Читаем A Feast for Crows полностью

“The boy needs a bit of seasoning, that’s all,” his father had told Lord Redwyne that night, but Redwyne’s fool rattled his rattle and replied, “Aye, a pinch of pepper, a few nice cloves, and an apple in his mouth.” Thereafter, Lord Randyll forbade Sam to eat apples so long as they remained beneath Paxter Redwyne’s roof. He had been seasick on their voyage home as well, but so relieved to be going that he almost welcomed the taste of vomit at the back of his throat. It was not until they were back at Horn Hill that his mother told Sam that his father had never meant for him to return. “Horas was to come with us in your place, whilst you remained on the Arbor as Lord Paxter’s page and cupbearer. If you had pleased him, you would have been betrothed to his daughter.” Sam could still recall the soft touch of his mother’s hand as she washed the tears off his face with a bit of lace, dampened with her spit. “My poor Sam,” she murmured. “My poor poor Sam.”

It will be good to see her again, he thought, as he clung to Blackbird ’s rail and watched waves breaking on the stony shore. If she saw me in my blacks, it might even make her proud. “I am a man now, Mother,” I could tell her, “a steward, and a man of the Night’s Watch. My brothers call me Sam the Slayer sometimes.” He would see his brother Dickon too, and his sisters. “See,” I could tell them, “see, I was good for something after all.”

If he went to Horn Hill, though, his father might be there.

The thought made his belly heave again. Sam bent over the gunwale and retched, but not into the wind. He had gone to the right rail this time. He was getting good at retching.

Or so he thought, until Blackbird left the land behind and struck east across the bay for the shores of Skagos.

The island sat at the mouth of the Bay of Seals, massive and mountainous, a stark and forbidding land peopled by savages. They lived in caves and grim mountain fastnesses, Sam had read, and rode great shaggy unicorns to war. Skagos meant “stone” in the Old Tongue. The Skagosi named themselves the stoneborn, but their fellow northmen called them Skaggs and liked them little. Only a hundred years ago Skagos had risen in rebellion. Their revolt had taken years to quell and claimed the life of the Lord of Winterfell and hundreds of his sworn swords. Some songs said the Skaggs were cannibals; supposedly their warriors ate the hearts and livers of the men they slew. In ancient days, the Skagosi had sailed to the nearby isle of Skane, seized its women, slaughtered its men, and ate them on a pebbled beach in a feast that lasted for a fortnight. Skane remained unpeopled to this day.

Dareon knew the songs as well. When the bleak grey peaks of Skagos rose up from the sea, he joined Sam at Blackbird ’s prow, and said, “If the gods are good, we may catch a glimpse of a unicorn.”

“If the captain is good, we won’t come that close. The currents are treacherous around Skagos, and there are rocks that can crack a ship’s hull like an egg. But don’t you mention that to Gilly. She’s scared enough.”

“Her and that squalling whelp of hers. I don’t know which of them is noisier. The only time he ever stops crying is when she shoves a nipple in his mouth, and then she starts to sob.”

Sam had noticed that as well. “Maybe the babe is hurting her,” he said, feebly. “If his teeth are coming in. ”

Dareon plucked at his lute with one finger, sending up a derisive note. “I’d heard that wildlings were braver than that.”

“She is brave,” Sam insisted, though even he had to admit that he had never seen Gilly in such a wretched state. Though she hid her face more oft than not and kept the cabin dark, he could see that her eyes were always red, her cheeks wet with tears. When he asked her what was wrong, though, she only shook her head, leaving him to find answers of his own. “The sea scares her, that’s all,” he told Dareon. “Before she came to the Wall, all she knew was Craster’s Keep and the woods around it. I don’t know that she went more than half a league from the place that she was born. She knows streams and rivers, but she had never seen a lake until we came on one, and the sea. the sea is a scary thing.”

“We’ve never been out of sight of land.”

“We will be.” Sam did not relish that part himself.

“Surely a little water does not frighten the Slayer.”

“No,” Sam lied, “not me. But Gilly. maybe if you played some lullabies for them, it would help the babe to sleep.”

Dareon’s mouth twisted in disgust. “Only if she shoves a plug up his arse. I cannot abide the smell.”