Chapter 5

“Oh, how the mighty have fallen.”

“Shut up, Robb”

Harren’s gruff retort only made me grin, “Maester Luwin warned you both, but no, you just kept on squabbling.”

“Shut up, Robb!”

This time it was Theon that snapped at me, his glare only getting a barely smothered laugh out of Jon, who was standing beside me, enjoying their misery as much as I was.

“You missed a spot”

Theon and Harren shifted their eyes to Jon, their stares, narrowed glares meant to silence. Jon didn’t care though as he lifted his hand, pointing to the far corner of the pens. “You also got a bit there on your face, Theon.”

It took me a moment to catch on to what Jon had said, I tried to warn Theon, but it was already too late as he reached up to wipe his already clean cheek.

Leaving smears of shit where his figures touched…

Theon’s face blanked for a long moment, the tension in the air rose as we all waited for his inevitable explosion. It was Harren that lost it first though, breaking out into the raunchiest laughter. I tried to resist, but eventually, Jon and myself started into fits as well.

Theon’s face turned red at the mockery. Unfortunately, it only brought out the blackish shit smeared across his face even more, starting us on another round.

Theon could only take it so long though, “You’re the freak right, can’t you just magic all the shit away?”

The silence that followed Theon’s outburst was deafening, Harren glared back at the oldest of us with a stare I normally saw him reserve for mushy peas.

It became an unwritten rule in Winterfell that when others saw his cousin doing things that could be described as “magical”, they just went about their business.

“No, Theon. I cannot just “magic it away”.” Harren sounded almost insulted by the suggestion, “Magic isn’t a toy.”

“You say that, but didn’t you make Arya and Sansa’s snowmen dance around the courtyard just last moon?” Jon's voice was tinted in amusement, the pull of his lips showing off one of his solemn brother’s rare smiles.

“That was different, even I can’t just wave my hand and make something disappear.” Harren went to shovel the shit in the corner Jon had pointed out.

“Not so special then are you, Lord Bastar…”

“Theon!”

His glare cut to me, the urge to ignore my warning playing out clearly in his eyes. After a long moment, he huffs angrily, his cheeks flushed red as he holds onto what little self-control remains to him.

Theon spikes the shovel into the hard ground of the pen, before marching out. “I’m going to get the shit off me, you can finish the rest.”

I half expected Harren to call out after him, to threaten to tell Maester Luwin about him skipping out early. Harren doesn’t respond though, just puts the last of his pile onto his shovel before moving back over to the cart, and dumping it in.

“He doesn’t mean anything by it, you know…”

This had become an all too common discussion, Theon’s mouth often left me trying to mend the bridges he burned. The first year of his stay, it had been Jon that Theon made a target of, and try as I might, there was simply no way of getting Theon to curb his insults.

Then Harren came, and for whatever reason, Theon seemed to make a target out of him as well. While it took some of his focus off Jon, I was worried for my cousin.

Turns out, it wasn’t really needed. Harren was more than capable of tearing Theon down all on his own.

Jon moved into the pens without comment, taking up Theon’s abandoned shovel and starting where he left off. I saw Harren look over his shoulder, and with a small, grateful smile, they turned silently to what little work remained.

It was hard, in moments like this, not to feel jealous of how easily the friendship between his brother and cousin had grown.

We had been told about Harren’s parentage before he even arrived in Winterfell, father had warned us to be delicate with the details.

The story had left Jon especially curious about my bastard cousin turned Lord. It was painful remembering the bitter sadness in my brother’s eyes, as they left their father’s solar. He had spent the fortnight leading up to Harren’s arrival unusually forlorn and quiet, speaking to others only if required.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

I had worried, when Harren arrived, that he would isolate himself much the same way Jon had. His quiet ways, and sad demeanor, had escaped no one’s notice in his early days here.

Truthfully, he likely still wouldn’t have opened up to us if Jon and I hadn’t accidentally entered the Godswood during his prayers. It took a few, probably rude, questions about his presence there before he told us how his father raised him in the Old Gods.

After that, it had been a simple thing to take him along when father took us to pray, or when he was giving lessons in the old ways of the First Men.

Theon had never cared to join them, claiming the old ways of the Iron Islands were his own. I had once asked what they were, but father had ordered Theon not to tell any of us, at least until he gave his approval.

The friendship between Jon and Harren had grown quickly after that.

“And that’s the last of it.”

Harren and Jon were quick to get out of the pen, likely having seen enough of it for a good while.

“We need to get cleaned up before lessons.” Harren started towards the keep when we heard the bell toll. The sign to the castle inhabitants, and the people of Winter Town, the day was now half passed.

Though to us, it generally meant something very different. It meant our lessons with father were starting in the Godswood, and none of us wanted to have to clean the horse's stables next for being overly late.

