Chapter Text
They meet Lord Frey outside the Twins.
Robb shifted on his horse, and watched as Walder Frey was lowered from his litter. It was a wobbly thing, and he’d heard Lord Frey cursing in before he’d even seen him.
Robb shot a look at Theon, and in a fluid movement he was off his horse. “Lord Frey,” Robb greeted, all smooth courtesy. “Thank you for meeting with me.”
Walder Frey was an old, ugly man. He had a sour look on his face. “You’ve hardly given me a choice, have you? ‘Thank you for meeting with me’,” he mocked. “You’ve been camped outside my walls for a fortnight, making a bloody racket. I’m old, Robb Stark. I have to get my sleep, or else I’ll make my children happy for once when I die of agitation.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Robb can see Theon tensing. Two of the Frey soldiers have their hands resting on their swords. Robb knows they won’t do anything, not with the might of all the North just behind him.
“The noise can end,” Robb tells Lord Frey. “The attacks upon your walls can end. The siege can end.”
Lord Frey gives a rattling laugh. “You think I’m an idiot, boy? Don’t look at me that way. When you’ve lived long as I have, you’re all boys. Yes, the siege can end, can it? When I commit treason to the throne and let you pass the river.”
Robb regards him. Lord Frey spoke like a loyal bannerman to the throne, but his eyes told another story, glittering as they were. “If you were truly loyal to the Queen,” Robb told him, eyes narrowed, “then you’d stay in your towers and wait out the siege. You could hold us off until we finished our catapults, Lord Frey, and we’re not even halfway done. Once we’d finished and started attacking, you’d have to cede the Twins to us. By then, though, Lord Edmure and his forces would be waiting for us on the other side.” Robb stepped closer and lowered his voice. “You’re not in your tower, though,” he said, almost thoughtfully. “Wonder if it’s because you’ve decided to see if it’s worth throwing your lot in with the Starks.”
There is quiet, for a moment. Then Lord Frey throws his head back and laughs. “Gods, boy,” he coughs when he is done, “You’re nothing like your father, are you? Go on, then. What would I gain by siding with the Starks?”
Robb keeps the distaste off his face, keeps his jaw from clenching. He is, despite Walder Frey’s japing, his father’s son.
“What you really want,” Robb says, face still, watching, always watching. His next words are met with silence, as he knew they’d be.
“The Riverlands.”
The Northern army moves as fast as an army can, once the bridge opens to them. The Frey soldiers are placed in the middle of the procession, by the Umbers. Robb knows the Greatjon will keep a close eye on them.
“Father,” he calls, when they have crossed. He sends his destrier into a trot, and in seconds, he’s by his father’s side.
“Robb,” Ned Stark says, his face clouded. He turns away from Lord Karstark. “You did well, Robb,” his father says, and turns to watch the men behind them.
“Thank you, father,” despite himself, Robb feels the warmth spread through his chest. No matter the distaste of dealing with Walder Frey, he’s proud of himself. Robb thinks his mother would be too.
“We’ll be meeting the Riverland forces soon,” Olyvar Frey says from besides Robb. He’s been hanging by Robb’s side since before they left the Twins. Part of Robb’s deal was taking a Frey on as a squire, though Robb’s no knight.
Lord Stark regards him. “When did you last hear from Lord Edmure?” he asks.
“Five days ago,” Olyvar Frey replies. “He’s been gathering his banners, preparing to travel North. But the Queen has also demanded soldiers search the Riverlands for Lord Tywin and your lady wife, as well as guard the Westerlands border.”
“They’re going to be spread thin,” Lord Stark says. To anyone else, his voice would be grim, but Robb can hear the hope in it.
“Until the Eyrie and the Stormlands can rustle up their men,” Robb interjects. “Or the Reach chooses a side.”
Lord Stark nods, his eyes far away. “We must move quickly, then.”
When they camp for the night, Robb and Theon make their way to the war tent. Lord Stark’s plans unfurl in front of before the map, big Northern lords crowded around the table.
“We stay west,” Lord Stark tells them all. “Take Seagard and Oldstones if we can, and meet Lord Edmure’s forces in the Whispering Wood.”
“We can’t go east, that’s for sure,” Lord Manderly’s fat son Wendel says. “We’d be caught between two great armies, that of the Eyrie and the Riverlands.”
Rickard Karstark guffaws around his ale. “Two great armies? That Edmure Tully’s green as a babe. He’s never fought in a battle before in his life!”
“No,” Robb says, “But his uncle the Blackfish has, you can bet on that. And he’s soon to be Lord Tully, if Hoster’s condition is truly worsening.”
There is a moment of silence in the tent, the only sound coming from Maege Mormont sharpening her ax.
“I sent a letter from the Twins,” Lord Eddard says, breaking the silence. “Soon we will find out if Lord Tywin and my wife have reached Casterly Rock. Lord Kevan has already called the banners. We will not be alone in this fight long.”
“What of the Reach?” The Greatjon asks. “And Dorne?”
“We will have to see,” Robb’s father says. With that, his bannermen file out.
When Robb and his father are alone, Robb can see the strain of war on his father’s shoulders, weighing him down, and not a single drop spilled yet.
“Robert was my greatest friend,” his father says wearily.
“I know,” Robb tells him.
“I’m betraying that friendship by going to war with his children.”
“I know, father.”
“It’s truly begun today.”
Robb has felt so helpless this whole time, since the moment his mother saw him off to the ship, back in King’s Landing. He’d been unable to do anything but sulk and keep watch after Myrcella during the voyage, only to hear that war had broken out days after they got home, to Winterfell. To watch as his father called his banners, as they left little Rickon and Myrcella North, as they heard less and less about Joanna, about Arya, about Bran and Jon.
