Robert Baratheon was a man of great appetites.
Great appetites for excitement more specifically. Whether it be women, combat, food or drink, he discovered that if there was some sense of danger, of living upon the edge, then he was always seeking it.
Perhaps that had come from living in such a tumultuous place as the Stormlands as a boy. The weather itself was a true measure of excitement every day you woke to it again. After all, it had everything from winds that could force a man to squint his eyes against it to rain that could soak him to the bone in minutes and all of which could howl up or die down in an instant.
Perhaps if his father and mother had not died on that fool's errand for the Mad King, he would not have such a fascination with it. But then again his younger brothers Stannis and Renly had watched alongside him from the walls of Storm's End as a sudden squall swept their ship up and dashed it upon the unforgiving rocks. And if ever there were relations Robert could not relate to, it would be those two.
The only thing left of them or their ship was the patch-faced fool everyone referred to as Patchface. A strange little man who sang songs that didn't make sense whilst remaining otherwise silent and staring. A simpleton or perhaps more accurately a particularly complicated doll with his blank, dead gaze. Though he'd never admit it, that tattooed jester gave him the creeps. He'd been glad enough to leave him behind with Stannis and Renly at Storm's End. Especially after he came to know Eddard Stark though their mutual fostering with Jon Arryn, the Lord of the Vale.
He'd loved his mother and father but never felt particularly close to either of the men who called themselves his brothers. That had changed when meeting his foster brother Eddard Stark. Though they'd gotten off to a rough start, he was the best parts of Renly and Stannis distilled into one person after Robert got to know him. His honor, his manners and his respectful nature were a less rigid version of Stannis's own whilst he could joke and drink when Robert prodded him enough without becoming obnoxious and grating his nerves in the same way Renly did.
Then he'd found that Ned's sister was betrothed to be his wife and he thought it a great thing indeed. If the stories Ned told of his home in Winterfell were even part true, she'd grown up with Ned as a brother as well as Brandon, who from the sound of things, was almost his twin in sensibilities. If there was any woman who could handle and understand his lust for life it would be her.
And then Rhaegar bloody Targaryen had happened.
He'd rode before them all after winning the joust, bold as brass, to present a crown of winter roses to Lyanna as she sat right in front of him. Robert would've been willing to bet his life that if he'd bothered participating in the joust instead of the melee, Rhaegar never would've been able to win the tournament against him. But he'd never have suspected even one of so cursed a bloodline as Targaryen would be mad enough to declare his intentions for a betrothed woman in front of so great an audience that included her husband-to-be and his own wife.
When Ned's brother and father, Brandon and Rickard, were executed via self-strangulation and burning alive for attempting to demand Rhaegar give her back after her abduction Robert could stand by no more. He'd fought through all the kingdoms, dreaming every night that the wench in his arms was gone and Lyanna was there instead, dreaming that he had her back from the vile clutches of the rapist prince.
But that was not to be.
Ned returned bearing her corpse. Robert had never asked how she died. He suspected she'd been brutalized by Mad Aerys's son, but to the extent that it had killed her…he honestly didn't want to know the details of it. Just knowing that she'd died because of what that bastard Rhaegar had inflicted upon her was enough to fuel his hatred of the Targaryen bloodline to this very day. It was why he never felt as guilty as Ned thought he should over the death of Princess Elia's children. It was a shame they'd been killed so young, but they would not have remained babes forever. Horrendous as their deaths were Robert also knew in his heart of hearts that they were a simmering fire waiting to flare up and consume everything that happened to surround them. Why else would people say that every time a Targaryen was born the gods flipped a coin to tell whether they'd be mad or great?
That was the past. And even as the memory of what he'd desired brought him such pain, Robert also could not bring himself to let go of it. Not when it meant letting go of the last thing that truly made him happy in life. The warm legs he put himself between, the warm food he put in his mouth, he'd give it all if only he could be back again in those days of the rebellion: a fighter going to battle for his beliefs rather than a leader who feels more a figurehead than a true king.
