SANSA

The first thing she heard was the Hound. He was saying something in a low hard voice that rose sharply to a pitch, and she realized with a lurch in her stomach that he was pleading. Not that she'd ever known Sandor Clegane to plead, only to be gruff or melancholic or drunk or angry, but there was more to him than that, she knew it. The tenderness in him was muted, almost shy, ashamed of itself, but this was the man who had saved her from Joffrey when he could, the man whose memory she had fallen in love with. Then all her romantic illusions had been shattered in one fell swoop when he'd gleefully killed those Arryn men at the inn, wrestled her up onto his horse the same way Ser Shadrich had and galloped off without so much as a by-your-leave. She did not thank him for that, but when the arrows had started to fall, when he pulled them both down and sheltered her without a second thought, she'd known that he was still him, that he'd not lied, that he'd never lied, that the outlaws –

Outlaws. Sansa's eyes flew open. She had a jumbled recollection of them appearing like ghosts from the wood, clad in patched cloaks and rusted ringmail, the thin freckly one voicing disbelief that none of his shafts had found their mark, and another one telling him jauntily that they'd have to cut off his thumbs in punishment. The Hound had still been lying over her, but the peculiar slackness of his big body and the way his head lolled told her that the blow had found its mark; he was unconscious.

Sansa herself had hit the ground hard enough that her vision was reeling, and her breath wouldn't come back no matter how much she gasped. She'd been picked up and slung over the shoulder of a big one-eyed lout in a green cloak, and he hit her again when she started to struggle. Then there was the blurriness of marching, crossing a creek, the trees thick around them, the flare of a torch, the screams of Sandor's wounded horse fading away behind. Then the smell of dirt and wet and moss, and now –

Pressing a hand to her aching head, she sat up carefully. They were holed up in some earthen cave, bare roots coiling through the walls, and she appeared to have been dumped directly in a slick of mud, but after the rough weeks she'd already endured, this was less than nothing. The outlaws were standing with their backs to her, converging on the lone man at the center of their circle. In the glow of the torch one of them was holding very close to him, Sansa could see the fear in the Hound's grey eyes, and that frightened her more than anything else. In stories, outlaws were usually good-hearted rogues who stole from the rich to give to the poor, and thumbed their noses at the bumbling authorities who tried in comical vain to thwart them, but they had ridden far enough across the ravaged riverlands for her to know that as in so much else, this was no story. And the way they were talking to Sandor made it plain that they at least knew him, and at most intended to kill him, here and now.

Locking her knees so they would not tremble, Sansa pushed herself to her feet. Her throat was dry, and her pulse beat fast and short, but however little she had thanked him for it, Sandor had saved her life – again. Her voice sounded faint when she spoke, barely more than a whisper. "Leave him be."

The outlaws startled around and took shrewd stock of her. They exchanged looks. Then the big one-eyed oaf said, "This is no business of yours, girl."

"Aye," said a second, the freckly archer. "We mean you no harm; we know you must be another one of the morsels this bloody dog stole off the table for hisself. Got a bad habit of that."

"Mean me no harm and hit me on the head?" Sansa flared. "And he didn't – he hasn't – "

"Aye, he did," a third voice cut in. From the look of the young man, he could only be a Baratheon – but how? Thick black hair fell tousled into steely blue eyes, and he was as tall and muscled as an ox. "He stole Arry and rode away with her. Didn't you, dog? We gave you your life and you pissed on us."

The Hound grinned. "Dogs do that. As for the brat, it's not my fault you didn't look after her better. As for my life, I don't recall 'we' giving me anything. I bloody won it back from you at the point of a bloody sword. Where is Dondarrion, by the way? They said he was really dead this time, but I wasn't wagering on it. Doesn't he want to come give me a kiss?"

The outlaws exchanged looks again, these much more guarded. Then One-Eye said, "The kiss was given elsewhere, and no concern of yours how. Tell us, Clegane, why didn't you have the bountifully good sense to stay dead?"

