A Feast for Dragons

land in knee-deep snow. Summer growled at him, his fur
bristling. The direwolf did not like the way that Coldhands smelled.
Dead
meat, dry blood, a faint whiff of rot. And cold. Cold over all
.
    “What is it?” Meera wanted to know.
    “Behind us,” Coldhands announced, his voice muffled by the
black wool scarf across his nose and mouth.
    “Wolves?” Bran asked. They had known for days that they were
being followed. Every night they heard the mournful howling of the pack, and
every night the wolves seemed a little closer.
Hunters, and hungry. They
can smell how weak we are
. Often Bran woke shivering hours before the
dawn, listening to the sound of them calling to one another in the distance as
he waited for the sun to rise.
If there are wolves, there must be prey
,
he used to think, until it came to him that
they
were the prey.
    The ranger shook his head. “Men. The wolves still keep their
distance. These men are not so shy.”
    Meera Reed pushed back her hood. The wet snow that had
covered it tumbled to the ground with a soft
thump
. “How many
men? Who are they?”
    “Foes. I’ll deal with them.”
    “I’ll come with you.”
    “You’ll stay. The boy must be protected. There is a lake
ahead, hard frozen. When you come on it, turn north and follow the shoreline.
You’ll come to a fishing village. Take refuge there until I can catch up with
you.”
    Bran thought that Meera meant to argue until her brother
said, “Do as he says. He knows this land.” Jojen’s eyes were a dark green, the
color of moss, but heavy with a weariness that Bran had never seen in them
before.
The little grandfather
. South of the Wall, the boy from
the crannogs had seemed to be wise beyond his years, but up here he was as lost
and frightened as the rest of them. Even so, Meera always listened to him.
    That was still true. Coldhands slipped between the trees,
back the way they’d come, with four ravens flapping after him. Meera watched
him go, her cheeks red with cold, breath puffing from her nostrils. She pulled
her hood back up and gave the elk a nudge, and their trek resumed. Before they
had gone twenty yards, though, she turned to glance behind them and said, “
Men
,
he says. What men? Does he mean wildlings? Why won’t he say?”
    “He said he’d go and deal with them,” said Bran.
    “He
said
, aye. He said he would take us to
this three-eyed crow too. That river we crossed this morning is the same one we
crossed four days ago, I swear. We’re going in circles.”
    “Rivers turn and twist,” Bran said uncertainly, “and where
there’s lakes and hills, you need to go around.”
    “There’s been too much
going around,”
Meera
insisted, “and too many secrets. I don’t like it. I don’t like
him
.
And I don’t trust him. Those hands of his are bad enough. He hides his face,
and will not speak a name. Who is he?
What
is he? Anyone can
put on a black cloak. Anyone, or any
thing
. He does not eat, he
never drinks, he does not seem to feel the cold.”
    It’s true
. Bran had been afraid to speak of
it, but he had noticed. Whenever they took shelter for the night, while he and
Hodor and the Reeds huddled together for warmth, the ranger kept apart.
Sometimes Coldhands closed his eyes, but Bran did not think he slept. And there
was something else …
    “The scarf.” Bran glanced about uneasily, but there was not
a raven to be seen. All the big black birds had left them when the ranger did.
No one was listening. Even so, he kept his voice low. “The scarf over his
mouth, it never gets all hard with ice, like Hodor’s beard. Not even when he
talks.”
    Meera gave him a sharp look. “You’re right. We’ve never seen
his breath, have we?”
    “No.” A puff of white heralded each of Hodor’s
hodors
.
When Jojen or his sister spoke, their words could be seen too. Even the elk
left a warm fog upon the air when he exhaled.
    “If he does not breathe …”
    Bran found himself remembering the tales Old Nan had told
him when he was a babe.
Beyond the Wall the monsters live, the giants
and the ghouls, the stalking shadows and the dead that walk
, she would
say, tucking him in beneath his scratchy woolen blanket,
but they cannot
pass so long as the Wall stands strong and the men of the Night’s Watch are
true. So go to sleep, my little Brandon, my baby boy, and dream sweet dreams.
There are no monsters here
. The ranger wore the black of the Night’s
Watch, but what if he was not a man at all? What if he was