The summons came in the hour before the dawn,
when the world was still and grey.
Alyn shook him roughly from his dreams and Ned stumbled into the
predawn chill, groggy from sleep, to find his horse saddled and the
king already mounted. Robert wore thick brown gloves and a heavy
fur cloak with a hood that covered his ears, and looked for all the
world like a bear sitting a horse. “Up, Stark!” he
roared. “Up, up! We have matters of state to
discuss.”
“By all means,” Ned said. “Come inside, Your
Grace.” Alyn lifted the flap of the tent.
“No, no, no,” Robert said. His breath steamed with
every word. “The camp is full of ears. Besides, I want to
ride out and taste this country of yours.” Ser Boros and Ser
Meryn waited behind him with a dozen guardsmen, Ned saw. There was
nothing to do but rub the sleep from his eyes, dress, and mount
up.
Robert set the pace, driving his huge black destrier hard as Ned
galloped along beside him, trying to keep up. He called out a
question as they rode, but the wind blew his words away, and the
king did not hear him. After that Ned rode in silence. They soon
left the kingsroad and took off across rolling plains dark with
mist. By then the guard had fallen back a small distance, safely
out of earshot, but still Robert would not slow.
Dawn broke as they crested a low ridge, and finally the king
pulled up. By then they were miles south of the main party. Robert
was flushed and exhilarated as Ned reined up beside him.
“Gods,” he swore, laughing, “it feels good to get
out and ride the way a man was meant to ride! I swear, Ned, this
creeping along is enough to drive a man mad.” He had never
been a patient man, Robert Baratheon. “That damnable
wheelhouse, the way it creaks and groans, climbing every bump in
the road as if it were a mountain . . . I promise you, if that
wretched thing breaks another axle, I’m going to burn it, and
Cersei can walk!”
Ned laughed. “I will gladly light the torch for
you.”
“Good man!” The king clapped him on the shoulder.
“I’ve half a mind to leave them all behind and just
keep going.”
A smile touched Ned’s lips. “I do believe you mean
it.”
“I do, I do,” the king said. “What do you say,
Ned? Just you and me, two vagabond knights on the kingsroad, our
swords at our sides and the gods know what in front of us, and
maybe a farmer’s daughter or a tavern wench to warm our beds
tonight.”
“Would that we could,” Ned said, “but we have
duties now, my liege . . . to the realm, to our children, I to my
lady wife and you to your queen. We are not the boys we
were.”
“You were never the boy you were,” Robert grumbled.
“More’s the pity. And yet there was that one time . . . what was her name, that common girl of yours? Becca? No, she was
one of mine, gods love her, black hair and these sweet big eyes,
you could drown in them. Yours was . . . Aleena? No. You told me
once. Was it Merryl? You know the one I mean, your bastard’s
mother?”
“Her name was Wylla,” Ned replied with cool
courtesy, “and I would sooner not speak of her.”
“Wylla. Yes.” The king grinned. “She must have
been a rare wench if she could make Lord Eddard Stark forget his
honor, even for an hour. You never told me what she looked like . . . ”
Ned’s mouth tightened in anger. “Nor will I. Leave
it be, Robert, for the love you say you bear me. I dishonored
myself and I dishonored Catelyn, in the sight of gods and
men.”
“Gods have mercy, you scarcely knew Catelyn.”
“I had taken her to wife. She was carrying my
child.”
“You are too hard on yourself, Ned. You always were. Damn
it, no woman wants Baelor the Blessed in her bed.” He slapped
a hand on his knee. “Well, I’ll not press you if you
feel so strong about it, though I swear, at times you’re so
prickly you ought to take the hedgehog as your sigil.”
The rising sun sent fingers of light through the pale white
mists of dawn. A wide plain spread out beneath them, bare and
brown, its flatness here and there relieved by long, low hummocks.
Ned pointed them out to his king. “The barrows of the First
Men.”
Robert frowned. “Have we ridden onto a
graveyard?”
“There are barrows everywhere in the north, Your
Grace,” Ned told him. “This land is old.”
