Inside Game Of Thrones - Season 1 - Episode 15

4 years ago

Inside Game Of Thrones - Season 1 - Episode 15

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He came into the Great Hall of Winterfell to see Lord Robb as a sign of respect, who obviously doesn’t like him very much considering the naked steel, based on what mother has told them about Lannisters. Lord Tyrion, a curious little man with mismatched eyes, asks him how it was he happened to fall, but Bran insists “Ineverfall, never, never, never.”
But the Lord has a present for Bran. He says he has talked at length with Jon up at the Wall and finds he has a soft spot for “broken things” like dwarves, bastards and cripples.
The gift is a diagram of a saddle with dimensions and guidelines for construction. Lord Tyrion says that when he was a child, he never thought he would ever be able to ride a horse, but that he was able to because of this special saddle of his own design. He says the saddle can help Bran ride again and gives it to Maester Luwin with instructions to give it to Winterfell’s blacksmith.

Robb, who had greeted Lord Tyrion with open hostility can’t hide his surprise and confusion as to why the dwarf is helping his brother, since, though a Lord he might be, Robb is still a fourteen-year old boy, and all Lannisters are bad in his eyes.

They’re all still talking when the door slams open and little Rickon runs in, breathless from play. The direwolves have been chasing him all about the place, and, you guessed it, they follow him right in. The moment Grey Wind and Summer step in and catch Lord Tyrion’s scent, they beging growling, snarling and snapping, stalking threateningly toward him. Tyrion, deathly afraid, walks backward carefully, away from the two wolves. . .
. . .and straight into black-furred Shaggydog, the wildest and most devilish-looking of the three, who had circled around Lord Tyrion the moment they entered. The dwarf wet himself the moment the wolf snapped at his heels, and the three Stark boys have to call off their wolves one by one, probably just in time to save him from having a heart attack.
Robb offers him and his men, as well as the black brother of the Night’s Watch, a place to stay in Winterfell, but after nearly been made into a meal by three direwolves, the dwarf isn’t too keen on the idea and declines, opting to spend the night out in the village instead, and then make South for King’s Landing come morning.
Part of the arrangement for Bran to ride a horse even without legs is for them to find a young, untrained horse. Since horses gallop or trot based on response to spurs by the ankles of the rider, Bran needs to have a horse that has not yet been trained to look for those spurs. Lord Tyrion says an unbroken yearling should do the trick.

Maester Luwin gives the saddle over to the smithy, and Bran waits with tentative hopes that the saddle isn’t some kind of trick. The boy is overjoyed to learn that it isn’t. Since Bran doesn’t have legs to keep firmly in the saddle or grip the sides of the horse with, the special saddle features a series of belt-like straps to hold both legs tight to the saddle and prevent the weight of his upper body from toppling him backwards off the horse, and also a raised, padded back for comfort, as well as straps to hold his back to the seat.
And the horse, a young filly, has been trained to respond to tugs on the reins, stimuli that even a cripple like Bran can provide since he still has working hands.

After practicing trotting circuits around Winterfell’s yard, Bran is finally ready for some real riding. And so Bran goes riding in the wolfswood outside Winterfell’s village with Robb, Theon Greyjoy, and some men of their father’s household guard to protect him. Even Maester Luwin comes along, to see to any injuries he might have along the way.
Riding a horse like everyone else, Bran doesn’t feel at all like a cripple. To him, riding feels likeflying.

Bran and his brother Robb are riding at the head of the column through the village, with Summer and Grey Wind running ahead of them, heading for the woods, and Bran can see that something is troubling his older brother. Robb says he recieved a letter in the night. In King’s Landing, three of Lord Stark’s men have been murdered in a skirmish with the Kingslayer, Jaime Lannister, and has shattered his leg when he took a fall of his horse that landed the animal on it.
Bran has no idea why anyone would ever want to harm their father or kill Jory Cassel, the captain of his guard, a man who had joined more than once in chasing Bran across the rooftops. But they are coming up on the wolfswood, and Robb doesn’t want them to dwell on it. The wolves have already run off to hunt, and now they leave the stone of the village road for the soft earth and trees of the wood. There’s a deep river not far into the wolfswood, and Robb leads both their mounts across to the other side.

Soon enough, they hear the howls of their two direwolves signifying that they have made a kill, and Robb goes off to see what they have caught.

No sooner has Robb left than Bran sees a face watching him out of the brush. A man comes out of hiding, then another man, both dressed in faded and tattered blacks, like men of the Night’s Watch, and then another two women, one short, and the other so tall and lean that she looks almost exactly like a man.
And all of them are armed.
Bran knows that both of the men are black brothers, or at least,wereblack brothers. Now they are just deserters. And Bran’s father had told him that, since a deserter knew that his life was forfeit once he was caught, there was no crime he wouldn’t deign to commit.