The road up to Oldstones went twice around the hill before
reaching the summit. Overgrown and stony, it would have been slow
going even in the best of times, and last night’s snow had
left it muddy as well. Snow in autumn in the riverlands, it’s
unnatural, Merrett thought gloomily. It had not been much of a
snow, true; just enough to blanket the ground for a night. Most of
it had started melting away as soon as the sun came up. Still,
Merrett took it for a bad omen. Between rains, floods, fire, and
war, they had lost two harvests and a good part of a third. An
early winter would mean famine all across the riverlands. A great
many people would go hungry, and some of them would starve. Merrett
only hoped he wouldn’t be one of them. I may, though. With my
luck, I just may. I never did have any luck.
Beneath the castle ruins, the lower slopes of the hill were so
thickly forested that half a hundred outlaws could well have been
lurking there. They could be watching me even now. Merrett glanced
about, and saw nothing but gorse, bracken, thistle, sedge, and
blackberry bushes between the pines and grey-green sentinels.
Elsewhere skeletal elm and ash and scrub oaks choked the ground
like weeds. He saw no outlaws, but that meant little. Outlaws were
better at hiding than honest men.
Merrett hated the woods, if truth be told, and he hated outlaws
even more. “Outlaws stole my life,” he had been known
to complain when in his cups. He was too often in his cups, his
father said, often and loudly. Too true, he thought ruefully. You
needed some sort of distinction in the Twins, else they were liable
to forget you were alive, but a reputation as the biggest drinker
in the castle had done little to enhance his prospects, he’d
found. I once hoped to be the greatest knight who ever couched a
lance. The gods took that away from me. Why shouldn’t I have
a cup of wine from time to time? It helps my headaches. Besides, my
wife is a shrew, my father despises me, my children are worthless.
What do I have to stay sober for?
He was sober now, though. Well, he’d had two horns of ale
when he broke his fast, and a small cup of red when he set out, but
that was just to keep his head from pounding. Merrett could feel
the headache building behind his eyes, and he knew that if he gave
it half a chance he would soon feel as if he had a thunderstorm
raging between his ears. Sometimes his headaches got so bad that it
even hurt too much to weep. Then all he could do was rest on his
bed in a dark room with a damp cloth over his eyes, and curse his
luck and the nameless outlaw who had done this to him.
Just
thinking about it made him anxious. He could no wise afford a
headache now. If I bring Petyr back home safely, all my luck will
change. He had the gold, all he needed to do was climb to the top
of Oldstones, meet the bloody outlaws in the ruined castle, and
make the exchange. A simple ransom. Even he could not muck it
up . . . unless he got a headache, one so bad
that it left him unable to ride. He was supposed to be at the ruins
by sunset, not weeping in a huddle at the side of the road. Merrett
rubbed two fingers against his temple. Once more around the hill,
and there I am. When the message had come in and he had stepped
forward to offer to carry the ransom, his father had squinted down
and said, “You, Merrett?” and started laughing through
his nose, that hideous heh heh heh laugh of his. Merrett
practically had to beg before they’d give him the bloody bag
of gold.
Something moved in the underbrush along the side of the road.
Merrett reined up hard and reached for his sword, but it was only a
squirrel. “Stupid,” he told himself, shoving the sword
back in its scabbard without ever having gotten it out.
“Outlaws don’t have tails. Bloody hell, Merrett, get
hold of yourself.” His heart was thumping in his chest as if
he were some green boy on his first campaign. As if this were the
kingswood and it was the old Brotherhood I was going to face, not
the lightning lord’s sorry lot of brigands. For a moment he
was tempted to trot right back down the hill and find the nearest
alehouse. That bag of gold would buy a lot of ale, enough for him
to forget all about Petyr Pimple. Let them hang him, he brought
this on himself. It’s no more than he deserves, wandering off
with some bloody camp follower like a stag in rut.
His head had begun to pound; soft now, but he knew it would get
worse. Merrett rubbed the bridge of his nose. He really had no
right to think so ill of Petyr. I did the same myself when I was
his age. In his case all it got him was a pox, but still, he
shouldn’t condemn. Whores did have charms, especially if you
had a face like Petyr’s. The poor lad had a wife, to be sure,
but she was half the problem. Not only was she twice his age, but
she was bedding his brother Walder too, if the talk was true. There
was always lots of talk around the Twins, and only a little was
ever true, but in this case Merrett believed it. Black Walder was a
man who took what he wanted, even his brother’s wife.
He’d had Edwyn’s wife too, that was common knowledge,
Fair Walda had been known to slip into his bed from time to time,
and some even said he’d known the seventh Lady Frey a deal
better than he should have. Small wonder he refused to marry. Why
buy a cow when there were udders all around begging to be
milked?
Cursing under his breath, Merrett jammed his heels into his
horse’s flanks and rode on up the hill. As tempting as it was
to drink the gold away, he knew that if he didn’t come back
with Petyr Pimple, he had as well not come back at all.
Lord Walder would soon turn two-and-ninety. His ears had started
to go, his eyes were almost gone, and his gout was so bad that he
had to be carried everywhere. He could not possibly last much
longer, all his sons agreed. And when he goes, everything will
change, and not for the better. His father was querulous and
stubborn, with an iron will and a wasp’s tongue, but he did
believe in taking care of his own. All of his own, even the ones
who had displeased and disappointed him. Even the ones whose names
he can’t remember. Once he was gone,
though . . .
When Ser Stevron had been heir, that was one thing. The old man
had been grooming Stevron for sixty years, and had pounded it into
his head that blood was blood. But Stevron had died whilst
campaigning with the Young Wolf in the west—“of
waiting, no doubt,” Lame Lothar had quipped when the raven
brought them the news—and his sons and grandsons were a different
sort of Frey. Stevron’s son Ser Ryman stood to inherit now; a
thick-witted, stubborn, greedy man. And after Ryman came his own
sons, Edwyn and Black Walder, who were even worse.
“Fortunately,” Lame Lothar once said, “they hate
each other even more than they hate us.”
