A Game of Thrones — Catelyn III
Fire in the library tower — and a catspaw with a Valyrian steel dagger at Bran's throat; Catelyn's bare hands and Summer's teeth end him.
The chapter retold
In the small hours at Winterfell, fire breaks out in the library tower — a deliberate distraction, it turns out, meant to draw the household's attention away from Bran's sickroom. It nearly works. A hired killer slips in with a dagger of Valyrian steel, meant to finish what the fall from the tower started, and only Catelyn's presence at her son's bedside — she has barely left his side since he fell — stands between the blade and Bran's throat. She seizes the knife with her bare hands, shredding her fingers to the bone rather than let go, and screams for help until Bran's direwolf Summer tears the assassin's throat out.
The attempt reframes everything the book has shown so far: someone believes Bran's fall was not an accident, and someone is frightened enough of what he might remember, or say, to send a professional killer rather than trust to luck. Catelyn survives with her hands ruined and her worst fears confirmed, and the dagger itself — expensive, exotic, clearly not a random cutpurse's weapon — becomes the single physical clue the rest of the plot will hang an entire war on.
What makes the chapter pivotal isn't just the violence but what it does to Catelyn. Up to now she has been a wife and mother managing a household under strain; from this point she becomes an active agent in the story's politics, willing to leave Winterfell, chase a rumor to King's Landing, and eventually make an arrest that will detonate the fragile peace between two of the Seven Kingdoms' great houses — all because someone tried to finish killing her son in his sleep and she happened to be sitting there.
This movement: The Road South
- A catspaw with a Valyrian dagger comes for the sleeping Bran; Catelyn's hands and Summer's teeth stop him.
- On the kingsroad, Joffrey's cruelty costs Mycah his life, Sansa her wolf, and Arya her innocence.
- Jon takes the black and finds the Watch is boys and broken men; Tyrion goes along to piss off the edge of the world.
- Catelyn rides south in secret with the dagger — and in a crossroads inn, arrests Tyrion Lannister.
The fallen — spoilers
- The catspaw assassin — His throat torn out by a direwolf pup at Bran's bedside.