《冰与火之歌卷Ⅱ：列王的纷争》（A_Clash_Of_Kings）【完结】_派派后花园

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[Novel] 《冰与火之歌卷Ⅱ：列王的纷争》（A_Clash_Of_Kings）【完结】

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等级: 内阁元老
配偶: 逐烟霞。
你看着眼前的人，分明还是以前的模样，可心里终究不是以前那般澄清透明了。
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CHAPTER 19
　　ARYA
　　When she climbed all the way up to the highest branch, Arya could see chimneys poking through the trees. Thatched roofs clustered along the shore of the lake and the small stream that emptied into it, and a wooden pier jutted out into the water beside a low long building with a slate roof.
　　She skinnied farther out, until the branch began to sag under her weight. No boats were tied to the pier, but she could see thin tendrils of smoke rising from some of the chimneys, and part of a wagon jutting out behind a stable.
　　Someone’s there. Arya chewed her lip. All the other places they’d come upon had been empty and desolate. Farms, villages, castles, septs, barns, it made no matter. If it could burn, the Lannisters had burned it; if it could die, they’d killed it. They had even set the woods ablaze where they could, though the leaves were still green and wet from recent rains, and the fires had not spread. “They would have burned the lake if they could have,” Gendry had said, and Arya knew he was right. On the night of their escape, the flames of the burning town had shimmered so brightly on the water that it had seemed that the lake was afire.
　　When they finally summoned the nerve to steal back into the ruins the next night, nothing remained but blackened stones, the hollow shells of houses, and corpses. In some places wisps of pale smoke still rose from the ashes. Hot Pie had pleaded with them not to go back, and Lommy called them fools and swore that Ser Amory would catch them and kill them too, but Lorch and his men had long gone by the time they reached the holdfast. They found the gates broken down, the walls partly demolished, and the inside strewn with the unburied dead. One look was enough for Gendry. “They’re killed, every one,” he said. “And dogs have been at them too, look.”
　　“Or wolves.”
　　“Dogs, wolves, it makes no matter. It’s done here.”
　　But Arya would not leave until they found Yoren. They couldn’t have killed him, she told herself, he was too hard and tough, and a brother of the Night’s Watch besides. She said as much to Gendry as they searched among the corpses.
　　The axe blow that had killed him had split his skull apart, but the great tangled beard could be no one else’s, or the garb, patched and unwashed and so faded it was more grey than black. Ser Amory Lorch had given no more thought to burying his own dead than to those he had murdered, and the corpses of four Lannister men-at-arms were heaped near Yoren’s. Arya wondered how many it had taken to bring him down.
　　He was going to take me home, she thought as they dug the old man’s hole. There were too many dead to bury them all, but Yoren at least must have a grave, Arya had insisted. He was going to bring me safe to Winterfell, he promised. Part of her wanted to cry. The other part wanted to kick him.
　　It was Gendry who thought of the lord’s towerhouse and the three that Yoren had sent to hold it. They had come under attack as well, but the round tower had only one entry, a second-story door reached by a ladder. Once that had been pulled inside, Ser Amory’s men could not get at them. The Lannisters had piled brush around the tower’s base and set it afire, but the stone would not burn, and Lorch did not have the patience to starve them out. Cutjack opened the door at Gendry’s shout, and when Kurz said they’d be better pressing on north than going back, Arya had clung to the hope that she still might reach Winterfell.
　　Well, this village was no Winterfell, but those thatched roofs promised warmth and shelter and maybe even food, if they were bold enough to risk them. Unless it’s Lorch there. He had horses; he would have traveled faster than us.
　　She watched from the tree for a long time, hoping she might see something; a man, a horse, a banner, anything that would help her know. A few times she glimpsed motion, but the buildings were so far off it was hard to be certain. Once, very clearly, she heard the whinny of a horse.
　　The air was full of birds, crows mostly. From afar, they were no larger than flies as they wheeled and flapped above the thatched roofs. To the east, Gods Eye was a sheet of sun-hammered blue that filled half the world. Some days, as they made their slow way up the muddy shore (Gendry wanted no part of any roads, and even Hot Pie and Lommy saw the sense in that), Arya felt as though the lake were calling her. She wanted to leap into those placid blue waters, to feel clean again, to swim and splash and bask in the sun. But she dare not take off her clothes where the others could see, not even to wash them. At the end of the day she would often sit on a rock and dangle her feet in the cool water. She had finally thrown away her cracked and rotted shoes. Walking barefoot was hard at first, but the blisters had finally broken, the cuts had healed, and her soles had turned to leather. The mud was nice between her toes, and she liked to feel the earth underfoot when she walked.
　　From up here, she could see a small wooded island off to the northeast. Thirty yards from shore, three black swans were gliding over the water, so serene . . . no one had told them that war had come, and they cared nothing for burning towns and butchered men. She stared at them with yearning. Part of her wanted to be a swan. The other part wanted to eat one. She had broken her fast on some acorn paste and a handful of bugs. Bugs weren’t so bad when you got used to them. Worms were worse, but still not as bad as the pain in your belly after days without food. Finding bugs was easy, all you had to do was kick over a rock. Arya had eaten a bug once when she was little, just to make Sansa screech, so she hadn’t been afraid to eat another. Weasel wasn’t either, but Hot Pie retched up the beetle he tried to swallow, and Lommy and Gendry wouldn’t even try. Yesterday Gendry had caught a frog and shared it with Lommy, and, a few days before, Hot Pie had found blackberries and stripped the bush bare, but mostly they had been living on water and acorns. Kurz had told them how to use rocks and make a kind of acorn paste. It tasted awful.
　　She wished the poacher hadn’t died. He’d known more about the woods than all the rest of them together, but he’d taken an arrow through the shoulder pulling in the ladder at the towerhouse. Tarber had packed it with mud and moss from the lake, and for a day or two Kurz swore the wound was nothing, even though the flesh of his throat was turning dark while angry red welts crept up his jaw and down his chest. Then one morning he couldn’t find the strength to get up, and by the next he was dead.
　　They buried him under a mound of stones, and Cutjack had claimed his sword and hunting horn, while Tarber helped himself to bow and boots and knife. They’d taken it all when they left. At first they thought the two had just gone hunting, that they’d soon return with game and feed them all. But they waited and waited, until finally Gendry made them move on. Maybe Tarber and Cutjack figured they would stand a better chance without a gaggle of orphan boys to herd along. They probably would too, but that didn’t stop her hating them for leaving.
　　Beneath her tree, Hot Pie barked like a dog. Kurz had told them to use animal sounds to signal to each other. An old poacher’s trick, he’d said, but he’d died before he could teach them how to make the sounds right. Hot Pie’s bird calls were awful. His dog was better, but not much.
　　Arya hopped from the high branch to one beneath it, her hands out for balance. A water dancer never falls. Lightfoot, her toes curled tight around the branch, she walked a few feet, hopped down to a larger limb, then swung hand over hand through the tangle of leaves until she reached the trunk. The bark was rough beneath her fingers, against her toes. She descended quickly, jumping down the final six feet, rolling when she landed.
　　Gendry gave her a hand to pull her up. “You were up there a long time. What could you see?”
　　“A fishing village, just a little place, north along the shore. Twenty-six thatch roofs and one slate, I counted. I saw part of a wagon. Someone’s there.”
　　At the sound of her voice, Weasel came creeping out from the bushes. Lommy had named her that. He said she looked like a weasel, which wasn’t true, but they couldn’t keep on calling her the crying girl after she finally stopped crying. Her mouth was filthy. Arya hoped she hadn’t been eating mud again.
　　“Did you see people?” asked Gendry.
　　“Mostly just roofs,” Arya admitted, “but some chimneys were smoking, and I heard a horse.” The Weasel put her arms around her leg, clutching tight. Sometimes she did that now.
　　“If there’s people, there’s food,” Hot Pie said, too loudly. Gendry was always telling him to be more quiet, but it never did any good. “Might be they’d give us some.”
　　“Might be they’d kill us too,” Gendry said.
　　“Not if we yielded,” Hot Pie said hopefully.
　　“Now you sound like Lommy.”
　　Lommy Greenhands sat propped up between two thick roots at the foot of an oak. A spear had taken him through his left calf during the fight at the holdfast. By the end of the next day, he had to limp along one-legged with an arm around Gendry, and now he couldn’t even do that. They’d hacked branches off trees to make a litter for him, but it was slow, hard work carrying him along, and he whimpered every time they jounced him.
　　“We have to yield,” he said. “That’s what Yoren should have done. He should have opened the gates like they said.”
　　Arya was sick of Lommy going on about how Yoren should have yielded. It was all he talked about when they carried him, that and his leg and his empty belly. Hot Pie agreed. “They told Yoren to open the gates, they told him in the king’s name. You have to do what they tell you in the king’s name. It was that stinky old man’s fault. If he’d of yielded, they would have left us be.”
　　Gendry frowned. “Knights and lordlings, they take each other captive and pay ransoms, but they don’t care if the likes of you yield or not.” He turned to Arya. “What else did you see?”
　　“If it’s a fishing village, they’d sell us fish, I bet,” said Hot Pie. The lake teemed with fresh fish, but they had nothing to catch them with. Arya had tried to use her hands, the way she’d seen Koss do, but fish were quicker than pigeons and the water played tricks on her eyes.
　　“I don’t know about fish.” Arya tugged at the Weasel’s matted hair, thinking it might be best to hack it off. “There’s crows down by the water. Something’s dead there.”
　　“Fish, washed up on shore,” Hot Pie said. “If the crows eat it, I bet we could.”
　　“We should catch some crows, we could eat them,” said Lommy. “We could make a fire and roast them like chickens.”
　　Gendry looked fierce when he scowled. His beard had grown in thick and black as briar. “I said, no fires.”
　　“Lommy’s hungry,” Hot Pie whined, “and I am too.”
　　“We’re all hungry,” said Arya.
　　“You’re not,” Lommy spat from the ground. “Worm breath.”
　　Arya could have kicked him in his wound. “I said I’d dig worms for you too, if you wanted.”
　　Lommy made a disgusted face. “If it wasn’t for my leg, I’d hunt us some boars.”
　　“Some boars,” she mocked. “You need a boarspear to hunt boars, and horses and dogs, and men to flush the boar from its lair.” Her father had hunted boar in the wolfswood with Robb and Jon. Once he even took Bran, but never Arya, even though she was older. Septa Mordane said boar hunting was not for ladies, and Mother only promised that when she was older she might have her own hawk. She was older now, but if she had a hawk she’d eat it.
　　“What do you know about hunting boars?” said Hot Pie.
　　“More than you.”
　　Gendry was in no mood to hear it. “Quiet, both of you, I need to think what to do.” He always looked pained when he tried to think, like it hurt him something fierce.
　　“Yield,” Lommy said.
　　“I told you to shut up about the yielding. We don’t even know who’s in there. Maybe we can steal some food.” “Lommy could steal, if it wasn’t for his leg,” said Hot Pie. “He was a thief in the city.”
　　“A bad thief,” Arya said, “or he wouldn’t have got caught.”
　　Gendry squinted up at the sun. “Evenfall will be the best time to sneak in. I’ll go scout come dark.”
　　“No, I’ll go,” Arya said. “You’re too noisy.”
　　Gendry got that look on his face. “We’ll both go.”
　　“Arry should go,” said Lommy. “He’s sneakier than you are.”
　　“We’ll both go, I said.”
　　“But what if you don’t come back? Hot Pie can’t carry me by himself, you know he can’t . . .”
　　“And there’s wolves,” Hot Pie said. “I heard them last night, when I had the watch. They sounded close.”
　　Arya had heard them too. She’d been asleep in the branches of an elm, but the howling had woken her. She’d sat awake for a good hour, listening to them, prickles creeping up her spine.
　　“And you won’t even let us have a fire to keep them off,” Hot Pie said. “It’s not right, leaving us for the wolves.”
　　“No one is leaving you,” Gendry said in disgust. “Lommy has his spear if the wolves come, and you’ll be with him. We’re just going to go see, that’s all; we’re coming back.”
　　“Whoever it is, you should yield to them,” Lommy whined. “I need some potion for my leg, it hurts bad.”
　　“If we see any leg potion, we’ll bring it,” Gendry said. “Arry, let’s go, I want to get near before the sun is down. Hot Pie, you keep Weasel here, I don’t want her following.”
　　“Last time she kicked me.”
　　“I’ll kick you if you don’t keep her here.” Without waiting for an answer, Gendry donned his steel helm and walked off.
　　Arya had to scamper to keep up. Gendry was five years older and a foot taller than she was, and long of leg as well. For a while he said nothing, just plowed on through the trees with an angry look on his face, making too much noise. But finally he stopped and said, “I think Lommy’s going to die.”
　　She was not surprised. Kurz had died of his wound, and he’d been a lot stronger than Lommy. Whenever it was Arya’s turn to help carry him, she could feel how warm his skin was, and smell the stink off his leg. “Maybe we could find a maester . . .”
　　“You only find maesters in castles, and even if we found one, he wouldn’t dirty his hands on the likes of Lommy.” Gendry ducked under a low-hanging limb.
　　“That’s not true.” Maester Luwin would have helped anyone who came to him, she was certain.
　　“He’s going to die, and the sooner he does it, the better for the rest of us. We should just leave him, like he says. If it was you or me hurt, you know he’d leave us.” They scrambled down a steep cut and up the other side, using roots for handholds. “I’m sick of carrying him, and I’m sick of all his talk about yielding too. If he could stand up, I’d knock his teeth in. Lommy’s no use to anyone. That crying girl’s no use either.”
　　“You leave Weasel alone, she’s just scared and hungry is all.” Arya glanced back, but the girl was not following for once. Hot Pie must have grabbed her, like Gendry had told him.
　　“She’s no use,” Gendry repeated stubbornly. “Her and Hot Pie and Lommy, they’re slowing us down, and they’re going to get us killed. You’re the only one of the bunch who’s good for anything. Even if you are a girl.”
　　Arya froze in her steps. “I’m not a girl!”
　　“Yes you are. Do you think I’m as stupid as they are?” “No, you’re stupider. The Night’s Watch doesn’t take girls, everyone knows that.”
　　“That’s true. I don’t know why Yoren brought you, but he must have had some reason. You’re still a girl.”
　　“I am not!”
　　“Then pull out your cock and take a piss. Go on.”
　　“I don’t need to take a piss. If I wanted to I could.”
　　“Liar. You can’t take out your cock because you don’t have one. I never noticed before when there were thirty of us, but you always go off in the woods to make your water. You don’t see Hot Pie doing that, nor me neither. If you’re not a girl, you must be some eunuch.”
　　“You’re the eunuch.”
　　“You know I’m not.” Gendry smiled. “You want me to take out my cock and prove it? I don’t have anything to hide.”
　　“Yes you do,” Arya blurted, desperate to escape the subject of the cock she didn’t have. “Those gold cloaks were after you at the inn, and you won’t tell us why.”
　　“I wish I knew. I think Yoren knew, but he never told me. Why did you think they were after you, though?”
　　Arya bit her lip. She remembered what Yoren had said, the day he had hacked off her hair. This lot, half o’ them would turn you over to the queen quick as spit for a pardon and maybe a few silvers. The other half’d do the same, only they’d rape you first. Only Gendry was different, the queen wanted him too. “I’ll tell you if you’ll tell me,” she said warily.
　　“I would if I knew, Arry . . . is that really what you’re called, or do you have some girl’s name?”
　　Arya glared at the gnarled root by her feet. She realized that the pretense was done. Gendry knew, and she had nothing in her pants to convince him otherwise. She could draw Needle and kill him where he stood, or else trust him. She wasn’t certain she’d be able to kill him, even if she tried; he had his own sword, and he was a lot stronger. All that was left was the truth. “Lommy and Hot Pie can’t know,” she said.
　　“They won’t,” he swore. “Not from me.”
　　“Arya.” She raised her eyes to his. “My name is Arya. Of House Stark.”
　　“Of House . . .” It took him a moment before he said, “The King’s Hand was named Stark. The one they killed for a traitor.”
　　“He was never a traitor. He was my father.”
　　Gendry’s eyes widened. “So that’s why you thought . . .”
　　She nodded. “Yoren was taking me home to Winterfell.”
　　“I . . . you’re highborn then, a . . . you’ll be a lady . . .”
　　Arya looked down at her ragged clothes and bare feet, all cracked and callused. She saw the dirt under her nails, the scabs on her elbows, the scratches on her hands. Septa Mordane wouldn’t even know me, I bet. Sansa might, but she’d pretend not to. “My mother’s a lady, and my sister, but I never was.”
　　“Yes you were. You were a lord’s daughter and you lived in a castle, didn’t you? And you . . . gods be good, I never . . .” All of a sudden Gendry seemed uncertain, almost afraid. “All that about cocks, I never should have said that. And I been pissing in front of you and everything, I . . . I beg your pardon, m’lady.”
　　“Stop that!” Arya hissed. Was he mocking her?
　　“I know my courtesies, m’lady,” Gendry said, stubborn as ever. “Whenever highborn girls came into the shop with their fathers, my master told me I was to bend the knee, and speak only when they spoke to me, and call them m’lady.”
　　“If you start calling me m’lady, even Hot Pie is going to notice. And you better keep on pissing the same way too.”
　　“As m’lady commands.”
　　Arya slammed his chest with both hands. He tripped over a stone and sat down with a thump. “What kind of lord’s daughter are you?” he said, laughing.
　　“This kind.” She kicked him in the side, but it only made him laugh harder. “You laugh all you like. I’m going to see who’s in the village.” The sun had already fallen below the trees; dusk would be on them in no time at all. For once it was Gendry who had to hurry after. “You smell that?” she asked.
　　He sniffed the air. “Rotten fish?”
　　“You know it’s not.”
　　“We better be careful. I’ll go around west, see if there’s some road. There must be if you saw a wagon. You take the shore. If you need help, bark like a dog.”
　　“That’s stupid. If I need help, I’ll shout help.” She darted away, bare feet silent in the grass. When she glanced back over her shoulder, he was watching her with that pained look on his face that meant he was thinking. He’s probably thinking that he shouldn’t be letting m’lady go stealing food. Arya just knew he was going to be stupid now.
　　The smell grew stronger as she got closer to the village. It did not smell like rotten fish to her. This stench was ranker, fouler. She wrinkled her nose.
　　Where the trees began to thin, she used the undergrowth, slipping from bush to bush quiet as a shadow. Every few yards she stopped to listen. The third time, she heard horses, and a man’s voice as well. And the smell got worse. Dead man’s stink, that’s what it is. She had smelled it before, with Yoren and the others.
　　A dense thicket of brambles grew south of the village. By the time she reached it, the long shadows of sunset had begun to fade, and the lantern bugs were coming out. She could see thatched roofs just beyond the hedge. She crept along until she found a gap and squirmed through on her belly, keeping well hidden until she saw what made the smell.
　　Beside the gently lapping waters of Gods Eye, a long gibbet of raw green wood had been thrown up, and things that had once been men dangled there, their feet in chains, while crows pecked at their flesh and flapped from corpse to corpse. For every crow there were a hundred flies. When the wind blew off the lake, the nearest corpse twisted on its chain, ever so slightly. The crows had eaten most of its face, and something else had been at it as well, something much larger. Throat and chest had been torn apart, and glistening green entrails and ribbons of ragged flesh dangled from where the belly had been opened. One arm had been ripped right off the shoulder; Arya saw the bones a few feet away, gnawed and cracked, picked clean of meat.
　　She made herself look at the next man and the one beyond him and the one beyond him, telling herself she was hard as a stone. Corpses all, so savaged and decayed that it took her a moment to realize they had been stripped before they were hanged. They did not look like naked people; they hardly looked like people at all. The crows had eaten their eyes, and sometimes their faces. Of the sixth in the long row, nothing remained but a single leg, still tangled in its chains, swaying with each breeze.
　　Fear cuts deeper than swords. Dead men could not hurt her, but whoever had killed them could. Well beyond the gibbet, two men in mail hauberks stood leaning on their spears in front of the long low building by the water, the one with the slate roof. A pair of tall poles had been driven into the muddy ground in front of it, banners drooping from each staff. One looked red and one paler, white or yellow maybe, but both were limp and with the dusk settling, she could not even be certain that red one was Lannister crimson. I don’t need to see the lion, I can see all the dead people, who else would it be but Lannisters?
　　Then there was a shout.
　　The two spearmen turned at the cry, and a third man came into view, shoving a captive before him. It was growing too dark to make out faces, but the prisoner was wearing a shiny steel helm, and when Arya saw the horns she knew it was Gendry. You stupid stupid stupid STUPID! she thought. If he’d been here she would have kicked him again.
　　The guards were talking loudly, but she was too far away to make out the words, especially with the crows gabbling and flapping closer to hand. One of the spearmen snatched the helm off Gendry’s head and asked him a question, but he must not have liked the answer, because he smashed him across the face with the butt of his spear and knocked him down. The one who’d captured him gave him a kick, while the second spearman was trying on the bull’s-head helm. Finally they pulled him to his feet and marched him off toward the storehouse. When they opened the heavy wooden doors, a small boy darted out, but one of the guards grabbed his arm and flung him back inside. Arya heard sobbing from inside the building, and then a shriek so loud and full of pain that it made her bite her lip.
　　The guards shoved Gendry inside with the boy and barred the doors behind them. Just then, a breath of wind came sighing off the lake, and the banners stirred and lifted. The one on the tall staff bore the golden lion, as she’d feared. On the other, three sleek black shapes ran across a field as yellow as butter. Dogs, she thought. Arya had seen those dogs before, but where?
　　It didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was that they had Gendry. Even if he was stubborn and stupid, she had to get him out. She wondered if they knew that the queen wanted him.
　　One of the guards took off his helm and donned Gendry’s instead. It made her angry to see him wearing it, but she knew there was nothing she could do to stop him. She thought she heard more screams from inside the windowless storehouse, muffled by the masonry, but it was hard to be certain.
　　She stayed long enough to see the guard changed, and much more besides. Men came and went. They led their horses down to the stream to drink. A hunting party returned from the wood, carrying a deer’s carcass slung from a pole. She watched them clean and gut it and build a cookfire on the far side of the stream, and the smell of cooking meat mingled queerly with the stench of corruption. Her empty belly roiled and she thought she might retch. The prospect of food brought other men out of the houses, near all of them wearing bits of mail or boiled leather. When the deer was cooked, the choicest portions were carried to one of the houses.
　　She thought that the dark might let her crawl close and free Gendry, but the guards kindled torches off the cookfire. A squire brought meat and bread to the two guarding the storehouse, and later two more men joined them and they all passed a skin of wine from hand to hand. When it was empty the others left, but the two guards remained, leaning on their spears.
　　Arya’s arms and legs were stiff when she finally wriggled out from under the briar into the dark of the wood. It was a black night, with a thin sliver of moon appearing and disappearing as the clouds blew past. Silent as a shadow, she told herself as she moved through the trees. In this darkness she dared not run, for fear of tripping on some unseen root or losing her way. On her left Gods Eye lapped calmly against its shores. On her right a wind sighed through the branches, and leaves rustled and stirred. Far off, she heard the howling of wolves.
　　Lommy and Hot Pie almost shit themselves when she stepped out of the trees behind them. “Quiet,” she told them, putting an arm around Weasel when the little girl came running up.
　　Hot Pie stared at her with big eyes. “We thought you left us.” He had his shortsword in hand, the one Yoren had taken off the gold cloak. “I was scared you was a wolf.”
　　“Where’s the Bull?” asked Lommy.
　　“They caught him,” Arya whispered. “We have to get him out. Hot Pie, you got to help. We’ll sneak up and kill the guards, and then I’ll open the door.”
　　Hot Pie and Lommy exchanged a look. “How many?”
　　“I couldn’t count,” Arya admitted. “Twenty at least, but only two on the door.”
　　Hot Pie looked as if he were going to cry. “We can’t fight twenty.”
　　“You only need to fight one. I’ll do the other and we’ll get Gendry out and run.”
　　“We should yield,” Lommy said. “Just go in and yield.”
　　Arya shook her head stubbornly.
　　“Then just leave him, Arry,” Lommy pleaded. “They don’t know about the rest of us. If we hide, they’ll go away, you know they will. It’s not our fault Gendry’s captured.”
　　“You’re stupid, Lommy,” Arya said angrily. “You’ll die if we don’t get Gendry out. Who’s going to carry you?”
　　“You and Hot Pie.”
　　“All the time, with no one else to help? We’ll never do it. Gendry was the strong one. Anyhow, I don’t care what you say, I’m going back for him.” She looked at Hot Pie. “Are you coming?” Hot Pie glanced at Lommy, at Arya, at Lommy again. “I’ll come,” he said reluctantly.
　　“Lommy, you keep Weasel here.”
　　He grabbed the little girl by the hand and pulled her close. “What if the wolves come?”
　　“Yield,” Arya suggested.
　　Finding their way back to the village seemed to take hours. Hot Pie kept stumbling in the dark and losing his way, and Arya had to wait for him and double back. Finally she took him by the hand and led him along through the trees. “Just be quiet and follow.” When they could make out the first faint glow of the village fires against the sky, she said, “There’s dead men hanging on the other side of the hedge, but they’re nothing to be scared of, just remember fear cuts deeper than swords. We have to go real quiet and slow.” Hot Pie nodded.
　　She wriggled under the briar first and waited for him on the far side, crouched low. Hot Pie emerged pale and panting, face and arms bloody with long scratches. He started to say something, but Arya put a finger to his lips. On hands and knees, they crawled along the gibbet, beneath the swaying dead. Hot Pie never once looked up, nor made a sound.
　　Until the crow landed on his back, and he gave a muffled gasp. “Who’s there?” a voice boomed suddenly from the dark.
　　Hot Pie leapt to his feet. “I yield!” He threw away his sword as dozens of crows rose shrieking and complaining to flap about the corpses. Arya grabbed his leg and tried to drag him back down, but he wrenched loose and ran forward, waving his arms. “I yield, I yield.”
　　She bounced up and drew Needle, but by then men were all around her. Arya slashed at the nearest, but he blocked her with a steel-clad arm, and someone else slammed into her and dragged her to the ground, and a third man wrenched the sword from her grasp. When she tried to bite, her teeth snapped shut on cold dirty chainmail. “Oho, a fierce one,” the man said, laughing. The blow from his iron-clad fist near knocked her head off.
　　They talked over her as she lay hurting, but Arya could not seem to understand the words. Her ears rang. When she tried to crawl off, the earth moved beneath her. They took Needle. The shame of that hurt worse than the pain, and the pain hurt a lot. Jon had given her that sword. Syrio had taught her to use it.
　　Finally someone grabbed the front of her jerkin, yanked her to her knees. Hot Pie was kneeling too, before the tallest man Arya had ever seen, a monster from one of Old Nan’s stories. She never saw where the giant had come from. Three black dogs raced across his faded yellow surcoat, and his face looked as hard as if it had been cut from stone. Suddenly Arya knew where she had seen those dogs before. The night of the tourney at King’s Landing, all the knights had hung their shields outside their pavilions. “That one belongs to the Hound’s brother,” Sansa had confided when they passed the black dogs on the yellow field. “He’s even bigger than Hodor, you’ll see. They call him the Mountain That Rides.”
　　Arya let her head droop, only half aware of what was going on around her. Hot Pie was yielding some more. The Mountain said, “You’ll lead us to these others,” and walked off. Next she was stumbling past the dead men on their gibbet, while Hot Pie told their captors he’d bake them pies and tarts if they didn’t hurt him. Four men went with them. One carried a torch, one a longsword; two had spears.
　　They found Lommy where they’d left him, under the oak. “I yield,” he called out at once when he saw them. He’d flung away his own spear and raised his hands, splotchy green with old dye. “I yield. Please.”
　　The man with the torch searched around under the trees. “Are you the last? Baker boy said there was a girl.”
　　“She ran off when she heard you coming,” Lommy said. “You made a lot of noise.” And Arya thought, Run, Weasel, run as far as you can, run and hide and never come back.
　　“Tell us where we can find that whoreson Dondarrion, and there’ll be a hot meal in it for you.”
　　“Who?” said Lommy blankly.
　　“I told you, this lot don’t know no more than those cunts in the village. Waste o’bloody time.”
　　One of the spearmen drifted over to Lommy. “Something wrong with your leg, boy?”
　　“It got hurt.”
　　“Can you walk?” He sounded concerned.
　　“No,” said Lommy. “You got to carry me.”
　　“Think so?” The man lifted his spear casually and drove the point through the boy’s soft throat. Lommy never even had time to yield again. He jerked once, and that was all. When the man pulled his spear loose, blood sprayed out in a dark fountain. “Carry him, he says,” he muttered, chuckling.

Ⅱ 列王的纷争 Chapter20 艾莉亚
　　艾莉亚费尽力气，爬上最高的枝干，看见林间突出的烟囱，些许茅草屋聚集在湖岸，一条小溪注入湖中。岸边有座木造码头伸入水里，旁边是一间低矮的石顶长屋。
　　她继续向外攀爬，直到后来树枝有些承受不住她的重量。码头边没有船，但她可以看到从烟囱里升起的缕缕轻烟，以及马厩后半掩的马车。
　　有人。艾莉亚咬紧下唇，到目前为止，他们经过的所有地方都空荡无人、废墟一片，不管农田、村镇、城堡、圣堂、谷仓都是同样下场。兰尼斯特军能烧则烧，能杀就杀，甚至到处放火焚毁树林。好在树叶仍青，而且最近下过雨，因此火势没有扩散。“若是湖水可以烧火，想必他们也不会放过吧。”詹德利这么说，艾莉亚知道他说得没错。他们逃出来的那天晚上，镇上的熊熊烈火璀璨地映在水面，彷佛湖真的烧起来了。
　　出事后第二天夜里，他们才好不容易鼓起勇气，偷偷溜回庄园的废墟。现场只剩焦黑的断垣残壁和遍地死尸，有些灰烬还在冒着苍白的烟缕。热派曾死命哀求他们不要回去，罗米则称他们为笨蛋，并发誓亚摩利爵士定会把他们抓起来杀掉。但当他们回去时，洛奇和他的人马早已离开。他们发现庄园大门砍倒，墙壁半塌，内里遍地死尸。詹德利只看一眼就受不了。“他们死了，全死了。”他说，“还被狗啃过，你看。”
　　究竟死了多少人“也可能是狼。”
　　“是狗是狼，还不都一样？反正这里是完了。”
　　但在找到尤伦之前，艾莉亚却不愿离开。他们杀不了他吧？她不断对自己说，他那么厉害、那么强硬，又是守夜人的弟兄。他们一面搜索尸堆，她一面对詹德利说。
　　那记致命的利斧把他头颅整个劈成了两半，但那把纠缠不清的大胡子，以及身上那件满是补丁、从不清洗、早已褪成灰色的黑衣又是那么地醒目。亚摩利·洛奇爵士既没有埋葬对手，也没有埋葬自己人。四名兰尼斯特士兵倒在尤伦身边，艾莉亚想知道究竟死了多少人才把他击倒。
　　他本来要带我回家呢，他们一边为老人挖墓，她心里一边想。庄里死人太多，无法全部埋葬，但艾莉亚坚持无论如何都该为尤伦挖个坟。他本来向我保证，要把我安全带回临冬城呢。她很想哭，却又很想用力踢他。
　　随后詹德利想到了之前被尤伦派去塔楼的那三个人，他们虽然也遭到攻击，但那圆形的塔楼仅有一个入口，尚且位于二楼，必须搭梯子上去，一旦楼梯被收进塔里，亚摩利爵士的手下就奈何不了他们。兰尼斯特家的人马虽然在塔底堆上干柴放火，但石头烧不起来，而洛奇又没耐心把里面的人逼出来。此刻詹德利一叫唤，凯杰克就开门出来。艾莉亚一听库兹建议他们继续北上，不能回头，心中便重复燃起返回临冬城的希望。
　　啊，眼前的村落虽然不是临冬城，但那些茅草屋顶代表着温暖和保护，说不定还有吃的。当然，这一切的先决条件是他们胆子够大，愿意冒险靠近。只要里面不是洛奇就好，可他骑马呀，早该走得远远地了。
　　她站在树上观望良久，盼望能看到些什么：一个人、一匹马、一面旗，任何能提供讯息的东西都好。有几次，她隐约见到一点动静，然而房屋的距离实在太远，无法确定。但有一回，非常清晰地，她听见了马的嘶叫。
　　天上满是飞鸟，大半为乌鸦。它们在茅草屋上空振翅盘旋，远处观之，大小和苍蝇无异。东边的神眼湖活像一片被太阳敲出的蓝，占据了半个世界。近来几天，他们沿着泥泞的湖岸缓缓前进（詹德利死也不肯接近任何道路，就连热派和罗米也觉得有理），艾莉亚时时觉得湖水似乎在呼唤她。她好想一头跃进平静的蓝湖，把自己洗个干净，游个泳、泼泼水，然后躺在艳阳下晒干。可她不敢在其他人面前脱衣服，连洗衣服都不敢。所以每天日落，她只能常坐在湖边岩石上，两脚垂在沁凉的湖水中。后来她把那双破烂不堪的鞋子丢了。赤脚走路起初很痛苦，但水泡会破，割伤会愈合，最后她的脚底硬得跟皮革一样。脚趾间满是湿泥的感觉很舒服，她喜欢肌肤与大地相连的悸动。
　　从这里看去，她可以见到东北方一座林木茂密的小岛。离岸三十码处，三只黑天鹅游弋水面，好一幅安详景致……没人告诉它们战争已经来临，焚毁的城镇和惨死的人们也与它们无关。她羡慕地望着它们，心里的一部分想变成天鹅，另一部分却又想杀一只来吃。她的早餐是橡子糊和一把甲虫。其实只要习惯，甲虫并不难咽，蠕虫就困难多了。但再怎么难吃，总比天天饿肚子好。甲虫很容易找，随便踢翻石头就有。艾莉亚小时候，曾有一次为了看珊莎尖叫，故意吃下一只甲虫，所以如今再吃没什么障碍。“黄鼠狼”也平静接受，可热派刚试着要吞，便把虫呕了出来。至于罗米和詹德利，则连试都不敢试。昨天詹德利抓到一只青蛙，和罗米分着吃了。几天前热派还找着一堆黑莓，他们立刻把整丛摘了个一干二净。但多数时候，他们得靠清水和橡子为生。库兹教他们如何用石头磨一种橡子糊，那味道糟透了。
　　她真希望盗猎者库兹没死，关于森林的知识，他比其他人加起来懂的还多，可那晚他在守卫塔收梯子时被人一箭射穿了肩膀。塔柏用湖边的泥巴和青苔为他敷伤，前两天库兹直说这伤不碍事，虽然他喉咙的血肉逐渐转黑，恐怖的红肿条痕从下巴一路长到胸前。后来有天早上，他没力气起身，第二天就死了。
　　他们堆石头做成他的坟墓，凯杰克拿了他的剑和猎号，塔柏则取走弓箭、靴子和短刀。两人离开时，把这些都带走了。起初他们以为这两人只是去打猎，不多久便会带着猎物回来喂饱他们。可他们等啊等，直到最后詹德利驱使他们上路。或许塔柏和凯杰克认为抛下这群孤儿不管，自己存活的机会比较大。说不定事实果真如此，但这并未减少她对他们的恨意。
　　树下，热派学着狗叫。从前，库兹教他们用动物的声音彼此联络，他说这是盗猎者的招牌技巧，可他还没教会便死了。热派学鸟叫实在苯透了，学狗叫稍好些，可也好不了多少。
　　艾莉亚跳向下面的树枝，同时伸出双手保持平衡。水舞者绝不会摔落。她着地很轻，脚趾弯曲，紧扣树枝。随后她走了几步，再往下跳到一根较大的枝干，接着双手悬吊在树枝上，一手接一手地向里爬，穿越密集的树叶，直到手脚触到主干。树皮摸起来很粗糙，她很快下了树，最后六尺一跃而下，着地滚翻。
　　詹德利伸手拉她起来，“你上去了好久。看到什么了吗？”
　　“一个渔村，不大，就在北边的湖岸。一共二十六间茅屋和一间石板屋，我数过了。我还看到半露的马车。那地方有人。”
　　听见她的声音，黄鼠狼便从灌木丛里爬了出来。这绰号是罗米取的，他说她长得很像黄鼠狼，其实根本没那回事，但他们总不能老叫她“爱哭鬼”吧，因为她后来总算是不哭了。她的嘴巴脏兮兮的，艾莉亚希望她别又去吃了泥巴才好。
　　只要乖乖投降就行“看到人了？”詹德利问。
　　“只看得到屋顶，”艾莉亚说，“不过有些烟囱在冒烟，我还听见了马叫。”黄鼠狼伸出双手，紧紧搂住她的腿，最近她经常这样。
　　“有人就有吃的！”热派道。他太吵了，詹德利一天到晚叫他放低音量，却不起作用。“说不定会分咱们一点！”
　　“说不定把咱们都宰了。”詹德利说。
　　“只要乖乖投降就行。”热派满怀希望地说。
　　“你这口气还真像罗米。”
　　绿手罗米坐在一棵橡树下，背靠两块粗厚的树根。庄里激战时，他的左小腿被一根长矛刺穿，到得第二天晚上，他只能扶着詹德利，单脚走路。如今他连走都半办法了，他们只好砍树枝做担架。抬着他赶路不但辛苦，速度也慢，一有颠簸他就呻吟个没完。
　　“咱们非投降不可，”他说，“尤伦就该这么做，他应该听话开门。”
　　艾莉亚真是受够了罗米这番“尤伦应该投降”的评论。大家抬他走，可他整天说着这些，不然便是抱怨脚痛和喊饿。
　　热派附和：“他们命令尤伦开门，还是以国王之名说的。只要以国王之名说的事，你就一定得照办。都是那臭老头的错，如果他乖乖投降，咱们就不会有事。”
　　詹德利眉头一皱，“只有骑士和贵族会互相俘虏，讨取赎金，他们才不管你这种人投不投降呢。”他转向艾莉亚，“你还看到什么？”
　　“如果是渔村，我敢打赌，他们一定会卖鱼。”热派说。湖里有的是鲜鱼，可惜他们没工具抓。艾莉亚试过用手，学习之前寇斯的把式，只是鱼的动作比鸽子快，水光反射又老害她看不清。
　　“有没鱼卖我不清楚。”艾莉亚拉拉黄鼠狼纠结一团的头发，心想还是割掉比较好。“湖边有乌鸦，那里肯定有东西死了。”
　　“一定是死鱼，给冲上了岸。”热派说，“乌鸦能吃，我敢打赌咱们也行！”
　　“咱们应该抓几只乌鸦，吃乌鸦才对！”罗米说，“咱们可以生个火，像烤鸡一样把它们烤来吃。”
　　詹德利皱眉的时候看起来很凶，他的胡子愈长愈浓密，黑如石南。“我说了，不许生火。”
　　“罗米肚子饿，”热派开始哀嚎，“我也饿。”
　　“谁肚子不饿啊？”艾莉亚道。
　　“你啊！”罗米啐了一口，“你这吃虫鬼。”
　　艾莉亚真想扬腿踢他的伤口，“我不是说过吗？你如果要吃我也可以给你挖。”
　　罗米露出作呕的表情，“我若不是脚成这样，早打几只野猪来吃了。”
　　“打野猪。”她嘲笑道，“你知道不？你得先有一根猎猪用的长矛，要有马儿和猎犬，还要有人帮你把野猪从窝里赶出来。”父亲以前就跟罗柏和琼恩一起在狼林里猎野猪，有一次他还带布兰去过，但从不准艾莉亚跟去，即使她年纪比布兰大。茉丹修女说打猎之事不适合淑女，母亲则答应她长大以后可以养只自己的猎鹰。如今她已经长大了，但要是有只猎鹰，铁定先把它吃掉。
　　“你懂什么打野猪？”热派说。
　　“起码懂得比你多。”
　　詹德利没心情听他们吵架，“你两个都给我安静！让我想想该怎么做。”他一思考便会露出痛苦不堪的神情，彷佛难受得紧。
　　“只有投降。”罗米说。
　　“我叫你别再说投降了！我们根本不知道那里的人是谁。弄不好可以偷点吃的。”
　　“若不是罗米脚受伤，可以叫他去偷。”热派说，“他以前在城里就是小偷。”
　　“而且很差劲，”艾莉亚道，“不然就不会被抓了。”
　　詹德利抬头看看太阳，“要溜进去最好趁傍晚，等天一黑我就去瞧瞧。”
　　“不，我去，”艾莉亚说，“你太吵了。”
　　詹德利又开始皱眉，“那我们一起去。”
　　“应该叫阿利去，”罗米说，“他动作比你轻。”
　　“我说了，我跟他一起去。”
　　“那你们回不来怎么办？热派一个人又抬不动我，你也知道他抬不动……”
　　“还有狼咧，”热派说，“昨晚我守夜时听见的，好象就在附近。”
　　艾莉亚也听见了。昨晚她睡在一棵榆树的枝头，结果被狼嚎惊醒。后来她坐着听了整整一个钟头，只觉背脊发凉。
　　“你还不准我们生火吓它们，”热派说，“把我们扔下来给狼吃，这样不对！”
　　“谁把你扔下来？”詹德利嫌恶地说，“就算狼真的来了，罗米有长矛，你也在旁边。我们只是去看看，如此而已，我们会回来的。”
　　“不管碰到谁，总之投降就好。”罗米呻吟着说，“脚好痛，我想抹药水。”
　　“如果找到抹脚的药水，我们会带回来给你。”詹德利道，“阿利，我们走。我想在日落之前接近一点。热派，黄鼠狼就交给你了，别让她跟着我们。”
　　“她上回踢我！”
　　“你不把她看好，小心我踢你！”不等对方回答，詹德利便戴上钢盔出发了。
　　艾莉亚得小跑才能跟上，詹德利大她五岁，足足比她高上一尺，又生了双长腿。有好一阵子，他什么也没说，只满脸怒容地在树林里费力穿梭，发出很大的噪音。最后他终于停下脚步：“我觉得罗米快死了。”
　　她并不惊讶，库兹也是这么死的，而他比罗米强壮许多呢。每当轮到艾莉亚抬他，她都能感觉他皮肤的温热，闻到他腿伤的臭味。“或许，我们可以找个学士……”
　　“学士只有城堡里才有，况且就算我们找到，人家也不会为罗米这种人脏了手。”詹德利低头避过一根低垂的树枝。
　　“不是这样的。”她很确定，不管谁找上鲁温师傅，他都会帮忙。
　　“他迟早会死，死得越快对其他人越好。我们应该丢下他，就像他刚才说的那样。如果今天受伤的是我或是你，你知道他一定早丢下我们不管了。”他们爬下一条陡峭的山沟，然后抓住树根爬上另一边。“我受够了抬他，受够了他满嘴投降的话。若他还能好好地站起来，我一定打得他满地找牙。罗米对我们一点用都没有，那爱哭的小妹也一样。”
　　就是被杀的那个叛徒“你别打黄鼠狼的主意！她只是肚子饿又害怕而已。”艾莉亚回头看了一眼，幸亏小女孩这次没跟来。热派一定照詹德利吩咐，乖乖把她捉住了。
　　“没用就是没用。”詹德利倔强地重复，“她和热派和罗米，都只会拖慢我们的速度，最后害我们送命。这帮人里面，你是唯一有用的，虽然你是女生。”
　　艾莉亚整个人僵在原地。“我不是女生！”
　　“你本来就是，你以为我跟他们一样笨吗？”
　　“不，你比他们更苯。守夜人不收女生，这事谁都知道。”
　　“你说的不错。我不知道尤伦为什么收你，可他一定有他的理由。总而言之，你是女生。”
　　“我才不是！”
　　“那你把鸡鸡掏出来撒尿啊，快点！”
　　“我又不用撒尿，我想尿才尿。”
　　“你骗人，掏不出鸡鸡，因为你根本就没有。以前人多时我没注意，到现在才发现你每次都到林子里撒尿。热派可没这样吧？我也不会，如果你不是女生，那你一定是太监。”
　　“你才是太监！”
　　“你明知我不是。”詹德利微笑，“要我把鸡鸡掏出来证明吗？我可没什么好隐瞒的。”
　　“才怪！”艾莉亚急着避开这个鸡鸡的话题，脱口便说，“当初我们在旅馆，那些金袍子来抓你，你却没说为什么！”
　　“我要是知道就好了。我觉得尤伦知道，但他不告诉我。你呢？你为什么认为他们抓的是你？”
　　艾莉亚咬紧嘴唇，想起尤伦割掉她头发那天所说的话：这群人有一半连想都不想就会把你交给太后，以换来特赦和几个铜板。另外一半也会这么做，可他们会先操你几次再说。只有詹德利不一样，因为太后也在抓他。“如果你肯告诉我，我也就跟你说。”她小心翼翼地开口。
　　“我若是知道为什么，一定跟你说！阿利……你真的叫阿利吗？你有女生的名字吗？”
　　艾莉亚瞪着脚边蜷曲的树根，知道自己无法再隐瞒。詹德利猜出了真相，而她裤裆里也的确没东西。她要么当场拔出缝衣针杀了他，要么信任他。就算真的动手，她还不确定是否杀得了她，因为他不但有剑，更比她强壮许多。所以唯一的选择是说出实情。“不许告诉罗米和热派，”她道。
　　“不会，”他发誓，“他们不会从我这里知道。”
　　“艾莉亚，”她抬头看着他的眼睛，“我是史塔克家族的艾莉亚。”
　　“史……”他顿了一会儿，“国王的首相就姓史塔克，就是被杀的那个叛徒。”
　　“他才不是叛徒。他是我父亲。”
　　詹德利眼睛睁得老大，“所以你以为……”
　　她点点头，“尤伦本来要带我回临冬城。”
　　“我……那你就是好人家的……淑女了……”
　　艾莉亚低头看看自己，一身破烂衣裳，光溜溜的脚丫，破皮满茧。她看到趾甲缝里的泥巴，看到手肘上的伤疤。这副模样，我敢说茉丹修女一定认不出来。珊莎说不定行，但她会假装不认识。“我母亲是淑女，我姐姐也是，但我从来都不是。”
　　“怎么不是？你是大贵族的女儿，住在城堡里，对不对？而且你……老天，我不……”詹德利突然犹豫起来，似乎有些害怕。“刚才说那些鸡鸡什么的，不是我的本意。我还在你面前撒尿和……我……请您原谅我，小姐。”
　　“够了！”艾莉亚生气地大喊。他这是寻她开心？
　　“小姐，我也是懂礼仪的人。”詹德利道，倔强一如往常，“每次好人家的女孩跟着父亲上我们店来，师父就吩咐我单膝跪下，直等她们跟我说话才能开口，并且一定要称呼她们为‘我的小姐’。”
　　“你若是改口叫我小姐，连热派都能发现！还有，你最好还是跟以前一样撒尿。”
　　“就照小姐吩咐。”
　　艾莉亚两手锤打他的胸膛，他被一颗石头绊了一跤，噗通一声坐倒在地。“你这算哪门子的老爷千金啊？”他笑着说。
　　“就是这种！”她踢他侧身，他却笑得更厉害。“你爱笑就笑个够，我去看看村里有什么人。”太阳已经没入树丛，黄昏很快便会降临。这回轮到詹德利快步跟上了。“你闻到了吗？”她问。
　　他嗅了嗅，“死鱼？”
　　“你明知不是。”
　　“我们最好小心点。我从西边绕过去，找找有没有路。既然你看到马车，一定有路可走。你从岸边走，如果需要帮忙，就学狗叫。”
　　“那太苯啦，如果需要帮忙，我会喊的。”她箭步跑开，赤脚在草地上寂静无声。当她回头张望，发觉他正盯着自己，脸上是那个思考时标志性的痛苦表情。他心里大概认为不该让淑女出去偷东西吃吧。艾莉亚直觉地认定他会开始做蠢事了。
　　离村庄愈近，味道便愈浓烈。她觉得闻起来不像死鱼，与之相较更为恶臭难闻，她忍不住皱起鼻子。
　　林木开始稀疏，她改钻灌木丛，在矮丛间滑动，静如影。每走几码，她便停下来侧耳倾听。到第三次时，她听见了马的嘶叫，还有人的话音，味道也更加难耐。这是死人的臭气，一定是。先前看到尤伦和其他死者时，她已经闻过了。
　　村子南边生了一丛浓密的荆藤，她抵达那儿时，夕阳的长影已经逐渐消失，萤火虫纷纷出来了。越过篱笆，她看到茅草屋顶。她爬啊爬，找到一个开口，蠕动着、小心翼翼地钻了过去，没有让任何人发现。这时，她看到了恶臭的来源。
　　神眼湖的水轻柔地拍打浅滩，岸边立起了一长排刑架，都是用新伐的树木搭成的。早已不成人形的尸体倒挂在刑架上，双脚被铁链扣住，任由群鸦恣意啄食。乌鸦从这具尸体飞到那具尸体，每一只都伴随着成百的苍蝇。湖面若有微风吹来，离她最近的尸体便会轻轻摇动，彷佛要挣脱铁链。他的脸已被乌鸦和某种体型更大的不明动物咬去大半，喉咙和胸膛被活活撕裂，绿色发亮的内脏和扯烂的皮肉条在腹部的开口悬晃。一只手臂自肩膀被生生撕下，艾莉亚看见骨头散落在几尺开外，破裂断开，满是咬痕，上面的肉早被啃了干净。
　　这时，传来一声大喊她强迫自己看了一具尸体，又看一具，再一具，同时不断告诉自己要刚硬如石。这些尸体全都惨遭蹂躏，腐烂已久，她看了好一会儿才发现他们早在吊死前衣服便被扒光了。可他们看起来却不像没穿衣服的人，他们看起来根本不像人。乌鸦吃掉了他们的眼睛，许多脸庞也不能幸免。这排长长刑架的第六个，铁链上更是只剩了一只脚，随着微风轻轻晃动。
　　恐惧比利剑更伤人。死人伤不了她，但杀死他们的人却可以。绞刑架后方远处，两个身穿盔甲的人拄着长熗，站在水边的低矮长屋前，那间屋有石板屋顶。门前的泥地上插了两根长竿，上面挂着旗帜，一面红，一面颜色比较淡，可能是白或者黄，但两者都低垂着，加上天光渐暗，所以她不能确定那是不是兰尼斯特家的深红。我用不着见到狮子图案，这些死人就说明了一切，除了兰尼斯特，还会有谁？
　　这时，传来一声大喊。
　　两名长熗兵立刻转头，只见第三人推着一名俘虏出现在视线里。天色很暗，看不清长相，可犯人戴着一顶闪亮的钢盔，艾莉亚一见头盔上的双角，便知是詹德利无疑。你笨蛋笨蛋笨蛋笨蛋！她心想。如果他还在身边，她一定再踢他一通。
　　三个守卫高声交谈，但她距离实在太远，听不出讲些什么，附近又有大批乌鸦怪叫着拍翅干扰。一名熗兵抢下詹德利的头盔，问了一个问题，并显然对答案不满意，便照着他的脸一挥熗柄，把他打倒在地。抓到他的人随后踢了他一脚，另一个熗兵则在一旁试戴牛角盔。最后，他们拉他起来，押着他朝那间长屋走去。当他们打开厚重的木门，立时有一个小男孩窜出，却被守卫一把攫住手臂，扔回屋里。艾莉亚听见里面传出啜泣，接着是一声凄厉痛苦的惨叫，她不由得咬紧嘴唇。
　　守卫把詹德利也推了进去，然后拴上门。就在这时，一阵清风从湖面吹来，两面旗帜抖了一下，飘了起来。正如她所担心的，高的那根竿子的旗上绣着金狮子。另一面则是奶油黄，绣有三个油亮的黑色形体。是狗，她想。艾莉亚以前见过这些狗，但是在哪儿呢？
　　这不重要。重要的是詹德利被他们抓走了。不管他有多苯多倔强，她总得想办法救他出来。她不知这些人知不知道太后要抓他。
　　一名守卫摘下自己的头盔，改戴詹德利那顶，她见了火冒三丈，但她知道自己阻止不了他。她隐约听见各种尖叫从那栋无窗的仓库中传出，隔着石墙，显得很模糊，她不敢确定。
　　她又待了一阵子，看到守卫换班，人来人往，他们牵着马儿去溪边喝水，还有一队打猎的人从森林里回来，用木棍抬着一头鹿。她看着他们把死鹿清理干净、掏出内脏，在小溪对岸生起了火。肉香和尸臭奇妙地混杂在一起，她只觉空虚的肚子不住翻腾，泫然欲呕。一见有吃的，其他人纷纷从各间房子里出来，大多穿着锁子甲或硬皮衣。鹿肉烤好之后，最美味的部位被人送进某一间屋。
　　她原以为可以趁夜色摸进去救詹德利，没想到守卫点起了火把。有个侍从把面包和烤肉带给两名仓库守卫，之后又有两个人带酒过来，大家轮流传着酒袋喝。喝完以后，来人离开，可守卫仍旧拄着长熗留在原地。
　　眼看无机可趁，艾莉亚终于从荆棘堆里钻出，回到黑暗的树林，这时她的四肢全僵硬了。天已全黑，一弯银月在流云间忽隐忽现。静如影，她一边在林间行走，一边提醒自己。黑暗中她不敢奔跑，生怕被树根绊倒或迷路。神眼湖在左边，湖水缓缓拍打浅滩；右边徐风过林，树叶扑簌扑簌。远方传来狼的嚎叫。
　　当她从罗米和热派身后的树林走出来时，他俩吓得差点没尿裤子。“嘘！”她对他们说，同时伸手抱住跑过来的小女孩黄鼠狼。
　　热派睁大双眼瞪着她，“我们以为你们抛下我们不管了。”他手握短剑，正是尤伦从金袍卫士的军官手中取得的那把。“我们还以为狼来了。”
　　“大牛呢？”罗米问。
　　“被他们抓了。”艾莉亚小声说，“我们得救他出来。热派，你得帮我，我们摸过去杀掉守卫，然后我去开门。”
　　热派和罗米交换个眼神，“有多少人？”
　　“我看不清，”艾莉亚承认，“至少二十个，可门边只有两人。”
　　热派似乎要哭了，“我们打不过二十个啦。”
　　“你只对付一个就好，另一个交给我，我们把詹德利放出来就跑。”
　　“我们应该投降，”罗米说，“过去投降就没事。”
　　艾莉亚倔强地摇头。
　　“阿利，那就别管他。”罗米哀求，“他们不知道还有我们，我们只要躲起来，他们就会走的，你知道他们一定会走。詹德利被抓又不是我们的错。”
　　“罗米，你真苯，”艾莉亚怒道，“要是我们不救詹德利出来，你会死的。想想看，谁来抬你啊？”
　　“你和热派啊。”
　　“一直我们俩，没人帮忙？绝对行不通。我们这群人里最强壮的就是詹德利。算了，不管你怎么说，反正我要回去救他。”她看着热派，“你去不去？”
　　热派瞄了罗米一眼，再看着艾莉亚，又看向罗米。“好吧，”他不情愿地说。
　　“罗米，你看好黄鼠狼。”
　　他伸手抓住小女孩，拉到身边。“如果狼来了怎么办？”
　　“投降啊，”艾莉亚建议。
　　找路回村花了很长时间，热派在黑暗中一直跌跌撞撞，又不时迷路，艾莉亚只好不断停步等他，然后再重新前进。最后她干脆拉起他的手，牵着他穿过树林，“安静地跟我走就好。”等他们首度看见夜幕中从村里传来的模糊灯火，她说：“记住，篱笆另一边有堆吊死的人，不过他们没什么好怕，你要知道：恐惧比利剑更伤人。我们要很安静、很小心地行动。”热派点点头。
　　我投降！我投降！
　　她当先钻进荆棘丛，压低身子走到另一边等他。热派爬出来时脸色苍白，气喘吁吁，双手和脸颊都被割得皮破流血。他刚要开口，艾莉亚连忙伸出手指挡他嘴巴。接着两人匍匐前进，穿过整排刑架，在摇晃的尸体下方运动。热派从头到尾不敢抬眼，也不敢发出任何声音。
　　冷不防，一只乌鸦停上他的背，他禁不住倒吸一口气，“谁？”黑暗中突然传出一个声音。
　　热派一跃而起，“我投降！”他把剑丢开老远，惊起几十只乌鸦，纷纷厉声抱怨，振翅在尸体旁飞舞。艾莉亚抓住他的腿，想拖他躺下，但他使劲挣脱，挥舞双手，反而向前跑去，“我投降！我投降！”
　　她跳起来，拔出缝衣针，然而这时她已被团团包围。艾莉亚朝最近的人挥剑砍去，却被钢护手挡住，接着有人扑上来，把她拉倒在地，另一个人则把剑从她手中夺走。她张口便咬，咬到的却是又冷又脏的锁甲。“呵呵，凶狠的小家伙噢！”那人笑道，接着便是迎面一拳，他戴了铁套，差点没把她的头打飞。
　　她浑身疼痛地躺在地上，他们就在旁边交谈，但艾莉亚耳鸣不已，无法分辨话语内容。她试着爬开，却觉得大地在脚下摇晃。他们抢走了缝衣针，这耻辱比皮肉之伤更令她痛苦，而皮肉之伤已经痛得要命。那把剑是琼恩送她的，教她使用的则是西利欧。
　　最后有人一把抓住她背心前襟，逼她跪下，热派也跪着。在他们面前是艾莉亚这辈子所见最为高大的人，简直就像从老奶妈故事里跑出来的怪物。她不知这巨人打哪儿冒出来的，只见他褪色的黄外衣上有三只奔跑的黑狗，他的脸则活如用坚石雕刻而成。刹那间，艾莉亚想起自己在何地见过这三犬标志了，那是君临比武大会当晚，所有参赛骑士都把盾牌挂在自己的营帐外。“那是猎狗的哥哥。”经过黄底黑狗的标志时，珊莎偷偷告诉她。“他比阿多还高大喔，到时候你一看就知道。大家都叫他‘会走路的魔山’。”
　　艾莉亚低下头，对周遭事情朦朦胧胧，只听热派还在嚷着投降。魔山道：“带我们去找其他人，”便转身离开。之后，她脚步踉跄地经过刑架上的死人，热派则对他们不断保证，只要不伤害他，他就烤热腾腾的派和水果饼给他们吃。有四个人跟着他们，一人持火把，一人拿长剑，另外两个拄着长熗。
　　罗米还在那棵橡树下，“我投降！”他一见他们便丢开长矛，高举双手，大声呼叫。他手上都是做学徒时染上的绿斑。“我投降！饶命啊！”
　　拿火炬的人在树下巡了一圈，“只有你一个？面包小弟说还有个小女孩。”
　　“她听到你们过来就跑了，”罗米道，“你们走路声音很大。”艾莉亚听了便想：跑啊，黄鼠狼，跑得越远越好，跑去藏好，永远不要回来。
　　“说！狗娘养的唐德利恩在哪里？我们招待你一顿热菜热饭。”
　　“谁？”罗米一脸茫然。
　　“我告诉你了么，这些他妈的小子跟村里的婊子一样啥都不清楚。妈的，浪费时间！”
　　一个熗兵走到罗米身边，“小鬼，你脚怎样啦？”
　　“伤了。”
　　“能走路吗？”他的声音有几分关切。
　　“不能，”罗米说，“你得背我。”
　　“背你？”那人随手操起长矛，刺穿男孩柔软的咽喉。罗米连再说投降的机会都没有，他抖了一下，便不再动静。那人拔出熗尖，鲜血有如暗红的喷泉般涌出。“他叫我背他咧！”他咯咯笑道。
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你看着眼前的人，分明还是以前的模样，可心里终究不是以前那般澄清透明了。
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CHAPTER 20
　　TYRION
　　They had warned him to dress warmly. Tyrion Lannister took them at their word. He was garbed in heavy quilted breeches and a woolen doublet, and over it all he had thrown the shadowskin cloak he had acquired in the Mountains of the Moon. The cloak was absurdly long, made for a man twice his height. When he was not ahorse, the only way to wear the thing was to wrap it around him several times, which made him look like a ball of striped fur.
　　Even so, he was glad he had listened. The chill in the long dank vault went bone deep. Timett had chosen to retreat back up to the cellar after a brief taste of the cold below. They were somewhere under the hill of Rhaenys, behind the Guildhall of the Alchemists. The damp stone walls were splotchy with nitre, and the only light came from the sealed iron-and-glass oil lamp that Hallyne the Pyromancer carried so gingerly.
　　Gingerly indeed . . . and these would be the ginger jars. Tyrion lifted one for inspection. It was round and ruddy, a fat clay grapefruit. A little big for his hand, but it would fit comfortably in the grip of a normal man, he knew. The pottery was thin, so fragile that even he had been warned not to squeeze too tightly, lest he crush it in his fist. The clay felt roughened, pebbled. Hallyne told him that was intentional. “A smooth pot is more apt to slip from a man’s grasp.” The wildfire oozed slowly toward the lip of the jar when Tyrion tilted it to peer inside. The color would be a murky green, he knew, but the poor light made that impossible to confirm. “Thick,” he observed.
　　“That is from the cold, my lord,” said Hallyne, a pallid man with soft damp hands and an obsequious manner. He was dressed in striped black-and-scarlet robes trimmed with sable, but the fur looked more than a little patchy and moth-eaten. “As it warms, the substance will flow more easily, like lamp oil.”
　　The substance was the pyromancers’ own term for wildfire. They called each other wisdom as well, which Tyrion found almost as annoying as their custom of hinting at the vast secret stores of knowledge that they wanted him to think they possessed. Once theirs had been a powerful guild, but in recent centuries the maesters of the Citadel had supplanted the alchemists almost everywhere. Now only a few of the older order remained, and they no longer even pretended to transmute metals . . .
　　. . . but they could make wildfire. “Water will not quench it, I am told.”
　　“That is so. Once it takes fire, the substance will burn fiercely until it is no more. More, it will seep into cloth, wood, leather, even steel, so they take fire as well.”
　　Tyrion remembered the red priest Thoros of Myr and his flaming sword. Even a thin coating of wildfire could burn for an hour. Thoros always needed a new sword after a melee, but Robert had been fond of the man and ever glad to provide one. “Why doesn’t it seep into the clay as well?”
　　“Oh, but it does,” said Hallyne. “There is a vault below this one where we store the older pots. Those from King Aerys’s day. It was his fancy to have the jars made in the shapes of fruits. Very perilous fruits indeed, my lord Hand, and, hmmm, riper now than ever, if you take my meaning. We have sealed them with wax and pumped the lower vault full of water, but even so . . . by rights they ought to have been destroyed, but so many of our masters were murdered during the Sack of King’s Landing, the few acolytes who remained were unequal to the task. And much of the stock we made for Aerys was lost. Only last year, two hundred jars were discovered in a storeroom beneath the Great Sept of Baelor. No one could recall how they came there, but I’m sure I do not need to tell you that the High Septon was beside himself with terror. I myself saw that they were safely moved. I had a cart filled with sand, and sent our most able acolytes. We worked only by night, we—”
　　“—did a splendid job, I have no doubt.” Tyrion placed the jar he’d been holding back among its fellows. They covered the table, standing in orderly rows of four and marching away into the subterranean dimness. And there were other tables beyond, many other tables. “These, ah, fruits of the late King Aerys, can they still be used?”
　　“Oh, yes, most certainly . . . but carefully, my lord, ever so carefully. As it ages, the substance grows ever more, hmmmm, fickle, let us say. Any flame will set it afire. Any spark. Too much heat and jars will blaze up of their own accord. It is not wise to let them sit in sunlight, even for a short time. Once the fire begins within, the heat causes the substance to expand violently, and the jars shortly fly to pieces. If other jars should happen to be stored in the same vicinity, those go up as well, and so—”
　　“How many jars do you have at present?”
　　“This morning the Wisdom Munciter told me that we had seven thousand eight hundred and forty. That count includes four thousand jars from King Aerys’s day, to be sure.”
　　“Our overripe fruits?”
　　Hallyne bobbed his head. “Wisdom Malliard believes we shall be able to provide a full ten thousand jars, as was promised the queen. I concur.” The pyromancer looked indecently pleased with that prospect.
　　Assuming our enemies give you the time. The pyromancers kept their recipe for wildfire a closely guarded secret, but Tyrion knew that it was a lengthy, dangerous, and time-consuming process. He had assumed the promise of ten thousand jars was a wild boast, like that of the bannerman who vows to marshal ten thousand swords for his lord and shows up on the day of battle with a hundred and two. If they can truly give us ten thousand . . .
　　He did not know whether he ought to be delighted or terrified. Perhaps a smidge of both. “I trust that your guild brothers are not engaging in any unseemly haste, Wisdom. We do not want ten thousand jars of defective wildfire, nor even one . . . and we most certainly do not want any mishaps.”
　　“There will be no mishaps, my lord Hand. The substance is prepared by trained acolytes in a series of bare stone cells, and each jar is removed by an apprentice and carried down here the instant it is ready. Above each work cell is a room filled entirely with sand. A protective spell has been laid on the floors, hmmm, most powerful. Any fire in the cell below causes the floors to fall away, and the sand smothers the blaze at once.”
　　“Not to mention the careless acolyte.” By spell Tyrion imagined Hallyne meant clever trick. He thought he would like to inspect one of these false-ceilinged cells to see how it worked, but this was not the time. Perhaps when the war was won.
　　“My brethren are never careless,” Hallyne insisted. “If I may be, hmmmm, frank . . .”
　　“Oh, do.
　　“The substance flows through my veins, and lives in the heart of every pyromancer. We respect its power. But the common soldier, hmmmm, the crew of one of the queen’s spitfires, say, in the unthinking frenzy of battle . . . any little mistake can bring catastrophe. That cannot be said too often. My father often told King Aerys as much, as his father told old King Jaehaerys.”
　　“They must have listened,” Tyrion said. “If they had burned the city down, someone would have told me. So your counsel is that we had best be careful?”
　　“Be very careful,” said Hallyne. “Be very very careful.”
　　“These clay jars . . . do you have an ample supply?”
　　“We do, my lord, and thank you for asking.”
　　“You won’t mind if I take some, then. A few thousand.”
　　“A few thousand?” “Or however many your guild can spare, without interfering with production. It’s empty pots I’m asking for, understand. Have them sent round to the captains on each of the city gates.”
　　“I will, my lord, but why . . . ?”
　　Tyrion smiled up at him. “When you tell me to dress warmly, I dress warmly. When you tell me to be careful, well . . .” He gave a shrug. “I’ve seen enough. Perhaps you would be so good as to escort me back up to my litter?”
　　“It would be my great, hmmm, pleasure, my lord.” Hallyne lifted the lamp and led the way back to the stairs. “It was good of you to visit us. A great honor, hmmm. It has been too long since the King’s Hand graced us with his presence. Not since Lord Rossart, and he was of our order. That was back in King Aerys’s day. King Aerys took a great interest in our work.”
　　King Aerys used you to roast the flesh off his enemies. His brother Jaime had told him a few stories of the Mad King and his pet pyromancers. “Joffrey will be interested as well, I have no doubt.” Which is why I’d best keep him well away from you.
　　“It is our great hope to have the king visit our Guildhall in his own royal person. I have spoken of it to your royal sister. A great feast . . .”
　　It was growing warmer as they climbed. “His Grace has prohibited all feasting until such time as the war is won.” At my insistence. “The king does not think it fitting to banquet on choice food while his people go without bread.”
　　“A most, hmmm, loving gesture, my lord. Perhaps instead some few of us might call upon the king at the Red Keep. A small demonstration of our powers, as it were, to distract His Grace from his many cares for an evening. Wildfire is but one of the dread secrets of our ancient order. Many and wondrous are the things we might show you.”
　　“I will take it up with my sister.” Tyrion had no objection to a few magic tricks, but Joff’s fondness for making men fight to the death was trial enough; he had no intention of allowing the boy to taste the possibilities of burning them alive.
　　When at last they reached the top of the steps, Tyrion shrugged out of his shadowskin fur and folded it over his arm. The Guildhall of the Alchemists was an imposing warren of black stone, but Hallyne led him through the twists and turns until they reached the Gallery of the iron Torches, a long echoing chamber where columns of green fire danced around black metal columns twenty feet tall. Ghostly flames shimmered off the polished black marble of the walls and floor and bathed the hall in an emerald radiance. Tyrion would have been more impressed if he hadn’t known that the great iron torches had only been lit this morning in honor of his visit, and would be extinguished the instant the doors closed behind him. Wildfire was too costly to squander.
　　They emerged atop the broad curving steps that fronted on the Street of the Sisters, near the foot of Visenya’s Hill. He bid Hallyne farewell and waddled down to where Timett son of Timett waited with an escort of Burned Men. Given his purpose today, it had seemed a singularly appropriate choice for his guard. Besides, their scars struck terror in the hearts of the city rabble. That was all to the good these days. Only three nights past, another mob had gathered at the gates of the Red Keep, chanting for food. Joff had unleashed a storm of arrows against them, slaying four, and then shouted down that they had his leave to eat their dead. Winning us still more friends.
　　Tyrion was surprised to see Bronn standing beside the litter as well. “What are you doing here?”
　　“Delivering your messages,” Bronn said. “Ironhand wants you urgently at the Gate of the Gods. He won’t say why. And you’ve been summoned to Maegor’s too.”
　　“Summoned?” Tyrion knew of only one person who would presume to use that word. “And what does Cersei want of me?”
　　Bronn shrugged. “The queen commands you to return to the castle at once and attend her in her chambers. That stripling cousin of yours delivered the message. Four hairs on his lip and he thinks he’s a man.”
　　“Four hairs and a knighthood. He’s Ser Lancel now, never forget.” Tyrion knew that Ser Jacelyn would not send for him unless the matter was of import. “I’d best see what Bywater wants. Inform my sister that I will attend her on my return.”
　　“She won’t like that,” Bronn warned.
　　“Good. The longer Cersei waits, the angrier she’ll become, and anger makes her stupid. I much prefer angry and stupid to composed and cunning.” Tyrion tossed his folded cloak into his litter, and Timett helped him up after it.
　　The market square inside the Gate of the Gods, which in normal times would have been thronged with farmers selling vegetables, was near deserted when Tyrion crossed it. Ser Jacelyn met him at the gate, and raised his iron hand in brusque salute. “My lord. Your cousin Cleos Frey is here, come from Riverrun under a peace banner with a letter from Robb Stark.”
　　“Peace terms?”
　　“So he says.”
　　“Sweet cousin. Show me to him.”
　　The gold cloaks had confined Ser Cleos to a windowless guardroom in the gatehouse. He rose when they entered. “Tyrion, you are a most welcome sight.”
　　“That’s not something I hear often, cousin.”
　　“Has Cersei come with you?”
　　“My sister is otherwise occupied. Is this Stark’s letter?” He plucked it off the table. “Ser Jacelyn, you may leave us.”
　　Bywater bowed and departed. “I was asked to bring the offer to the Queen Regent,” Ser Cleos said as the door shut.
　　“I shall.” Tyrion glanced over the map that Robb Stark had sent with his letter. “All in good time, cousin. Sit. Rest. You look gaunt and haggard.” He looked worse than that, in truth.
　　“Yes.” Ser Cleos lowered himself onto a bench. “It is bad in the riverlands, Tyrion. Around the Gods Eye and along the kingsroad especially. The river lords are burning their own crops to try and starve us, and your father’s foragers are torching every village they take and putting the smallfolk to the sword.”
　　That was the way of war. The smallfolk were slaughtered, while the highborn were held for ransom. Remind me to thank the gods that I was born a Lannister.
　　Ser Cleos ran a hand through his thin brown hair. “Even with a peace banner, we were attacked twice. Wolves in mail, hungry to savage anyone weaker than themselves. The gods alone know what side they started on, but they’re on their own side now. Lost three men, and twice as many wounded.”
　　“What news of our foe?” Tyrion turned his attention back to Stark’s terms. The boy does not want too much. Only half the realm, the release of our captives, hostages, his father’s sword . . . oh, yes, and his sisters.
　　“The boy sits idle at Riverrun,” Ser Cleos said. “I think he fears to face your father in the field. His strength grows less each day. The river lords have departed, each to defend his own lands.”
　　Is this what Father intended? Tyrion rolled up Stark’s map. “These terms will never do.”
　　“Will you at least consent to trade the Stark girls for Tion and Willem?” Ser Cleos asked plaintively.
　　Tion Frey was his younger brother, Tyrion recalled. “No,” he said gently, “but we’ll propose our own exchange of captives. Let me consult with Cersei and the council. We shall send you back to Riverrun with our terms.”
　　Clearly, the prospect did not cheer him. “My lord, I do not believe Robb Stark will yield easily. It is Lady Catelyn who wants this peace, not the boy.”
　　“Lady Catelyn wants her daughters.” Tyrion pushed himself down from the bench, letter and map in hand. “Ser Jacelyn will see that you have food and fire. You look in dire need of sleep, cousin. I will send for you when we know more.”
　　He found Ser Jacelyn on the ramparts, watching several hundred new recruits drilling in the field below. With so many seeking refuge in King’s Landing, there was no lack of men willing to join the City Watch for a full belly and a bed of straw in the barracks, but Tyrion had no illusions about how well these ragged defenders of theirs would fight if it came to battle.
　　“You did well to send for me,” Tyrion said. “I shall leave Ser Cleos in your hands. He is to have every hospitality.”
　　“And his escort?” the commander wanted to know.
　　“Give them food and clean garb, and find a maester to see to their hurts. They are not to set foot inside the city, is that understood?” It would never do to have the truth of conditions in King’s Landing reach Robb Stark in Riverrun.
　　“Well understood, my lord.”
　　“Oh, and one more thing. The alchemists will be sending a large supply of clay pots to each of the city gates. You’re to use them to train the men who will work your spitfires. Fill the pots with green paint and have them drill at loading and firing. Any man who spatters should be replaced. When they have mastered the paint pots, substitute lamp oil and have them work at lighting the jars and firing them while aflame. Once they learn to do that without burning themselves, they may be ready for wildfire.”
　　Ser Jacelyn scratched at his cheek with his iron hand. “Wise measures. Though I have no love for that alchemist’s piss.” “Nor I, but I use what I’m given.”
　　Once back inside his litter, Tyrion Lannister drew the curtains and plumped a cushion under his elbow. Cersei would be displeased to learn that he had intercepted Stark’s letter, but his father had sent him here to rule, not to please Cersei.
　　It seemed to him that Robb Stark had given them a golden chance. Let the boy wait at Riverrun dreaming of an easy peace. Tyrion would reply with terms of his own, giving the King in the North just enough of what he wanted to keep him hopeful. Let Ser Cleos wear out his bony Frey rump riding to and fro with offers and counters. All the while, their cousin Ser Stafford would be training and arming the new host he’d raised at Casterly Rock. Once he was ready, he and Lord Tywin could smash the Tullys and Starks between them.
　　Now if only Robert’s brothers would be so accommodating. Glacial as his progress was, still Renly Baratheon crept north and east with his huge southron host, and scarcely a night passed that Tyrion did not dread being awakened with the news that Lord Stannis was sailing his fleet up the Blackwater Rush. Well, it would seem I have a goodly stock of wildfire, but still . . .
　　The sound of some hubbub in the street intruded on his worries. Tyrion peered out cautiously between the curtains. They were passing through Cobbler’s Square, where a sizable crowd had gathered beneath the leather awnings to listen to the rantings of a prophet. A robe of undyed wool belted with a hempen rope marked him for one of the begging brothers.
　　“Corruption!” the man cried shrilly. “There is the warning! Behold the Father’s scourge!” He pointed at the fuzzy red wound in the sky. From this vantage, the distant castle on Aegon’s High Hill was directly behind him, with the comet hanging forebodingly over its towers. A clever choice of stage, Tyrion reflected. “We have become swollen, bloated, foul. Brother couples with sister in the bed of kings, and the fruit of their incest capers in his palace to the piping of a twisted little monkey demon. Highborn ladies fornicate with fools and give birth to monsters! Even the High Septon has forgotten the gods! He bathes in scented waters and grows fat on lark and lamprey while his people starve! Pride comes before prayer, maggots rule our castles, and gold is all . . . but no more! The Rotten Summer is at an end, and the Whoremonger King is brought low! When the boar did open him, a great stench rose to heaven and a thousand snakes slid forth from his belly, hissing and biting!” He jabbed his bony finger back at comet and castle. “There comes the Harbinger! Cleanse yourselves, the gods cry out, lest ye be cleansed! Bathe in the wine of righteousness, or you shall be bathed in fire! Fire!”
　　“Fire!” other voices echoed, but the hoots of derision almost drowned them out. Tyrion took solace from that. He gave the command to continue, and the litter rocked like a ship on a rough sea as the Burned Men cleared a path. Twisted little monkey demon indeed. The wretch did have a point about the High Septon, to be sure. What was it that Moon Boy had said of him the other day? A pious man who worships the Seven so fervently that he eats a meal for each of them whenever he sits to table. The memory of the fool’s jape made Tyrion smile.
　　He was pleased to reach the Red Keep without further incident. As he climbed the steps to his chambers, Tyrion felt a deal more hopeful than he had at dawn. Time, that’s all I truly need, time to piece it all together. Once the chain is done . . . He opened the door to his solar.
　　Cersei turned away from the window, her skirts swirling around her slender hips. “How dare you ignore my summons!”
　　“Who admitted you to my tower?”
　　“Your tower? This is my son’s royal castle.”
　　“So they tell me.” Tyrion was not amused. Crawn would be even less so; his Moon Brothers had the guard today. “I was about to come to you, as it happens.” “Were you?”
　　He swung the door shut behind him. “You doubt me?”
　　“Always, and with good reason.”
　　“I’m hurt.” Tyrion waddled to the sideboard for a cup of wine. He knew no surer way to work up a thirst than talking with Cersei. “If I’ve given you offense, I would know how.”
　　“What a disgusting little worm you are. Myrcella is my only daughter. Did you truly imagine that I would allow you to sell her like a bag of oats?”
　　Myrcella, he thought. Well, that egg has hatched. Let’s see what color the chick is. “Hardly a bag of oats. Myrcella is a princess. Some would say this is what she was born for. Or did you plan to marry her to Tommen?”
　　Her hand lashed out, knocking the wine cup from his hand to spill on the floor. “Brother or no, I should have your tongue out for that. I am Joffrey’s regent, not you, and I say that Myrcella will not be shipped off to this Dornishman the way I was shipped to Robert Baratheon.”
　　Tyrion shook wine off his fingers and sighed. “Why not? She’d be a deal safer in Dorne than she is here.”
　　“Are you utterly ignorant or simply perverse? You know as well as I that the Martells have no cause to love us.”
　　“The Martells have every cause to hate us. Nonetheless, I expect them to agree. Prince Doran’s grievance against House Lannister goes back only a generation, but the Dornishmen have warred against Storm’s End and Highgarden for a thousand years, and Renly has taken Dorne’s allegiance for granted. Myrcella is nine, Trystane Martell eleven. I have proposed they wed when she reaches her fourteenth year. Until such time, she would be an honored guest at Sunspear, under Prince Doran’s protection.”
　　“A hostage,” Cersei said, mouth tightening.
　　“An honored guest,” Tyrion insisted, “and I suspect Martell will treat Myrcella more kindly than Joffrey has treated Sansa Stark. I had in mind to send Ser Arys Oakheart with her. With a knight of the Kingsguard as her sworn shield, no one is like to forget who or what she is.”
　　“Small good Ser Arys will do her if Doran Martell decides that my daughter’s death would wash out his sister’s.”
　　“Martell is too honorable to murder a nine-year-old girl, particularly one as sweet and innocent as Myrcella. So long as he holds her he can be reasonably certain that we’ll keep faith on our side, and the terms are too rich to refuse. Myrcella is the least part of it. I’ve also offered him his sister’s killer, a council seat, some castles on the Marches . . .”
　　“Too much.” Cersei paced away from him, restless as a lioness, skirts swirling. “You’ve offered too much, and without my authority or consent.”
　　“This is the Prince of Dorne we are speaking of. If I’d offered less, he’d likely spit in my face.”
　　“Too much!” Cersei insisted, whirling back.
　　“What would you have offered him, that hole between your legs?” Tyrion said, his own anger flaring.
　　This time he saw the slap coming. His head snapped around with a crack. “Sweet sweet sister,” he said, “I promise you, that was the last time you will ever strike me.”
　　His sister laughed. “Don’t threaten me, little man. Do you think Father’s letter keeps you safe? A piece of paper. Eddard Stark had a piece of paper too, for all the good it did him.”
　　Eddard Stark did not have the City Watch, Tyrion thought, nor my clansmen, nor the sellswords that Bronn has hired. I do. Or so he hoped. Trusting in Varys, in Ser Jacelyn Bywater, in Bronn. Lord Stark had probably had his delusions as well.
　　Yet he said nothing. A wise man did not pour wildfire on a brazier. Instead he poured a fresh cup of wine. “How safe do you think Myrcella will be if King’s Landing falls? Renly and Stannis will mount her head beside yours.”
　　And Cersei began to cry.
　　Tyrion Lannister could not have been more astonished if Aegon the Conqueror himself had burst into the room, riding on a dragon and juggling lemon pies. He had not seen his sister weep since they were children together at Casterly Rock. Awkwardly, he took a step toward her. When your sister cries, you were supposed to comfort her . . . but this was Cersei! He reached a tentative hand for her shoulder.
　　“Don’t touch me,” she said, wrenching away. It should not have hurt, yet it did, more than any slap. Red-faced, as angry as she was grief-stricken, Cersei struggled for breath. “Don’t look at me, not . . . not like this . . . not you.”
　　Politely, Tyrion turned his back. “I did not mean to frighten you. I promise you, nothing will happen to Myrcella.”
　　“Liar,” she said behind him. “I’m not a child, to be soothed with empty promises. You told me you would free Jaime too. Well, where is he?”
　　“In Riverrun, I should imagine. Safe and under guard, until I find a way to free him.”
　　Cersei sniffed. “I should have been born a man. I would have no need of any of you then. None of this would have been allowed to happen. How could Jaime let himself be captured by that boy? And Father, I trusted in him, fool that I am, but where is he now that he’s wanted? What is he doing?”
　　“Making war.”
　　“From behind the walls of Harrenhal?” she said scornfully. “A curious way of fighting. It looks suspiciously like hiding.”
　　“Look again.”
　　“What else would you call it? Father sits in one castle, and Robb Stark sits in another, and no one does anything.”
　　“There is sitting and there is sitting,” Tyrion suggested. “Each one waits for the other to move, but the lion is still, poised, his tail twitching, while the fawn is frozen by fear, bowels turned to jelly. No matter which way he bounds, the lion will have him, and he knows it.”
　　“And you’re quite certain that Father is the lion?”
　　Tyrion grinned. “It’s on all our banners.”
　　She ignored the jest. “If it was Father who’d been taken captive, Jaime would not be sitting by idly, I promise you.” Jaime would be battering his host to bloody bits against the walls of Riverrun, and the Others take their chances. He never did have any patience, no more than you, sweet sister. “Not all of us can be as bold as Jaime, but there are other ways to win wars. Harrenhal is strong and well situated.”
　　“And King’s Landing is not, as we both know perfectly well. While Father plays lion and fawn with the Stark boy, Renly marches up the roseroad. He could be at our gates any day now!”
　　“The city will not fall in a day. From Harrenhal it is a straight, swift march down the kingsroad. Renly will scarce have unlimbered his siege engines before Father takes him in the rear. His host will be the hammer, the city walls the anvil. It makes a lovely picture.”
　　Cersei’s green eyes bored into him, wary, yet hungry for the reassurance he was feeding her. “And if Robb Stark marches?”
　　“Harrenhal is close enough to the fords of the Trident so that Roose Bolton cannot bring the northern foot across to join with the Young Wolf’s horse. Stark cannot march on King’s Landing without taking Harrenhal first, and even with Bolton he is not strong enough to do that.” Tyrion tried his most winning smile. “Meanwhile Father lives off the fat of the riverlands, while our uncle Stafford gathers fresh levies at the Rock.”
　　Cersei regarded him suspiciously. “How could you know all this? Did Father tell you his intentions when he sent you here?”
　　“No. I glanced at a map.”
　　Her look turned to disdain. “You’ve conjured up every word of this in that grotesque head of yours, haven’t you, Imp?”
　　Tyrion tsked. “Sweet sister, I ask you, if we weren’t winning, would the Starks have sued for peace?” He drew out the letter that Ser Cleos Frey had brought. “The Young Wolf has sent us terms, you see. Unacceptable terms, to be sure, but still, a beginning. Would you care to see them?”
　　“Yes.” That fast, she was all queen again. “How do you come to have them? They should have come to me.”
　　“What else is a Hand for, if not to hand you things?” Tyrion handed her the letter. His cheek still throbbed where Cersei’s hand had left its mark. Let her flay half my face, it will be a small price to pay for her consent to the Dornish marriage. He would have that now, he could sense it.
　　And certain knowledge of an informer too . . . well, that was the plum in his pudding.

