To my guest reviewer – The intention in Chapter 1 was that Sandor instantly recognizes Sansa while he's trying to tell himself that maybe he is wrong because seeing her puts him in a turmoil, and then he immediately proceeds to stalk her in Chapter 2, a bit more discreet than in canon because he's not drunk.
I hope that this chapter speaks for itself.
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Chapter 3
The Good Knights of the House Corbray
x
Mance
It had been much better when it rained.
The sad realization hit Mance Rayder hard when he woke up on a sunny morning and a company of fifty horsed knights led by Ser Lyn Corbray invaded the Quiet Isle, surrounding the cottage where the Lord Paragon of something could not be allowed to die in peace any longer. Several monks tried to resist with shovels and their heads with glassy eyes adorned the hastily raised wobbly spikes in the middle of the graveyard, where the Brother Gravedigger hurried to dig enough holes to bury the rest of their desecrated remains as the Seven commanded, after the carnage.
Mance thought it was probably for the better that he overslept the onslaught, not to endanger his errand by a temptation of bravery, which lingered in every man. He grabbed his longsword, donned his cloak to hide it and joined the giant man, nodding slightly in his direction. The monk showed a presence of the mind to behave as if Mance's helping at the burial place was an ordinary thing, under the watchful eyes of the knights stationed on top of the hill.
Within the shapeless brown robes of the large monk, deep in the folds and over his back, there was a tool packed. Not a shovel, nor an item of the Seven. Only a vague shape of the load he carried could be put together in one's mind, from many single looks measuring its size from different angles when the big man moved.
The burden in itself was never visible. Mance soon knew beyond any doubt that the silent monk was hauling a greatsword, the deadliest weapon of Westeros.
"We've been trained in the same art, it would seem," Mance said, pivoting his body to let the other man come to the same conclusion about what was under his cloak.
The answer was silence.
Serves me right, Mance thought, for talking to a silent brother of the Faith I don't keep.
"I thought you were a buggering singer," a rasp startled the King-beyond-the-Wall and an inner bard immediately studied the harsh sound of it for all its qualities. A bit rough but it would most certainly do. It needs some refinement, but the low pitch would be good, coming from the stage.
Since Mance reshaped the song he wrote for the capital into a mummers' play in his sleepless spirit, he was well aware that no man in Westeros was noble enough to read the part of Rhaegar Targaryen.
"So you can speak," Mance said. "Excellent! I am Mance. And who are you?"
The brother who was no longer silent lowered his hood in a feral, savage motion.
Yes, Mance thought, observing the flaring temper of the Gravedigger, with a few handpicked tricks this man will perform miracles in the role of Rhaegar. I won't find a better kneeler for it."
Elder Brother
Ser Lyn Corbray led the Elder Brother at spear point to the room where Lord Baelish was dying, and demanded brusquely, "We heard that you can do miracles for the ill. If he lives, then so will you."
"He refused my help when he arrived," the holy man said back.
"You would have poisoned me. You wanted to spread lies about my daughter. Say it! Say that she's my daughter. She confirmed it herself!" the moribund hissed, his spirit still awake and well present among the living. "Alayne! Tell him again!"
"Father, you are very ill," the girl chirped, white as a snowflake melting mercilessly in a too warm land. She dwindled immediately behind the bed, like an obedient daughter, assuming the place and the humble stance belonging to women. The breeding mares of the nobility at best, whores and expendable property of just about anyone at worst. The Elder Brother pushed the cruel thoughts away. They would always rise in his mind against his will, every time he saw the sick lord and his would-be-daughter.
"You heard her!" Baelish shouted with inhuman tone.
The Elder Brother sniffed the air and looked at the dying man's arm.
"Only one way to do it now," he said. "If he allowed me to help him before, we would have saved his arm. I suggest that you do it, my lord, for we have no swords in Quiet Isle. I will bring some herbs to dress his wound when you are done. His fate is in the hands of the Seven now."
"Then so is yours, old fool," said Ser Lyn. "Go and get your herbs and pray that the Seven save him if you want to see another spring."
