Harryn Stark Ch.5

EDDARD STARK

Ned Stark sat beneath the heart tree, letting the silence of the godswood envelop him. After taking a man's life, he always sought the quiet of this place. Three acres of old forest untouched for ten thousand years as the castle rose around it. It smelled of moist earth and decay. This was a wood of stubborn sentinel trees, of mighty oaks, of ironwoods as old as the realm itself. Black trunks crowded close together, twisted branches wove a dense canopy overhead, and misshapen roots wrestled beneath the soil. A place of deep silence and brooding shadows, and the gods who lived here had no names.

At the center of the grove, the ancient weirwood brooded over a small pool where the waters were black and cold. The heart tree. The weirwood's bark was white as bone, its leaves dark red, like a thousand bloodstained hands. The face carved in the trunk stared at him with deep-cut eyes, red with dried sap and strangely watchful. They were old, those eyes; older than Winterfell itself. They had seen Brandon the Builder set the first stone, if the tales were true.

Ice lay across his lap, and he was cleaning the blade in those waters black as night when he heard soft footsteps approaching through the thick carpet of humus that swallowed sound. The red eyes of the weirwood seemed to follow the approaching figure.

"Ned," she called softly.

He lifted his head. "Catelyn," he said, his voice formal as it often was in this place. "Where are the children?"

She spread her cloak on the forest floor and sat beside the pool, her back to the weirwood. He could see how she tried to ignore the watchful eyes of the heart tree.

"In the kitchen, arguing about names for the wolf pups," she said. "Arya is already in love, and Sansa is charmed and gracious, but Rickon is not quite sure." She paused, her mouth tightening almost imperceptibly. "Harryn has already named his wolf Padfoot."

Padfoot. A queer name, Ned thought, not a northern name by any stretch. Something foreign, like so many things about his son. Ned had never understood where Harryn got his strange notions.

"Harryn went to his room with that woman," Catelyn added, the final two words dripping with the particular venom she reserved for this subject alone.

Ned sighed, setting aside the oiled leather. The argument was as familiar as the stones of Winterfell. "It isn't Jez's fault Harryn took a liking to her."

"Jez is old enough to be Harryn's mother," Catelyn said, her Tully blue eyes hard as river stones.

Ned did find that odd. He remembered his time in the Vale with Robert and his brother Brandon. They had always sought young women, fresh-faced and maiden-shy, with skin like cream and hair like silk. It was strange that Harryn ignored the comelier servants, with their bright eyes and eager smiles, or the girls in the brothel that Robb and Theon frequented when they thought Ned was blind to their escapades. Jez was handsome enough, he supposed, but in the way of a woman who had seen thirty name days, with laugh lines at the corners of her eyes and a certain hardness about her mouth.

"We need to do something, Ned," Catelyn interrupted his thoughts. "Send the whore away."

Ned's jaw tightened. "I am not sending Jez away for decisions that weren't hers. Harryn would just find another woman to warm his bed." He looked at her directly. "Should we send them all away?"

Catelyn's face remained cold, her lips pressed together in silent judgment.

"He isn't your little boy anymore, Cat," Ned said, his voice softening. "He's almost a man grown."

"Harryn was never my little boy," Catelyn retorted, and in her voice he heard the resentment of fourteen years.

And that was true enough, Ned thought. Harryn had always seemed different than his trueborn siblings. Walking sure-footed before his first name day. Speaking in full sentences when other babes were still learning their first words. Keeping pace with Robb in Maester Luwin's lessons despite being three years younger. It was why Ned had taken him to see justice done for the first time on the same day as Robb, though Harryn had been only seven. The boy hadn't flinched when the deserter's head rolled across the frosty ground. Had only asked questions about duty and honor afterward, his eyes too knowing for a child.

"Is Rickon afraid of his pup?" Ned asked, turning back to the matter of the direwolves.

"A little," she admitted. "He is only three."

Ned frowned. "He must learn to face his fears. He will not be three forever. And winter is coming." The words gave her a chill, as they always did. The Stark words. Not for the first time, he reflected on what a strange people these northerners must seem to his southern wife.

"The man died well, I'll give him that," Ned said, returning to the greatsword. He ran the oiled leather lightly up the blade as he spoke, watching the Valyrian steel ripple like water in the dying light. "I was glad for Bran's sake. You would have been proud of Bran."

"I am always proud of Bran," Catelyn replied, but her eyes followed the movement of the sword with unconcealed distaste.

"He was the fourth this year," Ned said grimly, thinking of the deserter with his wild eyes and wilder tales. "The poor man was half-mad. Something had put a fear in him so deep that my words could not reach him." He sighed. "Ben writes that the strength of the Night's Watch is down below a thousand. It's not only desertions. They are losing men on rangings as well."

