Through the high narrow windows of the Red
Keep’s cavernous throne room, the light of sunset spilled
across the floor, laying dark red stripes upon the walls where the
heads of dragons had once hung. Now the stone was covered with
hunting tapestries, vivid with greens and browns and blues, and yet
still it seemed to Ned Stark that the only color in the hall was
the red of blood.
He sat high upon the immense ancient seat of Aegon the
Conqueror, an ironwork monstrosity of spikes and jagged edges and
grotesquely twisted metal. It was, as Robert had warned him, a
hellishly uncomfortable chair, and never more so than now, with his
shattered leg throbbing more sharply every minute. The metal
beneath him had grown harder by the hour, and the fanged steel
behind made it impossible to lean back. A king should never sit
easy, Aegon the Conqueror had said, when he commanded his armorers
to forge a great seat from the swords laid down by his enemies.
Damn Aegon for his arrogance, Ned thought sullenly, and damn Robert
and his hunting as well.
“You are quite certain these were more than
brigands?” Varys asked softly from the council table beneath
the throne. Grand Maester Pycelle stirred uneasily beside him,
while Littlefinger toyed with a pen. They were the only councillors
in attendance. A white hart had been sighted in the kingswood, and
Lord Renly and Ser Barristan had joined the king to hunt it, along
with Prince Joffrey, Sandor Clegane, Balon Swann, and half the court. So Ned must needs sit the Iron
Throne in his absence.
At least he could sit. Save the council, the rest must stand
respectfully, or kneel. The petitioners clustered near the tall
doors, the knights and high lords and ladies beneath the
tapestries, the smallfolk in the gallery, the mailed guards in
their cloaks, gold or grey: all stood.
The villagers were kneeling: men, women, and children, alike
tattered and bloody, their faces drawn by fear. The three knights
who had brought them here to bear witness stood behind them.
“Brigands, Lord Varys?” Ser Raymun Darry’s
voice dripped scorn. “Oh, they were brigands, beyond a doubt.
Lannister brigands.”
Ned could feel the unease in the hall, as high lords and
servants alike strained to listen. He could not pretend to
surprise. The west had been a tinderbox since Catelyn had seized
Tyrion Lannister. Both Riverrun and Casterly Rock had called their
banners, and armies were massing in the pass below the Golden
Tooth. It had only been a matter of time until the blood began to
flow. The sole question that remained was how best to stanch the
wound.
Sad-eyed Ser Karyl Vance, who would have been handsome but for
the winestain birthmark that discolored his face, gestured at the
kneeling villagers. “This is all the remains of the holdfast
of Sherrer, Lord Eddard. The rest are dead, along with the people
of Wendish Town and the Mummer’s Ford.”
“Rise,” Ned commanded the villagers. He never
trusted what a man told him from his knees. “All of you,
up.”
In ones and twos, the holdfast of Sherrer struggled to its feet.
One ancient needed to be helped, and a young girl in a bloody dress
stayed on her knees, staring blankly at Ser Arys Oakheart, who
stood by the foot of the throne in the white armor of the
Kingsguard, ready to protect and defend the king . . . or, Ned
supposed, the King’s Hand.
“Joss,” Ser Raymun Darry said to a plump balding man
in a brewer’s apron. “Tell the Hand what happened at
Sherrer.”
Joss nodded. “If it please His Grace—”
“His Grace is hunting across the Blackwater,” Ned
said, wondering how a man could live his whole life a few days ride
from the Red Keep and still have no notion what his king looked
like. Ned was clad in a white linen doublet with the direwolf of
Stark on the breast; his black wool cloak was fastened at the
collar by his silver hand of office. Black and white and grey, all
the shades of truth. “I am Lord Eddard Stark, the
King’s Hand. Tell me who you are and what you know of these
raiders.”
“I keep . . . I kept . . . I kept an alehouse,
m’lord, in Sherrer, by the stone bridge. The finest ale south
of the Neck, everyone said so, begging your pardons, m’lord.
It’s gone now like all the rest, m’lord. They come and
drank their fill and spilled the rest before they fired my roof,
and they would of spilled my blood too, if they’d caught me.
M’lord.”
“They burnt us out,” a farmer beside him said.
“Come riding in the dark, up from the south, and fired the
fields and the houses alike, killing them as tried to stop them.
They weren’t no raiders, though, m’lord. They had no mind to
steal our stock, not these, they butchered my milk cow where she
stood and left her for the flies and the crows.”
“They rode down my ’prentice boy,” said a
squat man with a smith’s muscles and a bandage around his
head. He had put on his finest clothes to come to court, but his
breeches were patched, his cloak travel-stained and dusty.
