The morning had dawned clear and cold, with a
crispness that hinted at the end of summer. They set forth at
daybreak to see a man beheaded, twenty in all, and Bran rode among
them, nervous with excitement. This was the first time he had been
deemed old enough to go with his lord father and his brothers to
see the king’s justice done. It was the ninth year of summer,
and the seventh of Bran’s life.
The man had been taken outside a small holdfast in the hills.
Robb thought he was a wildling, his sword sworn to Mance Rayder,
the King-beyond-the-Wall. It made Bran’s skin prickle to think
of it. He remembered the 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.
But the man they found bound hand and foot to the holdfast wall
awaiting the king’s justice was old and scrawny, not much
taller than Robb. He had lost both ears and a finger to frostbite,
and he dressed all in black, the same as a brother of the
Night’s Watch, except that his furs were ragged and
greasy.
The breath of man and horse mingled, steaming, in the cold
morning air as his lord father had the man cut down from the wall
and dragged before them. Robb and Jon sat tall and still on their
horses, with Bran between them on his pony, trying to seem older
than seven, trying to pretend that he’d seen all this before.
A faint wind blew through the holdfast gate. Over their heads
flapped the banner of the Starks of Winterfell: a grey direwolf
racing across an ice-white field.
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 this day, and he seemed not at all the
man who would sit before the fire in the evening and talk softly of
the age of heroes and the children of the forest. He had taken off
Father’s face, Bran thought, and donned the face of Lord
Stark of Winterfell.
There were questions asked and answers given there in the chill
of morning, but afterward Bran could not recall much of what had
been said. Finally his lord father gave a command, and two of his
guardsmen dragged the ragged man to the ironwood stump in the
center of the square. They forced his head down onto the hard black
wood. Lord Eddard Stark dismounted and his ward Theon Greyjoy
brought forth the sword. “Ice,” that sword was called.
It was as wide across as a man’s hand, and taller even than
Robb. The blade was Valyrian steel, spell-forged and dark as smoke.
Nothing held an edge like Valyrian steel.
His father peeled off his gloves and handed them to Jory Cassel,
the captain of his household guard. He took hold of Ice with both
hands and said, “In the name of Robert of the House
Baratheon, the First of his Name, King of the Andals and the
Rhoynar and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector
of the Realm, by the word of Eddard of the House Stark, Lord of
Winterfell and Warden of the North, I do sentence you to
die.” He lifted the greatsword high above his head.
Bran’s bastard brother Jon Snow moved closer. “Keep
the pony well in hand,” he whispered. “And don’t
look away. Father will know if you do.”
Bran kept his pony well in hand, and did not look away.
His father took off the man’s head with a single sure
stroke. Blood sprayed out across the snow, as red as surnmerwine.
One of the horses reared and had to be restrained to keep from
bolting. Bran could not take his eyes off the blood. The snows
around the stump drank it eagerly, reddening as he watched.
The head bounced off a thick root and rolled. It came up near
Greyjoy’s feet. Theon was a lean, dark youth of nineteen who
found everything amusing. He laughed, put his boot on the head, and
kicked it away.
“Ass,” Jon muttered, low enough so Greyjoy did not
hear. He put a hand on Bran’s shoulder, and Bran looked over
at his bastard brother. “You did well,” Jon told him
solemnly. Jon was fourteen, an old hand at justice.
It seemed colder on the long ride back to Winterfell, though the
wind had died by then and the sun was higher in the sky. Bran rode
with his brothers, well ahead of the main party, his pony
struggling hard to keep up with their horses.
“The deserter died bravely,” 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. “He had courage, at the least.”
“No,” Jon Snow said quietly. “It was not
courage. This one was dead of fear. You could see it in his eyes,
Stark.” 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 was not impressed. “The Others take his eyes,”
he swore. “He died well. Race you to the bridge?”
“Done,” Jon said, kicking his horse forward. Robb
cursed and followed, and they galloped off down the trail, Robb
laughing and hooting, Jon silent and intent. The hooves of their
horses kicked up showers of snow as they went.
Bran did not try to follow. His pony could not keep up. He had
seen the ragged man’s eyes, and he was thinking of them now.
After a while, the sound of Robb’s laughter receded, and the
woods grew silent again.
So deep in thought was he that he never heard the rest of the
party until his father moved up to ride beside him. “Are you
well, Bran?” he asked, not unkindly.
