have specially invited

Nothing Joff had decreed mattered any longer. “I wanted to be a knight. For this, at least.” Dontos lurched back to his feet and took her arm. “Come. Be quiet now, no questions.” They and across a small sunken courtyard. Ser Dontos shoved open a heavy door and lit a taper. They were inside a long gallery. Along the walls stood empty suits of armor, dark and dusty, their helms crested with rows of scales that continued down their backs Placement Opportunities.

As they hurried past, the taper’s light made the shadows of each scale stretch and twist. The hollow knights are turning into dragons, she thought. One more stair took them to an oaken door banded with iron. “Be strong now, my Jonquil, you are almost there.” When Dontos lifted the bar and pulled open the door, Sansa felt a cold breeze on her face, She passed through twelve feet of wall, and then she was outside the castle, standing at the top of the cliff. Below was the river, above the sky, and one was as black as the other Natur-a HK.

“We must climb down,” Ser Dontos said. “At the bottom, a man is waiting to row us out to the ship.” “I’ll fall.” Bran had fallen, and he had loved to climb. “No you won’t. There’s a sort of ladder, a secret ladder, carved into the stone. Here, you can feel it, my lady.” He got down on his knees with her and made her lean over the edge of the cliff, groping with her fingers until she found the handhold cut into the face of the bluff. “Almost as good as rungs.” Even so, it was a long way down. “I can’t.” “You must.” “Isn’t there another way?” “This is the way. It won’t be so hard for a strong young girl like you. Hold on tight and never look down and you’ll be at the bottom in no time at all.” His eyes were shiny. “Your poor Florian is fat and old and drunk, I’m the one should be afraid. I used to fall off my horse, don’t you remember? That was how we began. I was drunk and fell off my horse and Joffrey wanted my fool head, but you saved me. You saved me, sweetling.” He’s weeping, she realized new beauty.   

and dangerous to men he does not trust. Ser Raynald, stay with him. I won’t take him into Lord Walder’s hall like this.” Deftly done, Catelyn decided. Robb keeps the Westerling out of Lord Walder’s sight as well. Gout and brittle bones had taken their toll of old Walder Frey . They found him propped up in his high seat with a cushion beneath him and an ermine robe across his lap. His chair was black oak, its back carved into the semblance of two stout towers joined by an arched bridge, so massive that its embrace turned the old man into a grotesque child. There was something of the vulture about Lord Walder, and rather more of the weasel. His bald head, spotted with age, thrust out from his scrawny shoulders on a long pink neck. Loose skin dangled beneath his receding chin, his eyes were runny and clouded, and his toothless mouth moved constantly, sucking at the empty air as a babe sucks at his mother’s breast. The eighth Lady Frey stood beside Lord Walder’s high seat. At his feet sat a somewhat younger version of himself, a stooped thin man of fifty whose costly garb of blue wool and greyby a crown and collar ornamented with tiny brass bells. The likeness between him and his lord was striking, save for their eye
; Lord Frey’s small, dim, and suspicious, the other’s large, amiable, and vacant. Catelyn recalled that one of Lord Walder’s brood had fathered a halfwit long years ago. During past visits, the Lord of the Crossing had always taken care to hide this one away. Did he always wear a fool’s crown, or is that meant as mockery of Robb? It was a question she dare not ask.
Frey sons, daughters, children, grandchildren, husbands, wives, and servants crowded the rest of the hall. But it was the old man who spoke. “You will forgive me if I do not kneel, I know. My legs no longer work as they did, though that which hangs between’em serves well enough, heh.” His mouth split in a toothless smile as he eyed Robb’s crown. “Some would say it’s a poor king who crowns himself with bronze, Your Grace.” “Bronze and iron are stronger than gold and silver,” Robb answered .
“The old Kings of Winter wore such a sword-crown.” “Small good it did them when the dragons came. Heh.” That heh seemed to please the lackwit, who bobbed his head from side to side, jingling crown and collar. “Sire,” Lord Walder said, “forgive my Aegon the noise. He has less wits than a crannogman, and he’s never met a king before. One of Stevron’s boys. We call him Jinglebell.” “Ser Stevron mentioned him, my lord.” Robb smiled at the lackwit. “Well met, Aegon. Your father was a brave man.” Jinglebell jingled his bells. A thin line of spit ran from one comer of his mouth when he smiled. “Save your royal breath. You’d do as well talking to a chamberpot.” Lord Walder shifted his gaze to the others. “Well, Lady Catelyn, I see you have returned to us. And young Ser Edmure, the victor of the Stone Mill. Lord Tully now, I’ll need to remember that. You’re the fifth Lord Tully I’ve known. I outlived the other four, heh. Your bride’s about here somewhere. I suppose you want a look at her.”   

Sam went to take a look. The ground beneath his feet was a slush of melting snow and soft mud that Dolorous Edd insisted was made of Craster’s shit. It ; it sucked at Sam’s boots so hard he felt one pull loose. Back of a vegetable garden and empty sheepfold, a dozen black brothers were loosing arrows at a butt they’d built of hay and straw. The slender blond steward they called Sweet Donnel had laid a shaft just off the bull’s eye at fifty yards. “Best that, old man,” he said . “Aye. I will.” Ulmer, stooped and grey-bearded and loose of skin and limb, stepped to the mark and pulled an arrow from the quiver at his waist. In his youth he had been an outlaw, a member of the infamous Kingswood Brotherhood. He claimed he’d once put an arrow through the hand of the White Bull of the Kingsguard to steal a kiss from the lips of a Dornish princess. He had stolen her jewels too, and a chest of golden dragons, but it was the kiss he liked to boast of in his cups.

He notched and drew, all smooth as summer silk, then let fly. His shaft struck the butt an inch inside of Donnel Hill’s. “Will that do, lad?” he asked, stepping back. “Well enough,” said the younger man, grudgingly. “The crosswind helped you. It blew more strongly when I loosed.” “You ought to have allowed for it, then. You have a good eye and a steady hand, but you’ll need a deal more to best a man of the kingswood. Fletcher Dick it was who showed me how to bend the bow, and no finer archer ever lived. Have I told you about old Dick, now?” “Only three hundred times
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” Every man at Castle Black had heard Ulmer’s tales of the great outlaw band of yore; of Simon Toyne and the Smiling Knight, Oswyn Longneck the Thrice-Hanged, Wenda the White Fawn, Fletcher Dick, Big Belly Ben, and all the rest. Searching for escape, Sweet Donnel looked about and spied Sam standing in the muck. “Slayer,” he called. “Come, show us how you slew the Other.” He held out the tall yew longbow. Sam turned red .