22. A Feast for Crows, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 628-657

Brienne

Stunned and in pain, Brienne is being carried bound, "like a sack of oats," over the hindquarters of a horse. She hears Podrick calling out to her faintly, but then he falls silent. She drifts off into a dream in which she is being tormented by Biter, while others, such as Nimble Dick, Catelyn Stark, and Lord Renly, look on.

Finally the horse comes to a stop and she is taken from the horse. A girl gives her something to drink and tells her that her arm is broken, along with several ribs. The last thing she remembers from the fight is Biter attacking her, and she asks about him. The girl tells her, "He's dead. Gendry shoved a spearpoint through the back of his neck."

She gets a better look at the girl, who resembles Willow, back at the inn, and concludes that it's her sister, the innkeeper. The girl admits as much, and says her name is Jeyne Heddle. Brienne asks her to loosen the ropes tying her hands, but she says she can't. Then Gendry appears -- once again Brienne takes him at first for Renly -- and says, "M'lady means for you to answer for your crimes."

Brienne remembers the earlier mentions of a "Lady Stoneheart," and asks if she is the one he refers to. "Some call her that," he says. "Some call her other things. The Silent Sister. Mother Merciless. The Hangwoman." Brienne struggles to rise, but instead she faints into more dreams of struggle and capture.

When she wakes again, Jeyne is giving her a cup of onion broth. She asks for Gendry, but is told that he has returned to the inn to take care of Willow and the children. Then she gets a look at one of the men standing around her: "A yellow greatcloak was plastered to his shoulders, sodden and filthy. From his shoulders rose a steel dog's head, its teeth bared in a snarl." She protests that she had killed him, but the man now wearing the Hound's helmet says, "You got that backwards. It'll be me killing you. I'd do it now, but m'lady wants to see you hanged."

When Brienne protests that they shared bread and salt with Jeyne's sister, Jeyne replies, "Guest right don't mean so much as it used to.... Not since m'lady come back from the wedding. Some o' them swinging down by the river figured they was guests too."

They get back on the horses, and this time a leather hood covers Brienne's head. She passes out again and dreams of being back on Tarth, waiting for her betrothed. Blood pours from her mouth when she tries to speak: She has bitten off her tongue. Her betrothed mocks her, and when he turns away she sees that he is Jaime. She tries to call out for him, but her mouth is full of blood.

When she wakes again, she doesn't know where she is. Her clothes and armor are gone and she is wearing a thin woolen shift. Her arm is in a splint and her face is covered with bandages. When she stands and calls out, an old man in rags moves and says her name. He tells her they are being held in a cave, and asks if she is hungry. He tells her she has been suffering with a fever, but when he feels her forehead assures her that it has broken. Biter's savaging of her face had led to an infection. "We had to cut away some of the flesh. Your face will not be pretty, I fear.... My lady, that creature chewed off half your cheek."

She asks why bother to treat her wounds and splint her arm if she's just going to be hanged, and he admits to the irony of her situation. She had "fought bravely at the inn.... Whatever else you may have done, you won those wounds honorably, in the best of causes." She asks who they are, and he admits that they were once the king's men, and then they were a brotherhood, but now, "I do not know who we are, if truth be told, nor where we might be going."

She realizes then that he is the red wizard, Thoros of Myr, and that he was one of Dondarrion's band. But he tells her Lord Dondarrion is "gone out of the world" and "A grimmer shadow leads us in his place." He brings her food, and she asks about the others who were with her. Septon Merribald has been allowed to go on his way, he tells her, but "The others are here, awaiting judgment." She pleads for Podrick, who is "just a boy," but Thoros tells her that he has said he is a squire -- "The Imp's squire. He has fought in battles, by his own admission. He has even killed, to hear him tell it." She argues for pity and justice.

"Justice." Thoros smiled wanly. "I remember justice. It had a pleasant taste. Justice was what we were about when Beric led us, or so we told ourselves. We were king's men, knights, and heroes ... but some knights are dark and full of terror, my lady. War makes monsters of us all."

Then he hears others coming. "Our lady sends for you."

Four men appear, one of them wearing the Hound's helmet. She realizes now that it had been Rorge she killed, and that he had taken the helmet from him. Thoros is dismayed to hear this: "Is this true? A dead man's helm? Have we fallen that low?" Lem argues, "The sight of it will make my foes afraid." They escort her out of the cave and into a larger one centered on a firepit where outlaws are gathered. The only face Brienne recognizes is Jeyne Heddle's.

Behind a trestle table in a cleft in the rock sits "a woman all in grey, cloaked and hooded. In her hands was a crown, a bronze circlet ringed by iron swords." The one-eyed man presents her as "The Kingslayer's whore," to which Brienne protests.  A younger outlaw is holding her sword, Oathkeeper, which he places on the table in front of the hooded woman. Its pommel is in the shape of a lion's head. Thoros then places on the table the letter with Tommen's seal, which Lady Stoneheart takes to read.

Brienne protests that the sword was given her by Jaime because he "swore an oath to Catelyn Stark," but she is interrupted by the man in the yellow cloak: "...before his friends cut her throat for her, that must have been." Brienne realizes that her cause is hopeless, but she continues to explain that Jaime had promised to return Catelyn's daughters, and that he sent her out to find them. But Lem mocks all of her arguments, and then produces her companions. "Hyle Hunt had been beaten so badly that his face was swollen almost beyond recognition." Podrick supports him, and apologizes to Brienne for what has happened. 

Brienne turns to Lady Stoneheart and pleads that her companions had nothing to do with "Whatever treachery you think I may have done." She asks her to let them go. But the woman in gray says nothing for a moment, then reaches for her throat and produces sounds, "part croak, part wheeze, part death rattle." Brienne doesn't understand, but one of the men interprets the sound as a question about the sword's name. Brienne says it is Oathkeeper, but the woman hisses something that is interpreted as "Call it Oathbreaker.... It was made for treachery and murder. She names it False Friend. Like you."

Brienne asks to whom she has been unfaithful, and the interpreter says, "To her.... Can it be that my lady has forgotten that you once swore her your service?" Suddenly realizing that he means that Lady Stoneheart is Catelyn Stark, Brienne protests, "That cannot be.... She's dead." Lady Stoneheart lowers her hood and reveals the decayed face of Lady Catelyn. Thoros explains that she had been dead three days when they found her in the river. It was Beric Dondarrion who gave her the "kiss of life."

Brienne swears by the Seven, by her sword, that she had never betrayed Catelyn, who then produces more sounds that Lemoncloak interprets: "She says that you must prove your faith.... All she asks from you is Jaime Lannister." Brienne argues once again for Jaime's good faith, but to no avail: "The sword or the noose, she says. Choose, she says. Choose."

Brienne refuses, and she understands the next thing Lady Stoneheart croaks: "Hang them."

They are taken outside and strung to the trees. Brienne makes a last plea for Podrick, and as the noose tightens around her own throat she sees him struggling. "She screamed a word."

Cersei

Cersei is playing her part as she sits below the Iron Throne and in front of the assembled court protests the High Septon's decision. But Septa Moelle is insistent "that the young queen and her ladies cannot be released until and unless their innocence has been proved." The septa repeats the charges against Megga Tyrell and Elinor Tyrell -- "lewdness, fornication, and conspiracy to commit high treason" -- and the lesser one against Alla Tyrell -- "witnessing their shame and helping them conceal it" -- and finally against Queen Margaery -- all of the above "as well as adultery and high treason." Cersei feigns dismay at "such calumnies." But the septa's report of Ser Osney's confession causes a gasp and a buzz in the assemblage.

Once again, Cersei protests: "Margaery is a maiden!" But the septa says that she examined Margaery, Megga, and Elinor herself, as did other septas. The maidenheads of all of them were "not intact." Lord Merryweather asks, "Would you have us believe that all of these noble people lied to us?" But Septa Moelle says she can only attest to what she discovered in her examinations.  Cersei tries not to laugh, and says, "Grand Maester Pycelle, you shall accompany Septa Moelle back to Beloved Baelor's Sept, and return to us with the truth about our Margaery's maidenhead." Pycelle follows through: There's no need for him to do so. "Queen Margaery is no maiden. She has required me to make her moon tea, not once, but many times."

Cersei delights in the uproar that follows. But she rises with a stern face, has the gold cloaks clear the hall, and the Kingsguard exit with her. Secretly she rejoices in her triumph of the prophecy of Maggy the Frog: "No golden shrouds, no valonqar, I am free of your croaking malice at last." Her small council gathers around her in dismay, and Ser Harys Swyft predicts "blood in the streets" when Mace Tyrell hears the news. Cersei tells them that she will go to Baelor's Sept and see if there is anything she can do. 

Then she goes to Tommen with some blank arrest warrants for him to sign and seal. When he is gone, she fills in the names and gives them to Ser Osfryd Kettleblack to have the gold cloaks deliver them. He tells her that a crowd is gathering at Baelor's Sept. She hadn't expected this, though she knows the "smallfolk" love Margaery. She tells him to let the High Septon's own knights take care of the crowd, but to close the city gates. "No one is to enter or leave King's Landing without my leave, until all this is done and settled." The warrants are served, and by the end of the day all of the accused are in the dungeons except the Redwyne twins, who are supposed to be found falsely accused. They are "given comfortable chambers in a tower."

The next day she goes with Taena Merryweather to Baelor's Sept. Taena worries that Margaery may demand trial by combat, but Cersei has anticipated even that: A member of the royal family must be defended by one of the Kingsguard, and Margaery's brother, Ser Loras, is gravely wounded, while others are away, and Osmund is the brother of the accuser. That leaves only the elderly Boros Blount and Meryn Trant, "and Ser Meryn has been feeling ill of late. Remind me to tell him that when we return to the castle." Taena says she hopes she never offends Cersei.

The crowd at the sept is not particularly menacing, it turns out, and she is ushered in to the presence of the High Septon, though she has to wait until he finishes his prayers. She asks to see Margaery, and he agrees, though he asks her to come to seem him afterward. "We must pray together, you and I." Margaery is barefoot and shivering,, dressed in a "roughspun shift." She complains that the septas come every hour to ask her to confess, so she is unable to sleep. And she is astonished when Cersei tells her that her cousins have been accused as well.

Cersei tells her there will have to be a trial, and that the knights of the Kingsguard will defend her if she chooses a trial by combat. And suddenly Margaery gets wise to what is going on. She runs through the members of the Kingsguard herself, and "her brown eyes narrowed in suspicion. 'Blount or Trant,' she said at last. 'It would have to be one of them. You'd like that, wouldn't you? Osney Kettleblack would cut either one to pieces.'" When Margaery orders her to leave, Cersei is provoked at at having been seen through so easily, and assures Margaery that she only wants to help her.

"To help me to my grave. I asked for you to leave. Will you make me call my gaolers and have you dragged away, you vile, scheming, evil bitch?"

Cersei makes a dignified retreat.

