Recap
At a camp of poor faithful people productively work together with the little they have. It looks like they may be building a simple sept. And then we spot an enormous man carrying a log by himself... The HOUND! The Elder Brother talks to him some and we learn how the Hound was found and saved. He claims God has work left for Sandor Clegane. They discuss faith and the Elder Brother claims he doesn't know this god from that, but what matters is there is some greater power that has plans.
Margaery reads from the Seven Pointed Star. The High Sparrow asks her why she hasn't returned to the marriage bed. She claims to no longer have those base desires but he reminds her of duty and the need for an heir. She promises to try and then he threatens her grandmother.
Septa Unella hovers as Margaery and her grandmother talk. Her grandmother is unhappy and huffing and puffing. Margaery tries to calm her. Margaery talks the talk and tries to convince her grandmother Loras can be free if he repents. She tells her grandmother she must leave and slips a note in her hands. Outside Lady Olenna sees it is a rose. Margaery is still herself. Just playing the game.
The Wildlings grumble and posture about helping Jon, as this wasn't their plan, but he convinces them if they want help against the dead, they need to help Jon now, so he is in a position to return the favor later. Wun Wun stands and says Snow, and the others agree.
Cersei comes to see Lady Olenna. She's heard she is leaving King's Landing, but not without blaming Cersei for all this crap first. Cersei claims they need each other. Says things to coerce Olenna to stay, but Olenna has no patience for Cersei.
Jaime and Bronn approach Riverrun. Jaime tells Bronn he will be his right hand. Bronn is put out with all the fighting and the payoff still has not come. They march into the Frey “siege” which is a pathetic thing. The Freys are threatening to hang Lord Edmure, then stick a knife to his throat. The Blackfish calls their bluff and of course they can't—he is the only leverage they have. Jaime lectures Lothar Frey about not keeping a perimeter. 8000 men have just marched through it. He commands Lord Edmure be bathed and fed. He says he is taking over command of the siege. Bronn orders them to dig trenches and set pickets. The Frey's bristle and try to claim dominion, but the king has demanded Jaime take the castle. Jaime then asks Bronn to get word to the Blackfish that Jaime wants a parlay.
Sansa, Jon and Davos arrive to present their case to Lady Mormont, who is all of eleven. Sansa points out she is named for her Aunt Lyanna, a great beauty. She is sure Lady Momont will be too. Lady Mormont doubts it. Her mother was no beauty, but she was a great warrior who died fighting for Robb. Jon says he served under Lord Commander Mormont at Castle Black. She cuts off the small talk and asks why they are there. Jon asks for House Mormont's allegiance. Lady Lyanna points out Jon is a Snow and Lady Sansa is a Bolton or a Lannister. She says she is responsible for the lives of the people on Bear Island and asks why she should sacrifice one more life for somebody else's war. Lord Davos steps forward. He explains that if the houses are squabbling they will not be able to stand against the Dead—the real war—all of their war. Lyanna promises this is not the day the Mormonts desert the Starks. She has 62 men.
Jaime rides in for his parley with the Blackfish. The Blackfish says he assumed Jaime was there to fulfill the oath Jaime made Catelyn, but he doesn't see Sansa or Arya. He then asks if Jaime wishes to resume his captivity. Jaime doesn't. He insists the war is over and the castle belongs to the Freys, but the Blackfish insists as long as he is living, the war is not over. Jaime asks why he met then, and the Blackfish said “sieges are dull and I wanted to get the measure of you. And now I have. I'm disappointed.” [oh, Blackfish, you da boss]
Lord Glover tells Jon and Sansa No. The Boltons helped him get his castle back from the Ironborn. He wants to know who is in the army then bristles that the bulk of the forces are wildlings. Sansa reminds him of the Glover oat to House Stark, but Lord Glover throws Robb's mistakes back in her face.
Jon, Sansa and Davos come into camp. Davos talks of the good location but Jon says the snows may come—they need to attack. They are fewer than 2500. Davos leaves to break up a fight and Sansa questions Jon trusting Davos. Sansa insists they need more men and Jon insists they need to fight now. Jon goes and Sansa sees the Maester with his ravens, so she writes a scroll, presumably to Littlefinger.
