A Dance With Dragons by George R. R. Martin Page A

wanting a tail?” asked Garse.
    “I think I can find the King’s Tower by myself.” Jon hated having guards trailing after him everywhere he went. It made him feel like a mother duck leading a procession of ducklings.
    Iron Emmett’s lads were well at it in the yard, blunted swords slamming into shields and ringing against one another. Jon stopped to watch a moment as Horse pressed Hop-Robin back toward the well. Horse had the makings of a good fighter, he decided. He was strong and getting stronger, and his instincts were sound. Hop-Robin was another tale. His clubfoot was bad enough, but he was afraid of getting hit as well. Perhaps we can make a steward of him. The fight ended abruptly, with Hop-Robin on the ground.
    “Well fought,” Jon said to Horse, “but you drop your shield too low when pressing an attack. You will want to correct that, or it is like to get you killed.”
    “Yes, m’lord. I’ll keep it higher next time.” Horse pulled Hop-Robin to his feet, and the smaller boy made a clumsy bow.
    A few of Stannis’s knights were sparring on the far side of the yard. King’s men in one corner and queen’s men in another, Jon did not fail to note, but only a few. It’s too cold for most of them. As he strode past them, a booming voice called after him. “BOY! YOU THERE! BOY! ”
    Boy was not the worst of the things that Jon Snow had been called since being chosen lord commander. He ignored it.
    “ Snow, ” the voice insisted, “ Lord Commander. ”
    This time he stopped. “Ser?”
    The knight overtopped him by six inches. “A man who bears Valyrian steel should use it for more than scratching his arse.”
    Jon had seen this one about the castle—a knight of great renown, to hear him tell it. During the battle beneath the Wall, Ser Godry Farring had slain a fleeing giant, pounding after him on horseback and driving a lance through his back, then dismounting to hack off the creature’s pitiful small head. The queen’s men had taken to calling him Godry the Giantslayer.
    Jon remembered Ygritte, crying. I am the last of the giants. “I use Longclaw when I must, ser.”
    “How well, though?” Ser Godry drew his own blade. “Show us. I promise not to hurt you, lad.”
    How kind of you. “Some other time, ser. I fear that I have other duties just now.”
    “You fear. I see that.” Ser Godry grinned at his friends. “He fears,” he repeated, for the slow ones.
    “You will excuse me.” Jon showed them his back.
    Castle Black seemed a bleak and forlorn place in the pale dawn light. My command, Jon Snow reflected ruefully, as much a ruin as it is a strong-hold. The Lord Commander’s Tower was a shell, the Common Hall a pile of blackened timbers, and Hardin’s Tower looked as if the next gust of wind would knock it over … though it had looked that way for years. Behind them rose the Wall: immense, forbidding, frigid, acrawl with builders pushing up a new switchback stair to join the remnants of the old. They worked from dawn to dusk. Without the stair, there was no way to reach the top of the Wall save by winch. That would not serve if the wildlings should attack again.
    Above the King’s Tower the great golden battle standard of House Baratheon cracked like a whip from the roof where Jon Snow had prowled with bow in hand not long ago, slaying Thenns and free folk beside Satin and Deaf Dick Follard. Two queen’s men stood shivering on the steps, their hands tucked up into their armpits and their spears leaning against the door. “Those cloth gloves will never serve,” Jon told them. “See Bowen Marsh on the morrow, and he’ll give you each a pair of leather gloves lined with fur.”
    “We will, m’lord, and thank you,” said the older guard.
    “That’s if our bloody hands aren’t froze off,” the younger added, his breath a pale mist. “I used to think that it got cold up in the Dornish Marches. What did I know?”
    Nothing, thought Jon Snow, the same as me.
    Halfway up the