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Chapter 10. Fire and Blood
"Catelyn!" Ned yelled and held his passed out wife in his arms. Arya was the first to move after the yell. She went to her mother's side and checked her over, something she learned through her many experiences. "She passed out. She will be fine" she said monotonously and stood up to go back to her place when Ned grabbed her arm. "What happened to you?" he said, the words rolling out of his mouth in a rush. The others had gathered around them, only the Starks were close enough to Catelyn trying to wake her again. Arya looked to her unconscious mother than to her father, her eyes glazing over slightly before they hardened back again. "It will be shown father" she said and moved away, her arm sliding out of her father's grip. Ned looked as her daughter walked away. He had seen the hardened eyes she had and he had seen eyes like those only on warriors who had killed and were trained to kill. To see them on his daughter had shaken him to his core.
After Catelyn had regained her consciousness, Ned had to hold her and comfort her. Tell her that this won't happen again. It took them a while but finally she had calmed down. They all returned to their seats and the next memory began.
At the Great Sept of Baelor, Eddard Stark has been executed by beheading. The great sword Ice is covered in blood, and Sandor Clegane standing next to Ser Ilyn Payne, the royal executioner, holds Lord Eddard's head up to the adulation of the baying crowd.
Catelyn growled under her breath. "Bastards! All of them! They will know true pain once we are done here" she thought to herself, her eyes burning with anger.
Sansa Stark has fainted. In the crowd, Yoren drags Arya away, making a point of calling her "Boy". Once he gets her out of the courtyard, he cuts her hair off with a knife. He tells her that he will get her out of King's Landing and to Winterfell as a recruit of the Night's Watch, but he warns her not to trust the other recruits, since apparently half would hand her over to Cersei for a pardon, while the other half would do the same, but only after raping her first.
Catelyn and Sansa both shuddered at the thought. Catelyn from disgust and fear from what those men could do to her daughter. Sansa because she knew personally what that would feel like, how it would eat her from the inside.
Joffrey is holding court and a singer is brought before him, charged with making up an amusing but offensive song about Robert and Cersei. The song says that the boar might have killed King Robert, but the lion in his bed had previously castrated him. The singer turns out to be Marillion, who Catelyn and Ser Rodrik met at the Inn at the Crossroads, and who accompanied them and Tyrion to the Vale of Arryn. Joffrey asks Marillion if he wants to keep his hands or tongue. Marillion fearfully responds that everyone needs hands. Joffrey commands Ilyn Payne to cut out his tongue instead.
Catelyn sneered at disgust at the bastard's action. He was no king and had no qualities that would make a king in the first place.
Joffrey then takes Sansa up to the walls to see her father's head mounted on a spike and makes her look at it. He cruelly mocks her, promising he will give her Robb's head next.
"That boy will be the first to die. And I will make sure the whore watches it" Robert growled. Usually it was something Ned would be against. But only for the bastard, he would abide by what the king had in mind for the 'prince'.
Sansa quietly retorts that Robb might give her Joffrey's instead. Infuriated, Joffrey orders Ser Meryn Trant to beat her, as Cersei has told him that a king should not hit his queen.
Ned growled under his breath, something that caught everyone by surprise. He was a level headed man who never showed any outwards signs of irritation as prominently as he did now. Robert's mind flashed back to another time he had heard Ned do that. It was back when his sister was taken, or rather ran off. Tywin looked at the lord of house Stark and sighed internally. He had lost all love for the grandson who turns out was born from a forbidden relationship of his children. He wouldn't move one finger when his fate would call him. He was unsure whether the same would go for the other two grandchildren of his or his daughter on who his dislike was growing slowly.
Sansa moves up behind Joffrey, apparently preparing to shove him off the walkway to his death, but unexpectedly Sandor Clegane dabs the blood off her lip with a handkerchief and after Joffrey leaves, tells her to give him what he wants.
"He looked out for me when I was up there" Sansa said softly seeing the surprised stares from most of the others. They had all thought that the hound was probably the same kind of beast his brother was, maybe not in size but in nature. It seems they had misjudged him.
Cersei Lannister has taken a new lover, her cousin Lancel who was King Robert's squire.
