Chapter 36

The Long Night

Where Sandor talks to what is left of Gregor, Jaime gets attacks of madness, a canon POV character dies and something else happens.

Jaime

The light was born unusually pale on the eastern sky to be considered daylight. Greyness reigned over Highgarden. Greyness never encountered hovered above the elaborately carved walls that were a work of art, rather than an instrument of war, and over their tired defenders. The army of the dead retired towards the green hills neighbouring the city with the arrival of the shadow of light. Only the ship, Silence, lay low in front of the gates, stranded on the ground between the bushes of winter roses climbing higher and higher, ruining the quiet existence of the morning by its imposing presence.

Jaime Lannister witnessed how Ser Willas Tyrell, the heir of Lord Tyrell, greeted Mance Rayder in the gloom that passed for daytime, thanking him for defending the city, when he, the rightful lord could not, mourning for his lost brother and anticipating to be the next one to follow in his steps. Garlan was married, so they decided he would be the last. Garlan's wife had joined the fighters in the battle, contrary to the expected tenderness of her green Fossoway ancestors. Ravens were sent to King's Landing, to Lord Mace and to King Aegon, and to Lord Tarly in his high seat in the Reach, which had not yet been ravaged by the dead. Ravens imploring aid.

Jaime whetted his dagger and dwelt on how singularly elating it was to stand and fight next to Brienne, his joy at it sharper than any other thrill of life he had known so far. More mind turning than the constant fear of being discovered had been when he mainly lived for Cersei.

He wondered which member of his new company would be the last to burn, for he held no illusion: against the power Euron had mustered, there would be no victory. The weak light revealed a sea of wights covering the country as far as the eye could see. Unless, unless, if... So many things have happened that Jaime would never have believed in. Tommen was safe at the court of their mortal enemy, and Cersei was alive, somewhere, despite all her folly. It was more than any of them deserved. Tyrion, too, must have been alive, somewhere else. So Jaime hoped, selfishly, that both Brienne and he would live to take part in a marriage dance on Tommen's or Myrcella's wedding in the years to come.

He imagined her in a bright blue dress doing justice to the colour of her eyes. She would be mortified, miss a step and she would end up in his arms, ready and waiting. Right hand was fortunately not required to properly embrace a woman, even one so strong as Brienne.

The Hound's idea for getting the horn appeared sound, and that, in itself, was bothering Jaime. He had known Sandor Clegane for very long, and the plan he told them was just that, sound. Yet it lacked the audacity and a uniquely cruel disregard for all life, sometimes including his own, which was present in the younger Clegane's style of fighting at least since he was twelve. Then again, the man was infamous for telling the truth, and detested elaborate lies more than he loathed the knights and their sacred vows. So why would he now tell us one?

Head swarming with doubts, and not a single certainty, Jaime followed Mance Rayder to the top of the wall where Brienne and the Elder Brother were already standing. The Hound was nowhere to be seen. It was decided that Ser Willas would ride out to meet his destiny alone, for too many good men and women were already lost to the army of wights during night.

The morning count of losses also showed that the wood for fire was already getting scarce. They had crops to last a siege of six months, but they only had firewood to burn for another night or two. It hadn't been cold enough in Highgarden in the previous two mild winters to warrant heating of the homes, so there were no provisions made for it. And they had already scavenged part of the wooden furniture of the rich and the poor alike. There were more household items, roof beams, a few acres of rose bushes inside the walls, and a timid godswood, forgotten but standing still, although no one in Highgarden cared much about the old gods. But the crystals of the Seven could not feed the fires, and the wood of the old gods could. Even Mance did not object to that. "In the North they say," he said when Jaime suggested burning the godswood, "those who believe, they say that when the time is right the old gods will open their eyes again. And then the white weirwood will cover all lands again, the red blood of the earth its source and its father."

Jaime leaned on Brienne, very slightly, and was rewarded by a crooked smile and a flash of blue directed at him, before they both stared down as if they had rehearsed the movement. Ser Willas stood alone and nervous in front of the black ship. His horse shrank away from the dragons, or from the dead, who could tell. Euron was nowhere to be seen.

Ser Willas called out, most probably sick of waiting. "I have come, Euron Greyjoy. Let us do this and be done with it."

