What kind of commission is this, Creator,
To be the father of an adult daughter!(c) Griboedov
The family finally decided to spare Lord Eddard a little, and wrote to him from Winterfell only to say that his daughters had arrived home. No one was in a hurry to write a second letter telling him that they had left with Lionel for the Wall, and Eddard's thoughts were occupied with negotiations with Casterly Rock, where Lord Tywin had found the severed head of his favourite horse in his bed that morning and decided not to get involved with these northern savages, especially since vague rumours had reached him that one of his diversionary detachments had been eaten by man-eating wolves along with their armour, the second had been trampled to death at night by northern ghosts on horseback, and the third had been shot with crossbows by northern princesses. Of the three rumours, Tywin was forced to admit that the last one was the most plausible, and when his troops disappeared in the Riverlands, he realised that it was impossible to fight such people, or rather, such creatures from hell.
Then Lord Eddard turned his attention to the state treasury, which was in even worse shape, because the noble and just Eddard did not demand partial forgiveness of the debt from Tywin, but only refused to pay the extortionate interest. The Iron Bank still demanded its interest, and the treasury filled slowly, even though the young king was simple and unpretentious, seeking real adventure instead of tournaments, and drinking free spring water instead of expensive wines, so that even his right hand could have been grateful to him.
Therefore, Lord Eddard was temporarily uninterested in the affairs of the Night's Watch and even forgot the style of Jorah Mormont's letters: Mormont usually asked for money and donations in his letters, starting with small needs so as not to scare off potential donors, but once a donor decided in his heart to help the valiant rangers with a small donation, since they needed so little, the letter gradually revealed all their new needs and shortages, and the powerful lord, unprepared to read such messages, paragraph by paragraph, was drawn into the role of saviour of the Night's Watch, mentally promising to give the Watch twice as much, and as a result, starting with a small act of generosity, the donor ended up giving a large sum. This tactic was particularly effective when combined with a messenger who read the letter aloud, always volunteering to read before a large gathering of bored armourers and guards in the castle, and then silently recording the promises made by the lord who had taken the bait.
In a letter delivered to Eddard by a raven, Jorah Mormont did not ask for money, but used the same tactic to avoid leaving the realm orphaned and to prepare the lord's right hand for the harsh reality of fatherhood.
"My lord," Mormont wrote, as he had done in the past. "I hereby inform you that your children and the young lord have gone beyond the Wall, accompanied by the experienced scout Qhoren Halfhand..."
Lord Eddard looked up from the letter and prayed sincerely to the Old Gods.
"The squad has been tasked with reaching the Frostfangs, determining the strength of the Wildlings mobilised there, avoiding combat with enemy patrols and pickets whenever possible, and using stealth and military ingenuity to capture a 'tongue'," continued Jorah Mormont. "I find the combat training of the detachment to be adequate for the task at hand: as reported to the young lord in the previous letter to King's Landing, your son was the first in several centuries to fight the ghouls and emerge victorious, demonstrating resourcefulness, initiative, and personal courage..."
"It seems he was miraculously left alive," Lord Eddard translated the last phrase from military to human language, and the letter did not disappoint him. "I didn't know about Mormont's letter to Lionel. Apparently, my dear children don't want to worry me. Well, at least now it's clear why the three of them were sent to the Wall — probably Arya and Sansa rushed to save their brother. That's how it should be, that's what I taught them, and finally they both understood. But now there are consequences..."
"Faced with an unexpected enemy who had already killed several men and who did not lose his fighting ability even when cut in half," wrote Mormont, "Jon fought to the last, inflicting numerous wounds on the ghouls that would have killed a normal man, but they couldn't kill the dead, and then he figured out how to use fire against the undead. Jon's health is also surprisingly strong; when we found him in the ruins, we thought he wouldn't survive."
Lord Eddard poured himself a drink and drank it down, because Mormont's letter showed no sign of ending.
"Ten days ago, His Grace also encountered the undead in battle, having gone alone on an unauthorised sortie beyond the Wall," Mormont continued, probably not thinking about how acute the question of succession to the throne was now and how Lionel's life determined whether Eddard would be able to hold on to his victory over the Westerlands, or whether Tommen, Tywin's grandson, would ascend the throne and a war between the North and the West would break out in earnest. "Beyond the Wall, the young king encountered a band of wights led by the Other and destroyed them completely, sustaining only minor injuries. It would be difficult to believe such a victory, but the sword of the slain King Lionel of the Clegane Mountain, with which he arrived at the Wall, speaks for itself. Some of the more reckless fighters are afraid of him after his return from beyond the Wall.
