"He's dead!"

Beth and her mother lifted their heads from their needlework: her mother was patching holes in her brother's breeches while she knit a scarf for cold mornings in the hills. The supper simmered in a pot over the cook fire. They looked at each other before getting up and going to the window.

"HE'S DEAD!"

Her brother was running into the yard. He stopped suddenly and dropped the sac he was carrying from the market and bent over with his hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath. He looked up and saw them.

"He's dead," he repeated.

"Who's dead, lad?" his mother asked.

Beth clutched at her knitting. The Mountain, she prayed; let him be dead, and then Sandor can come back.

"The Prince!" her brother shouted. "Prince Rhaegar is dead! The traitor Robert killed him: single combat on the Trident, they're saying; and Barristan the Bold cut down too, with no word if he lives or not. They've called the banners: Lord Tywin's going to march to King's Landing to defend the King and his heirs. It's war for all for us now."

"Run tell you father, child," Beth's mother told her. "Tell him I'll send your brother up once he's fed."

Beth turned and ran uphill to her father. He had to spend more time there when they sent her brother to the village since Beth could no longer go on her own. The night of his father's burial, the Mountains' men had gotten drunk in the village, starting fights and breaking chairs and a door at the inn. When the innkeeper had appealed to the new master, he was thrown a scattering of coppers and silvers and told to mind his place and keep his own peace. Since then they had become more unruly, helping themselves to things in the market and being insolent to women. The old castellan had trouble looking folks in the eye. And then there were the whispered rumors that the father's death was no accident, making the Mountain a kinslayer. Beth's stomach clenched with each new story, her fear for Sandor and herself was now fear for everyone near Clegane's Keep.

Meanwhile the host was gathering and the Mountain and his retinue prepared to ride and meet the Lannister forces on the Goldroad. Beth went to the hills so her brother could go to the village again. Hours passed and night feel and still he did not return. The next morning the sheep shearer rode into their yard on a dappled stot, looking as grey and haggard as his mount. He told Beth's father that, as the Mountain and his men left the Keep, they had rounded up young men and boys who happened to be in the village to march with them as foot soldiers and bearers: the first to resist had been run through and so the others had gone submissively. Both of his sons and their own son had been taken, he told them. The man was so distraught that he recounted in front of Beth and her mother how the Mountain had also taken one of the innkeeper's daughters who had been standing outside, slapping her so hard with his mailed glove when she cried that blood had poured from her mouth. His men had laughed and the host rode off from the village. Beth was quickly sent back into the cottage.

Beth's parents despaired and wept; they wondered how they would manage the shepherding and cottage without their son. Beth promised to help and was good to her word. Remembering, always remembering Sandor, she found a big fallen branch that she fashioned into a staff and went farther into the hills than she had before to find new grass for the sheep to graze, just as he used to go exploring. She took to wearing her brother's breeches and cap so no one could tell she was a girl. She learned to sharpen a knife on a whetstone and tucked one into her belt. They all did more work and felt closer though they spoke less. Beth never complained or shirked even when her moon's blood finally came and her insides were dull with pain. Despite her best efforts, sheep were lost and they lived with less and her parents grew thin and strained.

When they did go to the village, they stopped at the sept and lit candles to the Mother and the Warrior to protect Beth's brother. She also secretly prayed for Sandor who would have ridden out with the Lannister host from Casterly Rock. The sheep shearer's wife saw Beth and smiled faintly, so Beth prayed for her betrothed too and they all sat together in the sept with the innkeeper's wife and youngest daughter.

After many turns, word came from Lannisport: the King was dead and King's Landing was sacked. Robert Baratheon, the traitor and usurper, sat on the Iron throne. They were shocked to learn that Lord Tywin had bent the knee; they believed he had gone to the capital to defend the King. Northern forces had broken away and gone south to lift the siege at Storm's End and thence to Dorne, only to find the abducted Northern maid dying. Lord Stannis Baratheon sailed to Dragonstone only to find the Queen had died in childbed and her younger children had been taken to exile in the Free Cities. Princess Elia and her children were also dead and so the Targaryen dynasty that had conquered and united and ruled the Seven Kingdoms for nearly three hundred years was at an end. The Dragons had fallen to the fury of the Stag. Though the Westerlands had been spared, they were still devastated, and wanted their men and their sons and brothers to return. Before the second turn of the moon, Beth's brother and his friend, the shearer's younger son, walked into their yard. The eldest boy was dead, they told Beth and her father, and they exchanged sympathies. Beth was not sure if she was sorry for him or he was sorry for her so she asked instead for word of the innkeeper's elder daughter. They looked at each other and looked at the ground and they shook their heads.

Beth's brother said he was glad to be home and fell into his routine again but he seemed distant and sometimes dazed. One evening when he came to take her place in the hills, she sat and stayed with him.

"Are you…was it…it was a victory, wasn't it? Lord Tywin's host took the city."

Her brother looked strangely ill. "It was a slaughter, Beth: people of all kinds were butchered…" He closed his eyes. "They told us we were to save the King, not murder his heirs. They presented King Robert with the bodies of Rhaegar's wife and children. They say he smiled, Beth." He looked around even though they were far into the hills. "It was the Mountain, Beth: killed the baby prince and his mother, and him a knight and all…we're not supposed to say 'cause he's Lord Tywin's bannerman. You can never tell."