Merrett wasn’t certain that was fortunate at all, and for
that matter Lothar himself might be more dangerous than either of
them. Lord Walder had ordered the slaughter of the Starks at
Roslin’s wedding, but it had been Lame Lothar who had plotted
it out with Roose Bolton, all the way down to which songs would be
played. Lothar was a very amusing fellow to get drunk with, but
Merrett would never be so foolish as to turn his back on him. In
the Twins, you learned early that only full blood siblings could be
trusted, and them not very far.
It was like to be every son for himself when the old man died,
and every daughter as well. The new Lord of the Crossing would
doubtless keep on some of his uncles, nephews, and cousins at the
Twins, the ones he happened to like or trust, or more likely the
ones he thought would prove useful to him. The rest of us
he’ll shove out to fend for ourselves.
The prospect worried Merrett more than words could say. He would
be forty in less than three years, too old to take up the life of a
hedge knight . . . even if he’d been a
knight, which as it happened he wasn’t. He had no land, no
wealth of his own. He owned the clothes on his back but not much
else, not even the horse he was riding. He wasn’t clever
enough to be a maester, pious enough to be a septon, or savage
enough to be a sellsword. The gods gave me no gift but birth, and
they stinted me there. What good was it to be the son of a rich and
powerful House if you were the ninth son? When you took grandsons
and great-grandsons into account, Merrett stood a better chance of
being chosen High Septon than he did of inheriting the Twins. I have no luck, he thought bitterly. I have never had any bloody
luck. He was a big man, broad around the chest and shoulders if
only of middling height. In the last ten years he had grown soft
and fleshy, he knew, but when he’d been younger Merrett had
been almost as robust as Ser Hosteen, his eldest full brother, who
was commonly regarded as the strongest of Lord Walder Frey’s
brood. As a boy he’d been packed off to Crakehall to serve
his mother’s family as a page. When old Lord Sumner had made
him a squire, everyone had assumed he would be Ser Merrett in no
more than a few years, but the outlaws of the Kingswood Brotherhood
had pissed on those plans. While his fellow squire Jaime Lannister
was covering himself in glory, Merrett had first caught the pox
from a camp follower, then managed to get captured by a woman, the
one called the White Fawn. Lord Sumner had ransomed him back from
the outlaws, but in the very next fight he’d been felled by a
blow from a mace that had broken his helm and left him insensible
for a fortnight. Everyone gave him up for dead, they told him
later.
Merrett hadn’t died, but his fighting days were done. Even
the lightest blow to his head brought on blinding pain and reduced
him to tears. Under these circumstances knighthood was out of the
question, Lord Sumner told him, not unkindly. He was sent back to
the Twins to face Lord Walder’s poisonous disdain.
After that, Merrett’s luck had only grown worse. His
father had managed to make a good marriage for him, somehow; he wed
one of Lord Darry’s daughters, back when the Darrys stood
high in King Aerys’s favor. But it seemed as if he no sooner
had deflowered his bride than Aerys lost his throne. Unlike the
Freys, the Darrys had been prominent Targaryen loyalists, which
cost them half their lands, most of their wealth, and almost all
their power. As for his lady wife, she found him a great
disappointment from the first, and insisted on popping out nothing
but girls for years; three live ones, a stillbirth, and one that
died in infancy before she finally produced a son. His eldest
daughter had turned out to be a slut, his second a glutton. When
Ami was caught in the stables with no fewer than three grooms,
he’d been forced to marry her off to a bloody hedge knight.
That situation could not possibly get any worse, he’d
thought . . . until Ser Pate decided he could
win renown by defeating Ser Gregor Clegane. Ami had come running
back a widow, to Merrett’s dismay and the undoubted delight
of every stablehand in the Twins.
Merrett had dared to hope that his luck was finally changing
when Roose Bolton chose to wed his Walda instead of one of her
slimmer, comelier cousins. The Bolton alliance was important for
House Frey and his daughter had helped secure it; he thought that
must surely count for something. The old man had soon disabused
him. “He picked her because she’s fat,” Lord
Walder said. “You think Bolton gave a mummer’s fart
that she was your whelp? Think he sat about thinking, ‘Heh,
Merrett Muttonhead, that’s the very man I need for a
good-father’? Your Walda’s a sow in silk, that’s
why he picked her, and I’m not like to thank you for it.
We’d have had the same alliance at half the price if your
little porkling put down her spoon from time to time.”
The final humiliation had been delivered with a smile, when Lame
Lothar had summoned him to discuss his role in Roslin’s
wedding. “We must each play our part, according to our
gifts,” his half-brother told him. “You shall have one
task and one task only, Merrett, but I believe you are well suited
to it. I want you to see to it that Greatjon Umber is so bloody
drunk that he can hardly stand, let alone fight.” And even that I failed at. He’d cozened the huge northman
into drinking enough wine to kill any three normal men, yet after
Roslin had been bedded the Greatjon still managed to snatch the
sword of the first man to accost him and break his arm in the
snatching. It had taken eight of them to get him into chains, and
the effort had left two men wounded, one dead, and poor old Ser
Leslyn Haigh short half a ear. When he couldn’t fight with
his hands any longer, Umber had fought with his teeth.
Merrett paused a moment and closed his eyes. His head was
throbbing like that bloody drum they’d played at the wedding,
and for a moment it was all he could do to stay in the saddle. I
have to go on, he told himself. If he could bring back Petyr
Pimple, surely it would put him in Ser Ryman’s good graces.
Petyr might be a whisker on the hapless side, but he wasn’t
as cold as Edwyn, nor as hot as Black Walder. The boy will be
grateful for my part, and his father will see that I’m loyal,
a man worth having about.
But only if he was there by sunset with the gold. Merrett
glanced at the sky. Right on time, He needed something to steady
his hands. He pulled up the waterskin hung from his saddle,
uncorked it, and took a long swallow. The wine was thick and sweet,
so dark it was almost black, but gods it tasted good.
