A Dance With Dragons: Davos II (Chapter Summary)

The Merry Midwife sails into White Harbor on the evening tide.  The ship carries Davos Seaworth, Stannis’s  envoy sent to treat with Lord Wyman Manderly.  Davos spots a warship in the outer harbor.  Her hull is black and gold, her figurehead a lion with an upraised paw, and Lionstar is written across her stern: the Freys are in White Harbor.  Casso Mogat, captain of the Merry Midwife, tells Davos the ship will linger for three days, after which it will set sail with or without the King’s Hand. 

A Dance With Dragons: Tyrion IV (Chapter Summary)

Tyrion is buried beneath a pile of musty skins, atop a heap of old sacks that serve him as a bed. He is aboard the Shy Maid, lodging atop the roof of its cabin with a coil of hempen rope for a pillow. He dresses and descends to the afterdeck, where Griff is sitting beside an iron brazier. The sellsword keeps the night watch by himself. I would kill for a cup of wine, Tyrion mutters. Since boarding, Griff has prohibited Tyrion from touching a drink. As the first pale light of day appears on the horizon, Griff rises and heads below deck. The deck is yours, he tells Tyrion.

A Dance With Dragons: Bran II (Chapter Summary)

They are here, Coldhands announces.  The white walkers step lightly and leave no impression in the snow, yet Coldhands senses their presence.  It has been twelve days since the elk has died.  Jojen is too weak to walk unaided and shivers violently in Meera’s arms.  Icicles hang from Hodor’s beard.  The wolves are close as well, Bran warns; inside Summer’s skin, he can smell an approaching pack.  The group is standing at the foot of an incline.  Less than a thousand yards away, halfway up the stony hill, a cleft in the rock marks the entrance to a cave.  According to Coldhands the cave is warded – the Others cannot pass.  There is also a backdoor to the cave three leagues north, down a sinkhole.  In his weakened state Jojen is unable to make the ascent and Meera refuses to leave his side.  She instructs Bran and Hodor to go on ahead.  Hodor, with Bran strapped to his back, plows through the snowdrifts up the hill and toward the concealed cave.  Coldhands and Summer follow.  Behind, Meera struggles up the hill, half-dragging and half-carrying her brother. 

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. 

A Dance With Dragons: Daenerys II (Chapter Summary)

Daenerys is shaken awake in the middle of the night by her handmaids.  Skahaz, Reznak, and Grey Worm require her presence in the throne room.  tThe Sons of the Harpy have struck again.  Black Fist and Cetherys were slain by cross-bow bolts in Mazdhan’s Maze; Mossador and Duran were crushed by falling stones beneath the river wall; Eladon Goldenhair and Loyal Spear were poisoned at a wineshop; three freed men were murdered in their homes, a money lender, a cobbler, and the harpist Rylona Rhee.  Mossador was Missandei’s brother.  Before Daenerys had freed them, the two siblings had been taken from their home on Narth by raiders from the Basilisk Isles and sold into slavery in Astapor.  Daenerys commands Grey Worm to pull back the Unsullied from the city; henceforth, Meereen will be guarded by a new watch, made up in equal parts of shavepates and freedmen.  Moreover, she commands that two children from each of the old slaving families are to serve her at court as pages and cupbearers. 

A Dance With Dragons: Jon III (Chapter Summary)

Mance Rayder’s hands are bound by hempen rope and a noose is tied around his neck.  The other end of the rope is looped about the saddle horn of Ser Godry Farring’s horse.  Jon has pleaded with Stannis to spare Mance’s life, but Stannis has remained unmoved.  The law is plain; a deserter’s life is forfeit.  Mance is dragged toward a deep pit filled with logs, leaves, and kindling.  Godry, along with a dozen men-at-arms, heave Mance into a wooden cage suspended over the pit.  On a wooden scaffold above the pit Melisandre addresses the wildings enclosed within the stockade.  She denounces Mance as a king of lies who sought to bring down the Wall.  Two of the queen’s men bring forth the Horn of Joramun.  Mance had uncovered the horn high up in the Frostfangs beneath Joramun’s grave.  It is black and banded with old gold, eight feet long from end to end.  Runes are carved into the golden bands in the writing of the First Men.  The horn bursts into flames before it is pushed into the pit.  Within the cage Mance screams, claws at the noose around his neck, and denies his kingship.  At Jon Snow’s command four black brothers let loose four arrows.  One arrow takes Mance in the chest, one in the gut, and one in the throat.  The fourth strikes the cage’s wooden bars.  Mance dies before the flames consume him.  And now his Watch is done, Jon murmurs softly.

