Her son’s crown was fresh from the forge, and it seemed to
Catelyn Stark that the weight of it pressed heavy on Robb’s
head.
The ancient crown of the Kings of Winter had been lost three
centuries ago, yielded up to Aegon the Conqueror when Torrhen Stark
knelt in submission. What Aegon had done with it no man could say.
Lord Hoster’s smith had done his work well, and Robb’s
crown looked much as the other was said to have looked in the tales
told of the Stark kings of old; an open circlet of hammered bronze
incised with the runes of the First Men, surmounted by nine black
iron spikes wrought in the shape of longswords. Of gold and silver
and gemstones, it had none; bronze and iron were the metals of
winter, dark and strong to fight against the cold.
As they waited in Riverrun’s Great Hall for the prisoner
to be brought before them, she saw Robb push back the crown so it
rested upon the thick auburn mop of his hair; moments later, he
moved it forward again; later he gave it a quarter turn, as if that
might make it sit more easily on his brow. It is no easy thing to
wear a crown, Catelyn thought, watching, especially for a boy of
fifteen years.
When the guards brought in the captive, Robb called for his
sword. Olyvar Frey offered it up hilt first, and her son drew the
blade and laid it bare across his knees, a threat plain for all to
see. “Your Grace, here is the man you asked for,”
announced Ser Robin Ryger, captain of the Tully household
guard.
“Kneel before the king, Lannister!” Theon Greyjoy
shouted. Ser Robin forced the prisoner to his knees.
He did not look a lion, Catelyn reflected. This Ser Cleos Frey
was a son of the Lady Genna who was sister to Lord Tywin Lannister,
but he had none of the fabled Lannister beauty, the fair hair and
green eyes. Instead he had inherited the stringy brown locks, weak
chin, and thin face of his sire, Ser Emmon Frey, old Lord
Walder’s second son. His eyes were pale and watery and he
could not seem to stop blinking, but perhaps that was only the
light. The cells below Riverrun were dark and
damp . . . and these days crowded as well.
“Rise, Ser Cleos.” Her son’s voice was not as
icy as his father’s would have been, but he did not sound a
boy of fifteen either. War had made a man of him before his time.
Morning light glimmered faintly against the edge of the steel
across his knees.
Yet it was not the sword that made Ser Cleos Frey anxious; it
was the beast. Grey Wind, her son had named him. A direwolf large
as any elkhound, lean and smoke-dark, with eyes like molten gold.
When the beast padded forward and sniffed at the captive knight,
every man in that hall could smell the scent of fear. Ser Cleos had
been taken during the battle in the Whispering Wood, where Grey
Wind had ripped out the throats of half a dozen men.
The knight scrambled up, edging away with such alacrity that
some of the watchers laughed aloud. “Thank you, my
lord.”
“Your Grace,” barked Lord Umber, the Greatjon, ever
the loudest of Robb’s northern
bannermen . . . and the truest and fiercest as
well, or so he insisted. He had been the first to proclaim her son
King in the North, and he would brook no slight to the honor of his
new-made sovereign.
“Your Grace,” Ser Cleos corrected hastily.
“Pardons.” He is not a bold man, this one, Catelyn thought. More of a Frey
than a Lannister, in truth. His cousin the Kingslayer would have
been a much different matter. They would never have gotten that
honorific through Ser Jaime Lannister’s perfect teeth.
“I brought you from your cell to carry my message to your
cousin Cersei Lannister in King’s Landing. You’ll
travel under a peace banner, with thirty of my best men to escort
you.”
Ser Cleos was visibly relieved. “Then I should be most
glad to bring His Grace’s message to the queen.”
“Understand,” Robb said, “I am not giving you
your freedom. Your grandfather Lord Walder pledged me his support
and that of House Frey. Many of your cousins and uncles rode with
us in the Whispering Wood, but you chose to fight beneath the lion
banner. That makes you a Lannister, not a Frey. I want your
pledge, on your honor as a knight, that after you deliver my
message you’ll return with the queen’s reply, and
resume your captivity.”
Ser Cleos answered at once. “I do so vow.”
“Every man in this hall has heard you,” warned
Catelyn’s brother Ser Edmure Tully, who spoke for Riverrun
and the lords of the Trident in the place of their dying father.
“If you do not return, the whole realm will know you
forsworn.”
“I will do as I pledged,” Ser Cleos replied stiffly.
“What is this message? “
“An offer of peace.” Robb stood, longsword in hand.
Grey Wind moved to his side. The hall grew hushed. “Tell the
Queen Regent that if she meets my terms, I will sheath this sword,
and make an end to the war between us.”
In the back of the hall, Catelyn glimpsed the tall, gaunt figure
of Lord Rickard Karstark shove through a rank of guards and out the
door. No one else moved. Robb paid the disruption no mind.
“Olyvar, the paper,” he commanded. The squire took his
longsword and handed up a rolled parchment.
Robb unrolled it. “First, the queen must release my
sisters and provide them with transport by sea from King’s
Landing to White Harbor. It is to be understood that Sansa’s
betrothal to Joffrey Baratheon is at an end. When I receive word
from my castellan that my sisters have returned unharmed to
Winterfell, I will release the queen’s cousins, the squire
Willem Lannister and your brother Tion Frey, and give them safe
escort to Casterly Rock or wheresoever she desires them
delivered.”
Catelyn Stark wished she could read the thoughts that hid behind
each face, each furrowed brow and pair of tightened lips.
“Secondly, my lord father’s bones will be returned
to us, so he may rest beside his brother and sister in the crypts
beneath Winterfell, as he would have wished. The remains of the men
of his household guard who died in his service at King’s
Landing must also be returned.”
Living men had gone south, and cold bones would return. Ned had
the truth of it, she thought. His place was at Winterfell, he said
as much, but would I hear him? No. Go, I told him, you must be
Robert’s Hand, for the good of our House, for the sake of our
children . . . my doing, mine, no
other . . .
“Third, my father’s greatsword Ice will be delivered
to my hand, here at Riverrun.”
She watched her brother Ser Edmure Tully as he stood with his
thumbs hooked over his swordbelt, his face as still as stone.
“Fourth, the queen will command her father Lord Tywin to
release those knights and lords bannermen of mine that he took
captive in the battle on the Green Fork of the Trident. Once he
does so, I shall release my own captives taken in the Whispering
Wood and the Battle of the Camps, save Jaime Lannister alone, who
will remain my hostage for his father’s good
behavior.”
