Torren did not sleep.
They gave him a bed. That was the problem.
It was too soft, too wide, too warm, and too clean. The room had a door that closed properly, a rush mat that did not smell of goats, a basin of water that no one had fought over, and a small fire already burning when he entered. Someone had even laid folded cloth near the bed, as if he might know what to do with more layers than he already wore.
He sat on the edge of the bed for a while and looked at all of it.
Then he stood and left.
No one stopped him in the corridor. A guard looked at him, looked at the packet sling under his cloak, then decided he had no wish to be the man who delayed the strange white boy Lord Stark had brought to his son's room. Torren found stairs, then a wrong passage, then another stair, then a door that opened into air cold enough to make him feel more like himself.
The yard was awake.
Winterfell did not sleep like a camp slept. In the mountains, night quieted a place unless danger walked close. Here, men still moved in the dark grey before dawn. Stableboys carried feed. Two women crossed the yard with covered baskets. A man with a broom shoved snow away from a doorway as if the snow had personally offended him. Farther off, guards trained in a packed square where old snow had been trampled into dirty ice.
Torren stopped to watch them.
They moved in pairs first, then in lines. Shields up. Feet set. Short cuts. No wasted leaps. One man called rhythm while the others struck, stepped, turned, and struck again. It was not pretty. That made Torren respect it more. Pretty things usually broke when stone and hunger got involved.
Still, it was strange.
They fought as if the ground would stay where it was.
One guard stepped too wide during a turn. Torren frowned.
"He would die on a goat path," he said.
"Most men would," Sara Snow said behind him.
Torren turned.
She stood with a cloak pulled over one shoulder and a cup steaming in one hand. Her hair was loose today, or near enough, dark strands escaping around her face. She looked less like someone attending a lord's table and more like someone who had slipped away before anyone decided she should be somewhere else.
Torren looked past her. "You follow quietly."
"You were staring loudly."
"That is not a thing."
"It is when you do it."
He looked back at the training men. "They fight in lines."
"They are guards."
"They trust the man beside them too much."
Sara came to stand near him, leaving enough space that he did not feel crowded. "And your people do what? Run about screaming?"
"Sometimes."
She laughed into her cup.
Torren pointed toward the men. "They move well together. But they wait for flat ground. A man who needs flat ground is easy to move."
Sara watched the drill. "Put your mountain men in this yard against shields and see how long they laugh."
"Not long."
That made her glance at him.
Torren shrugged. "Then we would not fight them here."
"Good. You do have sense."
"Some."
"Where do you fight, then?"
"Where they curse. Narrow paths. Loose stone. Snow above them. Night if we can. Fog if the gods are kind. We hit, take, leave. If they chase, they get tired. If they do not chase, we eat."
Sara sipped from her cup. "That sounds miserable."
"It is better when it works."
"And when it does not?"
"Then men die."
She nodded once, accepting that without making a song out of it. Torren liked that. Northerners did not seem as eager as southron prisoners to dress every hard thing in softer words.
One of the guards noticed them watching and lost his rhythm for half a step. The man calling cadence cuffed him across the back of the helmet.
Sara smiled. "You make them nervous."
"They stare at me like I came out of a grave."
"You do look odd."
"So do you."
"No, I look like a Stark."
"You said you are not."
"I said I am not that one." She pointed her cup vaguely toward the hall, where Sarra Stark and baby Alys had been taken away sometime before Torren returned to Rickon's room. "I am still a Stark. Just not the kind people put in songs if they can avoid it."
Torren looked at her more carefully.
"Bastard," she said, before he could ask badly.
He had learned the Common word. He had also learned that lower people wrapped too many feelings around it.
"In the mountains, a child is a child," he said. "If the father names him, people know. If he does not, people still know. Women know everything first."
Sara stared at him for a breath, then laughed. "That part is the same here."
"But your name changes."
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because lords like lines. Trueborn here. Bastard there. Heir here. Spare there. It keeps maesters busy."
"You do not like maesters."
"I like some. I dislike being written down by them."
Torren understood that better than he expected.
The guards shifted into a shield drill. Six men stood together while three others tried to break the line. They struck hard enough to bruise, not maim. Torren watched the shoulders, knees, shield edges, how the men gave ground without breaking apart.
"That part is good," he said.
Sara followed his gaze. "Which part?"
"They know how to be pushed."
"That sounds like a small compliment."
"It is not."
"I will tell them the mountain boy approves of being shoved."
"Do not. They will look pleased and do it badly."
Sara shook her head. "You are hard to feed and harder to praise."
"My wife says worse."
That caught her attention. "Your wife?"
"Yes."
"You are married?"
"Yes."
Sara looked him up and down again, as if the answer had changed the shape of him. "You are young."
"So is she."