“And cold,” Robert grumbled, pulling his cloak more
tightly around himself. The guard had reined up well behind them,
at the bottom of the ridge. “Well, I did not bring you out
here to talk of graves or bicker about your bastard. There was a
rider in the night, from Lord Varys in King’s Landing.
Here.” The king pulled a paper from his belt and handed it to
Ned.
Varys the eunuch was the king’s master of whisperers. He
served Robert now as he had once served Aerys Targaryen. Ned
unrolled the paper with trepidation, thinking of Lysa and her
terrible accusation, but the message did not concern Lady Arryn.
“What is the source for this information?”
“Do you remember Ser Jorah Mormont?”
“Would that I might forget him,” Ned said bluntly.
The Mormonts of Bear Island were an old house, proud and honorable,
but their lands were cold and distant and poor. Ser Jorah had tried
to swell the family coffers by selling some poachers to a Tyroshi
slaver. As the Mormonts were bannermen to the Starks, his crime had
dishonored the north. Ned had made the long journey west to Bear
Island, only to find when he arrived that Jorah had taken ship
beyond the reach of Ice and the king’s justice. Five years
had passed since then.
“Ser Jorah is now in Pentos, anxious to earn a royal
pardon that would allow him to return from exile,” Robert
explained. “Lord Varys makes good use of him.”
“So the slaver has become a spy,” Ned said with
distaste. He handed the letter back. “I would rather he
become a corpse.”
“Varys tells me that spies are more useful than
corpses,” Robert said. “Jorah aside, what do you make
of his report?”
“Daenerys Targaryen has wed some Dothraki horselord. What
of it? Shall we send her a wedding gift?”
The king frowned. “A knife, perhaps. A good sharp one, and
a bold man to wield it.”
Ned did not feign surprise; Robert’s hatred of the
Targaryens was a madness in him. He remembered the angry words they
had exchanged when Tywin Lannister had presented Robert with the
corpses of Rhaegar’s wife and children as a token of fealty.
Ned had named that murder; Robert called it war. When he had
protested that the young prince and princess were no more than
babes, his new-made king had replied, “I see no babes. Only
dragonspawn.” Not even Jon Arryn had been able to calm that
storm. Eddard Stark had ridden out that very day in a cold rage, to
fight the last battles of the war alone in the south. It had taken
another death to reconcile them; Lyanna’s death, and the
grief they had shared over her passing.
This time, Ned resolved to keep his temper. “Your Grace,
the girl is scarcely more than a child. You are no Tywin Lannister,
to slaughter innocents.” It was said that Rhaegar’s
little girl had cried as they dragged her from beneath her bed to
face the swords. The boy had been no more than a babe in arms, yet
Lord Tywin’s soldiers had torn him from his mother’s
breast and dashed his head against a wall.
“And how long will this one remain an innocent?”
Robert’s mouth grew hard. “This child will soon enough
spread her legs and start breeding more dragonspawn to plague
me.”
“Nonetheless,” Ned said, “the murder of
children . . . it would be vile . . . unspeakable . . . ”
“Unspeakable?” the king roared. “What Aerys
did to your brother Brandon was unspeakable. The way your lord
father died, that was unspeakable. And Rhaegar . . . how many times
do you think he raped your sister? How many hundreds of
times?” His voice had grown so loud that his horse whinnied
nervously beneath him. The king jerked the reins hard, quieting the
animal, and pointed an angry finger at Ned. “I will kill
every Targaryen I can get my hands on, until they are as dead as
their dragons, and then I will piss on their graves.”
Ned knew better than to defy him when the wrath was on him. If
the years had not quenched Robert’s thirst for revenge, no
words of his would help. “You can’t get your hands on
this one, can you?” he said quietly.
The king’s mouth twisted in a bitter grimace. “No,
gods be cursed. Some pox-ridden Pentoshi cheesemonger had her
brother and her walled up on his estate with pointy-hatted eunuchs
all around them, and now he’s handed them over to the
Dothraki. I should have had them both killed years ago, when it was
easy to get at them, but Jon was as bad as you. More fool I, I
listened to him.”
“Jon Arryn was a wise man and a good Hand.”