Ⅱ 列王的纷争 Chapter21 提利昂
　　他们告诫他要穿暖一点，于是提利昂·兰尼斯特地穿上厚重的软垫长裤、羊毛外衣，罩上从明月山脉得来的影子山猫皮披风。那件披风原本是为他两倍身高的人穿用的，所以他穿起来长得夸张。下马后，唯一的穿法便是把披风在身上缠个好几圈，他看起来活像个斑纹毛球。
　　虽然如此，他还是很高兴自己接受了建议。漫长的地窖阴湿黑暗，寒气彻骨。提魅没走几步，稍稍感受寒意，便决定退回上层去。他们位于雷妮丝丘陵地底深处，就在练金术士的公会大厅下方。潮湿的石墙上遍布硝石，唯一的光源来自火术士哈林小心翼翼地提着的那盏密封的铁条玻璃油灯。
　　小心翼翼……一定是为了这些罐子吧。提利昂拿起一个仔细端详，火红的圆罐，有如一个陶制的胖柚子。对他的手掌来说稍大，但他知道常人握起来刚好。陶土很薄很脆，所以术士告诫他不要用力，以免捏破。此外，陶土摸起来也很粗糙，掺了石子。哈林告诉他这是有意为之：“表面若是光滑，容易从手中滑落。”
　　提利昂稍微倾斜罐子，“野火”溶剂缓缓地向瓶口流动。他知道液体应呈浑浊的绿色，但光线太暗，此刻无法确定。“很稠，”他评论道。
　　“大人，这是因为地底的冷气，”哈林说。他是个脸色苍白的人，一双手又软又湿，态度极为谄媚。他穿着镶貂皮边的黑红条纹长袍，可毛皮看来有点稀疏，似乎还被蛾啃过。“温度升高之后，这种物质便会顺畅流动，就像灯油。”
　　“这种物质”，是火术士对野火的称呼。他们彼此间以“智者”相称，他们也习惯不断暗示自己学识广博，希望别人认为他们是饱学之士，这令提利昂十分不耐。的确，他们的公会曾盛极一时，但在最近几个世纪，学城的学士已经渐渐取代了各地的练金术士。如今这个古老组织的成员寥寥无几，也不再伪称有方子炼化金属……
　　……但他们确能制造野火。“听说，这东西水浇不熄？”
　　我们只在夜间行动“正是。一旦着火，这种物质便会剧烈燃烧，直至燃尽。而且，它会渗进布料、木材、皮革、甚至钢铁，并使它们也着火。”
　　提利昂想起密尔的红袍僧索罗斯和他那把火焰剑：涂上薄薄一层的野火，长剑便可燃烧一小时。索罗斯每次比武都要换把新剑。劳勃很喜欢那家伙，甚至乐于提供新剑给他。“它们为什么不渗进陶土？”
　　“噢，怎么不会？”哈林道，“这下面还有个地窖，是我们专门存放旧罐子的地方。那些都是伊里斯国王在位时留下的东西——把罐子做成水果形状就是他的主意。这些水果真是非常危险呀，首相大人，而且，嘿嘿嘿，比过去更‘成熟’啰，如果您懂我的意思。我们已把这些罐子蜡封，并在下层地窖灌满了水，即使这样……嘿，它们实在应该销毁，但君临城陷时我们有好多智者遇害，只剩少数助手，无法胜任这个工作。说实话，由于当时的混乱，我们为伊里斯王制作的东西有不少下落不明。去年我们刚在贝勒大圣堂下一间储藏室发现了两百罐，谁也记不得这些东西怎么会放在那里，但不用我说，您也可以想见总主教大人有多惊慌失措。后来是我亲自监督，方才把东西安全转运出来。我把推车装满沙子，派出最得力的助手。我们只在夜间行动，我们——”
　　“——干得漂亮，我明白，”提利昂把罐子放回去。桌上全是这种罐子，整整齐齐，四个一排，朝幽暗的地底深处延伸。由近至远，有很多张这种桌子。“这些，呃，伊里斯先王的‘水果’，还能使用吗？”
　　“噢，当然，当然能用……但要小心啊，大人，千万小心。存放时间一久，这种物质就会变得……嘿嘿嘿，不妨说‘变幻莫测’吧。只需一丁点火，哪怕一点火星，都会立刻燃烧。即便只是温度升高，罐子也可能自行起火，所以绝不要让它们受日光照射，时间很短也不行。内部一旦起火，高热会使这种物质剧烈膨胀，陶罐顷刻间炸成碎片。如果旁边恰巧还有其他罐子，便会引起连锁反应，然后——”
　　“目前你有多少罐？”
　　“今早蒙西特智者刚把统计结果告诉我：眼下我们共拥有七千八百四十罐，这其中包括伊里斯王时代存留的四千罐。”
　　“那些烂熟的水果？”
　　哈林点头，“梅利亚德智者坚信我们一定能实现对太后的承诺——提供整整一万罐。我也深信不疑。”火术士得意洋洋，表情近乎猥亵。
　　那得敌人给你们时间。火术士严守野火的配方秘密，但想也知道，那是一道繁复危险且耗时的程序。他原本估计一万罐的承诺是吹牛，就如诸侯向领主发誓带一万兵力驰援，最后上战场的却只有一两百人一样。话说回来，倘若他们真能提供一万罐……
　　他不知该兴奋还是恐惧，或许两者皆有吧。“智者，希望你公会的弟兄们不要无谓地加班赶工，毕竟我们不需要一万罐有瑕疵的野火，一罐都不要……我们非常在意，不允许任何意外发生。”
　　“首相大人，请您尽管放心，绝对没有意外。这种物质都由训练有素的助手制作，操作地点乃是一串空旷的石室，每完成一瓶，即刻交学徒下送到此处。每间工作室上方都有一个装满沙的房间，天花板上则施展了，嘿嘿嘿，最强力的保护法术。石室一旦起火，天花板便会落下，沙将立刻熄灭火势。”
　　“粗心助手的下场就不用说了。”提利昂认为哈林口中的“法术”指的是“机关”，他很想亲自调查这种屋顶开闭的工作室，看看究竟如何运作，但现在时机不对，还是等战争胜利后再说吧。
　　“我的弟兄们绝不会粗心大意，”哈林坚持，“不过呢，如果能允许我，嘿嘿嘿，实话实说……”
　　“啊，请便。”
　　“这种物质流贯我的血液，存在于每个火术士的心中。我们敬畏它的力量，但普通士兵……嘿嘿嘿，打起仗来往往头脑发热，只想大干一场，例如太后手下喷火弩的操作员便有可能……但是，任何一点小差错都会酿成灾难，在此，我务必再三强调。先父曾多次提醒伊里斯国王，我的祖父也是这么向老王杰赫里斯说的。”
　　“想必他们幸然接受，”提利昂道，“如果连都城都被他们烧了，总有人告诉我这个故事。好了，你建议我们多加小心？”
　　“务必非常小心，”哈林说，“非常非常小心。”
　　“这些陶罐……制作罐子的材料可充裕？”
　　“很充裕，大人，感谢您的关心。”
　　“既然如此，你不介意我带走几个吧。事实上，我想要几千个。”
　　“几‘千’个？”
　　“在不影响制作进程的前提下，能给多少就给多少。听清楚，我只要空罐。请把东西分头交给各城门的守卫队长。”
　　“是，大人，可为什么……？”
　　提利昂朝他微微一笑，“你要我穿暖一点，我就穿暖一点。你要我务必小心，所以啰……”他耸耸肩，“我也瞧够了，麻烦你送我回轿？”
　　“首相大人，我，嘿嘿嘿，乐意之至。”哈林举起油灯，领路走向阶梯，“您能亲自来访真是太好了，这是我们，嘿嘿嘿，莫大的荣幸。这里已经很久不曾有首相造访，往上要数罗萨特大人，他本人就是我们组织的人呢。那是伊里斯王在位时的事，伊里斯国王对我们的工作向来很感兴趣。”
　　伊里斯国王利用你们来烧烤对头。詹姆老哥跟他提过几个疯王和他那群火术士走狗的故事。“相信乔佛里国王陛下一定也会深表关注。”所以我才想尽办法不让你们接近他。
　　“我们衷心期盼陛下也能莅临敝会视察。我向您尊贵的姐姐提过，我们将举办一场盛大的宴席……”
　　恩准你们享用死尸他们越往上爬，便越觉温暖。“在取得胜利之前，陛下禁止举办任何宴席。”这当然是我的坚持。“陛下认为，倘若百姓未得温饱，任何人都无权独享美食。”
　　“大人，此议实乃，嘿嘿嘿，仁爱之举。那不妨……由我们几位智者代表众弟兄进红堡参见陛下，我们可以玩点小花活，让日理万机的陛下也能稍事休息一晚。本会历史悠久，野火只是我们诸多恐怖秘术之一。我们将呈给朝中诸君看的奇观可是庞杂繁复，数不胜数呢。”
　　“这事我会和我姐姐商量。”如果只是变变魔术，那他不反对，然而乔佛里每次当朝理事都爱叫人斗个“至死方休”，他不可想让这小鬼动起火烧活人的主意。
　　走完楼梯后，提利昂甩开山猫皮披风，缠在手臂。炼金术士的公会大厅是一座黑石砌成的大迷宫，哈林领他左弯右拐，最后来到“铁炬长廊”。这是一个漫长而回音缭绕的大房间，青绿的火焰在高达二十尺的黑铁梁柱周边雀跃舞动。亮泽的黑色大理石墙和天花板上鬼火闪烁，整个大厅浸沐在一片翡翠色的光芒中。这些巨型“铁炬”是为了欢迎他的到来，今天早上才点燃的，等他离开后，便会立刻熄灭——倘若他不知此事，印象定会更加深刻。野火非常昂贵，不容任意挥霍。
　　他们从面朝静默修女街的弯曲大阶梯上走出来，已近维桑尼亚丘陵底部。他向哈林道别后，便摇摇摆摆地走下台阶，与等候多时的提魅之子提魅和随行的其余灼人部众会合。为达今天的意图，挑他们作护卫再合适不过。此外，他们身上的伤疤可以吓退城里聚集的贫民，在这非常时期尤为关键。因为三天前，刚有一群暴民聚集到红堡门前，叫嚷着分配食物。乔佛里的回应是万箭齐放，一下杀死了四个，之后他从城上叫道：“恩准你们享用死尸。”我们真是越来越受爱戴了。
　　提利昂看到波隆也在轿子旁，有些吃惊。“你来做什么？”
　　“给你送口信。”波隆道，“铁手报告诸神门那儿有急事，但他不肯细说。还有，梅葛楼也在召你。”
　　“召我？”提利昂知道只有一个人敢用这个字眼。“瑟曦找我何事？”
　　波隆耸肩，“太后命你即刻返回城堡，到她的居室面见她。是你那乳臭未干的堂弟传的口信。呵，嘴上长了几根毛，就自以为成熟了。”
　　“几根毛，一个爵位。别忘了，他现下可是蓝赛尔‘爵士’。”提利昂知道除非事关重大，杰斯林爵士不会轻易催他过去。“我最好先瞧瞧拜瓦特那边。通知我老姐，我回来立刻去见她。”
　　“她可不会喜欢。”波隆警告他。
　　“很好。瑟曦等得越久，就会越恼怒，越恼怒就会越犯蠢。与其在她好整以暇、狡计盘算的时候见她，不如等她恼怒犯蠢以后。”提利昂把摺好的披风扔进轿子，随后提魅扶他上轿。
　　提利昂穿过诸神门里的市集广场，平日里，这里总是挤满叫卖蔬果的农民，如今却一片空荡。杰斯林爵士在城门口等他，举起铁手粗率地行了个礼。“大人，您的表弟克里奥·佛雷爵士刚从奔流城赶到，打着和平的旗帜，带来罗柏·史塔克的信件。”
　　“和平条件？”
　　“他是这么说的。”
　　“真是我的好表弟，快带我去见他。”
　　金袍卫士把克里奥爵士拘留在城门楼中一间无窗的警卫室里，一见他们进来，他立刻起身：“提利昂，见到你真是太高兴了。”
　　“表弟，这话对我可真是稀罕哟。”
　　“瑟曦也来了吗？”
　　“我姐姐刚巧有别的事要忙。这是史塔克的信？”他从桌上拿起来。“杰斯林爵士，请你退下。”
　　拜瓦特点头离开。“我的使命是将议和条件呈给摄政太后，”关门之后，克里奥爵士道。
　　“我会亲自呈上，”提利昂瞄了一眼罗柏·史塔克随信附上的地图，“我们不要着急，一件一件慢慢来。表弟你先坐，休息片刻，你看起来面色不佳，有些憔悴哪。”事实上，他的状况的确糟糕。
　　“可不是嘛。”克里奥爵士在一张长凳上坐下。“提利昂，河间地区一片混乱，尤其是神眼湖和国王大道周围。河间地的领主烧掉自己的作物，企图困死、饿死我们，令尊的征粮队则每到一座村落就纵火焚烧，并追杀其中的百姓。”
　　这就是战争之道：贵族被俘等人来赎，百姓却只能引颈待屠。感谢诸神，让我生为兰尼斯特。
　　克里奥爵士伸手拨拨稀疏的棕发，“即便打着和平的旗帜，我们还是两次遭到攻击。都是些披盔甲的豺狼，饥肠辘辘，只等着蹂躏弱小。他们原本是哪一边的人，恐怕只有上天知道，总之眼下这帮家伙是独立行动了。我的队伍死了三人，还有六个人受伤。”
　　“敌方动向如何？”提利昂把目光转回史塔克的条件。这孩子要的可不少嘛，半壁河山，释放俘虏，索要人质，父亲的剑……喔，当然，还有两个妹妹。
　　“那小鬼在奔流城无所事事，”克里奥爵士道，“想必他不敢与你父亲照面。他的兵力日渐减少，河间领主都回去保卫各自的属地了。”
　　这就是父亲的意图？提利昂卷起史塔克的地图。“这些条件不成的。”
　　“可否请你至少同意用史塔克家的女儿交换提恩和威廉？”克里奥爵士痛苦地问。
　　提利昂想起来，提恩·佛雷是对方的弟弟。“不行，”他温和地说，“但请你放心，我们会提出相应的战俘交换。就让我和重臣们及瑟曦商量一番，然后让你带着我们的条件返回奔流城。”
　　显然，他的情绪并未好转，“大人，我认为罗柏·史塔克不会轻易屈服。想要和平的是凯特琳夫人，不是那小鬼。”
　　谁准你进我的塔？
　　“而凯特琳夫人心中所想惟有她的女儿。”提利昂从板凳上起身，手拿信件和地图。“我让杰斯林爵士帮你张罗食物和衣物。表弟，你看起来委实需要恶补一觉。等我们商议有了结果，我再来通知你。”
　　提利昂在城墙上找到杰斯林爵士，他正观看着下方广场上操演中的数百新兵。由于大量难民涌入君临，许多人自愿加入都城守备队，藉以换取温饱和军营里的一张稻草床。等战争开始，这群乌合之众能有多少战力，提利昂可不抱任何幻想。
　　“你找我来，做得很对。”提利昂道，“我把克里奥爵士交给你了，请满足他一切需要。”
　　“他的随从呢？”都城守备队司令问。
　　“给他们提供食物和干净衣服，找个学士替他们疗伤。但不准他们踏进城里一步，清楚吗？”君临城的现况绝不能传到罗柏·史塔克耳中。
　　“非常清楚，大人。”
　　“喔，还有一事。炼金术士公会将把大批陶罐送到各个城门，你就用这些罐子来训练喷火弩和弩炮的操作员。将罐子装满绿色颜料，操练装填和发射。谁把颜料洒出来，就把谁撤掉。等他们熟悉了颜料罐，就改装灯油，叫他们先点燃油罐，之后再发射。待他们运用自如，不伤自身，打仗时就可使用野火。”
　　杰斯林爵士用铁手挠挠脸颊，“高明。不过我对炼金术士的屎尿没有好感。”
　　“彼此彼此，但我有什么用什么。”
　　回轿之后，提利昂·兰尼斯特拉上廉幕，又拿个靠垫枕着。瑟曦若知他拦截了史塔克的信件，一定大为不满，但父亲派他进城是来管事的，不是来哄瑟曦开心的。
　　在他看来，罗柏·史塔克实在给了他们一个黄金机会。就让那孩子坐等在奔流城，梦想着和平可以轻易换取罢。提利昂会提出自己的和平条件，刚好足以让北境之王保持希望。就让克里奥爵士磨破他瘦小的佛雷屁股，充任信使来回奔波。与此同时，他们的堂叔史戴佛爵士正在凯岩城整备兵器，训练新军，等他准备完毕，便可与泰温大人前后夹击徒利和史塔克。
　　若劳勃的两个弟弟也这么听话就好了。虽然蓝礼·拜拉席恩军队的行进速度慢如冰川，但他那支南境大军仍旧日渐朝东北逼近。除此之外，提利昂每夜都睡不安稳，惟恐接到史坦尼斯公爵的舰队驶进黑水湾的消息。哈，如今野火还算充裕，然而……
　　街上的喧哗打断了他的思虑。提利昂谨慎地从廉幕间向外看去，他们正行经鞋匠广场，大批民众聚集在皮制天蓬下，倾听一位“先知”大放厥词。从那身未经染色的羊毛衣和当腰带系着的麻绳看来，他不过是乞丐帮的弟兄。
　　“堕落啊！”那人厉声尖叫，“这就是警告！这就是天父之鞭！”他指着空中那道模糊的红色伤痕。从这个角度看去，远处伊耿高丘上的城堡正好在他身后，彗星则如预兆般高悬于塔楼上。真会营造舞台，提利昂心想。“我们变得臃肿、肮脏、腐化。姐弟在国王的寝床上苟合，乱伦的后代在王宫里随着畸形小魔猴的笛声翩翩起舞。高贵的淑女与小丑通奸，生下恐怖恶物！就连总主教也忘记了诸神！他用香水泡澡，享用鳗鱼和云雀，越吃越胖，却坐视他的子民挨饿！傲慢先于祈祷，蛆虫统治城堡，黄金就是一切……这些都必须终止！腐烂的夏天即将结束，嫖客国王受到天罚！他被野猪开膛破肚，可怕的臭气直冲云霄，一千条蛇从肚子里钻出，嘶嘶叫着咬人！”他再度伸出干瘦的手指指着彗星和城堡。“看哪，那就是上天的预示！诸神在呐喊，要我们自我净化，否则便把我们自世间完全抹除！沐浴正义之酒，否则便会烈火焚身！烈火焚身！”
　　“烈火焚身！”虽然有人附和，却被嘲笑的声浪掩盖。提利昂听了稍觉安心，下令继续前进。灼人部众趋前清出走道，轿子则像暴风雨中的船只般剧烈摇晃。好个“畸形小魔猴”。不过那混蛋对总主教的评价倒没错，上次月童怎么说他来着？“主教大人敬拜七神，信仰虔诚，难怪一旦腹饥，便要为七神各吃一餐。”想起弄臣的笑话，提利昂不禁微笑。
　　让他欣慰的是此后直到红堡，都没碰上其他事故。提利昂爬楼梯回塔顶房间，觉得比晨间多了几分希望。时间啊，我需要的就是时间，把事情拼凑起来的时间，只等铁链完工……他打开书房门。
　　瑟曦从窗边旋身，裙裾在纤细的臀旁摆荡，“我召你，你竟敢不来！”
　　“谁准你进我的塔？”
　　“你的塔？这是我儿的城堡！”
　　“算是吧，”提利昂很不高兴。待会儿定要教训克劳恩，今天负责把守的是他的月人部战士。“事实上，我正准备去找你。”
　　“是吗？”
　　他关上门，“怎么，不相信我啊？”
　　“当然不相信，而且我有充足的理由。”
　　“我好伤心。”提利昂一瘸一拐地走去餐具柜倒酒。他不知还有什么事比和瑟曦谈话更容易让人口干舌燥。“如果我冒犯了你，我想知道原因。”
　　“行了，你这恶心的烂蛆！弥赛拉是我唯一的女儿，你以为我真的会任你把她当作一包燕麦般的卖掉吗？”
　　弥赛拉，他想，好啊，既然蛋已经孵化，咱们就来瞧瞧鸡是什么颜色。“怎么叫当作一包燕麦呢？弥赛拉是堂堂公主，从某种意义上讲，她生来就要做这种事。你该不会打算把她嫁给托曼吧？”
　　她一挥手，打翻他手中的酒杯，酒洒了一地。“光凭这句话，我就该拔了你舌头，管你是不是我弟弟。乔佛里的摄政王是我，不是你，而我绝不同意把弥赛拉装船送给这个多恩人，就像当年我被送给劳勃·拜拉席恩一样！”
　　这是你最后一次动手提浪昂甩甩手指上的酒滴，叹道：“有何不可？去多恩总比留在这里安全。”
　　“你是笨到无可救药，还是真的丧心病狂？你我都很清楚，马泰尔家族不喜欢我们。”
　　“是的，马泰尔家族极端憎恨我们。即便如此，我依然认为他们会同意。道朗亲王对兰尼斯特家族的恨意只能追溯到上一代，可多恩人与风息堡、高庭间的战争已经持续了上千年。对我们尤其有利的是，蓝礼把多恩领的支持视作理所当然。弥赛拉现年九岁，崔斯丹·马泰尔则是十一岁，我已经提议，等她年满十四，两人即刻成婚。在此之前，她以贵宾的身份留在阳戟城，受到道朗亲王妥善的保护。”
　　“这是人质，”瑟曦抿紧嘴巴。
　　“是贵宾，”提利昂坚持，“说穿了，我想马泰尔对弥赛拉绝对比乔佛里对珊莎·史塔克要好。我有意安排亚历斯·奥克赫特爵士作她的护卫，有御林铁卫随侍在旁，相信谁也不敢轻视她的身份。”
　　“若哪天道朗·马泰尔决意要我女儿的性命来为妹妹复仇，亚历斯爵士又有何用？”
　　“马泰尔是个重荣誉的人，绝不会加害九岁女孩，尤其是如此天真甜美的弥赛拉。只要她在他手上，他定会信赖我们履行承诺，何况我们的条件很优厚，谅他无法拒绝。弥赛拉只是其中之一，我还向他提议交出杀害他妹妹的凶手，允诺他重臣之位，边疆地上数座城堡……”
　　“太多了。”瑟曦自他身边踱开，裙裾婆娑，焦躁有如母狮。“你不但给得太多，而且未经我同意，决无效力可言。”
　　“我们急需拉拢多恩亲王，若是给得少了，只怕他会不屑一顾啊。”
　　“太多了！”瑟曦坚持，旋身回来。
　　“换你怎么给？你两腿中间那个洞？”提利昂也火了。
　　这一回他瞧清楚了掴来的耳光，啪地一声，他的头打歪到一边。“亲爱的好姐姐，”他说，“我向你保证，这是你最后一次动手。”
　　姐姐笑道：“小家伙，少来威胁我。你以为有父亲那封信就万事无恙？不过一张薄纸，艾德·史塔克也有过一张，你瞧他什么下场。”
　　艾德·史塔克可没有都城守备队撑腰，提利昂心想，也没有高山氏族，更没有波隆召募的佣兵，我却三者皆有。至少他心里这么希望，因为这意味着信任瓦里斯、杰斯林·拜瓦特爵士和波隆三人。史塔克大人当初可能也抱着同样的感觉。
　　但他什么也没有说。聪明人不往火盆上浇野火，于是他又倒一杯酒。“你倒是想想，倘若君临不幸城破，弥赛拉岂会安全？届时，只怕蓝礼和史坦尼斯会把她的头跟你的头挂在一起。”
　　瑟曦哭了。
　　就算征服者伊耿当下骑着巨龙冲进房间，手中还抛着柠檬派耍把戏，提利昂·兰尼斯特也不会更惊讶了。打他们在凯岩城的孩提时代过后，他便再没见姐姐哭过。他有些笨拙地向她靠近一步。姐姐哭时，作弟弟的就该安慰她……但这……这是瑟曦啊！他试探性地伸手拍她肩膀。
　　“不准碰我！”她边说边扭身躲开。他不该觉得难受，可是，这却比任何一记耳光更教他疼痛。瑟曦满脸通红，难过又恼怒，她喘着气，“不准看我，不准……这样看我……不准你这样！”
　　提利昂恭敬地转头，“我不是想吓你。真的，我跟你保证，弥赛拉决不会出事。”
　　“骗子，”她在他背后说，“我不是三岁小孩，少拿空洞的承诺来敷衍我。你不是号称能救出詹姆吗？哼，他人在哪里？”
　　“在奔流城吧，我想。他有专人看守，安全无虞，正等着我想法子救他出来呢。”
　　瑟曦吸吸鼻子，“我是男人就好了，那样我根本就不需要你们，也不会发生这些事。詹姆是怎么回事，竟然落入那小鬼手中？还有父亲，算我蠢苯，居然信任他，眼下需要他的时候，他究竟在哪里？究竟在做什么？”
　　“他在打仗。”
　　“躲在赫伦堡的高墙后打？”她轻蔑地说，“真是奇怪的战法。说穿了，这是逃避！”
　　“你应该多动脑子。”
　　“那你说是怎么回事？为何父亲和罗柏·史塔克两人各据一座城池，却什么也不做！”
　　“他们不就在等嘛？”提利昂道，“双方都在等对手行动。等待有两种，狮子是摇着尾巴好整以暇，小鹿却是吓得不敢动弹，怕得魂飞魄散。不管朝哪边跑，最后都会被狮子吃掉，而且它自己心知肚明。”
　　“你敢确定，父亲就是那只狮子？”
　　提利昂嘻嘻一笑，“喏，不就画在咱家旗帜上吗？”
　　她没笑，“若今天被俘的是父亲，我敢跟你保证，詹姆绝不会坐视不管。”
　　詹姆会不顾一切浪掷兵力，派他们去奔流城的坚壁下白白送死，异鬼都知道那不可能成功。他从没耐性，跟你一样，我亲爱的姐姐。“咱们凡夫俗子，总不能个个都像詹姆那么英勇，好在赢得战争还有别的办法。你瞧，赫伦堡固若金汤，且位置极佳。”
　　“而你我都清楚，君临并非如此。当父亲和那史塔克小鬼玩狮子捉鹿的游戏时，蓝礼正率军从玫瑰大道杀来，随时可能兵临城下！”
　　“都城这么宏伟，总不会甫一交战就告陷落。从赫伦堡到此，是笔直迅捷的国王大道。蓝礼还来不及架好攻城器械，父亲便会从后夹击。打个比方，父亲的军队好似铁锤，我们则是铁砧，光想想都觉得美妙。”
　　瑟曦用一双碧眼盯着他，虽然仍有戒心，却渴望相信他的保证。“若罗柏·史塔克出兵呢？”
　　“赫伦堡离三叉戟河的渡口很近，正好阻止卢斯·波顿率北军步兵渡河与少狼主的骑兵会师。不拿下赫伦堡，史塔克军便到不了君临，而即使加上波顿的步兵，要攻下这座噩梦般的城堡，他的兵力也不够。”提利昂露出最迷人的微笑，“而与此同时呢，父亲将在肥沃的河间地休养生息，我们的史戴佛叔叔则在凯岩城集结新军。”
　　嘿，要来个翁中捉鳖瑟曦怀疑地看着他，“这些事，你又怎么知道？父亲把他的打算全给你说了？”
　　“不，我只是看了看地图。”
　　她的眼神立刻转为嫌恶，“你这小恶魔，刚才这些花言巧语全是你这颗畸形脑袋掰出来的，对吧？”
　　提利昂啧了一声，“亲爱的姐姐，我倒是问你，若不是我军节节胜利，史塔克怎会请求停战呢？”他拿出克里奥·佛雷爵士送来的信。“你看，少狼主开出了条件。当然，这些条件不能接受，但好歹是个开始。你要不要过目？”
　　“当然。”转眼她又变回了太后。“信怎么落会到你手上？应该给我才对。”
　　“哎，首相这双手是做什么用的？不就是为陛下您排忧解难吗？”提利昂递出信，刚被瑟曦打过的脸颊还隐隐作痛。随她去打吧，只要她肯同意与多恩的婚事，这又算得了什么？他有预感，此事会成。
　　除此之外，告密者也水落石出了……嘿，要来个翁中捉鳖。
[ 此帖被挽墨在2015-08-27 13:36重新编辑 ]
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你看着眼前的人，分明还是以前的模样，可心里终究不是以前那般澄清透明了。
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CHAPTER 21
　　BRAN
　　Dancer was draped in bardings of snowy white wool emblazoned with the grey direwolf of House Stark, while Bran wore grey breeches and white doublet, his sleeves and collar trimmed with vair. Over his heart was his wolf’s-head brooch of silver and polished jet. He would sooner have had Summer than a silver wolf on his breast, but Ser Rodrik had been unyielding.
　　The low stone steps balked Dancer only for a moment. When Bran urged her on, she took them easily. Beyond the wide oak-and-iron doors, eight long rows of trestle tables filled Winterfell’s Great Hall, four on each side of the center aisle. Men crowded shoulder to shoulder on the benches. “Stark!” they called as Bran trotted past, rising to their feet. “Winterfell! Winterfell!”
　　He was old enough to know that it was not truly him they shouted for—it was the harvest they cheered, it was Robb and his victories, it was his lord father and his grandfather and all the Starks going back eight thousand years. Still, it made him swell with pride. For so long as it took him to ride the length of that hall he forgot that he was broken. Yet when he reached the dais, with every eye upon him, Osha and Hodor undid his straps and buckles, lifted him off Dancer’s back, and carried him to the high seat of his fathers.
　　Ser Rodrik was seated to Bran’s left, his daughter Beth beside him. Rickon was to his right, his mop of shaggy auburn hair grown so long that it brushed his ermine mantle. He had refused to let anyone cut it since their mother had gone. The last girl to try had been bitten for her efforts. “I wanted to ride too,” he said as Hodor led Dancer away. “I ride better than you.”
　　“You don’t, so hush up,” he told his brother. Ser Rodrik bellowed for quiet. Bran raised his voice. He bid them welcome in the name of his brother, the King in the North, and asked them to thank the gods old and new for Robb’s victories and the bounty of the harvest. “May there be a hundred more,” he finished, raising his father’s silver goblet.
　　“A hundred more!” Pewter tankards, clay cups, and iron-banded drinking horns clashed together. Bran’s wine was sweetened with honey and fragrant with cinnamon and cloves, but stronger than he was used to. He could feel its hot snaky fingers wriggling through his chest as he swallowed. By the time he set down the goblet, his head was swimming.
　　“You did well, Bran,” Ser Rodrik told him. “Lord Eddard would have been most proud.” Down the table, Maester Luwin nodded his agreement as the servers began to carry in the food.
　　Such food Bran had never seen; course after course after course, so much that he could not manage more than a bite or two of each dish. There were great joints of aurochs roasted with leeks, venison pies chunky with carrots, bacon, and mushrooms, mutton chops sauced in honey and cloves, savory duck, peppered boar, goose, skewers of pigeon and capon, beef-and-barley stew, cold fruit soup. Lord Wyman had brought twenty casks of fish from White Harbor packed in salt and seaweed; whitefish and winkles, crabs and mussels, clams, herring, cod, salmon, lobster and lampreys. There was black bread and honeycakes and oaten biscuits; there were turnips and pease and beets, beans and squash and huge red onions; there were baked apples and berry tarts and pears poached in strongwine. Wheels of white cheese were set at every table, above and below the salt, and flagons of hot spice wine and chilled autumn ale were passed up and down the tables.
　　Lord Wyman’s musicians played bravely and well, but harp and fiddle and horn were soon drowned beneath a tide of talk and laughter, the clash of cup and plate, and the snarling of hounds fighting for table scraps. The singer sang good songs, “Iron Lances” and “The Burning of the Ships” and “The Bear and the Maiden Fair,” but only Hodor seemed to be listening. He stood beside the piper, hopping from one foot to the other.
　　The noise swelled to a steady rumbling roar, a great heady stew of sound. Ser Rodrik talked with Maester Luwin above Beth’s curly head, while Rickon screamed happily at the Walders. Bran had not wanted the Freys at the high table, but the maester reminded him that they would soon be kin. Robb was to marry one of their aunts, and Arya one of their uncles. “She never will,” Bran said, “not Arya,” but Maester Luwin was unyielding, so there they were beside Rickon.
　　The serving men brought every dish to Bran first, that he might take the lord’s portion if he chose. By the time they reached the ducks, he could eat no more. After that he nodded approval at each course in turn, and waved it away. If the dish smelled especially choice, he would send it to one of the lords on the dais, a gesture of friendship and favor that Maester Luwin told him he must make. He sent some salmon down to poor sad Lady Hornwood, the boar to the boisterous Umbers, a dish of goose-in-berries to Cley Cerwyn, and a huge lobster to Joseth the master of horse, who was neither lord nor guest, but had seen to Dancer’s training and made it possible for Bran to ride. He sent sweets to Hodor and Old Nan as well, for no reason but he loved them. Ser Rodrik reminded him to send something to his foster brothers, so he sent Little Walder some boiled beets and Big Walder the buttered turnips.
　　On the benches below, Winterfell men mixed with smallfolk from the winter town, friends from the nearer holdfasts, and the escorts of their lordly guests. Some faces Bran had never seen before, others he knew as well as his own, yet they all seemed equally foreign to him. He watched them as from a distance, as if he still sat in the window of his bedchamber looking down on the yard below, seeing everything yet a part of nothing.
　　Osha moved among the tables, pouring ale. One of Leobald Tallhart’s men slid a hand up under her skirts and she broke the flagon over his head, to roars of laughter. Yet Mikken had his hand down some woman’s bodice, and she seemed not to mind. Bran watched Farlen make his red bitch beg for bones and smiled at Old Nan plucking at the crust of a hot pie with wrinkled fingers. On the dais, Lord Wyman attacked a steaming plate of lampreys as if they were an enemy host. He was so fat that Ser Rodrik had commanded that a special wide chair be built for him to sit in, but he laughed loud and often, and Bran thought he liked him. Poor wan Lady Hornwood sat beside him, her face a stony mask as she picked listlessly at her food. At the opposite end of the high table, Hothen and Mors were playing a drinking game, slamming their horns together as hard as knights meeting in joust.
　　It is too hot here, and too noisy, and they are all getting drunk. Bran itched under his grey and white woolens, and suddenly he wished he were anywhere but here. It is cool in the godswood now. Steam is rising off the hot pools, and the red leaves of the weirwood are rustling. The smells are richer than here, and before long the moon will rise and my brother will sing to it.
　　“Bran?” Ser Rodrik said. “You do not eat.”
　　The waking dream had been so vivid, for a moment Bran had not known where he was. “I’ll have more later,” he said. “My belly’s full to bursting.”
　　The old knight’s white mustache was pink with wine. “You have done well, Bran. Here, and at the audiences. You will be an especial fine lord one day, I think.”
　　I want to be a knight. Bran took another sip of the spiced honey wine from his father’s goblet, grateful for something to clutch. The lifelike head of a snarling direwolf was raised on the side of the cup. He felt the silver muzzle pressing against his palm, and remembered the last time he had seen his lord father drink from this goblet. It had been the night of the welcoming feast, when King Robert had brought his court to Winterfell. Summer still reigned then. His parents had shared the dais with Robert and his queen, with her brothers beside her. Uncle Benjen had been there too, all in black. Bran and his brothers and sisters sat with the king’s children, Joffrey and Tommen and Princess Myrcella, who’d spent the whole meal gazing at Robb with adoring eyes. Arya made faces across the table when no one was looking; Sansa listened raptly while the king’s high harper sang songs of chivalry, and Rickon kept asking why Jon wasn’t with them. “Because he’s a bastard,” Bran finally had to whisper to him.
　　And now they are all gone. It was as if some cruel god had reached down with a great hand and swept them all away, the girls to captivity, Jon to the Wall, Robb and Mother to war, King Robert and Father to their graves, and perhaps Uncle Benjen as well . . .
　　Even down on the benches, there were new men at the tables. Jory was dead, and Fat Tom, and Porther, Alyn, Desmond, Hullen who had been master of horse, Harwin his son . . . all those who had gone south with his father, even Septa Mordane and Vayon Poole. The rest had ridden to war with Robb, and might soon be dead as well for all Bran knew. He liked Hayhead and Poxy Tym and Skittrick and the other new men well enough, but he missed his old friends.
　　He looked up and down the benches at all the faces happy and sad, and wondered who would be missing next year and the year after. He might have cried then, but he couldn’t. He was the Stark in Winterfell, his father’s son and his brother’s heir, and almost a man grown.
　　At the foot of the hall, the doors opened and a gust of cold air made the torches flame brighter for an instant. Alebelly led two new guests into the feast. “The Lady Meera of House Reed,” the rotund guardsman bellowed over the clamor. “With her brother, Jojen, of Greywater Watch.”
　　Men looked up from their cups and trenchers to eye the newcomers. Bran heard Little Walder mutter, “Frogeaters,” to Big Walder beside him. Ser Rodrik climbed to his feet. “Be welcome, friends, and share this harvest with us.” Serving men hurried to lengthen the table on the dais, fetching trestles and chairs.
　　“Who are they?” Rickon asked.
　　“Mudmen,” answered Little Walder disdainfully. “They’re thieves and cravens, and they have green teeth from eating frogs.”
　　Maester Luwin crouched beside Bran’s seat to whisper counsel in his ear. “You must greet these ones warmly. I had not thought to see them here, but . . . you know who they are?”
　　Bran nodded. “Crannogmen. From the Neck.”
　　“Howland Reed was a great friend to your father,” Ser Rodrik told him. “These two are his, it would seem.”
　　As the newcomers walked the length of the hall, Bran saw that one was indeed a girl, though he would never have known it by her dress. She wore lambskin breeches soft with long use, and a sleeveless jerkin armored in bronze scales. Though near Robb’s age, she was slim as a boy, with long brown hair knotted behind her head and only the barest suggestion of breasts. A woven net hung from one slim hip, a long bronze knife from the other; under her arm she carried an old iron greathelm spotted with rust; a frog spear and round leathern shield were strapped to her back.
　　Her brother was several years younger and bore no weapons. All his garb was green, even to the leather of his boots, and when he came closer Bran saw that his eyes were the color of moss, though his teeth looked as white as anyone else’s. Both Reeds were slight of build, slender as swords and scarcely taller than Bran himself. They went to one knee before the dais.
　　“My lords of Stark,” the girl said. “The years have passed in their hundreds and their thousands since my folk first swore their fealty to the King in the North. My lord father has sent us here to say the words again, for all our people.”
　　She is looking at me, Bran realized. He had to make some answer. “My brother Robb is fighting in the south,” he said, “but you can say your words to me, if you like.”
　　“To Winterfell we pledge the faith of Greywater,” they said together. “Hearth and heart and harvest we yield up to you, my lord. Our swords and spears and arrows are yours to command. Grant mercy to our weak, help to our helpless, and justice to all, and we shall never fail you.”
　　“I swear it by earth and water,” said the boy in green.
　　“I swear it by bronze and iron,” his sister said.
　　“We swear it by ice and fire,” they finished together.
　　Bran groped for words. Was he supposed to swear something back to them? Their oath was not one he had been taught. “May your winters be short and your summers bountiful,” he said. That was usually a good thing to say. “Rise. I’m Brandon Stark.”
　　The girl, Meera, got to her feet and helped her brother up. The boy stared at Bran all the while. “We bring you gifts of fish and frog and fowl,” he said.
　　“I thank you.” Bran wondered if he would have to eat a frog to be polite. “I offer you the meat and mead of Winterfell.” He tried to recall all he had been taught of the crannogmen, who dwelt amongst the bogs of the Neck and seldom left their wetlands. They were a poor folk, fishers and frog-hunters who lived in houses of thatch and woven reeds on floating islands hidden in the deeps of the swamp. It was said that they were a cowardly people who fought with poisoned weapons and preferred to hide from foes rather than face them in open battle. And yet Howland Reed had been one of Father’s staunchest companions during the war for King Robert’s crown, before Bran was born.
　　The boy, Jojen, looked about the hall curiously as he took his seat. “Where are the direwolves?”
　　“In the godswood,” Rickon answered. “Shaggy was bad.”
　　“My brother would like to see them,” the girl said.
　　Little Walder spoke up loudly. “He’d best watch they don’t see him, or they’ll take a bite out of him.”
　　“They won’t bite if I’m there.” Bran was pleased that they wanted to see the wolves. “Summer won’t anyway, and he’ll keep Shaggydog away.” He was curious about these mudmen. He could not recall ever seeing one before. His father had sent letters to the Lord of Greywater over the years, but none of the crannogmen had ever called at Winterfell. He would have liked to talk to them more, but the Great Hall was so noisy that it was hard to hear anyone who wasn’t right beside you.
　　Ser Rodrik was right beside Bran. “Do they truly eat frogs?” he asked the old knight.
　　“Aye,” Ser Rodrik said. “Frogs and fish and lizard-lions, and all manner of birds.”
　　Maybe they don’t have sheep and cattle, Bran thought. He commanded the serving men to bring them mutton chops and a slice off the aurochs and fill their trenchers with beef-and-barley stew. They seemed to like that well enough. The girl caught him staring at her and smiled. Bran blushed and looked away.
　　Much later, after all the sweets had been served and washed down with gallons of summerwine, the food was cleared and the tables shoved back against the walls to make room for the dancing. The music grew wilder, the drummers joined in, and Hother Umber brought forth a huge curved warhorn banded in silver. When the singer reached the part in “The Night That Ended” where the Night’s Watch rode forth to meet the Others in the Battle for the Dawn, he blew a blast that set all the dogs to barking.
　　Two Glover men began a spinning skirl on bladder and woodharp. Mors Umber was the first on his feet. He seized a passing serving girl by the arm, knocking the flagon of wine out of her hands to shatter on the floor. Amidst the rushes and bones and bits of bread that littered the stone, he whirled her and spun her and tossed her in the air. The girl squealed with laughter and turned red as her skirts swirled and lifted.
　　Others soon joined in. Hodor began to dance all by himself, while Lord Wyman asked little Beth Cassel to partner him. For all his size, he moved gracefully. When he tired, Cley Cerwyn danced with the child in his stead. Ser Rodrik approached Lady Hornwood, but she made her excuses and took her leave. Bran watched long enough to be polite, and then had Hodor summoned. He was hot and tired, flushed from the wine, and the dancing made him sad. It was something else he could never do. “I want to go.”
　　“Hodor,” Hodor shouted back, kneeling. Maester Luwin and Hayhead lifted him into his basket. The folk of Winterfell had seen this sight half a hundred times, but doubtless it looked queer to the guests, some of whom were more curious than polite. Bran felt the stares.
　　They went out the rear rather than walk the length of the hall, Bran ducking his head as they passed through the lord’s door. In the dim-lit gallery outside the Great Hall, they came upon Joseth the master of horse engaged in a different sort of riding. He had some woman Bran did not know shoved up against the wall, her skirts around her waist. She was giggling until Hodor stopped to watch. Then she screamed. “Leave them be, Hodor,” Bran had to tell him. “Take me to my bedchamber.”
　　Hodor carried him up the winding steps to his tower and knelt beside one of the iron bars that Mikken had driven into the wall. Bran used the bars to move himself to the bed, and Hodor pulled off his boots and breeches. “You can go back to the feast now, but don’t go bothering Joseth and that woman,” Bran said.
　　“Hodor,” Hodor replied, bobbing his head.
　　When he blew out his bedside candle, darkness covered him like a soft, familiar blanket. The faint sound of music drifted through his shuttered window.
　　Something his father had told him once when he was little came back to him suddenly. He had asked Lord Eddard if the Kingsguard were truly the finest knights in the Seven Kingdoms. “No longer,” he answered, “but once they were a marvel, a shining lesson to the world.”
　　“Was there one who was best of all?”
　　“The finest knight I ever saw was Ser Arthur Dayne, who fought with a blade called Dawn, forged from the heart of a fallen star. They called him the Sword of the Morning, and he would have killed me but for Howland Reed.” Father had gotten sad then, and he would say no more. Bran wished he had asked him what he meant.
　　He went to sleep with his head full of knights in gleaming armor, fighting with swords that shone like starfire, but when the dream came he was in the godswood again. The smells from the kitchen and the Great Hall were so strong that it was almost as if he had never left the feast. He prowled beneath the trees, his brother close behind him. This night was wildly alive, full of the howling of the man-pack at their play. The sounds made him restless. He wanted to run, to hunt, he wanted to . . .
　　The rattle of iron made his ears prick up. His brother heard it too. They raced through the undergrowth toward the sound. Bounding across the still water at the foot of the old white one, he caught the scent of a stranger, the mansmell well mixed with leather and earth and iron.
　　The intruders had pushed a few yards into the wood when he came upon them; a female and a young male, with no taint of fear to them, even when he showed them the white of his teeth. His brother growled low in his throat, yet still they did not run.
　　“Here they come,” the female said. Meera, some part of him whispered, some wisp of the sleeping boy lost in the wolf dream. “Did you know they would be so big?”
　　“They will be bigger still before they are grown,” the young male said, watching them with eyes large, green, and unafraid. “The black one is full of fear and rage, but the grey is strong . . . stronger than he knows . . . can you feel him, sister?”
　　“No,” she said, moving a hand to the hilt of the long brown knife she wore. “Go careful, Jojen.”
　　“He won’t hurt me. This is not the day I die.” The male walked toward them, unafraid, and reached out for his muzzle, a touch as light as a summer breeze. Yet at the brush of those fingers the wood dissolved and the very ground turned to smoke beneath his feet and swirled away laughing, and then he was spinning and falling, falling, falling . . .
Ⅱ 列王的纷争 Chapter22 布兰
　　小舞披着一身雪白的羊毛衣，衣上绣着史塔克家族的灰色冰原狼纹章；布兰穿着灰马裤，白上装，袖子和领口镶了松鼠皮。他的胸前别着白银和铮亮黑玉制成的狼头胸针。其实他本想带上活生生的夏天，而非戴只银狼，可惜罗德利克爵士不准。
　　起初，低矮的石阶让小舞踌躇不前，然而布兰一加催促，它立刻轻松地越了过去。在橡木和钢铁制成的大门内，八列长桌占满了临冬城的大厅，一边四列，中间空出走道。人们接踵磨肩地挤在长凳上。“史塔克万岁！”布兰疾跑而过，人们纷纷起立，高声呼喊，“临冬城万岁！临冬城万岁！”
　　他已经够大，知道他们欢呼的对象并非自己——他们是在庆祝丰收，庆祝罗柏和他的节节胜利，他们祝福的是他的父亲大人和他的祖父，祝福的是八千年来所有故去的史塔克。虽然如此，他仍旧感到十分骄傲。穿越大厅这段时间，足以使他忘记自己是个残废。最后他跑到高台，在众目睽睽之下，欧莎和阿多替他解开皮带和环扣，将他抱下小舞，放到父亲的高位上。
　　罗德利克爵士坐在布兰左边，他女儿贝丝陪在他身旁。瑞肯坐在布兰右手，一头杂乱的褐发已经太长，披散在白貂斗篷上。自打母亲离开，他便拒绝任何人为他修理。前次为他剪头的女侍反被他咬了一口。“我也要骑马，”阿多带走小舞时，他说，“我骑得比你好。”
　　“你不行的，别说话了，”他告诉弟弟。这时，只听罗德利克大喝一声，全场肃静。接着布兰提起嗓子，以他长兄——北境之王罗柏的名义欢迎他们，请求他们为光辉的胜利和慷慨的丰收感谢新旧诸神。“愿此福运连绵不绝，”他结束讲话，举起父亲的银杯。
　　“连绵不绝！”白蜡酒杯，陶杯和镶铁角杯相互交碰。布兰的酒里掺了蜂蜜，还加了肉桂和丁香，喝起来甘甜可口，却比他以前喝的饮料浓烈许多。他咽下酒汁，只觉无数热辣而弯曲的手指在胸腔蜿蜒，放下杯子，脑袋一片眩晕。
　　“做得好，布兰，”罗德利克爵士对他说，“艾德大人一定会为你骄傲。”下首桌边，鲁温师傅也点头赞许，这时，仆人们把饭菜端上来了。
　　布兰从未见过如此丰盛的宴席，菜肴一道又一道，目不暇接，起初他还打算每道菜都加以品尝，但很快便打消了这念头。人们端上韭菜烤野牛腿，塞满胡萝卜、培根和蘑菇的鹿肉派，涂了蜂蜜和丁香的羊排，五香鸭子，胡椒野猪肉，烤鹅，烤鸡串和鸽子串，大麦墩牛肉，冰冻水果汤。威曼大人从白港带来二十箱封在盐和藻类里的海鲜：白鲑和螺蛳，螃蟹和蚌贝，以及蛤，鲱鱼，鳕鱼，鲑鱼，龙虾和七鳃鳗。四处都是黑面包、蜂蜜蛋糕和燕麦饼干，芜箐、豌豆和甜菜，大豆、南瓜和红色大洋葱，还有烤苹果，浆果饼和烈酒煮梨。每张桌子的盐碟旁都搁着轮轮雪白的干酪，一壶壶加了香料的热葡萄酒和冰镇秋麦酒则在席间传来传去威曼大人手下的乐师们热情而优雅地演奏着，然而竖琴，提琴和喇叭的乐音很快被一片欢声笑语，觥雠交错和撕打争抢剩食的狗们的吠叫所淹没。歌手们唱得悦耳动听，他们依次表演了“铁熗”，“焚船”和“狗熊与美少女”，然而全场似乎只有阿多在听。他凑到笛手旁，单脚蹦跳不休。
　　喧哗逐渐增大，组合成持续不断的轰隆吼叫，好似一场大型合唱，教人头晕脑胀。罗德利克爵士隔着贝丝的卷发和鲁温师傅交谈，瑞肯则欢快地朝瓦德兄弟尖叫。布兰不愿佛雷兄弟坐上高台，但师傅提醒他：他们不久后就是他的亲戚了。罗柏很快要跟他们的姑妈成亲，而艾利亚会嫁给他们的叔叔。“她不会的，”布兰说，“艾利亚才不会。”但鲁温师傅不理会他的抗议，最后这两人还是坐在了瑞肯身边。
　　每上一道菜，仆人们都先端给布兰品尝，作为最高领主，他有权选择任何菜肴中喜欢的部分。所以等端上鸭子时，他已经彻底吃不下了。之后每道菜他都只好点头示意，挥手放走。假如某个餐盘闻起来实在诱人，他便指名送给高台上某位贵族，鲁温师傅之前特地指导过他：这是友谊和荣宠的姿势。他送了些鲑鱼给可怜又忧伤的霍伍德伯爵夫人，把野猪肉赐给喧闹的安柏家人，一盘浆果填鹅给了克雷·赛文，一只巨龙虾特意端给了马房总管乔赛斯——他不是贵族领主也非特邀宾客，但小舞全赖他细心调教，布兰方才得以乘骑。他还差人把糖果给阿多和老奶妈带去，不为别的，只因他爱他们。罗德利克爵士提醒他也该送点什么给他的养兄弟，于是他给小瓦德挑了煮甜菜，给了大瓦德黄油芜箐。
　　一切都是虚无的一部分下方的长凳上，临冬城堡的人们，避冬市镇的平民，附近村镇的来客以及来访贵族的跟班随从们混坐在一起。其中既有许多布兰从未见过的脸孔，也有许多他认识的人，然而在他眼中，他们都显得同样地陌生。他远远望着他们，好似坐在卧房的窗边探看下方的庭院，一切的一切都是虚无的一部分。
　　欧莎游走席间，替人斟酒。兰巴德·陶哈的某位手下把手滑进她裙子，却立刻遭她当头一壶，酒壶粉碎，众人哄堂大笑。密肯倒真把手伸进了某个女人的胸衣，但对方并不介意。布兰看着法兰拿骨头逗他的红母狗，老奶妈用满是皱纹的手指撕热派皮的动作瞧得他呵呵直笑。高台桌旁，威曼大人向一盘热气腾腾的鳗鱼发动猛攻，仿佛那是仇敌的军队。他好胖啊，罗德利克爵士不得不特地下令制做一把极宽的椅子供他入席，不过他总是笑口常开，乐呵呵的，布兰不由得暗自喜欢上了这人。可怜的霍伍德伯爵夫人坐在他身边，面色惨白，犹如一樽石雕，无精打采地拨弄着眼前的食物。桌子另一边，霍瑟和莫尔斯正在斗酒，角杯交碰，一如骑士格斗。
　　这里太热，太吵，四处都是快醉的人。布兰感觉到灰白毛衣下的身子好痒，他好渴望到别的地方，只要不留在这里就行。神木林里多么凉爽。热泉中蒸汽升腾，鱼梁木的红叶沙沙作响。那里的味道比这儿鲜活，月亮快要升起，我的兄弟将为它歌唱。
　　“布兰？”罗德利克爵士道，“你怎么不吃？”
　　白日梦活灵活现，好长时间布兰都弄不清自己置身何方。“我待会儿再吃，”他说，“肚子撑了。”
　　老骑士的白须上沾满红酒。“你做得很好，布兰。不止是今天，你接见他们时的表现也很称职。我相信，总有一天，你会成为一位出类拔萃的领主老爷。”
　　我想当的是骑士。布兰拿起父亲的酒杯，又吮了一口香料蜜酒。手里有东西抓握的感觉真好。栩栩如生的咆哮冰原狼头雕在杯子侧面，镀银的口鼻压着他的手掌，布兰忆起父亲大人最后一次拿它饮酒的情景。
　　那一夜，为了给来到临冬城的劳勃国王和他的宫廷接风洗尘，举行了盛大的欢迎宴会。当时仍是夏天，父母同劳勃、王后和王后的兄弟们一块坐在高台。班扬叔叔也在那儿，全身黑衣。布兰和兄弟姐妹们则与国王的孩子们同坐，有乔佛里，托曼还有弥赛拉公主。整个宴会期间，小公主都用崇拜的眼光打量着罗柏。只要没人注意，桌子对面的艾利亚便开始做鬼脸；珊莎则全神贯注地听王家竖琴师弹唱骑士的歌谣；而瑞肯则不停询问为何琼恩不和他们在一起。“因为他是个私生子，”最后布兰只好悄声告诉他。
　　一切都恍若隔世。一切都不知被哪个残酷的神灵从云端中伸出巨掌，擎上霄汉，一扫而空。女孩们被关起来，琼恩去了长城，罗柏和妈妈在打仗，劳勃国王和爸爸进了坟墓，或许班扬叔叔也……
　　就算坐在下方长凳的，也早非故人。乔里死了，过世的还包括胖汤姆，波瑟，埃林，戴斯蒙，从前的马房总管胡伦，他儿子哈尔温……他们和爸爸一起去了南方，茉丹修女和维扬·普尔也去了。剩下的人又和罗柏一起上了战场，布兰知道，他们之中很快也会有人死去。他并非不喜欢稻草头、麻脸提姆、俏皮话等等新人，但他更怀念老朋友。
　　他来来回回地巡视长凳上那些或快乐或忧伤的脸庞，心里却不知在明年，在未来还能不能见到他们。他应该要哭的，然而却忍住了。他是临冬城的史塔克，是父亲的儿子，是哥哥的继承人，几乎就要长大成人了。
　　大厅尽头，门突然打开，一阵寒风刹时吹进，火炬陡然发亮。酒肚子领着两位新客人走进来。“这位是黎德家族的梅拉小姐，”体态浑圆的卫士用洪亮的声音盖过席间喧哗，“这位是她的弟弟，玖健，他们从灰水望而来。”
　　人们纷纷自酒杯和餐盘上抬头打量来人。布兰听到小瓦德朝身边的大瓦德咕哝：“吃青蛙的。”罗德利克爵士起身，“欢迎之至，朋友们，请与我们共享丰收的盛宴。”仆人们急急忙忙赶来，搭长高台上的餐桌，端来凳子和椅子。
　　“他们是谁？”瑞肯问。
　　“泥人，”小瓦德轻蔑地答道，“都是些强盗和胆小鬼，他们吃青蛙，牙齿都是绿的。”
　　鲁温师傅蹲到布兰身边，在他耳畔叮嘱：“请你务必热情接待他们。唉，我以为他们不会来……你知道他们的来头吗？”
　　布兰点头。“泽地人。从颈泽来。”
　　“霍兰·黎德是你父亲的密友，”罗德利克爵士插话，“这两位想必是他的子嗣。”
　　来客穿越大厅走道的过程中，布兰确定比较高的那位真是女士，虽然从着装上一点也看不出。她穿着磨旧的羊皮马裤，无袖上衣外罩青铜甲胄。虽然年纪与罗柏相仿，却苗条得像个小孩，长长的褐发扎在脑后，几乎没有胸部。她一边细臀上挂着一张编织精巧的网，另一边则挂了把长长的青铜短刀；腋下夹有一顶锈迹斑斑的老旧大铁盔，一只捕蛙矛和一面圆皮盾绑在后背。
　　她的弟弟比她小了好几岁，没带武器。他一袭绿衣，从头到脚，连靴子的皮革都是绿色。待他走近，布兰发现他的眼睛也有青苔的色彩，只牙齿似旁人一般洁白。两位黎德都是短小身材，瘦得像把剑，连布兰都不比他们矮多少。他们单膝跪在高台下。
　　“尊贵的史塔克大人，”女孩道，“千百年来，我族皆对北境之王誓言忠贞。如今尊王再现，父亲大人特命吾等前来，代表全体人民，向您再次宣誓效忠。”
　　我们将永远追随于您她看着我呢！布兰意识到，必须说点什么。“我哥哥去南方作战了，”他说，“如果方便的话，您的誓言就对我说吧。”
　　“我们将灰水望的忠诚献给临冬城的主人，”他们同声说道，“我们将炉火、心灵和收获都奉献与您，大人。我们的宝剑、长矛和弓箭听从您的召唤。请您怜悯我们的困苦，帮助我们的窘迫，公正平等地对待每个人，而我们将永远追随于您。”
　　“我以大地和江河的名义起誓。”绿衣男孩道。
　　“我以青铜和钢铁的名义起誓。”他姐姐说。
　　“我们以冰与火的名义起誓。”他们齐声完成。
　　布兰想说点什么。我是不是也该对他们起誓？可他们这套誓词从没人教给他听过呀。“愿汝之凛冬短暂，盛夏长驻，”最后他道，用了一句常用的祝词。“请起，我是布兰登·史塔克。”
　　女孩梅拉首先起立，并扶起弟弟。男孩则一直盯着布兰。“我们给您带来了礼物，有鱼，青蛙和野禽，”他说。
　　“谢谢。”布兰不知遵照礼节自己是否得吃青蛙。“请您们尽情享用临冬城的酒肉。”他试图回忆泽地人的习俗，他们教过他的。相传他们世代居于颈泽深处，甚少离开沼泽。这些人都很穷，以捕鱼和捉蛙为生，住在茅草和芦苇编织的小屋中，躲藏于沼泽深处隐蔽的浮岛上。据说他们是懦弱的民族，不仅惯用淬毒的武器，而且常常躲着对手打游击，不敢面对面地战斗。然而在布兰出生之前，霍兰·黎德却成为了父亲最坚定的伙伴之一，协助他为劳勃的王冠浴血奋战。
　　那男孩，玖健，入席时好奇地环顾大厅。“冰原狼在哪儿？”
　　“在神木林里，”瑞肯答道，“毛毛不乖。”
　　“我弟弟很想见它们。”女孩说。
　　小瓦德高声叫道：“最好别让它们见你，否则咬你一块肉。”
　　“只要我在，他们不会咬人。”他们想见小狼，布兰觉得很开心。“夏天从来就不会，他还会把毛毛狗赶开。”对两位“泥人”他很好奇，以前他从未见过这个民族。虽说父亲年年岁岁都给灰水望的领主写信，却从未召见一个泽地人。他想跟他们多说话，可惜大厅实在太喧哗，除了坐在身边的人，远处什么也听不清。
　　坐在身边的是罗德利克爵士。“他们真的吃青蛙？”他问老骑士。
　　“是啊。”罗德利克爵士说，“吃青蛙，鱼，蜥狮，以及各种各样的野禽。”
　　他们那里或许没有牛羊吧，布兰心想。于是他指令仆人为他们送去羊排，烤野牛肉片和整盘的大麦炖牛肉。看来他们相当满意。女孩发现他注视着她，便报以微笑。布兰红了脸，别开头去。
　　又过了许久，当所有甜食上完，人们就着大杯夏日红咽下去之后，仆人们便清空残羹剩食，把桌子推到墙边，留出跳舞的空间。音乐愈加狂放，鼓手们参加进来。霍瑟·安柏亲提一只巨型的镶银弯战角，待歌手们唱起“终结长夜”——说的是守夜人与异鬼的黎明之战——这歌谣时，他用力吹奏应和，全厅的狗跟着狂吠。
　　两个葛洛佛的人——。但莫尔斯·安柏是第一个站起来行动的人。他伸手抓住一位路过的女仆，将她手中的酒壶打飞在地，摔得粉碎。在扔满灯心草、骨头和面包屑的石地板上，他引领着她，旋转着她，把她在空中抛来抛去。女孩欢快地尖叫，又因旋开提起的裙子而羞得满脸通红。
　　其他人很快加入。阿多开始自顾自地跳舞，威曼大人则邀请小贝丝·凯索作伴。别看他那么胖，动作却优雅依然。他跳累之后，克雷·赛文便接替他和孩子舞蹈。罗德利克爵士走向霍伍德伯爵夫人，但她说声抱歉，离开了。为了礼节，布兰观看很久后，方才召唤阿多。他又热又累，刚喝的酒让他满脸晕红，而跳舞却让他感伤。毕竟，这又是一件他再也办不到的事啊。“我想离开了。”
　　“阿多，”阿多吼道，同时跪在地上。鲁温师傅和稻草头合力把他抱进篮子。临冬城的居民对这样的景象早已司空见惯，可对外人而言，无疑还很新鲜。想必有些客人的好奇心会超过礼仪的约束，布兰感觉得到他们的目光。
　　好在他没有穿越走道，而是从后门出去，经过这道领主门时布兰连忙低头。厅外昏暗的走廊里，马房总管乔赛斯也在进行一场特殊的骑乘活动。他把一位布兰不认识的女人推到墙边，裙子卷上腰际。女人一直咯咯笑闹，可眼见阿多停下来关注，便开始尖叫。“别管他们，阿多，”布兰告诉他，“带我回房。”
　　阿多负着他，攀登蜿蜒的阶梯上了塔楼，在密肯钉的铁把手边跪下。布兰抓着把手移回床铺，然后阿多替他脱掉裤子鞋袜。“你可以回去参加宴会，但千万别打扰乔赛斯和那个女人，”布兰道。
　　“阿多，”阿多回答，不住点头。
　　当他吹灭床头的蜡烛，黑暗便像一张柔软而熟悉的毯子盖住了他。微弱的乐声，从百叶窗外飘进。
　　此时此刻，童年时代父亲给他讲的故事突然浮现于脑海。有一次，他问艾德公爵御林铁卫是不是七国上下最优秀的骑士。“再也不是了，”他答道，“但曾经，他们是奇迹，是全世界最光耀的战士。”
　　“他们之中谁最强？”
　　“在我所见过的骑士中，最为出色的是亚瑟·戴恩爵士，他的佩剑名为黎明，乃是用坠落陨石的核心锻造而成。人们尊他为拂晓神剑，若不是霍兰·黎德，爸爸本来也要死在他的手上。”父亲露出悲伤的神色，也不再言语。布兰真希望当时能问个明白。
　　你能感觉到吗，姐姐他入眠时满脑子骑士梦，他们穿着闪亮的铠甲，握着宛如星火的宝剑相互砍杀，但当梦境真的到来，他却又回到了神木林。来自厨房和大厅的气味是如此浓重，好似根本不曾离开宴会。他在树下巡游，弟弟紧跟着他。夜色如此鲜活，充满了人类玩耍的嚎叫。这声音让他烦躁不安。他渴望奔跑，渴望捕猎，渴望——突然，钢铁的碰撞让他耳朵竖立。弟弟也听见了。于是他们穿过矮树丛，朝发声之地飞奔而去。在苍白的老家伙脚边，他们跃过寂静的水面，追逐陌生人的气息，那是人类的味道，混合着皮革、泥土和钢铁的嗅觉。
　　找到入侵者时，他们已进了树林；来者是一名女性及一名年轻的男性。对方身上没有一丝一毫恐惧的气息，即使朝他们展示洁白的利牙也不管用。弟弟发出低吼，来者仍不却步。
　　“他们来了，”女性说。是梅拉，体内的某个部分低语道，那是迷失在狼梦中的男孩的朦胧呼唤。“你知道他们有这么大？”
　　“他们成长后会更大，”年轻的男性道，他睁大那双绿茵茵的眼睛，无惧地望着他们。“黑的那只充满恐惧和愤怒，可灰的那只更强……比他自知的更强……你能感觉到吗，姐姐？”
　　“不能，”她说，一只手滑上那柄长长的棕色短刀。“小心，玖健。”
　　“他不会伤害我，只因今日并非我的死期。”男性径直朝他们走来，毫无惧色。他朝他鼻子伸出手，触碰的感觉如盛夏清风一样温柔。然而随着手指的抚摩，四周的树林却逐渐融化，大地喷出烟雾，整个世界狂笑着开始旋转。他晕头转向，不断坠落，坠落，坠落……
[ 此帖被挽墨在2015-08-27 13:38重新编辑 ]
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你看着眼前的人，分明还是以前的模样，可心里终究不是以前那般澄清透明了。
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CHAPTER 22
　　CATELYN
　　As she slept amidst the rolling grasslands, Catelyn dreamt that Bran was whole again, that Arya and Sansa held hands, that Rickon was still a babe at her breast. Robb, crownless, played with a wooden sword, and when all were safe asleep, she found Ned in her bed, smiling.
　　Sweet it was, sweet and gone too soon. Dawn came cruel, a dagger of light. She woke aching and alone and weary; weary of riding, weary of hurting, weary of duty. I want to weep, she thought. I want to be comforted. I’m so tired of being strong. I want to be foolish and frightened for once. Just for a small while, that’s all . . . a day . . . an hour . . .
　　Outside her tent, men were stirring. She heard the whicker of horses, Shadd complaining of stiffness in his back, Ser Wendel calling for his bow. Catelyn wished they would all go away. They were good men, loyal, yet she was tired of them all. It was her children she yearned after. One day, she promised herself as she lay abed, one day she would allow herself to be less than strong.
　　But not today. It could not be today.
　　Her fingers seemed more clumsy than usual as she fumbled on her clothes. She supposed she ought to be grateful that she had any use of her hands at all. The dagger had been Valyrian steel, and Valyrian steel bites deep and sharp. She had only to look at the scars to remember.
　　Outside, Shadd was stirring oats into a kettle, while Ser Wendel Manderly sat stringing his bow. “My lady,” he said when Catelyn emerged. “There are birds in this grass. Would you fancy a roast quail to break your fast this morning?”
　　“Oats and bread are sufficient . . . for all of us, I think. We have many leagues yet to ride, Ser Wendel.”
　　“As you will, my lady.” The knight’s moon face looked crestfallen, the tips of his great walrus mustache twitching with disappointment. “Oats and bread, and what could be better?” He was one of the fattest men Catelyn had ever known, but howevermuch he loved his food, he loved his honor more.
　　“Found some nettles and brewed a tea,” Shadd announced. “Will m’lady take a cup?”
　　“Yes, with thanks.”
　　She cradled the tea in her scarred hands and blew on it to cool it. Shadd was one of the Winterfell men. Robb had sent twenty of his best to see her safely to Renly. He had sent five lordlings as well, whose names and high birth would add weight and honor to her mission. As they made their way south, staying well clear of towns and holdfasts, they had seen bands of mailed men more than once, and glimpsed smoke on the eastern horizon, but none had dared molest them. They were too weak to be a threat, too many to be easy prey. Once across the Blackwater, the worst was behind. For the past four days, they had seen no signs of war.
　　Catelyn had never wanted this. She had told Robb as much, back in Riverrun. “When last I saw Renly, he was a boy no older than Bran. I do not know him. Send someone else. My place is here with my father, for whatever time he has left.”
　　Her son had looked at her unhappily. “There is no one else. I cannot go myself. Your father’s too ill. The Blackfish is my eyes and ears, I dare not lose him. Your brother I need to hold Riverrun when we march—” “March?” No one had said a word to her of marching.
　　“I cannot sit at Riverrun waiting for peace. It makes me look as if I were afraid to take the field again. When there are no battles to fight, men start to think of hearth and harvest, Father told me that. Even my northmen grow restless.”
　　My northmen, she thought. He is even starting to talk like a king. “No one has ever died of restlessness, but rashness is another matter. We’ve planted seeds, let them grow.”
　　Robb shook his head stubbornly. “We’ve tossed some seeds in the wind, that’s all. If your sister Lysa was coming to aid us, we would have heard by now. How many birds have we sent to the Eyrie, four? I want peace too, but why should the Lannisters give me anything if all I do is sit here while my army melts away around me swift as summer snow?”
　　“So rather than look craven, you will dance to Lord Tywin’s pipes?” she threw back. “He wants you to march on Harrenhal, ask your uncle Brynden if—”
　　“I said nothing of Harrenhal,” Robb said. “Now, will you go to Renly for me, or must I send the Greatjon?”
　　The memory brought a wan smile to her face. Such an obvious ploy, that, yet deft for a boy of fifteen. Robb knew how ill-suited a man like Greatjon Umber would be to treat with a man like Renly Baratheon, and he knew that she knew it as well. What could she do but accede, praying that her father would live until her return? Had Lord Hoster been well, he would have gone himself, she knew. Still, that leavetaking was hard, hard. He did not even know her when she came to say farewell. “Minisa,” he called her, “where are the children? My little Cat, my sweet Lysa . . .” Catelyn had kissed him on the brow and told him his babes were well. “Wait for me, my lord,” she said as his eyes closed. “I waited for you, oh, so many times. Now you must wait for me.”
　　Fate drives me south and south again, Catelyn thought as she sipped the astringent tea, when it is north I should be going, north to home. She had written to Bran and Rickon, that last night at Riverrun. I do not forget you, my sweet ones, you must believe that. It is only that your brother needs me more.
　　“We ought to reach the upper Mander today, my lady,” Ser Wendel announced while Shadd spooned out the porridge. “Lord Renly will not be far, if the talk be true.”
　　And what do I tell him when I find him? That my son holds him no true king? She did not relish this meeting. They needed friends, not more enemies, yet Robb would never bend the knee in homage to a man he felt had no claim to the throne.
　　Her bowl was empty, though she could scarce remember tasting the porridge. She laid it aside. “It is time we were away.” The sooner she spoke to Renly, the sooner she could turn for home. She was the first one mounted, and she set the pace for the column. Hal Mollen rode beside her, bearing the banner of House Stark, the grey direwolf on an ice-white field.
　　They were still a half day’s ride from Renly’s camp when they were taken. Robin Flint had ranged ahead to scout, and he came galloping back with word of a far-eyes watching from the roof of a distant windmill. By the time Catelyn’s party reached the mill, the man was long gone. They pressed on, covering not quite a mile before Renly’s outriders came swooping down on them, twenty men mailed and mounted, led by a grizzled greybeard of a knight with bluejays on his surcoat.
　　When he saw her banners, he trotted up to her alone. “My lady,” he called, “I am Ser Colen of Greenpools, as it please you. These are dangerous lands you cross.”
　　“Our business is urgent,” she answered him. “I come as envoy from my son, Robb Stark, the King in the North, to treat with Renly Baratheon, the King in the South.”
　　“King Renly is the crowned and anointed lord of all the Seven Kingdoms, my lady,” Ser Colen answered, though courteously enough. “His Grace is encamped with his host near Bitterbridge, where the roseroad crosses the Mander. It shall be my great honor to escort you to him.” The knight raised a mailed hand, and his men formed a double column flanking Catelyn and her guard. Escort or captor? she wondered. There was nothing to be done but trust in Ser Colen’s honor, and Lord Renly’s.
　　They saw the smoke of the camp’s fires when they were still an hour from the river. Then the sound came drifting across farm and field and rolling plain, indistinct as the murmur of some distant sea, but swelling as they rode closer. By the time they caught sight of the Mander’s muddy waters glinting in the sun, they could make out the voices of men, the clatter of steel, the whinny of horses. Yet neither sound nor smoke prepared them for the host itself.
　　Thousands of cookfires filled the air with a pale smoky haze. The horse lines alone stretched out over leagues. A forest had surely been felled to make the tall staffs that held the banners. Great siege engines lined the grassy verge of the roseroad, mangonels and trebuchets and rolling rams mounted on wheels taller than a man on horseback. The steel points of pikes flamed red with sunlight, as if already blooded, while the pavilions of the knights and high lords sprouted from the grass like silken mushrooms. She saw men with spears and men with swords, men in steel caps and mail shirts, camp followers strutting their charms, archers fletching arrows, teamsters driving wagons, swineherds driving pigs, pages running messages, squires honing swords, knights riding palfreys, grooms leading ill-tempered destriers. “This is a fearsome lot of men,” Ser Wendel Manderly observed as they crossed the ancient stone span from which Bitterbridge took its name.
　　“That it is,” Catelyn agreed.
　　Near all the chivalry of the south had come to Renly’s call, it seemed. The golden rose of Highgarden was seen everywhere: sewn on the right breast of armsmen and servants, flapping and fluttering from the green silk banners that adorned lance and pike, painted upon the shields hung outside the pavilions of the sons and brothers and cousins and uncles of House Tyrell. As well Catelyn spied the fox-and-flowers of House Florent, Fossoway apples red and green, Lord Tarly’s striding huntsman, oak leaves for Oakheart, cranes for Crane, a cloud of black-and-orange butterflies for the Mullendores.
　　Across the Mander, the storm lords had raised their standards; Renly’s own bannermen, sworn to House Baratheon and Storm’s End. Catelyn recognized Bryce Caron’s nightingales, the Penrose quills, and Lord Estermont’s sea turtle, green on green. Yet for every shield she knew, there were a dozen strange to her, borne by the small lords sworn to the bannermen, and by hedge knights and freeriders, who had come swarming to make Renly Baratheon a king in fact as well as name.
　　Renly’s own standard flew high over all. From the top of his tallest siege tower, a wheeled oaken immensity covered with rawhides, streamed the largest war banner that Catelyn had ever seen—a cloth big enough to carpet many a hall,
　　shimmering gold, with the crowned stag of Baratheon black upon it, prancing proud and tall.
　　“My lady, do you hear that noise?” asked Hallis Mollen, trotting close. “What is that?”
　　She listened. Shouts, and horses screaming, and the clash of steel, and . . . “Cheering,” she said. They had been riding up a gentle slope toward a line of brightly colored pavilions on the height. As they passed between them, the press of men grew thicker, the sounds louder. And then she saw.
　　Below, beneath the stone-and-timber battlements of a small castle, a melee was in progress.
　　A field had been cleared off, fences and galleries and tilting barriers thrown up. Hundreds were gathered to watch, perhaps thousands. From the looks of the grounds, torn and muddy and littered with bits of dinted armor and broken lances, they had been at it for a day or more, but now the end was near. Fewer than a score of knights remained ahorse, charging and slashing at each other as watchers and fallen combatants cheered them on. She saw two destriers collide in full armor, going down in a tangle of steel and horseflesh. “A tourney,” Hal Mollen declared. He had a penchant for loudly announcing the obvious.
　　“Oh, splendid,” Ser Wendel Manderly said as a knight in a rainbowstriped cloak wheeled to deliver a backhand blow with a long-handled axe that shattered the shield of the man pursuing him and sent him reeling in his stirrups.
　　The press in front of them made further progress difficult. “Lady Stark,” Ser Colen said, “if your men would be so good as to wait here, I’ll present you to the king.”
　　“As you say.” She gave the command, though she had to raise her voice to be heard above the tourney din. Ser Colen walked his horse slowly through the throngs, with Catelyn riding in his wake. A roar went up from the crowd as a helmetless red-bearded man with a griffin on his shield went down before a big knight in blue armor. His steel was a deep cobalt, even the blunt morningstar he wielded with such deadly effect, his mount barded in the quartered sun-and-moon heraldry of House Tarth.
　　“Red Ronnet’s down, gods be damned,” a man cursed.
　　“Loras’ll do for that blue—” a companion answered before a roar drowned out the rest of his words.
　　Another man was fallen, trapped beneath his injured horse, both of them screaming in pain. Squires rushed out to aid them.
　　This is madness, Catelyn thought. Real enemies on every side and half the realm in flames, and Renly sits here playing at war like a boy with his first wooden sword.
　　The lords and ladies in the gallery were as engrossed in the melee as the men on the ground. Catelyn marked them well. Her father had oft treated with the southron lords, and not a few had been guests at Riverrun. She recognized Lord Mathis Rowan, stouter and more florid than ever, the golden tree of his House spread across his white doublet. Below him sat Lady Oakheart, tiny and delicate, and to her left Lord Randyll Tarly of Horn Hill, his greatsword Heartsbane propped up against the back of his seat. Others she knew only by their sigils, and some not at all.
　　In their midst, watching and laughing with his young queen by his side, sat a ghost in a golden crown.
　　Small wonder the lords gather around him with such fervor, she thought, he is Robert come again. Renly was handsome as Robert had been handsome; long of limb and broad of shoulder, with the same coalblack hair, fine and straight, the same deep blue eyes, the same easy smile. The slender circlet around his brows seemed to suit him well. It was soft gold, a ring of roses exquisitely wrought; at the front lifted a stag’s head of dark green jade, adorned with golden eyes and golden antlers.
　　The crowned stag decorated the king’s green velvet tunic as well, worked in gold thread upon his chest; the Baratheon sigil in the colors of Highgarden. The girl who shared the high seat with him was also of Highgarden: his young queen, Margaery, daughter to Lord Mace Tyrell. Their marriage was the mortar that held the great southron alliance together, Catelyn knew. Renly was one-and-twenty, the girl no older than Robb, very pretty, with a doe’s soft eyes and a mane of curling brown hair that fell about her shoulders in lazy ringlets. Her smile was shy and sweet.
　　Out in the field, another man lost his seat to the knight in the rainbow-striped cloak, and the king shouted approval with the rest. “Loras!” she heard him call. “Loras! Highgarden!” The queen clapped her hands together in excitement.
　　Catelyn turned to see the end of it. Only four men were left in the fight now, and there was small doubt whom king and commons favored. She had never met Ser Loras Tyrell, but even in the distant north one heard tales of the prowess of the young Knight of Flowers. Ser Loras rode a tall white stallion in silver mail, and fought with a long-handled axe. A crest of golden roses ran down the center of his helm.
　　Two of the other survivors had made common cause. They spurred their mounts toward the knight in the cobalt armor. As they closed to either side, the blue knight reined hard, smashing one man full in the face with his splintered shield while his black destrier lashed out with a steel-shod hoof at the other. In a blink, one combatant was unhorsed, the other reeling. The blue knight let his broken shield drop to the ground to free his left arm, and then the Knight of Flowers was on him. The weight of his steel seemed to hardly diminish the grace and quickness with which Ser Loras moved, his rainbow cloak swirling about him.
　　The white horse and the black one wheeled like lovers at a harvest dance, the riders throwing steel in place of kisses. Longaxe flashed and morningstar whirled. Both weapons were blunted, yet still they raised an awful clangor. Shieldless, the blue knight was getting much the worse of it. Ser Loras rained down blows on his head and shoulders, to shouts of “Highgarden!” from the throng. The other gave answer with his morningstar, but whenever the ball came crashing in, Ser Loras interposed his battered green shield, emblazoned with three golden roses. When the longaxe caught the blue knight’s hand on the backswing and sent the morningstar flying from his grasp, the crowd screamed like a rutting beast. The Knight of Flowers raised his axe for the final blow.
　　The blue knight charged into it. The stallions slammed together, the blunted axehead smashed against the scarred blue breastplate . . . but somehow the blue knight had the haft locked between steel-gauntleted fingers. He wrenched it from Ser Loras’s hand, and suddenly the two were grappling mount-to-mount, and an instant later they were falling. As their horses pulled apart, they crashed to the ground with bone-jarring force. Loras Tyrell, on the bottom, took the brunt of the impact. The blue knight pulled a long dirk free and flicked open Tyrell’s visor. The roar of the crowd was too loud for Catelyn to hear what Ser Loras said, but she saw the word form on his split, bloody lips. Yield.
　　The blue knight climbed unsteady to his feet, and raised his dirk in the direction of Renly Baratheon, the salute of a champion to his king. Squires dashed onto the field to help the vanquished knight to his feet. When they got his helm off, Catelyn was startled to see how young he was. He could not have had more than two years on Robb. The boy might have been as comely as his sister, but the broken lip, unfocused eyes, and blood trickling through his matted hair made it hard to be certain.
　　“Approach,” King Renly called to the champion.
　　He limped toward the gallery. At close hand, the brilliant blue armor looked rather less splendid; everywhere it showed scars, the dents of mace and warhammer, the long gouges left by swords, chips in the enameled breastplate and helm. His cloak hung in rags. From the way he moved, the man within was no less battered. A few voices hailed him with cries of “Tarth!” and, oddly, ‘A Beauty! A Beauty!” but most were silent. The blue knight knelt before the king. “Grace,” he said, his voice muffled by his dented greathelm.
　　“You are all your lord father claimed you were.” Renly’s voice carried over the field. “I’ve seen Ser Loras unhorsed once or twice . . . but never quite in that fashion.”
　　“That were no proper unhorsing,” complained a drunken archer nearby, a Tyrell rose sewn on his jerkin. “A vile trick, pulling the lad down.”
　　The press had begun to open up. “Ser Colen,” Catelyn said to her escort, “who is this man, and why do they mislike him so?”
　　Ser Colen frowned. “Because he is no man, my lady. That’s Brienne of Tarth, daughter to Lord Selwyn the Evenstar.”
　　“Daughter?” Catelyn was horrified.
　　“Brienne the Beauty, they name her . . . though not to her face, lest they be called upon to defend those words with their bodies.”
　　She heard King Renly declare the Lady Brienne of Tarth the victor of the great melee at Bitterbridge, last mounted of one hundred sixteen knights. “As champion, you may ask of me any boon that you desire. If it lies in my power, it is yours.”
　　“Your Grace,” Brienne answered, “I ask the honor of a place among your Rainbow Guard. I would be one of your seven, and pledge my life to yours, to go where you go, ride at your side, and keep you safe from all hurt and harm.”
　　“Done,” he said. “Rise, and remove your helm.”
　　She did as he bid her. And when the greathelm was lifted, Catelyn understood Ser Colen’s words.
　　Beauty, they called her . . . mocking. The hair beneath the visor was a squirrel’s nest of dirty straw, and her face . . . Brienne’s eyes were large and very blue, a young girl’s eyes, trusting and guileless, but the rest . . . her features were broad and coarse, her teeth prominent and crooked, her mouth too wide, her lips so plump they seemed swollen. A thousand freckles speckled her cheeks and brow, and her nose had been broken more than once. Pity filled Catelyn’s heart. Is there any creature on earth as unfortunate as an ugly woman?
　　And yet, when Renly cut away her torn cloak and fastened a rainbow in its place, Brienne of Tarth did not look unfortunate. Her smile lit up her face, and her voice was strong and proud as she said, “My life for yours, Your Grace. From this day on, I am your shield, I swear it by the old gods and the new.” The way she looked at the king—looked down at him, she was a good hand higher, though Renly was near as tall as his brother had been—was painful to see.
　　“Your Grace!” Ser Colen of Greenpools swung down off his horse to approach the gallery. “I beg your leave.” He went to one knee. “I have the honor to bring you the Lady Catelyn Stark, sent as envoy by her son Robb, Lord of Winterfell.”
　　“Lord of Winterfell and King in the North, ser,” Catelyn corrected him. She dismounted and moved to Ser Colen’s side.
　　King Renly looked surprised. “Lady Catelyn? We are most pleased.” He turned to his young queen. “Margaery my sweet, this is the Lady Catelyn Stark of Winterfell.”
　　“You are most welcome here, Lady Stark,” the girl said, all soft courtesy. “I am sorry for your loss.”
　　“You are kind,” said Catelyn.
　　“My lady, I swear to you, I will see that the Lannisters answer for your husband’s murder,” the king declared. “When I take King’s Landing, I’ll send you Cersei’s head.”
　　And will that bring my Ned back to me? she thought. “it will be enough to know that justice has been done, my lord.”
　　“Your Grace,” Brienne the Blue corrected sharply. “And you should kneel when you approach the king.”
　　“The distance between a lord and a grace is a small one, my lady,” Catelyn said. “Lord Renly wears a crown, as does my son. If you wish, we may stand here in the mud and debate what honors and titles are rightly due to each, but it strikes me that we have more pressing matters to consider.”
　　Some of Renly’s lords bristled at that, but the king only laughed. “Well said, my lady. There will be time enough for graces when these wars are done. Tell me, when does your son mean to march against Harrenhal?”
　　Until she knew whether this king was friend or foe, Catelyn was not about to reveal the least part of Robb’s dispositions. “I do not sit on my son’s war councils, my lord.”
　　“So long as he leaves a few Lannisters for me, I’ll not complain. What has he done with the Kingslayer?”
　　“Jaime Lannister is held prisoner at Riverrun.”
　　“Still alive?” Lord Mathis Rowan seemed dismayed.
　　Bemused, Renly said, “It would seem the direwolf is gentler than the lion.”
　　“Gentler than the Lannisters,” murmured Lady Oakheart with a bitter smile, “is drier than the sea.”
　　“I call it weak.” Lord Randyll Tarly had a short, bristly grey beard and a reputation for blunt speech. “No disrespect to you, Lady Stark, but it would have been more seemly had Lord Robb come to pay homage to the king himself, rather than hiding behind his mother’s skirts.” “King Robb is warring, my lord,” Catelyn replied with icy courtesy, “not playing at tourney.”
　　Renly grinned. “Go softly, Lord Randyll, I fear you’re overmatched.” He summoned a steward in the livery of Storm’s End. “Find a place for the lady’s companions, and see that they have every comfort. Lady Catelyn shall have my own pavilion. Since Lord Caswell has been so kind as to give me use of his castle, I have no need of it. My lady, when you are rested, I would be honored if you would share our meat and mead at the feast Lord Caswell is giving us tonight. A farewell feast. I fear his lordship is eager to see the heels of my hungry horde.”
　　“Not true, Your Grace,” protested a wispy young man who must have been Caswell. “What is mine is yours.”
　　“Whenever someone said that to my brother Robert, he took them at their word,” Renly said. “Do you have daughters?”
　　“Yes, Your Grace. Two.”
　　“Then thank the gods that I am not Robert. My sweet queen is all the woman I desire.” Renly held out his hand to help Margaery to her feet. “We’ll talk again when you’ve had a chance to refresh yourself, Lady Catelyn.”
　　Renly led his bride back toward the castle while his steward conducted Catelyn to the king’s green silk pavilion. “If you have need of anything, you have only to ask, my lady.”
　　Catelyn could scarcely imagine what she might need that had not already been provided. The pavilion was larger than the common rooms of many an inn and furnished with every comfort: feather mattress and sleeping furs, a wood-and-copper tub large enough for two, braziers, to keep off the night’s chill, slung leather camp chairs, a writing table with quills and inkpot, bowls of peaches, plums, and pears, a flagon of wine with a set of matched silver cups, cedar chests packed full of Renly’s clothing, books, maps, game boards, a high harp, a tall bow and a quiver of arrows, a pair of red-tailed hunting hawks, a vertible armory of fine weapons. He does not stint himself, this Renly, she thought as she looked about. Small wonder this host moves so slowly.
　　Beside the entrance, the king’s armor stood sentry; a suit of forestgreen plate, its fittings chased with gold, the helm crowned by a great rack of golden antlers. The steel was polished to such a high sheen that she could see her reflection in the breastplate, gazing back at her as if from the bottom of a deep green pond. The face of a drowned woman, Catelyn thought. Can you drown in grief? She turned away sharply, angry with her own frailty. She had no time for the luxury of self-pity. She must wash the dust from her hair and change into a gown more fitting for a king’s feast.
　　Ser Wendel Manderly, Lucas Blackwood, Ser Perwyn Frey, and the rest of her highborn companions accompanied her to the castle. The great hall of Lord Caswell’s keep was great only by courtesy, yet room was found on the crowded benches for Catelyn’s men, amidst Renly’s own knights. Catelyn was assigned a place on the dais between red-faced Lord Mathis Rowan and genial Ser Jon Fossoway of the green-apple Fossoways. Ser Jon made jests, while Lord Mathis inquired politely after the health of her father, brother, and children.
　　Brienne of Tarth had been seated at the far end of the high table. She did not gown herself as a lady, but chose a knight’s finery instead, a velvet doublet quartered rose-and-azure, breeches and boots and a finetooled swordbelt, her new rainbow cloak flowing down her back. No garb could disguise her plainness, though; the huge freckled hands, the wide flat face, the thrust of her teeth. Out of armor, her body seemed ungainly, broad of hip and thick of limb, with hunched muscular shoulders but no bosom to speak of. And it was clear from her every action that Brienne knew it, and suffered for it. She spoke only in answer, and seldom lifted her gaze from her food.
　　Of food there was plenty. The war had not touched the fabled bounty of Highgarden. While singers sang and tumblers tumbled, they began with pears poached in wine, and went on to tiny savory fish rolled in salt and cooked crisp, and capons stuffed with onions and mushrooms. There were great loaves of brown bread, mounds of turnips and sweetcorn and pease, immense hams and roast geese and trenchers dripping full of venison stewed with beer and barley. For the sweet, Lord Caswell’s servants brought down trays of pastries from his castle kitchens, cream swans and spun-sugar unicorns, lemon cakes in the shape of roses, spiced honey biscuits and blackberry tarts, apple crisps and wheels of buttery cheese.
　　The rich foods made Catelyn queasy, but it would never do to show frailty when so much depended on her strength. She ate sparingly, while she watched this man who would be king. Renly sat with his young bride on his left hand and her brother on the right. Apart from the white linen bandage around his brow, Ser Loras seemed none the worse for the day’s misadventures. He was indeed as comely as Catelyn had suspected he might be. When not glazed, his eyes were lively and intelligent, his hair an artless tumble of brown locks that many a maid might have envied. He had replaced his tattered tourney cloak with a new one; the same brilliantly striped silk of Renly’s Rainbow Guard, clasped with the golden rose of Highgarden.
　　From time to time, King Renly would feed Margaery some choice morsel off the point of his dagger, or lean over to plant the lightest of kisses on her cheek, but it was Ser Loras who shared most of his jests and confidences. The king enjoyed his food and drink, that was plain to see, yet he seemed neither glutton nor drunkard. He laughed often, and well, and spoke amiably to highborn lords and lowly serving wenches alike.
　　Some of his guests were less moderate. They drank too much and boasted too loudly, to her mind. Lord Willum’s sons Josua and Elyas disputed heatedly about who would be first over the walls of King’s Landing. Lord Varner dandled a serving girl on his lap, nuzzling at her neck while one hand went exploring down her bodice. Guyard the Green, who fancied himself a singer, diddled a harp and gave them a verse about tying lions’ tails in knots, parts of which rhymed. Ser Mark Mullendore brought a black-and-white monkey and fed him morsels from his own plate, while Ser Tanton of the red-apple Fossoways climbed on the table and swore to slay Sandor Clegane in single combat. The vow might have been taken more solemnly if Ser Tanton had not had one foot in a gravy boat when he made it.
　　The height of folly was reached when a plump fool came capering out in gold-painted tin with a cloth lion’s head, and chased a dwarf around the tables, whacking him over the head with a bladder. Finally King Renly demanded to know why he was beating his brother. “Why, Your Grace, I’m the Kinslayer,” the fool said.
　　“It’s Kingslayer, fool of a fool,” Renly said, and the hall rang with laughter.
　　Lord Rowan beside her did not join the merriment. “They are all so young,” he said. It was true. The Knight of Flowers could not have reached his second name day when Robert slew Prince Rhaegar on the Trident. Few of the others were very much older. They had been babes during the Sack of King’s Landing, and no more than boys when Balon Greyjoy raised the Iron Islands in rebellion. They are still unblooded, Catelyn thought as she watched Lord Bryce goad Ser Robar into juggling a brace of daggers. It is all a game to them still, a tourney writ large, and all they see is the chance for glory and honor and spoils. They are boys drunk on song and story, and like all boys, they think themselves immortal.
　　“War will make them old,” Catelyn said, “as it did us.” She had been a girl when Robert and Ned and Jon Arryn raised their banners against Aerys Targaryen, a woman by the time the fighting was done. “I pity them.”
　　“Why?” Lord Rowan asked her. “Look at them. They’re young and strong, full of life and laughter. And lust, aye, more lust than they know what to do with. There will be many a bastard bred this night, I promise you. Why pity?”
　　“Because it will not last,” Catelyn answered, sadly. “Because they are the knights of summer, and winter is coming.”
　　“Lady Catelyn, you are wrong.” Brienne regarded her with eyes as blue as her armor. “Winter will never come for the likes of us. Should we die in battle, they will surely sing of us, and it’s always summer in the songs. In the songs all knights are gallant, all maids are beautiful, and the sun is always shining.”
　　Winter comes for all of us, Catelyn thought. For me, it came when Ned died. It will come for you too, child, and sooner than you like. She did not have the heart to say it.
　　The king saved her. “Lady Catelyn,” Renly called down. “I feel the need of some air. Will you walk with me?”
　　Catelyn stood at once. “I should be honored.”
　　Brienne was on her feet as well. “Your Grace, give me but a moment to don my mail. You should not be without protection.”
　　King Renly smiled. “If I am not safe in the heart of Lord Caswell’s castle, with my own host around me, one sword will make no matter . . . not even your sword, Brienne. Sit and eat. If I have need of you, I’ll send for you.”
　　His words seemed to strike the girl harder than any blow she had taken that afternoon. “As you will, Your Grace.” Brienne sat, eyes downcast. Renly took Catelyn’s arm and led her from the hall, past a slouching guardsman who straightened so hurriedly that he near dropped his spear. Renly clapped the man on the shoulder and made a jest of it.
　　“This way, my lady.” The king took her through a low door into a stair tower. As they started up, he said, “Perchance, is Ser Barristan Selmy with your son at Riverrun?”
　　“No,” she answered, puzzled. “Is he no longer with Joffrey? He was the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard.”
　　Renly shook his head. “The Lannisters told him he was too old and gave his cloak to the Hound. I’m told he left King’s Landing vowing to take up service with the true king. That cloak Brienne claimed today was the one I was keeping for Selmy, in hopes that he might offer me his sword. When he did not turn up at Highgarden, I thought perhaps he had gone to Riverrun instead.”
　　“We have not seen him.
　　“He was old, yes, but a good man still. I hope he has not come to harm. The Lannisters are great fools.” They climbed a few more steps. “On the night of Robert’s death, I offered your husband a hundred swords and urged him to take Joffrey into his power. Had he listened, he would be regent today, and there would have been no need for me to claim the throne.”
　　“Ned refused you.” She did not have to be told.
　　“He had sworn to protect Robert’s children,” Renly said. “I lacked the strength to act alone, so when Lord Eddard turned me away, I had no choice but to flee. Had I stayed, I knew the queen would see to it that I did not long outlive my brother.”
　　Had you stayed, and lent your support to Ned, he might still be alive, Catelyn thought bitterly.
　　“I liked your husband well enough, my lady. He was a loyal friend to Robert, I know . . . but he would not listen and he would not bend. Here, I wish to show you something.” They had reached the top of the stairwell. Renly pushed open a wooden door, and they stepped out onto the roof.
　　Lord Caswell’s keep was scarcely tall enough to call a tower, but the country was low and flat and Catelyn could see for leagues in all directions. Wherever she looked, she saw fires. They covered the earth like fallen stars, and like the stars there was no end to them. “Count them if you like, my lady,” Renly said quietly. “You will still be counting when dawn breaks in the east. How many fires burn around Riverrun tonight, I wonder?”
　　Catelyn could hear faint music drifting from the Great Hall, seeping out into the night. She dare not count the stars.
　　“I’m told your son crossed the Neck with twenty thousand swords at his back,” Renly went on. “Now that the lords of the Trident are with him, perhaps he commands forty thousand.”
　　No, she thought, not near so many, we have lost men in battle, and others to the harvest.
　　“I have twice that number here,” Renly said, “and this is only part of my strength. Mace Tyrell remains at Highgarden with another ten thousand, I have a strong garrison holding Storm’s End, and soon enough the Dornishmen will join me with all their power. And never forget my brother Stannis, who holds Dragonstone and commands the lords of the narrow sea.”
　　“It would seem that you are the one who has forgotten Stannis,” Catelyn said, more sharply than she’d intended.
　　“His claim, you mean?” Renly laughed. “Let us be blunt, my lady. Stannis would make an appalling king. Nor is he like to become one. Men respect Stannis, even fear him, but precious few have ever loved him.”
　　“He is still your elder brother. If either of you can be said to have a right to the Iron Throne, it must be Lord Stannis.”
　　Renly shrugged. “Tell me, what right did my brother Robert ever have to the Iron Throne?” He did not wait for an answer. “Oh, there was talk of the blood ties between Baratheon and Targaryen, of weddings a hundred years past, of second sons and elder daughters. No one but the maesters care about any of it. Robert won the throne with his warhammer.” He swept a hand across the campfires that burned from horizon to horizon. “Well, there is my claim, as good as Robert’s ever was. If your son supports me as his father supported Robert, he’ll not find me ungenerous. I will gladly confirm him in all his lands, titles, and honors. He can rule in Winterfell as he pleases. He can even go on calling himself King in the North if he likes, so long as he bends the knee and does me homage as his overlord. King is only a word, but fealty, loyalty, service . . . those I must
　　have.”
　　“And if he will not give them to you, my lord?”
　　“I mean to be king, my lady, and not of a broken kingdom. I cannot say it plainer than that. Three hundred years ago, a Stark king knelt to Aegon the Dragon, when he saw he could not hope to prevail. That was wisdom. Your son must be wise as well. Once he joins me, this war is good as done. We—” Renly broke off suddenly, distracted. “What’s this now?”
　　The rattle of chains heralded the raising of the portcullis. Down in the yard below, a rider in a winged helm urged his well-lathered horse under the spikes. “Summon the king!” he called.
　　Renly vaulted up into a crenel. “I’m here, ser.”
　　“Your Grace.” The rider spurred his mount closer. “I came swift as I could. From Storm’s End. We are besieged, Your Grace, Ser Cortnay defies them, but . . .”
　　“But . . . that’s not possible. I would have been told if Lord Tywin left Harrenhal.”
　　“These are no Lannisters, my liege. It’s Lord Stannis at your gates. King Stannis, he calls himself now.”

Ⅱ 列王的纷争 Chapter23 凯特琳
　　躺在一望无垠、绵延起伏的大草原上，凯特琳梦见布兰在她面前活蹦乱跳，艾莉亚和珊莎握着她的手，婴儿瑞肯咬着她的乳房。她的罗柏，没有了王冠，拿起了木剑。而当一切都归于沉寂，奈德躺在她的床上，暗夜之中轻浅地微笑。
　　多么甜蜜，甜蜜的事总是不会久长。黎明无情地到来，阳光如同匕首穿刺而下。她浑身酸痛地醒来，孤独而疲惫：因骑马而疲惫，因心伤而疲惫，因责任而疲惫。只想痛哭一场，她不自禁地想，只想有人给我安慰，我真的厌倦了竭力坚强。如果能再一次，再一次变回那个天真又胆怯的小女孩，就一次，真的……一天……一个小时……
　　帐外，人来人往。她听见马的嘶鸣，夏德在抱怨睡硬了背，文德尔爵士则索要弓箭。凯特琳惟愿他们统统走开。他们都是好人，忠心耿耿，可她实在厌倦了所有人，她只想要她的孩子。总有一天，在梦中她曾向自己保证，总有一天她会放任自己不再坚强。
　　但不是今天。今天真的不行。
　　她摸索起衣服，发现手指比平日更加笨拙僵硬。还能使用这双手她本当感到庆幸。割她的匕首乃是瓦雷利亚钢所制，瓦雷利亚兵器锋利嗜血，只需瞟一眼伤口便能明了。
　　出了门，只见夏德正用壶煮燕麦粥，文德尔·曼德勒爵士则在调试弓箭。“夫人，”凯特琳出来时他道，“原野上空有鸟儿呢。要不我给您的早餐加点烤肉？”
　　“谢谢，我想燕麦和面包应该足够……应付我们所有人。今天还要赶很长的路，曼德勒爵士。”
　　“如您所愿，夫人。”圆脸骑士有些丧气，海象般的大把胡须失望地颤动。“燕麦和面包，还有什么比这更好？”他是凯特琳所识最为肥胖的人之一，他不仅爱食物，对荣誉的渴求更是甚而过之。
　　“我找到点荨麻，沏了壶茶，”夏德宣布。“夫人您来一杯？”
　　“好的，非常感谢。”
　　她用自己残破的手掌抱住茶杯，呵着气，等茶冷却。夏德是临冬城的兵士之一。为了让她平安地前去拜会蓝礼，罗柏不仅派出手下二十名最可靠的卫士，还让五位贵族与她同行，期望他们的名号和血统能为她的使命增添敬意与分量。他们一路南下，远离市镇和城堡，不时邂逅成群的武装人员，瞥见东方地平线上滚滚浓烟。无人前来骚扰。作为威胁他们人太少，当成猎物他们人太多。就这样，他们终于安然渡过黑水河，将混乱的江山抛在马后。自此四天以来，没有一丝一毫战争的迹象。
　　此行并非凯特琳的意思。在奔流城，她和罗柏争辩了许多。“我上次见到蓝礼时，他还没你弟弟布兰大。我根本就不了解他。派别人去。我有责任留在这里陪伴父亲，直到他的时辰最后到来。”
　　儿子不悦地望着她。“没别人可派。我不可能亲自去。你父亲病得太厉害。黑鱼则是我的耳目，我不能缺了他。至于你弟弟，我需要他坐镇奔流城，当我们进军——”
　　“进军？”没人跟她提过进军。
　　“我不能枯坐奔流城，等待和平，这会授人以柄，教世人说我害怕再上战场。父亲教导过我，无仗可打时，士兵就会思念壁炉和丰收……近来，我的北军也开始焦躁不宁。”
　　我的北军，她品味着，他连说话的方式都开始变得像个国王。“焦躁不宁不会导致伤亡，轻率卤莽却大不一样。我们播下了种子，应该耐心等待它们成长。”
　　罗柏倔强地摇摇头，“事实是，我们把种子抛进了狂风。若你妹妹莱莎肯派援军前来，早该有口信啦。想想我们给鹰巢城派了多少鸟，起码四只？我也希望和平，可如果我只傻坐在原地，听任我的军队像盛夏的雪花一般极速融化，兰尼斯特什么也不会给我。”
　　他甚至根本不认得她“所以为了那自负的勇气，你就非得让泰温大人牵着鼻子走？”她吼回去。“进军赫伦堡正中其下怀，听听你布林登叔叔的意见吧，如果——”
　　“谁说我要去赫伦堡？”罗柏道，“眼下唯一的问题是，你是为了我出使蓝礼呢，还是逼我派大琼恩去？”
　　忆起往事，她的脸颊泛起苍白的微笑。多直白的要挟，说真的，一个十五岁的男孩能做到这点，倒应该感到骄傲。罗柏深知与蓝礼·拜拉席恩这样的人打交道没有比大琼恩·安柏更不合适的人选了，他更明白她也知道。他让她无法拒绝，只能祈祷在返回之前父亲别有什么不测。她想：倘若霍斯特公爵身体安康，一定会自告奋勇担任使节。纵使百般宽慰，离别依旧让人伤感。当她到床前辞行时，他甚至根本不认得她。“米妮莎，”他唤她，“孩子们在哪儿？我的小凯特，我可爱的莱莎……”凯特琳吻了他的额头，告诉他他的宝贝们一切都好。“等我回来，大人，”当他阖上倦眼，她轻声说。“我等过你，噢，等了好多好多次。这次轮到了你，一定要等我回来。”
　　命运一次又一次把我拖向南方，凯特琳就着苦涩的茶水边吮边想，此时此刻，我本当返回北国，重整家园。在奔流城的最后一夜，她就着烛光给布兰和瑞肯写信。我没有抛下你们，我的小甜心，你们一定要相信。只是你们的哥哥更需要我。
　　“预计今天就能抵达曼德河上游，夫人。”夏普搅拌麦片粥时，文德尔爵士宣布。“如果道上打听的消息属实，蓝礼大人就在附近。”
　　见了他我又能说什么？告诉他我儿子不承认他是真正的国王？她对这场会晤不抱希望。我们需要的是朋友，不是更多敌手，而罗柏坚决不同意向一个他觉得毫无权利登上王位的人屈膝臣服。
　　她食不知味，勉强咽下麦片粥，把碗放到一旁。“我们该出发了。”越早见到蓝礼，她就能越早打道回府。她头一个翻上马背，带领纵队快速前进。哈里斯·莫兰骑行身旁，高举史塔克家族的旗帜。雪白布底上的冰原狼迎风招展。
　　他们被发现时，离蓝礼大营尚有半日之遥。罗宾·菲林特是他们的斥候，他飞驰回报远方的风车上有人监视。但等凯特琳的队伍赶到磨坊，陌生人已然离去。他们继续前进，不出一里却被蓝礼的马队团团围住。一位花白胡子的老骑士领着二十个全副武装的骑兵，老人的外套上有蓝鸟徽记。
　　当他看见她的旗号，便独自策马上前。“夫人，”他喊，“在下是格林普家族的科棱爵士，愿意为您效劳。您此刻正身临险境。”
　　“我们的任务非常紧急。”她答道。“我以我儿罗柏·史塔克——北境之王的信使的身份，前来会晤南境之王，蓝礼·拜拉席恩。”
　　“蓝礼国王是经正式加冕涂抹圣油的七国之君，夫人。”科棱爵士应道，礼貌依然。“陛下此刻和他的军队一道驻扎于苦桥，那是玫瑰大道横跨曼德河的要害，护送您前往是我莫大的荣幸。”骑士举起一只铁拳，手下士兵闪向两边，站在凯特琳和她的护卫侧旁。这是护送还是捉拿？她心想。如今也只好信任科棱爵士的荣誉，当然，还得信任蓝礼大人。
　　离大河尚有一小时骑程，他们便看见营火的烟柱。接着，各种声音飘过农场、田地和原野汹涌而来，朦朦胧胧，有如远海的呼唤。渐行渐近，涛声便愈加强烈。待他们终于瞧见阳光下闪耀的浑浊的曼德河水，声音也变得清晰，分辨出人语，金铁交击和马嘶。对他们而言，尽管有先前的烟柱和声响预作提醒，仍旧不由自主地为眼前的大军张口结舌。
　　成千的营火使空中弥漫着苍白的薄雾。排列整齐的马匹绵延数个里格。为制造承载旌旗的长杆，一整座树林砍伐而光。巨大的攻城器排列在玫瑰大道两旁的葱绿草坪上，有投石机、弩炮和攻城锤，那冲锤光车轮就比一个骑兵还高。艳阳下，无数的矛尖闪着红光，仿佛正在泣血。诸侯和骑士们的营帐好似丝质蘑菇，遍布四野。她看见拿矛的兵、持剑的兵、戴盔穿甲的兵，看见招摇过市的营妓，看见搭装羽毛的弓箭手，看见驱赶货车的杂役，看见喂养牲畜的猪倌，看见传送信息的听差，看见磨砺长剑的侍从，看见驱策战马的骑士，看见呵斥劣驹的马夫。“不可思议……有这么多军队，”文德尔·曼德勒爵士评论。他们越过一道古老的石拱桥——此桥正名为“苦桥”。
　　“没错，”凯特琳赞同。
　　看来，几乎所有的南境贵族都响应了蓝礼的号召。四处可见高庭的金玫瑰：绣在兵士和仆人们的右胸前，招展在装饰长熗和木矛的绿丝幡上，刻画在提利尔家族五花八门的旁支——儿子、兄弟、表亲、叔舅——帐门的盾牌上。凯特琳还看见佛罗伦家族的狐狸鲜花旗，两支佛索威家族的青苹果旗和红苹果旗，塔利伯爵的健步猎人旗，奥克赫特家族的橡树叶旗，克连恩家族的鹅旗，以及穆伦道尔家族那描绘成群黑橙蝴蝶的旗帜。
　　曼德河对岸，风暴之地的领主们也升起了自己的旗帜——他们是蓝礼直属的附庸，宣誓效忠于拜拉席恩家族和风息堡。凯特琳认出布莱斯·卡伦的夜莺旗，庞洛斯的鹅毛旗，以及伊斯蒙伯爵的海龟旗——绿色的汪洋上漂浮的绿海龟。但除开她认识的盾牌徽记，另有十几个异常陌生，想来他们该是效忠于地方诸侯的下级领主，或是雇佣骑士和自由骑手，这些人麇集到蓝礼·拜拉席恩周围，为的是要在这场权力的游戏中站在胜利者的一边。
　　真正的敌人近在咫尺蓝礼自己的旗帜高高飘扬于众旗之上。在他最高大的攻城塔上，在那生牛皮覆盖的巨大橡木轮车顶，飘动着凯特琳毕生所见最为壮观的——那块布料能做城堡大厅的地毯——一面旗帜，金黄面底，绣着拜拉席恩家族黑色的宝冠雄鹿，高大、腾越而骄傲。
　　“夫人，您听见那边的喧哗了吗？”哈里斯·莫兰骑行靠拢，轻声问，“那是什么？”
　　她仔细分辨，吼声，马儿的尖叫，兵器铿锵，还有……“喝彩声，”她道。他们骑上一道缓坡，朝着远方一列颜色鲜亮的大帐篷行去。当他们穿过这列帐篷，人愈来愈多，声音也愈加鼎沸。然后，她找到了答案。
　　下面，在一座小城堡的木石城垛下，一场团队比武正在进行。
　　人们清出场地，立好栅栏，修筑跑道，搭起看台。数百的人前来观看，噢，也许成千。从场地的情况看来，杂乱、泥泞、到处都是残甲断矛，他们至少打了一整天。而今，比武到了最后关头，仍在马背的骑士不满二十，在观众和落马战士的喝彩声中，相互砍劈和冲锋。她看见两匹全副重甲的战马撞在一起，钢铁和血肉难分难解，纠结在地。“比武大会！”哈里斯·莫兰宣布。他总爱布告人尽皆知的事。
　　“噢，漂亮！”眼见一位彩虹条纹披风的骑士给了穷追他的敌手反戈一击，长柄战斧击碎对手的盾牌，打得对手晕头转向，文德尔·曼德勒爵士不禁叫好。
　　人潮汹涌，难以接近。“史塔克夫人，”科棱爵士道，“若您的部下愿意留在这里，我这就带您面见王上。”
　　“好吧，”她下了命令，由于比武的喧嚣，她不得不提高声调。科棱爵士缓缓地穿越人群，凯特琳紧随其后。人群中忽然一阵叫嚷，一位没戴头盔、盾牌有狮鹫纹章的红须男子被一个蓝色铠甲的高大骑士打落下马。这骑士的铁甲深邃幽蓝，他异常镇静地挥舞着手中的钝化流星锤，坐骑的铠甲上，有塔斯家族分成四份的日月纹章。
　　“红罗兰败了，诸神该死！”一位男子咒道。
　　“洛拉斯会教训这蓝——”同伴的回答被另一阵突来的惊叫所淹没。
　　又一个战士落马。伤残的马儿压住了骑士，人马都在痛苦地嚎叫，侍从们急忙上前帮忙。
　　这真是疯了，凯特琳想。真正的敌人近在咫尺，半壁国土烽火连天，蓝礼居然还呆在这儿玩他的打仗游戏，活象个初次拿到木剑的男孩！
　　领主和贵妇们坐在看台上观看比武，和下面的观众一样津津有味。从中，凯特琳发现了一些熟悉的面孔。父亲常和南境的领主打交道，很多人都曾来奔流城做客。她认出马图斯·罗宛伯爵，此人较前更加结实健壮，白色上衣上延展着金树家徽。在他身下坐了奥克赫特伯爵夫人，纤细娇小。而在她左边则是角陵的领主蓝道·塔利，他的巨剑“碎心”依靠在椅背。其他人她只能辨认出家徽，甚至很多纹章她也说不上来。
　　在他们之中，在一位年轻的王后身边，一个头戴金冠的幽灵正有说有笑。
　　难怪领主大人们对他趋之若骛，她想，他简直就是劳勃重生。蓝礼和劳勃年轻时一样俊美：四肢纤细，肩膀宽阔，柔顺平直的炭黑头发，湛蓝的眼珠，甚至那浅笑也一模一样。他额上那条纤细的冠冕与他十分般配，乃是软金制成，一轮玫瑰精巧地镶嵌其上，正面有个暗色翡翠做的鹿头，装饰着金眼金角。
　　国王在雄鹿宝冠下穿了一身绿色的天鹅绒外套，胸前用金黄的丝线——高庭的色彩——绘着拜拉席恩的纹章。与他同坐高位的女孩也穿着高庭的服饰，那定然是他年轻的王后玛格丽，梅斯·提利尔公爵的女儿。凯特琳明白，正是由于他们的联姻，全南境的贵族才联合在一起。蓝礼现年二十一岁，那女孩则比罗柏还小，非常漂亮，麋鹿般温柔的眼睛，长长的棕色卷发慵懒地披散在肩膀。她的笑容既羞涩又甜蜜。
　　武场上，又一人被彩虹披风的骑士击落下马，国王也和大家一起赞叹。“洛拉斯！”她听见他喊道，“洛拉斯！为高庭而战！”王后则兴奋得不住拍手。
　　凯特琳回身过去，打量比武会的残局。如今，场地中央只剩下四个人，而毫无疑问谁受国王和观众的宠爱。她从没见过洛拉斯·提利尔爵士，但即便在遥远的北国，仍旧流传着少年百花骑士的故事。洛拉斯爵士骑在一匹银甲的高大白马上，手握一把长柄战斧，头盔中央有金玫瑰冠饰。
　　幸存者中有两人很快达成共识。他们脚踢马刺，一起朝深蓝铠甲的骑士扑去。待他们一左一右接近靠拢，蓝骑士猛地一拉缰绳，用破碎的盾牌狠狠地砸中一位袭击者的面孔，同时他黑色的战马则抬起刚硬的蹄铁扫中另一位对手。一瞬之间，一位骑手已然倒地，另一位也蹒跚退下。蓝骑士把破盾扔下场地，空出左手，静静地面对百花骑士。洛拉斯爵士奔上前来，钢铁的重量丝毫不减其优雅和敏捷，彩虹的披风在身后迎风飞舞。
　　白马和黑马搅作一团，有如丰收舞会上的恋人，只是骑手挥舞兵器而非倾身亲吻。长斧掠过、链锤旋动，两者皆已预先钝化，却仍旧产生可怕的声响。由于少了盾牌，蓝骑士似乎逐渐处于下风。洛拉斯爵士一次又一次照着他的头颅和肩膀挥击，应和着满场“高庭万岁！”的狂热呼喝。蓝骑士则用流星锤竭力还击，可每当锤球击出，都被洛拉斯爵士那面打扁了的、装饰着三朵金玫瑰的绿盾格挡开来。当长柄斧最终击中蓝骑士的手背，把流星锤打飞出去时，群众的情绪达到了高潮，如发情的野兽一样尖声呐喊。一片喧闹中，百花骑士举起长斧，准备最后一击。
　　保护您免遭一切危难蓝骑士冲锋了。两匹战马猛然相撞，钝过的斧刃向伤痕累累的深蓝胸甲砸去……但那蓝骑士却不知从哪儿生出一股劲道，用套着钢甲的手指在空中生生夹住了斧柄。他把斧头从洛拉斯爵士手中扳下，两人扭作一团，突然便双双坠马。两匹战马互相蹬踏，两名战士轰然撞地。洛拉斯·提利尔被压在下面，承受了大部分撞击的力道。蓝骑士顺势拔出一把长匕首，挑开提利尔的面甲。人群的吼声变得如此之大，凯特琳无从听出洛拉斯爵士到底说了什么，不过从那破裂、染血的唇边，她分辨出两个字：投降。
　　蓝骑士摇摇晃晃地站起身子，高举匕首，指向蓝礼·拜拉席恩。这是冠军在向国王致敬。侍从们匆忙奔进场，照料战败的骑士。当他们卸下他的头盔，凯特琳惊讶于他的年轻，只怕比罗柏大不了两岁。这男孩和他妹妹一般秀美，虽然破碎的嘴唇，散乱的目光以及纠结的头发上不住流下的鲜血使他大为失色。
　　“请上前，”蓝礼国王召唤他的冠军。
　　他跛着脚，朝看台移去。由近观之，那身灿烂的蓝甲并不耀眼，在它上面布满创伤，有战锤和钉头打下的凹痕，长剑刻出的凿槽，胸甲和头盔上的瓷釉片片脱落，披风被撕成碎条。从移动的姿势来看，此人本身亦受了不轻的伤。稀稀拉拉有几个人呼喊着：“塔斯万岁！”，或是奇怪地喊着：“美人！美人！”但多数人保持沉默。蓝骑士走到国王面前跪下。“陛下，”他说，隔着砸扁的头盔听来翁声翁气，“你尊贵的父亲大人并没有夸大其辞，”蓝礼的声音响彻全场，“我这辈子，只见洛拉斯爵士被打落过一两次……而且决没有这样子难堪。”
　　“那不是正当的击落下马，”凯特琳身边一位喝醉的弓箭手抱怨，这人上衣缝着提利尔的玫瑰。“只是下流的诡计，把我们的少爷撞下马来。”
　　人潮逐渐疏散。“科棱爵士，”凯特琳对护送她的人说，“这奇男子叫什么名字？为什么人们这么讨厌他？”
　　科棱爵士皱紧眉头。“她根本不是男子，夫人。那是塔斯家族的布蕾妮，”暮之星“塞尔温伯爵的女儿。”
　　“女儿？”凯特琳惊骇莫名。
　　“美人布蕾妮，他们这样称呼她……不过谁都不敢当她面说，否则就得作好决斗的准备啰。”
　　这时，蓝礼国王宣布：塔斯家族的小姐布蕾妮是苦桥团体比武大会的优胜，一百一十六位骑士中的佼佼者。“作为冠军，你可以向我要求任何你想得到的东西。只要我能力所及，就将其赐予与你。”
　　“陛下，”布蕾妮应道，“我向您请求彩虹护卫的荣誉职位。我请求成为您的七卫之一，为您献出我的生命，跟随您到天涯海角，时时刻刻不离左右，保护您免遭一切危难。”
　　“我同意，”他说，“请起，摘下头盔。”
　　她照办了。当那顶巨盔拿掉后，凯特琳终于明白了科棱爵士的暗示。
　　美人布蕾妮，他们这样称呼他……多么可笑。头盔下的发髻，如松鼠用肮脏稻草铺的窝，那张脸……布蕾妮的眼睛又大又蓝，那是少女的眸目，纯真而直率，但除此之外……她的面孔又圆又糙，一排牙齿暴突不齐，嘴宽得可怕，唇肥胖得象毛虫。无数的雀斑密密麻麻地散布在额头和面颊上，她的鼻子看来被打断过好多次。凯特琳心中充满怜惜：在这个世界上，还有什么生物比一个丑陋的女人更为不幸的呢？
　　然而此刻，当蓝礼扯掉她破烂的披风，亲手为她系上崭新的彩虹披风时，塔斯家的布蕾妮却并非是不幸的。她的脸庞洋溢着欢笑，她的声调高亢又骄傲：“我的生命是您的了，陛下。我向新旧诸神起誓，从今天起，我就是您的盾牌。”她望向国王的眼神——准确地说是俯视，尽管蓝礼几乎和他死去的兄长一般身材，她仍比他高了近一个手掌——教人看了心碎。
　　“陛下！”格林普尔家族的科棱爵士策马向看台奔去。“恕我打扰您，陛下，”他单腿跪地。“我很荣幸地为您带来凯特琳·史塔克夫人，她是她儿子临冬城主罗柏·史塔克的信使。”
　　“临冬城主和北境之王，爵士。”凯特琳纠正，同时翻身下马，走到科棱爵士身旁。
　　蓝礼国王似乎很惊讶。“凯特琳夫人？欢迎，欢迎之至！”他回头望向他年轻的王后。“我亲爱的玛格丽，这位便是临冬城的凯特琳·史塔克夫人。”
　　“非常欢迎您，史塔克夫人，”女孩温和有礼地说，“对您亲人的遭遇我感到非常遗憾。”
　　“谢谢您，”凯特琳说。
　　“夫人，我向您起誓，兰尼斯特将为谋害您的丈夫付出代价，”国王声明，“一旦我拿下君临，即刻把瑟曦的人头交给您。”
　　这能让奈德回到我身边吗？她想。“听到您愿意声张正义，我已经心满意足了，大人。”
　　“陛下，”新任的蓝卫布蕾妮尖锐地更正，“而且你应当在国王面前跪下。”
　　“大人和陛下之间的差距比你想象的要小得多，小姐。”凯特琳说。“蓝礼大人戴着王冠，我的儿子也一样。依我看，我们与其站在尘土和泥泞中争论礼仪与头衔，不如马上来谈谈许多更迫切的话题。”
　　听罢此言，蓝礼部下不少贵族蠢蠢欲动，国王本人倒只笑笑，“说得好，夫人。战争结束之后，我们有的是时间讨论‘陛下’的问题。告诉我，您儿子打算何时进军赫伦堡？”
　　除非明了这位国王真实的打算，否则她决不把罗柏的部署向他透漏一星半点。“我并未列席我儿的作战会议，大人。”
　　莫非你已被悲伤所淹没“没关系，我应该感谢他，毕竟他吸引了兰尼斯特大部分的军队。对了，他拿弑君者怎样？”
　　“詹姆·兰尼斯特目前被关在奔流城的牢里。”
　　“还活着？”马图斯·罗宛伯爵惊讶地接口。
　　蓝礼也十分困惑，他说：“看来冰原狼果然比狮子温和。”
　　“比兰尼斯特温和，”奥克赫特伯爵夫人苦笑着呢喃道，“好比比大海干涸。”
　　“我看是懦弱。”蓝道·塔利伯爵留着一把短硬灰胡，说话出了名的耿直。“没有冒犯您的意思，史塔克夫人，但罗柏大人应该亲自前来向国王陛下表示臣服，别要躲在母亲的裙子里。”
　　“罗柏国王正与强敌对抗，大人，”凯特琳冰冷而有礼地回答，“他可不是在比武玩闹。”
　　蓝礼露齿而笑，“放松放松，蓝道大人，别太卤莽了哟。”他招来一名身着风息堡服饰的侍从。“去为夫人的随从安排住所，一定确保他们安全舒适。我将邀请凯特琳夫人住进我自己的营帐。自从好心的卡斯威大人把自己的城堡供给我使用后，营帐已经空了好几天。夫人，您休息好之后，我很荣幸邀请您与我们共进晚餐，参加男爵大人安排的宴会。这是一次送别宴，大人他一定早早盼着我饥肠辘辘的大兵们快些离开哪！”
　　“并非如此，陛下，”一位纤细的年轻人抗议，此人大概便是卡斯威。“我所拥有的一切都属于您。”
　　“每当别人这么对我老哥劳勃说，他总是信以为真，”蓝礼道，“你有女儿吗？”
　　“有的，陛下。有两个。”
　　“那你应该感谢天上诸神，我不是劳勃。全世界的女人，我唯一想要的只是我可爱的王后。”蓝礼伸手抱住玛格丽，扶她起身。“等您养足精神后我们再谈，凯特琳夫人。”
　　蓝礼带着他的新娘朝着城堡走去，他的侍从则把凯特琳带到国王那绿丝绸做的大营帐前。“需要什么，请尽管开口吩咐，夫人。”
　　对这地方凯特琳真是无话可说，我还需要什么？帐里的空间比寻常旅馆的厅堂还大，各种奢侈品比比皆是：羽毛床垫和毛皮睡衣，一个木板镶铜、足够两人共用的大浴缸，用来驱散寒夜冷气的无数炭盆，悬吊起的皮革折椅，摆放着墨水瓶和鹅毛笔的书桌，桌上还林落地摆放有一盘盘桃子、李子和梨子，一圈精致的银杯围绕着一壶葡萄酒，一堆雪松木箱子装满蓝礼的换洗衣物、书籍、作战图、以及一架高竖琴，一把长弓和一袋箭。四周还有一对红尾巴的猎鹰和一堆精心打制的兵器。他真舍不得亏待自己呀，这个蓝礼，她边看边想。难怪他的军队走得这么慢。
　　营帐入口两旁，国王的铠甲哨兵似的矗立：一套森林绿的全身铠，雕镂着金饰，头盔上有两根庞大的金鹿角。甲胄打磨得那么闪亮，以至于她能从胸甲上看清自己的脸庞，那张脸活像深埋在一条又深又绿的河中，瞪望着她。一张被淹死的女人的脸，凯特琳想。莫非你已被悲伤所淹没？她断然转头，痛恨自己的脆弱。哪有余暇来顾影自怜？她必须赶紧洗掉发暨间的灰尘，换好适合国王盛宴的服装啊。
　　与她同往城堡的包括文德尔·曼德勒爵士，卢卡斯·布莱伍德，派温·佛雷爵士等几位贵族。卡斯威城堡的“大厅”其实算不得大，蓝礼的骑士挤满了房间，只能在长凳上为凯特琳的随从安插座位。凯特琳坐上高台，左右分别是红面孔的马图斯·罗宛伯爵和绿苹果佛索威家的琼恩爵士。琼恩爵士待人亲切，爱开玩笑；罗宛爵爷则礼貌地问候她的父亲，弟妹和儿女。
　　塔斯的布蕾妮坐在长桌末端。她并没换上贵妇的礼服，而是穿着骑士的服饰：天鹅绒上衣上缝着玫瑰与苍天的四分纹章，此外还有马裤、靴子和做工优良的剑带，崭新的彩虹披风披在后背。可是，没有衣物能遮掩她平庸的相貌：满是斑点的巨手，又圆又平的脸，暴突的牙齿。没有了铠甲，她的体形看起来也极丑陋，宽阔的臀部，粗壮的大腿，隆起的、肥厚的肩膀，却一点胸部也无。从她的一举一动中，可以看出她自己也深感困扰，并默默地承受苦痛。她只在必要时简短作答，几乎从不把视线自食物上抬开。
　　这里的食物供应的确充足，战火并未触及丰饶繁华的高庭。在歌手和杂耍艺人的表演中，人们首先享用了烈葡萄酒煮的梨子，接着是滚盐炸脆的美味小鱼和填满洋葱、蘑菇的公鸡。随后是大块烤得棕黄的面包，堆积如山的芜箐、甜玉米和豌豆，上等火腿和烤鹅，一盘盘啤酒和大麦墩的野鹿肉装得满溢。至于甜点，卡斯威男爵的仆人们端出一碟蝶由城堡厨房精制的糕饼，有奶油天鹅，糖丝独角兽，玫瑰状的柠檬蛋糕，加香料的蜂蜜饼干，黑莓馅饼，苹果酥，黄油乳酪等等丰盛的晚宴并未提振凯特琳的食欲，但眼下，她的使命成功与否全赖于她的坚强，丝毫不能展现脆弱。于是一点一点，她吃了下去，一边留心观察这个称王的人。蓝礼左边坐着他年轻的新娘，右手是新娘的哥哥。虽然洛拉斯爵士的额上还绑着白色的亚麻绷带，但他整个人已完全从日间的不幸中恢复过来。他正如凯特琳料想的那么英俊。他的眼神不再呆滞，而变得聪明伶俐、灵动有神；他那一头自然卷曲的漂亮棕发，不知会让多少少女羡慕不已。比武时那件破烂的披风已被一件新的取而代之——这是蓝礼彩虹护卫华丽的条纹丝披风，钩扣是高庭的金玫瑰蓝礼国王不时拿匕首尖挑食物给玛格丽，或俯身轻柔地在她脸上印下一吻，但大部分时间都花在和洛拉斯爵士玩笑戏语，或说悄悄话上。显然，国王很享受食物和美酒，但他并没有酗酒或滥吃。他不时开怀大笑，不论与出身高贵的领主，还是地位卑贱的女仆，他都能亲切交谈。
　　她已成为真正的女人有些宾客就没那么收敛了。他们喝得太多，声音太吵，使她不得安宁。威廉伯爵的儿子乔苏拉和埃利斯为谁将第一个翻过君临的城墙而争论不休；瓦尔纳伯爵将一名女侍抱到膝盖上，用鼻子拱她的颈项，一边将手伸进对方胸衣；绿衣卫古德自诩为歌手，正在拨弄竖琴，演奏一曲狮子尾巴打结的歌；马克·穆伦道尔爵士逗着一只黑白相间的猴子，拿自己餐盘里的东西喂它；最夸张的要数红苹果佛索威家的坦通爵士，他跳到桌上，发誓要在一对一决斗中干掉桑铎·克里冈。若不是这位爵士的一只脚刚巧插进了调味瓶，人们还不会笑得那么厉害。
　　当一位肥胖的弄臣从镀金的锡桶中跳出，头戴布制狮子帽，绕着桌子追逐一名侏儒，拿起气球打击对方的头颅时，这场闹剧达到了高潮。蓝礼国王笑完后询问弄臣为何追打自己的“兄弟”。“哎呀，陛下，我是弑亲者呢，”弄臣回答。
　　“是弑君者！你这傻瓜中的傻瓜。”蓝礼道，全场哄堂大笑。
　　坐在她身边的罗宛伯爵没有加入嬉闹。“他们好年轻，”他道。
　　是啊。当劳勃在三叉戟河上斩杀雷加王子时，百花骑士还不满两岁。他们中的大多数人也都是这个年纪。君临城陷时，他们尚为婴孩，铁群岛的巴隆·葛雷乔伊起兵时，他们还在安享无忧无虑的童年。他们从未见识血光沙场，凯特琳一边看着布莱斯伯爵怂恿罗拔爵士表演匕首特技，心里一边想。对他们而言，这不过是场游戏，一场盛大的比武会，而他们将在其中猎获光辉、荣誉和宠幸。他们是沉溺于歌谣和故事的小孩，小孩子总以为自己力大无穷。
　　“他们会在战争中长大成熟，”凯特琳道，“就和我们一样。”当劳勃，奈德和艾林举起叛旗，对抗伊里斯·坦格利安时，她自己也是个小女孩。但等战争结束，她已成为真正的女人。“我怜悯他们。”
　　“为什么？”罗宛伯爵问她，“瞧瞧他们，年轻力壮，充满生机和欢笑。哈，活力充沛，充沛到他们不知如何是好。我敢说，今夜又会有无数私生子出世。为何要怜悯他们？”
　　“因为这不会久长，”凯特琳悲伤地回答，“因为他们是夏天的骑士，而凛冬将至。”
　　“你错了，凯特琳夫人，”布蕾妮用和铠甲一般深蓝的眼睛打量着她，“我们是夏天的骑士，对我们而言，凛冬永不会到来。即便在战斗中牺牲，也会有歌谣传唱我们的事迹。在歌谣里，永远都是夏天。在歌谣里，所有的骑士都是英雄，所有的少女都是美人，阳光则永远普照大地。”
　　孩子，不论你情愿与否，凛冬终将降临到每个人身边，凯特琳心想。对我而言，它降临在奈德横死的那一刻；对你而言，它也将降临，只怕会快得超乎你的想象。她没有心情去探讨这个话题国王替她接了围。“凯特琳夫人，”蓝礼唤道。“我想呼吸新鲜空气，陪我出去走走好吗？”
　　凯特琳立刻起身。“荣幸之至。”
　　布蕾妮也跟着起立。“陛下，您不能没有保护。请稍等片刻，容我穿戴铠甲。”
　　蓝礼国王微笑：“如果我在卡斯威爵爷的城堡深处，在我全部军队的包围下都不安全，那么多一把剑又有什么用呢……即便那是你的剑，布蕾妮。请坐下来好好用餐。需要你的时候，我自会召唤。”
　　他的言语给她的打击比她今天下午在武场上承受的任何一记都要深重。“遵命，陛下。”她垂头丧气地坐下来，不再抬眼。蓝礼挽起凯特琳的手臂，带她离开大厅，路遇一名无精打采的卫兵。对方一见他连忙立正，差点没把长矛松脱。蓝礼拍拍兵士的肩膀，跟他说了句俏皮话。
　　“请这边走，夫人。”国王带她穿过一道矮门，来到一座塔楼的阶梯前。接着他们向上爬去，途中他说：“呃，只怕巴利斯坦·塞尔弥爵士和您儿子一块待在奔流城吧？”
　　“没有，”她困惑地答道，“难道他不在乔佛里身边？他可是御林铁卫的队长啊。”
　　蓝礼摇头。“兰尼斯特嫌他老迈，将他的披风给了猎狗。听说他离开君临时，发誓为真正的国王继续服务。今日下午布蕾妮要求的那件披风，原本是我留给塞尔弥的，希望他能投奔于我。他一直没在高庭出现，我猜想他或许去了奔流城。”
　　“我们没见到他。”
　　“唉，他老则老矣，可确实是个好人。但愿他别受什么伤害。兰尼斯特都是些大混蛋。”他们又上几级阶梯。“劳勃逝世当晚，我打算用手下百名卫士援助您丈夫，我劝他把乔佛里控制起来。如果他听了我的话，眼下他就是摄政王，我也不必出兵去争夺王位了。”
　　“奈德拒绝了你。”这还用说吗？
　　“他发誓保护劳勃的孩子，”蓝礼说。“而我没有独自起事的实力。所以一当艾德大人赶走了我，我只能抓紧时间，一走了之。如果不走，王后会让我和我哥死在一起。”
　　如果你留在君临，全力支持奈德，他一定还活着，凯特琳苦涩地想。
　　“我很欣赏您丈夫，夫人。他一直都是劳勃最忠实的朋友，我明白……但恕我直言，他脑筋太死，不懂能屈能伸的道理。现在，让我给您展示一番。”阶梯到了尽头，蓝礼推开一扇木门，带她踱到屋顶。
　　卡斯威男爵的堡垒其实没有高到可以称为塔楼的程度，只因四周都是平坦空旷的原野，凯特琳才能极目眺望遥远的地平线。不论望向何方，惟有焰火可见。火焰如同坠落的繁星，覆盖四野，组合成无穷无尽的星辰大海。“夫人，请您好好算算。”蓝礼平静地说，“即便数到旭日东升也数不完。奔流城夜间有多少营火，能告诉我吗？”
　　凯特琳听着隐隐约约的音乐声从大厅里渗透而出，发散于夜空之中。她不敢去点数那繁星。
　　“听说您儿子越过颈泽时身边跟了两万人马，”蓝礼续道，“现在三河诸侯也追随他，或许他有了四万人。”
　　没有，她想，相去甚远，我们打仗折了不少兵马，还有的回家忙收获去了。
　　“而在这里，我有两倍于此的军队，”蓝礼道，“这还仅是我手下大军的一部分。梅斯·提利尔带着一万兵士留守高庭，另一支强大的队伍替我看守风息堡，不久多恩人也定将带着他们的军力加入我方。还有，别忘了我哥哥史坦尼斯，他拥有龙石岛，统御狭海诸侯。”
　　“忘了史坦尼斯的恐怕正是您吧，”凯特琳道，话一出口，方才觉得过于尖锐。
　　“您指的是……他的继承权？”蓝礼大笑。“就让我们直说吧，夫人。史坦尼斯要当上国王那才叫可怕。不，他不适合当国王。人们尊敬他，甚至畏惧他，但没有人喜欢他。”
　　“可他仍旧是你的兄长。如果你们兄弟俩真有这个权利要求铁王座，那也应当是史坦尼斯大人。”
　　蓝礼耸耸肩。“告诉我，我老哥劳勃有什么权利要求铁王座？”他没有等她回答。“噢，的确人们传说拜拉席恩家族和坦格利安家之间有血亲关系，数百年前的联姻，私生次子和老王的大女儿……除了学士谁在乎这个？不，劳勃得到王座靠的是他的战锤。”他伸出手臂，扫过无边无际的篝火。“是的，这就是我的权利，和劳勃当初一样。如果您儿子象他父亲支持劳勃一般支持我，他将发现我是个慷慨的人。我会乐于承认他的一切领地、头衔和荣誉。只要他高兴，他可以永远统治临冬城。如果他愿意，他甚至可以保留北境之王的称号。只需他向我屈膝臣服，承认我是他的主人。国王的称呼不过就是一句话，而顺从，忠诚，服务……这些才是我的目的。”
　　“如果他不愿把这些给您呢，大人？”
　　“我想当个国王，夫人，并且决不要一个肢解的王国。我说得还不够明白吗？三百年前，一位史塔克的王向龙王伊耿屈膝，因为他知道自己没机会成功。这是明智之举。您儿子为何就不能当个明理的人呢？只要他投入我帐下，便能底定大局。我们——”蓝礼突然停下，烦乱地望着前方。“怎么回事？”
　　铁链的卡嗒声宣告闸门正被升起。在下方的院落，一位带着有翼头盔的骑手猛力催促着他那匹气喘吁吁的坐骑。“有急事禀报王上！”他高喊。
　　蓝礼从城垛口探出头。“我在这里，爵士。”
　　“陛下。”骑手踢马靠前。“我尽了最大努力赶来。从风息堡。我们被包围了，陛下，科塔奈爵士正与他们交战，但是……”
　　“这……这不可能。泰温大人离开赫伦堡，我怎会一无所知？”
　　“不是兰尼斯特，主公。是史坦尼斯公爵兵临城下。现在，他自称为：史坦尼斯国王。”
[ 此帖被挽墨在2015-08-27 13:39重新编辑 ]
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你看着眼前的人，分明还是以前的模样，可心里终究不是以前那般澄清透明了。
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CHAPTER 23
　　JON
　　A blowing rain lashed at Jon’s face as he spurred his horse across the swollen stream. Beside him, Lord Commander Mormont gave the hood of his cloak a tug, muttering curses on the weather. His raven sat on his shoulder, feathers ruffled, as soaked and grumpy as the Old Bear himself. A gust of wind sent wet leaves flapping round them like a flock of dead birds. The haunted forest, Jon thought ruefully. The drowned forest, more like it.
　　He hoped Sam was holding up, back down the column. He was not a good rider even in fair weather, and six days of rain had made the ground treacherous, all soft mud and hidden rocks. When the wind blew, it drove the water right into their eyes. The Wall would be flowing off to the south, the melting ice mingling with warm rain to wash down in sheets and rivers. Pyp and Toad would be sitting near the fire in the common room, drinking cups of mulled wine before their supper. Jon envied them. His wet wool clung to him sodden and itching, his neck and shoulders ached fiercely from the weight of mail and sword, and he was sick of salt cod, salt beef, and hard cheese.
　　Up ahead a hunting horn sounded a quavering note, half drowned beneath the constant patter of the rain. “Buckwell’s horn,” the Old Bear announced. “The gods are good; Craster’s still there.” His raven gave a single flap of his big wings, croaked “Corn,” and ruffled his feathers up again.
　　Jon had often heard the black brothers tell tales of Craster and his keep. Now he would see it with his own eyes. After seven empty villages, they had all come to dread finding Craster’s as dead and desolate as the rest, but it seemed they would be spared that. Perhaps the Old Bear will finally get some answers, he thought. Anyway, we’ll be out of the rain.
　　Thoren Smallwood swore that Craster was a friend to the Watch, despite his unsavory reputation. “The man’s half-mad, I won’t deny it,” he’d told the Old Bear, “but you’d be the same if you’d spent your life in this cursed wood. Even so, he’s never turned a ranger away from his fire, nor does he love Mance Rayder. He’ll give us good counsel.”
　　So long as he gives us a hot meal and a chance to dry our clothes, I’ll be happy. Dywen said Craster was a kinslayer, liar, raper, and craven, and hinted that he trafficked with slavers and demons. “And worse,” the old forester would add, clacking his wooden teeth. “There’s a cold smell to that one, there is.”
　　“Jon,” Lord Mormont commanded, “ride back along the column and spread the word. And remind the officers that I want no trouble about Craster’s wives. The men are to mind their hands and speak to these women as little as need be.”
　　“Aye, my lord.” Jon turned his horse back the way they’d come. It was pleasant to have the rain out of his face, if only for a little while. Everyone he passed seemed to be weeping. The march was strung out through half a mile of woods. In the midst of the baggage train, Jon passed Samwell Tarly, slumped in his saddle under a wide floppy hat. He was riding one dray horse and leading the others. The drumming of the rain against the hoods of their cages had the ravens squawking and fluttering. “You put a fox in with them?” Jon called out.
　　Water ran off the brim of Sam’s hat as he lifted his head. “Oh, hullo, Jon. No, they just hate the rain, the same as us.”
　　“How are you faring, Sam?”
　　“Wetly.” The fat boy managed a smile. “Nothing has killed me yet, though.”
　　“Good. Craster’s Keep is just ahead. If the gods are good, he’ll let us sleep by his fire.”
　　Sam looked dubious. “Dolorous Edd says Craster’s a terrible savage. He marries his daughters and obeys no laws but those he makes himself. And Dywen told Grenn he’s got black blood in his veins. His mother was a wildling woman who lay with a ranger, so he’s a bas . . .” Suddenly he realized what he was about to say.
　　“A bastard,” Jon said with a laugh. “You can say it, Sam. I’ve heard the word before.” He put the spurs to his surefooted little garron. “I need to hunt down Ser Ottyn. Be careful around Craster’s women.” As if Samwell Tarly needed warning on that score. “We’ll talk later, after we’ve made camp.”
　　Jon carried the word back to Ser Ottyn Wythers, plodding along with the rear guard. A small prune-faced man of an age with Mormont, Ser Ottyn always looked tired, even at Castle Black, and the rain had beaten him down unmercifully. “Welcome tidings,” he said. “This wet has soaked my bones, and even my saddle sores complain of saddle sores.”
　　On his way back, Jon swung wide of the column’s line of march and took a shorter path through the thick of the wood. The sounds of man and horse diminished, swallowed up by the wet green wild, and soon enough he could hear only the steady wash of rain against leaf and tree and rock. It was midafternoon, yet the forest seemed as dark as dusk. Jon wove a path between rocks and puddles, past great oaks, grey-green sentinels, and black-barked ironwoods. In places the branches wove a canopy overhead and he was given a moment’s respite from the drumming of the rain against his head. As he rode past a lightning-blasted chestnut tree overgrown with wild white roses, he heard something rustling in the underbrush. “Ghost,” he called out. “Ghost, to me.”
　　But it was Dywen who emerged from the greenery, forking a shaggy grey garron with Grenn ahorse beside him. The Old Bear had deployed outriders to either side of the main column, to screen their march and warn of the approach of any enemies, and even there he took no chances, sending the men out in pairs.
　　“Ah, it’s you, Lord Snow.” Dywen smiled an oaken smile; his teeth were carved of wood, and fit badly. “Thought me and the boy had us one o’ them Others to deal with. Lose your wolf?”
　　“He’s off hunting.” Ghost did not like to travel with the column, but he would not be far. When they made camp for the night, he’d find his way to Jon at the Lord Commander’s tent.
　　“Fishing, I’d call it, in this wet,” Dywen said. “My mother always said rain was good for growing crops,” Grenn put in hopefully.
　　“Aye, a good crop of mildew,” Dywen said. “The best thing about a rain like this, it saves a man from taking baths.” He made a clacking sound on his wooden teeth.
　　“Buckwell’s found Craster,” Jon told them.
　　“Had he lost him?” Dywen chuckled. “See that you young bucks don’t go nosing about Craster’s wives, you hear?”
　　Jon smiled. “Want them all for yourself, Dywen?”
　　Dywen clacked his teeth some more. “Might be I do. Craster’s got ten fingers and one cock, so he don’t count but to eleven. He’d never miss a couple.”
　　“How many wives does he have, truly?” Grenn asked.
　　“More’n you ever will, brother. Well, it’s not so hard when you breed your own. There’s your beast, Snow.”
　　Ghost was trotting along beside Jon’s horse with tail held high, his white fur ruffed up thick against the rain. He moved so silently Jon could not have said just when he appeared. Grenn’s mount shied at the scent of him; even now, after more than a year, the horses were uneasy in the presence of the direwolf. “With me, Ghost.” Jon spurred off to Craster’s Keep.
　　He had never thought to find a stone castle on the far side of the Wall, but he had pictured some sort of motte-and-bailey with a wooden palisade and a timber tower keep. What they found instead was a midden heap, a pigsty, an empty sheepfold, and a windowless daub-and-wattle hall scarce worthy of the name. It was long and low, chinked together from logs and roofed with sod. The compound stood atop a rise too modest to name a hill, surrounded by an earthen dike. Brown rivulets flowed down the slope where the rain had eaten gaping holes in the defenses, to join a rushing brook that curved around to the north, its thick waters turned into a murky torrent by the rains.
　　On the southwest, he found an open gate flanked by a pair of animal skulls on high poles: a bear to one side, a ram to the other. Bits of flesh still clung to the bear skull, Jon noted as he joined the line riding past. Within, Jarmen Buckwell’s scouts and men from Thoren Smallwood’s van were setting up horse lines and struggling to raise tents. A host of piglets rooted about three huge sows in the sty. Nearby, a small girl pulled carrots from a garden, naked in the rain, while two women tied a pig for slaughter. The animal’s squeals were high and horrible, almost human in their distress. Chett’s hounds barked wildly in answer, snarling and snapping despite his curses, with a pair of Craster’s dogs barking back. When they saw Ghost, some of the dogs broke off and ran, while others began to bay and growl. The direwolf ignored them, as did Jon.
　　Well, thirty of us will be warm and dry, Jon thought once he’d gotten a good look at the hall. Perhaps as many as fifty. The place was much too small to sleep two hundred men, so most would need to remain outside. And where to put them? The rain had turned half the compound yard to ankle-deep puddles and the rest to sucking mud. Another dismal night was in prospect.
　　The Lord Commander had entrusted his mount to Dolorous Edd. He was cleaning mud out of the horse’s hooves as Jon dismounted. “Lord Mormont’s in the hall,” he announced. “He said for you to join him. Best leave the wolf outside, he looks hungry enough to eat one of Craster’s children. Well, truth be told, I’m hungry enough to eat one of Craster’s children, so long as he was served hot. Go on, I’ll see to your horse. If it’s warm and dry inside, don’t tell me, I wasn’t asked in.” He flicked a glob of wet mud out from under a horseshoe. “Does this mud look like shit to you? Could it be that this whole hill is made of Craster’s shit?”
　　Jon smiled. “Well, I hear he’s been here a long time,”
　　“You cheer me not. Go see the Old Bear.”
　　“Ghost, stay,” he commanded. The door to Craster’s Keep was made of two flaps of deerhide. Jon shoved between them, stooping to pass under the low lintel. Two dozen of the chief rangers had preceded him, and were standing around the firepit in the center of the dirt floor while puddles collected about their boots. The hall stank of soot, dung, and wet dog. The air was heavy with smoke, yet somehow still damp. Rain leaked through the smoke hole in the roof. It was all a single room, with a sleeping loft above reached by a pair of splintery ladders.
　　Jon remembered how he’d felt the day they had left the Wall: nervous as a maiden, but eager to glimpse the mysteries and wonders beyond each new horizon. Well, here’s one of the wonders, he told himself, gazing about the squalid, foul-smelling hall. The acrid smoke was making his eyes water. A pity that Pyp and Toad can’t see all they’re missing.
　　Craster sat above the fire, the only man to enjoy his own chair. Even Lord Commander Mormont must seat himself on the common bench, with his raven muttering on his shoulder. Jarman Buckwell stood behind, dripping from patched mail and shiny wet leather, beside Thoren Smallwood in the late Ser Jaremy’s heavy breastplate and sable-trimmed cloak.
　　Craster’s sheepskin jerkin and cloak of sewn skins made a shabby contrast, but around one thick wrist was a heavy ring that had the glint of gold. He looked to be a powerful man, though well into the winter of his days now, his mane of hair grey going to white. A flat nose and a drooping mouth gave him a cruel look, and one of his ears was missing. So this is a wildling. Jon remembered Old Nan’s tales of the savage folk who drank blood from human skulls. Craster seemed to be drinking a thin yellow beer from a chipped stone cup. Perhaps he had not heard the stories.
　　“I’ve not seen Benjen Stark for three years,” he was telling Mormont. “And if truth be told, I never once missed him.” A half-dozen black puppies and the odd pig or two skulked among the benches, while women in ragged deerskins passed horns of beer, stirred the fire, and chopped carrots and onions into a kettle.
　　“He ought to have passed here last year,” said Thoren Smallwood. A dog came sniffing round his leg. He kicked it and sent it off yipping.
　　Lord Mormont said, “Ben was searching for Ser Waymar Royce, who’d vanished with Gared and young Will.”
　　“Aye, those three I recall. The lordling no older than one of these pups. Too proud to sleep under my roof, him in his sable cloak and black steel. My wives give him big cow eyes all the same.” He turned his squint on the nearest of the women. “Gared says they were chasing raiders. I told him, with a commander that green, best not catch ‘em. Gared wasn’t half-bad, for a crow. Had less ears than me, that one. The ‘bite took ‘em, same as mine.” Craster laughed. “Now I hear he got no head neither. The ‘bite do that too?”
　　Jon remembered a spray of red blood on white snow, and the way Theon Greyjoy had kicked the dead man’s head. The man was a deserter. On the way back to Winterfell, Jon and Robb had raced, and found six direwolf pups in the snow. A thousand years ago.
　　“When Ser Waymar left you, where was he bound?”
　　Craster gave a shrug. “Happens I have better things to do than tend to the comings and goings of crows.” He drank a pull of beer and set the cup aside. “Had no good southron wine up here for a bear’s night. I could use me some wine, and a new axe. Mine’s lost its bite, can’t have that, I got me women to protect.” He gazed around at his scurrying wives.
　　“You are few here, and isolated,” Mormont said. “If you like, I’ll detail some men to escort you south to the Wall.”
　　The raven seemed to like the notion. “Wall,” it screamed, spreading black wings like a high collar behind Mormont’s head.
　　Their host gave a nasty smile, showing a mouthful of broken brown teeth. “And what would we do there, serve you at supper? We’re free folk here. Craster serves no man.”
　　“These are bad times to dwell alone in the wild. The cold winds are rising.”
　　“Let them rise. My roots are sunk deep.” Craster grabbed a passing woman by the wrist. “Tell him, wife. Tell the Lord Crow how well content we are.”
　　The woman licked at thin lips. “This is our place. Craster keeps us safe. Better to die free than live a slave.”
　　“Slave,” muttered the raven.
　　Mormont leaned forward. “Every village we have passed has been abandoned. Yours are the first living faces we’ve seen since we left the Wall. The people are gone . . . whether dead, fled, or taken, I could not say. The animals as well. Nothing is left. And earlier, we found the bodies of two of Ben Stark’s rangers only a few leagues from the Wall. They were pale and cold, with black hands and black feet and wounds that did not bleed. Yet when we took them back to Castle Black they rose in the night and killed. One slew Ser Jaremy Rykker and the other came for me, which tells me that they remember some of what they knew when they lived, but there was no human mercy left in them.”
　　The woman’s mouth hung open, a wet pink cave, but Craster only gave a snort. “We’ve had no such troubles here . . . and I’ll thank you not to tell such evil tales under my roof. I’m a godly man, and the gods keep me safe. If wights come walking, I’ll know how to send them back to their graves. Though I could use me a sharp new axe.” He sent his wife scurrying with a slap on her leg and a shout of “More beer, and be quick about it.”
　　“No trouble from the dead,” Jarmen Buckwell said, “but what of the living, my lord? What of your king?”
　　“King!” cried Mormont’s raven. “King, king, king.”
　　“That Mance Rayder?” Craster spit into the fire. “King-beyond-the-Wall. What do free folk want with kings?” He turned his squint on Mormont. “There’s much I could tell you o’ Rayder and his doings, if I had a mind. This o’ the empty villages, that’s his work. You would have found this hall abandoned as well, if I were a man to scrape to such. He sends a rider, tells me I must leave my own keep to come grovel at his feet. I sent the man back, but kept his tongue. It’s nailed to that wall there.” He pointed. “Might be that I could tell you where to seek Mance Rayder. If I had a mind.” The brown smile again. “But we’ll have time enough for that. You’ll be wanting to sleep beneath my roof, belike, and eat me out of pigs.”
　　“A roof would be most welcome, my lord,” Mormont said. “We’ve had hard riding, and too much wet.”
　　“Then you’ll guest here for a night. No longer, I’m not that fond o’ crows. The loft’s for me and mine, but you’ll have all the floor you like. I’ve meat and beer for twenty, no more. The rest o’ your black crows can peck after their own corn.”
　　“We’ve packed in our own supplies, my lord,” said the Old Bear. “We should be pleased to share our food and wine.”
　　Craster wiped his drooping mouth with the back of a hairy hand. “I’ll taste your wine, Lord Crow, that I will. One more thing. Any man lays a hand on my wives, he loses the hand.”
　　“Your roof, your rule,” said Thoren Smallwood, and Lord Mormont nodded stiffly, though he looked none too pleased.
　　“That’s settled, then.” Craster grudged them a grunt. “D’ya have a man can draw a map?”
　　“Sam Tarly can.” Jon pushed forward. “Sam loves maps.”
　　Mormont beckoned him closer. “Send him here after he’s eaten. Have him bring quill and parchment. And find Tollett as well. Tell him to bring my axe. A guest gift for our host.”
　　“Who’s this one now?” Craster said before Jon could go. “He has the look of a Stark.”
　　“My steward and squire, Jon Snow.”
　　“A bastard, is it?” Craster looked Jon up and down. “Man wants to bed a woman, seems like he ought to take her to wife. That’s what I do.” He shooed Jon off with a wave. “Well, run and do your service, bastard, and see that axe is good and sharp now, I’ve no use for dull steel.”
　　Jon Snow bowed stiffly and took his leave. Ser Ottyn Wythers was coming in as he was leaving, and they almost collided at the deerhide door. Outside, the rain seemed to have slackened. Tents had gone up all over the compound. Jon could see the tops of others under the trees.
　　Dolorous Edd was feeding the horses. “Give the wildling an axe, why not?” He pointed out Mormont’s weapon, a shorthafted battle-axe with gold scrollwork inlaid on the black steel blade. “He’ll give it back, I vow. Buried in the Old Bear’s skull, like as not. Why not give him all our axes, and our swords as well? I mislike the way they clank and rattle as we ride. We’d travel faster without them, straight to hell’s door. Does it rain in hell, I wonder? Perhaps Craster would like a nice hat instead.”
　　Jon smiled. “He wants an axe. And wine as well.”
　　“See, the Old Bear’s clever. If we get the wildling well and truly drunk, perhaps he’ll only cut off an ear when he tries to slay us with that axe. I have two ears but only one head.”
　　“Smallwood says Craster is a friend to the Watch.”
　　“Do you know the difference between a wildling who’s a friend to the Watch and one who’s not?” asked the dour squire. “Our enemies leave our bodies for the crows and the wolves. Our friends bury us in secret graves. I wonder how long that bear’s been nailed up on that gate, and what Craster had there before we came hallooing?” Edd looked at the axe doubtfully, the rain running down his long face. “Is it dry in there?”
　　“Drier than out here.”
　　“If I lurk about after, not too close to the fire, belike they’ll take no note of me till morn. The ones under his roof will be the first he murders, but at least we’ll die dry.”
　　Jon had to laugh. “Craster’s one man. We’re two hundred. I doubt he’ll murder anyone.”
　　“You cheer me,” said Edd, sounding utterly morose. “And besides, there’s much to be said for a good sharp axe. I’d hate to be murdered with a maul. I saw a man hit in the brow with a maul once. Scarce split the skin at all, but his head turned mushy and swelled up big as a gourd, only purply-red. A comely man, but he died ugly. It’s good that we’re not giving them mauls.” Edd walked away shaking his head, his sodden black cloak shedding rain behind him.
　　Jon got the horses fed before he stopped to think of his own supper. He was wondering where to find Sam when he heard a shout of fear. “Wolf!” He sprinted around the hall toward the cry, the earth sucking at his boots. One of Craster’s women was backed up against the mud-spattered wall of the keep. “Keep away,” she was shouting at Ghost. “You keep away!” The direwolf had a rabbit in his mouth and another dead and bloody on the ground before him. “Get it away, m’lord,” she pleaded when she saw him.
　　“He won’t hurt you.” He knew at once what had happened; a wooden hutch, its slats shattered, lay on its side in the wet grass. “He must have been hungry. We haven’t seen much game.” Jon whistled. The direwolf bolted down the rabbit, crunching the small bones between his teeth, and padded over to him.
　　The woman regarded them with nervous eyes. She was younger than he’d thought at first. A girl of fifteen or sixteen years, he judged, dark hair plastered across a gaunt face by the falling rain, her bare feet muddy to the ankles. The body under the sewn skins was showing in the early turns of pregnancy. “Are you one of Craster’s daughters?” he asked.
　　She put a hand over her belly. “Wife now.” Edging away from the wolf, she knelt mournfully beside the broken hutch. “I was going to breed them rabbits. There’s no sheep left.”
　　“The Watch will make good for them.” Jon had no coin of his own, or he would have offered it to her . . . though he was not sure what good a few coppers or even a silver piece would do her beyond the Wall. “I’ll speak to Lord Mormont on the morrow.”
　　She wiped her hands on her skirt. “M’lord—”
　　“I’m no lord.”
　　But others had come crowding round, drawn by the woman’s scream and the crash of the rabbit hutch. “Don’t you believe him, girl,” called out Lark the Sisterman, a ranger mean as a cur. “That’s Lord Snow himself.”
　　“Bastard of Winterfell and brother to kings,” mocked Chett, who’d left his hounds to see what the commotion was about.
　　“That wolf’s looking at you hungry, girl,” Lark said. “Might be it fancies that tender bit in your belly.”
　　Jon was not amused. “You’re scaring her.”
　　“Warning her, more like.” Chett’s grin was as ugly as the boils that covered most of his face.
　　“We’re not to talk to you,” the girl remembered suddenly.
　　“Wait,” Jon said, too late. She bolted, ran.
　　Lark made a grab for the second rabbit, but Ghost was quicker. When he bared his teeth, the Sisterman slipped in the mud and went down on his bony butt. The others laughed. The direwolf took the rabbit in his mouth and brought it to Jon.
　　“There was no call to scare the girl,” he told them.
　　“We’ll hear no scolds from you, bastard.” Chett blamed Jon for the loss of his comfortable position with Maester Aemon, and not without justice. If he had not gone to Aemon about Sam Tarly, Chett would still be tending an old blind man instead of a pack of ill-tempered hunting hounds. “You may be the Lord Commander’s pet, but you’re not the Lord Commander . . . and you wouldn’t talk so bloody bold without that monster of yours always about.”
　　“I’ll not fight a brother while we’re beyond the Wall,” Jon answered, his voice cooler than he felt.
　　Lark got to one knee. “He’s afraid of you, Chett. On the Sisters, we have a name for them like him.”
　　“I know all the names. Save your breath.” He walked away, Ghost at his side. The rain had dwindled to a thin drizzle by the time he reached the gate. Dusk would be on them soon, followed by another wet dark dismal night. The clouds would hide moon and stars and Mormont’s Torch, turning the woods black as pitch. Every piss would be an adventure, if not quite of the sort Jon Snow had once envisioned.
　　Out under the trees, some rangers had found enough duff and dry wood to start a fire beneath a slanting ridge of slate. Others had raised tents or made rude shelters by stretching their cloaks over low branches. Giant had crammed himself inside the hollow of a dead oak. “How d’ye like my castle, Lord Snow?”
　　“It looks snug. You know where Sam is?”
　　“Keep on the way you were. If you come on Ser Ottyn’s pavilion, you’ve gone too far.” Giant smiled. “Unless Sam’s found him a tree too. What a tree that would be.”
　　It was Ghost who found Sam in the end. The direwolf shot ahead like a quarrel from a crossbow. Under an outcrop of rock that gave some small degree of shelter from the rain, Sam was feeding the ravens. His boots squished when he moved. “My feet are soaked through,” he admitted miserably. “When I climbed off my horse, I stepped in a hole and went in up to my knees.”
　　“Take off your boots and dry your stockings. I’ll find some dry wood. If the ground’s not wet under the rock, we might be able to get a fire burning.” Jon showed Sam the rabbit. “And we’ll feast.”
　　“Won’t you be attending Lord Mormont in the hall?”
　　“No, but you will. The Old Bear wants you to map for him. Craster says he’ll find Mance Rayder for us.”
　　“Oh.” Sam did not look anxious to meet Craster, even if it meant a warm fire.
　　“He said eat first, though. Dry your feet.” Jon went to gather fuel, digging down under deadfalls for the drier wood beneath and peeling back layers of sodden pine needles until he found likely kindling. Even then, it seemed to take forever for a spark to catch. He hung his cloak from the rock to keep the rain off his smoky little fire, making them a small snug alcove.
　　As he knelt to skin the rabbit, Sam pulled off his boots. “I think there’s moss growing between my toes,” he declared mournfully, wriggling the toes in question. “The rabbit will taste good. I don’t even mind about the blood and all.” He looked away. “Well, only a little . . .”
　　Jon spitted the carcass, banked the fire with a pair of rocks, and balanced their meal atop them. The rabbit had been a scrawny thing, but as it cooked it smelled like a king’s feast. Other rangers gave them envious looks. Even Ghost looked up hungrily, flames shining in his red eyes as he sniffed. “You had yours before,” Jon reminded him.
　　“Is Craster as savage as the rangers say?” Sam asked. The rabbit was a shade underdone, but tasted wonderful. “What’s his castle like?”
　　“A midden heap with a roof and a firepit.” Jon told Sam what he had seen and heard in Craster’s Keep.
　　By the time the telling was done, it was dark outside and Sam was licking his fingers. “That was good, but now I’d like a leg of lamb. A whole leg, just for me, sauced with mint and honey and cloves. Did you see any lambs?”
　　“There was a sheepfold, but no sheep.”
　　“How does he feed all his men?”
　　“I didn’t see any men, just Craster and his women and a few small girls. I wonder he’s able to hold the place. His defenses were nothing to speak of, only a muddy dike. You had better go up to the hall and draw that map. Can you find the way?”
　　“If I don’t fall in the mud.” Sam struggled back into his boots, collected quill and parchment, and shouldered out into the night, the rain pattering down on his cloak and floppy hat.
　　Ghost laid his head on his paws and went to sleep by the fire. Jon stretched out beside him, grateful for the warmth. He was cold and wet, but not so cold and wet as he’d been a short time before. Perhaps tonight the Old Bear will learn something that will lead us to Uncle Benjen.
　　He woke to the sight of his own breath misting in the cold morning air. When he moved, his bones ached. Ghost was gone, the fire burnt out. Jon reached to pull aside the cloak he’d hung over the rock, and found it stiff and frozen. He crept beneath it and stood up in a forest turned to crystal.
　　The pale pink light of dawn sparkled on branch and leaf and stone. Every blade of grass was carved from emerald, every drip of water turned to diamond. Flowers and mushrooms alike wore coats of glass. Even the mud puddles had a bright brown sheen. Through the shimmering greenery, the black tents of his brothers were encased in a fine glaze of ice.
　　So there is magic beyond the Wall after all. He found himself thinking of his sisters, perhaps because he’d dreamed of them last night. Sansa would call this an enchantment, and tears would fill her eyes at the wonder of it, but Arya would run out laughing and shouting, wanting to touch it all.
　　“Lord Snow?” he heard. Soft and meek. He turned.
　　Crouched atop the rock that had sheltered him during the night was the rabbit keeper, wrapped in a black cloak so large it drowned her. Sam’s cloak, Jon realized at once. Why is she wearing Sam’s cloak? “The fat one told me I’d find you here, m’lord,” she said.
　　“We ate the rabbit, if that’s what you came for.” The admission made him feel absurdly guilty.
　　“Old Lord Crow, him with the talking bird, he gave Craster a crossbow worth a hundred rabbits.” Her arms closed over the swell of her belly. “Is it true, m’lord? Are you brother to a king?”
　　“A half brother,” he admitted. “I’m Ned Stark’s bastard. My brother Robb is the King in the North. Why are you here?”
　　“The fat one, that Sam, he said to see you. He give me his cloak, so no one would say I didn’t belong.”
　　“Won’t Craster be angry with you?”
　　“My father drank overmuch of the Lord Crow’s wine last night. He’ll sleep most of the day.” Her breath frosted the air in small nervous puffs. “They say the king gives justice and protects the weak.” She started to climb off the rock, awkwardly, but the ice had made it slippery and her foot went out from under her. Jon caught her before she could fall, and helped her safely down. The woman knelt on the icy ground. “M’lord, I beg you—”
　　“Don’t beg me anything. Go back to your hall, you shouldn’t be here. We were commanded not to speak to Craster’s women.”
　　“You don’t have to speak with me, m’lor. Just take me with you, when you go, that’s all I ask.”
　　All she asks, he thought. As if that were nothing.
　　“I’ll . . . I’ll be your wife, if you like. My father, he’s got nineteen now, one less won’t hurt him none.”
　　“Black brothers are sworn never to take wives, don’t you know that? And we’re guests in your father’s hall besides.”
　　“Not you,” she said. “I watched. You never ate at his board, nor slept by his fire. He never gave you guest-right, so you’re not bound to him. It’s for the baby I have to go.” “I don’t even know your name.”
　　“Gilly, he called me. For the gillyflower.”
　　“That’s pretty.” He remembered Sansa telling him once that he should say that whenever a lady told him her name. He could not help the girl, but perhaps the courtesy would please her. “Is it Craster who frightens you, Gilly?”
　　“For the baby, not for me. If it’s a girl, that’s not so bad, she’ll grow a few years and he’ll marry her. But Nella says it’s to be a boy, and she’s had six and knows these things. He gives the boys to the gods. Come the white cold, he does, and of late it comes more often. That’s why he started giving them sheep, even though he has a taste for mutton. Only now the sheep’s gone too. Next it will be dogs, till . . .” She lowered her eyes and stroked her belly.
　　“What gods?” Jon was remembering that they’d seen no boys in Craster’s Keep, nor men either, save Craster himself.
　　“The cold gods,” she said. “The ones in the night. The white shadows.”
　　And suddenly Jon was back in the Lord Commander’s Tower again. A severed hand was climbing his calf and when he pried it off with the point of his longsword, it lay writhing, fingers opening and closing. The dead man rose to his feet, blue eyes shining in that gashed and swollen face. Ropes of torn flesh hung from the great wound in his belly, yet there was no blood.
　　“What color are their eyes?” he asked her.
　　“Blue. As bright as blue stars, and as cold.”
　　She has seen them, he thought. Craster lied.
　　“Will you take me? just so far as the Wall—”
　　“We do not ride for the Wall. We ride north, after Mance Rayder and these Others, these white shadows and their wights. We seek them, Gilly. Your babe would not be safe with us.”
　　Her fear was plain on her face. “You will come back, though. When your warring’s done, you’ll pass this way again.”
　　“We may.” If any of us still live. “That’s for the Old Bear to say, the one you call the Lord Crow. I’m only his squire. I do not choose the road I ride.”
　　“No.” He could hear the defeat in her voice. “Sorry to be of trouble, m’lord. I only . . . they said the king keeps people safe, and I thought . . .” Despairing, she ran, Sam’s cloak flapping behind her like great black wings.
　　Jon watched her go, his joy in the morning’s brittle beauty gone. Damn her, he thought resentfully, and damn Sam twice for sending her to me. What did he think I could do for her? We’re here to fight wildlings, not save them.
　　Other men were crawling from their shelters, yawning and stretching. The magic was already faded, icy brightness turning back to common dew in the light of the rising sun. Someone had gotten a fire started; he could smell woodsmoke drifting through the trees, and the smoky scent of bacon. Jon took down his cloak and snapped it against the rock, shattering the thin crust of ice that had formed in the night, then gathered up Longclaw and shrugged an arm through a shoulder strap. A few yards away he made water into a frozen bush, his piss steaming in the cold air and melting the ice wherever it fell. Afterward he laced up his black wool breeches and followed the smells.
　　Grenn and Dywen were among the brothers who had gathered round the fire. Hake handed Jon a hollow heel of bread filled with burnt bacon and chunks of salt fish warmed in bacon grease. He wolfed it down while listening to Dywen boast of having three of Craster’s women during the night.
　　“You did not,” Grenn said, scowling. “I would have seen.”
　　Dywen whapped him up alongside his ear with the back of his hand. “You? Seen? You’re blind as Maester Aemon. You never even saw that bear.”
　　“What bear? Was there a bear?”
　　“There’s always a bear,” declared Dolorous Edd in his usual tone of gloomy resignation. “One killed my brother when I was young. Afterward it wore his teeth around its neck on a leather thong. And they were good teeth too, better than mine. I’ve had nothing but trouble with my teeth.”
　　“Did Sam sleep in the hall last night?” Jon asked him.
　　“I’d not call it sleeping. The ground was hard, the rushes ill-smelling, and my brothers snore frightfully. Speak of bears if you will, none ever growled so fierce as Brown Bernarr. I was warm, though. Some dogs crawled atop me during the night. My cloak was almost dry when one of them pissed in it. Or perhaps it was Brown Bernarr. Have you noticed that the rain stopped the instant I had a roof above me? It will start again now that I’m back out. Gods and dogs alike delight to piss on me.”
　　“I’d best go see to Lord Mormont,” said Jon.
　　The rain might have stopped, but the compound was still a morass of shallow lakes and slippery mud. Black brothers were folding their tents, feeding their horses, and chewing on strips of salt beef. Jarman Buckwell’s scouts were tightening the girths on their saddles before setting out. “Jon,” Buckwell greeted him from horseback. “Keep a good edge on that bastard sword of yours. We’ll be needing it soon enough.”
　　Craster’s hall was dim after daylight. Inside, the night’s torches had burned low, and it was hard to know that the sun had risen. Lord Mormont’s raven was the first to spy him enter. Three lazy flaps of its great black wings, and it perched atop Longclaw’s hilt. “Corn?” It nipped at a strand of Jon’s hair.
　　“Ignore that wretched beggar bird, Jon, it’s just had half my bacon.” The Old Bear sat at Craster’s board, breaking his fast with the other officers on fried bread, bacon, and sheepgut sausage. Craster’s new axe was on the table its gold inlay gleaming faintly in the torchlight. Its owner was sprawled unconscious in the sleeping loft above, but the women were all up, moving about and serving. “What sort of day do we have?”
　　“Cold, but the rain has stopped.”
　　“Very good. See that my horse is saddled and ready. I mean for us to ride within the hour. Have you eaten? Craster serves plain fare, but filling.” I will not eat Graster’s food, he decided suddenly. “I broke my fast with the men, my lord.” Jon shooed the raven off Longclaw. The bird hopped back to Mormont’s shoulder, where it promptly shat. “You might have done that on Snow instead of saving it for me,” the Old Bear grumbled. The raven quorked.
　　He found Sam behind the hall, standing with Gilly at the broken rabbit hutch. She was helping him back into his cloak, but when she saw Jon she stole away. Sam gave him a look of wounded reproach. “I thought you would help her.”
　　“And how was I to do that?” Jon said sharply. “Take her with us, wrapped up in your cloak? We were commanded not to— ”
　　“I know,” said Sam guiltily, “but she was afraid. I know what it is to be afraid. I told her . . .” He swallowed.
　　“What? That we’d take her with us?”
　　Sam’s fat face blushed a deep red. “On the way home.” He could not meet Jon’s eyes. “She’s going to have a baby.”
　　“Sam, have you taken leave of all your sense? We may not even return this way. And if we do, do you think the Old Bear is going to let you pack off one of Craster’s wives?”
　　“I thought . . . maybe by then I could think of a way . . .”
　　“I have no time for this, I have horses to groom and saddle.” Jon walked away as confused as he was angry. Sam’s heart was a big as the rest of him, but for all his reading he could be as thick as Grenn at times. It was impossible, and dishonorable besides. So why do I feel so ashamed?
　　Jon took his accustomed position at Mormont’s side as the Night’s Watch streamed out past the skulls on Craster’s gate. They struck off north and west along a crooked game trail. Melting ice dripped down all about them, a slower sort of rain with its own soft music. North of the compound, the brook was in full spate, choked with leaves and bits of wood, but the scouts had found where the ford lay and the column was able to splash across. The water ran as high as a horse’s belly. Ghost swam, emerging on the bank with his white fur dripping brown. When he shook, spraying mud and water in all directions, Mormont said nothing, but on his shoulder the raven screeched.
　　“My lord,” Jon said quietly as the wood closed in around them once more. “Craster has no sheep. Nor any sons.”
　　Mormont made no answer.
　　“At Winterfell one of the serving women told us stories,” Jon went on. “She used to say that there were wildlings who would lay with the Others to birth half-human children.”
　　“Hearth tales. Does Craster seem less than human to you?”
　　In half a hundred ways. “He gives his sons to the wood.”
　　A long silence. Then: “Yes.” And “Yes,” the raven muttered, strutting. “Yes, yes, yes.”
　　“You knew?”
　　“Smallwood told me. Long ago. All the rangers know, though few will talk of it.”
　　“Did my uncle know?”
　　“All the rangers,” Mormont repeated. “You think I ought to stop him. Kill him if need be.” The Old Bear sighed. “Were it only that he wished to rid himself of some mouths, I’d gladly send Yoren or Conwys to collect the boys. We could raise them to the black and the Watch would be that much the stronger. But the wildlings serve crueler gods than you or I. These boys are Craster’s offerings. His prayers, if you will.”
　　His wives must offer different prayers, Jon thought.
　　“How is it you came to know this?” the Old Bear asked him. “From one of Craster’s wives?”
　　“Yes, my lord,” Jon confessed. “I would sooner not tell you which. She was frightened and wanted help.”
　　“The wide world is full of people wanting help, Jon. Would that some could find the courage to help themselves. Craster sprawls in his loft even now, stinking of wine and lost to sense. On his board below lies a sharp new axe. Were it me, I’d name it ‘Answered Prayer’ and make an end.”
　　Yes. Jon thought of Gilly. She and her sisters. They were nineteen, and Craster was one, but . . .
　　“Yet it would be an ill day for us if Craster died. Your uncle could tell you of the times Craster’s Keep made the difference between life and death for our rangers.”
　　“My father . . .” He hesitated.
　　“Go on, Jon. Say what you would say.”
　　“My father once told me that some men are not worth having,” Jon finished. “A bannerman who is brutal or unjust dishonors his liege lord as well as himself.”
　　“Craster is his own man. He has sworn us no vows. Nor is he subject to our laws. Your heart is noble, Jon, but learn a lesson here. We cannot set the world to rights. That is not our purpose. The Night’s Watch has other wars to fight.”
　　Other wars. Yes. I must remember. “Jarman Buckwell said I might have need of my sword soon.”
　　“Did he?” Mormont did not seem pleased. “Craster said much and more last night, and confirmed enough of my fears to condemn me to a sleepless night on his floor. Mance Rayder is gathering his people together in the Frostfangs. That’s why the villages are empty. It is the same tale that Ser Denys Mallister had from the wildling his men captured in the Gorge, but Craster has added the where, and that makes all the difference.”
　　“Is he making a city, or an army?”
　　“Now, that is the question. How many wildlings are there? How many men of fighting age? No one knows with certainty. The Frostfangs are cruel, inhospitable, a wilderness of stone and ice. They will not long sustain any great number of people. I can see only one purpose in this gathering. Mance Rayder means to strike south, into the Seven Kingdoms.”
　　“Wildlings have invaded the realm before.” Jon had heard the tales from Old Nan and Maester Luwin both, back at Winterfell. “Raymun Redbeard led them south in the time of my grandfather’s grandfather, and before him there was a king named Bael the Bard.”
　　“Aye, and long before them came the Horned Lord and the brother kings Gendel and Gorne, and in ancient days Joramun, who blew the Horn of Winter and woke giants from the earth. Each man of them broke his strength on the Wall, or was broken by the power of Winterfell on the far side . . . but the Night’s Watch is only a shadow of what we were, and who remains to oppose the wildlings besides us? The Lord of Winterfell is dead, and his heir has marched his strength south to fight the Lannisters. The wildlings may never again have such a chance as this. I knew Mance Rayder, Jon. He is an oathbreaker, yes . . . but he has eyes to see, and no man has ever dared to name him faintheart.”
　　“What will we do?” asked Jon.
　　“Find him,” said Mormont. “Fight him. Stop him.”
　　Three hundred, thought Jon, against the fury of the wild. His fingers opened and closed.

