Chapter Thirteen: The Rubble and the Wolf
In Willa Frey, there was always a darkness. Derwa knew this the moment that she turned seven and found her baby sister in the garden staring off at the Trident, her eyes unsettlingly blank. In the wind, there was the sent of warm sugar and lemon, an unfamiliar scent to grace the Twins. Autumn held heavy and cold on the leaves, making the wind from the great river that circled their home seem damp and chill. Perhaps that was why Derwa felt cold and flushed all at once as she crunked her way through the pebbled path to her sister.
"Willa?" she had whispered, her gaze flighty as it searched the empty gravel that Willa sat on, stopping disdainfully on the wilted flowers and weeds that circled their garden. Could the gardener have done nothing for her birthday with the shrubs? "It's cold, Willa. We'll be eating soon and it's cold. Come inside or you'll have a fever and we all know how Corlin will wail."
"I had a dream," Willa had murmured in return after a long pause that had made Derwa's throat grow tight. Tawny brown eyes the color of warm gold ran stayed fixed to the waves crashing against the Twins' walls like a scorned lover. A secret part of Derwa had always hated her little sister for those eyes, so wide and seeking with a heavy dusting of lashes that gave her sister's face a cute innocence that she longed for. Her only hope would be that she got uglier before suitable gentlemen came to the Twins.
All thoughts of beauty and knights in shiny armor fled from her mind at the next words uttered into the foul wind of Autumn.
"I dreamed about blood and lions - wolves and fire. And then in the end there was only the ice. Ice as far as the eye can see." Slowly, Willa had tilted her head back, blinking up at Derwa. "Have you ever seen the cold like that?"
"You-you're crazy." But in the way that only children can know, Derwa knew that what Willa was saying was real. There was an air of truth around the words, like the feeling that she got from staring through a glass window and seeing into a room that she was never supposed to.
More than anything, that truth made her sprint away, her hands shaking and clammy. She would never go into that garden again and she would warn all of her sisters away from there as well.
Years later, Derwa would look back on that moment and reassure herself. Every cruel word that was spoken at her confident, pretty little sister were all for a reason. Willa was crazy and sooner or later her mask would slip and their father would know it.
And somewhere inside of Willa she knew that she was dark as well. She knew that one day that darkness would leak out and she would become just like her father and mother. She would make fragile people cry.
And when that day came, she wouldn't cry - not like she had when she saw Derwa run from her in fear.
No. Instead the whole world would weep. Willa Frey would have no more tears to give.
"She's been in a fever dream for nine days now," Robb hissed, his shoulders rigid as he stared down at the small, medicinal woman.
The tent that had been made in the dead of the mountains that led to the Vale of Arryn. They had made a harsh trek into the pass - as far as the small pack of soldiers and servants could go before they reached the unforgiving chill of the mountains. It would be nine more days before they reached the Vale - nine hard days that would be unforgiving to the woman currently thrashing beneath a pile of furs and quilts.
"Would you like me to heal her or kill her? If I give her any more milk of the poppy she's likely to wake up addicted to it." Skipperth's owlish eyes went thin as she glared up at the imposing man. For over thirty years she had ran the battlefields and bedrooms of the north. She had seen more blood and gore, heard more whispers of the Stranger in those hellish rooms and tents than this boy could ever imagine. Skipperth would not be ordered about like a scullery maid. If she had wanted to be than she would have stayed in King's Landing.
"She needs to sweat the fever and heal naturally. Not be carted about like a prized chicken." At this, Robb gave a vicious growl, his eyes wild.
In the corner, sweaty and cold all at once, Willa moaned, her eyes blinking around foggily before closing once more. For a night, Caitlyn had whispered fiercely with her son about tying her to the bed so she wouldn't thrash her way out and cause herself more damage.
"We can only stay here for four more days at the most," Robb snarled, his eyes flicking anxiously toward the woman who was staring blankly into the fire, her lips moving quickly. She had done this since she had lapsed into near unconsciousness nearly nine days ago, her eyes seeing ghosts in the deep of the woods or in the fires that were built all around her like an altar to the Gods. Briefly, his mind flicked back to the first night that he had came to that dim little slab that the Frey's inhabited. He had hated it. Every moment. Worse, he had hated that his mind kept drifting, thinking about rough hands and skin that smelled like mint and rosemary. He had long since let go of any affection that he held for Talisa but his mind still clung to those solitary moments. She had been a body to warm his after the screams of battle had long since numbed him. A moment where he didn't have to make a decision other than where he would like to place his lips next.
In that way, his mind had become lazy. He hadn't had to win Talisa over - not particularly. She had ambushed him with her thoughts - brazen and wild - but he hadn't ever particularly felt like sparring with her in that way. She was a untamable sort - something that you let be and admired in passing but never captured.
But then Willa Frey had whispered to her sister, her eyes frightened and her hands shaking even as she tried to force courage into the little girl in front of her. For a moment, he had felt something flare - something bright and familiar like the call of light after a boat has been lost to see for weeks. He remembered the feeling of offering comfort to his siblings. How long was it since he had spoken to Jon or teased Arya for her boyish gait and unending fire? Was Sansa as beautiful now as he remembered her to be before all the blood and carnage?
For the first time, he had stumbled, suddenly realizing that his life wasn't apart of some grotesque play. The steel of his sword at his hip felt heavy and he could breathe a little bit easier because it was better - this was better than whatever hell he had been living in where everyone smiled for him and no one reminded him of what life was like before his father died and the curtain dropped.
