EDDARD VI
"The Great Hall of Storm's End was a magnificent sight, just as usual. His friend and brother of all these years, Robert sat seated on the high chair as the Lord of Storm's End while Ned held his usual place of highest honour in the carved wooden direwolf throne that Robert's servants had put down next to it.
Ned found that even after all these years, the simple throne did not quite outstage the great antlered feralry that was the throne of the Storm lords, but he did not think too much about it. The Iron Throne, in its jagged steel monstrosity, was larger still by ten times. More importantly, however, Robert was his friend and brother, first and foremost, and they had won the war together all those years ago. No duties, nor fancy honours, nor the high elevation of a chair could change that fact, nor lessen the love they both held for eachother, now and always.
Dinner had just been picked away, a great and roarious roast hunting dinner of roasted wild boar, deer, swan, hare and partridge, served along with parsnips and turnips and leeks in yellow dragon sauce, chives, honeyed parsnips and buttered beets, as well as creamy fish soup with carrots, garlic bread and great big barrels of musty brown and yellow ale and deep red wine.
The good-tasteing dragon sauce, sour and indescribably fragrant with its green dragon spices, was the only thing related to dragons that Robert could abide, Ned thought in silence. His hatred for the Targaryens was still like a flame that burned strong within him, though he took care to try and hinder himself from thinking about it, even as Prince Viserys still lived and remained as lord on his island, a threat to noone as far as Eddard Stark was concerned, albeit possibly to himself now.
Ned had taken great care in each turn and trevice throughout his reign to make sure so that the two lords of Dragonstone and Storm's End never had to meet. He had never invited Prince Viserys to any tournaments wherein Robert would be competeing, and taken heed to tell Stannis as much as to keep them both separated, something that the lord castellan of Dragonstone was only too happy to do. There was not much love lost between the Baratheon brothers either, ever since the war.
So far, it had all worked, year after year, but now apparently had come something grim out of it all anyway... Ned thought with hard-pressing severity. He would soon know for sure where his old friend's heart's allegiances lay.
He chose the time to speak on the matter as Robert finished his laugh over some old hunting jape.
"Robert... " He turned to his old friend. "There is something I wish to speak to you about."
The lord of Storm's End turned right towards him, immediately displeased with the words of alware.
"What, some politics again? Damnit, Ned, is that why you went down here after all? Why can't we just have a hunt and some piss and wine like in the olden days anymore?"
"Robert..." Ned said, in his mildest and most oversmoothening voice.
"Yes, yes,... fine! What is it now? Is the old lion causing you trouble? He will never serve you as well as Jon did, and you and I both know it."
"It is not about Tywin Lannister", Ned clarified as soon as he could.
"No? Then what? Something about the tourney? I already told you, Ned, the Redwyne boy got himself knocked down fair and square. Perhaps he will have learnt something from it." He laughed aloud.
"It is about Princess Daenerys", Eddard said with a stone cold severity in his voice. He could already wonder what Robert might say. And he was not surprised.
Robert spat out his wine across the floor as if the name was posion to his ears.
"Seven hells, Ned! I thought we'd fought our last about this during the war. But it seems not. And you are not wise to call her that, if you value your own rule on that throne. There are still those out there who call us both usurpers. Do not feed their fires, Ned. I warn you."
Eddard took a deep breath, letting his fingers grasp into the hard wood of the direwolf throne as he prepared himself for what must come next.
"Robert... There was some further news come about the attempt on her capture at Riverrun. Baelish told me."
Robert made a sneer, as if to show what he thought of any words coming from the Master of Whispers.
"I don't see why I have to bother myself about it", he grumbled, as if the Targaryen girl was a small pebble in his shoe that he had tried to forget was there during all these years, and Ned had just made him aware of it all over again. "I do not sit on the council. You know well how I feel about all of this, Ned. For both our sakes, I thought we were better off not speaking of it."
"This has to be spoken about", Eddard said, dreading his own words as they came out of him. "Baelish has gotten word from Lord Mooton again."
