Chapter Two - That Maid so Fair
Roose
Robbard was a stupid name. A fool's name for a fool boy, a royal style that was largely inconsequential. But at least it was better than "Robb".
Roose's men had started making very bad puns out it. The Lannisters were being Robbed of all their men. That they would Robb the Westerlands and Tywin Lannister of all its wealth. They even called his personal guard Robbers. Robbard was still a fool's name, but now that insipid idiocy would stop, at long last. And if it did not… Well, perhaps a few of the men could disappear into his dungeon.
They would howl then, but no one would hear their stories. The puns would be cleansed from Roose's ears. And they would know that his blades were sharp.
A few days after the septon of House Tully had drippled oil onto the Stark boy's brow and said some bollocks about the seven – honestly, did the fools think that the gods of the world were merciful?– and the Riverlords had bent their knees before him and sworn themselves to House Stark, from this day until the end of days, the Young Wolf was in his warroom in Riverrun with Smalljon and Maege Mormont and Brynden the Blackfish and many of his other commanders.
Now, again as he often seemed to be, he was poised over a map of the Riverlands as he was quickly losing his patience. And so was Roose Bolton.
"Your Grace!" Edmure Tully protested fiercely, seeming so small standing beside the armoured Northmen in the livery of his House. Roose wondered if the man was a screamer, a weeper or a breather. After all, a man could be only one of those three things under a flaying blade, though he could turn from one to the other during the flaying itself. "You cannot mean to be honest in this! You are letting the Lannister scum have free reign of your realm! They will march on us like the wind and attack like-"
"Spare me the allegories, uncle" Robb raised his hand and ushered his silence. "Don't you see? We want the Lion to think us tired and weak. We want him to think himself strong, our victories accidents of chance. We want him to be overconfident". Robb's finger pointed to the Whispering Wood, and the lords and ladies around him muttered and nodded, remembering how he had defeated a numerically superior foe with nothing but the vengeance in his heart and the wit of his mind. "Just like here. We draw them in, bait them, nibble at their ankles. When they roar, as lions always do, we cower back, let them chase after us. Let them think us beaten. And then we put them right in the way of our traps. Surround them, box them in, right where we want them".
"You're a clever one, boy" Brynden Blackfish, the black sheep of House Tully, noted from aside, and Robb shrugged. He was uncomfortable with taking praise out of turn. He would learn. He had learned much already. Still there was much he needed to know. This council was one summoned in haste, after all, and he showed himself prickly and weak and tired. A new army was gathering in the Westerlands, and there were enemies fast approaching him from both sides.
"Oi, Riverlord" Smalljon rumbled from beside the newly crowned king. "It's 'your Grace'". Robb shot him a long look, at which the poorly named son of Greatjon Umber faltered and got a pensive look to him. "In'nit? I mean, that what all the southrons do, right? Stand on all the formality?"
"Is this a Southron crown on me head, Smalljon?" Robb asked back, to which the scion of House Umber grinned just like his father would have. It truly wasn't, no crown of gold or precious metals. It was a northern crown, a crown of war and Winter. "I know this is hard, for all of you" Robb looked then to all of them, Edmure and the Riverlords in particular. "But glory will not win this war. Swords and soldiers and shrewdness will. We will fight on our terms, where we will. And Tywin Lannister will be sent whimpering back to Casterly Rock before the year is out". He looked then to the Lord Karstark. "I know this will be hard, for you in particular. But you have my word that your sons will be avenged. Kill as many Lannisters as you'd like in the field, or in their homes. Put their heads on spikes and make necklaces out of their ears if you'd like. Remember: the Kingslayer is mine to torment. My sisters are dead otherwise".
"Understood, your Grace" Karstak grumbled and scratched at his beard, placated at least somewhat by his new king's assurances. From aside in the group Roose Bolton nodded slowly, approving of this new attitude. He liked this change in this newly crowned young man. That bronze crown had changed him, and for the better by much in Roose's mind. Perhaps he would see his House wealthier under the Wolf's rule at least, if not kings in the North themselves when he went to his death in battle as he inevitably would. First Roose would have to make quick work of Ramsey if that was how it meant. That boy did not have the temperament for kingship. Too eager, and much too mad.
Foolish youths, all of them. But now there was at least a little Ramsey in the King in the North, and Roose approved of that. Oh, if he had only a daughter. He could have married the girl to the Direwolf. T'was better to tie oneself close to the highest power so that one could usurp it when one's plans came to fruition than to merely trail on his coattails. But time would tell. That much Roose knew.
Time would tell. Until it did all Roose could do was to keep his blades sharp.
"Where is the Ironborn boy?" he spoke up when there was a silence in the talk around the table, and the Umber and Glover and Karstark men and the Mormont women looked at him darkly before they reluctantly nodded. All of them, excepting Karstark of course, had been kings in the North before the andals came and there could be only one king there to fight them. But the Red Kings of House Bolton had lasted the longest. None other kept so hard to their freedom from the Starks, before or since. And Roose remembered that once his ancestors had made cloaks out of the skins of the Starks. The men, not the Direwolves. All that fur would do nothing but itch. Human skin made for good handle-wraps and took good to holding off rain and dampness.
Just because Harlon Stark had forbidden flaying didn't mean that Roose's kin had stopped doing it. Oh, how he had worked in the dungeons in the Dreadfort on slavers and murderers. The man that passes the sentence should swing the sword – but swords were half measures. The sword ended the man, certainly it did, but the flaying knife put the fear of the Gods in the hearts of those who would follow in his footsteps. And that way it could take time instead of being over in a single chop. He had seen some men last days after losing their skin. Roose found that it gave them time to reflect on their life's poorer choices.
"I sent Theon to the Iron Islands, Lord Bolton" the Stark boy informed him, and Roose bent his head in acknowledgement, understanding at once. The others, though, were horrendously thick as most Mormonts and Glovers and Karstarks often were, and so the Wolf pup had to explain it to them. "I will swear to secure the freedom of the Isles if they join us against the Lannisters. We all know how much they have longed to reave at the Westerlands again after the Dragons died out". Roose did remember that clearly. Eddard Stark had ridden out for that Southron pretender Robert and sailed to Wyk and Pyke and all those other silly things the Iron Islands were named. Pathetic, really.
There had been much to respect in Eddard Stark. He had understood strength and callousness and when to use them both to great effect. But he had a bleeding heart, soft and womanish like all the others. His love for his Southron lord and his precious honour. Roose had made a silent toast to himself when he found out that the man had lost his head because of his precious honour.
