In the yard below, Rickon ran with the
wolves.
Bran watched from his window seat. Wherever the boy went, Grey Wind was there first, loping ahead to cut him off, until
Rickon saw him, screamed in delight, and went pelting off in
another direction. Shaggydog ran at his heels, spinning and
snapping if the other wolves came too close. His fur had darkened
until he was all black, and his eyes were green fire. Bran’s
Summer came last. He was silver and smoke, with eyes of yellow gold
that saw all there was to see. Smaller than Grey Wind, and more
wary. Bran thought he was the smartest of the litter. He could hear
his brother’s breathless laughter as Rickon dashed across the
hard-packed earth on little baby legs.
His eyes stung. He wanted to be down there, laughing and
running. Angry at the thought, Bran knuckled away the tears before
they could fall. His eighth name day had come and gone. He was
almost a man grown now, too old to cry.
“It was just a lie,” he said bitterly, remembering
the crow from his dream. “I can’t fly. I can’t
even run.”
“Crows are all liars,” Old Nan agreed, from the
chair where she sat doing her needlework. “I know a story
about a crow.”
“I don’t want any more stories,” Bran snapped,
his voice petulant. He had liked Old Nan and her stories once.
Before. But it was different now. They left her with him all day
now, to watch over him and clean him and keep him from being
lonely, but she just made it worse. “I hate your stupid
stories.”
The old woman smiled at him toothlessly. “My stories? No,
my little lord, not mine. The stories are, before me and after me,
before you too.”
She was a very ugly old woman, Bran thought spitefully; shrunken
and wrinkled, almost blind, too weak to climb stairs, with only a
few wisps of white hair left to cover a mottled pink scalp. No one
really knew how old she was, but his father said she’d been
called Old Nan even when he was a boy. She was the oldest person in
Winterfell for certain, maybe the oldest person in the Seven
Kingdoms. Nan had come to the castle as a wet nurse for a Brandon
Stark whose mother had died birthing him. He had been an older
brother of Lord Rickard, Bran’s grandfather, or perhaps a
younger brother, or a brother to Lord Rickard’s father.
Sometimes Old Nan told it one way and sometimes another. In all the
stories the little boy died at three of a summer chill, but Old Nan
stayed on at Winterfell with her own children. She had lost both
her sons to the war when King Robert won the throne, and her
grandson was killed on the walls of Pyke during Balon
Greyjoy’s rebellion. Her daughters had long ago married and
moved away and died. All that was left of her own blood was Hodor,
the simpleminded giant who worked in the stables, but Old Nan just
lived on and on, doing her needlework and telling her stories.
“I don’t care whose stories they are,” Bran
told her, “I hate them.” He didn’t want stories
and he didn’t want Old Nan. He wanted his mother and father.
He wanted to go running with Summer loping beside him. He wanted to
climb the broken tower and feed corn to the crows. He wanted to
ride his pony again with his brothers. He wanted it to be the way
it had been before.
“I know a story about a boy who hated stories,” Old
Nan said with her stupid little smile, her needles moving all the
while, click click click, until Bran was ready to scream at
her.
It would never be the way it had been, he knew. The crow had
tricked him into flying, but when he woke up he was broken and the
world was changed. They had all left him, his father and his mother
and his sisters and even his bastard brother Jon. His father had
promised he would ride a real horse to King’s Landing, but
they’d gone without him. Maester Luwin had sent a bird after
Lord Eddard with a message, and another to Mother and a third to
Jon on the Wall, but there had been no answers. “Ofttimes the
birds are lost, child,” the maester had told him.
“There’s many a mile and many a hawk between here and
King’s Landing, the message may not have reached
them.” Yet to Bran it felt as if they had all died while he had slept
. . . or perhaps Bran had died, and they had forgotten him. Jory and
Ser Rodrik and Vayon Poole had gone too, and Hullen and Harwin and
Fat Tom and a quarter of the guard.
Only Robb and baby Rickon were still here, and Robb was changed.
He was Robb the Lord now, or trying to be. He wore a real sword and
never smiled. His days were spent drilling the guard and practicing
his swordplay, making the yard ring with the sound of steel as Bran
watched forlornly from his window. At night he closeted himself
with Maester Luwin, talking or going over account books. Sometimes
he would ride out with Hallis Mollen and be gone for days at a
time, visiting distant holdfasts. Whenever he was away more than a
day, Rickon would cry and ask Bran if Robb was ever coming back.
Even when he was home at Winterfell, Robb the Lord seemed to have
more time for Hallis Mollen and Theon Greyjoy than he ever did for
his brothers.
“I could tell you the story about Brandon the
Builder,” Old Nan said. “That was always your
favorite.”
Thousands and thousands of years ago, Brandon the Builder had
raised Winterfell, and some said the Wall. Bran knew the story, but
it had never been his favorite. Maybe one of the other Brandons had
liked that story. Sometimes Nan would talk to him as if he were her
Brandon, the baby she had nursed all those years ago, and sometimes
she confused him with his uncle Brandon, who was killed by the Mad
King before Bran was even born. She had lived so long, Mother had
told him once, that all the Brandon Starks had become one person in
her head.
“That’s not my favorite,” he said. “My
favorites were the scary ones.” He heard some sort of
commotion outside and turned back to the window. Rickon was running
across the yard toward the gatehouse, the wolves following him, but
the tower faced the wrong way for Bran to see what was happening.
He smashed a fist on his thigh in frustration and felt nothing.
“Oh, my sweet summer child,” Old Nan said quietly,
“what do you know of fear? Fear is for the winter, my little
lord, when the snows fall a hundred feet deep and the ice wind
comes howling out of the north. Fear is for the long night, when
the sun hides its face for years at a time, and little children are
born and live and die all in darkness while the direwolves grow
gaunt and hungry, and the white walkers move through the
woods.”
