Marching Song, Part 10/11

[kimberlite8]

I wrote this for
dealbreaker19 as a part of the SansaxSandor letter exchange. It blossomed from what was suppose to be one letter into a full blown epistolary romance. This is the tenth letter of several letters.

Title: Marching Song
Author:
kimberlite8
Summary: Sandor's war letters to Sansa while he is on campaign. An epistolary smutfic.  "It feels so sweet to fall asleep with your words in my head, your letters underneath my hand. Like I could actually believe that with all the world has to offer, you chose to sit in this muddy tent only because I was here."
Rating: Explicit
Warning: warfare
Pairing: SanSan
Word count: 5000
Beta: A special thanks to
redgoddemandsit



6th Day of the 2nd Month, 304

Sansa,
It happens tonight, in just a few hours. A good commander must organize victory from the start and I am full of confidence that I have satisfied my duty. Nothing left except to wait for the end of daylight as storming a castle is a deed best done under the cloak of darkness and there’s always the chance that we might catch the enemy stupid with sleep. Right now, I’m sitting here alone in near silence, listening to the echo of the septon’s prayers that manage to pierce my tent. His congregation is pretty light, being made up of chiefly just the men from White Harbor but by the sound of it, they are most intent upon their devotions. The septon appealed to me to take part - ever since he caught me lighting that candle for you, he thinks we are sworn friends - but my answer was No! I don’t feel like it and don’t think I would get anything out of it. Why should a man adhere to forms if the substance has long since disappeared? For certain, I feel no twinge to beseech the Warrior for courage, nor to look towards the Seven Heavens for solace. What swallows my attention might be you can tell and its to her that I devote the final hours left to me.
You’ll be pleased to hear the news is all good. The weather is and has been all we could ask. As to the men, well, I have returned from my last inspection of the war host not an hour ago. I am so bloody proud of an army such as ours, more than simple words can convey. Are you surprised to hear me say such a thing? I admit the sentiment is new. When I was given supreme command of this campaign, the honor cheered me crazily. After all, what makes a man feel more like a man than that he should be relied on for something important? Also I was getting so bloody tired of that sad tame life. The days were near all alike - tasting the dregs of my discouraged hopes regarding you and then slinking dismally back to my bedchamber to fall asleep alone. So of course I leapt quick at the chance to play the part of the man and conquer the Dreadfort manfully and by that success claim an even greater bounty. There you have it - my fears and hopes for the future with the future part polished up and painted pretty. Your influence at work, little bird? Or might I’ve always been partial to such wishful thinking, loathe as I am to admit it. What would you say if I told you that I once hoped to find high favor with your brother Robb? That in repayment for your sister’s return, he would make me a lordling and task me with killing my brother. Ha, it’s a wonder I never asked aloud if he would give me you if I were bold and brave enough to rescue you from the lions’ den. Such is the strength of the life of dreams over actual existence.

Now, I’m not a such a silly dreaming fool that I thought this campaign would be easy. I have known enough about the real character of war to know that sieges are the worst  - for every day of glorious day of battle, months of hectic toil, monotonous and hard. It’s no surprise that even besiegers lose health and heart in their camps and ditches. I tell you, they go against my grain.  Give me open country and open combat: that’s the part of war that animates a man, puts the marcher ballads in his heart.

Truth be told, I also harbored some doubts about my abilities. I never found much pleasure in commanding before nor have done it with so many lives in my hand. True, I've been soldiering for more than twenty years and whether it be grand tactics or drilling green boys or ensuring the line of supply, I’ve done every proper labor. And with pride to be sure but it was the mirthless pride of a man who carried a heavy burden and did not mislay it.

