The Karstarks came in on a cold windy morning,
bringing three hundred horsemen and near two thousand foot from
their castle at Karhold. The steel points of their pikes winked in
the pale sunlight as the column approached. A man went before them,
pounding out a slow, deep-throated marching rhythm on a drum that
was bigger than he was, boom, boom, boom.
Bran watched them come from a guard turret atop the outer wall,
peering through Maester Luwin’s bronze far-eye while perched
on Hodor’s shoulders. Lord Rickard himself led them, his sons
Harrion and Eddard and Torrhen riding beside him beneath
night-black banners emblazoned with the white sunburst of their
House. Old Nan said they had Stark blood in them, going back
hundreds of years, but they did not look like Starks to Bran. They
were big men, and fierce, faces covered with thick beards, hair
worn loose past the shoulders. Their cloaks were made of skins, the
pelts of bear and seal and wolf.
They were the last, he knew. The other lords were already here,
with their hosts. Bran yearned to ride out among them, to see the
winter houses full to bursting, the jostling crowds in the market
square every morning, the streets rutted and torn by wheel and
hoof. But Robb had forbidden him to leave the castle. “We
have no men to spare to guard you,” his brother had
explained.
“I’ll take Summer,” Bran argued.
“Don’t act the boy with me, Bran,” Robb said.
“You know better than that. Only two days ago one of Lord
Bolton’s men knifed one of Lord Cerwyn’s at the Smoking
Log. Our lady mother would skin me for a pelt if I let you put
yourself at risk.” He was using the voice of Robb the Lord
when he said it; Bran knew that meant there was no appeal.
It was because of what had happened in the wolfswood, he knew.
The memory still gave him bad dreams. He had been as helpless as a
baby, no more able to defend himself than Rickon would have been.
Less, even . . . Rickon would have kicked them, at the least. It
shamed him. He was only a few years younger than Robb; if his
brother was almost a man grown, so was he. He should have been able
to protect himself.
A year ago, before, he would have visited the town even if it
meant climbing over the walls by himself. In those days he could
run down stairs, get on and off his pony by himself, and wield a
wooden sword good enough to knock Prince Tommen in the dirt. Now he
could only watch, peering out through Maester Luwin’s lens
tube. The maester had taught him all the banners: the mailed fist
of the Glovers, silver on scarlet; Lady Mormont’s black bear;
the hideous flayed man that went before Roose Bolton of the
Dreadfort; a bull moose for the Hornwoods; a battle-axe for the
Cerwyns; three sentinel trees for the Tallharts; and the fearsome
sigil of House Umber, a roaring giant in shattered chains.
And soon enough he learned the faces too, when the lords and
their sons and knights retainer came to Winterfell to feast. Even
the Great Hall was not large enough to seat all of them at once, so
Robb hosted each of the principal bannermen in turn. Bran was
always given the place of honor at his brother’s right hand.
Some of the lords bannermen gave him queer hard stares as he sat
there, as if they wondered by what right a green boy should be
placed above them, and him a cripple too.
“How many is it now?” Bran asked Maester Luwin as
Lord Karstark and his sons rode through the gates in the outer
wall.
“Twelve thousand men, or near enough as makes no
matter.”
“How many knights?”
“Few enough,” the maester said with a touch of
impatience. “To be a knight, you must stand your vigil in a
sept, and be anointed with the seven oils to consecrate your vows.
In the north, only a few of the great houses worship the Seven. The
rest honor the old gods, and name no knights . . . but those lords
and their sons and sworn swords are no less fierce or loyal or
honorable. A man’s worth is not marked by a ser before his
name. As I have told you a hundred times before.”
“Still,” said Bran, “how many
knights?”
Maester Luwin sighed. “Three hundred, perhaps four . . . among three thousand armored lances who are not knights.”
“Lord Karstark is the last,” Bran said thoughtfully.
“Robb will feast him tonight.”
“No doubt he will.”
“How long before . . . before they go?”
“He must march soon, or not at all,” Maester Luwin
said. “The winter town is full to bursting, and this army of
his will eat the countryside clean if it camps here much longer.
Others are waiting to join him all along the kingsroad, barrow
knights and crannogmen and the Lords Manderly and Flint. The
fighting has begun in the riverlands, and your brother has many
leagues to go.”
“I know.” Bran felt as miserable as he sounded. He
handed the bronze tube back to the maester, and noticed how thin
Luwin’s hair had grown on top. He could see the pink of scalp
showing through. It felt queer to look down on him this way, when
he’d spent his whole life looking up at him, but when you sat
on Hodor’s back you looked down on everyone. “I
don’t want to watch anymore. Hodor, take me back to the
keep.”
“Hodor,” said Hodor.
Maester Luwin tucked the tube up his sleeve. “Bran, your
lord brother will not have time to see you now. He must greet Lord
Karstark and his sons and make them welcome.”
“I won’t trouble Robb. I want to visit the
godswood.” He put his hand on Hodor’s shoulder.
“Hodor.”
A series of chisel-cut handholds made a ladder in the granite of
the tower’s inner wall. Hodor hummed tunelessly as he went
down hand under hand, Bran bouncing against his back in the wicker
seat that Maester Luwin had fashioned for him. Luwin had gotten the
idea from the baskets the women used to carry firewood on their
backs; after that it had been a simple matter of cutting legholes
and attaching some new straps to spread Bran’s weight more
evenly. It was not as good as riding Dancer, but there were places
Dancer could not go, and this did not shame Bran the way it did
when Hodor carried him in his arms like a baby. Hodor seemed to
like it too, though with Hodor it was hard to tell. The only tricky
part was doors. Sometimes Hodor forgot that he had Bran on his
back, and that could be painful when he went through a door.
For near a fortnight there had been so many comings and goings
that Robb ordered both portcullises kept up and the drawbridge down
between them, even in the dead of night. A long column of armored
lancers was crossing the moat between the walls when Bran emerged
from the tower; Karstark men, following their lords into the
castle. They wore black iron halfhelms and black woolen cloaks
patterned with the white sunburst. Hodor trotted along beside them,
smiling to himself, his boots thudding against the wood of the
drawbridge. The riders gave them queer looks as they went by, and
once Bran heard someone guffaw. He refused to let it trouble him.
“Men will look at you,” Maester Luwin had warned him
the first time they had strapped the wicker basket around
Hodor’s chest. “They will look, and they will talk, and
some will mock you.” Let them mock, Bran thought. No one
mocked him in his bedchamber, but he would not live his life in
bed.
As they passed beneath the gatehouse portcullis, Bran put two
fingers into his mouth and whistled. Summer came loping across the
yard. Suddenly the Karstark lancers were fighting for control, as
their horses rolled their eyes and whickered in dismay. One
stallion reared, screaming, his rider cursing and hanging on
desperately. The scent of the direwolves sent horses into a frenzy
of fear if they were not accustomed to it, but they’d quiet
soon enough once Summer was gone. “The godswood,” Bran
reminded Hodor.
