Warning: in this chapter rape is mentioned. It is shown as if it is about to happen in the main plot (but it doesn't) and it is mentioned in a mummery, in an ugly way, albeit as a past event not taking place on the stage. It is most probably the only place in this story where rape that truly occurred will be mentioned, and not in a nice way, even if without too many details, that is at least my estimation of it.

Chapter 35

Birds

Where the things take a turn for the worse

xx

The sleeping girl

It was only good that the direwolves did not enjoy eating birds. Or the wolverine's mouth would be stuffed full with feathers already, and the girl who still didn't know her name would be nauseated in her vivid dreams.

She couldn't find anyone in this waking dream she was having, not the stupid boy, and certainly not her sister. And her other sister whose skin she borrowed to dream on, the huge grey one with sharp teeth, she got hungry from useless prowling down the corridors of the Red Keep when she could have been hunting tasty rats in the sewers of the capital, or stray dogs in the dirty streets. Sniffing took the sleeping girl straight to her sister's blood, spilled in the godswood, and to the man with calculating green eyes who took the stained piece of her sister's dress as a proof of something to the young king. The direwolf hid in the shadows then, and followed the king who went to the septa who smelled somehow familiar even if the girl couldn't tell why. Could it be that she also had wolf dreams like the sleeping girl did? Or was she merely a friend of another lady wolf who had died so long ago, but the realm remembered her still. For it was in the name of that other dead wolf girl that the kingdoms had gone to ruin and to despair. The sleeping girl had been told many times, in her other life she could not remember, that she had looked a lot like that other, dead girl, but she had always dismissed it as a giant lie. The dead wolf girl had been beautiful and the sleeping girl was not. There was nothing to add to that.

The snake woman came to see the septa soon after the young king, only to leave too, in a great hurry to be somewhere else, rather than in the Red Keep. The sleeping girl could understand that with ease. The septa told the snake woman about the raven, the white tailed one, the one who would meet her half-way to tell her to which noble house of the Reach she should go. The snake woman was dressed in soft brown leather, lean and meager, an odd-shaped spear in her hand. Determination glimmered in her eyes. All that fitted the dark-skinned woman very well, unlike the black too large skin of a septa she was hiding in until then. Just like a thin sharp sword, Needle, had always fitted the sleeping girl. Until the dragon queen has taken it for safe-keeping, and guarded it well, grateful for the gift of her life. The first time the sleeping girl opened her real eyes in years, she saw the queen's lilac ones twinkling in the dark, and her wolf blood had told her she had been wrong: wrong in obeying the order to take the life of a dragon. The dragon queen did not deserve the gift of the god the girl served, and she who had lost her face, wished fervently to find it again, but so far she could not. All she could do was sleep and have wolf dreams.

The leather clad woman was a snake, dangerous and fast. It was good that she found the way to shed her wrong skin on time. Before her body would overgrow it and the snake would choke. Like the sleeping girl could die if she didn't soon find a way to wake up and be her old self.

The ravens, the sleeping girl dreamed on. I have to find those. They may have seen my sister. They see everything and everyone under the high skies, they can even sometimes see the arrival of the kings and queens to their cities, and the rightfulness in people. The words rang true, but the girl had no prior knowledge of what she had just thought, so maybe she was thinking the thoughts of the wolf, and not her own. There was no clear way to tell.

The ravens had their cages on the upper levels of the Keep, under the hollow aged eaves of the red tiled roof. Luckily there was no man with them at that time, so there could be a wolf. The chatter of birds became terribly loud when the direwolf found them and pawed the narrow bars, standing up on her hind legs. The growing hunger suggested the wolf to tear apart the weak door of the cage and feast, but the sleeping girl asked her not to do that, and the birds were luckily not so tasty as other animals. The wolf waited.

At first the girl thought they had frightened the birds, until she realized that the black ravens were not the only ones fighting for bird food in the same holding place. A large black bird of prey with a patch of lighter coloured greyish feathers on its head, and a white tail, lay hurt among bird droppings, exhausted from a long flight. Not a raven, the girl thought, but she had no idea what sort of bird it was, a falcon, or an eagle of sorts. The real ravens croaked at it but mostly they cried to one another, announcing the arrival of some sort of doom. Long ago, in the cold of the north, in its endless woods and hilly lands, the sleeping girl had known falcons and eagles, but that bird of prey was one of a kind. A different bird, regal, starving after a along journey, yet barely able to pick up a grain.

