Chapter 17

They had only travelled for a week, but it was taking its toll on her more than she wanted to admit. Bronn seemed fine with only sleeping for four hours at a time, and not needing to bathe, but Sansa was not accustomed to such circumstances, and so she put her foot down the instant they were near water.

"Bronn," she said as she dismounted and tied off Zmaj to a nearby tree, "I have been accommodating thus far, so I don't see how it is a burden that I ask you to let me have this one thing."

He snorted as he slid down from Brego and threw a smirk in her direction as he replied, "You want to stop for a fucking bath?"

Sansa glared at him, but he was unaffected and rolled his eyes, patting his gelding on the neck and pulling out a bag of feed for both of the horses. As she attached their feed bags, she said, "Yes. I do. No one is following us, we are alone, and there is a river right here. An hour, at the most. Is it too much to ask?"

He removed the saddle from his gelding and drawled, "Whatever my lady asks."

She knew that he didn't like stopping, but she needed to be clean, if only for a few hours. Resolute and unwavering, she grabbed her bag and moved towards the river…and was more than a bit pleasantly surprised when she could hear the sound of a waterfall just out of sight. Sansa slipped down the bank, looking for it, and as she rounded a dense crop of trees, she saw it. Perfect.

Still wary, she very carefully removed her clothes.

They were in the middle of the wilderness. They were alone. She could do this.

Sansa removed the last layer and then sprinted to the water, sinking as deep in as quickly as she possibly could. The water was freezing. Her whole body shivered violently, but she continued to move through the water, ignoring the cold, instead relishing in the fact that she was finally getting clean. The water slipped between her legs, cleaning away a disgusting layer of sweat and grime from places of her body that she didn't even care to think about. All that mattered was getting clean.

As Bronn settled the horses, stripping them of their leather tack, he kept a wary eye on the perimeter. There was no reason for him to be overly cautious; they were in the middle of nowhere between Rosby and Maiden's Head, not even remotely close to any place where people might find them. Not even bandits.

However, as he turned to grab the animal's feed bags, he noticed movement from the corner of his eye. Before his fingers could even reach the hilt of his blade, the sellsword found himself thrown onto his back, a large male figure on top of him, heavy enough that Bronn could not easily throw him.

He struggled with the man, trying to untangle him enough to get at his blade that uncomfortably pressed into his back as he was pinned against a rock.

Bronn was not used to being taken off guard, and attempted to violently free himself, but felt an unfamiliar feeling as he realized that he was losing. Fear. The telling part of his loss, however, was the thick, meaty hand that wrapped around his throat and began to choke him with far more strength than it should have had.

Just as his vision went black, he heard the snap of leather…

The water sluiced through Sansa's hair, over her skin, and she sighed in relief. Clean. Finally. She rubbed the palms of her hands over her legs, removing the salty sweat from the inside of her thighs, which had grossly accumulated in her days of riding. Just as she was about to put her head back under the water, she heard a high sound over the rush of the waterfall.

She stepped out and saw Brego break through the trees on the shore at a full gallop, slowing as he came closer to the shore, his sides heaving and nostrils flaring.

Not thinking, she pushed herself through the water, and as soon as her wet feet hit the muddy bank, she lunged forward and grabbed her blade from her pile of discarded clothes. She then quickly reached up and grasped at the gelding's snapped rein. He didn't settle, and pawed and snorted, agitated. Something was definitely wrong.

She heard a loud crash come from the direction of where Bronn had set up camp.

Bile and panic rose in the back of her throat. She ran into the brush, barely noticing the thorns that grabbed at her naked flesh, and lifted her blade in her hand, ready to attack…and then froze as she broke into the clearing.

Bronn was on his back with a large, bear-like man on top of him, both of his hands around the sellsword's neck, while Bronn's weapon lay just beyond his reach.

Sansa didn't even think.