Robert snorted. The anger was leaving him as suddenly as it had
come. “This Khal Drogo is said to have a hundred thousand men
in his horde. What would Jon say to that?”
“He would say that even a million Dothraki are no threat
to the realm, so long as they remain on the other side of the
narrow sea,” Ned replied calmly. “The barbarians have no ships. They
hate and fear the open sea.”
The king shifted uncomfortably in his saddle. “Perhaps.
There are ships to be had in the Free Cities, though. I tell you,
Ned, I do not like this marriage. There are still those in the
Seven Kingdoms who call me Usurper. Do you forget how many houses
fought for Targaryen in the war? They bide their time for now, but
give them half a chance, they will murder me in my bed, and my sons
with me. If the beggar king crosses with a Dothraki horde at his
back, the traitors will join him.”
“He will not cross,” Ned promised. “And if by
some mischance he does, we will throw him back into the sea. Once
you choose a new Warden of the East—”
The king groaned. “For the last time, I will not name the
Arryn boy Warden. I know the boy is your nephew, but with
Targaryens climbing in bed with Dothraki, I would be mad to rest
one quarter of the realm on the shoulders of a sickly
child.”
Ned was ready for that. “Yet we still must have a Warden
of the East. If Robert Arryn will not do, name one of your
brothers. Stannis proved himself at the siege of Storm’s End,
surely.”
He let the name hang there for a moment. The king frowned and
said nothing. He looked uncomfortable.
“That is,” Ned finished quietly, watching,
“unless you have already promised the honor to
another.”
For a moment Robert had the grace to look startled. Just as
quickly, the look became annoyance. “What if I
have?”
“It’s Jaime Lannister, is it not?”
Robert kicked his horse back into motion and started down the
ridge toward the barrows. Ned kept pace with him. The king rode on,
eyes straight ahead. “Yes,” he said at last. A single
hard word to end the matter.
“Kingslayer,” Ned said. The rumors were true, then.
He rode on dangerous ground now, he knew. “An able and
courageous man, no doubt,” he said carefully, “but his
father is Warden of the West, Robert. In time Ser Jaime will
succeed to that honor. No one man should hold both East and
West.” He left unsaid his real concern; that the appointment
would put half the armies of the realm into the hands of
Lannisters.
“I will fight that battle when the enemy appears on the
field,” the king said stubbornly. “At the moment, Lord
Tywin looms eternal as Casterly Rock, so I doubt that Jaime will be
succeeding anytime soon. Don’t vex me about this, Ned, the
stone has been set.”
“Your Grace, may I speak frankly?”
“I seem unable to stop you,” Robert grumbled. They
rode through tall brown grasses.
“Can you trust Jaime Lannister?”
“He is my wife’s twin, a Sworn Brother of the
Kingsguard, his life and fortune and honor all bound to
mine.”
“As they were bound to Aerys Targaryen’s,” Ned
pointed out.
“Why should I mistrust him? He has done everything I have
ever asked of him. His sword helped win the throne I sit
on.” His sword helped taint the throne you sit on, Ned thought, but
he did not permit the words to pass his lips. “He swore a vow
to protect his king’s life with his own. Then he opened that
king’s throat with a sword.”
“Seven hells, someone had to kill Aerys!” Robert
said, reining his mount to a sudden halt beside an ancient barrow.
“If Jaime hadn’t done it, it would have been left for
you or me.”
“We were not Sworn Brothers of the Kingsguard,” Ned
said. The time had come for Robert to hear the whole truth, he
decided then and there. “Do you remember the Trident, Your
Grace?”
“I won my crown there. How should I forget it?”
“You took a wound from Rhaegar,” Ned reminded him.
“So when the Targaryen host broke and ran, you gave the
pursuit into my hands. The remnants of Rhaegar’s army fled
back to King’s Landing. We followed. Aerys was in the Red
Keep with several thousand loyalists. I expected to find the gates
closed to us.”
Robert gave an impatient shake of his head. “Instead you
found that our men had already taken the city. What of
it?”
“Not our men,” Ned said patiently. “Lannister
men. The lion of Lannister flew over the ramparts, not the crowned
stag. And they had taken the city by treachery.”
