The woods were full of whispers.
Moonlight winked on the tumbling waters of the stream below as it wound its rocky way along thefloor of the valley. Beneath the trees, warhorses whickered softly and pawed at the moist, leafyground, while men made nervous jests in hushed voices. Now and again, she heard the chink ofspears, the faint metallic slither of chain mail, but even those sounds were muffled.
“It should not be long now, my lady,” Hallis Mollen said. He had asked for the honor ofprotecting her in the battle to come; it was his right, as Winterfell’s captain of guards, and Robb hadnot refused it to him. She had thirty men around her, charged to keep her unharmed and see her safelyhome to Winterfell if the fighting went against them. Robb had wanted fifty; Catelyn had insisted thatten would be enough, that he would need every sword for the fight. They made their peace at thirty,neither happy with it.
“It will come when it comes,” Catelyn told him. When it came, she knew it would mean death.
Hal’s death perhaps … or hers, or Robb’s. No one was safe. No life was certain. Catelyn was contentto wait, to listen to the whispers in the woods and the faint music of the brook, to feel the warm windin her hair.
She was no stranger to waiting, after all. Her men had always made her wait. “Watch for me, littlecat,” her father would always tell her, when he rode off to court or fair or battle. And she would,standing patiently on the battlements of Riverrun as the waters of the Red Fork and the Tumblestoneflowed by. He did not always come when he said he would, and days would ofttimes pass as Catelynstood her vigil, peering out between crenels and through arrow loops until she caught a glimpse ofLord Hoster on his old brown gelding, trotting along the river-shore toward the landing. “Did youwatch for me?” he’d ask when he bent to hug her. “Did you, little cat?”
Brandon Stark had bid her wait as well. “I shall not be long, my lady,” he had vowed. “We will bewed on my return.” Yet when the day came at last, it was his brother Eddard who stood beside her inthe sept.
Ned had lingered scarcely a fortnight with his new bride before he too had ridden off to war withpromises on his lips. At least he had left her with more than words; he had given her a son. Ninemoons had waxed and waned, and Robb had been born in Riverrun while his father still warred in thesouth. She had brought him forth in blood and pain, not knowing whether Ned would ever see him.
Her son. He had been so small …And now it was for Robb that she waited … for Robb, and for Jaime Lannister, the gilded knightwho men said had never learned to wait at all. “The Kingslayer is restless, and quick to anger,” heruncle Brynden had told Robb. And he had wagered their lives and their best hope of victory on thetruth of what he said.
If Robb was frightened, he gave no sign of it. Catelyn watched her son as he moved among themen, touching one on the shoulder, sharing a jest with another, helping a third to gentle an anxioushorse. His armor clinked softly when he moved. Only his head was bare. Catelyn watched a breezestir his auburn hair, so like her own, and wondered when her son had grown so big. Fifteen, and nearas tall as she was.
Let him grow taller, she asked the gods. Let him know sixteen, and twenty, and fifty. Let him growas tall as his father, and hold his own son in his arms. Please, please, please. As she watched him, this tall young man with the new beard and the direwolf prowling at his heels, all she could see wasthe babe they had laid at her breast at Riverrun, so long ago.
The night was warm, but the thought of Riverrun was enough to make her shiver. Where are they?
she wondered. Could her uncle have been wrong? So much rested on the truth of what he had toldthem. Robb had given the Blackfish three hundred picked men, and sent them ahead to screen hismarch. “Jaime does not know,” Ser Brynden said when he rode back. “I’ll stake my life on that. Nobird has reached him, my archers have seen to that. We’ve seen a few of his outriders, but those thatsaw us did not live to tell of it. He ought to have sent out more. He does not know.”
“How large is his host?” her son asked.
“Twelve thousand foot, scattered around the castle in three separate camps, with the riversbetween,” her uncle said, with the craggy smile she remembered so well. “There is no other way tobesiege Riverrun, yet still, that will be their undoing. Two or three thousand horse.”
“The Kingslayer has us three to one,” said Galbart Glover.
“True enough,” Ser Brynden said, “yet there is one thing Ser Jaime lacks.”
“Yes?” Robb asked.
“Patience.”
