Robb Stark P O V
They gave my grandfather to the river at sunrise.
The Tullys do it the old way, the way the river lords did before the Andals taught them to bury their dead under a sept, and it reminded me of what I had seen of Viking burial rites, naval rituals, in my old life. Hoster Tully lay in a slender boat of pale wood, in a mail shirt and a surcoat with the leaping trout, with his sword under his folded hands and his helm at his feet and his shield at his head. They had dressed him in his own colors and he looked, for the first time since I had met him, like the lord of this castle. Edmure and Brynden and I had carried him down to the Water Gate ourselves with Ser Desmond and Lord Blackwood and Lord Bracken for the other three carriers, and the whole castle had come out onto the walls and the wallwalks and the roofs to watch, and the river lords and my Northmen stood along the banks of the Tumblestone and the Red Fork, both sides of both rivers, so that when the boat went out into the current there was no stretch of water it would pass that did not have men on it with their heads bared.
Edmure stood on the battlement above the Water Gate with a longbow in his hand.
We had practiced in the godswood the night before, in the dark, by the light of two torches, with Grey Wind lying at the foot of the weirwood watching us. Edmure had not wanted to. He had said he would miss and shame his father in front of every lord in the riverlands. He was not that good of a shot, and that was before his time in captivity, but I had encouraged him, along with the Blackfish, that it was his duty and custom, and that was why we would practice all night, even if he did not sleep that day. He could rest after his duty to his father as the new Lord of Riverrun was done. The first twenty he missed. The next twenty, more than half were on target. By the last twenty his hands had stopped shaking, and Brynden, who had come down to watch without a word, took the bow for a moment to force some rest on him and to show his other nephew some support.
Now a boy brought the arrow, wrapped in oiled rag, and a second held the brazier, and Edmure put the point in the coals and let it catch.
The boat was out in the middle of the Tumblestone by then, turning slowly as the current found it, drifting down toward the place where the two rivers meet. Edmure drew. He drew the way we had practiced, to the ear, with his breath out, and he held it a long moment, longer than I liked, and I saw Brynden's hand close at his side.
He loosed.
The arrow went up and across the water in a long low arc with the fire streaming back off it, and it came down in the boat a hand's width from Hoster Tully's feet, in the oil-soaked wood, and the flame took. It went up all at once, blue and then yellow, and the smoke went straight up in the still morning air, and the boat went on turning down toward the Red Fork with the fire standing on it, and every man on both banks and every wall of the castle stood and watched it go.
Lord Blackwood, beside me, said "'Twas a good shot. His father lived a good life," under his breath, and I heard it go along the battlement from lord to lord, and Edmure heard it too, and lowered the bow, and put his other hand over his face.
Brynden put a hand on the back of his neck and left it there.
I watched the boat until it was a small bright thing far down the Red Fork, and then until it was only smoke, and I thought about my own father, and did not let myself think about him for long.
Lord Karstark came in four days later with the foot.
Hedwig had seen them two days ago while out flying: a column eight miles long coming up the river road from the east with Manny in the middle of it, and the rest of the giants, and the wagons, and I rode out with my uncle and Edmure and a hundred horse to meet them on the river road east of the castle. I wanted to see Rickard Karstark's face before anyone else did.
He saw me first. He was at the head of the column on his big black, with Harrion and Torrhen behind him and the Greatjon beside him on the biggest horse in the North, and when he saw the plain wolf banner on the road ahead he put his heels in and came on at a canter and did not slow until he was in front of me.
"My lord," he said. He looked at me. He looked at Grey Wind, and at the splinted hand, and at the two men in grey behind me, and at Edmure, and back at me. "We heard. Three days back, from a Mallister rider on the road. The Kingslayer, and the camps. Is it true?"
"It's true. All of it. Jaime Lannister's in a cell under Riverrun with one hand. The camps are burned. My uncle Edmure's free and Lord of Riverrun, and his father is with the river. Tywin's gone to Harrenhal. I heard how it went on the Green Fork from Hedwig and from a prisoner or two. I'd rather hear the good news from you, so please, my lords, don't keep me waiting. Tell me the good news," I said with a smirk.
