A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

by George R. R. Martin

Through a haze of poppied sleep, he saw a soft pink face leaning over him. He was back in the dank room with the torn bed hangings, and the face was wrong, not hers, too round, with a brown fringe of beard. “Do you thirst, my lord? I have your milk, your good milk. You must not fight, no, don’t try to move, you need your rest.” He had the copper funnel in one damp pink hand and a flask in the other.

  As the man leaned close, Tyrion’s fingers slid underneath his chain of many metals, grabbed, pulled. The maester dropped the flask, spilling milk of the poppy all over the blanket. Tyrion twisted until he could feel the links digging into the flesh of the man’s fat neck. “No. More,” he croaked, so hoarse he was not certain he had even spoken. But he must have, for the maester choked out a reply. “Unhand, please, my lord . . . need your milk, the pain . . . the chain, don’t, unhand, no . . .”

  The pink face was beginning to purple when Tyrion let go. The maester reeled back, sucking in air. His reddened throat showed deep white gouges where the links had pressed. His eyes were white too. Tyrion raised a hand to his face and made a ripping motion over the hardened mask. And again. And again.

  “You . . . you want the bandages off, is that it?” the maester said at last. “But I’m not to . . . that would be . . . be most unwise, my lord. You are not yet healed, the queen would . . .”

  The mention of his sister made Tyrion growl. Are you one of hers, then? He pointed a finger at the maester, then coiled his hand into a fist. Crushing, choking, a promise, unless the fool did as he was bid.

  Thankfully, he understood. “I . . . I will do as my lord commands, to be sure, but . . . this is unwise, your wounds . . .”

  “Do. It.” Louder that time.

  Bowing, the man left the room, only to return a few moments later, bearing a long knife with a slender sawtooth blade, a basin of water, a pile of soft cloths, and several flasks. By then Tyrion had managed to squirm backward a few inches, so he was half sitting against his pillow. The maester bade him be very still as he slid the tip of the knife in under his chin, beneath the mask. A slip of the hand here, and Cersei will be free of me, he thought. He could feel the blade sawing through the stiffened linen, only inches above his throat.

  Fortunately this soft pink man was not one of his sister’s braver creatures. After a moment he felt cool air on his cheeks. There was pain as well, but he did his best to ignore that. The maester discarded the bandages, still crusty with potion. “Be still now, I must wash out the wound.” His touch was gentle, the water warm and soothing. The wound, Tyrion thought, remembering a sudden flash of bright silver that seemed to pass just below his eyes. “This is like to sting some,” the maester warned as he wet a cloth with wine that smelled of crushed herbs. It did more than sting. It traced a line of fire all the way across Tyrion’s face, and twisted a burning poker up his nose. His fingers clawed the bedclothes and he sucked in his breath, but somehow he managed not to scream. The maester was clucking like an old hen. “It would have been wiser to leave the mask in place until the flesh had knit, my lord. Still, it looks clean, good, good. When we found you down in that cellar among the dead and dying, your wounds were filthy. One of your ribs was broken, doubtless you can feel it, the blow of some mace perhaps, or a fall, it’s hard to say. And you took an arrow in the arm, there where it joins the shoulder. It showed signs of mortification, and for a time I feared you might lose the limb, but we treated it with boiling wine and maggots, and now it seems to be healing clean . . .”

  “Name,” Tyrion breathed up at him. “Name.”

  The maester blinked. “Why, you are Tyrion Lannister, my lord. Brother to the queen. Do you remember the battle? Sometimes with head wounds—”

  “Your name.” His throat was raw, and his tongue had forgotten how to shape the words.

  “I am Maester Ballabar.”

  “Ballabar,” Tyrion repeated. “Bring me. Looking glass.”

  “My lord,” the maester said, “I would not counsel . . . that might be, ah, unwise, as it were . . . your wound . . .”

  “Bring it,” he had to say. His mouth was stiff and sore, as if a punch had split his lip. “And drink. Wine. No poppy.”

  The maester rose flush-faced and hurried off. He came back with a flagon of pale amber wine and a small silvered looking glass in an ornate golden frame. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he poured half a cup of wine and held it to Tyrion’s swollen lips. The trickle went down cool, though he could hardly taste it. “More,” he said when the cup was empty. Maester Ballabar poured again. By the end of the second cup, Tyrion Lannister felt strong enough to face his face.

