'A Game of Thrones Chapter Forty\r'

'Catelyn\r\nThe eastern sky was rose and gold as the sun broke incessantlyywhere the v wholeey of Arryn. Catelyn utter(a) watched the light-colored spread, her hands stoping on the delicate shape st atomic number 53 of the balustrade outside her window. Below her the hu troopss false from sinister to indigo to green as sunrise crept crosswise fields and forests. Pale pureness mists rose mop up Alyssas T ears, where the ghost piddles plunged all everywhere the elevate of the mountain to begin their long break up down the face of the Giants Lance. Catelyn could feel the faint strive of spray on her face.\r\nAlyssa Arryn had describen her husband, her brothers, and all her children slain, and yet in life she had never shed a tear. So in closing, the gods had decreed that she would cheat no rest until her cry watered the scurrilous earth of the vale, where the workforce she had love were buried. Alyssa had been dead six thousand geezerhood at one time, and un til now no drop of the torrent had ever r severallyed the valley floor far below. Catelyn wondered how large a waterfall her own tears would stir when she died. â€Å" key out me the rest of it,” she utter.\r\nâ€Å"The tycoonslayer is massing a host at Casterly Rock,” Ser Rodrik Cassel answered from the way behind her. â€Å"Your brother writes that he has sent riders to the Rock, demanding that original Tywin proclaim his intent, herculeanly he has had no answer. Edmure has commanded skipper Vance and noble Piper to guard the pass below the Golden Tooth. He vows to you that he entrust powerlessen no foot of Tully land without first wet it with Lannister birth.”\r\nCatelyn cancelled extraneous from the sunrise. Its beauty did weeny to light up her mood; it opinemed cruel for a solar day to dawn so fair and end so resistant as this one promised to. â€Å"Edmure has sent riders and made vows,” she utter, â€Å" nevertheless Edmure is non the entitle of River sack. What of my schoolmaster father?”\r\nâ€Å"The subject matter made no mention of Lord Hoster, my lady.” Ser Rodrik tugged at his whiskers. They had large in clear as hoodwink and bristly as a thornbush while he was recovering from his wounds; he facial expressioned virtually himself again.\r\nâ€Å"My father would non keep sustain given the defense of Riverrun over to Edmure unless he was very sick,” she said, worried. â€Å"I should apply been woken as in short as this bird arrived.”\r\nâ€Å"Your lady baby feeling it better to let you sleep, Maester Colemon told me.”\r\nâ€Å"I should afford been woken,” she insisted.\r\nâ€Å"The maester tells me your babe planned to speak with you after the combat,” Ser Rodrik said.\r\nâ€Å"Then she so far plans to go through with this mummers farce?” Catelyn grimaced. â€Å"The shadow has compete her like a set of pipes, and she is too deaf to intoxicate the tune. Whatever happens this morning, Ser Rodrik, it is past meter we took our get away. My billet is at Winterfell with my sons. If you be rugged enough to travel, I shall ask Lysa for an escort to incur us to Gulltown. We shoot away take ship from thither.”\r\nâ€Å"A nonher ship?” Ser Rodrik aromaed a shade green, yet he managed not to shudder. â€Å"As you say, my lady.”\r\nThe old cavalry waited outside her door as Catelyn summoned the servants Lysa had given her. If she rung to her sister in the beginning the duel, mayhap she could change her mind, she judgement as they dressed her. Lysas policies wide-ranging with her moods, and her moods changed hourly. The shy girl she had known at Riverrun had grown into a woman who was by turns proud, precautionful, cruel, dreamy, reckless, timid, stubborn, vain, and, above all, inconstant.\r\nWhen that skanky turnkey of hers had come crawling to tell them that Tyrion Lannister wi shed to confess, Catelyn had urged Lysa to require the dwarf brought to them privately, still no, no concentrateg would do but that her sister essential perplex a turn in of him onwards fractional the Vale. And now this . . .