It was too far to make out the banners clearly, but even through the drifting fog she could see thatthey were white, with a dark smudge in their center that could only be the direwolf of Stark, greyupon its icy field. When she saw it with her own eyes, Catelyn reined up her horse and bowed herhead in thanks. The gods were good. She was not too late.

“They await our coming, my lady,” Ser Wylis Manderly said, “as my lord father swore theywould.”

“Let us not keep them waiting any longer, ser.” Ser Brynden Tully put the spurs to his horse andtrotted briskly toward the banners. Catelyn rode beside him.

Ser Wylis and his brother Ser Wendel followed, leading their levies, near fifteen hundred men:

some twenty-odd knights and as many squires, two hundred mounted lances, swordsmen, andfreeriders, and the rest foot, armed with spears, pikes and tridents. Lord Wyman had remained behindto see to the defenses of White Harbor. A man of near sixty years, he had grown too stout to sit ahorse. “If I had thought to see war again in my lifetime, I should have eaten a few less eels,” he’d toldCatelyn when he met her ship, slapping his massive belly with both hands. His fingers were fat assausages. “My boys will see you safe to your son, though, have no fear.”

His “boys” were both older than Catelyn, and she might have wished that they did not take aftertheir father quite so closely. Ser Wylis was only a few eels short of not being able to mount his ownhorse; she pitied the poor animal. Ser Wendel, the younger boy, would have been the fattest manshe’d ever known, had she only neglected to meet his father and brother. Wylis was quiet and formal,Wendel loud and boisterous; both had ostentatious walrus mustaches and heads as bare as a baby’sbottom; neither seemed to own a single garment that was not spotted with food stains. Yet she likedthem well enough; they had gotten her to Robb, as their father had vowed, and nothing else mattered.

She was pleased to see that her son had sent eyes out, even to the east. The Lannisters would comefrom the south when they came, but it was good that Robb was being careful. My son is leading a hostto war, she thought, still only half believing it. She was desperately afraid for him, and for Winterfell,yet she could not deny feeling a certain pride as well. A year ago he had been a boy. What was henow? she wondered.

Outriders spied the Manderly banners—the white merman with trident in hand, rising from a blue-green sea—and hailed them warmly. They were led to a spot of high ground dry enough for a camp.

Ser Wylis called a halt there, and remained behind with his men to see the fires laid and the horsestended, while his brother Wendel rode on with Catelyn and her uncle to present their father’s respectsto their liege lord.

The ground under their horses’ hooves was soft and wet. It fell away slowly beneath them as theyrode past smoky peat fires, lines of horses, and wagons heavy-laden with hardbread and salt beef. Ona stony outcrop of land higher than the surrounding country, they passed a lord’s pavilion with wallsof heavy sailcloth. Catelyn recognized the banner, the bull moose of the Hornwoods, brown on itsdark orange field.

Just beyond, through the mists, she glimpsed the walls and towers of Moat Cailin … or whatremained of them. Immense blocks of black basalt, each as large as a crofter’s cottage, lay scatteredand tumbled like a child’s wooden blocks, half-sunk in the soft boggy soil. Nothing else remained of acurtain wall that had once stood as high as Winterfell’s. The wooden keep was gone entirely, rottedaway a thousand years past, with not so much as a timber to mark where it had stood. All that wasleft of the great stronghold of the First Men were three towers … three where there had once beentwenty, if the taletellers could be believed.

The Gatehouse Tower looked sound enough, and even boasted a few feet of standing wall to eitherside of it. The Drunkard’s Tower, off in the bog where the south and west walls had once met, leanedlike a man about to spew a bellyful of wine into the gutter. And the tall, slender Children’s Tower,where legend said the children of the forest had once called upon their nameless gods to send thehammer of the waters, had lost half its crown. It looked as if some great beast had taken a bite out ofthe crenellations along the tower top, and spit the rubble across the bog. All three towers were greenwith moss. A tree was growing out between the stones on the north side of the Gatehouse Tower, itsgnarled limbs festooned with ropy white blankets of ghostskin.

“Gods have mercy,” Ser Brynden exclaimed when he saw what lay before them. “This is MoatCailin? It’s no more than a—”

“—death trap,” Catelyn finished. “I know how it looks, Uncle. I thought the same the first time Isaw it, but Ned assured me that this ruin is more formidable than it seems. The three surviving towerscommand the causeway from all sides, and any enemy must pass between them. The bogs here areimpenetrable, full of quicksands and suckholes and teeming with snakes. To assault any of the towers,an army would need to wade through waist-deep black muck, cross a moat full of lizard-lions, andscale walls slimy with moss, all the while exposing themselves to fire from archers in the othertowers.” She gave her uncle a grim smile. “And when night falls, there are said to be ghosts, coldvengeful spirits of the north who hunger for southron blood.”

Ser Brynden chuckled. “Remind me not to linger here. Last I looked, I was southron myself.”

Standards had been raised atop all three towers. The Karstark sunburst hung from the Drunkard’sTower, beneath the direwolf; on the Children’s Tower it was the Greatjon’s giant in shattered chains.

But on the Gatehouse Tower, the Stark banner flew alone. That was where Robb had made his seat.

Catelyn made for it, with Ser Brynden and Ser Wendel behind her, their horses stepping slowly downthe log-and-plank road that had been laid across the green-and-black fields of mud.

