After sunset, Roslin was undressed by her maids, bathed, given a clean, scented nightgown and tucked into bed. She knew what was coming: she was prepared for it. But as she heard the footsteps approaching from the corridor, and then the creak of the heavy door handle, a shudder ran through her whole body, for not a single part of her wished for what was to come next. She was afraid, terrified of him. Robb did not look at her. He too wore a nightgown and soft slippers. Reaching the bed, he stepped out of his footwear and lay down beside his wife. He did not move. He just lay on his back and stared at the painted ceiling, breathing slowly and calmly. Roslin, meanwhile, was silently pleading, her tears in her eyes. Her breathing was not at all calm, and her husband noticed. After a short while, Robb got out of bed, slipped back into his slippers and walked to the steaming bath tub in the middle of the room. A thick wolf-skin coat was spread on the cold stone floor beside him, so that he could step out on it when he had finished, and a chair was made for him, with a large linen cloth and Robb's clean clothes on it. He would not hear of servants dressing him. "Only lick-assed, delicate faggots can't dress themselves!" he always said, but he was ashamed of his scarred body and didn't want servants gossiping about his injuries when he had nothing better to do. They would end up seeing him as a weak, wounded, bleeding animal, and who knows what the consequences would be. As he soaked in the hot water, he stroked his scarred body thoughtfully. The room was dim. The windows were closed to keep more heat in. In the corner, an old fireplace crackled, its light providing some illumination, but on the walls no old shields or tapestries proclaimed the wealth of the King of Winterfell. Most of the rooms in the castle looked as if they had been ransacked only yesterday: here, in the bedchamber, there was only a steaming bath tub, a simple bed, a few chests, a table and a few chairs. No finery, no ornaments, no superfluous glitter, not even in Catlyn's quarters. For Robb was obsessed with spending all the money of the empire on the development of his army. That was his real family: the Stark army. He gave them all his time, all his love, and when he didn't have enough money, he sold off some of the castle's furnishings to keep his battalion and its fearsome reputation alive. The fireplace in the corner was long overdue for a new one, but there was always a cartload of spears, a few dozen new helmets, hundreds of shields, or a few crates of good quality metal hoops for driftwood that he could buy at a good price, and such things were more important to him than a fireplace with wolf's teeth. Robb closed his eyes, dipped himself neck-deep in hot water to wash the filth of revelry from his silky beard and curly hair, and wondered how much tax Roose Bolton's steward had managed to collect in Winterfell while he was away. The recent raid without booty had made him sensitive himself, as he was preparing for a special extension. On the one hand, he wanted to finally deploy a hundred heavy horsemen, but he did not know whether he could add another hundred to his band or whether he would have to choose from the five hundred he already had to train for heavy-armed combat. On the other hand, ever since he had heard of the devastation wrought in the Riverlands, first by wildlings and then by Stannis Baratheon's knights, he had been thinking how he could raise at least a thousand or five hundred horsemen and train them to be excellent dragon-slaying archers if need be, but also to be a formidable force in close combat. Robb believed that of all the members of House Stark, he most truly represented the legacy of their ancestors. It had been more than five thousand years since the Starks, Greystarks and Karstarks of Winterfell had joined forces, and in the time since, the branches of the dynasty had multiplied, slowly adding countless warlords and noblewomen to the Northern Kingdom. Most of them, like the Northerners in general, saw land acquisition as their main task. Starting from the former snow-capped mountains, they seized a good part of the Frozen Land, becoming owners of the winter towns, where they also built castles, such as in Neck, Old Castle and Winterfell. Broken Stone was the strongest Stark headquarters, and the ancient lands there were shared by kin at a time when King Cregan Stark was still in the thick of his struggle for the throne of the Northern Kingdom. They were all great land-grabbers, but Robb saw the Stark clan's ancient strength in something else: warfare. Among his ancestors was the warlord Artos Stark, who had fought alongside Jack Musgood in the battle against the fierce hordes of the Red Bearded Raymun, but also the brave Builder Brandon, who had slain the dragon of the Neck Marshes in the time of Aegon the Conqueror. So Robb Stark believed the only way to follow in the footsteps of such ancestors with a pure heart, and to be entitled to use the ancient crest, with its grey direwolf painted in a snow-white field that reminded him of the power of Targaryen dragons, was to serve the realm as a great warrior and a ruthless wolf. And just as his illustrious ancestors were the unswervingly loyal bastions of a ruler, so he must serve the people of Winterfell. It was his own code of honour, unwritten but rock-solid. Hence, too, that, though he could not abide the coarse-mannered Frey knights in their tatty robes, he was unreservedly loyal to the richest of them all, his own father-in-law. His passionate thoughts were interrupted by the creaking of the bed. The unlubricated springs creaked with an ugly, metallic sound that made Robb wince involuntarily, painfully. It was hard for him to hear metal creaking on metal. Once he even beat his own cook half to death for wielding his knives too loudly, which sent him into a frenzy of rage. He couldn't understand why, but he just couldn't control his murderous outbursts of rage.
- "My Lord," came the weak female voice from the bed.
The faint smile faded from the man's face as soon as he realised his wife had interrupted him.
- "What do you want?" growled Robb harshly. - You won't leave me alone here?
- 'You have sworn, my king,' she repeated, as she approached the steaming bath tub with quiet steps.