"Is it the wildlings?" she asked.

"Who else?" Ned lifted Ice, looked down the cool steel length of it. "And it will only grow worse. The day may come when I will have no choice but to call the banners and ride north to deal with this King-beyond-the-Wall for good and all."

"Beyond the Wall?" The thought made Catelyn shudder visibly.

Ned saw the dread on her face. "Mance Rayder is nothing for us to fear."

"There are darker things beyond the Wall." She glanced behind her at the heart tree, the pale bark and red eyes, watching, listening, thinking its long slow thoughts.

His smile was gentle. "You listen to too many of Old Nan's stories. The Others are as dead as the children of the forest, gone eight thousand years. Maester Luwin will tell you they never lived at all. No living man has ever seen one."

"Until this morning, no living man had ever seen a direwolf either," Catelyn reminded him.

"I ought to know better than to argue with a Tully," he said with a rueful smile. He slid Ice back into its sheath with a soft rasp of steel on leather. "You did not come here to tell me crib tales. I know how little you like this place. What is it, my lady?"

Catelyn took his hand, her fingers cool against his skin. "There was grievous news today, my lord. I did not wish to trouble you until you had cleansed yourself." There was no way to soften the blow, and she told him straight. "I am so sorry, my love. Jon Arryn is dead."

His eyes found hers, and he felt the truth of it like a knife between his ribs. In his youth, Ned had fostered at the Eyrie, and the childless Lord Arryn had become a second father to him and his fellow ward, Robert Baratheon. When the Mad King Aerys II Targaryen had demanded their heads, the Lord of the Eyrie had raised his moon-and-falcon banners in revolt rather than give up those he had pledged to protect.

And one day fifteen years ago, this second father had become a brother as well, as he and Ned stood together in the sept at Riverrun to wed two sisters, the daughters of Lord Hoster Tully.

"Jon..." he said, the name a whisper. "Is this news certain?"

"It was the king's seal, and the letter is in Robert's own hand. I saved it for you. He said Lord Arryn was taken quickly. Even Maester Pycelle was helpless, but he brought the milk of the poppy, so Jon did not linger long in pain."

"That is some small mercy, I suppose," he said, grief thick in his throat. Even then, his thoughts turned to others. "Your sister," he said. "And Jon's boy. What word of them?"

"The message said only that they were well, and had returned to the Eyrie," Catelyn said. "I wish they had gone to Riverrun instead. The Eyrie is high and lonely, and it was ever her husband's place, not hers. Lord Jon's memory will haunt each stone. I know my sister. She needs the comfort of family and friends around her."

"Your uncle waits in the Vale, does he not? Jon named him Knight of the Gate, I'd heard."

Catelyn nodded. "Brynden will do what he can for her, and for the boy. That is some comfort, but still..."

"Go to her," Ned urged. "Take the children. Fill her halls with noise and shouts and laughter. That boy of hers needs other children about him, and Lysa should not be alone in her grief."

"Would that I could," Catelyn said. "The letter had other tidings. The king is riding to Winterfell to seek you out."

It took Ned a moment to comprehend her words, but when the understanding came, the darkness left his eyes. "Robert is coming here?" When she nodded, a smile broke across his face.

Catelyn smiled too, though Ned saw something in her eyes he could not name. "I knew that would please you," she said. "We should send word to your brother on the Wall."

"Yes, of course," he agreed. "Ben will want to be here. I shall tell Maester Luwin to send his swiftest bird." Ned rose and pulled her to her feet. "Damnation, how many years has it been? And he gives us no more notice than this? How many in his party, did the message say?"

"I should think a hundred knights, at the least, with all their retainers, and half again as many freeriders. Cersei and the children travel with them."

"Robert will keep an easy pace for their sakes," he said. "It is just as well. That will give us more time to prepare."

"The queen's brothers are also in the party," she told him.

Ned grimaced at that. There was small love between him and the queen's family. The Lannisters of Casterly Rock had come late to Robert's cause, when victory was all but certain, and he had never forgiven them. "Well, if the price for Robert's company is an infestation of Lannisters, so be it. It sounds as though Robert is bringing half his court."

"Where the king goes, the realm follows," she said.

"It will be good to see the children. The youngest was still sucking at the Lannister woman's teat the last time I saw him. He must be, what, five by now?"

"Prince Tommen is seven," she told him. "The same age as Bran. Please, Ned, guard your tongue. The Lannister woman is our queen, and her pride is said to grow with every passing year."

Ned squeezed her hand. "There must be a feast, of course, with singers, and Robert will want to hunt. I shall send Jory south with an honor guard to meet them on the kingsroad and escort them back." The reality of hosting a royal progress descended on him like a weight. "Gods, how are we going to feed them all? On his way already, you said? Damn the man. Damn his royal hide."