CHAPTER 30

SANSA

Sleep was a dark abyss she left reluctantly. Her mind fed her one snippet of the nightmare at a time until her last, semi-conscious thought before waking: Gods have mercy that it was but a dream.

Except that it wasn't. Her heart beat quicker as she realized where she was and what had happened. She was huddled in a fur-lined, tar-covered sleeping bag. She and Sandor had spent the last three days putting distance between themselves and the Wildling camp. Wyndi, Grtta, and her husband were dead. So were most, if not all, of the other Wildlings. Ramsay Snow and his men had killed them.

Her stomach lurched as she remembered that first, early morning of their escape. The wind blew at their backs, which was something lucky—since it cast fresh powder over the trail left by their sled. Being downwind of Ramsay's dogs would make the already difficult task of tracking them impossible. But the gusts carried an acrid smoke and the smell of something rotten, metallic, and sweet. She had only to look at Sandor's face to know what it was.

Sansa pushed herself out into the day. They'd made camp on a small rise near a clump of trees. The sky was clear now, and the sunlight blinded on the white snow. A gyrfalcon circled overhead. Sandor ran his gloved hands over the icy mound of snow he'd built. He took one look at Sansa and looked away. She doubted if she would have recognized his expression if they were not lovers, but she had seen his face twisted in passion and knew what his subtle affectations meant. Sandor was disappointed.

She stood by stupidly, wringing her hands together, the dogs straining at their tethers and whining for her to pet them. She wondered how they could be so happy. Didn't they know what fate had befallen their former masters?

By the time she got it in her mind to wander over to Sandor, he had left the ice house and was taking his first chop at one of the tall pines. She approached him slowly, vaguely aware that her feet no longer hurt. She could thank her Wildling friends for that, too. And what they got in return . . . For that she could thank herself. Water beaded at the corners of her eyes and ran down her cheeks and out of her nose, too.

"Crying won't bring them back," he said between chops. "Get the fuck over it already."

"W-what?" Sansa stammered, and sniffled, shocked out of her sadness. "How can you say that!"

"Because they're dead." He punctuated the last word with a vicious swing at the tree.

Sandor's harsh words did nothing to ease Sansa's guilt. "We were so careful . . . They did not even know our true names. How did Ramsay even find us?" When Sandor didn't respond to that she added, "I thought I would help my people by coming north. Not get them killed."

Sandor hit the tree with furious power. If Sansa had more sense, she would have been frightened.

"Those were Wildlings," he corrected with a swing. "They were not—"—chop—"—your fucking—"—chop—"—people!"

"They were!" Sansa shouted. If Sandor was trying to make her forget her sadness, it worked, because for a moment she felt nothing but anger at him for his callousness. "They were the first people in the North that actually helped us! And for that, they died!"

Sandor planted his boot above the deep cut in the tree and pushed. There was a noise like an enormous, ancient door creaking open, followed by cracks as loud as thunder. The tree fell. The gyrfalcon, perched at its tip, took flight and circled high above.

The pine landed in the powdery snow with a soft thump. Sandor breathed heavily. "Well," he panted. "What did you think it would be like when you came up here? Did you think the Boltons were just going to hand the North back to you?"

"No."

"Thought they'd be happy to see you? Or give you an army so the fight'd be fair?"

"No."

"You thought you'd start a war—or rather, finish the one your brother started. Run back up to Winterfell and be the Princess like he named you. Take the North back from your enemies and claim the land that's yours by right. And no one would die."

"No," she said meekly. But he did sort of have her there.

"Honestly, what do you think that Princesses, Kings, Queens, Lords, rulers—what do you think they do? They order people to die for them. They're players in the game. Other people die so that they can get what they want. You wanted to move up in the world. Well, now you got your first taste of the cost."

Sansa's mouth ran dry. "But . . . how can I expect people to die for me, when I want to save them from dying?" She took a step closer to him. "Sandor, I decided that I would dedicate my life to the people in the North. It's not just because it's my right. It's my fate. I belong to them. I can't stand by and let the Boltons and the Lannisters win. We've seen what they do to people, and smallfolk all over the North are starving or getting caught by pirates and sold into slavery! If I give my life to the people of the North, how can I also value my life above all of theirs? How can I ask them to die for me?"

"Fuck, Sansa! I don't know!" He pulled his arms back with the axe in hand and threw it as hard as he could, sending it spinning over itself until it landed flatways in a puff of powder. "We're in the middle of a fucking desert of snow, and you're having some kind of existential crisis! Look, I know it was sad, because we knew them, but it was one bloody band of Wildlings. How many people lived there? Fifty? You're right about Ramsay, so how many people do you think die up here every day? And let me tell you, before the day you rule the North from Winterfell, a lot more people are going to die."

She felt on some level that he was right, but she could not just "get over" seeing people murdered. She had a few choice words to say to Sandor about his insensitivity towards the Free Folk, but she fought them down, choosing instead to exercise her great strength of compassion. Sandor knew things that she didn't, he was obviously dealing with this better than she was, and she could learn something from him. "Well, you kill people all the time," she commented, and had to cringe at how flippant she sounded. "How do you deal with it?"

