"The Lord of Light is not yet done with Joffrey's Hound, it would seem." Thoros of Myr, Asoiaf.
Eighteen
The castle gate shook and rattled in the hinges.
The sortie was not yet formed.
"What are these six waiting for?" Bronze Yohn rumbled, studying all the men at his disposal, and glaring at the six he just mentioned.
"They are from the Bloody Gate," a knight with a maidenly face informed his liege. The six in question occupied places in the vanguard, horseless and poorly armed. "They are as useful for fighting as statues in a sept."
Useless, the Hound knew. He knew the knight as well, Redfort something, the boy who had custody of Stranger while the Hound climbed to the Eyrie.
"Get out of here!" Bronze Yohn roared, annoyed. "Up to the Eyrie you go, all of you. And you, Mychel. I shall not make my daughter a widow and an orphan on the same day if I can help it." Redfort, Royce's good-son from the sound of it, obeyed rapidly, though not without glancing with longing at the battle he was told to leave.
The six stood dutifully aside, but never joined the long column of men departing to the Eyrie. They just leaned on a castle wall, not very near the gate, but not far either, watching the preparation of the sortie as curious crones, bored and knitting to pass the time.
The Hound recognised them. They gave him food and he guarded them while they slept at the Bloody Gate. They must have fled to the Gates of the Moon before Cersei's army.
"Why don't you go up?" he asked.
"Why don't you?" the eldest of the six said, shrugging wisely.
"I have work here," the Hound replied with determination.
The Stranger would call on Gregor today, for a visit long due.
"So do we," a broad-chested guard replied.
"You are not the smith, are you?" the Hound challenged him, half mocking and half hoping he might obtain a better sword in the last moment if he found the damned man. "Just fat and slow, aren't you? Go up while you still can."
"No, in the Gates of the Moon I'm not the smith," the guard responded stupidly and belatedly.
Of course he wasn't the smith. He was a poxy gnat and the Hound was dumb for making conversation with him.
Yet the man's answer rang very oddly in Sandor's head though he could not decide why. Just like… like when Sansa told him she would sing for him gladly, meaning the music and nothing more.
The gates opened. The Hound buried all thought of the six cowardly guards and gave himself to the familiar song of steel. In the first rank, he rode out and cut through man and horse, ignoring the cries of the dying. He heaved a hard object in two in the thick of the battle, and realised it was the wooden ram the assailants had used to breach the gate. So the ridiculous blade he carried was maybe not that bad.
It should better be good.
The Hound dealt blows left and right without mercy until the field around him was empty.
And at the opposite end was Gregor, mounted on one of his ill-tempered stallions…
In white armour, wearing a white cloak, holding high the shield with the snow white blazon of the Kingsguard…
The defenders withdrew behind the relative safety of the walls as they well should. The enemy was pushed behind. Sandor was left alone with his brother as he had demanded to be done.
The Hound did not wait.
He charged.
Gregor met him halfway. The strength of his onslaught was such that the Hound could barely withstand him.
He was stronger than the brother Sandor remembered, and yet… less cruel.
He did not try a cut at the obviously weak places in Sandor's mismatched armour in order to obtain an advantage and slay the naughty pup messily as soon as possible. Gregor attacked in pirouettes worthy of Ser Loras. He only missed a mare in heat to equal the Knight of Flowers in style.
But not so in force…
With every new blow, Sandor's strength wavered. It was a miracle he was not yet wounded or lost ground.
"What are you, brother?" Sandor asked with contempt through the slit of his helm, between two clashes. "Did they give you a special brew of poppy? Or some ointment to make you a bigger monster?"
Gregor grumbled deeply from his stomach, landing a blow that could have cut Sandor in two. Parrying it was the death of the pitiful metal club the Hound wielded, abandoned in the smithy to pose as a sword. The blade was bent, the steel irreparably ruined.
Gregor's entire giant body roared and twisted with laughter, resembling the brother Sandor knew, but only now that the Hound was almost at his mercy. Fortunately, Gregor's last blow had forced Sandor to recede; he was still ahorse, and Gregor was wasting his time on mockery.
The Hound turned the Stranger back towards the castle before Gregor could catch up. He needed another weapon. Right before the gates, Stranger reared in pain. His rump was cut open by a savage blow. The Hound was thrown off. He rolled away and leaped to the gate as Gregor butchered his horse with pleasure. The animal screamed.
