A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

leaves for Oakheart, cranes for
Crane, a cloud of black-and-orange butterflies for the Mullendores.
    Across the Mander, the storm lords had raised their standards—Renly’s
own bannermen, sworn to House Baratheon and Storm’s End. Catelyn recognized
Bryce Caron’s nightingales, the Penrose quills, and Lord
Estermont’s sea
turtle, green on green. Yet for every shield she knew, there were a dozen
strange to her, borne by the small lords sworn to the bannermen, and by hedge
knights and freeriders who had come swarming to make Renly Baratheon a king in
fact as well as name.
    Renly’s own standard flew high over all. From the top of his tallest siege
tower, a wheeled oaken immensity covered with rawhides, streamed the largest
war banner that Catelyn had ever seen—a cloth big enough to carpet many
a hall, shimmering gold, with the crowned stag of Baratheon black upon it,
prancing proud and tall.
    â€œMy lady, do you hear that noise?” asked Hallis Mollen, trotting close.
“What is that?”
    She listened. Shouts, and horses screaming, and the clash

of steel, and . . . “Cheering,” she said. They had been
riding up a gentle slope toward a line of brightly colored pavilions on the
height. As they passed between them, the press of men grew thicker, the sounds
louder. And then she saw.
    Below, beneath the stone-and-timber battlements of a small castle, a melee was
in progress.
    A field had been cleared off, fences and galleries and tilting barriers thrown
up. Hundreds were gathered to watch, perhaps thousands. From the looks of the
grounds, torn and muddy and littered with bits of dinted armor and broken
lances, they had been at it for a day or more, but now the end was near. Fewer
than a score of knights remained ahorse, charging and slashing at each other as
watchers and fallen combatants cheered them on. She saw two destriers collide
in full armor, going down in a tangle of steel and horseflesh. “A tourney,”
Hal Mollen declared. He had a penchant for loudly announcing the
obvious.
    â€œOh, splendid,” Ser Wendel Manderly said as a knight in a rainbow-striped
cloak wheeled to deliver a backhand blow with a long-handled axe that shattered
the shield of the man pursuing him and sent him reeling in his
stirrups.
    The press in front of them made further progress difficult. “Lady Stark,” Ser
Colen said, “if your men would be so good as to wait here, I’ll present you to
the king.”
    â€œAs you say.” She gave the command, though she had to raise her voice to be
heard above the tourney din. Ser Colen walked his horse slowly through the
throngs, with Catelyn riding in his wake.

A roar went up from the crowd as a helmetless red-bearded man with a griffin on
his shield went down before a big knight in blue armor. His steel was a deep
cobalt, even the blunt morningstar he wielded with such deadly effect, his
mount barded in the quartered sun-and-moon heraldry of House Tarth.
    â€œRed Ronnet’s down, gods be damned,” a man cursed.
    â€œLoras’ll do for that blue—” a companion answered before a roar
drowned out the rest of his words.
    Another man was fallen, trapped beneath his injured horse, both of them
screaming in pain. Squires rushed out to aid them.
    This is madness,
Catelyn thought.
Real enemies on every side and
half the realm in flames, and Renly sits here playing at war like a boy with
his first wooden sword.
    The lords and ladies in the gallery were as engrossed in the melee as the men
on the ground. Catelyn marked them well. Her father had oft treated with the
southron lords, and not a few had been guests at Riverrun. She recognized Lord
Mathis Rowan, stouter and more florid than ever, the golden tree of his House
spread across his white doublet. Below him sat Lady Oakheart, tiny and
delicate, and to her left Lord Randyll Tarly of Horn Hill, his greatsword
Heartsbane propped up against the back of his seat. Others she knew only by
their sigils, and some not at all.
    In their midst, watching and laughing with his young queen by his side, sat a
ghost in a golden crown.
    Small wonder the lords gather around him with such fervor,
she
thought,
he is Robert come again.
Renly was handsome as

Robert had been handsome; long of limb and broad of shoulder, with the same
coal-black hair, fine and straight, the same deep blue eyes, the same easy
smile. The