“Sorry, Guys. It looks like you’ll have to bear with it for a while.” I couldn’t quite stifle the laugh at just how putout Harren looked about it all, his boots and trousers covered nearly to the knee in smears of awful.

He only tossed me a halfhearted glare before we started on our way towards the Godswood, his grumblings of injustice, Jon and my entertainment for the brief trip.

The trek took only a few minutes before the Heart Tree came into view, father sitting at its' roots, wiping Ice with a silken cloth.

The soft fabric; damp and stained red.

I knew father had rode out near dawn, though mother had been unwilling to tell us anything further than, “checking on a nearby village”.

“Come boys, sit.”

We moved quickly as we could across the overgrowth, sitting near the edge of the hot spring that rested at the foot of the large Heart Tree.

Father looked us over, his mouth pinching up at the corners as he as saw the state of Harren. “Tell me boys, what is the most important responsibility for a Lord?”

I tried to think back to all our previous lessons, but those were always about the gods and beliefs of the first men. Father had never asked us a question like this so suddenly before.

What happened on his ride out?

From the corner of my eye, I could see Jon and Harren, their faces scrunched up in mild confusion. I bit back a sigh, as father’s heir, I should probably answer first.

“The most important duty, of the Lord of Winterfell, is to rule over his vassal lords well?” I bit back the urge to take it back, I hadn’t meant for it to sound like I was asking a question, instead of answering it.

Father gave a small smile, though before I could be excited he said, “I didn’t ask about our house Robb. I’m asking, what is the most important responsibility, for any Lord, no matter how great or lowly.”

The cringe came before I could fight it back, my answer had been horribly off. I had been thinking of only of my own house, not of all Lords as a whole. It was frustrating though, because I couldn’t think of something that the Lord of a Holdfast and a Lord Paramount would have in common.

“Um…” I looked over to Harren, he was fidgeting slightly under father’s stare. “All lords have their obligation towards the King.”

At first, I want to scold myself for forgetting that all lords took the same oath to the King, but then, my father just smiled at Harren as he had at me, and once more, shook his head.

“All lords Harren, great and lowly, that means even the King.”

Harren’s shoulders fell, his face pinched in a familiar frustration.

“All Lords must keep the King’s peace?” We all looked to Jon then, his brow knitted like he was trying to solve one of the Maester’s riddles.

Father’s smile grew, and he nodded to Jon. “That’s half the answer Jon, keeping the king's Peace is important. There’s more though, not everything that threatens the people will come wielding steel and wanting pillage.”

He lifts his sword then, we all watch in awe as the light slipping through the canopy of the ancient heart tree reflects off the Smokey grey metal. It disappears, inch by inch, into the worn leather sheath.

“Remember children, that most threats can not be solved with blood.” Father placed Ice to the side then, laying it against the ashen trunk. “Starvation doesn’t care how much steel you threaten it with. Disease doesn’t care how great your sword arm may be. Destitution and despair won’t flee at the sight of any army.”

“A Lords duty, his first and truest obligation, is to save his people from the horrors of the world. Not just beasts that rise in men when they hold steel, but all enemies, no matter the shape they take.”

Father seemed to age so much that moment, going from the wise and powerful Lord, to the expression I had only ever seen him wear on the day he came back with Theon.

In that moment he looked so tired.

“You will fail, every Lord fails. It isn’t possible to save everyone, no matter how hard we might try. Today it was desperate men, looking for a way out of a life no one would have chosen. In that dark place their hearts fell into, they took up steel and decided their salvation was more important than the lives they would inevitably take.”

He stood then, motioning with a hand for us to stand in kind. We scrambled up, Jon stumbling slightly before Harren caught his arm and steadied him. Father looked over us all, his smile long forgotten, his face solemn, but proud.

“Being a lord is like being a father, except you have thousands of children, and you worry about them all. The farmer plowing the fields is yours to protect, the chamber women scrubbing the floors, yours to protect, the soldiers you order into battle.”

“How do you bare it?” I looked to Harren, his voice low, almost desperate. It took me a moment to figure out why, Harren was already a Lord, and that meant the lives of his people were already on his shoulders. “It…sounds like such a scary thing.”

“I wake with fear in the morning and go to bed with fear in the night. If you are not afraid for your people, then you have no rite to rule them.”

“But you’re not afraid of anything” I cut in quickly, I’d seen father fight men twice his size in the training yard, seen him talk Bannermen into submission with little more than a greeting. He was the Stark of Winterfell, if even he was afraid…

“How can a man be brave if he’s afraid?” My voice sounded faint, unsure if I truly wanted the answer.

“Remember this, Robb.” Father was smiling again, but it was brittle and pained. “That is the only time a man can be brave.”