Wife of the Wolf, Husband of the Sun
Chapter Eighty-Four
The room smelled of rot and something sickeningly sweet, it was so overpowering that Ned had to resist the urge to retch. Now more than ever, he need to be strong, he need to be as cold as the heart of Winter. Like it or not, he was the Lord of Winterfell and a regent for a King. He was not a boy any longer and he had not been for a long time, he had to be strong.
But even knowing that did not make seeing his brother by law laying in the bed, fighting for his life even the slightest bit easier. When it was looked at in the larger sense of things, Ned had not known Oberyn all that long. He had seen him once or twice in the rare occasions that his Father had sent him below the Neck to attend a large feast with Brandon, mostly to keep his older brother out of trouble all though he never seemed quite able to manage that, and he had never exchanged more than a few words with him.
Even after he had married Elia, that had not changed much at all. He had not attended the wedding, which given what Elia had told him of their childhood together since Ned had to admit was somewhat odd. Though considering what he had learned about both of her brothers, it was likely that Doran had held him back in order to stop Oberyn from doing something foolish at the wedding.
Elia had told him after all that he had threatened to raise all of Dorne in rebellion against the Iron Throne after he had learned that Aerys had ended the betrothal between her and Prince Rhaegar, it was so odd to think that same man who had such passion and fire in him could look so weak now.
He almost looked small, with the thick sheets on the bed covering him. He was pale and his chest was heaving as he struggle to take his next breath, the maester of Riverrun had made it clear that all though he had done all that he could do in order to save Oberyn's life that now it was in the hands of the gods if he would survive or not.
Ned knew that Riverrun did have a godswood and he had already been there to pray for Oberyn to recover but it felt like his prayers were useless here in the south, how likely was it that they were going to hear them in the lands where the weirwoods had been chopped down and burned? All the same, at least he could say that he had said his prayers if nothing else.
He had prayed for Elia as well, prayed that she was safe and she was on her way back to him as well. Word of Ironborn ships off the coast of Lannisport would seem to suggest that Lord Quellon had joined their rebellion and if that was true then it meant that Elia had been successful in her task but if that was so, she had sent no word back to them.
It had been Lord Selwyn who had given his wife the ships to carry her and her honor guard to the Iron Islands, would it be to Tarth that she would return? It would be a long journey but it had been one that she had already made after all. Or perhaps she would depart to Sunspear instead, she would need to sail around the kingdom where she was born in order to reach Tarth and she might decide instead to remain there.
And Ned would not mind that, for all that he still held anger against Doran Martell for what he had done to his family with his scheming but for all his insidiousness, Ned did not think for a moment that he would even consider harming his own sister. After all, in his own foolish and self serving way, what he had done had been for Elia.
So yes, maybe right now Elia was in the very heart of Sunspear, maybe she was sitting in her old chambers and writing a letter to him to tell him that she was well. Yes, much as like she had already sent it off with a raven and it was on it's way to Winterfell, informing his Father and Benjen where she was and that she was safe.
Or perhaps she had forsaken all of that and ordered the ships to carry her all the way to White Harbor and from there she had her guard take her all the way to Winterfell and that thought was the sweetest that Ned had in the longest time, the thought that his wife was finally safe behind the walls of their home with their sons as far away from the war as she could be, it was a thought that could give him comfort on the worst of nights.
But every time that he tried to hold on to that thought, it slipped away from him when he remembered that without word that it was just as like that perhaps Lord Quellon was keeping her as a hostage on Pyke in order to ensure some from of reward from them or perhaps that her ship had capsized and was right now sitting at the bottom of the sea.
Ned had no way to know, and it was killing him. Just like he had no idea what it was that was happening to Lyanna, if she was even still alive. Rhaegar had no reason to harm her, but he had no reason to take her in the first place either. The son was as mad as the father and his sister could very well be dead by now that thought was enough to make him want to be ill, made no better with his worry for Elia.
He was so consumed by everything, he had not heard the door to the bedchamber open or the Maester walk into the room. "Forgive me, my Lord. It is time for me to check Prince Oberyn's condition and to change his dressings." Ned nodded but did not feel the need to say anything and so the Maester walked over to the bed and began to tend to Oberyn.
The Maester hummed as he rested the back of his hand on Oberyn's forehead, reminding Ned of when Old Nan had done much the same whenever he or any of his siblings had been ill and she had tended to them. "He is cool to the touch, it is still early of course and these things can change as quickly as the wind but the fact that there is no fever yet is as good a sign as any we can dare to hope for."
It was a stroke of good fortune that Oberyn had even managed to get back to Riverrun alive when everything had been considered. Ned had not been there, indeed he had still been marching his men down from the North and through the Neck as Oberyn had been riding into the Crownlands in order to try and take the capital but he had been able to piece together much of what had happened, mostly with Ser Brynden Tully and Lord Harmen Ullers's own accounts of what had happened.
