In the North, at Winterfell, Maester Luwin held up a torch as he hurried out from the maester's tower beneath the rookery, striding toward Robb Stark's chambers.
Night was deep, and at some point snow had begun falling once more over Winterfell's skies.
As a tireless maester, he was always busy, having devoted his entire life to serving House Stark with utmost diligence.
But though snowflakes settled on his head and shoulders, he did not spare a moment to brush them away. Instead, his steps grew even faster as he crossed past the library tower, walked through the training yard, and finally reached the front of the Great Keep.
He had barely approached when the guards on duty noticed him. Yet before they could even wonder why he had come at such a late hour, Maester Luwin spoke first.
"I must see young Lord Robb," Maester Luwin said, looking somewhat anxious.
"Now? Young Lord Robb has been resting for a while—" Hearing Luwin's words, the guard froze for a moment, responding instinctively.
"I have just received a letter from Lord Eddard in King's Landing. Its contents are of great importance. I must inform Robb at once!"
Maester Luwin had no time to waste arguing with a guard. Tossing out those words, he brushed past the man and strode straight into the Great Keep.
Upon hearing that the letter came from Lord Eddard Stark, the guard not only refrained from stopping him, but after seeing Luwin hurry inside with his head lowered, he quickly snatched up a torch and followed after him.
The guard's steps were, of course, far quicker than an old man's. Trotting ahead, he passed Maester Luwin along the way. "I'll go notify him first!"
He then dashed up the staircases floor by floor, reaching Robb Stark's chamber.
Rapping his knuckles against the door, the guard shouted through it: "Young Lord Robb! Young Lord Robb! Maester Luwin has urgent business with you!"
Inside Robb Stark's room, everything was dim, lit only by the faint glow drifting in from the window.
On a brown bearskin, Grey Wind—who had woken the moment he heard footsteps—pricked up his ears, his bright eyes staring at the door. Upon hearing the urgent knocking and shouting, he turned his head and barked loudly at Robb, who was still sound asleep on the bed.
"Woof! Woof!"
The knocking and the dog's barking made Robb, exhausted from the day, snap his eyes open at once and jolt awake from sleep.
"Grey Wind? What is it?!"
Just as Robb woke and instinctively asked without yet realizing what was happening, he became aware of the knocking and shouting outside the door.
As he fully woke, Grey Wind also stopped barking and hurriedly stood up from the bearskin.
Outside, hearing the barking inside the room stop—and hearing Robb's voice immediately afterward—the guard realized Robb was awake and quickly shouted, "Young Lord Robb! Maester Luwin wishes to see you! He says it's urgent—there's a letter from Lord Stark in King's Landing!"
"Maester Luwin? King's Landing? Father?!"
The string of key words instantly cleared away the last traces of sleep from Robb's mind.
Without pausing to ask further, he threw aside the covers and climbed out of the warm bed, bare-chested.
Unlike his mother Catelyn Tully's chambers, which—even built above the hot springs—still required a hearth fire to keep warm, Robb was a Stark. Northmen's blood flowed through him, so like Eddard Stark, he hardly feared a bit of cold after leaving his blankets.
And to conserve supplies for the winter that might soon arrive, his room not only lacked a bonfire—there were not even any extra candles lit.
Using only the faint light from the window, he strode toward the door, unlatched it, and pulled open the heavy oak door.
"What's happened?!"
The moment he opened the door, the torchlight in the corridor shone upon Robb's face.
And while he was speaking with the guard, Maester Luwin—whose steps had been slower—finally caught up.
Noticing the glow of the second torch, Robb instinctively turned his head.
"Young lord, it's a letter from Lord Stark."
Without waiting for Robb to question him, the slightly breathless Luwin called out immediately upon seeing him.
"A letter? What did Father say?"
Robb now also noticed the urgency on Maester Luwin's face, and he could not help feeling a jolt of panic in his heart.
From childhood to now, he had rarely seen such an expression on Maester Luwin.
Since his father, Eddard Stark, became Hand of the King and rode south with the king to wage war—and later, when his mother also took his younger siblings south to King's Landing—Winterfell now had only him.
For more than half a year, he had been acting as Winterfell's castellan in his father's stead, overseeing all affairs within the castle and across their lands.