The war had raged for close to a year. Lords great and small had
flocked to Robert’s banners; others had remained loyal to
Targaryen. The mighty Lannisters of Casterly Rock, the Wardens of
the West, had remained aloof from the struggle, ignoring calls to
arms from both rebels and royalists. Aerys Targaryen must have
thought that his gods had answered his prayers when Lord Tywin
Lannister appeared before the gates of King’s Landing with an
army twelve thousand strong, professing loyalty. So the mad king
had ordered his last mad act. He had opened his city to the lions
at the gate.
“Treachery was a coin the Targaryens knew well,”
Robert said. The anger was building in him again. “Lannister
paid them back in kind. It was no less than they deserved. I shall
not trouble my sleep over it.”
“You were not there,” Ned said, bitterness in his
voice. Troubled sleep was no stranger to him. He had lived his lies
for fourteen years, yet they still haunted him at night.
“There was no honor in that conquest.”
“The Others take your honor!” Robert swore.
“What did any Targaryen ever know of honor? Go down into your
crypt and ask Lyanna about the dragon’s honor!”
“You avenged Lyanna at the Trident,” Ned said,
halting beside the king. Promise me, Ned, she had whispered.
“That did not bring her back.” Robert looked away,
off into the grey distance. “The gods be damned. It was a
hollow victory they gave me. A crown . . . it was the girl I prayed
them for. Your sister, safe . . . and mine again, as she was meant
to be. I ask you, Ned, what good is it to wear a crown? The gods
mock the prayers of kings and cowherds alike.”
“I cannot answer for the gods, Your Grace . . . only for
what I found when I rode into the throne room that day,” Ned
said. “Aerys was dead on the floor, drowned in his own blood.
His dragon skulls stared down from the walls. Lannister’s men
were everywhere. Jaime wore the white cloak of the Kingsguard over
his golden armor. I can see him still. Even his sword was gilded.
He was seated on the Iron Throne, high above his knights, wearing a
helm fashioned in the shape of a lion’s head. How he
glittered!”
“This is well known,” the king complained.
“I was still mounted. I rode the length of the hall in
silence, between the long rows of dragon skulls. It felt as though
they were watching me, somehow. I stopped in front of the throne,
looking up at him. His golden sword was across his legs, its edge
red with a king’s blood. My men were filling the room behind
me. Lannister’s men drew back. I never said a word. I looked
at him seated there on the throne, and I waited. At last Jaime
laughed and got up. He took off his helm, and he said to me,
‘Have no fear, Stark. I was only keeping it warm for our
friend Robert. It’s not a very comfortable seat, I’m
afraid.’ ”
The king threw back his head and roared. His laughter startled a
flight of crows from the tall brown grass. They took to the air in
a wild beating of wings. “You think I should mistrust
Lannister because he sat on my throne for a few moments?” He
shook with laughter again. “Jaime was all of seventeen, Ned.
Scarce more than a boy.”
“Boy or man, he had no right to that throne.”
“Perhaps he was tired,” Robert suggested.
“Killing kings is weary work. Gods know, there’s no
place else to rest your ass in that damnable room. And he spoke
truly, it is a monstrous uncomfortable chair. In more ways than
one.” The king shook his head. “Well, now I know Jaime’s dark sin, and the matter can be forgotten. I am
heartily sick of secrets and squabbles and matters of state, Ned.
It’s all as tedious as counting coppers. Come, let’s
ride, you used to know how. I want to feel the wind in my hair
again.” He kicked his horse back into motion and galloped up
over the barrow, raining earth down behind him.
For a moment Ned did not follow. He had run out of words, and he
was filled with a vast sense of helplessness. Not for the first
time, he wondered what he was doing here and why he had come. He
was no Jon Arryn, to curb the wildness of his king and teach him
wisdom. Robert would do what he pleased, as he always had, and
nothing Ned could say or do would change that. He belonged in
Winterfell. He belonged with Catelyn in her grief, and with
Bran.
A man could not always be where he belonged, though. Resigned,
Eddard Stark put his boots into his horse and set off after the
king.
