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A Game Of Thrones
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Book One of A Song of Ice and Fire
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By George R. R. Martin
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PROLOGUE
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"We should start back," Gared urged as the woods began to grow dark around them. "The wildlings are
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dead."
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"Do the dead frighten you?" Ser Waymar Royce asked with just the hint of a smile.
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Gared did not rise to the bait. He was an old man, past fifty, and he had seen the lordlings come and go.
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"Dead is dead," he said. "We have no business with the dead."
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"Are they dead?" Royce asked softly. "What proof have we?"
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"Will saw them," Gared said. "If he says they are dead, that's proof enough for me."
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Will had known they would drag him into the quarrel sooner or later. He wished it had been later rather
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than sooner. "My mother told me that dead men sing no songs," he put in.
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"My wet nurse said the same thing, Will," Royce replied. "Never believe anything you hear at a woman's
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tit. There are things to be learned even from the dead." His voice echoed, too loud in the twilit forest.
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Page 1
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"We have a long ride before us," Gared pointed out. "Eight days, maybe nine. And night is falling."
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Ser Waymar Royce glanced at the sky with disinterest. "It does that every day about this time. Are you
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unmanned by the dark, Gared?"
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Will could see the tightness around Gared's mouth, the barely sup
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pressed anger in his eyes under the thick black hood of his cloak. Gared had spent forty years in the
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Night's Watch, man and boy, and he was not accustomed to being made light of. Yet it was more than
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that. Under the wounded pride, Will could sense something else in the older man. You could taste it; a
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nervous tension that came perilous close to fear.
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Will shared his unease. He had been four years on the Wall. The first time he had been sent beyond, all
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the old stories had come rushing back, and his bowels had turned to water. He had laughed about it
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afterward. He was a veteran of a hundred rangings by now, and the endless dark wilderness that the
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southron called the haunted forest had no more terrors for him.
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Until tonight. Something was different tonight. There was an edge to this darkness that made his hackles
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rise. Nine days they had been riding, north and northwest and then north again, farther and farther from
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the Wall, hard on the track of a band of wildling raiders. Each day had been worse than the day that had
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come before it. Today was the worst of all. A cold wind was blowing out of the north, and it made the
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trees rustle like living things. All day, Will had felt as though something were watching him, something
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cold and implacable that loved him not. Gared had felt it too. Will wanted nothing so much as to ride
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hellbent for the safety of the Wall, but that was not a feeling to share with your commander.
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Especially not a commander like this one.
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Ser Waymar Royce was the youngest son of an ancient house with too many heirs. He was a handsome
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youth of eighteen, grey-eyed and graceful and slender as a knife. Mounted on his huge black destrier, the
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knight towered above Will and Gared on their smaller garrons. He wore black leather boots, black
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woolen pants, black moleskin gloves, and a fine supple coat of gleaming black ringmail over layers of
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black wool and boiled leather. Ser Waymar had been a Sworn Brother of the Night's Watch for less than
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half a year, but no one could say he had not prepared for his vocation. At least insofar as his wardrobe
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was concerned.
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His cloak was his crowning glory; sable, thick and black and soft as sin. "Bet he killed them all himself,
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he did," Gared told the barracks over wine, "twisted their little heads off, our mighty warrior." They had
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all shared the laugh.
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It is hard to take orders from a man you laughed at in your cups, Will reflected as he sat shivering atop
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his garron. Gared must have felt the same.
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"Mormont said as we should track them, and we did," Gared said.
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"They're dead. They shan't trouble us no more. There's hard riding before us. I don't like this weather. If
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it snows, we could be a fortnight getting back, and snow's the best we can hope for. Ever seen an ice
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storm, my lord?"
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The lordling seemed not to hear him. He studied the deepening twilight in that half-bored, half-distracted
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Page 2
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way he had. Will had ridden with the knight long enough to understand that it was best not to interrupt
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him when he looked like that. "Tell me again what you saw, Will. All the details. Leave nothing out."
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Will had been a hunter before he joined the Night's Watch. Well, a poacher in truth. Mallister freeriders
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had caught him red-handed in the Mallisters' own woods, skinning one of the Mallisters' own bucks, and
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it had been a choice of putting on the black or losing a hand. No one could move through the woods as
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silent as Will, and it had not taken the black brothers long to discover his talent.
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"The camp is two miles farther on, over that ridge, hard beside a stream," Will said. "I got close as I
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dared. There's eight of them, men and women both. No children I could see. They put up a lean-to
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against the rock. The snow's pretty well covered it now, but I could still make it out. No fire burning, but
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the firepit was still plain as day. No one moving. I watched a long time. No living man ever lay so still."
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"Did you see any blood?"
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"Well, no," Will admitted.
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"Did you see any weapons?"
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"Some swords, a few bows. One man had an axe. Heavy-looking, double-bladed, a cruel piece of iron.
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It was on the ground beside him, right by his hand."
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"Did you make note of the position of the bodies?"
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Will shrugged. "A couple are sitting up against the rock. Most of them on the ground. Fallen, like."
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"Or sleeping," Royce suggested.
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"Fallen," Will insisted. "There's one woman up an ironwood, halfhid in the branches. A far-eyes." He
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smiled thinly. "I took care she never saw me. When I got closer, I saw that she wasn't moving neither."
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Despite himself, he shivered.
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"You have a chill?" Royce asked.
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"Some," Will muttered. "The wind, m'lord."
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The young knight turned back to his grizzled man-at-arms. Frostfallen leaves whispered past them, and
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Royce's destrier moved restlessly. "What do you think might have killed these men, Gared?" Ser
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Waymar asked casually. He adjusted the drape of his long sable cloak.
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"It was the cold," Gared said with iron certainty. "I saw men freeze
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last winter, and the one before, when I was half a boy. Everyone talks about snows forty foot deep, and
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how the ice wind comes howling out of the north, but the real enemy is the cold. It steals up on you
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quieter than Will, and at first you shiver and your teeth chatter and you stamp your feet and dream of
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mulled wine and nice hot fires. It burns, it does. Nothing burns like the cold. But only for a while. Then it
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gets inside you and starts to fill you up, and after a while you don't have the strength to fight it. It's easier
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just to sit down or go to sleep. They say you don't feel any pain toward the end. First you go weak and
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drowsy, and everything starts to fade, and then it's like sinking into a sea of warm milk. Peaceful, like."
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"Such eloquence, Gared," Ser Waymar observed. "I never suspected you had it in you."
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Page 3
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"I've had the cold in me too, lordling." Gared pulled back his hood, giving Ser Waymar a good long look
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at the stumps where his ears had been. "Two ears, three toes, and the little finger off my left hand. I got
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off light. We found my brother frozen at his watch, with a smile on his face."
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Ser Waymar shrugged. "You ought dress more warmly, Gared."
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Gared glared at the lordling, the scars around his ear holes flushed red with anger where Maester
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Aemon had cut the ears away. "We'll see how warm you can dress when the winter comes." He pulled
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up his hood and hunched over his garron, silent and sullen.
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