Read a Storm of Swords Chapter 23

A Storm of Swords

( A Song of Ice and Fire - 3 )

George R. R. Martin

Of the v contenders for power, one is dead, another in aversion, and still the wars rage every bit violently as ever, as alliances are made and cleaved. Joffrey, of House Lannister, sits on the Iron Throne, the uneasy ruler of the land of the 7 Kingdoms. His most bitter rival, Lord Stannis, stands defeated and disgraced, the victim of the jealous sorceress who holds him in her evil thrall. Just young Robb, of House Stark, still rules the North from the fortress of Riverrun. Robb plots against his despised Lannister enemies, even as they concur his sister hostage at Rex'southward Landing, the seat of the Fe Throne. Meanwhile, making her way across a blood-drenched continent is the exiled queen, Daenerys, mistress of the only three dragons still left in the world…

But as opposing forces maneuver for the final titanic showdown, an army of barbaric wildlings arrives from the outermost line of civilisation. In their vanguard is a horde of mythical Others-a supernatural army of the living dead whose blithe corpses are unstoppable. As the futurity of the land hangs in the balance, no one will residuum until the Seven Kingdoms take exploded in a veritable storm of swords…

GEORGE R. R. MARTIN

A STORM OF SWORDS

A Notation ON CHRONOLOGY

A Song of Ice and Burn down is told through the eyes of characters who are sometimes hundreds or even thousands of miles autonomously from i another. Some capacity cover a day, some simply an hr; others might span a fortnight, a month, half a yr. With such a structure, the narrative cannot be strictly sequential; sometimes important things are happening simultaneously, a thou leagues apart.

In the case of the volume now in hand, the reader should realize that the opening chapters of A Tempest of Swords exercise non follow the closing capacity of A Clash of Kings so much every bit overlap them. I open with a look at some of the things that were happening on the Fist of the Beginning Men, at Riverrun, Harrenhal, and on the Trident while the Battle of the Blackwater was beingness fought at Rex'southward Landing, and during its aftermath.

George R. R. Martin

PROLOGUE

for Phyllis who fabricated me put the dragons

The 24-hour interval was greyness and bitter cold, and the dogs would not accept the scent.

The big black bitch had taken ane sniff at the bear tracks, backed off, and skulked dorsum to the pack with her tail between her legs. The dogs huddled together miserably on the riverbank as the current of air snapped at them. Chett felt it also, biting through his layers of black wool and boiled leather. It was too bloody cold for human being or beast, simply here they were. His mouth twisted, and he could almost feel the boils that covered his cheeks and neck growing ruby and aroused. I should exist safe back at the Wall, tending the bloody ravens and making fires for onetime Maester Aemon. It was the bastard Jon Snowfall who had taken that from him, him and his fat friend Sam Tarly. Information technology was their fault he was here, freezing his encarmine balls off with a pack of hounds deep in the haunted wood.

"Seven hells." He gave the leashes a hard yank to get the dogs' attention. "Track, yous bastards. That'south a deport print. You lot want some meat or no? Find!" But the hounds just huddled closer, whining. Chett snapped his brusk lash above their heads, and the black bitch snarled at him. "Canis familiaris meat would sense of taste as good equally deport," he warned her, his breath frosting with every word.

Lark the Sisterman stood with his artillery crossed over his chest and his easily tucked up into his armpits. He wore black wool gloves, simply he was always complaining how his fingers were frozen. "It's too encarmine common cold to hunt," he said. "Bugger this acquit, he's not worth freezing over."

"Nosotros can't get dorsum emptyhand, Lark," rumbled Small Paul through the chocolate-brown whiskers that covered nigh of his face. "The Lord Commander wouldn't like that." In that location was ice under the big man'due south squashed pug olfactory organ, where his snot had frozen. A huge hand in a thick fur glove clenched tight around the shaft of a spear.

"Bugger that One-time Behave besides," said the Sisterman, a sparse man with sharp features and nervous eyes. "Mormont volition be dead before daybreak, remember? Who cares what he likes?"

Small Paul blinked his black little eyes. Perchance he had forgotten, Chett thought; he was stupid plenty to forget most anything. "Why practice nosotros have to impale the Old Carry? Why don't we only go off and let him exist?"

"You think he'll permit united states of america be?" said Distraction. "He'll hunt united states of america downwardly. Yous desire to be hunted, you bang-up muttonhead?"

"No," said Small Paul. "I don't desire that. I don't."

