By the time the Queen found herself in the relative isolation of the small tent assigned to her, Sansa's mind had calmed enough where she felt she could assess her situation with even tempers. It would so seem, based on both climate and the men she'd met since the storm, that by some magic, and indeed it could only be magic, she was no longer in the North, and perhaps outside of Westeros altogether. At the very least, wherever she was, it was in a place where neither her title nor her Stark name bore any meaning in the minds of the men surrounding her, so while she would remain Queen in the North until the day she died, or was deposed, Sansa concluded practically her expectations of treatment ought not tie itself with a Queenhood in a land which did not recognize it.
"The General'll see you now." A guard was posted outside her tent. It was the shorter soldier, Henry, whom she'd first encountered on the road. Sansa preferred him to his companion, who had a twitchy, nervous way about him. Henry, in contrast, seemed calm, careful with his words, his eyes more observant than someone of his rugged and presumably lowly countenance would suggest. By now Sansa had gathered that he was from a place called Cornwall, his friend David from Kent, which apparently lay on opposite sides of the same coast in an island country separated from the lands they stood currently upon.
"Ser Henry," she acknowledged him politely. "I do thank you for your vigilance. I realize that my presence in this camp is not exactly expected, not by myself, nor your peoples, and I understand that as a soldier, the last thing on your mind would be to tend to the needs of a...a lady."
The man laughed jovially, noticeably less tense compared to their first encounter, now that the responsibility for her personage had been passed from him to a high lord and commander. "No need to address me as sir. Yet, anyhow, just Henry's good. I dream of being knighted one day, sure, what boy doesn't. But I've no illusions, 'cept, if I survive this war, this a much more interesting story to tell than, well, the daily marches and gruel and rum, ain't nothing more exciting than finding you apart from the battles of course, and not in a good way, the battles. Oh, and I get to dine with the General tonight. Quite the honor for the son of a shoemaker to dine with a Marquess, an' there's whispers about camp another victory and they'd make him a Duke! A Duke, to dine with a Duke, if only because I was the lucky son of a bitch who found you on the road."
More gibberish, Sansa becoming accustomed now to nodding her head blankly towards verbiage which she did not understand, though she could infer that the man was describing to her various ranks and positions afforded to highborns in this land.
If dining with a soon to be Duke ranked amongst the highest honors of this land, Sansa did not feel it immediately so. The three of them ate in the Lord Wellington's tent. The stew was fine, the meat barely cooked, but Sansa had marched alongside enough armies to understand that fine dishes and lemoncakes did not often accompany war. The Lord did drink wine, and offered it politely to Sansa and her guard, so they partook, though Sansa could tell that Henry sipped upon his glass with the utmost care, likely worried about imbibing too much before the gaze of his lord and commander.
"So," Lord Wellington finally spoke, after several minutes of awkward silence. "Get on with it then, milady."
"Get on with what, I must politely ask."
"Your story," the man replied blandly, "your fantasies of being a princess and a queen and so forth, get on with it, I'm curious, if only in a morbid sense. And in a more practical sense, in how you actually came across this wolf's crown of silver." He gestured with his head to where the priceless symbol of her Queenship sat plainly upon a table behind the Lord.
"It is not a story, it is my life," Sansa spoke firmly, choosing each word with care so as to neither offend the man or show weakness upon her side. "But, it is clear to me that wherever I am right now, it is a place which has not heard of any of the names and lands of my home, and I can say the same of myself to you. I am not one of...well, one of Boney's spies, whoever this Lord Boney character might be, so it seems the most I can do at the moment is to impress upon you that I am not your enemy under the service of someone I know not of and have never heard of."
"By God," the Lord muttered almost to himself, "your ignorance seems so genuine." He observed her trying to hide her indignity towards what appeared to her as an affront. "Bonaparte? Napoleon Bonaparte? Emperor of France?"
Sansa shook her head. "None of the words or names you speak of ring true with any familiarity to me."
"So get on with it then. Dispense of the pretense, clearly there is a story you want to tell, otherwise why make it up, except every storyteller feels the same urge to share the fantasies inside their minds to their peers and brethren?"
So she got on with it then, starting with a brief description of her home and her dynasty. She spoke of her father, how he and Robert Baratheon went to war and overthrew a three hundred year old dynasty, only briefly mentioning her aunt Lyanna, considering that part of the story to be more complicated than the one she'd originally known. Then of her siblings, and her father's appointment in King's Landing. She would have preferred to dwell little on the difficult years that followed, yet as she describe watching her father die, as she described with pride the military exploits of her brother Robb to these fellow soldiers and men of the sword, even as she could barely contain her tears in telling how her mother and Robb met their end, Sansa found it almost a relief to be telling the story of her life and that of her family to these strangers, to whom the Stark name meant nothing, because it also meant that she found a captive audience who did not already hold any preconceived notions of her family, colored as it may be by Lannister or Targaryen sympathies.
