A Game of Thrones ÔÇö Bran VI

Robb calls the banners and Winterfell fills with lords; the Greatjon draws steel at supper and Grey Wind takes two of his fingers for it.

The chapter retold

Word of Ned's imprisonment reaches Winterfell, and Robb, fifteen years old and abruptly the man of the house, calls the northern banners to war. The great hall fills with lords twice his age, testing the boy's authority the way lords always test a new one, and it's the Greatjon Umber who pushes hardest ÔÇö drawing steel at the high table in a dispute over marching order, until Robb's direwolf Grey Wind lunges across the room and takes two fingers off the Greatjon's sword hand. Rather than take offense, the Greatjon roars with laughter, kneels, and names Robb the Young Wolf ÔÇö the moment the northern lords stop testing him and start following him.

It's a scene that does the specific work of legitimizing Robb as a war leader in the space of a single supper, using violence and wolf-blood rather than any speech he could have given to prove he belongs at the head of the table his father usually sits at. The direwolves, present since the very first chapter as omens more than actors, start here to become something closer to instruments of Stark authority ÔÇö extensions of the family's will that speak louder, in this hall, than any argument Robb himself could make.

This movement: The Wolf Calls the Banners

• The Stark household is slaughtered; Arya escapes through the Red Keep's cellars with Needle; Sansa pleads for her father's life.
• Robb calls the banners; the Greatjon learns about direwolves and fingers; the host marches for the Neck.
• Catelyn wins the Twins' bridge from Walder Frey at the price of marriage promises.
• Beyond the Wall, dead men rise in Castle Black itself; Jon's torch and Ghost save the Old Bear.