A Dance with Dragons

“Jon Snow?”

“We’ll take you to him, but you must come at once.”

Jeyne pulled her wolfskins up to her chin. “No. This is some trick. It’s him, it’s my… my lord, my sweet lord, he sent you, this is just some test to make sure that I love him. I do, I do, I love him more than anything.” A tear ran down her cheek. “Tell him, you tell him. I’ll do what he wants… whatever he wants… with him or… or with the dog or… please… he doesn’t need to cut my feet off, I won’t try to run away, not ever, I’ll give him sons, I swear it, I swear it…”

Rowan whistled softly. “Gods curse the man.”

“I’m a good girl,” Jeyne whimpered. “They trained me.”

Willow scowled. “Someone stop her crying. That guard was mute, not deaf. They’re going to hear.”

“Get her up, turncloak.” Holly had her knife in hand. “Get her up or I will. We have to go. Get the little cunt up on her feet and shake some courage into her.”

“And if she screams?” said Rowan.

We are all dead, Theon thought. I told them this was folly, but none of them would listen. Abel had doomed them. All singers were half-mad. In songs, the hero always saved the maiden from the monster’s castle, but life was not a song, no more than Jeyne was Arya Stark. Her eyes are the wrong color. And there are no heroes here, only whores. Even so, he knelt beside her, pulled down the furs, touched her cheek. “You know me. I’m Theon, you remember. I know you too. I know your name.”

“My name?” She shook her head. “My name… it’s…”

He put a finger to her lips. “We can talk about that later. You need to be quiet now. Come with us. With me. We will take you away from here. Away from him.”

Her eyes widened. “Please,” she whispered. “Oh, please.”

Theon slipped his hand through hers. The stumps of his lost fingers tingled as he drew the girl to her feet. The wolfskins fell away from her. Underneath them she was naked, her small pale breasts covered with teeth marks. He heard one of the women suck in her breath. Rowan thrust a bundle of clothes into his hands. “Get her dressed. It’s cold outside.” Squirrel had stripped down to her smallclothes, and was rooting through a carved cedar chest in search of something warmer. In the end she settled for one of Lord Ramsay’s quilted doublets and a well- worn pair of breeches that flapped about her legs like a ship’s sails in a storm.

With Rowan’s help, Theon got Jeyne Poole into Squirrel’s clothes. If the gods are good and the guards are blind, she may pass. “Now we are going out and down the steps,” Theon told the girl. “Keep your head down and your hood up. Follow Holly. Don’t run, don’t cry, don’t speak, don’t look anyone in the eye.”

“Stay close to me,” Jeyne said. “Don’t leave me.”

“I will be right beside you,” Theon promised as Squirrel slipped into Lady Arya’s bed and pulled the blanket up.

Frenya opened the bedchamber door. “You give her a good wash, Reek?” asked Sour Alyn as they emerged. Grunt gave Willow’s breast a squeeze as she went by. They were fortunate in his choice. If the man had touched Jeyne, she might have screamed. Then Holly would have opened his throat for him with the knife hidden up her sleeve. Willow simply twisted away and past him.

For a moment Theon felt almost giddy. They never looked. They never saw. We walked the girl right by them!

But on the steps the fear returned. What if they met Skinner or Damon Dance-for-Me or Steelshanks Walton? Or Ramsay himself? Gods save me, not Ramsay, anyone but him. What use was it to smuggle the girl out of her bedchamber? They were still inside the castle, with every gate closed and barred and the battlements thick with sentries. Like as not, the guards outside the keep would stop them. Holly and her knife would be of small use against six men in mail with swords and spears.

But the guards outside were huddled by the doors, backs turned against the icy wind and blown snow. Even the serjeant did not spare them more than a quick glance. Theon felt a stab of pity for him and his men. Ramsay would flay them all when he learned his bride was gone, and what he would do to Grunt and Sour Alyn did not bear thinking about.

Not ten yards from the door, Rowan dropped her empty pail, and her sisters did likewise. The Great Keep was already lost to sight behind them. The yard was a white wilderness, full of half-heard sounds that echoed strangely amidst the storm. The icy trenches rose around them, knee high, then waist high, then higher than their heads. They were in the heart of Winterfell with the castle all around them, but no sign of it could be seen. They might have easily been lost amidst the Land of Always Winter, a thousand leagues beyond the Wall. “It’s cold,” Jeyne Poole whimpered as she stumbled along at Theon’s side.

And soon to be colder. Beyond the castle walls, winter was waiting with its icy teeth. If we get that far. “This way,” he said when they came to a junction where three trenches crossed.

“Frenya, Holly, go with them,” Rowan said. “We will be along with Abel. Do not wait for us.” And with that, she whirled and plunged into the snow, toward the Great Hall. Willow and Myrtle hurried after her, cloaks snapping in the wind.

Madder and madder, thought Theon Greyjoy. Escape had seemed unlikely with all six of Abel’s women; with only two, it seemed impossible. But they had gone too far to return the girl to her bedchamber and pretend none of this had ever happened. Instead he took Jeyne by the arm and drew her down the pathway to the Battlements Gate. Only a half-gate, he reminded himself. Even if the guards let us pass, there is no way through the outer wall. On other nights, the guards had allowed Theon through, but all those times he’d come alone. He would not pass so easily with three serving girls in tow, and if the guards looked beneath Jeyne’s hood and recognized Lord Ramsay’s bride…

The passage twisted to the left. There before them, behind a veil of falling snow, yawned the Battlements Gate, flanked by a pair of guards. In their wool and fur and leather, they looked as big as bears. The spears they held were eight feet tall. “Who goes there?” one called out. Theon did not recognize the voice. Most of the man’s features were covered by the scarf about his face. Only his eyes could be seen. “Reek, is that you?”

Yes, he meant to say. Instead he heard himself reply, “Theon Greyjoy. I… I have brought some women for you.”

“You poor boys must be freezing,” said Holly. “Here, let me warm you up.” She slipped past the guard’s spearpoint and reached up to his face, pulling loose the half-frozen scarf to plant a kiss upon his mouth. And as their lips touched, her blade slid through the meat of his neck, just below the ear. Theon saw the man’s eyes widen. There was blood on Holly’s lips as she stepped back, and blood dribbling from his mouth as he fell.

The second guard was still gaping in confusion when Frenya grabbed the shaft of his spear. They struggled for a moment, tugging, till the woman wrenched the weapon from his fingers and clouted him across the temple with its butt. As he stumbled backwards, she spun the spear around and drove its point through his belly with a grunt.

Jeyne Poole let out a shrill, high scream. “Oh, bloody shit,” said Holly. “That will bring the kneelers down on us, and no mistake. Run!”

Theon clapped one hand around Jeyne’s mouth, grabbed her about the waist with the other, and pulled her past the dead and dying guards, through the gate, and over the frozen moat. And perhaps the old gods were still watching over them; the drawbridge had been left down, to allow Winterfell’s defenders to cross to and from the outer battlements more quickly. From behind them came alarums and the sounds of running feet, then the blast of a trumpet from the ramparts of the inner wall.

On the drawbridge, Frenya stopped and turned. “Go on. I will hold the kneelers here.” The bloody spear was still clutched in her big hands.

Theon was staggering by the time he reached the foot of the stair. He slung the girl over his shoulder and began to climb. Jeyne had ceased to struggle by then, and she was such a little thing besides… but the steps were slick with ice beneath soft powdery snow, and halfway up he lost his footing and went down hard on one knee. The pain was so bad he almost lost the girl, and for half a heartbeat he feared this was as far as he would go. But Holly pulled him back onto his feet, and between the two of them they finally got Jeyne up to the battlements.