A/N: I will not be posting this frequently in the future, I am sorry to say. It's just that I already have the first six done, and I want to stay four chapters ahead of my posts, which is where I am, so...yeah. Umm...with the description of the man who will only be known as of now by the ASOIAF fans, I did not write it. I took it from George R. R. Martin because I liked it and didn't want to try and paraphrase it. I take no credit for it. Many thanks to my beta reader (and sister) GrowlingPeanut.

Disclaimer: It's Bethesda's and George R. R. Martin's, not mine.

Rating: T for suggestive themes.

"We're the children of Skyrim, and we fight all our lives.
And when Sovngarde beckons, every one of us dies!
But this land is ours and we'll see it wiped clean.
Of the scourge that has sullied our hopes and dreams."

Sansa Stark finished her song and smiled graciously at the applause, giving a proper curtsey to the man who'd requested it. She made to set her lute down when she heard a low rasping voice from the table behind her.

"How much for a song?"

The man was facing away from her, and was sitting in the shadows besides; all she could see of his face was a brief glimpse of his left jaw every time the tankard of mead he had traveled from his lips to the table. Something about it didn't look right, but she was polite enough not to stare.

"Five gold, please. What song would you like, ser?"

"I'm not a ser," the man snarled, his voice laced with acid. "And it doesn't matter. You choose."

Sansa raised her eyebrows and lifted her lute again, hesitating for only a moment before playing the beginning notes of Ragnar the Red. It had been a few nights since she'd sang it last, and since she didn't know if the man supported the Legion or the Stormcloaks, it was better to just pass on the Age of Oppression or Age of Aggression. She had accidentally started a few drunken brawls with those before.

"There once was a hero named Ragnar the Red, who came riding to Whiterun from ole Rorikstead!" Cheers went up from a few of the drunker men and the ones who were feeling gracious tossed coins in her direction. "And the braggart did swagger and brandish his blade, as he told of bold battles and gold he had made!" She couldn't tell if the man who'd asked her to sing was enjoying the jaunty tune, but as Tyrion always liked to remind her, they were usually too drunk to really appreciate it anyway. It only mattered if she got their coin.

"But then he went quiet, did Ragnar the Red, when he met the shieldmaiden Matilda who said..." Sansa had always harbored mixed emotions toward Matilda; the fierce shieldmaiden reminded her of her younger sister. "Oh, you talk and you lie and you drink all our mead! Now I think it's high time that you lie down and bleed!"

"Aye! Get him Matilda!" Shae, one of the working girls in the tavern, led the cry. The man on whose lap she was perched seconded the motion and within seconds most of the inn's guests had joined in with shouts of their own.

Sansa stifled a giggle. One of the best parts of working in a tavern was watching the patrons when they drank too much, so long as they weren't the ones who tried to reach their hands up her dress. Shae and Dancy did their best to keep them entertained, but every night there were a few who decided to try their luck with the pretty young bard.

"And so then came the clashing and slashing of steel, as the brave lass Matilda charged in full of zeal!
And the braggart named Ragnar was boastful no moooooree... when his ugly red head rolled around on the floor!"

By the last verse, most of the guests had joined in—rather loudly, and with a great deal of slurring— and when she finished, the applause was wildly enthusiastic. It seemed Tyrion hadn't been reserved with the wine tonight. Sansa smiled and extended her lute, nodding her thanks to each man who dropped a septim or two inside of it. Once they'd returned to their drinks, she turned and waited politely behind the man who'd requested the song. His shoulders rose and fell in a sigh and he turned toward her.

The right side of his face was gaunt, with sharp cheekbones and a grey eye beneath a heavy brow. His nose was large and hooked, his hair thin, dark. He wore it long and brushed it sideways, because no hair grew on the other side of that face.

The left side was a ruin. His ear had been burned away; there was nothing left but a hole. His eye was still good, but all around it was a twisted mass of scar, slick black flesh hard as leather, pocked with craters and fissured by deep cracks that gleamed red and wet when he moved. Down by his jaw, she could see a hint of bone where the flesh had been seared away.

Sansa let out a quiet gasp then flushed in embarrassment. The man snorted and his lips twisted into a scowl, the left side twitching once; twice. "Do I scare you, girl?"

"N-No..."

He grunted and turned back to his mead. "You're a terrible liar. But I didn't ask you to lie, I asked you to sing. Here." Pressing a few gold coins into her palm, he downed the rest of his drink in one gulp and then stood, towering over her.

She swallowed thickly before stammering up at him. "Did you like the song?"

The big man cocked his eyebrow and moved closer, forcing Sansa breathlessly against the wall. "Well enough, but I'd like to hear you sing a different kind of song."

She looked up at him with wide and uncomprehending eyes and after a moment, he shook his head and walked off toward his room without another word.