And that was why Roose followed the Old Gods, personally. Gentle Mother, font of mercy? Ludicrous. The Gods were cruel and capricious, and a man lived best and longest if he were cruel as well. In a world of treachery and deceit fear was the only thing that kept a man alive.
Most fools didn't understand that.
"What is this?" And speaking of, there was the trout who thought she was a wolf bitch, standing in the doorway to the warroom. Roose would have answered something snarky at her, inwardly sighing at Catelyn Tully's foolish presence, but when he saw the paper in the woman's hand he realised that the boy had sent a message. "Robb, what is this?" Her voice was shrill, her face pale and cold, her hand clutching the scroll so hard that it was a wonder that her dainty fingers didn't break. Oh, how some people wore their emotion and their hearts plain for the world to see. Fools.
"I forgot to clean my desk. Damn it" the King muttered and reached up to rub his eyes. Still red and strained. He had done that often of late. Were the stresses of command getting to the Young Wolf? If so Roose would have to make contingency plans. Perhaps the Freys would be open to negotiation, and through them the Lannisters and that child of incest on the Iron Throne. "It's a message I've rewritten a dozen time these last few days, Mother" the Stark boy answered his mother. "I didn't want you to see it".
"Why?" the Tully woman accused, all but snarling as she stepped up towards him, her brother and uncle and some of the other commanders making to leave. Roose stayed. He wouldn't miss this for the world. Life's simple pleasures, really. "So that you could dishonour me again? You did this without even asking me, Robb. How could you? I am your Mother!"
"And he is my brother!" Robb shouted back, a rare thing for the Young Wolf to do outside of battle, and all left in the chamber jumped or flinched at it. Except for Roose. Roose was fighting a smile. "What did you think I was going to do, mother?" he asked, tearing the bronze and iron circlet from his head and holding it hard in his hand, the blades of the tiny pointed swords that lined it prickling blood from his palm. "Did you think that I would pass this damned thing to Bran if I died? To Rickon? They are boys, Mother, born in the summer. And Winter is Coming. He's different, mother. More like me. He can even be of use".
"'Of use'? Are you hearing yourself, Robb?" She stepped in close to him and slapped the parchment against the front of his tunic. "That is why you did this? You, my oldest son. You have hurt me more with this than your father ever did. You have all but torn the clothes from my back and forced me to walk naked through the streets. A walk of shame in all but deed. How could you?"
"He can be of use to me, Mother" the Stark boy answered her weakly and quietly, like how a drunk peasant might apologise to his wife when he found that his cock could not be made to stand. "We need him. For the lives of the fifty men I trade for him… they are a small price to pay". Excuses, excuses – if she had been Roose's mother he'd tell her to know her place and leave him to his work. "I know this hurts you, but honour won't win this war. He understands that. Mother, I need you to collect yourself. If the reports of Stafford Lannister gathering another Westerland army are true I need you to go south to Renly Baratheon and-"
"Do this for you?" she wondered back at him weakly, a hitch in her voice and tears streaming down her cheek. "I love you, Robb. Gods know that I have no choice in the matter. But I will do no such thing for you. Not for what you did yesterday by sending the Greatjon North with this". She stepped away from him, letting the parchment fall crumpled and broken to the floor, her shoulders trembling. "I need to tend to my father. I need to take care of my family" she muttered quietly as she headed for the far door of the room. "Family is all I have left".
The Stark boy stared after her once she was gone, his face contorting in an incomprehensible mass of emotions both ordered and not, shame and sadness and anger and a boy's smallness before an angry parent all mixing together. "Out" he said sharply and turned towards the table and the maps once again, and by his tone no one of his loyal lords and bannermen dared to disobey. Luckily it was for him then, from a certain point of view, that the Boltons had risen in revolt against the Starks almost a dozen times since they had first bent the knee.
"Might I suggest, my king, that you place the Kingslayer under heavier guard, guards that you can trust?" Roose told the young king, and slowly his face turned and all semblance of tears went out of his eyes. He lingered behind, for he was not afraid of the Stark boy. A pup thinking himself a fully grown wolf, all baying and no biting. "Your lady mother will take matters in her own hands after this. You must be careful that she does not decide to break him free on her own and trade what little advantage we have over the Lannisters out of… misplaced maternity".
"Aye, Bolton" the Stark boy breathed out hard and set his teeth together. "There is sense in that. You" he noted, his eyes coming alight with intellect and planning. Good. He was using what little brains he had now. "You have little stake in getting Lannister gold, do you? And you are no friend of my mother's. Half the guards around the Kingslayer will be yours from now on. We double his wardens". Half Bolton guards and half Tully ones, one half watching the other just as much as they watched their prisoner? Clever boy.
"Good" Roose nodded to him and went to stand opposite him, looking over the map with the boy. He had to admit that he didn't have the same head for strategy that the Young Wolf seemed to possess, but he had lived through the Usurpation and fought in wars and knew enough to know that the situation as it was seemed dire and precarious. "One army rising in the Westerlands, another camped at Harrenhall. If we are not careful, my king, we will be caught like a fish in a crab's pincer, and snipped in half before we are eaten. And we still need someone to go treat with the other kings".
"I know that, Bolton" the Stark Boy seemed to breathe out hard through his teeth as he considered many plans and tactics and discarded almost all of them instantly. "Bolton – you and Glover will stay in Riverrun with the Umber men under Greatjon's daughter Rowra. She commands the riders from Last Hearth, but her father has kept her from fighting. She needs to be bloodied. You will fortify the lands and make the traps. Tytos Blackwood and Maege Mormont will be the hounds" he set his finger to the map and pointed hard to the Golden Tooth and the Westerlands. "They will harry the Lannister army, soften them up, lure them towards your traps. Rickard Karstark will march half the army east, to Harrenhal. If he wants to avenge himself on Lannisters he can take it up with the Old Lion himself".
Clever boy. Dealing with his rebellious kinsman by sending him right at the target he wanted to end the most. Callous, but effective. Karstark was, after all, the only one who could beyond all doubt be counted on to not sway before gilded Lannister hands filled with coin. "My king, there is still the matter of treating with the Baratheons. Stannis is beyond the reach of words, but Renly could still be open to negotiation". He almost wanted to go deal with the young stag himself. Not that he was an effective negotiator – quite the opposite – and he doubted that he would have the desired effect, but he wondered if the gentle weather of the Reach softened the skin of men and women. Perhaps they would even feel like silk.
