MEERA REED: Years ago, in the height of summer,
my father told my brother and me a story.
He only told it once, and he refused to speak of it ever again.
When he was a young man, in the Year of the False Spring,
a great southern lord held the largest tourney Westeros had ever seen,
in the largest castle Westeros had ever seen.
Knights and lords from across the Seven Kingdoms made their way,
drawn by the spectacle, and the size of the champion's purse.
Even the King was rumored to be attending.
Though none had seen him in years.
Ours is a small house, and my father had come only to be part of the magnificence,
whose like he'd never see again.
One afternoon, he was walking across the field, enjoying the warm spring day,
when he was set upon by three squires.
None were older than 15, yet all were bigger than him.
This was their world as they saw it, and he had no right to be there.
They snatched away his spear, and knocked him to the ground,
cursing him for a frog-eater.
Every time he tried to rise,
-they shoved him down, -(MAN GROANlNG)
and kicked him when he curled up on the ground.
But then, they heard a shout.
"That's my father's man you're kicking !"
howled the she-wolf.
Lyanna Stark, the young daughter of Lord Rickard Stark,
Warden of the North, and my father's liege lord.
Lyanna laid into the squires with a tourney sword, scattering them all.
My father was bruised and bloodied.
So she took him back to her tent to clean his cuts and bind them up with linen.
There he met her brothers.
Wild Brandon, who led them. The quiet Eddard.
And Benjen, who was the youngest of the four.
That evening there was to be a feast in Harrenhal,
to mark the opening of the tourney.
And Lyanna insisted that my father attend.
As he was of high birth with as much a right to a place on the bench as any other man.
She was not easy to refuse, this wolf maid.
So my father borrowed suitable clothes from Benjen
and went up to the great castle.
Under Harren's great roof, my father ate and drank with his fellow Northmen.
A black brother beseeched the knights to join the Night's Watch,
to snickers and smiles.
Prince Rhaegar sang a song so sad that it brought tears to Lyanna's eyes.
But when Benjen teased her for it she poured wine over his head.
Lord Baratheon drank down a knight of skulls and kisses in a wine cup war.
My father remembered a beautiful woman with purple eyes,
who danced with Ser Barristan Selmy and several others.
As the end of the evening approached,
Brandon Stark asked her for one more dance on his shy brother's behalf.
And so, Eddard Stark shared the last dance of the celebration
with Lady Ashara Dayne.
Abruptly, the hall went quiet.
The Mad King had come after all,
and was now entering the hall with his Kingsguard.
He hadn't left the Red Keep in years, and none could believe the state of him.
His long yellow fingernails, tangled beard, and ropes of unwashed matted hair
made his madness plain to all.
Nor was his behavior that of a sane man.
For in the blink of an eye he could go from hysterical laughter to weeping to rage.
But when he commanded Ser Jaime Lannister to kneel before him
and swear the oath of the Kingsguard before half the lords of the realm,
a cheer burst from the crowd.
For Ser Jaime was much admired for his courage, gallantry
and skill with a sword.
Amidst all this merriment,
my father spied the three squires who'd attacked him, attending their knights.
Lyanna saw them, too, and pointed them out to her brothers.
"l could find you a horse and some armor that might fit," Benjen offered.
My father thanked him, but gave no answer.
Our people sit a boat more often than a horse,
and our hands are made for oars, not lances.
Much as he wished to have his vengeance,
he feared he would only make a fool of himself and shame his people.
Eddard had offered my father a place in his tent that night.
But before my father slept,
he knelt on the lakeshore, looking across the water to the lsle of Faces
and said a prayer to the Old Gods.
The next day in the tourney, the three knights whose squires had beaten my father
unseated their opponents and earned a place among the champions.
But late in the afternoon, as the shadows grew long,
a mystery knight appeared in the lists.
He was short, and clad in ill-fitting armor cobbled together from different suits.
On his shield was painted a heart tree of the Old Gods.
A white weirwood with a laughing red face.
The mystery knight dipped his lance before the King,
and rode to the end of the lists, where the five champions had their pavilions.
You can guess the three he challenged.
Whoever the mystery knight was, the Old Gods gave strength to his arm.
-All three knights fell before him. -(HORSE WHlNNYlNG)
None were well-loved,
so the common folk cheered the "Knight of the Laughing Tree,"
-as the new champion was soon called. -(MEN CHEERlNG)
When his fallen foes sought to ransom their horses and armor,
the Knight of the Laughing Tree's voice boomed through his helm, and told them,
"Teach your squires honor. That shall be ransom enough."
Once the defeated knights chastised their squires sharply,
their horses and armor were returned.
And so, my father's prayer was answered.
The King was furious.
ln his madness he suspected a traitor in his midst.
Perhaps even the newly made Ser Jaime Lannister,
whom he had already sent back to the Red Keep.
That night, the King asked Lord Robert Baratheon to take to the lists
and unmask the mystery knight, declaring him no friend of his.
But the next morning, when the heralds blew their trumpets
and the King took his seat,
the Knight of the Laughing Tree had vanished.
All they ever found was his painted shield, hanging abandoned in a tree.
My father's tale ended here.
He never spoke more of Harrenhal.
Though he must have seen Prince Rhaegar's victory.
Some whispered that Prince Rhaegar himself had arranged the entire tourney in secret,
as a way to gather the great lords and address his father's apparent madness.
Perhaps even remove him from the lron Throne.
But when l asked my father about this,
he only shrugged sadly.
What Rhaegar intended, none can say.
But all know what he did.
SANSA: The North is the oldest and largest of the Seven Kingdoms.
But House Stark has not always held it.
When Bran the Builder raised Winterfell and founded our line,
we were vassals to the Barrow Kings
who claimed descent from the First King and thus dominion over all the First Men.
But after the Long Night, it was our house who built the Wall
and set the Night's Watch to guard the realms of men
whilst our king sat in his barrow.
My ancestors eventually revolted,
waging what singers call the Thousand Years War to free our lands.
Other families joined us, recognizing that the North is a cold and hard land,
and needed a king who served its people before himself.
Finally, the last Barrow King bent the knee and House Stark became the Kings of Winter.
Yet, we were kings in name only,
for by then, the North had fractured into petty kingdoms
and my ancestors would struggle to unite it again for thousands of years.
Rodrik Stark wrestled an ironborn lord for Bear lsland
and granted it to House Mormont when he won.
A younger son of our family, Karlon Stark, won his own keep
after he put down a rebellion and founded House Karstark,
one of the most powerful in the North.
When the Manderlys were exiled from the Reach,
my ancestors shielded them and gave them a home at the mouth of the White Knife
in return for holding the river against pirates and invaders.
Now, they're one of the wealthiest houses in the North.
l'm not so na�ve to pretend that the entire North welcomed Stark rule.
The last Warg King was slain at Sea Dragon Point
along with all his sons and beasts.
The last Marsh King died at the hands of King Rickard Stark
and House Reed has held the swamps of the Neck ever since.
Houses Greenwood, Towers, Amber, Frost,
none survive today as more than names in dusty old books.
But my ancestors never wanted to destroy their foes' root and stem.
The Umbers of Last Hearth and the Glovers of Deepwood Motte
bent the knee and became loyal vassals of House Stark.
The Red Kings of House Bolton
wore cloaks made from the skins of Stark princes they'd flayed.
And one of the Boltons was even known as the Redarm
because he liked to plunge an arm into the bellies of captive Starks
and pull out their entrails with his bare hand.
The North deserved to be wiped clean of them.
Yet, my ancestors spared them after their defeat
because they believed the North couldn't afford to fight itself any longer.
Time soon proved them right.
When the Andals swept into Westeros,
they obliterated all the kingdoms of the First Men except the North.
