A/N: Chap 27 review responses in my forums as normal. Thank you for reading.
Chapter Twenty-Eight: The Call of the Wild
Sansa knew something terrible happened at the Dreadfort when she stood on the walls of Winterfell and saw her brother Robb's face upon his return. He wore his heart like a banner for all the world to know. When angered, his men smoldered in anger with him. When he felt joy, his men's spirits lifted.
And when he was shaken with loss and sadness?
The Northmen marched with their shoulders bowed and their heads down. Robb left with a thousand of his bannermen, and as far as she could see Sansa thought his losses were light. He'd yet to lose a battle, and his attack on the Boltons in revenge for their treason appeared no different. But still, something terrible had happened.
It was only when she saw the wagon at the end, draped with a direwolf banner, that she understood.
Arya scrambled across the alure of the castle wall to stand at her side. She poor girl had grown neither taller nor prettier as she aged. She was as much her father's daughter as Sansa was her mother's. Of course, looking like a short man did no favors for a girl freshly blossomed.
"No," the girl whispered to herself, understanding immediately what the wagon and body meant. "No!"
As quick as she came, Arya left to spread the word. She was soon replaced by Sansa's new queen and the queen's ever-present shadow, the Red Priestess Eriale. The two women came and stood by Sansa's side as she stared down at the troubled king. As always, Talisa carried her infant son swaddled in her arms. She hated to let the boy go, calling him her miracle.
Sansa's mother spoke bitterly about Talisa's unwillingness to let her hold her grandson, but Sansa understood. This was a baby destined to die unborn, but for a whispered warning from a glass candle.
The queen watched her king with a fond, almost motherly smile. "He has not seen his little brother in years." She spoke softly, her words barely audible before the cold wind carried them away. "And then he was only a child. He never knew Ricon. It bothers him that he does not feel more grief for a brother lost."
Sansa couldn't help but blink and stare, because what the queen said was exactly what Sansa felt. "You can tell that just from his face?"
Talisa laughed, though it sounded sad. "He wears his emotions plainly for all to see. It is what won my heart. It makes him a wonderful leader of men and a husband better than I could ever have imagined. I fear, though, that it may not serve him well as king. In the south, he won every battle, and yet he had no hope of winning the war. Now that the Dragon Queen has conquered her other enemies…"
What hope did the North have against dragons and sorcery? Worse, Sansa could not help but remember how wonderful her time in Port Royal was. It was the first time in her life where she was not expected to behave like a lady, but rather allowed to do as she wanted. She swam in the warm waters of the harbor with the queen herself, playing with island children while dragons made waves for them. She dined with pirates and soldiers who treated her with respect because of her being a guest of the queen. It was so wonderful…
She found herself resenting the cold. She never minded the cold as a child-not until she knew what it was like to be warm.
She thought she would resent her brother's wife as well. Robb was always her favorite, not as dour as Jon, not an infant like Ricon, nor a worm like Theon. But just as she had difficulty feeling personal loss at the death of a brother she had almost no memory of, distance and life had built a barrier between her and Robb that Talisa somehow straddled.
To her great surprise, she and Robb's wife had become the dearest of friends. She even found herself sometimes drifting into the queen's solar where she and Eriale would pray to their red god when the sun set. She wasn't sure if "and his chosen on this world" was a normal part of their liturgy, but she couldn't think of anyone better to pray to than Rhaenys Targaryen.
Not that she could ever voice that thought aloud.
"Would you like to hold your nephew?"
Sansa forced herself back to the present. "Truly?"
"Yes. Robb will wish company. And if you happen to let his grandmother hold him, then I will be spared her ill will. A conspiracy of mother and daughter behind the queen's back." Talisa winked at her.
Sansa laughed as she took the child. He had his mother's dark hair and an olive shade to his skin foreign in the north, but his eyes were just as blue as his father's. Sansa cooed as she tickled his chin.
~~Quintessence~~
~~Quintessence~~
"Oh, let me hold him, dear! That foreign shrew never lets me!"
It hurt to hear her mother speak so of Talisa, but Sansa handed the baby over. She had ulterior motives, and having her mother holding the child might soothe her increasingly foul temper.
"Oh, he needs new swaddling!"
"Oh? I didn't notice."
Catelyn gave her daughter a withering stare. Sansa smiled demurely back. "I do have swaddling clothes."
"Give them here, and pay attention."
They changed the baby's swaddling rags and sent the soiled rags off with a servant girl to be washed. It pleased Sansa in a way that her mother did not shy away from such a chore. In fact, she took pleasure in being needed.
