A Song of Dreamers - (Robb I)
Previously... Prologue
299 AC
Riverrun
The Riverlands is a beautiful place, filled with verdant plains and greener forests. The rivers that it is named for seem to run endlessly through it - broad blue brushstrokes cut across a canvas of green. It was once the home of his mother and where she had grown up, and for all intents and purposes it is far more beautiful than the gray monotony of the North. Yet to Robb, it is dreary and dreadful, and no matter how brightly the sun shines or breathtaking the landscape, it will never be anything more than a bad memory.
It was in the Riverlands where they had received news that Theon Greyjoy had betrayed him and taken Winterfell; the home where they had grown up together as brothers. It was in the Riverlands where they were told that Theon had murdered his actual brothers and burnt his home to the ground. And it was in the Riverlands where he had found out his father had been murdered; executed by the bastard Joffrey Baratheon.
He can still remember the day as though it were only yesterday: the skies overcast with dark clouds that held the promise of rain, the chill in the air that nipped at his skin that almost reminded him of home. He remembers the way the birds had been singing from their perches in the trees, the way his mother had smiled when they had broken their fast together that same morning.
And then they received a raven with a scroll tied to its ankle. Dark wings, dark words. Perhaps he should have known, then.
He can still remember the way his heart seemed to shatter in his chest as he read the words inked on the parchment, the ache in his arm as he swung his sword against a tree again and again. Remembers how his vision blurred and he could not even see past his own tears.
But most of all, he remembers the tears in his own mother’s eyes and how she had tried to hide them. How she had tried to stay strong for him, promised him that they would save his sisters and then they would kill them all.
The next few turns of the moon had left Robb with a single-minded purpose of revenge that left room for little else in his mind. He ate little and slept even less, for he was too focused on when and where the next battle would take place. His mind filled with the intricacies of war and battle that seemed to be as much a part of him now as Grey Wind was. So when he had seen the familiar sights of red eyes and fur as white as summer snows, accompanied by a rider all in black - he had thought it nothing more than a vision at first. A trick of the mind, conjured up by the lack of sleep or perhaps even his grief stricken heart that longed for the family that remained to him. Yet there were differences to the figures before him, notable changes that were too dissimilar from the images of his memory to be anything but real.
And the words that had left his lips in what felt to be both a lifetime ago and only yesterday echoed through his mind: The next time I see you, you’ll be all in black.
And the words rang true now. Jon was dressed all in black, with his dark hair wild about his head and a pained look in his gray eyes. Their father’s eyes.
Ghost was bigger than when Robb had last seen him, though not as big as Grey Wind. Robb hadn’t realized just how much he missed Jon until they were wrapped in each other’s arms, greeting each other as though no time had passed at all.
It was a balm to each of them, the death of their father bringing them closer together than they ever had been before.
Robb learned that Jon had left Castle Black as soon as he received word of their father’s death, despite already having said his vows and knowing the cost of desertion. But Robb was the King of the North and the Trident, and Jon was his brother even if his surname was Snow. He pardoned him, much to his mother’s chagrin, and for the few moons that Jon was by his side again, he didn’t feel so alone or so consumed by his grief. Of course good things never lasted for long – bad things come in threes – and that adage proved true when they received word that Theon had betrayed him and seized Winterfell for his own, turning Bran and Rickon into prisoners in their own home. Roose Bolton had tried to convince him that he would send his bastard to retake it, but Robb had politely refused him. Jon had offered to go, and who did Robb trust more than him? His mother hadn’t liked it, but she had liked Jon being around Robb and being forced to tolerate his presence even less. So it was that Jon went back North with a number of men, but had arrived too late. Theon and his Ironborn were gone, and Winterfell was left in ruin. Worse still were the burned bodies he had found of two children that were roughly the size and shape of their brothers. Robb didn’t truly believe it was them. In his wolf dreams, he could still sense Summer and Shaggy Dog far off in the North, further North than Ghost was then. If their wolves were still alive, then his brothers had to be as well. When he informed his mother of what Jon had found, she had screamed and raged that it was somehow Jon’s fault. That Jon was the reason her youngest boys were dead. Robb had tried to console her, for they were Jon’s brothers too and that he would have Theon’s head for what he had done. But all his mother could do was sob and blame him for ever trusting Theon and Jon in the first place. Robb wrote to Jon to have him send men to search for any trace of Theon and to hold Winterfell until he could return. After all, there must always be a Stark in Winterfell, and even though Jon was a Snow, he still had the blood of the Starks running through his veins. His mother had done her best to appear strong in public, to hide her tears from his men. Though Robb was sure that no one would blame her for them, she had lost much and more in the last year that no wife or mother should ever have had to. In private, when it was just the two of them, she made no effort to hide them from him. It was then that he became her strength, when before she had always been his.