“Yes, Father,” Bran told him. He looked up. Wrapped
in his furs and leathers, mounted on his great warhorse, his lord
father loomed over him like a giant. “Robb says the man died
bravely, but Jon says he was afraid.”
“What do you think?” his father asked.
Bran thought about it. “Can a man still be brave if
he’s afraid?”
“That is the only time a man can be brave,” his
father told him. “Do you understand why I did it?”
“He was a wildling,” Bran said. “They carry
off women and sell them to the Others.”
His lord father smiled. “Old Nan has been telling you
stories again. In truth, the man was an oathbreaker, a deserter
from the Night’s Watch. No man is more dangerous. The
deserter knows his life is forfeit if he is taken, so he will not
flinch from any crime, no matter how vile. But you mistake me. The
question was not why the man had to die, but why I must do
it.”
Bran had no answer for that. “King Robert has a
headsman,” he said, uncertainly.
“He does,” his father admitted. “As did the
Targaryen kings before him. Yet our way is the older way. The blood
of the First Men still flows in the veins of the Starks, and we
hold to the belief that the man who passes the sentence should
swing the sword. If you would take a man’s life, you owe it
to him to look into his eyes and hear his final words. And if you
cannot bear to do that, then perhaps the man does not deserve to
die.
“One day, Bran, you will be Robb’s bannerman,
holding a keep of your own for your brother and your king, and
justice will fall to you. When that day comes, you must take no
pleasure in the task, but neither must you look away. A ruler who
hides behind paid executioners soon forgets what death
is.”
That was when 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.” He
sent his horse into a trot. Jory and Bran and the rest came
after.
They found Robb on the riverbank north of the bridge, with Jon
still mounted beside him. The late summer snows had been heavy this
moonturn. Robb stood knee-deep in white, his hood pulled back so
the sun shone in his hair. He was cradling something in his arm,
while the boys talked in hushed, excited voices.
The riders picked their way carefully through the drifts,
groping for solid footing on the hidden, uneven ground. Jory Cassel
and Theon Greyjoy were the first to reach the boys. Greyjoy was
laughing and joking as he rode. Bran heard the breath go out of
him. “Gods!” he exclaimed, struggling to keep control
of his horse as he reached for his sword.
Jory’s sword was already out. “Robb, get away from
it!” he called as his horse reared under him.
Robb grinned and looked up from the bundle in his arms.
“She can’t hurt you,” he said. “She’s
dead, Jory.”
Bran was afire with curiosity by then. He would have spurred the
pony faster, but his father made them dismount beside the bridge
and approach on foot. Bran jumped off and ran.
By then Jon, Jory, and Theon Greyjoy had all dismounted as well.
“What in the seven hells is it?” Greyjoy was
saying.
“A wolf,” Robb told him.
“A freak,” Greyjoy said. “Look at the size of
it.”
Bran’s heart was thumping in his chest as he pushed
through a waist-high drift to his brothers’ side.
Half-buried in bloodstained snow, a huge dark shape slumped in
death. Ice had formed in its shaggy grey fur, and the faint smell
of corruption clung to it like a woman’s perfume. Bran
glimpsed blind eyes crawling with maggots, a wide mouth full of
yellowed teeth. But it was the size of it that made him gasp. 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.”
Theon Greyjoy said, “There’s not been a direwolf
sighted south of the Wall in two hundred years.”
“I see one now,” Jon replied.
Bran tore his eyes away from the monster. That was when he
noticed the bundle in Robb’s arms. He gave a cry of delight
and moved closer. The pup was a tiny ball of grey-black fur, its
eyes still closed. It nuzzled blindly against Robb’s chest as
he cradled it, searching for milk among his leathers, making a sad
little whimpery sound. Bran reached out hesitantly. “Go
on,” Robb told him. “You can touch him.”
Bran gave the pup a quick nervous stroke, then turned as Jon
said, “Here you go.” His half brother put a second pup
into his arms. “There are five of them.” Bran sat down
in the snow and hugged the wolf pup to his face. Its fur was soft
and warm against his cheek.
“Direwolves loose in the realm, after so many
years,” muttered Hullen, the master of horse. “I like
it not.”
“It is a sign,” Jory said.