I warrant those who I commanded didn’t find much pleasure in it either. I’m your man for battles but when it comes to the rest, I suppose in the past I didn’t lead men so much as angrily oversaw them. A captain amasses many small resentments with those kind of manners and might be I was never precisely hated but neither was I esteemed and when I came around, everybody wanted to get the hell out of my way. That was fine by me. I liked keeping myself aloof and nobody - whether they be ditch diggers or high lords, chivalrous warriors drunk on dreams of glory or the fucking reckless knights who saw war as nothing but series of unruly jousts - could escape my sour malignity. Unless there was a lot of drinking or gambling or other low entertainments around to sweeten me. I reckon this is why I never kept the same squire in service for too long. You know the current one has stuck around the longest yet? You were right, as usual, to commend him to me. Boy moves at my side like one of those preserving terrier dogs - and knows me well enough to have a costrel of wine always ready. Might be he deserves a medallion after all this is said and done. You should see him now, you might not recognize him. Strong, swarthy and brave, such a contrast to that pale, weak and fearful fellow that came to me two years ago.

I suppose he’s not the only one that’s different. I’ve changed a lot since this siege started, grown maybe, and it’s possible others can look at me in ways they couldn’t have imagined doing a year ago. Picture this in your head, my lady: long lines of men, made of the best bone and muscle in the Seven Kingdoms, standing straight underneath your fluttering grey direwolf banners. As I walked through the ranks, the faces of some of the troops actually lit up with pensive but pleasant smirks. When I smiled back, instead of my smile making the moment more tense, it gave it a certain lightness. How about that? Sansa, I wish you could have seen what I saw today - the admiration would have spurted from your arteries, girl. I swear when the drummer boys started rolling the drums, I felt the blood in my legs tingle. I wager every last man felt that too. As if although standing, we were already marching, muscles anticipating future maneuvers. Your soldiers, Lady Stark, are in excellent heart, ready to take the Dreadfort or indeed any other field of combat and trample everything down under our feet.

As for the plan of attack - we pored over that last night in my tent until the candles burned low.  Every last detail has been worked out and my captains are confident that all conceivable measures have been taken to ensure success. You know what’s funny though? All the preparation in the world and still it ends with the same air of maidenish nervousness that clouds every other council I’ve ever been in. Men go to the battlefield like girls go to their bridal bed, hoping for the best, fearing the worst, reciting the same prayers - “Mother have mercy.” Well, my lady, this isn’t the worst predicament we’ve been in, is it? A summer skirmish compared to those brutal death struggles of yesteryears. Still from the beginning, everyone understood this campaign’s not going to be some child’s scuffle that can be called off with ransoms and cries aloud for mercy. Nothing else has ever been in contemplation save the extermination of most of them that live in that pest house. Well, we've besieged the Dreadfort for more than a year. Might be we have its occupants bayed and they’ll fall underneath our blades, soft and sweet as an exhausted stag. Or might be they have still have bountiful storehouses of courage, if not food, and every last whoreson will fight with the desperate strength of the doomed. Who knows what’s to come? War is war and no man can control it.

What are you doing right now, hmm? Poring over your ledgers, I wager. Another hour and you’ll leave your solar to supervise the preparation of the evening’s meal. If I close my eyes I can almost follow you in my mind and estimate your movements. Little bird, when am I going to get to see you again? No, I must not dwell so much on that. It's hard enough waiting.

Look at me - my palms are sweating and my left thigh keeps fidgeting as sunset draws near. Bloody embarrassing. A commander should not lack for composure, I think, or failing that, where’s the cynical indifference I could summon so swift as a younger man? Hard to believe that the moment that we have been so long waiting seems really to have come. I know this sounds like shit but right now I feel like I’m a dancer, beating time in my head while waiting for the music to start to which I’ll try a new step. The song of steel: once I regarded it as the sweetest music under the stars. Bang, boom, go the battering rams and mining timber supports and I must to the front go where honest commanders belong. Where the combat is, there I’ll be, my grinning and snarling face peering through the smoke.