Before the wolverine could find out something more from the talkative ravens, for the animals could talk to each other, mostly, the girl's dream abruptly ended. The girl was back in the belly of the ship, and she thought that a silver-haired lady had been watching over her sleep. It was soothing. She had to be patient and wait until the new dream would come again. Maybe when the silver lady went south, and west. Daenerys didn't know it yet, but the girl could feel her departure in the air as surely as she had learned to distinguish the faces of the Many-Faced God. Is that her name? the girl wondered. If it is, it fits her well. Her last conscious thought was a hope that Nymeria did not eat the unfamiliar large bird of prey and found something else to content her gnawing lack of nourishment. Then, she drifted into nothing.

Petyr

Lord Baelish enjoyed the spectacular view of the ancient capital of the Seven Kingdoms, from his stark new, pristine chambers, next door to the new lodging prepared for the Hand of the King, after Cersei had burned down the Tower of the Hand. The stone walls of the Keep ran steeply down towards the cliffs, kissing the sea where the sun would soon bury itself, its path unhidden by anything built by man or any piece of land. It was the most visible sign of Petyr's new high standing in the court of King Aegon, Sixth of His Name, and of the enduring admiration of Lord Connington towards the unmistakable gifts of the master of coin.

He kept waiting for Varys and the High Septon to answer his summons and appear, as the charming view slowly turned from blue to grey.

It started to rain.

Sansa was nowhere to be found but Petyr Baelish had no doubt that she would appear when his new plan would come to fruition. For it was nothing like Sansa, or her noble dead father, to let an innocent woman lose her head over a murder she did not commit, wasn't it? All the time Sansa spent as Alayne Stone could not have changed certain things, and it would work, as most things, to Petyr's favour.

A large black bird, which would be a raven if its beak was not sharper, its body three times as large, and the tip of its head and its tail white, flew towards the master of coin through the second autumn shower that had stricken the capital, landing on a prominent white-washed window sill. Content with finding a firm spot in the torrent of the elements, it croaked.

Petyr Baelish was in an excellent mood no rain could spoil. All his plans had been finally set in motion. No matter who won the Iron Throne, Petyr made certain that he would win as well. So he took a leftover of bread from breaking his fast, and gave it out generously to the bird, feeling merciful and lordly.

And unless someone murders her in truth, I will have Sansa, maiden or not, Petyr's thought was more refreshing than rain, and not innocent at all.

The bird croaked again, swallowing the bread offered to it in its entirety, as if it were a chunk of meat and not a bite of dry grain.

"Lord Baelish," a slow guarded voice of the eunuch sounded from behind. "I see that you have taken a new liking to birds."

"A bird is my sigil, after all," he retorted, glad to see the stern dark shift of the High Septon finding its way to his chambers too. Connington would be late but they didn't need that oaf for the discussion he had in mind.

"Always prudent, as I like to say," Varys continued. "My little birds tell me you have sent ravens to Lord Greyjoy to sue for peace, without consulting the young king."

"I consulted his Hand, the king needs must not know everything. He gave me full royal powers in matters pertaining to the business of the kingdoms," the Lord Paramount of the Trident unveiled the maidenly blank parchment signed and stamped by the king and his Hand.

"Some would call writing to the contender for a throne treason, my lord," observed the High Septon.

"Some would," Baelish agreed as well, looking through the window at the rain that kept falling, impervious to the counsel of others. There was another bird now, next to the black white-tailed one, a much younger brownish bird of prey. Two ordinary ravens flanked the odd black bird, as an escort of a kind. Baelish gave all four birds some more bread, humming cheerfully a tavern tune. "Especially since His Grace has changed his mind about sending a northern traitor to the crown to Highgarden to defend the interests of the House Targaryen. King Aegon will now ride in person to meet Lord Greyjoy in the field of battle. What a song it will be! Alas my ravens have already gone to the pretender, and returned with the news before I have been informed of this change of attitude."

