The Kingsroad

The party escorting Eddard Stark toward King's Landing stops to rest at a roadside inn. While two of the young nobles in the group walk along a nearby river, they come across the youngest Stark girl sparring with sticks alongside a butcher's son. The dare that follows goes wrong: the boy ends up cut, the girl answers with her fists, and when the young noble tries to strike back at her, it's her direwolf that bites him and sends him running with a bloodied arm.

Fearing punishment, the girl throws the noble's sword into the river and hides in the woods with her wolf until nightfall. What the injured boy tells the court afterward is a different story: he accuses the butcher's son, the girl, and the wolf of attacking him unprovoked. His betrothed, pressed to speak, can't quite bring herself to contradict him, though she doesn't back his account either.

The king, furious to learn his son was disarmed by a little girl, leaves the punishment to each father. But before he rides on, his wife demands the wolf responsible pay with its life. Since the true culprit has fled, it's the other wolf of the house — the one that bit no one — who ends up condemned. Eddard Stark, unable to talk the king out of it, takes the task on himself. On his way there, he crosses paths with the prince's bodyguard, who is dragging the butcher's son's body behind him.