Chapter Text

Eddard I

Consciousness returned laboriously through a lazy haze of physical comfort and sleep, his mind slowly waking from the nightmares of the previous few hours. What had he been dreaming about? Dark shadows, steel clashing under the moonlight, blue eyes staring, staring, staring…

Ned shivered, his naked, sweat-drenched back chilled by the breeze coming through the window. Sighing, he stood up and prepared for the day ahead. Outside, the North was as evergreen as it had been for so many years now, but somehow Ned was certain that soon a white sheet of snow would cover his lands and not melt as easily as the summer snows did. There was a distinct, sharp chill in the air. Winter was coming.

He dressed quickly and left his rooms. It was yet still early but Robb was already up as he always was these days, his young face frowning, bent over the large map table. His gaze was focused on the northern part of their kingdom, near the Gift.

“Working again, my boy? What will your wife say when she finds you gone from your bed?”

Robb’s pale face flushed with color and the grown-up, married man changed into a young boy again.

“I know you told me that I shouldn’t work so hard, but…”

“…but you’re worried.”

There was no need to ask why. Small red figurines were scattered all over the map table, their numbers rising more and more the closer to the Wall one looked. Though some of them even reached far south into the Rills.

“Aye.” Robb nodded. “They are like a storm at sea, wave after wave crashing against the shore that is the North. Even with the Dawnguard patrolling the Gifts it is not enough and the population of the Gifts and even further south suffer. This could render all our efforts to strengthen the Night’s Watch useless. And then there are those rumors about a King-Beyond-the-Wall…”

“True. But, Robb — thinking about it overly much won’t help you solve the problem. We are already doing everything we can and we can do nothing more than that. Come, let us go and eat something. Your mind will work better after some food in your belly and some rest from your concerns.”

Robb smiled slightly, shrugging in an abashed manner.

“Yes, Father. You are probably right. It’s just…”

Ned put an arm around his son and pulled him out of the room.

“It’s just that you’re a young man eager to achieve something grand. That is both the curse and blessing of youth. But remember, Robb, that patience is oftentimes the difference between success and failure.”

“And sometimes action is better than waiting around doing nothing,” Robb argued back.

“True. Though you have to know, my boy, when the time is right to do one or the other. It is no easy thing to discern. Sometimes you won’t know until much later what the right decision had been.”

There were times that Ned himself wondered how different the world would have been had he, say, declared independence years ago, had he not given Robert a hostage in Lyan or if Jaime Lannister had been a lesser man. But such things only the Gods knew now. The world was as it was and they had to deal with the here and now.

Ned shook his head, dispelling those useless musings.

“Come, let us eat.”

Together, father and son broke their fast: cold grilled rabbit, fresh bread and fruit. They ate in companionable silence, enjoying the quiet before Winterfell entirely awoke to life.

“Will you come with me to the execution?”

“Aye, Father,” Robb nodded. “It’s not every day that we’ve got ourselves a Night’s Watch deserter.”

“Were that those came few and far between. The Watch is not what it was in ancient times, ’tis true, but more than ten in two months?” It was something Ned could not explain. The Wildling attacks had grown more ferocious, yes, but they had gained in frequency years ago and yet only now did the Night’s Watch lose so many members to desertion.

“Perhaps we might ask the man his reasons?”

“Ask we may,” Ned nodded, taking a sip from his goblet, “but don’t expect too much, son. An oath breaker’s words are not often to be trusted. If a man can break an oath he swore before men and the Gods then what hinders him to lie again? Oaths hold a kingdom together as surely as military might does. They should not easily be squandered.”

“And yet you trusted Lord Jaime after the Rebellion — a man who broke perhaps the most important oath in the whole of Westeros.” There was a glint of satisfaction in Robb’s eye as he countered, but also more than enough curiosity as to how Ned would reply.

“Aye, I did. There are few things in the world that are more important than your personal honor, Robb. For Jaime Lannister it were the lives of the citizens of King’s Landing…”

“And what would be more important for you, Father?” Ah, the boy was thinking about Jon.

Ned smiled. The honorable Ned Stark, they called him even still; just a reflection in the water of a second son fostered in the Vale. He had not been that boy for a long time now. A lordship meant responsibility, meant making decisions where there was no good choice at all offered. Ned could only hope that his son would not be burdened with such things for a long time to come yet.

“Family and the North.”

He had long ago chosen those things over his friendship with the man who now sat upon the Iron Throne. He would choose them again, if necessary.

Duty upon duty upon duty. And here, now, was another duty.

They rode out of the gates, a small group of his men-at-arms behind him and Robb, and Greywind to the side. The dire wolf yipped and yapped, already having grown so much in such a short time. A living sigil at their side. Sometimes Ned wondered if that was a sign for things to come. Living in a time of legends, that was what it felt like. But legendary times, Ned knew, were times of strife and chaos.