"Yes? What of it? Some noble fishes missing from his river, perhaps? The Golden Company have spears, you know. Mayhaps they have begun putting pikes up on their pikes, eh? Or did they at last find the rubies I knocked off of the raper's breastplate? The Others take it, I want no part of spoils."
Robert swore and took a bite of an apple before throwing the rest away hard.
Eddard looked at the face of his friend, his old trusted brother, as if to see it one last time before its expression must once again change towards him forever.
Trust in me, Ned... Robert had said, now, and many times before. And Ned had trusted his old friend, more than was wise. But now he must ask him, and pray that his questioning did not tear up the bond between them both.
"Robert... Lord Mooton wrote to us urgently about it...-"
"Yes, yes, yes, yes! What? What did he write, the old fool?"
...
Emotions shifted on the storm lord's already blustering face, as Eddard told the tale, changing through deafness of hearing, to caution, to wariness, to nonbelief, to indignation, to anger, to a feeling of betrayal, to a brief moment of immense sadness, disappointment, and then over to a roaring red hard rage.
The banners, he repeated to his old friend, for the last time, trying with all of his calm to not seem as if he meant anything by it. And yet the question had to be posed, accusation to the feel of it or no. Can you tell me if anyone would have laid a taking of your banners?
…
"My banners?" Robert repeated, incredulous. "My bloody banners?" His face began to turn red.
"For all anyone knows they might be your grandsire's", Ned was quick to say. "I am only asking you the question."
Robert would not have it. He shook his head back and forth, and then back and forth again, going into circles, shifting in his seat and edging across the stone floor of the hall.
"No, no, no, no..."
"Robert, you need not say anything. We will begin looking to see who could have done it."
The stealing of the banners, he meant, undertakedly obvious. He could not, nay, he would not ever believe that his old friend would truly be so hateful after all these years as to want to hurt the girl on account of the crimes of her father, even if it was the Mad King. No, not for the girl. Not Robert. Viserys, yes, but not the girl. He would not kill a child. He could not, Ned did his best to tell himself over and over again inside his head, just as he regretted having even told Robert of Littlefinger's tale about the banners.
…
But it was too late. The peace and countenance of Storm's End Great Hall, and the peace between King Eddard Stark and his old friend and foster brother Lord Robert Baratheon was no more, as Ned sunk down to an introspective and anguished silence in his elaborate chair, and as the outrage and anger on Robert's face continued.
"Damnit Ned, can't you see what is all happening here? What is truly going on? " Robert was furious.
"It's Stannis, the bloody traitor! Stannis, I tell you! Stannis, of course! Why else would he have sided with the dragonspawn all those years ago, if not to ally with them, to go and bide his time while they grow up into undeedlings like their father, and then hop on over to their side like the turncloak he is?
"And now he can see it fit to challenge your reign as well, and not only that of mine, I am sure! Just wait, Ned! Just you wait! Wait another full year or less, another two years, perhaps, and I assure you, he will be coming for you in your red castle, and take it all! All for that... Fool, that... Snake... That... Stain from the breeches of his Mad Father! Damn them all, Ned! Damn them to the Seven Hells!"
Robert cast his drinking horn into the wall behind him so hard that it clanked down a whole precipice of chandeliers, that clattered loudly to the floor, knocking over a wine barrel that fortunately propped shut, but nonetheless began to roll and turned over two or three small chairs, a standing chandelier and a toppling of an elaborate stag-carved spitting pot for good measure.
CLL-LANK-CLATT-TA-RRRAAAANNGGGGG!
Ned said nothing, nothing at all, as he waited for his old friend to calm himself down. As it turned out, however, he did not. When Ned held silent for a few short moments, waiting for the candles to finish rolling and snuff themselves out or else take a flaming to the entire hall, gods forbid, Robert took it as a sign of cowardice or of disalignment, and stood up from his seat to roar even louder.
