Chapter 2: A Wolf-Blooded Woman

Lord Eddard Stark stared hard at the letter that had arrived that morning. The stag sigil stamped in the wax seal was a surprise to him and Ned frowned in curiosity. He'd not spoken to or heard from Robert Baratheon in many long years. Not since his children had been very young. Robert had never gotten over Lyanna choosing to marry Rhaegar as his second wife, rather than marrying Robert after she'd learned of Mya Stone's existence and realised what a whore-monger Robert was.

They had tried to get past it several times, but always Robert would get drunk and start shouting about how Lyanna had spurned him. Ned could only imagine what might've prompted Robert to be writing to him now and as he broke the seal on the letter, he vaguely hoped it wasn't some new war Robert was thinking of starting. The man had a thirst for battle that could never be slaked, much like his thirst for wine and whores.

Ned,

You're probably shocked to read this and thinking I'm back at my war-mongering ways, but hang it all we're friends! Word has reached me that you're seeking a husband for that wild daughter of yours. Sod it all, Ned, I'm tired of this mess with Lyanna hanging between us. I propose we join our houses. My son Gendry seeks a wife and he tells me he won't settle for some meek, pathetic little tart, so I reckon we'll give him just the opposite.

If what I've heard of your Arya is true, I reckon she's anything but meek.

What do you say? I heard word too that your eldest is wedded to Tyrell and you'll need an alliance with the Stormlands when the Martells and the Greyjoys hear of that. We can give you that.

Our houses should've joined long ago, but since Lyanna won't have me it'll be up to our children to join us.

~ Robert Baratheon.

Ned felt a small smile tug at the corners of his mouth as he read the letter. It was typically Robert, and the messy scrawl suggested his old friend had already been a few wines into the day when he'd penned the letter. However, it did pose an interesting solution to his current problem.

Cat had been harping at him for moons now to find Arya a husband and for the life of him he hadn't been able to think of a single man he'd want married to his daughter. Sansa had been easy to see wedded. She was the picture of a dutiful bride and had happily agreed to a match with Willas Tyrell, in spite of his crippled leg. Just a seven-day ago he'd returned from High Garden where he'd seen them wed in the Godswood there and had left his beautiful eldest daughter there with the Tyrells.

Bran was wedded to Meera Reed, and already the girl was expecting a babe. Robb too had finally decided that he would accept Nymeria Martell to be his bride and currently preparations were being made for their matrimonial. He wouldn't need to worry about the Martell's being put out over Sansa wedding Willas because Robb would wed Nymeria. The Tyrell's too had been appeased after Robb had refused their daughter Margery when Sansa had agreed to a match with Willas and so there were no hurt feelings from either house.

Arya however, was proving far more difficult to marry off to anyone. Word of her wilfulness had reached the ears of all within the Seven Kingdoms and many refused to even entertain the idea of such a match, saving those houses that required the alliance such a match forged with house Stark. Ned didn't know what to do about it. Of all his children, though fathers weren't meant to have them, Arya was his favourite. He knew it was his own doing that had resulted in her being so wilful and so defiant. She was proud and wild and the wolf-blood ran strong in her veins.

She was his baby, and he hated the idea of seeing her married off at all. He knew that she needed to be, that Cat would never forgive him if he let her stay unwed and that eventually people would talk. Not that Arya would care. She had no time for gossip unless it directly affected the way she lived her life and the opinions of others mattered little to her. Perhaps Robert might've offered a solution to how he could see Arya married without crushing the spirit out of her.

Robert himself had always favoured Lyanna for her beauty and her wild ways, and Arya resembled her aunt in appearance and demeanour more than anyone cared to admit. He hadn't met Gendry Baratheon in many long years, not since he'd been just a lad when Robert had brought his young sons and daughters to Winterfell in another failed attempt to reconcile their differences after Ned's father had allowed Lyanna to back out of her betrothal to Robert.

He had heard of him though. Word throughout the realm was that Gendry Baratheon was a huge strapping man as similar in appearance to Robert as Arya was to Lyanna. On the battlefield he wielded his war hammer with precision and skill, not to mention enough strength to singlehandedly wipe out battalions. Outside the battlefield however, he did not match Robert in his whore-mongering or drinking. He was a stern, self-contented lad with a knack for smithing and a head for strategy. Ned wondered if perhaps he might be tolerant enough for his fierce daughter.

