Potential
Spoilers Below
I keep telling everyone that
similarities between The Wheel of Time (TWOT) and A Song of Ice and Fire
(ASOIAF) are vast even if there are those out there that say otherwise.
This is extremely long but it explains
why the 3 direwolves; which are described as big as ponies when grown; attack
Tyrion when he goes to Winterfell to present Bran a design for a saddle which
would let him ride a horse again. For
those of you who don’t know I believe that Tyrion is based upon the Mat Cauthon
character from the Wheel of Time.
Why the Darkhounds attacked Mat:
Striding to the center of the room, he planted himself atop the mosaic
there, the ancient symbol of the Aes Sedai, ten feet across. It was an apt
place. “Under this sign will he conquer.” That was what the Prophecy of Rhuidean
said of him. He stood straddling the sinuous dividing line, one boot on the
black teardrop that was now called the Dragon’s Fang and used to represent
evil, the other on the white now called the Flame of Tar Valon. Some men said
it stood for the Light. An appropriate place to meet this attack, between Light
and darkness.
The fetid feel grew stronger, and a burned sulphur smell filled the
air. Suddenly things moved, slinking away from the stairs like moonshadows,
along the outside of the room. Slowly they resolved into three black dogs, darker than night
and big as ponies. Eyes shining
silver, they circled him warily. With the Power in him, he could hear their
hearts beat, like deep drums pounding. He could not hear them breathe, though;
perhaps they did not.
He channeled, and a sword was in his hands, its slightly curving,
heron-marked blade seeming hammered out of fire. He had expected Myrddraal, or
something even worse than the Eyeless, but for dogs, even Shadowspawn dogs, the
sword would be enough. Whoever had sent them did not know him. Lan said he had
very nearly reached the level of a blademaster, now, and the Warder was sparing
enough with praise to make him think he might have passed on to that level
already.
With snarls like bones being ground to dust, the dogs hurtled at him
from three sides, faster than galloping horses.
He did not move until they were almost on him; then he flowed, one with
the sword, move to move, as though dancing. In the blink of an eye the sword
form called Whirlwind on the Mountain became The Wind Blows Over the Wall
became Unfolding the Fan. Great black heads flew apart from black bodies, their
dripping teeth, like burnished steel, still bared as they bounced across the
floor. He was already stepping from the mosaic as the dark forms collapsed in
twitching, bleeding heaps.
Laughing to himself, he let the sword go, though he held on to saidin, to the raging Power, the
sweetness and the taint. Contempt slid along the out side of the Void. Dogs.
Shadowspawn, certainly, but still just . . . Laughter died.
Slowly, the dead dogs and their heads were melting, settling into pools
of liquid shadow that quivered slightly, as if alive. Their blood, fanned
across the floor, trembled. Suddenly the smaller pools flowed across the floor in
viscous streams to merge with the larger, which oozed away from the mosaic to
mound higher and higher, until the three huge black dogs stood there once more,
slavering and snarling as they gathered massive haunches under them.
He did not know why he felt surprise, dim outside the emptiness. Dogs,
yes, but Shadowspawn. Whoever had sent them had not been as careless as he had
thought. But they still did not know him.
Instead of reaching for the sword again, he channeled as he remembered
doing once long ago. Howling, the huge dogs leaped, and a thick shaft of white
light shot from his hands, like molten steel, like liquid fire. He swept it
across the springing creatures; for an instant they became strange shadows of
themselves, all colors reversed, and then they were made of sparkling motes
that broke apart, smaller and smaller, until there was nothing.
He let go of the thing he had made, with a grim smile. A purple bar of
light still seemed to cross his vision in afterimage.
Across the great chamber a piece of one of the columns crashed to the
floor tiles. Where that bar of light—or whatever it had been; not light,
exactly—had swung, neat slices were gone from the columns. A gaping swath cut
half the width of the wall behind them.
“Did any
of them bite you, or bleed on you?”
