"Kill them yourself," she replied. "I'll not be getting near those monsters."
For a moment Stiv was at a loss. His hand trembled; Bran felt a trickle of blood where the knife pressed against his neck. The stench of the man filled his nose; he smelled of fear. "You," he called out to Robb. "You have a name?"
"I am Robb Stark, the heir to Winterfell."
"This is your brother?"
"Yes.,,
"You want him alive, you do what I say. Off the horse."
Robb hesitated a moment. Then, slowly and deliberately, he dismounted and stood with his sword in hand.
"Now kill the wolves."
Robb did not move.
"You do it. The wolves or the boy."
"No!" Bran screamed. If Robb did as they asked, Stiv would kill them both anyway, once the direwolves were dead.
The bald man took hold of his hair with his free hand and twisted it cruelly, till Bran sobbed in pain. "You shut your mouth, cripple, you hear me?" He twisted harder. "You hear me?"
A low thrum came from the woods behind them. Stiv gave a choked gasp as a half foot of razor-tipped broadhead suddenly exploded out of his chest. The arrow was bright red, as if it had been painted in blood.
The dagger fell away from Bran's throat. The big man swayed and collapsed, facedown in the stream. The arrow broke beneath him. Bran watched his life go swirling off in the water.
Osha glanced around as Father's guardsmen appeared from beneath the trees, steel in hand. She threw down her spear. "Mercy, m'lord," she called to Robb.
The guardsmen had a strange, pale look to their faces as they took in the scene of slaughter. They eyed the wolves uncertainly, and when Summer returned to Hali's corpse to feed, Joseth dropped his knife
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and scrambled for the bush, heaving. Even Maester Luwin seemed shocked as he stepped from behind a tree, but only for an instant. Then he shook his head and waded across the stream to Bran's side. "Are you hurt?"
"He cut my leg," Bran said, "but I couldn't feel it."
As the maester knelt to examine the wound, Bran turned his head. Theon Greyjoy stood beside a sentinel tree, his bow in hand. He was smiling. Ever smiling. A half-dozen arrows were thrust into the soft ground at his feet, but it had taken only one. "A dead enemy is a thing of beauty," he announced.
"Jon always said you were an ass, Greyjoy," Robb said loudly. "I ought to chain you up in the yard and let Bran take a few practice shots at you. "
"You should be thanking me for saving your brother's life."
"What if you had missed the shot?" Robb said. "What if you'd only wounded him? What if you had made his hand jump, or hit Bran instead? For all you knew, the man might have been wearing a breastplate, all you could see was the back of his cloak. What would have happened to my brother then? Did you ever think of that, Greyjoy?"
Theon's smile was gone. He gave a sullen shrug and began to pull his arrows from the ground, one by one.
Robb glared at his guardsmen. "Where were you?" he demanded of them. "I was sure you were close behind us."
The men traded unhappy glances. "We were following, m'lord," said Quent, the youngest of them, his beard a soft brown fuzz. "Only first we waited for Maester Luwin and his ass, begging your pardons, and then, well, as it were He glanced over at Theon and quickly looked away, abashed.
"I spied a turkey," Theon said, annoyed by the question. "How was I to know that you'd leave the boy alone?"
Robb turned his head to look at Theon once more. Bran had never seen him so angry, yet he said nothing. Finally he knelt beside Maester Luwin. "How badly is my brother wounded?"
"No more than a scratch," the maester said. He wet a cloth in the stream to clean the cut. "Two of them wear the black," he told Robb as he worked.
Robb glanced over at where Stiv lay sprawled in the stream, his ragged black cloak moving fitfully as the rushing waters tugged at it. "Deserters from the Night's Watch," he said grimly. "They must have been fools, to come so close to Winterfell."
"Folly and desperation are ofttimes hard to tell apart," said Maester Luwin.
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"Shall we bury them, m'lord?" asked Quent.
"They would not have buried us," Robb said. "Hack off their heads, we'll send them back to the Wall. Leave the rest for the carrion crows."
"And this one?" Quent jerked a thumb toward Osha.