The summons came in the hour before the dawn,
when the world was still and grey.
Alyn shook him roughly from his dreams and Ned stumbled into the
predawn chill, groggy from sleep, to find his horse saddled and the
king already mounted. Robert wore thick brown gloves and a heavy
fur cloak with a hood that covered his ears, and looked for all the
world like a bear sitting a horse. “Up, Stark!” he
roared. “Up, up! We have matters of state to
discuss.”
“By all means,” Ned said. “Come inside, Your
Grace.” Alyn lifted the flap of the tent.
“No, no, no,” Robert said. His breath steamed with
every word. “The camp is full of ears. Besides, I want to
ride out and taste this country of yours.” Ser Boros and Ser
Meryn waited behind him with a dozen guardsmen, Ned saw. There was
nothing to do but rub the sleep from his eyes, dress, and mount
up.
Robert set the pace, driving his huge black destrier hard as Ned
galloped along beside him, trying to keep up. He called out a
question as they rode, but the wind blew his words away, and the
king did not hear him. After that Ned rode in silence. They soon
left the kingsroad and took off across rolling plains dark with
mist. By then the guard had fallen back a small distance, safely
out of earshot, but still Robert would not slow.
Dawn broke as they crested a low ridge, and finally the king
pulled up. By then they were miles south of the main party. Robert
was flushed and exhilarated as Ned reined up beside him.
“Gods,” he swore, laughing, “it feels good to get
out and ride the way a man was meant to ride! I swear, Ned, this
creeping along is enough to drive a man mad.” He had never
been a patient man, Robert Baratheon. “That damnable
wheelhouse, the way it creaks and groans, climbing every bump in
the road as if it were a mountain . . . I promise you, if that
wretched thing breaks another axle, I’m going to burn it, and
Cersei can walk!”
Ned laughed. “I will gladly light the torch for
you.”
“Good man!” The king clapped him on the shoulder.
“I’ve half a mind to leave them all behind and just
keep going.”
A smile touched Ned’s lips. “I do believe you mean
it.”
“I do, I do,” the king said. “What do you say,
Ned? Just you and me, two vagabond knights on the kingsroad, our
swords at our sides and the gods know what in front of us, and
maybe a farmer’s daughter or a tavern wench to warm our beds
tonight.”
“Would that we could,” Ned said, “but we have
duties now, my liege . . . to the realm, to our children, I to my
lady wife and you to your queen. We are not the boys we
were.”
“You were never the boy you were,” Robert grumbled.
“More’s the pity. And yet there was that one time . . . what was her name, that common girl of yours? Becca? No, she was
one of mine, gods love her, black hair and these sweet big eyes,
you could drown in them. Yours was . . . Aleena? No. You told me
once. Was it Merryl? You know the one I mean, your bastard’s
mother?”
“Her name was Wylla,” Ned replied with cool
courtesy, “and I would sooner not speak of her.”
“Wylla. Yes.” The king grinned. “She must have
been a rare wench if she could make Lord Eddard Stark forget his
honor, even for an hour. You never told me what she looked like . . . ”
Ned’s mouth tightened in anger. “Nor will I. Leave
it be, Robert, for the love you say you bear me. I dishonored
myself and I dishonored Catelyn, in the sight of gods and
men.”
“Gods have mercy, you scarcely knew Catelyn.”
“I had taken her to wife. She was carrying my
child.”
“You are too hard on yourself, Ned. You always were. Damn
it, no woman wants Baelor the Blessed in her bed.” He slapped
a hand on his knee. “Well, I’ll not press you if you
feel so strong about it, though I swear, at times you’re so
prickly you ought to take the hedgehog as your sigil.”
The rising sun sent fingers of light through the pale white
mists of dawn. A wide plain spread out beneath them, bare and
brown, its flatness here and there relieved by long, low hummocks.
Ned pointed them out to his king. “The barrows of the First
Men.”
Robert frowned. “Have we ridden onto a
graveyard?”
“There are barrows everywhere in the north, Your
Grace,” Ned told him. “This land is old.”