Even Winterfell itself was crowded. The yard rang to the sound
of sword and axe, the rumble of wagons, and the barking of dogs.
The armory doors were open, and Bran glimpsed Mikken at his forge,
his hammer ringing as sweat dripped off his bare chest. Bran had
never seen as many strangers in all his years, not even when King
Robert had come to visit Father.
He tried not to flinch as Hodor ducked through a low door. They
walked down a long dim hallway, Summer padding easily beside them.
The wolf glanced up from time to time, eyes smoldering like liquid
gold. Bran would have liked to touch him, but he was riding too
high for his hand to reach.
The godswood was an island of peace in the sea of chaos that
Winterfell had become. Hodor made his way through the dense stands
of oak and ironwood and sentinels, to the still pool beside the
heart tree. He stopped under the gnarled limbs of the weirwood,
humming. Bran reached up over his head and pulled himself out of
his seat, drawing the dead weight of his legs up through the holes
in the wicker basket. He hung for a moment, dangling, the dark red
leaves brushing against his face, until Hodor lifted him and
lowered him to the smooth stone beside the water. “I want to
be by myself for a while,” he said. “You go soak. Go to
the pools.”
“Hodor.” Hodor stomped through the trees and
vanished. Across the godswood, beneath the windows of the Guest
House, an underground hot spring fed three small ponds. Steam rose
from the water day and night, and the wall that loomed above was
thick with moss. Hodor hated cold water, and would fight like a
treed wildcat when threatened with soap, but he would happily
immerse himself in the hottest pool and sit for hours, giving a
loud burp to echo the spring whenever a bubble rose from the murky
green depths to break upon the surface.
Summer lapped at the water and settled down at Bran’s
side. He rubbed the wolf under the jaw, and for a moment boy and
beast both felt at peace. Bran had always liked the godswood, even
before, but of late he found himself drawn to it more and more.
Even the heart tree no longer scared him the way it used to. The
deep red eyes carved into the pale trunk still watched him, yet
somehow he took comfort from that now. The gods were looking over
him, he told himself; the old gods, gods of the Starks and the
First Men and the children of the forest, his father’s gods.
He felt safe in their sight, and the deep silence of the trees
helped him think. Bran had been thinking a lot since his fall;
thinking, and dreaming, and talking with the gods.
“Please make it so Robb won’t go away,” he
prayed softly. He moved his hand through the cold water, sending
ripples across the pool. “Please make him stay. Or if he has
to go, bring him home safe, with Mother and Father and the girls.
And make it . . . make it so Rickon understands.”
His baby brother had been wild as a winter storm since he
learned Robb was riding off to war, weeping and angry by turns.
He’d refused to eat, cried and screamed for most of a night,
even punched Old Nan when she tried to sing him to sleep, and the
next day he’d vanished. Robb had set half the castle
searching for him, and when at last they’d found him down in
the crypts, Rickon had slashed at them with a rusted iron sword
he’d snatched from a dead king’s hand, and Shaggydog
had come slavering out of the darkness like a green-eyed demon. The
wolf was near as wild as Rickon; he’d bitten Gage on the arm
and torn a chunk of flesh from Mikken’s thigh. It had taken
Robb himself and Grey Wind to bring him to bay. Farlen had the
black wolf chained up in the kennels now, and Rickon cried all the
more for being without him.
Maester Luwin counseled Robb to remain at Winterfell, and Bran
pleaded with him too, for his own sake as much as Rickon’s,
but his brother only shook his head stubbornly and said, “I
don’t want to go. I have to.”
It was only half a lie. Someone had to go, to hold the Neck and
help the Tullys against the Lannisters, Bran could understand that,
but it did not have to be Robb. His brother might have given the
command to Hal Mollen or Theon Greyjoy, or to one of his lords
bannermen. Maester Luwin urged him to do just that, but Robb would
not hear of it. “My lord father would never have sent men off
to die while he huddled like a craven behind the walls of
Winterfell,” he said, all Robb the Lord.
Robb seemed half a stranger to Bran now, transformed, a lord in
truth, though he had not yet seen his sixteenth name day. Even
their father’s bannermen seemed to sense it. Many tried to
test him, each in his own way. Roose Bolton and Robett Glover both
demanded the honor of battle command, the first brusquely, the
second with a smile and a jest. Stout, grey-haired Maege Mormont,
dressed in mail like a man, told Robb bluntly that he was young
enough to be her grandson, and had no business giving her commands
. . . but as it happened, she had a granddaughter she would be
willing to have him marry. Soft-spoken Lord Cerwyn had actually
brought his daughter with him, a plump, homely maid of thirty years
who sat at her father’s left hand and never lifted her eyes
from her plate. Jovial Lord Hornwood had no daughters, but he did
bring gifts, a horse one day, a haunch of venison the next, a
silver-chased hunting horn the day after, and he asked nothing in
return . . . nothing but a certain holdfast taken from his
grandfather, and hunting rights north of a certain ridge, and leave
to dam the White Knife, if it please the lord.
Robb answered each of them with cool courtesy, much as Father
might have, and somehow he bent them to his will.
And when Lord Umber, who was called the Greatjon by his men and
stood as tall as Hodor and twice as wide, threatened to take his
forces home if he was placed behind the Hornwoods or the Cerwyns in
the order of march, Robb told him he was welcome to do so.
“And when we are done with the Lannisters,” he
promised, scratching Grey Wind behind the ear, “we will march
back north, root you out of your keep, and hang you for an
oathbreaker.” Cursing, the Greatjon flung a flagon of ale
into the fire and bellowed that Robb was so green he must piss
grass. When Hallis Mollen moved to restrain him, he knocked him to
the floor, kicked over a table, and unsheathed the biggest, ugliest
greatsword that Bran had ever seen. All along the benches, his sons
and brothers and sworn swords leapt to their feet, grabbing for
their steel.
Yet Robb only said a quiet word, and in a snarl and the blink of
an eye Lord Umber was on his back, his sword spinning on the floor
three feet away and his hand dripping blood where Grey Wind had
bitten off two fingers. “My lord father taught me that it was
death to bare steel against your liege lord,” Robb said,
“but doubtless you only meant to cut my meat.”
Bran’s bowels went to water as the Greatjon struggled to
rise, sucking at the red stumps of fingers . . . but then,
astonishingly, the huge man laughed. “Your meat,” he
roared, “is bloody tough.”
And somehow after that the Greatjon became Robb’s right
hand, his staunchest champion, loudly telling all and sundry that
the boy lord was a Stark after all, and they’d damn well
better bend their knees if they didn’t fancy having them
chewed off.
Yet that very night, his brother came to Bran’s bedchamber
pale and shaken, after the fires had burned low in the Great Hall.
“I thought he was going to kill me,” Robb confessed.
“Did you see the way he threw down Hal, like he was no bigger
than Rickon? Gods, I was so scared. And the Greatjon’s not
the worst of them, only the loudest. Lord Roose never says a word,
he only looks at me, and all I can think of is that room they have
in the Dreadfort, where the Boltons hang the skins of their
enemies.”
