A/N: Happy dead week! For me anyway, and not actually dead because we definitely still have classes. But still. Only 8 days until I get to back home, so that's awesome. This semester has been rough. Anyway, here's chapter 31 for you. It's not super exciting. There's a lot of information exchanged that you will already know having read Ice and Fire, but it's important in terms of character development so it's here. As always, many thanks to my beta reader (and sister) GrowlingPeanut (see you soon, buddy!). Reviews are appreciated.

Disclaimer: Everything belongs to Bethesda Softworks and George R. R. Martin.

Rating: M for strong language, minor violence, and references to death and abuse.

The moons were still high in the sky when they found themselves on the seven thousand steps once more. Too excited for what might lie ahead, Daenerys had paced around her chambers, belongings already secured in a small sack and tied beneath her cloak. In his own room, Sandor had laid awake, eyes on the ceiling and mind far away. Finally, her impatience got the better of her and she roused him. Eager for an escape from his thoughts, Sandor had been more than willing to start their journey back down the mountain.

"It should be easier going down," he said gruffly, taking the first step. "Just watch your footing. I don't want to have to carry you all the way to Ivarstead."

Nodding, Dany followed, her cloak drawn tightly about her shoulders. Though it was no longer snowing, there was still a sharp chill to the winter air, made worse under the cover of darkness.

Each too keen to return to the road, they had left the temple without bidding the Greybeards farewell. While Dany knew that Sandor thought of them with anything but fondness, she appreciated what they had done for her, and so she had at least left a note telling them of their departure. Besides, they would be returning soon enough, with the Horn of Jurgen Windcaller at her side.

Though Sandor was right about the downhill journey being the easier of the two, they still took it carefully, and by the time the bridge from Ivarstead came into view, the sun was high in the sky above them.

"You check on the horses," Sandor ordered, wiping the sweat from his brow and taking a long pull from his waterskin. "I'll see if the innkeeper has any idea where this...Ustengrav...is."

Dany went obediently to the farm where their mounts had been kept, and as she approached, a young woman met her at the small paddock.

"Good day," she said with a smile. "I'm Fastred. My father Jofthor is the one who owns this farm. He said that you were going up to High Hrothgar. What is it like up there? Did you get to see the Greybeards? Are you adventurers?"

Before Dany could respond to the barrage of questions, she heard a derisive snort from behind her and Sandor tucked his worn leather map into the pack on Stranger's saddle before replying to the girl.

"'Adventurers?' Stop reading those bloody fairy stories, girl. All that's out there for 'adventurers' is death and disappointment. We're just travelers, nothing more, and that's the truth of it."

Fastred's face fell at his words, and when her mother called her back to the crops, she went, sullenly.

"Must you have said such a thing?" Dany asked as he walked their horses out of the corral. "She's young, and was only curious."

"Well you know what they say about the Khajiits," he said wryly, before shaking his head. "She should know the truth now before she ends up dead—or worse."

Dany frowned, but didn't argue further. He certainly knew more of the world than she did, even if his view of it was harsh and bitter. And from what she knew of a young Sansa Stark, she had had much the same view as Fastred, and now spent each day counting the new bruises given to her by her husband. Daenerys could still remember the way her own brother had abused her, and her near rape at the hands of Telrav and his bandits, and she thanked the gods once again for bringing Drogo to her.

"Are you ready?" Sandor asked gruffly. When Dany nodded, he helped her atop her horse and then mounted his own.

"So where is it that we're going?" she asked once they had left Ivarstead behind.

"North," he replied. "Near Morthal. The main roads take us out of our way so we'll try and make our way through the marsh. It may slow us down, but it's a more direct route."

As Dany tried to picture the maps of Skyrim that she had once studied as a child, she realized that the main road did in fact lead them out of their way. Between Ivarstead and Morthal the road led to Windhelm. Though Sandor's expression was hard and cold, she knew that he must be in a great amount of pain.

A little ways down the road, they met a Bosmer walking along in the direction of Ivarstead. He raised a hand in greeting as they approached and called out cheerfully.

"Greetings, fellow travelers! Are you coming down from the Throat of the World?"

When Dany nodded, he smiled brightly. "I'm making the pilgrimage myself! Perhaps I'll be the first to reach its peak!"

The two riders stayed silent as he continued on his merry way, and after a moment, Dany spoke sadly. "He's going to die trying isn't he?"

"It's very likely," Sandor replied indifferently. "With nothing but the clothes on his back, it's only a matter of whether he'll die from the cold or be torn apart by a troll."

