A/N: Chap 16 review responses are in my forums as normal. Thank you for reading.
Also, vulgar language ahead. 'Cause, you know, it's the Hound.
Chapter Seventeen: Dark Wings, Dark Words
Sandor Clegane's gut told him he was surrounded by soldiers, despite what his eyes said.
His eyes told him the farmer's cart he'd stolen in order to reach the Twins was surrounded by poor free men making their way north to the wedding of Edmund Tully of Riverrun and one of the Frey girls. Sandor had no doubt whichever girl it was, she'd be a complete hag. The Frey's had never produced a decent-looking human being in generations. Weak chins and dull eyes, the lot of 'em.
Fuck the Freys.
But what his gut told him was that these men walked like soldiers. They didn't wear armor, but the sleeping rolls on their backs were a bit too large and bulky.
The road started getting crowded just north of Oldstones. A trickle, at first. A pair of men walking on the side of the road in the dull homespun of workers or farmers. A set of three a little further. Other carts loaded with food and escorted by a few more farmers than seemed normal.
Within the hour, there were hundreds. Some on foot, some on horseback. They had carts, occasionally, with food for the wedding. Beside him, the little Stark girl sat with wide eyes and a straight back. Twice she looked like she was going to call out, and each time she stopped, as if she recognized someone, only to doubt herself.
A column of soldiers appeared ahead of them, also heading north. They were northerners from the cut of their helmets, and well-equipped. Mail, spears and those dinky round shields the wolves used. At their head rode a nobleman in boiled leather and steel-not plate armor, but well enough for anything short of a knightly tournament. A standard bearer rode beside him bearing the pendant of a flayed man. These weren't hastily raised levies fresh from the farm, but actual trained men at arms.
Fuckin' northern cunts.
It all went to hell about half a day's ride south of the Twins. The biggest fucking wolf Sandor Clegane had ever seen came loping out of the fucking middle of nowhere like a great white horse with fangs, jumped clear up over the northern noble cunt's horse, and took the nobleman's head in a single fucking bite.
The little girl stood up, like it was a great old time, and started to shout when Sandor put a quick end to that. He slapped his hand over her ugly little face. "Shut it! There's men dyin' there, you want to be one of them?"
And dying they were. A storm of arrows swept over the column, and abruptly all the men who had been walking along the road north had swords in hand. There were no tactical movements-just men who charged the tattered, shocked column of northerners from all sides. It was a complete slaughter. A thousand northerners died in a second.
"Those are northern men dying," Sandor hissed to the girl again when she wouldn't stop struggling. "Which means those are Lannister men doin' killing."
The little girl twisted her mouth free. "That's my brother's direwolf!"
"What, now?"
From the narrow forest that separated the marshes from Ironman's Bay came more actual soldiers. These bore the livery of a running wolf on white. And behind them, astride a horse in heavy mail and leather, rode a young pup with a sparse beard and a crown of wood and iron.
"Robb!"
Sandor's ear rang with the girl's shriek. This is why he hated little girls. They made his ears hurt. "Robb!"
The young king looked right at them, despite Sandor's best efforts to keep them out of sight. But now, the stupid little girl had to start screaming. And of course, all the soldiers not-dressed as soldiers began to gather around them.
Not for the first nor last time, Sandor had to wonder what the hells he thought he was doing helping little girls. It never made anything better for him.
King Robb Stark galloped his horse right at them, as if charging a tourney, only to bring his mount up short gaping like a fool. "Arya?"
"Robb!"
Damage done, Sandor couldn't stop the girl from scrambling from the wagon. Robb dismounted and the two were hugging. The girl was blabbering away a hundred words a second as she clung to the man.
Robb, though, was looking at Sandor.
Fuck.
"Ser Sandor Clegane," Robb snarled.
"I'm no fucking knight," Clegane said.
The soldiers around the wagon brought their blades at the ready. Sandor glared at them. "The fuck you think I'm gonna do, beat you to death with salt pork?"
"How did you have my sister?" Robb demanded.
"Crossed paths. Better me than some. Planned to ransom her to you. Why we were heading north."
"Odd orders from your King Joffrey."
Sandor spit. "Fuck Joffrey. Fuck Cersei. Fuck the Lannisters. Fuck the whole fucking lot of 'em. Just want gold for bringing the girl, then I'll be on my way."
"Did he hurt you?" Robb demanded of his sister.
She shook her head. "No. But he killed Mycah the butcher's boy!"
"I'm the fuckin' Hound, girl! I've killed hundreds of men and boys alike. And your Lord Beric already judged me for that, now, didn't he? Judged me innocent in trial by combat!"