"I will NEVER give up my seat or castle to that sour old codpiece! You mark my words, Ned! I will sail out into the Narrow Sea myself and throw him down into the waves where our parents lay with my own hands if I have to! Storm's End is mine! You hear me? It's mine, gods damn it, and my brother will die before he ever sees the smoke of it again!"
Silence again.
Not a word was heard, from folk or fae, in the Great Hall of Storm's End, but Ned suspected that the first nightly shivers of a late summer storm was brewing somewhere in the dark cloudy sky outside.
This time, however, to the gods' relief, Robert did finally settle down, and to Ned's relief as well, as two terrified servants, some young page boys wearing green and brown, hurried forth to quench out the beginning flame from the candles. Robert barely gave them nor the ruckus he had caused another look, however, before turning to Ned again.
"Is that not the way of it, Ned? Can you with your own heart on the judgement bear anything else in mind about your oldest friend? Eh? Can you show it in your frosted heart that you believe in me, your friend, and not him, the traitor, as I give you my appeal?"
He was practically shaking with rage, his face turned red from drink and anger both the same, his beard spilled with the red wine among his night-black locks, and his entire being practically resting on Ned's reply on whether he would still himself the slightest, or else tear himself, his king and his own castle to shreds over it all.
"Robert... I do not believe that it was you", he finally got it out of himself.
His friend stared him straight in the eye, for a second, another brief moment, wriggling to and racking forth slightly, before finally, finally bowing down and succumbing to his own silence and shame.
Ned said nothing, as the great lord of Storm's End remembered his position, and his dignity, if he had some left.
"I am sorry, Ned. ... Truly. I know you do not. It is only the thieving turncloaks and snakes in that city of yours that constantly need to scheme and wriggle to try and destroy whatever little peace we have all made amongst ourselves.
I know that you do not blame me for it. Hells... Even I would not want the girl dead. Not as long as she is gone from my sight, and I need not hear from her ever again. You know that."
"I do", Ned said, as he hindered himself from once and for all spewing out what he truly had thought about Robert still using the word "dragonspawn" all of those years ago.
"There is someone out for us, Ned", Robert warned. "For this... Tall tale of Lord Mooton's, that you speak of. From Lord Petyr Baelish's mouth, yes... That schemeing little bird. That moneygrubber."
"I know that you do not trust him as well as you would, but...-"
"And neither should you, Ned!" Robert came to his intensity of his words once again, determination arsing in his voice.
"There is someone out to take a run with us! Stannis, or Baelish, the tweeting little shit of a bird, or someone else...
…
The dragon girl tried for capture by the Golden Company, and then married off to the Pipers. Meanwhile you have word of some treason from me, and my own bloody banners sighted at the spot. "
Robert shook his head, a decided yet weary motion, drunkened by the wine in him, yet still firm.
"This is no accident, Ned. This is only the beginning.
...
There is a war coming, Ned.", Robert assured him, his tone as sober as it could be at this late hour. "You mark my words. I don't know when, and I certain as seven hells don't know who it is that is trying to get us, or who we will be fighting before the end of it, but it's coming."
Ned sat still for a moment, as he heard his old friend confirm his worst fears.
"If that should be so... Then what are we to do? How do we fight against shadows?" He asked.
"Do you want my advice for this? Does my king truly want my advice?" Robert repeated, as he drank.
"Advice would be well", Ned said, doing his best to remain stoic in the face of his drunken friend.
"Well then... Here you have it: You take one of those ships that the traitor left you, and you sail on across the Blackwater to go and see him on his little shit of an island. And the bleeding fool prince as well.
You talk to them. You assure yourself of their fealty, you make them kneel to you, again, and again, and again, or you hand them death. That... is my advice."
"Your Grace", he finished with a tone of scorn as he bent down to the floor to pick up his goblet again and fill it up with yet another portion of dark red wine."
...
Ned and Robert both went their separate ways to bed soon after, and the lord protector of the realm tried his best to get a blunder of sleep in the stuffy warm summer night at Storm's End. His thoughts were filled with more than usual of troubles, as he gave up all thoughts of sleep after an hour or two of sweat-stained tossing and turning and lit up a torch on his bedside desk.
