Berena looks doubtful as she helps Sansa wrap her throat with a soft scarf against the morning cold, but her lady insists and nods to her fur-lined cloak that is hanging inside the door of her chambers.
"Is a bitter cold morning, milady, though the sun be shining brightly: colder than we've had in a fortnight, I'll wager."
Sansa smiles and nods and holds her hands up to indicate that she needs her fur-lined gloves as well. Berena sighs and knows she will not change her lady's mind this morning, but she smiles back to her nevertheless.
Sansa had watched from a window overlooking the yard as her husband and children had seen Lord Jon, Tormund Giantsbane and Prince Oberyn Martell off for their return trip to the Wall in the early light. With them went soldiers with sledges and blankets to bring wildling orphans back to Last Hearth. Since Sansa had already heard the good-byes of the wildling leader and the Dornish prince, she did not feel that her presence was necessary; and she now felt ill-at-ease in the company of Prince Oberyn. He had spent the entire night previous in the solar smiling at her like a contented cat, though the Greatjon was present, and her tummy had been as fluttery as though she had swallowed a bat: just as it had whenever Joffrey had looked at her after he had ordered her father's head struck off. But unlike Joffrey, the prince had not been looking for signs that she would displease him or not be a suitable queen or mate; when Oberyn Martell looked at her appraisingly, it was very clear that he liked what he saw. Sansa did not know what to think or where to look.
Does he expect that I will come to him, and give myself? Does he believe that I will run off to Dorne? Whatever can I have done for him to think such a thing? Do I needs fear him, as I did Joffrey and Theon?
He did not seem to need a woman so desperately as that, for when he had first come to Last Hearth her husband had murmured privately to her of his scandalous past, including reputed relations with men; and of his current paramour: a Dornish woman, a bastard by birth, who had given him four more natural daughters. The Greatjon had told her that the prince spoke freely of such things and laughed when met with shock or reproach. It pleased her that her husband confided in her, even if what he told her was, well, quite wicked; and at least he did not make bawdy jests with her, as he did with his eldest son and uncles.
"They live and love very differently in Dorne, Sansa," the Greatjon had told her one night, with more amusement than censure.
Indeed they must, Sansa had thought then, as she felt the sly prince's dark eyes on her; and she was certain she did not wish to know how differently: now or ever.
She walks purposefully through the halls now: her husband and children have not returned inside the castle though the party heading North has left and the gates have long been closed. Soldiers and servants greet her warmly and respectfully, and she nods kindly in acknowledgement. She has not spoken to anyone since Mors fell and died at her hand, and so still does not know if her voice has or will ever recover from his brutal attempt to choke the life and breath from her so as to initiate a war between the Northerners and the wildlings who have settled in the Gift south of the Wall. She still suffers nightmares, and her husband still draws her close in his sleep.
She does not find them in the yard, nor in the stables or the armoury or the forge where her children like to watch the sparks fly as the bellows blow air into the hot coals and the smith brings his hammer down on the searing steel of tools or weapons or horseshoes; and then to hear the steaming hiss when they are dunked in a trough of cold water. What Sansa can hear over that hiss now is the high-pitched squeal of her daughter's laughter, followed by the treble piping of her son's calls and then the booming voice and laugh of the Greatjon. She follows the sounds into the godswood.
Far deeper into the trees beyond the great weirwood, she spies her renowned warrior husband who is besieged on both sides by their small children with his arms raised in surrender as they fling and pelt him with snowballs. He flinches and staggers comically, as though he were being stoned with sharp rocks or lead balls from slingshots, and makes his son and daughter laugh wildly; but Sansa sees that he is red-faced and coughing from having been so long in the sharp cold. Still, she cannot help but smile and recall her own childhood snowball fights and her heart warms to see her husband's kind indulgence of their children's play. She wonders again fleetingly what her father would think to see them together as a family.
"Mama," Serena calls when she sees her: "Da play wit' us! Come an' play too!"
Her daughter's words are followed by a piercing shriek that she emits as she is struck with a snowball to the back of her head, and she squirms and dances as the frigid remnants slide down into her collar. "No fair!"
"It's a fight, silly," her brother upbraids her. "It's not supposed to be fair."
"That's enough, Eddard," his father wheezes, out of breath. "Don't talk that way to your sister. Serena, put your hood up if you would not get snow down your back: see your mother is coming to scold me for letting you get wet under your clothes."
Sansa merely shakes her head slowly.
"Ah, I forgot you cannot speak: then we may do as we please without reproach," he exults triumphantly.
Sansa shakes her head again though her eyes smile at him.
"Talk, Mama," Serena implores her.
"Please, Mother," her son adds, "talk and sing for us again?"