He nevertheless had to wait a bit more. The onlookers on the battlements did not dare breathe and the tension in the air could be sliced even with a dull bread knife. A company of silent sisters they had saved in the night was lurking between the turrets and the openings to shoot down arrows. Their trade was not in demand: the dead were either burned or they lived on in a state most of them would never have chosen to exist in. A new fashion issued: there were not enough septons in the city so many of those in fear of dying (or living after they would die) sought to relieve their souls of various sorrows by talking to the servants of the Seven, completely forgetting about the particular nature of the duties the silent sisters have been carrying out for centuries. Besides preparing the corpses for burial, they were sworn not to talk. But the holy women did not have it in themselves to refuse the poor and the fearful so they would write down their replies and questions to those who sought the comfort of the Seven.

Jaime's gaze lingered on Brienne when an unknown presence demanded his attention. He didn't know what it was, and no one had spoken to him, all absorbed as they were with what awaited Willas. Jaime wondered if his father would have come up with a better strategy in their position. Despite all his reticence about the Hound's plan, it was the only possible way out they had. Even Mance reluctantly agreed that they had to use Gregor. There was one other feature of the plan which Jaime arrogantly loved and for which he was going to apply himself to the execution of it, heart and soul: the role attributed to Brienne was daring enough to satisfy her nature, young and thirsty for nobility and songs of valour, where certain death loomed, yet it was one of the two roles that guaranteed survival and running away from the city besieged by wights. If the scheme worked, which was far from certain.

Jaime's dagger was sharp again. He stood next to the woman of his choosing, and gazed down, in peace, when the presence disturbed him again. White. Golden. White again. More golden than the stores of gold under the Casterly Rock, not shit out by his father as the smallfolk imagined, but patiently stored by his forebears over the centuries. Some of them even worked hard to obtain the gold. White and gold cloud rested on the wind, far away where the world almost ended. Rejoicing wickedly, it flew back to the gloom around Highgarden.

Jaime shook his mane to chase the odd sensations away. The sleepless night had taken its toll. He had to stop daydreaming and simply stay awake for just a little bit longer.

"Lord Euron," Willas called, almost shy, exposed in the open, alone and horseless before the crumbling walls of his city and the fires that defended it, fed by the determination of its citizens and the timber from their homes.

And the shyness sometimes did what the audacity could not: the One-Eyed Lord of the Krakens appeared on the prow of his dead ship, clad in black, blacker than the night, shining bright black in the greyness of the morning. His red priest wore ruby red robes, his head was bare and his mantle sewn out of smooth black velvet, finer than could be found in all of the Seven Kingdoms.

Behind them, several wights led by Loras Tyrell and Aeron Damphair, Euron's brother, rose up from the belly of the ship, bringing forward on their backs the heavy iron stand where the Horn was perched, gingerly. Jaime observed with rising concern how even the wights took good care not to touch the cursed instrument. That didn't bode well at all for what they planned with Gregor.

It was the only plan they had with remote chance of succeeding. A wave of golden warmth flooded through Jaime's mind, reassuring him of something. He must have been dead tired to keep on dreaming with his eyes open. He shook his head violently. Still, in his visions, he spread golden wings and flew to the sky, where the bright sun was still in existence above the autumn clouds. There was a touch of support, very subtle, on his stump. It woke him up, as always. It was incredible how Brienne cherished his weakness where Cersei had only wanted his strength. The beast that had opened its wings screeched in his chest, and the man who could not roar despite his sigil had many unseemly thoughts, where a pair of legs longer than many a man's would cling to his body as they would engage in a dance different than the one of steel and dying. Wide awake, he looked down again.

Between Euron and his priest stepped a man in heavy chains, unbent and proud. He came forward from the ladder leading to the deck out of the depths of Silence, of his own free will. His facial bones were stoic, iron, a faithful mirror image of His One-Eyed Grace, except that he was much taller and stronger than Euron, who was lithe of body, and quick of mind before Balon banished him from Pyke as far as Jaime knew. And then he still had both eyes.

Victarion Greyjoy walked to his last living brother, and spat right into Euron's face.

Sandor

"So, Gregor," Sandor Clegane told his brother placidly, taking hold of an iron chain attached harshly around Gregor's thick neck and under Ser Bonifer's head, anointed with seven oils. "It is you and I again. We have not come to this world together like the lion twins, but we will be leaving it one after another. What say you?"

In the long years when he lived for becoming strong enough in order to kill his brother, the Hound always suspected he might die as a consequence of such fight. The possibility never bothered him. As long as Gregor died first.

"Doesn't that please you?" the Hound asked politely and continued to talk on his own. "It surely pleases me."

