SANSA
"You." She ought to have said something else, anything else, but she was too numb with shock. How could it be, it couldn't be, but in defiance of every odd that had ever existed, it was. "You."
"Me," he agreed, with a grin that bordered on the grotesque. He still had hold of her arm, had hauled her back inside and demanded two rooms from the innkeeper, and thrown four stags to bounce and roll off the desk. Then he'd dragged her upstairs – from what it looked like, Sansa expected a brigade of would-be heroes to follow with candlesticks and carving knives in hand. But instead it was still only the two of them, and the wall he'd pinned her against.
Her feet were dangling off the floor, and her heart was racing. She was still too stunned to have anything to say. Her true-knight-who-was-no-true-knight, miraculously come to save her after all – yet it had taken only this, him manhandling her and terrifying the others, to utterly strip away the glamour she had built around him. She had remembered him, romanticized him as her guardian and protector, dreamed of a kiss, fallen in love with the memory. Had longed to see him again, fancied to tame the rage within him. But that had all been in absence. The harsh, blunt, brutal, ferocious, dangerous man stood before her in the flesh. She wanted to look away, but remembered how he'd always snarled at her for doing it. So she held his gaze as best she could, trembling. If I can manage Ser Shadrich, this is nothing.
"Seven hells, girl," he said, after the silence had become equally as hideous. "What do you think you're bloody doing? I ran across a pair of Warrior's Sons who said you'd been kidnapped, and instead I find you gallivanting about, as if you were out for a bloody picnic! I didn't think even you were so – "
"I was kidnapped." She couldn't stand to hear him call her a stupid little talking bird again, not now, not here. "B-by a hedge knight. Ser Shadrich."
The Hound snorted. "And I suppose he just let you slip out of your cage for a few flaps, did he?"
"No! I killed him! Now put me down. Stop. You're scaring me. Why are you still so awful?"
Sandor Clegane flinched. For the first time he seemed to actually focus on her face, to see the way he'd thrown her against the wall, her dishevelment and dirtiness. He muttered something unintelligible. Then without a word, he set her on her feet.
"Th-thank you." Her voice was starting to shake. The gods answer your prayers, but never the way you expect. Once upon a time, the Hound had sworn to kill anyone who hurt her, albeit while drunk, fleeing the inferno of the Blackwater, and holding a knife to her throat. But he wept when she sang him the Mother's song, and afterwards he kissed her. She'd kept his white cloak, dreamed of him climbing into her bed on the night of Petyr and Lysa's wedding. . . he'd said that he heard she was kidnapped, he must have come after her. . . It cannot all mean nothing. And she very much did not want him to go. She was utterly on her own otherwise, and no matter how much of a dog Sandor Clegane demonstrably still was, she had never once believed that he would hurt her.
They stared at each other for an unbearably uncomfortable few more moments. Then the Hound, for all the world as if he was trying to break the silence, grumbled, "So what in blazes have you done with your hair?"
Sansa barely restrained herself from groping self-consciously at her head. "I – I cut it off. After I. . . I dealt with Ser Shadrich." It was so odd to refer to killing a man in that casual way. She still wasn't sorry that she'd done it, but it had certainly made her think.
"You killed him?" There was something in the Hound's voice that she couldn't make out, like pride and anger and grief and guilt all at once. "Bloody good for you. About time the little bird grew some claws. You do in the Imp too, I hope?"
Sansa gaped at him, then shook her head. "No. I. . . haven't seen my – seen Tyrion since the night. . . since the night I escaped from King's Landing."
"Turn into a sparrow then, did you? Or a she-wolf?"
"No. I. . ." Sansa hesitated, wondering if she should tell him about Petyr or not. "I was in the Eyrie," she said evasively. "Until Ser Shadrich kidnapped me."
"The Eyrie? You were there when Lady Lysa decided to practice her flying? Hellfire, girl, if I had known – " But with that, he stopped abruptly.
