A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

Longbough.”
    â€œâ€™Tis you indeed. You owe me seven stags. Show me some silver and I’ll show you a bed.” The innkeep set the tankards down one by one, slopping more ale on the table in the process.
    â€œI will pay for one room for myself, and a second for my two companions.” Brienne indicated Ser Creighton and Ser Illifer.
    â€œI shall take a room as well,” said the merchant, “for myself and good Ser Shadrich. My serving men will bed down in your stables, if it please you.”
    The innkeep looked them over. “It don’t please me, but might be I’ll allow it. Will you be wanting supper? That’s good goat on the spit, that is.”
    â€œI shall judge its goodness for myself,” Hibald announced. “My men will content themselves with bread and drippings.”
    And so they supped. Brienne tried the goat herself, after following the innkeep up the steps, pressing some coins into his hand, and stashing her goods in the second room he showed her. She ordered goat for Ser Creighton and Ser Illifer as well, since they had shared their trout with her. The hedge knights and the septon washed down the meat with ale, but Brienne drank a cup of goat’s milk. She listened to the table talk, hoping against hope that she might hear something that would help her find Sansa.
    â€œYou come from King’s Landing,” one of the locals said to Hibald. “Is it true that the Kingslayer’s been crippled?”
    â€œTrue enough,” Hibald said. “He’s lost his sword hand.”
    â€œAye,” Ser Creighton said, “chewed off by a direwolf, I hear, one of them monsters come down from the north. Nought that’s good ever come from the north. Even their gods are queer.”
    â€œIt was not a wolf,” Brienne heard herself say. “Ser Jaime lost his hand to a Qohorik sellsword.”
    â€œIt is no easy thing to fight with your off hand,” observed the Mad Mouse.
    â€œBah,” said Ser Creighton Longbough. “As it happens, I fight as well with either hand.”
    â€œOh, I have no doubt of that.” Ser Shadrich lifted his tankard in salute.
    Brienne remembered her fight with Jaime Lannister in the woods. It had been all that she could do to keep his blade at bay.
He was weak from his imprisonment, and chained at the wrists. No knight in the Seven Kingdoms could have stood against him at his full strength, with no chains to hamper him.
Jaime had done many wicked things, but the man could
fight!
His maiming had been monstrously cruel. It was one thing to slay a lion, another to hack his paw off and leave him broken and bewildered.
    Suddenly the common room was too loud to endure a moment longer. She muttered her good-nights and took herself up to bed. The ceiling in her room was low; entering with a taper in her hand, Brienne had to duck or crack her head. The only furnishings were a bed wide enough to sleep six, and the stub of a tallow candle on the sill. She lit it with the taper, barred the door, and hung her sword belt from a bedpost. Her scabbard was a plain thing, wood wrapped in cracked brown leather, and her sword was plainer still. She had bought it in King’s Landing, to replace the blade the Brave Companions had stolen.
Renly’s sword.
It still hurt, knowing she had lost it.
    But she had another longsword hidden in her bedroll. She sat on the bed and took it out. Gold glimmered yellow in the candlelight and rubies smoldered red. When she slid Oathkeeper from the ornate scabbard, Brienne’s breath caught in her throat. Black and red the ripples ran, deep within the steel.
Valyrian steel, spell-forged.
It was a sword fit for a hero. When she was small, her nurse had filled her ears with tales of valor, regaling her with the noble exploits of Ser Galladon of Morne, Florian the Fool, Prince Aemon the Dragonknight, and other champions. Each man bore a famous sword, and surely Oathkeeper belonged in their company, even if she herself did not. “You’ll be defending Ned Stark’s daughter with Ned Stark’s own steel,” Jaime had promised.
    Kneeling between the bed and wall, she held the blade and said a silent prayer to the Crone, whose golden lamp showed men the way through life.
Lead me,
she prayed,
light the way before me, show me the path that leads to Sansa.
She had failed Renly, had failed Lady Catelyn. She must not fail Jaime.
He trusted me with his sword. He trusted me