He laughed and told me as we rode, with the column coming up behind him and the Greatjon leaning over his saddle to put in his own pieces. The wind had been right. The vanguard had come on exactly as I'd said, with Clegane in front of it, and the door had swung, and the crossbows had done their work, and the horn had sounded, and Dar Weg had got up out of the ditch. Karstark told that part flatly, as he told everything, and the Greatjon told it again with his arms, and then they both stopped talking at the same moment and looked at me.
"He's in the fourth wagon," Karstark said. "Packed in salt, as you asked, Robb. Lord Stevron's maester saw to it. And the sword's with him, wrapped. I'd have thought to keep it myself, but fuck the Seven, that sword is heavy. The great Umber men took it as a challenge to see who could handle it well, but I let them know the sword was spoken for."
Behind me, Lord Mallister, who had ridden out with us after joining us at our first meal, said, "My lord, may I know why? I ask it plainly. The body of Gregor Clegane is not a thing to keep."
I had been waiting for someone to ask, and I was glad it was Jason Mallister, because the river lords needed to hear this and he was one of the more respected and neutral of them, one they listened to.
"Because it's not mine to keep, my lord. It's a gift, and it's owed." I turned so that Edmure and Brynden and the river lords could hear me. "Fifteen years ago, when my father's generation took King's Landing, Gregor Clegane went into the Red Keep on Tywin Lannister's orders and killed the Princess Elia of Dorne and her son. The babe's head he broke against a wall. The princess he raped and then killed. Amory Lorch put the little girl to the sword under her father's bed, and he did it in Tywin's name too, and Tywin wrapped the children in crimson cloaks and laid them at Robert's feet, and Robert called them dragonspawn and thanked him. Dorne has never forgotten it, and Dorne has never been given a thing for it. Not a trial. Not a word. Prince Doran has sat in his water gardens for fifteen years with that debt unpaid, and his brother Oberyn has spent fifteen years telling anyone who'll listen what he'd do if the Mountain were ever put in front of him. I mean to put the Mountain in front of him. In a cart, in salt, with the sword that did it, and a letter under my seal that says the North remembers Elia Martell even if the Iron Throne doesn't. I don't ask Dorne to fight for me. I'll not get that from a letter. But I'd have Dorne know who settled the account, and when the Lannisters go asking for Dornish spears, I'd have Prince Doran remember whose cart it came in."
Mallister looked at me for a moment, and then at the fourth wagon, and then he nodded slowly, and I saw him look at Lord Blackwood, and Blackwood nodded too.
"Elia Martell," Brynden said, quietly, from his saddle. "Hm. Hoster liked her. He met her once, at Harrenhal. Said she was the only one of the lot with sense."
Our conversation was interrupted by a trumpet as Manny came up the road with the giants walking beside him, and the river lords stopped looking at the fourth wagon and looked at that instead, and Lord Wyman's wagon came up behind, and Stevron Frey beside it, upright in the saddle in his mourning black, and I went to meet him, because I had something to tell him before he heard it from anyone else.
"My lord. Your sister's well, and here, and safe. And my uncle Edmure has asked for her hand, and she's said yes, and Perwyn's letter to you is sitting in Riverrun's rookery because I'd not send a raven you might ride past on the road. I'd have your answer from your own mouth."
Stevron Frey looked at Edmure, who had come up beside me and was standing very straight and had gone red again. Then he looked at me. He is a tired, decent, grey man, and he took it the way he had taken his father's death at the bridge road, quietly.
"My father asked for your sister, and you refused him," he said. "And your uncle asks for mine, and I'm to answer." He got down off his horse, slowly, sixty-three years old and a fortnight and more in the saddle, and he went to Edmure and took his hand. "Yes, my lord. With my whole heart. She is the best of us. Be good to her."
"I will," said Edmure. "And, my lord, I and the rest of the riverlands will remember your father being late when my father first called the banners, but I shall not forget that you were not late the second time, and that you played a hand in freeing me and giving me back Riverrun." Stevron seemed to like that, and gave a quick bow to his new lord.
