BRIENNE
It was hours until the screaming stopped. Even after the ships had burned to a twisted maelstrom of blackened wood, debris drifting on the ash-choked water, the men were still drowning. Those who might have been able to swim for safety were trapped in the wreckage, and the archers Ser Wylis had posted along the walls had child's play of it in taking out the exceptions. Crimson and gold-clad corpses bobbed in the tide, and torches pinpricked across the beach, as the folk of White Harbor were making their way down to have their choice of the loot. If a man had not been charred past hope of even his own mother knowing him, he was likely to have a few gold pieces sewn into his boots, a knife or a dirk of good steel, a cloak to guard against the cold. White Harbor was a prosperous port city, and the Manderlys' deception of the Iron Throne – the extent of which Brienne was only beginning to realize – had prevented it from being sacked like Maidenpool, but the poor were the poor and winter was winter. In the north, it mattered naught whether a blanket had a lion or a wolf stitched on it.
Yet Brienne could not stop her ears to the screaming. It was worse than the animals Ser Goodwin had made her butcher to toughen her hands and heart. They deserved it, she tried to tell herself, but could not make herself believe it. Had they deserved to die for doing as their liege lords bade them? She could not forget the tale Septon Meribald had told, as she traveled to the Quiet Isle for the first time with Pod and Ser Hyle. It was when her ironclad idealism in the justness of the cause and the rightness of white knights had truly cracked down the middle. There had been no monsters aboard those ships, only men who had wanted to do their duty, kill who they were instructed to, and then sail home to their families. And still the rains weep o'er his hall, and not a soul to hear.
Brienne had found a village wisewoman on her way north, and for the first time in her life, asked for moon tea. Yet she had had to talk herself out of a ludicrous last-minute urge not to take it. She could all too easily envision a future when Jaime died thousands of miles away, when they never laid eyes on each other again. Even one where Jaime turned back to the clutches of his sister and his family and his legacy – it was the only thing he had left now, the only chance he had at surviving. And then if he had gotten her with child, it would be the only thing she had left of him. Yet Brienne of Tarth, Brienne the Beauty, Brienne the Blue, had not become who she was by waiting on the whims or the approval or definition of men. She closed her eyes and drank it.
The burning she'd felt in her belly afterwards was kin to the burning she witnessed now. When it was finally through, Ser Wylis made a noncommittal noise and turned to go, as if he'd watched nothing more remarkable than an exhibition in the training yard. But Ser Davos still looked stunned, and Brienne knew that it must be written tenfold on her own face.
"Come, my lady, my lord," Manderly said. "The hour grows late. Ser Davos, you will set forth as soon as you are recovered from your ordeals. The boy will remain here, in my custody."
"In the Wolf's Den?" Ser Davos asked. "There must surely be many Freys left in White Harbor, and if they were to learn he was here. . . As well. . ." He shot a glance at Brienne.
Belatedly, Brienne realized that by their joint imprisonment, she had become inadvertently privy to damaging details of Stannis Baratheon's strategy and inclinations. Not all of them, but she had already learned that he was still alive, that Lord Wyman Manderly had somehow been rescued and taken into Stannis' camp, and that Ser Wylis intended to send Ser Davos to attack the Dreadfort, in hopes of pulling the Boltons out of Winterfell. Not to mention the minor fact that House Manderly now had the last living male heir of Eddard Stark's bloodline in hand, to which they intended to declare for Stannis. Thereby likely prompting the rest of the north to follow, when the boy's identity was revealed.
Vengeance for Renly or life for Jaime? She had sworn an oath, three times, to kill Stannis for what he had done to his brother. But even now she had seen men dying like dogs, for the mere crime of what lord they owed fealty to. Renly was not a dog, would not ever be a dog, but he was dead and in the ground. There was nothing she could do to win his love or his smiles or his service, his existence, his breath. And while she had yearned her life long to be a proper knight, it was at that moment, even more so than from Septon Meribald's tale, that Brienne felt the true horror of war in her bones.
"Have no fear, ser." The words felt sticky in her throat. "Do for your king as you must. I will not betray you."
Ser Davos shot her an extremely startled look. He seemed to be on the verge of saying something else, but Ser Wylis turned back. "It is cruel of me to ask yet one more service of you. But I must go down to the hall to treat with the Lannister captains. They have a right to know what was done to them, and why. If you would come with me?"
