A/N The mood of this and the next chapter have been greatly inspired by the song If I have to go, by Tom Waits.

Chapter 37

It Was Her

Where Sandor wakes up, and new evil is brewing in King's Landing

xx

Sandor

It had to be the endless expanse of flames, the molten seas of fire, burning bright. The Hound was captured in a dream from which he could not wake, on the day when the rest of his yet unburned body would be consumed by the dread of the horn, rightfully belonging to the long dead dragonlords. In the vastness there were words he should remember, helping words he should heed to, in his guts the dog knew that he should. The dog was feral, but he always survived.

Yet in his sleep the blaze devoured everything on its rolling path, and no words ever came.

When Sandor Clegane awoke, relieved to escape from the expanding hell of his dreams, there was no one in his bed, but there was the Elder Brother sleeping in the garden.

The bald monk was folded like a child in his mother's womb on an elaborately sculpted bench where the immobile stone roses intertwined with the living ones of winter. The morning was a dark, dull grey, charged with the pungent smell of flowers. They could see each other again without the light of the torches, so it must have been daytime. Several ravens roosted on the rose bush above the Elder Brother, but the magnificent white-headed bird with grey eyes that had been watching the Hound was nowhere to be seen.

"Why didn't you wake me to have your turn in bed as we have agreed?" the Hound asked him rudely.

The monk opened his vivid dark eyes and answered, more crimson in his face than the red scarf he took to wearing, after he prevailed in the confrontation with the red priest, or with his god. "You were not alone."

His words struck the Hound as the Smith's hammer, erasing any remaining drowsiness and lingering nightmares from his strong limbs.

He understood why his cock felt so light, and his heart so full.

I bedded Sansa, he grinned half in joy and half in despair. But if I did, where is she?

He remembered every touch and every movement of his body before falling asleep, divine moments of unequalled fulfilment. He ran back to the room in several huge leaps and gazed at the bed reverently, as if it were the Mother's Altar and he still a child that believed in the Seven.

"Sansa!" he cried. Adjusting his own grey eyes to the remaining shadows of the barely existing light. A rusting stain spread peacefully over the immaculately embroidered bedding of the House Tyrell.

A sign, a proof, a witness.

Of a wound such as he would have never wanted to inflict upon her. He contemplated the size of his body in a completely new fashion as his hands trembled with dread. Sansa was tall for a woman, but he, he was a giant of a man, only surpassed by his brother.

"Sansa!" he cried out louder, refusing to believe what his eyes had seen, rejecting a different explanation. I will leave you a favour come morning, he remembered how she had told him, like you once left me a bloody cloak. "You can't be! You couldn't have been!"

A different voice, young and stern, crept back to his tortured mind which had a habit of storing events and phrases in separate mental chests, helping him to survive in the court for as long as he did. He saw himself cutting his way towards Sansa with dull-coloured sharp steel, at the court of King Aegon, who was speaking. The young pretender said that Sansa's marriage to the Imp could be dissolved once a septa would prove her maidenly innocence… Sounding like he was mentioning a solid truth of what he had had for breakfast that day. The Hound disregarded it then. Aegon could not know the truth, could he?

All the sweet memories of Sansa's behaviour towards him on the road from the Quiet Isle, and in King's Landing, made their appearance bathed in an entirely different light. The confusion he took for a woman's game shone brightly for what it was, in truth. Sansa didn't know what she was doing, could not know what to do with a man. She had heard about it, but she had never done it before, by miracle, or a whim of fate.

Or he had just deflowered a very young silent sister in a moment of utter folly, recreating in his last moments the woman he desired more than anything. If that was the way of it, he only had one consolation. The woman was as willing as he had been, or he didn't know anything about women at all. There would be no regrets.

Sandor wished he had real family, someone whom he could ask for advice. He remembered Gregor and laughed like a Stranger would, cursed and deadly, at the thought of honestly talking to his brother. He grasped the bloodied sheet in his huge hands, rolling it in a bundle to take along. On an impulse, he sniffed it. No other woman would smell like Sansa, he was certain.

I stand alone, he thought, determined to seek out the silent sisters and kill a few of them if he must, in order to establish the truth.

