A Storm of Swords ÔÇö Jon X
Among the captive free folk Jon counts the cost of victory; Melisandre watches him from the king's side the way fire watches wood.
The chapter retold
In the aftermath of Stannis's rout of the wildling army, Jon Snow moves among the captured free folk counting a cost that victory does not erase ÔÇö men, women and children he lived among for a season, now prisoners of the side he nominally serves, their cause broken not because it was wrong but because Stannis had the larger army and no interest in negotiation once the advantage was his.
Melisandre watches Jon throughout with an attention that has nothing casual in it, the kind of focus the book has already taught readers to associate with her fires and her plans for king's blood. The chapter leaves Jon in an uncomfortable position ÔÇö victorious by technicality, morally unsettled by what victory required, and newly, uncomfortably visible to a woman whose interest in him is unlikely to be simple curiosity.
This movement: Gold, Ice, and the Hanged Woman
- Jaime frees his brother; Tyrion detours through the Tower of the Hand: Shae in the bed, Tywin on the privy, a crossbow for both.
- Lysa Arryn flies from the Moon Door screaming about tears and dark words; Littlefinger blames a singer.
- Jon Snow is elected Lord Commander of the Night's Watch on Sam's clever tongue.
- Epilogue at the Twins: the Brotherhood hangs Freys for a hooded woman whose throat gapes ÔÇö Lady Stoneheart remembers.