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"I killed my first man at twelve. I've lost count of how many I've killed since then" - Sandor Clegane, the Hound. ASOIAF
Two
A pup needed a kennel, and his mare a stable.
Casterly Rock had both aplenty.
You were fed and had a place to sleep if you served your lord well. And Gregor was not allowed to kill Lord Tywin's servants. He had to content himself with making his own servants disappear. And why not? the Hound thought with scorn. There will always be enough scrawny smallfolk to take their places.
Yet the saying went you had to be born a Lannister to love the Rock.
Sandor was not born a Lannister so he had no affection for it. The great, impressive, square fortress looked like solid rock on the outside, and maybe a little bit like a dungeon.
Fortunately, love was not required, only obedience.
And a good dog excelled in that.
Casterly Rock was also Sandor's grandfather's only home before he lost his leg saving his lord's life from an angry lioness. Lord Tytos Lannister, Lord Tywin's father, paid for the leg with lands and a towerhouse and took his son, Sandor's father, to squire. No one paid anything to the three hounds who died in the yellow of the autumn grass. Even now, many years later, Sandor still drew a certain measure of pride from the way his grandfather had earned their sigil. And he still liked dogs better than most people.
Back then, a boy of ten trained in the yard every day; he swung the sword, he rode at the quintain with a knight's lance, he shot at archery targets and learned how to fight with bare hands. He never tired of it. He was determined to be the best man Lord Tywin could possibly have. And to beat bloody every man who so much as smiled at his face.
At eleven he could best most of the grown men-at-arms with the sword. Few dared laughing at him by that time, and most of those who did served Gregor. And Sandor knew he had to be much, much stronger if he ever wanted to kill his brother. It was the only thing he wanted, to kill his brother. Everything he did served that one single purpose.
However, he had to be patient and wait. Just like he had to be patient now when he finally reached the Bloody Gate.
The gate was a miserable wall with twin watchtowers joined by a bridge, set between majestic mountains that lowered their proud heads in a narrow pass precisely at that place.
The cold was in Sandor's veins and it was only going to get worse. Especially without wine to offer him a semblance of warmth. He was still very, very far from the Eyrie, and he had to reassure the guards of his peaceful intentions to allow him to pass.
"Who would pass the Bloody Gate?"
A splotchy blond fellow bellowed from the bridge of ancient grey stone between the towers, arching above the road. Courage must have come easier that way. The lad looked very young and innocent, thin like a rabbit roasted on a spit. The Hound could have killed him left-handed.
But Sandor Clegane had a different purpose now, and only his battered body to achieve it.
"I serve the Faith," he said quietly, under the monk's cowl. "There should be a sept at the Gates of the Moon, or so I heard. It is cold out here," he gestured at the desolation of heights behind his back and waited.
Sandor Clegane didn't serve anyone anymore. He was his own dog now. Yet what he said was not a lie, not entirely. If the gods did not exist, then neither did the Faith. Or if they did, they made the world as awful as it was and it mattered little if the Hound served them or not.
"Your horse looks like it should belong to a knight," the skinny fellow got suspicious.
"There are many dead knights in the riverlands, my lords," the Hound said flatly. "This animal drifted to the Quiet Isle with his dead master. Alas, that septry is no more and we are both searching for a new home."
Calling them my lords was their undoing. The lowborn soldiers at the gate felt flattered and opened it.
"Come, share our fire," one said mercifully, while the Hound was cantering by. The unknowing man was guilty of trust. Like the little bird used to be in the very beginning when Cersei and Joffrey only had sweet words and false smiles for her. Long before Joff thought of presenting her with her father's head.
The Hound hesitated, still ahorse.
"Your call," another guard, a very old man said. He rekindled the fire, shrugging wisely, "But you won't find any other until the Gates of the Moon unless you make it yourself."
A smell of fried meat filled the air and the dog's mouth began to drool.
"Would you provide a begging brother with some food for on the way?" he asked. "What you can spare?"
