Sansa

To her surprise, Sansa found herself waking in the bed she'd fallen asleep in. No dreams, she thought. I wonder if that's good or bad. Quickly she flitted behind Myranda's unblinking eyes, making sure the Singers' new roots were in place and the Other himself quite unable to manage another escape. He hasn't Howling Wind's talents. Then again, men did not share all the same knacks. I can no more climb than Bran can sew. She got up, heedless of the flurry that blew in through her open window. Drat, she though crossly. I must remember to close the window or I'm like to wake up to everything coated in white every morning. Then she blinked. Outside was black but for the pinpricks of light, torches burning where they could in the yard below or the far ramparts. Still dark, she thought confusedly. Her ears registered a constant stamp of feet, people running about all over the castle. Her sleepy, placid mood vanished and she dressed as quickly as she could, pulling on a thick wool cloak more for show than comfort. At least I need not hog all the hot water anymore, she thought. It gave the others pause in Winterfell when she wore only a summer gown while freezing gales raged most every day though, so she wore the cloak. As innocuously as she could she lastly took her walnut branch in hand, the pack of hounds up and ready when she was. Again, she wished it were Lady at her side instead of mundane dogs. It is no fault of theirs, she thought, feeling guilty. Nobody paid her much mind in the corridors with her hair hidden by the hood but on reaching the hall the skull-capped branch gave her away and the guards let her pass unbothered. Lord Royce sat pale-faced at one of the tables, several of his knights closely attending him. On seeing her he made to stand but seemed curiously unable. In armor, anyway. He's too old to fight, but not to think or plan.

"What's happened?" she asked. He took several shallow breaths before replying.

"Apologies, Princess Sansa. The aspect of another battle…it has me off my feet for the moment." he said blusteringly. Playing it off as eagerness for the fight.

"You may find it easier to move without your breastplate, my lord. Wights I hear come in numbers that make armor irrelevant, for the most part. If anything, it will slow you. Dead men do not tire, why cede them more ground?" Besides, steel will not stop razor ice regardless. At her words he swallowed, trying to will his legs to carry him.

"Off with it, then. Seven save me but I'd sooner die on my feet than my ass." One of the older knights guffawed at his lord's command, helping to remove the breastplate and the rest of the heavier armor. "I may still need to brain somebody, so the gauntlets stay." Sansa offered her hand and pulled him to his feet, watching a bit of color seep back into his cheeks. "They're coming from the north, of course." he said. "Out of the wolfswood." The giants, Sansa thought at once. They must be brought behind the ring.

Once she might have run for the ramparts, or the castle's fastest courier. Instead Sansa reached out for one of the forest's countless owls and promptly began screeching her head off, the numerous mountain-sized people slowly rousing and peering about. It was a few moments before Sansa realized that even with the owl's spectacular sight, there was no trace of so much as a dead man's little finger. That does not mean they are not near, she thought. Of course, the owl could no more coerce the giants than carry them and in due course her screeching got the mammoths out of sorts. That made the giants focus. Then Sansa got an idea. She flitted from branch to branch until she found the right mammoth, a hoary old cow that eyed the owl irritably. On reaching for the mammoth something altogether different happened even than with the black hound. Rather than picking a fruit, it was quite as if a hand had popped from the boughs and gripped her own in turn. Danger, she thought, images of a tide of dead men making the cow snort in alarm. She got to her feet, trumpeted, and trundled off at once, the others of her kind quick to follow her lead. The giants will come now, Sansa thought. They will follow the mammoths anywhere. There was a fair bit of irate chatter in the Old Tongue and the astonishingly loud wail of an unseen infant, but nobody was left behind, to Sansa's relief. Perhaps it would do well to bring Myranda up out of the crypts. Once the giants were well underway she returned to the waking world, finding herself in the arms of a seated Harrold Arryn.

"Sansa, if you're going to get up to your northern nonsense the least you could do is sit down first." he said, red from embarrassment and from admonishing her. He's quite right, Sansa reminded herself. I am not invulnerable spirit; I have a body still to mind. He eased her to her feet. "Where did you go?"

