A Dance With Dragons

Stannis’s march should have taken 15 days but is now at 30 days and counting. Asha is among his prisoners. Asha’s position is perilous. There are those who want to kill her or rape her because she is a Greyjoy. Because her captors understand little about the princes in the Iron Islands, they believe she has royal blood, so burning her might help them regain the favor of R’hllor, whom they think is angry with them (hence the snow). Stannis’s army, a mix of wildlings, Southerners, and Northerners, starts to fray. The Northerners blame the Southerners for slowing them down; they believe the Southerners are cowards. Northerners go to war with the understanding that they are the walking dead. They don’t ever expect to return from war and don’t want to since they would be extra mouths that would doom the families they leave behind. That ethos makes them fierce warriors. The Southerners think the army should retreat. Iron Islanders would just as soon surrender if they cannot win or fight if there is any chance they can. Asha doesn’t expect Stannis to yield to circumstances. They are snowed in the next morning and have no food, curtailing any choices Stannis could have made.