Chapter Text
It rains from the moment the northern force begins their siege, as though the gods themselves are cursing them – and perhaps, Ned thinks, that is the case. The gods of the Riverlands are the southron Seven and are not likely to smile down upon a northern army – especially one set on besieging a castle currently housing no more than servants, children, and maidens. Despite resenting the ache in every muscle of his body and the way the water soaks between the cracks of his armor to turn his clothes heavy and sodden, Ned cannot blame the gods for showing their wrath. It is a business that he finds most distasteful, as well, devoid of the honor that comes from facing a foe on the field, looking him in the eye during battle.
The downpour is cold in a way completely foreign from the brisk frigidity of the North. It settles into his bones as a constant damp chill that no manner of layers or seeking of cover will abate. At night when Ned lays upon his cot and listens to the rain battering the sides of his tent, he allows his mind to wander to warmer, drier places. When his eyes drift closed, he is back in the Hall of a Hundred Hearths, sandwiched between Benjen and Brandon. The flames of the crackling fires had danced upon Lady Ashara’s hair, making it shine like dark polished steel.
Yet when he thinks of that evening now, his mind most often wanders to Brandon beside him – laughing, drinking, japing, alive - and the fist of grief closes tightly around Ned’s heart. He cannot help but wonder what Brandon would think of the siege of Riverrun, of what their father would say to see the hope of his carefully planned southron match so thoroughly destroyed. I tried, Ned tells himself furiously, in an attempt to batter away the lingering guilt. He would have wed Brandon’s betrothed, to secure the swords of House Tully and to cement the alliance that Rickard Stark had arranged. That Hoster Tully had rejected his offer is nothing short of a terrible affront to House Stark, and therefore he should not feel guilty at all about the eight hundred men lingering outside those sandstone walls.
Not guilty, but perhaps still foolish, he thinks when he studies their target from the edge of his tent. Lord Tully had left his brother the Blackfish as the castellan of the castle when he departed to fight for his king, and from his studies of wars past, Ned knows that Brynden Tully is sharper and wilier than most. The castle had barely been within the sights of Ned’s army before the sluice gates had opened and filled the wide moat on Riverrun’s open side. Now it sits as an island adrift, and Ned remembers his father saying with satisfaction that Riverrun could stand for two years, a thousand years ago when he had been looking for a match for Brandon.
If Brandon had lived, he would have been wed to Lady Catelyn by now. Ned wonders if that would have made a difference, if the Tullys would have sided with the rebels rather than the loyalists if the match had already been made. Brandon would have made a more charismatic leader of the northern troops, but Hoster Tully is known to be notoriously stubborn. Perhaps all of Rickard Stark’s work would have still been for naught, and Brandon would have had to face his good-father in the field.
There are nights when he looks upon the castle with calculation, wondering how the walls across the water may be breached, and nights when he stews in guilt, knowing that there is little more than the skeleton of a household guard within – that, and the Blackfish, easily worth ten of Ned’s soldiers in battle prowess. And then there are the times that he looks upon it in envy, thinking of those behind the walls, warm and dry and perhaps even well-fed, if the stores had been well-kept through the years of winter. This is a folly, he writes to Robert, but if the raven bearing the message has found its way through the pounding rains, he has no way of knowing. On the other hand, he is certain that his invitation to the Blackfish to come and treat with him was received, and merely ignored. And why not? Why not stay warm and dry within the castle walls, and wait for us to wash away like melted snow? he thinks bitterly. In one of Jon Arryn’s rare, hastily-scribbled messages, he learns of Mace Tyrell’s siege upon Storm’s End and how the loyalist army feasts within sight of the castle walls. It is a far cry from the waterlogged futility of their campaign in the Riverlands; rather than force the Blackfish’s hand, Ned imagines he is having a good laugh at the bedraggled scattering of soldiers outside, kept safely at bay by the rivers between them.
It is a point of honor for Robert, capturing Riverrun. In truth, winning and holding the castle is far more trouble than it is worth; the Riverlands have always been conflict-laden and difficult to protect, hardly an ideal stronghold in wartime. But Robert had taken much greater insult at Hoster Tully’s rejection than Ned had. When we win the war, I’ll marry his precious girls to blacksmiths, Robert had boasted before they had parted, crumpling the letter from the Lord Paramount and feeding it to the flames. A few years of meager living will break that undue pride.
