A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

laugh.” She stroked Sam’s hand. “We could name the little one Maester, if you like. When he’s old enough, not now. We could.”
    â€œ
Maester
is not a name. You could call him Aemon, though.”
    Gilly thought about that. “Dalla brought him forth during battle, as the swords sang all around her. That should be his name. Aemon Battleborn. Aemon Steelsong.”
    A name even my lord father might like. A warrior’s name.
The boy was Mance Rayder’s son and Craster’s grandson, after all. He had none of Sam’s craven blood. “Yes. Call him that.”
    â€œWhen he is two,” she promised, “not before.”
    â€œWhere is the boy?” Sam thought to ask. Between rum and sorrow, it had taken him that long to realize that Gilly did not have the babe with her.
    â€œKojja has him. I asked her to take him for a while.”
    â€œOh.” Kojja Mo was the captain’s daughter, taller than Sam and slender as a spear, with skin as black and smooth as polished jet. She captained the ship’s red archers too, and pulled a double-curved goldenheart bow that could send a shaft four hundred yards. When the pirates had attacked them in the Stepstones, Kojja’s arrows had slain a dozen of them whilst Sam’s own shafts were falling in the water. The only thing Kojja Mo loved better than her bow was bouncing Dalla’s boy upon her knee and singing to him in the Summer Tongue. The wildling prince had become the darling of all the women in the crew, and Gilly seemed to trust them with him as she had never trusted any man.
    â€œThat was kind of Kojja,” Sam said.
    â€œI was afraid of her at first,” said Gilly. “She was so black, and her teeth were so big and white, I was afraid she was a beastling or a monster, but she’s not. She’s good. I like her.”
    â€œI know you do.” For most of her life the only man Gilly had known had been the terrifying Craster. The rest of her world had been female.
Men frighten her, but women don’t,
Sam realized. He could understand that. Back at Horn Hill he had preferred the company of girls as well. His sisters had been kind to him, and though the other girls would sometimes taunt him, cruel words were easier to shrug off than the blows and buffets he got from the other castle boys. Even now, on the
Cinnamon Wind,
Sam felt more comfortable with Kojja Mo than with her father, though that might be because she spoke the Common Tongue and he did not.
    â€œI like you too, Sam,” whispered Gilly. “And I like this drink. It tastes like fire.”
    Yes,
Sam thought,
a drink for dragons.
Their cups were empty, so he went over to the cask and filled them once again. The sun was low in the west, he saw, swollen to thrice its proper size. Its ruddy light made Gilly’s face seem flushed and red. They drank a cup to Kojja Mo, and one to Dalla’s boy, and one to Gilly’s babe back on the Wall. And after that nothing would do but to drink two cups for Aemon of House Targaryen. “May the Father judge him justly,” Sam said, sniffing. The sun was almost gone by the time they were done with Maester Aemon. Only a long thin line of red still glowed upon the western horizon, like a slash across the sky. Gilly said that the drink was making the ship spin round, so Sam helped her down the ladder to the women’s quarters in the bow of the ship.
    There was a lantern hanging just inside the cabin, and he managed to bang his head on it going in. “Ow,” he said, and Gilly said, “Are you hurt? Let me see.” She leaned close . . .
    . . . and kissed his mouth.
    Sam found himself kissing her back.
I said the words,
he thought, but her hands were tugging at his blacks, pulling at the laces of his breeches. He broke off the kiss long enough to say, “We can’t,” but Gilly said, “We can,” and covered his mouth with her own again. The
Cinnamon Wind
was spinning all around them and he could taste the rum on Gilly’s tongue and the next thing her breasts were bare and he was touching them.
I said the words,
Sam thought again, but one of her nipples found its way between his lips. It was pink and hard and when he sucked on it her milk filled his mouth, mingling with the taste of rum, and he had never tasted anything so fine and sweet and good.
If I do this I am no better than Dareon,
Sam thought, but it felt too good to stop. And suddenly his