“Chased him back and forth across the fields on their horses,
poking at him with their lances like it was a game, them laughing
and the boy stumbling and screaming till the big one pierced him
clean through.”
The girl on her knees craned her head up at Ned, high above her
on the throne. “They killed my mother too, Your Grace. And
they . . . they . . . ” Her voice trailed off, as if she had
forgotten what she was about to say. She began to sob.
Ser Raymun Darry took up the tale. “At Wendish Town, the
people sought shelter in their holdfast, but the walls were
timbered. The raiders piled straw against the wood and burnt them
all alive. When the Wendish folk opened their gates to flee the
fire, they shot them down with arrows as they came running out,
even women with suckling babes.”
“Oh, dreadful,” murmured Varys. “How cruel can
men be?”
“They would of done the same for us, but the Sherrer
holdfast’s made of stone,” Joss said. “Some
wanted to smoke us out, but the big one said there was riper fruit
upriver, and they made for the Mummer’s Ford.”
Ned could feel cold steel against his fingers as he leaned
forward. Between each finger was a blade, the points of twisted
swords fanning out like talons from arms of the throne. Even after
three centuries, some were still sharp enough to cut. The Iron
Throne was full of traps for the unwary. The songs said it had
taken a thousand blades to make it, heated white-hot in the furnace
breath of Balerion the Black Dread. The hammering had taken
fifty-nine days. The end of it was this hunched black beast made of
razor edges and barbs and ribbons of sharp metal; a chair that
could kill a man, and had, if the stories could be believed.
What Eddard Stark was doing sitting there he would never
comprehend, yet there he sat, and these people looked to him for
justice. “What proof do you have that these were
Lannisters?” he asked, trying to keep his fury under control.
“Did they wear crimson cloaks or fly a lion
banner?”
“Even Lannisters are not so blind stupid as that,”
Ser Marq Piper snapped. He was a swaggering bantam rooster of a
youth, too young and too hot-blooded for Ned’s taste, though
a fast friend of Catelyn’s brother, Edmure Tully.
“Every man among them was mounted and mailed, my
lord,” Ser Karyl answered calmly. “They were armed with
steel-tipped lances and longswords, with battle-axes for the
butchering.” He gestured toward one of the ragged survivors.
“You. Yes, you, no one’s going to hurt you. Tell the
Hand what you told me.”
The old man bobbed his head. “Concerning their
horses,” he said, “it were warhorses they rode. Many a
year I worked in old Ser Willum’s stables, so I knows the
difference. Not a one of these ever pulled a plow, gods bear
witness if I’m wrong.”
“Well-mounted brigands,” observed Littlefinger.
“Perhaps they stole the horses from the last place they
raided.”
“How many men were there in this raiding party?” Ned
asked.
“A hundred, at the least,” Joss answered, in the
same instant as the bandaged smith said, “Fifty,” and
the grandmother behind him, “Hunnerds and hunnerds, m’lord, an
army they was.”
“You are more right than you know, goodwoman,” Lord
Eddard told her. “You say they flew no banners. What of the
armor they wore? Did any of you note ornaments or decorations,
devices on shield or helm?”
The brewer, Joss, shook his head. “It grieves me, m’lord,
but no, the armor they showed us was plain, only . . . the one who
led them, he was armored like the rest, but there was no mistaking
him all the same. It was the size of him, m’lord. Those as
say the giants are all dead never saw this one, I swear. Big as an
ox he was, and a voice like stone breaking.”
“The Mountain!” Ser Marq said loudly. “Can any
man doubt it? This was Gregor Clegane’s work.”
Ned heard muttering from beneath the windows and the far end of
the hall. Even in the galley, nervous whispers were exchanged. High
lords and smallfolk alike knew what it could mean if Ser Marq was
proved right. Ser Gregor Clegane stood bannerman to Lord Tywin
Lannister.
He studied the frightened faces of the villagers. Small wonder
they had been so fearful; they had thought they were being dragged
here to name Lord Tywin a red-handed butcher before a king who was
his son by marriage. He wondered if the knights had given them a
choice.
Grand Maester Pycelle rose ponderously from the council table,
his chain of office clinking. “Ser Marq, with respect, you
cannot know that this outlaw was Ser Gregor. There are many large
men in the realm.”
“As large as the Mountain That Rides?” Ser Karyl
said. “I have never met one.”
“Nor has any man here,” Ser Raymun added hotly.
“Even his brother is a pup beside him. My lords, open your
eyes. Do you need to see his seal on the corpses? It was
Gregor.”
