Robb Stark's Camp - The Riverlands - Months Earlier
Robb - Third Person
The portal closed with a sound like silk tearing, and Arya was gone.
Robb stood in the center of his command tent, staring at the space where his sister had vanished. She and her companions had dissolved into violet light, leaving only ozone and the echo of Yennefer's magic. The tent canvas settled. Grey Wind, pressed against Robb's leg since Arya's arrival, let out a low whine and paced to where the portal had been, sniffing air that still crackled with residual energy.
Catelyn spoke first.
"She's different." Her voice carried the steadiness of a mother who had processed her grief and was now working through a new fear—not for Arya's safety, but for what Arya had become. "Not just the eyes or how she moves. Something fundamental changed. The girl who left Winterfell would never have spoken to us like she did tonight."
"The girl who left Winterfell didn't have slitted eyes and dragon's blood in her veins." Robb turned from the empty space and met Catelyn's gaze with clarity that felt almost painful. Since Yennefer stripped away the Three-Eyed Raven's influence, every thought arrived sharp and clean—his previous mental state had been like thinking through mud. Decisions that seemed reasonable weeks ago—breaking the betrothal, trusting Talisa, ignoring his bannermen's counsel—now revealed themselves as the strategic disasters they were. "She told us the truth, Mother. About the wedding. About Talisa. About the creature controlling my decisions. We need to decide what to do with that truth before sunrise."
Grey Wind returned to his side, pressing his massive head against Robb's hip. The direwolf had been agitated since Robb's mind was freed—pacing, growling at shadows, refusing to leave Robb's side. As if the animal had sensed the manipulation all along and was determined to ensure it never happened again.
Catelyn moved to the far side where Talisa lay unconscious on a camp cot, held in sleep deeper than natural rest by Yennefer's enchantment. In the lamplight, Robb's wife looked fragile and beautiful and entirely innocent—which, he now understood, had always been the point.
"The coded messages Ciri detected," Catelyn said, examining Talisa without touching her. "We need to know who she was communicating with and what she told them. If Tywin Lannister has been receiving intelligence about our movements through her, that explains our recent setbacks. The supply ambush at Oxcross. The failed river crossing near Harrenhal. I thought we had traitors among the bannermen, but if the information was coming from your own tent—"
"Then every battle plan I discussed in her presence went straight to the enemy." Robb's jaw tightened. The implications cascaded through his newly clear mind with devastating precision. "Mother, how do we handle this? If I publicly accuse my own wife of espionage, it undermines what little authority I have left. The bannermen who stayed loyal after I broke the Frey betrothal did so because they believed I married for love. If that love was manufactured—"
"Then you were a victim, not a fool." Catelyn straightened, and something in her expression shifted—the grief-stricken mother giving way to the Tully strategist who'd grown up navigating Riverrun's politics. "We don't publicly accuse her. We quietly cut her off from further intelligence and exploit the fact that Tywin doesn't know we've discovered his agent. If Talisa keeps sending messages—messages we now control—we can turn his own spy network against him."
Robb stared at his mother.
"That's remarkably devious."
"I learned politics from Hoster Tully, and I married into a house whose words are Winter is Coming—not a sentiment that encourages naivety." She allowed herself a thin smile. "You told them at the meeting we should let Walder Frey believe his trap is still in place. I say we extend that principle to everyone who conspired against us. Talisa keeps sending messages. We control what those messages say. Walder Frey keeps believing we'll attend his wedding. And when the time comes, we show them what happens when wolves stop being deceived."
The interrogation took three days.
Robb didn't conduct it himself—he couldn't trust his own objectivity where Talisa was concerned, even now. Instead, he assigned the task to Lord Umber and Lady Mormont, two bannermen whose loyalty was beyond question and whose combined approach covered both brute intimidation and methodical intelligence gathering.
The results confirmed everything Arya had warned them about.
Talisa—whose real name was indeed Talisa Maegyr of Volantene nobility—had been placed in Robb's path by intermediaries connected to Tywin Lannister's intelligence network. Her mission was simple and devastating: make the Young Wolf fall in love with her, encourage him to break his betrothal to the Frey girl, and create the exact conditions for the betrayal Walder Frey was planning. Coded messages had flowed south for months, detailing troop movements, supply routes, morale assessments, and private conversations between Robb and his war council.
