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The greatest tourney of an age, and Robert Baratheon had woken at the crack of dawn for it. The prize, the Whent maid’s name-day, and finally he would meet his betrothed lady.
Oh, and Ned was here.
So, it was that there was a joyful song in his heart when he stepped out to the Flowstone Yard with his training hammer in hand and got interrupted.
The first thing that struck was the silence. Oh, certainly there was the song of steel and the thunder of destriers being put through their paces, but more than that was the attention paid to one of the seven training rings laid out: squares of packed earth with a wooden fence running around them up to a man’s waist, the easier to see the tall Northmen surrounding one.
And Ned, who was frowning at the ring next to his wilder brothers’ cheers.
“Ned!”
“Robert.”
“NED!”
“You can put me down now, Robert.”
Robert set his friend down, still beaming. “What, your wild wolf brother convinced you to fight in the melee? You can join the Stormlands faction! They don’t have a North or Iron Islands, damned stuffies-”
“Not quite, Baratheon,” the Wild Wolf pouted in the midst of oiling a hauberk, one oil-stained hand lifting to gesture. “She would join if Father would let her.”
“Who let a woman-”
The strength of the warrior’s shout then struck him dumb, gaping like a fish as his eyes finally saw her; in the ring where said woman swung the quarterstaff only to have it rap the fence, and then a start of shock echoed before the staff hit the ground.
“Hold the staff in thirds, Lady Lyanna,” a calm lecture echoed to Robert’s shock as a shapely set of hips in grey breeches and boots came into view, and then his view rose to dark braids that hugged a scalp and the long face and grey eyes of the Starks that her face bore. “Power is generated by the back hand pulling the staff, while the front hand is used for guidance. Yelling up close and then swinging it is an immature tantrum, not a technique.”
“…yes, sensei,” the woman mumbled, stooping to pick the staff back up, uncaring of the men’s gaze on her.
“Now, hold it!” Robert snapped as he mounted the fence, hammer swinging at the man. “That’s my betrothed you’re beating, what kind of a-”
The world itself spun, before his head hit the ground and dampness mixed with the taste of clay, while the training hammer had been twisted behind and used to lock his arm in a jolt of pain and shock. There were hisses and cries, and Ned’s voice: “…no, really, Tobi, please let Robert up, I promise he’ll behave.”
A pause, with muffled words.
“If he does, then you can put him back in the ground.”
The arm was let go, and now relieved, Robert panted as he clambered back to his feet to study the assailant:
Short for a Northman and thin almost until he was insubstantial, he had strange fine-boned features that a Valyrian would envy. Lines streaked across his cheekbones and down his chin, all in red to match eyes that glittered like burning embers. Hair truly white as bone was cropped short to his skull. He was dressed in boiled leathers as most Stark guards were, with discrete leather padding around his neck and chest; he wore it with the invincibility more associated with a great name and full-plate armour, which earned Robert’s respect for his guts.
“Be known, my friend, to Tobirama of the North, in the service of Winterfell,” Behind the fence and the strange man, Ned sighed. “And Lya’s teacher.”
“And Lord Benjen’s.”
“Really? You look like you belong in a brothel.”
From beyond the fence, Ned gave him a look of disappointment paired with Brandon’s snort, but the younger Stark siblings started to glance around. The lady pointedly leant her staff against the fence and clambered out of the ring, making a gesture of universal surrender.
“He’s all yours, Tobi,” her Common was pronounced with a burr, much like Ned – very Northern, very Stark. And yet her assumption should have offended Robert, save for the way it was pronounced, the same way that Robert would have said of his lord father who had survived the Ninepenny, but went down with a mundane sinking ship.
A chuckle, and Robert was quickly realising something when the man, Tobirama, laughed, and then the quarterstaff in his hand was spun, the air shivering with its passage. The Stark guards surrounding the ring started giving him, Robert Baratheon, a knighted lord, visible looks of pity, for all the Gods’ sake.
“To date I have yet to find anything interesting outside of venereal diseases in a brothel, but I will take your words into advisement, Lord Baratheon. I do fight in Lord Stark’s service. If you would care for a demonstration?”
“If the Night’s Watch are fending off more Wildlings like your White Wolf, we need to send them more men and weapons.”
“Wiser words have yet to be spoken,” young Benjen, the craven, lifted his tankard in toast when a black brother had just ended his plea for assistance around the great hall of Harrenhal. “I wanted to volunteer, but Tobirama argued that my job would be best done if I took a holdfast and made sure that the black brothers were well victualled. Tobirama tends to speak sense, and I believe him.”
Robert groaned into the emptied bowl before him, where once laid minced pottage of capon and almond milk that he had filched from the kitchens on his way to the hall, too exhausted to find anything else. “So do I, now. I haven’t had such a fight since the Raven made me eat dirt.”
