The Wolf that kissed the Rose

Book One – The Wolf, the Rose and the Lion

Chapter One – The King in the North


Robb

"The proper course is clear!" T'was Lord Bracken standing there, 'fore the council of lords, talking a whole bunch of bollocks about whose banners they should kneel to in the South. Didn't matter none. Robb's father was dead, and it took all he had not to fill his mind with thoughts of only vengeance and nothing more. "Pledge our loyalties to king Renly and move south – to join our forces with his!"

Should have expected that from Bracken, who had been the closest of the Riverlords to the Targaryen dragon. Robb seemed to recall that Aegon Bittersteel's mother had been a Bracken, too. Barba Bracken, whose hill lay just north of the keep he and his men had taken and now occupied from the Lannisters after the Whispering Woods. Jonos Bracken even prayed in a sept before the Seven-Pointed star, like Robb's mother. And he was wrong in much, as much as he was wrong in his loyalties.

"Renly is not the king". As one all the bickering lords shut their gobs and turned their heads. Even the Lady Maege Mormont who lead the men of Bear Island and Lords Glover and Robin Flint who lead the vanguard of his armies. All of them listened now. Robb had proven himself worthy of listening to, and his blood had ruled the North for eight thousand years if the stories were to be trusted. They listened to him then, too. Bracken in particular looked confused.

"You cannot mean to hold to Joffery, my lord" Bracken protested as he approached him, and he was lucky that Robb ruled his temper with an iron fist lest he'd jump out of his seat and smack him about like the drunkard he was. Baratheon of King's Landing and the Lannisters – thick as thieves they were, and rotten the lot of 'em. "He put your father to death!" And so he had. Joffery would see, when the Wolfshead banner flew above Maegor's Holdfast. He'd know then that the North remembered.

"That doesn't make Renly king" Robb told him straight, lifting his voice to address the rest of the crowd of gathered Northern lords and Riverlords, the leaders and commanders of his army crowded into the great hall of a desolated keep on the edge of the Whispering Wood while the city of tents that was their army at rest lay camped outside. "He's Robert's youngest brother. If Bran can't be Lord of Winterfell before me, Renly can't be king before Stannis".

"Do you mean to declare us for Stannis?" Bracken wondered, and Robb bit down on his answer. His father had taught him to honour his allegiances, and lord Eddard Stark had readily bent the knee before House Baratheon out of friendship and the marriage between Lyanna and Robert that never was. But at the same time he knew that Stannis was a stern man, ill-loved and stoic, and rumours said that he had taken a red priestess from across the sea to his court, a woman who held his favour, a red witch who called for the burning of all gods but her own.

Some of the Northern lords kept close counsel with the Old Gods. They remembered the stories of how the Andals had burnt and hacked down the Weirwoods of the South. If Robb declared us for Stannis they'd sooner turn their swords on him than on the Lannisters.

"Renly is not right!" shouted Lord Tytos Blackwood from aside, by one table there sitting with the lady Mormont at his side. At his insistence the crowd burst into bickering, the same as before, some arguing loudly enough that Robb feared that they would draw their swords and go on to draw blood. "If we put ourselves behind Stannis-"

"My lords" the Greatjon stood from his seat, Jon Umber of the Shackled Giant of his house, his booming voice breaking at the bickering around him. "My lords!" he shouted, and ushered silence as he strode about, looking out over the crowd. "Here is what I say to these two kings-" he spat onto the ground, and Robb found himself frowning. The Greatjon had been his strongest supporter ever since Grey Wind had bitten two of his fingers off. He was odd like that, understanding only force, but Robb had inspired his respect, and he'd follow him until the end of his days. Robb wondered where he was going with that. "Renly Baratheon is nothing to me!" he went as the lords cheered at his spitting. "Nor Stannis neither!"

"Hear hear!" shouted Bowen Bole from aside some of the other lords of the Wolfswood, Gregor Forrester and Darren Woods chief amongst them. Most others kept their mouths shut as the Greatjon kept on talking.

"Why should they rule over me and mine, from some flowery seat in the South?" he asked, and though Robb knew that he was right his words… he feared the implications even as the majority of him was aghast and numb and enraged all at once by the ill deeds of the mad boy king who had put his father to death. "What do they know of the Wall, or the Wolfswood?! Even their Gods are wrong!" All but a few of the Northern lords laughed at that, the lady Mormont laughing the hardest. The Riverlords and Robb's mother did not laugh, except for Tytos Blackwood. Robb wondered if Mother would ever smile again.

