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Sean Bean Saves Westeros - Book 1: Sean Lends a Hand by High Plains Drifter
 A song of Ice and Fire & Game of Thrones Xover Rated: M, English, Adventure, Eddard S./Ned, Eddard S., Words: 109k+, Favs: 1k+, Follows: 737, Published: Jul 22, 2014 Updated: Feb 1, 2015  423Chapter 9
The besieged pride of lions waited until the last vestiges of the sun dipped low enough to turn the rosy stone of the Red Keep a vibrant crimson, a color befitting the Lannisters, before the Dragon Gate at last opened again. As the trio of envoys leisurely trotted out, Sean wondered how much of the delay in meeting his negotiating demands came from Cersei's haughty sense of gamesmanship and how much from Littlefinger and the Eunuch begging to let them stay out of the vengeful direwolf's den. Regardless, satisfied that the three mandated characters from this production of the 'Greek Tragedy of the Iron Throne' appeared to be coming, not Ned signaled to the Kingslayer's jailors to bring him off his singularly high stage and prepare the golden boy for his cameo in the next scene. The tough, arrogant son of a bitch wouldn't have much to say to the other surprise prisoners being kept off stage left while they waited for their cues. After only a few more minutes of watching things progress, Sean withdrew from the descending autumn chill into the main chamber of his immense pavilion, more a medieval conference room than a sleeping place.
"They come at last to speak with you, my lord husband?" Cat asked in a seemingly placid tone.
Not Ned gave a curt nod of his head in answer. 'Strange, it's only been a month, but I can read her already,' Sean thought, immediately noting the fierceness hiding just beneath the surface. Lady Catelyn Stark nee Tully had been steamed beyond all endurance when he first revealed to her the depths of Petyr Baelish's treachery. For a half hour the actor thought she had gone completely mental, causing him to well understand her transformation in the book to Lady Stoneheart. And even now, though he'd shared his plan for this meeting with her days ago, to prepare her for it, he still wasn't sure she wouldn't simply drive a dagger into Littlefinger's greedy, warped heart.
"About time, blast them," Edmure muttered, reaching again for reassurance in his goblet.
"Whether they know it or not, and they can't be so blind as to not see our siege lines," old Stevron Frey proclaimed, before continuing with a dry chuckle. "Lord Stark has them dangling in a cold North wind."
"Yes, winter is coming," whispered Roose, stealing the Stark family motto to describe the storm about to descend on their foes. "My Lord is full of surprises these days."
"And none of them bode well for the Lannisters," the Blackfish concurred.
That sentiment drew a general round of agreement from the other lords and sole lady not Ned had invited to participate in the parley. Maege Mormont, Medger Cerwyn, Jason Mallister, and his not son Robb all paused a moment in whatever quiet conversation they were having to laugh or make a denigrating comment about the Lion spawn or just raise the glass they were partaking of. Only Sean's aide Olyvar kept quiet, simply staying in the corner to dutifully watch the makeshift 'great' hall for unexpected danger.
As Sean wandered over to his seat beside Cat behind the mess board cum Westeros style conference table, he pondered the Sun Tzu saying 'keep your friends close but your enemies closer' with regards to Roose Bolton. He decided, regardless of the proverbs wisdom in general, the flaying lord's very presence would make the statement that this wasn't old honorable Ned his enemies would be dealing with. He snorted briefly. 'Will the arrogant buggers even notice or care?'
His ruminations were soon interrupted first by Grey Wind suddenly choosing to stand up and mover further away from Sean; and then, by the voice of his little angel. "Father," Arya called out softly from behind him and Cat.
Both he and not Michelle turned their heads in surprise to see a figure standing in the shadows through the flap leading to the couple's private sleeping chamber.
"Arya, you shouldn't be here," Cat lightly scolded her daughter. "How'd you get in there?"
"I lifted a peg and slid under the tent wall," she said matter of factly.
"Aren't you supposed to be with Merle?" Sean asked, wondering where his squire was; clearly not keeping a watchful eye on his daughter as ordered.
"Well …" not Maisie hemmed and hawed.
'Never send a boy to do the job of ten men,' Sean thought, shaking his head in amusement; causing cracks to appear on his Ned face.
Perhaps sensing she wasn't yet in much trouble, Arya boldly struck. "Let my attend too," she wheedled. "I have to find out what's happened to Sansa. Please?"
