Post by The Smith on Nov 20, 2013 22:34:07 GMT -5
Sansa Lannister rode out of the city of Oldtown, alone. She wanted a chance to stretch her mare's legs without the burden of being civil to a gaggle of Hightower maidens, who were like to be either annoying or boringly honorable, from what she had seen of their male kin so far. The Hightowers had a beautiful castle and beautiful things, and she quite liked the city, but Sansa was most at home in the saddle, with the wild woods around her.
"Your grandmother will be furious with you," Ser Norys had warned when she had stolen down to the stables to saddle her mare. "Let me at least chaperone you, so nobody can say that you rode off by yourself."
"I don't need a chaperone," she had retorted, strapping her sword to her waist. "What do you imagine will happen to me in a country that has a river called the Honeywine?"
"I dare not imagine," Ser Norys had replied dryly. "I will be amused if you come back bruised and bedraggled on foot, however, and not at all surprised."
She'd stuck her tongue out at him and kicked her mare forward. It had been a great relief to see the open highway before her finally, flanked by the river on one side and fields of flowers and distant woods on the other.
Sansa cantered through the fields, disappearing into the woods. Her mare was nimble-footed and swift, with a sensitive mouth that responded to the lightest touch of the reins. Without stumbling once, the mare turned a tight corner and sped forward as Sansa decided to chase a hare for the fun of it...
...and skidded to a halt in a small clearing, where they found a man worn peasant clothes kneeling over a dead doe. An arrow stuck out of the doe's neck, and a black pool of blood surrounded her. Sansa had to keep her mare well in hand, for the scent of blood made the horse half-rear in alarm.
"Who are you?" she demanded of the man. Something about him made her suspicious, and she trusted her instincts. "Did you kill that doe?"
He had frozen at the sight of the girl on her horse, and his hand slowly slid to the hilt of a dagger at his waist. She had not looked like nobility at first, despite that fine horse. But her voice decided the matter for him.
"Who wants to know?" he asked warily. "Of course I killed it. It's my deer. You can be on your way now."
"It's Lord Hightower's deer," Sansa said. She had developed a keen ability to detect lies, a skill she had honed in her family, where everyone lied to each other. Her mother had taught her how to detect such things. Tiny tell-tale signs on his face gave away the deception - the pauses, the shifty eyes, the defensiveness. "You're a poacher, aren't you? Unless Lord Hightower has given you leave to hunt in his woods, which I doubt. Do you have a writ that you can show me, with Hightower's seal on it?"
He hesitated, eyes narrowing.
"No, I did not think so. You shall come back to the Hightower with me." She drew her sword. "And Lord Hightower will have your hand chopped off for poaching, or send you to the Wall."
"I'll send you to the seven hells before that happens," he snarled, and he leaped over the doe's carcass to lunge at her. Sansa was ready for him. She had the advantage of being mounted, and was armed with a sword instead of a dagger. Her mare neatly sidestepped his charge and whirled so that Sansa could engage him. It only took a few moments for Sansa to knock the dagger out of his hands and throw him to the ground.
"Please spare me," he begged, all the defiance gone from him with her sword pointed at his chin. "Don't take me to your lord. Please. I'm a desperate man, just trying to provide for my family."
"That's what they all say," Sansa replied unsympathetically. "And he's not my lord. I am a guest at the Hightower."
"Please!" he said. "You can come to my home and see. I have a wife and four children to provide for. I used to be a cartwright in the village of Lower Crinkley, just up the river, but a rival cartwright drove me out of business and burned my shop. I have debts to pay and a family to feed and clothe and shelter. If you report me to Lord Hightower, you will kill us all."
Sansa hesitated. She had seen her father deal with enough robbers and poachers to be skeptical of such tales, but this man's story had the ring of truth to it. Normally, when poachers or robbers tried lying to her father, there were little signs that gave away the deception. A nose scratched, a mouth briefly covered, or an exaggerated look of distress. But this man's eyes never wavered from hers, he was not sweating, and he didn't seem to be talking unusually fast or slow. Instinct told her that he was being truthful. Still watching him with narrowed eyes, Sansa sheathed her sword. "What did you intend to do with this doe?" she asked, cocking her head towards the carcass. "It'll give you some good eating if you salt it. Or did you plan to sell it?"
"It's for eating," he replied. "We've been reduced to scraps today."
"What's your name?"
"Will, if it please m'lady."
It does not please me. Sansa was torn. She felt her duty to Lord Hightower keenly. She was his guest, and it was the law. Her upbringing as a Lannister had certainly not made Sansa accustomed to sympathizing with the plight of smallfolk, and her natural sympathies lay with Lord Gwayne and the protection of his woods.
