A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

piney smell of it. It was an easy tree for a boy to climb,
leaning as it did, crooked, the branches so close together they almost made a
ladder, slanting right up to the roof.
    Growling, he sniffed around the base of the tree, lifted a leg and marked it
with a stream of urine. A low branch brushed his face, and he snapped at it,
twisting and pulling until the wood cracked and tore. His mouth was full of
needles and the bitter taste of the sap. He shook his head and
snarled.
    His brother sat back on his haunches and lifted his voice in a ululating howl,
his song black with mourning. The way was no way. They were not squirrels, nor
the cubs of men, they could not wriggle up the trunks of trees, clinging with
soft pink paws and clumsy feet. They were runners, hunters, prowlers.
    Off across the night, beyond the stone that hemmed them close, the dogs
woke and began to bark. One and then another and then all of them, a great
clamor. They smelled it too; the scent of foes and fear.
    A desperate fury filled him, hot as hunger. He sprang away from the wall, loped
off beneath the trees, the shadows of branch and leaf dappling his grey
fur . . . and then he turned and raced back in a rush. His feet
flew, kicking up wet leaves and pine needles, and for a little time he was a
hunter and an antlered stag was fleeing before him and he could see it, smell
it, and he ran full out in pursuit. The smell of fear made his heart thunder
and slaver ran from his jaws, and he reached the falling tree in stride and
threw himself up the trunk, claws scrabbling at the bark for purchase. Upward
he bounded,
up,
two bounds, three, hardly slowing, until he was among
the lower limbs. Branches tangled his feet and whipped at his eyes, grey-green
needles scattered as he shouldered through them, snapping. He had to slow.
Something snagged at his foot and he wrenched it free, snarling. The trunk
narrowed under him, the slope steeper, almost straight up, and wet. The bark
tore like skin when he tried to claw at it. He was a third of the way up,
halfway, more, the roof was almost within reach . . . and then
he put down a foot and felt it slip off the curve of wet wood, and suddenly he
was sliding, stumbling. He yowled in fear and fury, falling,
falling,
and twisted around while the ground rushed up to break
him . . .
    And then Bran was back abed in his lonely tower room,

tangled in his blankets, his breath coming hard. “Summer,” he cried aloud.
“Summer.” His shoulder seemed to ache, as if he had fallen on it, but he knew
it was only the ghost of what the wolf was feeling.
Jojen told it true. I
am a beastling.
Outside he could hear the faint barking of dogs.
The
sea has come. It’s flowing over the walls, just as Jojen saw.
Bran grabbed
the bar overhead and pulled himself up, shouting for help. No one came, and
after a moment he remembered that no one would. They had taken the guard off
his door. Ser Rodrik had needed every man of fighting age he could lay his
hands on, so Winterfell had been left with only a token garrison.
    The rest had left eight days past, six hundred men from Winterfell and the
nearest holdfasts. Cley Cerwyn was bringing three hundred more to join them on
the march, and Maester Luwin had sent ravens before them, summoning levies from
White Harbor and the barrowlands and even the deep places inside the wolfswood.
Torrhen’s Square was under attack by some monstrous war chief named Dagmer
Cleftjaw. Old Nan said he couldn’t be killed, that once a foe had cut his head
in two with an axe, but Dagmer was so fierce he’d just pushed the two halves
back together and held them until they healed up.
Could Dagmer have
won?
Torrhen’s Square was many days from Winterfell, yet
still . . .
    Bran pulled himself from the bed, moving bar to bar until he reached the
windows. His fingers fumbled a little as he swung back the shutters. The yard
was empty, and all the windows he could see were black. Winterfell slept.
“Hodor!”
he shouted

down, as loud as he could. Hodor would be asleep above the stables, but maybe
if he yelled loud enough he’d hear, or
somebody
would.
“Hodor,
come fast! Osha! Meera, Jojen, anyone!”
Bran cupped his hands around his
mouth.
“HOOOOODOOOOOR!”
    But when the door crashed open behind him, the man who stepped through was no
one Bran knew. He wore a leather jerkin sewn with