After it was clear that they had been taken by surprise by Lord Tarly and that the battle was lost, the order to retreat had gone up and it could hardly have been called anything close to orderly. Oberyn had volunteered to gather men and slow the forces of the Crownlands and Lord Tarly so that the rest of their own forces would be less bloodied.
Sadly, that action might just be the reason that Oberyn was where he was now. He had gathered a hundred men around him and they rode ahead of the Tarly van, hitting them with arrows as they rode ahead of them but Oberyn had been one of the first to be hit back by the Tarly's own bowmen. Were it not for his own squire, a boy from House Wyl, Oberyn would have fallen off of his horse but that had not happened as the squire had took hold of the horse's reins and lead it away from the battle.
Ned was not a knight, and he would likely never be but if anything deserved a knighthood then surely the boy's actions did. He had men raining arrows down on them, an army at their heels but no matter what had happened he had not let go of the horse's reins and he made sure that the man he had been sent to squire for stayed in his saddle.
Even when they had made it back into the Riverlands it did not mean that they were safe, as it seemed that Lord Mooton had stayed true to his word that he was loyal to the King as when the host had made it across the border from the Crownlands back into the Riverlands the gates of Maidenpool had open and a large mounted force had ridden out.
For all that the force was large, it was still outnumbered and if the retreat had been more orderly then more than likely they would have been able to deal with Lord Mooton and his forces but alas the retreat had been anything but orderly and so his forces had gone through their own like a hot blade cutting through some butter, hundreds and hundreds had fallen before Mooton had returned to the safety of his walls.
Those that survived had made their way back to Riverrun, a great number of them were now outside the walls being tended to by herb women who had been given some basic instruction by the Maester and by the silent sisters and septas but those who were going to recover had already done so, for the rest of them was just a matter of easing their way as best at they could.
Was that what they should do for Oberyn? Would that not be kinder in the end, if he did not fully recover from the arrow wounds that he had suffered then the pain that he was going through at this moment was pointless. Ned did not know the answer to the question, at times it seemed like he did not know the answer to anything.
The Maester unwrapped the dressing the crossed over Oberyn's stomach and stared at the puckered flesh before taking a sniff of it. "This does not seem to be festering, and if the arrow had pierced his stomach he likely would have died before he had made it half way back here." He added a new poultice to some fresh dressings and reapplied before he went upward to the wound in his chest and did the same to that wound.
Ned was silent as he watched and the door to the chamber opened again and Ned turn to see a page, with a trout badge over his heart, standing in the doorway. "Begging your pardon, my Lord. Lord Hoster wishes for you to come and attend him in his solar, the rest of the armies from the Vale have arrived."
Well, that was some good news at least. In truth, he was quite surprised. Jon had given the order for the forces he had left behind to lay siege on Gulltown and to not make for the Riverlands until they had captured the city, Ned had not expected them to take it so quickly as he knew that the city had deep stores and could be resupplied from the sea.
Still, he was not going to think overly much of it. With all that had happened up to now, any bit of good news should be treasured and having the full force of the Vale behind them was very good news indeed. With them, and the Northmen that Ned had brought with him, it meant that the loss they had taken, while hard to bear, was not so bad as it might have been.
He was also glad that Jon had decided to keep the major part of his own forces back, some Valemen had gone with Oberyn and Brynden to avoid any accusation that they could be called craven, mainly some of the younger men, but the vast majority of the men showed better sense and remained at Riverrun to hold on to their strength.
Ned bid farewell to the maester and followed the page out of the bedchamber and into Riverrun proper, Riverrun was not a small castle by any means but with the sheer amount of people around it now and running through it's corridors, carrying messages to someone else or healing supplies to stop someone's bleeding, the castle almost seemed to be bursting at the seams.
Indeed, more than once Ned had to press himself against the stone wall of the corridors in order to let someone else run past him, no doubt with their own important task that could not wait. Whatever else that was decided Ned knew that all of the armies could not stay here long, if they did then the castle's larders would run dry before the turn of the moon.
It took longer than it should have to arrive at Lord Hoster's solar and even there, it was overly crowded. The solar itself was shaped like a triangle and that only made it seem worse, like the walls were closing in on you. Lord Hoster was sitting behind his desk and his face was a storm cloud, Ned did not think that he had ever seen the man pleased but he also knew that he had never seen the Lord of Riverrun look this angry.
His brother was standing next to him, Ser Brynden Tully had come away from the battle thankfully intact with only a scratch on his face and a small wound on his arm from where a Connington spearman had gotten a lucky thrust, and he did not look as angry as his elder brother but that was not to say that he looked anything close to happy or pleased or calm.
It was only when he took account of the three other people in the room that Ned truly began to understand why they both looked so very angry, Jon Arryn was standing in the corner with Elbert Arryn, they were both speaking quietly to one another and when Jon noticed that he had walked into the room he was making his way over to him but Ned walked away from him and towards the last person in the solar. It had been so long and the sun had baked his skin to a darker shade that at first glance, Ned had not recognized him but when he took a closer look, there could be no mistake.