He's not just mean, Beth; he's a killer.

She looked at him now. "Tell me, was he there?"

"The Mountain? I just said…"

"No," she said quietly, "not him."

He stared reproachfully at her; then shrugged. "Probably. It was a great host, Beth." But when he saw her keep looking at him, he admitted: "We were supposed to watch for him; the Mountain's men knew we would recognize him. I didn't see him 'cause…I didn't want to, Beth."

Beth smiled gently at him, and leaned her head on his shoulder. "I'm so happy you're home," she told him now.

"He wants to marry you, Beth: my friend." He turned to look at her now as she raised her head from his shoulder. "He's always liked you; more than his brother even: it ate him up you were going to be his goodsister and not his wife. He's thinks you're sweet," he told her, embarrassed, "and…dainty."

Beth looked down at her breeches and worn boots and her gloves with the fingertips cut off, holding her staff.

"Well," she replied now, "he's a fucking fool." She could not help smiling at her brother's shock.

They both laughed now, laughed until they bent over double and tears rolled down their cheeks and their sides ached from it. Sheep bleated as if laughing along with them.

Beth stood still as the innkeeper's younger daughter laced her bodice. She and her mother had invited Beth to use her room to change before her wedding so she would not have to walk on the country road in her dress. She looked into the girl's looking glass as she brushed her hair and wondered when she had changed so much. There was no looking glass at the cottage.

"You look so pretty for your wedding," the girl gushed happily.

Pretty, she thought; Sandor had called her that and so she wondered what he had seen. She was not pert and buxom like the innkeeper's daughter, with her round apple face and her riot of dark curls. Beth's hair was light brown and golden hued, like her eyes, and it fell gleaming straight down her back and around her shoulders when left unbraided. Her face was fairer and thinner and had faint hollows under her cheeks and her nose was straight and thin while her mouth was wide and full, unlike the tiny pucker of the innkeeper's girl. She had grown a little taller and filled out since her flowering but she did not bounce and wobble and strain the bodice of her dress like her new friend. Perhaps that what was her betrothed meant by dainty, she thought curiously.

"We can be friends now you'll live in the village," she prompted Beth hopefully. Then she glanced furtively about the room she'd shared with her lost sister.

Beth smiled then. "I would like to have a friend," she told her.

Her brother had helped pay some of her dowry sheep since he had confessed to taking gold dragons off dead knights during the sack of King's Landing; he'd given some of the gold and all the silver and coppers to the Mountain's men and so they had lazily trusted him and not made him turn out his pockets and empty his boots. He wanted to have his own wife soon.

"You're doing the best thing," he'd murmured to her as they left the inn, and squeezed her hand tightly.

Beth was a good wife. She was used to working hard and not complaining, and was frugal, having lived with less. Her husband was kind and never struck her; he talked to her but did not expect her to have thoughts of her own. A smile and a nod sufficed. He was clumsy and eager at their bedding and stayed that way: huffing and puffing over her with a far-away, eyes-half-closed smile that she found silly and endearing. She was soon with child and his parents were pleased, less so when she birthed a daughter. She lost her next babe when she fell from a chair reaching for a stone jar on a high shelf, and while her husband was clumsily tender and worried, her goodmother told her to hurry and get back on her feet as they had no time to nurse an invalid.

At the Keep, there was no babe: the Mountain had wed in the same turn as she had to a pretty, well-born girl with a soft smile and kind ways. Soon she looked wan and her smiles were forced, then they did not appear at all and finally neither did she. It was whispered the Mountain ravished her mercilessly; then beat her when she got her moon's blood, so violently did he want his own son. He was said to rage that without an heir, the Keep and its lands would pass to his brother; and he would tear it down stone by stone and lay waste to the village and valleys first.

Beth stood holding her baby daughter and talking to the innkeeper's girl one afternoon when she heard a man remark: "Fuck me, Ser: you should take a buggering commons to wife, see they breed like bloody rabbits."

"YOU," his deep voice boomed at her, "YOU GAVE YOUR MAN A SON?"

The Mountain loomed over her and her babe as he had years ago by the road when she held her grey kitten and for a terrifying moment she felt like that girl again, but she looked up and spoke clearly: "No, Ser: a daughter."

He growled a throaty deep grunt and shouted: "ANOTHER USELESS FEMALE!" He turned and struck his own man fiercely. "AND YOU'D HAVE ME TAKE A LOW-BORN WIFE FOR THAT!" He stomped to his destrier and mounted, riding off without looking back at the man spitting up blood and teeth in the road.

"You were so brave," the innkeeper's daughter whispered, squeezing her arm.

Beth finally exhaled. "Would you hold her, please?" she asked shakily, holding out her daughter, "I need the privy."

"The brother will have it all, mark my words," the innkeeper told them in a hushed voice, afraid to be overheard but hating the man. "The Seven won't let the Mountain go unpunished for all he's done. No one in that Keep died from anything but murder or grief." He nodded knowingly. They'd never learned what happened to his eldest girl; if anyone knew they hadn't the heart to tell him.

The brother, Beth smiled sadly: no longer the cursed child or the burned boy. Either they'd forgotten his face or realized it hadn't mattered after all. She kissed her daughter's forehead and held her close.

"Oh, my sweet kitten," she told her, "some things come too late."