He spun at the sound of Moiraine’s voice; absorbed in what he had done,
he had not heard her come up the stairs. She stood clutching her skirts with
both hands, peering at him, face lost in moonshadow. She would have sensed the
things the same way he did, but to be here so quickly she must have run. “The
Maidens let you pass? Have you become Far
Dareis Mai, Moiraine?”
“They grant me some privileges of a Wise One,” she said in a rush,
impatience raw in her usually melodious voice. “I told the guards I had to
speak with you urgently. Now, answer me! Did the Darkhounds bite you, or bleed on you?
Did their saliva touch you?”
“No,” he answered slowly. Darkhounds. The little he knew he had gotten
from old stories, the sort used to frighten children in the southlands. Some
grown-ups believed, too. “Why should a bite worry you? You could Heal it. Does
this mean the Dark One is free?” Enclosed in the Void as he was, even fear was
distant.
The tales he had heard said the Darkhounds ran the night in the Wild
Hunt, with the Dark One himself the hunter; they left no print on even the
softest dirt, only on stone, and they would not stop until you faced and
defeated them or put running water between you. Crossroads were supposed to be
particularly dangerous places to meet them, and the time just after sunset or
just before sunrise. He had seen enough old stories walking by now to believe
that any of it could be true.
“No, not that, Rand.” She seemed to be regaining her self-control; her
voice was silver chimes again, calm and cool. “They are only another kind of
Shadowspawn, something that should never have been made. But their bite is
death as surely as a dagger in the heart, and I do not think I could have
Healed such a wound before it killed you. Their blood, even their saliva, is
poison. A drop on the skin can kill, slowly, with great pain at the end. You
are lucky there were only three. Unless you killed more before I arrived? Their packs are
usually larger, as many as ten or twelve, or so say the scraps left from the
War of the Shadow.”
Larger packs. He was not the only target in Rhuidean for one of the
Forsaken. . . .
“We must speak of what you used to kill them,” Moiraine began, but he was already
running as hard as he could, ignoring her cries to know where he was going and
why.
Down flights of stairs, through darkened corridors where sleepy
Maidens, roused by the pounding boots, peered at him in consternation from
moonlit rooms. Through the front doors, where Lan stood restlessly with the two
women on guard, his color-shifting Warder’s cloak about his shoulders, making
parts of him seem to blend into the night.
“Where is Moiraine?” he shouted as Rand dashed by, but Rand leaped down
the broad steps two at a time without replying.
The half-healed wound in his side clenched like a fist, pain he was
only vaguely aware of inside the Void, by the time he reached the building he
sought. It stood at the very edge of Rhuidean, far from the plaza, as far from
the camp Moiraine shared with the Wise Ones as it was possible to be and remain
in the city. The upper floors had collapsed in a mound of rubble that fanned
out onto the cracked earth beyond the pavement. Only the bottom two floors
remained whole. Refusing his body’s efforts to hunch over around the pain, he
went in, still at a dead run.
Once the great antechamber, encircled by a stone balcony, had been
tall; now it was taller, open to the night sky, its pale stone floor strewn
with rubble from the collapse. In the moonshadows beneath the balcony, three Darkhounds were
up on their hind legs, clawing and chewing at a bronze-clad door that shivered
under their assault. The smell of burned sulphur hung strong in the
air.
Remembering what had happened before, Rand darted to one side as he
channeled, the shaft of liquid white fire streaking by the door as it destroyed
the Shadowspawn. He had tried to make it less this time, to confine the
destruction to the Darkhounds, but the thick wall at the far end of the chamber
had a shadowed hole in it. Not all the way through, he thought—it was hard to
tell by moonlight—but he would have to fine his control of this weapon.
The bronze sheathing on the door was tattered and torn as though the
teeth and toenails of the Darkhounds really had been steel; lamplight shone
through a number of small holes. There were pawprints in the floor-stones, but
surprisingly few. Releasing saidin,
he found a place where he would not cut his hand to shreds and pounded on the
door. Suddenly the pain in his side was very real and present; he took a deep
breath and tried to thrust it away. “Mat? It’s me, Rand! Open up, Mat!”
