SANDOR
Avoiding recognition had thus far been easier than he'd expected. He'd had the notion in his head that the instant he stepped off the boat onto the mainland, children would hide and maidens would faint from coast to coast. About the only bloody way they're ever like to faint for you, dog. But all had proceeded uneventfully, save for the Elder Brother making a final plea for him to change his mind. "Come with me to the Vale," the monk urged. "You need time to adjust to the world again. Then afterwards, if you must, continue onto King's Landing. That way you can – "
"Can what?" Sandor snorted. "Wipe little Lord Robert's arse? Give the rumors of my resurrection time to reach the wrong ears? No. You've done what you can for me, monk. Depending on what happens in the capital, I may even thank you for it. But I'm going it alone from here." And with that, he had mounted up on Stranger – he would not hear of leaving his big black warhorse behind, despite yet more objections – and turned his head for the south.
However, the Elder Brother had been right on one accord. Everything about the world felt strange to him. He rode with his hood up and his sword hidden in the saddle-ties, with a brown brother's robe over his roughspun jerkin and breeches. What few souls he encountered, for the most part, left him well alone. No one could be trusted these days; the war had made murderers, rapists, and thieves of otherwise ordinary men. Sandor wondered if some little pisspot would attempt to rob him, and almost hoped so – he wouldn't mind a chance to do some recreational disembowelment. Aye, Clegane. If you hone your skills on a few snot-nosed cutpurses, you'll be perfectly prepared to take on your bloody undead brother. Failing that, this was the riverlands, and he had a few scores to settle with the outlaw brotherhood. He'd killed Lord Beric Dondarrion himself, but Gregor had done so twice or thrice, and a few other of House Lannister's pet curs could claim credit for the feat as well. But the Elder Brother had said that Dondarrion was truly dead now, and this woman Stoneheart commanded the Brotherhood in his place, hanging any Frey she happened across. Sandor considered this an inestimable service to the whole of mankind. It's a damned good thing I don't look like a weasel, then.
In times of peace, the riverlands were the cradle of Westeros, lush and fertile and pastoral, but it was a very long while since anyone anywhere had known any peace. Sandor saw more corpses on the first day than in a month on the Quiet Isle, and for bloody certain no one had thought of burying them. The charred countryside was scattered with wattle cottages, deep ploughed ditches, clear-cut woods, broken fences and tumbledown walls. Smoke was often rising from the horizon. Yet from here, it was a more or less straight shot down the kingsroad to the capital.
Sandor, however, did not want to take the kingsroad. It was marginally safer than it had been in the heat of the war, but the closer he got to King's Landing, the harder it would be to conceal his identity. The place was in turmoil following the deaths of Ser Kevan and Grand Maester Pycelle, and Mace Tyrell – not the sort of leader to inspire outstanding confidence in anyone – was grappling as hard as he could to keep the peace. It was keeping for the moment, but barely. And if word spread that the infamous Hound himself, the coward of the Blackwater and the butcher of the riverlands, had returned for the express purpose of re-murdering the Mountain and sentencing the queen to death, the gods alone knew what sort of inferno would follow.
Sandor's mouth twisted, pulling the burned side of his face up into a leer. I might walk through an actual inferno, if it brought me the chance to come to grips with Gregor. There had never been a moment in his life that was ever free of Gregor.
The Clegane family keep lay in the Reach, south and east of Lannisport, about forty or fifty miles from Casterly Rock as the raven flew. While not a great castle, it was nonetheless a handsome manor house of stone suitable for a landed knight, and the forested hills were rich with game, the river bountiful with fish. Crofts, coppices, terraces, and orchards chequered the golden fields. Yet Sandor had to reach back almost to a moment before language, before conscious knowledge, to think of it without seeing the chilling and unnatural place it had become under Gregor. His memories were of being hunted through those trees, thrown into that river, locked in that manor's attic until he sobbed with hunger and begged to be let out, apologizing for things he had never done. They called it harmless fun, they said he was a growing lad, they excused everything they ever could, even when the burns were already on my face. Father told the world that my bedding caught fire, and I myself mouthed the lie like a pretty talking bird. No one saw what Gregor truly was, or chose not to. No one except me and Alienor.
