“I am certain my lord father would be pleased to speak to the Lady Catelyn,” Ser Stevron said. “To vouchsafe for our good intentions, my brother Ser Perwyn will remain here until she is safely returned to you.”
“He shall be our honored guest,” said Robb. Ser Perwyn, the youngest of the four Freys in the party, dismounted and handed the reins of his horse to a brother. “I require my lady mother’s return by evenfall, Ser Stevron,” Robb went on. “It is not my intent to linger here long.”
Ser Stevron Frey gave a polite nod. “As you say, my lord.” Catelyn spurred her horse forward and did not look back. Lord Walder’s sons and envoys fell in around her.
Her father had once said of Walder Frey that he was the only lord in the Seven Kingdoms who could field an army out of his breeches. When the Lord of the Crossing welcomed Catelyn in the great hall of the east castle, surrounded by twenty living sons (minus Ser Perwyn, who would have made twenty-one), thirty-six grandsons, nineteen great-grandsons, and numerous daughters, granddaughters, bastards, and grandbastards, she understood just what he had meant.
Lord Walder was ninety, a wizened pink weasel with a bald spotted head, too gouty to stand unassisted. His newest wife, a pale frail girl of sixteen years, walked beside his litter when they carried him in. She was the eighth Lady Frey.
“It is a great pleasure to see you again after so many years, my lord,” Catelyn said.
The old man squinted at her suspiciously. “Is it? I doubt that. Spare me your sweet words, Lady Catelyn, I am too old. Why are you here? Is your boy too proud to come before me himself? What am I to do with you?”
Catelyn had been a girl the last time she had visited the Twins, but even then Lord Walder had been irascible, sharp of tongue, and blunt of manner. Age had made him worse than ever, it would seem. She would need to choose her words with care, and do her best to take no offense from his.
“Father,” Ser Stevron said reproachfully, “you forget yourself. Lady Stark is here at your invitation.”
“Did I ask you? You are not Lord Frey yet, not until I die. Do I look dead? I’ll hear no instructions from you.”
“This is no way to speak in front of our noble guest, Father,” one of his younger sons said.
“Now my bastards presume to teach me courtesy,” Lord Walder complained. “I’ll speak any way I like, damn you. I’ve had three kings to guest in my life, and queens as well, do you think I require lessons from the likes of you, Ryger? Your mother was milking goats the first time I gave her my seed.” He dismissed the red-faced youth with a flick of his fingers and gestured to two of his other sons. “Danwell, Whalen, help me to my chair.”
They shifted Lord Walder from his litter and carried him to the high seat of the Freys, a tall chair of black oak whose back was carved in the shape of two towers linked by a bridge. His young wife crept up timidly and covered his legs with a blanket. When he was settled, the old man beckoned Catelyn forward and planted a papery dry kiss on her hand. “There,” he announced. “Now that I have observed the courtesies, my lady, perhaps my sons will do me the honor of shutting their mouths. Why are you here?”
“To ask you to open your gates, my lord,” Catelyn replied politely. “My son and his lords bannermen are most anxious to cross the river and be on their way.”
“To Riverrun?” He sniggered. “Oh, no need to tell me, no need. I’m not blind yet. The old man can still read a map.”
“To Riverrun,” Catelyn confirmed. She saw no reason to deny it. “Where I might have expected to find you, my lord. You are still my father’s bannerman, are you not?”
“Heh,” said Lord Walder, a noise halfway between a laugh and a grunt. “I called my swords, yes I did, here they are, you saw them on the walls. It was my intent to march as soon as all my strength was assembled. Well, to send my sons. I am well past marching myself, Lady Catelyn.” He looked around for likely confirmation and pointed to a tall, stooped man of fifty years. “Tell her, Jared. Tell her that was my intent.”
“It was, my lady,” said Ser Jared Frey, one of his sons by his second wife. “On my honor.”
“Is it my fault that your fool brother lost his battle before we could march?” He leaned back against his cushions and scowled at her, as if challenging her to dispute his version of events. “I am told the Kingslayer went through him like an axe through ripe cheese. Why should my boys hurry south to die? All those who did go south are running north again.”
Catelyn would gladly have spitted the querulous old man and roasted him over a fire, but she had only till evenfall to open the bridge. Calmly, she said, “All the more reason that we must reach Riverrun, and soon. Where can we go to talk, my lord?”