After a moment, the door opened a crack, letting out a spill of
lamplight; Mat peered through doubtfully, then pulled the door wider, leaning
against it as if he had run ten miles carrying a sack of rocks. Except for a
silver foxhead medallion hanging around his neck, its eye shaped and shaded
like the ancient Aes Sedai symbol, he was naked. The way Mat felt about Aes
Sedai, Rand was surprised he had not sold the thing long since. Deeper in the
room, a tall, golden-haired woman was calmly wrapping a blanket around herself.
A Maiden, by the spears and buckler lying at her feet.
Rand hastily averted his eyes and cleared his throat. “I just wanted to
make sure you were all right.”
“We’re fine.” Uneasily, Mat looked around the antechamber. “Now we are.
You killed it, or something? I don’t want to know what it was, as long as it’s
gone. It’s bloody hard on a man sometimes, being your friend.”
Not only a friend. Another ta’veren,
and perhaps a key to victory in Tarmon Gai’don; anyone who wanted to strike at
Rand had reason to strike at Mat, as well. But Mat always tried to deny both
things. “They’re
gone, Mat. Darkhounds. Three of them.”
“I told you I didn’t want to know,” Mat groaned. “Darkhounds now. I
can’t say it isn’t always something new around you. A man wouldn’t get bored;
not until the day he died. If I hadn’t been on my feet for a drink of wine when
the door started to open . . .” He trailed off, shivering, and scratched a red place on his
right arm as he studied the ravaged metal sheathing. “You know, it’s
funny how the mind plays tricks. When I was putting everything I had into
holding this door shut, I could have sworn one of them had chewed a hole right through
it. I could see its bloody head. And its teeth. Melindhra’s spear
didn’t even faze it.”
Moiraine’s arrival was more spectacular this time, running in, skirts
held up, panting and fuming. Lan was at her heels with his sword in hand and
thunderclouds on his stone face, and right behind, a throng of Far Dareis Mai that spilled out into
the street. Some of the Maidens wore no more than smallclothes, but every one
held her spears alertly and had her shoufa
wrapped around her head, black veil hiding all but her eyes, ready to kill.
Moiraine and Lan, at least, looked relieved to see him standing there calmly
talking to Mat, though the Aes Sedai also looked as if she meant to have strong
words with him. With the veils, it was impossible to tell what the Aiel thought.
Letting out a loud yelp, Mat darted back into his room and began
hastily tugging on a pair of breeches, his capering impeded by the way he kept
trying to haul at the breeches and scratch his arm at the same time. The
golden-haired Maiden watched with a broad grin that threatened to break into
laughter.
“What’s
the matter with your arm?” Rand asked.
“I told
you the mind plays funny tricks,” Mat said, still trying to scratch and pull at the same time. “When I thought
that thing chewed through the door, I thought it slobbered all over my arm,
too, and now it bloody itches like fire. Even looks like a burn there.”
Rand opened his mouth, but Moiraine was already pushing past him.
Staring at her, Mat fell down while frantically dragging his breeches on the
rest of the way, but she knelt beside him, ignoring his protests, clasping his
head in her hands. Rand had been Healed before, and seen it done, but instead
of what he expected, Mat only gave a shiver and lifted up the medallion by its
leather thong so that it hung against his hand.
“Bloody thing is colder than ice all of a sudden,” he muttered. “What are you
doing, Moiraine? If you want to do something, Heal this itch; it has my whole
arm now.” His right arm was red from wrist to shoulder, and had begun to look
puffy.
Moiraine stared at him with the most startled expression Rand had ever
seen on her face. Maybe the only one. “I will,” she said slowly. “If the
medallion is cold, take it off.”
