LION TRAP, game of thrones

𝐈𝐕. companions

Their escape didn't get them far, and again it was Sansorr who took the brunt of the blows, fighting back the hardest, while the Kingslayer only had a few scratches when they were thrown back into the hovel. Sansorr collapsed in the dirt, panting and shaking. He was sure it was all over now. He would be killed.

He lost the battle for consciousness and drifted into a restless state in which he was neither really asleep nor really awake. He really didn't want to be awake.

It was as if he saw Lyanna sitting with him.

"You're really fucked, aren't you San?" his twin sister smirked and Sansorr could almost feel her stroking his hair.

"Don't leave me again..." he begged the dream figure, feeling tears stinging his eyes, "I want to go home... I miss you so much."

Instead, another woman's voice answered him and he realized that he had woken up again.

"Lady Brienne will escort you to Kings Landing. There you will be exchanged for my daughters," his sister-in-law spoke in a dominant and determined tone.

"Catelyn... Please listen to me," Sansorr whispered and pulled himself to his feet, looking up at the red-haired woman.

But she didn't even give him a glance. Instead, she turned to a tall woman with short, blond hair and bulky armor who stood beside her and looked at Sansorr. "Take him with you. Lord Karstark demands his head and my husband would not have allowed him to die like this. Leave him in some brothel on the way. We'll never hear from him again, he'll be satisfied with what he gets there. He is... a disgrace to my house."

"Catelyn... I beg you," he whispered softly.

"Robb won't be patient with him for much longer," Catelyn said, unmoved, and said something quietly to the blond warrior beside her before walking away. Sansorr slumped down and only noticed in passing how the woman - Brienne, as Catelyn had called her - pulled the Kingslayer to his feet.

"What noble special treatment I get here," he snorted and gave the woman a dazzling grin that had probably turned the heads of many women. But with his bloody and dirty face, the Kingslayer only looked like a commoner. A rather dirty commoner, in fact.

"Lord Sta-" Brienne interrupted herself as she realized her mistake, "Sansorr, you need to get up."

"Let's leave him here," the Kingslayer mused gleefully, "He's a miserable gossip, like a washerwoman."

Anger flared up in Sansorr and he struggled to his feet, letting Brienne cut his bonds too. Then he shoved the Kingslayer so hard that he landed in the mud again and growled at him: "Be careful I don't castrate you and turn you into a real washerwoman myself, Kingslayer."

The one lying on the ground would surely have replied something fiery, but Lady Brienne interrupted him: "Quiet, or this will all be for nothing and you'll both be hanged in the morning."

This successfully silenced them and Sansorr pulled the Kingslayer roughly to his feet. Like Sansorr, he moved awkwardly; sitting in the cold mud for so long had made them stiff. Groaning, Sansorr rolled his shoulders and flexed his muscles.

"Silence now," Brienne ordered in a harsh tone that Sansorr was hardly used to from women. He examined her with interest. She was not a beauty in the classical sense, not as was expected in Westeros. Like the Kingslayer, she was muscular and broadly built, her body bursting with strength, and Sansorr could tell from the way she moved that she must be a good swordswoman. She was taller than the Kingslayer and therefore a lot taller than Sansorr.

Sansorr decided he liked her. She seemed like an outsider and damn, Sansorr was familiar with that.

Stiff-legged, he followed her, growling a bit reluctantly as he let her help him onto the back of her horse. While the Kingslayer strolled happily along beside Brienne like an arrogant rooster, Sansorr's body was exhausted and sluggish. The poor diet and lack of exercise, combined with his injuries from the battles the Lannisters had forced him into, meant that he would never have been able to keep up on foot.