By the time she'd finished the skies outside their tent were dark. To her right, young Henry Walker's jaw fell slightly ajar, and she saw that his fingers trembled slightly as he held the glass of wine his lips barely touched since she'd begun her tale. Yet the Lord Wellington seemed completely unmoved by the tales of her ordeals and triumphs which had spilled from her mouth with much less control than she'd intended.
"And I thought Swift wrote some fantastical tomes," Lord Wellington remarked, almost to himself yet again, before looking Sansa directly in the eye. "Milady, whomever your history tutor was, you must divulge his name to me, as it would appear that he did too well of a job in your instance."
"History," Sansa replied cautiously, trying to interpret the Lord Arthur's words. "So what you're saying is, what I have described to you is indeed part of your history, what you learned as a child?" She had travelled not across realms but...through time? To a time hundreds of years difficult from her own, or thousands, even? Was that possible? She knew that Bran could travel to the past with his mind, so to speak, if not his body, but according to his own words, anything apart from vague and cloudy glances into the future was impossible even for a Three Eyed Raven.
Wellington let out an unlordly guffaw. "Ah yes, the famed dragons and white walking dead men they lectured us about in Eton."
"Well, it's not like they existed where I'm from until they returned..."
"There are aspects of your tale that sounds like something plucked from the middle ages, however, which I would ascribe to a very studious upbringing upon the subject matter."
"Middle ages?" So there were aspects of this place which shared similarities with Westeros. Yet, if she wanted to hope that she could return home, there would be in her way some kind of barrier of time, that now appeared certain, as wherever she current sat now stood in a different time era as what came before? She could tell with some things, the tools of this army, their weapons, their spears not being spears but rather some kind of small round ball which functioned as an arrow and made extremely loud noises upon its use. The uniforms, the dress, although some of their customs remained similar as did the fact that they also spoke the common tongue, though it also seemed apparent that there were many other languages spoken by their neighbors, including one called Spanish, which was the native tongue of the land at the moment, as well as one spoken by nearly half the armies under the Lord Wellington.
"Yes, what with your knights and chivalry and all, liege lords, Hundred Years War, War of the Roses, Plantaganets and Yorks and old hunchbacked Richard the Third and what not. I assume you're familiar with Shakespeare, he must be your original muse?"
"Again, I do not know what or whom you speak of." A question appeared, or rather, an opening for some vague thought which had been gnawing upon her for some time now. "May I ask, Lord Wellington, this middle age you speak of, how long ago was this?"
He squinted his eyes, thinking for a moment. "Three, four hundred years, maybe five hundred years or more. It's a long period of time, and if you'll forgive me, my lady, it's been quite awhile since I've polished the covers of my history books."
"And forgive me if it's a stupid question, because it will likely sound as such to you, but how many moons comprise one of your years?"
Both men in the tent looked at her quite strangely, but the Lord nevertheless answered her with his usual curt courtesy. "Three hundred and sixty five days, my lady, twelve months, if you will."
"Twelve months," Sansa whispered. Twelve moons. So the years in this place passed in a similar manner to home, though the precise methodologies of measurements seemed to differ slightly. Yet, if Sansa had allowed herself to hope one thing once the strangeness of her new surroundings had become apparent and also unchangeable in the immediate sense, it was that whatever magic took her here aimed to reunite her with her sister. Perhaps this was a vast and strange continent far to the west of Westeros that no one in the known world knew about, yet she was destined to find Arya here. That they spoke a shared tongue and shared a similar calendar were arguments in favor of this hopeful theory, yet the fact that the life and the world she'd known was, to both Wellington and this common soldier, merely a historical era of time to be consigned to history books, made the prospect of a reunion with Arya appear dimmer. Unless, if the magics conspired to move her sister both to the right place, as well as the right time. She could hope, but she'd also suffered far too much in her life to place too much weight upon any prospect she would have to hope for.
Some twitch of her face must have given away her disappointment, for it caught the attention of both men. "Stew not sitting well," Henry offered. "Apologies, milady, you're probably not so accustomed to camp food."
"I actually am, and much worse," recalling the scraps of the Gods knew what that Ramsay deigned to serve her during her worst days, the one part of her story she skimmed over the most. "It's just... a thought. Nothing important, and I mean to give no offense to the hospitality offered by your Lordship."
