A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

Craster’s children. Well, truth
be told,
I’m
hungry enough to eat one of Craster’s children, so long
as he was served hot. Go on, I’ll see to your horse. If it’s warm and dry
inside, don’t tell me, I wasn’t asked in.” He flicked a glob of wet mud out
from under a horseshoe. “Does this mud look like shit to you? Could it be that
this whole hill is made of Craster’s shit?”
    Jon smiled. “Well, I hear he’s been here a long time.”
    â€œYou cheer me not. Go see the Old Bear.”
    â€œGhost, stay,” he commanded. The door to Craster’s Keep was made of two flaps
of deerhide. Jon shoved between them, stooping to pass under the low lintel.
Two dozen of the chief rangers had preceded him, and were standing around the
firepit in the center of the dirt floor while puddles collected about their
boots. The hall stank of soot, dung, and wet dog. The air was heavy with smoke,
yet somehow still damp. Rain leaked through the smoke hole in the roof. It was
all a single room, with a sleeping loft above reached by a pair of splintery
ladders.
    Jon remembered how he’d felt the day they had left the Wall: nervous as a
maiden, but eager to glimpse the mysteries and wonders beyond each new horizon.
Well, here’s one of the wonders,
he told himself, gazing about the
squalid, foul-smelling hall. The acrid smoke was making his eyes water.
A
pity that Pyp and

Toad can’t see all they’re missing.
    Craster sat above the fire, the only man to enjoy his own chair. Even Lord
Commander Mormont must seat himself on the common bench, with his raven
muttering on his shoulder. Jarman Buckwell stood behind, dripping from patched
mail and shiny wet leather,
beside Thoren Smallwood in the late Ser Jaremy’s
heavy breastplate and sable-trimmed cloak.
    Craster’s sheepskin jerkin and cloak of sewn skins made a shabby contrast, but
around one thick wrist was a heavy ring that had the glint of gold. He looked
to be a powerful man, though well into the winter of his days now, his mane of
hair grey going to white. A flat nose and a drooping mouth gave him a cruel
look, and one of his ears was missing.
So this is a wildling.
Jon
remembered Old Nan’s tales of the savage folk who drank blood from human
skulls. Craster seemed to be drinking a thin yellow beer from a chipped stone
cup. Perhaps he had not heard the stories.
    â€œI’ve not seen Benjen Stark for three years,” he was telling Mormont. “And
if truth be told, I never once missed him.” A half-dozen black puppies and the
odd pig or two skulked among the benches, while women in ragged deerskins
passed horns of beer, stirred the fire, and chopped carrots and onions into a
kettle.
    â€œHe ought to have passed here last year,” said Thoren Smallwood. A dog came
sniffing round his leg. He kicked it and sent it off yipping.
    Lord Mormont said, “Ben was searching for Ser Waymar Royce, who’d vanished
with Gared and young Will.”
    â€œAye, those three I recall. The lordling no older than one of these
pups. Too proud to sleep under my roof, him in his sable cloak and black steel.
My wives give him big cow eyes all the same.” He turned his squint on the
nearest of the women. “Gared says they were chasing raiders. I told him, with
a commander that green, best not catch ’em. Gared wasn’t half-bad, for a crow.
Had less ears than me, that one. The ’bite took ’em, same as mine.” Craster
laughed. “Now I hear he got no head neither. The ’bite do that
too?”
    Jon remembered a spray of red blood on white snow, and the way Theon Greyjoy
had kicked the dead man’s head.
The man was a deserter.
On the way
back to Winterfell, Jon and Robb had raced, and found six direwolf pups in the
snow. A thousand years ago.
    â€œWhen Ser Waymar left you, where was he bound?”
    Craster gave a shrug. “Happens I have better things to do than tend to the
comings and goings of crows.” He drank a pull of beer and set the cup aside.
“Had no good southron wine up here for a bear’s night. I could use me some
wine, and a new axe. Mine’s lost its bite, can’t have that, I got me women to
protect.” He gazed around at his scurrying wives.
    â€œYou are few here, and isolated,” Mormont said. “If you like, I’ll detail
some men to escort you south to the