The Hand

Riding was his only relief, it seemed. Not that he had any time to pursue aimless gallops through the countryside, but his men knew his foul and troubled demeanor well enough to not bother him on the marches when he chose to ride at the head of the men, even Dickon, thank the Gods he'd possessed the good sense to ride back to Horn Hill once they'd encountered the Queen's mercenary invaders, unlike the foolhardy Tyrell man. Randyll had nearly slapped the boy Loras himself, his adored new goodson, who had insisted on marching deep into Prince's Pass, and his likely doom, upon hearing of Garlan's death. Fortunately cooler heads had prevailed, the cripple Willas demanding that his younger brother submit to the planning of the Hand on behalf of their captive king...temporarily captive, Randyll assured all of them. Privately, his thoughts had long differed by now.

That Rhaegar and Connington's army of Stormlanders would be tempted into meeting a devastating defeat in Dorne was a possibility that Randyll had reckoned with ever since the King left the capital. A rout would be expected in that case, the loss of an entire army, though the entire business would've been far cleaner had the king not actually survived the battle. Any regency would not be without its challenges, and he did not expect that men like Kevan Lannister or Mace Tyrell would remain content to be complacent and entirely obedient to his leadership in the long run, but so long as the war continued, they needed him in the field, all the realm did.

His problem wasn't the resurgent Dornish army, or even their unexpected marcher lord allies. He'd take care not to repeat Rhaegar's mistake, leaving Dorne in Dorne so long as it was possible. For the Queen to make an invasion north from Prince's Pass so quickly after a triumph would not be unexpected either, but the problem was that his had been depending upon the damned fool Renly to have rallied all the loyal banners in the Stormlands to rebut such an invasion, slow it down at least until Randyll could've taken care of their many other threats. And that was indeed another problem, those other threats, how the King's sister, rather than remain passively in Casterly Rock while spreading her ridiculous rumors, had managed to both evade the armies they'd sent to besiege the Lannister seat, then convince more and more of the houses in the Westerlands, along with her idiot husband, into believing her childishly imagined stories.

In the corner of his eye, he saw a rider whisper into Dickon's ear. His son rode back up to him shortly afterwards. "It's true," the young man said, a gloomy pall cast over his voice. "Old Oak and the Oakhearts have rallied to the rebels, they've given shelter to Princess Daenerys and are marching with her south, against us."

More than just the Westerlands, Randyll thought, shaking his head. House Oakheart would be the first Reach house to rebel, an inauspicious tide he needed to quell at the immediate. "All because Doran Martell held their son, by the Gods, don't they know that we had nothing to do with that?"

It didn't matter, if everyone was rational, then far fewer wars would have broken out through the history of the Seven Kingdoms, much less waged for the crown of a girl who'd merely gotten lucky over the course of a few battles and skirmishes.

"Nothing from Storm's End either," Dickon asked. "I spoke to Ser Loras, he's rather furious..."

"Seems his friend isn't as loyal as we thought he'd be," Randyll said, quelling the nauseating pit in his stomach upon thinking of the true and secret inclinations of Talla's gallant new husband.

"Lord Renly hasn't declared for Queen Sansa either," Dickon said. They both looked back at the procession, the youngest son of Highgarden marching about ten horses behind them.

"No, he's only stood by while she's rallied the Cafferen's and Errols to their cause. Man thinks he's another Tywin Lannister, I'll bet, waiting till a winner emerges before declaring. Except I would've thought Renly knew better, Lord Tywin's not the best example to follow, not unless he has a hankering to go north after this war."

We'll see if the valiant Loras would be so eager to join his perverse lover at Castle Black.

The problem was that, with the Queen's host marching north, buffered from her losses at the tower by both the already defected Stormlands houses as well as the number of men formerly sworn to Connington who'd surrendered and now marched with her, Randyll could very well find himself outnumbered were the Princess's armies marching south from Old Oak allowed to join with her erstwhile Queen, and that wasn't even counting the further toll on morale inflicted by the news that the damned King had been captured in battle and now sat in a cell in the castle of his once greatest friend, the Sword of the Morning. At least a dead king meant closure for one reign and the crowning of another, but Rhaegar's sorry plight, along with whispers against the damned red priestesses filling even the villages along the Rose Road, massacres of the Sparrows by the townfolk followed by worse retribution in return, it was a surprise that all Seven Kingdoms had not erupted entirely into something more resembling the ruins of Old Valyria by now.