Lady Catelyn settled into her chair. Beside her, Sansa saw the Seven-Pointed Star she'd been weaving for Ricon. It lay on her mother's table, forgotten in the presence of another baby boy to hold.
"Will you sit with me, dearest?"
Her mother's hopefulness stung Sansa's heart with a heavy guilt. She'd not spent as much time with her mother as she might have, before the nightmare of Joffrey Baratheon began. She sank into the chair she knew once belonged to her grandfather. Robb took the master quarters in the Keep as was his right, but made sure his mother's room was as comfortable as it could be. More than any of the boys in the castle, Robb was always most attentive to mother.
Until he married an intelligent, educated, head-strong foreign girl to divide his attention and allegiance.
"There, there," Catelyn said. The baby started mewling. Sansa suspected the baby sensed his grandmother's distress and responded to it.
Catelyn Stark was not the same woman Sansa remembered from before she left. For one, she would never have called her son's wife a foreign shrew aloud. She might think it, but she'd never speak it. She seemed far less composed than before, often weeping for no discernable reason.
No, that's not true. She has reason enough, Sansa thought to herself. Her Lord Husband dead, her favorite son mutilated and taken by another woman, her youngest son murdered. Her home sacked and her friends killed. She bit back her uncharitable thoughts as best she could.
"I don't want you taking part in that foreign woman's pagan prayers," Catelyn said sharply as she held her half-pagan grandson. "I tolerated your father's gods because this is his land, and it was only right. But that foreign god is a vile creature. The missive from the new Lord Commander of the Night's Watch admitted he'd allowed his red priestess to make human sacrifices in the past."
"I don't believe Queen Talisa is…"
"I forbid it! I am your mother, and I will not have any daughter of mine cavorting with demon worshippers!"
The uncharitable thoughts returned. Still, if nothing else she'd learned how to keep her thoughts far from her face. "Of course, mother."
Conversation turned to more innocent things. The time went very slowly, until at last evening fell, and it was time to inter the latest Stark dead.
Sansa never saw his body; nor did her mother. Robb insisted Ricon remain covered. But given that the banner of the Boltons was a flayed man, and the Bastard Bolton who rallied the remnants of his father's forces at the Dreadfort was known for his cruelty, Sansa suspected what happened and decided she was content not seeing her brother. They made a sad little progression down into the family crypt until they came to the first open bier after the carved statue of her father.
The statue looks nothing like father. Sansa hated it. The stone smith got her father's face and beard completely wrong. Nor was the broad sword across his lap Ice. She knew that Tywin Lannister had the ancestral sword of the Starks melted down like that raging twat he was.
They buried Ricon and mother prayed to the Seven. Robb knelt and prayed beside her. Talisa, however, made the sign of the flame before her in silent blessing to the latest dead Stark.
~~Quintessence~~
~~Quintessence~~
"That lying...foreign whore!" Catelyn howled in grief.
Sansa was passing the solar a week after Ricon was interred when she heard her mother's exclamations. Fearing she was going to do something toward her good-sister, Sansa rushed in to find her mother collapsed on her chair by the lit fireplace, her face ravaged with grief and anguish. Robb stood beside her looking far older with his scars than a man not yet twenty should look.
"Mother, what's wrong?"
"That...that foreign whore...that false Targaryen! She's spread vile lies about your Aunt Lysa! My sister is dead! Dead because of that foul, loathsome, treacherous whore!" Catelyn turned to Robb. "You can't let the Vale abandon you, Robb! My dearest boy, we need them! With Riverrun and the Twins, they hem that...that Pretender in the south. Without the Vale, you've lost your greatest ally!"
"Robb, we've lost the Vale?"
Sansa's mother virtually threw the roll of parchment at her. Sansa lifted it and read. Her chest hurt as she realized that Queen Rhaenys had just taken another step to winning the war against the north, without a single arrow shot.
"This isn't a lie, mother."
Catelyn stopped her cajoling of Robb to call his banners and march to the Vale. Instead, she stiffened and turned to glare at Sansa. "What did you say, child?"
"I said this is not a lie." Sansa had faced far worse than her angry mother. "I was there when Queen Rhaenys interrogated Lord Baelish. I heard him admit his conspiracy with Aunt Lysa. He planned to marry her, but I've no doubt he'd have killed her shortly after. She murdered her husband with Tears of Lys, and then lied to you to raise suspicions against the Lannisters. It was Baelish who betrayed our father. It was Baelish and Aunt Lysa who started the War of the Five Kings."
Robb stood as stiffly as his mother. "This Baelish is dead?"
Sansa nodded. "Rhaenys does not believe in making condemned men suffer. Once she had the full account of his crimes, she killed him personally."
