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Bran

The hunt left at dawn The king wanted wild boar at the feast tonight Prince Joffrey rode with his father, so Robb had been allowed to join the hunters as well Uncle Benjen, Jory, Theon Greyjoy, Ser Rodrik, and even the queen’s funny little brother had all ridden out with them It was the last hunt, after all On the morrow they left for the south

Bran had been left behind with Jon and the girls and Rickon But Rickon was only a baby and the girls were only girls and Jon and his ere nowhere to be found Bran did not look for hiry at hiry at everyone these days Bran did not knohy He was going with Uncle Ben to the Wall, to join the Night’s Watch That was al Robb was the one they were leaving behind, not Jon

For days, Bran could scarcely wait to be off He was going to ride the kingsroad on a horse of his own, not a pony but a real horse His father would be the Hand of the King, and they were going to live in the red castle at King’s Landing, the castle the Dragonlords had built Old Nan said there were ghosts there, and dungeons where terrible things had been done, and dragon heads on the walls It gave Bran a shiver just to think of it, but he was not afraid How could he be afraid? His father would be with hihts and sworn swords

Bran was going to be a knight hiuard Old Nan said they were the finest swords in all the realm There were only seven of them, and they hite armor and had no wives or children, but lived only to serve the king Bran knew all the stories Their names were like music to him Serwyn of the Mirror Shield Ser Ryaht The twins Ser Erryk and Ser Arryk, who had died on one another’s swords hundreds of years ago, when brother fought sister in the war the singers called the Dance of the Dragons The White Bull, Gerold Hightower Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning Barristan the Bold

Two of the Kingsguard had co Robert Bran had watched the to speak to them Ser Boros was a bald man with a jowly face, and Ser Meryn had droopy eyes and a beard the color of rust Ser Jaihts in the stories, and he was of the Kingsguard too, but Robb said he had killed the oldknight was Ser Barristan Seluard Father had promised that they would , and Bran had been er to depart, to see a world he had only dreaine

Yet now that the last day was at hand, suddenly Bran felt lost Winterfell had been the only hoht to say his farewells today, and he had tried After the hunt had ridden out, he wandered through the castle with his wolf at his side, intending to visit the ones ould be left behind, Old Nan and Gage the cook, Mikken in his smithy, Hodor the stableboy who smiled sobut "Hodor," the ave him a blackberry when he caone to the stable first, and seen his pony there in its stall, except it wasn’t his pony any the pony behind, and all of a sudden Bran just wanted to sit down and cry He turned and ran off before Hodor and the other stableboys could see the tears in his eyes That was the end of his farewells Instead Bran spent theto teach his wolf to fetch a stick, and failing The wolfling was smarter than any of the hounds in his father’s kennel and Bran would have sworn he understood every word that was said to hi sticks

He was still trying to decide on a na his Grey Wind, because he ran so fast Sansa had named hers Lady, and Arya nas, and little Rickon called his Shaggydog, which Bran thought was a pretty stupid name for a direwolf Jon’s wolf, the white one, was Ghost Bran wished he had thought of that first, even though his asn’t white He had tried a hundred naht

Finally he got tired of the stick ga He hadn’t been up to the broken tower for weeks with everything that had happened, and this odswood, taking the long way around to avoid the pool where the heart tree grew The heart tree had always frightened hiht, or leaves that looked like hands His wolf ca at his heels "You stay here," he told him at the base of the sentinel tree near the arht Now stay--"

The wolf did as he was told Bran scratched hirabbed a low branch, and pulled hi easily froan to howl

Bran looked back down His wolf fell silent, staring up at hih hiain Once more the wolf howled "Quiet," he yelled "Sit down Stay You’re worse than Mother" The howling chased him all the way up the tree, until finally he juht

The rooftops of Winterfell were Bran’s second home His mother often said that Bran could climb before he could walk Bran could not remember when he first learned to walk, but he could not remember when he started to climb either, so he supposed it rey stone labyrinth of walls and towers and courtyards and tunnels spreading out in all directions In the older parts of the castle, the halls slanted up and down so that you couldn’t even be sure what floor you were on The place had grown over the centuries like some monstrous stone tree, Maester Luwin told hinarled and thick and twisted, its roots sunk deep into the earth

When he got out from under it and scralance He liked the way it looked, spread out beneath hi over his head while all the life of the castle went on below Bran could perch for hours aoyles that brooded over the First Keep, watching it all: theood and steel in the yard, the cooks tending their vegetables in the glass garden, restless dogs running back and forth in the kennels, the silence of the godswood, the girls gossiping beside the washing well It made him feel like he was lord of the castle, in a way even Robb would never know

