A Clash of Kings Read online

  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 in silence, until Catelyn raised her head. “You spoke of tidings that Robb needed to hear?” Lord Hoster moaned and rolled onto his side, almost as if he had heard.

  Brynden stood. “Come outside. Best if we do not wake him.”

  She followed him out onto the stone balcony that jutted three-sided from the solar like the prow of a ship. Her uncle glanced up, frowning. “You can see it by day now. My men call it the Red Messenger… but what is the message?”

  Catelyn raised her eyes, to where the faint red line of the comet traced a path across the deep blue sky like a long scratch across the face of god. “The Greatjon told Robb that the old gods have unfurled a red flag of vengeance for Ned. Edmure thinks it’s an omen of victory for Riverrun — he sees a fish with a long tail, in the Tully colors, red against blue.” She sighed. “I wish I had their faith. Crimson is a Lannister color.”

  “That thing’s not crimson,” Ser Brynden said. “Nor Tully red, the mud red of the river. That’s blood up there, child, smeared across the sky.”

  “Our blood or theirs?”

  “Was there ever a war where only one side bled?” Her uncle gave a shake of the head. “The riverlands are awash in blood and flame all around the Gods Eye. The fighting has spread south to the Blackwater and north across the Trident, almost to the Twins. Marq Piper and Karyl Vance have won some small victories, and this southron lordling Beric Dondarrion has been raiding the raiders, falling upon Lord Tywin’s foraging parties and vanishing back into the woods. It’s said that Ser Burton Crakehall was boasting that he’d slain Dondarrion, until he led his column into one of Lord Beric’s traps and got every man of them killed.”

  “Some of Ned’s guard from King’s Landing are with this Lord Beric,” Catelyn recalled. “May the gods preserve them.”

  “Dondarrion and this red priest who rides with him are clever enough to preserve themselves, if the tales be true,” her uncle said, “but your father’s bannermen make a sadder tale. Robb should never have let them go. They’ve scattered like quail, each man trying to protect his own, and it’s folly, Cat, folly. Jonos Bracken was wounded in the fighting amidst the ruins of his castle, and his nephew Hendry slain. Tytos Blackwood’s swept the Lannisters off his lands, but they took every cow and pig and speck of grain and left him nothing to defend but Raventree Hall and a scorched desert. Darry men recaptured their lord’s keep but held it less than a fortnight before Gregor Clegane descended on them and put the whole garrison to the sword, even their lord.”

  Catelyn was horrorstruck. “Darry was only a child.”

  “Aye, and the last of his line as well. The boy would have brought a fine ransom, but what does gold mean to a frothing dog like Gregor Clegane? That beast’s head would make a noble gift for all the people of the realm, I vow.”

  Catelyn knew Ser Gregor’s evil reputation, yet still… “Don’t speak to me of heads, Uncle. Cersei has mounted Ned’s on a spike above the walls of the Red Keep, and left it for the crows and flies.” Even now, it was hard for her to believe that he was truly gone. Some nights she would wake in darkness, half-asleep, and for an instant expect to find him there beside her. “Clegane is no more than Lord Tywin’s catspaw.” For Tywin Lannister — Lord of Casterly Rock, Warden of the West, father to Queen Cersei, Ser Jaime the Kingslayer, and Tyrion the Imp, and grandfather to Joffrey Baratheon, the new-crowned boy king — was the true danger, Catelyn believed.

  “True enough,” Ser Brynden admitted. “And Tywin Lannister is no man’s fool. He sits safe behind the walls of Harrenhal, feeding his host on our harvest and burning what he does not take. Gregor is not the only dog he’s loosed. Ser Amory Lorch is in the field as well, and some sellsword out of Qohor who’d sooner maim a man than kill him. I’ve seen what they leave behind them. Whole villages put to the torch, women raped and mutilated, butchered children left unburied to draw wolves and wild dogs… it would sicken even the dead.”

  “When Edmure hears this, he will rage.”

  “And that will be just as Lord Tywin desires. Even terror has its purpose, Cat. Lannister wants to provoke us to battle.”

  “Robb is like to give him that wish,” Catelyn said, fretful. “He is restless as a cat sitting here, and Edmure and the Greatjon and the others will urge him on.” Her son had won two great victories, smashing Jaime Lannister in the Whispering Wood and routing his leaderless host outside the walls of Riverrun in the Battle of the Camps, but from the way some of his bannermen spoke of him, he might have been Aegon the Conqueror reborn.