Brandon smiled at him, it was the sort of smile that Ned had seen maybe a thousand times before in his life. It was the same sort of smile that Brandon would always were whenever their Father had brought him forward to chastise him whenever he had done something wrong, the smile of someone who did not care, the smile of someone who would not change. "Hello little brother." Brandon said, still smiling.
Ned hit him, hard. Going back the crack that he heard a moment later, it seemed likely that he had broken his older brother's nose and a year ago, even half a year ago, he might have felt so ashamed about doing that but so much had happened since then, too much for anyone to bear on their own, that shame was the last thing that Ned was feeling.
He could vaguely here Jon telling him to stop and normally he would always do as his foster father told him, from the moment he had first gone to the Vale all those years ago, but nothing about any of this war normal and so he charged at Brandon. His brother was still taller and broader than him but he was also still reeling from the suddenness of Ned's punch and the pain of it and so he was easily able to get Brandon down to the ground.
Ned rose his first and brought it down into Brandon's face again and again and on the fifth time that he was about to bring it down again Brandon sized hold of his wrist and spun him so that now Ned was on the floor and Brandon was above him and at any other time Ned might have fond the image of his brother's bloody face above him terrifying but the anger over everything that had happened up to now was greater than that.
The first hit hurt a lot, Brandon was still a great deal stronger than him after all, and his mouth filled with blood but before his brother could land a second one on him Brynden and Elbert intervened and hauled Brandon off of him as Jon came over to help him up to his feet.
Ned spat out some blood as Brandon shrugged himself free from Elbert and Brynden's hold and began to wipe some of the blood of off his face. Ned was not calm, but he was calmer to the point that he could begin to feel some pangs of shame of how he had acted, each one only made worse when he saw how Brandon's face was already starting to swell and that one of his eyes had a large bruise around it and that his nose was broken out of shape.
It was always Ned who apologized first, ever since he was a boy and whenever he got into an argument with any of his siblings he would always be the one to apologies first but he was not going to do that this time. Brandon had abandoned him, abandoned their family, his wife and his child and Ned was not going to apologies to him. It was Brandon's turn.
But all his brother did was laugh, like it was the funniest thing in the world as he pulled his now bloody sleeve away from his face. "You still hit like a bloody woman, Barbrey Dustin used to slap me harder than that after I was finished with her." And just like that, any shame that Ned had felt drained away as he remembered what an utter tit his brother was.
"Enough. The both of you." Jon spoke and Ned closed his eyes and breathed deeply, trying his best to regain his calm. The shame was coming back, not for hitting Brandon, he refused to feel shame for that now, but for losing control as he had done and acting like a child in front of all the lords, he was the heir of the Winterfell and how he acted now would reflect on Winterfell and his Father.
And even if Brandon did not care about that, Ned did. So, he straightened his head and stood as tall as he could. "Brandon, what are you doing here?" He spoke, keeping his voice as cold as possible while also not making it sound like he was trying to be too insulting. He wanted to ask more, like where he had been for all of this time, but that could wait until later and when they were on their own.
Assuming of course that he did not throttle him the second that they were alone.
"I came to help." Brandon said, and it was only now that Ned noticed how strange his voice actually sounded to his ears. Part of that of course was more than likely due to the fact that his nose was broken but there was something else about it as well, an accent to his voice that sounded vaguely familiar and then he realized where he had heard it, in the voices of various sailors who had come into White Harbor or to Gulltown from across the Narrow Sea.
He had been in Essos, the Free Cities most likely. In Pentos or Myr or Lys, probably Lys knowing Brandon as he did. As everything had been falling apart around them, as the world fell into fire and madness seemed to reign in every single corner his brother had been half a world away and all so suddenly Ned wanted to hit him again.
He did not though, he had to do what Brandon never could and not given into his baser instincts. He had his duty and Ned Stark would always do his duty.
"Help? What have you ever helped, my Lord?" Lord Hoster asked, his voice full of scorn and barely constrained rage and if a look of hate could kill then Brandon would no doubt be dead a thousand times over. "You brought shame on to my daughter and abandoned my grandson to go and play the sellsword with your whore in the Free Cities, you would've done better to stay away."
"She's my wife, not my whore. Trust me, I have had enough of the latter to know the difference." Brandon spoke with a smirk but his eyes were hard. "And trust me, my Lord, I would rather share my bed with a thousand whores and die in my bed from the pox before I would willing share a bed or a life with your dear daughter, that would be the worst hell I could ever imagine."
Brandon was going to get hit again, but Ned wasn't sure if it would be him that would do it or if it would be Lord Hoster who had gone pale with rage and the center of his eyes had grown minuscule and his hands had clenched into fists but in the end it seemed that he had better control of himself than Ned did. His brother was angry as well, but the Blackfish kept a firm hold of it.
