So happy that you were happy with Sansa's rescue. Also, I'm glad that you liked the last chapter because the narrative was a little different and I wasn't quite sure about it.
To Dillon Baker, don't worry about being too hard. Honestly, it feels like readers are entitled to demand the chapters.
And if any of you feel like asking questions and you don't have a FF account, you can drop a few words in my tumblr's askbox (url in my profile). As some of you know, PM and questions I do reply to. Love your reviews too but I do not have much time to reply each and everyone of those.
Chapter 27 : Freedom
Waiting for news seemed to make the time go slower. Of course, Robb knew quite well that, in order to keep the secrecy of his mission, Jorah Mormont could not communicate with him. Meanwhile, men around the camp murmured about the traitor, about the food and horse he had stolen and how he had ridden away in the middle of the night.
Robb never corrected anyone. He just hoped the rescue would come to fruition, because he was already losing his mind. He feared that he would start losing battles not long after and then the war. Impatience costing him a war sounded sad and pathetic. Dany would think so. She would clear his head better than his uncle Brynden with his harsh words and good intentions. She would tell him the right word or discuss his worries with him.
Luckily for him, battle had eased part of his nerves as the Blackfish had told him. At Ashemark, his army had achieved a relatively easy victory a while ago, taking the castle and making more advances in his plan to attract Tywin Lannister to the West. They had settled there for a few days after his return to plan their next move.
He still believed that as soon as that happened, he could call the armies of Dorne and the ones from Crackclaw Point to siege King's Landing. With that he would take prisoners and exchange them for whatever Tywin had left at that point.
"Getting ready?" His uncle Edmure asked when he entered the room Robb had taken as his. He was wearing a small smile, as if something deserved it.
Robb couldn't remember the last time he had stopped scowling at the map laid in the sturdy table in front of him. Or, well, he could but that led him to daydream about waking to almost freezing mornings in Winterfell, with a beautiful woman in his arms.
"Soon," was Robb's gruff reply.
"The war will end soon, Nephew."
Robb looked up and sighed heavily.
His uncle had cost him more than a few men and the chance to end this war once and for all while he had been returning from Winterfell. Biting back the bile that had risen up his throat, Robb had to forgive him. Edmure had won a battle not knowing that by losing they would have been leading Tywin directly into their territory. Robb knew they could have easily defeated a weakened army but that never happened.
All that did not mean he was not bitter.
"Are you prepared?" the younger man decided to ask, instead of wondering once again how he, who was called a boy, could see more into a strategy than a man ten years older than him. Maybe he had been raised to be a soldier, maybe it was in the blood of the Starks.
"I am."
They had plans to attack by morning. It was not supposed to be a problem since a scout had only seen a small army a few leagues away. They could easily win, if they only compared numbers. But a battle was a battle, and it was not won until it was finished.
Nodding, Robb stood straight and looked into his uncle's eyes. "I'll be ready at first light. Let them come near us, it will be easier for us to show them how comfortable we are in their lands."
-o-
It was his fault. He had been distracted lately and that did not help him, not even if Grey Wind and Rhaegal were at his side, protecting him as loyally as always. Being as angry as he was, trying to let go of his fury by brandishing a sword and killing enemies had seemed like the perfect idea. That was until his rage blinded him and he failed to see the man attacking him with a spear.
He fell from his horse, with the spear still lodged in his leg, but he did not really know if he felt pain or just numbness. He saw Grey Wind ferociously jumping on the man and sinking his teeth on the man's shoulder, he was promptly followed by Rhaegal who ended the man's existence with fire.
The battle was won but he did not feel as victorious as he should have. A wound like his would cost him time and strength to recover, and he did not know if that would fit in his plans.
As his men dragged him back to safety, a woman approached him. Her hands were bloody and her forehead and hair damp with sweat. She didn't look at his face as she started to clean the wound; she did not even acknowledge when he hissed in pain. But as soon as she was over, she shot him a hard look.
