A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

but my Pate was oh so
very
brave, and swore he was the man to slay that monster. He wanted to make a great name for himself.”
    We all do.
“When I was a squire I told myself I’d be the man to slay the Smiling Knight.”
    â€œThe Smiling Knight?” She sounded lost. “Who was that?”
    The Mountain of my boyhood. Half as big but twice as mad.
    â€œAn outlaw, long dead. No one who need concern your ladyship.”
    Amerei’s lip trembled. Tears rolled from her brown eyes.
    â€œYou must forgive my daughter,” said an older woman. Lady Amerei had brought a score of Freys to Darry with her; a sister, an uncle, a half uncle, various cousins . . . and her mother, who had been born a Darry. “She still grieves for her father.”
    â€œOutlaws
killed
him,” sobbed Lady Amerei. “Father had only gone out to ransom Petyr Pimple. He brought them the gold they asked for, but they hung him anyway.”
    â€œ
Hanged,
Ami. Your father was not a tapestry.” Lady Mariya turned back to Jaime. “I believe you knew him, ser.”
    â€œWe were squires together once, at Crakehall.” He would not go so far as to claim they had been friends. When Jaime had arrived, Merrett Frey had been the castle bully, lording it over all the younger boys.
Then he tried to bully me.
“He was . . . very strong.” It was the only praise that came to mind. Merrett had been slow and clumsy and stupid, but he
was
strong.
    â€œYou fought against the Kingswood Brotherhood together,” sniffed Lady Amerei. “Father used to tell me stories.”
    Father used to boast and lie, you mean.
“We did.” Frey’s chief contributions to the fight had consisted of contracting the pox from a camp follower and getting himself captured by the White Fawn. The outlaw queen burned her sigil into his arse before ransoming him back to Sumner Crakehall. Merrett had not been able to sit down for a fortnight, though Jaime doubted that the red-hot iron was half so nasty as the kettles of shit his fellow squires made him eat once he was returned.
Boys are the cruelest creatures on the earth.
He slipped his golden hand around his wine cup and raised it up. “To Merrett’s memory,” he said. It was easier to drink to the man than to talk of him.
    After the toast Lady Amerei stopped weeping and the table talk turned to wolves, of the four-footed kind. Ser Danwell Frey claimed there were more of them about than even his grandfather could remember. “They’ve lost all fear of men. Packs of them attacked our baggage train on our way down from the Twins. Our archers had to feather a dozen before the others fled.” Ser Addam Marbrand confessed that their own column had faced similar troubles on their way up from King’s Landing.
    Jaime concentrated on the fare before him, tearing off chunks of bread with his left hand and fumbling at his wine cup with his right. He watched Addam Marbrand charm the girl beside him, watched Steffon Swyft refight the battle for King’s Landing with bread and nuts and carrots. Ser Kennos pulled a serving girl into his lap, urging her to stroke his horn, whilst Ser Dermot regaled some squires with tales of knight errantry in the rainwood. Farther down the table Hugo Vance had closed his eyes.
Brooding on the mysteries of life,
thought Jaime.
That, or napping between courses.
He turned back to Lady Mariya. “The outlaws who killed your husband . . . was it Lord Beric’s band?”
    â€œSo we thought, at first.” Though Lady Mariya’s hair was streaked with grey, she was still a handsome woman. “The killers scattered when they left Oldstones. Lord Vypren tracked one band to Fairmarket, but lost them there. Black Walder led hounds and hunters into Hag’s Mire after the others. The peasants denied seeing them, but when questioned sharply they sang a different song. They spoke of a one-eyed man and another who wore a yellow cloak . . . and a woman, cloaked and hooded.”
    â€œA woman?” He would have thought that the White Fawn would have taught Merrett to stay clear of outlaw wenches. “There was a woman in the Kingswood Brotherhood as well.”
    â€œI know of her.”
How not,
her tone suggested,
when she left her mark upon my husband?
“The White Fawn was young and fair, they say. This hooded woman is neither. The peasants would have us believe that her face was torn and scarred, and