She studied Theon Greyjoy’s sly smile, wondering what it
meant. That young man had a way of looking as though he knew some
secret jest that only he was privy to; Catelyn had never liked
it.
“Lastly, King Joffrey and the Queen Regent must renounce
all claims to dominion over the north. Henceforth we are no part of
their realm, but a free and independent kingdom, as of old. Our
domain shall include all the Stark lands north of the Neck, and in
addition the lands watered by the River Trident and its vassal
streams, bounded by the Golden Tooth to the west and the Mountains
of the Moon in the east.”
“THE KING IN THE NORTH!” boomed Greatjon Umber, a
ham-sized fist hammering at the air as he shouted. “Stark!
Stark! The King in the North!”
Robb rolled up the parchment again. “Maester Vyman has
drawn a map, showing the borders we claim. You shall have a copy
for the queen. Lord Tywin must withdraw beyond these borders, and
cease his raiding, burning, and pillage. The Queen Regent and her
son shall make no claims to taxes, incomes, nor service from my
people, and shall free my lords and knights from all oaths of
fealty, vows, pledges, debts, and obligations owed to the Iron
Throne and the Houses Baratheon and Lannister. Additionally, the
Lannisters shall deliver ten highborn hostages, to be mutually
agreed upon, as a pledge of peace. These I will treat as honored
guests, according to their station. So long as the terms of this
pact are abided with faithfully, I shall release two hostages every
year, and return them safely to their families.” Robb tossed
the rolled parchment at the knight’s feet. “There are
the terms. If she meets them, I’ll give her peace. if
not”—he whistled, and Grey Wind moved forward snarling—“I’ll give her another Whispering Wood.”
“Stark!” the Greatjon roared again, and now other
voices took up the cry. “Stark, Stark, King in the
North!” The direwolf threw back his head and howled.
Ser Cleos had gone the color of curdled milk. “The queen
shall hear your message, my—Your Grace.”
“Good,” Robb said. “Ser Robin, see that he has
a good meal and clean clothing. He’s to ride at first
light.”
“As you command, Your Grace,” Ser Robin Ryger
replied.
“Then we are done.” The assembled knights and lords
bannermen bent their knees as Robb turned to leave, Grey Wind at
his heels. Olyvar Frey scrambled ahead to open the door. Catelyn followed them
out, her brother at her side.
“You did well,” she told her son in the gallery that
led from the rear of the hall, “though that business with the
wolf was japery more befitting a boy than a king.”
Robb scratched Grey Wind behind the ear. “Did you see the
look on his face, Mother?” he asked, smiling.
“What I saw was Lord Karstark, walking out.”
“As did I.” Robb lifted off his crown with both hands
and gave it to Olyvar. “Take this thing back to my
bedchamber.”
“At once, Your Grace.” The squire hurried off.
“I’ll wager there were others who felt the same as
Lord Karstark,” her brother Edmure declared. “How can
we talk of peace while the Lannisters spread like a pestilence over
my father’s domains, stealing his crops and slaughtering his
people? I say again, we ought to be marching on
Harrenhal.”
“We lack the strength,” Robb said, though
unhappily.
Edmure persisted. “Do we grow stronger sitting here? Our
host dwindles every day.”
“And whose doing is that?” Catelyn snapped at her
brother. It had been at Edmure’s insistence that Robb had
given the river lords leave to depart after his crowning, each to
defend his own lands. Ser Marq Piper and Lord Karyl Vance had been
the first to go. Lord Jonos Bracken had followed, vowing to reclaim
the burnt shell of his castle and bury his dead, and now Lord Jason
Mallister had announced his intent to return to his seat at
Seagard, still mercifully untouched by the fighting.
“You cannot ask my river lords to remain idle while their
fields are being pillaged and their people put to the sword,”
Ser Edmure said, “but Lord Karstark is a northman. It would
be an ill thing if he were to leave us.”
“I’ll speak with him,” said Robb. “He
lost two sons in the Whispering Wood. Who can blame him if he does
not want to make peace with their
killers . . . with my father’s
killers . . . ”
“More bloodshed will not bring your father back to us, or
Lord Rickard’s sons,” Catelyn said. “An offer had
to be made—though a wiser man might have offered sweeter
terms.”
“Any sweeter and I would have gagged.” Her
son’s beard had grown in redder than his auburn hair. Robb
seemed to think it made him look fierce,
royal . . . older. But bearded or no, he was
still a youth of fifteen, and wanted vengeance no less than Rickard
Karstark. it had been no easy thing to convince him to make even
this offer, poor as it was.
“Cersei Lannister will never consent to trade your sisters
for a pair of cousins. It’s her brother she’ll want, as
you know full well.” She had told him as much before, but
Catelyn was finding that kings do not listen half so attentively as
sons.
“I can’t release the Kingslayer, not even if I
wanted to. My lords would never abide it.”
“Your lords made you their king.”
“And can unmake me just as easy.”
“If your crown is the price we must pay to have Arya and
Sansa returned safe, we should pay it willingly. Half your lords
would like to murder Lannister in his cell. If he should die while
he’s your prisoner, men will say—”
“—that he well deserved it,” Robb finished.
“And your sisters?” Catelyn asked sharply.
“Will they deserve their deaths as well? I promise you, if
any harm comes to her brother, Cersei will pay us back blood for
blood—”
“Lannister won’t die,” Robb said. “No
one so much as speaks to him without my warrant. He has food,
water, clean straw, more comfort than he has any right to. But I
won’t free him, not even for Arya and Sansa.”
Her son was looking down at her, Catelyn realized. Was it war
that made him grow so fast, she wondered, or the crown they had put
on his head? “Are you afraid to have Jaime Lannister in the
field again, is that the truth of it?”
Grey Wind growled, as if he sensed Robb’s anger, and
Edmure Tully put a brotherly hand on Catelyn’s shoulder.
“Cat, don’t. The boy has the right of this.”
“Don’t call me the boy,” Robb said, rounding
on his uncle, his anger spilling out all at once on poor Edmure,
who had only meant to support him. “I’m almost a man
grown, and a king—your king, ser. And I don’t fear Jaime
Lannister. I defeated him once, I’ll defeat him again if I
must, only . . . ” He pushed a fall of
hair out of his eyes and gave a shake of the head. “I might
have been able to trade the Kingslayer for Father,
but . . . ”
“ . . . but not for the girls?” Her voice was icy quiet.
“Girls are not important enough, are they?”