"What news?" the High Septon asked, hiding something, Baelish noticed from the nervous wriggling of his wrinkled hands drier than old parchment. So he continued slowly, stressing every word in an insistent murmur. One could never tell who might have been listening. "That Lord Greyjoy will have mercy for all former servants of His Grace King Aegon when the House Greyjoy finally starts its rightful reign, may it last for long, flanked by two dragons. Euron One-Eye will marry Daenerys Stormborn, the most beautiful of women, and kill an impostor in the place of her nephew."

"Lord Baelish," Varys said. "You never cease to amaze me. But what if Princess Daenerys does not think so highly of this match?"

All birds croaked on the window and lifted flight, all except the white-tailed one who was cleaning its behind with its beak, wet feathers stuck out, shining clean with pearly drops of rain.

"She received me this morning," Baelish said. "And she was most pleased when I revealed to her the identity of her young would be assassin, imprisoned in her ship, imagine, no one else than the lost Lady Arya Stark, younger daughter of Lord Eddard. It would seem that our former Hand had forwarded his hate towards all the Targaryens, for what had been done to his father, elder brother and sister. Even to his innocent daughters."

The High Septon was not convinced. "Women can be misleading, my lord. What were her exact words ?"

"Daenerys said that she was a young woman who knew little of the ways of war. Then she promised me a just reward for my services such as they were, and any position I wish to ask of her when she becomes the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms."

"And if Aegon prevails," Varys said, eyeing the large bird for some reason, "his Hand trusts that your virtues compensate for his shortcomings. How clever! Lord Baelish, I will take my leave now, and I thank you from all my heart for sparing my little birds the trouble of finding all this out. It was a most illuminating conversation."

"We have served different kings together, my lord," Baelish said prudently. "I don't see why we should not continue. The realm needs experienced and seasoned men."

"Like Lord Tyrell," said the High Septon.

"Like Lord Mace, the former Hand, may he enjoy having less duties in this dreadful times and spend more time with his loving family," Varys agreed. "With your leave, my lords."

"There is only one thing which requires the powers of Your Holiness to be solved," Baelish told the High Septon when they were left alone. "You have power to put to death any sinful servant of the faith. I have good reason to believe that the sweet septa who raised Aegon doesn't believe in Seven at all. She worships a red demon from across the sea. Another red sorceress of this false deity serves the pretender Stannis Baratheon. She had a septs burned in Dragonstone and further north, in the name of her god. I heard that this heresy is regrettably very widespread across the sea."

Petyr did not think there were so many septs in the North to begin with but he wouldn't remind the High Septon of this fact.

"That would be a most worrying thing, my lord. The servants of the Faith need to set an example of contrition in these troubled times. But the faith of the young king has been impeccable so far, and he loves this woman as a mother," the High Septon objected at first, but the desire to shed human blood shone unmistakably in his dark narrow eyes.

Petyr Baelish maintained his composure. Never betraying the immense gladness he felt, he slowly waved the white parchment signed by King Aegon in front of His Holiness. Modestly, he said. "Many and more things can happen when the young king marches to war."

"War is cruel and treacherous indeed," his talking companion admitted. The overlord of the riverlands bowed to the ground and kissed the hem of the roughspun robes, prompting his second guest to leave with his pride flattered and unchanged.

Then, alone and accomplished, Petyr Baelish carelessly threw the last piece of old bread to the large white-tailed raven outside his window. It seemed that the bird chirped a polite thank you catching its food, before it flew away, taking with it the rain.

The autumn sun returned with force, and there was nothing that could possibly go wrong.

Sandor

The Hound carefully approached the bonfire at the main gates of Highgarden one more time. He stopped counting how many times they pushed off the wights and the ironborn away during the night, and how many men the enemy had snatched and took with them, screaming as the life was leaving them and they were forced to join the army of the dead. Much less than what Lord Euron believed they would take in any case, the Hound had made certain of that. The army of His One-Eyed Grace did not increase by much, contrary to his solemn announcements of the day before.

