A Feast for Dragons

feathers, and wolf, wolf,
wolf.
A pack
. He would need to fight for his meat.
    They smelled him too. As he moved out from amongst the
darkness of the trees into the bloody glade, they were watching him. The female
was chewing on a leather boot that still had half a leg in it, but she let it
fall at his approach. The leader of the pack, an old male with a grizzled white
muzzle and a blind eye, moved out to meet him, snarling, his teeth bared.
Behind him, a younger male showed his fangs as well.
    The direwolf’s pale yellow eyes drank in the sights around
them. A nest of entrails coiled through a bush, entangled with the branches.
Steam rising from an open belly, rich with the smells of blood and meat. A head
staring sightlessly up at a horned moon, cheeks ripped and torn down to bloody
bone, pits for eyes, neck ending in a ragged stump. A pool of frozen blood,
glistening red and black.
    Men
. The stink of them filled the world.
Alive, they had been as many as the fingers on a man’s paw, but now they were
none.
Dead. Done. Meat
. Cloaked and hooded, once, but the
wolves had torn their clothing into pieces in their frenzy to get at the flesh.
Those who still had faces wore thick beards crusted with ice and frozen snot.
The falling snow had begun to bury what remained of them, so pale against the
black of ragged cloaks and breeches.
Black
.
    Long leagues away, the boy stirred uneasily.
    Black. Night’s Watch. They were Night’s Watch
.
    The direwolf did not care. They were meat. He was hungry.
    The eyes of the three wolves glowed yellow. The direwolf
swung his head from side to side, nostrils flaring, then bared his fangs in a
snarl. The younger male backed away. The direwolf could smell the fear in him.
Tail
,
he knew. But the one-eyed wolf answered with a growl and moved to block his
advance.
Head. And he does not fear me though I am twice his size
.
    Their eyes met.
    Warg!
    Then the two rushed together, wolf and direwolf, and there
was no more time for thought. The world shrank down to tooth and claw, snow
flying as they rolled and spun and tore at one another, the other wolves
snarling and snapping around them. His jaws closed on matted fur slick with
hoarfrost, on a limb thin as a dry stick, but the one-eyed wolf clawed at his
belly and tore himself free, rolled, lunged for him. Yellow fangs snapped
closed on his throat, but he shook off his old grey cousin as he would a rat,
then charged after him, knocked him down. Rolling, ripping, kicking, they
fought until the both of them were ragged and fresh blood dappled the snows
around them. But finally the old one-eyed wolf lay down and showed his belly.
The direwolf snapped at him twice more, sniffed at his butt, then lifted a leg
over him.
    A few snaps and a warning growl, and the female and the tail
submitted too. The pack was his.
    The prey as well. He went from man to man, sniffing, before
settling on the biggest, a faceless thing who clutched black iron in one hand.
His other hand was missing, severed at the wrist, the stump bound up in
leather. Blood flowed thick and sluggish from the slash across his throat. The
wolf lapped at it with his tongue, licked the ragged eyeless ruin of his nose
and cheeks, then buried his muzzle in his neck and tore it open, gulping down a
gobbet of sweet meat. No flesh had ever tasted half as good.
    When he was done with that one, he moved to the next, and
devoured the choicest bits of that man too. Ravens watched him from the trees,
squatting dark-eyed and silent on the branches as snow drifted down around
them. The other wolves made do with his leavings; the old male fed first, then
the female, then the tail. They were his now. They were pack.
    No
, the boy whispered,
we have
another pack. Lady’s dead and maybe Grey Wind too, but somewhere there’s still
Shaggydog and Nymeria and Ghost. Remember Ghost?
    Falling snow and feasting wolves began to dim. Warmth beat
against his face, comforting as a mother’s kisses.
Fire
, he
thought,
smoke
. His nose twitched to the smell of roasting
meat. And then the forest fell away, and he was back in the longhall again,
back in his broken body, staring at a fire. Meera Reed was turning a chunk of
raw red flesh above the flames, letting it char and spit. “Just in time,” she
said. Bran rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand and wriggled backwards
against the wall to sit. “You almost slept through supper. The ranger found a
sow.”
    Behind her, Hodor was tearing eagerly at a chunk