Robb made no answer, but there was hurt in his eyes. Blue eyes,
Tully eyes, eyes she had given him. She had wounded him, but he was
too much his father’s son to admit it. That was unworthy of me, she told herself. Gods be good, what is
to become of me? He is doing his best, trying so hard, I know it, I
see it, and yet . . . I have lost my Ned, the
rock my life was built on, I could not bear to lose the girls as
well . . .
“I’ll do all I can for my sisters,” Robb said.
“If the queen has any sense, she’ll accept my terms. If
not, I’ll make her rue the day she refused me.”
Plainly, he’d had enough of the subject. “Mother,
are you certain you will not consent to go to the Twins? You would
be farther from the fighting, and you could acquaint yourself with
Lord Frey’s daughters to help me choose my bride when the war
is done.” He wants me gone, Catelyn thought wearily. Kings are not
supposed to have mothers, it would seem, and I tell him things he
does not want to hear. “You’re old enough to decide
which of Lord Walder’s girls you prefer without your
mother’s help, Robb.”
“Then go with Theon. He leaves on the morrow. He’ll
help the Mallisters escort that lot of captives to Seagard and then
take ship for the Iron Islands. You could find a ship as well, and
be back at Winterfell with a moon’s turn, if the winds are
kind. Bran and Rickon need you.” And you do not, is that what you mean to say? “My lord
father has little enough time remaining him. So long as your
grandfather lives, my place is at Riverrun with him.”
“I could command you to go. As king. I could.”
Catelyn ignored that. “I’ll say again, I would
sooner you sent someone else to Pyke, and kept Theon close to
you.”
“Who better to treat with Balon Greyjoy than his
son?”
“Jason Mallister,” offered Catelyn. “Tytos
Blackwood. Stevron Frey. Anyone . . . but not
Theon.”
Her son squatted beside Grey Wind, ruffling the wolf’s fur
and incidentally avoiding her eyes. “Theon’s fought
bravely for us. I told you how he saved Bran from those wildlings
in the wolfswood. If the Lannisters won’t make peace,
I’ll have need of Lord Greyjoy’s longships.”
“You’ll have them sooner if you keep his son as
hostage.”
“He’s been a hostage half his life.”
“For good reason,” Catelyn said. “Balon
Greyjoy is not a man to be trusted. He wore a crown himself,
remember, if only for a season. He may aspire to wear one
again.”
Robb stood. “I will not grudge him that. If I’m King
in the North, let him be King of the Iron Islands, if that’s
his desire. I’ll give him a crown gladly, so long as he helps
us bring down the Lannisters.”
“Robb—”
“I’m sending Theon. Good day, Mother. Grey Wind,
come.” Robb walked off briskly, the direwolf padding beside
him.
Catelyn could only watch him go. Her son and now her king. How
queer that felt. Command, she had told him back in Moat Cailin. And
so he did. “I am going to visit Father,” she announced
abruptly. “Come with me, Edmure.”
“I need to have a word with those new bowmen Ser Desmond
is training. I’ll visit him later.” If he still lives, Catelyn thought, but she said nothing. Her
brother would sooner face battle than that sickroom.
The shortest way to the central keep where her father lay dying
was through the godswood, with its grass and wildflowers and thick
stands of elm and redwood. A wealth of rustling leaves still clung
to the branches of the trees, all ignorant of the word the white
raven had brought to Riverrun a fortnight past. Autumn had come,
the Conclave had declared, but the gods had not seen fit to tell
the winds and woods as yet. For that Catelyn was duly grateful.
Autumn was always a fearful time, with the specter of winter
looming ahead. Even the wisest man never knew whether his next
harvest would be the last.
Hoster Tully, Lord of Riverrun, lay abed in his solar, with its
commanding view to the east where the rivers Tumblestone and Red
Fork met beyond the walls of his castle. He was sleeping when
Catelyn entered, his hair and beard as white as his featherbed, his
once portly frame turned small and frail by the death that grew
within him.
Beside the bed, still dressed in mail hauberk and travel-stained
cloak, sat her father’s brother, the Blackfish. His boots
were dusty and spattered with dried mud. “Does Robb know you
are returned, Uncle?” Ser Brynden Tully was Robb’s eyes
and ears, the commander of his scouts and outriders.
“No. I came here straight from the stables, when they told
me the king was holding court. His Grace will want to hear my
tidings in private first I’d think.” The Blackfish was
a tall, lean man, grey of hair and precise in his movements, his
clean-shaven face lined and windburnt. “How is he?” he
asked, and she knew he did not mean Robb.
“Much the same. The maester gives him dreamwine and milk
of the poppy for his pain, so he sleeps most of the time, and eats
too little. He seems weaker with each day that passes.”
“Does he speak?”
“Yes . . . but there is less and less
sense to the things he says. He talks of his regrets, of unfinished
tasks, of people long dead and times long past. Sometimes he does
not know what season it is, or who I am. Once he called me by
Mother’s name.”
“He misses her still,” Ser Brynden answered.
“You have her face. I can see it in your cheekbones, and your
jaw . . . ”
“You remember more of her than I do. It has been a long
time.” She seated herself on the bed and brushed away a
strand of fine white hair that had fallen across her father’s
face.
“Each time I ride out, I wonder if I shall find him alive
or dead on my return.” Despite their quarrels, there was a
deep bond between her father and the brother he had once
disowned.
“At least you made your peace with him.”
They sat for a time in silence, until Catelyn raised her head.
“You spoke of tidings that Robb needed to hear?” Lord
Hoster moaned and rolled onto his side, almost as if he had
heard.
Brynden stood. “Come outside. Best if we do not wake
him.”
She followed him out onto the stone balcony that jutted
three-sided from the solar like the prow of a ship. Her uncle
glanced up, frowning. “You can see it by day now. My men call
it the Red Messenger . . . but what is the
message?”
Catelyn raised her eyes, to where the faint red line of the
comet traced a path across the deep blue sky like a long scratch
across the face of god. “The Greatjon told Robb that the old
gods have unfurled a red flag of vengeance for Ned. Edmure thinks
it’s an omen of victory for Riverrun—he sees a fish with a
long tail, in the Tully colors, red against blue.” She
sighed. “I wish I had their faith. Crimson is a Lannister
color.”
“That thing’s not crimson,” Ser Brynden said.
“Nor Tully red, the mud red of the river. That’s blood
up there, child, smeared across the sky.”
“Our blood or theirs?”
