Holy shit the ripples! 😮
I think you just made both Robert and Ned more dangerous by orders of magnitude.
I think you just made both Robert and Ned more dangerous by orders of magnitude.
The Logistics of Good Living (ASOIAF, Brandon Stark SI)
- Thread starter Karmic Acumen
- Start date
Karmic Acumen
Well-known member
Well, not really. I haven't seen Dothraki be particularly torture-happy, if only because they're usually on the move. They'd probably have just split the guy's belly open and left him to the crows. Slaver's Bay are the torturers of the series.
Not as much as all that, there was no shortage of extenuating circumstances in OTL for either of them.
It's not about the extenuating circumstances. Its about the fact that each one was just taught new and useful tactics with a lesson that jams it home. Ned Will not be blinkered by his honor, though he'll likely take blows still.
Robert may be the most effected as he's learned to think about consequences before he acts.
What these two things do to combine with a sane King at the Landing...I can only speculate which way you're going to to.
Ned learned that honour is not always aplicable,and Robert that hammer is not always best answer to his problems.
And Jon proved to be best teacher ever.
All good,but since Robert would not be King,and Ned would not be Lord,their mistakes,even if they learn nothing,would not destroy kingdom.
But - they could learn just for their own happiness.
P.S Hightower and Ellia ? that interesting.Rhaeger found Valyrian bride and do not need one from Dorne ?
it would be fun,if Mountain feel urge to murder Ellia anyway,becouse GRRM want so.By the way - interesting,what author would do with him.
And Jon proved to be best teacher ever.
All good,but since Robert would not be King,and Ned would not be Lord,their mistakes,even if they learn nothing,would not destroy kingdom.
But - they could learn just for their own happiness.
P.S Hightower and Ellia ? that interesting.Rhaeger found Valyrian bride and do not need one from Dorne ?
it would be fun,if Mountain feel urge to murder Ellia anyway,becouse GRRM want so.By the way - interesting,what author would do with him.
AAGAUCAAUGGA
Member
I loved what you did with Jon here, he is such a good teacher in this, really this is such a good story
Chapter II.2: Grinding Teeth Do Not a Gay Storm Make (VIII)
Karmic Acumen
Well-known member
A/N: I have failed! I didn't end Robert's POV here! But since I managed to naturally fit a lot of the North's advancement and general plot progress that I had originally marked for later, I consider it a fair trade.
As he listened and read everything Jon told and showed them, Robert Baratheon seriously wondered whether his father was still sane. He couldn't imagine having to deal with even half of what Jon was unloading on them. It turned out that while they were busy arguing ancient history with the most obstinate fake priest imaginable, the rest of Westeros had sailed all the way up Shit Creek without a paddle and taken residence in the deepest, dankest basement of Castle Skullduggery.
And that was just the background information that didn't have anything to do with the Oldtown wedding at all. At least not directly.
Duskendale was the first snark in the room. The charter given by King Aerys before Ned came along had led to a massive boom to the Darklyn lordship, the port town having quickly expanded into a city. But this also meant it proceeded to drain people, trade and jobs from King's Landing like snowmelt down a rill. An issue that only seemed to have picked up pace with the completion of the Hall of Wisdom a couple of months back.
"I'm guessing the King isn't happy?" Robert asked, because he knew Ned wasn't one to state the obvious.
"You would think so," Jon said. "But your father seems to have approached the matter as an opportunity. He's taken advantage of the shortage of bribe money to pick out who's most disgruntled at the drop in protection fees, so called. He's dismissed, maimed, gelded or outright executed about a third of the Goldcloaks by now, including half of their officers and almost every Gate Captain. I'm told it has done wonders to restore the capital's appeal among traders of all stripes. But it may just be the smallfolk that will sing his praises loudest by the end of it, if the biogas production proves as lucrative as the Scales claim."
'Scales' was what the people had taken to calling the Northern maesters ever since Rickard Stark promoted their metric system via the Winds of Winter. Since weighing schemes were a fact of life that no one had found a solution for in thousands of years, Robert was more inclined to think it was just an excuse to make sure their name had something to do with how they wore their chain links on their clothing.
All of which quickly fled his mind as he skimmed the reports Jon was showing them, because no shit his father was being forced to clean up the capital. There was so much shit on the Cloaks alone that you could probably light the whole city on fire with just their stench alone. Robert wasn't sure about this business of putting shit to fester in a barrel just so you can cook on shit fumes, but this was Dad so it couldn't be as insane as it sounded. Tanners already used piss to cure leather, didn't they? And didn't a lot of the best mushrooms grow out of shit too? Even if it didn't work out, the business would probably be worth it for the drop in stink alone, wasn't that the first thing people mentioned about King's Landing? The city's high and small folk alike were going to sing his father's praises to the end of time. Maybe he should call in the Scales to do something for the Kingswood smallfolk too, before those outlaws managed to carry off someone actually important.
Paying peasants to shit, the things Ned's maesters came up with, honestly!
"I'm sure Qarlton Chelsted and Symond Staunton are pleased," Ned said, yanking Robert's mind back on track.
It also turned out the Duskendale charter was putting a lot of coin in the pockets of the Master of Coins and Maser of Laws. Robert wondered how long they'd have let it go on despite every day causing King's Landing to decline. They were making money off his father's cleverness and goodwill, the thieves!
"Robert," Jon's voice brought his thoughts to a stumbling halt before they could slip away from him again. "I know you have trouble focusing when it comes to matters you didn't pick out yourself. And I know it seems like I am talking around the original point, but I promise it will prove important by the end. I need you to focus for this. Can you do that?"
"Right. Sorry."
Robert wished he could work out like he usually did, but he couldn't do that and read at the same time. Well, not without getting a squire or two and have one of them hold the papers in front of his face and wait a minute, that wasn't a bad idea at all if-
"Robert!"
"Sorry! Sorry…"
Being always as good as his word, Jon then proceeded to tell them a story that didn't have anything to do with anything. Some newly landed knight from the Westerlands went on a hunt with his firstborn. Then his giant freak of a son – quite the scary lad, it was said – died slowing down whatever beast only managed to turn the man into a bleeding mess on the ground. Then some wanderer or other came upon the mess and managed to get slightly less mangled while finishing the beast – probably a bear. This lad – 'tall as a gleaming mountain clad in plate and sword and shield smooth as a mirror' – then took the man's other son as a squire in payment for his life and rode off on his lustrous steed… somewhere in the other direction. Or so the story went. Robert supposed it was exciting enough, especially since the mysterious wanderer turned out to be some lad that Ned knew from Winterfell, but he didn't understand what it had to do with anything. He didn't think Ned understood either, but seeing as he was quite pleased to hear about this 'Walder' fellow, Robert decided he didn't mind. Not to say he didn't have plenty else to mind though.
"Oh piss off, Ned, this has nothing on Dunk and Egg" Robert scoffed. "You're drunk if you expect me to believe that."
"That's not what I said."
"Good, because it's crazy! What even is the point of this story?"
"The point is that this is just the latest in the man's tale of wandering good-doing," Jon said calmly. "The point is that the Faith has put much effort into discrediting all notions that knights like Serwyn of the Mirror Shield existed before Andal times. But now we have his second coming striding forth from the infidel North like a legend straight out of the Age of Heroes, living the chivalry ideal while spurning the Seven, and indeed claiming not to be any knight at all."
Robert blinked. "Oh…"
Jon nodded. "The response among the faithful and especially the clergy has been outsized, to say the least."
Robert thought deeply. About religion, tradition, politics and weddings being prepared in the most ancient of Westeros places. It still didn't feel like a big enough deal. "It's not the only bug up their arse, is it?"
"No indeed."
Robert was right. And then some.
Ice export, gemstone export, iron export, steel export, disease killers, plague killers, a dozen new kinds of booze – "You've been holding out on me, Ned you cunt!" – shipped in unique glass bottles, Pazaak and Gwent in every tavern, tools, tools to make tools, glass, glass windows, glass jars, glass baubles, far-eyes, thermometers (they wanted him to put quicksilver in his mouth, were they crazy?), all with neat little plaques and labels with the maker's mark and place of origin. And that's without getting into the really crazy stuff. Like no more food imports by the North.
Like food exports from the North. Three new crops never seen in Westeros before. Potatoes as easy to grow as weeds and bountiful as corn. Rice that kept forever but didn't grow anywhere outside the Neck of all places. Maple syrup that you could get from trees that didn't produce it except in the cold. None of them sold outside the North for anything less than coin enough to ruin anyone who wasn't at least as rich as a High Lord. Robert had heard about all of these things piecemeal over the years, but he'd never bothered considering what they signified together.
And then there was newer stuff too.
For the first time in history, a High Lord not named Stark had declined a maester replacement from the Citadel in favour of one from the Crown of Winter Institute of Learning. Sure, it was a Northern House – Glover – but it proved once and for all that Rickard Stark's Northern Citadel ambitions had borne fruit despite everyone expecting him to fail. Almost nobody had managed to bring themselves to fully accept it, despite everything else Robert had just gone over. Been made to go over. Because he'd been as oblivious as everyone else. Damn.
And the list wasn't even over. It still had those other fruit from the Winter Institute that could prove the success of Rickard Stark's northern ambitions. The printing press, printed books enough to outnumber however many Seven Pointed Stars were out and about by now, the Winds of Winter, the Journal of Scientific Inquiry that published a new breakthrough every few months.
It was that last one, Robert now found, that had really tossed the fox amongst the chickens. Not unto itself, but because of the knowledge it dangled before the noses of craftsmen, tradesmen and inventors that had taken to traveling North for 'inspiration' from all reaches of the continent and beyond. Incidentally avoiding the southron trade guilds and their 'exhausting politics and even more exhausting obsession with hoarding' that Jon never held back from holding in contempt when the topic turned that way. In private at least.
On the Killing of Plagues, The Nature of Disease, Germ Theory, Pregnancy Outcomes Related to Age…
"Four-Field Crop Rotation," Robert sounded out, the lightning going off in his mind and landing on a certain memory. "Ned, isn't that something you mentioned once?"
"It is."
"Before we moved to the Eyrie the first time."
"Yes."
"… And this only came out late last year."
"Yes."
Which gave people just enough time to test it before the presumed coming of autumn. It made for just enough harvest seasons to let them see the benefits, but not enjoy them before having to switch to winter crops. Enough time to paint the North in a good light just as they resumed paying what were apparently much bigger taxes than before, meaning the secret would have shortly stopped being a secret anyway. Enough time for the rest of the Seven Kingdoms to see the worth of the technique, but not enough to apply it before next winter, preserving the North's advantage for another turning while painting the Scales and House Stark in the best possible light.
Robert's mind turned to logistics then. He didn't think he'd find something so capable of focusing his entire mind like Ned's war did. Especially not so soon. But the moment he thought past the North's sparse population, or the Stormlands whose hills and farmers needed all the help they could get, oh boy…
"Robert?" Jon asked after a while. "What are you thinking about?"
"Cycling fields," Robert said slowly. "Isn't it going to bugger smaller farmers right up the arse? Especially in the Reach?" He could see it more clearly the more he thought about it. Larger landowners would be able to apply the new method and outcompete smaller farmers, which would enable them to buy them out or run them off, noble overseer or no. Hells, many of them would even be that noble overseer, there was no shortage of petty knights in the 'Heart of Chivalry.' It would let them centralize land and control the food trade while the bulk of smallfolk went poor and starved, helpless to do anything. "Fuck."
"Robert?"
"The Reach is going to see famine or a smallfolk rebellion by next summer."
Ned frowned.
Jon, though, just nodded again, if slowly. "Unless house Tyrell forbids the use of crop rotation entirely."
"But then it's either a smallfolk rebellion or war over their blatant power play, or that's what it would look like.'"
"In the worst case scenario, I suppose it's certainly not impossible."
"All the while, the other kingdoms will become less reliant on Reach food the more people apply the four-field rotation, and whatever else comes up from the North to kick Highgarden's teeth in next."
They already had new crops the Reach didn't have. Robert knew for sure his father would stop at almost nothing to get the potatoes. What next? Crop medicine? Crop plaguekillers? Pest killers? Pest repelling spells? What about those crazy rumours about Winterfell inventing a lightning-fast way to smelt iron just to make fancy farming tools, was that actually true? Old God worshippers were steadily moving North in greater numbers and not coming back, according to the reams of detailed paper on happening in the Riverlands that Jon had for some reason. Did that mean the North's food supply was now good enough to produce a surplus? Support a growing population? What about Winter? The North always lost the greatest share of people, was that going to change too? And what if a lord adopted Northern science regardless of what their overlords decided? If the Blackwoods did it in the Riverlands, what would the Tullys do?
What did the North mean for all this to accomplish? The North was controlling the leak of its advantages. The knowledge would crack the foundation of the southern kingdom with the most potential soft power and actual military power. How Highgarden dealt with the problem would only change the shape of the bloody repercussions. And regardless of what happened, their standing would be weakened and the politics of the realm would change just in time for winter to set in.
Robert abruptly began to rifle through everything else in Jon's stack of notes, looking for anything that would prove or disprove the image peeking up through the clouds. It took some time, but Ned and Jon waited until he was done. And when he was done, he was done and then some.
The Wolf Pack had returned to the North, just like the Company of the Rose. And it looked like almost all the Northern male heirs of their generation – including Brandon Stark – were just finishing their training with the sellsword company. As soldiers, rather than commanders.
"Ned…" Robert asked slowly. "Is your family fomenting rebellion?"
Ned snorted. "If they are, I haven't been told, though you'll be the first to know if that ever changes, I'm sure."
"Very funny."
Thinking about it more, though, Robert ultimately decided he'd been a right cunt to immediately assume the worst about Ned's family and homeland. What was the North going to do, not share their advancements? Everyone up to the King himself would be on their arse afterwards, and everything else would still happen. Ned was a better person than he was, to laugh him off so easily.
"Ned. I was an arse and a half to jump to the worst conclusion about your family. I'm sorry."