"Cat?" Ned said, wandering the castle until he found his ladywife overseeing preparation for the upcoming wedding between Robb and Nymeria Martell.

"What is it Ned?" Cat asked, looking surprised to see him.

"I need to speak with you. It's about Arya," Ned told her, taking her hand and pulling it through the crook of his elbow as he led his ladywife away from the Great Hall and into their private bedchamber far from whispering servants and smallfolk.

"What has she done this time?" Cat sighed when they were locked inside their chamber.

"Actually, it's not what she's done. I had a raven this morning," Ned told her, "From Robert Baratheon."

"What does he want?" Cat asked, her eyebrows lifting and her lip curling a little with distaste. Cat still hadn't forgiven Robert for his last visit when he'd told Ned to go and bury his head in the snow if he wouldn't help him convince Lyanna to have him instead.

"He's proposed a match between his eldest son, Gendry, and our Arya. Said the lad wants a wife who's not some meek little behaved woman and he thought Arya might test the boy," Ned explained, dropping down to sit on the edge of the bed he shared with her each night and waiting for her to take a seat beside him.

"You think it wise?" Catelyn asked him seriously, "You know how wilful Arya is, and for all that Gendry might not want a proper lady for a wife, he doesn't want a defiant witch like Arya either. You know Robert wouldn't hesitate to pull her into line and his son will be the same."

"I don't think he would lay a hand on her Cat, or I would never even consider the possibility. Robert loved Lyanna for the same wildness we see in Arya every day. He wouldn't take it as a personal slight from her or from the Stark's if she isn't always a demure lady like Sansa is. She'd be safe there," Ned told her seriously, "I don't want to see her wed at all, but since she must be I'd prefer it to be into to a family I trust."

"But the Stormlands are so far from here," Cat worried at her lip with her teeth.

"No further than High Garden," Ned reasoned, "Closer even. And you let Sansa go."

"Sansa has never done anything to make me think she would be in need of us when she gets herself into trouble. Not the way Arya has."

"True, but she'd be with Robert. The man I've entrusted my life to many times over on the battlefield. What I've heard of this Gendry is that he's a better man than Robert ever was. Rarely touches the drink, no bastards to his name. According to Robert's letter he specifically requested a wife who'll test his patience and push his limits. If he looks anything like Robert did – and I've heard he does – he could have his pick of willing brides, and yet Robert's writing to us. He wants to finally join our houses the way they should've been before Lyanna married Rhaegar."

Catelyn pondered it a while, and Ned sat watching her. He wasn't sure of the entire idea himself and he shuddered at the idea of telling Arya that they'd found her a suitor when she was so against the entire idea of marriage.

"She's going to hate us Ned. She won't just test Gendry's patience, she'll destroy it. You think she's been wilful and difficult so far, but imagine her when we tell her she's to be married off and sent to the other end of the realm to live with a man she's not laid eyes on in her life," Cat said.

"Well what do you want me to tell Robert? I doubt he'll extend the offer again, and I can think of no one else who would have a chance of wrangling Arya. At least Gendry will have the brute strength to hold her the way no one else ever has. If he's as interested in a non-traditional wife as Robert says then there's a chance he'll tolerate her weapon wielding and her dressing like a man and her cheek."

Cat sighed heavily, leaning sideways into him and resting her cheek against his shoulder.

"Tell him we'll bring her to meet Gendry Baratheon in a moon's time, after Robb's wedding. We'd best let them meet her before we agree to anything, else she'll be widowed or divorced and they'll declare war on us. Until we hear from him again, we'll keep the news from Arya," Catelyn told him quietly, nuzzling her face into his neck and taking a deep breath as though reaching for the strength to tell their wild daughter she was to be married.

Ned couldn't help thinking that it would be easier to simply declare war with his oldest friend now without the hassle of travelling to the Stormlands without his bannermen at his back.