The curtain wall of Oldstones had once encircled the brow of the
hill like the crown on a king’s head. Only the foundation
remained, and a few waist-high piles of crumbling stone spotted
with lichen. Merrett rode along the line of the wall until he came
to the place where the gatehouse would have stood. The ruins were
more extensive here, and he had to dismount to lead his palfrey
through them. In the west, the sun had vanished behind a bank of
low clouds. Gorse and bracken covered the slopes, and once inside
the vanished walls the weeds were chest high. Merrett loosened his
sword in its scabbard and looked about warily, but saw no outlaws.
Could I have come on the wrong day? He stopped and rubbed his
temples with his thumbs, but that did nothing to ease the pressure
behind his eyes. Seven bloody hells . . .
From somewhere deep within the castle, faint music came drifting
through the trees.
Merrett found himself shivering, despite his cloak. He pulled
open his waterskin and had another drink of wine. I could just get
back on my horse, ride to Oldtown, and drink the gold away. No good
ever came from dealing with outlaws. That vile little bitch Wenda
had burned a fawn into the cheek of his arse while she had him
captive. No wonder his wife despised him. I have to go through with
this. Petyr Pimple might be Lord of the Crossing one day, Edwyn has
no sons and Black Walder’s only got bastards. Petyr will
remember who came to get him. He took another swallow, corked the
skin up, and led his palfrey through broken stones, gorse, and thin
wind-whipped trees, following the sounds to what had been the
castle ward.
Fallen leaves lay thick upon the ground, like soldiers after
some great slaughter. A man in patched, faded greens was sitting
crosslegged atop a weathered stone sepulcher, fingering the strings
of a woodharp. The music was soft and sad. Merrett knew the song.
High in the halls of the kings who are gone, Jenny would dance with
her ghosts . . .
“Get off there,” Merrett said. “You’re
sitting on a king.”
“Old Tristifer don’t mind my bony arse. The Hammer
of Justice, they called him. Been a long while since he heard any
new songs.” The outlaw hopped down. Trim and slim, he had a
narrow face and foxy features, but his mouth was so wide that his
smile seemed to touch his ears. A few strands of thin brown hair
were blowing across his brow. He pushed them back with his free
hand and said, “Do you remember me, my lord?”
“No.” Merrett frowned. “Why would
I?”
“I sang at your daughter’s wedding. And passing
well, I thought. That Pate she married was a cousin. We’re
all cousins in Sevenstreams. Didn’t stop him from turning
niggard when it was time to pay me.” He shrugged. “Why
is it your lord father never has me play at the Twins? Don’t
I make enough noise for his lordship? He likes it loud, I have been
hearing.”
“You bring the gold?” asked a harsher voice, behind
him.
Merrett’s throat was dry. Bloody outlaws, always hiding in
the bushes. It had been the same in the kingswood. You’d
think you’d caught five of them, and ten more would spring
from nowhere.
When he turned, they were all around him; an ill-favored gaggle
of leathery old men and smooth-cheeked lads younger than Petyr
Pimple, the lot of them clad in roughspun rags, boiled leather, and
bits of dead men’s armor. There was one woman with them,
bundled up in a hooded cloak three times too big for her. Merrett
was too flustered to count them, but there seemed to be a dozen at
the least, maybe a score.
“I asked a question.” The speaker was a big bearded
man with crooked green teeth and a broken nose; taller than
Merrett, though not so heavy in the belly. A halfhelm covered his
head, a patched yellow cloak his broad shoulders.
“Where’s our gold?”
“in my saddlebag. A hundred golden dragons.” Merrett
cleared his throat. “You’ll get it when I see that
Petyr—”
A squat one-eyed outlaw strode forward before he could finish,
reached into the saddlebag bold as you please, and found the sack.
Merrett started to grab him, then thought better of it. The outlaw
opened the drawstring, removed a coin, and bit it. “Tastes
right.” He hefted the sack. “Feels right
too.” They’re going to take the gold and keep Petyr too, Merrett
thought in sudden panic. “That’s the whole ransom. All
you asked for.” His palms were sweating. He wiped them on his
breeches. “Which one of you is Beric Dondarrion?”
Dondarrion had been a lord before he turned outlaw, he might still
be a man of honor.
“Why, that would be me,” said the one-eyed man.
“You’re a bloody liar, Jack,” said the big
bearded man in the yellow cloak. “It’s my turn to be
Lord Beric.”
“Does that mean I have to be Thoros?” The singer
laughed. “My lord, sad to say, Lord Beric was needed
elsewhere. The times are troubled, and there are many battles to
fight. But we’ll sort you out just as he would, have no
fear.”
Merrett had plenty of fear. His head was pounding too. Much more
of this and he’d be sobbing. “You have your
gold,” he said. “Give me my nephew, and I’ll be
gone.” Petyr was actually more a great half-nephew, but there
was no need to go into that.
“He’s in the godswood,” said the man in the
yellow cloak. “We’ll take you to him. Notch, you hold
his horse.”
Merrett handed over the bridle reluctantly. He did not see what
other choice he had. “My water skin,” he heard himself
say. “A swallow of wine, to settle my—”
“We don’t drink with your sort,” yellow cloak
said curtly. “It’s this way. Follow me.”
Leaves crunched beneath their heels, and every step sent a spike
of pain through Merrett’s temple. They walked in silence, the
wind gusting around them. The last light of the setting sun was in
his eyes as he clambered over the mossy hummocks that were all that
remained of the keep. Behind was the godswood.
Petyr Pimple was hanging from the limb of an oak, a noose tight
around his long thin neck. His eyes bulged from a black face,
staring down at Merrett accusingly. You came too late, they seemed
to say. But he hadn’t. He hadn’t! He had come when they
told him. “You killed him,” he croaked.
“Sharp as a blade, this one,” said the one-eyed
man.
An aurochs was thundering through Merrett’s head. Mother
have mercy, he thought. “I brought the gold.”
“That was good of you,” said the singer amiably.
“We’ll see that it’s put to good use.”
Merrett turned away from Petyr. He could taste the bile in the
back of his throat. “You . . . you had no
right.”
“We had a rope,” said yellow cloak.
“That’s right enough.”