"That was not a denial."
"No."
"What is her name?"
"Lysa."
"Mountain girl?"
"Stone Crow. I am Painted Dog."
"That sounds like a problem."
"It was a marriage."
"Same thing, often."
Torren thought of Lysa standing near the morning fire, chin lifted, eyes sharp enough to cut foolishness before it took root. He thought of her giving Hokor dried apple and ordering him around as if she had been born in the Painted Dogs' camp. He thought of the coal and hearth-stone, the black marks on their faces, the living weirwood, the old words spoken with smoke in the air.
"She is clever," he said.
"That is all?"
"She is sharp. She argues. She sees too much. She makes my brother useful."
Sara's smile grew. "A miracle worker, then."
"Hokor is not that bad."
"You hesitated."
"He spills water."
"Many men do worse."
Torren nodded. "True."
Sara leaned a shoulder against a wooden post. "Did you choose her?"
"Our chiefs did. Then we agreed."
"That is not choosing."
"It is some choosing."
"Do you like her?"
Torren frowned. "She is my wife."
"That is also not an answer."
He looked at Sara, annoyed.
She looked back, waiting.
"Yes," he said.
"There. That was not hard."
"It was not your question to ask."
"No. I asked anyway."
That, too, reminded him of Lysa.
He looked away first.
Sara seemed pleased with herself.
Below them in the yard, the drill ended. Men pulled off helmets, breath smoking, cheeks red from cold and exertion. One had blood at his lip and looked proud of it. Another complained until his captain told him to complain louder so the Wall could hear. Torren caught only part of the words, but the tone was easy enough.
"The Wall again," he said.
Sara groaned. "You asked Reed about it, didn't you?"
"Yes."
"And now you want to ask me."
"What are wildlings?"
She looked amused. "That came with the Wall?"
"Cregan said I speak like one."
"Did he?"
"Yes."
"That may be praise from him. Or not. Hard to tell."
"What are they?"
"Free folk beyond the Wall. They do not kneel to Winterfell. They raid south when they can. Steal food, women, tools, sheep, anything they can carry. Sometimes they kill everyone. Sometimes they trade. Depends who meets them and how hungry they are."
Torren considered that. "So mountain clans with worse snow."
Sara laughed so hard she had to look away from the yard.
"I would not say that near a ranger," she said.
"Ranger?"
"Night's Watch. Men on the Wall."
"The ice wall has men on it?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"To watch the wildlings. And other things, if old stories are true."
Torren folded his arms. "Many men here watch other men who will not kneel."
"That is one way to put it."
"They refused?"
"The wildlings? Yes."
"Then why call them wild?"
"Because they cut throats and take what is not theirs."
"So do lords."
Sara gave him a look. "You like that answer."
"It fits many questions."
"It will get you hit one day."
"I have been hit before."
"By lords?"
"No."
"Then wait. They use heavier rings."
Torren almost smiled.
Sara studied him for a moment. "You feel sorry for them?"
"Wildlings?"
"Yes."
"I do not know them."
"But?"
"They did not kneel."
"That does not make a man good."
"No."
"Some are brave. Some are cruel. Some are hungry. Some just like taking. Same as anywhere."
Torren looked at the guards again. "Same as mountain clans."
Sara did not answer at once.
Then she said, "You said it. I didn't."
"That is fair."
They stood in quiet for a while.
Not a comfortable quiet. Not uncomfortable either.
The yard moved around them. Men trained. A horse refused to leave the stable and had to be cursed into obedience. Somewhere a woman shouted that if the kitchen boy dropped another bucket she would make him drink what froze in it. Winterfell felt less like a lord's seat in that moment and more like a very large camp with better walls and too many doors.
Sara finished her cup.
"What is it like?" she asked.
"What?"
"The mountains. Not raids. Not sickness. Just living."
Torren had to think about that.
"Cold," he said.
"That is all?"
"No. Loud when goats are angry. Quiet when snow is deep. Smoke in your hair. Stone under your back. Everyone knows when you failed at something. Children run everywhere. Old women remember what you did when you were small and use it against you. Food is counted. Salt is watched. If someone laughs too loud at night, people tell him to save breath for carrying wood."
Sara smiled. "That sounds awful."
"It is home."
She nodded, softer now. "Winterfell is like that, sometimes. Less goats."
"More walls."
"More walls."
"Too many rooms."
"Yes. You can be lonely here with fifty people near you."
Torren looked at her.
She seemed to regret saying it, or perhaps only disliked that he had heard it clearly.
He did not ask.
Instead he said, "In the mountains, if you want to be alone, you climb."
"And if you fall?"
"Then you are alone longer."
Sara laughed again. "You people are unpleasant."
"You asked."
"I did."
"What is Winterfell like when fever is not here?"
