A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

the grease’d run down into that skinny beard o’ his.”
    Father,
Jaime thought,
your dogs have both gone mad.
He found himself remembering tales he had first heard as a child at Casterly Rock, of mad Lady Lothston who bathed in tubs of blood and presided over feasts of human flesh within these very walls.
    Somehow revenge had lost its savor. “Take this and throw it in the lake.” Jaime tossed Hoat’s head to Peck, and turned to address the garrison. “Until such time as Lord Petyr arrives to claim his seat, Ser Bonifer Hasty shall hold Harrenhal in the name of the crown. Those of you who wish may join him, if he’ll have you. The rest will ride with me to Riverrun.”
    The Mountain’s men looked at one another. “We’re owed,” said one. “Ser promised us. Rich rewards, he said.”
    â€œHis very words,” Shitmouth agreed.
“Rich rewards, for them as rides with me.”
A dozen others began to yammer their assent.
    Ser Bonifer raised a gloved hand. “Any man who remains with me shall have a hide of land to work, a second hide when he takes a wife, a third at the birth of his first child.”
    â€œLand, ser?” Shitmouth spat. “Piss on that. If we wanted to grub in the bloody dirt, we could have bloody well stayed home, begging your pardon, ser.
Rich rewards,
Ser said. Meaning gold.”
    â€œIf you have a grievance, go to King’s Landing and take it up with my sweet sister.” Jaime turned to Rafford. “I’ll see those captives now. Starting with Ser Wylis Manderly.”
    â€œHe the fat one?” asked Rafford.
    â€œI devoutly hope so. And tell me no sad stories of how he died, or the lot of you are apt to do the same.”
    Any hopes he might have nursed of finding Shagwell, Pyg, or Zollo languishing in the dungeons were sadly disappointed. The Brave Companions had abandoned Vargo Hoat to a man, it would seem. Of Lady Whent’s people, only three remained—the cook who had opened the postern gate for Ser Gregor, a bent-back armorer called Ben Blackthumb, and a girl named Pia, who was not near as pretty as she had been when Jaime saw her last. Someone had broken her nose and knocked out half her teeth. The girl fell at Jaime’s feet when she saw him, sobbing and clinging to his leg with hysterical strength till Strongboar pulled her off. “No one will hurt you now,” he told her, but that only made her sob the louder.
    The other captives had been better treated. Ser Wylis Manderly was amongst them, along with several other highborn northmen taken prisoner by the Mountain That Rides in the fighting at the fords of the Trident. Useful hostages, all worth a goodly ransom. They were ragged, filthy, and shaggy to a man, and some had fresh bruises, cracked teeth, and missing fingers, but their wounds had been washed and bandaged, and none of them had gone hungry. Jaime wondered if they had any inkling what they’d been eating, and decided it was better not to inquire.
    None had any defiance left; especially not Ser Wylis, a bushy-faced tub of suet with dull eyes and sallow, sagging jowls. When Jaime told him that he would be escorted to Maidenpool and there put on a ship for White Harbor, Ser Wylis collapsed into a puddle on the floor and sobbed longer and louder than Pia had. It took four men to lift him back onto his feet.
Too much roast goat,
Jaime reflected.
Gods, but I hate this bloody castle.
Harrenhal had seen more horror in its three hundred years than Casterly Rock had witnessed in three thousand.
    Jaime commanded that fires be lit in the Hall of a Hundred Hearths and sent the cook hobbling back to the kitchens to prepare a hot meal for the men of his column. “Anything but goat.”
    He took his own supper in Hunter’s Hall with Ser Bonifer Hasty, a solemn stork of a man prone to salting his speech with appeals to the Seven. “I want none of Ser Gregor’s followers,” he declared as he was cutting up a pear as withered as he was, so as to make certain that its nonexistent juice did not stain his pristine purple doublet, embroidered with the white bend cotised of his House. “I will not have such sinners in my service.”
    â€œMy septon used to say all men were sinners.”
    â€œHe was not wrong,” Ser Bonifer allowed, “but some sins are blacker than others, and fouler in the nostrils of the Seven.”
    And you have no more nose than my