"Your Grace?" Jory asked.
Ned nodded silently to him, half to his face, and half into the darkness of the room and the murky dark stormland sky outside. The clouds were sweeping in from the sea already, gathering themselves before the end of summer and the beginning of autumn.
"It is a warm night", Jory said.
"I almost begin to long for winter", he allowed himself to jape, though regretted the words soon, as he felt the words his father had told him in the courtyard of Winterfell an eternity ago. The ones he had first told to Brandon, and then to Ned and Lyanna and Benjen, the ancient [ ] and promise of their house. There must always be a Stark in Winterfell. So why must I stay down here...?
He knew the answer of course. And whatever else, he could not leave the castle to anyone until Catelyn had returned. He knew that she had not liked it in the North, and would balk at the idea of returning for good. Perhaps, if he went up with Bran and Rickon, so that she could go home to see Robb and the girls... Yes, that would work...
But it included entrusting something more valuable than the seven kingdoms to the hands of his new Hand. Eddard Stark could not fathom such a notion. Whatever crimes might have been forgotten, and whatever else must still come to be for the sake of protecting the realm from the threat of war, he found deep inside his heart, the more that the thought about it, that he would rather entrust his children to a starving shadowcat than to the care of Lord Tywin Lannister. Coppers went one way and the other, to those who already had more gold than anyone had need of, and would continue to do so no matter what he did. The bricks of the Red Keep would stay as red as blood no matter for how long the direwolf of Stark waved atop its towers. Tywin Lannister could have the throne in his time if he truly so desired. But never more than that.
He saw the face of the young Joffrey, and Sansa, betrothed on the steps of the Great Sept of Baelor as they would be if the Old Lion got his choice with it. Never unless she wills it, thought Ned. Bricks and blood were not the same.
… Except for the time that they had been, of course. There was that to it as well. He thought of Lyanna again, as he had a thousand times before, dying in her bed of blood.
Promise me, Ned... Promise me. "
...
The morning came slowly, with the distant screeching of seagulls and the crashing of waves outside the windows, as he found that he had somehow had managed to collapse in his own worries and get some much-needed rest on the left side of his bed.
Ser Arys and Ser Marlon stood vigil, bidding him a good morning as Alyn came to wake him up.
After a quick and hearty breakfast with the children, during which the direwolves caused no small amount of havoc at the table to the roaring laughter of Robert and the annoyance of his two sons, they were off to hunt.
Arya wanted to come along, but he told her in a severe tone that it was far too dangerous for children to join in a hunt.
When she saw that Robert would be bringing both Eldyn and young Steffon with him on the hunt, however, she became impossible to calm down. Ned did his best to explain to her why he wanted her to stay behind and be safe, to which she protested that she had been allowed to go riding with Uncle Benjen at Winterfell, and that Bran had been with on the hunt in the Wolfswood, despite being younger than her.
Finally, when she would not relent, he sent her to the courtyard for arms training with Ser Cortnay Penrose, all the while praying that he was doing the right thing. What would Lya have done? What would Catelyn say if she were here now? She would never let Arya go with on the hunt, he knew. What would Brandon have done? Most of all, what would Brandon have said? He supposed that even Brandon would not have let a nine-year-old girl go with on the hunt, but he could not be sure.
Robert laughed when he heard about the troubles he'd been having.
"She's a wild thing, that one", he said, as he spurred his heels into his courser and pulled in by Ned's side, bedecked in his green, brown and yellow hunting clothes and with a skin of wine in hand.
"I wish that Catelyn was come back here soon", he heard himself admit from the saddle, as the gift of fatherhood weighed heavy as the crown on his heart. "I do not know what to make of all of it."
"Ah, don't worry about it, Ned", Robert waved a hand dismissively. "You're doing a fine job with the girls. Cat will be back soon. I never once heard of a Tully who stayed north of the Neck willingly."