Against his will, Sean's well practiced icy demeanor melted.
Cat clutched frantically at his arm.
Sean grabbed her hand and yanked hard. "Come," he commanded. The pair stumbled out of their tent. "Horses!" not Ned bellowed.
Olyvar, either being a seer or having heard the rumor used his cleverness to anticipate his Lord's thoughts, appeared out of nowhere with a pair of mounts.
Not Ned threw not Michelle up on her dapper roan. Unphased, she scrabbled hard at reins and stirrups to stay atop the mare.
"Where's Robb?!" he roared.
"Getting his mount, my Lord," the young knight answered calmly.
Not Ned leapt smoothly into the saddle on his graceful piebald, his heavy plate mail not slowing him in the least. In the past six weeks the actor, who'd already ridden plenty thanks to his varied historical roles, had seen his equestrian skills leap forward tenfold. He'd gotten strong too, truth to tell. Instinctively his body leaned forward and his feet moved to spur on his horse until a hand snatched hard at his reins. He looked down in rage at his aide de camp. "What?!" he snarled.
"Not without proper escort, my Lord," Olyvar murmured quietly. "There may be lions out hunting."
Damnit, even through his sense of urgency, excitement, and anger, he realized the boy spoke the truth! Sean fought to become Ned again. "Hold!" he ordered.
"Ned?!" Cat called in anguish. "What of Arya?!"
"She'd be disappointed if we foolishly got ourselves killed in our rush to see her, my lady," not Ned replied, hiding his own emotions as he tried to sooth hers.
He soon heard Hallis Mollen's stolid tone calling out for Winterfell's Household guards. Further in the background, the deeper note of the Umberman Bofor's voice could be heard swearing at some men to mount faster.
Feeling his icy face reasserting itself, he continued, "Five more minutes won't matter one way or the other."
"Father!" shouted Robb, charging up on a palomino; Grey Wind as always by his side. "Is it true?! Have they found Arya?!"
Sean eased out of his chair, not caring how conspicuous he appeared to his fellow lords, and knelt by the tent flap, in front of the girl still mostly hidden in the shadows. "Brave one," he called her in a soft voice. "Sansa is of your pack. And direwolves look after their packmates. I share both your worry and hope for your sister. But as the Stark of Winterfell, sometimes my pack is more than just you, your sister, your brothers, and your mother." He reached out a gentle hand and smoothed a small, twisted lock on her forehead; a face that looked as much his, if not more so, than did those of his true daughters Molly, Evie, and Lorna. As always, the thought of them tore a piece out of Sean's heart. "Sometimes my pack is all of the North. These strong men here look to me to lead that pack. To lead, they must think me stronger than I truly am. Can you understand, Arya?"
With watery eyes, Arya nodded slowly, causing what part of her still short mane of black hair that could to flop forwards towards her grey eyes. "I can't stay," she whispered.
The actor shook his head. "No," he whispered back.
She reluctantly stepped out of his sleeping area.
Sean snatched her hand, stopping her. "Have you been practicing what Syrio taught you?" he whispered.
A faint look of pleasure slipped onto Arya's horsey, adorable face. "Yes, father. Quent and Shadd let me spar against them with Needle."
'They damn well better,' Sean thought. 'That's one advantage of being medieval lord, the men don't protest even an order they find foolish.'
"Oh, and Ser Olyvar," she added.
'Interesting. I wonder if he's been helping too? He doesn't have anything to do until I say the name.' "What about the other things Syrio taught you?"
Arya frowned, not exactly happy at being forced to recall the dance instructor who'd saved her life at the expense of his own. "Like what, father?"
He smiled. "I remember hearing something about 'Swift as a deer. Quiet as a shadow.'"
"Yes …?" the girl said hesitantly, raising her eyebrows uncertainly.
Without moving his head, he pointedly shifted his eyes in the direction of the pavilion's side entrance, out of which several squires could be seen, each waiting to serve at the beck and call of their lord. "Perhaps you could work on being as quiet, and unseen, as a shadow, hmmmn?" he said softly.
Arya blinked once. Then her eyes started to widen, but just as quickly her face went still.
'Smart child,' Sean thought.
In a louder voice than before, but not too loud, his not daughter said in a semi-petulant tone. "Lessons? Now? Oh father!" And before turning away to stomp off, she slipped him a wink.
He stood up.
"Is everything alright, Ned?" not Michelle asked.