In such circumstances, unless it concerned matters beyond his ability to handle, they would not normally trouble his father so far away in King's Landing.
This was also why he had been so busy and exhausted recently.
After all, the entire North—having just ended the previous war and the Lannister upheaval—had only recently begun to settle. Each great house had only just withdrawn its forces back to their own lands.
And though the Citadel had not yet sent word that autumn had arrived, once the North settled from war, they had all—without needing to speak—quietly begun preparing for winter.
This long summer had lasted far too long—so long that even Northerners, who were used to winter, felt unease in their hearts.
For by past experience, the longer the summer, the longer the winter that followed.
And now, with their entire family—down to little Rickon—taken south to King's Landing by his mother Catelyn to accompany his father, if it were not something urgent, Maester Luwin would never be this anxious.
Something must have happened—something serious enough to make Maester Luwin act like this.
What worried Robb most was his family's safety.
He could not help recalling the stories his wet nurse had told him as a child: winter wolves moving south, like a curse hanging over House Stark.
"Has something happened to my family? Is it Bran?" Once the thought struck him, Robb hurriedly asked.
After being pushed from the broken tower by the Kingslayer, Bran had suffered shock and lingering illness. One of the reasons his mother and the others had traveled south was to see whether a change of environment might help him recover.
So the moment Robb suspected something had happened to his family, Bran was the first person he thought of.
"N–no, young lord!"
Maester Luwin finally reached him. Without taking time to catch his breath, he hurriedly handed the letter in his hand to Robb Stark.
After giving Robb the letter, Luwin quickly explained, "It concerns Tywin. King Robert has already died—and it appears he may have been assassinated."
"The new king, Kal Stone—His Majesty Kal Baratheon—was also attacked by a Faceless Man in King's Landing while returning there to investigate the matter!"
"The message in Lord Stark's letter says it seems to be connected to Tywin Lannister!"
Robb, who had hastily taken the letter and was just about to read its contents, froze completely upon hearing Luwin's words.
He lifted his head in a daze, staring at Luwin to make sure he wasn't joking with him.
"Assassinated… King Robert is dead… and the new king is Kal? And he was attacked as well?!"
Luwin swallowed a mouthful of saliva. Seeing Robb's incredulous look, he could only smile bitterly and then nod.
"Yes. After the tourney ended, King Robert went on a royal hunt—originally before Lord Kal El was to assume command at Casterly Rock."
"But something went wrong. Because the king had been drinking, a wild boar became the killer that ended his life."
Hearing this, Robb simply could not connect the idea of a wild boar with the king's death.
He stared wide-eyed, mouth slightly open. Pulled from sleep only moments ago, he could not make sense of these unrelated words, could not put them together and digest them.
A gust of wind drifted into the stone keep, and Maester Luwin—who had run all the way and worked up a sweat—shivered instinctively.
"Come inside first. Tell me everything in detail—light the candles!"
Still shocked, Robb noticed Luwin trembling from the cold and quickly came back to himself, inviting the maester into his room.
Winterfell's Great Keep was built atop a natural hot spring for warmth; hot water traveled through pipes within the walls, heating every chamber.
So Robb's room was naturally much warmer than the relatively drafty corridors.
The guard, who had also heard this explosive news in the middle of the night, raised his torch and hurried inside when Robb gave the order. One by one, he lit the candles before withdrawing to stand outside the room.
He closed the door and turned around, standing guard at the entrance.
Taking advantage of this moment, Robb hastily threw on a coat, then stood before one of the candles and read through the letter in his hand.
But as he continued reading, his expression also began to darken.
"Father wants me to summon our bannermen and go to Castle Black to inspect the situation."
"But we've only just finished a war—"
After finishing the letter, Robb roughly understood what had happened in King's Landing during this period.
The bastard who had once followed King Robert to Winterfell—the one who exposed the Lannisters' conspiracy, saved Bran, and later turned the tide in the war—had been legitimized before Robert's death and directly named heir to the throne.
But he had no time now to care about how many things had happened behind the scenes, or what the situation in King's Landing truly was.
Because the pressure had now fallen squarely upon him.