The sight that greets him now is altogether different as they stand in the castle that had once been her home. Now, his mother does not pretend to be strong any longer. Her cheeks are still wet from her tears though she is no longer crying - her lashes still wet and her eyes red. There is silver in her hair where before there was only red. Her figure has thinned some, and he knows that she has not been eating well. His mother looks to be a broken woman, appearing older than her years.
His heart aches for her, and yet there is nothing he can do. He cannot bring his father back, he cannot be the one to put Winterfell back together or bring his brothers back safely. Everyone believes them to be dead too, though Robb still holds onto the hope that they are out there somewhere - alive.
Nor can he return Lord Hoster Tully to the land of the living so his mother might say goodbye.
It is his first time really seeing Riverrun - the halls where his mother had been born and grown and played. Where his parents had met and married in Riverrun’s Godswood before King Robert’s Rebellion. The place where he had been born as well, though he holds no memory of this place. Yet they are here now to lay his grandfather to rest, to say goodbye to a man that he cannot recall.
Every day this war goes on, Robb feels as though he is running on ice; his body moving yet making no forward motion. He has won every battle he has fought, yet he is still losing the war. His purpose had died the day the Lannisters cut off his father’s head, and every morning it feels as though another tragedy awaits them - to sink its claws into them and tear into their flesh until nothing remains but their bones.
The only happy memory that the Riverlands holds for him is when he was reunited with Jon for that brief period, but even that feels so far away and is dulled by all the tragedy and heartache that seems to hound his steps like crows over carrion.
The day was overcast, much like it had been when they received word of his father’s death, though then the clouds had been so dark they’d been almost black. As though the Gods themselves raged and mourned the loss of the honorable Lord Eddard Stark. Now, the clouds are more gray in color, and though they cover the sun in its entirety, the glow from it can still be seen. Lord Hoster Tully, Lord of Riverrun and Lord Paramount of the Trident, is laid to rest in a boat dressed in his finest silks with the banner of House Tully laid over him. His armor, shield, hunting horn, and a wooden sword is added to the boat along with him. Robb, with the help of Lord Jonos Bracken, Lord Tytos Blackwood, Lord Karyl Vance, Lord Jason Mallister, Ser Marq Piper, and Lord Walder Frey's son Lothar, set the boat down the Red Fork like so many Tullys before him. His uncle Edmure tried three times to set the boat alight with a flaming arrow, before his great uncle, Brynden - also known as the Blackfish - took the bow from his nephew and successfully set the boat alight. They watched silently from the docks as the boat was consumed by flames and made its way down the Red Fork, Lord Hoster’s family and bannerman bidding him a final farewell. Robb’s own eyes are dry, though his face remains solemn. He had never known his grandfather, though he mourned his loss nonetheless. It is for the sake of his mother that his heart aches now, for the loss of a father after she has already suffered the loss of a husband and the supposed loss of two sons. Her daughters far away and out of reach, and Robb himself is the only child that remains to her. All that remains of the husband she has lost.
He doesn’t sleep much that night. Instead, he stays awake to watch over his mother as she sleeps fitfully through the night. Watches as she tosses and turns in her bed, her eyes red and cheeks tear-stained even in her sleep. Will the Gods not allow her even this small peace? Will they continue to cause her grief even in sleep? Hound her steps with loss in dreams just as they do in her waking hours?
The final thought that echoes through his mind before sleep tugs at him where he sits at his mother’s bedside is this: When will the Gods see fit to grant us peace?
≪ ◦ ❖ ◦ ≫ It is often said that among every tragedy and loss there remains a silver lining, and the saying proves to be true once more through a message borne to him on raven wings. King’s Landing has fallen to His Grace, Stannis Baratheon. The Usurper Joffrey Baratheon died a traitor’s death. Cersei Lannister and her other bastard son are dead, all of their heads set to rot on spikes.
It feels like the first time Robb has smiled in years, though he wishes he had been the one to take Joffrey’s head. To part it from his body with his own sword, like the bastard had ordered done to his father - too craven to do it himself.
There is more to the scroll he has received, but for now all he can focus on is the sheer relief and happiness those words bring him.
