Robert Chapter II [Voice]

[stagstrong]

What is the use of these damned vendors? I’ve no shortage of gold in my own keep, but these stubborn fools won’t take my word for promise of payment. Not even the bloody bank of Braavos is as hard nosed as these damned fools. The closets are little better. I've tried a dozen times to find a bow or spear for hunting, but all I have to show for it is are there tiny wooden sticks.

[Toothpicks! Why does he need toothpicks? Is he supposed to be hunting moths? He groans, rubbing his temple at the growing frustration of negotiating with the people who occupy this pace. It’s part of a larger symptom in that he simply craves some action, whether it’s fighting or fucking, he’s not picky.]

What this place could use is decent entertainment. We have a tavern, aye. But a sad one at that. But where are the tourneys? The action? Gods, but what I wouldn't do for a melee now. Seven hells, but I’ll end up fat and soft if I’m expected to live like this much longer. My armor will rust before it sees use again.

[A moment's pause. He adds testily:] And to anyone who might ask, I have no wish to read anything.

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[stagstrong]

The edge of the forest. I've given up on hunting anything by throwing rocks at them. But there's ample space.

[Because he DOES have his pride. What will people say if they saw him sparring in the courtyard with a woman half his size? They might think he's a decent guy or something.]

[wolfwild]

The forest's edge. [ hmm! ] I'll gather my own tiny wooden sticks and meet you there, shall I?

Ah. And I suppose I'll procure the blindfold as well. Something thick and impossible to see through.

[stagstrong]

As you say, Lady Lyanna. [He says these words in a grumbling reluctance. He doesn't fancy being in a blindfold at all.] I'll wait for you.

[wolfwild]

...She did not keep him waiting for long. Fickle and changeable and contrary she may be, but she was not so lacking in honour to keep anyone standing upon her ceremony. All she did was put her shoes back on her feet and gather an armful of wooden practise swords -- four of them! One was long and two were short and one had a funny curve in it. All of them were light and manageable and she tied a silk scarf to the end of one hilt so that it bobbed and waved and danced in the air above her shoulder. Lyanna was akin to a slim and skirted warrior marching to battle on light feet, her banner snapping softly at the air.

And when she found him she dumped the whole lot at his feet. Then, hands on her hips, she looked up at him. Oh. Sometimes it was hard to remember just how tall he was. And perhaps a flicker of her apprehension showed on her face once she realized even a playful bout would not be some simple thing.

"My lord," she greeted him. And curtseyed, though every dip and bow always seemed to tread the edge of nonchalance.

[stagstrong]

For Robert, it was a fine thing to wake up each morning and to know his Lyanna was present. Often when they woke around the same time, they would even meet in the hallway. It was not lost on him that she spent less and less time around him. He was easily jealous of it, to be sure. But now, he didn't need to be. They were alone, as lovers might be, though it was not for some tryst that they were together. He wished it was, however. The wait was ever maddening.

All the same, he grinned at her and crouched down, fetching the one with the tiny banner tied to it. He picked it up and showed his amusement at how it fluttered in the wind.

"My lady," he said in his own mild greeting. He stood. "Is this to be your banner or my blindfold?"

[wolfwild]

"Can it not be both?"

She caught the sword's tip and held it steady by its point as he held its handle. And deftly, she undid the solid cream-coloured banner. "The poets and the bards would love it: a banner doubling as a blindfold."

[stagstrong]

As the banner was freed, he chuckled. "Poets and bards! Those useless fools would love a privy if there was coin to made from it. But yes, it will serve."

[wolfwild]

She shook the cloth and she spread it flat over her palm. It spilled over her fingers. "Don't call them useless!" Lyanna thought of Prince Rhaegar's song. And of Prince Rhaegar's sister -- perhaps Daenerys knew its title and its words. She would love to know them. "We could all do with a bit more song in our lives, Lord Robert."

But Lyanna did not come here to offer him a song. She came here to give challenge, the first of which came in the form of a terse command: "Kneel!"

So that she might blind him, of course.

[stagstrong]

"I like songs just fine," Robert complained even as he knelt. Nearly he'd thought to taunt her by making her try to blindfold him while still standing. But even most men would have trouble doing so at his six and a half feet of height. So he knelt and looked up at her with a growing smirk. "Would you like me better if I wrote you a song, my lady?"

[wolfwild]

"And if I said I would, would you indeed write?"

Their conversation was a tricky one. It acknowledged (aloud) the possibility that she did not like him as best as she could. And for a moment, as she avoided his eyes and busied herself with folding the cloth into a narrow opaque strip, she feared Ned must have breathed some word of her disillusionment.

[stagstrong]

Ned, dutiful as he was, had said nothing. Instead, it was Robert's own perceptions. She would not spend this time with him, he thought, if she did not have some fondness for him. But she had not shown any special affection. But perhaps he was himself to blame for that. He'd not yet kissed her since the rooftop and that had only been on the forehead. He would have to do something about that.

He grinned still, beneath his blindfold. "If I could think of words. But I've been told I have a fine enough voice."

Or rather, he had a loud one and when he sang along to a song, everyone knew it.

