A Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin

the Wall? Had his mother died, or one of his sisters? Or was this
something else, as maester and septon and Old Nan seemed to think?
    If I were truly a direwolf, I would understand the song,
he thought
wistfully. In his wolf dreams, he could race up the sides of mountains, jagged
icy mountains taller than any tower, and stand at the summit beneath the full
moon with all the world below him, the way it used to be.
    “Oooo,” Bran cried tentatively. He cupped his hands around his mouth and
lifted his head to the comet.
“Ooooooooooooooooooo,
ahooooooooooooooo,”
he howled. It sounded stupid, high and hollow

and quavering, a little boy’s howl, not a wolf’s. Yet Summer gave answer, his
deep voice drowning out Bran’s thin one, and Shaggydog made it a chorus. Bran
haroooed
again. They howled together, last of their pack.
    The noise brought a guard to his door, Hayhead with the wen on his nose. He
peered in, saw Bran howling out the window, and said, “What’s this, my
prince?”
    It made Bran feel queer when they called him prince, though he
was
Robb’s heir, and Robb was King in the North now. He turned his head to howl at
the guard.
“Oooooooo. Oo-oo-oooooooooooo.”
    Hayhead screwed up his face. “Now you stop that there.”
    “Ooo-ooo-oooooo. Ooo-ooo-ooooooooooooooooo.”
    The guardsman retreated. When he came back, Maester Luwin was with him, all in
grey, his chain tight about his neck. “Bran, those beasts make sufficient
noise without your help.” He crossed the room and put his hand on the boy’s
brow. “The hour grows late, you ought to be fast asleep.”
    “I’m talking to the wolves.” Bran brushed the hand away.
    “Shall I have Hayhead carry you to your bed?”
    “I can get to bed myself.” Mikken had hammered a row of iron bars into the
wall, so Bran could pull himself about the room with his arms. It was slow and
hard and it made his shoulders ache, but he hated being carried. “Anyway, I
don’t have to sleep if I don’t want to.”
    “All men must sleep, Bran. Even princes.”
    “When I sleep I turn into a wolf.” Bran turned his face

away and looked back out into the night. “Do wolves dream?”
    “All creatures dream, I think, yet not as men do.”
    “Do dead men dream?” Bran asked, thinking of his father. In the dark crypts
below Winterfell, a stonemason was chiseling out his father’s likeness in
granite.
    “Some say yes, some no,” the maester answered. “The dead themselves are
silent on the matter.”
    “Do trees dream?”
    “Trees? No . . .”
    “They do,” Bran said with sudden certainty. “They dream tree dreams. I dream
of a tree sometimes. A weirwood, like the one in the godswood. It calls to me.
The wolf dreams are better. I smell things, and sometimes I can taste the
blood.”
    Maester Luwin tugged at his chain where it chafed his neck. “If you would only
spend more time with the other children—”
    “I hate the other children,” Bran said, meaning the Walders. “I commanded
you to send them away.”
    Luwin grew stern. “The Freys are your lady mother’s wards, sent here to be
fostered at her express command. It is not for you to expel them, nor is it
kind. If we turned them out, where would they go?”
    “Home. It’s their fault you won’t let me have
Summer.”
    “The Frey boy did not ask to be attacked,” the maester said, “no more than I
did.”
    “That was Shaggydog.” Rickon’s big black wolf was so wild he even frightened
Bran at times. “Summer never bit anyone.”
    “Summer ripped out a man’s throat in this very chamber, or have you
forgotten? The truth is, those sweet pups you and your brothers found in the
snow have grown into dangerous beasts. The Frey boys are wise to be wary of
them.”
    “We should put the Walders in the godswood. They could play lord of the
crossing all they want, and Summer could sleep with me again. If I’m the
prince, why won’t you heed me? I wanted to ride