Dany resisted the urge to retch at the mental image and glanced over her shoulder at the man once more before fixing her gaze on the road.

They were several miles from the mountain village when Sandor slowed and then pulled Stranger to a stop, pulling the map from his saddlebag. He looked at it for a long moment before grunting and jerking his head toward the left side of the fork that lie before them. Nodding, Dany began the descent down the foot of the mountain, but before she could cross the bridge that lay before, a man leapt from the bushes, brandishing a curved dagger.

The sunlight glinted off of his blue glass armor and Dany's horse whickered nervously as the man began to speak.

"That's a pretty dress you have, my lady. I'm sure it would fetch a good price from the right merchant. Why don't you get down off that horse?"

Panicked, Dany looked back, but Sandor was nowhere in sight. Perhaps she had misinterpreted his directions and he was already far on his way down the other side of the mountain. Perhaps she would never make it to Ustengrav after all.

Slowly, she dismounted, and just as the thief grabbed her arm, she heard a shout.

"Let her go!"

Somehow, he had managed to slip around another way and was advancing on the thief, sword drawn.

The dark elf only laughed, however, and with surprising speed, he pulled Dany against him, his dagger at her throat.

"It seems I picked my mark well," he said grinning. "Where there's a sellsword there's bound to be gold."

Sandor's expression darkened and he growled from between clenched teeth. "I said...let her go."

When the thief looked from Dany to her companion, Sandor's expression shifted and he locked his gaze firmly with hers as if an attempt to communicate something. After a moment, she caught the movement at his side and her heart leapt to her throat when she realized that he was clenching his hand into a fist.

The thought of trying to fight scared her witless, but she knew that Sandor could not act while the knife was at her neck. Taking a deep, heaving breath, she stomped down on the man's foot—hard. When he cried out in pain and dropped his arm, she swung around and let her fist fly. It landed with a crack against his jaw and as he fell back, Sandor was suddenly at her side, pushing her towards her horse and barking an order.

"Don't look, girl."

With surprising swiftness for a man his size, he brought his sword down on the cleft between the thief's helmet and cuirass, and in one stroke, he was nearly cleaved in two.

Unable to tear her eyes away, Dany watched in morbid fascination, and when the body all but peeled apart as Sandor withdrew his sword, she turned and emptied her stomach into the bushes.

Sighing, her companion cleaned his sword in the grass before returning it to his hip and then walking toward her.

"I warned you. But if you're going to be doing your own killing, you had best get used to the sight of blood."

Nodding, she coughed and then wiped the bile from her lips with the back of her hand. After a moment, he called Stranger to him, and then swung up atop the massive courser and gestured for her to mount her own horse.

Still struggling with the waves of nausea rolling through her, she managed to pull herself up into the saddle and with a nod, she spurred her mare to a walk, following Sandor across the bridge.

Their makeshift path soon took them from the road and the horses obediently waded across a wide river, crossing to the other side where a small pool lay at the foot of a carefully carved and preserved shrine to Talos.

"Do you believe in Talos?" Dany asked curiously as she studied the grave expression on the statue's chiseled face.

Sandor snorted at that and shook his head. "The gods are nothing but nonsense, girl. Just a way for people to explain things that they're too bloody stupid to realize are natural phenomena." After a moment, he added viciously. "If there are gods, they certainly haven't shown themselves to me."

They rode in silence for a long time after that, and it was as they were passing the rubble of a destroyed fort that Sandor spoke up again.

"This used to be a fort belonging to one of the many branches of the Legion," he said absently. "The Silver Hand, they were called. All a bunch of nonsense if you ask me. In the end, they got torn apart. They called what happened here a bloody massacre, and from the rumors I heard, it was all at the hands of some girl. She singlehandedly tore through the fort and set it ablaze."

Dany raised her eyebrows and looked over the ruins, trying to imagine the elusive female warrior fighting her way through in a rage. She hoped that someday she too would have such strength.

"There were rumors of werewolves involved," Sandor continued. "But that was all but dismissed as fantasy drivel, as it should have been."

"So were dragons, once," Dany replied, and when Sandor grunted irritably and fell into silence once more, she couldn't help but smirk.

They stopped briefly at a mill to eat a meager meal and earn a bit of coin, but were on their way again within an hour after feeding and watering their mounts.

As they continued farther north, the snow began to fall, and they slowed a bit, trudging through the white powder on the ground and wrapping themselves tighter in their cloaks. A large bear the same shade as the snow growled at them warningly as they passed, a rabbit dangling from its jaws, but when it deemed them something other than competition, it settled down to eat.

