A Storm of Swords — Daenerys V

Before Meereen's walls the city sends a champion in pink and white; Strong Belwas eats his liver — figuratively — and the slaves listen at night to a word: Dracarys.

The chapter retold

Before Meereen's high walls, the city answers Daenerys Targaryen's advance with theater: a champion in lacquered pink-and-white armor rides out to duel a chosen defender, confident in the ritual's power to intimidate an army that has already taken two slaver cities. Dany's answer is Strong Belwas, her enormous eunuch bodyguard, who dispatches the champion with brutal efficiency and, in a gesture calibrated for maximum psychological effect, eats a piece of the dead man's liver in front of the watching walls.

Inside the city, word of what Daenerys has already done at Astapor and Yunkai has clearly traveled ahead of her — slaves within Meereen start murmuring a single word to each other after dark, half rumor and half prayer: Dracarys. The chapter is mostly waiting and psychology, the calm calculation before a siege, but it makes plain that Meereen's real vulnerability is not its walls but the people trapped inside them, already choosing a side.

This movement: The Wall Holds

• Mance's host hits Castle Black from both sides; Donal Noye trades his life for a giant's in the gate.
• Jon commands the Wall with quips and a crossbow — until the Watch arrests him for oath-breaking.
• Stannis lands at the Wall with the fury of the one king who answered the letters.
• In King's Landing, the realm dresses for a royal wedding no god intends to bless.