A Storm of Swords (A Song of Ice and Fire, #3)

by George R.R. Martin

“Why do we have to kill the Old Bear? Why don’t we just go off and let him be?”

The snow’s taken it all from me … the bloody snow… Snow had ruined him once before. Snow and his pet pig.

He amused himself by picturing her in one of Cersei’s silken gowns in place of her studded leather jerkin. As well dress a cow in silk as this one.

Beneath her roughspun brown breeches were calves like cords of wood, and the long muscles of her arms stretched and tightened with each stroke of the oars. Even after rowing half the night, she showed no signs of tiring, which was more than could be said for his cousin Ser Cleos, laboring on the other oar.

yet she speaks like one highborn and wears longsword and dagger. Ah, ...

Tyrion is going to laugh himself sick when he hears how I slept through my own escape.

“You’ll wear your chains, Kingslayer.” “You figure to row all the way to King’s Landing, wench?” “You will call me Brienne. Not wench.” “My name is Ser Jaime. Not Kingslayer.”

I wonder what the High Septon would have to say about the sanctity of oaths sworn while dead drunk, chained to a wall, with a sword pressed to your chest?

the gods he claimed to serve.

Innocent? The wretched boy was spying on us.

Though behind my back they speak freely enough, I have no doubt.

If truth be told, Jaime had come to rue heaving Brandon Stark out that window. Cersei had given him no end of grief afterward, when the boy refused to die. “He was seven, Jaime,” she’d berated him. “Even if he understood what he saw, we should have been able to frighten him into silence.”

“If he wakes we’ll say he was dreaming, we’ll call him a liar, and should worse come to worst I’ll kill Ned Stark.”

If she wanted him dead she would have sent me. And it is not like her to chose a catspaw who would make such a royal botch of the killing.

“Cleos, it seems I must ask you to shave me. Leave the beard, but take the hair off my head.” “You’d be shaved bald?” asked Cleos Frey. “The realm knows Jaime Lannister as a beardless knight with long golden hair. A bald man with a filthy yellow beard may pass unnoticed.

Not only was he bald, but he looked as though he had aged five years

I don’t look as much like Cersei this way. She’ll hate that.

When Jaime complimented her on her knowledge of the river, she looked at him suspiciously and said, “I do not know the river. Tarth is an island. I learned to manage oars and sail before I ever sat a horse.”

“They Lay With Lions,” he read. “Oh, yes, woman, this was most unchivalrously done … but by your side, not mine. I wonder who they were, these women?”

“The girls pleasured some of my lord father’s soldiers, it would seem. Perhaps served them food and drink. That’s how they earned their traitors’ collars, with a kiss and a cup of ale.”

“This is Bracken land.

“We have graves to dig.”

Jaime Lannister had never been afraid of death.

Jaime watched her eyes. Pretty eyes, he thought, and calm. He knew how to read a man’s eyes. He knew what fear looked like. She is determined, not desperate.

“I was not born this morning, Lannister.” “No, but you’re like to die this afternoon.”

The archers could scarcely have missed, but as they pulled on their longbows a rain of pebbles cascaded down around them. Small stones rattled on their deck, bounced off their helms, and made splashes on both sides of the bow.

The stone tumbled through the air, struck the face of the cliff, cracked in two, and smashed down on them. The larger piece snapped the mast, tore through the sail, sent two of the archers flying into the river, and crushed the leg of a rower as he bent over his oar. The rapidity with which the galley began to fill with water suggested that the smaller fragment had punched right through her hull.

Thankfully, Jaime still had his oar. One good swing when she comes paddling up and I’ll be free of her. Instead he found himself stretching the oar out over the water. Brienne grabbed hold, and Jaime pulled her in.

“I want none of your thanks, Kingslayer. I swore an oath to bring you safe to King’s Landing.” “And you actually mean to keep it?” Jaime gave her his brightest smile. “Now there’s a wonder.”

“I understood what I was doing and knew it was treasonous. If you fail to punish me, men will believe that we connived together to free Jaime Lannister. It was mine own act and mine alone, and I alone must answer for it. Put me in the Kingslayer’s empty irons, and I will wear them proudly, if that is how it must be.”

May the Warrior give strength to your sword arm, Brienne, she prayed. She had done all she could; nothing remained but to hope.

What would you say if you knew my crime, Father? she wondered. Would you have done as I did, if it were Lysa and me in the hands of our enemies? Or would you condemn me too, and call it mother’s madness?

Lysa had gushed happily of the sons she was certain they carried. “Your son will be heir to Winterfell and mine to the Eyrie. Oh, they’ll be the best of friends, like your Ned and Lord Robert. They’ll be more brothers than cousins, truly, I just know it.” She was so happy.

No sooner had Catelyn placed the babe in her sister’s arms than Lysa’s face dissolved into tears. Hurriedly she had thrust the baby back at Catelyn and fled.

If she had lost a child before, that might explain Father’s words, and much else besides … Lysa’s match with Lord Arryn had been hastily arranged, and Jon was an old man even then, older than their father. An old man without an heir.

“You made him take her,” she whispered. “Lysa was the price Jon Arryn had to pay for the swords and spears of House Tully.”

Catelyn made her way up the winding stairs to the roof of the keep. Ser Desmond did not forbid me the roof, she told herself as she climbed.

She had made Jaime swear a hundred oaths, but it was his brother’s promise she had pinned her hopes on.

a cupbearer called Nan … or Weasel, or Arry, depending on who you asked.

Smart move

There is death on the road, she told herself, death on all the roads.

Not long after, they came upon three wolves devouring the corpse of a fawn.

Arya looked up at the fleshless dead in their wet rotting clothes and said her own prayer. Ser Gregor, it went, Dunsen, Polliver, Raff the Sweetling. The Tickler and the Hound. Ser Ilyn, Ser Meryn, King Joffrey, Queen Cersei. She ended it with valar morghulis,

It was mushy and overripe, but she ate it worms and all.

Riverrun was painted as a castle tower, in the fork between the flowing blue lines of two rivers, the Tumblestone and the Red Fork.

Gendry knew, but that was different. Gendry had his own secret, though even he didn’t seem to know what it was.

She cupped her hands around her mouth and howled down at them, “Ahooooooooo, ahooooooooo.” When the largest of the wolves lifted its head and howled back, the sound made Arya shiver.

She had been riding as long as she could remember, ponies when she was little and later horses, but Gendry and Hot Pie were city-born, and in the city smallfolk walked.

They were her pack, her friends, the only living friends that remained to her, and if not for her they would still be safe at Harrenhal, Gendry sweating at his forge and Hot Pie in the kitchens.

Arya gave Gendry a sideways look. He said it with me, like Jon used to do, back in Winterfell. She missed Jon Snow the most of all her brothers.

Her dreams were red and savage. The Mummers were in them, four at least, a pale Lyseni and a dark brutal axeman from Ib, the scarred Dothraki horse lord called Iggo and a Dornishman whose name she never knew.