My lady, you ought cover your head,” Ser
Rodrik told her as their horses plodded north. “You will take
a chill.”
“It is only water, Ser Rodrik,” Catelyn replied. Her
hair hung wet and heavy, a loose strand stuck to her forehead, and
she could imagine how ragged and wild she must look, but for once
she did not care. The southern rain was soft and warm. Catelyn
liked the feel of it on her face, gentle as a mother’s
kisses. It took her back to her childhood, to long grey days at
Riverrun. She remembered the godswood, drooping branches heavy with
moisture, and the sound of her brother’s laughter as he
chased her through piles of damp leaves. She remembered making mud
pies with Lysa, the weight of them, the mud slick and brown between
her fingers. They had served them to Littlefinger, giggling, and
he’d eaten so much mud he was sick for a week. How young they
all had been.
Catelyn had almost forgotten. In the north, the rain fell cold
and hard, and sometimes at night it turned to ice. It was as likely
to kill a crop as nurture it, and it sent grown men running for the
nearest shelter. That was no rain for little girls to play in.
“I am soaked through,” Ser Rodrik complained.
“Even my bones are wet.” The woods pressed close around
them, and the steady pattering of rain on leaves was accompanied by
the small sucking sounds their horses made as their hooves pulled
free of the mud. “We will want a fire tonight, my lady, and a
hot meal would serve us both.”
“There is an inn at the crossroads up ahead,”
Catelyn told him. She had slept many a night there in her youth,
traveling with her father. Lord Hoster Tully had been a restless
man in his prime, always riding somewhere. She still remembered the
innkeep, a fat woman named Masha Heddle who chewed sourleaf night
and day and seemed to have an endless supply of smiles and sweet
cakes for the children. The sweet cakes had been soaked with honey,
rich and heavy on the tongue, but how Catelyn had dreaded those
smiles. The sourleaf had stained Masha’s teeth a dark red,
and made her smile a bloody horror.
“An inn,” Ser Rodrik repeated wistfully. “If
only . . . but we dare not risk it. If we wish to remain unknown, I
think it best we seek out some small holdfast . . . ” He broke
off as they heard sounds up the road; splashing water, the clink of
mail, a horse’s whinny. “Riders,” he warned, his
hand dropping to the hilt of his sword. Even on the kingsroad, it
never hurt to be wary.
They followed the sounds around a lazy bend of the road and saw
them; a column of armed men noisily fording a swollen stream.
Catelyn reined up to let them pass. The banner in the hand of the
foremost rider hung sodden and limp, but the guardsmen wore indigo
cloaks and on their shoulders flew the silver eagle of Seagard.
“Mallisters,” Ser Rodrik whispered to her, as if she
had not known. “My lady, best pull up your hood.”
Catelyn made no move. Lord Jason Mallister himself rode with
them, surrounded by his knights, his son Patrek by his side and
their squires close behind. They were riding for King’s
Landing and the Hand’s tourney, she knew. For the past week,
the travelers had been thick as flies upon the kingsroad; knights
and freeriders, singers with their harps and drums, heavy wagons
laden with hops or corn or casks of honey, traders and craftsmen
and whores, and all of them moving south.
She studied Lord Jason boldly. The last time she had seen him he
had been jesting with her uncle at her wedding feast; the
Mallisters stood bannermen to the Tullys, and his gifts had been
lavish. His brown hair was salted with white now, his face chiseled
gaunt by time, yet the years had not touched his pride. He rode
like a man who feared nothing. Catelyn envied him that; she had
come to fear so much. As the riders passed, Lord Jason nodded a
curt greeting, but it was only a high lord’s courtesy to
strangers chance met on the road. There was no recognition in those
fierce eyes, and his son did not even waste a look.
“He did not know you,” Ser Rodrik said after,
wondering.
“He saw a pair of mud-spattered travelers by the side of
the road, wet and tired. It would never occur to him to suspect
that one of them was the daughter of his liege lord. I think we
shall be safe enough at the inn, Ser Rodrik.”
It was near dark when they reached it, at the crossroads north
of the great confluence of the Trident. Masha Heddle was fatter and
greyer than Catelyn remembered, still chewing her sourleaf, but she
gave them only the most cursory of looks, with nary a hint of her
ghastly red smile. “Two rooms at the top of the stair,
that’s all there is,” she said, chewing all the while.
“They’re under the bell tower, you won’t be
missing meals, though there’s some thinks it too noisy.
Can’t be helped. We’re full up, or near as makes no
matter. It’s those rooms or the road.”