You’ve told me before that you admire my ferocity, do you remember that? Rest assured that I’m not wanting for any of that. Nor in sharp steel and strong arms, both of which this army is well supplied. But I must confess there is one important thing I cannot secure and that is luck. No man can. Listen, I’ve been thinking a lot about Lord Manderly. Now, I have seen death in such vast quantities and in such gruesome forms that it no longer shakes me much. Yet the Lord of White Harbour’s passing hangs like a bloody millstone around my neck. I haven’t talked about this much - I can’t remember if I talked about it at all - but I sat with him, that second to last evening before he left. Just him and me, in the shadows of the red campfires, nursing some of that fine strongwine he brought. As the night wore on, he began to talk at length about his sons, whose deaths he laid at the door of the Boltons. I longed to be back alone in my tent when he started getting into it, yet there I stayed and listened. To the father who bowed his head and wept unselfconsciously in front of another man, to the commander whose warrior’s pulse never quieted despite his years and infirmities. It rattled me deep to see him like that as in his fury and grief he resembled nothing so much the world’s saddest fiercest mastiff, long gone to fat yet still powerful enough to rip out a man’s throat. I couldn’t find any words of comfort for him and it’s not in me to be generous like that anyhow. Like a dumb mute, I could only stare up at the moonlit heavens and wish he had some of the peace that I saw there. I would have liked to have given him that peace - seize the Bastard and give him a bloodletting; I wager that would have drained the dark shadows from the old dog’s mind. But the gods indulged his hopes only to rob him of their realization. Just as they did to me with Gregor. Ever are they spiteful in their malice. The old man must be furious wherever he is. He hated and feared the thought of dying in an unmanly fashion on a sickbed, or worse, on his privy. Yet my sympathies lie not so much with poor Manderly in his grave so much as those he left behind. Did he die, far away from home, without letting his girls know such things that could have been some comfort to them? The thought of his little granddaughters weeping in that mad way he had. Seven hells. How could he have foreseen being seized by the Stranger so unexpectedly and by such a nothing? And then I must ask myself, how can I foresee my own safety? My sweet Sansa, war is war and no man can control it. Every soldier has to face the possibility that he may get unlucky and wake up dead some morning.

Ah hell, don’t I feel silly writing these words to you now? All this time I’ve been telling you that nothing’s going to happen to me. I wasn’t lying before but I confess I never wanted you to occupy your hours fretting over my situation. War asks for a lot, not just for the men who must fight them, but for the homes that must endure the sacrifice of their sons and fathers, brothers and husbands and lovers. Now, of these distinctions only the last one can be fitted to me and it gives me much pleasure mingled with no small amount of pain to know how far and how short the epithet stretches in describing my relation to you.

You know what I've been in the habit of doing as of late? Fingering that little scrap of foolery you tucked in with those socks you knitted for me. “For Sandor, who is off fighting our foes, may these soft woolen socks warm your chilled toes, and when from war and danger you depart, may a pretty knitter warm your soldier's heart.” Bloody hell girl, that was a pretty bit of Northern witchery, wasn't it? You sure can bind a man with nothing more than yarn and gossamer. I'll have you know that piece of fluff reached the bottom of my heart and made a fucking hole in it. After that, I started to write to you not as a sworn sword to his liege lady but as a man to his maid. Your replies were fickle in the extreme, varying from shallow childlike adulations to the cold garb of formality and always dead silent on the things I longed most to hear from you. My mind could only lapse into that state of blind confusion you put me in regular. Sansa, you enchanting slut, you can’t ever understand what you do to me. You source your contentment from your brothers and the grey walls of Winterfell and even your ancient quavering nurse - while you are my little all. Fuck me, that so sharp a happiness should come to me only in my thirty-second year. And fuck the gods if they mean to school me yet again on their best-loved subject of ‘life is sweet and you can’t have it.’

