A Game of Thrones ÔÇö 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 ÔÇö 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 ÔÇö the man who passes the sentence swings the sword himself, a Stark law older than the Seven Kingdoms ÔÇö 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 ÔÇö 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 ÔÇö that a lord who orders death owes the dead his own arm in the doing of it ÔÇö 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 ÔÇö 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 ÔÇö spoilers
- Gared ÔÇö Fled the Others; found Ned Stark's justice instead.