"I forgive you."
Ned forgave far too easily too.
But Robert knew not to throw it in his face – unlike certain other total cunts – so he decided he may as well move on to the grumpkin in the room: if just two disgraced maesters and a dozen acolytes could make a Kingdom leap forward by several generations in every possible way, what the fuck had the Citadel been doing? Or, worse, what had they been stopping everyone from doing all this time?
"The King is attending the wedding, isn't he?" Ned said for both of them.
Jon had been waiting with an unreadable gaze since Robert's callous accusation of his far too kind and generous foster brother, but now he spoke again. Finally. "Just so."
"But he's not actually going there for the wedding."
"Yes he is, but there are other concerns pulling him in that direction as well, yes."
"Concerns big enough to outweigh the importance of the Faith's problems."
"The High Septon will be officiating the ceremony and the Most Devout are going as well," Jon answered. "But I do believe you are onto something."
"The Maesters are in deep shit again, aren't they?" Robert said, amazed he'd ever believed that being blamed for every natural death would be the worst of the maesters' problems. "All of them. From the Citadel and Darklyn's new Hall."
"And the Alchemists. And the Scribes. And every other trade guild since this began making its way to every port town and city." Jon pushed forward what turned out to be an older issue of the Scales' science journal. Progress Disincentivisation and Anticompetitive Practice: A Critical Review of Monopolies
Robert would never admit it, but them journal articles had instantly become his second favorite form of the written word right after newspaper columns, for the simple fact that they all came with neat and tidy conclusions at the end that let him skip the dry parts. "Guilds are holding us back?"
"My kin in Gulltown seem to be coming around to the idea, if naught else."
And if he mentioned them, it meant that Jon was out of patience with talk of coin counting for the day. Double damn. Then again, Robert was just about ready to tackle the Other in the room himself. "I don't suppose House Hightower did the sane thing and not invite House Stark to their nuptials?"
"No indeed. Though I'm sure they were relieved when their invitation was declined."
Say what now?
"Ned," Jon said. "This talk so far has been mostly for your benefit. I said earlier that I meant for you two to start making your own decisions. But the only worthwhile decisions are informed decisions, so I wanted to lay out all the important points. Other people will always seek to make their own options for you, but they are never the only options you have. I trust you understand the difference now?"
Ned's voice was grave. "Yes."
"This, then, are the options your father has arranged for you – you can attend the wedding as your own man, or go home as your own man. But not as House Stark's representative. Lord Rickard has declined Baelor Hightower's invite. His stated reason is that he can't in good conscience answer such a call when he still hasn't done so for the King's own invitation to travel south for his commendation." Which was fair. "There are many questioning this justification, but considering what all has been happening up North – never mind everything we don't know about – I'll let you decide for yourselves whether or not to take him at face value."
Keeping up with all the new business, stamping down on flaring rivalries because, traveling from one petty holdfast to the next to double-check the loyalty of his petty lords' maesters, using that same endless Progress to make sure said lords weren't skimping on their taxes, suffice to say Lord Stark had been extremely busy the past five years even disregarding the raiding problem that mostly solved itself. And that was without counting the rumors about two rival would-be Kings-Beyond-the-Wall. That was another few months of work, where Ned's dad and brother went and inspected the Night's Watch too, including visits to all the castles along the Wall. Even the abandoned ones. To say nothing of the War Games in the former Bolton holdings that had since been broken down in dozens of smaller parts. That was another grand old story.
No, Robert wasn't jealous of them grand adventures, whatever gave you that idea you fucking cunts?
Come to think of it, was the wildling problem why Lord Stark brought the Wolf Pack over? But they already had the Company of the Rose from years back when there still hadn't been a whiff of wildling kings and-
"Your father is willing to defer to my judgement on whether or not you should be allowed to attend," Jon was telling Ned. "However, unless you yourself persuade him otherwise, you will be under the authority of Ser Wyman Manderly once there, your father's official representative. Robert, this goes for you as well – if you choose to go, you won't be your own man. You'll be your father's son, with all that implies."
Robert suddenly had the image of insulting the High Septon to his face and telling him to piss on his gods just as his father walked up behind him. He shuddered. Next option please? Not like he wanted his reunion with Dad to be at a Dornishwoman's wedding anyway!
Ned, though, seemed to be thinking very deeply about it. "Who else will be there?"
"All other Lords Paramount have confirmed their attendance, with or without their families and up to half a dozen of their foremost bannermen."
"The Greyjoys too?"
"Yes."
The Greyjoys were attending a Hightower wedding?
"…Well," Robert said when nobody else seemed to follow up. "That's going to be awkward."
"It's precisely because of all the recent awkwardness that Quellon Greyjoy has decided to participate."
"And how fortunate for him," Ned almost sneered, "that my father will not."
Now this was something Robert was familiar with. The Ironborn had been caught doing a bit of raiding and a lot of wood poaching on the western coast, especially Sea Dragon Point and the New Gift. Brazenly inland into the latter too. They would cut the timber and rough hew it and then carry it back to the Iron Isles to let it season. They had also set up wood drying places in the abandoned parts of the woods near the Wall that no one bothered to patrol. They used to pay Northern loggers some coin to shut their mouths, and then just killed them when the loggers started regaining their conscience, which seemed to have happened more and more often in recent years. Ned had certainly fumed over it enough, in that quietly seething way of his. Robert still thought – but didn't say – that it made perfect sense for things to be that way. Shipwrights didn't look for any old tree, they needed long straight old trees. The kind that went without harvesting for generations. Like, say, in places where wildlings kept killing or scaring people away, like the hill clans did in the Mountains of the Moon. Plenty of loggers would be thinking about how to poach that wood that nobody was using. Little wonder a few coins went such a long way to strike a lawless deal.
Of course, then the North started building its semaphore towers and the Ironborn suddenly had a hard time not being spotted. Then the North came up with the crazy idea of mounted infantry and sent it intercepting and eliminating the Ironborn 'resource raids' with extreme prejudice. The Ironborn tried to switch things up and raid during foul weather, which backfired spectacularly when foul weather turned out to mean summer snows. The Snowdrifters lived up to their name quite literally and took an even bloodier toll on the cunts, in blood and lives and even their ships.
And then Euron Greyjoy decided that discovering a new, secret shipyard in the Bay of Ice was reason enough to break the King's Peace and launched a raid on the port in broad daylight. Which became a slew of raids on two other shipyards and half a dozen ships when the shipwrights and captains kept breaking and burning everything in reach to deny him spoils. Ned's fuming over that sad business had been outright gloating. Especially when the Iron Throne summoned the upstart pirate to account for himself. Alas, that was only followed by Euron Greyjoy sailing off into the Summer Sea, pursued by a share of the Iron Fleet whose size always changed in the telling. An incensed Quellon Greyjoy followed that by officially and forever banishing his son from the Iron Isles on pain of the King's Justice. Naturally, everyone assumed it was a mummery and that the man had deliberately let his son go. Didn't help that the pursuing ships were either trying to catch him or leave with him, depending on who you asked.
And now Quellon Greyjoy had somehow decided that the best way to regain face was attending a Greenlander wedding.
"Awkwardness is right."
"How is the Iron Throne planning to deal with this?" Ned asked.
"That is not among the things I have been told. I expect either a show of force in the shape of the Royal Fleet, a snub of similar scope, or both. All are equally likely in light of the Court's unchanged travel itinerary."
Robert most certainly didn't like it when Jon made leading statements, but they always signaled he was getting to the meat of the matter, so Robert usually managed to forgive him. "And that is?"
"The Royal Party is not taking a ship to Oldtown. The King has already announced and begun preparations to travel by land." Wait, really? "And this is the part that concerns you, Robert, because this seems to be another instance of your father taking things as an opportunity. He has decided to make it a Royal Progress, except under different rules than all those in the past – chiefly, the old way of hospitality."
"Old way?" Ned pounced. "You mean like it's still done in the North."
"Just so. The Royal Address framed it as a way to minimise the strain on the treasuries and stores of the many small keeps and holdfasts the King's Party will impose upon on the way. But I think you two can see the hidden goal here."
"Demanding courtiers to bring food and drink equal to their imposition on the host's hospitality will cut down on the freeloaders and opportunists," Ned surmised. "The lickspittles too. It's not as easy to kiss arse when it's costing you actual coin. It will also limit the size of the courtiers and petitioners' parties." Ned was getting that gleam in his eye that he only got when he read or wrote in his mysterious notebook of mystery. "Make it easier to know how invested in their purpose they are, when someone really comes in strength. Or not. And it will make it just as easy and affordable for the host to give appropriate gifts on their departure. Or not."
Was this why the Old Way was so big on hospitality? Was it really so easy to kick dirty politics in the cunt? Robert thought he might have just found a new appreciation for guest right. Suddenly, he didn't feel like laughing anymore at Ned for reading so often from that book of old fairytales sent down from Winterfell by that Old Nan person. Maybe he could swipe it from his room one of these days? No, the one time Robert went through his things and letters since they stopped sharing rooms, Ned actually punched him in the face and turned into Stannis when Robert tried to laugh it off.
"Jon." Robert's thought came like lightning. "Does dad plan to make this a permanent thing?"
"That is the question, isn't it? Would change the power games in the capital quite thoroughly if he did. But of course, the decision ultimately lies with the King."
"Right." Sure it did. "And you're saying this has something to do with Dad's plans for me?"
"Only assumptions. He has written nothing to me regarding you. However, he has informed me that he has sent a private missive with a courier. I expect him to arrive just before for my own departure. Considering these recent developments…"
"Right." Dad was giving him a new mission! What was it? Long as it wasn't the Small Council or the library, Robert was born ready! Join him on the trip? Go to King's Landing to break heads? Become a wandering knight? He'd have to get knighted, but that just meant he had to go and win a tourney, and wouldn't you know it, there was a big one being set up right now! Easy!
"Now that you've both sufficiently indulged your fantasies," Jon dryly interrupted Robert's daydream, "I'm ready to present the option I arranged for you." Jon folded his hands on the table and beheld the two of them. "I will be attending the wedding. But I won't be taking the two of you with me."
"What?" Robert roared. "Why? And whatever happened to us making our own decisions?"
"I said you could make then. And I'm even helping you make them informed. I did not, however, promise to help you fulfill them."
Oh, Jon was resorting to technicalities now!?
"Why?"
And since when was Ned all composure again?
"Several reasons. The first is because of the wedding itself. It is not just an alliance with Dorne. It also reads as a show of defiance and warning. To the Iron Throne." That was the last thing Robert expected to hear. "I don't want to risk the two of you getting dragged into whatever power shows and shadow plays will inevitably occur there. Ser Baelor is not lord, technically, and Elia Martell is certainly not in line to inherit Dorne. That the crown is attending at all is atypical. It speaks of certain personal reasons I'd rather you two not be in the range of when the landslide inevitably happens. I don't relish being near them, but I have my own reasons to go there."
Jon then proceeded to talk them through a borderline slanderous string of reports and missives about Oldtown, House Hightower, House Targaryen, and the fallout from the Great Deratting that still hadn't finished its rotten time in the sun.
Leyton Hightower had been a hostage in King's Landing since the Deratting. The point was to guarantee House Hightower's good behaviour. Except now Baelor Hightower was marrying the Princess of Dorne, which was about as clear a glove tossed at the King's feet as anything could be to those who knew even the barebones of history. It made Robert seriously wonder if the Tyrells had even been consulted about it first.
But that wasn't even half of it, because Baelor Hightower had been busy. He responded to his father being arrested by 'idealistically misjudging' the bloodlust of the commonborn and 'tragically failing' to contain the smallfolk outrage against the Oldtown septons. When the Iron Throne demanded an accounting, Ser Baelor sent them an exhaustive list of names, titles, holdings, crimes and punishments applied and / or pending. When The Iron Throne made noise about that list not including any of the smallfolk that lynched the Mansions of the Pious red – the Shield of the Faith couldn't keep silent after all – Baelor Hightower went on a second arrest and execution spree, almost all of whom turned out to be the corrupt elements that had meanwhile been unearthed among the traders and city guard. And when the Iron Throne sent Symond Staunton over there with a small army of men to make his own reckoning on behalf of the increasingly frothing High Septon, he found no hide nor hair of the commoners in question. Interestingly, a large share of Duskendale's initial immigration post-charter seemed to have come from Oldtown. Just a coincidence, surely. That Denys Darklyn wasn't able to refuse such a bountiful influx of scribes and acolytes lest he set back his House of Wisdom was also mere coincidence, certainly.
"Jon," Ned said in that slow way of his that denoted abject disbelief. "It says here that 'the Iron Throne will take advantage of the auspicious occasion provided by these nuptials to see the reins of Westeros' oldest City return to the proper hands.' Does this mean Lord Leyton is being released from his detainment?"
"Quite so."
Robert gaped. Baelor Hightower had got one over House Targaryen and made himself out to be a savage enough dog that the crown decided they'd rather have his father back there. He literally drove the King so spare that he was willing to release a man he absolutely believed was a traitor. All so he wouldn't have to deal with whatever idea the Bloody next got to escalate tensions. Completely deniably. "Holy shit."
"Indeed," Jon agreed, completely seriously. "House Targaryen, the Martells, Tullys, Lannisters, all Reach houses that claim descent from Garth Greenhand, myself, even Quellon Greyjoy will be in attendance for this travesty of reconciliation. And I still haven't touched on my personal purpose for going there that will absolutely see you two dragged into the resulting mess. Can either of you guess?"
Robert shook his head. Surprisingly, so did Ned.
"And that's why I'm not taking you with me. You've shown the ability to strategize. You've shown tactics every bit as good as those in the yard. And Robert, at least, has shown that he can keep a secret. But neither of you yet have the ability to read the present as well as you do the past, even after all the information I've given to you upfront." Robert almost bit his tongue in outrage. "However, I meant what I said before. It's time you made decisions yourself, see them through yourselves, and deal with the consequences yourselves. Robert, you're a man grown now. And Ned may as well be older than you, for all that he was born one year after." Now that was… no, no, that was fair. "So while I am not taking you with me, you're both free to come by your own means if you wish. Your own coin, your own travel arrangements. I certainly won't cage you."