His old friend laughed, a comforting, familiar sound which made Ned's troubles go away even just a little bit.
"If you say so...", he mumbled.
"And I'm not only saying it because you're the king!", Robert brawled with a great hearty smile. "Down here, the king is the man whomsoever fells the greatest beast in the woods. As it ever was for my kin in times past and gone."
"The old king of the woods has a crown all and of himself", Ned agreed, tyming to old memories and legends dear to his heart, of cool dark summer nights and campfires told by Robert during their time in the Vale, of the smell of mountain air and the sight of stars above. How he missed those days now.
"How far away?" He asked, angling towards the brush of the woods.
"Half a day's ride north, at the very least", Robert said. "I told you before, didn't I?"
"I'm sorry. My mind has been elsewhere", Ned apologized.
"Ah, don't sweat it, Ned. You are here now, and you at least try to listen, that's all that's important. There's nothing to help it. You Starks have always had snow in your ears. And far too many troubles. … Both for yourselves, and for your others."
He gave another laugh, a short, gruff one that almost seemed like a derisive snort, before taking the lead of the column with his horse.
"Will my king join me?" He called after Ned, as the outriders began to an uncertain trot by his side.
Eddard kicked his horse into action, and followed suit, doing his best to keep his mind on the hunt and his old friend, and not on the other thousand myriad things that occupied his mind.
They rode on for the better part of half an hour, passing by pines, fir trees, great oak trees and green ferns as high as a man's elbow before making a slowance again, and Ned saw Eldyn moving in beside his father on his shaggy stormland courser.
Robert was proud of his two boys, prouder than any father Ned had seen, and he did all he could to teach them the ways of the forest and the hunt. Just now, he was teaching Eldyn how to properly call for a deer with a specially made whistle. In his drunken blundor and excitement, however, he was taking the mouthpiece up the wrong way from its necklace, time and time again.
"I'd think it cheating to call upon a beast by its own accord", Ned said, "if only I thought you could do it properly."
Robert only waved a hand back, struggling too much with holding the reigns to his horse, the deer whistle and the wineskin to his side to make a better comeback in word.
"It's a damned nuisance is what it is! Gormon made it look smooth and all the same, damn him. He may be a good huntsman, but a craftsman of wood he is not."
"Just put a mark on it with the knife", Eldyn said, taking his father's knife from his sheath and doing so. Robert grumbled something, but agreed that it was a good idea so that they could see which side of the whistle was which. After that, he took a deep breath and made the call.
RRR-ROOOUUU... BRRR-RROUUUIIIEE...
"'Sounds like a stag, all right", Renly commented from behind. "If it were already half way to dying."
The lord of Storm's End put down the whistle again and gave a [scowling/glaring/[ ]] look back.
"I brought you on here to hunt with the king as a courtesty, and to be making a kindness to my poor younger brother", Robert warned. "Do not make me regret it, boy."
Renly was at ease, however, as always, his blue eyes seeming almost green to his gleaming forest emeral doublet, as he lazied a gloved leather hand up towards his elder brother's routine threats.
"I don't think His Grace minds my small innocent japes, do you, Ned?"
Eddard Stark considered how to reply to the younger Baratheon, in order to best balance his dignity with the closeness he felt to both Baratheon brothers, but before he could say the word, Robert got the gist of the whistle sound right.
BRRR-RRAAAAHHH...! BRRÖÖÖÖHLL!
"That's more like it", Renly observed. "You might even be able to summon a large hedgehog with that."
"Shut your mouth!" Robert said again, his face already turning pink red from the flurry of his wine and the effort of riding.
Ned had to laugh, even if only a faint flicker of his lips and a shaking of his weary head. He tried his best to forget about his troubles, and Robert and Renly were both doing their best to help him in that. For that, he was grateful. It would be a good hunt.