Sandor had been visited by the ghost of his sister more than once as he lay burning with fever on the Trident, and then later in the septry. Every time, she always looked exactly as she had on the day she died: thirteen years old, wearing her thick black hair in two long braids and that mint-green dress she'd loved, still spattered with bloodstains. Father said it must have been outlaws when the men found her in that gully, that she must have gone too far alone again like she always did. That it was outlaws who beat her with a riding whip until there was no flesh left on her back, who raped her so violently that her cunt and arse were torn apart, who broke her neck and threw her body at the bottom of the rocks to make it look like an accident. I was ten years old and I knew it was idiocy, and yet men thrice my age never asked any questions. She died for defending me, for helping me, for standing up for me. For loving me. No matter how often he was told that he must leave it all to the Father Above for judgment, Sandor could not forgive his own father for that.
Strangely, Ser Theodor Clegane had not been a particularly violent man. He had always been remarkably tall and strong – five fingers over six feet and eighteen stone of muscle – and he had bequeathed this commanding physique to his sons, but the spirit within was placid, unimaginative, fearful of change, and desperate to maintain appearances. The Cleganes were new enough as knights banneret to Casterly Rock that Ser Theodor was always fretting about what the old western houses would think of them, those who dripped in gold from Lannisport and silver and gems from Silverhill. His father had been the one to save Lord Tytos Lannister from the lion in the fields that day; he envisioned a similarly upright and honorable life for his sons, and envisioned it so well that he saw nothing else. He'd hoped for Alienor to marry a Marbrand or a Swyft or a Stackspear. Instead he wound up with a monster, a dog, and a corpse.
And then there was Sandor's lady mother. Alyx Clegane had been a Crakehall by birth, and while she too was big, strapping, and broad-shouldered to look upon, she was peculiar, fragile, and sensitive inside. Yet she had been the only one who tried to constrain Gregor, which explained why he tormented her so unceasingly that her death when Sandor was six, a year after the incident, was widely rumored to have come at her own hand. He could barely remember what she looked like, or if she was kind to him, or if he'd missed her. Yet sometimes a specter that might have been her had come to him as well, as he lay in that hallucinatory borderland between sleeping and waking, between sickness and health, between death and life. He was never sure, for it never had any face. Only a sense of great joy and melancholy mingled, and a pale hand, holding onto his in the darkness.
What Sandor did remember was the day Gregor had become a knight. Upon hearing that the Prince of Dragonstone himself was set to do the honors of dubbing, he had conceived a feverish, half-baked plan to get him alone and tell him everything. Rhaegar Targaryen would listen, would be horrified, would immediately agree that there was no way such a. . . thing could ever be accorded a loyal retainer of House Lannister and the Iron Throne. Sandor had loved knights as much as any little boy, as any little girl loved princesses. Everything he knew had told him that Gregor was as unfit for this high honor as were the Others. Whatever the false maester Qyburn had made him into, he could not possibly be more of a demon.
Yet Sandor had not been allowed to meet Rhaegar personally, let alone speak to him. Gregor entered from his vigil spent overnight in the sept – Sandor still couldn't understand how the place hadn't burst into flames – and Rhaegar listened to his vows, tapped his dragon-hilted sword on Gregor's shoulder, and said, "Arise, Ser Gregor."
And, watching from the back, Sandor lost everything he had ever believed in. Almost that quickly. He heard the rush of air as gods and knights and honor and goodness and kindness and hope and healing all at once fled out the door, never to return. He had joined the Lannisters as soon as he could after that, when Ser Theodor had that oh-so-convenient hunting accident. And soon began to hate them as well, guarding Joffrey Baratheon because it gave him money to drink, seeing in the crown prince a sadism to rival anything Gregor could have conjured, aware sometimes that Joffrey wanted him to be the father that Robert had never been, and becoming still more scornful as a result. And further and further down and down, nothing he ever cared for even a fraction, until. . .