"Why shouldn't we rule ourselves again?" the Greatjon asked the crowd, his voice lowered, a smile on his face and a straightness in his back that Robb had only seen in him the time he was about to draw his sword on him. "It was the dragons we bowed to" he put his hand to the blade at his hip "and now the Dragons are dead!" With a metallic scraping he pulled his ancestral sword from its sheath and turned to point the tip of it at Robb. "There sits the only king I mean to bend my knee to-"

In that moment time seemed to stop for him. As the Greatjon sank down to one knee Robb remembered his father and all his oaths of loyalty to Robert Baratheon. Robb had heard the stories about the man, the great warrior and fierce fighter who had always done right. He had seen him, too – a fat prick almost too heavy for his horse, surrounded by Lannisters and Lannister guards. Had that fat drunkard been his king? He felt my mother's eyes on the back of his neck as the Greatjon knelt before him.

"The King in the North!"

Greatjon looked at him, and Robb knew that he believed in him. He believed in the freedom of the North and the ancient legacy of House Stark, the kings of Winter, Wardens of the North, the Shield that guarded the realms of the First Men. And moreover he believed in Robb.

A shiver ran down his back, and at Jon Umber's words he stood tall before the commanders of his army, his eyes as dark as the midwinter nights above Winterfell. He did not know if he was about to reject the crown he was offered or if he was to accept it, but he never had the chance to do either of it right then. "I'll have peace on those terms!" Lord Blackwood proclaimed proudly from aside as Umber's sworn men bowed along with the Greatjon. "They can keep their red castle, and their iron chair too!" the Lord Glover too drew his sword and knelt before him where he stood along with Lord Blackwood. "The king in the North!"

From behind Glover and Umber, two houses who had been so long at war with each other, rose Theon Greyjoy from his bench, his grey eyes fixed on Robb's. "Am I your brother" he asked of him, not even a quiver to his voice "now and always?"

"Now and always" Robb told him truly, and so he knelt beside the lord Umber, drawing his sword to lay it at his feet.

"My sword is yours, in victory and defeat" he swore to Robb, in the ways of the liegemen of the old Kingdom of Isles and Rivers that had burned when Aegon Targaryen first cast down Harren the Black. "From this day until my last day".

And when the Greatjon boomed out again "The King in the North!" his call was picked up by all the others in the chamber, and one by one or en masse the lord of the North knelt before Robb while the Riverlords who had followed his mother's blood into battle where quick to do the same. His mother stared at his back as his lords swore their loyalties, their only loyalty, to him. Again and again they shouted it, until the keep and all the world seemed to ring with the sound of their oath and even spread to the camp of his army beyond them.

There he was, young and bold, the brave Robb Stark. "The King in the North!"

A couple of hours later he was panicking.

"Oh, pissing blimey!" He cursed as he stood before his mirror image in the polished bronze surface on the washing stand in his chambers, a small dreary room in the top of the small keep that they had taken residence in after they had driven the Lannister men holding it afield. He looked back at that boy that he saw in the mirror. Could hardly even grow a proper beard. How in the name of all the Gods was he supposed to lead his people as king? "Oh, bugger, bugger, bugger! Shite! What the bloody fuck am I to do now?" he asked the eyes watching behind him. Silence was his only return.

Grey Wind didn't answer with anything more than a stare, looking back at him from where he rested with his growing head laid across his paws. He had grown big, that Direwolf pup, almost a pup no longer. He had killed men when fighting the Lannisters, too. Mauled them too death, more rabid bear than wolf in those moments. Now, after the feast that had followed Robb's impromptu coronation, during which the shouting and the raucous drinking had almost gotten out of hand more than once, he seemed nothing but a furry presence of comfort in Robb's own chambers.

