A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

don’t have to speak with me, m’lord. Just take me with you, when you go,
that’s all I ask.”
    All she asks,
he thought.
As if that were
nothing.
    â€œI’ll . . . I’ll be your wife, if you like. My father, he’s
got nineteen now, one less won’t hurt him none.”
    â€œBlack brothers are sworn never to take wives, don’t you know that? And we’re
guests in your father’s hall besides.”
    â€œNot
you,
” she said. “I watched. You never ate at his board, nor
slept by his fire. He never gave you guest-right, so

you’re not bound to him. It’s for the baby I have to go.”
    â€œI don’t even know your name.”
    â€œGilly, he called me. For the gillyflower.”
    â€œThat’s pretty.” He remembered Sansa telling him once that he should say that
whenever a lady told him her name. He could not help the girl, but perhaps the
courtesy would please her. “Is it Craster who frightens you,
Gilly?”
    â€œFor the baby, not for me. If it’s a girl, that’s not so bad, she’ll grow a
few years and he’ll marry her. But Nella says it’s to be a boy, and she’s had
six and knows these things. He gives the boys to the gods. Come the white cold,
he does, and of late it comes more often. That’s why he started giving them
sheep, even though he has a taste for mutton. Only now the sheep’s gone too.
Next it will be dogs, till . . .” She lowered her eyes and stroked
her belly.
    â€œWhat gods?” Jon was remembering that they’d seen no boys in Craster’s Keep,
nor men either, save Craster himself.
    â€œThe cold gods,” she said. “The ones in the night. The white
shadows.”
    And suddenly Jon was back in the Lord Commander’s Tower again. A severed hand
was climbing his calf and when he pried it off with the point of his longsword,
it lay writhing, fingers opening and closing. The dead man rose to his feet,
blue eyes shining in that gashed and swollen face. Ropes of torn flesh hung
from the great wound in his belly, yet there was no blood.
    â€œWhat color are their eyes?” he asked her.
    â€œBlue. As bright as blue stars, and as cold.”
    She has seen them,
he thought.
Craster lied.
    â€œWill you take me? Just so far as the Wall—”
    â€œWe do not ride for the Wall. We ride north, after Mance Rayder and these
Others, these white shadows and their wights. We
seek
them, Gilly.
Your babe would not be safe with us.”
    Her fear was plain on her face. “You will come back, though. When your
warring’s done, you’ll pass this way again.”
    â€œWe may.”
If any of us still live.
“That’s for the Old Bear to
say, the one you call the Lord Crow. I’m only his squire. I do not choose the
road I ride.”
    â€œNo.” He could hear the defeat in her voice. “Sorry to be of trouble,
m’lord. I only . . . they said the king keeps people safe, and
I thought . . .” Despairing, she ran, Sam’s cloak flapping behind
her like great black wings.
    Jon watched her go, his joy in the morning’s brittle beauty gone.
Damn
her,
he thought resentfully,
and damn Sam twice for sending her to
me. What did he think I could do for her? We’re here to fight wildlings, not
save them.
    Other men were crawling from their shelters, yawning and stretching. The magic
was already faded, icy brightness turning back to common dew in the light of
the rising sun. Someone had gotten a fire started; he could smell woodsmoke
drifting through the trees, and the smoky scent of bacon. Jon took down his
cloak and snapped it against the rock, shattering the thin crust of ice that
had formed in the night, then gathered up Longclaw and

shrugged an arm through a shoulder strap. A few yards away he made water into a
frozen bush, his piss steaming in the cold air and melting the ice wherever it
fell. Afterward he laced up his black wool breeches and followed the
smells.
    Grenn and Dywen were among the brothers who had gathered round the fire. Hake
handed Jon a hollow heel of bread filled with burnt bacon and chunks of salt
fish warmed in bacon grease. He wolfed it down while listening to Dywen boast
of having three of Craster’s women during the night.
    â€œYou did not,” Grenn said, scowling. “I would have seen.”
    Dywen whapped him up