The Elder Brother tells his stories of what he was willing to do and what it made of him. A trio of riders comes, men of R'hollor—the Brotherhood men. They ask for horses, gold, steel, food. The Elder Brother invites them for supper, but says they have mouths to feed, too. After he finds Sandor shopping wood and Sandor says “Seven save your friends.” They wax philosophical about fighting and what good (and bad) it does. The Elder Brother invites Sandor to dinner, but he keeps chopping.
Arya buys passage on a ship to Westeros. She shows them enough coin for a cabin and insists they leave a day early (tomorrow at sunrise). She looks out over Bravos and an old woman approaches., then slices at her, spins her, removes her face (it's the waif) and stabs her. Arya throws her head back into the waif's face and jumps over the bridge into the water. When she climbs out she wanders through the streets bleeding.
Sandor is breaking branches for kindling and hears screams. All the people have been slaughtered. The Elder Brother hanged. Sandor takes an ax and goes.
Review
I half expected Gendry to be the smith in that opening scene, eh? Too much to ask, I suppose, but THE HOUND! Man, it was nice to see him again. Many of us suspected it was coming, but still...
I do, however, wish the elder brother had given his full broken man speech. He gave an abbreviated version, but for those of you interested in the full thing, I've included it below the review.
Margaery tips her hand a bit to us, if not the High Sparrow or Septa Unella. She is playing the game, doing what she needs to to bide time and work through (work out?) a plan. She manages to get that across to her grandmother. I suspected this was what Margaery was up to, but it was nice to get a bit of confirmation. I think her main priority is helping Loras.
Loved that Wun Wun was the first to stand up for Jon. And oh, Lady Mormont—what a fierce joy you are. Loved her. Sharp, bright and true. New when to ask questions and when she had made up her own mind. Pretty darned impressive at ten. But man... 62 men... so funny.
The Blackfish was TEH AWESOME!!!! Called Jaime at every turn. I'm still on Book Jaime's team, but Book Jaime is trying to avoid the death of Tullys. Show Jaime has lost his redemption arc, possibly for good. So GO Blackfish!
House Glover's refusal is disappointing, but it does seem fitting Robb's mistakes would bit them here and there.
Loved Yara and Theon's talk—it was a very Greyjoy route to encouragement, but it got there in the end. I do have a little trouble with Yara being the character the show has as a lesbian, not because I object to lesbian characters, I am all for them. But book Yara is a different kind of liberated woman the show really doesn't have—a lusty, taking men because she enjoys it, not giving a damn about traditions, so I hate losing that. And then as a tough fighter woman, she is a stereotypical choice as the lesbian. Probably just me being too sensitive on the matter, but I would have preferred they make a less obvious choice and left Yara the "manizing" woman.
Jon's urgency for “now” feels a little forced to put Sansa in a position of asking Littlefinger for helped. I don't object hugely, just a quibble. I would have liked more than fear of snow to push the timeline.
The Elder Brother's second speech is STILL not the broken man speech, but I think it did remind Sandor of the shame he eventually felt about killing Micah, a butcher's boy, when all he did was run. I loved the Elder Brother's clan and Ian McShane was a great Elder Brother. I liked the Hound's reintro—all well done. My only issue here is with the Brotherhood. The Brotherhood is meant to be taking revenge on Frey and Lannister armies. It bothers me that seems to have been totally swapped in exchange for this religious war. I know they followed R'hollor from the start (Thoros saving Beric Dondarion and all) but they never killed others for not following, and they were not the sort of thieves who killed (and in this case they left all the stuff—so this wasn't thieving, just murder). On the plus side, while it isn't book canon, I can see some great potential with the Hound roaming as a free agent again. I'd like him to overhear something about Sansa needing help and to jump into that fray. (or is he a potential Lady Stoneheart sub?--that would be one way to twist the Elder Brother's “try to do some good” --I mean it can only be good to rid the world of Freys and Lannisters, right?)
