One Banner Shall Fly
Disclaimer: I own nothing but my original characters. Thank you for reading and enjoy.
Prologue
Death of a Dog
"A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than he loves himself."
~Josh Billings.
oOoOoOo
He had fought, and he had lost.
Now he lay, a gash-ridden cur beneath an old tree, waiting for the Master of All to take him into its unknown service. The littlest Stark girl had dressed his wounds, perhaps her way of reimbursing him for his protection, and without any further action, vanished; he had begged her for mercy, for quickness, but she denied him, instead looking him in the eyes with the dying embers of hatred and something that he could not quite distinguish. Somehow, deep within himself, he could not find an arrow of blame with which to string his mind's bow; he had bought this fate with his sins, old and new.
He presently closed his eyes, trying vainly to suppress the pain that ravaged his body. He must have looked piteous at that moment, laying there, his dog's blood leaking into the earth. Perhaps it would kill all the grass, and maybe this old tree he would draw his last breath beneath, and in his death accomplish the one thing he had dedicated his being to: stealing away the gift of life.
The air came to his lungs with more difficulty now, and his breathing turned to ragged pants. He peeled back his eyelids, wanting to get a good look at the place that would be his last, but his vision swam, a murky and smudged scope, and he couldn't make anything out. Everything was a shadow, and for a moment his lack of faith in the supernatural faltered, and he wondered if this was to be his world now. A landscape of blur and darkness, as his life had been.
Footsteps sounded suddenly behind him, approaching at an unhurried pace. They drew near, to a spot just beside the tree and behind his head. He looked up, for a moment thinking, hoping, that it was the Stark girl, returned with a changed mind and a drawn blade. But the only thing that met his gaze was a tall and spindly shadow, bent slightly over and presumably looking down at him.
"Who is it?" he managed to rasp out, his own voice sounding foreign to himself. It was weak and shallow, like an old man after climbing a long flight of steps. "Is it a spectator? Come to watch the Hound die?"
His queries were met with silence. The shadow came closer, sinking towards him and halting but a few breaths before his face. It sat motionless for a moment, before he heard the words that would change it all.
"Yes, I have come to watch the Hound die. But I have also come to watch you live."
And with that, Sandor Clegane lost his grip on consciousness.
oOoOoOo
Months had passed since the Hound had died under that tree by the Trident, and Sandor Clegane had crawled out from beneath that darkness. It was not so much that the Hound had been totally eradicated, but simply been fractured, and through the fissures the man trapped within had managed to seep out. He had shed his fur and taken on life as the Gravedigger, a penniless monk who lived in silence with his brothers of the faith on a remote island in the river Trident.
He had been pulled from the clutches of death by a man known only as Elder Brother, a tall man with a square, shaved head, who spoke with a tongue that sounded like it had seen eons and eons pass. Elder Brother had dressed him, clothed him, put him among the ranks of the penitents, telling him often that, "he should begin to ponder what it meant to be alive now." Sandor felt no anger or hatred towards him, the man who had refused Death, nor did he feel gratitude or kinship. He simply did as the man asked.
Alongside his brothers, Sandor toiled, tilling the earth, planting, digging graves, all in service to the gods. He took no stance on the divines now, and he knew within himself that he never would; they would be something to some and nothing to him, regardless of existence.
His leg, grievously injured during his final skirmish, had pained him for a long time, and his fellow men of the Island considered him lucky to even still possess it. They had claimed he would be lame, a half-cripple, but that did not come to pass. It healed slowly, like his mind, but it did not fail him. It would never be the same as it once was, but he would never have to lean on a piece of wood to move, and for that he thought he might as well throw up a nod of thanks to whatever danced behind the clouds in the sky.
Autumn was shuddering, giving way to the march of Winter, and Sandor could feel the air carrying a sense of ill alongside the newborn chill. He was presently in the fields, digging, as he always did, when he heard voices in the near distance. Generally, he would pay no mind to them, as visitors came and went as often as the sun and moon rose and hid, but he picked up something among them that caught his attention.
A woman's voice.
He looked up from his earthen task to locate the voices, and his eyes widened slightly when he saw a woman, smaller than he but bigger than most men alive, walking up a path parallel to the field with a small party. She had short blonde hair and an ungainly gait, her body draped in armor and a sword sheathed at her side. Beside her stood a boy, wiry and black of hair, and two other men, but only one Sandor recognized as a wandering septon by the name of Meribald. He unconsciously pulled his hood down and his scarf tighter around his face.
Sandor alternated between observing them and digging the grave for just one of the many fallen, until they eventually came up the path and right beside him. A dog in their company broke rank, four legs bounding up to him and tail wagging vivaciously. Sandor smiled briefly, reaching down to scratch it behind the ear, before the large woman spoke.
"And who is this?"
The septon eyed Sandor warily for a moment, before turning his eyes back on the blond brute. "Just a gravedigger. A novice here on the Isle. He and his brothers work here in service of the Faith, and they will continue to do so while men rage against one another."
She stared at him, eyes searching and suspicious, and he thought for a moment that she might discover just who he was. No realization sparked in her big, blue eyes, however, and she looked away a moment later. And then the party was off again, walking up the path and toward the various structures of the Quiet Isle. Sandor watched them melt into the distance with a curiosity that welled up just below his heart, and in a moment, his spade was forgotten, and he was trudging up the hill in silent pursuit.