GOT: The Great — Chapter 293 - Littlefinger's Heartbreak

The bedroll was spread with a grey-brown wool blanket. Drogo lay on his back across it.

The master bedroom was large. Eddard Stark had once slept in this very room, stone walls, thick wooden door.

Winterfell was built atop natural hot springs, the warm water piped through channels inside the walls to heat the castle. This bedroom was the warmest room in the entire main keep.

Outside, bitter cold and snow. In here, warm enough to go without a stitch of clothing.

Margaery had her back to him, straddling his waist, her hips tracing slow circles.

Her brown curls hung loose, the ends brushing across his knees. A faint tickle.

Sansa knelt facing him, the rounded curve of her belly blocking his head from view entirely.

The candle on the table burned down and went out. A thread of white smoke rose straight up and dissolved against the ceiling.

After that, the room held nothing but the moan of the north wind outside the window.

Drogo drew Sansa closer, his hand settling over her belly. Her back pressed against his chest. He rested his chin on the top of her head and breathed in the faint, sweet scent of her hair.

"What about Brienne — your sworn sword."

"Didn't she swear to protect you? Why didn't she come with you?"

"She stayed in King's Landing." Sansa kept her eyes closed. "She became the seventh member of the Kingsguard. She guards the Queen now."

She added: "Tyrion Lannister has returned to King's Landing."

"I know."

Margaery said: "You tricked him into going beyond the Wall to capture a wight. He's furious. He's been demanding to see you, demanding an explanation."

Drogo made a low sound. "That's just how I do things."

The three of them talked until they didn't, and slept.

It was the wolves howling that jolted Drogo awake. Sunlight was already coming through the window.

He pushed it open. Cold air rushed in and swept the warmth from the room.

Down in the courtyard, Jon was leading the 200-odd prisoners out, driving carts loaded with food toward the gate.

Drogo stood at the window and watched. The last cart disappeared into the gatehouse tunnel. He picked up the half-cup of water he'd left on the sill the night before and poured it down in one swallow. The water was cold. It rolled down his throat and washed away the last trace of drowsiness.

He turned and started dressing.

Outside the walls, the main force was already mustering. Tents were coming down one by one. The campfires, doused with cold water, sent up plumes of white smoke.

The black banner bearing the three-headed red dragon flew at the head of the column. The direwolf banner rode to its left, the White Harbor merman banner to its right.

The Vale knights rode tall warhorses through the middle, armor polished to a bright shine, lake-blue cloaks snapping in the cold wind.

The column pushed south along the Kingsroad.

By dusk they had made camp at the Barrowlands.

Drogo leaned against a half-dead pine, broke off a chunk of hard bread and pushed it into his mouth. He was still chewing when he heard hoofbeats drawing near.

He looked up. Petyr Baelish was trotting toward him on a chestnut mare.

When the mare drew alongside Drogon, the black dragon turned and looked at it. His slit pupils narrowed to a thin line. A low rumble rolled from his throat.

The mare spooked. Her forelegs reared sharply, her haunches swung sideways, and she pitched Baelish clean off her back.

He hit the snow and rolled half a turn. His cloak flipped up over his face. He clawed it away with frantic hands and sat up, covered head to toe in snow.

"Uncle." Drogo didn't move. He pushed the rest of the bread into his mouth. "What did you want to see me about?"

Baelish got to his feet, brushed the snow off himself, and straightened his collar.

"Yesterday we searched the area around Winterfell. No sign of Ramsay Bolton."

"But I don't believe he's fled to the Twins. If it were me, I'd simply cross the sea and disappear into some free city. No one would ever find me."

"Whether Ramsay is there or not, the Freys must be destroyed." The voice came from the direction of the carriage.

Lady Stoneheart pushed aside the door curtain. Seated behind her were Sansa and Margaery, the two of them wrapped together under a thick blanket.

Drogo had intended to leave them at Winterfell. But Lady Stoneheart had insisted on coming. She wanted to cut off Walder Frey's head with her own hands.

Sansa had insisted too. She wanted to watch the men who murdered her brother die with her own eyes.

After Petyr Baelish returned from Braavos to the Vale, he had learned that Catelyn was not dead, and immediately led his forces north to Winterfell. His only purpose was to see her. But the moment he arrived, Drogo had dispatched him to search the Winterfell perimeter for Ramsay.

Now he finally saw her, and he had no smile on his face. He stood frozen where he was.

She no longer wore the face Baelish had adored for decades. Her hair was a withered white. Her flesh bore the livid marks of death, loose skin hanging in patches. The sight of it raised the hairs on your skin.

"Catelyn? You..." Baelish couldn't finish.

Catelyn said: "Walder Frey murdered me and my eldest son at his feast. I intend to make him pay tenfold."

A brief silence. Then Baelish bent at the waist. "As you wish, my lady."

On the 3rd day of the march, they followed the Kingsroad to Moat Cailin. The only north-south passage through the North, far easier going than open country.

Moat Cailin was a stone fortress sitting amid swamp and mud, connected to the outside world by nothing but the Kingsroad.

Dozens of wooden poles lined both sides of the road. Bones were nailed to them.

Moat Cailin had once been taken by the Ironborn.

Ramsay had used Theon Greyjoy — broken in will by months of torture — to negotiate its surrender. The Ironborn garrison had been worn down by disease and starvation. When Ramsay promised them food and safe passage, they laid down their arms.

Then he butchered them.

The flayed bodies were nailed to poles and set along both sides of the Kingsroad.

Those poles still held their bones.

When Drogo arrived at Moat Cailin, the garrison Ramsay had left behind was already gone. The gate stood open. The embers in the hearth hadn't fully gone cold. A few bundles of dry hay still sat in the stables.

He paused a moment, then turned and gave the order to rest.

As he moved along a corridor, he stopped.

Carved into the wall was the grey lizard-lion sigil of House Reed. A crack in the stone split the lizard's tail clean down the middle.

Howland Reed. The sole survivor of the Tower of Joy. The man who struck Arthur Dayne, Sword of the Morning, from behind. He was out there somewhere in the wetlands, hiding in whatever corner of the bog he'd chosen. Whereabouts unknown.

His daughter Meera and his son Jojen had helped Bran find the Three-Eyed Raven.

3 more days of marching, and the towers of the Twins appeared on the horizon.

Two grey stone towers, one on each bank of the Trident, joined by an arched bridge, with the squat ugly Frey tower rising from the bridge's center.

The stone bridge had been reinforced. Trebuchets and scorpions stood on both sides of the arches. The scorpions were already loaded, bolts pointing down the Kingsroad.

The walls were packed with archers. Braziers every few steps, black smoke pouring up in thick columns into a grey-white sky.

Men running along the walls. Men calling out orders. Men hauling the last bundles of bolts to the scorpions.

Drogo looked at the two towers and the bridge between them.

Six hundred years the Freys had held this crossing. Nothing but a river and a bridge, and it had been enough.

➤ Next: The Siege of the Twins