A Clash of Kings

The way their game was played, you laid the log across the water, and one player stood in the middle with the stick. He was the lord of the crossing, and when the other players came up, he had to say, “I am the lord of the crossing, who goes there?” And the other player had to make up a speech about who they were and why they should be allowed to cross. The lord could make them swear oaths and answer questions. They didn’t have to tell the truth, but the oaths were binding unless they said “Mayhaps,” so the trick was to say “Mayhaps” so the lord of the crossing didn’t notice. Then you could try to knock the lord into the water and you got to be lord of the crossing, but only if you’d said “Mayhaps.” Otherwise you were out of the game. The lord got to knock anyone in the water anytime he pleased, and he was the only one who got to use a stick.

In practice, the game seemed to come down to mostly shoving, hitting, and falling into the water, along with a lot of loud arguments about whether or not someone had said “Mayhaps.” Little Walder was lord of the crossing more often than not.

He was Little Walder even though he was tall and stout, with a red face and a big round belly. Big Walder was sharp-faced and skinny and half a foot shorter. “He’s fifty-two days older than me,” Little Walder explained, “so he was bigger at first, but I grew faster.”

“We’re cousins, not brothers,” added Big Walder, the little one. “I’m Walder son of Jammos. My father was Lord Walder’s son by his fourth wife. He’s Walder son of Merrett. His grandmother was Lord Walder’s third wife, the Crakehall. He’s ahead of me in the line of succession even though I’m older.”

“Only by fifty-two days,” Little Walder objected. “And neither of us will ever hold the Twins, stupid.”

“I will,” Big Walder declared. “We’re not the only Walders either. Ser Stevron has a grandson, Black Walder, he’s fourth in line of succession, and there’s Red Walder, Ser Emmon’s son, and Bastard Walder, who isn’t in the line at all. He’s called Walder Rivers not Walder Frey. Plus there’s girls named Walda.”

“And Tyr. You always forget Tyr.”

“He’s Waltyr, not Walder,” Big Walder said airily. “And he’s after us, so he doesn’t matter. Anyhow, I never liked him.”

Ser Rodrik decreed that they would share Jon Snow’s old bedchamber, since Jon was in the Night’s Watch and never coming back. Bran hated that; it made him feel as if the Freys were trying to steal Jon’s place.

He had watched wistfully while the Walders contested with Turnip the cook’s boy and Joseth’s girls Bandy and Shyra. The Walders had decreed that Bran should be the judge and decide whether or not people had said “Mayhaps,” but as soon as they started playing they forgot all about him.

The shouts and splashes soon drew others: Palla the kennel girl, Cayn’s boy Calon, TomToo whose father Fat Tom had died with Bran’s father at King’s Landing. Before very long, every one of them was soaked and muddy. Palla was brown from head to heel, with moss in her hair, breathless from laughter. Bran had not heard so much laughing since the night the bloody raven came. If I had my legs, I’d knock all of them into the water, he thought bitterly. No one would ever be lord of the crossing but me.

Finally, Rickon came running into the godswood, Shaggydog at his heels. He watched Turnip and Little Walder struggle for the stick until Turnip lost his footing and went in with a huge splash, arms waving. Rickon yelled, “Me! Me now! I want to play!” Little Walder beckoned him on, and Shaggydog started to follow. “No, Shaggy,” his brother commanded. “Wolves can’t play. You stay with Bran.” And he did …

… until Little Walder had smacked Rickon with the stick, square across his belly. Before Bran could blink, the black wolf was flying over the plank, there was blood in the water, the Walders were shrieking red murder, Rickon sat in the mud laughing and Hodor came lumbering in shouting “Hodor! Hodor! Hodor!”

After that, oddly, Rickon decided he liked the Walders. They never played lord of the crossing again, but they played other games—monsters and maidens, rats and cats, come-into-my-castle, all sorts of things. With Rickon by their side, the Walders plundered the kitchens for pies and honeycombs, raced round the walls, tossed bones to the pups in the kennels, and trained with wooden swords under Ser Rodrik’s sharp eye. Rickon even showed them the deep vaults under the earth where the stonemason was carving father’s tomb. “You had no right!” Bran screamed at his brother when he heard. “That was our place, a Stark place!” But Rickon never cared.