“Why should Ser Gregor turn brigand?” Pycelle asked.
“By the grace of his liege lord, he holds a stout keep and
lands of his own. The man is an anointed knight.”
“A false knight!” Ser Marq said. “Lord
Tywin’s mad dog.”
“My lord Hand,” Pycelle declared in a stiff voice,
“I urge you to remind this good knight that Lord Tywin
Lannister is the father of our own gracious queen.”
“Thank you, Grand Maester Pycelle,” Ned said.
“I fear we might have forgotten that if you had not pointed
it out.”
From his vantage point atop the throne, he could see men
slipping out the door at the far end of the hall. Hares going to
ground, he supposed . . . or rats off to nibble the queen’s
cheese. He caught a glimpse of Septa Mordane in the gallery, with
his daughter Sansa beside her. Ned felt a flash of anger; this was
no place for a girl. But the septa could not have known that
today’s court would be anything but the usual tedious
business of hearing petitions, settling disputes between rival
holdfasts, and adjudicating the placement of boundary stones.
At the council table below, Petyr Baelish lost interest in his
quill and leaned forward. “Ser Marq, Ser Karyl, Ser
Raymun—perhaps I might ask you a question? These holdfasts were
under your protection. Where were you when all this slaughtering
and burning was going on?”
Ser Karyl Vance answered. “I was attending my lord father
in the pass below the Golden Tooth, as was Ser Marq. When the word
of these outrages reached Ser Edmure Tully, he sent word that we
should take a small force of men to find what survivors we could
and bring them to the king.”
Ser Raymun Darry spoke up. “Ser Edmure had summoned me to
Riverrun with all my strength. I was camped across the river from
his walls, awaiting his commands, when the word reached me. By the
time I could return to my own lands, Clegane and his vermin were back
across the Red Fork, riding for Lannister’s hills.”
Littlefinger stroked the point of his beard thoughtfully.
“And if they come again, ser?”
“If they come again, we’ll use their blood to water
the fields they burnt,” Ser Marq Piper declared hotly.
“Ser Edmure has sent men to every village and holdfast
within a day’s ride of the border,” Ser Karyl
explained. “The next raider will not have such an easy time
of it.” And that may be precisely what Lord Tywin wants, Ned thought to
himself, to bleed off strength from Riverrun, goad the boy into
scattering his swords. His wife’s brother was young, and more
gallant than wise. He would try to hold every inch of his soil, to
defend every man, woman, and child who named him lord, and Tywin
Lannister was shrewd enough to know that.
“If your fields and holdfasts are safe from harm,”
Lord Petyr was saying, “what then do you ask of the
throne?”
“The lords of the Trident keep the king’s
peace,” Ser Raymun Darry said. “The Lannisters have
broken it. We ask leave to answer them, steel for steel. We ask
justice for the smallfolk of Sherrer and Wendish Town and the
Mummer’s Ford.”
“Edmure agrees, we must pay Gregor Clegane back his bloody
coin,” Ser Marq declared, “but old Lord Hoster
commanded us to come here and beg the king’s leave before we
strike.” Thank the gods for old Lord Hoster, then. Tywin Lannister was as
much fox as lion. If indeed he’d sent Ser Gregor to burn and
pillage—and Ned did not doubt that he had—he’d taken care to
see that he rode under cover of night, without banners, in the
guise of a common brigand. Should Riverrun strike back, Cersei and
her father would insist that it had been the Tullys who broke the
king’s peace, not the Lannisters. The gods only knew what
Robert would believe.
Grand Maester Pycelle was on his feet again. “My lord
Hand, if these good folk believe that Ser Gregor has forsaken his
holy vows for plunder and rape, let them go to his liege lord and
make their complaint. These crimes are no concern of the throne.
Let them seek Lord Tywin’s justice.”
“It is all the king’s justice,” Ned told him.
“North, south, east, or west, all we do we do in
Robert’s name.”
“The king’s justice,” Grand Maester Pycelle
said. “So it is, and so we should defer this matter until the
king—”
“The king is hunting across the river and may not return
for days,” Lord Eddard said. “Robert bid me to sit here
in his place, to listen with his ears, and to speak with his voice.
I mean to do just that . . . though I agree that he must be
told.” He saw a familiar face beneath the tapestries.
“Ser Robar.”
Ser Robar Royce stepped forward and bowed. “My
lord.”
“Your father is hunting with the king,” Ned said.
“Will you bring them word of what was said and done here
today?”
“At once, my lord.”
“Do we have your leave to take our vengeance against Ser
Gregor, then?” Marq Piper asked the throne.
