Chapter 2: Southward, Into Civilization

The party departed Wintermere Hall on a Tuesday, which Catelyn had selected with the practical fatalism of a woman who, having concluded that no day was auspicious, declined to waste a perfectly serviceable one. The courtyard was grey and purposeful at six o'clock in the morning, the frost sitting on the cobblestones with its customary northern authority, and the three direwolves — Ghost, Lady, and the one Aria had named Needle after an argument nobody had won — stood at the courtyard wall and watched the proceedings with an expression of collective assessment that Edwyn found, if he was honest, somewhat unnerving.

He was not, as a rule, a man who assigned significance to the behaviour of animals. He made an exception for the direwolves, and then told himself he hadn't.

The luggage had been loaded twice. The first loading had been conducted by Edwyn's steward Aldric, who had arranged everything with commendable efficiency. The second loading had been necessitated by the discovery, during a routine inspection, of a sword wrapped in Aria's third-best riding cloak and nestled between two trunks of household linens. The sword was confiscated and placed in the weapons case with the other arms, which was locked.