This is something I posted elsewhere many years ago when A Dance with Dragons first came out.
Those of us who watched series 5 of the show saw a version (if we can call it that) of the Battle of Ice that is nothing at all as I’d imagined. And while I don’t want to dwell on the show’s version of it, I will say that I do believe Stannis will die (but later on), I think there is a real possibility that Shireen will burn, and I also think Stannis may be directly involved but the stakes will have to be much, much higher.
Some highlights from the TWoW sample chapter Theon I:
<…> As he left, another entered; a knight. The king’s knights had been coming and going all night, Theon recalled dimly. This one seemed to be the king’s familiar. Lean, dark-haired, hard-eyed, his face marred by pockmarks and old scars, he wore a faded surcoat embroidered with three moths. “Sire,” he announced, “the maester is without. And Lord Arnolf sends word that he would be most pleased to break his fast with you.”
“The son as well?”
“And the grandsons. Lord Wull seeks audience as well. He wants — ”
“I know what he wants.” The king indicated Theon. “Him. Wull wants him dead. Flint, Norrey… all of them will want him dead. For the boys he slew. Vengeance for their precious Ned.”
“Will you oblige them?”
“Just now, the turncloak is more use to me alive. He has knowledge we may need. Bring in this maester.”
” <…> You must not call him that! A wave of pain washed over Theon Greyjoy. He closed his eyes and grimaced. When he opened them again, he said, “You do not know him.”
“No more than he knows me.”
“Knows me,” cried one of the ravens the maester had left behind. It flapped its big black wings against the bars of its cage. “Knows,” it cried again.
Stannis turned. “Stop that noise.”<…>
“Mors took the green boys and Hother took the greybeards. All the real men went with the Greatjon and died at the Red Wedding. Is that what you wanted to know, Your Grace?”
“Not long,” Theon agreed. “Not long at all.“
“Not long,” cried the raven from its cage. The king gave the bird an irritated look.<…>
“We hold the ground, and that I mean to turn to our advantage.”
“The ground?” said Theon. “What ground? Here? This misbegotten tower? This wretched little village? You have no high ground here, no walls to hide beyond, no natural defenses.”
“Yet.”
“Yet,” both ravens screamed in unison. Then one quorked, and the other muttered, “Tree, tree, tree.”
<…>
She has to understand. She is my sister. He never wanted to do any harm to Bran or Rickon. Reek made him kill those boys, not him Reek but the other one. “I am no kinslayer,” he insisted. He told her how he bedded down with Ramsay’s bitches, warned her that Winterfell was full of ghosts. “The swords were gone. Four, I think, or five. I don’t recall. The stone kings are angry.” He was shaking by then, trembling like an autumn leaf. “The heart tree knew my name. The old gods. Theon, I heard them whisper. There was no wind but the leaves were moving. Theon, they said. My name is Theon.” It was good to say the name. The more he said it, the less like he was to forget.
<…>
The memory left Theon writhing in his chains. “Let me down”, he pleaded. “Just for a little while, then you can hang me up again.” Stannis Baratheon looked up at him, but did not answer.
“Tree”, a raven cried. “Tree, tree, tree.”Then the other bird said, “Theon”, clear as day, as Asha came striding through the door.
<…>
He waved Asha to her feet. “You may rise.”
She stood. “The Braavosi ransomed my seven of my men from Lady Glover. I would gladly pay a ransom for my brother.”
“There is not enough gold on all your Iron Islands. Your brother’s hands are soaked with blood. Farring is urging me to give him to R’hllor.”
“Clayton Suggs as well, I do not doubt.”
“Him, Corliss Penny, all the rest. Even Ser Richard here, who only loves the Lord of Light when it suits his purposes.”
“The red god’s choir only knows a single song.”
“So long as the song is pleasing in god’s ears, let them sing. Lord Bolton’s men will be here sooner than we would wish. Only Mors Umber stands between us, and your brother tells me his levies are made up entirely of green boys. Men like to know their god is with them when they go to battle.”
“Not all your men worship the same god.”
“I am aware of this. I am not the fool my brother was.”
“Theon is my mother’s last surviving son. When his brothers died, it shattered her. His death will crush what remains of her… but I have not come to beg you for his life.”
“Wise. I am sorry for your mother, but I do not spare the lives of turncloaks. This one, especially. He slew two sons of Eddard Stark. Every northman in my service would abandon me if I showed him any clemency. Your brother must die.”
“Then do the deed yourself, Your Grace.” The chill in Asha’s voice made Theon shiver in his chains. “Take him out across the lake to the islet where the weirwood grows, and strike his head off with that sorcerous sword you bear. That is how Eddard Stark would have done it. Theon slew Lord Eddard’s sons. Give him to Lord Eddard’s gods. The old gods of the north. Give him to the tree.”
And suddenly there came a wild thumping, as the maester’s ravens hopped and flapped inside their cages, their black feathers flying as they beat against the bars with loud and raucous caws. “The tree,” one squawked, “the tree, the tree,” whilst the second screamed only, “Theon, Theon, Theon.”
Theon Greyjoy smiled. They know my name, he thought.