  He turned over the glass, and did not know whether he ought to laugh or cry. The gash was long and crooked, starting a hair under his left eye and ending on the right side of his jaw. Three-quarters of his nose was gone, and a chunk of his lip. Someone had sewn the torn flesh together with catgut, and their clumsy stitches were still in place across the seam of raw, red, half-healed flesh. “Pretty,” he croaked, flinging the glass aside.

  He remembered now. The bridge of boats, Ser Mandon Moore, a hand, a sword coming at his face. If I had not pulled back, that cut would have taken off the top of my head. Jaime had always said that Ser Mandon was the most dangerous of the Kingsguard, because his dead empty eyes gave no hint to his intentions. I should never have trusted any of them. He’d known that Ser Meryn and Ser Boros were his sister’s, and Ser Osmund later, but he had let himself believe that the others were not wholly lost to honor. Cersei must have paid him to see that I never came back from the battle. Why else? I never did Ser Mandon any harm that I know of. Tyrion touched his face, plucking at the proud flesh with blunt thick fingers. Another gift from my sweet sister.

  The maester stood beside the bed like a goose about to take flight. “My lord, there, there will most like be a scar . . .”

  “Most like?” His snort of laughter turned into a wince of pain. There would be a scar, to be sure. Nor was it likely that his nose would be growing back anytime soon. It was not as if his face had ever been fit to look at. “Teach me, not to, play with, axes.” His grin felt tight. “Where, are we? What, what place?” It hurt to talk, but Tyrion had been too long in silence.

  “Ah, you are in Maegor’s Holdfast, my lord. A chamber over the Queen’s Ballroom. Her Grace wanted you kept close, so she might watch over you herself.”

  I’ll wager she did. “Return me,” Tyrion commanded. “Own bed. Own chambers.” Where I will have my own men about me, and my own maester too, if I find one I can trust.

  “Your own . . . my lord, that would not be possible. The King’s Hand has taken up residence in your former chambers.”

  “I. Am. King’s Hand.” He was growing exhausted by the effort of speaking, and confused by what he was hearing.

  Maester Ballabar looked distressed. “No, my lord, I . . . you were wounded, near death. Your lord father has taken up those duties now. Lord Tywin, he . . .”

  “Here?”

  “Since the night of the battle. Lord Tywin saved us all. The smallfolk say it was King Renly’s ghost, but wiser men know better. It was your father and Lord Tyrell, with the Knight of Flowers and Lord Littlefinger. They rode through the ashes and took the usurper Stannis in the rear. It was a great victory, and now Lord Tywin has settled into the Tower of the Hand to help His Grace set the realm to rights, gods be praised.”

  “Gods be praised,” Tyrion repeated hollowly. His bloody father and bloody Littlefinger and Renly’s ghost? “I want . . .” Who do I want? He could not tell pink Ballabar to fetch him Shae. Who could he send for, who could he trust? Varys? Bronn? Ser Jacelyn? “. . . my squire,” he finished. “Pod. Payne.” It was Pod on the bridge of boats, the lad saved my life.

  “The boy? The odd boy?”

  “Odd boy. Podrick. Payne. You go. Send him.”

  “As you will, my lord.” Maester Ballabar bobbed his head and hurried out. Tyrion could feel the strength seeping out of him as he waited. He wondered how long he had been here, asleep. C
ersei would have me sleep forever, but I won’t be so obliging.

  Podrick Payne entered the bedchamber timid as a mouse. “My lord?” He crept close to the bed. How can a boy so bold in battle be so frightened in a sickroom? Tyrion wondered. “I meant to stay by you, but the maester sent me away.”

  “Send him away. Hear me. Talk’s hard. Need dreamwine. Dreamwine, not milk of the poppy. Go to Frenken. Frenken, not Ballabar. Watch him make it. Bring it here.” Pod stole a glance at Tyrion’s face, and just as quickly averted his eyes. Well, I cannot blame him for that. “I want,” Tyrion went on, “mine own. Guard. Bronn. Where’s Bronn?”

  “They made him a knight.”

  Even frowning hurt. “Find him. Bring him.”

  “As you say. My lord. Bronn.”

