A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

mutter.
    It was hard to make out what was happening, but the screams of the horses
seemed loud even at this remove, and beneath them Catelyn heard the fainter
clash of steel on steel. A banner vanished suddenly as its bearer was swept
under, and soon after the first dead man drifted past their walls, borne along
by the current. By then the Lannisters had pulled back in confusion. She
watched as they re-formed, conferred briefly, and galloped back the way they
had come. The men on the walls shouted taunts after them, though they were
already too far off to hear.
    Ser Desmond slapped his belly. “Would that Lord Hoster could have seen that.
It would have made him dance.”
    â€œMy father’s dancing days are past, I fear,” Catelyn said, “and this fight
is just begun. The Lannisters will come again.

Lord Tywin has twice my brother’s numbers.”
    â€œHe could have ten times and it would not matter,” Ser Desmond said. “The
west bank of the Red Fork is higher than the east, my lady, and well wooded.
Our bowmen have good cover, and a clear field for their
shafts . . . and should any breach occur, Edmure will have his
best knights in reserve, ready to ride wherever they are most sorely needed.
The river will hold them.”
    â€œI pray that you are right,” Catelyn said gravely.
    That night they came again. She had commanded them to wake her at once if the
enemy returned, and well after midnight a serving girl touched her gently by
the shoulder. Catelyn sat up at once. “What is it?”
    â€œThe ford again, my lady.”
    Wrapped in a bedrobe, Catelyn climbed to the roof of the keep. From there she
could see over the walls and the moonlit river to where the battle raged. The
defenders had built watchfires along the bank, and perhaps the Lannisters
thought to find them night-blind or unwary. If so, it was folly. Darkness was a
chancy ally at best. As they waded in to breast their way across, men stepped
in hidden pools and went down splashing, while others stumbled over stones or
gashed their feet on the hidden caltrops. The Mallister bowmen sent a storm of
fire arrows hissing across the river, strangely beautiful from afar. One man,
pierced through a dozen times, his clothes afire, danced and whirled in the
knee-deep water until at last he fell and was swept downstream. By the time his
body came bobbing past Riverrun, the

fires and his life had both been extinguished.
    A small victory,
Catelyn thought when the fighting had ended and the
surviving foemen had melted back into the night,
yet a victory
nonetheless.
As they descended the winding turret steps, Catelyn asked
Brienne for her thoughts. “That was the brush of Lord Tywin’s fingertip, my
lady,” the girl said. “He is probing, feeling for a weak point, an undefended
crossing. If he does not find one, he will curl all his fingers into a fist and
try and make one.” Brienne hunched her shoulders. “That’s what I’d do. Were I
him.” Her hand went to the hilt of her sword and gave it a little pat, as if
to make certain it was still there.
    And may the gods help us then,
Catelyn thought. Yet there was
nothing
she could do for it. That was Edmure’s battle out there on the river; hers was
here inside the castle.
    The next morning as she broke her fast, she sent for her father’s aged steward,
Utherydes Wayn. “Have Ser Cleos Frey brought a flagon of wine. I mean to
question him soon, and I want his tongue well loosened.”
    â€œAs you command, my lady.”
    Not long after, a rider with the Mallister eagle sewn on his breast arrived
with a message from Lord Jason, telling of another skirmish and another
victory. Ser Flement Brax had tried to force a crossing at a different ford six
leagues to the south. This time the Lannisters shortened their lances and
advanced across the river behind on foot, but the Mallister bowmen had rained
high arcing shots down over their shields, while the scorpions Edmure

had mounted on the riverbank sent heavy stones crashing through to break up the
formation. “They left a dozen dead in the water, only two reaching the
shallows, where we dealt with them briskly,” the rider reported. He also told
of fighting farther upstream, where Lord Karyl Vance held the fords. “Those
thrusts too were turned aside, at grievous cost to our foes.”
    Perhaps Edmure was wiser