That was the fourth day after we gave my grandfather to the river. They were wed on the fifth, in Riverrun's sept, with the Seven looking down from their painted panels and the river lords and the Northern lords packed into the back so tight that Wyman Manderly had to be given the whole of a side aisle, and Lord Stevron gave her away, and Olyvar carried the cloak. Roslin wore blue and red, Tully colors, because her brother had thought to bring the cloth from the Twins, and when Edmure put the trout cloak over her shoulders and took the Frey towers off her, she looked up at him and smiled, and he forgot the words of the vow and had to be told them by the septon, and the whole sept laughed, and he laughed too.
I stood with Brynden at the front, because we were his family, with Grey Wind sitting between us, which Septon Aron had not liked but had not pushed, as I insisted I would have Grey Wind at every wedding I attended in this world if I could help it. I spared a thought for my mother, who should have been here to see her brother wed and was at Winterfell with Arya and Rickon and a Lannister princess for a guest. I thought of Sansa. Then I made myself watch the wedding.
The feast went on past midnight. The river lords had been under siege for a month and had not eaten properly in all of it, and the Northmen had marched for two, and between them they went through Riverrun's cellars like weather. The Greatjon got Lord Bracken drunk and then arm-wrestled him with the bad arm, and lost, on purpose, I think. Dacey danced with Edmure and then with Perwyn and then with Ser Andar Royce, who turned out to be able to dance, which nobody from the Vale had expected. Lord Wyman sang. Stevron Frey sat at the high table beside his sister, and ate little, and watched her, and I saw him wipe his eyes twice and pretend it was the smoke.
Edmure came and found me late, when the hall had gone to singing and most of the lords had gone to bed. He had been drinking, but not much, and his eyes were clear.
"Robb."
"Uncle."
"I'll say this once because I'll not say it well." He stood in front of me with his hands at his sides. "Ten days ago I was chained to a tent pole in my own fields. You came. You broke the man who'd beaten me, you freed me, you brought me to my father in time, and three days later you put the kindest girl I've ever met in front of me in my own godswood and told me I could say no. I know what you could have asked for all of that. You asked for nothing. I'm Lord of Riverrun because of you, and I'll not forget it, and neither will my house." He stopped. "That's all."
"You'd have done the same for me, Uncle. That's what family's for. And I shall not forget the words of my mother's house, in the order they come in," I said, with a nod and a shake of his shoulder. It was strange that I was taller than him by a bit, even though he was my uncle, but I did like him; he seemed a good man, if a bit careless. "Just remember, it was Roslin's yes that mattered, not mine." I took his hand. "Go back to your wife. She's been looking at the door for an hour."
He laughed, and went.
It was two nights after the wedding, late, in the solar that had been Hoster's and was Edmure's now, that the raven came.
There were thirteen of us. Edmure at the head of his own table for the first time, with the map I had drawn pinned flat in front of him. Brynden. Lord Blackwood and Lord Bracken, who had taken to sitting at opposite ends of any table they were both at. Jason Mallister. The Greatjon, Karstark, and Lord Wyman on his bench, and Maege, and Roose Bolton against the wall, and Stevron Frey, and Ser Andar for the Vale men. We had been at it an hour and it was not a council yet, only lords talking after supper over the map. Lord Blackwood had the news from the south, which had come to Riverrun by a dozen roads in the last week and all said the same thing: Renly Baratheon had put a crown on his head at Highgarden and married Margaery Tyrell in the same week, and had the whole of the Reach and the Stormlands behind him, and was moving north toward King's Landing slowly, with a hundred thousand men and a tourney at every stop. Stannis sat at Dragonstone and said nothing to anyone. Tywin sat at Harrenhal, where Hedwig had put him three nights running, and had not moved, and I had told the table why I thought that was and the Greatjon had said something about old lions and dens.
"So we've two kings in the south and a third who'd like to be," Blackwood said. "And a boy on the throne who's king of nothing but the city, and a grandfather in a castle who's king of the boy. Who do we treat with, my lords? Because I'd have us decide it before Renly's hundred thousand decides it for us."