Mat frowned at her, then finally pulled it over his head and laid it
beside him. She took his head again, and he gave a shout as if he had been
ducked headfirst into ice; his legs stiffened and his back arched; his eyes
stared at nothing, as wide as they would go. When Moiraine took her hands away,
he slumped, gulping air. The redness and swelling were gone. It took three tries
before he could speak. “Blood and ashes! Does it have to be that flaming way
every flaming time? It was just a bloody itch!”
“You watch your tongue with me,” Moiraine told him, getting up, “or I
will find Nynaeve and put her in charge of you.” But her heart was not in it;
she could have been talking in her sleep. She was trying not to stare at the
foxhead as Mat hung it back around his neck. “You will need rest,” she said
absently. “Stay in bed tomorrow, if you feel like it.”
The Maiden in the blanket—Melindhra?—knelt behind Mat and put her hands
on his shoulders, looking up at Moiraine over his head. “I will see that he
does as you say, Aes Sedai.” With a sudden grin, she ruffled his hair. “He is
my little mischief maker, now.” From the horrified look on Mat’s face, he was
gathering his strength to run.
Rand became aware of soft, amused chuckles behind him. The Maidens, shoufas and veils around their
shoulders now, had crowded around and were peering into the room.
“Teach him to sing, spear-sister,” Adelin said, and the other Maidens
crowed with laughter.
Rand rounded on them firmly. “Let the man rest. Don’t some of you have
to put on clothes?” They gave way reluctantly, still trying to peer into the
room, until Moiraine came out.
“Will you leave us, please?” the Aes Sedai said as the mangled door
banged shut behind her. She half looked back with a vexed tightening of her
mouth. “I must speak with Rand al’Thor alone.” Nodding, the Aiel women started
for the door, some still jesting about whether Melindhra—a Shaido, it seemed;
Rand wondered if Mat knew that—would teach Mat to sing. Whatever that meant.
Rand stopped Adelin with a hand on her bare arm; others who noticed
stopped as well, so he spoke to them all. “If you will not go when I tell you
to, what will you do if I have to use you in battle?” He did not intend to if
he could help it; he knew they were fierce warriors, but he had been raised to
believe it was a man’s place to die if necessary before a woman had to. Logic
might say it was foolish, especially with women like this, but that was how he
felt. He knew better than to tell them that, however. “Will you think it a
joke, or decide to go in your own good time?”
They looked at him with the consternation of those listening to someone
who had revealed his ignorance of the simplest facts. “In the dance of spears,”
Adelin told him, “we will go as you direct, but this is not the dance. Besides,
you did not tell us to go.”
“Even the Car’a’carn is
not a wetlander king,” a gray-haired Maiden added. Sinewy and hard despite her
age, she wore only a short shift and her shoufa.
He was getting tired of that phrase.
The Maidens resumed their joking as they left him alone with Moiraine
and Lan. The Warder had finally put up his sword, and looked as at ease as he
ever did. Which was to say as still and calm as his face, all stony planes and
angles in the moonlight, and with an air of being on the brink of sudden
movement that made the Aiel appear placid in comparison. A braided leather cord
held Lan’s hair, graying at the temples, back from his face. His gaze could
have come from a blue-eyed hawk.
“I must speak with you about—” Moiraine began.
“We can
talk tomorrow,” Rand said, cutting her off. Lan’s face hardened
further, if such was possible; Warders were far more protective of their Aes
Sedai, of their position as well as their persons, than they were of
themselves. Rand ignored Lan. His side still wanted to hunch him over, but he
managed to keep erect; he was not about to show her any weakness. “If you think I’ll
help you get that foxhead away from Mat, you can think again.”
Somehow that medallion had stopped her channeling. Or at least it had stopped
her channeling from affecting Mat while he touched it. “He paid a hard price for it, Moiraine, and it
is his.” Thinking of how she had
thumped his shoulders with the Power, he added dryly, “Maybe I’ll ask if I can
borrow it from him.” He turned away from her. There was still one he had to
check on, though one way or another the urgency was gone; the Darkhounds would
have done what they intended by now.