"None taken," Wellington said simply, clearly taking none. "Well, Lady Stark, you've give us ample things to think about, and Private Walker also, if I may presume to speak for him. Private," he addressed more sternly the soldier, "I would have you inform Private Bruce to keep quiet of this, the both of you. Our Spanish brothers in arms are, well, more jumpy than usual this season, and I'd rather not give them any new reasons for worry." He turned to Sansa. "And from you, my lady, discretion would be most appreciated. Given that your appearance is already the talk of the camp, better to not make it worse. If possible, speak not of it at all, and if you must, Private Walker, you may tell Private Bruce to convey also that Lady Stark was suffering from a heavy fever when we first received her, and was perhaps not altogether in her right mind."
The Private Henry stood stiffly and saluted his commander, leading Sansa to imitate him in the same actions, which merely drew a chuckle from the Lord.
"Quite a story, if you ask me," Henry offered as he escorted Sansa to her tent. "An' I know, you'll reply 'but it's true, it's my life', an' at this point I'd almost be inclined to believe you. Hell, put it to paper, and I'll bet you'll sell more copies than that Jane Austen lass my wife keeps writing me on and on about..."
They let her keep her horse, riding at the rear of the Lord Wellington's army, yet at the head of a vast procession of followers of the army which shocked Sansa as to their multitudes. Many of them were women, some were children, and according to Henry, quite a few women were the sort to have worked in Baelish's establishments worlds away. Some of them were wives of the officers of the common tongue speakers, who'd sailed over from their island home, was it called England or Britain, she wasn't quite sure yet, to join their beloveds, but most of them were Spanish speakers, keeping pace with the army along their arduous march on foot all the while whispering and gossiping about her in words she didn't understand. It was just as well, she figured, and wondered whether the Lord Wellington had commanded her escorts to place her amongst the foreign speakers so that she might not accidentally chatter too much with women who spoke her language.
"Fine steed you have there," Private Dave Bruce remarked, having warmed to her somewhat now that he seemed more assured that she was more of a madwoman than an enemy spy, "as well bred and well fed as the general's. Where'd you come across such a beast, if you don't mind me askin', milady?"
"I've had Winter since Castle Black, when we first marched to take Winterfell. I sat upon him during the Battle of the Bastards, rode south upon him to attend the Great Council."
"Aye," Dave laughed, "when they crowned you a Queen, eh?"
"When I crowned myself, really," Sansa said with a grin, unable to hide some semblance of pride for the great accomplishment of her life. Both her guards were somewhat familiar with her story by now, so it seemed. She hadn't retold ut to Dave, the taller one, so she would guess that his friend Henry had filled him in on her tale, and pretty well, by the sounds of it.
It followed three days of monotonous marching without a word to anyone besides the two men whose sole jobs now was to both protect her and keep her away from the masses. The countryside she rode through was both beautiful and strange, at times reminding her of the mountains outside of King's Landing, other times of the bleaker landscapes of the Vale. To the north unseen but not too far away, they told her, was a great sea, and beyond that, the island countries which most of these men called home. They'd been at war for years, longer than Robb's war or even most of the wars she'd somewhat remembered from her lessons. This was Henry's third season in this country, she'd learned, and Dave's fourth, and some had been away for even longer, including Lord Wellington. They'd won many a battle here in Spain, as well as a smaller country in the west or south called Portugal. The Lord Wellington, or their General, apparently that was his army title, was spoken of as one of the greatest commanders in the world, much respected and acclaimed for his achievements, yet it was the talk of many to speculate what might happen once he finally faced the man named Bonaparte in the battlefield, a man who, even his enemies agreed, was already perhaps the greatest conqueror this world has ever known.
"Tell me about your King," she said, both out of curiosity and the need to make conversation. "George, Third of His Name. What is his Dynasty Name?"
"Dynasty," Dave scoffed. "I dunno, some German thing or another."
Odd, that house names seemed to matter less in this land, even amongst their highest royalty.
"Is he a good king, a kind king?"
"Mad as a cuckoo clock," Dave replied strangely. "Guess he was fine in the beginning, better than the two Georges before him, but then went off his rocker after we lost the colonies."
Sansa frowned. "So you all serve and fight for a Mad King?" For the first time she wondered about the character of the leaders whom she was marching with.
"We fight for our country," Henry explained. "Aye, but it's not like Mad George is in charge of this show anymore. His son Prince George is the regent."
"Ah, a regency." This made more sense, remembering the regencies of Aegon the Third, amongst others. "His son is a good ruler then?"
"Eh, a wastrel," Dave sneered, gesturing towards the women behind them in the procession. "If he were here each and every one of them whores would be carrying his child by now. Ugly ones too, same as the pretty ones."
