Snowbeati need somethingto kick this thing's ass over the lineRegistered Userregular
edited November 2007
jacobkosh, I get the feeling that you've never really liked anything before?
oh wait, you have? You're just being a jerk about it? that's great.
seriously, people saying "well, he's taken an extra two years to write this book that we would like to read" is not the same as them saying "JESUS CHRIST GOD TWO YEARS NOW I WILL KILL MARTIN AND HIS KIN!" I mean, I like the series and I think that Martin is a just basic lazy dude, but I'll happily wait another year or so if the next book is as good as his four last. People can anticipate stuff without being sweaty, creepy fanboys.
It's made worse by the fact that the first 3 books were actually released in relatively short order. It's the last couple that have been painful
Well, the problem is AFFC and ADWD weren't really supposed to exist.
The whole series was planned out and then he knocked out 1, 2 and 3 within like .. 5 years or so I think.
Now, what was originally planned was a 5 year gap. Essentially, the next book picks up 5 years after ASOS. Unfortunately, while trying to write this next book, he realised he couldn't skip over those 5 years like he thought he could. There was too much stuff he needed to cover "in person" and not just reference from the future books.
So, a new book is born. And this brings it's own new structural problems he's got to solve, which slows shit down. So he finally starts writing and quickly the whole thing gets far too large, so that ends up being split. So we get AFFC with half the characters and ADWD with the other half.
THEN, after completing AFFC he sits to down finish the half written ADWD and doesn't like most of the stuff already written, and so has to rewrite ADWD mostly from scratch.
And THAT'S why it's taking so fucking long.
Hopefully, once he's over this hurdle, it will be smooth sailing through the last volumes, since those are already planned out and such.
At the moment, I don't even give a shit about the HBO series. I just want the BOOK series to be done.
sigh
Same here. I mean it'll be a nice diversion this series, but I don't expect it will be great. Finishing the series however will most certainly be great.
It's been several years since I read the first three books. I'll have to get some time from somewhere to go through them again, so that I can move to Feast for Crows. They are so labyrinthine in structure, that I can't recall more than general plot-lines.
It's been several years since I read the first three books. I'll have to get some time from somewhere to go through them again, so that I can move to Feast for Crows. They are so labyrinthine in structure, that I can't recall more than general plot-lines.
This is true. Perhaps what makes the books so enjoyable to me is that what I do remember is the characters. Extremely well. Each has their own distinct and realistic personality, and generally doesn't tell you to completely hate a character. Littlefinger, for instance, while sort of a bit player (pardon the pun) is probably my favorite character. He is so fresh to read it's quite enjoyable. I suppose Gregor is the least sympathetic character around at the moment, but even then you get hints that while being a major cock to Sander, he really was teaching him in his twisted way that life was shit, so you had better buck up little brother because you're fucking tiny.
And then of course there are the characters you don't even read personally but just are mentioned. The Sword of the Morning for example.
...
I need to go dig through my boxes now and find the books. Damn PA. The way I deal with George's laziness is to forget about the books as much as possible.
GRRM just put up a half-update on his "Not A Blog":
Another year about to end. They seem to go past very fast of late.
I had hoped to be able to finish A DANCE WITH DRAGONS during 2007. Way back around this time last year, I had even hoped that the book might be published during 2007. Neither of those happened, and to that extent the year was a disappointment... for me, as well as for my fans.
Other projects fared better. THE ICE DRAGON, HUNTER'S RUN, DREAMSONGS, the SWORN SWORD comic book, the incredibly cool miniatures from Dark Sword, and soon to come the minibusts from Valyrian Resin and the replica of Longclaw from Valyrian Steel. The rebirth of Wild Cards has been especially exciting. INSIDE STRAIGHT will be out in less than a month, BUSTED FLUSH has been delivered, our new Wild Cards website is up and running, and the Wild Cards comic series and RPG are on the way (from DBPro and Green Ronin, respectively). And then there are the two new anthology projects that I'm co-editing with Gardner Dozois, WARRIORS and SONGS OF THE DYING EARTH, both now well underway. So it's certainly been a productive year. In some ways an exhausting one.
Still, the new year looms. I am not a big believer in New Year resolutions, but I do have some goals for 2008, both personal and professional, and the most urgent of those remains A DANCE WITH DRAGONS. For more about DANCE, see the Update page of my website, which I intend to update in the next day or so. See also the Samples page. I've been alternating the first Tyrion chapter and the first Dany chapter there for the past year, but as a holiday gift to my readers, and a thanks for all their patience, I'm going to put up a new sample soon.
(It may take a few days to get the update and the sample up, be warned).
Here's hoping that 2008 is a year of triumph and wonderment for all of us.
GRRM just put up a half-update on his "Not A Blog":
Another year about to end. They seem to go past very fast of late.
I had hoped to be able to finish A DANCE WITH DRAGONS during 2007. Way back around this time last year, I had even hoped that the book might be published during 2007. Neither of those happened, and to that extent the year was a disappointment... for me, as well as for my fans.
Other projects fared better. THE ICE DRAGON, HUNTER'S RUN, DREAMSONGS, the SWORN SWORD comic book, the incredibly cool miniatures from Dark Sword, and soon to come the minibusts from Valyrian Resin and the replica of Longclaw from Valyrian Steel. The rebirth of Wild Cards has been especially exciting. INSIDE STRAIGHT will be out in less than a month, BUSTED FLUSH has been delivered, our new Wild Cards website is up and running, and the Wild Cards comic series and RPG are on the way (from DBPro and Green Ronin, respectively). And then there are the two new anthology projects that I'm co-editing with Gardner Dozois, WARRIORS and SONGS OF THE DYING EARTH, both now well underway. So it's certainly been a productive year. In some ways an exhausting one.
Still, the new year looms. I am not a big believer in New Year resolutions, but I do have some goals for 2008, both personal and professional, and the most urgent of those remains A DANCE WITH DRAGONS. For more about DANCE, see the Update page of my website, which I intend to update in the next day or so. See also the Samples page. I've been alternating the first Tyrion chapter and the first Dany chapter there for the past year, but as a holiday gift to my readers, and a thanks for all their patience, I'm going to put up a new sample soon.
(It may take a few days to get the update and the sample up, be warned).
Here's hoping that 2008 is a year of triumph and wonderment for all of us.
Well, it's SOMEthing, at least.
I'm willing to wait as long as it takes for the next few books, but I still find that post inexplicably irritating. "Sorry Dance isn't finished. Now I'm going to plug all this other stuff I've done that I want you to spend money on. Again, sorry about Dance."
The above is exactly why Martin annoys me. Yep, still haven't found time for what I know you all want me to do but look at all this other crap you don't really care about that I somehow found time to work on.
I think he is being evasive about being stuck somewhere. That's why his side projects are getting more attention
He's not that evasive about it. He keeps complaining about the Tyrion chapters.
To be fair, I wouldn't know fuckall what to do with Tyrion. He's possibly the most complicated character in a series full of ridiculously complicated characters.
If you ask me, his character has already fired off his shot (so to speak) and I think it'd be okay if he met a good death at some point to emphasize the importance of Jaime's character journey.
I think he is being evasive about being stuck somewhere. That's why his side projects are getting more attention
He's not that evasive about it. He keeps complaining about the Tyrion chapters.
To be fair, I wouldn't know fuckall what to do with Tyrion. He's possibly the most complicated character in a series full of ridiculously complicated characters.
If you ask me, his character has already fired off his shot (so to speak) and I think it'd be okay if he became king of all Westeros because so far he's the only nobleman in the entire world who seems to give a damn about the people instead of focusing on honor, revenge, greed, or birthright.
I think he is being evasive about being stuck somewhere. That's why his side projects are getting more attention
He's not that evasive about it. He keeps complaining about the Tyrion chapters.
To be fair, I wouldn't know fuckall what to do with Tyrion. He's possibly the most complicated character in a series full of ridiculously complicated characters.
If you ask me, his character has already fired off his shot (so to speak) and I think it'd be okay if he BECAME GOD AND WAS GIVEN HIS OWN SPIN-OFF SERIES OF BOOKS CALLED "THE TRIALS OF TYRION THE TERRIBLE."
I think he is being evasive about being stuck somewhere. That's why his side projects are getting more attention
He's not that evasive about it. He keeps complaining about the Tyrion chapters.
To be fair, I wouldn't know fuckall what to do with Tyrion. He's possibly the most complicated character in a series full of ridiculously complicated characters.
If you ask me, his character has already fired off his shot (so to speak) and I think it'd be okay if he became king of all Westeros because so far he's the only nobleman in the entire world who seems to give a damn about the people instead of focusing on honor, revenge, greed, or birthright.
That will be the young Stark. My theory is that he is in fact the Dragon Prince's son (whose name escapes me. Anyway the one Robert killed). If I remember correctly, there is a passage that says that he raped Stark's love (at the time) and it may well come out that the boy was the result, rather than being the elder Stark's son. That would dove-tail nicely with the old Maester giving him the sword.
Tyrion is a really fantastic character. I remember thinking, when reading the books, that it is probably the best role ever written for a midget- I'd imagine there are several guys out there who would consider it their absolute dream role.
He'd better not die yet. Maybe at the end of the series, but there is really a lot more to do with his character than simple revenge.
The problem with doing these updates is that each of them is an attempt to predict the future, and if there's one thing that I have proved beyond a doubt these last few years, it's that I'm very bad at predicting the future, especially when my own work is concerned. I suppose I incline too much toward optimism.
My last formal update on A DANCE WITH DRAGONS was dated February 15, 2007.
If that seems like a long time ago to you, join the queue. It seems like forever and a day to me. When I wrote that update, I was sick of writing updates. So I tried to make that last update the final update, and ended it by saying, "The next update will be the one that announces that the DANCE is done."