The sun was just beginning to set when the road reappeared before them, and the thatched roof of an inn peeked from behind a hill.

"Oh, an inn!" Dany cried out eagerly. Her body was getting sore and beginning to ache, and she could tell that her mare needed rest just as much as her mistress. "Perhaps we could stop here for the night and continue on after some rest and a decent meal?"

To her surprise, Sandor was quick with his response, and curt. "No."

"Why on Nirn not?" she protested with a pout. "We aren't like to pass another and I'm growing tired."

"I said no," he repeated, his jaw clenched.

Petulantly, she crossed her arms over her chest. "You are working for me, Sandor Clegane, and I demand that we—"

"Shut your bloody mouth!" he yelled, yanking Stranger to a halt and meeting her gaze with eyes flashing in anger. "I said we aren't stopping and so we damn well aren't." When she stared at him agape, he turned away and spurred Stranger on once more. Silently, Dany followed, and as she glanced once more over her shoulder, she saw what lay beyond the inn, far on the horizon, and her heart sank. Windhelm.

Gently nudging her mare to go faster, she moved alongside her companion and finally, reluctantly, she spoke. "Morthal is still a long way from Markarth." When Sandor just grunted, she continued. "Less than a moon ago I thought I would be on my way home, with my husband at my side, carrying our child. Now I've somehow become the only thing that stands between life and death for a people that aren't even my own. My husband is far away, and our babe is dead. Believe me when I say that I understand how you feel."

Sandor was silent for a long time, and Dany had almost given up on what little hope she had had to get him to open up when he replied, the tension melting from his limbs as he sighed heavily.

"We stayed at that inn. The last night before we reached Windhelm. The night before I lost her." He lapsed into silence for a long moment, and when he continued, his voice was soft. "That was where we were the last time I..." He cleared his throat and continued, an uncharacteristic flush rising to his unburnt cheek. "Made love to her." He mumbled something to himself and then went quiet again.

After a moment, Dany probed a bit farther. "She loved you back, you've told as me as much, and I know you to be an honest man. How is this what came to be?"

He let out another long sigh before responding, almost more to himself. "We were to be married, when we reached Windhelm. She told me that her brother would be happy enough to just see her alive that he would allow it, and that by the end of a year, we would have the first of our many children."

When he grew quiet again, Dany spoke up, hesitantly. "So what happened?"

Sandor snorted, lips curling into a sneer. "Ulfric bloody Stormcloak happened. He called me a traitor and a rapist and ordered my head removed from my shoulders. It was barely a full day after my execution that he took S—" He faltered and cleared his throat. "That he took her as his wife."

As he spoke, she was reminded of what Jarl Balgruuf had said when they were in Whiterun, and of Sandor's own offhand comments about his survival.

"How did you get out of Windhelm alive?"

With a shrug, Sandor shook his head. She had never seen him look so weary, not even after having climbed the seven thousand steps. "I still don't quite know. Stormcloak and his men beat me before throwing me in the dungeon, and then Sansa came to my cell that evening, and they dragged her away. By then, I had resigned myself to death, but a few hours later the door to my cell opened and Robb Stark appeared."

"Sansa's elder brother?"

He nodded, his gaze distant. "And Stormcloak's most loyal officer. He came to me with another man, a stranger. He never gave a name, and I suppose it doesn't matter. They came and they set me free. Robb told me that he would do what he could to protect Sansa and that if I ever wanted to see her again I had to run. So I did. I ran all the way to Riverwood, and stayed there working at the mill until you found me. You know the rest."

Dany nodded slowly, letting his story sink in. After a moment, she spoke again. "Can you tell me about her?"

When his gaze met hers it was conflicted, and after a moment, he shook his head, his voice choked. "I can't."

Sighing, she nodded again and cleared her throat. "Drogo is a caravan master, as I'm sure you know, and as I've told you, he purchased me from my brother to be his wife. He has never been anything but gentle and kind to me. He gave me a choice on the night of our wedding, and treated me well when I made it. We fell in love quickly and easily, and then I discovered that I was pregnant, and he was scared, but he never left my side." Wiping her eyes, she shook her head. "In the end it was me that left, and now I would give anything to be at his side again."

As the reality of her situation sank in once again, she began to cry. After a long moment, Sandor held out a handkerchief, and then haltingly began to speak.

"Sansa was...is..." He shook his head in absent disbelief. "Bloody perfect. If there is any evidence of the gods, it's in the waves of her hair and the curve of her hips."

Dany suppressed a quiet laugh at the crooked grin that spread across his face and she wiped the last of the tears from her eyes.