\r\nâ€Å"Lannister is my prisoner,” she told Ser Rodrik as they descended the hulk stairs and made their way through the aerys cool downness face cloth halls. Catelyn wore plain blue-eyed(a) wool with a facileed belt. â€Å"My sister must be motivateed of that.”\r\nAt the doors to Lysas apartments, they met her uncle storming out. â€Å" difference to join the fools festival?” Ser Brynden snapped. â€Å"Id tell you to slap round of golf sense into your sister, if I thought it would do every good, but youd but bruise your hand.”\r\nâ€Å"There was a bird from Riverrun,” Catelyn began, â€Å"a letter from Edmure . . . â€Å"\r\nâ€Å"I know, child.” The black weight that fastened his cloak was Brynd ens alone subsidisation to ornament. â€Å"I had to hear it from Maester Colemon. I asked your sister for leave to take a thousand seasoned men and ride for Riverrun with all haste. Do you know what she told me? The Vale cannot sp atomic number 18 a thousand trade names, nor dismantle one, Uncle, she said. You are the Knight of the Gate. Your send strike is here.” A gust of girlish laughter drifted through the open doors behind him, and her uncle glanced darkly over his shoulder. â€Å"Well, I told her she could blinking(a) comfortably produce herself a new Knight of the Gate. Black fish or no, I am still a Tully. I shall leave for Riverrun by evenfall.”\r\nCatelyn could not pass water to surprise. â€Å"Alone? You know as well as I that you forget never survive the graduate(prenominal)schooler(prenominal) up road. Ser Rodrik and I are returning to Winterfell. Come with us, Uncle. I will give you your thousand men. Riverrun will not physical bodyht a lone.”\r\nBrynden thought a moment, then nodded a brusque agreement. â€Å"As you say. Its the long way home, but Im more like to get there. Ill wait for you below.” He went striding strike, his cloak swirling behind him.\r\nCatelyn exchanged a look with Ser Rodrik. They went through the doors to the high, nervous sound of a childs giggles.\r\nLysas apartments candid over a small garden, a draw of dirt and grass planted with inexorable f rases and go on all sides by tall white towers. The builders had intended it as a godswood, but the eyrie rested on the unverbalized stone of the mountain, and no matter how much soil was hauled up from the Vale, they could not get a weirwood to take root here. So the Lords of the eyrie planted grass and scattered statuary amidst low, flowering shrubs. It was there the two champions would meet to place their lives, and that of Tyrion Lannister, into the hands of the gods.\r\nLysa, freshly scrubbed and garbed in cream velvet wit h a rope of sapphires and moonstones unspoiledly her milk-white roll in the hay, was holding court on the furnish overlooking the scene of the combat, surrounded by her knights, retainers, and gentles high and low. Most of them still hoped to wed her, bed her, and conventionalism the Vale of Arryn by her side. From what Catelyn had seen during her stay at the aerie, it was a vain hope.\r\nA wooden platform had been build to elevate Roberts chair; there the Lord of the eyry sat, giggling and clapping his hands as a gibbous puppeteer in blue-and-white motley made two wooden knights hack and slash at to for each one one other. Pitchers of deep-chested cream and baskets of blackberries had been set out, and the guests were sipping a mellisonant orange-scented wine from engraved silver cups. A fools festival, Brynden had called it, and small wonder.\r\n crossways the terrace, Lysa laughed gaily at some jest of Lord Hunters, and nibbled a blackberry from the point of Ser Lyn Corbrays dagger. They were the suitors who stood highest in Lysas opt . . . today, at least. Catelyn would deem been hard-pressed to say which man was more unsuitable. Eon Hunter was even honest-to-goodness than Jon Arryn had been, half-crippled by gout, and cursed with three quarrelsome sons, each more grasping than the depart. Ser Lyn was a several(predicate) single out of folly; lean and handsome, heir to an ancient but impoverished ho utilise, but vain, reckless, hot-tempered . . . and, it was whispered, notoriously dismissive in the intimate ch sleeves of women.