The chained abomination had a decency to smile. That was unnatural. The Hound barked a powerful laugh, yanking the chain. What was left of his brother followed him, docile, towards the main city gates, rings of steel clanking on the large cobble stone pavement of the street.

"You know, Gregor," he kept on talking to his brother while they were walking, in a tone the courtiers would use to complain about the weather. "As a boy I wanted a brother who would be clever and teach me everything I should know about the world. Or a strong one who would stand for me until I gained force to stand on my own."

"I got a brother who humiliated me and who tortured me, before he would kill me, like he murdered our sister, and our father," the Hound concluded his considerations, not moving a muscle on his face, grey eyes never wavering from their entirely flat composure. "At least our mother left us before you could kill her too. Ran away with a sweet-tongued trader, our father said. Our maester said she ran away with puppeteers, like our grandfather's grandmother did many years before. It was in mother's blood, the maester said, despite that the poor woman was not a Clegane before marrying our father, so she had no blood in common with our great-great-grandmother either. And I very much doubt that the maester had any idea about what our great-great-grandmother may have done, or not."

"See, Gregor, I listened to the maester when I was a boy and he was changing the dressings which were rotting on my new pretty face. So I wondered if I deserved it all. If I was somehow born evil and twisted, if it was in my blood to run away, or to be burned as a just punishment, or if I have done something in my life to merit such destiny."

"I grew up and I understood. There was no reason why you were wicked or why I was cruel, vicious and strong. There was no reason why I wore my scars, no justification. No reason for what was done to me. You did it because you could. That was all."

Sandor Clegane clenched his fists and made a promise to his brother.

"Don't worry, Gregor," he told the smiling corpse before they approached the exit from the city. "I am more like you than I would wish, but I am still not you. I will grant you one thing. You will die as you, and not as this scoundrel of the Faith."

Ser Bonifer would have hunted them down for Baelish in Harrenhal, all of them, little bird included. That was enough to attract the Hound's rage even if he didn't already harbour a strong dislike for the perfumed liars of the Seven. The Elder Brother, brother whom they called Benjen for the show, Sansa, most likely her father, old Ser Barristan, and very few other people he encountered over the years were nothing like that. Those people did believe in gods and their innate goodness, despite all the abundant evidence to the contrary. They chose to believe where Sandor Clegane could not. His faith was burned down with his face, never to be reborn from the ashes.

"Soon, brother," the Hound rasped merrily, mouth curving in a tremendously appalling smile, "you will quit laughing. You had best enjoy it until then."

Sansa

Sansa had slept too much during her journey to Highgarden. It was good, because since the terrible moment when they arrived, she couldn't close her eyes. First an awful ugly man wanted to rape the two older women sharing Sansa's caravan. She mindlessly stepped before them, understanding too late that the only thing she earned with that was that she was going to be his victim first. Never seeing the man she came to see, intact. Stupid little bird, she thought of herself in the words of the man she wanted. The injustice of it angered her spirit, subduing her fear. In lucidity, she let the cloth she used to cover her wound be seen, healed for two nights already. The man was more stupid than her; he mistook old blood for moonblood and pushed her away.

Then, it was the Hound. He had to be there and cut the horrible man down in one ferocious sweep of his giant sword. Towering and fearsome. She almost forgot how tall he truly was. His scars twisted in the moonlight as he did what he loved most, in the words of his own choosing. Killing. Sansa found she could not meet him, she could not meet his eyes, she could not tell him what she came to Highgarden to do. She came to give him a gift, but now that she had seen him in his overwhelming unrestrained presence, she turned too cowardly to proceed. How can I want such a man? she thought. He's dangerous and rude, and he's not even hiding it.

She remembered Septa Tyene and her injuries. Although the septa did not seem to regret those, but something else she did or didn't do that Sansa could not fully comprehend. Maybe all women are stupid and they want what is harmful for them, Sansa thought, remembering with sickness how she used to love Joffrey.

Her fear of the Hound in Highgarden was different than when she was afraid for her life in King's Landing, or when she learned to be obedient and scared of Petyr. It was a new kind of fear, one that kept her mind wide awake, and made her stomach freeze.

The hand of a silent sister was an opportune distraction in the night. Sansa ran away from the Hound, jumping on another wagon, before she would have to face him, craving more time to understand what she wished of him.

It was not like any of them could leave Highgarden any time soon. The city was surrounded, its people afloat between the madness of bravery and that of despair.

