A Feast for Dragons Read online

  A Feast For Dragons (v0.9)

  by George R. R. Martin

  combined by JAHLUV

  April, 10 2012

  So, the action of A Feast for Crows mostly concentrates on King’s Landing and Cersei and Jaime and their ilk, dispatching Tyrion and Jon and Daenarys to what became A Dance with Dragons. This (imho) was a mistake that made the reading of A Feast for Crows something of a grind. Martin has said it was a bitch to write. George? It was also a bitch to read, my friend. He has said the other option available to him was to take all of the characters half way – to which, of course, the obvious response is: isn’t that what you’d been doing in all of the books previous? And what did he mean by ‘half way’ really? There are apparently to be seven books in the Song of Ice & Fire series, so each book moves the action along somewhat without any real sense of the finishing line. A reordering of both A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons (as will inevitably happen with the TV show) makes for a better read – and so I did it. If you’re ploughing through A Feast for Crows now, I’d treat yourself to a chapter from A Dance with Dragons every two or three chapters – provided you don’t exceed the 500 page mark, or so, on A Dance with Dragons, you’ll enjoy A Feast for Crows more, believe me). -from here

  AFFC & ADWD Combined Chapters Order

  AFFC 02: The Prophet

  ADWD 01: Prologue

  AFFC 01: Prologue

  AFFC 12: The Kraken's Daughter

  ADWD 03: Daenerys 1

  AFFC 19: The Iron Captain

  AFFC 20: The Drowned Man

  ADWD 04: Jon 1

  AFFC 04: Cersei 1

  AFFC 08: Cersei 2

  AFFC 09: Jaime 1

  ADWD 05: Bran 1

  AFFC 03: The Captain Of Guards

  AFFC 05: Brienne 1

  ADWD 13: Reek 1

  AFFC 10: Brienne 2

  AFFC 14: The Soiled Knight

  ADWD 10: Davos 1

  AFFC 22: The Queenmaker

  AFFC 15: Brienne 3

  ADWD 16: Davos 2

  AFFC 13: Cersei 3

  ADWD 20: Davos 3

  AFFC 17: Jaime 2

  AFFC 18: Cersei 4

  ADWD 02: Tyrion 1

  AFFC 07: Arya 1

  ADWD 21: Reek 2

  AFFC 21: Brienne 4

  ADWD 06: Tyrion 2

  AFFC 25: Cersei 5

  ADWD 09: Tyrion 3

  AFFC 41: The Princess In The Tower

  ADWD 07: The Merchant's Man

  AFFC 29: Cersei 6

  ADWD 12: Daenerys 2

  AFFC 30: The Reaver

  ADWD 14: Bran 2

  AFFC 28: Jaime 3

  AFFC 33: Cersei 7

  ADWD 15: Tyrion 4

  AFFC 26: Brienne 5

  AFFC 11: Sansa 1

  ADWD 17: Daenerys 3

  AFFC 31: Jaime 4

  ADWD 19: Tyrion 5

  AFFC 32: Brienne 6

  AFFC 06: Samwell 1

  ADWD 08: Jon 2

  AFFC 38: Brienne 7

  ADWD 11: Jon 3

  ADWD 18: Jon 4

  AFFC 34: Jaime 5

  ADWD 22: Jon 5

  AFFC 39: Jaime 6

  ADWD 23: Tyrion 6

  AFFC 16: Samwell 2

  ADWD 24: Daenerys 4

  AFFC 43: Brienne 8

  ADWD 25: The Lost Lord

  AFFC 24: Alayne 1

  ADWD 26: The Windblown

  AFFC 37: Cersei 8

  ADWD 27: The Wayward Bride

  ADWD 28: Tyrion 7

  AFFC 40: Cersei 9

  ADWD 29: Jon 6

  AFFC 44: Cersei 10

  ADWD 30: Davos 4

  AFFC 42: Alayne 2

  ADWD 31: Daenerys 5

  AFFC 45: Jaime 7

  ADWD 32: Melisandre

  ADWD 33: Reek 3

  AFFC 23: Arya 2

  ADWD 34: Tyrion 8

  AFFC 27: Samwell 3

  ADWD 35: Bran 3

  AFFC 36: Samwell 4

  ADWD 36: Jon 7

  AFFC 46: Samwell 5

  ADWD 37: Daenerys 6

  AFFC 35: Cat Of The Canals

  ADWD 39: The Watcher

  ADWD 40: Jon 8

  ADWD 41: Tyrion 9

  ADWD 42: The Turncloak

  ADWD 43: The King's Prize

  ADWD 44: Daenerys 7

  ADWD 45: Jon 9

  ADWD 46: The Blind Girl

  ADWD 47: A Ghost In Winterfell

  ADWD 48: Tyrion 10

  ADWD 62: The Griffin Reborn

  ADWD 49: Jaime

  ADWD 50: Jon 10

  ADWD 51: Daenerys 8

  ADWD 52: Theon

  ADWD 53: Daenerys 9

  ADWD 54: Jon 11

  ADWD 55: Cersei 1

  ADWD 56: The Queensguard

  ADWD 57: The Iron Suitor

  ADWD 58: Tyrion 11

  ADWD 59: Jon 12

  ADWD 60: The Discarded Knight

  ADWD 61: The Spurned Suitor

  ADWD 63: The Sacrifice