“And cold,” Robert grumbled, pulling his cloak more
tightly around himself. The guard had reined up well behind them,
at the bottom of the ridge. “Well, I did not bring you out
here to talk of graves or bicker about your bastard. There was a
rider in the night, from Lord Varys in King’s Landing.
Here.” The king pulled a paper from his belt and handed it to
Ned.
Varys the eunuch was the king’s master of whisperers. He
served Robert now as he had once served Aerys Targaryen. Ned
unrolled the paper with trepidation, thinking of Lysa and her
terrible accusation, but the message did not concern Lady Arryn.
“What is the source for this information?”
“Do you remember Ser Jorah Mormont?”
“Would that I might forget him,” Ned said bluntly.
The Mormonts of Bear Island were an old house, proud and honorable,
but their lands were cold and distant and poor. Ser Jorah had tried
to swell the family coffers by selling some poachers to a Tyroshi
slaver. As the Mormonts were bannermen to the Starks, his crime had
dishonored the north. Ned had made the long journey west to Bear
Island, only to find when he arrived that Jorah had taken ship
beyond the reach of Ice and the king’s justice. Five years
had passed since then.
“Ser Jorah is now in Pentos, anxious to earn a royal
pardon that would allow him to return from exile,” Robert
explained. “Lord Varys makes good use of him.”
“So the slaver has become a spy,” Ned said with
distaste. He handed the letter back. “I would rather he
become a corpse.”
“Varys tells me that spies are more useful than
corpses,” Robert said. “Jorah aside, what do you make
of his report?”
“Daenerys Targaryen has wed some Dothraki horselord. What
of it? Shall we send her a wedding gift?”
The king frowned. “A knife, perhaps. A good sharp one, and
a bold man to wield it.”
Ned did not feign surprise; Robert’s hatred of the
Targaryens was a madness in him. He remembered the angry words they
had exchanged when Tywin Lannister had presented Robert with the
corpses of Rhaegar’s wife and children as a token of fealty.
Ned had named that murder; Robert called it war. When he had
protested that the young prince and princess were no more than
babes, his new-made king had replied, “I see no babes. Only
dragonspawn.” Not even Jon Arryn had been able to calm that
storm. Eddard Stark had ridden out that very day in a cold rage, to
fight the last battles of the war alone in the south. It had taken
another death to reconcile them; Lyanna’s death, and the
grief they had shared over her passing.
This time, Ned resolved to keep his temper. “Your Grace,
the girl is scarcely more than a child. You are no Tywin Lannister,
to slaughter innocents.” It was said that Rhaegar’s
little girl had cried as they dragged her from beneath her bed to
face the swords. The boy had been no more than a babe in arms, yet
Lord Tywin’s soldiers had torn him from his mother’s
breast and dashed his head against a wall.
“And how long will this one remain an innocent?”
Robert’s mouth grew hard. “This child will soon enough
spread her legs and start breeding more dragonspawn to plague
me.”
“Nonetheless,” Ned said, “the murder of
children . . . it would be vile . . . unspeakable . . . ”
“Unspeakable?” the king roared. “What Aerys
did to your brother Brandon was unspeakable. The way your lord
father died, that was unspeakable. And Rhaegar . . . how many times
do you think he raped your sister? How many hundreds of
times?” His voice had grown so loud that his horse whinnied
nervously beneath him. The king jerked the reins hard, quieting the
animal, and pointed an angry finger at Ned. “I will kill
every Targaryen I can get my hands on, until they are as dead as
their dragons, and then I will piss on their graves.”
Ned knew better than to defy him when the wrath was on him. If
the years had not quenched Robert’s thirst for revenge, no
words of his would help. “You can’t get your hands on
this one, can you?” he said quietly.
The king’s mouth twisted in a bitter grimace. “No,
gods be cursed. Some pox-ridden Pentoshi cheesemonger had her
brother and her walled up on his estate with pointy-hatted eunuchs
all around them, and now he’s handed them over to the
Dothraki. I should have had them both killed years ago, when it was
easy to get at them, but Jon was as bad as you. More fool I, I
listened to him.”
“Jon Arryn was a wise man and a good Hand.”