Each of the southern kingdoms fought the invaders on its own,
but the North fought as one.
When the Andals tried to sail at the White Knife,
the Manderlys fell on their ships.
When the Andals tried to march an army through the Neck,
the Reeds fell on their soldiers.
King Theon Stark even sailed his own army to the Andal homeland for vengeance
and slew hundreds of Andal warriors.
When he returned, he planted their heads on spikes along our coasts.
A warning to other would-be conquerors.
The warning was heeded for thousands of years
until Aegon the Conqueror.
The South had already fallen to Aegon and his dragons. Only the North remained.
My ancestor, King Torrhen Stark, marched the North down to the Trident
and beheld Aegon's army,
larger than Torrhen's own by half and with three dragons circling overhead.
Many northern bannermen wanted to attack anyway,
claiming northern valor would carry the day.
Others wanted to fall back to Moat Cailin and make a stand there.
But Torrhen had heard how the armies of the Rock and the Reach had burned
on the Field of Fire,
and had seen the fires still glowing beneath the rubble of Harrenhal.
He knelt and laid his ancient crown at Aegon's feet,
and rose a king no more but Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North.
Some Northerners still sneer at my ancestor as "The King Who Knelt,"
forgetting that because of Torrhen they're alive today to sneer.
Their ancestors didn't leave their burned bones at the Trident
and their twisted swords didn't fill Aegon's new throne.
Now, many say that House Stark is dead and gone,
and House Bolton holds the North.
But the North remembers who united it.
The North remembers who defended it.
And the North remembers who stole it.
Long ago my ancestors spared the Boltons, trusting their oaths of fealty.
l shall correct that mistake.
Even the North can forget when there's nothing left to remember.
LlTTLEFlNGER: No army in the Seven Kingdoms can match
the pride and chivalry of the Knights of the Vale.
After all, they were the first true knights in Westeros.
The Knights of the Vale were originally the knights of Andalos,
an eastern nation whose people invaded Westeros thousands of years ago.
From the sea, the Vale seemed to the Andals an ideal new home.
A wide, fertile valley isolated from the rest of Westeros and its kingdoms
by a great mountain range.
The First Men who held it, moreover, were sparse and divided,
and waded into battle with bronze axes
and armor that couldn't match Andal horses and steel.
But what the First Men lacked in weaponry they made up for in ferocity.
Finally uniting behind King Robar Royce,
the First Men smashed the Andals in battle after battle,
reclaiming the Vale and pushing the invaders back to the sea from whence they'd come.
Learning from the First Men,
the remaining Andals united behind a leader of their own,
not a king or a lord,
but a knight who'd been born in the Vale and knew it as well as the First Men.
Ser Artys Arryn, known as the Falcon Knight.
The armies of the First Men and the Andals met beneath the Giant's Lance
to decide the fate of the Vale.
Ser Artys had many more mounted knights than the First Men,
who preferred to fight on foot.
But the First Men had seized the high ground,
digging trenches in front of their ranks and lining them with sharpened stakes
smeared with offal and excrement.
Six times the Andal knights charged
and six times the First Men threw them back.
But on the seventh, a fearsome Andal warrior broke through the ranks of the First Men
and the Andals rushed through the gap.
lf King Robar had been wiser, he would have retreated
and saved his army for another day.
Then again, if he'd been wise at all, he'd never have risked his army of foot soldiers
against mounted knights in the first place.
When King Robar saw the falcon helm of Ser Artys across the field,
he wagered that the Andals would break if they lost their leader,
and rode hard for the Falcon Knight.
The singers paint a pretty picture of the battle.
The king in flashing bronze armor, the knight in silvered steel.
But the jewel lasted no longer than a verse of the songs.
For King Robar had taken a Valyrian sword off a dead Andal lord
and it sheared through Ser Artys' helm much like a bird's wing through the air.
As the Falcon Knight tumbled to earth,
King Robar thought he'd won his desperate gamble.
Then he heard the trumpets behind him.
When he turned, he saw 500 fresh Andal knights pouring down the Giant's Lance.
And the man at its head was also the man at Robar's feet.
For Ser Artys, unique in that age, or indeed any age,
esteemed cunning even more than martial strength,
and had clad one of his knights in his spare suit of armor,
leaving him to die at Robar's hand
whilst Ser Artys took his best horsemen up a goat track he knew from childhood.
The charge of the Andal knights broke the last great army of the First Men
who would never again threaten the new Knights of the Vale.
Some of the defeated would even join their ranks in the years to come,
but many more fled to the mountains, choosing savagery over submission.
Ever since, the Knights of the Vale enjoyed an exclusive position in Westeros.
They could sally forth from the Vale at will,
knowing that if battle went against them, they could retreat through the Bloody Gate
where no army could follow.
Until the dragons changed the game.
When Aegon the Conqueror landed in Westeros,
the Queen Regent of the Vale shut the Bloody Gate against the Targaryens
and massed the Knights of the Vale behind it to lock it.
But Visenya simply flew her dragon to a balcony of the Eyrie
where the boy king was playing,
and gave the boy a ride round the castle in return for his mother's submission.
With the conquest,
no more could the Knights of the Vale hide behind their mountains,
nor, they soon discovered, did they need to.
For thousands of years,
the other kingdoms had warred and treated to balance each other's might
whilst the Vale kept to itself.
None realized what power the Vale could have until Jon Arryn defied the lron Throne,
refusing to surrender Ned Stark and Robert Baratheon to the Mad King.
The North, the Riverlands, and the Stormlands
couldn't have beaten the other three kingdoms by themselves.
But the Knights of the Vale rode with them.
Now, the North is freezing,
the Riverlands are burnt, the Stormlands are spent,
Dorne is distant, the Westerlands are weakened,
and the Reach is paralyzed.
Of all the great armies in Westeros,
only the Knights of the Vale have yet to suffer exhaustion or defeat.
The Bloody Gate is opening again onto Westeros,
and through it passes
opportunity
JORAH MORMONT: The Doom took Valyria in minutes.
But the rest of Essos wasn't so lucky.
Out of the east swarmed the Dothraki.
And there were no dragons to push them back.
The Dothraki tide slammed first into the Sarnori,
who called themselves the Tall Men,
and whose ancient kingdom dominated the grasslands of Essos.
The Tall Men at first scorned the Horselords as uncivilized barbarians.
Which they were.
But Khal Mengo had united all of them
into one khalasar with one aim.
To trample the world beneath their hooves
and take other peoples as their herd.
One by one, the cities of the Tall Men were overwhelmed.
Still, they wouldn't unite against the Dothraki.
Many didn't believe the tales of the rare survivors.
No army could move so fast or strike so quickly.
They didn't know that the Dothraki live in the saddle
and have such command over their horses
that they seem to have four legs, not two.
Where most archers fire from foot,
the Dothraki fire from horseback.
Charging or retreating, it makes no matter,
they are just as deadly.
But the Dothraki prefer close combat,
howling for blood as they ride down their enemies with their arakhs.
And there were so many of them.
When Khal Mengo's son, Khal Moro,
laid waste to the Waterfall City of Sathar,
renaming it "The Place of Wailing Children,"
the Tall Men finally realized their peril.
Led by a High King,
they assembled a great army to break the khals once and for all
and met the Dothraki on what would ever after
be known as the Field of Crows.
The four khals commanded almost 80,000 horsemen between them.
The Tall Men had 100,000 foot soldiers,
10,000 armored riders,
10,000 light horsemen
and 6,000 scythed chariots.
As battle was joined,
the earth-shattering advance of the Tall Men's chariots
smashed through the center of the Dothraki horde,
the spinning blades on their wheels slicing through the legs
of the Dothraki horses.