“Vengeance?” Ned said. “I thought we were
speaking of justice. Burning Clegane’s fields and
slaughtering his people will not restore the king’s peace,
only your injured pride.” He glanced away before the young
knight could voice his outraged protest, and addressed the
villagers. “People of Sherrer, I cannot give you back your
homes or your crops, nor can I restore your dead to life. But
perhaps I can give you some small measure of justice, in the name
of our king, Robert.”
Every eye in the hall was fixed on him, waiting. Slowly Ned
struggled to his feet, pushing himself up from the throne with the
strength of his arms, his shattered leg screaming inside its cast.
He did his best to ignore the pain; it was no moment to let them
see his weakness. “The First Men believed that the judge who
called for death should wield the sword, and in the north we hold
to that still. I mislike sending another to do my killing . . . yet
it seems I have no choice.” He gestured at his broken
leg.
“Lord Eddard!” The shout came from the west side of
the hall as a handsome stripling of a boy strode forth boldly. Out
of his armor, Ser Loras Tyrell looked even younger than his sixteen
years. He wore pale blue silk, his belt a linked chain of golden
roses, the sigil of his House. “I beg you the honor of acting
in your place. Give this task to me, my lord, and I swear I shall
not fail you.”
Littlefinger chuckled. “Ser Loras, if we send you off
alone, Ser Gregor will send us back your head with a plum stuffed
in that pretty mouth of yours. The Mountain is not the sort to bend
his neck to any man’s justice.”
“I do not fear Gregor Clegane,” Ser Loras said
haughtily.
Ned eased himself slowly back onto the hard iron seat of
Aegon’s misshapen throne. His eyes searched the faces along
the wall. “Lord Beric,” he called out. “Thoros of
Myr. Ser Gladden. Lord Lothar.” The men named stepped forward
one by one. “Each of you is to assemble twenty men, to bring
my word to Gregor’s keep. Twenty of my own guards shall go
with you. Lord Beric Dondarrion, you shall have the command, as
befits your rank.”
The young lord with the red-gold hair bowed. “As you
command, Lord Eddard.”
Ned raised his voice, so it carried to the far end of the throne
room. “In the name of Robert of the House Baratheon, the
First of his Name, King of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First
Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm, by the
word of Eddard of the House Stark, his Hand, I charge you to ride
to the westlands with all haste, to cross the Red Fork of the
Trident under the king’s flag, and there bring the
king’s justice to the false knight Gregor Clegane, and to all
those who shared in his crimes. I denounce him, and attaint him,
and strip him of all rank and titles, of all lands and incomes and
holdings, and do sentence him to death. May the gods take pity on
his soul.”
When the echo of his words had died away, the Knight of Flowers
seemed perplexed. “Lord Eddard, what of me?”
Ned looked down on him. From on high, Loras Tyrell seemed almost
as young as Robb. “No one doubts your valor, Ser Loras, but
we are about justice here, and what you seek is vengeance.”
He looked back to Lord Beric. “Ride at first light. These
things are best done quickly.” He held up a hand. “The
throne will hear no more petitions today.”
Alyn and Porther climbed the steep iron steps to help him back
down. As they made their descent, he could feel Loras
Tyrell’s sullen stare, but the boy had stalked away before
Ned reached the floor of the throne room.
At the base of the Iron Throne, Varys was gathering papers from
the council table. Littlefinger and Grand Maester Pycelle had
already taken their leave. “You are a bolder man than I, my
lord,” the eunuch said softly.
“How so, Lord Varys?” Ned asked brusquely. His leg
was throbbing, and he was in no mood for word games.
“Had it been me up there, I should have sent Ser Loras. He
so wanted to go . . . and a man who has the Lannisters for his
enemies would do well to make the Tyrells his friends.”
“Ser Loras is young,” said Ned. “I daresay he
will outgrow the disappointment.”
“And Ser Ilyn?” The eunuch stroked a plump, powdered
cheek. “He is the King’s Justice, after all. Sending
other men to do his office . . . some might construe that as a
grave insult.”
“No slight was intended.” In truth, Ned did not
trust the mute knight, though perhaps that was only because he
misliked executioners. “I remind you, the Paynes are
bannermen to House Lannister. I thought it best to choose men who
owed Lord Tywin no fealty.”
