Lord Arryn pondered over the letter that had been sent to him. It was an odd sort, packed in an envelope that was unopenable without tearing the paper and revealing that it had been tampered with. The rider had been quite guarded about the identity of the sender, but had handed the letter over either way.

Now Jon knew just why the rider had been so nervous. The letter was from Tywin Lannister, proposing a betrothal in order to cement an alliance between the Westerlands and the rebel forces. The letter made some very reasonable points. With the war going on, it was not likely to end until either the Baratheons, Stark and Arryns, or the Targaryens were wiped out. In the event of a victory for the rebels, Robert was the next closest in line for the throne, given his Targaryen blood through princess Rhaella two generations before.

Tywin had proposed his daughter Cersei to become Robert's wife. Jon Arryn was sorely tempted to accept there and then, but Robert was the lord paramount of the Stormlands, and Jon could not accept an offer of this magnitude on his behalf.

Jon tucked the letter into the fold of his doublet getting up from the desk in the Solar he had been using since descending down to the bloody gate and its surrounding land. The full might of the Vale's forces had been gathered, and Jon Arryn was getting them ready to move from their own kingdom into the war that was raging in the rest of the continent. Ned had sent a raven from Winterfell weeks before, telling his foster-father of the army that was being built. The North had so far gathered twenty-thousand men, with more set to gather at Winterfell once the winter ended and spring bloomed.

Jon Shifted through the reports on his desk. The Stormlands army headed by Robert had last been spotted past Bitterbridge months ago, heading north towards Riverrun. If Jon Arryn were a man with any predisposition towards gambling, he would bet that Robert was leading his forces there, either expecting to find Eddard waiting for him, or using it to march up the river road onto the kingsroad.

Luckily for the Robert and his forces, Hoster Tully had not yet declared a side in the rebellion. Brandon Stark had been set to marry his eldest daughter Catelyn before his death, and so by tradition Ned would have to take up his older brother's commitments. Still, with the war raging, and the very real posibility that they could lose looming overhead, house Tully would not be foolish to simply disolve the betrothal and declare for the dragons. The Riverlands owed a great deal to the Targaryen dynasty, not the least of which was their very freedom from the Ironborn who had enslaved their countrymen under house Hoare. Jon was not so foolish to believe that the Riverlands would be united in the decision of their liege lord, no matter what choice he did make.

The riverlords were a stubborn and independent lot, mostly due to the fact that many like the Reach the most powerful of them could counter each other in almost all ways. While Riverrun and house Tully stood at the head of the kingdom, it did so almost by name alone, as whatever they decided, it could be countered and matched by the houses who disagreed with them.

As such, politics in the Riverlands, much like the Reach, were a delicate struggle between many different powers, most of whom did not get along and would take any opportunity to gain whatever advantage they needed to overthrow their rivals.

Their support however, was nothing small, and Jon knew that the first step to securing it was making an inquiry to lord Hoster about the state of his Northern ward's new betrothal.

Quickly and quietly, he pulled out a series of parchments and began writing. One would go to Riverrun, informing Hoster of his duty to unhold the betrothal with house Stark, but not threatening him, which would likely only alienate the man. The other would go to Eddard in Winterfel, and if he was not there, then there were instructions to have the message sent on to wherever he was. As he wrote, Jon found that he disliked every second of it. Ned had been so happy with lady Dayne, they personalities so contrary but melding so well. He had watched them dance at one of the feasts Robert threw in the wake of a good hunt, and he had spent a good portion of the night laughing with the man as Ned and Ashara had danced and laughed the night away.

The lord of the Vale tried to get across his sorrow in the letter, and he hoped that Ned would understand that duty was as much a chain as it was an honour. Duty was the sacrifice of the lord in order to bring peace to his people, just as the peasants celebrated that peace by providing for the nobles. One could not exist without the other, and Jon hoped that he had taught his wards the value of doing one's duty, even if they did not always like it. They had seen what happened when one forsook duty for selfishness, and it had stolen the lives of thousands of men so far.

