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A Dance with Dragons

( A Song of Water ice and Burn - 5 )

George R. R. Martin

GAME OF THRONES: A NEW ORIGINAL Series, NOW ON HBO.

Dubbed "the American Tolkien" by Fourth dimension mag, George R. R. Martin has earned international acclaim for his monumental cycle of epic fantasy. Now the #one New York Times bestselling writer delivers the fifth book in his landmark series—every bit both familiar faces and surprising new forces vie for a foothold in a fragmented empire.

A DANCE WITH DRAGONS

A Song OF ICE AND FIRE: Volume FIVE

In the aftermath of a colossal battle, the future of the Seven Kingdoms hangs in the remainder—beset by newly emerging threats from every direction. In the east, Daenerys Targaryen, the terminal scion of House Targaryen, rules with her three dragons as queen of a urban center built on grit and death. But Daenerys has thousands of enemies, and many have set out to find her. As they gather, one boyfriend embarks upon his own quest for the queen, with an entirely different goal in mind.

Fleeing from Westeros with a price on his head, Tyrion Lannister, too, is making his fashion to Daenerys. Simply his newest allies in this quest are not the rag-tag band they seem, and at their heart lies one who could undo Daenerys'south claim to Westeros forever.

Meanwhile, to the north lies the mammoth Wall of ice and stone—a structure only as potent as those guarding information technology. There, Jon Snow, 998th Lord Commander of the Dark's Watch, will confront his greatest challenge. For he has powerful foes non only inside the Lookout merely likewise across, in the country of the creatures of ice.

From all corners, biting conflicts reignite, intimate betrayals are perpetrated, and a thousand cast of outlaws and priests, soldiers and skinchangers, nobles and slaves, will face up seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Some will neglect, others will grow in the strength of darkness. But in a time of rising restlessness, the tides of destiny and politics will atomic number 82 inevitably to the greatest dance of all.

From the Hardcover edition.

George R. R. Martin

A DANCE WITH DRAGONS

Dedication

this one is for my fans

for Lodey, Trebla, Stego, Pod,

Caress, Yags, X-Ray and Mr. 10,

Kate, Chataya, Mormont, Mich,

Jamie, Vanessa, Ro, for Stubby,

Louise, Agravaine, Wert, Malt, Jo,

Mouse, Telisiane, Blackfyre,

Bronn Stone, Coyote's Daughter,

and the residuum of the madmen and wild women of

the Brotherhood Without Banners

for my website wizards

Elio and Linda, lords of Westeros,

Winter and Fabio of WIC,

and Gibbs of Dragonstone, who started it all

for men and women of Asshai in Spain

who sang to us of a bear and a maiden fair

and the fabulous fans of Italy

who gave me so much wine

for my readers in Finland, Deutschland,

Brazil, Portugal, French republic, and the Netherlands

and all the other distant lands

where y'all've been waiting for this dance

and for all the friends and fans

I have yet to meet

thanks for your patience

A CAVIL ON CHRONOLOGY

Information technology has been a while between books, I know. So a reminder may be in order.

The book you lot concord in your easily is the fifth volume of A Song of Water ice and Burn. The fourth volume was A Feast for Crows. However, this volume does not follow that i in the traditional sense, so much equally run in tandem with it.

Both Dance and Banquet take upwards the story immediately after the events of the third volume in the serial, A Tempest of Swords. Whereas Feast focused on events in and effectually King's Landing, on the Atomic number 26 Islands, and down in Dorne, Dance takes usa due north to Castle Black and the Wall (and beyond), and across the narrow sea to Pentos and Slaver'south Bay, to pick up the tales of Tyrion Lannister, Jon Snow, Daenerys Targaryen, and all the other characters you did not see in the preceding volume. Rather than beingness sequential, the ii books are parallel… divided geographically, rather than chronologically.

Merely but upwardly to a point.

A Dance with Dragons is a longer book than A Feast for Crows, and covers a longer time period. In the latter one-half of this book, you will notice sure of the viewpoint characters from A Feast for Crows popping upward over again. And that means just what you think it means: the narrative has moved past the fourth dimension frame of Feast, and the two streams have one time again rejoined each other.

Next upward, The Winds of Winter. Wherein, I promise, everybody will be shivering together once more…

— George R. R. Martin

April 2011

PROLOGUE

The night was rank with the odor of homo.

The warg stopped below a tree and sniffed, his grey-brown fur dappled by shadow. A sigh of piney wind brought the human-odour to him, over fainter smells that spoke of fob and hare, seal and stag, even wolf. Those were human-smells too, the warg knew; the stink of old skins, dead and sour, near drowned beneath the stronger scents of smoke and blood and rot. Only homo stripped the skins from other beasts and wore their hides and pilus.