"I've asked that question a few times myself. Comes down to the fact that maybe you never killed me." Sansa momentarily thought he was going to say something else, but he caught himself, with a sidelong glance at her.

"Saltpans – " One-Eye began.

"Will everybody bloody shut up about Saltpans!" Sandor Clegane roared, making the black-haired boy, who had his hand on his sword and seemed inclined to further grievances about Arry, take a quick step backwards. "I'll tell you why I didn't do it – especially you, Ser Gendry of the Hollow Hill. It was because I'd been left for dead on the banks of the Trident by your precious wolf bitch herself, after I got into one tavern brawl too many. I asked her to kill me, I begged her to kill me, but she didn't, as you can see. A monk found me there but left my helm behind. Send a raven, send a raven right bloody now if you think I'm lying. To the Elder Brother, on the Quiet Isle."

He means Arya, Sansa realized, her stomach turning a flip as she remembered the story he'd told her at the inn on the Bite. But how did the black-haired boy – Ser Gendry – know Arya? And would he help her if she told him that she was Arya's sister, or even believe her? With her hair shorn, her clothes filthy, cold and underfed, she did indeed resemble a sundry village waif carried off by a ravishing brute.

Ser Gendry, having recovered from being briefly daunted, got in the Hound's face again. "You said she didn't kill you. So then where did she go, dog? Where did she go?"

"Bugger if I know. Why? You going to make her your forest lass?"

Gendry flinched. "Shut up, Clegane."

"What? Did I guess?"

"Because you have the devil of bloody nerve coming in here and claiming that, after what you did to her." Gendry's fists clenched. "Don't know where she is, my arse. You finally found someone who would pay her ransom – you sold her off to the fucking Bastard of Bolton and don't deny – "

"Sit down before you hurt yourself, boy. Whatever poor whelp the Boltons have, it isn't her. How do I know? Because the little wolf bitch was right next to me in the tavern when Gregor's men told us they'd found Arya Stark and she was on her way north to marry the leech lord's hellspawn. They seemed to think it was insulting when I laughed. Things went downhill from there."

Sansa glimpsed uncertainty in Gendry's stubborn blue eyes. He wants to believe it, she thought, and prayed that it would be enough. Then the young outlaw said grimly, "That may be so, and it may not. But there's not much chance of you getting out of here with your head twice, dog, and it's getting smaller every time you talk about her."

"Now, lad," said another of the brotherhood, a slight man with a large nose and a somewhat fatherly air. "You know that's m'lady's decision, not yours."

"Why?" Gendry cried, confusion and grief and anger naked on his face. "We know what's she going to say – the same as she always does, and the last trial lost us Lem. We don't need a trial this time, the dog's confessed, and when m'lady hears what he did to her – "

"Confessed to what? That I didn't hand Arya over to my brother's pack of pissants and vermin the instant I had the chance?" The Hound's voice dropped to a growl. "I see you lot can't tell your heads from your arses any more than last time. Where is this dread lady of yours, anyway?"

"Out," the small man said. "With Thoros and a few others. We heard that Edwyn Frey was leading a pack of the weasel-faced bastards from the Twins. Something about the Literally Late Lord Walder's daughter Roslin being murdered in King's Landing, when the Lannisters claimed that they were taking her safe to Casterly Rock."

"Then the Lannisters have lost their fucking minds," Sandor said succinctly. "But then, we knew that. What's this bitch of yours going to do, hang Edwyn? Black Walder will be delighted."

"Hang Edwyn and Black Walder, and every Frey she can." The small man – the harp slung across his back suggested that he was a singer – smiled oddly. "And the boy's right. A pinch more civility wouldn't go amiss. You're not the only one who didn't stay dead."