Varys found himself utterly frustrated as his informants provided him with nothing. Of course, he knew that Robert Baratheon's army was heading north, and seeing the route it was taking, he had advised lord Connington to intercept the rebels at the Stony Sept in the Riverlands before they could reach the river road for a straight route to the Vale and the North. There were several problems with the advancements of the royal strategy however, one of the largest of which was the so called 'Echoes'. The small company of sellswords had grown and shrunk to count half a hundred, but was quickly gaining members. Not only that, but the founding soldiers of the 'Echoes', who were known to be marcher knights that had honed themselves fighting bandits and Dornishmen, had begun to aid in training the army at large. It would be months before they would be able to bring the entire army up to their exceptional abilities, but any minor improvement would be detrimental to the success of the royalist army that Jon Connington would be bringing to destroy the rebels.

The capital and its surrounding lands would soon be emptied of more than twenty-five-thousand men by the new moon, and while such a number was a drop in the bucket in the heaving mass of people that was King's Landing, the mass of fighting men would be their best, and possibly only, chance to destroy Robert Baratheon before he was able to link with the remaining rebel armies of the Vale and North. Ravens had been sent repeatedly to the Westerlands and Casterly Rock.

However, more were sent to the Riverlands and its lord paramount, Hoster Tully. According to Varys' little birds in the Riverlands, Hoster had begun to call his banners, but only those lords who were closest and most loyal to the tenuous lords of the Riverlands. Many of the other lords, like the Mootons and Darrys, had not been given orders to marshal themselves, which was suspicious considering that houses like the Darrys were firecely loyal to the Targaryens. Such a lack of communication to them made Varys worry for the loyalty of the old trout. If the Riverlands were to side with the rebels, then they would outnumber even the Reach's full might. In such a case victory was looking more and more far away.

Varys had made sure to bring the information to both the king and prince Rhaegar, though he had declined to inform the king of the lack of mobalisation of the more loyal forces. He had only informed the king that in accordance with his demands, the Riverlands were gathering their banners. Aerys had been overjoyed, and by that he meant that the king had demanded that another prisoner be brought to him for burning and had then retired to queen Rhaella's rooms for another night spent violating his queen. Varys shuddered at the thought, though he no longer had the instruments necessary for sexual activity, the idea of forcing someone into such acts as the king did to his own wife was one he found sincerly distasteful.

Unlike his father, Rhaegar had been given the full breadth of information out of the Riverlands, and had been less than gleeful. He had ordered that missives be send to loyalist houses, overriding the actions of lord Tully, calling them to gather all the fighting men they could. Varys had obliged of course, and had made sure that each raven had left with the appropriate message. Grand Maester Pycelle had been rather slow in the matter, bumbling and stuttering as he always did, and Varys wondered not for the first time whether the man would ever retire from his position and make room for a man of fewer years and greater confidence.

Regardless of the changes in the war effort, the master of whispers found himself focused on the Red Keep, rather than the realm that he was meant to observe. Lord Kurt Ambrose had spent the last few weeks amidst the royal court. The man was a commander of almost unmatched ability, as he was able to order around the castle and its servants without holding any formal position of authority within its organization. Already he had made changes, bringing in more and more of the younger orphans of the city to serve as cupbearers, kitchen workers and other such jobs. Varys himself found that many of his birds were being drawn into the royal keep, and while that allowed him greater view of the nobility, it blinded him more to the goings on of the city.

Most audacious however, was not the man's change of the running of the Red Keep, but how he had accomplished it. It appeared that the ear lady Jane had gained from queen Rhaella had been used in many a way by the lord of the Plataea. What lord Kurt spoke of out loud, was whispered again into the ear of the queen, and with the king very much disinterested in the running of the kingdoms, much less his city, and the prince focused on the war effort, she was able to bring about changes with a power not seen since the good queen Alysanne.