Nobody answered him at once. Edmure looked at me. So did most of them.
I had an answer, and had had it for two years, but this was not the room; it needed a bigger council, I would think, and a better hour, and I needed them to come to it themselves. So I said that Renly had sent no rider to Riverrun and we owed him no answer until he did, and that Tywin was the man in front of us, and the map was the thing on the table, and we went back to the map.
Then Maester Vyman came in without knocking, which he had never done, with a scroll in his hand and his face the color of the parchment.
He gave it to Edmure. Edmure read it, and his hand with the scroll in it went down to the table slowly, and he looked at me, and I knew what it was before I read it.
"Give it to me, Uncle."
He gave it. It was from the Red Keep, under the seal of the King, in Pycelle's hand, and it said what it said. Lord Eddard Stark, late Hand of the King, now marked a traitor against the Crown and the person of King Joffrey for attempted usurpation and slander, had been executed by the King's justice before the Great Sept of Baelor on the day of the Maiden, and his head set upon the walls, and his lands and titles forfeit, and the King in his mercy commanded Robb Stark, late of Winterfell, to lay down his arms and come to King's Landing and swear his fealty, and so earn the King's pardon for his father's treason. It said nothing of Sansa. I read it twice to be sure, and it said nothing.
I read it aloud. All of it. I did not trust my voice to do anything but read, so I read, and when I had finished I put it down on the map, on the kingsroad, about where the Ruby Ford was.
The Greatjon stood up so fast his chair went over.
"Peace, my lord," Brynden said. He had not moved. He was looking at me. "Peace. Let Robb breathe."
I breathed. I put my hands flat on the table. Grey Wind had got up from the hearth and come to stand against my leg, and I put my hand in his ruff and held on, and I looked at the map, and I thought of my father's face, and I made myself put it away for an hour, because I had near forty thousand men in the fields outside this castle and every one of them was going to hear this by morning and I had to decide what they heard with it.
"My lords," I said. "The letter asks me to come to King's Landing and kneel to the boy who killed my father. I'll answer it. I'd ask you to let me think how."
"I'll answer it," said the Blackfish.
He stood up. He was in a plain brown doublet with no trout on it anywhere, and every man in that room went quiet for him anyway.
"I'll say this now, with Lord Tully beside me and the Lord of Winterfell in front of me, and I'll say it plainly and truthfully, because I'm too old to want to see another war after this one. I'll never bend my knee to a king who took Ned Stark's head. Not for a pardon, not for peace, not if he gives me the Vale and the riverlands both. Ned Stark was the best lord and one of the most honorable men I ever rode beside, and I rode beside legends. Let that be said in this room and carried out of it." He looked round the table. "And I'll not bend it to Stannis Baratheon, who shirked his duty as a brother and as master of ships while he sat on his island with his fleet, watching from afar as his brother died amongst lions and his Hand was dragged to the headsman, and sent not one ship and not one word. A man who'll not fight for his own brother's friend has no claim on mine. And I'll not bend it to Renly, who has put a crown on his head that belongs to his elder brother by every law of the Seven Kingdoms, and calls it his because he's missing the stick up his arse that his brother has. He'll not have mine either." He put his hand on the table. "That's three kings, my lords, and I've a reason to refuse each of them, and I've not had to look hard for any of the three. So I'll ask you what I asked myself on the march down here, when I had a long time to ask it. Why should the riverlands bend to any king at all, who's not the one standing in front of us? I've watched this man for a month. I've watched him take a correction without sulking and a finger without crying out, and I've watched him win three fights in ten days, and I've watched him feed my brother's castle, and free my nephew, and put the Mountain That Rides in a cart for Dorne because it was owed. He is king enough for any man I've ever served, and I've served two. I name him King of the Trident. Let the rivers have a king of their own blood, and let it be him."
Edmure had stood up beside him while he spoke. I had seen him do it. He had not said anything, and he did not say anything now; he put his hand on his uncle's shoulder, and then he drew his sword, which he had not worn to supper and must have had Olyvar bring, and he laid it on the table in front of me across the map with the hilt toward my hand.