When one khal went down before them,
cut to pieces and trampled,
his khalasar broke and fled.
The chariots thundered after the fleeing horsemen
and the High King and his armored riders plunged in after them,
followed by their foot soldiers, waving their spears and screaming in victory.
But it was a trap.
The Dothraki were not fleeing,
as the Tall Men realized when the Horselords suddenly turned their horses
and unleashed a storm of arrows.
Two more khalasars swept down on the Tall Men's flanks
while another attacked them from the rear, cutting off their retreat.
Completely encircled, the High King and his mighty host were destroyed.
The Tall Men had stood for thousands of years.
Now the crows feasted on their corpses,
as the Dothraki squabbled over their valuables.
The common wisdom is that the Dothraki tide
finally broke upon the spears of the Unsullied at Qohor,
saving Essos from the Horselords.
ln truth,
the days when the Dothraki could threaten the entire world
had already passed.
The great khalasar forged by Khal Mengo
had splintered into a dozen hordes,
after the death of the last great khal,
and the riders had resumed their petty feuds.
The grasslands of Essos are now called the Dothraki Sea
but no more nations drown in it.
Still, the Dothraki priestesses,
the Dosh Khaleen,
prophesy that one day the Dothraki will gather at Vaes Dothrak,
their holy capital,
and unite once more
under the greatest khal of them all:
the Stallion Who Mounts the World.
He will lead their people to the ends of the earth
and grind all nations to dust beneath them.
l knew a khaleesi who the priestesses said
would give birth to this Stallion.
She didn't.
No doubt the Dosh Khaleen have made the same prophecy before
and will again.
World conquest is an alluring dream,
but few who dream it ever wake to its reality.
Yet could the Dothraki,
united behind one great leader,
conquer the world?
When l first came to Essos,
l laughed at the idea.
But now. . .
Most armies are either sellswords,
paid to fight, who often refuse to die,
or peasants called up from the fields and hovels.
How long would those armies stand against the charge of 100,000 screamers
howling for blood?
How well would boiled-leather jerkins
and mailed shirts protect them,
when the arrows fall like rain?
THOROS: King Robert still lived
and Lord Eddard Stark had just survived an ambush
by Jaime Lannister in King's Landing.
We were the King's men.
Charged by the King's Hand to bring the King's justice to the false knight,
Gregor Clegane,
who was raping and murdering the King's subjects in the Riverlands.
To be honest, l cared more about the King's cellars
but l joined Lord Beric for the adventure.
And maybe a grateful milkmaid or two.
Ser Gregor isn't called the Mountain because of his subtlety.
Yet he took us by surprise at the Mummer's Ford.
He'd hidden his men on both banks
and as we crossed, he fell upon us from the front and rear.
l saw a single blow from his sword take a man's arm off.
And kill the horse beneath him.
Many of us though were simply ridden down and drowned.
The survivors spotted my damn red cloak and rallied around me
and we cut our way free.
A hundred men we'd been that morning.
By dark, only 40 were left.
And Lord Beric looked to make us 39 before morning.
l drew a foot of lance from his chest and poured boiling wine into the hole it left.
But l knew there was no hope.
When his light failed, l shut his eyes,
placed my hands on his cold chest
and mumbled a half-remembered blessing over his body.
Because he was my commander and my friend.
And l didn't know what else to do.
Then l felt his heart thud beneath his breast.
His body shuddered as the fire of life rekindled inside it.
l used to joke that l became a red priest because the robes hid the wine stains.
But the wine itself hid an unbelieving heart.
When Beric's eyes opened,
so did mine.
l fell to my knees and praised the one true god,
and begged forgiveness for my ways.
l don't know if the Lord heard me but when dawn came,
Beric was still alive and stronger than he'd been.
(CHUCKLES)
He told us that our war hadn't ended at the Mummer's Ford, but begun.
And that every fallen brother would be avenged.
We were so few though that all we could do was harry the Lannisters' rear.
Luckily, all they could do was kill Beric.
A Lannister mace shattered his helm and skull.
A noose snapped his neck after he surrendered himself
to save a bee-keeper and his wife.
The Mountain's dirk pierced his eye through his visor.
After each time, l stood over his corpse and prayed to the Lord
and the Lord brought him back.
Then we heard that Robert was dead and Lord Eddard, too.
We'd been sent by the King's Hand to deal with outlaws, but now. . .
We were the outlaws and Lord Tywin was the Hand of the King.
Some wanted to yield but Beric wouldn't hear of it.
We were still King's men, he said.
And these were the King's people the Lions were savaging.
lf we could not fight for Robert, we would fight for them.
Until every man of us was dead.
We'd lost the King's banner at the Mummer's Ford but
then the countryside was awash with sigils and armies anyway.
We became the Brotherhood Without Banners.
Beric led us in battle and l led us in prayer.
And the Lord of Light led us in everything.
When the heralds proclaimed the end of the War of the Five Kings,
none of us thought of yielding.
Our war wasn't over.
The generals had gone home but the soldiers stayed.
Either they had no homes to return to or they'd gotten a taste for other people's.
The Brotherhood was the people's only defense.
We became the brothers of murdered siblings.
Husbands of murdered wives.
And fathers of murdered children.
Led by a murdered man.
Once we sought to bring the King's justice to the realm.
Now we bring the Lord's.
Or at least we try.
EURON GREYJOY: Circling the Jade Sea is the dream of every merchant.
On the other side is the Golden Empire of Yi Ti,
which was ancient when the Valyrians were still fucking goats.
Even its ruins dwarf every city in Westeros.
And its princes are said to live in houses of solid gold
and feast on meat powdered with pearls and jade.
Foolish talk.
lf it were true, l would have visited long ago.
But a bold merchant will risk two years for one voyage
to fatten his holds with spices, gems, and silks
so that he never wants for anything again.
To be fair,
many never do
because my ship, Silence, finds them on their return.
Their merchant dreams look so pitiful poured out on my decks.
Not enough for any lifetime, but their own.
Traders from the Summer lslands make tougher prey.
Not even the Silence could run down their swan ships
on the open sea.
When we take them by surprise,
our rams splint and crack against their hulls,
carved from rare hardwoods of the Summer lslands
and fitted together without a single nail.
Worse, every swan ship carries a company of archers
armed with goldenheart bows,
which can hurl the shaft hard enough to pierce steel bait.
After all that trouble, we often find their holds filled only with maps,
fruit and wooden trinkets.
Hardly worth our time and blood, except for their women.
To worship their god, all women of the Summer lslands
learn to fuck.
lt's enough to make a man devout.
lbbenese whalers are the most worthless of prices.
The men of lb are short, thick and hairy.
So are their women.
Not even tales of their six breasts can tempt men to take them.
-(BlRDS CALLlNG) -But the lbbenese know how to build ships.
Their great bellied whalers can weather any storm
and withstand assaults of the largest beasts.
ln battle, the lbbenese are incredibly strong,
and even their blood reeks of blubber and oil,
and their holds are rarely worth scrubbing our decks free of the stench.
When our holds were full or needed repair,
we set a course for the greatest safe harbor on the Summer Sea,
the Basilisk lsles, Port Plunder, Sty, Whore's Gash.
No map can find these towns, nor can the laws of men.
The slavers keep their captives in caves in the lsle of Tears,
pirates trade their goods on Barter Beach,
and hire fresh crews from the murderers filling every inn.
Great piles of old yellow skulls line the shores of one deserted island,
offerings from captains who have fresh heads pinned to their masts.
Once every generation, the Free Cities send fleets to destroy the towns
and hang every man they find.
They do, and the towns are abandoned to rot and sink back into the slime.
But come the next year,
another Port Plunder sprouts up somewhere else in the isles,
like a toadstool from a new pile of shit.
