A Storm of Swords Read online

  weathered stone sepulcher, fingering the strings of a woodharp. The music was soft and sad. Merrett knew the song. High in the halls of the kings who are gone, Jenny would dance with her ghosts…

  “Get off there,” Merrett said. “You’re sitting on a king.”

  “Old Tristifer don’t mind my bony arse. The Hammer of Justice, they called him. Been a long while since he heard any new songs.” The outlaw hopped down. Trim and slim, he had a narrow face and foxy features, but his mouth was so wide that his smile seemed to touch his ears. A few strands of thin brown hair were blowing across his brow. He pushed them back with his free hand and said, “Do you remember me, my lord?”

  “No.” Merrett frowned. “Why would I?”

  “I sang at your daughter’s wedding. And passing well, I thought. That Pate she married was a cousin. We’re all cousins in Sevenstreams. Didn’t stop him from turning niggard when it was time to pay me.” He shrugged. “Why is it your lord father never has me play at the Twins? Don’t I make enough noise for his lordship? He likes it loud, I have been hearing.”

  “You bring the gold?” asked a harsher voice, behind him.

  Merrett’s throat was dry. Bloody outlaws, always hiding in the bushes. It had been the same in the kingswood. You’d think you’d caught five of them, and ten more would spring from nowhere.

  When he turned, they were all around him; an ill-favored gaggle of leathery old men and smooth-cheeked lads younger than Petyr Pimple, the lot of them clad in roughspun rags, boiled leather, and bits of dead men’s armor. There was one woman with them, bundled up in a hooded cloak three times too big for her. Merrett was too flustered to count them, but there seemed to be a dozen at the least, maybe a score.

  “I asked a question.” The speaker was a big bearded man with crooked green teeth and a broken nose; taller than Merrett, though not so heavy in the belly. A halfhelm covered his head, a patched yellow cloak his broad shoulders. “Where’s our gold?”

  “In my saddlebag. A hundred golden dragons.” Merrett cleared his throat. “You’ll get it when I see that Petyr—”

  A squat one-eyed outlaw strode forward before he could finish, reached into the saddlebag bold as you please, and found the sack. Merrett started to grab him, then thought better of it. The outlaw opened the drawstring, removed a coin, and bit it. “Tastes right.” He hefted the sack. “Feels right too.”

  They’re going to take the gold and keep Petyr too, Merrett thought in sudden panic. “That’s the whole ransom. All you asked for.” His palms were sweating. He wiped them on his breeches. “Which one of you is Beric Dondarrion?” Dondarrion had been a lord before he turned outlaw, he might still be a man of honor.

  “Why, that would be me,” said the one-eyed man.

  “You’re a bloody liar, Jack,” said the big bearded man in the yellow cloak. “It’s my turn to be Lord Beric.”

  “Does that mean I have to be Thoros?” The singer laughed. “My lord, sad to say, Lord Beric was needed elsewhere. The times are troubled, and there are many battles to fight. But we’ll sort you out just as he would, have no fear.”

  Merrett had plenty of fear. His head was pounding too. Much more of this and he’d be sobbing. “You have your gold,” he said. “Give me my nephew, and I’ll be gone.” Petyr was actually more a great half-nephew, but there was no need to go into that.

  “He’s in the godswood,” said the man in the yellow cloak. “We’ll take you to him. Notch, you hold his horse.”

  Merrett handed over the bridle reluctantly. He did not see what other choice he had. “My water skin,” he heard himself say. “A swallow of wine, to settle my—”

  “We don’t drink with your sort,” yellow cloak said curtly. “It’s this way. Follow me.”

  Leaves crunched beneath their heels, and every step sent a spike of pain through Merrett’s temple. They walked in silence, the wind gusting around them. The last light of the setting sun was in his eyes as he clambered over the mossy hummocks that were all that remained of the keep. Behind was the godswood.

  Petyr Pimple was hanging from the limb of an oak, a noose tight around his long thin neck. His eyes bulged from a black face, staring down at Merrett accusingly. You came too late, they seemed to say. But he hadn’t. He hadn’t! He had come when they told him. “You killed him,” he croaked.

  “Sharp as a blade, this one,” said the one-eyed man.

  An aurochs was thundering through Merrett’s head. Mother have mercy, he thought. “I brought the gold.”