“You mean the Others,” Bran said querulously.
“The Others,” Old Nan agreed. “Thousands and
thousands of years ago, a winter fell that was cold and hard
and endless beyond all memory of man. There came a night that
lasted a generation, and kings shivered and died in their castles
even as the swineherds in their hovels. Women smothered their
children rather than see them starve, and cried, and felt their
tears freeze on their cheeks.” Her voice and her needles fell
silent, and she glanced up at Bran with pale, filmy eyes and asked,
“So, child. This is the sort of story you like?”
“Well,” Bran said reluctantly, “yes, only . . . ”
Old Nan nodded. “In that darkness, the Others came for the
first time,” she said as her needles went click click click.
“They were cold things, dead things, that hated iron and fire
and the touch of the sun, and every creature with hot blood in its
veins. They swept over holdfasts and cities and kingdoms, felled
heroes and armies by the score, riding their pale dead horses and
leading hosts of the slain. All the swords of men could not stay
their advance, and even maidens and suckling babes found no pity in
them. They hunted the maids through frozen forests, and fed their
dead servants on the flesh of human children.”
Her voice had dropped very low, almost to a whisper, and Bran
found himself leaning forward to listen.
“Now these were the days before the Andals came, and long
before the women fled across the narrow sea from the cities of the
Rhoyne, and the hundred kingdoms of those times were the kingdoms
of the First Men, who had taken these lands from the children of
the forest. Yet here and there in the fastness of the woods the
children still lived in their wooden cities and hollow hills, and
the faces in the trees kept watch. So as cold and death filled the
earth, the last hero determined to seek out the children, in the
hopes that their ancient magics could win back what the armies of
men had lost. He set out into the dead lands with a sword, a horse,
a dog, and a dozen companions. For years he searched, until he
despaired of ever finding the children of the forest in their
secret cities. One by one his friends died, and his horse, and
finally even his dog, and his sword froze so hard the blade snapped
when he tried to use it. And the Others smelled the hot blood in
him, and came silent on his trail, stalking him with packs of pale
white spiders big as hounds—”
The door opened with a bang, and Bran’s heart leapt up
into his mouth in sudden fear, but it was only Maester Luwin, with
Hodor looming in the stairway behind him. “Hodor!” the
stableboy announced, as was his custom, smiling hugely at them
all.
Maester Luwin was not smiling. “We have visitors,”
he announced, “and your presence is required,
Bran.”
“I’m listening to a story now,” Bran
complained.
“Stories wait, my little lord, and when you come back to
them, why, there they are,” Old Nan said. “Visitors are
not so patient, and ofttimes they bring stories of their
own.”
“Who is it?” Bran asked Maester Luwin.
“Tyrion Lannister, and some men of the Night’s
Watch, with word from your brother Jon. Robb is meeting with them
now. Hodor, will you help Bran down to the hall?”
“Hodor!” Hodor agreed happily. He ducked to get his
great shaggy head under the door. Hodor was nearly seven feet tall.
It was hard to believe that he was the same blood as Old Nan. Bran
wondered if he would shrivel up as small as his great-grandmother
when he was old. It did not seem likely, even if Hodor lived to be
a thousand.
Hodor lifted Bran as easy as if he were a bale of hay, and
cradled him against his massive chest. He always smelled faintly of
horses, but it was not a bad smell. His arms were thick with muscle
and matted with brown hair. “Hodor,” he said again.
Theon Greyjoy had once commented that Hodor did not know much, but
no one could doubt that he knew his name. Old Nan had cackled like
a hen when Bran told her that, and confessed that Hodor’s
real name was Walder. No one knew where “Hodor” had
come from, she said, but when he started saying it, they started
calling him by it. It was the only word he had.
They left Old Nan in the tower room with her needles and her
memories. Hodor hummed tunelessly as he carried Bran down the steps
and through the gallery, with Maester Luwin following behind,
hurrying to keep up with the stableboy’s long strides.
Robb was seated in Father’s high seat, wearing ringmail
and boiled leather and the stern face of Robb the Lord. Theon
Greyjoy and Hallis Mollen stood behind him. A dozen guardsmen lined
the grey stone walls beneath tall narrow windows. In the center of
the room the dwarf stood with his servants, and four strangers in
the black of the Night’s Watch. Bran could sense the anger in
the hall the moment that Hodor carried him through the doors.
“Any man of the Night’s Watch is welcome here at
Winterfell for as long as he wishes to stay,” Robb was saying
with the voice of Robb the Lord. His sword was across his knees,
the steel bare for all the world to see. Even Bran knew what it
meant to greet a guest with an unsheathed sword.
“Any man of the Night’s Watch,” the dwarf
repeated, “but not me, do I take your meaning,
boy?”
Robb stood and pointed at the little man with his sword.
“I am the lord here while my mother and father are away,
Lannister. I am not your boy.”
“If you are a lord, you might learn a lord’s
courtesy,” the little man replied, ignoring the sword point
in his face. “Your bastard brother has all your
father’s graces, it would seem.”
“Jon,” Bran gasped out from Hodor’s arms.
The dwarf turned to look at him. “So it is true, the boy
lives. I could scarce believe it. You Starks are hard to
kill.”
“You Lannisters had best remember that,” Robb said,
lowering his sword. “Hodor, bring my brother here.”
“Hodor,” Hodor said, and he trotted forward smiling
and set Bran in the high seat of the Starks, where the Lords of
Winterfell had sat since the days when they called themselves the
Kings in the North. The seat was cold stone, polished smooth by
countless bottoms; the carved heads of direwolves snarled on the
ends of its massive arms. Bran clasped them as he sat, his useless
legs dangling. The great seat made him feel half a baby.
Robb put a hand on his shoulder. “You said you had
business with Bran. Well, here he is, Lannister.”