“Very prudent, no doubt,” Varys said. “Still,
I chanced to see Ser Ilyn in the back of the hall, staring at us
with those pale eyes of his, and I must say, he did not look
pleased, though to be sure it is hard to tell with our silent
knight. I hope he outgrows his disappointment as well. He does so
love his work . . . ”
Through the high narrow windows of the Red
Keep’s cavernous throne room, the light of sunset spilled
across the floor, laying dark red stripes upon the walls where the
heads of dragons had once hung. Now the stone was covered with
hunting tapestries, vivid with greens and browns and blues, and yet
still it seemed to Ned Stark that the only color in the hall was
the red of blood.
He sat high upon the immense ancient seat of Aegon the
Conqueror, an ironwork monstrosity of spikes and jagged edges and
grotesquely twisted metal. It was, as Robert had warned him, a
hellishly uncomfortable chair, and never more so than now, with his
shattered leg throbbing more sharply every minute. The metal
beneath him had grown harder by the hour, and the fanged steel
behind made it impossible to lean back. A king should never sit
easy, Aegon the Conqueror had said, when he commanded his armorers
to forge a great seat from the swords laid down by his enemies.
Damn Aegon for his arrogance, Ned thought sullenly, and damn Robert
and his hunting as well.
“You are quite certain these were more than
brigands?” Varys asked softly from the council table beneath
the throne. Grand Maester Pycelle stirred uneasily beside him,
while Littlefinger toyed with a pen. They were the only councillors
in attendance. A white hart had been sighted in the kingswood, and
Lord Renly and Ser Barristan had joined the king to hunt it, along
with Prince Joffrey, Sandor Clegane, Balon Swann, and half the court. So Ned must needs sit the Iron
Throne in his absence.
At least he could sit. Save the council, the rest must stand
respectfully, or kneel. The petitioners clustered near the tall
doors, the knights and high lords and ladies beneath the
tapestries, the smallfolk in the gallery, the mailed guards in
their cloaks, gold or grey: all stood.
The villagers were kneeling: men, women, and children, alike
tattered and bloody, their faces drawn by fear. The three knights
who had brought them here to bear witness stood behind them.
“Brigands, Lord Varys?” Ser Raymun Darry’s
voice dripped scorn. “Oh, they were brigands, beyond a doubt.
Lannister brigands.”
Ned could feel the unease in the hall, as high lords and
servants alike strained to listen. He could not pretend to
surprise. The west had been a tinderbox since Catelyn had seized
Tyrion Lannister. Both Riverrun and Casterly Rock had called their
banners, and armies were massing in the pass below the Golden
Tooth. It had only been a matter of time until the blood began to
flow. The sole question that remained was how best to stanch the
wound.
Sad-eyed Ser Karyl Vance, who would have been handsome but for
the winestain birthmark that discolored his face, gestured at the
kneeling villagers. “This is all the remains of the holdfast
of Sherrer, Lord Eddard. The rest are dead, along with the people
of Wendish Town and the Mummer’s Ford.”
“Rise,” Ned commanded the villagers. He never
trusted what a man told him from his knees. “All of you,
up.”
In ones and twos, the holdfast of Sherrer struggled to its feet.
One ancient needed to be helped, and a young girl in a bloody dress
stayed on her knees, staring blankly at Ser Arys Oakheart, who
stood by the foot of the throne in the white armor of the
Kingsguard, ready to protect and defend the king . . . or, Ned
supposed, the King’s Hand.
“Joss,” Ser Raymun Darry said to a plump balding man
in a brewer’s apron. “Tell the Hand what happened at
Sherrer.”
Joss nodded. “If it please His Grace—”
“His Grace is hunting across the Blackwater,” Ned
said, wondering how a man could live his whole life a few days ride
from the Red Keep and still have no notion what his king looked
like. Ned was clad in a white linen doublet with the direwolf of
Stark on the breast; his black wool cloak was fastened at the
collar by his silver hand of office. Black and white and grey, all
the shades of truth. “I am Lord Eddard Stark, the
King’s Hand. Tell me who you are and what you know of these
raiders.”
“I keep . . . I kept . . . I kept an alehouse,
m’lord, in Sherrer, by the stone bridge. The finest ale south
of the Neck, everyone said so, begging your pardons, m’lord.
It’s gone now like all the rest, m’lord. They come and
drank their fill and spilled the rest before they fired my roof,
and they would of spilled my blood too, if they’d caught me.
M’lord.”
“They burnt us out,” a farmer beside him said.
“Come riding in the dark, up from the south, and fired the
fields and the houses alike, killing them as tried to stop them.
They weren’t no raiders, though, m’lord. They had no mind to
steal our stock, not these, they butchered my milk cow where she
stood and left her for the flies and the crows.”
“They rode down my ’prentice boy,” said a
squat man with a smith’s muscles and a bandage around his
head. He had put on his finest clothes to come to court, but his
breeches were patched, his cloak travel-stained and dusty.
