A Feast for Dragons

by George R. R. Martin

  “I am. You are going to the stables, by the east gate. Ask the stableman if there’s an inn where we can spend the night.”

  “I will, ser. My lady.” Podrick stared at the ground as they went, kicking stones from time to time. “Do you know where it is? The Goose? The Stinking Goose, I mean.”

  “No.”

  “He said he’d show us. That knight. Ser Kyle.”

  “Hyle.”

  “Hyle. What did he do to you, ser? I mean, my lady.”

  The boy may be a stumbletongue, but he’s not stupid. “At Highgarden, when King Renly called his banners, some men played a game with me. Ser Hyle was one of them. It was a cruel game, hurtful and unchivalrous.” She stopped. “The east gate is that way. Wait for me there.”

  “As you say, my lady. Ser.”

  No sign marked the Stinking Goose. It took her most of an hour to find it, down a flight of wooden steps beneath a knacker’s barn. The cellar was dim and the ceiling low, and Brienne thumped her head on a beam as she entered. No geese were in evidence. A few stools were scattered about, and a bench had been shoved up against one earthen wall. The tables were old wine casks, grey and wormholed. The promised stink pervaded everything. Mostly it was wine and damp and mildew, her nose told her, but there was a little of the privy too, and something of the lichyard.

  The only drinkers were three Tyroshi seamen in a corner, growling at each other through green and purple beards. They gave her a brief inspection, and one said something that made the others laugh. The proprietor stood behind a plank that had been placed across two barrels. She was a woman, round and pale and balding, with huge soft breasts swaying beneath a soiled smock. She looked as though the gods had made her out of uncooked dough.

  Brienne did not dare to ask for water here. She bought a cup of wine and said, “I am looking for a man called Nimble Dick.”

  “Dick Crabb. Comes in most every night.” The woman eyed Brienne’s mail and sword. “If you’re going to cut him, do it somewheres else. We don’t want no trouble with Lord Tarly.”

  “I want to talk with him. Why would I do him harm?”

  The woman shrugged.

  “If you would nod when he comes in I’d be thankful.”

  “How thankful?”

  Brienne put a copper star on the plank between them and found a place in the shadows with a good view of the steps.

  She tried the wine. It was oily on the tongue and there was a hair floating in it. A hair as slender as my hopes of finding Sansa, she thought as she plucked it out. Chasing after Ser Dontos had been fruitless, and with Lady Lysa dead the Vale no longer seemed a likely refuge. Where are you, Lady Sansa? Did you run home to Winterfell, or are you with your husband, as Podrick seems to think? Brienne did not want to chase the girl across the narrow sea, where even the language would be strange to her. I will be even more a freak there, grunting and gesturing to make myself understood. They will laugh at me, as they laughed at Highgarden. A blush stole up her cheeks as she remembered.

  When Renly donned his crown, the Maid of Tarth had ridden all the way across the Reach to join him. The king himself had greeted her courteously and welcomed her to his service. Not so his lords and knights. Brienne had not expected a warm welcome. She was prepared for coldness, for mockery, for hostility. She had supped upon such meat before. It was not the scorn of the many that left her confused and vulnerable, but the kindness of the few. The Maid of Tarth had been betrothed three times, but she had never been courted until she came to Highgarden.

  Big Ben Bushy was the first, one of the few men in Renly’s camp who overtopped her. He sent his squire to her to clean her mail, and made her a gift of a silver drinking horn. Ser Edmund Ambrose went him one better, bringing flowers and asking her to ride with him. Ser Hyle Hunt outdid them both. He gave her a book, beautifully illuminated and filled with a hundred tales of knightly valor. He brought apples and carrots for her horses, and a blue silk plume for her helm. He told her the gossip of the camp and said clever, cutting things that made her smile. He even trained with her one day, which meant more than all the rest.

  She thought it was because of him that the others started being courteous. More than courteous. At table men fought for the place beside her, offering to fill her wine cup or fetch her sweetbreads. Ser Richard Farrow played love songs on his lute outside her pavilion. Ser Hugh Beesbury brought her a pot of honey “as sweet as the maids of Tarth.” Ser Mark Mullendore made her laugh with the antics of his monkey, a curious little black-and-white creature from the SummerIslands. A hedge knight called Will the Stork offered to rub the knots from her shoulders.