“That’s just one of Old Nan’s stories,”
Bran said. A note of doubt crept into his voice. “Isn’t
it?”
“I don’t know.” He gave a weary shake of his
head. “Lord Cerwyn means to take his daughter south with us.
To cook for him, he says. Theon is certain I’ll find the girl
in my bedroll one night. I wish . . . I wish Father was here . . . ”
That was the one thing they could agree on, Bran and Rickon and
Robb the Lord; they all wished Father was here. But Lord Eddard was
a thousand leagues away, a captive in some dungeon, a hunted
fugitive running for his life, or even dead. No one seemed to know
for certain; every traveler told a different tale, each more
terrifying than the last. The heads of Father’s guardsmen
were rotting on the walls of the Red Keep, impaled on spikes. King
Robert was dead at Father’s hands. The Baratheons had laid
siege to King’s Landing. Lord Eddard had fled south with the
king’s wicked brother Renly. Arya and Sansa had been murdered
by the Hound. Mother had killed Tyrion the Imp and hung his body
from the walls of Riverrun. Lord Tywin Lannister was marching on
the Eyrie, burning and slaughtering as he went. One wine-sodden
taleteller even claimed that Rhaegar Targaryen had returned from
the dead and was marshaling a vast host of ancient heroes on
Dragonstone to reclaim his father’s throne.
When the raven came, bearing a letter marked with Father’s
own seal and written in Sansa’s hand, the cruel truth seemed
no less incredible. Bran would never forget the look on
Robb’s face as he stared at their sister’s words.
“She says Father conspired at treason with the king’s
brothers,” he read. “King Robert is dead, and Mother
and I are summoned to the Red Keep to swear fealty to Joffrey. She
says we must be loyal, and when she marries Joffrey she will plead
with him to spare our lord father’s life.” His fingers
closed into a fist, crushing Sansa’s letter between them.
“And she says nothing of Arya, nothing, not so much as a
word. Damn her! What’s wrong with the girl?”
Bran felt all cold inside. “She lost her wolf,” he
said, weakly, remembering the day when four of his father’s
guardsmen had returned from the south with Lady’s bones.
Summer and Grey Wind and Shaggydog had begun to howl before they
crossed the drawbridge, in voices drawn and desolate. Beneath the
shadow of the First Keep was an ancient lichyard, its headstones
spotted with pale lichen, where the old Kings of Winter had laid
their faithful servants. It was there they buried Lady, while her
brothers stalked between the graves like restless shadows. She had
gone south, and only her bones had returned.
Their grandfather, old Lord Rickard, had gone as well, with his
son Brandon who was Father’s brother, and two hundred of his
best men. None had ever returned. And Father had gone south, with
Arya and Sansa, and Jory and Hullen and Fat Tom and the rest, and
later Mother and Ser Rodrik had gone, and they hadn’t come
back either. And now Robb meant to go. Not to King’s Landing
and not to swear fealty, but to Riverrun, with a sword in his hand.
And if their lord father were truly a prisoner, that could mean his
death for a certainty. It frightened Bran more than he could
say.
“If Robb has to go, watch over him,” Bran entreated
the old gods, as they watched him with the heart tree’s red
eyes, “and watch over his men, Hal and Quent and the rest,
and Lord Umber and Lady Mormont and the other lords. And Theon too,
I suppose. Watch them and keep them safe, if it please you, gods.
Help them defeat the Lannisters and save Father and bring them
home.”
A faint wind sighed through the godswood and the red leaves
stirred and whispered. Summer bared his teeth. “You hear
them, boy?” a voice asked.
Bran lifted his head. Osha stood across the pool, beneath an
ancient oak, her face shadowed by leaves. Even in irons, the
wildling moved quiet as a cat. Summer circled the pool, sniffed at
her. The tall woman flinched.
“Summer, to me,” Bran called. The direwolf took one
final sniff, spun, and bounded back. Bran wrapped his arms around
him. “What are you doing here?” He had not seen Osha
since they’d taken her captive in the wolfswood, though he
knew she’d been set to working in the kitchens.
“They are my gods too,” Osha said. “Beyond the
Wall, they are the only gods.” Her hair was growing out,
brown and shaggy. It made her look more womanly, that and the
simple dress of brown roughspun they’d given her when they
took her mail and leather. “Gage lets me have my prayers from
time to time, when I feel the need, and I let him do as he likes
under my skirt, when he feels the need. It’s nothing to me. I
like the smell of flour on his hands, and he’s gentler than
Stiv.” She gave an awkward bow. “I’ll leave you.
There’s pots that want scouring.”
“No, stay,” Bran commanded her. “Tell me what
you meant, about hearing the gods.”
Osha studied him. “You asked them and they’re
answering. Open your ears, listen, you’ll hear.”
Bran listened. “It’s only the wind,” he said
after a moment, uncertain. “The leaves are
rustling.”
“Who do you think sends the wind, if not the gods?”
She seated herself across the pool from him, clinking faintly as
she moved. Mikken had fixed iron manacles to her ankles, with a
heavy chain between them; she could walk, so long as she kept her
strides small, but there was no way for her to run, or climb, or
mount a horse. “They see you, boy. They hear you talking.
That rustling, that’s them talking back.”
“What are they saying?”
“They’re sad. Your lord brother will get no help
from them, not where he’s going. The old gods have no power
in the south. The weirwoods there were all cut down, thousands of
years ago. How can they watch your brother when they have no
eyes?”
Bran had not thought of that. It frightened him. If even the
gods could not help his brother, what hope was there? Maybe Osha
wasn’t hearing them right. He cocked his head and tried to
listen again. He thought he could hear the sadness now, but nothing
more than that.
The rustling grew louder. Bran heard muffled footfalls and a low
humming, and Hodor came blundering out of the trees, naked and
smiling. “Hodor!”
“He must have heard our voices,” Bran said.
“Hodor, you forgot your clothes.”
“Hodor,” Hodor agreed. He was dripping wet from the
neck down, steaming in the chill air. His body was covered with
brown hair, thick as a pelt. Between his legs, his manhood swung
long and heavy.
Osha eyed him with a sour smile. “Now there’s a big
man,” she said. “He has giant’s blood in him, or
I’m the queen.”
“Maester Luwin says there are no more giants. He says
they’re all dead, like the children of the forest. All
that’s left of them are old bones in the earth that men turn
up with plows from time to time.”
“Let Maester Luwin ride beyond the Wall,” Osha said.
“He’ll find giants then, or they’ll find him. My
brother killed one. Ten foot tall she was, and stunted at that.
They’ve been known to grow big as twelve and thirteen feet.
Fierce things they are too, all hair and teeth, and the wives have
beards like their husbands, so there’s no telling them apart.
The women take human men for lovers, and it’s from them the
half bloods come. It goes harder on the women they catch. The men
are so big they’ll rip a maid apart before they get her with
child.” She grinned at him. “But you don’t know
what I mean, do you, boy?”