On the other hand, she could not imagine being in such desperate financial straits that a man would risk losing his hand, or being sent to the Wall, in order to save his family from bankruptcy and starvation. Such circumstances were unthinkable to her, and it moved her deeply to see his desperation and fear. But would it not be a betrayal of Lord Hightower? Would she violate her guest right if she helped this nobody from some village called Lower Crinkley?
But will Lord Hightower really miss one deer? asked a little voice in her head. You feasted on boar and pigeon pie and a swan roasted in its plumage last night.
"I'll never do it again," he promised.
"I know what a poacher's promises are worth," Sansa said. "When you drag this deer home, cut out the heart and take it to your village sept. Lay it before the Mother, light a candle to Her, and pray that the next time you poach game in these woods, it is not the Hightowers who catch you."
She dismissed him impatiently as he cried out his thanks and kissed her hand, and turned her horse away to ride away from the scene. She was not convinced in her decision, and felt that for the first time, life had become more complicated than she had initially thought it would be. Sansa had never guessed that she would feel sympathy for a poacher.
After some while, she began to notice that her horse showed the signs of thirst. There was a pretty village in the distance, with a sheltered well in a grove of lemon trees. As she rode up to the well, she saw a frail young woman with a dirt-smeared face and raggedy clothes, weeping.
Sansa was impatient with weepers. "Will you water my horse?" she asked. She dug into her velvet coin pouch and tossed a couple of copper stars into the dirt, by the girl's bare feet. The girl was around Sansa's own age, but Sansa was completely disinterested in her. Peasants were people that one gave orders to, and ruled over.
"Aye," the girl replied in a muffled voice, wiping her tears. She drew water from the well in silence, punctured only by an occasional sniffle, and set the bucket on the stone edge of the well. As the mare quaffed the water eagerly, Sansa dismounted to stretch her legs a little.
The girl had been watching her. "Will the young master spare another star, if it please him?"
Sansa was more shocked that she had been addressed, rather than that she had been mistake for a boy. With her short hair, athletic, lithe body and small breasts, it was something that happened often. Especially since she chose to ride in breeches.
"It's my lady," she said. She sighed at the request, but the Lannister in her could not be miserly. She opened her pouch a tossed the girl another copper star. "I suppose life grows more expensive around here."
"No," the girl whispered. "I just want to visit the apothecary."
For the first time, Sansa paid attention to the girl. Maybe it was something in her voice, or something in her face, but whatever it was, Sansa's suspicious instincts were aroused. This girl is frightened, she realized. And she wishes to hide something.
Sansa had had enough of peasants' secrets for one afternoon, and half considered just riding away. All she had to do was mount her mare, turn back to the highway, and she'd be back at Oldtown inside of an hour. The fears of a little village girl were none of her business. She had given the girl three copper stars, after all.
And yet...
Sansa looked at the girl again. She was so small and pitiful and frail-looking, as if a gust of wind would knock her over. Her limbs were thin, her hair thin and disheveled, her eyes ringed with shadows. It occurred to Sansa that no young maiden ought to have eyes like that.
Sansa looked at the way the girl's toes curled in the dirt. Dirty toenails. Callused soles, hard as leather. What a very hard life these people led, she suddenly thought.
She did not have the most tender manner, unlike her mother or her aunt, or her sister Teirney, but Sansa tried her best. She walked over to the girl, sat beside her, and pulled a small bag of roasted peanuts out of her pocket.
"The cook at the Hightower gave me these to munch on while I ride," she said, offering the pouch of peanuts to the startled village girl. "You look like you need them. What's your name? I'm Sansa."
"Oh, m'lady, I can't..."
"They are just peanuts," Sansa said, feeling embarrassed. From the girl's expression, she seemed to think Sansa was parting with a great treasure. If only she knew how small my gift was, Sansa thought.
The girl took the peanuts tentatively, muttering thanks, and then mumbling her name so softly that Sansa had to ask her to repeat it.
"Nell, m'lady."
"Well, Nell, you are the second distressed person I've seen today," Sansa said, trying to sound cheerful. "First I find a man from Lower Crinkley named Will, babbling about his family problems, and now I find Teary Nell...what's wrong?" she looked at the girl Nell in concern, for she had not missed how the girl had started, eyes widening.
"Nothing, m'lady," the girl jumped to her feet. "I have to go."
"Wait," Sansa said, also getting to her feet. "What's wrong? You're frightened."
"I am not, m'lady," she said, and Sansa could tell at once that she was lying.
"I think you are," she said. A thought suddenly struck her. "It was when I mentioned the village, wasn't it? And it reminded you of something? Is that village over there Lower Crinkley?"
There was furtive look in the girl's eyes, a slight hesitation, before she said rather too eagerly, "Aye - aye, m'lady, that's the village over there. I remembered I have..."
