It seemed a thousand years ago that Catelyn
Stark had carried her infant son out of Riverrun, crossing the
Tumblestone in a small boat to begin their journey north to
Winterfell. And it was across the Tumblestone that they came home
now, though the boy wore plate and mail in place of swaddling
clothes.
Robb sat in the bow with Grey Wind, his hand resting on his
direwolf s head as the rowers pulled at their oars. Theon Greyjoy
was with him. Her uncle Brynden would come behind in the second
boat, with the Greatjon and Lord Karstark.
Catelyn took a place toward the stern. They shot down the
Tumblestone, letting the strong current push them past the looming
Wheel Tower. The splash and rumble of the great waterwheel within
was a sound from her girlhood that brought a sad smile to
Catelyn’s face. From the sandstone walls of the castle,
soldiers and servants shouted down her name, and Robb’s, and
“Winterfell!” From every rampart waved the banner of
House Tully: a leaping trout, silver, against a rippling
blue-and-red field. It was a stirring sight, yet it did not lift
her heart. She wondered if indeed her heart would ever lift again.
Oh, Ned . . .
Below the Wheel Tower, they made a wide turn and knifed through
the churning water. The men put their backs into it. The wide arch
of the Water Gate came into view, and she heard the creak of heavy
chains as the great iron portcullis was winched upward. It rose
slowly as they approached, and Catelyn saw that the lower half of
it was red with rust. The bottom foot dripped brown mud on them as
they passed underneath, the barbed spikes mere inches above their
heads. Catelyn gazed up at the bars and wondered how deep the rust
went and how well the portcullis would stand up to a ram and
whether it ought to be replaced. Thoughts like that were seldom far
from her mind these days.
They passed beneath the arch and under the walls, moving from
sunlight to shadow and back into sunlight. Boats large and small
were tied up all around them, secured to iron rings set in the
stone. Her father’s guards waited on the water stair with her
brother. Ser Edmure Tully was a stocky young man with a shaggy head
of auburn hair and a fiery beard. His breastplate was scratched and
dented from battle, his blue-and-red cloak stained by blood and
smoke. At his side stood the Lord Tytos Blackwood, a hard
pike of a man with close-cropped salt-and-pepper whiskers and a hook
nose. His bright yellow armor was inlaid with jet in elaborate
vine-and-leaf patterns, and a cloak sewn from raven feathers draped
his thin shoulders. It had been Lord Tytos who led the
sortie that plucked her brother from the Lannister camp.
“Bring them in,” Ser Edmure commanded. Three men
scrambled down the stairs knee-deep in the water and pulled the
boat close with long hooks. When Grey Wind bounded out, one of them
dropped his pole and lurched back, stumbling and sitting down
abruptly in the river. The others laughed, and the man got a
sheepish look on his face. Theon Greyjoy vaulted over the side of
the boat and lifted Catelyn by the waist, setting her on a dry step
above him as water lapped around his boots.
Edmure came down the steps to embrace her. “Sweet
sister,” he murmured hoarsely. He had deep blue eyes and a
mouth made for smiles, but he was not smiling now. He looked worn
and tired, battered by battle and haggard from strain. His neck was
bandaged where he had taken a wound. Catelyn hugged him
fiercely.
“Your grief is mine, Cat,” he said when they broke
apart. “When we heard about Lord Eddard . . . the Lannisters
will pay, I swear it, you will have your vengeance.”
“Will that bring Ned back to me?” she said sharply.
The wound was still too fresh for softer words. She could not think
about Ned now. She would not. It would not do. She had to be
strong. “All that will keep. I must see Father.”
“He awaits you in his solar,” Edmure said.
“Lord Hoster is bedridden, my lady,” her
father’s steward explained. When had that good man grown so
old and grey? “He instructed me to bring you to him at
once.”
“I’ll take her.” Edmure escorted her up the
water stair and across the lower bailey, where Petyr Baelish and
Brandon Stark had once crossed swords for her favor. The massive
sandstone walls of the keep loomed above them. As they pushed
through a door between two guardsmen in fish-crest helms, she
asked, “How bad is he?” dreading the answer even as she
said the words.
Edmure’s look was somber. “He will not be with us
long, the maesters say. The pain is . . . constant, and
grievous.”
A blind rage filled her, a rage at all the world; at her brother
Edmure and her sister Lysa, at the Lannisters, at the maesters, at
Ned and her father and the monstrous gods who would take them both
away from her. “You should have told me,” she said.
“You should have sent word as soon as you knew.”
“He forbade it. He did not want his enemies to know that
he was dying. With the realm so troubled, he feared that if the
Lannisters suspected how frail he was . . . ”
“ . . . they might attack?” Catelyn finished, hard.
It was your doing, yours, a voice whispered inside her. If you had
not taken it upon yourself to seize the dwarf . . .
They climbed the spiral stair in silence.
The keep was three-sided, like Riverrun itself, and Lord
Hoster’s solar was triangular as well, with a stone balcony
that jutted out to the east like the prow of some great sandstone
ship. From there the lord of the castle could look down on his
walls and battlements, and beyond, to where the waters met. They
had moved her father’s bed out onto the balcony. “He
likes to sit in the sun and watch the rivers,” Edmure
explained. “Father, see who I’ve brought. Cat has come
to see you . . . ”
Hoster Tully had always been a big man; tall and broad in his
youth, portly as he grew older. Now he seemed shrunken, the muscle
and meat melted off his bones. Even his face sagged. The last time
Catelyn had seen him, his hair and beard had been brown, well
streaked with grey. Now they had gone white as snow.
His eyes opened to the sound of Edmure’s voice.
“Little cat,” he murmured in a voice thin and wispy and
wracked by pain. “My little cat.” A tremulous smile
touched his face as his hand groped for hers. “I watched for
you . . . ”
“I shall leave you to talk,” her brother said,
kissing their lord father gently on the brow before he
withdrew.