A Dance With Dragons: Davos I (Chapter Summary)

Davos Seaworth is marched between two guards into the stone keep of Breakwater and brought before Godric Borrell, Lord of Sweetsister.  He is an ugly bald man, big and fleshy, with an oarsman’s thick shoulders and no neck.  Coarse grey stubble, going white in patches, covers his cheeks and chin.  Davos also notices that the man has a sort of webbing between the three middle fingers of his right hand.  A guard produces a ribbon of black velvet trimmed with cloth-of-gold, and bearing three seals: a crowned stag, a flaming heart in red, and a hand in white.  He lays it out in front of Godric.  Davos has been discovered in the Belly o’ the Whale, a smuggler’s den, trying to buy passage to White Harbor.  Cut him free, Gordic commands, and peel off his gloves.  Davos’s gloves are removed, revealing his maimed left hand.  The shortened fingers confirm his identity – he is the onion knight.  

A Dance With Dragons: Tyrion III (Chapter Summary)

Tyrion wakes to find the litter halted.  He steps outside and discovers Magister Illyrio talking with two riders.  They introduce themselves as Haldon Halfmaester and Ser Rolly Duckfield.  Haldon is older, clean-shaven, with a lined ascetic face, and his hair pulled back and tied in a knot behind his head; Duck is a brawny man with a shaggy beard and a shock of orange hair.  The two men transfer six oaken chests from Illyrio’s baggage train to their pack horses.  Haldon informs Illyrio that Dothraki have been seen north of Dagger Lake.  Outriders from Motho and Khal Zekko’s khalasars are moving through the Forest of Qohor, fleeing from Khal Pono and his khalasar of thirty thousand.  Tyrion is to continue journeying to the Rhoyne with Haldon and Duck.  Illyrio introduces Tyrion as Yollo, but Tyrion interjects, adding that his real name is Hugor Hill.  Yollo is a Pentoshi name, and Tyrion does not look or sound Pentoshi.  Haldon tests Tyrion with a series of questions concerning dragons, all of which Tyrion answers correctly;  presumably Illyrio has promised Haldon that Tyrion is a valuable resource with respect to dragon lore.  

A Dance With Dragons: Jon II (Chapter Summary)

Jon Snow is reading a letter written by Maester Aemon and addressed to King Tommen.  The letter explains that Stannis has arrived to defend the Wall, but that the Night’s Watch, as always, takes no part in the wars of the Seven Kingdoms.  The letter also pleads for the throne to send additional recruits to take the black.  Jon has not signed the letter.  Dolorous Edd Tollett enters the room and tells Jon that Gilly is waiting outside.  Jon tells Gilly that only she can save Dalla’s boy from Melisandre’s flames; she is to switch her own babe for Dalla’s, and travel far from the Wall with Sam and Maester Aemon to Oldtown.  If she refuses, Jon promises to kill her baby if Melisandre burns Dalla’s boy to work some spell requiring king’s blood.  Gilly rushes out and minutes later Samwell Tarly arrives.  Jon hands Sam Maester Aemon’s letter.  Jon is loath to ask the Lannisters for help.  Sam counsels Jon to sign the letter.  A paper shield is better than none, he explains.  Should the Lannisters defeat Stannis, the letter may be the Watch’s only hope.  Jon signs and seals the letter, and dispatches it to Maester Aemon.  

A Dance With Dragons: The Merchant's Man (Chapter Summary)

Quentyn Martell and Gerris Drinkwater meet with the captain of Adventure, seeking passage from Volantis to Meereen.  They have been in Volantis for twenty days and have sought passage from many captains without success.  Gerris is 24-years-old, tall and fair, with blue-green eyes, sandy hair streaked by the sun, and a lean and comely body.  Quentyn is 18-years-old, short-legged and stocky, thickly built, with hair the brown of new-turned earth.  Concealing their true identities from the captain of Adventure, Gerris poses as a wineseller, and Quentyn as his servant.  The captain advises against traveling to Slaver’s Bay.  Yunkai is at war with Astapor, he explains, and has been recruiting sellswords in Volantis: the Long Lances, the Windblown, and the Company of the Cat.  New Ghis has also allied with Yunkai, and the Golden Company marches east.  Gerris offers the captain three times the usual fee for passage to Slaver’s Bay; the captain tells him they will leave on the morrow an hour before first light.

A Dance With Dragons: Tyrion II (Chapter Summary)

Tyrion and Illyrio depart Pentos by the Sunrise Gate within a palanquin suspended between eight draft horses.  Illyrio ensures Tyrion that no one will know he visited Pentos: the galley that delivered him is en route to Asshai, and Illyrio’s household guards and servants are loyal and discreet.  They are traveling to Volantis; Illyrio tells Tyrion he will deliver him to Ghoyan Drohe, upon the Little Rhoyne, where a Westerosi sellsword named Griff will take him down the river the rest of the way.  They travel on the Valyrian road: a ribbon of fused stone raised a half foot above the ground, and wide enough for three wagon to pass abreast.  The roads have endured for four centuries, since the Doom of Valyria.  Tyrion inquires as to Illyrio’s motives – why does a magister of Pentos care who sits the Iron Throne.  Illyrio explains that Viserys had sworn to appoint him master of coin and bestow on him a lordship; he also mentions friends, and debts of affection to repay.