For many years, l brought Silence to the Summer Sea.
But when l close my eyes,
l hear the waves breaking below the bridges of Pyke.
l hear the kingsmoot chanting my brother's name.
Merchants pay the gold price,
buying their desires with coin.
Reavers pay the iron price,
taking what we want from the corpses of the men who had it.
But for what l dream,
no gold can buy and no iron can take.
l must pay with fire and blood.
HlGH SPARROW: Fire and blood make poor tools,
as kings make poor servants.
House Targaryen called themselves dragons long after the last beast died.
Perhaps it's only fitting that even their humility was monstrous.
Men worshipped on Visenya's Hill, thousands of years before Visenya came,
and Baelor raised the sanctum that bears his name.
The massive dome and towers of the Great Sept of Baelor
can be seen from anywhere in the city.
But not from the vast countryside that paid for it.
lts seven bells can be heard as far as Dragonstone,
whenever a king dies.
But none tolled for the stonemasons, glaziers, and smiths who built it.
The Great Sept was built to impress upon a man
how much greater the gods are than him.
A noble goal and, in that, it succeeds.
Within the main chamber, the sun streams through a seven-pointed star,
to illuminate the Seven, towering over mortals.
The Crone, with her lantern for lost souls.
The Mother, with her welcoming arms.
The Father, with his scales of justice.
The Maiden with her purity.
The Warrior with his sword.
The Smith with his hammer.
And lastly, the Stranger, with his shrouded face.
Pilgrims cross the Seven Kingdoms, to light candles here,
at the feet of their gods.
But these aren't the gods.
The Seven aren't encased in stone in the Great Sept
any more than the souls of dead kings are in the tombs below it.
To steward his monument to vanity,
Baelor summoned the High Septon of the Faith
from his ancient seat in Oldtown
and gifted him with ornate robes,
and a crown of crystal and gold.
And like a fool, the High Septon put on his lord's motley
and danced at his lord's table.
And with each passing year, the High Septons fell ever lower.
How can the flock be kept safe from wolves
when the shepherd sleeps in their den?
Baelor himself appointed a simple-minded stonemason,
believing him the Smith reborn.
And when he died, Baelor replaced him with an eight-year-old boy,
whom Baelor had seen speaking with doves,
that answered with the voices of the Seven.
Still, the common people revere Baelor, as the Blessed.
They tell of how he forced a high lord to wash a beggar's feet,
fasted to tame his unnatural lusts,
and walked the Boneway himself to make peace with Dorne.
Many septons and septas even claim that Baelor rescued his cousin,
the Dragonknight, from a snake pit,
because no viper would strike a man so pure and holy.
A lie.
Baelor was bitten a dozen times
and was bedridden for half a year.
And yet he didn't die.
Nor did his High Septons ruin the Faith.
Blessed Baelor's statue may greet men outside the doors,
but when men enter the Great Sept,
they don't see the gold
or the crystal
or the ambitions of a humble member of a powerful dynasty.
They see the gods.
They feel awe at the divine majesty
and their own insignificance.
The gods work through Baelor's pride and vanity,
as they work through all of us.
For the Faith is more than a sept.
The Faith is more than a High Septon,
more than all the septons and septas who preach to the living.
More than the Silent Sisters, who prepare the dead.
The Faith is the will of the gods.
And we are all its instruments.
Kings and beggars, lords and cobblers.
Lions and sparrows.
YOUNG NED: As a boy,
even l dreamed sometimes of being
not a Stark of Winterfell
but a Dayne of Starfall.
Legend has it that the Dornish founder of House Dayne
followed a falling star to where it hit the ground.
And there he raised his castle.
A fantastic story, l know,
but House Dayne has a relic to prove it.
Dawn.
The most famous sword in Westeros.
Forged from the fallen star's cold heart
and as strong and sharp as Valyrian steel.
Many Houses have ancestral swords
passed from father to oldest son,
like my own family's lce.
But Dawn doesn't pass to the lord of House Dayne by right.
To wield Dawn, a knight of their House must first be deemed worthy.
lt doesn't matter if he's the lord,
a younger brother or a distant cousin.
lf none are found to be worthy,
the blade stays on the mantel in Starfall until the next generation.
But Dawn hasn't rested there often.
From House Dayne have risen some of the greatest warriors in Westeros.
Vorian Dayne, who was a king,
and the greatest knight in Dorne before he was defeated by Nymeria.
Because of his honor, and his prowess,
she sent him to the Wall in golden fetters
and took his heir as her husband.
Joffrey Dayne,
who answered Aegon the Conqueror's demand to submit
by invading Aegon's Seven Kingdoms
and marching an army to the gates of Oldtown,
where Aegon had been crowned.
And the greatest of them all:
Ser Arthur Dayne.
The Sword of the Morning.
During the reign of the Mad King,
a band of outlaws calling themselves the Kingswood Brotherhood
terrorized the forest outside of King's Landing.
Every force sent after them either returned empty-handed
or vanished into the woods,
never to be seen again.
The King was furious
and dispatched Ser Arthur of his own Kingsguard to deal with the threat.
Ser Arthur didn't put the villagers to the question
or set fire to the woods to smoke out the Brotherhood,
as other forces had done.
He paid the smallfolk for the food his men ate,
brought their grievances to the King,
even won them the right to take a few of the King's deer
during the autumn.
The forest folk had looked to the outlaws to defend them.
But Ser Arthur did more for them than the outlaws could ever hope to do.
When a villager led Ser Arthur and his knights to the outlaws' secret camp,
the Brotherhood, to their credit,
didn't flee.
One of their leaders,
the Smiling Knight,
was a madman.
Cruelty and honor jumbled together.
But he didn't know fear.
Not even when Ser Arthur drew Dawn before him.
Soon, the outlaw's longsword had so many notches
that Ser Arthur stopped to let him fetch a new one.
The robber knights chose another and then asked for Dawn.
Ser Arthur replied,
"Then you shall have it."
The Smiling Knight never smiled again.
The mad fool.
Dawn is just a sword.
Ser Arthur was the true steel.
Strong, brave and loyal to a fault.
He would never have aided Rhaegar's abduction of my sister,
if his vows hadn't compelled him.
And though we fought on opposite sides,
l admired him.
When l was younger, l wanted to be him.
Every boy did.
And l killed him.
Not in single combat
but as he was on his knees,
a dagger in his back.
l'll never forget the look in his eyes.
He wasn't angry or betrayed.
He'd done his duty to the last,
even though he found it dishonorable.
And even though he knew what awaited me in that tower.
Ser Arthur Dayne died the greatest knight who ever lived.
After Robert's coronation,
l returned Dawn to Starfall.
One day, House Dayne will raise a worthy successor to Ser Arthur.
Until then, Dawn gathers dust above the fire,
with the dream of every boy in Westeros.
EURON GREYJOY: All across the lron lslands men sit around driftwood fires
and drink to the Old Way.
When the ironborn were feared wherever the waves were heard,
when our strength was in our ships, not our stories.
l don't blame them.
Drinking to the Old Way is easier than living it.
Our ancestors took to the sea because the lron lslands were shit
without the crops that grow from it.
Thirty cold wet rocks off the coast of Westeros,
and a dozen more clustered around the lonely light deep in the Sunset Sea.
But, hard places breed hard men.
The First Men feared the sea, they had walked to Westeros,
and even their fishermen never left sight of shore.
How l wish l could have seen the face of the first watchmen
to see our ships climb over the horizon.
He was not the last.
No matter how dark the night, or how high the waves,
come dawn our prows cut through the morning mist
and struck the beaches and riverbanks.
Before the sun reached its height, we vanished again into the sea.
Our longships filled with gold, food, scared children, and sobbing women.
