A Feast for Dragons

by George R. R. Martin

  “All that’s true, I don’t doubt,” said Yarwyck, “but it’s not a place I’d want to spend a night. You know the tale.”

  He did. Hardhome had been halfway toward becoming a town, the only true town north of the Wall, until the night six hundred years ago when hell had swallowed it. Its people had been carried off into slavery or slaughtered for meat, depending on which version of the tale you believed, their homes and halls consumed in a conflagration that burned so hot that watchers on the Wall far to the south had thought the sun was rising in the north. Afterward ashes rained down on haunted forest and Shivering Sea alike for almost half a year. Traders reported finding only nightmarish devastation where Hardhome had stood, a landscape of charred trees and burned bones, waters choked with swollen corpses, blood-chilling shrieks echoing from the cave mouths that pocked the great cliff that loomed above the settlement.

  Six centuries had come and gone since that night, but Hardhome was still shunned. The wild had reclaimed the site, Jon had been told, but rangers claimed that the overgrown ruins were haunted by ghouls and demons and burning ghosts with an unhealthy taste for blood. “It is not the sort of refuge I’d chose either,” Jon said, “but Mother Mole was heard to preach that the free folk would find salvation where once they found damnation.”

  Septon Cellador pursed his lips. “Salvation can be found only through the Seven. This witch has doomed them all.”

  “And saved the Wall, mayhaps,” said Bowen Marsh. “These are enemies we speak of. Let them pray amongst the ruins, and if their gods send ships to carry them off to a better world, well and good. In this world I have no food to feed them.”

  Jon flexed the fingers of his sword hand. “Cotter Pyke’s galleys sail past Hardhome from time to time. He tells me there is no shelter there but the caves. The screaming caves, his men call them. Mother Mole and those who followed her will perish there, of cold and starvation. Hundreds of them. Thousands.”

  “Thousands of enemies. Thousands of wildlings.”

  Thousands of people, Jon thought. Men, women, children. Anger rose inside him, but when he spoke his voice was quiet and cold. “Are you so blind, or is it that you do not wish to see? What do you think will happen when all these enemies are dead?”

  Above the door the raven muttered, “Dead, dead, dead.”

  “Let me tell you what will happen,” Jon said. “The dead will rise again, in their hundreds and their thousands. They will rise as wights, with black hands and pale blue eyes, and they will come for us.” He pushed himself to his feet, the fingers of his sword hand opening and closing. “You have my leave to go.”

  Septon Cellador rose grey-faced and sweating, Othell Yarwyck stiffly, Bowen Marsh tight-lipped and pale. “Thank you for your time, Lord Snow.” They left without another word.

  * * *

  TYRION

  The sow had a sweeter temper than some horses he had ridden.

  Patient and sure-footed, she accepted Tyrion with hardly a squeal when he clambered onto her back, and remained motionless as he reached for shield and lance. Yet when he gathered up her reins and pressed his feet into her side, she moved at once. Her name was Pretty, short for Pretty Pig, and she had been trained to saddle and bridle since she was a piglet.

  The painted wooden armor clattered as Pretty trotted across the deck. Tyrion’s armpits were prickly with perspiration, and a bead of sweat was trickling down his scar beneath the oversized, ill-fitting helm, yet for one absurd moment he felt almost like Jaime, riding out onto a tourney field with lance in hand, his golden armor flashing in the sun.

  When the laughter began, the dream dissolved. He was no champion, just a dwarf on a pig clutching a stick, capering for the amusement of some restless rum-soaked sailors in hopes of sweetening their mood. Somewhere down in hell his father was seething and Joffrey was chuckling. Tyrion could feel their cold dead eyes watching this mummer’s face, as avid as the crew of the Selaesori Qhoran.

  And now here came his foe. Penny rode her big grey dog, her striped lance waving drunkenly as the beast bounded across the deck. Her shield and armor had been painted red, though the paint was chipped and fading; his own armor was blue. Not mine. Groat’s. Never mine, I pray.

  Tyrion kicked at Pretty’s haunches to speed her to a charge as the sailors urged him on with hoots and shouts. Whether they were shouting encouragement or mocking him he could not have said for certain, though he had a fair notion. Why did I ever allow myself to be talked into this farce?

