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Christen's army was only a few hours ahead of Clay's force on the march. Yet because his men were all cavalry, their advance was swifter and more relentless than Clay's mixed host. By the time Christen thundered onto the battlefield and hurled his riders straight into the chaos of the northern camp, Clay's soldiers were still only halfway along their route, trudging in weary columns.
Edmure Tully's host, however, was positioned much closer. Thus, while Christen was already carving a bloody path through the northern encampment, fighting with reckless fury, Edmure and his men were just reaching the outer edge of the battlefield.
At the head of their vanguard rode Ser Brynden Tully. When his sharp eyes fell upon the northern camp engulfed in smoke and turmoil, his heart sank and a heavy ache settled in his temples.
The problem was plain enough. They had no notion from which direction to strike.
Christen's ruthless ambush had thrown the camp into utter confusion. Chickens flapped madly, dogs bolted in terror, men shouted over one another as panic spread like wildfire. And at Harrenhal's eastern gate, the lord commander of the host, the old lion himself, had naturally taken note of the uproar.
He had just seen how that stubborn knot of northern defenders clung fiercely to their ground. In a desperate surge, they had even hurled themselves forward and snatched back a stretch of wall that his own men had fought bitterly to seize.
Tywin Lannister could only breathe out a long sigh. He gave the order to rotate his exhausted soldiers, pulling them back and sending fresh troops from the rear. These were men who had until now been conserving their strength, and they pressed forward at once to continue the assault.
As for himself, he gathered a thousand of his finest riders and turned his horse toward the northern camp.
His thoughts darkened as he rode. Those two witless fools, if they were captured alive by the northerners, would drag everything into ruin. The campaign would already be lost, the war slipping from his grasp before it was truly won. In that case, better to bow out early and secure a dignified end than to cling to a hopeless fight that could only bring humiliation.
Yet he dared not entrust the task of putting out this fire to anyone else. The eastern gate would not fall quickly anyway, not with the defenders so tenacious.
And so the great lion banner of House Lannister, the largest and proudest among them, began to wheel northward.
Upon the castle walls, Robb Stark, his whole body soaked with blood, caught sight of the banner's movement. In that instant, it was as though all strength drained out of him.
He slumped against what little remained of the battlement, only the lower half of the stonework still standing. His chest rose and fell in great, ragged bursts of breath, each gasp loud in the din of battle.
Robb was a man, not a god. And worse still, this man had already lost the entire sword hand that had once been his strength.
So in the clash just now, even though his combat skill was seasoned and his instincts sharp enough to evade most of the killing strikes, he had still been battered and torn by more wounds than his body could properly bear.
None of them were mortal, not yet. But for Robb Stark, who had only recently dragged himself from a sickbed, the very fact that he was still standing at all was nothing short of a miracle.
At that moment, in the southeastern gate, the thousand men whom Tywin Lannister had lured to their deaths with heavy promises of gold were finally checked by the stubborn defenders of the North. They left behind more than three hundred corpses strewn before the walls, their bodies broken and twisted, while the survivors reeled back in frustration and despair.
The sight of their comrades splattered into mangled flesh on the ground broke them. At last the fear of death overcame the greed for coin. The haze lifted, they saw clearly again, and not a single one of them ever raised their weapons against the towering walls of Harrenhal after that retreat.
With their threat gone, the men who had been tied down at that quarter of the wall were freed. It was just in time, for desperate cries kept coming from the east gate, one after another, begging for aid. Like firemen rushing to a blaze, northern soldiers pounded along the battlements, racing to reinforce their brothers.
They reached the east gate only moments before the last defenders there would have been slaughtered outright. Fighting side by side with barely a dozen exhausted men who still clung to the gatehouse, they pushed back the western troops and forced them away from the walls.
When the dust finally settled and the clash fell silent, someone at last remembered what had been forgotten in the frenzy. With sudden panic in his voice, he shouted,
"Where is His Grace? Where is the king?"
And here was where disaster truly took root. Robb Stark had slipped out of the Kingspyre Tower without telling anyone. That secrecy meant almost no one knew their king was even here at the walls. Therefore, no one thought to send heavy reinforcements to the east gate. They had fought for it as though it were just another patch of battlefield.