"She claims she genuinely fell in love with you during the process," Lady Mormont reported, her weathered face carrying the contempt she reserved for people who wielded affection as a weapon. "Whether that's true or simply another layer of deception, I can't say. But the initial placement was deliberate. She was Tywin's creature from the beginning."
Robb absorbed this from his campaign chair, Grey Wind's head resting on his knee. Robb found the animal's presence grounding in a way nothing else was.
"Keep her comfortable but contained," he said finally. "No visitors, no writing materials, no opportunity to communicate outside this camp. And start feeding false intelligence through her previous channels—subtly, nothing that would alert Tywin we've discovered her. Begin with troop dispositions that are slightly off. Supply schedules shifted by a day or two. Small errors that will compound over time and make his strategic planning unreliable without being obvious enough to trigger suspicion."
"And Walder Frey?" Catelyn asked from the tent's entrance.
Robb's hand stilled on Grey Wind's fur. The direwolf raised his head, golden eyes reflecting the lamplight with an intensity that matched his master's.
"We accept his invitation to the wedding. We send all the appropriate courtesies and diplomatic niceties. We give every indication that the Young Wolf is coming to make amends for his broken promise." His voice carried a coldness that hadn't been there before Yennefer stripped away the magical fog. "And we prepare for what we'll actually do when we get there."
The Twins - Six Weeks Later
The preparations had been meticulous.
Robb spent those six weeks becoming the king he should have been from the start. With the Three-Eyed Raven's influence gone, his natural strategic instincts reasserted themselves—the same mind that had won the Battle of the Whispering Wood and captured Jaime Lannister now turned its full attention to surviving a massacre meant to kill him.
The first step was intelligence. Robb sent scouts to the Twins under various pretexts—merchants, travelers, hedge knights seeking employment—to map the castle's layout, identify Frey soldiers and their positions, and confirm the trap's details. The reports came back within weeks, painting an ugly picture.
Walder Frey had positioned crossbowmen in the galleries above the great hall. The Frey and Bolton soldiers stationed throughout the castle outnumbered the Northern retinue by roughly three to one. The musicians Walder had hired were actually soldiers with crossbows hidden in their instrument cases. Even the wine was laced with a paralytic agent—not lethal on its own, but enough to slow reactions when the killing started.
"They've thought of everything," Robb told Catelyn as they reviewed the intelligence in his command tent the night before departure. Grey Wind lay at his feet, the direwolf's ears pricked forward with the same alertness that had kept him on edge since Robb's liberation. "Crossbows in the galleries, soldiers disguised as servants, poisoned wine. Walder Frey wants to make certain nobody walks out of that feast hall alive."
"Then we give him a feast to remember." Catelyn's expression was granite. Whatever gentleness she possessed as a mother had been replaced with cold-blooded protectiveness. "Our men?"
"Three hundred of our best, handpicked by the Greatjon. They're wearing concealed mail under their feast clothes—it won't stop a direct crossbow bolt, but it'll turn a blade or a grazing shot. Each man has a weapon within reach." Robb pointed to the castle diagram spread across the table. "The Greatjon's assault team hits the galleries the moment the signal is given. Lord Umber himself, with fifty men—their job is to eliminate the crossbowmen before they can reload. Dacey Mormont takes another fifty through the kitchens to secure the rear exits and keep Bolton reinforcements from entering the hall. And Grey Wind—" He rested his hand on the direwolf's massive head. "Grey Wind stays with me. Not chained in the kennels where Walder planned to trap him."
"The Freys will insist. They'll claim it's improper to bring a beast to a wedding."
"And I'll refuse. Politely but firmly, with a smile that suggests I'm being indulgent rather than suspicious." Robb's mouth curved into something that was technically a smile but carried the predatory edge of a wolf baring its teeth. "If they push, I'll point out that Grey Wind hasn't left my side since the war began and suggest that forcing the issue would insult Northern customs. Walder cares about appearances—he won't risk offending me over a direwolf when he's convinced the crossbows will handle everything anyway."
Catelyn studied her son with an expression Robb couldn't quite decipher. Something between pride and sorrow, as if she was watching him become someone she'd always hoped he could be, while wishing the transformation hadn't required such brutal catalysts.
"When do we spring it?" she asked.
"We let the feast proceed normally. We eat their food, drink what appears to be their wine—our cupbearers will switch to clean cups—and we wait for Walder's signal. In the original plan, the musicians were supposed to begin playing 'The Rains of Castamere' as the trigger. When that song starts, instead of dying, we act."