Robb soon noticed that his wife was only holding a towel with her hand in front of her breast.
- I want you to tell me why you are pushing me away.
- "Why?" he asked moodily.
Robb had long since stopped having trouble saying what he thought in front of others.
- You know that. I married you because I made a pact with your father. By the law of the gods, I cannot have another wife, and you know it! My mother told me your womb is more fertile than a field of storm watered wheat. It is your fault that Winterfell must go to the Frey heirs when I die. If you don't die first and I can't remarry.
Roslin clenched her fist under the linen towel. Her old nurse had ordered her to go to her husband on their wedding night to bathe, soften his heart, give him all of herself, and that would tame the wolf. But after all this, she felt that she would be unable to love him, unable to feel for him as a woman in love, and that no matter how hard she tried, their life together could only be painful.
- How could I have known that my father... that he had promised you..." she tried to hold back her tears, determined not to cry again.
- 'So you say you didn't know?' Robb looked at her mockingly. - How could that be?
- 'But, my husband,' Roslin looked back, shocked, 'I've never been engaged to another man, I've never been engaged to anyone before you! You will take my virginity, otherwise it is impossible to spend a wedding night together!
- Not even once?" he asked dryly. - The Freys all say that, and they're the last to lie to me...
The woman could not believe her ears. She already knew that the Starks knew nothing about the Frey women, but to hear such nonsense about them was frankly shocking.
- 'It is possible,' she suggested with forced levity, 'that the present circumstances will be suitable for childbearing.
Robb was running out of patience, and he imagined him slamming his wife against the wall like a whining dog. The thought calmed him for a time.
- It depends on a lot of little things," she explained, just to get ahead of him, because she was getting awfully cold in that one towel. - How many days it had been since the last bleeding, how long until the next one...
The woman was lost for words. But she didn't have to say anything, she simply let go of the towel and let it fall to the floor. There she stood in the cool room, lean and snow-white, as naked as the gods had made her, and Robb felt his manhood rise in the slowly warming water. Angry conversation or not, he hadn't been with a woman in months, and he could feel it himself. The bath had warmed and relaxed his frozen limbs, and now there before him stood this slender creature, who was apparently about to make love to him.
- 'All right,' he murmured, somewhat relieved, his heart already beating faster and his breath quickening. - I'm willing to try.
Roslin stepped out of her footwear, dipped her hand in the water and was about to move to get into the tub when her husband yelled at her:
- What do you think you're doing?!
- "I'll get in to you, husband," she said timidly. - I'll sit on your lap and...
- "I should like that!" he stood up in a sudden movement, and not only his muscular body was visible, but also his male member, which was unashamedly thrusting forward. - I've already had a bath. I don't want to fuck in the water.
He stepped out onto the wolf-coat, grabbed the linen cloth spread on the chair, wiped himself with a few sloppy movements, then grabbed his wife's delicate breasts wildly and pulled the light body close to him. By the feel of her hard nipple, he could sense that she was cold, but he ignored it. He enjoyed being in control of her. He turned her to face him, forced her hand on his cock and ordered her to pull it back and forth. Meanwhile, his masculine hands squeezed her breasts tighter and tighter, and he watched her reaction to the growing pain with a lustful expression. Roslin swallowed back her tears, but she knew then that nothing good could come of the next few minutes. She shuddered more and more, the pain in her breasts gradually increasing as she had to grip the part of his body that disgusted her most. But she endured it as long as she could, and tried to keep quiet in case Robb got tired of her torture. She looked into his eyes and saw no kindness, no warmth. She realised she was downright terrified of that face. The tiny curls, the sea-blue eyes, the regular nose, the hard look, the harshness of which even the well-groomed beard could not hide. She began to hope that with a little pampering she might control him. She summoned all her willpower, and when she spoke again, her voice was no longer shaky or hiccupping. It was deep and measured.
- "What would you say, my dear husband," she asked softly, almost purring, "if you put your wolf-skin on me and we could continue by the fire?
- 'I'm fine here,' he said, panting, and then he stepped behind his wife and entered her painfully.
Roslin knew it wouldn't last, but she couldn't help sobbing bitterly:
- Is this how you fuck me? Like animals?!
- If you don't like it, take the matter to the Frey knights! Then everyone will know how you behave towards your husband.
Then he stopped talking, just kept poking and poking, moaning louder and louder, grabbing her trembling thighs and breasts with relentless force, until finally he let out a great, beastly roar, and Roslin felt her suffering was finally over. Though she was sure she would hear her husband's screams later that night. For Robb Stark hadn't had a peaceful night's sleep since he'd taken part in the first battle of his life months before. Since then he had been rude to everyone, since then he had hated his marriage to the Frey girl, and since then he had woken up every night screaming, his body wet with cold sweat, and only at dawn would sleep come again. Many times the servants heard him pacing up and down the darkness of his room at night, drinking himself to drunkenness, so that he should never again have to experience the horror that awaited him in his dreams. Yet the dead faces, the mutilated knights, the babies crying for their mothers, the pale eyes, the burnt, stinking bodies, and the endless fields foaming with blood and mud, where every step splatters with the spilled guts, all of it was waiting for him there among the pillows. Robb only slept soundly when death was not reaping all around him in the realm of House Stark.