  “That was good of you,” said the singer amiably. “We’ll see that it’s put to good use.”

  Merrett turned away from Petyr. He could taste the bile in the back of his throat. “You… you had no right.”

  “We had a rope,” said yellow cloak. “That’s right enough.”

  Two of the outlaws seized Merrett’s arms and bound them tight behind his back. He was too deep in shock to struggle. “No,” was all he could manage. “I only came to ransom Petyr. You said if you had the gold by sunset he wouldn’t be harmed…”

  “Well,” said the singer, “you’ve got us there, my lord. That was a lie of sorts, as it happens.”

  The one-eyed outlaw came forward with a long coil of hempen rope. He looped one end around Merrett’s neck, pulled it tight, and tied a hard knot under his ear. The other end he threw over the limb of the oak. The big man in the yellow cloak caught it.

  “What are you doing?” Merrett knew how stupid that sounded, but he could not believe what was happening, even then. “You’d never dare hang a Frey.”

  Yellow cloak laughed. “That other one, the pimply boy, he said the same thing.”

  He doesn’t mean it. He cannot mean it. “My father will pay you. I’m worth a good ransom, more than Petyr, twice as much.”

  The singer sighed. “Lord Walder might be half-blind and gouty, but he’s not so stupid as to snap at the same bait twice. Next time he’ll send a hundred swords instead of a hundred dragons, I fear.”

  “He will!” Merrett tried to sound stern, but his voice betrayed him. “He’ll send a thousand swords, and kill you all.”

  “He has to catch us first.” The singer glanced up at poor Petyr. “And he can’t hang us twice, now can he?” He drew a melancholy air from the strings of his woodharp. “Here now, don’t soil yourself. All you need to do is answer me a question, and I’ll tell them to let you go.”

  Merrett would tell them anything if it meant his life. “What do you want to know? I’ll tell you true, I swear it.”

  The outlaw gave him an encouraging smile. “Well, as it happens, we’re looking for a dog that ran away.”

  “A dog?” Merrett was lost. “What kind of dog?”

  “He answers to the name Sandor Clegane. Thoros says he was making for the Twins. We found the ferrymen who took him across the Trident, and the poor sod he robbed on the kingsroad. Did you see him at the wedding, perchance?”

  “The Red Wedding?” Merrett’s skull felt as if it were about to split, but he did his best to recall. There had been so much confusion, but surely someone would have mentioned Joffrey’s dog sniffing round the Twins. “He wasn’t in the castle. Not at the main feast… he might have been at the bastard feast, or in the camps, but… no, someone would have said…”

  “He would have had a child with him,” said the singer. “A skinny girl, about ten. Or perhaps a boy the same age.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Merrett. “Not that I knew.”

  “No? Ah, that’s a pity. Well, up you go.”

  “No,” Merrett squealed loudly. “No, don’t, I gave you your answer, you said you’d let me go.”

  “Seems to me that what I said was I’d tell them to let you go.” The singer looked at yellow cloak. “Lem, let him go.”

  “Go bugger yourself,” the big outlaw replied brusquely.

  The singer gave Merrett a helpless shrug and began to play, “The Day They Hanged Black Robin.”

  “Please.” The last of Merr
ett’s courage was running down his leg. “I’ve done you no harm. I brought the gold, the way you said. I answered your question. I have children.”

  “That Young Wolf never will,” said the one-eyed outlaw.

  Merrett could hardly think for the pounding in his head. “He shamed us, the whole realm was laughing, we had to cleanse the stain on our honor.” His father had said all that and more.

  “Maybe so. What do a bunch o’ bloody peasants know about a lord’s honor?” Yellow cloak wrapped the end of the rope around his hand three times. “We know some about murder, though.”

  “Not murder.” His voice was shrill. “It was vengeance, we had a right to our vengeance. It was war. Aegon, we called him Jinglebell, a poor lackwit never hurt anyone, Lady Stark cut his throat. We lost half a hundred men in the camps. Ser Garse Goodbrook, Kyra’s husband, and Ser Tytos, Jared’s son… someone smashed his head in with an axe… Stark’s direwolf killed four of our wolfhounds and tore the kennelmaster’s arm off his shoulder, even after we’d filled him full of quarrels…”

  “So you sewed his head on Robb Stark’s neck after both o’ them were dead,” said yellow cloak.