  Brienne refused him. She refused them all. When Ser Owen Inchfield seized her one night and pressed a kiss upon her, she knocked him arse-backwards into a cookfire. Afterward she looked at herself in a glass. Her face was as broad and bucktoothed and freckled as ever, big-lipped, thick of jaw, so ugly. All she wanted was to be a knight and serve King Renly, yet now . . .

  It was not as if she were the only woman there. Even the camp followers were prettier than she was, and up in the castle Lord Tyrell feasted King Renly every night, whilst highborn maids and lovely ladies danced to the music of pipe and horn and harp. Why are you being kind to me? she wanted to scream, every time some strange knight paid her a compliment. What do you want?

  Randyll Tarly solved the mystery the day he sent two of his men-at-arms to summon her to his pavilion. His young son Dickon had overheard four knights laughing as they saddled up their horses, and had told his lord father what they said.

  They had a wager.

  Three of the younger knights had started it, he told her: Ambrose, Bushy, and Hyle Hunt, of his own household. As word spread through the camp, however, others had joined the game. Each man was required to buy into the contest with a golden dragon, the whole sum to go to whoever claimed her maidenhead.

  “I have put an end to their sport,” Tarly told her. “Some of these . . . challengers . . . are less honorable than others, and the stakes were growing larger every day. It was only a matter of time before one of them decided to claim the prize by force.”

  “They were knights,” she said, stunned, “anointed knights.”

  “And honorable men. The blame is yours.”

  The accusation made her flinch. “I would never . . . my lord, I did nought to encourage them.”

  “Your being here encouraged them. If a woman will behave like a camp follower, she cannot object to being treated like one. A war host is no place for a maiden. If you have any regard for your virtue or the honor of your House, you will take off that mail, return home, and beg your father to find a husband for you.”

  “I came to fight,” she insisted. “To be a knight.”

  “The gods made men to fight, and women to bear children,” said Randyll Tarly. “A woman’s war is in the birthing bed.”

  Someone was coming down the cellar steps. Brienne pushed her wine aside as a ragged, scrawny, sharp-faced man with dirty brown hair stepped into the Goose. He gave the Tyroshi sailors a quick look and Brienne a longer one, then went up to the plank. “Wine,” he said, “and none o’ your horse piss in it, thank’e.”

  The woman gave Brienne a look and nodded.

  “I’ll buy your wine,” she called out, “for a word.”

  The man looked her over, his eyes wary. “A word? I know a lot o’ words.” He sat down on the stool across from her. “Tell me which m’lady wants t’ hear, and Nimble Dick will say it.”

  “I heard you fooled a fool.”

  The ragged man sipped his wine, thinking. “Mighten be I did. Or not.” He wore a faded, torn doublet from which some lord’s badge had been ripped. “Who is it wants t’ know?”

  “King Robert.” She put a silver stag on the barrel between them. Robert’s head was on one side, the stag on the other.

  “Does he now?” The man took the coin and spun it, smiling. “I like to see a king dance, hey-nonny hey-nonny hey-nonny-ho. Mighten be I saw this fool of
yours.”

  “Was there a girl with him?”

  “Two girls,” he said at once.

  “Two girls?” Could the other one be Arya?

  “Well,” the man said, “I never seen the little sweets, mind you, but he was wanting passage for three.”

  “Passage where?”

  “T’other side o’ the sea, as I recall.”

  “Do you remember what he looked like?”

  “A fool.” He snatched the spinning coin off the table as it began to slow, and made it vanish. “A frightened fool.”

  “Frightened why?”

  He shrugged. “He never said, but old Nimble Dick knows the smell o’ fear. He come here most every night, buying drinks for sailors, making japes, singing little songs. Only one night some men come in with that hunter on their teats, and your fool went white as milk and got quiet till they left.” He edged his stool closer to hers. “That Tarly’s got soldiers crawling over the docks, watching every ship that comes or goes. Man wants a deer, he goes t’ the woods. He wants a ship, he goes t’ the docks. Your fool didn’t dare. So I offered him some help.”

  “What sort of help?”

  “The sort that costs more than one silver stag.”

  “Tell me, and you’ll have another.”