He was more than that, and more than a fighter and a pet as well. He was the Direwolf, the grey figure in white against the banners of House Stark, he was the personal seal on Robb's shield where his grey fur and yellow eyes howled death onto his foes. He was of the North, in a way more than Robb was or would ever be. He was his family. Not the now living ones, but the souls of his ancestors, staring out of –

The heart tree. Yes, perhaps in the godswood he'd find some answers. They'd make for Riverrun in a day's time, and then they'd be on towards war. Thinking of his father – a lance of anger went through him at the mere thought – he took his sword, the one he hadn't ruined trying to kill a tree in his grief for his father, and headed down and out. Grey Wind rose with an audible sigh as he padded after him. Oh well, the Direwolf seemed to say.

It was odd, Robb reflected as he snuck down the stairs of the keep. Sometimes it was as if he understood what Grey Wind was thinking, what he was feeling, tasted blood on his tongue that wasn't his own when he and the beast charged into battle together. Sometimes it was as if the wolf warned him of enemies attacking out of sight or against his back, like eyes in the back of his neck. He knew not what this strange bond was, or how much of it he was imagining, but it had saved his life a dozen times already and won him the loyalty of Greatjon Umber and much of the North and so he wasn't about to look a gift horse too closely on the teeth. He might find the teeth rotted through, after all, and the bond sinister and cold down to the core. But it would have to wait until afterwards.

Afterwards. After the war. He had no idea of what that would be, now. As he walked past the sleeping or stupidly drunken sentries by the dreary tower's exit – making a mental note to speak with the keeper of the watch to ensure that at least some soldiers remained sober even through celebration and revelry – he found himself to be one of the only few awake in the camp outside it. It made it easy for him and his wolf to walk past the tents unnoticed and unaccosted, though on the distance he could still hear some men cheering. "King in the North!" they toasted in between the bouts of drunken singing, and Robb's lips tensed and his jaw clenched shut hard to grind his teeth together at the proclamations.

The godswood of that Riverland keep, half-ruined and fallen far out of favour with the local lords despite its proximity to Riverrun, was a shoddy thing, its grass grown over the paved paths past the high and thin stone wall surrounding it. A few trees stood there, oaks and pines and a single goldenheart tree around the edges of the garden – a garden more than it was a wood, in truth – but it had a Weirwood heart tree at the centre of it, standing on a raised dais of stone and moss a few steps high. The face carved into its white bark was cheerful, frozen in a bout of perpetual laughter, its eyes still seeping bloody sap that was yet dry despite the long years of its watch. A sign of the Gods' presence, perhaps?

Robb sat down on one of the tree's jutting and bulging roots, thick and worn by many an arse he noted with a shade of a smile passing over his lips, and pulled his blade softly from his scabbard as not to let the steel ring out into the night and wake anyone. He set to sharpening, cleaning and polishing it, and slowly drifted off into thought as Grey Wind padded about the garden before settling in the moonlight shadow of the heart tree.

He had wondered why his father had done that. Eddard Stark – Ned, as his friends and his wife had called him – had often done as Robb did now, retreating back to the godswood of Winterfell and seating himself at the foot of the heart tree with the stern face. Always when he had executed a man, sometimes when he merely needed to think. But now Robb understood. It was calming, tending to such a monotonous and familiar task in such a peaceful setting, placed there in the wild and familiar presence of the Gods. Doing it he felt a little like he was back home, at Winterfell. Doing it made him feel a little closer to his father.

The blood of the First Men flows in the veins of the Starks, his father had used to say. The Starks keep to the Old Ways of the Kings of Winter. The Old Ways, Robb wondered quietly as he ran his whetstone down the edge of his sword. The old ways? What were they? He'd doubtlessly have to rule by them if he was truly made King in the North.

The man that passes the sentence should swing the sword. His wasn't a new sword, not by any stretch of the word, but it had hardly seen any use before it came into his hand. It was a pretty yet sturdy thing, and he had taken it from the body of a Lannister commander in a skirmish sometime before the battle of the Camps. He still couldn't remember if it had been him or Grey Wind that had killed the man. The blade itself was simple, straight and true and with a broad taper and narrow tip to better punch through chainmail and armour, yet the crossguard was gaudy and hideous, gilded and set with rubies at the wings and the pommel, and the handle had been wrapped in red leather decorated with gold lions. He had torn that off and replaced with a simple brown wrap that lay better in the hand, but the crossguard he still hadn't done anything about. It was still the same gaudy gold from the Westerlands.