"I give you my word, Brandon Stark, that one day you will look back at the day you abandoned my daughter as the worst of your life. But it seems that day will not be today, so be it then." Lord Hoster turned his back on him then and walked back to his desk, which he had stood from after Ned had hit Brandon, and looked down on the maps that were spread across it. "As of right now, there is a war to be won and you are not worth my time."
"Come now, my Lord. Is that any way to speak to the man who has given to you an entire city?" Brandon asked, still smirking, and Lord Hoster scoffed as Ned turned his head to look at Elbert Arryn, who so far had been silent through out all of this and Ned did have to wonder as to what thoughts could be going around in his own mind at this very moment.
After all, he was the one who was now wed to Catelyn Tully. How must it feel to see the man who had shamed your wife walk around and speak as though there was no regret in his mind at all about what he had done to her? Ned was not wed to Catelyn, and yet the rage that he felt on her behalf was enough to shake the entire world.
Whatever rage that he felt, it did not stop the heir of the Vale from speaking the truth. "It is true." Ser Elbert spoke, though it was clear that he was doing his very best to not look at Brandon as he said it. "Gulltown was standing strong against us and any attempt to starve them out would not have worked do to their deep stores and them being able to be resupplied from the sea, we would have needed to take the city by storm if not for Lord Brandon."
Apparently his brother had joined a sellsword company, oh and when his Father heard about that his heart was going to explode in his chest Ned was fairly sure of that if nothing else, and he had risen enough in said company that when he had suggested to them that they turn their cloaks and open the gates for the armies that waited outside of the city, he had been agreed with instead of having his head struck off.
So that night the gates had been opened and the armies rode inside, the other sellswords soon caught word of what was happening and instead of trying to defend the city that they had been paid to do so, they had struck their banners and joined with them and soon enough the city had fallen. The lords who had tried to hold Gulltown had withdrawn to the keep in the middle of the city but in truth that was unimportant, the rest of the city and the fleet had surrendered and once the lords had seen that they had surrendered as well.
"Very well, we owe him a victory? We would have lost many of our own men if not for him? I accept that." Lord Hoster spoke, his words were slow and measured and gave away nothing of what he thought. "But I promise you this, I would burn Riverrun to the ground before I would ever thank you for that, I would rather Gulltown be drowned in the blood of it's people and the armies that would try and take it than offer you a scrap of gratitude. Now, leave me before I have you locked in the stocks."
Even Brandon seemed to know that it would be best to withdraw but of course he would not do such a thing quietly, he scoffed and left the room and muttered something about going to find the maester as he left which sent another pang of guilt through Ned's gut. Ser Brynden followed after him to show him the way to the Maester's quarters.
Once the door had shut again Lord Hoster swung his arm over his desk and swept everything atop of it down to the floor, the clay pitcher of wine smashed into pieces and the Arbor Gold that held with in it spread across the stone floor. "Your Father did us all a disservice by not drowning your brother in a river when he had the chance to do so."
Ned frowned, to be sure he was not happy with Brandon either and it was likely that he was never going to forgive him for what he had done but he was still his brother and even he did not wish to kill him. "My Father could have sired the worst son in the world and he could know all of the terrible things he would have done the moment he was born, and my Father would still not do harm to one of his own children. He's not a kinslayer."
Lord Hoster sighed and straightened himself up before he walked back around his desk and sat back down behind it. "No, I don't suppose that anyone could call Lord Rickard that, even if now he still chooses to cower in Winterfell and send his son to fight his battles instead of coming by himself."
"Hoster, that's enough." Jon Arryn spoke with a firm look and the Lord of Riverrun scoffed but said nothing else. Jon turned to Ned. "Go and speak with your brother, I mean for you to speak with him. Whatever else that he has done, it would've cost us both in time and in blood to take Gulltown and he spared us from that. He's an ally."
"Yes Jon." Ned said with a nod and then turned and left the solar, he shut his eyes and rested his weight against the door for a moment before he set off towards the maester's quarters.
Ned arrived to find that all of the blood on Brandon's face had been cleaned away and the maester was in the middle of preparing a poultice of herbs to deal with the rather ugly cuts across his swollen face. Brandon looked up at him and then turned his head away. "If you are here for another brawl, I would advice against it. You caught me off guard last time and unlike you, I actually hit like I'm a man."
"Why are you even here?" It was the only response that Ned could manage, it was the only thing he could have said if Brandon had said anything in that moment. It was what Ned wanted to know, more than anything else in the world.
"I told you, I came to help." Brandon said and then winced in pain as the maester began to smear the poultice over his face, even from where Ned was standing it did not smell overly good but if it stopped the wounds on his face from festering then it was all for the good. Ned didn't want to be any sort of kinslayer, after all.
But just because he did not want to kill his brother, or be the cause of his death, did not mean that he was ever likely going to forgive him and now it was Ned's turn to scoff. "Forgive me if I do not find much comfort or reassurance in your altruism, brother. You abandoned all of us once as soon as it became convenient for you, what is there to say that you will not do so again? This is a war, after all, if the fear ever becomes to much then you can merely flee and go back to Lady Ashara's side once again."