“We’re talking now,” Lord Frey complained. The spotted pink head snapped around. “What are you all looking at?” he shouted at his kin. “Get out of here. Lady Stark wants to speak to me in private. Might be she has designs on my fidelity, heh. Go, all of you, find something useful to do. Yes, you too, woman. Out, out, out.” As his sons and grandsons and daughters and bastards and nieces and nephews streamed from the hall, he leaned close to Catelyn and confessed, “They’re all waiting for me to die. Stevron’s been waiting for forty years, but I keep disappointing him. Heh. Why should I die just so he can be a lord? I ask you. I won’t do it.”
“I have every hope that you will live to be a hundred.”
“That would boil them, to be sure. Oh, to be sure. Now, what do you want to say?”
“We want to cross,” Catelyn told him.
“Oh, do you? That’s blunt. Why should I let you?”
For a moment her anger flared. “If you were strong enough to climb your own battlements, Lord Frey, you would see that my son has twenty thousand men outside your walls.”
“They’ll be twenty thousand fresh corpses when Lord Tywin gets here,” the old man shot back. “Don’t you try and frighten me, my lady. Your husband’s in some traitor’s cell under the Red Keep, your father’s sick, might be dying, and Jaime Lannister’s got your brother in chains. What do you have that I should fear? That son of yours? I’ll match you son for son, and I’ll still have eighteen when yours are all dead.”
“You swore an oath to my father,” Catelyn reminded him.
He bobbed his head side to side, smiling. “Oh, yes, I said some words, but I swore oaths to the crown too, it seems to me. Joffrey’s the king now, and that makes you and your boy and all those fools out there no better than rebels. If I had the sense the gods gave a fish, I’d help the Lannisters boil you all.”
“Why don’t you?” she challenged him.
Lord Walder snorted with disdain. “Lord Tywin the proud and splendid, Warden of the West, Hand of the King, oh, what a great man that one is, him and his gold this and gold that and lions here and lions there. I’ll wager you, he eats too many beans, he breaks wind just like me, but you’ll never hear him admit it, oh, no. What’s he got to be so puffed up about anyway? Only two sons, and one of them’s a twisted little monster. I’ll match him son for son, and I’ll still have nineteen and a half left when all of his are dead!” He cackled. “If Lord Tywin wants my help, he can bloody well ask for it.”
That was all Catelyn needed to hear. “I am asking for your help, my lord,” she said humbly. “And my father and my brother and my lord husband and my sons are asking with my voice.”
Lord Walder jabbed a bony finger at her face. “Save your sweet words, my lady. Sweet words I get from my wife. Did you see her? Sixteen she is, a little flower, and her honey’s only for me. I wager she gives me a son by this time next year. Perhaps I’ll make him heir, wouldn’t that boil the rest of them?”
“I’m certain she will give you many sons.”
His head bobbed up and down. “Your lord father did not come to the wedding. An insult, as I see it. Even if he is dying. He never came to my last wedding either. He calls me the Late Lord Frey, you know. Does he think I’m dead? I’m not dead, and I promise you, I’ll outlive him as I outlived his
father. Your family has always pissed on me, don’t deny it, don’t lie, you know it’s true. Years ago, I went to your father and suggested a match between his son and my daughter. Why not? I had a daughter in mind, sweet girl, only a few years older than Edmure, but if your brother didn’t warm to her, I had others he might have had, young ones, old ones, virgins, widows, whatever he wanted. No, Lord Hoster would not hear of it. Sweet words he gave me, excuses, but what I wanted was to get rid of a daughter.
“And your sister, that one, she’s full as bad. It was, oh, a year ago, no more, Jon Arryn was still the King’s Hand, and I went to the city to see my sons ride in the tourney. Stevron and Jared are too old for the lists now, but Danwell and Hosteen rode, Perwyn as well, and a couple of my bastards tried the melee. If I’d known how they’d shame me, I would never have troubled myself to make the journey. Why did I need to ride all that way to see Hosteen knocked off his horse by that Tyrell whelp? I ask you. The boy’s half his age, Ser Daisy they call him, something like that. And Danwell was unhorsed by a hedge knight! Some days I wonder if those two are truly mine. My third wife was a Crakehall, all of the Crakehall women are sluts. Well, never mind about that, she died before you were born, what do you care?