[wolfwild]

Lyanna hummed in mild agreement. Words, she suspected, were the hardest part. She herself had no desire to write any songs, no matter how much she loved them. So she let the subject drop and, with the silk held against his eyes, she leaned leftwards so she might secure it tightly behind his head. One knot. Two knots. And then she crouched beside him, waving her hand slowly before Robert's face.

"What can you see?" She asked softly, not even certain she should trust him to tell the truth if he could see anything.

[stagstrong]

Robert, who could see nothing at all save for the outlike of his cheeks against a dim light, did indeed lie to her. He did so boldly and with a wide grin, though his attention was still looking up where her face no longer was.

"A beautiful maiden. As clear as day."

[wolfwild]

She smiled. Oh, for a moment she thought perhaps her blindfold was no good. But she caught on to the jape and she nodded along with it as she reached for one of the wooden swords. The long one -- the one advantage she would give him in this game: a sword suited to his size.

"Some maiden of your mind, then. Some lady you imagine," she chided him.

[stagstrong]

"There's only one I imagine."

He held out his left hand now, waiting expectantly for the sword she would give him. Already he was worried about this duel because his blindness meant he was more likely to either do her serious harm or be robbed of any true strength in his blows. He knew it would be the latter. He wondered if ever anyone could ever learn to fight while blind. Assassins and faceless men, perhaps, who used darkness as their shroud. But never a knight. A game, he told himself. Not a battle.

[wolfwild]

"...Then it is perhaps best that she stay in your imagination," Lyanna sighed -- tugging at a corner of the blindfold because she found it crooked. Or maybe she too was imagining things. "Where she can do no wrong and never disappoint you, my lord."

And then, after a pause, she delivered onto him his sword. And picked up her own -- the curious curved one, though she had no notion of how to use it.

[stagstrong]

He gripped the sword in his hand. In order to know it's length, he drove its point towards the ground and used it to lift himself back into a standing position. He hefted in front of him and tried to listen for her. However, he was poorly trained for this kind of combat. So he decided the best thing to do was to keep her talking.

"She could never disappoint me. Not this lady."

[wolfwild]

"Oh--" her gasp was theatrical. Light and less serious than she'd sounded a moment ago. Lyanna accepted herself as the figure in his imagination only by degrees and syllables -- alluding to her understanding, but never quite confronting it. A careful verbal game of cat and mouse, one whereby she would never quite have to tell him how unseemly the words were becoming. "Careful, unless she hears you and takes your words for another challenge."

Testing her bravery as well as his reactions, she started out so simple: tapping her sword once against his.

[stagstrong]

There she was. He swung his sword awkward and clumsily, because he was ill used to fighting left handed. But his sword rattled on hers and he turned in her direction, ever smiling and seemingly unworried.

"Is she so easily challenged? It must make for a tiresome life."

[wolfwild]

"Would you prefer her listless? Without ambition and easy led? Maybe those who are instead easily challenged can be said to show promise."

She laughed to see his clumsy swing. But her laughter was sourced in a sharp knowledge that he could swing much stronger and much better when given half a chance. There were no illusions: she knew Lord Robert Baratheon was a skilled warrior. And every weakened blow was more to his credit than surely he even imagined.

Lyanna hopped backwards, circled left, and tried to tap his elbow instead. But she was still talking loud and boisterous: "Or is it you who would rather be unchallenged?"

[stagstrong]

He was becoming, by some small amount, a little better. She made it only too easy to keep facing her and keep a rudimentary kind of defense. His elbow bobbed away just in time for him to make another clumsy lunge at where he expected her to be.

"I love a challenge!" He roared boastfully. "But if we're so easily challenged, what does this promise hold?"

[wolfwild]

"Favours. Boons. Victory chalices. Rights to brag and boast that I felled a Lord of the Stormlands."

All her grandstanding and speechifying got her caught on her open side -- enough so that she huffed a quiet oof when the wood thudded harmlessly against her abdomen. A dire blow had they been real swords, maybe. But he was blindfolded and she did not want the game to end so soon: "My arm!" She screeched with laughing surprise, not a habitual liar but keen to keep their fun roused. "But not my sword-arm, thankfully."

[stagstrong]

"First blood," he declared and swept his weapon harmlessly into the air. "You should have brought a shield, my lady. Do you suppose your arm will ever heal?"

Now he was the one who spoke too much. He lost her in the shuffle and when he struck again, he was far from reaching her and only air greeted his useless attack.

[wolfwild]

-- And only then did she conclude that he was finding her by sound. Tricky! For only when she didn't speak did he miss so wildly, and Lyanna had not thought to count that sense. Of course she wouldn't; what did she know of actual battle? Of limited visibility? Of what a warrior had to do just to land a blow?

So she did not deign to answer his question, nor did she rise to his taunt. Instead she kept her blade up and tried to gently toe her way behind him.

[stagstrong]

The silence seemed so sudden now. He lunged at empty air. He frowned and tried to listen, but it was no use. He was not patient enough to slow his own breathing and truly listen. The wind rustling the leaves was louder than her foot falls and breathing.

"Have you run away, my lady? I would hate to think my betrothed to be craven in battle."