The rider bearing the flag of truce appeared to Eddard Stark as a gift from the Old Gods.
The rebel forces had left thousands of their numbers dead and wounded on the field. The total count still hadn't been made, no one entirely sure who was dead or missing in the aftermath of the chaos they had all been subjected to.
All Eddard knew was that Robert was dead, Jon Arryn was wounded and Hoster Tully was missing.
The Lord Paramount of the Vale and second—and only living—father to Eddard had taken a dagger slash to his calf, struck by a no name knight whom Arryn thought to be dead. The man most certainly hadn't been, ignoring the fact that his leg was gone and he was bleeding out rapidly to strike from his lying position and sink the dagger into Arryn's leg.
The wound was superficial, merely making it hard for Jon to walk. The much more dangerous blow to the Lord Paramount had been the death of his heir Denys, the Darling of the Vale, struck down by Jon Connington at the ford. Lord Arryn hadn't been able to recover his body, and that fact weighed on Eddard's close friend as heavily as the man's death.
Whether Hoster Tully was dead or captured no one could rightly say. None of his retainers had returned, having taken the brunt of the Dornish charge. None of the survivors could remember him being struck down, yet he hadn't fled the field with the rest of the Riverlander's. It was reasonable to assume he was dead, as much as it pained Eddard.
He was somewhat indifferent to his goodfather as a person, but he would have liked his child to have at least one grandfather. The way things seemed now, after the bloody fight of the ford, he or she may not even have a father.
The rider bearing the white banner rode in at dusk, the shouts of his approach echoing through the camp. It was a single man, riding a bay courser while leading another workhorse hauling a cart. Eddard and Jon Arryn waited in the center of the camp, Arryn using a broken spear shaft as a makeshift crutch, the Greatjon, Bronze Yohn Royce and other various nobles and bodyguards with them as the rider was directed to them, watched warily by the weary men in the camp.
As he approached, Eddard realized the envoy was a lad, no more than six and ten. Tall but lanky, he was dressed in a magnificent set of plate armor, scrubbed clean. Recently at that, if Eddard had a guess, for nothing had been clean after the Battle of the Trident; not armor, not weapons, and not the participant's souls
The boy reigned up several paces away from the men gathered to meet him, his face trying not to betray the nervousness he had to be feeling when surrounded by men he had been trying to kill—and who had been trying to kill him—hours before. "I come with a message from Prince Aelor Targaryen, Lord of Duskendale."
Greatjon scoffed, regarding the boy atop the horse with derision. "Targaryen sends a green boy to parlay? Does he mean to insult us, sending a whelp in his own place?"
The lad wisely didn't rise to the Greatjon's ribbing. "I was instructed to speak with Lords Eddard Stark and Jon Arryn."
"I am Jon Arryn," the Lord Paramount of the Vale said quietly. He gestured towards Eddard. "This is Lord Stark. Who are you, son, and why did Targaryen send you instead of another?"
The boy straightened. "I am Ser Alaric Langward, squire to Prince Aelor during the battle and knighted shortly afterwards." The lad was quiet a moment, his voice soft when he spoke again. "I suppose he sent me because everyone else he trusts is dead, courtesy of your lordships."
"He is not the only man to have lost friends and family." Lord Jason Mallister of Seagard said pointedly. The handsome man with the winged helm had lost his brother Thaddeus to King Rhaegar's second wave, having slain three minor lords to avenge him.
"Ser or bloody not, you're a boy," the Greatjon reiterated, pushing the lad's control. "Targaryen insults us by sending half a man to treat with us."
"Peace, Greatjon," Bronze Yohn Royce cut in, eyeing the lad. "If he was Targaryen's squire, he is man enough to be here. We knocked the Prince off of his stallion during Robert's charge. Thiswhelp as you call him fought off some of our best men to give Targaryen time to regain his feet."
Langward's chest swelled at that, pride evident on his face though he tried to conceal it. He's more man than boy, if Bronze Yohn is correct, but still part boy nonetheless. Eddard cleared his throat, regarding the teenager with an emotionless face as he spoke. "What word does your Prince have for us?"
Langward's voice took an even tone, obviously repeating words he had rehearsed in his head for hours. "Prince Aelor offers your Lordships the opportunity to reclaim your dead. Come morning, you may send a burial detail of no more than one hundred fifty men to the ford, where you will be left in peace to claim what bodies you wish. Whomever you leave shall be cremated alongside our own dead at dusk tomorrow." The new knight gestured towards the horse and cart slightly behind him. "He sends this as a token of his goodwill." Langward looked directly at Jon, his tone becoming somber. "It is your heir, Lord Arryn."
The Lord of the Vale didn't move for a long moment, face completely expressionless, before turning his head in the direction of Bronze Yohn Royce, who instantly exited the half circle of rebel leaders to quietly step to the cart's side. He looked over the lip of the cart for a moment before turning back to his liege lord, nodding softly.
Jon Arryn's jaw worked silently for a moment more before he spoke quietly, a few of his bodyguard joining Royce at the cart to retrieve the body of Denys Arryn. "Give him my thanks."