Jaime blinked in surprise. He had heard rumors of this back in the capital a long time back but Cersei had told him it was all a lie spread to defame her and attack house Lannister. Now seeing it for himself, he felt sick. I seemed to him that he was nothing but a means of pleasure for Cersei, even though he had dedicated so much to her. He clenched his fists, if he had known this back then.
" Hmmm that does sound better"_ a voice rang out through the room and Jaime disappeared only to be replaced by Jaime, except he was not the future Jaime. "I was on the king's road just now how…" he said and before anyone could say anything, he went stiff and his eyes rolled back for just a moment before they went back to normal. "He filled me in" Jaime said when Tyrion poked his side. "I was shown in a few moments what the other me had seen till now" he explained when he looked at the questioning glances of the others. The rest just nodded their heads and resumed the watch.
She also receives a letter informing her of Jaime's capture. Lancel is naked in Cersei's bedroom. The thought of being at war is exciting to him, as he has just been made a new young knight. He asks for the news of the war and asks what their next move is, but Cersei tells him to shut up and get back in bed.
"Typical" Jaime thought in disgust. Tywin looked at the screen with his own varying levels of disgust. He had decided, his daughter will get the same treatment as his eldest grandchild for sullying the Lannister name.
Grand Maester Pycelle takes the prostitute Ros to bed, boasting of the several great kings he has served, lamenting first how Aerys Targaryen devolved from a charming young man into a paranoid lunatic obsessed with fire, how Robert Baratheon was a great soldier, but perhaps not so ideal a king, before displaying his sycophantic loyalty to Joffrey. After Ros leaves, Pycelle stands and limbers up, revealing that he is not as frail in mind and body as he lets on. He resumes his act after he dresses and leaves his chamber.
"That man" Robert snorts in disgust. Guess he was another man he needed to deal with.
Yoren has assembled a band of new recruits for the Night's Watch. Pretending that Arya is a boy called "Arry", he has her join the group. Also in the group are Hot Pie, Lommy Greenhands, and Gendry, who unknown to him, is King Robert's bastard son. He had been working for Tobho Mott, but with Robert dead, the secret funds being sent to Mott stopped, so he fired Gendry and told him he had to join the Night's Watch.
"That's just sad" Sansa muttered. "Alas that's how things work" Ned muttered sullenly.
Hot Pie and Lommy try to bully Arya into giving up Needle, but she angrily draws the sword, warning that she "has already killed one fat boy" and will happily do it again. Gendry breaks up the argument by taking Arya's side, threatening the boys with violence to keep them from picking on Arya later. Yoren now has to get them all to the Wall, a thousand leagues away, through the war-torn Riverlands. They set out.
"Sounds very simple" Tyrion said sarcastically.
At Winterfell, Bran has another dream of the Three-Eyed Raven. He wakes up and tells Osha about how the dream always ends with the bird flying into the crypts under the castle, and he tells her he thinks his father is in the tombs. Osha takes Bran down there, and Bran tells her about the histories of some of the ancestors entombed there. They are then surprised by Shaggydog, Rickon's direwolf, who leaps out at them from the empty future tomb of Eddard Stark. Rickon calls Shaggydog off, then reveals to Bran that he had the same dream. Making their way out, Osha is still trying to tell Bran that it could be a coincidence, but outside they see Maester Luwin, who holds a letter and looks at them with such sadness that it is obviously the news of Eddard's death.
Bran sighed internally. He still remembered that day like it was just yesterday. Rickon had become so quiet, he wouldn't talk to anyone or eat properly and continuously called out for their mother. He blinked when something occurred to him. Why was he feeling this sadness? He had ever since he became the three eyed raven not felt a thing. "Maybe because my dead family are here" he thought to himself.
At the House Stark camp, Catelyn stoically walks through the encampment and receives the condolences and respect of the northern bannermen, who bow to her as she passes. She makes her way into the woods around the camp. Once she is out of everyone's sight, she breaks down, practically hyperventilating with grief.
Ned sighed sadly and wrapped an arm around his wife and pulled her closer to him. Catelyn who was still grieving buried herself into his side.
