It seemed a thousand years ago that Catelyn Stark had carried her infant son out of Riverrun, crossingthe Tumblestone in a small boat to begin their journey north to Winterfell. And it was across theTumblestone that they came home now, though the boy wore plate and mail in place of swaddlingclothes.

Robb sat in the bow with Grey Wind, his hand resting on his direwolf’s head as the rowers pulledat their oars. Theon Greyjoy was with him. Her uncle Brynden would come behind in the second boat,with the Greatjon and Lord Karstark.

Catelyn took a place toward the stern. They shot down the Tumblestone, letting the strong currentpush them past the looming Wheel Tower. The splash and rumble of the great waterwheel within wasa sound from her girlhood that brought a sad smile to Catelyn’s face. From the sandstone walls of thecastle, soldiers and servants shouted down her name, and Robb’s, and “Winterfell!” From everyrampart waved the banner of House Tully: a leaping trout, silver, against a rippling blue-and-red field.

It was a stirring sight, yet it did not lift her heart. She wondered if indeed her heart would ever liftagain. Oh, Ned …Below the Wheel Tower, they made a wide turn and knifed through the churning water. The menput their backs into it. The wide arch of the Water Gate came into view, and she heard the creak ofheavy chains as the great iron portcullis was winched upward. It rose slowly as they approached, andCatelyn saw that the lower half of it was red with rust. The bottom foot dripped brown mud on themas they passed underneath, the barbed spikes mere inches above their heads. Catelyn gazed up at thebars and wondered how deep the rust went and how well the portcullis would stand up to a ram andwhether it ought to be replaced. Thoughts like that were seldom far from her mind these days.

They passed beneath the arch and under the walls, moving from sunlight to shadow and back intosunlight. Boats large and small were tied up all around them, secured to iron rings set in the stone.

Her father’s guards waited on the water stair with her brother. Ser Edmure Tully was a stocky youngman with a shaggy head of auburn hair and a fiery beard. His breastplate was scratched and dentedfrom battle, his blue-and-red cloak stained by blood and smoke. At his side stood the Lord TytosBlackwood, a hard pike of a man with close-cropped salt-and-pepper whiskers and a hook nose. Hisbright yellow armor was inlaid with jet in elaborate vine-and-leaf patterns, and a cloak sewn fromraven feathers draped his thin shoulders. It had been Lord Tytos who led the sortie that plucked herbrother from the Lannister camp.

“Bring them in,” Ser Edmure commanded. Three men scrambled down the stairs knee-deep in thewater and pulled the boat close with long hooks. When Grey Wind bounded out, one of them droppedhis pole and lurched back, stumbling and sitting down abruptly in the river. The others laughed, andthe man got a sheepish look on his face. Theon Greyjoy vaulted over the side of the boat and liftedCatelyn by the waist, setting her on a dry step above him as water lapped around his boots.

Edmure came down the steps to embrace her. “Sweet sister,” he murmured hoarsely. He had deepblue eyes and a mouth made for smiles, but he was not smiling now. He looked worn and tired,battered by battle and haggard from strain. His neck was bandaged where he had taken a wound.

Catelyn hugged him fiercely.

“Your grief is mine, Cat,” he said when they broke apart. “When we heard about LordEddard … the Lannisters will pay, I swear it, you will have your vengeance.”

“Will that bring Ned back to me?” she said sharply. The wound was still too fresh for softerwords. She could not think about Ned now. She would not. It would not do. She had to be strong. “Allthat will keep. I must see Father.”

rwords. She could not think about Ned now. She would not. It would not do. She had to be strong. “Allthat will keep. I must see Father.”

“He awaits you in his solar,” Edmure said.

“Lord Hoster is bedridden, my lady,” her father’s steward explained. When had that good mangrown so old and grey? “He instructed me to bring you to him at once.”

“I’ll take her.” Edmure escorted her up the water stair and across the lower bailey, where PetyrBaelish and Brandon Stark had once crossed swords for her favor. The massive sandstone walls of thekeep loomed above them. As they pushed through a door between two guardsmen in fish-crest helms,she asked, “How bad is he?” dreading the answer even as she said the words.