Like all my other predictions about this book, however, that one turned out to be wrong. Ten-and-a-half months have passed, the book is still not done, and lately my mailbox has started filling up once again with readers pointing out that my last update is ah, quite old. So in the spirit of the holiday season, I decided, well, I can't give them DANCE, but I suppose I can give them a new update and a new sample chapter.
The new chapter you'll find on the Ice & Fire / Sample page of the website. For most of the past year, I've been rotating the first Daenerys chapter and the first Tyrion chapter on that page, changing back and forth every few months. By now, I fear, many of you have probably committed those two chapters to memory, so I'm adding a third wheel to the rotation, and giving you a taste of the first Jon Snow chapter as well. I hope you will enjoy it. And if you missed the Tyrion chapter and/or the Daenerys chapter, have no fear, both of them will be back up again in the months to come. I only offer one sample at a time, but my webmaster and I do try to change them out regularly.
As for the update part of the update... well, what can I say? The book's still not done.
Last February, when I wrote the previous update, my intent was to finish and deliver A DANCE WITH DRAGONS by the summer, so I could take off for the worldcon in Japan with a clear conscience, and follow it with a book tour through several other Asian countries. Obviously that didn't happen. I ended up cancelling the whole Asian tour and missing worldcon for the first time since 1985, so I could stay home, focus on the book, and make an all-out effort to finish it by the end of 2007. Unfortunately, that didn't happen either.
It is now 2008. I'm still working. There are no short cuts. It's a chapter at a time, a page at a time, a word at a time. I'm further along than I was, but not as far as I would like. During the last year, I had some good days (and months), some bad days (and months), and some days (and months) that I thought were good that turned out to be bad. The book is getting longer, and more importantly, the book is getting better. I've changed my mind about some of the things I said in earlier updates and on my Live Journal, and I reserve the right to change my mind again, though I am hoping I won't have to. Believe me, no one wants to finish this book more than me.
Sorry, I won't give you chapter and verse about the details of what I've been doing and undoing. I've never liked to talk much about a work-in-progress. Too much can and does change. Seeing as how I made you wait so long between updates, however, I'll throw out one small teaser, and mention I'm adding some chapters from the point of view of one of the characters featured in the first lot of Ice & Fire miniatures from Dark Sword, a character who has never had a POV in any of the earlier books.
This summer I am scheduled to travel to Spain to speak at Semana Negra in Gijon, make some appearances in Madrid and Barcelona, and then head over to Portugal to visit with my publishers and readers there. I want to have A DANCE WITH DRAGONS done and delivered before I leave. If that happens, the book will likely be published in the fall of 2008 in the U.S, and somewhat earlier in the U.K. I am pleased with the way the writing is going at the moment, and I think these projections are realistic ones... but as you all know, I've been wrong before. So I am not swearing any blood oaths here.
I probably won't update this page again for quite a long while, so let me close by saying once again that when A DANCE WITH DRAGONS is finished, I will post that news here. The moment I finish the book, I will log on and make the announcement. You guys will be the third ones to know, right after Parris and my publishers.
Until then, let me suggest that you check out HUNTER'S RUN, the new SF novel I wrote with Daniel Abraham and Gardner Dozois, and INSIDE STRAIGHT, the first volume in our new Wild Cards triad from Tor. They are not A Song of Ice and Fire, true, but I'm very proud of them both and I think a lot of you might enjoy them. Both books will be on sale in January in hardcover. And if it's more epic fantasy that you're yearning for, there's never been more good fantasies being published than there are right now. Try Daniel Abraham, try Scott Lynch, try S.L. Farrell and David Anthony Durham and Peter S. Beagle, try Lisa Tuttle and Robin Hobb and Ellen Kushner, or any of myriad other authors whose work is making fantasy such an exciting genre to be a part of... and if you want a change of pace, hop over to historical fiction and sample some Bernard Cornwell, some Cecilia Holland, some Steven Pressfield, some David W. Ball. You'll be glad you did.
Meanwhile, I'll keep working.
A white wolf moved through a black wood, beneath a pale cliff as tall as the sky. The moon ran with him, slipping through a tangle of bare branches overhead, across the starry sky.
"Snow," the moon murmurred.
The wolf made no answer. Snow crunched beneath his paws. The wind sighed through the trees. And far off, he could hear his packmates calling to him, like to like.
They were hunting too. A wild rain was lashing down upon his black brother as he tore at the flesh of an enormous goat, washing the blood from his side where the goat's long horn had raked him. In another place, his little sister lifted her head to sing to the moon, and a hundred small grey cousins broke off their hunt to sing with her. The hills were warmer where they were, and full of game. Many a night his sister's pack gorged on the flesh of sheep and cows and horses, the prey of men, and sometimes even on the flesh of man himself.
"Snow," the moon called down again, cackling.
The white wolf padded along the man trail beneath the icy cliff. The taste of blood and bone and sinew was on his tongue, and his ears rang to the song of the hundred cousins, but he had lost his other brother, grey-furred and smelling of the sun. Once they had been six, five whimpering blindly in the snow beside their dead mother, and him alone, the pale one, crawling off into the trees on shaky legs as his litter mates sucked cool milk from hard dead nipples. Now only four remained of the six born that day, and one of those was lost and gone.
"Snow," the moon insisted.
The white wolf ran from it, a white arrow flying past the ice, racing toward the cave of night where the sun had hidden, his breath frosting in the air. On starless nights the great cliff was as black as stone, a darkness towering high above the wide world, but when the moon came out it shimmered pale and icy as a frozen stream. The wolf's pelt was thick and shaggy, but when the wind blew along the ice no fur could keep the chill out. On the other side the wind was colder still, the wolf sensed. That was where his brother was, the grey brother who smelled of summer.
"Snow." An icicle tumbled from a branch. The white wolf turned toward the sound and bared his teeth.
"Snow!" The wolf's fur rose bristling, as the woods dissolved around him. "Snow, snow, snow!" The cries were accompanied by the beat of wings. Through the gloom a raven flew.
It landed on Jon Snow's chest with a thump and a scrabbling of claws. "SNOW!" it screamed into his face, flapping its wings.
"I hear you." The room was dim, his pallet hard. Grey light leaked through the shutters, promising another bleak cold day. In his wolf dreams it was always night. "Is this how you woke Mormont? Get your feathers out of my face." Jon wriggled an arm out from under his blankets to shoo the raven off. It was a big bird, old and bold and scruffy, utterly without fear.
"Snow," it cried, flapping to his bedpost. "Snow, snow."
Jon filled his fist with a pillow and let fly, but the bird took to the air. The pillow struck the wall and burst, scattering stuffing everywhere just as Dolorous Edd Tollett poked his head through the door.
"Beg pardon," the steward said, ignoring the flurry of feathers, "shall I fetch m'lord some breakfast?"
"Corn," cried the raven. "Corn, corn."
"Roast raven," Jon suggested. "And half a pint of ale."
"Three corns and one roast raven," said Edd. "Very good, m'lord, only Hobb's made boiled eggs, black sausage, and apples stewed with prunes this morning. The apples stewed with prunes are excellent, except for the prunes. I never eat prunes myself. Well, there was one time when Hobb chopped them up with chestnuts and carrots and hid them in a hen. Never trust a cook, my lord. They'll prune you when you least expect it."
"Later." Breakfast could wait; Stannis could not. "Any trouble from the stockades last night?"
"Not since you put guards on the guards, my lord."
"Good." A thousand wildlings had been penned up beyond the Wall, the captives Stannis Baratheon had taken when his knights had smashed Mance Rayder's patchwork host. Many of the prisoners were women, and some of the guards had been sneaking them out to warm their beds. King's men, queen's men, it did not seem to matter; a few black brothers had tried the same thing. Men were men, and these were the only women for a thousand leagues.
"Two more wildlings turned up to surrender," Edd went on. "A mother with a girl clinging to her skirts. She had a boy babe too, all swaddled up in fur, but he was dead."
"Dead," said the Old Bear's raven. It was one of the bird's favorite words. "Dead, dead, dead."
They had free folk drifting in most every night, starved and half frozen creatures who had run from the battle beneath the Wall only to realize that they had no place to run to.
"Was the mother questioned?" Jon asked. Stannis Baratheon had smashed Mance Rayder's host to pieces and made the King-Beyond-the-Wall his captive... but the wildlings were still out there, the Weeper and Tormund Giantsbane and thousands more.
"Aye, m'lord," said Edd, "but all she knows is that she ran off during the battle and hid in the woods after. We filled her full of porridge and sent her to the pens, and burned the babe."
Burning dead children had ceased to trouble Jon Snow; live ones were another matter. Two kings to wake the dragon, he remembered. The father first and then the son, so both die kings. The words had been murmurred by one of the queen's men as Maester Aemon had cleaned his wounds after the battle. Jon had been shocked when they were repeated to him. "It was his fever talking," he had said, but Maester Aemon had demurred. "There is power in a king's blood, Jon," he warned, "and better men than Stannis have done worse things than this." The king can be harsh and unforgiving, aye, but a babe still on the breast? Only a monster would give a living child to the flames.
He pissed in darkness, filling his chamberpot as the Old Bear's raven muttered complaints. The wolf dreams had been growing stronger, and Jon found himself remembering them even when awake. Ghost knows that Grey Wind is dead. Robb had died at the Twins, betrayed by men he'd believed his friends, and Grey Wolf had perished with him. Bran and Rickon had been murdered too, beheaded by that turncloak Theon Greyjoy... but if the dreams did not lie, their direwolves had escaped. At Queenscrown, one had come out of the darkness to save Jon's life. Summer, it had to be. His fur was grey, and Shaggydog is black. He wondered if some part of his dead brothers lived on inside their wolves.
Jon filled his basin from the flagon of water beside his bed, washed his face and hands, donned a clean set of black woolens, laced up a black leather jerkin, and pulled on a pair of well-worn boots. Mormont's raven watched with shrewd black eyes, then fluttered to the window. "Do you take me for your thrall?" Jon asked the bird. When he folded back the window with its thick diamond-shaped panes of yellow glass, the chill of the morning hit him in the face. He took a breath to clear away the cobwebs of the night as the raven flapped away. That bird is too clever by half. It had been the Old Bear's companion for long years, but that had not stopped it from eating Mormont's face once he died.
