Chapter 6: Requiems and Absolutions
Ned Stark sat alone in his solar, feeling like a requiem. His tongue lay heavy in his mouth, as though thickened and numbed with Dornish wine. Gone. The finality of the word hit him like a tempest, nearly bowing him over with its weight and magnitude.
Oh gods. Sansa Stark had…gone. The bile began to rise within his throat—hot and acidic—and he quickly willed it down. He could not break, not now. Yet, it was all he could do to not buckle and collapse. He hurt. Gods, how he hurt, a sharp, resounding throb that threatened to tear his heart asunder.
A wail shattered through the hall, animalistic almost, in its pain. High and keening, cutting through the thickened silence. Ned shut his eyes tightly to the sound of it, his heart breaking anew. Catelyn. Since the abduction, she had been confined to their bed, a torrent of tears and convulsions.
She had refused all food and drink, as untouched trays littered the outside of the closed chamber door, and Maester Luwin feared for her health, administering small doses of Night Shade from the apothecary to induce sleep. Ned furled his hand over the armrest as if to keep himself buoyant and tethered to reality.
Four days…It had been four days since the abduction and he still felt as though he were asleep, ensnared within a dark, never-ending incubus. Wake. He needed to wake now. If he could only wake, then everything would be as it was. Sansa would be in her solar, sewing in her embroidery circle, japing with Arya and Robb, smiling as sweetly as the dawn…
Locke, a Bolton bannerman and Roose's best tracker, said it was the work of wildlings, that no kidnapping had been so complete or well-executed.
"Just like a ghost," the small ferreted man announced, his black, beady eyes glistening in sordid glee and anticipation. His hand slowly caressing his hunter's knife, his strokes both slow and deliberate. Ned immediately disliked the look of him.
Like some salivating dog tempted with a leg of mutton.
Roose had assured him that he was the finest hunter in all the North and did exceptional work, but that did little to pacify and ease his comfort. Ned was loathed to think of the past work that he had done in the Bolton's employ. Monsters, monsters all of them…
They had been in the Wolfswood two days prior. All of them—the two most powerful houses in the North—and already dissention arose. Roose had been incensed, his blood lust near insatiable, wanting to execute the forester and his family ( a young wife and a nursing babe) for their incompetence.
"I fear you have gone soft, Lord Stark." Roose's eyes were cold, flat chips of ice, simmering with an undercurrent of rage. Controlled, but bubbling just beneath the surface. "This man was your forester, clearly benefitting from your mercy and elevated position. Your daughter is missing because he was careless and an example needs to be made."
The forester, Merric, was knelt on forest floor, a trembling, blubbering fit of apologies and excuses. "Mercy, m'lords! Mercy! I did not see 'em! M-m-mercy! I did not see 'em, I swear. M-m-m-must've hid in the dark…"
His wife was standing just beyond, at the entrance of the cottage, clutching the babe at her breast as though it were a shield, her bottom lip quivering. Ned turned away then, barely hearing the pleas, his thoughts suddenly in a quagmire. How did it all come to this? This—whatever it was—was sheer madness.
"Leave him," he said finally, returning to his horse. He suddenly felt tired, defeated. The search party had returned with very few leads and only more unanswered questions. "The man knows nothing and will be of no help to us."
All that his men gathered was that a group of wildlings had traversed the Wall and briefly settled in the forest. There had been a small group of them—five, at the most—and they were all able to go undetected so far south. No other clue had been left. No clothing, no weapons. Nothing.
"This is Mance Rayder's work," Robb stated from his mount, a hard gleam in his eye. Ever since Sansa's kidnapping, he had become angry. Harder. No longer a carefree lord of seven and ten, but now a man full grown and fashioned from the tragedy that has befallen him. On all of them.
"No," Ned interjected, turning around to face them all. Roose's lips were tightly pursed, a look of righteous anger upon his mien at being undermined. His bastard silently fuming upon his black destrier. All throughout the interrogation, he remained quiet, eerily so, lost in contemplation and thought. One hand held tightly onto the reigns of his charger, the other to the scabbard of his sword.
As Ned silently watched him then, appraising the Bolton heir, a tightening seized his gut, sudden and constricting. He was Sansa's betrothed, an agreement borne out of dire necessity and preservation, and yet he could summon no sympathy for the man. He turned his head, feeling shamed.
He was angry, angry at feeling such animosity and resentment towards a man who had not chosen his bastard status, or to be the unwanted son of a cold, unfeeling man like Roose. Yet, angry that it had all come down to this. He had heard the stories of the Bastard of Bolton, as had all of the North. A monster and a madman who relished in the peeling of human flesh.
…And Ned had given his beloved daughter to him as though with little thought or consequence…
When Catelyn had heard of the engagement, she ranted and raved at him, a storm of tears and accusations. Her eyes wide and transfixed.
"How in the seven hells could you give our daughter away to that animal, Ned? How?"
In retrospect, Ned had believed that he had taken the right course of action, striving to repair a splintered and fractured North, badly weakened by its self-imposed civil war. Yet standing there, now, he had realized he had greatly errored. A mistake he would willingly rectify once Sansa returned.
If, that sly and treacherous voice would whisper. If she returns, you mean.
Ramsay was like a broken bone, one that had not fully mended correctly and continued to hinder and impair the body. There was no correcting or healing it, it just continued to grow crooked, distorted, and wrong. He did not deserve Sansa to take to wife. He would never be deserving of her.
"It was not Mance Rayeder. He's too cunning and cautious to venture south of the Wall on a whim. Everything he has done has been deliberate and planned. This was the work of his son, Jon Snow."
Everyone turned to look at him then, Ramsay included, his grip on his sword hilt tightening. It seemed almost instinctual, this visceral reaction, one based off loathing and fear. Even the Mad Dog trembled and kowtowed to the White Wolf…
Ned ordered his bannermen to disperse and reconvene on the morrow, at first light. As his men began their journey to their keeps, a loud squall reverberated throughout the air, a woman's howl quickly ensuing. Ned turned to look back, and his blood nearly congealed at the sight awaiting him…
The forester lay writhing on the floor, a large pool of blood coalescing near the stump that was once his hand. Ramsay standing over the corpse, panting, sword drawn, a feral smile of pure exultation fully displayed upon his lips…