Bran was uncomfortably aware of Tyrion Lannister’s eyes.
One was black and one was green, and both were looking at him,
studying him, weighing him. “I am told you were quite the
climber, Bran,” the little man said at last. “Tell me,
how is it you happened to fall that day?”
“I never,” Bran insisted. He never fell, never never
never.
“The child does not remember anything of the fall, or the
climb that came before it,” said Maester Luwin gently.
“Curious,” said Tyrion Lannister.
“My brother is not here to answer questions,
Lannister,” Robb said curtly. “Do your business and be
on your way.”
“I have a gift for you,” the dwarf said to Bran.
“Do you like to ride, boy?”
Maester Luwin came forward. “My lord, the child has lost
the use of his legs. He cannot sit a horse.”
“Nonsense,” said Lannister. “With the right
horse and the right saddle, even a cripple can ride.”
The word was a knife through Bran’s heart. He felt tears
come unbidden to his eyes. “I’m not a
cripple!”
“Then I am not a dwarf,” the dwarf said with a twist
of his mouth. “My father will rejoice to hear it.”
Greyjoy laughed.
“What sort of horse and saddle are you suggesting?”
Maester Luwin asked.
“A smart horse,” Lannister replied. “The boy
cannot use his legs to command the animal, so you must shape the
horse to the rider, teach it to respond to the reins, to the voice.
I would begin with an unbroken yearling, with no old training to be
unlearned.” He drew a rolled paper from his belt. “Give
this to your saddler. He will provide the rest.”
Maester Luwin took the paper from the dwarfs hand, curious as a
small grey squirrel. He unrolled it, studied it. “I see. You
draw nicely, my lord. Yes, this ought to work. I should have
thought of this myself.”
“It came easier to me, Maester. It is not terribly unlike
my own saddles.”
“Will I truly be able to ride?” Bran asked. He
wanted to believe them, but he was afraid. Perhaps it was just
another lie. The crow had promised him that he could fly.
“You will,” the dwarf told him. “And I swear
to you, boy, on horseback you will be as tall as any of
them.”
Robb Stark seemed puzzled. “Is this some trap, Lannister?
What’s Bran to you? Why should you want to help
him?”
“Your brother Jon asked it of me. And I have a tender spot
in my heart for cripples and bastards and broken things.”
Tyrion Lannister placed a hand over his heart and grinned.
The door to the yard flew open. Sunlight came streaming across
the hall as Rickon burst in, breathless. The direwolves were with
him. The boy stopped by the door, wide-eyed, but the wolves came
on. Their eyes found Lannister, or perhaps they caught his scent.
Summer began to growl first. Grey Wind picked it up. They padded
toward the little man, one from the right and one from the
left.
“The wolves do not like your smell, Lannister,”
Theon Greyioy commented.
“Perhaps it’s time I took my leave,” Tyrion
said. He took a step backward . . . and Shaggydog came out of the
shadows behind him, snarling. Lannister recoiled, and Summer lunged
at him from the other side. He reeled away, unsteady on his feet,
and Grey Wind snapped at his arm, teeth ripping at his sleeve and
tearing loose a scrap of cloth.
“No!” Bran shouted from the high seat as
Lannister’s men reached for their steel. “Summer, here.
Summer, to me!”
The direwolf heard the voice, glanced at Bran, and again at
Lannister. He crept backward, away from the little man, and settled
down below Bran’s dangling feet.
Robb had been holding his breath. He let it out with a sigh and
called, “Grey Wind.” His direwolf moved to him, swift
and silent. Now there was only Shaggydog, rumbling at the small
man, his eyes burning like green fire.
“Rickon, call him,” Bran shouted to his baby
brother, and Rickon remembered himself and screamed, “Home,
Shaggy, home now.” The black wolf gave Lannister one final
snarl and bounded off to Rickon, who hugged him tightly around the
neck.
Tyrion Lannister undid his scarf, mopped at his brow, and said
in a flat voice, “How interesting.”
“Are you well, my lord?” asked one of his men, his
sword in hand. He glanced nervously at the direwolves as he
spoke.
“My sleeve is torn and my breeches are unaccountably damp,
but nothing was harmed save my dignity.”
Even Robb looked shaken. “The wolves . . . I don’t
know why they did that . . . ”
“No doubt they mistook me for dinner.” Lannister
bowed stiffly to Bran. “I thank you for calling them off,
young ser. I promise you, they would have found me quite
indigestible. And now I will be leaving, truly.”
“A moment, my lord,” Maester Luwin said. He moved to
Robb and they huddled close together, whispering. Bran tried to
hear what they were saying, but their voices were too low.
Robb Stark finally sheathed his sword. “I . . . I may have
been hasty with you,” he said. “You’ve done Bran
a kindness, and, well . . . ” Robb composed himself with an
effort. “The hospitality of Winterfell is yours if you wish
it, Lannister.”
“Spare me your false courtesies, boy. You do not love me
and you do not want me here. I saw an inn outside your walls, in
the winter town. I’ll find a bed there, and both of us will
sleep easier. For a few coppers I may even find a comely wench to
warm the sheets for me.” He spoke to one of the black
brothers, an old man with a twisted back and a tangled beard.
“Yoren, we go south at daybreak. You will find me on the
road, no doubt.” With that he made his exit, struggling
across the hall on his short legs, past Rickon and out the door.
His men followed.
The four of the Night’s Watch remained. Robb turned to
them uncertainly. “I have had rooms prepared, and
you’ll find no lack of hot water to wash off the dust of the
road. I hope you will honor us at table tonight.” He spoke
the words so awkwardly that even Bran took note; it was a speech he
had learned, not words from the heart, but the black brothers
thanked him all the same.
