Masks
Chapter 1
For story purposes, let's imagine there are rocky cliffs in the woods where the hunt is going on, and there's also a mountain stream. A wide and deep mountain stream.
Apparently, the belief that you shouldn't allow someone to go to sleep after a head injury is a myth. You're just supposed to watch out for changes in behavior, dilated pupils, trouble walking or sleeping, and other symptoms. Not only Sandor can't check these things in their situation, but he doesn't have a very sophisticated understanding of medicine (not that I do, either). So he just tries to keep her awake. But that all happens in the next chapter.
This story was not beta-read. If you spot any mistakes or if you'd like to beta-read future chapters, please email me at at gmail com
Arya's POV
"A boar hunt is no place for a child," Ned Stark said.
She had expected that argument. As long as he didn't flat out refuse, she had a chance.
"I'm older than Bran, and he's allowed to come."
Her father looked at her severely. His somber grey stare worked on her brothers, but it never worked on Arya. His eyes looked too much like hers. She practiced for such conversations by staring in a mirror.
"I'm better with a bow than he is," she went on, starting to tick the points on her fingers. "I'm a better rider than him. I don't climb in trees or on castle walls."
He didn't seem convinced, but he hadn't brushed her off yet. He did not enjoy denying her requests. Not even when he was surprised by them. The world might have thought that Lord Eddard Stark had two daughters, but in fact he had five sons. She had to make him say yes before mother showed up and she'd be sent back to sewing.
"I'm more responsible than him. If you take me on the hunt, I promise to watch out for him and make sure he doesn't get in trouble."
"You can come with us. And you will be responsible for the both of you. I don't want to hear that anything happened to you or to Bran."
She jumped to her feet and gave him a quick hug. He hugged her back, and left shaking his head.
'Five sons, Father. Better get used to it.'
She heard the barking and the drunken laughter. When she turned toward the sounds, she saw a group of boys elbowing each other while looking across the courtyard where Prince Joffrey was talking to his shield - the big man with a scared face. Next to them rested a helmet shaped like the head of a big ugly dog.
They barked again, then scurried off toward the stables before the big man could see their faces. The prince kept looking at his shiny sword, but his shield's gaze was drawn to the noise. To her surprise, he didn't seem angry.
But she was.
Arya knew how it felt. She was angry for all those times that stupid Jeyne neighed whenever she came near. She was angry that those drunken little shits made fun of a guest. Before she could think it through, she stormed off to the stables, grabbing a wooden sword off the rack.
Her heart pounded and blood roared in her ears.
When she got in the stables, the idiots were still guffawing and barking. She hit one of them hard across the buttocks with the width of the wooden sword. He yelped and made to run. The other three stopped laughing. Their dull eyes focused on her.
"You ugly cunt," one of them said, taking a step toward her.
The one she hit looked at her with glossy, baleful eyes.
"This ugly cunt is a Stark of Winterfell and the four of you have just insulted a guest. A member of the Kingsguard."
"He didn't hear us," the one with black hair said.
"I heard you," she said. "I heard you shitting on the honor of my House."
That got their attention. She didn't have to threaten to tell Father about it. She never wanted to be a lady, but she would never not be a Stark.
"For the duration of the King's visit, you will be at the beck and call of Prince Joffrey's shield. You will make sure his horse is well tended to, his armor is polished, and he doesn't lack for anything. And you will not apologize for an insult you gave behind his back. You will show him the respect he deserves."
Halfway through her speech she realized that she had no idea who the man was. She didn't know his name, and the only symbol on his armor was the crown, so she didn't even know his House. He had the armor of a knight and the bearing of a warrior.
His name didn't matter. The man had done nothing to invite ridicule.
#
Sandor's POV
He heard the barking and the sniggers. He didn't have to turn his head to know it came from the four boys who had stared at him earlier. He tried to pay attention to what Prince Joffrey was saying, but he tuned out when he started talking about his betrothal to the Stark girl.
He was talking about the girl's beauty. Though Sandor agreed with him, she was quite a pretty little bird, he couldn't say it aloud. It wasn't for the likes of him to talk about the charms of Northern princesses.
"Get the horses, Dog" Prince Joffrey said. "We'll go for a ride before it gets dark. I didn't get a chance to see this place, stuck inside the carriage all the time."
'With your bitch mother, too.'
There were many things he thought but couldn't say to the Prince. It would have done him a world of good to learn about the real world. But Sandor Clegane was not the boy's father and it wasn't his place to act like one. Even if the King was more often drunk than sober, and he was letting the Prince's education in the hands of the Queen.