NOOOO! Arya buying passage is a good thing, but the waif stabbing her is a complication! I wonder who she will go to for help—the acting troop maybe? Lady Crane would help her. Lara the whore? But think of the ramifications here... Arya is going to have to spend the rest of her life thinking anybody could be a faceless man, come for her.
The Broken Man Scene [From Brienne V, Feast for Crows]
"Ser? My lady?" said Podrick. "Is a broken man an outlaw?"
"More or less," Brienne answered.
Septon Meribald disagreed. "More less than more. There are many sorts of outlaws, just as there are many sorts of birds. A sandpiper and a sea eagle both have wings, but they are not the same. The singers love to sing of good men forced to go outside the law to fight some wicked lord, but most outlaws are more like this ravening Hound than they are the lightning lord. They are evil men, driven by greed, soured by malice, despising the gods and caring only for themselves. Broken men are more deserving of our pity, though they may be just as dangerous. Almost all are common-born, simple folk who had never been more than a mile from the house where they were born until the day some lord came round to take them off to war. Poorly shod and poorly clad, they march away beneath his banners, ofttimes with no better arms than a sickle or a sharpened hoe, or a maul they made themselves by lashing a stone to a stick with strips of hide. Brothers march with brothers, sons with fathers, friends with friends. They've heard the songs and stories, so they go off with eager hearts, dreaming of the wonders they will see, of the wealth and glory they will win. War seems a fine adventure, the greatest most of them will ever know.
"Then they get a taste of battle.
"For some, that one taste is enough to break them. Others go on for years, until they lose count of all the battles they have fought in, but even a man who has survived a hundred fights can break in his hundred-and-first. Brothers watch their brothers die, fathers lose their sons, friends see their friends trying to hold their entrails in after they've been gutted by an axe.
"They see the lord who led them there cut down, and some other lord shouts that they are his now. They take a wound, and when that's still half-healed they take another. There is never enough to eat, their shoes fall to pieces from the marching, their clothes are torn and rotting, and half of them are shitting in their breeches from drinking bad water.
"If they want new boots or a warmer cloak or maybe a rusted iron halfhelm, they need to take them from a corpse, and before long they are stealing from the living too, from the smallfolk whose lands they're fighting in, men very like the men they used to be. They slaughter their sheep and steal their chickens, and from there it's just a short step to carrying off their daughters too. And one day they look around and realize all their friends and kin are gone, that they are fighting beside strangers beneath a banner that they hardly recognize. They don't know where they are or how to get back home and the lord they're fighting for does not know their names, yet here he comes, shouting for them to form up, to make a line with their spears and scythes and sharpened hoes, to stand their ground. And the knights come down on them, faceless men clad all in steel, and the iron thunder of their charge seems to fill the world . . .
"And the man breaks.
"He turns and runs, or crawls off afterward over the corpses of the slain, or steals away in the black of night, and he finds someplace to hide. All thought of home is gone by then, and kings and lords and gods mean less to him than a haunch of spoiled meat that will let him live another day, or a skin of bad wine that might drown his fear for a few hours. The broken man lives from day to day, from meal to meal, more beast than man. Lady Brienne is not wrong. In times like these, the traveler must beware of broken men, and fear them . . . but he should pity them as well."
When Meribald was finished a profound silence fell upon their little band. Brienne could hear the wind rustling through a clump of pussywillows, and farther off the faint cry of a loon. She could hear Dog panting softly as he loped along beside the septon and his donkey, tongue lolling from his mouth. The quiet stretched and stretched, until finally she said, "How old were you when they marched you off to war?"
"Why, no older than your boy," Meribald replied. "Too young for such, in truth, but my brothers were all going, and I would not be left behind. Willam said I could be his squire, though Will was no knight, only a potboy armed with a kitchen knife he'd stolen from the inn. He died upon the Stepstones, and never struck a blow. It was fever did for him, and for my brother Robin. Owen died from a mace that split his head apart, and his friend Jon Pox was hanged for rape."
"The War of the Ninepenny Kings?" asked Hyle Hunt.
"So they called it, though I never saw a king, nor earned a penny. It was a war, though. That it was."Anybody want to just join me for a moment of awe. That is why George is the master. What a great speech. And I think it gives us some insight into his views on war.
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