Outside his bedchamber a flight of steps descended to a larger room furnished with a scarred pinewood table and a dozen oak-and-leather chairs. With Stannis in the King's Tower and the Lord Commander's Tower burned to a shell, Jon had established himself in Donal Noye's modest rooms behind the armory.
The grant that the king had presented him for signature was on the table beneath a silver drinking cup that had once been Donal Noye's. The one-armed smith had left few personal effects: the cup, six pennies and a copper star, a niello brooch with a broken clasp, a musty brocade doublet that bore the stag of Storm's End. His treasures were his tools, and the swords and knives he made. His life was at the forge. Jon moved the cup aside and read the parchment once again. If I put my seal to this, I will forever be remembered as the lord commander who gave away the Wall, he thought, but if I should refuse...
Stannis Baratheon was proving to be a prickly guest, and a restless one. He had ridden down the kingsroad almost as far as Queenscrown, prowled through the empty hovels of Mole's Town, inspected the ruined forts at Queensgate and Oakenshield. Each night he walked atop the Wall with Lady Melisandre, and during the days he visited the stockades, picking captives out for the red woman to question. He does not like to be balked. This would not be a pleasant morning, Jon feared.
From the armory came a clatter of shields and swords, as the latest lot of boys and raw recruits armed themselves. He could hear the voice of Iron Emmett telling them to be quick about it. Cotter Pyke had not been pleased to lose him, but the young ranger had a gift for training men. He loves to fight, and he'll teach his boys to love it too. Or so he hoped.
Jon's cloak hung on a peg by the door, his swordbelt on another. He donned them both and made his way to the armory. The rug where Ghost slept was empty, he saw. Two guardsmen stood inside the doors, clad in black cloaks and iron halfhelms, spears in their hands. "Will m'lord be wanting a tail?" asked Garse.
"I think I can find the King's Tower by myself." Jon hated having guards trailing after him everywhere he went. It made him feel like a mother duck leading a procession of ducklings.
Iron Emmett's lads were well at it in the yard when Jon emerged, blunted swords slamming into shields and ringing against one another. Jon stopped to watch a moment as Horse pressed Hop-Robin back toward the well. Horse had the makings of a good fighter, he decided. He was strong and getting stronger, and his instincts were sound. Hop-Robin was another tale. His club foot was bad enough, but he was afraid of getting hit as well. Perhaps we can make a steward of him. The fight ended abruptly, with Hop-Robin on the ground.
"Well fought," Jon said to Horse, "but you drop your shield too low when pressing an attack. You will want to correct that, or it is like to get you killed."
"Yes, m'lord. I'll keep it higher next time." Horse pulled Hop-Robin to his feet, and the smaller boy made a clumsy bow.
A few of Stannis's knights were sparring as well, on the far side of the yard. King's men in one corner and queen's men in another, he did not fail to note, but only a few. It's too cold for most of them. As Jon strode past them, a booming voice called after him. "BOY! YOU THERE! BOY!"
'Boy' was not the worst of the things that Jon Snow had been called since being chosen lord commander. He ignored it.
"Snow," the voice insisted, "Lord Commander."
This time he stopped and turned. "Ser?"
The knight overtopped him by six inches. "A man who bears Valyrian steel should use it for more than scratching his arse."
Jon had seen this one about the castle; a knight of great renown, to hear him tell it. During the battle beneath the Wall, Ser Godry Farring had slain a fleeing giant, pounding after him on horseback and driving his lance through his back, then dismounting to hack off the creature's pitiful small head. The queen's men had taken to calling him Godry the Giantslayer. Whenever he heard that, Jon remembered Ygritte, crying. I am the last of the giants. "I use Longclaw when I must, ser."
"How well, though?" Ser Godry drew his own blade. "Show me. I promise not to hurt you, lad."
How kind of you, thought Jon. "Some other time, perhaps. I fear that I have other duties just now."
"You fear. I see that." Ser Godry looked at his friends, grinning. "He fears," he said again, for the slow ones.
"You will excuse me." Jon showed them his back.
Castle Black seemed a bleak and forlorn place in the pale dawn light. My command, Jon Snow reflected ruefully, as much a ruin as it is a stronghold. The Lord Commander's Tower was a shell, the Common Hall a pile of blackened timbers, and Hardin's Tower looked as if the next gust of wind would knock it over... though it had looked that way for years. Behind them all the Wall rose huge and pale. Even at this hour it was acrawl with men, builders pushing up a new switchback stair to join the remnants of the old. Othell Yarwyck had put all of command on the task, and they worked from dawn to dusk. Without the stair, there was no way to reach the top of the Wall save by winch. That would not serve if the wildlings should attack again.
Above the King's Tower the great golden battle standard of House Baratheon cracked like a whip on the roof where Jon Snow had prowled with bow in hand not long ago, slaying Thenns and free folk beside Satin and Deaf Dick Follard. Two queen's men stood shivering on the steps, their hands tucked up into their armpits and their spears leaning against the door.
"Those cloth gloves will never serve," Jon told them. "See Bowen Marsh on the morrow, and he'll give you each a pair of leather gloves lined with fur."
"We will, m'lord, and thank you," said the older guard.
"That's if our bloody hands aren't froze off," the younger added, his breath a pale mist. "I used to think that it got cold up in the Dornish Marches. What did I know?"
Nothing, thought Jon Snow, the same as me.
Halfway up the winding steps, he came upon Samwell Tarly, headed down. "Are you coming from the king?" Jon asked him.
Sam nodded. "Maester Aemon sent me with a letter."
"I see." Some lords trusted their maesters to read their letters and convey the contents, but Stannis insisted on breaking the seals himself. "How did Stannis take it?"
"Not happily, by his face." Sam dropped his voice to a whisper. "I am not supposed to speak of it."
"Then don't." Jon wondered which of his father's bannermen had refused Stannis homage this time. He was quick enough to spread the word when Karhold declared for him. "How are you and your longbow getting on?" he asked Sam.
"I found a good book about archery," the fat youth said, "but doing it is harder. I get blisters."
"Keep at it. We may need your bow on the Wall if the Others turn up some dark night."
"Oh, I hope not," Sam said, shuddering.
Jon found more guards outside the king's solar. "No arms are allowed in His Grace's presence, my lord," their serjeant said. "I'll need that sword. Your knives as well." It would do no good to protest, Jon knew. He handed them his weaponry.
Within the solar the air was warm. Lady Melisandre was seated near the fire, her ruby glimmering against the pale skin of her throat. Ygritte had been kissed by fire; the red priestess was fire, and her hair was blood and flame. Stannis stood behind the rough-hewn table where the Old Bear had once been wont to sit and take his meals. Covering the table was a large map of the north, painted on a ragged piece of hide. A tallow candle weighed down one end of it, a steel gauntlet the other.
The king wore lambswool breeches and a quilted doublet, yet somehow he looked as stiff and uncomfortable as if he had been clad in plate and mail. His skin was pale leather, his beard cropped so short that it might have been painted on. A fringe about his temples was all that remained of his black hair. In his hand was a parchment with a broken seal of dark green wax.
Jon took a knee. The king frowned at him, and rattled the parchment angrily. "Rise. Tell me, who is Lyanna Mormont?"
"One of Lady Maege's daughters. Sire. The youngest. She was named for my lord father's sister."
"To curry your lord father's favor, I don't doubt. How old is this wretched girl child?"
Jon had to think a moment. "Ten. Or near enough to make no matter. Might I know how she has offended Your Grace?"
Stannis read from the letter. "Bear Island knows no king but the King in the North, whose name is STARK. A girl of ten, you say, and she presumes to scold her lawful king." His close-cropped beard lay like a shadow over his hollow cheeks. "See that you keep these tiding to yourself, Lord Snow. Karhold is with me, that is all the men need know. I will not have your brothers trading tales of how this child spit on me."
"As you command, Sire." Maege Mormont had ridden south with Robb, Jon knew. Her eldest daughter had joined the Young Wolf's host as well. Even if both of them had died, however, Lady Maege had other daughters, younger than Dacey but older than Lyanna. He did not understand why the youngest Mormont should be writing Stannis, and part of him could not help but wonder if the girl's answer might have been different if the letter had been sealed with a direwolf instead of a crowned stag, and signed by Jon Stark, Lord of Winterfell. It is too late for such misgivings, he reminded himself. You made your choice.
"Two score ravens were sent out," the king complained bitterly, "yet we get no response but silence and defiance. Homage is the duty every leal subject owes his king. Yet your lord father's bannermen turn their back on me, save the Karstarks. Is Arnolf Karstark the only man of honor in the north?"
Arnolf Karstark was the late Lord Rickard's uncle. He had been made the castellan of Karhold when his nephew and his sons went south with Robb, and he had been the first to send a raven in reply to Stannis's demand for homage, declaring his allegiance. The Karstarks have no other choice, Jon might have pointed out. Lord Rickard Karstark had betrayed the direwolf and spilled the blood of lions. The stag was Karhold's only hope, as Stannis knew as well as Jon. "In times as confused as these even men of honor must wonder where their duty lies," he told the king. "Your Grace is not the only king in the realm demanding homage."
"Tell me, Lord Snow," said Lady Melisandre, "where were these other kings when the wild people stormed your Wall?"
"A thousand leagues away, and deaf to our need. I have not forgotten that. Nor will I. But my father's bannermen have wives and children to protect, and smallfolk who will die should they chose wrongly. You ask much of them, Sire. Give them time, and you will have your answers."
"Answers such as this?" Stannis crushed Lyanna's letter in his fist.