It was those rooms, low, dusty garrets at the top of a cramped
narrow staircase. “Leave your boots down here,” Masha
told them after she’d taken their coin. “The boy will
clean them. I won’t have you tracking mud up my stairs. Mind
the bell. Those who come late to meals don’t eat.”
There were no smiles, and no mention of sweet cakes.
When the supper bell rang, the sound was deafening. Catelyn had
changed into dry clothes. She sat by the window, watching rain run
down the pane. The glass was milky and full of bubbles, and a wet
dusk was falling outside. Catelyn could just make out the muddy
crossing where the two great roads met.
The crossroads gave her pause. If they turned west from here, it
was an easy ride down to Riverrun. Her father had always given her
wise counsel when she needed it most, and she yearned to talk to
him, to warn him of the gathering storm. If Winterfell needed to
brace for war, how much more so Riverrun, so much closer to
King’s Landing, with the power of Casterly Rock looming to
the west like a shadow. If only her father had been stronger, she
might have chanced it, but Hoster Tully had been bedridden these
past two years, and Catelyn was loath to tax him now.
The eastern road was wilder and more dangerous, climbing through
rocky foothills and thick forests into the Mountains of the Moon,
past high passes and deep chasms to the Vale of Arryn and the stony
Fingers beyond. Above the Vale, the Eyrie stood high and
impregnable, its towers reaching for the sky. There she would find
her sister . . . and, perhaps, some of the answers Ned sought.
Surely Lysa knew more than she had dared to put in her letter. She
might have the very proof that Ned needed to bring the Lannisters
to ruin, and if it came to war, they would need the Arryns and the
eastern lords who owed them service.
Yet the mountain road was perilous. Shadowcats prowled those
passes, rock slides were common, and the mountain clans were
lawless brigands, descending from the heights to rob and kill and
melting away like snow whenever the knights rode out from the Vale
in search of them. Even Jon Arryn, as great a lord as any the Eyrie
had ever known, had always traveled in strength when he crossed the
mountains. Catelyn’s only strength was one elderly knight,
armored in loyalty.
No, she thought, Riverrun and the Eyrie would have to wait. Her
path ran north to Winterfell, where her sons and her duty were
waiting for her. As soon as they were safely past the Neck, she
could declare herself to one of Ned’s bannermen, and send
riders racing ahead with orders to mount a watch on the
kingsroad.
The rain obscured the fields beyond the crossroads, but Catelyn
saw the land clear enough in her memory. The marketplace was just
across the way, and the village a mile farther on, half a hundred
white cottages surrounding a small stone sept. There would be more
now; the summer had been long and peaceful. North of here the
kingsroad ran along the Green Fork of the Trident, through fertile
valleys and green woodlands, past thriving towns and stout
holdfasts and the castles of the river lords.
Catelyn knew them all: the Blackwoods and the Brackens, ever
enemies, whose quarrels her father was obliged to settle; Lady
Whent, last of her line, who dwelt with her ghosts in the cavernous
vaults of Harrenhal; irascible Lord Frey, who had outlived seven
wives and filled his twin castles with children, grandchildren, and
great-grandchildren, and bastards and grandbastards as well. All of
them were bannermen to the Tullys, their swords sworn to the
service of Riverrun. Catelyn wondered if that would be enough, if
it came to war. Her father was the staunchest man who’d ever
lived, and she had no doubt that he would call his banners . . . but would the banners come? The Darrys and Rygers and Mootons had
sworn oaths to Riverrun as well, yet they had fought with Rhaegar
Targaryen on the Trident, while Lord Frey had arrived with his
levies well after the battle was over, leaving some doubt as to
which army he had planned to join (theirs, he had assured the
victors solemnly in the aftermath, but ever after her father had
called him the Late Lord Frey). It must not come to war, Catelyn
thought fervently. They must not let it.
Ser Rodrik came for her just as the bell ceased its clangor.
“We had best make haste if we hope to eat tonight, my
lady.”
“It might be safer if we were not knight and lady until we
pass the Neck,” she told him. “Common travelers attract less
notice. A father and daughter taken to the road on some family
business, say.”
“As you say, my lady,” Ser Rodrik agreed. It was
only when she laughed that he realized what he’d done.
“The old courtesies die hard, my—my daughter.” He tried
to tug on his missing whiskers, and sighed with exasperation.
Catelyn took his arm. “Come, Father,” she said.
“You’ll find that Masha Heddle sets a good table, I
think, but try not to praise her. You truly don’t want to see
her smile.”