Catelyn knelt and took her father’s hand in hers. It was a
big hand, but fleshless now, the bones moving loosely under the
skin, all the strength gone from it. “You should have told
me,” she said. “A rider, a raven . . . ”
“Riders are taken, questioned,” he answered.
“Ravens are brought down . . . ” A spasm of pain took
him, and his fingers clutched hers hard. “The crabs are in my
belly . . . pinching, always pinching. Day and night. They have
fierce claws, the crabs. Maester Vyman makes me dreamwine, milk of
the poppy . . . I sleep a lot . . . but I wanted to be awake to see
you, when you came. I was afraid . . . when the Lannisters took
your brother, the camps all around us . . . was afraid I would go,
before I could see you again . . . I was afraid . . . ”
“I’m here, Father,” she said. “With
Robb, my son. He’ll want to see you too.”
“Your boy,” he whispered. “He had my eyes, I
remember . . . ”
“He did, and does. And we’ve brought you Jaime
Lannister, in irons. Riverrun is free again, Father.”
Lord Hoster smiled. “I saw. Last night, when it began, I
told them . . . had to see. They carried me to the gatehouse . . . watched from the battlements. Ah, that was beautiful . . . the
torches came in a wave, I could hear the cries floating across the
river . . . sweet cries . . . when that siege tower went up,
gods . . . would have died then, and glad, if only I could have
seen you children first. Was it your boy who did it? Was it your
Robb?”
“Yes,” Catelyn said, fiercely proud. “It was
Robb . . . and Brynden. Your brother is here as well, my
lord.”
“Him.” Her father’s voice was a faint whisper.
“The Blackfish . . . came back? From the Vale?”
“Yes.”
“And Lysa?” A cool wind moved through his thin white
hair. “Gods be good, your sister . . . did she come as
well?”
He sounded so full of hope and yearning that it was hard to tell
the truth. “No. I’m sorry . . . ”
“Oh.” His face fell, and some light went out of his
eyes. “I’d hoped I would have liked to see her,
before . . . ”
“She’s with her son, in the Eyrie.”
Lord Hoster gave a weary nod. “Lord Robert now, poor
Arryn’s gone . . . I remember . . . why did she not come with
you?”
“She is frightened, my lord. In the Eyrie she feels
safe.” She kissed his wrinkled brow. “Robb will be
waiting. Will you see him? And Brynden?”
“Your son,” he whispered. “Yes. Cat’s
child . . . he had my eyes, I remember. When he was born. Bring him
. . . yes.”
“And your brother?”
Her father glanced out over the rivers. “Blackfish,”
he said. “Has he wed yet? Taken some . . . girl to
wife?” Even on his deathbed, Catelyn thought sadly. “He has not
wed. You know that, Father. Nor will he ever.”
“I told him . . . commanded him. Marry! I was his lord. He
knows. My right, to make his match. A good match. A Redwyne. Old
House. Sweet girl, pretty . . . freckles . . . Bethany, yes. Poor
child. Still waiting. Yes. Still . . . ”
“Bethany Redwyne wed Lord Rowan years ago,” Catelyn
reminded him. “She has three children by him.”
“Even so,” Lord Hoster muttered. “Even so.
Spit on the girl. The Redwynes. Spit on me. His lord, his brother . . . that Blackfish. I had other offers. Lord Bracken’s girl.
Walder Frey . . . any of three, he said . . . Has he wed? Anyone?
Anyone?”
“No one,” Catelyn said, “yet he has come many
leagues to see you, fighting his way back to Riverrun. I would not
be here now, if Ser Brynden had not helped us.”
“He was ever a warrior,” her father husked.
“That he could do. Knight of the Gate, yes.” He leaned
back and closed his eyes, inutterably weary. “Send him.
Later. I’ll sleep now. Too sick to fight. Send him up later,
the Blackfish . . . ”
Catelyn kissed him gently, smoothed his hair, and left him there
in the shade of his keep, with his rivers flowing beneath. He was
asleep before she left the solar.
When she returned to the lower bailey, Ser Brynden Tully stood
on the water stairs with wet boots, talking with the captain of
Riverrun’s guards. He came to her at once. “Is
he—”
“Dying,” she said. “As we feared.”
Her uncle’s craggy face showed his pain plain. He ran his
fingers through his thick grey hair. “Will he see
me?”
She nodded. “He says he is too sick to fight.”
Brynden Blackfish chuckled. “I am too old a soldier to
believe that. Hoster will be chiding me about the Redwyne girl even
as we light his funeral pyre, damn his bones.”
Catelyn smiled, knowing it was true. “I do not see
Robb.”
“He went with Greyjoy to the hall, I believe.”
Theon Greyjoy was seated on a bench in Riverrun’s Great
Hall, enjoying a horn of ale and regaling her father’s
garrison with an account of the slaughter in the Whispering Wood.
“Some tried to flee, but we’d pinched the valley shut
at both ends, and we rode out of the darkness with sword and lance.
The Lannisters must have thought the Others themselves were on them when that wolf of Robb’s
got in among them. I saw him tear one man’s arm from his
shoulder, and their horses went mad at the scent of him. I
couldn’t tell you how many men were thrown—”
“Theon,” she interrupted, “where might I find
my son?”
“Lord Robb went to visit the godswood, my lady.”
It was what Ned would have done. He is his father’s son as
much as mine, I must remember. Oh, gods, Ned . . .
She found Robb beneath the green canopy of leaves, surrounded by
tall redwoods and great old elms, kneeling before the heart tree, a
slender weirwood with a face more sad than fierce. His longsword
was before him, the point thrust in the earth, his gloved hands
clasped around the hilt. Around him others knelt: Greatjon Umber,
Rickard Karstark, Maege Mormont, Galbart Glover, and more. Even
Tytos Blackwood was among them, the great raven cloak fanned out
behind him. These are the ones who keep the old gods, she realized.
She asked herself what gods she kept these days, and could not find
an answer.
