A Storm of Swords — Catelyn III
Rickard Karstark butchers two captive squires in their cell for vengeance; Robb answers as a king must and takes his head — and half his host rides home.
The chapter retold
Grief curdles into murder inside Riverrun's walls: Lord Rickard Karstark, still raw from losing two sons to Jaime Lannister's Kingsguard in earlier battles, slips into the cell holding two young Lannister hostages — Willem Lannister and Tion Frey, squires, boys, protected in theory by Robb's own word — and butchers them both for a vengeance that has nothing to do with either victim's actual guilt. Catelyn discovers the bodies and understands immediately what it will cost the war before Robb ever announces the sentence.
Robb does what a king must and what a lord bannerman will never forgive: he takes Karstark's head himself for murdering men under his protection, upholding the letter of honor at a price the North's war effort cannot absorb — half of Karstark's furious kinsmen ride home rather than serve a king who beheads their lord for killing enemies. It is the clearest demonstration yet that Robb has inherited his father's rigid justice without yet inheriting the political room to survive using it, and the army that wins every battle starts losing the war in this cell.
This movement: Dracarys
- In Astapor Dany trades Drogon for the Unsullied — then speaks Valyrian, and the whip changes hands: Dracarys.
- Jaime loses his sword hand to Vargo Hoat's Brave Companions and learns what he is without it.
- Arya falls in with the Brotherhood Without Banners and watches a dead man rise from his seventh death.
- Tywin re-arranges the realm at his table: Tyrion to Sansa, Cersei to Willas — the children object; the Hand doesn't care.
The fallen — spoilers
- Lord Rickard Karstark — Beheaded by the King in the North for murdering captives under the king's protection.
- Willem Lannister — A squire, murdered in his cell for another man's deeds.
- Tion Frey — Murdered beside Willem — kin to both sides of the war.