"I am not a craven." Brandon growled at him and he tried to rise to his feet but the Maester urged him to stay seated and he must not have felt that strong as he quickly settled once again. "If nothing else, you should thank me. You are the heir of Winterfell now, when Father finally does die you are going to be the Lord of it as well and Lord Paramount of the North and Warden of the North besides."
"I never wanted it!" Ned shouted and the maester shot him a reproachful look and Ned bit his tongue, closed his eyes and waited for himself to calm down before he spoke again. "I never wanted it, any of it. I wanted my own, unimportant little holdfast that you would not even see on a map with walls to keep out the chill and stew to fill my belly, I wanted my wife to be sitting at my side in front of our heath with our sons playing at our feet, I want my daughter to still be alive and not born dead. I want many things, Winterfell is not one of them."
He couldn't know that the babe had been a girl pf course, Elia had said that she had been born malformed and twisted and no one had been able to tell if it was male or female but deep in the core of himself he knew that it was the truth. The babe would have been a girl, their first daughter and yet she had never even drawn a single breath and was now buried in the godswood, beneath the weirwood tree and ever under the watchful eye of the Old Gods.
Brandon looked taken aback and for a brief moment Ned thought that he was going to apologize to him for leaving as he did, for letting all of it fall on him. But no, of course not. "I never wanted it either." Brandon spoke. "To be the Heir, to be the Lord, I never wanted any of it. Father always made it clear how disappointed he was in me but I say how was that fair when I never asked for anything that I was given, when all my life I just wanted to choose what I wanted. And I did."
"Father even know that I wouldn't make a good lord, it's why he let me go after all." Ned opened his mouth, ready to ask him how he could possibly know that but Brandon only laughed and held up his hand in order to stop him from speaking. "I know what you think of me, but I am really not that much of a fool and I did sometimes pay attention to my lessons. The guard on the walls that night was lighter than normal, they took to long in between patrols."
"I had a woman and a young girl with me and only the one horse to carry us, if Father had sent a hunting party after us then I would have little chance of out riding them but he never did. We made it all the way to White Harbor and on to a ship without even a single threat, Father must have known that I would take ship and yet aside from the few guards that are always at the harbor, there were none. Father let me go."
Ned wanted to tell him that he was wrong, that it wasn't true but he knew that it was. His Father and Prince Doran had both schemed it up together, his Father so he could have an heir that he deemed more suitable to inherit Winterfell, Prince Doran so that his younger sister could be wed to the future Lord of Winterfell and having Elia be married to the second son who had a small holdfast would not do.
But even with all of that, Ned could not let go of point of it. "Father didn't put you on the horse. Father did not make you ride out of the gates. You did that Brandon, you are the one who choose to leave. Father did not force you into any of it, you could have chosen to stay. You could have chosen to be a faithful husband and protect the honor of your lady wife and be a father to the babe that you left in her belly. Everything that's happened to you Brandon, it has been your choice."
"Aye, it has. And this is the point, it's my choice. For good or for ill, it is my choice." Brandon closed his eyes and sighed and when he opened them again to stare at Ned, his gaze was hard. "And I am happy with the choices I've made. I have a wife, one I love and one I chose. I have a daughter and I have a son, we named him Arthur. And I'll have others as well, we're going to name our next son Ned and our next daughter we're going to call Lyanna."
"Lyanna, that's why you came back." When his brother had uttered the name, it all made perfect sense. Winterfell could have crumbled into the ground, Benjen could have been carried over by Skagosi in the middle of the night and any right or claim to anything the Starks had could fade away like mist in the harsh light of the sun and none of that would make Brandon care enough to come back.
But Lyanna would.
"You heard about what happened to her." Ned did not need any sort of confirmation from his brother, he knew that it was the truth. And Brandon made no move to dismiss it at any rate. "It only makes sense I suppose, you were always each other's favorite."
He supposed that it was only natural, Ned had been sent to the Vale when he was still young after all. Brandon had been fostered away as well but Barrowton was not the Vale and he could always ride back to spend more time with their little sister. And Brandon had doted on her even more than he or Father ever had, giving her all that she had ever wanted by all accounts.
And as Brandon had doted on her, Lyanna had worshiped him and the ground that he had walked on and the pair of them had been inseparable. Whatever else could be said about his brother, Ned had never doubted for a single moment that he had loved Lyanna enough to die for her. Compared to that, what was crossing an ocean and fighting in a war in the end?
"You should not have let them take her." For a moment Ned hadn't understood what his brother had said to him. But then he realized what it was that he was actually saying to him and Ned had to bite his tongue so hard that for a moment he thought that he must have cut it in half with the very force of his bite as he could not speak at all.
But then a moment later it became clear that his tongue was still in one piece and so Ned could indeed speak, and when he did speak his words were slow and cold. "I did not let them take her, how could I? How could I have stopped them in the very first place? I did not know that they would have been waiting for her."