Ned’s father had always called Hoster Tully a proud man, but a cunning one, as well, and Ned had been far more concerned than angry when Tully had refused to ally himself with their cause. Their chances had seemed a bit more dismal that day.
The days stretch on in a cold, damp, monotonous blur, and when the rider in Tully livery finally comes to the camp, bearing a note from the Blackfish saying that he will meet with Lord Stark, Ned suspects it is more an attempt to combat boredom than to come to a true accord. At the very least, it is something different, and as word spreads through the ranks about the impending meeting, morale rises with the illusion of progress being made. I should thank him for that, at least, Ned thinks grimly; there is nothing heroic or glorious about sieging a castle in the Riverlands, not as there is in a bloody battle. Ned has no interest in such things, but he is not fool enough to think that the men who follow him – young, eager, thirsty for war – feel the same. This endless blanket of nothingness leaves them restless, and restless soldiers are a danger to all around them.
When the time comes, Howland Reed and Martyn Cassel flank Ned, one on each side. The rain has still not abated, and Ned must push his helm up in order to see as a figure appears from the haze that shrouds the castle and its gates. The Blackfish rides unaccompanied and lightly armored, and Ned does not know if he means it as a compliment to Ned’s honor or an insult to his battle prowess. The latter would not be unexpected; Ned is no Brynden Blackfish, no Barristan Selmy, and he lacks Robert’s brute strength and single-mindedness in the field. And yet Ned’s stubborn, relentless sense of duty, to do what Robert commanded of him, has led them here – a step closer to the end of this mess, once and for all. There are places for men like me in war, after all, Ned thinks wryly.
The Blackfish dismounts, and his boots land in the mud with a loud squelch. The rain seems to bother him not at all – though, Ned thinks rather sourly, he imagines he, too, would not be troubled by it if he had warm dry walls at his back, awaiting his return. “Ser Brynden,” Ned greets, his voice even and polite. “Thank you for meeting us.”
The Blackfish shrugs, the reins of his destier looped casually over his black glove. “I’ve always said a siege is a tedious business. This promised to be a much-needed rest from listening to my nephew complain of his hunger.” A stab of guilt twists Ned’s stomach at that – Edmure Tully is but ten, younger even than Benjen, and certainly had no say in the wars of those much older than him – but the Blackfish does not linger on the subject. “And I must admit that I was curious to see you. I knew your brother Brandon well, and he would have smashed himself upon the gate by now, cocky and impatient as he was.” A pause, and for a moment, the older man’s eyes seem to gentle. “Seven rest his soul,” he adds gruffly.
“I am not Brandon,” Ned replies stiffly, uncomfortable with the sympathy. The pain is still too raw, the wound too gaping to find comfort in the words of others.
“As you have not been swept away by the river in a folly, it seems you are not,” Brynden Blackfish allows. “And so I decided to come and see what sort of man you were for myself.”
“The time has come to relinquish Riverrun in the name of King Robert,” Ned says sternly, abruptly changing the subject to less personal matters. “Lord Tully took the bulk of your forces with him when he went to join Prince Rhaegar’s forces. You are far outnumbered.”
“Aye, so we are,” the Blackfish agrees, and his piercing blue eyes slide past Ned and his companions, wandering over the sodden forces waiting in the distance, through the misting rain. “And despite that, you ask me to relinquish the castle – you do not simply take it. You northerners may keep your snow, but it seems water leaves you baffled.” His gaze returns to Ned’s face, and his voice grows hard. “My brother left me in charge of his home and his children, and I will allow neither to come to harm.”
Instinctively, Ned bristles at the implication. “Your nieces and nephew are in no danger,” he replies shortly. “They would be treated with the upmost respect, I assure you. They are safe.”
The Blackfish snorts in response. “I have seen more wars than you have, boy. Maidens and children are never safe.”
Unbidden, Ned’s thoughts wander to Lyanna – a maiden and a child both, no matter how she fancied herself a woman grown. Are you safe tonight, sister? he wonders, and though he is far from his old gods, he finds himself offering a silent prayer to them regardless. The old gods have no eyes in the south, his father’s gruff voice echoes in his mind, and Ned’s resolve to take the castle doubles. Unlike pleading with gods who could not see this far from the weirwoods of the north, perhaps holding Riverrun would somehow help recover his sister.
