A Game of Thrones asoiaf-1

by George R. R. Martin

  Catelyn sat on her horse, unmoving, with Hal Mollen and her guard around her, and she waited as she had waited before, for Brandon and Ned and her father. She was high on the ridge, and the trees hid most of what was going on beneath her. A heartbeat, two, four, and suddenly it was as if she and her protectors were alone in the wood. The rest were melted away into the green.

  Yet when she looked across the valley to the far ridge, she saw the Greatjon’s riders emerge from the darkness beneath the trees. They were in a long line, an endless line, and as they burst from the wood there was an instant, the smallest part of a heartbeat, when all Catelyn saw was the moonlight on the points of their lances, as if a thousand willowisps were coming down the ridge, wreathed in silver flame.

  Then she blinked, and they were only men, rushing down to kill or die.

  Afterward, she could not claim she had seen the battle. Yet she could hear, and the valley rang with echoes. The crack of a broken lance, the clash of swords, the cries of “Lannister” and “Winterfell” and “Tully! Riverrun and Tully!” When she realized there was no more to see, she closed her eyes and listened. The battle came alive around her. She heard hoofbeats, iron boots splashing in shallow water, the woody sound of swords on oaken shields and the scrape of steel against steel, the hiss of arrows, the thunder of drums, the terrified screaming of a thousand horses. Men shouted curses and begged for mercy, and got it (or not), and lived (or died). The ridges seemed to play queer tricks with sound. Once she heard Robb’s voice, as clear as if he’d been standing at her side, calling, “To me! To me!” And she heard his direwolf, snarling and growling, heard the snap of those long teeth, the tearing of flesh, shrieks of fear and pain from man and horse alike. Was there only one wolf? It was hard to be certain.

  Little by little, the sounds dwindled and died, until at last there was only the wolf. As a red dawn broke in the east, Grey Wind began to howl again.

  Robb came back to her on a different horse, riding a piebald gelding in the place of the grey stallion he had taken down into the valley. The wolf’s head on his shield was slashed half to pieces, raw wood showing where deep gouges had been hacked in the oak, but Robb himself seemed unhurt. Yet when he came closer, Catelyn saw that his mailed glove and the sleeve of his surcoat were black with blood. “You’re hurt,” she said.

  Robb lifted his hand, opened and closed his fingers. “No,” he said. “This is … Torrhen’s blood, perhaps, or …” He shook his head. “I do not know.”

  A mob of men followed him up the slope, dirty and dented and grinning, with Theon and the Greatjon at their head. Between them they dragged Ser Jaime Lannister. They threw him down in front of her horse. “The Kingslayer,” Hal announced, unnecessarily.

  Lannister raised his head. “Lady Stark,” he said from his knees. Blood ran down one cheek from a gash across his scalp, but the pale light of dawn had put the glint of gold back in his hair. “I would offer you my sword, but I seem to have mislaid it.”

  “It is not your sword I want, ser,” she told him. “Give me my father and my brother Edmure. Give me my daughters. Give me my lord husband.”

  “I have mislaid them as well, I fear.”

  “A pity,” Catelyn said coldly.

  “Kill him, Robb,” Theon Greyjoy urged. “Take his head off.”

  “No,” her son answered, peeling off his bloody glove. “He’s more use alive than dead. And my lord father never condoned the murder of prisoners after a battle.”

  “A wise man,” Jaime Lannister said, “and honorable.”

  “Take him away and put him in irons,” Catelyn said.

  “Do as my lady mother says,” Robb commanded, “and make certain there’s a strong guard around him. Lord Karstark will want his head on a pike.”

  “That he will,” the Greatjon agreed, gesturing. Lannister was led away to be bandaged and chained.

  “Why should Lord Karstark want him dead?” Catelyn asked.

  Robb looked away into the woods, with the same brooding look that Ned often got. “He … he killed them …”

  “Lord Karstark’s sons,” Galbart Glover explained.

  “Both of them,” said Robb. “Torrhen and Eddard. And Daryn Hornwood as well.”

  “No one can fault Lannister on his courage,” Glover said. “When he saw that he was lost, he rallied his retainers and fought his way up the valley, hoping to reach Lord Robb and cut him down. And almost did.”

