The Song Of Ice and Fire (94 page)

“You sound like a sulky boy, Robb,” Catelyn said sharply. “A child sees an obstacle, and his first thought is to run around it or knock it down. A lord must learn that sometimes words can accomplish what swords cannot.”

Robb’s neck reddened at the rebuke. “Tell me what you mean, Mother,” he said meekly.

“The Freys have held the crossing for six hundred years, and for six hundred years they have never failed to exact their toll.”

“What toll? What does he
want?
”

She smiled. “That is what we must discover.”

“And what if I do not choose to pay this toll?”

“Then you had best retreat back to Moat Cailin, deploy to meet Lord Tywin in battle … or grow wings. I see no other choices.” Catelyn put her heels to her horse and rode off, leaving her son to ponder her words. It would not do to make him feel as if his mother were usurping his place.
Did you teach him wisdom as well as valor, Ned?
she wondered.
Did you teach him how to kneel?
The graveyards of the Seven Kingdoms were full of brave men who had never learned that lesson.

It was near midday when their vanguard came in sight of the Twins, where the Lords of the Crossing had their seat.

The Green Fork ran swift and deep here, but the Freys had spanned it many centuries past and grown rich off the coin men paid them to cross. Their bridge was a massive arch of smooth grey rock, wide enough for two wagons to pass abreast; the Water Tower rose from the center of the span, commanding both road and river with its arrow slits, murder holes, and portcullises. It had taken the Freys three generations to complete their bridge; when they were done they’d thrown up stout timber keeps on either bank, so no one might cross without their leave.

The timber had long since given way to stone. The Twins—two squat, ugly, formidable castles, identical in every respect, with the bridge arching between—had guarded the crossing for centuries. High curtain walls, deep moats, and heavy oak-and-iron gates protected the
approaches, the bridge footings rose from within stout inner keeps, there was a barbican and portcullis on either bank, and the Water Tower defended the span itself.

One glance was sufficient to tell Catelyn that the castle would not be taken by storm. The battlements bristled with spears and swords and scorpions, there was an archer at every crenel and arrow slit, the drawbridge was up, the portcullis down, the gates closed and barred.

The Greatjon began to curse and swear as soon as he saw what awaited them. Lord Rickard Karstark glowered in silence. “That cannot be assaulted, my lords,” Roose Bolton announced.

“Nor can we take it by siege, without an army on the far bank to invest the other castle,” Helman Tallhart said gloomily. Across the deep-running green waters, the western twin stood like a reflection of its eastern brother. “Even if we had the time. Which, to be sure, we do not.”

As the northern lords studied the castle, a sally port opened, a plank bridge slid across the moat, and a dozen knights rode forth to confront them, led by four of Lord Walder’s many sons. Their banner bore twin towers, dark blue on a field of pale silver-grey. Ser Stevron Frey, Lord Walder’s heir, spoke for them. The Freys all looked like weasels; Ser Stevron, past sixty with grandchildren of his own, looked like an especially old and tired weasel, yet he was polite enough. “My lord father has sent me to greet you, and inquire as to who leads this mighty host.”

“I do.” Robb spurred his horse forward. He was in his armor, with the direwolf shield of Winterfell strapped to his saddle and Grey Wind padding by his side.

The old knight looked at her son with a faint flicker of amusement in his watery grey eyes, though his gelding whickered uneasily and sidled away from the direwolf. “My lord father would be most honored if you would share meat and mead with him in the castle and explain your purpose here.”

His words crashed among the lords bannermen like a great stone from a catapult. Not one of them approved. They cursed, argued, shouted down each other.

“You must not do this, my lord,” Galbart Glover pleaded with Robb. “Lord Walder is not to be trusted.”

Roose Bolton nodded. “Go in there alone and you’re
his. He can sell you to the Lannisters, throw you in a dungeon, or slit your throat, as he likes.”

“If he wants to talk to us, let him open his gates, and we will
all
share his meat and mead,” declared Ser Wendel Manderly.

“Or let him come out and treat with Robb here, in plain sight of his men and ours,” suggested his brother, Ser Wylis.

Catelyn Stark shared all their doubts, but she had only to glance at Ser Stevron to see that he was not pleased by what he was hearing. A few more words and the chance would be lost. She had to act, and quickly. “
I will go
,” she said loudly.

“You, my lady?” The Greatjon furrowed his brow.

“Mother, are you certain?” Clearly, Robb was not.