Father frowned. “This is only a dead animal, Jory,”
he said. Yet he seemed troubled. Snow crunched under his boots as
he moved around the body. “Do we know what killed
her?”
“There’s something in the throat,” Robb told
him, proud to have found the answer before his father even asked.
“There, just under the jaw.”
His father knelt and groped under the beast’s head with
his hand. He gave a yank and held it up for all to see. A foot of
shattered antler, tines snapped off, all wet with blood.
A sudden silence descended over the party. The men looked at the
antler uneasily, and no one dared to speak. Even Bran could sense
their fear, though he did not understand.
His father tossed the antler to the side and cleansed his hands
in the snow. “I’m surprised she lived long enough to
whelp,” he said. His voice broke the spell.
“Maybe she didn’t,” Jory said.
“I’ve heard tales . . . maybe the bitch was already
dead when the pups came.”
“Born with the dead,” another man put in.
“Worse luck.”
“No matter,” said Hullen. “They be dead soon
enough too.”
Bran gave a wordless cry of dismay.
“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.”
“Put away your sword, Greyjoy,” Robb said. For a
moment he sounded as commanding as their father, like the lord he
would someday be. “We will keep these pups.”
“You cannot do that, boy,” said Harwin, who was
Hullen’s son.
“It be a mercy to kill them,” Hullen said.
Bran looked to his lord father for rescue, but got only a frown,
a furrowed brow. “Hullen speaks truly, son. Better a swift
death than a hard one from cold and starvation.”
“No!” He could feel tears welling in his eyes, and
he looked away. He did not want to cry in front of his father.
Robb resisted stubbornly. “Ser Rodrik’s red bitch
whelped again last week,” he said. “It was a small
litter, only two live pups. She’ll have milk
enough.”
“She’ll rip them apart when they try to
nurse.”
“Lord Stark,” Jon said. It was strange to hear him
call Father that, so formal. Bran looked at him with desperate
hope. “There are five pups,” he told Father.
“Three male, two female.”
“What of it, Jon?”
“You have five trueborn children,” Jon said.
“Three sons, two daughters. The direwolf is the sigil of your
House. Your children were meant to have these pups, my
lord.”
Bran saw his father’s face change, saw the other men
exchange glances. He loved Jon with all his heart at that moment.
Even at seven, Bran understood what his brother had done. The count
had come right only because Jon had omitted himself. He had
included the girls, included even Rickon, the baby, but not the
bastard who bore the surname Snow, the name that custom decreed be
given to all those in the north unlucky enough to be born with no
name of their own.
Their father understood as well. “You want no pup for
yourself, Jon?” he asked softly.
“The direwolf graces the banners of House Stark,”
Jon pointed out. “I am no Stark, Father.”
Their lord father regarded Jon thoughtfully. Robb rushed into
the silence he left. “I will nurse him myself, Father,”
he promised. “I will soak a towel with warm milk, and give
him suck from that.”
“Me too!” Bran echoed.
The lord weighed his sons long and carefully with his eyes.
“Easy to say, and harder to do. I will not have you wasting
the servants’ time with this. If you want these pups, you
will feed them yourselves. Is that understood?”
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.”
It was not until they were mounted and on their way that Bran
allowed himself to taste the sweet air of victory. By then, his pup
was snuggled inside his leathers, warm against him, safe for the
long ride home. Bran was wondering what to name him.
Halfway across the bridge, Jon pulled up suddenly.
“What is it, Jon?” their lord father asked.
“Can’t you hear it?”
Bran could hear the wind in the trees, the clatter of their
hooves on the ironwood planks, the whimpering of his hungry pup,
but Jon was listening to something else.
“There,” Jon said. He swung his horse around and
galloped back across the bridge. They watched him dismount where
the direwolf lay dead in the snow, watched him kneel. A moment
later he was riding back to them, smiling.
“He must have crawled away from the others,” Jon
said.
“Or been driven away,” their father said, looking at
the sixth pup. His fur was white, where the rest of the litter was
grey. His eyes were as red as the blood of the ragged man who had
died that morning. Bran thought it curious that this pup alone
would have opened his eyes while the others were still blind.
“An albino,” Theon Greyjoy said with wry amusement.
“This one will die even faster than the others.”
Jon Snow gave his father’s ward a long, chilling look.
“I think not, Greyjoy,” he said. “This one
belongs to me.”