They would serve as trophies, Brienne realized. Ser Davos was intended to finally reveal how badly the Iron Throne had been played for fools, and as for her, she was the infamous ugly wench who had escorted Ser Jaime to King's Landing, and was later spotted sniffing after Sansa Stark from Duskendale to Crackclaw Point. With Stannis's onion smuggler at hand, there would be a certain underscoring resonance to Ser Wylis' declaration for him. And as for whatever Freys were still squatting in White Harbor . . having seen what fate had just befallen the royal fleet, Brienne did not doubt that they were finding their own unpleasant bride gift this very moment.After what they did under the banner of hospitality to my lady, no punishment could be more fitting. She had heard Manderly's men japing of the Rat Cook and of pies, certain pies served at Ramsay Bolton's wedding, and knew that Lord Wyman and Ser Wylis felt the same.
She and Ser Davos trailed several paces behind the fat lord as they descended into the Merman's Court, and Brienne found herself looking to him for strength, only to find him glancing back at her. It was an unlikely alliance to be sure, but there had been unlikelier ones, and she would need any there were to hand. It had not escaped her attention that while Ser Wylis had promised to provision Davos with an army, he had been silent on her fate.
"My lords." Ser Wylis' voice was remarkably calm as he surveyed the collection of stunned Lannister captains. "Shall we parley?"
Silence as loud as a thunderclap reigned over the court. None of them seemed able to speak. Then one of them, a tall copper-haired man in a smoke-grey doublet, stepped convulsively forward. "My lord of Manderly," he said. "You have no idea what you have just done."
"I know quite well." Ser Wylis seated himself on his father's cushioned throne. The fishing nets hanging from the rafters looked almost spectral in the low light, torches burning in sconces in echo of the firestorm dwindling to embers outside. Brienne and Davos stood in the shadows to his right and left. "It is called war. The north remembers, my lord of Marbrand, and the sand runs from the glass for good."
Brienne jerked. If that was who she thought – she now recognized the device beneath the dirt and grime, the burning tree of House Marbrand – then she knew him to be a man far from home, and a friend of Ser Jaime's. Perhaps Jaime's only friend, indeed.
"Aye, the north remembers," Ser Addam said vehemently. "And with good cause. It is not only Stark and Manderly who mourn the atrocities of these mad dogs it has pleased the crown to call your new lords. Any right-thinking man should feel the same, and if the Iron Throne had but given up its grudges earlier, much and more could have been mended. My lord, it was my intention, before you burned those ships, to take them to war against the Boltons."
At that, Brienne jerked harder, watching Ser Wylis' face intently. The fat lord revealed nothing; he had been better schooled than her. "When you and your fellows came here, I heard naught of any plans to fight the Boltons. The captains ordered me to surrender, under pain of death."
"The other captains did not know. It was mine own idea, but I had no chance to speak with them before we came ashore in White Harbor – I was but one man, aboard one ship. I meant to broach it to them once we returned from our audience with you."
"Against the Boltons?" one of the captains interrupted, while a second said, "But it would be treason, Addam, treason against the throne, the king made the Boltons the Wardens of the North," and a third added, "You should have said, you should have said!" and a fourth bellowed, "Bloody good you didn't, we'd all have been hanged for liars on the spot!" Others joined in.
As Brienne's eyes sketched restlessly over them, they came back to one particular man standing at Ser Addam's side, slightly behind and to the left. A fiery beard covered most of his face, which was thin and gaunt and heartsick, and he too was wearing a doublet in the Marbrand colors. She must be mistaken, then, but the blue eyes were hauntingly familiar. And while she'd not known him well, she had certainly seen Lord Edmure Tully more than once while in Lady Catelyn's company at Riverrun.
Don't be mad, Brienne told herself, seeing ghosts in every shadow. Edmure Tully is long leagues away from here, a prisoner at Casterly Rock. Jaime ended the siege of Riverrun himself and sent him there. Yet as the red-bearded man looked up, his gaze caught hers and he started noticeably. What in seven hells Lord Edmure was doing here, in the company of a Lannister delegation – she could think of no person more likely to gleefully strangle the lot of them the instant he got the chance – she could not possibly say, but it was him beyond a doubt. I will not betray my lady's brother. It was horrendously difficult, but she forced her eyes away from Edmure, affecting nonchalance.
"I grieve to hear this," Ser Wylis said calmly. "If indeed it was true, which I sorely doubt. But when the battle was done, the fleet would still owe allegiance to the Lannisters. And there is no power on earth that will bring me to bend my knee to them again. Indeed, my lords, it is time you learned the truth. I will here and now honor my father's pledge, and take Stannis Baratheon for my king."
