Under that gaze, Edmure’s face reddened. “Spare his life, I mean. I don’t like the taste of it any more than you, sire. He slew my men as well. Poor Delp had only just recovered from the wound Ser Jaime gave him. Karstark must be punished, certainly. Keep him in chains, say.”
“A hostage?” said Catelyn. It might be best...
“Yes, a hostage!” Her brother seized on her musing as agreement. “Tel the son that so long as he remains loyal, his father will not be harmed. Otherwise... we have no hope of the Freys now, not if I offered to marry all Lord Walder’s daughters and carry his litter besides. If we should lose the Karstarks as wel , what hope is there?”
“What hope. .” Robb let out a breath, pushed his hair back from his eyes, and said, “We’ve had naught from Ser Rodrik in the north, no response from Walder Frey to our new offer, only silence from the Eyrie.” He appealed to his mother. “Will your sister never answer us? How many times must I write her? I will not believe that none of the birds have reached her.” Her son wanted comfort, Catelyn realized; he wanted to hear that it would be al right. But her king needed truth. “The birds have reached her. Though she may tel you they did not, if it ever comes to that. Expect no help from that quarter, Robb.”
“Lysa was never brave. When we were girls together, she would run and hide whenever she’d done something wrong. Perhaps she thought our lord father would forget to be wroth with her if he could not find her. It is no different now. She ran from King’s Landing for fear, to the safest place she knows, and she sits on her mountain hoping everyone will forget her.”
“The knights of the Vale could make al the difference in this war,” said Robb, “but if she will not fight, so be it. I’ve asked only that she open the Bloody Gate for us, and provide ships at Gul town to take us north. The high road would be hard, but not so hard as fighting our way up the Neck. If I could land at White Harbor I could flank Moat Cailin and drive the ironmen from the north in half a year.”
“It wil not happen, sire,” said the Blackfish. “Cat is right. Lady Lysa is too fearful to admit an army to the Vale. Any army. The Bloody Gate wil remain closed.”
“The Others can take her, then,” Robb cursed, in a fury of despair. “Bloody Rickard Karstark as wel . And Theon Greyjoy, Walder Frey, Tywin Lannister, and al the rest of them. 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 looked at them all. “Wil the Lannisters thank me for Lord Rickard’s head? Wil the Freys?”
“No,” said Brynden Blackfish, blunt as ever.
“All the more reason to spare Lord Rickard’s life and keep him hostage,” Edmure urged.
Robb reached down with both hands, lifted the heavy bronze-and-iron crown, and set it back atop his head, and suddenly he was a king again. “Lord Rickard dies.”
“But why~” said Edmure. “You said yourself -”
“I know what I said, Uncle. It does not change what I must do.” The swords in his crown stood stark and black against his brow. “In battle I might have slain Tion and Willem myself, but this was no battle. They were asleep in their beds, naked and unarmed, in a cel where I put them.
Rickard Karstark killed more than a Frey and a Lannister. He killed my honor. I shall deal with him at dawn.”
When day broke, grey and chilly, the storm had diminished to a steady, soaking rain, yet even so the godswood was crowded. River lords and northmen, highborn and low, knights and sel swords and stableboys, they stood amongst the trees to see the end of the night’s dark dance.
Edmure had given commands, and a headsman’s block had been set up before the heart tree.
Rain and leaves fell all around them as the Greatjon’s men led Lord Rickard Karstark through the press, hands stil bound. His men already hung from Riverrun’s high walls, slumping at the end of long ropes as the rain washed down their darkening faces.
Long Lew waited beside the block, but Robb took the poleaxe from his hand and ordered him to step aside. “This is my work,” he said. “He dies at my word. He must die by my hand.” Lord Rickard Karstark dipped his head stiffly. “For that much, I thank you. But for naught else.” He had dressed for death in a long black wool surcoat emblazoned with the white sunburst of his House. “The blood of the First Men flows in my veins as much as yours, boy. You would do wel to remember that. I was named for your grandfather. I raised my banners against King Aerys for your father, and against King Joffrey for you. At Oxcross and the Whispering Wood and in the Battle of the Camps, I rode beside you, and I stood with Lord Eddard on the Trident.
We are kin, Stark and Karstark.”
“This kinship did not stop you from betraying me,” Robb said. “And it will not save you now.
Kneel, my lord.”
Lord Rickard had spoken truly, Catelyn knew. 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.
“Old gods or new, it makes no matter,” Lord Rickard told her son, “no man is so accursed as the kinslayer.”
“Kneel, traitor,” Robb said again. “Or must I have them force your head onto the block?” Lord Karstark knelt. “The gods shall judge you, as you have judged me.” He laid his head upon the block.
“Rickard Karstark, Lord of Karhold.” Robb lifted the heavy axe with both hands. “Here in sight of gods and men, I judge you guilty of murder and high treason. In mine own name I condemn you. With mine own hand I take your life. Would you speak a final word?”