"Even in the north men fear the wroth of Tywin Lannister," said Jon. "The Boltons make bad enemies as well. It is not happenstance that put a flayed man on their banners. The north rode with Robb, bled with him, died for him. They have supped on grief and death, and now you come to offer them another serving. Do you blame them if they hang back? Forgive me, Your Grace, but some will look at you and see only another doomed pretender."
"If His Grace is doomed, your realm is doomed as well," said Lady Melisandre. "Remember that, Lord Snow. It is the one true king of Westeros who stands before you."
Jon kept his face a mask. "As you say, my lady."
Stannis snorted. "You spend your words as if every one were a golden dragon. I wonder, how much gold do you have laid by?"
"Gold?" Are those the dragons the red woman means to wake? Dragons made of gold? "Such taxes as we collect are paid in kind, Your Grace. The Watch is rich in turnips, but poor in coin."
"Turnips are not like to appease Salladhor Saan. I require gold or silver."
"For that, you need White Harbor. The city cannot compare to Oldtown or King's Landing, but it is still a thriving port. Lord Manderly is the richest of my lord father's bannermen."
"Lord Too-Fat-To-Sit-a-Horse." The letter that Lord Wyman Manderly had sent back from White Harbor had spoken of his age and infirmity, and little more. Stannis had commanded Jon not to speak of that one either.
"Perhaps his lordship would fancy a wildling wife," suggested Lady Melisandre. "Is this fat man married, Lord Snow?"
"His lady wife is long dead. Lord Wyman has two grown sons, and grandchildren by the elder. And he is too fat to sit a horse, thirty stone at least. Val would never have him."
"Just once you might try to give me an answer that would please me, Lord Snow," the king grumbled.
"I would hope the truth would please you, Sire. Your men call Val a princess, but to the free folk she is only the sister of their king's dead wife. If you force her to marry a man she does not want she is like to slit his throat for him on their wedding night, but even if she accepts her husband, that does not mean the wildlings will follow him, or you. The only man who can bind them to your cause is Mance Rayder."
"I know that," Stannis said, unhappily. "I have spent hours speaking with the man. He knows much and more of our true enemy, and there is strength in him, I'll grant you. Even if he were to renounce his kingship, though, the man remains an oathbreaker. If I suffer one deserter to live, it will encourage others to desert. No. Laws should be made of iron, not of pudding. Mance Rayder's life is forfeit by every law of the Seven Kingdoms."
"The law ends at the Wall, Your Grace. You could make good use of Mance."
"I will. I'll burn him, and show the north how I deal with turncloaks and traitors. I have other men to lead the wildlings. And I have Rayder's son, do not forget. Once the father dies, his whelp will be the King-Beyond-the-Wall."
"Your Grace is mistaken." You know nothing, Jon Snow, Ygritte used to say, but he had learned. "The babe is no more a prince than Val is a princess. You don't become King-Beyond-the-Wall because your father was."
"Good," said Stannis, "for I will suffer no other kings in Westeros. Enough of Rayder. Have you signed the grant?"
And now it comes. Jon closed his burned fingers and opened them again. "No, Your Grace. You ask too much."
"Ask? I asked you to be Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North. I require these castles."
"We have ceded you the Nightfort," said Jon Snow.
"Rats and ruins. It is a niggard's gift that costs the giver nothing. Your own man Yarwyck says it will be half a year before the castle can be made fit for habitation."
"The other forts are no better."
"I know that. It makes no matter. They are all we have. There are nineteen forts along the Wall, and you have men in only three of them. I mean to have every one of them garrisoned again before the year is out."
"I have no quarrel with that, Sire, but it is being said that you also mean to grant these castles to your knights and lords, to hold as their own seats as vassals to Your Grace."
"Kings are expected to be open-handed to their followers. Did Lord Eddard teach his bastard nothing? Many of my knights and lords abandoned rich lands and stout castles in the south. Should their loyalty go unrewarded?"
"If Your Grace wishes to lose all of my lord father's bannermen, there is no more certain way than by giving northern halls to southron lords."
"How can I lose men I do not have? I had hoped to bestow Winterfell on a northman, you may recall. A son of Eddard Stark. He threw my offer in my face." Stannis Baratheon with a grievance was like a mastiff with a bone; he gnawed it down to splinters.
"By right Winterfell should go to my sister Sansa."
"Lady Lannister, you mean? Are you so eager to see the Imp perched on your father's seat?"
"No," said Jon.
"Good. It will not happen whilst I live, Lord Snow."
Jon knew better than to press the point. "Sire, some claim that you mean to grant lands and castles to Rattleshirt and the Magnar of Thenn."
The king's eyes turned to hard blue stones. He ground his teeth and said, "Who told you that?"
"Does that matter?" The talk was all over Castle Black. "If you must know, I had the tale from Gilly."
"Who is Gilly?" the king demanded.
"The wet nurse," said Lady Melisandre. "Your Grace gave her freedom of the castle."
"Not for running tales. She's wanted for her teats, not for her tongue. I'll have more milk from her, and fewer messages."
"Castle Black needs no useless mouths," Jon agreed. "I am sending Gilly south on the next ship out of Eastwatch."
Melisandre touched the ruby at her neck. "Gilly is giving suck to Dalla's son as well as her own. It seems cruel of you to part our little prince from his milk brother, my lord."
Careful now, careful. "Mother's milk is all they share. Gilly's son is larger and more robust. He kicks the prince and pinches him, and shoves him from the breast. Craster was his father, a cruel man and greedy, and blood tells."
Stannis furrowed his brow. "I was told that the wet nurse was this man Craster's wife."
"Wife and daughter both. Craster married all his daughters. Gilly's boy was the fruit of their union."
"Her own father got this child on her? We are well rid of her, then. I will not suffer such abominations here. This is not King's Landing."
"I can find another wet nurse. If there's none amongst the wildlings, I will send to the mountain clans. Until such time, goat's milk should suffice for the boy, if it please Your Grace."
"Poor fare for a prince... but better than whore's milk, aye." Stannis drummed his fingers on the map. "If we may return to the matter of these forts... "
"Your Grace," said Jon, with chilly courtesy, "I have housed your men and fed them, at dire cost to our winter stores. I have clothed them so they would not freeze."
Stannis was not appeased. "Aye, you've shared your salt pork and porridge, and you've thrown us some black rags to keep us warm. Rags the wildlings would have taken off your corpses if I had not come north."
Jon ignored that. "I have given you fodder for your horses, and once the stair is done I will lend you builders to restore the Nightfort. I have even agreed to allow you to settle wildlings on the Gift, which was given to the Night's Watch in perpetuity."
"You offer me empty lands and desolations, yet deny me the castles I require to reward my lords and bannermen."
"The Night's Watch built those castles... "
"And the Night's Watch abandoned them."
"... to defend the Wall," Jon finished stubbornly, "not as seats for wildlings and southron lords. The stones of those forts are mortared with the blood and bones of my brothers, long dead. I cannot give them to you."
"Cannot or will not?" The cords in the king's neck stood out sharp as swords. "And to think, I offered you a name."
"I have a name, Your Grace."
"Snow. Was ever a name more ill-omened?" Stannis touched his sword hilt. "Just who do you imagine that you are?"
"The watcher on the walls. The sword in the darkness."
"Don't prate your words at me." Stannis drew the longsword he called Lightbringer. "Here is your sword in the darkness." Light rippled up and down the blade, now red, now yellow, nor orange, painting the king's face in harsh, bright hues. "Even a green boy should be able to see that. Are you blind?"
"No, Sire. I agree these castles must be garrisoned - "
"The boy commander agrees. How fortunate."
" - by the Night's Watch," Jon finished.
"You do not have the men."
"Then give them to me, Sire. I will provide officers for each of the abandoned forts, seasoned men who know the Wall and the lands beyond, who know how best to survive the winter that is coming. In return for all we've given you, grant me the men to fill out the garrisons. Men-at-arms, crossbowmen, raw boys. I will even take your wounded and infirm."
Stannis stared at him incredulously, then gave a bark of laughter. "You are bold enough, Snow, I grant you that, but you're mad if you think my men will take the black."
"They can wear any color cloak they choose, so long as they obey my officers as they would your own."
The king was unmoved. "I have knights and lords in my service, the scions of noble Houses old in honor. They cannot be expected to serve under poachers, peasants, and murderers."
Or bastards, sire? "Your own Hand is a smuggler."
"Was a smuggler. I shortened his fingers for that. They tell me that you are the nine-hundred-ninety-eighth man to command the Night's Watch, Lord Snow. I wonder what the nine-hundred-ninety-ninth might say about these castles. The sight of your head on a spike might inspire him to be more helpful." The king lay his bright blade down on the map, along the Wall, its steel shimmering like sunlight on water. "You are only lord commander by my sufferance. You would do well to remember that."
"I am lord commander because my brothers chose me."
"Did they?" The map lay between them like a battleground, drenched by the colors of the glowing sword. "Alliser Thorne complains about the manner of your choosing, and I cannot say he does not have a grievance. The count was done by a blind man with your fat friend by his elbow. And Slynt names you a turncloak."
And who would know one better than Slynt? "A turncloak would tell you what you wished to hear and betray you later. Your Grace knows that I was fairly chosen. My father always said you were a just man." Just but harsh had been Lord Eddard's exact words, but Jon did not think it would be wise to share that.
"Lord Eddard was no friend of mine, but he was not without some sense," said Stannis. "He would have given me these castles."
Never. "I cannot speak to what my father might have done. I took an oath, Your Grace. The Wall is mine."
"For now. We will see how well you hold it." Stannis pointed at him. "Keep your ruins, as they mean so much to you. I promise you, though, if any remain empty when the year is out, I will take them with your leave or without it. And if even one should fall to the foe, your head will soon follow. Now get out."
Lady Melisandre rose from her place near the hearth. "With your leave, Sire, I will show Lord Snow back to his chambers."
"Why? He knows the way." Stannis waved them both away. "Do what you will. Devan, food. Boiled eggs and lemon water."