Four septas escort her to a subterranean audience chamber where the High Septon is waiting. She suggests that instead of being tried by the court, over which Tommen would have to preside, Margaery might be tried by the Faith. He agrees, saying he had had the same thought. "A sacred court of seven judges shall sit upon this case. Three shall be of your female sex. A maiden, a mother, and a crone. Who could be more suited to judge the wickedness of women?" He also agrees that if she chooses trial by combat, it should be one of the Kingsguard.

"Cersei covered her face with her hands, as if in grief. When she raised her head again, a tear glistened in one eye." Then she says she'll return to the castle and take Ser Osney Kettleblack with her to be questioned by the small council. And she is shocked when he says "No." He will take her to Ser Osney, he says, and she begins to worry. He conducts her to a chamber protected with an iron door, which he unlocks.

Within, Osney Kettleblack hung naked from the ceiling, swinging from a pair of heavy iron chains. He had been whipped. His back and shoulders [had] been laid almost bare, and cuts and welts crisscrossed his legs and arse as well.

The High Septon explains to her that he had seldom "heard a man so pleased to be so guilty." So he has had him whipped to find out the truth: "Osney Kettleblack is guilty of treason and murder, and the wages of treason are death." Ser Osney now says he never touched Margaery Tyrell, but that he had had sex with Cersei: "She's the queen I fucked, the one sent me to kill the old Septon. He never had no guards. I just come in when he was sleeping and pushed a pillow down across his face."

Cersei makes a run for it. The elderly High Septon is no match for her, nor are the old septas who had escorted her. As she is trying to escape she remembers that Taena Merryweather is there: "Taena knows it all. If they take her too, and whip her...." But finally she is caught, overpowered, stripped, and thrust naked into a cell. And like Margaery she is awakened every hour by a septa who says, "I am come to hear you tell of all your murders and fornications."

A night and a day passes with only the hourly visits of the septa demanding confession. Finally, on the morning of the second day, Qyburn appears. He tells her, "You are to be tried before a holy court of seven, for murder, treason, and fornication." Margaery is to be tried by the same court, he says, and he has handed over the Blue Bard to the High Septon. "My whisperers tell me that they are whipping him, but so far he is still singing the same sweet song we taught him."

But Qyburn has been removed from the king's council, which is being run by Harys Swyft and Pycell. They have removed Osfryd Kettleblack as head of the City Watch, and have sent a raven to Casterly Rock, asking Kevan Lannister to become regent. "Mace Tyrell has abandoned the siege of Storm's End and is marching back to the city with his army, and Randyll Tarly is reported on his way down from Maidenpool as well." Lord Merryweather and his wife have fled. (Cersei is glad to hear that they let Taena go.) And Aurane Waters has left with his fleet. "Ser Harys fears he means to join Lord Stannis. Pycelle believes that he is sailing to the Stepstones, to set himself up as a pirate."

Cersei says, "I am lost, Qyburn." And when he hears that only a member of the Kingsguard can defend her, he doesn't disagree. But she asks him to send word to Jaime of her plight, and to write three times, "I love you." Qyburn agrees, but reminds her that her brother has no sword hand anymore. "If he should champion you and lose...."

We will leave this world together, as we once came into it. "He will not lose. Not Jaime. Not with my life at stake."

32. A Storm of Swords, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 1098-1128

Sansa

She is in the lofty and strange Eyrie, pretending to be Alayne Stone. It is a lonely place, with her only usual company her aunt, her elderly maid, and "the Lord Robert, eight going on three." Marillion is there, too, and he is still putting the moves on her, singing songs addressed to Sansa, to Lysa's irritation: "Her aunt was far from pleased. Lady Lysa doted on Marillion, and had banished two serving girls and even a page for telling lies about him." (Marillion swings both ways?) Littlefinger is often away, dealing with troubles in the Vale.

She gets up and opens the shutters to discover that it is snowing. She remembers happier times when it would snow at Winterfell, and gets up and dresses warmly. In the garden she starts to make snowballs, remembering a snowball fight with Arya, but there is no one to fight with. She decides to make a snow castle, and "before very long Sansa knew it was Winterfell."

Her maid calls down to ask if she wants breakfast, but Sansa says no. Lysa looks down briefly from her balcony, and Maester Colemon watches her for a while from the rookery. She is trying to build a bridge that will stay up when Littlefinger appears and tells her to pack the snow around a stick for support. He recognizes it as Winterfell, and says he used to dream of it. "In my dreams it was ever a dark place, and cold." Sansa replies that it was warm, heated by the hot springs, and that "inside the glass gardens it was always like the hottest day of summer."

She sets out to make the glass roof over the gardens, and he shows her how to create the frame from twigs. He pauses for a moment to observe that she is smiling, perhaps for the first time since her deliverance from King's Landing. Playfully, she tosses some snow at him. He says, "I told you that nothing could please me more than to help you with your castle. I fear that was a lie as well. Something else would please me more." He pulls her to him and kisses her.

She pulls away from him and protests for the sake of Lysa, but he persists: "I think you might be even more beautiful than your mother was your age." He reminds her of the drunken Marillion. But then they are interrupted by Lord Robert, who is carrying "the threadbare cloth doll he carried everywhere." When she tells him it is Winterfell, "The great castle of the north," Robert pretends to be a giant and, swinging the doll, knocks down parts of it. Sansa appeals to him to stop, and grabs the doll, ripping off its head.

Robert wails, and then begins to have a seizure, collapsing on the castle and knocking it to pieces. Littlefinger grabs the boy's wrists and shouts for the maester. Soon a crowd of servants, trained by Lysa to respond to any sound that indicates the boy is upset, arrives and the maester gives him some dreamwine and has him taken to the maester's chambers for a leeching. Sansa says she didn't mean to rip the doll, but Robert protests, "She killed him! I hate her! She's a bastard and I hate her!"

"My lord husband," Sansa thinks as he is led away. Then she angrily sticks the doll's head on a broken branch and puts it "atop the shattered gatehouse of her snow castle." Littlefinger laughs, and she leaves him there to return to her chambers. She hopes Lysa will banish her from the Eyrie, and vows to tell her that she doesn't want to marry Robert.

Late in the afternoon, Lysa sends Marillion to summon her. He tells her he is composing a song about "a baseborn girl so beautiful she bewitched every man who laid eyes upon her." She lets him accompany her to the High Hall, where he bars the doors and leaves the guards outside. Lysa is sitting on the dais, but Robert isn't there. Sansa curtsies to her, and Lysa says, "I saw what you did." Sansa says she didn't mean to rip the doll apart, but Lysa informs her that that's not what she saw: "I saw you kissing him."

"He kissed me," Sansa replies, but Lysa insists, "You threw yourself at him." Sansa persists in her defense, but Lysa won't hear it: "They all tried to take him from me. My lord father, my husand, your mother ... Catelyn most of all. She liked to kiss my Petyr too, oh yes she did." Sansa backs away and says, "My mother?" But Lysa rants on about how Catelyn tried to win Littlefinger, asking, "But you remember none of it, do you? ... Do you?" Sansa is confused, and protests that she wasn't born, and wonders if Lysa is "drunk, or mad?" Lysa rambles on about giving her virginity to Littlefinger. "He told me he loved me then, but he called me Cat, just before he fell back to sleep." Sansa is terrified, and asks if she may leave, but Lysa says no.

Then she tells Sansa that she was forced to marry Jon Arryn, who took her even though he knew she wasn't a virgin. She and Littlefinger, she says, "made a baby together, a precious little baby.... When they stole him from me, I made a promise to myself that I would never let it happen again." They wanted to send Robert to Dragonstone, she says, or to marry him to Cersei, but she prevented it. Sansa says what she thinks Lysa wants to hear: "I swear, I won't every kiss him again, or ... entice him." But Lysa takes this as a confession, and seizes Sansa by the wrist, calling out to command Marillion to sing a song, "The False and the Fair."

As he sings, Lysa drags Sansa toward "a white weirwood door set in the marble wall" and held in place by bronze bars. Sansa recognizes it as the Moon Door. Lysa commands her to raise the bars, and Sansa goes along, hoping that if she obeys Lysa will come to her senses. When the bars are removed, the wind blows the door open with a bang. Lysa begins to push her toward the door, and when they reach the opening tells her to look down. "There was nothing in front of her but empty air, and a waycastle six hundred feet below clinging to the side of the mountain."

Marillion continues to sing as Sansa struggles with Lysa at the door. Finally, Sansa grabs her aunt's hair as they teeter on the brink. Lysa shrieks, "Let go of my hair!" Outside, the guards have heard the disturbance and bang on the door, and Marillion stops singing. Then Littlefinger enters from the unguarded back way, and asks what Lysa is doing. Lysa grabs Sansa's hair and says, "She kissed you.... I was teaching her a lesson, that was all." Littlefinger says, "I think she understands now. Isn't that so, Alayne?" Sansa sobs that she does.

Lysa says that Sansa doesn't belong her, and Littlefinger assures her that they'll send her away. "Let her up, now. Let her away from the door." But Lysa cries, "NO!" grasping Sansa tighter.

Tears ran down her aunt's puffy red face. "I gave you my maiden's gift. I would have given you a son too, but they murdered him with moon tea, with tansy and mint and wormwood, a spoon of honey and a drop of pennyroyal. It wasn't me, I never knew, I only drank what Father gave me...."

So the tansy that Lord Hoster talked about in his final delirium was not a woman, as Catelyn thought, but an abortifacient.

Littlefinger moves closer, trying to quiet Lysa. "We don't want Alayne to know more than she should, do we? Or Marillion?" But Lysa refuses to let go of Sansa's hair. "I saw you kissing in the snow. She's just like her mother. Catelyn kissed you in the godswood, but she never meant it, she never wanted you." Littlefinger comes closer. "There's no cause for all these tears," he says, and the word reminds Lysa of the poison, the tears of Lys, that she says Littlefinger told her to put in Jon Arryn's wine. She wrote to Catelyn to say the Lannisters did it, just as he suggested. "We're together now, we're together after so long, so very long, why would you want to kiss herrrrrr?"

Littlefinger assures her that they will be together now, forever. Lysa asks, "Truly?" And Littlefinger replies, "Truly. Now unhand the girl and come give me a kiss." Lysa lets go of Sansa, who crawls away from the Moon Door and grasps a pillar firmly. Littlefinger lets Lysa hold him for a moment, then puts his hands on her arms and assures her, "I've only loved one woman, I promise you." Lysa wants him to swear it: "Only one?"

"Only Cat," he says, and pushes her out the Moon Door. Marillion gasps in surprise. Then Littlefinger goes to Sansa, sees that she's all right, and tells her, "Run let my guards in, then. Quick now, there's no time to lose. This singer's killed my lady wife."

