CATELYN VI
"The green needles of pine and fir trees surrounded them, scratching and tearing at both horse and rider as Catelyn did her best to keep her head down in the saddle.
The first light of day was beginning to rise somewhere behind them, as they rode on. They had escaped the terrifying sound of the hounds almost an hour past, and the both the castle and the Kingsroad were far behind them, disappearing more in their minds for every twist and turn of the trail.
Still, they could not slow down. The Winterfell riders could very well still be on their trail.
Brandon's old way through the forest seemed to be still in use from time to time, perhaps more often than she had hoped, and no doubt any Winterfell man would know exactly which route they were taking until they strayed off from it, and after that they would be riding blind through the forest. They would have to stay on the path for at least another hour or two if they wanted to make enough speed east to lose their [ensuers/pursuers]. The hour of dayne was the thing most in their favour. So far, they had not chanced upon any woodcutters or other smallfolk passing through.
"How is Bran?" She heard herself asking, as they crested around a small mossy ridge.
"He's not in pain, at any rate", Ser Erryk replied.
But neither could he feel in his body if he was, Catelyn thought. They would have to slow down sooner or later, somehow, for their own safety. Catelyn herself was far from used to riding. She had not galloped ever since she was young, and the Tullys were not famed for their cavalry or horsemanship as much as the Starks. Her ladies, among with Senelle, seemed more or less equally unprepared, and troubled and strained to first hell's threshhold already from the effort of riding.
"Can't we stop?" Bran asked her, then. It was his first words aloud for more than two miles, surely.
She let the question linger in the ruddy green of the trees and the cold wind of the morning air between them, as she thought Ser Erryk might answer for her.
"We could still be followed, my prince", he said finally.
"We will not stop yet!" Ser Mandon confirmed from further behind, still leading the rear and holding out watch for any pursuers.
Catelyn wanted to speak against, to order them to stop for at least a while, but she knew that they were in the right. They could not risk getting caught until they were well beyond any risk of capture. Cersei would be on them, with her loyal Hound, and perhaps even Benjen as well, though she hoped he would be merciful and see no use in following them.
She thought of Ned, and of Robb and the girls, and longed for home.
They rode on, turn after turn, the fir trees, soldier pines and sentinels guarding the way before them, each tree marking yet another tiny increment further. Yes, only another couple of hundred feet, and then another half mile more, and we will be out of harm's way.
We will be safe, she prayed. Please, you old gods, just help us escape south, and we will never return to trouble you again.
The hooves of their red filly clapped on thunderously towards the green moss and brown dirt of the ground, as Catelyn shifted her stance a little to get a look at Senelle and Eresa.
"Are you well, my lady?" She asked, as best she could in the speed of the equipage.
"Yes, Your Grace", Eresa called back to her, mere inches away from her face, yet as in another world.
She holds up a good facade for us, Catelyn knew. The poor girl is terrified.
Eresa was only a couple of years younger than Catelyn, but she was frail by heart and she looked old and frail by body as well already, by the thin wrinkled lines on her long neck, and the terrified expression in her light blue eyes.
Her hair was still beautiful, Catelyn thought, long and pretty, although slightly tousled now from their journey, with a bronze-like brown, making her look like a marten, weasel, or perhaps a female fox. She had a Frey for a mother, so the comparison was not far away for Catelyn to make.
She took her sight to the side of them for a while, and then far ahead, where the wolves were making way for them and scouting ahead like two enormous shadows, one grey, one black. She thanked the gods for the gift of them, once again.
They were young and energetic, more so than the horses even, she was sure, as she began to feel the slight waddle and wavering in the saddle for each passing mile and heard the frantic thrusting of their breath. Ser Mandon's destrier was made for battle, not long journeys, and she guessed that the beast of a horse had to be at least ten or twelve years old, if not more.
The sky began to wane toward a light grey, but the sun still had not risen.
It will not be long, though, she thought.
She looked up and felt the soft falling of snowflakes touching her cheeks and hair. Bran felt it too.
