“Aye, Lord Robb.” He nodded decisively.
“It’s a simple enough task.
I’ll have it ready for the day mentioned.” He paused, and something that might have been amusement moved beneath the soot on his face.
“Funny thing, m’lord.
Lord Jon asked me for something similar not three days past.
A thin bit of steel, made small.
For yer lordship’s little sister.” Robb’s eyebrows went up.
“Jon is commissioning a blade for Arya?” “Aye, m’lord.
Said it was for when her ladyship practices her swordwork.
Somethin’ about a ‘sea castle,’ though I confess I didn’t follow the whole of it.” Robb huffed something close to a laugh and gave the smith a nod.
“You have my thanks, Mikken.” Jon, making a sword for Arya.
He should have known about it before Mikken told him.
Of all of them, Jon and Arya had always been the closest, part of it due to the fact that they share their father’s coloring.
Pulling at his hair and seeing the thick auburn locks, not for the first time did he wish for hair as dark as his father’s, it would have made certain things easier.
Not for himself, but for Jon.
His mother had never said anything outright cruel about it, not where Robb could hear.
But there was a way she looked at Jon sometimes, one not filled with the usual contempt but of longing.
Jon looked like their father in a way that none of the rest of them quite did, save Arya.
But Arya was not the heir, nor was she a son that could fight his father’s battles and earn glory and renown that way.
He put the thought away.
It was not the morning for it.
Turning back, Robb made his way back to the central courtyard, past all the servants and guards busy running around.
Things had turned ever since news of the raper in Wintertown had spread.
That horrid business in the past five days at the Three Wolves had become common knowledge through Wintertown and then through Winterfell itself.
The fact that Winterfell’s guards had caught him so quickly had earned them the satisfaction of the smallfolk, but that satisfaction was not enough for they were out for blood.
Leyna, the poor girl, had been quite beloved by most of the townsfolk, it seems.
Robb did not yet know the full details of what transpired.
Only that judgment would be passed today in Wintertown’s square, before the eyes of half the town and most of the castle.
Grey Wind fell into step behind him, already past his knees, nose working at something in the cold air, and Robb had not gone twenty paces before Jon found him, with Theon and Torrhen close behind.
“Is the execution set for today?” Torrhen asked.
“What else would warrant such a gathering, Karstark?” Theon replied with a mocking tone.
“The King is still set to arrive in another fortnight.” “It was just a simple question, Greyjoy.” Torrhen scowled.
“One with an obvious answer.” Robb let out a breath through his nose and did not bother trying to intervene further; the two of them had the tendency to bicker whenever the other was in the same room, and Jon’s resigned expression beside him suggested that he was just as tired of it as Robb.
They came around the corner into the central yard, and Robb’s eyes found his father first.
His Lord Father stood at the center of the gathering, with Uncle Karlon and Uncle Benjen beside him.
The three brothers, Robb thought, an arrangement he had only recently begun to take for granted, after a lifetime of there only ever being one.
Tales of their feats together had been mentioned many times in the North, particularly during both rebellions that happened, and it was only now did Robb see it personally.
Around them stood the North’s finest.
Jory Cassel and Ser Egran of Frostkeep, Hallis Mollen, Ser Rodrik with his walrus mustache set in its grimmest line.
Jorah Mormont, Rickard Liddle, and Robett Glover stood a little apart, part of his uncle’s retinue and present, Robb suspected, more as witnesses to northern justice than participants in it.
His gaze then moved to his mother, gently speaking to Sansa and Arya in hushed whispers.
His youngest sister looked excited, but Sansa had grown pale in a way that made her look younger than her fourteen years.
His father turned to Robb the moment he approached.
His father’s icy stare was present in the current moment, and Robb had to work to not fidget under his gaze.
“Robb.” Ned took Ice from Jory’s hands and held it out.
“Today, you will be the one to mete out justice.” Robb’s hands closed around the scabbard before his mind had finished processing the words.
“Me, Father?” “It is time you were bloodied without the risk of battle.” Eddard said, “Hunting deer in the Wolfswood is one thing.
Taking the life of a man is another.
I’d have you accustomed to Ice in hand before the day comes you must carry it into battle.” Robb looked down at the blade in his hands—nearly as long as he was tall.
“Isn’t Ice too large for proper use?
In battle, I mean.” A short laugh came from Karlon.
“Valyrian steel is easily half the weight of normal metal, nephew mine.
So while Ice is not light, it’s not unusable either.” “Swords forged in the fires of Valyria hold an edge no smith since has managed to replicate,” Ned said.
“They do not dull.
A skilled hand can cut through ordinary men the way a butcher parts pigs.” He held Robb’s eyes, steady.