Two of the outlaws seized Merrett’s arms and bound them
tight behind his back. He was too deep in shock to struggle.
“No,” was all he could manage. “I only came to
ransom Petyr. You said if you had the gold by sunset he
wouldn’t be harmed . . . ”
“Well,” said the singer, “you’ve got us
there, my lord. That was a lie of sorts, as it happens.”
The one-eyed outlaw came forward with a long coil of hempen
rope. He looped one end around Merrett’s neck, pulled it
tight, and tied a hard knot under his ear. The other end he threw
over the limb of the oak. The big man in the yellow cloak caught
it.
“What are you doing?” Merrett knew how stupid that
sounded, but he could not believe what was happening, even then.
“You’d never dare hang a Frey.”
Yellow cloak laughed. “That other one, the pimply boy, he
said the same thing.” He doesn’t mean it. He cannot mean it. “My father
will pay you. I’m worth a good ransom, more than Petyr, twice
as much.”
The singer sighed. “Lord Walder might be half-blind and
gouty, but he’s not so stupid as to snap at the same bait
twice. Next time he’ll send a hundred swords instead of a
hundred dragons, I fear.”
“He will!” Merrett tried to sound stem, but his
voice betrayed him. “He’ll send a thousand swords, and
kill you all.”
“He has to catch us first.” The singer glanced up at
poor Petyr. “And he can’t hang us twice, now can
he?” He drew a melancholy air from the strings of his
woodharp. “Here now, don’t soil yourself. All you need
to do is answer me a question, and I’ll tell them to let you
go.”
Merrett would tell them anything if it meant his life.
“What do you want to know? I’ll tell you true, I swear
it.”
The outlaw gave him an encouraging smile. “Well, as it
happens, we’re looking for a dog that ran away.”
“A dog?” Merrett was lost. “What kind of
dog?”
“He answers to the name Sandor Clegane. Thoros says he was
making for the Twins. We found the ferrymen who took him across the
Trident, and the poor sod he robbed on the kingsroad. Did you see
him at the wedding, perchance?”
“The Red Wedding?” Merrett’s skull felt as if
it were about to split, but he did his best to recall. There had
been so much confusion, but surely someone would have mentioned
Joffrey’s dog sniffing round the Twins. “He
wasn’t in the castle. Not at the main
feast . . . he might have been at the bastard
feast, or in the camps, but . . . no, someone
would have said . . . ”
“He would have had a child with him,” said the
singer. “A skinny girl, about ten. Or perhaps a boy the same
age.”
“I don’t think so,” said Merrett. “Not
that I knew.”
“No? Ah, that’s a pity. Well, up you go.”
“No,” Merrett squealed loudly. “No,
don’t, I gave you your answer, you said you’d let me
go.”
“Seems to me that what I said was I’d tell them to
let you go.” The singer looked at yellow cloak. “Lem,
let him go.”
“Go bugger yourself,” the big outlaw replied
brusquely.
The singer gave Merrett a helpless shrug and began to play,
“The Day They Hanged Black Robin.”
“Please.” The last of Merrett’s courage was
running down his leg. “I’ve done you no harm. I brought
the gold, the way you said. I answered your question. I have
children.”
“That Young Wolf never will,” said the one-eyed
outlaw.
Merrett could hardly think for the pounding in his head.
“He shamed us, the whole realm was laughing, we had to
cleanse the stain on our honor.” His father had said all that
and more.
“Maybe so. What do a bunch o’ bloody peasants know
about a lord’s honor?” Yellow cloak wrapped the end of
the rope around his hand three times. “We know some about
murder, though.”
“Not murder.” His voice was shrill. “It was
vengeance, we had a right to our vengeance. It was war. Aegon, we
called him Jinglebell, a poor lackwit never hurt anyone, Lady Stark
cut his throat. We lost half a hundred men in the camps. Ser Garse
Goodbrook, Kyra’s husband, and Ser Tytos, Jared’s
son . . . someone smashed his head in with an
axe . . . Stark’s direwolf killed four of
our wolfhounds and tore the kennelmaster’s arm off his
shoulder, even after we’d filled him full of
quarrels . . . ”
“So you sewed his head on Robb Stark’s neck after
both o’ them were dead,” said yellow cloak.
“My father did that. All I did was drink. You
wouldn’t kill a man for drinking.” Merrett remembered
something then, something that might be the saving of him.
“They say Lord Beric always gives a man a trial, that he
won’t kill a man unless something’s proved against him.
You can’t prove anything against me. The Red Wedding was my
father’s work, and Ryman’s and Lord Bolton’s.
Lothar rigged the tents to collapse and put the crossbowmen in the
gallery with the musicians, Bastard Walder led the attack on the
camps . . . they’re the ones you want,
not me, I only drank some wine . . . you have
no witness.”
“As it happens, you’re wrong there.” The
singer turned to the hooded woman. “Milady?”
The outlaws parted as she came forward, saying no word. When she
lowered her hood, something tightened inside Merrett’s chest,
and for a moment he could not breathe. No. No, I saw her die. She
was dead for a day and night before they stripped her naked and
threw her body in the river. Raymund opened her throat from ear to
ear. She was dead.
Her cloak and collar hid the gash his brother’s blade had
made, but her face was even worse than he remembered. The flesh had
gone pudding soft in the water and turned the color of curdled
milk. Half her hair was gone and the rest had turned as white and
brittle as a crone’s. Beneath her ravaged scalp, her face was
shredded skin and black blood where she had raked herself with her
nails. But her eyes were the most terrible thing. Her eyes saw him,
and they hated.
“She don’t speak,” said the big man in the
yellow cloak. “You bloody bastards cut her throat too deep
for that. But she remembers.” He turned to the dead woman and
said, “What do you say, m’lady? Was he part of
it?”
Lady Catelyn’s eyes never left him. She nodded.
Merrett Frey opened his mouth to plead, but the noose choked off
his words. His feet left the ground, the rope cutting deep into the
soft flesh beneath his chin. Up into the air he jerked, kicking and
twisting, up and up and up.
