A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

studded brigantine and roughspun breeches was lean and hard and wiry strong. His eyes were small and close-set, his nose broken, his widow’s peak as sharply pointed as the head of a spear. The pox had ravaged his face badly, and the beard he’d grown to hide the scars was thin and scraggly.
    â€œSam the Slayer!” he said, by way of greeting. “Are you sure you stabbed an Other, and not some child’s snow knight?”
    This isn’t starting well
. “It was the dragonglass that killed it, my lord,” Sam explained feebly.
    â€œAye, no doubt. Well, out with it, Slayer. Did the maester send you to me?”
    â€œThe maester?” Sam swallowed. “I . . . I just left him, my lord.” That wasn’t truly a lie, but if Pyke chose to read it wrong, it might make him more inclined to listen. Sam took a deep breath and launched into his plea.
    Pyke cut him off before he’d said twenty words. “You want me to kneel down and kiss the hem of Mallister’s pretty cloak, is that it? I might have known. You lordlings all flock like sheep. Well, tell Aemon that he’s wasted your breath and my time. If anyone withdraws it should be Mallister. The man’s too bloody
old
for the job, maybe you ought to go tell him that. We choose him, and we’re like to be back here in a year, choosing someone else.”
    â€œHe’s old,” Sam agreed, “but he’s well ex-experienced.”
    â€œAt sitting in his tower and fussing over maps, maybe. What does he plan to do, write letters to the wights? He’s a knight, well and good, but he’s not a
fighter
, and I don’t give a kettle of piss who he unhorsed in some fool tourney fifty years ago. The Halfhand fought all his battles, even an old blind man should see that. And we need a fighter more than ever with this bloody king on top of us. Today it’s ruins and empty fields, well and good, but what will
His Grace
want come the morrow? You think
Mallister
has the belly to stand up to Stannis Baratheon and that red bitch?” He laughed. “I don’t.”
    â€œYou won’t support him, then?” said Sam, dismayed.
    â€œAre you Sam the Slayer or Deaf Dick? No, I won’t support him.” Pyke jabbed a finger at his face. “Understand this, boy. I don’t
want
the bloody job, and never did. I fight best with a deck beneath me, not a horse, and Castle Black is too far from the sea. But I’ll be buggered with a red-hot sword before I turn the Night’s Watch over to that preening eagle from the Shadow Tower. And you can run back to the old man and tell him I said so, if he asks.” He stood. “Get out of my sight.”
    It took all the courage Sam had left in him to say, “W-what if there was someone else? Could you s-support someone else?”
    â€œWho? Bowen Marsh? The man counts spoons. Othell’s a follower, does what he’s told and does it well, but no more’n that. Slynt . . . well, his men like him, I’ll grant you, and it would almost be worth it to stick him down the royal craw and see if Stannis gagged, but no. There’s too much of King’s Landing in that one. A toad grows wings and thinks he’s a bloody dragon.” Pyke laughed. “Who does that leave, Hobb? We could pick him, I suppose, only then who’s going to boil your mutton, Slayer? You look like a man who likes his bloody mutton.”
    There was nothing more to say. Defeated, Sam could only stammer out his thanks and take his leave.
I will do better with Ser Denys
, he tried to tell himself as he walked through the castle. Ser Denys was a knight, highborn and well-spoken, and he had treated Sam most courteously when he’d found him and Gilly on the road.
Ser Denys will listen to me, he has to
.
    The commander of the Shadow Tower had been born beneath the Booming Tower of Seagard, and looked every inch a Mallister. Sable trimmed his collar and accented the sleeves of his black velvet doublet. A silver eagle fastened its claws in the gathered folds of his cloak. His beard was white as snow, his hair was largely gone, and his face was deeply lined, it was true. Yet he still had grace in his movements and teeth in his mouth, and the years had dimmed neither his blue-grey eyes nor his courtesy.
    â€œMy lord of Tarly,” he said, when his steward brought Sam to him in the Lance, where the Shadow Tower men were staying. “I am pleased to see