But no. He wasn't going to think about her.
Sandor arrived in Maidenpool four days later. At once, he could see that he was going to have to be very careful. Not only was Maidenpool the first village of even comparable size, it was swarming with Tarly men, busily rebuilding it after the brutal sacking and burning that had befallen it near the end of the war. Another of my alleged crimes, no doubt. There were still ashes and broken beams, and the hillside was pocked with graves, but order did seem in the process of being restored. In his professional capacity, Sandor wondered how many of those graves had been dug after Lord Randyll arrived. The Lord of Horn Hill might be the only man in the Seven Kingdoms whose idea of justice was even more inflexible than Stannis Baratheon's.
There was a guard on the gate, inspecting all entrants into the village. Sandor kept his eyes down and mumbled "ser" and "m'lord," and was shooed through with only a cursory glance. He recalled schooling the little wolf bitch on that accord – right before they'd nearly faffed into the middle of the Red Wedding, if memory served. He might not have risked entering Maidenpool at all, but Stranger had cast a shoe a few miles back, and was limping on the rocky road.
Sandor tracked down the smith, who was already beset with more orders for pegs, stakes, wedges, cottar-pins, adze blades, and banging out dents in tools than he could possibly satisfy, and thus was not disposed to be polite when a big hooded man turned up with a bad-tempered destrier. Nonetheless, something must have warned him not to complain overmuch, and he set to the task, albeit with surly bad grace and a price that was twice what the same smith would have charged in King's Landing. Sandor paid it without comment, and held Stranger firmly by the bridle as the smith got grumbling to work; kicking the man in the face would certainly be detrimental to their aims of avoiding attention. The stallion did not, though he snorted and laid back his ears and bared his teeth in a way that made the smith eye both of them more sourly than ever. Stranger was clearly too good and too expensive a horse for this apparently penniless ragamuffin to have come by innocuously. Maybe he'll fetch Lord Tarly and have me hanged for thievery. It would be ironic, if unfortunate.
The smith got the bellows going, hammered out a shoe, and plunged it into the rain barrel to cool it. "Hold his hoof while I put this on," he ordered Sandor through a mouthful of nails. "Bad enough they've got bloody wolves on show, I don't need to contend with the likes o' him to boot."
Sandor knelt and pulled up the hoof in question, the left rear one. There were sundry pebbles and dirt embedded in it, which he economically cleaned out, then held it out for the shoe. He knew he should keep his mouth shut, but his bloody curiosity got the better of him. "What wolf on show?"
The smith grunted. "I forgot, you just fell off the back o' the turnip cart. Lord Randyll's got that she-wolf caged up on the village green here, the one they captured on the Trident. He thinks it serves a good firm lesson. Me, I just think it queer how many brave men there are now that weren't before, who go off to point and jeer and throw stones now she can't hurt them. Not that I entirely blame them, mind. The Fat Flower will bloody shit hisself when that monster arrives in King's Landing."
The wolf bitch. Yes, the Elder Brother had mentioned that during their conversation in Hermit's Hole. He'd briefly entertained the notion of taking her south himself, before deciding that if it was hard enough to remain anonymous with half his face burned off and a riotously ill-tempered black warhorse, it would be several orders of magnitude worse with a man-killing fiend in tow. If I do what I intend to, they should all be bloody thanking me on bended knee anyway.
Still, something about it made him want to go and see. I don't like wolves. I hate wolves. Maybe he'd throw a few stones himself. Or maybe he wouldn't. I know something about being stared at, spat at, stoned, and cursed for a monstrosity. Seven hells, I do know something about that.
The shoeing job was completed without loss of life or limb on anyone's part, and Sandor thanked the smith with a grunt and tossed him an extra coin. Then he led Stranger out to the horse pickets, tied him well away from any of the others, and gave him a withered apple from his pocket. Once the destrier was munching more or less contentedly, Sandor headed for the green, which wasn't hard to find. Maidenpool was not that large of a town, and besides, a steady stream of people were making in the same direction. There, just as promised, Sandor finally laid eyes on the feared, fabled Terror of the Trident.