It would not do to disturb them at their prayers. The gods must
have their due . . . even cruel gods who would take Ned from her,
and her lord father as well. So Catelyn waited. The river wind
moved through the high branches, and she could see the Wheel Tower
to her right, ivy crawling up its side. As she stood there, all the
memories came flooding back to her. Her father had taught her to
ride amongst these trees, and that was the elm that Edmure had
fallen from when he broke his arm, and over there, beneath that
bower, she and Lysa had played at kissing with Petyr.
She had not thought of that in years. How young they all had
been—she no older than Sansa, Lysa younger than Arya, and Petyr
younger still, yet eager. The girls had traded him between them,
serious and giggling by turns. It came back to her so vividly she
could almost feel his sweaty fingers on her shoulders and taste the
mint on his breath. There was always mint growing in the godswood,
and Petyr had liked to chew it. He had been such a bold little boy,
always in trouble. “He tried to put his tongue in my
mouth,” Catelyn had confessed to her sister afterward, when
they were alone. “He did with me too,” Lysa had
whispered, shy and breathless. “I liked it.”
Robb got to his feet slowly and sheathed his sword, and Catelyn
found herself wondering whether her son had ever kissed a girl in
the godswood. Surely he must have. She had seen Jeyne Poole giving
him moist-eyed glances, and some of the serving girls, even ones as
old as eighteen . . . he had ridden in battle and killed men with a
sword, surely he had been kissed. There were tears in her eyes. She
wiped them away angrily.
“Mother,” Robb said when he saw her standing there.
“We must call a council. There are things to be
decided.”
“Your grandfather would like to see you,” she said.
“Robb, he’s very sick.”
“Ser Edmure told me. I am sorry, Mother . . . for Lord
Hoster and for you. Yet first we must meet. We’ve had word
from the south. Renly Baratheon has claimed his brother’s
crown.”
“Renly?” she said, shocked. “I had thought,
surely it would be Lord Stannis . . . ”
“So did we all, my lady,” Galbart Glover said.
The war council convened in the Great Hall, at four long trestle
tables arranged in a broken square. Lord Hoster was too weak to
attend, asleep on his balcony, dreaming of the sun on the rivers of
his youth. Edmure sat in the high seat of the Tullys, with Brynden
Blackfish at his side, and his father’s bannermen arrayed to
right and left and along the side tables. Word of the victory at
Riverrun had spread to the fugitive lords of the Trident, drawing
them back. Karyl Vance came in, a lord now, his father dead beneath
the Golden Tooth. Ser Marq Piper was with him, and they brought a
Darry, Ser Raymun’s son, a lad no older than Bran. Lord Jonos
Bracken arrived from the ruins of Stone Hedge, glowering and
blustering, and took a seat as far from Tytos Blackwood as the
tables would permit.
The northern lords sat opposite, with Catelyn and Robb facing
her brother across the tables. They were fewer. The Greatjon sat at
Robb’s left hand, and then Theon Greyjoy; Galbart Glover and
Lady Mormont were to the right of Catelyn. Lord Rickard Karstark,
gaunt and hollow-eyed in his grief, took his seat like a man in a
nightmare, his long beard uncombed and unwashed. He had left two
sons dead in the Whispering Wood, and there was no word of the
third, his eldest, who had led the Karstark spears against Tywin
Lannister on the Green Fork.
The arguing raged on late into the night. Each lord had a right
to speak, and speak they did . . . and shout, and curse, and
reason, and cajole, and jest, and bargain, and slam tankards on the
table, and threaten, and walk out, and return sullen or smiling.
Catelyn sat and listened to it all.
Roose Bolton had re-formed the battered remnants of their other
host at the mouth of the causeway. Ser Helman Tallhart and Walder
Frey still held the Twins. Lord Tywin’s army had crossed the
Trident, and was making for Harrenhal. And there were two kings in
the realm. Two kings, and no agreement.
Many of the lords bannermen wanted to march on Harrenhal at
once, to meet Lord Tywin and end Lannister power for all time.
Young, hot-tempered Marq Piper urged a strike west at Casterly Rock
instead. Still others counseled patience. Riverrun sat athwart the
Lannister supply lines, Jason Mallister pointed out; let them bide
their time, denying Lord Tywin fresh levies and provisions while
they strengthened their defenses and rested their weary troops.
Lord Blackwood would have none of it. They should finish the work
they began in the Whispering Wood. March to Harrenhal and bring
Roose Bolton’s army down as well. What Blackwood urged,
Bracken opposed, as ever; Lord Jonos Bracken rose to insist they
ought pledge their fealty to King Renly, and move south to join
their might to his.
“Renly is not the king,” Robb said. It was the first
time her son had spoken. Like his father, he knew how to
listen.
“You cannot mean to hold to Joffrey, my lord,”
Galbart Glover said. “He put your father to death.”
“That makes him evil,” Robb replied. “I do not
know that it makes Renly king. Joffrey is still Robert’s
eldest trueborn son, so the throne is rightfully his by all the
laws of the realm. Were he to die, and I mean to see that he does,
he has a younger brother. Tommen is next in line after
Joffrey.”
“Tommen is no less a Lannister,” Ser Marq Piper
snapped.
“As you say,” said Robb, troubled. “Yet if
neither one is king, still, how could it be Lord Renly? He’s
Robert’s younger brother. Bran can’t be Lord of
Winterfell before me, and Renly can’t be king before Lord
Stannis.”
Lady Mormont agreed. “Lord Stannis has the better
claim.”
“Renly is crowned,” said Marq Piper.
“Highgarden and Storm’s End support his claim, and the
Dornishmen will not be laggardly. If Winterfell and Riverrun add
their strength to his, he will have five of the seven great houses
behind him. Six, if the Arryns bestir themselves! Six against the
Rock! My lords, within the year, we will have all their heads on
pikes, the queen and the boy king, Lord Tywin, the Imp, the
Kingslayer, Ser Kevan, all of them! That is what we shall win if we
join with King Renly. What does Lord Stannis have against that,
that we should cast it all aside?”
“The right,” said Robb stubbornly. Catelyn thought
he sounded eerily like his father as he said it.
“So you mean us to declare for Stannis?” asked
Edmure.