So much for the Stranger.
The gnats let the Hound in and he was more mad than rabid.
"Is that Qyburn man still alive?" he shouted.
He was.
In long strides, the Hound made it to Gregor's pet, who enjoyed the tender company of maesters.
"What is that thing?" Sandor asked in a murderous growl. "And how can you kill it?"
"See, that is the core of the matter," Qyburn said very weakly. "You can't. The experiment has failed."
You can't.
Gregor got to be a monster forever as a reward for his crimes.
"What do you mean, you can't?" the Hound snarled.
"He is dead, you see," Qyburn drooled. "You can't kill a deadman, a walking corpse, a wight… They go by many names. I… I educated him to be a knight since I woke him to undead life by the great art of necromancy, to make him serve the crown without mercy, and yet with most strident obedience. But… he sometimes forgets his lessons. Especially… especially if he remembers he was once Gregor Clegane. And you and that stupid girl have been so expertly reminding him of that… Maybe… Maybe if you cut him to pieces or burn him. I must advise you that I haven't tried either method. The queen would have had my head if I destroyed her precious Ser Robert by chance. A necromancer finds little employ these days, my lord."
"And whose head have they sent to Dorne, pray?" Sandor had to know everything now.
"From an aurochs, I think. A skull is a skull. The maester of the Martells should be able to confirm that the body to whom it belonged was taller than usual. But I am not privy to this, my lord, I just assume. The Grand Maester Pycelle measured the head to arrange for this sending, after I failed in keeping Ser Gregor alive. Then he gave me back his corpse in Kingsguard armour, saying I could bury it in the ditch or use him for my studies by the gracious permission of our queen. The royal smiths had enlarged the armour made for the little dog who ran away to fit the big one before the trial that killed him, Pycelle said when he dropped the parcel, and laughed. I didn't quite understand him. But I have to confess that I was inspired when I saw the white armour. The queen was always most generous towards me… And I thought that she, being a lady, might one day need a valiant, unbeatable champion of her cause and that if I could provide him-"
The Hound punched Qyburn straight in the face until the light left him.
No one in their right mind would have tried to tame Gregor. Not even Cersei or Tywin. No wonder that the experiment went wrong.
Feeling useless, the Hound rejoined Bronze Yohn, who now stood on the walls overseeing the defences.
Royce held no grudge about his latest failure. "You did what you could," he estimated. "Dying would accomplish nothing."
"But it would," the Hound retorted darkly. "If Gregor died as well."
Angry as that made him, Royce had a point. Without a sound strategy to take Gregor down first, his death would be as inconsequential as his life had been.
And since burning was not something Sandor was willing to try, not even to get the world rid of his brother, he should look for another sword.
The notion of cutting Gregor into pieces was far more appealing.
From the walls, the defenders threw stones and giant balls of snow and ice at the assailants. Gregor predictably turned to killing those men of his who deserted. Those still alive brought forward ladders and tried to attach them to the walls. The effort cost time, limbs and lives.
"If we can keep them down for a few more hours," Royce said with hope, "we may see the reinforcements arriving."
Yet against all armies of Westeros, Gregor might still survive.
The injustice of it was infuriating.
A gentle breeze came from nowhere, coloured with the stench of burning.
"Can you smell that?" Sandor asked, but no one except for him reacted to the scent.
He was being sensitive, like some stupid girl and hated his weakness.
Rabid, he got off the walls and paced the yard where another sortie was being formed, following a routine of every siege. The enemy would assault the gates again, sooner or later.
The six useless guards from the Bloody Gate remained planted on the same spot.
"He is already forgetting his purpose," the bearded guard, who used to be drunk when the Hound first met him, complained to one of his companions who at least resembled a warrior. "I told you: he is more blind than most in his arrogance."
The gnat warrior nodded mutely.
An impossible notion fleeted through the Hound's hardened head. The six… useless as the statues in the sept. They effectively did resemble the gods with the exception that they were all men. And then there were all those other men and one woman he encountered in each and every fortress while he had been climbing to the Eyrie in his search for Sansa…
"Anyone still down here who has been often enough to the Eyrie?" he asked aloud, having to check his assumption.
A girl answered readily, glaring and unafraid of the likes of him. "I have. The name's Mya. Mya Stone. I just got back."