For thousands of years the ironborn reaved up and down the Sunset Sea,
driving the men of the green lands far inland,
or into walled castles where they paid us tribute.
ln the depth of winter we feasted,
while the men who had planted and harvested crops starved.
-(METAL CLANGlNG) -Their sons worked our mines,
and their daughters warmed our beds.
Stories claim that the Old Way died
with Harren the Black and his sons in Harrenhal.
Our ships and axes were no match for Aegon's dragons,
so our ancestors bent their steel into fish hooks,
and our kingdom into villages.
And started telling the red tales around the fire
of how we used to be strong.
And how one day we'd be so again.
Generations later, a young boy listened to them.
Dalton Greyjoy, the wild young heir to Pyke
was rowing at five and reaving at 10
in the Basilisk lsles with his uncle.
By 14, Dalton had sailed as far as Old Ghis, fought in a dozen battles,
and claimed four salt wives.
ln his 15th year, he avenged his uncle's death in battle.
But he took a dozen wounds and emerged from the fight
drenched head to heel in blood.
From that day forth, men called him the Red Kraken.
During the Dance of Dragons,
the Red Kraken picked the side that was fighting the Lannisters,
and fell upon the Westerlands while the Lannisters were off at war.
Casterly Rock itself proved too strong
once the lady of the castle barred its gates,
but the ironborn burned the Lannister fleet,
and sacked Lannisport, carrying off gold, grain,
and hundreds of women and girls.
lncluding Lord Lannister's favorite mistress, and all of his bastards.
The Red Kraken now ruled the Sunset Sea as his forebears had.
And his longships again brought the Old Way to the coast of Westeros.
But then the war ended, and the mainland armies came home.
The lron Throne commanded the Red Kraken to stop reaving.
And when he didn't,
a mistress opened his throat as he slept.
While his sons squabbled,
the Lannisters sent their soldiers to the lron lslands.
Thousands of men, women, and children were put to the sword.
And scores of villages, and hundreds of longships
were put to the torch.
The glorious return to the Old Way had lasted almost two years.
My brother vowed to return us to the old ways
while he sat on the Salt Throne
and sent our reavers to the shores of Westeros.
Just as he remembered from the stories he heard as a child.
An old way for an old man.
But while he listened to the stories, l lived them.
lt was never the Old Way to me.
lt was the only way.
RANDYLL: Most houses take wild beasts for their sigils,
calling themselves bears, lions, or stags,
as if a cloth banner could make them so.
That isn't the way of House Tarly.
Our sigil is the huntsman pulling his bow,
and it isn't some idle fancy.
As soon as a son of House Tarly can hold a spoon,
he gets a bow.
As soon as the boy can sit a horse, his father takes him on a hunt.
They return with a stag, a buck, a boar, a brace of pheasant,
even if it takes days.
Even if it takes a week.
Even if it takes the boy's whole life.
Horn Hill is ours.
A fitting home for one of the oldest and most honorable families of the Reach.
Legend has it that Harlon the Hunter and Herndon of the Horn,
two sons of Garth the Greenhand,
raised the castle in the Age of Heroes,
and shared a home and a wife for 100 years.
Most of the great houses spout such nonsense about their origins.
At least my family doesn't claim some long-lost ancient crown, like the rest of them.
House Tarly breeds soldiers, not kings.
When House Gardener ruled the Reach, we served them well and loyally.
When House Gardener died,
and Aegon gave the Reach to their stewards, the Tyrells,
we served them well and loyally.
We know our place,
even if the Tyrell women don't.
When Aegon's son faced rebellion from the Vulture King of Dorne,
my ancestor, Savage Sam Tarly, led the royal forces on a Vulture Hunt.
Heartsbane, our ancestral Valyrian sword and the pride of our house,
soon ran red from point to hilt with rebel blood.
When Robert Baratheon rebelled against Aerys,
l led the Tyrell van,
and handed him his only defeat in the war at Ashford.
But a hunter knows that a moment's slip can cost him the game.
Great houses have fallen from a single, weak heir.
Samwell looked like a son when he was born,
but he grew up plump and soft as a daughter.
l'd catch him in the kitchen shoving cakes into his ever-growing mouth,
or reading in the garden when he was supposed to be training.
l brought masters-at-arms from all over Westeros to make a man of him.
He slept in chain mail, bathed in bull's blood,
was dressed in his mother's clothes and paraded through the castle
to shame him into valor.
He only grew fatter
and more craven.
l despaired of the future of our house until my wife gave me another boy, Dickon.
A real son and worthy heir.
Or he would have been, if Sam wasn't squatting in his way.
One morning l had Sam brought into the woods outside the castle.
l told him he'd given me no cause to disown him,
but Heartsbane should go to a man strong enough to wield her.
And Sam wasn't worthy to touch her hilt.
Either he would take the black and renounce all claim to his brother's sword and title,
or l would hunt him down like the pig he was.
Of course, faced with danger and exertion,
he chose the coward's path
and waddled north to the Wall.
Some may call me cruel for what l did,
but l don't care.
l am responsible for House Tarly
as my father was before me and his father before him.
lf the hunter returns with empty hands, his family starves.
lf the warrior carries an empty scabbard, his home burns.
House Tarly has stood for thousands of years.
lt will not fall on my watch.
No matter how many tears my family sheds.
PYCELLE: Without question, Oldtown is the oldest,
wealthiest and greatest city in Westeros.
QYBURN: Though King's Landing is more populous,
and arguably, more powerful.
PYCELLE: Ah. The city straddles the mouth of the Honeywine River.
And the bounty of the entire Reach flows beneath its great stone bridges.
To ports that are renowned throughout the world.
QYBURN: Thus we needn't speak more of them.
More interesting is the history of the city.
For none can say when it was founded.
Many centuries ago, a few bold maesters sought out the Children of the Forest.
Who claimed that men have lived at the mouth of the Honeywine
since the Dawn Age.
PYCELLE: Nonsense.
Maester Jellicoe proved that the city began as a trading post.
Where ships from Valyria, Old Ghis and the Summer lsles
put in to replenish their provisions and make repairs.
Hence, the most famous feature of the city, the Hightower.
Raised even before the city walls as a beacon through the fog-covered waters.
Originally built of wood and standing a mere 50 feet
above the ancient fortress of its foundation,
it is now thick stone and rises even taller than the Wall.
Those born and raised in Oldtown can tell the time of day by where its shadow falls.
QYBURN: But no maester can tell why.
Even in our oldest records, the island on which it stands is called
Battle lsle.
What battle was fought there?
And when?
As for the ancient fortress that forms the tower's base,
its walls and interiors are all of solid black stone
with no hints of joins.
Or mortar. And no chisel marks of any kind.
We know it predates the tower itself by thousands of years.
But who built it? How?
And against what?
PYCELLE: The maesters who have studied it
declare it to be of Valyrian construction,
akin to Dragonstone and the black walls of Volantis.
As is well-known,
the dragonlords of Valyria could turn stone to liquid with dragonflame
to shape as they wished.
QYBURN: Didn't one archmaester
link the fortress to the vanished mazemakers of Lorath?
And another maester, to the legendary Deep Ones
who inhabited the lron lslands before the ironborn?
(PYCELLE SlGHS)
PYCELLE: Both marginal opinions without common support.
But of more importance than the origin of the tower
is the family to which it gave its name.
House Hightower.
The ancient ruling family of Oldtown.
Known for their prudence and love of peace.
QYBURN: And pieces of gold.
PYCELLE: During the Age of Heroes, when Lymond Hightower
saw the Gardener kings conquering the Reach,
he didn't beat them on the battlefield,
but in the godswood.
He bound his house to theirs by marriage.
And transformed House Hightower from wealthy but relatively minor kings
to the greatest lords of the Reach.