Wargs have no fear of man, as wolves exercise. Hate and hunger coiled in his belly, and he gave a low growl, calling to his one-eyed brother, to his small sly sis. As he raced through the copse, his packmates followed hard on his heels. They had defenseless the smell as well. Equally he ran, he saw through their eyes too and glimpsed himself ahead. The breath of the pack puffed warm and white from long gray jaws. Ice had frozen between their paws, hard equally rock, but the hunt was on now, the prey alee. Flesh, the warg thought, meat.

A man alone was a feeble thing. Big and strong, with good sharp optics, but dull of ear and deafened to smells. Deer and elk and even hares were faster, bears and boars fiercer in a fight. Merely men in packs were dangerous. Every bit the wolves closed on the prey, the warg heard the wailing of a pup, the chaff of final night's snowfall breaking under clumsy homo-paws, the rattle of hardskins and the long grey claws men carried.

Swords, a vocalism inside him whispered, spears.

The trees had grown icy teeth, snarling downwardly from the bare chocolate-brown branches. One Eye ripped through the undergrowth, spraying snow. His packmates followed. Up a hill and down the slope beyond, until the wood opened earlier them and the men were at that place. One was female. The fur-wrapped packet she clutched was her pup. Leave her for last, the vocalism whispered, the males are the danger. They were roaring at each other every bit men did, simply the warg could odour their terror. One had a wooden tooth as tall as he was. He flung it, just his mitt was shaking and the molar sailed high.

And then the pack was on them.

His one-eyed brother knocked the tooth-thrower back into a snowdrift and tore his throat out equally he struggled. His sister slipped behind the other male and took him from the rear. That left the female and her pup for him.

She had a tooth likewise, a niggling one fabricated of bone, but she dropped it when the warg'due south jaws closed around her leg. As she fell, she wrapped both artillery around her noisy pup. Underneath her furs the female was but peel and basic, just her dugs were total of milk. The sweetest meat was on the pup. The wolf saved the choicest parts for his brother. All around the carcasses, the frozen snow turned pink and red as the pack filled its bellies.

Leagues away, in a 1-room hut of mud and straw with a thatched roof and a smoke hole and a flooring of hard-packed earth, Varamyr shivered and coughed and licked his lips. His eyes were scarlet, his lips croaky, his throat dry and parched, but the taste of blood and fat filled his mouth, even as his swollen belly cried for nourishment. A child's flesh, he idea, remembering Crash-land. Man meat. Had he sunk so low as to hunger later on homo meat? He could almost hear Haggon growling at him. "Men may eat the fl

esh of beasts and beasts the mankind of men, but the human being who eats the flesh of man is an anathema."

Abomination. That had ever been Haggon's favorite give-and-take. Abomination, abomination, abomination. To eat of human meat was abomination, to mate as wolf with wolf was anathema, and to seize the torso of another homo was the worst anathema of all. Haggon was weak, afraid of his own ability. He died weeping and alone when I ripped his second life from him. Varamyr had devoured his heart himself. He taught me much and more, and the last affair I learned from him was the taste of human flesh.

That was every bit a wolf, though. He had never eaten the meat of men with human being teeth. He would not grudge his pack their banquet, however. The wolves were as famished as he was, gaunt and cold and hungry, and the casualty… ii men and a woman, a babe in artillery, fleeing from defeat to death. They would take perished soon in any case, from exposure or starvation. This way was meliorate, quicker. A mercy.

"A mercy," he said aloud. His pharynx was raw, merely it felt good to hear a man voice, even his ain. The air smelled of mold and damp, the basis was common cold and hard, and his burn down was giving off more smoke than rut. He moved as shut to the flames as he dared, coughing and shivering by turns, his side throbbing where his wound had opened. Blood had soaked his breeches to the knee and dried into a difficult brown crust.

Thistle had warned him that might happen. "I sewed information technology up the best I could," she'd said, "simply yous need to residue and let it mend, or the flesh will tear open again."

Thistle had been the last of his companions, a spearwife tough as an old root, warty, windburnt, and wrinkled. The others had deserted them along the way. Ane past i they vicious behind or forged ahead, making for their one-time villages, or the Milkwater, or Hardhome, or a lonely death in the forest. Varamyr did non know, and could not intendance. I should have taken one of them when I had the adventure. One of the twins, or the big man with the scarred confront, or the youth with the red hair. He had been afraid, though. One of the others might have realized what was happening. So they would accept turned on him and killed him. And Haggon's words had haunted him, so the run a risk had passed.

