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A sad chapter, this one.

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Chapter 10

Her Name Was Jeyne

Where R'hllor is not to be disregarded

Jaime

"You didn't kill Jeyne and Gendry, we were all delighted to hear that. So what else did you not do, holy brother, from the atrocities they accuse you of late?" asked Ser Jaime Lannister of Sandor Clegane when they rode together at the end of the rescue party, returning to the camp of the every day more colourful company of men and beasts on the way south to King's Landing. They left far behind them the weirwood infested caves of the Brotherhood without Banners, and a multitude of smallfolk on the way to their homes, mouths filled with fresh gossip.

"The Imp must have told you about the Blackwater. He sat the bay on fire. I ran. After that I dug graves. That's pretty much all there is to say."

Jaime felt light like a feather, or a flower petal. To experience that was not very manly but he didn't care. He killed his first man with his left hand, without even using a sword. It was an ugly outlaw and a peasant, but it was in a close fight, and the memory still tasted inexorably sweet, as if it was one of his greatest achievements worthy of an entry in the White Book of the Kingsguard. The day when Ser Jaime the cripple of House Lannister almost became a warrior again.

"And why risk your skin for the liege lord whose cause you deserted?" he pursued a conversation.

"Not for you. For the company I keep."

"For Sansa Stark?" Jaime asked in plain disbelief.

"You've heard the Elder Brother defending you. That's who he is, he would have burned with you, for justice and for his faith. Might die for it still, from the looks of it. It so happens he met the Lady of Tarth on her travels before she ended up bound to you and sentenced to death. I have no idea what she told him, but he said she had honour and ought to be saved. Just like he took a stray dog in when he didn't need to. I owe him my life so I came along," the Hound drawled slowly, sounding indifferent, almost bored. "Lady Stark is with Baelish. You want to ask questions about her, ask him. Last thing I heard he was still loyal to the crown."

"And to himself, laying a hand on the last Stark with a true claim to Winterfell," Jaime said bitterly. "Did you know that he sent a false Arya Stark north to marry the bastard of Roose Bolton? Not even my father could have devised such a thing by himself. So that Roose and after him his bastard, Ramsay, get a better hold to the title of the Warden of the North."

"I'd make a better Warden of the West," said the Hound mockingly.

"Others take me, you just might," the lion jested back.

"And the Others might just hear you and heed to your wise counsel," the Hound retorted in kind, remembering the terror of the cold.

Jaime Lannister turned dead serious. "So what now?"

"Your golden hand, shiny sword and white armour are all gone, could be they were sold for food by the outlaws. You're lucky you found your horse. I'll borrow you some monk clothing to cover your bony ass. We'll find a dress or an armour for your lady knight, whatever pleases her more. Then you go your way and I go mine."

"And Lady Brienne's sword?"

"Gone. Mance only found a rounded wooden shield painted with a sigil of old, that could be hers."

"Who's Mance? And where will you go?"

"That's no concern of yours, Kingslayer."

"You called me Jaime in the firepit."

"Aye," Sandor Clegane's mouth twitched in a repulsively looking uncontrolled laugh of contentment. "I'll go where it pleases me, Jaime."

"Sandor, see, that sounded much better," said Ser Jaime Lannister with a broad grin of his own.

Sandor Clegane, contrary to all the rumours, did not turn rabid like his brother, and the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard was glad for it. My duty in the riverlands is truly done now, he thought. I can go back to King's Landing and tell my son Tommen the truth."

His stomach clenched at the thought that Cersei's trial had yet come to pass. Jaime was unable to confess, not even to himself, whether he wished to see her again dead, or alive.

The Hound has Lady Sansa and if you don't come with me, alone, he will kill her, Brienne's lies echoed in his spirit. They wouldn't leave his mind ever since he learned of her treason, not even when he set himself between the insufferable wench and the approaching fire. Her falseness rang so hard in his head that the fire didn't seem nearly hot enough as it should have been. He was saved in the end, and all he could do was think how Brienne's betrayal had hurt him more than when he learned that Cersei had slept with Lancel, and Osney and the Moon Boy, and only the Seven knew who else, for all that his little brother Tyrion had known.

That's also over, now, he thought, resigned. The quest is over. Brienne can go home.

Sansa

"Gendry told us what became of my mother but it was still horrible to see it in truth," Sansa said to Mance when they rode back, forgetting her decision not to talk to him at all. "Where could she have gone?"

