A/N
7 follows and 4 favorites within a day of posting the first chapter, amazing! Review too? :)
I revised chapter 1 – expanded the dragon birth scene, and added Daenerys' reaction to Jorah's reveal of his slavery incident. Here's the second chapter, which was almost done anyway. Now I introduce Robb's side of the story.
Chapter
King In The North! King In The North! The chant led by his bannerman Lord Jon Umber echoed in Robb Stark's head. As Westeros fell apart, a Stark was the only king his fellow northmen felt they could follow.
The northern army had recently begun raiding the Westerlands – they had won a major victory at Oxcross and a minor one at Ashemark before storming a small fortress on the coast known as The Crag. Like Ashemark, it was an easy victory, and the castle was captured, but Robb had sustained an arrow wound in this battle.
Robb needed someone to tend to his wound. Maester Luwin was amongst the Stark staff that had stayed at Winterfell – not serving him in the field, not massacred along with his father in King's Landing. The man was too old to travel anyways.
Robb didn't move from the place where he was injured, not wanting to aggravate the wound. He called out "Maester!" With an arrow sticking out of his leg, it was obvious why he needed one.
"We don't have one," a smooth voice answered. It belonged to a young woman with brown hair and eyes. Looking at her thin body and smooth face, Robb thought She's pretty, I suppose. As his father's heir, he had focused on political and military affairs rather than wenching. It made sense that they don't have a maester – The Crag was the seat of House Westerling, old and proud but also small and poor. Now what are we going to do about that? Robb thought. "In the absence of a maester, I've learned how to treat wounds like that," the girl continued.
"So be it," Robb said flatly.
Another Jon Umber, the lord's son, was one of the soldiers who carried Robb to a room where he could be treated. "First, I need to get the arrowhead out, so don't just yank on the shaft, else it might become separated from the flint," Jeyne announced. "Did you see any arrows with barbed tips being used?" she asked.
"No," Robb answered simply, relieved that the problem wasn't even worse.
Her fingers found where the arrowhead was lodged in Robb's flesh. Robb gritted his teeth. Well, this is war, Robb thought. And I refuse to cry in front of my soldiers. She inserted smooth metal tools into the wound, so the arrowhead would not cause even more damage as it was pulled out. Jeyne gladly presented Robb with the bloody metal triangle. Robb was wholly unsurprised to see her bring boiling wine to clean out the wound. She wrapped cloth around the part of Robb's leg that bore the cut.
"Wow, you're good," Robb complimented. If she had been born a commoner, she may have found work as some sort of healer, mayhaps a midwife. If she was a man born high or low she could have gone to Oldtown to study to become a maester.
Robb put some weight on the leg. It felt sore and weak, and he wasn't sure how much of that would fade with time.
An older woman showed up in the doorway. "Jeyne dear, it seems you have done well with the patient," she said.
"Yes, my lady mother, the Mother Above is merciful," Jeyne answered.
"She had nothing to do with it, your daughter did," Robb chimed in.
"You northmen," Sybell Spicer Westerling responded. "Well, I've mixed a potion that should help with the swelling. Drink some yourself to prove that it's not poison," she said to explain the vial she was carrying. "My son Raynald is the Westerling in The Crag, he did submit the castle, and I will respect that."
His father, Sybell's husband Gawen, was the house lord, but he had been captured at the Whispering Wood. That was the North's first clear victory in the current war, before Robb was crowned, before his army marched into the Westerlands. However, Robb had almost forgotten about Gawen Westerling in the joy of capturing enemy commander Jaime Lannister.
Robb found the potion's taste mild, and Jeyne agreed as she drank her portion. "The wound needs to be washed again. You may as well take a full bath, you probably need one anyway," Jeyne suggested.
"Months in the field will do that to a soldier even without injuries," Robb agreed. Jeyne called one of the Westerling servants to prepare the hot water. Meanwhile, she removed the bandage to find it mostly soaked with blood and the bleeding mostly stopped.
After Robb bathed and dressed, he received a wound that no medic of any sort could treat. The younger Jon Umber came running with a scroll. "Your Grace, dark wings bring dark words," Umber said simply and solemnly. "I believe you'll wish to be left alone with this." Robb read that Theon Greyjoy had captured Winterfell and then had the Stark brothers Brandon and Rickon killed. Theon was acting for his own House, but this made him seem like a traitor after living at Winterfell for years and fighting alongside Robb in the earlier stages of the current war. His brothers dead, his home in ruins, by someone who had been like a brother at Winterfell. the tough young man began to cry.
