A Dance With Dragons

Reek (Theon Greyjoy) is so abused that he fears more torture from cruel Ramsay Bolton, now the legitimate heir of Roose Bolton. Ramsay brings Reek up from the dungeons at the Dreadfort, the Boltons’ seat, because he has a task for him. The lords who are in on the plan with Bolton refuse to accept that the white-haired, skeletally thin, fawning man in front of them is Theon at first. Ramsay needs Reek to convince holdouts at the garrison at Moat Cailin, a strategically important castle in the state of Winterfell, to surrender. Ramsay is so confident that he has control over Reek that he means to send Reek to Moat Cailin on his own.

Bran and his companions make it to the children of the forest and the cave of the greenseer. To get to the cave, they have to survive an ambush of wights, undead who lack the intelligence of the Others. Bran is shocked by the appearance of the greenseer, whose body (what’s left of it) is bound by the thick roots of a weirwood tree. The first thing the greenseer tells Bran is that Bran will never walk again.

Tyrion sails along the Rhoyne River toward Meereen on the pole boat The Shy Maid. He is now going by the name “Hugor Hill,” but Griff knows who he is. Griff forces him to stop drowning his sorrows in drink. More alert, Tyrion notes how handsome Young Griff is and suspects he might move Daenerys because he looks the part of the prince. Tyrion also quickly picks up more of the local language and history, information that might help him later.

Davos arrives in White Harbor incognito and heads to the harbor inns to pick up useful gossip. He hears disheartening news—the Lannisters are holding hostage the son of Wyman Manderly, the lord of White Harbor. The locals are tired of war and want no part in more fighting. Most don’t even know who Stannis is. Others share rumors about stray Targaryens—Viserys, Daenerys, and a third, unnamed one. One sailor even claims that Daenerys tried to book passage from the Free Cities to Westeros with him. Davos makes his way to the castle at White Harbor. When an underling tries to prevent Davos from seeing the lord because of his shabby clothes and common accent, he stands up for himself because he knows how important it is that Stannis sway the Manderlys to his side. He manages to get into the court.

Daenerys’s situation in Meereen is increasingly difficult. The nobility makes her an offer through Hizdahr: if she agrees to leave Meereen and head to Westeros, they will give her 13 ships for her journey. After consulting her own heart and the advice of her staff, including her Westerosi Queensguard Barristan Selmy and the experienced bureaucrats she relies on, she refuses the offer. She feels a responsibility to the formerly enslaved people she freed, and she knows the former enslavers in Slaver’s Bay will enslave them again. When she shares the news, one of the merchants reminds her that he had the chance to kill her once but did not because she and the dragons were young. Now, he finds her “too dangerous to live” and the dragons “death and devastation” (217).

Stannis reveals his ill-conceived plan to re-take the Dreadfort, the Bolton’s seat and a strategically important location for controlling Winterfell, with the small number of men he has brought to him. Jon asks for leave to go up into the mountains around the Wall and recruit among the petty lords for more men to garrison the Night’s Watch forts; the more experienced fighters already on hand can then go with Stannis, but Stannis should aim to re-take Deepwood Motte instead. It is a bold plan but a flawed one because Jon hopes to recruit a thousand wildlings with this plan, and the Night’s Watch already lacks enough food stores to get through a years-long winter.

The Shy Maid continues on the Rhoyne. Along the way, they encounter stone men, people suffering from greyscale, a disease much like leprosy and spread by close contact with people who have it. It is usually not immediately fatal to children, but it will rot and kill adults quickly and painfully. As they make their cautious way through this part of the river, Tyrion listens to enough talk to figure out that while it may be possible that Young Griff really is Aegon, he may just as well be an imposter. Griff and the company are uneasy when he reveals what he knows, which is that Tywin Lannister revealed the bodies of Prince Rhaegar and Princess Elia’s babies at the end of Robert’s Rebellion, and the male baby’s head was so shattered it would have been hard to verify his identity. When stone men attack, Tyrion risks himself to save Young Griff. He falls in the water with stone men.

At his audience with Manderly, Davos is unable to convince Manderly to support Stannis in his effort to re-take Winterfell, even when Davos promises that Stannis will help Manderly get vengeance on all those he lost during Robb’s Rebellion. The lord remembers how much he lost after supporting Robb’s Rebellion and when Eddard Stark’s son declared a kingdom in the North instead of accepting Baratheon rule. Robb and most of his allies died at the Red Wedding, when Roose Bolton and the Freys pretended to be allies to lure the young king to his death. Manderly’s son is a hostage the Lannisters will kill if Manderly declares for Stannis. The court is also full of Freys, riverlords who connived in the assassination of Robb. Davos’s only supporter is Wylla, the lord’s outspoken granddaughter; she is engaged to a Frey. She insists that the lord made an oath to support Robb, and if Stannis will avenge Robb’s death, they should support Stannis. She repeats the stories of the cruelty of the Boltons to support her position. Manderly isn’t physically in shape to fight in any event. With the Freys there and his son a hostage, Manderly is unlikely to help Stannis. Davos is crestfallen when Manderly calls for his execution. Manderly’s men take him away to the dungeons.

Theon makes his way to Moat Cailin on a broken-down horse. When he thinks about running away or remembers what it was like to ride this way before Ramsay captured him, he shuts down the past by reminding himself that he is now Reek. He has no problems convincing the soldiers in Moat Cailin to surrender to the Boltons. Most are nearly dead, and Victarion, the Iron Islander who led them there, has no intention of returning. When Theon returns to Winterfell, he is too terrified to ask for anything more than wine and a blanket. Roose Bolton shows up later. He has married Walda Frey and brings with him a girl he claims is Arya Stark. He means to have Arya marry Ramsay to shore up the Boltons’ claim to Winterfell for King Tommen. Reek recognizes the girl. She is Jeyne Poole, the daughter of the steward at Winterfell. What he knows is dangerous to the both of them.