Not Ned didn't turn around to face the room, so as to hide the smile on his lips, when he answered sternly, "Yes."
As Sean, not Michelle, and not Rich, accompanied by three hundred deadly northerners rode in a long column down the dirt path through rolling woodland, the space between the trees started to widen and the thickets bracketing the track lessen. The dull early February sky at last revealed a large open pasture of dead, yellow grass and reeds. Toward the far end forty riders sporting either a silver Mallister eagle or a dead Blackwood weirwood on their surcoats could be seen riding in a perimeter around a small convoy of near two score ragged figures walking around five ramshackle wagons. The Riverland guards gave a brief cheer and the lead bunch of them parted, pulling back to let the grey direwolf sigil of Winterfell through. Even over the thundering beat of hooves, not Ned heard the joyous shrieks of a child's and a mother's voice.
"Mother!"
"Arya!"
"Father!"
Cat flew out of her saddle and with scarred hands swept up a scarecrow of a child into her arms. Arya's dirty black hair poked out here and there in what the actor took for the world's worst haircut; Yoren's successful, but damned ugly, attempt to make a waif of a girl pass for a boy from King's Landing's slums.
Seeing the love glowing between mother and daughter, Sean let out a massive sigh of release. Arya had been the first dent in his armor of omniscience. Back by the banks of the Trident, the first time he'd met Catelyn, he'd awed her, by way of explaining his 'resurrection,' with all his knowledge about what had happened, was happening, and would happen in George's dirty, shitten world of Westeros. Of course his not wife's first concern, her first query; believing every word the paragon of honor the oh so noble Eddard Stark had doled out, had been about Sansa and Arya. He'd couched Sansa's status as carefully as he could, hinting at the possible hellish deeds the psychopathic bastard Joffrey might unleash on the girl. But Arya, for Arya he'd promised not Michelle the moon; that their younger daughter was already escaped from King's Landing and Northern riders were already ranging to find Arya. He'd pledged that her return was imminent, only it hadn't been so easy. Sean hadn't remembered the script, the books, correctly. The Night Watch recruits hadn't been plotted to leave King's Landing until the Red Comet appeared, two weeks after the destruction of Tywin Lannister's host. If word of her father's death had reached Cersei before the comet's appearance, he'd doubted the paranoid bitch would have let anyone, not even a Black Brother, out of the city. Luckily that nightmare hadn't quite happened. He sighed again.
"Arya!" he shouted, now also off his horse.
The girl broke out of her mother's grasp and ran at not Ned; leaping the last five feet through the air like a battering ram to plow right into his armored chest, staggering him slightly.
He swept arms around her back to hold her high and began to swing the willow wisp around in a happy, almost drunken circle. He found himself giggling, tears welling up in his eyes, caught up in the joyous reunion with a person he'd never met before. A small detached part of himself whispered in his head, 'She looks amazingly like Maisie.'
He staggered. Robb had bounded into him, smushing Arya between the two of them. Giving huge shouts to release his elation and months of pent up, stomach churning worry.
He staggered again as Catelyn joined the impromptu circle dance.
Grey Wind yipped in delight, twirling around them in the opposite direction.
Through spinning eyes, Sean watched the Black Brother approach and then stop a respectful distance away. After a time, he carefully disentangled himself from the joyous family reunion and stepped over to the ugly stooped man who had saved Arya. "Brother Yoren."
"Lord Stark. I … I … I never thought to see you again," the grizzled, black bearded wandering crow stuttered with amazement through his red, sourleaf stained teeth.
Not Ned smiled kindly, knowing the man had been at Baelor's Sept when that deed, best not dwelt on too long for his sanity's sake. "Except decorating a spike," he snickered.
"Well …" the Black Brother first spluttered. And then he began to chuckle harder and harder. "Har … har … harr! Well, yes my Lord," he finally coughed out.
Sean slipped on a knowing yet mysterious look and whispered for only the foul smelling man's ears to hear. "The Old Gods work in mysterious ways, Brother Yoren. A Red Comet flies through the sky. A man is brought back from the dead. The North marches south to stop the Seven Kingdoms from war between themselves. And Mance Rayder, the King-Beyond-The-Wall, seeks to lead the wildlings through the Wall. Winter is coming."
Yoren gulped hard at not Ned's words, swallowing his sourleaf. "What would you have me do?" the wandering crow asked, displaying not an ounce of skepticism at what he'd just been told.