  “Let’s see it,” he said. She put another stag on the barrel. He spun it, smiled, scooped it up. “A man who can’t go t’ the ships need for the ships t’ come t’ him. I told him I knew a place where that might happen. A hidden place, like.”

  Gooseprickles rose along Brienne’s arms. “A smugglers’ cove. You sent the fool to smugglers.”

  “Him and them two girls.” He chuckled. “Only thing, well, the place I sent them, been no ships there for a while. Thirty years, say.” He scratched his nose. “What’s this fool to you?”

  “Those two girls are my sisters.”

  “Are they, now? Poor little things. Had a sister once meself. Skinny girl with knobby knees, but then she grew a pair o’ teats and a knight’s son got between her legs. Last I saw her she was off for King’s Landing t’ make a living on her back.”

  “Where did you send them?”

  Another shrug. “As t’ that, I can’t recall.”

  “Where?” Brienne slapped another silver stag down.

  He flicked the coin back at her with his forefinger. “Someplace no stag ever found . . . though a dragon might.”

  Silver would not get the truth from him, she sensed. Gold might, or it might not. Steel would be more certain. Brienne touched her dagger, then reached into her purse instead. She found a golden dragon and put in on the barrel. “Where?”

  The ragged man snatched up the coin and bit it. “Sweet. Puts me in mind o’ Crackclaw Point. Up north o’ here, ’tis a wild land o’ hills and bogs, but it happens I was born and bred there. Dick Crabb, I’m named, though most call me Nimble Dick.”

  She did not offer her own name. “Where in Crackclaw Point?”

  “The Whispers. You heard o’ Clarence Crabb, o’ course.”

  “No.”

  That seemed to surprise him. “Ser Clarence Crabb, I said. I got his blood in me. He was eight foot tall, and so strong he could uproot pine trees with one hand and chuck them half a mile. No horse could bear his weight, so he rode an aurochs.”

  “What does he have to do with this smugglers’ cove?”

  “His wife was a woods witch. Whenever Ser Clarence killed a man, he’d fetch his head back home and his wife would kiss it on the lips and bring it back t’ life. Lords, they were, and wizards, and famous knights and pirates. One was king o’ Duskendale. They gave old Crabb good counsel. Being they was just heads, they couldn’t talk real loud, but they never shut up neither. When you’re a head, talking’s all you got to pass the day. So Crabb’s keep got named the Whispers. Still is, though it’s been a ruin for a thousand years. A lonely place, the Whispers.” The man walked the coin deftly across his knuckles. “One dragon by hisself gets lonely. Ten, now . . .”

  “Ten dragons are a fortune. Do you take me for a fool?”

  “No, but I can take you to one.” The coin danced one way, and back the other. “Take you to the Whispers, m’lady.”

  Brienne did not like the way his fingers played with that gold coin. Still . . . “Six dragons if we find my sister. Two if we only find the fool. Nothing if nothing is what we find.”

  Crabb shrugged. “Six is good. Six will serve.”

  Too quick. She caught his wrist before he could tuck the gold away. “Do not play me false. You’ll not find me easy meat.”

  When she let go, Crabb rubbed his wrist. “Bloody piss,” he muttered. “You hurt my hand.”

  “I am sorry for that. My sister is a girl of three-and-ten. I need to find her before—”

  “—before some knight gets in her slit. Aye, I hear you. She’s good as saved. Nimble Dick is with you now. Meet me by east gate at first light. I need t’ see this man about a horse.”

  * * *

  DAVOS

  The Merry Midwife stole into White Harbor on the evening tide, her patched sail rippling with every gust of wind.

  She was an old cog, and even in her youth no one had ever called her pretty. Her figurehead showed a laughing woman holding an infant by one foot, but the woman’s cheeks and the babe’s bottom were both pocked by wormholes. Uncounted layers of drab brown paint covered her hull; her sails were grey and tattered. She was not a ship to draw a second glance, unless it was to wonder how she stayed afloat. The Merry Midwife was known in White Harbor too. For years she had plied a humble trade between there and Sisterton.

  It was not the sort of arrival that Davos Seaworth had anticipated when he’d set sail with Salla and his fleet. All this had seemed simpler then. The ravens had not brought King Stannis the allegiance of White Harbor, so His Grace would send an envoy to treat with Lord Manderly in person. As a show of strength, Davos would arrive aboard Salla’s galleas Valyrian, with the rest of the Lysene fleet behind her. Every hull was striped: black and yellow, pink and blue, green and white, purple and gold. The Lyseni loved bright hues, and Salladhor Saan was the most colorful of all. Salladhor the Splendid, Davos thought, but the storms wrote an end to all of that.