Alaric Langward nodded. "Prince Aelor also invites Lord's Stark and Arryn to discuss peace terms while the bodies are claimed, on this side of the river though far from the edge of the forest. He agrees to fifty men in your personal guard, though he will bring double that due to the burial party and the location of the meeting. He invites a single representative from the Stormlands in lieu of a Lord Baratheon."
Lord Roose Bolton, pale eyes unblinking, stared at the boy. "And how do we know it isn't a trap?"
Ser Alaric turned to meet the Lord of the Dreadfort's odd eyes evenly, the slightest touch of anger in his own. "Prince Aelor is a man of his word."
"A Targaryen being a man of his word? Har!" Greatjon's scorn was met with several murmurs of agreement from the other lords surrounding them.
Eddard, however, believed the lad. "I have met Prince Aelor on more than one occasion. Whatever his family's faults, he does seem to be a man of honor, and he is consenting to meeting us when we have the advantage, however slight."
"So he is a fool as well as a madman," boomed fat Lord Benedar Belmore.
"He is neither," Jon Arryn said quietly but with a hint of steel in his voice that stopped his bannerman's sniggers instantly. Jon Arryn looked back to Ser Alaric. "You made no mention of the Riverlands."
The young man shrugged. "We already have a representative from the Riverlands; Lord Hoster Tully is our prisoner."
Brynden Blackfish Tully, so far having remained quiet, instantly spoke up. "Is he injured?" Eddard found the apparent concern from the Blackfish odd, considering he had never seen the Tully brother's at anything other than each other's throats.
"We found him unconscious from a fall from his horse, but otherwise unharmed."
The Blackfish grunted, satisfied. Eddard looked to Jon Arryn, who met his eyes and held them for a moment before nodding. The Lord of the North then nodded in turn to Ser Alaric. "Tell Prince Aelor we will be there at dawn."
If their war had accomplished nothing else, it had at least aged Aelor Targaryen at least a decade.
As he rode towards them on a massive black stallion, surrounded by a hundred men of his choosing, Eddard saw that the Dragon of Duskendale looked almost nothing like the young, full of life youth he had been at the Tournament of Harrenhal, when the foundations had been laid for the war they were currently fighting. He still carried the air of authority Ned remembered, his shoulders still strong and broad and back still straight in the saddle, but his face was that of an older man than one and twenty. A mostly healed scar sliced down his right eye, framed by his silvery beard grown bushy and untrimmed. Some scars added to a man's handsomeness. This was not one of those scars, though his face still held traces of its Targaryen beauty; this scar was a vicious gash that drew the attention of all those in contact with the Dragon Prince. It almost made him look more sellsword than Prince, brilliant black armor and destrier aside.
Until he spoke, that was. Then there was no doubt he was of royal blood.
"Lords Stark and Arryn, I am glad you came. Let us put an end to this bloodshed." The Dragon of Duskendale looked to his right, where Ser Barristan Selmy sat a white courser beside Hoster Tully, the Lord Paramount of the Riverlands tied to his saddle like a common bandit. The Prince nodded, and Selmy withdrew a dagger to cut Tully's hands free. A thin Dornishman atop a sand steed to Tully's other side, undoubtedly Prince Oberyn Martell, slapped the lord's courser lightly on the flank, prompting the horse to trot the few dozen paces between the two sides to pull up beside the Blackfish. The two brothers looked at one another only a moment before both turning to look back at the loyalist.
"Prince Aelor," Jon Arryn began. "I want to thank you for returning Denys' body to me."
"Enemy or no, the man fought bravely. He deserved to rest with his own."
"And Robert?" Ned asked quietly.
Aelor Targaryen met his eyes, violet on gray. "His body resides in my camp."
Roose Bolton cocked an eyebrow. "Are we not allowed to claim his body as well?"
Targaryen cocked his own brow. "Are you a Baratheon? No? Then you don't have a claim, do you?" the Prince let his words hang a moment before continuing. "He hasn't been mutilated, nor will he be. I will consent to his body being entombed at Storm's End, despite my personal desire to remove his head and place it on a spike on Maegor's Holdfast." The Prince's eyes confirmed he meant what he said, though he leaned back slightly in his saddle to regard the others. "That is assuming we can put an end to this nonsense here and now, of course."
Arryn nodded ever so slightly. "What are you thinking?"
"Surrender," the Dragon of Duskendale said instantly and firmly. "Yours, here and now. This war was started over the personal disagreements between a few men. Most of those men are now dead. Thousands have already died; I see no need for thousands more to join them."
Tully grunted. "There will be repercussions."
"Of course there will. For all of you, though some of you will fare worse than others."
They waited for a moment for the Prince to continue, but the Dragon of Duskendale simply met their gazes evenly. Jon Arryn broke the silence. "What do you mean?"
Aelor spoke calmly and confidently. "You, Lord Arryn, didn't surrender your wards when your liege lord ordered it."
"That liege lord killed my father and brother, as well as one of Jon's kinsmen," Ned pointed out. "He meant to do the same with us."