“Please, Rand,” Moiraine said, and the open pleading in her voice
halted him in his tracks. He had never heard anything like that from her
before.
The tone seemed to offend Lan. “I thought you had become a man,” the Warder said harshly. “Is this how a man behaves? You act like an
arrogant boy.” Lan practiced the sword with him—and liked him, Rand
thought—but if Moiraine said the right word, the Warder would do his best to
kill him.
“I will not be with you forever,” Moiraine said urgently. Her hands
gripped her skirts so hard that they trembled. “I might die in the next attack.
I could fall from my horse and break my neck, or take a Darkfriend’s arrow through
my heart, and death cannot be Healed. I have given my entire life to the search
for you, to find you and help you. You still do not know your own strength; you
cannot know half of what you do. I—apologize—most humbly for any offense I have
given you.” Those words—words he had never thought to hear from her—came out as
if dragged, but they came; and she could not lie. “Let me help you as much as I
can, while I can. Please.”
“It’s hard to trust you, Moiraine.” He disregarded Lan, shifting in the
moonlight; his attention was all on her. “You have handled me like a puppet,
made me dance the way you wanted, from the day we met. The only times I’ve been
free of you were either when you were far away or when I ignored you. And you
make even that hard.”
Her laugh was as silvery as the moon above, but bitterness tinged it.
“It has been more like wrestling with a bear than pulling strings on a puppet.
Do you want an oath not to try manipulating you? I give it.” Her voice hardened
to crystal. “I even swear to obey you like one of the Maidens—like one of the gai’shain, if you require—but you
must—” Taking a deep breath, she began again, more softly. “I ask you, humbly, to allow me to help
you.”
Lan was staring at her, and Rand thought his own eyes must be popping
out of his head. “I will accept your help,” he said slowly. “And I apologize,
too. For all the rudeness I’ve shown.” He had the feeling he was still being
manipulated—he had had good cause to be rude, when he was—but she could not
lie.
Tension drained from her visibly. She stepped closer to look up at him.
“What you used
to kill the Darkhounds is called balefire. I can still sense the
residue of it here.” He could, too, like the fading smell remaining after a pie
was carried out of the room, or the memory of something just snatched out of
sight. “Since before the Breaking of the World, the use of balefire has been
forbidden. The White Tower forbids us even to learn it. In the War of Power,
the Forsaken and the Shadowsworn themselves used it only reluctantly.”
“Forbidden?” Rand said, frowning. “I saw you use it once.” He could not
be sure in the pale light of the moon, but he thought color flamed in her
cheeks. For this once, perhaps she was the one off balance.
“Sometimes it is necessary to do that which is forbidden.” If she was
flustered, it did not show in her voice. “When anything is destroyed with balefire, it ceases to exist
before the moment of its
destruction, like a thread that burns away from where the flame touched it. The
greater the power of the balefire, the further back in time it ceases to exist.
The strongest I can manage will remove only a few seconds from the Pattern. You
are much stronger. Very much so.”
“But if
it doesn’t exist before you
destroy it . . .”
Rand raked fingers through his hair in confusion.
“You
begin to see the problems, the dangers? Mat
remembers seeing one of the Darkhounds chew through the door, but there is no
opening, now. If it had slavered on him as much as he remembers, he would have
been dead before I could reach him. For as far back as you destroyed the
creature, whatever it did during that time no longer happened. Only the memories remain, for those who saw
or experienced it. Only what it did before is real, now. A few tooth holes in
the door, and one drop of saliva on Mat’s arm.”
“That
sounds just fine to me,” he told her. “Mat’s alive because of it.”
