Iron and Blood: a Theon & Sansa Story

Chapter 25

Sansa
Robb returned within a day, though the guards swore he rode up from the south. With him, to Sansa's dismay, was the captain of her Lord Father's personal guard—Jory Cassel. The horse that Robb dismounted when his family ran out to meet him was not his own, and when Catelyn demanded to know where he had been, Robb replied, "I can explain everything once Theon returns."

Another day passed.

Sansa was sick with worry, and she could tell that Robb was, too; it only aggrieved her more. Each night that Theon remained absent, she curled up alone in his bed and cried until she fell asleep.

Late in the morning of the third day, Sansa was awoken by shouting in the yard outside Theon's window. "Bring him in!" she heard a guard holler. A woman chimed in, "Is that Lord Stark?" A new voice, this one thundering and gruff, shouted back at them, "No you dumb fuckers, does it look like Robb Stark to you? Now clear a path!" After that, Sansa swore she heard the word, "Greyjoy."

She sprung from the bed and ran to investigate—without bothering to change out of her nightshift or put on her shoes. Instead, she hurried through the castle doors barefoot, letting the mud outside squelch between her toes. It had stopped raining for the first time in days, but the ground was still cold and wet on the soles of Sansa's feet.

A crowd had gathered just outside the doors, where a great lumbering man with a whiskered grey face hopped down off his horse. Robb and the other Stark children were already there to meet him. "Lord Umber," he said to the man, and then to Arya, "Fetch Maester Luwin."

She obeyed and hurried back inside the castle, brushing past Sansa without a word.

Lord Umber shoved forward a man who had dismounted the horse behind him. "Take mine own Maester with youse," he snapped. The wiry little man passed through the crowd to follow Arya inside.

Robb turned and saw Sansa there.

"Go back inside," he instructed, but Sansa would not go.

"Is it Theon?" she asked, starting to push past him. He would not let her go. She said again, "Is it Theon?" When Robb did not respond, Sansa's heart started to sink.

No, no. Please, no.

And then she saw him. Behind Lord Umber's horse, attached to the saddle, was a wooden sled Sansa had seen them use in Winterfell when they carried the dead to their graves. Theon was laying still on his back, fastened against the wood with leather straps. His face was dark with blood.

Sansa ran to the far side of the sled and knelt down in the mud so that she could touch him.

The Old Gods heard her: he was alive.

His forehead was burning hot beneath Sansa's hand, and he looked so gaunt that she wanted to cry. "What happened?" Sansa screamed at Lord Umber.

He crossed his big arms over his chest. "My son found the boy flat on his back, taking a knife to the chest in the wood around the Kingsroad." Lord Umber—the one Sansa had long ago heard her father call the Greatjon—nodded down at Theon. "My son thought he was you, Stark, seein' as the boy was dressed the part. So Smalljon took the head off the killer before realizing it was the Greyjoy lad."

Sansa moved the blanket that laid across Theon's chest to reveal the bloody doublet underneath. There, she found Robb's silver brooch—the one all the Stark children had. It was dented so badly it didn't look to Sansa like a direwolf anymore.

"By the grace of the Gods, that damn wolf put off the dagger meant for his heart," the Greatjon noted as Sansa touched it. "Still, he was in bad shape by the time we got a maester out to him. There was a knife stuck in his shoulder, and the wound there seems to have festered. We got him here as soon as we could, my Lady." The Greatjon had turned away from Sansa to speak quietly with Robb and Lady Catelyn.

"Theon," Sansa whispered, brushing his cheek with her finger. "Theon, please."

He did not stir, even when she started to cry.

"Mother," Robb began, "show Lord Umber and his men to Theon's chamber. The maesters will treat him there." When Lady Catelyn nodded, Robb added, "Jory, take my sister back to her room."

"No," she snapped back at him, before Jory Cassel could respond. "I'm not leaving him."

Robb looked angry, but he did not say it again.

The Greatjon lifted one end of the sled, and two of his men took the other. Inside the castle, they followed Catelyn up the narrow stairs to Theon's chamber. Sansa's clothes were tucked away in the trunk at the foot of the bed, and there was otherwise no sign of the nights she had slept there. Though she reasoned that it did not matter who knew about them, should Theon succumb to his injuries.

No, she muttered to herself. I will not let it happen.

The men moved Theon into his bed and removed his doublet. A small, red-faced boy who wore the sigil of House Umber—a raging brown giant—removed the direwolf brooch from Theon's chest and handed it to Sansa with big, sad eyes. She gripped it tight between her fingers, feeling the divot through the wolf's neck where the dagger had apparently come down upon it before reaching Theon's heart. Sansa only hoped that it would be enough to save him.

"He woke a few times on the way here," Sansa heard the Greatjon explaining to Lady Catelyn. "All he did was scream from the pain until Maester Dedrick gave him milk of the poppy. He refused it the first time, said he didn't want to sleep and never wake up, but the pain beat out his stubbornness."

Sansa wanted to cover her ears, but she did not need the men and her mother to see that she was weak and afraid. She could not look away when they slid Theon's doublet and undershirt from his body, revealing his wounds for the maesters as they hurried into the room.

The gash on Theon's chest cut just beneath his left collarbone, jagged and uneven—deepest at the point closest to his arm. Atop Theon's shoulder, straight down into his body, Sansa could see a gaping hole that oozed a yellow-grey pus. Nearly all of Theon's upper body had been bathed in blood.

Still, all Sansa wanted was to reach for him, nudge his chest to wake him up so that he could assure her he was all right.

Maester Luwin and Lord Umber's man, Dedrick, prodded at the wounds, discussing the treatments that had already been applied. They took a dozen jars from Maester Luwin's box, smearing Theon with ointment and medicine and grumbling about how they would stop the infection and seal the wounds when they were ready.

Sansa could not keep herself from crying anymore.