It was good that not all of the silent sisters could write. And Sansa Stark could not sleep so she spent the rest of the night and the early morning mute under her robes, listening to the confessions of people and writing out words of consolation. With a belated thought she understood that had the war been a different one, she would be handling the dead in a role she had hastily chosen for herself. Grateful for a turn of tide which did not require her to perform the necessary but no less repulsive rite of preserving the bodies, she heard some more confessions, hoping they would mute her vivid thoughts.

She learned so much of what she missed from the poor people wishing to save their lives. Sansa knew that the Seven most likely would not help them, as they haven't helped her in the past, but she went on writing them words of comfort all the same.

She heard how Ser Loras died bravely, and how his brothers Willas and Garlan would try their luck next. She heard how Mance Rayder defended the city where no one else could, followed by a company of strange grim men who have ridden to Highgarden all the way from the North. A fiddler and a singer were composing a rhyme of a beautiful lady knight protecting the city, orange petals sparkling from her hair. The poor admired the North, believing it has come to their aid, and Sansa Stark was proud although their belief was not true.

It was the winter subdued by the work of evil magic that had come to claim them.

In the dim morning, she found herself on the wall, only one more woman in a contingent of the silent sisters. Standing by. Watching. Waiting. As girls who were to become women were taught to do. Somewhat calmed down, her eyes went searching for Sandor, her reticence less with the weak light of the day. The tender memories of having been in his arms in King's Landing erased the image of a frightening warrior in full swing. Everyone else is here except for him, why? The familiar old fear for him filled up her soul, older than her young body, battered at the edges.

Then, she noticed the Hound from above. Walking what was left of his brother towards the city gates. Gregor was on a leash, just like a dog. That was unlike Sandor Clegane. By now she had known him well enough. She could imagine him killing his brother in cold blood or boiling rage, but she found it hard to believe that the Hound could or would use him as Petyr did with people. A vague thought occurred to her after hearing out so many penitents of the Seven. Would he confess to me? Would he share something if he didn't know who I was? The desire to speak to Sandor without him recognising her took hold of Sansa when Lord Euron Greyjoy's hollow voice rang coldly from beneath, frightening both the living and the dead.

"Ser Willas Tyrell, welcome!" Euron greeted his visitor with malice more measured than a balanced stroke of a sword wrought of Valyrian steel. "A proper lord would have come out yesterday to welcome his noble guests. To share bread and salt."

I will never marry Willas now, Sansa thought and she was sad. Not for not marrying him but because no one deserved to die the way they told her Ser Loras did. Burning from inside out, alive, in heart wrenching pain. So far, Willas seemed kind and lordly, good to his people, who might cry over his passing.

"Welcome, Lord Greyjoy," Willas said, slowly, not awarding the Usurper of his lands the title of His Grace, the name all yearned for and very few deserved from what Sansa had seen.

"You are a cripple not worthy to blow the horn of the dragonlords," Lord Euron judged, wiping the spit that had landed on his face moments earlier from a tall man in chains thicker than Gregor's. "And you have offended my benevolence by resisting your destiny last night. You are thus forcing me to show you my strength beyond any doubt. Behold!" Lord Euron tenderly kissed the cheek of the man in chains. "My brother Victarion! I gave him this mighty horn and I charged him to bring me back three dragons and the most beautiful woman in the world to be my bride!"

"Alas, he failed me. He brought only two dragons and a red priest, letting the third one, the mightiest of all, escape with the woman which was rightfully mine."

Lord Euron spoke with unhidden passion. "Yet, he did bring me dragons, for he is my brother. Any lesser man would not have been able to deliver this service to a true dragonlord that I am."

"Victarion, brother, I love you dearly," Lord Euron said to the chained man, kissing his other cheek. "I love you so much that I will give you one more present. And please, do not remind me of how all my gifts are poisoned."

Sansa had no doubt that was exactly what they were, recalling the choking death woven of amethysts she had worn in her hair.

"I'll give you the blessing of heroic death," Lord Euron said in a kingly voice.

Victarion wanted to spit again, but the red priest touched a red jewel he had been holding in his hands. Something in the prisoner's neck constricted. Victarion stood still, glancing at the red rings around the horn. "Beloved brother," he replied to Lord Euron, haughty, unbroken. "I deserve the dragons and the woman you dare to speak of more than you ever will. Do not be surprised if I become the rightful master of the horn and your new army after you make me do this. I have always been stronger than you."

"That you were," Lord Euron said. "But it will be of no use, brother. You should have done as you were told, that is all. A woman, and three dragons. This horn is bound to me by magic that cannot be easily broken. I have claimed it for myself and suffered the consequences."

