When Hodor came bustling in, smiling and humming tunelessly, he found the boy resigned to his fate. Winter is coming, and you are almost a man grown, Bran. He could almost hear him, and their lord father as well. Robb would tell him not to play the boy, he knew. Only those who have matters of import to set before us are like to make the journey.' Bran gazed up at the rough stone ceiling above his head. 'The feast makes a pleasant pretext,' Ser Rodrik explained, 'but a man does not cross a hundred leagues for a sliver of duck and a sip of wine. If that had been the end of it, he would not have minded. Bran had welcomed them to Winterfell from his father's high stone seat with the direwolves carved into the arms, and afterward Ser Rodrik had said he'd done well. With him had come a long tail of retainers: knights, squires, lesser lords and ladies, heralds, musicians, even a juggler, all aglitter with banners and surcoats in what seemed half a hundred colors. Lord Wyman Manderly had arrived from White Harbor two days past, traveling by barge and litter, as he was too fat to sit a horse. 'You are your brother's heir and the Stark in Winterfell,' Ser Rodrik said, reminding him of how Robb used to sit with their lord father when his bannermen came to see him. A lord on his cushioned chair might be crippled-the Walders said their grandfather was so feeble he had to be carried everywhere in a litter-but not a knight on his destrier. Why must he waste his days listening to old men speak of things he only half understood? Because you're broken, a voice inside reminded him. It was knighthood he had always dreamed of bright armor and streaming banners, lance and sword, a warhorse between his legs. 'Listen, and it may be that you will learn something of what lordship is all about,' Maester Luwin had said. He must play the prince in his father's solar. The Walders would break lances with the squires of Lord Manderly's escort, but Bran would have no part of it. Once that prospect would have filled him with excitement, but that was before.

This morning they would be tilting at quintains in the yard. There were guests in Winterfell, visitors come for the harvest feast. BRAN Long before the first pale fingers of light pried apart Bran's shutters, his eyes were open.

Clash of kings silver