It was smaller than he expected. That was his first thought. All the tales had given the creature monolithic proportions – the size of a pony, the size of a cow, the size of an elk. While it was the largest wolf he'd ever seen, to ordinary wolves what his brother Gregor was to ordinary men, it still fell somewhat short of the grandiose expectations. It lay awkwardly in its chains, twisted and tangled, froth dripping from its mouth. Every so often it would lift its head and snarl, usually causing whatever jeering party of youths had approached to backtrack precipitately, but its strength appeared to be mostly at an end. Tattered red wounds showed through its thick fur, and sticks, stones, and missiles of all sorts lay scattered around the bars of the cage.
Bloody hells, they're killing it. The last thing Sandor had expected to feel was pity – an indignation felt by one monster of the riverlands on behalf of another. I know, he thought at it. I know what it is like to be mocked by fleas, for not one of them dares to face you on equal ground. I know what it is like to wear chains.
The wolf lifted her head. Golden eyes met his grey ones. She stared at him.
It's just an animal, Sandor reminded himself. It doesn't understand you, it doesn't know who you are. Don't be bloody ridiculous.
The wolf kept staring at him. People were glancing around to see what it was looking at. "Seems she fancies you, brother," one remarked. "Fancies you to eat, most like. Seeing as she's come up straight from the seventh hell, and snacks on a septon every afternoon."
Sandor grunted again and turned away. It was late afternoon by now; the sun was going down and the air was fast getting colder. He was going to have to decide whether to press on, or spend the night in Maidenpool. It was folly to linger around other folk any longer than he had to, but he didn't like the purplish-black clouds mounding up in the western sky, and his bad leg had started to give him trouble again after five days of hard riding. When he pulled down his breeches this morning to take a piss, he had seen a faint yellowish discharge oozing from the corrugated scar tissue, and knew he'd have to bind it up quickly. Otherwise it might break open again and fester, and that would just be a fucking deuce of a way to end things.
I'll have to stay here tonight, Sandor decided. There had to be some bed he could buy with a few coppers. He trudged back to Stranger, untied him, and set off through Maidenpool's narrow, muddy streets. Lord Randyll's soldiers were marching through as well, calling curfew; anyone caught outside after the last evenfall bell had sung would be subject to arrest and possible execution. Keeping the peace for the rest of us, bloody hero that he is.
At last, Sandor located a suitable inn, which also had the distinction of being the only inn that was even remotely habitable. The keeper didn't ask questions, which he appreciated, and even gave Sandor a place in the back by the kitchens that was warm and mostly dry, if slanted so steeply overhead that he had to wriggle in like a greased pig. After he'd clumsily tended to his leg, he lay down with a heavy sigh and stared at the rough-grained wood above him. He was so tired that he might sleep soundly through an army of cooks and banging pots, but he couldn't stop thinking about the confounded wolf.
Will you give it up? Either you'd be hanged by Tarly's minions or get the other half of your face eaten off by the bitch. Sandor owed nothing to anyone, only cared about getting back to King's Landing and taking the revenge a lifetime in the making. Yet there alone in the darkness, he was forced to admit that he was scared stiff of returning to the capital. He hadn't exactly departed in the best of circumstances, it wasn't how he'd wanted to go, he hadn't intended to go alone. . . but with the Blackwater Rush belching green flames a hundred feet high, there was no way he could have made himself walk back into it. You're coming back the same way you left, dog. And there's no one but yourself to blame for that.
Sandor turned over. The thin, straw-stuffed mattress was scratchy and uncomfortable, and he wasn't getting anywhere by lying here. He opened them and sat up, cautiously, to avoid braining himself on the low beam. The place was quiet, save for the snoring of the servants who slept in the kitchen. He slithered out, testing the floor for creaks. The coldness of the air under the door suggested the clouds were in the process of disgorging their contents.