Thanks to Lord Lymond's foresight,
Highgarden has always defended Oldtown.
Allowing the Hightowers to focus on higher pursuits
such as learning and trade.
QYBURN: On that we agree.
When the Andals invaded Westeros,
Lord Dorian Hightower told his wife of 20 years
that wars are bad for trade.
And to make his point, traded her for a young Andal princess.
When Aegon the Conqueror was earning his name,
House Hightower traded its loyalty to the Gardeners
for his confirmation of their rights,
welcoming him with open arms and open gates.
PYCELLE: House Hightower bent the knee to Aegon
to spare the city from his dragons.
(CHUCKLES) l would think such insinuations and insults beneath even you, Qyburn.
Ah, then again, mockery of one's betters is the trade of fools.
QYBURN: l wouldn't know.
Perhaps if l'd studied at the Citadel as long as you, Grand Maester.
PYCELLE: The Citadel is the greatest seat of learning in the known world.
Without it and the maesters it trains,
Westeros would be a land of superstition and ignorance.
QYBURN: Like the ignorance that shrouds the Citadel's own birth?
PYCELLE: Even without records,
we have more than enough reason to believe that the Citadel began
as a court of scholars and priests.
Assembled by a second son of House Hightower.
When he died, his elder brother raised the Citadel
so that wise men would always have a home in Westeros.
And could continue the enquiries and debates
that had given such joy to his younger brother.
QYBURN: His little brother's pets,
as legend has it he called them.
And so, the maesters have remained.
Only their masters have changed.
Now they serve every lord with a castle.
For a fee, of course.
Whilst the Citadel serves its own importance.
(PYCELLE CHUCKLES)
PYCELLE: Every word you speak merely validates your own expulsion
from our ranks.
QYBURN: Knowledge is validation enough.
l assume the world's greatest minds would agree.
And perhaps they would if l had met them.
Oldtown is a city for old men and old beliefs.
But the world is changing.
No matter how high the tower,
the clouds will not hold it up
if the ground shifts beneath it.
VARYS: Men called me "the spider" long before l came to Westeros.
As a young thief in Pentos, l seemed to have eight hands,
each dipped into a stranger's pocket.
But the other thieves didn't appreciate my skill,
and they had size and strength that l couldn't match.
When they discovered why,
l was beaten and told that a eunuch boy doesn't belong in the streets
but in the brothels, as any slaver would know.
l managed to escape them,
and took to sleeping in the sewers by day and prowling the rooftops by night,
barely one step ahead of starvation, much less slavery.
Then l met lllyrio Mopatis.
He was a Braavo who lived by his sword,
but his mind was sharper than his blade.
l proposed an arrangement.
l would spy on lesser thieves and steal their takings.
lllyrio would offer help to the thieves' victims,
promising to recover their valuables for a fee.
Soon every honest man knew to come to lllyrio,
whilst the city's cutpurses sought me,
half to sell me what they had stolen,
and the other half to slit my throat.
Sadly for them, lllyrio needed my throat more than he needed theirs.
Most thieves, like most men, are fools,
who think no further than turning a night's plunder into wine.
Luckily, as the other thieves had reminded me,
l was not a man.
Nor were those l hired with the gold we earned.
l chose the smallest orphan boys and girls,
the ones who were as quick and quiet as me
and taught them to climb walls and slip down chimneys.
My little birds left the shiny trinkets for common thieves
and instead stole letters, ledgers and charts.
Secrets are worth far more than silver or sapphires.
Later l taught my little birds to read the letters themselves
and leave them where they lay so no one would know of our intrusion.
lllyrio and l grew so rich that lllyrio wed a princess of Pentos,
whilst whispers of my talents
reached the ears of a very anxious king across the Narrow Sea
who did not trust his son, nor his wife, nor his Hand.
Nor should he have,
as l told him once l arrived and raised more little birds.
They thought it the most amazing game
to discover all the secret tunnels through the Red Keep,
and listen to all the whispered secrets from within the castle walls.
l often wonder what became of my little birds once l left King's Landing.
Most likely they returned to Flea Bottom,
or worse, grew up.
One day l'll hear their song again.
Until then, well, the world never lacks for orphans.
Little birds sing in the west, and little birds sing in the east.
And a Harpy flies into a spider's web.
BLACKFlSH: ln the long and glorious history of men butchering each other,
we river folk make the best meat.
How else can you explain why anyone would stay in a land of constant carnage
for thousands of years?
lf it wasn't the First Men killing the Children of the Forest here,
it was the Andals killing the First Men and then each other.
Even when the Riverlands finally united behind the kings of House Justman,
the unusual silence of peace attracted the storm lords, westermen,
and those bloody ironborn, to try and take our grain, gold and women.
The problem is, and has always been,
that the Riverlands have no natural defenses.
Unlike the North, we don't have the Neck to keep invaders waist-deep in muck.
Unlike the Vale, we don't have mountains with narrow passes,
easily defended by stable boys with slings.
Unlike Dorne, we don't have a blazing sun and. . .
Well. . . The Dornish.
My ancestors may have had a funny taste in sigils
but they knew one thing.
lf you plan on staying in the Riverlands,
you'd better have a strong castle.
My ancestor, Axel Tully,
bright man that he was,
realized that most soldiers can't swim,
and raised his castle of Riverrun
where the Red Fork and the Tumblestone rivers meet.
He built right up to the water on each side,
daring attackers to force a crossing.
lf they wore armor, they'd drown.
lf they didn't, our archers would feather them from the battlements as they paddled.
An army could still assault Riverrun from the west, however,
so my ancestors dug a wide moat along our western wall,
connecting the rivers on either side of the castle.
When any would-be conqueror showed up,
we opened a series of gates and flooded the moat,
transforming Riverrun into an island fortress,
with enough stores to last years.
As the invaders starved in their camps,
they'd watch us fish off our walls, just for variety,
and because we were bored.
Eventually, they all skulked home.
ln the thousand years that Riverrun has stood,
not once has it been taken by force.
lt's a proper castle.
You want it, you have to marry into it.
Even the damned Freys knew that much.
Upjumped toll collectors living on a bridge instead of beneath it like the rest of their kind.
But finally, a Lord of the Crossing passed off one of his brood to his liege lord.
House Tully. My nephew Edmure.
People say Lord Walder arranged the Red Wedding to punish Robb Stark.
l say he did it just as much to steal Riverrun.
They've always envied our castle.
Maybe they think two rivers can wash off the filth that coats them.
They'll never know.
The Lannisters could grant Riverrun to the Freys for a thousand years.
But that doesn't mean they can have it.
Do you think it was hard to convince Tully soldiers to turn against the Freys?
Do you think we won't enjoy watching them simper
as winter bears down on their pitiful camp?
l even carved a new fishing rod for the occasion.
When the starving Freys look up at our walls,
we'll wave our trouts at them.
JORAH MORMONT: Between the Free Cities and the Bones,
between the Shivering Sea and Slaver's Bay,
spreads the Dothraki Sea.
Named not for its waters but for how freely its conquerors roam upon it.
A traveler on the Dothraki Sea will find few villages and no farms.
Because the Dothraki view it as a sin to cut into their Mother Earth
with plows and shovels.
And the Dothraki know only one punishment.
The closest the Dothraki approach to civilization
is Vaes Dothrak.
Though to outsiders, it doesn't look like a city.
There are no walls,
because the Dothraki believe only cowards hide behind them,
instead of facing an enemy blade in hand.
But the Dothraki couldn't do that here either.
Within the bounds of the city,
no one, not even the mightiest khal, may carry a blade,
by order of the priestesses of the Dosh Khaleen.
Not that any enemy would be foolish enough
to attack the sacred city of the Dothraki in the first place.
