Chapter 66: The Starks of Winterfell
Catelyn Tully had ridden south from Winterfell with three people and was returning with twenty.
The Kings Road through the North was hard going in the best of seasons — rutted, exposed, the kind of road that reminded you at every mile that the North was not built for comfort. She had not ridden this far or this hard in years, not since before the children, and she had not thought to bring riding clothes when she left because she had not expected to be leaving in a hurry. By the time the grey towers of Winterfell appeared on the horizon, she was exhausted in a way that went past the body and into something deeper.
The party behind her carried four banners. Ser Rodrik rode at the front with the Stark direwolf. Behind him, two more banners — the lizard-lion of House Reed of the Neck, and the double-headed battle axe of House Stout of Goldgrass. After Catelyn had crossed into the North from the Kings Road, the lords whose lands she passed through had sent riders to escort her home. It was the courteous thing, and most of them had done it.
Most. Lady Dustin of Barrowton had received her at Barrow Hall, offered a night's hospitality, and in the morning had made it gently but unmistakably clear that the sooner Catelyn continued north, the better. Catelyn had not taken offense. She understood what lay under it — Ned had ridden away from Barrowton with Bethany Ryswell's husband and come back with a dead man's bones and a story about a bastard son he wouldn't name the mother of. Bethany had died while Ned was still away. Some griefs didn't soften with time; they just learned to sit still.
Robb was waiting at the gate.
He was holding Rickon's hand — which required some effort, since Rickon had been trying to pull free and run toward the road since the moment the gate guards had called the approach. Grey Wind was making slow circles around both of them with the focused energy of a wolf that doesn't know what to do with itself but knows something is about to happen.
Bran sat on his horse behind Robb, Summer pressing her nose against the horse's flank, trying to reach Bran's boots. He had been quiet since the guard called from the wall — watching the distant road with the concentration of someone who has been waiting longer than he intended to wait and has feelings about it.
"Is Jon coming back with her?" Rickon asked. "And Sansa and Arya?"
"Jon, Sansa, and Arya are all in King's Landing." Robb ran a hand through Rickon's hair, which had grown past presentable and was now simply wild — a development Robb had been unable to address because Rickon had decided, with the absolute conviction of a four-year-old, that he would not submit to a haircut until his mother came home. "They're staying south for now."
Rickon absorbed this. "That's stupid."
"Probably."
Robb crouched down to Rickon's level and lowered his voice. "Don't mention Jon in front of Mother. When she gets here."
"Why not? Jon is our brother."
"I know. Just — not right now."
Rickon's expression said that he found this inexplicable and objectionable but was willing to temporarily table it in favor of larger priorities. He pulled free of Robb's hand the moment the riders were close enough to make out faces and ran for the gate.
"Mother!"
Catelyn dismounted before the horse had fully stopped, which was not something she had planned but which happened anyway, and Rickon hit her at approximately knee height with enough force that she had to take a step back. She knelt in the cold mud of the yard and kissed his forehead and held him for a moment with her eyes closed.
When she looked up, Bran was watching her from his horse.
Maester Luwin had written to her in King's Landing. He had been careful in his wording — a maester's caution — but she had read what lay under the careful words: even waking, Bran would likely not walk again. She had prayed for him every night since the fall, kneeling in the small sept and asking for nothing more than that he open his eyes, because asking for more than that had felt like presumption. Just let him wake. I'll take whatever comes with it. She had said that to herself in the dark more times than she could count.
She had been afraid to see him. That was the truth she hadn't let herself look at directly during the long ride north. She had been afraid of what his face would tell her when he saw her, and afraid of what it would tell her about herself that she had left.
She walked to his horse. He turned his face away from her.
"Bran." Her voice broke on the single syllable.
He kept his face turned. His hands tightened on the saddle. Then she heard him inhale with the particular sound of a child who has spent a long time rehearsing not crying and has just lost the argument with himself, and he turned back and reached for her.
She got her arms around him while he was still on the horse — awkward, her chin against his knee — and held on.
"Mother," he said, into her hair, his voice small and accusing and relieved in equal measure.