“Chased him back and forth across the fields on their horses,
poking at him with their lances like it was a game, them laughing
and the boy stumbling and screaming till the big one pierced him
clean through.”
The girl on her knees craned her head up at Ned, high above her
on the throne. “They killed my mother too, Your Grace. And
they . . . they . . . ” Her voice trailed off, as if she had
forgotten what she was about to say. She began to sob.
Ser Raymun Darry took up the tale. “At Wendish Town, the
people sought shelter in their holdfast, but the walls were
timbered. The raiders piled straw against the wood and burnt them
all alive. When the Wendish folk opened their gates to flee the
fire, they shot them down with arrows as they came running out,
even women with suckling babes.”
“Oh, dreadful,” murmured Varys. “How cruel can
men be?”
“They would of done the same for us, but the Sherrer
holdfast’s made of stone,” Joss said. “Some
wanted to smoke us out, but the big one said there was riper fruit
upriver, and they made for the Mummer’s Ford.”
Ned could feel cold steel against his fingers as he leaned
forward. Between each finger was a blade, the points of twisted
swords fanning out like talons from arms of the throne. Even after
three centuries, some were still sharp enough to cut. The Iron
Throne was full of traps for the unwary. The songs said it had
taken a thousand blades to make it, heated white-hot in the furnace
breath of Balerion the Black Dread. The hammering had taken
fifty-nine days. The end of it was this hunched black beast made of
razor edges and barbs and ribbons of sharp metal; a chair that
could kill a man, and had, if the stories could be believed.
What Eddard Stark was doing sitting there he would never
comprehend, yet there he sat, and these people looked to him for
justice. “What proof do you have that these were
Lannisters?” he asked, trying to keep his fury under control.
“Did they wear crimson cloaks or fly a lion
banner?”
“Even Lannisters are not so blind stupid as that,”
Ser Marq Piper snapped. He was a swaggering bantam rooster of a
youth, too young and too hot-blooded for Ned’s taste, though
a fast friend of Catelyn’s brother, Edmure Tully.
“Every man among them was mounted and mailed, my
lord,” Ser Karyl answered calmly. “They were armed with
steel-tipped lances and longswords, with battle-axes for the
butchering.” He gestured toward one of the ragged survivors.
“You. Yes, you, no one’s going to hurt you. Tell the
Hand what you told me.”
The old man bobbed his head. “Concerning their
horses,” he said, “it were warhorses they rode. Many a
year I worked in old Ser Willum’s stables, so I knows the
difference. Not a one of these ever pulled a plow, gods bear
witness if I’m wrong.”
“Well-mounted brigands,” observed Littlefinger.
“Perhaps they stole the horses from the last place they
raided.”
“How many men were there in this raiding party?” Ned
asked.
“A hundred, at the least,” Joss answered, in the
same instant as the bandaged smith said, “Fifty,” and
the grandmother behind him, “Hunnerds and hunnerds, m’lord, an
army they was.”
“You are more right than you know, goodwoman,” Lord
Eddard told her. “You say they flew no banners. What of the
armor they wore? Did any of you note ornaments or decorations,
devices on shield or helm?”
The brewer, Joss, shook his head. “It grieves me, m’lord,
but no, the armor they showed us was plain, only . . . the one who
led them, he was armored like the rest, but there was no mistaking
him all the same. It was the size of him, m’lord. Those as
say the giants are all dead never saw this one, I swear. Big as an
ox he was, and a voice like stone breaking.”
“The Mountain!” Ser Marq said loudly. “Can any
man doubt it? This was Gregor Clegane’s work.”
Ned heard muttering from beneath the windows and the far end of
the hall. Even in the galley, nervous whispers were exchanged. High
lords and smallfolk alike knew what it could mean if Ser Marq was
proved right. Ser Gregor Clegane stood bannerman to Lord Tywin
Lannister.
He studied the frightened faces of the villagers. Small wonder
they had been so fearful; they had thought they were being dragged
here to name Lord Tywin a red-handed butcher before a king who was
his son by marriage. He wondered if the knights had given them a
choice.
Grand Maester Pycelle rose ponderously from the council table,
his chain of office clinking. “Ser Marq, with respect, you
cannot know that this outlaw was Ser Gregor. There are many large
men in the realm.”
“As large as the Mountain That Rides?” Ser Karyl
said. “I have never met one.”
“Nor has any man here,” Ser Raymun added hotly.
“Even his brother is a pup beside him. My lords, open your
eyes. Do you need to see his seal on the corpses? It was
Gregor.”