The bloody singer had the entire city on its feet well before sunset, to the point that no one sought guidance in the House Tyrell any more, but in the tireless light-coloured cloaked man who rode and ran around the perimeter of the walls, starting fires, arranging fires, showing anyone who wanted to fight the best ways to keep the wights out, for the night, at least, in hope that the morning would bring new counsel. Some women joined the ranks of men and Mance encouraged others to do the same. All those unwilling or incapable to fight withdrew within the city, as far away from the city walls as possible.

The dead enemies could not fly, and the winged fire-spitting monsters remained floating languidly in the stale air of the night, charged with the smell of thousands of blue winter roses.

The Elder Brother fought next to Sandor Clegane, guarding the main gate, where the onslaught was the fiercest. The Kingslayer and his lady knight led the defence on the battlements above it. And Mance, the buggering Mance was everywhere, wielding a torch rather than a longsword, faster than the wind in the mountains, like the stuff the songs were made of, the Hound unwillingly admitted, a spirit of freedom mounted on his brown horse, which seemed so sturdy and slow when they journeyed south.

"Patience is of a northern race," Mance told them when they were setting the fires to burn, "from the mountains on the western edge of the place they call the Gift. Both men and animals wear large snowshoes not to fall through the high snow, and they can run swiftly enough in them. Faster then most of you can on your two feet. Such is the endurance of the north, when roused. The real north. I took Patience as a gift from Stannis, but only because his former owner, a clansman, had died."

The wildling's special treat were the wights, unlike the Hound's who preferred to face the ironborn and avoided the fire when he could. Not that he didn't cut into pieces his share of wights before the others would burn them when the need called.

The Hound moved two steps away from the fire, ready for another round of fighting. Soon, it was upon them.

The Elder Brother wielded a lance in close combat with dexterity the Hound has never seen. It reached the ironborn and the wights alike, for its top was partially made of a dagger wrought of Valyrian steel. Euron's red priest came with them that time, the last one behind his host, urging the corpses on with a prophetic voice. The Hound hated the lying sound of it. Way before Sandor could reach the priest, the Elder Brother was facing the man sworn to serve the Lord of Light, but who was nonetheless leading the company of darkness, as a good and proper knight. The tip of the bastard lance unwrapped the red scarf from the priest's head as if his skin had been peeled off. The unusual gesture sent the slave of R'hllor back running, ashamed, as if he were made to walk naked in front of a group of laughing maidens. The Elder Brother wrapped the fiery red tissue around his own head in a mimicry of a monk's cowl which he pulled back to hang over his shoulders.

"Some hedge knight you were," the Hound told the changing monk with new appreciation while they were waiting, again.

"Apparently," the older man joked back, re-arranged his new headdress and turned to dead silence. He spoke much less than usual since they left King's Landing and almost none of his scarce words were about the rather well hidden goodness and wisdom of the gods. The Hound considered it a good sign, that one of the cleverest men he had met had finally come to his senses about the condition of the world. "Look," the Elder Brother told the Hound with burning eyes, striving to see through the darkness. "A caravan!"

Aye, there was one, indeed, a grey trail of slow carriages on the move, approaching the battle raging around Highgarden in the ever thickening darkness.

"We have to help them get into the city," the Elder Brother was adamant and talkative again. "Or they will all become wights!"

"Why should we bother?" the Hound said but his feet still followed the monk, climbing on the battlements, finding the Kingslayer and the rest of their small party.

Before long they were forty strong men and women, ready to make a sortie through the gates to liberate the passage for the unsuspecting travellers.

The Elder Brother led the attack, red scarf floating in the darkness like a long flaming hair of a woman. His obsession with the rightfulness that had something to do with the Seven was unfortunately back in its full splendour, against any wishes Sandor Clegane may have had in that regard.

"Brother," the former hedge knight called out to the Hound, hesitantly, gaze pleading to be followed, and the Hound obeyed, a good dog as he was. Out there, there were no fires, only mindless wights, and he wasn't going to let the Elder Brother be killed over some noble thing or another. He had little time, and in what time he had, he would still protect him.

