A Game Of Thrones [ASOIAF #1]

Chapter 4: EDDARD [I]

The visitors poured through the castle gates in a river of gold and silver and
polished steel, three hundred strong, a pride of bannermen and knights, of sworn
swords and freeriders. Over their heads a dozen golden banners whipped back
and forth in the northern wind, emblazoned with the crowned stag of Baratheon.
Ned knew many of the riders. There came Ser Jaime Lannister with hair as
bright as beaten gold, and there Sandor Clegane with his terrible burned face.
The tall boy beside him could only be the crown prince, and that stunted little
man behind them was surely the Imp, Tyrion Lannister.
Yet the huge man at the head of the column, flanked by two knights in the
snow-white cloaks of the Kingsguard, seemed almost a stranger to Ned … until
he vaulted off the back of his warhorse with a familiar roar, and crushed him in a
bone-crunching hug. “Ned! Ah, but it is good to see that frozen face of yours.”
The king looked him over top to bottom, and laughed. “You have not changed at
all.”
Would that Ned had been able to say the same. Fifteen years past, when they
had ridden forth to win a throne, the Lord of Storm’s End had been clean-
shaven, clear-eyed, and muscled like a maiden’s fantasy. Six and a half feet tall,
he towered over lesser men, and when he donned his armor and the great
antlered helmet of his House, he became a veritable giant. He’d had a giant’s
strength too, his weapon of choice a spiked iron warhammer that Ned could
scarcely lift. In those days, the smell of leather and blood had clung to him like
perfume.
Now it was perfume that clung to him like perfume, and he had a girth to
match his height. Ned had last seen the king nine years before during Balon
Greyjoy’s rebellion, when the stag and the direwolf had joined to end the
pretensions of the self-proclaimed King of the Iron Islands. Since the night they
had stood side by side in Greyjoy’s fallen stronghold, where Robert had
accepted the rebel lord’s surrender and Ned had taken his son Theon as hostage
and ward, the king had gained at least eight stone. A beard as coarse and black as
iron wire covered his jaw to hide his double chin and the sag of the royal jowls,
but nothing could hide his stomach or the dark circles under his eyes.
Yet Robert was Ned’s king now, and not just a friend, so he said only, “Your
Grace. Winterfell is yours.”
By then the others were dismounting as well, and grooms were coming
forward for their mounts. Robert’s queen, Cersei Lannister, entered on foot with
her younger children. The wheelhouse in which they had ridden, a huge double-
decked carriage of oiled oak and gilded metal pulled by forty heavy draft horses,
was too wide to pass through the castle gate. Ned knelt in the snow to kiss the
queen’s ring, while Robert embraced Catelyn like a long-lost sister. Then the
children had been brought forward, introduced, and approved of by both sides.
No sooner had those formalities of greeting been completed than the king had
said to his host, “Take me down to your crypt, Eddard. I would pay my
respects.”
Ned loved him for that, for remembering her still after all these years. He
called for a lantern. No other words were needed. The queen had begun to
protest. They had been riding since dawn, everyone was tired and cold, surely
they should refresh themselves first. The dead would wait. She had said no more
than that; Robert had looked at her, and her twin brother Jaime had taken her
quietly by the arm, and she had said no more.
They went down to the crypt together, Ned and this king he scarcely
recognized. The winding stone steps were narrow. Ned went first with the
lantern. “I was starting to think we would never reach Winterfell,” Robert
complained as they descended. “In the south, the way they talk about my Seven
Kingdoms, a man forgets that your part is as big as the other six combined.”
“I trust you enjoyed the journey, Your Grace?”
Robert snorted. “Bogs and forests and fields, and scarcely a decent inn north
of the Neck. I’ve never seen such a vast emptiness. Where are all your people?”
“Likely they were too shy to come out,” Ned jested. He could feel the chill
coming up the stairs, a cold breath from deep within the earth. “Kings are a rare
sight in the north.”
Robert snorted. “More likely they were hiding under the snow. Snow, Ned!”
The king put one hand on the wall to steady himself as they descended.
“Late summer snows are common enough,” Ned said. “I hope they did not
trouble you. They are usually mild.”
“The Others take your mild snows,” Robert swore. “What will this place be
like in winter? I shudder to think.”
“The winters are hard,” Ned admitted. “But the Starks will endure. We always
have.”
“You need to come south,” Robert told him. “You need a taste of summer
before it flees. In Highgarden there are fields of golden roses that stretch away as
far as the eye can see. The fruits are so ripe they explode in your mouth—
melons, peaches, fireplums, you’ve never tasted such sweetness. You’ll see, I
brought you some. Even at Storm’s End, with that good wind off the bay, the
days are so hot you can barely move. And you ought to see the towns, Ned!