"I was going to send my mother" the Stark boy all but whispered before he set his teeth again and nodded to himself. "I will be the one to go. It is doubtful that Renly would listen to anyone but me myself with any attention. If I take a small band, two or three dozen, on fast horses, we should make it to Bitterbridge and Renly's camp inside of ten days. What do you say, Bolton?" he looked to Roose, affixing him with eyes containing a shade of winter. "Can you hold the Riverlands for a month while I am gone south?"
Interesting. Roose bent his head in a slight bow. "Of course, my king" he told the Stark boy. "I am forever loyal".
Until it is no longer advantageous for me to be so, you clever little boy.
Robb
Bitterbridge was not far from the Riverlands. Riding hard and stopping only to rest their horses Robb and his chosen band of companions made it there inside of nine days.
The journey had been hard. They had furled up their banners and hid their colours from the world as they went, affecting imitations of southern accents with varying convincingness, covered their Wolfshead shields and sung no songs, Robb had even left his Frey squires behind, and perhaps because of that the nights had been sullen and quiet at first, with none of the joking and horseplay Robb had come to expect from his men by then. So he took up training, sparring with Smalljon and his Gloverblade, a greatsword that had been in the possession of his family for almost five hundred years. Normal steel, hard forged and tended well, but not Dragonforged Valyrian. Not like Ice.
Ice was the reason Robb began to spar with the greatsword. Owen Norrey had been kind enough to lend him his greatsword for it, a weapon that while dark and brooding did not have the same sick and twisted history as the Gloverblade. Smalljon's sword was called that because the handle and pommel of it had been made out of the bones of a Glover Lord, a Glover Lord who had been eaten by a mad member of House Umber and his remains made into weapons and tools for the Umbers to use.
Robb had started to get the feeling that ending the family feuds between the great Houses of the North was going to be a matter most hard fought. But one battle at a time. First he was going to win his war and learn how to fight with Father's sword. After he had convinced his men that the name Robbard was for declarations, decrees and letters only, of course. It was a mouthful everywhere else.
Greatswords were fool things according to most southron fighters and knights, too big and too heavy to use properly. But at most they were only twice as heavy as ordinary swords, and they did have their uses. Robb had seen what had happened to the Lannister lines of pike at the Whispering Woods when the raging Umbers and Mountain Clansmen, on foot, had slammed into them with their greatswords and long axes. The result had been a slaughter as the Lannisters tried to run but were cut down mercilessly by the Umber berserkers. Apparently long wooden sticks pointed with steel could be shortened and cut away if you had a sword long enough to reach them. And a Valyrian steel greatsword was unique in the world now. Ice belonged to the Starks. It belonged to Robb.
It always made more sense to him to fight alongside a personal guard of noble heirs and lesser lords. Oathsword guards like the Kingsguard were there for you in peacetime, true, but if you charged for the enemy ranks alongside the heirs and children of the men leading the other wings of your army they would never even think to betray you. And in doing this he fostered loyalty with the next generation of his subjects and bannermen. There were great risks, true, but they were outweighed by the benefits. And… it felt good having friends at his back, not just sworn men.
Even more so now when they called him king. He made a rule on the first day of their travels: no member of his personal guard had to kneel or bow unless they wanted to. On the second day he changed it so that none of them were allowed to kneel at all unless he asked them to. It was getting tedious and it was slowing them down.
Despite the fresh bruises on his arms and chest from his sparring with Owen and Smalljon and the constant minor delays they made it to Bitterbridge at midday the tenth day of their journey. Around that far source of the river Mander, carving through the flatlands of the upper Reach, a city of tents had sprung up like mushrooms grown of death. A hundred thousand armed men in the bright colours of the Reach and the Stormlands. When Robb rode into their camp with his men behind him, their banners unfurled and their shields now bare to the world, many of the footmen rose and looked on him and his band in awe. Robb hardly saw them. He looked instead to the banners of the camp.
He knew… Bulwer, a southron House that had married into the Starks just after Torrhen Stark, the King who Knelt, had died. And there was the High Grey Tower of House Hightower and the Fox of House Florent – did these Reachmen have no imagination? They were short and scampering men, it seemed to him, slender and fair and all too soft. Was this what the long summer had done to the South, or had it always been like this? Over all other banners flew the rampant Crowned Stag in black on gold of House Baratheon. They expected him to kneel, to these southern fops? He'd die before he did that.
Most of Renly bannermen and sworn lords had gathered around the centre of the camp. A tourney of some kind was being held, the lists and the horses taken away to leave an open circle on the stomped ground not too far from the squat and crone-like keep of Bitterbridge and the river beyond, and before a stand of wood where the Storm King and a woman Robb could not quite see clearly just yet and his kingsguard in coloured armour, a rainbow standing together, a few fought. From the back of the crowd Robb watched, no one paying any attention to him or his, as a boyish knight with flowing brown hair was cast done by a woman so large and ugly that he suspected that she was partly of giant's blood.
"Or maybe she's just a long lost relation of mine" Smalljon Umber jested from the band behind him, and Robb almost smiled at that. Since his mother's tears and harsh words – Gods know I have no choice in the matter – smiling had been hard fraught. His lips seemed stiff and his sullenness unending, but his eyes hurt most of all. The Gods must have all but blinded him.
"Sound the horn" Robb said back at the Smalljon, and the shaggy man nodded, reaching down to his hip to lift the bull's horn with iron fittings from his side. He blew a long blast from it, a dull and mournful sound, the sound of winter's arrival, and the crowd parted and all eyes turned to Robb as he urged his horse forwards to meet with Renly.
There was a contrast between the great mass of Reachmen and Stormlanders in the crowd and between the men beneath the banner of House Stark. All of the ones sworn to Lord Renly – King Renly – were colourful, in both armour and appearance, their flags flying tall above their finery in all their motley colours banded together under the flower of House Tyrell and the Crowned Stag rampant of House Baratheon of Storm's End. But the Stark guards wore all the same grey, the same heavy armours and thick furs and leather baldrics with the same helmets, and rode under the same banners, and as Robb Stark approached the empty circle before Renly Baratheon's upraised stand it was all his men could do but keep from snickering.
"See that?" Smalljon Umber muttered under his helmet the way of Dacey Mormont who rode beside him in the double ranks of the Stark procession, his bright eyes streaking over the knights and lordlings surrounding them. "Fresh as fucking mildew, they are. Green enough to be pissing grass".
