Chapter 11: Miracle
A few days after their departure from Greywater Watch, the North welcomed them with heavy snowfall.
All the northmen suddenly turned into little boys at the sight. Even her mother had a smile on her face at seeing grown men frolicking in the snow, chucking snowballs at one another.
It seemed only now they were finally where they belonged: back in the North.
The snow brought two additions to their party as well.
The first was a young man about Robb's age who rather persistently asked to see "Lady Arya" until his brazenness had the desired result and brought him Arya's attention.
It was apparent from the start that those two knew each other and knew each other well, even though the words Arya had for the boy were less than flattering and not even remotely joyful.
Her mother, at seeing the young man, first looked shocked and then ever so slightly disdainful.
"I suppose you're one of Robert Baratheon's many illegal children," she said with a downturn of her mouth.
The young man looked back unperturbed, holding Catelyn Stark's gaze without even blinking.
"Mayhaps the only one still living," he gave back calmly.
"It's clear Arya had rather not want you with us, so…"
"I've never said that, mother!" Arya interjected. "He's halfway decent as a blacksmith, surely we have use for him?"
At that point, Robb had joined the discussion and ended it by deciding that the young man would indeed be needed as a blacksmith once they'd be back at Winterfell.
Arya seemed unaccountably pleased by that, considering her first reaction.
The second surprise came shortly before nightfall, when Grey Wind suddenly started to howl so loudly, even Robb became nervous.
An answering howl came immediately from somewhere in the vicinity and Grey Wind at once dashed out of Robb's tent and into the night.
When he came back, he was not alone.
At his side, almost as huge as her brother, Nymeria trotted into the camp with an ease as if she had only been away for a couple of hours.
This reunion was very different from the one with Gendry, Sansa observed as Arya came running and threw her arms around her wolf, sobbing and laughing with joy and happiness.
Though she did her best to keep them back, tears freely ran down Sansa's cheeks as she thought of all she had lost that would never come back to her, even should she wish it.
She had lost her wolf forever and from the way things looked, she had lost her Hound as well.
…
The general joy that had buoyed the men for a while at the snowfall and Nymeria's return, which everyone thought to be a good omen, only lasted until the next day.
The weather had been wet and grey ever since they had departed the Twins and no one – neither King nor lowborn soldier – owned a stitch of clothing that wasn't wet or at least clammy.
It had been cold before, but with the snow falling heavily, it was freezing. Again Sansa was tempted to use one of her wishes, but what should she have wished for? For the North not being cold?
Their procession took on a ghostly, eerie sort of stillness the farther north they came on the Kingsroad. The clopping of the horses' hooves was muffled by snow, every sound muted to almost perfect silence.
Before, they hadn't talked because the rain had made it necessary to shout and at some point it hadn't been worth the effort, now it seemed sacrilegious to disturb the peace with loud words.
Besides, how was one to speak with chattering teeth?
…
The Stranger found them during the third night and took to dogging their path ever since.
One soldier had gone to sleep that night and not woken up in the morning, his body already frozen stiff on his pallet that apparently had been too far away from the nearest fire.
Robb gave orders to build more fires, for the men to rotate more often on their watches, so no one would freeze in their sleep, but still death kept taking from them.
The soldiers began coughing, some dropped from their horses, weak with fever. Soon there wasn't enough space in the wains to hold all those who were sick and Robb commanded sleighs to be built for the horses to draw through the snow, with the sick lying on them by threes and fours, while those who had been riding before where forced to walk and lead the horses.
More than three dozen soldiers had died by the time they were nearing Winterfell and by then Sansa deeply regretted having been so careless with making everyone believe her to be a witch.
Where before the looks given her had been wary but somehow awed, they were full of sullen anger now. They blamed her for the sickness, she knew, or at least thought she could help and didn't.
Knowing that she actually could help should she wish to, made things only worse for her.
…
Almost miraculously, ravens still sometimes found their way to wherever they made camp at night.
Thus they learned of almost unbelievable events happening in King's Landing. Tyrion Lannister had apparently killed his own father and fled the capital, which now left Cersei in power with no one to challenge her, safe maybe the young queen who probably wouldn't dare and Kevan Lannister, Cersei's uncle, who had a reputation for being good at following orders, but not necessarily at giving them.
The part of the news that was most devastating to Sansa, however, was to learn that Gregor Clegane had been killed at Tyrion Lannister's trial by combat. By Oberyn Martell.