Robb walked over to her. She was a head taller than he was, but she dropped to her knees at his approach. "Give me my life, m1ord of Stark, and I am yours."
"Mine? What would I do with an oathbreaker?"
"I broke no oaths. Stiv and Wallen flew down off the Wall, not me. The black crows got no place for women."
Theon Greyjoy sauntered closer. "Give her to the wolves," he urged Robb. The woman's eyes went to what was left of Hali, and just as quickly away. She shuddered. Even the guardsmen looked queasy.
"She's a woman," Robb said.
"A wildling," Bran told him. "She said they should keep me alive so they could take me to Mance Rayder."
"Do you have a name?" Robb asked her.
"Osha, as it please the lord," she muttered sourly.
Maester Luwin stood. "We might do well to question her."
Bran could see the relief on his brother's face. "As you say, Maester. Wayn, bind her hands. She'll come back to Winterfell with us . . . and live or die by the truths she gives us."
TYRION
"Yu want eat?" Mord asked, glowering. He had a plate of oiled beans in one thick, stub-fingered hand.
Tyrion Lannister was starved, but he refused to let this brute see him cringe. "A leg of lamb would be pleasant," he said, from the heap of soiled straw in the corner of his cell. "Perhaps a dish of peas and onions, some fresh baked bread with butter, and a flagon of mulled wine to wash it down. Or beer, if that's easier. I try not to be overly particular."
"Is beans," Mord said. "Here." He held out the plate.
Tyrion sighed. The turnkey was twenty stone of gross stupidity, with brown rotting teeth and small dark eyes. The left side of his face was slick with scar where an axe had cut off his ear and part of his cheek. He was as predictable as he was ugly, but Tyrion was hungry. He reached up for the plate.
Mord jerked it away, grinning. "Is here," he said, holding it out beyond Tyrion's reach.
The dwarf climbed stiffly to his feet, every joint aching. "Must we play the same fool's game with every meal?" He made another grab for the beans.
Mord shambled backward, grinning through his rotten teeth. "Is here, dwarf man." He held the plate out at arm's length, over the edge
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where the cell ended and the sky began. "You not want eat? Here. Come take."
Tyrion's arms were too short to reach the plate, and he was not about to step that close to the edge. All it would take would be a quick shove of Mord's heavy white belly, and he would end up a sickening red splotch on the stones of Sky, like so many other prisoners of the Eyrie over the centuries. "Come to think on it, I'm not hungry after all," he declared, retreating to the corner of his cell.
Mord grunted and opened his thick fingers. The wind took the plate, flipping it over as it fell. A handful of beans sprayed back at them as the food tumbled out of sight. The turnkey laughed, his gut shaking like a bowl of pudding.
Tyrion felt a pang of rage. "You fucking son of a pox-ridden ass," he spat. "I hope you die of a bloody flux."
For that, Mord gave him a kick, driving a steel-toed boot hard into Tyrion's ribs on the way out. "I take it back!" he gasped as he doubled over on the straw. "I'll kill you myself, I swear it!" The heavy ironbound door slammed shut. Tyrion heard the rattle of keys.
For a small man, he had been cursed with a dangerously big mouth, he reflected as he crawled back to his corner of what the Arryns laughably called their dungeon. He huddled beneath the thin blanket that was his only bedding, staring out at a blaze of empty blue sky and distant mou
ntains that seemed to go on forever, wishing he still had the shadowskin cloak he'd won from Marillion at dice, after the singer had stolen it off the body of that brigand chief. The skin had smelled of blood and mold, but it was warm and thick. Mord had taken it the moment he laid eyes on it.
The wind tugged at his blanket with gusts sharp as talons. His cell was miserably small, even for a dwarf. Not five feet away, where a wall ought to have been, where a wall would be in a proper dungeon, the floor ended and the sky began. He had plenty of fresh air and sunshine, and the moon and stars by night, but Tyrion would have traded it all in an instant for the dankest, gloomiest pit in the bowels of the Casterly Rock.
"You fly," Mord had promised him, when he'd shoved him into the cell. "Twenty day, thirty, fifty maybe. Then you fly."