"Then you'll kill him?" said Distraction.

"Yes." The huge man stamped the barrel of his spear on the frozen riverbank. "I will. He shouldn't hunt us."

The Sisterman took his hands from his armpits and turned to Chett. "We need to impale all the officers, I say."

Chett was sick of hearing it. "Nosotros been over this. The Former Bear dies, and Blane from the Shadow Tower. Grubbs and Aethan besides, their ill luck for drawing the watch, Dywen and Bannen for their tracking, and Ser Piggy for the ravens. That's all. We kill them placidity, while they sleep. One scream and we're wormfood, every one of us." His boils were scarlet with rage. "Just exercise your bit and see that your cousins do theirs. And Paul, effort and recall, it'south third watch, non second."

"Third lookout," the big man said, through hair and frozen snot. "Me and Softfoot. I retrieve, Chett."

The moon would be black tonight, and they had jiggered the watches so as to have 8 of their own standing lookout man, with 2 more than guarding the horses. It wasn't going to get much riper than that. Besides, the wildlings could be upon them whatever solar day at present. Chett meant to be well away from here before that happened. He meant to alive.

3 hundred sworn brothers of the Night's Watch had ridden north, two hundred from Castle Black and some other hundred from the Shadow Belfry. It was the biggest ranging in living retention, about a third of the Lookout'due south strength. They meant to discover Ben Stark, Ser Waymar Royce, and the other rangers who'd gone missing, and discover why the wildlings were leaving their villages. Well, they were no closer to Stark and Royce than when they'd left the Wall, but they'd learned where all the wildlings had gone — upward into the icy heights of the godsforsaken Frostfangs. They could squat upwards in that location till the finish of time and it wouldn't prick Chett's boils none.

But no. They were coming down. Downwards the Milkwater.

Chett raised his optics and at that place information technology was. The river's stony banks were bearded past water ice, its stake milky waters flowing incessantly downward out of the Frostfangs. And now Mance Rayder and his wildlings were flowing down the same manner. Thoren Smallwood had returned in a soap 3 days past. While he was telling the Old Carry what his scouts had seen, his human Kedge Whiteye told the rest of them. "They're still well upwardly the foothills, simply they're coming," Kedge said, warming his hands over the burn down. "Harma the Dogshead has the van, the poxy bitch. Goady crept up on her camp and saw her plain by the fire. That fool Tumberjon wanted to pick her off with an arrow, simply Smallwood had better sense."

Chett spat. "How many were there, could y'all tell?"

"Many and more than. Xx, thirty chiliad, we didn't stay to count. Harma had v hundred in the van, every one ahorse."

The men around the burn exchanged uneasy looks. It was a rare thing to find even a dozen mounted wildlings, and five hundred…

"Smallwood sent Bannen and me wide around the van to grab a peek at the primary torso," Kedge went on. "There was no terminate of them. They're moving boring as a frozen river, four, five miles a day, but they don't look like they mean to become dorsum to their villages neither. More than'due north half were women and children, and they were driving their animals before them, goats, sheep, even aurochs dragging sledges. They'd loaded up with bales of fur and sides of meat, cages of chickens, butter churns

and spinning wheels, every damn thing they own. The mules and garrons was then heavy laden you'd think their backs would suspension. The women as well."

"And they follow the Milkwater?" Lark the Sisterman asked.

"I said so, didn't I?"

The Milkwater would have them past the Fist of the Starting time Men, the aboriginal ringfort where the Night'due south Watch had fabricated its military camp. Whatever man with a thimble of sense could see that it was time to pull up stakes and autumn back on the Wall. The Old Bear had strengthened the Fist with spikes and pits and caltrops, but against such a host all that was pointless. If they stayed here, they would be engulfed and overwhelmed.

And Thoren Smallwood wanted to attack. Sweet Donnel Hill was squire to Ser Mallador Locke, and the night before last Smallwood had come to Locke'due south tent. Ser Mallador had been of the aforementioned mind every bit old Ser Ottyn Wythers, urging a retreat on the Wall, simply Smallwood wanted to convince him otherwise. "This Rex-beyond-the-Wall volition never look for us so far due north," Sugariness Donnel reported him saying. "And this smashing host of his is a shambling horde, full of useless mouths who won't know what end of a sword to hold. I blow will take all the fight out of them and send them howling back to their hovels for another 50 years."