"I don't know," replied the King-beyond-the-Wall. "But I know one other thing. If I ever turn into that, into a wight, I'd rather be burned alive then continue to exist in that fashion. All my people know about my wish."

"You say you're a bard, not a lord. Who are then your people?"

"I left them behind, I had to," Mance replied with immense sadness in his dark eyes and Sansa regretted asking the question. "When I can, I will go back. And if I'm alive when all this is over, I will go to Oldtown, and speak to the maesters of the Citadel, to learn from them where my heart has gone."

"How did you know Jon?" she ventured on hopefully safer ground.

"A crow knows another, as it should be. And what do you know about Brother Gravedigger? What was the name he'd been given as a child?" the singer appeared to be quite curious.

"Have you seen his face?"

"Yes, he showed it to me the first time we spoke."

"You cannot be from the White Harbor, then," Sansa said in amazement, imagining the vast lands across the narrow sea, far away from Westeros, where lived people who have not heard of and who would not have recognised the Hound, widely known and feared in all of the Seven Kingdoms. The Free Cities, the ruins of the Old Valyria, the Dothraki Sea and the Shadow Lands beyond Asshai! In the Vale she frequently imagined that her sister Arya was not dead but instead on a long journey to see them all.

"That's what he said as well," said Mance, amused. "Keep your secrets then, Sansa. As I will do with mine. Some truths are simply too terrible to behold."

"I have learned that at great cost, my lo... Mance," Sansa said and continued without courtesies. "Do you know why the masks you gave us burned the priest of the god of flames?"

"Did they now? I don't know, Sansa. I am but a man, no more, no less."

He continued and Sansa listened with apprehension. "Some folk in the north say that the masks possess a magic of old, of the children of the forest. Others say that they help to see the truth of things, or protect the wearer from harm. They're carved out of living weirwood. And the caverns which have been used here for the unsavoury judgments of the Lord of Light," Mance visibly shivered as if he was chasing away a ghost of a bad memory, "they belonged to the old gods, maybe they still do. There is no way of telling why the masks did that. Just like we don't know why a large flock of bloody ravens came after us all the way from the Raventree Hall, if not to roost on Lady Stoneheart's abandoned throne."

"They were like a black tempest," said Sansa in a dreamy voice. "Black army flapping their wings in the dankness of the caves..."

"The Elder Brother, will he make it?" Pondering on the mystery of the masks and the ravens, Sansa finally asked the question she dreaded to put before. For death also came with them all the way, like an old friend.

The old monk hung lifeless over a horse between them, thin and long like a half empty sack of flour, squeezed ruthlessly on the edges from too much usage.

"If there's a decent healer to be found among the people here, maybe he will," Mance did not sweeten the truth and for that too Sansa was grateful.

She sighed and looked backwards where the Hound and Ser Jaime Lannister were exchanging words. She fervently hoped that Gendry was right, and that Ser Jaime had indeed sent Lady Brienne to look for her and for Arya to return them to Lady Catelyn in fulfilment of his oath. Or her trial would be the next one after the Queen Cersei's if he decided to bring her to King's Landing by force, once he would rejoin the lost surviving part of his army, prowling the woods of the Riverlands, amongst the wolves and the horrors of the cold. She suspected that Petyr would stand in the first row and approve the wisdom of King Tommen, when she would be put to her death. Her head would roll down the stony steps of the Great Sept of Baelor, as her father's did before, and then it would be mounted on a spike for the multitude to watch.

She wondered who the new King's Justice would be for Ser Ilyn Payne was dead and burned on the pyre in Pennytree.

Sansa noticed how the Hound carelessly tossed his hair backwards, away from his eyes. Had he not been wearing the cowl, he would have bared his entire face to Ser Jaime without a second thought, not stopping to comb his hair over his burns as he did in front of all in the Red Keep.

A desire came over Sansa, innocent but rushing like a fast mountain spring through her veins, unstoppable, wild. She wished she was Ser Jaime and that the Hound was at ease in her presence, laughing at her jest, listening to her voice.

Would he fight for me if I asked for a trial by combat for supposedly killing Joffrey? Sansa wondered. Would he wear my favour or would he just mock me for it all?

I would die for my betrothed, if needs be, he told her before the old gods. Sansa's tummy turned with unknown sickness for she was already married, even if only in name, and the Hound could become betrothed to another woman if he so wished. In the Vale she understood that the men of the Faith sired bastards just like any other men, or abandoned the Faith and founded families. Even Ser Gregor had wives, and he was a monster.