Their host was greater than it had been when they left the Twins. Lord Jason Mallister had broughthis power out from Seagard to join them as they swept around the headwaters of the Blue Fork andgalloped south, and others had crept forth as well, hedge knights and small lords and masterless menat-arms who had fled north when her brother Edmure’s army was shattered beneath the walls ofRiverrun. They had driven their horses as hard as they dared to reach this place before JaimeLannister had word of their coming, and now the hour was at hand.
Catelyn watched her son mount up. Olyvar Frey held his horse for him, Lord Walder’s son, twoyears older than Robb, and ten years younger and more anxious. He strapped Robb’s shield in placeand handed up his helm. When he lowered it over the face she loved so well, a tall young knight saton his grey stallion where her son had been. It was dark among the trees, where the moon did notreach. When Robb turned his head to look at her, she could see only black inside his visor. “I mustride down the line, Mother,” he told her. “Father says you should let the men see you before a battle.”
“Go, then,” she said. “Let them see you.”
“It will give them courage,” Robb said.
And who will give me courage? she wondered, yet she kept her silence and made herself smile forhim. Robb turned the big grey stallion and walked him slowly away from her, Grey Wind shadowinghis steps. Behind him his battle guard formed up. When he’d forced Catelyn to accept her protectors,she had insisted that he be guarded as well, and the lords bannermen had agreed. Many of their sonshad clamored for the honor of riding with the Young Wolf, as they had taken to calling him. TorrhenKarstark and his brother Eddard were among his thirty, and Patrek Mallister, Smalljon Umber, DarynHornwood, Theon Greyjoy, no less than five of Walder Frey’s vast brood, along with older men likeSer Wendel Manderly and Robin Flint. One of his companions was even a woman: Dacey Mormont,Lady Maege’s eldest daughter and heir to Bear Island, a lanky six-footer who had been given amorningstar at an age when most girls were given dolls. Some of the other lords muttered about that,but Catelyn would not listen to their complaints. “This is not about the honor of your houses,” shetold them. “This is about keeping my son alive and whole.”
And if it comes to that, she wondered, will thirty be enough? Will six thousand be enough?
A bird called faintly in the distance, a high sharp trill that felt like an icy hand on Catelyn’s neck.
Another bird answered; a third, a fourth. She knew their call well enough, from her years atWinterfell. Snow shrikes. Sometimes you saw them in the deep of winter, when the godswood waswhite and still. They were northern birds.
They are coming, Catelyn thought.
“They’re coming, my lady,” Hal Mollen whispered. He was always a man for stating the obvious.
“Gods be with us.”
She nodded as the woods grew still around them. In the quiet she could hear them, far off yetmoving closer; the tread of many horses, the rattle of swords and spears and armor, the murmur ofhuman voices, with here a laugh, and there a curse.
Eons seemed to come and go. The sounds grew louder. She heard more laughter, a shoutedcommand, splashing as they crossed and recrossed the little stream. A horse snorted. A man swore.
And then at last she saw him … only for an instant, framed between the branches of the trees as shelooked down at the valley floor, yet she knew it was him. Even at a distance, Ser Jaime Lannister wasunmistakable. The moonlight had silvered his armor and the gold of his hair, and turned his crimsoncloak to black. He was not wearing a helm.
He was there and he was gone again, his silvery armor obscured by the trees once more. Otherscame behind him, long columns of them, knights and sworn swords and freeriders, three quarters ofthe Lannister horse.
“He is no man for sitting in a tent while his carpenters build siege towers,” Ser Brynden hadpromised. “He has ridden out with his knights thrice already, to chase down raiders or storm astubborn holdfast.”
Nodding, Robb had studied the map her uncle had drawn him. Ned had taught him to read maps.
“Raid him here,” he said, pointing. “A few hundred men, no more. Tully banners. When he comesafter you, we will be waiting”—his finger moved an inch to the left—“here.”
Here was a hush in the night, moonlight and shadows, a thick carpet of dead leaves underfoot,densely wooded ridges sloping gently down to the streambed, the underbrush thinning as the groundfell away.
Here was her son on his stallion, glancing back at her one last time and lifting his sword in salute.
Here was the call of Maege Mormont’s warhorn, a long low blast that rolled down the valley fromthe east, to tell them that the last of Jaime’s riders had entered the trap.
And Grey Wind threw back his head and howled.
The sound seemed to go right through Catelyn Stark, and she found herself shivering. It was aterrible sound, a frightening sound, yet there was music in it too. For a second she felt something likepity for the Lannisters below. So this is what death sounds like, she thought.