Would he have come for me? It crossed Sansa's mind that she did not know who he was working for at the nonce, if he had taken up service as a sellsword in the aftermath of his shameful exit from King's Landing. And even if not, they could not stay in this inn forever, and her destination had suddenly become twice as nebulous. I could ask him to escort me to White Harbor. . . but if he had met a pair of Warrior's Sons who had informed him of her abduction, word must be running rampant, and reaching the gods knew whose ears. No safe places.
Finally, she took a timid sideways step. "I'm – I'm very hungry, I'll. . ."
The Hound made a move toward the stairs. "Stay here. I'll fetch something."
"No." Sansa impulsively laid her hand on his arm, and was surprised to feel the muscles tense. "They'll think you hurt me if they see you alone."
The Hound gave her an extremely surprised glance, but stepped aside. She could feel his eyes on her back as she descended, wondering what the reaction would be after all, and the hush when she entered the front room was certainly palpable. On seeing her, the innkeeper immediately busied himself behind a stack of plates and could not be retrieved. It was finally his wife who came to attend to her.
Sansa paid a stag for the leavings of supper, and carried it back up the stairs. She was not sure which room the Hound had bought for her, but a door stood ajar at the end of the dark hall. The entire night was feeling more and more like a dream. She might awake and find herself back in the woods with Ser Shadrich, or even back in the Eyrie, awaiting another day as Alayne. But I'm not, and even if I am dreaming, I remember. "I am Sansa," she whispered. "Sansa Stark."
She was quiet enough that the Hound hadn't heard her. He was kneeling in front of the draughty hearth, striking a pair of flints against a pile of kindling and swearing when the sparks failed to catch. "Seven hells," he mumbled. "I hate fires."
Sansa cleared her throat. "Here," she said. "Don't mind that. I. . . I know you don't. . ."
The Hound scowled at her. "Were you going to tell me it's not actually that dark and not actually that cold? It will snow tonight, and it won't be a pleasant little dusting. What's coming. . . it's one of your northern storms, little bird. It's in the air. I can smell it."
Snow, Sansa thought. It gave her the strangest feeling, like something she should remember but couldn't. Shyly she brought the food over, and crouched beside him. He'd managed to coax a passable fire, and they sat side by side, not looking at each other, gnawing on the gamey meat. At last, when nothing remained on the plates but bones and a few crumbs, she looked back at him. "Where have you been? I thought you were dead. I thought you were. . ."
"The butcher of Saltpans?" he finished. The burned side of his mouth twisted. "You can thank the bloody monk for that. Found me after your little wolf bitch of a sister left, and didn't have the decency to finish what Gregor's men had started. It was him who left my helm behind, when he carted me off to the Quiet Isle. It's there I've been. Digging graves. Something I'm good at, wouldn't you say?"
Sansa struggled to absorb this. There was only one thing that leapt out at her, that clutched her around the throat. "My sister? You know something about my sister? You. . ." In her mind's eye she could see the two of them, but Arya's face was nothing more than a featureless blur. "What did you do to her? What did she do to you?"
She had thought the Hound would laugh at her, but instead he was motionless. The fire dwelled deep in the pits of his eyes, he did not seem entirely human. She wanted to back away from him, fearing the end of that stillness, the explosion of rage and energy that must follow. But he only said, "I wanted her to kill me. Very badly. She didn't. She got up and rode off. That's all I know. She could be downstairs, she could be in bloody Sothoros. I have no damned idea."
"Why was she with you?" Sansa could barely get the words out. Arya. She'd lived so long thinking that every single member of her family was dead, had heard that her sister had gone to marry the monster whom Ser Shadrich would have sold her to, then found out it was her best friend instead. "Did you. . ."
"I kidnapped her," the Hound supplied matter-of-factly. "From the bloody outlaws. They were going to sell her for ransom too, I just got there first. No, don't look at me, I don't know how she was still alive either. Girl was such a bloody nuisance, it makes no sense."