"Some option you got there," Robert groused, knowing but not caring that he was about to be full of shit. "You didn't have to tie us in so many knots. If you didn't want us there, you could have just said so."
"Ah, but that isn't the option." Jon was all smug now too!? "I've yet to even name that."
"Jon," Ned said tiredly. "Please have mercy on my poor ears, you know it's me Robert will complain to for this. All day."
Well fuck you too, you no good traitor.
"Very well." Said his supreme condescension. "It so happens I have been arranging a wedding of my own." What's this now? "Alyssa's, to be exact. I have prevailed on Elys to accept an outside match. I had originally planned to make it a big family event, but with recent events forcing my hand, I was hoping you might consider being her escorts. She will be leaving to live the rest of her life far away. I thought familiar faces would do her well on the parting."
… How did Robert not already know about this?
"Jon." Ned sounded almost suspicious all of a sudden. "Who is she marrying?"
"Jonos Bracken."
Wait, is that what he meant by outside match? "You're sending her to the Riverlands? Why?"
"Ned?"
Oh he did not just snub him!
"… I'm not sure what you want me to say." Ned admitted. "How is a Bracken a good idea? They're known Blackfyre conspirators." They were? They didn't fight for the Ninepenny kings, surely? Or was he talking about before, back during Dunk and Egg times? But then he may as well accuse the Redwynes, Freys and who knew which others. "Are you sure that's the kind of interest you want to bind Alyssa to? Come to think of it, won't this match send the King the wrong message?"
"No. If anything it should be the opposite message. House Arryn and Bracken are not peers. By this bond, they will be beholden to me."
"But she isn't marrying as an Arryn, she's a Waynwood. And Aly would be theirs to hold hostage in an eventuality. I mean, with Blackfyres across the sea… Unconfirmed, admittedly."
Unconfirmed he says. The public screed the King descended into after that courier came from the North to explain the sudden reveal and movement of House Stark's Essosi relatives became its own legend practically overnight. Of all the Blackfyres to squeeze such vitriol from the main Targaryen branch, Robert had never imagined it would be a eunuch, of all things. Never mind that his lineage was never confirmed, there probably wasn't a person on either side of the sea that was more hunted right now. Especially after his Magister friend from Pentos publicly and categorically denounced him and put his own price on his head.
"Jon…" Ned suddenly asked. His tone had taken a strange turn unexpectedly. "The Brackens are among the foremost adherents of the Seven in the Riverlands, aren't they?"
"Openly and proud of it."
"How do they feel about the recent… calumnies, shall we say?"
"Now that is a good question. They've been quite obstinate in refusing to share their thoughts on the matter. That said, they've also gone out of their way to secure the services of the region's most prominent wandering septon for the wedding ceremony. Since you seem so interested in the Seven and have already read everything there is to read on it, I was thinking you may take this opportunity to talk to someone who lives the priest's life, rather than merely talk about it. Perhaps he'll take less defensively to your questions than Urizen has. Present your arguments to someone who might at least pretend to debate in good faith, perhaps even before a properly receptive audience? I'm sure Robert will help you if you ask him. He seems to do whatever you tell him."
"No I don't!" He didn't, right?
Ned ignored Robert to keep staring at Jon. "Does this septon like to travel barefoot to the point his feet have turned leather-brown and just as hard?"
"An excellent guess. Don't hold it against him before you meet him though. I hear he is warming up to some of your views already."
"Such as?"
"The Nine Noble Virtues."
The room turned and stayed very quiet. Somehow, Robert's mind didn't even once try to run away from him. Not that he could cope with silence any better than usual. "Nine noble virtues?"
"Courage, truth, honor, fidelity, discipline, hospitality, industriousness, self-reliance, perseverance."
Robert sat back in his chair, taken aback not just by the list but how Ned had given it. It sounded like a really good list that Robert really wanted to hear more about, but Ned had said it almost absentmindedly. Vacantly, even.
And when Ned spoke again, it was low and damn near disbelieving. "… You mean to split the Faith."
…
He WHAT!?
"I don't imagine what you could possibly mean by that." That had no business being said like an old dodderer! "Whatever happens in Oldtown will be down to all the fuss in the Starry Sept, what with the King's Landing clergy and the Starry Sept devout being all in the same place for that whole week. Under the eyes of the King, the Hand, and every great noble head except the one they may or may not have a legitimate grievance against. That said, should some septon or other expect me to pledge my support to him during the inevitable disruption to the main event, the onus of blame will not fall on me for however he reacts when I instead mention the Sparrow and what an excellent display he put on at my niece's wedding. I'm sure Denys will be very publically supportive or outraged at my approach to the situation, as it suits him. I'm old and my heir is young enough to 'learn better' whichever way the falcon flies. But you boys shouldn't worry too much. Why would any septon need an outsider's endorsement like that? Well, unless they weren't particularly popular with their peers, but what fool would try to build any position of power on such a weak foundation?"
Robert Baratheon stared at his foster father, vaguely astounded he wasn't open-mouthed on top of everything else.
Then he slammed a hand on the table, jumped to his feet and pointed his finger dramatically. "I knew it! You're just a schemer after all, you grumpkin!"
Jon smiled – it completely blasted away the brewing clouds in Robert's mind – stood up, walked around the table and put his hands on his shoulders. "I'm proud of you, Robert."
… That wasn't fair.
Robert hugged him. He had to bend a little, but that was alright.
When Robert finally released him – you didn't stop hugging someone until you were good and ready, Dad said so! – Jon turned and embraced Ned too. "I'm proud of you Eddard."
"Thank you, Jon."
Fucking Starks and their fucking ice for blood.
When Jon released him – because Ned didn't know how to hug proper either, the cunt – Jon turned and embraced them both. "I love you both, my boys."
"… Luv you too," Robert muttered, misty-eyed. So what if he was, huh? Huh!? You gonna say someth-
"The Faith made a business out of raping small children," Jon murmured in their ears. "When, exactly, did I give the impression I have tolerance for such things?" Jon pulled away. "I'll let you talk."
Then he walked out.
Robert stood there, thinking about going to King's Landing as Jon's ward, attending the Oldtown wedding as Dad's boy, going to the Riverlands as a man to help form ties with who might become the high priests of an entire new church, and how one of the titles of the King on the Iron Throne was Shield of the Faith.
"Did we just engage in sedition?"
"I'm going to the Riverlands."
"Alright then."
Hopefully Dad wouldn't be too disappointed.
==============
"-. 278 AC .-"
"-. 278 AC .-"
As he listened and read everything Jon told and showed them, Robert Baratheon seriously wondered whether his father was still sane. He couldn't imagine having to deal with even half of what Jon was unloading on them. It turned out that while they were busy arguing ancient history with the most obstinate fake priest imaginable, the rest of Westeros had sailed all the way up Shit Creek without a paddle and taken residence in the deepest, dankest basement of Castle Skullduggery.
And that was just the background information that didn't have anything to do with the Oldtown wedding at all. At least not directly.
Duskendale was the first snark in the room. The charter given by King Aerys before Ned came along had led to a massive boom to the Darklyn lordship, the port town having quickly expanded into a city. But this also meant it proceeded to drain people, trade and jobs from King's Landing like snowmelt down a rill. An issue that only seemed to have picked up pace with the completion of the Hall of Wisdom a couple of months back.
"I'm guessing the King isn't happy?" Robert asked, because he knew Ned wasn't one to state the obvious.
"You would think so," Jon said. "But your father seems to have approached the matter as an opportunity. He's taken advantage of the shortage of bribe money to pick out who's most disgruntled at the drop in protection fees, so called. He's dismissed, maimed, gelded or outright executed about a third of the Goldcloaks by now, including half of their officers and almost every Gate Captain. I'm told it has done wonders to restore the capital's appeal among traders of all stripes. But it may just be the smallfolk that will sing his praises loudest by the end of it, if the biogas production proves as lucrative as the Scales claim."
'Scales' was what the people had taken to calling the Northern maesters ever since Rickard Stark promoted their metric system via the Winds of Winter. Since weighing schemes were a fact of life that no one had found a solution for in thousands of years, Robert was more inclined to think it was just an excuse to make sure their name had something to do with how they wore their chain links on their clothing.
All of which quickly fled his mind as he skimmed the reports Jon was showing them, because no shit his father was being forced to clean up the capital. There was so much shit on the Cloaks alone that you could probably light the whole city on fire with just their stench alone. Robert wasn't sure about this business of putting shit to fester in a barrel just so you can cook on shit fumes, but this was Dad so it couldn't be as insane as it sounded. Tanners already used piss to cure leather, didn't they? And didn't a lot of the best mushrooms grow out of shit too? Even if it didn't work out, the business would probably be worth it for the drop in stink alone, wasn't that the first thing people mentioned about King's Landing? The city's high and small folk alike were going to sing his father's praises to the end of time. Maybe he should call in the Scales to do something for the Kingswood smallfolk too, before those outlaws managed to carry off someone actually important.
Paying peasants to shit, the things Ned's maesters came up with, honestly!
"I'm sure Qarlton Chelsted and Symond Staunton are pleased," Ned said, yanking Robert's mind back on track.
It also turned out the Duskendale charter was putting a lot of coin in the pockets of the Master of Coins and Maser of Laws. Robert wondered how long they'd have let it go on despite every day causing King's Landing to decline. They were making money off his father's cleverness and goodwill, the thieves!
"Robert," Jon's voice brought his thoughts to a stumbling halt before they could slip away from him again. "I know you have trouble focusing when it comes to matters you didn't pick out yourself. And I know it seems like I am talking around the original point, but I promise it will prove important by the end. I need you to focus for this. Can you do that?"
"Right. Sorry."
Robert wished he could work out like he usually did, but he couldn't do that and read at the same time. Well, not without getting a squire or two and have one of them hold the papers in front of his face and wait a minute, that wasn't a bad idea at all if-
"Robert!"
"Sorry! Sorry…"
Being always as good as his word, Jon then proceeded to tell them a story that didn't have anything to do with anything. Some newly landed knight from the Westerlands went on a hunt with his firstborn. Then his giant freak of a son – quite the scary lad, it was said – died slowing down whatever beast only managed to turn the man into a bleeding mess on the ground. Then some wanderer or other came upon the mess and managed to get slightly less mangled while finishing the beast – probably a bear. This lad – 'tall as a gleaming mountain clad in plate and sword and shield smooth as a mirror' – then took the man's other son as a squire in payment for his life and rode off on his lustrous steed… somewhere in the other direction. Or so the story went. Robert supposed it was exciting enough, especially since the mysterious wanderer turned out to be some lad that Ned knew from Winterfell, but he didn't understand what it had to do with anything. He didn't think Ned understood either, but seeing as he was quite pleased to hear about this 'Walder' fellow, Robert decided he didn't mind. Not to say he didn't have plenty else to mind though.
"Oh piss off, Ned, this has nothing on Dunk and Egg" Robert scoffed. "You're drunk if you expect me to believe that."
"That's not what I said."
"Good, because it's crazy! What even is the point of this story?"
"The point is that this is just the latest in the man's tale of wandering good-doing," Jon said calmly. "The point is that the Faith has put much effort into discrediting all notions that knights like Serwyn of the Mirror Shield existed before Andal times. But now we have his second coming striding forth from the infidel North like a legend straight out of the Age of Heroes, living the chivalry ideal while spurning the Seven, and indeed claiming not to be any knight at all."
Robert blinked. "Oh…"
Jon nodded. "The response among the faithful and especially the clergy has been outsized, to say the least."
Robert thought deeply. About religion, tradition, politics and weddings being prepared in the most ancient of Westeros places. It still didn't feel like a big enough deal. "It's not the only bug up their arse, is it?"
"No indeed."
Robert was right. And then some.
Ice export, gemstone export, iron export, steel export, disease killers, plague killers, a dozen new kinds of booze – "You've been holding out on me, Ned you cunt!" – shipped in unique glass bottles, Pazaak and Gwent in every tavern, tools, tools to make tools, glass, glass windows, glass jars, glass baubles, far-eyes, thermometers (they wanted him to put quicksilver in his mouth, were they crazy?), all with neat little plaques and labels with the maker's mark and place of origin. And that's without getting into the really crazy stuff. Like no more food imports by the North.
Like food exports from the North. Three new crops never seen in Westeros before. Potatoes as easy to grow as weeds and bountiful as corn. Rice that kept forever but didn't grow anywhere outside the Neck of all places. Maple syrup that you could get from trees that didn't produce it except in the cold. None of them sold outside the North for anything less than coin enough to ruin anyone who wasn't at least as rich as a High Lord. Robert had heard about all of these things piecemeal over the years, but he'd never bothered considering what they signified together.
And then there was newer stuff too.
For the first time in history, a High Lord not named Stark had declined a maester replacement from the Citadel in favour of one from the Crown of Winter Institute of Learning. Sure, it was a Northern House – Glover – but it proved once and for all that Rickard Stark's Northern Citadel ambitions had borne fruit despite everyone expecting him to fail. Almost nobody had managed to bring themselves to fully accept it, despite everything else Robert had just gone over. Been made to go over. Because he'd been as oblivious as everyone else. Damn.
And the list wasn't even over. It still had those other fruit from the Winter Institute that could prove the success of Rickard Stark's northern ambitions. The printing press, printed books enough to outnumber however many Seven Pointed Stars were out and about by now, the Winds of Winter, the Journal of Scientific Inquiry that published a new breakthrough every few months.
It was that last one, Robert now found, that had really tossed the fox amongst the chickens. Not unto itself, but because of the knowledge it dangled before the noses of craftsmen, tradesmen and inventors that had taken to traveling North for 'inspiration' from all reaches of the continent and beyond. Incidentally avoiding the southron trade guilds and their 'exhausting politics and even more exhausting obsession with hoarding' that Jon never held back from holding in contempt when the topic turned that way. In private at least.