If he hadn't been skeptical as to how much enjoyment any man could derive from being king, the reality of it convinced him completely that the people like Tywin and Cersei who coveted it were some of the greatest fools he'd ever known. And they unfortunately seemed to be the majority of people he encountered these days as the proclaimed king of the seven kingdoms.
Jon Arryn was one of the last who he felt he could trust to advise him and see whatever bigger picture there was to see rather than limited gains for himself at the expense of the crown that weighed heavier on felt tighter on Robert's brow every day. With his death there was only one man Robert felt he could trust to watch his back the same as he would've trusted them to do so on a field of battle.
Though when he'd said to Ned that he wanted to make him Hand of the King so that he could whore and drink his way to an early grave, that wasn't exactly an inaccurate sentiment either.
So now in celebration he was out amidst the cold wilderness of the North: only a small party of the men of Winterfell accompanying him outside Winterfell. It consisted of Ned and Robert themselves, Robert's squire Lancel Lannister, the Kingsguard Commander Barristan Selmy and Robb Stark, Ned's eldest son. The boy had left his faithful direwolf companion behind since they frightened the hunting hounds that were being led along in front of them by a few of the attendants.
Robert reached for the wine skein offered to him by Lancel without him having to ask for it, one of the golden haired twit's few redeeming features being his eagerness to please Robert's demands without complaint.
"Has your accursed Northern cold scared all the damn game underground Ned?" Robert asked jovially, his spirits high ever since his friend had accepted his demand to come south as his new Hand of the King.
"If there's no snow upon the ground your grace, it means they're out and about." Ned answered. That was one of the few things he couldn't get Ned to budge on: addressing him as your grace as befitted the king. There was that Stannis part of Ned; that attention to titles and propriety again. But unlike with Stannis, Robert was able understand it as a part of his nature imparted from their time by Jon Arryn rather than a dig at him personally as it might've been coming from Renly or Stannis himself.
"I'll hold you to that!" Robert jovially proclaimed before taking another swig from the skein.
As he wiped his mouth with his left sleeve the hounds began barking, their cacophony a signal that there was something up ahead.
"Seems you've held me to my word your grace." Ned remarked dryly as they rode forward with the dogs leading the way.
Up ahead, Robert caught a glimpse of brown fur and antlers. A stag of some sort. Obviously it had heard the hounds coming as it started to leap away. But before they could give chase, something unexpected happened.
Before the stag could get too far another creature leapt from the brush ahead, a white furred blur that made no sound before it managed to take a bloody chunk out of the stag's side. With a startled cry the creature tried to move on, only to be met with another furry blur that took it from the other side and the figure of a man that took it from the front. It hit the ground loudly and painfully. As it struggled to dislodge the human form upon it, there was a flash of its hand toward the creature's head and it stilled entirely.
As Robert and the others rode closer, they could now see the figure withdrawing a dagger from the juncture where the throat met the base of the creature's jaw. Judging from the length and sharpness of the blade, the thing had been driven through the neck and the skull directly into the stag's brain. They halted at Robert and Ned's shouted command, drawing the attention of what Robert now recognized as the direwolves Ned's children had acquired. Admittedly he'd only seen the two that belonged to the eldest in his stay thus far, but these two were definitely not them.
The one was white as driven snow with eyes the color of the fresh blood upon its snout while the other was a greyish black color on top with a bottom half as white as its sibling. The two easily eclipsed the hunting dogs in size though were only about a quarter the size of the full grown horses. Whose could they have possibly been?
As the figure before them stood up with bloody blade in hand, Robert couldn't help but think he was seeing Ned from before the rebellion reborn. He'd always heard his bastard looked like him but this? This was almost eerie.
"Apologies your grace." The Snow said, sinking to one knee before the hunting party.
"I hadn't realized we were intruding on the hunt. Had I known, I would've tried to call off the pack." He continued as he stood again.
Even as he'd sunk to one knee and bowed his head before Robert, his spine had remained as hard as iron he noticed. Courteous but with a strong will beneath it. He truly was his father's son.