"The King of the Trident," he said. "Riverrun says so. My uncle speaks for me, and I speak for Riverrun."
"Aye," said Tytos Blackwood, and stood, and his sword came down on the table beside Edmure's. "Raventree says so."
"Stone Hedge," said Jonos Bracken, and stood, with his bad arm, and I will say that I had not expected it to be that easy for him. His sword went down across Blackwood's, and the two of them looked at each other over the blades, and neither one moved his away.
"Seagard," said Jason Mallister, and his went down.
The Greatjon had been standing since his chair went over. He had been standing with his mouth open and his face getting redder, and now he picked up his chair and threw it against the wall, where it broke, and he put both his fists on the table and leaned over it toward me and said, in a voice that must have carried to the Tumblestone, "King of the Trident. Aye. And the North? The North was a kingdom when the Andals were still rowing. The North had kings for eight thousand years before a dragon ever flew. My lords, we've bowed to the south since Torrhen knelt, and what's it got us? A Stark dead in every new king's reign, and now the latest on the sept's steps with his head on a wall! Here's what I say. The King of the North, and the Trident, and both of them standing right there with his hand in his wolf. There sits the only king I mean to kneel to. THE KING FROM THE NORTH."
He drew his sword and knelt. He did it so hard the floor shook.
Rickard Karstark stood up, and looked at me a long moment with those hard flat eyes, and then he drew, and knelt beside the Greatjon, and said, "The King in the North," quietly.
Maege Mormont. Wyman Manderly, who could not kneel and put his sword across his knees and bowed his head instead and said it. Stevron Frey, who looked at Edmure first and then at me and then drew his own sword and knelt and said, "The King of the Trident, and the North. The Crossing says so, and I'll not be late to say it." Roose Bolton came off the wall last, and drew, and knelt, with no expression on his face at all, and said it as quietly as Karstark had, and I looked at him and he looked at me and I nodded to him, because whatever else he was, he had come off the wall.
They were all saying it then. The Greatjon had started the chant and it went round the room and out of it, through the door that Vyman had left open, down the stair, and I heard it picked up in the hall below where the household had been sleeping, and then in the yard, and then, faint and far, from the camp across the moat, where near forty thousand men were being woken by the men nearest the walls. It was slightly different than I remembered, though it still sounded surreal, even though I had known, butterflies and all, that this was the likely outcome. THE KING FROM THE NORTH. THE KING FROM THE NORTH. Edmure was saying it. The river lords were saying it in their own way, King of the Trident, and the two chants ran together.
Ser Andar Royce had not knelt. He could not; he was not mine to give, and he knew it, and I knew it. He stood at the end of the table with his cup in his hand and he had had, I think, more of Riverrun's wine than he had meant to, and when the chant had gone round twice he raised the cup to me and said, loud enough for the table, "The Vale's not mine to speak for, Your Grace. But I'll say this. Bronze Yohn won't mind it. And neither do I. We all saw and read the letter. We all know what the Lannisters did. We know Lady Lysa is going through grief, with what happened with these Stark men in the sky cells, though I cannot speak to it. I will say for myself that I and the men with me will see no trouble in continuing to stand next to this new king. He shares the same blood as the heir to the Vale," and he drank, and the Greatjon roared and slapped him on the back so hard he spilled the rest.
Theon, though, looked at me with a solemn face and said he wished he could be Lord of the Iron Islands, so he could name me king as well. I patted him on the shoulder and told him that in due time, after this mess in the south was over, we would set the Iron Islands right, so they could prosper along with us, with him at their front as heir, for a change.
I let it go round. I let them have it, because they needed it, and because I wanted to see their faces while they said it. They meant it, every one of them, and Roose Bolton too, as far as I could tell. For now, at least, he would not move against me alone.
Then I stood.
"My lords."
They stopped. It took a moment for all of them to ready themselves for what I was about to say, and there was an irony in it that only I could see, because I was about to tell them I had never set out to be a king, and I had.
