The Red Reception - a prophecy

[Melifeather]

We've endured the Starks getting their sacks kicked - five books thus far - until finally we have ADWD chapter 29, a Davos POV and a bright beacon of hope promising to navigate us safely into the port of White Harbor. There we receive assurances from a very fat man - is this Lord-too-fat-to-sit-a-horse "George" assuring us that we will get a satisfactory revenge on the Boltons and Freys? Lets examine the evidence:

First of all, Davos’s cell in the Wolf’s Den was quite comfortable:
 

  The sounds coming through the door were faint and muffled. Davos rose and paced his cell. As cells went, it was large and queerly comfortable. He suspected it might once have been some lordling’s bedchamber. It was thrice the size of his captain’s cabin on Black Bessa, and even larger than the cabin Salladhor Saan enjoyed on his Valyrian. Though its only window had been bricked in years before, one wall still boasted a hearth big enough to hold a kettle, and there was an actual privy built into a corner nook. The floor was made of warped planks full of splinters, and his sleeping pallet smelled of mildew, but those discomforts were mild compared to what Davos had expected. 

  The food had come as a surprise as well. In place of gruel and stale bread and rotten meat, the usual dungeon fare, his keepers brought him fresh-caught fish, bread still warm from the oven, spiced mutton, turnips, carrots, even crabs.Garth was none too pleased by that. “The dead should not eat better than the living,” he complained, more than once. Davos had furs to keep him warm by night, wood to feed his fire, clean clothing, a greasy tallow candle. When he asked for paper, quill, and ink, Therry brought them the next day. When he asked for a book, so he might keep at his reading, Therry turned up with The Seven-Pointed Star.
 

 

 

  He knew there were true dungeons down in the castle cellars— oubliettes and torture chambers and dank pits where huge black rats scrabbled in the darkness. His gaolers claimed all of them were unoccupied at present. “Only us here, Onion,” Ser Bartimus had told him.
 

 

 

  He was still hunched over the letters when he heard the sound of iron keys rattling on a ring. Half a heartbeat later, the door to his cell came swinging open. The man who stepped through the door was not one of his gaolers. He was tall and haggard, with a deeply lined face and a shock of grey-brown hair. A longsword hung from his hip, and his deep-dyed scarlet cloak was fastened at the shoulder with a heavy silver brooch in the shape of a mailed fist. “Lord Seaworth,” he said, “we do not have much time. Please, come with me.” 

  Davos eyed the stranger warily. The “please” confused him. Men about to lose their heads and hands were not oft accorded such courtesies. “Who are you?” 

  “Robett Glover, if it please, my lord.” 

  “Glover. Your seat was Deepwood Motte.” 

  “My brother Galbart’s seat. It was and is, thanks to your King Stannis. He has taken Deepwood back from the iron bitch who stole it and offers to restore it to its rightful owners. Much and more has happened whilst you have been confined within these walls, Lord Davos. Moat Cailin has fallen, and Roose Bolton has returned to the north with Ned Stark’s younger daughter. A host of Freys came with him. Bolton has sent forth ravens, summoning all the lords of the north to Barrowton. He demands homage and hostages … and witnesses to the wedding of Arya Stark and his bastard Ramsay Snow, by which match the Boltons mean to lay claim to Winterfell. Now, will you come with me, or no?”

  “What choice do I have, my lord? Come with you, or remain with Garth and Lady Lu?” 

  “Who is Lady Lu? One of the washerwomen?” Glover was growing impatient. “All will be explained if you will come.” 

  Davos rose to his feet. “If I should die, I beseech my lord to see that my letters are delivered.” 

  “You have my word on that … though if you die, it will not be at Glover’s hands, nor Lord Wyman’s. Quickly now, with me.”
 

 

Robett took Davos through many cellars and tunnels, and pushed on a wall that turned to reveal a long tunnel and then a flight of stairs…
 

  “Where are we?” asked Davos as they climbed. His words echoed faintly though the darkness. 

  “The steps beneath the steps. The passage runs beneath the Castle Stair up to the New Castle. A secret way. It would not do for you to be seen, my lord. You are supposed to be dead.”
 

 

 

  “Please sit.” Lord Manderly was richly garbed. His velvet doublet was a soft blue-green, embroidered with golden thread at hem and sleeves and collar. His mantle was ermine, pinned at the shoulder with a golden trident. “Are you hungry?” 

  “No, my lord. Your gaolers have fed me well.” 

  “There is wine, if you have a thirst.” 

  “I will treat with you, my lord. My king commanded that of me. I do not have to drink with you.” 

  Lord Wyman sighed. “I have treated you most shamefully, I know. I had my reasons, but … please, sit and drink, I beg you. Drink to my boy’s safe return. Wylis, my eldest son and heir. He is home. That is the welcoming feast you hear. In the Merman’s Court they are eating lamprey pie and venison with roasted chestnuts. Wynafryd is dancing with the Frey she is to marry. The other Freys are raising cups of wine to toast our friendship.” 

  Beneath the music, Davos could hear the murmur of many voices, the clatter of cups and platters. He said nothing. 