Brandon grunted. “Considering that it only took five rounds where you were knocked out over a space of several hours, three of those with Tobi forgoing weapons to fight with his bare hands… I think Tobi managed to beat some sense into your betrothed, Lya.”
“Is that so?” The eating knife in her hand flashed, the lady somehow showing knife-work that would shame some grown squires as she dismantled joint after joint of meat, piled atop a trencher for all the siblings and Robert to share. “Tobi was more encouraging of the betrothal when I expressed my discomfort of a natural daughter being known. How could I know that Lord Baratheon’s talent extends to finding affection eight thousand feet above sea level?”
Robert coughed into his tankard. “Er, yes, Mya. She’s in the Vale, with a nurse. We were at the Gates of the Moon, actually…”
“Which is even more cause for concern, if any woman could simply waltz into Lord Arryn’s winter holding. If that had happened at Winterfell without the lord’s knowledge Father would have heads rolling before a heart tree before the next sunset,” Lyanna’s grey eyes were almost like Ned, but everything of her reminded Robert of his late lady mother, who for being born as an Estermont did not stop her from reigning almost as a dragon within Durran’s Point.
“Lord Robert,” she then began, “I am certain that your daughter is old enough to move to Storm’s End should the wedding happen.”
“Well, Jon has been caring for her since, Mya’s fine-”
“I insist,” the lady spoke, and Robert’s teeth nearly clipped off his tongue when the tip of her razor-sharp knife speared an unfortunate capon. “Make no mistake, my lord. The fact that the child was born in the first place can only be your fault. I do not see the point of punishing the child for your mistake. I am sure that, since we are betrothed, you shall do better to focus your attentions on the battle, and not the bed.”
Or I will stab you as I do this cock, was the unspoken statement.
“Well, if your tutor in bladework is fighting, I think I may focus on the joust,” Robert grumbled. “A lovely crown for my lady.”
“Tobi’s not fighting in the melee,” was the rejoinder from a doleful Benjen. “A shame, we could’ve bet for long odds.”
“I am certain that you would not, Lord Benjen, for the Lady Lyanna would insist on fighting if I had joined,” came the smooth voice of the man being discussed, who had turned up with a smaller figure clad in a doublet of fine-spun linen, a grey-green lizard-lion badge pinned over his heart. “Lady Lyanna, as requested I have brought Lord Reed.”
Up and down the Northern table, men cheered, and with their roars the banners overhead flapped in an unseen wind. Between the wolf-banners, there waved long-axes and mermen and moose and bears.
“Will you not stay?” Ned spoke to him. “The men welcome you, and the North protects its own.”
“I shall dine with the guards, and I feel it best to avoid revealing my lack at the dance. I am sure my lord will recoup our Northmen’s side.” Bright eyes glittered when Ned gave a groan. “Lord Baratheon, the Kingsguard approaches, the royals will come.”
“Oh, thanks for the reminder,” Robert groaned, getting up to rejoin the Stormlands bunch and await the formal opening of the feast by the Prince, watching as the man seemed to melt back into the shadows of the Hundred Hearths and vanish amongst the banners.
Robert was then more preoccupied with matching damned Richard Lonmouth drink for drink, and then his second cousin strummed his harp in some tune of Jenny of Oldstones, before to his shock a skirt embroidered in blue roses marched up, dagged sleeves folded under arms that certainly looked strong enough to brain him.
“Would you care to dance?” the Lady Lyanna offered. “I need to kick Ned in the shin and he’s waltzing with that- that-”
Roused despite the mild buzz of the drink, Robert peered through the dimness of the Hall of a Hundred Hearths and gave a low whistle. “Is that… Ashara Dayne?! Ned, that dog! Why’re you kicking him?”
“Because he was waltzing with Tobi the whole afternoon, and I know Bran would be at home with the Dornish ladies, not Ned,” Lyanna growled, fetching in her mutinous rage. “Bran put Ned up to this, so that he could sneak to the Hunter’s Hall without Tobi catching him.”
“I didn’t know the dance started that early,” Robert offered for lack of options.
“Yes, well, come on,” the lady’s wildness did not detract from her charm; indeed, as Robert was led or dragged to the dancing floor he caught a whiff of her perfume, a bouquet of pines and wintersweet. So distracted he was, that it was only the lady’s furious jab at him that reminded him to lift her – right as they sidled next to poor Ned and his lady partner, and Robert’s betrothed kicked poor Ned in the shin.
Drawing a hiss, Ned gamely continued to lift and spin the unknowing Ashara Dayne, and they continued to meander off, despite that Ned was now dancing with a limp that when the dance ended, he unfortunately begged off.
“Posset, Lord Baratheon?”
“Oh thank- where did you pop up?!” Robert almost jumped in shock when the hand he had reached to his betrothed was suddenly occupied with a small cup, warmed from the posset within.
