A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

down.
    He flicked the coin back at her with his forefinger. “Someplace no stag ever found . . . though a dragon might.”
    Silver would not get the truth from him, she sensed.
Gold might, or it might not. Steel would be more certain.
Brienne touched her dagger, then reached into her purse instead. She found a golden dragon and put in on the barrel. “Where?”
    The ragged man snatched up the coin and bit it. “Sweet. Puts me in mind o’ Crackclaw Point. Up north o’ here, ’tis a wild land o’ hills and bogs, but it happens I was born and bred there. Dick Crabb, I’m named, though most call me Nimble Dick.”
    She did not offer her own name. “
Where
in Crackclaw Point?”
    â€œThe Whispers. You heard o’ Clarence Crabb, o’ course.”
    â€œNo.”
    That seemed to surprise him. “
Ser
Clarence Crabb, I said. I got his blood in me. He was eight foot tall, and so strong he could uproot pine trees with one hand and chuck them half a mile. No horse could bear his weight, so he rode an aurochs.”
    â€œWhat does he have to do with this smugglers’ cove?”
    â€œHis wife was a woods witch. Whenever Ser Clarence killed a man, he’d fetch his head back home and his wife would kiss it on the lips and bring it back t’ life. Lords, they were, and wizards, and famous knights and pirates. One was king o’ Duskendale. They gave old Crabb good counsel. Being they was just heads, they couldn’t talk real loud, but they never shut up neither. When you’re a head, talking’s all you got to pass the day. So Crabb’s keep got named the Whispers. Still is, though it’s been a ruin for a thousand years. A lonely place, the Whispers.” The man walked the coin deftly across his knuckles. “One dragon by hisself gets lonely. Ten, now . . .”
    â€œTen dragons are a fortune. Do you take me for a fool?”
    â€œNo, but I can take you to one.” The coin danced one way, and back the other. “Take you to the Whispers, m’lady.”
    Brienne did not like the way his fingers played with that gold coin. Still . . . “Six dragons if we find my sister. Two if we only find the fool. Nothing if nothing is what we find.”
    Crabb shrugged. “Six is good. Six will serve.”
    Too quick.
She caught his wrist before he could tuck the gold away. “Do not play me false. You’ll not find me easy meat.”
    When she let go, Crabb rubbed his wrist. “Bloody piss,” he muttered. “You hurt my hand.”
    â€œI am sorry for that. My sister is a girl of three-and-ten. I need to find her before—”
    â€œâ€”before some knight gets in her slit. Aye, I hear you. She’s good as saved. Nimble Dick is with you now. Meet me by east gate at first light. I need t’ see this man about a horse.”

SAMWELL
    T he sea made Samwell Tarly greensick.
    It was not all his fear of drowning, though that was surely some of it. It was the motion of the ship as well, the way the decks rolled beneath his feet. “I have a queasy belly,” he confessed to Dareon the day they sailed from Eastwatch-by-the-Sea. The singer slapped him on the back and said, “With a belly big as yours, Slayer, that is a lot of quease.”
    Sam tried to keep a brave face on him, for Gilly’s sake if little else. She had never seen the sea before. When they were struggling through the snows after fleeing Craster’s Keep, they had come on several lakes, and even those had been a wonder to her. As
Blackbird
slipped away from shore the girl began to tremble, and big salt tears rolled down her cheeks. “Gods be good,” Sam heard her whisper. Eastwatch vanished first, and the Wall grew smaller and smaller in the distance, until it finally disappeared. The wind was coming up by then. The sails were the faded grey of a black cloak that had been washed too often, and Gilly’s face was white with fear. “This is a good ship,” Sam tried to tell her. “You don’t have to be afraid.” But she only looked at him, held her baby tighter, and fled below.
    Sam soon found himself clutching tightly to the gunwale and watching the sweep of the oars. The way they all moved together was somehow beautiful to behold, and better than looking at the water. Looking at the water only made him think of drowning. When he was small his lord father had tried to teach him how to swim by