Not that any of this looming and ongoing disaster gave the damned Hightowers any urgency, their marriage with the Redwynes necessary but occurring at the exact wrong moment of the war. His most immediate threat was the approaching armies of the rogue Lannister heir, but he could not march against them confident in his numbers without the Hightowers. He'd had no choice anyway, because the alternative of waiting was worse, and thankfully two thousand men did arrive from Oldtown the night before the march commenced, though this was but half of what he'd expected from Leyton, who'd sent only his son Gunthor along with the host.

Nevertheless they were marching, they were moving, Roland Crakehall was good soldier but not one Randyll particularly feared, especially considering the old was the best Lancel had at his disposal, unless the silver haired Princess had some secret knowledge of war that he knew not of.

"One battle at a time," he heard himself whispering into the wind, though Dickon obviously thought the words wisdom meant for him. It wasn't wrong, he could not afford to think of the battles he had ahead of him, the Queen marching for Highgarden or a lightly guarded Horn Hill, though he was fine if she and the boy Dayne pursued some fruitless siege, it bought him time to crush the Princess and then relieve the castles in turn. In fact he wished they would do so, because the problem was that he'd yet to hear more promising news from further north, it seemed the Brackens and Blackwoods were caught in a stalemate, a particularly harsh set of winter storms preventing either side from rallying enough of the Riverlands houses together for a decisive battle one way or another, and there was the Vale too, damned if he had a clue what was going on there.

The problem was, Randyll decided, wasn't the sheer multitude of the problems he faced, but that it would seem he was the only man in all Seven Kingdoms whom he trusted to do any damned thing about them.


Sansa

Were she still the foolish creature she'd been as a child, Sansa Stark would have cried at the picture roaring before her eyes now, the fires raging and ravaging through all the spectacular roses and tulips and lilies and so many other carefully manicured flowers and bushes and trees guarding the walls of Highgarden. Glee would have been the furthest emotion in that child's mind, yet it was exactly that she felt now, the smoke from the burning gardens creating the strangest fragrances wafting astride her nostrils, as if she took a sadistic joy in destroying the last traces of everything she'd once held dear, that failed Queen who'd gotten everyone she loved in her life betrayed and murdered.

"If I was older and they made me Queen," Arya said, standing solemnly to her side, "I would've burned these gardens just to make you cry."

There was a look of satisfaction to her sister's eyes. Sansa wondered if other may see the same look upon herself, whether Edric saw it, he knew her better than most now, he could read her like few could in her new life. Or even her old, would mother or grandpapa even recognize her this night, much less father and Robb?

"That's cruel," the Queen pretended to chide her sister. "You know I'm not doing this to make Margaery Tyrell cry."

"No," Brienne of Tarth said, "it's strategic. And necessary." The woman from the Sapphire Isle had fought like a beast or a woman possessed during the battle, and if the men didn't respect her before, most who'd had their lives saved by the woman did so now. Edric had always known what she was made of, he'd ridden and patrolled the Kingswood and marches with her for years, and considered her almost as much of a mentor as Beric Dondarrion.

"It is," her lover said to really no one but himself. He'd spoken little of losing Lord Beric since the battle, and Sansa did not press him, because he hadn't pressed her at all on all the horrors that had befallen her in King's Landing. But the Lord of Starfall seemed a changed man since that day, not too drastically, but slightly more withdrawn, quieter, more morose. Sansa could tell herself that it was the finality of the war's commencement that troubled him, all the responsibility placed upon his young shoulders in leading an effort to regain the Iron Throne for a woman who'd been but barely a stranger a year before, but Sansa also knew him well enough to discern that was not the truth, not the whole truth anyway.