"You should not have let her go off on her own!"
"I sent her with guards!"
"Not enough, clearly! You should not have let her go off at all, why would you in the first place!?"
Ned wanted to scream, to throttle and hit his brother once again but he knew that he could not do so. "She wanted to go and pray, she wanted to go to the God's Eye to pray. To give herself strength for her marriage to Robert. I knew that she did not want to be married to Robert, I knew that it would be difficult for her and so I wanted to make it as easier for her to cope with as I possibly could, she'd been praying even before we left Winterfell and so when she asked if we could go to the God's Eye so that she could pray at the Isle of Faces, I didn't see any harm in it. I was trying to be kind."
In truth, he was trying to apologize as well. He had not thought well of his sister, after what had happened at Harrenhal if the truth was to be told for what it was. And the truth of it was that he had never been able to easily speak to Lyanna even at the best of times, years and years apart from one another had not aided in that, and he had never told her that he was sorry in words and so he had tried to do it with his actions instead.
And that had gotten her taken by a mad prince, to some place that only the gods seemed to know where it was. Was every action that he ever took, no matter how well his intentions and kindly meant, always doomed to make everything worse in the end?
Brandon certainly seemed to think so as he kept talking. "You still should not have let her go, even if it was with guards. You should have gone with her, if it had been all of you maybe that mad bastard wouldn't have been able to take her." Brandon spat out a mixture of blood and phlegm and spit out on to the floor. "How did he even know that she was going to be there? How could he fucking know?"
"I don't know, someone must have told him. We only stopped a few times in the Riverlands and Lyanna only decided that she wanted to go to the Isle of Faces late in the journey, whoever it was they only had a small window of opportunity in order to let them know that we were going to be there." Ned had spent a great deal of time wondering who it could have been who had told the Prince that they were going to be there.
He had also thought about what it was that he would do once he found out, he didn't sleep very well those nights.
"Could it have been Lya?" Brandon asked and Ned looked at him, not understanding what it was that he meant. Brandon sighed and explained. "I mean, could it have been Lya who told him that you were going to be there? Maybe she told him before you all left from Winterfell, maybe she always planned to go there. Maybe she went with him willingly."
"No, she didn't." Ned shook his head, already knowing that could not be the case. "When we went to the isle to go and look for her, one of the guards I sent to protect her was still alive." It shamed him more than words could say that he could not remember which guard that it had been now, so much had happened since that terrible night. "He said that Lyanna hadn't wanted to go, that she had fought them off and they needed to bind her to take them with her. She was not willing."
Brandon said nothing for a time and the maester choose that moment to come back over to them and to wrap his wounds and Ned crossed his arms over his chest and shut his eyes, by all the gods he was tired. "You still should not have let her go off on her own, you shouldn't have." Ned opened his eyes as Brandon spoke and he saw his brother looking at him. "If you wanted to help her then you should have gone with her, prayed with her so she didn't feel so on her own. You should have told Father, convinced him not to wed her to Robert, to marry her to a Northman where that fucker could have gotten nowhere near her. You could have done that, it's your fault."
Ned did not say anything to that, he didn't make any noise at all. Instead, he merely turned and walked out of the room and closed the door as gently as he could and walked so that he was a good distance away from the door before he hit the wall with all the strength he had in him, which caused him to let out a roar of pain as his fist throbbed in agony after it had hit the stone.
He could still move his fingers, so at least it wasn't broken. Small mercies, in the darkest days, you needed to be thankful for the small mercies. His mother had said that to him when he had been very, very young. She had been sitting in the middle of her bed which she had not left in months and looking down at baby Benjen as he had nursed from her.
She must have known, even then she must have known.
Ned shut his eyes and pretended that the sound of wetness hitting the ground was from the blood on the cut of his hand. He didn't know how long he stood there, with his head bowed and his eyes shut just trying to forget about the world for a time but he supposed that it could not have been that long as he did not hear the door to the maester's chamber open again which meant that the man was still no doubt tending to Brandon.
"My Lord?" A voice that sounded familiar met his ears and Ned opened his eyes and looked up to see a man that looked somewhat vaguely familiar to him, he was older that Ned and he knew that he had definitely seen him somewhere before. "Forgive me, I do not mean to disturb you but I am Ser Edric Estermont, your wife told me to come and find you."
That was why the man looked so familiar to him, he was one of the five hundred men who had been chosen to keep Elia safe on her voyage to the Iron Islands. The man's words then settled into Ned's head and he stepped away from the wall as he came to realize what it meant. "Elia is here? When did she arrive? Is she well?"
"Yes my Lord, she is here. And we rode through the gates not half an hour hence." Ser Edric explained and then he hesitated and Ned's stomach felt like it had just plummeted down into a dark pit with no bottom and no walls to climb to get back up. "She is well, my Lord. But, she is very distressed. We were informed of what had happened to her brother and she has gone to be at his side."