“I don’t know,” said Robb. “I prayed to
know what to do, but the gods did not answer. The Lannisters killed
my father for a traitor, and we know that was a lie, but if Joffrey
is the lawful king and we fight against him, we will be
traitors.”
“My lord father would urge caution,” aged Ser
Stevron said, with the weaselly smile of a Frey. “Wait, let
these two kings play their game of thrones. When they are done
fighting, we can bend our knees to the victor, or oppose him, as we
choose. With Renly arming, likely Lord Tywin would welcome a truce
. . . and the safe return of his son. Noble lords, allow me to go
to him at Harrenhal and arrange good terms and ransoms . . . ”
A roar of outrage drowned out his voice. “Craven!”
the Greatjon thundered. “Begging for a truce will make us
seem weak,” declared Lady Mormont. “Ransoms be damned,
we must not give up the Kingslayer,” shouted Rickard
Karstark.
“Why not a peace?” Catelyn asked.
The lords looked at her, but it was Robb’s eyes she felt,
his and his alone. “My lady, they murdered my lord father,
your husband,” he said grimly. He unsheathed his longsword
and laid it on the table before him, the bright steel on the rough
wood. “This is the only peace I have for
Lannisters.”
The Greatjon bellowed his approval, and other men added their
voices, shouting and drawing swords and pounding their fists on the
table. Catelyn waited until they had quieted. “My
lords,” she said then, “Lord Eddard was your liege, but
I shared his bed and bore his children. Do you think I love him any
less than you?” Her voice almost broke with her grief, but
Catelyn took a long breath and steadied herself. “Robb, if
that sword could bring him back, I should never let you sheathe it
until Ned stood at my side once more . . . but he is gone, and
hundred Whispering Woods will not change that. Ned is gone, and
Daryn Hornwood, and Lord Karstark’s valiant sons, and many
other good men besides, and none of them will return to us. Must we
have more deaths still?”
“You are a woman, my lady,” the Greatjon rumbled in
his deep voice. “Women do not understand these
things.”
“You are the gentle sex,” said Lord Karstark, with
the lines of grief fresh on his face. “A man has a need for
vengeance.”
“Give me Cersei Lannister, Lord Karstark, and you would
see how gentle a woman can be,” Catelyn replied.
“Perhaps I do not understand tactics and strategy . . . but I
understand futility. We went to war when Lannister armies were
ravaging the riverlands, and Ned was a prisoner, falsely accused of
treason. We fought to defend ourselves, and to win my lord’s
freedom.
“Well, the one is done, and the other forever beyond our
reach. I will mourn for Ned until the end of my days, but I must
think of the living. I want my daughters back, and the queen holds
them still. If I must trade our four Lannisters for their two
Starks, I will call that a bargain and thank the gods. I want you
safe, Robb, ruling at Winterfell from your father’s seat. I
want you to live your life, to kiss a girl and wed a woman and
father a son. I want to write an end to this. I want to go home, my
lords, and weep for my husband.”
The hall was very quiet when Catelyn finished speaking.
“Peace,” said her uncle Brynden. “Peace is
sweet, my lady . . . but on what terms? It is no good hammering
your sword into a plowshare if you must forge it again on the
morrow.”
“What did Torrhen and my Eddard die for, if I am to return
to Karhold with nothing but their bones?” asked Rickard
Karstark.
“Aye,” said Lord Bracken. “Gregor Clegane laid
waste to my fields, slaughtered my smallfolk, and left Stone Hedge
a smoking ruin. Am I now to bend the knee to the ones who sent him?
What have we fought for, if we are to put all back as it was
before?”
Lord Blackwood agreed, to Catelyn’s surprise and dismay.
“And if we do make peace with King Joffrey, are we not then
traitors to King Renly? What if the stag should prevail against the
lion, where would that leave us?”
“Whatever you may decide for yourselves, I shall never
call a Lannister my king,” declared Marq Piper.
“Nor I!” yelled the little Darry boy. “I never
will!”
Again the shouting began. Catelyn sat despairing. She had come
so close, she thought. They had almost listened, almost . . . but
the moment was gone. There would be no peace, no chance to heal, no
safety. She looked at her son, watched him as he listened to the
lords debate, frowning, troubled, yet wedded to his war. He had
pledged himself to marry a daughter of Walder Frey, but she saw his
true bride plain before her now: the sword he had laid on the
table.
Catelyn was thinking of her girls, wondering if she would ever
see them again, when the Greatjon lurched to his feet.
“MY LORDS!” he shouted, his voice booming off the
rafters. “Here is what I say to these two kings!” He
spat. “ Renly Baratheon is nothing to me, nor Stannis
neither. Why should they rule over me and mine, from some flowery
seat in Highgarden or Dorne? What do they know of the Wall or the
wolfswood or the barrows of the First Men? Even their gods are
wrong. The Others take the Lannisters too, I’ve had a
bellyful of them.” He reached back over his shoulder and drew
his immense two-handed greatsword. “Why shouldn’t we
rule ourselves again? It was the dragons we married, and the
dragons are all dead!” He pointed at Robb with the blade.
“There sits the only king I mean to bow my knee to,
m’lords,” he thundered. “The King in the
North!”
And he knelt, and laid his sword at her son’s feet.
“I’ll have peace on those terms,” Lord
Karstark said. “They can keep their red castle and their iron
chair as well.” He eased his longsword from its scabbard.
“The King in the North!” he said, kneeling beside the
Greatjon.
Maege Mormont stood. “The King of Winter!” she
declared, and laid her spiked mace beside the swords. And the river
lords were rising too, Blackwood and Bracken and Mallister, houses
who had never been ruled from Winterfell, yet Catelyn watched them
rise and draw their blades, bending their knees and shouting the
old words that had not been heard in the realm for more than three
hundred years, since Aegon the Dragon had come to make the Seven
Kingdoms one . . . yet now were heard again, ringing from the
timbers of her father’s hall:
“The King in the North!”
“The King in the North!”
“THE KING IN THE NORTH!”
