A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

though. The very men who guard her could be used to bring her down.
The evidence would need to be so overwhelming that even Margaery’s own lord father would have no choice but to consent to her execution. That would not be easy.
Her lovers are not like to confess, knowing it would mean their heads as well as hers. Unless . . .
    The next day the queen came on Osmund Kettleblack in the yard, as he was sparring with one of the Redwyne twins. Which one she could not say; she had never been able to tell the two of them apart. She watched the swordplay for a while, then called Ser Osmund aside. “Walk with me a bit,” she said, “and tell me true. I want no empty boasting now, no talk of how a Kettleblack is thrice as good as any other knight. Much may ride upon your answer. Your brother Osney. How good a sword is he?”
    â€œGood. You’ve seen him. He’s not as strong as me nor Osfryd, but he’s quick to the kill.”
    â€œIf it came to it, could he defeat Ser Boros Blount?”
    â€œBoros the Belly?” Ser Osmund chortled. “He’s what, forty? Fifty? Half-drunk half the time, fat even when he’s sober. If he ever had a taste for battle, he’s lost it. Aye, Your Grace, if Ser Boros wants for killing, Osney could do it easy enough. Why? Has Boros done some treason?”
    â€œNo,” she said.
But Osney has.

BRIENNE
    T hey came upon the first corpse a mile from the crossroads.
    He swung beneath the limb of a dead tree whose blackened trunk still bore the scars of the lightning that had killed it. The carrion crows had been at work on his face, and wolves had feasted on his lower legs where they dangled near the ground. Only bones and rags remained below his knees . . . along with one well-chewed shoe, half-covered by mud and mold.
    â€œWhat does he have in his mouth?” asked Podrick.
    Brienne had to steel herself to look. His face was grey and green and ghastly, his mouth open and distended. Someone had shoved a jagged white rock between his teeth. A rock, or . . .
    â€œSalt,” said Septon Meribald.
    Fifty yards farther on they spied the second body. The scavengers had torn him down, so what remained of him was strewn on the ground beneath a frayed rope looped about the limb of an elm. Brienne might have ridden past him, unawares, if Dog had not sniffed him out and loped into the weeds for a closer smell.
    â€œWhat do you have there, Dog?” Ser Hyle dismounted, strode after the dog, and came up with a halfhelm. The dead man’s skull was still inside it, along with some worms and beetles. “Good steel,” he pronounced, “and not too badly dinted, though the lion’s lost his head. Pod, would you like a helm?”
    â€œNot that one. It’s got worms in it.”
    â€œWorms wash out, lad. You’re squeamish as a girl.”
    Brienne scowled at him. “It is too big for him.”
    â€œHe’ll grow into it.”
    â€œI don’t want to,” said Podrick. Ser Hyle shrugged, and tossed the broken helm back into the weeds, lion crest and all. Dog barked and went to lift his leg against the tree.
    After that, hardly a hundred yards went by without a corpse. They dangled under ash and alder, beech and birch, larch and elm, hoary old willows and stately chestnut trees. Each man wore a noose around his neck, and swung from a length of hempen rope, and each man’s mouth was packed with salt. Some wore cloaks of grey or blue or crimson, though rain and sun had faded them so badly that it was hard to tell one color from another. Others had badges sewn on their breasts. Brienne spied axes, arrows, several salmon, a pine tree, an oak leaf, beetles, bantams, a boar’s head, half a dozen tridents.
Broken men,
she realized,
dregs from a dozen armies, the leavings of the lords.
    Some of the dead men had been bald and some bearded, some young and some old, some short, some tall, some fat, some thin. Swollen in death, with faces gnawed and rotten, they all looked the same.
On the gallows tree, all men are brothers.
Brienne had read that in a book, though she could not recall which one.
    It was Hyle Hunt who finally put words to what all of them had realized. “These are the men who raided Saltpans.”
    â€œMay the Father judge them harshly,” said Meribald, who had been a friend to the town’s aged septon.
    Who they were did not concern Brienne half so much as who had hanged them. The noose was