"No," Sansa's eyes were narrowed. "I was wrong. It was because I mentioned the man I had met." From the girl's face, she could tell she had guessed right. "The man Will, who I met in the woods. Is that it? Why are you afraid?"
The girl almost fled, tears streaming down her face, but Sansa leaped after her quickly and caught her hand. She forced the girl, gently and kindly but firm as steel, to eventually speak. And then she wished that she hadn't.
Nell, it turned out, was Will's daughter. And he crept to her pallet every night, when he was in his cups, and took her as he took his wife.
"It don't matter if I tell you!" Nell cried, sobbing now. "I wanted to tell someone, afore the secret et me up. I've sinned and I'll sin no more. I'll get a poison from the apothecary, and if he won't give it to me then I'll go to Mother Tess, her that's the woods witch, and she'll see to me. I'm done. I'd rather give my body to the Stranger than to let him touch me again."
Sansa looked at the girl's dirty tear-stained face, seeing how much the girl blamed herself for this, and how much it shamed her and horrified her. She felt sick, and enraged. He looked so honest. An honest village man, driven to desperation in order to provide for his family. That is all I saw. For all her pride in her ability to read faces, Sansa had read this one wrong. So, so, so wrong.
"Will your father go directly home after he catches this deer?" she asked quietly.
"No, m'lady," the girl said. "Likely he'll get drunk first, he keeps a wineskin on him. But I must go to Mother Tess..."
"No," Sansa caught her arm. "No woods witch is going to help you kill yourself. And your father will not touch you again. You are under my protection now."
"Your protection?" the girl turned to her with wary, frightened eyes. "Who are you?"
"A very angry person," Sansa replied, mounting up again. "Go home. And take this." She reached into her pocket, and withdrew her velvet pouch. It was packed tight with gold and silver and copper, and barely jingled when she threw the entire pouch to Nell, who caught it and stared at it in wonder. "If you aren't getting any income from his cartwright business, that should see you through the rest of the year, until your family finds its feet again. Tell your mother that a widow finds a great deal of sympathy, and she should make use of it."
Before the girl could respond to that, Sansa spurred her horse and the mare shot forward, smooth as silk. They disappeared into the woods as the girl Nell watched, and before long Sansa found herself in the clearing where she had left Will and his stolen doe. The clearing was empty. She followed the trail of blood from where he had dragged the carcass, and soon found Will sitting on a fallen log, drunk as a green boy newly knighted. The doe carcass was bound up with rope beside him.
"Is this what you do after every poached kill?" she asked, and he jumped and turned around. "Get yourself drunk, haul the kill home, and rape your daughter to celebrate?"
Will had initially greeted her with a drunken smile, but that faded as Sansa began to speak. She saw the momentary look of shock in his eyes, noted the hesitation as he absorbed what she said and figured out how to respond.
This isn't your duty, a part of her mind said. This is Lord Hightower's duty. Drag him before Lord Hightower and ask him to dispense justice. These are his smallfolk, not yours. But she had allowed this man to poach Lord Hightower's deer, a fact that would almost certainly come out as Lord Hightower questioned the man Sansa did not want that. Besides, she wanted the personal pleasure of doing this herself. Sansa was a bundle of angered innocence. She was angry at Will. She was angry at herself. She longed to hurt him as he had hurt his daughter.
"What is m'lady talking about?" Will said. "You wouldn't accuse me of such things, would you? I know it's wrong of me to drink, but a poor man needs whatever consolation from his hard life that he can find." He smiled ingratiatingly, his eyes gentle.
An honest face, she thought, rage building inside her. Honest eyes. She dismounted and drew her sword in one fluid motion. Why didn't I see it?
"You're a liar," she said in a low, trembling voice, advancing towards Will as he stumbled back in alarm and fell over the log. "You're a bad man." She struck him across the face, hard, with the flat of her blade. Then she struck him again, this time drawing blood on his cheek. He gave a muffled groan, and raised one hand to shield himself from her blows while the other hand went for his dagger. That pricked her to greater fury.
"Don't you DARE!" she yelled, knocking the dagger out of his hand and cutting his hand multiple times in the process. "You want to fight me, after what you did? I'll kill you! I'll cut you into a thousand pieces and let you rot here beside this deer carcass! When I'm done with you, you'll wish you had been everything a good father should be, instead of a MONSTER!"
But fighting Will with her sword held no savor for her, she quickly realized. He was unarmed, and Sansa was too honorable to enjoy beating him with a sword, as satisfying as it was to hear his cowardly yelps of pain. And so she threw the sword aside, and lunged at him with her fists. It should have been an easy victory for him, but he was weakened by many cuts, and could barely use his hands without flinching in pain, and was bruised by her other blows. Sansa, on the other hand, was a flurry of fists and knees and boots. She was a strong and muscled girl despite her slender body, and it was very satisfying to break his nose and kick his groin and batter him with everything she had.