Epilogue

Merrett Frey has come to ransom his nephew, Petry, known as Petyr Pimple. He had volunteered for the task, despite the derision of his father, Lord Walder. Merrett is waiting for the old man,who is almost ninety-two, to die, though when he thinks about it, he's not sure if his successor, whoever that may be among his many prodigy, will be better. It was Lord Walder who ordered the massacre of the Red Wedding, but the plot had been laid by Lame Lothar, along with Roose Bolton, even "down to which songs would be played." So there is likely to be a bloodbath among the sons when Lord Walder dies. Merrett himself is ninth in line of succession, and possessed of no particular skills or luck. After being beaned by a mace in a tourney, he has suffered from crippling headaches.

He thought his luck had changed when Roose Bolton chose his daughter, Fat Walda, for a wife, but his father soon disabused him of that notion: Bolton had chosen her because of her weight, because the promised dowry was his bride's weight in silver and not because Bolton liked the prospect of a connection with "Merrett Muttonhead." Even at the Red Wedding, he had been assigned the task of getting the Greatjon too drunk to fight, and he had failed at that.

But now if he could bring back Petyr Pimple, it might put him in favor with Petyr's father, Ser Ryman, the heir apparent to the Twins. The meeting with the outlaws holding Petyr has been set for Oldstones. He hears music and follows the sound to find a man we recognize as Tom Sevenstrings, playing on a woodharp. Then a harsh voice asks if he has brought the gold, and Merrett finds himself surrounded by outlaws. With them is a woman in a hooded cloak. The speaker, "a big bearded man with crooked green teeth and a broken nose," repeats his question, and Merrett tells him it's in his saddlebag and he'll produce it when he sees Petyr. But another of the outlaws simply steps forward, reaches in the saddlebag, and finds the money.

Panicked that they will take the money and keep Petyr too, Merrett asks which one of the men is Beric Dondarrion, thinking that because he had been a lord before he was an outlaw, Dondarrion "might still be a man of honor." A couple of the men claim to be Dondarrion, and then begin to quarrel over which of them really is. So he asks for his nephew -- "actually more a great half-nephew, but there was no need to go into that" -- and says he'll be gone. A man in a yellow cloak says he's in the godswood and he'll take Merrett to him.

"Petyr Pimple was hanging from the limb of an oak, a  noose tight around his long thin neck." Merrett protests that he wasn't supposed to be killed, and that he had kept his end of the bargain, but suddenly finds a noose around his own neck. "You'd never dare hang a Frey," he says, and the man in the yellow cloak replies, "That other one, the pimply boy, he said the same thing." Merrett says his father will pay more to ransom him, but Sevenstrings says Lord Walder isn't the kind to be fooled twice: "Next time he'll send a hundred swords instead of a hundred dragons, I fear." Then he offers to let Merrett go if he'll tell them where they can find Sandor Clegane.

Merrett has no idea, so the singer tells Lem to go ahead with the hanging. Merrett pleads, "I have children," and the one-eyed outlaw replies, "That Young Wolf never will." Merrett protests that Robb had shamed them with his marriage.

"It was vengeance, we had a right to our vengeance. It was war. Aegon, we called him Jinglebell, a poor lackwit never hurt anyone, Lady Stark cut his throat.... Stark's direwolf killed four of our wolfhounds and tore the kennelmaster's arm off his shoulder, even after we'd filled him full of quarrels..."

Lem, the man in the yellow cloak, says, "So you sewed his head on Robb Stark's neck after both o' them were dead." Merrett says it was his father's idea. "All I did was drink. You wouldn't kill a man for drinking." He remembers hearing that Beric Dondarrion always lets a man have a trial. "I only drank some wine ... you have no witness."

But they do, the singer says, and the woman comes forward and lowers his hood. Merrett can't believe what he's seeing: "No. No, I saw her die. She was dead for a day and night before they stripped her naked and threw her body in the river. Raymund opened her throat from ear to ear. She was dead."

The gash in Catelyn's neck is hidden by her cloak, but her flesh is soft and "the color of curdled milk." She has lost half of her hair and what remains is white, and her face is "shredded skin and black blood where she had raked herself with her nails." Her eyes are full of hatred.  Lem says she can't speak because the cut in her throat went too deep. He asks her if he took part in it, and she nods. Merrett is hoist in the air, "kicking and twisting, up and up and up."

21. A Storm of Swords, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 693-721

Catelyn

The noise of the music and the drums is getting to Catelyn. The rain continues outside and the hall in which the feast is being held is overheated and smoky. The guests are packed into the hall, and she is wedged between Ser Ryman Frey and Roose Bolton. The food is heavy and unappealing, and she eats sparingly, though "Robb ate it uncomplaining, and her brother was too caught up with his bride to pay much attention."

Catelyn notices the fixed smile on Roslin's face, and sympathizes with her discomfort, remembering her own wedding. She sees Robb's guards, Smalljon Umber and Robin Flint, seated near him, and Patrek Mallister and Dacey Mormont not far off. "A wedding feast was not a battle, but there were always dangers when men were in their cups, and a king should never be unguarded." She thinks, "Was there ever a wedding less joyful?" and then remembers Sansa's marriage to Tyrion.

Some dogs start to fight over a scrap of meat, and Catelyn is reminded that Grey Wind is not in the hall. Lord Walder had forbidden him, even though Robb assured him there was no danger from the direwolf. Walder had cited the attack on the party he sent to meet them, in which Petyr Pimple had fallen from his horse. "Have your wolf or have your wedding, sire. You'll not have both." Catelyn had seen Robb swallow his anger.

The noise in the hall grows worse when Greatjon Umber stands and starts to bellow a song while the musicians are playing an entirely different and incompatible tune. Roose Bolton murmurs his excuses and leaves the hall, so Robb comes over and sits down next to Catelyn in his place. He turns to Ser Ryman and inquires about Olyvar Frey, saying he wanted him to be his squire at they march north. Ser Ryman says Olyvar is not at the feast. "Gone ... gone from the castles. Duty." Robb then asks him about one of his cousins, Alesander, noting that he is a singer. He is away too, Ryman says, then begs their excuse and leaves.

Robb goes to dance with Dacey Mormont. Then Lord Walder gives a signal and others among the Freys begin pounding on the tables for silence. The patriarch announces that it is time for the bedding. "Roslin had gone white. Catelyn wondered whether it was the prospect of losing her maidenhead that frightened the girl, or the bedding itself." She recalls her own bedding and the men who helped strip her naked, many of whom had died after Ned rode south to become Hand. "Catelyn wondered how may of the men here tonight would be dead before the year was done. Too many, I fear."

Robb signals his agreement to the bedding, and there is a flood of bawdy jokes. The men surround Roslin and the women Edmure. "She knew she should join the throng of women round her brother, but she would only ruin their fun. As the throngs leave the hall, she sees that Robb has remained behind as well. She worries that Lord Walder might take that as another insult, but she sees that others have remained: Petyr Pimple and Ser Whalen Frey are asleep, Jinglebell is wandering around picking food off of plates, and Ser Wendel Manderly was still eating from a leg of lamb.

Dacey Mormont goes up to Edwyn Frey and asks him if he wanted to dance, but Edwyn rejects her so rudely that Dacey walks away looking pale. Catelyn wonders what's wrong. Even Ser Wendel senses something amiss. Then the musicians begin to play the song "The Rains of Castamere," which was written about the destruction of a house by the Lannisters. She sees Edwyn leaving, and hurries over to him. When she grabs his arm, she feels the rings of chain mail underneath his sleeve.

She slaps Edwyn, thinking about all of the Freys who are missing from the wedding. He pushes her aside, but Robb steps forward to block his way -- and is pierced by an arrow through one shoulder and then another through his leg. She looks toward the gallery and sees that half of the musicians have crossbows instead of instruments. As she runs toward Robb, something strikes her in the back and she falls.

Smalljon Umber overturns a table and throws it over Robb to protect him as arrows lodge in the tabletop. Robin Flint is being stabbed by Freys, and Ser Wendel is pierced by an arrow through his open mouth. Catelyn sees other defenders being cut down. The door flies open and "Ser Ryman Frey pushed into the hall, clad in steel from helm to heel. A dozen Frey men-at-arms packed the door behind him. They were armed with heavy longaxes."

Catelyn sees a dagger on the floor and crawls toward it, determined to kill Lord Walder. She sees Robb push aside the tabletop and rise to his knees. He has been pierced by three arrows, one of them through his chest. The music stops and Catelyn hears the howling of Grey Wind. Lord Walder cackles out, "Seems we killed some of your men, Your Grace. Oh, but I'll make you an apology, that will mend them all again, heh."

Catelyn grabs Jinglebell Frey by the hair, and cries out to Lord Walder, "Enough.... You have repaid  betrayal with betrayal, let it end." She presses the dagger to Jinglebell's throat and begs Walder to spare her son. Robb rises to his feet and she pushes harder on the dagger at Jinglebell's throat as Ser Ryman and Black Walder move in on her. She vows to Lord Walder, "I will trade your boy's life for Robb's. A son for a son." But the old man says, "that's a grandson ... and he never was much use."

A man in dark armor and a pale pink cloak spotted with blood stepped up to Robb. "Jaime Lannister sends his regards." He thrust his longsword through her son's heart, and twisted.

Catelyn cuts Jinglebell's throat. And as tears and blood run down her face, she feels someone grab her by the hair and hears someone say, "Make an end."

"Then the steel was at her throat, and its bite was red and cold."

Arya

They have passed the tents and are nearing the castle when Arya realizes that the drawbridge is down and the portcullis is being raised, removing the last impediments to their entrance. But the Hound knows something is wrong, and he halts the wagon and shoves her bodily from it, then reaches for the sword he has hidden beneath the front seat. A stream of armored riders, many of them carrying torches as well as weapons, pours forth from the gate.

Through the sound of the horses, Arya hears a wolf howling. "The sound shivered through Arya like a knife, sharp with rage and grief." Behind her the feast tents are going up in flames. From the castle she hears the music of "The Rains of Castamere," which Tom Sevenstrings had sung.

Three riders have spotted the wagon and are heading their way. Clegane cuts loose his horse, Stranger, and leaps on it, then heads toward the riders. Arya picks up a rock and for a moment wonders whom to throw it at. When she sees him outnumbered, she thinks for a moment of the butcher's boy, Mycah.

The third rider is heading for her, and she sees the two towers of the Frey sigil on his surcoat. "She did not understand. Her uncle was marrying Lord Frey's daughter, the Freys were her brother's friends." She cries out, "Don't!" but when the rider continues to charge she throws the rock at him, hitting his helmet glancingly but slowing him only for a moment.

She runs and the knight pursues, but suddenly he is felled from behind by an axe. The Hound rides up and Arya sees one Frey trapped beneath a dying horse, the other already dead. Clegane tells her to get his helmet and she retrieves it from a sack of apples in the wagon and throws it to him. She wants to go to the castle to see about her brother, but he says, "Do you think they'd slaughter his men and leave him alive?"

She looks toward the camp and sees the burning tents and the unarmored men fighting for their lives against the armored knights. A barrel crashes from the sky and bursts into flames, and she realizes that it was flung by a catapult. Clegane reaches out a hand for her and tells her to come with him. But she shouts out, "Robb's just in the castle, and my mother. The gate's even open."