The Arryns kept the only dungeon in the realm where the prisoners were welcome to escape at will. That first day, after girding up his courage for hours, Tyrion had lain flat on his stomach and squirmed to the edge, to poke out his head and look down. Sky was six hundred feet below, with nothing between but empty air. If he craned his neck out as far as it could go, he could see other cells to his right and left and
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above him. He was a bee in a stone honeycomb, and someone had torn off his wings.
It was cold in the cell, the wind screamed night and day, and worst of all, the floor sloped. Ever so slightly, yet it was enough. He was afraid to close his eyes, afraid that he might roll over in his steep and wake in sudden terror as he went sliding off the edge. Small wonder the sky cells drove men mad.
Gods save me, some previous tenant had written on the wall in something that looked suspiciously like blood, the blue is calling. At first Tyrion wondered who he'd been, and what had become of him; later, he decided that he would rather not know.
If only he had shut his mouth . . .
The wretched boy had started it, looking down on him from a throne of carved weirwood beneath the moon-and-falcon banners of House Arryn. Tyrion Lannister had been looked down on all his life, but seldom by rheumy-eyed six-year-olds who needed to stuff fat cushions under their cheeks to lift them to the height of a man. "Is he the bad man?" the boy had asked, clutching his doll.
"He is," the Lady Lysa had said from the lesser throne beside him. She was all in blue, powdered and perfumed for the suitors who filled her court.
"He's so small," the Lord of the Eyrie said, giggling.
"This is Tyrion the Imp, of House Lannister, who murdered your father." She raised her voice so it carried down the length of High Hall of the Eyrie, ringing off the milk-white walls and the slender pillars, so every man could hear it. "He slew the Hand of the King!"
"Oh, did I kill him too?" Tyrion had said, like a fool.
That would have been a very good time to have kept his mouth closed and his head bowed. He could see that now; seven hells, he had seen it then. The High Hall of the Arryns was long and austere, with a forbidding coldness to its walls of blue-veined white marble, but the faces around him had been colder by far. The power of Casterly Rock was far away, and there were no friends of the Lannisters in the Vale of Arryn. Submission and silence would have been his best defenses.
But Tyrion's mood had been too foul for sense. To his shame, he had faltered during the last leg of their day-long climb up to the Eyrie, his stunted legs unable to take him any higher. Brorm had carried him the rest of the way, and the humiliation poured oil on the flames of his anger. "It would seem I've been a busy little fellow," he said with bitter sarcasm. "I wonder when I found the time to do all this slaying and murdering."
He ought to have remembered who he was dealing with. Lysa Arryn
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and her half-sane weakling son had not been known at court for their love of wit, especially when it was directed at them.
"Imp," Lysa said coldly, "you will guard that mocking tongue of yours and speak to my son politely, or I promise you will have cause to regret it. Remember where you are. This is the Eyrie, and these are knights of the Vale you see around you, true men who loved Jon Arryn well. Every one of them would die for me."
"Lady Arryn, should any harm come to me, my brother Jaime will be pleased to see that they do." Even as he spat out the words, Tyrion knew they were folly.
"Can you fly, my lord of Lannister?" Lady Lysa asked. "Does a dwarf have wings? If not, you would be wiser to swallow the next threat that comes to mind."
"I made no threats," Tyrion said. "That was a promise."
Little Lord Robert hopped to his feet at that, so upset he dropped his doll. "You can't hurt us," he screamed. "No one can hurt us here. Tell him, Mother, tell him he can't hurt us here." The boy began to twitch.
"The Eyrie is impregnable," Lysa Arryn declared calmly. She drew her son close, holding him safe in the circle of her plump white arms. "The Imp is trying to frighten us, sweet baby. The Lannisters are all liars. No one will hurt my sweet boy."
The hell of it was, she was no doubt right. Having seen what it took to get here, Tyrion could well imagine how it would be for a knight trying to fight his way up in armor, while stones and arrows poured down from above and enemies contested with him for every step. Nightmare did not begin to describe it. Small wonder the Eyrie had never been taken.
Still, Tyrion had been unable to silence himself. "Not impregnable," he said, "merely inconvenient."