"I see," Sansa said plainly. If this country of England did not have most noble and benevolent of rulers, it would seem that its soldiers were not shy about speaking openly so of their Robert Baratheon like rulers. As they explained further, Sansa noted that it seemed that neither the King nor the Regent was a full ruler, but their system of rule was more akin to some of the Free Cities of the east, with most of the work conducted by grand councils made of the highest ranking lords, which the Lord Wellington might be a part of in the future after the war, as well as men chosen in some instances by the smallfolk. The French Emperor however, their great enemy, seemed to rule in the way she would be more accustomed to.
As they reached camp on that third day, one of their officers, or higher ranking soldiers which she could often distinguish by how increasingly ridiculous their fancy hats became, approached her and her guard. "The Generals will receive you at Lord Wellington's tent, my lady."
This time her two guards were commanded to remain outside, which was strange because the moment she stepped in she instantly recognized that this was a war council. There stood the Lord Wellington alongside several of his top ranking men, as well as the men she recognized to be leaders in the native Spanish armies marching beside her.
"Lady Stark," Wellington began without much patience for niceties. "You're already acquainted with Lord Dalhousie. May I introduce General Avala of His Majesty King Ferdinand's Spanish Armies."
"Ah, a pleasure," the Spanish General replied, obliging her with a bow that seemed a bit grandiose compared to the courtesies more typical of Lord Wellington and his men. "La Reina del Norte."
"It means Queen of the North," Wellington explained.
"I appreciate your courtesy," Sansa bowed, though she wondered whether she ought to be grateful for a comment likely made in jest at her expense. She noted that the three generals all hovered above a table, typical of one where men of war studied their maps and moved their pieces about. Yet the sheet of paper they stood over was blank. As if on cue, the Lord Wellington motioned towards the absurdly large scroll, as if she were meant to write upon it.
"If you don't mind, my lady, I wish for you to draw for me this land you claim is your native home."
At first it seemed an odd request. Sansa would not have been taken aback if Wellington asked her to recount her tale yet again, but then it made sense to her that the first reaction that these men of war would have towards a story as unbelievable as hers would be to see it in map form, the way they were most used to.
"I'm a better seamstress than an artist," she demurred, "much less a military strategist, but I'll do the best I can." So she dipped the quill in the ink and moved about the table trying to outline her best all the kingdoms of Westeros. Once she had finished, she squinted and frowned at the blurry result. The North was not as a half as large as it should've been, the shores of the Vale looked like a clumsy child's attempt to draw a hand, she honestly possessed no recollection of how the shores of the Sunset Sea where shaped, nor where the Westerlands ended and the Reach began, but overall it was familiar enough for her to then start marking the approximate spots of the main cities, explaining each of them to the generals as she proceeded.
"That's Winterfell, where I'm from, the home of House Stark...there's King's Landing, that's the capital and where the Red Keep is. Or what's left of it, I guess. Highgarden to the south, they say it is the most beautiful castle in all the lands. Dorne, House Martell, represented by a spear through the sun, a land of deserts where bastards are not looked down upon..."
So she went, and as she continued she felt a familiar warmth embrace her body, as if merely describing the locations of her land brought her closer to home. Then, without even asking the generals for permission, she decided that if it was war they related to the best, then it would be war that she would show them. She started with the War of Five Kings, placing dots close to where she thought Robb's greatest battles were...Whispering Wood, Oxcross in the Westerlands, ending briefly at the Twins and skipping quickly to some blank spot in the Reach.
"And that's where Renly Baratheon gathered an army of a hundred thousand men, except Stannis took them after he had a shadow demon murder his brother. So they sailed here, there's Tarth, home of the Evenstar and Ser Brienne, they sailed up the coast to besiege King's Landing, but failed to take it from the Lannisters after a great battle. I was there, but I was a hostage, so I didn't see much of the battle myself...then Stannis marched north to the Wall after buying new army with the Iron Bank, and defeated the wildings, but he tried to take Winterfell and failed, I was held captive by the Boltons by then, I saw the battle from the ramparts, it wasn't much of one. But then finally Jon and I took back our home in the Battle of the Bastards..."
She drew triumphantly two arrows converging on Winterfell, one from the north and Castle Black, another leading up from the Vale. Finding herself temporarily out of breath, her sights left the map and she looked to the three generals for the first time since starting, pathetically seeking their approval for her efforts as if she were a little girl again and they were her maesters.
"La guerra de los Bastardos," the Spanish general remarked bemusedly, stroking his chin as he spoke, "that's my kind of war. And General Wellington says that you claimed too to have led your army in this battle."