"Lies! Petyr was lying!" Catelyn rushed to Sansa, and to both women's shock slapped her. "Don't you dare speak such lies to me! That foreign whore was just using you, making you believe the lies as only a foolish…"
All three fell quiet. Sansa's hand throbbed as hard as her cheek did. Her mother stared back at her, mouth agape, as she held her own stinging cheek.
"I was a child when I went to King's Landing," Sansa said, her voice almost unrecognizable for how low and cold it was. "I was far from a child when I left. The child in me died when I saw my father's head hit the stone. It was buried when Joffrey had his knights hit me until I stared at father's head on a pike. There is only one child in this room, and she's the one refusing to see the truth right under her nose!"
To her surprise, Catelyn did not slap her back. She did not yell or scream. She sank slowly to the floor, bowed her head, and began to cry. Brother and sister could only stand and stare in shock, unsure what to do.
"Where is Rodrik?" their mother suddenly demanded. "Where is Rodrik?" She looked up at Sansa. "Dear, where's Rodrik? I'd like to take a ride to clear my head."
The abrupt change of tone and the glazed look in her eye felt worse to Sansa than a thousand slaps. Sansa blinked back tears as she knelt down beside her mother. "Rodrik's out of the castle right now," she lied. "I'll send for him. For now, you must be tired."
"Yes," Catelyn said.
The older woman felt light and fragile in Sansa's arms. It came as shock that her mother was so small. She lifted her from the flagstones and walked her to her bed. "Lay down, mother. I'll fetch some dreamwine to help you sleep."
"Tell your father I may miss dinner," Catelyn said.
"I will, mother. I promise."
~~Quintessence~~
~~Quintessence~~
They had no Maester in the Castle. Old Master Luwin helped buy time for Bran and Ricon to escape with his life. They found Ricon, but heard only rumors of Bran beyond the wall. Thus it was Talisa herself, employing the medical arts she learned in Volantis, who looked over their mother. Sansa held the sleeping baby, who's naming ceremony would be in the morning.
For all their disagreements, Talisa was gentle and kind with Catelyn. She held the woman's head up to sip at dreamwine before she stood and walked to the two elder Starks. Arya sat on the floor just inside the room, her eyes dry and her face blank as she stared at their mother.
"I have seen this before," Talisa said. "Gorgos of Qarth called it apoplexy. Just as a muscle can be pulled, or a bone broken, the mind too can be harmed. Her grip strength in her left hand is all but gone, and I notice she does not smile on the left side of her face."
"She'll get better, though, right?"
The question came from Arya. She pushed herself quickly from the floor. As had been the case since she returned to them in the wagon of Sandor Clegane, she wore the small sword Jon Snow had made for her.
"I...cannot heal her, Arya," Talisa said sadly. Unlike Sansa, the new queen and Arya were not friends. "Not the greatest Maesters in the Citadel nor the finest physicians of Volantis could heal her. I'm so very sorry."
"So she's going to die then?" The question was delivered in the same flat tone as her first.
"No," Talisa said. "That is the tragedy of it. Her heart beats strongly still, her lungs breathe fairly. It's only her mind that has broken. From what I have read, she will have only scattered memories and may often forget where she is or who she is with. I'm sorry."
"It's be a kindness just to kill her," Arya said.
"No." Robb's voice whipped through the room. He'd unconsciously gone from speaking to them as sisters and instead employed his command voice. "You will do nothing to her, Arya."
The little girl trembled a moment before she blinked and looked up at him. Her eyes shimmered with the first sign of emotion she'd demonstrated since mother collapsed. "Is it right for her to suffer?"
"I...Arya, I'm not sure she suffers," Talisa said. "If there is pain, I will attend her. Her mind is now like that of a child. If she is kept in peace and comfort, I don't believe she will suffer."
"I would," the girl said sharply before she turned and left.
~~Quintessence~~
~~Quintessence~~
Sansa's Uncles Brynden and Edmure arrived on the King's Road two weeks later after a hard ride up through the neck. They'd ridden lightly, accompanied by ten knights and another ninety light cavalry.
After a perfunctory greeting, Brynden "Blackfish" Tully went to see his most beloved niece. Edmure stayed with Robb in his study. It always struck Sansa as odd to see her brother seated on her father's chair.
The meeting became a debrief as well.
"The Dragon Queen has ten thousand men in the riverlands," Edmure told them dourly. "A mix of those foreign eunuchs and mercenaries. We've engaged a few times, but those Unsullied are tough little buggers."
"Have they pressed north of the Red Fork?" Robb asked.