It seemed a thousand years ago that Catelyn
Stark had carried her infant son out of Riverrun, crossing the
Tumblestone in a small boat to begin their journey north to
Winterfell. And it was across the Tumblestone that they came home
now, though the boy wore plate and mail in place of swaddling
clothes.
Robb sat in the bow with Grey Wind, his hand resting on his
direwolf s head as the rowers pulled at their oars. Theon Greyjoy
was with him. Her uncle Brynden would come behind in the second
boat, with the Greatjon and Lord Karstark.
Catelyn took a place toward the stern. They shot down the
Tumblestone, letting the strong current push them past the looming
Wheel Tower. The splash and rumble of the great waterwheel within
was a sound from her girlhood that brought a sad smile to
Catelyn’s face. From the sandstone walls of the castle,
soldiers and servants shouted down her name, and Robb’s, and
“Winterfell!” From every rampart waved the banner of
House Tully: a leaping trout, silver, against a rippling
blue-and-red field. It was a stirring sight, yet it did not lift
her heart. She wondered if indeed her heart would ever lift again.
Oh, Ned . . .
Below the Wheel Tower, they made a wide turn and knifed through
the churning water. The men put their backs into it. The wide arch
of the Water Gate came into view, and she heard the creak of heavy
chains as the great iron portcullis was winched upward. It rose
slowly as they approached, and Catelyn saw that the lower half of
it was red with rust. The bottom foot dripped brown mud on them as
they passed underneath, the barbed spikes mere inches above their
heads. Catelyn gazed up at the bars and wondered how deep the rust
went and how well the portcullis would stand up to a ram and
whether it ought to be replaced. Thoughts like that were seldom far
from her mind these days.
They passed beneath the arch and under the walls, moving from
sunlight to shadow and back into sunlight. Boats large and small
were tied up all around them, secured to iron rings set in the
stone. Her father’s guards waited on the water stair with her
brother. Ser Edmure Tully was a stocky young man with a shaggy head
of auburn hair and a fiery beard. His breastplate was scratched and
dented from battle, his blue-and-red cloak stained by blood and
smoke. At his side stood the Lord Tytos Blackwood, a hard
pike of a man with close-cropped salt-and-pepper whiskers and a hook
nose. His bright yellow armor was inlaid with jet in elaborate
vine-and-leaf patterns, and a cloak sewn from raven feathers draped
his thin shoulders. It had been Lord Tytos who led the
sortie that plucked her brother from the Lannister camp.
“Bring them in,” Ser Edmure commanded. Three men
scrambled down the stairs knee-deep in the water and pulled the
boat close with long hooks. When Grey Wind bounded out, one of them
dropped his pole and lurched back, stumbling and sitting down
abruptly in the river. The others laughed, and the man got a
sheepish look on his face. Theon Greyjoy vaulted over the side of
the boat and lifted Catelyn by the waist, setting her on a dry step
above him as water lapped around his boots.
Edmure came down the steps to embrace her. “Sweet
sister,” he murmured hoarsely. He had deep blue eyes and a
mouth made for smiles, but he was not smiling now. He looked worn
and tired, battered by battle and haggard from strain. His neck was
bandaged where he had taken a wound. Catelyn hugged him
fiercely.
“Your grief is mine, Cat,” he said when they broke
apart. “When we heard about Lord Eddard . . . the Lannisters
will pay, I swear it, you will have your vengeance.”
“Will that bring Ned back to me?” she said sharply.
The wound was still too fresh for softer words. She could not think
about Ned now. She would not. It would not do. She had to be
strong. “All that will keep. I must see Father.”
“He awaits you in his solar,” Edmure said.
“Lord Hoster is bedridden, my lady,” her
father’s steward explained. When had that good man grown so
old and grey? “He instructed me to bring you to him at
once.”
“I’ll take her.” Edmure escorted her up the
water stair and across the lower bailey, where Petyr Baelish and
Brandon Stark had once crossed swords for her favor. The massive
sandstone walls of the keep loomed above them. As they pushed
through a door between two guardsmen in fish-crest helms, she
asked, “How bad is he?” dreading the answer even as she
said the words.
Edmure’s look was somber. “He will not be with us
long, the maesters say. The pain is . . . constant, and
grievous.”
A blind rage filled her, a rage at all the world; at her brother
Edmure and her sister Lysa, at the Lannisters, at the maesters, at
Ned and her father and the monstrous gods who would take them both
away from her. “You should have told me,” she said.
“You should have sent word as soon as you knew.”
“He forbade it. He did not want his enemies to know that
he was dying. With the realm so troubled, he feared that if the
Lannisters suspected how frail he was . . . ”
“ . . . they might attack?” Catelyn finished, hard.
It was your doing, yours, a voice whispered inside her. If you had
not taken it upon yourself to seize the dwarf . . .
They climbed the spiral stair in silence.
The keep was three-sided, like Riverrun itself, and Lord
Hoster’s solar was triangular as well, with a stone balcony
that jutted out to the east like the prow of some great sandstone
ship. From there the lord of the castle could look down on his
walls and battlements, and beyond, to where the waters met. They
had moved her father’s bed out onto the balcony. “He
likes to sit in the sun and watch the rivers,” Edmure
explained. “Father, see who I’ve brought. Cat has come
to see you . . . ”
Hoster Tully had always been a big man; tall and broad in his
youth, portly as he grew older. Now he seemed shrunken, the muscle
and meat melted off his bones. Even his face sagged. The last time
Catelyn had seen him, his hair and beard had been brown, well
streaked with grey. Now they had gone white as snow.
His eyes opened to the sound of Edmure’s voice.
“Little cat,” he murmured in a voice thin and wispy and
wracked by pain. “My little cat.” A tremulous smile
touched his face as his hand groped for hers. “I watched for
you . . . ”
“I shall leave you to talk,” her brother said,
kissing their lord father gently on the brow before he
withdrew.