"Led no, nor did I obviously do any of the fighting. But I brought the two armies together, when I recognized that we could not win on our own."
"I see," Avala said, seemingly deep in thought. "Then you killed the man who helped you win the battle. Is this what you are trying to tell me, General Wellington? That you and I will combine armies and defeat our enemy, but then you will have me killed once the war is won? The hideous leopard would keep Spain for herself?"
"Well," Sansa hurriedly interrupted before Wellington could answer, "if Lord Wellington had properly conveyed to you this man Baelish's many crimes, you would understand the reasoning for his very necessary death." She could tell that the man spoke in jest, yet her diplomatic instincts took over, as well as a mind fully aware of both the worlds she'd stood astride, and was still struggling to reconcile between the two.
"It's like this, you see," she pointed towards Riverrun on the map, explaining as much as for herself as for her small audience. "Your home, Lord Avala, is like the Riverlands, the lands of my mother's family. The Lannisters are like your French enemies, who've invaded your home. And General Wellington, and his Britains, are like my brother Robb and the Northmen, who came to free your home from your invaders. And if the Lannisters represent France, then had Lord Renly survived, the Tyrells may have been like the Russians who defeated your Emperor Bonaparte on the other side of the continent. And the..., the people that they said changed sides again in the middle..."
"The Germans," Dalhousie ventured. "Prussia and Austria, among others."
"Yes, the Germans, they'd be like the treacherous Lord Baelish I've described, who switched sides half a dozen times through the war. It's not a perfect comparison but..."
As she trailed off, she realized how trying to match the two worlds was helping her better understand this new world. Conveniently she had left out the fact that Robb had also been crowned King of the Riverlands as well, sensing that this would disrupt the diplomatic balance between these two main generals at the moment. A slight grin appeared on Wellington's face for the first time this evening. "As I've tried to tell my colleagues, Lady Stark, put your stories to paper one day and you'll be this century's Jonathan Swift."
Sansa smiled back politely, for she was well past protesting by now. "Whether or not your lordships believe me, which you obviously don't, I seriously doubt you've asked to come to your tent to tell stories. Unless you've changed your minds and have decided to make war upon the Kingdoms of Westeros rather than Emperor Napoleon."
So as she understood, the word Emperor described a title that was even greater than King, rather than a specific term for what called the kings in the faraway lands of Yi-Ti. If anything, it sounded like the people of this land would describe the Targaryens, or her brother now, as Emperors of Westeros, and then titles of Kings and Queens for herself, and the various monarchs of the realm before Aegon's Conquering.
"General Avala, I hope you are well assured," the Lord named Dalhousie said to Avala, "that, whatever the many ills which may be plaguing the poor girl's mind, that she appears to be far too...well, insane, to be an enemy spy within our midst."
"No need to be insult her ladyship, Dalhousie," Wellington reprimanded his man, "I wouldn't say yet Lady Stark may be insane rather than, well, most fervently committed to her tales."
"Si, general," Avala said, suddenly eyeing Sansa in a more predatory manner as if she were the most important person, if not the only person, inside the tent. "My Lady Sansa, a lovely name too, no, I do not believe you are spy for Bonaparte. And I believe you...no, I mean, I believe that every word you say to us, you believe it entirely yourself."
"It is true," Sansa said rather dully. She was no ignorant child, she did not fail to notice all the looks towards her from the men in the vast army, up to and including Lord Wellington himself, though he and his officers seemed to make conscious efforts to keep discrete whatever urges they may have. Yet, she sense no true threat from this Avala man either. If he seemed more forward or friendly than the others, it reminded her of the Dornish mannerisms, rather than the likes of Ramsay.
"I'd even say I'd believe her," Wellington remarked from somewhere further in the tent, "if believing her didn't mean having to overturn everything I understand of the sciences and philosophies and theologies upon God's green Earth."
The word Earth, Sansa had come to learned, meant more than just the dirt they stood upon, but represented what these people chose to name their entire world. Which was apparently shaped like a ball. Not for the first time did Sansa wonder if Westeros might lie on a round ball like world as well, and if so, did that mean the further west Arya sailed, the closer she would come to arriving at Asshai? Or whether Jon and his wildling men might reach Southyros if they travelled far enough north of Castle Black.
"Indeed," Dalhousie added, his voice betraying nothing. "Well, I'm sure your ladyship must be exhausted after such a...diligent description of your, ahem, former environs."
"Your time is appreciated, Lady Stark," Wellington concluded, and Sansa did not begrudge the men for dismissing her, because she was coming to sense how extraordinary it was in their world that they would give her so much time to tell of her tales, so they thought, in the middle of what appeared to be the largest, longest, and most important war in this world's entire history.