Three hundred against thirty one thousand. Chett chosen that rank madness, and what was madder still was that Ser Mallador had been persuaded, and the ii of them together were on the point of persuading the Sometime Behave. "If nosotros wait too long, this chance may be lost, never to come up over again," Smallwood was proverb to anyone who would listen. Against that, Ser Ottyn Wythers said, "We are the shield that guards the realms of men. You lot do not throw away your shield for no good purpose," just to that Thoren Smallwood said, "In a swordfight, a man's surest defense is the swift stroke that slays his foe, not cringing behind a shield."

Neither Smallwood nor Wythers had the control, though. Lord Mormont did, and Mormont was waiting for his other scouts, for Jarman Buckwell and the men who'd climbed the Giant's Stair, and for Qhorin Halfhand and Jon Snow, who'd gone to probe the Skirling Pass. Buckwell and the Halfhand were late in returning, though. Dead, nearly like. Chett pictured Jon Snow lying blue and frozen on some bleak mountaintop with a wildling spear up his bastard'southward arse. The thought fabricated him smiling. I promise they killed his bloody wolf besides.

"There's no comport here," he decided abruptly. "But an quondam impress, that's all. Back to the Fist." The dogs almost yanked him off his feet, as eager to get dorsum as he was. Maybe they thought they were going to get fed. Chett had to laugh. He hadn't fed them for 3 days at present, to plough them hateful and hungry. This night, before slipping off into the dark, he'd turn them loose amid the equus caballus lines, after Sweet Donnel Hill and Clubfoot Karl cutting the tethers. They'll have snarling hounds and panicked horses all over the Fist, running through fires, jumping the ringwall, and trampling down tents. With all the confusion, information technology might be hours earlier anyone noticed that fourteen brothers were missing.

Lark had wanted to bring in twice that number, simply what could you lot expect from some stupid fishbreath Sisterman? Whisper a word in the wrong ear and earlier you knew information technology you'd be curt a head. No, 14 was a good number, enough to do what needed doing but not so many that they couldn't go on the secret. Chett had recruited most of them himself. Small Paul was one of his; the strongest man on the Wall, even if he was slower than a dead snail. He'd once cleaved a wildling'due south back with a hug. They had Dirk likewise, named for his favorite weapon, and the piddling grey man the brothers called Softfoot, who'd raped a hundred women in his youth, and liked to boast how none had ever seen nor heard him until he shoved it up inside them.

The plan was Chett'south. He was the clever one; he'd been steward to old Maester Aemon for four skillful years before that bounder Jon Snowfall had done him out so his job could be handed to his fatty pig of a friend. When he killed Sam Tarly tonight, he planned to whisper, "Requite my dearest to Lord Snowfall," correct in his ear before he sliced Ser Piggy's throat open to let the blood come bubbling out through all those layers of suet. Chett knew the ravens, and so he wouldn't have no problem in that location, no more than than he would with Tarly. One bear upon of the pocketknife and that chicken would piss his pants and showtime blubbering for his life. Let him beg, it won't do him no good. Later he opened his throat, he'd open the cages and shoo the birds abroad, so no messages reached the Wall. Softfoot and Small Paul would kill the Old Bear, Dirk would exercise Blane, and Lark and his cousins would silence Bannen and old Dywen, to keep them from sniffing subsequently their trail. They'd been caching nutrient for a fortnight, and Sweet Donnel and Clubfoot Karl would have the horses ready. With Mormont expressionless, command would pass to Ser Ottyn Wythers, an one-time done man, and failing. He'll be running for the Wall earlier sundown, and he won't waste no men sending them after u.s.a. neither.

The dogs pulled at him as they made their way through the trees. Chett could see the Fist punching its mode up through the light-green. The day was so dark that the Old Bear had the torches lit, a great circle of them burning all along the ringwall that crowned the top of the steep stony loma. The three of them waded across a brook. The h2o was icy cold, and patches of ice were spreading beyond its surface. "I'm going to make for the coast," Distraction the Sisterman confided. "Me and my cousins. Nosotros'll build us a boat, canvas back home to the Sisters."

And at home they'll know yous for deserters and lop off your fool heads, thought Chett. There was no leaving the Nighttime's Sentinel, one time you said your words. Anywhere in the Seven Kingdoms, they'd take you and impale you lot.