So when the bloodied survivors, their minds cooling after the madness of combat, finally raised their eyes and took in their surroundings, a few sharper souls noticed what the others had overlooked. Among all the soot-stained, weary faces, one was absent. It was the face of their king. And then the realization spread like a chill wind, and with it came fear.
"His Grace? What king? What are you babbling about?"
Jon Umber came charging up at that very moment, his voice like a whip as he barked the question.
The guard Robb had dispatched to fetch him had not made it far. The poor man had scarcely left before a Lannister trebuchet loosed a stone, and the boulder came crashing down, killing him instantly in the street.
Harrenhal was chaos from one end to the other. Soldiers rushed past, blinded by urgency. When they caught sight of the man's body pinned beneath the massive rock, lifeless without even the faintest twitch of struggle, none had time to stop or tend him. He remained there still, crushed beneath the stone, forgotten in the storm of war.
Because of that, no word ever spread that Robb Stark was fighting alone at the east gate. By the time the truth was uncovered, his men had already been nearly wiped out. Only then did Jon Umber and his reinforcements arrive.
After listening to several survivors from the east gate babble their fragments of testimony, stumbling over one another and desperate to make themselves understood, Jon Umber felt the world dim before his eyes.
Out of more than two hundred defenders, only a handful, barely ten men, were still alive and standing here. The rest, northmen and westermen alike, lay in tangled heaps, their corpses pressed together in layers of gray and red, covering the ground around the east gate like a macabre carpet.
The stench was suffocating. Death had loosed its foulness upon the air, the reek of bodies emptying themselves in the final moment. Even Jon Umber, a man hardened by the slaughterhouse of war, found it hard to draw breath in that miasma.
But he had no time to flinch. This was Robb Stark, King in the North. Alive, he must be seen; dead, his body must be found. There could be no delay.
At once, every man who had ever laid eyes on Robb was ordered out to search. The north gate could wait. Finding their king came first.
Jon Umber almost leapt with impatience as he flung his orders, dispatching men in all directions. His chest felt ready to burst, his heart hammering as though it might break him from within.
And then, before his mounting desperation consumed him, the call came.
"Your Grace… Your Grace…"
Jon Umber moved forward and slowly knelt at the base of the shattered battlement where Robb Stark was slumped.
The very first glance stole half the warmth from his heart.
There was not a patch of clean flesh left on the young king's body. Blood stained him from head to toe, dark and clotted, no telling whether it belonged to Robb himself or to the countless foes he had cut down.
A steel sword still rested in his left hand, clutched so tight his fingers seemed welded to the hilt. The blade was battered, its edge curled and chipped in half a dozen places, but he had not let go.
Jon Umber could not say where he found the strength to move. Every muscle in his arm resisted him, trembling so violently that his fingers shook like dry leaves in a winter gale. Even so, he forced them forward until they rested against Robb Stark's throat.
All he felt beneath his touch was slickness, a clinging wetness that smeared across his fingertips. And no, this was not some tender or intimate moment.
It was blood. Blood that had dripped down from the small half of Robb Stark's ear that had been sliced away by an enemy blade.
And then… there it was.
In the midst of that clammy wetness, Jon Umber felt it. The warmth he had prayed for, the faint trace of life he had begged the gods to grant. A pulse, so weak it was almost nothing, yet still present, beating with the stubborn strength of the North.
"Quickly! Men! Bring heavy cloaks, a stretcher, hurry! The King still lives!"
Jon Umber's shout tore from his chest, more roar than command, his voice breaking under the weight of relief and fury.
Robb Stark could die, for he was flesh and blood like any man. But he could not be allowed to die here, sprawled in plain sight of his soldiers. A sight like that would shatter Harrenhal's morale beyond repair.
In truth, even before he touched Robb, Jon Umber had already steeled himself. If the young king had gone to the gods, he would still have sworn otherwise. He would have lied without hesitation, proclaiming Robb alive and ordering the body carried back to the Kingspyre Tower before despair could take hold of the men.
This was not about deceit or some petty scheme. Robb Stark had already seen to his legacy, had already made peace with what lay ahead. Choosing to remain here on the wall had been nothing short of flirting with death.
While he ordered the remaining soldiers to rush toward the north gate, where the fighting had grown so brutal that men's brains were being dashed out upon the stones, Jon Umber himself turned back and followed Robb to the Kingspyre Tower.