“Was there ever a war where only one side bled?” Her
uncle gave a shake of the head. “The riverlands are awash in
blood and flame all around the Gods Eye. The fighting has spread
south to the Blackwater and north across the Trident, almost to the
Twins. Marq Piper and Karyl Vance have won some small victories,
and this southron lordling Beric Dondarrion has been raiding the
raiders, falling upon Lord Tywin’s foraging parties and
vanishing back into the woods. It’s said that Ser Burton
Crakehall was boasting that he’d slain Dondarrion, until he
led his column into one of Lord Beric’s traps and got every
man of them killed.”
“Some of Ned’s guard from King’s Landing are
with this Lord Beric,” Catelyn recalled. “May the gods
preserve them.”
“Dondarrion and this red priest who rides with him are
clever enough to preserve themselves, if the tales be true,”
her uncle said, “but your father’s bannermen make a
sadder tale. Robb should never have let them go. They’ve
scattered like quail, each man trying to protect his own, and
it’s folly, Cat, folly. Jonos Bracken was wounded in the
fighting amidst the ruins of his castle, and his nephew Hendry
slain. Tytos Blackwood’s swept the Lannisters off his lands,
but they took every cow and pig and speck of grain and left him
nothing to defend but Raventree Hall and a scorched desert. Darry
men recaptured their lord’s keep but held it less than a
fortnight before Gregor Clegane descended on them and put the whole
garrison to the sword, even their lord.”
Catelyn was horrorstruck. “Darry was only a
child.”
“Aye, and the last of his line as well. The boy would have
brought a fine ransom, but what does gold mean to a frothing dog
like Gregor Clegane? That beast’s head would make a noble
gift for all the people of the realm, I vow.”
Catelyn knew Ser Gregor’s evil reputation, yet still . . . “Don’t speak to me of heads, Uncle. Cersei has mounted
Ned’s on a spike above the walls of the Red Keep, and left it
for the crows and flies.” Even now, it was hard for her to
believe that he was truly gone. Some nights she would wake in
darkness, half-asleep, and for an instant expect to find him there
beside her. “Clegane is no more than Lord Tywin’s
catspaw.” For Tywin Lannister—Lord of Casterly Rock, Warden
of the West, father to Queen Cersei, Ser Jaime the Kingslayer, and
Tyrion the Imp, and grandfather to Joffrey Baratheon, the
new-crowned boy king—was the true danger, Catelyn believed.
“True enough,” Ser Brynden admitted. “And
Tywin Lannister is no man’s fool. He sits safe behind the
walls of Harrenhal, feeding his host on our harvest and burning
what he does not take. Gregor is not the only dog he’s
loosed. Ser Amory Lorch is in the field as well, and some sellsword
out of Qohor who’d sooner maim a man than kill him.
I’ve seen what they leave behind them. Whole villages put to
the torch, women raped and mutilated, butchered children left
unburied to draw wolves and wild dogs . . . it
would sicken even the dead.”
“When Edmure hears this, he will rage.”
“And that will be just as Lord Tywin desires. Even terror
has its purpose, Cat. Lannister wants to provoke us to
battle.”
“Robb is like to give him that wish,” Catelyn said,
fretful. “He is restless as a cat sitting here, and Edmure
and the Greatjon and the others will urge him on.” Her son
had won two great victories, smashing Jaime Lannister in the
Whispering Wood and routing his leaderless host outside the walls
of Riverrun in the Battle of the Camps, but from the way some of
his bannermen spoke of him, he might have been Aegon the Conqueror
reborn.
Brynden Blackfish arched a bushy grey eyebrow. “More fool
they. My first rule of war, Cat—never give the enemy his wish. Lord
Tywin would like to fight on a field of his own choosing. He wants
us to march on Harrenhal.”
“Harrenhal.” Every child of the Trident knew the
tales told of Harrenhal, the vast fortress that King Harren the
Black had raised beside the waters of Gods Eye three hundred years
past, when the Seven Kingdoms had been seven kingdoms, and the
riverlands were ruled by the ironmen from the islands. In his
pride, Harren had desired the highest hall and tallest towers in
all Westeros. Forty years it had taken, rising like a great shadow
on the shore of the lake while Harren’s armies plundered his
neighbors for stone, lumber, gold, and workers. Thousands of
captives died in his quarries, chained to his sledges, or laboring
on his five colossal towers. Men froze by winter and sweltered in
summer. Weirwoods that had stood three thousand years were cut down
for beams and rafters. Harren had beggared the riverlands and the
Iron Islands alike to ornament his dream. And when at last
Harrenhal stood complete, on the very day King Harren took up
residence, Aegon the Conqueror had come ashore at King’s
Landing.
Catelyn could remember hearing Old Nan tell the story to her own
children, back at Winterfell. “And King Harren learned that
thick walls and high towers are small use against dragons,”
the tale always ended. “For dragons fly.” Harren and
all his line had perished in the fires that engulfed his monstrous
fortress, and every house that held Harrenhal since had come to
misfortune. Strong it might be, but it was a dark place, and
cursed.
“I would not have Robb fight a battle in the shadow of
that keep,” Catelyn admitted. “Yet we must do
something, Uncle.”
“And soon,” her uncle agreed. “I have not told
you the worst of it, child. The men I sent west have brought back
word that a new host is gathering at Casterly Rock.” Another Lannister army. The thought made her ill. “Robb
must be told at once. Who will command?”
“Ser Stafford Lannister, it’s said.” He turned
to gaze out over the rivers, his red-and-blue cloak stirring in the
breeze.
“Another nephew?” The Lannisters of Casterly Rock
were a damnably large and fertile house.
“Cousin,” Ser Brynden corrected. “Brother to
Lord Tywin’s late wife, so twice related. An old man and a
bit of a dullard, but he has a son, Ser Daven, who is more
formidable.”
“Then let us hope it is the father and not the son who
takes this army into the field.”
“We have some time yet before we must face them. This lot
will be sellswords, freeriders, and green boys from the stews of
Lannisport. Ser Stafford must see that they are armed and drilled
before he dare risk battle . . . and make no
mistake, Lord Tywin is not the Kingslayer. He will not rush in
heedless. He will wait patiently for Ser Stafford to march before
he stirs from behind the walls of Harrenhal.”
“Unless . . . ” said
Catelyn.
“Yes?” Ser Brynden prompted.
“Unless he must leave Harrenhal,” she said,
“to face some other threat.”
Her uncle looked at her thoughtfully. “Lord
Renly.”
“King Renly.” If she would ask help from the man,
she would need to grant him the style he had claimed for
himself.
“Perhaps.” The Blackfish smiled a dangerous smile.
“He’ll want something, though.”
“He’ll want what kings always want,” she said.
“Homage.”