They came upon the stag after another two hours of riding north, making their way up through the lush green forests of the Kingswood, through beech trees and alders, huge magnificent oak trees double the size of the heart tree back at the Red Keep, over small hills and streams, through thick blueberry bushes and over fern-crested slopes where hares and roe deer leaped alike, as the hunters felled smalldeer and beast after beast alike. But there had still been no sight of the stag until they got past a clearing and into the deep forest to the northwest, when Robert's whistle met its kin.
BRRRÖÖÖÄÄAAAHHHH! The deer called from some hundred couple of feet away in the thicket of the snores and brambles, behind a twoge or more of trees making it impossible to see anything.
Ned and Robert gave eachother a look, as they both nodded and Robert signalled to Ser Jasper Cliffe to send the flank hunters out and encircle the deer from afar.
...
It took another four hours to return down to the castle with their findings, even as outriders filled up their ranks with more game for every hill they crested. Hares, wood pigeons taken by young archer boys, roe deer and red deer alike. Before long, the royal prize seemed less a crown of the hunt than a tenth of it, but Ned was glad nonetheless. It was true what Robert had said. The forest was teeming with game, and even more so as the late afternoon came, and the sun began to set.
...
When they reached all the way back to the keep again, Ser Jasper Cliffe, being the lord hunting master, announced the return of the hunt while a banner boy sounded a trumpet.
"His Grace King Eddard of House Stark and Lord Robert of House Baratheon have on this happy day caught a fine kingly stag of sixteen tines! All hail King Eddard! All hail Lord Robert! Glory to the hunt, and to the fabled bounty of the Kingswood!"
The trumpet sounded, as the guards and servants of the castle's northern gates cheered for the return of the hunting party, and column after column of riders, hunters, dogs, banner boys and knights came trodding in beneath the gatehouse. Ned and Robert rode first, alongside their children and Ser Jasper and Renly and all the others in the royal party.
After they had freshened up, the catch of the hunt was brought over to be prepared for the next day's feast. While Ned and Robert reconvened in the small corridor east of the Great Hall, named the Rainwalk, Maester Gorm came out from his chamber as if summoned by Robert's very thoughts.
"My lord! Your Grace! I see that the hunt has brought you great bounty!" The deep voice rang, as Ned heard heavy steps echoing off the stone floor, and Maester Gorm tread forth, an elaborate rain measuring instrument in one hand, and a heavy tome book on the seasons of Westeros, bound in brown leather, in the other.
Maester [Gormon/Jure/[ ]] was a large, stocky and bearded man in his middle age, somewhere between forty and fifty perhaps, and very tall and strong, only half a head shorter than Robert, with huge strong arms and hands, grey-brown hair, a short yet fluffy beard like that of owl feathers, a stubbornly inquisitive, non-trusting green gaze like a stag deer or an old shadowcat watching its human hunter from the thicket brush of the woods. He had crooked yellowish teeth with a glug in between his beard when he spoke, a large gourd-like nose, broad cheeks and forehead, bushy eyebrows and a toweringly wise yet stoneful and demeanour, as if he knew all of the secrets of the Old Gods of the forest yet did not believe them to be of importance to anyone else other than for the work of the day, Ned thought.
As luck would have it, for the hunting-loving lord of Storm's End, Maester Gormon was an expert on hunting and the beasts of the forest. He was from the northeastern parts of the Rainwood himself, very close by, only a few miles to the south along the misty forest-covered green coast of the Stormlands, and had trained at the Citadel with his specialty being that of beasts, forestry and agriculture, as well as weather, astronomy and herbology. More often than not, the large and sturdy Maester Gorth would accompany Robert like his grey second incarnation, tagging along with his parchment scrolls, weather instruments and whatever else his acolytes carried for him at the far back end of the hunting column.
"Ah! Gormon", Robert greeted as the huge maester stopped by the long table at the center of the room and put his things down on it. "I would thank you for your latest gift to us, but it took the skill of my boy to overcome it", he muttered.
"What? How so, my lord?" Gormon said, surprised, his bearded face hovering over the lantern he held in his huge hand.