“We have to protect our family,” Robb tells his father. “They have Joanna. They have my sister, my twin sister. Father, whoever Robert Baratheon was to you…his children and his wife are not our allies.”
“I know,” Lord Eddard says, and rubs at his eyes. In the firelight, his father’s wrinkles cast shadows, make him look far older than his age. Robb wonders how many wars his father must fight in before he has peace.
“Robb,” his father says, finally breaking the silence that has stretched between them. “My son, I have to tell you something.”
Robb meets his father’s eyes.
“The queen was not wrong,” he whispers. Robb does not understand, for a moment. He searches his mind, thinking about what it is the queen was right about, but before he can think, his father continues. “I have kept a Targaryen hidden from the crown, but it is not Viserys Targaryen, I swear it, Robb. I made a promise, my son, the last time I went South to rescue family.”
There is only one thing that makes sense.
“Jon,” Robb whispers, mouth dry.
“Jon,” Ned Stark repeats, and Robb can feel his world turned on its head.
“What will we do, then?” Robb asks, and it is almost angry, the way he says it. His father is the most honorable man Robb knows, and relief is marred with disbelief in Robb’s heart; relief that his father has not dishonored his mother, disbelief that his father could lie to them all for seventeen years.
“We win this war,” his father says firmly. Before his eyes, his father becomes a lord again. “We get Joanna, Jon and Arya and Bran and your mother and we go home.”
“Grandfather will never let it go at that,” Robb warns him. “If there is a way to win the throne, he will take it.” In a quieter voice, he asks, “Does he know? About Jon?”
His father hesitates. “Yes,” he admits.
“Will he try to put Jon on the Iron Throne?”
“I don’t know,” his father says, but his voice is less certain.
“And marry him to Joanna, is that his plan? So his great grandchildren will be kings?” Robb’s voice has risen. “She needs to come home, father, not be a piece in his game of thrones!”
“I know,” his father says, and suddenly, Robb is in his father’s arms, distantly aware that he has begun to shake. “Robb,” he hears. “I’ve been so proud of you. We will get through this, and we will all be together again.”
Robb can, for a moment, believe him.
Arya wakes up to a buzzing in her ears. When she opens her eyes she can see why; the remnants of the dog carcass she and Gendry stripped the night before has been surrounded by flies.
“There goes supper,” she grumbles.
“We weren’t going to eat it anyhow,” Gendry tells her, stirring the fire. He is sitting across from her, his face sooty and dirty and somehow, Arya’s heart squeezes at the sight.
Arya nicked a bit of steel from one of the villages they passed earlier. Gendry had scoffed at it, calling it scrap, but the feel of it sends a thrill up Arya’s arm. When she stands, she buckles it onto her belt.
“There’s a breeze today,” Arya says, pulling her tunic from her sweaty skin. She can feel it against her neck, where she’s chopped her hair to.
“Thank the gods,” Gendry replies, standing. The pack is already over his shoulder, and it takes them a few moments to cover the traces of their camp.
“How long do you think we’ll be able to stay on the Gold Road?” He asks her later, when they’ve begun their hike through the forest. Arya strains for the sounds of the second fork of the Blackwater.
“Dunno,” Arya mumbles, swatting a fly away from her face. “If we find the river, there might be a boat to take us up to Stony Sept.”
“And what’s at Stony Sept?” Gendry asked, holding a branch away from her. She looks up to thank him and looks away just as fast, face burning.
“It’s near the Westerlands, I think,” Arya says, trying to sound sure. The map she’d studied before they got out of King’s Landing had been dark, and the ink had been runny.
“You think?” Gendry repeated. “Arry…”
“I know where I’m going!” Arya insisted. “My mother’s people live in Lannisport. They’d take us in, I swear!”
“Arry,” Gendry said, and stopped. She huffed, only to have his hand come down on her shoulder, stilling her movements. “Why are we hiding, then?” he asked, his voice soft. “Why have we ducked every soldier we’ve seen, and why are we tripping through the woods when the Gold Road is ten paces that way?”
“It’s more than ten paces,” Arya tells him, “I wouldn’t be stupid enough to walk in view of any travelers.”
“Why?”
Arya bites at her lip when she realizes he wants a real answer. “All the servants, all the soldiers, everyone from Winterfell,” she tells him. “They’re all dead, if they stayed in King’s Landing. I saw them with my own eyes, rooms full of people killed by the Queen. I can’t let her find me too.”
Her hand has tightened on the sword. She can see their faces, when she thinks about it, and Jon’s face, his bloody hand. She can’t go back, she won’t, unless there’s a way to get Joanna out and kill the Queen.
“I hear you saying her name at night,” Gendry admits, his face screwed up in sympathy.
That’s because I’m going to kill her, Arya thinks, but does not say. “We need to go,” she says instead. “Before these flies decide to make us their supper.”
Gendry’s eyes are clouded, but he lets go of her.
Arya does not know how much time passes before she hears it, but suddenly it is all she can hear. The rushing of the Blackwater river fills her ears, and she stops to grin at Gendry. “We made it,” she tells him.
She can see through the leaves, and there it is, a ship. She’s nearly giddy, and is almost out of the trees when Gendry grabs her arm and pulls her back so hard she nearly screams.
“Stop, Arry,” he whispers, hand over her mouth. And only then does Arya truly look, and see what she has missed.
The port is full of Tully Soldiers.