"I'll not pretend to you that I came to Riverrun to be a king. I came for my father, and I'm too late, and I'll carry that. But I heard what you said, and I heard why, and I'll not refuse what the North and the Trident have offered with their swords on the table, because you're right. There's no king in the south I can kneel to and keep my honor, and I'll not teach my sons to kneel to a man who took their grandfather's head." I put my hand on the hilt of Edmure's sword. "So I'll take it. I'll take it on this condition, and it's the only one. You're not kneeling to a man of seventeen who's won three fights. You're kneeling to the North and the Trident, standing together, with eight thousand horse in the fields and thirty thousand foot behind them and giants in the trees, and I'm the man who holds it together, and the day I stop being that man you'll tell me so, the way my uncle just told me three kings he'll not kneel to. That's the bargain. I'd have you remember it when it's harder than tonight. I shall be your king, because I see you all as my people, and I will not forget that. What do you say?"
"Aye," said Brynden.
"Then I'm your king. And Tywin Lannister is still at Harrenhal, and my father's head is still on a wall, and I'll have both of those changed before the year's out. Go to bed, my lords. We start again at first light."
They went. Not quickly. Edmure stayed, and Brynden, and when the room was empty Edmure picked up the letter off the map and looked at it, and then at me.
"What do you want done with it?"
"Keep it. I'll want to read it to the Tyrells one day, and to Dorne." I sat down. Grey Wind put his head in my lap. "Uncle. I need an hour."
They left me the hour. I did not use it well. I sat in Hoster Tully's chair with my father's death on the table and my wolf's head on my knee, and I wept for my father, quietly, with my hand in the wolf's fur. I had done some of it already on the road, a little every night since the raven about Robert, since Howland Reed told me at the Moat that a fate could be changed and I understood mine might not be changed in time. I had not stopped trying. I was not going to stop now. But the hour was his, and I gave it to him. I had thought I would feel his death, or that something would happen when it came, but I was wrong. For now I would give him an hour's silent respect, as he was truly a good man for a world such as this.
We rested a week.
Near forty thousand men needed it, and the river lords' levies needed it more, and the horses most of all. I used the week. I had every lord of the riverlands into the solar one at a time and heard what they had lost and what they had left and what they wanted, and I had Edmure beside me for every one of them so that they understood whose castle it was and whose cause. I had the Frey maester and Vyman between them see the Mountain packed in a second layer of salt and lime and the wagon sealed, and I wrote the letter to Prince Doran myself, in my own hand, and read it to Brynden, who said "Hm," and then said, "Leave out the part about Robert. He'll know it. Don't make him hear it from a stranger," and I left it out. And the riders kept coming up from the south all week, and by the third day Lord Blackwood had it from three of them that my father had confessed to nothing on the steps of Baelor's sept. He had named Joffrey a bastard, aloud, before the crowd, and been killed for it, and the city was already saying so in the taverns. I sat with Jaime Lannister for an hour on the fourth day, in his cell, and got nothing from him but fever and curses and one question about his brother, which I answered, and left him to Vyman. And I ate. I had not noticed I was doing it until Brynden said so, the third night, across Edmure's table, watching me go through a second trencher of Riverrun's river pike: "You've your color back. You've eaten more this week than you did the whole way down from the Twins. Whatever that was, it's done with you, then." I told him it was, and found that I meant it, and Olyvar, who had carried three untouched suppers out of my tent on the march and said nothing about any of them, grinned at the jug.
And I let Vyman look at the hand, which he did every morning, and which had begun to trouble him.
"It is healing too fast, Your Grace," he said on the fifth day, with the splint off and the hand in his. He said Your Grace carefully, as if he were still testing the weight of it. "The flesh has closed over the bone. There is new skin. A wound of this kind, on a man of your age, I would expect to take the better part of three months to close so. It has been a fortnight."
"I've always healed quickly, Maester. The cut Styr gave me closed in half the time Maester Luwin said it would, and he shouted at me about that too. It runs in the family, I'm told."
"It does not run in any family I have read of."
