A Clash of Kings

He remembered who he was all too well; Bran the boy, Bran the broken. Better Bran the beastling. Was it any wonder he would sooner dream his Summer dreams, his wolf dreams? Here in the chill damp darkness of the tomb his third eye had finally opened. He could reach Summer whenever he wanted, and once he had even touched Ghost and talked to Jon. Though maybe he had only dreamed that. He could not understand why Jojen was always trying to pull him back now. Bran used the strength of his arms to squirm to a sitting position. “I have to tell Osha what I saw. Is she here? Where did she go?”

The wildling woman herself gave answer. “Nowhere, m’lord. I’ve had my fill o’ blundering in the black.” He heard the scrape of a heel on stone, turned his head toward the sound, but saw nothing. He thought he could smell her, but he wasn’t sure. All of them stank alike, and he did not have Summer’s nose to tell one from the other. “Last night I pissed on a king’s foot,” Osha went on. “Might be it was morning, who can say? I was sleeping, but now I’m not.” They all slept a lot, not only Bran. There was nothing else to do. Sleep and eat and sleep again, and sometimes talk a little . . . but not too much, and only in whispers, just to be safe. Osha might have liked it better if they had never talked at all, but there was no way to quiet Rickon, or to stop Hodor from muttering, “Hodor, hodor, hodor,” endlessly to himself.

“Osha,” Bran said, “I saw Winterfell burning.” Off to his left, he could hear the soft sound of Rickon’s breathing.

“A dream,” said Osha.

“A wolf dream,” said Bran. “I smelled it too. Nothing smells like fire, or blood.”

“Whose blood?”

“Men, horses, dogs, everyone. We have to go see .”

“This scrawny skin of mine’s the only one I got,” said Osha. “That squid prince catches hold o’ me, they’ll strip it off my back with a whip.”

Meera’s hand found Bran’s in the darkness and gave his fingers a squeeze. “I’ll go if you’re afraid.”

Bran heard fingers fumbling at leather, followed by the sound of steel on flint. Then again. A spark flew, caught. Osha blew softly. A long pale flame awoke, stretching upward like a girl on her toes. Osha’s face floated above it. She touched the flame with the head of a torch. Bran had to squint as the pitch began to burn, filling the world with orange glare. The light woke Rickon, who sat up yawning.

When the shadows moved, it looked for an instant as if the dead were rising as well. Lyanna and Brandon, Lord Rickard Stark their father, Lord Edwyle his father, Lord Willam and his brother Artos the Implacable, Lord Donnor and Lord Beron and Lord Rodwell, one-eyed Lord Jonnel, Lord Barth and Lord Brandon and Lord Cregan who had fought the Dragonknight. On their stone chairs they sat with stone wolves at their feet. This was where they came when the warmth had seeped out of their bodies; this was the dark hall of the dead, where the living feared to tread.

And in the mouth of the empty tomb that waited for Lord Eddard Stark, beneath his stately granite likeness, the six fugitives huddled round their little cache of bread and water and dried meat. “Little enough left,” Osha muttered as she blinked down on their stores. “I’d need to go up soon to steal food in any case, or we’d be down to eating Hodor.”

“Hodor,” Hodor said, grinning at her.

“Is it day or night up there?” Osha wondered. “I’ve lost all count o’ such.”

“Day,” Bran told her, “but it’s dark from all the smoke.”

“M’lord is certain?”

Never moving his broken body, he reached out all the same, and for an instant he was seeing double. There stood Osha holding the torch, and Meera and Jojen and Hodor, and the double row of tall granite pillars and long dead lords behind them stretching away into darkness . . . but there was Winterfell as well, grey with drifting smoke, the massive oak-and-iron gates charred and askew, the drawbridge down in a tangle of broken chains and missing planks. Bodies floated in the moat, islands for the crows.

“Certain,” he declared.

Osha chewed on that a moment. “I’ll risk a look then. I want the lot o’ you close behind. Meera, get Bran’s basket.”

“Are we going home?” Rickon asked excitedly. “I want my horse. And I want applecakes and butter and honey, and Shaggy. Are we going where Shaggydog is?”

“Yes,” Bran promised, “but you have to be quiet.”

Meera strapped the wicker basket to Hodor’s back and helped lift Bran into it, easing his useless legs through the holes. He had a queer flutter in his belly. He knew what awaited them above, but that did not make it any less fearful. As they set off, he turned to give his father one last look, and it seemed to Bran that there was a sadness in Lord Eddard’s eyes, as if he did not want them to go. We have to , he thought. It’s time.