A Burning He Can't Escape, Chapter Six
The Hound was right. By the time he catches and cooks the first rabbit, she is far too hungry to worry about anything but filling her belly. After several days' travel in the direction of Riverrun, rabbit is not only acceptable, but tastes better than any of the sublime dishes she ever had in King's Landing. The Hound shows her how to set the traps. She is fairly good at tying the knots correctly with her hands so accustomed to sewing. She is less good at skinning what they catch. When the Hound guts a rabbit, she can't stand to watch. Luckily, he does not try to teach her again after the first time.
During the nights, he also shows her where to stab a man with her dagger, should the need arise. Sansa finds this idea less repulsive than skinning rabbits, after the event with the singer. She pays rapt attention. She's not very fast or accurate with the knife he gave her, but he doesn't give up trying to teach her. This is more important than skinning rabbits.
Sansa's dreams persist. Every night, the Hound comes to her and every night, he kisses her and touches her with burning hands. She wakes not knowing how to alleviate the longing inside her, and watches the Hound more intently by the day. If he senses the fire inside her, he gives no indication.
Their journey is going smoothly, if slowly. The one trial they undergo is crossing the Blackwater Rush again. They lose almost an entire day getting the horses across. It is difficult, even once they find a place where the current is weak. Stranger, being the strongest of the two mounts, swims steadily. It's Sansa's little gelding that causes trouble, shying away from the deep water and jerking his head away when the Hound tries to pull him by the reins. But Sansa cannot make the rest of the journey without a horse, so they persist until the gelding is across and all four of them are soaked.
Today they are following a road. The Hound deemed it necessary. Last night, after they were finished practicing, he said to her, "We haven't got much of a choice. We need food, clothes for you if we can find them, and a good rest while we can get it."
"Won't it be dangerous?" she asked.
"We may be far enough out of the way that news has not reached this place," the Hound told her. "At any rate, we won't get by on our own all the way to Riverrun. That's the way of it. If needs be, you'll remember where to stick that knife of yours, I hope?"
With a small smile, she reached up and touched her fingers to her throat, where he'd told her a man would bleed to death if cut deep enough. The inner thigh she would remember too, and the belly. And the heart. It was easiest to think of it as a memory test, like the simple game of cards Robb would sometimes play with her, or remembering titles, words, and sigils for Septa Mordane.
"Aye, girl," the Hound approved, to her pleasure. "That'd do it."
They have yet to happen upon an inn, but merely riding on the road is a nice change. Her horse bounces less, which will mean less pain for her later, when she dismounts. Stranger has grown accustomed to sharing the road. He only nips at her gelding now when he gets neck-to-neck with him. Sansa finds she can lag slightly behind without rousing the courser's wrath.
"How close are we to Riverrun?" she asks, turning her gaze on the Hound.
He keeps his eyes on the road, but squints in thought. "Some days yet, little bird. We're near the Riverlands now. We're making for a place called the Stoney Sept."
"The late King Robert won a great battle there," Sansa says, proud to remember. "With my father and grandfather."
The Hound lets out a non-commital grunt and says nothing. Sansa holds her tongue, but her thoughts are occupied now with her Septa's old stories. The Battle of the Bells, it was called, and the late king said that it was her father, Lord Eddard, who had truly won it. Sansa's eyes prick with tears at the thought of her father, even now. She blinks them away and dares to feel hopeful. They are near the Riverlands. They cannot be too far away from her mother's birthplace, if they are headed for the place where her grandfather's forces joined the rebellion.
Stranger snorts beside her as the Hound abruptly pulls him to a stop. In confusion, Sansa does the same, holding tight to her gelding's reins. She follows the Hound's eyes to a place further along the road, and her pulse quickens. At the side of the road, there stands a man. She cannot make out his features from this far away, but he is eerily still. A shudder rolls down Sansa's spine, but she follows the Hound obediently when he nudges Stranger back into motion. It is only a man. He cannot have recognized them from this distance.
As they approach, it becomes clear why the man is unmoving. He's been burned and made into a grotesque effigy, his ravaged body completely black and supported only by a wooden stake. Like a scarecrow. With a gasp, Sansa covers her nose and mouth. The scent of charred flesh makes her gag, knowing that it is the man she smells. Fish, too. She can smell rotting fish. There is a pile of the dead creatures at the man's feet, their bellies split open. She turns her head away from the sight. The Hound swings his leg over Stranger's back and dismounts smoothly, dragging the reluctant courser along behind him.
Her eyes watering, Sansa watches him inspect the corpse. When she can bear to look no longer, she lets her gaze wander to the area beyond. It's a farm, she realizes, though the crops have been uprooted or trampled. A wagon lies broken in one of the fields. There is a small house in the distance. Even from here, she can tell that it has been burned to the ground. Only blackened posts and rubble remain of what must once have been a home. Her heart aches to think of the farmer lashed to the stake, a mottled husk. He must have had a family. She cannot bring herself to think about where they might be, left to the mercy of someone who could make such a horrible mockery of a corpse.
After a moment, the Hound comes back to her and lifts himself back into Stranger's saddle. When he speaks, his voice is harsher than she has ever heard it. "There's nothing for us here, little bird. Come now."
"How could this happen?" Sansa wonders. "Brigands? A... a hill tribe?"
Was there no one to stop this? This is an injustice. This is a horror.
"This was a knight's doing," the Hound tells her gruffly.
Sansa's stomach churns, sickened. "How can you know that?"
He glances back at her sternly, his mouth a grim line. "Look away now, and come. It's growing dark."
Sansa does not hesitate to heed him. The sight of the burned man makes her skin crawl, and she is glad to ride past. Her gelding, too, is eager to move again. Still, the twisted face of the farmer is engraved on the backs of her eyelids. He must have died in terrible pain, she thinks. Her thoughts wander to the Hound and the ugly scars on his face. The pain of fire put such a rage inside him, and such a fear. She cannot imagine how it must have hurt - and at the hands of someone meant to be his brother, possessed by a cruelty Sansa cannot fathom.
"That was your brother's doing." She says it as the realization strikes her.
The Hound's fingers clench into fists, and his lips tighten. "Aye, little bird."
She can hear the loathing in his words. Pity replaces her horror. Sansa chews her lips, unable to swallow her concern, though she knows it will only irritate him. He does not want her sympathies, she knows, but he has them nonetheless. She knows what betrayal feels like. She can even begin to understand his anger. She can fully understand his fear.
"What will you do?" she asks him softly.
His shoulders are stiff and his eyes are on the road again. "I'll take you home. Put it from your mind, girl. It's done."
She tries, but for her it is not so easy.