A Feast for Dragons

Northmen,
free folk, queen’s men … “Form a line,” Jon Snow commanded them.
“Keep them back. Everyone, but especially the queen’s men.” The dead man was
Ser Patrek of King’s Mountain; his head was largely gone, but his heraldry was
as distinctive as his face. Jon did not want to risk Ser Malegorn or Ser Brus
or any of the queen’s other knights trying to avenge him.
    Wun Weg Wun Dar Wun howled again and gave Ser Patrek’s other
arm a twist and pull. It tore loose from his shoulder with a spray of bright
red blood.
Like a child pulling petals off a daisy
, thought
Jon. “Leathers, talk to him, calm him. The Old Tongue, he understands the Old
Tongue.
Keep back
, the rest of you. Put away your steel, we’re
scaring him.” Couldn’t they see the giant had been cut? Jon had to put an end to
this or more men would die. They had no idea of Wun Wun’s strength.
A
horn, I
need a horn
. He saw the glint of steel, turned
toward it. “No
blades!”
he screamed. “Wick, put that
knife …”
     … 
away
, he meant to say. When
Wick Whittlestick slashed at his throat, the word turned into a grunt. Jon
twisted from the knife, just enough so it barely grazed his skin.
He cut
me
. When he put his hand to the side of his neck, blood welled between
his fingers. “Why?”
    “For the Watch.” Wick slashed at him again. This time Jon
caught his wrist and bent his arm back until he dropped the dagger. The
gangling steward backed away, his hands upraised as if to say,
Not me,
it was not me
. Men were screaming. Jon reached for Longclaw, but his
fingers had grown stiff and clumsy. Somehow he could not seem to get the sword
free of its scabbard.
    Then Bowen Marsh stood there before him, tears running down
his cheeks. “For the Watch.” He punched Jon in the belly. When he pulled his
hand away, the dagger stayed where he had buried it.
    Jon fell to his knees. He found the dagger’s hilt and
wrenched it free. In the cold night air the wound was smoking. “Ghost,” he
whispered. Pain washed over him.
Stick them with the pointy end
.
When the third dagger took him between the shoulder blades, he gave a grunt and
fell face-first into the snow. He never felt the fourth knife. Only the
cold …
    ----

    THE QUEEN’S HAND
    The Dornish prince was three days dying.
    He took his last shuddering breath in the bleak black dawn,
as cold rain hissed from a dark sky to turn the brick streets of the old city
into rivers. The rain had drowned the worst of the fires, but wisps of smoke
still rose from the smoldering ruin that had been the pyramid of Hazkar, and
the great black pyramid of Yherizan where Rhaegal had made his lair hulked in
the gloom like a fat woman bedecked with glowing orange jewels.
    Perhaps the gods are not deaf after all
, Ser
Barristan Selmy reflected as he watched those distant embers.
If not for
the rain, the fires might have consumed all of Meereen by now
.
    He saw no sign of dragons, but he had not expected to. The
dragons did not like the rain. A thin red slash marked the eastern horizon
where the sun might soon appear. It reminded Selmy of the first blood welling
from a wound. Often, even with a deep cut, the blood came before the pain.
    He stood beside the parapets of the highest step of the Great
Pyramid, searching the sky as he did every morning, knowing that the dawn must
come and hoping that his queen would come with it.
She will not have
abandoned us, she would never leave her people
, he was telling
himself, when he heard the prince’s death rattle coming from the queen’s
apartments.
    Ser Barristan went inside. Rainwater ran down the back of
his white cloak, and his boots left wet tracks on the floors and carpets. At
his command, Quentyn Martell had been laid out in the queen’s own bed. He had
been a knight, and a prince of Dorne besides. It seemed only kind to let him
die in the bed he had crossed half a world to reach. The bedding was
ruined—sheets, covers, pillows, mattress, all reeked of blood and smoke, but
Ser Barristan thought Daenerys would forgive him.
    Missandei sat at the bedside. She had been with the prince
night and day, tending to such needs as he could express, giving him water and
milk of the poppy when he was strong enough to drink, listening to the few
tortured words he gasped out from time to time, reading to him when he fell
quiet, sleeping in her chair beside him. Ser Barristan had asked some of the
queen’s cupbearers to help, but the sight of the burned man