Ⅱ 列王的纷争 Chapter24 琼恩
　　狂风夹着细雨，抽打在琼恩脸上，他踢踢马刺，跨过涨水的溪流。在他身旁，莫尔蒙总司令扯紧斗篷的兜帽，喃喃地诅咒着天气。他的乌鸦停在肩上，风弄皱了羽毛，使它看来和熊老本人一样又湿又躁。朔风突起，湿叶纷飞，好似一群死亡的飞鸟。鬼影森林啊，琼恩可怜兮兮地想，不如说是水淹森林。
　　他暗自希望跟在后面的山姆还撑得住。就算天气和煦，他也骑得不好，而今，雨下了整整六天，路况变得十分凶险，处处是软泥和碎石。狂风卷起，漫天的雨落入眼睛。温暖的雨水混合融雪，注满所有的小溪与河流，让人以为南方的长城也说不定会被它们冲垮。此刻，派普和陶德一定会坐在大厅的炉火边，喝着晚餐前的开胃热葡萄酒。琼恩羡慕他们。他自己一身浸透的羊毛衣粘在身上，湿漉发痒，脖子和肩膀则因盔甲与长剑的重量而压得疼痛，更难受的是，他已彻底受够了盐鳕鱼，咸牛肉和硬奶酪的滋味。
　　前方，一只猎号发出震颤的声调，隔着交织的急雨显得分外朦胧。“是布克威尔，”熊老宣布，“诸神保佑，卡斯特总算没挪窝。”他的乌鸦把大黑翅膀扇了一扇，嘶哑地叫声“玉米”，便又继续整理羽毛。
　　琼恩常听黑衣兄弟们讲述卡斯特和他的堡垒的故事，现在终于亲眼目睹。经过了七座空无一人的村庄，每个人都开始怀疑卡斯特的堡垒是否也像其他地方一样死寂荒凉，幸好担忧没有成真。或许熊老能在那儿找到苦苦追寻的答案，他想，但至少，我们能摆脱大雨。
　　早前，索伦·斯莫伍德曾向大家保证，卡斯特虽然名声不好，但确是守夜人的朋友。“我承认，这家伙精神不太正常，”他告诉熊老，“但要换你在这受诅咒的森林待上一辈子，也会跟他一样。他虽然疯癫，却从不把我们游骑兵拒之门外，对曼斯·雷德更没好感。他应该能向我们提供一些忠告。”
　　只要他提供一顿热饭，提供屋檐和干燥衣服，我就很满足了。在戴文口中，卡斯特不仅弑杀亲人，还是骗子、强盗和懦夫，他甚至暗示对方和奴隶贩子与魔鬼打交道。“更可怕的是，”老林务官“劈啪劈啪”地嚼着木制假牙，补充道，“这混蛋身上有股寒冷的味道，真的。”
　　“琼恩，”莫尔蒙司令命令，“骑到后面去，把消息告诉大家。还有，提醒军官们约束部下，我不允许任何人打卡斯特老婆的主意。谁也不准毛手毛脚，没事少跟她们搭腔。”
　　“遵命，大人。”琼恩把马转回来时的方向。能让飞雨暂离自己的脸庞，虽然为时不长，他也觉得舒心。一路穿过众多兄弟，每人看来都像在哭泣，整个队列在树林中延伸半里之长。
　　在辎重车辆间，琼恩遇见了山姆威尔·塔利，塔利戴着一顶宽边稻草软帽，无精打采地坐在鞍上。他骑着一匹高大笨拙的驮马，吆喝着其他几匹马。雨点嗡嗡地打在遮住铁笼的篷布上，里面的渡鸦拍打嘶叫，不住地抗议。“哈，你莫非放了只狐狸进去？”琼恩打招呼。
　　山姆抬头，雨水从帽檐如注流下。“喂，你好，琼恩。不是的，它们只是讨厌下雨，和我们一样。”
　　“你感觉怎样，山姆？”
　　“湿透了。”胖男孩竭力装出笑容。“还好，没什么危险。”
　　“那就好。卡斯特的堡垒就在前面，希望诸神保佑，他让我们在温暖的炉火边借宿一宿。”
　　山姆露出半信半疑的神情。“忧郁的艾迪说卡斯特是个恐怖的野蛮人。他娶自己女儿为妻，除了自己订的规矩，什么律法都不依。戴文还跟葛兰说他身上流的是没心肝的黑血，因为他母亲是个女野人，和游骑兵通奸，才有他这个杂……”突然间，他住了嘴。
　　“杂种，”琼恩笑道，“只管直说就是，山姆，我以前又不是没听过。”他踢踢马刺，驱策胯下那匹结实的矮马前进。“我得去找奥廷爵士。对了，不可招惹卡斯特的女人哦，”好像山姆威尔还需要提醒似的，“扎营以后，我们再聊。”
　　找到奥廷·威勒斯爵士时，他正率领后卫部队一路缓行。奥廷爵士和莫尔蒙年纪相当，矮短身材，尖尖的脸，模样总那么疲惫(从前在黑城堡时也一样)。大雨无情地冲刷着他。“好消息，”他说，“这里的湿气都浸进我骨头里去了，瞧，只怕连鞍子都在抗议哩，痛得很哪。”
　　回程路上，琼恩远远避开拉长的队列，转而在浓密的森林中选择捷径。人马的声音渐渐降低，吞没在润湿的绿荒中，不一会儿，耳中只剩瓢泼大雨击打叶子、树木和岩石的声响。天色刚入下午，森林里却黑如黄昏。琼恩在岩石和水坑之间寻找道路，穿过大橡树，灰绿的哨兵树和黑皮铁树。浓密的树枝为他搭起天篷，使他暂时摆脱雨点的敲打。骑经一棵被闪电击中，爬满野生白玫瑰的栗树时，他听见草丛里沙沙作响。“白灵，”他唤道，“白灵，过来。”
　　钻出来的却是戴文，他骑着一匹鬃毛杂乱的灰矮马，旁边还有葛兰。熊老在行军纵队两翼都派出轻骑，不仅为了探察地形，更为了警报敌人的逼近。他不敢大意，训令侦查兵们两两一组，结伴行动。
　　“啊，是你呀，雪诺大人。”戴文咧嘴大笑，他的假牙是用橡木雕的，且极不搭配。“我和这孩子还以为咱遇异鬼了哩。怎么，狼走丢了？”
　　“他打猎去了，”白灵不爱和队伍一起前进，但也不会跑远。每当人们安营扎寨后，他自会找到总司令帐篷，返回琼恩身边。
　　“照我看，只怕是捉鱼去了吧，到处都是滔天大水。”戴文说。
　　“我妈常说，多下雨对庄稼好，”葛兰乐观地插话。
　　“吓，庄稼上的霉长得比较快，”戴文道，“像这样的雨能带来的惟一好处，就是省了洗澡的工夫。”他的木假牙发出一声清脆的劈啪。
　　“布克威尔找到了卡斯特，”琼恩告诉他们。
　　“他弄丢过他吗？”戴文咯咯笑道，“你们这些小伙子啊，可千万别招惹卡斯特的老婆，听到没？”
　　琼恩笑了，“想独占芳泽么，戴文？”
　　戴文再度嚼起假牙。“别说，我还真有这种打算哩。卡斯特还不是十根指头一个鸡巴，最多数到十一。少两三个，想来也发现不了。”
　　“说真的，他到底有几个老婆啊？”葛兰问。
　　“反正你是永远别想比啦，兄弟。是嘛，老婆自己生，要多少有多少。哦，雪诺，你那家伙回来啦。”
　　白灵小跑着来到琼恩马边，尾巴高翘，一身白毛在大雨中显得厚实了许多。他来去无声，琼恩也不知道是何时出现的。葛兰的马一闻到气息就惊得退开——即使现在，经过了一年多时间，马儿们还是没能习惯冰原狼的存在。“跟我走，白灵，”琼恩朝卡斯特的堡垒骑去。
　　他不敢想像在离开长城这么远的地方还能发现石制城堡，所以便自顾自地勾勒出一幅树丛之中栏栅围着木楼的景象，没料到，事实却更为糟糕：这里只有一个垃圾堆，一间猪舍，一栏空虚的羊圈和一座枝条与泥土敷的厅堂，不值一提，连窗户都没有。大厅又长又矮，房木粗糙，屋顶上铺了草。这个“堡垒”建在一座简直不配称为山丘的小坡上，四周环绕着一道土堤。常年的雨水在堤防上蚀出无数小洞，棕色的水流随之溢下斜坡，汇入一道向北蜿蜒的奔流小溪，因为暴雨，原本便水源丰富的溪涧已成黑暗的急流。
　　土堤西南方，有一扇开着的小门，门边有一对插着动物头骨的长竿：一边是熊头，一边是羊头。琼恩加入进门的大队伍，发现熊头上还有一点残存的血肉。里面，贾曼·布克威尔的侦察兵与索伦·斯莫伍德的前卫部队已经把马排成行，忙着搭帐篷了。猪圈里，一大群小猪偎在三头肥母猪身边。旁边，一个小女孩一丝不挂地蹲在雨中的菜园里拔萝卜，另两个女人正准备屠宰一头猪。牲畜尖声惨叫，高亢而恐怖，好似悲苦万分的人所发出的哭喊。齐特的猎狗们疯狂咆哮回应，且不管齐特怎么咒骂制止，它们还是吠个不休，惹得卡斯特养的一群狗也叫喊着回应。不过它们一见白灵，便纷纷住嘴，夹着尾巴逃走，只有少数几只还在低声抱怨，不肯认输。冰原狼对它们不理不睬，琼恩也一样。
　　好吧，现在我们之中大概有三十人能暖暖和和，烘干衣服了，琼恩仔细打量房子一眼得出结论，说不定能容纳五十人。然而这地方太小，绝对不够两百人睡，所以多数人肯定还得待在外面。可要他们住哪儿呢？在这个杂乱的院落里，除了及踝深的水坑，就是湿漉漉的泥泞。看来，又一个阴郁的夜晚等在眼前。
　　总司令已经把坐骑交给忧郁的艾迪照管。琼恩下马时，他正忙着洗刷马蹄上的泥巴。“莫尔蒙司令在大厅里，”他宣布，“他叫你过去。不过你最好把狼留外面，瞧他饿成那样，你会以为他要把卡斯特的孩子抓来吃了。好吧，说真的，我自己就饿得能吃他一个孩子哩，只要热腾腾端上来就行。去吧，马交给我。对了，如果里面又暖又干，就不用给我说啦，没人请我进去。”他边说边弹开马蹄底部一撮湿泥。“这泥巴，你看像不像屎？会不会这整个山坡都是卡斯特拉出来的呢？”
　　琼恩微笑道：“这个嘛，听说他在这儿住了好久哟。”
　　“你安慰不了我。还是快进去见熊老吧。”
　　“白灵，留在这儿，”他命令。卡斯特堡垒的门是两片鹿皮，琼恩推开它们，弯腰越过门楣。在他之前，已有二十来个游骑兵头目进了屋，围站在泥地正中的火盆边，水顺着靴子流下，聚成一个个小水塘。厅堂里混杂着煤灰、粪便和湿淋淋的狗的气味，很难闻。然而烟味虽重，空气却仍旧潮湿。雨水从屋顶的烟洞渗进。整栋屋子就只有这一个房间，外加顶上一个用做卧室的阁楼，通过一座摇摇欲坠的梯子相连。
　　琼恩还记得从长城出发当天自己的感受：纵然紧张得像个出嫁的少女，却也心怀渴望，期待前方不断升起的陌生地平线后有怎样的神秘和奇迹。好啊，现在总算是发现了一个，他看着这间又脏又臭的大厅，一边告诉自己。辛辣的烟雾熏得他眼睛流泪。真可惜，派普和陶德错过了这么精彩的事儿。
　　卡斯特靠在火盆边，他是屋内惟一一个有椅子坐的人。连莫尔蒙司令都只能挤在长凳上，他的乌鸦在他肩上嘀咕着。贾曼·布克威尔站在他身后，打补丁的盔甲和湿得发亮的皮衣不住淌水，索伦·斯莫伍德也站在旁边，身穿以前属于杰瑞米爵士的胸甲和黑貂皮斗篷。
　　相较之下，卡斯特一身羊皮背心和兽皮拼成的斗篷显得寒酸了许多，然而在他粗大的手腕上，却带有一只手镯，分量颇重，金光闪闪。他看上去虽已进入人生末途，头发由灰转白，时日应该不多，但毋庸置疑，仍旧是个很有力量的人。扁平的鼻子和下垂的嘴唇让他的模样带有几分凶残，他还缺了一只耳朵。这就是活生生的野人。琼恩想起老奶妈口中用头骨饮血的蛮人。但眼前的卡斯特喝的是淡黄啤酒，用的是琢石杯子。也许他根本不知道那些故事哩。
　　“三年没见着班扬·史塔克了，”他告诉莫尔蒙，“说实话，我一点都不想念他。”六七只小黑狗和一两头落单的猪在长凳之间躲迷藏，穿着褴褛鹿皮的女人们送来一杯杯啤酒，并升好炉火，开始往壶里切萝卜和洋葱。
　　“就去年，他应该路过这儿，”索伦·斯莫伍德道。一只狗在他腿边嗅来嗅去。他飞起一脚，踢得它汪汪直叫。
　　莫尔蒙司令说：“当时，班是出来搜寻威玛·罗伊斯爵士的，他跟盖瑞及小威尔一起失踪了。”
　　“哦，这三个我还知道。带头的贵族小少爷比这些狗崽子大不了多少，穿一身貂皮斗篷拿着黑剑，就骄傲得了不起，还不屑于睡我屋子呢。不过我老婆们倒把眼睛瞪得牛大，望着他瞧。”他转头斜视离他最近的女人。“盖瑞说他们在追踪土匪强盗。我给他说，你自个儿当头的都是个菜鸟，最好别真的追上。就乌鸦而言，盖瑞还不算太坏的种。这家伙，耳朵比我还少，都是给寒风咬的，和我一样。”卡斯特笑了，“现在么，听说他头也没啦。不知栽在哪条道上啰？”
　　琼恩回想起洒在白雪里的那滩红血，想起席恩·葛雷乔伊踢死人头的情景。此人是个逃兵。回临冬城的路上，琼恩和罗柏一起赛跑，在雪地里发现六只冰原狼小崽。一千年前的往事。
　　“威玛爵士离开后，去了哪里？”
　　卡斯特耸肩，“我事情多着呢，哪有空管乌鸦打哪儿来，飞哪儿去。”他把酒一饮而尽，杯子放到一边。“嘿，整整一年，都没南方的好酒来啦！我缺酒，还缺把新斧子。旧的太钝，没用，老子有一大堆老婆要保护哩。”他环视他那群忙碌的妻子。
　　“你们这里人少，又孤立无援，”熊老说，“只要你愿意，我这就派人护送你南下长城。”
　　乌鸦似乎很喜欢这提议。“长城，”它尖叫，一边张开黑色的翅膀，莫尔蒙的颈上好似戴了高领子。
　　主人做出一个肮脏的笑容，露出满口破黄牙。“我们去那儿干什么，伺候你晚餐么？咱可是天生的自由民。我卡斯特决不伺候任何人。”
　　“如今是艰难时代，独居荒野很不妥啊。冷风已然吹起。”
　　“让它们吹。我的根基深得很。”卡斯特猛然抓住一个路过的女人的腰。“告诉他，老婆。告诉乌鸦大人我们有多喜欢这地方。”
　　女人舔舔薄唇。“这里是我们的土地。卡斯特的堡垒保护我们的安全。我们宁可身为自由人而死，也决不当奴隶。”
　　“奴隶，”乌鸦咕哝着。
　　莫尔蒙倾身向前，“一路走来，每个村子都遭遗弃。离开长城以后，你这儿是我们头一处见到活人的地方。其他人都消失了……被杀，逃走，还是被俘，我不知道。连动物也都不在了。什么都没有。早些时候，我们还在离长城仅几里格的地方找到班杨·史塔克手下两个游骑兵的尸体。他们苍白冰冷，手脚乌黑，伤口不流血。我们把他们带回黑城堡，他们却在半夜里爬起来杀人。其中一个杀掉了杰瑞米·莱克爵士，另一个跑来杀我，可见他们虽然保留着生前的某些记忆，但已经换成了一副毫无人性的歹毒心肠。”
　　女人合不拢嘴，脸上活像长了个潮湿的粉红洞穴，但卡斯特嗤之以鼻：“我们这儿可没那种麻烦……我谢谢你，不要在我的屋檐下说这些邪恶的事。我是个敬神的人，神灵会保佑我平安。就算尸体变鬼爬出来，我也知道怎么送他们回坟墓。不过嘛，得先找把称手锋利的新斧子。”他一巴掌打在妻子身上，吼着要她快行动，“再拿点啤酒来，搞快点。”
　　“既然你不怕死人，”贾曼·布克威尔说，“那活人呢，大人？你的国王怎么说？”
　　“国王！”莫尔蒙的乌鸦尖叫道，“国王，国王，国王。”
　　“那个曼斯·雷德？”卡斯特朝火堆淬了一口。“所谓的‘塞外之王’？哼，自由民要国王干嘛？”他转头斜视莫尔蒙，“好吧，我可以给你讲讲雷德和他干的那些勾当，不过我记性可不太好。告诉你吧，这些空荡荡的村庄，都是他干的。如果我也那么好欺负，等你们找到这儿，早不见人了。他派来一个骑马的，叫我务必离开自己的堡垒，去他脚边摇尾巴。人被我赶走了，只要了舌头。喏，就钉在墙上。”他指了指，“或许我能告诉你上哪儿去找曼斯·雷德，如果我记得住的话。”他又咧开黄板牙笑了，“这个我们可以慢慢谈。你们大概很想住我的屋檐下吧，嘿嘿，只怕还想把我的猪报销光呢。”
　　“有个屋檐遮风挡雨咱们感激不尽，大人，”莫尔蒙说，“我们走了很长的路，全身都湿透了。”
　　“那么，今晚你们就算是这里的客人。就只今晚，我可不太喜欢乌鸦。上面的阁楼我和我老婆唾，下面的地板你们爱怎么安排都行。我提供二十人份的肉和啤酒，多的没有。你手下多余的黑乌鸦就啄自己带的玉米去吧。”
　　“我们有足够的给养，大人，”熊老说，“我们很乐意与您分享我们的食物和饮酒。”
　　卡斯特用毛茸茸的手背揩揩下垂的嘴唇。“我会尝尝你的酒，乌鸦大人，我会的。最后一件事：哪只臭手敢碰我老婆一下，我就把它给剁掉。”
　　“你的屋檐下，你说了算。”索伦·斯莫伍德道，莫尔蒙司令僵硬地点点头，他看上去一点都不高兴。
　　“那就说定了，”卡斯特不情愿地哼了一声，“你们这群乌鸦里有会画图的吗？”
　　“山姆·塔利行，”琼恩挤上前，“山姆他爱死地图了。”
　　莫尔蒙示意他走近，“叫他吃饱了就过来，带上羽毛笔和羊皮纸。把托勒特也找来，让他拿上我的斧头，作为送给主人的谢礼。”
　　“这家伙是谁？”琼恩正要离开，卡斯特开口道，“他看来像个史塔克。”
　　“他是我的事务总管和侍从，琼恩·雪诺。”
　　“哦，私生子？”卡斯特上下打量着琼恩。“男人要跟女人睡，就该把她讨来当老婆，像我这样。”他挥手赶琼恩离开。“好吧，赶快去办事，小杂种，一定给我拿把又好又利的斧子，锈铁不顶用。”
　　琼恩·雪诺僵硬地一鞠躬，连忙离开。出门时奥廷·威勒斯爵士刚好赶到，两人差点在鹿皮门边撞个满怀。门外，雨势稍缓，院内到处搭起帐篷，堤外的树木下也有。
　　忧郁的艾迪正在喂马。“送野人一把斧子，有何不可？”他指指莫尔蒙的武器，那是一把镶着金饰花纹的短柄战斧，黑铁斧刃。“他会还我们的，我发誓。不过到时候是插在熊老的头骨里还，聊胜于无。咱们干嘛不把所有的战斧长剑通通都给他算了？骑马的时候，它们丁当喀啦，吵死人啦。没了它们，我们大概会走得更快，直通地狱之门。你说，地狱里也下雨吗？也许卡斯特该要顶好帽子。”
　　琼恩笑道：“他要的是斧子，还有葡萄酒。”
　　“你瞧，这就是熊老高明的地方。先把野人灌得酩酊大醉，等他操斧子杀我们时，说不定就只砍到耳朵。头只有一个，耳朵却还有两个哪。”
　　“斯莫伍德说卡斯特是守夜人的朋友。”
　　“你知道是守夜人朋友的野人和不是守夜人朋友的野人区别在哪儿吗？”这位阴沉的侍从道，“敌人会把我们弃尸荒野，喂乌鸦和野狼；朋友则会把我们悄悄埋起来。我在想，门上那头熊到底挂了多久啊，我们吆喝着到来之前，卡斯特挂在门上的又是什么呢？”艾迪怀疑地望着斧子，雨水不住流下他的长脸。“里面干不干？”
　　“比外面当然干得多喽。”
　　“如果我进去以后，不太靠近火堆，说不定他们到早上才发现我。虽然进到房里的人算是最先没命，但至少死的时候身上干干燥燥的。”
　　琼恩忍俊不禁，“卡斯特是一个人，而我们有两百弟兄。他杀得了谁呀？”
　　“你在安慰我，”艾迪说，他的语气低沉到极点。“不过嘛，死在上好的利斧下还算不错。要是被槌子谋杀可就惨了。有一次，我见人被槌子挥中，皮一点没破，可脑袋里全打烂啦，胀得像个大葫芦，整个变成紫红。他人长得本来不错，死的时候却很丑。谢天谢地，我们送的不是槌子。”艾迪摇头走开，一身浸透的黑斗篷不住淌水。
　　琼恩喂了马，才想起自己没吃晚餐。他正思索上哪儿去找山姆，忽然听到一声惊恐的尖叫：“狼！”他沿着厅堂飞跑，冲向声音传来的方向，靴子不断陷入烂泥。一个卡斯特的女人背靠溅满烂泥的墙，“别过来！”她朝白灵尖叫，“你别过来！”冰原狼嘴衔一只兔子，身前还躺着一只血淋淋的死兔。“快帮我把他赶走吧，大人，”她看见他，便开口哀告。
　　“他不会伤害你，”他只需一眼便明白问题所在：一个小木栏箱，板条碎了，湿草散了一地。“他一定是饿了，很久都没发现猎物。”琼恩吹个口哨。冰原狼立刻几口把兔子吞下，齿间嚼着碎骨，轻轻走到他身边。
　　女人紧张地瞪着他们。他这才发觉她有多年轻，估计才十五六岁，因为雨的关系，黑发乱糟糟地贴在憔悴的脸上，光脚丫子上直到脚踝都是泥。兽皮拼凑缝成的衣服下，她的身体初露怀孕的迹象。“你是卡斯特的女儿？”他问。
　　她把一只手放在肚子上。“现在是他老婆，”她沿着墙壁，小心翼翼地避开狼，然后伤心地跪在破碎的兔箱前。“我是来喂兔子的。我们没有羊了。”
　　“我们守夜人会补偿你。”琼恩身上一个铜板都没有，否则他定会倾囊而出……虽说他不知在长城之外，一把铜板甚或一块银币对她来说有什么用。“明天我会给莫尔蒙司令说。”
　　她用裙子擦擦手。“大人——”
　　“我不是什么大人。”
　　然而受女人的尖叫和兔箱破裂的声音吸引，这时其他人也围拢过来。“小妹妹，别信他，”姐妹男拉克道，他来自于三姐妹群岛，是游骑兵中的无赖，“他可是雪诺大人。”
　　“临冬城的私生子，还是国王的兄弟咧，”齐特嘲笑道，他把猎狗留下，独自前来凑热闹。
　　“这头狼饥肠辘辘地望着你哟，小妹妹，”拉克说，“说不定他盘算着你肚里面那团嫩肉呢。”
　　琼恩可不觉得有趣。“你别吓她。”
　　“确切地说，是警告她。”齐特咧牙露齿的笑容和他满脸的疖子一样丑陋。
　　“我们不能和你们讲话，”女孩突然想起。
　　“等等，”琼恩说，但迟了。她突然跳起来，跑了开去。
　　拉克想抓剩下的那只兔子，不料白灵更快。他露出利齿，吓得姐妹男在泥地一滑，瘦小的屁股坐倒在地。众人哄堂大笑。冰原狼叼起兔子，交给琼恩。
　　“没必要去吓小女孩，”他告诉他们。
　　“你少来教训我们，杂种。”齐特一直怀恨琼恩使他失去了在伊蒙学士身边的好差事。其实这也有理，若不是他为山姆·塔利去找了伊蒙，齐特眼下一定还好端端地照料着盲眼老人，而不是成天牵起这群难伺候的猎狗。“你不过是总司令的小狗，还没当上总司令呢……若不老带着这头怪物，你他妈的敢这么说话吗？”
　　“在长城之外，我不想和兄弟打架。”琼恩道，声音意想不到地冰冷。
　　拉克撑起一条腿。“他怕你，齐特。在我们三姐妹群岛，对这种人有个专门的称呼。”
　　“我哪种称呼没听过，你就省省吧。”他说完便走，白灵紧跟在后。到得大门，雨已经减弱成细细的毛毛雨。天快要黑了，又一个潮湿凄冷的夜即将来临。层层乌云将遮住月亮，遮住星星，遮住“莫尔蒙的火炬”，把树林变得和沥青一样漆黑。若他担心属实，搞不好连晚上小便都会成为大冒险。
　　院外的树林间，游骑兵们收集到足够的落叶和干树枝，便在山脊的岩石下升起一堆篝火。有的人更搭起帐篷，或把斗篷挂在低垂的枝头，做个简单的遮蔽所。巨人找到棵死橡树，勉强把身子塞进树洞，“嘿嘿，我的城堡怎么样，雪诺大人？”
　　“看起来好暖和。你知道山姆在哪儿吗？”
　　“沿着这个方向继续走就行。假如走到奥廷爵士的帐篷还没看到他，就是走过头了。”巨人笑笑，“除非山姆也找到棵树。那得多大一棵树呀。”
　　不久，白灵发现了山姆。冰原狼好似十字弓射出的飞矢，疾驰而去。在一片突出的岩层下——它或多或少能阻挡雨势——山姆正喂着渡鸦。他每动一步，靴子就发出咯吱咯吱的声响。“脚湿透了，”他凄惨地承认，“我下马时，不小心踩进坑里，水一直淹到膝盖啦。”
　　“靴子脱掉，先把袜子晾干。我去找点干柴。如果这石头下的地不太湿，我们就能升火，”琼恩提起兔子在山姆眼前晃晃，“然后美餐一顿。”
　　“你不在大厅里陪莫尔蒙司令？”
　　“不，要去的是你。熊老叫你去画地图。卡斯特会为我们指出曼斯·雷德的所在。”
　　“哦，”看样子山姆并不怎么想见卡斯特，即使这意味着温暖的火堆。
　　“不过嘛，他让你吃饱了再去。好了，快把脚晾干。”琼恩跑去收集燃料，他在地面堆积的枝叶里深深挖掘，以求干燥的树枝。然后他仔细剥开湿润的松针，直到确信能引火为止。即使这样挑选，仍旧花了老半天工夫，方才擦出火花。他脱下斗篷，盖在岩石上，以保护这堆冒烟的小火苗。最后，他终于为俩人建好一个温暖的小空间。
　　当他跪下来剥兔皮时，山姆已经脱了靴子。“我觉得脚趾间一定长苔藓了，”他困惑地动动趾头，悲伤地宣布。“这兔子看起来不错，血……不管了，我不在乎……”他边说边转头，“呃，还是有一点……”
　　琼恩把兔子叉好，找来两块石头靠在火堆上，把他们的晚餐架在上面。兔子虽然瘦小，闻起来却像国王的大餐。其他游骑兵纷纷报以羡慕的眼光。就连白灵也馋得抬头，嗅来嗅去，火光在他的红眼睛里闪烁。“你的那份已经吃了哟，”琼恩提醒他。
　　“这卡斯特……真像游骑兵们传说的那样野蛮吗？”山姆问。兔子烤得半生不熟，但味道美妙极了。“他的城堡是什么样子？”
　　“一座有屋顶、有火盆的垃圾场。”琼恩把自己在卡斯特堡垒中的所见所闻告诉山姆。
　　等他说完，天已全黑，山姆舔舔手指：“这兔子不错，真想再来只羊腿，要一整只腿，我一个人吃，上面要撒薄荷、蜂蜜和丁香。你瞧见里面有羊羔吗？”
　　“羊圈是有的，不过没有羊。”
　　“那他怎么养活他的人呢？”
　　“可不是？我也没见什么男子，只看到卡斯特本人、他的老婆们和几个小姑娘。真不知他是怎么守住这儿的。他的防御设施根本不值一提，只是一道土堤。好啦，你该去大厅画图了，找得到路吗？”
　　“没事，只要不陷进泥里就成，”山姆奋力穿上靴子，拿出羽毛笔和羊皮纸，挤进夜幕之中，雨点拍打在他的斗篷和软帽上。
　　白灵把头搁上前爪，依偎在火堆边睡了。琼恩舒展身子，躺在他旁边，暗暗感激火堆的温暖。虽然他还是又冷又湿，但比之前已经好得多。或许在今晚，熊老便能知道如何去找班杨叔叔……
　　他醒来时，只见自己的呼吸在清晨的冷气中结成薄雾。刚起身，骨头就随之酸痛。白灵已然离去，火堆早已熄灭。琼恩拉开挂在岩石上的斗篷，发现它又硬又冰。他爬出住所，走到外面，站在水晶的森林里。
　　淡淡的粉红晨光闪耀在枝头、叶子和岩石上。每片芳草都是用翡翠刻成，每滴露珠都成了璀璨钻石。鲜花和蘑菇好似穿上玻璃的衣服，就连污水泥坑都放出明亮的棕色光辉。在一片闪闪发光的林木绿丛中，兄弟们的黑帐篷上包裹着一层完美的冰雕。
　　这么说来，长城之外果然是有魔法的。他不由自主地想起了妹妹们，或许昨晚正是梦见了她们吧。珊莎会将这里的奇景称为魔术，感动得热泪盈眶；而艾莉亚会笑着叫着，跑来跑去，要将一切亲手触摸。
　　“雪诺大人？”有人唤道，轻柔又温顺。他转过头。
　　管兔舍的女人蹲在昨晚替他遮蔽一夜风雨的大石头上，裹着一件大黑斗篷，那斗篷大得快把她淹没。这是山姆的斗篷，琼恩一眼便认出来，她怎么穿着山姆的斗篷？“胖子说能在这儿找到您，大人，”她说。
　　“真的很抱歉，兔子被我们吃了。”坦承事实让他有种荒谬的罪恶感。
　　“那位老乌鸦大人，就肩上有只说话鸟儿的那位，给了卡斯特一把十字弓，值一百只兔子呢。”她用手紧紧护住隆起的肚腹。“是真的吗，大人？您真的是国王的兄弟？”
　　“同父异母的兄弟，”他承认，“我是奈德·史塔克的私生子，我哥哥罗柏是当今的北境之王。对了，你来找我做什么？”
　　“是那胖子，山姆，他叫我来找您的。他还叫我穿上他的斗篷，以免被人发现。”
　　“你这样做，不怕卡斯特生气？”
　　“父亲昨晚喝多了乌鸦大人的酒，大概会睡上老半天。”她急促紧张的喘息在空气中结霜。“人家说国王会主持正义，保护弱者。”她一边说，一边从岩石上笨拙地往下爬。岩石表面的冰很溜，她的脚猛然一滑，幸好琼恩及时抓住，扶她安全落地。她跪在结冰的地面上，“大人，我求求您——”
　　“什么都别求我。回你的厅堂去吧，你不该出现在这儿。我们奉命不得与卡斯特的女人讲话。”
　　“您不用跟我讲话，大人。只求您离开时，带我走吧，我只求您这个。”
　　只求我这个，他心想，好像这挺容易似的。
　　“如果您高兴，我会……我会作您的妻子。我父亲，他已经有了十九个，少一个也没关系。”
　　“黑衣兄弟发誓永不娶妻，你难道不知道？何况我们还是你父亲家的客人呢。”
　　“您不是，”她说，“我仔细看过了。您从没在他桌上吃饭，从没在他火边睡觉。他并没让您享受宾客权利，所以您对他也没有义务。为了这孩子，我必须离开。”
　　“可我连你的名字都还不知道呢。”
　　“吉莉，他叫我吉莉，是用紫罗兰花取的名。”
　　“好美，”他忆起珊莎曾指导他，当小姐透露姓名时，应该怎么应答。他帮不了这女孩，但礼貌殷勤或许能让她开心，“卡斯特吓着你了吗，吉莉？”
　　“我是为孩子，不是为自己。如果这是个女孩，那么一切还好说，长大之后他便会娶她。可妮拉告诉我这是个男孩，她已经生了六个孩子，对这些事算得很准的。他将把男孩奉献给神。当白色寒神到来，父亲便会动手。最近他的来临越来越频繁，起初父亲奉献羊羔——其实他自己最喜欢羊肉。现在连一只羊都没有了，接着便会轮到狗，再往后……”她垂下眼睛，抚摸肚子。
　　“神？什么神？”琼恩猛然想起在卡斯特的堡垒中根本不见一个男孩，更别说成年男子。这里只有卡斯特一位男性。
　　“寒冷之神，”她说，“只在夜间行走。如同苍白的阴影。”
　　刹那间，琼恩仿佛又回到了司令塔。一只僵硬的手掌爬上小腿，他用剑尖撬开，它掉在地上翻腾，指头开开阖阖。死人爬起来，劈成两半的肿胀脸庞上，湛蓝的眼睛发出非人的光芒。他腹部的大裂口旁悬挂着撕烂的肌肉，却一点血也没有。
　　“他们的眼睛是什么颜色？”他问她。
　　“蓝的。明亮犹如蓝色的星。充满寒意。”
　　她见过他们，他意识道。卡斯特在撒谎。
　　“您会带我走吗？只到长城边就好——”
　　“我们不去长城。我们往北走，追踪曼斯·雷德，以及这些鬼怪、白影、幽灵之类的东西。我们在追寻它们，吉莉。你的宝宝跟着我们并不安全。”
　　她的恐惧清楚明白地写在脸上。“可是，你们会回来的。等您把仗打完，您还会经过这儿。”
　　“我们‘可能’会。”如果我们之中还有谁活下来的话。“不过那得由熊老决定，就那位被你称做乌鸦大人的老人。我只是他的侍从，不能自作主张。”
　　“不要，”他听出她声音里极度的挫败感。“很抱歉麻烦您，大人。我只是想……人家说国王会保护人民平安，所以我只是想……”她绝望地别过头，跑开了，山姆的斗篷在她身后扑打，宛如硕大的黑翼。
　　琼恩目送她离开，清晨朦胧易碎的美所带来的好心境随之消逝。她真该死，他愤愤不平地想，山姆更该死，居然叫她来找我。他以为我能为她做什么？我们是来和野人打仗的，不是来营救他们的。
　　这时，其他人也纷纷从他们的遮蔽所里爬出，打着呵欠，伸着懒腰。魔法已然褪色，在初升的秋日下，闪亮的冰晶化为露水。有人升起了火，他闻到林间飘荡的柴火烟味，以及培根的味道。琼恩拿下斗篷，对着岩石猛拍，好把昨晚结成的薄冰壳敲碎。然后他拿起长爪，套上肩带，走开几码，对着一丛结冰的灌木小便。尿液在寒气中蒸腾，所到之处，冰雪竞相融化。最后他系好黑羊毛马裤，循香而去。
　　一群兄弟围坐在火堆边，其中包括葛兰和戴文。哈克递给琼恩一份夹心面包，里面有焦培根和被培根油脂弄热的大块腌鱼。他三两口吞下食物，一边听戴文吹嘘昨晚睡了三个卡斯特的女人。
　　“你才没有，”葛兰板起脸孔说，“不然我看得到。”
　　戴文用手背给了对方耳朵一巴掌，“就你？看得到？你比伊蒙学士还瞎。你连熊都看不见。”
　　“什么熊？这里有熊？”
　　“别说这里，上哪儿都有熊，”忧郁的艾迪语调中透着他惯有的无可奈何。“我小时候，不知从哪儿冒出一只熊把我哥杀了。后来它还用皮带把他的牙齿串好戴在脖子上。那是口好牙，比我的好。我最烦我这一口烂牙。”
　　“山姆在哪儿？昨晚睡大厅里吗？”琼恩问他。
　　“照我说，那不能称之为‘睡’。地那么硬，草席一股怪味，兄弟们的呼噜更是吓人。嘿，说到熊，熊的鼾声准没黄伯纳厉害。说真的，暖和倒暖和，因为晚上一群狗全爬上我身子，不过斗篷正要干的当口，却被它们尿在上面。或许是黄伯纳干的也说不定。你们注意到没？我刚进屋，头上遮着呢，雨就停止；现在我出来了，瞧着吧，雨马上又要开始啦。诸神和野狗都拿我当尿壶咧。”
　　“我去看看莫尔蒙司令有什么需要，”琼恩道。
　　雨虽然停了，院里仍是一片充斥浅坑烂泥的泽国。黑衣兄弟们正在收拾帐篷，喂养马匹，一边嚼着腌牛肉条。贾曼·布克威尔的侦察兵已在整束鞍带，准备出发了，“琼恩，”马上的布克威尔跟他打招呼，“记得把你那柄杂种剑磨利点，很快就要派上用场了。”
　　天亮以后，卡斯特的大厅仍很昏暗。厅内，几根夜间点的火把快要燃尽，摇摇摆摆，太阳的光芒几无所见。最先发现他的是莫尔蒙司令的乌鸦。它抬起巨大的黑翅，懒洋洋地扇了三下，飞到长爪的剑柄上。“玉米？”它啄住琼恩一绺头发。
　　“别理这狡猾的乞丐鸟，琼恩，我才把半份培根给了它。”熊老坐在卡斯特的桌边，与其他军官一起吃着早餐——烤面包，培根和羊肉香肠。卡斯特的新斧头就放在桌上，镀金装饰在火炬微光下闪烁。它的新主人在阁楼里睡得不省人事，只有女人们集体起身，忙碌不休。“天气如何？”莫尔蒙问。
　　“有些冷，但雨已经停了。”
　　“好，好。去把我的马鞍配妥当，我打算即刻动身。吃过了吗？卡斯特这儿食物普通，分量倒足。”
　　我不能吃卡斯特的东西，他突然下了决心。“我和弟兄们一起用过早餐了，大人。”琼恩把乌鸦从长爪上赶开，鸟儿飞回熊老的肩膀，迅速拉出一堆屎。“留给我干嘛？在琼恩那儿方便了不就好？”熊老抱怨，乌鸦尖叫回应。
　　他在屋后找到山姆，对方正站在破损的兔笼前与吉莉谈话。女人帮他穿回斗篷，当她回头发现琼恩，却连忙逃开。山姆给了他一个受伤的表情，“我以为你会帮她。”
　　“怎么帮？”琼恩尖刻地说，“把她包进你的斗篷，然后带她一起走？别忘了，我们奉命不得与——”
　　“我知道，”山姆愧疚地说，“但她真的好害怕。我明白恐惧的滋味，所以我告诉她……”他嗫嚅着。
　　“告诉她什么？告诉她我们要带她一起走？”
　　山姆的胖脸胀成紫红。“只是回程时顺路带她而已，”他不敢看琼恩的眼睛，“她快生孩子了。”
　　“山姆，你完全丧失理智了吗？我们连回程走不走这条路都不知道。就算会经过这儿，你以为熊老会准我们偷走卡斯特的老婆？”
　　“我是想……或许到时候……能找到什么办法……”
　　“我可没工夫关心这个。我得去照管马匹。”琼恩大步走开，心里又气又急。山姆那颗心，真和他的身躯一般大，在琼恩眼中，他简直跟葛兰一样没头脑。这是不可能的事，不名誉的事。可是，我拒绝他，为何又觉得自己可耻呢？
　　准备妥当后，守夜人弟兄们川流不息地越过高挂头骨的栅门，再度出发。琼恩和往常一样，骑行在熊老身边。人们沿着一条弯曲的狩猎小径，朝西北行去。古树枝头，融雪滴落，犹如徐缓的雨，配着轻柔的节律。堡垒以北，小溪泛滥，浮满落叶和枝条，所幸先前出发的斥候已经找到了渡口，足够人马涉过。渡口的水直淹到马肚子。白灵当先游过去，白毛滴着污水，出现在对岸。他甩甩身子，泥水四处飞溅。乌鸦朝他尖叫，但莫尔蒙一直保持沉默。
　　“大人，”当他们再度深入丛林后，琼恩静静地开口道，“卡斯特家没有羊。他也没有儿子。”
　　莫尔蒙没有作答。
　　“在临冬城，有位老女仆很喜欢说故事，”琼恩续道，“她常对我们说，野人会与异鬼苟合，繁衍半人半鬼的恐怖后代。”
　　“那不过是炉边故事。难道你觉得，卡斯特看来不像人？”
　　他不像人的地方可多了。“他把自己的儿子丢进森林。”
　　长久的沉默。“是啊，”熊老最后说，“是啊。”乌鸦边嘀咕边昂首阔步地走着，“是啊，是啊，是啊。”
　　“您早知道？”
　　“斯莫伍德告诉过我，那是很久以前的事了。其实游骑兵们都知道，只是大家嘴上不提而已。”
　　“我叔叔也知道。”
　　“游骑兵们都知道，”莫尔蒙重复了一遍，“你是不是觉得我该阻止他，甚至杀了他？”熊老叹口气，“唉，要真是因为他养不活孩子，我很乐意叫尤伦或康威来带他们走。我们可以让他们穿上黑衣，守夜人军团就缺人手。但野人侍奉的神比你我的神更残酷，这些孩子是卡斯特的祭品……唉，是他的祈祷方式。”
　　是吗？他老婆的祈祷可与他大相径庭。琼恩心想。
　　“这些事，你怎么知道？”熊老转而问他，“卡斯特的老婆给你说的？”
　　“是的，大人，”琼恩坦承，“但我不能告诉您这是谁说的。她吓坏了，她向我求助。”
　　“琼恩，世界如此辽阔，到处都有求助的人。其中有的人，或许该鼓起勇气，自己拯救自己。这会儿，卡斯特就瘫在阁楼上，浑身酒臭，毫无知觉。楼下的长桌搁着咱们新赠的利斧。如果我是他老婆，我会把这当成天神对祈祷的回应，就此了结他。”
　　是啊。琼恩想起了吉莉，想起了她的姐妹们，她们共有十九人，卡斯特孤身一个，可……
　　“其实对我们而言，卡斯特的死并不值得庆幸。你叔叔若健在，必会告诉你卡斯特堡垒对我们的游骑兵来说，通常意味着生与死的差别。”
　　“我父亲说……”他犹豫起来。
　　“说吧，琼恩。想说什么只管说。”
　　“我父亲告诉过我，有的人是咎由自取，罪有应得，”琼恩道，“一个残暴不公的封臣不仅玷污了自己，还玷污了他的主人。”
　　“卡斯特是个自由人，他没有对我们宣誓，并不需遵从我们的律法。你有一颗高贵的心，琼恩，但你得学会这一课：我们不能按自己的想法来塑造这个世界，这并非我们的目的，咱们守夜人军团的职责只是战斗。”
　　战斗，是啊，我必须谨记。“贾曼·布克威尔也说我的剑很快就要派上用场。”
　　“是吗？”莫尔蒙看来有些忧虑，“昨晚，卡斯特对我们说了许多，完全印证了我之前的担心。我躺在地板上，一夜没睡。曼斯·雷德正在霜雪之牙上聚集部众，因此村落纷纷荒废。这跟出发之前，丹尼斯·梅利斯特爵士的部下从大峡谷里抓到的野人口中得到的消息一模一样。惟一的区别在于，卡斯特把他们集结的确切地点告诉了我们，情况越来越复杂了。”
　　“他是想建筑要塞？还是要组织军队？”
　　“是啊，这正是关键所在。那里‘究竟’有多少野人？其中又有多少能操起武器作战？没有人说得清。霜雪之牙是一片严酷、冷漠、荒凉的冰山，无法供养大批人群长期停留。照我分析，曼斯·雷德只有一个目的——南下长城，扫荡七大王国。”
　　“从前，野人也曾大举入侵，”在临冬城时，这些故事琼恩都听老奶妈和鲁温师傅讲过，“在我祖父的祖父的时代，‘红胡子’雷蒙率领他们南下，再往前，‘吟游诗人’贝尔也曾兵临城下。”
　　“不错，比他们更早，有‘长角王’，‘兄弟王’詹德尔和戈尼，在远古，还有吹响冬之号角、从地底唤醒巨人的乔曼，他们都做过同样的尝试，但每次不是在长城下一败涂地，就是被临冬城的援军奋力杀退……但如今，且不论守夜人军团的实力只有夕日的一鳞半爪，又有谁会与我们并肩作战、对抗野人呢？临冬城主已经丧命，他的继承人带着所有军队南下与兰尼斯特交兵。对野人们而言，这是千载难逢的大好机会。琼恩，我很了解曼斯．雷德，不错，他背弃了誓言……但他为人一向目光敏锐，行事果断，是个千里挑一的人才。”
　　“我们该怎么办？”琼恩问。
　　“找到他，”莫尔蒙道，“了结他，阻止他。”
　　凭这区区三百人，琼恩心想，前去对抗整个北野洪荒的愤怒。他的五指开开合合。
[ 此帖被挽墨在2015-08-27 13:40重新编辑 ]
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你看着眼前的人，分明还是以前的模样，可心里终究不是以前那般澄清透明了。
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CHAPTER 24
　　THEON

　　She was undeniably a beauty. But your first is always beautiful, Theon Greyjoy thought.
　　“Now there’s a pretty grin,” a woman’s voice said behind him. “The lordling likes the look of her, does he?”
　　Theon turned to give her an appraising glance. He liked what he saw. Ironborn, he knew at a glance; lean and longlegged, with black hair cut short, wind-chafed skin, strong sure hands, a dirk at her belt. Her nose was too big and too sharp for her thin face, but her smile made up for it. He judged her a few years older than he was, but no more than five-and-twenty. She moved as if she were used to a deck beneath her feet.
　　“Yes, she’s a sweet sight,” he told her, “though not half so sweet as you.”
　　“Oho.” She grinned. “I’d best be careful. This lordling has a honeyed tongue.”
　　“Taste it and see.”
　　“Is it that way, then?” she said, eyeing him boldly. There were women on the Iron Islands—not many, but a few—who crewed the longships along with their men, and it was said that salt and sea changed them, gave them a man’s appetites. “Have you been that long at sea, lordling? Or were there no women where you came from?”
　　“Women enough, but none like you.”
　　“And how would you know what I’m like?”
　　“My eyes can see your face. My ears can hear your laughter. And my cock’s gone hard as a mast for you.”
　　The woman stepped close and pressed a hand to the front of his breeches. “Well, you’re no liar,” she said, giving him a squeeze through the cloth. “How bad does it hurt?”
　　“Fiercely.”
　　“Poor lordling.” She released him and stepped back. “As it happens, I’m a woman wed, and new with child.”
　　“The gods are good,” Theon said. “No chance I’d give you a bastard that way.”
　　“Even so, my man wouldn’t thank you.”
　　“No, but you might.”
　　“And why would that be? I’ve had lords before. They’re made the same as other men.”
　　“Have you ever had a prince?” he asked her. “When you’re wrinkled and grey and your teats hang past your belly, you can tell your children’s children that once you loved a king.”
　　“Oh, is it love we’re talking now? And here I thought it was just cocks and cunts.”
　　“Is it love you fancy?” He’d decided that he liked this wench, whoever she was; her sharp wit was a welcome respite from the damp gloom of Pyke. “Shall I name my longship after you, and play you the high harp, and keep you in a tower room in my castle with only jewels to wear, like a princess in a song?”
　　“You ought to name your ship after me,” she said, ignoring all the rest. “It was me who built her.”
　　“Sigrin built her. My lord father’s shipwright.”
　　“I’m Esgred. Ambrode’s daughter, and wife to Sigrin.”
　　He had not known that Ambrode had a daughter, or Sigrin a wife . . . but he’d met the younger shipwright only once, and the older one he scarce remembered. “You’re wasted on Sigrin.”
　　“Oho. Sigrin told me this sweet ship is wasted on you.”
　　Theon bristled. “Do you know who I am?”
　　“Prince Theon of House Greyjoy. Who else? Tell me true, my lord, how well do you love her, this new maid of yours? Sigrin will want to know.”
　　The longship was so new that she still smelled of pitch and resin. His uncle Aeron would bless her on the morrow, but Theon had ridden over from Pyke to get a look at her before she was launched. She was not so large as Lord Balon’s own Great Kraken or his uncle Victarion’s Iron Victory, but she looked swift and sweet, even sitting in her wooden cradle on the strand; lean black hull a hundred feet long, a single tall mast, fifty long oars, deck enough for a hundred men . . . and at the prow, the great iron ram in the shape of an arrowhead. “Sigrin did me good service,” he admitted. “Is she as fast as she looks?”
　　“Faster—for a master that knows how to handle her.”
　　“It has been a few years since I sailed a ship.” And I’ve never captained one, if truth be told. “Still, I’m a Greyjoy, and an ironman. The sea is in my blood.”
　　“And your blood will be in the sea, if you sail the way you talk,” she told him.
　　“I would never mistreat such a fair maiden.”
　　“Fair maiden?” She laughed. “She’s a sea bitch, this one.”
　　“There, and now you’ve named her. Sea Bitch.”
　　That amused her; he could see the sparkle in her dark eyes. “And you said you’d name her after me,” she said in a voice of wounded reproach. “I did.” He caught her hand. “Help me, my lady. In the green lands, they believe a woman with child means good fortune for any man who beds her.”
　　“And what would they know about ships in the green lands? Or women, for that matter? Besides, I think you made that up.”
　　“If I confess, will you still love me?”
　　“Still? When have I ever loved you?”
　　“Never,” he admitted, “but I am trying to repair that lack, my sweet Esgred. The wind is cold. Come aboard my ship and let me warm you. On the morrow my uncle Aeron will pour seawater over her prow and mumble a prayer to the Drowned God, but I’d sooner bless her with the milk of my loins, and yours.”
　　“The Drowned God might not take that kindly.”
　　“Bugger the Drowned God. If he troubles us, I’ll drown him again. We’re off to war within a fortnight. Would you send me into battle all sleepless with longing?”
　　“Gladly.”
　　“A cruel maid. My ship is well named. If I steer her onto the rocks in my distraction, you’ll have yourself to blame.”
　　“Do you plan to steer with this?” Esgred brushed the front of his breeches once more, and smiled as a finger traced the iron outline of his manhood.
　　“Come back to Pyke with me,” he said suddenly, thinking, What will Lord Balon say? And why should I care? I am a man grown, if I want to bring a wench to bed it is no one’s business but my own.
　　“And what would I do in Pyke?” Her hand stayed where it was.
　　“My father will feast his captains tonight.” He had them to feast every night, while he waited for the last stragglers to arrive, but Theon saw no need to tell all that.
　　“Would you make me your captain for the night, my lord prince?” She had the wickedest smile he’d ever seen on a woman.
　　“I might. If I knew you’d steer me safe into port.”
　　“Well, I know which end of the oar goes in the sea, and there’s no one better with ropes and knots.” One-handed, she undid the lacing of his breeches, then grinned and stepped lightly away from him. “A pity I’m a woman wed, and new with child.”
　　Flustered, Theon laced himself back up. “I need to start back to the castle. If you do not come with me, I may lose my way for grief, and all the islands would be poorer.”
　　“We couldn’t have that . . . but I have no horse, my lord.”
　　“You could take my squire’s mount.”
　　“And leave your poor squire to walk all the way to Pyke?”
　　“Share mine, then.”
　　“You’d like that well enough.” The smile again. “Now, would I be behind you, or in front?”
　　“You would be wherever you liked.”
　　“I like to be on top.”
　　Where has this wench been all my life? “My father’s hall is dim and dank. It needs Esgred to make the fires blaze.”
　　“The lordling has a honeyed tongue.”
　　“Isn’t that where we began?”
　　She threw up her hands. “And where we end. Esgred is yours, sweet prince. Take me to your castle. Let me see your proud towers rising from the sea.”
　　“I left my horse at the inn. Come.” They walked down the strand together, and when Theon took her arm, she did not pull away. He liked the way she walked; there was a boldness to it, part saunter and part sway, that suggested she would be just as bold beneath the blankets.
　　Lordsport was as crowded as he’d ever seen it, swarming with the crews of the longships that lined the pebbled shore and rode at anchor well out past the breakwater. Ironmen did not bend their knees often nor easily, but Theon noted that oarsmen and townfolk alike grew quiet as they passed, and acknowledged him with respectful bows of the head. They have finally learned who I am, he thought. And past time too.
　　Lord Goodbrother of Great Wyk had come in the night before with his main strength, near forty longships. His men were everywhere, conspicuous in their striped goat’s hair sashes. It was said about the inn that Otter Gimpknee’s whores were being fucked bowlegged by beardless boys in sashes. The boys were welcome to them so far as Theon was concerned. A poxier den of slatterns he hoped he’d never see. His present companion was more to his taste. That she was wed to his father’s shipwright and pregnant to boot only made her more intriguing.
　　“Has my lord prince begun choosing his crew?” Esgred asked as they made their way toward the stable. “Ho, Bluetooth,” she shouted to a passing seafarer, a tall man in bearskin vest and raven-winged helm. “How fares your bride?”
　　“Fat with child, and talking of twins.”
　　“So soon?” Esgred smiled that wicked smile. “You got your oar in the water quickly.”
　　“Aye, and stroked and stroked and stroked,” roared the man,
　　“A big man,” Theon observed. “Bluetooth, was it? Should I choose him for my Sea Bitch?”
　　“Only if you mean to insult him. Bluetooth has a sweet ship of his own.”
　　“I have been too long away to know one man from another,” Theon admitted. He’d looked for a few of the friends he’d played with as a boy, but they were gone, dead, or grown into strangers. “My uncle Victarion has loaned me his own steersman.”
　　“Rymolf Stormdrunk? A good man, so long as he’s sober.” She saw more faces she knew, and called out to a passing trio, “Uller, Qarl. Where’s your brother, Skyte?”
　　“The Drowned God needed a strong oarsman, I fear,” replied the stocky man with the white streak in his beard.
　　“What he means is, Eldiss drank too much wine and his fat belly burst,” said the pink-cheeked youth beside him. “What’s dead may never die,” Esgred said.
　　“What’s dead may never die.”
　　Theon muttered the words with them. “You seem well known,” he said to the woman when the men had passed on.
　　“Every man loves the shipwright’s wife. He had better, lest he wants his ship to sink. If you need men to pull your oars, you could do worse than those three.”
　　“Lordsport has no lack of strong arms.” Theon had given the matter no little thought. It was fighters he wanted, and men who would be loyal to him, not to his lord father or his uncles. He was playing the part of a dutiful young prince for the moment, while he waited for Lord Balon to reveal the fullness of his plans. If it turned out that he did not like those plans or his part in them, however, well . . .
　　“Strength is not enough. A longship’s oars must move as one if you would have her best speed. Choose men who have rowed together before, if you’re wise.”
　　“Sage counsel. Perhaps you’d help me choose them.” Let her believe I want her wisdom, women fancy that.
　　“I may. If you treat me kindly.”
　　“How else?”
　　Theon quickened his stride as they neared the Myraham, rocking high and empty by the quay. Her captain had tried to sail a fortnight past, but Lord Balon would not permit it. None of the merchantmen that called at Lordsport had been allowed to depart again; his father wanted no word of the hosting to reach the mainland before he was ready to strike.
　　“Milord,” a plaintive voice called down from the forecastle of the merchanter. The captain’s daughter leaned over the rail, gazing after him. Her father had forbidden her to come ashore, but whenever Theon came to Lordsport he spied her wandering forlornly about the deck. “Milord, a moment,” she called after him. “As it please milord . . .”
　　“Did she?” Esgred asked as Theon hurried her past the cog. “Please milord?”
　　He saw no sense in being coy with this one. “For a time. Now she wants to be my salt wife.”
　　“Oho. Well, she’d profit from some salting, no doubt. Too soft and bland, that one. Or am I wrong?”
　　“You’re not wrong.” Soft and bland. Precisely. How had she known?
　　He had told Wex to wait at the inn. The common room was so crowded that Theon had to push his way through the door. Not a seat was to be had at bench nor table. Nor did he see his squire. “Wex,”—he shouted over the din and clatter. If he’s up with one of those poxy whores, I’ll strip the hide off him, he was thinking when he finally spied the boy, dicing near the hearth . . . and winning too, by the look of the pile of coins before him.
　　“Time to go,” Theon announced. When the boy paid him no mind, he seized him by the ear and pulled him from the game. Wex grabbed up a fistful of coppers and came along without a word. That was one of the things Theon liked best about him. Most squires have loose tongues, but Wex had been born dumb . . . which didn’t seem to keep him from being clever as any twelve-year-old had a right to be. He was a baseborn son of one of Lord Botley’s half brothers. Taking him as squire had been part of the price Theon had paid for his horse.
　　When Wex saw Esgred, his eyes went round. You’d think he’d never seen a woman before, Theon thought. “Esgred will be riding with me back to Pyke. Saddle the horses, and be quick about it.”
　　The boy had ridden in on a scrawny little garron from Lord Balon’s stable, but Theon’s mount was quite another sort of beast. “Where did you find that hellhorse?” Esgred asked when she saw him, but from the way she laughed he knew she was impressed.
　　“Lord Botley bought him in Lannisport a year past, but he proved to be too much horse for him, so Botley was pleased to sell.” The Iron Islands were too sparse and rocky for breeding good horses. Most of the islanders were indifferent riders at best, more comfortable on the deck of a long-ship than in the saddle. Even the lords rode garrons or shaggy Harlaw ponies, and ox carts were more common than drays. The smallfolk too poor to own either one pulled their own plows through the thin, stony soil.
　　But Theon had spent ten years in Winterfell, and did not intend to go to war without a good mount beneath him. Lord Botley’s misjudgment was his good fortune: a stallion with a temper as black as his hide, larger than a courser if not quite so big as most destriers. As Theon was not quite so big as most knights, that suited him admirably. The animal had fire in his eyes. When he’d met his new owner, he’d pulled back his lips and tried to bite off his face.
　　“Does he have a name?” Esgred asked Theon as he mounted.
　　“Smiler.” He gave her a hand, and pulled her up in front of him, where he could put his arms around her as they rode. “I knew a man once who told me that I smiled at the wrong things.”
　　“Do you?”
　　“Only by the lights of those who smile at nothing.” He thought of his father and his uncle Aeron.
　　“Are you smiling now, my lord prince?”
　　“Oh, yes.” Theon reached around her to take the reins. She was almost of a height with him. Her hair could have used a wash and she had a faded pink scar on her pretty neck, but he liked the smell of her, salt and sweat and woman.
　　The ride back to Pyke promised to be a good deal more interesting than the ride down had been.
　　When they were well beyond Lordsport, Theon put a hand on her breast. Esgred reached up and plucked it away. “I’d keep both hands on the reins, or this black beast of yours is like to fling us both off and kick us to death.”
　　“I broke him of that.” Amused, Theon behaved himself for a while, chatting amiably of the weather (grey and overcast, as it had been since he arrived, with frequent rains) and telling her of the men he’d killed in the Whispering Wood. When he reached the part about coming that close to the Kingslayer himself, he slid his hand back up to where it had been. Her breasts were small, but he liked the firmness of them.
　　“You don’t want to do that, my lord prince.”
　　“Oh, but I do.” Theon gave her a squeeze. “Your squire is watching you.”
　　“Let him. He’ll never speak of it, I swear.”
　　Esgred pried his fingers off her breast. This time she kept him firmly prisoned. She had strong hands.
　　“I like a woman with a good tight grip.”
　　She snorted. “I’d not have thought it, by that wench on the waterfront.”
　　“You must not judge me by her. She was the only woman on the ship.”
　　“Tell me of your father. Will he welcome me kindly to his castle?”
　　“Why should he? He scarcely welcomed me, his own blood, the heir to Pyke and the Iron Islands.”
　　“Are you?” she asked mildly. “It’s said that you have uncles, brothers, a sister.”
　　“My brothers are long dead, and my sister . . . well, they say Asha’s favorite gown is a chainmail hauberk that hangs down past her knees, with boiled leather smallclothes beneath. Men’s garb won’t make her a man, though. I’ll make a good marriage alliance with her once we’ve won the war, if I can find a man to take her. As I recall, she had a nose like a vulture’s beak, a ripe crop of pimples, and no more chest than a boy.”
　　“You can marry off your sister,” Esgred observed, “but not your uncles.”
　　“My uncles . . .” Theon’s claim took precedence over those of his father’s three brothers, but the woman had touched on a sore point nonetheless. In the islands it was scarce unheard of for a strong, ambitious uncle to dispossess a weak nephew of his rights, and usually murder him in the bargain. But I am not weak, Theon told himself, and I mean to be stronger yet by the time my father dies. “My uncles pose no threat to me,” he declared. “Aeron is drunk on seawater and sanctity. He lives only for his god—”
　　“His god? Not yours?”
　　“Mine as well. What is dead can never die.” He smiled thinly. “If I make pious noises as required, Damphair will give me no trouble. And my uncle Victarion—”
　　“Lord Captain of the Iron Fleet, and a fearsome warrior. I have heard them sing of him in the alehouses.”
　　“During my lord father’s rebellion, he sailed into Lannisport with my uncle Euron and burned the Lannister fleet where it lay at anchor,” Theon recalled. “The plan was Euron’s, though. Victarion is like some great grey bullock, strong and tireless and dutiful, but not like to win any races. No doubt, he’ll serve me as loyally as he has served my lord father. He has neither the wits nor the ambition to plot betrayal.”
　　“Euron Croweye has no lack of cunning, though. I’ve heard men say terrible things of that one.”
　　Theon shifted his seat. “My uncle Euron has not been seen in the islands for close on two years. He may be dead.” If so, it might be for the best. Lord Balon’s eldest brother had never given up the Old Way, even for a day. His Silence, with its black sails and dark red hull, was infamous in every port from Ibben to Asshai, it was said.
　　“He may be dead,” Esgred agreed, “and if he lives, why, he has spent so long at sea, he’d be half a stranger here. The ironborn would never seat a stranger in the Seastone Chair.”
　　“I suppose not,” Theon replied, before it occurred to him that some would call him a stranger as well. The thought made him frown. Ten years is a long while, but I am back now, and my father is far from dead. I have time to prove myself.
　　He considered fondling Esgred’s breast again, but she would probably only take his hand away, and all this talk of his uncles had dampened his ardor somewhat. Time enough for such play at the castle, in the privacy of his chambers. “I will speak to Helya when we reach Pyke, and see that you have an honored place at the feast,” he said. “I must sit on the dais, at my father’s right hand, but I will come down and join you when he leaves the hall. He seldom lingers long. He has no belly for drink these days.”
　　“A grievous thing when a great man grows old.”
　　“Lord Balon is but the father of a great man.”
　　“A modest lordling.”
　　“Only a fool humbles himself when the world is so full of men eager to do that job for him.” He kissed her lightly on the nape of her neck.
　　“What shall I wear to this great feast?” She reached back and pushed his face away.
　　“I’ll ask Helya to garb you. One of my lady mother’s gowns might do. She is off on Harlaw, and not expected to return.”
　　“The cold winds have worn her away, I hear. Will you not go see her? Harlaw is only a day’s sail, and surely Lady Greyjoy yearns for a last sight of her son.”
　　“Would that I could. I am kept too busy here. My father relies on me, now that I am returned. Come peace, perhaps . . .”
　　“Your coming might bring her peace.”
　　“Now you sound a woman,” Theon complained.
　　“I confess, I am . . . and new with child.”
　　Somehow that thought excited him. “So you say, but your body shows no signs of it. How shall it be proven? Before I believe you, I shall need to see your breasts grow ripe, and taste your mother’s milk.”
　　“And what will my husband say to this? Your father’s own sworn man and servant?”
　　“We’ll give him so many ships to build, he’ll never know you’ve left him.”
　　She laughed. “It’s a cruel lordling who’s seized me. If I promise you that one day you may watch my babe get suck, will you tell me more of your war, Theon of House Greyjoy? There are miles and mountains still ahead of us, and I would hear of this wolf king you served, and the golden lions he fights.”
　　Ever anxious to please her, Theon obliged. The rest of the long ride passed swiftly as he filled her pretty head with tales of Winterfell and war. Some of the things he said astonished him. She is easy to talk to, gods praise her, he reflected. I feel as though I’ve known her for years. If the wench’s pillow play is half the equal of her wit, I’ll need to keep her . . . He thought of Sigrin the Shipwright, a thick-bodied, thick-witted man, flaxen hair already receding from a pimpled brow, and shook his head. A waste. A most tragic waste.
　　It seemed scarcely any time at all before the great curtain wall of Pyke loomed up before them.
　　The gates were open. Theon put his heels into Smiler and rode through at a brisk trot. The hounds were barking wildly as he helped Esgred dismount. Several came bounding up, tails wagging. They shot straight past him and almost bowled the woman over, leaping all around her, yapping and licking. “Off,” Theon shouted, aiming an ineffectual kick at one big brown bitch, but Esgred was laughing and wrestling with them.
　　A stableman came pounding up after the dogs. “Take the horse,” Theon commanded him, “and get these damn dogs away— ”
　　The lout paid him no mind. His face broke into a huge gap-toothed smile and he said, “Lady Asha. You’re back.”
　　“Last night,” she said. “I sailed from Great Wyk with Lord Goodbrother, and spent the night at the inn. My little brother was kind enough to let me ride with him from Lordsport.” She kissed one of the dogs on the nose and grinned at Theon.
　　All he could do was stand and gape at her. Asha. No. She cannot be Asha. He realized suddenly that there were two Ashas in his head. One was the little girl he had known. The other, more vaguely imagined, looked something like her mother. Neither looked a bit like this . . . this . . . this . . .
　　“The pimples went when the breasts came,” she explained while she tussled with a dog, “but I kept the vulture’s beak.”
　　Theon found his voice. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
　　Asha let go of the hound and straightened. “I wanted to see who you were first. And I did.” She gave him a mocking half bow. “And now, little brother, pray excuse me. I need to bathe and dress for the feast. I wonder if I still have that chainmail gown I like to wear over my boiled leather smallclothes?” She gave him that evil grin, and crossed the bridge with that walk he’d liked so well, half saunter and half sway.
　　When Theon turned away, Wex was smirking at him. He gave the boy a clout on the ear. “That’s for enjoying this so much.” And another, harder. “And that’s for not warning me. Next time, grow a tongue.”
　　His own chambers in the Guest Keep had never seemed so chilly, though the thralls had left a brazier burning. Theon kicked his boots off, let his cloak fall to the floor, and poured himself a cup of wine, remembering a gawky girl with knob knees and pimples. She unlaced my breeches, he thought, outraged, and she said . . . oh, gods, and I said . . . He groaned. He could not possibly have made a more appalling fool of himself.
　　No, he thought then. She was the one who made me a fool. The evil bitch must have enjoyed every moment of it. And the way she kept reaching for my cock . . .
　　He took his cup and went to the window seat, where he sat drinking and watching the sea while the sun darkened over Pyke. I have no place here, he thought, and Asha is the reason, may the Others take her! The water below turned from green to grey to black. By then he could hear distant music, and he knew it was time to change for the feast.
　　Theon chose plain boots and plainer clothes, somber shades of black and grey to fit his mood. No ornament; he had nothing bought with iron. I might have taken something off that wildling I killed to save Bran Stark, but he had nothing worth the taking. That’s my cursed luck, I kill the poor.
　　The long smoky hall was crowded with his father’s lords and captains when Theon entered, near four hundred of them. Dagmer Cleftjaw had not yet returned from Old Wyk with the Stonehouses and Drumms, but all the rest were there—Harlaws from Harlaw, Blacktydes from Blacktyde, Sparrs, Merlyns, and Goodbrothers from Great Wyk, Saltcliffes and Sunderlies from Saltcliffe, and Botleys and Wynches from the other side of Pyke. The thralls were pouring ale, and there was music, fiddles and skins and drums. Three burly men were doing the finger dance, spinning short-hafted axes at each other. The trick was to catch the axe or leap over it without missing a step. It was called the finger dance because it usually ended when one of the dancers lost one . . . or two, or five.
　　Neither the dancers nor the drinkers took much note of Theon Greyjoy as he strode to the dais. Lord Balon occupied the Seastone Chair, carved in the shape of a great kraken from an immense block of oily black stone. Legend said that the First Men had found it standing on the shore of Old Wyk when they came to the Iron Islands. To the left of the high seat were Theon’s uncles. Asha was ensconced at his right hand, in the place of honor. “You come late, Theon,” Lord Balon observed.
　　“I ask your pardon.” Theon took the empty seat beside Asha. Leaning close, he hissed in her ear, “You’re in my place.”
　　She turned to him with innocent eyes. “Brother, surely you are mistaken. Your place is at Winterfell.” Her smile cut. “And where are all your pretty clothes? I heard you fancied silk and velvet against your skin.” She was in soft green wool herself, simply cut, the fabric clinging to the slender lines of her body.
　　“Your hauberk must have rusted away, sister,” he threw back. “A great pity. I’d like to see you all in iron.”
　　Asha only laughed. “You may yet, little brother . . . if you think your Sea Bitch can keep up with my Black Wind.” One of their father’s thralls came near, bearing a flagon of wine. “Are you drinking ale or wine tonight, Theon?” She leaned over close. “Or is it still a taste of my mother’s milk you thirst for?”
　　He flushed. “Wine,” he told the thrall. Asha turned away and banged on the table, shouting for ale.
　　Theon hacked a loaf of bread in half, hollowed out a trencher, and summoned a cook to fill it with fish stew. The smell of the thick cream made him a little ill, but he forced himself to eat some. He’d drunk enough wine to float him through two meals. If I retch, it will be on her. “Does Father know that you’ve married his shipwright?” he asked his sister.
　　“No more than Sigrin does.” She gave a shrug. “Esgred was the first ship he built. He named her after his mother. I would be hard-pressed to say which he loves best.”
　　“Every word you spoke to me was a lie.”
　　“Not every word. Remember when I told you I like to be on top?” Asha grinned.
　　That only made him angrier. “All that about being a woman wed, and new with child . . .”
　　“Oh, that part was true enough.” Asha leapt to her feet. “Rolfe, here,” she shouted down at one of the finger dancers, holding up a hand. He saw her, spun, and suddenly an axe came flying from his hand, the blade gleaming as it tumbled end over end through the torchlight. Theon had time for a choked gasp before Asha snatched the axe from the air and slammed it down into the table, splitting his trencher in two and splattering his mantle with drippings. “There’s my lord husband.” His sister reached down inside her gown and drew a dirk from between her breasts. “And here’s my sweet suckling babe.”
　　He could not imagine how he looked at that moment, but suddenly Theon Greyjoy realized that the Great Hall was ringing with laughter, all of it at him. Even his father was smiling, gods be damned, and his uncle Victarion chuckled aloud. The best response he could summon was a queasy grin. We shall see who is laughing when all this is done, bitch.
　　Asha wrenched the axe out of the table and flung it back down at the dancers, to whistles and loud cheers. “You’d do well to heed what I told you about choosing a crew.” A thrall offered them a platter, and she stabbed a salted fish and ate it off the end of her dirk. “If you had troubled to learn the first thing of Sigrin, I could never have fooled you. Ten years a wolf, and you land here and think to prince about the islands, but you know nothing and no one. Why should men fight and die for you?”
　　“I am their lawful prince,” Theon said stiffly.
　　“By the laws of the green lands, you might be. But we make our own laws here, or have you forgotten?”
　　Scowling, Theon turned to contemplate the leaking trencher before him. He would have stew in his lap before long. He shouted for a thrall to clean it up. Half my life I have waited to come home, and for what? Mockery and disregard? This was not the Pyke he remembered. Or did he remember? He had been so young when they took him away to hold hostage.
　　The feast was a meager enough thing, a succession of fish stews, black bread, and spiceless goat. The tastiest thing Theon found to eat was an onion pie. Ale and wine continued to flow well after the last of the courses had been cleared away.
　　Lord Balon Greyjoy rose from the Seastone Chair. “Have done with your drink and come to my solar,” he commanded his companions on the dais. “We have plans to lay.” He left them with no other word, flanked by two of his guards. His brothers followed in short order. Theon rose to go after them.
　　“My little brother is in a rush to be off.” Asha raised her drinking horn and beckoned for more ale.
　　“Our lord father is waiting.”
　　“And has, for many a year. It will do him no harm to wait a little longer . . . but if you fear his wrath, scurry after him by all means. You ought to have no trouble catching our uncles.” She smiled. “One is drunk on seawater, after all, and the other is a great grey bullock so dim he’ll probably get lost.”
　　Theon sat back down, annoyed. “I run after no man.”
　　“No man, but every woman?”
　　“It was not me who grabbed your cock.”
　　“I don’t have one, remember? You grabbed every other bit of me quick enough.”
　　He could feel the flush creeping up his cheeks. “I’m a man with a man’s hungers. What sort of unnatural creature are you?”
　　“Only a shy maid.” Asha’s hand darted out under the table to give his cock a squeeze. Theon nearly jumped from his chair. “What, don’t you want me to steer you into port, brother?”
　　“Marriage is not for you,” Theon decided. “When I rule, I believe I will pack you off to the silent sisters.” He lurched to his feet and strode off unsteadily to find his father.
　　Rain was falling by the time he reached the swaying bridge out to the Sea Tower. His stomach was crashing and churning like the waves below, and wine had unsteadied his feet. Theon gritted his teeth and gripped the rope tightly as he made his way across, pretending that it was Asha’s neck he was clutching.
　　The solar was as damp and drafty as ever. Buried under his sealskin robes, his father sat before the brazier with his brothers on either side of him. Victarion was talking of tides and winds when Theon entered, but Lord Balon waved him silent. “I have made my plans. It is time you heard them.”
　　“I have some suggestions—”
　　“When I require your counsel I shall ask for it,” his father said. “We have had a bird from Old Wyk. Dagmer is bringing the Drumms and Stonehouses. If the god grants us good winds, we will sail when they arrive . . . or you will. I mean for you to strike the first blow, Theon. You shall take eight longships north—”
　　“Eight?” His face reddened. “What can I hope to accomplish with only eight longships?”
　　“You are to harry the Stony Shore, raiding the fishing villages and sinking any ships you chance to meet. It may be that you will draw some of the northern lords out from behind their stone walls. Aeron will accompany you, and Dagmer Cleftjaw.”
　　“May the Drowned God bless our swords,” the priest said.
　　Theon felt as if he’d been slapped. He was being sent to do reaver’s work, burning fishermen out of their hovels and raping their ugly daughters, and yet it seemed Lord Balon did not trust him sufficiently to do even that much. Bad enough to have to suffer the Damphair’s scowls and chidings. With Dagmer Cleftjaw along as well, his command would be purely nominal.
　　“Asha my daughter,” Lord Balon went on, and Theon turned to see that his sister had slipped in silently, “you shall take thirty longships of picked men round Sea Dragon Point. Land upon the tidal flats north of Deepwood Motte. March quickly, and the castle may fall before they even know you are upon them.”
　　Asha smiled like a cat in cream. “I’ve always wanted a castle,” she said sweetly.
　　“Then take one.”
　　Theon had to bite his tongue. Deepwood Motte was the stronghold of the Glovers. With both Robett and Galbart warring in the south, it would be lightly held, and once the castle fell the ironmen would have a secure base in the heart of the north. I should be the one sent to take Deepwood. He knew Deepwood Motte, he had visited the Glovers several times with Eddard Stark.
　　“Victarion,” Lord Balon said to his brother, “the main thrust shall fall to you. When my sons have struck their blows, Winterfell must respond. You should meet small opposition as you sail up Saltspear and the Fever River. At the headwaters, you will be less than twenty miles from Moat Cailin. The Neck is the key to the kingdom. Already we command the western seas. Once we hold Moat Cailin, the pup will not be able to win back to the north . . . and if he is fool enough to try, his enemies will seal the south end of the causeway behind him, and Robb the boy will find himself caught like a rat in a
　　bottle.”
　　Theon could keep silent no longer. “A bold plan, Father, but the lords in their castles—”
　　Lord Balon rode over him. “The lords are gone south with the pup. Those who remained behind are the cravens, old men, and green boys. They will yield or fall, one by one. Winterfell may defy us for a year, but what of it? The rest shall be ours, forest and field and hall, and we shall make the folk our thralls and salt wives.”
　　Aeron Damphair raised his arms. “And the waters of wrath will rise high, and the Drowned God will spread his dominion across the green lands!”
　　“What is dead can never die,” Victarion intoned. Lord Balon and Asha echoed his words, and Theon had no choice but to mumble along with them. And then it was done.
　　Outside the rain was falling harder than ever. The rope bridge twisted and writhed under his feet. Theon Greyjoy stopped in the center of the span and contemplated the rocks below. The sound of the waves was a crashing roar, and he could taste the salt spray on his lips. A sudden gust of wind made him lose his footing, and he stumbled to his knees.
　　Asha helped him rise. “You can’t hold your wine either, brother.”
　　Theon leaned on her shoulder and let her guide him across the rainslick boards. “I liked you better when you were Esgred,” he told her accusingly.
　　She laughed. “That’s fair. I liked you better when you were nine.”