“Never more,” Catelyn lied glibly. “Lord Walder is my father’s bannerman. I have known him since I was a girl. He would never offer me any harm.”
Unless he saw some profit in it
, she added silently, but some truths did not bear saying, and some lies were necessary.

“I am certain my lord father would be pleased to speak to the Lady Catelyn,” Ser Stevron said. “To vouchsafe for our good intentions, my brother Ser Perwyn will remain here until she is safely returned to you.”

“He shall be our honored guest,” said Robb. Ser Perwyn, the youngest of the four Freys in the party, dismounted and handed the reins of his horse to a brother. “I require my lady mother’s return by evenfall, Ser Stevron,” Robb went on. “It is not my intent to linger here long.”

Ser Stevron Frey gave a polite nod. “As you say, my lord.” Catelyn spurred her horse forward and did not look back. Lord Walder’s sons and envoys fell in around her.

Her father had once said of Walder Frey that he was the only lord in the Seven Kingdoms who could field an army out of his breeches. When the Lord of the Crossing welcomed Catelyn in the great hall of the east castle, surrounded by twenty living sons (minus Ser Perwyn, who would have made twenty-one), thirty-six grandsons, nineteen great-grandsons, and numerous daughters, granddaughters, bastards, and grandbastards, she understood just what he had meant.

Lord Walder was ninety, a wizened pink weasel with a bald spotted head, too gouty to stand unassisted. His newest
wife, a pale frail girl of sixteen years, walked beside his litter when they carried him in. She was the eighth Lady Frey.

“It is a great pleasure to see you again after so many years, my lord,” Catelyn said.

The old man squinted at her suspiciously. “Is it? I doubt that. Spare me your sweet words, Lady Catelyn, I am too old. Why are you here? Is your boy too proud to come before me himself? What am I to do with
you?
”

Catelyn had been a girl the last time she had visited the Twins, but even then Lord Walder had been irascible, sharp of tongue, and blunt of manner. Age had made him worse than ever, it would seem. She would need to choose her words with care, and do her best to take no offense from his.

“Father,” Ser Stevron said reproachfully, “you forget yourself. Lady Stark is here at your invitation.”

“Did I ask
you?
You are not Lord Frey yet, not until I die. Do I look dead? I’ll hear no instructions from you.”

“This is no way to speak in front of our noble guest, Father,” one of his younger sons said.

“Now my bastards presume to teach me courtesy,” Lord Walder complained. “I’ll speak any way I like, damn you. I’ve had three kings to guest in my life, and queens as well, do you think I require lessons from the likes of you, Ryger? Your mother was milking goats the first time I gave her my seed.” He dismissed the red-faced youth with a flick of his fingers and gestured to two of his other sons. “Danwell, Whalen, help me to my chair.”

They shifted Lord Walder from his litter and carried him to the high seat of the Freys, a tall chair of black oak whose back was carved in the shape of two towers linked by a bridge. His young wife crept up timidly and covered his legs with a blanket. When he was settled, the old man beckoned Catelyn forward and planted a papery dry kiss on her hand. “There,” he announced. “Now that I have observed the courtesies, my lady, perhaps my sons will do me the honor of shutting their mouths. Why are you here?”

“To ask you to open your gates, my lord,” Catelyn replied politely. “My son and his lords bannermen are most anxious to cross the river and be on their way.”

“To Riverrun?” He sniggered. “Oh, no need to tell me,
no need. I’m not blind yet. The old man can still read a map.”

“To Riverrun,” Catelyn confirmed. She saw no reason to deny it. “Where I might have expected to find you, my lord. You are still my father’s bannerman, are you not?”

“
Heh,
” said Lord Walder, a noise halfway between a laugh and a grunt. “I called my swords, yes I did, here they are, you saw them on the walls. It was my intent to march as soon as all my strength was assembled. Well, to send my sons. I am well past marching myself, Lady Catelyn.” He looked around for likely confirmation and pointed to a tall, stooped man of fifty years. “Tell her, Jared. Tell her that was my intent.”

“It was, my lady,” said Ser Jared Frey, one of his sons by his second wife. “On my honor.”

“Is it my fault that your fool brother lost his battle before we could march?” He leaned back against his cushions and scowled at her, as if challenging her to dispute his version of events. “I am told the Kingslayer went through him like an axe through ripe cheese. Why should my boys hurry south to die? All those who did go south are running north again.”

Catelyn would gladly have spitted the querulous old man and roasted him over a fire, but she had only till evenfall to open the bridge. Calmly, she said, “All the more reason that we must reach Riverrun, and soon. Where can we go to talk, my lord?”