The door to his bedchamber opened. Maester Luwin was carrying a green jar, and this time Osha and Hayhead came with him. “I’ve made you a sleeping draught, Bran.”

Osha scooped him up in her bony arms. She was very tall for a woman, and wiry strong. She bore him effortlessly to his bed.

“This will give you dreamless sleep,” Maester Luwin said as he pulled the stopper from the jar. “Sweet, dreamless sleep.”

“It will?” Bran said, wanting to believe.

“Yes. Drink.”

Bran drank. The potion was thick and chalky, but there was honey in it, so it went down easy.

“Come the morn, you’ll feel better.” Luwin gave Bran a smile and a pat as he took his leave.

Osha lingered behind. “Is it the wolf dreams again?”

Bran nodded.

“You should not fight so hard, boy. I see you talking to the heart tree. Might be the gods are trying to talk back.”

“The gods?” he murmured, drowsy already. Osha’s face grew blurry and grey. Sweet, dreamless sleep, Bran thought.

Yet when the darkness closed over him, he found himself in the godswood, moving silently beneath green-grey sentinels and gnarled oaks as old as time. I am walking, he thought, exulting. Part of him knew that it was only a dream, but even the dream of walking was better than the truth of his bedchamber, walls and ceiling and door.

It was dark amongst the trees, but the comet lit his way, and his feet were sure. He was moving on four good legs, strong and swift, and he could feel the ground underfoot, the soft crackling of fallen leaves, thick roots and hard stones, the deep layers of humus. It was a good feeling.

The smells filled his head, alive and intoxicating; the green muddy stink of the hot pools, the perfume of rich rotting earth beneath his paws, the squirrels in the oaks. The scent of squirrel made him remember the taste of hot blood and the way the bones would crack between his teeth. Slaver filled his mouth. He had eaten no more than half a day past, but there was no joy in dead meat, even deer. He could hear the squirrels chittering and rustling above him, safe among their leaves, but they knew better than to come down to where his brother and he were prowling.

He could smell his brother too, a familiar scent, strong and earthy, his scent as black as his coat. His brother was loping around the walls, full of fury. Round and round he went, night after day after night, tireless, searching … for prey, for a way out, for his mother, his littermates, his pack … searching, searching, and never finding.

Behind the trees the walls rose, piles of dead man-rock that loomed all about this speck of living wood. Speckled grey they rose, and moss-spotted, yet thick and strong and higher than any wolf could hope to leap. Cold iron and splintery wood closed off the only holes through the piled stones that hemmed them in. His brother would stop at every hole and bare his fangs in rage, but the ways stayed closed.

He had done the same the first night, and learned that it was no good. Snarls would open no paths here. Circling the walls would not push them back. Lifting a leg and marking the trees would keep no men away. The world had tightened around them, but beyond the walled wood still stood the great grey caves of man-rock. Winterfell, he remembered, the sound coming to him sudden. Beyond its sky-tall man-cliffs the true world was calling, and he knew he must answer or die.

ARYA

They traveled dawn to dusk, past woods and orchards and neatly tended fields, through small villages, crowded market towns, and stout holdfasts. Come dark, they would make camp and eat by the light of the Red Sword. The men took turns standing watch. Arya would glimpse firelight flickering through the trees from the camps of other travelers. There seemed to be more camps every night, and more traffic on the kingsroad by day.

Morn, noon, and night they came, old folks and little children, big men and little ones, barefoot girls and women with babes at their breasts. Some drove farm wagons or bumped along in the back of ox carts. More rode; draft horses, ponies, mules, donkeys, anything that would walk or run or roll. One woman led a milk cow with a little girl on its back. Arya saw a smith pushing a wheelbarrow with his tools inside, hammers and tongs and even an anvil, and a little while later a different man with a different wheelbarrow, only inside this one were two babies in a blanket. Most came on foot, with their goods on their shoulders and weary, wary looks upon their faces. They walked south, toward the city, toward King’s Landing, and only one in a hundred spared so much as a word for Yoren and his charges, traveling north. She wondered why no one else was going the same way as them.

