A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

the fair hair and green eyes. Instead he had inherited
the stringy brown locks, weak chin, and thin face of his sire, Ser Emmon Frey,
old Lord Walder’s second son. His eyes were pale and watery and he could not
seem to stop blinking, but perhaps that was only the light. The cells below
Riverrun were dark and damp . . . and these days crowded as
well.
    â€œRise, Ser Cleos.” Her son’s voice was not as icy as his father’s would have
been, but he did not sound a boy of fifteen either. War had made a man of him
before his time. Morning light glimmered faintly against the edge of the steel
across his knees.
    Yet it was not the sword that made Ser Cleos Frey anxious; it was the beast.
Grey Wind, her son had named him. A direwolf large as any elkhound, lean and
smoke-dark, with eyes like molten gold. When the beast padded forward and
sniffed at the captive knight, every man in that hall could smell the scent of
fear. Ser Cleos had been taken during the battle in the Whispering Wood, where
Grey Wind had ripped out the throats of half a dozen men.
    The knight scrambled up, edging away with such alacrity that some of the
watchers laughed aloud. “Thank you, my lord.”
    â€œYour Grace,”
barked Lord Umber, the Greatjon, ever the
loudest of Robb’s northern bannermen . . . and the truest and
fiercest as well, or so he insisted. He had been the first to proclaim her son
King in the North, and he would brook no slight to the honor of his new-made
sovereign.
    â€œYour Grace,” Ser Cleos corrected hastily. “Pardons.”
    He is not a bold man, this one,
Catelyn thought. More of a Frey than
a Lannister, in truth. His cousin the Kingslayer would have been a much
different matter. They would never have gotten that honorific through Ser Jaime
Lannister’s perfect teeth.
    â€œI brought you from your cell to carry my message to your cousin Cersei
Lannister in King’s Landing. You’ll travel under a peace banner, with thirty of
my best men to escort you.”
    Ser Cleos was visibly relieved. “Then I should be most glad to bring His
Grace’s message to the queen.”
    â€œUnderstand,” Robb said, “I am not giving you your freedom. Your grandfather
Lord Walder pledged me his support and that of House Frey. Many of your cousins
and uncles rode with us in the Whispering Wood, but
you
chose to
fight beneath the lion banner. That makes you a Lannister, not a Frey. I want
your pledge, on your honor as a knight, that after you deliver my message
you’ll return with the queen’s reply, and resume your captivity.”
    Ser Cleos answered at once. “I do so vow.”
    â€œEvery man in this hall has heard you,” warned
Catelyn’s brother Ser Edmure
Tully, who spoke for Riverrun and the lords of the Trident in the place of
their dying father. “If you do not

return, the whole realm will know you forsworn.”
    â€œI will do as I pledged,” Ser Cleos replied stiffly. “What is this
message?”
    â€œAn offer of peace.” Robb stood, longsword in hand. Grey Wind moved to his
side. The hall grew hushed. “Tell the Queen Regent that if she meets my terms,
I will sheath this sword, and make an end to the war between us.”
    In the back of the hall, Catelyn glimpsed the tall, gaunt figure of Lord
Rickard Karstark shove through a rank of guards and out the door. No one else
moved. Robb paid the disruption no mind. “Olyvar, the paper,” he commanded.
The squire took his longsword and handed up a rolled parchment.
    Robb unrolled it. “First, the queen must release my sisters and provide them
with transport by sea from King’s Landing to White Harbor. It is to be
understood that Sansa’s betrothal to Joffrey Baratheon is at an end. When I
receive word from my castellan that my sisters have returned unharmed to
Winterfell, I will release the queen’s cousins, the squire Willem Lannister and
your brother Tion Frey, and give them safe escort to Casterly Rock or
wheresoever she desires them delivered.”
    Catelyn Stark wished she could read the thoughts that hid behind each face,
each furrowed brow and pair of tightened lips.
    â€œSecondly, my lord father’s bones will be returned to us, so he may rest
beside his brother and sister in the crypts beneath Winterfell, as he would
have wished. The remains of the men of his household