“I, too, find little joy in a siege,” Ned says gravely, his fingers curling into fists. “But if I have to starve you out, I will do so, as commanded. No boat will come to dock at your Water Gate, I assure you. I have archers at the ready, and they are not likely to discriminate. If we must raze the lands to force your hand, I will do so. I would much rather come to an accord. Think carefully of what you would wish Lord Tully to find upon his return home.
The knight’s weathered face twists into a bitter smirk at that. “Suddenly not so earnest about the safety of my nieces and nephews, are you, Lord Stark? Perhaps it is for the best. We should not waste our time pretending that war is a noble business.”
Involuntarily, Ned’s teeth clench. Ser Brynden’s words strike their mark a bit too true; blustering threats are not something Ned takes pleasure in, nor something he would normally even consider. It is the rain and the hunger, he tells himself – a reason, though not an excuse. The water does not seem to bother the Blackfish, and despite Ned’s threats to starve Riverrun out, he has no reason to believe that provisions are not better within the castle than they are at the camp outside its walls. And by the unconcerned expression on the Blackfish’s face, Ned suspects he realizes that the threat to raze the lands is an empty one. Robert would urge him, and Brandon would have pushed forward without a second thought. But for Ned, the mere idea makes him ill; they are not at war with the smallfolk of the Riverlands.
You are not at war with the Tullys, either, a small voice at the back of his mind taunts him – a voice that sounds remarkably like his father. Irritated, Ned pushes the thought away. The Tullys had chosen their course, and like the rest of the Great Houses, would have to face the consequences of that choice at war’s end, one way or another.
As Ned opens his mouth to argue, the Blackfish’s face changes; for the first time, Ned sees surprise on the older man’s face, spreading like molasses over his features, slow as in a dream. The moment hangs in the air, unnaturally long, and then with a jolt, time surges forward again, with a sudden, blinding pain in his leg, so shocking that for a moment, the entire world goes white.
It is only when Howland crouches down beside him that Ned realizes he has fallen.
--
The days stretch long and empty inside the castle.
Sometimes Catelyn imagines that the walls will simply not be able to contain Edmure and his boundless, restless energy. He is young and used to playing outside in the sun of the godswood, not trapped inside with a thousand rules and restrictions put in place for his own good. She could recite them like a mantra, their uncle’s stern words on the day the northern army had appeared on their horizon. Keep away from the windows. Put out your candles as soon as the sky darkens. Do not even think of going out to the grounds.
They are dark words, hard for summer southron children to accept, and Edmure has always been the softest of the three Tully siblings. He defies their uncle’s orders, lifting up on tiptoes to peer from the windows and get a glimpse of the army at their gates, and then racing down the corridor when a passing steward or maid anxiously shoos him away. A week ago, Catelyn had discovered him with damp hair and mud on his boots, and she had barely resisted the urge to strike him in terror at the realization that he had snuck outside. To Edmure, it is little more than a game – one that he has tired of and wants ended.
Yet as infuriating as her brother’s behavior is, Catelyn prefers it to Lysa’s self-imposed confinement. Day and night, her sister stays locked in her room, refusing entry to all but her maid at mealtimes. She had allowed Catelyn to sit with her at the beginning of the siege, but when Catelyn had tried to dry her sister’s tears by reassuring her that their father would soon be home, Lysa had demanded she leave and had henceforth refused to speak to anyone or to even come to the door. It is unusual for Lysa; she has always been inclined to moodiness, but normally she chooses to sulk and pout in the Great Hall, or in their lesson room – the better that everyone may see that she has been offended.
After nearly a moon’s turn of this strange behavior, Catelyn seeks out Maester Vyman in her concern, fearing that perhaps her sister is plagued by illness. It is a task that she has set out to do at least a dozen times before, and once again, she is distracted by Edmure on her way to the maester’s chambers. At the end of the long hall, her brother stands on his tiptoes, peering out the window to the gates below, and Catelyn resists the urge to grab him by the scruff of his neck in irritation. “Edmure, come away from the window,” she orders, her voice brokering no room for argument – and of course, Edmure argues with her regardless.
“But Uncle Brynden is riding back with someone,” Edmure protests, glancing over his shoulder and ignoring her command. “I watched him ride out alone, but now there is another horse and – ” he glances again, “ – two other men. One is on the horse. I think someone is hurt.”
