A Feast for Dragons

of hot
charred flesh as blood and grease ran down into his beard. Wisps of smoke rose
from between his fingers. “Hodor,” he muttered between bites, “hodor, hodor.”
His sword lay on the earthen floor beside him. Jojen Reed nipped at his own
joint with small bites, chewing each chunk of meat a dozen times before
swallowing.
    The ranger killed a pig
. Coldhands stood
beside the door, a raven on his arm, both staring at the fire. Reflections from
the flames glittered off four black eyes.
He does not eat
, Bran
remembered,
and he fears the flames
.
    “You said no fire,” he reminded the ranger.
    “The walls around us hide the light, and dawn is close. We
will be on our way soon.”
    “What happened to the men? The foes behind us?”
    “They will not trouble you.”
    “Who were they? Wildlings?”
    Meera turned the meat to cook the other side. Hodor was
chewing and swallowing, muttering happily under his breath. Only Jojen seemed
aware of what was happening as Coldhands turned his head to stare at Bran.
“They were foes.”
    Men of the Night’s Watch
. “You killed them.
You and the ravens. Their faces were all torn, and their eyes were gone.”
Coldhands did not deny it. “They were your
brothers
. I saw. The
wolves had ripped their clothes up, but I could still tell. Their cloaks were
black. Like your hands.” Coldhands said nothing. “Who are you?
Why are
your hands black?”
    The ranger studied his hands as if he had never noticed them
before. “Once the heart has ceased to beat, a man’s blood runs down into his
extremities, where it thickens and congeals.” His voice rattled in his throat,
as thin and gaunt as he was. “His hands and feet swell up and turn as black as
pudding. The rest of him becomes as white as milk.”
    Meera Reed rose, her frog spear in her hand, a chunk of
smoking meat still impaled upon its tines. “Show us your face.”
    The ranger made no move to obey.
    “He’s dead.” Bran could taste the bile in his throat. “Meera,
he’s some dead thing. The monsters cannot pass so long as the Wall stands and
the men of the Night’s Watch stay true, that’s what Old Nan used to say. He
came to meet us at the Wall, but he could not pass. He sent Sam instead, with
that wildling girl.”
    Meera’s gloved hand tightened around the shaft of her frog
spear. “Who sent you? Who is this three-eyed crow?”
    “A friend. Dreamer, wizard, call him what you will. The last
greenseer.” The longhall’s wooden door banged open. Outside, the night wind howled,
bleak and black. The trees were full of ravens, screaming. Coldhands did not
move.
    “A monster,” Bran said.
    The ranger looked at Bran as if the rest of them did not
exist. “Your monster, Brandon Stark.”
    “Yours,”
the raven echoed, from his
shoulder. Outside the door, the ravens in the trees took up the cry, until the
night wood echoed to the murderer’s song of
“Yours, yours, yours.”
    “Jojen, did you dream this?” Meera asked her brother. “Who
is he? What is he? What do we do now?”
    “We go with the ranger,” said Jojen. “We have come too far
to turn back now, Meera. We would never make it back to the Wall alive. We go
with Bran’s monster, or we die.”
    ----
    The
Captain Of Guards
    T he blood oranges are well past ripe,” the
prince observed in a weary voice, when the captain rolled him onto the terrace.
    After that he did not speak again for hours.
    It was true about the oranges. A few had fallen to burst
open on the pale pink marble. The sharp sweet smell of them filled Hotah’s
nostrils each time he took a breath. No doubt the prince could smell them too,
as he sat beneath the trees in the rolling chair Maester Caleotte had made for
him, with its goose-down cushions and rumbling wheels of ebony and iron.
    For a long while the only sounds were the children splashing
in the pools and fountains, and once a soft plop as another orange
dropped onto the terrace to burst. Then, from the far side of the palace, the
captain heard the faint drumbeat of boots on marble.
    Obara. He knew her stride; long-legged, hasty, angry.
In the stables by the gates, her horse would be lathered, and bloody from her
spurs. She always rode stallions, and had been heard to boast that she could
master any horse in Dorne . . . and any man as well. The captain could hear
other footsteps as well, the quick soft scuffing of Maester Caleotte hurrying
to keep up.
    Obara Sand always walked too fast. She is chasing after
something