  “I have just come from the high table,” Lord Wyman went on. “I have eaten too much, as ever, and all White Harbor knows my bowels are bad. My friends of Frey will not question a lengthy visit to the privy, we hope.” He turned his cup over. “There. You will drink and I will not. Sit. Time is short, and there is much we need to say. Robett, wine for the Hand, if you will be so good. Lord Davos, you will not know, but you are dead.” 

  Robett Glover filled a wine cup and offered it to Davos. He took it, sniffed it, drank. “How did I die, if I may ask?” 

  “By the axe. Your head and hands were mounted above the Seal Gate, with your face turned so your eyes looked out across the harbor. By now you are well rotted, though we dipped your head in tar before we set it upon the spike…
 

 

 

  …My lord, I bear you no ill will. The rancor I showed you in the Merman’s Court was a mummer’s farce put on to please our friends of Frey.”
 

 

 

  “My lord should take up a life of mummery,” said Davos. “You and yours were most convincing. Your good-daughter seemed to want me dead most earnestly, and the little girl …” 

  “Wylla.” Lord Wyman smiled. “Did you see how brave she was? Even when I threatened to have her tongue out, she reminded me of the debt White Harbor owes to the Starks of Winterfell, a debt that can never be repaid. Wylla spoke from the heart, as did Lady Leona. Forgive her if you can, my lord. She is a foolish, frightened woman, and Wylis is her life. Not every man has it in him to be Prince Aemon the Dragonknight or Symeon Star-Eyes, and not every woman can be as brave as my Wylla and her sister Wynafryd … who did know, yet played her own part fearlessly.

  “When treating with liars, even an honest man must lie. I did not dare defy King’s Landing so long as my last living son remained a captive. Lord Tywin Lannister wrote me himself to say that he had Wylis. If I would have him freed unharmed, he told me, I must repent my treason, yield my city, declare my loyalty to the boy king on the Iron Throne … and bend my knee to Roose Bolton, his Warden of the North. Should I refuse, Wylis would die a traitor’s death, White Harbor would be stormed and sacked, and my people would suffer the same fate as the Reynes of Castamere. 

  “I am fat, and many think that makes me weak and foolish. Mayhaps Tywin Lannister was one such. I sent him back a raven to say that I would bend my knee and open my gates after my son was returned, but not before. There the matter stood when Tywin died. Afterward the Freys turned up with Wendel’s bones … to make a peace and seal it with a marriage pact, they claimed, but I was not about to give them what they wanted until I had Wylis, safe and whole, and they were not about to give me Wylis until I proved my loyalty. Your arrival gave me the means to do that. That was the reason for the discourtesy I showed you in the Merman’s Court, and for the head and hands rotting above the Seal Gate.”
 

 

 

  “Soon I must return to the feast to toast my friends of Frey,” Manderly continued. “They watch me, ser. Day and night their eyes are on me, noses sniffing for some whiff of treachery. You saw them, the arrogant Ser Jared and his nephew Rhaegar, that smirking worm who wears a dragon’s name. Behind them both stands Symond, clinking coins. That one has bought and paid for several of my servants and two of my knights. One of his wife’s handmaids has found her way into the bed of my own fool. If Stannis wonders that my letters say so little, it is because I dare not even trust my maester. Theomore is all head and no heart. You heard him in my hall. Maesters are supposed to put aside old loyalties when they don their chains, but I cannot forget that Theomore was born a Lannister of Lannisport and claims some distant kinship to the Lannisters of Casterly Rock. Foes and false friends are all around me, Lord Davos. They infest my city like roaches, and at night I feel them crawling over me.” The fat man’s fingers coiled into a fist, and all his chins trembled. “My son Wendel came to the Twins a guest. He ate Lord Walder’s bread and salt, and hung his sword upon the wall to feast with friends. And they murdered him. Murdered, I say, and may the Freys choke upon their fables. I drink with Jared, jape with Symond, promise Rhaegar the hand of my own beloved granddaughter … but never think that means I have forgotten. The north remembers, Lord Davos. The north remembers, and the mummer’s farce is almost done. My son is home.”

  Something about the way Lord Wyman said that chilled Davos to the bone. “If it is justice that you want, my lord, look to King Stannis. No man is more just.” 

  Robett Glover broke in to add, “Your loyalty does you honor, my lord, but Stannis Baratheon remains your king, not our own.” 

  “Your own king is dead,” Davos reminded them, “murdered at the Red Wedding beside Lord Wyman’s son.” 

  “The Young Wolf is dead,” Manderly allowed, “but that brave boy was not Lord Eddard’s only son. Robett, bring the lad.” 

  “At once, my lord.” Glover slipped out the door. 

  The lad? Was it possible that one of Robb Stark’s brothers had survived the ruin of Winterfell? Did Manderly have a Stark heir hidden away in his castle? A found boy or a feigned boy? The north would rise for either, he suspected … but Stannis Baratheon would never make common cause with an imposter.
 

