A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

next roll of the ship came as he was struggling back to his feet. It threw Gilly into his arms, and the wildling girl clung to him so fiercely that Sam could hardly breathe. “Don’t you be frightened,” he told her. “This is just an adventure. One day you’ll tell your son this tale.” That only made her dig her nails into his arm. She shuddered, her whole body shaking with the violence of her sobs.
Whatever I say just makes her worse.
He held her tightly, uncomfortably aware of her breasts pressing up against him. As frightened as he was, somehow that was enough to make him stiff.
She’ll feel it,
he thought, ashamed, but if she did, she gave no sign, only clung to him the harder.
    The days ran together after that. They never saw the sun. The days were grey and the nights black, except when lightning lit the sky above the peaks of Skagos. All of them were starved yet none could eat. The captain broached a cask of firewine to fortify the oarsmen. Sam tried a cup and sighed as hot snakes wriggled down his throat and through his chest. Dareon took a liking to the drink as well, and was seldom sober thereafter.
    The sails went up, the sails came down, and one ripped free of the mast and flew away like a great grey bird. As
Blackbird
rounded the south coast of Skagos, they spotted the wreckage of a galley on the rocks. Some of her crew had washed up on the shore, and the rooks and crabs had gathered to pay them homage. “Too bloody close,” grumbled Old Tattersalt when he saw. “One good blow, and we’ll be breaking up aside them.” Exhausted as they were, his rowers bent to their oars again, and the ship clawed south toward the narrow sea, till Skagos dwindled to no more than a few dark shapes in the sky that might have been thunderheads, or the tops of tall black mountains, or both. After that, they had eight days and seven nights of clear, smooth sailing.
    Then came more storms, worse than before.
    Was it three storms, or only one, broken up by lulls? Sam never knew, though he tried desperately to care.
“What does it matter?”
Dareon screamed at him once, when all of them were huddled in the cabin.
It doesn’t,
Sam wanted to tell him,
but so long as I’m thinking about that I’m not thinking about drowning or being sick or Maester Aemon’s shivering.
“It doesn’t,” he managed to squeak, but the thunder drowned out all the rest of it, and the deck lurched and knocked him sideways. Gilly was sobbing. The babe was shrieking. And up top he could hear Old Tattersalt bellowing at his crew, the ragged captain who never spoke at all.
    I hate the sea,
Sam thought,
I hate the sea, I hate the sea, I hate the sea.
The next lightning flash was so bright it lit the cabin through the seams in the planking overhead.
This is a good sound ship, a good sound ship, a good ship,
he told himself.
It will not sink. I am not afraid.
    During one of the lulls between the gales, as Sam clung white-knuckled to the rail wanting desperately to retch, he heard some of the crew muttering that this was what came of bringing a woman aboard ship, and a wildling woman at that. “Fucked her own father,” Sam heard one man say, as the wind was rising once again. “Worse than whoring, that. Worse than
anything.
We’ll all drown unless we get rid of her, and that abomination that she whelped.”
    Sam dared not confront them. They were older men, hard and sinewy, their arms and shoulders thickened by years at the oars. But he made certain that his knife was sharp, and whenever Gilly left the cabin to make water, he went with her.
    Even Dareon had no good to say about the wildling girl. Once, at Sam’s urging, the singer played a lullaby to soothe the babe, but partway through the first verse Gilly began to sob inconsolably. “Seven bloody hells,” Dareon snapped, “can’t you even stop weeping long enough to hear a
song
?”
    â€œJust play,” Sam pleaded, “just sing the song for her.”
    â€œShe doesn’t need a song,” said Dareon. “She needs a good spanking, or maybe a hard fuck. Get out of my way, Slayer.” He shoved Sam aside and went from the cabin to find some solace in a cup of firewine and the rough brotherhood of the oars.
    Sam was at his wit’s end by then. He had almost gotten used to the smells, but between the storms and Gilly’s sobbing he had not slept for days.