"Aye. They're all but planting grass all over their britches before the Wolf" Dacey answered back. None of them were younger than Robb or the two of them, and for all their worth the Northerners had seen battle time and time again, seen more blood spilt than Reachmen and Stormlanders twice their age. "Bloody knights of summer, so they are".
"Hush!" Lucas Blackwood, the second son of Tytos Blackwood of Raventree Hall, muttered from just behind them. "Please! The king's about to meet with the pretender". And so it was that Robb stark raised his hand and had his entire procession halted a mere fifteen feet from Renly Baratheon, whose head was only a little higher on his wooden throne compared to the tall Stark boy on horseback, and as the two kings stared at each other the silence reigned.
In the end it wasn't either of the two who broke the stalemate of stares. "My lord husband" said the woman who rose from beside the seated King Baratheon, a woman so fair that Robb could have sworn his heart skipped a beat when he laid his eyes on her. "Who is this interloper to our melee? We did not expect guests. And why hasn't he announced himself or partaken in-"
Gathering his wits back about him Robb raised his hands from the pommel of his saddle and lifted the helmet off his head to cast out his hair, red and long, behind him to cascade down the shoulders of his armour. His bright eyes all but shone blue like the Others' glare in that gloomy day, and he sat perfectly on in the saddle still when Armstark his horse, nostrils flaring when Grey Wind came in close under him, reared up on his hindquarters and pranced with a terrible whinny.
"Hark!" Smalljon Umber boomed, and all who had thought to speak cowered in silence before his mighty voice. "You stand in the presence of Robbard Stark, the first of his name! The Wolf of the Whispering Wood! Lord of Winterfell, Lord of the Wolfswood, Lord of the Trident, King of Winter! High chief of the First Men! Slayer of lions and unmaker of armies! The King in the North!"
"The King in the North!" the procession behind Robb raised their voices and their banners in a three-fold cheer. "The King in the North!" And none could doubt him there, none could doubt his claim or his lineage as he stood there before the banners of his ancestors. "The King in the North!"
"You asked for me, king Renly, and by my father's love for your family I have come to parley" Robb spoke up before anyone else had a chance to say anything, thus keeping the momentum and the authority his men and his wolf had established for him. "You wanted to talk. Talk we shall".
"Well, then" Renly stood from his throne with a smile, taken aback but still in control of himself, and clapped his hands. "Someone tend to the King's horses! These men are our honoured guests!" And with that he stepped off the podium and led the way towards the Bitterbridge keep of House Caswell, flanked on all sides by the members of his Rainbow Guard. One of them, one in reddish-maroon armour, turned and bowed towards Robb, muttering "The King in the North" under his breath. He seemed familiar. Robb wondered if he had ever seen the man before.
But other thoughts distracted him. Specifically, the woman who walked at Renly's side. She was every inch a queen, walking with a grace that seemed to come as natural to her as drawing breath was for him, and her green and gold and black gown clung to her body in a way that made his heart race. Slender yet shapely all over, her back was bare to him by the cut of her gown yet all but covered with brown hair that curled ever so slightly. Unblemished, fair and breathtaking, she looked back at him over her shoulder and he almost tripped over his own feet.
Her eyes. Round and large, like those of a doe. Shining and bright like stars. Gods, his heart was turning in his chest. He wrested control over his thoughts and all but bared his teeth as she turned back around and linked Renly's arm in hers. By the Gods, he was desiring a married woman while betrothed to another. Had he no honour?
Forsake honour.
Yet somehow he had the sense that the Gods had not meant honour in matters such as these.
Margaery
Margaery knew not what to make of this pretender from the North. No, not pretender. There was an authority to him as he and his men followed her husband and his into the keep of Bitterbridge, a low and squat thing, ugly and flat by the standards of Highgarden but standing tall against the backdrop of the flatlands that surrounded it. A certainty in the young wolf's walk. As bread and salt and wine and food was brought to the tables he followed Margaery and Renly to the high table at one end of the hall, where he would sit at the king and queen's side. On an ordinary seat, no less, to make him know that he was in the presence of his betters and his rightful liege lord.
Or so was the intention of the seating, anyways. No sooner had the chief Northeners climbed the steps to that raised dais before they started handily rearranging things, moving their chairs so that they would sit in a line facing Renly and his most intimate court, their backs against the hall. How unconcerned they were, like all the armies of the Reach and the Stormlands posed no threat to them.
"What do you think of my host, Lord Stark?" Renly asked the northern king, his eyes shining with pride. "A hundred thousand swords come to fight for the Iron Throne. Such is the might of the South".
The young wolf levelled back at him a piercing stare, clearly unimpressed. "They're fresh and untreyned, so they are. Eager to winn glory, with no plaece in real batt-le. They're boys, Bara-thae-oun. They're the knights of Soummer – an' Winter is Comin'". His voice was deep and dark compared to any Southern accent, and the drawl that was in it, rich and far Northern, was thick and distinctive. Margaery estimated that the boy was at least six years younger than Renly, about her age, but he looked and acted and sounded much older. Despite herself his voice sent shivers down her spine as he sat before Renly, showing a flippant lack of respect. That didn't matter to him. He had made it clear that he and Renly were there as equals. "Let's treat, Stag. I've Lannisters to kill".
"Well then, Lord Stark" Renly sat down opposite the King in the North, and at that signal Stark's soldiers took off their helmets and shrugged off their cloaks and shields, leaving their weapons close at hand. "Let's get to it". Margaery watched the Stark men as she sat down beside her husband, with her brother on the far side of him and Brienne of Tarth at their back, and she marvelled at them.
One was a giant. Nothing short of it. Seven feet tall or more he was possessed of a bristling red beard, his hair in long braids down his neck and a greatsword with a handle of Ironwood and yellowed bone – Gods she hoped it wasn't human – he sat down to the Wolf's right, opposite Loras. On his left a tall woman, slender and broad of shoulder, a hammer and an axe at each hip and her dark hair cut short at her neck. Brienne stared at her even as none of the Northerners stared at Brienne. Were warrior women such a common thing in the North that she wasn't even worth noting? Most of the rest of them had features she recognised vaguely, from descriptions and long-lost acquaintances of Olenna Redwyne the Queen of Thornes, but none of them wore any coat of arms or colour except for the Stark grey over their armours.
Brave companions, united as one. It was incredibly romantic, like something from out of the chronicles or the songs of the minstrels.