"Then you've not read the right families." I took the hand back and flexed it. It hurt, the way a healing thing hurts, and the end of the finger was smooth and pink and stupid-looking, and I could close the hand on a shield grip and hold it, which was what mattered. "The old gods were generous with me, Maester, and I don't ask them why. That's all. I leave that to more religious men. I've stopped questioning it. Bind it loose. I'll want it on an axe haft in a month."
He bound it loose and wished me luck, but nothing more.
On the seventh day I called the council. A real one, in the great hall, with the doors shut and every lord who'd put a sword on the table a week before, and the map spread on the high table where the trenchers should have been.
"Tywin is at Harrenhal," I said. "He's been there since the Greatjon and Karstark popped him on the nose and took his pet Mountain. He has twenty-five thousand men, less what he lost at the Green Fork, and he's sitting in the biggest castle in the Seven Kingdoms with the Gods Eye at his back and the kingsroad in front of him, and he's waiting. He's waiting for one of two things. He's waiting for Renly's hundred thousand to come up the roseroad and threaten King's Landing, so he can march south and save his grandson, or he's waiting for me to come at him, so he can fight me on ground he's chosen with walls behind him. I'll not give him either. I'll give him a third thing."
I put my finger on the Golden Tooth.
"Tywin took the west's army into the riverlands. All of it. What's left behind the Tooth is what Lord Tywin's cousins have been scraping together since: green levies, Lannisport sellswords, every second son in the westerlands with a horse, mustering somewhere behind Ser Stafford Lannister's banner. My uncle's riders and myself both put them north and west of the Tooth, in the hills, and I'd guess ten thousand of them, and I'd guess not one in five has ever stood in a line. I mean to go and break them before they finish learning how. Not through the Tooth. Around it. Grey Wind and I found a goat path over the hills to the north of the Tooth four nights ago, and my uncle's Vale men have been up it since and say it'll take horse if we go in single file and lead them over the worst of it. It'll take three days. We'll come down behind the Tooth with eight thousand horse in the dark, onto men who've never seen a Northman, and we'll do to them what we did to the camps."
"And then?" said Edmure.
"And then I split the horse." I looked up. "Lord Umber, Lord Karstark, Lady Maege, and Lord Glover, who's walked far enough and can have the five hundred horse that came down the kingsroad with the foot: each of you takes a column, a thousand horse or so, and you ride through the westerlands and you burn it. Mills, granaries, mines, the Lannisport road, the Crag, Ashemark, anything with a lion on it. You don't stop and you don't siege. Jon takes a fifth column with Ser Wendel Manderly, Lord Wyman's younger son, as his captain, and Ser Wendel, if my brother tries to storm a castle you'll sit on him until he stops. The Tooth itself we take from both sides, the foot in front of it on the riverlands road under Lord Wyman and Lord Stevron, and the horse behind it, and Lefford's castellan inside it will have to choose which way to look. And when Tywin Lannister hears that the North is burning his father's house, he'll come. He'll have to. He can't sit in Harrenhal and watch the west burn. He'll come west, across the Red Fork, and when he comes, Uncle, that's where you come in."
Edmure had gone very still.
"Every instinct you have, my lord, will tell you to hold the fords of the Red Fork against him, and you'd likely win, and it would be the worst thing that could happen to us, because it would keep Tywin in the riverlands when I want him let go west to die. I'll not have that. You'll know the plan, all of it, because you're my uncle and the Lord of Riverrun and I'd rather you argue with me now than fight the wrong battle later. When Tywin comes to the fords, you let him cross. You pull your men back inside these walls and you let him go by, and you send a raven to me the hour he's over the water. He'll go west, into a country I've already burned, with my horse behind every hill and his new army already dead in a ditch under the Golden Tooth, and he'll have to come to me there, on ground I've picked, with the Tooth at his back and no walls. That's the battle I want. Not here. There."
"And King's Landing?" said Blackwood. "If Tywin goes west, there's nothing between Renly and the city but the city."