Ser Davos shifted his weight nervously, but the captains did not notice; they were still too busy reeling. Save for Lord Edmure, who had the trace of a sardonic smile on his face. He realized his danger quick enough and changed it to an appropriately blank expression, but he and Brienne caught each other's eyes again. But while she was still racketing through her head in search of a proper plan to help him, Ser Wylis gestured her and Ser Davos forward. "Here, my lords, you will behold the Kingslayer's errand-woman and Stannis Baratheon's onion knight. Both of whom are currently enjoying my hospitality full as much as you, and serve as proof that this is no hasty decision on my part. Ser, my lady?"
For once, Brienne was not the recipient of a roomful of men's jaw-dropped disbelief. That was reserved for Ser Davos, who looked nearly as uncomfortable. He shot an entreating look at Ser Wylis, as if wondering how long he was required to be on display. To which the answer seemed to be: as long as it took for the shock to have the proper effect. Fortunately, it wasn't very.
"Lord Davos has performed a great service," Ser Wylis said, when it became apparent that nobody had anything to offer. "Which is why I take his king for mine. Ser, if you would tell them?"
Davos cleared his throat. "My – my lords. I have returned the Stark heir to the north. From the lands of the wildlings."
"Which heir?" Marbrand cut in. "Which heir, ser?"
"Eddard Stark's last living trueborn son." It was Ser Wylis who answered. "If you doubt his identity, I am pleased to bring his direwolf in for your inspection."
That got a communal flinch from the Lannister men. They surely knew of the wild tales of how Robb Stark had been a warg, of the slaughter at Oxcross and elsewhere, and Brienne, having seen the big black beast for herself, could not blame them. But Ser Addam was not defeated. "My lord of Manderly, it is kind of you to offer some surety besides your own word, as that has just proven entirely unreliable. Yet there is something else you ought to know. By now, Robb Stark may have a son."
That made everyone in the hall snap to attention once more. Even Ser Wylis looked thrown, before recovering with aplomb. "First the one about the Boltons, now this? You certainly have your masters' talent for lying, Marbrand."
Ser Addam glared back at him. "Precisely what would it avail me to lie of that now, my lord of Lamprey?"
"Everything. If you could prove that Robb Stark had an heir besides his brother, an heir of his body, you could hope to stop me from swearing fealty to Stannis on those grounds alone. Can you prove it?"
Ser Addam hesitated. "No," he admitted. "But I can tell you where the Young Wolf's widow is right this moment – and it is not the Crag. She is at Greywater Watch, with Lord Howland Reed, after being smuggled there by Ser Brynden Tully. Nor can I think of any reason for the Westerlings to take such an absurd risk, unless she was with child. And if so, it will soon be her time."
Manderly blinked. "It would be foolish of you to lie about something so easily disproved, I'll grant. All I need do is send a raven to Lord Reed."
"Aye, you would," Ser Addam retorted. "And if you ask any of these men, they will tell you that Lord Gawen and his family are dead, were killed the very day the fleet left King's Landing. An utterly foolish, short-sighted decision by the queen, and chief among the reasons that I no longer wish to carry out her commands."
Ser Davos appeared to be getting more and more anxious as this conversation unfolded, as well he might. Ser Addam had pulled a solid trump on them, and the Manderlys' declaration for Stannis was not quite sealed yet. It suddenly supplied to Brienne a most plausible reason for Edmure Tully's unwilling presence here, but while she felt an instinctive protectiveness toward Lady Catelyn's potential grandchild, she was grateful that it did not further fray her tattered allegiances. She had sworn to Catelyn, after all, not Robb or even House Stark. Her life now was for Sansa and Jaime.
"Very well," Ser Wylis said at last, a small smile playing on his lips. "I'll give you the same challenge my lord father set to Ser Davos. Bring Queen Jeyne and her child, if in fact she should have one, back to me, and. . ."
"And what? You will take Tommen back as your king?"
"No, I will not execute the rather important hostages I happen to have in my possession." Ser Wylis swept a plump hand at the captains. "They are some of the last commanders the Iron Throne has left, and if the blizzard of ravens over the previous fortnight has told me anything, it is that King's Landing shall soon have to fight for its life, very likely against an attack by sea. Your little Tommen might have need of these men then."
Ser Addam had gone bloodless to the lips. "Well struck, my lord of Manderly. For my task, I will request that my kinsman accompany me." He gestured to Edmure Tully. "Ser Cristofer?"