He leaned forward, Grey Wind rising with him.
"They expect sheep walking into a slaughter pen. They're going to find wolves."
The Red Wedding became the Wolf's Feast.
History would remember it differently depending on who told the story. In the south, it was whispered as a Northern atrocity—a violation of guest right by a savage young king who lured his host into false security and butchered them. In the North, it was celebrated as the night the Young Wolf proved the Starks were nobody's victims.
The truth, as usual, was messier than either version.
The feast proceeded exactly as Walder Frey had planned for its first two hours. Food was served. Wine was poured. The old lord made his customary cutting remarks about Robb's broken betrothal, his watery eyes gleaming with malice of a man savoring a private joke his guests didn't yet understand. Robb endured it with practiced grace, knowing exactly what was coming.
Catelyn sat beside him, her hands steady on her wine cup—the one their cupbearer had switched for an untainted replacement—and kept up conversation with the Frey women seated near her. She laughed at the right moments. Complimented the food. Played her role with ease.
Grey Wind lay at Robb's feet beneath the table, invisible to most of the hall. The direwolf's muscles coiled tight, his golden eyes tracking every servant who passed within reach of his master.
The musicians began to play.
The opening notes of The Rains of Castamere drifted through the feast hall, and Robb felt the shift in atmosphere like a change in wind direction. The Frey soldiers positioned around the room straightened. Hands moved toward hidden weapons. In the galleries above, crossbow strings being drawn back was audible only to those who knew to listen for it.
Robb lifted his wine cup and drank deeply—from the clean cup—and set it down with a deliberate, measured motion.
"Now," he said quietly.
Three hundred Northerners moved at once.
The feast hall erupted into violence so sudden and total that Walder Frey's carefully orchestrated massacre never began. The Greatjon Umber's assault team hit the gallery stairs before the first crossbow bolt flew, their war cries echoing off stone walls as they crashed into the archers with the focused fury of men who'd been waiting weeks for this moment. Dacey Mormont's flanking force surged through the kitchen passages, catching the Bolton reinforcements in a bottleneck that turned their numbers into a liability.
And in the feast hall itself, Grey Wind exploded from beneath the table and seized the nearest Frey soldier by the throat before the man had finished drawing his sword.
Robb was on his feet a heartbeat later, his blade clearing its scabbard in a single smooth motion that spoke of countless hours he'd spent training since his mind had been freed. The Young Wolf fought with a precision his earlier campaigns had lacked—no hesitation, no second-guessing, no fog of artificial emotion clouding his judgment. He cut through the Frey guards between him and the high table with the methodical efficiency.
Walder Frey's expression when Robb reached him was, Catelyn would later reflect, almost worth the months of dread that had led to this moment.
The old lord sat frozen in his chair, his watery eyes wide with horror of a predator who's just realized his prey was never prey at all. The crossbowmen in the galleries were dead or dying. The Bolton soldiers were trapped in the kitchen corridors. His household guard was being systematically cut down by Northern warriors who'd come to this wedding expecting treachery and had prepared accordingly.
"You—" Walder began, his reedy voice cracking. "You can't—guest right—"
"Guest right?" Robb stood before the Lord of the Crossing with Grey Wind at his side, the direwolf's muzzle dark with blood, its golden eyes fixed on the old man with predatory focus. "You were going to murder me, my mother, my wife, and every man who rode with me under the protection of your own roof. You don't get to invoke the sacred traditions you planned to violate."
"Bolton promised—Tywin Lannister guaranteed—"
"Tywin Lannister isn't here. Roose Bolton isn't here—he's trapped in the eastern corridor with fifty of my men between him and freedom." Robb's voice carried a coldness that made several surviving Freys flinch. "You conspired to commit the greatest violation of sacred law in the history of the Seven Kingdoms. You did it for spite, for gold, and for vengeance you didn't have the courage to pursue honestly."
Walder Frey's mouth worked soundlessly. Around him, his sons and grandsons were being disarmed and forced to their knees by Northern soldiers, their faces frozen in the stunned disbelief of men who'd expected to be perpetrators and found themselves captives.
"The sentence for conspiracy to commit mass murder under the protection of guest right," Robb said, drawing himself to his full height, "is death."
Grey Wind growled, and the sound resonated through the blood-splattered feast hall like a promise.
Robb executed Walder Frey that night, along with Roose Bolton and Black Walder—the three architects of the massacre that never was. He did it publicly in the courtyard of the Twins, with his bannermen watching and the surviving Freys forced to bear witness.