Flowers everywhere, the markets bursting with food, the summerwines so cheap
and so good that you can get drunk just breathing the air. Everyone is fat and
drunk and rich.” He laughed and slapped his own ample stomach a thump. “And
the girls, Ned!” he exclaimed, his eyes sparkling. “I swear, women lose all
modesty in the heat. They swim naked in the river, right beneath the castle. Even
in the streets, it’s too damn hot for wool or fur, so they go around in these short
gowns, silk if they have the silver and cotton if not, but it’s all the same when
they start sweating and the cloth sticks to their skin, they might as well be
naked.” The king laughed happily.
Robert Baratheon had always been a man of huge appetites, a man who knew
how to take his pleasures. That was not a charge anyone could lay at the door of
Eddard Stark. Yet Ned could not help but notice that those pleasures were taking
a toll on the king. Robert was breathing heavily by the time they reached the
bottom of the stairs, his face red in the lantern light as they stepped out into the
darkness of the crypt.
“Your Grace,” Ned said respectfully. He swept the lantern in a wide
semicircle. Shadows moved and lurched. Flickering light touched the stones
underfoot and brushed against a long procession of granite pillars that marched
ahead, two by two, into the dark. Between the pillars, the dead sat on their stone
thrones against the walls, backs against the sepulchres that contained their mortal
remains. “She is down at the end, with Father and Brandon.”
He led the way between the pillars and Robert followed wordlessly, shivering
in the subterranean chill. It was always cold down here. Their footsteps rang off
the stones and echoed in the vault overhead as they walked among the dead of
House Stark. The Lords of Winterfell watched them pass. Their likenesses were
carved into the stones that sealed the tombs. In long rows they sat, blind eyes
staring out into eternal darkness, while great stone direwolves curled round their
feet. The shifting shadows made the stone figures seem to stir as the living
passed by.
By ancient custom an iron longsword had been laid across the lap of each who
had been Lord of Winterfell, to keep the vengeful spirits in their crypts. The
oldest had long ago rusted away to nothing, leaving only a few red stains where
the metal had rested on stone. Ned wondered if that meant those ghosts were free
to roam the castle now. He hoped not. The first Lords of Winterfell had been
men hard as the land they ruled. In the centuries before the Dragonlords came
over the sea, they had sworn allegiance to no man, styling themselves the Kings
in the North.
Ned stopped at last and lifted the oil lantern. The crypt continued on into
darkness ahead of them, but beyond this point the tombs were empty and
unsealed; black holes waiting for their dead, waiting for him and his children.
Ned did not like to think on that. “Here,” he told his king.
Robert nodded silently, knelt, and bowed his head.
There were three tombs, side by side. Lord Rickard Stark, Ned’s father, had a
long, stern face. The stonemason had known him well. He sat with quiet dignity,
stone fingers holding tight to the sword across his lap, but in life all swords had
failed him. In two smaller sepulchres on either side were his children.
Brandon had been twenty when he died, strangled by order of the Mad King
Aerys Targaryen only a few short days before he was to wed Catelyn Tully of
Riverrun. His father had been forced to watch him die. He was the true heir, the
eldest, born to rule.
Lyanna had only been sixteen, a child-woman of surpassing loveliness. Ned
had loved her with all his heart. Robert had loved her even more. She was to
have been his bride.
“She was more beautiful than that,” the king said after a silence. His eyes
lingered on Lyanna’s face, as if he could will her back to life. Finally he rose,
made awkward by his weight. “Ah, damn it, Ned, did you have to bury her in a
place like this?” His voice was hoarse with remembered grief. “She deserved
more than darkness …”
“She was a Stark of Winterfell,” Ned said quietly. “This is her place.”
“She should be on a hill somewhere, under a fruit tree, with the sun and
clouds above her and the rain to wash her clean.”
“I was with her when she died,” Ned reminded the king. “She wanted to come
home, to rest beside Brandon and Father.” He could hear her still at times.
Promise me, she had cried, in a room that smelled of blood and roses. Promise
me, Ned. The fever had taken her strength and her voice had been faint as a
whisper, but when he gave her his word, the fear had gone out of his sister’s
eyes. Ned remembered the way she had smiled then, how tightly her fingers had
clutched his as she gave up her hold on life, the rose petals spilling from her
palm, dead and black. After that he remembered nothing. They had found him
still holding her body, silent with grief. The little crannogman, Howland Reed,
had taken her hand from his. Ned could recall none of it. “I bring her flowers
when I can,” he said. “Lyanna was … fond of flowers.”
