It was in the marrow of her bones, a constant, crystalline chill that no fire could ever warm. It was in the way her skin felt—slack and cold, like the belly of a dead fish. Even when the rain ceased, Catelyn Stark felt the phantom weight of the Green Fork pressing against her lungs, the slow, rhythmic tug of the current trying to pull her back into the mud where she belonged.
She sat atop a shaggy, grey garron that had seen better winters, her hood pulled low. Beneath the wool, her fingers were busy. She didn't embroider dragonflies or silver trout anymore. She spent her nights sharpening a small, notched dagger against a whetstone, the scritch-scrape-scritch a lonely, metallic prayer in the dark.
Beside her, Thoros of Myr sat his horse with his head bowed. The red priest looked as if he had aged a decade in the weeks since Beric had passed the flame. His red robes were the color of dried blood, and his beard was a tangled thicket of grey. He didn't look at Catelyn. He rarely looked at her now. When he did, his eyes held a hollow, flickering fear, as if he were staring at a miracle that had soured in the sun.
"They are late," Lem Lemoncloak grumbled. He was standing by a moss-covered boulder, adjusting the straps of his boiled leather breastplate. His yellow hood was a dull, mud-stained rag now. "The scouts said they left Riverrun three days ago. Unless they've found a pot of ale along the way, they should have hit the fork by noon."
"They have a dozen knights and twice as many men-at-arms," Tom o' Sevens said, leaning against a tree. He wasn't playing his wood-harp. The strings had snapped two nights ago, and he hadn't bothered to find new ones. "And they're carrying the Tully coin. That makes a man slow. Makes him cautious."
Catelyn didn't turn her head. She looked through the screen of wet pines toward the road. It was a narrow, treacherous track, hemmed in by steep, rocky banks and a tumble of fallen trees. A perfect place for a funeral.
She reached up and touched the puckered, angry scar at her throat. It was a jagged ridge of flesh, hard as a rope. If she didn't hold it shut, the air escaped with a wet, whistling sound that made the horses skitter. She hated the sound. It reminded her of the last thing she had heard at the Twins—the sound of her own life leaking into the rushes.
Suddenly, a low, rhythmic thudding vibrated through the earth.
"Horses," Lem whispered, his hand going to the hilt of his longsword.
Catelyn felt the familiar, cold tightening in her chest. It wasn't the flutter of a heart; it was the coiling of a spring. She raised a hand, and the Brotherhood melted into the shadows. They were good at this now. They didn't need commands. They were a web of grey and brown, woven into the rot of the woods.
The Frey party appeared through the mist. They were a proud lot, despite the mud that caked their greaves and the rust on their chainmail. At their head rode Ser Danwell Frey, a man of thick wrists and a face that looked like it had been carved from a winter turnip. He wore a heavy surcoat with the twin towers, and a silver-and-blue plume danced in the wind atop his helm.
Behind him came the wagons—three of them, their axles groaning under the weight of the taxes collected from the Tully lands. The knights rode in a loose formation, their lances held upright, their shields slung over their backs. They were talking and laughing, their voices carrying over the patter of the rain.
"I tell you, Ryman's a fool," one of the knights was saying. "He thinks because he's got the Crossing, he's a King. He's got the wits of a salted cod."
"He's got the coin, though," another replied. "That's enough wits for any man."
They reached the narrowest part of the track, where the fallen trees choked the path. Ser Danwell raised a hand, his horse stepping daintily over a puddle.
"Clear those trunks!" he barked to the men-at-arms. "We're not spending the night in these woods. The wolves are out."
Four men dismounted, their boots squelching in the muck. They moved toward the timber, their breath huffing in the damp air. They were halfway to the trees when the first arrow hissed out of the brush.
It took the lead man-at-arm in the eye. He didn't scream; he simply sat down in the mud, the fletching of the arrow vibrating against his brow.
"Ambush!" Danwell roared, reaching for his sword.
But the web had already closed.
Crossbow bolts thudded into the horses, the beasts shying and screaming as they collapsed into the ruts of the road. The knights were tumbled from their saddles, their heavy plate making them clumsy in the deep mire. Lem and the others didn't charge with a shout; they emerged from the trees like shadows, their blades dark and efficient.
It was a systematic butchery. The Brotherhood didn't aim for the shields; they aimed for the gaps. They went for the hamstrings of the horses and the visors of the fallen. Catelyn watched from her grey garron, her eyes unblinking. She saw a Frey knight—a boy no older than seventeen—trying to crawl away, his legs tangled in his own cloak. Jack-Be-Lucky stepped over him and drove a dagger through the boy's throat with the bored indifference of a man gutting a trout.
The air grew thick with the smell of iron and horse-sweat and the sudden, sharp stench of bowels. Ser Danwell Frey was the last to fall. He had backed himself against a wagon, swinging his longsword in wide, desperate arcs, but he was a man fighting the wind. Lem Lemoncloak took a mace to the knight's knee, the sound of the bone shattering like a dry branch.
Danwell hit the ground with a clatter of steel. Lem stepped on the knight's sword-arm and pinned him to the mud.