  Brynden Blackfish arched a bushy grey eyebrow. “More fool they. My first rule of war, Cat—never give the enemy his wish. Lord Tywin would like to fight on a field of his own choosing. He wants us to march on Harrenhal.”

  “Harrenhal.” Every child of the Trident knew the tales told of Harrenhal, the v
ast fortress that King Harren the Black had raised beside the waters of Gods Eye three hundred years past, when the Seven Kingdoms had been seven kingdoms, and the riverlands were ruled by the ironmen from the islands. In his pride, Harren had desired the highest hall and tallest towers in all Westeros. Forty years it had taken, rising like a great shadow on the shore of the lake while Harren’s armies plundered his neighbors for stone, lumber, gold, and workers. Thousands of captives died in his quarries, chained to his sledges, or laboring on his five colossal towers. Men froze by winter and sweltered in summer. Weirwoods that had stood three thousand years were cut down for beams and rafters. Harren had beggared the riverlands and the Iron Islands alike to ornament his dream. And when at last Harrenhal stood complete, on the very day King Harren took up residence, Aegon the Conqueror had come ashore at King’s Landing.

  Catelyn could remember hearing Old Nan tell the story to her own children, back at Winterfell. “And King Harren learned that thick walls and high towers are small use against dragons,” the tale always ended. “For dragons fly.” Harren and all his line had perished in the fires that engulfed his monstrous fortress, and every house that held Harrenhal since had come to misfortune. Strong it might be, but it was a dark place, and cursed.

  “I would not have Robb fight a battle in the shadow of that keep,” Catelyn admitted. “Yet we must do something, Uncle.”

  “And soon,” her uncle agreed. “I have not told you the worst of it, child. The men I sent west have brought back word that a new host is gathering at Casterly Rock.”

  Another Lannister army. The thought made her ill. “Robb must be told at once. Who will command?”

  “Ser Stafford Lannister, it’s said.” He turned to gaze out over the rivers, his red-and-blue cloak stirring in the breeze.

  “Another nephew?” The Lannisters of Casterly Rock were a damnably large and fertile house.

  “Cousin,” Ser Brynden corrected. “Brother to Lord Tywin’s late wife, so twice related. An old man and a bit of a dullard, but he has a son, Ser Daven, who is more formidable.”

  “Then let us hope it is the father and not the son who takes this army into the field.”

  “We have some time yet before we must face them. This lot will be sellswords, freeriders, and green boys from the stews of Lannisport. Ser Stafford must see that they are armed and drilled before he dare risk battle… and make no mistake, Lord Tywin is not the Kingslayer. He will not rush in heedless. He will wait patiently for Ser Stafford to march before he stirs from behind the walls of Harrenhal.”

  “Unless…” said Catelyn.

  “Yes?” Ser Brynden prompted.

  “Unless he must leave Harrenhal,” she said, “to face some other threat.”

  Her uncle looked at her thoughtfully. “Lord Renly.”

  “King Renly.” If she would ask help from the man, she would need to grant him the style he had claimed for himself.

  “Perhaps.” The Blackfish smiled a dangerous smile. “He’ll want something, though.”

  “He’ll want what kings always want,” she said. “Homage.”

  TYRION

  Janos Slynt was a butcher’s son, and he laughed like a man chopping meat. “More wine?” Tyrion asked him.

  “I should not object,” Lord Janos said, holding out his cup. He was built like a keg, and had a similar capacity. “I should not object at all. That’s a fine red. From the Arbor?”

  “Dornish.” Tyrion gestured, and his serving man poured. But for the servants, he and Lord Janos were alone in the Small Hall, at a small candlelit table surrounded by darkness. “Quite the find. Dornish wines are not often so rich.”

  “Rich,” said the big frog-faced man, taking a healthy gulp. He was not a man for sipping, Janos Slynt. Tyrion had made note of that at once. “Yes, rich, that’s the very word I was searching for, the very word. You have a gift for words, Lord Tyrion, if I might say so. And you tell a droll tale. Droll, yes.”

  “I’m pleased you think so… but I’m not a lord, as you are. A simple Tyrion will suffice for me, Lord Janos.”

  “As you wish.” He took another swallow, dribbling wine on the front of his black satin doublet. He was wearing a cloth-of-gold half cape fastened with a miniature spear, its point enameled in dark red. And he was well and truly drunk.

  Tyrion covered his mouth and belched politely. Unlike Lord Janos he had gone easy on the wine, but he was very full. The first thing he had done after taking up residence in the Tower of the Hand was inquire after the finest cook in the city and take her into his service. This evening they had supped on oxtail soup, summer greens tossed with pecans, grapes, red fennel, and crumbled cheese, hot crab pie, spiced squash, and quails drowned in butter. Each dish had come with its own wine. Lord Janos allowed that he had never eaten half so well. “No doubt that will change when you take your seat in Harrenhal,” Tyrion said.