The eerie haze from the burning still glowing, the smoky fragrance permeating through the camp like some twisted perfume from the shadowlands of Asshai, they all walked in silence back to their respective tents. Alone, Edric opened the flap and Sansa walked under it first, but she noticed he hesitated at following her inside.

"Is something wrong?"

It was a stupid question, there was plenty wrong, though neither one of them seemed willing to admit it.

"I think I'll go for a ride. I need to clear my head."

Biting her lip, Sansa looked away at her cot, sitting so invitingly in the corner of their makeshift home for the next few nights, so long as the false siege lasted.

"Do what you have to do then."

Perhaps it was the way she looked at him, or the way she spoke, some intangible mannerism which he'd come to recognize knowingly or not, which elicited the response which came next.

"I know it's late," he said uneasily, staring at the ground as he spoke, "but you can come if you want. I wouldn't mind the company."

Without another word she nodded, and donned a heavy dark cloak for the night's ride. Further afield the flames disappeared behind them, and the night overtook the landscape, only the benefit of a clear sky and a full moon guiding their way through the open plains, bare patches of grass and dirt comprising the last remnants of the bountiful harvests of the long summer, long passed into history.

The fires themselves were useless from a tactical perspective, burning only the gardens which sat outside and below the castle walls, the same ones which had sheltered her and so much of the highborn realm during that tourney held a year before the last involuntary purge of her life. Highgarden held few defenders now, but the castle's relative weakness was hardly the point of their so-called siege. They'd seen new arrivals join them from the Stormlands, but not Renly and Shireen's men from Storm's End. Had Sansa recalled at the time the importance of Loras Tyrell to Lady Shireen's former lord regent, she may have held second thoughts on executing his brother. And though it now cost her a powerful army, the lesson was a useful one, to realize the limits to the fealty of her father's Master of Whispers, that his loyalties died when ordered to make war and murder against the man he loved.

Which meant joining with the Westerlands army Daenerys had managed to rally all the more critical to their shared cause. Sansa was impressed by her tenacity, she truly was, by both the woman's faithfulness to a promise made to a stranger, the last they'd seen of each other, as well as her abilities to somehow not just delve into gossip, but then translate it into an actual force of fighting men. The problem was they did not know where the other was, and with Randyll Tarly's massive army looming ominously between them, there was but one way to communicate their position further north, by besieging Highgarden, or pretending to at least, news of such a momentous event sure to spread through the land, intercepted scouts or not. With any luck they could pull the captive king's Hand south as well and in a predictable manner, at which point she and Edric and Arya and Brienne could study the maps and determine how to maneuver around the Lord of Horn Hill and evade battle whilst edging ever closer to Daenerys's Lannister host on the other side of the Mander.

"I'm sorry," Sansa said, as their gallops slowed when the lights of a nearby village appeared upon the horizon, "about Beric. He was a good man, he was loyal, and he saved my life, same as you. I'll see to it that he's remembered, after this war."

"Thank you," Edric whispered quietly, riding ahead with the utmost caution, one hand gripped on Ice as they approached the village. He pointed at a set of banners illuminated by the torchlight bearing the sigils of the Swan, the house of her former Queensguard who'd proven so crucial in the battle, their presence indicating that they'd already driven any hostile soldiers away from the village. Whomever was in charge at the Red Keep had let Balon free, Donnel Swann had assured her after the battle, and the faithful man was riding fast westwards to resume his former duties, not that she particularly needed bodyguards in war, surrounded by Edric and Arya and all their loyal soldiers.

"I'll miss him," he continued, as they rode slowly towards the small bundling of cabins and houses. From its direction they could hear songs sung from what looked to be a small tavern at the edge of the village, smoke billowing out of its chimney.

"I know you will." Sansa wished she could take his hand now, and squeeze it, to assure him that she did care, cared not that she'd lost a lord and an experienced commander of men, but because he'd lost a man beloved and meaningful to him.

"He's a soldier, we all are, dying's not some strange idea to us," Edric began, then the young man hesitated. The fabric of his hood turning away from her, his voice rang out before the cacophony of celebration threatened to drown out his voice. "I...I almost failed you, Sansa, I almost failed us. Vulture's Pass, I never saw it coming."

