Chapter 26: The Warden of the North and the Wounds of a God
Five years. In the grand, cosmic timescale of a god, it was less than a heartbeat. For the Seven Kingdoms, it was an age. An age of fragile, terrified peace, ruled by a king who had won a war he hadn't finished and presided over by the ghost of a god in a tavern.
The reign of King Robert Baratheon, the First of His Name, was a reign defined by what it was not. It was not glorious. It was not prosperous. It was not secure. The treasury was a hollowed-out gourd, the Lannister gold that had propped up the Targaryen dynasty having vanished with the flooding of the mines. Trade was slow, with the great port of Lannisport a ruin of splintered timbers and the fear of the sea-lanes still palpable. The great lords paid their taxes and swore their fealty, but they did so with one eye always looking south, towards the capital, towards the district of Flea Bottom.
Robert, for his part, was a miserable king. The fire in his belly, the righteous fury that had driven him to rebellion, had been quenched by the god's intervention. He was a warrior with no war to fight, a storm without a sky to rage in. He had been forced by his Hand, the ever-pragmatic Jon Arryn, into a political marriage with Cersei Lannister, a desperate, humiliating attempt to bind the broken but still proud Westerlands to his new regime. He found no joy in his wife, a woman whose beauty was as cold and sharp as her father's shattered pride. He found solace only at the bottom of a wine cask and in the beds of Flea Bottom whores—though he never, ever strayed too close to the ominous, ever-present silence that surrounded The Grinning Pig.
The Small Council meetings were exercises in paranoia. Every decision, from tax levies to road repairs, was weighed against a single, terrifying question: Will this displease him? The king's justice was swift for murderers and thieves, but the city guard gave Flea Bottom a wide, fearful berth. The district had become a city-state unto itself, a de facto holy land ruled by the strange, syncretic "Faith of the Storm." Leo the Storm-Crier had grown fat and important, his sermons now attracting pilgrims from as far as the Riverlands. They came to see the god, to leave offerings at his tavern-temple, and to watch him in his holy ritual, which consisted primarily of drinking vast quantities of ale and staring blankly at the wall.
And Thor… Thor had what he wanted. He had his corner. He had his drink. He had his solitude. The world had, for five years, adhered to his terms. The lords left him alone. The king left him alone. He was a black hole of sorrow at the center of the city, his immense gravity bending the life of the capital around him, but he himself remained untouched, unseen, a man engaged in a slow, patient suicide of the soul.
He was a fixture, a landmark of misery. The tourists came. The pilgrims prayed. And Thor drank. The routine was a shield. The alcohol was a blanket. Underneath it, the ghosts still whispered, but their voices were muffled, their faces blurred. He was managing. He was enduring. He was a god who had achieved the pinnacle of his new ambition: to be a thing, not a person. An object of fear and reverence, but an object nonetheless, blessedly free of choice or consequence. He thought this state could last forever. He was wrong.
The intrusion, when it came, was not a king's command or a lord's plea. It was a quiet, honourable man, come to pay a debt.
The remains of Lord Rickard Stark and his heir, Brandon, had finally been returned to the North. For five years, their bones had sat in the silent septs of the Red Keep, a grim reminder of Aerys's madness. Robert, in a rare act of kingly grace, had ordered them prepared with all honours and sent north with a Kingsguard escort.
Lord Eddard Stark, the Quiet Wolf, the Warden of the North, came south to King's Landing to meet them. It was his first time in the capital since the end of the rebellion. He came not with an army, but with a small retinue of his household guard, his grey eyes missing nothing of the strange, fearful peace that gripped the city. He saw the grand weirwood in the plaza, now known as the "Gods' Tree," its white bark and blood-red leaves a stark, living monument to the day the world had changed. He saw the nervous energy of the Gold Cloaks, the way the smallfolk would fall silent and look to the sky at any unexpected loud noise. This was a city living in the shadow of a god.
He met with Robert in the Red Keep. Their reunion was a clash of changed worlds. Robert was louder, heavier, his face florid with wine, his eyes holding a restless, unhappy shadow. Ned was quieter, harder, his face carved with the responsibilities of ruling the vast, unforgiving North. They were still brothers in spirit, but the easy camaraderie of their youth in the Vale was gone, replaced by the heavy weight of their new realities.
