The summons came in the hour before the dawn, when the world was still and grey.

Alyn shook him roughly from his dreams and Ned stumbled into the predawn chill, groggy fromsleep, to find his horse saddled and the king already mounted. Robert wore thick brown gloves and aheavy fur cloak with a hood that covered his ears, and looked for all the world like a bear sitting ahorse. “Up, Stark!” he roared. “Up, up! We have matters of state to discuss.”

“By all means,” Ned said. “Come inside, Your Grace.” Alyn lifted the flap of the tent.

“No, no, no,” Robert said. His breath steamed with every word. “The camp is full of ears.

Besides, I want to ride out and taste this country of yours.” Ser Boros and Ser Meryn waited behindhim with a dozen guardsmen, Ned saw. There was nothing to do but rub the sleep from his eyes,dress, and mount up.

Robert set the pace, driving his huge black destrier hard as Ned galloped along beside him, tryingto keep up. He called out a question as they rode, but the wind blew his words away, and the king didnot hear him. After that Ned rode in silence. They soon left the kingsroad and took off across rollingplains dark with mist. By then the guard had fallen back a small distance, safely out of earshot, butstill Robert would not slow.

Dawn broke as they crested a low ridge, and finally the king pulled up. By then they were milessouth of the main party. Robert was flushed and exhilarated as Ned reined up beside him. “Gods,” heswore, laughing, “it feels good to get out and ride the way a man was meant to ride! I swear, Ned, thiscreeping along is enough to drive a man mad.” He had never been a patient man, Robert Baratheon.

“That damnable wheelhouse, the way it creaks and groans, climbing every bump in the road as if itwere a mountain … I promise you, if that wretched thing breaks another axle, I’m going to burn it,and Cersei can walk!”

Ned laughed. “I will gladly light the torch for you.”

“Good man!” The king clapped him on the shoulder. “I’ve half a mind to leave them all behindand just keep going.”

A smile touched Ned’s lips. “I do believe you mean it.”

“I do, I do,” the king said. “What do you say, Ned? Just you and me, two vagabond knights on thekingsroad, our swords at our sides and the gods know what in front of us, and maybe a farmer’sdaughter or a tavern wench to warm our beds tonight.”

“Would that we could,” Ned said, “but we have duties now, my liege … to the realm, to ourchildren, I to my lady wife and you to your queen. We are not the boys we were.”

“You were never the boy you were,” Robert grumbled. “More’s the pity. And yet there was thatone time … what was her name, that common girl of yours? Becca? No, she was one of mine, godslove her, black hair and these sweet big eyes, you could drown in them. Yours was … Aleena? No.

You told me once. Was it Merryl? You know the one I mean, your bastard’s mother?”

“Her name was Wylla,” Ned replied with cool courtesy, “and I would sooner not speak of her.”

“Wylla. Yes.” The king grinned. “She must have been a rare wench if she could make LordEddard Stark forget his honor, even for an hour. You never told me what she looked like …”

Ned’s mouth tightened in anger. “Nor will I. Leave it be, Robert, for the love you say you bear me.

I dishonored myself and I dishonored Catelyn, in the sight of gods and men.”

“Gods have mercy, you scarcely knew Catelyn.”

“I had taken her to wife. She was carrying my child.”

“You are too hard on yourself, Ned. You always were. Damn it, no woman wants Baelor theBlessed in her bed.” He slapped a hand on his knee. “Well, I’ll not press you if you feel so strongabout it, though I swear, at times you’re so prickly you ought to take the hedgehog as your sigil.”

The rising sun sent fingers of light through the pale white mists of dawn. A wide plain spread outbeneath them, bare and brown, its flatness here and there relieved by long, low hummocks. Nedpointed them out to his king. “The barrows of the First Men.”

Robert frowned. “Have we ridden onto a graveyard?”

“There are barrows everywhere in the north, Your Grace,” Ned told him. “This land is old.”

“And cold,” Robert grumbled, pulling his cloak more tightly around himself. The guard hadreined up well behind them, at the bottom of the ridge. “Well, I did not bring you out here to talk ofgraves or bicker about your bastard. There was a rider in the night, from Lord Varys in King’sLanding. Here.” The king pulled a paper from his belt and handed it to Ned.