Hearing something from deeper in the woods, she finds Robb hacking his sword at a tree in anger and grief. Lady Catelyn calls to him and tells him he is ruining his sword. Robb drops the sword and falls into her arms, vowing to kill the Lannisters who murdered his father. Catelyn comforts him and promises him revenge, but only after they rescue Sansa and Arya first.
Jon sighed sadly. If only that had happened, he would still have his brother with him, Sansa wouldn't have to go through what she did and Arya wouldn't have changed this drastically.
At Robb's camp, Robb and his bannermen debate whether to cooperate with Stannis or Renly Baratheon in the war against King Joffrey; Renly has greater forces, but Stannis is the elder Baratheon and next in line of succession excepting Cersei's children. Jon Umber questions why the northerners should be told what to do by rulers in the south at all, reminding them that the North was independent of the other Kingdoms before the Targaryens threatened them with their dragons. With the dragons gone, Umber declares there is only one king worthy of his respect and allegiance and bows before Robb, calling out, "The King in the North!" The other northern bannermen take up the cry and bow before the new King in the North, swearing fealty to Robb.
Ned, Robb and Catelyn all blinked at that. It had been ages since the north had an independent king. Ned and Catelyn looked at each other then turned their eyes to Robb. It was a proud moment for them but both of them knew how much more danger Robb was put into.
Catelyn visits the captive Jaime Lannister who taunts her about Ned's death and offers to serve her as a lover. She hits him in the head with a rock. Jaime says that if she keeps hitting him, she can kill him and that he doesn't fear death, though Jaime probably realizes that the Starks won't kill him as long as his sister holds Sansa and Arya hostage. Catelyn tells him he has violated the laws of man and gods, and he asks where Ned's gods were when his head was cut off. She says there is injustice in the world because of men like him to which Jaime responds, "There are no men like me, only me". He admits to pushing Bran from the tower, but doesn't reveal why.
Jaime put his head down in shame. He couldn't believe he was stooping down to such low levels right then. But he could believe it. Cersei's hold on him was so strong by then that he could believe that he would do something like that. He gritted his teeth in frustration.
At the Lannister camp, Lord Tywin is holding a strategy meeting with his generals, and is furious that Jaime has been captured by the Starks. Both Stannis and Renly have claimed the Iron Throne, meaning the Lannisters are now fighting a three-front war against the Starks to the north and the competing Baratheon forces to the south. Tywin's brother Kevan and other commanders debate whether to attack, fall back and raise reinforcement armies, or sue for peace. Tyrion points out that any chance of negotiating with Robb Stark died when his father Eddard was executed. The Lannister army is now exposed, so Tywin decides to retreat to Harrenhal, the great castle on the northern shores of Gods Eye, and use it as a base of operations. Reluctantly impressed by Tyrion's astute judgment of the situation, Tywin orders his son to go to King's Landing and serve as Acting Hand of the King in Tywin's stead.
Tywin blinked in surprise at his future self's actions. But then again, he knew he had made a good call. The boy might be a dwarf and disfigured, but he was one of the smartest men he had ever met. Him as a hand of the king would be a good choice.
He is to control Cersei and Joffrey and prevent the young king from making more idiotic mistakes, and killBaelish,Varys, and Pycelle if he sees treachery. Tywin also orders Tyrion to leave whore behind. Later on in his tent, Tyrion complains about his father to Shae, then decides to defy Tywin and take Shae to court anyway. Jon Snow learns of his father's death. He saddles a horse and prepares to leave to join Robb's army, ignoring Samwell's pleas to stay and fulfill his oaths. Jon leaves Castle Black, but is pursued. One of his pursuers hits a tree branch and is unhorsed, and Jon realizes it was Sam. He turns back to help him. The other riders are Grenn and Pypar. He tells them to go back or they will get in trouble too, but they say they can't go back without him. They surround him and recite their oath to the Night's Watch, and Jon realizes that they are right. Leaving would make him a deserter and an oathbreaker, something his father would never countenance if he were alive, and Jon doesn't even know if Robb would accept his help or turn him over to the authorities. He agrees to return to the Wall with them.
"It was the right choice" Ned said. "Always honor your vows" he added and Jon nodded. Jon looked at his hands and smiled sadly, he had missed these talks with his father.