The Westerlands. Already Robb had beaten the Lannisters at the Battle of the Camps and the Whispering Woods, and all but a few saw the Battle of the Green Fork as anything but a victory. Now he'd be on towards the West, keeping a token force harrying Tywin's forces in the Riverlands so that the old lion could not leave Harrenhal unattended while Robb marched on Lannisport. He wasn't dumb enough to think that he could lay siege to Casterly Rock as was, not with the rest of the war to fight. It would waste too many of his men. But if Lannisport fell…

If Lannisport fell the lords of the Westerlands would perhaps see that the mighty Tywin had no power left to defend them. They'd rout, forsake his family to stand on its own as Tywin had made few friends over the years and was powerless without the fear and respect of his banners, and so the resistance around King's Landing would falter and lessen. Robb could take the city then, with as much tactics as martial prowess, and when the city fell the garrison of the Red Keep would no doubt throw open their gates and deliver the boy king to Stark justice, and-

Wishful thinking, no doubt. Things rarely went as easy as that. Battle had taught him that particular lesson. But he'd kill all of them, and get justice for his father and set his sisters free from captivity. Then Joffery – that ingrate, that blonde inbred little shit – would die, and he'd be free. His people would be free.

He wondered what Edmure Tully and the rest of the Riverlords would do in response to the Northeners crowning him king, the ones not there at the camps but still under Lannister siege at Riverrun, but he doubted that it would lead to open hostilities. And, after all, he had a knack for war. He had discovered that quickly. In some ways it wasn't the thoughts of Kingship and the war that drove him to the godswood to sit and think before the Gods. It was the fear of what came after.

Afterwards… he knew how to rule a kingdom. He had been his father's first son and heir, and so he knew the practicalities of rule, at least for the North. But theory was one thing and practice another. The books told you to do something but never how it was to experience doing it. He'd have to levy taxes, establish an independent mint – that was what Southron kings did –, build and maintain a navy, see to it that Glover and Umber didn't start feuding once again, see that Forrester and Whitehill put aside their squabbles, that the Skagosi were well and truly subjugated, establish a bodyguard in the style of the Kingsguard – a Wolfguard? – and father heirs and get married-

At those thoughts and what they implied he slanted his whetstone off the blade and ran his palm down the edge. Just a hair, but it did cut him, and as he dropped his sword and seized his hand with a curse he saw a small trickle of blood slowly escape a hair-thin cut now in his palm. He muttered another choice oath and made to stand fetch some bandages, but almost slipped on the uneven dais and thus both his hands fell on the heart tree's bark to hold him upright. And as his cut hand landed on the space just beneath the eyes of the Weirwood tree, beneath the face of the God, the blood of the tree, still fresh and dripping, mingled with his.

And pain shot through him.

"Old gods or new, it makes no matter, no man is so accursed as the kinslayer". Pain, in his shoulder, a slash, a clawing demon thing, a poisoned bolt fired from a crossbow.

"The Lannisters send their regards". A stab, through the gut, a slash of pain across the neck, blood all over, blood everywhere.

"I will trade your boy's life for Robb's. A son for a son!" Claws down his face, wolves butchered, ash of burning heart trees on the air, a greatsword melted down and cannibalised, brothers lied to and dead and gone.

"The North remembers". A stab through the heart, blood on the Needle, House Stark forgotten.

And then silence, until the end of time. Silence.

Silence.

Lying prone on the ground before the heart tree Robb panted, chest heaving, the aftershock of the pains running through him. His vision swam, stars dancing black before his eyes, but through it all he saw Grey Wind standing staring at him, concerned but not helping. The thing that did this… it was the Direwolf's master, too. That was what he could tell Grey Wind was thinking.

"Gods" Robb gasped, forcing himself to roll over onto his stomach. Everything hurt, even his eyes. Especially his eyes. "Gods!" he tried to stand, but the world spun around him, and his stomach heaved until he could do nothing but brace himself on his hands and evacuate everything in his gut onto the ground before him in a bout of violent sickness. His britches felt wet – had the cramps made him piss himself? His heart was beating faster than it ever had before and he was as hard as a rock all over, every muscle rippling in agony as if they wanted to tear themselves from his bones. "Gods!"