Varys the eunuch was the king’s master of whisperers. He served Robert now as he had onceserved Aerys Targaryen. Ned unrolled the paper with trepidation, thinking of Lysa and her terribleaccusation, but the message did not concern Lady Arryn. “What is the source for this information?”

“Do you remember Ser Jorah Mormont?”

“Would that I might forget him,” Ned said bluntly. The Mormonts of Bear Island were an oldhouse, proud and honorable, but their lands were cold and distant and poor. Ser Jorah had tried toswell the family coffers by selling some poachers to a Tyroshi slaver. As the Mormonts werebannermen to the Starks, his crime had dishonored the north. Ned had made the long journey west toBear Island, only to find when he arrived that Jorah had taken ship beyond the reach of Ice and theking’s justice. Five years had passed since then.

“Ser Jorah is now in Pentos, anxious to earn a royal pardon that would allow him to return fromexile,” Robert explained. “Lord Varys makes good use of him.”

“So the slaver has become a spy,” Ned said with distaste. He handed the letter back. “I wouldrather he become a corpse.”

“Varys tells me that spies are more useful than corpses,” Robert said. “Jorah aside, what do youmake of his report?”

“Daenerys Targaryen has wed some Dothraki horselord. What of it? Shall we send her a weddinggift?”

The king frowned. “A knife, perhaps. A good sharp one, and a bold man to wield it.”

Ned did not feign surprise; Robert’s hatred of the Targaryens was a madness in him. Heremembered the angry words they had exchanged when Tywin Lannister had presented Robert withthe corpses of Rhaegar’s wife and children as a token of fealty. Ned had named that murder; Robertcalled it war. When he had protested that the young prince and princess were no more than babes, hisnew-made king had replied, “I see no babes. Only dragonspawn.” Not even Jon Arryn had been ableto calm that storm. Eddard Stark had ridden out that very day in a cold rage, to fight the last battles ofthe war alone in the south. It had taken another death to reconcile them; Lyanna’s death, and the griefthey had shared over her passing.

This time, Ned resolved to keep his temper. “Your Grace, the girl is scarcely more than a child.

You are no Tywin Lannister, to slaughter innocents.” It was said that Rhaegar’s little girl had cried asthey dragged her from beneath her bed to face the swords. The boy had been no more than a babe inarms, yet Lord Tywin’s soldiers had torn him from his mother’s breast and dashed his head against awall.

“And how long will this one remain an innocent?” Robert’s mouth grew hard. “This child willsoon enough spread her legs and start breeding more dragonspawn to plague me.”

“Nonetheless,” Ned said, “the murder of children … it would be vile … unspeakable …”

“Unspeakable?” the king roared. “What Aerys did to your brother Brandon was unspeakable. Theway your lord father died, that was unspeakable. And Rhaegar … how many times do you think heraped your sister? How many hundreds of times?” His voice had grown so loud that his horsewhinnied nervously beneath him. The king jerked the reins hard, quieting the animal, and pointed anangry finger at Ned. “I will kill every Targaryen I can get my hands on, until they are as dead as theirdragons, and then I will piss on their graves.”

Ned knew better than to defy him when the wrath was on him. If the years had not quenchedRobert’s thirst for revenge, no words of his would help. “You can’t get your hands on this one, canyou?” he said quietly.

The king’s mouth twisted in a bitter grimace. “No, gods be cursed. Some pox-ridden Pentoshicheesemonger had her brother and her walled up on his estate with pointy-hatted eunuchs all aroundthem, and now he’s handed them over to the Dothraki. I should have had them both killed years ago,when it was easy to get at them, but Jon was as bad as you. More fool I, I listened to him.”

“Jon Arryn was a wise man and a good Hand.”

Robert snorted. The anger was leaving him as suddenly as it had come. “This Khal Drogo is said tohave a hundred thousand men in his horde. What would Jon say to that?”

“He would say that even a million Dothraki are no threat t............