A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

Mormont?”
    â€œWould that I might forget him,” Ned said bluntly. The Mormonts of Bear Island were an old house, proud and honorable, but their lands were cold and distant and poor. Ser Jorah had tried to swell the family coffers by selling some poachers to a Tyroshi slaver. As the Mormonts were bannermen to the Starks, his crime had dishonored the north. Ned had made the long journey west to Bear Island, only to find when he arrived that Jorah had taken ship beyond the reach of Ice and the king’s justice. Five years had passed since then.
    â€œSer Jorah is now in Pentos, anxious to earn a royalpardon that would allow him to return from exile,” Robert explained. “Lord Varys makes good use of him.”
    â€œSo the slaver has become a spy,” Ned said with distaste. He handed the letter back. “I would rather he become a corpse.”
    â€œVarys tells me that spies are more useful than corpses,” Robert said. “Jorah aside, what do you make of his report?”
    â€œDaenerys Targaryen has wed some Dothraki horselord. What of it? Shall we send her a wedding gift?”
    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. He remembered the angry words they had exchanged when Tywin Lannister had presented Robert with the corpses of Rhaegar’s wife and children as a token of fealty. Ned had named that murder; Robert called it war. When he had protested that the young prince and princess were no more than babes, his new-made king had replied, “I see no babes. Only dragonspawn.” Not even Jon Arryn had been able to calm that storm. Eddard Stark had ridden out that very day in a cold rage, to fight the last battles of the war alone in the south. It had taken another death to reconcile them; Lyanna’s death, and the grief they 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 as they dragged her from beneath her bed to face the swords. The boy had been no more than a babe in arms, yet Lord Tywin’s soldiers had torn him from his mother’s breast and dashed his head against a wall.
    â€œAnd how long will this one remain an innocent?” Robert’s mouth grew hard. “This
child
will soon enough spread her legs and start breeding more dragonspawn to plague me.”
    â€œNonetheless,” Ned said, “the murder of children … it would be vile … unspeakable …”
    â€œUnspeakable?”
the king roared. “What Aerys did to your brother Brandon was unspeakable. The way your lord father died, that was unspeakable. And Rhaegar … how many times do you think he raped your sister? Howmany
hundreds
of times?” His voice had grown so loud that his horse whinnied nervously beneath him. The king jerked the reins hard, quieting the animal, and pointed an angry finger at Ned. “I will kill every Targaryen I can get my hands on, until they are as dead as their dragons, 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, can you?” he said quietly.
    The king’s mouth twisted in a bitter grimace. “No, gods be cursed. Some pox-ridden Pentoshi cheesemonger had her brother and her walled up on his estate with pointy-hatted eunuchs all around them, 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.”
    â€œJon 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 to have a hundred thousand men in his horde. What would Jon say to
that?”
    â€œHe would say that even a million Dothraki are no threat to the realm, so long as they remain on the other side of the narrow sea,” Ned replied calmly. “The barbarians have no
ships
. They hate and fear the open sea.”
    The king shifted uncomfortably in his saddle. “Perhaps. There are