And when he lay cowering in the dirt, begging forgiveness, she reached for her sword and prepared to deliver the killing blow...
...And stopped.
When he lay there, weak and craven and bleeding, begging a girl like her to spare him, curled up in a ball, she saw how small he was suddenly. Will was a small, weak person, smaller and weaker than his frail daughter. How can a monster be so weak? she wondered. Killing him is stepping on an ant.
And when he looked into her eyes, she hesitated still further. Those eyes were pleading, and despite her righteous anger, they pierced her. Sansa had never killed anyone in her life, and despite all her blunt speech and aggression, she had a kind heart. It was one thing to bring down game on dozens of hunts, but quite another to kill a man. Sansa wondered how she could be so weak herself, so incapable to making the killing blow to someone who clearly deserved it.
Make an end of it, she told herself sternly. If you don't, he will go back and rape his daughter, and countless other girls. He will drink and drink and indebt himself further, ruining his family. He doesn't deserve to live.
Her sword didn't move.
You'll never know what kind of man he'll become though, a voice seemed to whisper in her head. You don't know if he'll amend his ways. You don't know who needs him and loves him and will mourn him if you kill him.
She still felt rage, though it was tempered by pity. "Stop sniveling like a baby," she ordered, her grip tightening on her sword's leather hilt. "Unlace your breeches and take them off."
He was startled. "W-what?"
"Do as I say."
He gave her a red, bloody grin. "You decided to sample the goods, did you?" he asked slyly. "Nell make you curious?"
That was all she needed to hear to set her conscience at ease. "Do. It. Now."
Smiling cockily, he did as she bid now. "I'll not be shy to say it, you've never seen a cock like this," he said, as it swung free. "Maiden or not. Are you a maid, sweetling? Ol' Will can fix that for you."
Sansa had never seen a cock before, and had never been particularly curious to see one. The sight of Will repulsed her. It was heavy and bulbous and ungroomed, and the very design of it seemed hideous and unappealing in her eyes. Knowing what he had done with it did not help.
Keeping an eye on him, she retrieved more rough rope from his clothsack, and tied him up around a tree. When he protested, she reminded him that he could either do as he was told and hope for the best, or fight her and die.
"The little lady has kinks, does she?" he said, but now he sounded hopeful and fearful, as if he dared not imagine any other possibility, and hoped he could sway her mind. "Knew it. Figured you for a girl who likes different things, what with that short hair of yours."
She tied him up wordlessly. Her heart was pounding in her ears now, and it was only her rage and her conviction that it was her duty to protect Nell that kept her going.
Sansa found his dagger in the dirt, and cleaned the blade with Will's sleeve. That would do. It would not be as clean as it needed to be, but if he died from an infection, she would not mourn him. And she had no intention of using her noble, castle-forged sword on this beast's testicles.
Feeling nausea rising within her, she grabbed hold of his cock with one hand and lifted it up so that she could see the sack beneath. Sansa had a rudimentary knowledge of this procedure, as she had see it done on horses or dogs at Casterly Rock, but had never done it herself. Her nausea was due to the fact that she had to touch his disgusting private parts, not at the prospect of gelding him.
Will had begun screaming, begging her to stop as he writhed and fought against the ropes, but she had bound him securely.
"Hold still," she said curtly. "I've never done this before."
And she cut him. His screams echoed through the forest, a high-pitched shriek of agony and fear. His bladder voided, piss and blood splashing to the ground together.
It was clumsily done and took longer than it should have, but Sansa was satisfied that it had worked when she observed the finished effect. The contents of that sack lay in bloody ruins on the ground, a sight that reviled her as much as the fact that his blood covered her fingers. She hated that she had been forced to touch him.
"Bandage yourself up with some of that cloth I saw in your bag," she said, cutting the ropes that bound him. He was screaming and shaking and sobbing, and sagged to the floor. "Take the carcass home, and leave this village behind. I will know if you don't. Besides, there is nothing for you here after this. Only shame."
So saying, she took her horse by the bridle, and stepped over him as he lay on the ground crying. She walked her horse to the riverbank, and knelt to wash her hands - and washed them again, and again, and again. Revenge had not brought any sweetness to her, only a sick feeling in her stomach.
She rode back to the city in a brooding silence, and gave her mare over to the grooms of the Hightower, instead of unsaddling and rubbing the horse down herself, as she usually did.
"Ser Norys was looking for you, m'lady," a groom said. "Lady Winifred wishes to know where you have been."
"Nobody needs to know anything," she snapped, and stalked off to the bathing room adjacent to her chambers. A maid filled it with hot water at her request, and Sansa sank into the tub, scrubbing herself furiously. When she was done, she dried herself and went to her bed in a cotton underrobe, thinking of Nell and her family, wishing the world wasn't quite so full of injustice.