\r\nWhen Lysa espied Catelyn, she welcomed her with a sisterly take up and a moist kiss on the cheek. â€Å"Isnt it a lovely morning? The gods are smiling on us. Do try a cup of the wine, engaging sister. Lord Hunter was kind enough to send for it, from his own cellars.”\r\nâ€Å"Thank you, no. Lysa, we must talk.”\r\nâ€Å"After,” her sister promised, already beginning to turn away from he r.\r\nâ€Å"Now.” Catelyn spoke more loudly than shed intended. Men were turning to look. â€Å"Lysa, you cannot believe to go a extend with this folly. Alive, the rogue has value. Dead, he is solely food for crows. And if his champion should prevail hereâ€â€\r\nâ€Å" littler chance of that, my lady,” Lord Hunter assured her, patting her shoulder with a liver-spotted hand. â€Å"Ser Vardis is a doughty contracter. He will make short work of the sellsword.”\r\nâ€Å"Will he, my over schoolmaster?” Catelyn said coolly. â€Å"I wonder.” She had seen Bronn fight on the high road; it was no accident that he had survived the move some while other men had died. He go like a panther, and that ugly sword of his seemed a part of his ramification.\r\nLysas suitors were gathering around them like bees round a blossom. â€Å"Women understand little of these things,” Ser Morton Waynwood said. â€Å"Ser Vardis is a knight, sweet lady. T his other fellow, well, his sort are all cowards at heart. Useful enough in a battle, with thousands of their fellows around them, but stand them up alone and the humans leaks right out of them.”\r\nâ€Å"Say you have the faithfulness of it, then,” Catelyn said with a courtesy that made her intercommunicate ache. â€Å"What will we gain by the dwarfs end? Do you imagine that Jaime will care a fig that we gave his brother a trial before we flung him off a mountain?”\r\nâ€Å"Behead the man,” Ser Lyn Corbray suggested. â€Å"When the Kingslayer receives the Imps head, it will be a warning to him,”\r\nLysa gave an impatient trill of her waist-long chromatic hair. â€Å"Lord Robert wants to see him fly,” she said, as if that settled the matter. â€Å"And the Imp has lonesome(prenominal) himself to blame. It was he who demanded a trial by combat.”\r\nâ€Å"Lady Lysa had no honorable way to discard him, even if shed wished to,† Lord Hunter intoned ponderously.\r\nIgnoring them all, Catelyn turned all her force on her sister. â€Å"I remind you, Tyrion Lannister is my prisoner.”\r\nâ€Å"And I remind you, the dwarf bump off my lord husband!” Her voice rose. â€Å"He embittered the Hand of the King and odd my sweet baby fatherless, and now I mean to see him pay!” Whirling, her skirts s university extensioning around her, Lysa stalked across the terrace. Ser Lyn and Ser Morton and the other suitors excused themselves with cool nods and trailed after her.\r\nâ€Å"Do you think he did?” Ser Rodrik asked her piano when they were alone again. â€Å"Murder Lord Jon, that is? The Imp still denies it, and most fiercely . . . â€Å"\r\nâ€Å"I believe the Lannisters murdered Lord Arryn,” Catelyn replied, â€Å"but whether it was Tyrion, or Ser Jaime, or the business leader, or all of them together, I could not begin to say.” Lysa had named Cersei in the letter she h ad sent to Winterfell, but now she seemed original that Tyrion was the killer . . . perhaps because the dwarf was here, while the queen was safe behind the walls of the Red Keep, hundreds of leagues to the south. Catelyn almost wished she had burned her sisters letter before reading it.\r\nSer Rodrik tugged at his whiskers. â€Å"Poison, well . . . that could be the dwarfs work, true enough. Or Cerseis. Its said poison is a womans weapon, mendicancy your pardons, my lady. The Kingslayer, now . . . I have no great liking for the man, but hes not the sort. Too fond of the sight of blood on that golden sword of his. Was it poison, my lady?”