The road up to Oldstones went twice around the hill before
reaching the summit. Overgrown and stony, it would have been slow
going even in the best of times, and last night’s snow had
left it muddy as well. Snow in autumn in the riverlands, it’s
unnatural, Merrett thought gloomily. It had not been much of a
snow, true; just enough to blanket the ground for a night. Most of
it had started melting away as soon as the sun came up. Still,
Merrett took it for a bad omen. Between rains, floods, fire, and
war, they had lost two harvests and a good part of a third. An
early winter would mean famine all across the riverlands. A great
many people would go hungry, and some of them would starve. Merrett
only hoped he wouldn’t be one of them. I may, though. With my
luck, I just may. I never did have any luck.
Beneath the castle ruins, the lower slopes of the hill were so
thickly forested that half a hundred outlaws could well have been
lurking there. They could be watching me even now. Merrett glanced
about, and saw nothing but gorse, bracken, thistle, sedge, and
blackberry bushes between the pines and grey-green sentinels.
Elsewhere skeletal elm and ash and scrub oaks choked the ground
like weeds. He saw no outlaws, but that meant little. Outlaws were
better at hiding than honest men.
Merrett hated the woods, if truth be told, and he hated outlaws
even more. “Outlaws stole my life,” he had been known
to complain when in his cups. He was too often in his cups, his
father said, often and loudly. Too true, he thought ruefully. You
needed some sort of distinction in the Twins, else they were liable
to forget you were alive, but a reputation as the biggest drinker
in the castle had done little to enhance his prospects, he’d
found. I once hoped to be the greatest knight who ever couched a
lance. The gods took that away from me. Why shouldn’t I have
a cup of wine from time to time? It helps my headaches. Besides, my
wife is a shrew, my father despises me, my children are worthless.
What do I have to stay sober for?
He was sober now, though. Well, he’d had two horns of ale
when he broke his fast, and a small cup of red when he set out, but
that was just to keep his head from pounding. Merrett could feel
the headache building behind his eyes, and he knew that if he gave
it half a chance he would soon feel as if he had a thunderstorm
raging between his ears. Sometimes his headaches got so bad that it
even hurt too much to weep. Then all he could do was rest on his
bed in a dark room with a damp cloth over his eyes, and curse his
luck and the nameless outlaw who had done this to him.
Just
thinking about it made him anxious. He could no wise afford a
headache now. If I bring Petyr back home safely, all my luck will
change. He had the gold, all he needed to do was climb to the top
of Oldstones, meet the bloody outlaws in the ruined castle, and
make the exchange. A simple ransom. Even he could not muck it
up . . . unless he got a headache, one so bad
that it left him unable to ride. He was supposed to be at the ruins
by sunset, not weeping in a huddle at the side of the road. Merrett
rubbed two fingers against his temple. Once more around the hill,
and there I am. When the message had come in and he had stepped
forward to offer to carry the ransom, his father had squinted down
and said, “You, Merrett?” and started laughing through
his nose, that hideous heh heh heh laugh of his. Merrett
practically had to beg before they’d give him the bloody bag
of gold.
Something moved in the underbrush along the side of the road.
Merrett reined up hard and reached for his sword, but it was only a
squirrel. “Stupid,” he told himself, shoving the sword
back in its scabbard without ever having gotten it out.
“Outlaws don’t have tails. Bloody hell, Merrett, get
hold of yourself.” His heart was thumping in his chest as if
he were some green boy on his first campaign. As if this were the
kingswood and it was the old Brotherhood I was going to face, not
the lightning lord’s sorry lot of brigands. For a moment he
was tempted to trot right back down the hill and find the nearest
alehouse. That bag of gold would buy a lot of ale, enough for him
to forget all about Petyr Pimple. Let them hang him, he brought
this on himself. It’s no more than he deserves, wandering off
with some bloody camp follower like a stag in rut.
His head had begun to pound; soft now, but he knew it would get
worse. Merrett rubbed the bridge of his nose. He really had no
right to think so ill of Petyr. I did the same myself when I was
his age. In his case all it got him was a pox, but still, he
shouldn’t condemn. Whores did have charms, especially if you
had a face like Petyr’s. The poor lad had a wife, to be sure,
but she was half the problem. Not only was she twice his age, but
she was bedding his brother Walder too, if the talk was true. There
was always lots of talk around the Twins, and only a little was
ever true, but in this case Merrett believed it. Black Walder was a
man who took what he wanted, even his brother’s wife.
He’d had Edwyn’s wife too, that was common knowledge,
Fair Walda had been known to slip into his bed from time to time,
and some even said he’d known the seventh Lady Frey a deal
better than he should have. Small wonder he refused to marry. Why
buy a cow when there were udders all around begging to be
milked?
Cursing under his breath, Merrett jammed his heels into his
horse’s flanks and rode on up the hill. As tempting as it was
to drink the gold away, he knew that if he didn’t come back
with Petyr Pimple, he had as well not come back at all.
Lord Walder would soon turn two-and-ninety. His ears had started
to go, his eyes were almost gone, and his gout was so bad that he
had to be carried everywhere. He could not possibly last much
longer, all his sons agreed. And when he goes, everything will
change, and not for the better. His father was querulous and
stubborn, with an iron will and a wasp’s tongue, but he did
believe in taking care of his own. All of his own, even the ones
who had displeased and disappointed him. Even the ones whose names
he can’t remember. Once he was gone,
though . . .
When Ser Stevron had been heir, that was one thing. The old man
had been grooming Stevron for sixty years, and had pounded it into
his head that blood was blood. But Stevron had died whilst
campaigning with the Young Wolf in the west—“of
waiting, no doubt,” Lame Lothar had quipped when the raven
brought them the news—and his sons and grandsons were a different
sort of Frey. Stevron’s son Ser Ryman stood to inherit now; a
thick-witted, stubborn, greedy man. And after Ryman came his own
sons, Edwyn and Black Walder, who were even worse.
“Fortunately,” Lame Lothar once said, “they hate
each other even more than they hate us.”
