A Dance With Dragons: Reek I (Chapter Summary)

A man bites into the belly of a rat.  Confined within a dungeon cell, it has been two days since he has eaten.  His arms and legs are as thin as reeds, his belly swollen and hollow.  Impatiently chewing through the rat’s flesh, he hears two sets of footsteps approaching his cell.  Two boys enter; one crouches and asks the man what his name is.  The man can’t remember, but one of the boys provides an answer.  Your name is Reek, he says.  Reek, Reek, my name is Reek, the man thinks to himself.  Reek recognizes the two boys: known as Big Walder and Little Walder, both are Walder Frey and both are eight-years-old.  He has been summoned by Ramsay Bolton, the boys inform him. 

Reek contemplates overwhelming the two boys and escaping from the dungeon, but decides otherwise.  He is dissuaded by the memory of his last attempt to escape.  Another prisoner, a woman named Kyra, had appeared at his cell door with stolen keys, and the two had slipped from the castle out a postern gate.  It had all been a trap however, a game, a jape.  Within the hour, both Reek and Kyra had been recaptured by Ramsay and his dogs.  

Big Walder and Little Walder march Reek into the great hall.  The dais is occupied by Ramsay’s favorites, the Bastard’s Boys: Ben Bones, the old man who kept his lordship’s hunting dogs; Damon, called Damon Dance-for-Me, fair-haired and boyish; Grunt, who had lost his tongue for speaking carelessly in Lord Roose’s presence; Sour Alyn; Skinner; and Yellow Dick.  Also on the dais are two old men Reek does not recognize.  One is gaunt, with flinty eyes, a long white beard, and a face as hard as a winter frost.  The other is thin, with one shoulder much higher than the other; his eyes are grey, his teeth yellow, and his forked beard snow and silver.  His cloak is fastened at the shoulder with a starburst.  

Standing before the dais, Reek is recognized by the two men – he is in fact Theon Greyjoy.  His hair has gone white and he his three stone thinner.  Ramsay has whipped, racked, cut, and flayed Theon, and removed three fingers and four toes.  Ramsay tells Theon that he is to wed Arya Stark at Winterfell, and that he has a task for Theon to complete.  He needs Theon’s help to fetch home his virgin bride.