After the boxing there had been thousands of them struggling through the woods, hungry, frightened, fleeing the carnage that had descended on them at the Wall. Some had talked of returning to the homes that they'd abandoned, others of mounting a second assault upon the gate, simply most were lost, with no notion of where to go or what to practice. They had escaped the blackness-cloaked crows and the knights in their grayness steel, but more than relentless enemies stalked them now. Every solar day left more than corpses by the trails. Some died of hunger, some of cold, some of sickness. Others were slain past those who had been their brothers-in-arms when they marched s with Mance Rayder, the Male monarch-Across-the-Wall.

Mance is fallen, the survivors told each other in despairing voices, Mance is taken, Mance is dead. "Harma's dead and Mance is captured, the rest run off and left u.s.a.," Thistle had claimed, as she was sewing up his wound. "Tormund, the Weeper, Sixskins, all them brave raiders. Where are they now?"

She does not know me, Varamyr realized and then, and why should she? Without his beasts he did not look similar a neat homo. I was Varamyr Sixskins, who broke bread with Mance Rayder. He had named himself Varamyr when he was ten. A name fit for a lord, a name for songs, a mighty name, and fearsome. Yet he had run from the crows like a frightened rabbit. The terrible Lord Varamyr had gone craven, but he could not comport that she should know that, so he told the spearwife that his name was Haggon. Later on he wondered why that proper name had come to his lips, of all those he might have called. I ate his heart and drank his blood, and still he haunts me.

One day, as they fled, a rider came galloping through the woods on a gaunt white equus caballus, shouting that they all should make for the Milkwater, that the Weeper was gathering warriors to cross the Bridge of Skulls and take the Shadow Tower. Many followed him; more did non. Subsequently, a dour warrior in fur and amber went from cookfire to cookfire, urging all the survivors to head north and accept refuge in the valley of the Thenns. Why he idea they would be condom at that place when the Thenns themselves had fled the place Varamyr never learned, but hundreds followed him. Hundreds more went off with the woods witch who'd had a vision of a fleet of ships coming to acquit the free folk south. "Nosotros must seek the sea," cried Mother Mole, and her followers turned east.

Varamyr might have been amongst them if only he'd been stronger. The sea was grey and cold and far away, though, and he knew that he would never live to encounter information technology. He was ix times dead and dying, and this would be his true death. A squirrel-pare cloak, he remembered, he knifed me for a squirrel-pare cloak.

Its owner had been dead, the back of her caput smashed into red pulp flecked with bits of bone, but her cloak looked warm and thick. It was snowing, and Varamyr had lost his own cloaks at the Wall. His sleeping pelts and woolen smallclothes, his sheepskin boots and fur-lined gloves, his store of mead and hoarded food, the hanks of hair he took from the women he bedded, even the gilded arm rings Mance had given him, all lost and left behind. I burned and I died and then I ran, half-mad with hurting and terror. The memory still shamed him, but he had not been lone. Others had run as well, hundreds of them, thousands. The battle was lost. The knights had come, invincible in their steel, killing everyone who stayed to fight. It was run or die.

Death was not and so easily outrun, still. So when Varamyr came upon the expressionless woman in the forest, he knelt to strip the cloak from her, and never saw the boy until he burst from hiding to drive the long os knife into his side and rip the cloak out of his clutching fingers. "His female parent," Thistle told him later, after the boy had run off. "It were his female parent'due south cloak, and when he saw you robbing her…"

"She was dead," Varamyr said, wincing every bit her bone needle pierced his flesh. "Someone smashed her head. Some crow."

"No crow. Hornfoot men. I saw it." Her needle pulled the gash in his side closed. "Savages, and who's left to tame them?" No one. If Mance is dead, the free folk are doomed. The Thenns, giants, and the Hornfoot men, the cavern-dwellers with their filed teeth, and the men of the western shore with their chariots of os… all of them were doomed as well. Even the crows. They might not know it yet, but those black-cloaked bastards would perish with the remainder. The enemy was coming.

Haggon'southward rough voice echoed in his head. "Yous will die a dozen deaths, male child, and every one will hurt… simply when your truthful death comes, you will live again. The second life is simpler and sweeter, they say."

Varamyr Sixskins would know the truth of that soon enough. He could sense of taste his true death in the fume that hung acrid in the air, feel it in the heat beneath his fingers when he slipped a hand under his clothes to touch his wound. The arctic was in him too, though, deep down in his bones. This fourth dimension it would be cold that killed him.