A Dance With Dragons: Bran I (Chapter Summary)

Bran, Hodor, Meera, Jojen, Summer, and Coldhands trudge through a forest north of the wall.  Bran is strapped to Hodor’s back while Meera, Jojen, and Coldhands are mounted on an elk.  Coldhands’s face is pale, his hands black and hard as iron; he is wrapped in layers of wool, boiled leather, and ringmail, and a black woolen scarf conceals the lower half of his face.  The elk stops suddenly and Coldhalds vaults lightly into the snow – he announces that the group is being followed.  He instructs Hodor and the children to carry on ahead where they will find a lake, and to follow its shoreline north to a fishing village; he will take care of the men following them himself and rejoin the group later.  The children discuss Coldhands’s peculiarities: he does not eat or drink, he cannot feel the cold, he never sleeps, and he has no breath.  Bran suspects their mysterious companion is a monster.

A Dance With Dragons: Jon I (Chapter Summary)

Jon Snow is dreaming.  He watches the world through Ghost’s eyes, as the direwolf runs through a black wood beneath the Wall.  Ghost can sense his siblings: Shaggydog is tearing through the flesh of an enormous goat, and Nymeria is howling at the moon alongside a hundred grey wolves.  Over and over, the moon calls out “Snow”.  The direwolf recalls that only three of his siblings are still alive, one of which he can no longer sense.  The dream is interrupted when a raven lands on Jon’s chest screaming “SNOW!”.

A Dance With Dragons: Daenerys I (Chapter Summary)

Daenerys Targaryen is woken by Missandei and rushed to the throne room.  Her bedchambers are located in the lofty apex of the Great Pyramid of Meereen, eight hundred feet in the sky.  Irri and Jhiqui warn Daenerys that it is bad luck to touch a dead person you haven’t killed yourself.  In the throne room Daenerys covers herself with a lion pelt, made from the head and hide of a hrakkar, the white lion of the Dothraki sea, given to her by Khal Drogo.  Grey Worm enters the room wearing a bronze cap with three spikes, followed by four of the Unsullied bearing a dead man on their shoulders.  Barristan Selmy, lord commander of the Queensguard, pulls back the bloodstained shroud covering the dead man’s body: a tall man, blue-eyed and fair of face; his cheeks are slashed open from ear to ear and his body covered in wounds.

A Dance With Dragons: Tyrion I (Chapter Summary)

Tyrion is aboard a ship crossing the narrow sea.  He is confined to his cabin and not allowed to venture above deck.  During the voyage he drinks heavily – red and sour wine.  His thoughts are consumed by the memory of killing his father.  He regrets shooting him in the belly instead of the cock.  His father’s last words, “wherever whores go”, repeat in his mind.  A cabin boy visits him daily to bring meals and clean vomit off the floor.  Tyrion tries to speak to him, but he does not reply: he tells him that the Dornish wine reminds him of Oberyn Martell; he asks him if the pleasure houses of Lys are where the whores go; he inquires about the ship’s destination.  Tyrion recalls Jamie mentioning the Free Cities during his escape from King’s Landing; nevertheless, he hopes the ship is travelling to either Dorne or the Wall.  In Dorne he wants to queen Myrcella and pit her against Tommen; the Wall is a safe refuge if Mormont is still alive and Janos Slynt not in command.  Tyrion remembers that each of the Nine Free Cities speak a different dialect of High Valyrian, on their way to becoming separate languages – as a child, Tyrion’s maester taught him to read High Valyrian.  

A Dance With Dragons: Prologue (Chapter Summary)

The prologue is narrated from the point of view of Varamyr Sixskins.  He is sitting in a one-room hut of mud and straw with a thatched roof and a smoke hole, and a floor of hard-packed earth.  Elsewhere his spirit inhabits and the controls the wolf Stalker, who is hunting with his pack-mates, fellow wolves, One Eye and Sly.  One Eye is the oldest, the biggest, and the fiercest of the three, Stalker is lean, quick, and young, and Sly, the sole female, cunning.  The wolves attack and devour four humans armed with spears: two men, and a woman carrying a baby.  Varamyr returns to his own body still tasting the child’s flesh in his mouth.  The fire in the center of the hut has gone out and Varamyr is unable to relight it.  He calls out for a woman named Thistle who he believes has been absent for days, though he is uncertain.