The rest of House Frey he treated with calculated mercy that served his strategic purposes better than wholesale slaughter. He spared the women and children entirely. The male Freys who could prove they knew nothing of the conspiracy were stripped of their titles and lands but allowed to live. Those who had participated in the planning were imprisoned to await trial when the war ended.
The Twins themselves he gave to Dacey Mormont's garrison, securing the critical river crossing that had been a strategic vulnerability since the war began.
"You could have killed them all," Catelyn observed as they rode north from the Twins, morning light painting the Riverlands in pale gold. "Many of the bannermen expected it."
"Killing them all would have confirmed every story the Lannisters will tell about Northern savagery." Robb rode with Grey Wind loping alongside his horse, the direwolf's presence a constant comfort. "We killed the conspirators. We spared the innocent. That's a story even our enemies will struggle to spin against us—because it's the story of a king who dispensed justice rather than vengeance."
"Your father would have done the same."
Robb was quiet for a long time after that, watching the road ahead with eyes that saw clearly for the first time in years.
"My father would have done it better," he said finally. "He never would have needed his sister to rescue him from his own stupidity."
The War Renewed
The weeks following the Wolf's Feast transformed the Northern campaign.
Robb Stark had always been a capable military commander—his early victories against the Lannisters had proven that. But the commander who emerged from the Twins was something more refined, more dangerous, more deliberate than the boy-king who had won battles through audacity and lost the war through foolishness.
The false intelligence flowing through Talisa's compromised channels was the first weapon he deployed. Tywin Lannister had relied on his agent's reports to anticipate Northern movements, and now he was making decisions based on information that was subtly, consistently wrong. He dispatched supply convoys to intercept Northern forces that weren't where Talisa's messages claimed. He reinforced defensive positions against attacks that never came, leaving other sectors weakened. The cumulative effect was small at first—a missed opportunity here, a wasted march there—but it compounded with every passing week.
The second weapon was Grey Wind.
Robb had kept his direwolf close since the liberation, but now he wove the animal into his tactical planning with a deliberateness his earlier campaigns had lacked. Grey Wind scouted ahead of the main force, his supernatural senses detecting ambushes and hidden positions that human scouts would miss. The direwolf's presence on the battlefield had always demoralized enemy troops; now, with Robb fighting alongside him in coordinated tandem rather than treating him as a companion, the pair became something approaching legend.
At the Battle of the Golden Tooth, Grey Wind flanked the Lannister cavalry while Robb's infantry held the center, the direwolf tearing through the mounted knights with such ferocity that the entire wing broke into panicked retreat. At the Siege of Lannisport's outer defenses, Robb used Grey Wind to identify a weakness in the fortification that his engineers had missed—a drainage culvert large enough for a small assault team, which the direwolf had found by scent.
Tywin noticed the change.
The Lord of Casterly Rock sat in his command tent outside Harrenhal, reviewing the latest battle reports with his usual cold analytical precision. His golden eyes—the same eyes his children had inherited, minus the warmth—moved across the dispatches without visible emotion.
"The Stark boy is fighting differently," he said to Kevan, who sat across the table nursing an untouched cup of wine. "His movements are more conservative and calculated. He's stopped making the impulsive decisions I was counting on to hand us a decisive battle. The supply ambushes that should have crippled his logistics have missed their targets three times in the last month. And the intelligence from our assets in his camp has become... unreliable."
"Unreliable how?" Kevan asked.
"Positions that don't match reality. Troop numbers that are slightly off. Timing that's consistently shifted by just enough to matter." Tywin's expression didn't change, but something behind his eyes sharpened. "Either our source has been compromised and is feeding us disinformation, or the Stark boy has reorganized his command structure in a way she can no longer observe accurately."
"Should we pull the asset?"
"No. If she's been turned, we'd be confirming that we know. If she's simply misreporting due to changed access, pulling her gains us nothing and loses what coverage we still have." Tywin set down the dispatches and steepled his fingers. "The more pressing concern is the strategic picture. We've lost the Golden Tooth. Lannisport's outer defenses are compromised. And our treasury—" His voice carried the faintest edge of something that might have been frustration. "The crown's debts to the Iron Bank grow with every month this war continues. The Tyrell alliance, while useful, comes with its own price. We cannot sustain a prolonged campaign against an enemy who has stopped making exploitable mistakes."