He shifted in his saddle, the chill from his nightmare suddenly present and real in the Northern sunshine. Those blue eyes…

As they rode on the morning fog hovering above the hills slowly lifted and by midday they came upon the small holdfast where the deserter was kept imprisoned. It was a pitiful sight. The man was old, over fifty surely, with deep lines in his face and grey in his hair. Cowering and thin only the black clothes he wore separated him from a common wretch. But it was the eyes that unsettled Ned. Sheer terror was in them; terror greater even than that which he had seen during the war in those waiting to die.

“Father…is this not Gared? We met him at the Wall.” Robb frowned, his head cocking to one side.

“Hmm…now that you mention it…yes.” It was no wonder that Ned hadn’t recognized him at first. His memories told him of an experienced ranger with a dry humor and intelligence in his eyes. Not…this…

“Gared! Gared! Tell us — why did you desert?”

Gared groaned, mad eyes darting from side to side, watchful for something only he could see.

“No use, this, Lord Robb,” the guard answered instead, “the man’s as mad as a rabid dog. Hasn’t said anything with sense the whole night he’s been here.”

“Then what did he say?”

The guard shrugged.

“Rambled about danger and death. Figured that all the time on the Wall without a good woman drove him mad.” He paused. “Oh — he also went on and on about some blue eyes —“

“Blue eyes!” Gared shrieked, his body trembling. “Around…around…coming…they bring death, death!”

Blue eyes. He had dreamed about blue eyes today and even hours later he could not banish them from his mind.

Ned kneeled in front of the Black Brother, his own sure hands clasping the weathered face, holding it in place. He stared into madness and madness stared back. His heart shuddered.

“Where,” he used his full lord-voice, gathering every scrap of authority into his words that he could, “where have you seen the blue eyes? Where? Where?!”

Beneath his hands the body of the man shook but Ned thought that behind the madness in his eyes he could glimpse a small shard of the man Gared had once been.

“The Fist…the Fist…the Fist!” Gared screamed his answer, then folded into himself as if sapped of all his strength. “Cold and death,” he continued to whisper. “Nohopenohopenohopenohopenohope…”

A mad, terrible suspicion rose up in his mind as for just a moment it seemed to Ned that Gared’s speech was as clear as spring water. But no, it could not be…

“Father. Father!” Robb grasped his arm firmly and the terror inside him subsided, the dream leaving him once more.

“I am fine, Robb. Come, let us make an end to this. Whatever his reasons, this man deserted the Night’s Watch and there is only one fate that awaits him now.” Perhaps it was even mercy of a kind to grant him a swift and painless death.

It was with this wish of mercy that Ned raised Ice and cut off Gared’s head. Robb stood silently and grimly next to him, never having looked more like Ned than in these moments of responsibility.

“Are you alright, Father?” Robb asked him during their ride back to Winterfell.

“It is nothing, son, just…”

“Just what?”

“A bad feeling.”

And that bad feeling would not leave him, not even as they rode through the familiar gates of Winterfell.

“My lord! My lord!” Maester Luwin was running. If that had not been enough, then his grave eyes would have done it. Ned tensed, chest tight and heart cold.

“Yes, Luwin?”

“A raven, my lord. Come — you must look at this. Now.”

They followed Luwin to the solar, reaching it quickly. Behind him Ned could feel Robb shifting anxiously. As he took the letter from Luwin Ned already knew that it had all fallen apart, somehow.

Lord Eddard Stark,

You are to present yourself and your heir to his Highness King Joffrey Baratheon the First of His Name to answer for the crimes committed by your traitor brother Benjen against King Robert Baratheon. In cowardly fashion and against all that is right and sacred in this world the traitor Benjen Stark killed King Robert Baratheon the First of His Name, breaking Guest Right and all worldly laws.

It is the kind and merciful heart of King Joffrey Baratheon that gives you the opportunity to spare the rest of your family the dishonor of treason. You are assured of fair and just treatment if you confirm your loyalty to King and realm. But know that if you deny your King’s will, all the might of Westeros will be brought to bear against you as justice is sought.

King Joffrey Baratheon,
First of His Name, King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, Protector of the Realm

The letter slipped from his hand. Dimly, he was aware that Robb had picked it up and was reading it.

Again. It was all happening again. History repeating itself. Starks in the hands of a king sitting on the Iron Throne. His House branded traitors, called to present himself and Robb in King’s Landing.

He knew how it would end if he followed this call. How it had ended before.

“Father?” Robb’s voice was faint. He could hear the same impotence in it that he remembered in his own all those years ago when he had gotten the news about his father and Brandon. “Father, what shall we do?”

“The only thing we can do, son.” He turned to Luwin and nodded. “Call the banners, assemble the North and get information from our spies. We are going to war.”

And this time things would end differently.

Ned would make sure of it.