Clegane rides at her, trying to keep her from heading to the castle. "You go in there, you won't come out. Maybe Frey will let you kiss your mother's corpse." But she eludes him and runs toward the castle, where the drawbridge is already rising.

She heard loud splashing and looked back to see Stranger pounding after her, sending up gouts of water with every stride. She saw the longaxe too, still wet with blood and brains. And Arya ran. Not for her brother now, not even for her mother, but for herself. She ran faster than she had ever run before, her head down and her feet churning up the river, she ran from him as Mycah must have run. 


His axe took her in the back of the head. 

Tyrion

He suffers through an uncomfortable dinner with his unhappy wife, who then excuses herself and goes to the godswood. When he suggests that he might accompany her and find out more about the old religion, Sansa tells him that she goes there only to pray silently and he would be bored. "He was tempted to ask what she prayed for, but Sansa was so dutiful she might actually tell him, and he didn't think he wanted to know."

He is working over the ledgers that Littlefinger left behind when his father summons him. He finds Cersei, Ser Kevan, Pycelle, and Joffrey there. Joffrey is "almost bouncing," and Cersei is smiling, which makes Tyrion a little uneasy. His father hands him a roll of parchment, and Tyrion reads: "Roslin caught a fine fat trout.... Her brothers gave her a pair of wolf pelts for her wedding."

Joffrey chortles, "He's dead!" Tyrion thinks of Sansa praying in the godswood. "The old gods paid no more heed to prayer than the new ones, it would seem." Cersei observes that Riverrun can't hold out now "against the combined power of Highgarden, Casterly Rock, and Dorne." And Tywin adds that "so long as Walder Frey holds Edmure Tully hostage, the Blackfish dare not mount a threat." The other northmen can be contained, and he intends "to offer generous terms" to any house that submits. He has also told Gregor Clegane to rid Harrenhal of the Brave Companions.

Joffrey wants everyone killed, of course: "They're traitors. I want them killed. I won't have any generous terms." And he wants Lord Frey to send him Robb's head so he can serve it to Sansa at his wedding feast. Ser Kevan protests that Sansa is now Joffrey's "aunt by marriage," and Cersei says Joffrey was only joking. But Joffrey wasn't: "He was a traitor, and I want his stupid head. I'm going to make Sansa kiss it."

Tyrion says, "Sansa is no longer yours to torment. Understand that, monster." Joffrey retorts, childishly, "You're the monster, Uncle." Tyrion replies that if he's a monster, Joffrey should remember, "Monsters are dangerous beasts, and just now kings seem to be dying like flies."

Sometimes you almost feel sorry for Lord Tywin, having to deal with the dysfunctions of his family. Finally he puts a stop to the quarrel but not before Joffrey talks back to him. Joffrey bristles at what he sees as his grandfather's weakness in not allowing him to serve up Robb's head to Sansa or cut out Tyrion's tongue for calling him a monster, and when Cersei tells him to apologize, he says, "My father won all the battles. He killed Prince Rhaegar and took the crown while your father was hiding under Casterly Rock."

Tywin responds "with a courtesy so cold it was likely to freeze their ears off." He sends Joffrey off to bed and tells Pycelle to prepare "some gentle potion to help His Grace sleep restfully." When Joffrey is gone, Tywin tells Cersei, "I did not fight a war to seat Robert the Second on the Iron Throne. You gave me to understand the boy cared nothing for his father." Cersei protests, but he sends her away, too.

Left alone with his father, and delighted that Cersei and Joffrey made him angry, Tyrion asks how long he has been plotting with Walder Frey to get rid of Robb Stark. Tywin dislikes the word "plotting," but implies that he had indeed done so. Then he says he is now wondering what to do about Oberyn Martell, who "has always been half-mad." Tyrion is inclined to agree. "The Red Viper is not going to be pleasant, I fear ... nor will he content himself with Ser Gregor's head alone." Then Tywin shocks his son by saying, "All the more reason not to give it to him."

Tyrion starts to protest that Oberyn knows Gregor Clegan killed Oberyn's sister Elia and her children, but Lord Tywin says Oberyn has no proof. If asked, he will tell Oberyn they were killed by Ser Amory Lorch -- who is, conveniently, dead -- and that Tyrion should tell him that, too. As for who gave the order, the story should be that Ser Amory acted on his own, expecting to be rewarded by the new king.

As for the carnage at the Frey wedding, Tywin says, "The blood is on Walder Frey's hands, not mine." Frey had planned to keep Catelyn a prisoner after assassinating Robb, "but perhaps something went awry." He continues,

"The price was cheap by any measure. The crown shall grant Riverrun to Ser Emmon Frey once the Blackfish yields. Lancel and Daven must marry Frey girls. Joy [illegitimate daughter of Tywin's brother Gerion] is to wed one of Lord Walder's natural sons when she's old enough, and Roose Bolton becomes Warden of the North and takes home Arya Stark." 

Tyrion is startled at the last: "Arya Stark is surely dead," he protests. But Tywin implies that Littlefinger knows of her whereabouts, and that she will be married to Lord Bolton's bastard son. And, he adds, "The north will go to your son by Sansa Stark ... if you ever find enough manhood in you to breed one."

Tyrion acidly replies, "And when do you imagine Sansa will be at her most fertile? ... Before or after I tell her how we murdered her mother and her brother?"

20. A Storm of Swords, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 659-692

Jon

In acute pain and feverish from the leg wound, Jon rides on toward Castle Black. He reaches the kingsroad and follows it to Mole's Town, where he gets a fresh mount and some bread and wine, and warns the villagers that there are wildlings south of the Wall and that they should gather their things and retreat to the castle.

Dawn is breaking as he arrives, but there are no sentries to challenge him and few signs of life. In the armory he finds Donal Noye at the forge. Noye tells him that Jarman Blackwell had returned from a scouting trip and had spotted Jon among the wildlings, riding with them. He admits that it was true, but tells him that he was acting on orders from Qhorin Halfhand.

The garrison, Noye tells him, is scattered because wildlings have been sighted everywhere along the Wall. Jon tells him that Mance Rayder wants to spread them thin, but the attack will be there at the center. Bowen Marsh has done what Rayder wanted by scattering the forces. The aged Ser Wynton Stout was left as castellan, and there are only about forty men, the old, the infirm, and some trainees, left to defend against the attack from the south.

Noye takes him to Maester Aemon to be treated for his wound. Aemon tells him of Mormont's death at the hands of his own men, and that only a dozen men have returned, including Dolorous Edd and Grenn. As Maester Aemon and Clydas work on his wounded leg, he tells them and Noye about Styr the Magnar and his men, the Thenns. Mance, he tells them, was looking for the Horn of Winter, the legendary horn that can destroy the Wall. And he lets slip Ygritte's name, then finds it hard to explain about her.

Finally, when the wound is being cauterized, he faints. When he wakes he finds Pyp and Grenn there. Grenn tells about Sam killing the Other with the dragonglass knife, and Jon is amazed to hear his friend called Sam the Slayer. But they know only that Sam was left behind with Mormont. Aemon returns to tell Jon that he must rest and let the wound heal: They have rinsed it "with boiling wine, and close you up with a poultice of nettle, mustard seed and moldy bread." (Penicillin was around long before Fleming.) But Jon, of course, is unwilling to rest, and asks, "has word been sent to Winterfell? To the king?"

Maester Aemon breaks the news of the fall of Winterfell and Theon's treachery and the supposed death of Bran and Rickon. But Jon remembers the gray direwolf at Queenscrown. "If Bran was dead, could some part of him live on in his wolf, as Orell lived within his eagle?" When Grenn gives him something to drink, Jon falls asleep with his head full of questions, and dreams of naked Ygritte saying, "You know nothing, Jon Snow." They are in the hot pools at Winterfell, but suddenly he sees "her skin dissolving in the hot water, the flesh beneath sloughing off her bones until only skull and skeleton remained, and the pool bubbled thick and red."

Catelyn

They are nearing the Twins, where the rains have swollen the river and turned the moats into lakes. Catelyn cautions Robb again about offending Lord Frey, and advises him to ask for food and wine as soon as they arrive: "Once you have eaten of his bread and salt, you have the guest right, and the laws of hospitality protect you beneath his roof." Robb scoffs that he has an army to protect him, but he'll do as she says.

They are met by a contingent headed by Ser Ryman Frey, Lord Walder's grandson, and three of Ryman's sons: Edwyn, Black Walder ("a nasty bit of business," Edmure observes), and Petyr, known as Petyr Pimple, for reasons that are obvious. Grey Wind leaps forward with a snarl and Petyr's horse throws him. Catelyn moves her horse between the Freys and the direwolf, and Robb calls Grey Wind to his side. Black Walder asks, "Is this how a Stark makes amends?" Robb dismounts and offers Petyr his own horse, since Petyr's has run away.

Ser Ryman says, "I do not see the woman," by which he means, insultingly, Jeyne Westerling. Catelyn offers her apologies, but Black Walder says that Lord Walder will be displeased. They have rooms prepared for Robb, Catelyn, and Edmure, and for the lords bannermen, but they say they can't feed or shelter the troops, who will be housed in three large tents on the far bank.

Edmure tells Catelyn that he is offended that Lord Walder himself didn't come to greet his future son-in-law, but she reminds him that Walder is ninety-one, which is old to go riding in the rain. Though she thinks to herself that Lord Walder usually travels in a covered litter, and wonders, "A deliberate slight? If so, it might be the first of many yet to come."

When they reach the gatehouse, Grey Wind stops and howls and bares his teeth. Catelyn thinks, "He does not like this place." But Robb persuades the wolf to enter, and Walder Rivers says, "It's the sound of the water her fears.... Beasts know to avoid the river in flood." Lothar suggests summoning the master of hounds to find a kennel for him, but Robb points out that he's not a dog, and tells Ser Raynald to stay with Grey Wind. "I won't take him into Lord Walder's hall like this." Catelyn thinks this is a good idea, because it "keeps the Westerling out of Lord Walder's sight as well."

The aged and toothless Lord Walder, who has "something of the vulture about" him, "and rather more of the weasel," is seated in the hall with his eighth wife. At their feet is a man of fifty with "large, amiable, and vacant eyes," and Catelyn remembers "that one of Lord Walder's brood had fathered a halfwit long years ago." He is Aegon Frey, known as Jinglebell, and Catelyn wonders if he is there to mock Robb.

After greeting them, none too courteously, Walder sends for Edmure's bride and asks about Queen Jeyne. Robb delivers his apology for the marriage, but Walder doesn't exactly accept it. Instead, he summons his daughters and granddaughters to parade before him as evidence of what Robb could have chosen from. Then Robb is expected to apologize to them, saying, "I come before you to ask forgiveness, that the Freys of the Crossing and the Starks of Winterfell may once again be friends." But the phrase in the apology that Lord Walder picks up on is, "No words can set it right."