  “He mislaid his sword in Eddard Karstark’s neck, after he took Torrhen’s hand off and split Daryn Hornwood’s skull open,” Robb said. “All the time he was shouting for me. If they hadn’t tried to stop him—”

  “—I should then be mourning in place of Lord Karstark,” Catelyn said. “Your men did what they were sworn to do, Robb. They died protecting their liege lord. Grieve for them. Honor them for their valor. But not now. You have no time for grief. You may have lopped the head off the snake, but three quarters of the body is still coiled around my father’s castle. We have won a battle, not a war.”

  “But such a battle!” said Theon Greyjoy eagerly. “My lady, the realm has not seen such a victory since the Field of Fire. I vow, the Lannisters lost ten men for every one of ours that fell. We’ve taken close to a hundred knights captive, and a dozen lords bannermen. Lord Westerling, Lord Banefort, Ser Garth Greenfield, Lord Estren, Ser Tytos Brax, Mallor the Dornishman … and three Lannisters besides Jaime, Lord Tywin’s own nephews, two of his sister’s sons and one of his dead brother’s …”

  “And Lord Tywin?” Catelyn interrupted. “Have you perchance taken Lord Tywin, Theon?”

  “No,” Greyjoy answered, brought up short.

  “Until you do, this war is far from done.”

  Robb raised his head and pushed his hair back out of his eyes. “My mother is right. We still have Riverrun.”

  DAENERYS

  The flies circled Khal Drogo slowly, their wings buzzing, a low thrum at the edge of hearing that filled Dany with dread.

  The sun was high and pitiless. Heat shimmered in waves off the stony outcrops of low hills. A thin finger of sweat trickled slowly between Dany’s swollen breasts. The only sounds were the steady clop of their horses’ hooves, the rhythmic tingle of the bells in Drogo’s hair, and the distant voices behind them.

  Dany watched the flies.

  They were as large as bees, gross, purplish, glistening. The Dothraki called them bloodflies. They lived in marshes and stagnant pools, sucked blood from man and horse alike, and laid their eggs in the dead and dying. Drogo hated them. Whenever one came near him, his hand would shoot out quick as a striking snake to close around it. She had never seen him miss. He would hold the fly inside his huge fist long enough to hear its frantic buzzing. Then his fingers would tighten, and when he opened his hand again, the fly would be only a red smear on his palm.

  Now one crept across the rump of his stallion, and the horse gave an angry flick of its tail to brush it away. The others flitted about Drogo, closer and closer. The khal did not react. His eyes were fixed on distant brown hills, the reins loose in his hands. Beneath his painted vest, a plaster of fig leaves and caked blue mud covered the wound on his breast. The herbwomen had made it for him. Mirri Maz Duur’s poultice had itched and burned, and he had torn it off six days ago, cursing her for a maegi. The mud plaster was more soothing, and the herbwomen made him poppy wine as well. He’d been drinking it heavily these past three days; when it was not poppy wine, it was fermented mare’s milk or pepper beer.

  Yet he scarcely touched his food, and he thrashed and groaned in the night. Dany could see how drawn his face had become. Rhaego was restless in her belly, kicking like a stallion, yet even that did not stir Drogo’s interest as it had. Every morning her eyes found fresh lines of pain on his face when he woke from his troubled sleep. And now this silence. It was making her afraid. Since they had mounted up at dawn, he had said not a word. When she spoke, she got no answer but a grunt, and not even that much since midday.

  One
of the bloodflies landed on the bare skin of the khal’s shoulder. Another, circling, touched down on his neck and crept up toward his mouth. Khal Drogo swayed in the saddle, bells ringing, as his stallion kept onward at a steady walking pace.

  Dany pressed her heels into her silver and rode closer. “My lord,” she said softly. “Drogo. My sun-and-stars.”

  He did not seem to hear. The bloodfly crawled up under his drooping mustache and settled on his cheek, in the crease beside his nose. Dany gasped, “Drogo,” Clumsily she reached over and touched his arm.

  Khal Drogo reeled in the saddle, tilted slowly, and fell heavily from his horse. The flies scattered for a heartbeat, and then circled back to settle on him where he lay.

  “No,” Dany said, reining up. Heedless of her belly for once, she scrambled off her silver and ran to him.

  The grass beneath him was brown and dry. Drogo cried out in pain as Dany knelt beside him. His breath rattled harshly in his throat, and he looked at her without recognition. “My horse,” he gasped. Dany brushed the flies off his chest, smashing one as he would have. His skin burned beneath her fingers.