"This is Dacey Mormont, heiress to Bear Island" Stark jerked his head to his left at the black-haired woman who moved not an inch, impassive and stoic. "And this is Smalljon Umber, heir to Last Hearth" the giant nodded at the King and Loras his champion. "And you're the Knight of Flouers" he looked to Loras. "Heard 'bout you. You escaped with Renly from King's Landin' – hours before my father was cut down like a dog". Oh. So that explained the hostility that had radiated from the Wolf since he first had laid eyes on Renly.
"Eddard Stark was a noble man and a good Hand" Loras replied stiffly, squirming a little in his seat under those eyes of winter blue. "I and my King pleaded with him to flee the city, to come with us. But he stayed in the city, to honour Robert. I have never known a braver or more honourable man. He died a hero".
"He died a trey-tor, slandered by Lannisters. Got 'is head lopped off by 'is ouwn grandfather's sword" Smalljon all but spat at Loras. "All you kneelers and scrapers" that giant scoffed, his red beard thick and bristling like a boar's hide. "That's all youse want for. Like Tytos Blackwood said: youse can keep your Iron Chair. Wolves need no seats like that. They're at their best huntin' an' howlin' to the moon. Free".
"Enough" Robb said levelly, but the unruly giant became silent and calm at once. Absolute obedience, from such bearded and unwashed savages. A paradoxical people, or a ruler who commanded them with a firm hand? "Forgive Smalljon. His mother was a wildling, and she taught him to always speak his mind. You've got terms, King Renly. What are they?"
"They are important, but they will have to wait until after you've broken your fast" Renly inclined his head and seemed to agree with the Wolf even as he raised his hand and beckoned the servants to him. "Wine, and supper. Tonight we dine as kings and brothers!" Stark stared for a second before he inclined his head in approval, and no one but Loras and Margaery saw the tension go out of the Stag King's shoulders.
He kept a good front, smiling and making idle conversation as food was laden onto the tables and wine and ale poured into silver goblets, but Margaery saw the redness that had crept up over his neck and over his back. Like a charge from their famous heavy cavalry the Northeners had ridden all over him and made him lose the high ground. He called for dinning mostly to calm his nerves and try to figure out how to outmanoeuvre this bull-head young man.
Margery looked at him, really looked at him, as she ate in silence with her husband, taking the time to regard each of the Northeners in turn. At other times she would have laughed and joked and flirted to ease the tension, but this was a council of war and most of her grandmother's lessons neither applied nor helped. So she took to doing the one thing she could think of doing: silently watching from the periphery, getting to know her enemy as she ate. The tables were set with swan and goose and fowl, stuffed with roots and vegetables and glazed with honey, finely sculptured cakes and delicacies and all the fruits of the Reach, yet the Northerners took of the hard breads and the meat only, tearing into it like they hadn't eaten in days with all the cultivated manner of starving beasts. Margaery took sparsely though – trying to mind her figure, as her beauty was the sharpest sword in her figurative armoury – eating only lightly of the honeycakes put before her even though she loved them. As she looked to Robb stark her hand, holding one of them, drooped off the side of the table.
The Lord Stark was handsome. Despite her best attempts not to stare at only him, to let her eyes take in and judge each other those wild-haired and dark-eyed Northerners equally, her gaze returned to the Wolf again and again. His hair was dark red, long and shining, gathered at the nape of his neck in a small band whilst he ate, and from in under a few escaped strands his eyes were sitting like fixed pale opals. Winter blue. Never had she known a colour to be truer to its name.
Despite herself her eyes trailed down his shoulders, braced against the ungainly weight of his armour, armour he insisted on wearing along with his weapons even in the peace of their hall. He was broad, brawny, yet the armour was snug and she could tell that not an ounce of fat rested on his bones. All muscle. His hands were bare and callused after he had removed his gauntlets, griping his goblet hard with thick fingers, and she wondered how his touch felt. Renly didn't touch her. A brush across the cheek along with a chaste kiss at the most, perhaps, like when he had bid her goodnight on their wedding night. She knew that he loved her brother more than the light of the sun, and that in another, better world the two would have been wedded to each other better than most couples between members of opposing sexes were.
It was for her brother, in part, that she had married Renly even though it hadn't been her grandmother's first choice. She had – and she was staring at the Stark again. She glanced up, and found those winter eyes looking back at her. Well, better own to it. She gave him a smile, and to her surprise and delight he blushed and averted his gaze like a boy. She had known that he was young, sent to war before his time and before that made Lord of the North in his father's absence, but the Young Wolf, shy? Was he a maid? It was almost too precious. The virgin king, fighting to avenge the crimes against his family. Just like out of the ballads if not for–
Something cold touched her hand.
"Eep!" she yelped at first, having let one hand previously holding a honeycake at the edge of the table, and then the pastry was gone, yanked from her grip, followed shortly by something cold, wet and prickly touching her knuckles. Something that moved in a manner most familiar, something that breathed on her, and she looked down to see, under the table and all but propped up against the Stark's chair, that enormous wolf of his, easily the size of a small horse. Despite its massive size and its grey fur and sinisterly intelligent yellow eyes it acted like a lapdog, having crept under the table with all the grace of a stealthy tomcat to steal Margaery's sweetcake, and when he had done so he sniffed her fingers with his enormous muzzle.
At first she sat stock still, as did Renly and Loras, white in the faces with fear, Brienne's hand flying to her sword behind her and the rest of the Rainbow Guard making to rise, but then, after a glance up at her eyes, the Direwolf started licking her fingers. His tongue was huge and raspy, but not uncomfortably so, and it tickled so much that she could help herself but start to giggle. With her free hand, trembling at first, she reached out and touched his ear, the fur soft as silk, and the Direwolf hummed as she stroked behind his ear, making almost pig-like noises of satisfaction.
"'She kicked and wailed, that maid so fair'" the Young Wolf sitting across from her husband hummed, a small smile coming onto his face. "'But he licked the honey from her hair'". Margaery recognized that song, a northern diddy that had spread to the south during the reign of the Targaryen dynasty, and something far less gruesome than the Rains of Castamere that the Lannister lords favoured so. She only saw that small smile though as she looked up to him, and for an instant he seemed not so grim or dangerous or powerful. He seemed like a young man, tired and in need of a rest, blue eyes shot with red. She laughed as Grey Wind pushed his muzzle under her hands pointedly, as if asking for more strokes.