“Yes I do,” Bran insisted. He understood about
mating; he had seen dogs in the yard, and watched a stallion mount
a mare. But talking about it made him uncomfortable. He looked at
Hodor. “Go back and bring your clothes, Hodor,” he
said. “Go dress.”
“Hodor.” He walked back the way he had come, ducking
under a low-hanging tree limb.
He was awfully big, Bran thought as he watched him go.
“Are there truly giants beyond the Wall?” he asked
Osha, uncertainly.
“Giants and worse than giants, Lordling. I tried to tell
your brother when he asked his questions, him and your maester and
that smiley boy Greyjoy. The cold winds are rising, and men go out
from their fires and never come back . . . or if they do,
they’re not men no more, but only wights, with blue eyes and
cold black hands. Why do you think I run south with Stiv and Hali
and the rest of them fools? Mance thinks he’ll fight, the
brave sweet stubborn man, like the white walkers were no more than
rangers, but what does he know? He can call himself
King-beyond-the-Wall all he likes, but he’s still just
another old black crow who flew down from the Shadow Tower.
He’s never tasted winter. I was born up there, child, like my
mother and her mother before her and her mother before her, born of
the Free Folk. We remember.” Osha stood, her chains rattling
together. “I tried to tell your lordling brother. Only
yesterday, when I saw him in the yard. ‘M’lord
Stark,’ I called to him, respectful as you please, but he
looked through me, and that sweaty oaf Greatjon Umber shoves me out
of the path. So be it. I’ll wear my irons and hold my tongue.
A man who won’t listen can’t hear.”
“Tell me. Robb will listen to me, I know he
will.”
“Will he now? We’ll see. You tell him this, m’lord.
You tell him he’s bound on marching the wrong way. It’s
north he should be taking his swords. North, not south. You hear
me?”
Bran nodded. “I’ll tell him.”
But that night, when they feasted in the Great Hall, Robb was
not with them. He took his meal in the solar instead, with Lord
Rickard and the Greatjon and the other lords bannermen, to make the
final plans for the long march to come. It was left to Bran to fill
his place at the head of the table, and act the host to Lord
Karstark’s sons and honored friends. They were already at
their places when Hodor carried Bran into the hall on his back, and
knelt beside the high seat. Two of the serving men helped lift him
from his basket. Bran could feel the eyes of every stranger in the
hall. It had grown quiet. “My lords,” Hallis Mollen
announced, “Brandon Stark, of Winterfell.”
“I welcome you to our fires,” Bran said stiffly,
“and offer you meat and mead in honor of our
friendship.”
Harrion Karstark, the oldest of Lord Rickard’s sons,
bowed, and his brothers after him, yet as they settled back in
their places he heard the younger two talking in low voices, over
the clatter of wine cups. “ . . . sooner die than live like
that,” muttered one, his father’s namesake Eddard, and
his brother Torrhen said likely the boy was broken inside as well
as out, too craven to take his own life. Broken, Bran thought bitterly as he clutched his knife. Is that
what he was now? Bran the Broken? “I don’t want to be
broken,” he whispered fiercely to Maester Luwin, who’d
been seated to his right. “I want to be a knight.”
“There are some who call my order the knights of the
mind,” Luwin replied. “You are a surpassing clever boy
when you work at it, Bran. Have you ever thought that you might
wear a maester’s chain? There is no limit to what you might
learn.”
“I want to learn magic,” Bran told him. “The
crow promised that I would fly.”
Maester Luwin sighed. “I can teach you history, healing,
herblore. I can teach you the speech of ravens, and how to build a
castle, and the way a sailor steers his ship by the stars. I can
teach you to measure the days and mark the seasons, and at the
Citadel in Oldtown they can teach you a thousand things more. But,
Bran, no man can teach you magic.”
“The children could,” Bran said. “The children
of the forest.” That reminded him of the promise he had made
to Osha in the godswood, so he told Luwin what she had said.
The maester listened politely. “The wildling woman could
give Old Nan lessons in telling tales, I think,” he said when
Bran was done. “I will talk with her again if you like, but
it would be best if you did not trouble your brother with this
folly. He has more than enough to concern him without fretting over
giants and dead men in the woods. It’s the Lannisters who
hold your lord father, Bran, not the children of the forest.”
He put a gentle hand on Bran’s arm. “Think on what I
said, child.”
And two days later, as a red dawn broke across a windswept sky,
Bran found himself in the yard beneath the gatehouse, strapped atop
Dancer as he said his farewells to his brother.
“You are the lord in Winterfell now,” Robb told him.
He was mounted on a shaggy grey stallion, his shield hung from the
horse’s side; wood banded with iron, white and grey, and on
it the snarling face of a direwolf. His brother wore grey chainmail
over bleached leathers, sword and dagger at his waist, a
fur-trimmed cloak across his shoulders. “You must take my
place, as I took Father’s, until we come home.”
“I know,” Bran replied miserably. He had never felt
so little or alone or scared. He did not know how to be a lord.
“Listen to Maester Luwin’s counsel, and take care of
Rickon. Tell him that I’ll be back as soon as the fighting is
done.”
Rickon had refused to come down. He was up in his chamber,
redeyed and defiant. “No!” he’d screamed when
Bran had asked if he didn’t want to say farewell to Robb.
“NO farewell!”
“I told him,” Bran said. “He says no one ever
comes back.”
“He can’t be a baby forever. He’s a Stark, and
near four.” Robb sighed. “Well, Mother will be home
soon. And I’ll bring back Father, I promise.”
He wheeled his courser around and trotted away. Grey Wind
followed, loping beside the warhorse, lean and swift. Hallis Mollen
went before them through the gate, carrying the rippling white
banner of House Stark atop a high standard of grey ash. Theon
Greyjoy and the Greatjon fell in on either side of Robb, and their
knights formed up in a double column behind them, steel-tipped
lances glinting in the sun.
Uncomfortably, he remembered Osha’s words. He’s
marching the wrong way, he thought. For an instant he wanted to
gallop after him and shout a warning, but when Robb vanished
beneath the portcullis, the moment was gone.
Beyond the castle walls, a roar of sound went up. The foot
soldiers and townsfolk were cheering Robb as he rode past, Bran
knew; cheering for Lord Stark, for the Lord of Winterfell on his
great stallion, with his cloak streaming and Grey Wind racing
beside him. They would never cheer for him that way, he realized
with a dull ache. He might be the lord in Winterfell while his
brother and father were gone, but he was still Bran the Broken. He
could not even get off his own horse, except to fall.
When the distant cheers had faded to silence and the yard was
empty at last, Winterfell seemed deserted and dead. Bran looked
around at the faces of those who remained, women and children and
old men . . . and Hodor. The huge stableboy had a lost and
frightened look to his face. “Hodor?” he said
sadly.
“Hodor,” Bran agreed, wondering what it meant.