Many of the travelers were armed; Arya saw daggers and dirks, scythes and axes, and here and there a sword. Some had made clubs from tree limbs, or carved knobby staffs. They fingered their weapons and gave lingering looks at the wagons as they rolled by, yet in the end they let the column pass. Thirty was too many, no matter what they had in those wagons.

Look with your eyes, Syrio had said, listen with your ears.

One day a madwoman began to scream at them from the side of the road. “Fools! They’ll kill you, fools!” She was scarecrow thin, with hollow eyes and bloody feet.

The next morning, a sleek merchant on a grey mare reined up by Yoren and offered to buy his wagons and everything in them for a quarter of their worth. “It’s war, they’ll take what they want, you’ll do better selling to me, my friend.” Yoren turned away with a twist of his crooked shoulders, and spat.

Arya noticed the first grave that same day; a small mound beside the road, dug for a child. A crystal had been set in the soft earth, and Lommy wanted to take it until the Bull told him he’d better leave the dead alone. A few leagues further on, Praed pointed out more graves, a whole row freshly dug. After that, a day hardly passed without one.

One time, Arya woke in the dark, frightened for no reason she could name. Above, the Red Sword shared the sky with half a thousand stars. The night seemed oddly quiet to her, though she could hear Yoren’s muttered snores, the crackle of the fire, even the muffled stirrings of the donkeys. Yet somehow it felt as though the world was holding its breath, and the silence made her shiver. She went back to sleep clutching Needle.

Come morning, when Praed did not awaken, Arya realized that it had been his coughing she had missed. They dug a grave of their own then, burying the sellsword where he’d slept. Yoren stripped him of his valuables before they threw the dirt on him. One man claimed his boots, another his dagger. His mail shirt and helm were parceled out. His longsword Yoren handed to the Bull. “Arms like yours, might be you can learn to use this,” he told him. A boy called Tarber tossed a handful of acorns on top of Praed’s body, so an oak might grow to mark his place.

That evening they stopped in a village at an ivy-covered inn. Yoren counted the coins in his purse and decided they had enough for a hot meal. “We’ll sleep outside, same as ever, but they got a bathhouse here, if any of you feels the need o’ hot water and a lick o’ soap.”

Arya did not dare, even though she smelled as bad as Yoren by now, all sour and stinky. Some of the creatures living in her clothes had come all the way from Flea Bottom with her. It didn’t seem right to drown them. Tarber and Hot Pie and the Bull joined the line of men headed for the tubs. Others settled down in front of the bathhouse. The rest crowded into the common room. Yoren even sent Lommy out with tankards for the three in fetters, who’d been left chained up in the back of their wagon.

Washed and unwashed alike supped on hot pork pies and baked apples. The innkeep gave them a round of beer on the house. “I had a brother took the black, years ago. Serving boy, clever, but one day he got seen filching pepper from m’lord’s table. He liked the taste of it, is all. Just a pinch o’ pepper, but Ser Malcolm was a hard man. You get pepper on the Wall?” When Yoren shook his head, the man sighed. “Shame. Lync loved that pepper.”

Arya sipped at her tankard cautiously, between spoonfuls of pie still warm from the oven. Her father sometimes let them have a cup of beer, she remembered. Sansa used to make a face at the taste and say that wine was ever so much finer, but Arya had liked it well enough. It made her sad to think of Sansa and her father.

The inn was full of people moving south, and the common room erupted in scorn when Yoren said they were traveling the other way. “You’ll be back soon enough,” the innkeep vowed. “There’s no going north. Half the fields are burnt, and what folks are left are walled up inside their holdfasts. One bunch rides off at dawn and another one shows up by dusk.”

“That’s nothing to us,” Yoren insisted stubbornly. “Tully or Lannister, makes no matter. The Watch takes no part.”

Lord Tully is my grandfather, Arya thought. It mattered to her, but she chewed her lip and kept quiet, listening.

“It’s more than Lannister and Tully,” the innkeep said. “There’s wild men down from the Mountains of the Moon, try telling them you take no part. And the Starks are in it too, the young lord’s come down, the dead Hand’s son …”

Arya sat up straight, straining to hear. Did he mean Robb?