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

by George R.R. Martin

The King-beyond-the-Wall looked nothing like a king, nor even much a wildling. He was of middling height, slender, sharp-faced, with shrewd brown eyes and long brown hair that had gone mostly to grey. There was no crown on his head, no gold rings on his arms, no jewels at his throat, not even a gleam of silver. He wore wool and leather, and his only garment of note was his ragged black wool cloak, its long tears patched with faded red silk.

Magnar means ‘lord’ in the Old Tongue.”

“Our ferocious chicken-eater here is my loyal Tormund. The woman—”

“As you wish. Jon Snow, before you stands Tormund Giantsbane, Tall-talker, Horn-blower, and Breaker of Ice. And here also Tormund Thunderfist, Husband to Bears, the Mead-king of Ruddy Hall, Speaker to Gods and Father of Hosts.”

“But you said you saw me twice. When was the other time?” “When King Robert came to Winterfell to make your father Hand,” the King-beyond-the-Wall said lightly. Jon’s eyes widened in disbelief. “That can’t be so.” “It was. When your father learned the king was coming, he sent word to his brother Benjen on the Wall, so he might come down for the feast.

All in all I made much better time than Robert, who was traveling with a ponderous great wheelhouse to keep his queen in comfort. A day south of Winterfell I came up on him and fell in with his company. Freeriders and hedge knights are always attaching themselves to royal processions, in hopes of finding service with the king, and my lute gained me easy acceptance.”

“Though once I had eaten at his board I was protected by guest right. The laws of hospitality are as old as the First Men, and sacred as a heart tree.”

Yet even so, as she stood upon the forecastle watching her dragons chase each other across a cloudless blue sky, Daenerys Targaryen was as happy as she could ever remember being.

Once on a voyage to Braavos, as she’d watched the crew wrestle down a great green sail in a rising gale, she had even thought how fine it would be to be a sailor.

Her velaryon heritage coming out

They are my children, she told herself, and if the maegi spoke truly, they are the only children I am ever like to have.

The first time they had done it, she feared that they meant to kill each other, but it was only sport. No sooner would they splash into the sea than they would break apart and rise again, shrieking and hissing, the salt water steaming off them as their wings clawed at the air. Drogon was aloft as well, though not in sight; he would be miles ahead, or miles behind, hunting.

any dog would have out-weighed them; they were all wings and neck and tail, lighter than they looked.

“In the Seven Kingdoms, there are tales of dragons who grew so huge that they could pluck giant krakens from the seas.”

Possible foreshadowing

“It was said that no man ever knew Prince Rhaegar, truly. I had the privilege of seeing him in tourney, though, and often heard him play his harp with its silver strings.”

Young Lord Connington was dear to the prince as well, but his oldest friend was Arthur Dayne.”

A man will win one tourney, and fall quickly in the next. A slick spot in the grass may mean defeat, or what you ate for supper the night before.

“Or a lady’s favor knotted round an arm.” Mormont’s face darkened. “Be careful what you say, old man.”

He had won the lady too; Lynesse of House Hightower, his second wife, highborn and beautiful … but she had ruined him, and abandoned him, and the memory of her was bitter to him now.

“As a young boy, the Prince of Dragonstone was bookish to a fault. He was reading so early that men said Queen Rhaella must have swallowed some books and a candle whilst he was in her womb. Rhaegar took no interest in the play of other children. The maesters were awed by his wits, but his father’s knights would jest sourly that Baelor the Blessed had been born again.

Prince Rhaegar found something in his scrolls that changed him.

“The highborn and the low, the strong and the weak, the noble and the venal. One voice may speak you false, but in many there is always truth to be found.”

She tried to imagine what it would feel like, when she first caught sight of the land she was born to rule. It will be as fair a shore as I have ever seen, I know it. How could it be otherwise?

Irri had been sleeping at the foot of her bunk (it was too narrow for three, and tonight was Jhiqui’s turn to share the soft featherbed with her khaleesi),

“Stop that, Rhaegal,” Dany said in annoyance, giving his head a swat. “You had the last one. I’ll have no greedy dragons.”

Viserion and Rhaegal began to snap and claw at each other.

“It seems to me that a queen who trusts no one is as foolish as a queen who trusts everyone.

Am I to conquer Westeros with one exile knight and three Dothraki bloodriders?”

Dany was not certain she liked the sound of that at all. Everything she’d ever heard of the flesh marts in the great slave cities of Yunkai, Meereen, and Astapor was dire and frightening. “What is there for me in Slaver’s Bay?”

In Astapor you can buy Unsullied.”

Three Thousand of Qohor?”

The Unsullied locked their shields, lowered their spears, and stood firm.

Roman testudo formation

Thrice Temmo sent his archers wheeling past and arrows fell like rain upon the Three Thousand, but the Unsullied merely lifted their shields

Ser Jorah slid his arms around her.

“Oh,” was all Dany had time to say as he pulled her close and pressed his lips down on hers. He smelled of sweat and salt and leather, and the iron studs on his jerkin dug into her naked breasts as he crushed her hard against him.

He should not be doing this. I am his queen, not his woman.

“You … you should not have …”

“I should have kissed you in Qarth, in Vaes Tolorru. I should have kissed you in the red waste, every night and every day. You were made to be kissed, often and well.” His eyes were on her breasts.

STAY AWAY FROM HER

And I tell you truly, Daenerys, there is no man in all the world who will ever be half so true to you as me.”

He could not smell them, nor hear their howls by night, yet he felt their presence at his back … all but the sister they had lost.

Four now, not five. Four and one more, the white who has no voice.

No, he thought. No, I won’t. It was a boy’s thought, not a direwolf’s. The woods were darkening all about him, until only the shadows of the trees remained, and the glow of his cousins’ eyes.

“Bran,” he said sullenly. Bran the Broken. “Brandon Stark.” The cripple boy. “The Prince of Winterfell.” Of Winterfell burned and tumbled, its people scattered and slain. The glass gardens were smashed, and hot water gushed from the cracked walls to steam beneath the sun. How can you be the prince of someplace you might never see again?

A warg cannot live on what his beast consumes.”

Except he dreamed me dead, and I’m not.

“I’m only nine. I’ll be better when I’m older. Even Florian the Fool and Prince Aemon the Dragonknight weren’t great knights when they were nine.”

“I dreamed of a winged wolf bound to earth by chains of stone, and came to Winterfell to free him. The chains are off you now, yet still you do not fly.”

She has broken him, as a man breaks a horse. She would ride him to power if she could, and for that she gave my sons to the fire. I will cut the living heart from her breast and see how it burns.

Davos was reminded of Patchface, Princess Shireen’s lackwit fool. He had gone into the sea as well, and when he came out he was mad. Am I mad as well?

Since the battle, he sees no one, but broods in his Stone Drum. Queen Selyse keeps court for him with her uncle the Lord Alester, who is naming himself the Hand.

“Queer talking I have heard, of hungry fires within the mountain, and how Stannis and the red woman go down together to watch the flames. There are shafts, they say, and secret stairs down into the mountain’s heart, into hot places where only she may walk unburned. It is enough and more to give an old man such terrors that sometimes he can scarcely find the strength to eat.”