They'd arrived by the tavern now, and seeing him dismount his horse, Sansa did the same, and Edric tied both their mounts to the small but fully occupied stable.

"It doesn't matter," Sansa said, taking Edric's hands now that they both stepped foot upon the fertile ground. "Sure you can't predict everything, you can't see everything that's coming."

I know it's not much, but let me comfort you, let me help you. After all you've done for me, it's the least I can do.

"But I have to," Edric nearly yelled, protesting loudly before he lowered his voice again. Lowering the hood further over his head, he continued more carefully. "This is war, I can't afford another mistake like that. It could have cost us everything, it could have killed you, were it not for the Swanns changing their minds. There was no certainty to the whole thing, it was only sheer chance which won us that battle. So what happens next time then, when the roll of the dice doesn't favor us as much?"

"Let it be chance then," Sansa said, answering Edric with a tone far more decisively than she would have expected. She pulled his body closer against her own under the banisters of the building, the bones of his hips ground against her own. The boy soldier stood taller than her by half a head, Sansa thought, he'd grown taller than when he'd rescued her. In the back of her mind, Sansa found it unsettling how she couldn't help but compare every aspect of her newest lover to Trystane, who'd always stood eye to eye and shoulder to shoulder with her.

Would he have grown taller too, yet another cruel deprivation Rhaegar had robbed from him?

"I can't. If we lose because I've made another mistake, then I'll have failed you, failed my duty."

As she listened, Sansa realized that in her throat she held back a more terrifying truth, one which Edric had probably understood more deeply than she had until now.

You're a boy. You're good at war, you know how to lead men, how to wage it...but you're still a boy. What boy can win a war by himself, can truly master an artform destined to evade most men, though so many strive to master through entire lifetimes, dragons or not?

Or maybe there's more luck or chance to warfare than most men would admit.

Would Trystane know how to wage a war like Edric, could he have rallied a kingdom, could he have survived a battle, or won it by his commands?

She kissed him on the lips, surprising him with her touch. They'd kissed before, but not like this, not tenderly, so as to quell the fire, rather than setting it alight. Rather than biting at his lips, trying to elicit from him a fierce reaction, and draw forth from his body passion, she massaged her lips and tongue slowly against his, almost as if she were whispering to him as their lips met, because I care for you, because everything will be alright.

"I don't care," she said, slightly out of breath, finally pulling her face from his, though her hands held his waist ever more securely to her. "I meant what I said, before the last battle. If we win this war, we win it together. If we die, we die together. I don't know what songs they'll sing of us after, I'd think they'd be good ones, but I don't care, it doesn't matter. We've defeated and captured a King...a rapist, a criminal...we've proven that wolves don't whimper off and die when cornered.

I want to sit on my throne again Edric, I want to see with my own eyes revenge upon all the traitors, justice deserved and delivered...but I know that wants are as useless as...as a lemoncake on a battlefield. And if I can't get everything I want, then all that matters to me is what we know in our hearts, that...," Sansa stopped, trying to think of the right words to say, "that we died knowingly, that we died fighting, that we died on terms we chose for ourselves."

It seemed callous, volunteering Edric for a death which perhaps she'd settled more comfortably upon than he, but Sansa could only rely upon his own words, that he was a soldier, and soldiers were no strangers to the idea of death. A creak from the tavern door startled them, interrupting whatever dark secrets to be further sifted from each other's hearts, and a fat and stubby drunk man stumbled out of the bar, paying them no heed whatsoever as he slumped his way down the path to the adjoining village.

"I think we need a drink," Edric whispered, his face indecipherable to her.

"Are you sure?"

His fingers reached out to pull the hood further over her face, almost hiding it completely, before pointing to a nearby horse whose saddle was emblazoned by the sigil of the swan.

"I think we'll be fine. Besides," he smirked as he ran his fingers over the hilt of Ice, "I've got my new sword, don't I?"