Catelyn knelt and took her father’s hand in hers. It was a
big hand, but fleshless now, the bones moving loosely under the
skin, all the strength gone from it. “You should have told
me,” she said. “A rider, a raven . . . ”
“Riders are taken, questioned,” he answered.
“Ravens are brought down . . . ” A spasm of pain took
him, and his fingers clutched hers hard. “The crabs are in my
belly . . . pinching, always pinching. Day and night. They have
fierce claws, the crabs. Maester Vyman makes me dreamwine, milk of
the poppy . . . I sleep a lot . . . but I wanted to be awake to see
you, when you came. I was afraid . . . when the Lannisters took
your brother, the camps all around us . . . was afraid I would go,
before I could see you again . . . I was afraid . . . ”
“I’m here, Father,” she said. “With
Robb, my son. He’ll want to see you too.”
“Your boy,” he whispered. “He had my eyes, I
remember . . . ”
“He did, and does. And we’ve brought you Jaime
Lannister, in irons. Riverrun is free again, Father.”
Lord Hoster smiled. “I saw. Last night, when it began, I
told them . . . had to see. They carried me to the gatehouse . . . watched from the battlements. Ah, that was beautiful . . . the
torches came in a wave, I could hear the cries floating across the
river . . . sweet cries . . . when that siege tower went up,
gods . . . would have died then, and glad, if only I could have
seen you children first. Was it your boy who did it? Was it your
Robb?”
“Yes,” Catelyn said, fiercely proud. “It was
Robb . . . and Brynden. Your brother is here as well, my
lord.”
“Him.” Her father’s voice was a faint whisper.
“The Blackfish . . . came back? From the Vale?”
“Yes.”
“And Lysa?” A cool wind moved through his thin white
hair. “Gods be good, your sister . . . did she come as
well?”
He sounded so full of hope and yearning that it was hard to tell
the truth. “No. I’m sorry . . . ”
“Oh.” His face fell, and some light went out of his
eyes. “I’d hoped I would have liked to see her,
before . . . ”
“She’s with her son, in the Eyrie.”
Lord Hoster gave a weary nod. “Lord Robert now, poor
Arryn’s gone . . . I remember . . . why did she not come with
you?”
“She is frightened, my lord. In the Eyrie she feels
safe.” She kissed his wrinkled brow. “Robb will be
waiting. Will you see him? And Brynden?”
“Your son,” he whispered. “Yes. Cat’s
child . . . he had my eyes, I remember. When he was born. Bring him
. . . yes.”
“And your brother?”
Her father glanced out over the rivers. “Blackfish,”
he said. “Has he wed yet? Taken some . . . girl to
wife?” Even on his deathbed, Catelyn thought sadly. “He has not
wed. You know that, Father. Nor will he ever.”
“I told him . . . commanded him. Marry! I was his lord. He
knows. My right, to make his match. A good match. A Redwyne. Old
House. Sweet girl, pretty . . . freckles . . . Bethany, yes. Poor
child. Still waiting. Yes. Still . . . ”
“Bethany Redwyne wed Lord Rowan years ago,” Catelyn
reminded him. “She has three children by him.”
“Even so,” Lord Hoster muttered. “Even so.
Spit on the girl. The Redwynes. Spit on me. His lord, his brother . . . that Blackfish. I had other offers. Lord Bracken’s girl.
Walder Frey . . . any of three, he said . . . Has he wed? Anyone?
Anyone?”
“No one,” Catelyn said, “yet he has come many
leagues to see you, fighting his way back to Riverrun. I would not
be here now, if Ser Brynden had not helped us.”
“He was ever a warrior,” her father husked.
“That he could do. Knight of the Gate, yes.” He leaned
back and closed his eyes, inutterably weary. “Send him.
Later. I’ll sleep now. Too sick to fight. Send him up later,
the Blackfish . . . ”
Catelyn kissed him gently, smoothed his hair, and left him there
in the shade of his keep, with his rivers flowing beneath. He was
asleep before she left the solar.
When she returned to the lower bailey, Ser Brynden Tully stood
on the water stairs with wet boots, talking with the captain of
Riverrun’s guards. He came to her at once. “Is
he—”
“Dying,” she said. “As we feared.”
Her uncle’s craggy face showed his pain plain. He ran his
fingers through his thick grey hair. “Will he see
me?”
She nodded. “He says he is too sick to fight.”
Brynden Blackfish chuckled. “I am too old a soldier to
believe that. Hoster will be chiding me about the Redwyne girl even
as we light his funeral pyre, damn his bones.”
Catelyn smiled, knowing it was true. “I do not see
Robb.”
“He went with Greyjoy to the hall, I believe.”
Theon Greyjoy was seated on a bench in Riverrun’s Great
Hall, enjoying a horn of ale and regaling her father’s
garrison with an account of the slaughter in the Whispering Wood.
“Some tried to flee, but we’d pinched the valley shut
at both ends, and we rode out of the darkness with sword and lance.
The Lannisters must have thought the Others themselves were on them when that wolf of Robb’s
got in among them. I saw him tear one man’s arm from his
shoulder, and their horses went mad at the scent of him. I
couldn’t tell you how many men were thrown—”
“Theon,” she interrupted, “where might I find
my son?”
“Lord Robb went to visit the godswood, my lady.”
It was what Ned would have done. He is his father’s son as
much as mine, I must remember. Oh, gods, Ned . . .
She found Robb beneath the green canopy of leaves, surrounded by
tall redwoods and great old elms, kneeling before the heart tree, a
slender weirwood with a face more sad than fierce. His longsword
was before him, the point thrust in the earth, his gloved hands
clasped around the hilt. Around him others knelt: Greatjon Umber,
Rickard Karstark, Maege Mormont, Galbart Glover, and more. Even
Tytos Blackwood was among them, the great raven cloak fanned out
behind him. These are the ones who keep the old gods, she realized.
She asked herself what gods she kept these days, and could not find
an answer.