  ADWD 64: Victarion

  ADWD 65: The Ugly Little Girl

  ADWD 66: Cersei 2

  ADWD 67: Tyrion 12

  ADWD 69: The Dragontamer

  ADWD 68: The Kingbreaker

  ADWD 70: Jon 13

  ADWD 71: The Queen's Hand

  ADWD 72: Daenerys 10

  ADWD 73: Epilogue

  The Winds of Winter (due – oh, 2016?) and all subsequent books will unravel with all characters therein. This is a very good thing. All the extra book stuff like ,"Title page", "Contents", "Appendix". "About the Author" etc I placed at the end of the EPUB mostly because I got bored and didn't want to spend any more time organizing.

  * * *

  The Prophet

  The prophet was drowning men on Great Wyk when they came to tell him that the king was dead.

  It was a bleak, cold morning, and the sea was as leaden as the sky. The first three men had offered their lives to the Drowned God fearlessly, but the fourth was weak in faith and began to struggle as his lungs cried out for air. Standing waist-deep in the surf, Aeron seized the naked boy by the shoulders and pushed his head back down as he tried to snatch a breath. “Have courage,” he said. “We came from the sea, and to the sea we must return. Open your mouth and drink deep of god’s blessing. Fill your lungs with water, that you may die and be reborn. It does no good to fight.”

  Either the boy could not hear him with his head beneath the waves, or else his faith had utterly deserted him. He began to kick and thrash so wildly that Aeron had to call for help. Four of his drowned men waded out to seize the wretch and hold him underwater. “Lord God who drowned for us,” the priest prayed, in a voice as deep as the sea, “let Emmond your servant be reborn from the sea, as you were. Bless him with salt, bless him with stone, bless him with steel.”

  Finally, it was done. No more air was bubbling from his mouth, and all the strength had gone out of his limbs. Facedown in the shallow sea floated Emmond, pale and cold and peaceful.

  That was when the Damphair realized that three horsemen had joined his drowned men on the pebbled shore. Aeron knew the Sparr, a hatchet-faced old man with watery eyes whose quavery voice was law on this part of Great Wyk. His son Steffarion accompanied him, with another youth whose dark red fur-lined cloak was pinned at the shoulder with an ornate brooch that showed the black-and-gold warhorn of the Goodbrothers. One of Gorold’s sons, the priest decided at a glance. Three tall sons had been born to Goodbrother’s wife late in life, after a dozen daughters, and it was said that no man could tell one son from the others. Aeron Damphair did not deign to try. Whether this be Greydon or Gormond or Gran, the priest had no time for him.

  He growled a brusque command, and his drowned men seized t
he dead boy by his arms and legs to carry him above the tideline. The priest followed, naked but for a sealskin clout that covered his private parts. Goosefleshed and dripping, he splashed back onto land, across cold wet sand and sea-scoured pebbles. One of his drowned men handed him a robe of heavy roughspun dyed in mottled greens and blues and greys, the colors of the sea and the Drowned God. Aeron donned the robe and pulled his hair free. Black and wet, that hair; no blade had touched it since the sea had raised him up. It draped his shoulders like a ragged, ropy cloak, and fell down past his waist. Aeron wove strands of seaweed through it, and through his tangled, uncut beard.

  His drowned men formed a circle around the dead boy, praying. Norjen worked his arms whilst Rus knelt astride him, pumping on his chest, but all moved aside for Aeron. He pried apart the boy’s cold lips with his fingers and gave Emmond the kiss of life, and again, and again, until the sea came gushing from his mouth. The boy began to cough and spit, and his eyes blinked open, full of fear.