“It is terrible, Rand.” An urgent note entered her voice. “Why do you
think even the Forsaken feared to use it? Think of the effect on the Pattern of
a single thread, one man, removed from hours, or days, that have already been
woven, like one thread picked partly out of a piece of cloth. Fragments of
manuscripts remaining from the War of Power say several entire cities were
destroyed with balefire before both sides realized the dangers. Hundreds of
thousands of threads pulled from the Pattern, gone for days already past;
whatever those people had done, now no longer had been done, and neither had
what others had done because of their actions. The memories remained, but not
the actions. The ripples were incalculable. The Pattern itself nearly
unraveled. It could have been the destruction of everything. World, time,
Creation itself.”
Rand shivered, nothing to do with the cold cutting through his coat. “I
can’t promise not to use it again, Moiraine. You yourself said there are times
when it’s necessary to do what’s forbidden.”
“I did not think that you would,” she said coolly. Her agitation was
vanishing, her balance restored. “But you must be careful.” She was back to
“must” again. “With a sa’angreal
like Callandor, you could
annihilate a city with balefire. The Pattern could be disrupted for years to
come. Who can say that the weave would even remain centered on you, ta’veren as you are, until it settled
down? Being ta’veren, and so strongly so, may be
your margin of victory, even in the Last Battle.”
“Perhaps it will,” he said bleakly. In tale after heroic tale, the
protagonist proclaimed he would have victory or death. It seemed that the best
he could hope for was victory and
death. “I have to check on someone,” he went on quietly. “I will see you in the
morning.” Gathering the Power into him, life and death in swirling layers, he
made a hole in the air taller than he was, opening into blackness that made the
moonlight seem day. A gateway, Asmodean called it.
“What is that?” Moiraine gasped.
“Once I’ve done something, I remember how. Most of the time.” That was
no answer, but it was time to test Moiraine’s vows. She could not lie, but Aes
Sedai could find loopholes in a stone. “You are to leave Mat alone tonight. And
you won’t try to take that medallion away from him.”
“It belongs in the Tower for study, Rand. It must be a ter’angreal, but none has ever been
found that—”
“Whatever it is,” he said firmly, “it is his. You will leave it with
him.”
Why the Direwolves attacked Tyrion:
Robb put a hand on his shoulder. “You said you had business with Bran.
Well, here he is, Lannister.”
Bran
was uncomfortably aware of Tyrion Lannister’s eyes. One was black and one was
green, and both were looking at him, studying him, weighing him. “I am told you
were quite the climber, Bran,” the little man said at last. “Tell me, how is it
you happened to fall that day?”
“I never,” Bran insisted.
He never fell, never never never.
“The
child does not remember anything of the fall, or the climb that came before
it,” said Maester Luwin gently.
“Curious,”
said Tyrion Lannister.
“My
brother is not here to answer questions, Lannister,” Robb said curtly. “Do your
business and be on your way.”
“I
have a gift for you,” the dwarf said to Bran. “Do you like to ride, boy?”
Maester
Luwin came forward. “My lord, the child has lost the use of his legs. He cannot
sit a horse.”
“Nonsense,”
said Lannister. “With the right horse and the right saddle, even a cripple can
ride.”
The
word was a knife through Bran’s heart. He felt tears come unbidden to his eyes.
“I’m not a cripple!”
“Then
I am not a dwarf,” the dwarf said with a twist of his mouth. “My father will
rejoice to hear it.” Greyjoy laughed.
“What
sort of horse and saddle are you suggesting?” Maester Luwin asked.
“A
smart horse,” Lannister replied. “The boy cannot use his legs to command the
animal, so you must shape the horse to the rider, teach it to respond to the
reins, to the voice. I would begin with an unbroken yearling, with no old
training to be unlearned,” He drew a rolled paper from his belt. “Give this to
your saddler. He will provide the rest.”
Maester
Luwin took the paper from the dwarf’s hand, curious as a small grey squirrel.
He unrolled it, studied it. “I see. You draw nicely, my lord. Yes, this ought
to work. I should have thought of this myself.”
“It
came easier to me, Maester. It is not terribly unlike my own saddles.”
“Will
I truly be able to ride?” Bran asked. He wanted to believe them, but he was
afraid. Perhaps it was just another lie. The crow had promised him that he
could fly.