The night air was crisp and cold when they reached the wagon. They loaded the Elder Brother next to a sleeping Gendry and trotted, slowly, back to the camp to rest, content because that night, at least, it didn't look like it was going to snow.

The Gutted Boy

Her face was thin and pale, sorrowful as the bare lands in winter. Her eyes and lips held no life, her hair was no longer shining; it was dark and dull and her breathe felt fetid and freezing. Her name was Jeyne.

Gendry didn't have much time until the guards circling the camp would pass by and notice what he was about to do. He prayed to the Lord of Light to guide his steps, remembering the tale how Thoros blew the breath of life in the body of Lord Beric Dondarrion, when he lay slain by Ser Gregor the Mountain, and how Lord Beric then gave it all away to bring Lady Catelyn back among the living.

Digging her out with his bare hands was not easy because he was still very weak: he barely made it on his own from the wagon to her grave. Luckily, it was not deep. He was grateful that the queer foreigner with the lute did not go through with his idea to burn her.

Her name was Jeyne, he thought again and hot tears ran down his cheeks. We have to find Willow and leave somewhere safe to spend the winter, far away from m'lords and m'ladies and from the Brotherhood, too. The orphans have no brothers, with or without the banners. It was just me, so stupid to believe it could be any different.

He remembered the words he'd been given to read while the gentle lady treated his wound. Lovely Lyanna of House Stark. Why did it have to be that name of all the noble names? I should have stayed with her, not smith armour for the Brotherhood and hope that Lord Beric's gift of knighthood was going to make me worthy of m'lady one day, thought Gendry, remembering a courageous little girl with mousy hair, wondering where she was.

Serves me right, he mused, Ser Gendry of the Hollow Hill, the Lord of Fools. There was no escaping one's condition and he felt as if he had uncovered it way too late for his own good.

Her name was Jeyne, Gendry recalled his thoughts back to what he was doing, digging the cold ground to reveal the rest of the fragile body in front of him. Blood came from under his nails but he did not relent. The smell of wet ground was sickening and he felt an oppressing urge to lay down and dream forever, forsaking everything. Not a good idea, he concluded. Her name was Jeyne and she would have done the same for me.

Her body was cold and her skin felt so dead, the bristle sensation when one would accidentally brush her always busy hands in passing lost, the voice which called Willow to come home gone silent for good. Her name was Jeyne.

Gendry started the fire, crouching, careful to hide the small flame from the rest of the camp with the breadth of his shoulders. He leaned over it and inhaled the smoke and the hot air above the fire as much as he could, until his lungs started to hurt and he was almost choking.

"Lord of Light, help me," he said. "Cast your light over us. Bring her back."

Gendry breathed the fire of life in Jeyne's stiff mouth and a wolf howled, distracted, in the distance.

She rose smoothly and grabbed him by the arms, unnaturally strong and menacing, the look in her eyes threatening, more lifeless than before, the grip on him mortal, unkind. She was alive, yes, but what kind of life it was! Evil and ruthless, not meant to be. She bared her teeth and they looked sharp. He could see the black circle around her neck where the rope had been.

The creature he created threw him down and prepared to rip him apart as he lay on the cold muddy ground, sprawled in the shallow grave that was to be hers, but would now be his. He was ready. There was nothing else for him to do. All people he had ever cared about betrayed him, left, or died. He wondered if at least Master Tobho Mott was still alive in the capital.

"Jeyne," he almost whimpered. "Please, forgive me."

Far away in the woods it started to snow. Through the night mist Gendry could see a separation. A line clearly drawn between the trees still rustling with autumn leaves and the forest which fell victim to the implacable winter.

She screeched and shrill voices answered her from afar, from the land that had surrendered to ice. The last thing he saw was a piece of solid wood colliding with his face in ferocious speed.

Mance

"Where was your head, boy?" shouted Mance Rayder shaking Gendry awake. "Have you southrons heard nothing about leaving the dead be? She would have killed you if I didn't rise on time!"

Mance thanked the ice in his veins for once again warning him of the danger; the weakness of easy sleep was gone when the winter decided to follow him south. He only regretted arriving too late to burn her. The cursed girl ran with unnatural swiftness when he tossed a burning log at her. Only her long black hair caught flame, but she would extinguish it later, in the fresh snow. The wights had never been an easy prey.