Her son’s crown was fresh from the forge, and it seemed to
Catelyn Stark that the weight of it pressed heavy on Robb’s
head.
The ancient crown of the Kings of Winter had been lost three
centuries ago, yielded up to Aegon the Conqueror when Torrhen Stark
knelt in submission. What Aegon had done with it no man could say.
Lord Hoster’s smith had done his work well, and Robb’s
crown looked much as the other was said to have looked in the tales
told of the Stark kings of old; an open circlet of hammered bronze
incised with the runes of the First Men, surmounted by nine black
iron spikes wrought in the shape of longswords. Of gold and silver
and gemstones, it had none; bronze and iron were the metals of
winter, dark and strong to fight against the cold.
As they waited in Riverrun’s Great Hall for the prisoner
to be brought before them, she saw Robb push back the crown so it
rested upon the thick auburn mop of his hair; moments later, he
moved it forward again; later he gave it a quarter turn, as if that
might make it sit more easily on his brow. It is no easy thing to
wear a crown, Catelyn thought, watching, especially for a boy of
fifteen years.
When the guards brought in the captive, Robb called for his
sword. Olyvar Frey offered it up hilt first, and her son drew the
blade and laid it bare across his knees, a threat plain for all to
see. “Your Grace, here is the man you asked for,”
announced Ser Robin Ryger, captain of the Tully household
guard.
“Kneel before the king, Lannister!” Theon Greyjoy
shouted. Ser Robin forced the prisoner to his knees.
He did not look a lion, Catelyn reflected. This Ser Cleos Frey
was a son of the Lady Genna who was sister to Lord Tywin Lannister,
but he had none of the fabled Lannister beauty, the fair hair and
green eyes. Instead he had inherited the stringy brown locks, weak
chin, and thin face of his sire, Ser Emmon Frey, old Lord
Walder’s second son. His eyes were pale and watery and he
could not seem to stop blinking, but perhaps that was only the
light. The cells below Riverrun were dark and
damp . . . and these days crowded as well.
“Rise, Ser Cleos.” Her son’s voice was not as
icy as his father’s would have been, but he did not sound a
boy of fifteen either. War had made a man of him before his time.
Morning light glimmered faintly against the edge of the steel
across his knees.
Yet it was not the sword that made Ser Cleos Frey anxious; it
was the beast. Grey Wind, her son had named him. A direwolf large
as any elkhound, lean and smoke-dark, with eyes like molten gold.
When the beast padded forward and sniffed at the captive knight,
every man in that hall could smell the scent of fear. Ser Cleos had
been taken during the battle in the Whispering Wood, where Grey
Wind had ripped out the throats of half a dozen men.
The knight scrambled up, edging away with such alacrity that
some of the watchers laughed aloud. “Thank you, my
lord.”
“Your Grace,” barked Lord Umber, the Greatjon, ever
the loudest of Robb’s northern
bannermen . . . and the truest and fiercest as
well, or so he insisted. He had been the first to proclaim her son
King in the North, and he would brook no slight to the honor of his
new-made sovereign.
“Your Grace,” Ser Cleos corrected hastily.
“Pardons.” He is not a bold man, this one, Catelyn thought. More of a Frey
than a Lannister, in truth. His cousin the Kingslayer would have
been a much different matter. They would never have gotten that
honorific through Ser Jaime Lannister’s perfect teeth.
“I brought you from your cell to carry my message to your
cousin Cersei Lannister in King’s Landing. You’ll
travel under a peace banner, with thirty of my best men to escort
you.”
Ser Cleos was visibly relieved. “Then I should be most
glad to bring His Grace’s message to the queen.”
“Understand,” Robb said, “I am not giving you
your freedom. Your grandfather Lord Walder pledged me his support
and that of House Frey. Many of your cousins and uncles rode with
us in the Whispering Wood, but you chose to fight beneath the lion
banner. That makes you a Lannister, not a Frey. I want your
pledge, on your honor as a knight, that after you deliver my
message you’ll return with the queen’s reply, and
resume your captivity.”
Ser Cleos answered at once. “I do so vow.”
“Every man in this hall has heard you,” warned
Catelyn’s brother Ser Edmure Tully, who spoke for Riverrun
and the lords of the Trident in the place of their dying father.
“If you do not return, the whole realm will know you
forsworn.”
“I will do as I pledged,” Ser Cleos replied stiffly.
“What is this message? “
“An offer of peace.” Robb stood, longsword in hand.
Grey Wind moved to his side. The hall grew hushed. “Tell the
Queen Regent that if she meets my terms, I will sheath this sword,
and make an end to the war between us.”
In the back of the hall, Catelyn glimpsed the tall, gaunt figure
of Lord Rickard Karstark shove through a rank of guards and out the
door. No one else moved. Robb paid the disruption no mind.
“Olyvar, the paper,” he commanded. The squire took his
longsword and handed up a rolled parchment.
Robb unrolled it. “First, the queen must release my
sisters and provide them with transport by sea from King’s
Landing to White Harbor. It is to be understood that Sansa’s
betrothal to Joffrey Baratheon is at an end. When I receive word
from my castellan that my sisters have returned unharmed to
Winterfell, I will release the queen’s cousins, the squire
Willem Lannister and your brother Tion Frey, and give them safe
escort to Casterly Rock or wheresoever she desires them
delivered.”
Catelyn Stark wished she could read the thoughts that hid behind
each face, each furrowed brow and pair of tightened lips.
“Secondly, my lord father’s bones will be returned
to us, so he may rest beside his brother and sister in the crypts
beneath Winterfell, as he would have wished. The remains of the men
of his household guard who died in his service at King’s
Landing must also be returned.”
Living men had gone south, and cold bones would return. Ned had
the truth of it, she thought. His place was at Winterfell, he said
as much, but would I hear him? No. Go, I told him, you must be
Robert’s Hand, for the good of our House, for the sake of our
children . . . my doing, mine, no
other . . .
“Third, my father’s greatsword Ice will be delivered
to my hand, here at Riverrun.”
She watched her brother Ser Edmure Tully as he stood with his
thumbs hooked over his swordbelt, his face as still as stone.
“Fourth, the queen will command her father Lord Tywin to
release those knights and lords bannermen of mine that he took
captive in the battle on the Green Fork of the Trident. Once he
does so, I shall release my own captives taken in the Whispering
Wood and the Battle of the Camps, save Jaime Lannister alone, who
will remain my hostage for his father’s good
behavior.”