"And now, now," the one-eyed leader yelled to the walls of Highgarden, "there is one among you miserable rats who may be the true master of the horn! Moqorro, the priest, had seen it in the flames of his god, which often deceive, but rarely do they lie. Give me that man! Or woman, makes no matter. Give them to me! And I will enlist you to my army as I have promised! Fail to do so, and the dragons will scorch your city to the ground until not a single stone will be left unmelted in this new Harrenhal of the south, cursed, abandoned and dead."

"And when it comes to you, dearest brother," Lord Euron faced Victarion again. "It will give me joy when you squirm and pray to die faster as the fire is eating you slowly from within. You will beg and I will watch. And by your death I will be stronger than ever, for you will now surrender your life force to me, whether you wish it or not."

Sansa Stark did not look when Victarion Greyjoy blew the horn.

Sansa Stark did not see. She did not hear when Victarion screamed, just like Lord Euron foretold, or worse.

Sansa Stark could not bring herself to care when Lord Euron proclaimed his new strength and when a white dragon approached him and let him touch its long snout, thinning at the end.

Sansa Stark stared at Sandor Clegane, who observed Victarion's cruel death from the safety of the vault of the city gates, never letting go a chain of his brother. The man she followed south against any better judgement on her part turned paler than the fresh parchment, whiter than the clean bedding, greyer than the dim daylight of the day that did not deserve that name. He wore a face Sansa must have had when Joffrey executed and humiliated her father for all to see, except that he didn't scream. The Hound gazed at Lord Euron in mutiny, with murder in his eyes, while the ironborn leader continued torturing his brother, needlessly, as if it were the most pleasant thing someone could do. She was too far up to see Sandor's eyes clearly but she could imagine the anger that must have been in them, stormier than the sea Petyr used to sail a ship on to better steal her. The Hound stared at Lord Euron until the last throes of the victim resounded over the green fields inhabited by the dead. Then he retreated back where he came from, a shadow in the shadows of a grey morning, further obscured by the dark form of his eight foot tall companion.

Sansa looked at Victarion, dead, and wondered if on the morrow he would also carry the iron stand of the cursed horn with Ser Loras and another unfortunate man whom Sansa didn't know, but who visibly grieved for Victarion, unlike Lord Euron, his brother. Lord Euron robbed the horn from Victarion's stiff hands and laid it back to the pedestal where it was taken from, illustrating his ability to handle it without dying from its magic. Although he did not blow it, and Sansa noticed that the red priest pressed again the same invisible red jewel which must have prevented Victarion from his last act of spitting.

Jaime

"I wouldn't wish to be the rightful owner of the Blasted Horn," Jaime told Brienne. They were supposed to descend and join the Hound to set their plan in motion but Euron's improvisation kept them where they were, stunned still with the turn of events.

"I doubt that any of us is its master," Brienne was of the opinion. "He told us that to frighten us because we defied him. And we will do it again as long as there is wood to burn and arms that can fight!"

"That's very admirable, wench," Jaime said, chasing fresh white and golden sensation away from his mind succumbing to exhaustion. Or maybe it was the influence of the stone candle, and watching purple flames for too long created golden reflections in one's mind. "Look," he said, perplexed, "not all of his threats were idle."

A white dragon, elegant and long, glided on the grey air, colour of the House Stark, Jaime thought, distracted, finding the colour of the bleak north appropriate for the arrival of doom to the southern kingdoms. The magnificent beast landed in front of Euron, and nuzzled his hand that had touched the Horn, in submission.

Euron smiled, pleased and gratified. The eye he had glimmered bright. The animal turned to face the city walls, gracing them with a wave of smoke and a deep roar. As it gazed to the part of the wall where the mummers' company was standing, it put a paw in its mouth, bit it hard and nearly bit it off.

"The beast resists the will of Lord Euron!" Brienne exclaimed. "It will harm itself rather than obey!"

As far as Jaime knew, Brienne knew next to nothing about the dragons, but she did draw his attention to the fact that the dragon was harming his right paw, not his left one. Don't do that, Jaime thought absurdly, you will want to have both paws no matter which lord you serve. Or you may want it for mating. He wondered how the dragons did that among themselves before their females laid eggs. He was glad that Brienne could not hear his thoughts, getting crazier and crazier on the matter of dragons. About the white one in any case. Not golden, luckily, Jaime thought as the gale of warm sparkling wind under the open skies kept twirling in his head.

