The hunt left at dawn. The king wanted wild boar at the feast tonight.
Prince Joffrey rode with hisfather, so Robb had been allowed to join the hunters as well.
Uncle Benjen, Jory, Theon Greyjoy, SerRodrik, and even the queen’s funny little
brother had all ridden out with them. It was the last hunt,after all.
On the morrow they left for the south.
Bran had been left behind with Jon and the girls and Rickon.
But Rickon was only a baby and thegirls were only girls and Jon and his wolf
were nowhere to be found. Bran did not look for him veryhard. He thought Jon
was angry at him. Jon seemed to be angry at everyone these days. Bran did notknow why.
He was going with Uncle Ben to the Wall, to join the Night’s Watch.
That was almost asgood as going south with the king. Robb was the one
they were leaving behind, not Jon.
For days, Bran could scarcely wait to be off. He was going to ride the kingsroad on
a horse of hisown, not a pony1 but a real horse. His father would be the Hand of
the King, and they were going tolive in the red castle at King’s Landing, the castle
the Dragonlords had built. Old Nan said there wereghosts there, and dungeons2
where terrible things had been done, and dragon heads on the walls. Itgave
Bran a shiver just to think of it, but he was not afraid. How could he be afraid?
His father wouldbe with him, and the king with all his knights4 and sworn swords.
Bran was going to be a knight3 himself someday, one of the Kingsguard.
Old Nan said they were thefinest swords in all the realm. There were only seven of them,
and they wore white armor and had nowives or children, but lived only to serve the king.
Bran knew all the stories. Their names were likemusic to him. Serwyn of the
Mirror Shield. Ser Ryam Redwyne. Prince Aemon the Dragonknight.
The twins Ser Erryk and Ser Arryk, who had died on one another’s swords hundreds
of years ago,when brother fought sister in the war the singers called the Dance of the
Dragons. The White Bull,Gerold Hightower. Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning.
Barristan the Bold.
Two of the Kingsguard had come north with King Robert. Bran had watched them with
fascination,never quite daring to speak to them. Ser Boros was a bald man with a jowly
face, and Ser Meryn haddroopy eyes and a beard the color of rust6. Ser Jaime Lannister
looked more like the knights in thestories, and he was of the Kingsguard too, but Robb
said he had killed the old mad king and shouldn’tcount anymore. The greatest living
knight was Ser Barristan Selmy, Barristan the Bold, the LordCommander of the Kingsguard.
Father had promised that they would meet Ser Barristan when theyreached King’s Landing,
and Bran had been marking the days on his wall, eager to depart, to see aworld he had
only dreamed of and begin a life he could scarcely imagine.
Yet now that the last day was at hand, suddenly Bran felt lost. Winterfell had been the
only homehe had ever known. His father had told him that he ought to say his
farewells today, and he had tried.
After the hunt had ridden out, he wandered through the castle with his wolf at his side,
intending tovisit the ones who would be left behind, Old Nan and Gage7 the cook,
Mikken in his smithy, Hodor thestableboy who smiled so much and took care of his
pony and never said anything but “Hodor,” theman in the glass gardens who gave
him a blackberry when he came to visit …But it was no good. He had gone to the stable
first, and seen his pony there in its stall, except itwasn’t his pony anymore,
he was getting a real horse and leaving the
pony behind, and all of a suddenBran just wanted to sit
down and cry. He turned and ran off before Hodor and the other stableboyscould see
the tears in his eyes. That was the end of his farewells. Instead Bran spent the morning
alone in the godswood, trying to teach his wolf to fetch a stick, and failing.
The wolfling was smarterthan any of the hounds in his father’s kennel8 and Bran
would have sworn he understood every wordthat was said to him, but he showed
very little interest in chasing sticks.
He was still trying to decide on a name. Robb was calling his Grey Wind,
because he ran so fast.
Sansa had named hers Lady, and Arya named hers after some old witch queen
in the songs, and littleRickon called his Shaggydog, which Bran thought was a
pretty stupid name for a direwolf. Jon’swolf, the white one, was Ghost. Bran
wished he had thought of that first, even though his wolf wasn’twhite. He had tried
a hundred names in the last fortnight, but none of them sounded right.
Finally he got tired of the stick game and decided9 to go climbing. He hadn’t
been up to the brokentower for weeks with everything that had happened, and
this might be his last chance.
He raced across the godswood, taking the long way around to avoid the pool
where the heart treegrew. The heart tree had always frightened him; trees ought
not have eyes, Bran thought, or leavesthat looked like hands. His wolf came sprinting
at his heels. “You stay here,” he told him at the baseof the sentinel tree near
the armory wall. “Lie down. That’s right. Now stay.”
The wolf did as he was told. Bran scratched him behind the ears, then turned away, jumped,
grabbed a low branch, and pulled himself up. He was halfway12 up the tree, moving
easily from limb tolimb, when the wolf got to his feet and began to howl.
Bran looked back down. His wolf fell silent,
staring up at him through slitted yellow eyes.
Astrange chill went through him. He began to climb again. Once more the wolf howled.
“Quiet,” heyelled. “Sit down. Stay. You’re worse than Mother.” The howling chased him
all the way up the tree,until finally he jumped off onto the armory roof and out of sight.
The rooftops of Winterfell were Bran’s second home. His mother often said that Bran
could climbbefore he could walk. Bran could not remember when he first learned to walk,
but he could notremember when he started to climb either, so he supposed it must be true.
To a boy, Winterfell was a grey stone labyrinth13 of walls and towers and courtyards and
tunnelsspreading out in all directions. In the older parts of the castle, the halls
slanted14 up and down so thatyou couldn’t even be sure what floor you were on.
