A Game of Thrones v1.0

Book One of A Song of Ice and Fire

By George R.R. Martin

Scanned 3/5/02 by sliph

PROLOGUE

"We should start back," Gared urged as the woods began to grow dark around them.
"The wildlings are dead."

"Do the dead frighten you?" Ser Waymar Royce asked with just the hint of a smile.

Gared did not rise to the bait. He was an old man, past fifty, and he had seen
the lordlings come and go. "Dead is dead," he said. "We have no business with
the dead."

"Are they dead?" Royce asked softly. "What proof have we?"

"Will saw them," Gared said. "If he says they are dead, that's proof enough for
me."

Will had known they would drag him into the quarrel sooner or later. He wished
it had been later rather than sooner. "My mother told me that dead men sing no
songs," he put in.

"My wet nurse said the same thing, Will," Royce replied. "Never believe anything
you hear at a woman's tit. There are things to be learned even from the dead."
His voice echoed, too loud in the twilit forest.

"We have a long ride before us," Gared pointed out. "Eight days, maybe nine. And
night is falling."

Ser Waymar Royce glanced at the sky with disinterest. "It does that every day
about this time. Are you unmanned by the dark, Gared?"

Will could see the tightness around Gared's mouth, the barely sup

2 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

pressed anger in his eyes under the thick black hood of his cloak. Gared had
spent forty years in the Night's Watch, man and boy, and he was not accustomed
to being made light of. Yet it was more than that. Under the wounded pride, Will
could sense something else in the older man. You could taste it; a nervous
tension that came perilous close to fear.

Will shared his unease. He had been four years on the Wall. The first time he
had been sent beyond, all the old stories had come rushing back, and his bowels
had turned to water. He had laughed about it afterward. He was a veteran of a
hundred rangings by now, and the endless dark wilderness that the southron
called the haunted forest had no more terrors for him.

Until tonight. Something was different tonight. There was an edge to this
darkness that made his hackles rise. Nine days they had been riding, north and
northwest and then north again, farther and farther from the Wall, hard on the
track of a band of wildling raiders. Each day had been worse than the day that
had come before it. Today was the worst of all. A cold wind was blowing out of
the north, and it made the trees rustle like living things. All day, Will had
felt as though something were watching him, something cold and implacable that
loved him not. Gared had felt it too. Will wanted nothing so much as to ride
hellbent for the safety of the Wall, but that was not a feeling to share with
your commander.

Especially not a commander like this one.

Ser Waymar Royce was the youngest son of an ancient house with too...

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