Summer followed them up the tower steps as Hodor carried Bran
back to his bed. Old Nan was asleep in her chair. Hodor said
“Hodor,” gathered up his great-grandmother, and carried
her off, snoring softly, while Bran lay thinking. Robb had promised
that he could feast with the Night’s Watch in the Great Hall.
“Summer,” he called. The wolf bounded up on the bed.
Bran hugged him so hard he could feel the hot breath on his cheek.
“I can ride now,” he whispered to his friend. “We
can go hunting in the woods soon, wait and see.” After a time
he slept.
In his dream he was climbing again, pulling himself up an
ancient windowless tower, his fingers forcing themselves between
blackened stones, his feet scrabbling for purchase. Higher and
higher he climbed, through the clouds and into the night sky, and
still the tower rose before him. When he paused to look down, his
head swam dizzily and he felt his fingers slipping. Bran cried out
and clung for dear life. The earth was a thousand miles beneath him
and he could not fly. He could not fly. He waited until his heart
had stopped pounding, until he could breathe, and he began to climb
again. There was no way to go but up. Far above him, outlined
against a vast pale moon, he thought he could see the shapes of
gargoyles. His arms were sore and aching, but he dared not rest. He
forced himself to climb faster. The gargoyles watched him ascend.
Their eyes glowed red as hot coals in a brazier. Perhaps once they
had been lions, but now they were twisted and grotesque. Bran could
hear them whispering to each other in soft stone voices terrible to
hear. He must not listen, he told himself, he must not hear, so
long as he did not hear them he was safe. But when the gargoyles
pulled themselves loose from the stone and padded down the side of
the tower to where Bran clung, he knew he was not safe after all.
“I didn’t hear,” he wept as they came closer and
closer, “I didn’t, I didn’t.”
He woke gasping, lost in darkness, and saw a vast shadow looming
over him. “I didn’t hear,” he whispered,
trembling in fear, but then the shadow said “Hodor,”
and lit the candle by the bedside, and Bran sighed with relief.
Hodor washed the sweat from him with a warm, damp cloth and
dressed him with deft and gentle hands. When it was time, he
carried him down to the Great Hall, where a long trestle table had
been set up near the fire. The lord’s seat at the head of the
table had been left empty, but Robb sat to the right of it, with
Bran across from him. They ate suckling pig that night, and pigeon
pie, and turnips soaking in butter, and afterward the cook had
promised honeycombs. Summer snatched table scraps from Bran’s
hand, while Grey Wind and Shaggydog fought over a bone in the
corner. Winterfell’s dogs would not come near the hall now.
Bran had found that strange at first, but he was growing used to
it.
Yoren was senior among the black brothers, so the steward had
seated him between Robb and Maester Luwin. The old man had a sour
smell, as if he had not washed in a long time. He ripped at the
meat with his teeth, cracked the ribs to suck out the marrow from
the bones, and shrugged at the mention of Jon Snow. “Ser
Alliser’s bane,” he grunted, and two of his companions
shared a laugh that Bran did not understand. But when Robb asked
for news of their uncle Benjen, the black brothers grew ominously
quiet.
“What is it?” Bran asked.
Yoren wiped his fingers on his vest. “There’s hard
news, m’lords, and a cruel way to pay you for your meat and
mead, but the man as asks the question must bear the answer.
Stark’s gone.”
One of the other men said, “The Old Bear sent him out to
look for Waymar Royce, and he’s late returning, my
lord.”
“Too long,” Yoren said. “Most like he’s
dead.”
“My uncle is not dead,” Robb Stark said loudly,
anger in his tones. He rose from the bench and laid his hand on the
hilt of his sword. “Do you hear me? My uncle is not
dead!” His voice rang against the stone walls, and Bran was
suddenly afraid.
Old sour-smelling Yoren looked up at Robb, unimpressed.
“Whatever you say, m’lord,” he said. He sucked at
a piece of meat between his teeth.
The youngest of the black brothers shifted uncomfortably in his
seat. “There’s not a man on the Wall knows the haunted
forest better than Benjen Stark. He’ll find his way
back.”
“Well,” said Yoren, “maybe he will and maybe
he won’t. Good men have gone into those woods before, and
never come out.”
All Bran could think of was Old Nan’s story of the Others
and the last hero, hounded through the white woods by dead men and
spiders big as hounds. He was afraid for a moment, until he
remembered how that story ended. “The children will help
him,” he blurted, “the children of the
forest!”
Theon Greyjoy sniggered, and Maester Luwin said, “Bran,
the children of the forest have been dead and gone for thousands of
years. All that is left of them are the faces in the
trees.”
“Down here, might be that’s true, Maester,”
Yoren said, “but up past the Wall, who’s to say? Up
there, a man can’t always tell what’s alive and
what’s dead.”
That night, after the plates had been cleared, Robb carried Bran
up to bed himself. Grey Wind led the way, and Summer came close
behind. His brother was strong for his age, and Bran was as light
as a bundle of rags, but the stairs were steep and dark, and Robb
was breathing hard by the time they reached the top.
He put Bran into bed, covered him with blankets, and blew out
the candle. For a time Robb sat beside him in the dark. Bran wanted
to talk to him, but he did not know what to say. “We’ll
find a horse for you, I promise,” Robb whispered at last.
“Are they ever coming back?” Bran asked him.
“Yes,” Robb said with such hope in his voice that
Bran knew he was hearing his brother and not just Robb the Lord.
“Mother will be home soon. Maybe we can ride out to meet her
when she comes. Wouldn’t that surprise her, to see you
ahorse?” Even in the dark room, Bran could feel his
brother’s smile. “And afterward, we’ll ride north
to see the Wall. We won’t even tell Jon we’re coming,
we’ll just be there one day, you and me. It will be an
adventure.”
“An adventure,” Bran repeated wistfully. He heard
his brother sob. The room was so dark he could not see the tears on
Robb’s face, so he reached out and found his hand. Their
fingers twined together.