A great bearded bear of a man came riding a poor, sway-backed pony from the slaughter. "Roose is dead. King's justice is hard justice." He said it like it was a joke.
"Robb, what's happening?" Arya asked. "I thought the Bolton's were our bannermen."
Robb looked from Arya to Sandor, then around the field. "If you want gold, Clegane, then you need to follow me. We don't have a lot of time. Smalljon, have the men start stripping the bodies and get them off the road. The Freys are expecting a column of Bolton men, we need to give them one."
The king mounted, then held down a hand and easily lifted his sister to his lap. "Bring the cart, Clegane," the young king said.
"Fuckin' carts," Sandor muttered.
The king's army was hiding in the trees like fucking outlaws. Even so, Stark had a good number, at least three or four thousand at a glance. In the middle was a modest tent. And in that tent stood the old Stark bitch that Cersei wanted dead so bad back in Winterfell.
Catelyn Stark cried out when she saw Arya, and the girl jumped from Robb's saddle screaming, "Mother! Mother!" like she was a babe. Behind the old Stark woman came a younger woman, fat with a babe in her belly but skinny everywhere else. Volantine, Sandor bet. Them Volantines like their women skinny, the fools. Give him a big woman with big tits and a nice round ass over a skinny bitch anyway.
"What is he doing here?" Catelyn Stark hissed when she saw Sandor.
"Returning your fool daughter to you, woman," Sandor called. "I'd have the other too, if she'd left with me. Damned fool girl stayed, though. Thought that fucker Stannis won, more's the pity he didn't."
"Why'd you leave?" Robb said.
"Cause they kept asking me stupid fucking questions. I brought the girl to you. Where's my gold?"
Sandor didn't understand the look the young pup gave his mum. He understood her reaction clear enough, though.
"No!"
"Mother, even knowing it's a trap, there's no guarantee we can survive it," Robb said. "This way, you, Arya and Talisa are safe. You can travel with the 'Bolton' column. The Frey's won't have any reason to keep you. Make toward White Harbor as fast as you can. Lord Manderly will protect you."
"This man is a killer!"
Robb ignored the comment and instead turned to Sandor. "A hundred gold dragons if you get my wife, mother and sister safely to White Harbor. Twenty now, and another eighty on your arrival."
"Two hundred! If the mum's anything like the girls, she'll be a pain in the arse to travel with."
"How dare you!" Catelyn Stark declared indignantly.
"Done!"
"Robb!"
The mother's outrage was ignored by Robb in favor of a long, searing kiss from the skinny pregnant bitch. Unlike the loud harridan of a Stark, this one just stared at the young king for a long time. Sandor found himself looking away.
The Volantine woman and another with the fair hair and freakish eyes of a Valyrian came up to the cart. "Well, at least we'll have plenty to eat," the pregnant one told the servant who helped her up.
"But Robb, I just got away from him, don't make me go with him again!" Arya cried. "He's an arsehole!"
"Arya, language!" Catelyn Stark demanded.
"That's right, ya little bitch," Sandor called. "Listen to yer mum and don't fucking curse. It's not ladylike."
In the back, the skinny pregnant Volantine girl laughed. "Come, Arya!" the woman called. "My name is Talisa, and I've heard so much about you! Come sit by me and tell me about your adventures!"
The older woman sagged in defeat. "Please, Robb," she said. Though Sandor was smart enough to figure she wasn't asking about the cart any more. "Please come back to us. To me."
The young man grinned at her, though Sandor could see it was as fake a grin as Sandor was a farmer. He gave his harpy of a mother a hug, then sent her on. To Sandor's grave displeasure, he also dispatched the great bear of a man he'd named Smalljon. The man had an inch on Sandor. If he was Smalljon, then his dad had better have been a real fucking bear.
Fuckin' northerners.
~~Quintessence~~
~~Quintessence~~
"This your wife, then, old man?"
Sandor stared at the Frey guard for a long moment, not sure if the man were blind or dumb. One, Sandor was not old. Two, the idea of being married to a fucking carping harridan like Catelyn Stark, who'd spent the entire trip commenting on the poor quality of the wagon and it's driver, was so ludicrous that only a fool would think Sandor such a man.
Still, if it got them through. "Aye. Want her?"
"Don't you dare!" the old Stark woman hissed.
The soldier laughed. "I think you've got it covered, old man. The pregnant one?"
"She's my wife," Small Jon Umber said proudly. "Won her in a game o' bones!"