He looked up, forcing himself onto his knees, and his eyes met those of the Weirwood's. In them there was a light, shining like the moon over glaciers. A terrible, awesome light, and from the mouth of the madly laughing God: a whisper in his mind, a voice like gnarled roots twisting and ice breaking, of mountains splitting apart and the world being torn asunder.

Forsake honour. Forsake righteousness. Forsake kindness. Winter is coming, little king. And the cold knows no mercy.

"Gods" Robb whispered into the silence that rung in his ears after the pain had left his body. And, in truth, the silence was perfect but for that. Not a wind moved, not a bird sang, not a blade of grass whisked as he climbed onto his feet and nearly fell over. He had to brace himself against the heart tree's white trunk, but nothing happened. The visions had passed. On the distant breeze he heard, half a world away, the hatching cries of infant Dragons.

The Gods had spoken.

It could have been nothing but the Gods speaking to him by way of the heart tree.

If this was what it was like to be a prophet he never wanted to be one ever again. But as his hands slid over the smooth white surface of the heart tree no more sights came to him. No more agonies, no more flashes of pain and screaming of voices so distant. Now, past the ringing in his ears, there was only that far-off and off-key singing on the wind. It was the Night that Ended, the song his Northerners sang. And they cheered again and again, a new cheer past every verse. "The King in the North!" They'd put their trust in him. The lords of the North and the Riverlands and the Smallfolk, too. His family, his sisters and brothers. Even the gods, now. They all counted on him.

And then, in a flash, the fear from before escaped the young king. This, he had discovered, was as it should have been. The gods had spoken to him.

This was his destiny.

"Come along, Grey Wind" Robb said to his Direwolf after he had straightened out the garden after him and cleaned up the sick to make sure that he didn't dishonour the Gods – Gods he knew for certain were real now – and retrieved his sword, the one with the Lannister crossguard. He'd have to have it changed soon, but not now.

Now, when all the doubts had been burned away by a godssent agony, it was time to act.

His lords and commanders found him before dawn the next day – or later that night, as Robb had not slept even an instant through all those dark hours – in the great hall, a gathering of scrolls before him all sealed with grey wax sigils bearing the imprint of the Direwolf and spread out far over the surface of the table he was standing over. It was Greatjon Umber that came first, looking for his son and heir Smalljon, who despite his name was too a giant of a man in the spitting image of his father and was passed out on top of the back of the otherwise incredibly dignified Robett Glover.

"Your Grace!" Greatjon boomed and approached the king, stepping over unconscious men and women as he went, avoiding to tread on all other lords with great care but gleefully kicking his own men in the sides to wake them up. "You're up bloody early" he commented as he stopped and looked down over the map alongside the Young Wolf. "What's bothering you?"

"This war, and the future of my House" Robb Stark confessed and turned towards the Lord Umber, and Greatjon scowled at the sight of him. His hair was ruffled, his shirt and britches clean and new yet still somehow hanging off him, and his face was pale and splotched with large bruises, his eyes shot with tendrils of red in the millions. "Don't mind me, Lord Umber. I was drunk and went to pray in the godswood last night. Must've fallen over and down a rocky slope… or nine".

"Aye, you look like absolute shite, your grace" Greatjon chuckled, satisfied with the explanation as he moved to stand beside his new and uncrowned king, looking out over the rough semblance of Westeros. "So" the Lord of Last Hearth went slowly, softly "I might've been drunken and glad after the battle yesterday, but I regret nothing, your Grace. I should've run it by you first, not just sprung it on you like that, but it had been burning in my mind ever since I, uh, carved your meat for you, and-"

"We've been servants of southron lords for far too long, Greatjon" Robb interrupted him, and at that the Lord Umber gave a large and bloodthirsty grin, hearing the certainty in his liege's voice. "They'll answer for my father's death. All of them will. I will have my sisters back, I will have justice, and we'll all have freedom. What you say to that, Lord Umber?"

"I'd say that you'll have us Umbers with you every step of the way, and our bannermen too, King Stark" the Greatjon grinned even broader and licked his lips. "So what's keeping you up – besides the bruises and the restlessness?"

"Besides my thoughts of vengeance?" And the words of the Gods? "I've thought on it long and hard, and I need someone I can trust beyond all reproach to do… something. Someone who can be my King's Hand and perform for me a charge more important than any battle". The Gods had told him to forsake honour, the cornerstone of his father's legacy, and though he would not betray either his father's or his own morality he had come to understand the voices to be right during his long wake. He needed to forsake kindness if he was to win this war. He would hate it, but he needed to use the men at his command like pieces upon a board.