The Karstarks came in on a cold windy morning,
bringing three hundred horsemen and near two thousand foot from
their castle at Karhold. The steel points of their pikes winked in
the pale sunlight as the column approached. A man went before them,
pounding out a slow, deep-throated marching rhythm on a drum that
was bigger than he was, boom, boom, boom.
Bran watched them come from a guard turret atop the outer wall,
peering through Maester Luwin’s bronze far-eye while perched
on Hodor’s shoulders. Lord Rickard himself led them, his sons
Harrion and Eddard and Torrhen riding beside him beneath
night-black banners emblazoned with the white sunburst of their
House. Old Nan said they had Stark blood in them, going back
hundreds of years, but they did not look like Starks to Bran. They
were big men, and fierce, faces covered with thick beards, hair
worn loose past the shoulders. Their cloaks were made of skins, the
pelts of bear and seal and wolf.
They were the last, he knew. The other lords were already here,
with their hosts. Bran yearned to ride out among them, to see the
winter houses full to bursting, the jostling crowds in the market
square every morning, the streets rutted and torn by wheel and
hoof. But Robb had forbidden him to leave the castle. “We
have no men to spare to guard you,” his brother had
explained.
“I’ll take Summer,” Bran argued.
“Don’t act the boy with me, Bran,” Robb said.
“You know better than that. Only two days ago one of Lord
Bolton’s men knifed one of Lord Cerwyn’s at the Smoking
Log. Our lady mother would skin me for a pelt if I let you put
yourself at risk.” He was using the voice of Robb the Lord
when he said it; Bran knew that meant there was no appeal.
It was because of what had happened in the wolfswood, he knew.
The memory still gave him bad dreams. He had been as helpless as a
baby, no more able to defend himself than Rickon would have been.
Less, even . . . Rickon would have kicked them, at the least. It
shamed him. He was only a few years younger than Robb; if his
brother was almost a man grown, so was he. He should have been able
to protect himself.
A year ago, before, he would have visited the town even if it
meant climbing over the walls by himself. In those days he could
run down stairs, get on and off his pony by himself, and wield a
wooden sword good enough to knock Prince Tommen in the dirt. Now he
could only watch, peering out through Maester Luwin’s lens
tube. The maester had taught him all the banners: the mailed fist
of the Glovers, silver on scarlet; Lady Mormont’s black bear;
the hideous flayed man that went before Roose Bolton of the
Dreadfort; a bull moose for the Hornwoods; a battle-axe for the
Cerwyns; three sentinel trees for the Tallharts; and the fearsome
sigil of House Umber, a roaring giant in shattered chains.
And soon enough he learned the faces too, when the lords and
their sons and knights retainer came to Winterfell to feast. Even
the Great Hall was not large enough to seat all of them at once, so
Robb hosted each of the principal bannermen in turn. Bran was
always given the place of honor at his brother’s right hand.
Some of the lords bannermen gave him queer hard stares as he sat
there, as if they wondered by what right a green boy should be
placed above them, and him a cripple too.
“How many is it now?” Bran asked Maester Luwin as
Lord Karstark and his sons rode through the gates in the outer
wall.
“Twelve thousand men, or near enough as makes no
matter.”
“How many knights?”
“Few enough,” the maester said with a touch of
impatience. “To be a knight, you must stand your vigil in a
sept, and be anointed with the seven oils to consecrate your vows.
In the north, only a few of the great houses worship the Seven. The
rest honor the old gods, and name no knights . . . but those lords
and their sons and sworn swords are no less fierce or loyal or
honorable. A man’s worth is not marked by a ser before his
name. As I have told you a hundred times before.”
“Still,” said Bran, “how many
knights?”
Maester Luwin sighed. “Three hundred, perhaps four . . . among three thousand armored lances who are not knights.”
“Lord Karstark is the last,” Bran said thoughtfully.
“Robb will feast him tonight.”
“No doubt he will.”
“How long before . . . before they go?”
“He must march soon, or not at all,” Maester Luwin
said. “The winter town is full to bursting, and this army of
his will eat the countryside clean if it camps here much longer.
Others are waiting to join him all along the kingsroad, barrow
knights and crannogmen and the Lords Manderly and Flint. The
fighting has begun in the riverlands, and your brother has many
leagues to go.”
“I know.” Bran felt as miserable as he sounded. He
handed the bronze tube back to the maester, and noticed how thin
Luwin’s hair had grown on top. He could see the pink of scalp
showing through. It felt queer to look down on him this way, when
he’d spent his whole life looking up at him, but when you sat
on Hodor’s back you looked down on everyone. “I
don’t want to watch anymore. Hodor, take me back to the
keep.”
“Hodor,” said Hodor.
Maester Luwin tucked the tube up his sleeve. “Bran, your
lord brother will not have time to see you now. He must greet Lord
Karstark and his sons and make them welcome.”
“I won’t trouble Robb. I want to visit the
godswood.” He put his hand on Hodor’s shoulder.
“Hodor.”
A series of chisel-cut handholds made a ladder in the granite of
the tower’s inner wall. Hodor hummed tunelessly as he went
down hand under hand, Bran bouncing against his back in the wicker
seat that Maester Luwin had fashioned for him. Luwin had gotten the
idea from the baskets the women used to carry firewood on their
backs; after that it had been a simple matter of cutting legholes
and attaching some new straps to spread Bran’s weight more
evenly. It was not as good as riding Dancer, but there were places
Dancer could not go, and this did not shame Bran the way it did
when Hodor carried him in his arms like a baby. Hodor seemed to
like it too, though with Hodor it was hard to tell. The only tricky
part was doors. Sometimes Hodor forgot that he had Bran on his
back, and that could be painful when he went through a door.
For near a fortnight there had been so many comings and goings
that Robb ordered both portcullises kept up and the drawbridge down
between them, even in the dead of night. A long column of armored
lancers was crossing the moat between the walls when Bran emerged
from the tower; Karstark men, following their lords into the
castle. They wore black iron halfhelms and black woolen cloaks
patterned with the white sunburst. Hodor trotted along beside them,
smiling to himself, his boots thudding against the wood of the
drawbridge. The riders gave them queer looks as they went by, and
once Bran heard someone guffaw. He refused to let it trouble him.
“Men will look at you,” Maester Luwin had warned him
the first time they had strapped the wicker basket around
Hodor’s chest. “They will look, and they will talk, and
some will mock you.” Let them mock, Bran thought. No one
mocked him in his bedchamber, but he would not live his life in
bed.
As they passed beneath the gatehouse portcullis, Bran put two
fingers into his mouth and whistled. Summer came loping across the
yard. Suddenly the Karstark lancers were fighting for control, as
their horses rolled their eyes and whickered in dismay. One
stallion reared, screaming, his rider cursing and hanging on
desperately. The scent of the direwolves sent horses into a frenzy
of fear if they were not accustomed to it, but they’d quiet
soon enough once Summer was gone. “The godswood,” Bran
reminded Hodor.