"You got the better end of the bargain, I'd say," the Frey soldier said.
"Aye, I get me a right beautiful girl, she got herself a right big ugly man! On our way up to the Gift. Gotta feed those poor wretches on the Wall, you know."
Smalljon had a mouth on him, Sandor thought.
"A copper star to cross." The guard held out his hand.
"Copper star!" Sandor sputtered. "What, you gonna fuck me and carry me across the river?"
The Frey fucker rolled his eyes. "I don't set the rate, you old shit. Lord Walder says. To pay the war effort. It's a copper star, or you can wade across on the water."
Given the river was rushing past them several hundred feet across, the option was less than attractive. Grumbling angrily, he pulled out one of his precious coins. That he'd stolen.
"Choke on it," he said.
"Be a kinder fate than yours," the soldier laughed.
"Fucking Freys," Sandor muttered. He snapped the reins and set the cart in motion. They passed through the first of the two massive tower gates that controlled the only bridge over the Green Fork so far north. Passing within the tower, he lost count of the murder holes within.
"I can't believe you dared…" Cately Stark started to harangue him.
"You're my wife, woman," Sandor snapped angrily. "If you say different, we're dead."
She snapped her mouth shut. "Yes, husband." She managed to make the words sound sweet even as they cut.
Eddard Stark was better off dead if that was what warmed his bed at night.
~~Quintessence~~
~~Quintessence~~
Carts made poor speed. When Sandor found the cart, it was because the farmer was repairing a wheel. Sandor helped him, then beat him unconscious and was about to kill him with the runt of a girl stopped him. The gods saw fit to curse him with three broken wheels in the next three days as just reward for his crime. Fuckin' gods.
He and Smalljon fixed the wheels each time and went on their way. He had to admit that as travelling companions went, Smalljon wasn't so bad. He only talked when talked to. Otherwise he was content to just look out over the Neck as they made their way to the King's Road. It wasn't safe, but it was the fastest and only way to get through the marshes of the Neck.
Moat Caitlin might be a bit of an issue. Not even the Northerners knew who held it at the moment.
They were set upon by broken men on the third day out. Six of them, dead in the eyes if not in body, armed with poorly made swords and a cudgel. They attacked in the small hours of the morn, thinking their victims would all be asleep.
For a big, hairy fucker, Sandor had to admit Smalljon was a good fighter. He wielded a war axe, blade on one side with a sharp steel pick on the other. He was on his feet at his horse's first nicker and had a man's head off before the other brigands even realized they were supposed to attack.
Sandor did his part. To his surprise, the skinny Volantine girl did her part as well, shooting a crossbow that her little Valyrian handmade cranked for her. The mum almost did them all in by screaming "Arya!" when her precious, vicious little girl took that pig-sticker of hers and finished the man her good sister shot.
"That's a daddy's girl, there!" Smalljon crowed when they were done. "Winterfell!"
The girl beamed despite her mother's chastising. "Let it, woman," Sandor snapped. "There were six o' them and two men fighting. She did her part."
"I am the Lady of Winterfell," Catelyn Stark hissed. "You will not speak to me like some common whore!"
"Why not? I'm not being paid to be nice; I'm being paid to get you north." He looked at Smalljon. "Your king paying you?"
"I'm a vassal," Small Jon said with a shrug. "I don't get paid."
"Pity. If you get tired of all this shite, there's good work for an axe like that in Essos. Now let's get these shits in the marsh."
That night, Sandor watched as the pregnant girl and her servant prayed at a bonfire, like it was going to give them new clothes or feed them. "Like Thoros," he muttered. "Wouldn't that fuck all, if those shits showed up."
They didn't. Instead, the day before they were to reach Coat Maitlin, King Robb arrived with his host.
All twelve hundred men.
"You had a lot more when I left," Sandor told the king. "And two eyes."
His mum cried that her precious little babe lost the use of his left eye. His wife didn't blubber, she just walked up to him and examined the gruesome wound.
"No infection yet," she said. Her voice sounded brittle to Sandor. "You came back to us. In defeat, or victory?"
The man's grin didn't look like one a defeated man would were. "We took the Twins. Lord Edmure is there with half the Tully garrison, and his Uncle holds Riverrun for us. The Lannisters had a column moving north already, anticipating the Freys, Bolton's and Karstarks to have defeated us. They outnumbered us five to one, and we drove them from the field in disgrace. Caught them completely by surprise."