He would need to play at the southron Game of Thrones.

"Lord Umber, you were the first to call me king, and you are the most loyal to my House" Robb took the much larger man by the shoulders and stared him true. "I must trust you with a secret mission. You are the only man for this. If you'd do it-"

"Aye" Greatjon nodded without question, and Robb nodded back at him. If he had had the strength in him to smile he would have done so. For now, a nod would have to do. "What is your command, your grace?"

"After my coronation in a sevennight you'll take a hundred and fifty men and ride to the North, as far as North goes" he instructed as he turned back to the table and pulled from there four scrolls – three for his brothers' sake, one for Maester Luwin – and handed them to Greatjon before taking them back. He would have to rewrite them. "Then you must ride like the winds of Winter, and let no man bar your way". As he went on to explain in hushed tones the hall began to fill with other Northern chiefs and Riverlords, shaking and slapping their sleeping comrades awake. And soon even the lady dowager herself, the widow Stark, lady Catelyn, rose from her reprieve to find in the lowest chamber of the keep her son, Smalljon Umber and Dacey Mormont helping him put on his heavy plate armour.

"Mother" Robb greeted the woman who had birthed him levelly, almost coolly, despite the way she flinched when she saw his bruised and battered appearance. Smalljon Umber, bearded and fierce, gave his newly minted king a look after having secured the last strap of his breastplate, and Robb nodded and jerked his head, to which he and the heiress of House Mormont left the two alone and dragged with them the few remaining in the hall. It was half an hour past dawn, and Riverrun was half a day's march away.

"What on earth happened last night?" Mother stalked up to his side and lifted her hand to touch his face, but Robb flinched away and held still her wrist. He didn't want her – or anyone else for that matter – to touch his skin. He was still feverish from the visions, and the bruises left behind by the cramps where his muscles had all but been ripped apart were still fresh and forming.

"I went to the godswood and tripped in the dark. But now I see clearly" he told her, winching inside as he knew how she would react when she came to know what he had just done. Or what he had ordered Greatjon to do. Gods, Mother, forgive me. "And last night… they crowned me, Mother. The crown's just a formality at this point. The whole army cheered it to the stars, and soon the smallfolk will know too. Even if I could turn away from it, I wouldn't".

"Are you sure about this, Robb?" she implored him strongly, seeking chinks and cracks in his armour. "Surely it's not too late to back away from this madness. There are still Baratheons out there with honour – like Stannis and Renly. You could-"

"I wouldn't. Lord Umber was right. Blackwood, Glover, Mormont, Umber, even Bolton and the Reed boys, even Bracken and the Vances – they all knelt to me. The Seven Kingdoms lived by the Dragons, and the Dragons are gone".

"What about the realm, Robb? What about what your father fought and bled for?" How could he make his mother understand? How could she ever understand? She was southron through and through, despite having borne five northern children, and she clove close to the Seven. She knew not, nor would she ever know, the whispers of the Gods. She heard not their voices in the godswood. She would never see the visions or believe in the Greenseers and the Skinchangers. All stories to her. He knew now, for certain. Could he trust a heathen? Winter is coming, and the cold knows no mercy.

"The realm is dead. The Lannisters saw to half of that murder, and by the Gods I'll see to the rest of it". He wondered what the Gods had meant. Did they want him to honour his father but dishonour his memory? "My father fought for Baratheon. Robert Baratheon. Did you name me after him? I only ever saw a fat drunkard who couldn't dismount his own bloody horse without help". He turned away from her and faced the map. "Robb… Robb. It's too short. Not a good name for a king. Needs a royal style, doesn't it? If I am to be crowned I'll need it longer, and with titles".

"Already thinking of that, are you?" Catelyn knew her son – or at least, she had known the boy that he had been before the war began. She had never known him to be so good at killing, but she had always known that he was gregarious and practical both. It was his brother, Jon, who had been the sullen and quiet one, prone to anger and passions at times but otherwise always hanging close to Robb's side, drawn in by heir of Winterfell's charisma. But Robb had grown so brooding and serious now. He didn't even hear her when she asked him, staring at the far wall as he was, muttering half to himself and half to her.

