Our task is clear: to guard, not to interfere.
And you try to be everywhere at once,
And sit on our shoulders and look brave,
So it's no wonder they draw us with gloomy faces.
(c) Igor Rasteryaev
Lord Eddard did not expect a reply to his letter from his son, preferring instead that he carry out his orders, and besides, a young lord should not have so much free time to correspond with his relatives. But Lord Eddard expected even less to receive a letter from Winterfell, not from his son or wife, but from Maester Luwin.
"My lord, do not abandon your duties, show divine mercy," wrote the perplexed and confused maester. "There is no steward, no stable master, no commander of the guard (well, there is one, but he is no longer with us), and soon there will be no castellan or master-at-arms either. You see, the young lord has been gathering men and planning a campaign to the Riverlands, which has been invaded by these villains led by Gregor Clegane, and he has had no time for anything else. He planned the campaign well: the moat at Kaylin is occupied, there are outposts on the King's Road, the two roads to Sigard Ryd have been checked, and no one will cut off his communications.
Your middle son's health is improving; he has begun to feel his legs, but his muscles are still stiff and weak. The lady is planning to take him to King's Landing in the next few days, where, they say, new master healers have appeared. Do not withhold your kind advice, my lord. Write to the lady in White Harbour that it is not worth offering a reward for the capture of the black magician Quiburn, even if they say he can raise the dead.
And since your three-year-old son is now lord of the castle, with me, weak and elderly Lyvin, as his advisor, I beg you to show mercy and appoint us at least a steward, a castellan and a groom from the attached list.
Lord Eddard clasped his head in his hands and even wanted to cry a little. His son's quick thinking was hereditary; Eddard had won his victories in the civil war in the same way, but now Eddard did not remember that at the time he himself had cared little about who Benjen appointed castellan or stable master without his input. Eddard now thought about how his son, without saying a word to him, without asking for advice or information from the capital, had gone against a dangerous enemy, and it would be good if Robb joined forces with someone like Brynden Tully or Roose Bolton, who could advise him not to seek glory and a decisive battle, but to attack enemy troops with superior forces at night, trampling the sleeping and half-clothed enemies under their hooves.
The gods spared Eddard, and he did not yet know that yesterday his daughters had already been in a heroic and almost hopeless battle, miraculously surviving and escaping the worst fate that could have awaited them in the clutches of the Mountain of Clygan, And so Lord Eddard, unaware of the full extent of his misfortune, lamented his wife, who was once again entertaining strange ideas, this time to ride to King's Landing and leave Winterfell to Rickon.
As always, the chronicler, who had recently reappeared at the Red Keep and, judging by his appearance, had already dealt with the box of provisions, visited the lord, who was burdened with heavy thoughts. The chronicler brought with him a bottle of sweet, viscous ice wine, which is made in the North from grapes damaged by frost and which the chronicler had obviously wheedled out of the hand's steward, and settled down on the sofa by the door, groaning under his heavy body.
"I have a new story for you, Lord Hand," said the chronicler, and Eddard thought that even if the story did not contain a veiled solution to his problems, he would at least laugh at it. "Good wine, my lord. How long have I been fed tales of sweet summer wines from the south, imbued with summer and sunshine? The only sweet wine I found in the south was a Dornish port, and even that was white, not golden. But the icy wine comforted my soul. If only you had some icy cider...
"I think we have some," recalled Lord Eddard, who drank only dry table wines and left dessert for the ladies. "They make raspberry wine in the Reach, if you have such a sweet tooth."
"Send a note to the storekeeper, Lord Hand," the chronicler perked up.
"Tell us your story," Lord Eddard smiled at the childish chronicler, and the chronicler did not need to be asked twice.
"Long ago, back in Arren's time, when there was order in the land, Jon Arren began to grow old. Of course, no one noticed this; many lords considered Arren immortal, but Arren himself did not think so. And so Arren was walking down the corridor, thinking sad thoughts: that his son was small and sickly, that his wife, the Lady of the Vale, would turn out even worse than his young son, or maybe just the devil himself." And then Varys came up to him with a pile of anonymous letters, each one primly written with all the gossip he had heard. Arren felt so sick that he grabbed Varys by the collar, leaned close to his ear, and said confidentially but firmly:
"I'm going to die, Varys," and then you're screwed."Come now, Lord Hand," Varys stammered, and even his treacherous thoughts disappeared, that if one Hand could die, then why couldn't the other... No matter how many Hands there were, what mattered was that he himself was screwed! Arren said so, and Arren doesn't throw words to the wind.
"Exactly, Varys," Arren said insistently. "If I'm gone, in a year, or two, you're screwed.
"Come now, my lord...
"Ass, Varys!
And then Varys picked up the hem of his robe and blew Arren across the corridor! And why wouldn't he, when Arren himself promised that, first, he would die, and second, that you would be in trouble after that. Either Eddard would get Varys, or Stannis would, and there was nothing in the world more terrifying to Varys than a just man. Take, for example, Varys's spy boys, who were mute. What would a just and conscientious man do to them? Well, maybe not the right hand, but at least Prince Lionel...
And Arren will bark at him like he did fifteen years ago on the battlefield:
"ASS!!
Varys only came to his senses at the Great Sept, he almost repented."
"If Lord Varys were still master of whispers and not sitting in a dungeon, you would have to be arrested for slander against the highest officials of the state," Eddard warned the chronicler. "How would you prove that Varys cuts out the tongues of little children?
Lord Eddard was a father of many children and loved them dearly, and confirmation of such an accusation would surely awaken the civil war general in him, to whom Varys would confess all his sins and intrigues without even waiting for the arrival of Roose Bolton, who was always ready to serve in such matters.