"It is to you, the sworn brother of the Night's Watch who saved my daughter, that the question should be asked," Sean answered.
The coarse, ugly, lice ridden head atop the stooped shoulders bobbed up and down as he thought on the Lord of Winterfell's words. "She's a tough little wolf cub, your Arya. Shame to see a fighting spirit like that penned up in ladies dresses and all that poxy mishmash," he started to spout, before suddenly shutting up for another minute to think.
Sean stayed quiet, letting the smart man think.
"'Tis true about Mance? On yer honor, milord?"
"I swear," not Ned said solemnly.
Yoren bobbed his head yet again. "I knew Mance a mite before he returned to the folk of his birth; a fierce, clever foe to his enemies." The man stroked his black beard a moment. "Will the North come to the Night Watch's aid? Help us to man the long length of the Wall, like it were done a thousand years ago," the wandering crow finally proposed.
"We shall. You have the word of a Stark, the lords of Winterfell," Sean answered easily.
Suddenly, the flapping of some banner in the wind caught the wandering crow's attention. A knowing look came upon his face. "But not today."
Yoren was no one's fool Sean observed. "No. A Lannister may always pay his debts. But so does a Stark."
A wicked smile cracked the ugly man's stained lips. He scratched at a particularly bothersome lice and then said, "Can't say's I blame you. That one back there's," and the Black Brother jerked a thumb in the general direction of King's Landing, "a noisome little shite." The Night's Watch was sworn to stay out of the affairs of the Seven Kingdoms, so Yoren named no names. "And he wanted one of my recruits somethin' fierce, not Arya though; sent some useless gold cloak fuckers to try and snatch him."
'Gendry,' Sean thought
"We drove'em off, easy enough. But I'm tired of sneaking around. You'll be giving us a proper escort back North then," Yoren said, more statement than question.
Not Ned nodded his agreement before saying, "I do actually have two requests to make of you."
"Name it, my lord."
"First, there are three prisoners that came from the black cells. You've been keeping them chained in a wagon, I believe."
"Yes," Yoren answered dubiously.
"I would see them. I have need of one of them, perhaps all three."
And so later, during a brief stop as the convoy and its enlarged escort headed back towards the kingsroad and the army of the True King, Yoren introduced not Ned to Biter, Rorge, and Jaqen H'ghar. The actor dismissed the wandering crow and all others within earshot so he could to speak to the prisoners alone.
Addressing himself to only the white and red haired one while the other two hissed and spit and cursed at him, Sean announced, "I would kill these beasts. Even at the Wall, creatures such as these would find no redemption. The black brothers would have to put them down like dogs at the first sign of madness."
"That may be, the Red God will take his due when it is time."
"And what if I thought to add your name to the Red God's due?" not Ned whispered.
The split color haired man simply tilted his eyes and stared keenly back at the actor. "I would wish otherwise, but all men must die," the prisoner at last replied evenly.
Sean leaned in very close. "Valar morghulis," he whispered.
"Valar dohaeris," came the equally quiet response.
Sean, face now steadied, turned around to find the lords and ladies in the tent watching him with varying degrees of tolerance or humor or affection on their faces. The actor's icy not Ned glare drove most to look away or suddenly pick up their goblets.
Only the Blackfish boldly dared make an open quip. "I've seen my great niece wield that sharp little needle of hers. Littlefinger doesn't know how merciful Lord Stark is. I fear if Arya had stayed, the sanctity of our parley would have been broken and the treacherous wretch would have returned to his whore queen as ball-less as that spider Varys."
Behind ill-concealed smirks and over raised cups a muttering of complements for not Ned's not daughter spilled out. The epic tale of her escape from the Red Keep, living alone on the streets of Flea Bottom for a month, watching her own father's beheading, and then disguised as a boy slipping out of the city as a recruit for the Wall had quickly swept the whole army after her rescue. Those few minstrels following the army were composing songs and epic ballads of her daring do. In fact, Arya's brave deeds along with Robb's victory over the Kingslayer to free Riverrun and not Ned's own defeat of Tywin Lannister, let alone his return from the dead, had helped build a legend within the army that the Starks were unbeatable.
The actor felt a surge of pride for his replacement daughter.
As he hoped to himself that everyone's response would be just as positive with Sansa's return, Sean completely missed Jason Mallister's murmured comment, "Lady Arya's another Knight of the Laughing Tree in the making."
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