"Out to the wolfswood to warn the giants. To get them out of harm's way." Harry swallowed.

"Good thinking. Still, it wouldn't have been good to have your head dashed open on Winterfell's own floor from a fall. Shall we find your brother?" Yes, Jon will know what to do. Then she remembered Jon was a world away.

"I suppose so. Better that than reeling in the hall less than useless." she said, shaking herself. Another moment and she was ready to go, heading for the ramparts and finding the others there. While most everyone from the north proper as well as the Vale stared into the darkness, Bran wasted no time in bringing Sansa up to speed.

"The Wall has fallen. What members of the Night's Watch survived both that and the journey south have only just reached us." His face was grim but set. Sansa blinked.

"What about Last Hearth?"

"Either whatever in particular's out there stayed off the kingsroad, going through mountains and forests, or the castle was removed as an obstacle before they could send warning." Are they so close?

"Have we heard anything from the other northern houses?" "Apart from those here in person, Princess, not a word." Howland Reed said, appearing from the midst of several of his crannogmen. Not a word from the enemy, either. One would think the wights would attack straightaway with the giants headed out of reach. Then bluish light bright as day broke from every horizon from the north and the ground rumbled quietly, pebbles shaking loose from Winterfell's walls.

"What is that?" Bran shouted, Lord Reed watching with an older man's composed air. Thunder, Sansa answered in her head. Thunder from the ground.

Whatever it was moved off after a few minutes, the tempests receding and sending the castle into darkness once again.

"Well…pretty, but whatever that was supposed to be-" Bran said uncertainly. "It wasn't for us. They were trying to hit something else, someone else." Lord Howland replied. He turned finally to the north.

"They must be trying to cut the castle off from the countryside. Isolating it before they let the wights at us." He cracked his fingers. "We'd best get the rings built sooner rather than later. We'll need to work at night, I think, in torchlight if they'll stay lit."

"That's not like to please the giants." Sansa said doubtfully.

"Neither will such a tempest loosed upon their heads." Howland replied grimly. Dutifully, several fluent speakers of the Old Tongue were dredged up and informed of their task. Their faced advertised their eagerness to perform such a task.

"I'll go as well. What giants speak the Common Tongue may do better putting our words in terms more easily swallowed." Sansa said, her wariness of the big folk put quite in perspective by what else she'd seen of late. Nobody objected, mostly because Sansa suspected their minds were on whatever had happened just over the horizon. Doubtless we'll find out when the Others feel ready to throw it at Winterfell proper. She put the blinding lights and shaking ground out of her mind, intent on making certain of the giants' continued well-being. Jon would do the same. He's not here and Bran is busy with the Singers and with Meera and their babe, so the giants fall to me. What wildlings fluent enough in the Old Tongue and steeled enough to ask more of sleep-deprived giants seemed led by one older man with a bald head who limped along on a wooden peg in place of a foot. A Thenn, Sansa knew at once. They were fluent in the Old Tongue and used to obeying superiors. Maybe that discipline will rub off on the giants. Not that they were an unruly lot- if anything, giants were more reserved than men, even shy. They mind their mammoths and wander about. Precisely nothing like the stories Old Nan used to tell Bran. She made to introduce herself to the Thenn but he only looked at her.

"Know you are." he said curtly. "Firehair." He pointed to her branch. Perhaps they believe it improper to talk to me, Jon's sister? Or are they afraid of me? She didn't see fear in the bald man's face, though. No doubt they talk of me in their own circles. To the Valemen I'm simply Princess Sansa, but what am I to the Free Folk? Or the giants, for that matter? They walked out to the outer ring together, the other half-dozen wildlings giving them a wide berth. My talkative escort must be someone of ill repute. When she turned to look at them, she saw they were Thenns all but a single filthy boy who might have been of the ice-river clans. At once they stopped, every pair of eyes on her. Wary, yes, but not of the old Thenn.

"Is something wrong?" she asked finally. The boy's hanging jaw and wide eyes told her he at least spoke not a word of the Common Tongue.