  Tyrion seized the lad’s wrist. “Ser Mandon?”

  The boy flinched. “I n-never meant to k-k-k-k-”

  “Dead? You’re, certain? Dead?”

  He shuffled his feet, sheepish. “Drowned.”

  “Good. Say nothing. Of him. Of me. Any of it. Nothing.”

  By the time his squire left, the last of Tyrion’s strength was gone as well. He lay back and closed his eyes. Perhaps he would dream of Tysha again. I wonder how she’d like my face now, he thought bitterly.

  JON

  When Qhorin Halfhand told him to find some brush for a fire, Jon knew their end was near.

  It will be good to feel warm again, if only for a little while, he told himself while he hacked bare branches from the trunk of a dead tree. Ghost sat on his haunches watching, silent as ever. Will he howl for me when I’m dead, as Bran’s wolf howled when he fell? Jon wondered. Will Shaggydog howl, far off in Winterfell, and Grey Wind and Nymeria, wherever they might be?

  The moon was rising behind one mountain and the sun sinking behind another as Jon struck sparks from flint and dagger, until finally a wisp of smoke appeared. Qhorin came and stood over him as the first flame rose up flickering from the shavings of bark and dead dry pine needles. “As shy as a maid on her wedding night,” the big ranger said in a soft voice, “and near as fair. Sometimes a man forgets how pretty a fire can be.”

  He was not a man you’d expect to speak of maids and wedding nights. So far as Jon knew, Qhorin had spent his whole life in the Watch. Did he ever love a maid or have a wedding? He could not ask. Instead he fanned the fire. When the blaze was all acrackle, he peeled off his stiff gloves to warm his hands, and sighed, wondering if ever a kiss had felt as good. The warmth spread through his fingers like melting butter.

  The Halfhand eased himself to the ground and sat cross-legged by the fire, the flickering light playing across the hard planes of his face. Only the two of them remained of the five rangers who had fled the Skirling Pass, back into the blue-grey wilderness of the Frostfangs.

  At first Jon had nursed the hope that Squire Dalbridge would keep the wildlings bottled up in the pass. But when they’d heard the call of a far-off horn every man of them knew the squire had fallen. Later they spied the eagle soaring through the dusk on great blue-grey wings and Stonesnake unslung his bow, but the bird flew out of range before he could so much as string it. Ebben spat and muttered darkly of wargs and skinchangers.

  They glimpsed the eagle twice more the day after, and heard the hunting horn behind them echoing against the mountains. Each time it seemed a little louder, a little closer. When night fell, the Halfhand told Ebben to take the squire’s garron as well as his own, and ride east for Mormont with all haste, back the way they had come. The rest of them would draw off the pursuit. “Send Jon,” Ebben had urged. “He can ride as fast as me.”

  “Jon has a different part to play.”

  “He is half a boy still.”

  “No,” said Qhorin, “he is a man of the Night’s Watch.”

  When the moon rose, Ebben parted from them. Stonesnake went east with him a short way, then doubled back to obscure their tracks, and the three who remained set off toward the southwest.

  After that the days and nights blurred one into the other. They slept in their saddles and stopped only long enough to feed and water the garrons, then mounted up again. Over bare rock they rode, through gloomy pine forests and drifts of old snow, over icy ridges and across shallow rivers that had no names. Sometimes Qhorin or Stonesnake would loop back to sweep away their tracks, but it was a futile gesture. They were watched. At every dawn and every dusk they saw the eagle soaring between the peaks, no more than a speck in the vastness of the sky.

  They were scaling a low ridge between two snowcapped peaks when a shadowcat came snarling from its lair, not ten yards away. The beast was gaunt and half-starved, but the sight of it sent Stonesnake’s mare into a panic; she reared and ran, and before the ranger could get her back under control she had stumbled on the steep slope and broken a leg.

  Ghost ate well that day, and Qhorin insisted that the rangers mix some of the garron’s blood with their oats, to give them strength. The taste of that foul porridge almost choked Jon, but he forced it down. They each cut a dozen strips of raw stringy meat from the carcass to chew on as they rode, and left the rest for the shadowcats.

