Chapter Text
Another day on the road, another time that accursed wheelhouse had thrown an axle.
If Robert requested for him to fetch a torch, Eddard Stark would do so gladly.
“Might as well set up camp for the night,” the King grumbled under his breath. Just fixing the bloody thing took over an hour, and judging by the position of the sun, nightfall was barely two hours away. With a mighty bellow, he gave the order to do just that, then sighed, shaking his head. “I knew we should have taken a ship. This damnable creeping along is enough to drive a man to madness.”
“It’s not too late to change course,” Ned pointed out, just as frustrated as his lifelong friend. “Lord Manderly would be most honoured to host you.”
“I don’t want to honour him,” Robert spat. “I just want to get back home as soon as fucking possible. He just happens to be on the way.”
You and me both, Ned thought wearily, though with a different destination in mind. Barely under a month on the road, and he was already tired.
Tired of riding at a snail’s pace every waking hour of the day. Tired of the Queen and that accursed wheelhouse of hers that was too large and heavy to function properly. Tired of their court of liars and schemers. Tired of the angry, bitter man that wore his friend’s face like a mask. He was done with them all.
And they hadn’t even arrived at Moat Cailin yet. He despaired to think of how things would be down at King’s Landing. At this rate, he would damn well welcome being murdered by the Queen, if only so he wouldn’t have to deal with them anymore.
“We should just leave them,” Robert said after a moment’s silence. “Spur our horses onwards and leave them all behind."
Ned closed his eyes, sighing sufferingly. “Don’t tempt me, Robert, I beg of you. Gods know I’m not lacking in want.”
Robert laughed huskily. “Come on,” he insisted devilishly, smelling blood on the water. “Just you and me, two vagabond knights on the kingsroad once again, with nothing but our swords at our sides and the whole world for the taking. Hells, we might even find a farmer’s daughter or a tavern wench to warm our beds.”
“You can keep them both for yourself,” Ned quipped, allowing himself a light smile. Wouldn’t be the first time. “I’m happily married, thank you very much.”
“And again with that,” The King scoffed. “Why must you hate fun so much, Neddard?”
I don’t hate fun, Ned protested internally, I just don’t think dishonouring my wife is. “Look at the bright side,” he said lightly, “it just means all the more fun for you.” Seeing Cersei Lannister be dishonoured in favour of peasant wenches, however? Now that was more like it. The mere thought of her face contorting as if she swallowed a lemon whole was enough to bring him a modicum of cheer. He was being petty, to be sure, but in the absence of her facing justice for the murder of Jon Arryn, pettiness would have to do.
“Ah, well, when you put it that way…” Robert considered it.
“Think of it as an advance of this year’s Seventh,” Ned quipped.
Both men laughed softly, as they looked on at the commotion from atop their horses. Grooms, pages and servants ran around the king’s party like beheaded chickens, trying to set up a camp as fast as possible, suffering under the verbal lashings of their so-called betters who were too good and proud to suffer even the slightest discomfort. Arya and Bran bickered to the side, their direwolves roaming about them, keeping any impertinent interlopers at bay. Atop his horse, Prince Joffrey spoke at his hound-helmed retainer, who listened impassively.
The King sighed.
“Come on, Stark,” he said, turning his horse away. “Let’s get out of here.”
“And go where?” Ned was alarmed. “Robert, I was joking. We cannot abandon the party. We have—”
“Matters of state to discuss,” Robert interrupted him firmly. “Believe me, much as I would like nothing more than to drop everything here and now and bugger off into the sunset, I know better than to actually do so.” That’s a relief.
“Then why…?”
“Because this is of the utmost importance, but we’re surrounded by ears here, and none too friendly.”
Ned couldn’t argue with that. “Lead the way, then,” he said simply.
Wordlessly, King Robert spurred his huge black destrier onwards, setting off like a man possessed across the rolling plains of the Barrowlands, and Lord Stark followed, hot on his heels. Ned noticed that an impromptu bodyguard had formed in their wake, led by Ser Meryn and Ser Boros of the Kingsguard, but they struggled to keep up to their pace.
And so they rode and rode, over hill and under tree, until finally the King pulled up. By then they were at the very least a mile and a half away from the main party. Robert was flushed and exhilarated as Ned reined up beside him.