"The seven hells does that mean?" The Hound spoke with his usual scornful bravado, but Sansa again saw the flicker of fear in his eyes. Her belly knotted like a fist. There had been tales in the Eyrie that the infamous outlaw brotherhood of the riverlands had a new leader, a woman, who had embarked on a savage campaign of retribution on any Frey or Lannister she could get her hands on – even those only tangentially associated with them. Sansa didn't know what the singer meant, but she didn't like it.

"You'll see," One-Eye said. "Soon, I promise. Mayhaps the two of you can swap stories. About being dead and all. Then – "

"I was never dead. Gods damn it, you have to let me go."

"We have to let you go." The words were redolent with sarcasm. "Do we?"

"Aye! Look, in King's Landing – the queen, haven't you bloody heard who the champion in her trial's going to be?"

"Should we have?"

In that moment, it hit Sansa sickeningly. She'd never asked where they were going after they fled the inn, but she'd trusted him. Partly since she had no choice, but mostly since she still didn't think he'd hurt her, no matter how angry she had been with him. One night when she'd woken to find him snoring beside her, one hand protectively clutched around his sword and the other stretched out as if to shield her, she'd imagined that perhaps he was taking her home. Not to her home, ruined and ravaged in the snowbound North, but to his. With his elder brother dead, he was its rightful master, and it was the only place left in the world that he could call his own. She'd thought of going there at his side, and realized that she did not mind. Almost that she wanted to, and many more strange deep adult feelings that allured and alarmed her in equal measure. But if he never had – if he had been taking them back to King's Landing –

"Why?" Sansa blurted out, heartbroken.

They all looked at her again. "Where'd you find this one, dog? You don't have anything better to do than kidnapping girls?"

The freckly archer moved toward her, grinning. "Can't fault his taste in this one. Clean her up a bit and she'd be a rare fine beauty."

"Archer." The Hound's voice stopped the boy in his tracks. "Lay a hand on her, and I'll rip your head off and stuff it up your skinny freckly arse."

Archer – Anguy, she thought she'd heard one of the others call him in the confusion of getting here, wherever here was – raised an eyebrow. "Bit territorial, dog? I won't blame you. Or is it because – "

"Because she's my little bird, you son of a Dornish halfwit, and since I've once more failed her outlandishly by getting her captured by you stinking pricks, I'll be damned if I'll stand here and watch you rub it in. Not to mention, she said she was hit in the head." Clegane wheeled in a circle, snarling. "Which of you bastards hit her in the head?"

"He did," Gendry said, pointing at One-Eye.

"I'll fight you over it," the Hound promised. "Surely such a brave man wouldn't refuse. But since I see you're notably lacking the idiot in the piss-colored cloak, you might want to think of discretion and valor. Or just bloody cowardice."

"You talk quite a bit for a man with no sword."

"You talk quite a bit for a man with one ball and no brain."

One-Eye looked at Gendry. "You're right. Let's kill him."

"No!" Sansa stepped in front of the Hound. "If you – if you touch him, you go through me."

The outlaws, astonishingly, didn't break into uproarious laughter. Even though by rights they should have – there were a dozen of them, grown men, heavily armed, not a one about to be mistaken for Prince Aemon the Dragonknight or any other paragon of chivalry any time soon – and she was just a girl of not quite fifteen years, scared and scrawny, without so much as a sewing needle for a weapon. But she held her ground. Her impetuous and emotional actions had gotten them into the fracas with the Arryn men back at the inn, but she had meant well, had wanted to save Robert. Sandor was much more than Robert.

"M'lady," One-Eye began mockingly. "Your bad-tempered friend has – "

He stopped, gaze flickering over her shoulder, and dug the singer industriously in the ribs. Sansa sensed someone standing behind her, and tensed. But she didn't dare to turn and take her gaze off them.

"M'lady," One-Eye said again, in a much different tone. "There's a pair of prisoners for you here. A dog and his bitch."