My sister. Sansa almost wanted to cry. She could see her father and her lady mother on a summer's day in Winterfell, the snows glistening, Jon and Robb fighting in the bailey and Theon making some sardonic comment, little Rickon trying to join in. Bran running after them. It hurt almost beyond believing. Arya was her only link back to that, her only living blood kin. She sat mute, stricken.
Sandor coughed. Then he said gruffly, "Mind, I would have deserved it, if she'd killed me. I tried to get her to. I. . . told her, I confessed. . . but she hoped it would be slower, I think. Fierce as that bloody she-wolf in Maidenpool."
Something about that pricked at Sansa's memory. "The. . . wolf? The man-killing one on the Trident?"
"That's the one," the Hound confirmed. "They finally caught her and caged her up to send to King's Landing as a prize. Would have gotten there too, if not for me and my delusions of grandeur. Don't look so scared, little bird. The bitch wanted a bite of Randyll Tarly, not you. Aren't you a wolf too?"
I am. Sansa got hold of herself. There were two more questions she desperately had to have answered. "Where are. . . were you going? Before. . . me."
The Hound glanced at the black window. "It's late."
"Please."
He considered her a long moment. She had always found his eyes to be the most frightening thing about him, and in a way that was still true now. There was not the same deep, abrading core of rage that she remembered; they seemed older now, tired, sad, still slightly angry, guilty perhaps as well. Then he said, "King's Landing."
"What?" Next to the Wall, that was the last answer she had expected. "Why?"
"No point in telling you." He glanced away.
"Please," she said again.
"No." The flash of temper resurfaced. "You should know better than to ask questions that aren't good for you."
"Such as this?" she shot back. It occurred to her that she had no idea what to call him to his face; she called him the Hound in her head, but could not utter it aloud. He was no ser, as he'd always told her, and no lord either. Sandor seemed strange, too close, too familiar. "When we were up on the wallwalks, after Joffrey ordered my father k-killed. . . he wanted me to look at the heads and I did, but I looked at the courtyard as well and there was no wall, he was standing right there, all it would have taken was a shove. . . it wouldn't have mattered if I died too. I would have, and then it would have been over, there was nothing more they could have done to me. Why did you do it? Why did you stop me?"
"I was the prince's sworn shield, girl. Of course I couldn't have let you kill him. If I'd stood by and watched, it would have been my own head too."
"Yes, but. . ." Sansa struggled for the words. "You could have said something, you could have told Joffrey, the queen. . . any of them. But you knelt in front of me and you wiped the blood off my lip from where Ser Meryn hit me. . . all of it, you gave me your cloak after Ser Boros stripped me, you saved me from the riot after Princess Myrcella was sent to Dorne, you said you'd kill anyone who tried to hurt me, you. . . you kissed me. . ."
The Hound stared at her. "Kissed you? Seven hells, little bird, I never kissed you. What in blazes are you talking about?"
"You. . . what?" Sansa's face was burning. This was a conversation she'd imagined a thousand times, but always with the safety of believing that Sandor was dead, that she could romantically confide these fantasies to his loving memory. That way her recollection of him would remain untarnished, not this shock back into a realization of lies and more lies. "You promised. . . I sang for you. . ."
"Sang with my knife at your bloody throat." The Hound made a sound that might have been a laugh, if it wasn't so choked with pain. "Bloody hell, girl. Is there anything that isn't knights and ladies and pretty stories with you? You never gave the song, I took it, I stole it from you, I would have stolen more, all those days standing by mute and watching the royal shit do what he did. . . I'm not a knight, I've told you and told you, and what have you made of me now? The Hound died, but the dog remains. That's all I am. Ever."
"No," she said. "No, you're wrong."
Sandor Clegane growled, low in his throat. The silence could have been plucked like a harp string. Then in one rough motion he got to his feet, and she could see that he heavily favored his left leg. Limping, he crossed the room and left without another word. The door creaked shut behind him.
