Three men are riding through a dark wood, two common soldiers, and a noble lord.

“My mother told me that dead men sing no songs”, puts in the younger of the soldiers.

“My wet nurse said the same thing”, replies the lord. “Never believe anything you hear at a woman’s tit.”

On reading this, two images jumped up and jostled in my head. One was of a suckling infant with the intelligence of an adult, listening slyly at his mother’s or nurse’s breast, taking mental notes for future reference.  The other was of a recumbent adult - a medieval soldier clad in chain mail and helmet, say - lifting his bearded, dirt-streaked face from a woman's teat, to disagree scornfully with the good lady’s opinions on dead men and the songs they sing.  

This conversation transpires on the first page of the Prologue to Book 1 – “A Song of Ice and Fire” -  in George R.R. Martin’s acclaimed series of novels, “A Game of Thrones”.  It's not clear to me what idea the author intended to convey in this text. But probably it was not these two mildly amusing images that he did in fact convey, at least to me.