Lord Eddard could not rejoice at the death of the hated Mountain and the fact that the Lannisters had lost their best fighter and saboteur, because he understood the price that had been paid for this victory. Eddard knew the situation in the Riverlands and his daughters well, and he already suspected that the duel was unlikely to have taken place in the tournament arena and that Sansa and Arya were unlikely to have been at a safe distance from it. "And the Others, damn them," thought Lord Eddard. It was easier to believe that than to wait for new surprises. "We must raise the North. And write to Stannis, tell him how they're fighting the Others, with obsidian or something." And in the rest of his letter, Jorah Mormont confirmed his suspicions about his daughters.
"Do not worry about your daughters, my lord," wrote Mormont in a more human tone, like a father to a father, but he did not fail to remind him of the reckless adventures of Lord Eddard's daughters and the young king, and also shared his guess that it was not really any of his business. "Your daughters will not perish beyond the Wall. Yoren was with them in battle and says they shoot well, behave even better, and don't rush into danger. And I can see for myself that the king loves them both and won't put them in danger. I think that's why he tried to settle things with the Mountain in a duel, but then things got so heated that everyone had to fight."
As was often the case, Lord Eddard, bewildered and alarmed by Mormont's letter, was visited by his favourite chronicler. Eddard had already begun to wonder where he had gone, having left only six bottles behind last time. This time, the chronicler brought with him and laid out a small midnight supper before the pensive right-hand man, placing transparent smoked meat on a platter and bringing strong beer, the absence of which in King's Harbour the chronicler had complained about more than once. Eddard didn't even think about where it all came from at first, but half an hour later, everything had been drunk and eaten, and a new story was being told.
"Long ago, back in Arren's time, when there was order in the country, the Ironborn attacked the rest of the kingdom. No one understood why: they just invaded, and that was that. They're a muddled people, Bylon's daughter is either Asha or Yara, and it's unclear whether they have a monarchy, since the high lord has an heir, or a republic, since the captains vote. It's even scary to send ambassadors to them: you send a normal guy, and he comes back a traitor and such a bastard that you might as well cut off his dick.
Varys has been sending Lord Arren anonymous letters for five years now, saying that Greyjoy is building a large fleet, while the Lannisters are morally decaying and rotting from the head down: Jaime is decaying in the Kingsguard, Tywin is in Casterly Rock, and Tyrion is wherever he happens to be. Arren received so many anonymous letters about the Lannisters from Varys, all written in the same handwriting, that he even forbade Varys from bringing him any more. It made him look like a complete idiot, allowing such things to happen right under his nose: some kind of rotten scum at the most dangerous point of the Greyjoy rebellion. And then, lo and behold, the islanders arrived in rowing boats and defeated the Guardian of the West, burning his entire fleet.
Arren crossed him off the list of serious contenders for Tywin's Iron Throne, since he was such a fool, and turned to Stannis: come, he said, break Greyjoy, you're not far from all of Westeros, or else the islanders will sail off in the other direction, all the way to Dreadfort. They won't steal anything, but they'll spit and cause trouble. And Stannis replies: I'll get them, but it would be better to dig a canal through the swamps instead of the moat at Cailin, so I don't have to go around it all the time, and then I'll definitely get them. Arren writes to Stannis that normal heroes always take the long way around, while he himself is at his wits' end: all the Tyrell boys are tournament fighters, one has been crippled, the rest want to follow suit, the Tullys have only one brother left, and Arren's brother is a commander, Tywin is still morally decaying, stealing prostitutes from his younger son, and Gerion, the only Lannister who can tell a rudder from a brace, has already packed his trunk and gone to look for Valyria, not yet informed that she sank four hundred years ago.
Arren then writes one letter to Winterfell and another to Casterly Rock, stating in the latter that since the Stark vanguard did not reach Tywin during the civil war, it will now reach him, so that everything necessary will reach Tywin himself. He wrote to Lord Eddard that he was surrounded by fools and slackers, even though Robert had already taken up the hammer and Stannis had set out on a campaign.