Then Ser Benfrey enters with Roslin, who is small, pretty and shy. Catelyn notices, "Her brother's face had lit up at the sight of her." Edmure asks why Roslin is crying, and she assures him, "I weep for joy, my lord." Lord Walder puts an end to any sentiment, and tells Lame Lothar Frey to show his guests to their quarters. Robb says he needs to see to his men, and Catelyn suddenly remembers the bread and salt, so she says, "Some food would be most welcome. We have ridden many leagues in the rain."

Lord Walder orders some food and drink. "Catelyn tasted the wine and nibbled at some bread, and felt much the better for it. Now we should be safe, she thought." Their rooms are comfortable, too, and Edmure is pleased with his bride-to-bed. Catelyn worries that she is "Too small and delicate. Childbirth will go hard on her," but she reassures her brother. After changing her clothes, she goes back downstairs "in search of some Freys."

She finds them in the hall, drinking. Lame Lothar introduces her to his "Brothers, half-brothers, good brothers, and nephews." Then she asks to see the maester, explaining, "A woman's complaint." She is shown to Maester Brenett, whom she consults about Roslin's fitness for childbearing, which he assures her is all quite in order. Next she goes to see Robb, who is there with Roose Bolton, among others. She "could feel gloom in the room," and Bolton tells her more about the fall of Winterfell.

"Some of your people were taken back to the Dreadfort by my son, Ramsay," Bolton tells her. She points out, "Your bastard was accused of grievous crimes.... Of murder, rape, and worse." But he assured her that Ramsay is determined to atone for his past and "swears that he shall not sheathe his sword so long as a single Greyjoy remains in the north." Robb asks about Theon Greyjoy, and Bolton produces "a ragged strip of leather" that he claims is "The skin from the little finger of Theon Greyjoy's left hand." He presents it as a "small token of revenge." As for the rest of Theon, he is "now rightful King of the Iron Islands. A captive king has great value as a hostage."

Catelyn is outraged at the idea that they might "free the man who killed my sons," but Bolton continues to defend the notion of holding Theon as a bargaining ploy. Robb reluctantly agrees: "Keep him alive, then. For the present. Hold him secure at the Dreadfort till we've retaken the north." And after talk about the movements of the Lannisters and of Gregor Clegane south of the Trident, Robb announces his intentions "to start for the Neck as soon as my uncle has been wedded and bedded. We're going home."

Arya

The Hound has commandeered a wagon and some salt pork and pickled pigs' feet, pretending to be a farmer on the way to the wedding at the Twins. When they are stopped on the road, he claims that he is delivering them on the order of Lady Whent, who is also sending Stranger, Clegane's stallion, as a wedding gift for Lord Tully. They send him on his way.

Arya goes along with the ruse because she is getting closer to a reunion with her mother and her brother. "There was nothing between her and her mother but a castle gate, a river, and an army ... but it was Robb's army, so there was no real danger there. Was there?" On the other hand, Roose Bolton, whom she had fled at Harrenhal, killing one of his guards to escape, would be there.

What would he do if he saw her? He probably won't even know me. She looked more like a drowned rat than a lord's cupbearer these days. A drowned boy rat. The Hound had hacked handfuls of her hair off only two days past. He was an even worse barber than Yoren, and he'd left her half bald on one side. Robb won't know me either, I bet. Or even Mother. She had been a little girl the last time she saw them, the day Lord Eddard Stark left Winterfell.

They begin to hear the music as they draw near the castle, and Clegane says they've missed the wedding but the feast is still going on. "There were hundreds of horses and thousands of men, most of them milling about the three huge feast tents." The musicians in the two castles are playing different tunes, "so it sounded more like a battle than a song."

It is dark, so Arya is unable to single out the banners for the various houses. When they reach a checkpoint, the guards stop them, and tell them the castle's closed, but they can unload the goods by the feast tents. The drinking has been going on for hours, and Arya hears all sorts of noises, mixed with the music from the castles as they grow nearer. She keeps hoping to see someone she knows from Winterfell.

When they reach the feast tents, she hears someone shout, "Here's to Lord Edmure and Lady Roslin" and then, "Here's to the Young Wolf and Queen Jeyne." Arya wonders who Queen Jeyne is, but the mention of the Young Wolf makes her realize that these are northmen, so she suggests that they stop.

Clegane reminds her, "Your brother will be in the castle.... Your mother too. You want them or not." She agrees that she does, and he whips the horses to speed up, saying, "It's your bloody brother I want."

19. A Storm of Swords, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 620-658

Catelyn

Jeyne rides up to bid farewell to Robb as they set out for the wedding. Catelyn had insisted that she stay behind: On the one hand, Lord Walder Frey might be insulted by her absence from the festivities, but on the other, he might take it as a reminder of Robb's breach of faith. She tells Robb, "you have too much of your father in you to sit there while he insults Jeyne to your face." Of the Westerlings, only Jeyne's brother, Ser Raynald, is part of the wedding party, serving as Robb's banner-bearer. Brynden Blackfish has been left in charge of the defense of Riverrun.

The steady rain befits Catelyn's mood, in which she meditates on what is ahead for her: "two dead sons, an empty bed, and a castle full of ghosts." She wishes for news of Brienne and the mission to retrieve her daughters, but has to tell herself, "I must be strong for Robb. If I despair, my grief will consume me." Her brother, on the other hand, is fretting only about whether the daughter of Walder Frey will be pretty enough. Catelyn snaps at him, "You'd be wiser to pray that Roslin is strong and healthy, with a good head and a loyal heart."

And then she rides off, though she regrets losing patience when she remembers how disappointed she was at first sight of Ned Stark, who was shorter and plainer than his brother Brandon, to whom she had first been engaged. "Even when he took her maidenhood, their love had more of duty to it than of passion. We made Robb that night, though, we made a king together."

Their path takes them through the Whispering Wood, which had been the site of Robb's first great victory, and the signs of that battle still remain, including "a face peering out at her, the shape of the skull beginning to emerge from beneath the melting brown flesh." She wonders if Ned's bones had ever reached Winterfell before the war sealed off all roads leading there.

Five days along the route, word arrives that the continuing rain has washed out the bridge they had planned to cross, sweeping away two of the horses and one of the riders who had gone ahead to scout. This means an even longer and slower route, and Catelyn frets that Lord Walder "may take this delay as a deliberate insult." After eight more days they reach Oldstones, where the rain stops briefly. She recalls camping there once with her father when she was twelve. Petyr Baelish, Littlefinger, was with them too.

She finds Robb alone except for Grey Wind, and they talk about the history of the place. He tells her that he had hoped to leave Jeyne pregnant, but is uncertain if he did. She says he is still young.

"Young, and a king," he said. "A king must have an heir. If I should die in my next battle, the kingdom must not die with me. By law Sansa is next in line of succession, so Winterfell and the north would pass to her." His mouth tightened. "To her, and her lord husband, Tyrion Lannister. I cannot allow that. I will not allow that. That dwarf must never have the north." 

She agrees, and says that he must name another heir. She talks of some distant family connections, but he reminds her that his father had a son who is still alive. She returns to her old antipathy to Ned's bastard, but Robb persists, "Jon's more a Stark than some lordlings from the Vale who have never so much as set eyes on Winterfell." She reminds him that as a member of the Night's Watch Jon has sworn a lifelong vow neither to take a wife nor to own lands. And he replies that the Kingsguard take a similar oath, yet the Lannisters had no compunction about taking away the white cloaks from Barristan Selm and Boros Blount. "If I send the Watch a hundred men in Jon's place, I'll wager they find some way to release him from his vows."

She persists, "A bastard cannot inherit." But he has an answer for her: He can be legitimized by a royal decree. She argues back, "I know you trust Jon. But can you trust his sons? Or their sons? ... If you make Jon legitimate, there is no way to turn him bastard again. Should he wed and breed, any sons you may have by Jeyne will never be safe." And she reminds him that Theon Greyjoy had been raised with him, and that he killed Bran and Rickon. Robb protests that Jon is no Theon, but she continues: What about Arya.

Arya, he says, is dead. "Why do you lie to yourself? Arya's gone, the same as Bran and Rickon, and they'll kill Sansa too once the dwarf gets a child from her. Jon is the only brother that remains to me. Should I die without issue, I want him to succeed me as King in the North." She tells him, "Do not ask it." And he cuts off the discussion: "I don't have to. I'm the king." And he walks off with Grey Wolf following.

The rain returns, doing nothing to lift Catelyn's gloom. But one day news arrives that lightens everyone's mood: Balon Greyjoy is dead. He had been crossing one of the bridges on the Pyke when a storm came up and blew it to pieces, carrying him with it. And shortly after his death, his pirate brother Euron had returned and taken the throne. Robb points out that Theon is the rightful heir, and that Balon's brother Victarion, who now holds Moat Cailin, commands the Iron Fleet. And someone else mentions Asha, who has taken and holds Deepwood Motte. "What's true for the brothers is even more true for her," Robb says. "She will need to sail home to oust Euron and press her own claim." He begins to plot a strategy that involves joining forces with Roose Bolton and the Freys.

Then he turns to Catelyn. She will go with Lord Mallister to Seagard until the war is over. She thinks, "Is this my punishment for opposing him about Jon Snow? Or for being a woman, and worse, a mother?" She realizes that she has been under suspicion since she released Jaime Lannister, and says she would rather return to Riverrun. But Robb has an answer for that: "I left my wife at Riverrun. I want my mother elsewhere. If you keep all your treasures in one purse, you only make it easier for those who would rob you. After the wedding, you shall go to Seagard, that is my royal command."

And then he picks up a sheet of parchment, saying that he doesn't want to leave matters as chaotic as Balon Greyjoy did at his death. He commands them "to fix your seals to this document as witnesses to my decision."

"A king indeed, Catelyn thought, defeated." She hopes that the military campaign he has just mapped out is a trap that works "as well as the one in which he had just caught her."

Samwell

Exhausted, Sam has reached an abandoned village that he desperately hopes is Whitetree, the one closest to the Wall and Castle Black. He and Gilly and the baby have been traveling for days, and one of their horses has died. Weak from childbirth, she needs the remaining horse more than he does. Leaving her and the baby in the village's longhall, he goes to search the houses. The weirwood in the village is not as large as the one at Whitetree, he decides, but he prays at it, hoping for guidance to the Wall.

When he returns, she has a fire going. He talks to her about the Wall and the castles beyond it, remembering the food and the warmth and the friends. When she asks him to sing a "southron song" for the baby, he remembers one that he and his mother used to sing about the Seven to his younger brother, until his father made them stop, fearing that the songs would make his brother as much of a sissy as Sam.

They have only a few sausages left, and after they eat he goes outside to relieve himself and take care
of the horse. He decides that it's too cold to leave the horse outside, so he brings it into the longhall and then beds down with Gilly and the baby. He dreams that he is back home at his father's castle, but that it's his own castle now, and his friends from the Watch are there: Jon, Lord Mormont, Grenn, Dolorous Edd, Pyp, and Toad. They are feasting, and after the feast he goes up to bed where Gilly is waiting, "wearing nothing but a big shaggy fur, milk leaking from her breasts."


