Moths were in her ears. Fluttering, trapped against her skull, trying desperately to get free. She was on a boat, swooning up and down, the back of her head rolling and thudding against something soft. The thin green taste of wildfire liquid was sloshing up and down in her throat. She could almost see it, a long trickle winding down inside her and suddenly rising up again. And bright woods, golden, full of soldiers ten feet tall and skeletal, their spears pointing up towards the sun. And she was nestling in a wolf's arms.

She was dreaming again, of being in a bed. Tucked in with heavy, starched linen, like someone was lying on her. Her feet sought the corners of the bed, as cool as the shadows made by dappled sunlight in a wood.

A woman was looking at her, seated very close to the bed, her face was warm with concern. She was perhaps ten years older than Sansa, with a ruddy complexion and wisps of wiry brown hair tucked under a thin white cap.

'Alright, lass?' She spoke softly, with the round inflections of a northerner.

'Am I home?' Her own voice sounded very far away, as if floating leagues above her.

'Don't think so,' said the woman. 'Unless you want to live on a poor goat farm with a man who snores too much.'

Sansa lifted her eyes. She was lying in a large bed in a small room with one high window that had a murky, thick pane. The stone walls bulged and were roughly whitewashed. She was in a smock, not her own. The woman put a cool palm against Sansa's forehead.

'Better', she said, and not to Sansa. Sandor was standing up in the furthest corner of the room, his head almost touching the ceiling. His face looked drawn

'I'll be downstairs, then,' he said to the woman, and slipped out of the door.

Sansa swallowed dryly. The woman leant down and brought up a cup and held it to her lips. She gulped it slowly, feeling the water wind down her throat and into her stomach, and lay her head back on the pillow, exhausted.

'What – where am I?'

'You're in my house. In my bed, in fact, not that me and Heweg are bothered when we're being paid for the pleasure.

Sansa didn't say anything, wishing her mind didn't feel so muddy. Her arm was lying folded diagonally over her chest on top of the sheets. A thin stick ran along the length of each side of her wrist, and her forearm and hand had been wrapped in white strips. She tried to move it. It was as if someone had stabbed a fork in her hand. 'Ow.'

'I wouldn't move that too much, if I were you,' said the woman, looking at her sagely. 'I'm no healer, but I've bound it up as best I could.'

'What - happened?'

'You had a fever.' The woman put the cup back down. 'A bad one, too. Reckon you would have gone to ground even if you hadn't been attacked.'

Oh Gods. The men. The two of them running her down. The arrows. She tried to move. 'Am I better, do you think?'

'You'll be fine. Maybe another day or two. Though I'll be happy to have this mattress back after all that sleeping with the goats.'

All that sleeping? 'How long have I been here?'

The woman looked at her simply. 'You've been asleep for two days and nights, lass.'

'Two days…?' Sansa repeated, wonderingly.

'Just as well you've got your big man looking out for you, whatever he is to you.'

Sansa looked at her. 'Do you – do you think so?'

'I reckon.' The woman raised her eyebrows. 'He hasn't slept as far as I know in all the time you've lain there. Just sat here, waiting on you like a faithful hound.' She gestured to the chair she was sitting in.

Sansa took a long, deep breath in, and closed her eyes.

The woman's name was Elisota, and she lived with her quiet husband Heweg in a small farmholding, some way east of the Kingsroad. They didn't seem to have children. There were goats and chickens, and a field full of vegetables, all swelling in the late summer balm. Sansa regained her appetite very quickly once Elisota brought her roast chicken and carrot stew, and fresh-baked rye bread with goat's buttermilk. And she had a bath. It was in not much more than a tin bucket, but it seemed to her to be the height of luxury, with warm water heated from their kitchen fire. The bathwater looked like a swamp after she stepped out of it

She realised that Sandor was paying the couple to look after them, but Elisota's kindness seemed genuine. Sandor had told them that he was her father's trusted friend and was escorting her north to get work in one of the big castles – Sansa had almost given them both away when Elisota had called her Fira and she'd protested. She'd explained it away by pretending to feel groggy. Elisota had stroked Sansa's hair and said, 'Did your mother call you that because of your locks?' Sansa had asked what she meant. 'Fira – fiery one. You must have known that.'