That's when everything went as it should: Stannis caught the islanders almost at Casterly Rock, where they were still hanging around for some reason. Robert remembered, alone in all of Westeros, that catapults can be used in an assault, and even fired them from ships for fun, while Eddard brought a knight named Jorah Mormont from Bear Island and set him on the islanders. In general, everything seemed to be going well: the Greyjoys were drowning in the sea and dying under the wreckage, Thoros of the World was cutting everyone down with his flaming sword, and the knight Jorah Mormont became famous for his beautiful ferocity and almost married the princess. Arren even wondered which one he should send to Bear Island, but Robert whispered in his ear: take the Targaryen one, the Targaryen one, or she'll eat something in Essos and people will say we poisoned the child, and here we are, on the contrary, marrying her off, although it's not yet clear which is worse.
Only Arren himself is not happy, feeling like a complete fool: how could this happen, the islanders spent five years building a fleet, and he slept through it. And he doesn't even want to think about the Guardian of the West, what he is guarding there and for whom. Great Westeros, and there are only three decent generals in it: Robert, Eddard and Stannis, although the latter is actually an admiral. And then it dawned on Arren. He organised a huge tournament, all the lords came to the tournament, and Arren announced to them:
"If you don't know how to fight, I'll teach you; if you don't want to, I'll make you. In conditions as close to combat as possible. So let's attack someone we don't care about and practise on them.
Half of the lords here are Lannisters, and let's be honest: who's there to pity in the West? You could kill the Mountain ten times over if Thoros is on hand and Qyburn doesn't mess up.
"No," says the humane Jon Arryn. "We're not going to fight a civil war for the third time."
And then Lord Eddard makes a suggestion: to fight further north, because in the warm climate there is cholera and dysentery, and half the army will die of a terrible fever without performing their heroic deeds.
"Well, let's take a look at the map," Jon Arryn suggests to Eddard.
And thousands of miles away, the Great Other is banging his horns against the glacier, sensing where this is all going, and just muttering:
"There's Greyjoy, what a friend! I would have killed that son of a bitch, but I can't swim!"
"It happened," admitted Lord Eddard, cheering up. "Not quite like yours, it was worse and bloodier, but it happened." And Stannis went to train beyond the Wall a couple of years later, in conditions as close to combat as possible. He even attacked through the forest with cavalry and, surprisingly, successfully. Maybe it really was necessary to chop them up on a larger scale back then, to restore order once and for all, so that there would be enough for his grandchildren.
"I thought you were going to ask me if the Others really exist," said the chronicler, slipping a note to Lord Eddard to sign, even writing "Urgent" at the top, meaning that the storekeeper and the dog would have to be woken up today.
"What doesn't happen in this house," sighed Lord Eddard, returning to his thoughts of possible future battles. "Perhaps we should send the Greyjoys around Westeros and have them land somewhere beyond the Wall, at the mouth of the Horned River. I have no pity for Balon Greyjoy.
"By all the gods, my lord Hand!" the chronicler suddenly perked up. "Don't send Theon after the island army, or he'll really bring them back, and not to the right place, may the Almighty forbid! Balon may not be worth pitying, but the rest are. Don't let Stannis get any closer.
If Eddard already knew about some of the surprises his children had in store for him, Lord Tywin, on the edge of Westeros, knew nothing, especially that his youngest son had become a friend of House Stark and was now stuck in the Twins, preparing to tarnish the high name of Lannister in every way possible. For example, at that moment, Tyrion was drinking with the older Frey boys and quietly introducing them to the idea of bigamy, because Robb Stark would arrive as an honest man to marry for the second time, and it could end in anything.
"I, for example, am a staunch polygamist," said Tyrion. "Judge for yourselves, because of my height, I am called Half-Man, and I always want a girl to kiss me.
"Ha!" replied the Freys in several gulps, catching the double meaning, while the cunning Lord Walder proceeded to a hypothetical examination of the question to exercise his mind.
"I don't think there's much benefit in that," said the tipsy old man. "A family needs a good son-in-law, but why give him two girls at once? And if you give him one, whose son-in-law will he be, mine or the other father's?"
"But think of all the new possibilities, Lord Walder," suggested Tyrion, hitting the nail on the head. "During the time I've been living with you, not many unmarried men have passed through the Twins, but the married ones seem to have taken a liking to the place.