“Gods,” he swore, laughing. “Now this is the way a man was meant to ride! This is what the Gods gave us horses for! Not for moving at a snail’s pace, but to ride! Ride, fast as the wind, furious as a storm! RIDE!” he roared in laughter.
Ned chuckled. He would be lying if he said he hadn’t enjoyed it. “Perhaps we should make a habit of it,” he suggested. “While we wait for camp to be made, to cleanse our palates from the drudgery of the day.”
A smile, a genuine smile, flickered in Robert’s face. “I’ll take you up on it. Gods know we need a break from it all every now and again, and once we get to King’s Landing we won’t get the chance again, bogged as we will be by all these troublesome matters of state,” he said, as if he actually did any work when staying at the Red Keep but whore and feast.
“Speaking of matters of state,” Ned began, noticing their bodyguard had pulled up at a distance, safely out of earshot, “what is it that troubles you so?”
“Our vanguard met a rider from the south, sent by Lord Varys. Here.” The King pulled a paper from his belt and handed it to Ned. Ned unrolled the paper with trepidation, thinking of Lysa and her terrible accusation, but the message did not concern Lady Arryn. Nor, indeed, anything this side of the Narrow Sea.
“What is the source of this information?” he asked once he finished reading.
“Lord Varys gives no names,” the King grumbled, “but he says it comes from his contacts in Pentos. It’ll be the talk of the ports soon enough, he says.”
“And you’re showing me this… Why, exactly? Do you intend, perchance, to send them a wedding gift?” Ned snarked.
The King frowned. “A knife, perhaps. A good, sharp one, and a bold man to wield it.”
Figures. “Curiosities on the far end of the world are of no concern to us,” he stated, giving the King back his letter.
“Curiosities?” Robert was torn between incredulity and outrage in the face of the unflappable apathy shown by his Hand. “Is that what this is to you? A curiosity?!”
“What else could it be? Behold, the last of the Targaryens: a child sold off to a Dothraki horselord like a shiny trinket by a desperate, emaciated beggar with nothing but a fancy new sword to his name. Hardly something to lose sleep over.”
“Have you taken leave of your senses?!” Robert exclaimed in disbelief. “Nothing to lose sleep over? This child of yours will soon enough start spreading her legs and whelping more dragonspawn to plague me! And that damnable beggar king…” the King cursed. “Were it that my throne was secure, I would laugh heartily at his misery, but you know as well as I do that there are still those who name me Usurper. Do you forget how many houses fought for the Targaryens during the war? The laws of Gods and men were on our side, yet the Martells, the Tyrells, half the Vale and the Riverlands, even my own bloody bannermen took arms against us… They bide their time for now, but give them half a chance and they will murder me in my bed and my sons with me. If the beggar king lands on my shores with a Dothraki horde at his back, the traitors will flock to his banner, especially if that ‘fancy new sword’ of his is actually Blackfyre, as the rumours claim.”
Give me a couple of months, and I’ll have the Tyrells on our side. “And what makes you think the Dothraki will follow him?” Lord Stark replied simply.
The King frowned. “Isn’t it obvious? It’s a marriage alliance. That’s how things work,” he said.
“Obvious for us, perhaps, but you know as well as I do that the Dothraki are closer to horses than to men. They don’t follow blood nor names, only strength.” A strength the Beggar King conspicuously lacked, given the absence of any tales attesting to it. To the contrary, if the rumours were to be believed, he was a scrawny, sickly thing; hardly an inspiring leader to a bunch of savages like the horselords. If he had indeed received a Valyrian steel sword as a gift during the wedding, it was entirely lost on him, even if it was Blackfyre; what use is a blade, if you can barely lift it? Indeed, even the symbolic value of Blackfyre would be more of a curse than a blessing, as it would only highlight his martial incompetence, as it once did to his namesake almost two centuries ago. “If I recall our lessons correctly, their hordes dissolve upon the death of their khal, with his commanders each claiming the right to lead.”