On the Killing of Plagues, The Nature of Disease, Germ Theory, Pregnancy Outcomes Related to Age…
"Four-Field Crop Rotation," Robert sounded out, the lightning going off in his mind and landing on a certain memory. "Ned, isn't that something you mentioned once?"
"It is."
"Before we moved to the Eyrie the first time."
"Yes."
"… And this only came out late last year."
"Yes."
Which gave people just enough time to test it before the presumed coming of autumn. It made for just enough harvest seasons to let them see the benefits, but not enjoy them before having to switch to winter crops. Enough time to paint the North in a good light just as they resumed paying what were apparently much bigger taxes than before, meaning the secret would have shortly stopped being a secret anyway. Enough time for the rest of the Seven Kingdoms to see the worth of the technique, but not enough to apply it before next winter, preserving the North's advantage for another turning while painting the Scales and House Stark in the best possible light.
Robert's mind turned to logistics then. He didn't think he'd find something so capable of focusing his entire mind like Ned's war did. Especially not so soon. But the moment he thought past the North's sparse population, or the Stormlands whose hills and farmers needed all the help they could get, oh boy…
"Robert?" Jon asked after a while. "What are you thinking about?"
"Cycling fields," Robert said slowly. "Isn't it going to bugger smaller farmers right up the arse? Especially in the Reach?" He could see it more clearly the more he thought about it. Larger landowners would be able to apply the new method and outcompete smaller farmers, which would enable them to buy them out or run them off, noble overseer or no. Hells, many of them would even be that noble overseer, there was no shortage of petty knights in the 'Heart of Chivalry.' It would let them centralize land and control the food trade while the bulk of smallfolk went poor and starved, helpless to do anything. "Fuck."
"Robert?"
"The Reach is going to see famine or a smallfolk rebellion by next summer."
Ned frowned.
Jon, though, just nodded again, if slowly. "Unless house Tyrell forbids the use of crop rotation entirely."
"But then it's either a smallfolk rebellion or war over their blatant power play, or that's what it would look like.'"
"In the worst case scenario, I suppose it's certainly not impossible."
"All the while, the other kingdoms will become less reliant on Reach food the more people apply the four-field rotation, and whatever else comes up from the North to kick Highgarden's teeth in next."
They already had new crops the Reach didn't have. Robert knew for sure his father would stop at almost nothing to get the potatoes. What next? Crop medicine? Crop plaguekillers? Pest killers? Pest repelling spells? What about those crazy rumours about Winterfell inventing a lightning-fast way to smelt iron just to make fancy farming tools, was that actually true? Old God worshippers were steadily moving North in greater numbers and not coming back, according to the reams of detailed paper on happening in the Riverlands that Jon had for some reason. Did that mean the North's food supply was now good enough to produce a surplus? Support a growing population? What about Winter? The North always lost the greatest share of people, was that going to change too? And what if a lord adopted Northern science regardless of what their overlords decided? If the Blackwoods did it in the Riverlands, what would the Tullys do?
What did the North mean for all this to accomplish? The North was controlling the leak of its advantages. The knowledge would crack the foundation of the southern kingdom with the most potential soft power and actual military power. How Highgarden dealt with the problem would only change the shape of the bloody repercussions. And regardless of what happened, their standing would be weakened and the politics of the realm would change just in time for winter to set in.
Robert abruptly began to rifle through everything else in Jon's stack of notes, looking for anything that would prove or disprove the image peeking up through the clouds. It took some time, but Ned and Jon waited until he was done. And when he was done, he was done and then some.
The Wolf Pack had returned to the North, just like the Company of the Rose. And it looked like almost all the Northern male heirs of their generation – including Brandon Stark – were just finishing their training with the sellsword company. As soldiers, rather than commanders.
"Ned…" Robert asked slowly. "Is your family fomenting rebellion?"
Ned snorted. "If they are, I haven't been told, though you'll be the first to know if that ever changes, I'm sure."
"Very funny."
Thinking about it more, though, Robert ultimately decided he'd been a right cunt to immediately assume the worst about Ned's family and homeland. What was the North going to do, not share their advancements? Everyone up to the King himself would be on their arse afterwards, and everything else would still happen. Ned was a better person than he was, to laugh him off so easily.
"Ned. I was an arse and a half to jump to the worst conclusion about your family. I'm sorry."
"I forgive you."
Ned forgave far too easily too.
But Robert knew not to throw it in his face – unlike certain other total cunts – so he decided he may as well move on to the grumpkin in the room: if just two disgraced maesters and a dozen acolytes could make a Kingdom leap forward by several generations in every possible way, what the fuck had the Citadel been doing? Or, worse, what had they been stopping everyone from doing all this time?
"The King is attending the wedding, isn't he?" Ned said for both of them.
Jon had been waiting with an unreadable gaze since Robert's callous accusation of his far too kind and generous foster brother, but now he spoke again. Finally. "Just so."
"But he's not actually going there for the wedding."
"Yes he is, but there are other concerns pulling him in that direction as well, yes."
"Concerns big enough to outweigh the importance of the Faith's problems."
"The High Septon will be officiating the ceremony and the Most Devout are going as well," Jon answered. "But I do believe you are onto something."
"The Maesters are in deep shit again, aren't they?" Robert said, amazed he'd ever believed that being blamed for every natural death would be the worst of the maesters' problems. "All of them. From the Citadel and Darklyn's new Hall."
"And the Alchemists. And the Scribes. And every other trade guild since this began making its way to every port town and city." Jon pushed forward what turned out to be an older issue of the Scales' science journal. Progress Disincentivisation and Anticompetitive Practice: A Critical Review of Monopolies
Robert would never admit it, but them journal articles had instantly become his second favorite form of the written word right after newspaper columns, for the simple fact that they all came with neat and tidy conclusions at the end that let him skip the dry parts. "Guilds are holding us back?"
"My kin in Gulltown seem to be coming around to the idea, if naught else."
And if he mentioned them, it meant that Jon was out of patience with talk of coin counting for the day. Double damn. Then again, Robert was just about ready to tackle the Other in the room himself. "I don't suppose House Hightower did the sane thing and not invite House Stark to their nuptials?"
"No indeed. Though I'm sure they were relieved when their invitation was declined."
Say what now?
"Ned," Jon said. "This talk so far has been mostly for your benefit. I said earlier that I meant for you two to start making your own decisions. But the only worthwhile decisions are informed decisions, so I wanted to lay out all the important points. Other people will always seek to make their own options for you, but they are never the only options you have. I trust you understand the difference now?"
Ned's voice was grave. "Yes."
"This, then, are the options your father has arranged for you – you can attend the wedding as your own man, or go home as your own man. But not as House Stark's representative. Lord Rickard has declined Baelor Hightower's invite. His stated reason is that he can't in good conscience answer such a call when he still hasn't done so for the King's own invitation to travel south for his commendation." Which was fair. "There are many questioning this justification, but considering what all has been happening up North – never mind everything we don't know about – I'll let you decide for yourselves whether or not to take him at face value."
Keeping up with all the new business, stamping down on flaring rivalries because, traveling from one petty holdfast to the next to double-check the loyalty of his petty lords' maesters, using that same endless Progress to make sure said lords weren't skimping on their taxes, suffice to say Lord Stark had been extremely busy the past five years even disregarding the raiding problem that mostly solved itself. And that was without counting the rumors about two rival would-be Kings-Beyond-the-Wall. That was another few months of work, where Ned's dad and brother went and inspected the Night's Watch too, including visits to all the castles along the Wall. Even the abandoned ones. To say nothing of the War Games in the former Bolton holdings that had since been broken down in dozens of smaller parts. That was another grand old story.
No, Robert wasn't jealous of them grand adventures, whatever gave you that idea you fucking cunts?
Come to think of it, was the wildling problem why Lord Stark brought the Wolf Pack over? But they already had the Company of the Rose from years back when there still hadn't been a whiff of wildling kings and-
"Your father is willing to defer to my judgement on whether or not you should be allowed to attend," Jon was telling Ned. "However, unless you yourself persuade him otherwise, you will be under the authority of Ser Wyman Manderly once there, your father's official representative. Robert, this goes for you as well – if you choose to go, you won't be your own man. You'll be your father's son, with all that implies."
Robert suddenly had the image of insulting the High Septon to his face and telling him to piss on his gods just as his father walked up behind him. He shuddered. Next option please? Not like he wanted his reunion with Dad to be at a Dornishwoman's wedding anyway!
Ned, though, seemed to be thinking very deeply about it. "Who else will be there?"
"All other Lords Paramount have confirmed their attendance, with or without their families and up to half a dozen of their foremost bannermen."
"The Greyjoys too?"
"Yes."
The Greyjoys were attending a Hightower wedding?
"…Well," Robert said when nobody else seemed to follow up. "That's going to be awkward."
"It's precisely because of all the recent awkwardness that Quellon Greyjoy has decided to participate."
"And how fortunate for him," Ned almost sneered, "that my father will not."
Now this was something Robert was familiar with. The Ironborn had been caught doing a bit of raiding and a lot of wood poaching on the western coast, especially Sea Dragon Point and the New Gift. Brazenly inland into the latter too. They would cut the timber and rough hew it and then carry it back to the Iron Isles to let it season. They had also set up wood drying places in the abandoned parts of the woods near the Wall that no one bothered to patrol. They used to pay Northern loggers some coin to shut their mouths, and then just killed them when the loggers started regaining their conscience, which seemed to have happened more and more often in recent years. Ned had certainly fumed over it enough, in that quietly seething way of his. Robert still thought – but didn't say – that it made perfect sense for things to be that way. Shipwrights didn't look for any old tree, they needed long straight old trees. The kind that went without harvesting for generations. Like, say, in places where wildlings kept killing or scaring people away, like the hill clans did in the Mountains of the Moon. Plenty of loggers would be thinking about how to poach that wood that nobody was using. Little wonder a few coins went such a long way to strike a lawless deal.
Of course, then the North started building its semaphore towers and the Ironborn suddenly had a hard time not being spotted. Then the North came up with the crazy idea of mounted infantry and sent it intercepting and eliminating the Ironborn 'resource raids' with extreme prejudice. The Ironborn tried to switch things up and raid during foul weather, which backfired spectacularly when foul weather turned out to mean summer snows. The Snowdrifters lived up to their name quite literally and took an even bloodier toll on the cunts, in blood and lives and even their ships.
And then Euron Greyjoy decided that discovering a new, secret shipyard in the Bay of Ice was reason enough to break the King's Peace and launched a raid on the port in broad daylight. Which became a slew of raids on two other shipyards and half a dozen ships when the shipwrights and captains kept breaking and burning everything in reach to deny him spoils. Ned's fuming over that sad business had been outright gloating. Especially when the Iron Throne summoned the upstart pirate to account for himself. Alas, that was only followed by Euron Greyjoy sailing off into the Summer Sea, pursued by a share of the Iron Fleet whose size always changed in the telling. An incensed Quellon Greyjoy followed that by officially and forever banishing his son from the Iron Isles on pain of the King's Justice. Naturally, everyone assumed it was a mummery and that the man had deliberately let his son go. Didn't help that the pursuing ships were either trying to catch him or leave with him, depending on who you asked.
And now Quellon Greyjoy had somehow decided that the best way to regain face was attending a Greenlander wedding.
"Awkwardness is right."
"How is the Iron Throne planning to deal with this?" Ned asked.
"That is not among the things I have been told. I expect either a show of force in the shape of the Royal Fleet, a snub of similar scope, or both. All are equally likely in light of the Court's unchanged travel itinerary."
Robert most certainly didn't like it when Jon made leading statements, but they always signaled he was getting to the meat of the matter, so Robert usually managed to forgive him. "And that is?"
"The Royal Party is not taking a ship to Oldtown. The King has already announced and begun preparations to travel by land." Wait, really? "And this is the part that concerns you, Robert, because this seems to be another instance of your father taking things as an opportunity. He has decided to make it a Royal Progress, except under different rules than all those in the past – chiefly, the old way of hospitality."
"Old way?" Ned pounced. "You mean like it's still done in the North."
"Just so. The Royal Address framed it as a way to minimise the strain on the treasuries and stores of the many small keeps and holdfasts the King's Party will impose upon on the way. But I think you two can see the hidden goal here."
"Demanding courtiers to bring food and drink equal to their imposition on the host's hospitality will cut down on the freeloaders and opportunists," Ned surmised. "The lickspittles too. It's not as easy to kiss arse when it's costing you actual coin. It will also limit the size of the courtiers and petitioners' parties." Ned was getting that gleam in his eye that he only got when he read or wrote in his mysterious notebook of mystery. "Make it easier to know how invested in their purpose they are, when someone really comes in strength. Or not. And it will make it just as easy and affordable for the host to give appropriate gifts on their departure. Or not."
Was this why the Old Way was so big on hospitality? Was it really so easy to kick dirty politics in the cunt? Robert thought he might have just found a new appreciation for guest right. Suddenly, he didn't feel like laughing anymore at Ned for reading so often from that book of old fairytales sent down from Winterfell by that Old Nan person. Maybe he could swipe it from his room one of these days? No, the one time Robert went through his things and letters since they stopped sharing rooms, Ned actually punched him in the face and turned into Stannis when Robert tried to laugh it off.
"Jon." Robert's thought came like lightning. "Does dad plan to make this a permanent thing?"
"That is the question, isn't it? Would change the power games in the capital quite thoroughly if he did. But of course, the decision ultimately lies with the King."
"Right." Sure it did. "And you're saying this has something to do with Dad's plans for me?"
"Only assumptions. He has written nothing to me regarding you. However, he has informed me that he has sent a private missive with a courier. I expect him to arrive just before for my own departure. Considering these recent developments…"
"Right." Dad was giving him a new mission! What was it? Long as it wasn't the Small Council or the library, Robert was born ready! Join him on the trip? Go to King's Landing to break heads? Become a wandering knight? He'd have to get knighted, but that just meant he had to go and win a tourney, and wouldn't you know it, there was a big one being set up right now! Easy!