Sansa, there’s so much I wanted to get out of you. I never even got to kiss you on the lips, or anywhere else that’s nice. Bussing your knuckles is the most I've ever secured. How bloody pitiful is that? I got the same thing from the High Septon when that bugger came to decree that you were so immaculate a virgin that would not taint the purest heaven and no damned devious dwarf’s wife. All those months we spent alone travelling up North with nothing to between us save my crazy monk man restraint. All because I had felt I was unworthy of you and must do penance or some such horseshit. When should a man mind having what is too good for him? Never, that’s when. I should have had my joy of you then and there. Sure, it might have given me trouble but what’s the point of a man dying with no troubles if he has no joys either? The thought that I should get my quietus with the question of what you might taste like unanswered - seven hells, I’m angry. Bitterly angry. Have a care when they hand you my bones, there’d be enough hoarded rage in them to melt the frost from the perpetually frozen lichyard.

Little bird, my apologies for the interruption. Two of the rudest buggers I ever had the misfortune of laying eyes on came into my tent and wasted a long moment of my time. I offended them with my manners but with whatever time I have left, I only want to spend them conversing with you, not anybody else. So let’s see, where was I?

I have just read over what I wrote and in a fresh light what it says is “in the event of my death I must write to you that my biggest regret is never having fucked you when I had the chance.” Bloody stupid, dog.

I’m doing a fine job at offering you comfort, aren’t I? I suppose my ramblings have shown me up for the dirty uncouth brute that I have always been. Ever rage and recrimination come prompt at my bidding but like rude guests, they keep on warming a chair long after I’ve begged them to leave. Please don’t be offended at my rubbish, girl. I regret that there are so many doors between us still left unopened is what I’m trying to say. Believe me, I have felt for  you all kinds of love at once. Always you concentrate all my senses, intensify all colors, deepen all delight so the world around me seems brighter, clearer, more beautiful and brimming with possibilities, marvelous and new. Like I was a man brimming with possibilities; someone new and shinier, wiped off of the old defects that sullied me.

I confess to you now that’s why I wrote seldom at times. I wanted to talk to you when I could be that man, generous and courteous and full of good cheer. Not the same bloody rotten bastard that made you feel sick and small with his dark sayings and darker moods. Believe me, I see it and I feel it - the full load of fear and apprehension you bear, about me and this war, about how to feed and govern a people on the ruins of the North. How could I add even a feather’s weight to my sweet girl’s troubles? Knowing as I do that beneath her calm exterior she carries a heart of lead. Yes, I live in a tent in a war camp yet whenever my mind wanders back to Winterfell, I am filled with guilt for I know I am not the one to be most pitied. Sansa, the gods know that I always wished you safe and happy. Would I were always there to chase away your tears and fight off your sobs and carry those loads you can’t.

Little bird, are there deeper things I’ve left unsaid that I should have said otherwise? I’ve always been a chatterer with you, haven’t I? If I’ve ever talked your ear off, you only have yourself to blame, being so easy to talk to. Yet why have I seldom said the things you most wanted to hear? Strange that. I cannot full explain myself. True, maids have a way of knowing or feeling what their men feel but I suppose they like to hear it also. Bloody hell, I feel bad in every respect. This is suppose to be my ‘goodbye for the present’ letter yet I have written mostly a military accounting and have not once said

I LOVE YOU

There - I wrote that extra big across the page by way of emphasis.

What else can I say beyond that? Perhaps nothing and all that exists before and after those words is just me making noise. Still, you have said before that a reading a letter from me is too like the lightning, over before you can say it’s lightning, so I will continue on until called away.

You know when I first wrote those words to you, they made me break out in a fine sheen of sweat. Not because I lacked conviction but because I felt shy. You think that’s funny? It is somewhat: I’m a grown man, not a boy to be stricken with stumble tongue and sweaty brow. It’s only I was afraid you might find the words silly coming from me, as “silly as an ox beetle having feelings for a butterfly.”  Yes, I did overhear your kingly brother say that to you when I interrupted him in your solar that one time. I had to stifle a snort of laughter - for all his premature agedness, what can he know about real true honest feelings between a man and a woman? It sure is funny in an infuriating way how people get these notions about you that have little to do with the real you at all. Now that I think about it, I don’t suppose I’ve made a real first impression on a single soul in over fifteen years. Everywhere I go people, great and small, presume they know all about me because they heard some stories about the Hound.

