Rosby
Not far from Stokeworth, but through a thicket of woods and past a lapping stream, Sandor Clegane wrapped a wine-soaked bandage around the girth of his forearm, nought to disturb him but the lulling drones of dragonflies basking in the morning light.
It had been a tough night, and the Hound knew it would take time for this particular wound to heal. Tying the bandage's knot, he snarled at the pain. A day ago, he had been a Kingsguard – Joffrey's dog. Now, he was an outlaw, a wanderer, a hound in the wild. After ensuring the bandage was taut enough for travel, Sandor washed his face in the stream, caressing water over his scars, and stood. "Come on, Stranger," he said to his horse.
The stallion stared at him through its beady, black eyes.
"We have a lot of travelling to do." The horse curled its head. "Ah, fine," he grunted, taking an apple from his sack and feeding it to the great, black beast, who snapped the fruit out of his hand as if it were a grape. After stroking his mane, Sandor climbed up onto his back. Any other horse would have balked at his weight, but Stranger was as strong as the Hound was tall, and for that, there had been no better warhorse to guide his journey. "To Rosby," he said, "or Harrenhal ... wherever the road takes us, I suppose."
The pain in his shoulder still stung as he rode. A kiss from one of Stannis' swords, he thought bitterly. Ill-fated had been the man who dared to give him the wound, but even so, the Hound wondered how long it might be before it festered. The wine will keep the brunt of it down, but the rest will need fire. He shuddered at the thought. He had seen enough fire in recent days.
Sandor had made efforts to keep Stranger off the main road. Both Stannis and Joffrey's forces would be patrolling the Kingsroad, and from what he knew, all north of King's Landing had become a no man's land in the wake of the battle. If the beaten track was better, however, it was yet to prove itself so; wherever he rode, branches snapped against his head, and he could not help but expect an ambush every time one of Stranger's hoofs crunched against the twig-strewn ground. Thankfully, he had heard no steel yet, but it didn't hurt to stay prepared.
His mind flashed back to King's Landing. It had been a long battle, and tough, stretching from the evening deep into the night. Even after the Imp played his magician's trick with the wildfire, Stannis managed to breach the gates. He had cut down many of Stannis' forces, but by the end, he had grown weary. "Fuck the Kingsguard," he had told Joffrey, "fuck the city, fuck the king." Sandor coiled at the thought of what might have come next. All he knew was that Stannis Baratheon had a penchant for burning his enemies alive, and that had been cause enough to make him flee.
As Stranger trotted through the woodland, he came upon a pair of hanged bodies collecting flies in the morning sun. Crows pecked at their eyes, and whatever was left, an army of maggots haplessly consumed. Lions, he mused, noting their red cloaks, the only habiliment that otherwise left them naked. Stannis' troops have already been here.
Breaking through the woodland some two leagues north of Stokeworth stood the castle of Rosby, the seat of one of the many great houses of the crownlands for which it was named. As he came upon the place, however, he curled his lip at what he saw.
Black fields of barley burned like candles, the daub-and-wattle houses that stood around them despairing and roofless. As Sandor rode through, he glimpsed the townsfolk laying dead, strewn about the village green in heaps or otherwise nursing their wounds. What remained of the local sept was formless – a molten, black shape that sunk inwards. Even Stranger bristled at the sight.
The castle was no different. Riding up the forested mound on which it was built, he noticed the gate had been forced open by a battering ram, its middle crushed and splintered. Smithies and butcheries and bakeries within smouldered and burned as tradesmen gathered what little remained of their possessions to leave. The keep exhaled smoke from whatever crevices it had, a great chimney that crested the summit of Rosby's hill.
"Are you looking for something?" someone piped. Sandor looked down, figuring the speaker was a sheriff of some sort from the Rosby crest he wore on his gambeson. He was a spotted man, and small.
"What happened here?" he asked.
The man laughed. "Isn't it obvious? Stannis' army came. They burned down our sept, felled the godswood, killed Lord Gyles, slew our folk, and stole our gold. That's what happened, ser."
"I'm not a knight," the Hound said. So not even the just Lord Stannis is above my brother Gregor. The pain winced at his shoulder again. "I'm sorry for your troubles," he felt obliged to say.
"You're sorry? That's not going to bring the king's peace back, is it?" The man sighed deeply. "This place was untouched by the war until now, believe it or not, but by now, Stannis will have commanded a new lord to arrive here in Lord Gyles' stead. No doubt he'll force us all to leave or convert to this Red God."
From what Sandor had heard, the method of conversion to the Red God was not a peaceful one, but the life of a vagrant offered little. "You must do what you must to keep your family safe, I suppose," he said, praying that the man did not say that they had died in the siege.
When he did not, only stammering an agreement before sauntering off, Sandor found himself looking up at the keep again. Mayhaps there is some loot I can take, he thought. He dismounted Stranger, taking his sword from the luggage. A wiser man would carry his sword at his belt wherever he went, but ordinary people would not take kindly to that, he knew.
The mouth of the keep offered no welcome; in a great entrance hall, Lord Rosby's tapestries and suits of plate lay disfigured about the floor, pools of blood dry in the flagstone. The castle was silent.