Sansa went stiff. This must be her. The Hangwoman. The one it was said was neither living nor dead, the thing that had replaced Beric Dondarrion as leader of the Brotherhood. I don't want to see it, I don't want to be here, I don't. She could smell an unmistakable whiff of decay and bone, old blood and festered flesh, and had to swallow the gorge that had come racing up her throat.

Without a word, the hooded woman swept past. Her mantle was of torn and stained sable velvet, the heavy folds concealing everything except the awful hot eyes and the elegant bandaged hands. She was followed by a grey-haired man in faded red robes, but from the way the outlaws cleared silently away, Sansa knew whose appearance struck more fear into them. Lady Stoneheart. The name floated to mind from a distant corner of memory. She stood fast in place, petrified.

"Thoros," One-Eye said, addressing the man. "Good hunting?"

"Aye." The man, the red priest, sighed. "Edwyn Frey and all his party hanged, seven or eight miles west of here. Thus leaving Black Walder officially master of the Twins, god help us all. A muttonhead Edwyn may well have been, but still a better lord than that."

Lady Stoneheart reached under her hood and seemed to grasp something on her neck. An almost unintelligible, croaking rattle emerged.

"Aye, my lady, he was still a Frey," Thoros – it couldn't be Thoros of Myr, that fat jolly priest from King Robert's court? – said reluctantly. "But Black Walder's not going to be half so stupid as to go riding into our territory with only two dozen men-at-arms at his back. And you can be certain that now that we've obligingly got Edwyn out of the way, he'll be hunting us like the Lord of Night and Terror himself."

"Piss on Black Walder Frey," said One-Eye. "We'll hang him too if he troubles us. The Bull and I were wondering if we'd have leave to hang the dog here first.'"

Lady Stoneheart turned slowly. She studied the two of them for what felt like a small eternity. Then she reached up to her throat and rasped another question.

"Your name, girl," Thoros said. "What is it?"

Their only chance. Hideously and unspeakably dangerous, but the alternative was worse. "Sansa." Her voice was a breathy squeak. "Sansa Stark."

The silence that followed these two words was absolutely thunderstruck. Sansa didn't understand why the outlaws looked so singularly stunned, or why they all turned to stare between her and Lady Stoneheart. She didn't – it made no sense, why were they –

Unless. A nauseating chill laced down her back and took her in the stomach like a blow from Ser Boros Blount's mailed fist. The foul taste of vomit choked her throat. She's dead, it can't be, it's not, the Freys murdered her and Robb at my uncle Edmure's wedding, they threw her naked into the Green Fork – but what the singer had said about Sandor not being the only one to stay dead, and who else would have the unquenchable desire to hunt down and murder all the Freys and Lannisters she could –

No, the logical part of Sansa's mind screamed, but it was no use. In a horror colder than anything she had ever imagined, she knew who was beneath that hood.

Shaking from head to foot, Sansa began to sob. It was punched out of her over and over without her volition, a horrible thin sound like a wounded animal. Her stomach seized up and she began to retch in earnest, but she'd eaten so little that it was only bile. One or two of the outlaws reached for her, but it was only the Hound she wanted. He picked her up off her feet and hissed in her ear, "Gods, little bird. What? What is it?"

Sansa could not answer him. She wrapped both arms around his neck and wept so hard that she did not make a sound, her back almost breaking with the force of it, and then she let go of him and turned around. Legs as unsteady as a newborn foal's, chest still shuddering with gasping sobs, she walked as if in a dream across the cave to Lady Stoneheart, raised both hands, and lowered her hood.

For the longest moment, she simply stared. Those Tully blue eyes, almost unrecognizably bloodshot and furious. The torn fingernail tracks on her cheeks, the bone visible beneath. The auburn hair gone white and thin, the flesh turned to pudding. The bandages that hid, but only barely, the ruin of her throat.