Except that the Elder Brother must have been at the door for awhile, still ashamed. Sandor hoped the monk didn't hear him screaming Sansa's name, and that he had hidden the incriminating bedding on time. If it was Sansa, he thought, he couldn't have seen her. It was too dark, he thought, eager to preserve little bird's modesty from the prying eyes of the Faith. If it was her…. And it had to be her for him to reach to the seven heavens, or so he wished to believe. He wished to believe that above anything, but he needed much more than faith.

He must know for certain.

"It is understandable, even if for me it's difficult to fully comprehend," the Elder Brother offered meekly. "The siege, the battles, you are a man, and you have never made any vows…"

"What do you think, brother?" the Hound asked of the monk with uncharacteristic melancholy, realizing that the brother of the Faith came as close to family as anyone could in his case. "Would the Lady Stark mourn me if I were not to return from Highgarden?"

"I cannot say that," the Elder Brother answered in earnest and the Hound's crest fell. "All I can say is that a woman can forgive many things to a man. Things that most men would never be able to forgive, or at least, entirely forget. No matter how wrong or unjust that may be."

He thinks I betrayed her, the Hound thought, still staring at the monk, a mute plea for help dripping from his eyes, so strong that the force of his gaze could carry Euron's ship without the helping shoulder of a single wight.

"How in seven hells would you know?" he scorned him.

"I was married twice, remember? Before the vows," the Elder Brother admitted, eyes shy like a maiden's. "I can also say that I did overhear the end of her conversation with Mance Rayder about most likely, you, in King's Landing, after you walked away."

"And?" the Hound growled.

"Well," the monk stuttered, "she believed you might want to die for her."

"She was right," Sandor Clegane couldn't agree more.

"She didn't want you to," the Elder Brother did his best to finish what he started. "She wanted you to live for her and…"

But the Hound didn't listen to him any longer. He would not bend to anyone. Reckless, unstoppable, he was off to find the buggering silent sisters in a little time he still had before heading to meet his destiny.

Tommen

King Aegon, Sixth of His Name, received young Tom Waters in the hall of the Iron Throne. Some of the dragon skulls have been brought back from the cellars to decorate the walls, banishing the ornate tapestries of the stag, and the lion. The work was half done, and that was exactly how Aegon felt. Half done in everything, never truly accomplished.

The entire company of his sworn brothers of the Kingsguard stood guard in front of all doors and crevices, so that no little birds of Varys or other illustrious members of the court could have come too close to their king. The smallfolk turned to calling them the Young Falcons, after their newly elected Lord Commander, Robert Arryn of the Vale.

"Your Grace," Tom Waters said bowing deeply to the ground, not betraying in his countenance that only a short time ago he was the one seated on the Iron Throne, receiving signs of loyalty. "I am yours to command."

"Rise, Tom," Aegon said. "I called you before me for a reason. I am riding to Highgarden, and I will leave the throne in your charge while I am gone. I suspect you could find sitting on it more familiar than most."

Tommen rose with wonder and trepidation in his green eyes. He was recognised and his disguise was broken. "What would a humble bastard know about it, Your Grace?"

"As much or more as an heir to the dead prince raised across the water, whom at least someone in this court wants to see as dead as his father before the month is over," Aegon's eyes reflected the same fear of betrayal as Tommen's did in the fields facing the Dragon Gate when everyone abandoned him, and the green-eyed boy understood.

"You may have also called me to ask a question then," Tommen assumed further, examining Aegon's eyes, hoping he was not too far off the target. "Ask it. Whatever it is, I will answer with such honour as I have and as I have been raised with. The honour does not reside in blood, pure or not, Your Grace."

"I concur," Aegon said. "And you are right. I do want to ask you a question. They say that the blades the Iron Throne is made of are meant to cut the flesh of the ruler not worthy to sit upon it. I can confirm that there may be some truth to this old legends told by the crones. What say you?"

"The Usurper, Tommen, would say," Tommen said warily, "that for all his bastard blood the throne has never done such a thing to him. Incredible as it might seem. He could swear on the lives of his real mother and father that he was telling the truth. So either the old stories are wrong, or the throne has found him worthy, despite that he was only a pretender."

