A Feast for Crows полностью

By that time the ferry had departed and it had begun to rain. “I am a holy septon, good lady,” Meribald had shouted up, “and these are honest travelers. We seek shelter from the rain, and a place by your fire for the night.” The woman had been unmoved by his appeals. “The closest inn is at the crossroads, to the west,” she replied. “We want no strangers here. Begone.” Once she vanished, neither Meribald’s prayers, Dog’s barks, nor Ser Hyle’s curses could bring her back. In the end they had spent the night in the woods, beneath a shelter made of woven branches.

There was life at the crossroads inn, though. Even before they reached the gate, Brienne heard the sound: a hammering, faint but steady. It had a steely ring.

“A forge,” Ser Hyle said. “Either they have themselves a smith, or the old innkeep’s ghost is making another iron dragon.” He put his heels into his horse. “I hope they have a ghostly cook as well. A crisp roast chicken would set the world aright.”

The inn’s yard was a sea of brown mud that sucked at the hooves of the horses. The clang of steel was louder here, and Brienne saw the red glow of the forge down past the far end of the stables, behind an oxcart with a broken wheel. She could see horses in the stables too, and a small boy was swinging from the rusted chains of the weathered gibbet that loomed above the yard. Four girls stood on the inn’s porch, watching him. The youngest was no more than two, and naked. The oldest, nine or ten, stood with her arms protectively about the little one. “Girls,” Ser Hyle called to them, “run and fetch your mother.”

The boy dropped from the chain and dashed off toward the stables. The four girls stood fidgeting. After a moment one said, “We have no mothers,” and another added, “I had one but they killed her.” The oldest of the four stepped forward, pushing the little one behind her skirts. “Who are you?” she demanded.

“Honest travelers seeking shelter. My name is Brienne, and this is Septon Meribald, who is well-known through the riverlands. The boy is my squire, Podrick Payne, the knight Ser Hyle Hunt.”

The hammering stopped suddenly. The girl on the porch looked them over, wary as only a ten-year-old can be. “I’m Willow. Will you be wanting beds?”

“Beds, and ale, and hot food to fill our bellies,” said Ser Hyle Hunt as he dismounted. “Are you the innkeep?”

She shook her head. “That’s my sister Jeyne. She’s not here. All we have to eat is horse meat. If you come for whores, there are none. My sister run them off. We have beds, though. Some featherbeds, but more are straw.”

“And all have fleas, I don’t doubt,” said Ser Hyle.

“Do you have coin to pay? Silver?”

Ser Hyle laughed. “Silver? For a night’s bed and a haunch of horse? Do you mean to rob us, child?”

“We’ll have silver. Else you can sleep in the woods with the dead men.” Willow glanced toward the donkey, and the casks and bundles on his back. “Is that food? Where did you get it?”

“Maidenpool,” said Meribald. Dog barked.

“Do you question all your guests this way?” asked Ser Hyle.

“We don’t have so many guests. Not like before the war. It’s mostly sparrows on the roads these days, or worse.”

“Worse?” Brienne asked.

“Thieves,” said a boy’s voice from the stables. “Robbers.”

Brienne turned, and saw a ghost.

Renly. No hammerblow to the heart could have felled her half so hard. “My lord?” she gasped.

“Lord?” The boy pushed back a lock of black hair that had fallen across his eyes. “I’m just a smith.”

He is not Renly, Brienne realized. Renly is dead. Renly died in my arms, a man of one-and-twenty. This is a only a boy. A boy who looked as Renly had, the first time he came to Tarth. No, younger. His jaw is squarer, his brows bushier. Renly had been lean and lithe, whereas this boy had the heavy shoulders and muscular right arm so often seen on smiths. He wore a long leather apron, but under it his chest was bare. A dark stubble covered his cheeks and chin, and his hair was a thick black mop that grew down past his ears. King Renly’s hair had been that same coal black, but his had always been washed and brushed and combed. Sometimes he cut it short, and sometimes he let it fall loose to his shoulders, or tied it back behind his head with a golden ribbon, but it was never tangled or matted with sweat. And though his eyes had been that same deep blue, Lord Renly’s eyes had always been warm and welcoming, full of laughter, whereas this boy’s eyes brimmed with anger and suspicion.

Septon Meribald saw it too. “We mean no harm, lad. When Masha Heddle owned this inn she always had a honey cake for me. Sometimes she even let me have a bed, if the inn was not full.”

“She’s dead,” the boy said. “The lions hanged her.”

“Hanging seems your favorite sport in these parts,” said Ser Hyle Hunt. “Would that I had some land hereabouts. I’d plant hemp, sell rope, and make my fortune.”