  Instead he would smuggle himself into the city, as he might have done twenty years before. Until he knew how matters stood here, it was more prudent to play the common sailor, not the lord.

  White Harbor’s walls of whitewashed stone rose before them, on the eastern shore where the White Knife plunged into the firth. Some of the city’s defenses had been strengthened since the last time Davos had been here, half a dozen years before. The jetty that divided the inner and outer harbors had been fortified with a long stone wall, thirty feet tall and almost a mile long, with towers every hundred yards. There was smoke rising from Seal Rock as well, where once there had been only ruins. That could be good or bad, depending on what side Lord Wyman chooses.

  Davos had always been fond of this city, since first he’d come here as a cabin boy on Cobblecat. Though small compared to Oldtown and King’s Landing, it was clean and well-ordered, with wide straight cobbled streets that made it easy for a man to find his way. The houses were built of whitewashed stone, with steeply pitched roofs of dark grey slate. Roro Uhoris, the Cobblecat’s cranky old master, used to claim that he could tell one port from another just by the way they smelled. Cities were like women, he insisted; each one had its own unique scent. Oldtown was as flowery as a perfumed dowager. Lannisport was a milkmaid, fresh and earthy, with woodsmoke in her hair. King’s Landing reeked like some unwashed whore. But White Harbor’s scent was sharp and salty, and a little fishy too. “She smells the way a mermaid ought to smell,” Roro said. “She smells of the sea.”

  She still does, thought Davos, but he could smell the peat smoke drifting off Seal Rock too. The sea stone dominated the approaches to the outer harbor, a massive grey-green upthrust looming fifty feet above the waters. Its top was crowned with a circle of weathered stone
s, a ringfort of the First Men that had stood desolate and abandoned for hundreds of years. It was not abandoned now. Davos could see scorpions and spitfires behind the standing stones, and crossbowmen peering between them. It must be cold up there, and wet. On all his previous visits, seals could be seen basking on the broken rocks below. The Blind Bastard always made him count them whenever the Cobblecat set sail from White Harbor; the more seals there were, Roro said, the more luck they would have on their voyage. There were no seals now. The smoke and the soldiers had frightened them away. A wiser man would see a caution in that. If I had a thimble full of sense, I would have gone with Salla. He could have made his way back south, to Marya and their sons. I have lost four sons in the king’s service, and my fifth serves as his squire. I should have the right to cherish the two boys who still remain. It has been too long since I saw them.

  At Eastwatch, the black brothers told him there was no love between the Manderlys of White Harbor and the Boltons of the Dreadfort. The Iron Throne had raised Roose Bolton up to Warden of the North, so it stood to reason that Wyman Manderly should declare for Stannis. White Harbor cannot stand alone. The city needs an ally, a protector. Lord Wyman needs King Stannis as much as Stannis needs him. Or so it seemed at Eastwatch.

  Sisterton had undermined those hopes. If Lord Borrell told it true, if the Manderlys meant to join their strength to the Boltons and the Freys … no, he would not dwell on that. He would know the truth soon enough. He prayed he had not come too late.

  That jetty wall conceals the inner harbor, he realized, as the Merry Midwife was pulling down her sail. The outer harbor was larger, but the inner harbor offered better anchorage, sheltered by the city wall on one side and the looming mass of the Wolf’s Den on another, and now by the jetty wall as well. At Eastwatch-by-the-Sea, Cotter Pyke told Davos that Lord Wyman was building war galleys. There could have been a score of ships concealed behind those walls, waiting only a command to put to sea.

  Behind the city’s thick white walls, the New Castle rose proud and pale upon its hill. Davos could see the domed roof of the Sept of the Snows as well, surmounted by tall statues of the Seven. The Manderlys had brought the Faith north with them when they were driven from the Reach. White Harbor had its godswood too, a brooding tangle of root and branch and stone locked away behind the crumbling black walls of the Wolf’s Den, an ancient fortress that served only as a prison now. But for the most part the septons ruled here.