They buried Old Nan under a bright sun in the lichyard where all the faithful servants of House Stark lay. Hodor stood to one side slightly quivering and blankly looking at Old Nan's burial. Ser Rodrik gave the rites to lay her to rest while the household looked on. She slept off and peacefully passed away, the oldest woman in Winterfell and perhaps the North. Bran knelt and placed his direwolf brooch in her hands and allowed her to be lowered. Strangely, he felt no tears. It saddened him to no small measure but he felt no tears or loss. Old Nan had lived her life long and quiet, surviving even Theon's cruel reign and Father. Maester Luwin looked particularly shaken and Rickon had cast aside his hard faced demeanour to wail and sob. Hodor cast the first dirt and Bran nodded to the servants to begin covering it up. He watched for a time then left to the Godswood. He knelt and prayed for Robb and Jon. He prayed for Mother and the Tully men he never met. He prayed for Sansa, Arya and peace for Father's shade. He stopped praying and just spoke. He spoke of everything that troubled him and made him happy. He was still praying when Lyanna Mormont came and knelt beside him. They held hands and stared at the face of the Weirwood till Rickon joined them red-eyed and sniffing. They were the Starks in Winterfell and by all the Gods nothing would trouble the North while they lived.
Robb arrived at Moat Cailin dragging the survivors of all the men that had gone south. He would first be reunited with Sansa at the feast held at White Harbor for him and his queen to see off all the Manderly bannermen and the swords of the eastern houses like House Locke. Then they would turn around to Rillsteade and onto Deepwood Motte and the Mountain Clans releasing the bannermen at each location. A short stop at the Wall then down through Last Hearth and Karhold finally to The Dreadfort before reaching Winterfell where the last of the lords would stay witness to the Northern marriage of Robb and the Frey. The plan was Maester Luwin's. A royal progress like the ones done by Aegon I of House Targaryen to shore up support and strength for the Northern cause. Cley Cerwyn left Winterfell to see to his home even as Larence Hornwood announced he would be marrying the red-haired daughter of a wildling champion named 'Gerrick Kingsblood' that had promised over a thousand fighting men and women as dowry. Bran wished him good fortune and a prosperous household. The once bastard boy was going to be a lord. Bran had sent him many books on the Northern Houses and nobility. He hoped the boy would grow up to be a strong lord especially with the Boltons brooding so close and the Manderly bannermen mulling over what could have been theirs. The Glover steward had left to serve Larence at Hornwood once Lady Glover sent away her children to be fostered by her father at Oldcastle. It was one of many things Robb had to sort out once he returned to Winterfell. He sincerely wished the Vale would be convinced to join their cause. If the Vale joined the Lannisters, then they would not be able to rely on Moat Cailin to protect them and the eastern houses would need to be as unified as possible. Not by one House fighting claims from two stronger Houses. He considered the fleets being crewed on both sides of the North. An eastern fleet under House Manderly that counted thirty-two vessels and a great dromond as their lead ship. The western fleet was split among the Houses Ryswell, Glover, Mormont, Flint and the young Thenn. It was far larger numbering nigh eighty vessels including the northern ships and the captured Ironborn longships and galleys. The northern lords had men to crew but should war come their men were painfully unskilled in the rigging and steering of ships. The wildlings were little better the best of them giving what they knew from smugglers and rafts. Yet the more the wildlings were asked to work; the more they insisted they were being turned to slaves, even as the northmen ignored the threat from the North. They were not wrong there but they were not right that they were turned to slaves. More often than not the lords took their sides in disputes over their odd marriage customs and homes. A rebellion would be the death of them in Winter. Bran felt like laughing at the irony. A rebellion in the south would be a saving grace. A rebellion in the North would be a nightmare. It worried him to no small end that the Lannisters knew this. He had already received anonymous letters on how he could be a much greater lord than his brother playing in the south and Stannis Baratheon had bluntly ordered him to swear fealty and the arms of the North to his cause and the rightful King. Bran knew no Northern lord no matter how disgruntled with Robb, would suggest a Stark being a good lord. The only party who