“Damn your lessons, this Khal Drago is said to have a hundred thousand men in his horde, and is very well alive! Is that enough to shake you off your complacency?” Robert shook his head. “Seven hells, even his name is a mere letter removed from ‘dragon’. As if I had a need for omens to tell me this marriage is dangerous…”
“It’s not complacency, Robert,” Ned rebuked him calmly, “but common sense. Even a million Dothraki are no threat to the realm, so long as they remain on the other side of the narrow sea. The barbarians have no ships. They hate and fear the open sea, and you know it.”
Robert’s paranoia was undeterred. “There’s ships to be had in the Free Cities,” he insisted, “and the Dothraki aren’t lacking in loot to pay for them.”
“Did you even hear what I just said?”
“Of course I did,” Robert scoffed. “But what if? What if the Free Cities pay them off to attack us instead of them? What if they do cross the Narrow Sea? What if we have to face a hundred thousand Dothraki on an open field, Ned? What happens then?”
Eddard Stark shook his head. Their argument was going in circles, and he knew all too well Robert was stubborn enough to continue arguing until the Wall fell. Well, he wasn’t, nor was he patient or foolish enough to try and convince him otherwise.
“If it will make you sleep any easier, do as you damn well please with Viserys Targaryen,” Eddard Stark replied bluntly. He was the crux of the entire matter, not the Dothraki, and certainly not his sister. Sometimes, the easiest way to untangle a Meereenese Knot was to cut through it.
Two small corpses wrapped in bright scarlet banners.
He shook the image out of his head. This was different.
“He attempted to strike an alliance with the Dothraki against us. Misguided and miscalculated as it is, he has shown with it that he is no innocent child any more but a grown man responsible for his own actions. He has made his choice,” Ned explained.
“Good.” Robert smiled an ugly smile, making no attempt to hide his pleasure at the thought of snuffing out the male line of the Greatest House of Targaryen once and for all. “And the whore?”
“Irrelevant,” Stark stated dispassionately. “The Dothraki sea will swallow her up.”
Robert frowned, but nodded in tentative agreement. “And her dragonspawn?”
“More like than not, they’ll be more horse than dragon, and that’s assuming they even make it out of childhood,” Eddard shrugged disinterestedly. The chances of that were close to zero; the savage way of life of the horselords was so harsh that barely a quarter of all their children lived to their tenth nameday, nevermind the countless blood feuds the Dothraki engaged in that were paid in the blood of their offspring. “I’d have that Spider of yours keep an eye on them, but more than that? Curiosities on the far end of the world.” He allowed himself his own ugly smile, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Why, perhaps the untimely demise of their uncle might teach them a lesson or two.”
Robert barked a laughter, his bellows howling into the cold morning mist.
“Now that is what I like to hear!” he cheered, smacking his large, meaty hand upon Ned’s shoulder. It took everything he had to not flinch under the strength of his touch, but it were his words that hurt deeper still. “For a moment there I worried that your precious honour,” he spat, as if it was a curse, “would blind you again to the needs of the state. Thank the Gods I was wrong. They need to die, of course, but you’re right. Why bother going through the effort of killing them both, when the Dothraki Sea will take care of that whore for us?”
“Don’t get me wrong, Robert,” Eddard protested. That particular ‘again’ sickened him to his stomach. Two small corpses wrapped in scarlet banners. This was different. “That I call Viserys Targaryen the threat he is does not mean I endorse this plan happily. Daenerys Targaryen, however, is a child, and innocent in her brother’s machinations. She has done nothing to deserve death. Her fate will be decided by the Gods, not by us. If she lives, she lives, and if she dies, she dies, but I refuse to soil my hands with her blood.”
“Unless you intend to go and wield the killing knife yourself, your hands will be perfectly clean, so don’t you worry your pretty little head about it,” Robert replied, mockingly. “Viserys Targaryen will meet the sorry end he deserves, and that whore sister of his will be fucked to death by the horses, and all will be well.”
Snow melting atop a mop of dark curls. Ned’s temper rose murderously, but he kept it in check. Not that Viserys. Not my Jon. Promise me, Ned. “Would that be all?” He asked tersely.
Thankfully, Robert nodded, satisfied. “Yes, that would be all for now. Come, let’s ride some more. I want to feel the wind in my hair again before we have to go back to camp.” He kicked his horse into motion and galloped, raining earth down behind him.
After a brief second to breathe deeply, Eddard Stark drove his spurs into his horse, and followed.