In the yard below, Rickon ran with the
wolves.
Bran watched from his window seat. Wherever the boy went, Grey Wind was there first, loping ahead to cut him off, until
Rickon saw him, screamed in delight, and went pelting off in
another direction. Shaggydog ran at his heels, spinning and
snapping if the other wolves came too close. His fur had darkened
until he was all black, and his eyes were green fire. Bran’s
Summer came last. He was silver and smoke, with eyes of yellow gold
that saw all there was to see. Smaller than Grey Wind, and more
wary. Bran thought he was the smartest of the litter. He could hear
his brother’s breathless laughter as Rickon dashed across the
hard-packed earth on little baby legs.
His eyes stung. He wanted to be down there, laughing and
running. Angry at the thought, Bran knuckled away the tears before
they could fall. His eighth name day had come and gone. He was
almost a man grown now, too old to cry.
“It was just a lie,” he said bitterly, remembering
the crow from his dream. “I can’t fly. I can’t
even run.”
“Crows are all liars,” Old Nan agreed, from the
chair where she sat doing her needlework. “I know a story
about a crow.”
“I don’t want any more stories,” Bran snapped,
his voice petulant. He had liked Old Nan and her stories once.
Before. But it was different now. They left her with him all day
now, to watch over him and clean him and keep him from being
lonely, but she just made it worse. “I hate your stupid
stories.”
The old woman smiled at him toothlessly. “My stories? No,
my little lord, not mine. The stories are, before me and after me,
before you too.”
She was a very ugly old woman, Bran thought spitefully; shrunken
and wrinkled, almost blind, too weak to climb stairs, with only a
few wisps of white hair left to cover a mottled pink scalp. No one
really knew how old she was, but his father said she’d been
called Old Nan even when he was a boy. She was the oldest person in
Winterfell for certain, maybe the oldest person in the Seven
Kingdoms. Nan had come to the castle as a wet nurse for a Brandon
Stark whose mother had died birthing him. He had been an older
brother of Lord Rickard, Bran’s grandfather, or perhaps a
younger brother, or a brother to Lord Rickard’s father.
Sometimes Old Nan told it one way and sometimes another. In all the
stories the little boy died at three of a summer chill, but Old Nan
stayed on at Winterfell with her own children. She had lost both
her sons to the war when King Robert won the throne, and her
grandson was killed on the walls of Pyke during Balon
Greyjoy’s rebellion. Her daughters had long ago married and
moved away and died. All that was left of her own blood was Hodor,
the simpleminded giant who worked in the stables, but Old Nan just
lived on and on, doing her needlework and telling her stories.
“I don’t care whose stories they are,” Bran
told her, “I hate them.” He didn’t want stories
and he didn’t want Old Nan. He wanted his mother and father.
He wanted to go running with Summer loping beside him. He wanted to
climb the broken tower and feed corn to the crows. He wanted to
ride his pony again with his brothers. He wanted it to be the way
it had been before.
“I know a story about a boy who hated stories,” Old
Nan said with her stupid little smile, her needles moving all the
while, click click click, until Bran was ready to scream at
her.
It would never be the way it had been, he knew. The crow had
tricked him into flying, but when he woke up he was broken and the
world was changed. They had all left him, his father and his mother
and his sisters and even his bastard brother Jon. His father had
promised he would ride a real horse to King’s Landing, but
they’d gone without him. Maester Luwin had sent a bird after
Lord Eddard with a message, and another to Mother and a third to
Jon on the Wall, but there had been no answers. “Ofttimes the
birds are lost, child,” the maester had told him.
“There’s many a mile and many a hawk between here and
King’s Landing, the message may not have reached
them.” Yet to Bran it felt as if they had all died while he had slept
. . . or perhaps Bran had died, and they had forgotten him. Jory and
Ser Rodrik and Vayon Poole had gone too, and Hullen and Harwin and
Fat Tom and a quarter of the guard.
Only Robb and baby Rickon were still here, and Robb was changed.
He was Robb the Lord now, or trying to be. He wore a real sword and
never smiled. His days were spent drilling the guard and practicing
his swordplay, making the yard ring with the sound of steel as Bran
watched forlornly from his window. At night he closeted himself
with Maester Luwin, talking or going over account books. Sometimes
he would ride out with Hallis Mollen and be gone for days at a
time, visiting distant holdfasts. Whenever he was away more than a
day, Rickon would cry and ask Bran if Robb was ever coming back.
Even when he was home at Winterfell, Robb the Lord seemed to have
more time for Hallis Mollen and Theon Greyjoy than he ever did for
his brothers.
“I could tell you the story about Brandon the
Builder,” Old Nan said. “That was always your
favorite.”
Thousands and thousands of years ago, Brandon the Builder had
raised Winterfell, and some said the Wall. Bran knew the story, but
it had never been his favorite. Maybe one of the other Brandons had
liked that story. Sometimes Nan would talk to him as if he were her
Brandon, the baby she had nursed all those years ago, and sometimes
she confused him with his uncle Brandon, who was killed by the Mad
King before Bran was even born. She had lived so long, Mother had
told him once, that all the Brandon Starks had become one person in
her head.
“That’s not my favorite,” he said. “My
favorites were the scary ones.” He heard some sort of
commotion outside and turned back to the window. Rickon was running
across the yard toward the gatehouse, the wolves following him, but
the tower faced the wrong way for Bran to see what was happening.
He smashed a fist on his thigh in frustration and felt nothing.
“Oh, my sweet summer child,” Old Nan said quietly,
“what do you know of fear? Fear is for the winter, my little
lord, when the snows fall a hundred feet deep and the ice wind
comes howling out of the north. Fear is for the long night, when
the sun hides its face for years at a time, and little children are
born and live and die all in darkness while the direwolves grow
gaunt and hungry, and the white walkers move through the
woods.”