Some men and women in their party were armed with sharp black stones next to their blades. The word of the obsidian spread like an earthquake before the battle, and the forgotten valuable was recovered from kitchenware handles and obsolete storage rooms. Mance was at the rear, and next to him rode the Kingslayer, on a white horse, and his lady knight, on a darker palfrey, an orange rose shimmering against the background of the fires over her white blond hair.

When they reached the caravan, sneaking upon the enemy, a few ironborn men, living, not dead yet, the Hound considered grimly, were busy getting out in the open several silent sisters, their cocks hanging loose and ready, in unhidden meaning of what they were about to do.

"What is the meaning of this?" the Elder Brother asked, not understanding what he saw.

"You were married," the Hound cut back. "You should know better than I."

"Someone else can have this one," one of the ironborn heroes said, tossing aside the woman he had grabbed first. "She's either ugly and wounded, or she's having her moonblood." The woman crawled wordlessly aside, pressing a bandage to her stomach.

"They are all ugly, all right," the other one said. "Only old women go to silent sisters. But a cunt is a cunt to me, it makes no matter."

The discarded woman was probably lucky that her would-be rapist was either too dumb or could not see very well in the dark. Her figure looked slender in the weak moonlight, and comely when the overwhelming robes hiding her body were on the move. The blood on her bandage had been dry for days. But something in the way she cringed from her attacker reminded Sandor of Sansa, so his sword found the belly of the man who touched her much faster than it normally would, before the brave man had a time to make another step. When Sandor Clegane turned around to help the woman on her feet, she was gone. They did short work of the rest. And the wights, for an unfathomed reason, stayed well away from that little ironborn feast. Perhaps Lord Euron, omnipotent as he saw himself, did not allow the wights the treat of raping women. Or the wights, being dead and all, did not care any longer for such dubious amusement.

The lady knight dismounted and fought the ironborn leader, a shaggy man of her size who wielded a huge axe. Mance wanted to interfere but the Kingslayer stayed his hand as he himself also stood and watched his lady fight. The dance was slow and deadly, the axe against the sword, body pressing against body. The man finally had a good aim at the lady's blond head, oddly vulnerable despite her stature. When he thought that his strike could not fail, the woman bowed sharply and then moved forward rapidly, butting him with her tender looking head in the unarmoured parts under his stomach. The men would still lower his axe and reach his goal, if her short knife did not open his bowels first. The lady straightened up, not having a gift of mercy for her opponent.

"Now you have learned," she told him, "that not all of the women are helpless. If the gods see fit that you live, you may remember it."

With that she turned her wide back on the dying enemy, took the rose from her hair and offered it to the Kingslayer, as a proper knight would offer a favour to his lady. The Hound whistled rudely when the short-lived Lord Commander of the Kingsguard accepted the rose, only to press it on his mouth and stuck it back to the lady's breastplate, the only piece of the armour she wore, hastily arranged in the city before the battle had started.

This one is stronger than Cersei, who had always been brave in her own way, the Hound thought with amusement. Even if she doesn't know it yet.

And seeing the handsome Jaime Lannister looking at the tall ugly woman as though she were the centre of his world filled Sandor Clegane's head with foolish hopes that Sansa may also have a weak spot in her heart for the ugly and the disfigured. Sansa who could not look at him, but whose way of not looking at him was different than that of any other woman who could not look him in the eye in his past. A way of not looking at him that made him see no other woman in addition to Sansa, not truly, ever since he first spoke to her as a young girl on the kingsroad. Bugger all that. He had to stop thinking of what would not be, find the singer, and move forward with the strategy to get the damned horn.

That was the only thing that could truly help Sansa, and he would be the one to do it. Tywin Lannister had taught Sandor Clegane to die for his liege lord, and he had taught him well.

The wights were coming silently after them one more time, as the caravan trotted safely towards the gates, most of its wagons already in.

The defenders backed to the fire guarding the entrance to the city. After several more hours of mindless fighting, the heralds announced victory, or rather, the absence of defeat, as the light of the day put all fighting to the halt.

It was a fine morning of a new day and Highgarden still stood.

Euron, by his own words the Lord of Dragons, would not be pleased.

xx

The Elder Brother returned last to the place where they camped, with one more trophy of the night, apart from the scarf of the red priest which now bound his bald head tightly, in place of a monk's cowl.

