A Game of Thrones — Bran I
Ned Stark beheads the deserter Gared with Ice while his sons watch; on the ride home they find direwolf pups in the snow — one for each Stark child, and an albino for the bastard.
The chapter retold
Ned Stark takes his sons out from Winterfell to witness the King's justice done properly — the man who passes the sentence swings the sword himself, a Stark law older than the Seven Kingdoms — and Bran, seeing his first execution, watches his father take Gared's head from his shoulders with a clean stroke of Ice. Riding home, the boys find a direwolf carcass in the snow, killed on an antler, with five pups suckling at her — a sixth, white and red-eyed, off by itself. Jon Snow, the bastard among trueborn brothers, claims the runt before anyone can argue it isn't his to claim.
It's a chapter built entirely of omens the characters can't read yet: direwolves haven't been seen south of the Wall in centuries, and finding one dead with a stag's antler in her throat, birthing pups the exact number of Stark children, reads like the old gods keeping score. Ned's insistence that mercy and violence share one hand — that a lord who orders death owes the dead his own arm in the doing of it — becomes the yardstick every other execution in the book gets measured against, including the one waiting for him.
This movement: A Hand's Summons
- A prologue in the haunted forest: Ser Waymar Royce meets the Others, and only a deserter escapes to die at Ned Stark's block.
- Direwolf pups in the summer snows — one for each Stark child, and an albino for the bastard.
- Robert comes north with the court to make Ned his Hand; Lysa's letter blames the Lannisters for Jon Arryn.
- Bran climbs, sees the queen and the Kingslayer entwined, and flies. Across the sea, Daenerys is sold to Khal Drogo.
The fallen — spoilers
- Gared — Fled the Others; found Ned Stark's justice instead.