"She was so beautiful, and by the gods did she hate me at the start. I wanted to fuck her and she wanted to kill me. I was at Tyrion Lannister's tavern when it burned to the ground, and she begged me to take her with me, so I did, for ransom at first."

"When did you fall in love with her?" Dany asked quietly, tucking the handkerchief into the satchel at her hip.

Sandor frowned at that, his brow furrowed. Finally, he answered with a slight smile. "I think it was the night we spent in Morthal that I started to realize I wanted more than what she had between her legs. She was drunk on sweet wine and singing The Bear and the Maiden Fair. She asked me to dance, and I pushed her away, but I couldn't keep my eyes off of her. She's the most beautiful woman on Nirn, and that's no lie."

His gaze was distant, but almost content. "Later that night we sat together on the dock, and I think that's the moment I fell in love with her. Two nights later she kissed me for the first time, and even though that turned into a bloody mess, I wound up in her bed by the time we reached Dawnstar. Once we got to Windhelm we were a pair of lovesick fools, planning the rest of our lives together."

His expression grew grave once more and he sighed deeply. "Of course, we both know now how that turned out." When Dany reached out to brush her fingers across his hand, he accepted the gesture of comfort.

The silence that fell between them as they continued was less oppressive as it had been, for which Dany was grateful. As much as she wished she was far from where they were, she trusted Sandor Clegane with her life, and it was nice to know that he had come to trust her in return.

After another hour of riding, they came to a small camp with a few pitched tents and a still smoking fire at its center.

"Wait here a moment," Sandor ordered, dismounting and handing her Stranger's reins.

Silently, he slipped through the darkness, dagger in hand, and she watched as he methodically checked each tent. At one, she heard a muffled cry, but it ended shortly, and when he reappeared again, he had a body slung over his shoulder. By the time he returned, he had made off with several others, and she could see the blood sprayed across his ruined face beneath the light of the moons.

"Come. We'll rest here for the night, and then in the morning, we'll ride to Ustengrav."

It was the light of the rising sun that woke Dany from her slumber, and she sat up from her bedroll, groaning at the ache in her limbs. Sandor was sharing an apple with Stranger when she emerged from the tent she had claimed, and he nodded his head in greeting as she sluggishly walked to her mare and rummaged in her saddlebags for a bit of food. In the end, she found a still soft end of bread and ate bits of it as they rode on, toward the tomb of Jurgen Windcaller.

It wasn't until late morning that they saw any further signs of civilization and Dany frowned, squinting at the shelter in the distance. "What is that?"

After following her extended finger and then checking his map, Sandor sighed. "The Hall of the Vigilant. Followers of Stendarr. They fed Sansa and I on our way from Dawnstar. Nice enough folk I suppose, even if they are religious nuts."

As they neared the structure, they were able to make it out more clearly, and see the smoke that rose from its ruins.

"What happened here?" Dany asked, aghast. The smell of death and rot was strong, and it carried toward them on the wind.

"An attack of some sort," Sandor murmured in reply, his hand ready at his hip. They rode past slowly, eyeing the remains, and Dany gasped at a flutter of movement from the inside.

"Someone's still alive." She made to steer her mare toward the ruins, but Sandor caught her arm tightly, shaking his head.

"Don't."

Before she could respond, the shadowy figure raised its head, yellow eyes glowing above its bloodstained lips.

"Go, girl." Sandor ordered. "Go!"

Eyes wide, she ignored the command, her gaze fixed firmly on the monster as it continued its meal. Finally, he slapped a hand to her horse's rump and she was torn away as they rode quickly from the scene.

After a moment, she was able to regain her senses. "Was that...?"

When she trailed off, Sandor shook his head. "Don't think about it too hard, girl. There are a lot of things out there that shouldn't exist, and it's better to just forget that they do."

Nodding, Dany tried to shake the image from her mind, and had managed to with some difficulty by the time they entered the marshes beyond Morthal. The horses slogged dutifully through the muddy water, and after a hard hour of struggling through the low brush, Dany nearly fell straight through to the entrance of Ustengrav.

"Whoa..." Her horse pulled back before falling into the hollowed out pit and she dismounted, peering down at the carved stone stairs that wound around to a heavy ebony door.

Sandor tied their mounts to the stone pillars just beyond and then joined her, arms crossed over his chest.

"So this is it then," he said, absently kicking a pebble down into the pit. "The final resting place of Jurgen Windcaller." They stood together in silence for a moment before he sighed and began to descend. "Let's go get that bloody horn."