Game of Thrones: Frozen Fire

Allies

Fear was something that he could not help feeling. It wasn't that he was cowering. In fact, he felt bigger because the fear vanished when he thought about his family – as he had been taught, he would give anything for them, including his life.

But men like Greatjon kept thinking of him as a boy. A boy who was leading thousands of men to war, to face an enemy superior than him by far, both in experience and resources. But Tywin Lannister didn't have his heart.

Robb twined his fingers in Grey Wind's fur, petting the direwolf that kept growing at great speed, bigger and scarier every day. Many thought that the wolf was like the owner but Robb couldn't see it yet.

Before this, strategies and maps seemed like fun games to play – it was different when the ones fighting were real people, men with families waiting for them.

Nothing could have ever prepared him for war, not even if he had been taught how to ride a horse, how to hold a sword and shoot an arrow. Planning attacks and studying the enemy was difficult but he had learned quickly and, as it usually happened with him, he exceled. Of all his siblings, he had always been the one giving his parents less trouble, making them proud and he hoped that wouldn't change.

Listening to stories about largest armies being defeated by the old Kings in the North didn't help because even if he knew the north like the back of his hand, he didn't want the Lannister's army in his territory.

It was only when his mother showed up in the camp that he truly felt like a child. He wanted nothing more than to hug her just like when he was a little boy but he refrained himself from doing so.

There was something in her eyes when she looked at him. He didn't know if to read it as surprise or relief.

She was the one who wrapped her arms around him when they were finally alone, all the lords agreeing with her wishes of privacy for their first meeting in a very long time.

"I remember the day you came into this world, red-faced and squalling. And now I find you leading a host to war," she said and soon he understood that in her eyes, he would always be her child but he was no longer the same boy.

Even as she spoke, telling him that he didn't need to fight this war, she knew there was no chance he wouldn't have. His father had done the same at that age. And she had lived through a war but that didn't make it easier.

"I won't go back to Winterfell," he stated firmly.

"You left her there, alone?" It was obvious who was her. And his mother couldn't help the distaste laced to her voice as she said it.

It wasn't a secret for him that his mother hadn't approved of his father's idea of marrying him to Daenerys. He couldn't say he was euphoric about his marriage either but much had happened since and now he missed her – he longed for her at night, to feel her soft and warm skin against his, to smell her sweet perfume and wake up to her violet eyes.

"She's safer there. We are safer for as long as we can keep her a secret. Otherwise, the Lannisters would have more reason to attack."

"Robb."

"You've been away for too long. There are many things you have missed but right now, there are more pressing matters, Mother." He retrieved the piece of paper that contained Sansa's message, sent days prior. "There was a letter, from Sansa."

"From the Queen, you mean." His mother read the letter in a hurry and soon noticed a detail he had been aware of. "There's no mention of Arya."

"No."

She paused, probably thinking of the worst things that could happen to her daughters and how to get to them as fast as she could. "How many men do you have?"