The woods were full of whispers.

Moonlight winked on the tumbling waters of the stream below as it wound its rocky way along thefloor of the valley. Beneath the trees, warhorses whickered softly and pawed at the moist, leafyground, while men made nervous jests in hushed voices. Now and again, she heard the chink ofspears, the faint metallic slither of chain mail, but even those sounds were muffled.

“It should not be long now, my lady,” Hallis Mollen said. He had asked for the honor ofprotecting her in the battle to come; it was his right, as Winterfell’s captain of guards, and Robb hadnot refused it to him. She had thirty men around her, charged to keep her unharmed and see her safelyhome to Winterfell if the fighting went against them. Robb had wanted fifty; Catelyn had insisted thatten would be enough, that he would need every sword for the fight. They made their peace at thirty,neither happy with it.

“It will come when it comes,” Catelyn told him. When it came, she knew it would mean death.

Hal’s death perhaps … or hers, or Robb’s. No one was safe. No life was certain. Catelyn was contentto wait, to listen to the whispers in the woods and the faint music of the brook, to feel the warm windin her hair.

She was no stranger to waiting, after all. Her men had always made her wait. “Watch for me, littlecat,” her father would always tell her, when he rode off to court or fair or battle. And she would,standing patiently on the battlements of Riverrun as the waters of the Red Fork and the Tumblestoneflowed by. He did not always come when he said he would, and days would ofttimes pass as Catelynstood her vigil, peering out between crenels and through arrow loops until she caught a glimpse ofLord Hoster on his old brown gelding, trotting along the river-shore toward the landing. “Did youwatch for me?” he’d ask when he bent to hug her. “Did you, little cat?”

Brandon Stark had bid her wait as well. “I shall not be long, my lady,” he had vowed. “We will bewed on my return.” Yet when the day came at last, it was his brother Eddard who stood beside her inthe sept.

Ned had lingered scarcely a fortnight with his new bride before he too had ridden off to war withpromises on his lips. At least he had left her with more than words; he had given her a son. Ninemoons had waxed and waned, and Robb had been born in Riverrun while his father still warred in thesouth. She had brought him forth in blood and pain, not knowing whether Ned would ever see him.

Her son. He had been so small …And now it was for Robb that she waited … for Robb, and for Jaime Lannister, the gilded knightwho men said had never learned to wait at all. “The Kingslayer is restless, and quick to anger,” heruncle Brynden had told Robb. And he had wagered their lives and their best hope of victory on thetruth of what he said.

If Robb was frightened, he gave no sign of it. Catelyn watched her son as he moved among themen, touching one on the shoulder, sharing a jest with another, helping a third to gentle an anxioushorse. His armor clinked softly when he moved. Only his head was bare. Catelyn watched a breezestir his auburn hair, so like her own, and wondered when her son had grown so big. Fifteen, and nearas tall as she was.

Let him grow taller, she asked the gods. Let him know sixteen, and twenty, and fifty. Let him growas tall as his father, and hold his own son in his arms. Please, please, please. As she watched him,this tall young man with the new beard and the direwolf prowling at his heels, all she could see wasthe babe they had laid at her breast at Riverrun, so long ago.

The night was warm, but the thought of Riverrun was enough to make her shiver. Where are they?

she wondered. Could her uncle have been wrong? So much rested on the truth of what he had toldthem. Robb had given the Blackfish three hundred picked men, and sent them ahead to screen hismarch. “Jaime does not know,” Ser Brynden said when he rode back. “I’ll stake my life on that. Nobird has reached him, my archers have seen to that. We’ve seen a few of his outriders, but those thatsaw us did not live to tell of it. He ought to have sent out more. He does not know.”

“How large is his host?” her son asked.

“Twelve thousand foot, scattered around the castle in three separate camps, with the riversbetween,” her uncle said, with the craggy smile she remembered so well. “There is no other way tobesiege Riverrun, yet still, that will be their undoing. Two or three thousand horse.”

“The Kingslayer has us three to one,” said Galbart Glover.

“True enough,” Ser Brynden said, “yet there is one thing Ser Jaime lacks.”

“Yes?” Robb asked.

“Patience.”

Their host was greater than it had been when they left the Twins. Lord Jason Mallister had broughthis power out from Seagard to join them as they swept around the headwaters of the Blue Fork andgalloped south, and others had crept forth as well, hedge knights and small lords and masterless menat-arms who had fled north when her brother Edmure’s army was shattered beneath the walls ofRiverrun. They had driven their horses as hard as they dared to reach this place before JaimeLannister had word of their coming, and now the hour was at hand.

Catelyn watched her son mount up. Olyvar Frey held his horse for him, Lord Walder’s son, twoyears older than Robb, and ten years younger and more anxious. He strapped Robb’s shield in placeand handed up his helm. When he lowered it over the face she loved so well, a tall young knight saton his grey stallion where her son had been. It was dark among the trees, where the moon did notreach. When Robb turned his head to look at her, she could see only black inside his visor. “I mustride down the line, Mother,” he told her. “Father says you should let the men see you before a battle.”

“Go, then,” she said. “Let them see you.”

“It will give them courage,” Robb said.

And who will give me courage? she wondered, yet she kept her silence and made herself smile forhim. Robb turned the big grey stallion and walked him slowly away from her, Grey Wind shadowinghis steps. Behind him his battle guard formed up. When he’d forced Catelyn to accept her protectors,she had insisted that he be guarded as well, and the lords bannermen had agreed. Many of their sonshad clamored for the honor of riding with the Young Wolf, as they had taken to calling him. TorrhenKarstark and his brother Eddard were among his thirty, and Patrek Mallister, Smalljon Umber, DarynHornwood, Theon Greyjoy, no less than five of Walder Frey’s vast brood, along with older men likeSer Wendel Manderly and Robin Flint. One of his companions was even a woman: Dacey Mormont,Lady Maege’s eldest daughter and heir to Bear Island, a lanky six-footer who had been given amorningstar at an age when most girls were given dolls. Some of the other lords muttered about that,but Catelyn would not listen to their complaints. “This is not about the honor of your houses,” shetold them. “This is about keeping my son alive and whole.”

And if it comes to that, she wondered, will thirty be enough? Will six thousand be enough?

A bird called faintly in the distance, a high sharp trill that felt like an icy hand on Catelyn’s neck.

Another bird answered; a third, a fourth. She knew their call well enough, from her years atWinterfell. Snow shrikes. Sometimes you saw them in the deep of winter, when the godswood waswhite and still. They were northern birds.

They are coming, Catelyn thought.

“They’re coming, my lady,” Hal Mollen whispered. He was always a man for stating the obvious.

“Gods be with us.”

She nodded as the woods grew still around them. In the quiet she could hear them, far off yetmoving closer; the tread of many horses, the rattle of swords and spears and armor, the murmur ofhuman voices, with here a laugh, and there a curse.

Eons seemed to come and go. The sounds grew louder. She heard more laughter, a shoutedcommand, splashing as they crossed and recrossed the little stream. A horse snorted. A man swore.

And then at last she saw him … only for an instant, framed between the branches of the trees as shelooked down at the valley floor, yet she knew it was him. Even at a distance, Ser Jaime Lannister wasunmistakable. The moonlight had silvered his armor and the gold of his hair, and turned his crimsoncloak to black. He was not wearing a helm.

He was there and he was gone again, his silvery armor obscured by the trees once more. Otherscame behind him, long columns of them, knights and sworn swords and freeriders, three quarters ofthe Lannister horse.

“He is no man for sitting ............