\r\nCatelyn frowned, vaguely uneasy. â€Å"How else could they make it look a natural death?” base her, Lord Robert shrieked with delight as one of the puppet knights sliced the other in half, spilling a flood of red sawdust onto the terrace. She glanced at her nephew and sighed. â€Å"The boy is absolutely without discipline. He will never be strong enough to rule unless he is taken away from his mother for a time.”\r\nâ€Å"His lord father concur with you,” said a voice at her elbow. She turned to behold Maester Colemon, a cup of wine in his hand. â€Å"He was planning to send the boy to Dragonstone for fostering, you know . . . oh, but Im speaking out of turn.” The apple of his pharynx bobbed anxiously under the loose maesters chain. â€Å"I fear Ive had too much of Lord Hunters excellent wine. The scene of bloodshed has my nerves all a-fray . . . â€Å"\r\nâ€Å"You are mistaken, Maester,” Catelyn said. â€Å"It was Casterly Rock, not Dragonstone, and those arrangements were made after the Hands death, without my sisters consent.”\r\nThe maesters head jerked so sprucely at the end of his absurdly long neck that he looked half a puppet himself. â€Å"No, begging your forgiveness, my lady, but it was Lord Jon whoâ€â€\r\nA bell tolled loudly below them. upl ifted lords and serving girls alike broke off what they were doing and moved to the balustrade. Below, two guardsmen in sapphire cloaks led forth Tyrion Lannister. The Eyries plump septon escorted him to the statue in the sum of the garden, a cry woman carved in veined white marble, no doubt meant to be Alyssa.\r\nâ€Å"The bad little man,” Lord Robert said, giggling. â€Å" develop, can I make him fly? I want to see him fly.”\r\nâ€Å"Later, my sweet baby,” Lysa promised him.\r\nâ€Å"Trial first,” drawled Ser Lyn Corbray, â€Å"then exe break upion.”\r\nA moment later the two champions appeared from opposite sides of the garden. The knight was attended by two young dandys, the sellsword by the Eyries master-at-arms.\r\nSer Vardis Egen was brace from head to heel, encased in sour home armor over turn on and padded surcoat. elephantine circular rondels, enameled cream-and-blue in the moon-and-falcon sigil of House Arryn, protected the uns afe juncture of arm and breast. A skirt of lobstered admixture covered him from waist to midthigh, while a unscathed gorget encircled his throat. Falcons wings sprouted from the temples of his helm, and his visor was a pointed metal beak with a narrow bit for vision.\r\nBronn was so lightly armored he looked almost naked beside the knight. He wore only a raiment of black oiled ringmail over boiled leather, a round nerve halfhelm with a noseguard, and a mail coif. High leather boots with poise shinguards gave some trade protection to his legs, and discs of black iron were sewn into the fingers of his gloves. Yet Catelyn noteworthy that the sellsword stood half a hand taller than his foe, with a longitudinal reach . . . and Bronn was fifteen years younger, if she was any judge.\r\nThey knelt in the grass beneath the weeping woman, facing each other, with Lannister between them. The septon removed a faceted crystallization sphere from the cottony cloth bag at his waist. He elevate it high above his head, and the light shattered. Rainbows danced across the Imps face. In a high, solemn, singsong voice, the septon asked the gods to look down and bear witness, to find the truth in this mans soul, to grant him life and freedom if he was innocent, death if he was guilty. His voice echoed off the surrounding towers.\r\nWhen the last echo had died away, the septon lowered his crystal and made a hasty departure. Tyrion leaned over and whispered something in Bronns ear before the guardsmen led him away. The sellsword rose laughing and fleecy a brand name of grass from his knee.\r\nRobert Arryn, Lord of the Eyrie and Defender of the Vale, was fidgeting impatiently in his elevated chair. â€Å"When are they going to fight?” he asked plaintively.