Robb stood. “I will not grudge him that. If I’m King in the North, let him be King of the Iron Islands, if that’s his desire. I’ll give him a crown gladly, so long as he helps us bring down the Lannisters.”  “Robb-”  “I’m sending Theon. Good day, Mother. Grey Wind, come.” Robb walked off briskly, the direwolf padding beside him.  Catelyn could only watch him go. Her son and now her king. How queer that felt. Command, she had told him back in Moat Cailin. And so he did. “I am going to visit Father,” she announced abruptly. “Come with me, Edmure.”  “I need to have a word with those new bowmen Ser Desmond is training. I’ll visit him later.”  If he still lives, Catelyn thought, but she said nothing. Her brother would sooner face battle than that sickroom.  The shortest way to the central keep where her father lay dying was through the godswood, with its grass and wildflowers and thick stands of elm and redwood. A wealth of rustling leaves still clung to the branches of the trees, all ignorant of the word the white raven had brought to Riverrun a fortnight past. Autumn had come, the Conclave had declared, but the gods had not seen fit to tell the winds and woods as yet. For that Catelyn was duly grateful. Autumn was always a fearful time, with the specter of winter looming ahead. Even the wisest man never knew whether his next harvest would be the last.  Hoster Tully, Lord of Riverrun, lay abed in his solar, with its commanding view to the east where the rivers Tumblestone and Red Fork met beyond the walls of his castle. He was sleeping when Catelyn entered, his hair and beard as white as his featherbed, his once portly frame turned small and frail by the death that grew within him.  Beside the bed, still dressed in mail hauberk and travel-stained cloak, sat her father’s brother, the Blackfish. His boots were dusty and spattered with dried mud. “Does Robb know you are returned, Uncle?” Ser Brynden Tully was Robb’s eyes and ears, the commander of his scouts and outriders.  “No. I came here straight from the stables, when they told me the king was holding court. His Grace will want to hear my tidings in private first I’d think.” The Blackfish was a tall, lean man, grey of hair and precise in his movements, his clean-shaven face lined and windburnt. “How is he?” he asked, and she knew he did not mean Robb.  “Much the same. The maester gives him dreamwine and milk of the poppy for his pain, so he sleeps most of the time, and eats too little. He seems weaker with each day that passes.”   “Does he speak?”  “Yes... but there is less and less sense to the things he says. He talks of his regrets, of unfinished tasks, of people long dead and times long past. Sometimes he does not know what season it is, or who I am. Once he called me by Mother’s name.”  “He misses her still,” Ser Brynden answered. “You have her face. I can see it in your cheekbones, and your jaw...”  “You remember more of her than I do. It has been a long time.” She seated herself on the bed and brushed away a strand of fine white hair that had fallen across her father’s face.  “Each time I ride out, I wonder if I shall find him alive or dead on my return.” Despite their quarrels, there was a deep bond between her father and the brother he had once disowned.  “At least you made your peace with him.”  They sat for a time............