He wakes suddenly to bitter cold. The horse is whinnying and the room is full of dark shadows. One of the shadows moves, and Gilly says, "He's come for the babe." Sam recognizes the shadow as Small Paul, though his "hands were coal, his face was milk, his eyes shone a bitter blue." On his shoulder sits a raven, who is pecking at Paul's cheek.


Sam tells Gilly to quiet the horse and take it out of the room. He assures her that he has the dragonglass dagger that he had taken from Lord Mormont's body before leaving Craster's Keep. He keeps talking to Paul, trying to distract him from what Gilly is doing, but the horse rears and Paul turns toward it.


Sam lunges at the wight and stabs at it again and again, but the blade shatters on the chain mail that Paul is wearing, and seems to have no effect on him. The wight grabs him by the throat, its hands "so cold that they seemed to burn." Sam finds his steel knife and stabs again, but loses his grip on the blade. He squirms and kicks in the wight's grasp but to no avail until he begins to fall forward. "Small Paul was big and powerful, but Sam still outweighed him, and the wights were clumsy, he had seen that on the Fist."


When they fall, the wight loses his grip with one hand, and Sam desperately grabs for a chunk of smoldering wood from the fireplace, which he thrusts into Paul's mouth, shattering his teeth. The wight's grip doesn't loosen, but as Sam is beginning to lose consciousness he sees smoke coming from the mouth and then Paul bursts into flames.


Sam heads for the door and calls out for Gilly. She stands there by the weirwood, holding the baby.

The wights were all around her. There were a dozen of them, a score, more ... some had been wildlings once, and still wore skins and hides ... but more had been his brothers. Sam saw Lark the Sisterman, Softfoot, Ryles. The wen on Chett's neck was black, his boils covered with a thin film of ice. And that one looked like Hake, though it was hard to know for certain with half his head missing.

They have killed the horse and are tearing out its entrails. Gilly screams, and the raven echoes her. And then the weirwood and the other trees suddenly come alive with ravens, "hundreds of them, thousands." Sam sees them spread their wings and suddenly attack the wights, pecking at their flesh. "All around him the wights flailed at the black wings and sharp beaks that assailed them, falling in an eerie silence with never a grunt or cry." They ignore Sam, however, and he runs to Gilly, pulling her after him.


Then there is a shout: "Brother!" And a man dressed in the blacks of the Watch rides up on an elk, "ten feet tall at the shoulder, with a rack of antlers near as wide." The elk kneels, and the man reaches down to pull Gilly up and then Sam. "Only when he grasped the offered hand did he realize that the rider wore no glove. His hand was black and cold, with fingers hard as stone."


Arya


They have reached a broad, swollen river. Arya is seated on the horse in front of the Hound, and they have ridden so long in rain and darkness that she has no idea where they are. "It's a river we need to cross," he tells her, "that's all you need to know."


The first time they made camp she had waited until she thought he was asleep and tried to smash his head with a rock, but he had taken it away from her. After that, he tied her up at night. He had also caught her trying to leave signals for the outlaws by scratching her name on tree trunks, and put an end to that. Once she tried to steal his horse while Clegane was taking a piss, but the horse would respond only to its master and had tried to bite her.


The Hound recognizes the town, which is flooded so that only chimneys and upper stories appear above the waters. But there is a ferry that agrees to take them across. Arya wonders what he intends to pay with, since the outlaws have taken his gold, and the ferrymen say it will cost him three dragons to cross, payable in advance. But Clegane shows them his longsword and says, "Gold on the north bank, or steel on the south." After getting a good look at him and realizing that he could easily kill three or four of them before they overpowered him, the ferrymen agree.


"There's a brazier in the cabin if you and your son want to get warm," one of them says, which provokes Arya to protest, "I'm not his stupid son!" and Clegane to shake her so hard her teeth rattled. But the warmth from the heater is enough to make her stand by it and dry off, though once the boat gets under way she goes back outside again.


The current is so strong that they can't cross directly but go some ways downstream. And so much debris is being driven so fast that men with poles are kept busy keeping it away from the boat. Nevertheless, she persuades herself that swimming would be the best way to escape, and that even if she drowns, that fate would be better than what awaits her if Clegane is taking her to King's Landing. But just as she is about to jump overboard, a huge uprooted tree rushes toward the boat, and the attention of everyone on board is directed toward preventing the collision. One man is knocked overboard and swept away. Arya thinks better of trying to swim for it.


When they finally reach the other side, they are two miles downriver from the usual landing, and the ferryman demands six dragons -- "Three for the passage, and three for the man I lost." Clegane puts Arya on the horse, then thrusts a parchment into the man's hand, the note that Dondarrion had given him earlier for the confiscated gold: "A dead man's note, good for nine thousand dragons or nearabouts," he says, springing into the saddle and galloping off. Arya repeats her litany of the men she wants dead, concluding it with "And the Hound, the Hound, the Hound."


When the rain stops and they decide to call it a night, Arya is shivering with fever and sneezing. He catches her looking at his dagger as he cuts a piece of sausage for her, and says, "Don't even think about it." She lies and says she wasn't, but he knows better. "What good would it do you if you did get away? You'd just get caught by someone worse." She says, "There is no one worse," and he replies, "You never knew my brother."


She corrects him: She did know Gregor Clegane. "Him and Dunsen and Polliver, and Raff the Sweetling and the Tickler." He is surprised, and she tells him about the village by the lake where she and Gendry and Hot Pie were caught.

Clegane's mouth twitched. "Caught you? My brother caught you?" That made him laugh, a sour sound, part rumble and part snarl. "Gregor never knew what he had, did he? He couldn't have, or he would have dragged you back kicking and screaming to King's landing and dumped you in Cersei's lap. Oh, that's bloody sweet. I'll be sure and tell him that, before I cut his heart out." 

She has heard him talk about killing his brother before, but it still surprises her. "'Didn't you ever have a brother you wanted to kill?' He laughed again. 'Or maybe a sister?'" And then he senses the old tension between her and Sansa. He tells her that he saved Sansa's life and that she sang him a song, but she doesn't believe him.

Then he asks, "Where do you think we're going?" and when she says King's Landing, he mocks her: "Stupid blind little wolf bitch." He's done with the Lannisters, he says. The river was the Trident, and they're going to the Twins. "It's going to be me who hands you over to that mother of yours. Not the noble lightning lord or that flaming fraud of a priest, the monster." If her brother has any sense he'll hire him, he says. "Maybe I'll even kill Gregor for him, he'd like that."

She says Robb will never take him, "Not you." But he replies, "Then I'll take as much gold as I can carry, laugh in his face, and ride off." So he tells her to shut up "and maybe we'll even be in time for your uncle's bloody wedding."

14. A Storm of Swords, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 474-502

Catelyn

Lord Hoster Tully is dead, and his funeral is being prepared. But in the meantime, emissaries have arrived from the Tullys in response to the proposal of marriage. Edmure Tully, who has inherited Riverrun from his father, is furious that the emissaries are Lame Lothar Frey and Walder Rivers, Lord Walder's bastard son. "'Walder Frey should be flayed and quartered!' he'd shouted. 'He sends a cripple and a bastard to treat with us, tell me there is no insult meant by that.'" Robb, whose own marriage is the cause of the rift with the Freys, is more conciliatory.

The funeral involves sending Lord Hoster's body downriver in a boat, and then setting it on fire with a flaming arrow. It is Edmure's duty to shoot the arrow at the boat as it goes downstream, but he botches it three times before handing the bow to his uncle, Ser Brynden, who succeeds in igniting the pyre. Edmure goes off to sulk. He has taken his father's death so hard that Catelyn has lied and told him that Lord Hoster whispered Edmure's name at the end, when in fact his "last word had been 'Tansy.'"

There had been no word from her sister Lysa even about her father's death, let alone about sending troops to support Robb. Catelyn has also not heard from King's Landing, where she hoped Brienne had arrived with Jaime, and might even be on the way back with Sansa and Arya.

Lothar Frey now apologizes for intruding on the funeral and asks for an audience with Robb. He says that his father "instructed me to say that he was young once, and well remembers what it is like to lose one's heart to beauty."

Catelyn doubted very much that Lord Walder had said any such thing, or that he had ever lost his heart to beauty. The Lord of the Crossing had outlived seven wives and was now wed to his eighth, but he spoke of them only as bedwarmers and brood mares. Still, the words were fairly spoken, and she could scarce object to the compliment.

After others have expressed their condolences, Robb asks if he may speak to Catelyn. They go to the godswood, where he broods on the mistakes of diplomacy that have been made, and says, "I have won every battle, yet somehow I'm losing the war.... The ironmen hold Winterfell, and Moat Cailin too. Father's dead, and Bran and Rickon, maybe Arya. And now your father too." And now he tells her something that he has waited until after the funeral to reveal to her: Sansa's marriage to Tyrion.

Catelyn wonders why this arrangement was made, and Robb proposes that it was done to gain Winterfell for the Lannisters: "With Bran and Rickon dead, Sansa is my heir. If anything should happen to me...."

She clutched tight at his hand. "Nothing will happen to you. Nothing. I could not stand it. They took Ned, and your sweet brothers. Sansa is married, Arya is lost, my father's dead ... if anything befell you, I would go mad, Robb. You are all I have left. You are all the north has left."

She now suggests that he make peace with the Lannisters: "You would not be the first king to bend the knee, nor even the first Stark." But he refuses to consider it. "The Lannisters killed my father." And when she says, "Do you think I have forgotten that?" he replies, "I don't know. Have you?" She leaves, angrily.

The chill between them remains at supper, when Lothar Frey delivers another bit of bad news: Lord Walder has received a letter from his grandsons who were Catelyn's wards at Winterfell, the two Walders. "Winterfell is burned," he tells them. He blames the burning on Theon Greyjoy, not on the Bastard of Bolton. Ser Rodrik Cassel was killed, he tells them, and many of the people at the castle as well. The women and children, along with the two Walders, were taken to the Dreadfort. "All I can tell you is that my nephews claim it was this bastard son of Bolton's who saved the women of Winterfell, and the little ones." When Robb asks about Theon Greyjoy, Lothar says he doesn't know.

Then he tells them that his father has agreed to the marriage of Edmure to sixteen-year-old Roslin Frey, but on the condition that Robb apologize in person "for the insult done to House Frey." Robb agrees readily to that condition. Edmure, however, suggests it might be better if he met Lady Roslin first, but Walder Rivers replies, "You must accept her now, my lord.... Else my father's offer is withdrawn." And Lothar says that his father insists that the marriage must take place at once.

Robb asks Lothar and Walder to excuse them, and they take their leave. Edmure is furious at what he sees as an insult, but Catelyn puts it down to Lord Walder's injured pride. And Robb reminds him that they can't afford another slight to the Freys. Moreover, he says, he wants to return to the north, to see about Winterfell, and find out "what this bastard of Bolton's is about, or whether Theon is still alive and on the loose." And Catelyn insists that the wedding "must happen." Brynden Blackfish joins in the urging, and Edmure capitulates.