Few paid much attention to the two new arrivals into the tavern at first, giant sword or not. All the guests seemed many hours deep into their revelry by now, allowing the two hooded figures to find an empty table in a corner of the building, one away from a small group of soldiers. Edric tensed, soldiers drinking with the townspeople amidst the lands they are raiding were usually not great combinations, but though they sat separately from the rest of the villagers, there seemed to be little tension between the groups. The men were Stormlanders, which helped, their accents and cultures giving them a lesser impression of acting as foreign invaders, compared to their Dornish brethren.

They'd raided as many grain storages on their march from Prince's Pass into the Reach, bringing their fruits into each village they passed, knights often commanded in taking a full day passing rations to each keep in each of the small towns. Oftentimes the grain probably belonged to the very villages they were being distributed to, but other times, such as all the storages they'd taken outside Highgarden, the foodstuffs had been meant for the enemy armies, which meant an added reward of harming Tarly's men in addition to winning for themselves favor amongst the townsfolk.

There'd been some instances of less than savory activity by their men as well. Sansa would have liked to execute every scoundrel who dared commit trespasses against the townsfolk in the countryside, but they still needed every man they had. The guilty were scourged in front of the villages they wronged, Dornish soldiers by Dornish knights, Stormlanders by Andal knights, so as to not cause enmity between the two camps. One knight, a Santagar, found his title stripped after an accusation of rape by the offended girl's father, whose daughter had been bloodied and beaten as well. But even such a hideous crime had only been punished by the whipping, though a much more severe and brutal one. The only men who had actually been put to death were the ones who'd committed murder, though such trials were hard to prove at times, with the charged on several occasions claiming that they were merely defending themselves against enemy soldiers pretending to be innocent and aggrieved townsfolk.

It was a delicate balance, but all the highest ranking lords from Edric to Brienne to Donnel Swann and Bryce Caron seemed up to the challenge, so their procession through enemy grounds had gone better than other campaigns throughout history, or so Sansa could only hope. Of course, this new war was still as fresh as a newborn babe, and Sansa did not place herself under the illusion that the situation might not worsen, the more brutal and long lasting the war dragged on.

"...aye, an' once Highgarden falls," one of the burlier soldiers exclaimed, trying to impress a plump older barmaid that Sansa would have guessed might already be married, "I'll carry here all th' pigeon pies me arms can handle!"

"Oh," the woman squealed happily, ale spilling from her jug as she refilled his glass, "I've got me four daughters, plenty o'mouths t'feed."

"If yer daughters got tits like yer," a younger man exclaimed, pounding his glass against the table, "I'll buy them all when th' war's over an' I got more gold than prissy Mace Tyrell himself!"

"I trust the brothels are busy," Sansa said quietly, as the barmaid approached them after seeing Edric waving a copper coin in the air, handing and pouring them two glasses of what looked to be an amply disgusting ale.

"Aye," the woman replied, a bit puzzled hearing the voice of a woman, craning her head to see more clearly her new and mysterious customer, "never busier. An' these soldiers," she pointed to the group of Swann men in the table behind them, "have in ther pockits more coin than most, more than what I r'member from th' last war."

"I'm glad," Sansa said. From the corner of her eye, she saw a young knight looking most curiously in her direction. The Queen recognized the man, it was a hedge knight she'd anointed less than a fortnight before. Realizing that their true personages were about to be revealed, Sansa took the putrid glass of ale with both her hands and forced as much of the liquid down her throat as she was capable of. Far from a fine wine, the ale attacked her insides with every ferocity known to the senses, her tongue, her throat, before settling in to burn constantly against her stomach long after her lips had left the brim of the glass.

"Your Grace," the young knight said, eyes widening and sobering.

Edric shrugged and raised an interested eyebrow while she choked for what seemed to be half a minute. Her title emerged as a whisper at first, catching the attention of few, with even the barmaid moving on to the next table, but an older soldier beside him seemed to have heard the words whispered in awe and fear.

"Is...," he slurred, his body rocking back and forth, "is that..."

"The Queen," the young knight answered back, his voice raised, as more of the soldiers at the table paid heed the second time around.