The dragon released his paw and bowed to Euron, his master. The animal spread its leathery wings in the air, and there, there was the gold! Jaime's mouth sprang wide open. A thousand golden strings or veins, forming thin intricate patterns, scintillated like jewels on the bottom side of the beast's feathered limbs and its soft-looking belly.

The dragon flew directly to Highgarden. It glided effortlessly within the safety of the cool air of the morning. Nearing the walls, it scorched one of the city towers, burning hard stone and soft flesh until no one was left alive, and the screams of the dying made the dark day become blacker still.

The tower was not even 50 feet away from where Jaime and Brienne stood and its fall left a large opening that would have to be protected by fires at night, devouring the wood they didn't have.

"My army will be ready to enter your city at sunset," Euron said. "So go on burning it down if you want to last another night. It will be your last one, I swear to you. And tomorrow, bring me the man, or the woman, who think they can challenge me, the rightful owner of this horn, and the only living Lord of Dragons other than myself."

With that, Euron retreated to the bottom of his ship, leaving his army, his dragons and the corpse of his brother. The red priest stepped forward, raising both of his arms high up in the air. A dense irregularly shaped black shadow sprouted from his fingernails and travelled towards the sky. Darkening the air it went, growing wider as a thick unnatural rain cloud, unfolding its wings all over the condemned city.

"It will get as dark as during the Long Night," Brienne whispered next to Jaime, and it sounded like something she must have read once. They stood as close to each other as the propriety allowed, almost cheek to cheek, so that the warmth was shared between their faces. They witnessed the end of Westeros as they knew it, and the birth of a new continent, more terrible, perhaps. Or simply a world they would yet have to discover.

Jaime's sadness was exquisite when he would think of how many people lost their lives in the tower that was still smoking. He was oppressed by sorrow as few times turn his attention and his brain away, he looked at the white dragon again. The beast paid no heed to Euron any longer after it obeyed his unspoken command. It lifted fast flight and directed the splendour of its wings far away from the city, where its green coloured brother welcomed it with a shrill screech.

The greeting of dragons, Jaime thought with admiration, not noticing that Brienne was ushering him down the steep stairs.

Euron was gone, and their plan with Gregor would have to wait for another day.

For the night, their fires had to burn.

Sandor

"Get out of my sight," the Hound told a pair of silent sisters, nursing a jug of colourless piss. He no longer had Gregor, who would be in care of Jaime Lannister until his meeting with Euron would come to pass. Sandor Clegane wanted wine, but when the innkeep of the first tavern he found came to serve him, he only asked for water.

"Begone," he repeated to the two women who had been stalking him for a while, but the fat one only moved steadily toward him, and the slender one followed suit.

"What do you want?" he bellowed, his scars in the open, waiting for them to run away.

The fat one sat across him and the slender one next to her. The fat one wrote a message to him. "My sister is young and innocent", the paper read. "She took a vow of silence and she cannot write, but she can listen. Her ear is kind and known to ease the hearts of man in war. A man strong as you may need some nourishment for his soul. To better defend us all."

For a heavy-bodied woman with thick fingers, the silent sister wrote faster than Mance Rayder.

"I need nothing," the Hound thundered in a low threatening voice, bringing his face inches away from the slender silent companion across the table. The younger woman did not move, and then, he understood. It was the woman he saved the night before. "There is no need to thank me either," he breathed through the slits for air of her opulent robes, and then, she did recoil, trembling. Satisfied, the Hound sank back and added. "Another innocent girl wanted to thank me years ago. I didn't want her gratitude. The dog merely does what he is good at, every now and then."

The slender woman nodded to the fat one who wrote. "We apologise for disturbing your peace, warrior. My sister bids you enjoy your water. She will pray to the Seven to grant strength to your hand."

"No use praying either," he said then, suddenly not so eager to end the conversation. "Maybe another will pray for me if the ravens bring her news of how I died in the city of roses."

"We are lucky not to know the time nor the hour of our passing," the large woman wrote. "Do not despair."

"I would have died for less, before," the Hound said. "Now I will follow the Stranger gladly."

The younger woman hugged the fat one tightly and they buzzed like buggering black insects under the shroud of their robes. Apparently the vows allowed them to talk to each other. Or the silent sisters spat on those too, like the knights did.

"Why are you afraid to live?" the next message said.

"I'm not!" he refuted the ridiculous notion.

"Then why are you throwing your life away?"