"My fate has been in the hands of the gods for a long time. I do not fear it," the monk said peacefully. "What happened to him, anyway?" he wondered, ignoring Corbray's menacing stance.
All eyes turned to the girl after the Elder Brother had spoken. It would seem that the brave knights did not know what had befallen their lord.
"A shadowcat, my lords," she spoke as it was proper, bowing slightly before her betters. "We took a road from the Vale not visited by the mountain clans, according to our guide, Ser Shadrich. Father and me spent a night in a cave, it must have been the beast's lair."
"You were with him?" asked Ser Lyn, incredulously.
"Yes," said the girl, blushing and lowering her eyes.
"Then how come that you are unharmed?"
"Father defended me from the monster and he chased it away. He was so brave!" replied the girl looking at the floor.
Baelish convulsed and shook his head, as if he wanted to refute her words, but his head dropped down on a meager pillow, where he mercifully lost consciousness.
"And here I thought that Littlefinger was as brave as I was!" laughed Corbray with total disrespect for his lord and main source of coin. "But it seems that even the cowards fight for their kin! Very well. Get out now, old man. And take her with you! What will happen in here is not for the eyes of a lady."
The monk shot a disapproving look at the young woman, but he still offered her his hand as a knight would. They left the cottage together and trod down the hill.
The Elder Brother looked back where the door of the hovel still gaped open.
Ser Lyn Corbray unsheathed his sword and took a good look at Baelish's arm, as if he were determining the best way to slaughter an aurochs for a great feast. Two of his men held their lord firmly in place.
Corbray aimed the blade towards the Lord Paramount's right shoulder and swung.
The shrill that came out of the cottage a second later would have woken up the murdered brothers, if the gods were good.
Sandor
The Brother Gravedigger bared his face ferociously, in a sign of acceptance. The time of hiding was over. He had to be who he was, Sandor Clegane, until his dying day.
The singer from the north didn't move a muscle and he just kept looking straight at the face of the Hound, burns and all. And they didn't get any prettier with time. The Hound was patiently waiting, if not for revulsion, then for some cocky reaction typical of fellow killers when faced with one of the most renowned of their kind.
Nothing.
This man doesn't know me, he has never even heard about me, he realized. He must be from somewhere very far up north.
"Mance," he rasped, "you told the Elder Brother you were from White Harbor."
"Yes."
"You lied."
The singer's eyes changed expression to the one Sandor knew, a vulture examining its prey.
"My name is Mance," the singer insisted. "What's yours?"
"If you don't know, I don't see why I should tell you," Clegane spat and swiftly raised his hood back. It was barely on time before she could see him. All his attention turned to the cottage on the top of the hill the second she walked out of it on Elder Brother's arm.
"Alright," said Mance, completely missing the reason for Sandor's mood swing. "I have a proposition for you now that you are more talkative than you have been of late."
The inhuman scream cut his words in half. When it was over, Mance continued.
"There. That sounded like I might be going south to the capital with both Baelish and his daughter. I need an aid."
"I'm not a buggering squire and I serve no one. I am my own dog now," said Sandor Clegane, slowly reborn as the Hound again, with every word he spoke.
He used all the willpower he had left to rein in the desire to go after her, as he was always compelled to do when in his cups in the Red Keep. Ever since he had told her the truth about his burns, and she was stunned to silence. But then she comforted him, innocently, unknowingly, the simple honesty in her scarce and always measured words a balm on all his wounds, better than any ointment had ever been.
"I'm not looking for a squire. Only for another man who can read. I presume you can do that much. She already agreed to help me read my songs," commented Mance, pointing at the odd couple walking down the hill.
"Songs are sweet lies for the weak," Sandor said boringly, the words "she agreed" burning red in his mind. Of course she would have agreed to a thing like that. She will never learn!
"Perhaps," the bard smiled. "But don't the weak deserve something for them as well? Lest their existence become unbearable."
"I'll think about it," Sandor said flatly.
Reading songs with the bloody northerner might cheer up the little bird, he though. Better that than travelling alone with Littlefinger and his pathetic servants with thoughts of whoring on their mind.