"It's good to see you, Ned," Robert had boomed, crushing him in an embrace that smelled of sour wine. "Gods, it's been too long. A dreary business, I know, but I'm glad you came. We'll hunt! We'll drink! We'll find some wenches! It'll be like the old days!"
"The old days are gone, Robert," Ned had replied quietly, and the king's boisterous smile had faltered.
On his final day in the city, after he had seen his father's and brother's caskets onto the ship that would bear them home to the crypts of Winterfell, Ned knew there was one last duty he had to perform. It was a personal debt, an affair of honour that the North remembered, even if the rest of the world chose to forget.
He found Robert in the throne room, arguing with a merchant about grain prices. Ned waited patiently until the man was dismissed.
"Robert, I am leaving on the evening tide."
"So soon?" Robert grumbled. "The hunting is good this time of year."
"I have one last call to make," Ned said, his voice calm and steady. "I am going to Flea Bottom."
Robert froze, his wine cup halfway to his lips. "What? Ned, are you mad? No one goes there. We have an understanding. We leave him alone, he leaves us alone. For the love of the Seven, don't stir the bloody pot!"
"He killed the man who murdered my father and brother," Ned said simply. "Aerys burned them alive, without honour, without justice. The god served that justice. It was a brutal, terrible act. But it was justice nonetheless. I owe him thanks. A Stark pays his debts."
"A debt? He owes us!" Robert exploded, his face turning red. "He broke the whole bloody kingdom! He killed my enemy, he stole my vengeance, he made me king of this miserable pile of rocks! I owe him nothing but a curse!" He grabbed Ned's arm, his grip like iron. "Don't go, Ned. Please. For my sake. Let the sleeping storm lie."
Ned looked at his friend, at the genuine terror in the king's eyes. He felt a pang of pity for him. "Fear has made you a stranger to yourself, Robert," he said softly. He gently removed Robert's hand from his arm. "I will not go as a lord or a friend of the king. I will go as a son. I will be quiet. I will be respectful. But I will go."
He turned and left the throne room, leaving Robert staring after him, a king utterly powerless to command his oldest friend.
Ned walked into Flea Bottom alone. He wore simple, undyed leathers, the direwolf of his house clasped on his cloak his only adornment. He felt the eyes of the people on him, the whispers that followed in his wake. They were not hostile. They were curious, watchful. He walked with a quiet dignity that was so at odds with the usual swagger of high lords that they simply let him pass.
He reached The Grinning Pig. The tavern-temple was quiet, the midday crowd of pilgrims dozing in the sun outside. He pushed open the door and stepped into the gloom. The air was thick with the smell of stale ale, incense, and something else… a profound, suffocating despair.
In the corner, slumped in his great chair, was Thor.
Five years had changed him. The bloat of his earlier depression was gone, replaced by a lean, hard gauntness that seemed to accentuate the immense power of his frame. His sun-bleached hair and beard were longer, wilder. He looked less like a man and more like a figure from a saga, a forgotten sea-king washed up on a foreign shore. He was staring into a pewter flagon, his knuckles white where he gripped the handle, his expression one of utter, vacant emptiness.
Ned approached slowly, his boots making no sound on the filthy floor. He stopped ten feet away. He did not bow. He did not kneel. He simply stood, a silent figure of grey northern stone.
For a long time, Thor did not acknowledge him. He seemed to be in a world of his own. Ned waited, his patience a thing born of long winters and silent godswoods. Finally, Thor's gaze lifted, his bloodshot eyes focusing on Ned with a slow, weary recognition.
"The wolf," he rumbled, his voice a dry rasp. "Your friend, the king, knows you are here?"
"He does," Ned replied. "He does not approve."
"A sensible man," Thor grunted, and took a long drink. "State your business and be gone. I am not in a forgiving mood."
"I have not come to ask for forgiveness," Ned said. "I have come to give thanks."
Thor lowered his flagon, a flicker of genuine surprise in his eyes. "Thanks? For what?"
"For Aerys Targaryen," Ned said, his voice clear and steady. "He murdered my father. He murdered my brother. He took them from me, from my House. You took him from this world. You delivered the justice that my friend's rebellion was sworn to seek. On behalf of House Stark, on behalf of the North, I thank you."