"Young lord, what are your thoughts?"
Maester Luwin, who had quietly waited beside him as Robb read the letter, finally spoke once he saw Robb return from his thoughts.
Hearing him, Robb certainly understood what he meant.
But he furrowed his brows and turned to look at the hazy darkness outside the window.
"Castle Black must be investigated. If the contents of the letter are true, we must prepare early—cut off the danger at the budding stage."
"And this is also Father's order, and the king's—"
As he spoke, Robb fell silent again.
The North had only just finished mobilizing its lands and concluded a war. Everyone had only just returned home and had no time to regain stability. And on top of that, they now had to prepare supplies for winter.
Robb knew very well that the castles across the North truly had no manpower to spare.
As Winterfell's acting castellan, Robb Stark knew better than anyone what the North's situation was like—he had to handle such matters every single day.
And rather awkwardly, this entire affair was only about guarding against Tywin possibly plotting something against the Night's Watch.
Right now, things were stuck in an uncomfortable position—not too big, not too small, but precisely difficult to deal with.
So although the letter said to summon the bannermen, Robb would certainly not mobilize a massive host.
And after thinking it through, Robb gradually formed an idea in his heart.
He shifted his gaze back to Maester Luwin, who had been silently waiting for him the whole time.
"Maester Luwin, we will first send a message to Castle Black and request confirmation of the current situation there and of Tywin."
Hearing this, Luwin nodded in acknowledgment.
But although he accepted Robb's order, Luwin nonetheless reminded him, "Young Lord Robb, I believe I should warn you—if Castle Black truly is in the dire state we suspect, the reply verifying this may not necessarily be genuine."
As he said this, Maester Luwin's expression was still anxious, yet there was also a hint of testing Robb in his tone.
Hearing the reminder, Robb's face instead showed a confident smile.
"Maester Luwin, of course I understand that. But regardless of whether the information is true or false, this is only a mist to confuse Castle Black for now. I need to stabilize the situation temporarily and buy us some time."
"I certainly won't take the message at face value. What I truly need is more reliable information."
"So I plan to send word to the Umbers at Last Hearth. They are the closest house to the Wall. Having them dispatch a vanguard first to verify the news is the proper approach."
Seeing that Robb spoke with clear reasoning, not blindly trusting the raven's message, and already having a plan after giving it thought, Luwin smiled and nodded.
"Let us hope Castle Black is safe, and that this whole affair is nothing more than a contemptible lie."
After letting out a small breath of relief, Luwin could not help but offer this wish.
After all, this incident—and the war—had dealt a tremendous blow to House Lannister.
Tywin Lannister, once he saw all his schemes collapse and, after House Lannister wagered everything with no chance of victory, chose the most dignified path—surrender.
What they gained in return was the loss of everything Lannister, in exchange for preserving the rest of the Westerlands.
And those who had wreaked havoc and committed the greatest crimes on the Riverlands battlefield were sent to Castle Black to become members of the Night's Watch.
These men—together with Tywin Lannister, who had been deliberately sent only after some time had passed—did not seem capable of causing any great trouble in Luwin's eyes.
The Wall was simply too far. Whether the events in King's Landing truly had anything to do with Tywin Lannister or not, Luwin did not believe that, should Tywin choose rebellion again, he would gain anything from it.
The Night's Watch's supplies were far from abundant. Even after the war, when they escorted the prisoners, the victors had given them one batch of aid, and the North had provided another.
But even then, the supplies were still far from enough to support Tywin assembling another army.
After all, without even mentioning anything else, simply horses, weapons, armor, grain, warm clothing—each of these alone made it impossible for Tywin to rebuild a force.
And even if he stubbornly insisted on trying, with Tywin's intellect he would hardly fail to see that he had no chance of success.
For this was not the warm, resource-rich, grain-laden Riverlands.
From the Wall to the vast stretch of the North, there was nothing but snow.
If Tywin were truly foolish enough to try, once the armies of the North advanced, they wouldn't even need to fight him. Merely harassing and pressing him would be enough—the Northern climate alone would claim the lives of these Southrons.
Thus, the idea that Tywin Lannister still harbored treacherous intentions seemed highly unlikely to Luwin.
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