The terrible thing is that  the stories other people tell about you, you begin to believe yourself. Sansa, when you wrote about feeling inadequate - “if only I wasn’t so inadequate at everything” - and then went on about how you make a mess of things that should be simple, I felt real sad when I read that. Guilty too. You got sharp wits and sound instincts, trouble is you don’t trust them. Whose bloody fault is that? I’ve called you stupid from almost the very start and gods know how many times I’ve said it since then. If anyone else had said the things to you that I’ve said to you, I would have cut their tongue out with a blunt razor.

It’s usual for me to savage and maul a victim but they had it coming in some way. With you, I suppose I wanted you to see the world as it is and not as it should be. Your father’s death thrust you into the lions’ den bare-handed, so to speak, and the education he gave you left you dangerously weak-minded to start with. For a man like me, who never imagined mankind as anything other than a cruel marriage between the violent and their victims, to be defenseless and weak was the worst fate of all. My sweet girl, I held you in my heart from the moment you laid your soft hand and soft soft eyes on me and said “He was no true knight” as if it was the gravest insult in the world. After that I tried to look out for you, instruct you, because I never wanted any harm to befall you. “I could keep you safe” - ha, one fucking blunder from beginning to end. It near kills me when I think about it.  Still time marches in only one direction and you can’t change the past. Only learn from it. Grow.

Do you remember showing me where on that sentinel tree your father had marked your growth in little knifed notches? I’d pass by that tree and on occasion run my forefinger across those notches and think to myself: so this is how tall the little bird was when she learned to count to ten and this is how tall she was when she learned to write her own name and this is how tall she when she threaded her first needle and this is how tall she when she began to play the high harp and this is how tall she was when saw a boy and batted her eyelashes at him and this is how tall she was when she put away her dolls. That last little notch? That would have been the height of you when you left Winterfell with your father and your sister and your wolf, none of whom returned alive except you. Right there was your entrance into and departure from girlhood, laid out with the accuracy of a map.

Sansa, if only you could see and examine your growth on the inside in the past three years just as easy. I can, having watched you so close. You're everything fair and wise and good in this foul world otherwise full of shit. I don't mean those virtues are yours because you are stupid or lack the courage to see what is evident. Not anymore. The Lannisters and Littlefinger - may they all burn in hell - made good work of rubbing your nose in their own shittiness, didn’t they? Still I don’t know how you do that thing you do - find the spaces between the big steaming shit piles of this world and make your peace there while the rest of us are flinging filth at each other while shouting our own hands don’t stink. Do you understand what I’m trying to say? I should have digested it more and said it pretty and used ‘shit’ less. Get rid of the idea that you are inadequate is what I’m trying to say. You’re pretty remarkable from where I’m standing. Most of us, you see, are hobbled by the bad things that are done to us but you have been fortified by it. Your tragedies have released in you strength and courage and wisdom. Made you kinder too. Do you know how rare that is? I’ve met enough examples of the millions of human beings who labor and toil their quick years upon the earth and then die all over the place to know it’s fucking rare. I swear, watching you in action sometimes is like witnessing a herd of unicorn. You leave me kind of awestruck. Fearful too. I confess it has been my greatest worry that you’ll outgrow me like you outgrew your dolls. That those canny eyes of yours will finally see me as I am and not as I should be.