Young Robert pointed down, his hand trembling. "You're a liar. Mother, I want to see him fly." Two guardsmen in sky-blue cloaks seized Tyrion by the arms, lifting him off his floor.
The gods only know what might have happened then were it not for Catelyn Stark. "Sister," she called out from where she stood below the thrones, "I beg you to remember, this man is my prisoner. I will not have him harmed."
Lysa Arryn glanced at her sister coolly for a moment, then rose and swept down on Tyrion, her long skirts trailing after her. For an instant he feared she would strike him, but instead she commanded them to release him. Her men shoved him to the floor, his legs went out from under him, and Tyrion fell.
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He must have made quite a sight as he struggled to his knees, only to feel his right leg spasm, sending him sprawling once more. Laughter boomed up and down the High Hall of the Arryns.
"My sister's little guest is too weary to stand," Lady Lysa announced. "Ser Vardis, take him down to the dungeon. A rest in one of our sky cells will do him much good."
The guardsmen jerked him upright. Tyrion Lannister dangled between them, kicking feebly, his face red with shame. "I will remember this," he told them all as they carried him off.
And so he did, for all the good it did him.
At first he had consoled himself that this imprisonment could not last long. Lysa Arryn wanted to humble him, that was all. She would send for him again, and soon. If not her, then Catelyn Stark would want to question him. This time he would guard his tongue more closely. They dare not kill him out of hand; he was still a Lannister of Casterly Rock, and if they shed his blood, it would mean war. Or so he had told himself.
Now he was not so certain.
Perhaps his captors only meant to let him rot here, but he feared he did not have the strength to rot for long. He was growing weaker every day, and it was only a matter of time until Mord's kicks and blows did him serious harm, provided the gaoler did not starve him to death first. A few more nights of cold and hunger, and the blue would start calling to him too.
He wondered what was happening beyond the walls (such as they were) of his cell. Lord Tywin would surely have sent out riders when the word reached him. Jaime might be leading a host through the Mountains of the Moon even now . . . unless he was riding north against Winterfell instead. Did anyone outside the Vale even suspect where Catelyn Stark had taken him? He wondered what Cersei would do when she heard. The king could order him freed, but would Robert listen to his queen or his Hand? Tyrion had no illusions about the king's love for his sister.
>
If Cersei kept her wits about her, she would insist the king sit in judgment of Tyrion himself. Even Ned Stark could scarcely object to that, not without impugning the honor of the king. And Tyrion would be only too glad to take his chances in a trial. Whatever murders they might lay at his door, the Starks had no proof of anything so far as he could see. Let them make their case before the Iron Throne and the lords of the land. It would be the end of them. If only Cersei were clever enough to see that . . .
Tyrion Lannister sighed. His sister was not without a certain low
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cunning, but her pride blinded her. She would see the insult in this, not the opportunity. And Jaime was even worse, rash and headstrong and quick to anger. His brother never untied a knot when he could slash it in two with his sword.
He wondered which of them had sent the footpad to silence the Stark boy, and whether they had truly conspired at the death of Lord Arryn. If the old Hand had been murdered, it was deftly and subtly done. Men of his age died of sudden illness all the time. In contrast, sending some oaf with a stolen knife after Brandon Stark struck him as unbelievably clumsy. And wasn't that peculiar, come to think on it . . .
Tyrion shivered. Now there was a nasty suspicion. Perhaps the direwolf and the lion were not the only beasts in the woods, and if that was true, someone was using him as a catspaw. Tyrion Lannister hated being used.
He would have to get out of here, and soon. His chances of overpowering Mord were small to none, and no one was about to smuggle him a six-hundred-foot-long rope, so he would have to talk himself free. His mouth had gotten him into this cell; it could damn well get him out.
Tyrion pushed himself to his feet, doing his best to ignore the slope of the floor beneath him, with its ever-so-subtle tug toward the edge. He hammered on the door with a fist. "Mord!" he shouted. "Turnkey! Mord, I want you!" He had to keep it up a good ten minutes before he heard footsteps. Tyrion stepped back an instant before the door opened with a crash.
Martin, George R. R. - Song of Ice and Fire 01 - A Game of Thrones Page 44