He counted the guards. They were six. Only one mute-looking one resembled a warrior. With surprise on his side he could cut through all six of them with ease and just take what he wanted, but there was a small garrison housed in the watchtowers, and a fight would only serve to attract undue attention on himself and his errand. They might go after him. If the little bird was in the Eyrie, she would be guarded too. His only hope was in secrecy.
You have lost your mind, he thought, you don't even know if she's there.
Only one way to find out. You have to climb.
Florian the Fool! he mocked himself as he once derided Sansa and her love of true knights.
"We might give you the leftovers," said the careless, thin, young guard who spoke to Sandor first, yawning, "when we all eat our fill."
Sandor Clegane tied Stranger to a tree, not too close, but never too far. He squatted and ate peacefully with six unknown gnats-at-arms. Also, he continued to remember.
He didn't particularly wish to remember, but it was his life. He could not forget it.
When Sandor was ten, and tall as some lads of sixteen (and he may have silently agreed to a hint of the master-at-arms at the Rock that he was almost twelve at that time, or the man would not let him train as much as he wanted), he was supposed to become a squire, and afterwards, a knight. It was expected from an orphaned younger son of a lesser house with his abilities to fight.
But then, four years after Sandor got his scars, Gregor was knighted. By Rhaegar Targaryen, no less. The Prince of Dragonstone tapped Gregor on his shoulder and said "Arise, Ser Gregor!"
The knightly vows to protect the weak, the women and children, were in all evidence made of horseshit. Sandor Clegane spat on them and vowed never to swear vows. A polite inquiry with the master-at-arms confirmed his belief that he didn't necessarily have to become a squire or a knight, to serve Lord Tywin as a man-at-arms.
Lord Tywin knew the uses of every man in his service. And Sandor soon understood why Gregor was his treasured and well-respected bannerman. Lord Tywin kept him for purposes other men would shrink from, as a scourge of the disobedient nobles and smallfolk in the West. Sandor trained further and wondered what use Lord Tywin was going to find for him one day.
A year or two after Gregor was knighted, the kingdoms went in rebellion. Prince Rhaegar kidnapped and raped some girl from the North. Sandor could readily believe that of the man who knighted his brother. The girl's betrothed, a stormlord, raised an army to win her back.
Lord Tywin called his banners, but he didn't bestir himself from the West, biding his time, waiting. Sandor was to ride in war whenever Lord Tywin decided to make a move. He was not yet quite twelve for as much as all the others thought him to be fourteen and tall for his age.
One day, the army finally rode from the West all the way to King's Landing, thirsty for glory and spoils of war. They didn't yet know who they were warring against.
Sandor's company was somewhere in the middle, far away from his brother and Ser Amory Lorch who were in front. They found the doors of the capital open to them, and no real resistance. Yet the command came to attack.
The army cut through any man who was somehow armed, soldier or not. Sandor found it so easy to kill his first man, and the one after, and the one after that one, and so many that he lost count. He might have killed a woman too. He didn't think he killed a child then, that was later. Real children probably had a good inborn sense to hide.
It was not that much different than in the training yard, only more bloody.
He prevailed. He had been the strongest one and no one could hurt him.
He liked it.
He loved it.
When all resistance faded, it was different. His brothers in arms started looting the city and raping women.
Sandor didn't give a rat's ass for titles and lands. They didn't help his father. So he couldn't bring himself to care about silver chains and fancy cutlery. Lord Tywin provided well enough for his servants.
And rape was something he could not fully understand at that time. His overgrown body of a boy didn't show any interest in it. He was almost twelve, old enough and strong enough to kill a man with his bare hands.
But he was still just too young to know in his guts what it was to need or desire a woman.
He did note though that the people reviled Rhaegar for what he had done, considering it as great ignominy and offence to both gods and men, but maybe that was what they thought in the times of the Mad King's peace. In war, those same good people, whom Sandor had seen return to their wives and families and live peacefully later on, used the first chance to behave just as Rhaegar did.