No word of Sandor Clegane or Ryder Hills, no mention that he had at least tried to rid the world of the monster that was his brother. He had just vanished, leaving the role of hero to one who had not even been able to enjoy his victory, because he had died in the fight as well.
With a tremendous effort, she managed not to cry.
This time, she would keep her pain to herself. No one would learn how much it hurt her to have to suffer yet another crushing disappointment when it came to Sandor Clegane. He was supposed to be the chosen one, the hero from the tales of old.
He was supposed to be her hero, proving to all the world and most importantly her family that he was worthy of a princess.
So far, though, he had proven nothing. With Arya stubbornly maintaining that it hadn't been Sandor Clegane who had brought her back, Sansa did not even have that good deed to lay at his door.
Ryder said that life is nothing like Old Nan's stories.
Apparently, it really wasn't. Apparently, even those chosen by the Old Gods were only men in the end.
That night, she bid farewell to a dream she had cherished ever since she had thought of Sandor Clegane as the chosen one. She derided herself for her fantasies of seeing him riding up to her brother on a white charger, his banner flying behind him. Laughed at her notion that people would call him the Chosen One, the Slayer of the Mountain that Rides, the saviour of the princesses of Winterfell.
In that dream, Robb had readily agreed to a match between them, glad to approve an alliance the Gods seemed to have ordained. He had given Sandor a lordship and a castle and they had lived happily ever after.
How stupid she had been! How ready to believe in yet another dream that had nothing to do with reality.
If Sandor Clegane would ever come back to her, he would do so on the back of a mean black destrier. He would not have banners and fanfares, because he loathed the trappings of self-importance all the lords loved to surround themselves with. He would scoff at any names and titles trying to praise and elevate him. He would not even want a lordship and a castle and Sansa started to doubt that he ever had wanted her.
Why did her mind insist on glorifying him thus, why could she not think of him as simply the man he was and always had been?
She tried to do just that, and this time she reached farther back than that magical moment in the godswood. His face appeared in her mind as she had known him before that, dark and scowling, silvery bolts of anger shooting from his eyes, out of a face marred by an act of unimaginable brutality.
It had to be the first time since she had come back to her family that she remembered him with his scarred face and it brought back all she had ever felt when confronted with him. Fear, for one thing, but also a sense of cautious gratefulness, the irritation at his hateful way of speaking to her, uncertainty about his meaning, her fascination with his ferocity, his strength. And underlying all that, the absolute and unshakable conviction that he would not hurt her, no matter what.
Even back then, a part of her had always been sure of this.
Her insides hurt with that familiar mixture of loss and longing she had cultivated ever since she'd been back, but if she had hoped that thinking of him as he had been before his transformation would somehow lessen her torment, she was proven wrong.
Remembering him as he had been before he turned into her handsome savior, haloed by golden dust, only served to confuse her more. Everything she thought she had disliked about him suddenly held its own attraction, as if the darkness in him only made his compassion, his kindness and his care of her all the more precious and therefore alluring.
…
Robb had set a punishing pace for Winterfell after the first deaths, splitting the host into an advance force that was to retake Winterfell, consisting of the most able-bodied fighters and a contingent supposed to guard the royal family members with whom he didn't want to part whatever it took. The second contingent, having the care of all the sick and wounded, moved more slowly but was supposed to return to Winterfell no longer than three days after they had reclaimed the castle.
Unfortunately, the towers of Winterfell only came into sight when night already threatened to fall and it was too late to attack the enemy.
From afar, they could see the ruin the once mighty keep had become, could see the banners of House Bolton fluttering in the winds howling over the caved-in roof of the great hall.
A few of the crannogmen who had been sent for reconnaissance came back with even more disturbing details about how much destruction both the Ironborn and later Bolton's bastard had wrought on the castle.
After the news had been brought to him, Robb had commanded everyone to leave his tent so he could think of a plan, but from the way he had looked, Sansa suspected he just meant to weep with both hopelessness and exhaustion.
Despite the fact that sickness had not found anyone of Sansa's family, they were all nearing the end of their strength, their bodies much thinner than when they had left from the Twins weeks ago, their eyes ringed black with lack of proper sleep. Even wrapped in furs and blankets and Clegane's cloak, Sansa had woken a few times each night from being cold to her bones. She had no idea how the soldiers managed without even that much.
They all feared for Jeyne and her baby, because Jeyne suffered from the cold even more than anyone else, since she had been born in the south and never even seen snow, let alone experienced cold before.