“I was speaking of your sister. I proposed that Lord and Lady Arryn foster two of my grandsons at court, and offered to take their own son to ward here at the Twins. Are my grandsons unworthy to be seen at the king’s court? They are sweet boys, quiet and mannerly. Walder is Merrett’s son, named after me, and the other one … heh, I don’t recall … he might have been another Walder, they’re always naming them Walder so I’ll favor them, but his father … which one was his father now?” His face wrinkled up. “Well, whoever he was, Lord Arryn wouldn’t have him, or the other one, and I blame your lady sister for that. She frosted up as if I’d suggested selling her boy to a mummer’s show or making a eunuch out of him, and when Lord Arryn said the child was going to Dragonstone to foster with Stannis Baratheon, she stormed off without a word of regrets and all the Hand could give me was apologies. What good are apologies? I ask you.”
Catelyn frowned, disquieted. “I had understood that Lysa’s boy was to be fostered with Lord Tywin at Casterly Rock.”
“No, it was Lord Stannis,” Walder Frey said irritably. “Do you think I can’t tell Lord Stannis from Lord Tywin? They’re both bungholes who think they’re too noble to shit, but never mind about that, I know the difference. Or do you think I’m so old I can’t remember? I’m ninety and I remember very well. I remember what to do with a woman too. That wife of mine will give me a son before this time next year, I’ll wager. Or a daughter, that can’t be helped. Boy or girl, it will be red, wrinkled, and squalling, and like as not she’ll want to name it Walder or Walda.”
Catelyn was not concerned with what Lady Frey might choose to name her child. “Jon Arryn was going to foster his son with Lord Stannis, you are quite certain of that?”
“Yes, yes, yes,” the old man said. “Only he died, so what does it matter? You say you want to cross the river?”
“We do.”
“Well, you can’t!” Lord Walder announced crisply. “Not unless I allow it, and why should I? The Tullys and the Starks have never been friends of mine.” He pushed himself back in his chair and crossed his arms, smirking, waiting for her answer.
The rest was only haggling.
A swollen red sun hung low against the western hills when the gates of the castle opened. The drawbridge creaked down, the portcullis winched up, and Lady Catelyn Stark rode forth to rejoin her son and his lords bannermen. Behind her came Ser Jared Frey, Ser Hosteen Frey, Ser Danwell Frey, and Lord Walder’s bastard son Ronel Rivers, leading a long column of pikemen, rank on rank of shuffling men in blue steel ringmail and silvery grey cloaks.
Robb galloped out to meet her, with Grey Wind racing beside his stallion. “It’s done,” she told him. “Lord Walder will grant you your crossing. His swords are yours as well, less four hundred he means to keep back to hold the Twins. I suggest that you leave four hundred of your own, a mixed force of archers and swordsmen. He can scarcely object to an offer to augment his garrison … but make certain you give the command to a man you can trust. Lord Walder may need help keeping faith.”
“As you say, Mother,” Robb answered, gazing at the ranks of pikemen. “Perhaps … Ser Helman Tallhart, do you think?”
“A fine choice.”
“What … what did he want of us?”
“If you can spare a few of your swords, I need some men to escort two of Lord Frey’s grandsons north to Winterfell,” she told him. “I have agreed to take them as wards. They are young boys, aged eight years and seven. It would seem they are both named Walder. Your brother Bran will welcome the companionship of lads near his own age, I should think.”
“Is that all? Two fosterlings? That’s a small enough price to—”
“Lord Frey’s son Olyvar will be coming with us,” she went on. “He is to serve as your personal squire. His father would like to see him knighted, in good time.”
“A squire.” He shrugged. “Fine, that’s fine, if he’s—”
“Also, if your sister Arya is returned to us safely, it is agreed that she will marry Lord Walder’s youngest son, Elmar, when the two of them come of age.”
Robb looked nonplussed. “Arya won’t like that one bit.”
“And you are to wed one of his daughters, once the fighting is done,” she finished. “His lordship has graciously consented to allow you to choose whichever girl you prefer. He has a number he thinks might be suitable.”
To his credit, Robb did not flinch. “I see.”
“Do you consent?”
“Can I refuse?”
“Not if you wish to cross.”
“I consent,” Robb said solemnly. He had never seemed more manly to her than he did in that moment. Boys might play with swords, but it took a lord to make a marriage pact, knowing what it meant.