~ O ~

Gendry was suspicious of his father in the weeks that followed his outburst about a wife who would test him and help him and enthral him. He'd seemed entirely too dedicated to the task of finding such a woman and had even taken to drinking and whoring less. So much so that there was a noticeable difference in the amount of wine ordered each moon. His mother too appeared happier, and Gendry chose not to think too hard on why his father needed less whores and his mother was happier.

All he knew was that there was some strategic planning going on in his father's head and Gendry suspected he might just get his wish. There was little Robert couldn't achieve when he wanted to.

So when his father came to the forge where he was moulding some new armour for his destrier, Gendry knew that he was no doubt going to learn something that would upset him. After all, he'd requested such things in a wife in an attempt to stave off marriage for a few years, yet within weeks his father had news for him. It did not bode well for Gendry's status as a bachelor.

"I've found her," Robert said casually by way of greeting and Gendry paused in his moulding to look at his father's gleeful expression. It was a sight to behold. The bloodshot red of his eyes from the drink that Gendry had grown so used to was gone and if he wasn't mistaken his father had lost some weight too, not doubt thanks to less wine on a daily basis. His dark hair and beard were neatly trimmed for the first time in Gendry's memory and Gendry could see the remnants of the handsome face his father had possessed in his youth.

"Found whom?" he pretended ignorance, knowing his father was positively delighted to be telling him who the woman he'd found might be and playing along for the sake of seeing his Father grin so gleefully.

"The woman you told me you'd marry. The little hellcat that will give you as much cheek as she will help and one unlikely to fear you in your armour, no matter how intimidating you are," Robert announced, wandering into the forge and inspecting the armour he'd been making with more interest than Gendry ever remembered him showing before.

"You've managed to locate a woman who can achieve what few soldiers can?" Gendry scoffed at him. Everyone feared him in his armour. Even his own mother. The idea that there was some woman who wouldn't was slightly unnerving and Gendry supposed she must be a great brute like Brienne of Tarth if she truly wouldn't fear him.

"I believe so," Robert said, inspecting the breast-plate Gendry had moulded for his war-horse.

"Well who is this mystery maiden?" Gendry asked, beyond intrigued now to see his father so gleeful and yet trying to feign indifference.

"Lady Arya Stark of Winterfell," Robert replied, stopping Gendry mid-swing of his hammer to hear the Stark name. His father rarely spoke of them outside of war stories featuring Ned Stark. His bitterness over Lyanna's rejection of him and his fury over her father allowing her to break off their betrothal had always been a sore spot for Robert and so Gendry rarely heard the Stark name in Storm's End.

To do so now in relation to a possible bride for him must mean his father had already contacted the Stark's on the matter. Gendry felt something inside him squirm uncomfortably at the very idea. It was no secret that Arya Stark was wild. Everyone said so. And it seemed age had not broken that spirit of hers that Gendry recalled from when he'd been very young. Two and ten years past Gendry recalled his father dragging them all to Winterfell, the huge, towering castle, the stronghold of the North. He didn't recall why they had been there, only that he'd met the Stark children during the visit.

He fondly recalled the fast friendship he'd made with Robb Stark and Jon Snow, and the way they had often teased the elder Stark girl, Sansa for her prissy properness even then. Her long red hair and Tully blue eyes had become the talk of the realm as she'd matured and Gendry knew that she had wed Willas Tyrell a few weeks ago. Word had spread throughout the kingdom and Gendry had not been alone in the opinion that such beauty was wasted on the crippled Tyrell heir. Gendry had met Willas more than once and while he was indeed a fine man, his crippled leg did lower the opinion of many.

Gendry recalled too, that during his visit in the North as a lad there had been another younger daughter, though when he'd first laid eyes on the little urchin Gendry had thought her another Stark boy. He remembered that she had always been muddy and dirty, her long dark hair always in a nest. He recalled the sly grin she often wore and the way she so often fled the Septa and her mother as they tried to make a lady out of her. He recalled playing with her, Robb and Jon both fond of her and willing to let her tag along with them. In fact, if Gendry recalled correctly, the little urchin had challenged him to more than one sword fight in the training yards and had beaten at him with her little wooden sword until they'd both been black and blue with bruises. He'd gotten a hiding from Father for it when they'd seen the sight of Arya, bruised and limping. As though he too hadn't been covered in welts and sporting a black eye that had lasted nearly a moon thanks to the way the little brat had shoved her sword pommel into his eye when he'd tried to trap her in a stranglehold to keep her from hitting him.