It would not do to disturb them at their prayers. The gods must
have their due . . . even cruel gods who would take Ned from her,
and her lord father as well. So Catelyn waited. The river wind
moved through the high branches, and she could see the Wheel Tower
to her right, ivy crawling up its side. As she stood there, all the
memories came flooding back to her. Her father had taught her to
ride amongst these trees, and that was the elm that Edmure had
fallen from when he broke his arm, and over there, beneath that
bower, she and Lysa had played at kissing with Petyr.
She had not thought of that in years. How young they all had
been—she no older than Sansa, Lysa younger than Arya, and Petyr
younger still, yet eager. The girls had traded him between them,
serious and giggling by turns. It came back to her so vividly she
could almost feel his sweaty fingers on her shoulders and taste the
mint on his breath. There was always mint growing in the godswood,
and Petyr had liked to chew it. He had been such a bold little boy,
always in trouble. “He tried to put his tongue in my
mouth,” Catelyn had confessed to her sister afterward, when
they were alone. “He did with me too,” Lysa had
whispered, shy and breathless. “I liked it.”
Robb got to his feet slowly and sheathed his sword, and Catelyn
found herself wondering whether her son had ever kissed a girl in
the godswood. Surely he must have. She had seen Jeyne Poole giving
him moist-eyed glances, and some of the serving girls, even ones as
old as eighteen . . . he had ridden in battle and killed men with a
sword, surely he had been kissed. There were tears in her eyes. She
wiped them away angrily.
“Mother,” Robb said when he saw her standing there.
“We must call a council. There are things to be
decided.”
“Your grandfather would like to see you,” she said.
“Robb, he’s very sick.”
“Ser Edmure told me. I am sorry, Mother . . . for Lord
Hoster and for you. Yet first we must meet. We’ve had word
from the south. Renly Baratheon has claimed his brother’s
crown.”
“Renly?” she said, shocked. “I had thought,
surely it would be Lord Stannis . . . ”
“So did we all, my lady,” Galbart Glover said.
The war council convened in the Great Hall, at four long trestle
tables arranged in a broken square. Lord Hoster was too weak to
attend, asleep on his balcony, dreaming of the sun on the rivers of
his youth. Edmure sat in the high seat of the Tullys, with Brynden
Blackfish at his side, and his father’s bannermen arrayed to
right and left and along the side tables. Word of the victory at
Riverrun had spread to the fugitive lords of the Trident, drawing
them back. Karyl Vance came in, a lord now, his father dead beneath
the Golden Tooth. Ser Marq Piper was with him, and they brought a
Darry, Ser Raymun’s son, a lad no older than Bran. Lord Jonos
Bracken arrived from the ruins of Stone Hedge, glowering and
blustering, and took a seat as far from Tytos Blackwood as the
tables would permit.
The northern lords sat opposite, with Catelyn and Robb facing
her brother across the tables. They were fewer. The Greatjon sat at
Robb’s left hand, and then Theon Greyjoy; Galbart Glover and
Lady Mormont were to the right of Catelyn. Lord Rickard Karstark,
gaunt and hollow-eyed in his grief, took his seat like a man in a
nightmare, his long beard uncombed and unwashed. He had left two
sons dead in the Whispering Wood, and there was no word of the
third, his eldest, who had led the Karstark spears against Tywin
Lannister on the Green Fork.
The arguing raged on late into the night. Each lord had a right
to speak, and speak they did . . . and shout, and curse, and
reason, and cajole, and jest, and bargain, and slam tankards on the
table, and threaten, and walk out, and return sullen or smiling.
Catelyn sat and listened to it all.
Roose Bolton had re-formed the battered remnants of their other
host at the mouth of the causeway. Ser Helman Tallhart and Walder
Frey still held the Twins. Lord Tywin’s army had crossed the
Trident, and was making for Harrenhal. And there were two kings in
the realm. Two kings, and no agreement.
Many of the lords bannermen wanted to march on Harrenhal at
once, to meet Lord Tywin and end Lannister power for all time.
Young, hot-tempered Marq Piper urged a strike west at Casterly Rock
instead. Still others counseled patience. Riverrun sat athwart the
Lannister supply lines, Jason Mallister pointed out; let them bide
their time, denying Lord Tywin fresh levies and provisions while
they strengthened their defenses and rested their weary troops.
Lord Blackwood would have none of it. They should finish the work
they began in the Whispering Wood. March to Harrenhal and bring
Roose Bolton’s army down as well. What Blackwood urged,
Bracken opposed, as ever; Lord Jonos Bracken rose to insist they
ought pledge their fealty to King Renly, and move south to join
their might to his.
“Renly is not the king,” Robb said. It was the first
time her son had spoken. Like his father, he knew how to
listen.
“You cannot mean to hold to Joffrey, my lord,”
Galbart Glover said. “He put your father to death.”
“That makes him evil,” Robb replied. “I do not
know that it makes Renly king. Joffrey is still Robert’s
eldest trueborn son, so the throne is rightfully his by all the
laws of the realm. Were he to die, and I mean to see that he does,
he has a younger brother. Tommen is next in line after
Joffrey.”
“Tommen is no less a Lannister,” Ser Marq Piper
snapped.
“As you say,” said Robb, troubled. “Yet if
neither one is king, still, how could it be Lord Renly? He’s
Robert’s younger brother. Bran can’t be Lord of
Winterfell before me, and Renly can’t be king before Lord
Stannis.”
Lady Mormont agreed. “Lord Stannis has the better
claim.”
“Renly is crowned,” said Marq Piper.
“Highgarden and Storm’s End support his claim, and the
Dornishmen will not be laggardly. If Winterfell and Riverrun add
their strength to his, he will have five of the seven great houses
behind him. Six, if the Arryns bestir themselves! Six against the
Rock! My lords, within the year, we will have all their heads on
pikes, the queen and the boy king, Lord Tywin, the Imp, the
Kingslayer, Ser Kevan, all of them! That is what we shall win if we
join with King Renly. What does Lord Stannis have against that,
that we should cast it all aside?”
“The right,” said Robb stubbornly. Catelyn thought
he sounded eerily like his father as he said it.
“So you mean us to declare for Stannis?” asked
Edmure.
