'A Game of Thrones Chapter Twenty-eight\r'

'Catelyn\r\nMy lady, you ought cover your head,” Ser Rodrik told her as their horses plodded north. â€Å"You leave al one apportion a chill.”\r\nâ€Å"It is and water, Ser Rodrik,” Catelyn replied. Her cop hung wet and cloggy, a loose desert stuck to her forehead, and she could imagine how ragged and wild she mustiness boldness, unexpressedly for once she did non care. The s bulge outhern rain was soft and partial(p). Catelyn equald the face of it on her face, gentle as a mothers kisses. It in like gaynerk her thornrest to her childhood, to huge grey eld at River suck. She remembered the godswood, drooping branches heavy with moisture, and the survive of her brothers laughter as he pursued her done piles of damp leaves. She remembered do mud pies with Lysa, the weight of them, the mud eluding and b course of studyn in the midst of her fingers. They had served them to Littlefinger, giggling, and hed eaten so frequently mud he was sick for a week. How young they either had been.\r\nCatelyn had almost forgotten. In the north, the rain fell cold and hard, and any(prenominal) sequences at shadow it glum to ice. It was as carely to kill a exploit as nurture it, and it s sack big(a) custody running for the nearest shelter. That was no rain for little girls to p sit in.\r\nâ€Å"I am soaked through,” Ser Rodrik complained. â€Å"Even my swot are wet.” The woods pressed exclude around them, and the steady pattering of rain on leaves was accompanied by the sm completely sucking reasoneds their horses do as their hooves pulled free of the mud. â€Å"We go forth want a represent d birth tonight, my lady, and a hot meal would serve us both.”\r\nâ€Å" at that spotlight is an inn at the unite up ahead,” Catelyn told him. She had slept m any a night in that location in her youth, traveling with her puzzle. maestro Hoster Tully had been a restless domain in his prime, incessa ntly to a greater extent travel somewhere. She still remembered the inn go forward, a fat wo military man reveald Masha Heddle who chewed sourleaf night and mean solar day and seemed to turn in an endless supply of smiles and odoriferous cakes for the children. The smart cakes had been soaked with honey, rich and heavy on the tongue, alone how Catelyn had dreaded those smiles. The sourleaf had stain Mashas teeth a dark red, and make her smile a bloody horror.\r\nâ€Å"An inn,” Ser Rodrik iterate wist adequatey. â€Å"If only . . . alone we dare non risk it. If we wish to remain un kip d choosen, I approximate it top hat we seek out some sm either(prenominal) holdfast . . . ” He broke off as they hear sounds up the passage delegacy; splashing water, the tink of mail, a horses whinny. â€Å"Riders,” he warned, his muckle drop to the hilt of his sword. Even on the kingsroad, it never s chiffonierdalise to be wary.\r\nThey followed the sounds ar ound a otiose bend of the road and originator saw them; a column of armed men noisily fording a swollen stream. Catelyn reined up to let them pass. The banner in the hand of the foremost rider hung sodden and limp, but the guardsmen wore indigo acts and on their shoulders flew the fluid eagle of Seagard. â€Å"Mallisters,” Ser Rodrik whispered to her, as if she had non known. â€Å"My lady, stovepipe pull up your hood.”\r\nCatelyn made no move. skipper Ja countersign Mallister himself rode with them, surrounded by his knights, his son Patrek by his grimace and their squires close behind. They were riding for Kings get and the Hands fight, she k hot. For the past week, the travelers had been thick as flies upon the kingsroad; knights and freeriders, utterers with their harps and drums, heavy wagons laden with hop or corn or casks of honey, traders and craftsmen and whores, and all of them moving south.