BY GEORGE R. R. MARTIN
A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE
Book One: A Game of Thrones
Book Two: A Clash of Kings
Book Three: A Storm of Swords
Book Four: A Feast for Crows
Book Five: A Dance with Dragons
Dying of the Light
Windhaven (with Lisa Tuttle)
Fevre Dream
The Armageddon Rag
Dead Man’s Hand (with John J. Miller)
SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS
Dreamsongs, Volume I
Dreamsongs, Volume II
A Song of Lya and Other Stories
Songs of Stars and Shadows
Sandkings
Songs the Dead Men Sing
Nightflyers
Tuf Voyaging
Portraits of His Children
Quartet
EDITED BY GEORGE R. R. MARTIN
New Voices in Science Fiction, Volumes 1–4
The Science Fiction Weight-Loss Book
(with Isaac Asimov and Martin Harry Greenberg)
The John W. Campbell Awards, Volume 5
Night Visions 3
Wild Card I–XXI
A Dance with Dragons is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2011 by George R. R. Martin.
Endpaper and interior maps
copyright © by Jeffrey L. Ward
Heraldic crests by Virginia Norey
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Bantam Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
BANTAM BOOKS and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Martin, George R. R.
A dance with dragons / George R. R. Martin.
p. cm — (A song of ice and fire; bk. 5)
eISBN: 978-0-553-90565-6
I. Title.
PS3563.A7239D36 2011
813’.54—dc22 2011015508
www.bantamdell.com
v3.1
this one is for my fans
for Lodey, Trebla, Stego, Pod ,
Caress, Yags, X-Ray and Mr. X ,
Kate, Chataya, Mormont, Mich ,
Jamie, Vanessa, Ro ,
for Stubby, Louise, Agravaine ,
Wert, Malt, Jo ,
Mouse, Telisiane, Blackfyre ,
Bronn Stone, Coyote’s Daughter ,
and the rest of the madmen and wild women of
the Brotherhood Without Banners
for my website wizards
Elio and Linda, lords of Westeros ,
Winter and Fabio of WIC ,
and Gibbs of Dragonstone, who started it all
for men and women of Asshai in Spain
who sang to us of a bear and a maiden fair
and the fabulous fans of Italy
who gave me so much wine
for my readers in Finland, Germany ,
Brazil, Portugal, France, and the Netherlands
and all the other distant lands
where you’ve been waiting for this dance
and for all the friends and fans
I have yet to meet
thanks for your patience
A CAVIL ON CHRONOLOGY
It has been a while between books, I know. So a reminder may be in order.
The book you hold in your hands is the fifth volume of A Song of Ice and Fire . The fourth volume was A Feast for Crows . However, this volume does not follow that one in the traditional sense, so much as run in tandem with it.
Both Dance and Feast take up the story immediately after the events of the third volume in the series, A Storm of Swords . Whereas Feast focused on events in and around King’s Landing, on the Iron Islands, and down in Dorne, Dance takes us north to Castle Black and the Wall (and beyond), and across the narrow sea to Pentos and Slaver’s Bay, to pick up the tales of Tyrion Lannister, Jon Snow, Daenerys Targaryen, and all the other characters you did not see in the preceding volume. Rather than being sequential, the two books are parallel … divided geographically, rather than chronologically.
But only up to a point.
A Dance with Dragons is a longer book than A Feast for Crows , and covers a longer time period. In the latter half of this volume, you will notice certain of the viewpoint characters from A Feast for Crows popping up again. And that means just what you think it means: the narrative has moved past the time frame of Feast , and the two streams have once again rejoined each other.
Next up, The Winds of Winter . Wherein, I hope, everybody will be shivering together once again.…
—George R. R. Martin
April 2011
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
A Cavil on Chronology
Map
Prologue
Tyrion
Daenerys
Jon
Bran
Tyrion
The Merchant’s Man
Jon
Tyrion
Davos
Jon
Daenerys
Reek
Bran
Tyrion
Davos
Daenerys
Jon
Tyrion
Davos
Reek
Jon
Tyrion
Daenerys
The Lost Lord
The Windblown
The Wayward Bride
Tyrion
Jon
Davos
Daenerys
Melisandre
Reek
Tyrion
Bran
Jon
Daenerys
The Prince Of Winterfell
The Watcher
Jon
Tyrion
The Turncloak
The King’s Prize
Daenerys
Jon
The Blind Girl
A Ghost in Winterfell
Tyrion
Jaime
Jon
Daenerys
Theon
Daenerys
Jon
Cersei
The Queensguard
The Iron Suitor
Tyrion
Jon
The Discarded Knight
The Spurned Suitor
The Griffin Reborn
The Sacrifice
Victarion
The Ugly Little Girl
Cersei
Tyrion
The Kingbreaker
The Dragontamer
Jon
The Queen’s Hand
Daenerys
Epilogue
Appendix
Acknowledgments
About the Author
PROLOGUE
The night was rank with the smell of man.
The warg stopped beneath a tree and sniffed, his grey-brown fur dappled by shadow. A sigh of piney wind brought the man-scent to him, over fainter smells that spoke of fox and hare, seal and stag, even wolf. Those were man-smells too, the warg knew; the stink of old skins, dead and sour, near drowned beneath the stronger scents of smoke and blood and rot. Only man stripped the skins from other beasts and wore their hides and hair.
Wargs have no fear of man, as wolves do. Hate and hunger coiled in his belly, and he gave a low growl, calling to his one-eyed brother, to his small sly sister. As he raced through the trees, his packmates followed hard on his heels. They had caught the scent as well. As he ran, he saw through their eyes too and glimpsed himself ahead. The breath of the pack puffed warm and white from long grey jaws. Ice had frozen between their paws, hard as stone, but the hunt was on now, the prey ahead. Flesh , the warg thought, meat .
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