A Dance with Dragons ÔÇö Asha III

At a crofters' village three days from Winterfell, Stannis's starving host burns its cannibals; out of the storm come a broken man and a girl in a dead girl's name ÔÇö Theon and Jeyne.

The chapter retold

Three days from Winterfell, StannisÔÇÖs starving, frostbitten host stops at a croftersÔÇÖ village and burns men found to have turned to cannibalism during the retreatÔÇÖs worst nights ÔÇö grim, necessary justice by the kingÔÇÖs own account, and a measure of exactly how far the campaign has already collapsed before reaching a single Bolton sword. Out of the same storm stumble two more desperate travelers: a broken man and a girl wearing a dead girlÔÇÖs name, and Asha Greyjoy, watching from her captivity, recognizes her own kin the moment Theon Greyjoy staggers into the firelight.

The chapter closes the loop on Theon and JeyneÔÇÖs leap from WinterfellÔÇÖs walls, delivering them alive but ruined into the one camp in the North that might actually protect them, and gives Asha a reunion she surely never expected to survive long enough to witness. It also drives home, with the burnt cannibals as grim punctuation, exactly what StannisÔÇÖs campaign has cost before itÔÇÖs fired a single arrow at Winterfell itself ÔÇö an army eating its own discipline as thoroughly as the winter is eating its men.

This movement: The Dragon's Peace Breaks

• Cersei walks her penance through King's Landing, shorn and naked, while her champion waits: an eight-foot silence in white armor.
• Kevan Lannister steadies the realm as regent ÔÇö competence the realm can't be allowed to keep.
• On the Dothraki sea, Dany ÔÇö fevered, alone but for Drogon ÔÇö meets Khal Jhaqo's riders in the grass.
• Asha, Stannis's prisoner, watches the northmen prepare a battle in the snow that the book leaves unfought.