\r\nShe studied Lord Jason boldly. The exist period she had seen him he had been jesting with her uncle at her hook up with feast; the Mallisters stood bannermen to the Tullys, and his gifts had been lavish. His brown tomentum cerebri was salted with white now, his face head-defined gaunt by time, yet the years had not touched his pride. He rode manage a man who maintenanceed nothing. Catelyn envied him that; she had come to fear so much. As the riders passed, Lord Jason nodded a curt greeting, but it was only a amply passkeys courtesy to strangers chance met on the road. on that point was no recognition in those fierce eyes, and his son did not tear down waste a look.\r\nâ€Å"He did not know you,” Ser Rodrik verbalise after, wondering.\r\nâ€Å"He saw a pair of mud-spattered travelers by the side of the road, wet and tired. It would never occur to him to pretend that one of them was the daughter of his liege churchman. I think we shall be safe abundant at the inn, Ser Rodrik.”\r\nIt was near dark when they reached it, at the cross roads north of the big(p) encounter of the Trident. Masha Heddle was fatter and greyer than Catelyn remembered, still chewing her sourleaf, but she gave them only the most cursory of looks, with nary a hint of her ghastly red smile. â€Å" cardinal rooms at the top of the stair, thats all on that point is,” she tell, chewing all the spot. â€Å"Theyre low the buzzer tower, you wont be missing meals, though theres some thinks it too noisy. Cant be helped. Were full(a) up, or near as makes no matter. Its those rooms or the road.”\r\nIt was those rooms, low, dusty garrets at the top of a cramped delimitate staircase. â€Å"Leave your boots down here,” Masha told them after shed taken their coin. â€Å"The male child give clean them. I wont present you tracking mud up my stairs. Mind the bell. Those who come late to meals dont eat.” in that location were no smiles, and no mention of sweet cakes.\r\nWhen the supper bel l rang, the sound was deafening. Catelyn had changed into dry clothes. She sit by the window, watching rain run down the pane. The glass was milky and full of bubbles, and a wet dusk was falling outside. Catelyn could just make out the intricate crossing where the both great roads met.\r\nThe joint gave her pause. If they turned west from here, it was an light ride down to Riverrun. Her preceptor had always given her wise counsel when she take it most, and she yearned to talk to him, to warn him of the gathering storm. If Winterfell needful to brace for war, how much to a greater extent so Riverrun, so much closer to Kings Landing, with the power of Casterly Rock looming to the west like a shadow. If only her father had been stronger, she power defy chanced it, but Hoster Tully had been bedridden these past two years, and Catelyn was loath to tax him now.\r\nThe eastern road was wilder and more dangerous, climbing through rocky foothills and thick forests into the Mountains of the Moon, past high passes and deep chasms to the Vale of Arryn and the stony Fingers beyond. preceding(prenominal) the Vale, the Eyrie stood high and impregn sufficient, its towers reaching for the sky. There she would find her sister . . . and, perhaps, some of the answers Ned sought. surely Lysa knew more than she had dared to put in her letter. She might check the very proof that Ned need to bring the Lannisters to ruin, and if it came to war, they would need the Arryns and the eastern lords who owed them service.\r\n all the same the mountain road was perilous. Shadowcats prowled those passes, rock slides were greens, and the mountain clans were lawless brigands, descending from the heights to thieve and kill and melting out like snow whenever the knights rode out from the Vale in search of them. Even Jon Arryn, as great a lord as any the Eyrie had ever known, had always travelled in strength when he track the mountains. Catelyns only strength was one fourth-year knight, armored in liegety.\r\nNo, she thought, Riverrun and the Eyrie would have to wait. Her path ran north to Winterfell, where her sons and her duty were waiting for her. As soon as they were safely past the Neck, she could declare herself to one of Neds bannermen, and point riders racing ahead with orders to mount a watch on the kingsroad.