"Yes, he did," Aelor said with a nod. "You didn't let me finish, Lord Stark. My father was an unfit king, though still my father. My brother also made more than his share of mistakes, and the realm has bled for it. I'm not saying you were not justified in revolting, my lords, but the truth remains that you did revolt. You revolted against a dynasty that has ruled for close to three hundred years, and you lost."
Greatjon scoffed. "We haven't lost yet. There's still an army behind us."
Aelor shrugged at the big Umber. "You're right, there is, one likely equal to my own. But how long will it remain there?" Aelor leaned back in his saddle, perfectly aware that he was in control of these negotiations. "Your claimant through Rhaelle Targaryen is dead, and with him died your only chance to pass this off as a war of succession instead of conquest. Robert's brothers are both being besieged by Lord Mace Tyrell and the Redwyne Fleet; while I hear they are holding out impressively, it can only go on so long. If you were to decide to continuously rebel, you would have to fight through me and my army to even have a chance to reach them, something we all know would take months to do if you could even succeed. By then, Stannis and Renly would either be in Lord Tyrell's custody or dead of starvation; either way, their own claims would be gone. So tell me, with no Baratheon, who among you would be crowned King?"
Aelor turned to look at Lord Tully. "You, Lord Tully? Your ancestors were petty kings, only raised to their position of power by Aegon the Conqueror. Why should the other great houses follow you?" He turned to Jon Arryn. "You, Lord Arryn? Your ancestors arrived as Andal invaders and have ruled the Vale for generations, but you were only ever kings of one kingdom, not seven." Finally the Dragon of Duskendale turned to Ned. "And you, Lord Stark. You have ruled the North for six thousand years or longer, but you don't even follow the same gods as the rest of the realm. How long would the High Septon and zealots allows you to rule them?" The Prince began alternating his gaze among all of the men present. "Sure, were you to successfully eliminate my bloodline, your cooperation and friendship with one another may well let one of you rule. But what about your sons? What about your sons' sons? How many generations before one of them realize that their King has no right to be their King, and starts another war that ends more lives? How long would they in turn rule before another decides it should be him? Tell me, my lords, where would that cycle of death and blood end?"
"What right do Targaryen's have to rule us all?" Shot back Bronze Yohn Royce.
"The right we took and held for three hundred years. Targaryen's united the realms, placing them under one banner. While we haven't always ruled well, we have withstood threats from our own kinsmen and from countless other threats, and we have done it for three hundred years. That is a precedent that holds sway among many, my lords; even you cannot deny that."
"A precedent set by dragons." Hoster Tully pointed out. "And all the dragons are dead, boy."
"No, Tully," Aelor Targaryen said, eyes burning with a fire that Eddard had only ever seen in the blood of Old Valyria. "The Dragons are most certainly not."
There was silence for a long moment before Selwyn Tarth, the representative of the Stormlands, spoke up. "Say we wanted the Kingdoms to separate again, each ruling under the family that ruled them three hundred years ago?"
"There has been a King of the Iron Throne, proof that one man can rule all seven kingdoms. Again I ask, how long before one of your descendants decides that should be him, and starts more bloody battles that throw the entire continent into a chaos that would be ripe for the raiding by the Ironborn, who would once again rape and pillage unchecked with no one to temper their lusts? Tell me, where would those battles end?" Aelor Targaryen shook his head. "No, my lords. The only hope for your families, not only now but in the future, is to end this conflict today. Bend your knees now, and I promise I will take into consideration your reasons for rebelling." The Dragon of Duskendale's violet eyes began to burn again, his scarred but regal face growing dark. "If you decide to continue this war, however, when I defeat you—and I will defeat you—there will be no such consideration. I will reclaim what you tried to take from my family with fire and blood; the blood of you and your kin, down to the very last drop."
A quiet hung over the field then, only interrupted by the sounds of the burial party recovering dead rebel nobles all around them. The rebel leaders glanced among one another as Aelor Targaryen and his men looked on in silence, the tension in the air clear.
Eddard moved first, taking the same motions his ancestor Torrhen Stark had three centuries ago. Ned slid off of his garron smoothly, scared as any man would be but inwardly confident that this was the right course of action for his family and his people. Aerys, the man who killed my father and brother, is dead. Rhaegar, the man who kidnapped my sister, is dead. Aelor, my only chance at seeing my sister again, is offering terms we won't see again if we continue to fight and lose. Whatever happens to me, this is best for my people. For my sister.
For my child.
Eddard Stark, Lord Paramount of the North, walked smoothly to stand a few paces in front of Aelor Targaryen's black destrier, meeting the Prince's eyes for only a moment before dropping to his knee, head bowed. He heard others follow his lead, a great hulking presence appearing at his right that could only be the Greatjon, a muffled curse accompanying the action that Eddard was sure the big Umber didn't like but was following his liege lord in. A few moments later another sank to his knee to Eddard's left, the grunt of pain accompanying it confirming him as Jon Arryn, Lord Paramount of the Vale.
Before long, each rebel saddle was empty, the space between the two sides filled with kneeling men. Sitting above them all Aelor Targaryen watched, face impassive but heart, for the first time in months, at peace.