"You're suggesting we can't win."
"I'm suggesting that winning has become significantly more expensive than a month ago, and the cost-benefit calculation may no longer favor continued prosecution." Tywin's gaze was steady and unsentimental. "The Stark boy controls the North and the Riverlands. We control the Westerlands, the Crownlands, and through the Tyrells, the Reach. The Stormlands are divided. The Vale remains neutral under the Arryns. Neither side has the resources for a decisive campaign, and both sides know it."
"A truce," Kevan said carefully.
"A truce. Temporary, bounded, and designed to give us time to rebuild our treasury and consolidate our political position. Tommen is young and malleable—with proper guidance, he'll be a more effective king than Joffrey ever was. The Tyrell marriage gives us access to the wealthiest region in Westeros." Tywin's expression showed pragmatic calculation. "Send a raven to the Stark camp. Propose a cessation of hostilities. Nothing permanent—we're not recognizing his pretensions to kingship—but a formal acknowledgment that both sides will withdraw to current positions and cease offensive operations for two years."
"He'll want the Riverlands."
"He already has the Riverlands. I'm merely acknowledging reality rather than wasting men trying to reclaim territory we can't hold. Let the Stark boy have his kingdom of snow and mud. We have larger concerns." His gaze drifted to the window, where Harrenhal's towers stood dark against the evening sky. "The situation across the Narrow Sea grows more complicated with every report. The dragon-riders in Essos are no longer an Eastern curiosity—they're becoming a power that will eventually turn westward. When that day comes, I intend to be ready. I can't be ready if I'm still fighting wolves in the Riverlands."
Winterfell - Months Later
The truce held.
Robb returned to the North with his army reduced but unbroken, his reputation restored from the brink of disaster, and a sharp understanding of just how close he'd come to losing everything. The Stark banners flew over Winterfell again for the first time since the war began, and the sight of them—grey direwolf on white—stirred something in his chest that felt uncomfortably like relief.
Winterfell itself was damaged but not destroyed. Theon Greyjoy's brief occupation and the subsequent Bolton interference had left scars—burned sections of the inner keep, ransacked stores, a civilian population that flinched at armored footsteps—but the bones endured. Robb set his engineers to work immediately, prioritizing defensive fortifications and food production over cosmetic repairs.
"The North is depleted," he told Catelyn as they walked the walls together on a crisp autumn morning, Grey Wind padding ahead with his nose to the stones. "I lost too many men through my own foolishness before the Twins. The Karstarks are leaderless since I executed their lord—another decision the Three-Eyed Raven probably nudged me toward, though I can't prove it. The Boltons are broken, but their territory still needs managing. And winter is coming."
The Stark words had never felt more literal. The maesters were already reporting shorter days and longer nights, the creeping cold that heralded the season of darkness and hardship that could last years. Fighting a war and preparing for winter simultaneously had nearly bankrupted the North's stores; surviving the peace would require every resource Robb could marshal.
"Then we stop fighting and start building," Catelyn said. "The truce with Tywin gives us time. Two years at minimum—possibly longer if both sides honor it. That's enough to rebuild the grain stores, reinforce our defenses, and consolidate your authority as King in the North."
"My authority." Robb leaned against the battlement, watching the courtyard below where Northern soldiers drilled under officers who had survived campaigns that should have killed them all. "Half my bannermen followed me because they believed in the cause. The other half followed because they had no better option. Now that the war has paused, those lords are going to start wondering whether backing Robb Stark was the wisest investment."
"Then give them reasons not to wonder. Good governance does what military victories cannot—it makes people want to follow you, not just fear the consequences of refusing." Catelyn turned to face him, her expression carrying the weight of lessons learned watching her father rule the Riverlands. "You have advantages no King in the North has had in centuries. The Boltons are destroyed as a political force. The Freys' treachery eliminated the most dangerous potential traitor in your coalition. And you have something else—something no one in Westeros understands yet."
"Arya."
"Not just Arya. The knowledge she gave us." Catelyn's voice dropped, though the wall was empty except for the two of them and Grey Wind. "The Wyrmborne. Angelus. An empire rising in Essos that everyone's too busy fighting each other to take seriously. You know about them, Robb. You've heard Arya describe what they're building—an army of transformed soldiers, magical weapons that grow stronger over time, three dragons that answer to a creature older than recorded history. Sooner or later, the world will have to deal with that reality. You could be ahead of the wave instead of behind it."