Robert let out a loud laugh as an answer even as Ned's lips thinned with disapproval.
"No harm done boy!" Robert proclaimed jovially. It had been something of a great rush to see those beasts take down the stag with such efficiency and ruthlessness.
"But I only see two of those wolves of yours. Last I knew that didn't make a pack!" He continued laughing.
The hunting dogs whimpered as another two came out of the tree line. The one with bark colored fur darting toward the fresh kill and its stilled siblings while the other came through with a defensive posture to it.
Robert heard a very sharp intake of breath from his squire when the party clapped eyes on the other one coming out. The Baratheon king couldn't help but think his Lannister follower was too great a coward to appreciate the thing of savage beauty that was before them.
It was a great beast, easily as large as a pony on all four legs and with a mouth Robert felt confident could swallow Cersei's head or Tyrion's entire body whole. But at the moment its mouth was locked in a snarl toward them and its tail was swishing with aggravation.
"Jon! Stop her!" Ned called to his bastard with an edge to his voice. Robert almost regretted Ned's caution then, for such a creature truly would make a great prize as a pelt. But he sincerely was glad of it when he got to witness the boy do as his highborn father asked.
He moved with a swiftness that only Robert's extensive fighting in the rebellion allowed him to track as he got in front of the direwolf matriarch and clapped his hands on the creatures snarling snout to keep it shut while instructing: "Frost: Stop!"
His tone was rough and the warning in it clear for them all to hear. While her head thrashed somewhat from side to side trying to dislodge his latched hands, his body was unmovable as a gravestone. Her lips closed even as her tail continued to swish with agitation and she alternated between glaring at Robert and Jon as if pondering whether she could get around him to get at the Baratheon king.
"Jon, what's wrong with her?" Asked his half-brother whilst slowly coaxing the horse closer to the two even as the direwolf pups messily tore into the stag's carcass nearby.
The bastard looked awkward for a moment, his expression clearly showing he didn't wish to answer, before his unfaltering response came as something Robert hadn't expected to hear.
"If I had to guess, I'd say it's the smell of the wine. The scent is sharp enough to sting her nose and put her on edge. And from here, the scent of it is strong enough to rouse a sleeping man." He answered with a trace of sheepishness to his tone.
Robb and Ned looked embarrassed at his answer, Ned in particular glancing at Robert as though he expected his old friend to fly into a rage for his bastard's indirect insinuation: namely that Robert stank to high heaven of spirits.
In response, Robert threw back his head and laughed uproariously. It had usually been Jon Arryn who reprimanded him for drinking and whoring too much. Most people who surrounded him would've either pretended there was no problem (or in the case of Tyrion Lannister or Thoros of Myr actively encouraged him) or been a raging cunt about it (that was primarily Cersei admittedly but in truth he was so sick and tired of hearing her complain about everything he did under the sun that he counted her whining as ten people giving him grief for it) to the point where he felt no need to regard their advice as anything but the empty whistling of the air.
Even Ned, the man who'd once shamed him into seeing his first bastard Myra Stone a few times whilst they'd lived at the Vale, often restrained his opinion in the face of Robert's high station. But there was no recrimination in the bastard's answer; only a statement of a fact that Robert wouldn't have been at all surprised at now that he thought on it.
"That means I'm getting enough to drink boy!" He answered whilst continuing the chuckle. He noticed that the bastard continued to stand in front of the direwolf matriarch, seemingly ready to stop her at a moment's notice if she decided she didn't want to be stopped. The pups continued to feast on their meal: apparently uninterested in the nearby humans and whatever it was they were doing among each other.
"That pincering they did was good. But they're lucky we led them to it." Robert remarked, taking another swig from his skein.
The bastard was frowning thoughtfully.
"With all due respect your grace," Ned butted in as the Snow started to open his mouth. "They are barely tamed direwolves. Creatures for whom hunting is not a sport but a matter of survival."