Edmure’s look was somber. “He will not be with us long, the maesters say. The pain is … constant,and grievous.”

A blind rage filled her, a rage at all the world; at her brother Edmure and her sister Lysa, at theLannisters, at the maesters, at Ned and her father and the monstrous gods who would take them bothaway from her. “You should have told me,” she said. “You should have sent word as soon as youknew.”

“He forbade it. He did not want his enemies to know that he was dying. With the realm sotroubled, he feared that if the Lannisters suspected how frail he was …”

“…they might attack?” Catelyn finished, hard. It was your doing, yours, a voice whispered insideher. If you had not taken it upon yourself to seize the dwarf …They climbed the spiral stair in silence.

The keep was three-sided, like Riverrun itself, and Lord Hoster’s solar was triangular as well, witha stone balcony that jutted out to the east like the prow of some great sandstone ship. From there thelord of the castle could look down on his walls and battlements, and beyond, to where the waters met.

They had moved her father’s bed out onto the balcony. “He likes to sit in the sun and watch therivers,” Edmure explained. “Father, see who I’ve brought. Cat has come to see you …”

Hoster Tully had always been a big man; tall and broad in his youth, portly as he grew older. Nowhe seemed shrunken, the muscle and meat melted off his bones. Even his face sagged. The last timeCatelyn had seen him, his hair and beard had been brown, well streaked with grey. Now they hadgone white as snow.

His eyes opened to the sound of Edmure’s voice. “Little cat,” he murmured in a voice thin andwispy and wracked by pain. “My little cat.” A tremulous smile touched his face as his hand gropedfor hers. “I watched for you …”

“I shall leave you to talk,” her brother said, kissing their lord father gently on the brow before hewithdrew.

Catelyn knelt and took her father’s hand in hers. It was a big hand, but fleshless now, the bonesmoving loosely under the skin, all the strength gone from it. “You should have told me,” she said. “Arider, a raven …”

“Riders are taken, questioned,” he answered. “Ravens are brought down …” A spasm of pain tookhim, and his fingers clutched hers hard. “The crabs are in my belly … pinching, always pinching. Dayand night. They have fierce claws, the crabs. Maester Vyman makes me dreamwine, milk of thepoppy … I sleep a lot … but I wanted to be awake to see you, when you came. I was afraid … whenthe Lannisters took your brother, the camps all around us … I was afraid I would go, before I couldsee you again … I was afraid …”

“I’m here, Father,” she said. “With Robb, my son. He’ll want to see you too.”

“Your boy,” he whispered. “He had my eyes, I remember …”

“He did, and does. And we’ve brought you Jaime Lannister, in irons. Riverrun is free again,Father.”

Lord Hoster smiled. “I saw. Last night, when it began, I told them … had to see. They carried me tothe gatehouse … watched from the battlements. Ah, that was beautiful … the torches came in a wave,I could hear the cries floating across the river … sweet cries … when that siege tower went up,gods … would have died then, and glad, if only I could have seen you children first. Was it your boywho did it? Was it your Robb?”

“Yes,” Catelyn said, fiercely proud. “It was Robb … and Brynden. Your brother is here as well,my lord.”

“Him.” Her father’s voice was a faint whisper. “The Blackfish … came back? From the Vale?” r’s voice was a faint whisper. “The Blackfish … came back? From the Vale?”

“Yes.”

“And Lysa?” A cool wind moved through his thin white hair. “Gods be good, your sister … didshe come as well?”

He sounded so full of hope and yearning that it was hard to tell the truth. “No. I’m sorry …”

“Oh.” His face fell, and some light went out of his eyes. “I’d hoped … I would have liked to seeher, before …”

“She’s with her son, in the Eyrie.”

Lord Hoster gave a weary nod. “Lord Robert now, poor Arryn’s gone … I remember … why didshe not come with you?”

“She is frightened, my lord. In the Eyrie she feels safe.” She kissed his wrinkled brow. “Robb willbe waiting. Will you see him? And Brynden?”