"You've gone from one extreme to the other," Gendry told his father in an attempt to hide his reaction to the news that he might wind up wed to that little urchin, doubting that she had outgrown the need to challenge every order and push every limit.

"Extreme?" Robert asked him, a big grin on his face. He looked very pleased with himself for thinking of Arya Stark at all and Gendry realised his mistake had been in thinking that his Father would balk at the idea of seeing his heir wed to the farthest thing for a Lady while still remaining female. And she was female. Though the last time he'd seen her he hadn't believed it until that had all gone swimming without their clothes. Gendry chose not to think of what it might be like to do so again now that she had an additional twelve summers on the five she'd counted back then.

"First you send me that Lannister bitch with her scheming and her whorish nature that tried to fling herself into bed with me, and now you tell me you've asked the wildest woman in the realm to come here to meet me, as though she won't attempt to stab me as soon as she lays eyes on me over the very idea of a marriage," Gendry replied drily, not exactly looking forward to the meeting. Even if there was a nagging curiosity to learn if she truly was as wild as they said.

"Ned's not going to let her stab you. I'm sure the rumours are exaggerations anyway, she'll still have some manners about her. But you wanted a woman who won't fear you in your armour and who would tell you when you were being an idiot and fight you on every decision. I found you one," Robert grinned at him widely now, and Gendry got the feeling his words from several weeks past would come back to bite him on the arse.

"When's she arriving?" Gendry asked, resigned to the fact that he may wind up wedded to the most infuriating, defiant woman in all the Seven Kingdoms.

"Should be here within the seven-day. Although last I had a raven from Ned he still hadn't told her about this match yet, so there's always the chance she'll still try to run when they do tell her," Robert scratched at his beard absently, as though it were no big deal that his prospective bride might attempt to flee at the very thought of marrying him. Gendry didn't know if he should be more offended over the idea of a woman wanting to flee him, or flattered that his father clearly believed he'd be able to win over the icy she-wolf of the North.

"They haven't told her?" Gendry choked, "What? They're just going to drag her down here and announce it to her on arrival? You want me to be murdered in my sleep?"

"You're afraid of a woman?" Robert asked, looking disgusted now.

"Don't be ridiculous," Gendry snapped. "I just don't want to be around when they tell the girl famous throughout the realm for her hatred of marriage, that she's got to marry me."

"You'll marry her then?" Robert asked and Gendry could tell from the sudden glint in his father's blue eyes that he was being entirely serious in spite of his amused tone. It didn't surprise him. It would have taken a lot from his father to go to Ned Stark looking for help in finding him a wife he might actually accept. Gendry didn't doubt that even if he couldn't stand the woman he would be required to marry her regardless.

He only hoped she was decent enough to look at.

"I told you that if you found me a woman that was all I asked for I would marry her," Gendry replied.

"Good lad," his father praised and Gendry felt a smile tug at the corners of his mouth at the uncommonly heard words of praise.

"Why haven't they told her? Surely she deserves to know her possible fate?" Gendry pried, wanting to know why they would keep the woman in the dark on the matter.

"Ned said the less time she had to plan an escape before they left, the better. I don't doubt she knows by now, since they'll already be on the road, but for all I know Ned might've had to strap her to a wheelhouse to get her here. He reckoned she was going to take the news badly, and if I'm honest he was reluctant to have her marry anyone," His father told his as he wandered deeper into the hot forge and began picking and inspecting the other weapons and armour Gendry had made.

"Lord Stark's not a fan of me then? Or he just hasn't forgiven you for what you told him to do when we all went up there years ago?" Gendry queried over the sound of his hammering as he went back to nonchalantly working on the armour he was shaping.

"You know all his children have been wed since last summer but the youngest and the bastard. Robb wed Nymeria Martell just a few seven-day ago, and a couple of moons back the red-haired thing, Sansa, she wed a Tyrell. Bran, the middle son, he was first, wedded a suitor his brother didn't want, Meera Reed." Robert said slowly, "Ned wouldn't have had much trouble letting those three go. Robb's his heir and Bran will always be around. Sansa too, she was one of those prim, proper lasses who knew her duty and took pride in her lot in life as a highborn lady to wed a lord and let him fuck babes into her belly. Them three would've been easy for Ned. Not so with the wolf-child."