"No, that they haven't," Edmure admitted. "But all our bannermen south of the river have lost their holdings and morale is low. To my shame Lord Jonas Bracken has abandoned us and bent the knee, and is even now assisting the enemy in besieging Lord Blackwood. Twice I sallied men to relieve them, but was roundly defeated each time."
"Has the queen deployed her dragons?" Robb asked.
"She wouldn't," Sansa said with a shake of her head.
She'd been quiet as they spoke. A small part of her feared that Robb would send her away like a child, as mother did before. But her brother seemed to be a different man since the Twins. He regarded her intently.
"You've not spoken much of your time with her," he said. "I didn't want to push."
She couldn't help but smile. "My time in King's Landing was a nightmare, brother. But my time in Port Royal? Rhaenys made sure to set aside one hour every day while she was there to swim in the harbor with the village children. Her kindest dragon, Elliot, would let them play on him and use his head to leap from the water. She spoke to me kindly, but not like a queen. Rather, she treated me with respect for what I'd been through. But Robb...Rhaenys knew things."
"Her magic again?"
Sansa shook her head. "She once explained why the sky was blue. Don't you remember asking Luwin and being told that it was blue because that's the color the gods chose it to be? But when one of the village children asked, the Queen Rhaenys used a crystal to make a rainbow right in front of us, and explained that the light of the sun had many colors. That the colors our eyes see are based on what...what light the surface we look at absorbs. And the sky is blue because the air we breathe absorbs more blue than other colors. She instructed the engineer how to make a more powerful trebuchet. She created this...powder that burns like wildfire. But in iron shells it explodes almost like dragon fire. She called them bombs, and it was the bombs that breached the walls of King's Landing."
Edmure sat up in his seat in alarm.
"You sound like you admire her," Robb said.
"You are my brother, Robb," Sansa said. "I would follow you into the Long Night if you asked me too. But yes, I admire her. And I fear that if she has cause to come against us, there would be no way for us to win."
"We've done well enough," Edmure said stiffly.
"Uncle, she took King's Landing in one hour and only lost ten percent of her forces. When she captured my...Lord Tyrion Lannister, her dragons killed a thousand men in seconds. She wiped out the entire Tyrell and Lannister host escorting Tyrion, Margery and Lady Olenna by herself in a minute. If you've held, it's because she is consolidating her hold on the south first."
~~Quintessence~~
~~Quintessence~~
Sansa was in the godswood when the smith's son came bounding through the trees, calling for her. "Lady Sansa! Lady Sansa! The king calls you!"
Sansa gave her father's weirwood a pat on its white bark, stood, and followed after the excitable youth. When she reached the great hall, she almost stumbled at what she saw.
Jon Snow stood speaking with Robb. And sitting on a bench nearby, with Hodor standing just over him, was Bran Stark.
"Bran!" She ran toward him, only to slow when she saw how remote his gaze seemed.
"Hello, Sansa. It is good to see you."
The boy who loved to climb the castle walls and chase after Arya whenever she outshot him at archery now sounded cold and emotionless. Behind him, the gentle giant that had been his companion said, "Hodor." He sounded sad.
"Where have you been?" she asked.
"Training," Bran said.
"He was north of the Wall," Jon said. "He showed up with Hodor just after the Wildling attack on Castle Black."
"What attack?"
The story came out over dinner, with both the Tully men attending as Robb's most powerful remaining allies. His other liege lords were there as well-the Mallisters of White Harbor, the Umbers and Tallharts, the little Mormont girl and the various Flints. They listened in concern as Jon Snow and Bran Stark both described the battle of the Fist of the First Men, where over two hundred Brothers of the Watch were slaughtered by an army of undead wights. They listened as Snow described the Battle of Castle Black, and how perilously close they came to perishing. The thought of a hundred thousand bloody wildlings flooding the south made ever lord there shudder in fear.
"The Wildlings flee the Long Night," Bran said. His voice rang through the hall from the bench he sat on. "For every wildling that dies at the hands of the White Walkers, another soldier rises in their army. You should not be glad for the victory, you should be frightened for their loss."
Many of the lords looked uncomfortably from Bran to Robb. Sansa sat near her brother, and could sense his own confusion about the changes they saw in their kin.
"You've seen these White Walkers?" Robb asked.
For the very first time since he'd arrived, Bran's composure cracked. "I saw the Night King."
"Tell us," Sansa said.