"No talk. Near gond." A familiar terse voice said. Not so near. I'll need Val to explain this, she may be more helpful. The others had torches, but Sansa needed none to see the bunches of prostrate forms looming out of the night. One giant slowly rubbed his eyes with his fists. Something came trundling toward them from behind a motionless mammoth, making funny piping noises. The Thenns froze while Sansa smiled at the sight of the baby, its little trunk coming up to rub her side. A louder heavier snuffling from the mother turned several giants' heads immediately and one of them came forward to spur the baby back toward her. When the giant saw Sansa he froze in turn, the mud-brown eyes, primitive square face and shaggy black hair clear to her even in the darkness and the falling snow.

"Baelfea." he grunted quietly. I've heard that word from them before, she thought. A look to the Thenn confirmed her suspicion.

"Baelfea." he reiterated. "Old Tongue. Firehair." Sansa stood there, still and silent. So did the others, despite the cold and the snow. I'm sure I've been called worse behind my back in King's Landing, Sansa thought. I'd rather be Baelfea than a little dove. Or a little bird, for that matter. But would I rather be Baelfea than Sansa Stark?

"The dead are near. The earthen rings must be completed sooner than planned. I'm afraid work will need to be done at night to make this possible." Sansa said, the Thenn translating. She saw the giant's nostrils flare, his unkempt beard fluttering with the force of his exasperated breath. He answered in the Old Tongue.

"Torr say saw big light. Felt ground shake. Firehair want dirt faster, so do Torr." Primitive to a southerner, but not ignorant by any means.

"Do you know what it was?" she asked. It turned out the Singers are a deal more like the Others than they care to admit or have shoved in their faces. Do the giants know more of our enemy as well than anyone's bothered to ask? Torr peered into his hands.

"Men not like gond, like nagran. Men live small." He ran his tongue over his huge dark teeth. "Live small, only time to think small thinks. World big. World old. Big life in it still, life men live too small to see. Big life far away. Far above, far below." Sansa blinked.

"The Singers say just the opposite. They're afraid that the world of men will overtake the one that came before." At this, Torr laughed aloud, shaking his great head in utter bemusement. Sansa actually saw a tear roll out of one of his dark crinkled eyes to freeze in his beard. "Nagran often sad. Often weepy. Sad it not stay summer all times, sad all green must go to brown, to grey, to white. Gond say, Nagran must have rocks in head. Think same thinks since beginning. Never different. Different, any different, make Nagran sad." And some claim the giants simple. It's words they lack, not thoughts. Sansa found herself quite in agreement with the giant's words, even through the Thenn. If Branch would stop weeping over things long past and bother to look the present in the face he may find, miracle of miracles, something to approve of. Perhaps that's the problem with using the trees, at least the way the Singers use them. It ties one to the past the more the generations roll by. She spotted other giants and their mammoths moving back toward the northern section of the ring. Sansa followed, intent on making sure the giants were at least working without a horde of wights trying to get at them. Thankfully the great blocks' cutting and raising had been done in the weeks prior, leaving the moat to stop the wights simply rushing the walls except by one narrow bit the giants used as a bridge to reach the wolfswood. That same block they began to pull up once Torr spread the news that the forest was likely overrun. Only once it had been put into place did Sansa realize that with the outer ring's completion Winterfell had become an island. One about to bear the brunt of a storm the likes of which have not been seen since the Dawn. She wondered whether the mountain clans, so leery of wildlings, would be so prickly if they saw what might well be passing through their ancestral lands just then. A spearwife or an Other. Val or Howling Wind. A choice everyone in Winterfell had made, their decision advertised by their presence. If only the Others had been more rambunctious when Father was alive. Perhaps the situation would not have got so out of hand. On the way back to the castle she gave it more thought. King Robert was too drunk to see what a blind man could, and Father, bless him, was not the man to check the Others. Jon is his true heir, not me or Bran or even Robb, but Jon can look forward, a trait rare in northmen.