  The khal’s bloodriders had been following just behind them. She heard Haggo shout as they galloped up. Cohollo vaulted from his horse. “Blood of my blood,” he said as he dropped to his knees. The other two kept to their mounts.

  “No,” Khal Drogo groaned, struggling in Dany’s arms. “Must ride. Ride. No.”

  “He fell from his horse,” Haggo said, staring down. His broad face was impassive, but his voice was leaden.

  “You must not say that,” Dany told him. “We have ridden far enough today. We will camp here.”

  “Here?” Haggo looked around them. The land was brown and sere, inhospitable. “This is no camping ground.”

  “It is not for a woman to bid us halt,” said Qotho, “not even a khaleesi.”

  “We camp here,” Dany repeated. “Haggo, tell them Khal Drogo commanded the halt. If any ask why, say to them that my time is near and I could not continue. Cohollo, bring up the slaves, they must put up the khal’s tent at once. Qotho—”

  “You do not command me, Khaleesi,” Qotho said.

  “Find Mirri Maz Duur,” she told him. The godswife would be walking among the other Lamb Men, in the long column of slaves. “Bring her to me, with her chest.”

  Qotho glared down at her, his eyes hard as flint. “The maegi.” He spat. “This I will not do.”

  “You will,” Dany said, “or when Drogo wakes, he will hear why you defied me.”

  Furious, Qotho wheeled his stallion around and galloped off in anger … but Dany knew he would return with Mirri Maz Duur, however little he might like it. The slaves erected Khal Drogo’s tent beneath a jagged outcrop of black rock whose shadow gave some relief from the heat of the afternoon sun. Even so, it was stifling under the sandsilk as Irri and Doreah helped Dany walk Drogo inside. Thick patterned carpets had been laid down over the ground, and pillows scattered in the corners. Eroeh, the timid girl Dany had rescued outside the mud walls of the Lamb Men, set up a brazier. They stretched Drogo out on a woven mat. “No,” he muttered in the Common Tongue. “No, no.” It was all he said, all he seemed capable of saying.

  Doreah unhooked his medallion belt and stripped off his vest and leggings, while Jhiqui knelt by his feet to undo the laces of his riding sandals. Irri wanted to leave the tent flaps open to let in the breeze, but Dany forbade it. She would not have any see Drogo this way, in delirium and weakness. When her khas came up, she posted them outside at guard. “Admit no one without my leave,” she told Jhogo. “No one.”

  Eroeh stared fearfully at Drogo where he lay. “He dies,” she whispered.

  Dany slapped her. “The khal cannot die. He is the father of the stallion who mounts the world. His hair has never been cut. He still wears the bells his father gave him.”

  “Khaleesi,” Jhiqui said, “he fell from his horse.”

  Trembling, her eyes full of sudden tears, Dany turned away from them. He fell from his horse! It was so, she had seen it, and the bloodriders, and no doubt her handmaids and the men of her khas as well. And how many more? They could not keep it secret, and Dany knew what that meant. A khal who could not ride could not rule, and Drogo had fallen from his horse.

  “We must bathe him,” she said stubbornly. She must not allow herself to despair. “Irri, have the tub brought at once. Doreah, Eroeh, find water, cool water, he’s so hot.” He was a fire in human skin.

  The slaves set up the heavy copper tub in the corner of the tent. When Doreah brought the first jar of water, Dany wet a length of silk to lay across Drogo’s brow, over the burning skin. His eyes looked at her, but he did not see. When his lips opened, no words escaped them, only a moan. “Where is Mirri Maz Duur?” she demanded, her patience rubbed raw with fear.

  “Qotho will find her,” Irri said.

  Her handmaids filled the tub with tepid water that stank of sulfur, sweetening it with jars of bitter oil and handfuls of crushed mint leaves. While the bath was being prepared, Dany knelt awkwardly beside her lord husband, her belly great with their child within. She undid his braid with anxious fingers, as she had on the night he’d taken her for the first time, beneath the stars. His bells she laid aside carefully, one by one. He would want them again when he was well, she told herself.

  A breath of air entered the tent as Aggo poked his head through the silk. “Khaleesi,” he said, “the Andal is come, and begs leave to enter.”

  “The Andal” was what the Dothraki called Ser Jorah. “Yes,” she said, rising clumsily, “send him in.” She trusted the knight. He would know what to do if anyone did.