Two giant bronze stallions rear over the entrance to the city,
their hooves meeting in the air to form an arch.
The famous Horse Gate.
Through it is the godsway,
where the Dothraki drag the sacred idols of the cities and peoples they've broken.
Along one side, stone gods look down on you from cracked thrones
with chipped and stained faces,
their names lost to time.
Across the road, monsters watch you pass.
Black iron dragons with jewels for eyes,
roaring griffins, manticores with barbed tails poised to strike,
and other terrible beasts from every corner of Essos.
But there is nothing to fear.
lf these gods and devils had any power,
they would never have ended here.
Not all foreign gods in Vaes Dothrak are broken.
ln the famous Eastern and Western Markets,
merchants worship their god of trade with the sufferance of the Dothraki,
who themselves don't understand buying and selling.
The Western Market is a great square of beaten earth filled with animal pens,
drinking halls and a maze of stalls and crooked aisles.
Even goods from Westeros find their way here.
Though the merchants who sell them wouldn't know a Lannister from a Frey.
The Eastern Market is, fittingly, a stranger place.
The elders of the Dosh Khaleen view it with suspicion
and most Dothrakis stay away.
They aren't wrong.
The great elephants, the basilisks in silver cages
and the striped black-and-white horses of the Jogos Nhai
are harmless enough.
But l can see how the elders wouldn't want their younger members
to see the warrior maids of Hyrkoon,
who wear iron rings in their nipples and rubies in their cheeks.
Or listen to the Shadow Men, who cover their bodies with tattoos
and hide their faces behind masks and whisper dark secrets for a price.
This is all of Vaes Dothrak that foreigners ever know.
For only Dothraki are permitted into the inner city
where the Dosh Khaleen live out their lives.
A bloodrider, drunk on fermented mare's milk,
once told me that the Dosh Khaleen are stewards.
They prepare for the day when every rider of every khalasar
shall return to the city.
And the Dothraki truly will be one blood and one khalasar again,
under the greatest khal of all,
the stallion who mounts the world.
He will ride to the ends of the earth and grind nations into dust
and take the whole world as his herd.
Or so the prophecy goes.
Yet the world is vast,
with many places a horse can't go.
The stallion who mounts the world couldn't rear above a mountain range.
Or leap across the sea.
Still, the world has been conquered before.
Just not with stallions.
JAlME: "Kingslayer,"
a word every man and woman in Westeros spits at me,
though many can't even name the king l slayed.
l understand.
To them, l'm a symbol of everything they'll never have
and a warning that'll never apply.
So they can loathe me from the safety of their small lives.
'Cause when a dog goes mad, we put it down.
Why not a king?
l was never supposed to be on the Kingsguard.
Oh, as a boy l dreamed of the white cloak like all boys.
But l was heir to Tywin Lannister, Hand of the King.
lf he forbade the tides, the waves would cease.
Then l was 15,
and my father was congratulating me on my new knighthood in the Red Keep.
l wonder if that was the last time he was proud of me.
That night, there was a knock on my door
and l'd opened it to find my sister Cersei disguised as a simple serving girl.
l hadn't seen her since my father had taken her to court when she was 12.
She had grown up. As had l.
She told me that my father planned to marry me off to Lysa Tully.
But she could arrange for the King to raise me to the Kingsguard
so l could stay in the city with her.
All l had to do was agree.
l made the obvious objections. Our family, our father, Casterly Rock.
Until she asked,
"ls it a rock you want or me?"
Come morning, she had my consent.
l would join the Kingsguard for her.
l would forswear my lands and title for her.
l would forsake our family for her.
Soon, a royal raven commanded my father to present me to the King
during the great tourney at Harrenhal to say my vows.
My father erupted in fury.
He could not object openly,
but he resigned the Handship and returned to Casterly Rock,
taking Cersei with him.
lnstead of being together, Cersei and l exchanged places.
Then, everything started to fall apart.
At Harrenhal, King Aerys made a great show of my investiture.
l knelt before him in gleaming armor and swore the oath of the Kingsguard.
Once Ser Gerold Hightower raised me up and put the white cloak on my shoulders,
a roar went up from the crowd.
l admit, despite my father's anger, l was happy.
And foolish.
That very night Aerys soured, commanding me to return to the Red Keep
to guard the Queen and little Prince Viserys.
Ser Gerold offered to take that duty himself so l might compete in the tourney,
but Aerys refused.
"He'll win no glory here," the King said.
"He's mine now, not Tywin's. He'll serve as l see fit."
That was when l understood.
lt was not my skill or valor that had won me this honor.
The Mad King had chosen me to spite my father and steal his heir.
l wanted to rip off the white cloak, but it was too late.
A Kingsguard serves for life.
So l upheld my oath,
confined to the Red Keep where Varys could watch me
and where the headsman could find me if my father displeased the King.
l served the King's pleasure
as he burned Rickard Stark alive and strangled his son, inciting the rebellion.
l defended the King's honor against courtiers
as his generals lost battle after battle with Robert.
l kept the King's secrets
when his pyromancers had caches of wildfire beneath King's Landing.
l gave the King counsel when my father's army was at the city gate
and Grand Maester Pycelle lied that my father had come to save him.
Many forget that l also tried to defend the King from harm.
When the Lannister soldiers poured through the gates,
it fell to me to hold the Red Keep as the only Kingsguard in the city.
l knew we were lost and sent to Aerys asking his leave to make terms.
My man came back with the royal command.
"Bring me your father's head if you are no traitor."
Aerys would have no yielding.
His pyromancer was with him, my messenger said.
l knew what that meant.
Aerys Targaryen was alone in his throne room when l found him
picking at his scabbed and bleeding hands.
The fool was always cutting himself on the lron Throne.
"Burn them ! Burn them !" he kept muttering.
Aerys had decided to let Robert be king, after all,
over the charred bones and ashes of King's Landing.
He must have thought his pyromancer was near enough to obey him,
but l'd killed him a few minutes before in the courtyard.
As l approached the throne,
sanity flashed behind the King's eyes for a moment,
just long enough to read the look in mine.
His eyes grew huge and the royal mouth drooped open in shock.
He turned and ran.
A single thrust was all it took to end the greatest dynasty the world had ever seen.
Beneath the empty eyes of the dead dragons on the walls,
the last dragon king squealed like a pig and shat himself.
So easy, l thought.
A king should die harder than this.
My father's knights burst into the hall in time to see the last of it,
so there was no way for me to vanish and let some bragger steal the glory or blame.
l knew at once when l saw the way they looked at me.
lt would be blame.
Lannister or no, l'd been one of Aerys' Kingsguard.
l commanded them to announce that the Mad King was dead,
and to spare all those who yielded.
They asked me if they should proclaim a new king as well.
l knew what they meant.
Would it be my father or Robert Baratheon,
or maybe the child Viserys who'd fled to Dragonstone?
A Targaryen boy king with my father's hand to rule in truth.
l thought of how Ned Stark and Robert Baratheon would howl
at this end to their great heroic war,
and l was tempted.
Then l glanced down again at Aerys,
his life's blood oozing from the wound and pooling on the floor around him.
"Proclaim who you bloody well like," l said.
l climbed the steps to the lron Throne and sat on it with my sword across my knees,
waiting to see who would come to claim the kingdom.
EURON GREYJOY: Westeros has Seven Kingdoms,
but the lron lslands have hundreds.
Every ship on the waves is a kingdom,
and every captain on his deck is a king.
Mainlanders will bow to a man whose only claim is dropping out of the right cunt.
But the ironborn spend their lives at sea.
We know that if a captain is weak, his men drown.
lf he's foolish, his men drown.
But if he's strong,
his men carve their names into the world with blood, steel, and song.