Merrett wasn’t certain that was fortunate at all, and for
that matter Lothar himself might be more dangerous than either of
them. Lord Walder had ordered the slaughter of the Starks at
Roslin’s wedding, but it had been Lame Lothar who had plotted
it out with Roose Bolton, all the way down to which songs would be
played. Lothar was a very amusing fellow to get drunk with, but
Merrett would never be so foolish as to turn his back on him. In
the Twins, you learned early that only full blood siblings could be
trusted, and them not very far.
It was like to be every son for himself when the old man died,
and every daughter as well. The new Lord of the Crossing would
doubtless keep on some of his uncles, nephews, and cousins at the
Twins, the ones he happened to like or trust, or more likely the
ones he thought would prove useful to him. The rest of us
he’ll shove out to fend for ourselves.
The prospect worried Merrett more than words could say. He would
be forty in less than three years, too old to take up the life of a
hedge knight . . . even if he’d been a
knight, which as it happened he wasn’t. He had no land, no
wealth of his own. He owned the clothes on his back but not much
else, not even the horse he was riding. He wasn’t clever
enough to be a maester, pious enough to be a septon, or savage
enough to be a sellsword. The gods gave me no gift but birth, and
they stinted me there. What good was it to be the son of a rich and
powerful House if you were the ninth son? When you took grandsons
and great-grandsons into account, Merrett stood a better chance of
being chosen High Septon than he did of inheriting the Twins. I have no luck, he thought bitterly. I have never had any bloody
luck. He was a big man, broad around the chest and shoulders if
only of middling height. In the last ten years he had grown soft
and fleshy, he knew, but when he’d been younger Merrett had
been almost as robust as Ser Hosteen, his eldest full brother, who
was commonly regarded as the strongest of Lord Walder Frey’s
brood. As a boy he’d been packed off to Crakehall to serve
his mother’s family as a page. When old Lord Sumner had made
him a squire, everyone had assumed he would be Ser Merrett in no
more than a few years, but the outlaws of the Kingswood Brotherhood
had pissed on those plans. While his fellow squire Jaime Lannister
was covering himself in glory, Merrett had first caught the pox
from a camp follower, then managed to get captured by a woman, the
one called the White Fawn. Lord Sumner had ransomed him back from
the outlaws, but in the very next fight he’d been felled by a
blow from a mace that had broken his helm and left him insensible
for a fortnight. Everyone gave him up for dead, they told him
later.
Merrett hadn’t died, but his fighting days were done. Even
the lightest blow to his head brought on blinding pain and reduced
him to tears. Under these circumstances knighthood was out of the
question, Lord Sumner told him, not unkindly. He was sent back to
the Twins to face Lord Walder’s poisonous disdain.
After that, Merrett’s luck had only grown worse. His
father had managed to make a good marriage for him, somehow; he wed
one of Lord Darry’s daughters, back when the Darrys stood
high in King Aerys’s favor. But it seemed as if he no sooner
had deflowered his bride than Aerys lost his throne. Unlike the
Freys, the Darrys had been prominent Targaryen loyalists, which
cost them half their lands, most of their wealth, and almost all
their power. As for his lady wife, she found him a great
disappointment from the first, and insisted on popping out nothing
but girls for years; three live ones, a stillbirth, and one that
died in infancy before she finally produced a son. His eldest
daughter had turned out to be a slut, his second a glutton. When
Ami was caught in the stables with no fewer than three grooms,
he’d been forced to marry her off to a bloody hedge knight.
That situation could not possibly get any worse, he’d
thought . . . until Ser Pate decided he could
win renown by defeating Ser Gregor Clegane. Ami had come running
back a widow, to Merrett’s dismay and the undoubted delight
of every stablehand in the Twins.
Merrett had dared to hope that his luck was finally changing
when Roose Bolton chose to wed his Walda instead of one of her
slimmer, comelier cousins. The Bolton alliance was important for
House Frey and his daughter had helped secure it; he thought that
must surely count for something. The old man had soon disabused
him. “He picked her because she’s fat,” Lord
Walder said. “You think Bolton gave a mummer’s fart
that she was your whelp? Think he sat about thinking, ‘Heh,
Merrett Muttonhead, that’s the very man I need for a
good-father’? Your Walda’s a sow in silk, that’s
why he picked her, and I’m not like to thank you for it.
We’d have had the same alliance at half the price if your
little porkling put down her spoon from time to time.”
The final humiliation had been delivered with a smile, when Lame
Lothar had summoned him to discuss his role in Roslin’s
wedding. “We must each play our part, according to our
gifts,” his half-brother told him. “You shall have one
task and one task only, Merrett, but I believe you are well suited
to it. I want you to see to it that Greatjon Umber is so bloody
drunk that he can hardly stand, let alone fight.” And even that I failed at. He’d cozened the huge northman
into drinking enough wine to kill any three normal men, yet after
Roslin had been bedded the Greatjon still managed to snatch the
sword of the first man to accost him and break his arm in the
snatching. It had taken eight of them to get him into chains, and
the effort had left two men wounded, one dead, and poor old Ser
Leslyn Haigh short half a ear. When he couldn’t fight with
his hands any longer, Umber had fought with his teeth.
Merrett paused a moment and closed his eyes. His head was
throbbing like that bloody drum they’d played at the wedding,
and for a moment it was all he could do to stay in the saddle. I
have to go on, he told himself. If he could bring back Petyr
Pimple, surely it would put him in Ser Ryman’s good graces.
Petyr might be a whisker on the hapless side, but he wasn’t
as cold as Edwyn, nor as hot as Black Walder. The boy will be
grateful for my part, and his father will see that I’m loyal,
a man worth having about.
But only if he was there by sunset with the gold. Merrett
glanced at the sky. Right on time, He needed something to steady
his hands. He pulled up the waterskin hung from his saddle,
uncorked it, and took a long swallow. The wine was thick and sweet,
so dark it was almost black, but gods it tasted good.