"I went north to learn from the last Greenseer, the Three Eyed Raven," Bran said. "I was accompanied by Hodor, and Meera and Jojen of House Reed. The Three-Eyed-Raven showed me how to see through the Weirwoods, as the Children of the Forest once did ages ago. I saw the Night King walk from the shadows of the far north, where no man may live, and gathered the dead in his wake. Snow Bears and ice spiders and dead beyond counting follow. He is accompanied by a thousand White Walkers who wield swords of ice stronger than steel. I saw this through the trees. And he saw me back. He came for us. Jojen had already fallen. Meera held them back with the last Children of the Forest so that Hodor could carry me to safety."
His voice cracked, almost as if he were just a young man again. He blinked back a tear and looked up at Robb. "The Night King hates all living things. There will be no surrender, nor hope. He means to blanket the world in ice and death."
"The Wall has held for 8000 years," Greatjon Umber declared. "We'll send men to restore it again, and hold them back!"
"Not all the men in the North can hold back the army of the dead," Bran said. He looked from Umber to the high table. He did not, however, direct his gaze to Robb. "Of all the people in this room besides myself, only one has any hope. What better to fight ice than fire?"
For a long moment, it was difficult for Sansa to breathe. "Rhaenys Targaryen," Sansa whispered. "She had a Shadowbinder with her. They called her Azor Ahai, the princess who was promised. She was supposed to defend the world against the Long Night."
Some of the Lords rose to their feet. The Umbers and Tallharts looked murderous. "You'd have our king bend knee to the south, after what they've done?"
"If she set her dragons against us, there would be nothing for us to do but die," Sansa said. "Lord Umber, you cannot imagine the power of her dragons. She took King's Landing in less than an hour! She wiped out the entire Iron Fleet!"
"And she saved us," Robb said. He met Umber's gaze squarely. "Do you not remember, Lord Umber, where the warning that saved us from Frey treachery came from? She was our enemy, and yet gave us the information necessary for us to survive. Uncle, what say you?"
Robb didn't look to Edmure. Instead, he looked at the elder Tully, Ser Brynden, the Blackfish. His mother's uncle was a respected warrior throughout the North and the veteran of more battles than most men had the capacity to count.
He stood and looked about the room. "I've taken Ser Kevan Lannister into custody, and his men have aided my own. Through his spies, I've learned sobering truths. Queen Rhaenys doesn't just control the Reach through conquest, she has the allegiance of many of the great houses there. House Hightower has bent the knee and pledged ten thousand men. Prince Oberyn Martell of Dorne has conquered all the Westerlands and now has men to send to the northern front. The new Queen of the Iron Islands, Yara Greyjoy, has formally bent the knee. Rhaenys can easily raise another fifty thousand men atop the twenty she already commands. This does not even include her dragons, her sorcerous bombs, or she herself."
Brynden said nothing aloud he had not told them in private. His announcement, she knew, was for the other Northern Lords.
Nor was the Blackfish done. "The girl is smart. The fact that she routed Stannis Baratheon off his island in a day should tell you that. The people in the south worship her. She can heal the sick with her hands. She wept and hugged the smallfolk who were hurt when Cersei Lannister's treachery destroyed the Sept of Balor. Her foreign soldiers call her their Lord. Not as a liege lord, but as their god."
He looked around the room pointedly before returning his gaze to Robb. "Nephew, you are my king and I will fight with you to the end. But the North will not defeat her. Especially not with wildlings and an army of the dead marching on us."
He returned to his seat amidst the roar of the other lords voicing their opinions. Lord Wyman Manderly of White Harbor stood. "What punishments would she enact if you bent the knee, Your Grace? How might the North suffer under her?"
Sansa touched Robb's arm. He nodded to her. "Lord Manderly, the day after she took King's Landing from the Lannister, Queen Rhaenys appointed Lord Tyrion Lanniser as her master of coin. She could have held me hostage, but instead as soon as she secured the south she sent me home freely. My lords, Rhaenys Targaryen has no interest in vengeance. She believes she was appointed by the gods to rule Westeros, and intends to do so. If my brother bends the knee, there will be neither punishments nor reparations."
"I will take no action that harms my people," Robb said. "On that you have the word of Winterfell." He stood and looked about the room. "We won every battle we fought, you and I. Your courage and strength of arms brought honor to the North, the likes we have not seen since long before the conquest. But my brothers-my friends-I feel we must speak to her to see how our peoples can move forward. Winter is coming, Long Night or no. And we will need that southern food if we are to survive. I wish to call for a parley with the Southern Queen. What say you, my lords?"
No one there looked happy, but neither was anyone shouting. Sansa looked at Uncle Brynden, and the man winked at her. Robb was the one who decided he had to bend the knee, but it was her suggestion to have the idea come from the Blackfish. Robb was king, but he was young, and not all the Northern Houses had forgiven him for the Karstarks. But Brynden Tully?
Few were willing to argue with the Blackfish.