  “My father did that. All I did was drink. You wouldn’t kill a man for drinking.” Merrett remembered something then, something that might be the saving of him. “They say Lord Beric always gives a man a trial, that he won’t kill a man unless something’s proved against him. You can’t prove anything against me. The Red Wedding was my father’s work, and Ryman’s and Lord Bolton’s. Lothar rigged the tents to collapse and put the crossbowmen in the gallery with the musicians, Bastard Walder led the attack on the camps… they’re the ones you want, not me, I only drank some wine… you have no witness.”

  “As it happens, you’re wrong there.” The singer turned to the hooded woman. “Milady?”

  The outlaws parted as she came forward, saying no word. When she lowered her hood, something tightened inside Merrett’s chest, and for a moment he could not breathe. No. No, I saw her die. She was dead for a day and night before they stripped her naked and threw her body in the river. Raymund opened her throat from ear to ear. She was dead.

  Her cloak and collar hid the gash his brother’s blade had made, but her face was even worse than he remembered. The flesh had gone pudding soft in the water and turned the color of curdled milk. Half her hair was gone and the rest had turned as white and brittle as a crone’s. Beneath her ravaged scalp, her face was shredded skin and black blood where she had raked herself with her nails. But her eyes were the most terrible thing. Her eyes saw him, and they hated.

  “She don’t speak,” said the big man in the yellow cloak. “You bloody bastards cut her throat too deep for that. But she remembers.” He turned to the dead woman and said, “What do you say, m’lady? Was he part of it?”

  Lady Catelyn’s eyes never left him. She nodded.

  Merrett Frey opened his mouth to plead, but the noose choked off his words. His feet left the ground, the rope cutting deep into the soft flesh beneath his chin. Up into the air he jerked, kicking and twisting, up and up and up.

  APPENDIX

  MAPS

  THE KINGS AND THEIR COURTS

  THE KING ON THE IRON THRONE

  JOFFREY BARATHEON, the First of His Name, a boy of thirteen years, the eldest son of King Robert I Baratheon and Queen Cersei of House Lannister,

  — his mother, QUEEN CERSEI, of House Lannister, Queen Regent and Protector of the Realm,

  — Cersei’s sworn swords:

  — SER OSFRYD KETTLEBLACK, younger brother to Ser Osmund Kettleblack of the Kingsguard,

  — SER OSNEY KETTLEBLACK, youngest brother of Ser Osmund and Ser Osfryd,

  — his sister, PRINCESS MYRCELLA, a girl of nine, a ward of Prince Doran Martell at Sunspear,

  — his brother, PRINCE TOMMEN, a boy of eight, next heir to the Iron Throne,

  — his grandfather, TYWIN LANNISTER, Lord of Casterly Rock, Warden of the West, and Hand of the King,

  — his uncles and cousins, paternal,

  — his father’s brother, STANNIS BARATHEON, rebel Lord of Dragonstone, styling himself King Stannis the First,

  — Stannis’s daughter, SHIREEN, a girl of eleven,

  — his father’s brother, {RENLY BARATHEON}, rebel Lord of Storm’s End, murdered in the midst of his army,

  — his grandmother’s brother, SER ELDON ESTERMONT,

  — Ser Eldon’s son, SER AEMON ESTERMONT,

  — Ser Aemon’s son, SER ALYN ESTERMONT,

  — his uncles and cousins, maternal,

  — his mother’s brother, SER JAIME LANNISTER, called THE KINGSLAYER, a captive at Riverrun,

  — his mother’s brother, TYRION LANNISTER, called THE IMP, a dwarf, wounded in the Battle of the Blackwater,

  — Tyrion’s squire, PODRICK PAYNE,

  — Tyrion’s captain of guards, SER BRONN OF THE BLACKWATER, a former sellsword,

  — Tyrion’s concubine, SHAE, a camp follower now serving as bedmaid to Lollys Stokeworth,

  — his grandfather’s brother, SER KEVAN LANNISTER,

  — Ser Kevan’s son, SER LANCEL LANNISTER, formerly squire to King Robert, wounded in the Battle of the Blackwater, near death,

  — his grandfather’s brother, {TYGETT LANNISTER}, died of a pox,

  — Tygett’s son, TYREK LANNISTER, a squire, missing since the great riot,

  — Tyrek’s infant wife, LADY ERMESANDE HAYFORD,

  — his baseborn siblings, King Robert’s bastards:

  — MYA STONE, a maid of nineteen, in the service of Lord Nestor Royce, of the Gates of the Moon,

  — GENDRY, an apprentice smith, a fugitive in the riverlands and ignorant of his heritage,

  — EDRIC STORM, King Robert’s only acknowledged bastard son, a ward of his uncle Stannis on Dragonstone,

  — his Kingsguard:

  — SER JAIME LANNISTER, Lord Commander,

  — SER MERYN TRANT,

  — SER BALON SWANN,

  — SER OSMUND KETTLEBLACK,

  — SER LORAS TYRELL, the Knight of Flowers,

  — SER ARYS OAKHEART,

  — his small council:

  — LORD TYWIN LANNISTER, Hand of the King,

  — SER KEVAN LANNISTER, master of laws,

  — LORD PETYR BAELISH, called LITTLEFINGER, master of coin,

  — VARYS, a eunuch, called THE SPIDER, master of whisperers,

  — LORD MACE TYRELL, master of ships,

  — GRAND MAESTER PYCELLE,

  — his court and retainers:

  — SER ILYN PAYNE, the King’s Justice, a headsman,

  — LORD HALLYNE THE PYROMANCER, a Wisdom of the Guild of Alchemists,

  — MOON BOY, a jester and fool,

  — ORMOND OF OLDTOWN, the royal harper and bard,

  — DONTOS HOLLARD, a fool and a drunkard, formerly a knight called SER DONTOS THE RED,

  — JALABHAR XHO, Prince of the Red Flower Vale, an exile from the Summer Isles,

  — LADY TANDA STOKEWORTH,

  — her daughter, FALYSE, wed to Ser Balman Byrch,

  — her daughter, LOLLYS, thirty-four, unwed, and soft of wits, with child after being raped,

  — her healer and counselor, MAESTER FRENKEN,

  — LORD GYLES ROSBY, a sickly old man,

  — SER TALLAD, a promising young knight,

  — LORD MORROS SLYNT, a squire, eldest son of the former Commander of the City Watch,

  — JOTHOS SLYNT, his younger brother, a squire,

  — DANOS SLYNT, younger still, a page,

  — SER BOROS BLOUNT, a former knight of the Kingsguard, dismissed for cowardice by Queen Cersei,

  — JOSMYN PECKLEDON, a squire, and a hero of the Battle of the Blackwater,

  — SER PHILIP FOOTE, made Lord of the Marches for his valor during the Battle of the Blackwater,

  — SER LOTHOR BRUNE, named LOTHOR APPLE-EATER for his deeds during the Battle of the Blackwater, a former free-rider in service to Lord Baelish,
/>   — other lords and knights at King’s Landing:

  — MATHIS ROWAN, Lord of Goldengrove,

  — PAXTER REDWYNE, Lord of the Arbor,

  — Lord Paxter’s twin sons, SER HORAS and SER HOBBER, mocked as HORROR and SLOBBER,

  — Lord Redwyne’s healer, MAESTER BALLABAR,

  — ARDRIAN CELTIGAR, the Lord of Claw Isle,

  — LORD ALESANDER STAEDMON, called PENNYLOVER,

  — SER BONIFER HASTY, called THE GOOD, a famed knight,

  — SER DONNEL SWANN, heir to Stonehelm,

  — SER RONNET CONNINGTON, called RED RONNET, the Knight of Griffin’s Roost,

  — AURANE WATERS, the Bastard of Driftmark,

  — SER DERMOT OF THE RAINWOOD, a famed knight,

  — SER TIMON SCRAPESWORD, a famed knight,

  — the people of King’s Landing:

  — the City Watch (the “gold cloaks”),

  —{SER JACELYN BYWATER, called IRONHAND}, Commander of the City Watch, slain by his own men during the Battle of the Blackwater,

  — SER ADDAM MARBRAND, Commander of the City Watch, Ser Jacelyn’s successor,

  — CHATAYA, owner of an expensive brothel,

  — ALAYAYA, her daughter,

  — DANCY, MAREI, JAYDE, Chataya’s girls,

  — TOBHO MOTT, a master armorer,

  — IRONBELLY, a blacksmith,

  — HAMISH THE HARPER, a famed singer,

  — COLLIO QUAYNIS, a Tyroshi singer,