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"I had hopedif you still held the Ies" He took Sansa’s letter and crumpled it in his fist, and she could tell from the way he did it that it was not the first time "Is there word fro help Has she called Lord Arryn’s banners, do you know? Will the knights of the Vale come join us?"

"Only one," she said, "the best of them, my unclebut Brynden Blackfish was a Tully first My sister is not about to stir beyond her Bloody Gate"

Robb took it hard "Mother, what are we going to do? I brought this whole arhteen thousand men, but I don’tI’, the proud young lord ain, a fifteen-year-old boy looking to his mother for answers

It would not do

"What are you so afraid of, Robb?" she asked gently

"I" He turned his head away, to hide the first tear "If we marcheven if inthe Lannisters hold Sansa, and Father They’ll kill them, won’t they?"

"They want us to think so"

"You ?"

"I do not know, Robb What I do know is that you have no choice If you go to King’s Landing and swear fealty, you will never be allowed to leave If you turn your tail and retreat to Winterfell, your lords will lose all respect for you Soo over to the Lannisters Then the queen, with that much less to fear, can do as she likes with her prisoners Our best hope, our only true hope, is that you can defeat the foe in the field If you should chance to take Lord Tywin or the Kingslayer captive, why then a trade ht very well be possible, but that is not the heart of it So long as you have power enough that they must fear you, Ned and your sister should be safe Cersei is wise enough to know that she ainst her"

"What if the fighting doesn’t go against her?" Robb asked "What if it goes against us?"

Catelyn took his hand "Robb, I will not soften the truth for you If you lose, there is no hope for any of us They say there is naught but stone at the heart of Casterly Rock Rear’s children"

She saw the fear in his young eyes then, but there was a strength as well "Then I will not lose," he vowed

"Tellin the riverlands," she said She had to learn if he was truly ready

"Less than a fortnight past, they fought a battle in the hills below the Golden Tooth," Robb said "Uncle Edmure had sent Lord Vance and Lord Piper to hold the pass, but the Kingslayer descended on theht Lord Vance was slain The last e had was that Lord Piper was falling back to join your brother and his other bannermen at Riverrun, with Jaime Lannister on his heels That’s not the worst of it, though All the ti a second Lannister arer than Jaime’s host

"Father must have known that, because he sent out soave the co, Lord Erik or Derik or so like that, but Ser Raymun Darry rode with hihts as well, and a force of Father’s own guardsmen Only it was a trap Lord Derik had no sooner crossed the Red Fork than the Lannisters fell upon hiane took them in the rear as they tried to pull back across the Mummer’s Ford This Lord Derik and a few others may have escaped, no one is certain, but Ser Raymun was killed, and most of our sroad, it’s said, and now he’s oes"

Griht Catelyn It orse than she’d iined "You mean to meet him here?" she asked

"If he comes so far, but no one thinks he will," Robb said "I’ve sent word to Howland Reed, Father’s old friend at Greywater Watch If the Lannisters comen will bleed them every step of the way, but Galbart Glover says Lord Tywin is too srees He’ll stay close to the Trident, they believe, taking the castles of the river lords one by one, until Riverrun stands alone We need to march south to meet him"

The very idea of it chilled Catelyn to the bone What chance would a fifteen-year-old boy have against seasoned battle commanders like Jaily placed here It’s said that the old Kings in the North could stand at Moat Cailin and throw back hosts ten times the size of their own"

"Yes, but our food and supplies are running low, and this is not land we can live off easily We’ve been waiting for Lord Manderly, but now that his sons have joined us, we need tothe lords banner with her son’s voice, she realized Over the years, she had hosted many of them at Winterfell, and been welcomed with Ned to their own hearths and tables She knehat sorts of men they were, each one She wondered if Robb did

And yet there was sense in what they said This host her son had asse army such as the Free Cities were accustouardsmen paid in coin Most of them were smallfolk: crofters, fieldhands, fishermen, sheepherders, the sons of innkeeps and traders and tanners, leavened with a sry for plunder When their lords called, they ca is all very well," she said to her son, "but where, and to what purpose? What do you mean to do?"

Robb hesitated "The Greatjon thinks we should take the battle to Lord Tywin and surprise him," he said, "but the Glovers and the Karstarks feel we’d be wiser to go around his arslayer" He ran his fingers through his shaggy h by the time we reach RiverrunI’m not certain"

"Be certain," Catelyn told her son, "or go hoain You cannot afford to seem indecisive in front of men like Roose Bolton and Rickard Karstark Make no mistake, Robb--these are your bannermen, not your friends You named yourself battle commander Command"

Her son looked at her, startled, as if he could not credit what he was hearing "As you say, Mother"

"I’ll ask you again What do you mean to do?"

Robb drew a ed piece of old leather covered with lines of faded paint One end curled up froer "Both plans have virtues, butlook, if we try to swing around Lord Tywin’s host, we take the risk of being caught between hislayer, and if we attack himby all reports, he has more men than I do, and a lot more armored horse The Greatjon says that won’t matter if we catch him with his breeches down, but it seeht as many battles as Tywin Lannister won’t be so easily surprised"

"Good," she said She could hear echoes of Ned in his voice, as he sat there, puzzling over the map "Tell me more"

"I’d leave a small force here to hold Moat Cailin, archers mostly, and march the rest down the causeway," he said, "but once we’re below the Neck, I’d split our host in two The foot can continue down the kingsroad, while our horsemen cross the Green Fork at the Twins" He pointed "When Lord Tywin gets word that we’ve coe ourour riders free to hurry down the west bank to Riverrun" Robb sat back, not quite daring to sry for her praise

Catelyn frowned down at the map "You’d put a river between the two parts of your army"

"And between Jaierly The s on the Green Fork above the ruby ford, where Robert won his crown Not until the Twins, all the way up here, and Lord Frey controls that bridge He’s your father’s bannerman, isn’t that so?"

The Late Lord Frey, Catelyn thought "He is," she admitted, "but my father has never trusted him Nor should you"

"I won’t," Robb promised "What do you think?"

She was iht, yet he’s still his father’s son, and Ned taught him well "Which force would you coain like his father; Ned would always take the erous task himself

"And the other?"

"The Greatjon is always saying that we should sive him the honor"

It was his first ling confidence? "Your father once told me that the Greatjon was as fearless as any rinned "Grey Wind ate two of his fingers, and he laughed about it So you agree, then?"

"Your father is not fearless," Catelyn pointed out "He is brave, but that is very different"

Her son considered that for a moment "The eastern host will be all that stands between Lord Tywin and Winterfell," he said thoughtfully "Well, them and whatever femen I leave here at the Moat So I don’t want so, I should think, not courage"

"Roose Bolton," Robb said at once "That man scares me"

"Then let us pray he will scare Tywin Lannister as well"

Robb nodded and rolled up the ive the commands, and assemble an escort to take you hoht to keep herself strong, for Ned’s sake and for this stubborn brave son of theirs She had put despair and fear aside, as if they were garments she did not choose to wearbut now she saw that she had donned the to Winterfell," she heard herself say, surprised at the sudden rush of tears that blurred her vision "My fatherbehind the walls of Riverrun My brother is surrounded by foes I o to them"