Fear seizes her in a vice grip at that, and she strides across the corridor, disregarding her own concerns to join her brother, despite their uncle’s warnings. She can easily see over Edmure’s head and down to the courtyard in front of the gates below, but whomever Edmure had seen has already disappeared, presumably through the gate into the castle. “Our uncle isn’t hurt, is he?” she worries, and then another horrifying possibility occurs to her. Could it be Father? Has something happened to him? She keeps these terrible thoughts to herself, unwilling to frighten her brother.
Yet Edmure’s face is not frightened at all. It is exhilarated, as though he were watching a tourney or a dance. “Do you think Uncle Brynden killed Lord Stark?” he asks, with the eagerness of a child desperate for diversion, with the innocence of a boy who cannot truly grasp the finality of death and the futility of war. But Catelyn, who wakes each morning with the scent of smoke-burnt flesh lingering in her nostrils and Brandon’s strangled cries ringing in her ears, cannot bring herself to wish death upon her betrothed’s brother, not even if that would mean the end of the siege.
“No,” Catelyn tells him severely. “They met under the banners of parlay. Uncle Brynden would never dishonor that. No honorable man would.” She gives Edmure a stern look, trying to impart the seriousness of such an offense, but as ever, he pays little attention to her.
She does not have to wait long to be proven right; their uncle finds them barely an hour later, looking weary and irritated but mercifully unharmed. Catelyn cannot help but embrace him in relief, resting her head on the Tully crest sewn onto his tunic. He gives her a brief squeeze but then holds her at arm’s length, ignoring Edmure’s endless litany of questions (‘Is someone hurt? Did you kill someone, Uncle? Who was it?’). “I require your assistance, my niece,” he says, and he offers her his arm as he would to a lady. Her father has expected her to act as a woman grown since her mother’s death, but her uncle has always seen her as a child. That he now appeals to her for help is almost frightening, and Catelyn’s fingers tremble slightly at she slips her hand into the crook of his elbow.
“You,” he says, pointing a finger at Edmure, who scowls in response. “Stay here and behave. And how many times must I tell you to stay away from the windows? There is a war outside our gates, lad.”
“Where are you going? I am the heir to Riverrun, you have to tell me!” Edmure demands loudly, but Uncle Brynden sweeps Catelyn from the room as though Edmure has not spoken at all.
She nearly has to run to keep up with the Blackfish’s brisk pace. “It isn’t Father, is it?” she blurts out, voicing her most immediate fear as soon as they are out of Edmure’s earshot.
Out of the corner of her eye, she can see her uncle’s face soften, though his pace does not slow at all. “No, your father is well, from last I’ve heard,” he assures her, and Catelyn releases a breath that she had not even known she was holding. “But one of our more stupid bowmen decided that a peaceful parlay would be the best time to attempt an assassination of Lord Stark.” His face grows hard and cold once more, a scowl pulling at the corners of his lips. From his expression, Catelyn is suddenly absurdly grateful that Edmure had kept his theory that their uncle had killed Lord Stark to himself. “And along with an appalling lack of honor, he has remarkably poor aim,” he adds sourly. “He injured the man’s leg. I need you to find Maester Vyman and bring him to the sickroom to tend Lord Stark, little Cat. He is our guest for now. I must speak with Lord Reed in your father’s solar and try to convince him that this was not a plot, or else I fear that the northmen outside our doors will not remain satisfied with a siege.”
With a frustrated sigh, he releases her hand and gives her a gentle push on the back, urging her towards the winding stone staircase. “Go on, now. And make sure Vyman does not make a muck of it. The wound should be easy enough to treat, and the last thing we need are any complications.”
--
It is through no fault of Maester Vyman’s that the wound festers the next morning, and Lord Stark falls into a fevered sleep. Having left him alone to his duty the night before, Catelyn had knocked on the maester’s door in the morning to see how his patient fared. Finding the maester missing , she had made her way to the sickroom with a gnawing apprehension in her stomach.
Vyman answers the door at her first knock, and his face sags in relief at the sight of her, as though she could somehow remedy the situation. He quickly ushers her in, and she hesitates on the threshold. A soldier’s sickroom is not the proper place for a lady, and this Lord Stark is a stranger to her. It is entirely different than the times she would assist Vyman with some ailment of Lysa’s or Edmure’s, and she wonders if she should refuse to enter and leave this very moment to find her uncle.