She held him and let him cry and cried herself, there in the yard, in the mud, with Rickon's hand pressing into her back and Summer nosing at her shoulder and the household staff finding business to attend to in other parts of the castle.
After a while she became aware of Robb standing a few feet away, watching with the expression of a young man who is not going to cry because his brothers are watching and who is losing that particular battle by increments.
She reached out and took his face in her hands. "You look like your father," she said. Which wasn't quite what she meant. What she meant was that he looked like the lord of Winterfell — steady, capable, carrying something heavier than she'd left him with.
He pressed his lips together and nodded and hugged her, briefly and tight.
Later, when the household had settled and Rickon had been put to bed still talking about everything he intended to do now that his mother was home, Catelyn sat with Robb in the great hall.
The fire had burned down to coals. It was just the two of them.
"There's something you need to tell me," she said.
It wasn't a guess. She had seen it in him from the moment she rode through the gate — the particular set of his shoulders, the way he kept starting to say something and then not saying it.
Robb looked at the fire for a moment. Then he looked at her. "I arrested Tyrion Lannister. He arrived at Winterfell not long after you left. We've had him in the dungeon for over a month."
Catelyn went very still.
"He won't confess," Robb said. "To the attempt on Bran. We've — we haven't tortured him. I didn't know if I should. I didn't know what you'd want."
"You did right not to." She said it automatically, and meant it, though she was aware of the darkness she'd felt move through her at the word confess and what it had suggested before her better judgment got ahead of it. She pressed her hands flat on the table. "He needs to go to King's Landing. Robert should hear this himself. Robert will give us justice."
"A raven came while you were traveling." Robb's voice was careful. "From King's Landing. The King is ill, Mother. Seriously ill. They're saying he may not last the year."
She sat with that for a moment.
"Then I need to move quickly." She was already thinking ahead — the road south, how many men, how to present the case to Robert before Robert was in no condition to hear it. "I'll go myself. I won't trust this to a letter."
"You're going south again." Robb said it without inflection, but she heard what was in it.
"I have to." She looked at him steadily. "Robb. How many people know we have Tyrion?"
"Maester Luwin. Hodor. Twenty household men, all of them sworn and reliable. Four rangers from the Night's Watch who were passing through — they're no friends to the Lannisters." He paused. "I haven't sent any ravens to King's Landing. You said the city was in Lannister hands. I didn't even send word that Bran had woken."
She reached out and covered his hand with hers. "You did well." She meant it fully. The restraint required to sit on that news — not to send the raven that would have told Ned, that would have put the information in front of Cersei's spies before it reached anyone who could use it safely — that was not a small thing from a boy who had just turned sixteen.
He wasn't a boy. That was what she'd been looking at since she rode through the gate and hadn't let herself say.
She straightened. "Write to Lord Helman Tallhart and Lord Galbart Glover. In your father's name. Send a hundred archers each to garrison the Neck and hold Moat Cailin. I spoke with Lord Howland Reed when I passed through — he's already begun work on the castle." She paused. "And have Maester Luwin write to every lord in the North. Not summoning the banners — not yet. Just reminding them of their oaths and asking after their readiness."
Robb had gone still in the way he went still when something had arrived that he had been preparing for and was not yet sure he was prepared for.
"Is it going to be war?" His voice was steady. His hands were not, quite.
"The Lannisters will not let this pass quietly," she said. "If they find out we have Tyrion — and they will find out eventually, no secret that twenty people know stays secret for long — they will move. Your father is in King's Landing, surrounded by their people." She looked at her son directly, because he deserved that. "You are the Lord of Winterfell while your father is absent. If something happens — if word comes that forces are moving — you don't wait for orders that may not come. You call the banners yourself. You hold Moat Cailin. You keep the North."
Robb looked at the fire.
Grey Wind had been lying near the hearth through all of this. He raised his head and looked at Robb, the pale eyes catching the coal-light.
"Alright," Robb said, after a moment. "I'll write the letters tonight."
Catelyn nodded. She kept her face composed and her voice steady and did not let him see how frightened she was, because he was sixteen years old and he was going to need every piece of steadiness she could leave him with before she rode south again.
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