"Cregard, Bennard, Rickard… Eddard. Robard's an old name in the North. A First Men name. Robard Cerwyn comes to mind. It sounds" he drifted off in the middle of his sentence, leaving his mother to fill the void for him, but she did no such thing. "There's a sense of thing carrying on, as they always have, in that. Of continuity". He paused, and when he spoke again he spoke slowly, as if tasting and leaning on every single word. "Robbard Stark, the first of his name. King in the North". His eyes fell on the map again, bloodshot and strained, and a shiver ran down his back. "King in the fucking North".

"Never did I think I'd see this day" she told him honestly, and though her heart ached no tears came to her eyes. Though she had cried herself to sleep the night before, as the lord of the North lifted her son up on their shoulders and called him King, now it was as if she had no tears left. "Robb, if this is what you seek to do I will stand by you. A mother supports her son. As long as you get my little girls back to me-" she fell silent when Robb turned back to her, the cold of the North in his blue Tully eyes, brighter than they had ever been before. Blue, deep, and colder than the heart of winter.

"I will have my sisters back. I will have my vengeance on the Lannisters and House Baratheon of King's Landing" he assured her, laying one hand on the pommel of his sword. "No kindness, no mercy. I will bar no means to win this war – no matter what you or Father would say".

And with that he paced on by her, a new darkness in him apparent before her eyes. As the army made to march she lingered behind in that ruined hall for a little longer, quietly praying for his soul.

Seven days later, in the Godswood of Riverrun and the shadow of the heart tree there, a slender thing with a laughing merry face, Robb was crowned in the presence of the gods in the manner of the First Men.

He was kneeling before the heart tree, eyes fixed on the laughing face carved into its bark, as all his lords and oathsworn men stood behind him. He wondered faintly what it was with all the grinning faces in the trees this far south. Were the Gods somehow happier here, where the forests were brighter and the grass grew greener and the wheat grew taller?

Up in the North, in Winterfell and the Wolfswood, the faces were stern, sneering or staring or even baring narrow wooden teeth in anger. Had the Gods all been laughing and smiling once, long ago, but when the Andals came and cut down the trees the ones in the North had turned bitter and enraged? Then why was this one smiling? Was it because he was here, now, a wolf of the Starks come to bring the Andals justice?

Fool thoughts, lad. There was just as much Andal blood in him as there was in any man in the North, the result of thousands of years of intermarriage with the Andal strangers from the south. And the faces were carved. They didn't change. They didn't feel or think. They were just trees.

They didn't show any visions. And yet… His mind was hurting with the implications, a burning ache just behind his eyes. The bruises had faded, his eyes had stopped hurting, but the questions remained. If the Gods were real, beyond all doubts real, how much power did they have?

And how many more of the darkest myths of yesteryear were truths?

He cast the thoughts from his head and focused on the voices around him. The First Men had crowned their kings by the grace of his men, not by the Gods or whoever claimed to speak for them like the southorns did. No one man or woman could speak for the Gods of the Weirwoods, even the ones whom they had showed… something to. Flashes of pain and snippets of screams merely. A warning, no doubt about it, but of what? "I raise this man to the kingship of his fathers" Roose Bolton's voice had been in there, in the visions too, so familiar to what they were now as he repeated the same words said by all the rest of them as they passed around his crown. From hand to hand that bronze and iron circlet went, passed from each to the next as they all said the words. A mere formality now, truly, as was the crowning. But if it was such, why was Robb's hands shaking around the grip of his sword?

Smalljon had named it Lionslayer, once the crossbar and pommel of rubies and gold had been replaced with grey iron and bronze and the grip had been remade out of a piece of Weirwood, white and run through with red. All of it was made in the south but was of the North, like the crown made for him by his uncle's blacksmiths and greensmiths. Like Robb himself, he could not help but think. It was no secret that he was stocky and brawny and red of hair and blue of eye like a Tully. Almost no Stark at all in his features. But none of the lords before him spoke that aloud as they took his newly forged crown in their hands before they passed it along. He had proven himself to them. He had proven to be his father's son.