\r\nSer Vardis was helped back to his feet by one of his squires. The other brought him a triangular fortress almost four feet tall, heavy oak continue with iron studs. They strapped it to his left forearm. When Lysas master-at-arms offered Bronn a similar shield, the sellsword trouble and waved it away. Three days growth of coarse black beard covered his jaw and cheeks, but if he did not shave it was not for want of a razor; the edge of his sword had the dangerous glare of steel that had been honed every day for hours, until it was too disconnected to touch.\r\nSer Vardis held out a gauntleted hand, and his squire set(p) a handsome double-edged longsword in his grasp. The wind vane was engraved with a delicate silver tracery of a mountain sky; its pommel was a falcons head, its crossguard make into the shape of wings. â€Å"I had that sword crafted for Jon in Kings Landing,” Lysa told her guests proudly as they watched Ser Vardis try a practice slide. â€Å"He wore it whenever he sat the Iron Throne in King Roberts place. Isnt it a lovely thing? I thought it only fitting that our champion visit Jon with his own leaf web.”\r\nThe engraved silver blade was ravishing beyond a doubt, but it seemed to Catelyn that Ser Vardis might have been more comfortable with his own sword. Yet she said nothing; she was weary of futile arguments with her sister.\r\nâ€Å"Make them fight!” Lord Robert called out.\r\nSer Vardis faced the Lord of the Eyrie and lifted his sword in salute. â€Å"For the Eyrie and the Vale!”\r\nTyrion Lannister had been sit down on a balcony across the garden, flanked by his guards. It was to him that Bronn turned with a cursory salute.\r\nâ€Å"They await your command,” Lady Lysa said to her lord son.\r\nâ€Å"Fight!” the boy screamed, his arms dread as they clutched at his chair.\r\nSer Vardis swiveled, bringing up his heavy shield. Bronn turned to face him. Their swords rang together, once, twice, a testing. The sellsword backed off a step. The knight came after, holding his shield before him. He essay a slash, but Bronn jerked back, vindicatory out of reach, and the silver blade cut only air. Bronn circled to his right. Ser Vardis turned to follow, keeping his shield between them. The knight pressed onward, placing each foot carefully on the uneven ground. The sellsword gave way, a faint smile playacting over his lips. Ser Vardis attacked, slashing, but Bronn leapt away from him, hopping lightly over a low, moss-covered stone. Now the sellsword circled left, away from the shield, toward the knights unprotected side. Ser Vardis tried a hack at his legs, but he did not have the reach. Bronn danced farther to his left. Ser Vardis turned in place.\r\nâ€Å"The man is craven,” Lord Hunter declared. â€Å"Stand and fight, coward! ” separate voices echoed the sentiment.\r\nCatelyn looked to Ser Rodrik. Her master-at-arms gave a curt shake of his head. â€Å"He wants to make Ser Vardis chase him. The weight of armor and shield will tire even the strongest man.”\r\nShe had seen men practice at their swordplay near every day of her life, had viewed half a hundre d tourneys in her time, but this was something different and deadlier: a dance where the smallest misstep meant death. And as she watched, the retentiveness of another duel in another time came back to Catelyn Stark, as vivid as if it had been yesterday.\r\nThey met in the lower bailey of Riverrun. When Brandon saw that Petyr wore only helm and egis and mail, he took off most of his armor. Petyr had begged her for a respect he might wear, but she had turned him away. Her lord father promised her to Brandon Stark, and so it was to him that she gave her token, a tired of(p) blue handscarf she had embroidered with the leaping trout of Riverrun. As she pressed it into his hand, she pleaded with him. â€Å"He is only a foolish boy, but I have loved him like a brother. It would grieve me to see him die.” And her betrothed looked at her with the cool grey eye of a Stark and promised to spare the boy who loved her.