After the warmth of the king's solar, the turnpike stair felt bone-chillingly cold. "Wind's rising, m'lady," the serjeant warned Melisandre as he handed Jon back his weapons. "You might want a warmer cloak."
"I have my faith to warm me." The red woman walked beside Jon down the steps. "His Grace is growing fond of you."
"I can tell. He only threatened to behead me twice."
Melisandre laughed. "It is his silences you should fear, not his words." As they stepped out into the yard, the wind filled Jon's cloak and sent it flapping against her. The red priestess brushed the black wool aside and slipped her arm through his. "It is may be that you are not wrong about the wildling king. I shall gaze into the flames and pray for the Lord of Light to send me guidance. My fires show me much and more, Jon Snow. I can see through stone and earth, and find the truth in the darkness of men's souls. I can speak to kings long dead and children not yet born, and watch the years and seasons flicker past, until the end of days."
"Are your fires never wrong?"
"Never... though we priests are mortal and sometimes err, mistaking this must come from this may come."
Jon could feel her heat, even through his wool and boiled leather. The sight of them arm in arm was drawing curious looks. They will be whispering in the barracks tonight. "If you can truly see the morrow in your flames, tell me when and where the next wildling attack will come," he said, pulling free of her.
"R'hllor sends us what visions he will, but I shall seek for this man Tormund in the flames." Melisandre's red lips curled into a smile. "I have seen you in my fires, Jon Snow."
"Is that a threat, my lady? Do you mean to burn me too?"
"You mistake my meaning." She laughed. "I fear that I make you uneasy, Lord Snow."
Jon did not deny it. "The Wall is no place for a woman."
"You are wrong. I have dreamed of your Wall, Jon Snow. Great was the lore that raised it, and great the spells locked beneath its ice. We walk beneath one of the hinges of the world." Melisandre gazed up at it tenderly, her breath a warm moist cloud in the air. "This is my place as it is yours, and soon enough you may have grave need of me. Do not refuse my friendship, Jon. I have seen you in the storm, hard pressed, with enemies on every side. You have so many enemies. Shall I tell you their names?"
"I know their names."
"Do not be so certain." The ruby at Melisandre's throat gleamed redly. "It is not the foes who curse you to your face that you must fear, but those who smile when you are looking and sharpen their knives when you turn your back. You would do well to keep your wolf close beside you. Ice, I see, and daggers in the dark. Blood frozen red and hard, and naked steel. It was very cold."
"It is always cold on the Wall."
"You think so?"
"I know so, my lady."
"Then you know nothing, Jon Snow," she whispered.
Tyrion is a really fantastic character. I remember thinking, when reading the books, that it is probably the best role ever written for a midget- I'd imagine there are several guys out there who would consider it their absolute dream role.
He'd better not die yet. Maybe at the end of the series, but there is really a lot more to do with his character than simple revenge.
He is much more than the best fictional dwarf/midget/halfman ever. The guy is one of the most realistic and deep characters ever.
Posts
oh wait, you have? You're just being a jerk about it? that's great.
seriously, people saying "well, he's taken an extra two years to write this book that we would like to read" is not the same as them saying "JESUS CHRIST GOD TWO YEARS NOW I WILL KILL MARTIN AND HIS KIN!" I mean, I like the series and I think that Martin is a just basic lazy dude, but I'll happily wait another year or so if the next book is as good as his four last. People can anticipate stuff without being sweaty, creepy fanboys.
On the other hand threatening to kill him could potentially make him work harder as he fears for his life
I mean I don't think it actually works that way but I'm guessing that's the idea
I think a better idea is to bribe him, a truck load of twinkies and ding dongs might get him to work faster.
3DS: 2852-6809-9411
But then, because publishers like money, they will get a ghost-writer.
And we all know how that would go down.
badly
3dozen krispy kremes kthx
Great, now hes gonna die of a heart attack.
No, I say we send the death threats to his family instead. That is how you motivate someone.
Well, the problem is AFFC and ADWD weren't really supposed to exist.
The whole series was planned out and then he knocked out 1, 2 and 3 within like .. 5 years or so I think.
Now, what was originally planned was a 5 year gap. Essentially, the next book picks up 5 years after ASOS. Unfortunately, while trying to write this next book, he realised he couldn't skip over those 5 years like he thought he could. There was too much stuff he needed to cover "in person" and not just reference from the future books.
So, a new book is born. And this brings it's own new structural problems he's got to solve, which slows shit down. So he finally starts writing and quickly the whole thing gets far too large, so that ends up being split. So we get AFFC with half the characters and ADWD with the other half.
THEN, after completing AFFC he sits to down finish the half written ADWD and doesn't like most of the stuff already written, and so has to rewrite ADWD mostly from scratch.
And THAT'S why it's taking so fucking long.
Hopefully, once he's over this hurdle, it will be smooth sailing through the last volumes, since those are already planned out and such.
sigh
Same here. I mean it'll be a nice diversion this series, but I don't expect it will be great. Finishing the series however will most certainly be great.
This is true. Perhaps what makes the books so enjoyable to me is that what I do remember is the characters. Extremely well. Each has their own distinct and realistic personality, and generally doesn't tell you to completely hate a character. Littlefinger, for instance, while sort of a bit player (pardon the pun) is probably my favorite character. He is so fresh to read it's quite enjoyable. I suppose Gregor is the least sympathetic character around at the moment, but even then you get hints that while being a major cock to Sander, he really was teaching him in his twisted way that life was shit, so you had better buck up little brother because you're fucking tiny.
And then of course there are the characters you don't even read personally but just are mentioned. The Sword of the Morning for example.
...
I need to go dig through my boxes now and find the books. Damn PA. The way I deal with George's laziness is to forget about the books as much as possible.
Well, it's SOMEthing, at least.
I'm willing to wait as long as it takes for the next few books, but I still find that post inexplicably irritating. "Sorry Dance isn't finished. Now I'm going to plug all this other stuff I've done that I want you to spend money on. Again, sorry about Dance."
He's not that evasive about it. He keeps complaining about the Tyrion chapters.
To be fair, I wouldn't know fuckall what to do with Tyrion. He's possibly the most complicated character in a series full of ridiculously complicated characters.
If you ask me, his character has already fired off his shot (so to speak) and I think it'd be okay if he met a good death at some point to emphasize the importance of Jaime's character journey.
I think it's entirely more likely
That will be the young Stark. My theory is that he is in fact the Dragon Prince's son (whose name escapes me. Anyway the one Robert killed). If I remember correctly, there is a passage that says that he raped Stark's love (at the time) and it may well come out that the boy was the result, rather than being the elder Stark's son. That would dove-tail nicely with the old Maester giving him the sword.
Although it wasn't rape.
He'd better not die yet. Maybe at the end of the series, but there is really a lot more to do with his character than simple revenge.
My last formal update on A DANCE WITH DRAGONS was dated February 15, 2007.
If that seems like a long time ago to you, join the queue. It seems like forever and a day to me. When I wrote that update, I was sick of writing updates. So I tried to make that last update the final update, and ended it by saying, "The next update will be the one that announces that the DANCE is done."
Like all my other predictions about this book, however, that one turned out to be wrong. Ten-and-a-half months have passed, the book is still not done, and lately my mailbox has started filling up once again with readers pointing out that my last update is ah, quite old. So in the spirit of the holiday season, I decided, well, I can't give them DANCE, but I suppose I can give them a new update and a new sample chapter.
The new chapter you'll find on the Ice & Fire / Sample page of the website. For most of the past year, I've been rotating the first Daenerys chapter and the first Tyrion chapter on that page, changing back and forth every few months. By now, I fear, many of you have probably committed those two chapters to memory, so I'm adding a third wheel to the rotation, and giving you a taste of the first Jon Snow chapter as well. I hope you will enjoy it. And if you missed the Tyrion chapter and/or the Daenerys chapter, have no fear, both of them will be back up again in the months to come. I only offer one sample at a time, but my webmaster and I do try to change them out regularly.
As for the update part of the update... well, what can I say? The book's still not done.
Last February, when I wrote the previous update, my intent was to finish and deliver A DANCE WITH DRAGONS by the summer, so I could take off for the worldcon in Japan with a clear conscience, and follow it with a book tour through several other Asian countries. Obviously that didn't happen. I ended up cancelling the whole Asian tour and missing worldcon for the first time since 1985, so I could stay home, focus on the book, and make an all-out effort to finish it by the end of 2007. Unfortunately, that didn't happen either.
It is now 2008. I'm still working. There are no short cuts. It's a chapter at a time, a page at a time, a word at a time. I'm further along than I was, but not as far as I would like. During the last year, I had some good days (and months), some bad days (and months), and some days (and months) that I thought were good that turned out to be bad. The book is getting longer, and more importantly, the book is getting better. I've changed my mind about some of the things I said in earlier updates and on my Live Journal, and I reserve the right to change my mind again, though I am hoping I won't have to. Believe me, no one wants to finish this book more than me.
Sorry, I won't give you chapter and verse about the details of what I've been doing and undoing. I've never liked to talk much about a work-in-progress. Too much can and does change. Seeing as how I made you wait so long between updates, however, I'll throw out one small teaser, and mention I'm adding some chapters from the point of view of one of the characters featured in the first lot of Ice & Fire miniatures from Dark Sword, a character who has never had a POV in any of the earlier books.
This summer I am scheduled to travel to Spain to speak at Semana Negra in Gijon, make some appearances in Madrid and Barcelona, and then head over to Portugal to visit with my publishers and readers there. I want to have A DANCE WITH DRAGONS done and delivered before I leave. If that happens, the book will likely be published in the fall of 2008 in the U.S, and somewhat earlier in the U.K. I am pleased with the way the writing is going at the moment, and I think these projections are realistic ones... but as you all know, I've been wrong before. So I am not swearing any blood oaths here.