"You'll live. You would have live even if I had come here later. Your men forced me to tend your wounds first and let a man die. Is that fair just because you are a king?"
The bitterness in her voice surprised him. It had been a long time since someone outside his family – or Daenerys, actually – dared to talk to him like that. And he could understand that his men had decided he was a priority over some unknown fighter, but he could also imagine that man had a family that would have appreciated that only once that man had come before the King.
It was not as if he did not care about those who had died under his command but he had decided to bury the guilt under his goals.
"What is your name?"
"Talisa," she replied, ignoring him and just cleaning her hands in her skirts but quickly making her way away from him.
"Your last name," Robb demanded with a tone he had grown very accustomed to. It was a tone you could not say no to.
She snorted and to him it seemed like something akin to a laugh.
"You want to know on whose side my family fights on."
"You know my name and on what side I'm fighting. Don't you think it is fair that I know the same about you?"
She smiled at him with amusement, as if she could not believe the simple questions he made. It certainly sounded a bit childish of him to use those reasons as his excuse but it felt necessary. He was not about to allow an enemy to get near him, especially when she was in charge of his health at the moment.
He sighed before asking an alternative option to his previous question, "Your accent. Where are you from?"
She looked at him in the eye as she closed the wooden box in which she carried her supplies. "Volantis."
"Volantis?" he wondered aloud. "You're far from home."
Talisa never really made a reply to his comment. She only shouldered her box and decided to leave him for his men to take away.
"I need someone who can tend not only my wounds but the ones of my men. We don't have a maester among us."
Her answer was vaguer than he would have liked. "I found you before. I'm sure I'll found you again."
-o-
At the beginning, as he sat on his chair with his leg barely supporting his weight, limping whenever he had to move, he wanted to write to Dany and tell her all about his injury. As his head cooled down, he changed his mind.
By no means did Robb wished to make her pity him. He did not desire to mend their fight by telling her he was hurt because if he did, he knew they would never resolve their problems. She would come to take care of him, even if they were still angry with each other, because she loved him.
He would have done the same.
He did not want to put more pressure on her responsibilities. She had enough with being a mother and keeping an eye on his family. She had enough because she played diplomat with most of his allies south of the Neck and strategized for him, as well.
So he wrote no note to Winterfell to inform them about his well-being.
And when morning came, when the bandages covering his wounds needed change, he once again saw the woman who had tended his injuries.
She ducked her head to conceal her smile when she entered the room, but he did nothing to cover up his own smile and surprise.
"I certainly hope this time no one has forced you to abandon any of your patients," he jibed.
She chuckled softly. "No, this time I only came to see you because surely kings and queens are not taught to change their own bandages. And no one would wish to have a crippled king."
He smiled but soon he felt things were not as fine as he wanted to pretend.
Her soft and careful hands removed the bandages from his leg, her fingers brushing against his skin on the process. It was only then that he felt a pang of regret. It had been a very long time since a woman who was not Daenerys had touched him. And it had been a long time since Dany had not been with him.
He rarely worried about being unfaithful to his Queen because the majority of his time was spent among soldiers and men who were fighting the war. He had never felt tempted but now he realized he missed the gentle touch of a woman, the beauty and softness that were so different from what he faced every day.
She cleaned his wound and he felt the burning of it but did not wince even as she searched for signs of pain in his face.
"A brave king," she quipped but he only deepened his scowl. Apparently, he wasn't very good at hiding his feelings, since as soon as she had finished changing the bandages, she said, "Is there something bothering you?"
"How are traditions in Volantis?"
She looked taken aback by his question. "Pardon me?"
"As the eldest child of my Lord Father and Lady Mother, I was the heir of Winterfell. I was forced to marry a woman… no one wanted back in Westeros. I did not know her but in old stories." Robb shook his head as if he wanted to stop talking, and wordlessly forced Talisa to forget about what he had said.