"It must be cleaner that way for the battle," Jaime Lannister commented on the monk's new style, but the Elder Brother did not deign answer, holding a large black bird seated on his right arm. The dark eyes of both man and bird were full of wonder.

The bird looked as if it had just flown over a hundred miles in a single flight, all bones and feathers with no flesh. The tip of its head and tail would have been white if they had not turned muddy and yellow brown from its journey.

"Another of your ravens?" Jaime asked maliciously after his first failed attempt to start a conversation.

"A hawk, I think, they are rare, if native to the Reach," the Elder Brother said examining his prize. "The silent sisters say it came flying after the caravan on the second or maybe the third day after their departure from King's Landing. They had mercy on the bird and fed it, at times. It probably just wanted to go home."

The bird crowed and pecked the monk's red scarf, lovingly.

Mance Rayder had been waiting for the rest of them for a while, hands full of fresh parchment he had filled with letters while they travelled.

"Friends," he said, "blood lust is upon us all. Since drinking or whoring is not wise in our present situation, I say that we could quench it by reading. And pray for the easy death in this war of those who were not so lucky as the silent sisters were last night. I am not a believer. Yet sometimes, I pray, when there is nothing else I can do."

Sandor knew of only one person who might convince him to do a thing like that (or to do anything at all), but she was far away and most likely did not think of him.

Luckily, he was not called out to read so he could just lower his hulking body on the ground and watch. The scene was nothing like the Hound expected, it was blunt and cruel like life itself. He was almost glad that Sansa was not there to witness it. The wildling kept silent all through the reading as if he had nothing more to add to the words he had written already. That, too, was a small miracle.

xx

"Arthur," his sister whispered seated on the ground, exhausted in mummery and in the real life after the battle. "Are they safe?"

"Rhaegar has taken Lyanna to the Tower of Joy. I managed to intercept them before they would reach Starfall and direct them elsewhere."

"Good," the whisper continued. The mute silence galloped faster than a herd of wild horses on the hot soil of Dorne.

"Ashara," Ser Artur said carefully, "Aerys's men they talked, when my men and I fell upon them, they say that they..."

"Yes," she answered before he could ask.

"Ashara!" Ser Arthur was on his knees next to his sister, wrapping a handless arm around her broad shoulders.

"It's all right, Arthur, don't be like that," she told him then, voice quiet and strong. "People make so much out of it, when it is nothing but a piece of man's flesh inserted in a woman by force. It hurts as any other wound of the body, according to the force that had caused it, and with the time it wears off like other cuts and bruises. It is over, and I will not let it diminish me."

"With time, you say... How many...?"

"Is it important?"

"Not any more," said Ser Arthur Dayne, somber and cruel. "For I have killed them all. All who dared to talk and a few more. I have never killed that many men in a single day. And I don't know what is more terrifying, that I could do that in cold blood, or what they did to you while I was gone. More likely, the latter."

"Arthur, listen to me," she pleaded. "Since you will not let it go until I tell you everything as it happened, you should find courage to listen. The host of Aerys's men rode into Starfall this morning as soon as you were gone. They asked me if I knew where you were or where Prince Rhaegar was. I told them that I did, but that I wouldn't tell them."

"But why? You didn't know where I went, and much less where Rhaegar was!" Ser Arthur yelled at his sister, and immediately lowered his voice, shy after his inappropriate reaction.

"If I told them that, what do you think they would have done?" she asked him and then answered her own query. "They would have either killed me and left, or let me live and left. More likely, the former. In either case they would find your trail, and then, they would know your whereabouts, and soon about Rhaegar's, even if I did not..."

"So I thought, if I tell them this, they will hurt me, but I will live until I tell them what I couldn't tell, not knowing it, and you will all live as well, because they will be hurting me, and not riding after you..."

"My sister and a hero," Arthur whispered.

"My lover and my man," she said back, softly, before daring to ask a question of her own. "Am I different now in your eyes? Unworthy? Spoiled? Ruined? Or any other word the world uses to describe a woman to whom this has been done?"