Be as it may, Littlefinger's servants were too many at that moment, and one man wouldn't be able to kill them all, no matter how hard he tried. The singer has a sword, Sandor thought, and the Elder Brother is thinking of going south with some others. Not many are left alive after today. We might as well all leave for the winter.
Winter was coming.
Sandor threw his shovel in one of the holes, leaving a portion of the remains of his brothers laying unburied on the still wet ground. Absent-mindedly, he walked after the Elder Brother and the lady, trying to form a battle strategy in his mind.
"Won't you finish this?" Mance called after him, pointing at the mess he left behind.
"You do it, singer," Sandor replied coldly, pretending he wasn't looking back.
"First reading is this evening in the common room when all the good knights fall asleep!" he heard Mance shouting before the singer stooped, more like than not to lift the abandoned shovel from the ground.
Sansa
"Will my father live?" she asked of the Elder Brother while eating her porridge with great elegance, as if she took part again in the seventy seven courses feast for the wedding of Joffrey Baratheon and Margaery Tyrell.
"He's not your father," he replied. "Admit the truth."
The nameless girl just put another spoonful of porridge in her mouth.
"All right," the Elder Brother seemed too tired to be angry at her for her cowardice, "I will see to it that he lives, but it's too early to tell. Does this make you happy?"
"Yes," she replied earnestly.
The Elder Brother gathered his herbs and some wine to boil for the wound. She called after him, hoping he would understand her, "It is not for us to decide who lives and who dies."
Sansa Stark knew that Petyr was the same as any of her previous gaolers, but she still couldn't bring herself to willingly commit or order a murder. A true king, or a true lord in the name of his king, could dictate a sentence by law for the man's crimes. By right, Petyr's punishment should be death.
But Sansa was not a ruler and she was afraid that the gaoler who would come next would be even worse than the one that she already had.
The Elder Brother pushed his head back through the door, despite that he had already stepped out.
"I almost forgot," he said. "The singer asked me to tell you to stay in the common room tonight after supper. For a reading exercise."
"Gladly," she said, "if you would be so kind to stay at my father's side tonight."
"I will" he said, "and I will make sure that all the good knights know that it's not fit for a lady to spend a night in that cottage.
"Thank you," Sansa Stark said, and meant her courtesies.
xxxxxx
"So this is how we do it," the Northman called Mance commanded, "you just read from the parchments I gave to each of you. You start," he pointed at the hooded man who joined them in the common room after dinner in the late hour of the evening. "And then you read the next line," he told Sansa who hoped she would be able to act as this wolf girl and not like Petyr's daughter. "And so we continue until the end. Is that clear?"
Sansa looked expectantly at the man she was to read with. They were both seated in front of the singer. The brother of the Faith was completely hidden in his robes, but even so it was obvious that he must have been pretty tall. A single candle shed some light in the room from the table behind them.
Another tall man came into Sansa's mind, the one from her previous life, when the fire burned green in the skies amidst the dead and the dying. The one who left her and whom she should forget. And he didn't believe in any gods, the old, or the new.
An unnatural voice, completely not what she expected, broke a short silence after Mance's speech.
"They say that Winterfell is cold, my lady, and that no flowers grow among its walls."
"That may be so," she read back.
"How is it then that one has grown outside?" the voice recited his part with indifference.
"Noooo!" Mance halted them, disapproving. "That is not your own voice, good brother of the Faith. Imagine that you are telling me to dig graves like you did this afternoon, not that you are talking to your dead mother. You have no tenderness for her at this moment, you're just bleating empty courtesies due to a lady. And you, my lady, you hate courtesies and you will make him see it. Again!"
"They say that Winterfell is cold, my lady, and that no flowers grow among its walls," rasped the voice Sansa heard ofttimes in her dreams.
"That may be so," she raised her head defiantly as she would never do in any of her roles in life, attacking the darkness under his hood with a flash of her bright blue Tully eyes.
"How is it then that one has grown outside?" the voice mocked her as it always did in the Red Keep and her heart was stuck in her throat.
"How do you know that I am not a lady of this castle?" she asked trying to sound as her sister Arya would, forcing her spine straight.
"A lady would not be seen outside training with the lance. Weapons are for men," he leaned closer from his chair and breathed the comment out with cruel certainty and unhidden intention to hurt her with his words.