“Your son,” he whispered. “Yes. Cat’s child … he had my eyes, I remember. When he was born.

Bring him … yes.”

“And your brother?”

Her father glanced out over the rivers. “Blackfish,” he said. “Has he wed yet? Taken some … girlto wife?”

Even on his deathbed, Catelyn thought sadly. “He has not wed. You know that, Father. Nor will heever.”

“I told him … commanded him. Marry! I was his lord. He knows. My right, to make his match. Agood match. A Redwyne. Old House. Sweet girl, pretty … freckles … Bethany, yes. Poor child. Stillwaiting. Yes. Still …”

“Bethany Redwyne wed Lord Rowan years ago,” Catelyn reminded him. “She has three childrenby him.”

“Even so,” Lord Hoster muttered. “Even so. Spit on the girl. The Redwynes. Spit on me. His lord,his brother … that Blackfish. I had other offers. Lord Bracken’s girl. Walder Frey … any of three, hesaid … Has he wed? Anyone? Anyone?”

“No one,” Catelyn said, “yet he has come many leagues to see you, fighting his way back toRiverrun. I would not be here now, if Ser Brynden had not helped us.”

“He was ever a warrior,” her father husked. “That he could do. Knight of the Gate, yes.” Heleaned back and closed his eyes, inutterably weary. “Send him. Later. I’ll sleep now. Too sick to fight.

Send him up later, the Blackfish …”

Catelyn kissed him gently, smoothed his hair, and left him there in the shade of his keep, with hisrivers flowing beneath. He was asleep before she left the solar.

When she returned to the lower bailey, Ser Brynden Tully stood on the water stairs with wet boots,talking with the captain of Riverrun’s guards. He came to her at once. “Is he—?”

“Dying,” she said. “As we feared.”

Her uncle’s craggy face showed his pain plain. He ran his fingers through his thick grey hair. “Willhe see me?”

She nodded. “He says he is too sick to fight.”

Brynden Blackfish chuckled. “I am too old a soldier to believe that. Hoster will be chiding meabout the Redwyne girl even as we light his funeral pyre, damn his bones.”

Catelyn smiled, knowing it was true. “I do not see Robb.”

“He went with Greyjoy to the hall, I believe.”

Theon Greyjoy was seated on a bench in Riverrun’s Great Hall, enjoying a horn of ale and regalingher father’s garrison with an account of the slaughter in the Whispering Wood. “Some tried to flee,but we’d pinched the valley shut at both ends, and we rode out of the darkness with sword and lance.

The Lannisters must have thought the Others themselves were on them when that wolf of Robb’s gotin among them. I saw him tear one man’s arm from his shoulder, and their horses went mad at thescent of him. I couldn’t tell you how many men were thrown—”

“Theon,” she interrupted, “where might I find my son?”

“Lord Robb went to visit the godswood, my lady.”

It was what Ned would have done. He is his father’s son as much as mine, I must remember. Oh,gods, Ned …She found Robb beneath the green canopy of leaves, surrounded by tall redwoods and great oldelms, kneeling before the heart tree, a slender weirwood with a face more sad than fierce. Hislongsword was before him, the point thrust in the earth, his gloved hands clasped around the hilt.

Around him others knelt: Greatjon Umber, Rickard Karstark, Maege Mormont, Galbart Glover, andmore. Even Tytos Blackwood was among them, the great raven cloak fanned out behind him. Theseare the ones who keep the old gods, she realized. She asked herself what gods she kept these days,and could not find an answer.

delms, kneeling before the heart tree, a slender weirwood with a face more sad than fierce. Hislongsword was before him, the point thrust in the earth, his gloved hands clasped around the hilt.

Around him others knelt: Greatjon Umber, Rickard Karstark, Maege Mormont, Galbart Glover, andmore. Even Tytos Blackwood was among them, the great raven cloak fanned out behind him. Theseare the ones who keep the old gods, she realized. She asked herself what gods she kept these days,and could not find an answer.

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