Result:
- Sansa gains Novice in Hand-to-Hand
- Sansa gains Noteworthy in Deception
- Sansa moves towards Noteworthy in Riding
"Your grandmother will be furious with you," Ser Norys had warned when she had stolen down to the stables to saddle her mare. "Let me at least chaperone you, so nobody can say that you rode off by yourself."
"I don't need a chaperone," she had retorted, strapping her sword to her waist. "What do you imagine will happen to me in a country that has a river called the Honeywine?"
"I dare not imagine," Ser Norys had replied dryly. "I will be amused if you come back bruised and bedraggled on foot, however, and not at all surprised."
She'd stuck her tongue out at him and kicked her mare forward. It had been a great relief to see the open highway before her finally, flanked by the river on one side and fields of flowers and distant woods on the other.
Sansa cantered through the fields, disappearing into the woods. Her mare was nimble-footed and swift, with a sensitive mouth that responded to the lightest touch of the reins. Without stumbling once, the mare turned a tight corner and sped forward as Sansa decided to chase a hare for the fun of it...
...and skidded to a halt in a small clearing, where they found a man worn peasant clothes kneeling over a dead doe. An arrow stuck out of the doe's neck, and a black pool of blood surrounded her. Sansa had to keep her mare well in hand, for the scent of blood made the horse half-rear in alarm.
"Who are you?" she demanded of the man. Something about him made her suspicious, and she trusted her instincts. "Did you kill that doe?"
He had frozen at the sight of the girl on her horse, and his hand slowly slid to the hilt of a dagger at his waist. She had not looked like nobility at first, despite that fine horse. But her voice decided the matter for him.
"Who wants to know?" he asked warily. "Of course I killed it. It's my deer. You can be on your way now."
"It's Lord Hightower's deer," Sansa said. She had developed a keen ability to detect lies, a skill she had honed in her family, where everyone lied to each other. Her mother had taught her how to detect such things. Tiny tell-tale signs on his face gave away the deception - the pauses, the shifty eyes, the defensiveness. "You're a poacher, aren't you? Unless Lord Hightower has given you leave to hunt in his woods, which I doubt. Do you have a writ that you can show me, with Hightower's seal on it?"
He hesitated, eyes narrowing.
"No, I did not think so. You shall come back to the Hightower with me." She drew her sword. "And Lord Hightower will have your hand chopped off for poaching, or send you to the Wall."
"I'll send you to the seven hells before that happens," he snarled, and he leaped over the doe's carcass to lunge at her. Sansa was ready for him. She had the advantage of being mounted, and was armed with a sword instead of a dagger. Her mare neatly sidestepped his charge and whirled so that Sansa could engage him. It only took a few moments for Sansa to knock the dagger out of his hands and throw him to the ground.
"Please spare me," he begged, all the defiance gone from him with her sword pointed at his chin. "Don't take me to your lord. Please. I'm a desperate man, just trying to provide for my family."
"That's what they all say," Sansa replied unsympathetically. "And he's not my lord. I am a guest at the Hightower."
"Please!" he said. "You can come to my home and see. I have a wife and four children to provide for. I used to be a cartwright in the village of Lower Crinkley, just up the river, but a rival cartwright drove me out of business and burned my shop. I have debts to pay and a family to feed and clothe and shelter. If you report me to Lord Hightower, you will kill us all."
Sansa hesitated. She had seen her father deal with enough robbers and poachers to be skeptical of such tales, but this man's story had the ring of truth to it. Normally, when poachers or robbers tried lying to her father, there were little signs that gave away the deception. A nose scratched, a mouth briefly covered, or an exaggerated look of distress. But this man's eyes never wavered from hers, he was not sweating, and he didn't seem to be talking unusually fast or slow. Instinct told her that he was being truthful. Still watching him with narrowed eyes, Sansa sheathed her sword. "What did you intend to do with this doe?" she asked, cocking her head towards the carcass. "It'll give you some good eating if you salt it. Or did you plan to sell it?"
"It's for eating," he replied. "We've been reduced to scraps today."
"What's your name?"
"Will, if it please m'lady."
It does not please me. Sansa was torn. She felt her duty to Lord Hightower keenly. She was his guest, and it was the law. Her upbringing as a Lannister had certainly not made Sansa accustomed to sympathizing with the plight of smallfolk, and her natural sympathies lay with Lord Gwayne and the protection of his woods.
On the other hand, she could not imagine being in such desperate financial straits that a man would risk losing his hand, or being sent to the Wall, in order to save his family from bankruptcy and starvation. Such circumstances were unthinkable to her, and it moved her deeply to see his desperation and fear. But would it not be a betrayal of Lord Hightower? Would she violate her guest right if she helped this nobody from some village called Lower Crinkley?
