The music was the first thing that died.
It had been a wall of sound, a cacophony of pipes and fiddles intended to drown out the sound of a thousand men eating, drinking, and laughing at a wedding that should have mended a kingdom. Then the notes turned sour, curdling like milk in the heat. The Rains of Castamere. Robb Stark felt the transition in his marrow before he understood it with his mind. The rhythm was a funeral march, slow and heavy as a spade hitting wet earth.
Beside him, Jeyne was not there. He had left her at Riverrun to spare her the old man's spite, yet in the fog of wine and exhaustion, he reached for her ghost. Instead, his hand found the cold rim of a silver chalice. The wine tasted of vinegar and copper.
"Robb!"
His mother's voice was a whip-crack. She was standing, her face a mask of pale marble. Her eyes were fixed on Roose Bolton. The Lord of the Dreadfort looked back with eyes as pale as the morning mist over a graveyard. He was not drinking. He was not eating. He was waiting.
Then the bolts came.
The first one took Robb in the shoulder. It didn't feel like a shot; it felt like a hammer blow from a giant. The force of it spun him around, slamming his back against the high table. For a heartbeat, there was no pain, only a sudden, profound coldness that spread from the site of the impact. Then the fire woke up. It was a white-hot tooth gnawing through his muscle, seeking the bone.
He tried to rise, but his legs were made of straw. Across the hall, his men were falling like wheat before a scythe. Smalljon Umber reached for a table to fling it as a shield, but the crossbowmen in the gallery were efficient. They didn't aim for the heart; they aimed for the meat. Bolts punched into thighs, stomachs, and throats. The air filled with the smell of scorched hair, spilled ale, and the sudden, sharp stench of bowels opening in terror.
"Mother," he gasped. The word was a red bubble on his lips.
A second bolt found his ribs. This one was a jagged sting, a splinter of ice that slid between the bone and stayed there. Every breath became a chore of grinding metal. He saw Catelyn scream, but the sound was drowned by the roar of the Frey guardsmen bursting through the doors. They wore the grey and blue of the Twins, their steel glinting in the torchlight. They weren't there to take prisoners.
"The King in the North!" someone mocked—a high, thin voice that sounded like Walder Frey, though Robb could no longer see the dais. The world was tilting. The floor was slick with something dark and steaming.
A hand grabbed his tunic. It was a hard, frantic grip.
"Up, your Grace! Move or die!"
Raynald Westerling's face was a smear of red. A gash ran from his hairline to his jaw, and one of his ears was a ragged fringe of gristle. He wasn't wielding a sword; he was wielding a broken bench-leg, swinging it with the desperation of a cornered cur.
"Grey Wind," Robb wheezed. The direwolf was howling outside, a sound of such pure, unadulterated agony that it cut through the din of the slaughter. It was the sound of a soul being torn in half.
"The wolf is dead, Robb! Look at me!" Raynald hauled him upward. Robb's boots slid in a puddle of gravy and gore. He saw Wendel Manderly fall, a bolt protruding from his open mouth. He saw his mother clawing at the face of a Frey jester. The images were fragments of a shattered mirror.
They were near a side door, a narrow egress meant for servants. Raynald kicked it open, dragging Robb into the night.
The rain was a mercy. It hit Robb's face with the force of a slap, washing away the salt of his sweat and the heat of the fire. But the air outside was not empty. The Frey camp was a forest of flame. The pavilions were burning, the heavy canvas collapsing onto his sleeping Northmen. He heard the panicked whinnying of horses and the wet thud of axes hitting flesh.
"The river," Raynald panted. He was bleeding from three different places now, his breathing a wet rattle. "The Green Fork. It's the only way."
"Mother... she's still..."
"She's gone, Robb. They're all gone."
Raynald didn't wait for an answer. He slung Robb's arm over his shoulder and lunged toward the battlements that overhung the water. Behind them, the doors of the Great Hall burst open again. A dozen Frey men-at-arms spilled out, led by Black Walder. The firelight caught the cruel curve of his axe.
"There! The pup! Don't let him reach the water!"
The bolts hissed through the rain like angry vipers. One thudded into Raynald's back. The knight stumbled, a choked cry escaping his lips, but he didn't let go. He surged forward, his boots skidding on the mud-slicked stone of the embankment.
They reached the edge. Below them, the Green Fork was a churning beast, swollen by the autumn rains. It was black as obsidian, flecked with white foam where it broke against the pylons of the bridge. It looked less like water and more like a throat waiting to swallow them.
"Forgive me, your Grace," Raynald whispered.
He didn't jump; he fell, taking Robb with him.
The impact was a wall of stone. The cold of the river was so absolute that it didn't feel like wetness; it felt like being encased in iron. The air was punched out of Robb's lungs, replaced instantly by the silt-heavy water of the Fork. He sank, the weight of his mail shirt pulling him down into the dark.
The shoulder wound screamed. The water rushed into the hole the bolt had made, cold and invasive. He kicked, his boots heavy as lead. Above him, the surface was a flickering orange ceiling, the reflection of the burning North. He saw shapes—shadows of men on the bridge, the glint of crossbows.
Something hit the water near his head. Another bolt.
Robb clawed at the water. His fingers felt like sausages, numb and useless. He needed to shed the mail, but the buckles were stubborn, and his strength was a guttering candle. He felt the current catch him, a massive, indifferent hand that swept him away from the Twins.
The river was a chaotic world of tumbling debris. He slammed into a submerged log, the impact cracking his already broken ribs. He opened his mouth to scream and took in a lungful of the Green Fork. He coughed, a violent spasm that sent fresh agony through his chest. Darkness began to creep in at the edges of his vision, a soft, velvet blackness that promised an end to the fire in his shoulder.
Jeyne, he thought. Bran. Rickon.
The names were anchors, but the current was stronger. He drifted into a stand of reeds, his hair tangling in the long, submerged grasses. His head broke the surface for a fleeting second. He saw the Twins receding, two ugly towers of grey stone silhouetted against a sky of fire. Then the water pulled him under again.
He was spinning. The world was a roar of water and a pulse of red pain. He felt his consciousness fraying, the threads snapping one by one. He was no longer a King. He was a piece of driftwood, a bit of carrion for the fish to nibble.
His hand brushed against something soft—the muddy bank of an island or a bend in the river. He tried to grip the silt, but his fingernails just tore through the muck. He was sliding back. The river wanted him.
Then, a new sensation.
It wasn't the current. It was a grip. Something small and hard clamped onto the collar of his gambeson. It wasn't the hand of a man; it felt like a claw, scaled and cold. Another hand grabbed his hair, pulling his head upward.
He coughed, retching up a mixture of river water and blood. The air was thick with the smell of woodsmoke and rot.
"Easy, wolf-king," a voice hissed. It was a strange, melodic sound, like wind whistling through a hollow reed. "The mud has you now. And the mud does not let go."
Robb squinted through the blood in his eyes. He saw a shape against the grey pre-dawn light. It was small, clad in a mottled green that made it nearly invisible against the reeds. The face was narrow, the eyes a deep, mossy green that seemed to hold the secrets of a thousand years of swamp.
He tried to speak, to ask about Raynald, about his mother, but his throat was a ruin of salt and silt. The small figure leaned closer. It smelled of peat, stagnant water, and old iron.
"Rest," the creature said. "The Green Fork has washed away your crown. Now we see what remains beneath the gold."
Robb felt the weight of the world finally collapse. The fire in his shoulder didn't go out, but it grew distant, a lonely star in a vast, dark sky. The last thing he felt was the rhythmic drag of his body across the mud, the sound of the marsh-grasses whispering a welcome to a dead man who refused to stay buried.