She was quite lost in thought when she caught sight of Brienne of Tarth's blue armor. The tall woman looked almost embarrassed, her face a deep red. For a breath Sansa thought it was because of the man she was talking with, a bit taller even than she. Then Sansa saw the burned face, the puckered hairline, and recognized the curt gravelly voice. Bran, Jon and even Howling Wind fled her mind. Then at Brienne's noticing of her the man turned. Sandor Clegane was missing an ear and his face was even more haggard than it had been the night of the Blackwater, where hellish green light had turned him from frightening to nightmarish. He's not so scary as I remember, Sansa thought. Nor so imposing. Then again, it's hard to think of a man as imposing when one has seen a giant join battle. If anything, the man looked terribly tired. I wonder where he went after the battle. What sort of road brought him back to Winterfell. She gulped, feeling suddenly self-conscious regarding her wild hair to say nothing of the walnut branch she held, and made her way through the ever-present throng of crannogmen. He looked as stunned as she felt, either unable or unwilling to move as she got closer.

"I didn't think the world could do you any more harm."

"Neither did I. Then along came a bitey blue bitch." he replied, color rising in Brienne's cheeks. No knight, Sansa remembered. Not the man she thinks on so often.

"What was the issue?"

"Your sister. Me and her were on the road, nowhere to go and nowhere to be, when-"

"Pod and I chanced across them. By the time we'd settled our differences, Arya had disappeared-"

"-we got into it, she fucking bit me, baying like a hunting hound-"

"-I was not-"

"-end of it all, I was lying on the valley floor with a broken leg, a mouthful of blood and nothing left. But one thing led to another-"

"-and here you are." Sansa finished. Brienne was still bristling, so Sansa turned to her. I had forgotten about Podrick Payne anyway. Maybe he's been keeping his head down seeing as it was his own blood that killed Lord Stark. "Speaking of young Podrick, perhaps you should make certain he's staying out of trouble, Brienne. This man and I have much to discuss, and I'd sooner do it where you needn't feel the urge to defend me." The blue beauty pursed her lips, looking hurt in her way. "You kept my mother safe. Don't think I don't want you here, Brienne." Her feelings were hard to put in words. She is a noble-minded daughter of the Seven. Of the south. What could she, blessed as she must be, know of the real world? Of wood and stone and ice and bone? "I just think this man is more fitted to what I want to say just now." She turned to the man who had once been the Hound. "Even with all our worthy visitors, there are empty rooms aplenty in Winterfell. Full barrels, too. It would please me for you to stay in the castle instead of one of the inns in the winter town. It has only recently been rebuilt, and buildings are still going up notwithstanding the war-"

"-if there's building to be done, strong backs ought be doing it. I don't need some cushy hearth-lit room." Sandor Clegane told her. I might tell him he's highborn, after a fashion. I might order it of him. That's what Sansa the Little Bird would do. Sansa the Lady. Not Baelfea, with Ramsay's whore on strings, Ramsay's hounds in tow and Ramsay's skull in hand.

"Nobody will look too hard at a man who can do the work of two, perhaps three." she said. "The smallfolk keep to their own business. Indeed, with the coming of the crannogmen they're even more reluctant to come into the castle than during the peaceful years. One inn or other will have risen up against the walls by now." All she got in reply was a short nod.

It was a small matter of pulling the skull off the branch and holding it in her off hand beneath her cloak, her red hair hidden by a hood. The same provision had been made for Sandor Clegane's face. The smallfolk of the yet-named inn were gathered tight around several tables that looked fashioned from warped or rubbish wood. It will be a painful few years, until all the splinters have been worn away. Even then, the tables will never sit even. After she slid a silver stag at him, he duly looked at the coin rather harder than their faces.

"Room or two upstairs. Breakfast an hour after first light. Stay as long as you please." he said amicably, immediately turning his back to them. Once thus lodged, Sansa removed her hood and deftly recapped the walnut branch. All the while, Sandor Clegane watched from the door, only speaking when she looked at him.

