A Clash of Kings — Bran I

Winterfell readies a harvest feast without its lord; Bran plays the Stark in Winterfell from a basket on Hodor's back, and dreams as a wolf.

The chapter retold

Winterfell without its lord tries to hold a harvest feast anyway, because the North’s rhythms don’t stop for war, and Bran is propped into the high seat to play a role he never asked for: the Stark in Winterfell, nine years old, carried in on Hodor’s back because his legs no longer answer him. He performs it as well as a crippled boy can — listens to petitioners, minds his manners, aches with the absence of everyone who should be sitting where he sits. The hall is full and the larders are fuller, and none of it disguises how much has already been lost.

The chapter’s other half belongs to Bran’s nights, where his broken body stops mattering: he runs the godswood and the wolfswood as Summer, faster and more whole than he has been awake since his fall. The wolf-dreams have stopped feeling like dreams, which frightens him more than it should — Maester Luwin has no good answer for what’s happening inside his skull, and Bran is left to work it out alone, a small lord playing at rule by day and something else entirely by night.

This movement: The Comet

• A red comet splits the sky; five would-be kings each read their crown in it.
• On Dragonstone, Maester Cressen tries to poison the red priestess and drinks first; Stannis proclaims Joffrey a bastard born of incest.
• Tyrion takes the Hand's chair with Bronn at his back and starts removing his sister's men.
• Beyond the Wall, the Old Bear leads three hundred swords north into silence.