A Gameof Thrones(66)

37.BRAN(2)

The direwolves stopped, turned their heads. Grey Wind loped back to Robb. Summer stayed where he was, his eyes on Bran and the man beside him. He growled. His muzzle was wet and red, but his eyes burned.
   Osha used the butt end of her spear to lever herself back to her feet. Blood leaked from a wound on the upper arm where Robb had cut her. Bran could see sweat trickling down the big man’s face. Stiv was as scared as he was, he realized. “Starks,” the man muttered, “bloody Starks.” He raised his voice. “Osha, kill the wolves and get his sword.”
   “Kill them yourself,” she replied. “I’ll not be getting near those monsters.”
   For a moment Stiv was at a loss. His hand trembled; Bran felt a trickle of blood where the knife pressed against his neck. The stench of the man filled his nose; he smelled of fear. “You,” he called out to Robb. “You have a name?”
   “I am Robb Stark, the heir to Winterfell.”
   “This is your brother?”
   “Yes.”
   “You want him alive, you do what I say. Off the horse.”
   Robb hesitated a moment. Then, slowly and deliberately, he dismounted and stood with his sword in hand.
   “Now kill the wolves.”
   Robb did not move.
   “You do it. The wolves or the boy.”
   “No!” Bran screamed. If Robb did as they asked, Stiv would kill them both anyway, once the direwolves were dead.
   The bald man took hold of his hair with his free hand and twisted it cruelly, till Bran sobbed in pain. “You shut your mouth, cripple, you hear me?” He twisted harder. “You hear me?”
   A low thrum came from the woods behind them. Stiv gave a choked gasp as a half foot of razor-tipped broadhead suddenly exploded out of his chest. The arrow was bright red, as if it had been painted in blood.
   The dagger fell away from Bran’s throat. The big man swayed and collapsed, facedown in the stream. The arrow broke beneath him. Bran watched his life go swirling off in the water.
   Osha glanced around as Father’s guardsmen appeared from beneath the trees, steel in hand. She threw down her spear. “Mercy, m’lord,” she called to Robb.
   The guardsmen had a strange, pale look to their faces as they took in the scene of slaughter. They eyed the wolves uncertainly, and when Summer returned to Hali’s corpse to feed, Joseth dropped his knife and scrambled for the bush, heaving. Even Maester Luwin seemed shocked as he stepped from behind a tree, but only for an instant. Then he shook his head and waded across the stream to Bran’s side. “Are you hurt?”
   “He cut my leg,” Bran said, “but I couldn’t feel it.”
   As the maester knelt to examine the wound, Bran turned his head. Theon Greyjoy stood beside a sentinel tree, his bow in hand. He was smiling. Ever smiling. A half-dozen arrows were thrust into the soft ground at his feet, but it had taken only one. “A dead enemy is a thing of beauty,” he announced.
   “Jon always said you were an ass, Greyjoy,” Robb said loudly. “I ought to chain you up in the yard and let Bran take a few practice shots at you.”
   “You should be thanking me for saving your brother’s life.”
   “What if you had missed the shot?” Robb said. “What if you’d only wounded him? What if you had made his hand jump, or hit Bran instead? For all you knew, the man might have been wearing a breastplate, all you could see was the back of his cloak. What would have happened to my brother then? Did you ever think of that, Greyjoy?”
   Theon’s smile was gone. He gave a sullen shrug and began to pull his arrows from the ground, one by one.
   Robb glared at his guardsmen. “Where were you?” he demanded of them. “I was sure you were close behind us.”
   The men traded unhappy glances. “We were following, m’lord,” said Quent, the youngest of them, his beard a soft brown fuzz. “Only first we waited for Maester Luwin and his ass, begging your pardons, and then, well, as it were?.?.?.?” He glanced over at Theon and quickly looked away, abashed.
   “I spied a turkey,” Theon said, annoyed by the question. “How was I to know that you’d leave the boy alone?”
   Robb turned his head to look at Theon once more. Bran had never seen him so angry, yet he said nothing. Finally he knelt beside Maester Luwin. “How badly is my brother wounded?”
   “No more than a scratch,” the maester said. He wet a cloth in the stream to clean the cut. “Two of them wear the black,” he told Robb as he worked.
   Robb glanced over at where Stiv lay sprawled in the stream, his ragged black cloak moving fitfully as the rushing waters tugged at it. “Deserters from the Night’s Watch,” he said grimly. “They must have been fools, to come so close to Winterfell.”
   “Folly and desperation are ofttimes hard to tell apart,” said Maester Luwin.
   “Shall we bury them, m’lord?” asked Quent.
   “They would not have buried us,” Robb said. “Hack off their heads, we’ll send them back to the Wall. Leave the rest for the carrion crows.”
   “And this one?” Quent jerked a thumb toward Osha.
   Robb walked over to her. She was a head taller than he was, but she dropped to her knees at his approach. “Give me my life, m’lord of Stark, and I am yours.”
   “Mine? What would I do with an oathbreaker?”
   “I broke no oaths. Stiv and Wallen flew down off the Wall, not me. The black crows got no place for women.”
   Theon Greyjoy sauntered closer. “Give her to the wolves,” he urged Robb. The woman’s eyes went to what was left of Hali, and just as quickly away. She shuddered. Even the guardsmen looked queasy.
   “She’s a woman,” Robb said.
   “A wildling,” Bran told him. “She said they should keep me alive so they could take me to Mance Rayder.”
   “Do you have a name?” Robb asked her.
   “Osha, as it please the lord,” she muttered sourly.
   Maester Luwin stood. “We might do well to question her.”
   Bran could see the relief on his brother’s face. “As you say, Maester. Wayn, bind her hands. She’ll come back to Winterfell with us?.?.?.?and live or die by the truths she gives us.”