"The Queen," another soldier asked, and Sansa noticed that a nearby table of what appeared to be farmers had also caught on to their whispers. Taking another deep throaty gulp of the ale, managing to hold it down with less trouble this time, Sansa stood, and pulled back her hood, Edric following her direction one second afterwards.

For all the villagers might have known she would've been just a highborn lady out of place, a rare occasion in such a tavern like this, but not unthinkable in the noble dense kingdom of the Reach, she imagined. But all the soldiers recognized her, and instantly they rose from their seats to bend on one knee in varying directions, chaotically bumping into each other as they did so.

"Ser...Jamis," she asked, the name from the anointing still not entirely faded from her mind.

"Aye, Your Grace. I'm flattered, that you'd still remember me humble name..."

"Me...me apologies, Your Grace," another burlier and bearded soldier interrupted, the one who'd been flirting with the barmaid minutes earlier. "I've had much to drink..."

"Lord Donnel has given you permission to come and take a night off the patrol," Sansa questioned the knight who, despite his age, seemed to stand at the head of this small group of men.

"Aye," the young man with long chestnut hair replied, "t'meet the village an' keep the peace, he said."

She looked to Edric, who nodded, indicating that he didn't know any orders contrary to what he'd claimed.

"Good," Sansa answered, standing tall and regally now above the kneeled band of killers. "Then you are doing your duty." Moving her eyes across upon the other men at the table, the unmasked Queen continued. "War is dangerous, one does not take tomorrow for granted. Some time to ease the mind is necessarily, so long as it is not taken to excess, so long as it does not interfere or harm your duties."

"After all," Edric said lightly, raising his glass towards the men, "we're here drinking with you, aren't we?"

Their words seemed to offer the soldiers some sense of ease, and in turn, the rest of the revelers. Feeling a bit more assured towards their safety now, Sansa pulled from within her enveloped cloaks two gold dragons, the coins thudding against the table with the weight of two giant monolithic stones fallen from the sky.

"Your name," she asked the barmaid.

"Min...Minisa, Your Grace," the older woman replied, her fingers holding very loosely the jug of ale, as if she were about to drop it at any second. "But...but they call me Minnie..."

"Minnie," Sansa replied, smiling at the woman. "Minisa. It's a beautiful name."

"Thank ye, Yer Grace," the woman said, bowing clumsily.

"That was my grandmother's name, my mother's mother."

Oh grandpapa, what would you think now, if you could still see me, drinking ale out of all things in a forgotten tavern.

"I suppose this should pay for everyone's drink the rest of the night," she continued.

"Aye," the older woman replied, staring at the gold with more awe than the Queen who'd released the precious coins. "Th' year, even."

"Through winter," a big burly soldier screamed joyously behind her, almost causing her to jump, though Edric remained perfectly calm and still. "Long may she reign!"

The chants began, all the fighting men raising their swords in the air, the more modest farmers and bakers and cobblers raising their glasses and even one humble man his shoe, holes marring the coarse and worn surface. Sensing the improving mood, Sansa raised her glass back, turning from one side of the tavern to the other, before pressing it back against her lips and finishing the awful ale, which seemed to taste less awful the third time around. Without another signal, the barmaid hurried back to refill her glass, Sansa groaning inwardly, knowing that there lay another batch of liquid burden for her to force down her throat.

"You're blushing," Edric said as they sat back down, a small dimple formed against his left cheek taunting her.

"Sorry," Sansa shot back, eagerly taking another sip, hoping that each taste would ease the bitterness, which it did, slightly. "I'm clearly not a tavern girl."

"Seems like you're picking up new habits, what with the war and all."

The rabble and natural conversing had begun to pick up once more despite their presence, though Sansa could tell the difference, that all the chatter and games were more carefully uttered from before, but the Queen saw that Minnie had not moved from where she stood at the head of her table. She nodded, giving the woman permission to ask what she seemingly dared not ask.

"Is it true," she began, her lips trembling, "what they say about...the red fire priestesses...and Rhaegar? And the Sparrows."