"Now that you've both sufficiently indulged your fantasies," Jon dryly interrupted Robert's daydream, "I'm ready to present the option I arranged for you." Jon folded his hands on the table and beheld the two of them. "I will be attending the wedding. But I won't be taking the two of you with me."
"What?" Robert roared. "Why? And whatever happened to us making our own decisions?"
"I said you could make then. And I'm even helping you make them informed. I did not, however, promise to help you fulfill them."
Oh, Jon was resorting to technicalities now!?
"Why?"
And since when was Ned all composure again?
"Several reasons. The first is because of the wedding itself. It is not just an alliance with Dorne. It also reads as a show of defiance and warning. To the Iron Throne." That was the last thing Robert expected to hear. "I don't want to risk the two of you getting dragged into whatever power shows and shadow plays will inevitably occur there. Ser Baelor is not lord, technically, and Elia Martell is certainly not in line to inherit Dorne. That the crown is attending at all is atypical. It speaks of certain personal reasons I'd rather you two not be in the range of when the landslide inevitably happens. I don't relish being near them, but I have my own reasons to go there."
Jon then proceeded to talk them through a borderline slanderous string of reports and missives about Oldtown, House Hightower, House Targaryen, and the fallout from the Great Deratting that still hadn't finished its rotten time in the sun.
Leyton Hightower had been a hostage in King's Landing since the Deratting. The point was to guarantee House Hightower's good behaviour. Except now Baelor Hightower was marrying the Princess of Dorne, which was about as clear a glove tossed at the King's feet as anything could be to those who knew even the barebones of history. It made Robert seriously wonder if the Tyrells had even been consulted about it first.
But that wasn't even half of it, because Baelor Hightower had been busy. He responded to his father being arrested by 'idealistically misjudging' the bloodlust of the commonborn and 'tragically failing' to contain the smallfolk outrage against the Oldtown septons. When the Iron Throne demanded an accounting, Ser Baelor sent them an exhaustive list of names, titles, holdings, crimes and punishments applied and / or pending. When The Iron Throne made noise about that list not including any of the smallfolk that lynched the Mansions of the Pious red – the Shield of the Faith couldn't keep silent after all – Baelor Hightower went on a second arrest and execution spree, almost all of whom turned out to be the corrupt elements that had meanwhile been unearthed among the traders and city guard. And when the Iron Throne sent Symond Staunton over there with a small army of men to make his own reckoning on behalf of the increasingly frothing High Septon, he found no hide nor hair of the commoners in question. Interestingly, a large share of Duskendale's initial immigration post-charter seemed to have come from Oldtown. Just a coincidence, surely. That Denys Darklyn wasn't able to refuse such a bountiful influx of scribes and acolytes lest he set back his House of Wisdom was also mere coincidence, certainly.
"Jon," Ned said in that slow way of his that denoted abject disbelief. "It says here that 'the Iron Throne will take advantage of the auspicious occasion provided by these nuptials to see the reins of Westeros' oldest City return to the proper hands.' Does this mean Lord Leyton is being released from his detainment?"
"Quite so."
Robert gaped. Baelor Hightower had got one over House Targaryen and made himself out to be a savage enough dog that the crown decided they'd rather have his father back there. He literally drove the King so spare that he was willing to release a man he absolutely believed was a traitor. All so he wouldn't have to deal with whatever idea the Bloody next got to escalate tensions. Completely deniably. "Holy shit."
"Indeed," Jon agreed, completely seriously. "House Targaryen, the Martells, Tullys, Lannisters, all Reach houses that claim descent from Garth Greenhand, myself, even Quellon Greyjoy will be in attendance for this travesty of reconciliation. And I still haven't touched on my personal purpose for going there that will absolutely see you two dragged into the resulting mess. Can either of you guess?"
Robert shook his head. Surprisingly, so did Ned.
"And that's why I'm not taking you with me. You've shown the ability to strategize. You've shown tactics every bit as good as those in the yard. And Robert, at least, has shown that he can keep a secret. But neither of you yet have the ability to read the present as well as you do the past, even after all the information I've given to you upfront." Robert almost bit his tongue in outrage. "However, I meant what I said before. It's time you made decisions yourself, see them through yourselves, and deal with the consequences yourselves. Robert, you're a man grown now. And Ned may as well be older than you, for all that he was born one year after." Now that was… no, no, that was fair. "So while I am not taking you with me, you're both free to come by your own means if you wish. Your own coin, your own travel arrangements. I certainly won't cage you."
"Some option you got there," Robert groused, knowing but not caring that he was about to be full of shit. "You didn't have to tie us in so many knots. If you didn't want us there, you could have just said so."
"Ah, but that isn't the option." Jon was all smug now too!? "I've yet to even name that."
"Jon," Ned said tiredly. "Please have mercy on my poor ears, you know it's me Robert will complain to for this. All day."
Well fuck you too, you no good traitor.
"Very well." Said his supreme condescension. "It so happens I have been arranging a wedding of my own." What's this now? "Alyssa's, to be exact. I have prevailed on Elys to accept an outside match. I had originally planned to make it a big family event, but with recent events forcing my hand, I was hoping you might consider being her escorts. She will be leaving to live the rest of her life far away. I thought familiar faces would do her well on the parting."
… How did Robert not already know about this?
"Jon." Ned sounded almost suspicious all of a sudden. "Who is she marrying?"
"Jonos Bracken."
Wait, is that what he meant by outside match? "You're sending her to the Riverlands? Why?"
"Ned?"
Oh he did not just snub him!
"… I'm not sure what you want me to say." Ned admitted. "How is a Bracken a good idea? They're known Blackfyre conspirators." They were? They didn't fight for the Ninepenny kings, surely? Or was he talking about before, back during Dunk and Egg times? But then he may as well accuse the Redwynes, Freys and who knew which others. "Are you sure that's the kind of interest you want to bind Alyssa to? Come to think of it, won't this match send the King the wrong message?"
"No. If anything it should be the opposite message. House Arryn and Bracken are not peers. By this bond, they will be beholden to me."
"But she isn't marrying as an Arryn, she's a Waynwood. And Aly would be theirs to hold hostage in an eventuality. I mean, with Blackfyres across the sea… Unconfirmed, admittedly."
Unconfirmed he says. The public screed the King descended into after that courier came from the North to explain the sudden reveal and movement of House Stark's Essosi relatives became its own legend practically overnight. Of all the Blackfyres to squeeze such vitriol from the main Targaryen branch, Robert had never imagined it would be a eunuch, of all things. Never mind that his lineage was never confirmed, there probably wasn't a person on either side of the sea that was more hunted right now. Especially after his Magister friend from Pentos publicly and categorically denounced him and put his own price on his head.
"Jon…" Ned suddenly asked. His tone had taken a strange turn unexpectedly. "The Brackens are among the foremost adherents of the Seven in the Riverlands, aren't they?"
"Openly and proud of it."
"How do they feel about the recent… calumnies, shall we say?"
"Now that is a good question. They've been quite obstinate in refusing to share their thoughts on the matter. That said, they've also gone out of their way to secure the services of the region's most prominent wandering septon for the wedding ceremony. Since you seem so interested in the Seven and have already read everything there is to read on it, I was thinking you may take this opportunity to talk to someone who lives the priest's life, rather than merely talk about it. Perhaps he'll take less defensively to your questions than Urizen has. Present your arguments to someone who might at least pretend to debate in good faith, perhaps even before a properly receptive audience? I'm sure Robert will help you if you ask him. He seems to do whatever you tell him."
"No I don't!" He didn't, right?
Ned ignored Robert to keep staring at Jon. "Does this septon like to travel barefoot to the point his feet have turned leather-brown and just as hard?"
"An excellent guess. Don't hold it against him before you meet him though. I hear he is warming up to some of your views already."
"Such as?"
"The Nine Noble Virtues."
The room turned and stayed very quiet. Somehow, Robert's mind didn't even once try to run away from him. Not that he could cope with silence any better than usual. "Nine noble virtues?"
"Courage, truth, honor, fidelity, discipline, hospitality, industriousness, self-reliance, perseverance."
Robert sat back in his chair, taken aback not just by the list but how Ned had given it. It sounded like a really good list that Robert really wanted to hear more about, but Ned had said it almost absentmindedly. Vacantly, even.
And when Ned spoke again, it was low and damn near disbelieving. "… You mean to split the Faith."
…
He WHAT!?
"I don't imagine what you could possibly mean by that." That had no business being said like an old dodderer! "Whatever happens in Oldtown will be down to all the fuss in the Starry Sept, what with the King's Landing clergy and the Starry Sept devout being all in the same place for that whole week. Under the eyes of the King, the Hand, and every great noble head except the one they may or may not have a legitimate grievance against. That said, should some septon or other expect me to pledge my support to him during the inevitable disruption to the main event, the onus of blame will not fall on me for however he reacts when I instead mention the Sparrow and what an excellent display he put on at my niece's wedding. I'm sure Denys will be very publically supportive or outraged at my approach to the situation, as it suits him. I'm old and my heir is young enough to 'learn better' whichever way the falcon flies. But you boys shouldn't worry too much. Why would any septon need an outsider's endorsement like that? Well, unless they weren't particularly popular with their peers, but what fool would try to build any position of power on such a weak foundation?"
Robert Baratheon stared at his foster father, vaguely astounded he wasn't open-mouthed on top of everything else.
Then he slammed a hand on the table, jumped to his feet and pointed his finger dramatically. "I knew it! You're just a schemer after all, you grumpkin!"
Jon smiled – it completely blasted away the brewing clouds in Robert's mind – stood up, walked around the table and put his hands on his shoulders. "I'm proud of you, Robert."
… That wasn't fair.
Robert hugged him. He had to bend a little, but that was alright.
When Robert finally released him – you didn't stop hugging someone until you were good and ready, Dad said so! – Jon turned and embraced Ned too. "I'm proud of you Eddard."
"Thank you, Jon."
Fucking Starks and their fucking ice for blood.
When Jon released him – because Ned didn't know how to hug proper either, the cunt – Jon turned and embraced them both. "I love you both, my boys."
"… Luv you too," Robert muttered, misty-eyed. So what if he was, huh? Huh!? You gonna say someth-
"The Faith made a business out of raping small children," Jon murmured in their ears. "When, exactly, did I give the impression I have tolerance for such things?" Jon pulled away. "I'll let you talk."
Then he walked out.
Robert stood there, thinking about going to King's Landing as Jon's ward, attending the Oldtown wedding as Dad's boy, going to the Riverlands as a man to help form ties with who might become the high priests of an entire new church, and how one of the titles of the King on the Iron Throne was Shield of the Faith.
"Did we just engage in sedition?"
"I'm going to the Riverlands."
"Alright then."
Hopefully Dad wouldn't be too disappointed.
Last edited:
Great chapter.
So,Faith would be divided,Euron become another,this time evil Brandon,and Varys id running for his life.Good.
But - North is powerful,modern and just get standing army.They informed King about Blackfyre plot,but it is not enough.They need other enemies to show that they do not plan rebellion.
What about taking some wight ,well,not alive but still moving,and show it to King? and taking all wildlings who could behave and giants and gave them New Gift.
Maybe children,too.If they could be trusted - Rickard do not like them.
Please continue.
So,Faith would be divided,Euron become another,this time evil Brandon,and Varys id running for his life.Good.
But - North is powerful,modern and just get standing army.They informed King about Blackfyre plot,but it is not enough.They need other enemies to show that they do not plan rebellion.
What about taking some wight ,well,not alive but still moving,and show it to King? and taking all wildlings who could behave and giants and gave them New Gift.
Maybe children,too.If they could be trusted - Rickard do not like them.
Please continue.
OK, I liked that one. That's going to be one hum-dinger of a get-togheether!
i forget about Hodor killing Mountain and taking Hound as squire.Or,rather puppy in this case.
And becoming literally knight in shinning armour.Pity,that Brienne is too young to become his waifu.
What could i say,except "Hodor" ?
P.S there was daughter killed in canon by Mountain.What about her ?
And becoming literally knight in shinning armour.Pity,that Brienne is too young to become his waifu.
What could i say,except "Hodor" ?
P.S there was daughter killed in canon by Mountain.What about her ?
AAGAUCAAUGGA
Member
I like the way you filtered in the North's advancements, and it's funny how if Robert can think of it like a war he can be really insightful
Karmic Acumen
Well-known member
Brienne isn't even born yet (280 AC). Hodor has a couple of years of knight erranting until then (did I mention he's as big as Greatjon? Bigger than Robert at his biggest?).
Clegane's daughter is already dead, and Sandor's been burned too.
Too early in the timeline for that, and the New Gift is not House Stark's to give OR accept from the Night's watch without the Watch breaking its "we won't favor any one kingdom" rule. Technically.
He's average in most things and a savant in his specialty. Remove his health and psychological problems and he's a textbook hero in the making.
Poor girl,if she lived she could be Hodor waifu.He need big woman,and have no time waiting for Brienne.Maybe some wildling ? or Leng woman ? they are tall one there.But with proplematichidden city nearby,so...
Sandor burned by knigt and taken by Nortern knight - he could convert to old gods and mock any septon about how great their knights are.
About gift - if Starks show wight in right moment,they could get New gifta again.What one King take,other could gave.
Robert as supercommander - i like it.And,thanks to Ned games,he would never become fat in this TL.
Chapter II.2: Grinding Teeth Do Not a Gay Storm Make (IX)
Karmic Acumen
Well-known member
"-. 278 AC .-"
Jon decided it was well enough into the fall season that he may as well have the Eyrie vacated, seeing as so many people would be leaving the place at once. It was a hectic couple of weeks to get everything packed and moving. Hectic, dusty, sweaty, and seasoned with a fair bit of dramatics from Softbeak who was beyond incensed that he was being left behind alone at the Gates of the Moon. Well, very quiet and subdued dramatics, but it was better than nothing! Not everyone could be Alyssa Waynwood after all! Speaking of whom, she was ever so, er, accepting of her arranged marriage that she just couldn't bear to wait for them to go down to the Gates. She came up to the Eyrie the day before they all descended just to have a talk with her uncle in person.