The morning had dawned clear and cold, with a
crispness that hinted at the end of summer. They set forth at
daybreak to see a man beheaded, twenty in all, and Bran rode among
them, nervous with excitement. This was the first time he had been
deemed old enough to go with his lord father and his brothers to
see the king’s justice done. It was the ninth year of summer,
and the seventh of Bran’s life.
The man had been taken outside a small holdfast in the hills.
Robb thought he was a wildling, his sword sworn to Mance Rayder,
the King-beyond-the-Wall. It made Bran’s skin prickle to think
of it. He remembered the 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.
But the man they found bound hand and foot to the holdfast wall
awaiting the king’s justice was old and scrawny, not much
taller than Robb. He had lost both ears and a finger to frostbite,
and he dressed all in black, the same as a brother of the
Night’s Watch, except that his furs were ragged and
greasy.
The breath of man and horse mingled, steaming, in the cold
morning air as his lord father had the man cut down from the wall
and dragged before them. Robb and Jon sat tall and still on their
horses, with Bran between them on his pony, trying to seem older
than seven, trying to pretend that he’d seen all this before.
A faint wind blew through the holdfast gate. Over their heads
flapped the banner of the Starks of Winterfell: a grey direwolf
racing across an ice-white field.
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 this day, and he seemed not at all the
man who would sit before the fire in the evening and talk softly of
the age of heroes and the children of the forest. He had taken off
Father’s face, Bran thought, and donned the face of Lord
Stark of Winterfell.
There were questions asked and answers given there in the chill
of morning, but afterward Bran could not recall much of what had
been said. Finally his lord father gave a command, and two of his
guardsmen dragged the ragged man to the ironwood stump in the
center of the square. They forced his head down onto the hard black
wood. Lord Eddard Stark dismounted and his ward Theon Greyjoy
brought forth the sword. “Ice,” that sword was called.
It was as wide across as a man’s hand, and taller even than
Robb. The blade was Valyrian steel, spell-forged and dark as smoke.
Nothing held an edge like Valyrian steel.
His father peeled off his gloves and handed them to Jory Cassel,
the captain of his household guard. He took hold of Ice with both
hands and said, “In the name of Robert of the House
Baratheon, the First of his Name, King of the Andals and the
Rhoynar and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector
of the Realm, by the word of Eddard of the House Stark, Lord of
Winterfell and Warden of the North, I do sentence you to
die.” He lifted the greatsword high above his head.
Bran’s bastard brother Jon Snow moved closer. “Keep
the pony well in hand,” he whispered. “And don’t
look away. Father will know if you do.”
Bran kept his pony well in hand, and did not look away.
His father took off the man’s head with a single sure
stroke. Blood sprayed out across the snow, as red as surnmerwine.
One of the horses reared and had to be restrained to keep from
bolting. Bran could not take his eyes off the blood. The snows
around the stump drank it eagerly, reddening as he watched.
The head bounced off a thick root and rolled. It came up near
Greyjoy’s feet. Theon was a lean, dark youth of nineteen who
found everything amusing. He laughed, put his boot on the head, and
kicked it away.
“Ass,” Jon muttered, low enough so Greyjoy did not
hear. He put a hand on Bran’s shoulder, and Bran looked over
at his bastard brother. “You did well,” Jon told him
solemnly. Jon was fourteen, an old hand at justice.
It seemed colder on the long ride back to Winterfell, though the
wind had died by then and the sun was higher in the sky. Bran rode
with his brothers, well ahead of the main party, his pony
struggling hard to keep up with their horses.
“The deserter died bravely,” 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. “He had courage, at the least.”
“No,” Jon Snow said quietly. “It was not
courage. This one was dead of fear. You could see it in his eyes,
Stark.” 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 was not impressed. “The Others take his eyes,”
he swore. “He died well. Race you to the bridge?”
“Done,” Jon said, kicking his horse forward. Robb
cursed and followed, and they galloped off down the trail, Robb
laughing and hooting, Jon silent and intent. The hooves of their
horses kicked up showers of snow as they went.
Bran did not try to follow. His pony could not keep up. He had
seen the ragged man’s eyes, and he was thinking of them now.
After a while, the sound of Robb’s laughter receded, and the
woods grew silent again.
So deep in thought was he that he never heard the rest of the
party until his father moved up to ride beside him. “Are you
well, Bran?” he asked, not unkindly.
