CATELYN
"Jaime Lannister sends his regards."
Catelyn's heart pounded in her chest and tears stained her cheeks. The poor fool whimpered against her shaking body, but she kept her little blade firm against his skin and the bulging artery underneath. The man in the pink cloak drew back his red blade, lowering the point for a killing stroke. Her throat tightened, her lungs burned empty, the world slowed slowed to a crawl, and everything around her vanished except her son and the man with the sword.
Bang.
The sound impacted Catelyn almost as if it had reached out and struck her about the ears. She flinched and shuddered, and the man under her control squealed and squirmed. When her son's would-be killer staggered and dropped to the floor, Robb was holding a smoking dagger waist high - only, it wasn't a dagger. The shape is all wrong. The blade was a square hunk of steel with a round hollow at the end, sticking out at an odd angle from a leather grip clutched in the king's bloody fist. Barbs and feathers jutted out of his fine, bloodstained doublet, his face spasmed in agony, and his knees wobbled for one terrifying second, but he managed to keep his feet. Robb raised the weapon high, not towards the fallen figure in the pink cloak, but straight armed and angled in her direction, and before Catelyn could blink away the tears and take in a lungful of smoky air, Robb's knife shot fire from the hollow end and shook all the world around her.
Bang.
Catelyn recoiled and her hand slipped free of the fool's throat, knife edged in red, and the lackwick fell away gasping and clutching his neck. After the terrible noise of Robb's knife, all other sound dimmed to nothing. From the screams and challenges, to the clash of steel-on-steel and the twang of crossbows, all the cacophony of the slaughter disappeared as every eye in the room drew to a point over Catelyn's shoulder.
She turned. Walder Frey was dead.
The late Lord of the Crossing seemed to have…exploded, as if dropped from the walls of Winterfell, splat, headfirst and from a height ten times that of Bran's fall. Yet his body still reclined in the high seat in the middle of the dais, totally unmoved, and his brains and blood covered the wall tapestry in a splatter. Whatever magic had happened here, his head had been dashed suddenly and with great violence against the wall, yet no human hand had been close enough to create the greasy and spreading stain behind him.
Something moved at the edge of Catelyn's vision and she whirled. The rest of the room stared at the horrific corpse in dumbfounded silence, but the King, her son, her little boy, was already pointing his weapon at the nearest Frey man-at-arms. Bang, the knife spoke for him, bang bang bang and his first target dropped dead, followed by the man behind him, blood erupting from their backs and drenching a plush chair that lay overturned nearby. Someone screamed and the trance finally broke. A few still-living men wearing the Direwolf scrambled to retrieve blades from the new corpses, but Robb aimed his weapon towards the rest of the Frey host. The men of the Twins staggered away from them with panicked, half-mad eyes. Both sides shuffled into awkward battle lines, with the Frey men outnumbering Robb's ten-to-one. Men of the flayed man stood at the edge of the room and gaped at both sides, unsure of who to attack and lacking orders from their wounded lord.
"Robb!" Catelyn shouted, but if her son heard her, he paid no heed. She shouted again and pointed up at the crossbowmen on the balcony. They began cranking their weapons as if only now realizing the danger, but Robb saw them and directed his sorcery before they could draw a proper aim. When the fire and cacophony burst from the weapon, it seemed somehow duller, perhaps because the men were screaming at one another or perhaps because of the rapid pounding of Catelyn's own heart. She looked to the open center of the room and realized that the man in pink was gone, a thick, dark blood trail leading around a corner.
Suddenly, the Frey men charged. They did not attack Robb, who they no doubt feared as some terrible sorcerer unleashing the power of the Old Gods, but the tiny band of Direwolf survivors who huddled in the corner with stolen spears and makeshift clubs. Catelyn still held the little knife and hoped to join them, but her legs weren't responding as well as she might want, and despite pouring all her strength into her numb feet, the distance between them seemed impossible to close. The thin blade was useless in her hands against swords and shields, anyway, wholly inadequate compared to whatever nightmarish weapon Robb had found. I need to do something.
As if her heard her thoughts, Robb turned suddenly towards her, drew another identical hunk of steel from a strange type of leather sheath under his coat, and flung it towards his mother. Catelyn let the bloody knife drop from her fingers, snatched the device out of the air, spun around in a circle and without thinking, without planning, as if she was born to it, pointed the business end, the round hollow where fire and death had slain the Late Walder Frey, at the astonished face of his crippled son Lothar.
