The woods were full of whispers.

Moonlight winked¹ 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 metallic³ slither of chain mail, but even those sounds were muffled⁴.

“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 brook⁵, 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,standing⁶ 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, trotting⁸ along the river-shore toward the landing. “Did youwatch for me?” he’d ask when he bent⁹ to hug her. “Did you, little cat?”

分享到：