Sansa sat on the floor, shivering. She could hear snow scratching on the windows. She had been right about it snowing, could hear him telling her that this would be one of the northern storms. But I have never seen a true northern storm. She had been born a Stark; winter was in her blood, her tears had turned to ice, her skin to ivory and steel. But for all that, the stone walls of Winterfell had always risen high to shield her, the furs and quilts warm on her bed, the hot springs beneath the castle, knowing that her father would keep them all safe. I always knew that I could come in out of the cold.
Sansa was briefly possessed with a demented urge to get up and walk outside, to run out into the storm and greet it as a lover. Old Nan told tales about men who had lived past their time, who would dress their best and say they were going out to hunt, while the wind screamed and the snow piled up above the roof.
She was cold. She clumsily added more kindling to the fire, which sparked and snapped and smoked, and crossed the room to the bed. It was narrow and dirty, but when she crawled beneath the sheets, she was weary enough not to care.
Sansa slipped under quickly, but her dreams were fitful and sporadic. The coverlet on the bed was thin and tattered, and she woke in the black of night to find the fire gone out and the entire room as cold as ice. Shivering so hard that her teeth rattled, she tiptoed across the freezing floor, fumbled to relight the fire in the hearth, and only took the skin off her knuckles with the flint. She sucked them, tried again to light the fire, could not produce more than a miserly spark or two, and mumbled an oath better suited for Sandor's mouth than her own. Then she crept back to bed, suddenly thought that she spotted a shadow in the corner, and was so frightened that she dove under the quilt, burrowing into the mattress. Like a child. A child willing the monsters away. Still shivering, she closed her eyes again.
It was not quite dawn when she woke for good. She was warmer than she'd been, and her first thought was to look to the fire. It was still out, the embers grey and cold, but another covering had been laid over her. Reaching out to touch it, she realized that it was Sandor's mangy old robe. It was of the coarsest weave imaginable, a brown brother's garment, and it must have to do with that story he hadn't finished last night, about the monk and the Quiet Isle – and then a second revelation followed. The Elder Brother was head of the septry on the Quiet Isle, must have known that Sandor was still alive when he'd spoken to her. He didn't tell me. But what reason would he have had to? Yet he must have sent the Warrior's Sons after her, the ones who'd told the Hound where to –
It was too much to sort through all at once. Her feet so cold that she could scarcely feel her toes, Sansa went to the window and scratched out a peephole. She could only discern rough outlines of the outside world, but it was enough to tell that everything was blanketed in white. Regardless of whatever plans she might have made, it was obvious that no one was going to be crossing the Bite in this weather. But I was never sure that I wanted to go north anyway.
Sansa pulled back on what few clothes she had taken off, laced up her boots, and ventured across the floor, blowing on her fingers. She could see her breath even in the dim air of the room, and knew that it must be even colder outside. She opened the door, took a step –
– and nearly fell headlong over the Hound, who was sitting outside her room with long legs outstretched, head tipped forward and lank dark hair falling in his face. His sword lay half-drawn in his lap; it looked as if he had fallen asleep with one hand wrapped around the hilt. Faint puffs of silver rose from his nose and mouth, and he was only in his jerkin and shirtsleeves, having sacrificed his cloak for her. But he bought two rooms. He could have slept in his.
It was just another of the things she did not understand about Sandor Clegane. Sansa edged away, wondering if she should reconsider going outside. I will be quick. She hastened down the groaning stairs, through the deserted common room, and opened the door into the narrow, muddy street.
The cold hit her in the stomach before she'd gone a dozen paces. The Bite was invisible, socked in a frozen beading mist, and icicles hung in jagged sheaves from roofs and walls. It was still snowing, heavy flakes circling down from the smoky metal clouds, and everything was so grey that it looked washed out. No man or beast moved in the street, and the only sound was of the distant wind. Sansa tried not to imagine what might have befallen her if she had still been abroad with Ser Shadrich when this had struck. He would have ordered me to keep him warm. Worse, she might have done so.