"It's snowing!"
"Snow is good", Erryk said. "It will cover our scent."
It will make our tracks stand out, though, Catelyn thought to herself, but said nothing. Let them have the small peace of mind that comes with it, if so be the case.
Besides, Ser Erryk was a Glover, from the North himself. Perhaps he knew what he was speaking of.
...
They rode on like so for another while, as the light snows fell upon them, like the wet tears of relief, although Catelyn would not allow herself to feel that way until they had reached their destination.
As the ground became soft and slick with snow, they slowed the horses down into a trot at last. The change of speed was much appreciated, she could tell.
She put her gloved hand on the mane of her red filly. There, there, girl. You have done well by us so far. Have some rest now.
The wolves kept on going, though, running ahead as vigorously as before, and soon they had disappeared from their sight. Lady Leona became worried at that, believing them to have gone wild and deserted them.
"Will they come back?" She asked nervously.
"Yes. They won't leave us", Bran promised. "They just don't want to slow down yet."
She knew that her son spoke the truth about his furry brothers.
As they came upon another small clearing, however, and the trees began to gleasen out long before them, somewhere ahead, she heard the wolves suddenly beginning to howl. Something was wrong.
"There is something there", Bran said. "Someone. People. Men."
Catelyn felt it in her bones as well. And so this is as far as we made it, she thought.
But she could not understand how the Winterfell men had been able to catch them, in truth. The Starks of Winterfell were said to be among the best riders in the realm, true, but had they not been fast enough? Mankan had assured her that their three horses were fast enough to compete. Had he lied?
"They are not on horses, I don't think", Bran said. "They are on foot."
"How do you know, my sweet prince?" Lady Leona asked, almost close to crying – again, Catelyn thought.
"I just know", Bran replied, his voice as still and wise as ever it had been since his fall. He would not tell the truth about what bond he had with the wolves, not to herself, nor to Lady Leona. Her second youngest son was far wiser than that.
The mark of a warg was a feared thing, an ill thing, an omen of terror, even up here. And far worse in the south, if they should ever have the chance to return there...
The wolves continued to howl, and then she saw them, running back towards them, warning them, barking and howling for all the faey of the woods to hear.
"We should ride another way, then", Lady Leona urged.
"There is no other way now", Ser Mandon shouted from behind them. "We ride on, and send them to their precious old gods if they try to stop us!"
"They will not stop us, if they are not ahorse", Catelyn said, as she chisened her eyes to look ahead.
She could almost make out something behind the sentinels and soldier pines in the clearing ahead, opening up before them, as the wolves loped back towards them, and then forward again, leaping amidst the freshly fallen snow in a frenzy of warning and fear alike. Here it comes, Catelyn thought.
The wolves continued to howl and bark, louder than she had ever heard them before, Catelyn was certain, or perhaps it simply echoed louder when one was on horseback to hear it from down below. She was not sure. But if they were in luck, their pursuers were not mounted, Bran had assured. Could it be true? If so, how had they possibly caught up with them here, so far from the castle?
...
"No, they are not on horse", Ser Erryk confirmed, as their horses trodded along, and Catelyn first glimpsed. "But they might as well be. - Archers!"
Catelyn gave a quick terrified look, as she shot a glance over a fir tree branch, and saw that he was right. There were at least three men, or perhaps two men and a woman, clad in ragged browns, angling at them with bows and arrows.
"Brandon, cover yourself!" She called, and her son pulled up his hood and the long armored brail-mat across his legs. If they shot him with an arrow, he would not even feel it. Her poor little climber had to be protected, most of all.
The horses neighed, and screamed from the shock of it all, but they rode on forward, trotting and then galloping through the rain of the arrows, to their credit.
Catelyn picked up the long spear that hung from the hem of her saddle, to the side, and tried to aim it at one of the attackers as they rode perilously close by, but missed. The man had stood too far away by a long shot, five feet away at least.
