A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

nothing at all remained but a great gaping mouth in a ring of wrinkles. Sam stepped aside and waved Jojen through ahead of him. Summer followed, sniffing as he went, and then it was Bran’s turn. Hodor ducked, but not low enough. The door’s upper lip brushed softly against the top of Bran’s head, and a drop of water fell on him and ran slowly down his nose. It was strangely warm, and salty as a tear.

DAENERYS
    M eereen was as large as Astapor and Yunkai combined. Like her sister cities she was built of brick, but where Astapor had been red and Yunkai yellow, Meereen was made with bricks of many colors. Her walls were higher than Yunkai’s and in better repair, studded with bastions and anchored by great defensive towers at every angle. Behind them, huge against the sky, could be seen the top of the Great Pyramid, a monstrous thing eight hundred feet tall with a towering bronze harpy at its top.
    â€œThe harpy is a craven thing,” Daario Naharis said when he saw it. “She has a woman’s heart and a chicken’s legs. Small wonder her sons hide behind their walls.”
    But the hero did not hide. He rode out the city gates, armored in scales of copper and jet and mounted upon a white charger whose striped pink-and-white barding matched the silk cloak flowing from the hero’s shoulders. The lance he bore was fourteen feet long, swirled in pink and white, and his hair was shaped and teased and lacquered into two great curling ram’s horns. Back and forth he rode beneath the walls of multicolored bricks, challenging the besiegers to send a champion forth to meet him in single combat.
    Her bloodriders were in such a fever to go meet him that they almost came to blows. “Blood of my blood,” Dany told them, “your place is here by me. This man is a buzzing fly, no more. Ignore him, he will soon be gone.” Aggo, Jhogo, and Rakharo were brave warriors, but they were young, and too valuable to risk. They kept her
khalasar
together, and were her best scouts too.
    â€œThat was wisely done,” Ser Jorah said as they watched from the front of her pavilion. “Let the fool ride back and forth and shout until his horse goes lame. He does us no harm.”
    â€œHe does,” Arstan Whitebeard insisted. “Wars are not won with swords and spears alone, ser. Two hosts of equal strength may come together, but one will break and run whilst the other stands. This hero builds courage in the hearts of his own men and plants the seeds of doubt in ours.”
    Ser Jorah snorted. “And if our champion were to lose, what sort of seed would that plant?”
    â€œA man who fears battle wins no victories, ser.”
    â€œWe’re not speaking of battle. Meereen’s gates will not open if that fool falls. Why risk a life for naught?”
    â€œFor honor, I would say.”
    â€œI have heard enough.” Dany did not need their squabbling on top of all the other troubles that plagued her. Meereen posed dangers far more serious than one pink-and-white hero shouting insults, and she could not let herself be distracted. Her host numbered more than eighty thousand after Yunkai, but fewer than a quarter of them were soldiers. The rest . . . well, Ser Jorah called them mouths with feet, and soon they would be starving.
    The Great Masters of Meereen had withdrawn before Dany’s advance, harvesting all they could and burning what they could not harvest. Scorched fields and poisoned wells had greeted her at every hand. Worst of all, they had nailed a slave child up on every milepost along the coast road from Yunkai, nailed them up still living with their entrails hanging out and one arm always outstretched to point the way to Meereen. Leading her van, Daario had given orders for the children to be taken down before Dany had to see them, but she had countermanded him as soon as she was told. “I
will
see them,” she said. “I will see every one, and count them, and look upon their faces. And I will remember.”
    By the time they came to Meereen sitting on the salt coast beside her river, the count stood at one hundred and sixty-three.
I will have this city
, Dany pledged to herself once more.
    The pink-and-white hero taunted the besiegers for an hour, mocking their manhood, mothers, wives, and gods. Meereen’s defenders cheered him on from the city walls. “His name is Oznak zo Pahl,” Brown Ben Plumm told her when he arrived for the war