A Dance with Dragons

Serve and obey, he told himself, and he’ll let you live, and keep the parts that you still have. Serve and obey and remember your name. Reek, Reek, it rhymes with meek. “… bad and…”

“There’s blood on your mouth,” Ramsay observed. “Have you been chewing on your fingers again, Reek?”

“No. No, my lord, I swear.” Reek had tried to bite his own ring finger off once, to stop it hurting after they had stripped the skin from it. Lord Ramsay would never simply cut off a man’s finger. He preferred to flay it and let the exposed flesh dry and crack and fester. Reek had been whipped and racked and cut, but there was no pain half so excruciating as the pain that followed flaying. It was the sort of pain that drove men mad, and it could not be endured for long. Soon or late the victim would scream, “Please, no more, no more, stop it hurting, cut it off,” and Lord Ramsay would oblige. It was a game they played. Reek had learned the rules, as his hands and feet could testify, but that one time he had forgotten and tried to end the pain himself, with his teeth. Ramsay had not been pleased, and the offense had cost Reek another toe. “I ate a rat,” he mumbled.

“A rat?” Ramsay’s pale eyes glittered in the torchlight. “All the rats in the Dreadfort belong to my lord father. How dare you make a meal of one without my leave.”

Reek did not know what to say, so he said nothing. One wrong word could cost him another toe, even a finger. Thus far he had lost two fingers off his left hand and the pinky off his right, but only the little toe off his right foot against three from his left. Sometimes Ramsay would make japes about balancing him out. My lord was only japing, he tried to tell himself. He does not want to hurt me, he told me so, he only does it when I give him cause. His lord was merciful and kind. He might have flayed his face off for some of the things Reek had said, before he’d learned his true name and proper place.

“This grows tedious,” said the lord in the mail byrnie. “Kill him and be done with it.”

Lord Ramsay filled his cup with ale. “That would spoil our celebration, my lord. Reek, I have glad tidings for you. I am to be wed. My lord father is bringing me a Stark girl. Lord Eddard’s daughter, Arya. You remember little Arya, don’t you?”

Arya Underfoot, he almost said. Arya Horseface. Robb’s younger sister, brown-haired, long-faced, skinny as a stick, always dirty. Sansa was the pretty one. He remembered a time when he had thought that Lord Eddard Stark might marry him to Sansa and claim him for a son, but that had only been a child’s fancy. Arya, though… “I remember her. Arya.”

“She shall be the Lady of Winterfell, and me her lord.”

She is only a girl. “Yes, my lord. Congratulations.”

“Will you attend me at my wedding, Reek?”

He hesitated. “If you wish it, my lord.”

“Oh, I do.”

He hesitated again, wondering if this was some cruel trap. “Yes, my lord. If it please you. I would be honored.”

“We must take you out of that vile dungeon, then. Scrub you pink again, get you some clean clothes, some food to eat. Some nice soft porridge, would you like that? Perhaps a pease pie laced with bacon. I have a little task for you, and you’ll need your strength back if you are to serve me. You do want to serve me, I know.”

“Yes, my lord. More than anything.” A shiver went through him. “I’m your Reek. Please let me serve you. Please.”

“Since you ask so nicely, how can I deny you?” Ramsay Bolton smiled. “I ride to war, Reek. And you will be coming with me, to help me fetch home my virgin bride.”

BRAN

Something about the way the raven screamed sent a shiver running up Bran’s spine. I am almost a man grown, he had to remind himself. I have to be brave now.

But the air was sharp and cold and full of fear. Even Summer was afraid. The fur on his neck was bristling. Shadows stretched against the hillside, black and hungry. All the trees were bowed and twisted by the weight of ice they carried. Some hardly looked like trees at all. Buried from root to crown in frozen snow, they huddled on the hill like giants, monstrous and misshapen creatures hunched against the icy wind.

“They are here.” The ranger drew his longsword.

“Where?” Meera’s voice was hushed.

“Close. I don’t know. Somewhere.”

The raven shrieked again. “Hodor,” whispered Hodor. He had his hands tucked up beneath his armpits. Icicles hung from the brown briar of his beard, and his mustache was a lump of frozen snot, glittering redly in the light of sunset.

“Those wolves are close as well,” Bran warned them. “The ones that have been following us. Summer can smell them whenever we’re downwind.”

“Wolves are the least of our woes,” said Coldhands. “We have to climb. It will be dark soon. You would do well to be inside before night comes. Your warmth will draw them.” He glanced to the west, where the light of the setting sun could be seen dimly through the trees, like the glow of a distant fire.

“Is this the only way in?” asked Meera. “The back door is three leagues north, down a sinkhole.”

That was all he had to say. Not even Hodor could climb down into a sinkhole with Bran heavy on his back, and Jojen could no more walk three leagues than run a thousand.

Meera eyed the hill above. “The way looks clear.”

“Looks,” the ranger muttered darkly. “Can you feel the cold? There’s something here. Where are they?”

“Inside the cave?” suggested Meera. “The cave is warded. They cannot pass.” The ranger used his sword to point. “You can see the entrance there. Halfway up, between the weirwoods, that cleft in the rock.”

“I see it,” said Bran. Ravens were flying in and out.

Hodor shifted his weight. “Hodor.”

“A fold in the rock, that’s all I see,” said Meera.

“There’s a passage there. Steep and twisty at first, a runnel through the rock. If you can reach it, you’ll be safe.”

“What about you?”

“The cave is warded.”

Meera studied the cleft in the hillside. “It can’t be more than a thousand yards from here to there.”

No, thought Bran, but all those yards are upward. The hill was steep and thickly wooded. The snow had stopped three days ago, but none of it had melted. Beneath the trees, the ground was blanketed in white, still pristine and unbroken. “No one’s here,” said Bran, bravely. “Look at the snow. There are no footprints.”

“The white walkers go lightly on the snow,” the ranger said. “You’ll find no prints to mark their passage.” A raven descended from above to settle on his shoulder. Only a dozen of the big black birds remained with them. The rest had vanished along the way; every dawn when they arose, there had been fewer of them. “Come,” the bird squawked. “Come, come.”

The three-eyed crow, thought Bran. The greenseer. “It’s not so far,” he said. “A little climb, and we’ll be safe. Maybe we can have a fire.” All of them were cold and wet and hungry, except the ranger, and Jojen Reed was too weak to walk unaided.

“You go.” Meera Reed bent down beside her brother. He was settled in the bole of an oak, eyes closed, shivering violently. What little of his face could be seen beneath his hood and scarf was as colorless as the surrounding snow, but breath still puffed faintly from his nostrils whenever he exhaled. Meera had been carrying him all day. Food and fire will set him right again, Bran tried to tell himself, though he wasn’t sure it would. “I can’t fight and carry Jojen both, the climb’s too steep,” Meera was saying. “Hodor, you take Bran up to that cave.”

“Hodor.” Hodor clapped his hands together.