Note: This story is better read at archiveofourown, where I have added some illustrations.

Formatting: Sandor self-censors his letters by crossing out passages. As ff does not have the capability to use strikethrough, the censored passages are denoted as {}

"I'm not used to writing letters to a lady"

28th Day of the 11th Moon, 303

Sansa,

Maester Samwell promised me that he would carry this baggage to you when he departs for Winterfell in the morning. The ground is full of mud and slosh and that'll make the journey harder than it should be. I hope he reaches you before the fourth day of the twelfth month.

I found it necessary to convince him but you need not fear I used my usual methods of persuasion. Your fat friend was easy to bribe: some men never find the right woman, I'd say Maester Samwell has never found the wrong honeycake.

It was the last one from the food parcel you sent me.

As you know by now, we have been campaigning rough for a fortnight ever since the wildlings ambushed and broke the supply line. Half of them we killed, but the other half tucked their tails and rode off on our own bloody horses with three months' provision of grain and wine. And the buggering filthy savages stole the pig fat, Others take them.

The timing could not have been worse. We had slaughtered all the livestock not two days before. Ramsay had driven out some of his own animals from the castle's gate, they mixed with ours and within a week, the cows couldn't stand proper. Some of the carcasses we launched back at the whoresons. The rest we burned for fear of pestilence. Of the corn we have left, I've ordered the lot to be saved to feed the warhorses. The animals eat better than the men. We've been dining on firecakes—not made from flour, but dried, ground up turnips. Disgusting stuff that the serving wenches plop on your plate like cow pat. Leaves you staining your breeches brown too but at least it fills the belly enough for a man to sleep. Old turnips were the only foods we could buy at Pink Lady, the sole town within ten leagues that still had a heart beating inside its crippled bones.

I've received word from White Harbor that the new supply train should be here within the week. Though I hold little or no hope of that. The roads from White Harbor to here are made of clay and the rains will turn them into a sunken mire from which the wagons could no more pass than through a channel of the Trident. If Manderly can't haul supplies soon, I'm not sure who will be more hungry, the besiegers or the besieged. Desperation and foul temper have turned some of my soldiers into common thieves. Some days I think I'm playing nursemaid rather than commander. I cannot lie down or go away without at least a score of people moving after me. Damn me, if green boys are easy to drive but hard to lead. Disorder is bloody rampant—I ordered half a dozen of them whipped for foraging from the smallfolk. Bloody fools, starting one rebellion as we try to quell another. Seizing the farmer's cattle condemns him to death as sure as if I were to put him to the sword after the sack. These Dreadfort peasants already live close to the ground. Many of the plowing fields south of the Sheepshead Hills have been wrecked by the marching armies of Boltons and Baratheons and Freys that came before us.

I'd be lying if I said I give a rat's arse about the starving poor any more than they shed tears when they see the rotten rich destroy each other. But I'm trying real hard here not to the sow the seeds for next year's smallfolk insurrection. Receiving a horde of bedraggled Pates screaming for bread while armed with their wooden pikes at the gates of Winterfell won't win me your kingly brother's favor, I'd wager. Speaking of your brother, you may tell him that his siege engines are too bloody marvelous. No pulling ropes like the machines of our fathers' time, just counterweights. Daily we bombard the Dreadfort and smash its doomed walls to rubble, though a great many of our stones bury into the earth and do little harm. It's both my labor and my pleasure to go out every morning and direct the fire of the engines. The Bastard's bowmen have come very near hitting me a few times but so far I have escaped unhurt. We had to dismantle one of the supply ships that sailed up the Weeping Water for the timber to build her but 'Ladywolf' was worth the sacrifice. I call her a 'she' because 'she' is beautiful. My lady can cast a rock weighing eighty stones. Or speckle the sky with a traitor's head—yesterday I was treated to the sight of Hosteen Frey's ugly face flying a thousand feet high into the air, in an arc that surely must have landed him way beyond the Dreadfort's killing grounds. Ha!

Haven't told you about how we captured the Frey whoreson yet, have I? Bagged the hot-spurred fool after a sortie he led from the gates went to shit. If the gods are good, his rotting head plunged straight down into the castle well where it will poison their water. Ha, I can see your face wrinkling, Sansa. Don't—I thought it through. Hosteen Frey was no good for ransom and someone had to pay for us succumbing to hunger. Everyone was so cheerful over it. I know l laughed myself sick.

As to the mine gallery—I give it another three months before we penetrate the heart of the castle. Won't that be the sweetest day? Keen looking forward to painting the wooden timbers supporting the tunnel with buckets of pig fat, setting them to the torch and laying waste to this shithole. Right now the gallery runs sixteen feet past those ugly triangular merlons that look like teeth. I tell you, that was sweat dripping, body battering labor, sapping stone buttresses eight feet thick. But beyond the merlons, the ground is just clay, soft and yielding. Makes me feel like a man with his maiden bride—once you break the virginity, she's slack and sweet.