"Not doing that either," he said and stood abruptly on his feet. He didn't need those two insipid creatures to question his decisions.

"Pray for me if you must," he said, rattling the sentence that followed faster than he would wield a sword. Embarrassed that he had let it slip past his lips at all, he nevertheless let it roll, like a head of an opponent he would cut off in battle.

"I will die to save this city, and with it, everything I hold dear," Sandor Clegane said, and stormed out of the tavern, swifter than a dragon could fly.

The air smelled of burning and the bloody blue roses. All the streets looked the same, leading nowhere. The city was drenched in dark tones of grey, the drawing shadows of the evening becoming thicker and blacker with every passing moment.

On his way to the castle, Sandor Clegane passed the sight of a godswood in flames. The cloud of smoke above it smelled sharp, and fruity, as no other tree would when consumed by fire. A few commoners were helping the Elder Brother, who still held a burning torch in his left arm. He must have been the one to set the weirwood alight, the one to ruin what was left of the old gods in the south. He looked fallen in his countenance as if he were burying his mother. In the odd light, the monk's red-wrapped face shone like a snow white blazon of the Kingsguard, illuminated softly against the background of the rearing darkness. The Hound noticed, for the first time ever, that the Elder Brother must have been handsome once. Dark quiet eyes on a pale face with the slightest tone of amber, grieving.

"It is not your gods you killed," the Hound told him, as if it weren't obvious. "It are trees, no more, no less. We need wood."

"I wonder," the Elder Brother said. "In the old days before the Light of the Seven was brought to us from across the water, how many people of Highgarden have come here to pronounce their marriage vows?"

"That is not for you to know," the Hound said.

"Even the birds left me, when I started the fire," the monk denounced, gesturing to the sky which had slowly turned so dark that the men could barely see each other outside the reach of the flames. There would be no moon visible that night, that much was certain.

"You should take joy in that," the Hound said. "Your ravens have been persecuting us as it was. If you truly miss them, I reckon they will be back when you leave this place."

The monk smiled, scraping his head where the old injury must have bothered him again. The Hound took his leave as a good soldier; he was to sleep first and the others would come later, in turns, one by one, after they had helped setting their share of fires.

So he dragged his feet and the rest of his body to the set of rooms on the ground floor wing of the Tyrells' castle, always kept ready and clean for the noble guests, where Willas had allowed the mummers to rest, in payment for their defence of his city.

The chamber he was offered was spacious, better than any Joffrey would have given him when he was the king's dog. It must have been opening to the garden full of cursed blue flowers. He could smell them, and the fresh air of the night, but he could not see them. The castle stood high up in the city and the scent of burning did not reach it properly, a distant current of ruin and despair. The wind suddenly snuffed the only torch in the corridor when the Hound entered the chamber. He had to touch the walls to find his way in complete darkness. There was a bed, a large one.

A featherbed, he concluded.

It wasn't cold. He kicked out his boots and most of his clothing, laying down on his bare back. He could not remember when it was the last time he slept on so soft a thing.

The wind blew hard through the chamber. Or maybe it was something, or someone, walking in from the garden side.

"Who's there?" he asked, but the air could not talk.

He closed his eyes and the world was equally dark as when he had them open.

The wind stirred again and this time the dog in him was more alert.

"Who is it?" he growled. "Show yourself!"

A person was next to him. He grabbed a rough portion of cotton, and a warm body underneath.

"It's me," a voice whispered, the voice that couldn't be there.

His arms took hold of the intruder in full knowledge it could not be Sansa, and immediately recognised the attire of the silent sister. So that was the way of it. The stupid woman who sought him in the inn was grateful in a way a whore would be. He wouldn't mind it on another occasion but on that night he wanted to sleep only with his memories.

Of Sansa on Stranger in front of him, letting him do as he pleased, scars or not, as the fireflies lit the way.

Of Sansa kissing him as if he were a true hero from her songs, and not a lonely monster.

Of Sansa, no longer a maid, who melted under his fingers as if she would have let him do anything he wanted if only they had more time.

The sweet memories made the anger at the fraud he was facing swell huge in his chest, so he snarled at the impertinent woman.

"Didn't your sister say you were young and innocent? Didn't I tell you that you didn't need to thank me?"

"What if I were someone else?" the whisper was insistent, and the Hound's ears equally insisted on cheating him, telling him it was her.

Sansa, in Highgarden, on the featherbed.

"She is not here," he said, putting some distance between them, while he still kept his head.

"I will deceive you that I am her," the woman whispered.