She shrieked at the top of her lungs and rushed at them, throwing herself over the man's back, knowing that if he turned, she would be helpless against him. Using what Bronn had taught her, she wrapped her left hand around the top of the man's head, pulling it back as far as she could and started to move her right hand in to pull her blade across his neck, but in a sudden move, he had bucked her off, leaving her lying stunned in the dirt as her head hit a root. He then moved from Bronn and stalked towards her, and she could see the man's eyes were manic.

She awkwardly crawled backwards, keeping her grip tight on her weapon even as her vision swam, and then heard Bronn coughing and hacking, trying to breathe again, as she struggled to keep distance between herself and the man that was intent on killing her.

Just as the bearish figure was upon her, Sansa felt a surge of anger and managed to scramble to her feet just in time to swing her right arm up in defense…and the knife found its mark.

It swung perfectly across the assailant's throat, bright red arterial spray covering her, landing in her hair, across her face, and all across her still naked chest.

She glanced back at Bronn, panic still in her eyes, dropped her knife and rushed to his side, where he was just sitting up, rubbing one hand over his now severely sore and bruised neck.

"Fuck, girl," he rasped out.

Sansa ignored his epithet, looking him over for any other injuries, while he looked at her with a look that she didn't quite understand. Almost as if he'd never seen her before. She ignored it and ran shaking hands over his shoulders and chest, checking for any sign of blood.

"Are you alright?" she finally gasped out, her blood still pounding in her ears, keeping her on edge and even causing her to jump as Brego snapped a branch under hoof as he stepped back into the clearing, shaking himself and pawing at the ground once more. In a daze, she left Bronn's side and approached the horse, resting one blood-covered hand on the gelding's flank, the horse's quivering muscles settling under her surprisingly steady touch. The blood-bay continued to breathe heavily and she whispered low, reassuring sounds into its' ear, and Brego slowly calmed.

Bronn, still on the ground, stared at Sansa, and was astounded at the picture she made in front of him: her hair was still wet, and blood and water dripped freely down her fully exposed body in equal parts, still sticky and red in her hair and across her lips and throat, but smeared into a diluted pink over her hips and thighs.

She glanced back at him, as if aware of his eyes on her, and said in a broken voice, "I…I'm glad you're alright…"

He snorted, choked, and then cleared his throat as he stood and quipped back at her, "Thanks to you, girl."

Sansa dropped her eyes, and that was when she seemed to realize that she was naked. She quickly tried to move to cover herself, but the sellsword stopped her with a firm hand on her upper arm.

"Don't," he murmured. "You…look…"

He couldn't seem to find the words to finish his sentence, and Sansa rolled her eyes and blushed at the same time, as well as tried to pull her arm from his grip.

"I'm naked and covered in blood," she muttered. "Every man's dream, I'm sure…"

"One of mine," he snapped back, not a single hesitation in his words. "Jus' never thought I'd see it happen, though," he added with a twist of his lips.

Sansa looked back at him and then pulled her eyes away and said, "I'd rather be dressed," and Bronn nodded and replied, "You're goin' to need another dip in that river before that happens, girl," and Sansa tried not to show the small smile that wanted to stretch across her mouth at hearing some of his good humor already restored.

She then swallowed, nodded, and then asked in a tentative voice, "What…what do we do with…him?"

The sellsword shrugged.

"Burn 'im."

She looked up at him in surprise and he took a moment to admire her nudity before explaining, "Fire's the best way to deal with a body in the middle of nowhere. Keeps wolves and other animals from gettin' to his corpse and drawing attention to people who might be lookin' for someone to hunt." He gave her a dark smile, looked over at the body and then added, "Nice blade work, by the way," acting as if a body was an everyday occurrence. Well, for a man like himself, it probably was.

"I had a good teacher," she said in a voice barely above a whisper.

Sansa turned her eyes away and started back towards the river, and Bronn knew that the fact that she had just killed someone was slowly sinking in. He would leave her alone for the time being. He needed to get rid of the body, after all.