HAAroooooooooooooooooooooooo came the answer from the far ridge as the Greatjon winded hisown horn. To east and west, the trumpets of the Mallisters and Freys blew vengeance. North, wherethe valley narrowed and bent like a cocked elbow, Lord Karstark’s warhorns added their own deep,mournful voices to the dark chorus. Men were shouting and horses rearing in the stream below.
The whispering wood let out its breath all at once, as the bowmen Robb had hidden in the branchesof the trees let fly their arrows and the night erupted with the screams of men and horses. All aroundher, the riders raised their lances, and the dirt and leaves that had buried the cruel bright points fellaway to reveal the gleam of sharpened steel. “Winterfell!” she heard Robb shout as the arrows sighedagain. He moved away from her at a trot, leading his men downhill.
Catelyn sat on her horse, unmoving, with Hal Mollen and her guard around her, and she waited asshe had waited before, for Brandon and Ned and her father. She was high on the ridge, and the treeshid most of what was going on beneath her. A heartbeat, two, four, and suddenly it was as if she andher protectors were alone in the wood. The rest were melted away into the green.
Yet when she looked across the valley to the far ridge, she saw the Greatjon’s riders emerge fromthe darkness beneath the trees. They were in a long line, an endless line, and as they burst from thewood there was an instant, the smallest part of a heartbeat, when all Catelyn saw was the moonlighton the points of their lances, as if a thousand willowisps were coming down the ridge, wreathed insilver flame.
Then she blinked, and they were only men, rushing down to kill or die.
Afterward, she could not claim she had seen the battle. Yet she could hear, and the valley rang withechoes. The crack of a broken lance, the clash of swords, the cries of “Lannister” and “Winterfell”
and “Tully! Riverrun and Tully!” When she realized there was no more to see, she closed her eyesand listened. The battle came alive around her. She heard hoofbeats, iron boots splashing in shallowwater, the woody sound of swords on oaken shields and the scrape of steel against steel, the hiss ofarrows, the thunder of drums, the terrified screaming of a thousand horses. Men shouted curses andbegged for mercy, and got it (or not), and lived (or died). The ridges seemed to play queer tricks withsound. Once she heard Robb’s voice, as clear as if he’d been standing at her side, calling, “To me! Tome!” And she heard his direwolf, snarling and growling, heard the snap of those long teeth, thetearing of flesh, shrieks of fear and pain from man and horse alike. Was there only one wolf? It washard to be certain.
Little by little, the sounds dwindled and died, until at last there was only the wolf. As a red dawnbroke in the east, Grey Wind began to howl again.
Robb came back to her on a different horse, riding a piebald gelding in the place of the grey stallionhe had taken down into the valley. The wolf’s head on his shield was slashed half to pieces, raw woodshowing where deep gouges had been hacked in the oak, but Robb himself seemed unhurt. Yet whenhe came closer, Catelyn saw that his mailed glove and the sleeve of his surcoat were black with blood.
“You’re hurt,” she said.
dshowing where deep gouges had been hacked in the oak, but Robb himself seemed unhurt. Yet whenhe came closer, Catelyn saw that his mailed glove and the sleeve of his surcoat were black with blood.
“You’re hurt,” she said.
Robb lifted his hand, opened and closed his fingers. “No,” he said. “This is … Torrhen’s blood,perhaps, or …” He shook his head. “I do not know.”
A mob of men followed him up the slope, dirty and dented and grinning, with Theon and theGreatjon at their head. Between them they dragged Ser Jaime Lannister. They threw him down infront of her horse. “The Kingslayer,” Hal announced, unnecessarily.
Lannister raised his head. “Lady Stark,” he said from his knees. Blood ran down one cheek from agash across his scalp, but the pale light of dawn had put the glint of gold back in his hair. “I wouldoffer you my sword, but I seem to have mislaid it.”
“It is not your sword I want, ser,” she told him. “Give me my father and my brother Edmure. Giveme my daughters. Give me my lord husband.”
“I have mislaid them as well, I fear.”
“A pity,” Catelyn said coldly.
“Kill him, Robb,” Theon Greyjoy urged. “Take his head off.”
“No,” her son answered, peeling off his bloody glove. “He’s more use alive than dead. And mylord father never condoned the murder of prisoners after a battle.”
“A wise man,” Jaime Lannister said, “and honorable.”