The common room was long and drafty, with a row of huge wooden
kegs at one end and a fireplace at the other. A serving boy ran
back and forth with skewers of meat while Masha drew beer from the
kegs, chewing her sourleaf all the while.
The benches were crowded, townsfolk and farmers mingling freely
with all manner of travelers. The crossroads made for odd
companions; dyers with black and purple hands shared a bench with
rivermen reeking of fish, an ironsmith thick with muscle squeezed
in beside a wizened old septon, hard-bitten sellswords and soft
plump merchants swapped news like boon companions.
The company included more swords than Catelyn would have liked.
Three by the fire wore the red stallion badge of the Brackens, and
there was a large party in blue steel ringmail and capes of a
silvery grey. On their shoulder was another familiar sigil, the
twin towers of House Frey. She studied their faces, but they were
all too young to have known her. The senior among them would have
been no older than Bran when she went north.
Ser Rodrik found them an empty place on the bench near the
kitchen. Across the table a handsome youth was fingering a
woodharp. “Seven blessings to you, goodfolk,” he said
as they sat. An empty wine cup stood on the table before him.
“And to you, singer,” Catelyn returned. Ser Rodrik
called for bread and meat and beer in a tone that meant now. The
singer, a youth of some eighteen years, eyed them boldly and asked
where they were going, and from whence they had come, and what news
they had, letting the questions fly as quick as arrows and never
pausing for an answer. “We left King’s Landing a
fortnight ago,” Catelyn replied, answering the safest of his
questions.
“That’s where I’m bound,” the youth
said. As she had suspected, he was more interested in telling his
own story than in hearing theirs. Singers loved nothing half so
well as the sound of their own voices. “The Hand’s
tourney means rich lords with fat purses. The last time I came away
with more silver than I could carry . . . or would have, if I
hadn’t lost it all betting on the Kingslayer to win the
day.”
“The gods frown on the gambler,” Ser Rodrik said
sternly. He was of the north, and shared the Stark views on
tournaments.
“They frowned on me, for certain,” the singer said.
“Your cruel gods and the Knight of Flowers altogether did me
in.”
“No doubt that was a lesson for you,” Ser Rodrik
said.
“It was. This time my coin will champion Ser
Loras.”
Ser Rodrik tried to tug at whiskers that were not there, but
before he could frame a rebuke the serving boy came scurrying up.
He laid trenchers of bread before them and filled them with chunks
of browned meat off a skewer, dripping with hot juice. Another
skewer held tiny onions, fire peppers, and fat mushrooms. Ser
Rodrik set to lustily as the lad ran back to fetch them beer.
“My name is Marillion,” the singer said, plucking a
string on his woodharp. “Doubtless you’ve heard me play
somewhere?”
His manner made Catelyn smile. Few wandering singers ever
ventured as far north as Winterfell, but she knew his like from her
girlhood in Riverrun. “I fear not,” she told him.
He drew a plaintive chord from the woodharp. “That is your
loss,” he said. “Who was the finest singer you’ve
ever heard?”
“Alia of Braavos,” Ser Rodrik answered at once.
“Oh, I’m much better than that old stick,”
Marillion said. “If you have the silver for a song,
I’ll gladly show you.”
“I might have a copper or two, but I’d sooner toss
it down a well than pay for your howling,” Ser Rodrik
groused. His opinion of singers was well known; music was a lovely
thing for girls, but he could not comprehend why any healthy boy
would fill his hand with a harp when he might have had a sword.
“Your grandfather has a sour nature,” Marillion said
to Catelyn. “I meant to do you honor. An homage to your
beauty. In truth, I was made to sing for kings and high
lords.”
“Oh, I can see that,” Catelyn said. “Lord
Tully is fond of song, I hear. No doubt you’ve been to
Riverrun.”
“A hundred times,” the singer said airily.
“They keep a chamber for me, and the young lord is like a
brother.”
Catelyn smiled, wondering what Edmure would think of that.
Another singer had once bedded a girl her brother fancied; he had
hated the breed ever since. “And Winterfell?” she asked
him. “Have you traveled north?”
“Why would I?’ Marillion asked. “It’s
all blizzards and bearskins up there, and the Starks know no music
but the howling of wolves.” Distantly, she was aware of the door banging open at the far end
of the room.
“Innkeep,” a servant’s voice called out behind
her, “we have horses that want stabling, and my lord of
Lannister requires a room and a hot bath.”
“Oh, gods,” Ser Rodrik said before Catelyn reached
out to silence him, her fingers tightening hard around his
forearm.
Masha Heddle was bowing and smiling her hideous red smile.
“I’m sorry, m’lord, truly, we’re full up,
every room.”
