A Clash of Kings

Theon smiled. “There are similarities. But with hunting, there’s blood at the end.”

“Must it be so? This flight was great folly, but will you not be merciful? These are your foster brothers we seek.”

“No Stark but Robb was ever brotherly toward me, but Bran and Rickon have more value to me living than dead.”

“The same is true of the Reeds. Moat Cailin sits on the edge of the bogs. Lord Howland can make your uncle’s occupation a visit to hell if he chooses, but so long as you hold his heirs he must stay his hand.”

Theon had not considered that. In truth, he had scarcely considered the mudmen at all, beyond eyeing Meera once or twice and wondering if she was still a maiden. “You may be right. We will spare them if we can.”

“And Hodor too, I hope. The boy is simple, you know that. He does as he is told. How many times has he groomed your horse, soaped your saddle, scoured your mail?”

Hodor was nothing to him. “If he does not fight us, we will let him live.” Theon pointed a finger. “But say one word about sparing the wildling, and you can die with her. She swore me an oath, and pissed on it.”

The maester inclined his head. “I make no apologies for oathbreakers. Do what you must. I thank you for your mercy.”

Mercy, thought Theon as Luwin dropped back. There’s a bloody trap. Too much and they call you weak, too little and you’re monstrous. Yet the maester had given him good counsel, he knew. His father thought only in terms of conquest, but what good was it to take a kingdom if you could not hold it? Force and fear could carry you only so far. A pity Ned Stark had taken his daughters south; elsewise Theon could have tightened his grip on Winterfell by marrying one of them. Sansa was a pretty little thing too, and by now likely even ripe for bedding. But she was a thousand leagues away, in the clutches of the Lannisters. A shame.

The wood grew ever wilder. The pines and sentinels gave way to huge dark oaks. Tangles of hawthorn concealed treacherous gullies and cuts. Stony hills rose and fell. They passed a crofter’s cottage, deserted and overgown, and skirted a flooded quarry where the still water had a sheen as grey as steel. When the dogs began to bay, Theon figured the fugitives were near at hand. He spurred Smiler and followed at a trot, but what he found was only the carcass of a young elk… or what remained of it.

He dismounted for a closer look. The kill was still fresh, and plainly the work of wolves. The dogs sniffed round it eagerly, and one of the mastiffs buried his teeth in a haunch until Farlen shouted him off. No part of this animal has been butchered, Theon realized. The wolves ate, but not the men. Even if Osha did not want to risk a fire, she ought to have cut them a few steaks. It made no sense to leave so much good meat to rot. “Farlen, are you certain we’re on the right trail?” he demanded. “Could your dogs be chasing the wrong wolves?”

“My bitch knows the smell of Summer and Shaggy well enough.”

“I hope so. For your sake.”

Less than an hour later, the trail led down a slope toward a muddy brook swollen by the recent rains. It was there the dogs lost the scent. Farlen and Wex waded across with the hounds and came back shaking their heads while the animals ranged up and down the far bank, sniffing. “They went in here, m’lord, but I can’t see where they come out,” the kennelmaster said.

Theon dismounted and knelt beside the stream. He dipped a hand in it. The water was cold. “They won’t have stayed long in this,” he said. “Take half the dogs downstream, I’ll go up—”

Wex clapped his hands together loudly.

“What is it?” Theon said.

The mute boy pointed.

The ground near the water was sodden and muddy. The tracks the wolves had left were plain enough. “Pawprints, yes. So?”

Wex drove his heel into the mud, and pivoted his foot this way and that. It left a deep gouge.

Joseth understood. “A man the size of Hodor ought to have left a deep print in this mud,” he said. “More so with the weight of a boy on his back. Yet the only boot prints here are our own. See for yourself.”

Appalled, Theon saw it was true. The wolves had gone into the turgid brown water alone. “Osha must have turned aside back of us. Before the elk, most likely. She sent the wolves on by themselves, hoping we’d chase after them.” He rounded on his huntsmen. “If you two have played me false—”

“There’s been only the one trail, my lord, I swear it,” said Gariss defensively. “And the direwolves would never have parted from them boys. Not for long.”

That’s so, Theon thought. Summer and Shaggydog might have gone off to hunt, but soon or late they would return to Bran and Rickon. “Gariss, Murch, take four dogs and double back, find where we lost them. Aggar, you watch them, I’ll have no trickery. Farlen and I will follow the direwolves. Give a blast on the horn when you pick up the trail. Two blasts if you catch sight of the beasts themselves. Once we find where they went, they’ll lead us back to their masters.”

He took Wex, the Frey boy, and Gynir Rednose to search upstream. He and Wex rode on one side of the brook, Rednose and Walder Frey on the other, each with a pair of hounds. The wolves might have come out on either bank. Theon kept an eye out for tracks, spoor, broken branches, any hint as to where the direwolves might have left the water. He spied the prints of deer, elk, and badger easily enough. Wex surprised a vixen drinking at the stream, and Walder flushed three rabbits from the underbrush and managed to put an arrow in one. They saw the claw marks where a bear had shredded the bark of a tall birch. But of the direwolves there was no sign.

A little farther, Theon told himself. Past that oak, over that rise, past the next bend of the stream, we’ll find something there. He pressed on long after he knew he should turn back, a growing sense of anxiety gnawing at his belly. It was midday when he wrenched Smiler’s head round in disgust and gave up.

Somehow Osha and the wretched boys were eluding him. It should not have been possible, not on foot, burdened with a cripple and a young child. Every passing hour increased the likelihood that they would make good their escape. If they reach a village… The people of the north would never deny Ned Stark’s sons, Robb’s brothers. They’d have mounts to speed them on their way, food. Men would fight for the honor of protecting them. The whole bloody north would rally around them.

The wolves went downstream, that’s all. He clung to that thought. That red bitch will sniff where they came out of the water and we’ll be after them again.

But when they joined up with Farlen’s party, one look at the kennelmaster’s face smashed all of Theon’s hopes to shards. “The only thing those dogs are fit for is a bear baiting,” he said angrily. “Would that I had a bear.”

“The dogs are not at fault.” Farlen knelt between a mastiff and his precious red bitch, a hand on each. “Running water don’t hold no scents, m’lord.”

“The wolves had to come out of the stream somewhere.”

“No doubt they did. Upstream or down. We keep on, we’ll find the place, but which way?”

“I never knew a wolf to run up a streambed for miles,” said Reek. “A man might. If he knew he was being hunted, he might. But a wolf?”

Yet Theon wondered. These beasts were not as other wolves. I should have skinned the cursed things.

It was the same tale all over again when they rejoined Gariss, Murch, and Aggar. The huntsmen had retraced their steps halfway to Winterfell without finding any sign of where the Starks might have parted company with the direwolves. Farlen’s hounds seemed as frustrated as their masters, sniffing forlornly at trees and rocks and snapping irritably at each other.

Theon dared not admit defeat. “We’ll return to the brook. Search again. This time we’ll go as far as we must.”

“We won’t find them,” the Frey boy said suddenly. “Not so long as the frogeaters are with them. Mudmen are sneaks, they won’t fight like decent folks, they skulk and use poison arrows. You never see them, but they see you. Those who go into the bogs after them get lost and never come out. Their houses move, even the castles like Greywater Watch.” He glanced nervously at greenery that encircled them on all sides. “They might be out there right now, listening to everything we say.”