“Take him away and put him in irons,” Catelyn said.
“Do as my lady mother says,” Robb commanded, “and make certain there’s a strong guard aroundhim. Lord Karstark will want his head on a pike.”
“That he will,” the Greatjon agreed, gesturing. Lannister was led away to be bandaged andchained.
“Why should Lord Karstark want him dead?” Catelyn asked.
Robb looked away into the woods, with the same brooding look that Ned often got. “He … hekilled them …”
“Lord Karstark’s sons,” Galbart Glover explained.
“Both of them,” said Robb. “Torrhen and Eddard. And Daryn Hornwood as well.”
“No one can fault Lannister on his courage,” Glover said. “When he saw that he was lost, herallied his retainers and fought his way up the valley, hoping to reach Lord Robb and cut him down.
And almost did.”
“He mislaid his sword in Eddard Karstark’s neck, after he took Torrhen’s hand off and split DarynHornwood’s skull open,” Robb said. “All the time he was shouting for me. If they hadn’t tried to stophim—”
“—I should then be mourning in place of Lord Karstark,” Catelyn said. “Your men did what theywere sworn to do, Robb. They died protecting their liege lord. Grieve for them. Honor them for theirvalor. But not now. You have no time for grief. You may have lopped the head off the snake, butthree quarters of the body is still coiled around my father’s castle. We have won a battle, not a war.”
“But such a battle!” said Theon Greyjoy eagerly. “My lady, the realm has not seen such a victorysince the Field of Fire. I vow, the Lannisters lost ten men for every one of ours that fell. We’ve takenclose to a hundred knights captive, and a dozen lords bannermen. Lord Westerling, Lord Banefort, SerGarth Greenfield, Lord Estren, Ser Tytos Brax, Mallor the Dornishman … and three Lannistersbesides Jaime, Lord Tywin’s own nephews, two of his sister’s sons and one of his dead brother’s …”
“And Lord Tywin?” Catelyn interrupted. “Have you perchance taken Lord Tywin, Theon?”
“No,” Greyjoy answered, brought up short.
“Until you do, this war is far from done.”
Robb raised his head and pushed his hair back out of his eyes. “My mother is right. We still haveRiverrun.
Moonlight winked on the tumbling waters of the stream below as it wound its rocky way along thefloor of the valley. Beneath the trees, warhorses whickered softly and pawed at the moist, leafyground, while men made nervous jests in hushed voices. Now and again, she heard the chink ofspears, the faint metallic slither of chain mail, but even those sounds were muffled.
“It should not be long now, my lady,” Hallis Mollen said. He had asked for the honor ofprotecting her in the battle to come; it was his right, as Winterfell’s captain of guards, and Robb hadnot refused it to him. She had thirty men around her, charged to keep her unharmed and see her safelyhome to Winterfell if the fighting went against them. Robb had wanted fifty; Catelyn had insisted thatten would be enough, that he would need every sword for the fight. They made their peace at thirty,neither happy with it.
“It will come when it comes,” Catelyn told him. When it came, she knew it would mean death.
Hal’s death perhaps … or hers, or Robb’s. No one was safe. No life was certain. Catelyn was contentto wait, to listen to the whispers in the woods and the faint music of the brook, to feel the warm windin her hair.
She was no stranger to waiting, after all. Her men had always made her wait. “Watch for me, littlecat,” her father would always tell her, when he rode off to court or fair or battle. And she would,standing patiently on the battlements of Riverrun as the waters of the Red Fork and the Tumblestoneflowed by. He did not always come when he said he would, and days would ofttimes pass as Catelynstood her vigil, peering out between crenels and through arrow loops until she caught a glimpse ofLord Hoster on his old brown gelding, trotting along the river-shore toward the landing. “Did youwatch for me?” he’d ask when he bent to hug her. “Did you, little cat?”
Brandon Stark had bid her wait as well. “I shall not be long, my lady,” he had vowed. “We will bewed on my return.” Yet when the day came at last, it was his brother Eddard who stood beside her inthe sept.
Ned had lingered scarcely a fortnight with his new bride before he too had ridden off to war withpromises on his lips. At least he had left her with more than words; he had given her a son. Ninemoons had waxed and waned, and Robb had been born in Riverrun while his father still warred in thesouth. She had brought him forth in blood and pain, not knowing whether Ned would ever see him.