She studied Theon Greyjoy’s sly smile, wondering what it
meant. That young man had a way of looking as though he knew some
secret jest that only he was privy to; Catelyn had never liked
it.
“Lastly, King Joffrey and the Queen Regent must renounce
all claims to dominion over the north. Henceforth we are no part of
their realm, but a free and independent kingdom, as of old. Our
domain shall include all the Stark lands north of the Neck, and in
addition the lands watered by the River Trident and its vassal
streams, bounded by the Golden Tooth to the west and the Mountains
of the Moon in the east.”
“THE KING IN THE NORTH!” boomed Greatjon Umber, a
ham-sized fist hammering at the air as he shouted. “Stark!
Stark! The King in the North!”
Robb rolled up the parchment again. “Maester Vyman has
drawn a map, showing the borders we claim. You shall have a copy
for the queen. Lord Tywin must withdraw beyond these borders, and
cease his raiding, burning, and pillage. The Queen Regent and her
son shall make no claims to taxes, incomes, nor service from my
people, and shall free my lords and knights from all oaths of
fealty, vows, pledges, debts, and obligations owed to the Iron
Throne and the Houses Baratheon and Lannister. Additionally, the
Lannisters shall deliver ten highborn hostages, to be mutually
agreed upon, as a pledge of peace. These I will treat as honored
guests, according to their station. So long as the terms of this
pact are abided with faithfully, I shall release two hostages every
year, and return them safely to their families.” Robb tossed
the rolled parchment at the knight’s feet. “There are
the terms. If she meets them, I’ll give her peace. if
not”—he whistled, and Grey Wind moved forward snarling—“I’ll give her another Whispering Wood.”
“Stark!” the Greatjon roared again, and now other
voices took up the cry. “Stark, Stark, King in the
North!” The direwolf threw back his head and howled.
Ser Cleos had gone the color of curdled milk. “The queen
shall hear your message, my—Your Grace.”
“Good,” Robb said. “Ser Robin, see that he has
a good meal and clean clothing. He’s to ride at first
light.”
“As you command, Your Grace,” Ser Robin Ryger
replied.
“Then we are done.” The assembled knights and lords
bannermen bent their knees as Robb turned to leave, Grey Wind at
his heels. Olyvar Frey scrambled ahead to open the door. Catelyn followed them
out, her brother at her side.
“You did well,” she told her son in the gallery that
led from the rear of the hall, “though that business with the
wolf was japery more befitting a boy than a king.”
Robb scratched Grey Wind behind the ear. “Did you see the
look on his face, Mother?” he asked, smiling.
“What I saw was Lord Karstark, walking out.”
“As did I.” Robb lifted off his crown with both hands
and gave it to Olyvar. “Take this thing back to my
bedchamber.”
“At once, Your Grace.” The squire hurried off.
“I’ll wager there were others who felt the same as
Lord Karstark,” her brother Edmure declared. “How can
we talk of peace while the Lannisters spread like a pestilence over
my father’s domains, stealing his crops and slaughtering his
people? I say again, we ought to be marching on
Harrenhal.”
“We lack the strength,” Robb said, though
unhappily.
Edmure persisted. “Do we grow stronger sitting here? Our
host dwindles every day.”
“And whose doing is that?” Catelyn snapped at her
brother. It had been at Edmure’s insistence that Robb had
given the river lords leave to depart after his crowning, each to
defend his own lands. Ser Marq Piper and Lord Karyl Vance had been
the first to go. Lord Jonos Bracken had followed, vowing to reclaim
the burnt shell of his castle and bury his dead, and now Lord Jason
Mallister had announced his intent to return to his seat at
Seagard, still mercifully untouched by the fighting.
“You cannot ask my river lords to remain idle while their
fields are being pillaged and their people put to the sword,”
Ser Edmure said, “but Lord Karstark is a northman. It would
be an ill thing if he were to leave us.”
“I’ll speak with him,” said Robb. “He
lost two sons in the Whispering Wood. Who can blame him if he does
not want to make peace with their
killers . . . with my father’s
killers . . . ”
“More bloodshed will not bring your father back to us, or
Lord Rickard’s sons,” Catelyn said. “An offer had
to be made—though a wiser man might have offered sweeter
terms.”
“Any sweeter and I would have gagged.” Her
son’s beard had grown in redder than his auburn hair. Robb
seemed to think it made him look fierce,
royal . . . older. But bearded or no, he was
still a youth of fifteen, and wanted vengeance no less than Rickard
Karstark. it had been no easy thing to convince him to make even
this offer, poor as it was.
“Cersei Lannister will never consent to trade your sisters
for a pair of cousins. It’s her brother she’ll want, as
you know full well.” She had told him as much before, but
Catelyn was finding that kings do not listen half so attentively as
sons.
“I can’t release the Kingslayer, not even if I
wanted to. My lords would never abide it.”
“Your lords made you their king.”
“And can unmake me just as easy.”
“If your crown is the price we must pay to have Arya and
Sansa returned safe, we should pay it willingly. Half your lords
would like to murder Lannister in his cell. If he should die while
he’s your prisoner, men will say—”
“—that he well deserved it,” Robb finished.
“And your sisters?” Catelyn asked sharply.
“Will they deserve their deaths as well? I promise you, if
any harm comes to her brother, Cersei will pay us back blood for
blood—”
“Lannister won’t die,” Robb said. “No
one so much as speaks to him without my warrant. He has food,
water, clean straw, more comfort than he has any right to. But I
won’t free him, not even for Arya and Sansa.”
Her son was looking down at her, Catelyn realized. Was it war
that made him grow so fast, she wondered, or the crown they had put
on his head? “Are you afraid to have Jaime Lannister in the
field again, is that the truth of it?”
Grey Wind growled, as if he sensed Robb’s anger, and
Edmure Tully put a brotherly hand on Catelyn’s shoulder.
“Cat, don’t. The boy has the right of this.”
“Don’t call me the boy,” Robb said, rounding
on his uncle, his anger spilling out all at once on poor Edmure,
who had only meant to support him. “I’m almost a man
grown, and a king—your king, ser. And I don’t fear Jaime
Lannister. I defeated him once, I’ll defeat him again if I
must, only . . . ” He pushed a fall of
hair out of his eyes and gave a shake of the head. “I might
have been able to trade the Kingslayer for Father,
but . . . ”
“ . . . but not for the girls?” Her voice was icy quiet.
“Girls are not important enough, are they?”