I probably won't update this page again for quite a long while, so let me close by saying once again that when A DANCE WITH DRAGONS is finished, I will post that news here. The moment I finish the book, I will log on and make the announcement. You guys will be the third ones to know, right after Parris and my publishers.
Until then, let me suggest that you check out HUNTER'S RUN, the new SF novel I wrote with Daniel Abraham and Gardner Dozois, and INSIDE STRAIGHT, the first volume in our new Wild Cards triad from Tor. They are not A Song of Ice and Fire, true, but I'm very proud of them both and I think a lot of you might enjoy them. Both books will be on sale in January in hardcover. And if it's more epic fantasy that you're yearning for, there's never been more good fantasies being published than there are right now. Try Daniel Abraham, try Scott Lynch, try S.L. Farrell and David Anthony Durham and Peter S. Beagle, try Lisa Tuttle and Robin Hobb and Ellen Kushner, or any of myriad other authors whose work is making fantasy such an exciting genre to be a part of... and if you want a change of pace, hop over to historical fiction and sample some Bernard Cornwell, some Cecilia Holland, some Steven Pressfield, some David W. Ball. You'll be glad you did.
Meanwhile, I'll keep working.
A white wolf moved through a black wood, beneath a pale cliff as tall as the sky. The moon ran with him, slipping through a tangle of bare branches overhead, across the starry sky.
"Snow," the moon murmurred.
The wolf made no answer. Snow crunched beneath his paws. The wind sighed through the trees. And far off, he could hear his packmates calling to him, like to like.
They were hunting too. A wild rain was lashing down upon his black brother as he tore at the flesh of an enormous goat, washing the blood from his side where the goat's long horn had raked him. In another place, his little sister lifted her head to sing to the moon, and a hundred small grey cousins broke off their hunt to sing with her. The hills were warmer where they were, and full of game. Many a night his sister's pack gorged on the flesh of sheep and cows and horses, the prey of men, and sometimes even on the flesh of man himself.
"Snow," the moon called down again, cackling.
The white wolf padded along the man trail beneath the icy cliff. The taste of blood and bone and sinew was on his tongue, and his ears rang to the song of the hundred cousins, but he had lost his other brother, grey-furred and smelling of the sun. Once they had been six, five whimpering blindly in the snow beside their dead mother, and him alone, the pale one, crawling off into the trees on shaky legs as his litter mates sucked cool milk from hard dead nipples. Now only four remained of the six born that day, and one of those was lost and gone.
"Snow," the moon insisted.
The white wolf ran from it, a white arrow flying past the ice, racing toward the cave of night where the sun had hidden, his breath frosting in the air. On starless nights the great cliff was as black as stone, a darkness towering high above the wide world, but when the moon came out it shimmered pale and icy as a frozen stream. The wolf's pelt was thick and shaggy, but when the wind blew along the ice no fur could keep the chill out. On the other side the wind was colder still, the wolf sensed. That was where his brother was, the grey brother who smelled of summer.
"Snow." An icicle tumbled from a branch. The white wolf turned toward the sound and bared his teeth.
"Snow!" The wolf's fur rose bristling, as the woods dissolved around him. "Snow, snow, snow!" The cries were accompanied by the beat of wings. Through the gloom a raven flew.
It landed on Jon Snow's chest with a thump and a scrabbling of claws. "SNOW!" it screamed into his face, flapping its wings.
"I hear you." The room was dim, his pallet hard. Grey light leaked through the shutters, promising another bleak cold day. In his wolf dreams it was always night. "Is this how you woke Mormont? Get your feathers out of my face." Jon wriggled an arm out from under his blankets to shoo the raven off. It was a big bird, old and bold and scruffy, utterly without fear.
"Snow," it cried, flapping to his bedpost. "Snow, snow."
Jon filled his fist with a pillow and let fly, but the bird took to the air. The pillow struck the wall and burst, scattering stuffing everywhere just as Dolorous Edd Tollett poked his head through the door.
"Beg pardon," the steward said, ignoring the flurry of feathers, "shall I fetch m'lord some breakfast?"
"Corn," cried the raven. "Corn, corn."
"Roast raven," Jon suggested. "And half a pint of ale."
"Three corns and one roast raven," said Edd. "Very good, m'lord, only Hobb's made boiled eggs, black sausage, and apples stewed with prunes this morning. The apples stewed with prunes are excellent, except for the prunes. I never eat prunes myself. Well, there was one time when Hobb chopped them up with chestnuts and carrots and hid them in a hen. Never trust a cook, my lord. They'll prune you when you least expect it."
"Later." Breakfast could wait; Stannis could not. "Any trouble from the stockades last night?"
"Not since you put guards on the guards, my lord."
"Good." A thousand wildlings had been penned up beyond the Wall, the captives Stannis Baratheon had taken when his knights had smashed Mance Rayder's patchwork host. Many of the prisoners were women, and some of the guards had been sneaking them out to warm their beds. King's men, queen's men, it did not seem to matter; a few black brothers had tried the same thing. Men were men, and these were the only women for a thousand leagues.
"Two more wildlings turned up to surrender," Edd went on. "A mother with a girl clinging to her skirts. She had a boy babe too, all swaddled up in fur, but he was dead."
"Dead," said the Old Bear's raven. It was one of the bird's favorite words. "Dead, dead, dead."
They had free folk drifting in most every night, starved and half frozen creatures who had run from the battle beneath the Wall only to realize that they had no place to run to.
"Was the mother questioned?" Jon asked. Stannis Baratheon had smashed Mance Rayder's host to pieces and made the King-Beyond-the-Wall his captive... but the wildlings were still out there, the Weeper and Tormund Giantsbane and thousands more.
"Aye, m'lord," said Edd, "but all she knows is that she ran off during the battle and hid in the woods after. We filled her full of porridge and sent her to the pens, and burned the babe."
Burning dead children had ceased to trouble Jon Snow; live ones were another matter. Two kings to wake the dragon, he remembered. The father first and then the son, so both die kings. The words had been murmurred by one of the queen's men as Maester Aemon had cleaned his wounds after the battle. Jon had been shocked when they were repeated to him. "It was his fever talking," he had said, but Maester Aemon had demurred. "There is power in a king's blood, Jon," he warned, "and better men than Stannis have done worse things than this." The king can be harsh and unforgiving, aye, but a babe still on the breast? Only a monster would give a living child to the flames.
He pissed in darkness, filling his chamberpot as the Old Bear's raven muttered complaints. The wolf dreams had been growing stronger, and Jon found himself remembering them even when awake. Ghost knows that Grey Wind is dead. Robb had died at the Twins, betrayed by men he'd believed his friends, and Grey Wolf had perished with him. Bran and Rickon had been murdered too, beheaded by that turncloak Theon Greyjoy... but if the dreams did not lie, their direwolves had escaped. At Queenscrown, one had come out of the darkness to save Jon's life. Summer, it had to be. His fur was grey, and Shaggydog is black. He wondered if some part of his dead brothers lived on inside their wolves.
Jon filled his basin from the flagon of water beside his bed, washed his face and hands, donned a clean set of black woolens, laced up a black leather jerkin, and pulled on a pair of well-worn boots. Mormont's raven watched with shrewd black eyes, then fluttered to the window. "Do you take me for your thrall?" Jon asked the bird. When he folded back the window with its thick diamond-shaped panes of yellow glass, the chill of the morning hit him in the face. He took a breath to clear away the cobwebs of the night as the raven flapped away. That bird is too clever by half. It had been the Old Bear's companion for long years, but that had not stopped it from eating Mormont's face once he died.
Outside his bedchamber a flight of steps descended to a larger room furnished with a scarred pinewood table and a dozen oak-and-leather chairs. With Stannis in the King's Tower and the Lord Commander's Tower burned to a shell, Jon had established himself in Donal Noye's modest rooms behind the armory.
The grant that the king had presented him for signature was on the table beneath a silver drinking cup that had once been Donal Noye's. The one-armed smith had left few personal effects: the cup, six pennies and a copper star, a niello brooch with a broken clasp, a musty brocade doublet that bore the stag of Storm's End. His treasures were his tools, and the swords and knives he made. His life was at the forge. Jon moved the cup aside and read the parchment once again. If I put my seal to this, I will forever be remembered as the lord commander who gave away the Wall, he thought, but if I should refuse...
Stannis Baratheon was proving to be a prickly guest, and a restless one. He had ridden down the kingsroad almost as far as Queenscrown, prowled through the empty hovels of Mole's Town, inspected the ruined forts at Queensgate and Oakenshield. Each night he walked atop the Wall with Lady Melisandre, and during the days he visited the stockades, picking captives out for the red woman to question. He does not like to be balked. This would not be a pleasant morning, Jon feared.
From the armory came a clatter of shields and swords, as the latest lot of boys and raw recruits armed themselves. He could hear the voice of Iron Emmett telling them to be quick about it. Cotter Pyke had not been pleased to lose him, but the young ranger had a gift for training men. He loves to fight, and he'll teach his boys to love it too. Or so he hoped.
Jon's cloak hung on a peg by the door, his swordbelt on another. He donned them both and made his way to the armory. The rug where Ghost slept was empty, he saw. Two guardsmen stood inside the doors, clad in black cloaks and iron halfhelms, spears in their hands. "Will m'lord be wanting a tail?" asked Garse.
"I think I can find the King's Tower by myself." Jon hated having guards trailing after him everywhere he went. It made him feel like a mother duck leading a procession of ducklings.
Iron Emmett's lads were well at it in the yard when Jon emerged, blunted swords slamming into shields and ringing against one another. Jon stopped to watch a moment as Horse pressed Hop-Robin back toward the well. Horse had the makings of a good fighter, he decided. He was strong and getting stronger, and his instincts were sound. Hop-Robin was another tale. His club foot was bad enough, but he was afraid of getting hit as well. Perhaps we can make a steward of him. The fight ended abruptly, with Hop-Robin on the ground.