"I'd light the hearth, but you don't seem chilled." "I'm not. And you hate fire anyway." All it does is burn and blind. She sat down at the room's little table, another wobbly woebegone thing. Slowly he sat down across from her. "It's my knee," he said, "I felt it twist in the mad rush from the Wall. Hasn't been right since."

"I had no idea you were swift as a flying falcon, Sandor." Sansa asked. The puckered grimace that had become his face twisted in something like worry.

"I was on my own from the off. Never did catch a glimpse of…them once I'd gotten off the Wall. I'd just found Stranger again, I wasn't going to lose him to anyone, living or dead." Sansa felt a little flutter in her heart. That the horse had survived to reunite with his master pleased her greatly. Then her elation was tempered by uncertainty. "Stranger's no common plow horse, but…"

"Even a warhorse isn't about to outrun a blizzard." Sandor finished, nodding. "Well, all told, he didn't. He just kept running, right on through it. Even when the winds were stripping branches off trees and throwing men around, I never left the saddle." Sansa's eyebrows arched.

"Small wonder you reached the champion's circle at the Hand's tourney."

"Hang champions, hang tourneys. Stranger holds onto me, not the other way 'round." Even after Howling Wind and all the rest, Sansa found it in her to be surprised.

"You might have said something earlier."

"It's not my tale to tell. Stranger's business is his own." Sandor said stiffly.

"Where is he now?" "Someplace. Close, probably. But not where one of your fool sers will spot him and try something."

"He must eat…"

"When there's food, and only if he remembers." That made no sense to Sansa, but it was far from her chief concern. "Besides, I'm keener to know just what happened to the little bird I left trapped in a sea of green flame."

Where to start? While Sandor slowly sipped ale from a dented tankard, Sansa told him of all that had transpired since their last meeting. From being set aside by Joffrey in favor of Margaery to being married to Tyrion to being brutalized by Ramsay. To her surprise telling Sandor that part was easy, even her farce of a wedding night to the Bastard of the Dreadfort. Harder was speaking of her reunion with Jon, of seeing his ascension by the assembled lords' common assent. Of the nights she'd spent in the Haunted Forest in the body of an ice spider and the lanky brutes that slunk through the tall sentinel pines. Of Howling Wind and the Lords of the Long Night. Sandor never interrupted, never commented, just drank and listened; his eyes locked on her face. At the mention of the name Baelfea and what it meant, he stopped drinking. She'd talked more in the last hour than she had in the last year, and when her words stopped, she felt exhausted.

"You're not a little bird any longer." Sandor said. No. I'm an ice spider, glutted in her hollow beneath a fallen tree. I'm a bloom of winter roses growing over lion bones. I'm a white owl with blue eyes, on an arm clad in icy silk. I'm Lady, wherever she is. "One morning, a few days after the Red Wedding…your sister told me she saw your mother dead in the river. In a dream."

"Did you believe her?"

"Why wouldn't I?"

"You don't strike me as the…well, as the type to set stock in such things."

"After Stranger, it's not so hard to imagine. Certainly, I'm no clinking grey rat who thinks all that goes on in this world can be put on paper." Sansa found a smile curl her lips.

"It's not every man who would take kindly to learning that the person across from him made a corpse walk."

"Worse things have been done by worse men. Meat and bone, that's all we are. If you've put some to use before your enemy could, what's to piss my breeches about?" Ahoooooo. Ahoooooo. Ahoooooo. The trumpet's blaring shook Sansa from her thoughts. One of the sentries on the parapets.

"It's them. The Others." she told Sandor. "Perhaps their dead men have finally been sighted."

"Good." he replied, standing. "It's been too long since I've fought somebody. Let's ger you back to the castle first, though." At her frown he shrugged. "It isn't for your safety. I want a crack at them before you figure out how to make them crumble to the last corpse or burst into flame or some such fuckery."

Out on the ramparts the winds were steadily picking up.

