Chapter 44: A Fatal Miscalculation
A door to a small, dark room on the second floor suddenly burst open. Three men rushed out, raising hand crossbows and firing down toward Robb in the hall below.
At the instant the drum crashed to the floor, Robb's guards had already begun escorting him toward the exit. Their attention was fixed on the Freys in the hall—they never thought to look up.
Thunk!
The bolt missed Robb.
Instead, it struck Talisa squarely in the back as she fled hand in hand with him.
"No! Talisa!"
Robb felt her grip falter. When he turned, he saw the arrow buried deep in her body. He caught her as she collapsed, lowering her toward the ground.
"Your Grace, we must go!" a guard urged desperately. "The Frey soldiers will be here any second!"
Robb knew there was no time to assess her wounds. With the guards' help, he dragged Talisa toward the exit.
The crossbowmen managed only that single shot before the Blackfish and another noble reached the upper floor and cut them down. By then, the great hall had descended into utter chaos.
When the drum had crashed down, one of Catelyn's guards stabbed Roose Bolton from behind—but Bolton twisted aside at the last moment. The blade failed to strike true. Now the two men were locked in vicious close combat, daggers flashing.
Catelyn saw Talisa fall.
She rushed forward—only to hear a scream beside her. Her guard had been stabbed through the eye by Bolton and was collapsing in agony.
Hatred flooded Catelyn's heart.
She seized a carving knife from the table and drove it into Bolton's back with all her strength.
The blade sank only a quarter of the way before his hidden mail stopped it.
Bolton spun around, pain flaring across his face, just in time to see Catelyn raising the knife again.
He tried to counter—
—but suddenly his throat burned.
Blood poured from between his fingers as he clutched his neck, gasping uselessly for air. His eyes widened in disbelief as he turned—
—and met the Blackfish's merciless gaze.
Bolton's mouth opened, as if to speak.
Then he collapsed.
After killing Roose Bolton, the Blackfish regrouped with Catelyn and Robb. Looking at Talisa's lifeless body and Robb's hollow, stunned expression, he felt powerless. He hoisted Talisa's body and pulled Robb with him, forcing them toward the exit.
Walder Frey stared in horror as his carefully laid plan unraveled. Seeing Robb nearly reach the doors, he barked orders to his remaining guards.
If Robb escaped alive, House Frey would face annihilation. Walder had no illusions—Tywin Lannister would never honor his promises if Robb survived.
Before they could break through the doors, a fresh unit of soldiers poured in from outside.
Surrounded on both sides, Robb's guards formed a desperate ring around Robb, Catelyn, and the Blackfish.
At last, Robb's shock broke.
He gently brushed Talisa's cold cheek, took a sword from a fallen guard, and roared as he charged forward.
His wife.
His unborn child.
All dead—because he had ignored his mother's desperate pleas, obsessed only with reclaiming his honor.
Now he wanted only one thing: to kill everyone standing in his way.
They fought savagely, but the enemy kept coming.
Even Catelyn joined the fight.
As the Freys closed in from all sides, despair settled over her. In the end, she would die here with her son after all.
Thud-thud-thud!
The thunder of hooves echoed from the distance.
Both sides faltered, weapons lowering instinctively.
"Our men!" Robb shouted. "Cavalry!"
More than a hundred riders burst into the courtyard, cutting down the Frey soldiers surrounding Robb. They hauled Robb and the surviving nobles onto horses and charged straight for the gates.
Frey troops attacked from all sides, but the outer riders held them off.
At the gate, the northern army fought desperately to keep it open. Once Robb escaped, they slowly withdrew from the Twins.
Outside the walls, the cavalry spurred hard toward Riverrun, while infantry stayed behind to cover the retreat.
The pursuit was relentless.
Nearly all the riders who had first rescued Robb were killed along the way.
A full day later, the survivors finally encountered a Riverrun patrol. Only then did they secure fresh mounts and stagger back to the castle.
The sight of Robb and a mere handful of blood-soaked survivors returning from a wedding left the northern lords stunned.
When they learned the truth, none could believe Walder Frey had dared violate guest right.
Robb immediately ordered the arrest of all Bolton men within Riverrun—only to learn that more than three hundred of them had departed hours earlier under various pretenses.
Only then did Robb realize: Roose Bolton had prepared his escape long in advance.
Of the nobles who attended the wedding, fewer than twenty survived.
Robb ordered all forces pulled back into Riverrun and reinforced its defenses. Surrounded by water on three sides, the castle was nearly impregnable—even a joint assault by the Twins and Tywin Lannister would struggle to take it.
When all orders were given, Robb sat alone, cradling Talisa's frozen body, unable to let her go.
Regret consumed him.
By the banks of the Green Fork, the Hound and Arya shared a single horse, riding slowly onward. Arya kept turning her head toward the Twins, tears welling in her eyes.
The night before, she had planned to sneak into the wedding hall to find her mother and brother. Instead, before she could even get close, she saw the Freys and the Northmen erupt into violence.
She had seen it with her own eyes—Robb's direwolf shot dead by Frey soldiers. In that instant, she knew exactly what was happening. She had tried to run back for her mother, only to be struck unconscious. When she woke, she was already draped over a saddle.
"Do you think my mother and brother can escape?" Arya wiped the tears from her face and asked softly.
The man beside her was the Hound—Sandor Clegane, once Joffrey's Kingsguard, survivor of the Battle of the Blackwater, and younger brother to the Mountain.
When Sandor was a child, his brother had shoved his face into a brazier, leaving half his face a mass of horrific scars and burning away part of his ear. The wildfire during the defense of King's Landing had dragged those buried terrors back to the surface, driving him to abandon the city and flee.
"The Freys slaughtering guests at a wedding—no one would've expected that," Sandor said flatly, eyes fixed on the road ahead. "If Walder Frey dared to do it, then he planned it down to the bone. He wouldn't let a single northern noble escape—especially not your mother or your brother."
"But I saw my great-uncle sneaking around and setting fire to a haystack," Arya protested, clutching at the thought. "He must have realized something was wrong!"
Sandor thought for a moment before replying, "Even if they realized it, it was already too late."
Arya knew he was probably right—but she still couldn't accept it. She stared at the distant outline of the Twins until it blurred.
---
A day later, Varys received word from Riverrun. When he learned that Robb and Catelyn had escaped alive, he finally let out a quiet breath of relief.
In the Tower of the Hand, Tywin Lannister seized a goblet and smashed it violently against the floor. It had been a long time since he'd lost his temper like this.
A meticulously planned Red Wedding—and it still went wrong.
No wonder House Frey had spent generations unable to rise among the great houses. They were fit for nothing more than collecting tolls on a bridge.
The plan lay in ruins. Tyrion's marriage had been wasted for nothing. Tywin had no choice but to reassess the balance of power across the Seven Kingdoms.
---
On Dragonstone, inside the council chamber, the Red Woman stared at Stannis in disbelief.
"Robb Stark didn't die? Impossible. No one could escape from a trap like that!"
"And yet he did," Stannis replied grimly. "Could it be… that the Lord of Light made a mistake?"
"Our god does not err," Melisandre said sharply, her brow furrowing. "If something failed, then the fault lies with us. It seems your power is weaker than I believed."
Her words struck deep.
Stannis's chest tightened as an image surfaced unbidden in his mind—Shireen, as she had been in infancy, smiling sweetly up at him.