“Yes, Father,” Bran told him. He looked up. Wrapped
in his furs and leathers, mounted on his great warhorse, his lord
father loomed over him like a giant. “Robb says the man died
bravely, but Jon says he was afraid.”
“What do you think?” his father asked.
Bran thought about it. “Can a man still be brave if
he’s afraid?”
“That is the only time a man can be brave,” his
father told him. “Do you understand why I did it?”
“He was a wildling,” Bran said. “They carry
off women and sell them to the Others.”
His lord father smiled. “Old Nan has been telling you
stories again. In truth, the man was an oathbreaker, a deserter
from the Night’s Watch. No man is more dangerous. The
deserter knows his life is forfeit if he is taken, so he will not
flinch from any crime, no matter how vile. But you mistake me. The
question was not why the man had to die, but why I must do
it.”
Bran had no answer for that. “King Robert has a
headsman,” he said, uncertainly.
“He does,” his father admitted. “As did the
Targaryen kings before him. Yet our way is the older way. The blood
of the First Men still flows in the veins of the Starks, and we
hold to the belief that the man who passes the sentence should
swing the sword. If you would take a man’s life, you owe it
to him to look into his eyes and hear his final words. And if you
cannot bear to do that, then perhaps the man does not deserve to
die.
“One day, Bran, you will be Robb’s bannerman,
holding a keep of your own for your brother and your king, and
justice will fall to you. When that day comes, you must take no
pleasure in the task, but neither must you look away. A ruler who
hides behind paid executioners soon forgets what death
is.”
That was when 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.” He
sent his horse into a trot. Jory and Bran and the rest came
after.
They found Robb on the riverbank north of the bridge, with Jon
still mounted beside him. The late summer snows had been heavy this
moonturn. Robb stood knee-deep in white, his hood pulled back so
the sun shone in his hair. He was cradling something in his arm,
while the boys talked in hushed, excited voices.
The riders picked their way carefully through the drifts,
groping for solid footing on the hidden, uneven ground. Jory Cassel
and Theon Greyjoy were the first to reach the boys. Greyjoy was
laughing and joking as he rode. Bran heard the breath go out of
him. “Gods!” he exclaimed, struggling to keep control
of his horse as he reached for his sword.
Jory’s sword was already out. “Robb, get away from
it!” he called as his horse reared under him.
Robb grinned and looked up from the bundle in his arms.
“She can’t hurt you,” he said. “She’s
dead, Jory.”
Bran was afire with curiosity by then. He would have spurred the
pony faster, but his father made them dismount beside the bridge
and approach on foot. Bran jumped off and ran.
By then Jon, Jory, and Theon Greyjoy had all dismounted as well.
“What in the seven hells is it?” Greyjoy was
saying.
“A wolf,” Robb told him.
“A freak,” Greyjoy said. “Look at the size of
it.”
Bran’s heart was thumping in his chest as he pushed
through a waist-high drift to his brothers’ side.
Half-buried in bloodstained snow, a huge dark shape slumped in
death. Ice had formed in its shaggy grey fur, and the faint smell
of corruption clung to it like a woman’s perfume. Bran
glimpsed blind eyes crawling with maggots, a wide mouth full of
yellowed teeth. But it was the size of it that made him gasp. 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.”
Theon Greyjoy said, “There’s not been a direwolf
sighted south of the Wall in two hundred years.”
“I see one now,” Jon replied.
Bran tore his eyes away from the monster. That was when he
noticed the bundle in Robb’s arms. He gave a cry of delight
and moved closer. The pup was a tiny ball of grey-black fur, its
eyes still closed. It nuzzled blindly against Robb’s chest as
he cradled it, searching for milk among his leathers, making a sad
little whimpery sound. Bran reached out hesitantly. “Go
on,” Robb told him. “You can touch him.”
Bran gave the pup a quick nervous stroke, then turned as Jon
said, “Here you go.” His half brother put a second pup
into his arms. “There are five of them.” Bran sat down
in the snow and hugged the wolf pup to his face. Its fur was soft
and warm against his cheek.
“Direwolves loose in the realm, after so many
years,” muttered Hullen, the master of horse. “I like
it not.”
“It is a sign,” Jory said.