There were four of them, Catelyn saw. An old man in the black of
the Night’s Watch, two servants . . . and him, standing there
small and bold as life. “My men will steep in your stable,
and as for myself, well, I do not require a large room, as you can
plainly see.” He flashed a mocking grin. “So long as
the fire’s warm and the straw reasonably free of fleas, I am
a happy man.”
Masha Heddle was beside herself. “M’lord,
there’s nothing, it’s the tourney, there’s no
help for it, oh . . . ”
Tyrion Lannister pulled a coin from his purse and flicked it up
over his head, caught it, tossed it again. Even across the room,
where Catelyn sat, the wink of gold was unmistakable.
A freerider in a faded blue cloak lurched to his feet.
“You’re welcome to my room, m’lord.”
“Now there’s a clever man,” Lannister said as
he sent the coin spinning across the room. The freerider snatched
it from the air. “And a nimble one to boot.” The dwarf
turned back to Masha Heddle. “You will be able to manage
food, I trust?”
“Anything you like, m’lord, anything at all,” the
innkeep promised. And may he choke on it, Catelyn thought, but it
was Bran she saw choking, drowning on his own blood.
Lannister glanced at the nearest tables. “My men will have
whatever you’re serving these people. Double portions,
we’ve had a long hard ride. I’ll take a roast
fowl—chicken, duck, pigeon, it makes no matter. And send up a
flagon of your best wine. Yoren, will you sup with me?”
“Aye, m’lord, I will,” the black brother replied.
The dwarf had not so much as glanced toward the far end of the
room, and Catelyn was thinking how grateful she was for the crowded
benches between them when suddenly Marillion bounded to his feet.
“My lord of Lannister!” he called out. “I would
be pleased to entertain you while you eat. Let me sing you the lay
of your father’s great victory at King’s
Landing!”
“Nothing would be more likely to ruin my supper,”
the dwarf said dryly. His mismatched eyes considered the singer
briefly, started to move away . . . and found Catelyn. He looked at
her for a moment, puzzled. She turned her face away, but too late.
The dwarf was smiling. “Lady Stark, what an unexpected
pleasure,” he said. “I was sorry to miss you at
Winterfell.”
Marillion gaped at her, confusion giving way to chagrin as
Catelyn rose slowly to her feet. She heard Ser Rodrik curse. If
only the man had lingered at the Wall, she thought, if only . . .
“Lady . . . Stark?” Masha Heddle said thickly.
“I was still Catelyn Tully the last time I bedded
here,” she told the innkeep. She could hear the muttering,
feel the eyes upon her. Catelyn glanced around the room, at the
faces of the knights and sworn swords, and took a deep breath to
slow the frantic beating of her heart. Did she dare take the risk?
There was no time to think it through, only the moment and the
sound of her own voice ringing in her ears. “You in the
corner,” she said to an older man she had not noticed until
now. “Is that the black bat of Harrenhal I see embroidered on
your surcoat, ser?”
The man got to his feet. “It is, my lady.”
“And is Lady Whent a true and honest friend to my father,
Lord Hoster Tully of Riverrun?”
“She is,” the man replied stoutly.
Ser Rodrik rose quietly and loosened his sword in its scabbard.
The dwarf was blinking at them, blank-faced, with puzzlement in his
mismatched eyes.
“The red stallion was ever a welcome sight in
Riverrun,” she said to the trio by the fire. “My father
counts Jonos Bracken among his oldest and most loyal
bannermen.”
The three men-at-arms exchanged uncertain looks. “Our lord
is honored by his trust,” one of them said hesitantly.
“I envy your father all these fine friends,”
Lannister quipped, “but I do not quite see the purpose of
this, Lady Stark.”
She ignored him, turning to the large party in blue and grey.
They were the heart of the matter; there were more than twenty of
them. “I know your sigil as well: the twin towers of Frey.
How fares your good lord, sers?”
Their captain rose. “Lord Walder is well, my lady. He
plans to take a new wife on his ninetieth name day, and has asked
your lord father to honor the wedding with his presence.”
Tyrion Lannister sniggered. That was when Catelyn knew he was
hers. “This man came a guest into my house, and there
conspired to murder my son, a boy of seven,” she proclaimed
to the room at large, pointing. Ser Rodrik moved to her side, his sword in hand.
“In the name of King Robert and the good lords you serve, I
call upon you to seize him and help me return him to Winterfell to
await the king’s justice.”
She did not know what was more satisfying: the sound of a dozen
swords drawn as one or the look on Tyrion Lannister’s
face.