The curtain wall of Oldstones had once encircled the brow of the
hill like the crown on a king’s head. Only the foundation
remained, and a few waist-high piles of crumbling stone spotted
with lichen. Merrett rode along the line of the wall until he came
to the place where the gatehouse would have stood. The ruins were
more extensive here, and he had to dismount to lead his palfrey
through them. In the west, the sun had vanished behind a bank of
low clouds. Gorse and bracken covered the slopes, and once inside
the vanished walls the weeds were chest high. Merrett loosened his
sword in its scabbard and looked about warily, but saw no outlaws.
Could I have come on the wrong day? He stopped and rubbed his
temples with his thumbs, but that did nothing to ease the pressure
behind his eyes. Seven bloody hells . . .
From somewhere deep within the castle, faint music came drifting
through the trees.
Merrett found himself shivering, despite his cloak. He pulled
open his waterskin and had another drink of wine. I could just get
back on my horse, ride to Oldtown, and drink the gold away. No good
ever came from dealing with outlaws. That vile little bitch Wenda
had burned a fawn into the cheek of his arse while she had him
captive. No wonder his wife despised him. I have to go through with
this. Petyr Pimple might be Lord of the Crossing one day, Edwyn has
no sons and Black Walder’s only got bastards. Petyr will
remember who came to get him. He took another swallow, corked the
skin up, and led his palfrey through broken stones, gorse, and thin
wind-whipped trees, following the sounds to what had been the
castle ward.
Fallen leaves lay thick upon the ground, like soldiers after
some great slaughter. A man in patched, faded greens was sitting
crosslegged atop a weathered stone sepulcher, fingering the strings
of a woodharp. The music was soft and sad. Merrett knew the song.
High in the halls of the kings who are gone, Jenny would dance with
her ghosts . . .
“Get off there,” Merrett said. “You’re
sitting on a king.”
“Old Tristifer don’t mind my bony arse. The Hammer
of Justice, they called him. Been a long while since he heard any
new songs.” The outlaw hopped down. Trim and slim, he had a
narrow face and foxy features, but his mouth was so wide that his
smile seemed to touch his ears. A few strands of thin brown hair
were blowing across his brow. He pushed them back with his free
hand and said, “Do you remember me, my lord?”
“No.” Merrett frowned. “Why would
I?”
“I sang at your daughter’s wedding. And passing
well, I thought. That Pate she married was a cousin. We’re
all cousins in Sevenstreams. Didn’t stop him from turning
niggard when it was time to pay me.” He shrugged. “Why
is it your lord father never has me play at the Twins? Don’t
I make enough noise for his lordship? He likes it loud, I have been
hearing.”
“You bring the gold?” asked a harsher voice, behind
him.
Merrett’s throat was dry. Bloody outlaws, always hiding in
the bushes. It had been the same in the kingswood. You’d
think you’d caught five of them, and ten more would spring
from nowhere.
When he turned, they were all around him; an ill-favored gaggle
of leathery old men and smooth-cheeked lads younger than Petyr
Pimple, the lot of them clad in roughspun rags, boiled leather, and
bits of dead men’s armor. There was one woman with them,
bundled up in a hooded cloak three times too big for her. Merrett
was too flustered to count them, but there seemed to be a dozen at
the least, maybe a score.
“I asked a question.” The speaker was a big bearded
man with crooked green teeth and a broken nose; taller than
Merrett, though not so heavy in the belly. A halfhelm covered his
head, a patched yellow cloak his broad shoulders.
“Where’s our gold?”
“in my saddlebag. A hundred golden dragons.” Merrett
cleared his throat. “You’ll get it when I see that
Petyr—”
A squat one-eyed outlaw strode forward before he could finish,
reached into the saddlebag bold as you please, and found the sack.
Merrett started to grab him, then thought better of it. The outlaw
opened the drawstring, removed a coin, and bit it. “Tastes
right.” He hefted the sack. “Feels right
too.” They’re going to take the gold and keep Petyr too, Merrett
thought in sudden panic. “That’s the whole ransom. All
you asked for.” His palms were sweating. He wiped them on his
breeches. “Which one of you is Beric Dondarrion?”
Dondarrion had been a lord before he turned outlaw, he might still
be a man of honor.
“Why, that would be me,” said the one-eyed man.
“You’re a bloody liar, Jack,” said the big
bearded man in the yellow cloak. “It’s my turn to be
Lord Beric.”
“Does that mean I have to be Thoros?” The singer
laughed. “My lord, sad to say, Lord Beric was needed
elsewhere. The times are troubled, and there are many battles to
fight. But we’ll sort you out just as he would, have no
fear.”
Merrett had plenty of fear. His head was pounding too. Much more
of this and he’d be sobbing. “You have your
gold,” he said. “Give me my nephew, and I’ll be
gone.” Petyr was actually more a great half-nephew, but there
was no need to go into that.
“He’s in the godswood,” said the man in the
yellow cloak. “We’ll take you to him. Notch, you hold
his horse.”
Merrett handed over the bridle reluctantly. He did not see what
other choice he had. “My water skin,” he heard himself
say. “A swallow of wine, to settle my—”
“We don’t drink with your sort,” yellow cloak
said curtly. “It’s this way. Follow me.”
Leaves crunched beneath their heels, and every step sent a spike
of pain through Merrett’s temple. They walked in silence, the
wind gusting around them. The last light of the setting sun was in
his eyes as he clambered over the mossy hummocks that were all that
remained of the keep. Behind was the godswood.
Petyr Pimple was hanging from the limb of an oak, a noose tight
around his long thin neck. His eyes bulged from a black face,
staring down at Merrett accusingly. You came too late, they seemed
to say. But he hadn’t. He hadn’t! He had come when they
told him. “You killed him,” he croaked.
“Sharp as a blade, this one,” said the one-eyed
man.
An aurochs was thundering through Merrett’s head. Mother
have mercy, he thought. “I brought the gold.”
“That was good of you,” said the singer amiably.
“We’ll see that it’s put to good use.”
Merrett turned away from Petyr. He could taste the bile in the
back of his throat. “You . . . you had no
right.”
“We had a rope,” said yellow cloak.
“That’s right enough.”