Sansa nodded. "It is, all of it." Seeing eyes cast upon their direction again, she stood once more, so that her voice could carry across the vast room. "I saw the usurper invite into the sacred Keep the very highest priestess of that foul religion, a woman from Volantis by the name of Kinvara. I invited the High Sparrow into our audience, hoping that he could shield us from whatever vile and dark spells that woman could have cast. But I only found myself more horrified, when he revealed himself to have been in league with Rhaegar and the red priestess all along, and together they...they celebrated, they drank as we do now, cheering to the destruction of the Great Sept and with it, all of the Faith in the Seven Kingdoms."

Jaws fell agape. Of course this had been the message she and Daenerys had been spreading ever since her escape, but it would seem that some of the smallfolk possessed enough sense to doubt such ludicrous nonsense, until they heard the words coming from the very Queen herself, it would seem. Sansa could only imagine the success the Princess, Rhaegar's very own sister, had with convincing the people of the tale, wherever they were marching further north.

"The bastards..."

"We ran the Sparrows out of here at your coming, Yer Grace, killed half a dozen of them..."

"We'll kill them all fer ya, Yer Grace, I'll strangle the traitor Tyrell with his own beard..."

"My good people," the Queen spoke, amplifying her voice, her hand holding her ale out towards the gathered crowd, as if she were in the middle of a toast. "Understand that this war we wage isn't against you, isn't against your family, your friends, your children and wives and mothers, so long as you remain true to the Faith, and your Queen. I wage this war not on behalf of my Throne, usurped as it was from under me, but for the truest tenets of the Seven Pointed Star, the blessed faith of our mothers and fathers, to see it all restored to what it once was. We fight this war for you, so you may never have to live under the terrible reign of the Sparrows, who would have despoiled the Faith, in the name of the Faith, until it was no longer recognizable to any of us half a generation from now. We fight to restore the sanctity of your Septs, your prayers, your marriages and ceremonies and livelihoods."

"The Tyrells," one bone thin man interrupted her, asking from a corner where he had been drinking by himself. "Are they in league with the high priestesses too?"

He was a deeper thinker for a commoner, Sansa thought, naturally skeptical of such exaggerations, and Sansa had to be careful with her words.

"I can't read into the depths of a man's heart," she began, "I carry with me not the ability to judge their very consciences. The usurper's cloak of deception has pulled the wool over the eyes of many, and many follow him and the High Sparrow without knowing of their true motives, same as I, until I learned the truth...until the Princess Daenerys was touched by the Mother's mercy and the Maiden's virtue to let go of her allegiance to her brother, and embrace the true faith of her ancestors. Perhaps men like Mace and his sons did not once know the truth. Perhaps they do not believe even now. I knew your Lady Margaery, I counted her as one of my closest friends, she was betrothed and beloved to my own brother, your Prince Robb. In all the years I've known her, I cannot imagine her to be a fanatic of such a cruel religion, she was misled, I believe, along with many in her family, and many good men across this realm. But the threat is most urgent, I cannot warn you of that enough, I watched with my own eyes as the Sparrows set alight and burn my chosen Hand Lord Baelish, who devoted all of his life in serving the realm he so loved and cherished, charging him with the falsest and flimsiest accusations of treason. Who knows who they would've aimed to burn next, once the Sparrows held all seven kingdoms in their fiery grip?"

"Not us," the man who'd questioned her answered with gritted teeth, her words seeming to have had their intended effect, mellowing his doubts.

"They'll have t'kill every last one of us before they burn us..."

It was all shit, all her tales, the loyalty of the Littlefinger which she clung to before these men, out of all things. But these lies were good lies, Sansa told herself. By convincing the villagers and smallfolk of the Reach, the kingdom whose subjugation was most crucial to her cause, it would save both the lives of her soldiers, who would face less hostility from the natives, and save the lives of the townsfolk themselves, ensuring that they would not be motivated to wage a doomed and useless fight against their would be invaders.

"I'm afraid we do not have the luxury of judging men like your liege lord by their intentions," the Queen continued. Though she'd sat once upon the Iron Throne, though she'd won Dorne through the usage of vast deception and lies, though she'd won an actual battle by the skin of their teeth at the Tower of Joy, there was a strange satisfaction of winning over such a scattered group of villagers, who believed and breathed every one of her words now as if they were told by their own Septa or Maester.