  “For a certainty. Perhaps I should ask this cook of yours to enter my service, what do you say?”

  “Wars have been fought over less,” he said, and they both had a good long laugh. “You’re a bold man to take Harrenhal for your seat. Such a grim place, and huge… costly to maintain. And some say cursed as well.”

  “Should I fear a pile of stone?” He hooted at the notion. “A bold man, you said. You must be bold, to rise. As I have. To Harrenhal, yes! And why not? You know. You are a bold man too, I sense. Small, mayhap, but bold.”

  “You are too kind. More wine?”

  “No. No, truly, I… oh, gods be damned, yes. Why not? A bold man drinks his fill!”

  “Truly.” Tyrion filled Lord Slynt’s cup to the brim. “I have been glancing over the names you put forward to take your place as Commander of the City Watch.”

  “Good men. Fine men. Any of the six will do, but I’d choose Allar Deem. My right arm. Good good man. Loyal. Pick him and you won’t be sorry. If he pleases the king.”

  “To be sure.” Tyrion took a small sip of his own wine. “I had been considering Ser Jacelyn Bywater. He’s been captain on the Mud Gate for three years, and he served with valor during Balon Greyjoy’s Rebellion. King Robert knighted him at Pyke. And yet his name does not appear on your list.”

  Lord Janos Slynt took a gulp of wine and sloshed it around in his mouth for a moment before swallowing. “Bywater. Well. Brave man, to be sure, yet… he’s rigid, that one. A queer dog. The men don’t like him. A cripple too, lost his hand at Pyke, that’s what got him knighted. A poor trade, if you ask me, a hand for a ser.” He laughed. “Ser Jacelyn thinks overmuch of himself and his honor, as I see it. You’ll do better leaving that one where he is, my lor — Tyrion. Allar Deem’s the man for you.”

  “Deem is little loved in the streets, I am told.”

  “He’s feared. That’s better.”

  “What was it I heard of him? Some trouble in a brothel?”

  “That. Not his fault, my lo — Tyrion. No. He never meant to kill the woman, that was her own doing. He warned her to stand aside and let him do his duty.”

  “Still… mothers and children, he might have expected she’d try to save the babe.” Tyrion smiled. “Have some of this cheese, it goes splendidly with the wine. Tell me, why did you choose Deem for that unhappy task?”

  “A good commander knows his men, Tyrion. Some are good for one job, some for another. Doing for a babe, and her still on the tit, that takes a certain sort. Not every man’d do it. Even if it was only some whore and her whelp.”

  “I suppose that’s so,” said Tyrion, hearing only some whore and thinking of Shae, and Tysha long ago, and all the other women who had taken his coin and his seed over the years.

  Slynt went on, oblivious. “A hard man for a hard job, is Deem. Does as he’s told, and never a word afterward.” He cut a slice off the cheese. “This is fine. Sharp. Give me a good sharp knife and a good sharp cheese and I’m a happy man.”

  Tyrion shrugged. “Enjoy it while you can. With the riverlands in flame and Renly king in Highgarden, good cheese will
soon be hard to come by. So who sent you after the whore’s bastard?”

  Lord Janos gave Tyrion a wary look, then laughed and wagged a wedge of cheese at him. “You’re a sly one, Tyrion. Thought you could trick me, did you? It takes more than wine and cheese to make Janos Slynt tell more than he should. I pride myself. Never a question, and never a word afterward, not with me.”

  “As with Deem.”

  “Just the same. You make him your Commander when I’m off to Harrenhal, and you won’t regret it.”

  Tyrion broke off a nibble of the cheese. It was sharp indeed, and veined with wine; very choice. “Whoever the king names will not have an easy time stepping into your armor, I can tell. Lord Mormont faces the same problem.”

  Lord Janos looked puzzled. “I thought she was a lady. Mormont. Beds down with bears, that’s the one?”

  “It was her brother I was speaking of. Jeor Mormont, the Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch. When I was visiting with him on the Wall, he mentioned how concerned he was about finding a good man to take his place. The Watch gets so few good men these days.” Tyrion grinned. “He’d sleep easier if he had a man like you, I imagine. Or the valiant Allar Deem.”

  Lord Janos roared. “Small chance of that!”

  “One would think,” Tyrion said, “but life does take queer turns. Consider Eddard Stark, my lord. I don’t suppose he ever imagined his life would end on the steps of Baelor’s Sept.”