"Would I love you less if they cut off your arm? Would you love me less if I were crippled? I think not," replied the Sword of the Morning, as the man who read his part occasionally glanced at the stump where his right hand used to be, betraying his other thoughts.

"Aegon, is he still safe?" Ashara asked, finally.

"As safe as he can be in these times. Princess Lyanna is pregnant. He might have a brother or a sister soon."

"Do you think Rhaegar can both win over this rebellion and stand up to his father's growing madness?"

"I am convinced that Rhaegar can do anything if he so wishes,"Arthur said pensively. "I am just sometimes afraid that they will tell him something to make him lose his faith. If he remains himself, Rhaegar can win this war. If for nothing else, then because he had not started it, no matter what his father did to the Starks."

"And if he doesn't?"

"I guess, then, I will die defending him, or one of his queens, as the Kingsguard should do."

"I wish I could tell you not to do it, Arthur," Ashara said, seriously. "But how can I? When I have just nearly done the same without swearing any vows. It is somewhere in human nature, to be able to die for a worthy cause. It is what distinguishes us from the horses and the snakes, not prone to such folly."

"We will not think about it now, Ashara," Dayne said, frantically. "And if we have a year, a month, or a day left to live, it will be together. Even if what we have become is an ignominy in the eyes of the world."

"Hold me, Arthur," she said, sinking into his arms. "Don't do anything else. Not tonight. Tomorrow, I will love you again. Tonight, I only want to sleep."

That time, it was not Jaime who lost it during reading. The players have long finished speaking and sought guidance on what to do next. But the usually loud singer cowered in the darkest corner of their encampment, under the battlements, running away from any living sound other than that of his rustling thoughts.

The Elder Brother's hawk flew to the wildling's shoulder and bit his earlobe harshly before the owner of the assailed ear stirred to life.

"I wrote this as faithfully as I could to the story as it was," he said. "But seeing it makes my mind go bitter. For I am no better than the soldiers mentioned in my play, or the ironborn rapists we have just killed. Perhaps my execution was in order in Harrenhal."

Lady Brienne objected, "I have no great knowledge of men and their desires. But if you regret this much something you did, whatever it was, I can hardly think that you deserve dying."

"An interesting way of putting it," the singer said, somewhat more present. The black bird bit his other ear while he tried to chase if away, only to make it land on the Elder Brother's red wrapped head, as if it was a nest of a kind. "Thank you for your kindness, my lady, which I surely do not deserve," Mance Rayder said gratefully, with blatant honesty, earning him a dirty look from Jaime Lannister who had to rearrange his golden curls and try to tower behind Brienne, as a lord would when his lady complimented another man. The Hound burst into a dry laugh, hiding it in-between the wildling's continued words.

"I have known since I have first seen you tied in the firepit in the riverlands that you possessed an inner strength rather rare in either men and women," Mance said. "And I beg you to pardon me for saying so, but despite your rather...

"-Despite being ugly, you mean," the Hound had to mention, but no one reacted to his cruelty.

"Despite what anyone else has ever told you of your looks, my lady," Mance finished, ignoring Sandor Clegane's courtesies. "I would have never found another woman who would be either strong, impressive, or noble as you are, to read the part of Lady Ashara Dayne without false pretence."

The Lady Brienne blushed, and the Hound thought how Mance Rayder was a singer for a reason, after all. When it came to words, he was much better than Sandor Clegane, a grandson of a kennelmaster, soon to be counted among the burned dead, and not among the wights.

As long as the horn would be delivered to Daenerys and everyone would know it was he who did it, and that he did it only on behalf of Sansa.

"I have thought of something," he told them, being scrupulously dishonest, like when he lied to Joffrey for Sansa, hoping that no one shared his own sense of hounding out the truth, forever hidden somewhere between the many layers of smaller and bigger lies. "We have all come here to get the horn. We could use Gregor to fool Euron and obtain it, since we have him here with us whether we wished for it or not. Listen..."

All attention was on him then, even the sharp dark-grey eyes of the buggering bird studied him with curiosity, reminding him very strongly of his own.

The Hound continued to bring to light the strategy of his lifetime, in full knowledge that if it would come to pass, it would also mean his end.

His blood kept running equally warm, unafraid of the freeze that awaited it.