Robert snorted. The anger was leaving him as suddenly as it had
come. “This Khal Drogo is said to have a hundred thousand men
in his horde. What would Jon say to that?”
“He would say that even a million Dothraki are no threat
to the realm, so long as they remain on the other side of the
narrow sea,” Ned replied calmly. “The barbarians have no ships. They
hate and fear the open sea.”
The king shifted uncomfortably in his saddle. “Perhaps.
There are ships to be had in the Free Cities, though. I tell you,
Ned, I do not like this marriage. There are still those in the
Seven Kingdoms who call me Usurper. Do you forget how many houses
fought for Targaryen in the war? They bide their time for now, but
give them half a chance, they will murder me in my bed, and my sons
with me. If the beggar king crosses with a Dothraki horde at his
back, the traitors will join him.”
“He will not cross,” Ned promised. “And if by
some mischance he does, we will throw him back into the sea. Once
you choose a new Warden of the East—”
The king groaned. “For the last time, I will not name the
Arryn boy Warden. I know the boy is your nephew, but with
Targaryens climbing in bed with Dothraki, I would be mad to rest
one quarter of the realm on the shoulders of a sickly
child.”
Ned was ready for that. “Yet we still must have a Warden
of the East. If Robert Arryn will not do, name one of your
brothers. Stannis proved himself at the siege of Storm’s End,
surely.”
He let the name hang there for a moment. The king frowned and
said nothing. He looked uncomfortable.
“That is,” Ned finished quietly, watching,
“unless you have already promised the honor to
another.”
For a moment Robert had the grace to look startled. Just as
quickly, the look became annoyance. “What if I
have?”
“It’s Jaime Lannister, is it not?”
Robert kicked his horse back into motion and started down the
ridge toward the barrows. Ned kept pace with him. The king rode on,
eyes straight ahead. “Yes,” he said at last. A single
hard word to end the matter.
“Kingslayer,” Ned said. The rumors were true, then.
He rode on dangerous ground now, he knew. “An able and
courageous man, no doubt,” he said carefully, “but his
father is Warden of the West, Robert. In time Ser Jaime will
succeed to that honor. No one man should hold both East and
West.” He left unsaid his real concern; that the appointment
would put half the armies of the realm into the hands of
Lannisters.
“I will fight that battle when the enemy appears on the
field,” the king said stubbornly. “At the moment, Lord
Tywin looms eternal as Casterly Rock, so I doubt that Jaime will be
succeeding anytime soon. Don’t vex me about this, Ned, the
stone has been set.”
“Your Grace, may I speak frankly?”
“I seem unable to stop you,” Robert grumbled. They
rode through tall brown grasses.
“Can you trust Jaime Lannister?”
“He is my wife’s twin, a Sworn Brother of the
Kingsguard, his life and fortune and honor all bound to
mine.”
“As they were bound to Aerys Targaryen’s,” Ned
pointed out.
“Why should I mistrust him? He has done everything I have
ever asked of him. His sword helped win the throne I sit
on.” His sword helped taint the throne you sit on, Ned thought, but
he did not permit the words to pass his lips. “He swore a vow
to protect his king’s life with his own. Then he opened that
king’s throat with a sword.”
“Seven hells, someone had to kill Aerys!” Robert
said, reining his mount to a sudden halt beside an ancient barrow.
“If Jaime hadn’t done it, it would have been left for
you or me.”
“We were not Sworn Brothers of the Kingsguard,” Ned
said. The time had come for Robert to hear the whole truth, he
decided then and there. “Do you remember the Trident, Your
Grace?”
“I won my crown there. How should I forget it?”
“You took a wound from Rhaegar,” Ned reminded him.
“So when the Targaryen host broke and ran, you gave the
pursuit into my hands. The remnants of Rhaegar’s army fled
back to King’s Landing. We followed. Aerys was in the Red
Keep with several thousand loyalists. I expected to find the gates
closed to us.”
Robert gave an impatient shake of his head. “Instead you
found that our men had already taken the city. What of
it?”
“Not our men,” Ned said patiently. “Lannister
men. The lion of Lannister flew over the ramparts, not the crowned
stag. And they had taken the city by treachery.”