"I fear he did not know which way to angle it", Ned said, trying to hide his own amusement at his old friend's embarrassment.
"It was put with the rope in the right middle, and you know it!" Robert stormed. "Bah! Have you what you will make of it. Just make sure to give it to a woodcrafter the next time, instead of making it yourself."
Maester Gorm looked befuddled for a moment, but then quickly nodded,bowing down with hus huge head that almost seemed to wreckle at the chandelier above him. Ned began to wonder if he was even taller than Robert for a second, but then shied away the notion.
Clumsy was what he was, most of all. He could not bear his size comfortably, but rather seemed to have to con[ ] his every step, even as his massive hands swavered on top of the pages to his book.
"As for the rains, my lord..." Gorm began.
"Oh, yes..." Robert gulstered up. "I had almost forgotten. Well. What have you found?"
"If my calculations are correct, my lord, the rains will most like continue for at least another fortnight, almost every day, before there comes a dry period again, with modest rainfall perhaps every three or four days, and then there will come a storm front again from the southeast. My correspondence from Dorne and Lys has made me more than sure of it."
"Ah, you wouldn't need Dorne to tell you about that. What about your contraption?"
Robert waved a hand at the large glass cupboard behind the maester on the table, wherein stood a strange measuring device. It looked much like a balancing scales but with transparent glass cylinders enclosing eachother in diminishing size, as well as some bronze coils, horsehair threads, and a transparent net of sorts.
"Take a look at this, Ned. He says he can predict the coming of autumn with it. As good as they can at the Citadel, he reckons." Robert sounded amused but intrigued.
"Well, I cannot be sure, my lord, Your Grace, but it's possible... It is based on the same principles, but in a more distilled form... I measure the humidity of the air over a period of several moons and come to my conclusions therefrom..." The maester said, as he moved to open the cabinet and carefully pull the contraption out.
"Fascinating", Eddard said. "Would you mind showing it to us?"
"I will certainly show you, Your Grace, though I fear it is not much to see. But here... are my previous notes and reckoning charts for the past moon."
Ned glanced over the book, which was divided into days, nights and daynes, as well as fortnights and moons.
"There will continue to be a great surplus of game in these forests for another year at least. The boars will continue to feed from the acorns abound, and the stags from all the leaves and berries. It is truly a blessed summer of plenty still."
"You hear that, Ned? Many more hunts before autumn is here!"
"Even in autumn, whenever it so shall come, my lord", maester Gorm put in, "there will be many beasts to fell. I am from these lands myself, Your Grace. Well, from the northern parts of the Rainwood, in truth. And I have never in my life seen more life in the woods than these past years. It is best they are felled by autumn as well. The largest stags often don't make it all the way through winter, if it is altogether too long, as they require far more food to survive."
"Well, this stag will be making it, I can swear on that", Robert said, and slapped his big belly. "Hah! We have stocked up for enough for a seven year winter, is that not right, Gormon?"
"It is, my lord. Your Grace. My calculations suggest that the end of summer will come within seven moons, and thereafter an autumn which will last for about two years. After that, the winter will finally come, and last another six or seven years, despite what some might say. Let us pray we will make it through sound and safe."
"Aye", Robert agreed, nodding, as he turned to Ned, "but if we are to survive, we will need to take care of our problems as well."
His tone became hushed, as he turned to face his friend and king.
"You remember what I told you last night, Ned, do you not? About the...-" He hindered his tongue, and began again. "The fool prince?"
"I remember, Robert", Ned replied.
"I am sure that I do not need to remind my king what needs to be done, if he wants to hang on to his precious uncomfortable throne.
You must go and make him heel. The both of them. Go to Dragonstone. I know you don't like it, Ned, but take my advice for it. Speak, if you can. Speak some sense into the fool, and to my fool brother as well, if I should continue on calling him that. Or I assure you, our problems will only grow in time as you let them."
The sky far outside made a crashing sound, as a storm swept in across the grey cloud cover of the castle. And then the rains came all over again, washing the doubts of the advice away."