"My lord." Edmure's voice was utterly flat, unrevealing. His gaze flickered up to Ser Wylis, then back down. "I would be honored to help my. . . cousin in the search for Lady Jeyne."
Calling her lady instead of queen had been wise on his part, Brienne thought, even if his pause before "cousin" fairly screamed out the deception to her. But no one else appeared to have noticed, and while Ser Wylis' eyes narrowed as if trying to work out where he knew Edmure from, he let it pass unchallenged. He nodded. "Very well, Ser Cristofer. You will have leave to travel with your. . . cousin to Greywater."
This one is dangerous. As if burning the Lannister fleet was not enough to prove it. It did relieve Brienne of the obligation to think of a way to spring her lady's brother from their clutches – even if it was debatable how safe Edmure would be either during this quest or after it, that was no longer her concern. Ser Wylis must have already dealt with the Freys if he dared to reveal Ser Davos, even to a small group of men who were very likely to be escorted off to the dungeons post-haste. It was a question which also occurred to the onion knight, for he blurted out, "My lord of Manderly, the Freys still in White Harbor – "
"Will trouble us no longer," Ser Wylis answered composedly. "They were told they were invited to supper, which indeed they were. It lacked something of the elegance of my father's pies, but my lord of Stark's direwolf did not appear to mind."
Brienne flinched a bit herself at that. Again, she could not argue either with the brutal efficacy or poetic irony of Ser Wylis' punishment, but it made her wonder if feeding the beast's appetite for human flesh was altogether wise – especially when his master was a boy of not quite six, just returned from a long and savage sojourn. If he is truly to be Lord of Winterfell, he will need to know a life much different from that. Though depending on how Ser Addam and Edmure's mission ended up. . .
Ser Wylis clapped his hands. "Guards. Please show my guests to their chambers."
At once, armed men emerged from behind the heavy tapestries, crossed the floor, and began to tie the captains' hands. As they were being removed, still too numb from the accumulated shocks to struggle very vociferously, Ser Wylis beckoned to Brienne. Hesitant, she came closer.
"My lady, it grieves me to do this," he said simply. "I bear you no ill will, but I cannot trust you. If you found Sansa Stark, you would – what? Take her to King's Landing and try to use her life to save Ser Jaime's? I cannot allow that. Therefore, you will be residing in the Wolf's Den until such time, if such time, that I decide to release you. Men, take her."
Brienne clawed at her side, at the place her sword should be, but both of them, Oathkeeper and her own, had been left behind in the cell. And so she began to fight with her bare hands as a squadron of Ser Wylis' biggest and burliest henchmen – he had not at all underestimated her – closed in on her from all sides. She ducked, threw a punch, kicked a man's legs out from under him, and as he fell, wrenched his longsword out of its scabbard. Steel shivered through the air, the henchmen dropped back a pace, and hands fell to their own blades. "You don't want to fight us, woman."
"No, I don't." Brienne made no move at them. "But I cannot consent to imprisonment and defeat. I am no enemy of yours, my lord of Manderly."
"Are you not?" said Ser Wylis. "Yet you seem an unusually stalwart friend of the Lannisters."
"Not the Lannisters. Ser Jaime."
"I fail to see the difference."
"He is not who he – " They will try to take me now, while I am distracted. She could see Ser Davos signaling that one was attempting to sneak around behind her. The unexpectedness of it both touched her and made her wary, as she was so thoroughly used to mistrusting any apparent altruism from men. But she had sworn that he could leave without fear that she would attempt to sabotage him or –
The force of the blow almost split Brienne's skull in half. Choking, seeing stars, she crashed to hands and knees, the blade falling from her fingers. When she made to rise, another blow sent her spinning. Through the forest of fists she could see Ser Davos grasping Ser Wylis' arm, trying to ask him to stop – she thought. It may just as well have been to urge him on, to be sure that there were no mistakes in preserving Stannis' campaign. I told him – I promised –
Vows, so many vows. To Renly, to Catelyn, to Jaime, to Lady Stoneheart, to Ser Wylis, to Ser Davos, to everyone. She could hear Jaime's voice sardonically disdaining the lot of them. The taste of blood in her mouth and she was losing sense of the world. And then, she was falling.
When she opened her eyes the gods only knew how much later, it at first was impossible to tell; the darkness pressed up against them as solidly as it had in her unconsciousness. Bruised and aching, ears ringing, she just lay there, trying to ascertain whether her lungs were still present in her body. I must be back in the Wolf's Den.I have to get out of here. But how? Break the door? Gnaw it with her teeth? It was far too much to ask that they had put her in the cell with her sword.