Robb was quiet for a long time, Grey Wind returning to press against his leg as if sensing the weight of his thoughts.
"Arya said Angelus has no interest in Westeros. No desire to expand across the Narrow Sea."
"Arya said Angelus has no interest in conquering Westeros. That's not the same thing." Catelyn allowed herself a thin smile. "Dragons—even dragons who claim no territorial ambitions—still want things. Resources, information, alliances, security for their borders. If we can figure out what Angelus wants that we might provide, we'll have the foundation for a diplomatic relationship that benefits both sides."
"And what could the North possibly offer a dragon who commands transformed armies and magical weapons?"
"Strategic position, for one thing. The North is the largest kingdom in Westeros, sitting between the Narrow Sea and the Wall. Anyone moving between Essos and deeper Westeros has to deal with us." Catelyn had clearly been thinking about this longer than Robb realized. "More practically—information. Arya said Angelus has knowledge of events in this world, but that knowledge isn't perfect. She predicted the Red Wedding and the Purple Wedding, but also mentioned threats she hasn't dealt with yet. The White Walkers, the Wall, whatever's happening beyond it. We're closer to that threat than anyone in Essos."
"Jon," Robb said.
Catelyn's expression tightened. The subject of Ned Stark's bastard son had always been a raw nerve, and time and war had done nothing to soften that wound.
"Jon is at the Wall," Robb continued, choosing his words with the care of someone navigating hidden snares. "He's Night's Watch. He's been sending ravens for months about increasing wildling activity and strange movements beyond the Wall—reports that everyone south of the Neck dismisses as superstition. But if Angelus is right about the White Walkers, Jon's reports aren't exaggeration. They're early warnings."
"You want to contact your father's bastard." Catelyn's voice was carefully neutral, but her hands had tightened on the battlement's stone.
"I want to contact my brother." Robb met her eyes directly, and the clarity of his gaze—free of magical manipulation, free of the self-doubt the Three-Eyed Raven had cultivated—made the statement feel less like a challenge and more like simple fact. "I don't care about the circumstances of his birth, Mother. I never have. Jon is a Stark in every way that matters, and right now he's positioned at the most strategically important location in Westeros—the border between the living world and whatever's gathering in the frozen dark beyond it. I need that intelligence. The North needs that alliance."
Catelyn held his gaze for a long, taut moment. Grey Wind, sensing the tension, looked between them with the anxious attention of an animal caught between two pack leaders.
"And Sansa?" she asked finally, neither conceding nor rejecting his point about Jon.
"Arya told us Sansa escaped King's Landing after Joffrey's death. She said Littlefinger helped her disappear—that she's likely in the Vale, under his 'protection.'" Robb's mouth twisted on the last word. "Petyr Baelish doesn't protect anyone for free, and his interest in Sansa is something I don't want to examine too closely. We need to find her and bring her home before he turns her into another pawn."
"On that, we agree completely." Catelyn's voice carried a fierceness that had nothing to do with politics and everything to do with maternal instinct. "I'll send discreet inquiries through the Tully network—House Arryn may be neutral, but the Vale lords aren't universally loyal to Littlefinger. There are people there who might help, for the right consideration."
"Good. Do it." Robb pushed off the battlement and began walking again, Grey Wind falling into step beside him. "Send the inquiry about Jon as well. I'll write the letter myself—it needs to come from me, not an intermediary. And begin assembling a diplomatic brief about the Wyrmborne. Everything Arya told us, everything we can learn from merchant reports and sailor gossip about what's happening in Essos. If we're going to approach Angelus about an alliance, we need to understand what we're approaching."
"You're serious about this."
"I'm serious about survival. Our survival, the North's survival, possibly the survival of everyone on this continent if the White Walkers are real." He paused at the corner of the wall-walk, looking north toward a horizon already darkening with approaching winter. "Arya said Angelus isn't a god, isn't a savior, and doesn't think like a human. She said we'd have to approach carefully, offer something of genuine value, and accept that the relationship might not always align with our interests. I'd rather deal with a dragon who's honest about her priorities than a southern lord who smiles while sharpening his knife."
Grey Wind's ears pricked toward the north, and for a moment, Robb could almost believe the direwolf sensed something beyond the horizon—something cold and patient and gathering strength in the frozen wastes beyond the Wall.
"Winter is coming," he said quietly. "And when it does, the North will need allies who can fight more than just men."
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End of Chapter Thirty-Two (Part 1)