She looked toward the hall. "Noisy. Busy. Still cold. Better food than you expected, apparently. Men arguing over horses, harvests, marriages, taxes. Children underfoot. Dogs everywhere. Cregan pretending he does not like any of it."
"He does."
"He does."
"Why pretend?"
"Because he is Cregan."
Torren accepted that. Some answers did not need more.
After a while Sara pointed to the training men. "Would you train with them?"
"No."
"Afraid?"
"Yes."
She blinked.
He shrugged. "I do not know their rules. A man who does not know rules gets hurt for another man's lesson."
"That is sensible."
"I can be."
"Rarely, I suspect."
He ignored that.
She shifted the empty cup between her hands. "Can you teach me some of your words?"
Torren looked at her. "Old Tongue?"
"Yes."
"You said it like it belongs to me."
"It does, more than to me."
"It belonged to your fathers too."
"So I am told."
"Then why do you not know it?"
That came out sharper than he intended.
Sara did not snap back. She watched him for a moment, then looked across the yard.
"Because people stopped using it where children could hear," she said. "Because Common is easier when half the realm uses it. Because ravens, laws, trade, marriages, singers, maesters, all of it comes in Common. Because old things can be kept in names and prayers and still lost in the mouth."
Torren frowned.
"That is a bad answer."
"It is the true one."
"You should have kept both."
"Probably."
He had expected defense. Anger, maybe. Instead she gave him agreement, and that left him with nowhere to put his irritation.
Sara glanced back. "So teach me."
"What word?"
"Wolf."
He gave it to her.
She repeated it.
Badly.
Torren shook his head. "No."
"That bad?"
"You made it toothless."
"It is a word, not a dog."
"It should bite a little."
She tried again.
"Better," he said.
"Tree."
He gave her the word.
She said it too softly.
"No. Deeper."
She tried again, exaggerating until Jojen, passing at the far side of the yard, turned his head.
Torren looked pained. "Now you sound like a choking crow."
Sara laughed. "You are a poor teacher."
"You are a poor student."
"Again."
He gave it again.
She listened more carefully this time. Her next attempt was not good, but it was closer.
"Better," Torren said.
She looked oddly pleased.
"Fire," she said.
He taught her that one too.
Then snow.
Then blood.
Then home.
Home gave her trouble.
Not because of the sound. Because she asked for it twice after saying it correctly the first time.
"Why that one?" Torren asked.
Sara shrugged. "It feels useful."
"It is."
"Wife?"
Torren gave her the word.
She repeated it, then raised an eyebrow. "Husband?"
He gave her that too.
She got it wrong on purpose the first time.
"No," he said.
"I know. Say it again."
He did.
She said it properly.
Then she studied him with a grin that warned him too late.
"If you were a few years older, I might take you for a husband."
Torren stared at her.
The words were teasing. Mostly. Her face said she wanted to see what he would do with them.
"Too late," he said.
"For being older?"
"For that. I am married."
"And if you were not?"
"My wife would still be angry."
Sara laughed hard enough that one of the guards glanced over again.
Torren added, "Also, you speak Old Tongue badly."
"That can be fixed."
"You are trouble."
"Yes."
"Lysa is also trouble."
"Then you have a type."
"I do not know what that means."
"It means you are easy to predict."
"I came from the mountains to save a wolf boy with red medicine."
"Fine. Not that easy."
He looked toward the high walls. Beyond them, the winter town coughed and smoked. Above them, somewhere in the castle, Rickon burned or cooled. Torren's amusement faded without warning.
Sara noticed.
"You think of the boy."
"Yes."
"He is stubborn."
"You know?"
"He bit me once when he was small."
Torren glanced at her. "Why?"
"I took a wooden horse from him."
"Then you earned it."
"I did."
That answer improved her in his eyes.
"Will he live?" she asked.
Torren hated that question. He hated it more from her because she had made him forget it for a few breaths.
"I do not know."
"I thought you might say that."
"It is still true."
"I know."
A door opened across the yard.
A guard stepped out, looked around, and spotted them. He came quickly but did not run. Men with bad news ran or moved too slowly. This one did neither.
"Torren," he called, awkwardly, as if the name felt strange in his mouth. "Lord Stark wants you."
Sara straightened. "Rickon?"
The guard looked at her, then at Torren. "He stirred. Not awake. But he moved and tried to speak. Lady Alysanne says come now."
Torren was already walking.
Sara caught up for three steps. "The word for home," she said.
"What?"
"Say it again."
He did, without slowing.
She repeated it behind him, still rough, still wrong at the edge, but close enough that he did not correct her.
Torren crossed the yard toward the door, boots striking packed snow, the taste of honey long gone from his mouth.
The red had not finished its work.
Neither had he.