“You mean the Others,” Bran said querulously.
“The Others,” Old Nan agreed. “Thousands and
thousands of years ago, a winter fell that was cold and hard
and endless beyond all memory of man. There came a night that
lasted a generation, and kings shivered and died in their castles
even as the swineherds in their hovels. Women smothered their
children rather than see them starve, and cried, and felt their
tears freeze on their cheeks.” Her voice and her needles fell
silent, and she glanced up at Bran with pale, filmy eyes and asked,
“So, child. This is the sort of story you like?”
“Well,” Bran said reluctantly, “yes, only . . . ”
Old Nan nodded. “In that darkness, the Others came for the
first time,” she said as her needles went click click click.
“They were cold things, dead things, that hated iron and fire
and the touch of the sun, and every creature with hot blood in its
veins. They swept over holdfasts and cities and kingdoms, felled
heroes and armies by the score, riding their pale dead horses and
leading hosts of the slain. All the swords of men could not stay
their advance, and even maidens and suckling babes found no pity in
them. They hunted the maids through frozen forests, and fed their
dead servants on the flesh of human children.”
Her voice had dropped very low, almost to a whisper, and Bran
found himself leaning forward to listen.
“Now these were the days before the Andals came, and long
before the women fled across the narrow sea from the cities of the
Rhoyne, and the hundred kingdoms of those times were the kingdoms
of the First Men, who had taken these lands from the children of
the forest. Yet here and there in the fastness of the woods the
children still lived in their wooden cities and hollow hills, and
the faces in the trees kept watch. So as cold and death filled the
earth, the last hero determined to seek out the children, in the
hopes that their ancient magics could win back what the armies of
men had lost. He set out into the dead lands with a sword, a horse,
a dog, and a dozen companions. For years he searched, until he
despaired of ever finding the children of the forest in their
secret cities. One by one his friends died, and his horse, and
finally even his dog, and his sword froze so hard the blade snapped
when he tried to use it. And the Others smelled the hot blood in
him, and came silent on his trail, stalking him with packs of pale
white spiders big as hounds—”
The door opened with a bang, and Bran’s heart leapt up
into his mouth in sudden fear, but it was only Maester Luwin, with
Hodor looming in the stairway behind him. “Hodor!” the
stableboy announced, as was his custom, smiling hugely at them
all.
Maester Luwin was not smiling. “We have visitors,”
he announced, “and your presence is required,
Bran.”
“I’m listening to a story now,” Bran
complained.
“Stories wait, my little lord, and when you come back to
them, why, there they are,” Old Nan said. “Visitors are
not so patient, and ofttimes they bring stories of their
own.”
“Who is it?” Bran asked Maester Luwin.
“Tyrion Lannister, and some men of the Night’s
Watch, with word from your brother Jon. Robb is meeting with them
now. Hodor, will you help Bran down to the hall?”
“Hodor!” Hodor agreed happily. He ducked to get his
great shaggy head under the door. Hodor was nearly seven feet tall.
It was hard to believe that he was the same blood as Old Nan. Bran
wondered if he would shrivel up as small as his great-grandmother
when he was old. It did not seem likely, even if Hodor lived to be
a thousand.
Hodor lifted Bran as easy as if he were a bale of hay, and
cradled him against his massive chest. He always smelled faintly of
horses, but it was not a bad smell. His arms were thick with muscle
and matted with brown hair. “Hodor,” he said again.
Theon Greyjoy had once commented that Hodor did not know much, but
no one could doubt that he knew his name. Old Nan had cackled like
a hen when Bran told her that, and confessed that Hodor’s
real name was Walder. No one knew where “Hodor” had
come from, she said, but when he started saying it, they started
calling him by it. It was the only word he had.
They left Old Nan in the tower room with her needles and her
memories. Hodor hummed tunelessly as he carried Bran down the steps
and through the gallery, with Maester Luwin following behind,
hurrying to keep up with the stableboy’s long strides.
Robb was seated in Father’s high seat, wearing ringmail
and boiled leather and the stern face of Robb the Lord. Theon
Greyjoy and Hallis Mollen stood behind him. A dozen guardsmen lined
the grey stone walls beneath tall narrow windows. In the center of
the room the dwarf stood with his servants, and four strangers in
the black of the Night’s Watch. Bran could sense the anger in
the hall the moment that Hodor carried him through the doors.
“Any man of the Night’s Watch is welcome here at
Winterfell for as long as he wishes to stay,” Robb was saying
with the voice of Robb the Lord. His sword was across his knees,
the steel bare for all the world to see. Even Bran knew what it
meant to greet a guest with an unsheathed sword.
“Any man of the Night’s Watch,” the dwarf
repeated, “but not me, do I take your meaning,
boy?”
Robb stood and pointed at the little man with his sword.
“I am the lord here while my mother and father are away,
Lannister. I am not your boy.”
“If you are a lord, you might learn a lord’s
courtesy,” the little man replied, ignoring the sword point
in his face. “Your bastard brother has all your
father’s graces, it would seem.”
“Jon,” Bran gasped out from Hodor’s arms.
The dwarf turned to look at him. “So it is true, the boy
lives. I could scarce believe it. You Starks are hard to
kill.”
“You Lannisters had best remember that,” Robb said,
lowering his sword. “Hodor, bring my brother here.”
“Hodor,” Hodor said, and he trotted forward smiling
and set Bran in the high seat of the Starks, where the Lords of
Winterfell had sat since the days when they called themselves the
Kings in the North. The seat was cold stone, polished smooth by
countless bottoms; the carved heads of direwolves snarled on the
ends of its massive arms. Bran clasped them as he sat, his useless
legs dangling. The great seat made him feel half a baby.
Robb put a hand on his shoulder. “You said you had
business with Bran. Well, here he is, Lannister.”