Lyanna accepted the next cup handed to her without a word, a defiant pout on her face. “Tobirama, Ned needs a cold press for his shin.”
“Is that so? I trust, my lady, as you were so happy to throw your feet about, you would not mind a few more rounds of this godswood here. A hundred acres it spans, so I am informed, and I shall wake you to run the course at dawn.”
The lady scowled before she waved a dismissal to the silver-haired man, who had already marched up to Ned to escort him off of the dance floor, and presumably to the Stark quarters. “The things I do for family.”
“I can join you?” Robert offered. “I mean, I did help… but I don’t think Ned’s a… er, inclined to… bite pillows?”
Surely not.
“I once saw Tobirama break a pumpkin with his thighs.”
Robert attempted to picture the scene, but his imagination was unable to reach those heights. “Erm…”
The lady gave him a look, much like old Jon did when the Maester started bemoaning his failed lessons. “Then the next day, Tobi let our Ned kneel between his legs to measure for a surcoat, when the next idiot who tried to give him hell for that got his neck cricked by thighs. Ned’s still wearing that surcoat. Our Ned might not have much in the way of inheritance, but surely, he could be happy, even if the method was… unexpected.”
Well, as the lady said so.
“...could have entered, and no one would have blinked an eye!” Lyanna’s vocal protest echoed in the stands. They had taken a rear seat, the better to dispense with formality and sit away from the mad beggar of a dragon king.
They had just seen a mystery knight fell a Frey knight, the last of three victories, to lusty cheers amongst the smallfolk. The mystery knight was short of stature, clad in ill-fitting armour made up higgledy-piggledy, a pied knight if there was any. The device upon his shield was a heart tree – a white weirwood with a laughing red face. Robert longed to unmask that knight.
“I was not the one to make the decision, sister,” Ned’s voice had the world-weary tone of retreading a long argument. “Take it up with Brandon, or Father. Or Tobi.”
Ned went ignored. “I wanted to enter the horse race too, but someone said I was too young.”
“That someone was not me.”
Before the outer ward, as the shadows grew longer the mystery knight was doing a victory lap, and then he made his bow.
As the knight then leapt from his mount, for a moment it was as though the knight had stepped out of the world, a brief instant before the knight had landed on his feet – in full armour! – without his lance and proceeded to make his bows: towards the royal seats, the high seats, the smallfolk seats.
Befitting his moniker, the Knight of the Laughing Tree proceeded to laugh, the echo of time echoing in the outer ward amongst the towers of Harrenhal, a tumbler’s start before a fair somersault and the knight mounted the Wailing Tower as though the earth did not pull at him, an act that caused many to leap to their feet in shock.
“A Myrish eye!”
“Someone get me one!”
The wolf pup Benjen had been overlooked for much of the feast – not like his wild or quiet brother, or even his sweet sister – but that lack of attention was of benefit now, as he was the only one in their stands with a serviceable far-eye.
“He’s climbing the tower – I think those are our rooms!” Benjen exclaimed, leaning to one side with the far-eye stretched away; the Lady Lyanna had leant over to try and snatch it. “Now, Lya, Father-”
“I want to see!” Pants came from the she-wolf, whether from excitement or if she had managed to run the length of the godswood while no one was looking.
Robert cursed as he tried to lean out, Ned only barely clinging on his surcoat before he went over the stands. In the distance he could see the oldest Stark brother at the formal high seats, the great and good apparently keen to peer at the spectacle. Their attention was justified as, midway up the Wailing Tower, a great plume of flame sheared through the twilight.
Strong jaws and sharp teeth illuminated, eyes burned in flame and wreathed in tongue of sparks, horns that curved of heat and flare, they curled the Wailing Tower as though in pursuit of the tumbler who was still making his arduous climb. It roared, some horrible blast that exploded in a bright flower that drew gasps and screams, stars of flame falling to fade into the twilit skies.
Having reached the arch of the Wailing Tower, the Knight made the fool, skipping easily to the Tower of Dread. Overlooking the great and the good, some unknown being between worlds, again the bows were sketched, courtesies that in the dusk hid his face even more, and for that moment Robert even yelled as he, the tumbler, the Knight of the Laughing Tree, as though taking a step into some brave new world, flopped over the edge of the roof –
Beyond the godswood of Harrenhal, for a breath green shot through the skies, the dying light of falling stars fading as though magic had, after a brief spectacle, returned to its slumber.
“Wonderful! Truly wonderful! We bid that the knight gets a special purse! Lord Whent! Someone get me Lord Whent, I want to know which mummer brought such joy to us this night!” The King’s roar echoed as he jumped to his feet, clapping.
As though to bid him farewell, all the Seven Kingdoms rose to their feet in acclamation.