Even Winterfell itself was crowded. The yard rang to the sound
of sword and axe, the rumble of wagons, and the barking of dogs.
The armory doors were open, and Bran glimpsed Mikken at his forge,
his hammer ringing as sweat dripped off his bare chest. Bran had
never seen as many strangers in all his years, not even when King
Robert had come to visit Father.
He tried not to flinch as Hodor ducked through a low door. They
walked down a long dim hallway, Summer padding easily beside them.
The wolf glanced up from time to time, eyes smoldering like liquid
gold. Bran would have liked to touch him, but he was riding too
high for his hand to reach.
The godswood was an island of peace in the sea of chaos that
Winterfell had become. Hodor made his way through the dense stands
of oak and ironwood and sentinels, to the still pool beside the
heart tree. He stopped under the gnarled limbs of the weirwood,
humming. Bran reached up over his head and pulled himself out of
his seat, drawing the dead weight of his legs up through the holes
in the wicker basket. He hung for a moment, dangling, the dark red
leaves brushing against his face, until Hodor lifted him and
lowered him to the smooth stone beside the water. “I want to
be by myself for a while,” he said. “You go soak. Go to
the pools.”
“Hodor.” Hodor stomped through the trees and
vanished. Across the godswood, beneath the windows of the Guest
House, an underground hot spring fed three small ponds. Steam rose
from the water day and night, and the wall that loomed above was
thick with moss. Hodor hated cold water, and would fight like a
treed wildcat when threatened with soap, but he would happily
immerse himself in the hottest pool and sit for hours, giving a
loud burp to echo the spring whenever a bubble rose from the murky
green depths to break upon the surface.
Summer lapped at the water and settled down at Bran’s
side. He rubbed the wolf under the jaw, and for a moment boy and
beast both felt at peace. Bran had always liked the godswood, even
before, but of late he found himself drawn to it more and more.
Even the heart tree no longer scared him the way it used to. The
deep red eyes carved into the pale trunk still watched him, yet
somehow he took comfort from that now. The gods were looking over
him, he told himself; the old gods, gods of the Starks and the
First Men and the children of the forest, his father’s gods.
He felt safe in their sight, and the deep silence of the trees
helped him think. Bran had been thinking a lot since his fall;
thinking, and dreaming, and talking with the gods.
“Please make it so Robb won’t go away,” he
prayed softly. He moved his hand through the cold water, sending
ripples across the pool. “Please make him stay. Or if he has
to go, bring him home safe, with Mother and Father and the girls.
And make it . . . make it so Rickon understands.”
His baby brother had been wild as a winter storm since he
learned Robb was riding off to war, weeping and angry by turns.
He’d refused to eat, cried and screamed for most of a night,
even punched Old Nan when she tried to sing him to sleep, and the
next day he’d vanished. Robb had set half the castle
searching for him, and when at last they’d found him down in
the crypts, Rickon had slashed at them with a rusted iron sword
he’d snatched from a dead king’s hand, and Shaggydog
had come slavering out of the darkness like a green-eyed demon. The
wolf was near as wild as Rickon; he’d bitten Gage on the arm
and torn a chunk of flesh from Mikken’s thigh. It had taken
Robb himself and Grey Wind to bring him to bay. Farlen had the
black wolf chained up in the kennels now, and Rickon cried all the
more for being without him.
Maester Luwin counseled Robb to remain at Winterfell, and Bran
pleaded with him too, for his own sake as much as Rickon’s,
but his brother only shook his head stubbornly and said, “I
don’t want to go. I have to.”
It was only half a lie. Someone had to go, to hold the Neck and
help the Tullys against the Lannisters, Bran could understand that,
but it did not have to be Robb. His brother might have given the
command to Hal Mollen or Theon Greyjoy, or to one of his lords
bannermen. Maester Luwin urged him to do just that, but Robb would
not hear of it. “My lord father would never have sent men off
to die while he huddled like a craven behind the walls of
Winterfell,” he said, all Robb the Lord.
Robb seemed half a stranger to Bran now, transformed, a lord in
truth, though he had not yet seen his sixteenth name day. Even
their father’s bannermen seemed to sense it. Many tried to
test him, each in his own way. Roose Bolton and Robett Glover both
demanded the honor of battle command, the first brusquely, the
second with a smile and a jest. Stout, grey-haired Maege Mormont,
dressed in mail like a man, told Robb bluntly that he was young
enough to be her grandson, and had no business giving her commands
. . . but as it happened, she had a granddaughter she would be
willing to have him marry. Soft-spoken Lord Cerwyn had actually
brought his daughter with him, a plump, homely maid of thirty years
who sat at her father’s left hand and never lifted her eyes
from her plate. Jovial Lord Hornwood had no daughters, but he did
bring gifts, a horse one day, a haunch of venison the next, a
silver-chased hunting horn the day after, and he asked nothing in
return . . . nothing but a certain holdfast taken from his
grandfather, and hunting rights north of a certain ridge, and leave
to dam the White Knife, if it please the lord.
Robb answered each of them with cool courtesy, much as Father
might have, and somehow he bent them to his will.
And when Lord Umber, who was called the Greatjon by his men and
stood as tall as Hodor and twice as wide, threatened to take his
forces home if he was placed behind the Hornwoods or the Cerwyns in
the order of march, Robb told him he was welcome to do so.
“And when we are done with the Lannisters,” he
promised, scratching Grey Wind behind the ear, “we will march
back north, root you out of your keep, and hang you for an
oathbreaker.” Cursing, the Greatjon flung a flagon of ale
into the fire and bellowed that Robb was so green he must piss
grass. When Hallis Mollen moved to restrain him, he knocked him to
the floor, kicked over a table, and unsheathed the biggest, ugliest
greatsword that Bran had ever seen. All along the benches, his sons
and brothers and sworn swords leapt to their feet, grabbing for
their steel.
Yet Robb only said a quiet word, and in a snarl and the blink of
an eye Lord Umber was on his back, his sword spinning on the floor
three feet away and his hand dripping blood where Grey Wind had
bitten off two fingers. “My lord father taught me that it was
death to bare steel against your liege lord,” Robb said,
“but doubtless you only meant to cut my meat.”
Bran’s bowels went to water as the Greatjon struggled to
rise, sucking at the red stumps of fingers . . . but then,
astonishingly, the huge man laughed. “Your meat,” he
roared, “is bloody tough.”
And somehow after that the Greatjon became Robb’s right
hand, his staunchest champion, loudly telling all and sundry that
the boy lord was a Stark after all, and they’d damn well
better bend their knees if they didn’t fancy having them
chewed off.
Yet that very night, his brother came to Bran’s bedchamber
pale and shaken, after the fires had burned low in the Great Hall.
“I thought he was going to kill me,” Robb confessed.
“Did you see the way he threw down Hal, like he was no bigger
than Rickon? Gods, I was so scared. And the Greatjon’s not
the worst of them, only the loudest. Lord Roose never says a word,
he only looks at me, and all I can think of is that room they have
in the Dreadfort, where the Boltons hang the skins of their
enemies.”