The so-called maesters, half-trained and scarcely trusted, were gathered in haste. The moment they stepped inside, Jon Umber had them locked in.
Now, the worth of every wounded man in the fortress was nothing compared to Robb Stark. Harsh as it was, though all men carried only one head upon two shoulders, the world had never pretended to be fair.
"Look at him! Quickly, tell me… what is His Grace's condition?"
Jon Umber's voice was raw with urgency.
The maesters exchanged uneasy glances. The King in the North, lying before them, was breathing in more than he breathed out. His head lolled as though one tilt more might send him straight into the arms of the Seven. Yet he still breathed, and because he lived, however faintly, they had no choice but to try.
Together, they worked to peel away his clothes, garments soaked through with blood until they had frozen stiff like sheets of brittle iron.
What they uncovered made every man in the chamber blanch. Robb Stark's body was a battlefield of its own, a map of wounds carved deep into his flesh, countless cuts and gashes crossing one another in merciless patterns. His entire right arm, along with the whole upper half of his right side, had rotted into a ruin too dreadful to gaze upon for long.
Wounds such as these should have laid any ordinary man flat, silent and waiting for the gods to summon him. Yet this king, this Robb Stark, had not only held himself upright, he had commanded his men, led a vastly outnumbered host, and somehow held back the tide of thousands of Lannister soldiers hammering at the walls.
More staggering still, he had done it while the whole right side of his body, the very side that had always borne his sword, was dead and useless. Even so, he had stood in the thick of battle, blade in hand, and he had refused to yield.
The men gathered there no longer knew how to look at him. Awe, disbelief, and something closer to reverence tangled in their eyes. Robb Stark had crossed into a place beyond ordinary measure, where words like "king" or "soldier" seemed too small.
In truth, he was never meant to be this kind of ruler, one buried in maps and counters, weighing armies and kingdoms with a steady hand. He should have been a commander, a warrior, a man of the front lines who lived and bled among his brothers.
It was not his fault that his father's sudden death had torn away the time he needed to grow. That loss had driven him headlong into this throne, forcing him into a role he had never truly been given the chance to prepare for.
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At last, after much hurried work, this group of men, crude maesters at best but saints of the battlefield in moments such as these, managed to bind Robb Stark once more in fresh wrappings.
Outside, snow swept across Harrenhal in whirling sheets. The air grew colder with every passing hour. Infection was less of a threat when the world itself lay frozen, though in truth such thoughts hardly mattered anymore.
Because the maesters had already confessed the truth to Jon Umber.
"Sigh… there's nothing to be done. The infection on the right side has reached the bone. His Grace will not last more than a few days, my lord. Best be prepared. My skills are poor, but… at most, I can only keep him from suffering too much before the end."
The words ended in a long sigh, and then the man turned away, walking toward the small dark chamber prepared for them.
Until the King in the North's death was announced to the world, none of these maesters would be allowed to leave. Everyone understood why. These were ordinary measures, harsh but necessary.
And the maesters, exhausted to their very bones, could accept it. They had nearly worked themselves to death these past days. Even if this confinement felt uneasy, there was a certain bitter relief in being told to rest. So they settled in with weary resignation, telling themselves: it is what it is.
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Jon Umber stepped out onto the balcony. At his side was Theon Greyjoy, who had just come rushing back from the north gate after hearing word of what had happened.
This same Theon, who in another thread of fate had stormed Winterfell and scattered the Starks from their home, now paced back and forth before Jon with red-rimmed eyes, restless as a caged wolf.
He could not fathom how Robb Stark had been so reckless, so stubborn, as to throw himself personally into the defense of the castle.
At least he had not died outright on the battlefield. At least he had been carried back here in one piece. For if he had been cut down in the chaos of that assault, if the Westerlanders had taken his head then and there, the eastern gate would likely have fallen within the hour.
"Lord Umber," Theon burst out, his voice sharp with frustration, "we can't keep on like this. His Grace isn't going to survive this trial. We have to think of a way to break out."
Of course Jon Umber knew that. He was no fool. But what choices did they have? The east gate had nearly fallen that very day. The north gate was still a cauldron of blood and steel. How were they supposed to carve a path to freedom in such a storm?
And just then, cutting across the heavy silence, came the roar of voices outside. Soldiers, shouting with a wild, desperate joy.
"Reinforcements! Reinforcements are here!"
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[Chapter End's]
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