Ⅱ 列王的纷争 Chapter25 席恩
　　无可挑剔，她美得惊人。为什么你的第一次总是如此美丽，席恩不禁想。
　　“瞧您，笑得多灿烂哟，”女人的声音从身后传来，“大人您喜欢上了她，是不？”
　　席恩回头审视这女孩。他喜欢她的模样。真正的铁种，一望而知：苗条、长腿，剪得短短的黑发，饱经风霜的皮肤，强壮有力的胳膊，腰间别着的匕首。虽然对她那张瘦脸而言，她的鼻子显得又大又尖，不过她的笑容足以弥补。他认定她比他大几岁，但不超过二十五。哈，走起路来活像上辈子都在甲板上讨生活似的。
　　“没错，她看起来真甜，”他告诉她，“不过嘛，却连你的一半也比不上。”
　　“噢，噢。”她笑道，“我可得当心，大人您有蜜糖般的唇舌呢。”
　　“来，尝尝看？”
　　“可以吗？”她边说边露骨地瞧他。铁群岛中有的女人——虽然不多，但确有一部分——和男人们一起驾驶长船为生。俗话说海和盐能改变女人，使她们有男人的癖好。“您在海上待太久了么，大人？莫非您去的地方没女人做伴？”
　　“唉，女人是不少，可哪有你这样的人才。”
　　“您怎知道人家是怎样的人呢？”
　　“我的眼睛会瞧啊，瞧你这漂亮脸蛋儿；我耳朵会听嘛，你笑起来真是没得说。喏，我那儿比桅杆还硬啦，还不都因为你。”
　　女人踱上前来，伸出一只手压上他马裤。“嘻嘻，您没骗我，”她边说边隔着衣料挤压，“痛不痛？”
　　“痛啊，痛死啦！”
　　“可怜的大人，”她放手走开去，“真不巧，人家已经结婚了，还刚怀孕了呢。”
　　“诸神在上，”席恩说，“那我不能给你孩子啦。”
　　“私生子？哈，恐怕还要我男人感激您哟？”
　　“他不会，可你会。”
　　“怎么？人家以前可陪过许多大人的。他们嘛……和外面的野男人也没啥两样。”
　　“可你跟过王子吗？”他问她，“当你年老色衰，白发苍苍，连奶头都松松垮垮的时候，你却可以骄傲地告诉孙子，你爱过一个国王呢！”
　　“噢，我们这是在谈情说爱吗？我还以为您只关心鸡巴和阴道呢。”
　　“你想要爱情？”他觉得自己暗暗喜欢上了这婊子，管她是谁，她那尖刻机巧的话语是这又冷又暗的派克岛能给他的最好舒解。“你要不要我拿你的名字来为自己的长船命名？要我整天给你弹竖琴，把你带上城堡的高楼，用珠宝打扮，让你像童话中的公主一般？”
　　“您本该用我的名字来命名您的船，”她答道，忽略了其他承诺，“她是我建造的。”
　　“不对吧，应该是西格林，我父亲大人的造船大师。”
　　“我是伊斯格蕊，安布德的女儿，西格林的老婆。”
　　他不知安布德还有个女儿，西格林的老婆？……但他和年轻的造船师傅只有一面之缘，而对以前那位大师更是记忆模糊。“你和西格林在一起真浪费。”
　　“噢，西格林告诉我，把这艘漂亮的船给你才浪费呢。”
　　席恩怒火中烧。“你知道我是谁？”
　　“葛雷乔伊家族的席恩王子，对不对？说实话，大人，你喜不喜欢她，这艘献给你的美少女？西格林很想知道。”
　　这艘长船崭崭新新，散发着沥青和树脂的味道。明天，伊伦叔叔将在新船下水之际予她祝福，但席恩已等不及，便飞马从派克城赶过来预先观看。她的大小比不上巴隆大王的泓洋巨怪号和维克塔利昂的无敌铁种号，但即便躺在岸边的木船坞，已能让人充分感受她的灵巧与敏捷：一百尺长的黑色流线形船壳，一根独立的大桅杆，五十条长桨，足够一百人站立的甲板……船首则是一座塑成箭头形状的钢铁巨锤。“西格林取悦了我，”他承认，“她真的就跟看起来一样跑得快？”
　　“很快很快——只要驾御她的是懂行的人。”
　　“我有几年没驾过船了。”事实上，从未当过船长。“不过，我是葛雷乔伊家的人，我是铁民，大海融入了我的血脉。”
　　“如果你想好好开船，你的血脉应该融入大海，”她告诉他。
　　“放心，我不会亏待这位美少女。”
　　“美少女？”她嘻笑道，“她么，应该叫海婊子才对。”
　　“瞧，你给她取了个好名，就叫她海婊子吧。”
　　她被逗乐了，他看见她黑眼珠里闪烁的火花。“您刚才不是说，要用我的名字为她命名么？”她用受伤的语调责备道。
　　“嘿，我可是说到做到了呀，”他执起她的手，“来吧，夫人。青绿之地上的人都说，怀孩子的女人能给睡她的男人带来好运。”
　　“青绿之地上的人怎么知道船上的事？怎会了解船上的女儿家？我想，您不会在哄我吧？”
　　“嗨，我投降啦。你还爱我吗？”
　　“什么？我啥时候爱上您啦？”
　　“就算还没有吧，”他承认，“可我不是在尽力弥补么？亲爱的伊斯格蕊，你瞧，外面寒风凄冷，就请上我的船，让我跟你暖和暖和。明天，我叔叔伊伦就要过来用海水浇灌她的船首，念念有词地向淹神祷告祈福，我打算先用我俩的精液来祝福她呢。”
　　“淹神老爷没定这规矩吧。”
　　“去他的淹神老爷。他敢来烦我们，我他妈把他再淹一次。两周后我们就要去打仗，你怎么忍心让我彻夜无眠、满怀思念地上战场呢？”
　　“那样的话，我最开心了。”
　　“好残忍的女孩。我的船真是取了个好名。唉，若是我驾船分心牵挂，说不定就让她触礁了呢，你可后悔都来不及啦。”
　　“您可真会说笑话，莫非您用这个驾驶？”伊斯格蕊的手再度绕过他的马裤，她一边用手指勾勒他硬得似铁的命根子一边微笑。
　　“跟我回派克城吧，”他沉吟半晌，突然道。巴隆大王会怎样说？嘿，我关心个屁！我是个大男人了，想带婊子上床是我自己的事，谁管得了？
　　“我去派克城干嘛？”她的手还放在那儿。
　　“今晚，我父亲会大宴诸位船长。”其实他每天都在宴请他们，只等他们聚齐，不过没必要给这婊子讲这么仔细。
　　“呵，我就是您今夜的船长么，王子殿下？”她露出他从未见过的邪恶笑容。
　　“我同意。只要你为我平平安安撑船返航。”
　　“好啊，我知道怎么撑船划桨……首先是放开绳子和索结……”她伸出另一只手，解开他的裤带，然后笑着轻快地走开，“不过人家结婚了，还怀了孩子，可惜哟。”
　　席恩慌忙提住裤带，“总之，我必须马上回城。你不跟我走的话，只怕我会永远为今天悲叹，就连群岛也将终日失色哪。”
　　“我们别那么坏哟……可我没马呀，殿下。”
　　“你可以骑我侍从的马。”
　　“我害你倒霉的侍从一路走回派克城去？”
　　“好了，骑我的马。”
　　“你这家伙！本就这样打算吧，”她又笑了，“那么，我是坐你后面，还是前面？”
　　“你想坐哪儿就坐哪儿。”
　　“我要骑在上面啦！”
　　我真该早些遇上这婊子。“我父亲的厅堂又黑又潮，惟有伊斯格蕊能让那儿焕发光芒。”
　　“大人您有蜜糖般的唇舌呢。”
　　“嘿，我们不就这样开始的么？”
　　她猛地抽回手，“这也是结束。伊斯格蕊跟你走，亲爱的王子，带我去城堡，我要好好瞧瞧您那海中升起的矫健塔楼。”
　　“来，我把马留在了旅馆，”他们并肩走下浅滩，席恩又去挽她的手，这次她没有拒绝。他喜欢她走路的姿势：透着一股蛮野劲儿，悠闲地摇摆，想来她在毯子底下也同样蛮野，同样棒。
　　君王港和从前一样，非常拥挤，鹅卵石岸上挤满长船水手，有的在防波堤边固定船锚，将船在岸边排成一列。铁民们不常屈膝，更不易屈膝，但席恩经过时发现无论桨手镇民似乎都通通闭上了嘴巴，朝他恭敬地点头。他们终于明白了我是谁，他心想，花的时间可不少嘛。
　　大威克岛的古柏勒头领昨晚刚到，带来了他的船队主力，约四十条长船。这时，他的部下正四处游荡，围着斑纹山羊毛做的腰带，十分醒目。旅馆的闲人都说老板“水濑”吉普肯的妓女都被这群花腰带没胡子的男孩操弯了腰啦。呵，这些小子才不关他席恩的事，他可不想见那些脸上长痘的荡妇，还是身边的人更合胃口。她嫁给了父亲的造船师，肚里还拖着孩子，吓，多么诱人！
　　“王子殿下，您挑选好船员了吗？”他们朝马房走去时，伊斯格蕊开口道。“喂，蓝牙，”她朝一位路过的船员高喊，那人十分高大，穿着熊皮背心，头戴鸦翼盔。“你新娘子呢？”
　　“怀孩子变胖啦，就念着双胞胎。”
　　“这样快啊？”伊斯格蕊又露出邪恶的笑容，“你在水里划桨总是这般猛。”
　　“嘿嗨，划呀划呀划呀，”男人吼着。
　　“粗汉一个，”席恩评论，“他叫蓝牙？我可以选他上海婊子。”
　　“你莫非想侮辱他？蓝牙有自己的漂亮长船。”
　　“我离开得太久，很多人际关系都扯不清喽，”席恩承认。他用心寻访过儿时玩伴，但一无所获，他们要么死了，要么成了陌生人。“我叔叔维克塔利昂答应把自己的舵手借给我。”
　　“‘风暴狂饮’瑞摩尔？人选不错，只是他清醒的时候不多。”她认出更多熟人，朝旁边一个三人组叫嚷，“乌勒，科尔，你们老哥上哪儿去啦？嗯，斯基特？”
　　“唉，恐怕淹神老爷急着要个好桨手哪，”那矮小身材，胡子半白的男人答道。
　　“他是说，埃迪斯喝得太多，把大肚子撑暴喽，”斯基特旁边粉红脸颊的少年续道。
　　“逝者不死，”伊斯格蕊说。
　　“逝者不死。”
　　席恩跟着他们呢喃祷词。“看来你很受欢迎嘛，”男人们离开后，他告诉女人。
　　“谁不喜欢造船师傅的老婆呢。不多恭维点，说不定哪天船沉了都不知道。你想找桨手，这三人倒不错。”
　　“君王港里多的是壮汉。”席恩早考虑过这个问题，他要的是经验丰富的战士，要的是赤胆忠心的伙伴——不是对他父亲大人，不是对他叔叔，而只对他本人。眼下，他不得不暂时扮演恭顺尽责的王子殿下的角色，眼看着巴隆大王执行计划。可只要时机成熟，计划出了岔子，或是他不喜欢自己的角色了，那么，那就……
　　“光有力气是不够的，要想一条长船跑得快，关键是她的桨手必须整齐一致。你聪明的话，得尽量选择以前共事过的船员。”
　　“贤明的建议。依我看，应当由你来帮我挑选船员。”让她知道我有多赏识她的智商，女人就喜欢这道道。
　　“或许吧，如果您待我好点儿的话。”
　　“还不够好么？”
　　他们走近密拉罕号，席恩陡然加快脚步。这条船甲板上空无一人，在波浪中不住摇晃。早在两周前，船长就试图驾船离开，却被巴隆大王发话禁止。自席恩归来以后，君王港所有的商船都不准出港；父亲希望在准备就绪之前，不让大陆得到一丝一毫军队集结的讯息。
　　“少爷！”商船船楼上传下一声凄惨的呼唤。船长的女儿倚在栏杆边，目不转睛地望着他。她老爸不准她上岸，于是每当席恩前来君王港，总能见她在甲板上没头苍蝇似的四处徘徊。“少爷，请等我一下，”她在他身后大喊。“如果少爷您高兴……”
　　“就这女孩？”当席恩领着伊斯格蕊飞快地越过小船后，她问，“逗少爷您高兴？”
　　我可不会为这小女孩脸红。“有一段时间吧。她得寸进尺，想当我的盐妾。”
　　“噢，噢，没错，当盐妾再没更好的可人儿了。你看看，她娇嫩又柔弱，不是么？我说得没错吧？”
　　“没错。”娇嫩又柔弱。中肯极了。可她怎么知道呢？
　　他吩咐威克斯在旅馆等他。此时大厅里人头攒动，席恩只好从门边一路挤过去。长椅和桌边都没了空位，他的跟班不见了。“威克斯，”他在一片喧嚣和谈笑中高声大叫。如果他跑去睡那些长痘痘的婊子，我就剥了他的皮，他正这么想着，转头便瞧见了男孩，对方正在壁炉边掷骰子……赢了不少，面前的钱币堆得小山似的。
　　“该走了，”席恩宣布。男孩不理他，他一把揪住孩子的耳朵，将他拖离赌局。威克斯慌乱中抓起一把铜板，一言不发地跟席恩出去。他就这点讨席恩喜欢，别人的侍从都是多嘴多舌，只有他的威克斯天生是个哑巴……惟一的遗憾是他跟其他十二岁男孩一般机灵古怪。他是波特利头领的同父异母兄弟的私生子之一，带走他当跟班也是席恩为换取波特利的好马所付出的代价。
　　当威克斯瞧见伊斯格蕊，眼睛顿时瞪得老大。你还以为他这辈子从没见过女人呢！席恩想。“伊斯格蕊跟我一起骑马回派克。快把马鞍备好，快！”
　　男孩的坐骑只是从巴隆大王的马房里随意拣的一匹又瘦又矮的小马驹，但席恩的马不同凡响。“这该死的马你打哪儿弄到的？”伊斯格蕊一见便问，从她笑的模样，他知道她被打动了。
　　“一年前，波特利头领在兰尼斯港买下的。不过他家的马也实在太多，所以就很乐意转手喽。”铁群岛贫瘠多山，不是培育良马的地方。多数岛民对骑马很陌生，对他们而言，待在甲板比骑上马背自在得多。头领们也只骑骑矮马或多毛的哈尔洛小马。岛上牛车都比马车多。平民百姓更没财力去购买牲畜来在这荒芜崎岖的土地上拉犁。
　　不过席恩在临冬城待了十年，决心骑着雄健的战马上战场。波特利头领不识货，算他的运气：这匹牡马的脾性就像他的漆黑皮肤一般，个子虽比不得军马，却比普通坐骑高大。对他而言真是恰好合适，因为席恩也不如一般骑士那么高大。这家伙眼透火气，记得第一次跟新主人见面，撅撅嘴唇，差点把席恩的脸咬掉。
　　“它有名字么？”席恩上马时她问。
　　“笑星，”他朝她伸手，把她抱到身前，好在骑马途中搂着她。“记得从前有个家伙对我说，我总是对着错误的东西微笑。”
　　“是么？”
　　“哼，在那些从不懂得欢笑的人眼里或许如此吧。”他想起父亲和伊伦叔叔。
　　“那您现在在笑吗，我的王子殿下？”
　　“哈，当然，”席恩的手环抱着她，抓起缰绳。她几乎和他一样高，头发洗得很勤，只不过那标致的颈项上有道褪色的红伤疤。没关系，他喜欢她的味道，海盐、汗水和女人的味道。
　　这次回派克一定比和叔叔那次舒服得多。
　　当君王港慢慢从视线中消失，席恩也渐渐地把手放上她的乳房。伊斯格蕊抓住他的手，挥打开去。“您这人！一定要双手抓紧绳子啦，不然这黑大个把咱俩掀下去踢死才好看呢。”
　　“它敢！”席恩觉得很开心，于是暂时压住性子，和她亲切地聊起了天气(自打他来，便是灰暗多云，时常降雨)以及他在呓语森林杀人的事迹。当他说到自己逼近弑君者的部分时，忍不住又把手伸到它们原本该待的地方去了。她的奶子小是小，不过他顶喜欢它们的坚硬。
　　“您不要这么做啦！我的王子殿下。”
　　“噢，干嘛？”席恩拧了一下。
　　“您的侍从正瞧着您呢。”
　　“管他的。他不会说出去的，我发誓。”
　　于是伊斯格蕊逮住他的指头。这回他可被牢牢困住了，她那双手真是强壮得紧。
　　“哈，我喜欢带劲的女人。”
　　她嗤之以鼻。“我可不那么想，瞧瞧在码头碰见的女孩吧。”
　　“你不能用她来评判我。她是那船上惟一的女人呀！”
　　“哎，还是说说你父亲吧。不知他会不会欢迎我去他城堡？”
　　“干嘛要求他欢迎？他连我都不欢迎，我可是他的亲生血脉，是派克和铁群岛的继承人呢。”
　　“真的？”她温柔地问，“你不是有叔叔，有兄弟，还有一个姐姐么。”
　　“老哥们死了几百年啦，我姐姐……好啦，听说阿莎最喜欢的衣服是一件过膝的锁子甲，她连内衣都穿的是硬皮甲。哼，不管怎么讲，穿男人的衣服不能让她变成男人。不过呢，只等我们打了胜仗，我会给她找个声名显赫的世家，安排一桩好婚事。记得她鼻子真是跟秃鹫的喙没两样，一脸的烂麻子，胸脯却还没那些假小子大。”
　　“也许你能嫁掉姐姐，”伊斯格蕊评论，“但还有叔叔呢。”
　　“我的叔叔们……”席恩的继承顺位照理比父亲的三个弟弟优先，不过这女人还是逮到了痛处。在这片群岛，强大而有野心的亲戚霸占侄儿的土地，甚至把小辈谋害掉的例子真可谓数不胜数。但我不是弱者，席恩提醒自己，老爸死前我要变得更为强大。“叔叔们对我没威胁，”他宣称，“伊伦把自己献给了大海和神灵。他活着只为了他的神——”
　　“他的神？难道不是你的？”
　　“当然是啦。逝者不死么。”他敷衍地笑笑，“只要我记得每天多念这些虔诚的废话，湿发就不会来烦我。而我叔叔维克塔利昂——”
　　“他是铁岛舰队的总司令，无畏的战士。我在酒馆里常听人们唱歌颂扬他呢。”
　　“当年我父亲起兵，就是他和我另一位叔叔攸伦一同航往兰尼斯港，把兰尼斯特的整只舰队活活焚在了锚地里，”席恩回忆，“不过，整个计划是攸伦制订的。要我形容的话，维克塔利昂就像那些笨重的灰公牛，强壮、不知疲倦、忠于职守，但你甭想用他去赢得任何赛跑。毫无疑问，他会像服侍我父亲一般服侍我。他可没那个本事和野心去策划叛变。”
　　“说到本事，‘鸦眼’攸伦可是个厉害角色。我看别人对他简直就是谈虎色变。”
　　席恩在鞍上挪了挪，“我的攸伦叔叔已经快两年不曾在群岛露面，大概是死了。”真这样的话，那简直太妙了。巴隆大王的长弟从未放弃古道，一天都不曾放弃。他的宁静号，挂着漆黑的风帆、有着暗红的船壳。据人们传说，从伊班到亚夏，无论哪个港口这艘船都是恶名昭彰。
　　“他也许是死了，”伊斯格蕊赞同，“即使还活着，不管怎么说，在海上也待得太久，在这里都快成半个陌生人了。铁种们应该不会让一位陌生人坐上海石之位。”
　　“……我也这么想，”席恩勉强答道，他忽然想到很多人也把他当陌生人看待，不禁皱紧了眉头。十年是长了点，但我不是回来了么？老爸看来还很健康，我还有时间证明自己。
　　他犹豫着，是否再摸摸伊斯格蕊的乳房。她一定又要把我拦住。谈了半天叔叔的事已经坏了他的兴致，算了，等回到城堡有的是时间慢慢玩，在他的私人卧室里好好玩。“等咱们抵达派克城，我会跟海莉亚打声招呼，为你在宴会中安排个体面的位置，”他说，“我自己得坐在高台上，就在我父亲的右手，不过等他离席我一定会下来找你，我保证。他待不了多久的，这些日子，他没喝酒的胃口。”
　　“伟人逃不脱岁月的魔掌，多可悲呀。”
　　“可不？巴隆大王算得上伟人的父亲。”
　　“多谦虚的殿下哟。”
　　“在这个世界上，大家都是互相倾轧，只有傻瓜才会自己贬低自己。”他轻轻吻向她的颈背。
　　“那我该穿什么去参加这次盛宴呢？”她迅速回头，一把推开他的脸。
　　“我会吩咐海莉亚为你好好打扮。我母亲大人的裙服应该适合你。她去了哈尔洛岛，大概是不会回来了。”
　　“这事我听说了，派克岛的寒风让她再也无法忍受。你不去看她么？哈尔洛岛离这儿不过一日航程，我想葛雷乔伊夫人一定成天盼着见她小儿子最后一面。”
　　“我会去的，只是最近实在太忙。我刚回来，父亲很倚靠我。或许，等一切胜利，平静之后……”
　　“你现在去看她，或许可以带给她平静。”
　　“嘿，你的口气可真像个女人，”席恩抱怨。
　　“我……我是……刚怀孩子嘛。”
　　不知怎的，想到这个让他又兴奋起来。“你嘴上这样说，可没见身上有什么迹象。你要怎么证明呢？要我信你，除非让我瞧瞧你成熟的奶子，尝尝你这新妈妈的乳汁才成。”
　　“那给我丈夫知道了会怎样说哦？他可是你父亲眷顾的臣下和仆人哪！”
　　“我们会给他安排造不完的船，让他忙得连你离开都不知道。”
　　她大笑：“占有我的是怎样一位残酷的殿下哟。葛雷乔伊家族的席恩，如果我答应您，总有一天会让您看着我给孩子哺乳，您肯给我多讲些您打仗的故事吗？离咱们的目的地还有几重大山，远得很，我正想听听您曾经效劳的那位狼王的事迹，还有他所对抗的金色雄狮呢。”
　　我真的好想讨好她，席恩自忖。于是在剩下的漫长路途里，他极力朝她可爱的脑袋灌输临冬城和战争的故事，时间一下子过得飞快。说出口的话连他自己也感到惊讶。诸神保佑，她真让人管不了嘴巴，他心想，仿佛我跟她是厮守多年的伴侣似的。只要这婊子的床上功夫有她嘴皮子一半厉害，我真会把她留住……他想起造船大师西格林——大胖子，木脑瓜，长满粉刺的额头上垂着几丝麻黄头发——忍不住摇头。真浪费。最最可悲的浪费。
　　当派克城的高大墙垒在眼前出现时，他已经失去了时间感觉。
　　城门开着。席恩踢踢笑星，轻快地跑进去。当他扶伊斯格蕊下马时，猎狗们疯狂地吠叫起来。有的作势欲扑，有的摇尾呼喝。它们一古脑儿越过了他，几乎把女人撞倒。它们把她团团围住，又跳又吼又舔。“走开，”席恩大吼，随意踢向一只高大的棕色母狗，伊斯格蕊却嘻笑着同它们打闹。
　　一位马夫步履沉重地跟着狗群跑出来。“把马带走，”席恩命令他，“把这些混账狗给我赶——”
　　这傻瓜居然不搭理他。马夫咧开巨嘴，露齿大笑，他说：“阿莎小姐！你回来了啊！”
　　“昨晚刚到，”她答道，“我同古柏勒头领一块儿乘船从大威克岛来，在旅馆将就了一宿。然后我好心的小弟就特意把我从君王港接来啦。”她吻了吻狗的鼻子，朝着席恩坏笑。
　　他……傻站在那儿，目瞪口呆地望着她。阿莎？不。她不可能是阿莎。他突然想起自己脑海里其实有两幅阿莎的镜像。一幅是他见过的小女孩；而另一幅，只是模糊的想像，和她的妈妈差不多。但一点也不像这份俏样……这份俏样……这份俏样……
　　“乳房成熟时，痘痘也跟着不见了，”她边和猎狗扭打边解释，“只有鹰勾鼻改不了。”
　　席恩找回了几分自制。“为什么不早告诉我？”
　　阿莎放开猎狗，站起身来。“我打算先瞧瞧你现在是什么德行，而我果真不辱此行。”她朝他嘲弄地半鞠一躬。“现在哪，我的小弟弟，恳请您原谅我先失陪哦，我要回去沐浴更衣，准备参加宴席喽。哎呀，不知那件穿在皮甲内衣外的大锁子甲还在不在？”她给了他一个邪恶的笑容，用他最欣赏的那种步伐跨过吊桥，悠闲地摇摆着。
　　等席恩回过神来，只见威克斯朝他咯咯傻笑。他狠狠给了这小子一记耳光，“你他妈高兴个鬼，”又扇一记，这次更重，“谁叫你不早说！下辈子，记得长舌头！”
　　虽然奴隶们已在他位于血堡中的卧室点起了火盆，他却感到前所未有的寒意。席恩踢掉靴子，扔下斗篷，操起一杯葡萄酒，回想起过去那个罗圈腿、满脸麻子的愚笨女孩。“她”居然脱了我的裤子，他义愤填膺地想，她还……噢，诸神啊，我还说了……他不住呻吟。我简直就是个彻头彻尾的大傻瓜。
　　不对，他接着想，是她让我心甘情愿当了个傻瓜。这坏心肝的婊子精心安排了一切。哎，她捏我那话儿的手势……
　　他握紧杯子，赶到窗边的座位，边喝酒边看大海。太阳正在派克岛远方的海平面沉没。在这里，我没有地位，他想，原来都因为阿莎，异鬼把她抓去吧！城堡下，汹涌的波涛逐渐由绿变灰、由灰转黑。他听到远方传来的音乐声，明白是该换衣服出席宴会的时候了。
　　席恩挑了一双平淡无奇的靴子和一件更朴素的衣服，它们颜色灰暗，正好符合他的心境。他不敢带装饰品：只因未付铁钱。救布兰·史塔克那次，我该从那野人身上捞点什么。可那人的确没什么好拿。我的运气为什么总是这样糟，连杀人都轮到穷鬼。
　　当他步入烟雾弥漫的长厅时，四处皆是父亲麾下的头领和船长，将近四百人。去老威克岛传令的裂颚达格摩尚未归来，该岛的斯通浩斯家族和卓鼓家族也同时缺席，但余者皆已齐聚于此——哈尔洛岛的哈尔洛家族，黑潮岛的布莱克泰斯家族，大威克岛的古柏勒家族、斯帕家族和梅林家族，盐崖岛的苏克利夫家族和桑德利家族，以及派克岛另一边的波特利家族和温奇家族。奴隶来回奔跑，为头领们斟酒，厅堂里回荡着提琴和皮鼓发出的乐章。三个魁梧大汉表演着手指舞，一连串短柄利斧在三人之间来回投掷周转。玩耍的规则是参加者接住或避开斧子，但不得挪动半步。这游戏之所以叫手指舞，是因为它通常会在某人丢掉一根指头的时候结束……运气不好的话，是两根，甚至五根全部。
　　但不论舞蹈者还是喝酒的人全都没在意踱向高台的席恩·葛雷乔伊。巴隆大王安坐于海石之位，这海怪模样的座位乃是用一块黝黑油亮的巨石雕刻而成。传说当先民们初次踏上铁群岛，这块巨石便躺在老威克岛的海滩。尊位左边坐着他的两位叔叔，阿莎被安排在巴隆右手，无疑表明了他的宠爱。“你迟到了，席恩，”巴隆大王评论道。
　　“请您原谅。”席恩坐到阿莎身旁的空位。他倾前身子，靠在她耳畔嘶声道：“你抢了我的座位。”
　　她一脸无辜地望着他。“弟弟，你肯定搞错了。你的座位在临冬城吧。”她坏笑着，“哟，你那些漂亮衣服哪儿去啦？听说你不是爱用丝绸羽绒打扮自己么？”她穿着一身淡绿的羊毛衫，做工虽普通，不过……却愈发凸显她苗条的曲线。
　　“哼，锁甲生锈了吧，姐姐，”他试图反击，“多可惜，你还是一身铁皮比较耐看。”
　　阿莎一笑置之，“你会看到的，我的小弟弟……只要你的海婊子追得上我的黑风。”父亲的奴隶提着一大壶葡萄酒上前。“你要葡萄酒还是麦酒，席恩？”她也倾身过来。“还是你想尝尝新妈妈的乳汁呢？”
　　他脸红了。“葡萄酒，”他告诉奴隶。阿莎坐回去，猛敲桌子，吼着要麦酒。
　　席恩劈开一条面包，抓来空盘，吩咐厨子将之盛满新鲜鱼肉。厚重的乳酪气味让他有些不适，然而他强迫自己去对付。刚才他已经喝下了平日两倍份量的酒，就算吐，也要吐到她身上。“父亲知道你嫁给了他的造船师？”他问姐姐。
　　“连西格林自己都不知道，”她耸耸肩，“伊斯格蕊是他这辈子造的第一艘船，他拿他老妈的名字取的。我只不过借件他爱得最深的东西用用罢了。”
　　“原来你说的每一句都是谎话。”
　　“也不尽然。记得我告诉你我要骑在上面吗？”阿莎笑道。
　　他再也按捺不住。“你还说你结婚了，怀了孩子……”
　　“噢，这句也不假。”阿莎一跃而起。“拉夫，拿来，”她朝着一位正表演手指舞的大汉高叫，伸出一只手掌。他看见她，转了个圈，一把斧子脱手飞来。利斧划过一把又一把火炬，翻滚的刀刃闪动着寒光。席恩几乎便要窒息。只见阿莎凌空接住飞斧，“砰”地一声猛扎在长桌上。他的餐盘成了两半，斗篷溅满油脂。“这是我的夫君老爷，”姐姐将手伸进上衣，从双乳之间拔出一把匕首，“这是我的乳儿宝宝。”
　　席恩·葛雷乔伊不知自己这时是副什么模样，他只听到一瞬之间大厅里轰然暴笑，所有人都在嘲笑他，即便父亲也不自禁地笑了，诸神该死，维克塔利昂叔叔笑得都快背气了。他所能想到的最佳应对便是跟着挤出几丝神经质的笑容。我们看看谁笑到最后，臭婊子。
　　阿莎从桌上拔出斧头，掷回给舞蹈者，四周传来口哨和欢呼。“你好好想想，我是怎么教你挑选船员的。”奴隶端来盛鱼的浅盘，她用匕首尖挑起腌鱼，大吃起来。“假如你肯费点心去了解西格林的背景，我怎么作弄得了你？当了十年的狼仔，如今就这么大摇大摆地回来，以为自己便是群岛的王子，可你什么都不懂，什么人都不了解。凭什么别人要为你而战，为你而死？”
　　“因为依律法，我生来便是他们的王子，”席恩生硬地答道。
　　“按照青绿之地的律法，也许没错。但在这里，我们有自己的规则，你难道忘了吗？”
　　席恩板起脸孔，回头凝视面前的餐盘。他的双腿旱就溅满鱼肉，这才想起吆喝奴隶前来清理。我半辈子渴望着回家，为了啥？为了嘲笑与漠视？这不是他记忆中的派克。不过他真的有记忆吗？他们抓他去当养子时他实在太小了。
　　席间菜色乏善可陈，惟有一盘盘炖鱼，黑面包，以及未加香料的烤羊肉等，其中席恩觉得最可口的是洋葱馅饼。当最后几盘菜也被端掉时，他还在猛灌麦酒和葡萄酒。
　　巴隆·葛雷乔伊大王从海石之位上起身。“喝完酒到我书房集合，”他命令高台上的众人。“我要公布计划，”他不再多说，转身离去，两名贴身护卫紧随左右。他的弟弟们立刻跟进。席恩也站起来。
　　“我的小弟真是个急惊风。”阿莎举起角杯，叫人拿来更多麦酒。
　　“我们父亲大人在等呢。”
　　“唉，他都等了那么多年，再多等会儿又何妨……可你要怕他发火呢，就赶紧想办法追上去吧。再怎么说，也不能落在两位叔叔后面哦，”她笑了，“可不，他们一个只喝海水，另一个是笨重的灰公牛，只怕还会迷路呢。”
　　席恩坐回去，心烦意乱。“我不会跟在别人屁股后面跑。”
　　“不跟男人，专跟女生的屁股？”
　　“够了！我没有主动来挠你鸡巴。”
　　“天哪，我没长啊，您不会忘了吧？而您呢，片刻工夫便把我全身上下挠了个遍！”
　　他感到红晕爬上脸颊，“我是个男人，有男人的正常欲望。而你到底是个什么样的怪物？”
　　“呵，我是含羞的少女嘛。”阿莎飞快出手，在桌底挤了一下那话儿。席恩差点从椅子上摔下。“怎么，弟弟，不想我为你撑船返航啦？”
　　“你不会嫁人的，”席恩决定，“等我称王，头一件事便是扔你去当静默修女。”他歪歪斜斜地站起身子，蹒跚地迈步去找父亲。
　　走上通往海中塔的吊桥时，雨开始落下。他的胃像下方的浪涛一样翻涌，过多的酒精使他东倒西歪。席恩咬紧牙关，紧拽绳索，勉力向前，想像着手里攫的是阿莎的脖子。
　　书房和平日一样潮湿通风。父亲裹着一身海豹皮长袍，端坐于火盆前，两个弟弟分坐两旁。席恩进门时，维克塔利昂正谈到潮汛和风向，巴隆大王挥手制止他，“我把一切都计划好了。你只需留心倾听便行。”
　　“我有些建议——”
　　“需要你建言时我自会开口，”父亲道。“我们刚接到老威克岛的飞鸟传信，达格摩带着卓鼓家和斯通浩斯家正在路上。惟愿神灵赐予顺风，他们一赶到我们就大举行动……首先是你，我打算派你担任先锋，席恩。你将率领八艘长船航往北——”
　　“八艘？”他胀红了脸，“八艘船能干什么？”
　　“你的任务是袭击磐石海岸，掠夺沿海渔村，击沉见到的每一条船。也许你能把几个北方老爷从他们的石碉堡里引出来。伊伦会跟着你，还有裂颚达格摩。”
　　“愿神圣的淹神赐福我们的宝剑，”牧师应道。
　　这感觉就像被猛扇了一巴掌。交给他的是一点掠夺的工作，烧毁渔夫的茅屋，奸污他们丑陋的女儿，巴隆大王不信他能干点别的！而且就办这点事他也不能自主，必须忍受湿发的脸色和责骂，外加裂颚达格摩这老小子，这不是打算架空他，摆他做样子么！
　　“我的女儿阿莎，”巴隆续道，席恩回头看见姐姐无声地闪进来，“你将率领三十条长船去海龙角，记住，你的手下务必精挑细选。只等潮汛到来，便在深林堡以北登陆。行动要快，一定要在他们察觉之前替我拿下城堡。”
　　阿莎笑得活像泡在黄油里的猫咪。“我早想要座城堡啦，”她甜甜地说。
　　“这个便给你。”
　　席恩紧咬舌根。深林堡是葛洛佛家族的要塞。如今罗贝特和盖伯特都在南方打仗，城内一定防守空虚，铁民们只需拿下它，就如同在北境的心脏里打进了一个楔子。我才该是那个被派去夺取深林堡的人，我比她熟悉状况。从前，他曾多次跟随艾德·史塔克拜访葛洛佛家族。
　　“维克塔利昂，”巴隆大王对弟弟说，“最重要的一击交给你完成。当我的孩子们四面出击时，临冬城必定有所反应。这时你航到盐矛滩，顺着热浪河上行一定不会有什么阻碍。越过它们后，离卡林湾便不足二十里之遥。颈泽是王国的咽喉要道，我们已能控制整个西海，一旦再掌握了卡林湾，小畜生就回不了家了……若他蠢到想蛮干，他现在的敌手便会从南方紧逼而来，一直追到堤道，那时这小鬼罗柏可就真成了瓶中鼠喽。”
　　席恩再也无法保持沉默，“大胆的计划，父亲，但您可曾想过北境诸城的领主——”
　　巴隆大王不等他说完：“领主老爷们都和小畜生一起去南方啦。留下的都是些胆小鬼、糟老头和啥也不懂的小孩。一个接一个，他们要么投降，要么受死。临冬城或许能坚守个一年半载，但那又怎样？地盘都是我们的了，森林、田野和厅堂属于我们，我们将把他们的属民抓来当奴隶和盐妾。”
　　伊伦·葛雷乔伊高举双手：“汪洋的怒火终将爆发，伟大的淹神将在青绿之地获得威权！”
　　“逝者不死，”维克塔利昂吟道，巴隆大王和阿莎齐声回应，席恩别无选择，也只得跟着念叨。然后大家便离开了。
　　外面的雨越下越大。索桥在脚底不停翻腾扭动。席恩·葛雷乔伊在桥中央停下，呆望着下方的巨礁。惊涛拍石的巨响萦绕于耳，他品尝着嘴边海盐的味道。一阵突来的狂风让他失去平衡，跪倒在桥上。
　　阿莎扶起他，“你喝太多啦，弟弟。”
　　席恩靠在她肩膀，任她领着自己一步又一步走过渗雨的木板。“我更喜欢那个叫伊斯格蕊的你，”他控诉般地喊。
　　她笑了，“这很公平么。你知道，我更喜欢九岁时候的你。”
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你看着眼前的人，分明还是以前的模样，可心里终究不是以前那般澄清透明了。
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　　CHAPTER 25
　　TYRION

　　Through the door came the soft sound of the high harp, mingled with a trilling of pipes. The singer’s voice was muffled by the thick walls, yet Tyrion knew the verse. I loved a maid as fair as summer, he remembered, with sunlight in her hair . . .
　　Ser Meryn Trant guarded the queen’s door this night. His muttered “My lord” struck Tyrion as a tad grudging, but he opened the door nonetheless. The song broke off abruptly as he strode into his sister’s bedchamber.
　　Cersei was reclining on a pile of cushions. Her feet were bare, her golden hair artfully tousled, her robe a green-and-gold samite that caught the light of the candles and shimmered as she looked up. “Sweet sister,” Tyrion said, “how beautiful you look tonight.” He turned to the singer. “And you as well, cousin. I had no notion you had such a lovely voice.”
　　The compliment made Ser Lancel sulky; perhaps he thought he was being mocked. It seemed to Tyrion that the lad had grown three inches since being knighted. Lancel had thick sandy hair, green Lannister eyes, and a line of soft blond fuzz on his upper lip. At sixteen, he was cursed with all the certainty of youth, unleavened by any trace of humor or self doubt, and wed to the arrogance that came so naturally to those born blond and strong and handsome. His recent elevation had only made him worse. “Did Her Grace send for you?” the boy demanded.
　　“Not that I recall,” Tyrion admitted. “It grieves me to disturb your revels, Lancel, but as it happens, I have matters of import to discuss with my sister.”
　　Cersei regarded him suspiciously. “If you are here about those begging brothers, Tyrion, spare me your reproaches. I won’t have them spreading their filthy treasons in the streets. They can preach to each other in the dungeons.”
　　“And count themselves lucky that they have such a gentle queen,” added Lancel. “I would have had their tongues out.”
　　“One even dared to say that the gods were punishing us because Jaime murdered the rightful king,” Cersei declared. “It will not be borne, Tyrion. I gave you ample opportunity to deal with these lice, but you and your Ser Jacelyn did nothing, so I commanded Vylarr to attend to the matter.”
　　“And so he did.” Tyrion had been annoyed when the red cloaks had dragged a half dozen of the scabrous prophets down to the dungeons without consulting him, but they were not important enough to battle over. “No doubt we will all be better off for a little quiet in the streets. That is not why I came. I have tidings I know you will be anxious to hear, sweet sister, but they are best spoken of privily.”
　　“Very well.” The harpist and the piper bowed and hurried out, while Cersei kissed her cousin chastely on the cheek. “Leave us, Lancel. My brother’s harmless when he’s alone. If he’d brought his pets, we’d smell them.”
　　The young knight gave his cousin a baleful glance and pulled the door shut forcefully behind him. “I’ll have you know I make Shagga bathe once a fortnight,” Tyrion said when he was gone.
　　“You’re very pleased with yourself, aren’t you? Why?”
　　“Why not?” Tyrion said. Every day, every night, hammers rang along the Street of Steel, and the great chain grew longer. He hopped up onto the great canopied bed. “Is this the bed where Robert died? I’m surprised you kept it.”
　　“It gives me sweet dreams,” she said. “Now spit out your business and waddle away, Imp.”
　　Tyrion smiled. “Lord Stannis has sailed from Dragonstone.”
　　Cersei bolted to her feet. “And yet you sit there grinning like a harvest-day pumpkin? Has Bywater called out the City Watch? We must send a bird to Harrenhal at once.” He was laughing by then. She seized him by the shoulders and shook him. “Stop it. Are you mad, or drunk? Stop it!”
　　It was all he could do to get out the words. “I can’t,” he gasped. “It’s too . . . gods, too funny . . . Stannis . . .”
　　—“What?”
　　“He hasn’t sailed against us,” Tyrion managed. “He’s laid siege to Storm’s End. Renly is riding to meet him.”
　　His sister’s nails dug painfully into his arms. For a moment she stared incredulous, as if he had begun to gibber in an unknown tongue. “Stannis and Renly are fighting each other?” When he nodded, Cersei began to chuckle. “Gods be good,” she gasped, “I’m starting to believe that Robert was the clever one.”
　　Tyrion threw back his head and roared. They laughed together. Cersei pulled him off the bed and whirled him around and even hugged him, for a moment as giddy as a girl. By the time she let go of him, Tyrion was breathless and dizzy. He
　　staggered to her sideboard and put out a hand to steady himself.
　　“Do you think it will truly come to battle between them? If they should come to some accord—”
　　“They won’t,” Tyrion said. “They are too different and yet too much alike, and neither could ever stomach the other.”
　　“And Stannis has always felt he was cheated of Storm’s End,” Cersei said thoughtfully. “The ancestral seat of House Baratheon, his by rights . . . if you knew how many times he came to Robert singing that same dull song in that gloomy aggrieved tone he has. When Robert gave the place to Renly, Stannis clenched his jaw so tight I thought his teeth would shatter.”
　　“He took it as a slight.”
　　“It was meant as a slight,” Cersei said.
　　“Shall we raise a cup to brotherly love?”
　　“Yes,” she answered, breathless. “Oh, gods, yes.”
　　His back was to her as he filled two cups with sweet Arbor red. It was the easiest thing in the world to sprinkle a pinch of fine powder into hers. “To Stannis!” he said as he handed her the wine. Harmless when I’m alone, am I?
　　“To Renly!” she replied, laughing. “May they battle long and hard, and the Others take them both!”
　　Is this the Cersei that Jaime sees? When she smiled, you saw how beautiful she was, truly. I loved a maid as fair as summer, with sunlight in her hair. He almost felt sorry for poisoning her.
　　It was the next morning as he broke his fast that her messenger arrived. The queen was indisposed and would not be able to leave her chambers. Not able to leave her privy, more like. Tyrion made the proper sympathetic noises and sent word to Cersei to rest easy, he would treat with Ser Cleos as they’d planned.
　　The Iron Throne of Aegon the Conqueror was a tangle of nasty barbs and jagged metal teeth waiting for any fool who tried to sit too comfortably, and the steps made his stunted legs cramp as he climbed up to it, all too aware of what an absurd spectacle he must be. Yet there was one thing to be said for it. It was high.
　　Lannister guardsmen stood silent in their crimson cloaks and lion-crested halfhelms. Ser Jacelyn’s gold cloaks faced them across the hall. The steps to the throne were flanked by Bronn and Ser Preston of the Kingsguard. Courtiers filled the gallery while supplicants clustered near the towering oak-and-bronze doors. Sansa Stark looked especially lovely this morning, though her face was as pale as milk. Lord Gyles stood coughing, while poor cousin Tyrek wore his bridegroom’s mantle of miniver and velvet. Since his marriage to little Lady Ermesande three days past, the other squires had taken to calling him “Wet Nurse” and asking him what sort of swaddling clothes his bride wore on their wedding night.
　　Tyrion looked down on them all, and found he liked it. “Call forth Ser Cleos Frey.” His voice rang off the stone walls and down the length of the hall. He liked that too. A pity Shae could not be here to see this, he reflected. She’d asked to come, but it was impossible.
　　Ser Cleos made the long walk between the gold cloaks and the crimson, looking neither right nor left. As he knelt, Tyrion observed that his cousin was losing his hair.
　　“Ser Cleos,” Littlefinger said from the council table, “you have our thanks for bringing us this peace offer from Lord Stark.”
　　Grand Maester Pycelle cleared his throat. “The Queen Regent, the King’s Hand, and the small council have considered the terms offered by this self-styled King in the North. Sad to say, they will not do, and you must tell these northmen so, ser.”
　　“Here are our terms,” said Tyrion. “Robb Stark must lay down his sword, swear fealty, and return to Winterfell. He must free my brother unharmed, and place his host under Jaime’s command, to march against the rebels Renly and Stannis Baratheon. Each of Stark’s bannermen must send us a son as hostage. A daughter will suffice where there is no son. They shall be treated gently and given high places here at court, so long as their fathers commit no new treasons.”
　　Cleos Frey looked ill. “My lord Hand,” he said, “Lord Stark will never consent to these terms.”
　　We never expected he would, Cleos. “Tell him that we have raised another great host at Casterly Rock, that soon it will march on him from the west while my lord father advances from the east. Tell him that he stands alone, without hope of allies. Stannis and Renly Baratheon war against each other, and the Prince of Dorne has consented to wed his son Trystane to the Princess Myrcella.” Murmurs of delight and consternation alike arose from the gallery and the back of the hall.
　　“As to this of my cousins,” Tyrion went on, “we offer Harrion Karstark and Ser Wylis Manderly for Willem Lannister, and Lord Cerwyn and Ser Donnel Locke for your brother Tion. Tell Stark that two Lannisters are worth four northmen in any season.” He waited for the laughter to die. “His father’s bones he shall have, as a gesture of Joffrey’s good faith.”
　　“Lord Stark asked for his sisters and his father’s sword as well,” Ser Cleos reminded him.
　　Ser Ilyn Payne stood mute, the hilt of Eddard Stark’s greatsword rising over one shoulder. “Ice,” said Tyrion. “He’ll have that when he makes his peace with us, not before.”
　　“As you say. And his sisters?”
　　Tyrion glanced toward Sansa, and felt a stab of pity as he said, “Until such time as he frees my brother Jaime, unharmed, they shall remain here as hostages. How well they are treated depends on him.” And if the gods are good, Bywater will find Arya alive, before Robb learns she’s gone missing.
　　“I shall bring him your message, my lord.”
　　Tyrion plucked at one of the twisted blades that sprang from the arm of the throne. And now the thrust. “Vylarr,” he called.
　　“My lord.”
　　“The men Stark sent are sufficient to protect Lord Eddard’s bones, but a Lannister should have a Lannister escort,” Tyrion declared. “Ser Cleos is the queen’s cousin, and mine. We shall sleep more easily if you would see him safely back to Riverrun.”
　　“As you command. How many men should I take?”
　　“Why, all of them.” Vylarr stood like a man made of stone. It was Grand Maester Pycelle who rose, gasping, “My lord Hand, that cannot . . . your father, Lord Tywin himself, he sent these good men to our city to protect Queen Cersei and her children . . .”
　　“The Kingsguard and the City Watch protect them well enough. The gods speed you on your way, Vylarr.”
　　At the council table Varys smiled knowingly, Littlefinger sat feigning boredom, and Pycelle gaped like a fish, pale and confused. A herald stepped forward. “If any man has other matters to set before the King’s Hand, let him speak now or go forth and hold his silence.”
　　“I will be heard.” A slender man all in black pushed his way between the Redwyne twins.
　　“Ser Alliser!” Tyrion exclaimed. “Why, I had no notion that you’d come to court. You should have sent me word.”
　　“I have, as well you know.” Thorne was as prickly as his name, a spare, sharp-featured man of fifty, hard-eyed and hard-handed, his black hair streaked with grey. “I have been shunned, ignored, and left to wait like some baseborn servant.”
　　“Truly? Bronn, this was not well done. Ser Alliser and I are old friends. We walked the Wall together.”
　　“Sweet Ser Alliser,” murmured Varys, “you must not think too harshly of us. So many seek our Joffrey’s grace, in these troubled and tumultuous times.”
　　“More troubled than you know, eunuch.”
　　“To his face we call him Lord Eunuch,” quipped Littlefinger.
　　“How may we be of help to you, good brother?” Grand Maester Pycelle asked in soothing tones.
　　“The Lord Commander sent me to His Grace the king,” Thorne answered. “The matter is too grave to be left to servants.”
　　“The king is playing with his new crossbow,” Tyrion said. Ridding himself of Joffrey had required only an ungainly Myrish crossbow that threw three quarrels at a time, and nothing would do but that he try it at once. “You can speak to servants or hold your silence.”
　　“As you will,” Ser Alliser said, displeasure in every word. “I am sent to tell you that we found two rangers, long missing. They were dead, yet when we brought the corpses back to the Wall they rose again in the night. One slew Ser Jaremy Rykker, while the second tried to murder the Lord Commander.”
　　Distantly, Tyrion heard someone snigger. Does he mean to mock me with this folly? He shifted uneasily and glanced down at Varys, Littlefinger, and Pycelle, wondering if one of them had a role in this. A dwarf enjoyed at best a tenuous hold on dignity. Once the court and kingdom started to laugh at him, he was doomed. And yet . . . and yet . . .
　　Tyrion remembered a cold night under the stars when he’d stood beside the boy Jon Snow and a great white wolf atop the Wall at the end of the world, gazing out at the trackless dark beyond. He had felt—what? something, to be sure, a dread that had cut like that frigid northern wind. A wolf had howled off in the night, and the sound had sent a shiver through him.
　　Don’t be a fool, he told himself. A wolf, a wind, a dark forest, it meant nothing. And yet . . . He had come to have a liking for old Jeor Mormont during his time at Castle Black. “I trust that the Old Bear survived this attack?”
　　“He did.”
　　“And that your brothers killed these, ah, dead men?”
　　“We did.”
　　“You’re certain that they are dead this time?” Tyrion asked mildly. When Bronn choked on a snort of laughter, he knew how he must proceed. “Truly truly dead?”
　　“They were dead the first time,” Ser Alliser snapped. “Pale and cold, with black hands and feet. I brought Jared’s hand, torn from his corpse by the bastard’s wolf.”
　　Littlefinger stirred. “And where is this charming token?”
　　Ser Alliser frowned uncomfortably. “it . . . rotted to pieces while I waited, unheard. There’s naught left to show but bones.”
　　Titters echoed through the hall. “Lord Baelish,” Tyrion called down to Littlefinger, “buy our brave Ser Alliser a hundred spades to take back to the Wall with him.”
　　“Spades?” Ser Alliser narrowed his eyes suspiciously.
　　“If you bury your dead, they won’t come walking,” Tyrion told him, and the court laughed openly. “Spades will end your troubles, with some strong backs to wield them. Ser Jacelyn, see that the good brother has his pick of the city dungeons.”
　　Ser Jacelyn Bywater said, “As you will, my lord, but the cells are near empty. Yoren took all the likely men.”
　　“Arrest some more, then,” Tyrion told him. “Or spread the word that there’s bread and turnips on the Wall, and they’ll go of their own accord.” The city had too many mouths to feed, and the Night’s Watch a perpetual need of men. At Tyrion’s signal, the herald cried an end, and the hall began to empty.
　　Ser Alliser Thorne was not so easily dismissed. He was waiting at the foot of the iron Throne when Tyrion descended. “Do you think I sailed all the way from Eastwatch-by-the-Sea to be mocked by the likes of you?” he fumed, blocking the way. “This is no jape. I saw it with my own eyes. I tell you, the dead walk.”
　　“You should try to kill them more thoroughly.” Tyrion pushed past. Ser Alliser made to grab his sleeve, but Preston Greenfield thrust him back. “No closer, ser.”
　　Thorne knew better than to challenge a knight of the Kingsguard. “You are a fool, Imp,” he shouted at Tyrion’s back.
　　The dwarf turned to face him. “Me? Truly? Then why were they laughing at you, I wonder?” He smiled wanly. “You came for men, did you not?”
　　“The cold winds are rising. The Wall must be held.”
　　“And to hold it you need men, which I’ve given you . . . as you might have noted, if your ears heard anything but insults. Take them, thank me, and begone before I’m forced to take a crab fork to you again. Give my warm regards to Lord Mormont . . . and to Jon Snow as well.” Bronn seized Ser Alliser by the elbow and marched him forcefully from the hall.
　　Grand Maester Pycelle had already scuttled off, but Varys and Littlefinger had watched it all, start to finish. “I grow ever more admiring of you, my lord,” confessed the eunuch. “You appease the Stark boy with his father’s bones and strip your sister of her protectors in one swift stroke. You give that black brother the men he seeks, rid the city of some hungry mouths, yet make it all seem mockery so none may say that the dwarf fears snarks and grumkins. Oh, deftly done.”
　　Littlefinger stroked his beard. “Do you truly mean to send away all your guards, Lannister?”
　　“No, I mean to send away all my sister’s guards.”
　　“The queen will never allow that.”
　　“Oh, I think she may. I am her brother, and when you’ve known me longer, you’ll learn that I mean everything I say.”
　　“Even the lies?”
　　“Especially the lies. Lord Petyr, I sense that you are unhappy with me.”
　　“I love you as much as I ever have, my lord. Though I do not relish being played for a fool. If Myrcella weds Trystane Martell, she can scarcely wed Robert Arryn, can she?”
　　“Not without causing a great scandal,” he admitted. “I regret my little ruse, Lord Petyr, but when we spoke, I could not know the Dornishmen would accept my offer.”
　　Littlefinger was not appeased. “I do not like being lied to, my lord. Leave me out of your next deception.”
　　Only if you’ll do the same for me, Tyrion thought, glancing at the dagger sheathed at Littlefinger’s hip. “If I have given offense, I am deeply sorry. All men know how much we love you, my lord. And how much we need you.”
　　“Try and remember that.” With that Littlefinger left them.
　　“Walk with me, Varys,” said Tyrion. They left through the king’s door behind the throne, the eunuch’s slippers whisking lightly over the stone.
　　“Lord Baelish has the truth of it, you know. The queen will never permit you to send away her guard.”
　　“She will. You’ll see to that.”
　　A smile flickered across Varys’s plump lips. “Will I?”
　　“Oh, for a certainty. You’ll tell her it is part of my scheme to free Jaime.”
　　Varys stroked a powdered cheek. “This would doubtless involve the four men your man Bronn searched for so diligently in all the low places of King’s Landing. A thief, a poisoner, a mummer, and a murderer.”
　　“Put them in crimson cloaks and lion helms, they’ll look no different from any other guardsmen. I searched for some time for a ruse that might get them into Riverrun before I thought to hide them in plain sight. They’ll ride in by the main gate, flying Lannister banners and escorting Lord Eddard’s bones.” He smiled crookedly. “Four men alone would be watched vigilantly. Four among a hundred can lose themselves. So I must send the true guardsmen as well as the false . . . as you’ll tell my sister.”
　　“And for the sake of her beloved brother, she will consent, despite her misgivings.” They made their way down a deserted colonnade. “Still, the loss of her red cloaks will surely make her uneasy.”
　　“I like her uneasy,” said Tyrion.
　　Ser Cleos Frey left that very afternoon, escorted by Vylarr and a hundred red-cloaked Lannister guardsmen. The men Robb Stark had sent joined them at the King’s Gate for the long ride west.
　　Tyrion found Timett dicing with his Burned Men in the barracks. “Come to my solar at midnight.” Timett gave him a hard one-eyed stare, a curt nod. He was not one for long speeches.
　　That night he feasted with the Stone Crows and Moon Brothers in the Small Hall, though he shunned the wine for once. He wanted all his wits about him. “Shagga, what moon is this?”
　　Shagga’s frown was a fierce thing. “Black, I think.”
　　“In the west, they call that a traitor’s moon. Try not to get too drunk tonight, and see that your axe is sharp.”
　　“A Stone Crow’s axe is always sharp, and Shagga’s axes are sharpest of all. Once I cut off a man’s head, but he did not know it until he tried to brush his hair. Then it fell off.”
　　“Is that why you never brush yours?” The Stone Crows roared and stamped their feet, Shagga hooting loudest of all.
　　By midnight, the castle was silent and dark. Doubtless a few gold cloaks on the walls spied them leaving the Tower of the Hand, but no one raised a voice. He was the Hand of the King, and where he went was his own affair.
　　The thin wooden door split with a thunderous crack beneath the heel of Shagga’s boot. Pieces went flying inward, and Tyrion heard a woman’s gasp of fear. Shagga hacked the door apart with three great blows of his axe and kicked his way through the ruins. Timett followed, and then Tyrion, stepping gingerly over the splinters. The fire had burned down a few glowing embers, and shadows lay thick across the bedchamber. When Timett ripped the heavy curtains off the bed, the naked serving girl stared up with wide white eyes. “Please, my lords,” she pleaded, “don’t hurt me.” She cringed away from Shagga, flushed and fearful, trying to cover her charms with her hands and coming up a hand short.
　　“Go,” Tyrion told her. “It’s not you we want.”
　　“Shagga wants this woman.”
　　“Shagga wants every whore in this city of whores,” complained Timett son of Timett.
　　“Yes,” Shagga said, unabashed. “Shagga would give her a strong child.”
　　“If she wants a strong child, she’ll know whom to seek,” Tyrion said. “Timett, see her out . . . gently, if you would.”
　　The Burned Man pulled the girl from the bed and half marched, half dragged her across the chamber. Shagga watched them go, mournful as a puppy. The girl stumbled over the shattered door and out into the hall, helped along by a firm shove from Timett. Above their heads, the ravens were screeching.
　　Tyrion dragged the soft blanket off the bed, uncovering Grand Maester Pycelle beneath. “Tell me, does the Citadel approve of you bedding the serving wenches, Maester?”
　　The old man was as naked as the girl, though he made a markedly less attractive sight. For once, his heavy-lidded eyes were open wide. “What is the meaning of this? I am an old man, your loyal servant . . .”
　　Tyrion hoisted himself onto the bed. “So loyal that you sent only one of my letters to Doran Martell. The other you gave to my sister.” “N-no,” squealed Pycelle. “No, a falsehood, I swear it, it was not me. Varys, it was Varys, the Spider, I warned you—”
　　“Do all maesters lie so poorly? I told Varys that I was giving Prince Doran my nephew Tommen to foster. I told Littlefinger that I planned to wed Myrcella to Lord Robert of the Eyrie. I told no one that I had offered Myrcella to the Dornish . . . that truth was only in the letter I entrusted to you.”
　　Pycelle clutched for a corner of the blanket. “Birds are lost, messages stolen or sold . . . it was Varys, there are things I might tell you of that eunuch that would chill your blood . . .”
　　“My lady prefers my blood hot.”
　　“Make no mistake, for every secret the eunuch whispers in your ear, he holds seven back. And Littlefinger, that one . . .”
　　“I know all about Lord Petyr. He’s almost as untrustworthy as you. Shagga, cut off his manhood and feed it to the goats.”
　　Shagga hefted the huge double-bladed axe. “There are no goats, Halfman.”
　　“Make do.”
　　Roaring, Shagga leapt forward. Pycelle shrieked and wet the bed, urine spraying in all directions as he tried to scramble back out of reach. The wildling caught him by the end of his billowy white beard and hacked off three-quarters of it with a single slash of the axe.
　　“Timett, do you suppose our friend will be more forthcoming without those whiskers to hide behind?” Tyrion used a bit of the sheet to wipe the piss off his boots.
　　“He will tell the truth soon.” Darkness pooled in the empty pit of Timett’s burned eye. “I can smell the stink of his fear.”
　　Shagga tossed a handful of hair down to the rushes, and seized what beard was left. “Hold still, Maester,” urged Tyrion. “When Shagga gets angry, his hands shake.”
　　“Shagga’s hands never shake,” the huge man said indignantly, pressing the great crescent blade under Pycelle’s quivering chin and sawing through another tangle of beard.
　　“How long have you been spying for my sister?” Tyrion asked.
　　Pycelle’s breathing was rapid and shallow. “All I did, I did for House Lannister.” A sheen of sweat covered the broad dome of the old man’s brow, and wisps of white hair clung to his wrinkled skin. “Always . . . for years . . . your lord father, ask him, I was ever his true servant . . . ‘twas I who bid Aerys open his gates . . .”
　　That took Tyrion by surprise. He had been no more than an ugly boy at Casterly Rock when the city fell. “So the Sack of King’s Landing was your work as well?”
　　“For the realm! Once Rhaegar died, the war was done. Aerys was mad, Viserys too young, Prince Aegon a babe at the breast, but the realm needed a king . . . I prayed it should be your good father, but Robert was too strong, and Lord Stark moved too swiftly . . .”
　　“How many have you betrayed, I wonder? Aerys, Eddard Stark, me . . . King Robert as well? Lord Arryn, Prince Rhaegar? Where does it begin, Pycelle?” He knew where it ended.
　　The axe scratched at the apple of Pycelle’s throat and stroked the soft wobbly skin under his jaw, scraping away the last hairs. “You . . . were not here,” he gasped when the blade moved upward to his cheeks. “Robert . . . his wounds . . . if you had seen them, smelled them, you would have no doubt . . .”
　　“Oh, I know the boar did your work for you . . . but if he’d left the job half done, doubtless you would have finished it.”
　　“He was a wretched king . . . vain, drunken, lecherous . . . he would have set your sister aside, his own queen . . . please . . . Renly was plotting to bring the Highgarden maid to court, to entice his brother . . . it is the gods’ own truth . . .”
　　“And what was Lord Arryn plotting?”
　　“He knew,” Pycelle said. “About . . . about . . .”
　　“I know what he knew about,” snapped Tyrion, who was not anxious for Shagga and Timett to know as well.
　　“He was sending his wife back to the Eyrie, and his son to be fostered on Dragonstone . . . he meant to act . . .”
　　“So you poisoned him first.”
　　“No.” Pycelle struggled feebly. Shagga growled and grabbed his head. The clansman’s hand was so big he could have crushed the maester’s skull like an eggshell had he squeezed.
　　Tyrion tsked at him. “I saw the tears of Lys among your potions. And you sent away Lord Arryn’s own maester and tended him yourself, so you could make certain that he died.”
　　“A falsehood!”
　　“Shave him closer,” Tyrion suggested. “The throat again.”
　　The axe swept back down, rasping over the skin. A thin film of spit bubbled on Pycelle’s lips as his mouth trembled. “I tried to save Lord Arryn. I vow—”
　　“Careful now, Shagga, you’ve cut him.”
　　Shagga growled. “Dolf fathered warriors, not barbers.”
　　When he felt the blood trickling down his neck and onto his chest, the old man shuddered, and the last strength went out of him. He looked shrunken, both smaller and frailer than he had been when they burst in on him. “Yes,” he wimpered, “yes, Colemon was purging, so I sent him away. The queen needed Lord Arryn dead, she did not say so, could not, Varys was listening, always listening, but when I looked at her I knew. It was not me who gave him the poison, though, I swear it.” The old man wept. “Varys will tell you, it was the boy, his squire, Hugh he was called, he must surely have done it, ask your sister, ask her.”
　　Tyrion was disgusted. “Bind him and take him away,” he commanded. “Throw him down in one of the black cells.”
　　They dragged him out the splintered door. “Lannister,” he moaned, “all I’ve done has been for Lannister . . .”
　　When he was gone, Tyrion made a leisurely search of the quarters and collected a few more small jars from his shelves. The ravens muttered above his head as he worked, a strangely peaceful noise. He would need to find someone to tend the birds until the Citadel sent a man to replace Pycelle. He was the one I’d hoped to trust. Varys and Littlefinger were no more loyal, he suspected . . . only more subtle, and thus more dangerous. Perhaps his father’s way would have been best: summon Ilyn Payne, mount three heads above the gates, and have done. And wouldn’t that be a pretty sight, he thought.






Ⅱ 列王的纷争 Chapter26 提利昂
　　轻柔的竖琴声透过门扉传来，混合着笛子的颤音。虽然歌手的嗓门隔着厚厚的门板听不真切，但歌词却是提利昂再熟悉也不过的：我爱上一位美如夏日的姑娘，阳光照在她的秀发……
　　今晚在太后卧室门外把守的是马林·特兰爵士。提利昂的出现让他有些为难，只好含含糊糊地说声“大人”，活像个心怀不忿的孩子，随后开了门。他大步跨入姐姐的卧室，歌声嘎然而止。
　　瑟曦赤裸双脚，倚靠在一堆垫子上，金色的秀发蓬乱而美丽。她抬起头，一身金绿相间的锦袍映出闪烁的烛光。“亲爱的姐姐，”提利昂道，“你今晚看上去真迷人。”他转向歌手，“你也是，堂弟。真没想到，你的嗓音这么动人。”
　　听见恭维，蓝赛尔爵士绷起了脸，也许他意识到受了嘲笑。提利昂觉得这小子自从被封为骑士后，似乎拔高了三寸。蓝赛尔有浓密的黄棕头发和兰尼斯特家招牌式的碧眼，上唇留了一层柔软的金色茸须。他年方十六，和其他少年一样，对一切都那么肯定，毫无幽默感和自省心。与生俱来的金发碧眼和强壮英俊的外表使他愈加自傲，最近的擢升更让他气焰嚣张。“太后陛下召唤你了吗？”少年当即质问。
　　“呵，这我倒不记得，”提利昂承认，“实在很遗憾，打搅你们的雅兴，蓝赛尔。事实上，我有要事跟我姐姐商量。”
　　瑟曦怀疑地看着他，“你来这儿别说是为了那些乞丐帮的家伙，省省吧，提利昂，少来烦我。我不能让他们在大街上公然散播肮脏的谋逆邪说，就让他们在黑牢里互相说教去。”
　　“他们该庆幸有一位仁慈的太后，”蓝赛尔补充道，“换作是我，非拔了他们舌头不可！”
　　“有个家伙居然声称诸神将惩罚我们，因为詹姆谋害了正统的国王，”瑟曦嚷道，“是可忍孰不可忍，提利昂，我已经给了你充足的时间去料理这些满身虱子的家伙，但你和你的杰斯林爵士什么也没做，我只好把担子交给维拉尔。”
　　“他可真听话，”事实上，提利昂当时很恼火，红袍卫士将数个衣衫褴褛的先知拖进地牢，却根本未征求他的意见。然而此刻事关重大，不值得为此争吵。“是啊，街上平静些肯定对大家都有好处。我不是为这个来的，我刚接到消息，你急切想知道的消息，亲爱的姐姐，我们能否私下谈谈？”
　　“很好，”竖琴手和笛手一鞠躬，快速退出，瑟曦礼节性地吻了吻堂弟的脸颊，“去吧，蓝赛尔，我老弟孤身一人时没能耐。假如他带了宠物，臭气我们早闻到了。”
　　年轻骑士恶狠狠地瞟了一眼他的堂兄，重重地摔门离开。“告诉你，我让夏嘎两周洗一次澡，”蓝赛尔走后，提利昂说。
　　“哟，怎么回事？瞧你挺得意嘛？”
　　“为什么不呢？”提利昂说。日以继夜，钢铁街上工作不息，巨大的铁链越来越长。他跳上华盖大床，“劳勃就死在这张床上？真令人惊讶，你还留着它。”
　　“它让我美梦连连，”她道，“好了，要说什么赶紧说，然后就滚吧，小恶魔。”
　　提利昂微笑道：“史坦尼斯大人已从龙石岛起航。”
　　瑟曦猛地跳将起来，“什么？那你还坐在这儿笑得像个丰收宴会上的南瓜？拜瓦特集结都城守备队没有？得立刻往赫伦堡传信啊！”他大笑起来，她用力抓着他的肩膀摇晃，“停！停！你疯了还是醉了？给我停下！”
　　他费了好大劲才说出话来。“没办法，”他上气不接下气地说，“实在是太……诸神啊，这太可笑了……史坦尼斯他……”
　　“他怎么了？”
　　“他不来攻打我们，”提利昂努力说道，“反而去围攻风息堡。蓝礼正飞骑赶去与他交战。”
　　姐姐的指甲嵌入他胳膊，掐得好疼。有那么片刻，她难以置信地瞪着他，仿佛他所说的是全然陌生的语言。“你是说，史坦尼斯和蓝礼打起来了？”他点点头，瑟曦终于笑了。“诸神保佑，”她喘着气说，“我开始相信劳勃是他们三兄弟里的聪明人了。”
　　提利昂仰头狂笑。他们笑成一团。瑟曦将他从床上拖下来，跳舞转圈，以至拥抱，一时间，她疯得像个小女孩。待她住手，提利昂已经气喘吁吁，头晕眼花。他跌跌撞撞地走到餐具柜旁，伸手稳住身子。
　　“你认为他们真的会打起来吗？倘若他们达成什么协议——”
　　“不可能，”提利昂说，“他们个性如此迥异，本质却又那么相似，两人均不可能容忍对方。”
　　“史坦尼斯一直觉得在风息堡一事上劳勃待他不公，”瑟曦若有所思地说，“风息堡是拜拉席恩家世袭的居城，本来该是他的……你不知道，他来找过劳勃多少次，用那阴沉委屈的声调不停地申诉啰唆。最后劳勃还是把地方给了蓝礼，史坦尼斯紧咬着牙，我瞧他牙齿都快咬碎了。”
　　“他将之视为羞辱。”
　　“我瞧劳勃就是要羞辱他。”
　　“哈哈，让我们为姐弟之爱举杯吧？”
　　“是的，”她气喘吁吁地答道，“噢，诸神啊，是的。”
　　他背对着她，倒满两杯青亭岛的上等红葡萄酒，并轻易在她杯中撒了一点细粉末。“敬史坦尼斯！”他边说边把酒递给她。我孤身一人时没能耐，是吗？
　　“敬蓝礼！”她笑答，“愿他们打得难解难分，最后都教异鬼抓走！”
　　这就是詹姆喜欢的瑟曦？她笑起来，你才发觉她到底有多美。我爱上一位美如夏日的姑娘，阳光照在她的秀发。他差点因为对她下毒而心怀抱歉。
　　第二天早餐时她遣人过来，宣布自己身体不适，无法离开房间。应该是无法离开厕所吧。提利昂适度表示了一些同情之意，并叫来人回话给瑟曦，请她安心休养，他会照预订计划来应付克里奥爵士。
　　征服者伊耿的铁王座布满凶险的倒钩和尖锐的铁齿，只有傻瓜才以为可以舒舒服服地坐在上面。上阶梯时，他发育不良的双腿不断抽筋，他非常清楚，这是一幅多么荒谬可笑的景象。好在它有一点值得称道，它很高。
　　兰尼斯特家的卫士在大厅一端森然站立，身披猩红披风，头戴狮纹半盔。杰斯林爵士的金袍卫士则站在大厅另一端，与他们相对。通向王座的阶梯两侧有波隆和御林铁卫的普列斯顿爵士。廷臣罗列廊中，请愿者们则聚集在由橡木镶青铜的巍峨大门边。珊莎·史塔克今早的模样特别可爱，只是她的脸像牛奶一般苍白。盖尔斯大人站在那儿咳嗽不休，而可怜的堂弟提瑞克则披着白鼬皮加天鹅绒做的新郎披风。自打三天前，他跟小艾弥珊德女士成婚以来，其他侍从就改口管他叫“保姆”，还问他新婚之夜新娘裹的是什么颜色的尿布。
　　提利昂俯瞰着所有人。这滋味真不错。“传克里奥·佛雷爵士。”他朗声道，话音响彻大厅。这也挺不错。只可惜雪伊没来瞧瞧，他心想。她当然想来，但那是不可能的。
　　克里奥爵士目不斜视，从红袍军和金袍军之间的长长走道行过来。当他跪下时，提利昂注意到这位表弟的头发正逐渐稀疏。
　　“克里奥爵士，”议事桌边的小指头道，“感谢你为我们带来史塔克大人的和平条件。”
　　派席尔大学士清清嗓子，“摄政太后，国王之手以及御前会议已经仔细考虑了由自称北境之王的人所提出的条款。很遗憾，爵士，这些条件无法接受，劳烦你将我们的答复转告北方人。”
　　“以下是我们的条件，”提利昂说，“罗柏·史塔克必须放下武器，宣誓效忠，随后只身返回临冬城。他必须毫发无伤地释放我哥哥詹姆，并将麾下军队交其指挥，以讨伐叛徒蓝礼·拜拉席恩和史坦尼斯·拜拉席恩。凡曾效忠史塔克家族的诸侯贵族，都务必送出一个儿子作为人质。无子嗣的家族可由女儿代替。只要他们的父亲不再聚众谋逆，他们就将受到礼遇，并由朝廷赐予高位。”
　　克里奥·佛雷苦着脸道，“首相大人，”他结结巴巴地说，“史塔克大人决不会答应这些条件。”
　　我根本不指望他答应，克里奥。“告诉他，我们已在凯岩城整备了又一支新军，很快就会进发，我父亲大人将同时从东面出击。告诉他，他势单力孤，没有盟友可以指望。史坦尼斯·拜拉席恩和蓝礼·拜拉席恩正互相攻击，而多恩亲王已同意让儿子崔斯丹迎娶弥赛菈公主。”此言一出，大厅和长廊间一片低呼，既有欣喜也有惊愕。
　　“至于我的亲戚们，”提利昂续道，“我们愿以哈利昂·卡史塔克和威里斯·曼德勒爵士交换威廉·兰尼斯特，以赛文伯爵和唐纳尔·洛克爵士交换你的兄弟提恩。告诉史塔克，两个兰尼斯特不论何时都抵得上四个北方人。”他静待笑声平息，“但他可以得到先父的遗骨，以示乔佛里陛下的诚意。”
　　“史塔克大人想要回他的妹妹，以及他父亲的佩剑，”克里奥爵士提醒他。
　　伊林·派恩爵士默默地站在原地，艾德·史塔克那柄巨剑的剑柄从他肩上冒出。“关于寒冰剑，”提利昂道，“达成和议后，我们可以归还，但现在不行。”
　　“我知道了。那他的妹妹们呢？”
　　提利昂瞥了瞥珊莎，感到一阵由衷的怜悯，他道：“在他毫发无伤地释放我哥哥詹姆之前，她们仍将作为人质留在君临。她们待遇如何，完全取决于他。”诸神保佑，但愿拜瓦特能赶在罗柏得知艾莉亚失踪的消息之前找到她，而且要活生生的她。
　　“我一定将您的口信带到，大人。”
　　提利昂拨弄了一下扶手边伸出的一根扭曲剑刃。接下来是今天的重点。“维拉尔，”他喊道。
　　“在！大人。”
　　“史塔克家派来的人护送艾德公爵的遗骨无妨，但兰尼斯特家的人身价不同，”提利昂宣布，“克里奥爵士是太后和我的表亲，由你负责送他安全返回奔流城，我们都能高枕无忧。”
　　“遵命。我该带上多少人？”
　　“嗯，自然是带上所有人。”
　　维拉尔顿时像个石人一样杵在原地。派席尔大学士站起来，喘着气说：“首相大人，这可不行……这些壮士是由您父亲，泰温大人，亲自送来都城，以保护瑟曦太后和她的孩子们……”
　　“这些工作，御林铁卫和都城守备队完全能够胜任。维拉尔，愿诸神保佑你马到成功。”
　　议事桌边，瓦里斯心照不宣地微笑，小指头一副百无聊赖的样子，派席尔则像条鱼一样张大了嘴，脸色苍白，疑惑不解。司仪踏上前来：“国王之手倾听在场诸位的请愿，有事禀报，无事退朝。”
　　“我有话说！”一个瘦长的黑衣人从雷德温兄弟中间挤出来。
　　“艾里沙爵士！”提利昂惊呼，“啊，没想到您会上朝！怎不早点派人通知我呢？”
　　“你少给我装蒜，”索恩真是人如其名①，他年方五十左右，高瘦身材，面貌嶙峋，眼神锐利，双手有力，发色黑中间灰。“你回避我，忽视我，把我像个出生低贱的仆人一样扔进客房，不闻不问。”
　　“有这回事？波隆，这可不对。艾里沙爵士是我的老朋友咧，我们一起爬过长城。”
　　“亲爱的艾里沙爵士，”瓦里斯低声说，“您就别太苛责我们了。如今正是动荡棘手的关口，有多少人求见我们的乔佛里陛下啊。”
　　“只怕我带来的消息比你想像的要棘手得多，太监。”
　　“当着他面，要称他为太监大人，”小指头讽刺道。
　　“好兄弟，我们该如何帮你呢？”派席尔大学士安抚地说。
　　“总司令大人派我来晋见国王陛下，”索恩回答，“事态严重，不能交给臣仆们处理。”
　　“哦，此刻国王陛下正在摆弄他的新十字弓，”提利昂道。打发乔佛里可容易多了，只需一把笨重的密尔十字弓，一次发三矢的那种。看到那玩意儿，他立刻什么也不顾了，“怎么办？你要么告诉我们这些臣仆，要么就只好保持沉默喽。”
　　“好吧，”艾里沙爵士忿忿不平地说，“我来这里的目的，是要禀报国王陛下，我们发现了两个失踪已久的游骑兵。找到他们时，他们已经死了，但尸体运回长城后，却在深夜里复活。其中一个杀了杰瑞米·莱克爵士，而另一个试图谋害总司令大人。”
　　提利昂隐约地听见人们窃笑。莫非他想拿这种蠢事来嘲弄我？他不安地挪了一下，瞥瞥下方的瓦里斯、小指头和派席尔，不知是他们中哪位搞的鬼？对他这个侏儒而言，最重要的就是那份脆弱的尊严。一旦朝廷和国家开始嘲笑他，他就完了。只是……只是……
　　提利昂忆起那个群星之下的寒夜，他跟琼恩·雪诺那孩子和一头巨大的白狼并排站在绝境长城之巅，站在世界的尽头，凝视着远处杳无人迹的黑暗。当时，他感觉到——什么？——某些东西，某种恐惧，如北方的寒风一般刺骨。接着，遥遥北疆夜狼哀嚎，一阵颤栗流过全身。
　　别傻了，他告诉自己，那只是一匹狼，一阵风，一片阴暗的森林，没什么特别意义……他倒是关心老杰奥·莫尔蒙，从前在黑城堡的短短时日，使他喜欢上了他。“相信熊老平安无事吧？”
　　“是的。”
　　“你的弟兄们把那些个……呃……死人都杀死了吗？”
　　“是的。”
　　“你确定死人这次真死了吗？”提利昂温和地问。眼见一旁的波隆忍俊不禁，他明白该当如此进行下去，“千真万确的死了？”
　　“他们早就死了！”艾里沙爵士怒气冲冲地大喊，“尸体苍白冰凉，手脚发黑。野种的狼把杰佛的手扯了下来，我把它带过来了。”
　　小指头开始搅和：“这件迷人的纪念品在哪儿啊？”
　　艾里沙爵士不自在地皱起眉头，“它……在我等候召见期间，悄无声息地烂成了碎片。你们对我不闻不问，如今除了骨头已没什么可看。”
　　嗤笑声在大厅里回响。“贝里席大人，”提利昂指示小指头，“买一百把铲子给我们英勇的艾里沙爵士，让他带回长城去。”
　　“铲子？”艾里沙爵士怀疑地眯起眼。
　　“应该把死人埋起来，他们才不会半夜出来惹事生非，”提利昂告诉他，朝堂众人轰然大笑，“铲子能解决你的困扰，别忘了，找几个青壮劳力来使用。杰斯林爵士，请带这位好兄弟去城里的地牢随意挑选。”
　　杰斯林·拜瓦特爵士道：“遵命，大人。但牢房实在没什么人，合适的人选都被尤伦带走了。”
　　“那就多抓几个，”提利昂告诉他。“或者温和点，传话出去，就说长城上有面包和萝卜，他们该会自发报名了。”反正城里有太多嗷嗷待哺的嘴巴，而守夜人军团一直人手不足。提利昂做个手势，司仪便朗声宣布请愿结束，人们缓缓离去。
　　但艾里沙·索恩爵士没那么好打发。提利昂步下王座后，发现他就等在阶梯口。“你以为我大老远从东海望坐船赶来是为了让你这种人嘲笑的吗？”他怒气冲冲地挡住去路，“这不是开玩笑，是我亲眼所见。我告诉你，确实有死人复活。”
　　“那你们怎么不早点让他们死透呢？”提利昂硬挤过去。艾里沙爵士想抓他的袖子，但普列斯顿·格林菲尔爵士将他推回去，“不得靠近，爵士。”
　　索恩不敢挑衅御林铁卫的骑士。“小恶魔，你真是个大傻瓜！”他冲着提利昂的脊背喊。
　　侏儒转身面对他，“什么？我是傻瓜？你不瞧瞧大家嘲笑的是谁？”他疲惫地一笑，“行了，你是来要人手的吧？”
　　“冷风已然吹起，必须守住长城！”
　　“长城需要人手，而我已经给了你……好好想想吧，你那双耳朵难道只配听侮辱和嘲笑？收下他们，并感谢我，在逼我拿螃蟹叉子跟你再次比划之前赶紧消失。记住，替我问候莫尔蒙司令……以及琼恩·雪诺。”波隆抓住艾里沙爵士胳膊，将他强拖出大厅。
　　派席尔大学士早已溜走，只有瓦里斯和小指头从头看到尾。“我真是越来越佩服你了，大人，”太监承认，“你用史塔克先父的遗骨安抚他的孩子，同时轻描淡写地一笔勾销了令姐的护卫；你给黑衣兄弟提供急需的人手，同时又替城里除去不少饥饿的嘴巴——而这一切，你都用嘲弄的方式加以实施，以防别人议论侏儒害怕古灵精怪。哦，真是天衣无缝。”
　　小指头摸摸胡子，“兰尼斯特，你真打算把你的卫士全部送走？”
　　“当然不是，我打算把我姐姐的卫士全部送走。”
　　“此事想必太后不会答应。”
　　“哦，我想她会的。毕竟我是她弟弟嘛，如果你我相交再久一点，你就会了解，我这个人说得出做得到。”
　　“包括谎言？”
　　“尤其是谎言。培提尔大人，你对我似乎不太满意。”
　　“怎么可能？我一如既往地敬爱着您，大人。我只是不想被当做傻子一样作弄。如果弥赛菈嫁给了崔斯丹·马泰尔，应该不能同时与劳勃·艾林结婚了，您说对吧？”
　　“除非想制造大丑闻。”他承认，“很抱歉，我要了个小花招，培提尔大人。不过当你我谈论婚嫁时，多恩人是否接受提议尚未可知。”
　　小指头不依不饶：“我不喜欢上当的滋味，大人。所以下次你耍什么花招，千万别把我蒙在鼓里。”
　　这不过是礼尚往来，提利昂心想，他瞥瞥小指头挂在腰间的匕首。“如有冒犯，我深切致歉。大家都知道我们有多爱您，多倚重您，大人。”
　　“你最好记牢一点。”语毕，小指头转身离去。
　　“跟我来，瓦里斯，”提利昂说。他们从王座后的国王门离开，太监的拖鞋在石板上轻擦。
　　“你知道，贝里席大人说的没错，太后绝不会允许你遣走她的卫队。”
　　“她当然会。而且这事由你负责。”
　　一抹微笑滑过瓦里斯丰厚的嘴唇，“我？”
　　“嗯，那是当然。你要告诉她，这是我营救詹姆的大计划的关键部分。”
　　瓦里斯摸摸扑粉的脸颊，“毋庸置疑，这跟你的波隆费尽心机在君临市井各处找到的四个人有关：盗贼，施毒者，戏子，外加一个杀手。”
　　“让他们穿上深红披风，戴上狮盔，就跟其他卫士没什么区别。这阵子，我一直在思考，不知怎么将他们送进奔流城，最后决定不如让他们大大方方地混进去。他们将从正门列队骑马而入，高举兰尼斯特的旗帜，护送着艾德公爵的遗骨。”他狡猾地微笑道，“单单四个人必会惹人疑心，可一百个当中的四个，应该无人注意。所以我必须把真假卫兵一起送去……这番话，你一定得向我姐姐剖析清楚。”
　　“为了心爱的弟弟，她纵然心存疑虑，但应该会同意。”他们沿着一条废弃的柱廊往下走。“不过，失去红袍卫士定会令她不安。”
　　“这正是我想要的效果，”提利昂说。
　　克里奥·佛雷爵士于当日下午出发，由维拉尔率领一百名兰尼斯特红袍卫士负责护送。罗柏·史塔克的人在国王门外与他们会合，一同踏上漫漫的西行之路。
　　提利昂在兵营里找到提魅，他正跟他的灼人部手下玩骰子。“午夜时分，到我书房来。”提魅用仅存的眼睛狠狠地瞪着他，略略点头。他是个沉默寡言的人。
　　当晚，他在小厅里宴请石鸦部和月人部，但这次他没有喝酒。他必须保证头脑清醒，“夏嘎，今晚月光如何？”
　　夏嘎皱起眉来很可怕，“乌七八黑，什么也瞧不见。”
　　“在我们西境，这种夜晚被称为叛逆之月。今晚尽量别喝醉，再把斧子磨利点。”
　　“石鸦部的斧子永远锋利，其中夏嘎的斧子最锋利。有次我砍了一个人的头，他自己还不知道，一直等他梳头才掉下来。”
　　“难怪你从不梳头！”提利昂的话惹得石鸦部众人边嚎叫边跺脚，夏嘎吼得最响亮。
　　到了午夜，整个城堡漆黑而宁静。他们出了首相塔，毫无疑问，城上几名金袍卫士发现了他们的行踪，但没有作声。毕竟他是御前首相，没人敢来多管闲事。
　　随着一声如雷的巨响，薄木板门崩裂成千千碎片，散落在夏嘎靴下。木片也朝里飞去，提利昂听见女人惊恐的喘息。夏嘎抡起斧子，三板斧就将门给劈了，随后踢开碎屑走进去。提魅跟在后面，接着是提利昂，他走得小心，以免踩上碎片。炉火已成发光的余烬，卧室内黑影憧憧。提魅一把扯下床上的厚帷，只见一丝不挂的女侍抬起头来，瞪大眼睛望着他们。“求求您们，大人，”她哀求，“别伤害我。”她缩着身子，又羞又怕，想尽办法远离夏嘎。她极力遮掩身上引人遐想的部位，只恨两只手不够用。
　　“你走吧，”提利昂告诉她，“我们要的不是你。”
　　“夏嘎要这个女人。”
　　“这座妓女之城的每个妓女夏嘎都要，”提魅之子提魅埋怨。
　　“是的，”夏嘎一点也不害臊，“夏嘎要给她一个强壮的孩子。”
　　“很好，等她想要一个强壮孩子的时候，她知道去找谁，”提利昂道，“提魅，送她出去……尽你的可能温柔一点。”
　　灼人部的提魅将女孩拽下床，半拖半推地将她领出房间。夏嘎目送他们离开，像只小狗一样伤心。女孩在碎门上绊了一交，随后被提魅用力推出去，进到外面的大厅。头顶，渡鸦厉声尖叫。
　　提利昂将床上的软被拉开，露出下面的派席尔大学士。“告诉我，学城准许你跟女侍同床吗，大学士？”
　　老人跟女孩一样光着身子，当然他的裸体远没有女孩的吸引力。他沉重的眼睑此刻却睁得大大的，“这——这是干什么？我是个老人，是您忠诚的仆人……”
　　提利昂跳上床去。“多么忠诚！我给你两份抄本，你将一份寄给道朗·马泰尔，另一份倒不忘给我姐姐过目。”
　　“不——不对，”派席尔高声尖叫，“不对，这不是实情，我发誓，不是我走漏的消息。瓦里斯，是瓦里斯，八爪蜘蛛干的！我警告过您——”
　　“难道学士说谎都这么差劲？我告诉瓦里斯要把侄子托曼交道朗亲王抚养；我对小指头说的则是把弥赛菈嫁给鹰巢城的劳勃公爵；至于将弥赛菈送去多恩的打算，我从没给任何人提过……这件事从头到尾只写在我托付给你的信件里面。
　　派席尔扯紧毯子一角。“鸟儿会迷路，信会被人偷走，被人出卖……一定是瓦里斯干的，关于这个太监，我有好些事要告诉您，保管让您的血液冰凉……”
　　“我的女人喜欢我热血沸腾呢。”
　　“您不要太自信了，那太监每在您耳边吹嘘一个秘密，他自己其实隐瞒了七个。至于小指头那家伙……”
　　“我十分了解培提尔伯爵，他跟你一样靠不住。夏嘎，把他的命根子剁掉喂山羊。”
　　夏嘎举起双刃巨斧，“半人，这里没山羊。”
　　“砍了再说。”
　　夏嘎怒吼着跃上前来。派席尔尖叫一声，尿了床，他拼命向外爬去，尿液四散喷洒。原住民一把抓住他波浪般的白胡子，斧子一挥就割下四分之三。
　　“提魅，依你看，等我们的朋友没法躲在胡须后面的时候，会不会合作一点呢？”提利昂拉过床单来擦拭靴上的尿。
　　“他很快就会说实话，”提魅灼伤的空眼眶里一片幽暗，“我能嗅出他的恐惧。”
　　夏嘎将手中的须发匆匆扔进地板的草席，然后抓住剩下的胡须。“别乱动，大学士，”提利昂劝道，“若是惹得夏嘎生气，他的手可会抖哦。”
　　“夏嘎的手从来不抖，”巨人一边忿忿地说，一边将巨大的弯刃贴紧派席尔颤抖的下巴，又锯断一蓬胡子。
　　“你替我姐姐当间谍有多久了？”提利昂问。
　　派席尔的呼吸短浅而急促。“我所做的一切，全是为了兰尼斯特家族。”一层闪亮的汗珠覆盖了老人宽阔的圆额，几缕白发附在皱巴巴的皮肤上。“一直以来……多年以来……去问您的父亲大人，去问问他，我一直都是他忠诚的仆人……正是我让伊里斯打开了城门……”
　　啊！什么？君临城陷时，他不过是凯岩城里一个丑陋的男孩。“所以君临的陷落是你的所为？”
　　“我是为了国家！雷加一死，战争大局已定。伊里斯疯了，韦赛里斯太小，而伊耿王子还是个吃奶的婴儿，但国家需要国王……我本希望由您高贵的父亲来承担，但劳勃当时实力太强，史塔克公爵又行动迅速……”
　　“我很好奇，你到底出卖了多少人？伊里斯，艾德·史塔克，我……劳勃国王？艾林公爵？雷加王子？派席尔，你什么时候变成这样的？”好在他知道将在何时结束。
　　斧子刮过派席尔的喉结，蹭着他下巴抖动的软肉，削掉最后几根毛发。“您……您当时不在场，”斧刃上移到脸颊，他趁机喘口气，“劳勃……他的伤……如果您看到了，闻到了，就不会怀疑……”
　　“噢，我知道野猪替你完成了任务……就算它办事不力，相信你也会加以协助。”
　　“他是个可耻的国王……虚荣，酗酒，荒淫无度……他要撇下您的姐姐，他自己的王后……求求您……蓝礼密谋将高庭的明珠带到宫中来诱惑他哥哥……诸神作证，这是千真万确的事实……”
　　“那艾林公爵又有何罪呢？”
　　“他知道了……”派席尔说，“关于……关于……”
　　“我明白他知道什么，”提利昂打断话头，他不想让夏嘎和提魅听到这些。
　　“他要把妻子送回鹰巢城，将儿子送到龙石岛作养子……然后采取行动……”
　　“所以你抢先毒死了他。”
　　“不对！”派席尔无力地挣扎起来。夏嘎咆哮着抓住他的头，原住民的巨手如此有力，学士的头颅简直像蛋壳一般脆弱。
　　提利昂不耐烦地“啧啧”两声，“我在你的置物架上见过里斯之泪。你遣开艾林公爵的学士，自己去治疗他，妙啊，这样就能确保他一命呜呼。”
　　“这不是实情！”
　　“给他剃干净点，”提利昂催促，“脖子上再清一遍。”
　　斧子又从上往下滑行，锉过每一寸皮肤。派席尔的嘴不住颤抖，唇上泛起一层薄薄的唾沫，“我尽全力拯救艾林公爵，我发誓——”
　　“小心，夏嘎，你割到他了。”
　　夏嘎咆哮道：“多夫之子当战士，不当理发师。”
　　老人感到鲜血从脖子流下来，滴到胸口，情不自禁地发抖，最后一丝力气也离他而去。他看上去仿佛小了一圈，比他们闯入时虚弱得多。“是的，”他呜咽着说，“是的，柯蒙要帮他排毒，因此我把他送走了。王后想要艾林公爵死于非命，但没有说出口，不能说出口，因为瓦里斯在听，他一直都在听。不过我只需看着她的眼睛，就明白该如何行动。但下毒的不是我，千真万确不是我，我发誓。”老人泪流满面，“去问瓦里斯，应该是那个男孩，他的侍从，叫做修夫，一定是他干的，去问你姐姐，去问她。”
　　提利昂一阵作呕。“把他绑起来带走，”他命令，“扔进黑牢。”
　　他们将他拖出碎裂的门。“兰尼斯特，”他呻吟道，“我所做的一切都是为了兰尼斯特……”
　　等他们离开，提利昂从容不迫地搜查房间，又从他的架子上取走几个小罐。在此过程中，渡鸦一直在头顶嘀咕，声调却出奇地平和。在学城派人接替派席尔之前，他得找人照看这些鸟。
　　我本指望能信赖他。他心里清楚，瓦里斯和小指头的算盘打得更精……他们更难捉摸，因此也更危险。或许还是父亲的办法最好：传唤伊林·派恩，将三人的脑袋用熗尖插着，挂上城墙，一了百了。这不是很悦目吗？他想。
　　※※※※※※
　　①在英语中，索恩“thorn”意为“刺”。
[ 此帖被挽墨在2015-08-28 02:19重新编辑 ]
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你看着眼前的人，分明还是以前的模样，可心里终究不是以前那般澄清透明了。
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　　CHAPTER 26
　　ARYA

　　Fear cuts deeper than swords, Arya would tell herself, but that did not make the fear go away. It was as much a part of her days as stale bread and the blisters on her toes after a long day of walking the hard, rutted road.
　　She had thought she had known what it meant to be afraid, but she learned better in that storehouse beside the Gods Eye. Eight days she had lingered there before the Mountain gave the command to march, and every day she had seen someone die.
　　The Mountain would come into the storehouse after he had broken his fast and pick one of the prisoners for questioning. The village folk would never look at him. Maybe they thought that if they did not notice him, he would not notice them . . . but he saw them anyway and picked whom he liked. There was no place to hide, no tricks to play, no way to be safe.
　　One girl shared a soldier’s bed three nights running; the Mountain picked her on the fourth day, and the soldier said nothing.
　　A smiley old man mended their clothing and babbled about his son, off serving in the gold cloaks at King’s Landing. “A king’s man, he is,” he would say, “a good king’s man like me, all for Joffrey.” He said it so often the other captives began to call him All-for-Joffrey whenever the guards weren’t listening. All-for-Joffrey was picked on the fifth day.
　　A young mother with a pox-scarred face offered to freely tell them all she knew if they’d promise not to hurt her daughter. The Mountain heard her out; the next morning he picked her daughter, to be certain she’d held nothing back.
　　The ones chosen were questioned in full view of the other captives, so they could see the fate of rebels and traitors. A man the others called the Tickler asked the questions. His face was so ordinary and his garb so plain that Arya might have thought him one of the villagers before she had seen him at his work. “Tickler makes them howl so hard they piss themselves,” old stoop—shoulder Chiswyck told them. He was the man she’d tried to bite, who’d called her a fierce little thing and smashed her head with a mailed fist. Sometimes he helped the Tickler. Sometimes others did that. Ser Gregor Clegane himself would stand motionless, watching and listening, until the victim died.
　　The questions were always the same. Was there gold hidden in the village? Silver, gems? Was there more food? Where was Lord Beric Dondarrion? Which of the village folk had aided him? When he rode off, where did he go? How many men were with them? How many knights, how many bowmen, how many men-at-arms? How were they armed? How many were horsed? How many were wounded? What other enemy had they seen? How many? When? What banners did they fly? Where did they go? Was there gold hidden in the village? Silver, gems? Where was Lord Beric Dondarrion? How many men were with him? By the third day, Arya could have asked the questions herself.
　　They found a little gold, a little silver, a great sack of copper pennies, and a dented goblet set with garnets that two soldiers almost came to blows over. They learned that Lord Beric had ten starvelings with him, or else a hundred mounted knights; that he had ridden west, or north, or south; that he had crossed the lake in a boat; that he was strong as an aurochs or weak from the bloody flux. No one ever survived the Tickler’s questioning; no man, no woman, no child. The strongest lasted past evenfall. Their bodies were hung beyond the fires for the wolves.
　　By the time they marched, Arya knew she was no water dancer. Syrio Forel would never have let them knock him down and take his sword away, nor stood by when they killed Lommy Greenhands. Syrio would never have sat silent in that storehouse nor shuffled along meekly among the other captives. The direwolf was the sigil of the Starks, but Arya felt more a lamb, surrounded by a herd of other sheep. She hated the villagers for their sheepishness, almost as much as she hated herself.
　　The Lannisters had taken everything: father, friends, home, hope, courage. One had taken Needle, while another had broken her wooden stick sword over his knee. They had even taken her stupid secret. The storehouse had been big enough for her to creep off and make her water in some corner when no one was looking, but it was different on the road. She held it as long as she could, but finally she had to squat by a bush and skin down her breeches in front of all of them. It was that or wet herself. Hot Pie gaped at her with big moon eyes, but no one else even troubled to look. Girl sheep or boy sheep, Ser Gregor and his men did not seem to care.
　　Their captors permitted no chatter. A broken lip taught Arya to hold her tongue. Others never learned at all. One boy of three would not stop calling for his father, so they smashed his face in with a spiked mace. Then the boy’s mother started screaming and Raff the Sweetling killed her as well.
　　Arya watched them die and did nothing. What good did it do you to be brave? One of the women picked for questioning had tried to be brave, but she had died screaming like all the rest. There were no brave people on that march, only scared and hungry ones. Most were women and children. The few men were very old or very young; the rest had been chained to that gibbet and left for the wolves and the crows. Gendry was only spared because he’d admitted to forging the horned helm himself; smiths, even apprentice smiths, were too valuable to kill.
　　They were being taken to serve Lord Tywin Lannister at Harrenhal, the Mountain told them. “You’re traitors and rebels, so thank your gods that Lord Tywin’s giving you this chance. It’s more than you’d get from the outlaws. Obey, serve, and live.”
　　“It’s not just, it’s not,” she heard one wizened old woman complain to another when they had bedded down for the night. “We never did no treason, the others come in and took what they wanted, same as this bunch.”
　　“Lord Beric did us no hurt, though,” her friend whispered. “And that red priest with him, he paid for all they took.”
　　“Paid? He took two of my chickens and gave me a bit of paper with a mark on it. Can I eat a bit of raggy old paper, I ask you? Will it give me eggs?” She looked about to see that no guards were near, and spat three times. “There’s for the Tullys and there’s for the Lannisters and there’s for the Starks.”
　　“It’s a sin and a shame,” an old man hissed. “When the old king was still alive, he’d not have stood for this.” “King Robert?” Arya asked, forgetting herself.
　　“King Aerys, gods grace him,” the old man said, too loudly. A guard came sauntering over to shut them up. The old man lost both his teeth, and there was no more talk that night.
　　Besides his captives, Ser Gregor was bringing back a dozen pigs, a cage of chickens, a scrawny milk cow, and nine wagons of salt fish. The Mountain and his men had horses, but the captives were all afoot, and those too weak to keep up were killed out of hand, along with anyone foolish enough to flee. The guards took women off into the bushes at night, and most seemed to expect it and went along meekly enough. One girl, prettier than the others, was made to go with four or five different men every night, until finally she hit one with a rock. Ser Gregor made everyone watch while he took off her head with a sweep of his massive two-handed greatsword. “Leave the body for the wolves,” he commanded when the deed was done, handing the sword to his squire to be cleaned.
　　Arya glanced sidelong at Needle, sheathed at the hip of a blackbearded, balding man-at-arms called Polliver. It’s good that they took it away, she thought. Otherwise she would have tried to stab Ser Gregor, and he would have cut her right in half, and the wolves would eat her too.
　　Polliver was not so bad as some of the others, even though he’d stolen Needle. The night she was caught, the Lannister men had been nameless strangers with faces as alike as their nasal helms, but she’d come to know them all. You had to know who was lazy and who was cruel, who was smart and who was stupid. You had to learn that even though the one they called Shitmouth had the foulest tongue she’d ever heard, he’d give you an extra piece of bread if you asked, while jolly old Chiswyck and soft-spoken Raff would just give you the back of their hand.
　　Arya watched and listened and polished her hates the way Gendry had once polished his horned helm. Dunsen wore those bull’s horns now, and she hated him for it. She hated Polliver for Needle, and she hated old Chiswyck who thought he was funny. And Raff the Sweetling, who’d driven his spear through Lommy’s throat, she hated even more. She hated Ser Amory Lorch for Yoren, and she hated Ser Meryn Trant for Syrio, the Hound for killing the butcher’s boy Mycah, and Ser Ilyn and Prince Joffrey and the queen for the sake of her father and Fat Tom and Desmond and the rest, and even for Lady, Sansa’s wolf. The Tickler was almost too scary to hate. At times she could almost forget he was still with them; when he was not asking questions, he was just another soldier, quieter than most, with a face like a thousand other men.
　　Every night Arya would say their names. “Ser Gregor,” she’d whisper to her stone pillow. “Dunsen, Polliver, Chiswyck, Raff the Sweetling. The Tickler and the Hound. Ser Amory, Ser Ilyn, Ser Meryn, King Joffrey, Queen Cersei.” Back in Winterfell, Arya had prayed with her mother in the sept and with her father in the godswood, but there were no gods on the road to Harrenhal, and her names were the only prayer she cared to remember.
　　Every day they marched, and every night she said her names, until finally the trees thinned and gave way to a patchwork landscape of rolling hills, meandering streams, and sunlit fields, where the husks of burnt holdfasts thrust up black as rotten teeth. It was another long day’s march before they glimpsed the towers of Harrenhal in the distance, hard beside the blue waters of the lake.
　　It would be better once they got to Harrenhal, the captives told each other, but Arya was not so certain. She remembered Old Nan’s stories of the castle built on fear. Harren the Black had mixed human blood in the mortar, Nan used to say, dropping her voice so the children would need to lean close to hear, but Aegon’s dragons had roasted Harren and all his sons within their great walls of stone. Arya chewed her lip as she walked along on feet grown hard with callus. It would not be much longer, she told herself; those towers could not be more than a few miles off.
　　Yet they walked all that day and most of the next before at last they reached the fringes of Lord Tywin’s army, encamped west of the castle amidst the scorched remains of a town. Harrenhal was deceptive from afar, because it was so huge. Its colossal curtain walls rose beside the lake, sheer and sudden as mountain cliffs, while atop their battlements the rows of woodand-iron scorpions looked as small as the bugs for which they were named.
　　The stink of the Lannister host reached Arya well before she could make out the devices on the banners that sprouted along the lakeshore, atop the pavilions of the westermen. From the smell, Arya could tell that Lord Tywin had been here some time. The latrines that ringed the encampment were overflowing and swarming with flies, and she saw faint greenish fuzz on many of the sharpened stakes that protected the perimeters.
　　Harrenhal’s gatehouse, itself as large as Winterfell’s Great Keep, was as scarred as it was massive, its stones fissured and discolored. From outside, only the tops of five immense towers could be seen beyond the walls. The shortest of them was half again as tall as the highest tower in Winterfell, but they did not soar the way a proper tower did. Arya thought they looked like some old man’s gnarled, knuckly fingers groping after a passing cloud. She remembered Nan telling how the stone had melted and flowed like candlewax down the steps and in the windows, glowing a sullen searing red as it sought out Harren where he hid. Arya could believe every word; each tower was more grotesque and misshapen than the last, lumpy and runneled and cracked.
　　“I don’t want to go there,” Hot Pie squeaked as Harrenhal opened its gates to them. “There’s ghosts in there.”
　　Chiswyck heard him, but for once he only smiled. “Baker boy, here’s your choice. Come join the ghosts, or be one.”
　　Hot Pie went in with the rest of them.
　　In the echoing stone-and-timber bathhouse, the captives were stripped and made to scrub and scrape themselves raw in tubs of scalding hot water. Two fierce old women supervised the process, discussing them as bluntly as if they were newly acquired donkeys. When Arya’s turn came round, Goodwife Amabel clucked in dismay at the sight of her feet, while Goodwife Harra felt the callus on her fingers that long hours of practice with Needle had earned her. “Got those churning butter, I’ll wager,” she said. “Some farmer’s whelp, are you? Well, never you mind, girl, you have a chance to win a higher place in this world if you work hard. If you won’t work hard, you’ll be beaten. And what do they call you?”
　　Arya dared not say her true name, but Arry was no good either, it was a boy’s name and they could see she was no boy. “Weasel,” she said, naming the first girl she could think of. “Lommy called me Weasel.” “I can see why,” sniffed Goodwife Amabel. “That hair is a fright and a nest for lice as well. We’ll have it off, and then you’re for the kitchens.”
　　“I’d sooner tend the horses.” Arya liked horses, and maybe if she was in the stables she’d be able to steal one and escape.
　　Goodwife Harra slapped her so hard that her swollen lip broke open all over again. “And keep that tongue to yourself or you’ll get worse. No one asked your views.”
　　The blood in her mouth had a salty metal tang to it. Arya dropped her gaze and said nothing. If I still had Needle, she wouldn’t dare hit me, she thought sullenly.
　　“Lord Tywin and his knights have grooms and squires to tend their horses, they don’t need the likes of you,” Goodwife Amabel said. “The kitchens are snug and clean, and there’s always a warm fire to sleep by and plenty to eat. You might have done well there, but I can see you’re not a clever girl. Harra, I believe we should give this one to Weese.”
　　“If you think so, Amabel.” They gave her a shift of grey roughspun wool and a pair of ill-fitting shoes, and sent her off.
　　Weese was understeward for the Wailing Tower, a squat man with a fleshy carbuncle of a nose and a nest of angry red boils near one corner of his plump lips. Arya was one of six sent to him. He looked them all over with a gimlet eye. “The Lannisters are generous to those as serve them well, an honor none of your sort deserve, but in war a man makes do with what’s to hand. Work hard and mind your place and might be one day you’ll rise as high as me. If you think to presume on his lordship’s kindness, though, you’ll find me waiting after m’lord has gone, y’see.” He strutted up and down before them, telling them how they must never look the highborn in the eye, nor speak until spoken to, nor get in his lordship’s way. “My nose never lies,” he boasted. “I can smell defiance, I can smell pride, I can smell disobedience. I catch a whiff of any such stinks, you’ll answer for it. When I sniff you, all I want to smell is fear.”