  Another one returned. It was a sign of the Drowned God’s favor, men said. Every other priest lost a man from time to time, even Tarle the Thrice-Drowned, who had once been thought so holy that he was picked to crown a king. But never Aeron Greyjoy. He was the Damphair, who had seen the god’s own watery halls and returned to tell of it. “Rise,” he told the sputtering boy as he slapped him on his naked back. “You have drowned and been returned to us. What is dead can never die.”

  “But rises.” The boy coughed violently, bringing up more water. “Rises again.” Every word was bought with pain, but that was the way of the world; a man must fight to live. “Rises again.” Emmond staggered to his feet. “Harder. And stronger.”

  “You belong to the god now,” Aeron told him. The other drowned men gathered round and each gave him a punch and a kiss to welcome him to the brotherhood. One helped him don a roughspun robe of mottled blue and green and grey. Another presented him with a driftwood cudgel. “You belong to the sea now, so the sea has armed you,” Aeron said. “We pray that you shall wield your cudgel fiercely, against all the enemies of our god.”

  Only then did the priest turn to the three riders, watching from their saddles. “Have you come to be drowned, my lords?”

  The Sparr coughed. “I was drowned as a boy,” he said, “and my son upon his name day.”

  Aeron snorted. That Steffarion Sparr had been given to the Drowned God soon after birth he had no doubt. He knew the manner of it too, a quick dip into a tub of seawater that scarce wet the infant’s head. Small wonder the ironborn had been conquered, they who once held sway everywhere the sound of waves was heard. “That is no true drowning,” he told the riders. “He that does not die in truth cannot hope to rise from death. Why have you come, if not to prove your faith?”

  “Lord Gorold’s son came seeking you, with news.” The Sparr indicated the youth in the red cloak.

  The boy looked to be no more than six-and-ten. “Aye, and which are you?” Aeron demanded.

  “Gormond. Gormond Goodbrother, if it please my lord.”

  “It is the Drowned God we must please. Have you been drowned, Gormond Goodbrother?”

  “On my name day, Damphair. My father sent me to find you and bring you to him. He needs to see you.”

  “Here I stand. Let Lord Gorold come and feast his eyes.” Aeron took a leather skin from Rus, freshly filled with water from the sea. The priest pulled out the cork and took a swallow.

  “I am to bring you to the keep,” insisted young Gormond, from atop his horse.

  He is afraid to dismount, lest he get his boots wet. “I have the god’s work to do.” Aeron Greyjoy was a prophet. He did not suffer petty lords ordering him about like some thrall.

  “Gorold’s had a bird,” said the Sparr.

  “A maester’s bird, from Pyke,” Gormond confirmed.

  Dark wings, dark words. “The ravens fly o’er salt and stone. If there are tidings that concern me, speak them now.”

  “Such tidings as we bear are for your ears alone, Damphair,” the Sparr said. “These are not matters I would speak of here before these others.”

  “These others are my drowned men, god’s servants, just as I am. I have no secrets from them, nor from our god, beside whose holy sea I stand.”

  The horsemen exchanged a look. “Tell him,” said the Sparr, and the youth in the red cloak summoned up his courage. “The king is dead,” he said, as plain as that. Four small words, yet the sea itself trembled when he uttered them.

  Four kings there were in Westeros, yet Aeron did not need to ask which one was meant. Balon Greyjoy ruled the IronIslands, and no other. The king is dead. How can that be? Aeron had seen his eldest brother not a moon’s turn past, when he had returned to the IronIslands from harrying the StonyShore. Balon’s grey hair had gone half-white whilst the priest had been away, and the stoop in his shoulders was more pronounced than when the longships sailed. Yet all in all the king had not seemed ill.

  Aeron Greyjoy had built his life upon two mighty pillars. Those four small words had knocked one down. Only the Drowned God remains to me. May he make me as strong and tireless as the sea. “Tell me the manner of my brother’s death.”

  “His Grace was crossing a bridge at Pyke when he fell and was dashed upon the rocks below.”

  The Greyjoy stronghold stood upon a broken headland, its keeps and towers built atop massive stone stacks that thrust up from the sea. Bridges knotted Pyke together; arched bridges of carved stone and swaying spans of hempen rope and wooden planks. “Was the storm raging when he fell?” Aeron demanded of them.

  “Aye,” the youth said, “it was.”