"You look so fierce, don't you?" she spoke in a nasal way onto the beast, as if babying it, before she reached for another honeycake to feed him with, and he took it almost gently from her hand, courteous and kind. "But really you're just a big softy, trying to seem tough. Aren't you just? Big softy!" As all the rest around the table, and some quite far from it too, stared at her she looked up at the Direwolf's master. "He's a delight! What's his name?"
"Grey Wind, your Grace" Stark smiled warmly, regarding the fussing of the big beast as Margaery scratched his big head. "He's killed too many men to fear them, but he's never this friendly. He likes you". Indeed the creature did, Margaery reflected as the Direwolf in question began to happily pant. This must be the beast that follows the King in the North to battle. It was odd. The animal might look like a slayer of men, but in reality he was such a sweet and tender soul. "My moouther once said that these wolves arenn-t merely wolves. That they can tell the hearts ouf men and women by scent and sight aloune. That the Gods sent them to my family. The Gods in the high North, the Gods ouf the heart trees and the Children".
"Then they must be at least as magnanimous as the Seven" she smiled back at the Lord Stark, and as they spoke together, she and him and Grey Wind, all the rest of them seemed to fade away, out of her sight and out of her mind. "I've heard that there are no Septs in the North. That on the days of the Gods you dance naked around the Weirwood trees".
"You'd must think ous savages then, your Grace" the Stark king bent his head, and she had to admit that even though the crown seemed to weigh on him more than it ever should have he was every inch the king, even more so than Renly. No, not more so – different. A different sort of king. "Not keepin' with your Gods ouf the Seven. But your Gods're the savage ones ta me, your Grace. Your Gods're the ones with all the ruoles".
Blessed be the Mother, how that deep and drawling musical accent of his sent shivers down her spine. "Oh, believe me, your Grace, when I say that I know that to be truth better than most. I was raised with a whole cackle of septas – I believe that is the appropriate collective noun – telling me what to do and how to sing and what to wear. It was only by the grace of my brothers that I stayed sane". She sipped of her wine again by her free hand and studied the Wolf again, every cut of his face as strong as if fashioned from stone. "But surely there are rules in the North, too. The First men must have had some tenants to follow at the very least".
"There are abhorrences ta ous, your Grace" he smiled – and she liked it. He looked so young, when he smiled, no older than her. He seemed like someone who didn't smile too often. Whom the world didn't allow to smile too often. "Murderers. Rapists. Thieves. Trey-ters. Slavers. Kinslayers. Beyond that and keeping to their oaths, men are free to follow their ouwn ways in the North. As long as they bend the knee to their lieges and as long as their lieges respect their rights, the peace is kept. But if that peace is broken and a man doesnn-t avenge himself, how can he be respected?"
"So as long as they keep the peace and swear fealty, each tends to their own lands and only their own matters?" Margaery smiled in disbelief and took another sip of her wine, and the King in the North inclined his head back at her. "That bodes ill, does it not? How can taxation be levied against such an unruly people? How do you collect your dues?"
"Each lord supplies his ouwn holding and men, or he cannot call himself a lord" said the Stark boy, as they sometimes called him, the Young Wolf, though she didn't see a boy before her but a man, shrewd and tested and hardened by war. "It might not work as well as all you southron folk and your lofty cities, but it keeps us fed".
"Well, hardly that" Margaery jested. "It is like the lot of you have been starved! All of you are lords, yet not a, eherm, large one amongst you. Not even a trace of gut. How is that? The North must truly be less flowering than our lands". Harsh and bitter it must be, truly, to bring about the birth of such hungry wolves. How did these people treat their own? "How about crime? If you break the law, do you have justices meeting out due punishments, or…?"
"The man that passes the sentence should swing the sword" his joy and easy manner slipped from his face a hint, and he spoke that phrase with all the assuredness of a practiced mantra or idiom. "That's the old ways. If you cannot mete out punishment to a man yourself, then did that man truly deserve to be punished in the first place?"
"But what if you have too many men to punish?" Margaery could see that train of logic collapse from miles away. "Or if you are squeamish and sick at the sight of blood but still devoted to justice?"
"If you've too many murderers in your service to end on your own, you've either all too many men, or the wrong sort of men, sworn to you". His words were pointed behind his serious smile and his bright eyes flickered to Renly for an instant before they came back to her. "And as for squeamishness – that's something that doesn't last for long when winter comes. The cold makes men or corpses of all children".
"Can there be such a thing as commanding too many men?" Margaery wondered. All the other lords thought only to spread their wing and take as much glory and land as they pleased and possibly could, all other lords she had met anyway. But in this man there was a fixed goal, an end to ambition. Her Grandmother's lessons had proved true once again. It was as if by merely listening she had seen into the Young Wolf's soul. As she thought on it she stroked Grey Wind's head, the massive head that all but covered her entire lap, and when Robb looked away to be addressed in hushed tones by Smalljon Umber Renly leant in towards her to whisper into her ear. "Yes, lord husband?"
"I can't for the life of me understand more than half the words he says" Renly remarked in words as silent as his breath, and the only one listening in on them was the great Grey wolf, who glanced up at the Stag King and narrowed his yellow eyes in suspicion. "His accent's even thicker than his father's. Do you have to flirt with him so blatantly?"
"All we are doing is trading words, my lord husband" Margaery held back the warmth in her cheeks and smiled to her King. For an instant she thought that maybe he was jealous, but by the look of him she knew that was not so. He was vexed at her speaking so candidly with his enemy – or a perceived enemy at least – and she restrained herself from rolling her eyes. "He is not our enemy, Renly. Stannis is. Make peace with him, I beg of you". She glanced the way of the Young Wolf, and at his smile and the look in his eyes she smiled back at him and was rewarded with another blush. "He's dangerous, this King in the North".
"Do you fancy him?" Renly wondered, and now the blush came freely to her cheeks as she drew back from her husband and stared hard at him. Sometimes he was just as rude and outspoken as his late older brother, and if they had been alone she would have slapped him for his tone. "I know I do. All dominant and cocksure. Traits to look for in a lover, but not in a vassal". He drew back from her and cleared his throat to speak up loud. "Lord Stark" the Northerners fell silent all as one, Smalljon Umber glaring at what he no doubt considered the wrong title. "Your father swore himself to my brother. They fought and loved and ruled, side by side, as brothers. Why cannot we do the same?"
"My father wasn't King in the North, Baratheon" Stark spoke back levelly. "My men placed the Crown of Winter on my head. Remember Torrhen". Margaery recognised that name – Torrhen Stark, the King who Knelt, the last King in the North – but Renly, not all too schooled, did not. "He knelt to Dragons. And you are many things, Lord Baratheon, but you are no dragon".
