A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, #1)

by George R.R. Martin

the endless dark wilderness that the southron called the haunted forest had no more terrors for him. Until tonight. Something was different tonight. There was an edge to this darkness that made his hackles rise.

Nine days they had been riding, north and northwest and then north again,

trees rustle like living things.

All day, Will had felt as though something were watching him, something cold and implacable that loved him not. Gared had felt it too.

Ser Waymar Royce was the youngest son of an ancient house with too many heirs. He was a handsome youth of eighteen, grey-eyed and graceful and slender as a knife.

“They couldn’t have froze. Not if the Wall was weeping. It wasn’t cold enough.” Royce nodded. “Bright lad. We’ve had a few light frosts this past week, and a quick flurry of snow now and then, but surely no cold fierce enough to kill eight grown men. Men clad in fur and leather, let me remind you, with shelter near at hand, and the means of making fire.” The knight’s smile was cocksure. “Will, lead us there. I would see these dead men for myself.”

Somewhere off in the wood a wolf howled.

drew his longsword from its sheath. Jewels glittered in its hilt, and the moonlight ran down the shining steel. It was a splendid weapon, castle-forged, and new-made from the look of it.

Ser Waymar Royce gained the ridge. He stood there beside the sentinel, longsword in hand, his cloak billowing behind him as the wind came up, outlined nobly against the stars for all to see.

The Others made no sound.

Pale shapes gliding through the wood. He turned his head, glimpsed a white shadow in the darkness. Then it was gone.

He must have felt them, as Will felt them. There was nothing to see. “Answer me! Why is it so cold?” It was cold.

A shadow emerged from the dark of the wood. It stood in front of Royce. Tall, it was, and gaunt and hard as old bones, with flesh pale as milk. Its armor seemed to change color as it moved; here it was white as new-fallen snow, there black as shadow, everywhere dappled with the deep grey-green of the trees. The patterns ran like moonlight on water with every step it took.

The Other slid forward on silent feet.

In its hand was a longsword like none that Will had ever seen. No human metal had gone into the forging of that blade. It was alive with moonlight, translucent, a shard of crystal so thin that it seemed almost to vanish when seen edge-on. There was a faint blue shimmer to the thing, a ghost-light that played around its edges, and somehow Will knew it was sharper than any razor.

The Other halted. Will saw its eyes; blue, deeper and bluer than any human eyes, a blue that burned like ice.

They emerged silently from the shadows, twins to the first. Three of them … four … five …

Behind him, to right, to left, all around him, the watchers stood patient, faceless, silent, the shifting patterns of their delicate armor making them all but invisible in the wood. Yet they made no move to interfere.

Then Royce’s parry came a beat too late. The pale sword bit through the ringmail beneath his arm. The young lord cried out in pain. Blood welled between the rings. It steamed in the cold, and the droplets seemed red as fire where they touched the snow. Ser Waymar’s fingers brushed his side. His moleskin glove came away soaked with red. The Other said something in a language that Will did not know; his voice was like the cracking of ice on a winter lake, and the words were mocking.

He found what was left of the sword a few feet away, the end splintered and twisted like a tree struck by lightning. Will knelt, looked around warily, and snatched it up. The broken sword would be his proof. Gared would know what to make of it, and if not him, then surely that old bear Mormont or Maester Aemon.

Will closed his eyes to pray. Long, elegant hands brushed his cheek, then tightened around his throat.

the ninth year of summer, and the seventh of Bran’s life.

Mance Rayder, the King-beyond-the-Wall.

hearth tales Old Nan told them. The wildlings were cruel men, she said, slavers and slayers and thieves. They consorted with giants and ghouls, stole girl children in the dead of night, and drank blood from polished horns. And their women lay with the Others in the Long Night to sire terrible half-human children.

as his lord father had the man cut down from the wall and dragged before them.

Bran’s father sat solemnly on his horse, long brown hair stirring in the wind. His closely trimmed beard was shot with white, making him look older than his thirty-five years. He had a grim cast to his grey eyes

dragged the ragged man to the ironwood stump in the center of the square. They forced his head down onto the hard black wood.

“Ice,” that sword was called. It was as wide across as a man’s hand, and taller even than Robb.

Jory Cassel, the captain of his household guard.

His father took off the man’s head with a single sure stroke.

Bran could not take his eyes off the blood. The snows around the stump drank it eagerly, reddening as he watched.

Theon was a lean, dark youth of nineteen who found everything amusing. He laughed, put his boot on the head, and kicked it away.

Jon was fourteen,

Robb said. He was big and broad and growing every day, with his mother’s coloring, the fair skin, red-brown hair, and blue eyes of the Tullys of Riverrun.

Jon’s eyes were a grey so dark they seemed almost black, but there was little they did not see. He was of an age with Robb, but they did not look alike. Jon was slender where Robb was muscular, dark where Robb was fair, graceful and quick where his half brother was strong and fast.

Robb laughing and hooting, Jon silent and intent.

The blood of the First Men still flows in the veins of the Starks,

Jon reappeared on the crest of the hill before them. He waved and shouted down at them. “Father, Bran, come quickly, see what Robb has found!” Then he was gone again.

Jory rode up beside them. “Trouble, my lord?” “Beyond a doubt,” his lord father said. “Come, let us see what mischief my sons have rooted out now.”

It was bigger than his pony, twice the size of the largest hound in his father’s kennel. “It’s no freak,” Jon said calmly. “That’s a direwolf. They grow larger than the other kind.”

Hullen, the master of horse. “I like it not.”

“It is a sign,” Jory said.

maybe the bitch was already dead when the pups came.” “Born with the dead,” another man put in. “Worse luck.”

“The sooner the better,” Theon Greyjoy agreed. He drew his sword. “Give the beast here, Bran.” The little thing squirmed against him, as if it heard and understood. “No!” Bran cried out fiercely. “It’s mine.”

Harwin, who was Hullen’s son.

Bran nodded eagerly. The pup squirmed in his grasp, licked at his face with a warm tongue.

“You must train them as well,” their father said. “You must train them. The kennelmaster will have nothing to do with these monsters, I promise you that. And the gods help you if you neglect them, or brutalize them, or train them badly. These are not dogs to beg for treats and slink off at a kick. A direwolf will rip a man’s arm off his shoulder as easily as a dog will kill a rat. Are you sure you want this?” “Yes, Father,” Bran said. “Yes,” Robb agreed. “The pups may die anyway, despite all you do.” “They won’t die,” Robb said. “We won’t let them die.” “Keep them, then. Jory, Desmond, gather up the other pups. It’s time we were back to Winterfell.”

Bran was wondering what to name him.

His fur was white, where the rest of the litter was grey. His eyes were as red as the blood of the ragged man

Catelyn