"Back?" the Hound asked shakily. "Is anyone up already?" Were you with Sansa?
"Lord Arryn, Alayne… I mean, Lady Sansa, and a large party of men digging through the tunnel. They should be in the Eyrie by now."
Sandor's heart drummed uselessly from unmeasured relief. She will be fine, dog, she has to. The little bird will always find a manner to hop off and fly away.
"Is there… was there a servant who had stayed in the Eyrie before, after everyone left for the winter?" He remembered what he wanted to ask in the beginning and described the old woman he'd met. The crone mocked him for not being able to act as if he was more than his scars, though he was convinced of it himself, and then expected from others to humour his belief by looking straight in his face... The crone told him… to bugger off and that the lords would return in the morning… them being Sansa and her cousin. How could she have possibly known all that, about him and about the future, if she was just a worthless servant?
"Of course, m'lord," Mya Stone replied cheerfully. "Old Jeyne is stark mad and she wouldn't come down. She may be dead by now."
The simple statement surprised the Hound, who found himself suddenly prone to believing in the most absurd notions, if it meant he could find a way to kill the new, improved Gregor.
The failed experiment.
He had hoped for an answer that no such woman existed because she was not a woman but… the Crone.
"And where is the smith of the Gates of the Moon?" he roared nonetheless, wishing, wishing… not knowing what he wished for, not truly.
"Just behind you," Harry the Peacock answered as if he was talking to a lackwit and not to the fearsome Hound. "Can't you see?" Ser Peacock was not killed in the first sortie as Sandor would have expected. Yet he had a bandaged leg, a broad cut over his pretty face and looked only half as eager to challenge anyone to a single combat.
The Hound turned around.
A stocky man he had never seen, shorter than Sandor, but extremely broad of shoulders, stood in the middle of the yard; exchanging ruined weapons, handing out new ones, looking as if he had always been there since the battle started, except that the Hound was unable to see him.
"I met an old bearded man in the Sky," Sandor approached the smith and said pensively, hoping no one was paying attention to his strange bleating. Yet he would gladly suffer the mocking of lesser men for a weapon that could kill Gregor.
"I met a bearded father," he stressed. "He nursed my wounds and told me he was a friend of yours. He stole my boots and my sword and bid me ask another one of you."
"To do what?" the smith wondered. "Kill, maim?"
Yes, the Hound thought avidly before he remembered his true purpose.
"To do justice," he stated with ungodly calm.
It was the truth.
"I see," the smith said, all business-like and a perfectly ordinary man, handing Sandor a greatsword. "This should be good for you then."
The blade was dull grey in colour and sharper than a razor.
Without a word of thanks, without looking for a new horse, the Hound strolled to the gates.
"Let me out!" he commanded.
"But it's suicide-" a gnat complained.
The Hound opened the door for himself and was out before anyone could stop him. Passing by Stranger's mutilated corpse, he marched to meet Gregor.
It is justice, he reminded himself, contemplating the sky; grey and broad and limitless.
The world was…
What was the world?
How was it in truth?
He did not know.
He did not care.
Far behind him, yet always present in the back of his mind, the Giant's Lance was bathed in fog; pure, foamy and white. The Eyrie was almost invisible. Sansa must be there, safe and sound.
The Hound stood alone and horseless in the field, just like some empty-headed, young knight who believed in gods, holding good castle-made steel which was nothing more than that. Yet a well-hidden piece of his unbelieving, aged soul insisted that the sword was… given to him by the Smith. Not just any smith. The one from the septs. He wondered if this new inkling of unfounded faith in the Seven was simply going to kill him or help him kill Gregor.
The defenders halted on the walls, and the attackers in the field, observing Sandor's appearance as a new devilry.
He realised that he had lost his helm somewhere, maybe with Qyburn, or next to the smith's stand, or on his frenzied stroll to get out of the castle. Everyone stared at him, gawked and turned away. He didn't give two shits for it now.
"Ser Robert!" he shouted. "Or should I say Ser Gregor Clegane! Brother! You are an arse and a criminal. Come here to answer for your crimes! For murdering Father and our sister! For all the accidents in our family! For shoving my face in the coals when I was six… For all the slaughtered children and their poor mothers who have crossed your way… Let it not be said anymore that the House Clegane was built upon dead children!"
It was not a very noble formulation of his goals, but Sansa was not there to listen and be appalled by his manners.