They hadn't. The door was solidly barred, and the only narrow window gazed down steeply on the harbor below. Away toward the east a line of livid crimson heralded sunrise. The burned ships were still smoldering, a field of wreckage across the sea.
Brienne spent at least a quarter hour ferreting around, trying to uncover any weakness or any potential weapon, but finally had to conclude that there was nothing. She had been shut up as solidly as a rat in a trap. She sat back on her knees, her hair falling into her face, big hands hanging uselessly, shoulders hunched. Now she'd just –
Her head snapped up. She was not entirely sure, but she thought she had heard a bolt creaking in the door. Not that it was anything or anyone to welcome, there would be gaolers beyond a doubt, likely torturers as well – Manderly had nothing to lose –
It wasn't. The bolt croaked and complained as volubly as an old man getting out of bed in the morning, until Brienne was sure the noise would attract someone. Then she heard a muffled curse, and the heavy oak door of her prison cracked open. Davos Seaworth's voice hissed, "My lady?"
Brienne scrambled to her feet and almost fell; the blow she'd taken to her head was still making her dizzy. "Ser?"
"Come. Now. Hurry!"
Brienne took him at his word. She ducked low and slithered out, and tumbled in an undignified heap at the onion knight's feet. He was wearing a new hauberk and a tabard in the black and gold of House Baratheon; it gave her an instinctive, painful swoop of memory to see it. He held a sword in one hand, a sack in the other.
"My lord?" she said stupidly.
"Hurry," Davos repeated. He opened the sack and pulled out a helmet with a visor, a tabard emblazoned with the merman of Manderly, and handed them to her. "I couldn't get your sword. I'm sorry. This one will have to do."
"It's all right," Brienne said by reflex, even though it wasn't. I will return one day and take Oathkeeper back. So the world may know that that vow at least was kept.But when she had pulled the tabard over her head and buckled the swordbelt around her waist, taken the helmet and the sack – to judge from the weight, there was food in there – she turned to him directly. "Why?"
He seemed as uncomfortable as he had when Ser Wylis unveiled him in the Merman's Court. Finally he said, "You are brave, my lady. And loyal, and good. There are too few sorts like that in this world, man or woman. And I know what it must have cost you to turn away from your vengeance. For Renly. When it is my own king whose life you otherwise would have taken."
Brienne did not know what to say to that. Fortunately she was spared the need; there was a noise at the end of the hallway, warning of someone coming, and Ser Davos took her by the wrist, leading her back down to a narrow gate. "Your helmet, my lady," he whispered. "Cover your face, and you will ride out of White Harbor among my force. When we are clear, drop back and get away. Do what you must."
She nodded, throat tight, and pulled her visor down as she followed him down the steps and out into the bailey. There were countless other Manderly soldiers present, but none of them possessed the skill to see through solid steel, and no one challenged her identity. Someone gave her a horse, and a brief speech was made by Ser Wylis, who had appeared on the porch to oversee the leavetaking. He told them that they were not to return until the Dreadfort had been pulled down stone by stone, exhorted them to obey Lord Davos as they would himself, and reminded them of the unforgivable crimes of House Bolton against gods, men, and Starks alike. The Boltons were not to be negotiated with, pled with, coaxed with, cajoled with, or reasoned with. They were to be flatly and completely destroyed.
The cheer this ultimatum received was thunderous, and Brienne was tempted to join in, but could not risk someone noticing her voice. They were not an army in the fashion of the Lannisters, golden and impressive and thousands in number, but a horde of hardened northmen prepared to ride fast, cold, and rough. Their strength would come in their ability to withstand the mounting winter, to reach the Dreadfort before the Boltons knew they had left, and to live on less than a minimum of creature comforts. Brienne wondered how many would come back.
They left within the hour, while the sun was struggling to surmount the cliffs, and crossed the stone bridge spanning the White Knife, which was still running here but rumored to be frozen fast just a few dozen leagues further north. And Brienne knew then that she had to make a decision, and make it fast. Where was Sansa more likely to have gone: further into this magnificently forbidding, bleak, bitter, empty realm of ice and snow, or south? The girl was no fool. She would know that she could not survive up here alone. South it is.
Brienne could not break away too early, or any place they could easily see her and track her down, but she could not wait too long, either. Finally, when they were entering the rough, hilly country that the White Knife cut through, she was able to slip behind, turn around, and disappear like a fey creature of the fells. She galloped the horse with scarce a letup for an hour after, terrified of pursuit, but for once the gods were good. She was free.