Ollo Lophand now, he was talking about sailing back to Tyrosh, where he claimed men didn't lose their hands for a fleck of honest thievery, nor get sent off to freeze their life away for being constitute in bed with some knight'southward wife. Chett had weighed going with him, just he didn't speak their wet girly tongue. And what could he do in Tyrosh? He had no trade to speak of, growing upwardly in Hag's Mire. His begetter had spent his life grubbing in other men'south fields and collecting leeches. He'd strip down bare only for a thick leather clout, and go wading in the murky waters. When he climbed out he'd be covered from nipple to ankle. Sometimes he fabricated Chett help pull the leeches off. One had attached itself to his palm once, and he'd smashed it against a wall in revulsion. His male parent trounce him bloody for that. The maesters bought the leeches at twelve-for-a-penny.

Lark could go home if he liked, and the damn Tyroshi too, simply not Chett. If he never saw Hag'due south Mire once more, information technology would be likewise bloody soon. He had liked the expect of Craster's Keep, himself. Craster lived high as a lord there, so why shouldn't he exercise the same? That would be a laugh. Chett the leechman'south son, a lord with a keep. His banner could be a dozen leeches on a field of pinkish. But why stop at lord? Maybe he should exist a king. Mance Rayder started out a crow. I could exist a rex same as him, and have me some wives. Craster had nineteen, not even counting the young ones, the daughters he hadn't gotten around to bedding yet. Half them wives were as sometime and ugly as Craster, but that didn't thing. The onetime ones Chett could put to work cooking and cleaning for him, pulling carrots and slopping pigs, while the immature ones warmed his bed and bore his children. Craster wouldn't object, not once Minor Paul gave him a hug.

The simply women Chett had ever known were the whores he'd bought in Mole's Boondocks. When he'd been younger, the village girls took ane wait at his face, with its boils and its wen, and turned away sickened. The worst was that slattern Bessa. She'd spread her legs for every boy in Hag'due south Mire then he'd figured why non him too? He fifty-fifty spent a forenoon picking wildflowers when he heard she liked them, merely she'd just laughed in his face up and told him she'd clamber in a bed with his father'south leeches earlier she'd crawl in one with him. She stopped laughing when he put his knife in her. That was sweet, the look on her confront, so he pulled the knife out and put it in her again. When they caught him downwardly near Sevenstreams, one-time Lord Walder Frey hadn't fifty-fifty bothered to come up himself to do the judging. He'd sent one of his bastards, that Walder Rivers, and the side by side affair Chett had known he was walking to the Wall with that foul-smelling black devil Yoren. To pay

for his one sweet moment, they took his whole life.

Simply now he meant to take it dorsum, and Craster'due south women besides. That twisted old wildling has the right of it. If you want a adult female to wife you take her, and none of this giving her flowers so that perhaps she don't find your bloody boils. Chett didn't hateful to make that mistake again.

It would work, he promised himself for the hundredth fourth dimension. So long every bit we get abroad clean. Ser Ottyn would strike south for the Shadow Belfry, the shortest way to the Wall. He won't bother with united states, not Wythers, all he'll want is to get dorsum whole. Thoren Smallwood now, he'd want to press on with the attack, but Ser Ottyn's circumspection ran too deep, and he was senior. Information technology won't matter anyhow. One time we're gone, Smallwood can attack anyone he likes. What practise nosotros care? If none of them ever returns to the Wall, no one will ever come looking for us, they'll think nosotros died with the rest. That was a new thought, and for a moment it tempted him. But they would need to impale Ser Ottyn and Ser Mallador Locke as well to give Smallwood the command, and both of them were well-attended day and night… no, the run a risk was as well great.

"Chett," said Pocket-sized Paul as they trudged along a stony game trail through sentinels and soldier pines, "what about the bird?"

"What encarmine bird?" The final affair he needed now was some mutton-head going on well-nigh a bird.

"The Old Bear's raven," Small Paul said. "If we kill him, who'due south going to feed his bird?"

"Who bloody well cares? Kill the bird too if you like."

"I don't want to hurt no bird," the big man said. "But that'southward a talking bird. What if it tells what we did?"

Lark the Sisterman laughed. "Small Paul, thick as a castle wall," he mocked.

"You shut upwards with that," said Small Paul dangerously.

"Paul," said Chett, earlier the big man got too angry, "when they find the former man lying in a pool of blood with his throat slit, they won't need no bird to tell them someone killed him."

Small Paul chewed on that a moment. "That's true," he allowed. "Can I keep the bird, then? I like that bird."

"He'south yours," said Chett, just to shut him up.

"We can always swallow him if we go hungry," offered Distraction.