He found the great hall. Benches and tables were overturned while scorch marks painted the walls black as tar. Clearly somebody had aimed to burn this place down. Was the crownlands to be the new riverlands?
Rosby was a fairly small castle and it took little time to find the lord's bedchamber. There, he came across Lord Gyles' body, rotting in his bed with a dagger stuck between his ribs, dry blood soaked without. Wrinkling his nose at the scene, he covered it with one of the crusty fur blankets beside the corpse's feet. That might keep the crows off it, should they come knocking at his window. As he did, he saw the fastenings of a chest glisten beneath the lord's bed. Let's take a look, he thought, kneeling down.
And then he heard a cry.
The Hound leapt to his feet, fingers pressed against the hilt of his sword. Listening sharply, he heard it again. "Help! Help me!"
Where was it coming from? He left Lord Gyles' bedchamber, scouting the floor. "Where are you?" he growled. He had not anticipated company here in Rosby.
"I'm upstairs!"
He found a stairwell coiled into a circular tower. Climbing up, he was greeted instantly by a monstrous pile of debris. The roof had fallen through, trapping someone underneath. "Help me, I'm stuck!" they cried meekly.
It took some strength, but Sandor lifted one brick at a time, the wound in his shoulder wincing with every heave. Stone by stone, he uncovered the pile until the bloody, pink brains of a dead man revealed itself underneath. For half a heartbeat, he thought he recognised the man's face, but shook the thought off and continued with his task.
As the rubble cleared itself, the voice became clearer. "Are you injured?" Sandor called.
"My head hurts so much."
"But your arms and your legs. Are they fine?"
Some silence for a moment, then they responded. "Yes, ser."
Sandor soon realised why he recognised the dead man. He may have been a fat oaf caked in blood, but as the stones cleared and the corpse met the light, the Hound could recognise the white cloak and armour of the Kingsguard well enough. Bugger me with a bloody spear, he thought; it's Ser Boros fucking Blount.
"Name yourself," the Hound commanded.
"I ... I ...—"
"Yes, you, you. I don't have all day. Tell me who you are."
"Robert," the boy stammered. "Robert ... Payne."
A Payne in Rosby?
As the last bit of rubble was cleared, and Sandor's shoulder cried with pain, he stared at the boy. With a face caked in ash, the child looked up with two bulbous, green eyes, half with fear, half with admiration. "You're going to have to get better at lying, Tommen Baratheon. Get up."
The princeling gulped, clambering hopelessly out of the pile. "Ser Sandor?" he said worriedly. "Did Joffy send you to rescue me?"
"If Joffrey was alive, do you think Rosby would be a ruin?" The Hound uncorked his flask and gulped half of it down. "Drink some wine, princeling."
Tommen reluctantly took the flask and tasted the wine with the tip of his tongue. Impatient, Sandor grabbed it back, swigging some more. "You're lucky, boy. If I wasn't riding by, you would be dead too, along with your cunt brother." As the child eyed the floor, the Hound sighed. "But there's no point dwelling on roads not taken. Follow me and stay close."
"But what about Ser Boros?" the prince pleaded.
"What about him?"
"You can't just leave him here! He's a knight of the Kingsguard ... he died trying to save me!"
Sandor looked back at his old sworn brother. Fat and pink-faced, he was no Symeon Star-Eyes. "He's dead, child. He'll feed the crows well, now tug along. I don't want to be here any more than you do."
The Hound had made one last stop at the lord of Rosby's bedchamber, beseeching the fair-haired prince to stay outside. The chest offered little: a purse of silver, a few rings, and a gold cup. With the tide of the war, he wondered how long it would take to sell the latter. The merchandise of Maidenpool and Fairmarket would well have dwindled by now, and if this had been the fate of Rosby, Duskendale may well be worse. Mayhaps it's best to stay out of any towns for now, even more now that I have Tommen bloody Baratheon in my grasp.
As he left the room, he turned to the prince, who stared at him ashen-faced. "I suppose you've never seen a siege before, have you?"
"It was less of a siege, ser, and more of a slaughter. They didn't know I was here, though."
If they did, you would have been burned at the stake. The thought of that was enough to make even Sandor shudder. "I'm not a knight. Don't call me 'ser' again."
"Then what shall I call you?"
"Sandor Clegane," he barked, "or the Hound. Your kingly brother never did grace me with my own name. Perhaps you'll turn out the same."
The prince looked aghast. "I don't want to be like Joffy."
"Joffrey. Your brother's name was Joffrey." He tilted Tommen's head back up. The prince stared at his scars. "And it's all right, little cub. I don't want to be like my brother either." He raised his flask. "To brotherly love."
As they left the castle, he lifted Tommen onto Stranger's back. "Meet Stranger, king of the warhorses." Mayhaps it was not worth telling the prince how he had fled the defence of King's Landing atop the said horse for now. He clambered up, holding the prince in place. The boy shuffled unnervingly, clearly unsuited to horse-riding. "Are you ready to see the seven kingdoms, princeling? Hyah!"