The distance between him and the illusion of his mind suddenly unbearable, Sandor closed it again, offering the ghost of his imagination a whisper of his own: "If you do that, woman, there's no telling what I could do. Leave!"

But his arms had made that impossible already, and she didn't struggle to leave them, much on the contrary.

"I will make you believe that it is me who you want to pray for you," she said.

"Alas, if you do that, woman," he said, incoherent, as the curves of her body came to life in his hands and the rough fabric slowly disappeared.

"I will leave you a favour, come morrow," she murmured. "You'll find it when I am gone. Like once you had left me with nothing but a bloody cloak."

He didn't believe he could ever possibly be taken by such blessed deep joy being with any other woman than Sansa, and Sansa was not there.

"I hope you will find it in your heart to bring my favour back to me."

"Sansa," he begged. "It can't be you. Don't lie to me, please."

"I will make you see the truth, that my hair is auburn and that my eyes are blue," she deceived him so sweetly that he forgot where he was. He was hearing Sansa's voice, and it was Sansa in his arms where he was still alive, and still a man.

So he went to show her that, while they still had time, not thinking of any consequences of his mindless actions.

Sansa

It hurt much worse than a dagger did, sliding over her tummy.

A different pain, blunt, echoing with warmth from where it started, but hurting nevertheless. Unthinkable and unbearable closeness. Unusual, strong, real. More real than anything. Sensations running over, thoughts abandoned, courtesies forgotten.

Sansa shivered, instinctively.

She kissed him again and again for reassurance, grabbing both of his cheeks to make him come closer, covering the entire length of her body with his. She did not mind the pressure, welcoming its challenge. His body, an anchor, at the point of no return.

Soon, it was yet another thing entirely. They were joined beyond measure of what she thought possible. When he moved, she moved after him, wanting to contain him.

A first sound came from him then, in the growing darkness. A grunt, a wail, a prayer.

She wished so much that she could see him, see all of him, see how he was and where they were joined, see if the intensity of what she was exposed to would have shown also on his face of sculpted, twisted stone.

She imagined that it would. It had to.

He loved her. Of that, Sansa was certain. She didn't want to think now of how much she loved him, or even less for how long. Forever, a thought surged, unwanted. Love was not a poison, but it was a danger all the same. For love could be lost, and Sansa had learned that better than many others.

She was dropped back to the featherbed when he moved up again. It was not pleasing, so she placed her legs on his shoulders and followed his body, sweat, smell and touch. It was better.

He bleated weakly, his bark gone like her courtesies in the overarching darkness.

She thought it would be over soon. He was well inside her so she presumed it was done. What was done in marriage bed. And outside of it, more often than not, from what she had learned.

But he, he…

He set her legs back down, and claimed her mouth again before conquering her breasts as he never did before, warm and tingling between his lips. Hands roamed firmly over her. Then, between where her body and his were one. It was taking time. Their joint movement slow and deliberate. She was his lute, his high harp. The strings of her body making no sound, other than rapid breathing.

She pressed to him, to his hand, to the part of him that was inside her.

Until it was there.

The sea. Washing over.

Its waves. Crashing over.

"Sandor," she said after, not knowing if he had heard her, not caring if he did. "I wish I could see you now." With that, he shuddered violently, covering the crown of her head with his soft silky hair. And she discovered she had been crying against his chest. Boneless, edgeless, soft. Drowning in the sweetest thing that there ever was. That there ever would be for her, she suspected.

She didn't know how much time had passed when she woke in his arms. It was still dark. Her head nested on his shoulder, and the desire to make water reigned strong. Sandor breathed in, and he breathed out. Asleep by the sound of it.

Good, she thought, but it hadn't been good at all.

She came to give him a gift, not knowing she would receive a gift in return.

Leaving him was much harder than she thought it would be, and the temptation to stay sweet and overwhelming. She knew there would be blood on the sheets come morning. There had to be but she could not see it, or find it by touch in the marvel of his embrace.

Somehow, she made herself stand up, a daughter of ice, equally stubborn as her forefathers.

She found her garments on the floor, hoping he would see what they had done with first light, if the light was not entirely gone from the world. Determined that it was the only way to make him wish to live, to reconfirm the truth of their love, she ventured blindly into the elegant corridors of the castle, in search of the silent sisters' quarters, where she would wait as was the fate of women. She would not deprive him of doing the man's duty by her wailing.

It was all that I could have done, my love, she sighed. The rest will be up to you.