The bear-clad archers loosened three more arrows, she was sure, and then a fourth one that seemed to hit Ser Erryk's gelding in the side, penetrating the horse's thin armor into its soft grey-white flesh.
NEEEEEIIIIIGGHHH!
The sound of it was horrifying to her ears. It might as well be the sound of her son dying before her. But Bran still sat up in the saddle, even as their horse wagged its head back and serlanced, agitated from the sudden shock and the pain.
It will not hold on much longer in this stress, she could already see. Ser Mandon's horse at the back of their column was a destrier, perhaps, yes, but the slender grey gelding was not used to war, or the weapons of men... It had been frightened enough of having to share the lane with the wolves, and now with the archers coming on...
It was only a question of moments before the horse would shy away from the path, into some tree or other, throwing all of its riders off as best it could. Catelyn could feel her heart going up into her throat again.
"Get them!" Ser Erryk screamed out, beside himself, as he lunged left towards the wildlings, for that was what they were now, she realized with a sudden jolt as she saw them once again, rugged brown-bearded and brown-clad wildlings in bear furs, waiting to ambush them in the forest.
Please no, I don't want your page covered with Bran's name in the White Book, I want us to survive, Catelyn thought, as she prayed to the gods that he would not jump from the horse and leave Bran behind. He would not be as reckless as that, only to get a killing of the archers, surely, but if he did, the weeping Leona would be as good as useless to hold her son there. Hang on, Bran, she prayed. Hold on.
"Die, you scum!" Ser Erryk called out again, as he slashed at the air to his side a second time, but the horse would not ride closer. It was falling to its bleeding sore already.
Erryk got the insight just then, it seemed, as he called out to her.
"Your Grace! The prince!"
"Take him off with you!", she called back.
He did as she ordered, and pulled Bran down from the saddle with him as best he could, while the horse slowed down. Lady Leona stayed on, however, too frightened to leave the saddle, and hurried the grey gelding on forward as soon as Erryk and Bran had lemped themselves off it.
Catelyn tried to hop down from her own horse as well, but the red filly was riding faster than she could anticipate. She called for it to stop, but it did not listen. It would not stop with the wildlings so close by. And so instead she held on tight, as their mount continued on beyond the wildling clearing, through the thicket of some fir trees, and onwards along the trail again, safe but away from Bran and both of her Kingsguards.
"It will not stop!" She told Eresa, her voice almost sounding scared in spite of herself.
"It won't?" Eresa sounded even more panicked. "Stop! Stop, let us off!" Her high and strained voice wavered to the filly, but it did not heed the orders of its second rider either.
Before they could care about any of that, however, they heard the sound of the wolves again.
Our saviours, Catelyn thought once more, as she turned around and saw the silhouette of Shaggydog leaping up on to the closest of the attackers and savaging him right in his face. The scream of the man was a horrifying thing to hear, and the crunch of bone and other things as well. Eresa was screaming, weeping hysterically, and Rickon was screaming also, as their red horse rode on, and on, until they could no longer see nor hear any of it clearly.
They must have ridden another two hundred feet away, into the thicket of the trail and onwards, before the red filly began to come to some semblance of a stop.
"Come on, now... That's it, girl... Stay! Stop! Ptrooh!" She and Senelle both called, and the horse finally slowed down, although it was flaring wild in its nostrils still, and kicking back and forth.
Had it been hit by one of the arrows? Catelyn thought, as she grabbed on to Rickon and carefully drew herself down from the saddle. Senelle came down soon after, helping down Eresa.
"My lady, are you well?" Senelle asked Lady Eresa.
"Well? If I am well..?"
"We must go back! Come now!" Catelyn called, as she grabbed on to Rickon once again, to his protests, and began to run all the way back. She saw Senelle try and get ahold of the horse behind her, and hoped that she would be able to tie it up. Elsewise, their journey would become even harder from now on. But as long as she could save Bran from all the horrors that befell them, even now...
…
"Brandon!" She called.
