Chapter 34 — "The King's Road"
The Roads changed as they rode north.
Not a line crossed where one thing ended and another began. Just the gradual accumulation of small differences that added up to something — the air with less warmth in it, the trees with less colour, the sky doing less with the light it had. The road good but harder underfoot than the southern roads. The inns smaller and further apart.
The company moved fast.
Two-fifty men stripped to road weight — no wagons, supplies on pack horses, the specific lean efficiency of a force that had been told it was going somewhere and had decided to get there.
Alaric rode at the front .
Harys rode at his shoulder.
After days of travel in the cold roads.the outriders appeared. It was suspected but still a suprise.
Baratheon livery. Four of them on the road ahead, moving at the pace of men escorting something considerably larger and slower behind them. They saw the company coming and pulled up on encountering an unknown force on the king's road.
Alaric slowed the column.
The outrider captain came forward. Looked at the two-fifty. At the banner Edwyn Flowers carried — the direwolf head on the mountains that had no house and no formal standing and had somehow become more recognisable in the past year than half the legitimate sigils in Westeros. Alacric has gained fame especially in King's Landing and thier people. Especially After the incident with the Lannisters.
"Snow," the captain said."You are here, going back home are you. "
"Aye," Alaric said.
"His Grace is two miles back," the captain said. "Moving at slow pace." He paused with the pause of a man delivering a message he had been given. "Word was sent ahead that you might be on this road. His Grace said if you were found you were to be brought to him. "
Alaric looked at Harys.
Harys looked back with the expression of a man who was surprised.
"How" Alacric said
"How would I know Snow. I am just a knight." The knight said.
"Lead on," Alaric said.
The royal party was considerably larger than two miles of road could fully contain.
Knights. Household men. Servants. Supply wagons. The specific organised chaos of a king traveling with everything a king required to travel with regardless of how inconvenient the everything was on a northern road in autumn.
Robert Baratheon was near the front of it on a destrier that was doing its patient best with a rider who had added considerable weight since the last time he had campaigned seriously. He was eating something from a cloth and drinking from a skin simultaneously and talking to a Ser Barristan beside him and doing all three with the comfortable ease of a man for whom eating and drinking and talking had become so simultaneous they barely registered as separate activities.
He saw Alaric coming and his face did the thing it had done at the Red Keep — the specific recognition of someone who had been told about a thing and was now seeing the thing and finding the reality satisfactory.
"Boy, you arrived here . Finally" he said. And laughed Loudly.
"Your Grace," Alaric said respectfully.
Robert looked at the two-fifty behind him. At the axe. At the banner.
"Finally going home boy, last you weren't so keen" Robert said. " Now On the king's road going north." He grinned. " No worries, now go Winterfell with me boy"
"Your Grace, i don't think that's a great idea. I don't think the her grace the queen is very happy with me." Alaric said. "And I would like to see my family as early as possible."
Robert's grin widened. "Your family." He said it warmly — the word carrying the specific weight of a man who had known Ned Stark for years and found the idea of Ned's household heading home genuinely pleasing. "Ned will be glad of it that you finally going home." He paused. "But it will have to wait.You haven't been home for 4 years and I think you can wait some days more. About the queen. She is always unhappy about one thing or more. She doesn't get everything she wishes otherwise I would be long dead "
'I expect so' Alaric thought.
Robert looked at him for a long moment.
Alaric had expected it. Had prepared a response that was polite and clear and left no room for negotiation.
"Your Grace is generous," he said. "But I would rather ride ahead. Arrive at Winterfell before your party. It would be my pleasure to welcome his Grace to Winterfell."
Robert looked at him.
Then he laughed.
The real one — the big loud laugh that Alaric had heard at the Red Keep plenty enough when Robert had been drunk enough which was not rare at all.
Robert repeated. He shook his head. "You sound like Ned it is the same tone He uses with me when he wants to refuse things." He said it warmly,Then he looked at Alaric "Ride with us Snow. Your men can set their own pace. Ride up here with me. We're going the same road. Same destination."
"Your Grace—"
"This is my final decision, I don't want hear anything else" Robert said. The stubborn eyes still present. He paused. " You are good here, pisses off those Lannisters golden fucks ." He took a drink from the skin.
Alaric was quiet for a moment.
"Of course Your Grace, if that's what you wish" Alaric said.
All said and done. They are ready to ride again
He moved his horse alongside Robert's.
Behind him Harys fell in with the column.
Somewhere further back Edwyn Flowers and Ser Damon exchanged the look of men whose plans had just changed.
"Good," Robert said. He offered the skin.
Alaric took it.
Drank.
"Tell me about your story," Robert said. "I've heard things. Wanted to ask you about them at the Red Keep but you left before I could corner you properly. You pissing off Lanisters was too much back then. I have never seen Tywin looked so pissed. Jon too tensed" He laughed remembering Tywin 's face.
"What do you want to know, your Grace" Alaric said.
"Your Campaigns," Robert said simply. "I love a good campaign story. Haven't heard one in years that was worth listening to." He looked at the road ahead. "Ned and I used to do things like that before the damm Rebellion." He glanced at Alaric sideways. "You don't seem modest."
"I'm not," Alaric said.
Robert laughed again.
"Good," he said. "Start from the beginning."
The road north unreeled ahead of them. The royal party moving at its progress pace. Alaric beside the king on the king's road going toward the place he had been avoiding for four years.
He started from the beginning.
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