The Hound's Son Chapter 1, an a song of ice and fire fanfic

The cat was draped across the top of the wall enjoying the heat that baked the yellow bricks. It could have been a statue carved out of obsidian. The only part that moved was the steady flick, flick as it moved the tip of its long tail. The movement caught Grendle's eye as he scanned the market place. He was standing in the shadow between two buildings; the ancient musky huddle of bad city planning that built one shop almost on top of another. People bustled through the alley ways not glancing into the alcoves or recesses. It was easy to move around unseen. Grendle had been waiting, keeping as still as the cat, but not as comfortable. His body ached from the unnatural stillness he had to adopt. He was longing to stretch but he couldn't give away his position here, not after he had waited from when the empty moon was bright in the sky until now.

Early morning, people selling spiced bread and tea, the smell of cattle shit sweltering in the burning heat. The sun was hardly above the city walls but already sweat was sticking Grendle's thin robe to his back. He sighed and shifted position. His eyes unfocused from the yellow wall opposite and he let his mind flick back to the memory of woodlands with mist rising above the bright green oaks, the freezing coldness of a stream, the smell of a freshly ploughed field, the taste of chilled blackberries picked from a hedgerow. Grimacing, he shook the images from his thoughts and stared at the cat. The damn thing was staring at him with pale eyes. It seemed amused. I would laugh too, he thought, at a stupid man standing in a gloomy alcove instead of sitting in the sunshine.

Then he saw him, his target. The man was middle aged, with a fat belly that pushed out his rose-pink robe. A rich man wearing expensive fabrics and gold bracelets. He was meandering along the walkway with one of his minders holding a parasol above his balding head. Grendle didn't want to know what this man had done to offend his employer; it was none of his business. His job was to kill him; that was all, not ponder why. Leave that to philosophers not hired assassins. Grendle couldn't help a smirk lifting his lips at the corners because assassin sounded quite glamorous, hired murderer was more accurate. Thug perhaps. Villain, rogue, criminal. Whatever word used to describe it, it all boiled down to taking a life. Grendle was very good at killing people and when he had found himself alone in the world he had the skills he possessed to survive. He had tried to work in an inn in Volantis pulling ale and serving food but he couldn't stand being told what to do by ignorant fools. His heart was broken and he found he wanted to beat anyone who bad mouthed the Stark's, it was getting him into trouble, pounding men who laughed at Ned Stark's fate or mentioned Rob Stark's body wearing a wolf head. As he hit them he would think of Sansa's kind face and Grendle would tell himself he did this for her honour but hells, it got him into a pit of shit having to run from villages and leave cities where he was wanted by guards and destined to be thrown into a cell or worse. So here he was, pushed East all the way to Qarth, making money by settling debts for people, deciding who lived with a flick of his knife in the street. Grendle knew where to strike so his thin blade would slip in so gently the victim wouldn't even notice for a few moments; time enough for him to slip away and collect his bag of coin, live another day. Another day alone, without his family. It had been four years since he last saw them and each day was painful but he had no way to find them, all the Gods knew he had tried, he had wandered through the free cities and across seas trying to find any information but it was like an evil magic, they had vanished completely.

Grendle had spent his nineteenth birthday in Braavos, drowning his sorrows in a bottle of dark rum. The sweet liquid had burnt away his worries until he only cared about the bottom of the glass and how pleased he was to see it each time he swigged down the brown syrupy liquor. He wasn't even sure when his birthday was, he just picked a date in the summer months and decided to celebrate. Alone. The next morning he had woken up beneath the table, a small street kid rifling through his pockets. Grendle had growled at him and pulled himself up, shaking the rum from his mind. Then he went to get a job to pay his fare to another place, any place. Assassins in Braavos were members of some elite, secretive order and Grendle's grief was too raw to settle anywhere, he didn't want to join anything. He just wanted to keep moving, keep searching. He loaded ships for a week to earn his fare. Hefting the sacks onto his shoulders, the pain in his muscles was pure; it emptied his mind of all the guilt he felt: he should have protected them, somehow, saved them…but save them from what or who? So many questions and no answers. With his money he got on the first ship and went to another city, then another ship, another journey, more jobs, men to kill, another ship and then here he was; in this strange walled city. Grendle hated Qarth but there were plenty of jobs here for a man who was handy with a knife, a skinny, quick man who could talk his way into any place and deliver a killing blow with a certain elegance. The Hound trained me well, he thought, there is a time to wait and a time to kill, although at the moment, any hour of the day or night is the right time to kill. No women though and definitely no children. Grendle had a code of sorts. He would only kill men.

Grendle watched the portly man in pink stop to look at a table of peaches. The sight of the round orange fruits in baskets made Grendle shiver and he broke his first rule and began to dwell on the past. He thought of the last thing Sandor had said to him in Myr: 'We will be back soon, keep the fire in you little sod.' Then he had grinned at him and picked up Brandon. He walked out of the house away from Grendle. Brandon had waved at him. He was three years old, still a bit of baby fat around his face. He would be seven now. Sansa had kissed Grendle, muttering something about bringing peaches back from the market, and then she had picked up her scarf and wrapped it around her neck. The scarf had been green. She was heavy with child. What happened next? Grendle had no idea. They hadn't returned that night. He had kept the fire burning and fallen asleep. The following morning he began to really worry. Where were they? He had searched every building and tree in Myr, no one had known anything. No one said anything anyway. They had lived there, happily and peacefully for three years after leaving the Quiet Isle, shunning the wars that were happening, the rumours of dragons and ice men, they had made a life there. But after they disappeared all their neighbours acted like they had never existed. Grendle had been alone, a fifteen year old boy that had to fall into instant, cruel manhood. His adopted family were gone. All he could do was search for them. Years of searching. Try not to imagine they had done it on purpose, that they had abandoned him. Or that they were dead. Grendle felt childish tears fill his eyes and he rubbed his fists hard into his sockets. Shaking his mouse coloured hair out of his eyes he focused back onto the target in the street, working out the best place to strike him to end his life.

Sansa would be so ashamed of me he thought, he imagined her voice speaking sternly to him, her bright blue eyes full of sympathetic tears. He missed her so much, he missed all of them. Damn it! I can't think about them, not now. Grendle gripped his dagger in the long sleeve of his robe and slipped into the bright street, immediately jostled by people and their packages. He moved behind the fat man, noted his bodyguards: three. They were eyeing up the ladies behind the stalls, their leather covered shoulders relaxed and carefree. None of them were on guard, it would be an easy task to kill this plumped up parrot of a man. Grendle moved silently, like the sly fox he was. As he slipped behind one guard and merged into the shadows cast by the canopies he disappeared from view for a second, them reappeared behind the pink shoulder of the rich man.

The black cat on the yellow bricks got up and stretched sinuously. Then it jumped down from the wall and trotted away. If someone was watching the scene unfold they would have been sure it was following the young man who was swiftly running up a darkened alley, away from the commotion in the bright sunlight where a man lay dead on the floor and women screamed amongst the stalls of fruit.