Robert greeted her with a big hug, two very loud and sloppy kisses on her cheeks, then he carried her from the courtyard all the way over the threshold to Jon's solar despite her (fake) protests.
Then he dumped her in a chair and followed Ned out and away.
"Where are we going?"
"It's a surprise."
Robert's mind somehow flew back to the first surprise they shared, when it was just the two of them except with Robert as the one, er… leading the way. "… You're not gonna grab me by the balls again, are you?"
"Not unless you've earned it, brother."
Brother! Robert felt like he might just melt from sappiness. He should never have doubted Ned, that was way before they knew each other, true friends didn't do to friends such unmanly things! He hugged Ned until his bones creaked and kept hugging him for a long time to hide his weak legs. Sniff.
"It's alright, Robert."
"I'm not crying!" Robert protested, then their talk finally caught up to him and he jumped away from Ned as if struck by lightning. "The fuck do you get off saying that so easily – wait! What the fuck does 'earn it' even mean – no, wait, does that mean you've planned for it!? For… for… Ned! Ned, don't you walk away from me, you do that one more time and I swear to every god that doesn't exist I'll-!"
The 'surprise' turned out to be one evening with just the two of them high up on the Eyrie's tallest summit. Ned led him to the tallest spire where they stood, sat, sparred with weapons and without weapons, then talked and, when it was finally less day than night, Ned went and showed him a Northern custom close to his heart that he'd not mentioned before even once: the skylamp.
It was… Robert didn't know what to say about it, except that he spent ages just watching the flamelights get higher and higher. All sixteen of them. Sixteen, because Jon had indefinitely put off Robert's coming of age celebration because of the whole Septon Patsy diversion. Robert would've hugged Ned again if he were at all willing to miss more of the sight than it took to blink, now and then. He tried to imagine what it would look like if it were dozens more. Hundreds. Thousands even. He could only picture the stars in the sky. Especially while busy trying not to go all sappy and weak in the knees again at knowing Ned hadn't shared that tradition with anyone else.
'Course, then Ned went and blew that fancy horn he got from home. It made everyone stop, come out and look up at the lamps too, all right and proper.
They drank ale, beer and wine enough that they were right proper relaxed by the time the lamps were just little glints in the night. They drank and they talked. About lots of things. Men, women, girls, boys, fucking septons that Jon inflicted on them because they were 'useful.' Somehow, they even went and talked about getting married and having little Neds and Robertses and what have you.
"I'll have an army of sprogs and they'll be smart and strong and good at everything and handsome and perfect," Robert proclaimed. "Just like me!"
"My children will all be smart, strong, loved and trueborn," Ned said with that seriousness as deep as the roots of the mountain that he only ever reached when he was drunk off his arse, could barely hold his liquor that Ned. "I'll convert a whole wing of my castle into a play pen with toys, obstacle courses, climbing cliffs and nets. Pitons and ropes like the Wildilings use to climb the Wall when they come raiding. If I have a daughter, I'll hire an old widow to teach her what she needs, one that's already seen her own children grown, so she doesn't need to find fulfilment through mine but knows what to pass on. Maybe I'll even hire a dancing master for from Braavos if she's anything like Lya."
"The mysterious Lya." Robert took a long chug from his beer mug. "The Lya you never talk about. Why? She ugly? Simple? Dwarf?"
"She's doomed," Ned said flatly. "Spends so much time complaining about everything she doesn't want that she barely knows what she does want. Any time she might spend on figuring that out, she spends instead dreaming. Everything she does think she wants is what she apes from Brandon."
"Like what?"
"Riding, running, hunting, swordplay, pants instead of skirts and dresses," Ned waved vaguely. "Boy things."
"Sounds like my kind of girl," Robert laughed. "Is she pretty at least? What about music, is she any good for that? There's some good songs out there now, does she know at least the good ones? Or is it all doom and gloom and 'Here's a toast, here's a toast to you~'"
"Where did you hear that song?"
Ned was suddenly looming over him, demanding to know here he'd heard those verses. Robert had to force himself not to cover his crotch. He liked decisiveness in a man just fine, but not so much that he enjoyed being intimidated by someone a head shorter. "The hells' gotten into you?"
That snapped Ned out of… whatever it was. "You shouldn't know that song. How do you know it?"
The fuck did he mean Robert shouldn't know it? "I don't know, a passing bard? Lot of them are throwing it about ever since Prince Rhaegar went and made it."
"… Prince Rhaegar… wrote that song…"
"Years ago now, how have you not heard it before?"
Ned fell quiet for way too long a time – how was this shocking? Oh well. If Ned dwelled on it and then moved on like he usually did, Robert was willing to let it go. And he did, so that was that! He did cut back on the drink after that, though, the pansy. Oh well! More for him! Ned's tongue loosed back to proper order without ale just fine anyway. It turned out that Robert's intervention in the 'final debate' spared Ned from having to call on the speech he'd prepared from his mysterious notebook of mystery. Tristifer Mudd's speech. For the first time in their life, Ned allowed Robert to see inside that notebook. Robert was gloatingly pleased and then some, but turned mind-blown right quick after that.
"This speech can break the world," Robert said, shocked.
"It can," Ned agreed.
Was this why the Andals made a complete turnaround in behaviour after Tristifer?
Robert definitely needed to drink after that, so he went and drank more ale, beer and wine until he reached the sort of peaks of drunkenness that he'd only ever heard of in legends. Turned out he was a sad drunk (at least when there wasn't a bodice or sober Ned nearby to muddle on after) and ended up spilling his guts about how much he missed home, how much he missed Dad, how much he didn't miss mom because he wasn't no momma's boy thanking you kindly, and complaining about Stannis despite not having thought about him in weeks and did Ned even fathom how jealous Robert was of him?
"My father plays favorites too, you know," Ned told him while Robert did his best to double the length of his beard with beer foam. "He knows it, I know it, Brandon knows it. But it doesn't bother me anymore, you know why?"
Fuck Ned for not being a liar that Robert could call a filthy liar. "Why?"
"Because however little he likes me compared to Bran, I know he still loves me."
"Ye'r full o'shit."
Ned didn't even try to deny it, the cunt.
"Wha' does tha' brother o' yers say?"
"Brandon told me to give up on father because he's hopeless so I should try to make him proud of me instead."
Robert's beer came snorting out.
"Father was standing right next to him, by the way."
Robert choked, coughed, sneezed, and broke into laughter so loud and uncontrollable that it made for a lot of grumpy death glares the next day when they set off down the mountain and a whole bunch of them guards hadn't properly rested because of him.
"Are you gonna do it?" He asked half-way down the Giant's Lance.
Ned blinked and looked over from his horse, uncomprehendingly.
"What your brother said, are you gonna do it?"
Ned frowned and had to spend almost two bends in the path trying to recall what Robert was talking about because Ned was terrible at hangovers too. "Oh. Of course."
"Why?"
"It wouldn't do for just one brother to take pride in the other, don't you think?"
Robert's chest tightened. "I don't think Stannis was ever proud of me," Robert admitted, and fuck everyone else for listening in, see if he cares. Yes, that includes you! "I don't think he can be proud of anybody."
"Did you ever try?"
"… No."
"There's a difference between love and like. I know it. Do you?"
"Yes." But he doubted Stannis did. If Robert should be alright being loved and not liked, why not Stannis? Why should Robert live his life at the whims of someone else? For someone else? It was his life, Stannis had his own, what more did he want? Maybe a bunch of vinegar-soaked eggs to the face. Like he should have gone and pelted Urizen way back when, instead of letting things descend into such lunacy that he ended up wasting so much time on him and his horseshit.
That thought fouled his mood for the rest of the ride and much of the day after, though Robert strove not to show it until he went and got himself and Ned absolutely drunk again, as was right and proper!
"Where'd Hugor Hill go anyway?" Robert grumbled half-way through… he didn't know how many ale mugs. Somewhere between going to the alehouse to drink his sorrows and… not complaining about Stannis being a teeth-grinding cunt, he'd gone and started complaining about Septon Patsy instead. Which was totally fine because Jon hadn't told them to keep quiet about anything, so there! "Where're his forty-four sons? Supposedly the Seven were herding the Andals 'round in person for a generation at most before the Andals came tromping in. Where'd his forty-four sons go? They should've been leading the Andal tribes, where'd they go? Everyone and their gran in the Reach swaggers about who's closest kin to Garth the Green, but I've been here five years and I haven't found anyone bragging about descent from Hugor or any of his sprogs. Why? And what's even up with Artys Arryn? Why that name? Why would the most Andal Andal name himself after some Westerosi prig who lived thousands of years before? Was it to charm the locals? But that's not what happened, is it? Why the crystal sword? Why the hair shirts? Why do septons say the Stranger is the face of the seven most associated with death, instead of the only one? And why didn't I just punch Jon in the face for making me think about all this!?"
"Why indeed," Ned said as if he weren't the one who said it didn't matter anymore, the daft moron. How'd he never have any moodswings? Wait, was he still – he was still on his second mug, the bastard! "Now that you mention it, though, Artys Arryn is a very odd case. Pure Andal blood, but he came out of nowhere and was a perfect echo of the Age of Heroes Artys Arryn, except he reached the fullness of his prowess when he was just fifteen somehow. Then everyone loved him and followed him and he was apparently the best at everything, even more so than Robar Royce. But that's not even the oddest thing. What happened to those huge falcons that the Winged Knight supposedly rode when he conquered the Giant's Lance? They don't seem to have existed before or after. This legend supposedly conflated with Artys Arryn later, but on what basis? What was the common element that sold it?"
"Maybe them maesters are right and it was actually dragons," Robert scoffed, emptying his mug and gesturing for the one in Rosie's palms. "Maybe that part of the story isn't the ancient one. Maybe Jon was right and it was the Valyrians that egged the Andals on all along. Now go and be amazed at my findings, peons!"
"Or it is the proper way to read the ancient legend," Ned said ponderously. "Either there was no myth mix-up and the Artys Arryn of Andal myth was helped by Valyria, or… the original Artys Arryn was himself an invader with dragons… which means the first Artys Arryn might not have been of the First Men either."
"No wonder everyone from Essosi slavers to the fucking mountain clans can't stand us." Robert laughed. "Our entire history can be summed up as 'then a bunch of foreign cunts came in and broke everything!'"
"You lowlanders really are all morons, aren't you?"
Robert blinked owlishly and raised his eyes from his mug to Shaggy, who'd been sitting opposite from them since the very beginning. Robert had completely forgotten about running into him and dragging him along for a drink. Come to think of it, everyone else around them had been pretty quiet for a while now too, weren't they?
Shaggy looked at the two of them as if they were each half a chunk of bird shit stuck under his shoe. Then he stood up, stomped over to the bar, ordered two of the biggest ale mugs and came back, dumping one in front of each of them. "Drink."
Robert scowled while he and Ned downed their first mouthful.
"Drink."
Robert frowned at Ned and drank again.
"Drink."
They drank a third ti-
"That's right you pathetic fucks, do as you're fucking told."
Robert threw his mug to the floor and glared at Shaggy, speechless with open-mouthed outrage. Next to him, Ned slowly set his own mug back on the table
Shaggy plopped back down on his chair and stared at them every bit as disgustedly as before, as if he himself didn't smell foul enough to lay out a whole horde of horses. "Look at you two, jabbering on as if you know anything. You don't know shit. You don't even know life." The big man acted as if he didn't have a bar full of off-duty guards and knights glancing at him from every corner. "Why the fuck do you stick your face so far up the arse of cunts you know for liars? I see it everyday, everywhere since coming down here. Men in capes, men in old robes, men in new robes, they show you a bunch of puppets and shake them in front of you, then they read a few words from some fucking book and you start clapping like trained monkeys. The weak, the stupid, and now the strong too! It's fun to you, isn't it? It must be, to crow about wanting to be the next puppet on strings. To dress up in fancy armor and knock heads with other cunts in fancy armor, while the fat bald man screams about the useless wench with sagging tits, both of them frothing at the mouth. None of you ever say anything worth anything, you all just grunt like pigs and squeal whatever's spoonfed to you by belly-aching jackasses. All the while, your world goes to shit and the future of the young – your future – is given away. And for what? Honor? You don't know the meaning of the word. Glory? Whenever one of you boys shows even an inkling of power, the old and decrepit descend like locusts and beat you over the head until you're scared to do anything with what the Gods gave you but waste it on the useless. And don't even get me started on your faith!"
Robert Baratheon stared, dumbstruck.
"The first year after I came down from the mountains, I'd go to people and ask them when they last felt the gods, felt completely drunk on their presence. They didn't know which way to throw me! And those that did, they told me how the gods 'helped' them withstand the hells' temptation to savagery, or they told me some nonsense about being whipped into a frenzy by some man in a sack. I always had to go and spent time in the wilds, where at least the beasts still know they don't need useless busybodies to set aside 'holidays' to live every moment full and proper. When's the last time you heard your blood call out to you? Does it sing in your ear? Do you listened for it? Can you even do it anymore, without being so drunk off your arse that you can't make good on anything it tells you anyway?"
Robert stared at Shaggy, wondering if he'd drunk enough that reality finally decided he wasn't worthy dragging along anymore.
"Civilisation. Used to be even you lowlanders still knew how to make the world bent to your whims without smothering the life out of yourselves. The freedom. Now it's all backbreaking labour and withered husks of bones and sweat while your bones get thinner, your teeth rot in your mouth, and every child is smaller than the last. You'd think you nobles would be spared these tolls, but it turns out you just go and live like leeches dazzled by shiny flower patterns, animals locked up in a menagerie you built with your own hands. Even your kings bend the knee to old busybodies playing at wisdom, while the rest of you play at life and war and read with nothing to show for it but a fat, stinking shit pile. I'm starting to see why my own clan thinks better of even the Ironborn than you lot."