She found her son surrounded by his father’s lords bannermen, in a drafty hall with a peat firesmoking in a black hearth. He was seated at a massive stone table, a pile of maps and papers in frontof him, talking intently with Roose Bolton and the Greatjon. At first he did not notice her … but hiswolf did. The great grey beast was lying near the fire, but when Catelyn entered he lifted his head,and his golden eyes met hers. The lords fell silent one by one, and Robb looked up at the sudden quietand saw her. “Mother!” he said, his voice thick with emotion.

Catelyn wanted to run to him, to kiss his sweet brow, to wrap him in her arms and hold him sotightly that he would never come to harm … but here in front of his lords, she dared not. He wasplaying a man’s part now, and she would not take that away from him. So she held herself at the farend of the basalt slab they were using for a table. The direwolf got to his feet and padded across theroom to where she stood. It seemed bigger than a wolf ought to be. “You’ve grown a beard,” she saidto Robb, while Grey Wind sniffed her hand.

He rubbed his stubbled jaw, suddenly awkward. “Yes.” His chin hairs were redder than the ones onhis head.

“I like it.” Catelyn stroked the wolf’s head, gently. “It makes you look like my brother Edmure.”

Grey Wind nipped at her fingers, playful, and trotted back to his place by the fire.

Ser Helman Tallhart was the first to follow the direwolf across the room to pay his respects,kneeling before her and pressing his brow to her hand. “Lady Catelyn,” he said, “you are fair as ever,a welcome sight in troubled times.” The Glovers followed, Galbart and Robett, and Greatjon Umber,and the rest, one by one. Theon Greyjoy was the last. “I had not looked to see you here, my lady,” hesaid as he knelt.

“I had not thought to be here,” Catelyn said, “until I came ashore at White Harbor, and LordWyman told me that Robb had called the banners. You know his son, Ser Wendel,” Wendel Manderlystepped forward and bowed as low as his girth would allow. “And my uncle, Ser Brynden Tully, whohas left my sister’s service for mine.”

“The Blackfish,” Robb said. “Thank you for joining us, ser. We need men of your courage. Andyou, Ser Wendel, I am glad to have you here. Is Ser Rodrik with you as well, Mother? I’ve missedhim.”

“Ser Rodrik is on his way north from White Harbor. I have named him castellan and commandedhim to hold Winterfell till our return. Maester Luwin is a wise counsellor, but unskilled in the arts ofwar.”

dhim to hold Winterfell till our return. Maester Luwin is a wise counsellor, but unskilled in the arts ofwar.”

“Have no fear on that count, Lady Stark,” the Greatjon told her in his bass rumble. “Winterfell issafe. We’ll shove our swords up Tywin Lannister’s bunghole soon enough, begging your pardons, andthen it’s on to the Red Keep to free Ned.”

“My lady, a question, as it please you.” Roose Bolton, Lord of the Dreadfort, had a small voice,yet when he spoke larger men quieted to listen. His eyes were curiously pale, almost without color,and his look disturbing. “It is said that you hold Lord Tywin’s dwarf son as captive. Have youbrought him to us? I vow, we should make good use of such a hostage.”

“I did hold Tyrion Lannister, but no longer,” Catelyn was forced to admit. A chorus ofconsternation greeted the news. “I was no more pleased than you, my lords. The gods saw fit to freehim, with some help from my fool of a sister.” She ought not to be so open in her contempt, she knew,but her parting from the Eyrie had not been pleasant. She had offered to take Lord Robert with her, tofoster him at Winterfell for a few years. The company of other boys would do him good, she haddared to suggest. Lysa’s rage had been frightening to behold. “Sister or no,” she had replied, “if youtry to steal my son, you will leave by the Moon Door.” After that there was no more to be said.

The lords were anxious to question her further, but Catelyn raised a hand. “No doubt we will havetime for all this later, but my journey has fatigued me. I would speak with my son alone. I know youwill forgive me, my lords.” She gave them no choice; led by the ever-obliging Lord Hornwood, thebannermen bowed and took their leave. “And you, Theon,” she added when Greyjoy lingered. Hesmiled and left them.

There was ale and cheese on the table. Catelyn filled a horn, sat, sipped, and studied her son. Heseemed taller than when she’d left, and the wisps of beard did make him look older. “Edmure wassixteen when he grew his first whiskers.”

“I will be sixteen soon enough,” Robb said.

“And you are fifteen now. Fifteen, and leading a host to battle. Can you understand why I mightfear, Robb?”

His look grew stubborn. “There was no one else.”

“No one?” she said. “Pray, who were those men I saw here a moment ago? Roose Bolton, RickardKarstark, Galbart and Robett Glover, the Greatjon, Helman Tallhart … you might have given thecommand to any of them. Gods be good, you might even have sent Theon, though he would not bemy choice.”

“They are not Starks,” he said.

“They are men, Robb, seasoned in battle. You were fighting with wooden swords less than a yearpast.”

She saw anger in his eyes at that, but it was gone as quick as it came, and suddenly he was a boyagain. “I know,” he said, abashed. “Are you … are you sending me back to Winterfell?”

Catelyn sighed. “I should. You ought never have left. Yet I dare not, not now. You have come toofar. Someday these lords will look to you as their liege. If I pack you off now, like a child being sentto bed without his supper, they will remember, and laugh about it in their cups. The day will comewhen you need them to respect you, even fear you a little. Laughter is poison to fear. I will not do thatto you, much as I might wish to keep you safe.”

“You have my thanks, Mother,” he said, his relief obvious beneath the formality.

She reached across his table and touched his hair. “You are my firstborn, Robb. I have only to lookat you to remember the day you came into the world, red-faced and squalling.”

He rose, clearly uncomfortable with her touch, and walked to the hearth. Grey Wind rubbed hishead against his leg. “You know … ab............