“Why should Ser Gregor turn brigand?” Pycelle asked.
“By the grace of his liege lord, he holds a stout keep and
lands of his own. The man is an anointed knight.”
“A false knight!” Ser Marq said. “Lord
Tywin’s mad dog.”
“My lord Hand,” Pycelle declared in a stiff voice,
“I urge you to remind this good knight that Lord Tywin
Lannister is the father of our own gracious queen.”
“Thank you, Grand Maester Pycelle,” Ned said.
“I fear we might have forgotten that if you had not pointed
it out.”
From his vantage point atop the throne, he could see men
slipping out the door at the far end of the hall. Hares going to
ground, he supposed . . . or rats off to nibble the queen’s
cheese. He caught a glimpse of Septa Mordane in the gallery, with
his daughter Sansa beside her. Ned felt a flash of anger; this was
no place for a girl. But the septa could not have known that
today’s court would be anything but the usual tedious
business of hearing petitions, settling disputes between rival
holdfasts, and adjudicating the placement of boundary stones.
At the council table below, Petyr Baelish lost interest in his
quill and leaned forward. “Ser Marq, Ser Karyl, Ser
Raymun—perhaps I might ask you a question? These holdfasts were
under your protection. Where were you when all this slaughtering
and burning was going on?”
Ser Karyl Vance answered. “I was attending my lord father
in the pass below the Golden Tooth, as was Ser Marq. When the word
of these outrages reached Ser Edmure Tully, he sent word that we
should take a small force of men to find what survivors we could
and bring them to the king.”
Ser Raymun Darry spoke up. “Ser Edmure had summoned me to
Riverrun with all my strength. I was camped across the river from
his walls, awaiting his commands, when the word reached me. By the
time I could return to my own lands, Clegane and his vermin were back
across the Red Fork, riding for Lannister’s hills.”
Littlefinger stroked the point of his beard thoughtfully.
“And if they come again, ser?”
“If they come again, we’ll use their blood to water
the fields they burnt,” Ser Marq Piper declared hotly.
“Ser Edmure has sent men to every village and holdfast
within a day’s ride of the border,” Ser Karyl
explained. “The next raider will not have such an easy time
of it.” And that may be precisely what Lord Tywin wants, Ned thought to
himself, to bleed off strength from Riverrun, goad the boy into
scattering his swords. His wife’s brother was young, and more
gallant than wise. He would try to hold every inch of his soil, to
defend every man, woman, and child who named him lord, and Tywin
Lannister was shrewd enough to know that.
“If your fields and holdfasts are safe from harm,”
Lord Petyr was saying, “what then do you ask of the
throne?”
“The lords of the Trident keep the king’s
peace,” Ser Raymun Darry said. “The Lannisters have
broken it. We ask leave to answer them, steel for steel. We ask
justice for the smallfolk of Sherrer and Wendish Town and the
Mummer’s Ford.”
“Edmure agrees, we must pay Gregor Clegane back his bloody
coin,” Ser Marq declared, “but old Lord Hoster
commanded us to come here and beg the king’s leave before we
strike.” Thank the gods for old Lord Hoster, then. Tywin Lannister was as
much fox as lion. If indeed he’d sent Ser Gregor to burn and
pillage—and Ned did not doubt that he had—he’d taken care to
see that he rode under cover of night, without banners, in the
guise of a common brigand. Should Riverrun strike back, Cersei and
her father would insist that it had been the Tullys who broke the
king’s peace, not the Lannisters. The gods only knew what
Robert would believe.
Grand Maester Pycelle was on his feet again. “My lord
Hand, if these good folk believe that Ser Gregor has forsaken his
holy vows for plunder and rape, let them go to his liege lord and
make their complaint. These crimes are no concern of the throne.
Let them seek Lord Tywin’s justice.”
“It is all the king’s justice,” Ned told him.
“North, south, east, or west, all we do we do in
Robert’s name.”
“The king’s justice,” Grand Maester Pycelle
said. “So it is, and so we should defer this matter until the
king—”
“The king is hunting across the river and may not return
for days,” Lord Eddard said. “Robert bid me to sit here
in his place, to listen with his ears, and to speak with his voice.
I mean to do just that . . . though I agree that he must be
told.” He saw a familiar face beneath the tapestries.
“Ser Robar.”
Ser Robar Royce stepped forward and bowed. “My
lord.”
“Your father is hunting with the king,” Ned said.
“Will you bring them word of what was said and done here
today?”
“At once, my lord.”
“Do we have your leave to take our vengeance against Ser
Gregor, then?” Marq Piper asked the throne.