"There's Lord Blackwood and Lord Bracken." I put my finger on the kingsroad south of the Trident. "Not between Harrenhal and the city; I'll not put you on open ground where Tywin can turn and eat you. Here, on the high ground above the kingsroad, south of the river, where he can't get past you to the city without a fight and can't get at you without leaving his walls. Five thousand foot, river and Northern mixed, with Lord Hornwood's men and Ser Ryman's Freys, and you dig in, my lords, and you sit, and you let him look, and make his own decisions. He'll not march on Renly with you on his road. And if Renly comes north, you'll be the first men he meets, and you'll tell him the King in the North sends his regards and no knee."
Blackwood looked at Bracken. Bracken looked at Blackwood. "I can sit on a hill beside him for a month," Bracken said. "I've sat on one across from him for thirty years."
"Riverrun holds with my uncle Brynden," I went on, "and with Lord Bolton's men. My lord of Bolton." Roose lifted his eyes. "There are Lannister sellswords and freeriders loose in the riverlands from the Trident to the Blue Fork, burning villages because no one's told them the war has moved. The Mountain's own men, some of them, Polliver and the Tickler and that lot, if they lived. I want them hunted. I'd ask Ser Brynden to command it from Riverrun with his scouts, and your horse to do the hunting, because your men are patient and they frighten people, and I want these people frightened. Any sellsword captain or bandit chief you take alive, my lord, any man who's led a company that raped or burned, you may do with as the Dreadfort does, and hang and even flay what's left on the roads where the next company will see it. Not a lord's son. Not a Westerosi smallfolk who was pressed into it. Only the men who took Lannister gold to do this, and only the ones who led. That's my word on it, and I'll put my seal to it, and I'll not have it said afterward that you did it without my leave."
Roose Bolton looked at me for a long moment. Then he inclined his head, a small, exact movement.
"As Your Grace commands," he said. "They will be frightened."
I did not doubt it.
"Lord Wyman and the crossbowmen go with the foot to the Tooth. Lord Stevron's foot with them. Theon stays with me." Theon, behind me, made a noise. "You'll thank me later. Lord Jason, Ser Perwyn, Ser Andar, and Lord Piper, I'll have a word with the four of you after this, and with my uncle Brynden, and with Theon, about something else that's not for this table yet. The rest of you have your orders. We ride for the goat path in two days. Questions."
There were questions. There were an hour of them, and I answered every one, and Edmure asked the most, which pleased me, and Brynden asked none. Daryn Hornwood asked the last, standing at the back with his sword arm still bound across his chest from the valley, and it was whether he could ride west with Jon's column instead of sitting at Riverrun while it healed. I told him his father would skin me if I let him and that I would let him anyway, and the hall laughed, and so did he. Then they went, and I kept the four I'd named and Theon, and Brynden, and shut the doors.
"Renly," I said. "Lord Blackwood's riders say he'll be at Bitterbridge in a fortnight with his court and his tourney and his new wife. When the west is burning and the columns are out, I'm going to ride there with a hundred men and the five of you, and Grey Wind, and no mammoth, and I'm going to congratulate him on his marriage, and offer him the North's friendship against the Lannisters, and not kneel. And I'd have the men beside me when I do it be a Mallister and a Piper for the riverlands, a Frey for the Crossing, a Royce for the Vale, and the heir to the Iron Islands, so that when the Reach looks at me it sees four kingdoms at my back and not a lordling from the snow." I looked at them. "That's the whole of it for tonight. Think on it. Ser Brynden, you'll hold Riverrun with my uncle while I'm gone, and if I'm not back in two months, you'll have been right about everything."
"I generally am," said the Blackfish. "Hm. Go to bed, Your Grace."
I went. On the stair I stopped at the window that looks west, over the moat and the fields and the long dark line of the Whispering Wood, and I stood there a while with Grey Wind against my leg, and I thought about a goat path, and a tourney at Bitterbridge, and a girl I had never met.
Then, as I went to bed, I looked straight in front of me, as I swear I heard my name being called, but I shook my head and turned to planning for the future of my people, and to plans to keep this kingdom from tearing itself to pieces.