As he gathered wood and started a small fire away from the trees, he looked over his shoulder and wondered where the man had come from. He was good at what he did and he knew that no one had been following them, which meant that the killer had come from ahead of their path. But two questions remained: one, why had he been so strong, and two, why had he attacked the sellsword?

The questions lingered in the back of his mind as reached down to move the body…and that was when he saw it. Just under the man's large leather jerkin, on his chest, there was a deep wound, and it looked like it was from a bit from a rabid animal. But the size of it…shit. Bronn knew what had attacked the man, and he now understood why the man had been so difficult for him to fight. He'd been bitten by a direwolf. If the bite didn't kill, it was said that men went mad from a mythical curse that was placed upon them. Which meant that there was no reason for the man to attack, he'd simply done it out of sheer madness.

Bronn heaved the man's body onto the small pyre and grimaced at the smell of burnt flesh, the smell leaving an acrid taste in the back of his throat.

He looked towards the river and carefully made his way towards it, limping slightly, and immediately felt uncomfortable when he saw the girl sitting in the shallows, her arms wrapped tightly around her knees, crying.

Ah, fuck. Not crying. Anything but that.

However, he knew that it was a reasonable reaction for someone such as herself to have, having just killed a man, so he tamped down on his body's reaction at seeing so much naked flesh, and walked towards her, leaving the fire burning behind him.

He approached her, but stayed far enough away, and said, "Sansa…"

Her head snapped to the side and she roughly ran a hand over her tear-stained face and said, "Give me a moment." He started to say more, but she cut him off with a brisk, "I know we need to leave. Just give me a moment, Bronn."

He nodded and headed back to camp. There was a direwolf in the area, and they needed to go as soon as they could; there shouldn't be this one this far south. This was far beyond their range, which meant that it was probably forced there out of sheer preservation, and that worried him. The sellsword knew that the only way to make sure they were safe would be to track it down and, regrettably, kill it.

Bronn re-dressed the horses, and as he was fixing the leather on Brego's reins, Sansa emerged through the trees fully dressed, her face composed, no sign of any blood to betray her actions only less than an hour before.

"We're leaving?"

The sellsword nodded, and lead Zmaj over to her, handing her the reins, and explained, "Yes and no. First, we're goin' to track what drove that man to the raggedy edge. When we find it, I'll take care of it…and then we'll turn northward."

Sansa's brow furrowed as she said, "Track what? I thought he was a bandit…"

"Nope," he drawled, throwing a pack over Brego's hindquarters. "Regular man just driven mad from a bite from a direwolf. We need to track it, and kill it."

At this, her face became vividly animated and she shook her head and fought back with, "No! Don't kill it, Bronn, please…I beg of you…it's not its fault!"

He looked at her as he swung up onto the horse, the reins loose in his hands, curious at her sudden defense of such a violent creature. Direwolves were not to be trifled with, and if there was one down there, it just might decide that the two of them, and their horses, would make a good meal, and he wasn't willing to take that risk.

"Might I ask why you want me to spare the murderous beast?"

Sansa hesitated, her hands lingering on the worn leather of the reins, still standing on the ground. The sellsword watched her, curious as she bit her lip, worried it, and then looked down at the forest floor before finally looking back up at him with a pleading look in her eyes.

"I had one once. She was named Lady…Cersei had her killed for no reason." She swallowed. "She was my protector, my friend…"

Bronn was surprised, not having thought of that before. Of course, the Starks would raise direwolves like pets, it was their bloody sigil, after all. A gray direwolf on a white field of snow. Well, if the girl wanted to see no harm come to the animal, fine. But they still had to track it. There were only two reasons why a wolf would attack a human; one, they were sick in the head and had gone foaming mad, like so many other predators seemed to do, or two, it was injured and had done it out of self-defense.

Either way, they needed to know.

"Fine. I won't kill it…" Sansa breathed a sigh of relief and mounted Zmaj, but then Bronn added, "But if it threatens you, Sansa, I may not have a choice…"

She looked at him a moment, and then nodded, and he felt reassured.

They had a direwolf to track.

Part 17/?