He was successful and Sansa no longer needed to pretend. The words she read were flowing, no matter how harsh they sounded for a lady she always tried so hard to be.
"Do you consider yourself a man?"
"Isn't it obvious? I am one."
"Then where is your weapon, man? You seem to have forgotten it. There are foul things in the woods of Winterfell waiting for pretty knights as yourself. You should run back behind the walls while you still can and leave the free folk in peace."
"Are you a wildling then?" the Hound sounded as if he could barely contain a mirth in his voice from seeing her so... openly angry... for the first time.
"Perhaps," she said; polite, perfect and false once more.
It was the last sentence written on the parchment in Sansa's hands. Her eyes were blazing and the Hound seemed even more withdrawn then usual.
"Much better," said Mance, satisfied. "You're both getting a taste of this. We'll leave it at that for tonight."
"If I may make a suggestion," the friendly, balanced voice of the Elder Brother said from the door. "I came to accompany the lady to her new quarters for the night-"
"My father? Sansa asked, joining her hands anxiously.
"Still with us and not yet with the gods. Ser Lyn Corbray and the young squire are keeping him company for the moment," the Elder Brother reassured her. "But, please, about your play at the end of the first scene, I think it would sound better if he asks her 'A wildling? Is that who you are? I've heard they are wicked and know no gods.' And when she answers 'Perhaps' which was very good, then he should end the conversation saying 'If we ever meet again, I will name you the Wild Rose of Winterfell and you will know me for who I am.'"
"Not bad for a monk. No singers in the family?" Mance nodded in approval. "The two of you, are you willing to try again, from the end of the scene?"
"You never told us the names of your characters," said Sansa. "I suppose they must have names."
"There will be plenty of time for that. I want you to get used to the story before you know whom you are playing in truth," said Mance. "Who knows, maybe you will guess who you are as the story is being told. Let's do it again, say it as the Elder Brother wanted."
"Don't expect me to repeat that," stated the voice from under the hood, unnatural and hushed once more, the rasp hidden.
"Why not, by the old gods?" asked Mance. "You were doing fine. We will all make lots of coin if you keep up the good work. It's just words and the words are wind!"
"Please," Sansa said, glancing demurely at her partner. "It's only a song."
She sank back on her chair and, slowly, the tall brother did the same.
Deep silence reigned in the room and the candle seemed afraid to keep burning.
"You, singer," the voice rasped. "Can I stand and say these new words of yours?"
"By all means, suit yourself," Mance encouraged him, waving a hand.
So Sandor Clegane towered over Sansa and asked her in his true voice burned off by the fire years ago, just like half of his face had been, "A wildling? Is that who you are? I've heard they are wicked and know no gods."
"Perhaps," she replied rising up on her feet to face him, unable to see him under the cowl, and yet yearning to do so, wishing her voice to sound careless and not to betray her pounding heart.
He dared take one of her hands in his own before he pronounced the final words very slowly, as if he had to try hard to remember them correctly, with the unintended consequence that they sounded as if every word was important to him.
"If we ever meet again, I will name you the Wild Rose of Winterfell and you will know me for who I am."
Sandor finished talking, let her hand go, and with a slightest nod to Mance and the Elder Brother stormed away into the night without another word.
"This brother is a natural in this art despite himself!" Mance whistled. "And your counsel was a solid one for a man of the Faith."
"I was only a man, once," said the Elder Brother.
Mance took a quill from his belt and touched the shoulders of the Elder Brother, mocking the gesture performed when a man was knighted, "I, Mance without a Realm, by the grace of the old gods Lord of this Mummers' Show, appoint you, Elder Brother of the Seven, to serve on my small council and grace it with your advice, until such day that I release you from your duties."
"And I, Elder Brother of the Quiet Isle, gladly accept," said their host, dropping on one knee in make-believe.
Sansa was grateful that men sometimes indulged in childish behaviour because none of them saw how she had to fight off the urge to faint. The words of a song about someone else, spoken to her by the Hound, alive and well from what it seemed, thrummed like thoughts of treason in her captive mind.