Robb’s feet bring him to where Jaime Lannister is caged, Grey Wind at his side and the scroll still clasped in his hand. To see the Golden Lion now: laid low and covered in his own filth, left to rot in the mud and watched over by the very same Northmen his family sought to make an enemy of… it feels good.
When the Kingslayer looks up to see who has deigned to visit him, his green eyes are still just as bright as the day he was defeated and imprisoned. When he sees that it is Robb who has come to visit him, that self-satisfied smirk takes up his face once more. And Robb meets it with one of his own - can’t wait to see it shatter and fall.
“Ah, the King of the North!” Jaime cries, his smile smug and tone mocking. “What is it that brings you to see me today? Has my father worn you down? Has he finally gotten you to realize that you have no hope of winning this war?”
Robb can’t help but laugh, lip curled up in a sneer. If only you knew what I am about to tell you,he thinks. Then you would not be so smug. “I’ve come with news, Lannister. To deliver to you the fates of your sister and your bastard sons.” He leans forward then, grasps one of the bars that encage Tywin Lannister’s favorite son. “I thought you might like to know, Kingslayer. But, if you’d rather continue to make mock of me, go ahead.”
It pleases him more than anything to see that flash of fear in the Kingslayer’s eyes - that hint of doubt. Grey Wind’s hackles rise as a rumble emanates from the direwolf, lips snarling up as yellow eyes land on the Lannister - a mirror to a moment not too long ago, when Jaime Lannister had mocked him for being a boy, only for Robb to remind him that he was only mocking himself, for he was the one who had been beaten by a boy.
When a moment of silence passes between them without any word from Ser Jaime, Robb finally speaks up. “Stannis Baratheon has taken King’s Landing. Your sister and your bastard sons are dead.” His words echo the words inked on the raven scroll, though he leaves out that their heads were left to rot on spikes above the city gates. Because even for as much as Robb hates the Lannisters, believes that everything that befell Joffrey, his mother, and his brother was more than deserved… He still recognizes that they meant something to the man before him. And perhaps the more gruesome details of that letter are better left out.
Still, as Robb witnesses an array of emotion cross over Jaime Lannister’s face - watches as that smug grin and self-satisfied air that always seems to hang about him - shatter and crumble before him … he cannot help the sick sense of pride that claws at his chest. That sense of righteousness, that finally the Gods have seen fit to punish his enemies.
Robb doesn’t linger before the Kingslayer for long. After all, he has many duties to attend to. Joffrey Baratheon may be dead, but Tywin Lannister still lingers to the West. The war that Robb started to rescue his father from the dungeons of the Red Keep, that then turned into a war for vengeance against the boy-king who had taken his head is not over.
Robb knows that Tywin Lannister will not stop just because his daughter and grandsons are dead. But, Robb still holds Tywin’s favorite son prisoner, and that perhaps lends him some advantage. And now King’s Landing is beneath the rule of Stannis Baratheon, the false king Joffrey Baratheon firmly crushed beneath his heel.
It is only when he returns to the keep proper that Robb gets the chance to read the scroll in its entirety:
To the Usurper, Robb Stark
King’s Landing has fallen to His Grace, Stannis Baratheon. The Usurper Joffrey Baratheon died a traitor’s death. Cersei Lannister and her other bastard son are dead, all of their heads set to rot on spikes.
Come to King’s Landing and bend the knee to His Grace, and you shall be shown mercy and allowed to keep your father’s title of Warden of the North.
If you do not, and continue to call yourself King in the North and rebel against the Crown, you will be met with the same fate that was visited upon Joffrey Baratheon.
Robb scowls as his eyes trail over the last words inked on the scroll, brows furrowing in contemplation. Of course, it all seems so easy when spelled out in such a way. The purpose of vengeance that his war has become has been all but carried out - even if it was not by his hand. He should be able to just go home, resume his place as Lord of Winterfell and rest. After all, it isn’t as though he wanted to be named King in the North. His bannermen declared him as such, told him that he was the only King they meant to bend their knee to.
Why shouldn’t we rule ourselves again? Lord Umber had said. It was the dragons we bowed to, and now the dragons are dead!
Yet how can he turn his back on them now? He may not have wanted it, but he had accepted it all the same. Were he to bend the knee to Stannis now, it would be as though he were betraying them. So even though such a thing might be easier, he cannot.
He has to go on fighting, until Tywin Lannister is defeated and until the North is recognized as a free and independent kingdom, unfettered by the shackles of the Iron Throne.
Or die trying.