"When the maester says she can, she will," their father consoles them and her when he sees her smile fade to sadness. "Come along then, enough play for one morning. You have lessons with the maester, Eddard; and Serena needs change into dry garb before she catches a chill like your old man did beyond the Wall," he coughs raspingly.
Once their son is left with the maester and their daughter is with her nurse, Sansa and the Greatjon return to their chambers to shed their heavy cloaks and scarves, and Sansa looks at her husband with a pained expression when he coughs forcefully again.
"It's alright, Sansa: I'll drink more of that vile tea and stay out of the cold for a day or two until I'm right again," he concedes to her, knowing that he had been improving steadily and has now relapsed due to his carelessness. "We were just playing, and it felt good to hear them laugh and to remember…" He trails off and shakes his head as though to clear it, but Sansa believes he is remembering playing with the younger sons and daughters of his first wife, all of whom are either dead or gone; and so she lifts her hand tenderly to his cheek and smiles sadly in sympathy.
The Greatjon pats her hand and then looks at her appraisingly. "Come sit, Sansa: let me see how you are healing," he commands gently. She sits on the end of their great bed as he pulls up his chair and sits facing her. She has a linen shirt beneath her high-necked gown so that he reaches to untie the cord gently before lowering it and parting the sides of her collar with thick fingertips that brush lightly against her skin. He narrows his eyes beneath lowered brows to see that she is still marked, though the livid bluish-purple bruises have faded to a jaundiced yellow with greenish outlines. He trails his fingertips down her neck slowly which makes her flush, and then he impulsively leans in and kisses her throat. Sansa drops her eyes demurely and stares down at her clasped hands in her lap. He leans forward again to try to catch her eye.
"It's better than it was, Sansa," he consoles her. "It will look fine soon enough."
She shakes her head and avoids his gaze.
"What's that you say? Oh, you didn't." He sighs.
"H'can you bear to look at me?" she whispers ever so faintly.
"You're always beautiful, Sansa," he reassures her now.
"No. I killed a man…your uncle." It pains her so much to say it that she turns her head further away from him.
But the Greatjon puts his finger under her chin and firmly turns her head back to him. "You were right to save yourself, Sansa: I have told you already. Besides, do you know how many men I have killed? I've been making corpses out of men since before you were born…before your parents even met."
She shakes her head once more. "War. Soldiers; not family," she whispers insistently.
He pauses now and she can see that he is affected by her words; but he presses on.
"Sansa," he begins resolutely now after taking a deep breath, "anyone who needs save themselves or the ones they love is fighting a war like a soldier…doesn't matter who they needs kill: it needs be done," he tells her. "Takes my hands now," he murmurs as he hold his out to hers in her lap," and look at them; not at me, and keep looking at them until I tell you not to." His voice and countenance are grave, and Sansa fears what he may say next; fears that she has lost his love and that he does not want her to see it in his eyes. "It's time I told you about Robb, Sansa," is what he tells her now.
Sansa gasps slightly and instinctively holds his hands tighter but she does not look up at him. Already she feels the tears gathering behind her eyes but she purses her lips and nods quickly so that he will continue.
"We had set out very early from the Wall that morning," he begins and he sounds as though he is far away from Last Hearth already, "barely dawn, and cold: harsh, bitter cold with dark grey skies and a wind that cut through our furs like they were Southron Summer silks, even in the woods; and the snows so deep that we dismounted and led our horses by their reins. We plodded through that deep snow up to our knees, sinking in deeper with every bloody step until our feet were numb with wet and cold. But we kept on, the lot of us: the king, myself, wildling guides and men from Winterfell and Last Hearth and even some from the Dreadfort and White Harbor wanted to follow their king into battle."
"It got darker and colder all of a sudden, and the horses started tossing their heads to break away and run," he continues and she grips his fingers, four on one hand and only two on the other: courtesy of Grey Wind. "That direwolf knew already though: paused all alert and whined before growling low. You can't imagine the cold: so cold the very air freezes into a mist of ice. Even a Northman can barely breathe in cold like that. We had our swords out and out torches burning but still they came, taking those on our edges with a near sucking-air sound as they were dragged away so quickly they hadn't chanced to even cry out. Eerie how they did that," he seems to say almost to himself, "and hard to fight what you can't even see. The king and I exchanged looks and I saw he felt it too: this would be like nothing we'd ever fought before…and it might be we weren't ready. But we pressed on."
Sansa is beginning to shake; even the feeling of her husband absently running his thumbs over hers does not soothe her nerves.
