A Game of Thrones ÔÇö Tyrion VII

Tyrion reaches Tywin's camp with his clansmen at his back, argues strategy over supper, and finds a girl named Shae in the baggage train.

The chapter retold

Tyrion arrives at his father's war camp with a rabble of mountain clansmen at his back ÔÇö proof he can deliver what he promised, even if Tywin receives the news with characteristic coldness rather than pride. Over supper, Tyrion argues strategy with a bluntness few of Tywin's other officers would risk, unwilling to simply defer to his father's judgment the way the rest of the camp does. Wandering the baggage train afterward, he meets Shae, a camp follower with sharp wit and no illusions about what she is, and the two begin a relationship that will complicate a great deal more than Tyrion currently expects.

The supper scene is a rare glimpse of Tyrion holding his ground against Tywin as something closer to an equal than a disappointment, even if Tywin's respect, when it comes at all, arrives grudgingly and conditionally. Shae's introduction plants what will become one of the more consequential entanglements of Tyrion's arc ÔÇö a relationship built, on his side at least, on something closer to genuine feeling than the transactional arrangements he's more used to, in a family that has never once made room for a Lannister son to love beneath his station without cost.

This movement: The Wolf Calls the Banners

• The Stark household is slaughtered; Arya escapes through the Red Keep's cellars with Needle; Sansa pleads for her father's life.
• Robb calls the banners; the Greatjon learns about direwolves and fingers; the host marches for the Neck.
• Catelyn wins the Twins' bridge from Walder Frey at the price of marriage promises.
• Beyond the Wall, dead men rise in Castle Black itself; Jon's torch and Ghost save the Old Bear.