A Storm of Swords ÔÇö Bran III
Storm over the lake: from the tower Bran wargs Hodor to still him, then Summer to save a stranger in the rain below ÔÇö his brother, unknowing.
The chapter retold
A storm breaks over the lake tower where Bran Stark's party is sheltering, and Bran spends it doing two acts of warging in quick succession ÔÇö first slipping into Hodor to still the huge man's animal terror of thunder, a kindness that costs Bran nothing and means everything to Hodor, and then into Summer, whose wolf senses catch something moving in the rain below that needs help. The direwolf drives off wildling attackers threatening a lone, exhausted traveler in the storm, saving a man's life without either of them ever learning the other's name.
The stranger is Jon Snow ÔÇö Bran's half-brother, fighting for his life at Queenscrown in a scene the book will show properly only a chapter later ÔÇö and neither wolf nor rescued man understands the family the moment reveals. Bran, watching through Summer's eyes, knows exactly whose blood he just protected; Jon rides away from the encounter with his life saved by a wolf he has no reason to suspect is his brother's, one of the book's quietest and saddest ironies about a family that keeps almost finding each other and never quite managing it.
This movement: The Red Wedding
- Edmure weds Roslin Frey under the Twins' roof; the bread and salt are eaten; the music is wrong.
- Crossbows from the gallery, tent canvas cut over the feast outside, Grey Wind penned and shot.
- Robb dies with Roose Bolton's steel in his heart: "Jaime Lannister sends his regards."
- Catelyn opens her own face with her nails, and a Frey opens her throat. The North dies at a wedding.