"It stayed dark, though it never seemed to be night; and we were all exhausted from cold and wandering. Every once in a while we would look back to see there was another horse or man gone. Sometimes there was blood on the snow, sometimes not: just a sword or a torch that had sputtered out when dropped. Our boots were punching holes through the frozen ice over the deep snow as we walked; and we couldn't decide if it were better to talk to keep ourselves awake or to keep quiet so they wouldn't hear us, though the wildings said they could smell what lived and from far away too. The wildling guides were almost the last to go: good men too, and brave to come to where they knew what could happen. They knew what was out there and still they came with us," he seems to scoff with incredulity. "No wonder they fought to come south of the Wall, to kill us who would have sent them back or die trying to stay. And now we didn't know if it were day or night, or how long even we'd been out ranging; but we knew we needed head back or die; but without sun or even sky to guide us, we didn't know if we were heading back or further north or in circles. We put our trust in the direwolf to lead us back and followed with our swords drawn and our torches aloft, turning so they couldn't come up behind. Well, Robb stumbled…my king stumbled…It could just as easily have been me but it wasn't; and by the time I'd turned, he was gone….just his sword, you father's sword, lying there in the snow. That direwolf set to whining and running circles around me as I picked up Ice and slung my own sword across by back in its sheath."
"The silence was a deep one; not a breath of wind nor a sound of bird or beast but for the whining and huffing of that wolf. It was only the two of us now. Well I said to that wolf: Your sister Lady's lady is my lady. Get me home to her, and you'll have a home with us, I promise you that, wolf. And that wolf set out in a straight line, looking back at me or walking on my flanks as we moved forward, the two of us through that eerie dark and frozen, icy cold. I couldn't feel my feet or my hands though I carried my torch and Ice, and I had real ice in my beard and my hair and my eyelashes and up my nose but I could feel the pouch around my neck: it seemed the only thing in the world that wasn't frozen. It held your heart, you had written; and I had to bring it back to you. It was the only thing that kept me from lying down in that snow and going to sleep; that and knowing I wouldn't sleep, but rise again as a wight and never sleep or be warm again; and that if I did not live and fight that you and the children would someday be wights as well, and my sons and daughters and uncles and everyone we have ever known. And so I walked and walked and that wolf lead me on and circled around me and then all at once everything was still, and that icy mist surrounded me and the direwolf growled and whined and then I saw him…I saw him…"
Hot tears are rolling down Sansa's cheeks as she stares down at their joined hands and her vision shimmers and blurs and she tightens her hold on her husband's hands because she knows, she knows without any doubt who he means by him; and her heart breaks as much as it did when she was told that he was gone: Robb, the King in the North, the Young Wolf and her brother.
"My king…my king and my friend and good-brother…but not," he pauses and Sansa can tell that he is working up the courage and the heart to tell her what he can hardly bring himself to say to her. "He..he was bloodied from his belly to his face…they must have torn him open," his voice is anguished and bitter. "I could see his entrails through the tattered mail and leather he still wore; and his face was whiter than snow and ice and his eyes that horrid blue: cold and empty and unseeing; and the black hands. He stood still and just stared at me, and his direwolf barked and barked, this animal that was near a part of him growled and barked and paced back and forth before me: protecting me from him who had once been his master. Then he came at me," his voice chokes momentarily and then resumes. "Wights are frightful fast and strong, the wildlings had warned us: so much that one the size of a child can bring down an armed man. Well, your brother'd been no child; and so he put me on my back before I knew what had happened…but I had Ice…and I put it right through him…and he only twitched. So I pulled it back and hacked at him while I stuck my torch into him over and over. The things about wights is…even the pieces you cut away will turn and attack you. So I put the torch to every bit I cut away: hands, legs, arms, body…head…I cut off my king's head to save myself, and put it to the torch. Those bits and pieces went up like dry wood or oilcloth, and flamed up and withered to oily ashes on the snow. There was naught left of him even to bring home to bury…my king." He grips her own slender hands now and raises them to his lips but does not kiss them. "I killed him, Sansa, your own brother and my king; I had to…or die myself; and I wanted to come home to you…but I feared that you would hate me for what I had to do to get home. I feared that I would lose you either way…" he trails off as his voice drops to silence and he waits.
"No," she whispers, and then repeats fervently. "No…not Robb. You did not kill him; they did." She sobs and lifts his hands to her lips now and kisses them over and over. "Not you; them," she insists again through her tears and soft, steady sobs. "Not Robb…a monster…like them. I don't hate you. Could never hate you…my lord, my love…never. Never."
Her husband pulls a hand from her grasp and then places it gently on top of her head. She feels him lean in closer and he murmurs hoarsely to her:
"And do you think Mors' hate made him any less a monster, Sansa? You killed what he became; not who he was. You saved yourself…as I had needed to do."