Small Paul clouded upwardly once more. "Best non try and eat my bird, Distraction. Best not."

Chett could hear voices drifting through the copse. "Close your bloody mouths, both of you. We're nearly to the Fist."

They emerged well-nigh the westward face up of the loma, and walked around south where the slope was gentler. Near the edge of the forest a dozen men were taking archery practice. They had carved outlines on the trunks of trees, and were loosing shafts at them. "Look," said Lark. "A grunter with a bow."

Sure enough, the nearest bowman was Ser Piggy himself, the fat boy who had stolen his place with Maester Aemon. Only the sight of Samwell Tarly filled him with anger. Stewarding for Maester Aemon had been every bit good a life as he'd always known. The old bullheaded man was undemanding, and Clydas had taken care of most of his wants anyway. Chett'southward duties were easy: cleaning the rookery, a few fires to build, a few meals to fetch… and Aemon never once hit him. Thinks he can just walk in and shove me out, on account of being highborn and knowing how to read. Might exist I'll enquire him to read my knife before I open his throat with information technology. "You go on," he told the others, "I want to lookout man this." The dogs were pulling, anxious to get with them, to the nutrient they thought would be waiting at the top. Chett kicked the bitch with the toe of his kick, and that settled them down some.

He watched from the trees every bit the fat boy wrestled with a longbow every bit tall as he was, his red moon face screwed upward with concentration. Three arrows stood in the ground before him. Tarly nocked and drew, held the depict a long moment every bit he tried to aim, and let wing. The shaft vanished into the greenery. Chett laughed loudly, a snort of sweet cloy.

"We'll never find that one, and I'll be blamed," announced Edd Tollett, the dour grey-haired squire anybody called Dolorous Edd. "Nothing always goes missing that they don't look at me, ever since that time I lost my horse. Every bit if that could exist helped. He was white and it was snowing, what did they expect?"

"The wind took that ane," said Grenn, another friend of Lord Snowfall'south. "Endeavour to hold the bow steady, Sam."

"It's heavy," the fat boy complained, merely he pulled the second pointer all the same. This 1 went high, sailing through the branches x anxiety above the target.

"I believe you knocked a foliage off that tree," said Dolorous Edd. "Fall is falling fast plenty, there's no need to help information technology." He sighed. "And we all know what follows fall. Gods, just I am cold. Shoot the last arrow, Samwell, I believe my tongue is freezing to the roof of my rima oris."

Ser Piggy lowered the bow, and Chett thought he was going to get-go bawling. "It'southward also hard."

"Notch, describe, and loose," said Grenn. "Become on."

Dutifully, the fat male child plucked his terminal arrow from the earth, notched it to his longbow, drew, and released. He did information technology chop-chop, without squinting along the shaft painstakingly as he had the outset two times. The arrow struck the charcoal outline low in the chest and hung quivering. "I hit him." Ser Piggy sounded shocked. "Grenn, did you see? Edd, look, I hit him!"

"Put it between his ribs, I'd say," said Grenn.

"Did I impale him?" the fat boy wanted to know.

Tollett shrugged. "Might have punctured a lung, if he had a lung. Most trees don't, as a rule." He took the bow from Sam'due south hand. "I've seen worse shots, though. Aye, and made a few."

Ser Piggy was beaming. To expect at him you'd think he'd actually done something. Merely when he saw Chett and the dogs, his smile curled up and died squeaking.

"You striking a tree," Chett said. "Let's run into how you shoot when information technology's Mance Rayder's lads. They won't stand in that location with their artillery out and their leaves rustling, oh no. They'll come right at you, screaming in your face, and I bet you'll piss those breeches. 1 o' them volition plant his axe right between those little pig eyes. The last thing you'll hear will be the thunk it makes when it bites into your skull."

The fat boy was shaking. Dolorous Edd put a hand on his shoulder. "Brother," he said solemnly, "just considering it happened that way for you doesn't mean Samwell will endure the same."

"What are you talking well-nigh, Tollett?"

"The axe that divide your skull. Is it true that half your wits leaked out on the basis and your dogs ate them?"

The large lout Grenn laughed, and even Samwell Tarly managed a weak little smile. Chett kicked the nearest dog, yanked on their leashes, and started up the hill. Grin all yous want, Ser Piggy. Nosotros'll run into who laughs tonight. He just wished he had time to kill Tollett too. Gloomy horsefaced fool, that'southward what he is.

Read a Storm of Swords Chapter 23

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