  There was no question of riding double. Stonesnake offered to lay in wait for the pursuit and surprise them when they came. Perhaps he could take a few of them with him down to hell. Qhorin refused. “If any man in the Night’s Watch can make it through the Frostfangs alone and afoot, it is you, brother. You can go over mountains that a horse must go around. Make for the Fist. Tell Mormont what Jon saw, and how. Tell him that the old powers are waking, that he faces giants and wargs and worse. Tell him that the trees have eyes again.”

  He has no chance, Jon thought when he watched Stonesnake vanish over a snow-covered ridge, a tiny black bug crawling across a rippling expanse of white.

  After that, every night seemed colder than the night before, and more lonely. Ghost was not always with them, but he was never far either. Even when they were apart, Jon sensed his nearness. He was glad for that. The Halfhand was not the most companionable of men. Qhorin’s long grey braid swung slowly with the motion of his horse. Often they would ride for hours without a word spoken, the only sounds the soft scrape of horseshoes on stone and the keening of the wind, which blew endlessly through the heights. When he slept, he did not dream; not of wolves, nor his brothers, nor anything. Even dreams cannot live up here, he told himself.

  “Is your sword sharp, Jon Snow?” asked Qhorin Halfhand across the flickering fire.

  “My sword is Valyrian steel. The Old Bear gave it to me.”

  “Do you remember the words of your vow?”

  “Yes.” They were not words a man was like to forget. Once said, they could never be unsaid. They changed your life forever.

  “Say them again with me, Jon Snow.”

  “If you like.” Their voices blended as one beneath the rising moon, while Ghost listened and the mountains themselves bore witness. “Night gathers, and now my watch begins. It shall not end until my death. I shall take no wife, hold no lands, father no children. I shall wear no crowns and win no glory. I shall live and die at my post. I am the sword in the darkness. I am the watcher on the walls. I am the fire that burns against the cold, the light that brings the dawn, the horn that wakes the sleepers, the shield that guards the realms of men. I pledge my life and honor to the Night’s Watch, for this night and all the nights to come.”

  When they were done, there was no sound but the faint crackle of the flames and a distant sigh of wind. Jon opened and closed his burnt fingers, holding tight to the words in his mind, praying that his father’s gods would give him the strength to die bravely when his hour came. It would not be long now. The garrons were near the end of their strength. Qhorin’s mount would not last another day, Jon suspected.

  The flames were burning low by then, the warmth fading. “The fire will soon go out,” Qhorin said, “but if the Wall should ever fall, all the fires will go out.”

  There was nothing Jon could say to that. He nodde
d.

  “We may escape them yet,” the ranger said. “Or not.”

  “I’m not afraid to die.” It was only half a lie.

  “It may not be so easy as that, Jon.”

  He did not understand. “What do you mean?”

  “If we are taken, you must yield.”

  “Yield?” He blinked in disbelief. The wildlings did not make captives of the men they called the crows. They killed them, except for . . . “They only spare oathbreakers. Those who join them, like Mance Rayder.”

  “And you.”

  “No.” He shook his head. “Never. I won’t.”

  “You will. I command it of you.”

  “Command it? But . . .”

  “Our honor means no more than our lives, so long as the realm is safe. Are you a man of the Night’s Watch?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “There is no but, Jon Snow. You are, or you are not.”

  Jon sat up straight. “I am.”

  “Then hear me. If we are taken, you will go over to them, as the wildling girl you captured once urged you. They may demand that you cut your cloak to ribbons, that you swear them an oath on your father’s grave, that you curse your brothers and your Lord Commander. You must not balk, whatever is asked of you. Do as they bid you . . . but in your heart, remember who and what you are. Ride with them, eat with them, fight with them, for as long as it takes. And watch.”

  “For what?” Jon asked.

  “Would that I knew,” said Qhorin. “Your wolf saw their diggings in the valley of the Milkwater. What did they seek, in such a bleak and distant place? Did they find it? That is what you must learn, before you return to Lord Mormont and your brothers. That is the duty I lay on you, Jon Snow.”

  “I’ll do as you say,” Jon said reluctantly, “but . . . you will tell them, won’t you? The Old Bear, at least? You’ll tell him that I never broke my oath.”

  Qhorin Halfhand gazed at him across the fire, his eyes lost in pools of shadow. “When I see him next. I swear it.” He gestured at the fire. “More wood. I want it bright and hot.”