  He knew the answer, though. For twelve days now the ship had floated becalmed in the Gulf of Grief. The mood of the crew was ugly, and like to turn uglier when their daily rum ration went dry. There were only so many hours a man could devote to mending sails, caulking leaks, and fishing. Jorah Mormont had heard the muttering about how dwarf luck had failed them. Whilst the ship’s cook still gave Tyrion’s head a rub from time to time, in hopes that it might stir a wind, the rest had taken to giving him venomous looks whenever he crossed their paths. Penny’s lot was even worse, since the cook had put about the notion that squeezing a dwarf girl’s breast might be just the thing to win their luck back. He had also started referring to Pretty Pig as Bacon, a jape that had seemed much funnier when Tyrion had made it.

  “We have to make them laugh,” Penny had said, pleading. “We have to make them like us. If we give them a show, it will help them forget. Please, m’lord.” And somehow, somewise, someway he had consented. It must have been the rum. The captain’s wine had been the first thing to run out. You could get drunk much quicker on rum than on wine, Tyrion Lannister had discovered.

  So he found himself clad in Groat’s painted wooden armor, astride Groat’s sow, whilst Groat’s sister instructed him in the finer points of the mummer’s joust that had been their bread and salt. It had a certain delicious irony to it, considering that Tyrion had almost lost his head once by refusing to mount the dog for his nephew’s twisted amusement. Yet somehow he found it difficult to appreciate the humor of it all from sowback.

  Penny’s lance descended just in time for its blunted point to brush his shoulder; his own lance wobbled as he brought it down and banged it noisily off a corner of her shield. She kept her seat. He lost his. But then, he was supposed to.

  Easy as falling off a pig … though falling off this particular pig was harder than it looked. Tyrion curled into a ball as he dropped, remembering his lesson, but even so, he hit the deck with a solid thump and bit his tongue so hard he tasted blood. He felt as if he were twelve again, cartwheeling across the supper table in Casterly Rock’s great hall. Back then his uncle Gerion had been on hand to praise his efforts, in place of surly sailors. Their laughter seemed sparse and strained compared to the great gales that had greeted Groat’s and Penny’s antics at Joffrey’s wedding feast, and some hissed at him in anger. “No-Nose, you ride same way you look, ugly,” one man shouted from the sterncastle. “Must have no balls, let girl beat you.” He wagered coin on me, Tyrion decided. He let the insult wash right over him. He had heard worse in his time.

  The wooden armor made rising awkward. He found himself flailing like a turtle on its back. That, at least, set a few of the sailors to laughing. A shame I did not break my leg, that would have left them howling. And if they had been in that privy when I shot my father through the bowels, they might have laughed hard enough to shit their breeches right along with him. But anything to keep the bloody bastards sweet.

  Jorah Mormont finally took pity on Tyrion’s struggles and pulled him to his feet. “You looked a fool.”

  That was the intent. “It is hard to look a hero when mounted on a pig.”

  “That must be why I stay off pigs.”

  Tyrion unbuckled his helm, twisted it off, and spat a gobbet of bloody pink phlegm over the side. “It feels as though I bit through half my tongue.”

  “Next time bite harder.” Ser Jorah shrugged. “Truth be told, I’ve seen worse jousters.”

  Was that praise? “I fell off the bloody pig and
bit my tongue. What could possibly be worse than that?”

  “Getting a splinter through your eye and dying.”

  Penny had vaulted off her dog, a big grey brute called Crunch. “The thing is not to joust well, Hugor.” She was always careful to call him Hugor where anyone might hear. “The thing is to make them laugh and throw coins.”

  Poor payment for the blood and bruises, Tyrion thought, but he kept that to himself as well. “We failed at that as well. No one threw coins.” Not a penny, not a groat.

  “They will when we get better.” Penny pulled off her helm. Mouse-brown hair spilled down to her ears. Her eyes were brown too, beneath a heavy shelf of brow, her cheeks smooth and flushed. She pulled some acorns from a leather bag for Pretty Pig. The sow ate them from her hand, squealing happily. “When we perform for Queen Daenerys the silver will rain down, you’ll see.”

  Some of the sailors were shouting at them and slamming their heels against the deck, demanding another tilt. The ship’s cook was the loudest, as always. Tyrion had learned to despise that man, even if he was the only half-decent cyvasse player on the cog. “You see, they liked us,” Penny said, with a hopeful little smile. “Shall we go again, Hugor?”