Sansa watched him, her heart hammering in her chest. She did not know what he had meant, and his proximity had made her head feel cloudy.

When she was suitably recovered, she moved through the crowd and over to the bar, looking down at her master, the innkeeper. He was a dwarf, stunted by birth, shunned by most men, and while he was hideous to look at, he had the wits to rival those of a court fool. The Imp—as men liked to call him—had owned King's Landing Inn for most of his adult life, and Sansa had worked there for the past few years, as a maid while she was still a child and as its bard since she had grown. He was kind and he paid well, and she knew she was fortunate, given her position.

"He was a strange fellow wasn't he?" Tyrion asked, following her gaze to the mysterious burned man. "Do you think he got those burns fighting a dragon?" His mismatched eyes—one green, one black—glinted mischievously and his lips curled into what might have been considered a grin.

Shae sauntered up behind Tyrion and bent over to wrap her arms loosely around his neck, purring beside his ear. "Maybe he was a knight. He was saving a fair maid from one of those fearsome beasts. He must be brave to have made it out alive. But when the fight was over, he was so hideously ugly that she ran away, for with the burns, he was even more fearsome than the dragon had ever been. Maybe she even decided to take the dragon as her lover over that one." The exotic whore seemed to like that idea.

Tyrion raised his eyebrows and his grin turned to a frown. "Not all fair maids run away from us grotesques. I seem to recall one running to me last night in fact, though not free of charge."

Shae grinned wickedly and whispered something in his ear while Sansa blushed and averted her gaze. "You both know as well as everyone else that dragons don't exist anymore," she replied. "He probably just got in a fight with a reckless mage." From the conglomeration of armor he'd been wearing and the worn sword at his hip, she could tell he was a mercenary, though she'd never seen him before in the tavern. A part of her felt as though she should recognize him, had perhaps met him in her life before King's Landing, but...she thought it unlikely that she would have forgotten a man like him.

Tyrion saw her unsuccessful attempt to stifle a yawn and looked over at the handful of drunken patrons. "I think the rush has passed, sweetling. Go get some sleep."

Sansa nodded her thanks and went to her room, glancing at the one next to her as she passed. There was no sound from behind the door, only silence, and she frowned, but knew better than to pry into the private business of their guests.

After closing the door, she plopped down on her bed and pulled the book out from under her pillow. She had attended the Bard's College during her years in Skyrim's capital city and after being passed by Inge Six Fingers and Giraud Gemane, the latter had given her a few books of old songs and poems, expressing his wish for her to put them to music and spread them throughout the inns and taverns of Skyrim.

Sansa had always wanted to be a bard. She and her siblings were born in Winterhold, but when her father Lord Eddard Stark had been appointed steward to the High King, he had taken her and her younger sister Arya with him to Solitude. She studied at the college for hours on end while Arya spent her days in the training yard with a foreign dancing master their father had hired. Now she was the only one who remained nearby after Lord Eddard's death. A confused and foolish child, she had allowed herself to be taken in by the Lannisters, and she often wondered if Arya had made it home.

Sighing, she sat up against her pillow, propped her lute across her lap and set The Battle of Molag Beran against her knee. Picking up where she left off, she ran her fingers across the strings and sang softly.

"The guard of House Retheran
Were bright arrayed for battle.
They came in pride, in columns wide,
But ran like frightened cattle."

The second refrain never seemed to sound as good as the first and she furrowed her brow, shifting octaves as she tried again. She tried in vain to concentrate on the notes that flowed softly through the air, but her mind returned to the man in the next room over.

How could he have gotten those burns? Perhaps Shae was right. Maybe he was trying to rescue some fair maiden. And maybe his love was scorned because of his injuries. Perhaps that's why he seemed so bitter and angry. She caught herself and shook her head. It was rude to assume things about a man she'd never met before. Then again, it would also be rude to assume things about a man she'd known her whole life and Septa Mordane had taught her to be nothing if not courteous.

That was the other thing...most of the patrons who came to King's Landing were familiar faces from the city, but this one had been a new arrival. Sellswords were common enough, but it seemed that a man like that would've brought whispers with him, and she'd heard nothing regarding a mysterious stranger with burns across half of his face. At least, not that she knew of.

Her fingers strummed a chord and she tried a second time, taking a deep breath to clear her head.

"The guard of House Retheran
Were bright arrayed for battle..."

The way he looked at me...the anger in his voice, and in his eyes too. That was what had frightened her the most. Not his scars, or the way he had spoken to her, but the rage she had seen in his deep grey eyes, just beneath the surface.

Sansa shivered and set aside her lute and the book of poetry. Burrowing under the blankets, she pulled them up to her chin and closed her eyes. No matter how hard she tried to forget them, the man's scars were as burned into her mind as they were on his face. She slowly drifted off into a fitful sleep, but her last thought was not of Molag Beran and the Dunmer.

I should have asked him his name...