It all smelled of another lie of the world, a monumental one. The Hound hated lies just like he hated knights and their sacred vows. They reminded him of all those accidents in his family.
Women screamed while being forcefully held in one place by the soldiers, just like he screamed and screamed as Gregor held him under his arm down in the burning coals.
He would never acquire a taste for rape.
Awkward, he realised he had to do something when the killing was done. He pretended to be a man, not a boy, so he had to do something a man would do, and neither looting nor raping was appealing.
And he needed something to calm down the unknown burning in his body, taut and uselessly alert, still on edge for no reason at all.
Then, as a sort of salvation, he noticed some men he had ridden with in a winesink. The flagons in front of them exhaled a sour odour and the liquid within was red like blood. Gregor's blood, he thought wishfully, knowing that no matter how strong he was, he was still not as strong as his brother. He sat and started drinking. It was the first time he drank more than a cup offered to boys in Casterly Rock, the first time he drank freely.
As he drank, he felt stronger than in the battle, more powerful than Gregor.
He woke the next day in a pond of his own vomit in a ditch between the two rows of houses where the innkeep and his serving girls must have dragged him, sick in body and heart.
As any other, it was a lesson hard learned. The wine quenched the battle fever in his blood, but he had to be sober on the day when he would kill Gregor.
A semblance of order returned to the city. He rejoined the ranks of his company. People flinched from him, and it was not only his face any longer. They had seen him fight. They had seen him drink. Doubtlessly, Lord Tywin would be told of his prowess.
Sandor Clegane laughed, and his laugh was raucous, and it could be heard all the way to the blood-washed walls of the Red Keep.
They are all afraid of me.
All, except my brother.
"Brother?" a drunk voice asked, and the Hound was back in the mountains of the Vale, behind the false safety of the Bloody Gate. He shivered like the dog he still was. The lonely battlement in the snowy mountains might keep out the clansmen, but not the cold.
His brother was long dead and Sandor Clegane was looking for Sansa Stark.
"I'm still here," he answered the drunk guard, who was bearded like the image of the Father on his altar on the Quiet Isle.
"Would you keep vigil for us?" the drunk father asked. "As a payment for food, brother. I don't suppose you have any silver."
The Hound said neither yes or no. He had some coin, but he wouldn't give it away easily.
"The new watchers will come to relieve us at dawn," another man said, a brown-haired, fat one, very broad of chest, "and we are so tired."
"I'll do it," the Hound said. "If you give me that food now."
They did.
All six of them soon slept.
The chill was rising and the Hound moved closer to the embers of the dwindling fire, huddled in his roughspun brown cloak.
Thinking on his past unavoidably meant thinking of Sansa.
Sansa was maybe twelve years old when he asked her to sing him a song. She answered with simple, unknowing courtesy that she would sing it for him gladly.
She was then as old or as young as Sandor had been when King's Landing fell.
She was as old because she had seen her father killed, just like he had seen his own father killed, accidentally. His accident was called Gregor, and hers Joffrey.
Yet she was as young because although she looked almost a woman, just like he had looked every inch a man at twelve, she couldn't understand, not truly, what song he had in mind when he told her that one day he would have it from her, whether she willed it or not.
Sansa's mother and her septa must have told her what it meant to be wedded and bedded, to lay with someone and have his babies, or whatever the highborn girls were taught. But she could not truly grasp what it meant just like he didn't know desire at twelve.
Did you understand it all when the Imp took your innocence? Do you remember me at all?
Sandor Clegane and the Stranger watched over the six sleeping guards and the snowy gate lost in the mountains. The men in their slumber didn't even know that nobody would hurt them that night, or the Hound would kill them.
They were not aware who he was and his saddlebag was already stuffed with food. He wouldn't have to delay his journey to hunt and he hadn't been carrying any snares.
All he had was his horse, his sword and himself.
The winter night was starry and clear.
On the morrow, I shall continue climbing.