Two of the outlaws seized Merrett’s arms and bound them
tight behind his back. He was too deep in shock to struggle.
“No,” was all he could manage. “I only came to
ransom Petyr. You said if you had the gold by sunset he
wouldn’t be harmed . . . ”
“Well,” said the singer, “you’ve got us
there, my lord. That was a lie of sorts, as it happens.”
The one-eyed outlaw came forward with a long coil of hempen
rope. He looped one end around Merrett’s neck, pulled it
tight, and tied a hard knot under his ear. The other end he threw
over the limb of the oak. The big man in the yellow cloak caught
it.
“What are you doing?” Merrett knew how stupid that
sounded, but he could not believe what was happening, even then.
“You’d never dare hang a Frey.”
Yellow cloak laughed. “That other one, the pimply boy, he
said the same thing.” He doesn’t mean it. He cannot mean it. “My father
will pay you. I’m worth a good ransom, more than Petyr, twice
as much.”
The singer sighed. “Lord Walder might be half-blind and
gouty, but he’s not so stupid as to snap at the same bait
twice. Next time he’ll send a hundred swords instead of a
hundred dragons, I fear.”
“He will!” Merrett tried to sound stem, but his
voice betrayed him. “He’ll send a thousand swords, and
kill you all.”
“He has to catch us first.” The singer glanced up at
poor Petyr. “And he can’t hang us twice, now can
he?” He drew a melancholy air from the strings of his
woodharp. “Here now, don’t soil yourself. All you need
to do is answer me a question, and I’ll tell them to let you
go.”
Merrett would tell them anything if it meant his life.
“What do you want to know? I’ll tell you true, I swear
it.”
The outlaw gave him an encouraging smile. “Well, as it
happens, we’re looking for a dog that ran away.”
“A dog?” Merrett was lost. “What kind of
dog?”
“He answers to the name Sandor Clegane. Thoros says he was
making for the Twins. We found the ferrymen who took him across the
Trident, and the poor sod he robbed on the kingsroad. Did you see
him at the wedding, perchance?”
“The Red Wedding?” Merrett’s skull felt as if
it were about to split, but he did his best to recall. There had
been so much confusion, but surely someone would have mentioned
Joffrey’s dog sniffing round the Twins. “He
wasn’t in the castle. Not at the main
feast . . . he might have been at the bastard
feast, or in the camps, but . . . no, someone
would have said . . . ”
“He would have had a child with him,” said the
singer. “A skinny girl, about ten. Or perhaps a boy the same
age.”
“I don’t think so,” said Merrett. “Not
that I knew.”
“No? Ah, that’s a pity. Well, up you go.”
“No,” Merrett squealed loudly. “No,
don’t, I gave you your answer, you said you’d let me
go.”
“Seems to me that what I said was I’d tell them to
let you go.” The singer looked at yellow cloak. “Lem,
let him go.”
“Go bugger yourself,” the big outlaw replied
brusquely.
The singer gave Merrett a helpless shrug and began to play,
“The Day They Hanged Black Robin.”
“Please.” The last of Merrett’s courage was
running down his leg. “I’ve done you no harm. I brought
the gold, the way you said. I answered your question. I have
children.”
“That Young Wolf never will,” said the one-eyed
outlaw.
Merrett could hardly think for the pounding in his head.
“He shamed us, the whole realm was laughing, we had to
cleanse the stain on our honor.” His father had said all that
and more.
“Maybe so. What do a bunch o’ bloody peasants know
about a lord’s honor?” Yellow cloak wrapped the end of
the rope around his hand three times. “We know some about
murder, though.”
“Not murder.” His voice was shrill. “It was
vengeance, we had a right to our vengeance. It was war. Aegon, we
called him Jinglebell, a poor lackwit never hurt anyone, Lady Stark
cut his throat. We lost half a hundred men in the camps. Ser Garse
Goodbrook, Kyra’s husband, and Ser Tytos, Jared’s
son . . . someone smashed his head in with an
axe . . . Stark’s direwolf killed four of
our wolfhounds and tore the kennelmaster’s arm off his
shoulder, even after we’d filled him full of
quarrels . . . ”
“So you sewed his head on Robb Stark’s neck after
both o’ them were dead,” said yellow cloak.
“My father did that. All I did was drink. You
wouldn’t kill a man for drinking.” Merrett remembered
something then, something that might be the saving of him.
“They say Lord Beric always gives a man a trial, that he
won’t kill a man unless something’s proved against him.
You can’t prove anything against me. The Red Wedding was my
father’s work, and Ryman’s and Lord Bolton’s.
Lothar rigged the tents to collapse and put the crossbowmen in the
gallery with the musicians, Bastard Walder led the attack on the
camps . . . they’re the ones you want,
not me, I only drank some wine . . . you have
no witness.”
“As it happens, you’re wrong there.” The
singer turned to the hooded woman. “Milady?”
The outlaws parted as she came forward, saying no word. When she
lowered her hood, something tightened inside Merrett’s chest,
and for a moment he could not breathe. No. No, I saw her die. She
was dead for a day and night before they stripped her naked and
threw her body in the river. Raymund opened her throat from ear to
ear. She was dead.
Her cloak and collar hid the gash his brother’s blade had
made, but her face was even worse than he remembered. The flesh had
gone pudding soft in the water and turned the color of curdled
milk. Half her hair was gone and the rest had turned as white and
brittle as a crone’s. Beneath her ravaged scalp, her face was
shredded skin and black blood where she had raked herself with her
nails. But her eyes were the most terrible thing. Her eyes saw him,
and they hated.
“She don’t speak,” said the big man in the
yellow cloak. “You bloody bastards cut her throat too deep
for that. But she remembers.” He turned to the dead woman and
said, “What do you say, m’lady? Was he part of
it?”
Lady Catelyn’s eyes never left him. She nodded.
Merrett Frey opened his mouth to plead, but the noose choked off
his words. His feet left the ground, the rope cutting deep into the
soft flesh beneath his chin. Up into the air he jerked, kicking and
twisting, up and up and up.