“Your grandfather Rickard was said to be able to split one of the Band of Nine clean in half with a single stroke of this blade, during the War of the Ninepenny Kings.
Steel, bone, wood — Ice went through all of it as though none of it were there.” Robb said nothing, listening.
“I could never do this, because for years I learned to fight with a longsword and dagger in hand.
Ice was meant for your uncle Brandon, who had practiced with the greatsword at six years old, and it suited him in a way it never suited me.
It is why I only use our ancestral blade for ceremonial purposes.” His expression did not change, but something in his voice deepened.
“I will not make that same mistake with you.
You will learn this blade properly, starting today.
Do you understand?” “Aye.” Robb’s hand tightened around the hilt.
The thought of using the ancestral blade of his House stirred something primal in him.
“Then come.” Ned turned toward the gate, and the procession began to form behind him.
“Ours is the old way, Robb.
Remember your lessons.” Robb glanced back once and caught his mother throwing a piercing look towards her father, but slowly ushered the girls after them.
Robb could usher a guess as to why.
Neither Sansa nor Arya needed to see such a grim sight that was northern justice, but then he remembered his father’s words.
Ours is the old way.
Both his sisters are Starks, and winter is coming.
Even Bran and Rickon were brought along, Benjen’s hand resting lightly on Bran’s shoulder as they walked, Rickon’s small hand swallowed entirely in his uncle’s larger one.
Robb followed his father as he uneasily held the ancestral blade of their House.
It was nearly as tall as him, and Robb struggled in finding a proper grip.
But he was determined to not embarrass himself in front of all of Winterfell’s household as they passed through the gates and onto the road to Wintertown.
“Jory,” Ned said, without turning his head.
“Tell them what happened.” “A riverlander, claims he’s from Maidenpool, took a room at the Three Wolves five nights past.
Pulled the serving girl, Leyna, into his room and meant to force himself on her.
When old Owen — the innkeep and her father — heard her cry out, he went up to stop it.
The riverlander’s a merchant of some means, it seems, for he’d hired three sellswords as guard, and they beat Owen bloody for his trouble.
Broke his leg in the doing.” Jory’s jaw tightened.
“That brought half the inn’s patrons up the stairs at a run.” A short, derisive snort came from Theon that everyone pointedly ignored.
“What happened then?” Robb asked.
“By the time our men reached the Three Wolves, the three sellswords were already beaten near senseless by the patrons.
Hallis Mollen was first through the door, confiscated every weapon in the room and dragged the riverlander down to the dungeon himself.” “Were any of the patrons injured?” Robb asked.
“No, my lord.” Jory shook his head.
“The sellswords weren’t worth what he paid them, by the look of it.” They made the rest of the way to Wintertown in solemn silence.
The square, when they reached it, was already crowded.
A block set at the base of the old oak that marked the town’s heart, and a voice screaming itself hoarse somewhere near it.
“Release me!
This is an outrage, a mistake of the gravest—” The voice was grating to the ears, and it belonged to a plump man in a dark blue velvet tunic, manacled and held fast between Jacks and Varly, his bald scalp beaded with sweat despite the cold.
“I have friends in high places, you northern savages, you wouldn’t dare—” “And pray tell,” Ned said, his voice carrying easily over the crowd as it parted to let the procession through, “who exactly these friends might be?” A low murmur ran through the gathered smallfolk at the sight of three score guards and the assembled lords of Winterfell descending on their square.
It was not a sight Wintertown saw often, and Robb understood the murmur for what it was, equal parts awe and anticipation.
The riverlander’s face contorted into a sleazy smile, and he attempted to bow that the manacles made into something closer to a stumble.
“Ah, my lord!
Lord Commander Janos Slynt of the City Watch in King’s Landing, and Lord Baelish, the Master of Coin — both dear friends of mine, my lord, dear friends indeed.
My name is Dylan, and as I was saying, all of this has been a terrible misunderstanding.” “Petyr…?” Robb heard his mother murmur, very low, as Robb echoed.
“A mistake?” “Yes, yes, precisely!” Dylan’s head bobbed, the motion lending his round face an unfortunate resemblance to a hog rooting for scraps.
“I paid for the girl’s company, my lord, paid fairly!
It was her brute of a father who set upon me and my men without provocation!” He gestured wildly to a row of three men kneeling nearby, each one tied with thick ropes by the hands and feet.
They were all bruised blue, though certainly not as injured as Robb imagined them to be from Jory’s account of it.
“Is that so?” Ned’s tone did not rise.
Jory stepped forward and placed a folded parchment into his hand.
“Our investigation says otherwise.
No fewer than a dozen witnesses saw you drag the girl Leyna to your room by force.
Your men then broke her father’s leg when he tried to intervene.” “Lies, my lord, vicious lies!