"I see," Aegon thought, somewhat disappointed. Soon, he regained the composure and royalty he so freely possessed in Tommen's opinion. "Than I am more than right in letting you rule in my stead. My Kingsguard will not go either, much to their dislike, but I will take only men of age to face Euron Greyjoy in the field of battle. Jeyne will ride with me. Her sister says she is a woman grown, and she's the only person I trust to guard my life with hers if need arises, especially with the Kingsguard staying here. Jon Connington will help you out as much as he can. He is the only one outside my Kingsguard you can fully trust. He, and Septa Lemore, but she is to remain confined in her quarters until I return. It might be safer that way, for all."

"You are wrong, Your Grace," Tommen said. "You cannot trust anyone. It is so, and worse than that for those who are made to sit the Iron Throne. The mother of the Usurper Tommen tried to teach him this wisdom, but he wouldn't believe her. It was one of the few things, maybe the only thing where she was right. "For your enemies may find the way to corrupt your honest councillors, until they work for them, and not for you."

"That may well be," Aegon said. "But I will still endeavour to rule with honour and honesty, and so will you while I am gone, wiser for your experiences. My aunt refused to join me. She wouldn't even see me when I came begging for her help. If I do not return, you will surrender the throne to someone whose claim is worthy, if that is within your powers to do."

"You have my word, Your Grace," Tommen said, feeling the gaze of the dead dragons on his helmed head. They seemed to question him for treason in their own way, and, satisfied of finding none in his young soul, in Tommen's mind they snorted, and turned their skulls away.

Gendry

Not a day after King Aegon was gone, a large wooden construction started to rise slowly in front of the Mud Gate, chasing away the fishermen and their trade. Gendry sat near the muddy water where the Blackwater Rush mingled with the sea, in a company of Nymeria, wishing that Arya were awake and could be with them. She was smart and she would know what the men were building before Gendry's unlearned eyes.

"I wonder what they are doing," he told the wolf. "My healing stomach tells me this is something we should mention to Daenerys. I know it deep down in my bastard veins. But we should try to know more before we run like mad dogs to her ships." Or crazy stags, he thought, yet he still found it very difficult to identify with his presumed father's sigil.

Ever since Sansa disappeared, and all the other mummers were gone, Gendry took a strange liking in talking to the wolf. It seemed almost as if Nymeria could hear him, and she reacted to his words, in her own way. And he was sure the direwolf wanted Arya to wake up at least as much, or even more than he wanted it himself.

It was not a scaffolding for hanging or decapitation, that much was clear.

Many men dressed in roughspun robes of the Faith were running around, busy with too many tasks. They were building a pyre, of lonely twigs and dry grass, looming high above the land, on a high pedestal of wood that would be visible for many leagues away, if the woods were not so close to King's Landing on all sides. Each wooden pillar holding a dais where the pyre was being built was shaped as one face of the seven faces of one god. In an outline of the city and its surroundings, the height of the structure and the elaborate carvings of the carpentry appeared exaggerated, serving only to boost the earthly power of the High Septon and his crystal-armed followers. Gendry was of a mind to use his warhammer and smash the crystal pommels of their swords, but that wouldn't have done any good. Since the champion of the Faith won over the cursed champion of the Whore Queen, the reputation of the High Septon, who had chosen the Elder Brother, was unequalled in splendour and importance in the eyes of the smallfolk.

There were benches foreseen for spectators, and a large stake set in the growing heap of wood.

Nymeria suddenly licked Gendry's face and ran towards one of the workers, toppling the poor man over. Her action forced Gendry to follow her, arms bare, hammer ready to use.

The attacked man struggled to fight off the beast, but he was no match for her. Gendry considered hitting the wolf with his weapon, only to calm her down, but as soon he approached them, the wolf sat on her hind legs and howled like a good dog.

"I am sorry," Gendry said to the confused man. "My dog seems to like you."

"Dog, you say," man mumbled. "More like one of these monsters from the north, those ungodly animals, larger than wolves. I tell you, lad, winter will do for us all. We just have to wait a little bit longer.

"Where are you from, to speak like that of winter?" Gendry wondered.