"When will they come?" one guardsman asked, wrapped in a blanket and shrugging off snow. Several dirty looks made him turn red. "Just putting it out there. All this time waiting for them, now they're right outside-"

"Barnard, do us all a favor and shut your fucking mouth." the sergeant on duty muttered. One of the stormlanders, Sansa remembered. What few of them had survived from Dragonstone to waiting on the wights had become flinty as any true northmen, the sergeant in particular with his long beard and steely eyes. They follow Davos Seaworth now, or would if he were here. The day's fleeting light was already fast fading, the sun dipping into the west. It's getting harder to keep track of time. The days are shorter than normal days, the nights longer than normal nights.

"What good are we here? We ought be out at the dirt wall where we can see them, get at them." Sandor said grumpily.

"Let's see what they do first. They have three such earthen walls to scale, not to mention the moats before them, before they reach the winter town and the castle proper. Why throw ourselves into their midst just for the fight?" Sansa asked in reply. All according to Lord Howland's stratagem, she thought. Lizard-lions rarely chase their food, they spring from the bogs in ambush. They know food enough will come to them, as Lord Howland knows fight enough will come to him. The last glint of sunlight vanished, and night began to fall. At once Sansa could hear the wolfswood come alive. As such, anyway. The sound of countless rushing feet reminded her of the Battle of the Bastards- if there were ten times as many men fighting it and they'd all been rendered mute beforehand. No trumpets, no calls to arms, no cries of valor.

The combination was truly unnerving. Instantly she spotted men readying to go out to the wall if needed, if the garrison was not enough. Several giants were plodding out to the outermost ring as well, determination in their faces. I wonder if this is the start of it, Sansa thought. If this northern push is their first action, or if they've found a way to cause trouble other places as well. For the first time in a long time, Sansa felt herself go cold. The war is starting and here we are, no dragons, no second army, and no King in the North. The defenders' shouts of "Moat!" were met by a mass mobilization by the crannogmen, the olive tide pouring out of the castle and the hollow bits of ring to reinforce the contested bit of wall. As the sounds of battle joined and grew louder, Sansa braced for the worst. There were screams, shouts of pain and terror, but nothing so horrible as she imagined. Could it be the wights are stymied by the moat? That they lack the ability to scale the wall quick enough to present a true threat? It had only been a thought, the earthen rings, but it seemed as the moments became minutes and the garrison held that Sansa's simple idea had quite proved worth doing. A moment more and Bran was beside her, Meera as well, her smoky sword prominent on her hip.

"Just wights for now." Sansa said.

"For now." Branch's sullen voice replied, coming up the stone steps. "Maggots may reach the corpse first, but that doesn't dull a wolf's interest. Nor a shadowcat's, nor a bear's." Ever cheerful. There was only the faintest sound of cured leather boots fast approaching, even to Sansa's ears. Only she and Branch turned to see who was about to be on them and for a moment Sansa felt irritation at glimpsing Myranda. Is it my worry that draws her? The eyes were different though, not the green that Sansa had put into them. Blue. Blue like stars. The dead girl did not shamble along as the wights had in the Haunted Forest, nor did she pay anyone else the slightest mind. Sansa had time only to raise her arm in defense before Myranda tackled her- or rather, whatever had taken ahold of her strings bid her to. Even when Meera put her sword through the corpse's back her feral rending hands did not still. A foot away, an inch, and Sansa recognized the eyes that stared out from Myranda's face. Walls of glass, she remembered as a pair of cold hands shoved her arm aside and clasped around her throat. Or tried to. Instead, Sansa's palm caught her in the ribs. The walls of glass went wide, the mouth dropped open, and Myranda flew from the ramparts as she'd done when Theon had killed her. While chaos reigned on the ramparts and Bran frantically tried to tend to Sansa, she could not tear her eyes away from the hand that had struck Myranda. There was nothing to denote anything out of the ordinary, but Sansa felt it tingle, felt it hum. Only after he realized she was unharmed did Bran pick up on it as well. Eventually the feeling faded until her arm felt like a wet cloth, like she'd bumped her elbow on something especially hard, but the memory of what had been was crisp and clear in her mind.

"Like I said," the rough voice of Sandor Clegane said softly as he brought her to her feet. "Save some for the rest of us. Else your bastard brother will come back to Winterfell with you having won his war for him."