I think Bloodraven and Bran are controlling the ravens, I think they do want Stannis to bring Theon before the weirwood but not to have him executed as a sacrifice. Bran has important information for Stannis. Not only that he and Rickon are alive, but about Winterfell as well. Bran knows the secret ways of Winterfell better than anyone.
AGoT, chapter 8, Bran II:
When he got out from under it and scrambled up near the sky, Bran could see all of Winterfell in a glance. He liked the way it looked, spread out beneath him, only birds wheeling over his head while all the life of the castle went on below. Bran could perch for hours among the shapeless, rain-worn gargoyles that brooded over the First Keep, watching it all: the men drilling with wood and steel in the yard, the cooks tending their vegetables in the glass garden, restless dogs running back and forth in the kennels, the silence of the godswood, the girls gossiping beside the washing well. It made him feel like he was lord of the castle, in a way even Robb would never know.
It taught him Winterfell’s secrets too. The builders had not even leveled the earth; there were hills and valleys behind the walls of Winterfell. There was a covered bridge that went from the fourth floor of the bell tower across to the second floor of the rookery. Bran knew about that. And he knew you could get inside the inner wall by the south gate, climb three floors and run all the way around Winterfell through a narrow tunnel in the stone, and then come out on ground level at the north gate, with a hundred feet of wall looming over you. Even Maester Luwin didn’t know that, Bran was convinced.
I think Bran might skinchange into Theon when he’s brought before the weirwood. And I think Theon, who is ready to die, will be a willing vessel for Bran to communicate with Stannis (and the northners). Here are some bits that foreshadow this. We are told dogs are the easiest animals to skinchange into.
ADwD, Prologue
Dogs were the easiest beasts to bond with; they lived so close to men that they were almost human. Slipping into a dog’s skin was like putting on an old boot, its leather softened by wear. As a boot was shaped to accept a foot, a dog was shaped to accept a collar, even a collar no human eye could see. Wolves were harder.
And Theon is presented to us, time and again, as a dog. This point is driven home throughout A Dance with Dragons.
ADwD, Reek I
Reek. My name is Reek, it rhymes with bleak. He had to remember that. Serve and obey and remember who you are, and no more harm will come to you. He promised, his lordship promised. Even if he had wanted to resist, he did not have the strength. It had been scourged from him, starved from him, flayed from him. When Little Walder pulled him up and Big Walder waved the torch at him to herd him from the cell, he went along as docile as a dog. If he’d had a tail, he would have tucked it down between his legs.
<…>
The crookback lord looked again and gave a sudden snort. “Him? Can it be? Stark’s ward. Smiling, always smiling.”
“He smiles less often now,” Lord Ramsay confessed. “I may have broken some of his pretty white teeth.”
“You would have done better to slit his throat,” said the lord in mail. “A dog who turns against his master is fit for naught but skinning.”
ADwD, Reek II
“Reek,” he said. “Your Reek.”
“Do this little thing for me, and you can be my dog and eat meat every day,” Lord Ramsay promised.
<…>
Lord Ramsay laughed. “You’re not a man, Reek. You’re just my creature. You’ll have your wine, though. Walder, see to it. And fear not, I won’t return you to the dungeons, you have my word as a Bolton. We’ll make a dog of you instead. Meat every day, and I’ll even leave you teeth enough to eat it. You can sleep beside my girls. Ben, do you have a collar for him?”
“I’ll have one made, m’lord,” said old Ben Bones.
The old man did better than that. That night, besides the collar, there was a ragged blanket too, and half a chicken. Reek had to fight the dogs for the meat, but it was the best meal he’d had since Winterfell.
<…>
Farther back came the baggage train—lumbering wayns laden with provisions and loot taken in the war, and carts crowded with wounded men and cripples. And at the rear, more Freys. At least a thousand, maybe more: bowmen, spearmen, peasants armed with scythes and sharpened sticks, freeriders and mounted archers, and another hundred knights to stiffen them. Collared and chained and back in rags again, Reek followed with the other dogs at Lord Ramsay’s heels when his lordship strode forth to greet his father.
ADwD, Reek III
The dogs were on him before he could puzzle out which, drawn to his scent. The dogs were fond of Reek; he slept with them oft as not, and sometimes Ben Bones let him share their supper.
<…>
“An invitation will accomplish the same thing. Power tastes best when sweetened by courtesy. You had best learn that if you ever hope to rule.” The Lord of the Dreadfort glanced at Reek. “Oh, and unchain your pet. I am taking him.”
ADwD, A Ghost in Winterfell
The Bastard’s Boys gathered beneath a wall sconce where a torch was flaming smokily. Luton and Skinner were throwing dice. Grunt had a woman in his lap, a breast in his hand. Damon Dance-for-Me sat greasing up his whip. “Reek,” he called. He tapped the whip against his calf as a man might do to summon his dog. “You are starting to stink again, Reek.”
There is an awful lot of emphasis on Theon becoming a dog; we know Bran can skinchange into Hodor and use the weirnet; we know Theon is broken and guilt-ridden, possibly willing to do anything he can to atone to his betrayal; and he’s very likely going to be brought before a weirwood.
The Heart Tree 