But will Lord Hightower really miss one deer? asked a little voice in her head. You feasted on boar and pigeon pie and a swan roasted in its plumage last night.
"I'll never do it again," he promised.
"I know what a poacher's promises are worth," Sansa said. "When you drag this deer home, cut out the heart and take it to your village sept. Lay it before the Mother, light a candle to Her, and pray that the next time you poach game in these woods, it is not the Hightowers who catch you."
She dismissed him impatiently as he cried out his thanks and kissed her hand, and turned her horse away to ride away from the scene. She was not convinced in her decision, and felt that for the first time, life had become more complicated than she had initially thought it would be. Sansa had never guessed that she would feel sympathy for a poacher.
After some while, she began to notice that her horse showed the signs of thirst. There was a pretty village in the distance, with a sheltered well in a grove of lemon trees. As she rode up to the well, she saw a frail young woman with a dirt-smeared face and raggedy clothes, weeping.
Sansa was impatient with weepers. "Will you water my horse?" she asked. She dug into her velvet coin pouch and tossed a couple of copper stars into the dirt, by the girl's bare feet. The girl was around Sansa's own age, but Sansa was completely disinterested in her. Peasants were people that one gave orders to, and ruled over.
"Aye," the girl replied in a muffled voice, wiping her tears. She drew water from the well in silence, punctured only by an occasional sniffle, and set the bucket on the stone edge of the well. As the mare quaffed the water eagerly, Sansa dismounted to stretch her legs a little.
The girl had been watching her. "Will the young master spare another star, if it please him?"
Sansa was more shocked that she had been addressed, rather than that she had been mistake for a boy. With her short hair, athletic, lithe body and small breasts, it was something that happened often. Especially since she chose to ride in breeches.
"It's my lady," she said. She sighed at the request, but the Lannister in her could not be miserly. She opened her pouch a tossed the girl another copper star. "I suppose life grows more expensive around here."
"No," the girl whispered. "I just want to visit the apothecary."
For the first time, Sansa paid attention to the girl. Maybe it was something in her voice, or something in her face, but whatever it was, Sansa's suspicious instincts were aroused. This girl is frightened, she realized. And she wishes to hide something.
Sansa had had enough of peasants' secrets for one afternoon, and half considered just riding away. All she had to do was mount her mare, turn back to the highway, and she'd be back at Oldtown inside of an hour. The fears of a little village girl were none of her business. She had given the girl three copper stars, after all.
And yet...
Sansa looked at the girl again. She was so small and pitiful and frail-looking, as if a gust of wind would knock her over. Her limbs were thin, her hair thin and disheveled, her eyes ringed with shadows. It occurred to Sansa that no young maiden ought to have eyes like that.
Sansa looked at the way the girl's toes curled in the dirt. Dirty toenails. Callused soles, hard as leather. What a very hard life these people led, she suddenly thought.
She did not have the most tender manner, unlike her mother or her aunt, or her sister Teirney, but Sansa tried her best. She walked over to the girl, sat beside her, and pulled a small bag of roasted peanuts out of her pocket.
"The cook at the Hightower gave me these to munch on while I ride," she said, offering the pouch of peanuts to the startled village girl. "You look like you need them. What's your name? I'm Sansa."
"Oh, m'lady, I can't..."
"They are just peanuts," Sansa said, feeling embarrassed. From the girl's expression, she seemed to think Sansa was parting with a great treasure. If only she knew how small my gift was, Sansa thought.
The girl took the peanuts tentatively, muttering thanks, and then mumbling her name so softly that Sansa had to ask her to repeat it.
"Nell, m'lady."
"Well, Nell, you are the second distressed person I've seen today," Sansa said, trying to sound cheerful. "First I find a man from Lower Crinkley named Will, babbling about his family problems, and now I find Teary Nell...what's wrong?" she looked at the girl Nell in concern, for she had not missed how the girl had started, eyes widening.
"Nothing, m'lady," the girl jumped to her feet. "I have to go."
"Wait," Sansa said, also getting to her feet. "What's wrong? You're frightened."
"I am not, m'lady," she said, and Sansa could tell at once that she was lying.
"I think you are," she said. A thought suddenly struck her. "It was when I mentioned the village, wasn't it? And it reminded you of something? Is that village over there Lower Crinkley?"
There was furtive look in the girl's eyes, a slight hesitation, before she said rather too eagerly, "Aye - aye, m'lady, that's the village over there. I remembered I have..."
"No," Sansa's eyes were narrowed. "I was wrong. It was because I mentioned the man I had met." From the girl's face, she could tell she had guessed right. "The man Will, who I met in the woods. Is that it? Why are you afraid?"
The girl almost fled, tears streaming down her face, but Sansa leaped after her quickly and caught her hand. She forced the girl, gently and kindly but firm as steel, to eventually speak. And then she wished that she hadn't.