He was about to enter the stable when he heard a loud thwack! followed by a boy's voice.
"You ugly cunt."
"This ugly cunt is a Stark of Winterfell and you four have just insulted a guest. A member of the Kingsguard."
He almost smiled. It was funny really. He couldn't remember a single instance when anyone gave a damn about him. He heard more insults in a month than he had heard kind words all his life. He wondered which of the Stark children had taken it into their head to defend his honor.
Going by the voice, he placed the child in his mid teens. That meant it was probably Brandon. The boy who liked to climb. Angry, thudding steps hurried toward him and he thought about stepping out of the way.
To his surprise, the body which cannoned into him, was not young Brandon's. A young girl looked up at him with Eddard Stark's cold eyes. This was the daughter not engaged to Joffrey. The lucky one.
Her face was round, her skin flushing red. She was fairly tall, rather skinny and flat chested for a girl of ten and six but she seemed to have retained some baby fat. She had a tiny mouth, and her thin lips formed a perfect O when she saw him. He liked the way she looked at him. Boldly. Not flinching at his scars. He put his hands on her shoulders and move her out of the way as gently as he knew how.
He never got to play with girls when he was a boy. As a man, he had even less interactions with girls. All he knew about princesses was that he should stay the fuck away. Was it a breach in etiquette to manhandle a princess of the North like that?
Arya's POV
This was so unfair. The one time she got permission to join the hunt, and Bran managed to spoil it all for her. He'd been climbing on trees like a monkey from the Summer Isles. And now he was scaling a gods damned cliff.
Her feet skidded on the rocks. Some of them dislodged under her feet and she lost her balance. She fell hard on one knee. She winced when she stood up. That was going to leave a bruise.
"Bran, get down from there."
The noises of the hunt were getting further and further away. Arya thought about leaving him there to catch up with the hunt and tell their father, but if she got him involved, neither of them was likely to get any freedom in the foreseeable future. As much as she would have loved to see Bran locked in a room with Maester learning about long dead kings and longer dead monsters, she could be pretty sure that she'd be in that same room. Or worse. She shuddered. She could be sentenced to sewing.
They both knew she couldn't climb after him, but she had to scare him somehow.
"Don't make me shoot you down!"
She caressed the length of her bow. Her fingers itched to see if she could put an arrow in that patch of moss a few feet from him. She huffed and relaxed her hand. Of course she wouldn't shoot at her own brother.
The last thing she saw before the earth ran from under her feet was Bran smiling happy while he waved to her from the top. She tried to jump, to run faster than the rocks hurtling toward her. The soil under her feet started to shift and she lost control of the direction. She heard Bran screaming her name, thought about holding on to a tree, but when she looked back she saw that bigger boulders were now rolling down the slope. She let herself go with the flow. Her only concern was to avoid getting crushed.
The landslide took her all the way to the stream. The level of the stream was at its highest, after the rainpour of the past few weeks. And it was bloody cold, too.
Rocks had banged her ankles, branches had slashed at her clothes, but nothing compared to the icy coldness of the water. Boulders kept rolling off the slope, breaking into smaller pieces as they bounced and smashed into the ground.
The current was trying to drag her downwards. That stream was one of the many flowing into the headwaters of the White Knife river. Her arms and legs hurt, but she decided to try to swim across the stream instead of going with the torrent. The other bank seemed close, but the strong current, and freezing water made it all but impossible to cross.
She was Arya Stark of Winterfell and she would not give up.
The stream had dragged her half a mile from the point where she had fallen into it by the time she got close enough to the other side to feel the earth under her feet. The force of the torrent kept pushing her further along, but she kept going. Even when the water was shallow, the current kept threatening to drag her away. She crawled on hands and knees until she made it to the other side.
Her head was spinning. All she could hear in her ears was the deafening sound of the running water. She wondered if Bran was all right. He'd been right at the top of that cliff when it started to crumble.
Should she shout for help? Would anyone hear her in the woods? Or would she attract the attention of boars, or bears, or wolves?
Her teeth chattered. Right. She was freezing. She couldn't afford to take off her clothes to dry, but she should find some kind of shelter. Making a fire was unlikely. She didn't have any flint, and nothing to use as tinder. Everything in the woods was soggy after the weeks and weeks of rain.
Shelter. She needed a place to stay dry. And fast. Judging by the sun's position, she had less than an hour of decent light.
#
Sandor's POV
He sensed something was wrong before anyone else. He raised his head, looked all around, not knowing without what he was looking for. He noticed that the horses seemed to do the same. The hounds were following the trail of the boar, but even they stopped, moments before everyone heard the noise.