"Heh heh heh," chuckled the cunning Lord Frey, who loved to cheat unsuspecting little men. "Yes, Tyrion, I knew right away that you would be useful to us.
"He speaks the truth," one of Frey's older sons agreed, seeing that his father approved of the conversation. "I'd trade my forty-year-old wife for a couple of twenty-year-olds myself."
"I'll trade you mine!" Lord Walder swung his arm. "You'll get me into trouble with my neighbours!"
In general, the Freys gradually warmed up to the idea of bigamy and even began to make further devious matrimonial plans, taking this possibility into account. But Tyrion, who had long since shaken hands with Lord Frey, could not marry. His cunning had not helped him win the heart of Lord Frey's young daughter; she would have married him if her parents had allowed it, but Tirion sighed and admitted that he could hardly hope for anything more. Tyrion wandered around the Twins, stood by the river and quietly cursed the minstrels with their courtly love, because of which the hearts of many married women were occupied not by their husbands, but by handsome knights, and with such customs, Tyrion's chances of occupying the thoughts of his bride were becoming slim indeed.
Many minstrels were fickle, and Tom Seven, who had left for Thoros, soon returned to the Twins, as if summoned by Tyrion's curses against his tribe.
"Come now, my lord," Tom tried to comfort Tyrion. "I'm no handsome man myself, and I'm much older than you, but I've never been short of women.
"I've got no trouble with women either," said Tyrion. "But Arwen is a decent girl."
"What's her name?" Tom the Seven opened his mouth wide, for as a seasoned minstrel, he knew many legends and ballads.
"Or Arwin," Tirion said doubtfully. "I'm not sure how to spell it. I'm not going to write to her, living in the same castle."
"Why not?" asked Tom. "Wait, I'll recite a ballad about Arwen for you. Were there ancient kings in your family?"
"Yeah, loads," Tyrion waved him off. The Lannisters had indeed been Kings of the West for a long time, and Tom remembered this too and began to laugh quietly. "To hell with ballads, remind me of some better poems."
Unfortunately, Tom Seven wasn't very good at poetry, and Tyrion had to rummage through the library, but finally he dug up a real gem for his betrothed.
Ah, Arvin, have mercy on me.
I dare not ask for love,
Tyrion recited quietly and sincerely, left alone with his young bride.
Perhaps for my sins,
My angel, I am not worthy of love!
But pretend! That look
Can express so much!
Ah, it is not difficult to deceive me!
I am happy to be deceived! **
"You... you must not speak to me of love, my lord," whispered Arvin Frey, lowering her eyes, for such words cannot fail to touch a woman's heart, but her mind was still filled with notions of courtly love, whose exalted nature is incompatible with married life and the prose of the marital bed, and thoughts of beautiful knights, unlike the golden-haired, sweet dwarf. "You will be my husband, and I will be your obedient wife, but that is completely different..."
"That's not how things are in the capital now, my lady," replied the cunning Tyrion, pressing on the provincial girl's desire to keep up with fashion, be it crinolines or court poets. "Surely you have heard that my royal nephew has run away with Sansa Stark, to whom he was already betrothed.
Tyrion could not sing, but he had a way with words, and, drawing on the stories he had heard from Thoros as retold by Tom Seven, he spun a romanticised version of the sublime love between Lionel and Sansa, about how Lionel went to a deadly duel with a terrible enemy for his lady love, and how he was saved in another battle by her arrow, that Arwin Frey even shed a tear.
"I'll never be like Lady Sansa," Arvin sighed, as if Sansa wasn't even younger than her.
"I'll never grow up to be like my nephew either," Tyrion said cheerfully and stood on the bench next to Arvin, so that he was finally taller than her. "But if you agree to run away with me, Lady Arvin, my father's wrath, which will pursue us, will be quite complete."
Tyrion correctly predicted Lord Tywin's reaction to his unauthorised marriage and even more so to his elopement with his bride, and Arwin felt that he was telling the truth and that her ordinary life was finally turning into an exciting story from a book.
"And you will marry me against Lord Tywin's wishes?" Arwin asked, blushing and lowering her eyes.
"The whole West won't stop me," Tyrion said passionately. "I'll take you to the North, my lady, and there we'll meet King Lionel and Lady Sansa. Trust me, I've even been to the Wall. And my good minstrel will sing songs about us on the way."
***
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