Huddling deeper into her own cloak, Sansa made her way through thigh-high rifts of snow to a raised boulder on which her mother stood, looking out to the grey silhouette of what had been her home.
"I've wished and prayed to be back here," her mother said without turning when Sansa had made it to her side, her voice desolate and bleak. "I just wanted to be back. To mourn your father, to love the children I have left, to stitch my life back together."
She sighed and shook her head.
"But it's all gone. The glass-gardens to grow greeneries, the stores most likely emptied by those who have taken all this from us. The people…," a smothered sob came from her then and her shoulders shook.
Sansa had no idea how to comfort her. She could see all of this herself, knew what it meant.
"Lord Bolton was right," her mother continued. "Robb won the war, tricked the trickster, came back alive only to be bested by hunger and cold. Even if we do manage to oust the bastard from the keep, they'll destroy what is still standing just to spite us. There will be not a grain of barley or even one cask of wine left in the cellars, no roof over our heads. We might have won the war, but winter is coming – it's here already – and it will accomplish what none of Robb's other foes could."
With that dire prediction, Catelyn Stark turned and walked away from her, leaving Sansa standing where she was, experiencing the already familiar sensation of feeling guilty of something she had not done.
The time had come, she realized. The time for a miracle.
Around her, golden dust fluttered and materialized.
"I wish," she whispered, "I wish for the bastard's troops to give us no fight so we can win Winterfell back without bloodshed. And I wish it whole again, stores filled, fires burning to welcome us back home."
The fairy looked at Winterfell for a long moment, but then turned back to her.
"Are you sure?" she asked. "Because those are two wishes."
"I am… no, why?"
"Think about it. You wish for an easy victory and for the castle to be as it was before. That makes two."
If Sansa hadn't been so weary, so frozen through, so sad, she might have felt angry and in the mood to argue. Only now, the only emotion left to her was desperation.
There was no way to wish for one without the other. Her mother was right. Even should the victory be an easy one, they'd starve in an empty, destroyed castle. If she only wished for Winterfell to be restored, the attackers would destroy everything again before they were defeated and it would make the fight this much harder if they had the castle in order.
She turned and looked over to the soldiers huddling around the fires. They had walked through snow for weeks, many of them on feet turning black with frostbite. They had to be in pain. They were cold, hungry and tired and looked as if it would not take more than a gust of wind to knock them down so they would never get up again. Most looked at her with feverishly bright eyes that seemed unnaturally large in faces taut with hunger. And they were those who Robb thought were most able to win a fight. There were others in the second contingent much worse off.
So if she wished for Winterfell's restoration only after their victory, there was no telling if there would be a victory at all. They would live, her family at least, since they were protected by her wish, but how would they? As guests of Lord Umber, crammed into his castle that was more a glorified hut than anything else?
And what about all those others? All those who had fought for Robb so faithfully? Followed him through war and hardship? Most of them wouldn't even survive another day, let alone a journey as far as Last Hearth.
Would they all end up like those in the Whispering Wood?
Could she justify gambling with all their lives for what she owed one man? Was her honour, her promise, worth so high a price?
Once again she let her eyes roam over all those men and closed her eyes against the burning of tears in them.
"Listen to what your heart tells you," the fairy said quietly.
Sandor, she thought, anguished, and when she opened her eyes, tears clung frozen to her eyelashes. My last wish. It was meant for you, but I can't... I can't. Please forgive me.
"Then let it be two wishes," she said with the last of her strength and then sunk into the snow, sobbing uncontrollably. Weeping as she had not yet done for lost dreams and wishes forever unfulfilled.
…
The next day dawned grey and foggy, Winterfell barely visible in the distance.
Robb stood in his tent when Sansa joined him, surrounded by his lords, all of them wearing identically expressions of tired resignation. None of them expected a victory, Sansa realized. They just wanted it to be over.
"The fog might be in our favour," the Smalljon said, sounding unconvinced of his own words. "If they have archers, they cannot spot us."
"Robb," Sansa said and the men turned to her at once, looking as if glad for the interruption.
Grey Wind stood as well, getting up from where he had lain curled up next to the brazier.
"Winterfell can be taken without bloodshed," she told him, slightly breathless with nerves. "I cannot tell you how it came about, but we will not meet with resistance."
"Sansa," Robb started, sounding pained. "I know we all wish for this..."
"No," she said shaking her head. "This isn't fancy. It is real. If you..." She swallowed, for the moment overcome with fear at the audacity of what she felt compelled to suggest. "If you do not believe me, let me ride out alone."
