The heavy, two-handed greatsword Ice fell one last time, ending the life of the direwolf named Lady.
Eddard numbly sheathed his sword. The harsh scrape of metal echoed through the deathly silent courtyard.
The air was thick with the smell of blood and unspoken grief.
Dragging legs that felt weighted with lead, he made his way, step by step, toward the temporary quarters arranged for him inside the castle.
In his mind, he saw the gleam of triumph on the Queen's beautiful face, and Robert's retreating back as he left in silence, avoiding his gaze.
Exhaustion, anger, helplessness, and profound sorrow nearly suffocated him.
Why had he left his beloved North to come to this southern land of lies and conspiracies?!
Eddard had promised Catelyn that he would take Sansa and Arya south, thinking he was fulfilling his wife's wish and offering his daughters the possibility of a glorious future.
Yet fate seemed to have played one cruel joke after another on him.
First, Bran had fallen from the High Tower. He remained unconscious, his life hanging in the balance.
Then, here on House Darry's lands, Arya had become embroiled in a fierce clash with Joffrey.
Arya insisted that Joffrey had first attacked the poor Butcher's Boy, Micah, with his sword. When she stopped the prince's outrageous behavior, he retaliated, and her direwolf Nymeria had bitten his hand only to protect her mistress.
The arrogant Joffrey, however, had twisted the truth, accusing the Butcher's Boy and the "wild girl" Arya of attacking him together.
Faced with their conflicting accounts, Queen Cersei had displayed a mad, ruthless determination to protect her son.
She had ordered the direwolf Lady beheaded as punishment.
And Robert, under the pressure of Cersei's tearful coaxing, had actually acquiesced to this absurd, cruel judgment.
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