"Mercy!" Danwell wheezed, his helm having been knocked askew. One of his eyes was swollen shut, and blood leaked from a split lip. "I have... I have gold! My father... he will pay!"
Lem didn't answer. He looked toward the trees.
Catelyn nudged her garron forward. The horse's hooves made a wet, sucking sound in the blood-slicked mud. She stopped a few feet from the fallen knight. The rain was falling harder now, washing the pink foam from the horse's flanks.
She reached up and pushed back her hood.
Ser Danwell Frey stared. His one good eye widened until the white showed all around the pupil. He tried to speak, but his voice failed him, turning into a high-pitched, rhythmic whimper. He looked at the white, peeling skin of her cheeks, the red, raw gash of her throat, and the eyes that held no light, only the memory of a cold river.
"You," he whispered. "The... the Stark woman. But... Black Walder... he cut you. He said you were dead."
Catelyn reached for her throat. She pressed two fingers against the scar, the skin cold as ice under her touch.
"He... did," she hissed. The word was a spray of red mist.
She pointed to the wagons.
"They're carrying the Tully silver, my lady," Tom o' Sevens said, walking over and wiping his blade on a dead man's surcoat. "And these."
He held up a bundle of parchment. They were lists—names of men in the Riverlands who had not yet paid their "loyalty tax" to the Twins. Names of houses that had stood with Robb.
Catelyn took the lists. She didn't read the names; she looked at the seals. Piper. Bracken. Blackwood. They were the names of the living.
She turned her gaze back to Danwell Frey. She remembered him now. He had been one of the men who sat near the high table. He had toasted the King in the North with a smile on his face, while the crossbowmen were taking their places in the gallery.
She raised a single finger and pointed toward the branch of a nearby oak.
"No!" Danwell shrieked, struggling against Lem's boot. "I didn't do it! It was Roose! It was the Lannisters! I was just a guest! I was just a guest!"
Catelyn didn't move. She thought of her son. She thought of the way his hair had looked in the torchlight before the bolts took him. She thought of the way the Freys had laughed as they sowed the wolf's head onto his body.
"The... Guest... Right," she rasped, the words tearing at her throat. "You... broke... it."
"Up with him," Lem commanded.
They didn't waste time. They dragged the knight to the oak, the heavy steel of his armor clanking against the roots. They used a double-braided rope, thick with grease. Danwell fought them, his boots digging fruitlessly into the mud, his screams echoing through the silent woods.
They slipped the noose over his head. The silver-and-blue plume of his helm snapped off as they tightened the rope.
"Do you have anything to say, Frey?" Lem asked.
"Curse you!" Danwell spat, his face turning a dark, dangerous purple. "Curse you all to the seven hells! My father will hang every one of you! He'll burn these woods to the ground!"
Catelyn didn't wait for him to finish. She made a sharp, downward motion with her hand.
Lem and Jack pulled.
The rope creaked, a slow, rhythmic groan as it took the weight of the man and his armor. Danwell Frey was jerked upward. Because of the weight of the plate, the neck didn't snap. He swung there, his armored legs kicking in a frantic, metallic dance. The sound was terrible—the rasp of his breath, the clink of the greaves hitting the trunk, and the wet, choking sounds from his throat.
Catelyn watched him. She didn't feel the satisfaction of a woman who had won a battle. She felt only the cold. The hunger in her belly didn't go away; it only grew sharper, a hollow space that could never be filled, no matter how many men danced on the end of a rope.
"Twelve," Lem said, looking at the other knights being rounded up by the Brotherhood. "We have enough rope for the lot, my lady."
Catelyn nodded.
She turned her garron away from the hanging man. She looked at the wagons full of silver. It was Tully coin. Her father's coin. Her brother's. She reached out and touched the side of the lead wagon, her cold fingers trailing through the mud.
Edmure, she thought. He is in the dark. In the stones.
She felt a sudden, sharp pain in her head—a memory of a lullaby her mother used to sing, of the way the sun looked on the Red Fork in the summer. The memory was a ghost, a flickering thing that couldn't survive the damp of her new world. She pushed it away.
She walked her horse toward the back of the line. The Brotherhood were already busy, the rhythmic thud of their work echoing through the trees as more ropes were thrown over the branches.
Thoros of Myr stood by the road, his hands trembling as he clutched his prayer beads. "This is not why the Lord brought us back, Lem," the priest whispered. "This is not the flame."
"The flame is whatever the lady says it is," Lem replied, his voice a hard, flat stone.
Catelyn looked at the priest. She didn't speak. She didn't have to. She was the fire now, and the fire did not need words.
She began to walk back into the deep shadows of the woods, the grey cloak billowing behind her like a shroud. Behind her, the rhythmic creak of the ropes grew louder, a dozen pendulums swinging in the rain, marking the time of a world that had forgotten how to be kind. The Riverlands were wide, and the Freys were many, but Catelyn Stark had all the time in the world. She was the silent sister, the widow of the North, and her web was only just beginning to spread.