It was even colder when Sandor crept out the back door. Flakes swirled like icy needles out of the dark sky, and the thatched roofs of the cottages were already glazed in snow. He could see a brazier burning several alleyways over, but Lord Tarly's soldiers were apparently more concerned with staying huddled close to it rather than hunting potential curfew-breakers. Like as not they didn't expect there to be any.
Sandor turned away from the light, and stole down a narrow side lane. He had a heavy iron implement from the kitchen in hand, as well as a flask of cooking oil, and with every step he cursed himself. Undoubtedly the bitch would start running roughshod through the whole village, attacking every soul in their beds. Well, then she might tear out Lord Tarly's throat, and that would certainly be amusing. And the chaos would give me a chance to escape without being seen.
The village square was as black as pitch when Sandor reached the wolf's cage. The bitch's fur was caked with snow, and icicles of slaver had formed beneath her opened, lolling jaws. Her eyes turned as bright as two flames when she saw him coming.
"Don't you make a sound, or I'll just kill you here," Sandor warned her in a hiss. "And hold still."
For all the world as if she understood him, the bitch continued to watch him with those evil eyes of hers. She held still. He raised the implement high, and brought it down.
The noise was horrendous, shivering and scraping, so much that he thought doors would fly open and outraged householders in their nightclothes would come swarming out to string him up on the instant. But they didn't. Another grunting, two-handed blow, and the front of the cage hung halfway off its hinges. A final blow, and it fell into the snow.
"I can't believe I'm bloody doing this," Sandor muttered, not for the first time, as he unstopped the flask of oil and poured it on the beast's front paws. They had grown gaunt enough during her captivity that it was surprisingly simple to slip them through the fetters. The instant he loosed her rear ones, she would leap on him and tear out his throat first, but that was the only reward he deserved for his stupidity. But it transpired that he could not do the same at the back, as these cuffs had a key turned into them that had embedded into the wolf's lower leg, leaving a pustulated, oozing wound. Sandor fumbled and twisted, swearing under his breath, until finally it came free, coagulated with frozen blood. One, and then the other.
The she-wolf climbed out of the cage with sore, stalking grace. She lifted her head and regarded Sandor calmly, then – as he held out his hand for some damned-fool reason, just so she could more conveniently rip it off – she padded close enough to give it a quick, rough swipe with her tongue. Then she gathered her hindquarters under her, limping but moving fast, with purpose, and vanished like a grey wind between the houses into the night.
I would do very well myself to be out of Maidenpool by the time they find she's escaped. Sandor glanced in all directions for approaching torches and pitchforks, then ducked low and scrambled back through the labyrinthine wynds. He didn't stop until he reached the stable, slid in and untied Stranger, saddled him, and led the two of them out toward the muddy ground that bordered the palisade. Still Lord Tarly's soldiers did not leave their braziers. The snow continued to fall. He might hang them as well, once he discovers that they sat on their arses while the she-wolf got away.
He was out of Maidenpool and pelting hard down the road to Duskendale by the time dawn began to perforate the cold horizon. Then he had to stop; his leg was cramping savagely, and there was more pus on the bandages when he unwrapped them. He changed the dressing and built as much of a fire as he dared, stretching out and warming a little of his cold food. He doubted that any man would be in a great hurry to hunt down the wolf bitch on his own.
Nonetheless, after he had been at rest for an hour or so, he noticed two riders coming hard from the north. He considered hauling himself back up on Stranger and trying to outdistance them, but the banners that he could pick out were not blazoned with the striding huntsman of House Tarly. Rather, it was the rainbow sword of the Warrior's Sons. What in damnation are they doing here? Then again, they were nearly ubiquitous these days. Four of them had gone to the Vale with the Elder Brother, and he would have sent some with Sandor, but Sandor had refused. Knights are bad enough, but these knights think they're the Seven made flesh. Still, having a few prickly religious zealots along might help him out of any future tight corners. Or get him into them, but no matter.