Ⅱ 列王的纷争 Chapter27 艾莉亚
　　恐惧比利剑更伤人，艾莉亚告诉自己，但那并不能驱走恐惧。恐惧就跟发霉的面包，就跟长途跋涉后脚趾长出的水疱一样，成为了她生活的一部分。
　　她以为自己早已尝过恐惧的滋味，但在神眼湖畔那间仓库里却完全推翻了自己的认识。魔山下令出发前，他们一共逗留了八天，每一天都有人死去。
　　每天早上，魔山吃完早餐便进入仓库，随意挑选一个囚犯来审讯。村民们从不敢抬头看他，或许他们以为假如不去注意他，他也不会注意到他们……但这不管用，他爱挑谁就挑谁。没有地方可以躲藏，没有花招可以玩弄，没有办法可以幸免。
　　有位女孩曾跟一个士兵连续睡了三天，而魔山在第四天选中了她，那士兵什么也没说。
　　有位老人总是笑容满面，帮大家缝补衣服，一边唠叨离家远去君临在金袍卫队服役的儿子。“他是国王的人，”他总如此说，“就跟我一样，都是国王忠诚的仆人，一切皆为乔佛里。”他啰唆个不停，以至于其他俘虏给他起个外号就叫“一切皆为乔佛里”，当然，谁也不敢当着卫兵们的面讲。“一切皆为乔佛里”在第五天的时候被挑中了。
　　有位因天花而留下满脸水痘的少妇在审讯中提出，只要他们保证不伤害她女儿，她愿意付出所有的一切。魔山先让她把话说完，然后在第二天早上带走了她女儿，以确定她实践昨日的承诺。
　　没被挑中的人必须在一旁全程观摩审讯，以了解反抗和叛逆的下场。询问由一个人称“记事本”的士兵负责。此人长相平凡，衣着朴素，若非日日见他办事，艾莉亚定会将他认做村民。“记事本有法子教他们嗷嗷怪叫，屎尿齐流，”驼背的老奇斯威克告诉他们。他就是那个她曾经要咬的人，而他称她为凶狠的小家伙，并用戴护甲的拳头打她的脑袋。有时候，由他协助记事本审讯，有时候则是其他人。在此过程中，格雷果·克里冈爵士只纹丝不动地站在一旁观看倾听，直到受害者死去。
　　问来问去都是相同的题目：村里藏有金子吗？银子和珠宝呢？存粮呢？贝里·唐德利恩伯爵在哪儿？有哪位村民帮助过他？他离开后去了哪儿？他身边有多少人？其中有多少骑士，多少弓手，多少步兵？他们装备如何？有多少人骑马？有多少人受伤？可曾见过其他敌人？他们又有多少？什么时候见着的？他们举着什么样的旗帜？他们去了哪儿？村里藏有金子吗？银子和珠宝呢？贝里·唐德利恩伯爵在哪儿？他身边有多少人？到得第三天，艾莉亚自己都能倒背如流。
　　通过询问，他们找到几枚金币，一点银子，一大袋铜板，还有一只缺了口的、镶着石榴石的酒杯——两个士兵差点为它动手。他们也问出一点消息，有人说贝里伯爵拖着十个老弱残兵，有人则说他带着上百名全副武装的骑士；他或许去了西边，或许去了北面，再或者去了南面；他乘坐小船横渡大湖；他要么像水牛一样健壮，要么因失血而虚弱。只有一点相同：不管男人、女人，还是小孩，无人自记事本的盘问下幸存。最多熬到黄昏。到得夜晚，他们的尸体挂在火堆以外，留给狼群享用。
　　当他们离开仓库出发时，艾莉亚终于意识到自己并非水舞者。西利欧·佛瑞尔决不会任由他们击倒，把剑夺走，决不会在他们杀害绿手罗米时袖手旁观；西利欧也决不会默默地坐在仓库，更不会没骨气地混在俘虏里拖着脚步前进。史塔克家族的纹章是冰原狼，但艾莉亚感觉自己更像一只绵羊，一大群绵羊里的一只。她痛恨村民们的懦弱，更痛恨自己的懦弱。
　　兰尼斯特夺走了她的一切：父亲，朋友，家园，希望和勇气。有人抢走了她的缝衣针，另一人则将她的木剑在膝盖上拗断。他们甚至夺走了她那愚笨的小秘密。仓库够大，她还可以趁没人注意时偷偷找个角落小解，但路上就不同了。她尽量忍耐，最后却不得不蹲在一丛灌木旁，当着所有人的面脱下裤子。她只能如此，要么就得尿湿自己。热派盯着她看，眼睛瞪得像月亮，嘴巴也合不拢来，但其他人一眼也没有多瞧。绵羊是公还是母，格雷果爵士和他的部下似乎并不关心。
　　俘虏他们的人不许他们互相交谈。艾莉亚已从破裂的嘴唇中得到了教训，但总有人管不住舌头。有个三岁小男孩不愿停止叫唤爸爸，因此他们用带刺钉头锤砸扁了他的脸。随后孩子的妈开始尖叫，“甜嘴”拉夫便把她也杀了。
　　艾莉亚只能站在一旁，看着他们死去，什么也没做。勇敢又有什么用呢？某个被挑去审讯的女人试图表现得勇敢些，但到最后，仍旧和其他人一样嚎叫着死去。这支队伍中没有勇者，只有懦夫和饿殍。他们中的大多数是女人和小孩，仅有的几个男子不是很老，就是很小；壮汉都被绑上刑架，留给野狼和乌鸦。惟一逃过性命的是詹德利，而那仅仅因为他承认自己铸造了那顶牛角盔；铁匠——即便铁匠学徒——很有利用价值，杀掉可惜。
　　魔山说，他们将被带去赫伦堡服侍泰温·兰尼斯特大人。“你们是逆贼，是叛徒，应该感谢诸神，泰温大人给你们这次机会。碰上的若是那群亡命徒，决没有这般的待遇。乖乖地顺从、服侍，你们就能活下去。”
　　“这不公平！不公平！”某晚他们睡下后，她听到一位枯瘦的老妇人对身边的人抱怨，“我们从没做过叛国的事，另一帮人完全是自己闯进来的，想拿什么就拿，跟这拨人一样。”
　　“但贝里大人没有伤害我们，”她的朋友悄声道，“那个跟他一起的红袍僧还为所有东西付了钱。”
　　“付钱？他拿走我两只鸡，然后塞给我一张作了记号的小纸片。我倒是问你，这破破烂烂的纸我能吃吗？它会帮我下蛋吗？”她环顾四周，确认没有卫兵在旁，然后用力啐了三口，“这个给徒利！这个给兰尼斯特！还有一个给史塔克！”
　　“真是可耻啊，造孽啊，”一个老头唏嘘道，“先王若是还在，决不会容忍这种事发生。”
　　“劳勃国王吗？”艾莉亚忍不住问。
　　“伊里斯国王，诸神保佑他，”老头道。他的声音太响了些，一个卫兵慢腾腾地晃悠过来，老头被打掉两颗牙，那晚无人再说话。
　　除俘虏之外，格雷果爵士还带回十几头猪，一笼鸡，一头骨瘦如柴的奶牛和装满九辆马车的咸鱼。魔山和他的手下有马可骑，但俘虏们全是步行，凡因羸弱而掉队或笨到想逃跑的人都会被当场格杀。夜间，士兵会把女人们带到灌木丛里，她们中的大多数似乎早有准备，也就相当顺从地去了。有个女孩，比旁人要漂亮，每晚都被四五个不同的男人带出去，最后她终于忍不住用石块砸了一个士兵。格雷果爵士当着大家的面，举起那把丑陋的巨剑一挥，砍掉了她的脑袋。“尸体扔去喂狼，”完事之后，他一边将剑递给侍从擦拭，一边下令。
　　艾莉亚时时不忘瞥看缝衣针，它就插在一个黑须秃顶的士兵腰间，那人名叫波利佛。幸亏他把它抢走了，她心想，否则她定会拿它去刺杀格雷果爵士，然后被他劈成两半，丢去喂狼。
　　波利佛虽然抢了缝衣针，但他并不若其他人那么坏。她刚被抓时，兰尼斯特士兵对她而言都是无名无姓的陌生人，带着护鼻盔，看起来都差不多，但经过一些时日，她逐渐熟悉了所有人。你得知道，谁懒惰，谁残忍，谁聪明，谁蠢笨。你得知道，虽然那个外号“臭嘴”的人有她所听过最恶毒的口舌，但你若开口求他，他会多给你一片面包，而快活的老奇斯威克和说话轻声细语的拉夫只会反手给你一巴掌。
　　用你的眼睛看，用你的耳朵听，就如从前詹德利擦拭他的牛角盔一样，艾莉亚将她的仇恨反复研磨。那顶牛角盔如今戴在邓森头上，她为此而恨他；她恨波利佛抢走缝衣针，她恨老奇斯威克自命不凡，她尤其恨“甜嘴”拉夫用长熗刺穿了罗米的咽喉。她为尤伦而恨亚摩利爵士，为西利欧而恨马林·特兰爵士，为屠夫之子米凯而恨猎狗，恨伊林爵士、乔佛里王子及太后则因为他们害死了父亲，胖汤姆，戴斯蒙，乃至珊莎的狼淑女。只有记事本过于可怕，她不敢恨。有时候，她几乎忘记他的存在，因为当他不主持审讯时，不过是普通一兵，且比多数人都安静。他的长相毫无特征，没有人会注意他。
　　每天夜里，艾莉亚都会复诵他们的名字。“格雷果爵士，”她朝自己枕着睡觉的石头低语，“邓森，波利佛，齐斯威克，‘甜嘴’拉夫。记事本和猎狗。亚摩利爵士，伊林爵士，马林爵士，乔佛里国王，瑟曦太后。”从前在临冬城，艾莉亚会跟母亲去圣堂(或跟父亲去神木林)祈祷。这条通往赫伦堡的路上没有神祗，这些名字就是她惟一的祷词。
　　日复一日，沿着湖岸，白天赶路，夜晚复诵姓名，直到最后树木渐疏，眼前出现绵延起伏的山丘，蜿蜒的溪流和阳光普照的原野。平原上，数栋烧毁的庄园骨架像焦黑的烂牙齿一般竖立。又走一整天，他们方才隐约看到赫伦堡的塔楼耸立在蓝色的湖畔。
　　等到赫伦堡就会好了，俘虏们如此安慰彼此，但艾莉亚却不那么肯定。她还记得在老奶妈的故事里，这是一座由恐惧所建筑的城堡，黑心赫伦将婴孩之血与泥灰混合——每当说到这里，老奶妈总会压低声音，孩子们得靠过去才听得见——但伊耿的龙吐出火焰，穿过巨大的石墙，烤焦了赫伦和他所有的儿子。艾莉亚一边用长出硬茧的脚不断前行，一边咬紧嘴唇。不会太久了，她告诉自己，那些塔楼就只有数里地远。
　　但他们那天走了一整天，第二天又走了大半天，才终于到达泰温公爵麾下大军营区的边缘，即城堡西面一座烧成废墟的小镇。远看赫伦堡容易使人产生错觉，因为它实在过于巨大。庞大的围墙从湖边拔地而起，陡峭突兀一如山崖，城垛上排列着木铁制成的弩炮，看上去就跟虫子一般小。
　　沿湖有众多旗帜，插在西境军人的帐篷上，艾莉亚虽不能辨出旗上的纹章，却能闻到兰尼斯特部队散发的臭味。从味道中，艾莉亚得出结论，泰温公爵已在这儿驻扎有一段时日。营地外的便池已经满溢，苍蝇成群，环绕营区的尖桩上长出淡淡的绿茸毛。
　　赫伦堡的城门楼有临冬城的主堡那么大，石壁开裂褪色，十分可怖。从城墙外看去，只能见到五座巨塔的顶端，其中最矮的一个也有临冬城最高塔楼的一倍半高，但它们不像正常塔楼那样高耸屹立，艾莉亚觉得它们好似老人粗糙弯曲的手指，正在摸索飘过的云彩。她记得老奶妈讲过，石壁如何像蜡烛般融化，顺着台阶和窗户流淌，闪耀着阴暗炙热的红光，朝赫伦藏身之处流去。眼下，艾莉亚相信故事里的每一个字，这些塔楼一座比一座诡异畸形，它们凹凸粗糙，破裂失衡。
　　“我不要进去！”当赫伦堡的大门朝他们敞开时，热派尖叫道，“这里面闹鬼！”
　　话给齐斯威克听到了，但这次他只笑笑，“面包小弟，你自己挑好了：要么跟鬼待在一起，要么成为其中之一。”
　　于是热派跟大家一起走了进去。
　　俘虏们被赶进一间木石结构、充满回音的大澡堂，被迫脱光衣服，进入滚烫的热水盆里使劲搓洗身子。两个相貌凶恶的老妇人一边监督他们，一边露骨地评论，就当他们是新到的驴子。轮到艾莉亚时，埃玛贝尔太太对她的脚啧啧称奇，而哈拉太太摸到她手指上久练缝衣针磨出的老茧。“我敢打赌，这家伙是个搅黄油的好手，”她说，“瞧你，是农夫的小崽子吧？好啦，别在意，孩子，在这个世界上，只要卖力干活，就有机会往上爬，如果你不卖力呢，就一定会挨打。你叫什么？”
　　艾莉亚不敢说出真名，但阿利也不行，那是男孩的名字，她们看得出她不是男孩。“黄鼠狼，”小女孩第一时间闪入她的脑海，她便顺势答道，“罗米叫我黄鼠狼。”
　　“真是人如其名，”埃玛贝尔太太吸吸鼻子，“头发乱得惊人，完全是个跳蚤窝。我们先剪掉它，然后派你去厨房。”
　　“我想去照看马匹。”艾莉亚喜欢马儿，况且如果在马厩工作，说不定能偷匹马逃走。
　　哈拉太太狠狠打了她一巴掌，她肿胀的嘴唇立刻又全裂开了。“少多嘴多舌，否则有你苦头吃！没人征求你的意见！”
　　嘴里的血有一股咸涩的金属味，艾莉亚垂下视线，一言不发。如果缝衣针还在我手上，她绝不敢打我，她闷闷不乐地想。
　　“泰温大人和他的骑士们的马自有马夫和侍从照顾，用不着你这种小人！”埃玛贝尔太太道，“厨房既暖和又干净，天天吃得饱，睡得暖，你本可在那儿过得不错，但瞧你不是个聪明的主儿。哈拉，我看还是把这家伙丢给威斯。”
　　“你说行就行，埃玛贝尔。”于是她们塞给她一件灰色粗纺的羊毛裙和一双不合脚的鞋，打发她走了。
　　威斯是“号哭塔”的管事，生得矮胖，肉乎乎的酒糟鼻，丰满的嘴角下有一簇扎眼的红疖子。连带艾莉亚共有六个人分给他，他用锐利的目光巡视他们，“兰尼斯特家对下人是很慷慨的，你们这帮家伙本来不配侍奉大人们，但现在在打仗，也只好将就将就。假如你们工作努力本分，或许某天能升到我的位置；但如果得寸进尺，在大人们面前放肆的话，回头瞧瞧我怎么收拾你们！”他神气活现地在他们面前来回踱步，训示他们绝不能直视贵族的眼睛，绝不能自己开口说话，绝不能挡大人们的路等等。“我的鼻子从不撒谎，”他夸口，“我能闻出轻蔑，闻出傲气，闻出违拗，若是让我闻到一丁点这些臭味，你们就得付出代价。从你们身上，我只想闻到一种味道：恐惧。”
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你看着眼前的人，分明还是以前的模样，可心里终究不是以前那般澄清透明了。
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　　CHAPTER 27
　　DAENERYS

　　On the walls of Qarth, men beat gongs to herald her coming, while others blew curious horns that encircled their bodies like great bronze snakes. A column of camelry emerged from the city as her honor guards. The riders wore scaled copper armor and snouted helms with copper tusks and long black silk plumes, and sat high on saddles inlaid with rubies and garnets. Their camels were dressed in blankets of a hundred different hues.
　　“Qarth is the greatest city that ever was or ever will be,” Pyat Pree had told her, back amongst the bones of Vaes Tolorro. “It is the center of the world, the gate between north and south, the bridge between east and west, ancient beyond memory of man and so magnificent that Saathos the Wise put out his eyes after gazing upon Qarth for the first time, because he knew that all he saw thereafter should look squalid and ugly by comparison.”
　　Dany took the warlock’s words well salted, but the magnificence of the great city was not to be denied. Three thick walls encircled Qarth, elaborately carved. The outer was red sandstone, thirty feet high and decorated with animals: snakes slithering, kites flying, fish swimming, intermingled with wolves of the red waste and striped horses and monstrous elephants. The middle wall, forty feet high, was grey granite alive with scenes of war: the clash of sword and shield and spear, arrows in flight, heroes at battle and babes being butchered, pyres of the dead. The innermost wall was fifty feet of black marble, with carvings that made Dany blush until she told herself that she was being a fool. She was no maid; if she could look on the grey wall’s scenes of slaughter, why should she avert her eyes from the sight of men and women giving pleasure to one another?
　　The outer gates were banded with copper, the middle with iron; the innermost were studded with golden eyes. All opened at Dany’s approach. As she rode her silver into the city, small children rushed out to scatter flowers in her path. They wore golden sandals and bright paint, no more.
　　All the colors that had been missing from Vaes Tolorro had found their way to Qarth; buildings crowded about her fantastical as a fever dream in shades of rose, violet, and umber. She passed under a bronze arch fashioned in the likeness of two snakes mating, their scales delicate flakes of jade, obsidian, and lapis lazuli. Slim towers stood taller than any Dany had ever seen, and elaborate fountains filled every square, wrought in the shapes of griffins and dragons and manticores.
　　The Qartheen lined the streets and watched from delicate balconies that looked too frail to support their weight. They were tall pale folk in linen and samite and tiger fur, every one a lord or lady to her eyes. The women wore gowns that left one breast bare, while the men favored beaded silk skirts. Dany felt shabby and barbaric as she rode past them in her lionskin robe with black Drogon on one shoulder. Her Dothraki called the Qartheen “Milk Men” for their paleness, and Khal Drogo had dreamed of the day when he might sack the great cities of the east. She glanced at her bloodriders, their dark almond-shaped eyes giving no hint of their thoughts. Is it only the plunder they see? she wondered. How savage we must seem to these Qartheen.
　　Pyrat Pree conducted her little khalasar down the center of a great arcade where the city’s ancient heroes stood thrice life-size on columns of white and green marble. They passed through a bazaar in a cavernous building whose latticework ceiling was home to a thousand gaily colored birds. Trees and flowers bloomed on the terraced walls above the stalls, while below it seemed as if everything the gods had put into the world was for sale.
　　Her silver shied as the merchant prince Xaro Xhoan Daxos rode up to her; the horses could not abide the close presence of camels, she had found. “If you see here anything that you would desire, O most beautiful of women, you have only to speak and it is yours,” Xaro called down from his ornate horned saddle.
　　“Qarth itself is hers, she has no need of baubles,” blue-lipped Pyat Pree sang out from her other side. “It shall be as I promised, Khaleesi. Come with me to the House of the Undying, and you shall drink of truth and wisdom.”
　　“Why should she need your Palace of Dust, when I can give her sunlight and sweet water and silks to sleep in?” Xaro said to the warlock. “The Thirteen shall set a crown of black jade and fire opals upon her lovely head.”
　　“The only palace I desire is the red castle at King’s Landing, my lord Pyat.” Dany was wary of the warlock; the maegi Mirri Maz Duur had soured her on those who played at sorcery. “And if the great of Qarth would give me gifts, Xaro, let them give me ships and swords to win back what is rightfully mine.”
　　Pyat’s blue lips curled upward in a gracious smile. “It shall be as you command, Khaleesi.” He moved away, swaying with his camel’s motion, his long beaded robes trailing behind.
　　“The young queen is wise beyond her years,” Xaro Xhoan Daxos murmured down at her from his high saddle. “There is a saying in Qarth. A warlock’s house is built of bones and lies.”
　　“Then why do men lower their voices when they speak of the warlocks of Qarth? All across the east, their power and wisdom are revered.”
　　“Once they were mighty,” Xaro agreed, “but now they are as ludicrous as those feeble old soldiers who boast of their prowess long after strength and skill have left them. They read their crumbling scrolls, drink shade-of-the-evening until their lips turn blue, and hint of dread powers, but they are hollow husks compared to those who went before. Pyat Pree’s gifts will turn to dust in your hands, I warn you.” He gave his camel a lick of his whip and sped away.
　　“The crow calls the raven black,” muttered Ser Jorah in the Common Tongue of Westeros. The exile knight rode at her right hand, as ever. For their entrance into Qarth, he had put away his Dothraki garb and donned again the plate and mail and wool of the Seven Kingdoms half a world away. “You would do well to avoid both those men, Your Grace.”
　　“Those men will help me to my crown,” she said.
　　“Xaro has vast wealth, and Pyat Pree pretends to power,” the knight said brusquely. On his dark green surcoat, the bear of House Mormont stood on its hind legs, black and fierce. Jorah looked no less ferocious as he scowled at the crowd that filled the bazaar. “I would not linger here long, my queen. I mislike the very smell of this place.”
　　Dany smiled. “Perhaps it’s the camels you’re smelling. The Qartheen themselves seem sweet enough to my nose.”
　　“Sweet smells are sometimes used to cover foul ones.”
　　My great bear, Dany thought. I am his queen, but I will always be his cub as well, and he will always guard me. It made her feel safe, but sad as well. She wished she could love him better than she did.
　　Xaro Xhoan Daxos had offered Dany the hospitality of his home while she was in the city. She had expected something grand. She had not expected a palace larger than many a market town. It makes Magister Illyrio’s manse in Pentos look like a swineherd’s hovel, she thought. Xaro swore that his home could comfortably house all of her people and their horses besides; indeed, it swallowed them. An entire wing was given over to her. She would have her own gardens, a marble bathing pool, a scrying tower and warlock’s maze. Slaves would tend her every need. In her private chambers, the floors were green marble, the walls draped with colorful silk hangings that shimmered with every breath of air. “You are too generous,” she told Xaro Xhoan Daxos.
　　“For the Mother of Dragons, no gift is too great.” Xaro was a languid, elegant man with a bald head and a great beak of a nose crusted with rubies, opals, and flakes of jade. “On the morrow, you shall feast upon peacock and lark’s tongue, and hear music worthy of the most beautiful of women. The Thirteen will come to do you homage, and all the great of Qarth.”
　　All the great of Qarth will come to see my dragons, Dany thought, yet she thanked Xaro for his kindness before she sent him on his way. Pyat Pree took his leave as well, vowing to petition the Undying Ones for an audience. “A honor rare as summer snows.” Before he left he kissed her bare feet with his pale blue lips and pressed on her a gift, a jar of ointment that he swore would let her see the spirits of the air. Last of the three seekers to depart was Quaithe the shadowbinder. From her Dany received only a warning. “Beware,” the woman in the red lacquer mask said.
　　“Of whom?”
　　“Of all. They shall come day and night to see the wonder that has been born again into the world, and when they see they shall lust. For dragons are fire made flesh, and fire is power.”
　　When Quaithe too was gone, Ser Jorah said, “She speaks truly, my queen . . . though I like her no more than the others.”
　　“I do not understand her.” Pyat and Xaro had showered Dany with promises from the moment they first glimpsed her dragons, declaring themselves her loyal servants in all things, but from Quaithe she had gotten only the rare cryptic word. And it disturbed her that she had never seen the woman’s face. Remember Mirri Maz Duur, she told herself. Remember treachery. She turned to her bloodriders. “We will keep our own watch so long as we are here. See that no one enters this wing of the palace without my leave, and take care that the dragons are always well guarded.”
　　“It shall be done, Khaleesi,” Aggo said.
　　“We have seen only the parts of Qarth that Pyat Pree wished us to see,” she went on. “Rakharo, go forth and look on the rest, and tell me what you find. Take good men with you—and women, to go places where men are forbidden.”
　　“As you say, I do, blood of my blood,” said Rakharo.
　　“Ser Jorah, find the docks and see what manner of ships lay at anchor. It has been half a year since I last heard tidings from the Seven Kingdoms. Perhaps the gods will have blown some good captain here from Westeros with a ship to carry us home.”
　　The knight frowned. “That would be no kindness. The Usurper will kill you, sure as sunrise.” Mormont hooked his thumbs through his swordbelt. “My place is here at your side.”
　　“Jhogo can guard me as well. You have more languages than my bloodriders, and the Dothraki mistrust the sea and those who sail her. Only you can serve me in this. Go among the ships and speak to the crews, learn where they are from and where they are bound and what manner of men command them.”
　　Reluctantly, the exile nodded. “As you say, my queen.”
　　When all the men had gone, her handmaids stripped off the travelstained silks she wore, and Dany padded out to where the marble pool sat in the shade of a portico. The water was deliciously cool, and the pool was stocked with tiny golden fish that nibbled curiously at her skin and made her giggle. It felt good to close her eyes and float, knowing she could rest as long as she liked. She wondered whether Aegon’s Red Keep had a pool like this, and fragrant gardens full of lavender and mint. It must, surely. Viserys always said the Seven Kingdoms were more beautiful than any other place in the world.
　　The thought of home disquieted her. If her sun-and-stars had lived, he would have led his khalasar across the poison water and swept away her enemies, but his strength had left the world. Her bloodriders remained, sworn to her for life and skilled in slaughter, but only in the ways of the horselords. The Dothraki sacked cities and plundered kingdoms, they did not rule them. Dany had no wish to reduce King’s Landing to a blackened ruin full of unquiet ghosts. She had supped enough on tears. I want to make my kingdom beautiful, to fill it with fat men and pretty maids and laughing children. I want my people to smile when they see me ride by, the way Viserys said they smiled for my father.
　　But before she could do that she must conquer.
　　The Usurper will kill you, sure as sunrise, Mormont had said. Robert had slain her gallant brother Rhaegar, and one of his creatures had crossed the Dothraki sea to poison her and her unborn son. They said Robert Baratheon was strong as a bull and fearless in battle, a man who loved nothing better than war. And with him stood the great lords her brother had named the Usurper’s dogs, cold-eyed Eddard Stark with his frozen heart, and the golden Lannisters, father and son, so rich, so powerful, so treacherous.
　　How could she hope to overthrow such men? When Khal Drogo had lived, men trembled and made him gifts to stay his wrath. If they did not, he took their cities, wealth and wives and all. But his khalasar had been vast, while hers was meager. Her people had followed her across the red waste as she chased her comet, and would follow her across the poison water too, but they would not be enough. Even her dragons might not be enough. Viserys had believed that the realm would rise for its rightful king . . . but Viserys had been a fool, and fools believe in foolish things.
　　Her doubts made her shiver. Suddenly the water felt cold to her, and the little fish prickling at her skin annoying. Dany stood and climbed from the pool. “Irri,” she called, “Jhiqui.
　　As the handmaids toweled her dry and wrapped her in a sandsilk robe, Dany’s thoughts went to the three who had sought her out in the City of Bones. The Bleeding Star led me to Qarth for a purpose. Here I will find what I need, if I have the strength to take what is offered, and the wisdom to avoid the traps and snares. If the gods mean for me to conquer, they will provide, they will send me a sign, and if not . . . if not . . .
　　It was near evenfall and Dany was feeding her dragons when Irri stepped through the silken curtains to tell her that Ser Jorah had returned from the docks . . . and not alone. “Send him in, with whomever he has brought,” she said, curious.
　　When they entered, she was seated on a mound of cushions, her dragons all about her. The man he brought with him wore a cloak of green and yellow feathers and had skin as black as polished jet. “Your Grace,” the knight said, “I bring you Quhuru Mo, captain of the Cinnamon Wind out of Tall Trees Town.”
　　The black man knelt. “I am greatly honored, my queen,” he said; not in the tongue of the Summer Isles, which Dany did not know, but in the liquid Valyrian of the Nine Free Cities.
　　“The honor is mine, Quhuru Mo,” said Dany in the same language. “Have you come from the Summer Isles?”
　　“This is so, Your Grace, but before, not half a year past, we called at Oldtown. From there I bring you a wondrous gift.”
　　“A gift?”
　　“A gift of news. Dragonmother, Stormborn, I tell you true, Robert Baratheon is dead.”
　　Outside her walls, dusk was settling over Qarth, but a sun had risen in Dany’s heart. “Dead?” she repeated. In her lap, black Drogon hissed, and pale smoke rose before her face like a veil. “You are certain? The Usurper is dead?”
　　“So it is said in Oldtown, and Dorne, and Lys, and all the other ports where we have called.”
　　He sent me poisoned wine, yet I live and he is gone. “What was the manner of his death?” On her shoulder, pale Viserion flapped wings the color of cream, stirring the air.
　　“Torn by a monstrous boar whilst hunting in his kingswood, or so I heard in Oldtown. Others say his queen betrayed him, or his brother, or Lord Stark who was his Hand. Yet all the tales agree in this: King Robert is dead and in his grave.”
　　Dany had never looked upon the Usurper’s face, yet seldom a day had passed when she had not thought of him. His great shadow had lain across her since the hour of her birth, when she came forth amidst blood and storm into a world where she no longer had a place. And now this ebony stranger had lifted that shadow.
　　“The boy sits the Iron Throne now,” Ser Jorah said.
　　“King Joffrey reigns,” Quhuru Mo agreed, “but the Lannisters rule. Robert’s brothers have fled King’s Landing. The talk is, they mean to claim the crown. And the Hand has fallen, Lord Stark who was King Robert’s friend. He has been seized for treason.”
　　“Ned Stark a traitor?” Ser Jorah snorted. “Not bloody likely. The Long Summer will come again before that one would besmirch his precious honor.”
　　“What honor could he have?” Dany said. “He was a traitor to his true king, as were these Lannisters.” It pleased her to hear that the Usurper’s dogs were fighting amongst themselves, though she was unsurprised. The same thing happened when her Drogo died, and his great khalasar tore itself to pieces. “My brother is dead as well, Viserys who was the true king,” she told the Summer Islander. “Khal Drogo my lord husband killed him with a crown of molten gold.” Would her brother have been any wiser, had he known that the vengeance he had prayed for was so close at hand? “Then I grieve for you, Dragonmother, and for bleeding Westeros, bereft of its rightful king.”
　　Beneath Dany’s gentle fingers, green Rhaegal stared at the stranger with eyes of molten gold. When his mouth opened, his teeth gleamed like black needles. “When does your ship return to Westeros, Captain?”
　　“Not for a year or more, I fear. From here the Cinnamon Wind sails east, to make the trader’s circle round the jade Sea.”
　　“I see,” said Dany, disappointed. “I wish you fair winds and good trading, then. You have brought me a precious gift.”
　　“I have been amply repaid, great queen.”
　　She puzzled at that. “How so?”
　　His eyes gleamed. “I have seen dragons.”
　　Dany laughed. “And will see more of them one day, I hope. Come to me in King’s Landing when I am on my father’s throne, and you shall have a great reward.” The Summer Islander promised he would do so, and kissed her lightly on the fingers as he took his leave. Jhiqui showed him out, while Ser Jorah Mormont remained.
　　“Khaleesi,” the knight said when they were alone, “I should not speak so freely of your plans, if I were you. This man will spread the tale wherever he goes now.”
　　“Let him,” she said. “Let the whole world know my purpose. The Usurper is dead, what does it matter?”
　　“Not every sailor’s tale is true,” Ser Jorah cautioned, “and even if Robert be truly dead, his son rules in his place. This changes nothing, truly.”
　　“This changes everything.” Dany rose abruptly. Screeching, her dragons uncoiled and spread their wings. Drogon flapped and clawed up to the lintel over the archway. The others skittered across the floor, wingtips scrabbling on the marble. “Before, the Seven Kingdoms were like my Drogo’s khalasar, a hundred thousand made as one by his strength. Now they fly to pieces, even as the khalasar did after my khal lay dead.”
　　“The high lords have always fought. Tell me who’s won and I’ll tell you what it means. Khaleesi, the Seven Kingdoms are not going to fall into your hands like so many ripe peaches. You will need a fleet, gold, armies, alliances—”
　　“All this I know.” She took his hands in hers and looked up into his dark suspicious eyes. Sometimes he thinks of me as a child he must protect, and sometimes as a woman he would like to bed, but does he ever truly see me as his queen? “I am not the frightened girl you met in Pentos. I have counted only fifteen name days, true . . . but I am as old as the crones in the dosh khaleen and as young as my dragons, Jorah. I have borne a child, burned a khal, and crossed the red waste and the Dothraki sea. Mine is the blood of the dragon.”
　　“As was your brother’s,” he said stubbornly.
　　“I am not Viserys.”
　　“No,” he admitted. “There is more of Rhaegar in you, I think, but even Rhaegar could be slain. Robert proved that on the Trident, with no more than a warhammer. Even dragons can die.”
　　“Dragons die.” She stood on her toes to kiss him lightly on an unshaven cheek. “But so do dragonslayers.”



Ⅱ 列王的纷争 Chapter28 丹妮莉丝
　　丹妮莉丝抵达魁尔斯时，人们在城墙上敲响铜锣通报，另一些人吹起如青铜巨蛇一般盘绕在身的奇怪号角。城内走出一队骆驼骑兵，充当她的荣誉护卫。骑手们穿着铜鳞甲，头戴镶有铜牙、披着长长黑羽的长吻盔，高高地坐在镶嵌红宝石和石榴石的华丽鞍座之上。他们的骆驼披着色彩斑斓的毯子。
　　“魁尔斯是古往今来最伟大的城市。”俳雅·菩厉在枯骨之城维斯·托罗若就告诉过她。“它是世界的中心，沟通南北的门户，连接东西的桥梁，古老悠久，超越人们的记忆。它宏伟壮丽，令智者萨索斯第一眼看到它之后便自毁双眼，因为他知道今后所见的一切，与它相比都将丑陋不堪，黯然失色。”
　　丹妮认为男巫说话向来添油加醋，但这座伟大城市的华丽宏伟无可否认。三重厚墙环绕着魁尔斯，墙上有各种精巧的雕刻。外墙由红砂岩砌成，三十尺高，雕刻着各种动物：蜿蜒爬行的蛇，展翅飞翔的鸢，滑行游动的鱼，还夹杂着红色荒原的狼群，以及斑马和巨象。中墙四十尺高，由灰色花岗岩砌成，雕刻着栩栩如生的战争场面：刀剑相交，矛盾互击，箭支如雨，英雄在战斗，婴儿被屠杀，熊熊燃烧的火葬堆。内墙是五十尺高的黑色大理石，墙上的雕刻让丹妮羞红了脸，但她告诉自己，别傻了，她早已不是黄花闺女；既然灰墙上的屠戮场面都吓不倒她，男女交欢的情景又有什么隐讳呢？
　　外城门镶铜，中门镶铁，内城门则镶嵌着许多黄金眼睛。这些城门随着丹妮的走近一一打开。她骑着银马进入城内，小孩子们跑出来，撒下鲜花，铺满她前进的路径。这些孩子除了金色的凉鞋，什么都没穿，全身都是明艳的彩绘。
　　维斯·托罗若所缺乏的各种色彩似乎全跑到了魁尔斯，她的四周挤满了建筑物，呈现着深浅各异、如梦似幻的玫瑰、紫罗兰和棕褐色调。她经过一道雕成交欢的双蛇形状的青铜拱门，蛇的鳞片是精致的翡翠、黑曜石和天青石。无数纤细的尖塔高高耸立，丹妮毕生未见如此高大的塔楼。每个广场都有狮鹫、龙和狮身蝎尾兽形状的精巧喷泉。
　　魁尔斯人罗列于街道边，或在精致的阳台上观看——那些阳台如此精细，令人怀疑是否能支撑人的体重。他们是高挑而白皙的人种，穿着亚麻布、织锦和虎皮制成的衣服，在她的眼里，个个都是领主和贵妇。妇女的长袍露出一边胸脯，男子则偏爱镶有珠饰的丝裙。丹妮披着狮皮，肩上站了黑色的卓耿，从他们面前骑过，觉得自己粗鄙而蛮荒。魁尔斯人被多斯拉克人呼为“奶人”，因为他们肤色白皙，卓戈卡奥曾经梦想有朝一日来洗劫这些东方的巨城。她瞥了一眼她的血盟卫，从他们杏仁状的黑眼睛里看不出任何想法。在他们眼中，这些都只是未来的战利品吗？她疑惑地想。而在这些魁尔斯人看来，我们定是一群彻头彻尾的野蛮人。
　　俳雅·菩厉领着她小小的卡拉萨穿过一条巨大的拱廊街道，这座城市的古代英雄们站立在白色与绿色的大理石柱上，大小是真人的三倍。接着他们穿过一处集市，集市位于一座多面开口的巨大建筑内，格子状的天花板成了数千只色彩斑斓的鸟儿的家园。店铺上方的平台生长着茂密的树木花草，而在店铺之内，商品琳琅满目，诸神创造的一切似乎都可买卖。
　　巨商札罗·赞旺·达梭斯靠过来时，她的银马受到惊吓，马匹似乎受不了骆驼的气息。“如果您看中什么东西，哦，绝代佳人，您只需轻吐芳唇，它就是您的了，”札罗坐在华丽的角鞍上俯身说。
　　“整个魁尔斯都是她的，她不需要这些小玩意，”蓝嘴唇的俳雅·菩厉在另一侧高声叫道。“听我的没错，卡丽熙。跟我去不朽之殿吧，在那里，您将啜饮真理与智慧。”
　　“既然我可以提供阳光、琼浆和丝绸，她怎会去你的尘埃之殿呢？”札罗对男巫说。“十三巨子将把一顶由黑玉和火晕石制成的冠冕戴在她美丽的头上。”
　　“我惟一想去的宫殿是君临的红堡，俳雅大人。”丹妮对男巫存有戒心，女巫弥丽·马兹·笃尔使她对操弄巫术的人心怀厌恶。“如果魁尔斯的大人物们要给我礼物，札罗，请他们赐予我舰船和军队，助我赢回理应属于我的一切吧。”
　　俳雅蓝唇上翘，优雅地微笑道：“正该如此，正该如此，卡丽熙。”他转身走开，缀满珠宝的长袍拖在身后，随着骆驼的移动而摇摆。
　　“女王陛下有超越年龄的智慧，”札罗·赞旺·达梭斯在高高的鞍座上对她低声说。“魁尔斯有句俗话：男巫的房子，骸骨加谎言。”
　　“那为什么人们谈起魁尔斯的男巫就压低声音呢？在整个东方，他们的力量与智慧受人敬畏。”
　　“他们曾经强盛，”札罗同意，“但如今就跟那些羸弱的老兵一样可笑，只会夸耀当年之勇，全不顾力量与技能早已离他们而去。他们阅读腐朽的卷轴，啜饮夜影之水直到双唇变蓝，口中暗示自己具有可怕的力量，但跟前人相比，他们不过是空壳子。我要提醒您，无论俳雅·菩厉给您什么礼物，都将在手中化为尘土。”他抽了骆驼一鞭，加速跑开。
　　“乌鸦还嫌八哥黑，”乔拉爵士用维斯特洛通用语低声说。遭放逐的骑士照旧在她的右边骑行。进入魁尔斯城之前，他收起多斯拉克服装，再度穿上板甲、锁子甲和羊毛衣——这些远在半个世界之外的七大王国骑士的全副装备。“您最好避开他们俩，陛下。”
　　“他们会助我得到王冠，”她道，“札罗拥有巨大的财富，而俳雅·菩厉——”
　　“——只会装神弄鬼，”骑士唐突地说。在他深绿色的外衣上，莫尔蒙家族的巨熊后腿直立，黑黝黝的，煞是凶猛。乔拉朝集市里拥挤的人群皱眉，看上去也同样凶猛。“我不愿在此久留，我的女王。我不喜欢这地方的气味。”
　　丹妮微微一笑。“你闻到的大概是骆驼。就我的鼻子而论，魁尔斯人似乎还挺香呢。”
　　“香水时常用来掩盖臭味。”
　　我的大熊，丹妮心想。我是他的女王，但他却当我是个孩子，一心要永远守护我。这令她感觉安全，却也有些悲哀。她希望自己能比现在更爱他。
　　札罗·赞旺·达梭斯热情地邀请丹妮住进自己的家。她料到那会是一座豪宅，却没想到是比集市还大的宫殿。与之相比，伊利里欧总督在潘托斯的大宅就像猪倌的茅屋，她想。先前，札罗曾保证他的家可以舒舒服服地容下她所有的人马；事实上，它将他们吞没其中。他把一整边的厢房都给了她。她有自己的花园、大理石浴池、一座水晶占卜塔，以及男巫居住的迷宫。无数的奴隶任她差遣。在她的私人套房里，地板是绿色大理石，墙壁上挂着五彩的丝绸，每当微风拂过，便闪闪发光。“你太慷慨了，”她对札罗·赞旺·达梭斯说。
　　“对龙之母而言，这点礼物不算什么。”札罗是个慵懒儒雅的人，秃顶的脑袋，硕大的鹰钩鼻上缀满红宝石、猫儿眼和翡翠。“明天早上，您将一边享用孔雀和云雀舌，一边欣赏那些只配绝代佳人的音乐。十三巨子会到这里来向您致敬，全魁尔斯的高尚人物都会来。”
　　全魁尔斯的人都会来看我的龙，丹妮心想，但她还是向札罗道谢，感谢他的好意，然后将他送走。俳雅也告辞离开，并再三保证会向“不朽者”们请求，安排接见丹妮。“那是如盛夏飘雪一般稀罕的荣耀啊。”他离开前，用淡蓝的嘴唇亲吻她赤裸的双脚，并坚持留下一罐油膏作礼物，他发誓说这能让她看见空气之灵。三位寻龙者中最后离开的是缚影士魁晰，从她那儿，丹妮只得到一个警告。“小心，”戴红漆面具的女人说。
　　“小心谁？”
　　“小心所有人。他们将不分昼夜地觐见这重生于世的奇迹，接着便会贪念陡生。因为龙的血肉由火构成，而火就是力量。”
　　待魁晰也离开后，乔拉爵士说，“她说得对，我的女王……尽管我也不喜欢她，但是……”
　　“说实话，我很不理解她。”俳雅和札罗从第一眼看到她的龙开始，就连连许诺，宣称他们彻头彻尾是她忠实的仆人，但从魁晰那儿，她只得到寥寥几句含糊隐秘的言词，而且她从没见到那女人的脸，这让她很不安。记住弥丽·马兹·笃尔，她告诉自己，记住背叛。她转向她的血盟卫。“我们留在这里一天，就得保持继续站哨。未经我允许，任何人都不得进入这一侧的厢房。尤其是这些龙，必须时刻小心看守。”
　　“遵命，卡丽熙，”阿戈说。
　　“我们只看到魁尔斯的一部分——俳雅·菩厉希望我们看到的部分，”她续道，“拉卡洛，我要你深入查看其余的部分，把所见所闻向我回报。带上得力的人手——以及几位女人，以进入男人禁入的地方。”
　　“遵命，吾血之血，”拉卡洛说。
　　“乔拉爵士，我要你去找码头，看看那里停泊着什么样的船只。我已经半年没有听到七大王国的消息了。或许诸神会将某位好心的船长从维斯特洛吹到这儿来，用他的船载我们回家。”
　　骑士皱了皱眉头。“这可不算好意。篡夺者将杀死你，这和太阳会升起一样确凿无疑。”莫尔蒙将拇指勾在剑带。“我要留在您身边守护您。”
　　“乔戈也能守卫我。而且，你会的语言比我的血盟卫多，多斯拉克人又不信任海洋和在海上航行的人，这件事上只有你能为我效力。去吧，去船只之间走走，跟水手们聊聊，了解他们从哪儿来，往哪儿去，还有负责指挥他们的人。”
　　遭放逐的骑士勉强点点头。“遵命，我的女王。”
　　等所有男人离开，女仆替她脱去沾染风尘的丝绸外衣，丹妮缓缓走出去，来到门廊阴影里的大理石浴池。池水清凉宜人，池中的小金鱼好奇地轻咬她的肌肤，令她不禁咯咯笑出声来。她闭上眼，随波漂浮，知道自己想休息多久就可以休息多久，这样的感觉真好。不知伊耿的红堡内是否也有这样的池子，这般长满熏衣草和薄荷的芬芳花园。一定有。韦赛里斯常说七大王国是世界上最美的地方。
　　一想到家，她就不安起来。如果她的日和星还活着，一定会率领卡拉萨横渡毒水汪洋，扫清她的敌人，但他的力量已从这世上消失了。她的血盟卫们虽然还在，且武艺过人，誓死效命，但毕竟只是马上英雄。多斯拉克人洗劫城市，抢掠王国，却不懂统治之道。丹妮不希望君临化为满地游魂的焦黑废墟，她已经尝够了眼泪的滋味。我要我的王国美丽动人，到处都是精壮的男子，漂亮的女人和快乐的孩子。我要我的子民在我骑马经过时面带微笑，如韦赛里斯所说的那种，对我父亲展现的微笑。
　　要做到这些，首先要征服。
　　篡夺者将杀死你，这和太阳会升起一样确凿无疑，莫尔蒙如是说。劳勃杀死了她英勇的哥哥雷加，还派爪牙穿越多斯拉克海，企图毒死她和她未出生的孩子。据说劳勃·拜拉席恩壮如公牛，在战场上无所畏惧，是个喜爱战争胜过一切的男人。在他身边，有许多被哥哥称为‘篡夺者走狗’的大贵族：眼神冷峻、心肠冰冻的艾德·史塔克；金光灿灿的兰尼斯特父子，富裕、强大、背信弃义。
　　她该如何挫败这样的敌人呢？卓戈卡奥活着的时候，人们颤抖着献上贡品，以延滞他的怒气，否则他便要夺取对手的城池、财富、妻子等等一切。但他的卡拉萨非常庞大，而她的却如此弱小。她追随着她的彗星，而她的子民追随着她穿越红色荒原，也将追随她横渡毒水汪洋，但只有他们是不够的，就算加上她的龙也不够。韦赛里斯相信国内人民会为了真正的国王揭竿而起……但韦赛里斯是个傻瓜，傻瓜相信蠢事。
　　疑虑令她颤抖。她突然感到水太冰凉，小鱼的咬啄让人生厌。丹妮起身爬出池子。“伊丽，”她喊，“姬琪。”
　　女仆们用毛巾替她擦干，并裹上一条沙丝长袍，丹妮的思绪则转向到骸骨之城来找她的那三个人。“泣血之星”引领我来到魁尔斯，必有目的。只要我有足够的力量去寻取帮助，并有足够的智慧避开圈套与陷阱，就将找到自己所需。如果诸神注定要我成为征服者，他们必将提供支持，展现某种神迹。但如果不是这样……如果不是……
　　快傍晚时，丹妮正在喂龙，伊丽穿过丝帘走进来，通报乔拉爵士已从码头归来……还带了一个人。“请他们进来，不管他带了谁，都一起进来，”她很好奇。
　　他们进来时，她坐在地面的一堆软垫上，她的龙围绕四周。来人穿一件黄绿相间的羽毛披风，乌黑的皮肤像抛光的黑玉。“陛下，”骑士道，“我为您带来库忽鲁·莫，‘月桂风号’的船长，来自高树镇。”
　　黑皮肤的人跪下来。“我感到无上荣幸，女王陛下，”他不是用丹妮听不懂的盛夏群岛语言，而是九大自由贸易城邦所使用的瓦雷利亚语，并且非常流畅。
　　“这是我的荣幸，库忽鲁·莫，”丹妮用同样的语言回答。“你是盛夏群岛人？”
　　“是的，陛下。不到半年之前，我们曾在旧镇停靠，我从那儿为您带来一件特别的礼物。”
　　“礼物？”
　　“一个好消息。风暴降生的龙之母啊，让我告诉您，劳勃·拜拉席恩已经死了。”
　　围墙之外，暮色笼罩了魁尔斯，但一轮红日却从丹妮心中升起。“他死了？”她重复道。膝上黑色的卓耿嘶嘶叫着，喷出一道白烟，如面纱般罩在她面前。“你肯定吗？篡夺者真的死了？”
　　“旧镇的人都这么说，在多恩，在里斯，在我们停靠的所有港口都有同样的消息。”
　　他给我送来毒酒，如今我活着，他却先死了。“他怎么死的？”在她肩头，韦赛利昂拍打着乳白色的翅膀，搅动空气。
　　“他在御林打猎时，被一头怪物般的野猪戳死，至少我在旧镇是这么听说。也有人说是王后背叛了他，或是他的弟弟，或是他的首相史塔克公爵。所有传说的共同点在于：劳勃国王确实死了，业已进了坟墓。”
　　丹妮不知篡夺者长得什么样，但几乎没有一天不想到他。他如同巨大的阴影，自她诞生起就笼罩着她，她在鲜血和风暴中降生于世，却因他而无处容身。然而此刻，这个陌生的黑肤男子却陡然把她解放。
　　“男孩坐上了铁王座，”乔拉爵士说。
　　“如今乔佛里国王即位，”库忽鲁·莫补充，“政事把持在兰尼斯特家族手里。劳勃的两个弟弟逃离了君临，传言说他们意图称王。首相失了势，史塔克公爵是劳勃国王最好的朋友，却以叛国罪遭到逮捕。”
　　“艾德·史塔克叛国？”乔拉爵士嗤之以鼻。“异鬼才相信！就算永夏降临，这家伙也不会玷污他的宝贵荣誉。”
　　“他能有什么荣誉？”丹妮说，“他背叛了真正的国王，这些兰尼斯特家的人也是。”听到篡夺者的走狗们自相残杀，令她心情愉快，但并不意外。她的卓戈死后也发生了同样的事，强大的卡拉萨四分五裂。“我哥哥韦赛里斯死了，他才是真正的国王，”她告诉盛夏群岛人。“我夫君卓戈卡奥杀了他，以熔化的黄金为他加冕。”哥哥聪明一点就好了，他日夜祈祷的复仇已经近在眼前了啊！
　　“我为您感到悲哀，龙之母，也为正在流血的维斯特洛感到悲哀，因为它失去了真正的国王。”
　　在丹妮温柔的手指下面，绿色的雷哥用熔金般的眼睛注视着陌生人。他张开嘴，牙齿如黑针一般闪闪发光。“船长，你的船何时再去维斯特洛？”
　　“恐怕一两年之内不会。月桂风号将从这里启程向东，沿着贸易航线环行玉海。”
　　“我明白了，”丹妮有些失望。“我祝你一路顺风，生意兴隆。你给我带来了一份珍贵的礼物。”
　　“而我得到了丰厚的回报，伟大的女王。”
　　她有些疑惑。“怎么会？”
　　他的眼睛闪烁着光芒。“我见到了龙。”
　　丹妮笑了。“希望有朝一日，你能见到更多。当我登上父亲的王座之后，来君临见我，你将得到一份丰厚的奖赏。”
　　盛夏群岛人保证一定照办，临行前轻吻她的十指。姬琪领他出去，乔拉·莫尔蒙留下来。
　　“卡丽熙，”等他们独处时，骑士开了口，“如果我是您，可不会随便把计划说出去。这种人走到哪里，都会大肆宣扬。”
　　“由他去说，”她道。“就让全世界都知道我的决心。篡夺者已死，我怕什么呢？”
　　“并非每个水手的故事都是真的，”乔拉爵士警告，“即使劳勃死了，也得由他的儿子来接替统治。说实在的，什么也没改变。”
　　“一切皆已改变。”丹妮猛然起身。她的龙一边尖叫一边松开尾巴展翅飞离。卓耿拍拍翅膀、爬上拱廊的横梁，另外两只掠过地面，翅尖刮在大理石上。“从前，七大王国就像卓戈的卡拉萨，在领袖的强力统御下万众一心。如今，它们也将像卡奥死后的卡拉萨，分崩离析。”
　　“大贵族们总是沉溺于权力的游戏中，争斗不休。谁家获胜，我都能预测形势的变化。卡丽熙啊，七大王国不会像成熟的桃子一样落入您手中。您需要舰队，需要金钱，需要军队，需要同盟——”
　　“这些我都知道。”她拉起他的手，深深望进他疑虑的黑眼睛。在他眼中，我有时是个需要他保护的女孩，有时是个他想要睡的女人，他可曾真正将我视为他的女王？“我已经不再是你在潘托斯遇见的那个惊惶失措的女孩了。没错，我只经历了十五个命名日……但是，乔拉，我也像多希卡林的老妪一般年长，像我的龙一样年轻。我怀过一个孩子，烧过一个卡奥，穿越了红色荒原和多斯拉克海。我体内流着真龙的血脉。”
　　“和您哥哥一样，”他固执地说。
　　“我和韦赛里斯不一样。”
　　“我指的不是他，”他解释，“而是雷加。但您别忘了，即便雷加也难免一死。劳勃在三叉戟河上，只凭一把战锤就证明：真龙也有克星。”
　　“真龙会死。”她掂起脚尖，轻吻他未曾修刮的脸颊。“但屠龙者也会。”
[ 此帖被挽墨在2015-08-28 02:20重新编辑 ]
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你看着眼前的人，分明还是以前的模样，可心里终究不是以前那般澄清透明了。
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　　CHAPTER 28
　　BRAN

　　Meera moved in a wary circle, her net dangling loose in her left hand, the slender three-pronged frog spear poised in her right. Summer followed her with his golden eyes, turning, his tail held stiff and tall. Watching, watching . . .
　　“Yai!” the girl shouted, the spear darting out. The wolf slid to the left and leapt before she could draw back the spear. Meera cast her net, the tangles unfolding in the air before her. Summer’s leap carried him into it. He dragged it with him as he slammed into her chest and knocked her over backward. Her spear went spinning away. The damp grass cushioned her fall but the breath went out of her in an “Oof.” The wolf crouched atop her.
　　Bran hooted. “You lose.”
　　“She wins,” her brother Jojen said. “Summer’s snared.”
　　He was right, Bran saw. Thrashing and growling at the net, trying to rip free, Summer was only ensnaring himself worse. Nor could he bite through. “Let him out.”
　　Laughing, the Reed girl threw her arms around the tangled wolf and rolled them both. Summer gave a piteous whine, his legs kicking against the cords that bound them. Meera knelt, undid a twist, pulled at a corner, tugged deftly here and there, and suddenly the direwolf was bounding free.
　　“Summer, to me.” Bran spread his arms. “Watch,” he said, an instant before the wolf bowled into him. He clung with all his strength as the wolf dragged him bumping through the grass. They wrestled and rolled and clung to each other, one snarling and yapping, the other laughing. In the end it was Bran sprawled on top, the mud-spattered direwolf under him. “Good wolf,” he panted. Summer licked him across the ear.
　　Meera shook her head. “Does he never grow angry?”
　　“Not with me.” Bran grabbed the wolf by his ears and Summer snapped at him fiercely, but it was all in play. “Sometimes he tears my garb but he’s never drawn blood.”
　　“Your blood, you mean. If he’d gotten past my net . . .”
　　“He wouldn’t hurt you. He knows I like you.” All of the other lords and knights had departed within a day or two of the harvest feast, but the Reeds had stayed to become Bran’s constant companions. Jojen was so solemn that Old Nan called him “little grandfather,” but Meera reminded Bran of his sister Arya. She wasn’t scared to get dirty, and she could run and fight and throw as good as a boy. She was older than Arya, though; almost sixteen, a woman grown. They were both older than Bran, even though his ninth name day had finally come and gone, but they never treated him like a child.
　　“I wish you were our wards instead of the Walders.” He began to struggle toward the nearest tree. His dragging and wriggling was unseemly to watch, but when Meera moved to lift him he said, “No, don’t help me.” He rolled clumsily and pushed and squirmed backward, using the strength of his arms, until he was sitting with his back to the trunk of a tall ash. “See, I told you.” Summer lay down with his head in Bran’s lap. “I never knew anyone who fought with a net before,” he told Meera while he scratched the direwolf between the ears. “Did your master-at-arms teach you net-fighting?”
　　“My father taught me. We have no knights at Greywater. No master-at-arms, and no maester.”
　　“Who keeps your ravens?”
　　She smiled. “Ravens can’t find Greywater Watch, no more than our enemies can.”
　　“Why not?”
　　“Because it moves,” she told him.
　　Bran had never heard of a moving castle before. He looked at her uncertainly, but he couldn’t tell whether she was teasing him or not. “I wish I could see it. Do you think your lord father would let me come visit when the war is over?”
　　“You would be most welcome, my prince. Then or now.”
　　“Now?” Bran had spent his whole life at Winterfell. He yearned to see far places. “I could ask Ser Rodrik when he returns.” The old knight was off east, trying to set to rights the trouble there. Roose Bolton’s bastard had started it by seizing Lady Hornwood as she returned from the harvest feast, marrying her that very night even though he was young enough to be her son. Then Lord Manderly had taken her castle. To protect the Hornwood holdings from the Boltons, he had written, but Ser Rodrik had been almost as angry with him as with the bastard. “Ser Rodrik might let me go. Maester Luwin never would.”
　　Sitting cross-legged under the weirwood, Jojen Reed regarded him solemnly. “It would be good if you left Winterfell, Bran.”
　　“It would?”
　　“Yes. And sooner rather than later.”
　　“My brother has the greensight,” said Meera. “He dreams things that haven’t happened, but sometimes they do.”
　　“There is no sometimes, Meera.” A look passed between them; him sad, her defiant.
　　“Tell me what’s going to happen,” Bran said.
　　“I will,” said Jojen, “if you’ll tell me about your dreams.”
　　The godswood grew quiet. Bran could hear leaves rustling, and Hodor’s distant splashing from the hot pools. He thought of the golden man and the three-eyed crow, remembered the crunch of bones between his jaws and the coppery taste of blood. “I don’t have dreams. Maester Luwin gives me sleeping draughts.”
　　“Do they help?”
　　“Sometimes.”
　　Meera said, “All of Winterfell knows you wake at night shouting and sweating, Bran. The women talk of it at the well, and the guards in their hall.”
　　“Tell us what frightens you so much,” said Jojen.
　　“I don’t want to. Anyway, it’s only dreams. Maester Luwin says dreams might mean anything or nothing.”
　　“My brother dreams as other boys do, and those dreams might mean anything,” Meera said, “but the green dreams are different.”
　　Jojen’s eyes were the color of moss, and sometimes when he looked at you he seemed to be seeing something else. Like now. “I dreamed of a winged wolf bound to earth with grey stone chains,” he said. “It was a green dream, so I knew it was true. A crow was trying to peck through the chains, but the stone was too hard and his beak could only chip at them.”
　　“Did the crow have three eyes?”
　　Jojen nodded.
　　Summer raised his head from Bran’s lap, and gazed at the mudman with his dark golden eyes.
　　“When I was little I almost died of greywater fever. That was when the crow came to me.”
　　“He came to me after I fell,” Bran blurted. “I was asleep for a long time. He said I had to fly or die, and I woke up, only I was broken and I couldn’t fly after all.”
　　“You can if you want to.” Picking up her net, Meera shook out the last tangles and began arranging it in loose folds.
　　“You are the winged wolf, Bran,” said Jojen. “I wasn’t sure when we first came, but now I am. The crow sent us here to break your chains.”
　　“Is the crow at Greywater?”
　　“No. The crow is in the north.”
　　“At the Wall?” Bran had always wanted to see the Wall. His bastard brother Jon was there now, a man of the Night’s Watch.
　　“Beyond the Wall.” Meera Reed hung the net from her belt. “When Jojen told our lord father what he’d dreamed, he sent us to Winterfell.”
　　“How would I break the chains, Jojen?” Bran asked.
　　“Open your eye.”
　　“They are open. Can’t you see?”
　　“Two are open.” Jojen pointed. “One, two.”
　　“I only have two.”
　　“You have three. The crow gave you the third, but you will not open it.” He had a slow soft way of speaking. “With two eyes you see my face. With three you could see my heart. With two you can see that oak tree there. With three you could see the acorn the oak grew from and the stump that it will one day become. With two you see no farther than your walls. With three you would gaze south to the Summer Sea and north beyond the Wall.”
　　Summer got to his feet. “I don’t need to see so far.” Bran made a nervous smile. “I’m tired of talking about crows. Let’s talk about wolves. Or lizard-lions. Have you ever hunted one, Meera? We don’t have them here.”
　　Meera plucked her frog spear out of the bushes. “They live in the water. In slow streams and deep swamps—”
　　Her brother interrupted. “Did you dream of a lizard-lion?”
　　“No,” said Bran. “I told you, I don’t want—”
　　“Did you dream of a wolf?”
　　He was making Bran angry. “I don’t have to tell you my dreams. I’m the prince. I’m the Stark in Winterfell.”
　　“Was it Summer?”
　　“You be quiet.”
　　“The night of the harvest feast, you dreamed you were Summer in the godswood, didn’t you?”
　　“Stop it!” Bran shouted. Summer slid toward the weirwood, his white teeth bared. Jojen Reed took no mind. “When I touched Summer, I felt you in him. Just as you are in him now.”
　　“You couldn’t have. I was in bed. I was sleeping.”
　　“You were in the godswood, all in grey.”
　　“It was only a bad dream . . .”
　　Jojen stood. “I felt you. I felt you fall. Is that what scares you, the falling?”
　　The falling, Bran thought, and the golden man, the queen’s brother, he scares me too, but mostly the falling. He did not say it, though. How could he? He had not been able to tell Ser Rodrik or Maester Luwin, and he could not tell the Reeds either. If he didn’t talk about it, maybe he would forget. He had never wanted to remember. It might not even be a true remembering.
　　“Do you fall every night, Bran?” Jojen asked quietly.
　　A low rumbling growl rose from Summer’s throat, and there was no play in it. He stalked forward, all teeth and hot eyes. Meera stepped between the wolf and her brother, spear in hand. “Keep him back, Bran.”
　　“Jojen is making him angry.”
　　Meera shook out her net.
　　“It’s your anger, Bran,” her brother said. “Your fear.”
　　“It isn’t. I’m not a wolf.” Yet he’d howled with them in the night, and tasted blood in his wolf dreams.
　　“Part of you is Summer, and part of Summer is you. You know that, Bran.”
　　Summer rushed forward, but Meera blocked him, jabbing with the three-pronged spear. The wolf twisted aside, circling, stalking. Meera turned to face him. “Call him back, Bran.”
　　“Summer!” Bran shouted. “To me, Summer!” He slapped an open palm down on the meat of his thigh. His hand tingled, though his dead leg felt nothing.
　　The direwolf lunged again, and again Meera’s spear darted out. Summer dodged, circled back. The bushes rustled, and a lean black shape came padding from behind the weirwood, teeth bared. The scent was strong; his brother had smelled his rage. Bran felt hairs rise on the back of his neck. Meera stood beside her brother, with wolves to either side. “Bran, call them off.”
　　“I can’t!”
　　“Jojen, up the tree.”
　　“There’s no need. Today is not the day I die.”
　　“Do it!” she screamed, and her brother scrambled up the trunk of the weirwood, using the face for his handholds. The direwolves closed. Meera abandoned spear and net, jumped up, and grabbed the branch above her head. Shaggy’s jaws snapped shut beneath her ankle as she swung up and over the limb. Summer sat back on his haunches and howled, while Shaggydog worried the net, shaking it in his teeth.
　　Only then did Bran remember that they were not alone. He cupped hands around his mouth. “Hodor!” he shouted. “Hodor! Hodor!” He was badly frightened and somehow ashamed. “They won’t hurt Hodor,” he assured his treed friends.
　　A few moments passed before they heard a tuneless humming. Hodor arrived half-dressed and mud-spattered from his visit to the hot pools, but Bran had never been so glad to see him. “Hodor, help me. Chase off the wolves. Chase them off.”
　　Hodor went to it gleefully, waving his arms and stamping his huge feet, shouting “Hodor, Hodor,” running first at one wolf and then the other. Shaggydog was the first to flee, slinking back into the foliage with a final snarl. When Summer had enough, he came back to Bran and lay down beside him.
　　No sooner did Meera touch ground than she snatched up her spear and net again. Jojen never took his eyes off Summer. “We will talk again,” he promised Bran.
　　It was the wolves, it wasn’t me. He did not understand why they’d gotten so wild. Maybe Maester Luwin was right to lock them in the godswood. “Hodor,” he said, “bring me to Maester Luwin.”
　　The maester’s turret below the rookery was one of Bran’s favorite places. Luwin was hopelessly untidy, but his clutter of books and scrolls and bottles was as familiar and comforting to Bran as his bald spot and the flapping sleeves of his loose grey robes. He liked the ravens too.
　　He found Luwin perched on a high stool, writing. With Ser Rodrik gone, all of the governance of the castle had fallen on his shoulders. “My prince,” he said when Hodor entered, “you’re early for lessons today.” The maester spent several hours every afternoon tutoring Bran, Rickon, and the Walder Freys.
　　“Hodor, stand still.” Bran grasped a wall sconce with both hands and used it to pull himself up and out of the basket. He hung for a moment by his arms until Hodor carried him to a chair. “Meera says her brother has the greensight.”
　　Maester Luwin scratched at the side of his nose with his writing quill. “Does she now?”
　　He nodded. “You told me that the children of the forest had the greensight. I remember.”
　　“Some claimed to have that power. Their wise men were called greenseers.”
　　“Was it magic?”
　　“Call it that for want of a better word, if you must. At heart it was only a different sort of knowledge.”
　　“What was it?”
　　Luwin set down his quill. “No one truly knows, Bran. The children are gone from the world, and their wisdom with them. It had to do with the faces in the trees, we think. The First Men believed that the greenseers could see through the eyes of the weirwoods. That was why they cut down the trees whenever they warred upon the children. Supposedly the greenseers also had power over the beasts of the wood and the birds in the trees. Even fish. Does the Reed boy claim such powers?”
　　“No. I don’t think. But he has dreams that come true sometimes, Meera says.”
　　“All of us have dreams that come true sometimes. You dreamed of your lord father in the crypts before we knew he was dead, remember?”
　　“Rickon did too. We dreamed the same dream.”
　　“Call it greensight, if you wish . . . but remember as well all those tens of thousands of dreams that you and Rickon have dreamed that did not come true. Do you perchance recall what I taught you about the chain collar that every maester wears?”
　　Bran thought for a moment, trying to remember. “A maester forges his chain in the Citadel of Oldtown. It’s a chain because you swear to serve, and it’s made of different metals because you serve the realm and the realm has different sorts of people. Every time you learn something you get another link. Black iron is for ravenry, silver for healing, gold for sums and numbers. I don’t remember them all.”
　　Luwin slid a finger up under his collar and began to turn it, inch by inch. He had a thick neck for a small man, and the chain was tight, but a few pulls had it all the way around. “This is Valyrian steel,” he said when the link of dark grey metal lay against the apple of his throat. “Only one maester in a hundred wears such a link. This signifies that I have studied what the Citadel calls the higher mysteries—magic, for want of a better word. A fascinating pursuit, but of small use, which is why so few maesters trouble themselves with it.
　　“All those who study the higher mysteries try their own hand at spells, soon or late. I yielded to the temptation too, I must confess it. Well, I was a boy, and what boy does not secretly wish to find hidden powers in himself? I got no more for my efforts than a thousand boys before me, and a thousand since. Sad to say, magic does not work.”
　　“Sometimes it does,” Bran protested. “I had that dream, and Rickon did too. And there are mages and warlocks in the east . . .”
　　“There are men who call themselves mages and warlocks,” Maester Luwin said. “I had a friend at the Citadel who could pull a rose out of your ear, but he was no more magical than I was. Oh, to be sure, there is much we do not understand. The years pass in their hundreds and their thousands, and what does any man see of life but a few summers, a few winters? We look at mountains and call them eternal, and so they seem . . . but in the course of time, mountains rise and fall, rivers change their courses, stars fall from the sky, and great cities sink beneath the sea. Even gods die, we think. Everything changes.
　　“Perhaps magic was once a mighty force in the world, but no longer. What little remains is no more than the wisp of smoke that lingers in the air after a great fire has burned out, and even that is fading. Valyria was the last ember, and Valyria is gone. The dragons are no more, the giants are dead, the children of the forest forgotten with all their lore.
　　“No, my prince. Jojen Reed may have had a dream or two that he believes came true, but he does not have the greensight. No living man has that power.”
　　Bran said as much to Meera Reed when she came to him at dusk as he sat in his window seat watching the lights flicker to life. “I’m sorry for what happened with the wolves. Summer shouldn’t have tried to hurt Jojen, but Jojen shouldn’t have said all that about my dreams. The crow lied when he said I could fly, and your brother lied too.”
　　“Or perhaps your maester is wrong.”
　　“He isn’t. Even my father relied on his counsel.”
　　“Your father listened, I have no doubt. But in the end, he decided for himself. Bran, will you let me tell you about a dream Jojen dreamed of you and your fosterling brothers?”
　　“The Walders aren’t my brothers.”
　　She paid that no heed. “You were sitting at supper, but instead of a servant, Maester Luwin brought you your food. He served you the king’s cut off the roast, the meat rare and bloody, but with a savory smell that made everyone’s mouth water. The meat he served the Freys was old and grey and dead. Yet they liked their supper better than you liked yours.”
　　“I don’t understand.”
　　“You will, my brother says. When you do, we’ll talk again.”
　　Bran was almost afraid to sit to supper that night, but when he did, it was pigeon pie they set before him. Everyone else was served the same, and he couldn’t see that anything was wrong with the food they served the Walders. Maester Luwin has the truth of it, he told himself. Nothing bad was coming to Winterfell, no matter what Jojen said. Bran was relieved . . . but disappointed too. So long as there was magic, anything could happen. Ghosts could walk, trees could talk, and broken boys could grow up to be knights. “But there isn’t,” he said aloud in the darkness of his bed. “There’s no magic, and the stories are just stories.”
　　And he would never walk, nor fly, nor be a knight.




Ⅱ 列王的纷争 Chapter29 布兰
　　梅拉机警地转着圈，索网在她左手摇摆，右手则泰然自若地握着细长的三叉捕蛙矛。夏天睁大金色的眼珠紧盯着她，不断移动，长尾巴直立起来。他观察着，观察着……
　　“呀！”女孩一声叫喊，长矛飞刺向前。狼闪到左边，在她收矛之前扑跳上去。梅拉顺势扔出网子，纠结的索扣挡在身前。飞跃的夏天正好被装进了里面。他不肯认输，拖着网子，砰地一下，撞上她的胸膛，把她击倒在地。矛飞出老远，幸亏潮湿的草地减轻了落地的撞击，她气喘吁吁地躺在地面。冰原狼蹲在她身上。
　　布兰叫道：“你输了。”
　　“她赢了，”她弟弟玖健说，“夏天被抓住了。”
　　他说得没错，布兰仔细地看了看。夏天在网子里扭动，咆哮，想撕开个口子，却只能使自己越捆越紧。网子是咬不开的。“放他出来吧。”
　　黎德家的女孩朝他笑笑，伸出双臂抱住这缠成一团的冰原狼，打了个滚。夏天发出一声可怜的哀鸣，腿脚不住踢打缚住自己的绳结。梅拉跪下去，解开一个索扣，扯掉一个角落，灵巧地这里拖拖那里拉拉，突然之间，冰原狼便重获自由。
　　“夏天，过来，”布兰张开手臂。“看这里。”他说，于是狼飞一般地朝他跑来。他立刻积蓄起全身力量，任狼飞奔过来把他又拖又撞地弄倒在草地上。他们扭打着、翻滚着，难舍难分，一个又吠又闹，另一个只管嘻笑。最后布兰翻到了上面，沾满泥巴的冰原狼被压在身下。“乖狼狼，”他喘着气说。夏天舔了舔他的耳朵。
　　梅拉不住摇头。“难道他从不生气？”
　　“从不和我生气。”布兰捉住狼的耳朵，夏天朝他凶猛地吼叫，但一切都只是玩笑。“有时他会把我衣服扯烂，但从不见血。”
　　“那是你的血。如果他刚才弄穿了网子……”
　　“也不会伤害你。他知道我喜欢你。”众位领主骑士在丰收宴会后的一两天便相继离开了临冬城，只有黎德家这两个少年留下来陪伴布兰。玖健总是很严肃，弄得老奶妈称他为“小个子祖父”，而梅拉却让他想起姐姐艾莉亚。和二姐一样，她也从不怕弄脏衣服，喜欢像个男孩子一样跑跳打闹、投掷东西。不过，她比艾莉亚大得多，都快十六岁，是成年女人了。而自己呢，虽说好不容易盼到了第九个命名日，却仍比他们姐弟年纪都小，所幸他们从不把他当小孩子看待。
　　“我真希望我们家的养子是你们而不是瓦德兄弟，”他挣扎着向最近的树木爬去。那种扭动拖曳的姿势一定很难看，但当梅拉伸出援手时，他却说，“别，我不要人帮忙。”他笨拙地翻身，蠕动着前进，用尽双手的力量，终于把背靠到大芩树的树干上。“你看，我就说不用帮嘛，”夏天把头放在布兰膝上。“我以前真没见过谁用网子打架的，”他边挠冰原狼耳背边对梅拉说。“这是你家教头教的吗？”
　　“我父亲教的。灰水望没有骑士，也没有教头和学士。”
　　“那渡鸦怎么办，谁来照顾它们呢？”
　　她笑了。“渡鸦是找不到灰水望的，正如敌人也找不到它。”
　　“为什么？”
　　“因为它在动，”她告诉他。
　　布兰以前还没听说过会走路的城堡呢。他迟疑地看着她，不知是否受了她作弄。“我真想去瞧瞧。你觉得等仗打完了你父亲大人会准许我去参观吗？”
　　“我们非常欢迎您，王子殿下。不论现在还是将来。”
　　“现在也行？”布兰以前从未离开临冬城。他好想见识远方的国度。“等罗德利克爵士回来我要问他同不同意。”老骑士去了东边，代表临冬城处理一件棘手事务。事情的起因是卢斯·波顿的私生子把刚从丰收宴会中返回的霍伍德伯爵夫人抓了起来，当晚便同她成了亲——听说他的年纪足以当她儿子呢。之后没几天，曼德勒大人便接管了她的城堡。这是为避免霍伍德家的产业沦入波顿手中所做的必要措施，他来信中这样解释，但罗德利克爵士对他和对那私生子一样火冒三丈。“罗德利克爵士或许会同意。可鲁温师傅决计不会。”
　　玖健盘腿坐在鱼梁木下，严肃地望着他。“你能离开临冬城就好了，布兰。”
　　“真的？”
　　“对。越快越好。”
　　“我弟弟有绿之视野，”梅拉道，“他能梦见尚未发生的事，而它们往往会成真。”
　　“不是往往，梅拉。”他们之间对视一眼：他悲伤，她倔强。
　　“告诉我会发生什么事，”布兰说。
　　“我会的，”玖健道，“但请你首先告诉我你的梦。”
　　神木林间刹时宁静下来。布兰听见树叶的沙沙响，听见阿多洗热泉发出的微弱水声。他想到了金色男子和三眼乌鸦，他想起啄碎头骨的鸟喙和嘴中金属般的血味道。于是他说：“我不做梦。鲁温师傅给我喝安眠药。”
　　“起作用吗？”
　　“很有效。”
　　梅拉开了口：“整个临冬城都知道你时时在夜里醒来，浑身是汗，大喊大叫，布兰。打水的女仆这么说，大厅的守卫也这么说。”
　　“告诉我们，你在怕什么，”玖健道。
　　“不要。不管怎么说，那都只是梦而已。鲁温师傅说梦什么也不代表。”
　　“我弟弟和别的男孩一样会做梦，有的梦也许只是梦，”梅拉说，“但绿色之梦不一样。”
　　玖健的眼睛是青苔的颜色，很多时候，当他看着你，你会觉得他看到的不止是你，还包括很多别的事物。就像现在。“我梦见一只长翅膀的狼被灰色石链束缚于地，”他说。“那是绿色之梦，我知道是真的。一只乌鸦想琢开链条，然而石头太坚硬，它的喙只能徒劳无益地留下痕迹。”
　　“那乌鸦有三只眼睛吗？”
　　玖健点头。
　　夏天自布兰膝盖抬起头，用那双黑底金瞳的眼睛凝视着泥人。
　　“我小时候得了灰水热，差点没命。正是这只乌鸦救了我。”
　　“我摔下去之后它也来了，”布兰脱口而出。“那时我昏迷了好久，它飞来告诉我，说我要么跟着飞要么就会摔死，结果我醒了，却成了残废，根本不能飞。”
　　“只要想飞，你就能飞。”梅拉捡起网子，抖开纠结的地方，重新装备起来。
　　“你就是那长翅膀的狼，布兰，”玖健说，“刚来时，我还不敢确定，现在我肯定了。正是那乌鸦派我们来打碎你的枷锁。”
　　“乌鸦住在灰水望吗？”
　　“不。乌鸦在北方。”
　　“住在长城？”布兰一直想去长城看看。他的私生子哥哥琼恩就在那儿，当了守夜人的弟兄。
　　“在长城之外。”梅拉·黎德把网子系在腰带。“玖健把他的梦告诉了我们的父亲大人，于是他便马不停蹄地派我们前来临冬城。”
　　“我该怎么来打破锁链，玖健？”布兰问。
　　“睁开眼睛。”
　　“我一直睁着啊，你看不见吗？”
　　“睁开了两只，”玖健指出，“一只，两只。”
　　“我只有两只啊。”
　　“你有三只。乌鸦给了你第三只眼，而你却没能睁开它。”他说话的方式总是那么缓慢柔和。“用两只眼你能看见我的脸。用三只眼你能看见我的心。用两只眼你能看见此时的橡树，用三只眼你能看见从前的橡实和日后的断桩。用两只眼你不过能看到墙边。用三只眼你却能南望夏日之海、北越绝境长城。”
　　夏天站了起来。“我不需要看那么远，”布兰紧张地笑笑，“我已经厌倦了讨论乌鸦。我们来说说狼吧。要么聊蜥狮也行。你捉到过蜥狮吗，梅拉？我们都没见过这种动物呢。”
　　梅拉把捕蛙矛从矮树丛间拔出。“它们住在水里。通常在缓溪或深泽之——”
　　她弟弟打断她：“你梦见了蜥狮？”
　　“没有，”布兰说，“我告诉你了，我不想——”
　　“你梦见的是狼？”
　　他让布兰生气了。“我凭什么要告诉你我的梦？我是王子。我是临冬城的史塔克。”
　　“你梦见的可是夏天？”
　　“别说了！”
　　“丰收宴会那一晚，你梦见自己变成了神木林里的夏天，对不对？”
　　“住嘴！”布兰叫道。夏天从鱼梁木下窜出，露出洁白的牙齿。
　　玖健·黎德毫不在意。“当时我抚摸夏天，感觉到你在他体内。正如现在你也在他体内。”
　　“不可能。我当时人在床上。我正在睡觉！”
　　“你在神木林里，全身灰毛。”
　　“那只是场恶梦……”
　　玖健起立。“我感觉到你的存在，感觉到你的坠落。你害怕的可是这个？坠落？”
　　坠落，布兰心想，还有金色男子，王后的弟弟，不知怎地，他也让我害怕，但我最怕的还是坠落。这番话，他从没给别人讲过。要怎么说？他无法对罗德利克爵士和鲁温师傅说，更不能告诉黎德姐弟。如果避而不谈，也许便能遗忘。他一点也不想留住这份回忆。那甚至根本不能算真实的记忆。
　　“你每晚都会坠落吗，布兰？”玖健静静地问。
　　夏天喉头发出一声隆隆的低吼，这次可不是开玩笑。他径直上前，咧牙露齿，眼睛火热。梅拉提起长矛，挡在弟弟身前。“叫他回去，布兰。”
　　“是玖健惹怒了他。”
　　梅拉抖开网子。
　　“不对，这是你的怒火，布兰，”她弟弟说，“你的恐惧。”
　　“不是的！我才不是狼！”虽然他总在暗夜里和他们一道狂叫怒嗥，总在狼梦中和他们一起品尝鲜血。
　　“你的一部分是夏天，夏天的一部分是你。你知道的，布兰。”
　　夏天猛扑上来，却被梅拉拦住，并用三叉矛戳刺回去。狼扭到一边，绕着圈子，再度逼近。梅拉转身面对他，“叫他回去，布兰。”
　　“夏天！”布兰高喊，“到我这儿来，夏天！”他伸出手掌朝大腿拍打。掌心打得麻痛、僵死的大腿却毫无知觉。
　　冰原狼再次出击，仍旧被梅拉的长矛格开。夏天灵巧地闪避矛头，转着圈子往后退。忽然，矮树丛里传来一阵沙沙声，一个瘦削的黑影从鱼梁木下一跃而出，利牙暴露。原来他的狂怒所发出的强烈气味引来了弟弟。布兰感觉颈后寒毛直竖。梅拉站在弟弟身边，腹背受敌。“布兰，叫他们离开。”
　　“我做不到！”
　　“玖健，上树。”
　　“没有必要。今日并非我的死期。”
　　“快！”她尖叫道，于是她弟弟用树脸的凹陷处做支撑，爬上鱼梁木的主干。冰原狼们围上来。梅拉扔开矛和网，向上一跳，抓住头顶的枝干。当她吊着一荡，翻上枝头之后，毛毛的大口正好从她脚踝下方咬过。夏天蹲坐下来，不住怒嗥，而毛毛狗似乎担心那网子，用牙咬住不停乱摇。
　　这时布兰方才忆起他们并非孤立无援。他用手围住嘴巴。“阿多！”他大喊，“阿多！阿多！”他怕得厉害，竟觉得有几分惭愧。“他们不会伤害阿多，”他向树上的朋友们保证。
　　片刻功夫，他们便听见不协调的咕哝声。阿多急急忙忙地从热泉里奔出来，衣冠不整，全身是泥，然而布兰见他出现从未这么高兴过。“阿多，快帮帮我！把狼赶走！把他们都赶走！”
　　阿多愉快地跑过去，挥着手臂，跺着大脚，高喊：“阿多，阿多。”他在两只狼之间来回吆喝。最先逃走的是毛毛狗，他发出最后一声吼，潜进树丛。夏天似乎也觉得够了，便跑回到布兰身边，靠着他躺下。
　　梅拉下树后立刻拾起矛和网，但玖健的目光从未离开夏天。“我们以后再谈，”他向布兰承诺。
　　那是狼，不是我。他不懂他们为什么会变得如此狂野。也许鲁温师傅把他们关在神木林是对的。“阿多，”他说，“带我去鲁温师傅那儿。”
　　鸦巢之下学士的塔楼是布兰最喜欢的地方之一。鲁温对打扫整理之类的事真是一窍不通，可屋里那些凌乱的书籍、卷轴、瓶瓶罐罐和老师傅的光头，宽松灰袍的长袖子都让他觉得亲切而温馨。此外，他也很喜欢那些信鸦。
　　此刻鲁温师傅坐在一张高椅上，奋笔疾书。罗德利克爵士走后，整个城堡的管理重担便落到他肩上。“王子殿下，”阿多进门之后他说，“离上课还有些时辰呢。”老学士每天下午都花几个钟头给布兰、瑞肯以及两位瓦德·佛雷上课。
　　“阿多，站着别动。”布兰伸出双手抓住墙上的烛台，用它做支点把自己提出篮子。他在半空吊了一会儿，等阿多把凳子搬来。“梅拉说他弟弟有绿之视野。”
　　鲁温师傅用手中的羽毛笔挠挠鼻子，“她这么说？”
　　他点点头。“记得你告诉我森林之子才有绿之视野。我记得的。”
　　“他们中的很多人自称具有那种能力。他们的智者被称为绿先知。”
　　“这是魔法吗？”
　　“你愿意的话，可以姑且这么称呼它。因为从本质而言，这不过是另一种类别的知识而已。”
　　“什么知识？”
　　鲁温放下笔管。“这世上没有人真正了解，布兰。森林之子已从这个世界消失，他们的智慧也随之而逝。我们只能猜测，这种知识和树上的人脸有关。先民们认为绿先知通过鱼梁木上的眼睛观察他们。这就是他们每次和森林之子开战都大肆伐木的原因。据推测，绿先知们对森林里的走兽和飞鸟也有影响力，甚至能控制鱼类。黎德家那男孩自称具有这种能力吗？”
　　“不，我觉得他没有。不过梅拉说，他梦见的事情往往会成真。”
　　“我们所有人梦见的事情往往都会成真。记得吗，在你父亲大人去世之前你便梦见他在墓窖里？”
　　“瑞肯也梦见了。我们做了同样的梦。”
　　“你愿意的话，称这为绿之视野也无妨……但你要记住，你和瑞肯做过的成千上万其他的梦最终并没有成真。你不会忘了我教你的关于每个学士必备的颈链的故事吧？”
　　布兰想了一会儿，试图说完整。“学士必须在旧镇的学城铸造自己的颈链。它是锁链只因配上它的人必须为他人服务。它包含多种金属只因配上它的人服务于国度里各个阶层的居民。每当完成新的学业你便能加上新的链条。黑铁代表管理乌鸦，白银代表救死扶伤，黄金代表财务会计。其他的颜色我不记得了。”
　　鲁温把手指伸到颈链下面，一个又一个链条抡起来。他人长得矮小，脖子却很粗，所以颈链很紧，得用力才能转动。“这是瓦雷利亚钢，”当一环暗灰色金属链转到喉头的时候他说，“一百个学士里面只有一个能戴上这环链条。它代表我学到了学城里称之为高级神秘术的知识——魔法，当然取这个名字只是为了动听。这是个很迷人的东西，却并不实用，所以少有学士投身这个方向。”
　　“或迟或早，学习高级神秘术的人总忍不住想自行施展魔法。我必须承认，连我自己也抵挡不住那种诱惑。是啊，我当时还是个孩子，哪个孩子没偷偷幻想在自己身上发现神奇的力量呢？然而我的下场和我之前的一千个小孩相同，和我之后的一千个也一样。非常遗憾，所谓的魔法根本不起作用。”
　　“它们有时候会起作用的，”布兰抗议。“像我做了那个梦，瑞肯也做了。而且东方还有魔法师和男巫……”
　　“世上确有人自称为魔法师和男巫，”鲁温师傅说。“在学城，我有个朋友便能从你的耳朵里变出一朵玫瑰花，但事实上，他和我一样都不会魔法。啊，必须指出的是，世上不为人知的事还很多很多。历史的洪流奔过百年千年，而一个人短暂的一生不就是几个仓促的夏季，几个渺小的冬天么？我们仰望着高山，便称其为永恒，因为它们看来是这样……然而在时间的长河里，高山升起又倒塌，江河改变了途径，繁星坠下了天幕，雄城没入了汪洋。若我们所断不假，连神灵也在生死轮替。沧海桑田，世事变迁。”
　　“魔法或许在远古时代曾是一种伟大的力量，但那个纪元已经永远地失落了。如今这点残余就像熄灭的烈火在空中飘散的几缕烟雾，就连这几许轻丝也在不断褪色。瓦雷利亚是最后的灰烬，而它早已熄灭。再没有龙了，巨人也都死去，森林之子和他们所有的知识被世界所遗忘。”
　　“不，我的王子殿下。玖健·黎德或许做过一两个自以为成真的梦，但他绝没有绿之视野。活在世上的人没有一个具有那种能力。”
　　黄昏时分，当梅拉来找他时，他把这番话原原本本告诉了她。他坐在窗边看着四周灯火逐渐亮起，给夜晚带来生机。“对狼的事我很抱歉。夏天不该攻击玖健，可玖健也不该随便谈论我的梦。乌鸦说我能飞，它撒了谎，你弟弟也在撒谎。”
　　“你不认为或许是你家学士错了么？”
　　“他没错。我父亲总是听取他的建议。”
　　“你父亲倾听，这点我不怀疑。但到了决定的时刻，他会自己做主。布兰，就让我告诉你玖健做过的关于你和你养兄弟的梦吧。”
　　“瓦德们才不是我的兄弟。”
　　她没在意。“你坐在晚餐桌边，上菜的却不是仆人，而是鲁温学士。他把烤肉中只配国王享用的部分给了你，那肉半熟而多血，香气扑鼻，惹得在座人人都流出口水。同时，他送给佛雷们的部分却是又老又灰的死肉，但他们对到手的食物却比你更满意。”
　　“我不懂。”
　　“你会懂的。我弟弟说了，当你懂得它的含义，我们便可以再谈谈。”
　　当晚，布兰简直不敢去出席晚宴，但当他终于去了，却发现人们早把鸽子派摆在了他位子上。在坐人人一份，而他实在看不出瓦德们所吃的有什么特别。鲁温师傅果然是对的，他告诉自己。不管玖健说过什么，没有任何坏事会降临到临冬城。布兰松了一口气……却也竟有几分失望。如果世上真有魔法存在，那就意味着什么事都可能发生。幽灵能走路，大树会说话，残废的男孩也一定能重新站起来当骑士。“但那是办不到的，”躺在床上，在无边的黑暗之中，他大声地说，“世上没有魔法了，所有的故事都只是故事。”
　　所以他不能走路，不能飞翔，永远也做不了骑士。
[ 此帖被挽墨在2015-08-28 02:21重新编辑 ]
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你看着眼前的人，分明还是以前的模样，可心里终究不是以前那般澄清透明了。
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CHAPTER 29
　　TYRION

　　The rushes were scratchy under the soles of his bare feet. “My cousin chooses a queer hour to come visiting,” Tyrion told a sleep-befuddled Podrick Payne, who’d doubtless expected to be well roasted for waking him. “See him to my solar and tell him I’ll be down shortly.”
　　It was well past midnight, he judged from the black outside the window. Does Lancel think to find me drowsy and slow of wit at this hour? he wondered. No, Lancel scarce thinks at all, this is Cersei’s doing. His sister would be disappointed. Even abed, he worked well into the morning—reading by the flickering light of a candle, scrutinizing the reports of Varys’s whisperers, and poring over Littlefinger’s books of accounts until the columns blurred and his eyes ached.
　　He splashed some tepid water on his face from the basin beside his bed and took his time squatting in the garderobe, the night air cold on his bare skin. Ser Lancel was sixteen, and not known for his patience. Let him wait, and grow more anxious in the waiting. When his bowels were empty, Tyrion slipped on a bedrobe and roughed his thin flaxen hair with his fingers, all the more to look as if he had wakened from sleep.
　　Lancel was pacing before the ashes of the hearth, garbed in slashed red velvet with black silk undersleeves, a jeweled dagger and a gilded scabbard hanging from his swordbelt. “Cousin,” Tyrion greeted him. “Your visits are too few. To what do I owe this undeserved pleasure?” “Her Grace the Queen Regent has sent me to command you to release Grand Maester Pycelle.” Ser Lancel showed Tyrion a crimson ribbon, bearing Cersei’s lion seal impressed in golden wax. “Here is her warrant.”
　　“So it is.” Tyrion waved it away. “I hope my sister is not overtaxing her strength, so soon after her illness. It would be a great pity if she were to suffer a relapse.”
　　“Her Grace is quite recovered,” Ser Lancel said curtly.
　　“Music to my ears.” Though not a tune I’m fond of. I should have given her a larger dose. Tyrion had hoped for a few more days without Cersei’s interference, but he was not too terribly surprised by her return to health. She was Jaime’s twin, after all. He made himself smile pleasantly. “Pod, build us a fire, the air is too chilly for my taste. Will you take a cup with me, Lancel? I find that mulled wine helps me sleep.”
　　“I need no help sleeping,” Ser Lancel said. “I am come at Her Grace’s behest, not to drink with you, Imp.”
　　Knighthood had made the boy bolder, Tyrion reflected—that, and the sorry part he had played in murdering King Robert. “Wine does have its dangers.” He smiled as he poured. “As to Grand Maester Pycelle . . . if my sweet sister is so concerned for him, I would have thought she’d come herself. Instead she sends you. What am I to make of that?”
　　“Make of it what you will, so long as you release your prisoner. The Grand Maester is a staunch friend to the Queen Regent, and under her personal protection.” A hint of a sneer played about the lad’s lips; he was enjoying this. He takes his lessons from Cersei. “Her Grace will never consent to this outrage. She reminds you that she is Joffrey’s regent.”
　　“As I am Joffrey’s Hand.”
　　“The Hand serves,” the young knight informed him airily. “The regent rules until the king is of age.”
　　“Perhaps you ought write that down so I’ll remember it better.” The fire was crackling merrily. “You may leave us, Pod,” Tyrion told his squire. Only when the boy was gone did he turn back to Lancel. “There is more?”
　　“Yes. Her Grace bids me inform you that Ser Jacelyn Bywater defied a command issued in the king’s own name.”
　　Which means that Cersei has already ordered Bywater to release Pycelle, and been rebuffed. “I see.”
　　“She insists that the man be removed from his office and placed under arrest for treason. I warn you—”
　　He set aside his wine cup. “I’ll hear no warnings from you, boy.”
　　“Ser,” Lancel said stiffly. He touched his sword, perhaps to remind Tyrion that he wore one. “Have a care how you speak to me, Imp.” Doubtless he meant to sound threatening, but that absurd wisp of a mustache ruined the effect.
　　“Oh, unhand your sword. One cry from me and Shagga will burst in and kill you. With an axe, not a wineskin.”
　　Lancel reddened; was he such a fool as to believe his part in Robert’s death had gone unnoted? “I am a knight—”
　　“So I’ve noted. Tell me—did Cersei have you knighted before or after she took you into her bed?”
　　The flicker in Lancel’s green eyes was all the admission Tyrion needed. So Varys told it true. Well, no one can ever claim that my sister does not love her family. “What, nothing to say? No more warnings for me, ser?”
　　“You will withdraw these filthy accusations or—”
　　“Please. Have you given any thought to what Joffrey will do when I tell him you murdered his father to bed his mother?”
　　“It was not like that!” Lancel protested, horrified.
　　“No? What was it like, pray?”
　　“The queen gave me the strongwine! Your own father Lord Tywin, when I was named the king’s squire, he told me to obey her in everything.”
　　“Did he tell you to fuck her too?” Look at him. Not quite so tall, his features not so fine, and his hair is sand instead of spun gold, yet still . . . even a poor copy of Jaime is sweeter than an empty bed, I suppose. “No, I thought not.”
　　“I never meant . . . I only did as I was bid, I . . .”
　　“. . . hated every instant of it, is that what you would have me believe? A high place at court, knighthood, my sister’s legs opening for you at night, oh, yes, it must have been terrible for you.” Tyrion pushed himself to his feet. “Wait here. His Grace will want to hear this.”
　　The defiance went from Lancel all at once. The young knight fell to his knees a frightened boy. “Mercy, my lord, I beg you.”
　　“Save it for Joffrey. He likes a good beg.”
　　“My lord, it was your sister’s bidding, the queen, as you said, but His Grace . . . he’d never understand . . .”
　　“Would you have me keep the truth from the king?”
　　“For my father’s sake! I’ll leave the city, it will be as if it never happened! I swear, I will end it . . .”
　　It was hard not to laugh. “I think not.”
　　Now the lad looked lost. “My lord?”
　　“You heard me. My father told you to obey my sister? Very well, obey her. Stay close to her side, keep her trust, pleasure her as often as she requires it. No one need ever know . . . so long as you keep faith with me. I want to know what Cersei is doing. Where she goes, who she sees, what they talk of, what plans she is hatching. All. And you will be the one to tell me, won’t you?”
　　“Yes, my lord.” Lancel spoke without a moment’s hesitation. Tyrion liked that. “I will. I swear it. As you command.”
　　“Rise.” Tyrion filled the second cup and pressed it on him. “Drink to our understanding. I promise, there are no boars in the castle that I know of.” Lancel lifted the cup and drank, albeit stiffly. “Smile, cousin. My sister is a beautiful woman, and it’s all for the good of the realm. You could do well out of this. Knighthood is nothing. If you’re clever, you’ll have a lordship from me before you’re done.” Tyrion swirled the wine in his cup. “We want Cersei to have every faith in you. Go back and tell her I beg her forgiveness. Tell her that you frightened me, that I want no conflict between us, that henceforth I shall do nothing without her consent.”
　　“But . . . her demands . . .”
　　“Oh, I’ll give her Pycelle.” “You will?” Lancel seemed astonished.
　　Tyrion smiled. “I’ll release him on the morrow. I could swear that I hadn’t harmed a hair on his head, but it wouldn’t be strictly true. In any case, he’s well enough, though I won’t vouch for his vigor. The black cells are not a healthy place for a man his age. Cersei can keep him as a pet or send him to the Wall, I don’t care which, but I won’t have him on the council.”
　　“And Ser Jacelyn?”
　　“Tell my sister you believe you can win him away from me, given time. That ought to content her for a while.”
　　“As you say.” Lancel finished his wine.
　　“One last thing. With King Robert dead, it would be most embarrassing should his grieving widow suddenly grow great with child.”
　　“My lord, I . . . we . . . the queen has commanded me not to . . .”
　　His ears had turned Lannister crimson. “I spill my seed on her belly, my lord.”
　　“A lovely belly, I have no doubt. Moisten it as often as you wish . . . but see that your dew falls nowhere else. I want no more nephews, is that clear?”
　　Ser Lancel made a stiff bow and took his leave.
　　Tyrion allowed himself a moment to feel sorry for the boy. Another fool, and a weakling as well, but he does not deserve what Cersei and I are doing to him. It was a kindness that his uncle Kevan had two other sons; this one was unlikely to live out the year. Cersei would have him killed out of hand if she learned he was betraying her, and if by some grace of the gods she did not, Lancel would never survive the day Jaime Lannister returned to King’s Landing. The only question would be whether Jaime cut him down in a jealous rage, or Cersei murdered him first to keep Jaime from finding out. Tyrion’s silver was on Cersei.
　　A restlessness was on him, and Tyrion knew full well he would not get back to sleep tonight. Not here, in any case. He found Podrick Payne asleep in a chair outside the door of the solar, and shook him by the shoulder. “Summon Bronn, and then run down to the stables and have two horses saddled.”
　　The squire’s eyes were cloudy with sleep. “Horses.”
　　“Those big brown animals that love apples, I’m sure you’ve seen them. Four legs and a tail. But Bronn first.”
　　The sellsword was not long in appearing. “Who pissed in your soup?” he demanded.
　　“Cersei, as ever. You’d think I’d be used to the taste by now, but never mind. My gentle sister seems to have mistaken me for Ned Stark.”
　　“I hear he was taller.”
　　“Not after Joff took off his head. You ought to have dressed more warmly, the night is chill.”
　　“Are we going somewhere?”
　　“Are all sellswords as clever as you?”
　　The city streets were dangerous, but with Bronn beside him Tyrion felt safe enough. The guards let him out a postern gate in the north wall, and they rode down Shadowblack Lane to the foot of Aegon’s High Hill, and thence onto Pigrun Alley, past rows of shuttered windows and tall timber-and-stone buildings whose upper stories leaned out so far over the street they almost kissed. The moon seemed to follow them as they went, playing peek-and-sneak among the chimneys. They encountered no one but a lone old crone, carrying a dead cat by the tail. She gave them a fearful look, as if she were afraid they might try to steal her dinner, and slunk off into the shadows without a word.
　　Tyrion reflected on the men who had been Hand before him, who had proved no match for his sister’s wiles. How could they be? Men like that . . . too honest to live, too noble to shit, Cersei devours such fools every morning when she breaks her fast. The only way to defeat my sister is to play her own game, and that was something the Lords Stark and Arryn would never do. Small wonder that both of them were dead, while Tyrion Lannister had never felt more alive. His stunted legs might make him a comic grotesque at a harvest ball, but this dance he knew.
　　Despite the hour, the brothel was crowded. Chataya greeted them pleasantly and escorted them to the common room. Bronn went upstairs with a dark-eyed girl from Dorne, but Alayaya was busy entertaining. “She will be so pleased to know you’ve come,” said Chataya. “I will see that the turret room is made ready for you. Will my lord take a cup of wine while he waits?”
　　“I will,” he said.
　　The wine was poor stuff compared to the vintages from the Arbor the house normally served. “You must forgive us, my lord,” Chataya said. “I cannot find good wine at any price of late.”
　　“You are not alone in that, I fear.”
　　Chataya commiserated with him a moment, then excused herself and glided off. A handsome woman, Tyrion reflected as he watched her go. He had seldom seen such elegance and dignity in a whore. Though to be sure, she saw herself more as a kind of priestess. Perhaps that is the secret. It is not what we do, so much as why we do it. Somehow that thought comforted him.
　　A few of the other patrons were giving him sideways looks. The last time he ventured out, a man had spit on him . . . well, had tried to. Instead he’d spit on Bronn, and in future would do his spitting without teeth.
　　“Is milord feeling unloved?” Dancy slid into his lap and nibbled at his ear. “I have a cure for that.”
　　Smiling, Tyrion shook his head. “You are too beautiful for words, sweetling, but I’ve grown fond of Alayaya’s remedy.”
　　“You’ve never tried mine. Milord never chooses anyone but ‘Yaya. She’s good but I’m better, don’t you want to see?”
　　“Next time, perhaps.” Tyrion had no doubt that Dancy would be a lively handful. She was pug-nosed and bouncy, with freckles and a mane of thick red hair that tumbled down past her waist. But he had Shae waiting for him at the manse.
　　Giggling, she put her hand between his thighs and squeezed him through his breeches. “I don’t think he wants to wait till next time,” she announced. “He wants to come out and count all my freckles, I think.”
　　“Dancy.” Alayaya stood in the doorway, dark and cool in gauzy green silk. “His lordship is come to visit me.”
　　Tyrion gently disentangled himself from the other girl and stood. Dancy did not seem to mind. “Next time,” she reminded him. She put a finger in her mouth and sucked it.
　　As the black-skinned girl led him up the stairs, she said, “Poor Dancy. She has a fortnight to get my lord to choose her. Elsewise she loses her black pearls to Marei.”
　　Marei was a cool, pale, delicate girl Tyrion had noticed once or twice. Green eyes and porcelain skin, long straight silvery hair, very lovely, but too solemn by half. “I’d hate to have the poor child lose her pearls on account of me.”
　　“Then take her upstairs next time.”
　　“Maybe I will.”
　　She smiled. “I think not, my lord.”
　　She’s right, Tyrion thought, I won’t. Shae may be only a whore, but I am faithful to her after my fashion.
　　In the turret room, as he opened the door of the wardrobe, he looked at Alayaya curiously. “What do you do while I’m gone?”
　　She raised her arms and stretched like some sleek black cat. “Sleep. I am much better rested since you began to visit us, my lord. And Marei is teaching us to read, perhaps soon I will be able to pass the time with a book.”
　　“Sleep is good,” he said. “And books are better.” He gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. Then it was down the shaft and through the tunnel.
　　As he left the stable on his piebald gelding, Tyrion heard the sound of music drifting over the rooftops. It was pleasant to think that men still sang, even in the midst of butchery and famine. Remembered notes filled his head, and for a moment he could almost hear Tysha as she’d sung to him half a lifetime ago. He reined up to listen. The tune was wrong, the words too faint to hear. A different song then, and why not? His sweet innocent Tysha had been a lie start to finish, only a whore his brother Jaime had hired to make him a man.
　　I’m free of Tysha now, he thought. She’s haunted me half my life, but I don’t need her anymore, no more than I need Alayaya or Dancy or Marei, or the hundreds like them I’ve bedded with over the years. I have Shae now . . . Shae.
　　The gates of the manse were closed and barred. Tyrion pounded until the ornate bronze eye clacked open. “It’s me.” The man who admitted him was one of Varys’s prettier finds, a Braavosi daggerman with a harelip and a lazy eye. Tyrion had wanted no handsome young guardsmen loitering about Shae day after day. “Find me old, ugly, scarred men, preferably impotent,” he had told the eunuch. “Men who prefer boys. Or men who prefer sheep, for that matter.” Varys had not managed to come up with any sheeplovers, but he did find a eunuch strangler and a pair of foulsmelling Ibbenese who were as fond of axes as they were of each other. The others were as choice a lot of mercenaries as ever graced a dungeon, each uglier than the last. When Varys had paraded them before him, Tyrion had been afraid he’d gone too far, but Shae had never uttered a word of complaint. And why would she? She has never complained of me, and I’m more hideous than all her guards together. Perhaps she does not even see ugliness.
　　Even so, Tyrion would sooner have used some of his mountain clansmen to guard the manse; Chella’s Black Ears perhaps, or the Moon Brothers. He had more faith in their iron loyalties and sense of honor than in the greed of sellswords. The risk was too great, however. All King’s Landing knew the wildlings were his. If he sent the Black Ears here, it would only be a matter of time until the whole city knew the King’s Hand was keeping a concubine.
　　One of the Ibbenese took his horse. “Have you woken her?” Tyrion asked him.
　　“No, m’lord.”
　　“Good.”
　　The fire in the bedchamber had burned down to embers, but the room was still warm. Shae had kicked off her blankets and sheets as she slept. She lay nude atop the featherbed, the soft curves of her young body limned in the faint glow from the hearth. Tyrion stood in the door and drank in the sight of her. Younger than Marei, sweeter than Dancy, more beautiful than Alayaya, she’s all I need and more. How could a whore look so clean and sweet and innocent, he wondered?
　　He had not intended to disturb her, but the sight of her was enough to make him hard. He let his garments fall to the floor, then crawled onto the bed and gently pushed her legs apart and kissed her between the thighs. Shae murmured in her sleep. He kissed her again, and licked at her secret sweetness, on and on until his beard and her cunt were both soaked. When she gave a soft moan and shuddered, he climbed up and thrust himself inside her and exploded almost at once.
　　Her eyes were open. She smiled and stroked his head and whispered, “I just had the sweetest dream, m’lord.”
　　Tyrion nipped at her small hard nipple and nestled his head on her shoulder. He did not pull out of her; would that he never had to pull out of her. “This is no dream,” he promised her. It is real, all of it, he thought, the wars, the intrigues, the great bloody game, and me in the center of it . . . me, the dwarf, the monster, the one they scorned and laughed at, but now I hold it all, the power, the city, the girl. This was what I was made for, and gods forgive me, but I do love it . . .
　　And her. And her.


Ⅱ 列王的纷争 Chapter30 提利昂
　　草席刺得他赤裸的脚底发痒。“堂弟真会挑时机，”提利昂告诉睡得迷迷糊糊的波德瑞克·派恩，这孩子无疑以为深夜唤醒他，会遭一顿训斥。“带他到书房，告诉他，我马上下来。”
　　从窗外的天色判断，应该过了午夜时分。莫非蓝赛尔以为这时候我就会迷迷糊糊，反应迟钝么？他心里盘算。不，蓝赛尔根本不动脑子，这一定是瑟曦的主意。可惜，老姐要失望了。他每晚都把工作带到床上，一直干到凌晨——在摇曳的烛光下，仔细审查瓦里斯的秘密报告，查阅小指头的账簿，直到眼睛发疼，字迹模糊为止。
　　他用床边脸盆里的温水湿了湿脸，不紧不慢地蹲在厕所，夜间的空气让他裸露的皮肤有些凉。蓝赛尔爵士年方十六，从没什么耐性，就让他等着吧，他会越来越焦躁。提利昂清空肠子，套上一件睡袍，并用手指将稀疏的亚麻色头发揉乱，好让自己看上去像是刚刚醒来。
　　蓝赛尔在烧成灰烬的壁炉前踱步，身穿有黑丝绸内袖的红天鹅绒斜纹外衣，佩一柄镶珠宝的匕首，刀鞘镀金。“堂弟！”提利昂跟他打招呼，“你真是稀客。请问有何贵干呢？”
　　“摄政太后陛下命我前来，要你即刻释放派席尔大学士。”蓝赛尔爵士拿出一条猩红的缎带，金蜡上摁有瑟曦的狮印。“这是陛下的授权状。”
　　“原来如此，”提利昂挥手要他拿开。“唉，姐姐大病初愈，我衷心地希望她不要过度操劳。倘若病情复发，那就太遗憾了。”
　　“太后陛下业已康复，”蓝赛尔简略地说。
　　“妙极了，”尽管不是我喜欢的曲调。我当初真该多下点剂量。提利昂本希望能多几天不受瑟曦的干涉，但对她迅速恢复健康也没吃惊。毕竟，她是詹姆的孪生姐姐。他做出一个愉快地笑容。“波德，替我们生个火，这里实在太凉。陪我喝一杯如何，蓝赛尔？我发现温酒有助于睡眠呢。”
　　“我可不需要睡眠，”蓝赛尔说，“我代表陛下前来宣令，不是来跟你喝酒的，小恶魔。”
　　哟，骑士称号让这小子肆无忌惮，提利昂寻思——还有他在谋杀劳勃国王一事中扮演的可悲角色。“酒喝多了自然伤身。”他一边倒酒一边微笑，“至于派席尔大学士……如果我亲爱的姐姐真那么在乎他，似乎该亲自前来，但她却派了你。对此，我怎么理解呢？”
　　“随你怎么理解，我只要你放人！国师是摄政太后坚定的盟友，处于她的保护之下。”这小子唇边浮现一抹冷笑，似乎很得意。想必这套都是跟瑟曦学的。“陛下决不容许这种暴行发生。她要我提醒你，她才是乔佛里的摄政王。”
　　“而我是乔佛里的首相。”
　　“御前首相专心服务，”年轻骑士轻描淡写地告知他，“摄政太后统理国事，直到国王成年为止。”
　　“或许你该把这写下来，以免我记不住。”炉火欢快地噼啪作响。“你可以下去了，波德，”提利昂告诉他的侍从。等孩子离开之后，他方才转身面对蓝赛尔。“还有什么事？”
　　“有。陛下命我通知你，杰斯林·拜瓦特爵士公然违抗国王陛下的谕令。”
　　看来瑟曦早已命令拜瓦特释放派席尔，却遭到断然拒绝。“我明白了。”
　　“太后陛下她坚持要求撤换此人，并以叛国罪加以逮捕。我警告你——”
　　他将酒杯放到一边。“别警告我，小子。”
　　“爵士！”蓝赛尔硬邦邦地说。他碰了碰剑，或许想提醒提利昂，他也有武器。“跟我说话小心点，小恶魔。”无疑他想作势威胁，但那簇可笑的小胡子毁了效果。
　　“哦，剑是危险的东西，快放下。你莫非不知我出一声，夏嘎就会冲进来把你大卸八块么？他杀人可是拿斧子，不是用酒袋哪。”
　　蓝赛尔涨红了脸；难道他蠢到以为他在劳勃之死中的作为就神不知鬼不觉？“我是个骑士——”
　　“我明白。那么告诉我——瑟曦是同你上床前还是上床后封你作骑士的？”
　　蓝赛尔那双碧眼里闪烁的目光招认了一切。看来瓦里斯所言是真。好吧，没人能指称老姐不爱自家人。“怎么，没话说了？叫你别警告我么，爵士。”
　　“你必须收回这些下流的指控，否则——”
　　“拜托，你有没有想过，假如我告诉乔佛里，你为了唾他母亲而害死他父亲，他会怎么做呢？”
　　“这不是实情！”蓝赛尔惊恐地抗议。
　　“不是？那请问，实情究竟是怎样？”
　　“烈酒是太后给的！从我当上国王侍从的那天起，你父亲泰温大人就要我一切遵从太后的指令。”
　　“包括跟她上床？”看看他，个子不太高，身材不算好，况且他的头发不是金色，而是沙棕，也罢……即便是詹姆的拙劣替身，也赛过空床。“我想不会罢。”
　　“我并非主动……我只是奉命……我……”
　　“……痛恨这一切，你要我相信这个？朝廷的高位，骑士的身份，我姐姐夜里为你张开的双腿，哦，是啊，这一切对你来说太糟糕了。”提利昂双手一瘫，站起身来。“等在这里。等国王陛下来亲自裁决。”
　　蓝赛尔的傲气一扫而空，这位年轻骑士像吓坏的孩子一样跪下来。“发发慈悲吧，大人，求求您。”
　　“省省吧，这些话给乔佛里说去。他最喜欢听别人苦苦哀求。”
　　“大人，您说的这些都是令姐……太后陛下的命令，但国王陛下……他决不会明白……”
　　“你要我在国王面前替你隐瞒？”
　　“请看在我父亲的份上！我会立刻离开都城，假装什么事都没有发生！我发誓，我会把事情做个了断……”
　　要忍住笑真的很难。“我想不必。”
　　这回轮到小子困惑了。“大人？”
　　“没错。我父亲不是要你遵从她么？很好，那就照办，留在她的身边，保持她的信任，随时满足她的需求。之前的事情不会有人知道……只要你忠诚于我。而回报呢，我想知道瑟曦在干什么，去了哪里，见了谁，谈了些什么，她有什么计划……所有的一切，你都必须告诉我，行不行？”
　　“行，大人。”蓝赛尔毫不迟疑。提利昂很满意。“我会的。我发誓。您怎么说，我就怎么做。”
　　“起来吧。”提利昂倒满一杯酒塞给他。“为我们的共识干一杯！我保证在这座城堡里，我半只野猪都不认识。”蓝赛尔举杯饮下，尽管动作有些僵硬。“开心点，堂弟，我姐姐是个大美人，而你做的一切都是为了国家，是利国利己的好事。骑士头衔算什么？你机灵点的话，我总有天会弄个伯爵给你当当。”提利昂晃着杯中酒。“总而言之呢，我们得让瑟曦完全信任你。回去告诉她，我恳求她的原谅。告诉她，你的来访让我又惊又怕。我不希望我们之间发生任何矛盾，从今往后，未经她同意，我不会轻举妄动。”
　　“可……她要求……”
　　“我会把派席尔还给她。”
　　“是吗？”蓝赛尔一脸讶异。
　　提利昂微笑道：“我明天就放人。虽然不能说“毫发无伤”，但我可以保证，他还算安好，只是精力有些不济。毕竟黑牢对他这种年纪的人而言，可不是个休闲的地方。瑟曦要把他当宠物养着，或是送去长城，这我不管，就是不能要他留在御前会议。”
　　“杰斯林爵士呢？”
　　“告诉我姐姐，你相信只需多花一点时间，就能把他争取过去。这样应该可以暂时敷衍。”
　　“遵命。”蓝赛尔喝完他的酒。
　　“最后一件事。劳勃国王已死，如果他悲伤的遗孀突然怀上孩子，肚子大起来了，这可难堪。”
　　“大人，我……我们……太后不准我……”他的耳朵涨成兰尼斯特家徽的红。“我都射在她肚子上，大人。”
　　“相信那是个可爱的肚子。你爱怎么滋润它都行……但绝不许失误，我不想再多个外甥，懂吗？”
　　蓝赛尔爵士僵硬地鞠了一躬，转身离开。
　　提利昂为这小子难过了一会儿。又一个傻瓜，又一个弱者，但我和瑟曦这么对他也实在太残忍。好在上苍有眼，给了凯冯叔叔三个儿子，这一个大概是活不过今年了。瑟曦若是发现他出卖她，一定会除掉他，就算诸神慈悲，她一直闭目塞听，那么等詹姆·兰尼斯特回到君临，他还是得死。惟一的区别在于：他是死在詹姆的妒火之下呢，还是被瑟曦灭口，以防詹姆发现。提利昂把注押在瑟曦这边。
　　提利昂觉得很不安，他非常清楚今晚是睡不着了。至少在这儿是睡不着了。他在房外的椅子上找到熟睡中的波德瑞克·派恩，摇摇对方的肩膀：“传唤波隆，然后跑步去下面的马厩，给两匹马上好鞍。”
　　侍从满眼睡意。“马。”
　　“就是那些爱吃苹果的棕色大个，四条长腿，一根尾巴，我肯定你见过它们。记住，先找波隆。”
　　佣兵即刻出现。“谁在你汤里撒尿啦？”他质问。
　　“瑟曦，老样子。我都快习惯这味道了，不过没关系，我那好姐姐似乎把我错当成了艾德·史塔克。”
　　“听说他长得比你高。”
　　“那是小乔砍他脑袋之前的事了。你该多穿点，夜里很凉。”
　　“我们要出去？”
　　“佣兵都像你这么聪明吗？”
　　城里的街道很危险，但有波隆在旁，提利昂相当放心。他们通过卫兵，出了北墙的边门，沿着夜影巷骑到伊耿高丘的脚下，然后又行过匹格伦巷，两旁是紧闭的门窗和高耸的木石建筑，它们彼此楼层突出，靠得很近，几乎像在接吻。月亮一路追随，于烟囱间跟他们捉迷藏。但他们没有遇到任何人，惟有一个孤身老妪，拎着一只死猫的尾巴。她惊恐地看了他们一眼，然后一言不发地悄悄溜进阴影中，仿佛害怕他们会抢走她的晚餐。
　　提利昂回想起前两任首相，他们显然对姐姐的阴谋诡计准备不足。这很自然，他们那种人……太过正直，难以生存，太过高尚，不愿欺骗，瑟曦每天都在吞噬这样的傻子。想要对付姐姐，惟一的方法就是以其人之道，还治其人之身，而这种做法史塔克公爵和艾林公爵又不屑为之。所以他们进了坟墓，而他提利昂·兰尼斯特却过得生龙活虎。他这双发育不良的短腿所跳的舞或许会让他成为丰收宴会上的笑柄，但对这种舞，他可是驾轻就熟。
　　时间已是后半夜，这家妓院仍然宾客满堂。莎塔雅愉快地招呼他们，领他们进入大堂。波隆跟一个来自多恩的黑眼姑娘上了楼，但爱拉雅雅正好有客，抽不开身。“她知道您来了一定很高兴，”莎塔雅说，“大人请稍等片刻，我去为您把角楼房间准备好。要不要先喝杯酒？”
　　“好的，”他说。
　　跟平日里品尝的上等青亭岛葡萄酒相比，这酒很粗劣。“请您千万见谅，大人，”莎塔雅说，“近来我无论出什么价，就是买不到好酒。”
　　“我明白，遇到这种情况的不只你一人。”
　　莎塔雅陪他感叹了一会儿，然后告辞离开。真是个有派头的女人，提利昂一边看着她走开一边想，少有妓女能如此典雅高贵。她肯定把自己当做了某种女祭司。也许秘密就在于此：我们做什么并不重要，重要是我们为何而做。这念头略略令他心安。
　　有几个恩客斜眼瞟他。上次他冒险出来，竟有人吐他口水……呵，应该说是试图吐他口水，结果却吐在了波隆身上。将来就只能用无牙的嘴吐口水了。
　　“大人，可觉得自己缺少爱怜？”丹晰悄悄滑到他膝上，轻咬他的耳朵。“我最会治疗这种病哦。”
　　提利昂微笑着摇头，“亲爱的，你真是美得难以形容，但只怕我对爱拉雅雅的疗法上瘾了呢。”
　　“那是因为你从没试过我的。大人每次都选雅雅。她很棒，但是我更棒，您不想试试么？”
　　“或许……下次吧。”提利昂相信她在怀里是个精力充沛的小东西。她长着狮子鼻，几颗雀斑，一头齐腰的浓密红发，身体富于弹性。但他有了雪伊，她正在宅子里等他。
　　她咯咯笑着，将手伸进他两腿之间，隔着裤子捏他。“我觉得它可等不到下次，”她宣告，“它想出来数数我的雀斑呢。”
　　“丹晰。”爱拉雅雅站在门口，黝黑的皮肤上罩了层轻薄透明的绿丝衣，她冷静地说，“大人是来找我的。”
　　提利昂轻轻地挣脱女孩，站起身来。丹晰似乎并不介意，“记得下次哦，”她提醒他，悠闲地将一个指头放进嘴里吮吸。
　　黑肤女孩领他上了楼梯：“可怜的丹晰，她要是两周之内不能让大人选择她，就得把黑珍珠输给玛丽了。”
　　玛丽是个沉静、白皙、娇俏的女孩，提利昂注意过她一两次。绿色的眼睛，瓷器般精细的皮肤，又长又直的银发，虽然很可爱，却有些严肃。“真不愿让这可怜的孩子因为我的缘故而输掉珍珠宝贝。”
　　“那么下次就带她上楼。”
　　“也许吧。”
　　她微笑道：“我想您不会的，大人。”
　　她说得对，提利昂心想，我不会。虽然雪伊只是个妓女，但我仍会以我的方式对她忠诚。
　　到了角楼房间，当他打开衣柜门时，突然好奇地问爱拉雅雅：“我走之后你都干些什么呢？”
　　听见这话，她像只养尊处优的黑猫般伸了伸懒腰。“睡觉啊。大人，打从您光顾之后，我的休息充分多了。玛丽最近教我们识字，也许过阵子我可以读书来打发时间。”
　　“睡觉很好，”他道，“读书更好。”随后他快速地吻了一下她的脸颊，便直下深井，穿过隧道。
　　当他骑着花斑马离开马厩时，听见楼顶飘来阵阵乐声。看来，纵然在屠杀与饥荒之中，人们也能照样歌唱，想到这里他很愉快。脑海充溢着熟悉的音符，片刻之间，他似乎又听到半生之前，泰莎为他唱的歌，于是他勒马聆听。这曲子其实不太对劲，歌词也听不真切。想必是另一首歌。怎么可能是同一首歌呢？他那天真可爱的泰莎啊，从头到尾都是个骗局，她只是哥哥詹姆雇来的妓女，好让他初验男女之事。
　　但是，我终于摆脱了泰莎，他想，我半生都活在她的阴影之下，到如今终于可以忘了她，正如我忘了爱拉雅雅，忘了丹晰，忘了玛丽，忘了这些年来数百个跟我同床的妓女。如今我有了雪伊。雪伊。
　　宅院大门紧闭，从内上闩。提利昂用力敲了半天，华丽的青铜窥眼才“咔哒”一声打开。“是我！”接待他的是瓦里斯找来的人中相对好看的一个，布拉佛斯人，精于短剑，长着兔唇，目光迟钝。提利昂特地关照不要年轻英俊的守卫一天到晚在雪伊身边晃来晃去。“给我找些又老又丑，脸上有疤的来，阳萎的更好，”他告诉太监，“喜欢男孩，甚至喜欢绵羊的，也行。”瓦里斯没找到喜欢绵羊的守卫，但他罗织了一个太监杀手，以及一对臭烘烘的伊班人——他们只爱斧子和彼此。他雇来的其余人手也很精彩，都像从黑牢里挖出的角色，一个比一个丑陋。当瓦里斯将他们列队带到他跟前时，连提利昂都觉得过分，但雪伊没有出声抱怨。她怎会抱怨呢？她所有的守卫加起来还没有我可怕，而她从没有抱怨过我。或许，她根本不知道什么是丑吧。
　　其实，提利昂心中想用他的高山原住民来护卫这座宅院；要么用齐拉的黑耳部，要么月人部。比起贪婪的佣兵，他更相信他们铁一般的忠诚与荣誉。然而这太冒险。全君临都知道原住民是他的人，如果他派黑耳部来此，那么御前首相养情妇的绯闻迟早会传得风风雨雨。
　　那对伊班人之一牵过他的马。“你叫醒她了吗？”
　　“没有，大人。”
　　“很好。”
　　卧室里炉火成烬，但余温仍存。雪伊睡得很熟，踢掉了毯子和褥子。她赤裸地躺在羽床上，璧炉淡淡的火光映在她年轻的胴体上，显出柔和的曲线。提利昂站在门口，看得心醉神迷。她比玛丽年轻，比丹晰可人，比爱拉雅雅美丽，她就是我要的全部，甚至比我梦想的更棒。一个妓女怎可如此清纯而美丽呢？他疑惑地想。
　　他本不想打搅她的好眠，但只是看着她就让他硬了起来。他把外衣脱在地板上，爬上床，轻轻拨开她的腿，亲吻两股之间。雪伊在睡梦中呢喃了一声。他再次吻她，舔她甜蜜的隐私之处，不停地舔，直至他的胡须和她的下体双双湿润。她颤抖着发出一声低吟，他爬上去，插入她的身体，几乎当即迸射出来。
　　她睁开眼，微笑着敲敲他的头，低声说：“我刚做了个好美的梦哦，大人。”
　　提利昂轻咬着她那小而坚挺的乳头，将自己的头依在她肩上。他没有从她体内拔出来；他希望自己永远也不要拔出来。“这不是梦，”他向她保证。这是真的，所有这一切都是真的，他心想，战争，阴谋，壮丽而血腥的游戏，还有处于这一切中心的我……我！一个侏儒，一个怪物，一个他们轻蔑和取笑的对象，凭着我与生俱来的本领，掌握了所有……权力，都城，女人。诸神宽恕我，我爱这一切……
　　还有她。尤其是她。
[ 此帖被挽墨在2015-08-28 02:22重新编辑 ]
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你看着眼前的人，分明还是以前的模样，可心里终究不是以前那般澄清透明了。
举报 只看该作者 31楼  发表于: 2015-08-29 0
CHAPTER 30
　　ARYA