But it is her uncle’s very words that ring in her head – ‘make sure he does not make a muck of it’ – and so she crosses the room to see the damage. And if she is honest with herself, she is curious, as well, to see the man in the flesh after having avoided laying eyes on him the night before.
While the maester bends over his work table, Catelyn takes the opportunity to study Lord Stark - Brandon’s brother, the man who could have, at her father’s word, been her husband. He is not nearly as handsome as Brandon, she thinks rather unkindly, and she suspects it is not only the toils of war that make him so. His face is long and hard, as though his features were carved from marble or stone – something inflexible, immovable. A cruel face, perhaps, she considers, and she wonders if an equally cold heart lingers beneath the exterior. But Brandon had loved him – he had japed about how his brother Ned was solemn and dull, but had loved him all the same. It is for Brandon’s sake that she would see him live.
“It needs a poultice,” Maester Vyman murmurs, rounding the bed to inspect the wound on Stark’s leg that is weeping pus and blood. “And to be cleaned with boiled wine. Or else the infection shall spread to his heart.”
“Do it, then,” Catelyn instructs, with all the dignity she has learned as the lady of the castle.
The maester hesitates for the briefest of moments, leaning in and lowering his voice, as though the man before them is in any state to overhear their conversation, as he tosses and turns from feverish dreams. “My lady…if he dies, the siege will be broken,” he says with some matter of reluctance, and Catelyn purses her lips in displeasure. “But if he lives, we have afforded their army a way into the castle.”
“Or we have won ourselves a valuable hostage,” Catelyn argues, trying to keep the edge from her voice. Maester Vyman is sworn to the service of Riverrun, and he is merely trying to do his duty – she must not begrudge him that. “My father would be pleased to have Lord Baratheon’s closest friend captured within our grasp. And my uncle has ordered that all be done to treat him. His injury was ill-done of our guard.” Her eyes flicker once more to the man sprawled across the sick bed, and she wonders if their care will make a difference at all, or if the gods will take him into their keep regardless. Was her uncle correct? Would Lord Stark’s death put them all in even greater danger from the soldiers outside their gates? “Do all that you must.”
With a low bow, and a murmured ‘my lady,’ the maester departs to follow her bidding and retrieve the necessary ingredients. As Catelyn looks upon Eddard Stark, she offers a quick prayer to the Seven that she has not made the wrong decision.
Vyman had covered him with furs at some point, perhaps hoping that the fever would swelter and break, but Stark has kicked them to the end of the bed. Sweat plasters dark hair to his forehead and beads in the unkempt beard that grows across his cheeks, while his entire face is flush with fever. Struck by a pang of sympathy beyond the call of duty or tactics, Catelyn dips her handkerchief into the basin of water the maester has left behind, gently brushing his forehead with the damp cloth.
His hand snatches her wrist so quickly that she yelps in surprise, and her lips part to call for help when his eyes, glazed and confused, flicker open briefly, seeing without seeing. With a moan of discomfort, he brings her cool hand to his fevered cheek, turning his face and pressing his hot lips briefly into her palm. Catelyn freezes in shock, unable to withdraw from his iron grasp, which is surprisingly strong for an injured, ill man. He murmurs a name - a woman’s name, barely decipherable - and instinctively, Catelyn cranes her head closer to listen. Who is he thinking of? she wonders despite herself – could it be that this seemingly cold, hard man has a love waiting for him at the end of the war, a lady he wishes were beside him in his moment of need?
“Lya,” he croaks, louder this time, and his fingers tighten almost painfully on her wrist. “Lya, I am so sorry…”
Her heart breaks for him at that moment, as it broke for Brandon the day he rode away from her and turned his eyes instead to King’s Landing. She had not argued; who better than a Tully to understand the ties of family? He does this for his sister, she remembers as she looks down at Ned, who clutches her hand as though it were a lifeline, and as the thought comes to her, it is suddenly hard to hate him for besieging her castle. He does this for his father, and for Brandon.
Suddenly, his face seems a great deal less cruel to her. He is little more than a boy, she thinks, and she is overwhelmed by guilt at her hesitance to care for him. He is so young, and he does not deserve to die.
Catelyn sinks into the chair beside the bed, and she waits for the morning.