The thing that used to be Gregor, no, that was still Gregor at the bottom, strong like an ox until the end, having an upper hand even against a necromancer, dismounted and sauntered to his little brother. The monster's armoured stomach shook from laughter as he advanced. The new Gregor had a bundle of muddy ribbons tied around his sword, in a mockery of lady's favours, cut out of tunics and breeches of his own men he'd sliced and killed, punishing them for disobedience.
The new Gregor acted just like the old one, at times.
Sandor had one favour, black as the three dogs that died to earn the name of the modest noble house Gregor had brought shame upon. "Come on, brave knight!" he provoked his brother.
He could not wait a moment longer.
Gregor obeyed like a good ser trained by the necromancer, bestowing a whirlwind of elaborate, flowery blows on Sandor. The Hound's own fury of counterattacks that would have killed anyone did not even dent his brother's white enamelled armour.
Time passed quickly, long hours that felt like years.
The Hound endured and fought on, seeing no way to end it. He and Gregor were matched in strength as every time before.
Until the first shy sign of exhaustion made Sandor miss a step on his bad leg. Gregor nearly cut off his empty shield arm. None of the brothers carried a shield in their second duel that day. Sandor jumped away, needing a moment of respite. He would become weary and then…
How stupid he must have been to believe he might be wielding a blade given by the gods to a man willing to do justice...
Sandor laughed at himself, so as not to cry.
Laughter freed him, cleansed him, blew a gust of fresh-smelling air into his mind, clearing it profoundly from all the burning, past and present; quenching the flames of anger that slowly consumed his soul.
The bloody, useless guards had been six and death skipped them when the Hound watched over them, helping them for no good reason; for a bit of food they shared…
The guards had been six…
And he had been the seventh, the one whose face the six did not have… The one with half a face. The animal. The monster.
And when he crossed the Bloody Gate, during his climb to the Eyrie and stay in the Vale of Arryn, known for the Andals being mad about the Seven, he met five men and one woman on his journey who might have shown him a different face of the gods in a passing moment of their lives… The Maiden, the Mother, the Warrior, the Father, the Crone, and finally the Smith, in that order.
The Hound's face was rightfully notorious, but it was not that face he needed now.
In the past, he mocked the gods, naming his horse after the absent god of death, constantly joking about the Stranger's actions in his mind… Not once did he think that the god journeyed with him, for good and for evil. The gods did not exist. And if they did, they were as awful as the people they created.
Against everything, against himself, the Hound believed… Sandor believed in gods. For there was nothing else he could do short of accepting a thundering defeat. And that was something he would never do. Not from Gregor. Not only because he would find immense joy in killing him.
Because it wasn't just and it wasn't fair.
The Stranger could take the life of any creature.
Couldn't he?
Couldn't he?
He'd better do so now.
The Stranger lifted the sword given to him by the Smith and advanced in slow, measured steps. Or maybe they were very fast, but the time slowed down to almost a standstill, dark and treacherous; a screaming abyss of crimes and past regrets.
Death, the Stranger's most constant companion, walked with the god of death as a heavy hump on the back of the man who now chose to don the god's face willingly, by believing in him.
Gregor's armour, which appeared unbreakable, shattered like glass; the limbs that could not be cut were sliced and maimed, oozing black blood.
Sandor was showered by stinky, oily, grimy liquid; his light grey armour of the Winged Knight slowly becoming soot black.
And when he heaved Gregor's neck in two, the death finally unburdened Sandor's back and jumped to Gregor for all times; pleasingly definite and final, much more certain than the existence of the gods.
The Hound was himself again. No more and no less. The Stranger was gone, whether he had ever been there with him or not. He opened his brother's helm with shaky hands to confirm his success and found it empty…
Pycelle must have underestimated or, more likely, simply insulted Cersei's pet necromancer, suggesting to him a task of an ordinary gravedigger, before following the queen's orders of gifting him with Gregor's remains. Ser Robert had always been a headless monster, and Gregor's skull truly adorned the castle of the Princes of Dorne, like the skulls of the dragons once graced the Red Keep.
So this is why you couldn't speak brother, only grumble and laugh from your stomach...
It was all nothing to Sandor now.
He gazed around and could almost taste the dark grey silence of the evening.
The field was empty like Gregor's helm and he was all alone. Everyone fled… but why? Where? If Gregor was dead...