“Vengeance?” Ned said. “I thought we were
speaking of justice. Burning Clegane’s fields and
slaughtering his people will not restore the king’s peace,
only your injured pride.” He glanced away before the young
knight could voice his outraged protest, and addressed the
villagers. “People of Sherrer, I cannot give you back your
homes or your crops, nor can I restore your dead to life. But
perhaps I can give you some small measure of justice, in the name
of our king, Robert.”
Every eye in the hall was fixed on him, waiting. Slowly Ned
struggled to his feet, pushing himself up from the throne with the
strength of his arms, his shattered leg screaming inside its cast.
He did his best to ignore the pain; it was no moment to let them
see his weakness. “The First Men believed that the judge who
called for death should wield the sword, and in the north we hold
to that still. I mislike sending another to do my killing . . . yet
it seems I have no choice.” He gestured at his broken
leg.
“Lord Eddard!” The shout came from the west side of
the hall as a handsome stripling of a boy strode forth boldly. Out
of his armor, Ser Loras Tyrell looked even younger than his sixteen
years. He wore pale blue silk, his belt a linked chain of golden
roses, the sigil of his House. “I beg you the honor of acting
in your place. Give this task to me, my lord, and I swear I shall
not fail you.”
Littlefinger chuckled. “Ser Loras, if we send you off
alone, Ser Gregor will send us back your head with a plum stuffed
in that pretty mouth of yours. The Mountain is not the sort to bend
his neck to any man’s justice.”
“I do not fear Gregor Clegane,” Ser Loras said
haughtily.
Ned eased himself slowly back onto the hard iron seat of
Aegon’s misshapen throne. His eyes searched the faces along
the wall. “Lord Beric,” he called out. “Thoros of
Myr. Ser Gladden. Lord Lothar.” The men named stepped forward
one by one. “Each of you is to assemble twenty men, to bring
my word to Gregor’s keep. Twenty of my own guards shall go
with you. Lord Beric Dondarrion, you shall have the command, as
befits your rank.”
The young lord with the red-gold hair bowed. “As you
command, Lord Eddard.”
Ned raised his voice, so it carried to the far end of the throne
room. “In the name of Robert of the House Baratheon, the
First of his Name, King of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First
Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm, by the
word of Eddard of the House Stark, his Hand, I charge you to ride
to the westlands with all haste, to cross the Red Fork of the
Trident under the king’s flag, and there bring the
king’s justice to the false knight Gregor Clegane, and to all
those who shared in his crimes. I denounce him, and attaint him,
and strip him of all rank and titles, of all lands and incomes and
holdings, and do sentence him to death. May the gods take pity on
his soul.”
When the echo of his words had died away, the Knight of Flowers
seemed perplexed. “Lord Eddard, what of me?”
Ned looked down on him. From on high, Loras Tyrell seemed almost
as young as Robb. “No one doubts your valor, Ser Loras, but
we are about justice here, and what you seek is vengeance.”
He looked back to Lord Beric. “Ride at first light. These
things are best done quickly.” He held up a hand. “The
throne will hear no more petitions today.”
Alyn and Porther climbed the steep iron steps to help him back
down. As they made their descent, he could feel Loras
Tyrell’s sullen stare, but the boy had stalked away before
Ned reached the floor of the throne room.
At the base of the Iron Throne, Varys was gathering papers from
the council table. Littlefinger and Grand Maester Pycelle had
already taken their leave. “You are a bolder man than I, my
lord,” the eunuch said softly.
“How so, Lord Varys?” Ned asked brusquely. His leg
was throbbing, and he was in no mood for word games.
“Had it been me up there, I should have sent Ser Loras. He
so wanted to go . . . and a man who has the Lannisters for his
enemies would do well to make the Tyrells his friends.”
“Ser Loras is young,” said Ned. “I daresay he
will outgrow the disappointment.”
“And Ser Ilyn?” The eunuch stroked a plump, powdered
cheek. “He is the King’s Justice, after all. Sending
other men to do his office . . . some might construe that as a
grave insult.”
“No slight was intended.” In truth, Ned did not
trust the mute knight, though perhaps that was only because he
misliked executioners. “I remind you, the Paynes are
bannermen to House Lannister. I thought it best to choose men who
owed Lord Tywin no fealty.”
“Very prudent, no doubt,” Varys said. “Still,
I chanced to see Ser Ilyn in the back of the hall, staring at us
with those pale eyes of his, and I must say, he did not look
pleased, though to be sure it is hard to tell with our silent
knight. I hope he outgrows his disappointment as well. He does so
love his work . . . ”