"Mother," Sansa whispered. The word shattered her, the sound of a small child left alone in the dark. She merely looked and looked, mesmerized and revolted and destroyed. And then at last, not caring a brass dam that this was the fearsome Hangwoman, the unliving nightmare huntress, she began to kiss the ruined cheeks, tracing the clawed flesh with her own fingers, crying so hard she could no longer see. Love is stronger than death.

The corpse woman stared back at her with that haunted, haunting gaze, neither responding to her touch or attempting to stop her. This was not truly her mother, Sansa knew, but only a jumbled resurrection of the fury, terror, and agony of Catelyn Stark's last maddened moments. Not the woman who brushed her hair, who taught her the prayers in the sept where they knelt together, who let Sansa crawl into the great lord's bed one winter night when she'd had a bad dream, who cuddled her close and told her that with Papa gone to Karhold, she was scared of the howling northern winds too. Sansa had fallen asleep again in her arms, and that was a memory she had sometimes returned to during her long, and real, nightmare in King's Landing. And then the Red Wedding had happened, and every hope of ever regaining that safety had vanished. The last of the Starks. But Arya was alive, or had been, and this. . . The Brotherhood feared her and respected her, but her undeath had become revenge alone, cold and furious, nothing to touch the monster she had become.

The outlaws and Sandor were silent. Sansa closed her eyes and pressed her cheek against her mother's ruined one. "I love you," she whispered, choking. "I love you so much. Please, remember that. Remember me."

She thought Lady Stoneheart's bandaged hand might have lifted, touched her hair gingerly and then pulled back as if she was aflame. Somehow Sansa's fear and horror had vanished, and there was nothing left but the catharsis of grief. She just wanted to hold the corpse close to her, as gruesome as it was.

Time became a blur. Sansa merely stood there, undone. Then at last, Lady Stoneheart pulled away and said something in a soft, gurgling rattle.

"She asks that you go," Thoros supplied, very gently. "Please."

"I. . ." Sansa lifted her head. "I don't. . ."

"Child, she remembers, but this. . . seeing you, and knowing that she is past the point of giving you any help or counsel. . . it breaks her, and there is nothing left in this frail ruined shell to break. Have pity on her. Go. Leave her."

"No," Sansa whispered. "I can't – "

"Don't be a fool." Sandor pulled her off. "We need to get away while we can."

"No!" Sansa screamed it this time. But Sandor hauled her down the long earthen passage, the torches fading behind them, the shadows of the outlaws stretching and vanishing, as he ran for the surface. Roots tangled around them, she pushed him helplessly, his breath was harsh in her ear. He was too strong for her, she couldn't let him –

Fresh air slapped at their faces. A ghostly moon was rising above the dark, skeletal trees, and the night was especially frigid after the cloistered warmth under the hollow hill. Sandor put her down at last, but glanced to all sides and didn't let go of her wrist. "Leave it, girl," he said wearily. "Thoros is right. You can't help her. Well, that's something else we have in common. We both have to deal with our bloody undead relatives, just in different – "

"What are you." Sansa tilted her head back to stare at him. "What are you talking about?"

At that, the Hound realized he had been decisively caught out. "Oh," he mumbled. "Oh, bugger."

"What are you talking about?" The only relative of his that she knew of was the Mountain.

"Look, girl." He dragged a hand through his lank dark hair. The unburned half of his face was almost as white as Lady Stoneheart's, the scarred half more twisted than ever. "I should have told you. The rumors. . . that false maester's done something unspeakable. In King's Landing. For the queen's trial. My brother. . ."

"No." Sansa said it instinctively, but the same horrifying realization was sweeping over her as when she'd known her monster. She'd always known what Sandor wanted when it came to his. "You can't. You can't!"

"Yes, I can. I have to." He was pleading, not the way he'd pleaded with the Brotherhood, in snarls and sarcasm, but really pleading. "If it's him. . . I can't, I'll never rest, I'll never heal unless. . . the only reason I left the Quiet Isle. . ."