The place had grown over the centuries like somemonstrous stone tree,
Maester Luwin told him once, and its branches were gnarled and thick andtwisted,
its roots sunk deep into the earth.
When he got out from under it and scrambled15 up near the sky,
Bran could see all of Winterfell in aglance. He liked the way it looked, spread out
beneath him, only birds wheeling over his head whileall the life of the castle went on
below. Bran could perch17 for hours among the shapeless, rain-worngargoyles
that brooded over the First Keep, watching it all: the men drilling with wood and steel
inthe yard, the cooks tending their vegetables in the glass garden, restless dogs
running back and forthin the kennels21, the silence of the godswood, the girls
gossiping beside the washing well. It made himfeel like he was lord of the castle,
in a way even Robb would never know.
It taught him Winterfell’s secrets too. The builders had not even leveled the earth;
there were hillsand valleys behind the walls of Winterfell. There was a covered bridge
that went from the fourth floorof the bell tower across to the second floor of the
rookery. Bran knew about that. And he knew youcould get inside the inner wall by
the south gate, climb three floors and run all the way aroundWinterfell through a
narrow tunnel in the stone, and then come out on ground level at the north gate,
with a hundred feet of wall looming22 over you. Even Maester Luwin didn’t know
that, Bran wasconvinced.
His mother was terrified that one day Bran would slip off a wall and kill himself.
He told her thathe wouldn’t, but she never believed him. Once she made him
promise that he would stay on theground. He had managed to keep that promise
for almost a fortnight, miserable23 every day, until onenight he had gone out the
window of his bedroom when his brothers were fast asleep.
He confessed his crime the next day in a fit of guilt24. Lord Eddard ordered him to
the godswood tocleanse himself. Guards were posted to see that Bran remained
there alone all night to reflect on hisdisobedience. The next morning Bran was
nowhere to be seen. They finally found him fast asleep inthe upper branches of the
tallest sentinel in the grove25.
As angry as he was, his father could not help but laugh. “You’re not my son,”
he told Bran whenthey fetched him down, “you’re a squirrel. So be it. If you must climb,
then climb, but try not to letyour mother see you.”
Bran did his best, although he did not think he ever really fooled her.
Since his father would notforbid it, she turned to others. Old Nan told him a story
about a bad little boy who climbed too highand was struck down by lightning, and
how afterward26 the crows came to peck out his eyes. Bran wasnot impressed.
There were crows’ nests atop the broken tower, where no one ever went but him,
and sometimes he filled his pockets with corn before he climbed up there and the
crows ate it right outof his hand. None of them had ever shown the slightest bit
of interest in pecking out his eyes.
tof his hand. None of them had ever shown the slightest bit of interest in
pecking out his eyes.
Later, Maester Luwin built a little pottery27 boy and dressed him in Bran’s
clothes and flung him offthe wall into the yard below, to demonstrate what
would happen to Bran if he fell. That had been fun,but afterward Bran just
looked at the maester and said, “I’m not made of clay. And anyhow, I neverfall.”
Then for a while the guards would chase him whenever they saw him on the roofs,
and try to haulhim down. That was the best time of all. It was like playing a game
with his brothers, except that Branalways won. None of the guards could climb half
so well as Bran, not even Jory. Most of the timethey never saw him anyway.
People never looked up. That was another thing he liked about climbing;it
was almost like being invisible.
He liked how it felt too, pulling himself up a wall stone by stone, fingers and toes
digging hard intothe small crevices28 between. He always took off his boots and
went barefoot when he climbed; it madehim feel as if he had four hands instead
of two. He liked the deep, sweet ache it left in the musclesafterward. He liked the
way the air tasted way up high, sweet and cold as a winter peach. He liked thebirds:
the crows in the broken tower, the tiny little sparrows that nested in cracks between
the stones,the ancient owl5 that slept in the dusty loft29 above the old armory.
Bran knew them all.
Most of all, he liked going places that no one else could go, and seeing
the grey sprawl30 ofWinterfell in a way that no one else ever saw it.
It made the whole castle Bran’s secret place.
His favorite haunt was the broken tower. Once it had been a watchtower,
the tallest in Winterfell. Along time ago, a hundred years before even
his father had been born, a lightning strike had set it afire.
The top third of the structure had collapsed31 inward, and the tower had
never been rebuilt. Sometimeshis father sent ratters into the base of the tower,
to clean out the nests they always found among thejumble of fallen stones and
charred32 and rotten beams. But no one ever got up to the jagged top of the
structure now except for Bran and the crows.
He knew two ways to get there. You could climb straight up the side of the tower itself,
but thestones were loose, the mortar33 that held them together long gone to ash,
and Bran never liked to put hisfull weight on them.
The best way was to start from the godswood, shinny up the tall sentinel, and cross
over the armoryand the guards hall, leaping roof to roof, barefoot so the guards
wouldn’t hear you overhead. Thatbrought you up to the blind side of the First Keep,
the oldest part of the castle, a squat34 round fortressthat was taller than it looked.
Only rats and spiders lived there now but the old stones still made forgood climbing.
You could go straight up to where the gargoyles18 leaned out blindly over empty space,
and swing from gargoyle19 to gargoyle, hand over hand, around to the north side.
From there, if youreally stretched, you could reach out and pull yourself over to the
broken tower where it leaned close.
The last part was the scramble16 up the blackened stones to the eyrie, no more
than ten feet, and thenthe crows would come round to see if you’d brought any corn.
Bran was moving from gargoyle to gargoyle with the ease of long practice when
he heard thevoices. He was so startled he almost lost his grip.
The First Keep had been empty all his life.
“I do not like it,” a woman was saying. There was a row of windows beneath him,
and the voicewas drifting out of the last window on this side. “You should be the Hand.”