The king touched her cheek, his fingers brushing across the rough stone as
gently as if it were living flesh. “I vowed to kill Rhaegar for what he did to her.”
“You did,” Ned reminded him.
“Only once,” Robert said bitterly.
They had come together at the ford of the Trident while the battle crashed
around them, Robert with his warhammer and his great antlered helm, the
Targaryen prince armored all in black. On his breastplate was the three-headed
dragon of his House, wrought all in rubies that flashed like fire in the sunlight.
The waters of the Trident ran red around the hooves of their destriers as they
circled and clashed, again and again, until at last a crushing blow from Robert’s
hammer stove in the dragon and the chest beneath it. When Ned had finally
come on the scene, Rhaegar lay dead in the stream, while men of both armies
scrabbled in the swirling waters for rubies knocked free of his armor.
“In my dreams, I kill him every night,” Robert admitted. “A thousand deaths
will still be less than he deserves.”
There was nothing Ned could say to that. After a quiet, he said, “We should
return, Your Grace. Your wife will be waiting.”
“The Others take my wife,” Robert muttered sourly, but he started back the
way they had come, his footsteps falling heavily. “And if I hear ‘Your Grace’
once more, I’ll have your head on a spike. We are more to each other than that.”
“I had not forgotten,” Ned replied quietly. When the king did not answer, he
said, “Tell me about Jon.”
Robert shook his head. “I have never seen a man sicken so quickly. We gave a
tourney on my son’s name day. If you had seen Jon then, you would have sworn
he would live forever. A fortnight later he was dead. The sickness was like a fire
in his gut. It burned right through him.” He paused beside a pillar, before the
tomb of a long-dead Stark. “I loved that old man.”
“We both did.” Ned paused a moment. “Catelyn fears for her sister. How does
Lysa bear her grief?”
Robert’s mouth gave a bitter twist. “Not well, in truth,” he admitted. “I think
losing Jon has driven the woman mad, Ned. She has taken the boy back to the
Eyrie. Against my wishes. I had hoped to foster him with Tywin Lannister at
Casterly Rock. Jon had no brothers, no other sons. Was I supposed to leave him
to be raised by women?”
Ned would sooner entrust a child to a pit viper than to Lord Tywin, but he left
his doubts unspoken. Some old wounds never truly heal, and bleed again at the
slightest word. “The wife has lost the husband,” he said carefully. “Perhaps the
mother feared to lose the son. The boy is very young.”
“Six, and sickly, and Lord of the Eyrie, gods have mercy,” the king swore.
“Lord Tywin had never taken a ward before. Lysa ought to have been honored.
The Lannisters are a great and noble House. She refused to even hear of it. Then
she left in the dead of night, without so much as a by-your-leave. Cersei was
furious.” He sighed deeply. “The boy is my namesake, did you know that?
Robert Arryn. I am sworn to protect him. How can I do that if his mother steals
him away?”
“I will take him as ward, if you wish,” Ned said. “Lysa should consent to that.
She and Catelyn were close as girls, and she would be welcome here as well.”
“A generous offer, my friend,” the king said, “but too late. Lord Tywin has
already given his consent. Fostering the boy elsewhere would be a grievous
affront to him.”
“I have more concern for my nephew’s welfare than I do for Lannister pride,”
Ned declared.
“That is because you do not sleep with a Lannister.” Robert laughed, the
sound rattling among the tombs and bouncing from the vaulted ceiling. His smile
was a flash of white teeth in the thicket of the huge black beard. “Ah, Ned,” he
said, “you are still too serious.” He put a massive arm around Ned’s shoulders.
“I had planned to wait a few days to speak to you, but I see now there’s no need
for it. Come, walk with me.”
They started back down between the pillars. Blind stone eyes seemed to
follow them as they passed. The king kept his arm around Ned’s shoulder. “You
must have wondered why I finally came north to Winterfell, after so long.”
Ned had his suspicions, but he did not give them voice. “For the joy of my
company, surely,” he said lightly. “And there is the Wall. You need to see it,
Your Grace, to walk along its battlements and talk to those who man it. The
Night’s Watch is a shadow of what it once was. Benjen says—”
“No doubt I will hear what your brother says soon enough,” Robert said. “The
Wall has stood for what, eight thousand years? It can keep a few days more. I
have more pressing concerns. These are difficult times. I need good men about
me. Men like Jon Arryn. He served as Lord of the Eyrie, as Warden of the East,
as the Hand of the King. He will not be easy to replace.”
“His son …” Ned began.
“His son will succeed to the Eyrie and all its incomes,” Robert said brusquely.
“No more.”
That took Ned by surprise. He stopped, startled, and turned to look at his king.