Sandor couldn't look at the way the young pup and his wife stared at each other. Instead, he studied the soldiers. Tired, filthy and stinking of shit, nonetheless they stood straight. Their king had won them the day against all odds. He greeted his family, then made his way eventually to Sandor. "Smalljon tells me you fought off brigands. You've earned your gold, if that's all you want."
"That's all I want," Sandor said. "I'm done serving lords and kings. And your mum would sooner have my throat cut."
The young king's wife laughed. "The man speaks truly, Robb. He was horribly rude to Lady Catelyn the entire trip. Though I think he has reason. Some men carry guilt with humility, others with rage."
"The fuck do you know?" Sandor demanded.
Talisa left her husband's side. "What I know, Sandor Clegane, was that you tried to save Sansa and Arya Stark. Not because your king told you; but because, despite your words and your anger, you are a good man. Not kind, perhaps, but good. I will tell you something, then, as a reward. We discovered that the Freys and Boltons had betrayed us through magic. We confirmed it from a Frey himself, but it was the Lord of Light that gave us the first warning. And by that same token, we know of a queen in the Stepstones who is destined to seize the Iron Throne. She resides in Torturer's Deep, in the Step Stones. She is Azor Ahai, the Princess Who was Promised. If you are done serving kings and Lords, perhaps you would find meaning with a true queen instead?"
"I had my fill of queens as well," Sandor said.
"Even queens who could heal your scars? You will do what you will. But for my part, I thank you." To Sandor's utter shock, the young queen pulled him down and kissed his unblemished cheek.
Stark just gave him gold, thank the gods.
As he pulled on his armor and saddled a horse, the little runt girl ran up to him. "I don't want to kill you any more," she decided.
"I'll sleep better now," Sandor said. "You watch after yourself, little bird. Keep that pig-sticker handy." With that, he rode east to White Harbor.
Fuck the northerners; he was done with the whole lot of 'em. Still, two-hundred gold dragons was a lot of coin.
"Never been to Lys," he muttered to himself.
~~Quintessence~~
~~Quintessence~~
"Killed a hundred men by himself, 'ee did! My cos' swears it on our grandpappy's grave!"
The Sunken Cog was a typical port-side inn. The wenches were old, ugly, and a damned-sight friendlier than they had any right to be. The beer was good, though, and they served a toasted crust of barley bread with cheese and onions melted over it that he decided was about the best fucking thing he'd ever eaten.
And at the moment the entertainment was being provided by a travelling spice merchant who just sailed in from Gulltown. He had a whole host of wharf rats, sailors, ship's captains and locals listening to every word like thirsty men staring at water in Dorne.
And the tale got more outlandish with every damned drink. First it was Robb killing ten men with his magic wolf, then twenty, then thirty. Now it was a hundred, and by the time the pot-bellied fool drank himself into a stupid, Robb Stark would have slaughtered the entire Westerlands by himself.
"You look doubtful, friend."
Sandor looked up at a man who might actually be uglier than he was, though for far different reasons. Tall, broad shoulders, but with a face covered in ugly black tattoos of manacles, swords and whips, the man wore the boiled leather and mail of a fighter. He sat without invitation and put his trencher near Sandor's own. Rather than a wooden mug, the man put down a pitcher.
"I look hungry, so fuck off."
"Ugly as fuck, too," the man said with a smirk. "But you'll drink my fucking beer, or your a cunt and a fool. Only cunts and fools turn down free beer."
Sandor considered arguing for the sake of it, but fuck all if the man wasn't right. He slammed his mug by the pitcher. "Fine."
The fucker poured, then ate his own onion cheese bread. "The Volantines have this sauce they make, red as blood, a little sweet, little tart. I swear by the Maiden's tits if they put a little under this cheese and onion, it'd be the best fuckin' food ever made."
"Good enough as is," Sandor said. "What do you want?"
"I want to know what really happened," the tattooed man said. "The Iron Throne is so fucked they delayed the royal wedding while Tywin Lannister musters more levies."
Sandor stared at the man for the first time. "How the fuck would you know that?"
"I was just there."
"Why?"
"To spy of course, you twat," the man said with a laugh. He took a huge bite of his cheesy onion bread and smirked.
"Not much of a spy if you admit it," Sandor said. "You one of Varys?"
The man snorted. "Me? Work for that cockless fucker? Hells no. If I'm gonna work for someone without a cock, they'd better have tits. And long legs. Legs like you wouldn't believe."
Sandor stared at the man, long and hard. "Who the fuck are you?"
"Names Wylis Toyne, my friend. And there's plenty of coin for you if you tell me how Robb Stark escaped Walder Frey's trap. And maybe a job as well, if you're interested."