No. I do not want to think about him. He is dead and frozen, and it was certainly not his spirit I saw haunting me last night. It was a dream. Yet in one of the thrashing, shallow dozes before sunrise, she'd seen fire and blood and a cascading avalanche of broken ice. Shadows. Ghosts. If she was staying here for the foreseeable future, and it appeared that she was, the snow would be good for her. All the others hunting her would have the deuce of a time tracking her down now.
I have seen what I needed to. Sansa turned to go back and quickened her pace, hoping that the Hound hadn't woken in her absence and thought her fled again. She still had a thousand questions to ask him, though no guarantee that he would answer them. Last night had been strange, both of them sharing more than they'd meant to, and today, the walls would be back up. She wanted to go with him, she wanted to give him a chance to prove his word, but she could hear his voice in her head. Is there anything that isn't knights and ladies and pretty songs with you? Perhaps it was, if she'd invented the kiss from – what, exactly? She knew that she had changed forever, since they'd last met. Now she could only wonder if he had too.
The inn was still quiet when she returned, and there were no affronted roars from above, which she took to mean Sandor was still asleep. When she mounted the stairs, she found out that he was. He looked uncomfortable and cold and unhappy, and she was moved by a sudden pity. She knelt and quietly shook him.
He must have been deep in the throes of a dream, because it took several. Then at last his eyes blinked open and stared at her without seeing. It took another few moments until recognition set in. "Girl," he said. "What time is it?"
"Early." She sat back on her heels. "It's still snowing."
"It won't stop." The corner of his mouth twitched again, in that way he had. "Remember the stories your nurse must have told you? The Long Night. Others and pale spiders and knights shitting their smallclothes and dying like everyone else."
Sansa was surprised, seeing as she had of course just been thinking of Old Nan the previous night, but she was hurt that he seemed so bent on throwing it back in her face. Of course he would say that. He was still awful, in a way. "I'm sorry," she said stiffly. "I should have let you sleep, ser."
He appeared set to snarl at her again, but the gleam in his eye that appeared, and then vanished just as quickly, seemed to acknowledge the subtle insult. Instead he snorted once more and hewed upright. He swore, sheathed his sword and buckled it around his waist, as if he expected to have to duel someone over breakfast, and stalked down the hallway.
Sansa followed him a few paces behind. Snow was still sifting out of her cloak and hood and hair, melting a trail down the stairs, but the inn was starting to wake up, the smell of frying bacon drifting up the chimney so appetizingly that it made her mouth water. It wouldn't be so bad to be snowbound here, mayhaps. So long as it did not last forever. The food would not hold out forever. Nor would her money.
She reached the bottom and hurried into the common room, wondering if her fistful of pennies would suffice for another meal. With a lurch, she realized that she would now be dependent on Sandor's purse; if his funds ran out, so would she. He won't want to pension me forever, he'll insist we make a run for it – but where? Back to King's Landing? What had he left in King's Landing that called to him so strongly? So far as he knew, the one thing, the only thing, he had ever wanted in life was to kill his brother, and now that the Mountain had fallen to the Viper's poisoned spear, there was naught left for him but –
At that moment, Sansa looked up. And almost ran into the Hound again, for a very different reason.
He was standing stock still, staring at the men at the table across the way. Sansa hadn't seen them when she'd come in last night; they must have arrived later, just before the snow set in for earnest. Looking for the first lodging they could find, following whatever clues they could – she'd seen them, they must have still been tracking her, it was only that night that she'd killed Shadrich –
Three men in the moon-and-falcon of House Arryn, and two Warrior's Sons. All of them had hands on their sword hilts, and all of them were staring at Sandor with red murder in their eyes. "You," said the leader. "Bloody hell, dog. We told you that you weren't wanted, that we as godly men would rescue the girl. What part of that did you fail to comprehend?"
Sandor Clegane, for once, utterly failed to have a smart-arse retort to hand. The silence was horrible. Then at last, he spoke.
"Oh," the Hound said. "Bugger."