I paid for her services, as I said—” “Yer the liar, ye festerin’ cunt!” The voice belonged to a woman who shoved her way to the front of the crowd, who Robb recognized as Ingrid, the innkeep’s wife, her eyes were rimmed red and her weathered face twisted into something between grief and fury.
She had her arms locked around a thin slip of a girl whose own eyes were swollen nearly shut from crying.
“Me daughter’s not even five-and-ten, ye brigand, and no whore neither!
Yer thugs broke my Owen’s leg tryin’ to stop ya, and ye’d stand there and call her a—” “She wanted it, I tell you!
I was going to compensate her properly!” The square erupted into a clamor of voices as the smallfolk began shouting over one another.
Robb glanced at his father, uncertain, and found Ned watching him rather than the crowd.
A single eyebrow raised, the question in it unmistakable even unspoken.
What will you do?
Robb looked at the crying girl in her mother’s arms.
He looked at the manacled merchant, still protesting, still certain — even now, even here, with the evidence laid out before half the town — that his coin and his connections would see him through this the way they had likely seen him through everything else in his life.
The hesitation left him all at once, replaced by something colder and steadier than he had expected to find in himself.
“Silence!” The squabbling ceased at Robb’s cry.
He turned to Jacks and Varly.
“Bring him to the block.” Dylan’s face went from sleazy confidence to genuine, undiluted fear in the space of a single heartbeat.
“W-Wait, please, my lord!
This is a mistake!
I was going to pay, it’s only a peasant girl’s maidenhead, surely that’s not worth—” The guardsmen forced him down over the oaken stump regardless, his protests collapsing into incoherent pleading as his cheek met the rough wood.
“Any last words?” Robb asked, and drew Ice from its scabbard.
The blade caught the thin midday light, its smoke-dark ripples shifting along the steel like something half-alive.
Robb made two careful practice swings, feeling the balance of it settle into his hands.
Uncle Karlon had been right.
The blade was massive in length and breadth both, and yet it weighed scarcely more than an ordinary greatsword — a wrongness in the hand that took a moment to adjust to.
Dylan struggled weakly against the iron grip of Jacks and Varly, finding no purchase.
“W-Wait!
I’m innocent, I tell you, my friends will hear of this treatment—” His voice cracked upward, panic overtaking whatever composure he’d been clinging to.
“I demand a trial by combat!” The words made Robb pause, Ice still held steady, and glanced at his father.
Ned’s expression remained carved from the same ice as the Wall, and Robb’s eyes steeled with resolve.
“You are neither knight nor noble,” he said.
“You have no right to demand such a thing.” “T-Then I’ll take the black!
The Wall, I’ll take the black, you can’t refuse a man the Wall!” “No, but I can.” The voice of Benjen Stark echoed through the square from where he stood with Bran and Rickon.
“The Night’s Watch has no need for scum like you.” That was all Robb needed to hear.
He drew a breath and let the old words come.
“In the name of Robert of House Baratheon, the First of His Name, King of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm, by the word of Robb of House Stark, heir of Winterfell, I sentence you to die.” He raised Ice over his head.
Dylan thrashed once, uselessly, against hands that held him like iron clamps and did not so much as shift.
The blade descended with a single motion, and Dylan’s head struck the mud with a wet, heavy sound and rolled a half-turn before stilling, leaving a bloody trail where it rolled.
It was a clean cut, one that surprised Robb.
He felt little to no resistance, as if the blade was going through a whiff of grass instead of a man’s head.
His father nodded with approval, as a ragged cheer went up from sections of the crowd.
It certainly helped Robb’s conflicting feelings at taking a life for the first time, he could only hope that no one had noticed the slight tremor in his sword hand as he lowered the blade.
“Put his head on a spike at the gate,” he said.
“Let it be visible for all to see.” Jacks and Varly moved to it without comment.
Alyn came forward to carry the body off for burning, the mud already dark and churned where it had fallen.
Robb turned to the three bound sellswords.
Their faces had gone pale, and each of them flinched as his gaze found them in turn.
He took a slow breath, steadied the grip on Ice’s hilt, and looked at the first of them.
“The black or the block?
… AN: Robb is a chad, and northern justice is dispensed.
This will be the last of the ‘character building’ moments in Winterfell.
Things will pick up in the next chapter as all the people travelling for Winterfell begin to arrive in droves.
Also, I’d really appreciate if you guys review the novel.
Webnovel is made so that ratings only appear after ten reviews or so, and most people would only give it a read once there’s a rating.
Feel free to rate and review whatever you want!
I’ll accept any kind of suggestion / criticism you give me, thanks!
Check it out if you’re interested, at least chapter 16 (long form, which is around chp 30 in webnovel) should be available by the time this chapter was uploaded.