My lady, you ought cover your head,” Ser
Rodrik told her as their horses plodded north. “You will take
a chill.”
“It is only water, Ser Rodrik,” Catelyn replied. Her
hair hung wet and heavy, a loose strand stuck to her forehead, and
she could imagine how ragged and wild she must look, but for once
she did not care. The southern rain was soft and warm. Catelyn
liked the feel of it on her face, gentle as a mother’s
kisses. It took her back to her childhood, to long grey days at
Riverrun. She remembered the godswood, drooping branches heavy with
moisture, and the sound of her brother’s laughter as he
chased her through piles of damp leaves. She remembered making mud
pies with Lysa, the weight of them, the mud slick and brown between
her fingers. They had served them to Littlefinger, giggling, and
he’d eaten so much mud he was sick for a week. How young they
all had been.
Catelyn had almost forgotten. In the north, the rain fell cold
and hard, and sometimes at night it turned to ice. It was as likely
to kill a crop as nurture it, and it sent grown men running for the
nearest shelter. That was no rain for little girls to play in.
“I am soaked through,” Ser Rodrik complained.
“Even my bones are wet.” The woods pressed close around
them, and the steady pattering of rain on leaves was accompanied by
the small sucking sounds their horses made as their hooves pulled
free of the mud. “We will want a fire tonight, my lady, and a
hot meal would serve us both.”
“There is an inn at the crossroads up ahead,”
Catelyn told him. She had slept many a night there in her youth,
traveling with her father. Lord Hoster Tully had been a restless
man in his prime, always riding somewhere. She still remembered the
innkeep, a fat woman named Masha Heddle who chewed sourleaf night
and day and seemed to have an endless supply of smiles and sweet
cakes for the children. The sweet cakes had been soaked with honey,
rich and heavy on the tongue, but how Catelyn had dreaded those
smiles. The sourleaf had stained Masha’s teeth a dark red,
and made her smile a bloody horror.
“An inn,” Ser Rodrik repeated wistfully. “If
only . . . but we dare not risk it. If we wish to remain unknown, I
think it best we seek out some small holdfast . . . ” He broke
off as they heard sounds up the road; splashing water, the clink of
mail, a horse’s whinny. “Riders,” he warned, his
hand dropping to the hilt of his sword. Even on the kingsroad, it
never hurt to be wary.
They followed the sounds around a lazy bend of the road and saw
them; a column of armed men noisily fording a swollen stream.
Catelyn reined up to let them pass. The banner in the hand of the
foremost rider hung sodden and limp, but the guardsmen wore indigo
cloaks and on their shoulders flew the silver eagle of Seagard.
“Mallisters,” Ser Rodrik whispered to her, as if she
had not known. “My lady, best pull up your hood.”
Catelyn made no move. Lord Jason Mallister himself rode with
them, surrounded by his knights, his son Patrek by his side and
their squires close behind. They were riding for King’s
Landing and the Hand’s tourney, she knew. For the past week,
the travelers had been thick as flies upon the kingsroad; knights
and freeriders, singers with their harps and drums, heavy wagons
laden with hops or corn or casks of honey, traders and craftsmen
and whores, and all of them moving south.
She studied Lord Jason boldly. The last time she had seen him he
had been jesting with her uncle at her wedding feast; the
Mallisters stood bannermen to the Tullys, and his gifts had been
lavish. His brown hair was salted with white now, his face chiseled
gaunt by time, yet the years had not touched his pride. He rode
like a man who feared nothing. Catelyn envied him that; she had
come to fear so much. As the riders passed, Lord Jason nodded a
curt greeting, but it was only a high lord’s courtesy to
strangers chance met on the road. There was no recognition in those
fierce eyes, and his son did not even waste a look.
“He did not know you,” Ser Rodrik said after,
wondering.
“He saw a pair of mud-spattered travelers by the side of
the road, wet and tired. It would never occur to him to suspect
that one of them was the daughter of his liege lord. I think we
shall be safe enough at the inn, Ser Rodrik.”
It was near dark when they reached it, at the crossroads north
of the great confluence of the Trident. Masha Heddle was fatter and
greyer than Catelyn remembered, still chewing her sourleaf, but she
gave them only the most cursory of looks, with nary a hint of her
ghastly red smile. “Two rooms at the top of the stair,
that’s all there is,” she said, chewing all the while.
“They’re under the bell tower, you won’t be
missing meals, though there’s some thinks it too noisy.
Can’t be helped. We’re full up, or near as makes no
matter. It’s those rooms or the road.”