"Well fought," Jon said to Horse, "but you drop your shield too low when pressing an attack. You will want to correct that, or it is like to get you killed."
"Yes, m'lord. I'll keep it higher next time." Horse pulled Hop-Robin to his feet, and the smaller boy made a clumsy bow.
A few of Stannis's knights were sparring as well, on the far side of the yard. King's men in one corner and queen's men in another, he did not fail to note, but only a few. It's too cold for most of them. As Jon strode past them, a booming voice called after him. "BOY! YOU THERE! BOY!"
'Boy' was not the worst of the things that Jon Snow had been called since being chosen lord commander. He ignored it.
"Snow," the voice insisted, "Lord Commander."
This time he stopped and turned. "Ser?"
The knight overtopped him by six inches. "A man who bears Valyrian steel should use it for more than scratching his arse."
Jon had seen this one about the castle; a knight of great renown, to hear him tell it. During the battle beneath the Wall, Ser Godry Farring had slain a fleeing giant, pounding after him on horseback and driving his lance through his back, then dismounting to hack off the creature's pitiful small head. The queen's men had taken to calling him Godry the Giantslayer. Whenever he heard that, Jon remembered Ygritte, crying. I am the last of the giants. "I use Longclaw when I must, ser."
"How well, though?" Ser Godry drew his own blade. "Show me. I promise not to hurt you, lad."
How kind of you, thought Jon. "Some other time, perhaps. I fear that I have other duties just now."
"You fear. I see that." Ser Godry looked at his friends, grinning. "He fears," he said again, for the slow ones.
"You will excuse me." Jon showed them his back.
Castle Black seemed a bleak and forlorn place in the pale dawn light. My command, Jon Snow reflected ruefully, as much a ruin as it is a stronghold. The Lord Commander's Tower was a shell, the Common Hall a pile of blackened timbers, and Hardin's Tower looked as if the next gust of wind would knock it over... though it had looked that way for years. Behind them all the Wall rose huge and pale. Even at this hour it was acrawl with men, builders pushing up a new switchback stair to join the remnants of the old. Othell Yarwyck had put all of command on the task, and they worked from dawn to dusk. Without the stair, there was no way to reach the top of the Wall save by winch. That would not serve if the wildlings should attack again.
Above the King's Tower the great golden battle standard of House Baratheon cracked like a whip on the roof where Jon Snow had prowled with bow in hand not long ago, slaying Thenns and free folk beside Satin and Deaf Dick Follard. Two queen's men stood shivering on the steps, their hands tucked up into their armpits and their spears leaning against the door.
"Those cloth gloves will never serve," Jon told them. "See Bowen Marsh on the morrow, and he'll give you each a pair of leather gloves lined with fur."
"We will, m'lord, and thank you," said the older guard.
"That's if our bloody hands aren't froze off," the younger added, his breath a pale mist. "I used to think that it got cold up in the Dornish Marches. What did I know?"
Nothing, thought Jon Snow, the same as me.
Halfway up the winding steps, he came upon Samwell Tarly, headed down. "Are you coming from the king?" Jon asked him.
Sam nodded. "Maester Aemon sent me with a letter."
"I see." Some lords trusted their maesters to read their letters and convey the contents, but Stannis insisted on breaking the seals himself. "How did Stannis take it?"
"Not happily, by his face." Sam dropped his voice to a whisper. "I am not supposed to speak of it."
"Then don't." Jon wondered which of his father's bannermen had refused Stannis homage this time. He was quick enough to spread the word when Karhold declared for him. "How are you and your longbow getting on?" he asked Sam.
"I found a good book about archery," the fat youth said, "but doing it is harder. I get blisters."
"Keep at it. We may need your bow on the Wall if the Others turn up some dark night."
"Oh, I hope not," Sam said, shuddering.
Jon found more guards outside the king's solar. "No arms are allowed in His Grace's presence, my lord," their serjeant said. "I'll need that sword. Your knives as well." It would do no good to protest, Jon knew. He handed them his weaponry.
Within the solar the air was warm. Lady Melisandre was seated near the fire, her ruby glimmering against the pale skin of her throat. Ygritte had been kissed by fire; the red priestess was fire, and her hair was blood and flame. Stannis stood behind the rough-hewn table where the Old Bear had once been wont to sit and take his meals. Covering the table was a large map of the north, painted on a ragged piece of hide. A tallow candle weighed down one end of it, a steel gauntlet the other.
The king wore lambswool breeches and a quilted doublet, yet somehow he looked as stiff and uncomfortable as if he had been clad in plate and mail. His skin was pale leather, his beard cropped so short that it might have been painted on. A fringe about his temples was all that remained of his black hair. In his hand was a parchment with a broken seal of dark green wax.
Jon took a knee. The king frowned at him, and rattled the parchment angrily. "Rise. Tell me, who is Lyanna Mormont?"
"One of Lady Maege's daughters. Sire. The youngest. She was named for my lord father's sister."
"To curry your lord father's favor, I don't doubt. How old is this wretched girl child?"
Jon had to think a moment. "Ten. Or near enough to make no matter. Might I know how she has offended Your Grace?"
Stannis read from the letter. "Bear Island knows no king but the King in the North, whose name is STARK. A girl of ten, you say, and she presumes to scold her lawful king." His close-cropped beard lay like a shadow over his hollow cheeks. "See that you keep these tiding to yourself, Lord Snow. Karhold is with me, that is all the men need know. I will not have your brothers trading tales of how this child spit on me."
"As you command, Sire." Maege Mormont had ridden south with Robb, Jon knew. Her eldest daughter had joined the Young Wolf's host as well. Even if both of them had died, however, Lady Maege had other daughters, younger than Dacey but older than Lyanna. He did not understand why the youngest Mormont should be writing Stannis, and part of him could not help but wonder if the girl's answer might have been different if the letter had been sealed with a direwolf instead of a crowned stag, and signed by Jon Stark, Lord of Winterfell. It is too late for such misgivings, he reminded himself. You made your choice.
"Two score ravens were sent out," the king complained bitterly, "yet we get no response but silence and defiance. Homage is the duty every leal subject owes his king. Yet your lord father's bannermen turn their back on me, save the Karstarks. Is Arnolf Karstark the only man of honor in the north?"
Arnolf Karstark was the late Lord Rickard's uncle. He had been made the castellan of Karhold when his nephew and his sons went south with Robb, and he had been the first to send a raven in reply to Stannis's demand for homage, declaring his allegiance. The Karstarks have no other choice, Jon might have pointed out. Lord Rickard Karstark had betrayed the direwolf and spilled the blood of lions. The stag was Karhold's only hope, as Stannis knew as well as Jon. "In times as confused as these even men of honor must wonder where their duty lies," he told the king. "Your Grace is not the only king in the realm demanding homage."
"Tell me, Lord Snow," said Lady Melisandre, "where were these other kings when the wild people stormed your Wall?"
"A thousand leagues away, and deaf to our need. I have not forgotten that. Nor will I. But my father's bannermen have wives and children to protect, and smallfolk who will die should they chose wrongly. You ask much of them, Sire. Give them time, and you will have your answers."
"Answers such as this?" Stannis crushed Lyanna's letter in his fist.
"Even in the north men fear the wroth of Tywin Lannister," said Jon. "The Boltons make bad enemies as well. It is not happenstance that put a flayed man on their banners. The north rode with Robb, bled with him, died for him. They have supped on grief and death, and now you come to offer them another serving. Do you blame them if they hang back? Forgive me, Your Grace, but some will look at you and see only another doomed pretender."
"If His Grace is doomed, your realm is doomed as well," said Lady Melisandre. "Remember that, Lord Snow. It is the one true king of Westeros who stands before you."
Jon kept his face a mask. "As you say, my lady."
Stannis snorted. "You spend your words as if every one were a golden dragon. I wonder, how much gold do you have laid by?"
"Gold?" Are those the dragons the red woman means to wake? Dragons made of gold? "Such taxes as we collect are paid in kind, Your Grace. The Watch is rich in turnips, but poor in coin."
"Turnips are not like to appease Salladhor Saan. I require gold or silver."
"For that, you need White Harbor. The city cannot compare to Oldtown or King's Landing, but it is still a thriving port. Lord Manderly is the richest of my lord father's bannermen."
"Lord Too-Fat-To-Sit-a-Horse." The letter that Lord Wyman Manderly had sent back from White Harbor had spoken of his age and infirmity, and little more. Stannis had commanded Jon not to speak of that one either.
"Perhaps his lordship would fancy a wildling wife," suggested Lady Melisandre. "Is this fat man married, Lord Snow?"
"His lady wife is long dead. Lord Wyman has two grown sons, and grandchildren by the elder. And he is too fat to sit a horse, thirty stone at least. Val would never have him."
"Just once you might try to give me an answer that would please me, Lord Snow," the king grumbled.
"I would hope the truth would please you, Sire. Your men call Val a princess, but to the free folk she is only the sister of their king's dead wife. If you force her to marry a man she does not want she is like to slit his throat for him on their wedding night, but even if she accepts her husband, that does not mean the wildlings will follow him, or you. The only man who can bind them to your cause is Mance Rayder."
"I know that," Stannis said, unhappily. "I have spent hours speaking with the man. He knows much and more of our true enemy, and there is strength in him, I'll grant you. Even if he were to renounce his kingship, though, the man remains an oathbreaker. If I suffer one deserter to live, it will encourage others to desert. No. Laws should be made of iron, not of pudding. Mance Rayder's life is forfeit by every law of the Seven Kingdoms."
"The law ends at the Wall, Your Grace. You could make good use of Mance."
"I will. I'll burn him, and show the north how I deal with turncloaks and traitors. I have other men to lead the wildlings. And I have Rayder's son, do not forget. Once the father dies, his whelp will be the King-Beyond-the-Wall."
"Your Grace is mistaken." You know nothing, Jon Snow, Ygritte used to say, but he had learned. "The babe is no more a prince than Val is a princess. You don't become King-Beyond-the-Wall because your father was."