"From the Neck. Ran away from there when the ironborn came. Ran all the way through the riverlands when the Mountain came. With Faith I stopped running. Now I'm here and I can eat every day, so far."

"What is this?" Gendry asked, pointing at the structure.

"The High Septon intends to burn to death the septa who raised the king. He has proof she has betrayed the Faith of the Seven and became a follower of the Lord or Light. She may have also killed a lady who disappeared from the court. King Aegon himself commanded it."

"But the king is gone," Gendry said and Nymeria snarled.

"An order is written and signed by his hand," the man whispered and looked around. "And there is worse. Lord Baelish has said, and some sparrow has overheard it, that the fallen septa is no other but Lady Ashara Dayne. And King Aegon, he may not be a son of Prince Rhaegar but a bastard of Lady Ashara and Brandon Stark instead. Imagine only! She may have fooled Lord Connington that her son was Rhaegar's son all those years ago. She is told to be a very smart and an even more wicked woman."

"So Aegon will execute his own mother?" Gendry asked in shock, pondering how it was Varys, and not Septa Lemore who saved Aegon from the Mountain, so at least one part of the pious gossip did not match the truth. "If that is true and if Aegon knows it, what kind of king does that make him?"

"A prudent one," the man said. "Lord Baelish knows many things. If he said so for anyone to hear, than it is not very far away from the truth. What better way for a king to hide the truth about his bastard origin? What do you think King Joffrey would have done to hide his, the Seven bless his soul? Forgive me for mentioning his name, for we should speak only good of the dead."

Another worker jumped in, posing a large carpentry beam with a piece of the face of the Stranger temporarily to the ground. "If Aegon ordered it," he said, "why did they then kill all the ravens? Tom Waters wanted to send the raven after the king when the High Septon announced he would pass such sentence this morning, but not a single one could be found... They have flown away or they lie dead in the rookery of the Red Keep. A sickness took them over night, the servants say at court, that, or a human hand who didn't want King Aegon to know…"

Gendry's innards were boiling when he thanked the two men for sharing so interesting stories and ran to Daenerys's ship, Nymeria on his heels. Old Ser Barristan walked out to meet him and interrupted his account several times. "Lady Ashara Dayne, you say?" he asked, "Are you certain?"

Gendry nodded.

"The queen is not here," Ser Barristan said "she has taken her dragon out to fly this morning, somewhere far away where he can hunt. But I will go back to the city with you to see if they will let me speak with Septa Lemore. When should this sentencing and the execution come to pass?"

"In three days," Gendry said. "Whoever is behind this wants King Aegon to reach Highgarden and to be unable to return, if a raven miraculously reaches him by that time because there are none left in this city. Forgive me for asking this now, but I have also thought of something the Elder Brother had said. Of how familiar things Arya lived through may help her now."

"Yes?"

"Well, she had seen the execution of her father. Maybe seeing this septa's execution will wake her up. Like another unexpected shock."

"Let's hope it won't come to that," Ser Barristan said, dead serious in his demeanour, right hand on the pommel of his sword.

"But if it does..."

"I should ask the queen," the old knight said, softly, "but knowing her, she might allow you to expose the young Lady Stark to that if it could be to her benefit. Queen Daenerys may ask of you to stay with Arya Stark at all times, for she is still the queen's prisoner.

"I would never let Arya go," Gendry said. "I did it once and I won't do it again." He was startled when two grey paws of a direwolf leaned on his back and shoulders, gingerly, letting him keep his balance. A huge nose scraped the back of his neck, grazing it with sharp yellow teeth, oddly careful not to leave a visible mark.

Ser Barristan

Barristan Selmy paced in front of a locked chamber in the Red Keep, waiting for Lord Baelish to let him in. The master of coin did not leave him to wait for long. "King Aegon is wise and kind," he said. "He ordered us to keep Septa Lemore here and not in the dungeons."

The door sank in under hands smelling unhealthily of mint, first ajar, then open.

