A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

they came upon Joseth the master of horse engaged in a
different sort of riding. He had some woman Bran did not know shoved up against
the wall, her skirts around her waist. She was giggling until Hodor stopped to
watch. Then she screamed. “Leave them be, Hodor,” Bran had to tell him.
“Take me to my bedchamber.”
    Hodor carried him up the winding steps to his tower and

knelt beside one of the iron bars that Mikken had driven into the wall. Bran
used the bars to move himself to the bed, and Hodor pulled off his boots and
breeches. “You can go back to the feast now, but don’t go bothering Joseth and
that woman,” Bran said.
    â€œHodor,” Hodor replied, bobbing his head.
    When he blew out his bedside candle, darkness covered him like a soft, familiar
blanket. The faint sound of music drifted through his shuttered
window.
    Something his father had told him once when he was little came back to him
suddenly. He had asked Lord Eddard if the Kingsguard were truly the finest
knights in the Seven Kingdoms. “No longer,” he answered, “but once they were
a marvel, a shining lesson to the world.”
    â€œWas there one who was best of all?”
    â€œThe finest knight I ever saw was Ser Arthur Dayne, who fought with a blade
called Dawn, forged from the heart of a fallen star. They called him the Sword
of the Morning, and he would have killed me but for Howland Reed.” Father had
gotten sad then, and he would say no more. Bran wished he had asked him what he
meant.
    He went to sleep with his head full of knights in gleaming armor, fighting with
swords that shone like starfire, but when the dream came he was in the
godswood
again. The smells from the kitchen and the Great Hall were so strong that it
was almost as if he had never left the feast. He prowled beneath the trees, his
brother close behind him. This night was wildly alive, full of the howling of
the man-pack at their play. The sounds made him

restless. He wanted to run, to hunt, he wanted to—
    The rattle of iron made his ears prick up. His brother heard it too. They raced
through the undergrowth toward the sound. Bounding across the still water at
the foot of the old white one, he caught the scent of a stranger, the man-smell
well mixed with leather and earth and iron.
    The intruders had pushed a few yards into the wood when he came upon them; a
female and a young male, with no taint of fear to them, even when he showed
them the white of his teeth. His brother growled low in his throat, yet still
they did not run.
    â€œHere they come,” the female said.
Meera,
some part of him
whispered, some wisp of the sleeping boy lost in the wolf dream. “Did you know
they would be so big?”
    â€œThey will be bigger still before they are grown,” the young male said,
watching them with eyes large, green, and unafraid. “The black one is full of
fear and rage, but the grey is strong . . . stronger than he
knows . . . can you feel him, sister?”
    â€œNo,” she said, moving a hand to the hilt of the long brown knife she wore.
“Go careful, Jojen.”
    â€œHe won’t hurt me. This is not the day I die.” The male walked toward them,
unafraid, and reached out for his muzzle, a touch as light as a summer breeze.
Yet at the brush of those fingers the wood dissolved and the very ground turned
to smoke beneath his feet and swirled away laughing, and then he was spinning
and falling, falling,
falling . . .

CATELYN
    A s she slept amidst the rolling grasslands, Catelyn dreamt that Bran was
whole again, that Arya and Sansa held hands, that Rickon was still a babe at
her breast. Robb, crownless, played with a wooden sword, and when all were safe
asleep, she found Ned in her bed, smiling.
    Sweet it was, sweet and gone too soon. Dawn came cruel, a dagger of light. She
woke aching and alone and weary; weary of riding, weary of hurting, weary of
duty.
I want to weep,
she thought.
I want to be comforted. I’m
so tired of being strong. I want to be foolish and frightened for once. Just
for a small while, that’s all . . . a
day . . . an hour . . .
    Outside her tent, men were stirring. She heard the whicker of horses,
Shadd complaining of stiffness in his back, Ser Wendel calling for his bow.
Catelyn wished they would all go away. They were good men, loyal, yet she was
tired of them all.