Before the supply line ambush, we dug three feet a day. Could do twice that but the men have to work silent which means they can't work swift. The only way to combat mining is countermining and I dread the fight being brought down in the earth where a man fears the darkness and the confined space and the restricted air as much as a foe's sword. I'd wager that swaddling infant Ramsay Snow knows precious little about how to defend a castle. A captain of experience would have littered the battlements with bowls of water, so that any disturbance caused by the digging would create ripples indicating where we are underground. Still, I sleep a little less easy at the thought of being proven wrong. What the Bastard lacks in seasoning he compensates with a kind of low animal cunning.

Have I bored you to tears yet? I don't know why I wrote so much about siegecraft—as if ladies would be interested in such dull matters. I spend a lot of time narrating my day to you in my head. I like to imagine you accompanying me as I'm going about my duties, your pretty face rapt with attention when I point out all the work we've done and all the work we still need to do. Funny isn't that? Prattling to you underneath my breath as if I was a madman. I suppose it's a way of keeping you with me, walking beside me, a real presence in this miserable hard place.

Anyhow. Enough talk about the war. How are you, girl? Near everyone here has fallen prey to some kind of gut illness except for me. I'm keeping to myself, pretending to be sick for the sake of decency. It gives me some quiet and the time to finally write to you. Now, don't be angry that I haven't replied as often as you've written. I don't how to make the stuff in my head sound good, light and free from the real dark stuff here and still be interesting to a lady who reads as many books as you do. Should I write about the weather? You northerners never cease running your mouths about it. Well, it's bloody wet. The constant rains have surrounded our encampment with hundreds of little lakes, some six inches deep. I don't mind it so much. Saves us the trouble of drawing water from the river, we just leave the buckets out. And the mud is so courteous, slides right off so I don't have to clean my boots. Might be I have lost the habit of regarding the weather: if it rains, we get wet, and if it doesn't, we don't, and if the sun shines, good. It's not so bad lying on my stomach on my straw pellet reading one of your letters again with the sound of rain pattering against my tent. Drowns out the noise the packs of men make out there—yelling, cussing, fighting, laughing and singing. Ceaseless clatter day and night.

That it should bother me at all. I never use to loathe war, I loved it nine tenths of the time and hated the thought of it being ended too soon. I told you once that killing was the sweetest thing there is…when I was younger, I savored the first cries of "attack" coming from both sides, dodging the blow that would have hacked off my arm could produce a sort of joy only bested by the screams of "help" coming from men great and small alike as they lay in the grassy ditch with their broken lances and split heads, the shadow of the Hound the last thing they see before he sends them off to meet their gods. Yet here I am today, misery fitting this dog like an old damp cloak cause he hates being away from home. {I know now why all the good ones were unmarried: it's not the craven's fear of death that cuts deep to the bone but the fear that by death a soldier is prevented from returning to the woman that waits for him.} Seven hells. Ignore me. I think the hunger is making me stupid.

Am I ever hungry. {Usually, I go to bed dreaming of you but} Last night I dreamt of roast duck with pomegranate sauce with an intensity that was frightening. The crispy skin, the tender flesh, duck fat dripping off my lips. Eel soup with mace and cream, carrots roasted with butter and mint, brown bread still warm from the oven so the sweet butter melts the moment you spread it. Those jugs of that nutty dark ale you know like I so well with my meat. Smacking my lips now as I write this down. It was the last meal we had before I departed Winterfell if you recall. Or can you recall? After we finished the pudding, you had drunk so much icewine that you were nodding off while trying to raise the glass to your lips. Your maids had to come to usher your disgraceful arse to bed. I fight back a smile every time I revisit that evening in my head. Little bird, little bird, I miss you so bad.

If only today had brought one of your letters! I know ravens get lost sometimes and the distance between Winterfell and the Dreadfort is far. But I'm longing to hear from you so much tonight, like never before. Just when I think I've reached the peak of my impatience, I am punished and have to wait some more. Not much to do to fight off boredom and loneliness save brawl or whore. I'm keeping myself straight but am I so bloody tired of being in this kennel. {A man needs good meat, good wine, and good cunt to keep from going fucking insane.} I'm at my wits' end.

I read and read again your letters so often, I don't even need to see the parchment any more to recall the words. {I like to touch them anyway. Imagining your hand on the quill, pressing firm on the parchment—did you moisten the quill tip with your spit?} No, you do not "twaddle on too much"–what bloody nonsense. I have never thought that and never would.

Please continue to write to me, girl. Don't wait upon my answers. I want you to tell me about everything I'm missing out on, being away. I want you to tell me about you.

I suppose that's enough writing for now. I have about an inch of candle left for my light. And my hand is cramping. I'm not used to writing letters to a lady. I'm not used to writing letters. I like it, though.

Happy seventeenth name day, little bird.

Your servant,

Sandor Clegane