“I don’t know,” said Robb. “I prayed to
know what to do, but the gods did not answer. The Lannisters killed
my father for a traitor, and we know that was a lie, but if Joffrey
is the lawful king and we fight against him, we will be
traitors.”
“My lord father would urge caution,” aged Ser
Stevron said, with the weaselly smile of a Frey. “Wait, let
these two kings play their game of thrones. When they are done
fighting, we can bend our knees to the victor, or oppose him, as we
choose. With Renly arming, likely Lord Tywin would welcome a truce
. . . and the safe return of his son. Noble lords, allow me to go
to him at Harrenhal and arrange good terms and ransoms . . . ”
A roar of outrage drowned out his voice. “Craven!”
the Greatjon thundered. “Begging for a truce will make us
seem weak,” declared Lady Mormont. “Ransoms be damned,
we must not give up the Kingslayer,” shouted Rickard
Karstark.
“Why not a peace?” Catelyn asked.
The lords looked at her, but it was Robb’s eyes she felt,
his and his alone. “My lady, they murdered my lord father,
your husband,” he said grimly. He unsheathed his longsword
and laid it on the table before him, the bright steel on the rough
wood. “This is the only peace I have for
Lannisters.”
The Greatjon bellowed his approval, and other men added their
voices, shouting and drawing swords and pounding their fists on the
table. Catelyn waited until they had quieted. “My
lords,” she said then, “Lord Eddard was your liege, but
I shared his bed and bore his children. Do you think I love him any
less than you?” Her voice almost broke with her grief, but
Catelyn took a long breath and steadied herself. “Robb, if
that sword could bring him back, I should never let you sheathe it
until Ned stood at my side once more . . . but he is gone, and
hundred Whispering Woods will not change that. Ned is gone, and
Daryn Hornwood, and Lord Karstark’s valiant sons, and many
other good men besides, and none of them will return to us. Must we
have more deaths still?”
“You are a woman, my lady,” the Greatjon rumbled in
his deep voice. “Women do not understand these
things.”
“You are the gentle sex,” said Lord Karstark, with
the lines of grief fresh on his face. “A man has a need for
vengeance.”
“Give me Cersei Lannister, Lord Karstark, and you would
see how gentle a woman can be,” Catelyn replied.
“Perhaps I do not understand tactics and strategy . . . but I
understand futility. We went to war when Lannister armies were
ravaging the riverlands, and Ned was a prisoner, falsely accused of
treason. We fought to defend ourselves, and to win my lord’s
freedom.
“Well, the one is done, and the other forever beyond our
reach. I will mourn for Ned until the end of my days, but I must
think of the living. I want my daughters back, and the queen holds
them still. If I must trade our four Lannisters for their two
Starks, I will call that a bargain and thank the gods. I want you
safe, Robb, ruling at Winterfell from your father’s seat. I
want you to live your life, to kiss a girl and wed a woman and
father a son. I want to write an end to this. I want to go home, my
lords, and weep for my husband.”
The hall was very quiet when Catelyn finished speaking.
“Peace,” said her uncle Brynden. “Peace is
sweet, my lady . . . but on what terms? It is no good hammering
your sword into a plowshare if you must forge it again on the
morrow.”
“What did Torrhen and my Eddard die for, if I am to return
to Karhold with nothing but their bones?” asked Rickard
Karstark.
“Aye,” said Lord Bracken. “Gregor Clegane laid
waste to my fields, slaughtered my smallfolk, and left Stone Hedge
a smoking ruin. Am I now to bend the knee to the ones who sent him?
What have we fought for, if we are to put all back as it was
before?”
Lord Blackwood agreed, to Catelyn’s surprise and dismay.
“And if we do make peace with King Joffrey, are we not then
traitors to King Renly? What if the stag should prevail against the
lion, where would that leave us?”
“Whatever you may decide for yourselves, I shall never
call a Lannister my king,” declared Marq Piper.
“Nor I!” yelled the little Darry boy. “I never
will!”
Again the shouting began. Catelyn sat despairing. She had come
so close, she thought. They had almost listened, almost . . . but
the moment was gone. There would be no peace, no chance to heal, no
safety. She looked at her son, watched him as he listened to the
lords debate, frowning, troubled, yet wedded to his war. He had
pledged himself to marry a daughter of Walder Frey, but she saw his
true bride plain before her now: the sword he had laid on the
table.
Catelyn was thinking of her girls, wondering if she would ever
see them again, when the Greatjon lurched to his feet.
“MY LORDS!” he shouted, his voice booming off the
rafters. “Here is what I say to these two kings!” He
spat. “ Renly Baratheon is nothing to me, nor Stannis
neither. Why should they rule over me and mine, from some flowery
seat in Highgarden or Dorne? What do they know of the Wall or the
wolfswood or the barrows of the First Men? Even their gods are
wrong. The Others take the Lannisters too, I’ve had a
bellyful of them.” He reached back over his shoulder and drew
his immense two-handed greatsword. “Why shouldn’t we
rule ourselves again? It was the dragons we married, and the
dragons are all dead!” He pointed at Robb with the blade.
“There sits the only king I mean to bow my knee to,
m’lords,” he thundered. “The King in the
North!”
And he knelt, and laid his sword at her son’s feet.
“I’ll have peace on those terms,” Lord
Karstark said. “They can keep their red castle and their iron
chair as well.” He eased his longsword from its scabbard.
“The King in the North!” he said, kneeling beside the
Greatjon.
Maege Mormont stood. “The King of Winter!” she
declared, and laid her spiked mace beside the swords. And the river
lords were rising too, Blackwood and Bracken and Mallister, houses
who had never been ruled from Winterfell, yet Catelyn watched them
rise and draw their blades, bending their knees and shouting the
old words that had not been heard in the realm for more than three
hundred years, since Aegon the Dragon had come to make the Seven
Kingdoms one . . . yet now were heard again, ringing from the
timbers of her father’s hall:
“The King in the North!”
“The King in the North!”
“THE KING IN THE NORTH!”