He saw Ned throw a warning look at the bastard, whose mouth closed after nodding to his lord father. Gods what he wouldn't have given to have a son that could appreciate his love of the greater pleasures in life instead of a mewling, coddled little shit like Joffrey.
But his sense of competition and excitement wouldn't let him have it rest at that.
"Nonsense Ned!" He proclaimed loudly, drawing the pup's attention back to him again as they licked their chops of the dripping red on their fangs and lips.
"We're the great heroes of the rebellion! We've got your strapping boy and the unbeatable Barristan Selmy on our side! There's no possibility in the seven hells we'd lose to a bunch of wolves!" He declared, his mind already made up.
"Boy! Do you think like your father, that a bunch of wolves could outhunt us?!" He asked of the Snow, his sharp point by his right index finger demanding an answer to his royal question.
He saw him look to Ned as though to take a cue from him.
"Don't look to him, look to your king when he asks you a question boy! Do you think the wolves could outhunt us?!" He asked again, his brown eyes focused as much as he could through the slight but pleasant alcoholic haze to focus on the grey of the boy's Stark eyes.
"My answer would be yes; I do believe so your grace." He responded after only a moment's silence.
Robert allowed the silence to maintain for a few moments, infinitely amused at how Ned seemed to think the bastard was going to provoke his temper somehow by answering honestly.
He threw back his head and laughed again.
"There's that damn Stark honesty again!" He roared, the laughter shaking his gut like a bowl of jelly. "Oh, I've been missing it amongst all those arse-kissers and self-righteous shits in King's Landing Ned!"
"Very well then boy!" Robert said with a broad smile. It was good to be here even in the face of the ball shriveling cold. He'd smiled more on this brief sojourn to the North than in all the years he'd been stuck in King's Landing atop that damn iron throne.
"We'll have ourselves a contest then! We'll hunt our prey, you and your wolves hunt yours. Whoever has the most kills at the end of the hunt wins!" He announced grandly. His blood was already pumping in anticipation. He couldn't wait to show his true prowess at hunting now that there was truly a reason aside from escaping Cersei behind it.
The bastard bowed before him, only the slightest twitch in the right corner of his mouth indicating how he wished to smile. Same as Ned would whenever he was trying not to laugh at one of Robert's more ribald jokes back at the Vale.
"As your grace commands." He answered before walking toward the direwolf matriarch he'd referred to as Frost. A slight tug on the right scruff of her neck and she let out a short but commanding bark. Without another sound, the other direwolf pups left behind the stag's carcass and followed the other two into the brush again, their forms fading somewhat before Robert swore he saw them all break into a run toward something in the distance.
"Well, what're we waiting for you lumps?! We've a hunt to win!" Robert declared in excitement, gesturing for the hound handlers to move quickly so that they could hurry up and win against the wild animals.
Hours passed from morning into afternoon as they briefly stopped to make camp and eat some dried bread and salted meat. As they were devouring their rations, a mournful howl arose from somewhere in the distance. Ned and his son looked concerned as the howl reverberated again.
"Father?" Ned's son asked, his eyes holding fear and puzzlement in equal measure.
Ned looked grave as ever as he opened his mouth to answer before the hounds whimpering and a crashing sound came from the underbrush nearby their camp. As they turned their heads, the direwolf pups stampeded through. Ned's bastard only just behind them.
"Jon? What is it?!" His half-brother asked in alarm.
"That's Bran's direwolf." He answered. "Something's happened, we should get back to Winterfell immediately!" He finished while continuing to sprint behind the direwolf pups, his speed seeming to Robert as though it was approaching that of a horse.
Ned's eyes met Robert's for only a moment before the King of Westeros called out the order.
"Pack up everything you sods! We're getting back to Winterfell now!" All whilst silently praying nothing had happened to Ned's family while they had been out here.
Upon their urgent return to the Stark ancestral keep, Robert was dismayed to discover his prayers had gone unanswered.
A/N: Second of three new chapters. Bear with me as we meet up with and rapidly depart from canon.