Fog swallowed the Giant's Lance, thick and grey, mingling with the night. The Hound could barely see a portion of the soil before his nose.
But he could very well smell that most unpleasant scent once more.
The burning.
In the misty sky there was a hum, the flapping of wings of a giant bird of prey.
Not a bird, never a bird, but a buggering, fire-spewing dragon.
The Hound stepped away from his dead brother and found temporary refuge behind his dead horse.
Not a moment too late.
White fire blazed from the sky, devouring what was left of Gregor and his snow-white armour.
The white dragon in the sky was not small, nor would there ever be a Lannister shroud large enough to cover it. Sweaty and nervous, the Hound backed towards the castle walls, grateful for the stinky blackening of his shiny armour that must have helped him fade into the night and hidden him from the beast's anger.
The six were gone with the rest or maybe they had vanished, forever different from men, dwelling in seven heavens or, more likely, seven hells...
Sandor retreated through the open gates and the empty castle, reaching the woods behind it, hoping that not even the dragon could see clearly in the thick fog that had conquered the mountain. He still remembered the way up. He had to do in one night what took him three days before, when he wanted to reach the Eyrie with prudence and in good health. Now he only had to reach it. If he could climb to the Sky, the tunnel might be open, warm, leading to the Eyrie.
Leading to…
He would not think further to whom.
He would climb.
In the woods, he caught up with the trail of men-at-arms on their way up. Cersei's men embraced those from the Vale. No one paid the Hound any heed. The dragon's appearance or the news of it must have forced them to reconcile and chased them in the same direction. The Hound wondered if those reinforcements had ever arrived. Judging by the river of men retreating, they might have.
And Sandor had not even noticed the change of tide, immersed in duelling Gregor…
He hurried up in long strides and giant leaps, as big as his legs allowed them. Soon, he reached Stone.
Past the first fortress guarding the way to the Eyrie, the forest ended. The body of the mountain became barren and icy, life-threatening in the night and with fog.
The Hound nevertheless remembered the layout of the stairs cut out in cold stone. He braved them as fast as he could, always looking up.
Orange lights, orange lights from above!
Small flames were lit on the second fortress, by the vanguard for the rearguard, lighting the frozen stairway.
Up he went and more up, until that miserable fort. He barely noticed anything while he was passing through Snow...
After Snow, the stairs turned more slippery than ever and all the lights were gone. The defenders could not have lit all the way to Sky.
That wouldn't be clever with the dragon flying around now, would it?
The Hound bent to the ice and continued climbing, leaving more men behind as he went. At some point, he even passed a mule, considered stealing her from some lightly wounded knight to get up faster, and gave up. He had come this far by himself.
He would be up in the Eyrie before at least half of the gnats who had started climbing before him from the Gates of the Moon.
In the Eyrie, he could rest. He could sleep. Drink, maybe. There would be a sweet scent between his sheets and a soft hand on his face. On his real one, ruined one, human one, and not on the black, angry face of the god of death.
Maybe, on another day, on a different day, he could be the Father, the Warrior, the Mother or even the Maiden; the Smith or the Crone. Maybe he could be just or brave; compassionate or innocent, the maker and the wise man… Maybe he could...
He fell and pulled himself further up on all fours.
Hungry and tired like a dog, he continued climbing.
Climbing, skating, sliding... Always up and up he went.
Where was the Sky?
Was he in the Sky?
His reason abandoned him and he did not know.
I'll have a song from you, he rasped in his weary daydream with his eyes open, ashamed and wanting at the same time.
Wait…
Wasn't everything alright now?
Didn't he find Sansa?
He could not remember if he did, nor how she reacted to what he came to tell her.
The snow felt so warm, seducing him.
He would sleep now.
Hours, years later, a soft voice chimed over his head.
"Gods be good!" Sansa exclaimed. "Look! Down there, Robin. It must be him!"
"I don't know, Sansa, this man has black armour," the little lord attempted to temper his pretty cousin's enthusiasm.
The six faces of the useless guards and Sandor's own merged into one, noble and whole, luminous as his childhood dreams of knighthood in which the good still existed.
Wide-eyed, bright-eyed lies...
"I'm here," he rasped weakly and listened to the soft thud of womanly boots in snow. "Here," he repeated.
"Yes," Sansa said and cradled his frozen head against her warm, sweet smelling chest. "Right here, my love."