It was those rooms, low, dusty garrets at the top of a cramped
narrow staircase. “Leave your boots down here,” Masha
told them after she’d taken their coin. “The boy will
clean them. I won’t have you tracking mud up my stairs. Mind
the bell. Those who come late to meals don’t eat.”
There were no smiles, and no mention of sweet cakes.
When the supper bell rang, the sound was deafening. Catelyn had
changed into dry clothes. She sat by the window, watching rain run
down the pane. The glass was milky and full of bubbles, and a wet
dusk was falling outside. Catelyn could just make out the muddy
crossing where the two great roads met.
The crossroads gave her pause. If they turned west from here, it
was an easy ride down to Riverrun. Her father had always given her
wise counsel when she needed it most, and she yearned to talk to
him, to warn him of the gathering storm. If Winterfell needed to
brace for war, how much more so Riverrun, so much closer to
King’s Landing, with the power of Casterly Rock looming to
the west like a shadow. If only her father had been stronger, she
might have chanced it, but Hoster Tully had been bedridden these
past two years, and Catelyn was loath to tax him now.
The eastern road was wilder and more dangerous, climbing through
rocky foothills and thick forests into the Mountains of the Moon,
past high passes and deep chasms to the Vale of Arryn and the stony
Fingers beyond. Above the Vale, the Eyrie stood high and
impregnable, its towers reaching for the sky. There she would find
her sister . . . and, perhaps, some of the answers Ned sought.
Surely Lysa knew more than she had dared to put in her letter. She
might have the very proof that Ned needed to bring the Lannisters
to ruin, and if it came to war, they would need the Arryns and the
eastern lords who owed them service.
Yet the mountain road was perilous. Shadowcats prowled those
passes, rock slides were common, and the mountain clans were
lawless brigands, descending from the heights to rob and kill and
melting away like snow whenever the knights rode out from the Vale
in search of them. Even Jon Arryn, as great a lord as any the Eyrie
had ever known, had always traveled in strength when he crossed the
mountains. Catelyn’s only strength was one elderly knight,
armored in loyalty.
No, she thought, Riverrun and the Eyrie would have to wait. Her
path ran north to Winterfell, where her sons and her duty were
waiting for her. As soon as they were safely past the Neck, she
could declare herself to one of Ned’s bannermen, and send
riders racing ahead with orders to mount a watch on the
kingsroad.
The rain obscured the fields beyond the crossroads, but Catelyn
saw the land clear enough in her memory. The marketplace was just
across the way, and the village a mile farther on, half a hundred
white cottages surrounding a small stone sept. There would be more
now; the summer had been long and peaceful. North of here the
kingsroad ran along the Green Fork of the Trident, through fertile
valleys and green woodlands, past thriving towns and stout
holdfasts and the castles of the river lords.
Catelyn knew them all: the Blackwoods and the Brackens, ever
enemies, whose quarrels her father was obliged to settle; Lady
Whent, last of her line, who dwelt with her ghosts in the cavernous
vaults of Harrenhal; irascible Lord Frey, who had outlived seven
wives and filled his twin castles with children, grandchildren, and
great-grandchildren, and bastards and grandbastards as well. All of
them were bannermen to the Tullys, their swords sworn to the
service of Riverrun. Catelyn wondered if that would be enough, if
it came to war. Her father was the staunchest man who’d ever
lived, and she had no doubt that he would call his banners . . . but would the banners come? The Darrys and Rygers and Mootons had
sworn oaths to Riverrun as well, yet they had fought with Rhaegar
Targaryen on the Trident, while Lord Frey had arrived with his
levies well after the battle was over, leaving some doubt as to
which army he had planned to join (theirs, he had assured the
victors solemnly in the aftermath, but ever after her father had
called him the Late Lord Frey). It must not come to war, Catelyn
thought fervently. They must not let it.
Ser Rodrik came for her just as the bell ceased its clangor.
“We had best make haste if we hope to eat tonight, my
lady.”
“It might be safer if we were not knight and lady until we
pass the Neck,” she told him. “Common travelers attract less
notice. A father and daughter taken to the road on some family
business, say.”
“As you say, my lady,” Ser Rodrik agreed. It was
only when she laughed that he realized what he’d done.
“The old courtesies die hard, my—my daughter.” He tried
to tug on his missing whiskers, and sighed with exasperation.
Catelyn took his arm. “Come, Father,” she said.
“You’ll find that Masha Heddle sets a good table, I
think, but try not to praise her. You truly don’t want to see
her smile.”