Little bird, should I die, I die knowing you love me. At least that's what you said and better yet, that's how you acted. No one can deprive me of that honor. You know I spoke to Willas Tyrell before he departed Winterfell? Or rather he spoke to me or to the night air and I just happened to be around, worthy of as much regard as a dead dog lying in a fighting pit. Anyhow, Tyrell said: “Lady Sansa knows how to love. A man would find great pleasure in being loved by her.” Ha. Ha. I have called him many names under the sun - a cripple and a whoreson and a Lannister with thorns - but I never did say he was a fool. That you chose to love me and wanted no part of anyone else: believe me, I am all gratitude and just pride.

The sky’s turning inky-blue now. I must write faster. Sansa, listen, Tyrell was right - you were made to love a man and be loved by him in return. Should anything happen to me, don't allow it to bow your head forever, girl. You hear me?  Life is for the living, a worn out saying if there ever was one, but no truer truth.

As for me, well, if there's anyplace else, I'll be there waiting for you. Though I am almost sure there isn't. Seven Heavens or the Seven Hells, they mean spit to me and I cannot long for or dread what I do not believe in. You’ve asked me about this before and so now I must satisfy your curiosity. You need never worry that I will ever surrender in premature haste, whether it be in battle or under other circumstances. Yes, I confess, like you, there have been times when I’ve felt robbed of all the things that make life bearable and in those woeful states the Stranger's whispers have bent my mind and made me think of the darkness. When your sister left me to die slow by the side of a tree, it solaced me to picture returning back there. To the life of dumb roots and the grace of the swaying autumn grass from whence sprung my proud forefathers and to know at last the peace of simple things.

Yet I’m pondering that ending now and I tell you, it no longer pleases me in the slightest. Ever you draw me from the dirt, little bird.

You remember how you wrote about being a kitchenmaid? “You’d see me in the kitchens on one of your afternoons off and you’d pull up a chair and spend your hours lazing about, watching me ready the meals and talking to me, oh about everything and anything, in that molten-metal voice of yours.” I liked that, I liked it a lot. I remembered every word, you see. My sweet girl, I have only found peace here on this earth with you, I am only wholly in place here with you. And if I am to live in the hereafter, let it be with you. But let me speak blunt: you are too wonderful a woman to go to waste and grow cold and ugly from lack of use. Sansa, whatever you wanted to get out of me, I want you to have it. So go out and get it with someone worthy, if I can't be him. Only, little bird, please, please, maintain a little place, some quiet sweet-smelling snuggery for me in your heart. As long as you guard my memory and love it well, I won’t be really dead is my way of thinking. So go find me a comfortable chair and always keep a warm hearthfire glowing and the flowers fresh and let me laze about there for an uninterrupted age with just you talking to me. If I ever get back to you, you can be sure I’m setting up something like that for real. That’s my haven and my heaven - dug in deep and sumptuously supplied with everything I need, in you.

Ah hell, old Time is summoning me and there’s not much else left for me to say. I’m leaving this letter in the care of Maester Samwell to send to you later, after the battle is well under way. He has a quick perception of things and I reckon he must know. I reckon everyone who has ever seen me speak of you must know. They can read it in my eyes - they light up like candles in my head whenever the Lady Sansa’s name is on my lips. Little bird, I hope very soon to write to you again. To boast to you of victory, and assure you of my health and welfare, and to make you laugh over the japes and fun of war at a more fitting time for japery. Now it has turned too serious.

If you don’t hear from me, well, whatever possessions I have, I leave to you to dispose of as you will. Except for the dirk made of Valyrian steel: tell Rickon I give that to him as a kind remembrance of me. As for my gold, divide it among those who come home from this campaign and give an extra something to the camp cook Turnip and my squire. Take care of my dog, my horse should the gods preserve him, and my little all-she whom I would love and cherish and protect even more than I do, if I knew how.

Sansa, I write no more. I embrace you tenderly my sweet girl. Kiss me now. And love me, love me always.

Sandor

Readers, this is the penultimate letter. Only one left and then I write no more. Thank you for all your kudos and comments, especially as my updates have gotten fewer and farther between.