"Mother!" She heard her young son's voice calling back from beyond the thicket of the trees.
"My queen!" and "Your Grace!", Ser Mandon and Ser Erryk both called.
Catelyn Tully rushed forth, as fast as her lungs and the legs of her littlest one would take them, as they reached into the clearing once again, seeing that only two of the wildlings still remained, one man and what seemed like a very scruffy-looking woman. Both of them were armed; the man standing still with a bow and arrow, and the woman with a spear.
"My queen?" The man said, licking his thin lips with an evil grin. "Tha' sounds good 'nough for me."
A third one suddenly appeared from nowhere, then, just behind her, taking ahold of her hair, as she shuddered at the man taking shape from the thick fir branches that were all around. Nightmare... Nightmare! Mandon... Erryk... Take me away from this place!
"Aye, she's a proper queen, this one! The kneelers all have so pretty women down here, don't they?" The man said, as he held up a knife towards her throat and sniffed her hair deep.
She trembled, trying to flinch away, as she could smell his breath that smelled like death, pine needles, excrement and rotting flesh.
"Unhand her, you wildling scum!" Ser Erryk shouted, as he turned to face the man and walked closer, raising his sword. Bran sat on the ground behind him, next to the pale-faced Leona Woolfield. Summer was next to him, though. Summer would protect him. They were one and the same.
She relaxed, only a little, as much as she could with her own and Rickon's life still on the edge of the disgusting tree man's knife. Brandon was safe. Her older son would survive, at least, even if the vile man were to slit her throat in another heartbeat or two.
"Unhand her, ser! That is the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms you are holding on to!" Mandon called out, his voice a dead iron tone, declaring it out loud, to any and all who would hear.
"The seven kingdoms? There's only two bloody kingdoms tha' I know of, and Mance Rayder ain't come down here to trouble you lot yet!" The man with the bow and arrow called out to them, laughing with his terrible grin.
"Come on then, little queen", he continued. "What do you have for us? Some gold for old Borkas?"
"I bet you she shits bronze and pisses out honey, this one", the man with the breath of death said, as he inhaled her perfume once more, and shuddered with the delight of a sinner in a brothel.
Catelyn slowly, slowly let her hand go from Rickon's, urging him on with her feet, as her littlest one cried and cried.
No, no, don't cry, my love... Go to Erryk now. Go to your brother, and to Summer, and be safe.
Thankfully, they did not stop him at that, no doubt seeing him as less important, only a little red-haired tot, the runt of their flock. The wildlings, as her sweet Ned had explained to her many times, the same as the hill-tribes of the Vale, did not put much stock in who was the son of who and the concept of heirs, especially not for young children who had yet to match their fathers' deeds. Blood amongst the wildlings was something that held one alive, or could be spilled; not the stuff of divine rulers or families chosen by the gods to glory or to watch over their people.
"Wha' do you have then, little queen?" The man with the bow and arrow repeated, as he went closer to examine her. "Keep her there. I'll have me a nice little look at her."
Catelyn suddenly became conscious of how richly they were all dressed, especially up here in the grim wasteland that was the North. Her little Brandon was wearing his grey Stark doublet lined with silver and gold, and his surcoat was splendid as well, dark grey wool with golden buttons, and a heavy silver pin of the Stark direwolf fastened his cloak at his shoulders. His boots and furs were of black moleskin.
Catelyn was grateful for that she herself had at least not worn her crown as they rode out, instead keeping it in the packing, but they would have to give the wildlings something valuable all the same. Gold, silver, bronze... Anything that they had, and would not need until White Harbour.
"You will have nothing from Her Grace, unless you unhand her this moment!" Mandon called to the man who still held her by the neck with his knife. "If you lay a hand on her, ser, you will lose it."
"Fingers I have lost to the cold", the man replied, his disgusting breath oozing from between his yellow rotten teeth. "Hands, though, I have a need of, before winter is through." He angled the knife closer to her throat, making it gleam in the first early light of morning peeking through the trees from above. "Try me."