It taught him Winterfell’s secrets too The builders had not even leveled the earth; there were hills and valleys behind the walls of Winterfell There was a covered bridge that went from the fourth floor of the bell tower across to the second floor of the rookery Bran knew about that And he knew you could get inside the inner wall by the south gate, clih a narrow tunnel in the stone, and then coate, with a hundred feet of wall loo over you Even Maester Luwin didn’t know that, Bran was convinced

His mother was terrified that one day Bran would slip off a wall and kill himself He told her that he wouldn’t, but she never believed hiround He had ht, one out theof his bedroom when his brothers were fast asleep

He confessed his criuilt Lord Eddard ordered hiodswood to cleanse himself Guards were posted to see that Bran reht to reflect on his disobedience The nextBran was nowhere to be seen They finally found him fast asleep in the upper branches of the tallest sentinel in the grove

As angry as he was, his father could not help but laugh "You’re not my son," he told Bran when they fetched him down, "you’re a squirrel So be it If you must climb, then climb, but try not to let your h he did not think he ever really fooled her Since his father would not forbid it, she turned to others Old Nan told hih and was struck down by lightning, and how afterward the crows came to peck out his eyes Bran was not impressed There were crows’ nests atop the broken tohere no one ever went but him, and sometimes he filled his pockets with corn before he cliht out of his hand None of the out his eyes

Later, Maester Luwin built a little pottery boy and dressed hi him off the wall into the yard below, to demonstrate ould happen to Bran if he fell That had been fun, but afterward Bran just looked at the maester and said, "I’m not made of clay And anyhow, I never fall"

Then for a while the guards would chase him whenever they saw him on the roofs, and try to haul hiame with his brothers, except that Bran alon None of the guards could climb half so well as Bran, not even Jory Most of the time they never saw hi he liked about cli invisible

He liked how it felt too, pulling hi hard into the small crevices between He always took off his boots and went barefoot when he climbed; it made him feel as if he had four hands instead of two He liked the deep, sweet ache it left in the h, sweet and cold as a winter peach He liked the birds: the crows in the broken tower, the tiny little sparrows that nested in cracks between the stones, the ancient owl that slept in the dusty loft above the old aroing places that no one else could go, and seeing the grey sprawl of Winterfell in a way that no one else ever saw it It made the whole castle Bran’s secret place

His favorite haunt was the broken tower Once it had been a watchtower, the tallest in Winterfell A long tio, a hundred years before even his father had been born, a lightning strike had set it afire The top third of the structure had collapsed inward, and the tower had never been rebuilt Sometimes his father sent ratters into the base of the tower, to clean out the nests they always found a the jumble of fallen stones and charred and rotten beaed top of the structure now except for Bran and the crows

He kneays to get there You could cliht up the side of the tower itself, but the stones were loose, the one to ash, and Bran never liked to put his full weight on theodswood, shinny up the tall sentinel, and cross over the ar roof to roof, barefoot so the guards wouldn’t hear you overhead That brought you up to the blind side of the First Keep, the oldest part of the castle, a squat round fortress that was taller than it looked Only rats and spiders lived there now but the old stones still ht up to where the gargoyles leaned out blindly over eoyle, hand over hand, around to the north side From there, if you really stretched, you could reach out and pull yourself over to the broken tohere it leaned close The last part was the scramble up the blackened stones to the eyrie, no more than ten feet, and then the croould coht any corn

Bran waspractice when he heard the voices He was so startled he alrip The First Keep had been empty all his life

"I do not like it," a wo There was a ros beneath hi out of the laston this side "You should be the Hand"

"Gods forbid," a man’s voice replied lazily "It’s not an honor I’d want There’s far too , suddenly afraid to go on Theyby

"Don’t you see the danger this puts us in?" the woman said "Robert loves the man like a brother"

"Robert can barely stomach his brothers Not that I blaestion"

"Don’t play the fool Stannis and Renly are one thing, and Eddard Stark is quite another Robert will listen to Stark Damn them both I should have insisted that he name you, but I was certain Stark would refuse hiht to count ourselves fortunate," the ht as easily have naods help us Give me honorable enemies rather than aht"

They were talking about Father, Bran realized He wanted to hearout in front of the

"We will have to watch him carefully," the woman said