Lord Commander Jeor Mormont decides to overlook Jon's brief desertion, saying many have fled the Wall, only to think better of it and return. If they executed everyone who did that, they'd have no men left. Mormont tells Jon that the war between the Lannisters and Starks is less important than what they face now, a renewed threat from the wildlings, White Walkers, and wights. Mormont means to lead the Night's Watch in force into the Haunted Forest to learn more of their foe, to prepare to battle against them, and to find the missing Benjen Stark. Jon agrees to commit himself fully to the Night's Watch and all that lies ahead.
Jeor nodded proudly. He had chosen a worthy successor.
In the wastelands beyond Lhazar, Daenerys wakes up to terrible news from Ser Jorah Mormont. Her son, Rhaego, is dead. He was born dead and deformed, covered with scales. The majority of the khalasar have also moved on, leaving them behind. However, Drogo lives. Daenerys insists on seeing her husband, and finds him in a catatonic state. Daenerys demands to know why, and Mirri Maz Duur explains that when Daenerys "saved" her, she had already been raped three times and the temple she served had been burned and defiled by the Dothraki. They had sacked her village, looted all they owned, and those not killed were enslaved. She has now gotten her revenge, not only on Drogo, but on Daenerys' child Rhaego; now her "Stallion Who Mounts the World" can burn no cities and slaughter no innocents. Duur agrees that Daenerys saved her life, but she says to ask Drogo what life is worth when all else is gone.
Dany clenches her fists in anger. She had never forgotten what had happened to her and her unborn child. She may have made the witch pay but she still had that anger in her. She snapped out of her internal raging when she felt a hand on hers. She looked up to see that Jon was looking at her with a soft smile and was holding her hand, which had uncurled and then curled around his hand. The man might not be a significant other to her, but he is a good friend.
It is night, and Daenerys is in their tent tending to Drogo. She baths him, talks to him, even tries to seduce him, but nothing she does reaches him. She realizes he is no longer there, and seeing him in his vegetative state breaks her heart. Crying, Daenerys kisses him goodbye, then smothers him with a pillow.
Rhaegar looked on sadly at the scene. He could not imagine the kind of pain Dany had gone through right there, losing her son and then her husband as well.
Daenerys and her small retinue prepare a funeral pyre for Drogo. She makes a speech to the few who are left saying that if they wish to go they may, but if they stay with her she will lead them into a glorious future. She frees those of them who are slaves and asks that they stay as equals. The maegi smirks as some people begin walking away. At Daenerys' command, Rakharo places the dragon eggs on the pyre, and Mirri Maz Duur is tied to a stake next to the pyre as well. She tells Daenerys that she will not scream while she is burned alive. Daenerys replies that she only wants the maegi's life. Ser Jorah believes that Daenerys intends to kill herself and pleads for her to reconsider, as they can sell the eggs and travel far away. Ignoring Jorah's pleas, she kisses his cheek, and sets the pyre alight. Mirri Maz Duur does indeed scream as she burns, and Daenerys calmly walks into the flames. She stands below the pyre as flames appear to consume her.
"She would be fine. She has the gift of the dragons. Fire would never harm her" Rhaegar told himself. But even he doubted whether she could actually survive a flame as great as this. But then it occurred to him that she was here. Meaning she did survive. But then another thought occurred to him, what had happened to the dragon eggs? Did they burn to ashes or did they stay the same? And then a bunch of words played in his head. "Where are my dragons!?" he had heard someone scream.
At dawn, the fire dies down. Jorah and the rest of the khalasar awake to find Daenerys sitting among the still smoldering embers, with three newly-hatched baby dragons crawling over her. Her clothes have burnt away and her body is covered in ash, but she is completely unharmed. One dragon nuzzles in her arm, another climbs her leg, and the third pulls itself up to sit on her shoulder. At the sight of the mythical animals born anew, an amazed Jorah and the few remaining Dothraki kneel and swear their allegiance to the Mother of Dragons. After she slowly stands up from the ashes, the black hatchling on her shoulder rises, spreads its wings and screams, announcing the return of dragons to the world.
"Dragons" Rhaegar said in awe and stood up. For centuries there has never been a single dragon in their family and many have tried to bring them back. Centuries later his sister had done something that no one had ever done before, she had brought three healthy dragons into this world.