"I am a woman. I never had much choice on what I was supposed to do but I vowed to not follow the rules my parents had made for me. I renounced to all that, to my life as a noble, dances and arranged marriages. Instead I chose to heal people." Talisa looked at him openly. Her dark eyes were nothing like Dany's but they held the same defiance and strength. "We make our choices."
"The only choice I've taken is to fight this war." Robb moved so he was sat at the edge of his bed, his feet on the floor. He looked at his wound as if it would become the only memory of the battles he had fought. "And sometimes I'm not sure it was the right one."
With his hands on his knees, he soon saw Talisa's hand over his, beckoning him to look at her.
"Do you believe there is someone else who could be a better king?" she murmured in a soft voice.
He had never thought about it that way. Since he had rebelled against Joffrey, Robb had always believed there was no one else. He had no specific plans for what he would do if or when he got the Iron Throne but he believed he was capable of taking the Seven Kingdoms to a place where they could shine.
"No one knows until someone takes the crown."
She smiled. "I think you will be a good king."
He doubted he was consciously moving, or maybe he was but he did not know why. He leaned forward, towards her and she shyly mirrored him. When he felt the soft lips against his, he realized what he was doing. The kiss felt so wrong. Talisa's lips were thinner and they felt colder against his. She was not as full of passion as Dany was.
Pulling away abruptly, Robb avoided her gaze. He felt ashamed. "I might have married her because it was an order but I decided to be hers long ago."
Talisa seemed to feel guilty. She stood up quickly and put distance between them. "I'm sorry. I assumed… and I shouldn't have."
"I love her," he confessed openly, staring at her as if those words were the absolute truth.
Talisa smiled before chuckling at him, and he realized how stupidly he had behaved, even if she tried to cover her mouth with her hands to conceal her amusement. "You'll be a good king."
-o-
He was studying the map for what seemed the tenth time that morning alone. He had grown to hate the lines and numbers he needed to always keep an eye on. He felt tired.
But as he was about to drink from his goblet, he heard the commotion outside. He wished to stand up and see for himself what was the cause of it but before he could reach for the cane he had been using for the last few days, the door flung open.
It was the Blackfish, wearing a smile he usually did not reveal.
"Good news," he said, taking long strides towards him. "Your plan worked. And I wished you had told me about it so I didn't have to recognize your sister so they wouldn't kill the Bear."
Robb's eyes widened just as Sansa set foot inside the room, right in front of Jorah Mormont. Forgetting the pain, Robb stood up and smiled at his sister who ran into his arms.
They said nothing for a while, Robb only holding his sister to his chest, letting her bury her head in his chest and cling to him while she cried. He felt so much relief that he had almost forgotten about a very important detail. "Where's Arya?"
Only then smiles faded and worry invaded him.
"She was not in King's Landing," Jorah replied.
"She escaped before Father was taken prisoner and no one knows where she is," Sansa told behind her tears. "I don't know what happened to her. No one knows, not even the Queen."
Robb looked down and then up at Brynden Tully, "We need to find her, before they do. Now that we have Sansa they will do anything to have something of ours in their power." He promptly turned to Jorah. "And thank you, the North is grateful for your actions, Jorah Mormont. As King in the North, I free you of your death sentence."
"Robb?" Sansa murmured, looking up at him. His smile grew brighter at her. "Is it true you've married the last Targeryen? Do you have a son? Ser Jorah told me he was a boy. Are you King?"
Robb laughed with his deep and rich laughter before her and held her innocent face between his hands, tucking her long reddish-brown hair behind her ears and pressing a kiss to her forehead. He was sure Jorah Mormont had to keep her entertained for the duration of their trip from King's Landing, and he was glad she heard only happy things.
"I missed you, as Mother did. And Dany wants to meet you. As soon as it is safe, Ser Jorah will take you to Winterfell, so you'll meet your nephew." He took her hands in his and saw all the fingers in her hands. He cursed under his breath but soon decided he wouldn't think about that again. He had his sister back. "I'll tell you everything you want to know. And you'll tell me what happened to you."