Davos

In their cell, Lord Alester tells Davos that someone is coming. The guard appears, followed by Ser Axell Florent and four guardsmen. Alester is certain that it is he who has been sent for, but it turns out to be Davos. Alester cries out in dismay as Davos is removed from the cell and Axell tells the jailer to take the torch as well, leaving his brother in pitch darkness.

Davos asks if he is being taken to Melisandre and is told that she will be there, but that the summons came from Stannis. His legs are aching by the time they reach the top of the stairs and emerge onto a bridge that connects the prison tower to the Stone Drum. In the middle of the bridge, Axell stops and tells Davos that if it were up to him, he would burn both Davos and his brothers as traitors. And he adds, "His Grace must make me his Hand, in place of his traitor brother. And you will tell him so." Davos says nothing, but Axell says that the queen wants him to have the appointment, as does Salladhor Saan, but Stannis seems to have some reason for hesitating. So Davos must "join your voice to ours. Tell him that I am the only Hand he needs. Tell him, and when we sail I shall see that you have a new ship." And he backs Davos up against the waist-high wall of the bridge, then shoves him a little farther out so that he is leaning over the void below. "Do you hear me?"

Davos says, "I hear," and they proceed to the Chamber of the Painted Table, which centers on "a massive slab of wood carved and painted in the shape of Westeros as it had been in the time of Aegon the Conqueror." Davos is shocked by the sight of Stannis, who seems to have aged ten years since he last saw him before they sailed for the Battle of Blackwater. But he seems to smile when he sees Davos, who kneels before him. Stannis tells him to rise: "I have missed you, ser. I have need of good counsel, and you never gave me less." Then he adds, "So tell me true -- what is the penalty for treason?"

Davos answers that the penalty is death, and then he realizes that Stannis is not talking about him. He thinks of his cellmate, and says, "Sire, Lord Florent meant no treason." Stannis thinks otherwise, arguing that Alester's proposal to marry his daughter to Joffrey, "a bastard born of incest," was treasonous. Then he talks of how his brother Robert could convert his enemies into friends, while "it would seem that I inspire only betrayal. Even in mine own blood and kin." Ser Axell speaks up to plead that Stannis give him "the chance to prove to you that not all Florents are so feeble."

Stannis tells Davos that Ser Axell wants to resume conflict with the Lannisters, and asks him to outline his plan for doing so. They would capture Claw Isle, a few hours' sail from Dragonstone and the seat of House Celtigar. Lord Adrian Celtigar had fought for Stannis on the Blackwater, but had gone over to Joffrey and now remains in King's Landing. Axell proposes laying waste to Claw Isle "so the realm might see the fate of those who bed with Lannisters." When Axell finishes with his proposal, Stannis asks Davos what he thinks of it. Davos remembers Axell's threats, but he decides to be honest: He thinks it is "folly ... aye, and cowardice."

Axell's outraged cry is silenced by Stannis, who asks Davos to continue. Davos says, first, that there aren't any Lannisters on Claw Isle. And that Lord Celtigar "is an old done man, who wants no more than to end his days in his castle, drinking his fine wine out of his jeweled cups." But Celtigar went to battle when Stannis called on him to do so. "Claw Isle is weakly held, yes. Held by women and children and old men. And why is that? Because their husbands and sons and fathers died on the Blackwater, that's why.... These smallfolk are no traitors...."

But Ser Axell insists that they are: The men who followed Celtigar committed treason when they joined him in pledging loyalty to Joffrey. Stannis appears to agree with Axell: "It is every man's duty to remain loyal to his rightful king, even if the lord he serves proves false." Davos fears that he has already lost the argument, but he plunges ahead: "As you remained loyal to King Aerys when your brother raised his banners?" Axell breaks the "Shocked silence" that follows Davos's riposte by drawing his dagger and shouting "Treason!" But Stannis tells him to put away his knife and leave them, and to send in Melisandre.

As they wait for Melisandre, Stannis reminds Davos that he can cut out his tongue the way he chopped off his fingertips, but he admits that the decision to follow Robert in his rebellion against Aerys was not easy, but having done it, he feels justified in asserting that he is the rightful king, and that he has a duty to try to claim the Iron Throne. And then he asks Davos why he wanted to murder Melisandre.

"Four of my sons burned on the Blackwater," Davos replies. "She gave them to the flames." But Stannis says the fires were not her work. "Curse the Imp, curse the pyromancers, curse that fool of Florent who sailed my fleet into the jaws of a trap." Melisandre, he says, "remains my faithful servant." So was Maester Cressen, Davos replies. "She slew him, as she killed Ser Cortnay Penrose and your brother Renly." But Stannis claims that Melisandre prophesied Renly's death, but didn't kill him. She was with him at the time. "And it was Melisandre who told me to send for you when Ser Axell wished to give you to R'hllor.... Does that surprise you?"

Davos admits that it does. Then Stannis says that Edric Storm, Robert's bastard son from Storm's End,  is ill, and that Maester Pylos has been leeching him. The illness is not serious, but Melisandre says "There is power in a king's blood." He points to the Painted Table and comments that there are no borders on it: "It is all one. One realm, for one king to rule alone." Davos says, "One king means peace." Stannis says he will "bring justice to Westeros," and that Axell's plan to lay waste to Claw Isle is "evil, just as you said." Then he says, "On your knees, Onion Knight."

Davos is startled, but when Stannis repeats it as a command he complies. Stannis draws his sword, Lightbringer, asks Davos to swear to serve and defend him, and proclaims, "Then rise again, Davos Seaworth, and rise as Lord of the Rainwood, Admiral of the Narrow Sea, and Hand of the King." Davos protests that he is lowborn and illiterate and that Stannis's lords won't obey him. They'll make new ones who will, Stannis insists. And when Davos protests that there are others better fitted for the office of Hand, Stannis names a few, but says, "I trust none of them as I trust you, my lord of Rainwood. You will be my Hand. It is you I want beside me for the battle."

They're not strong enough for a battle with the Lannisters, Davos protests.

"It is the great battle His Grace is speaking of," said a woman's voice, rich with the accents of the east. Melisandre stood at the door in her red silks and shimmering satins, holding a covered silver dish in her hands. "These little wars are no more than a scuffle of children before what is to come. The one whose name may not be spoken is marshaling his power, Davos Seaworth, a power fell and evil and strong beyond measure. Soon comes the cold, and the night that never ends." She placed the silver dish on the Painted Table. "Unless true men find the courage to fight it. Men whose hearts are fire."

Stannis says she has shown him what she means in the flames: He saw a high hill in a forest, with men dressed in black surrounded by "shapes moving through the snow" and he "felt a cold so terrible I shivered." Davos is terrified by the conviction in the king's voice, but doesn't understand what he's talking about. Melisandre says that it means that "Westeros must unite beneath her one true king, the prince that was promised, Lord of Dragonstone and chosen of R'hllor."

Stannis says he doesn't understand why R'hllor should have chosen him, and why Renly couldn't have joined forces with him. He dreams of Robert, who was so good at fighting. "The Lord of Light should have made Robert his champion. Why me?" Melisandre tells him it's because he is "a righteous man." Stannis touches the covered silver dish. But Melisandre warns him, "this is not the way," that there is a better way to achieve what they want: "Give me the boy, Your Grace. It is the surer way. The better way. Give me the boy and I shall wake the stone dragon."

But Stannis refuses Melisandre's request. "My daughter has grown fond of him. And he is mine own blood." The boy has his brother's blood, Melisandre insists. "A king's blood. Only a king's blood can wake the stone dragon." But whatever Melisandre has in mind for Robert's bastard, Edric Storm, remains unspoken. Stannis doesn't fully believe in her. "The dragons are done," he insists. The Targaryens tried to bring them back and failed. They have the leeches, and they'll have to do.

Melisandre throws some powder onto the brazier and it flames up, then she takes the dish to Stannis and raises the lid, revealing three blood-fattened leeches. "The boy's blood, Davos knew. A king's blood." Stannis picks up a leech, and Melisandre tells him, "Say the name."

"'The usurper,' he said. 'Joffrey Baratheon.'" He tosses the leech into the fire and picks up the second.

"'The usurper,' he declared, louder this time. "'Balon Greyjoy.'" After he tosses the second leech on the flames, he picks up the third and looks at it for a longer time.

"'The usurper,' he said at last. 'Robb Stark.' And he threw it on the flames."

8. A Storm of Swords, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 273-310

Catelyn

Two boys, Tion Frey and Willem Lannister, squires captured and held as hostage, have been murdered by a group led by Lord Rickard Karstark, seeking retribution for the death of his own sons. The bodies of the murdered boys make Catelyn think of Bran and Rickon, and she wonders if Robb does too. Karstark, brought in as prisoner by Greatjon Umber, is defiant, and blames the deaths on the boys on Catelyn, for releasing Jaime Lannister.

Robb, who is furious, orders Karstark's men hanged, but says he will deal with Karstark himself. But before he can do so, Brendyn Tully arrives, and Robb goes to speak with him privately, bringing his mother with him. The Blackfish reports that all of Karstark's men have left. "Near three hundred riders and twice as many mounts," Robb comments, "melted away in the night." Catelyn silently blames herself for the situation, which leaves Robb "surrounded by enemies to every side but east, where Lysa sat aloof on her mountaintop." Moreover, Willem Lannister was Ser Kevan's son, which could be taken as a pretext to do harm to Sansa, as Catelyn knows to her agony.

Edmure suggests that Lord Karstark not be executed but be kept prisoner, a hostage that will ensure the loyalty of his son. But Robb is not willing to do this. He asks Catelyn if her sister is going to answer her calls for help, and she admits that she has no doubt that her messages have reached Lysa and been ignored: "Lysa was never brave." The Blackfish agrees: No help should be expected from that quarter. Robb now knows how uneasy lies the head that wears the crown:

"Gods be good, why would any man ever want to be king? When everyone was shouting King in the North, King in the North, I told myself ... swore to myself ... that I would be a good king, as honorable as Father, strong, just, loyal to my friends and brave when I faced my enemies ... now I can't even tell one from the other. How did it all get so confused? Lord Rickard's fought at my side in half a dozen battles. His sons died for me in the Whispering Wood. Tion Frey and Willem Lannister were my enemies. Yet now I have to kill my dead friends' father for their sakes." 

He puts on his crown and says, "Lord Rickard dies." Edmure protests, but Robb says he has no choice. "Rickard Karstark killed more than a Frey and a Lannister. He killed my honor. I shall deal with him at dawn."

The executioner is waiting at dawn, but Robb takes the axe from him. "He dies at my word. He must die by my hand." Lord Rickard reminds Robb of their kinship. "The Karstarks traced their descent to Karlon Stark, a younger son of Winterfell who had put down a rebel lord a thousand years ago, and been granted lands for his valor. The castle he built had been named Karl's Hold, but that soon became Karhold, and over the centuries the Karhold Starks had become Karstarks." But Rickard's last words are, "Kill me, and be cursed. You are no king of mine." The blow Robb delivers kills him, but it takes three blows to sever the head.

