“Here lies Tristifer, the Fourth of His Name, King of the Rivers and the Hills.” Her father had told her his story once. “He ruled from the Trident to the Neck, thousands of years before Jenny and her prince, in the days when the kingdoms of the First Men were falling one after the other before the onslaught of the Andals. The Hammer of justice, they cal ed him. He fought a hundred battles and won nine-and-ninety, or so the singers say, and when he raised this castle it was the strongest in Westeros.” She put a hand on her son’s shoulder. “He died in his hundredth battle, when seven Andal kings joined forces against him. The fifth Tristifer was not his equal, and soon the kingdom was lost, and then the castle, and last of al the line. With Tristifer the Fifth died House Mudd, that had ruled the riverlands for a thousand years before the Andals came.”
“His heir failed him.” Robb ran a hand over the rough weathered stone. “I had hoped to leave Jeyne with child... we tried often enough, but I’m not certain...”
“It does not always happen the first time.” Though it did with you. “Nor even the hundredth.
You are very 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 al ow that. I wil not al ow that. That dwarf must never have the north.”
“No,” Catelyn agreed. “You must name another heir, until such time as Jeyne gives you a son.” She considered a moment. “Your father’s father had no siblings, but his father had a sister who married a younger son of Lord Raymar Royce, of the junior branch. They had three daughters, all of whom wed Vale lordlings. A Waynwood and a Corbray, for certain. The youngest... it might have been a Templeton, but...”
“Mother.” There was a sharpness in Robb’s tone. “You forget. My father had four sons.” She had not forgotten; she had not wanted to look at it, yet there it was. “A Snow is not a Stark.”
“Jon’s more a Stark than some lordlings from the Vale who have never so much as set eyes on Winterfell.”
“If Jon is a brother of the Night’s Watch, sworn to take no wife and hold no lands. Those who take the black serve for life.”
“So do the knights of the Kingsguard. That did not stop the Lannisters from stripping the white cloaks from Ser Barristan Selmy and Ser Boros Blount when they had no more use for them. 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.”
He is set on this. Catelyn knew how stubborn her son could be. “A bastard cannot inherit.”
“Not unless he’s legitimized by a royal decree,” said Robb. “There is more precedent for that than for releasing a Sworn Brother from his oath.”
“Precedent,” she said bitterly. “Yes, Aegon the Fourth legitimized al his bastards on his deathbed. And how much pain, grief, war, and murder grew from that? I know you trust Jon. But can you trust his sons? Or their sons? The Blackfyre pretenders troubled the Targaryens for five generations, until Barristan the Bold slew the last of them on the Stepstones. 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.”
“Jon would never harm a son of mine.”
“No more than Theon Greyjoy would harm Bran or Rickon?”
Grey Wind leapt up atop King Tristifer’s crypt, his teeth bared. Robb’s own face was cold.
“That is as cruel as it is unfair. Jon is no Theon.”
“So you pray. Have you considered your sisters? What of their rights? I agree that the north must not be permitted to pass to the imp, but what of Arya? By law, she comes after Sansa...
your own sister, trueborn...”
“... and dead. No one has seen or heard of Arya since they cut Father’s head off. Why do you lie to yourself? Arya’s gone, the same as Bran and Rickon, and they’l 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. I had hoped you would support my choice.”
“I cannot,” she said. “In all else, Robb. In everything. But not in this... this fol y. Do not ask it.”
“I don’t have to. I’m the king.” Robb turned and walked off, Grey Wind bounding down from the tomb and loping after him.
What have I done? Catelyn thought wearily, as she stood alone by Tristifer’s stone sepulcher.
First I anger Edmure, and now Robb, but al I have done is speak the truth. Are men so fragile they cannot bear to hear it? She might have wept then, had not the sky begun to do it for her. It was al she could do to walk back to her tent, and sit there in the silence.