  “There were damn few as did,” Lord Janos allowed, chuckling.

  Tyrion chuckled too. “A pity I wasn’t here to see it. They say even Varys was surprised.”

  Lord Janos laughed so hard his gut shook. “The Spider,” he said. “Knows everything, they say. Well, he didn’t know that.”

  “How could he?” Tyrion put the first hint of a chill in his tone. “He had helped persuade my sister that Stark should be pardoned, on the condition that he take the black.”

  “Eh?” Janos Slynt blinked vaguely at Tyrion.

  “My sister Cersei,” Tyrion repeated, a shade more strongly, in case the fool had some doubt who he meant. “The Queen Regent.”

  “Yes.” Slynt took a swallow. “As to that, well… the king commanded it, m’lord. The king himself.”

  “The king is thirteen,” Tyrion reminded him.

  “Still. He is the king.” Slynt’s jowls quivered when he frowned. “The Lord of the Seven Kingdoms.”

  “Well, one or two of them, at least,” Tyrion said with a sour smile. “Might I have a look at your spear?”

  “My spear?” Lord Janos blinked in confusion.

  Tyrion pointed. “The clasp that fastens your cape.”

  Hesitantly, Lord Janos drew out the ornament and handed it to Tyrion.

  “We have goldsmiths in Lannisport who do better work,” he opined. “The red enamel blood is a shade much, if you don’t mind my saying. Tell me, my lord, did you drive the spear into the man’s back yourself, or did you only give the command?”

  “I gave the command, and I’d give it again. Lord Stark was a traitor.” The bald spot in the middle of Slynt’s head was beet-red, and his cloth-of-gold cape had slithered off his shoulders onto the floor. “The man tried to buy me.”

  “Little dreaming that you had already been sold.”

  Slynt slammed down his wine cup. “Are you drunk? If you think I will sit here and have my honor questioned…”

  “What honor is that? I do admit, you made a better bargain than Ser Jacelyn. A lordship and a castle for a spear thrust in the back, and you didn’t even need to thrust the spear.” He tossed the golden ornament back to Janos Slynt. It bounced off his chest and clattered to the floor as the man rose.

  “I mislike the tone of your voice, my lo—Imp. I am the Lord of Harrenhal and a member of the king’s council, who are you to chastise me like this?”

  Tyrion cocked his head sideways. “I think you know quite well who I am. How many sons do you have?”

  “What are my sons to you, dwarf?”

  “Dwarf?” His anger flashed. “You should have stopped at Imp. I am Tyrion of House Lannister, and someday, if you have the sense the gods gave a sea slug, you will drop to your knees in thanks that it was me you had to deal with, and not my lord father. Now, how many sons do you have?”

  Tyrion could see the sudden fear in Janos Slynt’s eyes. “Th-three, m’lord. And a daughter. Please, m’lord—”

  “You need not beg.” He slid off his chair. “You have my word, no harm will come to them. The younger boys will be fostered out as squires. If they serve well and loyally, they may be knights in time. Let it never be said that House Lannister does not reward those who serve it. Your eldest son will inherit the title Lord Slynt, and this appalling sigil of yours.” He kicked at the little golden spear and sent it skittering across the floor. “Lands will be found for him, and he can build a seat for himself. It will not be Harrenhal, but it will be sufficient. It will be up to him to make a marriage for the girl.”

  Janos Slynt’s face had gone from red to white. “Wh-what… what do you…?” His jowls were quivering like mounds of suet.

  “What do I mean to do with you?” Tyrion let the oaf tremble for a moment before he answered. “The carrack Summer’s Dream sails on the morning tide. Her master tells me she will call at Gulltown, the Three Sisters, the isle of Skagos, and Eastwatch-by-the-Sea. When you see Lord Commander Mormont, give him my fond regards, and tell him that I have not forgotten the needs of the Night’s Watch. I wish you long life and good service, my lord.”

  Once Janos Slynt realized he was not to be summarily executed, color returned to his face. He thrust his jaw out. “We will see about this, Imp. Dwarf. Perhaps it will be you on that ship, what do you think of that? Perhaps it will be you on the Wall.” He gave a bark of anxious laughter. “You and your threats, well, we will see. I am the king’s friend, you know. We shall hear what Joffrey has to say about this. And Littlefinger and the queen, oh, yes. Janos Slynt has a good many friends. We will see who goes sailing, I promise you. Indeed we will.”

  Slynt spun on his heel like the watchman he’d once been, and strode the