"You talk to Varys, Lord Hand," suggested the chronicler. "You can start gently, perhaps he will confess of his own accord, not seeing any unforgivable sin in his actions. I have my suspicions because one man in the dungeons said to another, 'I need gold and fifty more birds,' and the other replied, 'Those you want are hard to find; they are too young to know how to write.' Only a mute spy needs to know how to write to report to his master, and if the spy is too young, who will dare to loosen the tongue of a mute without thinking that he can write his confession?
The chronicler paused and looked at Eddard, who was deep in thought, already recalling Arya's story and the phrase that had been uttered both in it and by the chronicler: "If one right hand can die, why can't the other?" Arya did not repeat the dialogue about the birds to her father, and it was now impossible to ask her if there had been such a dialogue, but the phrase and the dungeons coincided in both stories.
"I just love quiet places, my lord," the chronicler lied easily, giving an explanation for his knowledge that was easy to believe.
"And I think you are a dangerous man," said Lord Eddard, but the chronicler raised his hands slightly, as if his large and sinful belly were surrendering to his right hand.
"He was too funny for such a profession," the chronicler quoted an unknown poet from Westeros. "I am only dangerous to sweet wines, strong beer, and delicious meat. You see, I've run out of wine. Please write a note for half a dozen different bottles and a pound of black caviar; the story was short, and I can't think of anything else."
On his way to the curtain separating the worlds, the chronicler could not resist the temptation and passed by Varys's chamber.
"Zooopa, Varys!" the chronicler howled in a grave voice. "Zooopa to you! Zooopa!"
Tyrion was the unexpected beneficiary of Thoros' original prayers, with which the red priest bravely tormented the ears of the deity. Tyrion simply enjoyed conversing with the serious and well-read boy, bringing him books, and once, feeling that he had now earned the right to friendly, hopeless attempts, Tyrion tapped the immobilised leg near the kneecap, not quite understanding why this had occurred to him — a secretive deity, unwilling to force people to believe in him, preferred to perform miracles through the hands of others. Bran's leg suddenly twitched, and Tyrion felt an unfounded confidence that the boy's condition was not so bad, with which confidence he first went to Maester Luwin and nearly sacrificed his knees to Westerosi science, which knew nothing yet of tendon reflexes. Maester Luwin, after tapping Tyrion and himself thoroughly, devised a somewhat barbaric and completely pointless therapy for Bran, but the deity working through his methods did not care what veil he hid behind. The therapy gradually worked, and Luwin, with Tyrion as his guinea pig and part-time assistant, became the best people in Westeros in Catelyn's eyes, despite the modest results, while R'hllor, Lord of Light, was only annoyed by Thoros' lack of faith, who did not believe in prophetic dreams, saw a figure in the flames, and continued to pester the God of Flame and Shadow with his absurd but sincere prayers.Luwin was a physician with many years of experience, kind and attentive to his patients, and he quickly noticed when their home-grown therapy stopped working. R'hlaren turned his attention to other matters, believing that Toros had gotten what he asked for and that he would not stop praying until Bran grew up and got married. Perhaps this characterised the Lord of Light as a Great Slacker, giving his followers what they prayed for, but not generously, just enough to keep them quiet — but Lyvin's unflinching report to his mistress that he had done everything in his power characterised him as an honest, fearless, but not very subtle man. Unexpectedly, when he heard the name Kviberna in response, Luwin almost fell at his mistress's feet, and when she decided to take her son to King's Landing for further treatment, he could not object, only praising Lord Eddard for his letter in which he forbade her to leave the castle with an old man and a three-year-old child and ordered his wife not to leave until Robb returned.
Tyrion had no natural inclination for medicine, but he had a knack for engineering and a good imagination, so when Lyanna stopped pestering Bran, who had given up on helping with his treatment, Robb returned from his campaign, more embarrassed than wounded in his glorious battles, and Catelyn gathered herself and Bran to set off on their journey. Tyrion, taking advantage of his new position, had two crutches made for Bran, tied them crosswise to his shoulders with towels, and it turned out that even with his barely functioning legs, Bran could stand without fear of falling, move around somewhat, and even shoot a bow.
"Wait, you'll learn to fence too," promised the cheerful Tyrion, and began to tell the boy an endless story he made up on the spot: about a one-legged sailor named John Silver, who skilfully moved around the deck on a crutch even in a storm, about his adventures, authority and fame, and gradually the originally gloomy character turned into a noble sea robber, and Bran decided to go to Dragonstone to Admiral Stannis Baratheon after King's Landing.
"And in White Harbor we'll buy you a foul-mouthed parrot," concluded one of his stories, the hooligan Tyrion, and Bran laughed — now he slept peacefully at night, and instead of three-eyed crows, terrible predictions and endless falls, he dreamed of the sea, adventures and military glory, like a normal boy.
"What kind of foul-mouthed parrot?" the Three-Eyed Raven exclaimed, peering into Bran's dreams, and cursed long, obscenely and elaborately — first work as a right hand for half a century, then as Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, and you'll learn enough. "Is that damn dwarf talking about me? What do you mean, I'll learn to read maps and chart a course, and then I'll become a pirate, sail to Slaver's Bay and show them the dragon's mother? What do you mean, to hell with your tundra, we're going to the Summer Sea? I saved that brat and now he's a burden on me, I even opened his third eye... He'll cause trouble, not to mention destroy frigates and fortress walls. And who will reveal family secrets, expose villains and foil the plans of the Great Other?" And the Three-Eyed Raven's gaze turned to the future. "Mother Blackwood, are you serious?
***
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