Chapter 142 139

The West. Casterly Rock. 299 AC.

Robb Stark.

Casterly Rock was impressive. Just as his father had said: the walls could not be broken by catapults, only the gates could be brought down, and that would be no simple matter. Massive, wrought from iron and steel, sheltered behind stone towers and bastions, they would exact a monstrous toll from anyone who tried to force them.

"Gods, what a brute," said the mercenary riding beside him, plainly stunned.

Bronn was one of many sellswords hired during his campaign to scour the Riverlands of Lannister filth. He had started as an ordinary sellsword scout, but his particular talents had lifted him to a command. He might have remained one among many until the war's end, but during the battle with Randyll Tarly, Bronn had been invaluable in organizing the ambush. Now the heir to Winterfell was celebrated across Westeros as the man who had "defeated" the legendary Lord Tarly, and the sellsword had earned a place in his retinue for it. There were those who objected to a baseborn upstart being so favored, but Robb did not much care.

"And we're supposed to storm that," Robb said. The sight of the Lannister stronghold had drained him of any appetite for the task.

"...Aye..." Bronn said heavily. "You're in deep shit."

"You mean we."

"No, no, I won't go throwing my life away for nothing," the sellsword said at once, waving the notion off. "Cutting down your enemies, scouting, tracking raiders, that I'll do gladly. But suicidal assaults are where our agreement ends."

Robb could not even fault him for it. If the castle had this demoralizing an effect on him, a man who knew every scrap of information about the coming assault, what must it do to ordinary men who had never seen anything taller than a village chapel?

"King Stannis has a plan," he said. He could not show weakness. If the commander wavered, everything was lost. "We hold to it and we'll crack this nut."

"Even an illiterate sellsword like me has heard of hundreds of clever kings who had some kind of plan," Bronn said. He had a sharp tongue and no fear of using it, which was exactly what Robb liked about him. "Never heard of one that actually worked. And there have been plenty of tries."

"Far more than plenty," Robb admitted.

"Then I don't understand what we're doing here. The West is defenceless. We should be riding from castle to castle and shaking the lords down for everything they've got."

"The siege of the Rock is a strong political move." Robb did not fully grasp all the reasoning himself, so he simply repeated his father's words. "It shows the world that Tywin Lannister is weak."

"A burning West is better proof than a suicidal attack on that giant," Bronn said, jerking his thumb toward the cliff that dwarfed even the Wall.

"Are you afraid?"

Once Robb had at least had Theon to be himself around. Now there was only Bronn, who had no patience for lofty concerns.

"Hardly," the sellsword said with a sour look. "Give me twenty brave men and I'll catch the garrison with their breeches down."

Robb stopped dead and fixed Bronn with a long stare. Whatever shift had just come over the Young Wolf was enough to make the sellsword uneasy. His eyelid twitched, a sign that trouble was coming, and the heir to the North promptly proved him right.

"Perhaps it will be exactly that," Robb said slowly, a distant look in his eyes.

"No. No, no, no, what are you on about? I was speaking for the sake of speaking, that's all," Bronn said, realizing he had walked into something, and immediately tried to back out of it.

Robb paid no attention to his companion's protests. Every trace of fear and unease had left his face. In its place was something else entirely: a quiet certainty about what came next.