Chapter 37. The Red Wedding.
Arthur could not remember everything. Important moments remained only as blurs in his mind: a boy falling from a tower, a throne made of swords, a wedding painted red. He had known the Red Wedding would happen. He had simply never known when.
Now he did. Arthur stiffened. The Rains of Castamere was not a wedding tune. It was Tywin Lannister's warning made music, a memory of House Reyne drowned beneath stone and pride. Playing it at a Frey wedding surrounded by northern and river lords was not bad taste. It was a sentence. Arthur didn't remember it happened this soon.
His gaze snapped to the musicians. Their faces were blank, their hands steady. Too steady. One drummer's fingers moved beneath the frame as if feeling for something hidden. Arthur looked up and saw the second-floor gallery, empty moments ago, now holding a faint glimmer of metal.
Crossbows.
"No!" Arthur shouted.
The noise swallowed him.
At the same moment, Lady Catelyn saw something wrong. She moved toward Roose Bolton and grabbed the hem of his sleeve. Her face changed when her fingers touched hard rings beneath cloth. Chainmail.
"You are wearing armor," she said. Then louder, striking him across the face, "Robb!"
For one heartbeat, the hall fell into a silence so complete that every man seemed to understand and not understand at the same time. Crossbows rose along the gallery. Arthur threw his wine cup at the nearest Frey servant. It struck the man in the face hard enough to break skin and bone. The servant fell, screaming, and a dagger slid from his sleeve. Arthur was on him before the man hit the floor. He tore the dagger free and opened the servant's throat, then dragged the dying body up in front of him.
The first volley came. Crossbow bolts hissed down like black rain. Men fell around the tables. Cups shattered. Plates flipped. Blood struck bread, meat, silk, and stone. Guests who had laughed a moment before became targets with confused eyes. Some tried to run and found doors closed. Others reached for weapons they had surrendered.
The corpse in Arthur's grip jerked as bolts struck it. One punched through deep enough for Arthur to feel the force against his chest. He drove forward, using the body as a shield, and kicked over a long table for cover. Chaos exploded around him. Screaming, music, steel, choking, Frey men drawing hidden blades.
His eyes searched for Ena.
He found her.
She threw herself over Lady Catelyn just as the bolts came. Four, five, perhaps more struck her back. Blood spread through her dress at once. She lifted her head and looked toward Arthur. Her lips moved, but only blood came out. Then her body went slack.
The world stopped.
Not truly. Men were still screaming. The Rains still played. Frey blades still rose and fell. But for Arthur, every sound vanished beneath the roar of blood in his ears. Ena, the girl who had fallen into his trap in the Wolfswood and cursed him before knowing his name. Ena, the archer who mocked his aim, saved his life, and followed him through snow, mud, mountains, courts, and war. Ena, the girl beneath the weirwood whose hand had stayed in his.
Arthur opened his mouth, but no sound came. Something cold moved through him. Not fear. Not grief yet. Grief belonged to men who still believed the world could be spoken to. This was darker, thicker, without shape. It rose from his feet to his throat and swallowed thought.
Only her eyes remained in his sight.
Around him, the hall became a slaughterhouse. Frey men stabbed drunk northmen. Crossbows reloaded. Bolton men moved with hidden steel. Robb tried to rise. Catelyn screamed. Grey Wind howled somewhere outside, trapped away from his master by men who had planned even the shape of loyalty.
Arthur looked down at the dagger in his hand, then at the Freys between him and Ena. The cold inside him sharpened. He moved without shout, speech, or oath. Those were for men who wanted witnesses. Arthur wanted a path.
The first Frey who came around the table died with the dagger through his eye. Arthur took his sword from the man's belt before the body finished falling. A crossbowman above leaned for a shot. Arthur grabbed a broken platter and hurled it upward. It struck badly, not killing, but enough to ruin the aim. The bolt passed near his shoulder and buried itself in the table behind him.
He rolled over the table, took a second dagger from a dying man's boot, and drove it into the side of the nearest servant. Another came from his left. Arthur ducked, felt the blade slice across his sleeve, and opened the man from belly to ribs. The soft armor beneath his clothes caught a glancing blow that would have gutted him. It hurt anyway.
He kept moving toward Ena, toward Catelyn, toward the ruin of guest right and every polite lie Westeros had ever told itself. A Frey guard blocked him with a spear. Arthur stepped inside the thrust, took the cut along his side, and jammed the dagger under the man's jaw. Blood poured over his hand. He tore the spear free and used it to strike another man's knee, then drove the sword into his throat as he fell.
The hall was madness now. Some northmen had armed themselves with benches, knives, serving forks, anything. Most died anyway. Crossbows from above made courage meaningless. The doors stayed closed. Arthur reached the fallen women and crouched beside them. Catelyn was alive, pinned beneath Ena's body and slick with her blood. Her eyes were wide, empty with horror, one hand clutching Ena's sleeve as if refusal could become medicine.
Ena did not move.
For one moment, the cold inside him cracked. Pain came through, bright and impossible. Then a bolt struck the table near his head, and Arthur looked up. The world returned as enemies.