He had not said another word, however, as Shaggydog appeared from behind the tree, a deathly black shadow the size of a horse, and mauled the man with fangs and claws both.
VAAA-RRRUUFFF! GRRRRWWWLLRRMRR...-
"AAAAAAARHHHHH!" The man screamed in anguish, as he dropped his knife, but not before cutting her on the ear and hair, making a long lock of her auburn hair and drops of blood spill onto the forest floor below them both.
Catelyn jumped away, hiding down at the ground, as Erryk and Shaggydog closed in from one direction each, and went at the man.
The sharp sound of arrows slitting through the air was heard once again, as one hit Shaggydog in his pelt, where he already had his wound from before, and another came quick at Mandon's gorget.
The bowman loosened a third one, before he tripped backwards on the soft moss, and Ser Mandon stormed up to him, sword arising, and cleaved him in two with a hard slash of the Kingsguard's blade.
The third one, the woman, tossed away her spear as soon as the archer reached the ground. It was over.
"I yield!" She cried.
"I yield to you!" She said again, holding up her hands before her, and curling up almost into a ball where she sat on the moss of the hillrise, her scruffy black tangled locks covering half of her face, her eyebrows rough and her face covered in dirt.
She is crying, Catelyn realized. She is a wildling, a murderer, but she is crying.
...
There was not much more to it after that. Ser Mandon dragged out the quill of the arrow from his gorget, seeming more angry than hurt from it, somehow, as she supposed it had only tipped him in his edge of his shoulder, and Ser Erryk and Shaggydog both finished the job of the yellow-teethed man with a slash of sword and a cracking bite of direwolf jaws.
"Kneel!" Ser Mandon commanded. "Kneel down on your knees if you would yield to us!"
The swarthy-looking wildling woman yielded, as she threw away her shield and other things, whelping desperately for mercy all the while.
"Your Grace?" Mandon awaited her command. "Shall we kill her?"
Catelyn stood frozen for a few moments, not quite sure of what to say. The woman was as much of a wildling as anyone else in the bunch, although she had been the only one of the three to not openly aim at them. As far as Catelyn had seen, she had only stood watch while the others shot their arrows and honed in on them.
"No, please!" The woman called out to them, as she begged down on her knees.
"Spare me! Spare me, and I'll serve you with all my life! I'll swear fealty to you! I'll do anything!"
"And what would we want with a dirty old wildling bitch such as yourself?" Erryk said contemptuously. "Better you return the way you came, and tell your stinking friends to stay there. North of the Wall." He made an emphasis of his words.
"No... Please... I can't go back there. I'll never return there. You'll have to skin me alive before I go there again. They are coming for us. They are coming for all of us."
"She fears her own kind", Erryk said. "Don't worry. Lord Stark will stop your dirty lot. He has before, he'll do it again. And if he cannot, we will send word to the Night's Watch to strenghten their fortress. Just tell me where you slipped through, and it will not happen again. The Gorge, was it?"
"I'm not speaking of the free folk", the woman said, with a dark tone in her voice. "There are other things up there... Worse things. Darker things." She went to her knees again, trying to creep her way towards Catelyn, but Mandon stopped her.
"Take another step towards the queen, and you're dead!"
"No", Catelyn heard herself say, in the heat of all things. "Mandon, wait."
She watched into the eyes of the wildling woman. They were not the eyes of a killer, if they ever had been. They were the eyes of someone truly terrified. Someone on the run from something.
There can oft be innocents in service to the Stranger, and secret sinners among those in service of the Father, her septa's old words echoed back to her inside her mind.
She came to think of her sweet Ned, sitting like the Father above on the iron throne. Her husband had been the best king in the last fifty years, she was certain, and he ruled with justice over a land of peace, but all the same there were those among them who would betray him. Amongst our own court...