Grey Wind whined quietly, then trotted over to her, pushing his big head gently against her hand. Absentmindedly, she patted him until he moved further to her side, his meaning clear. He meant to accompany her, wherever she'd go.
If nothing else, it was an encouraging sign.
Robb looked at her, then at his wolf. A wild sort of hope shone in his eyes, a desperate wish to believe in what she offered, despite its improbability. To believe in a miracle.
"I'll come with you," he said, his words barely above a whisper. "I will not let it be said the King of the North left it to his sister to retake his home."
Then he turned to his men.
"I do not expect anyone to join in this mission. If Sansa and I do not come back, you know what to do. Protect my wife and my child, bring them somewhere safe. Do not waste your strength on Winterfell. The bastard will not fare better in an empty, cold castle than we would have."
…
As they made to mount their horses, her mother came charging toward them.
"Has the cold frozen both your brains?" she yelled. "You mean to ride right into the enemy's teeth?"
"Yes, mother," Robb gave back calmly. "Sansa said it's safe."
Her mother levelled a glare at her.
"Sansa, what madness is this?"
Before Sansa could come up with a reply, Robb took a step towards their mother.
"Mother, I ask you to watch your tongue. May I remind you that it was Sansa to whom we all owe our lives?" he asked quietly, but with a determination in his tone that brooked no objection. "May I remind you that she saved us at the Twins? I trust her. Grey Wind trusts her."
"So do I," a booming voice declared behind them and when they both turned, they saw the Greatjon, next to his saddled horse, ready to join them.
"And I!" his son shouted, only a few paces behind his father, leading his own horse with a gleam of hope in his eyes that had not be there before.
"I, too, believe that Lady Sansa knows what she is about," Lord Reed said softly, leading his gelding next to him as he joined the group that began to form a circle around them.
Sansa's eyes widened and then filled with tears as more and more men joined in, declaring their trust and their intention to follow wherever she and Robb would lead them.
Here she was, believing they hated her, feared her for being a witch, when they were so ready to bet their very lives on as little as her word, on a strange notions of a girl of thirteen years.
She blinked her tears away, not intending to appear weak in the face of all this courage and straightened, giving every man around them a bright smile of gratitude.
Her mother's eyes demanded her attention, fearful and desperate, but then something changed in them, turning to mellow resignation.
"So be it," she said on a sigh. "I'll ride with you two. Should this be folly, I will die at my children's side where I belong. Should Sansa be right, there will be much to do for me."
With that she turned and signalled to have her horse brought to her.
…
Their departure from the camp had been delayed for some more minutes by Robb taking leave from his weeping wife, while Sansa's mother loudly and fruitlessly argued with Arya that she had to stay behind.
When she ordered one of the guards to restrain Arya, the man backed away rather quickly when Nymeria jumped in front of her, growling and baring her teeth.
"Oh for the Seven's sake," her mother exclaimed but then stopped herself and shook her head. "It's not as if anyone here listens to me anymore anyway, so you might as well come."
Arya's squeal of delighted glee made the men around them smile a little, as if Arya's exuberance had revived their spirits as well.
The wind battered icy against their faces as they rode on, but curiously enough, the pink banners depicting the flayed man of the Dreadfort hung listless and unmoving.
When they were close enough to be greeted by arrows from those who held the castle, the men let nervous glances roam over the battlements, but there was no sound to be heard and not a single man to be seen. No tell-tale clouds of steam rose from kettles of boiling pitch. The castle appeared empty of life.
Surprised whispers rose up behind Sansa, sounding like a low grumbling, as the men became aware of the fact that the towers looked in much better shape than they had expected, all roofs in order and clearly visible from their vantage point.
When they were about a hundred paces from the closed portcullis, Sansa started to get anxious, wondering how she was supposed to retake the castle – fight or not – if it was barred to her.
She halted her horse to buy herself some time, and everyone behind her halted as well at Robb's signal.
As close as they were, everyone who understood something about defending a castle would have done something by now, but still everything was deadly quiet.
Sansa dismounted and at once Grey Wind sprinted up to her side, pushing his big furry head against her hand.
"Let's do this," she whispered to him, trembling with nerves.
Slowly, hindered by the snow that reached almost to her knees, she walked up to the portcullis.
How do I open it? she asked silently.
Don't worry, a tinkling voice replied.
There was nothing else to do but walking on, towards an unmoving obstacle.
Suddenly, the black iron bars of the portcullis started to glow; golden and strangely beautiful.
Then, very slowly, it began to lift.
...
tbc