　　
　　Whatever names Harren the Black had meant to give his towers were long forgotten. They were called the Tower of Dread, the Widow’s Tower, the Wailing Tower, the Tower of Ghosts, and Kingspyre Tower. Arya slept in a shallow niche in the cavernous vaults beneath the Wailing Tower, on a bed of straw. She had water to wash in whenever she liked, a chunk of soap. The work was hard, but no harder than walking miles every day. Weasel did not need to find worms and bugs to eat, as Arry had; there was bread every day, and barley stews with bits of carrot and turnip, and once a fortnight even a bite of meat.
　　Hot Pie ate even better; he was where he belonged, in the kitchens, a round stone building with a domed roof that was a world unto itself. Arya took her meals at a trestle table in the undercroft with Weese and his other charges, but sometimes she would be chosen to help fetch their food, and she and Hot Pie could steal a moment to talk. He could never remember that she was now Weasel and kept calling her Arry, even though he knew she was a girl. Once he tried to slip her a hot apple tart, but he made such a clumsy job of it that two of the cooks saw. They took the tart away and beat him with a big wooden spoon.
　　Gendry had been sent to the forge; Arya seldom saw him. As for those she served with, she did not even want to know their names. That only made it hurt worse when they died. Most of them were older than she was and content to let her alone.
　　Harrenhal was vast, much of it far gone in decay. Lady Whent had held the castle as bannerman to House Tully, but she’d used only the lower thirds of two of the five towers, and let the rest go to ruin. Now she was fled, and the small household she’d left could not begin to tend the needs of all the knights, lords, and highborn prisoners Lord Tywin had brought, so the Lannisters must forage for servants as well as for plunder and provender. The talk was that Lord Tywin planned to restore Harrenhal to glory, and make it his new seat once the war was done.
　　Weese used Arya to run messages, draw water, and fetch food, and sometimes to serve at table in the Barracks Hall above the armory, where the men-at-arms took their meals. But most of her work was cleaning. The ground floor of the Wailing Tower was given over to storerooms and granaries, and two floors above housed part of the garrison, but the upper stories had not been occupied for eighty years. Now Lord Tywin had commanded that they be made fit for habitation again. There were floors to be scrubbed, grime to be washed off windows, broken chairs and rotted beds to be carried off. The topmost story was infested with nests of the huge black bats that House Whent had used for its sigil, and there were rats in the cellars as well . . . and ghosts, some said, the spirits of Harren the Black and his sons.
　　Arya thought that was stupid. Harren and his sons had died in Kingspyre Tower, that was why it had that name, so why should they cross the yard to haunt her? The Wailing Tower only wailed when the wind blew from the north, and that was just the sound the air made blowing through the cracks in the stones where they had fissured from the heat. If there were ghosts in Harrenhal, they never troubled her. It was the living men she feared, Weese and Ser Gregor Clegane and Lord Tywin Lannister himself, who kept his apartments in Kingspyre Tower, still the tallest and mightiest of all, though lopsided beneath the weight of the slagged stone that made it look like some giant half-melted black candle.
　　She wondered what Lord Tywin would do if she marched up to him and confessed to being Arya Stark, but she knew she’d never get near enough to talk to him, and anyhow he’d never believe her if she did, and afterward Weese would beat her bloody.
　　In his own small strutting way, Weese was nearly as scary as Ser Gregor. The Mountain swatted men like flies, but most of the time he did not even seem to know the fly was there. Weese always knew you were there, and what you were doing, and sometimes what you were thinking. He would hit at the slightest provocation, and he had a dog who was near as bad as he was, an ugly spotted bitch that smelled worse than any dog Arya had ever known. Once she saw him set the dog on a latrine boy who’d annoyed him. She tore a big chunk out of the boy’s calf while Weese laughed.
　　It took him only three days to earn the place of honor in her nightly prayers. “Weese,” she would whisper, first of all. “Dunsen, Chiswyck, Polliver, Raff the Sweetling. The Tickler and the Hound. Ser Gregor, Ser Amory, Ser Ilyn, Ser Meryn, King Joffrey, Queen Cersei.” If she let herself forget even one of them, how would she ever find him again to kill him?
　　On the road Arya had felt like a sheep, but Harrenbal turned her into a mouse. She was grey as a mouse in her scratchy wool shift, and like a mouse she kept to the crannies and crevices and dark holes of the castle, scurrying out of the way of the mighty.
　　Sometimes she thought they were all mice within those thick walls, even the knights and the great lords. The size of the castle made even Gregor Clegane seem small. Harrenhal covered thrice as much ground as Winterfell, and its buildings were so much larger they could scarcely be compared. Its stables housed a thousand horses, its godswood covered twenty acres, its kitchens were as large as Winterfell’s Great Hall, and its own great hall, grandly named the Hall of a Hundred Hearths even though it only had thirty and some (Arya had tried to count them, twice, but she came up with thirty-three once and thirty-five the other time) was so cavernous that Lord Tywin could have feasted his entire host, though he never did. Walls, doors, halls, steps, everything was built to an inhuman scale that made Arya remember the stories Old Nan used to tell of the giants who lived beyond the Wall.
　　And as lords and ladies never notice the little grey mice under their feet, Arya heard all sorts of secrets just by keeping her ears open as she went about her duties. Pretty Pia from the buttery was a slut who was working her way through every knight in the castle. The wife of the gaoler was with child, but the real father was either Ser Alyn Stackspear or a singer called Whitesmile Wat. Lord Lefford made mock of ghosts at table, but always kept a candle burning by his bed. Ser Dunaver’s squire Jodge could not hold his water when he slept. The cooks despised Ser Harys Swyft and spit in all his food. Once she even overheard Maester Tothmure’s serving girl confiding to her brother about some message that said Joffrey was a bastard and not the rightful king at all. “Lord Tywin told him to burn the letter and never speak such filth again,” the girl whispered.
　　King Robert’s brothers Stannis and Renly had joined the fighting, she heard. “And both of them kings now,” Weese said. “Realm’s got more kings than a castle’s got rats.” Even Lannister men questioned how long Joffrey would hold the Iron Throne. “The lad’s got no army but them gold cloaks, and he’s ruled by a eunuch, a dwarf, and a woman,” she heard a lordling mutter in his cups. “What good will the likes of them be if it comes to battle?” There was always talk of Beric Dondarrion. A fat archer once said the Bloody Mummers had slain him, but the others only laughed. “Lorch killed the man at Rushing Falls, and the Mountain’s slain him twice. Got me a silver stag says he don’t stay dead this time neither.”
　　Arya did not know who Bloody Mummers were until a fortnight later, when the queerest company of men she’d ever seen arrived at Harrenhal. Beneath the standard of a black goat with bloody horns rode copper men with bells in their braids; lancers astride striped black-and-white horses; bowmen with powdered cheeks; squat hairy men with shaggy shields; brown-skinned men in feathered cloaks; a wispy fool in green-and-pink motley; swordsmen with fantastic forked beards dyed green and purple and silver; spearmen with colored scars that covered their cheeks; a slender man in septon’s robes, a fatherly one in maester’s grey, and a sickly one whose leather cloak was fringed with long blond hair.
　　At their head was a man stick-thin and very tall, with a drawn emaciated face made even longer by the ropy black beard that grew from his pointed chin nearly to his waist. The helm that hung from his saddle horn was black steel, fashioned in the shape of a goat’s head. About his neck he wore a chain made of linked coins of many different sizes, shapes, and metals, and his horse was one of the strange black-and-white ones.
　　“You don’t want to know that lot, Weasel,” Weese said when he saw her looking at the goat-helmed man. Two of his drinking friends were with him, men-at-arms in service to Lord Lefford.
　　“Who are they?” she asked.
　　One of the soldiers laughed. “The Footmen, girl. Toes of the Goat. Lord Tywin’s Bloody Mummers.”
　　“Pease for wits. You get her flayed, you can scrub the bloody steps,” said Weese. “They’re sellswords, Weasel girl. Call themselves the Brave Companions. Don’t use them other names where they can hear, or they’ll hurt you bad. The goat-helm’s their captain, Lord Vargo Hoat.”
　　“He’s no fucking lord,” said the second soldier. “I heard Ser Amory say so. He’s just some sellsword with a mouth full of slobber and a high opinion of hisself.”
　　“Aye,” said Weese, “but she better call him lord if she wants to keep all her parts.”
　　Arya looked at Vargo Hoat again. How many monsters does Lord Tywin have?
　　The Brave Companions were housed in the Widow’s Tower, so Arya need not serve them. She was glad of that; on the very night they arrived, fighting broke out between the sellswords and some Lannister men. Ser Harys Swyft’s squire was stabbed to death and two of the Bloody Mummers were wounded. The next morning Lord Tywin hanged them both from the gatehouse walls, along with one of Lord Lydden’s archers. Weese said the archer had started all the trouble by taunting the sellswords over Beric Dondarrion. After the hanged men had stopped kicking, Vargo Hoat and Ser Harys embraced and kissed and swore to love each other always as Lord Tywin looked on. Arya thought it was funny the way Vargo Hoat lisped and slobbered, but she knew better than to laugh.
　　The Bloody Mummers did not linger long at Harrenhal, but before they rode out again, Arya heard one of them saying how a northern army under Roose Bolton had occupied the ruby ford of the Trident. “If he crosses, Lord Tywin will smash him again like he did on the Green Fork,” a Lannister bowmen said, but his fellows jeered him down. “Bolton’ll never cross, not till the Young Wolf marches from Riverrun with his wild northmen and all them wolves.”
　　Arya had not known her brother was so near. Riverrun was much closer than Winterfell, though she was not certain where it lay in relation to Harrenhal. I could find out somehow, I know I could, if only I could get away. When she thought of seeing Robb’s face again Arya had to bite her lip. And I want to see Jon too, and Bran and Rickon, and Mother. Even Sansa . . . I’ll kiss her and beg her pardons like a proper lady, she’ll like that.
　　From the courtyard talk she’d learned that the upper chambers of the Tower of Dread housed three dozen captives taken during some battle on the Green Fork of the Trident. Most had been given freedom of the castle in return for their pledge not to attempt escape. They vowed not to escape, Arya told herself, but they never swore not to help me escape.
　　The captives ate at their own table in the Hall of a Hundred Hearths, and could often be seen about the grounds. Four brothers took their exercise together every day, fighting with staves and wooden shields in the Flowstone Yard. Three of them were Freys of the Crossing, the fourth their bastard brother. They were only there a short time, though; one morning two other brothers arrived under a peace banner with a chest of gold, and ransomed them from the knights who’d captured them. The six Freys all left together.
　　No one ransomed the northmen, though. One fat lordling haunted the kitchens, Hot Pie told her, always looking for a morsel. His mustache was so bushy that it covered his mouth, and the clasp that held his cloak was a silver-and-sapphire trident. He belonged to Lord Tywin, but the fierce, bearded young man who liked to walk the battlements alone in a black cloak patterned with white suns had been taken by some hedge knight who meant to get rich off him. Sansa would have known who he was, and the fat one too, but Arya had never taken much interest in titles and sigils. Whenever Septa Mordane had gone on about the history of this house and that house, she was inclined to drift and dream and wonder when the lesson would be done.
　　She did remember Lord Cerwyn, though. His lands had been close to Winterfell, so he and his son Cley had often visited. Yet as fate would have it, he was the only captive who was never seen; he was abed in a tower cell, recovering from a wound. For days and days Arya tried to work out how she might steal past the door guards to see him. If he knew her, he would be honor bound to help her. A lord would have gold for a certainty, they all did; perhaps he would pay some of Lord Tywin’s own sellswords to take her to Riverrun. Father had always said that most sellswords would betray anyone for enough gold.
　　Then one morning she spied three women in the cowled grey robes of the silent sisters loading a corpse into their wagon. The body was sewn into a cloak of the finest silk, decorated with a battle-axe sigil. When Arya asked who it was, one of the guards told her that Lord Cerwyn had died. The words felt like a kick in the belly. He could never have helped you anyway, she thought as the sisters drove the wagon through the gate. He couldn’t even help himself, you stupid mouse.
　　After that it was back to scrubbing and scurrying and listening at doors. Lord Tywin would soon march on Riverrun, she heard. Or he would drive south to Highgarden, no one would ever expect that. No, he must defend King’s Landing, Stannis was the greatest threat. He’d sent Gregor Clegane and Vargo Hoat to destroy Roose Bolton and remove the dagger from his back. He’d sent ravens to the Eyrie, he meant to wed the Lady Lysa Arryn and win the Vale. He’d bought a ton of silver to forge magic swords that would slay the Stark wargs. He was writing Lady Stark to make a peace, the Kingslayer would soon be freed.
　　Though ravens came and went every day, Lord Tywin himself spent most of his days behind closed doors with his war council. Arya caught glimpses of him, but always from afar—once walking the walls in the company of three maesters and the fat captive with the bushy mustache, once riding out with his lords bannermen to visit the encampments, but most often standing in an arch of the covered gallery watching men at practice in the yard below. He stood with his hands locked together on the gold pommel of his longsword. They said Lord Tywin loved gold most of all; he even shit gold, she heard one squire jest. The Lannister lord was strong-looking for an old man, with stiff golden whiskers and a bald head. There was something in his face that reminded Arya of her own father, even though they looked nothing alike. He has a lord’s face, that’s all, she told herself. She remembered hearing her lady mother tell Father to put on his lord’s face and go deal with some matter. Father had laughed at that. She could not imagine Lord Tywin ever laughing at anything. One afternoon, while she was waiting her turn to draw a pail of water from the well, she heard the hinges of the east gate groaning. A party of men rode under the portcullis at a walk. When she spied the manticore crawling across the shield of their leader, a stab of hate shot through her.
　　In the light of day, Ser Amory Lorch looked less frightening than he had by torchlight, but he still had the pig’s eyes she recalled. One of the women said that his men had ridden all the way around the lake chasing Beric Dondarrion and slaying rebels. We weren’t rebels, Arya thought. We were the Night’s Watch; the Night’s Watch takes no side. Ser Amory had fewer men than she remembered, though, and many wounded. I hope their wounds fester. I hope they all die.
　　Then she saw the three near the end of the column.
　　Rorge had donned a black halffielm with a broad iron nasal that made it hard to see that he did not have a nose. Biter rode ponderously beside him on a destrier that looked ready to collapse under his weight. Halfhealed burns covered his body, making him even more hideous than before.
　　But Jaqen H’ghar still smiled. His garb was still ragged and filthy, but he had found time to wash and brush his hair. It streamed down across his shoulders, red and white and shiny, and Arya heard the girls giggling to each other in admiration.
　　I should have let the fire have them. Gendry said to, I should have listened. If she hadn’t thrown them that axe they’d all be dead. For a moment she was afraid, but they rode past her without a flicker of interest. Only Jaqen H’ghar so much as glanced in her direction, and his eyes passed right over her. He does not know me, she thought. Arry was a fierce little boy with a sword, and I’m just a grey mouse girl with a pail.
　　She spent the rest of that day scrubbing steps inside the Wailing Tower. By evenfall her hands were raw and bleeding and her arms so sore they trembled when she lugged the pail back to the cellar. Too tired even for food, Arya begged Weese’s pardons and crawled into her straw to sleep. “Weese,” she yawned. “Dunsen, Chiswyck, Polliver, Raff the Sweetling. The Tickler and the Hound. Ser Gregor, Ser Amory, Ser Ilyn, Ser Meryn, King Joffrey, Queen Cersei.” She thought she might add three more names to her prayer, but she was too tired to decide tonight.
　　Arya was dreaming of wolves running wild through the wood when a strong hand clamped down over her mouth like smooth warm stone, solid and unyielding. She woke at once, squirming and struggling. “A girl says nothing,” a voice whispered close behind her ear. “A girl keeps her lips closed, no one hears, and friends may talk in secret. Yes?”
　　Heart pounding, Arya managed the tiniest of nods.
　　Jaqen H’ghar took his hand away. The cellar was black as pitch and she could not see his face, even inches away. She could smell him, though; his skin smelled clean and soapy, and he had scented his hair. “A boy becomes a girl,” he murmured.
　　“I was always a girl. I didn’t think you saw me.”
　　“A man sees. A man knows.”
　　She remembered that she hated him. “You scared me. You’re one of them now, I should have let you burn. What are you doing here? Go away or I’ll yell for Weese.”
　　“A man pays his debts. A man owes three.”
　　“Three?”
　　“The Red God has his due, sweet girl, and only death may pay for life. This girl took three that were his. This girl must give three in their places. Speak the names, and a man will do the rest.”
　　He wants to help me, Arya realized with a rush of hope that made her dizzy. “Take me to Riverrun, it’s not far, if we stole some horses we could—”
　　He laid a finger on her lips. “Three lives you shall have of me. No more, no less. Three and we are done. So a girl must ponder.” He kissed her hair softly. “But not too long.”
　　By the time Arya lit her stub of a candle, only a faint smell remained of him, a whiff of ginger and cloves lingering in the air. The woman in the next niche rolled over on her straw and complained of the light, so Arya blew it out. When she closed her eyes, she saw faces swimming before her. Joffrey and his mother, Ilyn Payne and Meryn Trant and Sandor Clegane . . . but they were in King’s Landing hundreds of miles away, and Ser Gregor had lingered only a few nights before departing again for more foraging, taking Raff and Chiswyck and the Tickler with him. Ser Amory Lorch was here, though, and she hated him almost as much. Didn’t she? She wasn’t certain. And there was always Weese.
　　She thought of him again the next morning, when lack of sleep made her yawn. “Weasel,” Weese purred, “next time I see that mouth droop open, I’ll pull out your tongue and feed it to my bitch.” He twisted her ear between his fingers to make certain she’d heard, and told her to get back to those steps, he wanted them clean down to the third landing by nightfall.
　　As she worked, Arya thought about the people she wanted dead. She pretended she could see their faces on the steps, and scrubbed harder to wipe them away. The Starks were at war with the Lannisters and she was a Stark, so she should kill as many Lannisters as she could, that was what you did in wars. But she didn’t think she should trust Jaqen. I should kill them myself. Whenever her father had condemned a man to death, he did the deed himself with Ice, his greatsword. “If you would take a man’s life, you owe it to him to look him in the face and hear his last words,” she’d heard him tell Robb and Jon once.
　　The next day she avoided Jaqen H’ghar, and the day after that. It was not hard. She was very small and Harrenhal was very large, full of places where a mouse could hide.
　　And then Ser Gregor returned, earlier than expected, driving a herd of goats this time in place of a herd of prisoners. She heard he’d lost four men in one of Lord Beric’s night raids, but those Arya hated returned unscathed and took up residence on the second floor of the Wailing Tower. Weese saw that they were well supplied with drink. “They always have a good thirst, that lot,” he grumbled. “Weasel, go up and ask if they’ve got any clothes that need mending, I’ll have the women see to it.” Arya ran up her well-scrubbed steps. No one paid her any mind when she entered. Chiswyck was seated by the fire with a horn of ale to hand, telling one of his funny stories. She dared not interrupt, unless she wanted a bloody lip.
　　“After the Hand’s tourney, it were, before the war come,” Chiswyck was saying. “We were on our ways back west, seven of us with Ser Gregor. Raff was with me, and young Joss Stilwood, he’d squired for Ser in the lists. Well, we come on this pisswater river, running high on account there’d been rains. No way to ford, but there’s an alehouse near, so there we repair. Ser rousts the brewer and tells him to keep our horns full till the waters fall, and you should see the man’s pig eyes shine at the sight o’ silver. So he’s fetching us ale, him and his daughter, and poor thin stuff it is, no more’n brown piss, which don’t make me any happier, nor Ser neither. And all the time this brewer’s saying how glad he is to have us, custom being slow on account o’ them rains. The fool won’t shut his yap, not him, though Ser is saying not a word, just brooding on the Knight o’ Pansies and that bugger’s trick he played. You can see how tight his mouth sits, so me and the other lads we know better’n to say a squeak to him, but this brewer he’s got to talk, he even asks how m’lord fared in the jousting. Ser just gave him this look.” Chiswyck cackled, quaffed his ale, and wiped the foam away with the back of his hand. “Meanwhile, this daughter of his has been fetching and pouring, a fat little thing, eighteen or so—”
　　“Thirteen, more like,” Raff the Sweetling drawled.
　　“Well, be that as it may, she’s not much to look at, but Eggon’s been drinking and gets to touching her, and might be I did a little touching meself, and Raff’s telling young Stilwood that he ought t’ drag the girl upstairs and make hisself a man, giving the lad courage as it were. Finally Joss reaches up under her skirt, and she shrieks and drops her flagon and goes running off to the kitchen. Well, it would have ended right there, only what does the old fool do but he goes to Ser and asks him to make us leave the girl alone, him being an anointed knight and all such.
　　“Ser Gregor, he wasn’t paying no mind to none of our fun, but now he looks, you know how he does, and he commands that the girl be brought before him. Now the old man has to drag her out of the kitchen, and no one to blame but hisself. Ser looks her over and says, ‘So this is the whore you’re so concerned for’ and this besotted old fool says, ‘My Layna’s no whore, ser’ right to Gregor’s face. Ser, he never blinks, just says, ‘She is now’ tosses the old man another silver, rips the dress off the wench, and takes her right there on the table in front of her da, her flopping and wiggling like a rabbit and making these noises. The look on the old man’s face, I laughed so hard ale was coming out me nose. Then this boy hears the noise, the son I figure, and comes rushing up from the cellar, so Raff has to stick a dirk in his belly. By then Ser’s done, so he goes back to his drinking and we all have a turn. Tobbot, you know how he is, he flops her over and goes in the back way. The girl was done fighting by the time I had her, maybe she’d decided she liked it after all, though to tell the truth I wouldn’t have minded a little wiggling. And now here’s the best bit . . . when it’s all done, Ser tells the old man that he wants his change. The girl wasn’t worth a silver, he says . . . and damned if that old man didn’t fetch a fistful of coppers, beg mlord’s pardon, and thank him for the custom!”
　　The men all roared, none louder than Chiswyck himself, who laughed so hard at his own story that snot dribbled from his nose down into his scraggy grey beard. Arya stood in the shadows of the stairwell and watched him. She crept back down to the cellars without saying a word. When Weese found that she hadn’t asked about the clothes, he yanked down her breeches and caned her until blood ran down her thighs, but Arya closed her eyes and thought of all the sayings Syrio had taught her, so she scarcely felt it.
　　Two nights later, he sent her to the Barracks Hall to serve at table. She was carrying a flagon of wine and pouring when she glimpsed Jaqen H’ghar at his trencher across the aisle. Chewing her lip, Arya glanced around warily to make certain Weese was not in sight. Fear cuts deeper than swords, she told herself.
　　She took a step, and another, and with each she felt less a mouse. She worked her way down the bench, filling wine cups. Rorge sat to Jaqen’s right, deep drunk, but he took no note of her. Arya leaned close and whispered, “Chiswyck,” right in Jaqen’s ear. The Lorathi gave no sign that he had heard.
　　When her flagon was empty, Arya hurried down to the cellars to refill it from the cask, and quickly returned to her pouring. No one had died of thirst while she was gone, nor even noted her brief absence.
　　Nothing happened the next day, nor the day after, but on the third day Arya went to the kitchens with Weese to fetch their dinner. “One of the Mountain’s men fell off a wallwalk last night and broke his fool neck,” she heard Weese tell a cook.
　　“Drunk?” the woman asked.
　　“No more’n usual. Some are saying it was Harren’s ghost flung him down.” He snorted to show what he thought of such notions.
　　It wasn’t Harren, Arya wanted to say, it was me. She had killed Chiswyck with a whisper, and she would kill two more before she was through. I’m the ghost in Harrenhal, she thought. And that night, there was one less name to hate.



Ⅱ 列王的纷争 Chapter31 艾莉亚
　　无论黑心赫伦给他的塔楼取过什么名字，都已被时间所遗忘。它们如今分别称为恐怖塔，寡妇塔，号哭塔，厉鬼塔和焚王塔。艾莉亚睡在号哭塔那巨大拱顶下的小角落里，有一张稻草堆成的床。她随时可以洗澡，还得到了一大块肥皂。干活虽辛苦，却好过日日行军若干里。阿利得找蠕虫和甲虫充饥，但黄鼠狼每天都有面包，还有拌胡萝卜与芜箐碎块的燕麦粥，甚至每隔两周还有一丁点肉。
　　热派的伙食更好，因为他自得其所，在厨房操起了营生。这里的厨房是一座带拱顶的圆形石屋，自成一格。平日，艾莉亚都跟威斯和他的手下们一起在地下室的搁板桌上吃饭，但有时她会被派去厨房拿食物，这样就可以偷得片刻跟热派说话。他老忘记她现在是黄鼠狼，明知她是个女孩，还一直叫她阿利。有一次，他想悄悄塞给她一块热苹果派，但太过笨手笨脚，让两个厨子看见。好事没做成，反吃一顿大木勺。
　　詹德利去了铸炉工作，艾莉亚很少见他。至于跟她一起干活的人，她甚至连名字都不想问。知道名字又怎样？如果他们死了，那只会让她更难受。他们中的大多数年纪都比她大，也乐得由她一人独处。
　　赫伦堡巨大宽广，许多地方几近腐朽凋敝。河安伯爵夫人曾以徒利家族封臣的身份掌管城堡，但她只动用了五座塔里的两座，且只用下面三层，任由其他部分毁坏崩溃。如今她避战而逃，留下的一小群仆人自然无法照顾泰温大人麾下的大批骑士、领主和贵族囚犯，因此兰尼斯特家除了打家劫舍，搜刮钱粮，还得多抓人手来充当仆役。据说泰温大人打算恢复赫伦堡往日的荣耀，一旦战争结束便将其作为新的居城。
　　威斯安排艾莉亚做些奔走送信，打水，拿食物之类的工作，有时也叫她去军械库上方的兵营大厅侍奉士兵们餐饮。但她主要的工作是打扫清洗。号哭塔的底层如今被当做储藏室和粮仓，再上面两层住着一部分守城军士，但更高的楼层已经空置了八十年。泰温大人下令，要把它们收拾得适合人居。这样，就有无数的地板需要清洗，无数的窗户需要擦拭，无数的破椅烂床需要修理。顶层是河安家族家徽上那种黑蝠的巢穴，地下室则居住着好多老鼠……据说还闹鬼，黑心赫伦和他儿子们的鬼魂就在那里出没。
　　艾莉亚觉得这种说法很笨。赫伦父子死在焚王塔里——那座塔正是因此而得名——他们干嘛大老远穿过庭院来吓她呢？号哭塔每当北风刮来时才会号哭，那不过是因为空气吹过石头缝隙，这些石头当年曾因高热而裂开。总而言之，即便赫伦堡闹鬼，它们也从没来骚扰过她。她觉得活人比死人可怕多了，她害怕威斯和格雷果·克里冈爵士，更害怕住在焚王塔里的泰温·兰尼斯特公爵。那座塔尽管历经当年的烈火，在融化变形的岩石重压下倾向一侧，看上去活像一根巨大而半融的黑蜡烛，但仍然是最高最雄伟的塔楼。
　　她不知道如果直接跑到泰温公爵面前，坦白自己是艾莉亚·史塔克，他会怎么做，但她知道自己根本没有近身的机会，更别提说话了，而且不管怎样，即使她说了，他也决不会相信，事后威斯还会狠狠揍她。
　　威斯虽然地位低贱，又极自负，却差不多跟格雷果爵士一样可怕。魔山杀人就跟拍苍蝇一样随便，但多半时间他并不在乎苍蝇。可威斯总是知道你在那儿，知道你在干嘛，甚至知道你在想什么，哪怕露出一丝半点反抗之意，他就要你好看。他有一条丑陋的斑点母狗，几乎跟他一样坏，而且气味比艾莉亚见过的任何一条狗都难闻。有一次，一个扫厕所的男孩把他惹火了，他便放狗对付男孩。母狗撕下男孩小腿上一大块肉，威斯则哈哈大笑。
　　仅仅花了三天，他就在她的夜晚祷词中赢得一席之地。“威斯，”她把他放在荣誉的首席，“邓森，奇斯威克，波利佛，‘甜嘴’拉夫。记事本和猎狗。格雷果爵士，亚摩利爵士，伊林爵士，马林爵士，乔佛里国王，瑟曦太后。”她不能允许自己忘记其中一人，否则将来要怎么去找他们报仇，把他们杀掉呢？
　　在来时的路上，艾莉亚感觉自己像头绵羊，到了赫伦堡之后，她觉得自己变成了老鼠。她不但穿着凌乱的羊毛裙，像老鼠一样灰仆仆的，也始终像老鼠一样在城堡的裂缝与黑洞之间求生存，随时得留心闪避，以免冒犯有权有势的大人们。
　　有时候她觉得大家都是困在厚厚围墙里的老鼠，即使骑士和领主们也一样，因为这城堡的规模让格雷果·克里冈都显得渺小。赫伦堡占地是临冬城的三倍，建筑物的体积更有天渊之别。它的马厩能容纳一千匹马，它的神木林足有二十亩，它的厨房仿若临冬城的大厅，而它本身的大厅则堂皇地冠以“百炉厅”的名号，虽然有些言过其实(艾莉亚曾经努力数过，但一次结果是三十三，另一次是三十五)，但的确宽阔空旷，足够泰温公爵宴请整个军团，虽然他从没这么干过。不论墙壁，门窗，厅堂，阶梯，所有的一切都只能以巨大来形容，简直不像是给人类建造的，这让艾莉亚不禁想起老奶妈的故事里生活在长城之外的巨人。
　　老爷和夫人们从不留意脚底的小灰鼠，于是艾莉亚在奔走东西执行任务期间，只需竖起耳朵，便能听到各种秘密。比如储藏室里那“小美人”皮雅其实是个荡妇，跟城堡里每个骑士几乎都有一腿；狱卒的老婆怀了孕，但孩子真正的爹不是埃林·斯脱克皮爵士，就是名叫“白色微笑”渥特的歌手；莱佛德伯爵在餐桌上对闹鬼之说大肆嘲笑，睡觉时却总在床边点一根蜡烛；杜纳佛爵士的侍从乔吉睡觉时会尿床；厨子们都鄙视哈瑞斯·史威佛爵士，并往他的食物里啐唾沫。有一次，她甚至偷听到托斯谬学士的侍女向哥哥诉说，乔佛里原来是个私生子，根本不是正统的国王。“泰温大人告诉师傅把信烧掉，再不准提起这肮脏事，”女孩低声道。
　　她还听说劳勃国王的两个弟弟史坦尼斯和蓝礼都加入了战事。“他俩自立为王，”威斯道，“这年头，国王比城堡里的老鼠还多。”如今，就连兰尼斯特的人也开始怀疑乔佛里到底可以在铁王座上坐多久。“这小鬼除了那群没用的金袍子之外根本没有一兵一卒，帮他管事的还是太监、侏儒和女人！”她听见某个小领主在杯盏间自言自语，“真正打起仗来，这些个家伙管什么用？”不时有人谈及贝里·唐德利恩。一个胖胖的弓箭手说他已被“血戏班”杀了，但其他人只是哈哈大笑。“他被洛奇在急流瀑前杀过一次，被魔山宰过两次。我赌一个银鹿，这次他也死得不安分。”
　　艾莉亚不知道“血戏班”是谁，直到两周之后，这群人回到赫伦堡。他们是她所见最为怪异的人。在血角黑山羊旗下，辫扎铃铛、古铜皮肤的人骑马行进；熗骑兵跨着黑白斑纹的马；弓手们脸上抹着脂粉；矮胖多毛的人手拿毛绒的盾牌；黑皮肤的人穿着鸟羽制成的袍子；一个纤瘦的小丑穿着绿粉格子相间的戏服；剑士们留着奇异的，染成绿色、紫色和银色的八字胡；长熗兵脸上满是五彩的刺青；一个体形瘦长的人身着修士的袍子，一个面带慈祥的人穿戴学士的灰衣，另一位面露病容的人披着边沿用长长的金发装饰的皮革斗篷。
　　走在最前的是一位瘦得像竹竿的高个子，又黑又粗的胡子几乎从下巴直长到腰间，使他憔悴的长脸看上去更长了。他的坐骑也是那种奇怪的黑白斑纹马，鞍角上挂着一顶黑铁制成、打造成山羊头形状的头盔。他的颈上则围了一条链子，由大小、形状和材料各不相同的钱币串成。
　　“你不会喜欢这帮家伙的，黄鼠狼，”威斯见她目不转晴地瞧着那山羊头盔的人，便出声道。他的两个酒友跟他在一起，两人都是莱佛德伯爵手下的士兵。
　　“他们是谁呀？”她问。
　　一个士兵笑道：“他们？‘猎足者’呗，小妹妹。他们是山羊的脚趾头，泰温大人的‘血戏班’。”
　　“嗨，你给我放聪明点！要是害她缺脚断手，你就得负责去擦那些该死的楼梯，”威斯说，“他们是佣兵，黄鼠狼小妹妹。他们自称‘勇士团’。当着他们的面，你可千万别用其他名字，否则他们会狠狠折磨你。那个山羊头盔是他们的头儿，瓦格·赫特①大人。”
　　“放屁，他算哪门子大人，”第二个士兵说。“我听亚摩利爵士说，他不过是个唾沫横飞、自视甚高的流浪佣兵而已。”
　　“好啦，”威斯说，“如果你不想被大卸八块，最好叫他大人。”
　　艾莉亚又看看瓦格·赫特。泰温公爵到底养了多少怪物呀？
　　“勇士团”住在寡妇塔，于是艾莉亚不用服侍他们，对此她深感庆幸。他们抵达当晚，就和兰尼斯特的人起了冲突。哈瑞斯·史威佛爵士的侍从被刺死，两个“血戏班”的人受了伤。第二天早上，泰温公爵把他俩连同一个莱顿家的弓箭手一起吊死在城门楼上。威斯说那个弓箭手是始作俑者，正是他拿贝里·唐德利恩来嘲笑佣兵，才引发了所有的麻烦。上吊的人停止蹬腿后，瓦格·赫特与哈瑞斯爵士在泰温公爵的注视下拥抱亲吻，发誓永远互敬互爱。艾莉亚觉得瓦格·赫特说起话来口齿不清、唾沫横飞的样子很可笑，但她没有笨到笑出来。
　　“血戏班”没在赫伦堡多作逗留，但这期间，艾莉亚曾听他们中的一员提起，卢斯·波顿手下的北方军队占领了三叉戟河上的红宝石滩。“他要是敢渡河，泰温大人会像上次在绿叉河一样，打得他落花流水，”一个兰尼斯特弓箭手说，但他的同伴们不以为然。“波顿这老滑头现在可不会渡河，他要等小狼崽子带着那群野蛮的北方人和一整窝狼从奔流城出发，这才行动呢。”
　　艾莉亚这才知道哥哥竟然离得不远！奔流城可比冬城近多了，虽然她不确定它位于赫伦堡的哪个方向。我一定能查出来，我知道我可以，我一定要逃离这儿。想起能再见罗柏的脸，艾莉亚不由得咬紧了嘴唇。我也好想见琼恩，还有布兰和瑞肯，还有母亲，甚至珊莎……到时候，我会像个真正的淑女一样，亲吻她，请求她原谅。她会喜欢的。
　　早先，她就在院子里听人闲话得知，恐怖塔顶住着三四十个俘虏，都是绿叉河一役中抓来的。他们中的大部分被准许在城堡中自由活动，作为发誓不逃的回报。他们发誓自己不逃，艾莉亚告诉自己，可没说不能帮我逃走呢。
　　俘虏们也在百炉厅用餐——只是座位与旁人隔开——平常也都能随意走动。有四兄弟每天都在流石庭院里用棍子和木盾练习打斗。其中三人属于河渡口的佛雷家，另一个也是那里的私生子。但他们待得不久，某天早晨，他们家来了两个兄弟，打着和平的旗帜，带来一箱金币，从俘虏他们的骑士手中将他们赎了回去。六个佛雷一起离开。
　　没人来赎北方人。热派告诉她，一个胖胖的贵族常来厨房逡巡，总想找点吃的。他的胡子十分浓密，把嘴都遮住了，披风扣是白银和蓝宝石做的三叉戟。他是泰温公爵本人的俘虏，而另一个留胡子的凶悍青年则是某个雇佣骑士的财产——这骑士正想靠他发笔小财呢。这面带凶相的青年喜欢独自在城墙上行走，身穿一件漆黑披风，上印白色日芒的图案。珊莎一定知道他和那胖子是谁，但艾莉亚对头衔和纹章向来不感兴趣。每当茉丹修女讲述贵族家庭的历史，她就神游天外，一心期盼下课。
　　她只记得赛文伯爵。他的领地离临冬城很近，因此他和他儿子克雷经常来访。可命运弄人，他偏偏是惟一一个从不露面的俘虏。他一直在塔上的小屋卧床养伤，艾莉亚成天盘算着如何偷偷溜过门卫去见他。若是他能认出她来，出于荣誉，想必会帮助她。身为伯爵大人，他肯定有钱，领主不都是有钱人吗？也许他可以买通泰温公爵手下的佣兵，让他们送她去奔流城。父亲常说，佣兵多半都是只认钱不认人的。
　　然而，有一天早上，她偶然瞧见三个身穿静默修女会那种兜帽灰袍的女人将一具尸体搬上马车。尸体缝在一件饰有战斧纹章的精致丝披风里。艾莉亚询问死者是谁，一个卫兵告诉她赛文大人死了。这句话，活像在她肚子上踢了一脚。反正他也救不了你，她眼看着姐妹们赶着马车出了城门，心里想，他连自己都救不了，你这只笨老鼠，别做梦了。
　　从此之后，她又恢复到整天清洁擦洗，来回送信，以及在门后偷听的生活。大家众说纷纭，有人说泰温大人很快就要开往奔流城，有人说他要挥军南下，出奇不意地奇袭高庭，更有人对前两种说法嗤之以鼻，因为史坦尼斯才是最大的威胁，公爵大人想必会去保卫君临。小道消息还有很多，比如大人派出格雷果·克里冈和瓦格·赫特去消灭如芒刺在背的卢斯·波顿啦；大人派渡鸦送信去鹰巢城，打算迎娶莱莎·艾林夫人，以赢取谷地啦；大人买了一吨银子来铸造可以杀掉史塔克家狼灵的魔法剑啦；大人写信给史塔克夫人恳求和解，所以弑君者很快就会被释放啦，等等。
　　信鸦每天来来去去，泰温大人却几乎足不出户，忙着召开军事会议。艾莉亚远远地瞥见过他几次——一次他在城墙上行走，由三个学士和那个长着浓密胡须的胖俘虏陪同。一次他跟属下诸侯一起骑马出城，视察营地。但通常他站在拱顶的楼台中，注视下方流石庭院里操练的人们。他站在那儿，双手紧扣剑柄上的黄金圆球。据说泰温大人酷爱黄金，她听一个侍从开玩笑道，公爵甚至拉出的屎都有金子。作为一个老人而言，兰尼斯特公爵看起来很强壮，虽然谢了顶，却有着厚实僵直的金胡须。不知怎地，他的脸庞让她想起了父亲，尽管他们长得一点也不像。没什么大不了啦，他就是戴了张公爵的面具而已，她告诉自己。记得某次母亲也曾关照父亲带上公爵的面具，好去处理什么事情，父亲听了哈哈大笑。但她无法想像泰温大人会为什么事情发笑。
　　有一天下午，她正在井边排队等候打水，却听见东城门的绞链吱嘎作响。一大群人骑马从铁闸门下穿过。当她窥见领头之人盾牌上的狮身蝎尾兽图案，一股恨意猛然袭向全身。
　　在清天白日下，亚摩利·洛奇爵士看来不若火光中那么可怕，但那双猪眼仍和她记忆中一模一样。井边有个女人说，他带着部下沿湖追逐贝里·唐德利恩，搜捕反叛者。我们才不是反叛者，艾莉亚心想，我们是守夜人，守夜人是不偏不倚的。亚摩利爵士的手下比记忆中少了一些，许多人还受了伤。但愿他们伤口化脓！但愿他们通通死光！
　　接着，她看到了走在队伍末尾的三个人。
　　罗尔杰戴了一顶黑色半盔，宽宽的铁护鼻让人很难看出他没有鼻子。笨重的尖牙骑在他身旁，那可怜的战马看来随时都可能教他压垮。他浑身都是愈合中的灼伤，模样比以前更为丑陋可怕。
　　贾昆·赫加尔依然面露微笑，仍旧穿着那身破旧肮脏的外衣，只是头发清洗梳理过。半红半白的长发披到肩上，闪着光泽，艾莉亚听见女孩们羡慕地互相嘻笑称奇。
　　早知道，我就让大火烧死他们。詹德利说得对，我真该听他的。若是她没把斧子抛过去，他们早就没了命。片刻之间，她好害怕被认出来，可他们骑马经过时，对她并没有一丝一毫的关注。惟有贾昆·赫加尔大致朝她站的方向瞥了一眼，目光直直地越过了她。他也认不出我，她心想，这也难怪，阿利是个拿短剑的凶狠男孩。而我只是个提水捅的灰老鼠。
　　这天剩下的时间，她都在刷洗号哭塔的台阶。到得黄昏，当她将水桶拖回地窖时，手上已经破皮流血，胳膊酸得直打颤。艾莉亚累得连饭都吃不下，于是向威斯请求之后，直接爬回稻草堆里睡觉。“威斯，”她打着哈欠，“邓森，奇斯威克，波利佛，‘甜嘴’拉夫。‘记事本’和猎狗。格雷果爵士，亚摩利爵士，伊林爵士，马林爵士，乔佛里国王，瑟曦太后。”她觉得也许该在祷词里再加三个名字，但她今晚实在太累，无法做出决定。
　　她梦见群狼在森林里狂野地奔驰，突然有一只强壮的手捂住了她的嘴，就像光滑，温暖而坚实的岩石。她立即醒来，蠕动着要挣脱。“女孩什么都别说，”有个人贴着她的耳朵悄声道，“女孩闭紧嘴巴，没有人听得到，朋友之间说说悄悄话，好不好？”
　　艾莉亚的心咚咚直跳，她勉强点了点头。
　　贾昆·赫加尔将手拿开。地下室里一片漆黑，虽然他的脸只有数寸之遥，她也看不清。然而她能闻到他，他的皮肤闻起来很清新，有股肥皂的味道，他的头发上洒了香料。“小子变做女孩，”他喃喃道。
　　“我本来就是女孩。我还以为你没认出我。”
　　“某人的眼睛会看。某人洞察真相。”
　　她想起自己应该恨他的。“你吓着我了。你现在跟他们一伙，早知道我就让你烧死算了。你来这儿干嘛？走开，否则我喊威斯！”
　　“某人要还债。某人欠三条。”
　　“三条？”
　　“红神是债主，可爱的女孩，惟有死亡方能换取生命。女孩取走三条本属于他的命。女孩就得拿出三条来偿还。女孩说名字，某人去办事。”
　　原来他想帮我，艾莉亚想，心中陡然升起一线希望，简直令她晕眩。“带我去奔流城吧！那里并不远，我们偷两匹马，然后——”
　　他举起一根手指，放在她嘴唇上。“你有三条命，不多也不少。三条之后，我们两清。女孩必须想清楚。”他轻轻吻了吻她的头发，“但不要太久。”
　　等艾莉亚燃起她那截蜡烛头，空气中只剩一点淡淡的余味，那是一丝生姜和丁香的味道。睡在另一角落的女人在草堆里翻了个身，抱怨起亮光来，她只好把蜡烛吹熄。闭上眼睛，她眼前浮现出一张张脸庞：乔佛里和他母亲，伊林·派恩爵士，马林·特兰爵士和桑铎·克里冈……但他们远在千里之外的君临，而格雷果爵士只逗留了几晚，便又带着拉夫，奇斯威克和记事本他们一起外出掠夺。亚摩利·洛奇爵士倒是刚回来，她几乎一样恨他，不是吗？她不大肯定，还有排头的威斯呢。
　　第二天早上她决定将威斯列为优先考虑。只因睡眠不足，她打了个哈欠，便被威斯逮住不放。“黄鼠狼，”威斯咕哝道，“下次再让我看见你这样懒洋洋地张着嘴巴，就把你的舌头拔出来喂母狗。”他揪住她耳朵，使劲一拧，确保她印象深刻，然后叫她回去擦台阶，黄昏之前要擦到三层。
　　艾莉亚一边干活，一边考虑她的死亡名单。她假装他们的脸都印在台阶上，这样就能鼓起干劲努力擦洗。如今史塔克家和兰尼斯特家在打仗，而她是史塔克家的人，因此她应该尽可能多地杀死兰尼斯特家的人，打仗就是这么回事。可是，她觉得自己不该委托贾昆，而该亲自杀了他们。每当父亲判人死刑，总会提起寒冰，亲自操刀。“如果你要取人性命，至少应该注视他的双眼，聆听他的临终遗言。”她曾听父亲这么告诉罗柏和琼恩。
　　于是第二天她刻意避开贾昆·赫加尔，再往后一天也是。这并不困难。她个子太小，赫伦堡则太大，四处可容老鼠藏身。
　　接着格雷果爵士就回来了，比预期中要早。这次他的队伍没赶着绵羊般的俘虏，而是赶着一群真的绵羊。听说他在贝里伯爵的夜袭中损失了四个手下，只可惜艾莉亚憎恨的那几个都毫发未伤。他们住在号哭塔二层，由威斯负责供应饮酒。“这帮家伙怎么都喝不够，”他抱怨，“黄鼠狼，上去问问他们有没有衣服需要缝补，我找女人来负责。”
　　艾莉亚沿着被她擦洗干净的楼梯跑上去，进门时根本无人注意。奇斯威克手拿麦酒，坐在炉火旁，正在吹嘘他的那些趣闻。她不敢打断，惟恐又被打裂嘴唇。
　　“那时候，首相的比武大会刚结束，战争却还没来，”奇斯威克正说着，“我们七个跟着格雷果爵士返回西境。当时拉夫也在，还有小乔斯·斯提伍德，他在比武会中替爵士当侍从。嗯，我们遇上一条臭水沟，由于下雨，水涨得老高，没法淌过去，好在附近有个酒馆，因此我们就去歇了会儿。爵士叫来那酿酒的家伙，告诉他，水退之前，我们的杯子得一直满满的。吓！你没来瞅瞅他那对猪眼睛，看到银币就闪闪发光！他连忙把麦酒端出来，还叫上女儿帮忙。那酒稀得可怜，跟黄黄的尿差不多，这让我不大痛快，爵士也不大痛快。这酿酒的家伙啰里啰唆，一直在拜谢我们，因为大雨的关系，他最近的生意很不好。蠢蛋！他也不瞧瞧爵士的神色，告诉你，从头到尾，爵士一个字也没有说，只把嘴唇抿得紧紧的。大伙儿都知道他还在琢磨那个小花骑士的阴损招数，因此也就没接话，只有这个酿酒的在高谈阔论，居然还问起大人在比武会中的表现。于是，爵士就这么狠狠瞪了他一眼。”奇斯威克咯咯笑道，将麦酒一饮而尽，用手背抹去泡沫。“与此同时呢，他女儿正给我们端酒倒酒，那是个胖胖的小东西，大约十八岁——”
　　“我看是十三岁罢，”“甜嘴”拉夫懒洋洋地说。
　　“哦？随便随便，反正长得一塌糊涂。埃耿喝多了，摸了她两把，或许我自己也摸了两下，拉夫这伙计则怂恿小斯提伍德，叫他把女孩拖到楼上，完成自己的成年礼。说到最后，乔斯终于把手伸进她裙下，她尖声大叫，扔掉酒壶，跑进了厨房。嗯，事情本该就此打住，只怪那老笨蛋偏偏跑到爵士那儿去告状，要我们别碰他的女儿，还提醒爵士他是个涂过圣油的骑士。”
　　“格雷果爵士本来没有理会我们找乐子，这下他注意到了，你知道他怎么做？他命令把那个女孩带到他面前。于是那老家伙把她从厨房里拽了出来，嗨，这能怨谁呢？只能怨他自己！爵士看了看她，然后说：‘就她，她就是你关心的婊子？’那老糊涂蛋还直冲着格雷果爵士道：‘请原谅，我的蕾娜不是婊……，爵士。’爵士连眼睛都没眨一下，只说：‘她现在是了。’接着便丢给老头一枚银币，撕下小妞的裙子，当着她爹的面，就在桌子上把她办了。她像只兔子一样挣扎扭动，还吵吵闹闹。当时那老头脸上的表情，把我笑得连酒都从鼻子里喷了出来。最后有个男孩听见声音，从地窖里冲出，大概是他儿子，拉夫只好动手，往他肚子钉了把匕首。这时爵士已经完事，回去继续喝酒，便由大伙儿轮着上。托伯特——你知道他什么德行——把她翻过来从后面进。轮到我的时候，女孩已经不再挣扎，呵呵，或许她终于发现这样还挺舒服的，不过老实说，我宁愿女人多扭扭。最精彩的部分在后面：大家都完事之后，爵士要老头找钱，因为他女儿不值一个银币……哈哈，他说‘你这老东西要识相，赶紧找把铜板过来，恳求老爷的原谅，并感谢我们照顾生意，大驾光顾！’”
　　众人轰然狂笑，其中声音最大的就是奇斯威克自己，他似乎很满意自己的故事，连鼻涕都滴了下来，淌进乱糟糟的灰胡子里。艾莉亚站在楼梯间的阴影中，注视着他，一声不吭。最后，她蹑手蹑脚地回到地下室，威斯发现她没有询问衣服的事，便扒下她的裤子，用藤条鞭打，打得她大腿鲜血淋漓。艾莉亚闭紧眼睛，默念着西利欧教她的口诀，忘却了所有痛楚。
　　两天之后，威斯派她去兵营大厅侍奉晚餐。她拿酒壶帮兵士们倒酒时，一眼瞥见贾昆·赫加尔就在走道对面，就着托盘用餐。艾莉亚咬着嘴唇，小心翼翼地四处张望了一下，以确定威斯不在附近。恐惧比利剑更伤人，她告诉自己。
　　她向前踏出一步，又一步，一步又一步，逐渐觉得自己不再像只老鼠。她沿着长凳走下去，把桌上的酒杯一一倒满。罗尔杰坐在贾昆右边，已经喝得烂醉，因此没有注意她。艾莉亚俯身靠近，凑到贾昆耳边轻声说：“奇斯威克。”罗拉斯人不动声色，似乎根本没听见。
　　酒壶不知不觉就空了，艾莉亚赶紧跑回地下室，用酒桶重新灌满，然后迅速返回。这短短的时间里，没人渴死，也没人注意她的离开。
　　第二天，什么事都没有发生，再往后一天也一样，只是到了第四天，当艾莉亚跟威斯一起去厨房取晚餐时，听见威斯和厨子的对话。“知道么？魔山有个手下昨晚在城墙上散步时摔了下去，摔断了他的蠢脖子，”他说。
　　“醉酒了？”那女人问。
　　“他们哪天不是醉醺醺！可有些疑神疑鬼的家伙非说他给赫伦的鬼魂扔了下去！”他哼了一声，以示全然不信。
　　不是赫伦干的，艾莉亚想说，是我。只用一句耳语，她就杀死了奇斯威克，接下来还有两条性命。我就是赫伦堡的鬼魂，她心想。那天晚上，憎恨的名字少了一个。
　　※※※※※※
　　①HOAT在英语中意为山羊。
[ 此帖被挽墨在2015-08-29 13:00重新编辑 ]
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你看着眼前的人，分明还是以前的模样，可心里终究不是以前那般澄清透明了。
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　　CHAPTER 31
　　CATELYN

　　The meeting place was a grassy sward dotted with pale grey mushrooms and the raw stumps of felled trees.
　　“We are the first, my lady,” Hallis Mollen said as they reined up amidst the stumps, alone between the armies. The direwolf banner of House Stark flapped and fluttered atop the lance he bore. Catelyn could not see the sea from here, but she could feel how close it was. The smell of salt was heavy on the wind gusting from the east.
　　Stannis Baratheon’s foragers had cut the trees down for his siege towers and catapults. Catelyn wondered how long the grove had stood, and whether Ned had rested here when he led his host south to lift the last siege of Storm’s End. He had won a great victory that day, all the greater for being bloodless.
　　Gods grant that I shall do the same, Catelyn prayed. Her own liege men thought she was mad even to come. “This is no fight of ours, my lady,” Ser Wendel Manderly had said. “I know the king would not wish his mother to put herself at risk.” “We are all at risk,” she told him, perhaps too sharply. “Do you think I wish to be here, ser?” I belong at Riverrun with my dying father, at Winterfell with my sons. “Robb sent me south to speak for him, and speak for him I shall.” It would be no easy thing to forge a peace between these brothers, Catelyn knew, yet for the good of the realm, it must be tried.
　　Across rain-sodden flelds and stony ridges, she could see the great castle of Storm’s End rearing up against the sky, its back to the unseen sea. Beneath that mass of pale grey stone, the encircling army of Lord Stannis Baratheon looked as small and insignificant as mice with banners.
　　The songs said that Storm’s End had been raised in ancient days by Durran, the first Storm King, who had won the love of the fair Elenei, daughter of the sea god and the goddess of the wind. On the night of their wedding, Elenei had yielded her maidenhood to a mortal’s love and thus doomed herself to a mortal’s death, and her grieving parents had unleashed their wrath and sent the winds and waters to batter down Durran’s hold. His friends and brothers and wedding guests were crushed beneath collapsing walls or blown out to sea, but Elenei sheltered Durran within her arms so he took no harm, and when the dawn came at last he declared war upon the gods and vowed to rebuild.
　　Five more castles he built, each larger and stronger than the last, only to see them smashed asunder when the gale winds came howling up Shipbreaker Bay, driving great walls of water before them. His lords pleaded with him to build inland; his priests told him he must placate the gods by giving Elenei back to the sea; even his smallfolk begged him to relent. Durran would have none of it. A seventh castle he raised, most massive of all. Some said the children of the forest helped him build it, shaping the stones with magic; others claimed that a small boy told him what he must do, a boy who would grow to be Bran the Builder. No matter how the tale was told, the end was the same. Though the angry gods threw storm after storm against it, the seventh castle stood defiant, and Durran Godsgrief and fair Elenei dwelt there together until the end of their days.
　　Gods do not forget, and still the gales came raging up the narrow sea. Yet Storm’s End endured, through centuries and tens of centuries, a castle like no other. Its great curtain wall was a hundred feet high, unbroken by arrow slit or postern, everywhere rounded, curving, smooth, its stones fit so cunningly together that nowhere was crevice nor angle nor gap by which the wind might enter. That wall was said to be forty feet thick at its narrowest, and near eighty on the seaward face, a double course of stones with an inner core of sand and rubble. Within that mighty bulwark, the kitchens and stables and yards sheltered safe from wind and wave. Of towers, there was but one, a colossal drum tower, windowless where it faced the sea, so large that it was granary and barracks and feast hall and lord’s dwelling all in one, crowned by massive battlements that made it look from afar like a spiked flst atop an upthrust arm.
　　“My lady,” Hal Mollen called. Two riders had emerged from the tidy little camp beneath the castle, and were coming toward them at a slow walk. “That will be King Stannis.”
　　“No doubt.” Catelyn watched them come. Stannis it must be, yet that is not the Baratheon banner. It was a bright yellow, not the rich gold of Renly’s standards, and the device it bore was red, though she could not make out its shape.
　　Renly would be last to arrive. He had told her as much when she set out. He did not propose to mount his horse until he saw his brother well on his way. The first to arrive must wait on the other, and Renly would do no waiting. It is a sort of game kings play, she told herself. Well, she was no king, so she need not play it. Catelyn was practiced at waiting.
　　As he neared, she saw that Stannis wore a crown of red gold with points fashioned in the shape of flames. His belt was studded with garnets and yellow topaz, and a great square-cut ruby was set in the hilt of the sword he wore. Otherwise his dress was plain: studded leather jerkin over quilted doublet, worn boots, breeches of brown roughspun. The device on his sun-yellow banner showed a red heart surrounded by a blaze of orange fire. The crowned stag was there, yes . . . shrunken and enclosed within the heart. Even more curious was his standard bearer—a woman, garbed all in reds, face shadowed within the deep hood of her scarlet cloak. A red priestess, Catelyn thought, wondering. The sect was numerous and powerful in the Free Cities and the distant east, but there were few in the Seven Kingdoms.
　　“Lady Stark,” Stannis Baratheon said with chill courtesy as he reined up. He inclined his head, balder than she remembered.
　　“Lord Stannis,” she returned.
　　Beneath the tight-trimmed beard his heavy jaw clenched hard, yet he did not hector her about titles. For that she was duly grateful. “I had not thought to find you at Storm’s End.”
　　“I had not thought to be here.”
　　His deepset eyes regarded her uncomfortably. This was not a man made for easy courtesies. “I am sorry for your lord’s death,” he said, “though Eddard Stark was no friend to me.”
　　“He was never your enemy, my lord. When the Lords Tyrell and Redwyne held you prisoned in that castle, starving, it was Eddard Stark who broke the siege.”
　　“At my brother’s command, not for love of me,” Stannis answered. “Lord Eddard did his duty, I will not deny it. Did I ever do less? I should have been Robert’s Hand.”
　　“That was your brother’s will. Ned never wanted it.”
　　“Yet he took it. That which should have been mine. Still, I give you my word, you shall have justice for his murder.”
　　How they loved to promise heads, these men who would be king. “Your brother promised me the same. But if truth be told, I would sooner have my daughters back, and leave justice to the gods. Cersei still holds my Sansa, and of Arya there has been no word since the day of Robert’s death.”
　　“If your children are found when I take the city, they shall be sent to you.” Alive or dead, his tone implied.
　　“And when shall that be, Lord Stannis? King’s Landing is close to your Dragonstone, but I find you here instead.”
　　“You are frank, Lady Stark. Very well, I’ll answer you frankly. To take the city, I need the power of these southron lords I see across the field. My brother has them. I must needs take them from him.”
　　“Men give their allegiance where they will, my lord. These lords swore fealty to Robert and House Baratheon. If you and your brother were to put aside your quarrel—”
　　“I have no quarrel with Renly, should he prove dutiful. I am his elder, and his king. I want only what is mine by rights. Renly owes me loyalty and obedience. I mean to have it. From him, and from these other lords.” Stannis studied her face. “And what cause brings you to this field, my lady? Has House Stark cast its lot with my brother, is that the way of it?”
　　This one will never bend, she thought, yet she must try nonetheless. Too much was at stake. “My son reigns as King in the North, by the will of our lords and people. He bends the knee to no man, but holds out the hand of friendship to all.”
　　“Kings have no friends,” Stannis said bluntly, “only subjects and enemies.”
　　“And brothers,” a cheerful voice called out behind her. Catelyn glanced over her shoulder as Lord Renly’s palfrey picked her way through the stumps. The younger Baratheon was splendid in his green velvet doublet and satin cloak trimmed in vair. The crown of golden roses girded his temples, jade stag’s head rising over his forehead, long black hair spilling out beneat. Jagged chunks of black diamond studded his swordbelt, and a chain of gold and emeralds looped around his neck.
　　Renly had chosen a woman to carry his banner as well, though Brienne hid face and form behind plate armor that gave no hint of her sex. Atop her twelve-foot lance, the crowned stag pranced black-on-gold as the wind off the sea rippled the cloth.
　　His brother’s greeting was curt. “Lord Renly.”
　　“King Renly. Can that truly be you, Stannis?”
　　Stannis frowned. “Who else should it be?”
　　Renly gave an easy shrug. “When I saw that standard, I could not be certain. Whose banner do you bear?”
　　“Mine own.”
　　The red-clad priestess spoke up. “The king has taken for his sigil the fiery heart of the Lord of Light.”
　　Renly seemed amused by that. “All for the good. If we both use the same banner, the battle will be terribly confused.”
　　Catelyn said, “Let us hope there will be no battle. We three share a common foe who would destroy us all.”
　　Stannis studied her, unsmiling. “The Iron Throne is mine by rights. All those who deny that are my foes.”
　　“The whole of the realm denies it, brother,” said Renly. “Old men deny it with their death rattle, and unborn children deny it in their mothers’wombs. They deny it in Dorne and they deny it on the Wall. No one wants you for their king. Sorry.”
　　Stannis clenched his jaw, his face taut. “I swore I would never treat with you while you wore your traitor’s crown. Would that I had kept to that vow.”
　　“This is folly,” Catelyn said sharply. “Lord Tywin sits at Harrenhal with twenty thousand swords. The remnants of the Kingslayer’s army have regrouped at the Golden Tooth, another Lannister host gathers beneath the shadow of Casterly Rock, and Cersei and her son hold King’s Landing and your precious Iron Throne. You each name yourself king, yet the kingdom bleeds, and no one lifts a sword to defend it but my son.”
　　Renly shrugged. “Your son has won a few battles. I shall win the war. The Lannisters can wait my pleasure.”
　　“If you have proposals to make, make them,” Stannis said brusquely, “or I will be gone.”
　　“Very well,” said Renly. “I propose that you dismount, bend your knee, and swear me your allegiance.”
　　Stannis choked back rage. “That you shall never have.”
　　“You served Robert, why not me?”
　　“Robert was my elder brother. You are the younger.”
　　“Younger, bolder, and far more comely . . .”
　　“. . . and a thief and a usurper besides.”
　　Renly shrugged. “The Targaryens called Robert usurper. He seemed to be able to bear the shame. So shall I.”
　　This will not do. “Listen to yourselves! If you were sons of mine, I would bang your heads together and lock you in a bedchamber until you remembered that you were brothers.”
　　Stannis frowned at her. “You presume too much, Lady Stark. I am the rightful king, and your son no less a traitor than my brother here. His day will come as well.”
　　The naked threat fanned her fury. “You are very free to name others traitor and usurper, my lord, yet how are you any different? You say you alone are the rightful king, yet it seems to me that Robert had two sons. By all the laws of the Seven Kingdoms, Prince Joffrey is his rightful heir, and Tommen after him . . . and we are all traitors, however good our reasons.”
　　Renly laughed. “You must forgive Lady Catelyn, Stannis. She’s come all the way down from Riverrun, a long way ahorse. I fear she never saw your little letter.”
　　“Joffrey is not my brother’s seed,” Stannis said bluntly. “Nor is Tommen. They are bastards. The girl as well. All three of them abominations born of incest.”
　　Would even Cersei be so mad? Catelyn was speechless.
　　“Isn’t that a sweet story, my lady?” Renly asked. “I was camped at Horn Hill when Lord Tarly received his letter, and I must say, it took my breath away.” He smiled at his brother. “I had never suspected you were so clever, Stannis. Were it only true, you would indeed be Robert’s heir.”
　　“Were it true? Do you name me a liar?”
　　“Can you prove any word of this fable?”
　　Stannis ground his teeth.
　　Robert could never have known, Catelyn thought, or Cersei would have lost her head in an instant. “Lord Stannis,” she asked, “if you knew the queen to be guilty of such monstrous crimes, why did you keep silent?”
　　“I did not keep silent,” Stannis declared. “I brought my suspicions to Jon Arryn.”
　　“Rather than your own brother?”
　　“My brother’s regard for me was never more than dutiful,” said Stannis. “From me, such accusations would have seemed peevish and selfserving, a means of placing myself first in the line of succession. I believed Robert would be more disposed to listen if the charges came from Lord Arryn, whom he loved.”
　　“Ah,” said Renly. “So we have the word of a dead man.”
　　“Do you think he died by happenstance, you purblind fool? Cersei had him poisoned, for fear he would reveal her. Lord Jon had been gathering certain proofs—”
　　“—which doubtless died with him. How inconvenient.”
　　Catelyn was remembering, fitting pieces together. “My sister Lysa accused the queen of killing her husband in a letter she sent me at Winterfell,” she admitted. “Later, in the Eyrie, she laid the murder at the feet of the queen’s brother Tyrion.”
　　Stannis snorted. “If you step in a nest of snakes, does it matter which one bites you first?”
　　“All this of snakes and incest is droll, but it changes nothing. You may well have the better claim, Stannis, but I still have the larger army.” Renly’s hand slid inside his cloak. Stannis saw, and reached at once for the hilt of his sword, but before he could draw steel his brother produced . . . a peach. “Would you like one, brother?” Renly asked, smiling. “From Highgarden. You’ve never tasted anything so sweet, I promise you.” He took a bit. Juice ran from the corner of his mouth.
　　“I did not come here to eat fruit.” Stannis was fuming.
　　“My lords!” Catelyn said. “We ought to be hammering out the terms of an alliance, not trading taunts.”
　　“A man should never refuse to taste a peach,” Renly said as he tossed the stone away. “He may never get the chance again. Life is short, Stannis. Remember what the Starks say. Winter is coming.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
　　“I did not come here to be threatened, either.”
　　“Nor were you,” Renly snapped back. “When I make threats, you’ll know it. If truth be told, I’ve never liked you, Stannis, but you are my own blood, and I have no wish to slay you. So if it is Storm’s End you want, take it . . . as a brother’s gift. As Robert once gave it to me, I give it to YOU.”
　　“It is not yours to give. It is mine by rights.”
　　Sighing, Renly half turned in the saddle. “What am I to do with this brother of mine, Brienne? He refuses my peach, he refuses my castle, he even shunned my wedding . . .”
　　“We both know your wedding was a mummer’s farce. A year ago you were scheming to make the girl one of Robert’s whores.”
　　“A year ago I was scheming to make the girl Robert’s queen,” Renly said, “but what does it matter? The boar got Robert and I got Margaery. You’ll be pleased to know she came to me a maid.”
　　“In your bed she’s like to die that way.”
　　“Oh, I expect I’ll get a son on her within the year. Pray, how many sons do you have, Stannis? Oh, yes—none.” Renly smiled innocently. “As to your daughter, I understand. If my wife looked like yours, I’d send my fool to service her as well.”
　　“Enough!” Stannis roared. “I will not be mocked to my face, do you hear me? I will not!” He yanked his longsword from its scabbard. The steel gleamed strangely bright in the wan sunlight, now red, now yellow, now blazing white. The air around it seemed to shimmer, as if from heat.
　　Catelyn’s horse whinnied and backed away a step, but Brienne moved between the brothers, her own blade in hand. “Put up your steel!” she shouted at Stannis.
　　Cersei Lannister is laughing herself breathless, Catelyn thought wearily.
　　Stannis pointed his shining sword at his brother. “I am not without mercy,” thundered he who was notoriously without mercy. “Nor do I wish to sully Lightbringer with a brother’s blood. For the sake of the mother who bore us both, I will give you this night to rethink your folly, Renly. Strike your banners and come to me before dawn, and I will grant you Storm’s End and your old seat on the council and even name you my heir until a son is born to me. Otherwise, I shall destroy you.”
　　Renly laughed. “Stannis, that’s a very pretty sword, I’ll grant you, but I think the glow off it has ruined your eyes. Look across the fields, brother. Can you see all those banners?”
　　“Do you think a few bolts of cloth will make you king?”
　　“Tyrell swords will make me king. Rowan and Tarly and Caron will make me king, with axe and mace and warhammer. Tarth arrows and Penrose lances, Fossoway, Cuy, Mullendore, Estermont, Selmy, Hightower, Oakheart, Crane, Caswell, Blackbar, Morrigen, Beesbury, Shermer, Dunn, Footly . . . even House Florent, your own wife’s brothers and uncles, they will make me king. All the chivalry of the south rides with me, and that is the least part of my power. My foot is coming behind, a hundred thousand swords and spears and pikes. And you will destroy me? With what, pray? That paltry rabble I see there huddled under the castle walls? I’ll call them five thousand and be generous, codfish lords and onion knights and sellswords. Half of them are like to come over to me before the battle starts. You have fewer than four hundred horse, my scouts tell me— freeriders in boiled leather who will not stand an instant against armored lances. I do not care how seasoned a warrior you think you are, Stannis, that host of yours won’t survive the first charge of my vanguard.”
　　“We shall see, brother.” Some of the light seemed to go out of the world when Stannis slid his sword back into its scabbard. “Come the dawn, we shall see.”
　　“I hope your new god’s a merciful one, brother.”
　　Stannis snorted and galloped away, disdainful. The red priestess lingered a moment behind. “Look to your own sins, Lord Renly,” she said as she wheeled her horse around.
　　Catelyn and Lord Renly returned together to the camp where his thousands and her few waited their return. “That was amusing, if not terribly profitable,” he commented. “I wonder where I can get a sword like that? Well, doubtless Loras will make me a gift of it after the battle. It grieves me that it must come to this.”
　　“You have a cheerful way of grieving,” said Catelyn, whose distress was not feigned.
　　“Do I?” Renly shrugged. “So be it. Stannis was never the most cherished of brothers, I confess. Do you suppose this tale of his is true? If Joffrey is the Kingslayer’s get—”
　　“—your brother is the lawful heir.”
　　“While he lives,” Renly admitted. “Though it’s a fool’s law, wouldn’t you agree? Why the oldest son, and not the best-fitted? The crown will suit me, as it never suited Robert and would not suit Stannis. I have it in me to be a great king, strong yet generous, clever, just, diligent, loyal to my friends and terrible to my enemies, yet capable of forgiveness, patient—” “—humble?” Catelyn supplied.
　　Renly laughed. “You must allow a king some flaws, my lady.”
　　Catelyn felt very tired. It had all been for nothing. The Baratheon brothers would drown each other in blood while her son faced the Lannisters alone, and nothing she could say or do would stop it. It is past time I went back to Riverrun to close my father’s eyes, she thought. That much at least I can do. I may be a poor envoy, but I am a good moumer, gods save me.
　　Their camp was well sited atop a low stony ridge that ran from north to south. It was far more orderly than the sprawling encampment on the Mander, though only a quarter as large. When he’d learned of his brother’s assault on Storm’s End, Renly had split his forces, much as Robb had done at the Twins. His great mass of foot he had left behind at Bitterbridge with his young queen, his wagons, carts, draft animals, and all his cumbersome siege machinery, while Renly himself led his knights and freeriders in a swift dash east.
　　How like his brother Robert he was, even in that . . . only Robert had always had Eddard Stark to temper his boldness with caution. Ned would surely have prevailed upon Robert to bring up his whole force, to encircle Stannis and besiege the besiegers. That choice Renly had denied himself in his headlong rush to come to grips with his brother. He had outdistanced his supply lines, left food and forage days behind with all his wagons and mules and oxen. He must come to battle soon, or starve.
　　Catelyn sent Hal Mollen to tend to their horses while she accompanied Renly back to the royal pavilion at the heart of the encampment. Inside the walls of green silk, his captains and lords bannermen were waiting to hear word of the parley. “My brother has not changed,” their young king told them as Brienne unfastened his cloak and lifted the gold-and-jade crown from his brow. “Castles and courtesies will not appease him, he must have blood. Well, I am of a mind to grant his wish.”
　　“Your Grace, I see no need for battle here,” Lord Mathis Rowan put in. “The castle is strongly garrisoned and well provisioned, Ser Cortnay Penrose is a seasoned commander, and the trebuchet has not been built that could breach the walls of Storm’s End. Let Lord Stannis have his siege. He will find no joy in it, and whilst he sits cold and hungry and profitless, we will take King’s Landing.”
　　“And have men say I feared to face Stannis?”
　　“Only fools will say that,” Lord Mathis argued.
　　Renly looked to the others. “What say you all?”
　　“I say that Stannis is a danger to you,” Lord Randyll Tarly declared. “Leave him unblooded and he will only grow stronger, while your own power is diminished by battle. The Lannisters will not be beaten in a day. By the time you are done with them, Lord Stannis may be as strong as you . . . or stronger.”
　　Others chorused their agreement. The king looked pleased. “We shall fight, then.”
　　I have failed Robb as I failed Ned, Catelyn thought. “My lord,” she announced. “If you are set on battle, my purpose here is done. I ask your leave to return to Riverrun.”
　　“You do not have it.” Renly seated himself on a camp chair.
　　She stiffened. “I had hoped to help you make a peace, my lord. I will not help you make a war.”
　　Renly gave a shrug. “I daresay we’ll prevail without your five-and-twenty, my lady. I do not mean for you to take part in the battle, only to watch it.”
　　“I was at the Whispering Wood, my lord. I have seen enough butchery. I came here an envoy—”
　　“And an envoy you shall leave,” Renly said, “but wiser than you came. You shall see what befalls rebels with your own eyes, so your son can hear it from your own lips. We’ll keep you safe, never fear.” He turned away to make his dispositions. “Lord Mathis, you shall lead the center of my main battle. Bryce, you’ll have the left. The right is mine. Lord Estermont, you shall command the reserve.”
　　“I shall not fail you, Your Grace,” Lord Estermont replied.
　　Lord Mathis Rowan spoke up. “Who shall have the van?”
　　“Your Grace,” said Ser Jon Fossoway, “I beg the honor.”
　　“Beg all you like,” said Ser Guyard the Green, “by rights it should be one of the seven who strikes the first blow.”
　　“It takes more than a pretty cloak to charge a shield wall,” Randyll Tarly announced. “I was leading Mace Tyrell’s van when you were still sucking on your mother’s teat, Guyard.”
　　A clamor filled the pavilion, as other men loudly set forth their claims. The knights of summer, Catelyn thought. Renly raised a hand. “Enough, my lords. If I had a dozen vans, all of you should have one, but the greatest glory by rights belongs to the greatest knight. Ser Loras shall strike the first blow.”
　　“With a glad heart, Your Grace.” The Knight of Flowers knelt before the king. “Grant me your blessing, and a knight to ride beside me with your banner. Let the stag and rose go to battle side by side.”
　　Renly glanced about him. “Brienne.”
　　“Your Grace?” She was still armored in her blue steel, though she had taken off her helm. The crowded tent was hot, and sweat plastered limp yellow hair to her broad, homely face. “My place is at your side. I am your sworn shield . . .”
　　“One of seven,” the king reminded her. “Never fear, four of your fellows will be with me in the fight.”
　　Brienne dropped to her knees. “If I must part from Your Grace, grant me the honor of arming you for battle.”
　　Catelyn heard someone snigger behind her. She loves him, poor thing, she thought sadly. She’d play his squire just to touch him, and never care how great a fool they think her.
　　“Granted,” Renly said. “Now leave me, all of you. Even kings must rest before a battle.”
　　“My lord,” Catelyn said, “there was a small sept in the last village we passed. If you will not permit me to depart for Riverrun, grant me leave to go there and pray.”
　　“As you will. Ser Robar, give Lady Stark safe escort to this sept . . . but see that she returns to us by dawn.”
　　“You might do well to pray yourself,” Catelyn added. “For victory?”
　　“For wisdom.”
　　Renly laughed. “Loras, stay and help me pray. It’s been so long I’ve quite forgotten how. As to the rest of you, I want every man in place by first light, armed, armored, and horsed. We shall give Stannis a dawn he will not soon forget.”
　　Dusk was falling when Catelyn left the pavilion. Ser Robar Royce fell in beside her. She knew him slightly—one of Bronze Yohn’s sons, comely in a rough-hewn way, a tourney warrior of some renown. Renly had gifted him with a rainbow cloak and a suit of blood red armor, and named him one of his seven. “You are a long way from the Vale, ser,” she told him.
　　“And you far from Winterfell, my lady.”
　　“I know what brought me here, but why have you come? This is not your battle, no more than it is mine.”
　　“I made it my battle when I made Renly my king.”
　　“The Royces are bannermen to House Arryn.”
　　“My lord father owes Lady Lysa fealty, as does his heir. A second son must find glory where he can.” Ser Robar shrugged. “A man grows weary of tourneys.”
　　He could not be older than one-and-twenty, Catelyn thought, of an age with his king . . . but her king, her Robb, had more wisdom at fifteen than this youth had ever learned. Or so she prayed.
　　In Catelyn’s small corner of the camp, Shadd was slicing carrots into a kettle, Hal Mollen was dicing with three of his Winterfell men, and Lucas Blackwood sat sharpening his dagger. “Lady Stark,” Lucas said when he saw her, “Mollen says it is to be battle at dawn.”
　　“Hal has the truth of it,” she answered. And a loose tongue as well, it would seem.
　　“Do we fight or flee?”
　　“We pray, Lucas,” she answered him. “We pray.”



Ⅱ 列王的纷争 Chapter32 凯特琳
　　谈判地点乃是一片点缀着灰白蘑菇和新伐树桩的青绿草地。
　　“我们来得最早，夫人，”当他们骑行到树桩之间，孤立于两军当中时，哈里斯·莫兰评论道。史塔克家族的冰原狼旗帜在他紧握的长熗顶端飞舞雀跃。从这里，凯特琳望不到大海，但她清楚地感觉到大海的存在。晨风中弥漫着浊重的海盐味，从东方不绝而来。
　　史坦尼斯·拜拉席恩的部下把树木砍倒以搭建攻城塔和投石机。十几年一个轮回，凯特琳不禁思量这片树林究竟长了多高，不知奈德南下解风息堡之围时是否也在此观望。那天，他赢得了一次伟大的胜利，一场不流血的胜利。
　　但愿诸神保佑，我也能获得同样的成功，凯特琳默默地祷告。她手下的人都以为她疯了。“这场战争和我们无关，夫人，”文德尔·曼德勒说。“我更明白，国王陛下不希望自己的母亲去亲身冒险。”
　　“我们一直在冒险，”她告诉他，或许语气尖刻了些。“你以为我想来这里吗，爵士？”我属于奔流城垂死的老父，我属于临冬城幼弱的儿子。“罗柏既然派我到南方来为他发言，那我就要实实在在地负起发言的责任。”凯特琳深知，要在两弟兄间打造和平几乎是不可能完成的任务，但为了王国的未来，她必须一试。
　　越过细雨浸染的田野和多石崎岖的山冈，她遥遥望见巨大的风息堡屹立于苍天，完全遮蔽了其后的汪洋。在那些浅灰色的巨石下，史坦尼斯·拜拉席恩公爵的军队看起来如此渺小和无助，活像举着旗帜的老鼠。
　　歌谣相传，风息堡乃是古代第一位风暴国王杜伦所建，他赢得了美丽的依妮的爱情，而她是海神和风之女神爱的结晶。在他们新婚之夜，依妮将她的贞洁献给了一位凡人，从此便须像凡人一样承受生老病死。她的双亲对女儿的决定悲愤无比，将怒火发泄于杜伦的城郭。他们招来狂风和巨浪。那一夜，他的朋友、兄弟和婚宴宾客统统被卷走，要么砸死在城墙，要么淹没于汪洋，只有依妮用她的双臂勇敢地护卫着杜伦，保护他免遭伤害。最后，天亮了，风暴终于停息，这时杜伦向神灵们宣战，他发誓要重建城堡。
　　他的城堡重建了五次，一次比一次高大，一次比一次坚固，但当那呼啸的狂风和滔天的巨浪从破船湾中咆哮而出时，城墙都被一一粉碎。他的封臣纷纷恳求他迁到内地筑城；他的牧师告诉他为了安抚神灵的怒气应把依妮归还于大海；甚至他的属民百姓也请求他别再斗争。杜伦通通置之不理。他终于建成了第七座城堡，最雄伟的城堡。传说中这座城堡乃是由森林之子帮助修建，巨石中充溢着他们的魔法；另一种说法是城堡的筑法得自于一位小男孩之口——这个孩子就是日后的筑城者布兰登。不过无论故事的说法怎样，结局总是相同：尽管愤怒的神灵一次又一次将风暴投掷到那第七座城堡，它依旧巍然耸立，被神憎恨的杜伦和美丽的依妮幸福地生活在一起，直到他们终归尘土。
　　神灵没有宽恕他，千钧的狂风依旧时时从狭海吹来。风息堡日复一日地承受着风暴，几个纪元几十个世纪转瞬而过，而这城堡纹丝不动。它那伟岸的外墙足足有百尺之高，其上既无箭孔亦无暗门，巨石之间镶嵌精巧，处处浑圆一体，弯曲平滑，无角无缝，风雨难侵。外墙最窄的地方据说是四十尺厚，而临海一面将近有八十尺，城墙由内外两层巨石夹着中间的沙砾和碎石。在这伟岸的城墙之内，不论厨房、马厩还是庭院都不会受到一丝一毫风暴和波涛的影响。至于塔楼，这座城只有独一无二的一座，一座巨型的钟鼓楼。它临海的一面无有窗户，整个塔把风息堡的谷仓、兵营、宴会厅以及贵族居所都装在里面，令人惊叹于它的庞大。厚实的城垛环绕着它的顶部，远远看去，犹如一只擎天巨臂上张开的无数手指。
　　“夫人，”哈尔·莫兰喊道。在城堡下那整齐而渺小的营垒外出现了两个骑手，他们缓步而来。“那应该是史坦尼斯国王。”
　　“不错。”凯特琳打量着他们。那肯定是史坦尼斯，不过旗号却不是拜拉席恩家族的徽章。那是嫩黄，而非蓝礼营中的金黄，尤其是上面的图案，似乎是红的，凯特琳看不清它的形状。
　　蓝礼铁定会最后到来。她动身前他便告知她：他要等老哥出发后才会上马，因为早到的将等待晚到的，而他蓝礼决不当那个等待者。这是国王之间玩的又一种游戏，她告诉自己。好在她自己不是国王，所以她可以摆脱这些游戏。而对于等待，凯特琳早已习以为常。
　　直等他走近，她才看清史坦尼斯戴着一顶赤金的王冠，边缘刻意弄成火焰的形状。他的腰带上镶着石榴石和黄玉，一颗四四方方的大红宝石嵌在他的佩剑柄上。他身上的其他装束却很朴素：棉上衣外罩镶钉皮背心，一双磨旧的靴子，织工粗糙的棕色马裤。他那艳阳般色泽的旗帜上，画了一颗火红之心，由一圈橙色火焰所环绕。宝冠雄鹿的标记也还在上面，还在……不过却大大缩小，并被勾勒在火心之中。更奇怪的是，他挑选的掌旗官不仅是个女的，还一身火红装束，面容隐藏在猩红色的兜帽里不得而知。似乎是域外的红袍女祭司，凯特琳好奇地想。这个教派分支繁多，根深叶茂，不过一直都在自由贸易城邦和遥远的东方活动，向来不大涉足七大王国。
　　“史塔克夫人，”史坦尼斯勒住坐骑，带着冷冷的礼数打了声招呼。他微微点头，头发比她记忆中更少了。
　　“史坦尼斯大人，”她回应。
　　在齐整的胡须下，他那巨大的下巴收紧起来，不过他并未在头衔问题上当即发难。对此她相当感激。“没想到能在风息堡遇见你。”
　　“我也没想到自己会来这儿。”
　　他那双深陷的眼睛瞧得她不自在。这不是一个谈吐优雅，风度翩翩的人。“对于你丈夫的死我很遗憾，”他说，“虽然艾德·史塔克并不是我的朋友。”
　　“他也从来不是您的敌人，大人。当您被提利尔大人和雷德温大人困在这座城堡，饥饿待毙时，正是艾德·史塔克为您解除了危机。”
　　“那是由于我哥哥的命令，并非出于对我的爱护，”史坦尼斯答道。“史塔克公爵履行了他的职责，这点我不否认。可我做的难道就不够吗？成为劳勃首相的本该是我。”
　　“那是您哥哥的意思。奈德从未贪图荣华。”
　　“可他仍旧接受了。而那应当是我的。即便如此，我还是向你保证，我会为这次谋杀主持正义。”
　　这些想当国王的人，多喜欢拿人头来做承诺啊。“您弟弟也向我作了同样的承诺。但说实话，我只想要回我的女儿，而把正义和公道留给不朽的神灵去主宰。我的珊莎还在瑟曦手中，而自劳勃驾崩那天起，我便再没听到关于艾莉亚的只字片语。”
　　“倘若我拿下都城之后找着你的女儿，我会立刻把她们送还于你。”不论死活，这一句他倒没说出口。
　　“那要等到什么时候，史坦尼斯大人？君临和您的龙石岛近在咫尺，可我发现您偏偏来了这里。”
　　“你很坦率，史塔克夫人，这再好不过，让我也坦率地回答你。要拿下都城，我需要原野对面那些强大的南方诸侯的兵力。眼下他们追随着我弟弟，因此我必须从他手中夺过来。”
　　“大人，天下的律法是，人们要对自己的封君效忠。这些贵族宣誓效忠的对象是劳勃和拜拉席恩家族。如果您和您弟弟之间能停止争执——”
　　“我和蓝礼之间不存在争执，而是他如何表示忠顺的问题。我是他的兄长，也是他的国王。我要的只是根据权利属于我的东西。蓝礼理应忠顺于我、服从于我。我要的只有这个。当然，不仅是他，还包括其他各路诸侯。”史坦尼斯审视着她的面孔。“夫人，你又为何而来？难道说史塔克家族已经把自己拴在了我弟弟的马车上，是吗？”
　　此人绝不会妥协让步，她想，但她依旧不能放弃努力。太多的东西关系于此。“在贵族和平民的共同拥戴下，我儿已加冕为北境之王。他不会向任何人臣服，但愿意向所有人伸出友谊之手。”
　　“国王没有朋友，”史坦尼斯粗直地说，“只有臣民和敌人。”
　　“还有兄弟嘛，”一个欢快的声音从她身后传来。凯特琳回头看去，只见蓝礼漂亮的母马在树桩之间悠闲地挑选路径。年轻的拜拉席恩身穿绿天鹅绒上衣，披着镶松鼠皮的绸缎披风，看起来十分光鲜。装点着金玫瑰的王冠戴在他头上，前额处有头碧玉的雄鹿，他长长的黑发则披散于王冠之下。他的剑鞘上镶点了无数磨工精巧的大块黑钻石，一条翡翠金项链挂在颈项。
　　蓝礼也选择了一位女性来为他掌旗，不过身穿重甲的布蕾妮掩盖了面容和身段，无从透露性别。在她手中十二尺的长熗上，黑色的宝冠雄鹿腾跃于金色的面底，海上吹来的风划出无垠的波纹。
　　对他，他哥哥的问候也同样简洁。“蓝礼公爵。”
　　“蓝礼国王啦。这东西真是你的旗，史坦尼斯？”
　　史坦尼斯皱起眉头。“不然还是谁？”
　　蓝礼疏懒地耸耸肩。“远远看见，我还不大确定呢。你到底打着哪家的旗号？”
　　“我自己的。”
　　红袍女开了口：“国王陛下的徽章乃是真主光之王的烈焰红心。”
　　蓝礼似乎觉得很有趣。“我举双手赞成。如果咱俩打着同样的旗帜，打起来不弄混才怪。”
　　凯特琳适时插话：“仗还是别打的好。我们三方应该好好研究如何对付共同的敌人，否则它要把我们大家全部摧毁。”
　　史坦尼斯再次审视她的面孔，依旧一点笑意也无。“按照律法，铁王座属于我。否认这点的都是我的敌人。”
　　“全国都在否认你啊，老哥，”蓝礼说，“糟老头子临死时念叨着否认，未出生的婴儿在妈妈肚子里踢闹着否认。多恩人否认你，长城上的人否认你。没有一个人想让你当他的国王。非常遗憾。”
　　史坦尼斯咬紧下巴，面孔格外紧绷。“我曾发誓，只要你还戴着那顶叛逆的冠冕，我就绝不和你打交道。我早该遵守誓言。”
　　“这一切是多么可笑啊，”凯特琳尖锐地指出。“泰温公爵率领两万大军屯驻于赫伦堡，弑君者的残部在金牙城重整旗鼓，而在凯岩城的阴影下，兰尼斯特正加紧编制新军，同时瑟曦和她儿子还占有着君临以及你们那宝贝的铁椅子。你们都自称为王，眼下王国正分崩流血，除了我儿子，难道就没人肯拔剑而出、捍卫王国了么？”
　　蓝礼耸肩，“您儿子赢了几场战斗。我将赢得整个战争。一步一步来，到时候我自然会处理兰尼斯特。”
　　“你有什么建议，赶快提出来，”史坦尼斯唐突地喊道，“不然我马上离开。”
　　“非常好，”蓝礼道，“我建议你立刻下马，单膝跪下，宣誓效忠。”
　　史坦尼斯强抑怒火。“你永远得不到。”
　　“你既然可以为劳勃效劳，为什么对我就不行？”
　　“劳勃是我长兄。你不过是我的小弟。”
　　“是啊，我比你年轻，勇敢，标致……”
　　“……小偷！篡夺者！”
　　蓝礼又耸耸肩。“坦格利安家也管劳勃叫篡夺者，不过这指责对他毫无影响。所以我也无所谓。”
　　这样是不行的。“听听你们说的话！如果你们是我儿子，我要把你们两个的头狠狠撞在一起，然后锁进一间卧室，直到你们认清彼此是兄弟为止。”
　　史坦尼斯朝她皱眉。“你假设得太过火了，史塔克夫人。我是合法的国王，而你儿子和我弟弟一样都只是叛徒。他也有末日来临的那一天。”
　　这赤裸裸的威胁煽起了她的怒火。“大人，您有这个自由去随意指称别人为‘叛徒’或‘篡夺’，可瞧瞧您自己有什么区别？您说您是合法的国王，但我还没忘记劳勃留下两个儿子。不论依照七国上下何处的律法，乔佛里王子才是他的法定继承人，其后是托曼……我们都是叛徒，不管各家有什么好理由。”
　　蓝礼笑道：“你得原谅史塔克夫人哦，史坦尼斯。她从奔流城这么一路长途跋涉，大半时间都在马背上，恐怕来不及收看你那小小的信件哟。”
　　“乔佛里不是我哥哥的种，”史坦尼斯开门见山地说。“托曼也不是。他们都是私生子，包括那女孩在内，三个都是乱伦产下的孽种。”
　　瑟曦真的如此疯狂？凯特琳一时语塞。
　　“这故事可精彩，夫人？”蓝礼笑问。“我在角陵扎营时，塔利大人正好收到信，我承认，看得我大为赞叹啊。”他对着哥哥笑。“我从来不知道，你还会这么聪明的法门，史坦尼斯。如果这个能当真，你就是劳勃合法的继承人喽。”
　　“如果当真？难道你怀疑我说谎？”
　　“你有任何证据来证明这个神话吗？”
　　史坦尼斯咬紧了牙关。
　　或许连劳勃自己都不知道，凯特琳想，不然瑟曦早就脑袋搬家了。“史坦尼斯大人，”她询问，“您既已得知王后犯下滔天罪行，为何一直保持缄默？”
　　“我并没有保持缄默，”史坦尼斯。“我将自己的怀疑告诉了琼恩·艾林。”
　　“而非告诉自己的兄长？”
　　“我哥哥对我的要求除了忠诚尽责再没有其他，”史坦尼斯说。“何况从我的角度，这样的指控只可能显得自私和不妥，别人会以为我的目的是想把自己放到继承顺序的首位。我相信劳勃会更倾向于听取艾林公爵的意见，因为他敬爱艾林公爵。”
　　“啊哈，”蓝礼道，“所以我们的证据在一个死人的嘴里。”
　　“你以为他真是偶然病逝，你这不长眼睛的蠢货？瑟曦毒死了他！惟恐他揭发她的丑行。琼恩大人已经搜集到确凿的证据，那些证据无疑——”
　　“——和他一起进了棺材。你瞧，多为难呀。”
　　凯特琳开始明白了，她试着将碎片拼凑起来。“我妹妹莱莎在一封送到临冬城的密信里指控王后谋杀了她丈夫，”她承认，“其后，在鹰巢城，她又把这项指控转嫁到王后的弟弟提利昂身上。”
　　史坦尼斯哼了一声，“若你掉进毒蛇窝，被哪条先咬到有什么区别？”
　　“这些毒蛇呀乱伦呀都挺有趣，但什么也改变不了。说到底，你的要求的确更合理合法，史坦尼斯，不过我的军队却多得多。”蓝礼把手伸进披风下。史坦尼斯见状立刻握紧剑柄，不过在拔剑之前他弟弟却拿出了……一颗桃子。“要来一个吗，老哥？”蓝礼一脸笑意地发问，“高庭产的哦，我保证，你从没尝过这么可口的东西。”他咬了一口，汁液从嘴角流下。
　　“我不是来吃水果的。”史坦尼斯怒不可遏。
　　“大人们！”凯特琳高喊，“我们应该协力打造联盟，而不是恶言相交啊。”
　　“一个人实在不该拒绝品尝新桃子，”蓝礼边扔掉果核边评论。“谁知道以后还有没有机会？人生苦短啊，史坦尼斯。知道史塔克家怎么说吗？凛冬将至啊。”他用手背擦掉嘴边的果汁。
　　“我也不是来听你威胁的。”
　　“我可没威胁你，”蓝礼反击，“如果发出威胁，我会堂堂正正。说真的，我从来没有喜欢过你，史坦尼斯，可你毕竟是我的手足，我一点也不想伤害你。所以啦，如果你要的是风息堡，就拿去吧……权当兄弟之间的馈赠。就像劳勃当初赐予我一样，如今我将它赐予你。”
　　“轮不到你来赐予。照权利它本就属于我。”
　　蓝礼叹了口气，微微转身，“我要拿这个老哥怎么办呢，布蕾妮？他拒绝了我的桃子，拒绝了我的城堡，甚至还不肯来参加我的婚礼……”
　　“好了，你我都心知肚明，你那婚礼不过是出拙劣的闹剧。一年前你还计划让那女孩变成劳勃的又一个婊子。”
　　“一年前我计划让那女孩成为劳勃的王后，”蓝礼说，“可这有什么关系？野猪带走了劳勃而我带走了玛格丽。她嫁给我时还是个处女，你该替我高兴才是。”
　　“和你同床，她宁肯选择劳勃的下场。”
　　“啊，是嘛，跟你说，我期望和她今年便来个胖小子哦。天哪，你有几个儿子，史坦尼斯？啊，不错——一个也没有。”蓝礼无邪地笑道。“至于你女儿的事嘛，我其实挺理解的。如果我老婆长得跟你老婆一样丑，那我也宁可叫个弄臣去服侍她。”
　　“够了！”史坦尼斯咆哮起来，“我绝不允许谁当面侮辱我，你听清楚了没？我绝不允许！”他猛然抽出长剑。在苍白的目光下，剑身闪着诡异的光芒，一会儿红，一会儿黄，又一会儿变成炽烈的白芒。就连周遭的空气也似乎感应到剑刃四射的热力，跟着变换发光。
　　凯特琳的坐骑嘶叫着退开一步。布蕾妮则策马插进兄弟之间，拨剑在手，“把剑放下！”她呼喝史坦尼斯。
　　只怕瑟曦要笑得喘不过气来，凯特琳无力地想。
　　史坦尼斯提起闪亮的宝剑，指着他的弟弟。“我不是个严酷寡恩的人，”这个以严酷寡恩举世著称的人大吼。“我也不想用亲兄弟的鲜血来玷污‘光明使者’的剑刃。为着哺育我们的母亲的缘故，今晚上我就给你最后一次机会反省你的过错，蓝礼。降下叛旗，在天亮之前投效于我，我将封你为风息堡公爵，并保留你在御前会议中的重臣席位，甚至在我儿子出生前，我仍旧把你指定为我的继承人。你若不照办，别怪我不客气。”
　　蓝礼大笑，“史坦尼斯，你这宝剑可真漂亮，我很羡慕你，不过我怀疑这玩意儿的光芒是不是影响你的视力。你仔细看看前方的平原，老哥。看到那些旗帜了吗？”
　　“你以为几根裹着毛料的杆子就能让你称王？”
　　“提利尔的宝剑能让我称王。罗宛，塔利和卡伦能让我称王，用的是他们的战斧、槌杖和战锤。塔斯的弓箭和庞洛斯的长熗能让我称王。佛索威家族，库伊家族，穆伦道尔家族，伊斯蒙家族，塞尔弥家族，海塔尔家族，奥克赫特家族，克连恩家族，卡斯威尔家族，布莱巴尔家族，梅里维勒家族，毕斯柏里家族，希梅家族，杜恩家族，傅德利家族……甚至佛罗伦家族，你老婆的娘家，他们通通支持我称王。整个南方的骑士都随我而来，而这还只是我麾下大军中较少的一部分。我的步兵还在后面，整整十万拿剑提熗端矛的大兵。你说要对我不客气？凭什么，凭嘴巴祈祷？凭城墙下那群乱七八糟的乌合之众？给你点面子，我也顶多说那有五千人。什么鳕鱼大人、洋葱骑士和流浪佣兵凑在一块，至少有一半仗一开打就要往我这边跑。我的斥候告诉我，你的骑兵还不满四百——何况你我都知道，穿皮甲的自由骑手在重甲长熗的冲击下根本不堪一击。我不管你自以为多么身经百战、骁勇无敌，史坦尼斯，事实摆在眼前——只待我的前锋刚一冲击，你的部队就得全部完蛋。”
　　“我们走着瞧，弟弟。”当史坦尼斯收剑入鞘时，天地间似乎失去了几许光辉。“天明之时，我们走着瞧。”
　　“我只希望你的新神慈悲为怀，老哥。”
　　史坦尼斯鼻子一哼，绝尘而去，神色间充满了轻蔑。红袍女逗留了一会儿。“记住你自己的罪孽，蓝礼大人，”她驱策坐骑，边绕圈子边说。
　　之后，凯特琳随蓝礼回到营区，蓝礼的大军和凯特琳的小队伍正等着他们。“那玩意儿挺有趣，弄不好还真有些价值，”他评论，“不知上哪儿弄得到那种剑来玩玩？是了，等仗一打完，洛拉斯铁定会把它当礼物献给我。哎，宝物居然从此得来，我倒是有点悲哀啊。”
　　“你悲哀的方式倒也蛮开朗，”凯特琳说，她自己的苦恼已然无法隐藏。
　　“是么？”蓝礼耸肩，“大概是吧。我得承认，史坦尼斯在我们兄弟之间向来不大讨喜欢。嘿，你觉得他那个故事有没有可能？如果乔佛里是弑君者的——”
　　“——你哥哥就是法定继承人。”
　　“如果他活着，”蓝礼承认。“这算那门子傻瓜律法，你不这么认为么？为什么要选最老的，而不是最好的？王冠正适合我，正如它从未适合劳勃，更不会适合史坦尼斯。我能当个伟大的国王，强大而慷慨，聪明，公正又勤勉，对我的朋友我无比忠诚，对我的敌人我决不宽恕，我有宽大的胸怀，耐心——”
　　“——以及谦逊？”凯特琳补充。
　　蓝礼哈哈大笑：“你总得允许国王有几个缺点嘛，好夫人。”
　　凯特琳疲倦得无以复加。最终我还是一事无成。这对拜拉席恩兄弟即将骨肉相残，她儿子仍旧只能孤军面对兰尼斯特，而她什么也劝说不了，怎么也阻止不住。是我返回奔流城为爸爸阖眼的时候了，她心想，至少我能做到这个。我也许是个糟糕的使节，但我能当个挺好的悼亡人，诸神保佑我。
　　他们的营地精心构建在一条南北走向、低矮多石的山冈上。营区虽然只有曼德河畔那座大营的四分之一左右，却要整齐有序得多。当蓝礼得知哥哥突袭风息堡的消息之后，立刻将部队分开，正如罗柏当日在孪河城下之所为。他把庞大的步兵军团留在苦桥保护他的王后、车辆、辎重、牲畜、以及那堆笨重的攻城机器，然后率领手下的骑士和自由骑手星夜挥师东进。
　　他的举手投足多像他哥哥劳勃啊，连行为方式也那么相似……只是劳勃有奈德伴随左右，每每以谨慎调和他的冲动。如果今天在这里的是劳勃和奈德，奈德一定会坚持把整个大军尽数遣来，包围史坦尼斯，围攻围攻者。可蓝礼轻率地否定了这一选择，急急忙忙跑来对付他的哥哥。他完全不顾补给，把食物和草料，还有他全部的货车，骡子和驮牛统统抛在身后。现在他要么速战速决，要么就只有饥饿溃散。
　　凯特琳吩咐哈尔·莫兰照顾马匹，自己跟随蓝礼回到营地中央的王家大帐。在那高耸的绿丝绸帐篷内，他麾下的将领和诸侯正等着谈判的消息。“我哥还是老样子，”他们年轻的国王道，同时布蕾妮为他解掉披风，自他额头除下金玉王冠。“城堡和礼貌他都置之不理，他只要流血。那好，我很乐意替他达成愿望。”
　　“陛下，我以为不必在此作战，”马图斯·罗宛伯爵插话。“这座城堡固若金汤，供应充足，科塔奈爵士更是身经百战的老战士，何况全天下有什么地方造得出足以击垮风息堡城壁的投石机？史坦尼斯大人想围就任他围，没他好果子吃。而当他又饥又冷地待在这里无所事事时，我们早已拿下君临。”
　　“要我从此背上惧怕史坦尼斯的骂名？”
　　“只有不懂事的傻瓜才这么说，”马图斯伯爵争辩。
　　蓝礼望向其他人。“你们也这么以为？”
　　“我认为史坦尼斯对您是一大威胁，”蓝道·塔利伯爵宣称。“让他不受伤害的留在这里，只能让他的势力增强，而您的兵力将在接连的战斗中逐次削弱。兰尼斯特可不是一朝一夕就能打败的，等您终于击败了他们，说不定史坦尼斯大人已经变得和您一样……或许还更强。”
　　其他人纷纷附和。国王看来很满意。“那么，我们就开战吧。”
　　正如当初我让奈德失望，而今我也让罗柏失望了，凯特琳心想。“大人，”她朗声道，“如果您决意开战，我的使命就已告终。请准许我返回奔流城。”
　　“哎，眼下您不能走。”蓝礼找张折椅坐下。
　　她楞住了。“我带着打造和平的愿望而来，大人，并非前来助阵。”
　　蓝礼耸耸肩，“我敢说，不仰仗您那二十五个伴当，我们也能获胜。夫人，我不需要您参加战斗，只想要您在一旁观看。”
　　“呓语森林之役我就在场，大人。我已经看够了屠戮。我身为使节而来——”
　　“也将作为使节离开，”蓝礼说，“而且比来时更明智。您将用自己的眼睛好好看看叛徒是什么下场，如此您的儿子才能听您亲口转述。千万别害怕，我们会保护您绝对安全。”他转过身去下达部署。“马图斯大人，你指挥中央部队。布莱斯，你指挥左翼。右翼由我亲自指挥。伊斯蒙大人，后备部队交给你。”
　　“陛下，我不会让您失望，”伊斯蒙伯爵应道。
　　马图斯伯爵再次开口：“谁指挥前锋？”
　　“陛下，”琼恩·佛索威爵士喊，“我请求这一荣誉。”
　　“尽管去请求，”绿衣卫古德说，“依惯例，应由七卫之一来打头阵。”
　　“冲垮长长的盾墙靠张可爱的披风可办不到，”蓝道·塔利伯爵宣告，“你小子吃奶的时候我就是梅斯·提利尔大人的先锋官了，古德。”
　　叫嚷声刹时充满整个营帐，形形色色的人都争相宣布自己的请求。好一群夏天的骑士，凯特琳想。蓝礼举起一只手，“好了，大人们。如果我能封的话，我很乐意把你们全都封为先锋官，但最伟大的荣耀理当属于最伟大的骑士。先锋部队将由洛拉斯·提利尔爵士统率。”
　　“陛下，此刻我怀着无比感激的心情。”百花骑士在国王面前单膝跪下。“祝福我吧，君王，并赐予我一个骑士，在我身边执掌您的旗帜，让雄鹿和玫瑰并肩作战。”
　　蓝礼扫视一眼。“布蕾妮。”
　　“陛下？”她还穿着那身蓝甲，不过已经脱去了头盔。人头攒动的帐篷内相当闷热，汗水使她柔和的黄发打了卷儿，搭在宽大平庸的脸庞上。“我的职责是在您身边保护您。我是誓言守护您的……”
　　“七卫之一，”国王提醒她。“别担心，你的四位同僚将在战斗中随侍我左右。”
　　布蕾妮猛地跪下。“陛下，如果我真的必须和您分别，就请您给予我在战斗前为您穿戴盔甲的荣誉吧。”
　　凯特琳听见身后有人窃笑。她爱他，可怜的人，她悲伤地想，她扮演侍从就为了能碰碰他，丝毫不在意在别人眼底她是个多么可笑的傻瓜。
　　“我准了，”蓝礼说。“现在解散吧，全体解散。国王在打仗前也是需要休息的。”
　　“大人，”凯特琳道，“我们来时经过的最后一个村庄有间小小的圣堂。如果您不准我返回奔流城，就请您准许我到那里去祷告吧。”
　　“如您所愿。罗拔爵士，请把史塔克夫人平安地护送到那间圣堂……并在黎明前将她带回来。”
　　“您自己也应该祷告。”凯特琳补充道。
　　“为了胜利？”
　　“为了理智。”
　　蓝礼大笑：“洛拉斯，请先留下，帮我作祷告。很久没祈祷，恐怕都忘记该怎么说喽。至于其他人，我要求你们在第一缕晨光出现之时准备就绪，穿戴盔甲，拿好武器，翻身上马。明早将成为史坦尼斯永生难忘的一个清晨。”
　　凯特琳离开大帐时，日头已降下大半。罗拔·罗伊斯爵士和她并辔而行。他的身世她略微有些了解——青铜约恩的儿子之一，总体来看长得还算不错，在各地比武会里是个小有名气的角色。蓝礼赐予他彩虹披风和一套血红铠甲，封他为彩虹护卫之一。“你离开谷地很远了呢，爵士，”她告诉他。
　　“您自己离开临冬城不也很远么，夫人。”
　　“我知道自己来此所为何事，那么你呢？这不是你的战争，正如它不是我的。”
　　“从我承认蓝礼是我的国王那一刻起，这已经是我的战争。”
　　“罗伊斯家族可是艾林家族的封臣。”
　　“我的父亲大人固然该向莱莎夫人效忠，他的继承人亦然。然而，他的次子却必须去别处追寻荣誉。”罗拔爵士耸耸肩。“我只是厌倦了比武会。”
　　他最多只有二十一二岁，凯特琳暗想，和他的国王一般大……不过她的国王，她的罗柏，虽只弱冠十五，却比眼前这个年轻人懂事得多。至少她如此祈祷。
　　在凯特琳的小小营区内，夏德正往罐里削萝卜，哈尔·莫兰和三个临冬城的兵丁赌色子，而卢卡斯·布莱伍德坐着磨匕首。“史塔克夫人，”卢卡斯一见她便喊，“莫兰说天亮时便要开战？”
　　“哈尔说的没错，”她答道。我倒忘了，他实在是个多嘴的家伙。
　　“我们是打还是走？”
　　“我们祈祷，卢卡斯，”她回答他，“我们祈祷。”
[ 此帖被挽墨在2015-08-29 13:08重新编辑 ]
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你看着眼前的人，分明还是以前的模样，可心里终究不是以前那般澄清透明了。
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　　CHAPTER 32
　　SANSA

　　The longer you keep him waiting, the worse it will go for you,” Sandor Clegane warned her.
　　Sansa tried to hurry, but her fingers fumbled at buttons and knots. The Hound was always rough-tongued, but something in the way he had looked at her filled her with dread. Had Joffrey found out about her meetings with Ser Dontos? Please no, she thought as she brushed out her hair. Ser Dontos was her only hope. I have to look pretty, foff likes me to look pretty, he’s always liked me in this gown, this color. She smoothed the cloth down. The fabric was tight across her chest.
　　When she emerged, Sansa walked on the Hound’s left, away from the burned side of his face. “Tell me what I’ve done.”
　　“Not you. Your kingly brother.”
　　“Robb’s a traitor.” Sansa knew the words by rote. “I had no part in whatever he did.” Gods be good, don’t let it be the Kingslayer. If Robb had harmed Jaime Lannister, it would mean her life. She thought of Ser Ilyn, and how those terrible pale eyes staring pitilessly out of that gaunt pockmarked face.
　　The Hound snorted. “They trained you well, little bird.” He conducted her to the lower bailey, where a crowd had gathered around the archery butts. Men moved aside to let them through. She could hear Lord Gyles coughing. Loitering stablehands eyed her insolently, but Ser Horas Redwyne averted his gaze as she passed, and his brother Hobber pretended not to see her. A yellow cat was dying on the ground, mewling piteously, a crossbow quarrel through its ribs. Sansa stepped around it, feeling ill.
　　Ser Dontos approached on his broomstick horse; since he’d been too drunk to mount his destrier at the tourney, the king had decreed that henceforth he must always go horsed. “Be brave,” he whispered, squeezing her arm.
　　Joffrey stood in the center of the throng, winding an ornate crossbow. Ser Boros and Ser Meryn were with him. The sight of them was enough to tie her insides in knots.
　　“Your Grace.” She fell to her knees.
　　“Kneeling won’t save you now,” the king said. “Stand up. You’re here to answer for your brother’s latest treasons.”
　　“Your Grace, whatever my traitor brother has done, I had no part. You know that, I beg you, please—”
　　“Get her up!”
　　The Hound pulled her to her feet, not ungently.
　　“Ser Lancel,” Joff said, “tell her of this outrage.”
　　Sansa had always thought Lancel Lannister comely and well spoken, but there was neither pity nor kindness in the look he gave her. “Using some vile sorcery, your brother fell upon Ser Stafford Lannister with an army of wargs, not three days ride from Lannisport. Thousands of good men were butchered as they slept, without the chance to lift sword. After the slaughter, the northmen feasted on the flesh of the slain.”
　　Horror coiled cold hands around Sansa’s throat.
　　“You have nothing to say?” asked Joffrey.
　　“Your Grace, the poor child is shocked witless,” murmured Ser Dontos.
　　“Silence, fool.” Joffrey lifted his crossbow and pointed it at her face. “You Starks are as unnatural as those wolves of yours. I’ve not forgotten how your monster savaged me.”
　　“That was Arya’s wolf,” she said. “Lady never hurt you, but you killed her anyway.”
　　“No, your father did,” Joff said, “but I killed your father. I wish I’d done it myself. I killed a man last night who was bigger than your father. They came to the gate shouting my name and calling for bread like I was some baker, but I taught them better. I shot the loudest one right through the throat.”
　　“And he died?” With the ugly iron head of the quarrel staring her in the face, it was hard to think what else to say. “Of course he died, he had my quarrel in his throat. There was a woman throwing rocks, I got her as well, but only in the arm.” Frowning, he lowered the crossbow. “I’d shoot you too, but if I do Mother says they’d kill my uncle Jaime. Instead you’ll just be punished and we’ll send word to your brother about what will happen to you if he doesn’t yield. Dog, hit her.”
　　“Let me beat her!” Ser Dontos shoved forward, tin armor clattering. He was armed with a “morningstar” whose head was a melon. My Florian. She could have kissed him, blotchy skin and broken veins and all. He trotted his broomstick around her, shouting “Traitor, traitor” and whacking her over the head with the melon. Sansa covered herself with her hands, staggering every time the fruit pounded her, her hair sticky by the second blow. People were laughing. The melon flew to pieces. Laugh, Joffrey, she prayed as the juice ran down her face and the front of her blue silk gown. Laugh and be satisfied.
　　Joffrey did not so much as snigger. “Boros. Meryn.”
　　Ser Meryn Trant seized Dontos by the arm and flung him brusquely away. The red-faced fool went sprawling, broomstick, melon, and all. Ser Boros seized Sansa.
　　“Leave her face,” Joffrey commanded. “I like her pretty.”
　　Boros slammed a fist into Sansa’s belly, driving the air out of her. When she doubled over, the knight grabbed her hair and drew his sword, and for one hideous instant she was certain he meant to open her throat. As he laid the flat of the blade across her thighs, she thought her legs might break from the force of the blow. Sansa screamed. Tears welled in her eyes. It will be over soon. She soon lost count of the blows.
　　“Enough,” she heard the Hound rasp.
　　“No it isn’t,” the king replied. “Boros, make her naked.”
　　Boros shoved a meaty hand down the front of Sansa’s bodice and gave a hard yank. The silk came tearing away, baring her to the waist. Sansa covered her breasts with her hands. She could hear sniggers, far off and cruel. “Beat her bloody,” Joffrey said, “we’ll see how her brother fancies—”
　　“What is the meaning of this?”
　　The Imp’s voice cracked like a whip, and suddenly Sansa was free. She stumbled to her knees, arms crossed over her chest, her breath ragged. “Is this your notion of chivalry, Ser Boros?” Tyrion Lannister demanded angrily. His pet sellsword stood with him, and one of his wildlings, the one with the burned eye. “What sort of knight beats helpless maids?”
　　“The sort who serves his king, Imp.” Ser Boros raised his sword, and Ser Meryn stepped up beside him, his blade scraping clear of its scabbard.
　　“Careful with those,” warned the dwarf’s sellsword. “You don’t want to get blood all over those pretty white cloaks.”
　　“Someone give the girl something to cover herself with,” the Imp said.
　　Sandor Clegane unfastened his cloak and tossed it at her. Sansa clutched it against her chest, fists bunched hard in the white wool. The coarse weave was scratchy against her skin, but no velvet had ever felt so fine.
　　“This girl’s to be your queen,” the Imp told Joffrey. “Have you no regard for her honor?”
　　“I’m punishing her.”
　　“For what crime? She did not fight her brother’s battle.”
　　“She has the blood of a wolf.”
　　“And you have the wits of a goose.”
　　“You can’t talk to me that way. The king can do as he likes.”
　　“Aerys Targaryen did as he liked. Has your mother ever told you what happened to him?”
　　Ser Boros Blount harrumphed. “No man threatens His Grace in the presence of the Kingsguard.”
　　Tyrion Lannister raised an eyebrow. “I am not threatening the king, ser, I am educating my nephew. Bronn, Timett, the next time Ser Boros opens his mouth, kill him.” The dwarf smiled. “Now that was a threat, ser. See the difference?”
　　Ser Boros turned a dark shade of red. “The queen will hear of this!”
　　“No doubt she will. And why wait? Joffrey, shall we send for your mother?”
　　The king flushed.
　　“Nothing to say, Your Grace?” his uncle went on. “Good. Learn to use your ears more and your mouth less, or your reign will be shorter than I am. Wanton brutality is no way to win your people’s love . . . or your queen’s.”
　　“Fear is better than love, Mother says.” Joffrey pointed at Sansa. “She fears me.”
　　The Imp sighed. “Yes, I see. A pity Stannis and Renly aren’t twelve-year-old girls as well. Bronn, Timett, bring her.”
　　Sansa moved as if in a dream. She thought the Imp’s men would take her back to her bedchamber in Maegor’s Holdfast, but instead they conducted her to the Tower of the Hand. She had not set foot inside that place since the day her father fell from grace, and it made her feel faint to climb those steps again.
　　Some serving girls took charge of her, mouthing meaningless comforts to stop her shaking. One stripped off the ruins of her gown and smallclothes, and another bathed her and washed the sticky juice from her face and her hair. As they scrubbed her down with soap and sluiced warm water over her head, all she could see were the faces from the bailey. Knights are sworn to defend the weak, protect women, and fight for the right, but none of them did a thing. Only Ser Dontos had tried to help, and he was no longer a knight, no more than the Imp was, nor the Hound . . . the Hound hated knights . . . I hate them too, Sansa thought. They are no true knights, not one of them.
　　After she was clean, plump ginger-headed Maester Frenken came to see her. He bid her lie facedown on the mattress while he spread a salve across the angry red welts that covered the backs of her legs. Afterward he mixed her a draught of dreamwine, with some honey so it might go down easier. “Sleep a bit, child. When you wake, all this will seem a bad dream.”
　　No it won’t, you stupid man, Sansa thought, but she drank the drearnwine anyway, and slept.
　　It was dark when she woke again, not quite knowing where she was, the room both strange and strangely familiar. As she rose, a stab of pain went through her legs and brought it all back. Tears filled her eyes. Someone had laid out a robe for her beside the bed. Sansa slipped it on and opened the door. Outside stood a hard-faced woman with leathery brown skin, three necklaces looped about her scrawny neck. One was gold and one was silver and one was made of human ears. “Where
　　does she think she’s going?” the woman asked, leaning on a tall spear.
　　“The godswood.” She had to find Ser Dontos, beg him to take her home now before it was too late.
　　“The halfman said you’re not to leave,” the woman said. “Pray here, the gods will hear.”
　　Meekly, Sansa dropped her eyes and retreated back inside. She realized suddenly why this place seemed so familiar. They’ve put me in Arya’s old bedchamber, from when Father was the Hand of the King. All her things are gone and the furnishings have been moved around, but it’s the same . . .
　　A short time later, a serving girl brought a platter of cheese and bread and olives, with a flagon of cold water. “Take it away,” Sansa commanded, but the girl left the food on a table. She was thirsty, she realized. Every step sent knives through her thighs, but she made herself cross the room. She drank two cups of water, and was nibbling on an olive when the knock came.
　　Anxiously, she turned toward the door, smoothed down the folds of her robe. “Yes?”
　　The door opened, and Tyrion Lannister stepped inside. “My lady. I trust I am not disturbing you?”
　　“Am I your prisoner?”
　　“My guest.” He was wearing his chain of office, a necklace of linked golden hands. “I thought we might talk.”
　　“As my lord commands.” Sansa found it hard not to stare; his face was so ugly it held a queer fascination for her.
　　“The food and garments are to your satisfaction?” he asked. “If there is anything else you need, you have only to ask.”
　　“You are most kind. And this morning . . . it was very good of you to help me.”
　　“You have a right to know why Joffrey was so wroth. Six nights gone, your brother fell upon my uncle Stafford, encamped with his host at a village called Oxcross not three days ride from Casterly Rock. Your northerners won a crushing victory. We received word only this morning.”
　　Robb will kill you all, she thought, exulting. “It’s . . . terrible, my lord. My brother is a vile traitor.”
　　The dwarf smiled wanly. “Well, he’s no fawn, he’s made that clear enough.”
　　“Ser Lancel said Robb led an army of wargs . . .”
　　The Imp gave a disdainful bark of laughter. “Ser Lancel’s a wineskin warrior who wouldn’t know a warg from a wart. Your brother had his direwolf with him, but I suspect that’s as far as it went. The northmen crept into my uncle’s camp and cut his horse lines, and Lord Stark sent his wolf among them. Even war-trained destriers went mad. Knights were trampled to death in their pavilions, and the rabble woke in terror and fled, casting aside their weapons to run the faster. Ser Stafford was slain as he chased after a horse. Lord Rickard Karstark drove a lance through his chest. Ser Rubert Brax is also dead, along with Ser Lymond Vikary, Lord Crakehall, and Lord jast. Half a hundred more have been taken captive, including jast’s sons and my nephew Martyn Lannister. Those who survived are spreading wild tales and swearing that the old gods of the north march with your brother.”
　　“Then . . . there was no sorcery?”
　　Lannister snorted. “Sorcery is the sauce fools spoon over failure to hide the flavor of their own incompetence. My mutton-headed uncle had not even troubled to post sentries, it would seem. His host was raw—apprentice boys, miners, fieldhands, fisherfolk, the sweepings of Lannisport. The only mystery is how your brother reached him. Our forces still hold the stronghold at the Golden Tooth, and they swear he did not pass.” The dwarf gave an irritated shrug. “Well, Robb Stark is my father’s bane. Joffrey is mine. Tell me, what do you feel for my kingly nephew?”
　　“I love him with all my heart,” Sansa said at once.
　　“Truly?” He did not sound convinced. “Even now?”
　　“My love for His Grace is greater than it has ever been.”
　　The Imp laughed aloud. “Well, someone has taught you to lie well. You may be grateful for that one day, child. You are a child still, are you not? Or have you flowered?”
　　Sansa blushed. It was a rude question, but the shame of being stripped before half the castle made it seem like nothing. “No, my lord.”
　　“That’s all to the good. If it gives you any solace, I do not intend that you ever wed Joffrey. No marriage will reconcile Stark and Lannister after all that has happened, I fear. More’s the pity. The match was one of King Robert’s better notions, if Joffrey hadn’t mucked it up.”
　　She knew she ought to say something, but the words caught in her throat.
　　“You grow very quiet,” Tyrion Lannister observed. “Is this what you want? An end to your betrothal?”
　　“I . . .” Sansa did not know what to say. Is it a trick? Will he punish me if I tell the truth? She stared at the dwarf’s brutal bulging brow, the hard black eye and the shrewd green one, the crooked teeth and wiry beard. “I only want to be loyal.”
　　“Loyal,” the dwarf mused, “and far from any Lannisters. I can scarce blame you for that. When I was your age, I wanted the same thing.” He smiled. “They tell me you visit the godswood every day. What do you pray for, Sansa?”
　　I pray for Robb’s victory and Joffrey’s death . . . and for home. For Winterfell. “I pray for an end to the fighting.”
　　“We’ll have that soon enough. There will be another battle, between your brother Robb and my lord father, and that will settle the issue.”
　　Robb will beat him, Sansa thought. He beat your uncle and your brother Jaime, he’ll beat your father too.
　　It was as if her face were an open book, so easily did the dwarf read her hopes. “Do not take Oxcross too much to heart, my lady,” he told her, not unkindly. “A battle is not a war, and my lord father is assuredly not my uncle Stafford. The next time you visit the godswood, pray that your brother has the wisdom to bend the knee. Once the north returns to the king’s peace, I mean to send you home.” He hopped down off the window seat and said, “You may sleep here tonight. I’ll give you some of my own men as a guard, some Stone Crows perhaps—”
　　“No,” Sansa blurted out, aghast. If she was locked in the Tower of the Hand, guarded by the dwarf’s men, how would Ser Dontos ever spirit her away to freedom?
　　“Would you prefer Black Ears? I’ll give you Chella if a woman would make you more at ease.”
　　“Please, no, my lord, the wildlings frighten me.”
　　He grinned. “Me as well. But more to the point, they frighten Joffrey and that nest of sly vipers and lickspittle dogs he calls a Kingsguard. With Chella or Timett by your side, no one would dare offer you harm.”
　　“I would sooner return to my own bed.” A lie came to her suddenly, but it seemed so right that she blurted it out at once. “This tower was where my father’s men were slain. Their ghosts would give me terrible dreams, and I would see their blood wherever I looked.”
　　Tyrion Lannister studied her face. “I am no stranger to nightmares, Sansa. Perhaps you are wiser than I knew. Permit me at least to escort you safely back to your own chambers.”