He gave a short, formal bow from the waist. It was the courtesy of one lord to another, an acknowledgement of a grim deed done.
Thor stared at him. He had expected pleas, demands, questions, fear. He had not expected gratitude. And gratitude for that? For an act of violence born of his own rage and failure? The sentiment was so alien, so deeply at odds with his own perception of the event, that it bypassed all his defenses.
"Justice," Thor said, the word a bitter, hollow sound. He let out a dry, rattling laugh. "You call that justice? That was… pest control. That was the lashing out of a wounded animal. There was no honour in it."
"There was no honour in the way my father died," Ned countered, his voice still quiet, but with an edge of cold iron. "He was cooked in his own armour while my brother strangled himself trying to save him. The King denied him a warrior's death. You denied the King the same. That is a kind of justice. A Northern kind. It is enough."
The simple, profound sincerity of Ned's words struck Thor with the force of a physical blow. A son, thanking a stranger for avenging his father. The thought was a dagger that pierced through five years of alcoholic numbness and plunged directly into the raw, festering wound of his own grief.
His mind, unbidden, flew across the stars, across the years. He saw his own father, Odin, dissolving into a shower of golden light on a cliffside in Norway, his last words a warning. He saw his brother, Loki, strangled by the gauntleted hand of a purple titan, his final act of defiance a desperate, futile gamble.
He had not avenged them. He had failed them. He had run. He had hidden. He had drunk. He had avenged this mortal's father, a man he had never met, but he had failed his own. The irony was so vast, so cosmically cruel, that something inside him finally, irrevocably, broke.
The flagon slipped from his fingers, clattering to the floor and spilling its contents in a dark, spreading pool. Thor's massive shoulders began to shake. At first, Ned thought he was laughing again. But then he heard the sound. A low, ragged, hitching sound. The sound of a sob, torn from a chest that had not known tears for an eternity.
Thor buried his face in his hands, his body wracked with silent, convulsive tremors. The carefully constructed dam of apathy, built over years of grief and reinforced with a river of alcohol, had shattered. The full, undiluted agony of his loss, fresh as the day it had happened, washed over him. He was not a god. He was not a king. He was a son and a brother who had failed his family, and the grief was drowning him.
Ned Stark stood in stunned silence, his heart aching with a sudden, overwhelming pity. He had come to thank a fearsome, indifferent god. He had found a broken man weeping for ghosts a world away. He saw now what his friend Robert, in his rage, and the lords, in their fear, could not see. This was not a monster. This was not a weapon. This was a tragedy of a scale he could not begin to comprehend.
He felt a deep, instinctual urge to say something, to offer some word of comfort. But what comfort could a mortal man offer a god who mourned the death of a universe? What words could possibly suffice?
He simply stood, a silent, respectful witness to the immense, cosmic grief pouring out of the being before him. He had paid his debt. He had given his thanks. And in doing so, he had unintentionally unleashed a sorrow that felt older than the mountains.
After a long time, Thor's shaking subsided. He did not look up. He simply spoke, his voice a raw, broken whisper, thick with a pain that was not of this world.
"He died for me," he breathed, the words meant for no one but himself. "My brother. I could have saved him. I should have… I should have…"
He trailed off, lost in the memory.
Ned knew he was hearing something not meant for him, a confession from a wounded soul. He had seen enough. He had done what he came to do. He gave another short, formal bow, a gesture of profound, sorrowful respect, and backed away slowly. He walked out of the tavern, leaving the god alone with his newly awakened grief.
As he walked back through the streets of King's Landing, the sun seemed less bright, the sky less blue. The world felt older, sadder. The political problems of the Seven Kingdoms, the squabbles over the crown, the fear of the god's power—it all seemed so small now, so insignificant in the face of the sorrow he had just witnessed.
He had come seeking a god and had found a man. And in doing so, he had changed something. He had broken the fragile peace of Thor's exile. He had reminded the storm of the sorrow that gave it its strength. He did not know if this was a good thing or a bad thing. He only knew that the quiet, sleeping god was sleeping no more. He was weeping. And Ned Stark feared that when his tears finally dried, the world would have to reckon with whatever remained.