The common room was long and drafty, with a row of huge wooden
kegs at one end and a fireplace at the other. A serving boy ran
back and forth with skewers of meat while Masha drew beer from the
kegs, chewing her sourleaf all the while.
The benches were crowded, townsfolk and farmers mingling freely
with all manner of travelers. The crossroads made for odd
companions; dyers with black and purple hands shared a bench with
rivermen reeking of fish, an ironsmith thick with muscle squeezed
in beside a wizened old septon, hard-bitten sellswords and soft
plump merchants swapped news like boon companions.
The company included more swords than Catelyn would have liked.
Three by the fire wore the red stallion badge of the Brackens, and
there was a large party in blue steel ringmail and capes of a
silvery grey. On their shoulder was another familiar sigil, the
twin towers of House Frey. She studied their faces, but they were
all too young to have known her. The senior among them would have
been no older than Bran when she went north.
Ser Rodrik found them an empty place on the bench near the
kitchen. Across the table a handsome youth was fingering a
woodharp. “Seven blessings to you, goodfolk,” he said
as they sat. An empty wine cup stood on the table before him.
“And to you, singer,” Catelyn returned. Ser Rodrik
called for bread and meat and beer in a tone that meant now. The
singer, a youth of some eighteen years, eyed them boldly and asked
where they were going, and from whence they had come, and what news
they had, letting the questions fly as quick as arrows and never
pausing for an answer. “We left King’s Landing a
fortnight ago,” Catelyn replied, answering the safest of his
questions.
“That’s where I’m bound,” the youth
said. As she had suspected, he was more interested in telling his
own story than in hearing theirs. Singers loved nothing half so
well as the sound of their own voices. “The Hand’s
tourney means rich lords with fat purses. The last time I came away
with more silver than I could carry . . . or would have, if I
hadn’t lost it all betting on the Kingslayer to win the
day.”
“The gods frown on the gambler,” Ser Rodrik said
sternly. He was of the north, and shared the Stark views on
tournaments.
“They frowned on me, for certain,” the singer said.
“Your cruel gods and the Knight of Flowers altogether did me
in.”
“No doubt that was a lesson for you,” Ser Rodrik
said.
“It was. This time my coin will champion Ser
Loras.”
Ser Rodrik tried to tug at whiskers that were not there, but
before he could frame a rebuke the serving boy came scurrying up.
He laid trenchers of bread before them and filled them with chunks
of browned meat off a skewer, dripping with hot juice. Another
skewer held tiny onions, fire peppers, and fat mushrooms. Ser
Rodrik set to lustily as the lad ran back to fetch them beer.
“My name is Marillion,” the singer said, plucking a
string on his woodharp. “Doubtless you’ve heard me play
somewhere?”
His manner made Catelyn smile. Few wandering singers ever
ventured as far north as Winterfell, but she knew his like from her
girlhood in Riverrun. “I fear not,” she told him.
He drew a plaintive chord from the woodharp. “That is your
loss,” he said. “Who was the finest singer you’ve
ever heard?”
“Alia of Braavos,” Ser Rodrik answered at once.
“Oh, I’m much better than that old stick,”
Marillion said. “If you have the silver for a song,
I’ll gladly show you.”
“I might have a copper or two, but I’d sooner toss
it down a well than pay for your howling,” Ser Rodrik
groused. His opinion of singers was well known; music was a lovely
thing for girls, but he could not comprehend why any healthy boy
would fill his hand with a harp when he might have had a sword.
“Your grandfather has a sour nature,” Marillion said
to Catelyn. “I meant to do you honor. An homage to your
beauty. In truth, I was made to sing for kings and high
lords.”
“Oh, I can see that,” Catelyn said. “Lord
Tully is fond of song, I hear. No doubt you’ve been to
Riverrun.”
“A hundred times,” the singer said airily.
“They keep a chamber for me, and the young lord is like a
brother.”
Catelyn smiled, wondering what Edmure would think of that.
Another singer had once bedded a girl her brother fancied; he had
hated the breed ever since. “And Winterfell?” she asked
him. “Have you traveled north?”
“Why would I?’ Marillion asked. “It’s
all blizzards and bearskins up there, and the Starks know no music
but the howling of wolves.” Distantly, she was aware of the door banging open at the far end
of the room.
“Innkeep,” a servant’s voice called out behind
her, “we have horses that want stabling, and my lord of
Lannister requires a room and a hot bath.”
“Oh, gods,” Ser Rodrik said before Catelyn reached
out to silence him, her fingers tightening hard around his
forearm.
Masha Heddle was bowing and smiling her hideous red smile.
“I’m sorry, m’lord, truly, we’re full up,
every room.”