Ⅱ 列王的纷争 Chapter33 珊莎
　　“你让他等得越久，对你越没好处，”桑铎·克里冈警告她。
　　珊莎想加快速度，但指头就是不听话，纽扣和绳结一直系不好。她已经习惯了猎狗粗哑的话音，但今天他看她的眼神却令她恐惧。难道她和唐托斯爵士见面的事被乔佛里发现了？千万不要，她一边梳头一边想。唐托斯爵士是她惟一的希望。我要打扮得漂漂亮亮的，小乔喜欢我漂漂亮亮，每次我穿这件裙服他都喜欢，他喜欢这个颜色。她抚平衣服，发现胸部有些紧。
　　一路上，珊莎走在猎狗右边，远离他灼伤的半边脸。“告诉我，我做错了什么？”
　　“不是你。是你的国王哥哥。”
　　“罗柏是个叛徒。”她机械地背诵，“我和他没有任何关系。”诸神保佑，千万别是弑君者出了事。如果罗柏杀了詹姆·兰尼斯特，她肯定性命不保。她眼前浮现出伊林爵士的面容，那张憔悴的麻子脸上，可怕的苍白眼珠冷酷地瞪着她。
　　猎狗嗤之以鼻，“小小鸟，他们把你训练得真不错。”他领她走到下层庭院，靶场中聚集了一群人。一见他俩，人们忙不迭地让路。她听到盖尔斯伯爵的咳嗽，发现游荡的马夫们无礼地看着她，但霍拉斯·雷德温爵士在她经过时别开了脸，而他弟弟霍伯则假装没看到她。一只垂死的黄猫躺在地上，被弩箭穿透了肋骨，可怜地喵喵叫。珊莎绕开它，感到一阵恶心。
　　唐托斯爵士骑着他的扫帚马过来；在比武会上，他由于醉酒无法上马，国王便下令从此之后他再也不许下马。“勇敢些，”他捏捏她的胳膊，轻声说。
　　乔佛里站在人群中央，正给一把华丽的弩弓上弦。柏洛斯爵士和马林爵士站在他身旁，看到他们，她的肠子绞成一团。
　　“陛下。”她跪下来。
　　“下跪也救不了你，”国王说，“起来。你哥哥又有新的叛国罪行，我要惩罚你。”
　　“陛下，我跟我那叛徒哥哥一点关系都没有。您知道的，求求您，请——”
　　“拉她起来！”
　　猎狗不紧不慢地把她拉起来。
　　“蓝赛尔爵士，”小乔道。“告诉她，她哥哥做了些什么好事。”
　　珊莎一直认为蓝赛尔·兰尼斯特长相清秀，谈吐文雅，但他的眼神里却没有丝毫同情和善意。“史戴佛·兰尼斯特爵士屯军于兰尼斯港外三日骑程之处，而你哥哥以卑鄙的巫术控制成群恶狼攻击他。数千壮士在睡梦中横遭屠戮，甚至没有举剑还击的机会。屠杀之后，北方人用被害者的血肉大开筵席。”
　　恐惧如冰冷的手，箍住了珊莎的喉咙。
　　“你没话说了吧？”乔佛里问。
　　“陛下，这可怜的孩子给吓傻了，”唐托斯爵士低声道。
　　“闭嘴，小丑。”乔佛里抬起十字弓，瞄准她的脸。“你们史塔克家的人就跟你们的狼一样残忍。我可没忘记你那头怪物是如何攻击我的。”
　　“那是艾莉亚的狼，”她说。“淑女从没伤害你，但你却杀了她。”
　　“不是我，是你父亲干的。”小乔道，“但我杀了你父亲，只可惜没能亲自动手。昨晚我杀掉的人比你父亲还高大。他们来到城门口，大叫我的名字，喊着要面包，好像我是个面包师傅似的！所以我好好教训了他们一番，我瞄准那个叫得最响的家伙，射穿了他的喉咙。”
　　“他死了？”丑陋的铁箭头正对着自己的脸，她想不出该说什么。
　　“他当然死了，我一发命中呢。有个女人朝我扔石头，我也射了她，可惜只射中手臂。”他皱皱眉头，垂下十字弓。“我该把你也射死，但母亲说这样的话，他们会杀死詹姆舅舅，所以我只能惩罚你。我们会给你哥哥送信，告诉他要是不投降，你会有怎样的下场。狗，揍她！”
　　“让我来打她！”唐托斯爵士挤到前面，锡制盔甲叮当作响。他手拿流星锤，顶端却是个甜瓜。我的佛罗理安。她满心感激，直想亲吻他满是污斑和琐碎血管的丑陋脸庞。他骑着扫帚，围着她打转，口中高喊“叛徒，叛徒”，并用甜瓜砸她的脑袋。珊莎举手遮挡，每当甜瓜砸到身上，便作势摇晃，砸了两下，她的头发已经粘乎乎。人们哈哈大笑。最后甜瓜裂成碎片，飞散开来。你笑啊，乔佛里，她祈祷着，果汁流下她的脸，流下她美丽的蓝色裙服，你就笑个够，然后放过我吧。
　　可惜乔佛里一丝笑意也无，“柏洛斯！马林！”
　　马林·特兰爵士抓住唐托斯的胳膊，粗暴地将他甩出去。红脸小丑摔了个四脚朝天，扫帚和甜瓜散落一地。柏洛斯爵士抓住了珊莎。
　　“不要打脸，”乔佛里命令，“我要她漂漂亮亮。”
　　柏洛斯一拳打在珊莎肚子上，令她一阵窒息。等她弯腰，骑士便抓住她的头发，拔出剑来，在那恐怖的瞬间，她以为他肯定要割她喉咙，但他只用剑面敲打她的大腿，重击之下，她觉得自己的腿都要断了。珊莎大声尖叫，眼泪夺眶而出。很快就会过去的。不久之后，她已不知挨了多少打。
　　“够了，”她听见猎狗粗哑的声音。
　　“不，还不够，”国王回答，“柏洛斯，扒光她的衣服。”
　　柏洛斯粗壮的手伸进珊莎的胸衣前襟，猛力一撕。丝绸碎裂，她一直裸到腰际。珊莎忙用双手护住胸口，耳边尽是残忍的窃笑。“狠狠揍她，”乔佛里说，“给他哥哥瞧瞧——”
　　“你要干什么？”
　　小恶魔的声音如长鞭破空，抓住珊莎的手立时松开。她跌跌撞撞地跪下来，双臂交叉在胸，气喘吁吁。“这就是你的骑士精神，柏洛斯爵士？”提利昂·兰尼斯特愤怒地质问。他的心腹佣兵站在他旁边，此外那个一只眼的野蛮人也在。“何等骑士会殴打无助的少女？”
　　“为国王效命的骑士，小恶魔。”柏洛斯爵士举起剑，马林爵士也“唰”地一声拔出剑，跨上一步与他并肩。
　　“你们招子放亮点，”侏儒的佣兵警告，“否则这身漂亮白袍就要沾血了。”
　　“谁给这女孩找点东西遮体？”小恶魔问。桑铎·克里冈解下自己的披风丢过去。珊莎用它牢牢裹住自己的胸膛，白羊毛料下拳头紧握。粗糙的织物磨得肌肤又刺又痒，却是她穿过最舒适的衣服。
　　“这女孩是你未来的王后，”小恶魔告诉乔佛里。“你就不在乎她的名誉？”
　　“我在惩罚她。”
　　“为什么？她和她哥哥的战斗毫无瓜葛。”
　　“她有狼的血统。”
　　“你有鹅的脑瓜。”
　　“你不能这样跟我说话！我是国王，想干什么就干什么！”
　　“伊里斯·坦格利安想干什么就干什么。你母亲有没有告诉你他的下场？”
　　柏洛斯·布劳恩爵士哼了一声，“没人敢在御林铁卫面前威胁国王陛下。”
　　提利昂·兰尼斯特扬起一边眉毛。“我不是在威胁国王，爵士，我是在教育外甥。波隆，提魅，柏洛斯爵士再张嘴，就宰了他。”侏儒微笑，“这才叫威胁，爵士，知道区别了吗？”
　　柏洛斯爵士的脸色涨成暗红，“这件事太后一定会知道！”
　　“毫无疑问。还等什么呢？乔佛里，我们这就派人去请你母亲？”
　　国王脸红了。
　　“没话说了，陛下？”做舅舅的续道，“很好。学着多用耳朵少用嘴巴，否则你的王朝会比我的个头还短。任性残暴无法赢得人民爱戴……甚至得不到太后的喜欢。”
　　“不对，母亲说，宁叫他们怕你，也不要他们爱你。”乔佛里指着珊莎道，“她就很怕我。”
　　小恶魔长叹一声。“是啊，这我知道。只可惜史坦尼斯和蓝礼都不是十二岁的小女孩。波隆，提魅，带她走。”
　　珊莎觉得自己浑如梦游。她以为小恶魔的手下会送她回梅葛楼的卧室，却不料他们领她去了首相塔。自父亲失势之日起，她头一次踏进这个地方，再度爬上那些阶梯，令她头晕目眩。
　　负责照顾她的女仆们说着一些毫无意义的安慰话语，试图让她停止颤抖。其中一位脱去她身上残留的裙服和内衣，另一位为她沐浴，洗去她满头满脸粘粘的瓜汁。她们用肥皂替她搓洗，用温水冲淋她的头，但此刻她眼中所见惟有靶场上那些脸。骑士立誓帮助弱小，保护妇女，为正义而战，可他们一样也没做到。伸出援手的只有唐托斯爵士，但他已不是骑士，小恶魔也不是，猎狗也不是……记得“猎狗”最恨骑士……我也恨他们，珊莎心想。因为他们不是真正的骑士，他们都不是。
　　待她清洗干净，姜黄色头发、胖胖的法兰肯学士来照料她。他让她脸朝下趴在床垫上，随后用药膏涂抹她腿背那些红肿的伤痕，并为她调配了一剂安眠酒，加入一点蜂蜜，以利下咽。“好好睡会儿，孩子。等你醒来，你会发现一切都只是个恶梦。”
　　不，不会，才不会，你这个蠢笨的家伙，珊莎心想，但她还是喝下安眠酒，然后睡着了。
　　等她再次醒来，天已全黑，屋子既熟悉又陌生，令她不知身在何处。她站起身，一阵刺痛立刻贯穿双腿，带回所有的记忆，泪水又涌了上来。床边有为她准备的袍子。珊莎滑进长袍中，然后打开门。门外赫然站着一个面色严峻、棕黑皮肤像皮革一般的女人，细瘦的脖子上围了三条项链。一条金，一条银，还有一条竟是人耳穿成！“她想去哪里？”那女人倚在一支高高的长矛上问。
　　“神木林。”她必须找到唐托斯爵士，求他现在就带她回家，她实在受不了了。
　　“半人说她不能离开，”女人说，“她就在这儿祈祷，神听得到。”
　　珊莎乖乖垂下视线，退回房里。她忽然意识到自己为什么对这里如此熟悉。原来他们把我安置在艾莉亚从前的房间，那时父亲还是首相。她的东西都被清理过，家具也移了位置，但的确是同一个房间……
　　没过多久，一个女仆端着托盘进来，盛有奶酪、面包和橄榄，以及一壶凉水。“拿走，”珊莎命令，但那女孩还是将食物留在了桌上。她发现自己真的口渴，只好忍痛走到屋子对面取水，每走一步大腿都像刀扎一般。她刚喝下两杯，正咬起一颗橄榄时，有人开始敲门。
　　她紧张地转身，抚平长袍上的皱褶。“请进。”
　　门开了，提利昂·兰尼斯特走进来。“小姐。我没打扰你吧？”
　　“我是您的囚犯？”
　　“你是我的客人。”他戴着首相项链，一条金手串成的链子。“我想我们得谈谈。”
　　“遵命。”珊莎发现自己很难不看他的脸；他的面容实在太丑，竟让她觉得有股奇特的吸引力。
　　“食物和衣服都还满意？”他问。“还需要什么，你尽管开口。”
　　“您真是太仁慈了。今天下午……感谢您救了我。”
　　“乔佛里如此恼怒是有原因的。六天之前，你哥哥袭击了我叔叔史戴佛，他当时驻军在一个叫牛津的村子，离凯岩城三日骑程。你们北方人赢得了压倒性的胜利。我们今早才接到消息。”
　　罗柏会把你们通通杀死，她欣喜地想。“这……这真可怕，大人。我哥哥是个可恶的叛徒。”
　　侏儒无力地微笑，“嗯，他不是个毛头小鬼，这一点毋庸置疑。”
　　“蓝赛尔爵士说罗柏带着一群恶狼……”
　　小恶魔轻蔑地大笑。“蓝赛尔爵士是咱们的酒袋战士，多半连恶狼和恶瘤都分不清。你哥哥带着他的冰原狼，我想仅此而已。北方人潜入我叔叔的营地，割断系马的绳索，随后史塔克大人放狼进去。如此一来，训练有素的战马也发了疯。许多骑士被踩死在帐篷里，其余的乌合之众惊醒之后四散奔逃，为了赶路，连武器也不顾。史戴佛爵士在追马时被瑞卡德·卡史塔克伯爵当胸刺杀。卢伯特·布拉克斯爵士、莱蒙·维卡瑞爵士、克雷赫伯爵和贾斯特伯爵据传也都战死。五十多名贵族被俘，其中包括贾斯特的几个儿子和我侄子马丁·兰尼斯特。侥幸逃过一劫的人到处胡说八道，说什么北方的旧神跟你哥哥一起参战。”
　　“那……没有什么巫术喽？”
　　兰尼斯特嗤之以鼻。“巫术是笨蛋掩饰无能的借口，涂抹在失败外面的佐料。看来我那没脑子的叔叔甚至没有设置岗哨。他的军团都是新手——学徒、矿工、农民、渔夫，兰尼斯港里的垃圾。惟一的谜团是你哥哥如何能突袭他们？我们的军队仍然控制着坚固的金牙城，他们发誓他没经过那里。”侏儒焦躁地耸耸肩。“总之呢，罗柏·史塔克是我父亲的心病，乔佛里则是我的心病。告诉我，你觉得我那当国王的外甥怎样？”
　　“我全心全意地爱着他，”珊莎立刻答道。
　　“真的？”他并不信服，“现在也是？”
　　“我对陛下的爱更胜以往。”
　　小恶魔纵声大笑，“好好好，总算你有个好老师，说谎学得不错，或许将来有一天，你会为此心怀感激，孩子……哦，你还是个孩子，对吗？还是你已经来了初潮？”
　　珊莎脸红了。这是个无礼的问题，但比起在半个城堡的人面前被扒光衣服，这点羞耻又算不上什么。“没有，大人。”
　　“那最好。听着，我不想让你嫁给乔佛里，希望这算是一点安慰。发生了这么多事，只怕联姻已无法令史塔克家族和兰尼斯特家族和解。真可惜，这桩婚事本是劳勃国王少有的明智之举，却被乔佛里搞砸了。”
　　她知道自己该说些什么才对，但言词卡在了喉咙里。
　　“你很安静，”提利昂·兰尼斯特评论。“你得遂心愿了吗？你希望终止婚约吗？”
　　“我……”珊莎不知该说什么才好。这莫非是个陷阱？如果我说出真话，他会不会惩罚我？她凝视着侏儒凶恶而突出的额头，凝视着他冷冷的黑眼珠和狡黠的绿眼珠，还有弯曲的牙齿和金属丝般的胡子。“我只想乖巧忠诚。”
　　“乖巧忠诚，”矮子若有所思地说，“并远离兰尼斯特家的人。真难为了你，我在你这个年纪的时候，也这么想。”他笑了笑。“他们告诉我，你天天造访神木林。你都祈祷些什么，珊莎？”
　　我祈祷罗柏的胜利和乔佛里的死亡……我为家乡，为临冬城祈祷。“我祈祷战争早日结束。”
　　“快了，孩子。你哥哥罗柏和我父亲大人之间很快会爆发决战，由此解决一切争端。”
　　罗柏会打败他，珊莎心想。他打败了你叔叔和你哥哥詹姆。他也会打败你父亲。
　　侏儒似乎把她的脸当成了一本打开的书，将她的心思看得一清二楚。“别太看重牛津之战，小姐，”他客气地告诉她，“一场战斗无法决定战争的胜负，而我那史戴佛叔叔完全不能与我父亲大人同日而语。下次去神木林，就祈祷你哥哥能明智地屈膝臣服吧。一旦北方归顺国王的统治，我就送你回家。”他跳下窗边坐椅，“你今晚就睡这儿。我会派我的人为你把守，请放心，石鸦部的人——”
　　“不，”珊莎惊慌地夺口而出。如果她被锁在首相塔里，日夜由侏儒的手下看守，唐托斯爵士又如何能救她自由呢？
　　“你喜欢黑耳部？如果女人在身边你觉得自在些，我就把齐拉留给你。”
　　“不不，求求您不要，大人，我害怕这些野蛮人。”
　　他咧嘴笑笑，“我也一样。但关键在于，他们能吓住乔佛里和那窝称之为御林铁卫的毒蛇和马屁精。有齐拉和提魅在旁，没人敢加害于你。”
　　“可我宁愿睡自己的床，一个谎言出现在脑海，如此恰如其分，她当即脱口而出，“这座塔是我父亲的部下被残杀的地方，他们的鬼魂留在这里，会让我做噩梦的。我不管往哪里看，都能看到他们的血。”
　　提利昂·兰尼斯特端详着她的脸。“我对噩梦并不陌生，珊莎。也许你比我想像的更明智。那好吧，至少允许我将你安全地护送回去。”
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你看着眼前的人，分明还是以前的模样，可心里终究不是以前那般澄清透明了。
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　　CHAPTER 33
　　CATELYN

　　It was full dark before they found the village. Catelyn found herself wondering if the place had a name. If so, its people had taken that knowledge with them when they fled, along with all they owned, down to the candles in the sept. Ser Wendel lit a torch and led her through the low door.
　　Within, the seven walls were cracked and crooked. God is one, Septon Osmynd had taught her when she was a girl, with seven aspects, as the sept is a single building, with seven walls. The wealthy septs of the cities had statues of the Seven and an altar to each. In Winterfell, Septon Chayle hung carved masks from each wall. Here Catelyn found only rough charcoal drawings. Ser Wendel set the torch in a sconce near the door, and left to wait outside with Robar Royce.
　　Catelyn studied the faces. The Father was bearded, as ever. The Mother smiled, loving and protective. The Warrior had his sword sketched in beneath his face, the Smith his hammer. The Maid was beautiful, the Crone wizened and wise.
　　And the seventh face . . . the Stranger was neither male nor female, yet both, ever the outcast, the wanderer from far places, less and more than human, unknown and unknowable. Here the face was a black oval, a shadow with stars for eyes. It made Catelyn uneasy. She would get scant comfort there.
　　She knelt before the Mother. “My lady, look down on this battle with a mother’s eyes. They are all sons, every one. Spare them if you can, and spare my own sons as well. Watch over Robb and Bran and Rickon. Would that I were with them.”
　　A crack ran down through the Mother’s left eye. It made her look as if she were crying. Catelyn could hear Ser Wendel’s booming voice, and now and again Ser Robar’s quiet answers, as they talked of the coming battle. Otherwise the night was still. Not even a cricket could be heard, and the gods kept their silence. Did your old gods ever answer you, Ned? she wondered. When you knelt before your heart tree, did they hear you?
　　Flickering torchlight danced across the walls, making the faces seem half-alive, twisting them, changing them. The statues in the great septs of the cities wore the faces the stonemasons had given them, but these charcoal scratchings were so crude they might be anyone. The Father’s face made her think of her own father, dying in his bed at Riverrun. The Warrior was Renly and Stannis, Robb and Robert, Jaime Lannister and Jon Snow. She even glimpsed Arya in those lines, just for an instant. Then a gust of wind through the door made the torch sputter, and the semblance was gone, washed away in orange glare.
　　The smoke was making her eyes burn. She rubbed at them with the heels of her scarred hands. When she looked up at the Mother again, it was her own mother she saw. Lady Minisa Tully had died in childbed, trying to give Lord Hoster a second son. The baby had perished with her, and afterward some of the life had gone out of Father. She was always so calm, Catelyn thought, remembering her mother’s soft hands, her warm smile. If she had lived, how different our lives might have been. She wondered what Lady Minisa would make of her eldest daughter, kneeling here before her. I have come so many thousands of leagues, and for what? Who have I served? I have lost my daughters, Robb does not want me, and Bran and Rickon must surely think me a cold and unnatural mother. I was not even with Ned when he died . . .
　　Her head swam, and the sept seemed to move around her. The shadows swayed and shifted, furtive animals racing across the cracked white walls. Catelyn had not eaten today. Perhaps that had been unwise. She told herself that there had been no time, but the truth was that food had lost its savor in a world without Ned. When they took his head off, they killed me too.
　　Behind her the torch spit, and suddenly it seemed to her that it was her sister’s face on the wall, though the eyes were harder than she recalled, not Lysa’s eyes but Cersei’s. Cersei is a mother too. No matter who fathered those children, she felt them kick inside her, brought them forth with her pain and blood, nursed them at her breast. If they are truly Jaime’s . . .
　　“Does Cersei pray to you too, my lady?” Catelyn asked the Mother. She could see the proud, cold, lovely features of the Lannister queen etched upon the wall. The crack was still there; even Cersei could weep for her children. “Each of the Seven embodies all of the Seven,” Septon Osmynd had told her once. There was as much beauty in the Crone as in the Maiden, and the Mother could be fiercer than the Warrior when her children were in danger. Yes . . .
　　She had seen enough of Robert Baratheon at Winterfell to know that the king did not regard Joffrey with any great warmth. If the boy was truly Jaime’s seed, Robert would have put him to death along with his mother, and few would have condemned him. Bastards were common enough, but incest was a monstrous sin to both old gods and new, and the children of such wickedness were named abominations in sept and godswood alike. The dragon kings had wed brother to sister, but they were the blood of old Valyria where such practices had been common, and like their dragons the Targaryens answered to neither gods nor men.
　　Ned must have known, and Lord Arryn before him. Small wonder that the queen had killed them both. Would I do any less for my own? Catelyn clenched her hands, feeling the tightness in her scarred fingers where the assassin’s steel had cut to the bone as she fought to save her son. “Bran knows too,” she whispered, lowering her head. Gods be good, he must have seen something, heard something, that was why they tried to kill him in his bed.
　　Lost and weary, Catelyn Stark gave herself over to her gods. She knelt before the Smith, who fixed things that were broken, and asked that he give her sweet Bran his protection. She went to the Maid and beseeched her to lend her courage to Arya and Sansa, to guard them in their innocence. To the Father, she prayed for justice, the strength to seek it and the wisdom to know it, and she asked the Warrior to keep Robb strong and shield him in his battles. Lastly she turned to the Crone, whose statues often showed her with a lamp in one hand. “Guide me, wise lady,” she prayed. “Show me the path I must walk, and do not let me stumble in the dark places that lie ahead.”
　　Finally there were footsteps behind her, and a noise at the door. “My lady,” Ser Robar said gently, “pardon, but our time is at an end. We must be back before the dawn breaks.”
　　Catelyn rose stiffly. Her knees ached, and she would have given much for a featherbed and a pillow just then. “Thank you, ser. I am ready.”
　　They rode in silence through sparse woodland where the trees leaned drunkenly away from the sea. The nervous whinny of horses and the clank of steel guided them back to Renly’s camp. The long ranks of man and horse were armored in darkness, as black as if the Smith had hammered night itself into steel. There were banners to her right, banners to her left, and rank on rank of banners before her, but in the predawn gloom, neither colors nor sigils could be discerned. A grey army, Catelyn thought. Grey men on grey horses beneath grey banners. As they sat their horses waiting, Renly’s shadow knights pointed their lances upward, so she rode through a forest of tall naked trees, bereft of leaves and life. Where Storm’s End stood was only a deeper darkness, a wall of black through which no stars could shine, but she could see torches moving across the fields where Lord Stannis had made his camp.
　　The candles within Renly’s pavilion made the shimmering silken walls seem to glow, transforming the great tent into a magical castle alive with emerald light. Two of the Rainbow Guard stood sentry at the door to the royal pavilion. The green light shone strangely against the purple plums of Ser Parmen’s surcoat, and gave a sickly hue to the sunflowers that covered every inch of Ser Emmon’s enameled yellow plate. Long silken plumes flew from their helms, and rainbow cloaks draped their shoulders.
　　Within, Catelyn found Brienne armoring the king for battle while the Lords Tarly and Rowan spoke of dispositions and tactics. It was pleasantly warm inside, the heat shimmering off the coals in a dozen small iron braziers. “I must speak with you, Your Grace,” she said, granting him a king’s style for once, anything to make him heed her.
　　“In a moment, Lady Catelyn,” Renly replied. Brienne fit backplate to breastplate over his quilted tunic. The king’s armor was a deep green, the green of leaves in a summer wood, so dark it drank the candlelight. Gold highlights gleamed from inlay and fastenings like distant fires in that wood, winking every time he moved. “Pray continue, Lord Mathis.”
　　“Your Grace,” Mathis Rowan said with a sideways glance at Catelyn. “As I was saying, our battles are well drawn up. Why wait for daybreak? Sound the advance.”
　　“And have it said that I won by treachery, with an unchivalrous attack? Dawn was the chosen hour.”
　　“Chosen by Stannis,” Randyll Tarly pointed out. “He’d have us charge into the teeth of the rising sun. We’ll be half-blind.”
　　“Only until first shock,” Renly said confidently. “Ser Loras will break them, and after that it will be chaos.” Brienne tightened green leather straps and buckled golden buckles. “When my brother falls, see that no insult is done to his corpse. He is my own blood, I will not have his head paraded about on a spear.”
　　“And if he yields?” Lord Tarly asked.
　　“Yields?” Lord Rowan laughed. “When Mace Tyrell laid siege to Storm’s End, Stannis ate rats rather than open his gates.”
　　“Well I remember.” Renly lifted his chin to allow Brienne to fasten his gorget in place. “Near the end, Ser Gawen Wylde and three of his knights tried to steal out a postern gate to surrender. Stannis caught them and ordered them flung from the walls with catapults. I can still see Gawen’s face as they strapped him down. He had been our master-at-arms.”
　　Lord Rowan appeared puzzled. “No men were hurled from the walls. I would surely remember that.”
　　“Maester Cressen told Stannis that we might be forced to eat our dead, and there was no gain in flinging away good meat.” Renly pushed back his hair. Brienne bound it with a velvet tie and pulled a padded cap down over his ears, to cushion the weight of his helm. “Thanks to the Onion Knight we were never reduced to dining on corpses, but it was a close thing. Too close for Ser Gawen, who died in his cell.”
　　“Your Grace.” Catelyn had waited patiently, but time grew short. “You promised me a word.”
　　Renly nodded. “See to your battles, my lords . . . oh, and if Barristan Selmy is at my brother’s side, I want him spared.”
　　“There’s been no word of Ser Barristan since Joffrey cast him out,” Lord Rowan objected.
　　“I know that old man. He needs a king to guard, or who is he? Yet he never came to me, and Lady Catelyn says he is not with Robb Stark at Riverrun. Where else but with Stannis?”
　　“As you say, Your Grace. No harm will come to him.” The lords bowed deeply and departed.
　　“Say your say, Lady Stark,” Renly said. Brienne swept his cloak over his broad shoulders. It was cloth-of-gold, heavy, with the crowned stag of Baratheon picked out in flakes of jet.
　　“The Lannisters tried to kill my son Bran. A thousand times I have asked myself why. Your brother gave me my answer. There was a hunt the day he fell. Robert and Ned and most of the other men rode out after boar, but Jaime Lannister remained at Winterfell, as did the queen.”
　　Renly was not slow to take the implication. “So you believe the boy caught them at their incest . . .”
　　“I beg you, my lord, grant me leave to go to your brother Stannis and tell him what I suspect.”
　　“To what end?”
　　“Robb will set aside his crown if you and your brother will do the same,” she said, hoping it was true. She would make it true if she must; Robb would listen to her, even if his lords would not. “Let the three of you call for a Great Council, such as the realm has not seen for a hundred years. We will send to Winterfell, so Bran may tell his tale and all men may know the Lannisters for the true usurpers. Let the assembled lords of the Seven Kingdoms choose who shall rule them.”
　　Renly laughed. “Tell me, my lady, do direwolves vote on who should lead the pack?” Brienne brought the king’s gauntlets and greathelm, crowned with golden antlers that would add a foot and a half to his height. “The time for talk is done. Now we see who is stronger.” Renly pulled a lobstered green-and-gold gauntlet over his left hand, while Brienne knelt to buckle on his belt, heavy with the weight of longsword and dagger.
　　“I beg you in the name of the Mother,” Catelyn began when a sudden gust of wind flung open the door of the tent. She thought she glimpsed movement, but when she turned her head, it was only the king’s shadow shifting against the silken walls. She heard Renly begin a jest, his shadow moving, lifting its sword, black on green, candles guttering, shivering, something was queer, wrong, and then she saw Renly’s sword still in its scabbard, sheathed still, but the shadowsword . . .
　　“Cold,” said Renly in a small puzzled voice, a heartbeat before the steel of his gorget parted like cheesecloth beneath the shadow of a blade that was not there. He had time to make a small thick gasp before the blood came gushing out of his throat.
　　“Your Gr—no!” cried Brienne the Blue when she saw that evil flow, sounding as scared as any little girl. The king stumbled into her arms, a sheet of blood creeping down the front of his armor, a dark red tide that drowned his green and gold. More candles guttered out. Renly tried to speak, but he was choking on his own blood. His legs collapsed, and only Brienne’s strength held him up. She threw back her head and screamed, wordless in her anguish.
　　The shadow Something dark and evil had happened here, she knew, something that she could not begin to understand. Renly never cast that shadow Death came in that door and blew the life out of him as swift as the wind snuffed out his candles. Only a few instants passed before Robar Royce and Emmon Cuy came bursting in, though it felt like half the night. A pair of men-at-arms crowded in behind with torches. When they saw Renly in Brienne’s arms, and her drenched with the king’s blood, Ser Robar gave a cry of horror. “Wicked woman!” screamed Ser Emmon, he of the sunflowered steel. “Away from him, you vile creature!”
　　“Gods be good, Brienne, why?” asked Ser Robar.
　　Brienne looked up from her king’s body. The rainbow cloak that hung from her shoulders had turned red where the king’s blood had soaked into the cloth. “I . . . I . . .”
　　“You’ll die for this.” Ser Emmon snatched up a long-handled battleaxe from the weapons piled near the door. “You’ll pay for the king’s life with your own!”
　　“NO!” Catelyn Stark screamed, finding her voice at last, but it was too late, the blood madness was on them, and they rushed forward with shouts that drowned her softer words.
　　Brienne moved faster than Catelyn would have believed. Her own sword was not to hand, so she snatched Renly’s from its scabbard and raised it to catch Emmon’s axe on the downswing. A spark flashed bluewhite as steel met steel with a rending crash, and Brienne sprang to her feet, the body of the dead king thrust rudely aside. Ser Emmon stumbled over it as he tried to close, and Brienne’s blade sheared through the wooden haft to send his axehead spinning. Another man thrust a flaming torch at her back, but the rainbow cloak was too sodden with blood to burn. Brienne spun and cut, and torch and hand went flying. Flames crept across the carpet. The maimed man began to scream. Ser Emmon dropped the axe and fumbled for his sword. The second man-at-arms lunged, Brienne parried, and their swords danced and clanged against each other. When Emmon Cuy came wading back in, Brienne was forced to retreat, yet somehow she held them both at bay. On the ground, Renly’s head rolled sickeningly to one side, and a second mouth yawned wide, the blood coming from him now in slow pulses.
　　Ser Robar had hung back, uncertain, but now he was reaching for his hilt. “Robar, no, listen.” Catelyn seized his arm. “You do her wrong, it was not her. Help her! Hear me, it was Stannis.” The name was on her lips before she could think how it got there, but as she said it, she knew that it was true. “I swear it, you know me, it was Stannis killed him.”
　　The young rainbow knight stared at this madwoman with pale and frightened eyes. “Stannis? How?”
　　“I do not know. Sorcery, some dark magic, there was a shadow, a shadow” Her own voice sounded wild and crazed to her, but the words poured out in a rush as the blades continued to clash behind her. “A shadow with a sword, I swear it, I saw. Are you blind, the girl loved him! Help her!” She glanced back, saw the second guardsman fall, his blade dropping from limp fingers. Outside there was shouting. More angry men would be bursting in on them any instant, she knew. “She is innocent, Robar. You have my word, on my husband’s grave and my honor as a Stark!”
　　That resolved him. “I will hold them,” Ser Robar said. “Get her away.” He turned and went out.
　　The fire had reached the wall and was creeping up the side of the tent. Ser Emmon was pressing Brienne hard, him in his enameled yellow steel and her in wool. He had forgotten Catelyn, until the iron brazier came crashing into the back of his head. Helmed as he was, the blow did no lasting harm, but it sent him to his knees. “Brienne, with me,” Catelyn commanded. The girl was not slow to see the chance. A slash, and the green silk parted. They stepped out into darkness and the chill of dawn. Loud voices came from the other side of the pavilion. “This way,” Catelyn urged, “and slowly. We must not run, or they will ask why. Walk easy, as if nothing were amiss.”
　　Brienne thrust her sword blade through her belt and fell in beside Catelyn. The night air smelled of rain. Behind them, the king’s pavilion was well ablaze, flames rising high against the dark. No one made any move to stop them. Men rushed past them, shouting of fire and murder and sorcery. Others stood in small groups and spoke in low voices. A few were praying, and one young squire was on his knees, sobbing openly.
　　Renly’s battles were already coming apart as the rumors spread from mouth to mouth. The nightfires had burned low, and as the east began to lighten the immense mass of Storm’s End emerged like a dream of stone while wisps of pale mist raced across the field, flying from the sun on wings of wind. Morning ghosts, she had heard Old Nan call them once, spirits returning to their graves. And Renly one of them now, gone like his brother Robert, like her own dear Ned.
　　“I never held him but as he died,” Brienne said quietly as they walked through the spreading chaos. Her voice sounded as if she might break at any instant. “He was laughing one moment, and suddenly the blood was everywhere . . . my lady, I do not understand. Did you see, did you . . . ?” “I saw a shadow. I thought it was Renly’s shadow at the first, but it was his brother’s.”
　　“Lord Stannis?”
　　“I felt him. It makes no sense, I know.”
　　It made sense enough for Brienne. “I will kill him,” the tall homely girl declared. “With my lord’s own sword, I will kill him. I swear it. I swear it. I swear it.”
　　Hal Mollen and the rest of her escort were waiting with the horses. Ser Wendel Manderly was all in a lather to know what was happening. “My lady, the camp has gone mad,” he blurted when he saw them. “Lord Renly, is he—” He stopped suddenly, staring at Brienne and the blood that drenched her.
　　“Dead, but not by our hands.”
　　“The battle—” Hal Mollen began.
　　“There will be no battle.” Catelyn mounted, and her escort formed up about her, with Ser Wendel to her left and Ser Perwyn Frey on her right. “Brienne, we brought mounts enough for twice our number. Choose one, and come with us.”
　　“I have my own horse, my lady. And my armor—”
　　“Leave them. We must be well away before they think to look for us. We were both with the king when he was killed. That will not be forgotten.” Wordless, Brienne turned and did as she was bid. “Ride,” Catelyn commanded her escort when they were all ahorse. “If any man tries to stop us, cut him down.”
　　As the long fingers of dawn fanned across the fields, color was returning to the world. Where grey men had sat grey horses armed with shadow spears, the points of ten thousand lances now glinted silverly cold, and on the myriad flapping banners Catelyn saw the blush of red and pink and orange, the richness of blues and browns, the blaze of gold and yellow. All the power of Storm’s End and Highgarden, the power that had been Renly’s an hour ago. They belong to Stannis now, she realized, even if they do not know it themselves yet. Where else are they to turn, if not to the last Baratheon? Stannis has won all with a single evil stroke.
　　I am the rightful king, he had declared, his jaw clenched hard as iron, and your son no less a traitor than my brother here. His day will come as well.
　　A chill went through her.



Ⅱ 列王的纷争 Chapter34 凯特琳
　　走到村庄之前，天便已全黑。凯特琳默默地思量，不知这村子是否有名字。就算曾经有过，也早已被逃难的人群所带走。他们带走了每一件东西，甚至没放过圣堂的蜡烛。文德尔爵士点起一根火把，领她穿过低矮的门楣。
　　圣堂之内，七面高墙皆已破碎倾塌。我们的上帝独一无二，但他有七种位态，正如我们的圣堂是一座建筑，却有着七面高墙，她还是个小女孩时，奥密德修士便如此教诲她。大城市里那些繁华的圣堂中七神总有各自的雕像，而每一位都有专门的祭坛。在临冬城，柴尔修士只在每面墙上悬挂不同的雕刻面具。在此地，凯特琳只看得到粗糙的素描画。文德尔爵士把火把插进门边的壁台，退回门外去陪伴罗拔·罗伊斯。
　　凯特琳仔细端详那些面孔。和别处一样，天父留着胡须。圣母笑意不减，慈祥和蔼。战士擎着巨剑。铁匠拿着锤子。少女青春又美丽。老妪枯瘦而睿智。
　　而那第七张脸……陌客的脸孔分辨不出男女，更像两者同体。他是从遥远之地来的流浪人，天边永恒的放逐者，既像人又不像人，不被了解更无从了解。在此地，他的脸被画成一个黑色的椭圆，黑影之中加上两点星光权作眼睛。这张面庞让凯特琳不安。从陌客那里她无法寻求安慰。
　　于是她在圣母面前跪下。“夫人啊，请用您慈母的眼光来看护这场战争。他们都是您的子孙，每个人都是。求您眷顾他们，眷顾我的儿子。求您看护罗柏、布兰和瑞肯，一如我在他们身旁。”
　　圣母的左眼上横贯着一道裂痕，看来好似哭泣。凯特琳听见文德尔爵士的大嗓门，时不时还有罗拔爵士低声的回答，他们应在谈论即将来临的战斗。舍此之外，夜晚一片沉寂，连蟋蟀的声音都听不到。诸神保持沉默。奈德呀，你的远古诸神回应过你吗？她不禁想，当你跪在心树之下，它们真的在倾听你的话语吗？
　　火炬发出的摇曳光芒在墙壁上舞蹈，那些脸庞似乎被赋予了生命，火光扭曲着它们，改变着它们。城市里大圣堂中的塑像总能留下石匠雕工的心机，然而此处的木炭图画却粗拙得无有特点。天父的脸让她想起了自己的父亲，此刻正在奔流城卧床不起，奄奄一息。战士让她想起了蓝礼和史坦尼斯，罗柏和劳勃，詹姆·兰尼斯特和琼恩·雪诺。恍惚之间，在那些线条中她甚至看见了艾利亚的神色。一阵风穿过门槛，火炬劈啪摇荡，这种意象便随之而去，湮没在橘红色的光辉中。
　　火炬散发的烟尘熏得她眼睛隐隐作痛。她用伤残的手掌努力擦拭。当她再度抬眼凝视圣母时，却看见了自己的母亲。米妮莎·徒利夫人因难产过世，当时是为给霍斯特公爵产下次子。孩子和她一同离去，父亲的一部分也随她走了。她总那么沉静，凯特琳想着，想着母亲柔和的手臂，温暖的笑意。如果她还在世上，我们的生活将变得多么不同啊。她不知米妮莎夫人是否了解她的长女，这个跪在她面前的女人的心境。呵，我跋涉了千山万水，为了什么？我到底是为了谁？我失去了自己的女儿们，罗柏不要我，布兰和瑞肯想必认为我是个冷酷无情的母亲。甚至奈德临终时，我到底在哪儿……
　　她的头脑开始发晕，整个圣堂在身旁旋转。四周暗影摇晃轮换，诡异的禽兽在破碎的白墙上奔波。凯特琳整天没有进食。这并不明智。她对自己无力地分辩说都是因为没有时间，然而她又深知，在失去了奈德的世界里一切都没了滋味。他们砍下他的头颅，一次杀了两人。
　　身后的火炬突然迸发出一阵亮光，朦胧之间，圣母呈现妹妹的容貌，只是那对眼睛比回忆之中的更加刚硬，不太像莱莎，更像是瑟曦。是啊，瑟曦也是位母亲。不管孩子的生父是谁，是她怀胎十月，任他们在体内踢打，混合着痛苦与鲜血把他们带到这个世界。如果他们真是詹姆的……
　　“瑟曦也向您祈祷吗，夫人？”凯特琳询问圣母。那个高傲、冷酷、美丽的兰尼斯特王后的形象清楚地印在墙上。画像上裂缝尤在，犹如瑟曦在为自己的儿女悲歌。七神七而为一，一中有七，奥密德修士告诉过她。老妪有少女的美，圣母有战士的强，只要她的孩子们身临险境。是啊……
　　在临冬城和劳勃·拜拉席恩相处的短短时日，她已知国王没有给过乔佛里多少温暖。假如知道那男孩是詹姆的种，想必劳勃会毫不犹豫将他和他母亲一并处死，而对此任何人都无法责难。私生子固然司空见惯，然而乱伦之举却为新旧诸神所不容，由此邪行而生的孩子将在圣堂里或神木林中被公开宣布为孽种。龙王们兄妹通婚，然而他们是古老瓦雷利亚的血统，遵循瓦雷利亚人的习俗。像他们的龙一样，高傲的坦格利安家族从不听从神人的呼唤。
　　奈德一定已了解这事实，如同在他之前的艾林公爵。难怪王后把他们都杀了。换作是我，会这么做吗？凯特琳握紧拳头，伤残的手指上有从刺客的刀下拯救儿子而留下的伤痕，深可见骨，至今未愈。“布兰也知道，”她轻声说，低下了头。诸神在上，他一定看见或听到了什么，所以他们要把他扼杀于病床。
　　在失落和疲惫中，凯特琳·史塔克投身于神灵的怀抱。她跪在铁匠面前，因为他负责修复破损的事物，她请求他给予她可爱的甜心布兰以关注和保护；她跪在少女面前，恳求她将她的勇气赐予艾莉亚和珊莎，保护她们的清白之身；在天父面前，她祈求公正，祈求追寻正义的力量和知晓正义的智慧；在战士面前，她祈求他让罗柏变得强壮，护佑他平安地穿越战场。最后，她来到老妪跟前，老妪的形象总是一手擎灯。“指引我吧，睿智的夫人，”她祷告，“指引我该走的路，别让我在前方的黑暗中迷失方向。”
　　许久之后，脚步声在身后响起，门上传来敲击声。“夫人，”罗拔爵士礼貌地说，“请您原谅，不过我们的时间到了。必须在破晓之前赶回去。”
　　凯特琳僵硬地起立。膝盖隐隐作痛，她只想要羽床和枕垫。“谢谢你，爵士。我准备好了。”
　　他们沉默地策马穿越稀疏的树林，高大的树木因海风的吹刮而东倒西歪地侧向海的反面。马群紧张的嘶鸣和铁器叮当的交击是他们天然的向导，指引他们回到蓝礼的营地。在黑暗之中，人和马排列成长长的纵队。他们漆黑无垠，好似“铁匠”将黑夜本身锻造进了钢铁中。她的左边有飘扬的旗帜，右边也是，前方的旗帜更是一排接着一排，然而在黎明前的黑暗之中，看不到一种颜色，分不出一个纹章。这是一支灰色的军队，凯特琳想，灰色的战士骑着灰色的骏马打着灰色的旗号。蓝礼的阴影骑士们高举长熗，静坐在马鞍上等待。她穿过这片由裸露而高大的林木组成的森林，将这些被剥夺了绿叶和生机的大树抛在身后。抬眼望去，风息堡矗立之处是一片更深沉的黑暗，黑色的墙壁无法反射夜晚的星光，隔着原野，只见史坦尼斯公爵扎营之地正有火把来来往往。
　　蓝礼帐中烛光通明，映得那丝绸帐篷似乎在放光，好似一座雄伟的、发射绿光的魔法城堡。两名彩虹护卫守在大帐门边。碧光奇异地照在帕门爵士紫色的外衣上，并给了覆在埃蒙爵士全身铠上的黄釉向日葵以一种病态的色彩。他们头盔上飘着长长的丝羽毛，肩上垂着彩虹披风。
　　帐内，布蕾妮正为国王穿戴战装，而塔利伯爵和罗宛伯爵在一旁谈论部署和战术。营帐里很温暖，十几个小铁盆里的煤球在燃烧，散发出热能。“我一定要跟您谈谈，陛下，”她说，这是她第一次给他冠上国王的头衔，无论如何要让他注意到她。
　　“好的，我马上就好，夫人，”蓝礼答应。布蕾妮正把背甲和胸甲系在他的加垫外衣上。国王的铠甲乃是深绿，是夏日密林里树叶的色彩，绿得深沉，似乎能吸收烛光的焰芒。金色的光辉在铠甲的扣子和饰品上闪烁，如同树林里缥缈的鬼火，随着他的行动而摇曳。“请继续，马图斯大人。”
　　“陛下，”马图斯·罗宛边说边瞟了凯特琳一眼。“此刻，我军已准备就绪。为何要等天明？吹响号角，让我们进军吧。”
　　“要人们说我背信而胜，发动毫无骑士精神的偷袭？黎明才是约定的时间。”
　　“黎明是史坦尼斯选择的时间，”蓝道·塔利指出，“他想背乘初升的太阳冲击我们。而我军则几乎是半盲状态。”
　　“那最多只能造成片刻的惊骇，”蓝礼自信地说，“洛拉斯爵士将挡住他们。之后将开始混战。”布蕾妮为他系紧绿色的皮带，扣上金色的扣子。“我老哥去世之后，不许任何人侮辱他的尸首。他是我的血亲骨肉，我决不允许谁把他的头颅穿在熗上到处炫耀。”
　　“假如他投降呢？”塔利伯爵问。
　　“投降？”罗宛大人大笑，“当年梅斯·提利尔把他困在风息堡，他宁可吃老鼠也不愿献城。”
　　“那时的状况我记得很清楚。”蓝礼抬起下巴让布蕾妮系好护喉。“到最后山穷水尽，实在支撑不住，加文·威尔德爵士和他手下三个骑士便合谋赚开一道边门开城投降，却不料被史坦尼斯逮个正着。他下令用投石机把他们从城上抛出去。我还记得加文被捆上去时脸上的表情，他一直是我们的教头啊。”
　　罗宛大人有些迷惑。“没人从城内掷出来啊。我记得很清楚。”
　　“那是因为克礼森学士劝阻了史坦尼斯，他说既然我们困窘得快要吃同伴的尸体，怎么能把好肉就这么投掷出去呢。”蓝礼把头发拢了拢。布蕾妮用天鹅绒的带子将它系住，并在他耳边装了一顶小垫帽，以减轻头盔的重量。“多亏洋葱骑士，我们才没有堕落到啃食尸体的地步，当时那是迫在眉睫的事了。对加文爵士来说更是如此，他死在牢里。”
　　“陛下。”凯特琳一直耐心等待，不过时间越来越少。“您答应要听我一言。”
　　蓝礼点头。“去战斗吧，大人们……呃，如果巴利斯坦·塞尔弥在我老哥的阵营里，千万要活捉他。”
　　“巴利斯坦爵士自被乔佛里赶走后就没了消息，”罗宛大人质疑。
　　“我了解那位老人。他需要一位供他守护的国王，不然他算什么？既然他没站到我这边，凯特琳夫人说他也没和奔流城的罗柏·史塔克在一起。那么，除了史坦尼斯，他还能在哪儿呢？”
　　“如您所愿，陛下。他将不会受到任何伤害。”两位大人深深一鞠躬，转身退出。
　　“请畅所欲言，史塔克夫人，”蓝礼道。布蕾妮将披风搭上他宽阔的肩膀。披风乃是金线织成，十分沉重，上面有黑玉镶成的拜拉席恩家族的宝冠雄鹿。
　　“兰尼斯特的人企图加害我儿子布兰，我无数次扪心自问这到底是为了什么。直到那天听了您哥哥的话，我才恍然大悟。他坠楼当天正是狩猎的日子，劳勃、奈德以及大部分人都去追逐野熊，只有詹姆·兰尼斯特留在临冬城内，还有王后。”
　　蓝礼没有忽略她的暗示。“所以你认为，那孩子看见他们乱伦的……”
　　“我求求您，陛下，准许我到您哥哥史坦尼斯那边去，把我的怀疑告知他。”
　　“目的何在？”
　　“如果您和您哥哥愿意暂时搁置王冠，罗柏也会。”她嘴上这么说，心中却只能希望儿子会这么做。必要之时，她要确保他这么做，就算罗柏手下的诸侯不肯听从，相信罗柏会听她的话。“你们三人应当协力召开大议会——这个国家已经有上百年没召集过了。我们将派人去临冬城，让布兰讲述他的故事，让全天下的人都知道兰尼斯特家族才是真正的篡夺者。然后，由应召而来的七国上下所有领主来共同决定谁是他们的统治者。”
　　蓝礼大笑。“告诉我，夫人，你们的冰原狼会为谁当头狼而投票吗？”布蕾妮拿来国王的手套和巨盔。盔上装饰着黄金鹿角，约有一尺半长。“谈判的时间已然过去，如今是比试力量的时刻。”蓝礼把龙虾状、金绿相间的手套穿进左手，布蕾妮则跪在地上替他系腰带，腰带因长剑和匕首的关系而显得沉重。
　　“以圣母的名义，我恳求您，”凯特琳喊道，忽然一阵风吹开了帐门。她觉得自己似乎看见某个东西移了进来，可当她回过头去，只有国王的影子映照在丝制篷布上，变换摇曳。只听蓝礼说了个笑话，他的影子也随之迁移，提起剑。绿帐浮现黑的阴霾，烛火闪烁颤抖的光。事情变得很奇特，很不对劲，她发现蓝礼的剑还好端端地别在腰间，并未出鞘，而那影子般的剑……
　　“好冷，”蓝礼用一种细微而迷惘的语调说，半晌之后，护喉处的钢板就如棉布一般被轻轻划开，被一柄并不存在的影子剑划开。他只来得及发出一声细小而粗浊的喘息，喷涌的鲜血便阻塞了喉咙。
　　“陛——不！”当那邪恶的喷流脱缰而出时，蓝衣卫布蕾妮撕心裂肺地哭嚎起来，和寻常受惊的小女孩无异。国王蹒跚着倒在她怀中，大片的鲜血在盔甲前流淌，暗黑的潮流淹没了绿色与金色。蜡烛纷纷熄灭。蓝礼挣扎着想开口，却被自己的鲜血哽住。他的双腿已然倾颓，全然凭借布蕾妮的力量支撑。她仰起头，放声呼叫，却在极度苦痛中无法吐词。
　　影子。某种既黑暗又邪恶的事情正在此地发生，她知道，这是一种她所无法了解的事情。那影子不是蓝礼的身影。死亡从门外而来，夺走了他的生命，迅疾一如吹灭烛火的狂风。
　　数秒之后，罗拔·罗伊斯和埃蒙·库伊便带着两名手执火把的军士闯了进来，然而凯特琳却觉得似乎过了半个夜晚。他们看见倒在布蕾妮怀中的蓝礼，看见她被国王的鲜血浸得通红，罗拔爵士发出惊怖的喊叫。“你这歹毒的女人！”身穿黄釉向日葵铠甲的埃蒙爵士吼道，“放下他，你这可恶的东西！”
　　“诸神在上，布蕾妮，这到底是为什么？”罗拔爵士质问。
　　布蕾妮从国王的躯体上抬起头。国王的血不住涌出，肩上的彩虹披风染得血红。“我……我……”
　　“你会偿命！”埃蒙爵士从门旁的兵器堆里拔出一根长柄战斧。“你要为国王偿命！”
　　“不要！”凯特琳·史塔克呼喝，她终于找回了自己的声音，但太迟了，他们都因鲜血而变得疯狂，人们喊叫着扑上来，淹没了她无力的话语。
　　然而说时迟那时快，布蕾妮以凯特琳无法置信的速度行动起来。她的剑并不在手边，因此她抽出蓝礼的佩剑，挡住埃蒙劈下的斧头。钢铁剧烈碰撞，擦出蓝白火花。布蕾妮一跃而起，将国王的躯体粗率地推到一旁。再次扑击而来的埃蒙爵士被尸首绊了一下，一愣之间，布蕾妮的剑便生生斩断了斧柄，断裂的斧头在空中旋转。这时，一名军士手执火把刺向她的背部，然而彩虹披风浸透了血，无法燃烧。布蕾妮回身，挥剑，火把与手臂齐飞，焰火点燃地毯。残废的军士凄厉地惨叫。埃蒙爵士扔下斧子，拔出自己的佩剑。第二位军士跳上前来，布蕾妮闪身弹开，两剑在空中急速交击、碰撞，发出剌耳的声响。随后埃蒙·库伊加入战团，以一敌二，布蕾妮只能后退，但她竭力和他们保持平手。地上，蓝礼的头颅无力地滚向一边，那道伤口恐怖地张开，血液缓缓地、缓缓地流出来。
　　罗拔爵士一直没有动手，犹豫不决，现在他也摸向自己的剑柄。“罗拔，别这样，听我说。”凯特琳抓住他的胳膊。“你们弄错了，不是她。救救她吧！听我说，这是史坦尼斯干的。”这个名字想也没想便浮现在嘴边，然而当她说了出来，迅即明白这是事实。“我发誓——你了解我的荣誉——是史坦尼斯害了他。”
　　年轻的彩虹骑士用苍白而惊恐的眼睛瞪着那正疯狂作战的女人。“史坦尼斯？他怎么做的？”
　　“我不知道。是巫术，某种黑暗的魔法，那里有道影子，影子。”她自己都听出自己语带颠狂，然而言语却滔滔不绝，一如身后飞速交击的利刃。“有一道拿着利剑的影子，我发誓，我亲眼看见了。你瞎了吗，那女孩爱他啊！快帮帮她吧！”她回头一瞥，只见第二名军士也倒了下去，长剑从他无力的手指中松脱。营帐外人声鼎沸，显然，愤怒的人群随时都可能一拥而入。“她是清白的，罗拔。我向你保证，以我丈夫之名和史塔克家族的荣誉向你保证！”
　　这句话打动了他。“我会制止他们，”罗拔爵士道，“快把她带走。”他转身走出去。
　　地毯上的火焰终于燃到了帐幕上，营帐内火势四处蔓延。埃蒙爵士狠狠地攻击布蕾妮，他身穿黄釉钢甲而她只穿着羊毛衣。然而他的不幸在于遗忘了凯特琳。她举起铁炭盆，砸在他的后脑勺上。他戴着头盔，这一击并不致命，但足以让他栽倒在地。“布蕾妮，跟我走，”凯特琳命令。女孩立即把握机会，手起剑落，划开绿丝帐篷。她们并肩奔入黎明前的黑暗和寒意中。嘈杂的喧哗从营帐另一头传来。“走这边，”凯特琳指点，“动作放慢。我们不能奔跑，否则会惹人起疑。若无其事地走，就当什么也没发生。”
　　布蕾妮收剑入鞘，跟在凯特琳身后。夜晚的空中有雨的气息。在她们后方，国王的帐篷完全着了火，飞升的火苗直冲夜空。无人在意她们。人们急冲冲地跑过，嘴里高呼着火灾、谋杀和巫术。还有的人三五成群地聚在一旁，低声议论着什么。只有几个人在祈祷，而凯特琳只发现有一名独一无二的年轻侍从跪倒在地，公然地啜泣。
　　谣言口耳相传，蓝礼的大军在逐步瓦解。夜晚的篝火渐渐熄灭，东方的旭日晨光下，风息堡硕大无朋的身躯卓然不群，宛如梦幻中的巨崖。苍白的迷雾一丝丝涌动，弥漫整个原野，随后又在太阳的光辉和清风的羽翼下四散逃窜。那是清晨的幽灵啊，老奶妈给她讲过这个典故，那是返回坟墓的灵魂。蓝礼就在里面，一如他的哥哥劳勃，一如她挚爱的奈德。
　　“我从没抱过他，直到他死去的那一刻，”她们在扩散的混乱中穿梭，布蕾妮静静地说。她的语调听起来似乎随时可能崩溃。“前一刻他还在笑，突然却到处都是血……夫人，我不明白。您看见了吗，您看见……？”
　　“我看见了一道影子。我起初以为那是蓝礼的影子，然而不是，那是他哥哥的影子。”
　　“史坦尼斯大人？”
　　“我能感觉到他。这听起来没什么理由，但我知道……”
　　对布蕾妮而言，这句话已经足够。“我会杀了他，”这位身材高大、容貌平庸的姑娘斩钉截铁地宣布。“我会亲手杀了他，用我主公的剑替他报仇。我发誓！我发誓！我发誓！”
　　哈尔·莫兰和她的护卫备好了马等着她。文德尔·曼德勒爵士正急不可捺地四处打听，想弄清到底发生了什么。“夫人，整个营地都好像发了疯！”瞧见她们，他不假思索地喊道。“蓝礼大人，他到底——”他突然住嘴，瞪着浑身浴血的布蕾妮。
　　“他已去世，但不是我们干的。”
　　“这场战斗——”哈尔·莫兰接过话头。
　　“没有战斗了。”凯特琳翻身上马，护卫们在她身边整队集结，文德尔爵士靠到她左边，派温·佛雷爵士在右。“布蕾妮，我们携带了两倍于人数的马匹。你挑一匹，跟我们走吧。”
　　“夫人，我有马，还有自己的铠甲——”
　　“那些都不用管。我们必须在他们立意追踪我们之前逃得远远的。国王被杀时我俩都在场，人们不会忘记这个事实。”于是布蕾妮一言不发地转身照办。“出发！”当护卫们全体上马后，凯特琳即刻下令。“若有人阻拦，格杀无论！”
　　晨光用修长的指头抚摸着原野，带回世界的色彩。薄雾之下，灰色的战士骑着灰色的骏马举着影影绰绰的熗矛，一万枝长熗的尖头闪烁着金色的寒光，一望无垠的飞扬战旗呈现出红粉橙，显示了蓝白棕，照耀着高贵的金黄。那里有风息堡和高庭全部的精锐骑兵啊，一个小时之前还是蓝礼的大军，如今却都属于史坦尼斯，凯特琳明白，虽然他们自己大概还不知道。如果不追随最后的拜拉席恩，他们还能效忠谁呢？史坦尼斯赢了，仅靠一次邪恶的打击便赢得了一切。
　　我是合法的国王，他宣称，说话时下巴像钢铁一样紧绷，而你儿子和我弟弟一样都只是叛徒。他也有末日来临的那一天。
　　一阵寒意浸透全身。
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你看着眼前的人，分明还是以前的模样，可心里终究不是以前那般澄清透明了。
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CHAPTER 34
　　JON

　　
　　The hill jutted above the dense tangle of forest, rising solitary and sudden, its windswept heights visible from miles off. The wildlings called it the Fist of the First Men, rangers said. It did look like a fist, Jon Snow thought, punching up through earth and wood, its bare brown slopes knuckled with stone.
　　He rode to the top with Lord Mormont and the officers, leaving Ghost below under the trees. The direwolf had run off three times as they climbed, twice returning reluctantly to Jon’s whistle. The third time, the Lord Commander lost patience and snapped, “Let him go, boy. I want to reach the crest before dusk. Find the wolf later.”
　　The way up was steep and stony, the summit crowned by a chest-high wall of tumbled rocks. They had to circle some distance west before they found a gap large enough to admit the horses. “This is good ground, Thoren,” the Old Bear proclaimed when at last they attained the top. “We could scarce hope for better. We’ll make our camp here to await Halfhand.” The Lord Commander swung down off his saddle, dislodging the raven from his shoulder. Complaining loudly, the bird took to the air.
　　The views atop the hill were bracing, yet it was the ringwall that drew Jon’s eye, the weathered grey stones with their white patches of lichen, their beards of green moss. It was said that the Fist had been a ringfort of the First Men in the Dawn Age. “An old place, and strong,” Thoren Smallwood said.
　　“Old,” Mormont’s raven screamed as it flapped in noisy circles about their heads. “Old, old, old.”
　　“Quiet,” Mormont growled up at the bird. The Old Bear was too proud to admit to weakness, but Jon was not deceived. The strain of keeping up with younger men was taking its toll.
　　“These heights will be easy to defend, if need be,” Thoren pointed out as he walked his horse along the ring of stones, his sable-trimmed cloak stirring in the wind.
　　“Yes, this place will do.” The Old Bear lifted a hand to the wind, and raven landed on his forearm, claws scrabbling against his black ringmail.
　　“What about water, my lord?” Jon wondered.
　　“We crossed a brook at the foot of the hill.”
　　“A long climb for a drink,” Jon pointed out, “and outside the ring of stones.”
　　Thoren said, “Are you too lazy to climb a hill, boy?”
　　When Lord Mormont said, “We’re not like to find another place as strong. We’ll carry water, and make certain we are well supplied,” Jon knew better than to argue. So the command was given, and the brothers of the Night’s Watch raised their camp behind the stone ring the First Men had made. Black tents sprouted like mushrooms after a rain, and blankets and bedrolls covered the bare ground. Stewards tethered the garrons in long lines, and saw them fed and watered. Foresters took their axes to the trees in the waning afternoon light to harvest enough wood to see them through the night. A score of builders set to clearing brush, digging latrines, and untying their bundles of fire-hardened stakes. “I will have every opening in the ringwall ditched and staked before dark,” the Old Bear had commanded.
　　Once he’d put up the Lord Commander’s tent and seen to their horses, Jon Snow descended the hill in search of Ghost. The direwolf came at once, all in silence. One moment Jon was striding beneath the trees, whistling and shouting, alone in the green, pinecones and fallen leaves under his feet; the next, the great white direwolf was walking beside him, pale as morning mist.
　　But when they reached the ringfort, Ghost balked again. He padded forward warily to sniff at the gap in the stones, and then retreated, as if he did not like what he’d smelled. Jon tried to grab him by the scruff of his neck and haul him bodily inside the ring, no easy task; the wolf weighed as much as he did, and was stronger by far. “Ghost, what’s wrong with you?” It was not like him to be so unsettled. In the end Jon had to give it up. “As you will,” he told the wolf. “Go, hunt.” The red eyes watched him as he made his way back through the mossy stones.
　　They ought to be safe here. The hill offered commanding views, and the slopes were precipitous to the north and west and only slightly more gentle to the east. Yet as the dusk deepened and darkness seeped into the hollows between the trees, Jon’s sense of foreboding grew. This is the haunted forest, he told himself. Maybe there are ghosts here, the spirits of the First Men. This was their place, once.
　　“Stop acting the boy,” he told himself. Clambering atop the piled rocks, Jon gazed off toward the setting sun. He could see the light shimmering like hammered gold off the surface of the Milkwater as it curved away to the south. Upriver the land was more rugged, the dense forest giving way to a series of bare stony hills that rose high and wild to the north and west. On the horizon stood the mountains like a great shadow, range on range of them receding into the blue-grey distance, their jagged peaks sheathed eternally in snow. Even from afar they looked vast and cold and inhospitable.
　　Closer at hand, it was the trees that ruled. To south and east the wood went on as far as Jon could see, a vast tangle of root and limb painted in a thousand shades of green, with here and there a patch of red where a weirwood shouldered through the pines and sentinels, or a blush of yellow where some broadleafs had begun to turn. When the wind blew, he could hear the creak and groan of branches older than he was. A thousand leaves fluttered, and for a moment the forest seemed a deep green sea, storm-tossed and heaving, eternal and unknowable.
　　Ghost was not like to be alone down there, he thought. Anything could be moving under that sea, creeping toward the ringfort through the dark of the wood, concealed beneath those trees. Anything. How would they ever know? He stood there for a long time, until the sun vanished behind the saw-toothed mountains and darkness began to creep through the forest.
　　“Jon?” Samwell Tarly called up. “I thought it looked like you. Are you well?”
　　“Well enough.” Jon hopped down. “How did you fare today?”
　　“Well. I fared well. Truly.”
　　Jon was not about to share his disquiet with his friend, not when Samwell Tarly was at last beginning to find his courage. “The Old Bear means to wait here for Qhorin Halfhand and the men from the Shadow Tower.”
　　“It seems a strong place,” said Sam. “A ringfort of the First Men. Do you think there were battles fought here?”
　　“No doubt. You’d best get a bird ready. Mormont will want to send back word.”
　　“I wish I could send them all. They hate being caged.”
　　“You would too, if you could fly.”
　　“If I could fly, I’d be back at Castle Black eating a pork pie,” said Sam.
　　Jon clapped him on the shoulder with his burned hand. They walked back through the camp together. Cookfires were being lit all around them. Overhead, the stars were coming out. The long red tail of Mormont’s Torch burned as bright as the moon. Jon heard the ravens before he saw them. Some were calling his name. The birds were not shy when it came to making noise.
　　They feel it too. “I’d best see to the Old Bear,” he said. “He gets noisy when he isn’t fed as well.”
　　He found Mormont talking with Thoren Smallwood and half a dozen other officers. “There you are,” the old man said gruffly. “Bring us some hot wine, if you would. The night is chilly.”
　　“Yes, my lord.” Jon built a cookfire, claimed a small cask of Mormont’s favorite robust red from stores, and poured it into a kettle. He hung the kettle above the flames while he gathered the rest of his ingredients. The Old Bear was particular about his hot spiced wine. So much cinnamon and so much nutmeg and so much honey, not a drop more. Raisins and nuts and dried berries, but no lemon, that was the rankest sort of southron heresy—which was queer, since he always took lemon in his morning beer. The drink must be hot to warm a man properly, the Lord Commander insisted, but the wine must never be allowed to come to a boil. Jon kept a careful eye on the kettle.
　　As he worked, he could hear the voices from inside the tent. Jarman Buckwell said, “The easiest road up into the Frostfangs is to follow the Milkwater back to its source. Yet if we go that path, Rayder will know of our approach, certain as sunrise.”
　　“The Giant’s Stair might serve,” said Ser Mallador Locke, “or the Skirling Pass, if it’s clear.”
　　The wine was steaming. Jon lifted the kettle off the fire, filled eight cups, and carried them into the tent. The Old Bear was peering at the crude map Sam had drawn him that night back in Craster’s Keep. He took a cup from Jon’s tray, tried a swallow of wine, and gave a brusque nod of approval. His raven hopped down his arm. “Corn,” it said. “Corn. Corn.”
　　Ser Ottyn Wythers waved the wine away. “I would not go into the mountains at all,” he said in a thin, tired voice. “The Frostfangs have a cruel bite even in summer, and now . . . if we should be caught by a storm . . .” “I do not mean to risk the Frostfangs unless I must,” said Mormont. “Wildlings can no more live on snow and stone than we can. They will emerge from the heights soon, and for a host of any size, the only route is along the Milkwater. If so, we are strongly placed here. They cannot hope to slip by us.”
　　“They may not wish to. They are thousands, and we will be three hundred when the Halfhand reaches us.” Ser Mallador accepted a cup from Jon.
　　“If it comes to battle, we could not hope for better ground than here,” declared Mormont. “We’ll strengthen the defenses. Pits and spikes, caltrops scattered on the slopes, every breach mended. Jarman, I’ll want your sharpest eyes as watchers. A ring of them, all around us and along the river, to warn of any approach. Hide them up in trees. And we had best start bringing up water too, more than we need. We’ll dig cisterns. It will keep the men occupied, and may prove needful later.”
　　“My rangers—” started Thoren Smallwood.
　　“Your rangers will limit their ranging to this side of the river until the Halfhand reaches us. After that, we’ll see. I will not lose more of my men.”
　　“Mance Rayder might be massing his host a day’s ride from here, and we’d never know,” Smallwood complained.
　　“We know where the wildlings are massing,” Mormont came back. “We had it from Craster. I mislike the man, but I do not think he lied to us in this.”
　　“As you say.” Smallwood took a sullen leave. The others finished their wine and followed, more courteously.
　　“Shall I bring you supper, my lord?” Jon asked.
　　“Corn,” the raven cried. Mormont did not answer at once. When he did he said only, “Did your wolf find game today?”
　　“He’s not back yet.”
　　“We could do with fresh meat.” Mormont dug into a sack and offered his raven a handful of corn. “You think I’m wrong to keep the rangers close?”
　　“That’s not for me to say, my lord.”
　　“It is if you’re asked.”
　　“If the rangers must stay in sight of the Fist, I don’t see how they can hope to find my uncle,” Jon admitted.
　　“They can’t.” The raven pecked at the kernels in the Old Bear’s palm. “Two hundred men or ten thousand, the country is too vast.” The corn gone, Mormont turned his hand over.
　　“You would not give up the search?”
　　“Maester Aemon thinks you clever.” Mormont moved the raven to his shoulder. The bird tilted its head to one side, little eyes a-glitter.
　　The answer was there. “Is it . . . it seems to me that it might be easier for one man to find two hundred than for two hundred to find one.”
　　The raven gave a cackling scream, but the Old Bear smiled through the grey of his beard. “This many men and horses leave a trail even Aemon could follow. On this hill, our fires ought to be visible as far off as the foothills of the Frostfangs. If Ben Stark is alive and free, he will come to us, I have no doubt.”
　　“Yes,” said Jon, “but . . . what if . . .”
　　“. . . he’s dead?” Mormont asked, not unkindly.
　　Jon nodded, reluctantly.
　　“Dead,” the raven said. “Dead. Dead.”
　　“He may come to us anyway,” the Old Bear said. “As Othor did, and Jafer Flowers. I dread that as much as you, Jon, but we must admit the possibility.”
　　“Dead,” his raven cawed, ruffling its wings. Its voice grew louder and more shrill. “Dead.”
　　Mormont stroked the bird’s black feathers, and stifled a sudden yawn with the back of his hand. “I will forsake supper, I believe. Rest will serve me better. Wake me at first light.”
　　“Sleep well, my lord.” Jon gathered up the empty cups and stepped outside. He heard distant laughter, the plaintive sound of pipes. A great blaze was crackling in the center of the camp, and he could smell stew cooking. The Old Bear might not be hungry, but Jon was. He drifted over toward the fire.
　　Dywen was holding forth, spoon in hand. “I know this wood as well as any man alive, and I tell you, I wouldn’t care to ride through it alone tonight. Can’t you smell it?”
　　Grenn was staring at him with wide eyes, but Dolorous Edd said, “All I smell is the shit of two hundred horses. And this stew. Which has a similar aroma, now that I come to sniff it.”
　　“I’ve got your similar aroma right here.” Hake patted his dirk. Grumbling, he filled Jon’s bowl from the kettle.
　　The stew was thick with barley, carrot, and onion, with here and there a ragged shred of salt beef, softened in the cooking.
　　“What is it you smell, Dywen?” asked Grenn.
　　The forester sucked on his spoon a moment. He had taken out his teeth. His face was leathery and wrinkled, his hands gnarled as old roots. “Seems to me like it smells . . . well . . . cold.”
　　“Your head’s as wooden as your teeth,” Hake told him. “There’s no smell to cold.”
　　There is, thought Jon, remembering the night in the Lord Commander’s chambers. It smells like death. Suddenly he was not hungry anymore. He gave his stew to Grenn, who looked in need of an extra supper to warm him against the night.
　　The wind was blowing briskly when he left. By morning, frost would cover the ground, and the tent ropes would be stiff and frozen. A few fingers of spiced wine sloshed in the bottom of the kettle. Jon fed fresh wood to the fire and put the kettle over the flames to reheat. He flexed his fingers as he waited, squeezing and spreading until the hand tingled. The first watch had taken up their stations around the perimeter of the camp. Torches flickered all along the ringwall. The night was moonless, but a thousand stars shone overhead.
　　A sound rose out of the darkness, faint and distant, but unmistakable: the howling of wolves. Their voices rose and fell, a chilly song, and lonely. It made the hairs rise along the back of his neck. Across the fire, a pair of red eyes regarded him from the shadows. The light of the flames made them glow.
　　“Ghost,” Jon breathed, surprised. “So you came inside after all, eh?” The white wolf often hunted all night; he had not expected to see him again till daybreak. “Was the hunting so bad?” he asked. “Here. To me, Ghost.”
　　The direwolf circled the fire, sniffing Jon, sniffing the wind, never still. It did not seem as if he were after meat right now. When the dead came walking, Ghost knew He woke me, warned me. Alarmed, he got to his feet. “is something out there? Ghost, do you have a scent?” Dywen said he smelled cold.
　　The direwolf loped off, stopped, looked back. He wants me to follow Pulling up the hood of his cloak, Jon walked away from the tents, away from the warmth of his fire, past the lines of shaggy little garrons. One of the horses whickered nervously when Ghost padded by. Jon soothed him with a word and paused to stroke his muzzle. He could hear the wind whistling through cracks in the rocks as they neared the ringwall. A voice called out a challenge. Jon stepped into the torchlight. “I need to fetch water for the Lord Commander.”
　　“Go on, then,” the guard said. “Be quick about it.” Huddled beneath his black cloak, with his hood drawn up against the wind, the man never even looked to see if he had a bucket.
　　Jon slipped sideways between two sharpened stakes while Ghost slid beneath them. A torch had been thrust down into a crevice, its flames flying pale orange banners when the gusts came. He snatched it up as he squeezed through the gap between the stones. Ghost went racing down the hill. Jon followed more slowly, the torch thrust out before him as he made his descent. The camp sounds faded behind him. The night was black, the slope steep, stony, and uneven. A moment’s inattention would be a sure way to break an ankle . . . or his neck. What am I doing? he asked himself as he picked his way down.
　　The trees stood beneath him, warriors armored in bark and leaf, deployed in their silent ranks awaiting the command to storm the hill. Black, they seemed . . . it was only when his torchlight brushed against them that Jon glimpsed a flash of green. Faintly, he heard the sound of water flowing over rocks. Ghost vanished in the underbrush. Jon struggled after him, listening to the call of the brook, to the leaves sighing in the wind. Branches clutched at his cloak, while overhead thick limbs twined together and shut out the stars.
　　He found Ghost lapping from the stream. “Ghost,” he called, “to me. Now” When the direwolf raised his head, his eyes glowed red and baleful, and water streamed down from his jaws like slaver. There was something fierce and terrible about him in that instant. And then he was off, bounding past Jon, racing through the trees. “Ghost, no, stay,” he shouted, but the wolf paid no heed. The lean white shape was swallowed by the dark, and Jon had only two choices—to climb the hill again, alone, or to follow.
　　He followed, angry, holding the torch out low so he could see the rocks that threatened to trip him with every step, the thick roots that seemed to grab as his feet, the holes where a man could twist an ankle. Every few feet he called again for Ghost, but the night wind was swirling amongst the trees and it drank the words. This is madness, he thought as he plunged deeper into the trees. He was about to turn back when he glimpsed a flash of white off ahead and to the right, back toward the hill. He jogged after it, cursing under his breath.
　　A quarter way around the Fist he chased the wolf before he lost him again. Finally he stopped to catch his breath amidst the scrub, thorns, and tumbled rocks at the base of the hill. Beyond the torchlight, the dark pressed close.
　　A soft scrabbling noise made him turn. Jon moved toward the sound, stepping carefully among boulders and thornbushes. Behind a fallen tree, he came on Ghost again. The direwolf was digging furiously, kicking up dirt.
　　“What have you found?” Jon lowered the torch, revealing a rounded mound of soft earth. A grave, he thought. But whose?
　　He knelt, jammed the torch into the ground beside him. The soil was loose, sandy. Jon pulled it out by the fistful. There were no stones, no roots. Whatever was here had been put here recently. Two feet down, his fingers touched cloth. He had been expecting a corpse, fearing a corpse, but this was something else. He pushed against the fabric and felt small, hard shapes beneath, unyielding. There was no smell, no sign of graveworms. Ghost backed off and sat on his haunches, watching.
　　Jon brushed the loose soil away to reveal a rounded bundle perhaps two feet across. He jammed his fingers down around the edges and worked it loose. When he pulled it free, whatever was inside shifted and clinked. Treasure, he thought, but the shapes were wrong to be coins, and the sound was wrong for metal.
　　A length of frayed rope bound the bundle together. Jon unsheathed his dagger and cut it, groped for the edges of the cloth, and pulled. The bundle turned, and its contents spilled out onto the ground, glittering dark and bright. He saw a dozen knives, leaf-shaped spearheads, numerous arrowheads. Jon picked up a dagger blade, featherlight and shiny black, hiltless. Torchlight ran along its edge, a thin orange line that spoke of razor sharpness. Dragonglass. What the maesters call obsidian. Had Ghost uncovered some ancient cache of the children of the forest, buried here for thousands of years? The Fist of the First Men was an old place, only . . .
　　Beneath the dragonglass was an old warhorn, made from an auroch’s horn and banded in bronze. Jon shook the dirt from inside it, and a stream of arrowheads fell out. He let them fall, and pulled up a corner of the cloth the weapons had been wrapped in, rubbing it between his fingers. Good wool, thick, a double weave, damp but not rotted. It could not have been long in the ground. And it was dark. He seized a handful and pulled it close to the torch. Not dark. Black.
　　Even before Jon stood and shook it out, he knew what he had: the black cloak of a Sworn Brother of the Night’s Watch.




Ⅱ 列王的纷争 Chapter35 琼恩
　　山丘自浓密的森林中骤然升起，孤立而突兀，数里之外便能看见强风吹刮的峰顶。游骑兵们都说，野人称它为先民拳峰。它真的像拳头，琼恩心想，它自土地和树林间高高屹立，光秃棕褐的山坡上乱石密布。
　　他随莫尔蒙司令和高级官员们上了山顶，把白灵留在树荫下。因为他们登山时，冰原狼三次逃开，前两次他勉强服从于琼恩的口哨，等到第三次，司令大人失去了耐心，叫道：“随他去，孩子。我想在日落之前抵达峰顶。你待会儿再去找狼吧。”
　　上山的路陡峭而崎岖，顶峰环绕着一圈由乱石砌成、及胸高的墙。人们不得不向西绕了一大圈，方才找到一个容马通行的缺口。“这里地势不错，索伦，”登顶之后熊老宣布。“找不到比这更好的地方了，我们就在这里安营扎寨，等待断掌。”语毕总司令翻身下马，他的动作惊扰了肩上的乌鸦。鸟儿高声抱怨几句，飞上了天。
　　山顶的风光很不错，但真正吸引琼恩的是那道环墙：风化的灰石上爬满片片苍白的地衣，绿色的苔藓轻轻拂动。传说这座拳峰是黎明纪元里先民所修筑的环堡。“地方虽古老，但依然坚固，”索伦·斯莫伍德说。
　　“古老，”莫尔蒙的乌鸦在他们头顶吵吵闹闹，挥舞翅膀，尖叫着，“古老，古老，古老。”
　　“闭嘴，”莫尔蒙抬头对鸟儿吼道。熊老向来骄傲，不肯在别人面前示弱，但琼恩也不是那么好骗的，他看得出来，跟着年轻人走了这么长的路，老人已经疲惫不堪。
　　“必要的时候，这个高地很容易防守，”索伦一边策马巡视环墙，一边指出，黑貂皮斗篷在风中激荡。
　　“没错，这地方行。”熊老迎风抬起一只手，乌鸦旋即停上他的前臂，爪子紧紧扒住黑环甲。
　　“水的问题怎么解决，大人？”琼恩询问。
　　“在山脚下，我们不是刚涉过一条小溪么。”
　　“两地之间，有一段很长的攀爬，”琼恩指出，“而且溪流在石头环垒之外。”
　　索伦开了口：“怎么，懒得不愿爬山了，小子？”
　　莫尔蒙司令也接口道：“看样子，我们找不到比这更坚固的地方了。我们可以把水先挑上来，确保补给充足。”琼恩知道多说无益，便不再开口。于是命令就此下达，守夜人的弟兄们很快在先民修筑的石墙后搭起了帐篷。黑色的营帐如雨后蘑菇般纷纷浮现，毯子和铺盖卷罩住了光秃的土地。事务官们将驮马排成长长的队列，喂它们草料和清水。林务官们则乘着落日的余晖拿起斧子到树林里砍伐木材，以备夜晚之需。一群工匠着手清理地面，挖掘厕所，并解下捆捆用火淬硬的木桩。“天黑之前，务必把环墙每个开口都挖好壕沟，立起桩子，”熊老下令。
　　等司令官的营帐搭好，将马匹安顿完毕，琼恩便下山去寻找白灵。冰原狼立刻响应他的召唤，沉默地冲出来：前一刻琼恩还孤身一人，大步走在林间，踏着松果和落叶，边吹口哨边喊叫；下一刻，这头大白狼就已经漫步在他身边，苍白一如晨雾。
　　可抵达环堡外围时，白灵却又不肯前进。他小心翼翼地跑上前去嗅嗅岩石的缝隙，接着便忙不迭地后退，好像很不喜欢嗅到的气息。琼恩抓住他颈背，打算硬拖他进入环墙，这并不容易——冰原狼几乎和他一般重，无疑还远比他强壮。“白灵，你是哪儿不对劲了？”他从来不会这么违拗啊。最后琼恩只好放弃。“随你便啦，”他告诉狼，“去吧，打猎去吧。”他穿过青苔密布的石墙往回走，那双红色的眼睛一直盯着他。
　　墙里面应该很安全。居高临下，附近地区都在视野之中，而山坡在北、西两面都非常陡峭，惟在东方稍微舒缓。虽然如此，但随着暮色渐沉，黑暗逐步渗透到林间的空旷中，琼恩心里的惴惴不安却油然而生。这可是鬼影森林啊，他告诉自己，这里或许真的有鬼魂，先民的幽灵在此徘徊不去呢。毕竟这里曾是他们的地盘。
　　“行了，别孩子气了，”他对自己说。爬上堆叠的乱石，琼恩望向落暮的太阳。乳河蜿蜒着流向南方，河面上闪烁的微光，好似锻冶中的黄金。上游的土地更加崎岖，浓密的森林不复出现，取而代之的是一系列光秃的石丘，它们肆无忌惮地高高耸立，并向着北方和西方延伸。远方的地平线上，山脉好似雄浑的阴影，一片接一片，直至变得灰白模糊。参差的峰峦上终年积雪，纵然遥遥相望，它们依旧那么庞大、冰冷、寂寞而荒凉。
　　拉近视线，四周完完全全是树的天下。南面和东面，林木直到视野尽头，这是一片无比辽阔、盘根错节的密林，撒下成千上万暗绿的影子，其中点缀着几处红色，那是挤开松树或哨兵树的鱼梁木，偶而浮现的黄则是几株开始成熟的阔叶烟草。朔风吹起，他听见远比他年迈的枝叶在呻吟叹息。千百片树叶集体舞蹈，一时之间，森林似乎化为深绿的海洋，风暴流转，不得宁息，恒同日月，难以揣测。
　　白灵怎会喜欢独自待在这种地方？他心想。在这片林海汪洋里，任何移动的事物，即便正朝着环堡扑来，也根本无从窥见。任何事物。真有什么不测我们该怎样防备？他在原地伫立许久，直到太阳消失在锯齿状的山脉后，暗影爬进了森林。
　　“琼恩？”山姆威尔·塔利喊道，“果然是你。你还好吗？”
　　“很好。”琼恩跳下墙。“你呢？”
　　“不错。我觉得不错。真的。”
　　琼恩不打算用自己的忧虑去烦扰朋友，尤其是面对刚开始找到勇气的山姆威尔·塔利。“熊老打算在这里等候断掌科林以及影子塔的人马。”
　　“这似乎是个很坚固的地方，”山姆说，“先民的环堡……你觉得这里从前打过仗吗？”
　　“当然喽。对了，你该把鸟儿准备好。熊老正打算派它送信呢。”
　　“我真想把它们通通派走。它们讨厌被关进笼子。”
　　“你要有翅膀，也会这样想。”
　　“我要有翅膀，早飞回黑城堡吃猪肉馅饼了。”山姆说。
　　琼恩用灼伤的手掌拍拍对方肩膀，他们并肩回到营地。周围的营火升了起来。头顶，星星也出来了。“莫尔蒙的火炬”那绵长的红尾如明月一般耀眼。还没走到鸦笼，琼恩便听见了它们的尖叫。很多鸟儿正喊着他的名字。对于制造噪音，乌鸦可是孜孜以求，决不害臊。
　　说不定它们也感觉到了。“我先去照管熊老，”他说。“不把他喂饱，他也会吵吵闹闹。”
　　熊老正和索伦·斯莫伍德及另外六七个军官讨论军务。“你来了啊，”老人粗声道，“没事的话，给我们端点热酒。今晚上凉得要命。”
　　“是，大人。”于是琼恩升起篝火，找负责给养的人要了一小桶莫尔蒙最喜欢的红葡萄酒，并将之倒进壶中。随后他将水壶搁在火上，自己跑去取其他材料。熊老对他爱喝的香料热酒是很讲究的：添加的肉桂、豆蔻和蜂蜜都有特定的剂量，不多也不少，此外还要加入葡萄干、坚果和干浆果，但不放柠檬——因为那是来自遥远南方的奢侈品，非常稀罕，熊老只用它来搭配早餐的啤酒。“饮料的第一功用是温暖身体，”司令官如此强调，“但葡萄酒不能煮沸了”。于是琼恩小心翼翼地盯着水壶。
　　他边工作，边听着帐内的谈话。只听贾曼·布克威尔道：“要进入霜雪之牙，最容易的路是顺着乳河上溯。但假如我们选择这条路，一定会给雷德知道，这和太阳会升起一样确然无疑。”
　　“那就走巨人梯，”马拉多·洛克爵士说，“说穿了，风声峡也可以考虑。”
　　葡萄酒冒出蒸汽。琼恩连忙把水壶从火上放下，倒满八个杯子，端进帐篷。只见熊老目不转睛地盯着山姆在卡斯特堡垒里绘制的粗糙地图。他从琼恩端的盘子里拿了一个杯子，用力灌下一口，粗率地点头，以示嘉许。他的乌鸦不肯沉默，在他手臂上跳来跳去。“玉米，”它说，“玉米，玉米。”
　　奥廷·威勒斯爵士挥开酒盘。“我决不进山，”他用细微而疲倦的语气说，“霜雪之牙那地方夏天都冷煞人，而目前……倘若遇上风暴……”
　　“嗯，除非万不得已，我不打算冒险进入霜雪之牙。”莫尔蒙说，“野人和我们一样，不能靠岩石和积雪过活。甭管他们聚集了多少人，很快便会从大山中出来，而惟一的路径便是顺着乳河河道向下。如此看来，我们在此正好扼住要害。他们绕不开我们。”
　　“恐怕他们根本就没打算绕开。他们的人成千上万，而我们呢？就算加上断掌的人马，也不过才区区三百。”马拉多爵士接过琼恩盘中的杯子。
　　“就算要打，也找不到比这里更好的地势。”莫尔蒙宣布，“所以我们得加紧准备，设好刺钉和陷坑，在山坡上布满蒺藜，每个裂口都要修补完整。贾曼，我需要借重你敏锐的观察力，带上你的人，在营地附近和河岸两边布下警戒，让他们藏在树上，一旦发现不明物接近便立刻报告。我们再来谈水的问题，必须储备大大多于当前需求的水。我命令，立刻着手开挖蓄水池。繁重的劳动眼下会让弟兄们不满，但到头来对我们可是性命攸关。”
　　“我的游骑兵——”索伦·斯奠伍德开口。
　　“断掌抵达之前，你的游骑兵只准在河的这一岸巡逻。他到达之后，我们再做决定。我不想失去任何兄弟。”
　　“那么，曼斯·雷德或许正在离此一日骑程外集结军队，而我们都不知道呢，”斯莫伍德抱怨。
　　“我们已经知道野人在何处集结，”熊老反驳，“卡斯特告诉了我们。我虽然讨厌他，但我不认为他会在这种事上撒谎。”
　　“那好吧，”斯莫伍德沉着脸离去。其他人比较礼貌，喝完了酒，才纷纷离开。
　　“用晚餐吗，大人？”琼恩问。
　　“玉米，”乌鸦尖叫。莫尔蒙沉默了一会儿，最后才开口：“你的狼今天可有猎获？”
　　“他还没回来呢。”
　　“他和我们一样，也需要新鲜肉食。”莫尔蒙手伸进口袋，掏出一把玉米喂乌鸦。“你也觉得我不该限制游骑兵的活动？”
　　“这轮不到我来发表议论，大人。”
　　“如果我认真的问你呢？”
　　“如果游骑兵只在拳峰视线之内活动，我不认为他们能找到我叔叔。”琼恩承以。
　　“他们是找不到的。”乌鸦急切地啄食熊老掌中的玉米粒。“别说是两百人，就算咱们有一万人，这片土地也过于辽阔。”玉米给吃了个干净，莫尔蒙抖了抖手臂。
　　“您不会放弃搜索吧？”
　　“伊蒙学士说你是个聪明人。”莫尔蒙把乌鸦让回肩膀。鸟儿歪起脖子，小眼睛闪闪发光。
　　他把琼恩逼到了死胡同。“这个……这个我觉得让一个人找两百人比让两百人找一个人要容易得多。”
　　乌鸦发出一阵咯咯的尖叫。透过厚厚的灰胡子，熊老笑了，“我们这群人留下的踪迹就连伊蒙也能跟上。屯在山上，相信我们的营火打霜雪之牙那边都能看到。如果班·史塔克还活着，还能自由行动，他一定会找路过来，我向你保证。”
　　“是的，”琼恩说，“可……如果……”
　　“……他死了？”莫尔蒙问，声音依旧和善。
　　琼恩勉力点点头。
　　“死了，”乌鸦说，“死了。死了。”
　　“他也许会以别种方式回来，”熊老说，“就像奥瑟，就像杰佛·佛花。琼恩，我的心情跟你一样，但我们必须承认这种可能性。”
　　“死了，”他的乌鸦还在叫闹，一边抖动翅膀，声调愈加高亢尖锐，“死了。”
　　莫尔蒙摸摸鸟儿的黑羽，用手背遮住一个突来的呵欠。“我想晚餐就省了吧。休息休息对我更好。记住，天一亮就叫醒我。”
　　“请您好好休息，大人。”琼恩收起空杯子，走出帐外。远处传来欢笑，还有管笛吹奏的伤感乐曲。营地中央燃起一堆熊熊的篝火，炖肉的香味随风传来。熊老或许不饿，但他可是饥肠辘辘。于是他朝着篝火走去。
　　戴文正一手拿勺，一边滔滔不绝的说话：“我哪，比这世上任何人都要了解这片森林。我告诉你，今晚上决不能一个人出去。你闻不到吗？”
　　葛兰睁着斗大的眼睛望着他，但接口的是忧郁的艾迪：“我只闻到两百匹马的屎尿味，还有这锅肉。说实话，气味都差不多。”
　　“你少说几句成不成？”哈克轻拍匕首，咕哝了几句，并为琼恩盛了一碗炖肉。
　　肉汤里有大麦、萝卜和洋葱，以及几片煮得烂熟的咸牛肉。
　　“你到底闻到什么，戴文？”葛兰问。
　　林务官已把假牙取了下来，琼恩瞧着他爬满皱纹的脸和老树根一般多瘤的手臂。他吮了吮勺子，方才开口：“我觉得这里闻起来……呃……很冷。”
　　“敢情你脑子和牙齿一样都是木头做的？”哈克告诉他，“怎么可能闻起来冷呢？”
　　怎么不可能？琼恩想，随即忆起司令塔那一夜。那是死亡的味道。突然间，他也没了胃口，便把肉汤递给葛兰，他看来正需要额外加餐以温暖身体，对抗寒夜。
　　离开之际，风吹得强烈。看来到了清晨，大雪便会覆盖土地，帐篷绳将会冻结僵硬。壶底还有些许残留的料酒，琼恩为火堆添进新柴，重新加热水壶。他边等边暖指头，又张又合，直到经脉稍稍舒活。营地四周，值头班夜的弟兄已经上岗。火炬沿着环墙摇曳不定。这是个无月的夜，只有上千颗星星高挂头顶。
　　黑暗中传来一阵呼嗥，微弱而遥远，但确然无疑——这是狼群的嗥叫。它们的声音起起落落，仿如一首凄迷而寂寥的歌谣，让他汗毛直竖。篝火对面，阴影之中，一对红眼睛凝视着他，就着火光，犹如一对闪烁的宝石。
　　“白灵，”琼恩惊讶得喘了口粗气，“你终于肯进来了么，呃？”他的白狼平常总是整夜巡猎，他本以为天亮之前没可能再见他。“这里抓不到东西？”他问，“来。到我这儿来，白灵。”
　　冰原狼围着火堆打转，嗅嗅琼恩，又嗅嗅风，不得宁静。看来他不像是刚饱餐过一顿的样子。当死人开始行走，最先发现的就是白灵，是他叫醒我，警告我。他忽然警惕地起立。“外面是不是有什么东西？白灵，你闻到了什么？”戴文说他闻到了冷。
　　冰原狼跳开一步，停下来，又回头望他。他要我跟他走。于是琼恩拉起斗篷的兜帽，离开营区，离开温暖的篝火，穿过排列整齐的粗毛犁马，朝外走去。白灵经过时，有匹马紧张地嘶叫起来，琼恩停下来摸摸它鼻子，说了几句安抚的话。他们越接近环墙，他便愈清晰地听见狂风刮过石缝发出的呼啸。前方有人盘问，琼恩走进火光下。“我去为司令大人取水。”
　　“好的，你去吧，”守卫说，“不过动作快点。”这名男子蜷缩在黑斗篷里，拉起兜帽以对抗寒风，琼恩看不见他的脸，只觉得他像原地不动的木桶。
　　琼恩从两根尖桩间挤过，而白灵则从下方穿出。墙缝里插着一支燃烧的火炬，风声席卷，它也跟着飞扬，发出白橙相间的光芒。琼恩侧身钻过墙间通道，顺手一把取下它。到了外面，白灵立时飞奔而下，琼恩则慢慢跟随，让火炬为自己照亮下山的路。营地的喧哗在身后湮灭。漆黑夜，乱石坡，险恶的山路，只要一时疏忽，便会摔断膝盖……甚至脖子。我到底在干什么？他一边选取路径一边问自己。
　　森林就在下方，宛如装备着硬皮与繁叶的战士，静默地排成队列，等待着攻打山丘的命令。它们的身躯一片漆黑……只有当火光扫过枝干，琼恩才瞥见几许绿影。隐隐约约，他听见岩石间潺潺的流水声。白灵在矮树丛中消失不见，琼恩拼力跟上，一边侧耳倾听小溪的呼唤，以及树叶在风中的叹息。枝条不断攫住他的斗篷，头顶浓厚的树冠密密匝匝，遮蔽了繁星。
　　白灵跑到溪边，啜饮清水。“白灵，”他唤道，“到我这儿来，快。”冰原狼抬起头，两眼通红，目露凶光，清水如垂涎般自他牙关滑落。刹那间，他是如此凶怖可怕。随后他便跑开了，跑过琼恩身边，冲向密林深处。“白灵，等等，站住，”他吼道，但狼毫无反应。苍白而苗条的形体隐没在无边的黑暗中，琼恩只有两个选择——要么独自爬山返回，要么继续跟随。
　　他只能跟随，于是他放低火炬，愤愤不平地向前走去，一边小心翼翼地留意可能绊倒人的岩石，可能箍住脚的粗根和可能扭断膝盖的孔洞。每走几步，他就停下来呼唤白灵，但夜风刮过密林的嚎啸淹没了一切。这真是疯了，他愈加深入森林，便愈加这么认为。当他终于打算回头时，忽然瞥见前方有一道白影，闪向右边，朝山丘奔去。他连忙追赶，上气不接下气地咒骂起来。
　　他们绕着拳峰的山脚跑了大约四分之一，直到再度他跟丢了狼。他累得喘不过气，便在一堆灌木、荆棘和碎石中歇下脚步。火光之外，黑暗从四面八方向他逼近。
　　这时，一阵轻微的抓刨声引起了他的注意。琼恩朝发声之地移去，在石头和灌木间谨慎地游走。最后，在一棵倾倒的大树下，他终于找到了白灵。冰原狼正疯狂地挖掘着大地，刨起阵阵尘土。
　　“找到了什么？”琼恩放低火炬，发现眼前是一座松土搭成的圆形土墩。一座坟墓，他心想，是谁的呢？
　　他跪下来，将火把插进身旁的泥地。土质松软而多沙，琼恩抓起一把，里面既没有石子，也没有根须。不管这里埋了什么，必定为时不长。挖下两尺，指头有了衣物的触觉。他认为是某具尸首，他恐怕是某具尸首，但这里……有别种的异样。他挤挤织物，觉出下面有某种细小、坚硬、不能弯曲的东西。这里没有气味，更没有尸虫的迹象。白灵往后退开，蹲下来，盯着他瞧。
　　琼恩拨开松土，找到一个圆形的包裹，直径几乎有两尺。他将手指伸进土中，用力提出来，随着拖拽，里面发出叮当的响声。莫非是财宝？他心想，但手上感觉不出钱币的形状，仔细一听声音也不是金属的发音。
　　一捆磨旧的绳子紧紧绑着包裹。琼恩取出匕首，割断开来，摸索着把织物抖开。包裹翻了个滚，东西落了一地，闪着黑光。他发现十几把小刀，大批树叶形状的矛尖，以及无数的箭头。琼恩拾起一把刀，它轻若鸿毛，闪着黑芒，无有握柄。火炬的辉光在刀锋上跃动，一轮橙色的细线描绘出锐利的锋刃。是龙晶。鲁温师傅称之为黑曜石的事物。难道说白灵找到了森林之子的古老窖室，埋藏于此数千年之久的遗物？先民拳峰是个古老的地方，可是……
　　龙晶之下还有一个年代久远的号角，牛角制成，边缘镶了青铜。琼恩拍去号角里里外外的尘土，一串箭头也跟着滑落。他任它们落下，随手扯起包裹的一角，用手指揉搓。这是上好的羊毛，厚实，双层织工，虽然受了潮但并未腐朽。它埋藏的时间不可能太久。手边昏黑一团，琼恩牵起毛料，凑近火炬。不是昏黑，是漆黑。
　　在起身呼喊之前，琼恩已经明白了他所发现的东西：这是誓言效命的守夜人兄弟的黑斗篷。
[ 此帖被挽墨在2015-08-29 13:10重新编辑 ]
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等级: 内阁元老
配偶: 逐烟霞。
你看着眼前的人，分明还是以前的模样，可心里终究不是以前那般澄清透明了。
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CHAPTER 35
　　BRAN

　　
　　Alebelly found him in the forge, working the bellows for Mikken. “Maester wants you in the turret, m’lord prince. There’s been a bird from the king.”
　　“From Robb?” Excited, Bran did not wait for Hodor, but let Alebelly carry him up the steps. He was a big man, though not so big as Hodor and nowhere near as strong. By the time they reached the maester’s turret he was red-faced and puffing. Rickon was there before them, and both Walder Freys as well. Maester Luwin sent Alebelly away and closed his door. “My lords,” he said gravely, “we have had a message from His Grace, with both good news and ill. He has won a great victory in the west, shattering a Lannister army at a place named Oxcross, and has taken several castles as well. He writes us from Ashemark, formerly the stronghold of House Marbrand.”
　　Rickon tugged at the maester’s robe. “Is Robb coming home?”
　　“Not just yet, I fear. There are battles yet to fight.”
　　“Was it Lord Tywin he defeated?” asked Bran.
　　“No,” said the maester. “Ser Stafford Lannister commanded the enemy host. He was slain in the battle.”
　　Bran had never even heard of Ser Stafford Lannister. He found himself agreeing with Big Walder when he said, “Lord Tywin is the only one who matters.” “Tell Robb I want him to come home,” said Rickon. “He can bring his wolf home too, and Mother and Father.” Though he knew Lord Eddard was dead, sometimes Rickon forgot . . . willfully, Bran suspected. His little brother was stubborn as only a boy of four can be.
　　Bran was glad for Robb’s victory, but disquieted as well. He remembered what Osha had said the day that his brother had led his army out Of Winterfell. He’s marching the wrong way, the wildling woman had insisted.
　　“Sadly, no victory is without cost.” Maester Luwin turned to the Walders. “My lords, your uncle Ser Stevron Frey was among those who lost their lives at Oxcross. He took a wound in the battle, Robb writes. It was not thought to be serious, but three days later he died in his tent, asleep.”
　　Big Walder shrugged. “He was very old. Five-and-sixty, I think. Too old for battles. He was always saying he was tired.”
　　Little Walder hooted. “Tired of waiting for our grandfather to die, you mean. Does this mean Ser Emmon’s the heir now?”
　　“Don’t be stupid,” his cousin said. “The sons of the first son come before the second son. Ser Ryman is next in line, and then Edwyn and Black Walder and Petyr Pimple. And then Aegon and all his sons.”
　　“Ryman is old too,” said Little Walder. “Past forty, I bet. And he has a bad belly. Do you think he’ll be lord?”
　　“I’ll be lord. I don’t care if he is.”
　　Maester Luwin cut in sharply. “You ought to be ashamed of such talk, my lords. Where is your grief? Your uncle is dead.”
　　“Yes,” said Little Walder. “We’re very sad.”
　　They weren’t, though. Bran got a sick feeling in his belly. They like the taste of this dish better than I do. He asked Maester Luwin to be excused.
　　“Very well.” The maester rang for help. Hodor must have been busy in the stables. It was Osha who came. She was stronger than Alebelly, though, and had no trouble lifting Bran in her arms and carrying him down the steps.
　　“Osha,” Bran asked as they crossed the yard. “Do you know the way north? To the Wall and . . . and even past?”
　　“The way’s easy. Look for the Ice Dragon, and chase the blue star in the rider’s eye.” She backed through a door and started up the winding steps.
　　“And there are still giants there, and . . . the rest . . . the Others, and the children of the forest too?”
　　“The giants I’ve seen, the children I’ve heard tell of, and the white walkers . . . why do you want to know?”
　　“Did you ever see a three-eyed crow?”
　　“No.” She laughed. “And I can’t say I’d want to.” Osha kicked open the door to his bedchamber and set him in his window seat, where he could watch the yard below.
　　It seemed only a few heartbeats after she took her leave that the door opened again, and jojen Reed entered unbidden, with his sister Meera behind him. “You heard about the bird?” Bran asked. The other boy nodded. “It wasn’t a supper like you said. It was a letter from Robb, and we didn’t eat it, but—”
　　“The green dreams take strange shapes sometimes,” jojen admitted. “The truth of them is not always easy to understand.”
　　“Tell me the bad thing you dreamed,” Bran said. “The bad thing that is coming to Winterfell.”
　　“Does my lord prince believe me now? Will he trust my words, no matter how queer they sound in his ears?”
　　Bran nodded.
　　“It is the sea that comes.”
　　“The sea?”
　　“I dreamed that the sea was lapping all around Winterfell. I saw black waves crashing against the gates and towers, and then the salt water came flowing over the walls and filled the castle. Drowned men were floating in the yard. When I first dreamed the dream, back at Greywater, I didn’t know their faces, but now I do. That Alebelly is one, the guard who called our names at the feast. Your septon’s another. Your smith as well.”
　　“Mikken?” Bran was as confused as he was dismayed. “But the sea is hundreds and hundreds of leagues away, and Winterfell’s walls are so high the water couldn’t get in even if it did come.”
　　“In the dark of night the salt sea will flow over these walls,” said jojen. “I saw the dead, bloated and drowned.”
　　“We have to tell them,” Bran said. “Alebelly and Mikken, and Septon Chayle. Tell them not to drown.”
　　“It will not save them,” replied the boy in green.
　　Meera came to the window seat and put a hand on his shoulder. “They will not believe, Bran. No more than you did.” jojen sat on Bran’s bed. “Tell me what you dream.”
　　He was scared, even then, but he had sworn to trust them, and a Stark of Winterfell keeps his sworn word. “There’s different kinds,” he said slowly. “There’s the wolf dreams, those aren’t so bad as the others. I run and hunt and kill squirrels. And there’s dreams where the crow comes and tells me to fly. Sometimes the tree is in those dreams too, calling my name. That frightens me. But the worst dreams are when I fall.” He looked down into the yard, feeling miserable. “I never used to fall before. When I climbed. I went everyplace, up on the roofs and along the walls, I used to feed the crows in the Burned Tower. Mother was afraid that I would fall but I knew I never would. Only I did, and now when I sleep I fall all the time.”
　　Meera gave his shoulder a squeeze. “Is that all?”
　　“I guess.”
　　“Warg,” said Jojen Reed.
　　Bran looked at him, his eyes wide. “What?”
　　“Warg. Shapechanger. Beastling. That is what they will call you, if they should ever hear of your wolf dreams.”
　　The names made him afraid again. “Who will call me?”
　　“Your own folk. In fear. Some will hate you if they know what you are. Some will even try to kill you.”
　　Old Nan told scary stories of beastlings and shapechangers sometimes. In the stories they were always evil. “I’m not like that,” Bran said. “I’m not. It’s only dreams.”
　　“The wolf dreams are no true dreams. You have your eye closed tight whenever you’re awake, but as you drift off it flutters open and your soul seeks out its other half. The power is strong in you.”
　　“I don’t want it. I want to be a knight.”
　　“A knight is what you want. A warg is what you are. You can’t change that, Bran, you can’t deny it or push it away. You are the winged wolf, but you will never fly.” Jojen got up and walked to the window. “Unless you open your eye.” He put two fingers together and poked Bran in the forehead, hard.
　　When he raised his hand to the spot, Bran felt only the smooth unbroken skin. There was no eye, not even a closed one. “How can I open it if it’s not there?”
　　“You will never find the eye with your fingers, Bran. You must search with your heart.” Jojen studied Bran’s face with those strange green eyes. “Or are you afraid?”
　　“Maester Luwin says there’s nothing in dreams that a man need fear.”
　　“There is,” said Jojen.
　　“What?”
　　“The past. The future. The truth.”
　　They left him more muddled than ever. When he was alone, Bran tried to open his third eye, but he didn’t know how. No matter how he wrinkled his forehead and poked at it, he couldn’t see any different than he’d done before. In the days that followed, he tried to warn others about what Jojen had seen, but it didn’t go as he wanted. Mikken thought it was funny. “The sea, is it? Happens I always wanted to see the sea. Never got where I could go to it, though. So now it’s coming to me, is it? The gods are good, to take such trouble for a poor smith.”
　　“The gods will take me when they see fit,” Septon Chayle said qui etly, “though I scarcely think it likely that I’ll drown, Bran. I grew up on the banks of the White Knife, you know. I’m quite the strong swimmer.”
　　Alebelly was the only one who paid the warning any heed. He went to talk to jojen himself, and afterward stopped bathing and refused to go near the well. Finally he stank so bad that six of the other guards threw him into a tub of scalding water and scrubbed him raw while he screamed that they were going to drown him like the frogboy had said. Thereafter he scowled whenever he saw Bran or jojen about the castle, and muttered under his breath.
　　It was a few days after Alebelly’s bath that Ser Rodrik returned to Winterfell with his prisoner, a fleshy young man with fat moist lips and long hair who smelled like a privy, even worse than Alebelly had. “Reek, he’s called,” Hayhead said when Bran asked who it was. “I never heard his true name. He served the Bastard of Bolton and helped him murder Lady Hornwood, they say.”
　　The Bastard himself was dead, Bran learned that evening over supper. Ser Rodrik’s men had caught him on Hornwood land doing something horrible (Bran wasn’t quite sure what, but it seemed to be something you did without your clothes) and shot him down with arrows as he tried to ride away. They came too late for poor Lady Hornwood, though. After their wedding, the Bastard had locked her in a tower and neglected to feed her. Bran had heard men saying that when Ser Rodrik had smashed down the door he found her with her mouth all bloody and her fingers chewed off.
　　“The monster has tied us a thorny knot,” the old knight told Maester Luwin. “Like it or no, Lady Hornwood was his wife. He made her say the vows before both septon and heart tree, and bedded her that very night before witnesses. She signed a will naming him as heir and fixed her seal to it.”
　　“Vows made at sword point are not valid,” the maester argued.
　　“Roose Bolton may not agree. Not with land at issue.” Ser Rodrik looked unhappy. “Would that I could take this serving man’s head off as well, he’s as bad as his master. But I fear I must keep him alive until Robb returns from his wars. He is the only witness to the worst of the Bastard’s crimes. Perhaps when Lord Bolton hears his tale, he will abandon his claim, but meantime we have Manderly knights and Dreadfort men killing one another in Hornwood forests, and I lack the strength to stop them.” The old knight turned in his seat and gave Bran a stern look. “And what have you been about while I’ve been away, my lord prince? Commanding our guardsmen not to wash? Do you want them smelling like this Reek, is that it?”
　　“The sea is coming here,” Bran said. “Jojen saw it in a green dream. ‘Mebelly is going to drown.”
　　Maester Luwin tugged at his chain collar. “The Reed boy believes he sees the future in his dreams, Ser Rodrik. I’ve spoken to Bran about the uncertainty of such prophecies, but if truth be told, there is trouble along the Stony Shore. Raiders in longships, plundering fishing villages. Raping and burning. Leobald Tallhart has sent his nephew Benfred to deal with them, but I expect they’ll take to their ships and flee at the first sight of armed men.”
　　“Aye, and strike somewhere else. The Others take all such cowards. They would never dare, no more than the Bastard of Bolton, if our main strength were not a thousand leagues south.” Ser Rodrik looked at Bran. “What else did the lad tell you?”
　　“He said the water would flow over our walls. He saw Alebelly drowned, and Mikken and Septon Chayle too.”
　　Ser Rodrik frowned. “Well, should it happen that I need to ride against these raiders myself, I shan’t take Alebelly, then. He didn’t see me drowned, did he? No? Good.” it heartened Bran to hear that. Maybe they won’t drown, then, he thought. If they stay away from the sea.
　　Meera thought so too, later that night when she and Jojen met Bran in his room to play a three-sided game of tiles, but her brother shook his head. “The things I see in green dreams can’t be changed.”
　　That made his sister angry. “Why would the gods send a warning if we can’t heed it and change what’s to come?”
　　“I don’t know,” Jojen said sadly.
　　“If you were Alebelly, you’d probably jump into the well to have done with it! He should fight, and Bran should too.”
　　“Me?” Bran felt suddenly afraid. “What should I fight? Am I going to drown too?”
　　Meera looked at him guiltily. “I shouldn’t have said . . .”
　　He could tell that she was hiding something. “Did you see me in a green dream?” he asked Jojen nervously. “Was I drowned?”
　　“Not drowned.” Jojen spoke as if every word pained him. “I dreamed of the man who came today, the one they call Reek. You and your brother lay dead at his feet, and he was skinning off your faces with a long red blade.”
　　Meera rose to her feet. “If I went to the dungeon, I could drive a spear right through his heart. How could he murder Bran if he was dead?”
　　“The gaolers will stop you,” Jojen said. “The guards. And if you tell them why you want him dead, they’ll never believe.”
　　“I have guards too,” Bran reminded them. “Alebelly and Poxy Tym and Hayhead and the rest.”
　　Jojen’s mossy eyes were full of pity. “They won’t be able to stop him, Bran. I couldn’t see why, but I saw the end of it. I saw you and Rickon in your crypts, down in the dark with all the dead kings and their stone wolves.”
　　No, Bran thought. No. “If I went away . . . to Greywater, or to the crow, someplace far where they couldn’t find me . . .”
　　“It will not matter. The dream was green, Bran, and the green dreams do not lie.”



