A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

again,
Catelyn thought as she sipped
the astringent tea,
when it is north I should be going, north to
home.
She had written to Bran and Rickon, that last night at Riverrun.
I do not forget you, my sweet ones, you must believe that. It is only that
your brother needs me more.
    â€œWe ought to reach the upper Mander today, my lady,” Ser Wendel announced
while Shadd spooned out the porridge. “Lord Renly will not be far, if the talk
be true.”
    And what do I tell him when I find him? That my son holds him no true
king?
She did not relish this meeting. They needed friends, not more
enemies, yet Robb would never bend the knee in homage to a man he felt had no
claim to the throne.
    Her bowl was empty, though she could scarce remember tasting the porridge. She
laid it aside. “It is time we were away.” The

sooner she spoke to Renly, the sooner she could turn for home. She was the
first one mounted, and she set the pace for the column. Hal Mollen rode beside
her, bearing the banner of House Stark, the grey direwolf on an ice-white
field.
    They were still a half day’s ride from Renly’s camp when they were taken. Robin
Flint had ranged ahead to scout, and he came galloping back with word of a
far-eyes watching from the roof of a distant windmill. By the time Catelyn’s
party reached the mill, the man was long gone. They pressed on, covering not
quite a mile before Renly’s outriders came swooping down on them, twenty men
mailed and mounted, led by a grizzled greybeard of a knight with bluejays on
his surcoat.
    When he saw her banners, he trotted up to her alone. “My lady,” he called,
“I am Ser Colen of Greenpools, as it please you. These are dangerous lands you
cross.”
    â€œOur business is urgent,” she answered him. “I come as envoy from my son,
Robb Stark, the King in the North, to treat with Renly Baratheon, the King in
the South.”
    â€œKing Renly is the crowned and anointed lord of
all
the Seven
Kingdoms, my lady,” Ser Colen answered, though courteously enough. “His Grace
is encamped with his host near Bitterbridge, where the roseroad crosses the
Mander. It shall be my great honor to escort you to him.” The knight raised a
mailed hand, and his men formed a double column flanking Catelyn and her guard.
Escort or captor?
she wondered. There was nothing to be done but
trust in Ser Colen’s honor, and Lord Renly’s.
    They saw the smoke of the camp’s fires when they were still an hour from
the river. Then the sound came drifting across farm and field and rolling
plain, indistinct as the murmur of some distant sea, but swelling as they rode
closer. By the time they caught sight of the Mander’s muddy waters glinting in
the sun, they could make out the voices of men, the clatter of steel, the
whinny of horses. Yet neither sound nor smoke prepared them for the host
itself.
    Thousands of cookfires filled the air with a pale smoky haze. The horse lines
alone stretched out over leagues. A forest had surely been felled to make the
tall staffs that held the banners. Great siege engines lined the grassy verge
of the roseroad, mangonels and trebuchets and rolling rams mounted on wheels
taller than a man on horseback. The steel points of pikes flamed red with
sunlight, as if already blooded, while the pavilions of the knights and high
lords sprouted from the grass like silken mushrooms. She saw men with spears
and men with swords, men in steel caps and mail shirts, camp followers
strutting their charms, archers fletching arrows, teamsters driving wagons,
swineherds driving pigs, pages running messages, squires honing swords, knights
riding palfreys, grooms leading ill-tempered destriers. “This is a fearsome
lot of men,” Ser Wendel Manderly observed as they crossed the ancient stone
span from which Bitterbridge took its name.
    â€œThat it is,” Catelyn agreed.
    Near all the chivalry of the south had come to Renly’s call,

it seemed. The golden rose of Highgarden was seen everywhere: sewn on the right
breast of armsmen and servants, flapping and fluttering from the green silk
banners that adorned lance and pike, painted upon the shields hung outside the
pavilions of the sons and brothers and cousins and uncles of House Tyrell. As
well Catelyn spied the fox-and-flowers of House Florent, Fossoway apples red
and green, Lord Tarly’s striding huntsman, oak