“You
will,” the dwarf told him. “And I swear to you, boy, on horseback you will be
as tall as any of them.”
Robb
Stark seemed puzzled. “Is this some trap, Lannister? What’s Bran to you? Why
should you want to help him?”
“Your
brother Jon asked it of me. And I have a tender spot in my heart for cripples
and bastards and broken things.” Tyrion Lannister placed a hand over his heart
and grinned.
The door to the yard
flew open. Sunlight came streaming across the hall as Rickon burst in,
breathless. The direwolves were with him. The boy stopped by the door,
wide-eyed, but the wolves came on. Their eyes found Lannister, or perhaps they
caught his scent. Summer began to growl first. Grey Wind picked it up. They
padded toward the little man, one from the right and one from the left.
“The
wolves do not like your smell, Lannister,” Theon Greyjoy commented.
“Perhaps it’s time I
took my leave,” Tyrion said. He took a step backward … and Shaggydog
came out of the shadows behind him, snarling. Lannister recoiled, and Summer
lunged at him from the other side. He reeled away, unsteady on his feet, and
Grey Wind snapped at his arm, teeth ripping at his sleeve and tearing loose a
scrap of cloth.
“No!” Bran shouted from the high seat as Lannister’s men reached
for their steel. “Summer, here. Summer, to
me!”
The direwolf heard
the voice, glanced at Bran, and again at Lannister. He crept backward, away
from the little man, and settled down below Bran’s dangling feet.
Robb had been
holding his breath. He let it out with a sigh and called, “Grey Wind.” His
direwolf moved to him, swift and silent. Now there was only Shaggy dog,
rumbling at the small man, his eyes burning like green fire.
“Rickon, call him,”
Bran shouted to his baby brother, and Rickon remembered himself and screamed,
“Home, Shaggy, home now.” The black wolf gave Lannister one final snarl and
bounded off to Rickon, who hugged him tightly around the neck.
Tyrion
Lannister undid his scarf, mopped at his brow, and said in a flat voice, “How interesting.”
“Are
you well, my lord?” asked one of his men, his sword in hand. He glanced
nervously at the direwolves as he spoke.
“My sleeve is torn
and my breeches are unaccountably damp, but nothing was harmed save my
dignity.”
Even
Robb looked shaken. “The wolves … I don’t know why they did
that …”
“No
doubt they mistook me for dinner.” Lannister bowed stiffly to Bran. “I thank you for
calling them off, young ser. I
promise you, they would have found me quite indigestible. And now I will be leaving,
truly.”
“A
moment, my lord,” Maester Luwin said. He moved to Robb and they huddled close
together, whispering. Bran tried to hear what they were saying, but their
voices were too low.
Robb
Stark finally sheathed his sword. “I … I may have been hasty with you,”
he said. “You’ve
done Bran a kindness, and, well …” Robb composed himself with
an effort. “The
hospitality of Winterfell is yours if you wish it, Lannister.”
“Spare me your false
courtesies, boy. You do not love me and you do not want me here. I saw an inn
outside your walls, in the winter town. I’ll find a bed there, and both of us
will sleep easier. For a
few coppers I may even find a comely wench to warm the sheets for me.” He spoke
to one of the black brothers, an old man with a twisted back and a tangled beard.
“Yoren, we go south at daybreak. You will find me on the road, no doubt.” With
that he made his exit, struggling across the hall on his short legs, past
Rickon and out the door. His men followed.
The short answer to the question
is because it was a homage to Rand saving Mat.
I just had to take the long road to fully explain it through both author’s
words.
Comments encouraged. Love to hear the idea’s of
others. Most believe that since I present my idea’s as “fact like” I’m
not open to change my viewpoints which is far from the truth. I simply
look at the information presented and go from there. If you can shine a
light on another way of thinking that opens the door to debate.
I am sorry, I read that all but I really did not get it... Maybe it's just too late during the night...
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