"Seven Kingdoms, ruled under the command of the Iron Throne" Renly's tone was all steel now, dark and hard and filled with the same stormclouds that seemed to pass over his head. "That is the way it has been for almost three centuries. That is the way it should be!"
"And for eight thousand years before that we in the North ruled ourselves" Stark glowered back. "Your lands are soft. Even your gods are wrong". He looked to Margaery and his eyes softened. "If you would excuse me, your Grace…?"
"Margaery" she told him with a smile despite the darkening mood around them. "Margaery Tyrell". She didn't realise that she hadn't given her husband's family name but her father's until the words had left her lips, but once said she refused to excuse it. Her marriage was a sham, anyway, cold and unconsummated. "Are you leaving, Robbard Stark?"
"Aye, I am. Please, call me Robb" he told her as he stood from his seat, his plate of food half-eaten before him, and all the rest around the table did the same. "You are a Stag only, Renly, playing at being a Dragon. And when stags lock horns their crowns shatter, and all around are wounded equally. You and I will have peace – as long as you stay out of my path. As for the rest" he looked over the table before he turned to look at the greater hall and all the Reachmen and Stormlords gathered there. "When the Stag dies, know that all of you a place at the court of Wolves. Any man who has a sword and a hate of Lions is welcome there". He looked back to Margaery, ignoring Renly completely as his sworn warriors took up their cloaks and shields and made to march out of her presence. "It was nice to meet you, your Grace".
"Margaery" she corrected him, and he gave her a hint of a smile and bent his head to her as much as he ever would to anyone. "Please stay, your Grace". For some reason she did not want him to leave.
"It was good to meet you, Margaery" he told her as Grey Wind, that warm and furry presence so kindly leant against her, rose and returned to his master's side, almost knocking the heavy oak table over as he did so. "He likes you" he reflected, reaching out to grab the beast's fur in his now gauntleted hand. "And he mistrusts your lordly husband. Of all living creatures I heed the words of the Gods first, and his second. My offer of sanctuary extends to you as well, lady Margaery" he looked to Renly, and the ice of winter was in his eyes. "I will pray that you will not need it. Farewell, Margaery of House Tyrell".
"Farewell, Robb Stark" she smiled back at him before he turned to leave, and under the silent stare of Renly Baratheon and his Rainbow Guard the Northerners marched out of the hall. When the guards of House Caswell weren't quick enough to get out of the way and open the doors in time that red giant, Smalljon Umber, shoved them aside. With a single mighty kick and a bellow to match Smalljon made the handlebars splinter and the doors fly open with a bang.
In the light of the broken doors the Young Wolf and his mighty beast lingered for an instant, turning over their shoulders to look back at Margaery. Eyes of yellow, eyes of blue. Eyes of winter. Eyes very much the same. And then they walked out into the light and were gone.
Renly
"Thank the Gods we took Edric with us here" Renly Baratheon breathed out hard as he read the letter in his hands, delivered to him by a raven from Bronzegate. "If not he'd be lost to us if I hadn't heard about this damned army my brother's conjured out of the flames!" He threw the parchment roll away from him in disgust, onto the table of Bitterbridge Keep's Chamber of Swords, sitting there in the presence of most of his commanders and his Rainbow Guard as well as his queen. Only two faces were missing: Loras – beloved, faithful, true Loras – and Roren Bulwer, uncle and commander to the infant Sylas Bulwer of Blackcrown and his lady sister who ruled there, Victoria.
"The irony is almost sweet, your Grace" noted Lyall Ashford from aside, feet stretched arrogantly out before him as he sipped of his bronze cup. That cup was a gift from the late lord Jon Bulwer, an ancient thing that was as old as the Hightower and the legend Garth Greenhand, and wines of tin and steel ran along its sides. "Your brother spent the better part of the Usurpation trapped behind those walls. Now he lays siege to them, like Lord Mace did so long ago. History makes fools of us all, doesn't it?"
Baelor 'Brightsmile' Hightower shot the man a sharp look from aside, his armour splendid and radiant and his sword's crossbar lined with seven jewels in the colours of the rainbow. "What would you have us do, your Grace?" he asked, that noblest and most chivalrous of knights. "Should we march on Storm's End? Stannis only has a few thousand men with him, and we have a hundred thousand at our back".
"Make that less three thousand" Loras said as he entered the chamber in a flurry, his green and golden cloak flowing like a waterfall off the back of his silver armour hammered with flowers in the thousands. "Roran Bulwer is nowhere to be found, or any of the men in his command. Two sentries said they saw his men on the outskirts of their patrol the morning after Stark came here to parley" he explained as he took the seat next to Renly, a heavy cast to his otherwise glorious face. "They said he was striking the Stag banner and raising another. One of grey and white. Stark colours".
"Bulwer did trade words with Stark in his tent before the Wolf left" Baelor Hightower noted, glancing as he did so at the far side of the room where Margaery and several of her ladies, some of which included the commanders' wives and daughters and female relatives and relations, idly reading while the other ladies sew or composed songs or wrote poetry like ladies of the Reach were supposed to do. "A man I trust claims that he saw it. He approached him just after his pet giant smashed the doors of the keep, pulled him aside. I thought nothing of it then, but now…" he shook his head as he ran his hand over the gold rings on his fingers, the metal shining in the light of the braziers around the room. "Traitor".
"Surely there must be some sort of explanation to this" Lyall Ashford protested, putting his goblet to the surface of the table. "This… Roren would not do this, your Grace. He might be an inbred dreamer, but he is not a traitor. House Bulwer are loyal to the Crown".
"To which crown?" Tanton Fossoway of Cider Hall spoke up from the left of the Hightower heir. "There are many these days. Some of gold, some of bronze and iron. It doesn't make him any less of a traitor. Your Grace" he turned fully towards Renly "we should march after him. Show him that the scions of Greenhand and Durran Godsgrief do not suffer traitors to live".
"Oh, that we will – but we head for Storm's End first" Renly told them as he stood. "Tell the men of the flying column to rouse themselves. We ride on the morrow, at first light. The footmen and archers stay here while I tend to my brother. Then we turn north to the Riverlands and show this upstart puppy that we do not take kindly to threats". He looked to his wife, absorbed in her reading as she was, just like she had been for three days hence since the Stark boy had waltzed into his camp and might as well have spat him in the eye. "The council is dismissed".