Father frowned. “This is only a dead animal, Jory,”
he said. Yet he seemed troubled. Snow crunched under his boots as
he moved around the body. “Do we know what killed
her?”
“There’s something in the throat,” Robb told
him, proud to have found the answer before his father even asked.
“There, just under the jaw.”
His father knelt and groped under the beast’s head with
his hand. He gave a yank and held it up for all to see. A foot of
shattered antler, tines snapped off, all wet with blood.
A sudden silence descended over the party. The men looked at the
antler uneasily, and no one dared to speak. Even Bran could sense
their fear, though he did not understand.
His father tossed the antler to the side and cleansed his hands
in the snow. “I’m surprised she lived long enough to
whelp,” he said. His voice broke the spell.
“Maybe she didn’t,” Jory said.
“I’ve heard tales . . . maybe the bitch was already
dead when the pups came.”
“Born with the dead,” another man put in.
“Worse luck.”
“No matter,” said Hullen. “They be dead soon
enough too.”
Bran gave a wordless cry of dismay.
“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.”
“Put away your sword, Greyjoy,” Robb said. For a
moment he sounded as commanding as their father, like the lord he
would someday be. “We will keep these pups.”
“You cannot do that, boy,” said Harwin, who was
Hullen’s son.
“It be a mercy to kill them,” Hullen said.
Bran looked to his lord father for rescue, but got only a frown,
a furrowed brow. “Hullen speaks truly, son. Better a swift
death than a hard one from cold and starvation.”
“No!” He could feel tears welling in his eyes, and
he looked away. He did not want to cry in front of his father.
Robb resisted stubbornly. “Ser Rodrik’s red bitch
whelped again last week,” he said. “It was a small
litter, only two live pups. She’ll have milk
enough.”
“She’ll rip them apart when they try to
nurse.”
“Lord Stark,” Jon said. It was strange to hear him
call Father that, so formal. Bran looked at him with desperate
hope. “There are five pups,” he told Father.
“Three male, two female.”
“What of it, Jon?”
“You have five trueborn children,” Jon said.
“Three sons, two daughters. The direwolf is the sigil of your
House. Your children were meant to have these pups, my
lord.”
Bran saw his father’s face change, saw the other men
exchange glances. He loved Jon with all his heart at that moment.
Even at seven, Bran understood what his brother had done. The count
had come right only because Jon had omitted himself. He had
included the girls, included even Rickon, the baby, but not the
bastard who bore the surname Snow, the name that custom decreed be
given to all those in the north unlucky enough to be born with no
name of their own.
Their father understood as well. “You want no pup for
yourself, Jon?” he asked softly.
“The direwolf graces the banners of House Stark,”
Jon pointed out. “I am no Stark, Father.”
Their lord father regarded Jon thoughtfully. Robb rushed into
the silence he left. “I will nurse him myself, Father,”
he promised. “I will soak a towel with warm milk, and give
him suck from that.”
“Me too!” Bran echoed.
The lord weighed his sons long and carefully with his eyes.
“Easy to say, and harder to do. I will not have you wasting
the servants’ time with this. If you want these pups, you
will feed them yourselves. Is that understood?”
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.”
It was not until they were mounted and on their way that Bran
allowed himself to taste the sweet air of victory. By then, his pup
was snuggled inside his leathers, warm against him, safe for the
long ride home. Bran was wondering what to name him.
Halfway across the bridge, Jon pulled up suddenly.
“What is it, Jon?” their lord father asked.
“Can’t you hear it?”
Bran could hear the wind in the trees, the clatter of their
hooves on the ironwood planks, the whimpering of his hungry pup,
but Jon was listening to something else.
“There,” Jon said. He swung his horse around and
galloped back across the bridge. They watched him dismount where
the direwolf lay dead in the snow, watched him kneel. A moment
later he was riding back to them, smiling.
“He must have crawled away from the others,” Jon
said.
“Or been driven away,” their father said, looking at
the sixth pup. His fur was white, where the rest of the litter was
grey. His eyes were as red as the blood of the ragged man who had
died that morning. Bran thought it curious that this pup alone
would have opened his eyes while the others were still blind.
“An albino,” Theon Greyjoy said with wry amusement.
“This one will die even faster than the others.”
Jon Snow gave his father’s ward a long, chilling look.
“I think not, Greyjoy,” he said. “This one
belongs to me.”