Her son. He had been so small …And now it was for Robb that she waited … for Robb, and for Jaime Lannister, the gilded knightwho men said had never learned to wait at all. “The Kingslayer is restless, and quick to anger,” heruncle Brynden had told Robb. And he had wagered their lives and their best hope of victory on thetruth of what he said.
If Robb was frightened, he gave no sign of it. Catelyn watched her son as he moved among themen, touching one on the shoulder, sharing a jest with another, helping a third to gentle an anxioushorse. His armor clinked softly when he moved. Only his head was bare. Catelyn watched a breezestir his auburn hair, so like her own, and wondered when her son had grown so big. Fifteen, and nearas tall as she was.
Let him grow taller, she asked the gods. Let him know sixteen, and twenty, and fifty. Let him growas tall as his father, and hold his own son in his arms. Please, please, please. As she watched him, this tall young man with the new beard and the direwolf prowling at his heels, all she could see wasthe babe they had laid at her breast at Riverrun, so long ago.
The night was warm, but the thought of Riverrun was enough to make her shiver. Where are they?
she wondered. Could her uncle have been wrong? So much rested on the truth of what he had toldthem. Robb had given the Blackfish three hundred picked men, and sent them ahead to screen hismarch. “Jaime does not know,” Ser Brynden said when he rode back. “I’ll stake my life on that. Nobird has reached him, my archers have seen to that. We’ve seen a few of his outriders, but those thatsaw us did not live to tell of it. He ought to have sent out more. He does not know.”
“How large is his host?” her son asked.
“Twelve thousand foot, scattered around the castle in three separate camps, with the riversbetween,” her uncle said, with the craggy smile she remembered so well. “There is no other way tobesiege Riverrun, yet still, that will be their undoing. Two or three thousand horse.”
“The Kingslayer has us three to one,” said Galbart Glover.
“True enough,” Ser Brynden said, “yet there is one thing Ser Jaime lacks.”
“Yes?” Robb asked.
“Patience.”
Their host was greater than it had been when they left the Twins. Lord Jason Mallister had broughthis power out from Seagard to join them as they swept around the headwaters of the Blue Fork andgalloped south, and others had crept forth as well, hedge knights and small lords and masterless menat-arms who had fled north when her brother Edmure’s army was shattered beneath the walls ofRiverrun. They had driven their horses as hard as they dared to reach this place before JaimeLannister had word of their coming, and now the hour was at hand.
Catelyn watched her son mount up. Olyvar Frey held his horse for him, Lord Walder’s son, twoyears older than Robb, and ten years younger and more anxious. He strapped Robb’s shield in placeand handed up his helm. When he lowered it over the face she loved so well, a tall young knight saton his grey stallion where her son had been. It was dark among the trees, where the moon did notreach. When Robb turned his head to look at her, she could see only black inside his visor. “I mustride down the line, Mother,” he told her. “Father says you should let the men see you before a battle.”
“Go, then,” she said. “Let them see you.”
“It will give them courage,” Robb said.
And who will give me courage? she wondered, yet she kept her silence and made herself smile forhim. Robb turned the big grey stallion and walked him slowly away from her, Grey Wind shadowinghis steps. Behind him his battle guard formed up. When he’d forced Catelyn to accept her protectors,she had insisted that he be guarded as well, and the lords bannermen had agreed. Many of their sonshad clamored for the honor of riding with the Young Wolf, as they had taken to calling him. TorrhenKarstark and his brother Eddard were among his thirty, and Patrek Mallister, Smalljon Umber, DarynHornwood, Theon Greyjoy, no less than five of Walder Frey’s vast brood, along with older men likeSer Wendel Manderly and Robin Flint. One of his companions was even a woman: Dacey Mormont,Lady Maege’s eldest daughter and heir to Bear Island, a lanky six-footer who had been given amorningstar at an age when most girls were given dolls. Some of the other lords muttered about that,but Catelyn would not listen to their complaints. “This is not about the honor of your houses,” shetold them. “This is about keeping my son alive and whole.”
And if it comes to that, she wondered, will thirty be enough? Will six thousand be enough?
A bird called faintly in the distance, a high sharp trill that felt like an icy hand on Catelyn’s neck.
Another bird answered; a third, a fourth. She knew their call well enough, from her years atWinterfell. Snow shrikes. Sometimes you saw them in the deep of winter, when the godswood waswhite and still. They were northern birds.