Nell, it turned out, was Will's daughter. And he crept to her pallet every night, when he was in his cups, and took her as he took his wife.
"It don't matter if I tell you!" Nell cried, sobbing now. "I wanted to tell someone, afore the secret et me up. I've sinned and I'll sin no more. I'll get a poison from the apothecary, and if he won't give it to me then I'll go to Mother Tess, her that's the woods witch, and she'll see to me. I'm done. I'd rather give my body to the Stranger than to let him touch me again."
Sansa looked at the girl's dirty tear-stained face, seeing how much the girl blamed herself for this, and how much it shamed her and horrified her. She felt sick, and enraged. He looked so honest. An honest village man, driven to desperation in order to provide for his family. That is all I saw. For all her pride in her ability to read faces, Sansa had read this one wrong. So, so, so wrong.
"Will your father go directly home after he catches this deer?" she asked quietly.
"No, m'lady," the girl said. "Likely he'll get drunk first, he keeps a wineskin on him. But I must go to Mother Tess..."
"No," Sansa caught her arm. "No woods witch is going to help you kill yourself. And your father will not touch you again. You are under my protection now."
"Your protection?" the girl turned to her with wary, frightened eyes. "Who are you?"
"A very angry person," Sansa replied, mounting up again. "Go home. And take this." She reached into her pocket, and withdrew her velvet pouch. It was packed tight with gold and silver and copper, and barely jingled when she threw the entire pouch to Nell, who caught it and stared at it in wonder. "If you aren't getting any income from his cartwright business, that should see you through the rest of the year, until your family finds its feet again. Tell your mother that a widow finds a great deal of sympathy, and she should make use of it."
Before the girl could respond to that, Sansa spurred her horse and the mare shot forward, smooth as silk. They disappeared into the woods as the girl Nell watched, and before long Sansa found herself in the clearing where she had left Will and his stolen doe. The clearing was empty. She followed the trail of blood from where he had dragged the carcass, and soon found Will sitting on a fallen log, drunk as a green boy newly knighted. The doe carcass was bound up with rope beside him.
"Is this what you do after every poached kill?" she asked, and he jumped and turned around. "Get yourself drunk, haul the kill home, and rape your daughter to celebrate?"
Will had initially greeted her with a drunken smile, but that faded as Sansa began to speak. She saw the momentary look of shock in his eyes, noted the hesitation as he absorbed what she said and figured out how to respond.
This isn't your duty, a part of her mind said. This is Lord Hightower's duty. Drag him before Lord Hightower and ask him to dispense justice. These are his smallfolk, not yours. But she had allowed this man to poach Lord Hightower's deer, a fact that would almost certainly come out as Lord Hightower questioned the man Sansa did not want that. Besides, she wanted the personal pleasure of doing this herself. Sansa was a bundle of angered innocence. She was angry at Will. She was angry at herself. She longed to hurt him as he had hurt his daughter.
"What is m'lady talking about?" Will said. "You wouldn't accuse me of such things, would you? I know it's wrong of me to drink, but a poor man needs whatever consolation from his hard life that he can find." He smiled ingratiatingly, his eyes gentle.
An honest face, she thought, rage building inside her. Honest eyes. She dismounted and drew her sword in one fluid motion. Why didn't I see it?
"You're a liar," she said in a low, trembling voice, advancing towards Will as he stumbled back in alarm and fell over the log. "You're a bad man." She struck him across the face, hard, with the flat of her blade. Then she struck him again, this time drawing blood on his cheek. He gave a muffled groan, and raised one hand to shield himself from her blows while the other hand went for his dagger. That pricked her to greater fury.
"Don't you DARE!" she yelled, knocking the dagger out of his hand and cutting his hand multiple times in the process. "You want to fight me, after what you did? I'll kill you! I'll cut you into a thousand pieces and let you rot here beside this deer carcass! When I'm done with you, you'll wish you had been everything a good father should be, instead of a MONSTER!"
But fighting Will with her sword held no savor for her, she quickly realized. He was unarmed, and Sansa was too honorable to enjoy beating him with a sword, as satisfying as it was to hear his cowardly yelps of pain. And so she threw the sword aside, and lunged at him with her fists. It should have been an easy victory for him, but he was weakened by many cuts, and could barely use his hands without flinching in pain, and was bruised by her other blows. Sansa, on the other hand, was a flurry of fists and knees and boots. She was a strong and muscled girl despite her slender body, and it was very satisfying to break his nose and kick his groin and batter him with everything she had.
And when he lay cowering in the dirt, begging forgiveness, she reached for her sword and prepared to deliver the killing blow...
...And stopped.