But the man was not just influencing the keep. The gossips of the castle had had a field day with the walk that lord Ambrose and queen Rhaella had taken through the gardens, acompanied only by ser Jaime Lannister, ser Robert of the Spartans, and lady Jane of the Spartans. of course, Varys had had the group followed, and found the truthfully nothing of importance had been discussed. Apparently lord Ambrose had been interested in a young beggar girl who he had encountered on his first trip to the city. The four year old child had been taken into the growing household of the Spartans, and was to become a part of lady Jane's entourage under the tutilage of the queen.

It appeared that about a half a dozen children had been selected, between the ages of four and six namedays, to enter into lady Jane's service and possibly even be moved to the Plataea should she return. The queen seemed quite enthused with the opportunity to help lady Jane form her own household, though she had apparently wondered why it was that they had chosen such young children. The lord of Fair Isle had not offered a response to that query.

Nevertheless, after nearly three weeks of attendance in King's Landing, lord Ambrose seemed ready to leave, entrusting his Spartans with the care of ser Jaime and lady Jane with the formation of her household, rather strangely named delta company.

Varys at times wondered at the strange words that the people of the Plataea used. He had heard from his birds on Fair Isle that the Terras would say strange maxims or phrases at each other. A pair of guards had been caught by one of his informants shouting the words Semper Fi at another group of men and women, who had responded with a rancourous cheer. Were they a greeting? A cheer? Perhaps a code of some sort. He would have to have his people try to infiltrate the castle of house Terra. Hopefully, he could come to understand just how it was that they seemed immune to the eyes of his birds, no matter how many he raised to spy on them.

Eddard Stark marched with near twenty-thousand men down the neck, leading his men down the king's road and into the south as the first Stark to do so since the dance of dragons. As he marched, he reached to pat the neck of his horse as it whinnied and shook its head. There was a knot in Ned's stomach as he looked behind him to see the thousands of man who he now led.

'Lord of Winterfell' Eddard himself of his new title. With his father imprisoned and possibly dead alongside his brother, he was now the lord of Winterfell and all the North. The world had changed so much in the last year. Just a year ago, he had been celebrating the victory of the Spartans of house Terra at the tourney of Harrenhal, and now his sister was siding with the dragon kings as the mad man who sat the throne and his unfaithful son plotted to destroy his family.

He could still remember Benjen's look of fear when he had told Ned that the banners had gathered. Word had taken time to reach every house of the North, and more time than that had been needed to bring the men in from every disperate corner of their massive land. The North was larger than the other six kingdoms of Westeros combined, and so where the Stormlands and Vale had gathered their banners in months or even weeks, it had taken the North nearly half a year from the beginning of the rebellion to build up an army worth the name to take part in the battle for his house's own survival.

'All this death, all for Lyanna.' Ned mused to himself, for it was her disappearance that had set off these horrid events. 'Disappearance' however, might not have been the right word. It was an elopement, that much had been made clear by the letters and missives sent out from the capital. When Jon Arryn had first received the message from the king to hand over his two wards to 'royal justice' he had been afraid for a moment. Honour demanded that lord Arryn hand over the two to the crown, but honour also demanded that Jon not release his wards into danger so long as he could help it. Such a situation put into question what was held in higher regard, the oath to a king, or an oath between men.

In the end, Jon had decided that the oath that he had made to the two boys' fathers was greater than his duty to a king who was so mad as to imprison one of his lord paramounts after his son had commited a great offence to abandon his lawful wife and take his own cousin's betrothed as his own. Ned for a moment allowed his anger to take him. Lyanna had always been a free spirit, the wolf's blood ran wild in her veins the same as Brandon, but now her desires, once charming and endearing to her older brothers, had sown chaos across the realm and sent thousands to their deaths.

'She spoke of Robert's unfaithfulness; 'Love is sweet, dearest Ned, but it cannot change a man's nature'.' He mulled over his sister's words. 'What nature of faithfulness had Lyanna found lacking in Robert, that was so abundant in Rhaegar?'

He shook the thought from his head, he would have little time to contemplate such things in the days ahead. War raged, and the North had descended to avenge themselves and their unjustly punished lord and heir. Along the kingsroad they marched, seeking the crossroads that would take them along the roads into the Vale, and from that, to wherever Robert was.

"My lord."