So why did the Gods want him to dishonour his father's legacy? Forsake righteousness. Why? But he had felt the agony that would follow if he clung too hard to notions of honour. The cold knows no mercy. He had felt the dagger in his gut, the quarrels in his body, the sword that cut his head from his neck. No more honour. And, as was, Roose Bolton's family knew more about a lack of honour and kindness than any other House alive on the face of the world. He'd have to keep the Lord of the Dreadfort close. Perhaps the man could teach him ruthlessness. And if the man thought to betray him, or if Robb had to act against him, Bolton would only be a sword's length away.

For now he was loyal. For now they all were. But he had felt the steel cut his flesh, and he had heard the name Lannister. His enemies would not rise above sending assassins and poison to do the work of men, or to try and turn his people against him with promises of gold and titles. They hadn't shied from such means in the past. He needed to prepare.

If he was the King in the North he needed to prepare.

"By my love for his father I raise him to the kingship of his ancestors" Rickard Karstark took the crown last, as a distant kinsman to Robb's family, and his armour creaked as he approached the kneeling young man with the circlet in hand. If Robb's lady Mother had followed the Gods of the land and the woods and the rivers she would have been the one to place the crown on his head, but his mother's presence would wait until the septons of the Riverlands and the Riverlords crowned him a second time, in the light of the Seven. A necessary formality. The Gods knew that his heart was with them and not with the Seven of the South. They had looked into his heart when he had looked into theirs. Or so he liked to think.

"From ice, from iron, from stone, from earth" Rickard Karstark droned. "We, of the Barrowlands, of the Rills and the Stony Shore, of the Bay of Ice and Bear Island, of the Mountains and the Hills, of Skagos and the Bay of Seals, of the Last River, the Weeping Water, the Broken Branch and the White Knife, of Saltspear and the Neck and Cape Kraken, of the Wolfswood and Long Lake; we children of the North raise you to your kingship, Stark of Winterfell".

And so the crown fell on Robb's head, placed there by his kinsman, and Rickard Karstark stepped back to the rest of the crowd to watch in reverence as Robb stood, sword still in hand. The Lord of Karhold drew in a mighty breath before he declared to the world. "Gods, bear witness to the rising of Robbard, son of Eddard, Lord of Winterfell, the get of Torrhen, King of Winter! Children, bear witness to the rising of Robbard, king of the First Men! Men of the North, bear witness to the rising of Robbard! The King in the North!"

For a little while he merely stood there and let their shouts wash over him. King in the North, the King of Winter and the Trident, High Chief of the First Men and the Sword of the North. The King in the North. The King in the North.

"The North remembers!" Robb shouted and raised Lionslayer to the heavens as the lords cheered his name, and on that day, the day of his crowning, the gods bore witness to his vow.

He would remember. He would never allow himself to forget.


END


A/N:

I want it noted, first and foremost, that I'm drawing inspiration on a sort of half-and-half of canon. Some events (Bitterbridge) will be like they are in the books, while characters and other events are more from the television series (the happenings in the chapter just past).

Logic is as follows: Robb sees vision in the tree, Robb grows in one stroke trustless and fanatical both. Being thus he does not take his mother's counsel as close as he otherwise would have, and grows determined to free his people and his House from the "southron yoke", as it were. This pushes the Lady Catelyn to the periphery of the politics of the new court, something that will have disastrous consequences.

I've always wondered what Robb's crowning looked like. It's a moment never mentioned in the books. One moment it's "King in the North!" and the next its two months later and he's wearing the damn thing on his head. I hope no one objects to the crowning scene. It always made sense to me, the Northerners being such an independent lot, that their king would be raised by his vassals.

And the Royal style… well, did you know that before Henry V was king he was called Hal? And his dad was born under the name Harry? Kings take new names when crowning themselves in history. Yeah, it's stupid, but hey, whatever works, right?

You want to know the interesting thing? I'm going with the whole concept of faulty prophesies, like GRRM does with Dany and Bran. So expect Robb to be mistaken about his visions, and to make the wrong conclusions and never ask himself the right questions. Namely: was it really the Old Gods that spoke to him through the tree? Or was it something else?

So, haven't really decided on who's love interest Jon will be. So if you guys have ideas I'd be glad to hear them. Only three requirements: female, red hair, bow and arrow. Boy's got more than a type, after all. He's got issues.

Hope you enjoyed. Chapter 2 will be out soon.

Ta.