Falconroost, Keep of House Arryn

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With the return of Lord Yohn Royce from his campaign against the Mountain Clans, the armies were redivided in order to better defend the Vale. An army, close to five thousand strong, had gathered at the Bloody Gate to serve as a defensive force. Ser Donnel Waynwood and Lord Arryn's cousin, Humphrey, were named the commanders. The main army, composed of twenty thousand men, gathered beneath the newly made banners of House Arryn as well as Sansa Stark. Along the path, heading toward the Riverlands and through the two gates, the proud standards depicted a falcon, with a fiery heart behind it, as well as a wolf with the same design. Converted knights and noblemen flocked to join the army as they prepared to march to war.

Within the still unfinished Falconroost, Lord Arryn, with a cadre of converted knights, knelt before eternal flame that was within the newly risen temple dedicated to the Red God. Several clergy, fresh from Volantis, served as the flame's caretakers, defenders, and the preachers of the newly arisen faith within the Vale. Trianna the Elder sat within her chair, watching from her place in the temple, as the red priest, Ordello, spoke the words of the Lord of Light and blessed Harrold and his knights in their battles to come. After the blessings were given, Harrold rose and reached, holding his hand to the flames as he uttered a small prayer. With that, Lord Arryn turned and walked out of the temple with his knights following him.

Out in the courtyard, a number of retainers and soldiers awaited the group with their horses. Harrold checked his saddle before turning to a squire, from one of the converted houses, to take his helmet and sword into hand. He takes a moment to look at the construction of the Falconroost. One day, he'd return to see it built and see his unborn child alive and well. He promised himself that.

”What happened to him?”

Asked the Princess in response, turning to Sansa with a face full of pensive curiosity. She’d heard a lot of Robb Stark, but could not be sure of how much was true.

”And how did you come to be here in the Vale, with Lord Baelish?”

Shireen knew Littlefinger as a kindly man with minty-breath, but her father and Davos often spoke ill of him. They had warned her not to trust him before they had ridden off again to war.

”A sad end. Honourable men are always betrayed by those who are not.”

Shireen remembered her father telling her of Lord Eddard, who died trying to seat him on his rightful throne. He had fewer kind words to say about Robb, but from what Shireen had heard in the north the Young Wolf had been well loved by his bannermen. The Princess instinctively brushed a hand against her blackened skin.

“By the Imp, was he not? I thought Lord Tyrion poisoned his nephew, the usurper.”

”Didn’t he kill his own father?”

Shireen looked back down at the courtyard. Though smaller and younger, Devan was defending himself handily from the attack of a burlier squire. The Princess kept her thoughts on Joffrey to herself, silently wondering why Stark had become so defensive.

”So many have suffered for this war. I wonder, sometimes, why there must be so much death.”

Men riding to war, never to return. Four of Devan’s own brothers had died fighting for her father at the Blackwater. She exhaled, breath rushing from her nostrils and into the frozen air.

”In the books, it is much easier. The good and brave defeat the evil.”

”Ser Devan has honour. As does Lord Davos.”

Shireen was disheartened by Sansa’s cynicism. It seemed as if the joy and innocence of the world had been robbed from Eddard Stark’s daughter, though she could understand why. Women were but playthings of the mighty, unless they became so themselves, and Sansa has been a plaything of the mighty all her life.

”I trust them both. There are some good men left, honest and true to their oaths. We should put our faith in them.”

When she was queen, she would see the honourable and kind rewarded, as they should be. Even her father was cold, fair to the point of being harsh. But at least he loved her.

"It's a girl, my lady, a healthy lass, by the looks of it"

Said the grey maester, his neck heavy with interwined links, he leaned over a babe, naked in his arms. Lady Sansa laid in her stately bed a maid, Jeyne Poole, removed the veil she had used to obscure her face during labour: it wasn't dignified for everyone else to see the pain of birth in the face of a Lady Paramount, or so Catelyn and Lysa believed and had been taught to. Courtesy is a lady's shield, after all. Her copper-like locks laid in disarray over the pillows, her face reddish by the strenous effort of delivery, that had noneless been rather uncomplicated.

"How will your Ladyship name her?"

The babe was brought forward, Sansa took a look at her, careful, the girl then openned her eyes, of a bright blue, trying to make sense of something as complicated as life. She would have a lifetime to figure it out, or not. There was a fuzz of red hair atop the infantile head, like a fire halo. She was a Tully, just like Sansa and Catelyn before her. Sansa's mother, long dead, her neck cut in a savage affair.

So be it, Harrold be damned if he wanted an Arryn name.

"Catelyn"

Said Sansa. The maester turned to the midwives and the gathered ladies waiting in the antechamber and around the bed.

"Lady Catelyn of House Arryn, heiress to the Eyrie"

The women flockered around, chatting eagerly, excited. The babe was paraded between the female nobility of the kingdom, including Lady Randa, Lady Waynwood, Lady Grafton, the blossomed Lady Corbray and even the queen herself, Selyse, with her sour grimace, and the young princess. A birth was a momentous event and women knew better, it was a hard trial, for every one of them had been and would be again, if they were still of age. Sansa had fathered a heir to the Vale, now she could do as she pleased... And she did not plan to be heavy with child again, at least not for a time.

Nestor came to find Lady Arryn, royal writ from Lord Tully in hand. The ageing Lord of the Gates looked troubled, more than he usually did of late. Through lack of action in the winter months much of Lord Royce’s old muscle had turned to fat, and though he remained a powerfully built man his girth had widened and his hair had greyed.