wanted a lord and not a King in the North were the Lannisters at least the only ones that would speak that way. Using spies and cravens. The letter was dropped on his bed and Bran kept it to show to Robb when he returned, The King in the North. And the Trident. Bran always forgot about his Tully sides. He thought about writing a letter to his Uncles Edmure and Brynden. There was a time he wanted to be a knight like them. Now he was just happy to be a Stark. Speaking of Starks and Tullys, Bran was conflicted on which room to put his mother and brother. Father's room would be given to the new Lord of Winterfell but that would mean turning out Mother. Bran could not bring himself to comfort Mother by throwing her out of the place she had slept for almost twenty years. Robb would have to manage his small room. His bed according to the Maester, was large enough for two. Sansa would have her old rooms back and the Freys would stay where they were meant to be. By Robb's request, a representative of the famed Iron Bank was coming to secure the gold from the sack of Casterly Rock. Some of it would find its way into more granaries and holdfasts at the west side of the North near White Harbor and the east coast. He often rode out more and more with a stiff escort, no less, to assign holdfasts and towns their new lords and portions. He tried to get Osha a holdfast of her own complete with a nearby mill but she refused and said she was fine in Winterfell and with little Rickon by her side. Rickon, liked the attention, no matter how hard he pretended to be grown up and Bran worried over his Mother's reaction if she learnt he was to marry either a Wull or a Norrey. The Clansmen were glad enough to have a Stark marriage but they mumbled endlessly about how a girl would have been better or even Robb's heir having strong mountain blood ready for Winter. Bran appeased them as best he could and promised to raise the matter with His Grace.
A few days after Robb reached Rillsteade, word came of a wildling raid on a village. Bran took Ice and four hundred riders and set out. The cause was a wildling feud as one of the wildings attacked a village for taking their daughters back from the men who had carried them off in the night. The wargs in Bran's escort swiftly located the marauding band and they fell upon them. The wildling who led the band was the Weeper, a man known for some eye troubles or the other. The Stark men rode into the fray with a wedge formation, lances and poleaxes ripping through the wildling furs and knocking against bits of stolen armour. It hurt Bran to have to attack the men they had worked so hard to save but they deserved this fate. He had hoped that all Westeros would learn never to attack the Northmen but it seemed the wildlings did not consider themselves as under that law. His shield interposed an axe even though the impact rattled him to his saddle. He swung around a wildling attacking a dismounted man-at-arms and pricked him in the soft of his neck. The blood sputtered out and he moved on to join a charge. A spear wielding wildling came at his side at a full tilt when Calon knocked into him with his own poleaxe from atop his horse. The charge routed the wildlings and they ran them all down. The Weeper was pulled out from cowering beneath corpses but he said nothing as Bran used Ice to judge him guilty and hang him immediately. The warg in their party gutted him as a warning to any more wildlings. Bran hoped Robb would not be getting an earful of such complaints as he visited the lords in their seats and hunted in their lands. The wildlings were mostly settling down. But all it took was for word of such attacks to spread and a lord might get it into his head that he could be lord of all the North with help from the Lannisters.
Robb Stark let his coming be known as he departed from the Dreadfort. All the tailors and seamstresses were desperately trying to sew new clothes for Roslin Frey using the few clothes Robb had 'borrowed' from his wife's chests and forgotten at Castle Cerwyn. Naturally, kind Cley had taken leave of his father to drop the clothes at Winterfell where Roslin Frey would end her journey. The household had roared with laughter at the thin gowns with small fur seams. Hopefully she would have been loaned gowns by Mother or the Northern ladies. He wondered how much Mother and Robb had changed, and more importantly, if Rickon would still remember them. He could easily recite their names and describe them but no further. He mixed up Jon's deeds with Robb's and Bran's. He tried his best to cure him of that error but even when older, Rickon was just as wild as ever. His main flaw during sparring yet was trying to use both shield and sword to rush opponents. Bran looked forward to seeing Mother's face when she met Rickon. It wouldn't be long.