They are coming, Catelyn thought.
“They’re coming, my lady,” Hal Mollen whispered. He was always a man for stating the obvious.
“Gods be with us.”
She nodded as the woods grew still around them. In the quiet she could hear them, far off yetmoving closer; the tread of many horses, the rattle of swords and spears and armor, the murmur ofhuman voices, with here a laugh, and there a curse.
Eons seemed to come and go. The sounds grew louder. She heard more laughter, a shoutedcommand, splashing as they crossed and recrossed the little stream. A horse snorted. A man swore.
And then at last she saw him … only for an instant, framed between the branches of the trees as shelooked down at the valley floor, yet she knew it was him. Even at a distance, Ser Jaime Lannister wasunmistakable. The moonlight had silvered his armor and the gold of his hair, and turned his crimsoncloak to black. He was not wearing a helm.
He was there and he was gone again, his silvery armor obscured by the trees once more. Otherscame behind him, long columns of them, knights and sworn swords and freeriders, three quarters ofthe Lannister horse.
“He is no man for sitting in a tent while his carpenters build siege towers,” Ser Brynden hadpromised. “He has ridden out with his knights thrice already, to chase down raiders or storm astubborn holdfast.”
Nodding, Robb had studied the map her uncle had drawn him. Ned had taught him to read maps.
“Raid him here,” he said, pointing. “A few hundred men, no more. Tully banners. When he comesafter you, we will be waiting”—his finger moved an inch to the left—“here.”
Here was a hush in the night, moonlight and shadows, a thick carpet of dead leaves underfoot,densely wooded ridges sloping gently down to the streambed, the underbrush thinning as the groundfell away.
Here was her son on his stallion, glancing back at her one last time and lifting his sword in salute.
Here was the call of Maege Mormont’s warhorn, a long low blast that rolled down the valley fromthe east, to tell them that the last of Jaime’s riders had entered the trap.
And Grey Wind threw back his head and howled.
The sound seemed to go right through Catelyn Stark, and she found herself shivering. It was aterrible sound, a frightening sound, yet there was music in it too. For a second she felt something likepity for the Lannisters below. So this is what death sounds like, she thought.
HAAroooooooooooooooooooooooo came the answer from the far ridge as the Greatjon winded hisown horn. To east and west, the trumpets of the Mallisters and Freys blew vengeance. North, wherethe valley narrowed and bent like a cocked elbow, Lord Karstark’s warhorns added their own deep,mournful voices to the dark chorus. Men were shouting and horses rearing in the stream below.
The whispering wood let out its breath all at once, as the bowmen Robb had hidden in the branchesof the trees let fly their arrows and the night erupted with the screams of men and horses. All aroundher, the riders raised their lances, and the dirt and leaves that had buried the cruel bright points fellaway to reveal the gleam of sharpened steel. “Winterfell!” she heard Robb shout as the arrows sighedagain. He moved away from her at a trot, leading his men downhill.
Catelyn sat on her horse, unmoving, with Hal Mollen and her guard around her, and she waited asshe had waited before, for Brandon and Ned and her father. She was high on the ridge, and the treeshid most of what was going on beneath her. A heartbeat, two, four, and suddenly it was as if she andher protectors were alone in the wood. The rest were melted away into the green.
Yet when she looked across the valley to the far ridge, she saw the Greatjon’s riders emerge fromthe darkness beneath the trees. They were in a long line, an endless line, and as they burst from thewood there was an instant, the smallest part of a heartbeat, when all Catelyn saw was the moonlighton the points of their lances, as if a thousand willowisps were coming down the ridge, wreathed insilver flame.
Then she blinked, and they were only men, rushing down to kill or die.
Afterward, she could not claim she had seen the battle. Yet she could hear, and the valley rang withechoes. The crack of a broken lance, the clash of swords, the cries of “Lannister” and “Winterfell”
and “Tully! Riverrun and Tully!” When she realized there was no more to see, she closed her eyesand listened. The battle came alive around her. She heard hoofbeats, iron boots splashing in shallowwater, the woody sound of swords on oaken shields and the scrape of steel against steel, the hiss ofarrows, the thunder of drums, the terrified screaming of a thousand horses. Men shouted curses andbegged for mercy, and got it (or not), and lived (or died). The ridges seemed to play queer tricks withsound. Once she heard Robb’s voice, as clear as if he’d been standing at her side, calling, “To me! Tome!” And she heard his direwolf, snarling and growling, heard the snap of those long teeth, thetearing of flesh, shrieks of fear and pain from man and horse alike. Was there only one wolf? It washard to be certain.