Sansa stepped away from him. Numbly, she made the sign of the star on herself. And then, ignoring his roar, she turned and fled back down under the hollow hill.

She could hear him blundering after her. Even now, he'd still follow her, and it made her broken heart hurt more. But she didn't look back, knew beyond doubt what her path was, struggled through the roots. I'm coming. I'm coming. The torchlight cast shadows on the dirt. She slowed to a walk and stepped back in.

To say that the Brotherhood had not been expecting to see her again was too much of an understatement. She actually thought they might expire on the spot; Gendry in particular was staring as if he'd been cracked on the head. Lady Stoneheart had not moved from where Sansa had left her, but she looked up, just a hairsbreadth.

"I'm sorry." Sansa gulped for breath. "I can't go. Not like this."

"Child," Thoros said, unutterably weary. "Don't – "

"No. Listen to me." Sansa drew herself up. "I. . . I know. Why I came here."

"Why is that?"

"You have to go with me. Back to the Vale."

The instant she said this, as it was still hanging in the air, Sandor crashed back into the cave after her, cursing. "Seven buggering hells – the Vale, are you – "

Sansa turned on him. "Yes," she said, slightly unnerved by her own steely calm. "There's someone there she needs to see."

The Hound blinked. "Littlefinger? Hellfire, you nearly succeeded in making me feel sorry for that whoremonger. Just for a moment, it's gone now."

Yes. Sansa felt herself changing almost moment by moment, transforming as if she was emerging from a chrysalis, a caterpillar no longer after months of cold and dark. She had to go back; she should have realized that long before. Too much was undone there. But not alone.

Lady Stoneheart had gone very still at the mention of Petyr Baelish. But the expression in her eyes was truly nightmarish, and Sansa knew that she was not mistaken. Swallowing the lump in her throat, she turned back to Sandor. "Please. Come with me."

He stood looking at her, just as tormented. He promised. He promised to keep me safe. And he has, he's done so. But she finally knew what hung on the other half of the scale: the only thing Sandor had wanted for most of his miserable life, a demon that she could not even fathom. How can I ask him to give that up? Yet he would die if he went to King's Landing to take on Gregor, and that, of everything that had happened to her since she had left Winterfell, she could not stand.

Sandor went to his knees in front of her. "Little bird," he said. "I can't."

"But you. . ." She would not need him to keep her safe, not if she had the Brotherhood at her back when she returned to the Vale, but if she let him go now, she would never see him again. "Sandor. . ."

He bent his head. He said nothing.

"To the Vale?" Thoros said. "With you?"

"With me." Sansa turned to him. "Will you agree?"

He glanced at Lady Stoneheart. It was plain what she thought.

"I'm up for it," One-Eye said.

"You would be, Jack," said the singer.

"Speak for yourself, Sevenstrings."

Sansa barely heard their byplay. They would follow where they were led, and in the Vale, they had a far greater purpose to accomplish than hanging Freys, as useful a cause as that was. All her attention was on the Hound.

After a silence that yet again went on forever, he got to his feet. Silently he came to her, took her face in both his big hands, and stared at it as if trying to memorize it. She seriously thought he was going to kiss her, and she very much wanted him to, could feel the heat in her stomach like nothing she ever had before, utterly unlike the slimy unease when Petyr forced his affections on her. But Sandor Clegane did nothing of the sort. In a voice barely above a whisper, he said, "Kill the bastard."

"You too."

He grimaced as if she'd stabbed him. He seemed to be trying to say something else, but couldn't get the words out. Then he shook his head, turned away, crossed the cave floor, and vanished up the passage beyond, walking like a blind man.

Sansa watched until she was sure that he was not coming back. Not this time. Not ever. As gutted as she was, she nonetheless had no more tears left. Only duty. Porcelain and ivory and steel.

She turned to the Brotherhood. "Come, my lords," she said. "We too must leave without delay. One more hard snow and the Bloody Gate will be impassable."