They carried the corpses¹ in upon their shoulders and laid them beneath the dais. A silence fell across the torchlit hall, and in the quiet Catelyn could hear Grey Wind howling half a castle away. He smells the blood, she thought, through stone walls and wooden doors, through night and rain, he still knows the scent² of death and ruin.  She stood at Robb’s left hand beside the high seat, and for a moment felt almost as if she were looking down at her own dead, at Bran and Rickon. These boys had been much older, but death had shrunken them. Naked and wet, they seemed such little things, so still it was hard to remember them living.  The blond boy had been trying to grow a beard. Pale yellow peach fuzz covered his cheeks and jaw⁴ above the red ruin the knife had made of his throat. His long golden hair was still wet, as if he had been pulled from a bath. By the look of him, he had died peacefully, perhaps in sleep, but his brown-haired cousin had fought for life. His arms bore slashes⁵ where he’d tried to block the blades, and red still trickled⁶ slowly from the stab wounds that covered his chest and belly⁷ and back like so many tongueless mouths, though the rain had washed him almost clean.  Robb had donned his crown before coming to the hall, and the bronze shone darkly in the torchlight. Shadows hid his eyes as he looked upon the dead. Does he see Bran and Rickon as well? She might have wept, but there were no tears left in her. The dead boys were pale from long imprisonment⁸, and both had been fair; against their smooth white skin, the blood was shockingly red, unbearable⁹ to look upon. Will they lay Sansa down naked beneath the Iron Throne after they have killed her?  Will her skin seem as white, her blood as red? From outside came the steady wash of rain and the restless howling of a wolf.  Her brother Edmure stood to Robb’s right, one hand upon the back of his father’s seat, his face still puffy from sleep. They had woken him as they had her, pounding on his door in the black of night to yank him rudely from his dreams. Were they good dreams, brother? Do you dream of sunlight and laughter and a

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