The guards around Ned shifted and readied themselves, making sure that no threat would approach their lord without first going through them. Ned waved them down however when he saw that it was a rider.

"Approach." He said, never one for long sentiments.

The man slowed to a trot, coming close and handing a pair of sealed scrolls over to Ned. As he eyes the two sigils, he felt his ire rise. The first of the two was sealed in the wax and crest of house Arryn. It appeared that old Jon had information to pass to the young acting lord of the North. The other letter however was the one that made him clench his teeth. The wax holding the letter bore the emblem of the Targaryens, but was in a deep grey that Ned recognised as being used by his house.

It appeared that Lyanna was again trying to reach out, or Rhaegar was trying through his new wife.

Ned shoved the Targaryen letter into his saddlebag, he would read it later when he was alone in his tent for the night. For the moment though, he opened the letter from Jon, scanning its contents. His eyes widened as he read, and a pit formed in his stomach.

'Marriage, to Bran's betrothed...' How was he supposed to do such a thing? By all accounts that he had heard, Catelyn Tully had been in love with his brother, and though Brandon was a wild man and prone to visiting the beds of many women, Ned had hoped that his brother would not dishonour his lawful wife after their wedding and the two would live well. Now he was to marry a woman he had not ever even met. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, reminding himself of the truth. The marriage was demanded by tradition, duty and necessity. The Tullys were the lords of the Riverlands, and would bring men to their side. Not only that, but Brandon's death and the lack of consumation of their relationship meant that honour and duty demanded that he uphold his brother's commitments.

For a single second, a vision of purple eyes, pale skin and black hair dominated his mind. A smiling face that coached laughter from his normally stoic person and made him, according to Robert at least, 'Not so bloody grim all the damn time'.

He regretted that he had had to leave Ashara, he had hoped to bring her to Bran and Catelyn's wedding, introduce her to his father and possibly broach the topic of betrothal. It was an advantagious match for both of them, and their love would only make the union more palatable given the strategic values that their marriage could bring about. Brandon's marriage would bring the Tullys to their side. Lyanna would become the lady of Storm's End, and Ned likely somewhere south, between the Daynes and the lands that Robert always promised he'd grant him if he so asked. It would no doubt please his father.

Now those plans were gone, disappeared over the horizon as Ashara's ship had when he had left for the North and she had traveled back to Dragonstone to be with princess Elia. Ned banished the vision of the Dornish beauty from his mind, resolving himself to carry on with the duty he had been given as leader of the North. If he continued to picture her, iridescent with the morning sun framing her from behind with a halo of light, there was a chance he might abandon it all and race to her, however slight.

It would still be a few days, maybe a week before they arrived at the crossroads between the kingsroad and riverroad, where Jon's letter also mentioned that their two forces would converge. The letter had also made mention of further information, but was not the kind that could be discussed over letter.

Ned resigned himself to keeping track of the army. Making sure that the men got their daily allotment of food and water, making sure that their pay was delivered where it was necessary and ensuring that the petty disputes between his lords did not evolve beyond such, for the last thing that he needed was animosity amongst his bannermen that might hinder them in battle. This was a war for the survival of the house of Stark, and to succeed, the North would need to be united in a way it hadn't been since the time of Aegon's conquest. Where once, the whole of the North had been willing to face down dragon-fire for their king. That North had knelt beside a Stark lord, sycophants and doubters alike. He would need his men to stand with him in the same way if he was to win this war, and more than that, recover the family that the dragon kings had stolen from him.

Another chapter. I'm trying to get these out at least once a week on Wednesday so hopefully I'll have a more consistent update time.

And the war rages on. How do you guys like the progression. I have seen your reviews and I would like to point out that Kurt has not decided to kill the royal family, and that he also has plans to kill the rebels. The problem is that there are no rebel babies to include so there's no opportunity for comparable brutality outside of Renly.

We also see Jane's talk about Rhaella in earlier chapters, which I had hoped would clue people into the idea that mudering the entire family was not the main or prefered strategy, just a possible contingency that was in place. I highlight both the most likely option, and the most extreme.