A Feast for Dragons

wicker basket on Hodor’s back, the boy
hunched down, ducking his head as the big stableboy passed beneath the limb of
an oak. The snow was falling again, wet and heavy. Hodor walked with one eye
frozen shut, his thick brown beard a tangle of hoarfrost, icicles drooping from
the ends of his bushy mustache. One gloved hand still clutched the rusty iron longsword
he had taken from the crypts below Winterfell, and from time to time he would
lash out at a branch, knocking loose a spray of snow. “Hod-d-d-dor,” he would
mutter, his teeth chattering.
    The sound was strangely reassuring. On their journey from
Winterfell to the Wall, Bran and his companions had made the miles shorter by
talking and telling tales, but it was different here. Even Hodor felt it. His
hodors
came less often than they had south of the Wall. There was a stillness to this
wood like nothing Bran had ever known before. Before the snows began, the north
wind would swirl around them and clouds of dead brown leaves would kick up from
the ground with a faint small rustling sound that reminded him of roaches
scurrying in a cupboard, but now all the leaves were buried under a blanket of
white. From time to time a raven would fly overhead, big black wings slapping
against the cold air. Elsewise the world was silent.
    Just ahead, the elk wove between the snowdrifts with his
head down, his huge rack of antlers crusted with ice. The ranger sat astride
his broad back, grim and silent.
Coldhands
was the name that
the fat boy Sam had given him, for though the ranger’s face was pale, his hands
were black and hard as iron, and cold as iron too. The rest of him was wrapped
in layers of wool and boiled leather and ringmail, his features shadowed by his
hooded cloak and a black woolen scarf about the lower half of his face.
    Behind the ranger, Meera Reed wrapped her arms around her
brother, to shelter him from the wind and cold with the warmth of her own body.
A crust of frozen snot had formed below Jojen’s nose, and from time to time he
shivered violently.
He looks so small
, Bran thought, as he
watched him sway.
He looks smaller than me now, and weaker too, and I’m
the cripple
.
    Summer brought up the rear of their little band. The
direwolf’s breath frosted the forest air as he padded after them, still limping
on the hind leg that had taken the arrow back at Queenscrown. Bran felt the
pain of the old wound whenever he slipped inside the big wolf’s skin. Of late
Bran wore Summer’s body more often than his own; the wolf felt the bite of the
cold, despite the thickness of his fur, but he could see farther and hear
better and smell more than the boy in the basket, bundled up like a babe in
swaddling clothes.
    Other times, when he was tired of being a wolf, Bran slipped
into Hodor’s skin instead. The gentle giant would whimper when he felt him, and
thrash his shaggy head from side to side, but not as violently as he had the first
time, back at Queenscrown.
He knows it’s me
, the boy liked to
tell himself.
He’s used to me by now
. Even so, he never felt
comfortable inside Hodor’s skin. The big stableboy never understood what was
happening, and Bran could taste the fear at the back of his mouth. It was
better inside Summer.
I am him, and he is me. He feels what I feel
.
    Sometimes Bran could sense the direwolf sniffing after the
elk, wondering if he could bring the great beast down. Summer had grown
accustomed to horses at Winterfell, but this was an elk and elk were prey. The
direwolf could sense the warm blood coursing beneath the elk’s shaggy hide.
Just the smell was enough to make the slaver run from between his jaws, and
when it did Bran’s mouth would water at the thought of rich, dark meat.
    From a nearby oak a raven
quork
ed, and Bran
heard the sound of wings as another of the big black birds flapped down to land
beside it. By day only half a dozen ravens stayed with them, flitting from tree
to tree or riding on the antlers of the elk. The rest of the murder flew ahead
or lingered behind. But when the sun sank low they would return, descending
from the sky on night-black wings until every branch of every tree was thick
with them for yards around. Some would fly to the ranger and mutter at him, and
it seemed to Bran that he understood their
quorks
and
squawks.
They are his eyes and ears. They scout for him, and whisper to him of dangers
ahead and behind
.
    As now. The elk stopped suddenly, and the ranger vaulted
lightly from his back to