“That’s just one of Old Nan’s stories,”
Bran said. A note of doubt crept into his voice. “Isn’t
it?”
“I don’t know.” He gave a weary shake of his
head. “Lord Cerwyn means to take his daughter south with us.
To cook for him, he says. Theon is certain I’ll find the girl
in my bedroll one night. I wish . . . I wish Father was here . . . ”
That was the one thing they could agree on, Bran and Rickon and
Robb the Lord; they all wished Father was here. But Lord Eddard was
a thousand leagues away, a captive in some dungeon, a hunted
fugitive running for his life, or even dead. No one seemed to know
for certain; every traveler told a different tale, each more
terrifying than the last. The heads of Father’s guardsmen
were rotting on the walls of the Red Keep, impaled on spikes. King
Robert was dead at Father’s hands. The Baratheons had laid
siege to King’s Landing. Lord Eddard had fled south with the
king’s wicked brother Renly. Arya and Sansa had been murdered
by the Hound. Mother had killed Tyrion the Imp and hung his body
from the walls of Riverrun. Lord Tywin Lannister was marching on
the Eyrie, burning and slaughtering as he went. One wine-sodden
taleteller even claimed that Rhaegar Targaryen had returned from
the dead and was marshaling a vast host of ancient heroes on
Dragonstone to reclaim his father’s throne.
When the raven came, bearing a letter marked with Father’s
own seal and written in Sansa’s hand, the cruel truth seemed
no less incredible. Bran would never forget the look on
Robb’s face as he stared at their sister’s words.
“She says Father conspired at treason with the king’s
brothers,” he read. “King Robert is dead, and Mother
and I are summoned to the Red Keep to swear fealty to Joffrey. She
says we must be loyal, and when she marries Joffrey she will plead
with him to spare our lord father’s life.” His fingers
closed into a fist, crushing Sansa’s letter between them.
“And she says nothing of Arya, nothing, not so much as a
word. Damn her! What’s wrong with the girl?”
Bran felt all cold inside. “She lost her wolf,” he
said, weakly, remembering the day when four of his father’s
guardsmen had returned from the south with Lady’s bones.
Summer and Grey Wind and Shaggydog had begun to howl before they
crossed the drawbridge, in voices drawn and desolate. Beneath the
shadow of the First Keep was an ancient lichyard, its headstones
spotted with pale lichen, where the old Kings of Winter had laid
their faithful servants. It was there they buried Lady, while her
brothers stalked between the graves like restless shadows. She had
gone south, and only her bones had returned.
Their grandfather, old Lord Rickard, had gone as well, with his
son Brandon who was Father’s brother, and two hundred of his
best men. None had ever returned. And Father had gone south, with
Arya and Sansa, and Jory and Hullen and Fat Tom and the rest, and
later Mother and Ser Rodrik had gone, and they hadn’t come
back either. And now Robb meant to go. Not to King’s Landing
and not to swear fealty, but to Riverrun, with a sword in his hand.
And if their lord father were truly a prisoner, that could mean his
death for a certainty. It frightened Bran more than he could
say.
“If Robb has to go, watch over him,” Bran entreated
the old gods, as they watched him with the heart tree’s red
eyes, “and watch over his men, Hal and Quent and the rest,
and Lord Umber and Lady Mormont and the other lords. And Theon too,
I suppose. Watch them and keep them safe, if it please you, gods.
Help them defeat the Lannisters and save Father and bring them
home.”
A faint wind sighed through the godswood and the red leaves
stirred and whispered. Summer bared his teeth. “You hear
them, boy?” a voice asked.
Bran lifted his head. Osha stood across the pool, beneath an
ancient oak, her face shadowed by leaves. Even in irons, the
wildling moved quiet as a cat. Summer circled the pool, sniffed at
her. The tall woman flinched.
“Summer, to me,” Bran called. The direwolf took one
final sniff, spun, and bounded back. Bran wrapped his arms around
him. “What are you doing here?” He had not seen Osha
since they’d taken her captive in the wolfswood, though he
knew she’d been set to working in the kitchens.
“They are my gods too,” Osha said. “Beyond the
Wall, they are the only gods.” Her hair was growing out,
brown and shaggy. It made her look more womanly, that and the
simple dress of brown roughspun they’d given her when they
took her mail and leather. “Gage lets me have my prayers from
time to time, when I feel the need, and I let him do as he likes
under my skirt, when he feels the need. It’s nothing to me. I
like the smell of flour on his hands, and he’s gentler than
Stiv.” She gave an awkward bow. “I’ll leave you.
There’s pots that want scouring.”
“No, stay,” Bran commanded her. “Tell me what
you meant, about hearing the gods.”
Osha studied him. “You asked them and they’re
answering. Open your ears, listen, you’ll hear.”
Bran listened. “It’s only the wind,” he said
after a moment, uncertain. “The leaves are
rustling.”
“Who do you think sends the wind, if not the gods?”
She seated herself across the pool from him, clinking faintly as
she moved. Mikken had fixed iron manacles to her ankles, with a
heavy chain between them; she could walk, so long as she kept her
strides small, but there was no way for her to run, or climb, or
mount a horse. “They see you, boy. They hear you talking.
That rustling, that’s them talking back.”
“What are they saying?”
“They’re sad. Your lord brother will get no help
from them, not where he’s going. The old gods have no power
in the south. The weirwoods there were all cut down, thousands of
years ago. How can they watch your brother when they have no
eyes?”
Bran had not thought of that. It frightened him. If even the
gods could not help his brother, what hope was there? Maybe Osha
wasn’t hearing them right. He cocked his head and tried to
listen again. He thought he could hear the sadness now, but nothing
more than that.
The rustling grew louder. Bran heard muffled footfalls and a low
humming, and Hodor came blundering out of the trees, naked and
smiling. “Hodor!”
“He must have heard our voices,” Bran said.
“Hodor, you forgot your clothes.”
“Hodor,” Hodor agreed. He was dripping wet from the
neck down, steaming in the chill air. His body was covered with
brown hair, thick as a pelt. Between his legs, his manhood swung
long and heavy.
Osha eyed him with a sour smile. “Now there’s a big
man,” she said. “He has giant’s blood in him, or
I’m the queen.”
“Maester Luwin says there are no more giants. He says
they’re all dead, like the children of the forest. All
that’s left of them are old bones in the earth that men turn
up with plows from time to time.”
“Let Maester Luwin ride beyond the Wall,” Osha said.
“He’ll find giants then, or they’ll find him. My
brother killed one. Ten foot tall she was, and stunted at that.
They’ve been known to grow big as twelve and thirteen feet.
Fierce things they are too, all hair and teeth, and the wives have
beards like their husbands, so there’s no telling them apart.
The women take human men for lovers, and it’s from them the
half bloods come. It goes harder on the women they catch. The men
are so big they’ll rip a maid apart before they get her with
child.” She grinned at him. “But you don’t know
what I mean, do you, boy?”