  Ser Jorah Mormont ducked through the door flap and waited a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dimness. In the fierce heat of the south, he wore loose trousers of mottled sandsilk and open-toed riding sandals that laced up to his knee. His scabbard hung from a twisted horsehair belt. Under a bleached white vest, he was bare-chested, skin reddened by the sun. “Talk goes from mouth to ear, all over the khalasar,” he said. “It is said Khal Drogo fell from his horse.”

  “Help him,” Dany pleaded. “For the love you say you bear me, help him now.”

  The knight knelt beside her. He looked at Drogo long and hard, and then at Dany. “Send your maids away.”

  Wordlessly, her throat tight with fear, Dany made a gesture. Irri herded the other girls from the tent.

  When they were alone, Ser Jorah drew his dagger. Deftly, with a delicacy surprising in such a big man, he began to scrape away the black leaves and dried blue mud from Drogo’s chest. The plaster had caked hard as the mud walls of the Lamb Men, and like those walls it cracked easily. Ser Jorah broke the dry mud with his knife, pried the chunks from the flesh, peeled off the leaves one by one. A foul, sweet smell rose from the wound, so thick it almost choked her. The leaves were crusted with blood and pus, Drogo’s breast black and glistening with corruption.

  “No,” Dany whispered as tears ran down her cheeks. “No, please, gods hear me, no.”

  Khal Drogo thrashed, fighting some unseen enemy. Black blood ran slow and thick from his open wound.

  “Your khal is good as dead, Princess.”

  “No, he can’t die, he mustn’t, it was only a cut.” Dany took his large callused hand in her own small ones, and held it tight between them. “I will not let him die …”

  Ser Jorah gave a bitter laugh. “Khaleesi or queen, that command is beyond your power. Save your tears, child. Weep for him tomorrow, or a year from now. We do not have time for grief. We must go, and quickly, before he dies.”

  Dany was lost. “Go? Where should we go?”

  “Asshai, I would say. It lies far to the south, at the end of the known world, yet men say it is a great port. We will find a ship to take us back to Pentos. It will be a hard journey, make no mistake. Do you trust your khas? Will they come with us?”

  “Khal Drogo commanded them to keep me safe,” Dany replied uncertainly, “but if he dies …” She touch
ed the swell of her belly. “I don’t understand. Why should we flee? I am khaleesi. I carry Drogo’s heir. He will be khal after Drogo …”

  Ser Jorah frowned. “Princess, hear me. The Dothraki will not follow a suckling babe. Drogo’s strength was what they bowed to, and only that. When he is gone, Jhaqo and Pono and the other kos will fight for his place, and this khalasar will devour itself. The winner will want no more rivals. The boy will be taken from your breast the moment he is born. They will give him to the dogs …”

  Dany hugged herself. “But why?” she cried plaintively. “Why should they kill a little baby?”

  “He is Drogo’s son, and the crones say he will be the stallion who mounts the world. It was prophesied. Better to kill the child than to risk his fury when he grows to manhood.”

  The child kicked inside her, as if he had heard. Dany remembered the story Viserys had told her, of what the Usurper’s dogs had done to Rhaegar’s children. His son had been a babe as well, yet they had ripped him from his mother’s breast and dashed his head against a wall. That was the way of men. “They must not hurt my son!” she cried. “I will order my khas to keep him safe, and Drogo’s bloodriders will—”

  Ser Jorah held her by the shoulders. “A bloodrider dies with his khal. You know that, child. They will take you to Vaes Dothrak, to the crones, that is the last duty they owe him in life … when it is done, they will join Drogo in the night lands.”

  Dany did not want to go back to Vaes Dothrak and live the rest of her life among those terrible old women, yet she knew that the knight spoke the truth. Drogo had been more than her sun-and-stars; he had been the shield that kept her safe. “I will not leave him,” she said stubbornly, miserably. She took his hand again. “I will not.”

  A stirring at the tent flap made Dany turn her head. Mirri Maz Duur entered, bowing low. Days on the march, trailing behind the khalasar, had left her limping and haggard, with blistered and bleeding feet and hollows under her eyes. Behind her came Qotho and Haggo, carrying the godswife’s chest between them. When the bloodriders caught sight of Drogo’s wound, the chest slipped from Haggo’s fingers and crashed to the floor of the tent, and Qotho swore an oath so foul it seared the air.