Lame Lothar had almost snuck up her. Almost, you treacherous bastard. He'd arranged all of this, she knew. Catelyn's father had told him years ago that Lothar was the real power in the Twins. Since the start of the war she made it her business to learn who each of the Freys were and what dangers they hid behind their eyes. She knew the louts, the drunkards, the fighters of surprising skill, and she knew the man who had arranged this bloody wedding and lured her family in to die with easy smiles and false promises.
So she gripped the weapon with her scarred hand and did exactly as Robb had done. A crippled hand slays the crippled man. She let her finger rest on a little metal switch where the leather and steel met, and squeezed.
Catelyn underestimated the power it unleashed. The weapon announced itself with a dull roar and leapt in the air as if trying to escape her grasp, but she reached out with both hands and caught it in a fumble of fingers and steel. When it was back under control, she wrapped her right hand around the grip, found the switch, and this time straight-armed the weapon so her shoulder could take the impact. Blood stung her eyes and she wiped her face clean with her free hand. Lothar stood still, dumbfounded, blood pouring in great rivulets from his chest and stomach down to his crotch and dripping to the floor. Catelyn's ears rung with the sudden burst of power so close and in such a confined space, but she ignored the irrelevant discomfort of the flesh. She would trade her hearing, her sight, her taste and touch and smell, all of it a thousand times just to see Robb through this madness. All magic comes with a price, she knew. The Old Gods have spoken. This was the great voice of the ancient, lost gods of the North, her Ned's gods, and they had traveled from the mists of time to this castle of oathbreakers for bloody fucking vengeance.
Bang.
This time, she was ready. Lothar's face ripped apart, revealing the skull and brains beneath. Like his father before him, the traitor's body fell limp and headless, staining the carpet with viscera and a spreading crimson pool. More of the muffled explosions rang around her, and she turned to see Robb blasting the Frey men in the back. They pushed against one another and scrambled over corpses, tables, and chairs, trying to get to the line of Stark men and put them to the sword. Catelyn pointed her weapon towards them and joined Robb in the slaughter. Bodies fell in a tangle, pulling others down with them, and the line shuddered and split to find the source of the carnage or simply flee. Some even desperately held their wood-and-iron shields up to block the magic, as if hoping that human implements could challenge the might of the Old Gods. Instead, the invisible magic flew as an arrow, ripping a hole in the shields and sending painted splinters spinning through the air. Mother and son killed one, two, three, the rest were a blur, and shocks of pain rippled through her arm every time the power erupted from her fist.
The weapon was so trivial to operate that the hardest part was finding enough men to kill. Those cloaked in the Twins scattered, and the flayed men were right behind them. The main entrance to the hall was still barred, and none of the Freys had dared turn their backs to pound on the door. Fools. Keeping their face to the terrible power did them no good whatsoever. Some ally on the other side might have let them out, and at least they could have died trying to live.
Eventually the magic seemed to run its course and the weapon functioned no longer, but the gift of the Old Gods had done more than enough damage to the enemy, so much so that it called into question a lifetime of septs and scripture. A lifetime of waste. Catelyn closed her eyes and murmured a small prayer to the Old Gods, echoing the words she'd heard Ned say a thousand times. She would repeat it in front of a Weirwood tree, she promised herself, and she would never go back to the Seven, not unless the Old Gods wished it. She would happily spend an eternity in each of the seven hells, one for each spell she'd been granted to kill Freys and save her son. For Robb's life? An easy bargain.
Several Freys crawled across the floor, moaning and begging for mercy, blood trails leading from holes in their armor to bloody spatters on the wall where they'd once stood. The northerners went to the butcher's work of cutting throats with mortal steel. Robb's weapon had apparently spent itself as well, and the brief respite in the chaos allowed Catelyn a moment to raise her arms in front of a flickering brazier and study the leather-and-steel gift of the gods cradled in her hands.
Words were etched in immaculate detail along the blade. "Colt 45," she read out loud. What does that mean? Are there forty-four more of them? The weapon was heavy in her hands, much heavier than she'd realized in the moment, and the thing suddenly slipped free of her tired hands and nearly dropped to the floor. She caught it at knee-height and cradled the precious gift in both palms, staring at it in awe.