Ned did not know if he managed to choke out any thanks to the night for coming to tell him as quickly as he had done, he hoped that he did but even if he did not he could not find the energy in him to care in that moment. In that moment, the only thing in the world that mattered was getting to Elia's side as quickly as he possibly could.
He ran as fast as he could, taking care not to knock anyone down as best as he could but even that he could find the will to be overly concerned about.
He just had to get to Elia.
He just turned the corner to the room where Oberyn was resting, thankfully it was not so far from the maester's own chambers by the need of the man needing to be close by in order to keep an eye on him and treat him as needed, when the door to the room burst open and a dark shape came running out of the room, sobbing uncontrollably as she went.
The shape was fast and slight and Ned was not able to stop it before it had turned the corner and carried on down the passage way. It had been so quick that Ned had not been able to make out any of her features expect the most important one, a long black braid bound with golden and red wire which marked her as being Nymeria Sand.
Ned's heart hurt for her and in any other circumstances he would have gone after her and tried to sooth her as best as he was able but in that moment he needed to be with Elia. The door to the bedchamber still stood open, and the only sound that he could here in that very moment was the sound of Oberyn struggling to breath.
He walked into the bedchamber and saw Elia sitting by the bed in a chair, her face was buried in her hands but when she heard him walk into the room she looked up from her hands and at him. Her eyes were red from her weep and tracks of tears ran down her face, her hair was a mess and Ned noticed that a hair net that must have been hers was in the corner, flung there after she had taken it off. She looked tired, and so pale.
She had never been more beautiful. Never been more frail. Ned wanted to go to her and hold but he was terrified that he would break her or that she would vanish like she had never been there at all.
But when Elia rose from her chair and took one stumbling step towards him, that was all that Ned needed. He hurried over to her and took her into his arms and buried his nose into her black curls and pressed a kiss to her forehead and held her tight to him, as strongly as he dared to, as his wife clung to him and buried her face into his chest in order to cry.
He never wanted to let go of her even in the best of times, but of course he knew that he would have to and so with a great deal of regret he loosened his hold but let her be the one to pull away, to do it when she felt ready to do so. Her dark eye still shone with unshed tears and fresh tracks ran down her cheeks, but when she spoke her voice was strong.
"What happened?"
Ned related as best he could as someone who had not been there, he was fairly certain that he had gotten some of the details wrong but the long and the short of it was right at least. Elia nodded once he finished speaking and walked back over to the foot of the bed to look over her younger brother, her hands clenched in one another.
"When we were younger Oberyn would always try and pick a fight with older boys, boys twice the size of him. Father would always scold him for being foolish but Mother would only laugh. I always knew that Oberyn would topple them, he always did." Elia's voice began to crack somewhat and her fingers flexed. "We were young, and none of those boys had bows and arrows."
"He was brave, and he did his duty." It was a pathetic sort of comfort, but it was the only words that would come into Ned's mind in that moment. "And he's not dead yet, he survived all the way here from the battlefield and he did not die. He may survive yet, my love."
"He may, and he may yet die." Elia spoke and reached down to take Oberyn's hand in hers and squeezed it gently, Oberyn's fingers did not so much as twitch. "Do you know if any word has been sent to Sunspear yet?"
"I am afraid that I do not, I meant to write a raven but things have been...hectic."
"It's all right, no doubt one of the lords already hear has already written a letter to Doran. I imagine that a dozen ravens have been sent, all bearing the same tidings." Elia scoffed. "I told Doran that day that so long as he lived that I would never forgive him for what he did to your family, the gods are either cruel or they are blind to punish the wrong brother."
Elia's face crumpled once again and Ned went to her, taking her into his arms but this hold did not last so long as the first one did and she pulled away from him but only to then cup his face and kiss him and Ned kissed her back just as deeply.
"How did you know to come here?" He asked her as they simply stood together for a time, standing close to one another and taking strength from the other.
"I did not, is the truth of it." Elia spoke as she took hold of one of Ned's hands in both of hers. "After we left the Iron Islands, I asked to be brought to the Riverlands and we came ashore at Seagard. I wanted to come to Riverrun because I knew it was likely to be the center of everything, the Riverlands are after all and it's where most wars are fought. I thought the chances of you actually being here was unlikely, however."
"We wanted to wait until all of our forces gathered before we made a decision." Ned admitted. "There have been reports of Ironborn ships off the coast of the Westerlands, can I take that to mean that they have agreed to join us?"
Elia nodded then. "I did send a raven to you to inform you of my success, and that the King's Master of Ships and his Master of Laws were both there and now both have been taken captive by him, but it must have gotten lost at sea, that or it was shot down. In any case, I am here now and until this war is done, it is behind the walls of Riverrun that I mean to stay."
Ned said nothing to that but he could not pretend that he was not glad of it, he would much rather she be back in Winterfell where she was both far from harm and behind strong walls but he knew that he would be unlikely to convince her of that and so he would take what safety for her that he could get and Riverrun was a strong castle besides.
