A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

we ought to be marching on Harrenhal.”
    â€œWe lack the strength,” Robb said, though unhappily.
    Edmure persisted. “Do we grow stronger sitting here? Our host dwindles every
day.”
    â€œAnd whose doing is that?” Catelyn snapped at her brother. It had been at
Edmure’s insistence that Robb had given the river lords leave to depart after
his crowning, each to defend his own

lands. Ser Marq Piper and Lord Karyl Vance had been the first to go. Lord Jonos
Bracken had followed, vowing to reclaim the burnt shell of his castle and bury
his dead, and now Lord Jason Mallister had announced his intent to return to
his seat at Seagard, still mercifully untouched by the fighting.
    â€œYou cannot ask my river lords to remain idle while their fields are being
pillaged and their people put to the sword,” Ser Edmure said, “but Lord
Karstark is a northman. It would be an ill thing if he were to leave
us.”
    â€œI’ll speak with him,” said Robb. “He lost two sons in the Whispering Wood.
Who can blame him if he does not want to make peace with their
killers . . . with my father’s
killers . . .”
    â€œMore bloodshed will not bring your father back to us, or Lord Rickard’s
sons,” Catelyn said. “An offer had to be made—though a wiser man might
have offered sweeter terms.”
    â€œAny sweeter and I would have gagged.” Her son’s beard had grown in redder
than his auburn hair. Robb seemed to think it made him look fierce,
royal . . . older. But bearded or no, he was still a youth of
fifteen, and wanted vengeance no less than Rickard Karstark. It had been no
easy thing to convince him to make even this offer, poor as it was.
    â€œCersei Lannister will
never
consent to trade your sisters for a
pair of cousins. It’s her brother she’ll want, as you know full well.” She had
told him as much before, but Catelyn was finding that kings do not listen half
so attentively as sons.
    â€œI can’t release the Kingslayer, not even if I wanted to.

My lords would never abide it.”
    â€œYour lords made you their king.”
    â€œAnd can
unmake
me just as easy.”
    â€œIf your crown is the price we must pay to have Arya and Sansa returned safe,
we should pay it willingly. Half your lords would like to murder Lannister in
his cell. If he should die while he’s your prisoner, men will
say—”
    â€œâ€”that he well deserved it,” Robb finished.
    â€œAnd your sisters?” Catelyn asked sharply. “Will they deserve their deaths
as well? I promise you, if any harm comes to her brother, Cersei will pay us
back blood for blood—”
    â€œLannister won’t die,” Robb said. “No one so much as speaks to him without
my warrant. He has food, water, clean straw, more comfort than he has any right
to. But I won’t free him, not even for Arya and Sansa.”
    Her son was looking
down
at her, Catelyn realized.
Was it war
that made him grow so fast,
she wondered,
or the crown they had put
on his head?
“Are you afraid to have Jaime Lannister in the field again,
is that the truth of it?”
    Grey Wind growled, as if he sensed Robb’s anger, and Edmure Tully put a
brotherly hand on Catelyn’s shoulder. “Cat, don’t. The boy has the right of
this.”
    â€œDon’t call me
the boy,
” Robb said, rounding on his uncle, his
anger spilling out all at once on poor Edmure, who had only meant to support
him. “I’m almost a man grown, and a king
—your
king, ser. And
I don’t fear Jaime Lannister. I defeated him

once, I’ll defeat him again if I must, only . . .” He pushed a
fall of hair out of his eyes and gave a shake of the head. “I might have been
able to trade the Kingslayer for Father, but . . .”
    â€œ. . . but not for the girls?” Her voice was icy quiet. “Girls
are not important enough, are they?”
    Robb made no answer, but there was hurt in his eyes. Blue eyes, Tully eyes,
eyes she had given him. She had wounded him, but he was too much his father’s
son to admit it.
    That was unworthy of me,
she told herself.
Gods be good, what is
to become of me? He is doing his best, trying so hard, I know it, I see it, and
yet . . . I have lost my Ned, the rock my life was built on, I
could not bear to lose the