It was that that had grounded him - had made him chase after her like some school boy longing for a single kiss or glance. At first he hadn't even known that it was her that had saved his life. Saved him from watching his men and mother wilt away from starvation. But after that he wasn't about to go back. He would marry her and although he knew that she would never love him - and in all honesty he didn't know if he would be able to love anyone either - they would be happy. He would be sure to make her happy - as happy as a monster, a slaughterer of men wearing the mask of a king could make a woman.
"The wolf went into the tower and dined with the rubble and dust." Robb flinched at the words, his feet carrying him swiftly to the edge of the bed. Grimly, Skipperth left the tent. She had heard the ravings of death before and didn't care to relive them anymore than necessary. There were other, more tolerable cases that she could handle. Cases that would end with a bandage and some salve.
Silently, his face set like stone, Robb waited as Willa gazed off into the flickering flames of the fire. Her skin which had reminded him of starlight was a grayish hue with speckles of red where her skin flushed feverishly. Her wide eyes, fringed so darkly were glassy and sick, the lace of her eyelashes dewy with tears and sweat. But her lips moved with an energy that scared him.
"He gorged himself on flattery and fantasy until his belly was so full that he could hardly move. But maybe a part of him wanted it to end. Being a wolf among men was hard. So he forgot his wrong, his perceived slights until the last moment when the tower crumbled and the wolf was killed. And the toll was paid. As it always is." Tears slid thickly down her cheeks, a sort of bone-deep agony sawing through her. Desperately, Robb reached down to run a hand along her face, trying to force some of his strength into her. If he could only just close his eyes and just wish, wake up to find her complaining for him to get away from her.
"Goddamnit, Willa," he hissed, childish anger flaring through him as she gave a frail shiver at the touch of his palm on her forehead. "You won't die before you even reach Winterfell. Do you hear me?"
He wanted to shake her, crush her to him and force all the sickness away from her. Force. That was the only thing that he knew. But force could do nothing for a woman dying.
Dimly, he stared down at her, those wide eyes fluttering closed as she slipped into unconsciousness once again. Strangely, he was more grateful for these moments than the lapses of consciousness where he could hear her suffering. And that alone made him feel wretched.
At his back, the fire crackled viciously in its hearth and Robb registered the slick slide of sweat as it rolled down his spine and throat. It was sweltering in the tent, so hot and humid from the water that had been splashed onto the fire intermittently that beads of sweat rolled from the wooden columns holding up the tent. Still Willa shivered, her teeth clacking quietly in the winter that engulfed her.
There was nothing more to do but watch her, wait for the brief screaming fits of terror that wakefulness gave her and the bitter cold that the sweet release of unconsciousness held.
"You need sleep." His mother's soft voice made him jump, her willowy presence startling in the heavy air of the tent. Sometimes he had wondered how such a frail woman had survived the war beside him. Had she seen the same dead that he had? How had it not broken her the way it had broken him? How was she still so… gentle? Her eyes crinkled as she stared down at him, moving around the bed silently. "I can sit with her."
Briefly, his eyes flicked to the still figure of his wife, catching on the hollow of her neck, slick with sweat where a small crystal necklace lay. Against the blanched tone of her skin, the magenta hue of the rock seemed to pulse lightly with color.
"You need rest." Quickly, Robb tore his gaze from the strange necklace. Was he imagining things? Just like he had imagined that strange flower growing in the corner of the tent nine days ago.
"Yes," he murmured, his bones creaking as he got up from the bed. "I'll… go to sleep…"
The thought seemed somehow strange to him like somehow leaving a battlefield in the middle of the bloodshed.
"What will you do?" That tone - he knew that soft, cajoling tone. Sometimes, during the war he had had to quil himself from yelling when his mother spoke to him like that. When he could hear the already formed answers barbing the end of her sentences. "When the four days come and she is not better - what will you do?"
"If," he snapped, the hair at the back of his neck raising like a wild animal. Jaime Lannister had called him just that while stuck in the mud and muck of his cell, staring out at him with that sarcastic tilt to his lips that had followed him into death. Sometimes he could feel that same animal clawing at his skin.
Caitlyn's lips softened into a patient smile. "If she isn't well enough to go on."
Silently, he swallowed, his eyes blazing with defiance before flattening out into a cool mask that Willa would have surely laughed at. "We march in four days. This pass is the only one safe enough to travel and we need to make it before the mountain folk grow aware of our position."
In the fire, a log gave a crack, it's hard skin giving way in the roar of the flames. Willa was silent, her eyes moving restlessly beneath the curtain of her lids. To move her while she was so frail would cause her to relapse. The duress would be too much for her body, small and weak from days of fever and vomiting.
She would die.
Caitlyn - for all her gentleness - was a practical woman. It was that reason that had led allowed her to brave the war. Logic over emotion. Decisions over inaction. As she stared down at the girl who had married into her family only a few weeks earlier she grew distantly aware of the fact that she liked her. In fact, she liked her son with her. That was why she had told him of her aid during the war and also why she had impressed upon him the importance of having a wife that could hold up and re-establish Winterfell to its former glory.
It was this unerring reason that also led her to believe that Willa Frey would not recover in four days.
Quickly, Robb left the tent, whistling sharply for Grey Wind before bounding past the edge of his tents to a rocky closure and drawing his sword. He wouldn't sleep. No, he would work his body until even his bones felt the ache that his soul did at this very moment.
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