The war had raged for close to a year. Lords great and small had
flocked to Robert’s banners; others had remained loyal to
Targaryen. The mighty Lannisters of Casterly Rock, the Wardens of
the West, had remained aloof from the struggle, ignoring calls to
arms from both rebels and royalists. Aerys Targaryen must have
thought that his gods had answered his prayers when Lord Tywin
Lannister appeared before the gates of King’s Landing with an
army twelve thousand strong, professing loyalty. So the mad king
had ordered his last mad act. He had opened his city to the lions
at the gate.
“Treachery was a coin the Targaryens knew well,”
Robert said. The anger was building in him again. “Lannister
paid them back in kind. It was no less than they deserved. I shall
not trouble my sleep over it.”
“You were not there,” Ned said, bitterness in his
voice. Troubled sleep was no stranger to him. He had lived his lies
for fourteen years, yet they still haunted him at night.
“There was no honor in that conquest.”
“The Others take your honor!” Robert swore.
“What did any Targaryen ever know of honor? Go down into your
crypt and ask Lyanna about the dragon’s honor!”
“You avenged Lyanna at the Trident,” Ned said,
halting beside the king. Promise me, Ned, she had whispered.
“That did not bring her back.” Robert looked away,
off into the grey distance. “The gods be damned. It was a
hollow victory they gave me. A crown . . . it was the girl I prayed
them for. Your sister, safe . . . and mine again, as she was meant
to be. I ask you, Ned, what good is it to wear a crown? The gods
mock the prayers of kings and cowherds alike.”
“I cannot answer for the gods, Your Grace . . . only for
what I found when I rode into the throne room that day,” Ned
said. “Aerys was dead on the floor, drowned in his own blood.
His dragon skulls stared down from the walls. Lannister’s men
were everywhere. Jaime wore the white cloak of the Kingsguard over
his golden armor. I can see him still. Even his sword was gilded.
He was seated on the Iron Throne, high above his knights, wearing a
helm fashioned in the shape of a lion’s head. How he
glittered!”
“This is well known,” the king complained.
“I was still mounted. I rode the length of the hall in
silence, between the long rows of dragon skulls. It felt as though
they were watching me, somehow. I stopped in front of the throne,
looking up at him. His golden sword was across his legs, its edge
red with a king’s blood. My men were filling the room behind
me. Lannister’s men drew back. I never said a word. I looked
at him seated there on the throne, and I waited. At last Jaime
laughed and got up. He took off his helm, and he said to me,
‘Have no fear, Stark. I was only keeping it warm for our
friend Robert. It’s not a very comfortable seat, I’m
afraid.’ ”
The king threw back his head and roared. His laughter startled a
flight of crows from the tall brown grass. They took to the air in
a wild beating of wings. “You think I should mistrust
Lannister because he sat on my throne for a few moments?” He
shook with laughter again. “Jaime was all of seventeen, Ned.
Scarce more than a boy.”
“Boy or man, he had no right to that throne.”
“Perhaps he was tired,” Robert suggested.
“Killing kings is weary work. Gods know, there’s no
place else to rest your ass in that damnable room. And he spoke
truly, it is a monstrous uncomfortable chair. In more ways than
one.” The king shook his head. “Well, now I know Jaime’s dark sin, and the matter can be forgotten. I am
heartily sick of secrets and squabbles and matters of state, Ned.
It’s all as tedious as counting coppers. Come, let’s
ride, you used to know how. I want to feel the wind in my hair
again.” He kicked his horse back into motion and galloped up
over the barrow, raining earth down behind him.
For a moment Ned did not follow. He had run out of words, and he
was filled with a vast sense of helplessness. Not for the first
time, he wondered what he was doing here and why he had come. He
was no Jon Arryn, to curb the wildness of his king and teach him
wisdom. Robert would do what he pleased, as he always had, and
nothing Ned could say or do would change that. He belonged in
Winterfell. He belonged with Catelyn in her grief, and with
Bran.
A man could not always be where he belonged, though. Resigned,
Eddard Stark put his boots into his horse and set off after the
king.