Motion drew her eyes up to her son. Robb was fiddling around in his coat, but his posture was unsteady and his hands moved awkwardly and without the certainty they had shown during the killing of Walder Frey. A little gray box lay at his feet, and Robb's knife had a second hollow where hers ended in a steel pommel. Catelyn's breathing grew ragged and she stepped in blood at her feet - her own blood, it seemed, as crossbow bolts were still lodged firmly through her insides. Her ankles were sticky and wet, and her clothes clung to her whole body from her knees to underneath her breasts. Panic gripped her as she realized Robb was nearly as injured, or perhaps worse. Had the Old Gods stepped in to slay their enemies, only to let Catelyn and Robb bleed to death on the battlefield? In her mind, she pleaded with them. Take me. Let me have enough time to swear my oaths under a tree, and then take me. Let Robb live, please, I beg you. Let my son live and I will die under the tree as the First Men did in the old times. I will water your roots with my blood.
With the certainty of her death looming, Catelyn watched Robb pull another little steel rectangle out of his coat, just like the one on the floor. He slammed it into the hollow with one smooth motion. Not the first hollow, where the magic had originated, but the one on the leather grip. What is this? A gift from the Old Gods, of course, any fool could see that. She had known for years that Ned's gods had chosen their son for greatness. But this? Sorcery, or some incredible construction like the Wall itself? The Children were once said to have used an unknown weapon to shatter the Arm of Dorne into a thousand islands, yet they had wielded nothing of the sort against the endless hordes of Andal invaders from across the Narrow Sea. The Old Gods and the Seven had met in centuries of bloody combat and Ned's gods had lost. Perhaps only now, thousands of years later, the Old Gods had chosen a new champion. The Children had not sufficed as extensions of their will. Was up to the descendants of the First Men to try again? Robb was an Andal and a First Man all in one, with Tully looks and Stark spirit, and when he'd called his banners against Walder Frey's new masters, the Riverlands had joined him just as eagerly as his own bannermen from the North.
She would bring them both to the Weirwood, Catelyn promised herself. Perhaps they would require her to die, perhaps not, it was of little importance. Oaths would be made and instructions received. There would be a price, of course. There is always a price.
Robb blinked at his weapon and nodded, apparently satisfied that it was primed for the next kill. He turned and walked around a corner on unsteady legs, following the blood trail from where the man in pink had slithered away at the moment the Old Gods had shown themselves. His face suddenly appeared in her memories. Roose Bolton. It had all happened so fast that she hadn't registered one enemy from the other, just a jumble of flayed men and twin castles. The Dreadfort had turned on Robb just as the Twins had turned on her. The Freys had a bridge that Robb would need for the war effort, but the Bolton's ancient castle was worthless. Once Winterfell was restored, she would pull the Dreadfort down stone by stone until nothing but the Godswood and the hot springs remained. She added that one to her long list of oaths and promised to reaffirm it in sight of the Old Gods, just as she had with all the rest.
Catelyn's frozen legs came to life as her son disappeared from view. A pair of strong hands were around her right bicep, ungloved, red as everything else, and attached to someone tall and dark, but there was nothing in the world that interested her besides her son and his quarry. Someone's voice buzzed in her ear but she ignored it and stepped forward instead, following the trail of gore across the room and into a narrow hallway.
She found the king standing over the Leech Lord's slumped figure. The Bolton forces had apparently fled through a back door and abandoned their dying lord, and from the sight of him, Roose was not long for the mortal world. His legs lay limp and useless, and he struggled to lift himself up by the arms. He looks as Bran must have, when he woke. Robb had described his brother's infirmities, and how the big stableboy had carried him around in a basket. I'm sorry you had to pay the price, my precious boy. There is always a price.
Roose stopped struggling as Robb and Catelyn approached, but he showed them no acknowledgment. Instead, he clawed at his face as if desperate to tear it off. Blood streamed down the fresh tears around his eyes, caked his nails, and dripped from his wrists. He had been alternating between the mad tearing and the futile attempts to stand, she realized. The gods laugh at you, Roose Bolton. He was utterly mad.
Most of what he muttered was gibberish, even if she concentrated on his white lips. "Why now…why now…" he croaked, then went back to babbling. Robb and Catelyn looked over him in silence as more Stark survivors crowded around behind them.
He blinked. "Why now, after thousands of years?" he said. Suddenly, his bloodshot eyes focused on the weapon in Catelyn's hand, then whipped over to the identical one in Robb's. "They were gone, thousands of years," he said. His chest heaved and blood poured out of his mouth. "There were none left, I won, all gone, how, I won…"
Robb lurched closer to Roose and pressed the hollow of the weapon up against the traitor's head. "Regard this."
The gods announced the battle's end.