He shook his head. "I've never thought about it the way you do. I don't start wars because I'm upset about some bullshit concept I got into my head thanks to my stupid fucking family. I don't decide to kill people or choose to let them die. When I kill people, it's because they're trying to kill me or because I was ordered to. I'm a fucking tool," he said with a humorless laugh, "or I wouldn't be up here in the middle of bloody winter! I'd be fucking some Dornish slut and drowning my face in buckets of iced wine. Gods help us," he fell to his knees in front of Sansa, "I've never been so fucking scared of clouds in my life. Please, Sansa. We're fucking lucky we made it out of there alive. Hells, every day since we left the Eyrie has been a fucking miracle! We'll never have time together like this again and you've cried for three days straight. Can you just enjoy the fucking life they gave you?"

Sandor looked like he was about to cry, or as nearabouts as he was likely to get, and Sansa realized she had hurt him. She looked around at the camp—the ice house, the fluffy dogs curled up and licking themselves, the fallen tree, the clothes stretched up on sticks. They had all this, when they were lucky to have anything. She looked at the sad, angry man kneeling at her feet. Color me ungrateful, she thought, and the feeling of remorse that washed over her—that the entire time she'd been mourning her dead friends she should have been counting her blessings at being alive—combined with her already fragile emotional state, was so overwhelming that she burst into tears.

"Bloody fuck!" Sandor roared, and for just a moment, she thought he was going to hit her. His fist came up, hit the snow, and flailed like a dying animal. "Fucking cunt whore poxy prick swallowing cock louse bullshit!"

"Sandor," she whimpered, "wait." But he was already marching away. She threw herself on him and he shrugged her off, so roughly that she was tossed to the ground.

Despondent, Sansa stayed where she had face planted in the snow. She lay there for a long time, too cold to fall asleep and too depressed to wake up, stuck in the place between dreams and waking.

Sansa was a princess, a real princess. A silver tiara sat on her head and a long cloak emblazoned with a direwolf trailed behind her. Her tall, fur-lined boots crunched through heavy snow as she traveled to a clearing to treat with her subjects.

All the people in the North were dead, so Sansa was princess of all the animals. They stood in a ring around the clearing—the bears, wolves, cats, and foxes; the deer, elk, moose, and weasels; crows, songbirds, and all the great eagles and falcons in the trees. They spoke to her in human voices.

"Stark! Stark!" the crows in the trees rallied. A shadowcat stepped forward. "We have been persecuted for too long. We want to fight!" The rest of the animals barked and bleated and growled in a chorus of assent.

"My enemies are great," Sansa cautioned them. "We can afford but one decisive battle."

"We cannot rest until the deed is done," the bearweasel said, "The North remembers."

"We meet you, Princess. The fealty of those untamed is greater than that of conquered subjects," the she-bear counseled.

A great white wolf met her with glowing eyes. "There must be a Stark in Winterfell."

The animals nodded. "You must go back."

Sansa's vision grew weak and she felt herself being pulled out of the clearing. She zoomed backwards, disoriented, as though caught tumbling in a blizzard.

When she came to, she was still facedown in the snow. She opened her eyes. Sharp things pressed into her back, though they didn't hurt through her thick coat. She turned over and a gyrfalcon hopped into the snow beside her, its head cocked quizzically to one side as they peered into each other's eyes.

"I suppose you think I overreacted, too," Sansa said finally. "Well. I can't help it that I'm so sensitive."

The bird turned its head. Look at me talking to a bird, Sansa thought. The strange dream had not left her.

"You're pretty," she went on. "I know about falconry. All ladies do. But I'm especially good at it. Want to try?" She sat up and wrapped part of her wolf cloak around her forearm to give herself some extra protection from the birds' sharp talons. Then she held out a fist, her arm turned sideways. The gyrfalcon looked at her. Slowly Sansa pushed her arm out until it touched its breastbone—a thrilling contact with a wild animal—and automatically it flapped its wings and leapt up.

"There you go!" Sansa whispered, delighted. "You're so tame. Oh! Wyndi said she had a gyrfalcon. Maybe you're hers?"

It screeched.

Sansa was embarrassed, ashamed for a moment, the deep hurt in her heart threatened to depress her. "If so, I'm sorry about what happened. I hate that it was my being there that caused the trouble. It's pointless to say it now, but we really were so careful. Sandor killed the men who knew I was here in the North. And the other, the lady-knight, I certainly don't think she'd betray us to Ramsay. Not even Lady Dustin could have done it. As far as she knew, I was on my way to Moat Cailin."

A quiet rage was building inside of her, replacing her sadness. "I don't know what Sandor meant, exactly, about not letting it get to me. I don't know how to do that. I could never leave here and forget all that's gone wrong in the North. I can't. And I can't let the Boltons rule the North!"

The gyrfalcon screeched again, so that Sansa imagined it shared her anger. "You can't know all about the Boltons and the Lannisters and what they did to me and my family. But you might know what they did to yours, whether your Wyndi's bird or a wild one suffered from poaching. It was the same thing, I promise you. I can't let them get away with it. The North is bleeding out from the wounds they gave it, and I mean to heal those wounds. There must be a Stark in Winterfell!"

The gyrfalcon gave a triumphant screech flapped its wings.

"What do you say?" Sansa grinned. "Revenge?"

It puffed its chest, and Sansa encouraged it to flap its wings. At the precise moment she flung her arm out, and the gyrfalcon soared.

The bird would follow them North, and Sansa would hunt with it, catching white rabbits in the snow while she plotted the greater capture of her homeland.