A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

assist me.” The hunched, pink-eyed brother handed Jon the bucket and scurried down the ladder. “Toss the meat into the cages,” Aemon instructed him. “The birds will do the rest.”
    Jon shifted the bucket to his right hand and thrust his left down into the bloody bits. The ravens began to scream noisily and fly at the bars, beating at the metal with night-black wings. The meat had been chopped into pieces no larger than a finger joint. He filled his fist and tossed the raw red morsels into the cage, and the squawking and squabbling grew hotter. Feathers flew as two of the larger birds fought over a choice piece. Quickly Jon grabbed a second handful and threw it in after the first. “Lord Mormont’s raven likes fruit and corn.”
    â€œHe is a rare bird,” the maester said. “Most ravens will eat grain, but they prefer flesh. It makes them strong, and I fear they relish the taste of blood. In that they are like men … and like men, not all ravens are alike.”
    Jon had nothing to say to that. He threw meat, wondering why he’d been summoned. No doubt the old man would tell him, in his own good time. Maester Aemon was not a man to be hurried.
    â€œDoves and pigeons can also be trained to carry messages,” the maester went on, “though the raven is a stronger flyer, larger, bolder, far more clever, better able to defend itself against hawks … yet ravens are black, and they eat the dead, so some godly men abhor them. Baelor the Blessed tried to replace all the ravens withdoves, did you know?” The maester turned his white eyes on Jon, smiling. “The Night’s Watch prefers ravens.”
    Jon’s fingers were in the bucket, blood up to the wrist. “Dywen says the wildlings call us crows,” he said uncertainly.
    â€œThe crow is the raven’s poor cousin. They are both beggars in black, hated and misunderstood.”
    Jon wished he understood what they were talking about, and why. What did he care about ravens and doves? If the old man had something to say to him, why couldn’t he just say it?
    â€œJon, did you ever wonder
why
the men of the Night’s Watch take no wives and father no children?” Maester Aemon asked.
    Jon shrugged. “No.” He scattered more meat. The fingers of his left hand were slimy with blood, and his right throbbed from the weight of the bucket.
    â€œSo they will not love,” the old man answered, “for love is the bane of honor, the death of duty.”
    That did not sound right to Jon, yet he said nothing. The maester was a hundred years old, and a high officer of the Night’s Watch; it was not his place to contradict him.
    The old man seemed to sense his doubts. “Tell me, Jon, if the day should ever come when your lord father must needs choose between honor on the one hand and those he loves on the other, what would he do?”
    Jon hesitated. He wanted to say that Lord Eddard would never dishonor himself, not even for love, yet inside a small sly voice whispered,
He fathered a bastard, where was the honor in that? And your mother, what of his duty to her, he will not even say her name
. “He would do whatever was right,” he said … ringingly, to make up for his hesitation. “No matter what.”
    â€œThen Lord Eddard is a man in ten thousand. Most of us are not so strong. What is honor compared to a woman’s love? What is duty against the feel of a newborn son in your arms … or the memory of a brother’s smile? Wind and words. Wind and words. We are only human, and the gods have fashioned us for love. That is our great glory, and our great tragedy.
    â€œThe men who formed the Night’s Watch knew that only their courage shielded the realm from the darkness to the north. They knew they must have no divided loyaltiesto weaken their resolve. So they vowed they would have no wives nor children.
    â€œYet brothers they had, and sisters. Mothers who gave them birth, fathers who gave them names. They came from a hundred quarrelsome kingdoms, and they knew times may change, but men do not. So they pledged as well that the Night’s Watch would take no part in the battles of the realms it guarded.
    â€œThey kept their pledge. When Aegon slew Black Harren and claimed his kingdom, Harren’s brother was Lord Commander on the Wall, with ten thousand swords to hand. He did not march. In the days when the