The words came unbidden. “The Arryns have always been Wardens of the East.
The title goes with the domain.”
“Perhaps when he comes of age, the honor can be restored to him,” Robert
said. “I have this year to think of, and next. A six-year-old boy is no war leader,
Ned.”
“In peace, the title is only an honor. Let the boy keep it. For his father’s sake
if not his own. Surely you owe Jon that much for his service.”
The king was not pleased. He took his arm from around Ned’s shoulders.
“Jon’s service was the duty he owed his liege lord. I am not ungrateful, Ned.
You of all men ought to know that. But the son is not the father. A mere boy
cannot hold the east.” Then his tone softened. “Enough of this. There is a more
important office to discuss, and I would not argue with you.” Robert grasped
Ned by the elbow. “I have need of you, Ned.”
“I am yours to command, Your Grace. Always.” They were words he had to
say, and so he said them, apprehensive about what might come next.
Robert scarcely seemed to hear him. “Those years we spent in the
Eyrie … gods, those were good years. I want you at my side again, Ned. I want
you down in King’s Landing, not up here at the end of the world where you are
no damned use to anybody.” Robert looked off into the darkness, for a moment
as melancholy as a Stark. “I swear to you, sitting a throne is a thousand times
harder than winning one. Laws are a tedious business and counting coppers is
worse. And the people … there is no end of them. I sit on that damnable iron
chair and listen to them complain until my mind is numb and my ass is raw.
They all want something, money or land or justice. The lies they tell … and my
lords and ladies are no better. I am surrounded by flatterers and fools. It can
drive a man to madness, Ned. Half of them don’t dare tell me the truth, and the
other half can’t find it. There are nights I wish we had lost at the Trident. Ah, no,
not truly, but …”
“I understand,” Ned said softly.
Robert looked at him. “I think you do. If so, you are the only one, my old
friend.” He smiled. “Lord Eddard Stark, I would name you the Hand of the
King.”
Ned dropped to one knee. The offer did not surprise him; what other reason
could Robert have had for coming so far? The Hand of the King was the second-
most powerful man in the Seven Kingdoms. He spoke with the king’s voice,
commanded the king’s armies, drafted the king’s laws. At times he even sat
upon the Iron Throne to dispense king’s justice, when the king was absent, or
sick, or otherwise indisposed. Robert was offering him a responsibility as large
as the realm itself.
It was the last thing in the world he wanted.
“Your Grace,” he said. “I am not worthy of the honor.”
Robert groaned with good-humored impatience. “If I wanted to honor you, I’d
let you retire. I am planning to make you run the kingdom and fight the wars
while I eat and drink and wench myself into an early grave.” He slapped his gut
and grinned. “You know the saying, about the king and his Hand?”
Ned knew the saying. “What the king dreams,” he said, “the Hand builds.”
“I bedded a fishmaid once who told me the lowborn have a choicer way to put
it. The king eats, they say, and the Hand takes the shit.” He threw back his head
and roared his laughter. The echoes rang through the darkness, and all around
them the dead of Winterfell seemed to watch with cold and disapproving eyes.
Finally the laughter dwindled and stopped. Ned was still on one knee, his eyes
upraised. “Damn it, Ned,” the king complained. “You might at least humor me
with a smile.”
“They say it grows so cold up here in winter that a man’s laughter freezes in
his throat and chokes him to death,” Ned said evenly. “Perhaps that is why the
Starks have so little humor.”
“Come south with me, and I’ll teach you how to laugh again,” the king
promised. “You helped me win this damnable throne, now help me hold it. We
were meant to rule together. If Lyanna had lived, we should have been brothers,
bound by blood as well as affection. Well, it is not too late. I have a son. You
have a daughter. My Joff and your Sansa shall join our houses, as Lyanna and I
might once have done.”
This offer did surprise him. “Sansa is only eleven.”
Robert waved an impatient hand. “Old enough for betrothal. The marriage can
wait a few years.” The king smiled. “Now stand up and say yes, curse you.”
“Nothing would give me greater pleasure, Your Grace,” Ned answered. He
hesitated. “These honors are all so unexpected. May I have some time to
consider? I need to tell my wife …”
“Yes, yes, of course, tell Catelyn, sleep on it if you must.” The king reached
down, clasped Ned by the hand, and pulled him roughly to his feet. “Just don’t
keep me waiting too long. I am not the most patient of men.”
For a moment Eddard Stark was filled with a terrible sense of foreboding. This
was his place, here in the north. He looked at the stone figures all around them,
breathed deep in the chill silence of the crypt. He could feel the eyes of the dead.
They were all listening, he knew. And winter was coming.