Her route would have to be down the coast. It would be quicker to take a ferry across the Bite, but that would entail returning to White Harbor, and Brienne was not quite so mad as to wager her luck twice in such a short span of time. The kingsroad was the most direct route, but Lady Sansa would not be on the kingsroad. Or anywhere else, potentially, but Brienne put that thought out of her head.
She did not get out of the saddle for the next day and night. There was enough food to tide her by, and a waterskin, but sleep and rest seemed as immaterial as they likely did to Ser Davos and his men, riding into the teeth of war, winter, and Boltons. I would still be rotting in the Wolf's Den if not for him. Mayhaps there were still good knights, true knights, as she had always believed before. Even if their sigil was an onion and their king was Stannis.
Brienne plowed steadily southwards, just outracing the snow that came creeping at her heels. She was passing through the fringes of the Neck now, and it made her think as well of Ser Addam and Lord Edmure. She hoped Marbrand had been telling the truth: that he meant to turn against the queen. She wondered why he had not revealed Edmure's identity to the rest of the Lannisters, and if it proved his sincerity. Then she remembered Jaime's belief that he could not die as long as Cersei lived, and her feelings turned back to confusion. She tried not to think. It was easier that way.
It was verging on a fortnight since her escape from White Harbor when she finally knew herself to be below the Bite, the highlands of the Vale beginning to shoulder up the horizon on her left. The mountains were white from flank to summit. She slept cold every night, when she dared to sleep at all.
At last, the snow began to fall that day. Lightly at first, then thicker and faster. Soon Brienne was holding her hood under her chin, trying to keep ice from crusting in her eyelashes, as it stung and bit her face. The world vanished in grey gloom, and it was soon impossible to judge which direction she was making. But there was no shelter to be found in the high prairie. Keep going. Keep going.
The storm kept going as well. The wind was howling, swirling, shoving, and Brienne bent almost double as freezing knives drove through her battered clothes. Ice whirled up into her throat, choking her breath. The horse was spooking and slipping, tossing its head and trying to bolt; she hauled on the reins with all her strength. At last she had to dismount and walk.
Her feet were the first to turn numb. Then her hands, and her legs, and her arms. She could feel the cold seeping through her like poison, even as she struggled to take a breath that did not lacerate her lungs. She couldn't keep on, she couldn't. But she did. Long after it felt as if she had two rocks in place of boots, walking until suddenly the world was abruptly gone beneath her, and she fell.
Brienne screamed as she went down, the horse stumbling after her, crashing through a madness of gorse and boulders and broken ground. For one heart-stopping instant she feared that it was a lake, and if they went under the ice, they were both dead. But the punch of it was reassuringly if agonizingly solid, and she could not arrest her momentum, rolling faster and faster. Make it stop. Make it stop.
It did stop, at last. She lay in a crumpled heap and could not summon the desire or ability to get up. She had heard that freezing to death was almost peaceful, and she lay there, going in and out of consciousness, until she began to hear Jaime's voice again. Get up, gods damn you. Get up, you stupid ugly brave strong wench. Bloody get up, you're almost there!
"Almost where?" she muttered, wiping blood and snow out of her eyes. But she trusted him, so she gathered one leg under her, then the other. And stood.
That's it. Come on. There's no way a snowstorm is more stubborn than you. I've never known anyone more stubborn than you.
"No," Brienne told the air, taking a step and then another. "You're not here." Snow crunched under her nerveless feet. "I wish you would shut up."
No you don't, Jaime said, sounding too smug as usual.
"Shut up." Brienne began to walk faster, lurching and staggering like a drunken sailor. A thousand voices seemed to scream in the wind. Gods knew where the horse was. Broke its neck, more than likely, and it was only sheer luck that she hadn't done the same. Step after step after step –
There, in the near distance – she'd thought it was a tree, but it was moving – it wasn't something, it was someone,and her heart stopped –
"Jaime?" she pleaded, knowing how mad, how mad and hopeless it was.
It's not me, he said sadly. You're imagining me.
"I know," she breathed, heartbroken. But still it was coming, galloping, a person, a figure, blundering toward her in the snow. And if she could just get a little closer, she would meet them, she would be there, where Jaime had said. Almost there. Oh, wench.
Brienne broke into a clumsy run. Not caring who it was – and then, when they were just a few yards apart, not believing it either. Her brain shut down, her legs stopped churning, her breath gusted silver, and her mouth shaped around a name like a prayer.
"Podrick," she said weakly, and fell into his arms.