It always came to him whenever the road was long and the wine was good and his body gave out before his mind did.
He remembered it as clear as the blue sky.
The cold rush of the river, the weight of his warhammer, the moment when Rhaegar Targaryen’s breastplate gave way under the blow and the rubies flew out like a handful of scattered stars.
The sound of it.
Gods, the sound of it.
It was sweeter than the songs from the finest Lyseni courtesans, and Robert had never bothered correcting them because they would never understand.
You could not explain that sound to a man who had not been there.
“Your Grace.” The sound woke him up from the dream as Robert Baratheon, King of the Seven Kingdoms, blinked at the sudden rays of daylight and the flat green hills of the Crownlands spreading out in every direction around him.
He had fallen asleep on his horse again.
It was his blonde ponce of a squire that woke him.
What was his name?
Lanna?
Landel?
Lancel.
That’s what it was.
Lancel Lannister, one of Cersei’s innumerable cousins.
Robert had agreed to take the boy on as a squire somewhere in the last year, during some interminable evening at court that he could not now recall, and had regretted every day since.
All he remembered was Cersei’s inherent screeching, and taking the boy in was the only way for her to shut up.
Ser Barristan rode to his left, upright in the saddle as always, his white cloak so clean it made Robert feel obscurely judged.
The old knight had been riding vigil without apparent fatigue since they left King’s Landing, which Robert found both admirable and slightly annoying.
“What is it?” Robert asked, hearing the irritation in his own voice and not particularly caring.
“The Queen’s wheelhouse, Your Grace.” Lancel said, “The rear axle has—” “Broken.” Robert finished for him.
“Again.” “I’m afraid so, Your Grace.” Robert stared at the horizon for a long moment, letting out a breath as he made the calculation in his mind.
The damned wheelhouse — that gilded, curtained, monstrosity — had broken down twice already in seven days.
Each time, the entire column had sat in the road for half a day while craftsmen swarmed over it and Cersei remained inside it and declined to emerge, which Robert considered the one blessed thing the breakdowns offered.
They had left King’s Landing seven days ago.
Seven days, and they aren’t even halfway past the Crownlands.
At this pace, it’ll be a year before they even enter the North.
“Fuck this,” he said.
“Barristan.” “Your Grace.” “How many of the court can ride?” The old knight considered this with a tilt of his head.
“A fair number, my King.
The Kingsguard, the household knights, most of the lords attendant.
But the ladies—” “The ladies can make their own arrangements.” Robert turned his horse with the ease of a man who had been riding since before he could walk.
He turned to Lancel, who had gone somewhat pale.
“Boy.
Ride back down the column and tell them the King commands it.
Anyone who can sit a horse, rides.
Anyone who can’t, follows in whatever conveyance they have.
“What of the Queen’s wheelhouse, Your Grace?” Lancel asked, his voice as low and squeaky as a rat.
“Others take that damn wheelhouse!” Robert looked at him.
“Cersei is welcome to ride, or she can bloody ride back to King’s Landing if she wants to.
If she prefers to follow in the wheelhouse when it’s repaired, then we’ll just leave her behind.” He took the wineskin from his other squire — Meryn?
No, the other one, another Lannister — held out to him and drank deeply.
Ah, Arbor Gold.
The fat flowers might be useless in everything, but at least they make good wine.
“But my children ride with me.” Lancel departed at speed in the direction of the wheelhouse, face paling.
“Barristan,” he said, without turning.
“Yes, Your Grace?” “How long to the North if we ride proper?” “Four weeks to the Neck.
Another three, perhaps four, through the North.” The old knight answered, “Seven weeks if the weather holds.
Eight if it doesn’t.” Robert grimaced.
Eight weeks.
He looked at the green hills and the distant line of road and thought about eight weeks of this — his blonde ponce of squire and the endless column of lords and ladies and servants and pack animals — and felt the familiar restlessness rise in him like a tide.
He had not wanted to be king, not truly.
He had wanted to fight, and to feast, and to hunt, and to fuck.
All done with men he trusted at his side.
What he had instead was King’s Landing, which stank in summer and stank just the same in winter.
Not to mention a court full of damned vipers who wanted things from him constantly, and a wife who liked to harp non-stop, enjoying the sound of her own voice too much.
Ah, things would have been so much better if he had married Lyanna instead.
If only.
Then, he and Ned would be brothers, as it should.
He hadn’t seen the man in years now.
Nine to be exact, after the damn squids thought him weak enough to rebel.
Gods, he missed Ned.
Ned was not exciting, never in his life would he call Eddard Stark exciting.
But there was a quality to his company that Robert had found nowhere else: a simple confidence of knowing that the man beside you spoke the truth above all else.
Robert had spent eighteen years now surrounded by people who meant something other than what they said, and the hunger for the other thing had never gone away.
Robert did not like what had become of him due to the pit of vipers that was the capital city.
The Demon of the Trident, they once called him.
And now it was the Fat King.
He liked it even less than he liked the thought of Ned in King’s Landing, surrounded by the same people and the same machinery that had killed Jon, doing the same work.
But the realm needed a Hand, and there was no man in Westeros he trusted with it.
“Pass the word, Barristan,” he said.
“We ride.” The column began to move, slowly at first and then with more purpose as the news spread that the King’s patience had run dry.
Somewhere behind him he could faintly hear the sounds of an argument beginning near the Queen’s wheelhouse as the Kingslayer rushed back to see what it was about.
Robert chose not to hear it, because a king needed to be selective about what he attended to, and the open road was in front of him, and Winterfell was at the end of it.
He wondered if Ned had changed.
He suspected not.
He was probably exactly the same man Robert remembered, only more so.
He thought of Ned’s brother, the one he had only met a handful of times before.
Karlon Stark, the Sea Wolf they called him, the younger lord at the edge of the map.
He had heard the name enough times that it had become a fixed feature of the north’s geography in his mind, the way the Wall was a fixed feature and was something that would never disappear.
The damn thing of ice was there long before he was born and it’d still be there centuries after he was dead.
His mind shifted back to Karlon Stark.
The man who had built the western fleet of the North and matched Victarion Greyjoy at sea.
It was when the squids attacked Frostkeep did Maron Greyjoy, Balon’s heir after his first son died in Seagard, had perished.
Robert had considered giving him a lordship for that, in the flush of victory after the rebellion, and had been told by Ned that his brother had already had one.
The captured ships of the Iron Fleet was reward enough, and Karlon Stark had no particular desire for southern recognition.
Robert had found this both baffling and refreshing, something he learned was normal among lords of the North.
He spurred his horse and continued riding, Selmy and Trant following from behind.
… AN: The Jorah POV was necessary to reveal the few changes to Bear Island.
The main difference, of course, being the marriage of Lynesse Hightower and Jorah Mormont actually a decently happy one.
This of course caused the birth of Leyton Mormont, a boy with her father’s build and her mother’s coloring.
Myanna Glover is the name I gave to Jorah’s first unnamed Glover wife.
Anyways, a surprise POV from old Bobby B.
I didn’t think I would do a POV of him this early, but thought it was necessary to have one from the royal family on their journey north.
Writing from his perspective was actually quite challenging as well, since Robert was a character who never got his own POV within the actual books.
I hope I got his character right.