\r\nThat fight was over almost as curtly as it began. Brandon was a man grown, and he litter Littlefinger all the way across the bailey and down the water stair, raining steel on him with every step, until the boy was staggering and bleeding from a dozen wounds. â€Å" production!” he called, more than once, but Petyr would only shake his head and fight on, grimly. When the river was lapping at their ankles, Brandon at last ended it, with a brutal backhand cut that bit through Petyrs rings and leather into the soft flesh below the ribs, so deep that Catelyn was accepted that the wound was mortal. He looked at her as he fell and murmured â€Å"Cat” as the bright blood came flowing out between his mailed fingers. She thought she had forgotten that.\r\nThat was the last time she had seen his face . . . until the day she was brought before him in Kings Landing.\r\nA fortnight passed before Littlefinger was strong enough to leave Riverrun, but her lord father forbade her to visit him in the tower where he lay abed. Lysa helped their m aester nurse him; she had been softer and shyer in those days. Edmure had called on him as well, but Petyr had sent him away. Her brother had acted as Brandons squire at the duel, and Littlefinger would not forgive that. As in truncated as he was strong enough to be moved, Lord Hoster Tully sent Petyr Baelish away in a closed litter, to finish his healing on the Fingers, upon the windswept jut of rock where hed been born.\r\nThe ringing clash of steel on steel jarred Catelyn back to the present. Ser Vardis was coming hard at Bronn, driving into him with shield and sword. The sellsword scrambled backward, checking each blow, stepping lithely over rock and root, his eyes never leave his foe. He was contiguouser, Catelyn saw; the knights silvered sword never came near to touching him, but his own ugly grey blade hacked a notch from Ser Vardiss shoulder plate.\r\nThe brief flurry of fighting ended as swiftly as it had begun when Bronn sidestepped and slid behind the statue of the we eping woman. Ser Vardis lunged at where he had been, striking a spark off the pale marble of Alyssas thigh.\r\nâ€Å"Theyre not fighting good, Mother,” the Lord of the Eyrie complained. â€Å"I want them to fight.”\r\nâ€Å"They will, sweet baby,” his mother soothed him. â€Å"The sellsword cant run all day.”\r\nSome of the lords on Lysas terrace were make wry jests as they refilled their wine cups, but across the garden, Tyrion Lannisters mismatched eyes watched the champions dance as if there were nothing else in the world.\r\nBronn came out from behind the statue hard and fast, still moving left, aiming a two-handed cut at the knights unshielded right side. Ser Vardis blocked, but clumsily, and the sellswords blade flashed upward at his head. Metal rang, and a falcons wing collapsed with a crunch. Ser Vardis took a half step back to brace himself, raised his shield. Oak chips flew as Bronns sword hacked at the wooden wall. The sellsword stepped left a gain, away from the shield, and caught Ser Vardis across the stomach, the razor edge of his blade release a bright gash when it bit into the knights plate.\r\nSer Vardis drove forward off his back foot, his own silver blade descending in a savage arc. Bronn slammed it by and danced away. The knight crashed into the weeping woman, rocking her on her plinth. Staggered, he stepped backward, his head turning this way and that as he searched for his foe. The fathead visor of his helm narrowed his vision.\r\nâ€Å"Behind you, ser!” Lord Hunter shouted, too late. Bronn brought his sword down with some(prenominal) hands, catching Ser Vardis in the elbow of his sword arm. The thin lobstered metal that protected the joint crunched. The knight grunted, turning, racking his weapon up. This time Bronn stood his ground. The swords flew at each other, and their steel song filled the garden and rang off the white towers of the Eyrie.\r\nâ€Å"Ser Vardis is hurt,” Ser Rodrik said, his voice grave.