“We’re talking now,” Lord Frey complained. The spotted pink head snapped around. “What are you all looking at?” he shouted at his kin. “Get out of here. Lady Stark wants to speak to me in private. Might be she has designs on my fidelity,
heh
. Go, all of you, find something useful to do. Yes, you too, woman. Out, out,
out.
” As his sons and grandsons and daughters and bastards and nieces and nephews streamed from the hall, he leaned close to Catelyn and confessed, “They’re all waiting for me to die. Stevron’s been waiting for forty years, but I keep disappointing him.
Heh
. Why should I die just so he can be a lord? I ask you. I won’t do it.”

“I have every hope that you will live to be a hundred.”

“
That
would boil them, to be sure. Oh, to be sure. Now, what do you want to say?”

“We want to cross,” Catelyn told him.

“Oh,
do
you? That’s blunt. Why should I let you?”

For a moment her anger flared. “If you were strong enough to climb your own battlements, Lord Frey, you would see that my son has twenty thousand men outside your walls.”

“They’ll be twenty thousand fresh corpses when Lord Tywin gets here,” the old man shot back. “Don’t you try and frighten me, my lady. Your husband’s in some traitor’s cell under the Red Keep, your father’s sick, might be dying, and Jaime Lannister’s got your brother in chains. What do you have that I should fear? That son of yours? I’ll match you son for son, and I’ll still have eighteen when yours are all dead.”

“You swore an oath to my father,” Catelyn reminded him.

He bobbed his head side to side, smiling. “Oh, yes, I said some words, but I swore oaths to the crown too, it seems to me. Joffrey’s the king now, and that makes you and your boy and all those fools out there no better than rebels. If I had the sense the gods gave a fish, I’d help the Lannisters boil you all.”

“Why don’t you?” she challenged him.

Lord Walder snorted with disdain. “Lord Tywin the proud and splendid, Warden of the West, Hand of the King, oh, what a great man
that
one is, him and his gold this and gold that and lions here and lions there. I’ll wager you, he eats too many beans, he breaks wind just like me, but you’ll never hear
him
admit it, oh, no. What’s
he
got to be so puffed up about anyway? Only two sons, and one of them’s a twisted little monster. I’ll match
him
son for son, and I’ll still have nineteen and a
half
left when all of his are dead!” He cackled. “If Lord Tywin wants my help, he can bloody well
ask
for it.”

That was all Catelyn needed to hear. “I am asking for your help, my lord,” she said humbly. “And my father and my brother and my lord husband and my sons are asking with my voice.”

Lord Walder jabbed a bony finger at her face. “Save your sweet words, my lady. Sweet words I get from my wife. Did you see her? Sixteen she is, a little flower, and her honey’s only for me. I wager she gives me a son by this time next year. Perhaps I’ll make
him
heir, wouldn’t that boil the rest of them?”

“I’m certain she will give you many sons.”

His head bobbed up and down. “Your lord father did not come to the wedding. An insult, as I see it. Even if he is dying. He never came to my last wedding either. He calls me the Late Lord Frey, you know. Does he think I’m dead? I’m not dead, and I promise you, I’ll outlive him as I outlived his father. Your family has always pissed on me, don’t deny it, don’t lie, you know it’s true. Years ago, I went to your father and suggested a match between his son and my daughter. Why not? I had a daughter in mind, sweet girl, only a few years older than Edmure, but if your brother didn’t warm to her, I had others he might have had, young ones, old ones, virgins, widows, whatever he wanted. No, Lord Hoster would not hear of it. Sweet words he gave me, excuses, but what I
wanted
was to get rid of a daughter.

“And your sister, that one, she’s full as bad. It was, oh, a year ago, no more, Jon Arryn was still the King’s Hand, and I went to the city to see my sons ride in the tourney. Stevron and Jared are too old for the lists now, but Danwell and Hosteen rode, Perwyn as well, and a couple of my bastards tried the melee. If I’d known how they’d shame me, I would never have troubled myself to make the journey. Why did I need to ride all that way to see Hosteen knocked off his horse by that Tyrell whelp? I ask you. The boy’s half his age, Ser Daisy they call him, something like that. And Danwell was unhorsed by a hedge knight! Some days I wonder if those two are truly mine. My third wife was a Crakehall, all of the Crakehall women are sluts. Well, never mind about that, she died before you were born, what do you care?