“Yes I do,” Bran insisted. He understood about
mating; he had seen dogs in the yard, and watched a stallion mount
a mare. But talking about it made him uncomfortable. He looked at
Hodor. “Go back and bring your clothes, Hodor,” he
said. “Go dress.”
“Hodor.” He walked back the way he had come, ducking
under a low-hanging tree limb.
He was awfully big, Bran thought as he watched him go.
“Are there truly giants beyond the Wall?” he asked
Osha, uncertainly.
“Giants and worse than giants, Lordling. I tried to tell
your brother when he asked his questions, him and your maester and
that smiley boy Greyjoy. The cold winds are rising, and men go out
from their fires and never come back . . . or if they do,
they’re not men no more, but only wights, with blue eyes and
cold black hands. Why do you think I run south with Stiv and Hali
and the rest of them fools? Mance thinks he’ll fight, the
brave sweet stubborn man, like the white walkers were no more than
rangers, but what does he know? He can call himself
King-beyond-the-Wall all he likes, but he’s still just
another old black crow who flew down from the Shadow Tower.
He’s never tasted winter. I was born up there, child, like my
mother and her mother before her and her mother before her, born of
the Free Folk. We remember.” Osha stood, her chains rattling
together. “I tried to tell your lordling brother. Only
yesterday, when I saw him in the yard. ‘M’lord
Stark,’ I called to him, respectful as you please, but he
looked through me, and that sweaty oaf Greatjon Umber shoves me out
of the path. So be it. I’ll wear my irons and hold my tongue.
A man who won’t listen can’t hear.”
“Tell me. Robb will listen to me, I know he
will.”
“Will he now? We’ll see. You tell him this, m’lord.
You tell him he’s bound on marching the wrong way. It’s
north he should be taking his swords. North, not south. You hear
me?”
Bran nodded. “I’ll tell him.”
But that night, when they feasted in the Great Hall, Robb was
not with them. He took his meal in the solar instead, with Lord
Rickard and the Greatjon and the other lords bannermen, to make the
final plans for the long march to come. It was left to Bran to fill
his place at the head of the table, and act the host to Lord
Karstark’s sons and honored friends. They were already at
their places when Hodor carried Bran into the hall on his back, and
knelt beside the high seat. Two of the serving men helped lift him
from his basket. Bran could feel the eyes of every stranger in the
hall. It had grown quiet. “My lords,” Hallis Mollen
announced, “Brandon Stark, of Winterfell.”
“I welcome you to our fires,” Bran said stiffly,
“and offer you meat and mead in honor of our
friendship.”
Harrion Karstark, the oldest of Lord Rickard’s sons,
bowed, and his brothers after him, yet as they settled back in
their places he heard the younger two talking in low voices, over
the clatter of wine cups. “ . . . sooner die than live like
that,” muttered one, his father’s namesake Eddard, and
his brother Torrhen said likely the boy was broken inside as well
as out, too craven to take his own life. Broken, Bran thought bitterly as he clutched his knife. Is that
what he was now? Bran the Broken? “I don’t want to be
broken,” he whispered fiercely to Maester Luwin, who’d
been seated to his right. “I want to be a knight.”
“There are some who call my order the knights of the
mind,” Luwin replied. “You are a surpassing clever boy
when you work at it, Bran. Have you ever thought that you might
wear a maester’s chain? There is no limit to what you might
learn.”
“I want to learn magic,” Bran told him. “The
crow promised that I would fly.”
Maester Luwin sighed. “I can teach you history, healing,
herblore. I can teach you the speech of ravens, and how to build a
castle, and the way a sailor steers his ship by the stars. I can
teach you to measure the days and mark the seasons, and at the
Citadel in Oldtown they can teach you a thousand things more. But,
Bran, no man can teach you magic.”
“The children could,” Bran said. “The children
of the forest.” That reminded him of the promise he had made
to Osha in the godswood, so he told Luwin what she had said.
The maester listened politely. “The wildling woman could
give Old Nan lessons in telling tales, I think,” he said when
Bran was done. “I will talk with her again if you like, but
it would be best if you did not trouble your brother with this
folly. He has more than enough to concern him without fretting over
giants and dead men in the woods. It’s the Lannisters who
hold your lord father, Bran, not the children of the forest.”
He put a gentle hand on Bran’s arm. “Think on what I
said, child.”
And two days later, as a red dawn broke across a windswept sky,
Bran found himself in the yard beneath the gatehouse, strapped atop
Dancer as he said his farewells to his brother.
“You are the lord in Winterfell now,” Robb told him.
He was mounted on a shaggy grey stallion, his shield hung from the
horse’s side; wood banded with iron, white and grey, and on
it the snarling face of a direwolf. His brother wore grey chainmail
over bleached leathers, sword and dagger at his waist, a
fur-trimmed cloak across his shoulders. “You must take my
place, as I took Father’s, until we come home.”
“I know,” Bran replied miserably. He had never felt
so little or alone or scared. He did not know how to be a lord.
“Listen to Maester Luwin’s counsel, and take care of
Rickon. Tell him that I’ll be back as soon as the fighting is
done.”
Rickon had refused to come down. He was up in his chamber,
redeyed and defiant. “No!” he’d screamed when
Bran had asked if he didn’t want to say farewell to Robb.
“NO farewell!”
“I told him,” Bran said. “He says no one ever
comes back.”
“He can’t be a baby forever. He’s a Stark, and
near four.” Robb sighed. “Well, Mother will be home
soon. And I’ll bring back Father, I promise.”
He wheeled his courser around and trotted away. Grey Wind
followed, loping beside the warhorse, lean and swift. Hallis Mollen
went before them through the gate, carrying the rippling white
banner of House Stark atop a high standard of grey ash. Theon
Greyjoy and the Greatjon fell in on either side of Robb, and their
knights formed up in a double column behind them, steel-tipped
lances glinting in the sun.
Uncomfortably, he remembered Osha’s words. He’s
marching the wrong way, he thought. For an instant he wanted to
gallop after him and shout a warning, but when Robb vanished
beneath the portcullis, the moment was gone.
Beyond the castle walls, a roar of sound went up. The foot
soldiers and townsfolk were cheering Robb as he rode past, Bran
knew; cheering for Lord Stark, for the Lord of Winterfell on his
great stallion, with his cloak streaming and Grey Wind racing
beside him. They would never cheer for him that way, he realized
with a dull ache. He might be the lord in Winterfell while his
brother and father were gone, but he was still Bran the Broken. He
could not even get off his own horse, except to fall.
When the distant cheers had faded to silence and the yard was
empty at last, Winterfell seemed deserted and dead. Bran looked
around at the faces of those who remained, women and children and
old men . . . and Hodor. The huge stableboy had a lost and
frightened look to his face. “Hodor?” he said
sadly.
“Hodor,” Bran agreed, wondering what it meant.