The life blood of the aged knight stopped from running, awaiting to see the only Lady whose hand he would have asked in marriage if he hadn't sworn the vows of the Kingsguard in his youth, the girl his parents had found for him be damned. As always, Ser Barristan dwelt on what would have happened if he unhorsed Prince Rhaegar in the final tilt of the Great Tourney of Lord Whent in Harrenhal, and if he had the courage to crown Lady Ashara Dayne to be his Queen of Love and Beauty, the same crazy courage Rhaegar Targaryen had shown when he chose Lyanna Stark, honouring her uniqueness in all the Seven Kingdoms with the blue roses of winter.

He walked in and he saw her. He grasped the truth more amazing than any of his thoughts. Cruel and full of meaning as life itself. His heart was beating stronger than when he saved Daenerys from a manticore, far away over the seas. For a moment he was afraid that the Lord Baelish, who kept standing behind his back, could hear it.

Barristan Selmy was never very good at deceit, but he would not bring himself to betray what he felt to the master of coin. Not about her, among all the women in the world presumed dead, and yet alive. More beautiful even than when they were all young, and full of dreams of knighthood and valour. Now they were much older, but Ser Barristan found consolation knowing that his dreams had remained the same. Serving Daenerys was a good way to stand for what he believed in.

She was standing at the open window, tall in her septa robes, Ser Barristan had noted with admiration. Her head remained bare, betraying her true stature, and her features appeared thinned and pale, as from a great suffering that had nonetheless not harmed her beauty.

"What has been done to her?" Ser Barristan asked in a voice of a Lord Commander of the Queensguard, startling Baelish on his feet.

"Oh, nothing," Baelish said, slightly offended that his good intentions have been questioned. "She's suffering from an ailment that gives her fits of losing awareness. Similar to young Lord Arryn, if you have heard. When it happens, and it has been a lot of late, she is not able to take food. I didn't have heart to order the servants to feed her by force."

As if you had a heart at all, Ser Barristan thought, while his own was pounding wildly, not as he expected it would before he stepped in the room, but in an acknowledgement of greatness that surpassed his person and the past sorrow of his heart. It was wonderful to see her alive, in the Red Keep, thin or not.

"My lady," he whispered, falling to his knees in awe. "It is you!"

Baelish, behind him, nearly danced from contentment, when his suspicions about Lady Ashara Dayne were confirmed by one of the few persons who would have known her, always. Ser Barristan's infatuation with the sister of the Sword of the Morning was hardly a secret in the old days. Littlefinger, a son of a lesser lord, was not invited to Harrenhal, and it was the only time that Lady Dayne, famous for her charm and grace in all the Seven Kingdoms, came north from the hot sands of her home, as far as Ser Barristan had known.

"Ser Barristan," she acknowledged him, "you do know me then. I surmised as much. It even gladdens my heart that I can still be known where all must have forgotten me."

Her face was lit from within by a sad smile.

"How could I not know you!" he continued, staring at the ground. "I am so sorry, my lady. So very sorry for all your losses, for my own cowardice where I should have been brave, and for everything that had come to pass."

"Brave people die, Ser Barristan," she said with a tiny scorn. "Surely you know that. But even if it were cowardice that had kept you alive, of which you will be a better judge than I, it must have been for a reason. How else could we live? Ridden with the burden of what we should have done differently, how could we possibly stay alive if we didn't hope that there may be a reason for our continued existence, mayhaps a chance to do better. I have cried my eyes out in hot rivers of grief and anger for the things that I have done, until one day I stopped it for it would not avail me. I stood next to Aegon and did my duty. And now he did not only sign, which I could still understand, he laid down the sentence on a decree of my execution in his own hand. So perhaps there was no reason for me to continue existing. Or if there was, now it is over. Now that I dared to hope for so much more."

"More, my lady?" Ser Barristan asked, wishing to know as much as he could about her hopes and dreams, even if she wouldn't reveal them in the present company, he knew.

"Rise, Ser Barristan," she told him bitterly. "Thank you for your visit. Now leave and do your duty, to the very end. As will I."

"My lady," he rose only to bow again, lightly. "My lord," he greeted Baelish and took his leave in a hurry before the mint smelling lord could ask him anything else. Wishing to leave the palace as soon as possible, his two old feet nevertheless took him to the room of the Iron Throne, dependent on the deeply entrenched habit to guard the king. Any king. Deserving or not of that name. To his surprise, there was a familiar boy sitting on Iron Throne, his face covered by a masterfully wrought helm.