In the days that fol owed, Robb was everywhere and anywhere; riding at the head of the van with the Greatjon, scouting with Grey Wind, racing back to Robin Flint and the rearguard. Men said proudly that the Young Wolf was the first to rise each dawn and the last to sleep at night, but Catelyn wondered whether he was sleeping at al . He grows as lean and hungry as his direwolf.
“My lady,” Maege Mormont said to her one morning as they rode through a steady rain, “you seem so somber. Is aught amiss?”
My lord husband is dead, as is my father. Two of my sons have been murdered, my daughter has been given to a faithless dwarf to bear his vile children, my other daughter is vanished and likely dead, and my last son and my only brother are both angry with me. What could possibly be amiss? That was more truth than Lady Maege would wish to hear, however. “This is an evil rain,” she said instead. “We have suffered much, and there is more peril and more grief ahead.
We need to face it boldly, with horns blowing and banners flying bravely. But this rain beats us down. The banners hang limp and sodden, and the men huddle under their cloaks and scarcely speak to one another. Only an evil rain would chil our hearts when most we need them to burn hot.”
Dacey Mormont looked up at the sky. “I would sooner have water raining down on me than arrows.”
Catelyn smiled despite herself. “You are braver than I am, I fear. Are al your Bear Island women such warriors?”
“She-bears, aye,” said Lady Maege. “We have needed to be. In olden days the ironmen would come raiding in their longboats, or wildlings from the Frozen Shore. The men would be off fishing, like as not. The wives they left behind had to defend themselves and their children, or else be carried off.”
“There’s a carving on our gate,” said Dacey. “A woman in a bearskin, with a child in one arm suckling at her breast. In the other hand she holds a battleaxe. She’s no proper lady, that one, but I always loved her.”
“My nephew Jorah brought home a proper lady once,” said Lady Maege. “He won her in a tourney. How she hated that carving.”
“Aye, and al the rest,” said Dacey. “She had hair like spun gold, that Lynesse. Skin like cream.
But her soft hands were never made for axes.”
“Nor her teats for giving suck,” her mother said bluntly.
Catelyn knew of whom they spoke; Jorah Mormont had brought his second wife to Winterfel for feasts, and once they had guested for a fortnight. She remembered how young the Lady Lynesse had been, how fair, and how unhappy. One night, after several cups of wine, she had confessed to Catelyn that the north was no place for a Hightower of Oldtown. “There was a Tul y of Riverrun who felt the same once,” she had answered gently, trying to console, “but in time she found much here she could love.”
Al lost now, she reflected. Winterfell and Ned, Bran and Rickon, Sansa, Arya, al gone. Only Robb remains. Had there been too much of Lynesse Hightower in her after al , and too little of the Starks? Would that I had known how to wield an axe, perhaps I might have been able to protect them better.
Day fol owed day, and still the rain kept fal ing. All the way up the Blue Fork they rode, past Sevenstreams where the river unraveled into a confusion of rills and brooks, then through Hag’s Mire, where glistening green pools waited to swal ow the unwary and the soft ground sucked at the hooves of their horses like a hungry babe at its mother’s breast. The going was worse than slow. Half the wayns had to be abandoned to the muck, their loads distributed amongst mules and draft horses.
Lord Jason Mal ister caught up with them amidst the bogs of Hag’s Mire. There was more than an hour of daylight remaining when he rode up with his column, but Robb called a halt at once, and Ser Raynald Westerling came to escort Catelyn to the king’s tent. She found her son seated beside a brazier, a map across his lap. Grey Wind slept at his feet. The Greatjon was with him, along with Galbart Glover, Maege Mormont, Edmure, and a man that Catelyn did not know, a fleshy balding man with a cringing look to him. No lordling, this one, she knew the moment she laid eyes on the stranger. Not even a warrior.
Jason Mal ister rose to offer Catelyn his seat. His hair had almost as much white in it as brown, but the Lord of Seagard was still a handsome man; tall and lean, with a chiseled clean-shaven face, high cheekbones, and fierce blue-grey eyes. “Lady Stark, it is ever a pleasure. I bring good tidings, I hope.”