"We must judge them by the consequences they've yielded, writ by their actions, their choices. Perhaps Mace Tyrell believes he is serving the Seven when he serves the usurper even now, after the Gods have made clear their displeasure upon the broken dragon in battle. But so long as his actions further the cause of treason, that of the Sparrows, the cause of the false fire god, then men such as your liege lord, ill intentions or not, must be resisted by those faithful to the Seven, till our dying breath, we must fight and destroy any who refuse to believe the truth, because it's not just our lives but our very souls whom the Gods, true and false, war their wars upon!"

With a flourish she finished the last of her second glass, barely tasting the liquid, then beckoning quickly the barmaid for a third. The rest of the night seemed a blur, as she and Edric walked from one set of men to another, Sansa learning all their names, their trades, listening as they told stories of their children lost to sickness or hunger, brothers and fathers lost to war and the like. One theme seemed common, even amongst her own soldiers, that uncertainty which always accompanied the winter, how long it would last, how much food their reserves had to keep them through the darkest of seasons even when war did not threaten their homes and well being. Upon entering, Sansa had wondered how these people could drink and celebrate so, when their own lands were at war and under siege. Now she understood that it was that very desperation which drove them into this tavern, the ale bitter enough to make them to forget their frets and fears for at least half a night.

And they'd also fretted about what truth of the word loyalty meant, until tonight at least.

"An' when yer liege lord says one thing," one drunk muttered, his breath noxious, "an' th' Queen yer swern fealty to says another, an' another King says anothir thing, an' Gods, the Sparrows..."

"It's confusing, isn't it," Sansa said, touching gently at his wrists, trying to convince herself that the man was not diseased, born of the plague himself. "When your lords commit treason, they betray not only their Queen, but their own people too, plunging them into such unnecessary wars. But know this, that as your Queen, I am loyal not to men like Mace or Loras Tyrell, who sit high in their gardens drinking wine while their lands and villages burn...but to you, my people, it is you that I fight for, and I shall not forget you, not while this war continues, and not after it's won."

Along with her horse, the night had cost them all their coins, her and Edric giving them all away to one group or another. Too drunk to ride, they left her steed at the stable, and she gripped tightly Edric's body as he guided them both across the deserted landscape back to their camp below the still burning bushes of Highgarden, the cold wind blowing against her face the entire ride.

"Don't vomit on me," Edric cautioned, just as Sansa was about to fall asleep, having nestled her chin against his neck and shoulder to a point where she felt almost comfortable.

She giggled. "When do we abandon the siege and continue on?"

"Once we've heard Tarly's taken the bait." He was drunk too, and burped loudly after answering her.

They'd purposely assigned few sentries guarding the northern boundaries of the castle and the bridge crossing the Mander, so as to make it possible for Lord Willas to send out riders seeking desperate aid against the siege. The plan was to keep moving, besiege Horn Hill next, then Oldtown, then back to Horn Hill, or wherever, just so long as to buy Daenerys as much time as she needed to get her armies south and across the Mander.

"We should find more taverns like this," she said, her words interrupted briefly by a violent hiccup.

"Taken a liking to ale, have we," Edric asked. His voice sounded amused and lustful, and Sansa sensed that their night together wasn't about to be concluded immediately upon their return to camp.

"We can win the people over, one village after another." Wincing, Sansa conceded, "we might be out of coin by the end of it all though."

It felt invigorating, to see the trust and faith in their eyes as she talked to them. And it gave her a strange power she never would have imagined possessing before, to speak knowingly such blatant lies, yet see the people feed upon her words as if it were the very air they needed to breath. No wonder the High Sparrow had been able to win over so easily the mob, so trusting as they were of any lie uttered to them, so long as it matched something close to what they wanted to believe.

"I don't think we'll have to pay for ale much, if that's any consolation."

Sansa made a sound of disgust with her lips. "I swear, no Iron Throne is worth winning, if by the end of this war I prefer that foul stuff over a perfect glass of Arbor Gold..."