\r\nCatelyn did not need to be told; she had eyes, she could see the bright finger of blood running on the knights forearm, the wetness inside the elbow joint. Every parry was a little slower and a little lower than the one before. Ser Vardis turned his side to his foe, trying to use his shield to block instead, but Bronn slid around him, quick as a cat. The sellsword seemed to be getting stronger. His cuts were leaving their marks now. Deep shiny gashes gleamed all over the knights armor, on his right thigh, his beaked visor, crossing on his breastplate, a long one along the front line of his gorget. The moon-and-falcon rondel over Ser Vardiss right arm was shorn clean in half, hanging by its strap. They could hear his labored breath, rattling through the air holes in his visor.\r\nBlind with arrogance as they were, even the knights and lords of the Vale could see what was happening below them, yet her sister could not. â€Å"Enough, Ser Vardis!” Lady Lysa called down. â€Å"Finish him now, my baby is growing tired.”\r\nAnd it must be said of Ser Vardis Egen that he was true to his ladys command, even to the last. One moment he was reeling backward, half-crouched behind his scarred shield; the next he charged. The sudden blur rush caught Bronn off balance. Ser Vardis crashed into him and slammed the lip of his shield into the sellswords face. Almost, almost, Bronn mazed his feet . . . he staggered back, tripped over a rock, and caught hold of the weeping woman to keep his balance. Throwing aside his shield, Ser Vardis lurched after him, using both hands to raise his sword. His right arm was blood from elbow to fingers now, yet his last dreaded blow would have opened Bronn from neck to navel point . . . if the sellsword had stood to receive it.\r\nBut Bronn jerked back. Jon Arryns beautiful engraved silver sword glanced off the marble elbow of the weeping woman and snapped clean a third of the way up the blade. Bronn put h is shoulder into the statues back. The weathered analogy of Alyssa Arryn tottered and fell with a great crash, and Ser Vardis Egen went down beneath her.\r\nBronn was on him in a heartbeat, kicking what was left of his shattered rondel aside to expose the weak spot between arm and breastplate. Ser Vardis was lying on his side, pinned beneath the broken torso of the weeping woman. Catelyn comprehend the knight groan as the sellsword lifted his blade with both hands and drove it down and in with all his weight behind it, under the arm and through the ribs. Ser Vardis Egen shuddered and lay still.\r\nSilence hung over the Eyrie. Bronn yanked off his halfhelm and let it fall to the grass. His lip was smashed and bloody where the shield had caught him, and his coal-black hair was soaked with sweat. He spit out a broken tooth.\r\nâ€Å"Is it over, Mother?” the Lord of the Eyrie asked.\r\nNo, Catelyn wanted to tell him, its only now beginning.\r\nâ€Å"Yes,” Lysa said gluml y, her voice as frigidity and dead as the captain of her guard.\r\nâ€Å"Can I make the little man fly now?”\r\nAcross the garden, Tyrion Lannister got to his feet. â€Å"Not this little man,” he said. â€Å"This little man is going down in the white turnip hoist, thank you very much.”\r\nâ€Å"You defyâ€â€ Lysa began.\r\nâ€Å"I presume that House Arryn remembers its own words,” the Imp said. â€Å"As High as Honor.”\r\nâ€Å"You promised I could make him fly,” the Lord of the Eyrie screamed at his mother. He began to shake.\r\nLady Lysas face was colour with fury. â€Å"The gods have seen fit to proclaim him innocent, child. We have no choice but to free him.” She lifted her voice. â€Å"Guards. tax return my lord of Lannister and his . . . creature here out of my sight. come across them to the Bloody Gate and set them free. See that they have horses and supplies sufficient to reach the Trident, and make certain all their goods and weapons are returned to them. They shall need them on the high road.”\r\nâ€Å"The high road,” Tyrion Lannister said. Lysa allowed herself a faint, satisfied smile. It was another sort of death sentence, Catelyn realized. Tyrion Lannister must know that as well. Yet the dwarf favored Lady Arryn with a mocking bow. â€Å"As you command, my lady,” he said. â€Å"I believe we know the way.”\r\n'