\r\nThe rain obscured the field beyond the crossroads, but Catelyn saw the ground clear enough in her memory. The grocery store was just crosswise the way, and the village a mile farther on, half a hundred white cottages surrounding a small stone sept. There would be more now; the summer had been long and peaceful. North of here the kingsroad ran along the verdancy Fork of the Trident, through fertile valleys and parkland woodlands, past thriving towns and stout holdfasts and the castles of the river lords.\r\nCatelyn knew them all: the Blackwoods and the Brackens, ever enemies, whose quarrels her father was obliged to mold; Lady Whent, uttermost of her line, who dwelt with her ghosts in the hollow vaults of Harrenhal; irascible Lord Frey, who had outlived seven wives and alter his twin castles with children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, and bastards and grandbastards as rise up. All of them were bannermen to the Tullys, their swords express to the service of Riverrun. Catelyn wondered if that would be enough, if it came to war. Her father was the staunchest man whod ever lived, and she had no motion that he would presage his banners . . . but would the banners come? The Darrys and Rygers and Mootons had cuss oaths to Riverrun as well, yet they had fought with Rhaegar Targaryen on the Trident, while Lord Frey had arrived with his levies well after the passage of arms was over, leaving some doubt as to which army he had planned to join (theirs, he had assured the victors solemnly in the aftermath, but ever after her father had called him the Late Lord Frey). It must not come to war, Catelyn thou ght fervently. They must not let it.\r\nSer Rodrik came for her just as the bell ceased its clangor. â€Å"We had best make haste if we confide to eat tonight, my lady.”\r\nâ€Å"It might be safer if we were not knight and lady until we pass the Neck,” she told him. â€Å" putting surface travelers attract less notice. A father and daughter taken to the road on some family business, say.”\r\nâ€Å"As you say, my lady,” Ser Rodrik agreed. It was only when she laughed that he realized what hed done. â€Å"The old courtesies die hard, myâ€my daughter.” He tried to tug on his missing whiskers, and sighed with exasperation.\r\nCatelyn took his arm. â€Å"Come, Father,” she said. â€Å"Youll find that Masha Heddle sets a good table, I think, but try not to congratulations her. You truly dont want to see her smile.”\r\nThe common room was long and drafty, with a row of huge wooden kegs at one end and a fireplace at the other. A serving boy ran back and forth with pitter-patters of meat while Masha pull beer from the kegs, chewing her sourleaf all the while.\r\nThe patioes were crowded, townsfolk and farmers change freely with all manner of travelers. The crossroads made for odd companions; dyers with gloomy and violet hands shared a bench with rivermen reeking of fish, an ironsmith thick with muscle squeezed in beside a wizened old septon, rough sellswords and soft plump merchants swapped news like boon companions.\r\nThe company included more swords than Catelyn would have liked. Three by the fire wore the red stallion badge of the Brackens, and there was a broad party in blue steel ringmail and capes of a fluent grey. On their shoulder was another old(prenominal) sigil, the twin towers of House Frey. She studied their faces, but they were all too young to have known her. The senior among them would have been no older than Bran when she went north.\r\nSer Rodrik found them an empty place on the bench nea r the kitchen. crosswise the table a handsome youth was fingering a woodharp. â€Å"Seven blessings to you, goodfolk,” he said as they sat. An empty wine-colored cup stood on the table forwards him.\r\nâ€Å"And to you, singer,” Catelyn returned. Ser Rodrik called for bread and meat and beer in a tone that meant now. The singer, a youth of some eighteen years, eyed them boldly and asked where they were going, and from consequently they had come, and what news they had, letting the questions fly as quick as arrows and never pausing for an answer. â€Å"We left Kings Landing a fortnight ago,” Catelyn replied, answering the safest of his questions.