Ⅱ 列王的纷争 Chapter36 布兰
　　酒肚子在锻炉边找到他时，他正帮密肯拉风箱。“学士在塔楼等您，王子殿下。有只鸟刚从国王那边过来。”
　　“从罗柏？”布兰兴奋起来，他等不及阿多，便让酒肚子背他上楼。酒肚子是个壮汉，但块头没阿多大，力量也差了不少。好不容易到达学士的住所，他已经满脸通红，气喘吁吁。瑞肯已经到了，两个瓦德·佛雷也在。
　　鲁温师傅遣开酒肚子，关上门。“大人们，”他严峻地说，“我们刚从陛下那里接获消息，其中有好也有坏。他在西境大获全胜，在一个名叫牛津的地方击破兰尼斯特军，随后夺取了很多城堡。他这封信写于烙印城，那里从前是马尔布兰家族的堡垒。”
　　瑞肯拉拉老师傅的袍子，“罗柏可以回家了？”
　　“恐怕暂时还不行。还有仗等着他去打呢。”
　　“不是说他打败泰温公爵了吗？”布兰问。
　　“并非如此，”学士道，“此次敌军由史戴佛·兰尼斯特爵士率领，此人也在战斗中送了命。”
　　布兰从未听说过这个史戴佛·兰尼斯特爵士，所以当大瓦德开口时，他发现自己居然赞同对方的话，“那没用，泰温大人才是关键。”
　　“告诉罗柏我要他回家家，”瑞肯说，“要他把小狼带回来哦，还有爸爸妈妈。”尽管瑞肯知道艾德公爵已死，却常常会忘记……大概是故意的吧，布兰怀疑。他的小弟弟有着四岁小孩所特有的固执。
　　布兰为罗柏的胜利高兴，却也隐隐有些不安。他还记得哥哥率军离开临冬城那天，欧莎告诉他的话。他走错方向了，女野人如此坚持。
　　“遗憾的是，胜利总是伴随着牺牲。”鲁温师傅转向瓦德们。“大人们，牛津一役的阵亡将士包括你们的叔叔史提夫伦·佛雷爵士。罗柏信上说，他在战斗中受了点伤，起初人们都以为并不严重，然而三天后他却在熟睡中死于自己的营帐。”
　　大瓦德耸耸肩：“他太老啦。我想想，该有六十五岁了吧。老头子是打不了仗的。他总说自己累得要命。”
　　小瓦德大声叫嚣：“等咱们祖父死等得累趴下了，是吧？那么艾蒙爵士是继承人喽？”
　　“别犯傻，”堂哥说。“长子的儿子的继承权优于次子。莱曼爵士才是下一顺位，接着是艾德温，黑瓦德，疙瘩脸培提尔，再来还有伊耿。”
　　“莱曼也老了，”小瓦德道，“我敢打赌，他都过了四十，胃又不好。你觉得他将来能继承领地吗？”
　　“我才会继承领地！谁管他呀。”
　　鲁温师傅严厉地打断他们，“你们该为自己的话感到羞耻！两位大人，死者是你们的亲叔叔，你们应有的哀悼在哪里？”
　　“是的，”小瓦德说，“我们非常悲痛。”
　　不对，他们才没有哩。布兰只觉一阵反胃，他们对到手的食物比你更满意。于是他请求鲁温师傅准他离开。
　　“好，”学士摇铃呼助。阿多大概在马厩里忙着，所以来了欧莎。她比酒肚子强壮，轻而易举便抱起布兰，背他下楼。
　　“欧莎，”穿过庭院时布兰开口问，“你知道去北方的路怎么走吗？就是去长城和……更远的地方？”
　　“找路不难。你只需追寻冰龙座，紧跟骑手之眼那颗蓝色的星。”她用背抵开门，走上螺旋梯。
　　“那里有巨人吗？以及……其他的……异鬼？森林之子？”
　　“我亲眼见过巨人，还听过森林之子的事迹，说到白鬼……你干嘛问这个？”
　　“你见过三只眼睛的乌鸦没？”
　　“没有。”她笑道，“我也不想见。”欧莎踢开卧室门，把他放在窗边座椅上，他在那里可以俯瞰下方的大院。
　　她离开没多久，房门又开，玖健·黎德未经邀请便走进来，身边跟着姐姐梅拉。“鸟儿带信的事你听说了？”布兰问。对面的男孩点点头。“可那不是你说的晚餐，只是罗柏写的一封信，我们又没吃信，而且——”
　　“绿色之梦会以奇特的方式反映现实，”玖健承认，“它们的真相并不容易理解。”
　　“给我讲讲你做的梦，”布兰道，“讲讲临冬城会有什么遭遇。”
　　“王子殿下肯相信我了么？您愿意信我的话，不管听起来多奇特了么？”
　　布兰点头。
　　“大海正涌来。”
　　“大海？”
　　“我梦见一片汪洋包围了临冬城。我看见黑色的浪涛击碎城门和塔楼，盐水灌进墙内，淹没了城堡。院子里到处是淹死的人。在灰水望，当我第一次做这个梦的时候，我还不认得那些面孔，现在我知道了，这里边有酒肚子，就是丰收宴会时为我们唱名的卫士。您的修士也在其中。还有铁匠师傅。”
　　“密肯？”布兰不但惊慌，还有些糊涂了，“可是大海和临冬城之间隔着千山万水，就算涨潮，城墙这么高，它怎么过得来呢？”
　　“在漆黑的夜里，盐水漫过了城墙，”玖健道。“我看见尸体，浮肿溺毙的人。”
　　“我们必须告诉他们，”布兰说。“告诉酒肚子，密肯和柴尔修士。让他们注意别被淹死。”
　　“这没有用，”绿衣男孩道。
　　梅拉来到窗边，把手放在他肩上，“他们不会相信的，布兰。就连你也不信。”
　　玖健坐上布兰的床。“告诉我你的梦。”
　　纵然梦境已过了许久，他仍旧很害怕，可他发了誓要相信他们，临冬城的史塔克必须遵守诺言的。“和你的梦不一样，”他缓缓地说，“有些是狼梦，狼梦还不算恐怖。我在梦中奔跑巡猎，杀戮松鼠。有的梦中乌鸦出现叫我飞。有的梦中大树呼叫我的名字，把我吓坏了。最吓人的是我经常梦见自己摔下去。”他望向庭院，感到很无助。“我以前从不失手。我喜欢爬，哪里都去过，上屋顶，登城墙，残塔上面喂乌鸦。母亲老是担心我摔下来，可我知道我不会。结果我真的摔了下来，现在连做梦都在不停地坠啊坠。”
　　梅拉捏捏他肩膀。“就这些？”
　　“差不多吧。”
　　“狼灵。”玖健·黎德道。
　　布兰睁大眼睛瞪着他，“什么？”
　　“狼灵。易形者。凶兽。假如你的狼梦被别人知道，别人便会如此称呼你。”
　　这些名字让他又害怕起来。“谁会这样叫我？”
　　“恐怕会是你自己的子民。很多人一旦知道你的真面目就会仇恨你，甚至来杀你。”
　　老奶妈经常讲起关于凶兽和易形者的可怕故事。故事里它们都是坏人。“我和它们不一样，”布兰道，“我才不是它们。那只是梦。”
　　“狼梦并非真正的梦。当你清醒时眼睛紧闭不开，当你入眠后灵魂却不由自主地搜寻它的另一半。布兰，你体内的能量非常强大。”
　　“我不要什么能量。我想当骑士。”
　　“骑士是你想当的，狼灵是你成为的。你改变不了事实，布兰，你既不能否认它也不能赶走它。你是长翅膀的奔狼，却不能飞翔。”玖健起身踱到窗前。“除非你睁开眼睛。”他并拢双指，用力戳布兰的前额。
　　布兰摸摸额头，却只有平滑无奇的皮肤。那里没有眼睛，那里根本不可能有闭着的眼睛。“我连它的存在都感觉不到，又怎么能睁开它呢？”
　　“布兰，你不能用手指来发现它，你必须以心灵去寻求它。”玖健奇异的绿眼审视着布兰的脸庞。“你在害怕？”
　　“鲁温师傅说，梦中没什么可让男子汉害怕。”
　　“有，”玖健道。
　　“有什么？”
　　“有过去。有未来。有真相。”
　　他们走后，布兰更加烦乱。乘独处之际，他试着打开第三只眼睛，却不知该怎么做。不管怎么皱额头，怎么用力戳，都不起作用。接下来的几天，他拿玖健提到的事去警告别人，可结果却和他的想像大相径庭。密肯觉得很可笑。“大海，是吗？说真的，我早想见识大海，可从来没机会。所以说它要自己来找我了，是吗？赞美诸神，为可怜的铁匠达成小小的愿望。”
　　“当我的时刻来临，诸神自会带走我，”柴尔修士平静地说，“可我不认为自己会被淹死。你知道，布兰，我是在白刃河畔长大的，游泳是我的拿手好戏。”
　　酒肚子是惟一把警告当回事的人。他跑去见了玖健，之后便不再洗浴，也拒绝靠近水井。最后他变得臭气熏天，以至于六位同僚不得不合力将他强行按进热水盆，他们一边替他擦洗，他一边惨叫呼救，说他们要像青蛙男孩讲的那样把他淹死。洗澡事件后，酒肚子看见布兰或玖健就皱紧眉头，低声咕哝。
　　这之后没几天，罗德利克爵士带着俘虏回到临冬城，此人是个肥胖的青年男子，嘴唇丰厚润湿，头发长长的。他闻起来有茅坑的味道，比前阵子的酒肚子还糟糕。“大家叫他‘臭佬’，”布兰问起姓名，稻草头回答，“我没听过他的真名，只听说他为波顿的私生子卖命，帮他谋害了霍伍德伯爵夫人。”
　　私生子本人已丧命，布兰在晚宴上得知这个消息。罗德利克爵士的部下在霍伍德家领地里逮到他时，他正干些可怕事情（布兰弄不清到底是什么，只知道这些事似乎等人死了才能干）。他试图逃跑，结果被射杀。然而，人们来得太晚，已来不及拯救可怜的霍伍德伯爵夫人。结婚之后，私生子把她锁在塔里，还不给吃的。布兰听人说，当罗德利克爵士劈门进去时，发现她满嘴鲜血，指头全给生生咬断。
　　“这怪物给咱们系了个棘手的死结，”老骑士对鲁温师傅说，“不管是否情愿，霍伍德伯爵夫人从法理上说都是他的妻子。他让她在圣堂里和心树下发了婚誓，当晚还在众目睽睽之下跟她上床。她更签下遗嘱，声明这该死的杂种为她的继承人，上面封了她家族的蜡印。”
　　“在刀剑威逼之下所发的誓毫无效力可言，”学士争辩。
　　“卢斯·波顿可不会这么看，毕竟这关系到一大片领地的归属。”罗德利克爵士有些闷闷不乐。“所以我不得不暂时留这狗奴才一命，照说他跟他主人一般该死。我得留着他，直到罗柏结束战争返回北境，因为他是惟一一个目睹那杂种罪行的证人。但愿波顿大人听过他的证词后，会自动放弃领土要求。眼下，曼德勒家的骑士和波顿的部队已经在霍伍德森林里真刀真熗地干了起来，我却无力制止。”老骑士转过身，严厉地望着布兰。“我走之后你干了些什么，王子殿下？叫我的守卫别洗澡？你打算让他们闻起来都像那个臭佬，是吗？”
　　“大海正朝这里涌来，”布兰说。“这是玖健在绿色之梦里的所见。他说酒肚子会被淹死。”
　　鲁温师傅拉拉颈链。“黎德家的男孩相信自己能从梦中预见未来，罗德利克爵士。我给布兰讲过，这样的预言是不可靠的，然而实话实说，磐石海岸的确出了点麻烦。长船载着掠夺者前来，洗劫渔村，奸淫烧杀，干尽坏事。兰巴德·陶哈已派侄子本福德前去处理，但我估计他们只要发现我方人马出现便会立刻上船，逃得无影无踪。”
　　“是啊，然后又去别处打家劫舍。异鬼把这群懦夫抓走吧！若非我们的军队千里迢迢去了南方，波顿家的私生子，还有这些家伙，怎敢如此妄为！”罗德利克爵士瞧向布兰。“那小子还说了什么？”
　　“他说大水会淹过城墙。他不仅看见酒肚子淹死，还包括密肯和柴尔修士。”
　　罗德利克爵士皱起眉头。“看来，如果我非得亲自出马去对付这群强盗不可，就让酒肚子留下好了。他没见我淹死吧，对吗？没有？好极了。”
　　这话令布兰很振奋。或许他们不会被淹死了，他心想，不让他们靠近海就好。
　　当晚梅拉也这么想，她和玖健来到布兰的房间，陪他玩三方瓦片棋。但她弟弟不住摇头：“我在绿色之梦中看到的事实无法改变。”
　　姐姐被他的话惹恼了。“如果我们对即将发生的事既无法留意也无法改变，那神灵干嘛还送来警告？”
　　“我不知道。”玖健悲伤地说。
　　“换成你是酒肚子，大概会直接跳进水井去实现预言吧！可人家会战斗到底，布兰也会。”
　　“我？”布兰突然很恐慌。“我要和谁战斗？我也会淹死吗？”
　　梅拉负疚地望着他。“我不该说……”
　　他知道她还隐瞒了什么。“在绿色之梦里你看见我了吗？”他紧张地问玖健，“我也淹死了吗？”
　　“并非淹死。”玖健道，字字句句都无比沉痛。“我梦到今日进城的那个男子，人称臭佬的那位。你和你弟弟死在他脚下，他用一把细长而血红的剑剥下你们的脸皮。”
　　梅拉霍地起身。“我现在就去地牢，拿矛戳他个透心凉！看他死了还怎么去谋害布兰！”
　　“狱卒会阻止你，”玖健说，“附近还有守卫。就算你把杀他的理由告诉他们，他们也绝不会相信。”
　　“可我身边也有守卫啊，”布兰提醒他们，“有酒肚子，麻脸提姆，稻草头，好多人呢……”
　　玖健青苔色的眼睛里充满同情。“他们都不能制止他，布兰。我不知道原因，但我看到了结局。我看见你和瑞肯躺在你们的墓窖里，无穷无尽的黑暗中只有死去的国王和石制冰原狼与你们为伴。”
　　不要，布兰想，不要。“如果我现在逃走……去灰水望，去找乌鸦，去某个他们找不着的地方……”
　　“没有用的，布兰。梦乃是绿色，绿色之梦一定会成真。”

[ 此帖被挽墨在2015-08-30 15:55重新编辑 ]
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　CHAPTER 36
　　TYRION

　
　　Varys stood over the brazier, warming his soft hands. “It would appear Renly was murdered most fearfully in the very midst of his army. His throat was opened from ear to ear by a blade that passed through steel and bone as if they were soft cheese.”
　　“Murdered by whose hand?” Cersei demanded.
　　“Have you ever considered that too many answers are the same as no answer at all? My informers are not always as highly placed as we might like. When a king dies, fancies sprout like mushrooms in the dark. A groom says that Renly was slain by a knight of his own Rainbow Guard. A washerwoman claims Stannis stole through the heart of his brother’s army with his magic sword. Several men-at-arms believe a woman did the fell deed, but cannot agree on which woman. A maid that Renly had spurned, claims one. A camp follower brought in to serve his pleasure on the eve of battle, says a second. The third ventures that it might have been the Lady Catelyn Stark.”
　　The queen was not pleased. “Must you waste our time with every rumor the fools care to tell?”
　　“You pay me well for these rumors, my gracious queen.”
　　“We pay you for the truth, Lord Varys. Remember that, or this small council may grow smaller still.”
　　Varys tittered nervously. “You and your noble brother will leave His Grace with no council at all if you continue.”
　　“I daresay, the realm could survive a few less councilors,” said Littlefinger with a smile.
　　“Dear dear Petyr,” said Varys, “are you not concerned that yours might be the next name on the Hand’s little list?”
　　“Before you, Varys? I should never dream of it.”
　　“Mayhaps we will be brothers on the Wall together, you and I” Varys giggled again.
　　“Sooner than you’d like, if the next words out of your mouth are not something useful, eunuch.” From the look of her eyes, Cersei was prepared to castrate Varys all over again.
　　“Might this be some ruse?” asked Littlefinger.
　　“If so, it is a ruse of surpassing cleverness,” said Varys. “It has certainly hoodwinked me.”
　　Tyrion had heard enough. “Joff will be so disappointed,” he said. “He was saving such a nice spike for Renly’s head. But whoever did the deed, we must assume Stannis was behind it. The gain is clearly his.” He did not like this news; he had counted on the brothers Baratheon decimating each other in bloody battle. He could feel his elbow throbbing where the morningstar had laid it open. It did that sometimes in the damp. He squeezed it uselessly in his hand and asked, “What of Renly’s host?”
　　“The greater part of his foot remains at Bitterbridge.” Varys abandoned the brazier to take his seat at the table. “Most of the lords who rode with Lord Renly to Storm’s End have gone over banner-and-blade to Stannis, with all their chivalry.”
　　“Led by the Florents, I’d wager,” said Littlefinger.
　　Varys gave him a simpering smile. “You would win, my lord. Lord Alester was indeed the first to bend the knee. Many others followed.”
　　“Many,” Tyrion said pointedly, “but not all?”
　　“Not all,” agreed the eunuch. “Not Loras Tyrell, nor Randyll Tarly, nor Mathis Rowan. And Storm’s End itself has not yielded. Ser Cortnay Penrose holds the castle in Renly’s name, and will not believe his liege is dead. He demands to see the mortal remains before he opens his gates, but it seems that Renly’s corpse has unaccountably vanished. Carried away, most likely. A fifth of Renly’s knights departed with Ser Loras rather than bend the knee to Stannis. It’s said the Knight of Flowers went mad when he saw his king’s body, and slew three of Renly’s guards in his wrath, among them Emmon Cuy and Robar Royce.”
　　A pity he stopped at three, thought Tyrion.
　　“Ser Loras is likely making for Bitterbridge,” Varys went on. “His sister is there, Renly’s queen, as well as a great many soldiers who suddenly find themselves kingless. Which side will they take now? A ticklish question. Many serve the lords who remained at Storm’s End, and those lords now belong to Stannis.”
　　Tyrion leaned forward. “There is a chance here, it seems to me. Win Loras Tyrell to our cause and Lord Mace Tyrell and his bannermen might join us as well. They may have sworn their swords to Stannis for the moment, yet they cannot love the man, or they would have been his from the start.”
　　“Is their love for us any greater?” asked Cersei.
　　“Scarcely,” said Tyrion. “They loved Renly, clearly, but Renly is slain. Perhaps we can give them good and sufficient reasons to prefer Joffrey to Stannis . . . if we move quickly.”
　　“What sort of reasons do you mean to give them?”
　　“Gold reasons,” Littlefinger suggested at once.
　　Varys made a tsking sound. “Sweet Petyr, surely you do not mean to suggest that these puissant lords and noble knights could be bought like so many chickens in the market.”
　　“Have you been to our markets of late, Lord Varys?” asked Littlefinger. “You’d find it easier to buy a lord than a chicken, I daresay. Of course, lords cluck prouder than chickens, and take it ill if you offer them coin like a tradesman, but they are seldom adverse to taking gifts . . . honors, lands, castles . . .”
　　“Bribes might sway some of the lesser lords,” Tyrion said, “but never Highgarden.”
　　“True,” Littlefinger admitted. “The Knight of Flowers is the key there. Mace Tyrell has two older sons, but Loras has always been his favorite. Win him, and Highgarden will be yours.”
　　Yes, Tyrion thought. “It seems to me we should take a lesson from the late Lord Renly. We can win the Tyrell alliance as he did. With a marriage.”
　　Varys understood the quickest. “You think to wed King Joffrey to Man gaery Tyrell.”
　　“I do.” Renly’s young queen was no more than fifteen, sixteen, he seemed to recall . . . older than Joffrey, but a few years were nothing, it was so neat and sweet he could taste it.
　　“Joffrey is betrothed to Sansa Stark,” Cersei objected.
　　“Marriage contracts can be broken. What advantage is there in wedding the king to the daughter of a dead traitor?”
　　Littlefinger spoke up. “You might point out to His Grace that the Tyrells are much wealthier than the Starks, and that Margaery is said to be lovely . . . and beddable besides.”
　　“Yes,” said Tyrion, “Joff ought to like that well enough.”
　　“My son is too young to care about such things.”
　　“You think so?” asked Tyrion. “He’s thirteen, Cersei. The same age at which I married.”
　　“You shamed us all with that sorry episode. Joffrey is made of finer stuff.”
　　“So fine that he had Ser Boros rip off Sansa’s gown.”
　　“He was angry with the girl.”
　　“He was angry with that cook’s boy who spilled the soup last night as well, but he didn’t strip him naked.”
　　“This was not a matter of some spilled soup—”
　　No, it was a matter of some pretty teats. After that business in the yard, Tyrion had spoken with Varys about how they might arrange for Joffrey to visit Chataya’s. A taste of honey might sweeten the boy, he hoped. He might even be grateful, gods forbid, and Tyrion could do with a shade more gratitude from his sovereign. It would need to be done secretly, of course. The tricky bit would be parting him from the Hound. “The dog is never far from his master’s heels,” he’d observed to Varys, “but all men sleep. And some gamble and whore and visit winesinks as well.”
　　“The Hound does all these things, if that is your question.”
　　“No,” said Tyrion. “My question is when.”
　　Varys had laid a finger on his cheek, smiling enigmatically. “My lord, a suspicious man might think you wished to find a time when Sandor Clegane was not protecting King Joffrey, the better to do the boy some harm.” “Surely you know me better than that, Lord Varys,” Tyrion said. “Why, all I want is for Joffrey to love me.”
　　The eunuch had promised to look into the matter. The war made its own demands, though; Joffrey’s initiation into manhood would need to wait. “Doubtless you know your son better than I do,” he made himself tell Cersei, “but regardless, there’s still much to be said for a Tyrell marriage. It may be the only way that Joffrey lives long enough to reach his wedding night.”
　　Littlefinger agreed. “The Stark girl brings Joffrey nothing but her body, sweet as that may be. Margaery Tyrell brings fifty thousand swords and all the strength of Highgarden.”
　　“Indeed.” Varys laid a soft hand on the queen’s sleeve. “You have a mother’s heart, and I know His Grace loves his little sweetling. Yet kings must learn to put the needs of the realm before their own desires. I say this offer must be made.”
　　The queen pulled free of the eunuch’s touch. “You would not speak so if you were women. Say what you will, my lords, but Joffrey is too proud to settle for Renly’s leavings. He will never consent.”
　　Tyrion shrugged. “When the king comes of age in three years, he may give or withhold his consent as he pleases. Until then, you are his regent and I am his Hand, and he will marry whomever we tell him to marry. Leavings or no.”
　　Cersei’s quiver was empty. “Make your offer then, but gods save you all if Joff does not like this girl.”
　　“I’m so pleased we can agree,” Tyrion said. “Now, which of us shall go to Bitterbridge? We must reach Ser Loras with our offer before his blood can cool.”
　　“You mean to send one of the council?”
　　“I can scarcely expect the Knight of Flowers to treat with Bronn or Shagga, can I? The Tyrells are proud.”
　　His sister wasted no time trying to twist the situation to her advantage. “Ser Jacelyn Bywater is nobly born. Send him.”
　　Tyrion shook his head. “We need someone who can do more than repeat our words and fetch back a reply. Our envoy must speak for king and council and settle the matter quickly.”
　　“The Hand speaks with the king’s voice.” Candlelight gleamed green as wildfire in Cersei’s eyes. “If we send you, Tyrion, it will be as if Joffrey went himself. And who better, You wield words as skillfully as Jaime wields a sword.”
　　Are you that eager to get me out of the city, Cersei? “You are too kind, sister, but it seems to me that a boy’s mother is better fitted to arrange his marriage than any uncle. And you have a gift for winning friends that I could never hope to match.”
　　Her eyes narrowed. “Joff needs me at his side.”
　　“Your Grace, my lord Hand,” said Littlefinger, “the king needs both of you here. Let me go in your stead.”
　　“You?” What gain does he see in this? Tyrion wondered.
　　“I am of the king’s council, yet not the king’s blood, so I would make a poor hostage. I knew Ser Loras passing well when he was here at court, and gave him no cause to mislike me. Mace Tyrell bears me no enmity that I know of, and I flatter myself that I am not unskilled in negotiation.”
　　He has us. Tyrion did not trust Petyr Baelish, nor did he want the man out of his sight, yet what other choice was left him? It must be Littlefinger or Tyrion himself, and he knew full well that if he left King’s Landing for any length of time, all that he had managed to accomplish would be undone. “There is fighting between here and Bitterbridge,” he said cautiously. “And you can be past certain that Lord Stannis will be dispatching his own shepherds to gather in his brother’s wayward lambs.”
　　“I’ve never been frightened of shepherds. It’s the sheep who trouble me. Still, I suppose an escort might be in order.”
　　“I can spare a hundred gold cloaks,” Tyrion said.
　　“Five hundred.”
　　“Three hundred.”
　　“And forty more—twenty knights with as many squires. If I arrive without a knightly tail, the Tyrells will think me of small account.”
　　That was true enough. “Agreed.”
　　“I’ll include Horror and Slobber in my party, and send them on to their lord father afterward. A gesture of goodwill. We need Paxter Redwyne, he’s Mace Tyrell’s oldest friend, and a great power in his own right.”
　　“And a traitor,” the queen said, balking. “The Arbor would have declared for Renly with all the rest, except that Redwyne knew full well his whelps would suffer for it.”
　　“Renly is dead, Your Grace,” Littlefinger pointed out, “and neither Stannis nor Lord Paxter will have forgotten how Redwyne galleys closed the sea during the siege of Storm’s End. Restore the twins and perchance we may win Redwyne’s love.”
　　Cersei remained unconvinced. “The Others can keep his love, I want his swords and sails. Holding tight to those twins is the best way to make certain that we’ll have them.”
　　Tyrion had the answer. “Then let us send Ser Hobber back to the Arbor and keep Ser Horas here. Lord Paxter ought to be clever enough to riddle out the meaning of that, I should think.”
　　The suggestion was carried without protest, but Littlefinger was not done. “We’ll want horses. Swift and strong. The fighting will make remounts hard to come by. A goodly supply of gold will also be needed, for those gifts we spoke of earlier.”
　　“Take as much as you require. If the city falls, Stannis will steal it all anyway.”
　　“I’ll want my commission in writing. A document that will leave Mace Tyrell in no doubt as to my authority, granting me full power to treat with him concerning this match and any other arrangements that might be required, and to make binding pledges in the king’s name. It should be signed by Joffrey and every member of this council, and bear all our seals.”
　　Tyrion shifted uncomfortably. “Done. Will that be all? I remind you, there’s a long road between here and Bitterbridge.”
　　“I’ll be riding it before dawn breaks.” Littlefinger rose. “I trust that on my return, the king will see that I am suitably rewarded for my valiant efforts in his cause?”
　　Varys giggled. “Joffrey is such a grateful sovereign, I’m certain you will have no cause to complain, my good brave lord.”
　　The queen was more direct. “What do you want, Petyr?”
　　Littlefinger glanced at Tyrion with a sly smile. “I shall need to give that some consideration. No doubt I’ll think of something.” He sketched an airy bow and took his leave, as casual as if he were off to one of his brothels.
　　Tyrion glanced out the window. The fog was so thick that he could not even see the curtain wall across the yard. A few dim lights shone indistinct through that greyness. A foul day for travel, he thought. He did not envy Petyr Baelish. “We had best see to drawing up those documents. Lord Varys, send for parchment and quill. And someone will need to wake Joffrey.”
　　It was still grey and dark when the meeting finally ended. Varys scurried off alone, his soft slippers whisking along the floor. The Lannisters lingered a moment by the door. “How comes your chain, brother?” the queen asked as Ser Preston fastened a vair-lined cloth-of-silver cloak about her shoulders.
　　“Link by link, it grows longer. We should thank the gods that Ser Cortnay Penrose is as stubborn as he is. Stannis will never march north with Storm’s End untaken in his rear.”
　　“Tyrion, I know we do not always agree on policy, but it seems to me that I was wrong about you. You are not so big a fool as I imagined. In truth, I realize now that you have been a great help. For that I thank you. You must forgive me if I have spoken to you harshly in the past.”
　　“Must I?” He gave her a shrug, a smile. “Sweet sister, you have said nothing that requires forgiveness.”
　　“Today, you mean?” They both laughed . . . and Cersei leaned over and planted a quick, soft kiss on his brow.
　　Too astonished for words, Tyrion could only watch her stride off down the hall, Ser Preston at her side. “Have I lost my wits, or did my sister just kiss me?” he asked Bronn when she was gone.
　　“Was it so sweet?”
　　“It was . . . unanticipated.” Cersei had been behaving queerly of late. Tyrion found it very unsettling. “I am trying to recall the last time she kissed me. I could not have been more than six or seven. Jaime had dared her to do it.”
　　“The woman’s finally taken note of your charms.”
　　“No,” Tyrion said. “No, the woman is hatching something. Best find out what, Bronn. You know I hate surprises.”




Ⅱ 列王的纷争 Chapter37 提利昂
　　瓦里斯站在火盆边，烘烤着柔软的手。“蓝礼居然在大军之中被人极其可怕地谋杀，真令人不敢相信。那把利刃就像切奶酪一样穿过钢铁和骨头，把他喉咙从左耳根割到右耳根。”
　　“到底谁干的？”瑟曦质问。
　　“哎，问题是，太多答案就等于没有答案。国王骤然身亡，谣言像阴暗处的蘑菇一样滋生，而我的情报并不总如我们所愿的那样担任要职。一个马夫说，蓝礼被彩虹护卫之一所害；一个洗衣妇声称，史坦尼斯带着他的魔剑，潜进弟弟的大营之中；一些士兵相信是位女人干的，却无法就哪个女人达成一致。其中一个认为凶手是遭蓝礼抛弃的少女，另一个说是战斗前夜服侍国王的营妓，第三个则斗胆猜测凯特琳·史塔克夫人是真凶。”
　　太后很不高兴，“你非得拿这些笨蛋津津乐道的闲言碎语来浪费我们的时间？”
　　“您为这些闲言碎语付了丰厚的报酬呀，我仁慈的太后陛下。”
　　“我们付酬是为了真相，瓦里斯大人。请你记住，否则这小小的会议只怕会变得更小。”
　　瓦里斯神经质地吃吃笑道：“哎，您和您尊贵的弟弟这样攀比下去，国王陛下就没有御前会议了。”
　　“依我看，国家精简几个重臣倒也无妨，”小指头微笑道。
　　“最最亲爱的培提尔，”瓦里斯说，“您就不担心自己是首相黑名册里的下一个吗？”
　　“排在你之前，瓦里斯？我做梦也不会这么想。”
　　“或许咱俩会在长城上当兄弟呢，你和我。”瓦里斯又咯咯笑。
　　“快了，太监，你再不吐出点有用的东西，就离长城不远了。”瑟曦恶狠狠地瞪着他，好似想将他再阉割一遍。
　　“这会不会是个花招？”小指头问。
　　“倘若如此，那实在玩得高明，”瓦里斯说，“连我也上了当。”
　　提利昂听够了。“只怕小乔要失望了，”他说，“他为蓝礼的脑袋准备了那么锋利的长熗。总之呢，不管谁下的手，幕后策划都该是史坦尼斯。事情很明显，他是得益者。”这实在不是个好消息，他原指望拜拉席恩兄弟血战一场，两败俱伤。肘部从前被流星锤砸中的地方隐隐作痛，每当天气潮湿，就会这样犯病。他一边徒劳地揉搓，一边问，“蓝礼的军队呢？”
　　“他把大队步兵留在苦桥。”瓦里斯离开火盆，坐回议事桌边的座位。“但那些跟随蓝礼大人星夜奔赴风息堡的领主们，大都降旗投靠了史坦尼斯，请注意，这几乎代表着全南境的骑兵。”
　　“我敢打赌，是佛罗伦家带的头，”小指头说。
　　瓦里斯皮笑肉不笑地道：“你赢了，大人。率先倒戈的确是艾利斯特伯爵。许多诸侯随后跟进。”
　　“许多，”提利昂强调，“不是全部？”
　　“不是全部，”太监确认。“不包括洛拉斯·提利尔，不包括蓝道·塔利，也不包括马图斯·罗宛。此外，风息堡的守军没有投降，科塔奈·庞洛斯爵士以蓝礼之名坚守城堡，拒绝相信主君已死。他坚持要亲眼目睹遗体方肯打开城门，但蓝礼的尸体竟莫名其妙失踪了，很可能被谁藏了起来。蓝礼麾下的骑士约有五分之一跟洛拉斯爵士一同离开，不愿效忠史坦尼斯。据说百花骑士一见国王的尸体就发了疯，盛怒之下连斩三名蓝礼的护卫，其中包括埃蒙·库伊和罗拔·罗伊斯。”
　　可惜，他才杀三个就住了手，提利昂心想。
　　“洛拉斯爵士应是往苦桥去了，”瓦里斯续道，“他的妹妹——蓝礼的王后——还留在那里。现在的情况是，留在当地的众多士兵突然失去了国王，不知何去何从。他们所侍奉的领主有不少在风息堡投靠了史坦尼斯。而这些小卒该怎么走？他们自己也不明白。”
　　提利昂倾身向前，“依我看，这正是我们的机会。只需把洛拉斯·提利尔争取过来，就有机会吸纳梅斯·提利尔和高庭的势力。他们或许暂时倾向史坦尼斯，但不可能喜欢那个人，否则从一开始就追随他了。”
　　“难道他们比较喜欢我们？”瑟曦反问。
　　“不大可能，”提利昂说，“很明显，他们爱戴的是蓝礼。但蓝礼已死，或许我们能提供一些充分的证据，来显示乔佛里和史坦尼斯之间的区别……而且要赶快。”
　　“你打算提供什么证据？”
　　“金钱证据，”小指头立即提议。
　　瓦里斯啧啧两声，“亲爱的培提尔，你不会以为这些强大的诸侯和高贵的骑士能像市场里的鸡那样随意买卖吧。
　　“你最近上市场吗，瓦里斯大人？”小指头问，“我敢说，买个诸侯绝对比买只鸡容易。当然了，诸侯的叫声比鸡高傲，而且你要是像商人一样直接标价做买卖，他们会很反感，但对于到手的礼物……以及荣誉，土地，城堡等等……他们可是却之不恭。”
　　“贿赂或能动摇部分小诸侯，”提利昂道，“但不可能买下整个高庭。”
　　“没错，”小指头承认。“关键是百花骑士。梅斯·提利尔有三个儿子，而幼子洛拉斯是他的最爱。把他争取过来，高庭的力量就是你的。”
　　不谋而舍，提利昂心想。“我认为，已故的蓝礼大人给我们好好上了一课，应该像他一样利用联姻争取提利尔的同盟。”
　　瓦里斯立刻明白弦外之音，“您要乔佛里国王迎娶玛格丽·提利尔？”
　　“对。”他依稀记得蓝礼的年轻王后不过十五六岁……比乔佛里稍大，但也就大几岁，况且她是那么美丽迷人。
　　“乔佛里已跟珊莎·史塔克订婚，”瑟曦反对。
　　“婚约可以解除。让国王跟一个已死叛徒的女儿成婚有什么好处？”
　　小指头发话了：“你可以提醒国王陛下，提利尔家比史塔克家有钱，玛格丽更是可爱……可爱到能同床共枕了。”
　　“没错，”提利昂说，“小乔很关心这点。”
　　“胡说，我儿子还小，怎会关心这种事？”
　　“你以为？”提利昂回敬，“瑟曦呀，他都十三岁了，当年我就是这个年龄结的婚。”
　　“你那可笑的故事让大家集体蒙羞！乔佛里的本质比你高贵得多。”
　　“高贵到让柏洛斯爵士去扒珊莎的衣服？”
　　“他在生她的气。”
　　“昨晚厨房小弟把汤洒掉的时候他也很生气，却没有扒光他的衣服。”
　　“这不是洒汤的问题——”
　　对，是乳房的问题。经过庭院里发生的那件事，提利昂和瓦里斯商议，或许该安排乔佛里去莎塔雅的妓院走走。希望这孩子尝过一点甜蜜之后会变得温和一些，甚至因此心怀感激，诸神保佑，这样提利昂就能在君主的支持下自由行动。当然，关键是保密，难处在于如何将猎狗支开。“那条狗老跟在主人脚边，”他对瓦里斯评述，“但人总要睡觉，也免不了赌博、嫖妓、或酗酒之事。”
　　“不用怀疑，猎狗对这些样样精通。”
　　“你别兜圈子了，”提利昂说，“我的问题是，他何时去做这些事？”
　　瓦里斯把一根指头放在脸颊，神秘地微笑。“大人，疑神疑鬼的人会认为你想趁桑铎·克里冈不在乔佛里陛下身边保护的时机，好加害那孩子呢。”
　　“你肯定不会误会，瓦里斯大人，”提利昂说，“啊，我所做的一切不都为了讨他喜欢么？”
　　太监答应留心这件事。但眼下战争自有其需求，乔佛里的成年礼还得搁一搁。“你对自己儿子的了解当然比我深，”他勉强自己说出违心之论，“但无论如何，跟提利尔联姻值得一试，因为这或许是惟一可让乔佛里活到婚礼当晚的方法。”
　　小指头表示同意：“史塔克家的女孩固然甜蜜，可除了以身相许，对乔佛里一点用也没有；玛格丽·提利尔不同，她有五万大军和高庭的全部势力做嫁妆。”
　　“此言有理啊。”瓦里斯把一只柔软的手搭上太后的袖子。“陛下，您有慈母的胸怀，我也明白国王陛下很爱他的小甜心。但我们这些冒昧为政的人，凡事必须以全国百姓福祉为优先考虑，而暂时搁置自身欲望。依我看呀，这门婚事势在必行。”
　　太后抽开胳膊，摆脱太监的手。“你是女人就不会这么讲了。随你们怎么说，大人们，但乔佛里生性骄傲，他决不会满足于蓝礼的残羹剩饭，决不会答应这门婚事。”
　　提利昂耸耸肩，“三年之后陛下成年，到时方可自行理事，在此之前，你是他的摄政，我是他的首相，我们让他娶谁，他就得娶谁。残羹剩饭也只能将就将就。”
　　瑟曦还在作无谓挣扎：“你们就提亲去吧，此事若惹恼小乔，你们就得求诸神保佑了。”
　　“很高兴大家达成共识，”提利昂说，“那么，我们之中谁去苦桥呢？我们的价码得赶在洛拉斯爵士冷静下来之前传达给他。”
　　“你打算派御前会议的成员去？”
　　“我很难指望百花骑士跟波隆或夏嘎打交道，对不？提利尔家一向高傲。”
　　姐姐不浪费任何可趁之机，“杰斯林·拜瓦特爵士出生高贵，我们派他去。”
　　提利昂摇摇头，“我们要的不是传声筒，派出的使者必须能代表国王和御前会议发言，并把事情迅速办妥。”
　　“首相正是国王的代言人。”烛光在瑟曦眼中如碧绿的野火一样燃烧，“我们该派你去，提利昂，如此便和乔佛里亲临没有分别。哪里有更好的人选呢？你说话就跟詹姆使剑一般厉害。”
　　你就这么急着要把我赶出都城，瑟曦？“真是过誉，姐姐，其实依我看，替孩子安排婚事，母亲比舅舅合适。况且你有交朋友的天赋，我则望尘莫及。”
　　她的眼睛眯成一线，“小乔身边需要我。”
　　“太后陛下，首相大人，”小指头说，“国王身边需要您们两位，就让我代您们前去吧。”
　　“你？”你从中发现了什么好处？提利昂寻思。
　　“我虽是御前会议的成员，却非国王的血亲，因此当人质价值不大。洛拉斯爵士在朝中时，我跟他还算熟，他没有理由拒绝我。此外，据我所知，梅斯·提利尔对我也没有敌意，并且——容我大言不惭地说一句——我对谈判之道略通一二。”
　　他能说服我们。提利昂不信任培提尔·贝里席，不想让他离开视线范围，但他有别的选择吗？此事非他自己或小指头出面不可，而他完全清楚，只要他踏出君临，不论时间长短，所有的苦心全得半途而废。“此去苦桥路途凶险，”他谨慎地说，“可以肯定，史坦尼斯公爵会放出自己的牧羊犬来接管弟弟手下任性的羔羊。”
　　“我不怕牧羊犬，我只在意那群羔羊。当然，卫队少不了。”
　　“我能匀出一百名金袍卫士，”提利昂说。
　　“五百。”
　　“三百。”
　　“三百四十——再加二十名骑士及同等数目的侍从。我得拖上一帮可观的队伍，提利尔家才会看重我。”
　　相当正确。“同意。”
　　“队伍中必须包括恐怖爵士和流口水爵士，我得将他们送回父亲大人身边，以示善意。派克斯特·雷德温不仅是梅斯·提利尔的老朋友，本身也很有势力，我们需要他的支持。”
　　“他是个叛徒，”太后回绝，“若不是我拿雷德温的小崽子威胁他，青亭岛早就跟风投靠蓝礼了。”
　　“蓝礼已死，陛下。”小指头指出，“而史坦尼斯和派克斯特伯爵都不会忘记，当年风息堡之围，正是雷德温的舰队封锁了海洋。送回他的双胞胎，我们或能赢得雷德温的青睐。”
　　瑟曦不肯服输，“异鬼才要他的青睐！我只要他的军队和船只，扣住这对双胞胎，他才会乖乖听话。”
　　提利昂来打圆场，“那就把霍伯爵士送回去，留下霍拉斯爵士。我想派克斯特伯爵够聪明，参得透其中意味。”
　　这提议无人反对，但小指头还没说完，“我们还要马，强壮迅捷的好马。一路战乱频仍，更换座骑恐怕很难。此外，必须提供充足的金钱，用于采买我们先前提到的礼物。”
　　“要多少拿多少。反正都城若是不保，再多的钱也得教史坦尼斯取走。”
　　“最后，我需要一份书面委任状。这份文件不仅要让梅斯·提利尔消除对我权限的质疑，更重要的是，赋予我全权谈判的权力，由我协商婚约及其相关的一切安排，并以国王之名订立誓约。这张纸上要有乔佛里和所有重臣的签名，并盖上大家的印章。”
　　提利昂不安地挪了挪，“一言为定。就这些了吧？我可提醒你，由此到苦桥的路长着呢。”
　　“破晓前我就出发。”小指头起身，“相信回来之时，国王当心存感激，犒劳我英勇地为国效力？”
　　瓦里斯咯咯笑道：“咱们乔佛里是个知恩图报的君王，您就放心地去吧，我英勇的好大人。”
　　太后说话直接：“你想要什么，培提尔？”
　　小指头挂着狡猾的微笑，瞥了提利昂一眼，“让我好好想想，总会想到的。”他诡诡然鞠了一躬，转身就走，轻松得像出发去逛自家妓院。
　　提利昂望向窗外。雾很浓，隔着庭院看不到外墙，一片灰暗之中依稀闪烁着几点昏黄的光。今日的天气真不适合出门，他心想，所幸要走的是培提尔·贝里席。“开始起草文件吧。瓦里斯大人，派人去取羊皮纸和鹅毛笔，并把乔佛里叫醒。”
　　当会议终于结束时，天色依旧晦涩黑暗。瓦里斯独自匆匆离开，柔软的拖鞋擦地无声。兰尼斯特姐弟在门口逗留了片刻。“你的链子打得怎样，弟弟？”太后一边问话，普列斯顿爵士一边将镶松鼠皮的银色斗篷系上她肩膀。
　　“一环一环，逐渐增长。我们该感谢诸神，科塔奈·庞洛斯爵士竟如此固执。史坦尼斯是个谨慎的人，风息堡一日不攻下，他决不会北进。”
　　“提利昂，尽管我们的意见常常不合，但我想我从前对你的看法似乎有些偏颇。你不像我想的那样是个蠢蛋，事实上，你帮了我很大的忙。我感谢你，假如从前对你说了什么难听的话，请你千万原谅。”
　　“千万原谅？”他耸耸肩，朝她微笑，“亲爱的姐姐，你没说什么需要原谅的话呀。”
　　“你是指今天吧？”他俩齐声大笑……随后瑟曦俯身，在他额头迅速地轻吻了一下。
　　提利昂吃惊得说不出话来，只能眼看着她在普列斯顿爵士的护送下迈步离开大厅。“我疯了吗？我姐姐刚才吻了我？”当她离开后，他问波隆。
　　“这个吻有那么甜蜜？”
　　“不是甜蜜……而是意外。”瑟曦最近行为古怪，提利昂有些不安。“我在回忆她上次吻我是什么时候。我想那时我才六七岁吧，还是詹姆挑唆她干的。”
　　“看来你长这么大，这女人终于发现你的魅力了。”
　　“不对，”提利昂说，“不对，这女人在酝酿什么。赶紧想办法查出来，波隆，你知道，我最讨厌意外。”

[ 此帖被挽墨在2015-08-30 15:55重新编辑 ]
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等级: 内阁元老
配偶: 逐烟霞。
你看着眼前的人，分明还是以前的模样，可心里终究不是以前那般澄清透明了。
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CHAPTER 37
　　THEON

　　Theon wiped the spittle off his cheek with the back of his hand. “Robb will gut you, Greyjoy,” Benfred Tallheart screamed. “He’ll feed your turncloak’s heart to his wolf, you piece of sheep dung.”
　　Aeron Damphair’s voice cut through the insults like a sword through cheese. “Now you must kill him.”
　　“I have questions for him first,” said Theon.
　　“Puck your questions.” Benfred hung bleeding and helpless between Stygg and Werlag. “You’ll choke on them before you get any answers from me, craven. Turncloak.”
　　Uncle Aeron was relentless. “When he spits on you, he spits on all of us. He spits on the Drowned God. He must die.”
　　“My father gave me the command here, Uncle.”
　　“And sent me to counsel YOU.”
　　And to watch me. Theon dare not push matters too far with his uncle. The command was his, yes, but his men had a faith in the Drowned God that they did not have in him, and they were terrified of Aeron Damphair. I cannot fault them for that.
　　“You’ll lose your head for this, Greyjoy. The crows will eat the jelly of your eyes.” Benfred tried to spit again, but only managed a little blood. “The Others bugger your wet god.”
　　Tallhart, you’ve spit away your life, Theon thought. “Stygg, silence him,” he said.
　　They forced Benfred to his knees. Werlag tore the rabbitskin off his belt and jammed it between his teeth to stop his shouting. Stygg unlimbered his axe.
　　“No,” Aeron Damphair declared. “He must be given to the god. The old way.”
　　What does it matter? Dead is dead. “Take him, then.”
　　“You will come as well. You command here. The offering should come from you.”
　　That was more than Theon could stomach. “You are the priest, Uncle, I leave the god to you. Do me the same kindness and leave the battles to me.” He waved his hand, and Werlag and Stygg began to drag their captive off toward the shore. Aeron Damphair gave his nephew a reproachful look, then followed. Down to the pebbled beach they would go, to drown Benfred Tallhart in salt water. The old way.
　　Perhaps it’s a kindness, Theon told himself as he stalked off in the other direction. Stygg was hardly the most expert of headsmen, and Benfred had a neck thick as a boar’s, heavy with muscle and fat. I used to mock him for it, just to see how angry I could make him, he remembered. That had been, what, three years past? When Ned Stark had ridden to Torrhen’s Square to see Ser Helman, Theon had accompanied him and spent a fortnight in Benfred’s company.
　　He could hear the rough noises of victory from the crook in the road where the battle had been fought . . . if you’d go so far as to call it a battle. More like slaughtering sheep, if truth be told. Sheep fleeced in steel, but sheep nonetheless.
　　Climbing a jumble of stone, Theon looked down on the dead men and dying horses. The horses had deserved better. Tymor and his brothers had gathered up what mounts had come through the fight unhurt, while Urzen and Black Lorren silenced the animals too badly wounded to be saved. The rest of his men were looting the corpses. Gevin Harlaw knelt on a dead man’s chest, sawing off his finger to get at a ring. Paying the iron price. My lord father would approve. Theon thought of seeking out the bodies of the two men he’d slain himself to see if they had any jewelry worth the taking, but the notion left a bitter taste in his mouth. He could imagine what Eddard Stark would have said. Yet that thought made him angry too. Stark is dead and rotting, and naught to me, he reminded himself.
　　Old Botley, who was called Fishwhiskers, sat scowling by his pile of plunder while his three sons added to it. One of them was in a shoving match with a fat man named Todric, who was reeling among the slain with a horn of ale in one hand and an axe in the other, clad in a cloak of white foxfur only slightly stained by the blood of its previous owner.
　　Drunk, Theon decided, watching him bellow. It was said that the ironmen of old had oft been blood-drunk in battle, so berserk that they felt no pain and feared no foe, but this was a common ale-drunk.
　　“Wex, my bow and quiver.” The boy ran and fetched them. Theon bent the bow and slipped the string into its notches as Todric knocked down the Botley boy and flung ale into his eyes. Fishwhiskers leapt up cursing, but Theon was quicker. He drew on the hand that clutched the drinking horn, figuring to give them a shot to talk about, but Todric spoiled it by lurching to one side just as he loosed. The arrow took him through the belly.
　　The looters stopped to gape. Theon lowered his bow. “No drunkards, I said, and no squabbles over plunder.” On his knees, Todric was dying noisily. “Botley, silence him.” Fishwhiskers and his sons were quick to obey. They slit Todric’s throat as he kicked feebly, and were stripping him of cloak and rings and weapons before he was even dead.
　　Now they know I mean what I say. Lord Balon might have given him the command, but Theon knew that some of his men saw only a soft boy from the green lands when they looked at him. “Anyone else have a thirst?” No one replied. “Good.” He kicked at Benfred’s fallen banner, clutched in the dead hand of the squire who’d borne it. A rabbitskin had been tied below the flag. Why rabbitskins? he had meant to ask, but being spat on had made him forget his questions. He tossed his bow back to Wex and strode off, remembering how elated he’d felt after the Whispering Wood, and wondering why this did not taste as sweet. Tallhart, you bloody overproud fool, you never even sent out a scout.
　　They’d been joking and even singing as they’d come on, the three trees of Tallhart streaming above them while rabbitskins flapped stupidly from the points of their lances. The archers concealed behind the gorse had spoiled the song with a rain of arrows, and Theon himself had led his men-at-arms out to finish the butcher’s work with dagger, axe, and warhammer. He had ordered their leader spared for questioning.
　　Only he had not expected it to be Benfred Tallhart.
　　His limp body was being dragged from the surf when Theon returned to his Sea Bitch. The masts of his longships stood outlined against the sky along the pebbled beach. Of the fishing village, nothing remained but cold ashes that stank when it rained. The men had been put to the sword, all but a handful that Theon had allowed to flee to bring the word to Torrhen’s Square. Their wives and daughters had been claimed for salt wives, those who were young enough and fair. The crones and the ugly ones had simply been raped and killed, or taken for thralls if they had useful skills and did not seem likely to cause trouble.
　　Theon had planned that attack as well, bringing his ships up to the shore in the chill darkness before the dawn and leaping from the prow with a longaxe in his hand to lead his men into the sleeping village. He did not like the taste of any of this, but what choice did he have?
　　His thrice-damned sister was sailing her Black Wind north even now, sure to win a castle of her own. Lord Balon had let no word of the hosting escape the Iron Islands, and Theon’s bloody work along the Stony Shore would be put down to sea raiders out for plunder. The northmen would not realize their true peril, not until the hammers fell on Deepwood Motte and Moat Cailin. And after all is done and won, they will make songs for that bitch Asha, and forget that I was even here. That is, if he allowed it.
　　Dagmer Cleftjaw stood by the high carved prow of his longship, Foamdrinker. Theon had assigned him the task of guarding the ships; otherwise men would have called it Dagmer’s victory, not his. A more prickly man might have taken that for a slight, but the Cleftjaw had only laughed.
　　“The day is won,” Dagmer called down. “And yet you do not smile, boy. The living should smile, for the dead cannot.” He smiled himself to show how it was done. It made for a hideous sight. Under a snowy white mane of hair, Dagmer Cleftjaw had the most gut-churning scar Theon had ever seen, the legacy of the longaxe that had near killed him as a boy. The blow had splintered his jaw, shattered his front teeth, and left him four lips where other men had but two. A shaggy beard covered his cheeks and neck, but the hair would not grow over the scar, so a shiny seam of puckered, twisted flesh divided his face like a crevasse through a snowfield. “We could hear them singing,” the old warrior said. “It was a good song, and they sang it bravely.”
　　“They sang better than they fought. Harps would have done them as much good as their lances did.”
　　“How many men are lost?”
　　“Of ours?” Theon shrugged. “Todric. I killed him for getting drunk and fighting over loot.”
　　“Some men are born to be killed.” A lesser man might have been afraid to show a smile as frightening as his, yet Dagmer grinned more often and more broadly than Lord Balon ever had.
　　Ugly as it was, that smile brought back a hundred memories. Theon had seen it often as a boy, when he’d jumped a horse over a mossy wall, or flung an axe and split a target square. He’d seen it when he blocked a blow from Dagmer’s sword, when he put an arrow through a seagull on the wing, when he took the tiller in hand and guided a longship safely through a snarl of foaming rocks. He gave me more smiles than my father and Eddard Stark together. Even Robb . . . he ought to have won a smile the day he’d saved Bran from that wildling, but instead he’d gotten a scolding, as if he were some cook who’d burned the stew.
　　“You and I must talk, Uncle,” Theon said. Dagmer was no true uncle, only a sworn man with perhaps a pinch of Greyjoy blood four or five lives back, and that from the wrong side of the blanket. Yet Theon had always called him uncle nonetheless.
　　“Come onto my deck, then.” There were no mlords from Dagmer, not when he stood on his own deck. On the Iron Islands, every captain was a king aboard his own ship.
　　He climbed the plank to the deck of the Foamdrinker in four long strides, and Dagmer led him back to the cramped aft cabin, where the old man poured a horn of sour ale and offered Theon the same. He declined. “We did not capture enough horses. A few, but . . . well, I’ll make do with what I have, I suppose. Fewer men means more glory.”
　　“What need do we have of horses?” Like most ironmen, Dagmer preferred to fight on foot or from the deck of a ship. “Horses will only shit on our decks and get in our way.”
　　“If we sailed, yes,” Theon admitted. “I have another plan.” He watched the other carefully to see how he would take that. Without the Cleftjaw he could not hope to succeed. Command or no, the men would never follow him if both Aeron and Dagmer opposed him, and he had no hope of winning over the sour-faced priest.
　　“Your lord father commanded us to harry the coast, no more.” Eyes pale as sea foam watched Theon from under those shaggy white eyebrows. Was it disapproval he saw there, or a spark of interest? The latter, he thought . . . hoped . . .
　　“You are my father’s man.”
　　“His best man, and always have been.”
　　Pride, Theon thought. He is proud, I must use that, his pride will be the key. “There is no man in the Iron Islands half so skilled with spear or sword.”
　　“You have been too long away, boy. When you left, it was as you say, but I am grown old in Lord Greyjoy’s service. The singers call Andrik best now. Andrik the Unsmiling, they name him. A giant of a man. He serves Lord Drumm of Old Wyk. And Black Lorren and Qarl the Maid are near as dread.”
　　“This Andrik may be a great fighter, but men do not fear him as they fear you.”
　　“Aye, that’s so,” Dagmer said. The fingers curled around the drinking horn were heavy with rings, gold and silver and bronze, set with chunks of sapphire and garnet and dragonglass. He had paid the iron price for every one, Theon knew.
　　“If I had a man like you in my service, I should not waste him on this child’s business of harrying and burning. This is no work for Lord Balon’s best man.”
　　Dagmer’s grin twisted his lips apart and showed the brown splinters of his teeth. “Nor for his trueborn son?” He hooted. “I know you too well, Theon. I saw you take your first step, helped you bend your first bow. ‘Tis not me who feels wasted.”
　　“By rights I should have my sister’s command,” he admitted, uncomfortably aware of how peevish that sounded.
　　“You take this business too hard, boy. It is only that your lord father does not know you. With your brothers dead and you taken by the wolves, your sister was his solace. He learned to rely on her, and she has never failed him.”
　　“Nor have I. The Starks knew my worth. I was one of Brynden Blackfish’s picked scouts, and I charged with the first wave in the Whispering Wood. I was that close to crossing swords with the Kingslayer himself.” Theon held his hands two feet apart. “Daryn Hornwood came between us, and died for it.”
　　“Why do you tell me this?” Dagmer asked. “It was me who put your first sword in your hand. I know you are no craven.”
　　“Does my father?”
　　The hoary old warrior looked as if he had bitten into something he did not like the taste of. “It is only . . . Theon, the Boy Wolf is your friend, and these Starks had you for ten years.”
　　“I am no Stark.” Lord Eddard saw to that. “I am a Greyjoy, and I mean to be my father’s heir. How can I do that unless I prove myself with some great deed?”
　　“You are young. Other wars will come, and you shall do your great deeds. For now, we are commanded to harry the Stony Shore.”
　　“Let my uncle Aeron see to it. I’ll give him six ships, all but Foamdrinker and Sea Bitch, and he can burn and drown to his god’s surfeit.”
　　“The command was given you, not Aeron Damphair.”
　　“So long as the harrying is done, what does it matter? No priest could do what I mean to, nor what I ask of you. I have a task that only Dagmer Cleftjaw can accomplish.”
　　Dagmer took a long draught from his horn. “Tell me.”
　　He is tempted, Theon thought. He likes this reaver’s work no better than I do. “If my sister can take a castle, so can P’
　　“Asha has four or five times the men we do.”
　　Theon allowed himself a sly smile. “But we have four times the wits, and five times the courage.”
　　“Your father—”
　　“—will thank me, when I hand him his kingdom. I mean to do a deed that the harpers will sing of for a thousand years.”
　　He knew that would give Dagmer pause. A singer had made a song about the axe that cracked his jaw in half, and the old man loved to hear it. Whenever he was in his cups he would call for a reaving song, something loud and stormy that told of dead heroes and deeds of wild valor. His hair is white and his teeth are rotten, but he still has a taste for glory.
　　“What would my part be in this scheme of yours, boy?” Dagmer Cleftjaw asked after a long silence, and Theon knew he had won.
　　“To strike terror into the heart of the foe, as only one of your name could do. You’ll take the great part of our force and march on Torrhen’s Square. Helman Tallhart took his best men south, and Benfred died here with their sons. His uncle Leobald will remain, with some small garrison.” If I had been able to question Benfred, I would know just how small. “Make no secret of your approach. Sing all the brave songs you like. I want them to close their gates.”
　　“Is this Torrhen’s Square a strong keep?”
　　“Strong enough. The walls are stone, thirty feet high, with square towers at each corner and a square keep within.”
　　“Stone walls cannot be fired. How are we to take them? We do not have the numbers to storm even a small castle.”
　　“You will make camp outside their walls and set to building catapults and siege engines.”
　　“That is not the Old Way. Have you forgotten? Ironmen fight with swords and axes, not by flinging rocks. There is no glory in starving out a foeman.”
　　“Leobald will not know that. When he sees you raising siege towers, his old woman’s blood will run cold, and he will bleat for help. Stay your archers, Uncle, and let the raven fly. The castellan at Winterfell is a brave man, but age has stiffened his wits as well as his limbs. When he learns that one of his king’s bannermen is under attack by the fearsome Dagmer Cleftjaw, he will summon his strength and ride to Tallhart’s aid. It is his duty. Ser Rodrik is nothing if not dutiful.”
　　“Any force he summons will be larger than mine,” Dagmer said, “and these old knights are more cunning than you think, or they would never have lived to see their first grey hair. You set us a battle we cannot hope to win, Theon. This Torrhen’s Square will never fall.”
　　Theon smiled. “It’s not Torrhen’s Square I mean to take.”



Ⅱ 列王的纷争 Chapter38 席恩
　　席恩用手背抹去脸颊上的唾沫。“葛雷乔伊，罗柏会剜了你的心！”本福德·陶哈高喊，“他会拿你这变色龙的心肺去喂他的狼，羊屎渣滓！”
　　如利剑切割奶酪，湿发伊伦出声制止侮辱，“杀了他。”
　　“我得先问问题，”席恩道。
　　“操你妈的问题！”本福德被斯提吉和魏拉格两人提在中间，血流满面，奄奄一息。“让你的鬼问题呛死你吧！懦夫！变色龙！”
　　伊伦叔叔冷酷地续道：“他吐你口水，就是吐我们大家。他胆敢向神圣的淹神吐唾沫。杀无赦。”
　　“父亲让我指挥，叔叔。”
　　“并让我辅佐你。”
　　来监视我的吧。席恩不敢开罪叔叔。不错，指挥权在他手里，但他的部下信奉淹神却并不信奉他，他们都害怕湿发伊伦。要利用他们，就得顺着他们。
　　“你会人头落地的，葛雷乔伊。乌鸦将啄掉你的烂眼泡。”本福德企图再吐唾沫，却只喷出几缕血丝。“异鬼抓去你阴湿的臭神！”
　　陶哈，这下你可把命给吐没了，席恩想。“斯提吉，干掉他，”他说。
　　他们把本福德强按在地。魏拉格扯下他的兔皮腰带，硬塞进他嘴中止住叫喊。斯提吉抡起斧子。
　　“不行，”湿发伊伦宣布。“必须将他献给淹神。遵循古道。”
　　有何区别？横竖一死。“好，我把他给你。”
　　“你也要来。你是这里的指挥官，依照古道，应该由你来奉献牺牲。”
　　这席恩可受不了。“你是牧师，叔叔，我把神灵的事务都交给你。你也发发善心让我只管作战吧。”他挥挥手，斯提吉和魏拉格便把俘虏拖向海滩。湿发伊伦给了侄儿一个责难的目光，回头跟去。他们将走下鹅卵石的滩头，把本福德·陶哈溺死在盐水里。这是古道。
　　或许这算是发善心吧，席恩转身直直地走开，边走边想。斯提吉不是个利索的刽子手，而本福德的颈项粗得像猪脖子，又肥又胖。我还拿这个取笑过他，就为了逗他生气，席恩回忆着。呵，那是什么时候的事啦？三年前吧？当年艾德·史塔克前去托伦方城拜访赫曼爵士，席恩也跟去了，跟本福德做了两个星期的伙伴。
　　他听见大路转弯处传来粗鲁的欢呼声，那里是战斗进行的地方……如果这也算战斗的话。事实上，根本就是屠杀绵羊。穿铁衣的绵羊，还是绵羊。
　　席恩爬上一座乱石冈，俯瞰下方的尸体和死马。马的待遇比较好，泰莫兄弟把战斗中未受伤的马都聚集起来，乌兹和黑罗伦则把伤势过重的马匹一一砍杀。他的其他部下在尸体上掠夺战利品。吉文·哈尔洛跪在死人胸前锯对方指头，以攫取戒指。这就是付铁钱，这就是父亲赞许的方式。席恩盘算着前去搜刮自己杀的那两人，看看有什么值钱东西好拿，但一念及此，嘴边却油然滋生一抹淡淡的苦味。他仿佛能听到艾德·史塔克的评语。这种想像让他非常生气。史塔克死了烂掉了，他什么也不是，席恩反复提醒自己。
　　老波特里，人称“鱼胡子”，阴沉地坐在他那堆小山般的战利品上，三个儿子将搜刮的东西不断拿过来。其中一个和肥胖的托德利克推搡起来。托德利克一手握角杯一手执斧头，在死人堆上晃荡，穿戴的白色狐皮披风迎风招展，纯白的皮料上只沾染了几滴故主的血液。他醉了，席恩明白，看他吼叫的模样。传说古代铁民上战场前要豪饮鲜血，由此带来的狂暴将让他们不觉痛苦、无所畏惧，但眼前这人只是麦酒喝过了头。
　　“威克斯，弓箭给我。”男孩跑过来递上弓。席恩弯弓搭箭，静静地看着托德利克击倒波特里的孩子，并把酒泼进他的眼睛。鱼胡子咒骂着扑上去，但席恩更快。他的目标是握角杯的手，好让他们坐下来谈判，可他出手时，托德利克摇晃着滑了一跤。不偏不倚，利箭穿膛而过。
　　所有人都停下来瞪着他。席恩放低弓箭，“我说过，我不要酒鬼，不许为战利品争执。”托德利克跪倒在地，发出垂死的惨嚎。“波特里，干掉他。”鱼胡子和他的儿子们即刻上前，压制住托德利克无力的踢打，割开他的喉咙，在人断气之前便活活剥下了斗篷、戒指和武器。
　　现在他们知道我言出必践。虽然巴隆大王给了他指挥权，可席恩明白在他的部下们眼里他不过是来自青绿之地的柔弱小子。“还有谁想试试？”无人应答。“很好。”他一脚踢开本福德倾倒的旌旗，掌旗官仍用冰冷的手掌紧紧抓着旗杆。旗下绑有一片兔皮。干嘛绑兔皮？他原本想问，不过被吐唾沫让他忘记了这回事。他把弓箭丢回给威克斯，大步走开，回想着呓语森林之役后自己得意的模样，不禁奇怪为何这次高兴不起来。陶哈，你这愚蠢而自傲的白痴，居然一个斥候都不派。
　　他们来时欢声笑语，甚至放声歌唱，陶哈家的三树旗帜高高飘扬，长矛上绑着可笑的兔皮。然而，金雀花丛后一阵箭雨，弓箭手们打断了欢歌，接着席恩亲率步兵冲上去用匕首、斧头和战锤完成了屠杀。他下令只留敌人头目，以审问情报。
　　不料敌人头目竟是本福德·陶哈。
　　席恩走向他的海婊子号，那具肿胀的躯体正被海浪卷上滩头。麾下的长船沿着鹅卵石岸一线排开，桅杆笔直地立于苍穹。渔村什么也没剩下，只余一片将在雨季发臭的冰冷灰烬。男人被尽数捕杀，惟有几个活口被席恩刻意放过，用以把消息传回托伦方城。他们的妻女被占为盐妾，当然，这是那些年轻漂亮的幸运儿的待遇，老妪和丑女操完后便干掉了，除非她们又听话又有手艺，那样还可以留作奴隶。
　　这次偷袭也是席恩的计划。是他，冒着黎明前刺骨的寒冷率领长船在海滩登陆，是他，手握长柄战斧第一个从船首跳下，指引部众杀向沉睡的村庄。他不喜欢这一切，可他有选择吗？
　　此刻，他那挨千刀的姐姐正驾驶黑风号北上，将为自己赢取一座城堡。她的胜算极大，巴隆大王没让铁群岛集结军队的消息走漏半点风声，而他席恩在磐石海岸干的这些龌龊勾当无疑将使人们以为这只是古老海盗们的又一次掠夺蠢动。北方人不会意识到真正的危险所在，直到深林堡和卡林湾被一一占领。但到了那时，一切都结束了，我们赢了，人们将永远歌颂婊子阿莎，而我的事迹无人铭记。假如我就这样碌碌无为，事情的结局就是如此。
　　裂颚达格摩站在他的长船豪饮号高大精雕的船首上。席恩给他分配的工作是看护船只：否则别人会把今天的胜利称之为达格摩的胜利，而不是席恩的胜利。换一个敏感的人或许会将席恩的安排视为轻侮，但达格摩只笑了笑。
　　“今天是胜利之日，”达格摩从高处喊，“可你脸上却没有笑容，小子。活着的人理应欢笑，因为死者无法做到。”为了示范，他自己笑了笑。可怕极了。在雪白披散的长发下，裂颚达格摩有席恩这辈子所见最为心惊的伤疤。据说达格摩小时候差点被长斧砍死，那一击粉碎了下巴，打掉了前齿，所以常人是两片唇，他则成了四片。杂乱的胡须覆盖了他的脸庞和颈项，只有那伤痕附近，什么也不长，惟有一道又皱又亮的疤痕，翻卷着脸上的皮肉，如同冰川上撕裂的峡谷。“我在这里都能听见他们唱歌，”老战士说，“唱得不错，唱得勇猛。”
　　“唱的比做的好。他们应该拿竖琴而不是提长熗。”
　　“死了几个？”
　　“我们？”席恩耸耸肩。“只有托德利克。他酗酒，为战利品还动手伤人，我宰了他。”
　　“有的人生来便是该杀。”别人或许会顾忌把如此可怖的笑容展现人前，不过达格摩即使当着巴隆大王的面也是无所畏惧，笑口常开。
　　笑容虽丑，却牵起席恩无数的回忆。幼童时代，这笑容伴随着他，每当他驱策小马跨过生苔的矮墙，每当他掷出飞斧击中竖立的靶标，每当他挡下达格摩的攻击，每当他射中海鸥的翅膀，每当他操纵舵柄指引长船穿过纠结的暗礁，这笑容总是不离左右。他给我的笑，比父亲、比艾德·史塔克给的都多，甚至比罗柏……那天他从野人手中拯救布兰，本该赢得微笑，结果却是责骂，仿佛他才是始作俑者。
　　“我们得谈谈，叔叔。”席恩说。其实达格摩不是他亲叔叔，只是父亲的部属，四五代前似乎有那么一点葛雷乔伊的血统，还是从私通苟合中得来。虽然如此，席恩仍旧一直喊他叔叔。
　　“好，那就上我的甲板吧。”从达格摩口中，你别想听到大人老爷的称呼，尤其是他踩在自己甲板上的时候。铁群岛的传统历来如此，每个船长都是自己船上的国王。
　　他跳上厚木板，来到豪饮号四跨宽的甲板上，达格摩领他去狭窄的船尾舱室，给自己和席恩分别倒了一角杯酸麦酒。席恩谢绝了，“我们没有逮到足够的马。抓到几匹，可是……好吧，我想也只能将就着用了。人越少，分享的光荣就越大。”
　　“我们拿马来做什么？”和大多数铁民一样，达格摩更欣赏徒步作战或在甲板上战斗。“马只会在船上拉屎拉尿，碍手碍脚。”
　　“没错，在船上航行当然是这样，”席恩承认。“但我另有计划。”他小心翼翼地盯着对方，盘算和盘托出的时机。争取不到裂颚，他就成不了事。不管他是不是指挥官，如果遭到伊伦和达格摩的共同反对，恐怕连一个人也指挥不动，而他显然无法赢取那阴沉牧师的欢心。
　　“你父亲大人命令我们抢掠海岸，仅此而已。”杂乱的白眉下，那双淡如海沫的苍白眼珠回望着席恩。他看见的是否认，还是一抹充满兴致的火花？是后者，他想……希望如此……
　　“你是我父亲的人。”
　　“他手下最棒的人，从来都是。”
　　骄傲，席恩想，他很骄傲，我必须利用这点，他的骄傲是成败的关键。“不错，在铁群岛，论起使剑挥矛，无人及得上你那纯熟的技艺。”
　　“你离开得太久，小子。你走的时候，的确是这样，但我在年复一年为巴隆大王效命的生涯中逐渐衰老啦。歌手们都说，如今的强者是阿德利克，他们叫他‘不苟言笑的‘阿德利克’。那家伙是个巨人，效力于老威克岛的卓鼓头领。黑罗伦和“少女”科尔也只比他稍逊半筹。”
　　“这阿德利克或许是个好战士，但人们决不会像畏惧你一般惧怕他。”
　　“啊，说得没错。”达格摩道。他握角杯的指头上戴满沉重的戒指，金银青铜样样俱全，镶嵌着蓝宝石、红宝石和龙晶。每一枚都付铁钱而来，席恩知道。
　　“如果我手下有您这样的人才，我决不浪费他去干这些烧啊抢的小儿科的工作。这种事怎能让巴隆大王手下最棒的人去……”
　　达格摩哈哈大笑，扭曲的嘴唇翻出焦黄的牙齿。“也不该给他亲儿子做？”他嘲骂道，“我太了解你了，席恩。我亲眼看着你学会走路，亲手教会你搭箭弯弓。的确是很浪费，我也为你惋惜啊。”
　　“按照权利，我姐姐的任务本该给我。”他承认，同时不安地意识到自己的声音有几分暴躁。
　　“你想太多了，小子，这一切只是因为你父亲大人还不太了解你。自打你的哥哥们尽数逝去，而你被群狼虏走，你姐姐便成了他惟一的慰藉。他不得不学着依靠她，而她也从未让他失望。”
　　“我也没有！史塔克家知道我的价值。我是黑鱼布兰登麾下的精锐斥候之一，在呓语森林我冲锋在最前线，差这么一点便要和弑君者正面交手。”席恩用手比划出两尺的距离。“然而戴林恩·霍伍德冲到我们之间，随后成了刀下鬼。”
　　“你告诉我这些做什么？”达格摩问，“正是我把你这辈子第一把剑交到你手中。我知道你不是懦夫。”
　　“我父亲也知道？”
　　头发灰白的老战士面露苦色，活像咬到什么难受的食物。“这只是……席恩，那个少狼主是你的朋友，史塔克家把你留了十年。”
　　“我不是史塔克。”艾德公爵凝视着他。“我是葛雷乔伊，我想成为父亲的传人。如果我不干出几番大事业，证明给别人看看，又怎么做得到呢？”
　　“你还年轻，战争的机会多的是，满可以立下很多功业。然而这次，我们的任务只是抢掠磐石海岸啊。”
　　“这任务让伊伦叔叔负责就好。除了豪饮和海婊子，我把剩下的六条船都拨给他。他可以为着他那神灵的欲望随意烧杀淹溺。”
　　“但任务是交给你的，不是给湿发伊伦。”
　　“达到抢掠骚扰的目的就行，谁执行有什么区别？牧师想不到我打算的事，更办不了我想请您办的事。我有一个任务，只有裂颚达格摩这样的人方能完成。”
　　达格摩举起角杯，深吸一口。“告诉我。”
　　他被打动了，席恩心想，他和我一样对这强盗的勾当没兴趣。“如果说我姐姐能拿下一座城堡，那么我也能。”
　　“阿莎的人手是我们的四五倍。”
　　席恩狡黠地笑道：“而我们有四倍于她的机智，五倍于她的勇气。”
　　“你父亲——”
　　“——会感谢我，当我把一整个王国拱手献上时。我所计划的行动将让歌手们传唱千年。”
　　他料到这句话会让达格摩踌躇。一个歌手曾写过一首关于他粉碎的下巴和斧头的歌，老人很爱听。每当喝得酩酊大醉，他便呼喝着高唱古代掠夺者们的歌谣——那些喧吵激烈，歌颂逝去的英雄和蛮荒的勇武的曲谣。他的头发或许已白，牙齿或许松动，但对荣耀的欲念却丝毫未减。
　　“我在你的计划中将扮演什么角色，小子？”在漫长的沉默之后，裂颚达格摩开口。席恩明白自己赢了。
　　“要让敌人心中充满恐惧，惟有你的名讳方能办到。你将率领大部人马攻向托伦方城。赫曼·陶哈把手下精锐都带去了南方，而本福德和那些人的儿子也死在了这里。城堡应由本福德的叔叔兰巴德据守，但估计他身边只剩一支小小的卫队。”如果我能审问本福德，就知道到底有多少了。“一路不用隐藏行踪。喜欢唱什么战歌就唱。我希望他们早早关门据守。”
　　“这托伦方城坚固么？”
　　“非常坚固。城墙乃是石砌，三十尺高，四角各有一座方塔，中央还有一座方形碉堡。”
　　“石墙不能用火烧，我们怎么打？哪怕是对付一座最简陋的城堡，我们的人手也不够。”
　　“你只管在城外扎营就好，并着手修建投石机和攻城器。”
　　“这不是古道！你莫非忘了？铁民用剑和斧去当面作战，不靠丢石块。而饿死敌人有何光荣可言？”
　　“不知道这个的是兰巴德。这老不死看见你们修建攻城塔，便会浑身发凉，四处请求援助。把你的弓箭手管好，叔叔，让那些信鸦飞出去。临冬城的守备是个勇敢的人，但他老了，岁月像迟缓他的躯体一样磨钝了他的智慧。当他听说自己国王麾下的封臣正被可怕的裂颚达格摩围困，一定会召集兵力，前来援救。这是他的职责。罗德利克爵士惟一的信条便是忠于职守。”
　　“他召集的军队无论如何也大大超过我方。”达格摩说，“而打起仗来这些老骑士比你想像的要狡猾得多，不然他们根本活不到长出灰发。你将把我们拖进一场无法取胜的战斗中，席恩。这个托伦方城是拿不下的。”
　　席恩笑了，“我的目标不是托伦方城。”

[ 此帖被挽墨在2015-08-30 15:56重新编辑 ]
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你看着眼前的人，分明还是以前的模样，可心里终究不是以前那般澄清透明了。
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CHAPTER 38
　　ARYA

　　
　　Confusion and clangor ruled the castle. Men stood on the beds of wagons loading casks of wine, sacks of flour, and bundles of new-fletched arrows. Smiths straightened swords, knocked dents from breastplates, and shoed destriers and pack mules alike. Mail shirts were tossed in barrels of sand and rolled across the lumpy surface of the Flowstone Yard to scour them clean. Weese’s women had twenty cloaks to mend, a hundred more to wash. The high and humble crowded into the sept together to pray. Outside the walls, tents and pavilions were coming down. Squires tossed pails of water over cookfires, while soldiers took out their oilstones to give their blades one last good lick. The noise was a swelling tide: horses blowing and whickering, lords shouting commands, men-at-arms trading curses, camp followers squabbling.
　　Lord Tywin Lannister was marching at last.
　　Ser Addam Marbrand was the first of the captains to depart, a day before the rest. He made a gallant show of it, riding a spirited red courser whose mane was the same copper color as the long hair that streamed past Ser Addam’s shoulders. The horse was barded in bronze-colored trappings dyed to match the rider’s cloak and emblazoned with the burning tree. Some of the castle women sobbed to see him go. Weese said he was a great horseman and sword fighter, Lord Tywin’s most daring commander.
　　I hope he dies, Arya thought as she watched him ride out the gate, his men streaming after him in a double column. I hope they all die. They were going to fight Robb, she knew. Listening to the talk as she went about her work, Arya had learned that Robb had won some great victory in the west. He’d burned Lannisport, some said, or else he meant to burn it. He’d captured Casterly Rock and put everyone to the sword, or he was besieging the Golden Tooth . . . but something had happened, that much was certain.
　　Weese had her running messages from dawn to dusk. Some of them even took her beyond the castle walls, out into the mud and madness of the camp. I could flee, she thought as a wagon rumbled past her. I could hop on the back of a wagon and hide, or fall in with the camp followers, no one would stop me. She might have done it if not for Weese. He’d told them more than once what he’d do to anyone who tried to run off on him. “It won’t be no beating, oh, no. I won’t lay a finger on you. I’ll just save you for the Qohorik, yes I will, I’ll save you for the Crippler. Vargo Hoat his name is, and when he gets back he’ll cut off your feet.” Maybe if Weese were dead, Arya thought . . . but not when she was with him. He could look at you and smell what you were thinking, he always said so.
　　Weese never imagined she could read, though, so he never bothered to seal the messages he gave her. Arya peeked at them all, but they were never anything good, just stupid stuff sending this cart to the granary and that one to the armory. One was a demand for payment on a gambling debt, but the knight she gave it to couldn’t read. When she told him what it said he tried to hit her, but Arya ducked under the blow, snatched a silver-banded drinking horn off his saddle, and darted away. The knight roared and came after her, but she slid between two wayns, wove through a crowd of archers, and jumped a latrine trench. In his mail he couldn’t keep up. When she gave the horn to Weese, he told her that a smart little Weasel like her deserved a reward. “I’ve got my eye on a plump crisp capon to sup on tonight. We’ll share it, me and you. You’ll like that.”
　　Everywhere she went, Arya searched for Jaqen H’ghar, wanting to whisper another name to him before those she hated were all gone out of her reach, but amidst the chaos and confusion the Lorathi sellsword was not to be found. He still owed her two deaths, and she was worried she would never get them if he rode off to battle with the rest. Finally she worked up the courage to ask one of the gate guards if he’d gone. “One of Lorch’s men, is he?” the man said. “He won’t be going, then. His lordship’s named Ser Amory castellan of Harrenhal. That whole lot’s staying right here, to hold the castle. The Bloody Mummers will be left as well, to do the foraging. That goat Vargo Hoat is like to spit, him and Lorch have always hated each other.”
　　The Mountain would be leaving with Lord Tywin, though. He would command the van in battle, which meant that Dunsen, Polliver, and Raff would all slip between her fingers unless she could find Jaqen and have him kill one of them before they left.
　　“Weasel,” Weese said that afternoon. “Get to the armory and tell Lucan that Ser Lyonel notched his sword in practice and needs a new one. Here’s his mark.” He handed her a square of paper. “Be quick about it now, he’s to ride with Ser Kevan Lannister.”
　　Arya took the paper and ran. The armory adjoined the castle smithy, a long high-roofed tunnel of a building with twenty forges built into its walls and long stone water troughs for tempering the steel. Half of the forges were at work when she entered. The walls rang with the sound of hammers, and burly men in leather aprons stood sweating in the sullen heat as they bent over bellows and anvils. When she spied Gendry, his bare chest was slick with sweat, but the blue eyes under the heavy black hair had the stubborn look she remembered. Arya didn’t know that she even wanted to talk to him. It was his fault they’d all been caught. “Which one is Lucan?” She thrust out the paper. “I’m to get a new sword for Ser Lyonel.”
　　“Never mind about Ser Lyonel.” He drew her aside by the arm. “Last night Hot Pie asked me if I heard you yell Winterfell back at the holdfast, when we were all fighting on the wall.”
　　“I never did!”
　　“Yes you did. I heard you too.”
　　“Everyone was yelling stuff,” Arya said defensively. “Hot Pie yelled hot pie. He must have yelled it a hundred times.”
　　“It’s what you yelled that matters. I told Hot Pie he should clean the wax out of his ears, that all you yelled was Go to hell! If he asks you, you better say the same.”
　　“I will,” she said, even though she thought go to hell was a stupid thing to yell. She didn’t dare tell Hot Pie who she really was. Maybe I should say Hot Pie’s name to laqen.
　　“I’ll get Lucan,” Gendry said.
　　Lucan grunted at the writing (though Arya did not think he could read it), and pulled down a heavy longsword. “This is too good for that oaf, and you tell him I said so,” he said as he gave her the blade.
　　“I will,” she lied. If she did any such thing, Weese would beat her bloody. Lucan could deliver his own insults.
　　The longsword was a lot heavier than Needle had been, but Arya liked the feel of it. The weight of steel in her hands made her feel stronger. Maybe I’m not a water dancer yet, but I’m not a mouse either. A mouse couldn’t use a sword but I can. The gates were open, soldiers coming and going, drays rolling in empty and going out creaking and swaying under their loads. She thought about going to the stables and telling them that Ser Lyonel wanted a new horse. She had the paper, the stableboys wouldn’t be able to read it any better than Lucan had. I could take the horse and the sword and just ride out. If the guards tried to stop me I’d show them the paper and say I was bringing everything to Ser Lyonel. She had no notion what Ser Lyonel looked like or where to find him, though. If they questioned her, they’d know, and then Weese . . . Weese . . .
　　As she chewed her lip, trying not to think about how it would feel to have her feet cut off, a group of archers in leather jerkins and iron helms went past, their bows slung across their shoulders. Arya heard snatches of their talk. Giants I tell you, he’s got giants twenty foot tall come down from beyond the Wall, follow him like dogs . . .
　　“. . . not natural, coming on them so fast, in the night and all. He’s more wolf than man, all them Starks are shit on your wolves and giants, the boy’d piss his pants if he knew we was coming. He wasn’t man enough to march on Harrenhal, was he? Ran Vother way, didn’t he? He’d run now if he knew what was best for him.”
　　“So you say, but might be the boy knows something we don’t, maybe it’s us ought to be run . . .”
　　Yes, Arya thought. Yes, it’s you who ought to run, you and Lord Tywin and the Mountain and Ser Addam and Ser Amory and stupid Ser Lyonel whoever he is, all of you better run or my brother will kill you, he’s a Stark, he’s more wolf than man, and so am I.
　　“Weasel.” Weese’s voice cracked like a whip. She never saw where he came from, but suddenly he was right in front of her. “Give me that. Took you long enough.” He snatched the sword from her fingers, and dealt her a stinging slap with the back of his hand. “Next time be quicker about it.”
　　For a moment she had been a wolf again, but Weese’s slap took it all away and left her with nothing but the taste of her own blood in her mouth. She’d bitten her tongue when he hit her. She hated him for that.
　　“You want another?” Weese demanded. “You’ll get it too. I’ll have none of your insolent looks. Get down to the brewhouse and tell Tuffleberry that I have two dozen barrels for him, but he better send his lads to fetch them or I’ll find someone wants ‘em worse.” Arya started off, but not quick enough for Weese. “You run if you want to eat tonight,” he shouted, his promises of a plump crisp capon already forgotten. “And don’t be getting lost again, or I swear I’ll beat you bloody.”
　　You won’t, Arya thought. You won’t ever again. But she ran. The old gods of the north must have been guiding her steps. Halfway to the brewhouse, as she passing under the stone bridge that arched between Widow’s Tower and Kingspyre, she heard harsh, growling laughter. Rorge came around a corner with three other men, the manticore badge of Ser Amory sewn over their hearts. When he saw her, he stopped and grinned, showing a mouthful of crooked brown teeth under the leather flap he wore sometimes to cover the hole in his face. “Yoren’s little cunt,” he called her. “Guess we know why that black bastard wanted you on the Wall, don’t we?” He laughed again, and the others laughed with him. “Where’s your stick now?” Rorge demanded suddenly, the smile gone as quick as it had come. “Seems to me I promised to fuck you with it.” He took a step toward her. Arya edged backward. “Not so brave now that I’m not in chains, are you?”
　　“I saved you.” She kept a good yard between them, ready to run quick as a snake if he made a grab for her.
　　“Owe you another fucking for that, seems like. Did Yoren pump your cunny, or did he like that tight little ass better?”
　　“I’m looking for Jaqen,” she said. “There’s a message.”
　　Rorge halted. Something in his eyes . . . could it be that he was scared of Jaqen H’ghar? “The bathhouse. Get out of my way.”
　　Arya whirled and ran, swift as a deer, her feet flying over the cobbles all the way to the bathhouse, She found Jaqen soaking in a tub, steam rising around him as a serving girl sluiced hot water over his head. His long hair, red on one side and white on the other, fell down across his shoulders, wet and heavy.
　　She crept up quiet as a shadow, but he opened his eyes all the same. “She steals in on little mice feet, but a man hears,” he said. How could he hear me? she wondered, and it seemed as if he heard that as well. “The scuff of leather on stone sings loud as warhorns to a man with open ears. Clever girls go barefoot.”
　　“I have a message.” Arya eyed the serving girl uncertainly. When she did not seem likely to go away, she leaned in until her mouth was almost touching his ear. “Weese,” she whispered.
　　Jaqen H’ghar closed his eyes again, floating languid, half-asleep. “Tell his lordship a man shall attend him at his leisure.” His hand moved suddenly, splashing hot water at her, and Arya had to leap back to keep from getting drenched.
　　When she told Tuffleberry what Weese had said, the brewer cursed loudly. “You tell Weese my lads got duties to attend to, and you tell him he’s a pox-ridden bastard too, and the seven hells will freeze over before he gets another horn of my ale. I’ll have them barrels within the hour or Lord Tywin will hear of it, see if he don’t.”
　　Weese cursed too when Arya brought back that message, even though she left out the pox-ridden bastard part. He fumed and threatened, but in the end he rounded up six men and sent them off grumbling to fetch the barrels down to the brewhouse.
　　Supper that evening was a thin stew of barley, onion, and carrots, with a wedge of stale brown bread. One of the women had taken to sleeping in Weese’s bed, and she got a piece of ripe blue cheese as well, and a wing off the capon that Weese had spoken of that morning. He ate the rest himself, the grease running down in a shiny line through the boils that festered at the corner of his mouth. The bird was almost gone when he glanced up from his trencher and saw Arya staring. “Weasel, come here.”
　　A few mouthfuls of dark meat still clung to one thigh. He forgot, but now he’s remembered, Arya thought. It made her feel bad for telling Jaqen to kill him. She got off the bench and went to the head of the table.
　　“I saw you looking at me.” Weese wiped his fingers on the front of her shift. Then he grabbed her throat with one hand and slapped her with the other. “What did I tell you?” He slapped her again, backhand. “Keep those eyes to yourself, or next time I’ll spoon one out and feed it to my bitch.” A shove sent her stumbling to the floor. Her hem caught on a loose nail in the splintered wooden bench and ripped as she fell. “You’ll mend that before you sleep,” Weese announced as he pulled the last bit of meat off the capon. When he was finished he sucked his fingers noisily, and threw the bones to his ugly spotted dog.
　　“Weese,” Arya whispered that night as she bent over the tear in her shift. “Dunsen, Polliver, Raff the Sweetling,” she said, calling a name every time she pushed the bone needle through the undyed wool. “The Tickler and the Hound. Ser Gregor, Ser Amory, Ser Ilyn, Ser Meryn, King Joffrey, Queen Cersei.” She wondered how much longer she would have to include Weese in her prayer, and drifted off to sleep dreaming that on the morrow, when she woke, he’d be dead.
　　But it was the sharp toe of Weese’s boot that woke her, as ever. The main strength of Lord Tywin’s host would ride this day, he told them as they broke their fast on oatcakes. “Don’t none of you be thinking how easy it’ll be here once m’lord of Lannister is gone,” he warned. “The castle won’t grow no smaller, I promise you that, only now there’ll be fewer hands to tend to it. You lot of slugabeds are going to learn what work is now, yes you are.”
　　Not from you. Arya picked at her oaten cake. Weese frowned at her, as if he smelled her secret. Quickly she dropped her gaze to her food, and dared not raise her eyes again.
　　Pale light filled the yard when Lord Tywin Lannister took his leave of Harrenhal. Arya watched from an arched window halfway up the Wailing Tower. His charger wore a blanket of enameled crimson scales and gilded crinet and charnfron, while Lord Tywin himself sported a thick ermine cloak. His brother Ser Kevan looked near as splendid. No less than four standard-bearers went before them, carrying huge crimson banners emblazoned with the golden lion. Behind the Lannisters came their great lords and captains. Their banners flared and flapped, a pageant of color: red ox and golden mountain, purple unicorn and bantam rooster, brindled boar and badger, a silver ferret and a juggler in motley, stars and sunbursts, peacock and panther, chevron and dagger, black hood and blue beetle and green arrow.
　　Last of all came Ser Gregor Clegane in his grey plate steel, astride a stallion as bad-tempered as his rider. Polliver rode beside him, with the black dog standard in his hand and Gendry’s horned helm on his head. He was a tall man, but he looked no more than a half-grown boy when he rode in his master’s shadow.
　　A shiver crept up Arya’s spine as she watched them pass under the great iron portcullis of Harrenhal. Suddenly she knew that she had made a terrible mistake. I’m so stupid, she thought. Weese did not matter, no more than Chiswyck had. These were the men who mattered, the ones she ought to have killed. Last night she could have whispered any of them dead, if only she hadn’t been so mad at Weese for hitting her and lying about the capon. Lord Tywin, why didn’t I say Lord Tywin?
　　Perhaps it was not too late to change her mind. Weese was not killed yet. If she could find Jaqen, tell him . . .
　　Hurriedly, Arya ran down the twisting steps, her chores forgotten. She heard the rattle of chains as the portcullis was slowly lowered, its spikes sinking deep into the ground . . . and then another sound, a shriek of pain and fear.
　　A dozen people got there before her, though none was coming any too close. Arya squirmed between them. Weese was sprawled across the cobbles, his throat a red ruin, eyes gaping sightlessly up at a bank of grey cloud. His ugly spotted dog stood on his chest, lapping at the blood pulsing from his neck, and every so often ripping a mouthful of flesh out of the dead man’s face.
　　Finally someone brought a crossbow and shot the spotted dog dead while she was worrying at one of Weese’s ears.
　　“Damnedest thing,” she heard a man say. “He had that bitch dog since she was a pup.”
　　“This place is cursed,” the man with the crossbow said.
　　“It’s Harren’s ghost, that’s what it is,” said Goodwife Amabel. “I’ll not sleep here another night, I swear it.”
　　Arya lifted her gaze from the dead man and his dead dog. Jaqen H’ghar was leaning up against the side of the Wailing Tower. When he saw her looking, he lifted a hand to his face and laid two fingers casually against his cheek.



Ⅱ 列王的纷争 Chapter39 艾莉亚
　　城堡里铿锵作响，一片混乱。人们站在马车上，把一桶桶葡萄酒，一袋袋面粉，以及一捆捆新上羽毛的箭往上搬。铁匠们则忙着将剑修平整，将铠甲上的凹痕打掉，并给战马和载货的骡子上蹄铁。锁甲扔进沙桶，沿着流石庭院凹凸不平的地面滚动，好将它们摩擦干净。威斯手下的女人分到二十件斗篷的缝补任务，还要清洗一百多件。城内，不论贵族还是士兵，都一股脑儿挤进圣堂去祈祷；而在城墙之外，大小帐篷纷纷拆除，侍从们提起水桶，将营火浇灭，士兵们则取出磨石，在上阵之前最后一次仔细磨刀。马匹嘶鸣喘息，领主发号施令，士兵互相咒骂，营妓争吵斗嘴，噪音如同潮汐高涨，达到顶点。
　　泰温·兰尼斯特公爵终于要出发了。
　　亚当·马尔布兰爵士最先离城，比别人早一天动身。他生得英姿飒爽，胯下一匹精神抖擞的红马，红铜色的鬃毛与亚当爵士披肩长发的色调一致，马饰也染成青铜色，纹饰着燃烧之树的家徽，以配合骑手的披风。城里好些女人目送他离开，泣不成声。威斯说他精于骑术与剑术，是泰温公爵麾下最厉害的军官。
　　希望他一命呜呼，艾莉亚一边看他骑出城门，心里一边想。他的部下在他身后排成两列，鱼贯而出。希望他们统统死掉。他们是去跟罗柏打仗，她知道的。最近，艾莉亚四处走动干活时常听人们谈论，似乎罗柏在西境打了个大胜仗。有人说他烧了兰尼斯港，有人说他只是打算要烧。有人说他夺下凯岩城，处死了所有居民，又有人说他正在围攻金牙城，众说纷纭……但确实有事发生，这点毋庸置疑。
　　从早到晚，威斯一直派她奔走送信，有时甚至要她离开城堡，去那泥泞而狂乱的营区。我可以逃跑，看着载货马车隆隆驶过身边，她心想，我可以跳上马车躲起来，或者混进营妓里，没人会阻止我。假如没有威斯，她大概就这么做了。可他不止一次地警告他们，谁想从他这儿逃跑，就给谁好看，“我不会揍你，哦，不会，我一根指头都不会碰你。我只把你关起来，然后交给科霍尔人，对，我要把你留给那个喜欢残废人的家伙。他叫瓦格·赫特，等他回来，便会剁掉你的脚。”或许威斯死了，我就能……艾莉亚心想，但现在还不行。他只需看看你，就能嗅出来你在想什么，他总这么说。
　　然而威斯根本料不到她识字，因此从不费神封信。于是艾莉亚偷看了所有的内容，却找不到有用的东西，全是诸如将这辆车送去谷仓，那辆车送去军械库之类的蠢笨事。曾有一封信是索要赌债，但收信的骑士不识字，她只好把信的内容说了出来，他一听出手便打，却被艾莉亚猫腰躲过，还顺手从他马鞍上抓了一只镶银角杯，拔腿就跑。骑士咆哮着追她，但她身手敏捷，先是从两辆车之间溜过，接着钻过一群弓箭手，跃过一个便池。而他穿着锁甲，根本追不上。当她将角杯交给威斯，他夸奖她，说像她这么聪明的小黄鼠狼值得奖励，“我瞅准一只肥嘟嘟的公鸡，今晚就把它弄来当晚饭。我们分了它，我和你，你会喜欢的。”
　　不管走到哪里，她都在寻找贾昆·赫加尔，只想赶在她憎恨的人全部远离之前，低声告诉他又一个名字。但在一片杂乱无序中，实在找不着这个罗拉斯佣兵。他还欠她两条命，她担心如果他跟别人一样上了战场，就再也没机会兑现了。最后，她鼓起勇气向一个城门守卫打听。“他是洛奇的人，是吗？”那人说，“那他不会走。公爵大人已任命亚摩利爵士为赫伦堡代理城主，他手下那帮人全得留在这儿守城。‘血戏班’也奉命留下，负责征收粮秣。嘿，瓦格·赫特那山羊又该气得啐唾沫骂娘了，他跟洛奇从来不和。”
　　但魔山要跟随泰温公爵离开，他被任命指挥先锋部队，这意味着邓森，波利佛和拉夫都将从她指间溜走。除非及时找到贾昆，让他赶在他们离开前杀死其中一个。
　　“黄鼠狼，”那天下午，威斯对她说，“去军械库找卢坎，菜昂诺爵士练习时崩凹了剑，要换把新的。这是他的凭据。”他递给她一张四方的单子。“搞快点！他马上要跟凯冯·兰尼斯特爵士一起出发。”
　　艾莉亚接过单子，跑了出去。军械库跟铁匠房毗邻，那铁匠房是一栋长条状的建筑，高高的屋顶，墙里嵌了二十个火炉，还有长长的石水槽，用来给钢铁焯火。她进去时，一半火炉都在运作。墙壁间回响着铁锤的敲打声，发出共鸣。魁梧结实的人们围着皮裙，俯身站在风箱和铁砧前，在滞闷的热气中挥汗如雨。她斜眼瞥见詹德利，他裸露的胸膛因汗水而显得光亮平滑，浓密黑发下的蓝眼睛仍有记忆中的固执。都是因为他，他们才全部被抓，艾莉亚不确定自己是否还想跟他说话。“哪位是卢坎？”她将纸递出去。“我要为莱昂诺爵士取一把新剑。”
　　“先别管莱昂诺爵士。”詹德利拽着她的手，拉到一旁。“昨晚热派问我来着，他说当初咱们在庄园墙上并肩作战时，你是不是喊了‘临冬城万岁’？”
　　“我没有喊！”
　　“可你的确喊过。我也听见的。”
　　“当时每个人都在叫喊，”艾莉亚防御性地说，“热派还拼命喊‘热派’呢！至少喊了一百次。”
　　“重要的是你喊了什么。反正我告诉热派，要他把耳垢清干净，你明明喊的是‘下地狱！’如果他问起你，记得不要说错话。”
　　“好吧，”她说，尽管她觉得‘下地狱’喊起来实在很笨，但她不敢向热派透露自己的真实身份。或许我该把热派这名字告诉贾昆。
　　“我把卢坎找来，”詹德利说。
　　卢坎对着那些字迹咕哝了一声（艾莉亚认为他其实不识字），随后取下一把沉重的长剑。“那蠢货不配这把好剑，你告诉他，这是我说的，”他边说边把剑递给她。
　　“好的，”她撒谎道。假如她真这么说，威斯铁定把她揍得皮开肉绽，卢坎也会亲自来教训她。
　　长剑比缝衣针沉重许多，但艾莉亚喜欢它的手感。手中钢铁的分量让她觉得自己再度变得强大。我也许算不上水舞者，但决不是老鼠。老鼠不会用剑，可我会。城门大开，士兵们进进出出，马车空空地驶进，满载着出去，吱吱嘎嘎直摇晃。她好想去马厩，告诉他们莱昂诺爵士要一匹新马。她手里有单子，而马夫和卢坎一样都不识字。我可以骑马提剑直接出城。卫兵若是拦我，我就给他们看单子，说我正把东西给莱昂诺爵士送去。可是，她既不知道莱昂诺爵士的长相，也不知道他驻在哪里。如果他们问她，一定会露馅的，然后威斯……威斯……
　　正当她咬紧嘴唇，努力不去想剁掉双脚是什么滋味时，一群穿皮甲戴铁盔的弓箭手走过来，他们的弓斜挎在肩头。艾莉亚听见一些琐碎的谈话。
　　“……巨人，我告诉你，他从长城外带来二十尺高的巨人，像狗一样跟着他……”
　　“……真是可怕，大黑夜的，突然出来袭击。他根本像狼不像人，史塔克家的人都这样……”
　　“……去你的狼和巨人吧，那小兔崽子假如知道我们要来，非吓得尿裤子不可。他不是个男人，没胆往赫伦堡来，对不？他往反方向去了，对不？他要是识时务，现在就该夹着尾巴逃跑喽。”
　　“随你怎么说，但我觉得那小子知道某些咱们不知道的东西，或许该跑的是我啊……”
　　没错，艾莉亚心想，没错，该跑的是你们，还有泰温公爵，还有魔山，还有亚当爵士，还有亚摩利爵士，还有那个不知是谁的笨蛋莱昂诺爵士，你们最好逃得远远的，否则我哥哥一定把你们全杀掉。他是史塔克家的人，像狼不像人，我也是。
　　“黄鼠狼。”威斯的声音像鞭子破空。她根本没注意他是从哪儿冒出来的，但突然之间就到了跟前。“剑给我！去这么久！”他从她指间夺过剑，还反手给了她火辣辣的一巴掌。“下次给我快点！”
　　片刻之前，她重新变做了一匹狼，但威斯的巴掌又将一切都打消了，只留下嘴里的血腥味。被打时，她咬到了舌头。她恨他。
　　“怎么？欠打？”威斯问。“你少给我装出这副傲慢无礼的样子！不然少不了你的！去，去酿酒房告诉特佛贝利，我这儿有两打木桶给他，但要他自己派小子们来拿，不然我就给别人了。”艾莉亚转身离开，威斯嫌她不够快。“今晚还想不想吃饭？给我跑！”他大声喊，先前许诺的肥鸡忘得一干二净。“这次不许游荡，否则瞧我怎么揍你！”
　　你不会，艾莉亚心想，你再也不会了。但她还是奔跑起来。北方的古老诸神指引着她的脚步。去酿酒房的半路上，当她从连接寡妇塔和焚王塔的石拱桥下经过时，听见刺耳的嚎笑。罗尔杰跟另外三人从拐角转出来，他们胸前都缝有亚摩利爵士的狮身蝎尾兽徽章。他一见她，便止了步，朝她咧嘴笑，用来掩盖脸上空洞的护鼻底下，露出满口弯曲棕黄的牙齿。“尤伦的小骚货，”他叫她。“这下我们终于明白那黑衣杂种干嘛带你去长城了，对不对？”他大笑起来，其他人也跟着一起笑。“你那根棍子呢？”罗尔杰突然问，笑容刹时消失，“记得我说过要拿它活活干死你。”他走近一步。艾莉亚慢慢后退。“我没链子拴着，你这小王八蛋就吓破了胆，对吗？”
　　“我救了你的命。”她努力跟他们保持距离，准备在他出手抓她之前逃走，迅如蛇。
　　“哦，为表示感谢我该多干你一次。说，尤伦是干你下面，还是喜欢你紧绷绷的小屁眼？”
　　“我在找贾昆，”她说，“有口信给他。”
　　罗尔杰突然顿住。他眼中……该不会他害怕贾昆·赫加尔吧？“在澡堂！别挡道！”
　　艾莉亚赶紧转身跑开，疾如鹿，她的双脚掠过鹅卵石面，一路朝澡堂飞奔。贾昆泡在浴盆里，女仆从他头上冲淋热水，蒸汽在周围升腾。他一边红一边白的长发披散在肩，湿漉而沉重。
　　她蹑手蹑脚走上前，静如影，但他还是睁开了眼睛。“女孩像小老鼠一样偷偷摸摸，但某人还是听见了，”他说。他怎么能听见呢？她疑惑地想，而他似乎连思想都听得到。“对某人而言，皮革摩擦石头就跟吹号一般响亮。聪明的女孩不穿鞋。”
　　“我有个口信。”艾莉亚迟疑地看了看女仆，她似乎不打算回避。于是她俯身靠过去，嘴巴凑着他的耳朵。“威斯，”她轻声说。（文＇心＇手＇打＇组＇手＇打＇整＇理）
　　贾昆·赫加尔的眼睛再度合上，他懒洋洋地泡在水里，似乎快睡着了。“告诉大人，某人随叫随到。”他的手突然一抖，把热水朝她泼来，艾莉亚赶紧跳开，才没淋成落汤鸡。
　　接着她把威斯的话告诉特佛贝利，酿酒师气得破口大骂：“你去告诉威斯，我的小子们都不是闲人，你告诉他，告诉这个满脸疖子的混蛋，七层地狱结冰之前，他别想再喝我一杯麦酒。一个小时之内，他不把木桶送来，我就报告泰温大人，等着瞧吧！”
　　当然，艾莉亚回报时省略了“满脸疖子”这部分，但威斯依旧气得发疯。他怒气冲冲，骂骂咧咧，但最终还是找来六个人，嘟嘟囔囔地命他们把桶送去酿酒房。
　　当天的晚饭是加了洋葱和胡萝卜的稀麦粥，还有一块不太新鲜的黑面包。有个女人被叫去和威斯上床，所以多得了一块成熟的蓝奶酪和一只鸡翅——从威斯早上提到的那只鸡上撕下来的。其余部分他一人独享，油脂闪着光亮，流淌过他嘴角化脓的疖子。鸡快吃完时，他才从盘子里抬头，发现艾莉亚正盯着他看。“黄鼠狼，过来。”
　　一条鸡腿上还连着几口焦黑的肉。原来他忘了，到现在才想起来，艾莉亚心想，也许她不该叫贾昆杀他。她难过地离开板凳，朝桌子前方走去。
　　“你在看我，我看见了。”威斯在她衣服前襟擦擦手指，然后一手掐住她脖子，一手扇了她一巴掌。“我跟你是怎么说的？”他反手又是一巴掌。“不许东张西望！否则我抠你眼睛出来喂母狗！”她被推倒在地，倒下时衣服边缘挂住木凳裂缝上的钉子，勾破了。“不把它补好，今晚你就别睡！”威斯宣布，一边扯下最后一点鸡肉。吃得精光之后，他响亮地吮吸手指，并把骨头丢给他那条丑陋的斑点狗。
　　“威斯，”那天晚上，艾莉亚一边俯身补裙子，一边低声说。“邓森，波利佛，‘甜嘴’拉夫，”骨针缝过褪色的羊毛布一次，她就念出一个名字。“记事本和猎狗。格雷果爵士，亚摩利爵士，伊林爵士，马林爵士，乔佛里国王，瑟曦太后。”她不知威斯还会在她的祷词里停留多久，真希望明天一早醒来，他已经死去，她想啊想，最后昏沉睡去。
　　一切照旧，第二天将她唤醒的仍是威斯的靴子尖。吃燕麦饼早餐时，他告诉他们，泰温公爵的主力部队将在今天出发。“千万别以为兰尼斯特大人离开后，你们就可以轻松，”他警告。“我保证，城堡不会变小，只有做事的人在变少。我要让你们这群懒虫了解什么是真正的工作，走着瞧吧。”
　　你才不会，艾莉亚边掰燕麦饼边想。威斯朝她皱皱眉，仿佛嗅到她的秘密，吓得她赶紧低下视线，盯着自己的食物，再也不敢抬头。
　　当淡淡的曙光射进庭院时，泰温·兰尼斯特公爵离开了赫伦堡。艾莉亚爬到号哭塔上一个拱窗边观察。他的战马披一袭猩红的釉彩鳞片甲，戴着镀金的护颈和头套，泰温公爵自己则身披一件厚重的貂皮斗篷。他的弟弟凯文爵士骑在他身旁，同样雍容华贵。四个掌旗官走在他们前面，高举深红大旗，怒吼雄狮迎风招展。兰尼斯特兄弟之后，跟着领主和军官们，旗帜飞扬，炫丽多彩：有红色的公牛，金色的山峰，紫色的独角兽和矮脚公鸡，斑纹野猪和獾，银色的雪鼯和五彩艺人，以及星星，太阳，孔雀，黑豹，尖角，匕首，黑色的兜帽，蓝色的甲虫和绿色的箭只。
　　格雷果·克里冈爵士走在最后，他身穿灰色的钢板甲，骑着跟他一样坏脾气的马。波利佛骑在他旁边，手擎黑狗旗帜，头戴詹德利的角盔。他是个高个儿，但走在主人的阴影里，看上去却像个半大孩子。
　　艾莉亚眼看着他们从赫伦堡巨大的铁闸门下列队走出，一阵颤栗爬上背脊。突然间，她明白自己犯了个天大的错误。我真笨，她想，威斯算什么？齐斯威克算什么？这些人才是重要人物，我该把他们杀掉才对。昨晚若不是威斯打她，骗她烤鸡的事，使她气晕了头，她本该向贾昆耳语他们中任何一个的名字。泰温公爵，我干嘛不说泰温公爵？
　　改变主意或许还不晚！威斯还没死！如果她找到贾昆，告诉他……
　　艾莉亚放下手中的工作，沿着弯曲的楼梯，飞奔而下。她一边跑一边听见铁链哗哗作响，闸门缓缓放下，底部的尖刺插入地面……最后是一声尖叫，充满痛苦，充满恐惧。
　　十几个人比她先赶到现场，但谁都不敢靠近。艾莉亚在人群中蠕动，钻到前面。只见威斯蜷在鹅卵石地上，喉咙血肉模糊，眼睛则往上翻，目瞪口呆地盯着一片灰色的云。他那条丑陋的斑点母狗正在他胸口舔食从脖子里涌出的血，不时还从死者脸上撕下一口肉来。
　　眼看威斯的耳朵就要不保，终于有人拿来一把十字弓，射死了母狗。
　　“可恶的东西，”她听见有人说，“他从小把它养大的。”
　　“这地方受了诅咒，”拿十字弓的人说。
　　“是赫伦的鬼魂干的！是的！”埃玛贝尔太太说。“我发誓再也不在这儿睡了！一晚也不行！”
　　艾莉亚将视线从死人和死狗上抬开，只见贾昆·赫加尔靠在号哭塔的墙上。他看见她，便把手搭在脸颊，两根指头若无其事地伸出来。

[ 此帖被挽墨在2015-08-30 16:00重新编辑 ]
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