A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

father will ever hand these holy islands over to a Stark. Now be silent. The ride is long enough without your magpie chatterings.”
    Theon held his tongue, though not without struggle.
So that is the way of it
, he thought. He almost laughed. As if ten years in Winterfell could make a Stark. Lord Eddard may have raised him among his own children, but Theon had never truly felt one of them. The whole castle, from Ned Stark himself to the lowliest kitchen scullion, knew he was there as hostage to his father’s good behavior, and treated him accordingly. Even the bastard Jon Snow had been accorded more honor than he had.
    Lord Eddard had tried to play the father to him from time to time, but to Theon he had always remained the man who’d brought blood and fire to Pyke and taken him from his home. As a boy, he had lived in fear of Stark’s stern face and great dark sword. His lady wife was, if anything, even more distant and suspicious.
    As for their children, the younger ones had been mewling babes for most of his years at Winterfell. Only Robb and his baseborn half-brother Jon Snow had been old enough to be worth his notice. The bastard was a sullen boy, quick to sense a slight, jealous of Theon’s high birth and Robb’s regard for him. For Robb himself, Theon did have a certain affection, as for a younger brother … but it would be best not to mention that. In Pyke, it would seem, the old wars were still being fought. That ought not surprise him. The Iron Islands lived in the past; the present was too hard and bitter to be borne. Besides, his father and uncles were old, and the old lords were like that; they took their dusty feuds to the grave, forgetting nothing and forgiving less.
    The path they rode wound up and up, into bare and stony hills. Soon they were out of sight of the sea, though the smell of salt still hung sharp in the damp air. They kept a steady plodding pace, past a shepherd’s croft and the abandoned workings of a mine. This new, holy Aeron Greyjoy was not much for talk. They rode in a gloom of silence. Finally Theon could suffer it no longer. “Robb Stark is Lord of Winterfell now,” he said.
    Aeron rode on. “One wolf is much like the other.”
    â€œRobb has broken fealty with the Iron Throne and crowned himself King in the North. There’s war.”
    â€œThe maester’s ravens fly over salt as soon as rock. This news is old and cold.”
    â€œIt means a new day, uncle,” Theon promised.
    â€œEvery morning brings a new day, much like the old.”
    â€œIn Riverrun, they would tell you different,” he said. “I’ve heard it said that the red comet is a herald of a new age. A messenger from the gods, they say.”
    â€œA sign it is,” the priest agreed, “but from our god, not theirs. A burning brand it is, such as our people carried of old. It is the flame the Drowned God brought from the sea, and it proclaims a rising tide. It is time to hoist our sails and go forth into the world with fire and sword, as he did.”
    Theon smiled. “I could not agree more.”
    â€œA man agrees with god as a raindrop with the storm.”
    This raindrop will one day be a king, old man
. Theon had suffered quite enough of his uncle’s gloom. He put his spurs into his horse and trotted on ahead, smiling.
    It was nigh on sunset when they reached the walls of Pyke, a crescent of dark stone that ran from cliff to cliff, with the gatehouse in the center and three square towers to either side. Theon could still make out the scars left by the stones of Robert Baratheon’s catapults. A new south tower had risen from the ruins of the old, its stone a paler shade of grey, and as yet unmarred by patches of lichen. That was where Robert had made his breach, swarming in over the rubble and corpses with his warhammer in hand and Ned Stark at his side. Theon had watched from the safety of the Sea Tower, and sometimes he still saw the torches in his dreams, and heard the dull thunder of the collapse.
    The gates stood open to him, the rusted iron portcullis drawn up. The guards atop the battlements watched with strangers’ eyes as Theon Greyjoy came home at last.
    Beyond the curtain wall were half a hundred acres of headland hard against the sky and the sea. The stables were here, and the kennels, and a scatter of other outbuildings. Sheep and swine huddled in their pens, and the castle dogs ran free. To the