"Wolf-child?" Gendry asked, knowing his father meant Arya but not understanding the name.

"Aye. The Starks are Old Blood boy, they've been up there in the North lording over it all for eight thousand years. They're a direct descendant traced all the way back uninterrupted to the First Men. And since the Pact was made between the First Men and the children of the forest, there has always been a Stark with more of the Children of the Forest blood to them than that of the other kind. Up there they call it the wolf blood. They've all got it, but some more than others. Lyanna had a touch of it, Brandon more than a touch. In Ned's brood, the wolf-child is Arya. I hear tell that bastard of Ned's, the middle lad and the youngest lad have a touch of it too, but Arya is the wolf-child of the litter."

"What does that mean? The wolf-blood?" Gendry asked, intrigued now.

"It differs in every Stark. In some there's a touch of the Old Magic, visions and the like. In others it's simply a wildness. Makes them wild. Makes them defiant. Makes them not fit into the rules society dictates. Arya Stark has all the wildness that once allowed the Queens of the North to run their kingdom with skill and authority. Today we tell our women to smile and look pretty and fuck us when we want to fuck, in return we go to war, we run the castles, we protect them. Women with the wolf-blood never fit that mould. If you want a woman who will sit in this castle and keep the wives of your underlords happy, don't marry the Stark girl. If you want a woman as willing to ride out in battle for the people as you, she'll never let you down."

"And you want me to allow that?" Gendry asked him father. Sure his mother picked up the slack when his father was too drunk to run Storm's End, but she was still a proper lady. She wore dresses and drank tea with the other ladies of the realm.

"It's what you asked for son," Robert replied, "It's up to you how you deal with her and whether you permit such behaviour. But know this: If you marry this girl, don't do it with the intent to fuck her full of babes and have her as something pretty for the other lords to admire. She'll slit your throat in the night and be gone before dawn. If you marry a Stark with the wolf-blood, you don't do it for their ladylike ways or their demure nature, because neither thing exists."

Gendry frowned a little at the words his father had said. He didn't really know what he wanted in a wife. Not really. He imagined he wanted a woman with more use to him than bearing him strong sons. He imagined it would be harder to run Storm's End than he believed, and a capable wife would go a long way in assisting him do so. But did he really want a wife as like to stab him in his sleep as fuck him?

Did he want a woman who might offend the other Ladies of the realm with her crass behaviour and her preference for britches over dresses? Did he want to deal with having the other lords and his own men scoff at him for the lack of control he had over his wife?

"Father?" Gendry asked, laying down his hammer and meeting his father's curious gaze. "Why did you want to marry Lyanna Stark?"

Gendry saw the pain even the mention of her name caused his father, and he felt bad for it, but he also needed to know. If this Arya Stark was even wilder than his father claimed Lyanna was, he needed to understand how a man he'd only ever known as being a self-entitled, arrogant, whore-mongering chauvinist could have craved the hand of a woman who wouldn't be put in her place and told to smile prettily.

"I wanted to marry her for her beauty. I wanted her for the way she'd throw off the restraints of being a proper highborn Lady in favour of having a horse-race with her brothers. There is a wildness to her, and no doubt to Arya, that better men than you or I have craved, son. Think of the wolf. When you see it, you first feel a fear for the livestock it might take, for the possibility that if it's hungry enough it might rush your horse, unseat you and tear your throat out." Robert explained, a faraway look coming to his blue eyes, "But the longer you look, the more you notice it's grace, the calculating way it assesses you, the calm way it might trot away into the undergrowth, at one with the winter and the world in a way you and I never will be. That sense of heart-racing, spine-tingling fear; that yearning you have when you see it lope across the fields; that total wildness that will never be tamed. That is what you admire in the wolf when you see it."

Gendry raised an eyebrow, not quite understanding what that had to do with Lyanna or Arya Stark. Before he could open his mouth to ask, Robert spoke again, in little more than a sad murmur.

"Now imagine all of that in the most beautiful woman you've ever laid your eyes on, and you tell me how you resist her."