He yelled and jumped back, leaving Cat. Grey Wind's jaws were firmly clamped around his left calf and the smallish pup had managed to keep his hold even as Ned had jumped.
"Down! DOWN!" He shouted, but the wolf hung on.
Grey Wind only released his grip on Ned when Catelyn came over and grabbed the scruff of his neck, ready to pull him off.
The small beast then relinquished Ned's leg, sat and looked up at her, his ears pricked up, at attention.
They both stared at him for a moment, shocked by what had occurred. Then Catelyn tore her eyes away to focus on Ned's leg.
"Gods be good! You need Maester Luwin!" She cried.
Ned was still slightly dazed by the sudden attack. How had the wolf pup even gotten in? He then remembered that he had not completely closed the door before going to Catelyn. Even so, Robb's rooms were far enough away and they surely ha not been that loud…
"Maester Luwin?" he replied.
"Your. Leg. Is. Injured." She explained slowly.
He looked down at it. Several puncture wounds from Grey Wind's teeth were bleeding freely, but were not terribly painful.
"I shall simply rinse it with hot wine and wrap it in cloth." He said dismissively, already heading over to the small table by the fire, where a pitcher of heated wine was always left for Catelyn on colder nights such as this one.
She sighed in exasperation and then went to retrieve a scrap swath of cloth from a dress she had been sewing for Arya. She poured the wine over his leg and wrapped the cloth around the wound.
"Why would he do something like that?" wondered Catelyn aloud, her voice sharp. "I shall have to speak with Robb about training his direwolf properly."
Ned smiled and raised a hand to her cheek, which was still flushed from the ordeal… and the events prior to it.
"He was just protecting his mother." He joked.
"Protecting his mother?" Repeated Catelyn wonderingly.
"The pup is young, and does not understand the difference between cries of pleasure and cries of pain." She mused, looking over at Grey Wind, who was snarling at Ned, ears back and lip curled.
Catelyn retrieved her shift and a gown and went over to the snarling pup. She scooped him up easily and he gave a small yelp of alarm.
"You have been naughty. I was in no danger and you had no right to attack my lord husband. Off to bed with you!" She chastised as she carried him out of the room.
She closed the door behind her and Ned rose from his chair.
"Now that we need not longer worry about interrupting pups…" he rumbled.
Cat frowned, "Your leg - "
"Is currently unimportant." He finished, reaching again to pull her to him.
She did not protest further.
…
Ned tried to conceal his limp as he walked with Catelyn down to the Great Hall the next morning. The bite hurt worse now that the adrenaline from the previous night had left him. He wondered at Catelyn's assessment of the attack, that Grey Wind was protecting his mother. That sounded too much like one of Old Nan's tales of the old Winter Kings and their wolves. The wolf pups must have simply been alerted by Catelyn's near miss with the hound the previous week, heard Cat's cries and protected as their instincts told them to.
As they reached the hall, they overheard Robb explaining how Grey Wind had woken him that past night and this morning his wolf had returned with a bloody muzzle.
Arya interrupted "Nymeria was up too! She was snarling and pacing around the room!"
"She woke Lady and I up too," sniffed Sansa.
"And then Lady started growling and pawing at the door!" continued Arya, undeterred by Sansa's cry to protest at the idea that her wolf might behave like a wolf.
"Shaggy was scratching the door too," interjected Rickon, "but Bran said we were not to let him or Bran's wolf out."
"You really ought to name your wolf, it's so long to say 'Bran's wolf' each time." Sansa told Bran, who merely shrugged and looked over thoughtfully at where the pups were sitting in the corner of the room, looking hopefully at the servants carrying out the morning meal.
However, when Ned and Catelyn entered the room, the pups immediately turned to him, flattened their ears and bared their teeth at him.
"Settle down!" Robb reprimanded the wolves, as Bran asked, "Father, are you well? You are limping."
"A minor hurt." Ned answered dismissively, "Though you ought to train your pup better, lest their bad behaviour change my mind about my decision to allow you to keep them." He said sternly.
"No! They are trained! You cannot send them all away! They merely got agitated! It wasn't even all of them!" Sansa cried, tears gathering in her eyes.
"Hush, sweetling." Catelyn said firmly, but not unkindly. "You father merely means that we must be sure they are not dangerous if you are to raise them."
"Why did Grey Wind attack you anyways?" Rickon queried.
Ned and Catelyn exchanged a glance and Ned observed that his wife was deeply flushed, the red creeping all of the way past her neckline. However she kept her head up and easily said, "I was clumsy and caused myself a minor injury. You father was helping me to sit when Grey Wind burst in and bit him."
They sat down, Ned warily eyeing the wolf pups that were now lying down, but still had their eyes trained on him.
"They must have thought you injured Mother and Grey Wind was just trying to protect her," mused Bran, echoing Cat's thought from the previous night.
"Well that's easy then," said Arya through a mouth full of oatcake. "We shall just tell the wolves that you did not hurt Mother and this was simply a misunderstanding."