There were four of them, Catelyn saw. An old man in the black of
the Night’s Watch, two servants . . . and him, standing there
small and bold as life. “My men will steep in your stable,
and as for myself, well, I do not require a large room, as you can
plainly see.” He flashed a mocking grin. “So long as
the fire’s warm and the straw reasonably free of fleas, I am
a happy man.”
Masha Heddle was beside herself. “M’lord,
there’s nothing, it’s the tourney, there’s no
help for it, oh . . . ”
Tyrion Lannister pulled a coin from his purse and flicked it up
over his head, caught it, tossed it again. Even across the room,
where Catelyn sat, the wink of gold was unmistakable.
A freerider in a faded blue cloak lurched to his feet.
“You’re welcome to my room, m’lord.”
“Now there’s a clever man,” Lannister said as
he sent the coin spinning across the room. The freerider snatched
it from the air. “And a nimble one to boot.” The dwarf
turned back to Masha Heddle. “You will be able to manage
food, I trust?”
“Anything you like, m’lord, anything at all,” the
innkeep promised. And may he choke on it, Catelyn thought, but it
was Bran she saw choking, drowning on his own blood.
Lannister glanced at the nearest tables. “My men will have
whatever you’re serving these people. Double portions,
we’ve had a long hard ride. I’ll take a roast
fowl—chicken, duck, pigeon, it makes no matter. And send up a
flagon of your best wine. Yoren, will you sup with me?”
“Aye, m’lord, I will,” the black brother replied.
The dwarf had not so much as glanced toward the far end of the
room, and Catelyn was thinking how grateful she was for the crowded
benches between them when suddenly Marillion bounded to his feet.
“My lord of Lannister!” he called out. “I would
be pleased to entertain you while you eat. Let me sing you the lay
of your father’s great victory at King’s
Landing!”
“Nothing would be more likely to ruin my supper,”
the dwarf said dryly. His mismatched eyes considered the singer
briefly, started to move away . . . and found Catelyn. He looked at
her for a moment, puzzled. She turned her face away, but too late.
The dwarf was smiling. “Lady Stark, what an unexpected
pleasure,” he said. “I was sorry to miss you at
Winterfell.”
Marillion gaped at her, confusion giving way to chagrin as
Catelyn rose slowly to her feet. She heard Ser Rodrik curse. If
only the man had lingered at the Wall, she thought, if only . . .
“Lady . . . Stark?” Masha Heddle said thickly.
“I was still Catelyn Tully the last time I bedded
here,” she told the innkeep. She could hear the muttering,
feel the eyes upon her. Catelyn glanced around the room, at the
faces of the knights and sworn swords, and took a deep breath to
slow the frantic beating of her heart. Did she dare take the risk?
There was no time to think it through, only the moment and the
sound of her own voice ringing in her ears. “You in the
corner,” she said to an older man she had not noticed until
now. “Is that the black bat of Harrenhal I see embroidered on
your surcoat, ser?”
The man got to his feet. “It is, my lady.”
“And is Lady Whent a true and honest friend to my father,
Lord Hoster Tully of Riverrun?”
“She is,” the man replied stoutly.
Ser Rodrik rose quietly and loosened his sword in its scabbard.
The dwarf was blinking at them, blank-faced, with puzzlement in his
mismatched eyes.
“The red stallion was ever a welcome sight in
Riverrun,” she said to the trio by the fire. “My father
counts Jonos Bracken among his oldest and most loyal
bannermen.”
The three men-at-arms exchanged uncertain looks. “Our lord
is honored by his trust,” one of them said hesitantly.
“I envy your father all these fine friends,”
Lannister quipped, “but I do not quite see the purpose of
this, Lady Stark.”
She ignored him, turning to the large party in blue and grey.
They were the heart of the matter; there were more than twenty of
them. “I know your sigil as well: the twin towers of Frey.
How fares your good lord, sers?”
Their captain rose. “Lord Walder is well, my lady. He
plans to take a new wife on his ninetieth name day, and has asked
your lord father to honor the wedding with his presence.”
Tyrion Lannister sniggered. That was when Catelyn knew he was
hers. “This man came a guest into my house, and there
conspired to murder my son, a boy of seven,” she proclaimed
to the room at large, pointing. Ser Rodrik moved to her side, his sword in hand.
“In the name of King Robert and the good lords you serve, I
call upon you to seize him and help me return him to Winterfell to
await the king’s justice.”
She did not know what was more satisfying: the sound of a dozen
swords drawn as one or the look on Tyrion Lannister’s
face.