When he lay there, weak and craven and bleeding, begging a girl like her to spare him, curled up in a ball, she saw how small he was suddenly. Will was a small, weak person, smaller and weaker than his frail daughter. How can a monster be so weak? she wondered. Killing him is stepping on an ant.
And when he looked into her eyes, she hesitated still further. Those eyes were pleading, and despite her righteous anger, they pierced her. Sansa had never killed anyone in her life, and despite all her blunt speech and aggression, she had a kind heart. It was one thing to bring down game on dozens of hunts, but quite another to kill a man. Sansa wondered how she could be so weak herself, so incapable to making the killing blow to someone who clearly deserved it.
Make an end of it, she told herself sternly. If you don't, he will go back and rape his daughter, and countless other girls. He will drink and drink and indebt himself further, ruining his family. He doesn't deserve to live.
Her sword didn't move.
You'll never know what kind of man he'll become though, a voice seemed to whisper in her head. You don't know if he'll amend his ways. You don't know who needs him and loves him and will mourn him if you kill him.
She still felt rage, though it was tempered by pity. "Stop sniveling like a baby," she ordered, her grip tightening on her sword's leather hilt. "Unlace your breeches and take them off."
He was startled. "W-what?"
"Do as I say."
He gave her a red, bloody grin. "You decided to sample the goods, did you?" he asked slyly. "Nell make you curious?"
That was all she needed to hear to set her conscience at ease. "Do. It. Now."
Smiling cockily, he did as she bid now. "I'll not be shy to say it, you've never seen a cock like this," he said, as it swung free. "Maiden or not. Are you a maid, sweetling? Ol' Will can fix that for you."
Sansa had never seen a cock before, and had never been particularly curious to see one. The sight of Will repulsed her. It was heavy and bulbous and ungroomed, and the very design of it seemed hideous and unappealing in her eyes. Knowing what he had done with it did not help.
Keeping an eye on him, she retrieved more rough rope from his clothsack, and tied him up around a tree. When he protested, she reminded him that he could either do as he was told and hope for the best, or fight her and die.
"The little lady has kinks, does she?" he said, but now he sounded hopeful and fearful, as if he dared not imagine any other possibility, and hoped he could sway her mind. "Knew it. Figured you for a girl who likes different things, what with that short hair of yours."
She tied him up wordlessly. Her heart was pounding in her ears now, and it was only her rage and her conviction that it was her duty to protect Nell that kept her going.
Sansa found his dagger in the dirt, and cleaned the blade with Will's sleeve. That would do. It would not be as clean as it needed to be, but if he died from an infection, she would not mourn him. And she had no intention of using her noble, castle-forged sword on this beast's testicles.
Feeling nausea rising within her, she grabbed hold of his cock with one hand and lifted it up so that she could see the sack beneath. Sansa had a rudimentary knowledge of this procedure, as she had see it done on horses or dogs at Casterly Rock, but had never done it herself. Her nausea was due to the fact that she had to touch his disgusting private parts, not at the prospect of gelding him.
Will had begun screaming, begging her to stop as he writhed and fought against the ropes, but she had bound him securely.
"Hold still," she said curtly. "I've never done this before."
And she cut him. His screams echoed through the forest, a high-pitched shriek of agony and fear. His bladder voided, piss and blood splashing to the ground together.
It was clumsily done and took longer than it should have, but Sansa was satisfied that it had worked when she observed the finished effect. The contents of that sack lay in bloody ruins on the ground, a sight that reviled her as much as the fact that his blood covered her fingers. She hated that she had been forced to touch him.
"Bandage yourself up with some of that cloth I saw in your bag," she said, cutting the ropes that bound him. He was screaming and shaking and sobbing, and sagged to the floor. "Take the carcass home, and leave this village behind. I will know if you don't. Besides, there is nothing for you here after this. Only shame."
So saying, she took her horse by the bridle, and stepped over him as he lay on the ground crying. She walked her horse to the riverbank, and knelt to wash her hands - and washed them again, and again, and again. Revenge had not brought any sweetness to her, only a sick feeling in her stomach.
She rode back to the city in a brooding silence, and gave her mare over to the grooms of the Hightower, instead of unsaddling and rubbing the horse down herself, as she usually did.
"Ser Norys was looking for you, m'lady," a groom said. "Lady Winifred wishes to know where you have been."
"Nobody needs to know anything," she snapped, and stalked off to the bathing room adjacent to her chambers. A maid filled it with hot water at her request, and Sansa sank into the tub, scrubbing herself furiously. When she was done, she dried herself and went to her bed in a cotton underrobe, thinking of Nell and her family, wishing the world wasn't quite so full of injustice.
Result:
- Sansa gains Novice in Hand-to-Hand
- Sansa gains Noteworthy in Deception
- Sansa moves towards Noteworthy in Riding
Hope you all are well and happy.