Battle of Oxcross

After crushing the enemy at the Whispering Wood and the Camps, Robb Stark and Brynden Tully weigh a different move: carrying the war into the westerlands while the bulk of Lannister strength stays bogged down in the riverlands. Pull troops back to guard the west and King's Landing sits undefended; leave the west alone and the north burns it at will.

Tywin sets his cousin Stafford Lannister to raise a fresh army. The recruits he gathers barely know one end of a spear from the other, and he drills them near Oxcross, unhurried, sure the fighting is far away.

The Stark-Tully cavalry crosses into the west along a goat path Grey Wind finds winding down a ravine — narrow, stony, passable only single file, but out of sight of the watchers posted at Golden Tooth. Nobody at the castle sees them go by.

Stafford assumes his own land keeps him safe and posts barely any sentries. At night Brynden Tully's vanguard silences them before the alarm can be raised, and Robb's main force falls on a sleeping camp.

The attack cuts riders off from their horses, and Robb turns the wolf loose among them; even the best-trained mounts panic and trample their own masters. The green troops run, throwing down their weapons; Grey Wind kills half a dozen men on his own. Stafford dies chasing his horse, run through by Rickard Karstark's lance, and Stevron Frey, Lord Walder's heir, takes a wound that kills him soon after.

Among those first reported dead or missing — later found to be prisoners instead — are Lymond Vikary, Roland Crakehall and Antario Jast; the northmen also take Martyn Lannister and more than a hundred and fifty soldiers.

The survivors fall back on Lannisport, where Daven Lannister — Stafford's son and a far steadier soldier — starts rebuilding a force. Robb doesn't stop: he sacks Ashemark while Galbart Glover and Rickard Karstark raid the coast, Maege Mormont drives thousands of head of cattle back toward the riverlands, and the Greatjon takes the gold at Castamere, Nunn's Deep and the Pendric Hills.

Word spreads among Stafford's men that the old gods of the north march with Robb and that the direwolves were sent to the Starks on purpose. Some say the king had Stafford beheaded and threw the head to his wolf to eat. Rymund the Rhymer sets it all to a song, 'The Wolf in the Night.'