"Ser Barristan," the young voice called him. "Have you seen her?"

"I have," he replied, recognising Tommen immediately.

"How is she?"

"As she has always been, brave, beautiful and wild," he said, not afraid of the spies. Those things were common knowledge of Lady Ashara Dayne. "Tell me, my lord…"

"-Not a lord, a bastard, Tom Waters is the name," the boy tossed in.

"Tell me, Tom," Ser Barristan had to ask, "has Aegon truly written and signed this order?"

"His signature looks genuine enough, I wouldn't know about the letters," Tommen said. "But there was once upon a time another boy king who signed parchments to practice writing, without understanding what was on them. The boy king also signed white parchments, later on filled by others. One of such formerly blank scrolls was used to make a boy's mother take a walk of shame, naked, through the city, shorn like a sheep, so that her beautiful golden hair would not protect her from evil gazes and unkind words. The boy cried as a boy he was, not as a king, when he discovered that. No matter what she did, she was, and still is, his mother. I wouldn't wish upon His Grace to return to the capital and find Septa Lemore dead by his hand."

"Be in peace, Tom Waters," the old knight had said. "I thank you for your words. And I bid you attend this execution in the name of King Aegon, as I will attend it in the name of Queen Daenerys. I will see you there three days hence."

Brienne

"Lend me your shield!" the Hound shouted at Brienne, not caring if he would wake up Jaime, still asleep in the back of the chamber they had shared. Jaime was breathing peacefully enough. It was a source of relief after a strange exhaustion had come over him, ever since they left the battlements razed to the ground with dragonbreath, and took to setting fires of their own. His head had hurt, his limbs had been losing consistency, and Brienne saw clearly how despite keeping the tiniest amount of composure and nobility, Jaime could barely walk and work until they could finally get some rest. What made her worried most of all, was that contrary to his nature, he had not been talking.

Brienne ended up leading Jaime and Gregor, as if they were both equally mindless and chained, through the darkened streets of Highgarden all the way to the castle. There, a frightened servant carried a torch in front of her, all the way to the spacious room with the balcony on the first floor.

Now, Mance and the Elder Brother were running two steps behind Sandor Clegane, unable to catch up with the man's enormous strides. "He is not himself this morning," Mance explained. "We had to prevent him from cutting down all the silent sisters with his sword, the same ones he would have died defending two nights ago. After a very fat one told him some wench he was looking for did not exist. Some faith you are having here in the south! Women of the faith turn the heads of strong men upside down, and the holy orders take arms and fight against fellow men in the name of their gods! It may truly be much better to pray to the trees. They cannot hold a sword, or a cock. Best give him your shield if that will make him any happier. He has to keep his head even if we are to go forward with our plan. Euron will not wait."

Mance reluctantly approached Gregor, chained safely to the angular thick stone pillar of the balcony balustrade outside the chamber. "This is against everything I believe in," he said. "But I do not see another way. It is abominable."

The Hound surprised them all by reformulating his plea. "May I borrow your shield for today, my lady?" His deep voice sounded like a speech of a highborn knight educated in the manners of the court. It would fool anyone if they didn't look at his face. Ugly as usual, yet also haunted that morning. Changed, Brienne found. By what, and into what, she could not tell.

"If it please you, my lord," she replied mechanically handing him the shield. She gave it to the Elder Brother once, and it was for the best. Lending it one more time could not hurt.

"Worry about your own heads, not mine," Sandor Clegane told Mance and the Elder Brother sounding more like himself. "I know my part in this. Do you, my lady?" he faced Brienne again, grey eyes questioning the integrity of her soul.

"No matter what happens," Brienne repeated the part of the plan concerning her, enduring his stare with a blue one of her own, without a moment of hesitation. "No matter who dies, behind me, or around me," she continued, "I do not stop, I do not fight. I do not defend anyone. I am to take the horn away and I am not to stop until I lay it at the feet of the Queen Daenerys in King's Landing."

"It may not prove easy," the Hound added, grey gaze still piercing her like cold steel.