Bran was uncomfortably aware of Tyrion Lannister’s eyes.
One was black and one was green, and both were looking at him,
studying him, weighing him. “I am told you were quite the
climber, Bran,” the little man said at last. “Tell me,
how is it you happened to fall that day?”
“I never,” Bran insisted. He never fell, never never
never.
“The child does not remember anything of the fall, or the
climb that came before it,” said Maester Luwin gently.
“Curious,” said Tyrion Lannister.
“My brother is not here to answer questions,
Lannister,” Robb said curtly. “Do your business and be
on your way.”
“I have a gift for you,” the dwarf said to Bran.
“Do you like to ride, boy?”
Maester Luwin came forward. “My lord, the child has lost
the use of his legs. He cannot sit a horse.”
“Nonsense,” said Lannister. “With the right
horse and the right saddle, even a cripple can ride.”
The word was a knife through Bran’s heart. He felt tears
come unbidden to his eyes. “I’m not a
cripple!”
“Then I am not a dwarf,” the dwarf said with a twist
of his mouth. “My father will rejoice to hear it.”
Greyjoy laughed.
“What sort of horse and saddle are you suggesting?”
Maester Luwin asked.
“A smart horse,” Lannister replied. “The boy
cannot use his legs to command the animal, so you must shape the
horse to the rider, teach it to respond to the reins, to the voice.
I would begin with an unbroken yearling, with no old training to be
unlearned.” He drew a rolled paper from his belt. “Give
this to your saddler. He will provide the rest.”
Maester Luwin took the paper from the dwarfs hand, curious as a
small grey squirrel. He unrolled it, studied it. “I see. You
draw nicely, my lord. Yes, this ought to work. I should have
thought of this myself.”
“It came easier to me, Maester. It is not terribly unlike
my own saddles.”
“Will I truly be able to ride?” Bran asked. He
wanted to believe them, but he was afraid. Perhaps it was just
another lie. The crow had promised him that he could fly.
“You will,” the dwarf told him. “And I swear
to you, boy, on horseback you will be as tall as any of
them.”
Robb Stark seemed puzzled. “Is this some trap, Lannister?
What’s Bran to you? Why should you want to help
him?”
“Your brother Jon asked it of me. And I have a tender spot
in my heart for cripples and bastards and broken things.”
Tyrion Lannister placed a hand over his heart and grinned.
The door to the yard flew open. Sunlight came streaming across
the hall as Rickon burst in, breathless. The direwolves were with
him. The boy stopped by the door, wide-eyed, but the wolves came
on. Their eyes found Lannister, or perhaps they caught his scent.
Summer began to growl first. Grey Wind picked it up. They padded
toward the little man, one from the right and one from the
left.
“The wolves do not like your smell, Lannister,”
Theon Greyioy commented.
“Perhaps it’s time I took my leave,” Tyrion
said. He took a step backward . . . and Shaggydog came out of the
shadows behind him, snarling. Lannister recoiled, and Summer lunged
at him from the other side. He reeled away, unsteady on his feet,
and Grey Wind snapped at his arm, teeth ripping at his sleeve and
tearing loose a scrap of cloth.
“No!” Bran shouted from the high seat as
Lannister’s men reached for their steel. “Summer, here.
Summer, to me!”
The direwolf heard the voice, glanced at Bran, and again at
Lannister. He crept backward, away from the little man, and settled
down below Bran’s dangling feet.
Robb had been holding his breath. He let it out with a sigh and
called, “Grey Wind.” His direwolf moved to him, swift
and silent. Now there was only Shaggydog, rumbling at the small
man, his eyes burning like green fire.
“Rickon, call him,” Bran shouted to his baby
brother, and Rickon remembered himself and screamed, “Home,
Shaggy, home now.” The black wolf gave Lannister one final
snarl and bounded off to Rickon, who hugged him tightly around the
neck.
Tyrion Lannister undid his scarf, mopped at his brow, and said
in a flat voice, “How interesting.”
“Are you well, my lord?” asked one of his men, his
sword in hand. He glanced nervously at the direwolves as he
spoke.
“My sleeve is torn and my breeches are unaccountably damp,
but nothing was harmed save my dignity.”
Even Robb looked shaken. “The wolves . . . I don’t
know why they did that . . . ”
“No doubt they mistook me for dinner.” Lannister
bowed stiffly to Bran. “I thank you for calling them off,
young ser. I promise you, they would have found me quite
indigestible. And now I will be leaving, truly.”
“A moment, my lord,” Maester Luwin said. He moved to
Robb and they huddled close together, whispering. Bran tried to
hear what they were saying, but their voices were too low.
Robb Stark finally sheathed his sword. “I . . . I may have
been hasty with you,” he said. “You’ve done Bran
a kindness, and, well . . . ” Robb composed himself with an
effort. “The hospitality of Winterfell is yours if you wish
it, Lannister.”
“Spare me your false courtesies, boy. You do not love me
and you do not want me here. I saw an inn outside your walls, in
the winter town. I’ll find a bed there, and both of us will
sleep easier. For a few coppers I may even find a comely wench to
warm the sheets for me.” He spoke to one of the black
brothers, an old man with a twisted back and a tangled beard.
“Yoren, we go south at daybreak. You will find me on the
road, no doubt.” With that he made his exit, struggling
across the hall on his short legs, past Rickon and out the door.
His men followed.
The four of the Night’s Watch remained. Robb turned to
them uncertainly. “I have had rooms prepared, and
you’ll find no lack of hot water to wash off the dust of the
road. I hope you will honor us at table tonight.” He spoke
the words so awkwardly that even Bran took note; it was a speech he
had learned, not words from the heart, but the black brothers
thanked him all the same.