  “The Storm God cast him down,” the priest announced. For a thousand thousand years sea and sky had been at war. From the sea had come the ironborn, and the fish that sustained them even in the depths of winter, but storms brought only woe and grief. “My brother Balon made us great again, which earned the Storm God’s wrath. He feasts now in the Drowned God’s watery halls, with mermaids to attend his every want. It shall be for us who remain behind in this dry and dismal vale to finish his great work.” He pushed the cork back into his waterskin. “I shall speak with your lord father. How far from here to Hammerhorn?”

  “Six leagues. You may ride pillion with me.”

  “One can ride faster than two. Give me your horse, and the Drowned God will bless you.”

  “Take my horse, Damphair,” offered Steffarion Sparr.

  “No. His mount is stronger. Your horse, boy.”

  The youth hesitated half a heartbeat, then dismounted and held the reins for the Damphair. Aeron shoved a bare black foot into a stirrup and swung himself onto the saddle. He was not fond of horses—they were creatures from the green lands and helped to make men weak—but necessity required that he ride. Dark wings, dark words. A storm was brewing, he could hear it in the waves, and storms brought naught but evil. “Meet with me at Pebbleton beneath Lord Merlyn’s tower,” he told his drowned men, as he turned the horse’s head.

  The way was rough, up hills and woods and stony defiles, along a narrow track that oft seemed to disappear beneath the horse’s hooves. Great Wyk was the largest of the IronIslands, so vast that some of its lords had holdings that did not front upon the holy sea. Gorold Goodbrother was one such. His keep was in the Hardstone Hills, as far from the Drowned God’s realm as any place in the isles. Gorold’s folk toiled down in Gorold’s mines, in the stony dark beneath the earth. Some lived and died without setting eyes upon salt water. Small wonder that such folk are crabbed and queer.

  As Aeron rode, his thoughts turned to his brothers.

  Nine sons had been born from the loins of Quellon Greyjoy, the Lord of the IronIslands. Harlon, Quenton, and Donel had been born of Lord Quellon’s first wife, a woman of the Stonetrees. Balon, Euron, Victarion, Urrigon, and Aeron were the sons of his second, a Sunderly of Saltcliffe. For a third wife Quellon took a girl from the green lands, who gave him a sickly idiot boy named Robin, the brother best forgotten. The
priest had no memory of Quenton or Donel, who had died as infants. Harlon he recalled but dimly, sitting grey-faced and still in a windowless tower room and speaking in whispers that grew fainter every day as the greyscale turned his tongue and lips to stone. One day we shall feast on fish together in the Drowned God’s watery halls, the four of us and Urri too.

  Nine sons had been born from the loins of Quellon Greyjoy, but only four had lived to manhood. That was the way of this cold world, where men fished the sea and dug in the ground and died, whilst women brought forth short-lived children from beds of blood and pain. Aeron had been the last and least of the four krakens, Balon the eldest and boldest, a fierce and fearless boy who lived only to restore the ironborn to their ancient glory. At ten he scaled the Flint Cliffs to the Blind Lord’s haunted tower. At thirteen he could run a longship’s oars and dance the finger dance as well as any man in the isles. At fifteen he had sailed with Dagmer Cleftjaw to the Stepstones and spent a summer reaving. He slew his first man there and took his first two salt wives. At seventeen Balon captained his own ship. He was all that an elder brother ought to be, though he had never shown Aeron aught but scorn. I was weak and full of sin, and scorn was more than I deserved. Better to be scorned by Balon the Brave than beloved of Euron Crow’s Eye. And if age and grief had turned Balon bitter with the years, they had also made him more determined than any man alive. He was born a lord’s son and died a king, murdered by a jealous god, Aeron thought, and now the storm is coming, a storm such as these isles have never known.

  It was long after dark by the time the priest espied the spiky iron battlements of the Hammerhorn clawing at the crescent moon. Gorold’s keep was hulking and blocky, its great stones quarried from the cliff that loomed behind it. Below its walls, the entrances of caves and ancient mines yawned like toothless black mouths. The Hammerhorn’s iron gates had been closed and barred for the night. Aeron beat on them with a rock until the clanging woke a guard.

  The youth who admitted him was the image of Gormond, whose horse he’d taken. “Which one are you?” Aeron demanded.

  “Gran. My father awaits you within.”

  The hall was dank and drafty, full of shadows. One of Gorold’s daughters offered the priest a horn of ale. Another poked at a sullen fire that was giving off more smoke than heat. Gorold Goodbrother himself was talking quietly with a slim man in fine grey robes, who wore about his neck a chain of many metals that marked him for a maester of the Citadel.