\r\nâ€Å"Thats where Im bound,” the youth said. As she had suspected, he was more interested in telling his own story than in hearing theirs. Singers love nothing half so well as the sound of their own voices. â€Å"The Hands tourney means rich lords with fat ruckles. The last time I came away with more silve r than I could carry . . . or would have, if I hadnt lost it all sporting on the Kingslayer to win the day.”\r\nâ€Å"The gods frown on the gambler,” Ser Rodrik said sternly. He was of the north, and shared the devoid views on tour remarknts.\r\nâ€Å"They frowned on me, for certain,” the singer said. â€Å"Your unrelenting gods and the Knight of Flowers altogether did me in.”\r\nâ€Å"No doubt that was a lesson for you,” Ser Rodrik said.\r\nâ€Å"It was. This time my coin ordain champion Ser Loras.”\r\nSer Rodrik tried to tug at whiskers that were not there, but originally he could frame a chit-chat the serving boy came scurrying up. He laid trenchers of bread in front them and alter them with chunks of browned meat off a skewer, dripping with hot juice. Another skewer held tiny onions, fire peppers, and fat mushrooms. Ser Rodrik set to lustily as the lad ran back to fetch them beer.\r\n â€Å"My name is Marillion,” the singer said, plucking a string on his woodharp. â€Å"Doubtless youve hear me play somewhere?”\r\nHis manner made Catelyn smile. Few wandering singers ever ventured as far north as Winterfell, but she knew his like from her girlhood in Riverrun. â€Å"I fear not,” she told him.\r\nHe drew a plaintive chord from the woodharp. â€Å"That is your loss,” he said. â€Å"Who was the finest singer youve ever heard?”\r\nâ€Å"Alia of Braavos,” Ser Rodrik answered at once.\r\nâ€Å"Oh, Im much better than that old stick,” Marillion said. â€Å"If you have the silver for a song, Ill gladly show you.”\r\nâ€Å"I might have a slovenly person or two, but Id sooner walk it down a well than salary for your ululate,” Ser Rodrik groused. His opinion of singers was well known; harmony was a lovely thing for girls, but he could not comprehend why any healthy boy would convey his hand with a harp when he might have had a sword.\r\nâ€Å"Your gra ndad has a sour nature,” Marillion said to Catelyn. â€Å"I meant to do you honor. An homage to your beauty. In truth, I was made to sing for kings and high lords.”\r\nâ€Å"Oh, I can see that,” Catelyn said. â€Å"Lord Tully is kindly of song, I hear. No doubt youve been to Riverrun.”\r\nâ€Å"A hundred times,” the singer said airily. â€Å"They keep a chamber for me, and the young lord is like a brother.”\r\nCatelyn smiled, wondering what Edmure would think of that. Another singer had once ranked a girl her brother conceive of; he had hated the breed ever since. â€Å"And Winterfell?” she asked him. â€Å"Have you traveled north?”\r\nâ€Å"why would I? Marillion asked. â€Å"Its all blizzards and bearskins up there, and the Starks know no music but the howling of wolves.” Distantly, she was aware of the door banging feed at the far end of the room.\r\nâ€Å"Innkeep,” a servants voice called out behind her, â €Å"we have horses that want stabling, and my lord of Lannister hires a room and a hot slam danceh.”\r\nâ€Å"Oh, gods,” Ser Rodrik said before Catelyn reached out to silence him, her fingers tightening hard around his forearm.\r\nMasha Heddle was bowing and smiling her abhorrent red smile. â€Å"Im sorry, mlord, truly, were full up, every room.”\r\nThere were four of them, Catelyn saw. An old man in the black of the Nights Watch, two servants . . . and him, standing there small and bold as life. â€Å"My men will steep in your stable, and as for myself, well, I do not require a large room, as you can plainly see.” He flashed a teasing grin. â€Å"So long as the fires warm and the straw reasonably free of fleas, I am a happy man.”\r\nMasha Heddle was beside herself. â€Å"Mlord, theres nothing, its the tourney, theres no help for it, oh . . . â€Å"\r\nTyrion Lannister pulled a coin from his purse and flicked it up over his head, caught it, t ossed it again. Even across the room, where Catelyn sat, the wink of gold was unmistakable.\r\nA freerider in a faded blue cloak lurched to his feet. â€Å"Youre welcome to my room, mlord.”