 

Robett brings in Wex - the Ironborn mute that was Theon’s squire, and knows that Bran and Rickon were not captured and killed. Lord Wyman knows the same tales that Davos has heard, but he corrects it all with the truth, including that Theon is still alive and that Ramsay Bolton is the bastard that put Winterfell to the sword. He also tells Davos about Ramsay’s sport of hunting maids through the woods.
 

  Davos paled. “Gods be good. How could any man—” 

  “The evil is in his blood,” said Robett Glover. “He is a bastard born of rape. A Snow, no matter what the boy king says.” 

  “Was ever snow so black?” asked Lord Wyman. “Ramsay took Lord Hornwood’s lands by forcibly wedding his widow, then locked her in a tower and forgot her. It is said she ate her own fingers in her extremity … and the Lannister notion of king’s justice is to reward her killer with Ned Stark’s little girl.” 

  “The Boltons have always been as cruel as they were cunning, but this one seems a beast in human skin,” said Glover. 

  The Lord of White Harbor leaned forward. “The Freys are no better. They speak of wargs and skinchangers and assert that it was Robb Stark who slew my Wendel. The arrogance of it! They do not expect the north to believe their lies, not truly, but they think we must pretend to believe or die. Roose Bolton lies about his part in the Red Wedding, and his bastard lies about the fall of Winterfell. And yet so long as they held Wylis I had no choice but to eat all this excrement and praise the taste.” 

  “And now, my lord?” asked Davos. 

  He had hoped to hear Lord Wyman say, And now I shall declare for King Stannis, but instead the fat man smiled an odd, twinkling smile and said, “And now I have a wedding to attend. I am too fat to sit a horse, as any man with eyes can plainly see. As a boy I loved to ride, and as a young man I handled a mount well enough to win some small acclaim in the lists, but those days are done. My body has become a prison more dire than the Wolf’s Den. Even so, I must go to Winterfell. Roose Bolton wants me on my knees, and beneath the velvet courtesy he shows the iron mail. I shall go by barge and litter, attended by a hundred knights and my good friends from the Twins. The Freys came here by sea. They have no horses with them, so I shall present each of them with a palfrey as a guest gift. Do hosts still give guest gifts in the south?” 

  “Some do, my lord. On the day their guest departs.” 

  “Perhaps you understand, then.” Wyman Manderly lurched ponderously to his feet. “I have been building warships for more than a year. Some you saw, but there are as many more hidden up the White Knife. Even with the losses I have suffered, I still command more heavy horse than any other lord north of the Neck. My walls are strong, and my vaults are full of silver. Oldcastle and Widow’s Watch will take their lead from me. My bannermen include a dozen petty lords and a hundred landed knights. I can deliver King Stannis the allegiance of all the lands east of the White Knife, from Widow’s Watch and Ramsgate to the Sheepshead Hills and the headwaters of the Broken Branch. All this I pledge to do if you will meet my price.” 

  “I can bring your terms to the king, but—” 

  Lord Wyman cut him off. “If you will meet my price, I said. Not Stannis. It’s not a king I need but a smuggler.” 

  Robett Glover took up the tale. “We may never know all that happened at Winterfell, when Ser Rodrik Cassel tried to take the castle back from Theon Greyjoy’s ironmen. The Bastard of Bolton claims that Greyjoy murdered Ser Rodrik during a parley. Wex says no. Until he learns more letters we will never know half the truth … but he came to us knowing yes and no, and those can go a long way once you find the right questions.”

  “It was the Bastard who murdered Ser Rodrik and the men of Winterfell,” said Lord Wyman. “He slew Greyjoy’s ironmen as well. Wex saw men cut down trying to yield. When we asked how he escaped, he took a chunk of chalk and drew a tree with a face.” 

  Davos thought about that. “The old gods saved him?” 

  “After a fashion. He climbed the heart tree and hid himself amongst the leaves. Bolton’s men searched the godswood twice and killed the men they found there, but none thought to clamber up into the trees. Is that how it happened, Wex?” 

  The boy flipped up Glover’s dagger, caught it, nodded. 

  Glover said, “He stayed up in the tree a long time. He slept amongst the branches, not daring to descend. Finally he heard voices down beneath him.” 

  “The voices of the dead,” said Wyman Manderly. 

  Wex held up five fingers, tapped each one with the dagger, then folded four away and tapped the last again. 

  “Six of them,” asked Davos. “There were six.” 

  “Two of them Ned Stark’s murdered sons.” 

  “How could a mute tell you that?” 

  “With chalk. He drew two boys … and two wolves.” 

  “The lad is ironborn, so he thought it best not to show himself,” said Glover. “He listened. The six did not linger long amongst the ruins of Winterfell. Four went one way, two another. Wex stole after the two, a woman and a boy. He must have stayed downwind, so the wolf would not catch his scent.” 

  “He knows where they went,” Lord Wyman said. 

  Davos understood. “You want the boy.” 

  “Roose Bolton has Lord Eddard’s daughter. To thwart him White Harbor must have Ned’s son … and the direwolf. The wolf will prove the boy is who we say he is, should the Dreadfort attempt to deny him. That is my price, Lord Davos. Smuggle me back my liege lord, and I will take Stannis Baratheon as my king.”