"Her name was Jeyne," squeezed the pale wounded boy through his teeth.

"It rhymes with pain," stated the one handed man with the golden hair whose pelt they saved that day, approaching with a nobility of a spoiled cat. "You are Mance?" he asked.

The King-beyond-the-Wall understood that he was in the presence of one of the most powerful and dangerous kneelers in the realm but he could not bring himself to care. One hand can only do so much, he judged, trusting his new host of men from every origin to do his bidding in case of need. "I am," he answered slowly.

"I listened to the piece of this play of yours gagged in the firepit and I found it most enlightening," Jaime's green eyes flickered, reflecting the fire. "I was wondering if it contains a character of a young boy who will swear the Kingsguard vows against the wishes of his father."

"That would depend on who the boy is, and who the father," Mance said coldly to the enemy, the man who nearly killed the father Jon had, and crippled one of his younger brothers.

"Just as I thought," the green eyes flashed, then gazed pensive to the eeriness of the haunted forest beyond them, and turned their attention to the Brother Gravedigger, lurking nearby, resembling a giant tree in his odd calmness. "You'd tell me if I was imagining this, would you not?"

"Aye. And it's not the first nor the worst such thing we've seen when coming down from the north," rasped the tall monk.

"What is to be done?"

"One can only warn people to stay in and burn fires at knight. Fire can ruin the dead ones. A black stone called obsidian can fight their masters. So can Valyrian steel," Brother Gravedigger offered with utmost aloofness.

"Good that the Lady Stoneheart took the only two such swords we had, then," Ser Jaime added. "Perhaps my duty is to travel West, before returning to King's Landing. To give such warnings as can be given."

The screams rang through the woods behind the invisible line dividing the land still alive and green, at least in part, from the bleak whitened desert taken hostage by winter. The entire camp was up from the noise, staring into the distance, not wanting to know what was happening under the incessant snow and why they were being spared. The pig-headed boy blinked and slowly straightened up. A large purple bruise flowered on his forehead as if he had been hit by a bronze weapon of the Magnar of Thenn, wrought in the far north of the lands beyond the Wall, and not by a simple piece of wood. The strength of the blow must have been deadly and he was lucky to still draw breath as a human and not as something else.

"Where is she?" Gendry had the nerve to ask.

"With others of her kind!" Mance pointed angrily to the shrieking woods.

"Will you kill me now?" came the next question from the shallow grave.

"He won't," said the Gravedigger steadily. "He will hand you a piece of parchment and make you read. It can get worse than just dying, believe it."

"Brother Gravedigger," Mance chuckled. "You know me well. I was going to ask him to read again the piece he read before, I had some thought on how to improve it during the raid at the caves."

"Fighting makes you write songs? How unbearably sweet," the Hound mocked the bard.

"Is it still about Lady Stark?" Gendry had to know.

The singer nodded and said in a suddenly courteous tone, "Yes. I thought maybe you don't want to stay here, now." He waved his arm again towards the terror of the dark. "You could go with us to the capital and read a part in my play. Die some other time. What do you say?"

"It hurts," said Gendry, absent-minded for a second, rubbing his head.

"It will hurt more," rasped the Gravedigger. "Live with it."

"I want to read," the boy made up his mind. "It helped yesterday. For the pain. "Here" he touched his head. "And here," Gendry put his right hand over his still beating heart.

Mance Rayder had to fiddle in his pockets to find a short wrinkled piece of parchment where the lines have been crossed and rewritten many times, the latest words scribbled on the margins in very small nervous letters. The part of Robert Baratheon still eluded him and his first attempt at it was very crude, even if young Robert was told to be frivolous at heart. Another difficulty was Aerys, the Mad King, which had to be solved soon, and the choice was between Blackwood and Corbray, maybe the latter one, he had not decided yet.

Sometimes hearing your words being read by others would reveal plenty of what should be done about them, so Mance forgot about the unwelcome presence of Ser Jaime, and waited devotedly for the imprudent boy to speak.

"I was born in the Stormlands where people enjoy life. They drink, they gamble, and they whore," the boy started, embarrassed because he couldn't read fast, yet determined not to let his ignorance be seen.

"I became a man in the Vale, where people are strict and straightforward, daring, like a falcon's flight," the second sentence sounded more natural.