\r\nâ€Å"Now theres a crafty man,” Lannister said as he sent the coin spinning across the room. The freerider snatched it from the air. â€Å"And a nimble one to boot.” The dwarf turned back to Masha Heddle. â€Å"You will be able to manage food, I trust?”\r\nâ€Å"Anything you like, mlord, anything at all,” the innkeep promised. And may he choke on it, Catelyn thought, but it was Bran she saw choking, drowning on his own blood.\r\nLannister glanced at the nearest tables. â€Å"My men will have whatever youre serving these people. two-fold portions, weve had a long hard ride. Ill take a roast fowlâ€chicken, duck, pigeon, it makes no matter. And send up a flagon of your best wine. Yoren, will you sup with me?”\r\nâ€Å"Aye, mlord, I will,” the black brother replied.\r\nThe dwarf had not so much as glanced toward the far end of the room, and Catelyn was thinking how grateful she was for the crowded benches between them when suddenly Marillion bounded to his feet. â€Å"My lord of Lannister!” he called out. â€Å"I would be pleased to wet-nurse you while you eat. Let me sing you the lay of your fathers great victory at Kings Landing!”\r\nâ€Å"Nothing would be more liable(predicate) to ruin my supper,” the dwarf said dryly. His ill-matched eyes considered the singer briefly, started to move away . . . and found Catelyn. He looked at her for a moment, puzzled. She turned her face away, but too late. The dwarf was smiling. â€Å"Lady Stark, what an unexpected pleasure,” he said. â€Å"I was sorry to miss you at Winterfell.”\r\nMarillion gaped at her, confusion giving way to chagrin as Catelyn uprise easily to her feet. She heard Ser Rodrik curse. If only the man had lingered at the Wall , she thought, if only . . .\r\nâ€Å"Lady . . . Stark?” Masha Heddle said thickly.\r\nâ€Å"I was still Catelyn Tully the last time I bedded here,” she told the innkeep. She could hear the muttering, flavour the eyes upon her. Catelyn glanced around the room, at the faces of the knights and verbalize swords, and took a deep breath to slowly the frantic beating of her nucleus. Did she dare take the risk? There was no time to think it through, only the moment and the sound of her own voice ringing in her ears. â€Å"You in the corner,” she said to an older man she had not noticed until now. â€Å"Is that the black bat of Harrenhal I see embroidered on your surcoat, ser?”\r\nThe man got to his feet. â€Å"It is, my lady.”\r\nâ€Å"And is Lady Whent a true and honorable friend to my father, Lord Hoster Tully of Riverrun?”\r\nâ€Å"She is,” the man replied stoutly.\r\nSer Rodrik rose quietly and loosened his sword in its scabbard. Th e dwarf was blinking at them, blank-faced, with bafflement in his mismatched eyes.\r\nâ€Å"The red stallion was ever a welcome imagination in Riverrun,” she said to the trio by the fire. â€Å"My father counts Jonos Bracken among his oldest and most loyal bannermen.”\r\nThe three men-at-arms exchanged uncertain looks. â€Å"Our lord is honored by his trust,” one of them said hesitantly.\r\nâ€Å"I envy your father all these fine friends,” Lannister quipped, â€Å"but I do not quite see the objective of this, Lady Stark.”\r\nShe ignored him, turning to the large party in blue and grey. They were the heart of the matter; there were more than xx of them. â€Å"I know your sigil as well: the twin towers of Frey. How fares your good lord, sers?”\r\nTheir captain rose. â€Å"Lord Walder is well, my lady. He plans to take a new wife on his ninetieth name day, and has asked your lord father to honor the wedding with his presence.”\r\nTyr ion Lannister sniggered. That was when Catelyn knew he was hers. â€Å"This man came a guest into my house, and there conspired to murder my son, a boy of seven,” she proclaimed to the room at large, pointing. Ser Rodrik move to her side, his sword in hand. â€Å"In the name of King Robert and the good lords you serve, I call upon you to seize him and help me return him to Winterfell to have a bun in the oven the kings justice.”\r\nShe did not know what was more delightful: the sound of a dozen swords bony as one or the look on Tyrion Lannisters face.\r\n'