  He was on the point of refusing when a shout from one of the mates spared him the necessity. It was midmorning, and the captain wanted the boats out again. The cog’s huge striped sail hung limply from her mast, as it had for days, but he was hopeful that they could find a wind somewhere to the north. That meant rowing. The boats were small, however, and the cog was large; towing it was hot, sweaty, exhausting work that left the hands blistered and the back aching, and accomplished nothing. The crew hated it. Tyrion could not blame them. “The widow should have put us on a galley,” he muttered sourly. “If someone could help me out of these bloody planks, I would be grateful. I think I may have a splinter through my crotch.”

  Mormont did the duty, albeit with poor grace. Penny collected her dog and pig and led them both below. “You might want to tell your lady to keep her door closed and barred when she’s inside,” Ser Jorah said as he was undoing the buckles on the straps that joined the wooden breastplate to the backplate. “I’m hearing too much talk about ribs and hams and bacon.”

  “That pig is half her livelihood.”

  “A Ghiscari crew would eat the dog as well.” Mormont pulled the breastplate and backplate apart. “Just tell her.”

  “As you wish.” His tunic was soaked with sweat and clinging to his chest. Tyrion plucked at it, wishing for a bit of breeze. The wooden armor was as hot and heavy as it was uncomfortable. Half of it looked to be old paint, layer on layer on layer of it, from a hundred past repaintings. At Joffrey’s wedding feast, he recalled, one rider had displayed the direwolf of Robb Stark, the other the arms and colors of Stannis Baratheon. “We will need both animals if we’re to tilt for Queen Daenerys,” he said. If the sailors took it in their heads to butcher Pretty Pig, neither he nor Penny could hope to stop them … but Ser Jorah’s longsword might give them pause, at least.

  “Is that how you hope to keep your head, Imp?”

  “Ser Imp, if you please. And yes. Once Her Grace knows my true worth, she’ll cherish me. I am a lovable little fellow, after all, and I know many useful things about my kin. But until such time I had best keep her amused.”

  “Caper as you like, it won’t wash out your crimes. Daenerys Targaryen is no silly child to be diverted by japes and tumbles. She will deal with you justly.”

  Oh, I hope not. Tyrion studied Mormont with his mismatched eyes. “And how will she welcome you, this just queen? A warm embrace, a girlish titter, a headsman’s axe?” He grinned at the knight’s obvious discomfit. “Did you truly expect me to believe you were about the queen’s business in that whorehouse? Defending her from half a world away? Or could it be that you were running, that your dragon queen sent you from her side? But why would she … oh, wait, you were spying on her.” Tyrion made a clucking sound. “You hope to buy your way back into her favor by presenting her with me. An ill-considered scheme, I’d say. One might even say an act of drunken desperation. Perhaps if I were Jaime … but Jaime killed her father, I only killed my own. You think Daenerys will execute me and pardon you, but the reverse is just as likely. Maybe you should hop up on that pig, Ser Jorah. Put on a suit of iron motley, like Florian the—”

  The blow the big knight gave him cracked his head around and knocked him sideways, so hard that his head bounced off the deck. Blood filled his mouth as he staggered back onto one knee. He spat out a broken tooth. Growing prettier every day, but I do believe I poked a wound. “Did the dwarf say something to offend you, ser?” Tyrion asked innocently, wiping bubbles of blood off his broken lip with the back of his hand.

  “I am sick of your mouth, dwarf,” said Mormont. “You still have a few teeth left. If you want to keep them, stay away from me for the rest of this voyage.”

  “That could be difficult. We share a cabin.”

  “You can find somewhere else to sleep. Down in the hold, up on deck, it makes no matter. Just keep out of my sight.”

  Tyrion pulled himself back to his feet. “As you wish,” he answered, through a mouthful of blood, but the big knight was already gone, his boots pounding on the deckboards.

  Below, in the galley, Tyrion was rinsing out his mouth with rum and water and wincing at the sting when Penny found him. “I heard what happened. Oh, are you hurt?”

  He shrugged. “A bit of blood and a broken tooth.” But I believe I hurt him more. “And him a knight. Sad to say, I would not count on Ser Jorah should we need protection.”