"Is there a point to this?" Ned asked as if he hadn't just been called worse than the fucking Ironborn.
"A point?" Shaggy's look in return was enough to pop Ned's bravery and then some. "You want a point? Think of… Think of Denys Arryn, but different. A Denys Arryn who actually lives up to the airs he puts on." Denys Arryn was right there. "Imagine him in the prime of his youth. He gathers his people and conquers the Vale, nay, Westeros itself, and then he immediately rouses them to a whole new war against Essos, through words and charm alone. Then he leaves on a ship to lead the armies. But then come rumors that Gallant Denys is a secret demon worshipper, and then people suddenly wake up the next day to find that someone defaced all their septs and godswoods. Rumors spread that it was Denys and his friends that did it, that they're preparing to overthrow the Iron Throne! So he's summoned back from war to stand trial. But instead of returning, Denys runs to Lys where he becomes a major advisor to the First Magister. Soon, though, he has to leave in a great rush because he's been fucking the Magister's wife in secret, and his mistress, and the wives and mistresses of half the conclave too. He runs to Slaver's Bay, where he miraculously becomes a great leader and advisor, adopting their customs and language easily. After a while, he leaves Slaver's Bay and ends up living in the Dothraki Sea with the Dothraki as one of them, where he finally runs into a sellsword bunch hired by the Crown and the Free Cities and finally dies fighting, charging them repeatedly at the head of his own khalasar on his glorious blood-red steed and clad in armor as blue as a summer sky. All this, and more, was the life of Hugor the Barbarian."
Robert stared at the man. And he wasn't the only one.
"Hukko the Barbarian. Hugor of the Hill. Huzhor Amai the Amazing! Son of the last Fisher Queen. Last because they were so incompetent that they were letting their people be slaughtered by the tiny, barbaric Hairy Men despite their storied history of a thousand years. The wise and benevolent Fisher Queens, rulers of the Silver Sea and favored of the gods, while kings and lords and wise men sought their floating palace for their counsel. Ha! Huzhor spoke against their weakness, and when they dismissed him, he charmed the loyalty of the youth and led them in a war to the knife until he himself slew the hairy men's king and fashioned his skin into a cloak he wore to the end of his days. When the Fisher Queens summoned him to stand trial, he fled instead to the court of an empire far to the south and became a major advisor, until he had to leave in a hurry because he was caught fucking all nine of the Emperor's wives. He fled to an island kingdom, where he adopted their language and customs easily, soon coming to be revered as an avatar of their god of love, beauty, and fertility. Eventually, though, he decided to return to the mainland, where he wound up living among the barbarians of the plains, taking to wife the daughter of one of their greatest kings and leading the men in war against his own former people, slaying six of the seven Fisher Queens as sacrifices in the name of his gods. When only his own sister was left, his mother's successor, he suddenly abandoned the war and returned to the grasslands, where he went on to conquer and marry the foremost daughters of two other tribes on top of the first. Maybe he wanted to see what his sister would do. Or wouldn't. The whole lot of nothing in the meanwhile had seen their former kingdom almost completely destroyed by the same hairy men that Hugor had thrown back into the sea. But see, his old people had been roused by his actions, and the Fisher Queen was just one of seven now. So she abandoned the bulk of her subjects and sailed away with just her own, all the way south to wed the same Emperor that Hugor had cuckolded. So Hugor took his barbarians, conquered the abandoned remnants of his once great people, led them against the hairy men again and broke them a second time, winning such love and loyalty from them all over again that they followed him all the way to the enemy's homeland. There, he found an entire city of slaves that the hairy men had named in their own tongue as mockery. So Hugor cast down its walls, roused the weak and infirm to such fury that they demanded to be left behind to break everything in their captors' path, took the able-bodied with him, and led the way back to the grasslands he now called home. There, finally, he decided to settle down along a great river and established his own kingdom while all the other tribes paid him homage or perished. Do I have to say its name? Or do you already know it from reading a fucking book?"
Robert Baratheon stared at Shagga son of Dolf, blinking with all the disbelief of everyone else in the alehouse at suddenly being slapped in the face with the foundation myth of the Kingdom of Sarnor - wait, Hugor of the Hill was the first King of Sarnor? What? How!? How did Robert never hear about this? How did Shaggy even know this? Or was he full of shit? He certainly smelled it!
"Huzhor Amai lived with half a dozen different peoples whose way of life was completely different from each other, but he did it and then made them into one kingdom as easy as fucking your wife every night. Can you think of anyone today that could do that? Can you imagine the sheer fucking charisma? Do you know anyone who lives like that today, free and fully? Anyone at all?"
Yes, came the thought like a lightning strike from the whirling clouds screeching against his mind. Da-
"What about old history, can you think of anyone then? Well let me tell you, there were plenty, it wasn't just Tristifer Mudd. And I'll tell you right now: the Andals understood the story of Hugor. When Morgan Martell was young, he got a bug up his arse and went off sailing to find his fortune. He took his kin to Dorne, attacked House Wade and House Shell, defeated them in battle, seized their villages, burned their castles and established his dominion over their entire strip of coastland. Centuries later, his descendants would go on to conquer the whole Dorne with just a bunch of refugees. When Dywen Shell and Jon Brightstone both hired Corwyn Corbray to make them King of the Fingers, he betrayed them both and slew them both, then took their lands and their women just because he could. Artys Arryn literally believed he was a man thousands of years dead, but he still made the Andals and First Men both love him. That's what a real man is. That's what freedom is. That's how you get your blood to live on in song and story. That's how you get your name and line to live to this day, well enough that your descendants even get one of the greatest weapons in the world and the rule of whole fucking kingdoms. And that's why the Clans chose the mountains instead of bending to the Andal conquerors: we also understand the story of Hugor. Of Bran the Bloody, Uthor Hightower, Durran Godsgrief, Garth Greenhand and all the others like them. We understand what it means to live fully and free. We understand what you don't. So don't you worry your pretty little head, little lord, we Mountain Men don't hate your Andal ancestors. We just can't stand the sight of their legacy having passed down to meek, slavish, pathetic shitstains like you."
Robert Baratheon smashed through the table and punched Shagga of the Mountains right in his sneering, stinking face!
Shaggy upended a table of his own in his stagger, but bounced back just in time to nail Robert in the face with a tray. "You hit like a woman!" He ducked under a haymaker and tackled Robert into Red-Nosed Ser Morgarth. "What else do you do like a woman? Do you write poems? Do you play the flute so it makes you cheeks look puffed like a cocksucker!?"
Robert kicked Shagga in the cock –
"You're one thousand fucks too young for that!"
–and when that failed he tackled him through Measel and Weasel and into Ser Wallace Waynwood, spilling Rosie's latest batch of ales all over Ned's head.
Shagga slammed into the floor with a grunt, kicked Denys's legs out from under him and then threw Robert off when he lost his balance under the older man. "It the beginning there was the One and Seven? NO!" Shagga grabbed a charging Chett Pudgeface and threw him at a trio of drunken guards trying to get him from the other side. "In the beginning there was the fire that bursts out in men like Hugor Amai and lays low the kingdoms of the decrepit and exposes all their nonsense!" He grabbed a mug of ale and splashed it in Robert's face – "You think this tantrum puts you on the same level, boy?"
Robert roared, grabbed an entire table and smashed it in the side of Shagga's head.
Shagga crashed to the floor with a dazed grunt, yanked the foot of someone or other, used his flailing, fallen frame to climb back to his feet and kicked Robert in the gut while he was at it. "Is this it, boy? Is your blood singing to you? Think yourself a real man!?" Two men grabbed Shagga by the arms, but the big man bit one's ear off and threw the other one over his shoulder while the first was too busy screaming. "Real men are sent by the Gods to chastise us when we grow old and dull and fat!" Shagga swayed under Robert's punch, but sent one right back. "No law or word of man can stand in their way!" They were fighting for real now, the man from the mountains against the storm that punched out his blood and teeth but only made him laugh. "A real man roars with the force of lions and scatters the shepherds and dogs before him, he doesn't hit like a peasant!"
Two men grabbed Robert this time, so he smashed them together with a thundering bellow and threw them so far they crashed into Denys and sent him back to the ground.
"The Andals understood! They knew to respect the vigor of youth as the true force behind life and behind all things! Why would we hate them!? WE REMEMBER!" Four men tried to hold Shagga, but he headbutted one and jumped back with the other three on top, breaking another table along with them on the way down. "And why shouldn't we hate you!?" He roared as he jumped back, savage and wild. "That fire that empowers the greatest warriors to fight against the gods themselves!" Shagga met Robert's charge straight-on. "That fire that endures even as the memories of men and kingdoms disappear, you've spent your whole life letting old cunts make a mockery of it, instead of embracing it like you should! Look at you, the prime of your life and you can't even beat one man! What strength have you? What gods will bother with you? What feats can you call on from your forebears, useless son of a useless father-"
The storm bubbled over and burst out into the world on the wings of thunder.
"-. 278 AC .-"
It rained heavily that night, the sky loud with the crashing bellows of lightning strikes.
Then came the morning, and Robert went to see Shagga in his cell.
The man should have been a sad sight, with an eye swollen shut, his nose broken, his whole body black and blue and half his teeth knocked out. But he didn't. Even laid out on his undersized cot, snoring and stinking to high hells, he looked… like a man.
Robert waited for him to wake up on his own. The man took his sweet time doing it too, but it was just as well. Robert spent the time… standing there and not doing or thinking about anything. His mind, normally so restless and jittery, for once wasn't tugging him anywhere. It was a new, heady feeling.
"Come to see the zoo?" Shagga grunted on waking.
"Do you know any tricks?" Robert asked, his words not feeling like anything.
"Plenty, but I won't perform for you. Or anyone."
"Are you sure? I'm sure bears and lions all think the same, but when brought to the circus they do every trick their handler tells them."
"Think of being my handler, boy?"
"I don't know. The couple of times a circus troop came by Storm's End, I got bored."
"Maybe there's hope for you yet."
They lay and stood there silently, for a while.
"How is it done?"
Shaggy squinted up at him, one-eyed.
"How do you listen to the blood?"
"Look at yourself, boy, trying to use words to understand nature. May as well try to teach a fish how to breathe underwater. Have you ever seen a herd of wild horses? Every once in a while, the head stallion will be possessed by the spirit of the wild and gallop this way and that, and the whole herd follows in a great rush of power and freedom. Have you ever seen anything like it?"
Robert had never seen a wild horse. Only birds and wild game, and even those only while looking to tame or kill them.
"I have." Shagga sat up. "Was at a big waterfall once, gathering place of many birds and other animals. The place has been there forever. The birds there, they've witnessed the coming and going of human kingdoms for thousands of years, but they still remember the waterfall through the centuries and always return there. The birds there… when the weather changes even the tiniest bit, the waterfall – so big that a small wind sprays water everywhere – the sun would come out from behind the clouds and paint the whole world in rainbows. When that happened, the birds would all become excited. They'd come out from cracks in the rock face and would frolic in the sprays of water and the rainbows, swooning and flitting and doing hops and tumbles this way and that. What's the purpose in that, do you think? It's not fucking, it's not surviving, it's not some mummer's play to herd each other this way and that. Maybe in your happiest moments you were free to act and feel the same, but be honest: how often do you throw off all the shit that's been trained into you since you were small? What about the Stark boy – that somber and cramped view of the world, you think that's life? When you're free, you know peace and plenty, luxury, you're even free to waste your life however you want. It's really as simple as that."
"You think we don't know this?"
"How can you? You live in hovels and palaces that don't belong to you, on lands that don't belong to you, and pay coin that doesn't belong to you so that your right to live isn't taken away by some cunt most people never lay eyes on. You live your life under a yoke. It's there when you're born, when you eat, when you fuck, when you kill. Did you know the most noble animals don't breed in cages? I've talked to sailors who told me about the menagerie at the Sealord's Palace in Braavos, so many of them mocked how this or that high cunt bemoaned about this or that beast not living up to its name and dying. They never realised they had even less dignity than those creatures! At least those beasts choose death when trapped!"
"That doesn't answer my question." For someone who held such disdain for maesters and septons, Shagga son of Dolf sure had a lot to say.
Shagga looked at him, scratching at his swollen eye. "There's a kind of mouse up in the mountain that collects food for winter. Somehow it knows exactly the share of poison herbs to add in its winter stores, to preserve them. Too much and the food it gathered becomes poison, too little and it spoils. How does it know this? No one teaches it. There are bugs too – two kinds meet, and one will kill the other on sight, not because it was any danger but because it will eat its eggs in the future. How do they know this? How does a spider design such large and beautiful webs? No one teaches them, and they couldn't learn if they tried – their brain is worth fuck all. I'll tell you why: it's in the blood!"
It's in the blood, huh?
"Used to be people could do that too, just live as they were meant to, and it made them big, clever and strong enough that the world itself bent before them!"
Robert remembered things too, then. Herds of sheep. And more. He used to watch them from the walls of Storm's End sometimes, or when hawking with Uncle Harbert. Very young rams, well before their horns came in, they would play-fight with their heads butting. Shepherds knew it was in preparation for when they grew horns, but no one taught the lambs any of that. They knew it in the blood.
"Now you're starting to see it…"
Sheep weren't the only ones, now that Robert thought about it. Young rams, young bulls. Very young stags… For a brief moment, Robert felt as if the dungeon walls were a lot closer than they actually were.