"It's a history of Westeros, written by Grand Maester Ellendor" Margaery told him later as she and him headed back to his chambers arm in arm, Loras trailing behind them a ways back to give them privacy but to still protect his king. He was so loyal, his Knight of Flowers, so graceful and strong. Why couldn't his sister be the same? "I read the one written by Archmaester Perestan, but he barely mentions the North at all. Hardly more than a single paragraph about the First Men. That one just said that the Andals faced resistance from 'native savages' when they came to this continent".
"Why are you so keen to learn about the North, my dear Margaery?" Renly's voice was level and calm but he seethed on the inside. He didn't love this woman, this member of the weaker and less fair sex, but she had made starry eyes at that Stark boy for the entire feast, asking him questions and feeding treats to his pet monster. She had insulted him in that. She, who he had wed in the light of the Seven. "Is it because of Stark? Are you fond of him?"
"He is our enemy, my lord husband" she replied back to him, but though the words came assured and seemingly honest he had spent enough time around Loras to know that a Tyrell had a very specific look about them when they were losing ground and on unsure footing. "Is not knowledge power? The more you know about Robb Stark the easier it will be to defeat him".
"You would like to know him, now wouldn't you?" She stepped back from him and slapped him hard across the cheek, but when Loras moved to hurry up to them Renly gave him a look and shook his head. "Forgive me, my lady wife" Renly told her then, regretting that he had said that. Margaery was a kind soul, a pretty youngster with a gentle spirit just like her brother's. She no doubt had taken a liking to that furry freak of a wolf the Stark man had brought with him and wanted to know if there were more of them. "I spoke out of rashness and vexation. A thousand pardons". And he had. That the Wolf had stolen men of his, men sworn to his cause, made him want to curse and spit and pray to become a better warrior like his beloved Loras just so he could kill and skin the Wolf himself.
"Of course, lord husband" Margaery said aloud. Inside her eyes a different light shone. It was said that kings never apologised or sought to excuse themselves, but that had been said during the Targaryen era, and all of them had been mad. How had Robert ruled? Poorly. But Robert never apologised either. And perhaps he had set a bad example, allowing this since the first time she had done it. But she had Loras's eyes, and he could neither strike nor reprimand his Beloved's sister. It was beyond him.
Gods. How he hated this violence and war business. Tourneys and melees were all well and good, but so much senseless death and despair. But the people loved him, stood at his back, and he would bring down the pretenders seated on the Iron Throne. Children born of abominable incest, to false Lions strutting and swaggering through the Red Keep like it was theirs. But it wasn't. It was Baratheon. By blood and by hammer the Stag had been crowned, and by the Seven Renly would not give that crown up to anyone, be they Dragon or Lion or Wolf.
"How goes your studies?" he forced himself back to the present, taking his wife and his Beloved by surprise with his smile and his forgiving ways. "Well, go on then – tell me why Ellandor is better than Perastin or whomever".
"Ehm" Margaery cleared her throat "Grand Maester Ellendor actually deals with the legends before history. He called it 'the Age of Heroes'" she began as she went on her way along with him when they continued towards their wing of the small keep. "The age from after the First Men settled Westeros but before the Andals came in force. Almost five thousand years. When all the kingdoms of Westeros were founded, including the North. And when the Age of Heroes ended the North was the only kingdom that managed to hold the Andals back. That is why they keep to those strange gods and odd traditions: because they are more First Men than they are Andals. Some more than others, of course. House Manderly, who rules at… some river, I can't recall – is an exiled noble family from the Reach and keep the Seven. And on the islands in the far North, Skagos, they are almost all savages. Like the wilding peoples that lived beyond the Wall".
"Beyond the Wall? Thought that was the end of the world, there" Renly mused at her rambling about inane things and linked his arm with his wife's for appearances' sake, casting a look over his shoulder back at Loras as he did so. Loras gave him a smile. One of those smiles that he lived and breathed for. "Surely there is nothing there but ice and darkness. You have heard how unkind the North is to even its own sons".
Margaery was about to start rambling on about boorish history again but, thank the Gods, they rounded a corner in the keep and more or less ran into Mya the nursemaid and Edric Storm.
Edric. Such a lovely little child. His brother's bastard – one of about a thousand running around Westeros, no doubt. Robert Baratheon had spread his seed in every major city and castle North to South, leaving behind a trail of black hair and blue eyes wherever he went except for in his own marital bed, but Edric Storm was the only one that Renly knew of that was possessed of noble blood. Half of House Florent had joined Stannis out of religious fervour, but the other half was still loyal because of that child and his mother. And Edric was a good boy. Kind, brave, gregarious for a child. Well spoken, and Baratheon through and through.
"Look!" Edric showed Margaery something, a stuffed animal or toy of some sort in an incomprehensible grey blob, and Margaery made sounds of gladness and amusement, squeals no human should ever rightly make. She was good with children, she truly was, and she was a patron of orphanages and poorhouses from Highgarden to Oldtown. Edric had taken to her almost instantly, and she was almost like a mother to him now that his blood mother had left for Dragonstone and Stannis's army. He was almost glad for it. Renly had no… persuasion towards childmaking himself, and Margaery wanted children. Edric could be a son to her once he took the Baratheon name. And they could reign from King's Landing together: Edric, Margaery and Renly Baratheon. And Loras.
Renly separated from his wife and her babying of the eight-year old lad and went to join Loras by one of the windows, from which you could see the whole of their mighty army. A hundred thousand men sworn to him, camped under a sunny sky fading into dusk. And the Knight of Flowers at his side. In truth, Renly did not worry about the war or the Crown or Stannis. The war was all but won already.
Gods, he felt like he would live forever.
END
A/N: At first this chapter was supposed to be only from Robb's and Margaery's points of view. But then I couldn't help but do Renly, give some perspective to the man, and when the idea of Roose being the POV character for the first part of the chapter occurred to me I just couldn't let it go. Sorry if the chapter feels a little schizophrenic because of that, and I hope I characterised either of Renly and Roose well.
You might have noticed how Robb and Smalljon talk differently in Margaery's point of view, at least at first. Fact is, the people of Westeros have different accents and dialects. And I wanted to show how she gradually, but very quickly, learned to understand it fully unlike Renly. Except for that this chapter is mostly set up for stuff that comes later down the line.
And don't you worry. Renly doesn't live forever. Not even close.
Next chapter will feature the POVs of Margaery, Robb and a special mystery character? Hmm. I wonder who could it be? ... I'm being facetious. And sarcastic.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed.
Ta.