  “What did you do? Oh, your lip is bleeding.” She slipped a square from her sleeve and dabbed at it. “What did you say?”

  “A few truths Ser Bezoar did not care to hear.”

  “You mustn’t mock him. Don’t you know anything? You can’t talk that way to a big person. They can hurt you. Ser Jorah could have tossed you in the sea. The sailors would have laughed to see you drown. You have to be careful around big people. Be jolly and playful with them, keep them smiling, make them laugh, that’s what my father always said. Didn’t your father ever tell you how to act with big people?”

  “My father called them smallfolk,” said Tyrion, “and he was not what you’d call a jolly man.” He took another sip of watered rum, sloshed it around his mouth, spat it out. “Still, I take your point. I have a deal to learn about being a dwarf. Perhaps you will be good enough to teach me, in between the jousting and the pig-riding.”

  “I will, m’lord. Gladly. But … what were these truths? Why did Ser Jorah hit you so hard?”

  “Why, for love. The same reason that I stewed that singer.” He thought of Shae and the look in her eyes as he tightened the chain about her throat, twisting it in his fist. A chain of golden hands. For hands of gold are always gold, but a woman’s hands are warm. “Are you a maid, Penny?”

  She blushed. “Yes. Of course. Who would have—”

  “Stay that way. Love is madness, and lust is poison. Keep your maidenhead. You’ll be happier for it, and you’re less like to find yourself in some dingy brothel on the Rhoyne with a whore who looks a bit like your lost love.” Or chasing across half the world, hoping to find wherever whores go. “Ser Jorah dreams of rescuing his dragon queen and basking in her gratitude, but I know a thing or two about the gratitude of kings, and I’d sooner have a palace in Valyria.” He broke off suddenly. “Did you feel that? The ship moved.”

  “It did.” Penny’s face lit up with joy. “We’re moving again. The wind …” She rushed to the door. “I want to see. Come, I’ll race you up.” Off she went.

  She is young, Tyrion had to remind himself, as Penny scrambled from the galley and up the steep wooden steps as fast as her short legs would allow. Almost a child. Still, it tickled him to see her excitement. He followed her topside.

  The sail had come to life again, billowing, emptying, then billowing again, the red stripes on the canvas wriggling like snakes. Sail
ors dashed across the decks and hauled on lines as the mates bellowed orders in the tongue of Old Volantis. The rowers in the ship’s boats had loosed their tow ropes and turned back toward the cog, stroking hard. The wind was blowing from the west, swirling and gusting, clutching at ropes and cloaks like a mischievous child. The Selaesori Qhoran was under way.

  Might be we’ll make Meereen after all, Tyrion thought.

  But when he clambered up the ladder to the sterncastle and looked off from the stern, his smile faltered. Blue sky and blue sea here, but off west … I have never seen a sky that color. A thick band of clouds ran along the horizon. “A bar sinister,” he said to Penny, pointing.

  “What does that mean?” she asked.

  “It means some big bastard is creeping up behind us.”

  He was surprised to find that Moqorro and two of his fiery fingers had joined them on the sterncastle. It was only midday, and the red priest and his men did not normally emerge till dusk. The priest gave him a solemn nod. “There you see it, Hugor Hill. God’s wroth. The Lord of Light will not be mocked.”

  Tyrion had a bad feeling about this. “The widow said this ship would never reach her destination. I took that to mean that once we were out to sea beyond the reach of triarchs, the captain would change course for Meereen. Or perhaps that you would seize the ship with your Fiery Hand and take us to Daenerys. But that isn’t what your high priest saw at all, is it?”

  “No.” Moqorro’s deep voice tolled as solemnly as a funeral bell. “This is what he saw.” The red priest lifted his staff, and inclined its head toward the west.

  Penny was lost. “I don’t understand. What does it mean?”

  “It means we had best get below. Ser Jorah has exiled me from our cabin. Might I hide in yours when the time comes?”

  “Yes,” she said. “You would be … oh …”

  For the better part of three hours they ran before the wind, as the storm grew closer. The western sky went green, then grey, then black. A wall of dark clouds loomed up behind them, churning like a kettle of milk left on the fire too long. Tyrion and Penny watched from the forecastle, huddled by the figurehead and holding hands, careful to stay out of the way of captain and crew.