They crossed at evenfall as a horned moon floated upon the river. The double column wound its way through the gate of the eastern twin like a great steel snake, slithering across the courtyard, into the keep and over the bridge, to issue forth once more from the second castle on the west bank.
Catelyn rode at the head of the serpent, with her son and her uncle Ser Brynden and Ser Stevron Frey. Behind followed nine tenths of their horse; knights, lancers, freeriders, and mounted bowmen. It took hours for them all to cross. Afterward, Catelyn would remember the clatter of countless hooves on the drawbridge, the sight of Lord Walder Frey in his litter watching them pass, the glitter of eyes peering down through the slats of the murder holes in the ceiling as they rode through the Water Tower.
The larger part of the northern host, pikes and archers and great masses of men-at-arms on foot, remained upon the east bank under the command of Roose Bolton. Robb had commanded him to continue the march south, to confront the huge Lannister army coming north under Lord Tywin.
For good or ill, her son had thrown the dice.
JON
“Are you well, Snow?” Lord Mormont asked, scowling.
“Well,” his raven squawked. “Well.”
“I am, my lord,” Jon lied … loudly, as if that could make it true. “And you?”
Mormont frowned. “A dead man tried to kill me. How well could I be?” He scratched under his chin. His shaggy grey beard had been singed in the fire, and he’d hacked it off. The pale stubble of his new whiskers made him look old, disreputable, and grumpy. “You do not look well. How is your hand?”
“Healing.” Jon flexed his bandaged fingers to show him. He had burned himself more badly than he knew throwing the flaming drapes, and his right hand was swathed in silk halfway to the elbow. At the time he’d felt nothing; the agony had come after. His cracked red skin oozed fluid, and fearsome blood blisters rose between his fingers, big as roaches. “The maester says I’ll have scars, but otherwise the hand should be as good as it was before.”
“
A scarred hand is nothing. On the Wall, you’ll be wearing gloves often as not.”
“As you say, my lord.” It was not the thought of scars that troubled Jon; it was the rest of it. Maester Aemon had given him milk of the poppy, yet even so, the pain had been hideous. At first it had felt as if his hand were still aflame, burning day and night. Only plunging it into basins of snow and shaved ice gave any relief at all. Jon thanked the gods that no one but Ghost saw him writhing on his bed, whimpering from the pain. And when at last he did sleep, he dreamt, and that was even worse. In the dream, the corpse he fought had blue eyes, black hands, and his father’s face, but he dared not tell Mormont that.
“Dywen and Hake returned last night,” the Old Bear said. “They found no sign of your uncle, no more than the others did.”
“I know.” Jon had dragged himself to the common hall to sup with his friends, and the failure of the rangers’ search had been all the men had been talking of.
“You know,” Mormont grumbled. “How is it that everyone knows everything around here?” He did not seem to expect an answer. “It would seem there were only the two of … of those creatures, whatever they were, I will not call them men. And thank the gods for that. Any more and … well, that doesn’t bear thinking of. There will be more, though. I can feel it in these old bones of mine, and Maester Aemon agrees. The cold winds are rising. Summer is at an end, and a winter is coming such as this world has never seen.”
Winter is coming. The Stark words had never sounded so grim or ominous to Jon as they did now. “My lord,” he asked hesitantly, “it’s said there was a bird last night …”
“There was. What of it?”
“I had hoped for some word of my father.”
“Father,” taunted the old raven, bobbing its head as it walked across Mormont’s shoulders. “Father.”
The Lord Commander reached up to pinch its beak shut, but the raven hopped up on his head, fluttered its wings, and flew across the chamber to light above a window. “Grief and noise,” Mormont grumbled. “That’s all they’re good for, ravens. Why I put up with that pestilential bird … if there was news of Lord Eddard, don’t you think I would have sent for you? Bastard or no, you’re still his blood. The message concerned Ser Barristan Selmy. It seems he’s been removed from the Kingsguard. They gave his place to that black dog Clegane, and now Selmy’s wanted for treason. The fools sent some watchmen to seize him, but he slew two of them and escaped.” Mormont snorted, leaving no doubt of his view of men who’d send gold cloaks against a knight as renowed as Barristan the Bold. “We have white shadows in the woods and unquiet dead stalking our halls, and a boy sits the Iron Throne,” he said in disgust.
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