Yet they were closer now, and then closer. And as they crossed the bridge a few stone's throws away, he recognized to his complete shock that they were in fact two of the Sons who had accompanied the Elder Brother. They must be going to King's Landing – to do what? Report at the Great Sept? What bloody happened in the Vale that the High Sparrow needs to know about so badly that they're trying to kill their horses?
In that case, Sandor might do well to find out himself. He rose to his feet and stepped out from beneath his tree. "And where are you scuttling off to?"
Both of the Sons reined in so hard that their horses almost sat down. They knew who he was, as much as he knew them, and shot him twin looks of searing displeasure at being interrupted in their vital errand, particularly by a half-clad, half-wild-looking ex-traitor dawdling in a river bottom. "You," said one of them. "What are you doing?"
"The same thing you are, by the looks of it. I'll challenge you to a race, if you want."
"Get out of our way, Clegane," said the other. "We have to reach the capital as soon as possible. Elder Brother learned certain details of crimes against the gods, and we were supposed to be taking the girl for refuge to the Quiet Isle, but something went badly wrong. She never turned up as she was supposed to, and it took until the next morning to realize she was gone."
"Girl? What girl?" Sandor could care less about some bloody girl. "Will there or will there not still be the queen's trial for the Faith to pay attention to, once you louts get there with your precious news?"
The rainbow knights stared at him coldly. Then the first one said, "I don't think you really deserve to know this, Clegane. The Father Above only knows why, in fact, but Elder Brother said that if by some wild chance we did happen across you, we should tell you. The girl who gave him the evidence, the girl who's now gone missing – like as not in the company of one Ser Shadrich, a hedge knight in Lord Baelish's service who's also mysteriously unaccounted for – was Sansa Stark."
For a moment that lasted forever, the world ended.
For a moment that lasted even longer, the world began.
Seven. Fucking. Hells.
The second Son smirked at whatever expression was on Sandor's face. He couldn't even begin to imagine what it was. His heart was roaring in his ears, he felt even more flattened than he had when the Elder Brother had broken the news about Robert Strong.I'm not sure how much more of this I can bloody take. The only two things he had ever wanted in his life, the only two things that defined him any more. Choose one, and forsake the other. Do it.
If I had gone to the Vale as the Elder Brother asked. . . This hedge knight could count himself unfathomably lucky, for the time being, that Sandor hadn't. If I was there, I would have ripped his cock and balls off and made him eat them raw. But he hadn't been. You dog. You utter useless dog.
At last, Sandor found his voice. "And you poncing bloody cunts just let him ride off with her?"
"Of course we didn't," the first one snapped. Nothing was like to insult a religious crusader more than the suggestion that he was a woman. "As soon as we realized she was gone, the Elder Brother sent the other two of our number to track her down and rescue her, while we were to ride for King's Landing with all speed. Your interference will neither be needed or appreciated, Clegane. Either go kill your demon brother, or crawl back to the Quiet Isle and leave whole men, godly men, to handle this affair properly."
Not a broken, bitter, burned bastard, you mean? He had always been hideously aware of who he was, what he was. But he could just as well stop breathing rather than turn his back now.
You're the gods' greatest fool, dog. First the bloody wolf bitch and now the little bird. What did it say of him that he knew what utter, consummate lunacy it was, and yet he still went ahead and did it?
With no further remarks, Sandor lurched about and limped back to Stranger. He did not even care what the news was. Hopefully it was good and scandalous, get the Faith's smallclothes in a knot long enough so that the queen's trial was pushed back a moon's turn or two. He didn't need long. Only long enough to make Ser Shadrich eat his vitals for breakfast, and see her face once more. So she can curse you for the mongrel you are, and run. He wouldn't blame her. Perhaps I can't take on my bloody brother just yet, but I think I can manage some pissant hedge knight.
"Where are you going, Clegane?" one of the Sons said, as he mounted up. "You'd best not be thinking – "
"To hell." Sandor snapped the reins across Stranger's nose. "I'm sure I'll see you there." And with that he galloped past, kicking up the fresh snow, and turned his face to the north. He did not once look back.