Summer followed them up the tower steps as Hodor carried Bran
back to his bed. Old Nan was asleep in her chair. Hodor said
“Hodor,” gathered up his great-grandmother, and carried
her off, snoring softly, while Bran lay thinking. Robb had promised
that he could feast with the Night’s Watch in the Great Hall.
“Summer,” he called. The wolf bounded up on the bed.
Bran hugged him so hard he could feel the hot breath on his cheek.
“I can ride now,” he whispered to his friend. “We
can go hunting in the woods soon, wait and see.” After a time
he slept.
In his dream he was climbing again, pulling himself up an
ancient windowless tower, his fingers forcing themselves between
blackened stones, his feet scrabbling for purchase. Higher and
higher he climbed, through the clouds and into the night sky, and
still the tower rose before him. When he paused to look down, his
head swam dizzily and he felt his fingers slipping. Bran cried out
and clung for dear life. The earth was a thousand miles beneath him
and he could not fly. He could not fly. He waited until his heart
had stopped pounding, until he could breathe, and he began to climb
again. There was no way to go but up. Far above him, outlined
against a vast pale moon, he thought he could see the shapes of
gargoyles. His arms were sore and aching, but he dared not rest. He
forced himself to climb faster. The gargoyles watched him ascend.
Their eyes glowed red as hot coals in a brazier. Perhaps once they
had been lions, but now they were twisted and grotesque. Bran could
hear them whispering to each other in soft stone voices terrible to
hear. He must not listen, he told himself, he must not hear, so
long as he did not hear them he was safe. But when the gargoyles
pulled themselves loose from the stone and padded down the side of
the tower to where Bran clung, he knew he was not safe after all.
“I didn’t hear,” he wept as they came closer and
closer, “I didn’t, I didn’t.”
He woke gasping, lost in darkness, and saw a vast shadow looming
over him. “I didn’t hear,” he whispered,
trembling in fear, but then the shadow said “Hodor,”
and lit the candle by the bedside, and Bran sighed with relief.
Hodor washed the sweat from him with a warm, damp cloth and
dressed him with deft and gentle hands. When it was time, he
carried him down to the Great Hall, where a long trestle table had
been set up near the fire. The lord’s seat at the head of the
table had been left empty, but Robb sat to the right of it, with
Bran across from him. They ate suckling pig that night, and pigeon
pie, and turnips soaking in butter, and afterward the cook had
promised honeycombs. Summer snatched table scraps from Bran’s
hand, while Grey Wind and Shaggydog fought over a bone in the
corner. Winterfell’s dogs would not come near the hall now.
Bran had found that strange at first, but he was growing used to
it.
Yoren was senior among the black brothers, so the steward had
seated him between Robb and Maester Luwin. The old man had a sour
smell, as if he had not washed in a long time. He ripped at the
meat with his teeth, cracked the ribs to suck out the marrow from
the bones, and shrugged at the mention of Jon Snow. “Ser
Alliser’s bane,” he grunted, and two of his companions
shared a laugh that Bran did not understand. But when Robb asked
for news of their uncle Benjen, the black brothers grew ominously
quiet.
“What is it?” Bran asked.
Yoren wiped his fingers on his vest. “There’s hard
news, m’lords, and a cruel way to pay you for your meat and
mead, but the man as asks the question must bear the answer.
Stark’s gone.”
One of the other men said, “The Old Bear sent him out to
look for Waymar Royce, and he’s late returning, my
lord.”
“Too long,” Yoren said. “Most like he’s
dead.”
“My uncle is not dead,” Robb Stark said loudly,
anger in his tones. He rose from the bench and laid his hand on the
hilt of his sword. “Do you hear me? My uncle is not
dead!” His voice rang against the stone walls, and Bran was
suddenly afraid.
Old sour-smelling Yoren looked up at Robb, unimpressed.
“Whatever you say, m’lord,” he said. He sucked at
a piece of meat between his teeth.
The youngest of the black brothers shifted uncomfortably in his
seat. “There’s not a man on the Wall knows the haunted
forest better than Benjen Stark. He’ll find his way
back.”
“Well,” said Yoren, “maybe he will and maybe
he won’t. Good men have gone into those woods before, and
never come out.”
All Bran could think of was Old Nan’s story of the Others
and the last hero, hounded through the white woods by dead men and
spiders big as hounds. He was afraid for a moment, until he
remembered how that story ended. “The children will help
him,” he blurted, “the children of the
forest!”
Theon Greyjoy sniggered, and Maester Luwin said, “Bran,
the children of the forest have been dead and gone for thousands of
years. All that is left of them are the faces in the
trees.”
“Down here, might be that’s true, Maester,”
Yoren said, “but up past the Wall, who’s to say? Up
there, a man can’t always tell what’s alive and
what’s dead.”
That night, after the plates had been cleared, Robb carried Bran
up to bed himself. Grey Wind led the way, and Summer came close
behind. His brother was strong for his age, and Bran was as light
as a bundle of rags, but the stairs were steep and dark, and Robb
was breathing hard by the time they reached the top.
He put Bran into bed, covered him with blankets, and blew out
the candle. For a time Robb sat beside him in the dark. Bran wanted
to talk to him, but he did not know what to say. “We’ll
find a horse for you, I promise,” Robb whispered at last.
“Are they ever coming back?” Bran asked him.
“Yes,” Robb said with such hope in his voice that
Bran knew he was hearing his brother and not just Robb the Lord.
“Mother will be home soon. Maybe we can ride out to meet her
when she comes. Wouldn’t that surprise her, to see you
ahorse?” Even in the dark room, Bran could feel his
brother’s smile. “And afterward, we’ll ride north
to see the Wall. We won’t even tell Jon we’re coming,
we’ll just be there one day, you and me. It will be an
adventure.”
“An adventure,” Bran repeated wistfully. He heard
his brother sob. The room was so dark he could not see the tears on
Robb’s face, so he reached out and found his hand. Their
fingers twined together.