𝐆𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐓𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐬 || 𝑾𝒉𝒆𝒏 𝑾𝒐𝒍𝒗𝒆𝒔 𝑪𝒓𝒚 𝑶𝒖𝒕

𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐈𝐕: 𝐊𝐞𝐩𝐭 𝐢𝐧 𝐁𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐤

[ CHAPTER X ]

"KEPT IN BLACK"
301 AFTER CONQUEST

꧁ SANSA ꧂

As the Lady had promised, House Mormont in its entirety now followed them. Sansa glanced over her shoulder for a moment, high up on her black horse, and saw the Mormont soldiers, some two-hundred fighting men marching amongst their motley crew of Wildlings and fellow Northmen they picked up along the way. It's not enough, she had been thinking for a while now. He's got so many more, Umber and Karstark, Ramsay, they..Rickon. Sansa glanced back ahead to her brother who was actually with their column for once, leading the way on his pale mare and dark demeanor as she sighed heavily. She still hadn't told him.

How do I even tell him? That question alone circled around her head as well as a thousand others, a thousand other things she needed to tell him but couldn't find the right way to reveal them. How?

"You look a bit lost there.."

Glancing to her side, the thoughts of her little brother lingering in her mind, Alys had ridden up to come beside her on her own horse, shorter than her brother's but tall nonetheless. The Karstark girl smiled a small smile, tilting her head a bit in question to Sansa, who didn't answer right away. Instead, she sighed, before nodding her head forward.

"I'm just..a little bit lost right now, yes."

A silence lingered in the brisk morning air for a while before Alys found her words.

"Want to talk about it?"

She asked, and it took a minute for Sansa to respond, but she eventually did.

"You and I are still young..but we aren't new to what the world is, not really. Even so, I don't get what we're doing."

She motioned around to the marching men, the outlying women of the Free-Folk who marched with spears, mounted soldiers and warriors on foot, all of them.

"Like..I get that we don't have enough men to fight at Winterfell yet, but we've been going around the country doing..nothing. Yes, we made an alliance with the Mormonts, and now we go to the Glovers here soon, but what are we really doing?"

Sansa motioned to Alys, an eyebrow raised in question. In a way, she felt as if her brother was leaving her out of some things. But then again, she was leaving him in the dark on some matters as well. Alys, it seemed, looked as though she were caught sort of, and sighed, shaking her head.

"Really? Nothing?"

Alys scoffed, and Sansa looked at her with surprise.

"What we're doing, it isn't "nothing," Sansa. We're spreading stories, and stories are what's going to help us win this war."

"I see you're bought into that, too."

Sansa rolled her eyes, and Alys just scoffed.

"I am."

She spoke, seriously and with a nod.

"You spent so much time down in King's Landing, you've forgotten the North. You forgot that we, like the flowery men and women of the South, are liars, too. We too have the tallest of tales, stories of fear and chaos that spreads nothing but doubt and confusion through our enemies."