"Good," said Stannis, "for I will suffer no other kings in Westeros. Enough of Rayder. Have you signed the grant?"
And now it comes. Jon closed his burned fingers and opened them again. "No, Your Grace. You ask too much."
"Ask? I asked you to be Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North. I require these castles."
"We have ceded you the Nightfort," said Jon Snow.
"Rats and ruins. It is a niggard's gift that costs the giver nothing. Your own man Yarwyck says it will be half a year before the castle can be made fit for habitation."
"The other forts are no better."
"I know that. It makes no matter. They are all we have. There are nineteen forts along the Wall, and you have men in only three of them. I mean to have every one of them garrisoned again before the year is out."
"I have no quarrel with that, Sire, but it is being said that you also mean to grant these castles to your knights and lords, to hold as their own seats as vassals to Your Grace."
"Kings are expected to be open-handed to their followers. Did Lord Eddard teach his bastard nothing? Many of my knights and lords abandoned rich lands and stout castles in the south. Should their loyalty go unrewarded?"
"If Your Grace wishes to lose all of my lord father's bannermen, there is no more certain way than by giving northern halls to southron lords."
"How can I lose men I do not have? I had hoped to bestow Winterfell on a northman, you may recall. A son of Eddard Stark. He threw my offer in my face." Stannis Baratheon with a grievance was like a mastiff with a bone; he gnawed it down to splinters.
"By right Winterfell should go to my sister Sansa."
"Lady Lannister, you mean? Are you so eager to see the Imp perched on your father's seat?"
"No," said Jon.
"Good. It will not happen whilst I live, Lord Snow."
Jon knew better than to press the point. "Sire, some claim that you mean to grant lands and castles to Rattleshirt and the Magnar of Thenn."
The king's eyes turned to hard blue stones. He ground his teeth and said, "Who told you that?"
"Does that matter?" The talk was all over Castle Black. "If you must know, I had the tale from Gilly."
"Who is Gilly?" the king demanded.
"The wet nurse," said Lady Melisandre. "Your Grace gave her freedom of the castle."
"Not for running tales. She's wanted for her teats, not for her tongue. I'll have more milk from her, and fewer messages."
"Castle Black needs no useless mouths," Jon agreed. "I am sending Gilly south on the next ship out of Eastwatch."
Melisandre touched the ruby at her neck. "Gilly is giving suck to Dalla's son as well as her own. It seems cruel of you to part our little prince from his milk brother, my lord."
Careful now, careful. "Mother's milk is all they share. Gilly's son is larger and more robust. He kicks the prince and pinches him, and shoves him from the breast. Craster was his father, a cruel man and greedy, and blood tells."
Stannis furrowed his brow. "I was told that the wet nurse was this man Craster's wife."
"Wife and daughter both. Craster married all his daughters. Gilly's boy was the fruit of their union."
"Her own father got this child on her? We are well rid of her, then. I will not suffer such abominations here. This is not King's Landing."
"I can find another wet nurse. If there's none amongst the wildlings, I will send to the mountain clans. Until such time, goat's milk should suffice for the boy, if it please Your Grace."
"Poor fare for a prince... but better than whore's milk, aye." Stannis drummed his fingers on the map. "If we may return to the matter of these forts... "
"Your Grace," said Jon, with chilly courtesy, "I have housed your men and fed them, at dire cost to our winter stores. I have clothed them so they would not freeze."
Stannis was not appeased. "Aye, you've shared your salt pork and porridge, and you've thrown us some black rags to keep us warm. Rags the wildlings would have taken off your corpses if I had not come north."
Jon ignored that. "I have given you fodder for your horses, and once the stair is done I will lend you builders to restore the Nightfort. I have even agreed to allow you to settle wildlings on the Gift, which was given to the Night's Watch in perpetuity."
"You offer me empty lands and desolations, yet deny me the castles I require to reward my lords and bannermen."
"The Night's Watch built those castles... "
"And the Night's Watch abandoned them."
"... to defend the Wall," Jon finished stubbornly, "not as seats for wildlings and southron lords. The stones of those forts are mortared with the blood and bones of my brothers, long dead. I cannot give them to you."
"Cannot or will not?" The cords in the king's neck stood out sharp as swords. "And to think, I offered you a name."
"I have a name, Your Grace."
"Snow. Was ever a name more ill-omened?" Stannis touched his sword hilt. "Just who do you imagine that you are?"
"The watcher on the walls. The sword in the darkness."
"Don't prate your words at me." Stannis drew the longsword he called Lightbringer. "Here is your sword in the darkness." Light rippled up and down the blade, now red, now yellow, nor orange, painting the king's face in harsh, bright hues. "Even a green boy should be able to see that. Are you blind?"
"No, Sire. I agree these castles must be garrisoned - "
"The boy commander agrees. How fortunate."
" - by the Night's Watch," Jon finished.
"You do not have the men."
"Then give them to me, Sire. I will provide officers for each of the abandoned forts, seasoned men who know the Wall and the lands beyond, who know how best to survive the winter that is coming. In return for all we've given you, grant me the men to fill out the garrisons. Men-at-arms, crossbowmen, raw boys. I will even take your wounded and infirm."
Stannis stared at him incredulously, then gave a bark of laughter. "You are bold enough, Snow, I grant you that, but you're mad if you think my men will take the black."
"They can wear any color cloak they choose, so long as they obey my officers as they would your own."
The king was unmoved. "I have knights and lords in my service, the scions of noble Houses old in honor. They cannot be expected to serve under poachers, peasants, and murderers."
Or bastards, sire? "Your own Hand is a smuggler."
"Was a smuggler. I shortened his fingers for that. They tell me that you are the nine-hundred-ninety-eighth man to command the Night's Watch, Lord Snow. I wonder what the nine-hundred-ninety-ninth might say about these castles. The sight of your head on a spike might inspire him to be more helpful." The king lay his bright blade down on the map, along the Wall, its steel shimmering like sunlight on water. "You are only lord commander by my sufferance. You would do well to remember that."
"I am lord commander because my brothers chose me."
"Did they?" The map lay between them like a battleground, drenched by the colors of the glowing sword. "Alliser Thorne complains about the manner of your choosing, and I cannot say he does not have a grievance. The count was done by a blind man with your fat friend by his elbow. And Slynt names you a turncloak."
And who would know one better than Slynt? "A turncloak would tell you what you wished to hear and betray you later. Your Grace knows that I was fairly chosen. My father always said you were a just man." Just but harsh had been Lord Eddard's exact words, but Jon did not think it would be wise to share that.
"Lord Eddard was no friend of mine, but he was not without some sense," said Stannis. "He would have given me these castles."
Never. "I cannot speak to what my father might have done. I took an oath, Your Grace. The Wall is mine."
"For now. We will see how well you hold it." Stannis pointed at him. "Keep your ruins, as they mean so much to you. I promise you, though, if any remain empty when the year is out, I will take them with your leave or without it. And if even one should fall to the foe, your head will soon follow. Now get out."
Lady Melisandre rose from her place near the hearth. "With your leave, Sire, I will show Lord Snow back to his chambers."
"Why? He knows the way." Stannis waved them both away. "Do what you will. Devan, food. Boiled eggs and lemon water."
After the warmth of the king's solar, the turnpike stair felt bone-chillingly cold. "Wind's rising, m'lady," the serjeant warned Melisandre as he handed Jon back his weapons. "You might want a warmer cloak."
"I have my faith to warm me." The red woman walked beside Jon down the steps. "His Grace is growing fond of you."
"I can tell. He only threatened to behead me twice."
Melisandre laughed. "It is his silences you should fear, not his words." As they stepped out into the yard, the wind filled Jon's cloak and sent it flapping against her. The red priestess brushed the black wool aside and slipped her arm through his. "It is may be that you are not wrong about the wildling king. I shall gaze into the flames and pray for the Lord of Light to send me guidance. My fires show me much and more, Jon Snow. I can see through stone and earth, and find the truth in the darkness of men's souls. I can speak to kings long dead and children not yet born, and watch the years and seasons flicker past, until the end of days."
"Are your fires never wrong?"
"Never... though we priests are mortal and sometimes err, mistaking this must come from this may come."
Jon could feel her heat, even through his wool and boiled leather. The sight of them arm in arm was drawing curious looks. They will be whispering in the barracks tonight. "If you can truly see the morrow in your flames, tell me when and where the next wildling attack will come," he said, pulling free of her.
"R'hllor sends us what visions he will, but I shall seek for this man Tormund in the flames." Melisandre's red lips curled into a smile. "I have seen you in my fires, Jon Snow."
"Is that a threat, my lady? Do you mean to burn me too?"
"You mistake my meaning." She laughed. "I fear that I make you uneasy, Lord Snow."
Jon did not deny it. "The Wall is no place for a woman."
"You are wrong. I have dreamed of your Wall, Jon Snow. Great was the lore that raised it, and great the spells locked beneath its ice. We walk beneath one of the hinges of the world." Melisandre gazed up at it tenderly, her breath a warm moist cloud in the air. "This is my place as it is yours, and soon enough you may have grave need of me. Do not refuse my friendship, Jon. I have seen you in the storm, hard pressed, with enemies on every side. You have so many enemies. Shall I tell you their names?"
"I know their names."
"Do not be so certain." The ruby at Melisandre's throat gleamed redly. "It is not the foes who curse you to your face that you must fear, but those who smile when you are looking and sharpen their knives when you turn your back. You would do well to keep your wolf close beside you. Ice, I see, and daggers in the dark. Blood frozen red and hard, and naked steel. It was very cold."
"It is always cold on the Wall."
"You think so?"
"I know so, my lady."
"Then you know nothing, Jon Snow," she whispered.
He is much more than the best fictional dwarf/midget/halfman ever. The guy is one of the most realistic and deep characters ever.
Not bad, though I hope it isn't finished yet. That was more than a bit rough.