Sandor had never heard that sound before, but Eddard Stark identified it.
"Landslide," he shouted. "Protect the King. Go west, back to the main trail."
The Hound was at his Prince's side, taking the reigns of Joffrey's horse calmly, but firmly. He led the horse west and in a few minutes they were at the main trail. The sounds of the landslide barely audible any more.
He waited for the orders to march back to Winterfell, satisfied that his Prince was safe. The expression on Eddard Stark's face was anything but calm.
"What's wrong, Ned?" King Robert asked.
"Bran and Arya are not here," Stark said. "Your Grace, I ask leave to look for them. The road is safe from here all the way to Winterfell. Please go back without me."
"Don't be a fool, man! I'm not going back while your children are missing. We'll look for them."
"Thank you, Your Grace," Stark said.
He started organizing the men into groups.
"Your Grace, it's going to be night soon. You and Prince Joffrey should go back to Winterfell," Jamie Lannister said.
"Take Joffrey back," King Robert said. "I'm staying here."
The Hound saw the wisdom in getting Joffrey to safety, but he couldn't stand the gnawing feeling that he should be out there, looking for them. For her.
"My Lord, " he said, approaching the Prince. "Allow me to stay and help with the search."
"Very well, Dog," he said. "I expect you will be able to sniff them out far better than any of these people."
Charming as always his Prince. The Hound nodded curtly. He grabbed a torch and hurried into the woods to catch up with the others. After they found the place of the landslide, Stark started splitting them into groups when they heard a boy's voice.
"Arya! Arya!"
They followed the sound and they found Brandon Stark, clothes torn and limping, but alone.
"Arya was here," he said as soon as he saw his father. "I don't know where she is. I don't know."
It was getting dark. They traced the path of the landslide all the way to the water. They could see that many boulders had been dragged by the current downstream. Stark gave directions to look for the girl down the river, along the banks.
He chose to be in the group that crossed the river. The freezing water tried to pull him along, but he was a strong son of a bitch. He was the first to make it to the other side of the stream. The others got out further down, and they started shouting her name and proceeding slowly south, with the river.
He let them move on, looking carefully for any traces of her. Everyone thought she was carried south by the river, but he couldn't help thinking that she had crossed the water and sought shelter.
It was almost too dark to see, but his eyesight was keen enough to see the footprints. Not along the river, like those of the searching party. These small footprints were going into the woods. He let the others move along. Maybe they were right. There was no point in slowing them down for a hunch he could very well investigate on his own.
He had to call out for her. He'd be damned if he shouted 'Lady Arya'. He wouldn't be out there looking for a highborn lady.
"Girl! Girl, are you here?"
The torchlight barely cast enough light to follow any tracks. He kept walking, following an instinct he had long learned to listen to when it came to life or death.
"Girl! I'm a member of the Kingsguard. I'm here to take you home. Girl!"
Kingsguard would mean something to her. He kept going. Shouting and stumbling.
"Girl!"
He had to hope that she would hear him or see the torchlight. The storm started without warning. The torch went out instantly and the only thing illuminating the darkness were the lightning scarring the sky.
"Girl!"
He hardly heard his own voice over the heavy rain, but he kept calling out.
"Girl!"
"Here!"
The voice was faint and the treacherous environment made it impossible for him to pinpoint its exact origin. Fortunately, the girl shouted again.
"I'm here."
Lightning stroke close enough that he could hear the crackling of the tree it hit. That flash was enough to see the mouth of a cave in the area from where the voice came. He sped up the slope toward her, and his boots slid in the mud, moss and dead leaves. He lost his footing and crashed hard into a tree trunk. His shoulder popped out painfully.
He was getting back up when he saw the girl running toward him. She slipped even worse than him on the treacherous ground. He extended his arm to catch her but his damaged shoulder stopped the movement short, and he missed. The sound of the falling body didn't end with a cry of pain. He cursed under his breath, fearing the worst.
On hands and knees, he made his way to her. He picked up the unconscious girl as best he could and ignored the pain as he made his way carefully back up to the cave.
It turned out not to be the entrance to a cave, but simply a shallow cave. A rock shelter. At least it was big enough for both of them. He had to kneel down to fit in, but he was grateful for the shelter. He laid her down her gently and scuttled inside after her.
He couldn't do anything about her wet clothes, but she would be warm enough in there, his body shielding her from the rain.
"Wake up, girl," he said, slapping her face gently.
He'd seen people who hit their head and never awoke again from their sleep. He put his hand on her clammy forehead.
'Come on, girl, don't give up now.'
"Wake up," he repeated.
Arya Stark gasped and opened her eyes.