Little by little, the sounds dwindled and died, until at last there was only the wolf. As a red dawnbroke in the east, Grey Wind began to howl again.
Robb came back to her on a different horse, riding a piebald gelding in the place of the grey stallionhe had taken down into the valley. The wolf’s head on his shield was slashed half to pieces, raw woodshowing where deep gouges had been hacked in the oak, but Robb himself seemed unhurt. Yet whenhe came closer, Catelyn saw that his mailed glove and the sleeve of his surcoat were black with blood.
“You’re hurt,” she said.
dshowing where deep gouges had been hacked in the oak, but Robb himself seemed unhurt. Yet whenhe came closer, Catelyn saw that his mailed glove and the sleeve of his surcoat were black with blood.
“You’re hurt,” she said.
Robb lifted his hand, opened and closed his fingers. “No,” he said. “This is … Torrhen’s blood,perhaps, or …” He shook his head. “I do not know.”
A mob of men followed him up the slope, dirty and dented and grinning, with Theon and theGreatjon at their head. Between them they dragged Ser Jaime Lannister. They threw him down infront of her horse. “The Kingslayer,” Hal announced, unnecessarily.
Lannister raised his head. “Lady Stark,” he said from his knees. Blood ran down one cheek from agash across his scalp, but the pale light of dawn had put the glint of gold back in his hair. “I wouldoffer you my sword, but I seem to have mislaid it.”
“It is not your sword I want, ser,” she told him. “Give me my father and my brother Edmure. Giveme my daughters. Give me my lord husband.”
“I have mislaid them as well, I fear.”
“A pity,” Catelyn said coldly.
“Kill him, Robb,” Theon Greyjoy urged. “Take his head off.”
“No,” her son answered, peeling off his bloody glove. “He’s more use alive than dead. And mylord father never condoned the murder of prisoners after a battle.”
“A wise man,” Jaime Lannister said, “and honorable.”
“Take him away and put him in irons,” Catelyn said.
“Do as my lady mother says,” Robb commanded, “and make certain there’s a strong guard aroundhim. Lord Karstark will want his head on a pike.”
“That he will,” the Greatjon agreed, gesturing. Lannister was led away to be bandaged andchained.
“Why should Lord Karstark want him dead?” Catelyn asked.
Robb looked away into the woods, with the same brooding look that Ned often got. “He … hekilled them …”
“Lord Karstark’s sons,” Galbart Glover explained.
“Both of them,” said Robb. “Torrhen and Eddard. And Daryn Hornwood as well.”
“No one can fault Lannister on his courage,” Glover said. “When he saw that he was lost, herallied his retainers and fought his way up the valley, hoping to reach Lord Robb and cut him down.
And almost did.”
“He mislaid his sword in Eddard Karstark’s neck, after he took Torrhen’s hand off and split DarynHornwood’s skull open,” Robb said. “All the time he was shouting for me. If they hadn’t tried to stophim—”
“—I should then be mourning in place of Lord Karstark,” Catelyn said. “Your men did what theywere sworn to do, Robb. They died protecting their liege lord. Grieve for them. Honor them for theirvalor. But not now. You have no time for grief. You may have lopped the head off the snake, butthree quarters of the body is still coiled around my father’s castle. We have won a battle, not a war.”
“But such a battle!” said Theon Greyjoy eagerly. “My lady, the realm has not seen such a victorysince the Field of Fire. I vow, the Lannisters lost ten men for every one of ours that fell. We’ve takenclose to a hundred knights captive, and a dozen lords bannermen. Lord Westerling, Lord Banefort, SerGarth Greenfield, Lord Estren, Ser Tytos Brax, Mallor the Dornishman … and three Lannistersbesides Jaime, Lord Tywin’s own nephews, two of his sister’s sons and one of his dead brother’s …”
“And Lord Tywin?” Catelyn interrupted. “Have you perchance taken Lord Tywin, Theon?”
“No,” Greyjoy answered, brought up short.
“Until you do, this war is far from done.”
Robb raised his head and pushed his hair back out of his eyes. “My mother is right. We still haveRiverrun.