Then he felt someone come in and put a hand on his shoulder. It was Jeyne. She seemed more beautiful now, Robb thought. "I also heard the news. My siblings all still live, but I can't bear the thought of losing Elenya, or Raynald or Rollam," she said sympathetically.
He stood up to put his hand on her shoulder, only to knock the strap of her gown off. Robb was surprised when she didn't rush to pull it back up. "Why don't you fix the other one?" she suggested smoothly. For some reason, Robb did, and the yellow fabric accented in white fell to the floor. She stepped out of the bottom of the dress to draw him closer for a kiss. The potion had left a sweet aftertaste that lingered in Robb's mouth even now; he smelled the same on Jeyne's breath.
They broke the sweet embrace only so he could lose his tunic and breeches. There was something not so small in his smallclothes and what looked like a nice firm pair of teats under hers. Neither person wished for their bodies to be constrained by the simple grey fabric any longer. Robb gazed in silent awe. His eyes and the eye at the tip of his manhood both focused between her legs, capped with a tuft of hair as brown as the luxurious strands atop her head. "You act like you haven't seen a naked woman before," Jeyne teased.
"Actually I haven't," Robb admitted. "Certainly not one I'm about to bed or one as pretty as you," he added more confidently.
"I figured someone as handsome as you would have wenched his way through half the North by now," Jeyne purred. "Bed me!" she said enthusiastically. "Make a woman out of me as I make a man out of you!" His body had already responded well enough, so he didn't need much prompting when Jeyne threw one of her legs up into his outstretched arms.
He slid her between the sheets of a bed he had expected to have to himself, and promptly followed. He climbed on top of her and pushed down into her, for he knew that much, whether through innate instinct or what he had gathered from listening to the rowdier boys around him. No wonder they had found this so fascinating! he thought as his body surged in and out of hers.
Within a couple minutes, he felt his seed pump into her and his tall body collapse onto the pillow sideways to gaze into her eyes. "You're a maiden's fantasy, but now it's no fantasy and I'm no maiden," Jeyne said. She was right; her maiden's gift had been given to him and the sheets.
Apparently the new king had found his queen. It seemed like the honorable way to treat her. He had promised himself to a daughter of Lord Walder Frey, but that man almost deserved to be snubbed for extracting concessions out of doing his fealty to House Tully. However, Robb was exhausted from the day's exertion in both business and pleasure. He quickly fell asleep in the same bed on which he had deflowered Jeyne.
As Robb awoke, he looked over to see the fair young woman still with him, still asleep. Robb heard a series of heavy steps in the hallways outside the bedchamber. Lord Umber's son was not a small man, so that was probably the source of the noise. "Good morning, Your Grace! I gather that your leg is still working?"
"Yes," Robb answered.
"Apparently the thing between your legs is also still working," he japed.
"Don't jape like we're at a wedding!" Robb shouted back. "I wish I could marry you," he whispered to Jeyne.
"I understand that you can't," Jeyne replied solemnly.
"But I can find another good match for you," Robb said cheerfully. Even though she's soiled, thanks to you.
"I hope so," she said, probably with similar thoughts running through her head.
"You deserve at least that much, though not a queen, you certainly should be treated like one," Robb declared.
With his brothers dead and his sisters Sansa and Arya imprisoned in Kings Landing, Robb didn't really have any heirs. Maybe he had just planted one in Jeyne last night. He couldn't marry her due to the political situation, but kings could legitimize bastards. It was particularly understandable if the bastard's father needed an heir. Robb had a living brother of sorts, his father's bastard Jon Snow, raised at Winterfell alongside Robb and his full siblings. However, Jon had joined the Night's Watch military order, the oath of which forbade members from holding lands or titles. So legitimizing Jon wouldn't provide Robb with a successor, but through Jon, Robb understood a bastard's fate as a well as a trueborn child could, so Robb would refuse to inflict that on his own children.
Mayhaps one of Frey's daughters would charm him the way Jeyne just had. It was possible that another match would present itself, to a House stronger than Frey, let alone Westerling. He was raised amongst the ice, but these dreams had filled him with fire.