A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

poison to fear. I will not do that to you, much as I might wish to keep you safe.”
    â€œYou have my thanks, Mother,” he said, his relief obvious beneath the formality.
    She reached across his table and touched his hair. “You are my firstborn, Robb. I have only to look at you to remember the day you came into the world, red-faced and squalling.”
    He rose, clearly uncomfortable with her touch, and walked to the hearth. Grey Wind rubbed his head against his leg. “You know … about Father?”
    â€œYes.” The reports of Robert’s sudden death and Ned’s fall had frightened Catelyn more than she could say, butshe would not let her son see her fear. “Lord Manderly told me when I landed at White Harbor. Have you had any word of your sisters?”
    â€œThere was a letter,” Robb said, scratching his direwolf under the jaw. “One for you as well, but it came to Winterfell with mine.” He went to the table, rummaged among some maps and papers, and returned with a crumpled parchment. “This is the one she wrote me, I never thought to bring yours.”
    Something in Robb’s tone troubled her. She smoothed out the paper and read. Concern gave way to disbelief, then to anger, and lastly to fear. “This is Cersei’s letter, not your sister’s,” she said when she was done. “The real message is in what Sansa does not say. All this about how kindly and gently the Lannisters are treating her … I know the sound of a threat, even whispered. They have Sansa hostage, and they mean to keep her.”
    â€œThere’s no mention of Arya,” Robb pointed out, miserable.
    â€œNo.” Catelyn did not want to think what that might mean, not now, not here.
    â€œI had hoped … if you still held the Imp, a trade of hostages …” He took Sansa’s letter and crumpled it in his fist, and she could tell from the way he did it that it was not the first time. “Is there word from the Eyrie? I wrote to Aunt Lysa, asking help. Has she called Lord Arryn’s banners, do you know? Will the knights of the Vale come join us?”
    â€œOnly one,” she said, “the best of them, my uncle … but Brynden Blackfish was a Tully first. My sister is not about to stir beyond her Bloody Gate.”
    Robb took it hard. “Mother, what are we going
to do?
I brought this whole army together, eighteen thousand men, but I don’t … I’m not certain …” He looked to her, his eyes shining, the proud young lord melted away in an instant, and quick as that he was a child again, a fifteen-year-old boy looking to his mother for answers.
    It would not do.
    â€œWhat are you so afraid of, Robb?” she asked gently.
    â€œI …” He turned his head away, to hide the first tear. “If we march … even if we win … the Lannisters hold Sansa, and Father. They’ll kill them, won’t they?”
    â€œThey want us to think so.”
    â€œYou mean they’re lying?”
    â€œI do not know, Robb. What I do know is that you have no choice. If you go to King’s Landing and swear fealty, you will never be allowed to leave. If you turn your tail and retreat to Winterfell, your lords will lose all respect for you. Some may even go over to the Lannisters. Then the queen, with that much less to fear, can do as she likes with her prisoners. Our best hope, our
only
true hope, is that you can defeat the foe in the field. If you should chance to take Lord Tywin or the Kingslayer captive, why then a trade might very well be possible, but that is not the heart of it. So long as you have power enough that they must fear you, Ned and your sister should be safe. Cersei is wise enough to know that she may need them to make her peace, should the fighting go against her.”
    â€œWhat if the fighting
doesn’t
go against her?” Robb asked. “What if it goes against us?”
    Catelyn took his hand. “Robb, I will not soften the truth for you. If you lose, there is no hope for any of us. They say there is naught but stone at the heart of Casterly Rock. Remember the fate of Rhaegar’s children.”
    She saw the fear in his young eyes then, but there was a strength as well. “Then I will not lose,” he vowed.
    â€œTell me what you know of the fighting in the riverlands,” she said. She had to learn if he was