His last death had been by fire. I burned. At first, in his confusion, he thought some archer on the Wall had pierced him with a flaming arrow… but the burn down had been inside him, consuming him. And the pain…

Varamyr had died nine times before. He had died once from a spear thrust, once with a comport's teeth in his throat, and one time in a wash of blood as he brought along a stillborn cub. He died his outset death when he was merely six, as his father's axe crashed through his skull. Even that had not been and then agonizing equally the fire in his guts, crackling along his wings, devouring him. When he tried to wing from information technology, his terror fanned the flames and made them burn hotter. One moment he had been soaring above the Wall, his eagle'south eyes marking the movements of the men below. Then the flames had turned his heart into a blackened cinder and sent his spirit screaming back into his own peel, and for a lilliputian while he'd gone mad. Even the memory was enough to make him shudder.

That was when he noticed that his fire had gone out.

Only a grey-and-blackness tangle of charred woods remained, with a few embers glowing in the ashes. There's still smoke, it just needs wood. Gritting his teeth against the hurting, Varamyr crept to the pile of cleaved branches Thistle had gathered before she went off hunting, and

tossed a few sticks onto the ashes. "Take hold of," he croaked. "Fire." He blew upon the embers and said a wordless prayer to the nameless gods of wood and hill and field.

The gods gave no answer. After a while, the smoke ceased to rise equally well. Already the little hut was growing colder. Varamyr had no flint, no tinder, no dry out kindling. He would never get the burn down burning again, not by himself. "Thistle," he called out, his voice hoarse and edged with pain. "Thistle!"

Her mentum was pointed and her nose flat, and she had a mole on i cheek with four dark hairs growing from it. An ugly confront, and hard, nonetheless he would accept given much to glimpse it in the door of the hut. I should have taken her before she left. How long had she been gone? Two days? Three? Varamyr was uncertain. Information technology was night within the hut, and he had been drifting in and out of sleep, never quite sure if it was day or night exterior. "Look," she'd said. "I will be dorsum with food." So like a fool he'd waited, dreaming of Haggon and Bump and all the wrongs he had done in his long life, but days and nights had passed and Thistle had not returned. She won't be coming back. Varamyr wondered if he had given himself away. Could she tell what he was thinking merely from looking at him, or had he muttered in his fever dream?

Abomination, he heard Haggon saying. It was nearly every bit if he were here, in this very room. "She is but some ugly spearwife," Varamyr told him. "I am a great man. I am Varamyr, the warg, the skinchanger, information technology is not correct that she should live and I should die." No 1 answered. In that location was no i at that place. Thistle was gone. She had abandoned him, the same as all the rest.

His own mother had abandoned him likewise. She cried for Crash-land, but she never cried for me. The morning his father pulled him out of bed to evangelize him to Haggon, she would not even look at him. He had shrieked and kicked as he was dragged into the woods, until his father slapped him and told him to be quiet. "You belong with your ain kind," was all he said when he flung him down at Haggon'south feet.

He was not wrong, Varamyr thought, shivering. Haggon taught me much and more. He taught me how to chase and fish, how to butcher a carcass and bone a fish, how to discover my way through the woods. And he taught me the mode of the warg and the secrets of the skinchanger, though my gift was stronger than his own.

Years afterwards he had tried to detect his parents, to tell them that their Lump had get the bang-up Varamyr Sixskins, just both of them were dead and burned. Gone into the trees and streams, gone into the rocks and earth. Gone to dirt and ashes. That was what the wood witch told his mother, the day Bump died. Lump did not want to exist a clod of earth. The boy had dreamed of a day when bards would sing of his deeds and pretty girls would osculation him. When I am grown I volition be the King-Across-the-Wall, Lump had promised himself. He never had, but he had come up close. Varamyr Sixskins was a name men feared. He rode to battle on the back of a snowfall bear thirteen anxiety alpine, kept three wolves and a shadowcat in thrall, and sat at the correct hand of Mance Rayder. It was Mance who brought me to this place. I should not have listened. I should have slipped inside my bear and torn him to pieces.

Earlier Mance, Varamyr Sixskins had been a lord of sorts. He lived alone in a hall of moss and mud and hewn logs that had in one case been Haggon's, attended by his beasts. A dozen villages did him homage in bread and table salt and cider, offering him fruit from their orchards and vegetables from their gardens. His meat he got himself. Whenever he desired a adult female he sent his shadowcat to stem her, and whatever girl he'd cast his eye upon would follow meekly to his bed. Some came weeping, aye, just still they came. Varamyr gave them his seed, took a hank of their hair to recall them past, and sent them back. From time to time, some village hero would come with spear in hand to slay the beastling and save a sister or a lover or a daughter. Those he killed, but he never harmed the women. Some he even blest with children. Runts. Pocket-size, puny things, like Lump, and non one with the gift.

Fear drove him to his feet, reeling. Holding his side to staunch the seep of blood from his wound, Varamyr lurched to the door and swept aside the ragged skin that covered it to face up a wall of white. Snow. No wonder it had grown so dark and smoky inside. The falling snowfall had buried the hut.

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