A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

for idle questions.
    â€œIt’s freedom they’re calling for,” declared Farlen, who was kennelmaster and
had no more love for the direwolves than his hounds did. “They don’t like
being walled up, and who’s to blame them? Wild things belong in the wild, not
in a castle.”
    â€œThey want to hunt,” agreed Gage the cook as he tossed cubes of suet in a
great kettle of stew. “A wolf smells better’n any man. Like as not, they’ve
caught the scent o’ prey.”
    Maester Luwin did not think so. “Wolves often howl at the moon. These are
howling at the comet. See how bright it is, Bran? Perchance they think it
is
the moon.”
    When Bran repeated that to Osha, she laughed aloud. “Your wolves have more wit
than your maester,” the wildling woman said. “They know truths the grey man
has forgotten.” The way she said it made him shiver, and when he asked what
the comet meant, she answered, “Blood and fire, boy, and nothing
sweet.”
    Bran asked Septon Chayle about the comet while they were sorting through some
scrolls snatched from the library fire. “It is the sword that slays the
season,” he replied, and soon after the white raven came from Oldtown bringing
word of autumn, so

doubtless he was right.
    Though Old Nan did not think so, and she’d lived longer than any of them.
“Dragons,” she said, lifting her head and sniffing. She was near blind and
could not see the comet, yet she claimed she could
smell
it. “It be
dragons, boy,” she insisted. Bran got no
princes
from Nan, no more
than he ever had.
    Hodor said only, “Hodor.” That was all he ever said.
    And still the direwolves howled. The guards on the walls muttered curses,
hounds in the kennels barked furiously, horses kicked at their stalls, the
Walders shivered by their fire, and even Maester Luwin complained of sleepless
nights. Only Bran did not mind. Ser Rodrik had confined the wolves to the
godswood after Shaggydog bit Little Walder, but the stones of Winterfell played
queer tricks with sound, and sometimes it sounded as if they were in the yard
right below Bran’s window. Other times he would have sworn they were up on the
curtain walls, loping round like sentries. He wished that he could see
them.
    He
could
see the comet hanging above the Guards Hall and the Bell
Tower, and farther back the First Keep, squat and round, its gargoyles black
shapes against the bruised purple dusk. Once Bran had known every stone of
those buildings, inside and out; he had climbed them all, scampering up walls
as easily as other boys ran down stairs. Their rooftops had been his secret
places, and the crows atop the broken tower his special friends.
    And then he had fallen.
    Bran did not remember falling, yet they said he had, so he

supposed it must be true. He had almost died. When he saw the weatherworn
gargoyles atop the First Keep where it had happened, he got a queer tight
feeling in his belly. And now he could not climb, nor walk nor run nor
swordfight, and the dreams he’d dreamed of knighthood had soured in his
head.
    Summer had howled the day Bran had fallen, and for long after as he lay broken
in his bed; Robb had told him so before he went away to war. Summer had mourned
for him, and Shaggydog and Grey Wind had joined in his grief. And the night the
bloody raven had brought word of their father’s death, the wolves had known
that too. Bran had been in the maester’s turret with Rickon talking of the
children of the forest when Summer and Shaggydog had drowned out Luwin with
their howls.
    Who are they mourning now?
Had some enemy slain the King in the
North, who used to be his brother Robb? Had his bastard brother Jon Snow fallen
from the Wall? Had his mother died, or one of his sisters? Or was this
something else, as maester and septon and Old Nan seemed to think?
    If I were truly a direwolf, I would understand the song,
he thought
wistfully. In his wolf dreams, he could race up the sides of mountains, jagged
icy mountains taller than any tower, and stand at the summit beneath the full
moon with all the world below him, the way it used to be.
    â€œOooo,” Bran cried tentatively. He cupped his hands around his mouth and
lifted his head to the comet.
“Ooooooooooooooooooo,
ahooooooooooooooo,”
he howled. It sounded stupid, high and hollow

and quavering, a little