Any man with a ship may claim the Salt Throne,
but the rest of the ironborn have to give it to him
in the kingsmoot.
Our priests claim the first king of the lron lslands was the Grey King,
who ruled over the sea itself in the dawn of days.
He took a mermaid to wife and stole fire from the Storm God
and carved the first ship from a demon tree that fed on human flesh.
When he died, his 100 sons slaughtered each other
until only 16 remained.
Since none could overpower the rest in battle,
they came together and chose the strongest to be their king.
And so began the tradition of the kingsmoot.
(LAUGHlNG)
A good story for children who don't know the Grey is what men become
after their strength has fled,
or that brothers do not easily submit.
Over the centuries, the kingsmoot has raised the greatest of the ironborn.
Qhored Hoare, whose word was law whenever men could smell the salt air
or hear the crash of waves.
He sacked Oldtown and defeated the River King,
taking three young sons as hostages.
When their father's tribute was late,
Qhored cut out their hearts with his own hand.
When the father marched for vengeance, Qhored smashed his army
and gave this River King to the Drowned God.
Harren Hoare, born to a king who had a fleet he didn't sail,
and swords he didn't blood.
As an unruly and worthless youngest son,
Harren was sent away to the east to vanish, and so he did.
But when his father died, Harren returned to the lron lslands for the kingsmoot.
An elder brother objected,
so an elder brother fell off a horse,
and at the kingsmoot, no man objected.
Harren launched his father's ships for Westeros
and took 10 times the lron lslands from its weak lords
who never expected to face an ironborn king as skilled on land as at sea,
for Harren had reaved with Eastern pirates and served with Eastern sellswords
and learned more of war than the ironborn could imagine.
After Aegon and his dragons burned our last King Harren the Black
and broke our armies,
the defeated ironborn chose my ancestor,
Vickon Greyjoy, as Lord of the lron lslands, not king.
For centuries after, the kingsmoot was a joke that the ironborn didn't get.
When a Lord Greyjoy died,
the captains would meet and choose his eldest son to succeed him.
Of course they argued over it just long enough
to show they weren't now like the very mainlanders they despised.
Once more we have a true king, my own brother Balon,
who had the balls to seize the driftwood crown
but not the brains to hold it.
He's the first king the Iron Islands have had in centuries
and the fool would be the last.
The kingsmoot once chose him over me.
They will not have that choice next time.
BROTHER RAY: The War of the Ninepenny Kings, they called it.
-But l never saw a king, or earned a penny. -(HORSE WHlNNYlNG)
After the war ended, l heard it all started
when an exiled royal bastard raised an army of sellswords,
and the rightful king sent his own army to stop an invasion.
Sounds simple the way the maesters tell it.
But an army isn't like a dog that comes when you whistle.
The king calls on great lords, who call on lesser lords,
who send out their captains to round up all the peasant men
on the land the lord claims to own.
lf the lord is wise and generous,
his new soldiers are given steel swords and wooden shields to fight his battles.
Most of our army fought with sharp sticks.
Singers still sing of the valiant heroes made in the war,
Ser Brynden Tully the Blackfish,
Ser Tywin Lannister and Prince Aerys Targaryen,
Ser Barristan Selmy the Bold, who slew the bastard pretender
-and ended the war at a stroke. -(SWORDS CLANKlNG)
But the king whose crown we were defending never came.
He mattered too much, l suppose.
His Hand commanded the crown's armies
and died valiantly in his son's arms.
Or so the singers say.
l never saw that either.
l did see the soldiers when they came to our village.
They declared l was too young to fight,
but my brothers and friends were all going, and l wouldn't be left behind.
My oldest brother said l could be his squire,
though he wasn't a knight, just a pot boy armed with a stolen kitchen knife.
He'd never need it.
l saw him collapse on the march from fever, along with many from our village.
l saw our shoes fall apart on the road, our clothes rot off our bodies,
and half of us shitting our beds from the sickness and fear.
And then we got to the war.
ln the Stepstones,
l saw a mace cave in my last brother's head.
l saw the lord who led us there cut down,
and some other lord shouting that we were his now.
One day l looked around and realized all my friends and kin were gone.
l was fighting beside strangers under a banner l'd never seen.
Didn't know where l was, or how to get home.
When a lord rode up shouting at us to form ranks with our scythes and hoes,
l couldn't remember which side l was on.
Then the knights came down on us, faceless men, all in steel.
The thunder of their charge filled the world.
l closed my eyes.
Years later, after the war had faded into songs,
-l opened them again. -(BlRDS CHlRPlNG)
And saw what l had done, and what l had become in the war and since.
l went looking for a way back home.
l know l'll never reach it.
But that doesn't mean l don't need a guide.
THREE-EYED RAVEN: War did not come to Westeros with men.
ln the dawn of days, the Children of the Forest fought the giants.
But neither race sought to destroy the other.
Or they claim to the continent.
They couldn't.
The Children hunted and fought with dragonglass arrows and spears.
And the giants had only the branches they pulled from trees.
Nor could both races fill more than one
of the Seven Kingdoms of today.
Then the southern deserts coughed up a new race:
the First Men,
who had crossed the Narrow Sea over the Arm of Dorne.
Unlike the Children and the giants,
the First Men lived in huts and villages
and farmed the land to eat.
And there were so many.
As their numbers swelled,
men needed ever more fields and timber.
Of course, they saw that the great forests could provide both.
When they cut into the deep woods, however,
they stumbled on a strange sight:
a white tree with red leaves
and a face staring back at them.
At first, they were afraid.
But the face never spoke.
Even when the ax bit into it.
The First Men didn't know what a weirwood was.
They didn't know that a weirwood grows forever,
if left in peace.
Or that the native Children believed their spirits went into it after death.
The Children had no letters or runes.
All of their history, songs and prayers,
only the trees remembered.
When the Children looked at the cleared fields,
they saw not white stumps,
but their ancestors, now lost forever.
With their bones stolen to line the invaders' walls,
driven mad by grief,
the Children attacked.
The First Men had never seen weirwood.
But the Children had never seen bronze.
Their dragonglass arrows glanced off the First Men's shields.
And their armor of woven bark split beneath the First Men's swords.
As the war raged,
the Children resorted to the one advantage they had:
the magic of their Old Gods.
Their greenseers enlisted direwolves and snow bears,
cave lions and eagles,
mammoths and serpents.
ln return, the First Men cut down and burned
every weirwood they could find,
fearing that the Children would spy on them through the faces in the trees.
The Children became desperate.
Their greenseers called down the hammer of waters,
to break the Arm of Dorne,
destroying the bridge that men crossed into Westeros.
And to flood to the Neck,
to contain men to the south.
But the First Men would not be stopped.
Fearing extinction, the Children combined their powers for one last spell,
that would save their people and their land from the invaders.
By themselves, the Children were too few to resist the onslaught.
But if they could turn men's numbers against them. . .
(WlND HOWLlNG)
After hundreds of years and untold death and destruction,
the wisest heads of the Children and the First Men
finally prevailed.
The Children couldn't win this war.
And the First Men didn't want to win,
fearing the costs of victory.
Heroes and rulers on both sides
met upon an isle in the Gods Eye,
to form the Pact.
The Children gave up all the lands of Westeros, save for the deep forests.
And the First Men swore
that they would no longer cut down the weirwoods.
Thus ended the Dawn Age
and began the Age of Heroes.
Yet after the dawn must come the night.
The great evil that the Children unleashed in the war
returned centuries later.
And only an alliance between the Children and men defeated it.
Now it comes again.
When the Children are a shadow of what they were
and men have long forgotten.
But the trees remember.
And Brandon Stark must learn
or as we watched the First Men,
so will we watch the last.