And at any rate, if this rebellion ended in failure then Ned very much doubted that it would matter how far away from the King or his forces that any of them were. The King was not someone who would forgive and nor would he forget, he had proven that to the entire realm by now a thousand times over.
They stared there together for a while longer, Ned looking out the window and Elia with her head bowed over Oberyn in prayer, until the sky turned the dark orange that meant the sun was about to set any moment. He did not look until he heard Elia move and one look at her told him that she very badly needed to rest.
He had led her out of the chamber and into the corridor and was about to lead her to the chambers that had been prepared for him but before he could, Brandon's voice reached out to him. "Ned."
Ned looked, and there Brandon stood with silk dressings across his face and that terrible stench of the poultice wafting off of him and it might have been enough to make him laugh were if not for the fact that he was too tired and too angry. Before Ned could say or do anything, Elia broke away from him and stormed over to his brother and slapped him across the face with so much forced that Brandon's head snapped back.
Brandon, as he want to do, laughed and grinned. "I've missed you too, sweet sister."
Elia slapped him again. And then she spat on him.
Ned hurried and gently lead Elia away from him before he told her to wait and hurried down the corridor to find a page. Thankfully, like most everything else, Riverrun seemed to be swarming with them as of late and thus he was quickly back to find Elia glaring at Brandon and Brandon was merely grinning like he was a larger fool than normal.
He instructed the page to see his lady wife to his room and Elia, perhaps because she was too tired as well, did not argue and he promised her that he would not be long. Once Elia was well out of sight, Ned turned to face Brandon and glared at him. "What do you want?"
"Even your wife hits harder than you, do you know that? And she has bird bones."
"Brandon."
"You sounded just like Father then, you know that right?" Brandon spoke with the same silly grin on his face. "I came to talk to you, I was wrong. What I said to you was wrong, it wasn't your fault. You couldn't have know what happened to Lya, you couldn't have stopped it even if you did. You'd probably just get yourself killed as well and then I'd home to come back here and save Lya and get revenge for you as well."
"What is wrong with you?" He was acting strange, the center of his eyes were very small indeed and his voice was odd and not just with the strange mixing of accents and his broken nose. With this, whatever it was, as well it made his older brother almost impossible to understand.
"Maester gave me poppy."
"Oh balls." Ned shook his head and knew that he would need to get Brandon somewhere where he wouldn't be capable of falling and so he grabbed him by the arm and dragged him through the castle as his brother went on and on about something that he was sure in Brandon's addled mind at the moment was the most important thing in the world.
He eventually found a small room that seemed to be empty of any occupant and made Brandon lay in the bed on his side and also made border of pillow so that he would not roll on his back and chock if he happened to be sick in the night. He thought that his brother might have fallen asleep when he rose and turn to leave, but a moment later Brandon called out to him. "Ned?"
"Yes?"
"I missed you."
"I missed you as well, go to sleep Bran. We can talk in the morning." The only response he got to that was a sleepy hum and so Ned left the room and shut the door to the room and made his way back to his own chambers.
By the time that he finally arrived there Ned was so tired that he was fairly certain that the moment he closed his eyes not even a warhorn would be able to wake him up before he was ready even if it was blown in his face. The fire was roaring in the heath and Elia was already under the furs and her chest was rising and falling steadily.
Ned did not bother to take his clothes off, aside from his boots which he pulled off and tossed them without caring in which direction they went, before he climbed on to the bed and laid next to his wife before pulling her into his arms.
The warmth of the room and the sound of Elia's breathing lulled him into sleep, and for a few precious hours, all his troubles were forgotten.
End of Chapter Eight-Four
Wow this was draining to write, both emotionally and physically but I did enjoy it as well and I really hope you all did as well. The core strength of this story, even though sometimes I know it hasn't felt like it, is the relationship between Elia and Ned with all it's highs and it's lows and I promise you now that there are plenty more highs and lows to come.
And yes Brandon is back and I hope everyone enjoyed his interactions with the main cast even though it is mostly some physical abuse to him at the moment but hey what can I say, he pissed a ton of people off.
And of course we have Oberyn still fighting for his life. WELP. Just going to have to wait and see how that is going to turn out, but I mean he will probably be fine. I am not cruel or sadistic enough to kill him off in his sick bed.
Am I?
Anywho the next chapter will more than likely be a Cersei chapter and it is also more than likely going to be a lot shorter than this one if we are going to be honest about it. I love Cersei, both as a character and writing her but the context of that chapter that I'm thinking of means that it naturally leans to being a lot shorter than this one.
But then on the other hand, I've been wrong before when it comes to estimating chapter length before. Sometimes I am really off base, it could be the same this time and this next chapter is the longest I've ever done. We will see.
Any who, if you enjoyed this chapter please consider leaving a review and follow and favorite this story, it always means a ton to me and constructive criticism is always welcome.
With a ton of love and warm regards,
DiscordantSymphony.