Robb made no answer, but there was hurt in his eyes. Blue eyes,
Tully eyes, eyes she had given him. She had wounded him, but he was
too much his father’s son to admit it. That was unworthy of me, she told herself. Gods be good, what is
to become of me? He is doing his best, trying so hard, I know it, I
see it, and yet . . . I have lost my Ned, the
rock my life was built on, I could not bear to lose the girls as
well . . .
“I’ll do all I can for my sisters,” Robb said.
“If the queen has any sense, she’ll accept my terms. If
not, I’ll make her rue the day she refused me.”
Plainly, he’d had enough of the subject. “Mother,
are you certain you will not consent to go to the Twins? You would
be farther from the fighting, and you could acquaint yourself with
Lord Frey’s daughters to help me choose my bride when the war
is done.” He wants me gone, Catelyn thought wearily. Kings are not
supposed to have mothers, it would seem, and I tell him things he
does not want to hear. “You’re old enough to decide
which of Lord Walder’s girls you prefer without your
mother’s help, Robb.”
“Then go with Theon. He leaves on the morrow. He’ll
help the Mallisters escort that lot of captives to Seagard and then
take ship for the Iron Islands. You could find a ship as well, and
be back at Winterfell with a moon’s turn, if the winds are
kind. Bran and Rickon need you.” And you do not, is that what you mean to say? “My lord
father has little enough time remaining him. So long as your
grandfather lives, my place is at Riverrun with him.”
“I could command you to go. As king. I could.”
Catelyn ignored that. “I’ll say again, I would
sooner you sent someone else to Pyke, and kept Theon close to
you.”
“Who better to treat with Balon Greyjoy than his
son?”
“Jason Mallister,” offered Catelyn. “Tytos
Blackwood. Stevron Frey. Anyone . . . but not
Theon.”
Her son squatted beside Grey Wind, ruffling the wolf’s fur
and incidentally avoiding her eyes. “Theon’s fought
bravely for us. I told you how he saved Bran from those wildlings
in the wolfswood. If the Lannisters won’t make peace,
I’ll have need of Lord Greyjoy’s longships.”
“You’ll have them sooner if you keep his son as
hostage.”
“He’s been a hostage half his life.”
“For good reason,” Catelyn said. “Balon
Greyjoy is not a man to be trusted. He wore a crown himself,
remember, if only for a season. He may aspire to wear one
again.”
Robb stood. “I will not grudge him that. If I’m King
in the North, let him be King of the Iron Islands, if that’s
his desire. I’ll give him a crown gladly, so long as he helps
us bring down the Lannisters.”
“Robb—”
“I’m sending Theon. Good day, Mother. Grey Wind,
come.” Robb walked off briskly, the direwolf padding beside
him.
Catelyn could only watch him go. Her son and now her king. How
queer that felt. Command, she had told him back in Moat Cailin. And
so he did. “I am going to visit Father,” she announced
abruptly. “Come with me, Edmure.”
“I need to have a word with those new bowmen Ser Desmond
is training. I’ll visit him later.” If he still lives, Catelyn thought, but she said nothing. Her
brother would sooner face battle than that sickroom.
The shortest way to the central keep where her father lay dying
was through the godswood, with its grass and wildflowers and thick
stands of elm and redwood. A wealth of rustling leaves still clung
to the branches of the trees, all ignorant of the word the white
raven had brought to Riverrun a fortnight past. Autumn had come,
the Conclave had declared, but the gods had not seen fit to tell
the winds and woods as yet. For that Catelyn was duly grateful.
Autumn was always a fearful time, with the specter of winter
looming ahead. Even the wisest man never knew whether his next
harvest would be the last.
Hoster Tully, Lord of Riverrun, lay abed in his solar, with its
commanding view to the east where the rivers Tumblestone and Red
Fork met beyond the walls of his castle. He was sleeping when
Catelyn entered, his hair and beard as white as his featherbed, his
once portly frame turned small and frail by the death that grew
within him.
Beside the bed, still dressed in mail hauberk and travel-stained
cloak, sat her father’s brother, the Blackfish. His boots
were dusty and spattered with dried mud. “Does Robb know you
are returned, Uncle?” Ser Brynden Tully was Robb’s eyes
and ears, the commander of his scouts and outriders.
“No. I came here straight from the stables, when they told
me the king was holding court. His Grace will want to hear my
tidings in private first I’d think.” The Blackfish was
a tall, lean man, grey of hair and precise in his movements, his
clean-shaven face lined and windburnt. “How is he?” he
asked, and she knew he did not mean Robb.
“Much the same. The maester gives him dreamwine and milk
of the poppy for his pain, so he sleeps most of the time, and eats
too little. He seems weaker with each day that passes.”
“Does he speak?”
“Yes . . . but there is less and less
sense to the things he says. He talks of his regrets, of unfinished
tasks, of people long dead and times long past. Sometimes he does
not know what season it is, or who I am. Once he called me by
Mother’s name.”
“He misses her still,” Ser Brynden answered.
“You have her face. I can see it in your cheekbones, and your
jaw . . . ”
“You remember more of her than I do. It has been a long
time.” She seated herself on the bed and brushed away a
strand of fine white hair that had fallen across her father’s
face.
“Each time I ride out, I wonder if I shall find him alive
or dead on my return.” Despite their quarrels, there was a
deep bond between her father and the brother he had once
disowned.
“At least you made your peace with him.”
They sat for a time in silence, until Catelyn raised her head.
“You spoke of tidings that Robb needed to hear?” Lord
Hoster moaned and rolled onto his side, almost as if he had
heard.
Brynden stood. “Come outside. Best if we do not wake
him.”
She followed him out onto the stone balcony that jutted
three-sided from the solar like the prow of a ship. Her uncle
glanced up, frowning. “You can see it by day now. My men call
it the Red Messenger . . . but what is the
message?”
Catelyn raised her eyes, to where the faint red line of the
comet traced a path across the deep blue sky like a long scratch
across the face of god. “The Greatjon told Robb that the old
gods have unfurled a red flag of vengeance for Ned. Edmure thinks
it’s an omen of victory for Riverrun—he sees a fish with a
long tail, in the Tully colors, red against blue.” She
sighed. “I wish I had their faith. Crimson is a Lannister
color.”
“That thing’s not crimson,” Ser Brynden said.
“Nor Tully red, the mud red of the river. That’s blood
up there, child, smeared across the sky.”
“Our blood or theirs?”