“Kill me, and be cursed. You are no king of mine.”
The axe crashed down. Heavy and well-honed, it killed at a single blow, but it took three to sever the man’s head from his body, and by the time it was done both living and dead were drenched in blood. Robb flung the poleaxe down in disgust, and turned wordless to the heart tree.
He stood shaking with his hands half-clenched and the rain running down his cheeks. Gods forgive him, Catelyn prayed in silence. He is only a boy, and he had no other choice.
That was the last she saw of her son that day. The rain continued al through the morning, lashing the surface of the rivers and turning the godswood grass into mud and puddles. The Blackfish assembled a hundred men and rode out after Karstarks, but no one expected he would bring back many. “I only pray I do not need to hang them,” he said as he departed. When he was gone, Catelyn retreated to her father’s solar, to sit once more beside Lord Hoster’s bed.
“It wil not be much longer,” Maester Vyman warned her, when he came that afternoon. “His last strength is going, though still he tries to fight.”
“He was ever a fighter,” she said. “A sweet stubborn man.”
“Yes,” the maester said, “but this battle he cannot win. It is time he lay down his sword and shield. Time to yield.”
To yield, she thought, to make a peace. Was it her father the maester was speaking of, or her son?
At evenfal , Jeyne Westerling came to see her. The young queen entered the solar timidly.
“Lady Catelyn, I do not mean to disturb you.. ”
“You are most welcome here, Your Grace.” Catelyn had been sewing, but she put the needle aside now.
“Please. Call me Jeyne. I don’t feel like a Grace.”
“You are one, nonetheless. Please, come sit, Your Grace.”
“Jeyne.” She sat by the hearth and smoothed her skirt out anxiously.
“As you wish. How might I serve you, Jeyne?”
“It’s Robb,” the girl said. “He’s so miserable, so... so angry and disconsolate. I don’t know what to do.”
“It is a hard thing to take a man’s life.”
“I know. I told him, he should use a headsman. When Lord Tywin sends a man to die, al he does is give the command. it’s easier that way, don’t you think?”
“Yes,” said Catelyn, “but my lord husband taught his sons that kil ing should never be easy.”
“Oh.” Queen Jeyne wet her lips. “Robb has not eaten al day. I had Rol am bring him a nice supper, boar’s ribs and stewed onions and ale, but he never touched a bite of it. He spent all morning writing a letter and told me not to disturb him, but when the letter was done he burned it. Now he is sitting and looking at maps. I asked him what he was looking for, but he never answered. I don’t think he ever heard me. He wouldn’t even change out of his clothes. They were damp all day, and bloody. I want to be a good wife to him, I do, but I don’t know how to help.
To cheer him, or comfort him. I don’t know what he needs. Please, my lady, you’re his mother, tell me what I should do.”
Tell me what I should do. Catelyn might have asked the same, if her father had been well enough to ask. But Lord Hoster was gone, or near enough. Her Ned as wel . Bran and Rickon too, and Mother, and Brandon so long ago. Only Robb remained to her, Robb and the fading hope of her daughters.
“Sometimes,” Catelyn said slowly, “the best thing you can do is nothing. When I first came to Winterfel , I was hurt whenever Ned went to the godswood to sit beneath his heart tree. Part of his soul was in that tree, I knew, a part I would never share. Yet without that part, I soon realized, he would not have been Ned. Jeyne, child, you have wed the north, as I did... and in the north, the winters will come.” She tried to smile. “Be patient. Be understanding. He loves you and he needs you, and he will come back to you soon enough. This very night, perhaps. Be there when he does. That is al I can tel you.”
The young queen listened raptly. “I will,” she said when Catelyn was done. “I’ll be there.” She got to her feet. “I should go back. He might have missed me. I’ll see. But if he’s still at his maps, I’l be patient.”
“Do,” said Catelyn, but when the girl was at the door, she thought of something else. “Jeyne,” she cal ed after, “there’s one more thing Robb needs from you, though he may not know it yet himself. A king must have an heir.”
The girl smiled at that. “My mother says the same. She makes a posset for me, herbs and milk and ale, to help make me fertile. I drink it every morning. I told Robb I’m sure to give him twins.
An Eddard and a Brandon. He liked that, I think. We... we try most every day, my lady.
Sometimes twice or more.” The girl blushed very prettily. “I’ll be with child soon, I promise. I pray to our Mother Above, every night.”
“Very good. I will add my prayers as wel . To the old gods and the new.” When the girl had gone, Catelyn turned back to her father and smoothed the thin white hair across his brow. “An Eddard and a Brandon,” she sighed softly. “And perhaps in time a Hoster.
Would you like that?” He did not answer, but she had never expected that he would. As the sound of the rain on the roof mingled with her father’s breathing, she thought about Jeyne. The girl did seem to have a good heart, just as Robb had said. And good hips, which might be more important.