Later, Jeyne comes to see Catelyn, wondering what she can do to console Robb, but all she can do is counsel patience. She also takes the opportunity to remind her daughter-in-law that she needs to produce an heir. Jeyne tells her that her mother "makes a posset for me, herbs and milk and ale, to help make me fertile. I drink it every morning." When she leaves, Catelyn remarks once again that she has good hips for child-bearing.

Jaime

They are riding through a desolate landscape, with destruction on all sides. Jaime's mind is on Cersei, and he thinks that maybe the stories about them have opened a new possibility: "there was nothing left to hid. Why shouldn't I marry Cersei openly and share her bed every night? The dragons always married their sisters. Septons, lords, and smallfolk had turned a blind eye to the Targaryens for hundreds of years, let them do the same for House Lannister." They could even marry Joffrey to Myrcella and send Sansa home. He had already decided that they should send Sansa back to her family: "the notion of keeping faith when they all expected betrayal amused him more than he could say."

Suddenly they are under attack. An arrow hits Jaime's gelding and he has to cling to its neck to keep from being thrown. Ser Cleos is less skillful; he is thrown from his horse but his foot is caught in the stirrup and he is dragged along the ground. Brienne is still mounted on her horse, but she has an arrow lodged in her back and another in her leg. Jaime calls out to her that the archers are behind a wall, and he charges them, hoping that Brienne will follow. She does, and the archers flee.

They go in search of Cleos and find him dead, his foot still caught in the stirrup and his head bashed in from being dragged across the rocky ground. Jaime lays claim to his horse and his clothes, shocking Brienne with his callous attitude toward his own cousin. He pulls Cleos's sword from its scabbard and pivots to find Brienne ready to parry his blow. Even though his hands are still chained, he is able to meet her blows, and they fight for some time until he realizes that he is tiring. "She is stronger than I am."

Finally, as they are fighting in a stream, he slips but manages to cut her thigh before he strikes a rock with his knee. Finally she gets the better of him and cries, "Yield, or I'll drown you!" Suddenly laughter rings out around them. There are armed men on both sides of the brook. "The scum of the earth surrounded them: swarthy Dornishmen and blond Lyseni, Dothraki with bells in their braids, hairy Ibbenese, coal-black Summer Islanders in feathered cloaks. He knew them. The Brave Companions."

Immediately there is talk from Rorge of raping Brienne, and Jaime feels compelled to defend her against that. He asks who is in charge, and a cadaverous man identifies himself as Urswyck the Faithful. He also addresses Jaime by name: "It takes more than a beard and a shaved head to deceive the Brave Companions," he says. Jaime knows them as the Bloody Mummers, and he asks, "Where's the goat?" Urswyck says that he'd better not call Lord Vargo Hoat that to his name, and Jaime is surprised to hear that Harrenhal has supposedly been promised to Lord Vargo: "Has my father taken leave of his senses?" he wonders.

Then Urswyck informs him that they no longer serve the Lannisters. "We now serve Lord Bolton, and the King in the North." When Jaime expresses his contempt for that, two of the Mummers grab him and Rorge punches him in the stomach with a mailed fist. Brienne calls out that he's under her protection, and dives into the brook to retrieve her sword. It takes four of the men to restrain her and to beat her into submission.

They are dragged back to the plow horse and bound back to back on it. Jaime calls Urswyck over and tries to bargain with him: Take him to King's Landing and collect a ransom. "Hers as well, if you like. Tarth is called the Sapphire Isle, a maiden told me once." (He knows that it's really called that because of the blueness of its lake.) But Urswyck isn't fooled by the offer of ransom, or even of a knighthood, when Jaime brings it up. "I have heard enough, Kingslayer. I would have to be a great fool indeed to believe the promises of an oath-breaker like you."

As they ride toward Harrenhal, Brienne asks him why he lied about the Sapphire Isle, and Jaime says, "The sooner they know how little you're worth in ransom, the sooner the rapes begin." She is silent for a while after that. Late in the day they find Vargo Hoat and more of the Brave Companions sacking a sept and using the corpse of the septon for target practice. "Kingthlayer," Hoat greets Jaime, "You are my captifth." Brienne introduces herself, and Rorge drags her off the horse and begins kicking her. Urswyck tells him not to break any bones: "The horse-faced bitch is worth her weight in sapphires."

Jaime again tries to bargain with Hoat, promising ransom money. Hoat says, "But firth I mutht thend him a methage." Jaime is knocked to the ground and his arms are pulled out in front of him by the chain. A fat Dothraki raises "a huge curved arakh, the wickedly sharp scythe-sword the horselords loved." Jaime refuses to show fear. But when the blade comes "shivering down, almost too fast to see," he screams.

Arya

They are searching for Beric Dondarrion, but so far have only been told to ask the Lady of the Leaves. They reach a forest and in the middle of it a member of the group who is called Jack-Be-Lucky blows a signal on his horn. Rope ladders unfurl from the trees, and Arya climbs with the others into a hidden village in the treetops, presided over by "a stick-thin white-haired woman," the Lady of the Leaves. She tells them that Lord Beric is dead: He was caught by the Mountain, Gregor Clegane, who "drove a dagger through his eye." But Lem tells her it's an old story, and that the lightning lord didn't die of having an eye put out. The woman is pleased to hear that Dondarrion isn't dead, but otherwise has no clue to his whereabouts.

The next village they come to has been destroyed, but in the ruins of its sept an old septon remains. He tells them the village was burned by "Northmen ... Savages who worship trees." Arya is both "angry and ashamed" at the characterization. There are a dozen men living in the vault under the sept, but they have no news of Dondarrion either, even though one of them has a lightning bolt on his cloak.

When they rest for the night, Anguy lets Arya try his bow, but she's unable to draw it. He promises to make her a lighter one when they reach Riverrun. But Tom Sevenstrings says they'll only stay at Riverrun long enough to collect ransom for Arya's return. Lord Hoster hangs outlaws and his son hates music. Lem says it's Tom that the son, presumably Edmure, hates, and Tom retorts, "Well, he has no cause. The wench was willing to make a man of him, is it my fault he drank too much to do the deed?" So presumably Edmure has several weaknesses. And this particular one became the basis for a song Tom wrote.

Arya is more interested in the idea that she will be ransomed, and Harwin says, "You will not be the first highborn captive we've ransomed. Nor the last, I'd hope." Arya then worries what will happen if if Robb doesn't pay the price they want for her. The next day they reach a hill called High Heart, which is encircled by the "huge pale stumps" of what was once a circle of weirwoods, and had been a sacred place for the children of the forest. "No harm can ever come to those as sleep here," Tom tells her.

That night, a storm comes up and blows the coverlet off of Arya. She runs after it, and then hears voices around the fading coals of the campfire. Tom, Lem, and Greenbeard are talking to a tiny, wrinkled old woman.

"The old gods stir and will not let me sleep," she heard the woman say. "I dreamt I saw a shadow with a burning heart butchering a golden stag, aye. I dreamt of a man without a face, waiting on a bridge that swayed and swung. On his shoulder perched a drowned crow with seaweed hanging from his wings. I dreamt of a roaring river and a woman that was a fish. Dead she drifted, with red tears on her cheeks, but when her eyes did open, oh, I woke from terror. All this I dreamt, and more. Do you have gifts for me, to pay me for my dreams?"

The symbols in her dreams are more suggestive for the reader than they are for Lem, who scoffs at them, but Tom Sevenstrings agrees to sing a song for her. Arya doesn't recognize it, but thinks that Sansa would. Singing is not one of Arya's skills. The next morning she asks Tom if the children of the forest still live on High Heart, and he knows that she saw the old woman. He tells her "she's only an old dwarf woman," but that "she knows things she has no business knowing, and sometimes she'll tell you if she likes the look of you." He also says that they now have a lead on Dondarrion.

Arya asks why, if he's their leader, he's so hard to find. Harwin says that he doesn't tell people his plans so no one can betray him. He doesn't want people following him around, either, because that way he keeps his followers scattered so they "can strike in a dozen places at once, and be off somewhere else before they know." If someone captures them, they can't torture them and find out where Lord Beric is. Arya is reminded of the way the Tickler had tortured the people around the Gods Eye to try to find him.

That day they ride to Acorn Hall, where Lady Smallwood welcomes them, but also scolds them for "dragging a young girl through the war," and is even more scandalized when she finds out that Arya is highborn. She has Arya scrubbed and scented and dressed "in girl's things," none of which Arya takes well to. When Lady Smallwood talks about her own daughter and her love of dancing, she asks Arya what she likes to do. Arya finally comes up with "Needlework," and when Lady Smallwood says that it's "restful," Arya says, "not the way I do it." And when she's asked if she works at it every day, Arya says, "I did till I lost Needle. My new one's not as good." When Arya goes down to supper in her feminine finery, "Gendry took one look and laughed so hard that wine came out his nose, until Harwin gave him a thwack alongside his ear."

Lady Smallwood tells them that the lightning lord passed by a fortnight ago, and that they were driving sheep. "Thoros gave me three as thanks. You've eaten one tonight." She says that she's heard of famine near Stoney Sept and the Threepenny Wood, and that she would look for Lord Beric there. She also says that some of Robb's followers came by looking for Jaime. Arya asks who they were, which surprises Lady Smallwood, but she describes the sigil, which Arya identifies as the Karstarks.  She thinks that if she could find them and slip away from the outlaws, they might take her to Riverrun.

Lem asks how Jaime escaped, and Lady Smallwood says, "They claimed that Lady Catelyn set him free." Tom says, "That's madness," and Arya refuses to believe it, though she holds her tongue. Harwin, however, says to Arya that she shouldn't be hearing such talk, and the others agree. Greenbeard tells her, "Be a good little lady and go play in the yard while we talk, now." Arya leaves, angrily, but Gendry follows her and they go to the smithy. He asks if the Thoros being talked about is the same one who was at King's Landing, "A red priest, fat, with a shaved head?" When Arya tells him she thinks so, he remembers that Thoros used to come to the forge where he apprenticed. His master disapproved of Thoros's flaming swords because they ruined the steel, but Thoros only used cheap swords that he dipped in wildfire.

Gendry compliments her on looking like "A proper little girl," and says, "You even smell nice for a change." She tells him he stinks, and they begin to wrestle until they are dirty and her dress is torn. When they return to the hall, Harwin bursts out laughing and says, "She was much the same at Winterfell." Lady Smallwood makes her take another bath and dresses her in something even more feminine. But it's too delicate to ride in, so when they set out the next day Lady Smallwood gives her some riding clothes that her son wore before he died at the age of seven.

Arya apologizes for tearing the acorn dress and says it was pretty. Lady Smallwood replies, "Yes, child. And so are you. Be brave."