“Was there ever a war where only one side bled?” Her
uncle gave a shake of the head. “The riverlands are awash in
blood and flame all around the Gods Eye. The fighting has spread
south to the Blackwater and north across the Trident, almost to the
Twins. Marq Piper and Karyl Vance have won some small victories,
and this southron lordling Beric Dondarrion has been raiding the
raiders, falling upon Lord Tywin’s foraging parties and
vanishing back into the woods. It’s said that Ser Burton
Crakehall was boasting that he’d slain Dondarrion, until he
led his column into one of Lord Beric’s traps and got every
man of them killed.”
“Some of Ned’s guard from King’s Landing are
with this Lord Beric,” Catelyn recalled. “May the gods
preserve them.”
“Dondarrion and this red priest who rides with him are
clever enough to preserve themselves, if the tales be true,”
her uncle said, “but your father’s bannermen make a
sadder tale. Robb should never have let them go. They’ve
scattered like quail, each man trying to protect his own, and
it’s folly, Cat, folly. Jonos Bracken was wounded in the
fighting amidst the ruins of his castle, and his nephew Hendry
slain. Tytos Blackwood’s swept the Lannisters off his lands,
but they took every cow and pig and speck of grain and left him
nothing to defend but Raventree Hall and a scorched desert. Darry
men recaptured their lord’s keep but held it less than a
fortnight before Gregor Clegane descended on them and put the whole
garrison to the sword, even their lord.”
Catelyn was horrorstruck. “Darry was only a
child.”
“Aye, and the last of his line as well. The boy would have
brought a fine ransom, but what does gold mean to a frothing dog
like Gregor Clegane? That beast’s head would make a noble
gift for all the people of the realm, I vow.”
Catelyn knew Ser Gregor’s evil reputation, yet still . . . “Don’t speak to me of heads, Uncle. Cersei has mounted
Ned’s on a spike above the walls of the Red Keep, and left it
for the crows and flies.” Even now, it was hard for her to
believe that he was truly gone. Some nights she would wake in
darkness, half-asleep, and for an instant expect to find him there
beside her. “Clegane is no more than Lord Tywin’s
catspaw.” For Tywin Lannister—Lord of Casterly Rock, Warden
of the West, father to Queen Cersei, Ser Jaime the Kingslayer, and
Tyrion the Imp, and grandfather to Joffrey Baratheon, the
new-crowned boy king—was the true danger, Catelyn believed.
“True enough,” Ser Brynden admitted. “And
Tywin Lannister is no man’s fool. He sits safe behind the
walls of Harrenhal, feeding his host on our harvest and burning
what he does not take. Gregor is not the only dog he’s
loosed. Ser Amory Lorch is in the field as well, and some sellsword
out of Qohor who’d sooner maim a man than kill him.
I’ve seen what they leave behind them. Whole villages put to
the torch, women raped and mutilated, butchered children left
unburied to draw wolves and wild dogs . . . it
would sicken even the dead.”
“When Edmure hears this, he will rage.”
“And that will be just as Lord Tywin desires. Even terror
has its purpose, Cat. Lannister wants to provoke us to
battle.”
“Robb is like to give him that wish,” Catelyn said,
fretful. “He is restless as a cat sitting here, and Edmure
and the Greatjon and the others will urge him on.” Her son
had won two great victories, smashing Jaime Lannister in the
Whispering Wood and routing his leaderless host outside the walls
of Riverrun in the Battle of the Camps, but from the way some of
his bannermen spoke of him, he might have been Aegon the Conqueror
reborn.
Brynden Blackfish arched a bushy grey eyebrow. “More fool
they. My first rule of war, Cat—never give the enemy his wish. Lord
Tywin would like to fight on a field of his own choosing. He wants
us to march on Harrenhal.”
“Harrenhal.” Every child of the Trident knew the
tales told of Harrenhal, the vast fortress that King Harren the
Black had raised beside the waters of Gods Eye three hundred years
past, when the Seven Kingdoms had been seven kingdoms, and the
riverlands were ruled by the ironmen from the islands. In his
pride, Harren had desired the highest hall and tallest towers in
all Westeros. Forty years it had taken, rising like a great shadow
on the shore of the lake while Harren’s armies plundered his
neighbors for stone, lumber, gold, and workers. Thousands of
captives died in his quarries, chained to his sledges, or laboring
on his five colossal towers. Men froze by winter and sweltered in
summer. Weirwoods that had stood three thousand years were cut down
for beams and rafters. Harren had beggared the riverlands and the
Iron Islands alike to ornament his dream. And when at last
Harrenhal stood complete, on the very day King Harren took up
residence, Aegon the Conqueror had come ashore at King’s
Landing.
Catelyn could remember hearing Old Nan tell the story to her own
children, back at Winterfell. “And King Harren learned that
thick walls and high towers are small use against dragons,”
the tale always ended. “For dragons fly.” Harren and
all his line had perished in the fires that engulfed his monstrous
fortress, and every house that held Harrenhal since had come to
misfortune. Strong it might be, but it was a dark place, and
cursed.
“I would not have Robb fight a battle in the shadow of
that keep,” Catelyn admitted. “Yet we must do
something, Uncle.”
“And soon,” her uncle agreed. “I have not told
you the worst of it, child. The men I sent west have brought back
word that a new host is gathering at Casterly Rock.” Another Lannister army. The thought made her ill. “Robb
must be told at once. Who will command?”
“Ser Stafford Lannister, it’s said.” He turned
to gaze out over the rivers, his red-and-blue cloak stirring in the
breeze.
“Another nephew?” The Lannisters of Casterly Rock
were a damnably large and fertile house.
“Cousin,” Ser Brynden corrected. “Brother to
Lord Tywin’s late wife, so twice related. An old man and a
bit of a dullard, but he has a son, Ser Daven, who is more
formidable.”
“Then let us hope it is the father and not the son who
takes this army into the field.”
“We have some time yet before we must face them. This lot
will be sellswords, freeriders, and green boys from the stews of
Lannisport. Ser Stafford must see that they are armed and drilled
before he dare risk battle . . . and make no
mistake, Lord Tywin is not the Kingslayer. He will not rush in
heedless. He will wait patiently for Ser Stafford to march before
he stirs from behind the walls of Harrenhal.”
“Unless . . . ” said
Catelyn.
“Yes?” Ser Brynden prompted.
“Unless he must leave Harrenhal,” she said,
“to face some other threat.”
Her uncle looked at her thoughtfully. “Lord
Renly.”
“King Renly.” If she would ask help from the man,
she would need to grant him the style he had claimed for
himself.
“Perhaps.” The Blackfish smiled a dangerous smile.
“He’ll want something, though.”
“He’ll want what kings always want,” she said.
“Homage.”