"Honour doesn't come easily and soldiers are trained to obey," she repeated something she had learned, and she meant it, too. He seemed to have read in her the confirmation he had been looking for.

"There is a good girl, stubborn as a mule, yet resilient as a warhorse," the Hound observed rudely, in a nearly friendly way. Brienne understood something about the mostly cruel man. He would tell her she was ugly and worse, in her face. A warhorse, she thought, not much better than the aurochs men compared me to when they didn't know I was listening. But unlike the comely knights who said all that laughing behind her back, the Hound had always treated her like his equal, even if she was a woman to start with.

"I will give you my horse," Sandor Clegane said. "He is not as dangerous as he seems. He is by far the fastest of all the horses I have ever seen or ridden. Euron has no cavalry. You should be away before either ironborn or their wights can stop you. From what we have all seen the dead possess great speed and they are inhumanly strong in a duel face to face. Yet I would bet my life that they cannot outrun Stranger. The rest of us will follow behind you when we can. Stay away from the road and you should be fine."

"He is right," Mance added. "The wights are slower than his horse, at any rate."

"Thank you," Brienne said. "That is uncommonly kind of you."

"Kindness has nothing to do with that," he said. "Best believe that. Wake him up," he pointed at Jaime. "It's time to go."

"He's been like this since yesterday," she explained. "Ever since the white dragon burned the tower. I believe that he may be ill, my lords," she said, to tell them something, terribly uncertain of her powers to do any part of what was demanded of her which concerned Jaime. Brienne was terribly uncertain about the fragile strings of devotion stretching between the two of them, more treacherous than his fingers on her thighs, more maddening than his lips on her own, more beautiful than anything she had ever expected to find in a man of flesh and blood.

"Ser Jaime," she called him more roughly than she intended to, suddenly ashamed to let show her weakness toward the blond men sleeping, in front of the other men, before the only company of men who had accepted her as one of their own. "Jaime!" she pulled his hair, unable to think of anything more gentle to do. "We have to go."

"Gods, wench, I have heard you," Jaime Lannister said. Stirring awake with difficulty he mumbled. "I would come back from the dead if you called me, Brienne."

Brienne nodded, her face purposefully even despite the turmoil in her chest when he called her by her name. She was one more knight among the others, about to ride out to meet their enemy. She grasped the hilt of her sword, picked up the crystal container for the horn, and moved purposefully out of the chamber and the gloomy safety it provided. In the yard of the castle, buzzing with men and horses in the weak light of the morning, she approached the Hound's horse. The man who owned it glided silently behind her, lost in his own thoughts. My shield fits him, she concluded. A lone tree on a sunset field for a rather singular man. The animal didn't react to her presence at first; then it neighed and moved its legs violently when she mounted it. Brienne was determined to appear strong, and she remained firmly in saddle. When she dismounted, she dared to caress the head of the horse, as she would do to any other. It was a magnificent animal, badly tempered or not. The warhorse opted to stand more immobile than his master while Brienne attached a special saddle bag with Myrish glass vessel to its broad black-haired back.

"See," the Hound said placidly, "he is not only what he seems."

Neither are you, Brienne thought, and neither am I, she understood, with newly discovered certainty, checking that the orange blossom was still gracing her unruly straw-like hair. Ridiculously, she thought she could feel its scent, and a small touch upon its petals revealed the flower's persistent refusal to fall to decay, challenging the natural course of events, as if it possessed a life force of its own.

She shivered remembering the evil black shadow Euron Greyjoy's red priest released upon the city, drowning Highgarden in the blackness of the ungodly night. So similar to the shadow of King Stannis which crawled into his brother's tent and killed King Renly. Lord Euron has to be stopped, Brienne told herself to take courage from it, and the dragons freed from the lure of the horn which is not rightfully his.

Brienne prayed fervently to the Seven, to the Warrior and to the Crone, that she should have the necessary strength of arm and mind to leave with the seven-times-cursed horn.

Even if the one of her companions to die behind her would be Jaime.

xxxxxx

A/N Thank you for reading. Comments are love and constructive criticism most welcome. Thank you to everyone who bothered to leave a review.