Shagga, when Robert refocused on him, looked like he understood far too much. "No kind of torment is worse than feeling trapped. My worst nightmare is about opening a door only to find myself in this cell, over and over. How many times have you gone to sleep exhausted after a long day of training, when you slept and your mind dreamed repeat nonsense moves? Exhaustion is the enemy of life, and you lowlanders live your entire lives exhausted. Now imagine someone came and put a yoke on you now, instead of when you were small and stupid. Imagine you're tied to a plow but you're still in full control of your spirit and strength, at least to begin with. Even animals find that impossible to stand, at least the noble ones. Enough to choose death if it'll get them out. Many of the Clans when Ironborn or Andals came, they died because they couldn't endure their slavery. Some bit through their arms to escape their chains and endured any pain to escape their cages. Mothers would kill their babes when slavers closed in, or jump off a cliff with them in the mountain highlands. Now look at the peasants you lot rule over and tell me, what did choosing survival at any price get them? The price they paid was monstrous. The price you make them pay is monstrous, and the price you pay the ones lording over you is just as monstrous."
"Because we don't actually have anything of our own, is that what you're saying?"
"A healthy animal not under threat, not maimed, not trapped by man, from the first moment he can move when young, what does he do? Do you know?"
"No." Robert did not feel ashamed to say so in the least. "What?"
"They fight for territory."
Robert stared at the man.
Then he nodded and called the guard to unlock the cell.
Shagga raised his eyebrows. "You're letting me go?"
"You didn't start the brawl, I did. You only defended yourself, Besides..." Robert stepped back as the cell creaked open. "I don't want to see you biting your arm off."
"How chivalrous of you."
"Are you crippled? Did you turn into a woman overnight? No? I didn't think so."
"I'll even prove it if you keep up the lip. All over again."
"And I'll put you down. All over again." Robert turned to leave.
Shagga scoffed and shouldered past the scowling guard, following after him. "Look at you, thinking one brief spell of rage in a brawl is enough to make you a man."
"How about a whole night?"
That seemed to shut him up, for a while.
Not a long while, but a while. "A whole night, huh?" Shaggy muttered. "How'd it feel?"
"Like I was the mightiest of men. Like I didn't need anyone to tell me anything. Like I could crush the other half of the alehouse like the first. Like I could beat down all the men, fuck all their women, and then do the same thing all over again today. And tomorrow. And whenever and wherever else I felt like it." Robert still remembered it vividly, that moment when the window finished crumbling and Shaggy finally passed out under his fists while laughing and saying 'that's how you do it.' When everyone and their brother and sister had come out to stare and jeer like bleating sheep at the broken mass of men around him. Robert had thrown his head back with a sigh, feeling taught, relaxed, hungry and sated all at once, and his eyes fell on Alyssa blushing down at him from the ramparts. In that moment, he knew with utter clarity that he could take her, fuck her brains out from dusk to dawn, and not only would she beg for it, he'd have Elys and Jon tread lightly around him and accept his actions with minimal fuss, whether or not he made an honest woman out of her later, never mind the plans of old men.
"So?" Shagga prodded impatiently when they were finally at the exit, shielding his eyes from the sun. "What did you do?"
"I carried Ned to bed and sat by him all night." Robert still didn't even know when he'd been knocked out. Or how.
"… That's good," Shagga murmured, bringing Robert to a surprised halt. "Friendship weaker than love for a woman is no friendship at all."
For a moment, Robert wondered if he should ask the obvious question. In the end, though, he decided he didn't care.
Just as they were about to part, though, Shagga stopped and turned to face him. "In the Battle of the Lance, just when Robar Royce was about to go on his great charge, it's said the white-eyed ancestor gods appeared to him and whispered in his ear. They reminded him of his forebears' great feats and breathed strength into his chest. They told him to go fearlessly into the throng of the enemy on his great steed, and as he was exalted, they drew back from his eyes the veil that had previously hidden the enemy gods. They told him that if their iron-clad cunt or even that manwhore of Hugor's appeared, he had the power to harm them. What kind of world would it be, if Robar had done this? If he'd trusted his spirit as much when it was aroused as when it was calm and quiet? The spirit of the true man exalts in glory freely and can see things that others can't. Can do things other can't. Defy and change the world. Time. Fate. If Robar had given himself to those heights of spirit, he'd have known the decoy from the true enemy king in an instant and the Andals would have been thrown back into the sea."
"… Why are you here if you despise us so much," Robert asked. "Why did you come down from the mountains?"
"I was banished," Shaggy shrugged as if it were no great matter. "Gods have been loud lately, sending dreams of all kinds. Didn't have to be a skinchanger or greenseer to get them either. Pa thought they herald change. Some thought they called for war. Burton son of Klaus rose to lead the latter, challenged Pa for leadership of the clan. Clansmoot decided on single combat. Burton beheaded Pa and became Chieftain after him. Then he called for war. Wanted to unite the clans, starting with the Burned Men, never mind they've been the biggest and strongest clan for a hundred years. I told him he was nuts. When that didn't work, I called on our bards and poets and the Wisdom Unbroken to talk good sense into the Clan right back. So old Burton found an excuse to kick me out. Called me a religious zealot for believing our stories and runes over his bootlickers' nonsense. Said I belonged with you lowlanders more than them. Now I'm down here and they're up there, enjoying Burton's rule. They were already calling him the 'Wheeler' when I left. His favourite punishment, that."
Robert gaped.
Then he hugged the other man. "That's such a sad story!"
Shagga grunted in surprise, but when he hugged him back it didn't feel awkward at all. "That's life, lad."
Shaggy pat Robert on the back, pulled away and went off… wherever he went in the mornings, leaving Robert to thoughts of cages and freedom and the warrior spirit that could rouse white-eyed ancestors gods – wait!" "Wait!" Robert ran after him.
Shagga stopped and turned, surprised. "What?"
"I thought you worshipped trees!"
Shagga stared at him, then started to laugh. And laugh. And laugh so hard he bent over and stumbled away before the sight of him set him off again. Soon he was gone with just the ringing echoes of his guffaws fading in his wake.
What the fuck was that about?
Robert's mood didn't change for days, even with all the hunting and hawking that Ned, Elbert and Jon took him on. He almost lost his bird to the call of the wild, if not for Elbert's uncanny ability to command other people's falcons almost as well as his own. Robert might have appreciated the family time – Elbert sure did – but all he could do was watch the birds and think about how completely their life had been controlled by others. Was that what they looked like to the Clansmen? Beasts taught to obey commands and perform tricks to the point where they never learned to live the way they were actually supposed to? Ned asked him about his mood. Even listened to everything Robert had to say. It was a lot. A whole lot of nothing. Robert asked him why nothing Shagga did and said seemed to have stuck with him. Ned said it did, but he'd decided to let it all settle and simmer undisturbed until whatever came to him… well, came to him.
"Once you start thinking yourself in circles, it's a sign you've already thought about everything you could think of. Now you have to leave it be and go on with your life. Whatever's meant to come of it, it'll dawn on you all on its own. Probably out of nowhere, knowing you."
Robert decided to do just that. It was surprisingly easy. And just like Ned said, the answer struck him out of nowhere. The same morning that Uncle Harbert arrived with Dad's letter actually. Robert was just finishing his morning workout when he began to think about his future. The future in store for him. And the future he wanted. Turned out they weren't the same thing at all!
The future laid out for him was of taking over for his father. Hopefully not for a long time, but it would happen. He'd marry some lord's daughter for politics, and then waste his life away in meetings after meetings, court days and papers, and coin counting while pretending not to be doing coin counting because it wasn't manly enough. He'd have less and less time to himself, so he'd grow old and weak and fat on all the feasts he'd have to throw his court. If he was really unlucky, his wife would be a shrew, and because of her and all the other stress in his life, he'd probably break at some point and go running into the arms of the nearest whore. Then do that again. And again. All the time. Maybe he'd even take advantage of his servant girls and vassals' daughters and wives too while he was at it. Maybe Dad would let him marry for love like he did, but could he hope for that? Dad only got to do that because grandfather died before he could arrange a match. And that was about as far as Robert was willing to go down that well, if he was getting so close to thinking about his father dying as a benefit.
So what did he want in his future?
No matter how much he thought about it, he always circled back to the same damn thing: becoming a sellsword. He wanted to go to Essos and fight. Adventure.
It was so stupid. Trade herding dumb cunts for taking orders from dumb cunts that were also slavers. He wouldn't last five years before he snapped. What then? Would he turn on his patrons? Kill them? Fuck their wives and daughters? Take their lands and cities and declare himself King of Myr?
Ha! Barely a drop of Andal blood in him, but to live their life was his greatest wish. The life of their worst. And their greatest.
Oh well! Now he knew!
Fortunately, his father was still in the prime of his life so Robert could put it out of his mind for the next few decades and have time left over. Speaking of which!
"Uncle Harbert!"
"Robert! So good to see you lad!"
Great-uncle Harbert Baratheon was rugged, grizzled, weather-beaten, but still strong of eye and arm despite all the time on the road. Alas, he'd ridden through the night to make up for time lost due to a wrong turn at Quirky Alba, so he retired almost as soon as Robert finished hugging him.
Which was fine, really! Dad forbid him from opening the letter in anywhere less than total privacy, uncle said so! Holding back until he was behind the locked door of his room was hard enough without spending half a day catching up first. What could it be? A betrothal? A new brother on the way? A secret mission? Court secrets that could break the realm? There was a wrapped booklet that came with the letter too, it was great! He couldn't wait to see what was in it!
With a racing heart, Robert Baratheon opened his father's letter.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Bobby!
Bobby!
Robert! My Dear Son! Baby Boy! I miss you so much!
But enough about me, let's talk about you!
What's this I hear about you not knowing a pole from a hole? I thought you'd know what to stick and where to dig by now! I could live with you doing whatever the hell you wanted and not giving a damn about your mother and me! But I can't live with this! I can't! I shan't!
I understand where you're coming from, son, I really do! I know what it's like to love someone, it's like loving the stars themselves! You don't expect a sunset to admire you back! And if you happen to find yourself or, worse, your sweetheart in any danger, let me tell you, fear will speak to you like nothing else does! Do you know about how Unsullied are trained? When they're young, the Masters learn their fears. One boy is scared of dogs. One boy hates high places. One boy is frightened of the ocean. They make the boy sleep with dogs, or climb a cliff. They throw him into the water. If he learns to swim, good. If he drowns, good. Either way, strong Unsullied! I always thought it was stupid, but then I had you! Even then, for the longest time, I thought you were the standout! You had no fears! You were the biggest, the strongest, the bravest, always! I was so proud of you!
But now I find out you can't even tell your parents about finding true love!?
You pierce my soul, my son! I am in agony! Half agony, half hope! I can no longer stand apart in silence! I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach! I should have done this in the beginning, I mean really! Not even one word between you two and you go straight to wife stealing? Your mother swore up, down and sideways it was just nature sneezing out the wrong hole. I never should have listened to her! I should have gone up there the moment it happened, had a sitdown so you knew what's what! I'd do that now, but since you can't even bring yourself to tell your parents about finding true love, I have no recourse but to punish you by staying as aloof from you and your problems as you've been with me!
Now pay attention!
Jon tells me you've been whoring, so I assume you understand the meaty parts. All the same, I sent a book on keeping the health of the human body. It has everything you need on that front, them northern maesters are very thorough, I'll tell you that! Pay special attention to Chapter 5, if you can't answer my question when we meet again, there'll be hell to pay!
What the book won't have is daddy's wisdom, so be sure not to spill even one drop of what I'm about to tell you, you hear me boy? Yes? Good. Here it is, put in short, simple words so even a lunk like you can understand.
Men fucking women is about having children. It can be about love, trust, pleasure, friendship, leverage or what have you, but it's always about mating first.
Men fucking men is about power. It can be about trust, pleasure, friendship, rage or what have you, but it's always about power first.
That's where you went wrong son! You started off trying to make that lad your woman! And when that kicked you in the face as you well deserved, you went tried to be the woman! Now I can somewhat understand the latter, you're completely besotted and it's plain as day that you'll never be in the saddle of that relationship. But really, Robert? Trying to make like Wildlings without any how do you do? You're lucky you still have your balls!
I trust I've made my point.
Love,
Dad.
Afterword: Now don't misunderstand me, I don't fault you for your choice of family at all! If I wasn't so broken in the head that I need to be absolutely smitten with someone before my cock even twitches, at least two of my loves would have been Starks! I have my suspicions about my father too, there's got to be a reason why he never tried for another child, never mind me.
That aside, if you ever plan to bring Ned here for a visit, I'm not just asking as your father but as the Grandmaster of the Holy Order of the Sausage, please let me know in advance so I can reschedule our meetings. Sorry I forgot to include this in the letter proper. I just finished re-reading Jon's letters about you and Ned, as well as the letters from Ned, and your own letters (they're all about Ned!). Now I don't want to hurt your feelings more than I already have, and I'm sure we can find a place in our order for you! But Ned, well… sorry to say that I don't think I can allow him to join our order. From what I can gather, his sausage is... massive. I mean, the sheer girth and juiciness alone is ridiculous. It looks as if his parents did blood magic to grow a fifth arm instead of a cock down there, a fat, pink mast long as Storm's End's drum tower. Which I suppose is good news for you since it means you'll feel right at home whichever way you sit. And that's not even mentioning how fat his nuts have to be! I'm sorry, son, but I'm afraid I'll have to ask that Ned take his ginormous meat somewhere else.
Now if you managed to read all that without your cock rearing up like an elephant's trunk, congratulations! You're as straight-shooting as they come. A real man's man!
If not, though, be sure to tell me how big a tent you grew in your trousers! I want to know how much you take after me!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Robert Baratheon gaped in horror, dropped the letter as if hit by lightning and jumped away as if battered by hail from head to end.
Then he stuck a hand down his trousers, found his cock shrivelled up like old grape, collapsed in relief, tore up the letter, threw it into the fire and proceeded to hide under his bed.
Last edited:
Abhishekm
Well-known member
Well it is shaped like Britain.
Poor Robert
Karmic Acumen
Well-known member
Lol.
So cruel to Bobby!
Huzhor Amai's story can be deduced from textual evidence. Also, it's literally what Dany's doing. I did toss in a bit of Alcibiades though.
A dad's purpose is to challenge his kids!