She thought of Jon Arryn. Had he only died of a sudden fever, as it seemed, or was there more? If there could be dishonourable men among those closest to the king, those closest to justice, then surely there could be some tiny semblance of honour, of justice, among those who had never been close to it? Those who lived and died in the fear of war and struggle and a cold that never truly went away even in summer must surely have once or twice in their lives hoped for something better, something higher... something more?
She at least allowed herself to think so of the woman. She was dirty and haggard already, despite her young years, seeming to be perhaps slightly under the age of thirty, perhaps just above it. I will look much like her in another fortnight on the road, she thought to herself. Her queenly looks were already fading away, her eyes tired and full of fear when she looked into them in her hand-mirror, a fear for those who would kill her or her babes, a fear for her children, and to a small degree also for herself...
She saw the same type of fear in the wildling woman's eyes. She did not have any children to protect, it seemed, at least not with her here. But perhaps she had had them earlier. Perhaps they had been taken by the ones she fled from.
Life beyond the Wall was hard. And Catelyn Tully decided to wait another hour before making her judgement on the poor soul who came from there.
"Bind her", she said. "We will take her with us and question her for the moment."
Mandon gave her a short look of confusion, of disagreement, but then quickly did as commanded. Erryk seemed as if he were about to argue, but kept silent. No doubt he will speak to me on it later.
As they all gathered together their things, and Mandon went over what little things of value they might take from the dead men and women, among which were the bows and arrows, good thick winter cloaks of bear and raindeer pelts, some fire-making stones and several bronze knives, the woman began talking.
Wait a little, Catelyn prayed, until we are gone on the road yet again, or my saviours will soon grow angry with you again, but the shaggy-looking woman had a mouth like a prattler snake.
"Them knives are good. But the fire is what you need most. You should burn them."
"What?" Erryk said, turning to look at her.
"Burn them, good ser southerner", she repeated, "or they will come back in the night to haunt you."
Her dark eyes were alive with some tingle of malice, the living memory on her eyeshine of someone who had seen death, and worse things than that, stared up at him insolently from between her dark dirty strands of hair.
She almost seemed to be smiling, Catelyn thought, as she looked at the woman's exposed teeth, but it was not a smile. Once again, it was the fear of something from whence she had come, the fear of something the more than they knew what it was.
"What do you speak of? Some witchcraft?" Erryk pulled her harshly up with the rope tight around her neck, threatening her. "Try that on us, you witch, try it one single time, and we'll take your head, same as with your friends."
"It's not me that you should worry about", she insisted. "I have no sorcery in me."
She stopped up a bit. "Well, no more than all of us northerners have compared to your lot, any way."
"The dead will come in the night, good ser. They will rise. Neither you or I can stop it. Unless you burn them. It's the only way."
"What is she speaking of?" Mandon growled impatiently. "Prisoners don't threaten. Or they die."
"You will not kill her until I command it", Catelyn said angrily. "Is that understood?"
Mandon stopped up, to look at her, with dead eyes, but with understanding.
"Yes, Your Grace."
He said nothing more.
"What is your name?" Catelyn asked.
The wildling woman turned suspiciously from Erryk's rope grasp about her neck towards her. Her eyes fluttered about for a moment, like a scared rabbit.
"Osha", she said. "That's the name me mother gave to me."
"Osha", Catelyn repeated. "What do you mean by that the dead will rise?"
"They rise in the night, and come after folk and fae alike", the woman explained. "That's why we came down here.
Well, not only. We heard tell about the king coming north, and my lot wanted to take themselves some gold and else. Came close to it as well, before he left. But I'd not come down south for no gold. I can't feed myself with gold. I can't light a fire with gold. Folks can't keep themselves safe from the cold with gold, nor iron, nor bronze. Only the fire. The fire is all that works against them. … They who are after us."
"Who are 'they'?" Catelyn asked, turning in closer. She gave a look at Erryk to loosen the rope.
Osha looked around, seeming scared to speak the name. "The ones who move stalking in the night. Like shadows. The ones who rise up from the snow. … The white walkers."