"I haven't gone north yet, but the only man I recognise as my true brother came from there. My brother in soul, if not in blood. And his Lord Father has talked to mine. His sister was promised to me, a maid honourable and pleasing to the eye, but savage in all her ways," Gendry was doing his best, but Mance found that it was not good enough.

"A lady who doesn't want to be one, they say, but still, a lady she remains," the expression on Gendry's face turned to brazen, and admiration crept into his speech. At what, Mance did not know, but the words finally lived in boy's mouth.

He continued with the stubborn fire only he possessed, the same fire that made him hold his guts in his hand and revive dead friends, "The direwolf banners are approaching, galloping down the kingsroad to seal my fate! Dust is on their heels and sun on their foreheads! She'll be coming with them, I know."

The boy hammered the last sentence, "And I have decided to offer my heart, such as it is, to virtuous Lyanna, of the House Stark."

"The Baratheons have a trace of dragon blood in them," commented Ser Jaime Lannister out of hand, and the King-beyond-the-Wall sharpened his mental sword and kept quiet. I don't have a blood of any noble animal, he thought. Yet I will spill mine in the end, as ignoble as it is, if it can save my people. I will not be there to see it any more, but I know that it will run equally bright and red like anyone else's.

Sandor

When the reading was over and it seemed that no one would attack them that night, Sandor Clegane walked to where Sansa veiled over the Elder Brother. Asleep, without a cowl, the brother of the Faith looked much younger than his roughly six and forty name days. Lady Brienne was seated a few meters to the side. She wouldn't talk to anyone since she was freed and the Hound felt queasy seeing a woman of her strength and size on the verge of tears, her eyes redder than he had ever seen them in his little bird, not even when Joffrey had her father killed.

"He seems at peace, yet I fear for his life," Sansa said when she heard his footsteps. "One of the other monks, the young one, I call him Benjen now, even if that is not his name, took out the arrow and bandaged the wound but he is not waking up."

"I could break a few necks tomorrow if the folk around here will not want to find us a healer," the Hound offered to do what he was good at.

"He wouldn't approve," Sansa pointed at the sleeping figure.

"Neither would you, wouldn't you?" he said wondering why he needed so much to hurt her with his words. "You missed the reading. Gendry read for Mance, Kingslayer and me, the singer's latest piece of folly, about how he longed to meet the virtuous Lady Stark."

"Gendry looks… When his face was cleaned from gore, he looks too good, a bit like Renly Baratheon," Sansa said, weighing her words. "And another bit like Mya Stone, a friend I had in the Vale."

"I'm convinced that your husband wouldn't mind if you did a tumble or two with a good looking commoner on the way home to your warm marriage bed. Better that, than Baelish. It might give you joy," the Hound said, overriding the angry protests of Sandor Clegane, the man, in the far back of his conscious mind. He imagined Sansa holding Gendry's hand and smiling at his handsome unmarred face. "The Imp wouldn't have to know if he's a jealous type. Even if he doesn't strike me as one."

Sansa just opened her beautiful mouth and closed it again, gaping like a fish out of water, gulping, fighting for survival.

Sandor Clegane wanted to cut out his own foul tongue with his sword, but only more ugly words poured out of his mouth, unstoppable as the land-breaking torrents after the copious spring showers. "The boy has the looks as if he hasn't had a woman yet. Maybe you could teach him, sing him a pretty little song…"

Sansa appeared frail in the light of the embers of the fire, and paler than the Elder Brother on his dying bed. Sandor Clegane bit his tongue until his mouth was bleeding on the inside, forcing the salty liquid down his throat. It was the only way to stop talking, but the images of Sansa with other men, handsome, handsome, whole, would not leave his mind, more twisted than his scarred flesh.

"Are you jealous?" her question came like a dagger in his ribs, simple, deadly and precise, the blade not less sharp for being dipped in the kindness of her voice. He shook his head and froze in one place, waiting for the next blow.

"What have I ever done to you that you judge me so?" she asked in all honesty and he could not muster the strength to give her the answer she deserved.

You showed me that the seven heavens existed, he thought, but not for the likes of me.

They both stared in silence at the dying fire, observing the slow movement of the Elder Brother's chest, rising quietly up and falling down again, clinging to life against all odds.

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A/N Arya may or may not make appearance somewhere towards the end of this story. That part of the plot is still very vague for now. The likelihood at this moment is more towards the not because than this story would outgrow its proportions. Lady Stoneheart in my imagination must know from people talking about the more prominent events in the Seven Kingdoms that Baelish married Lisa and that she died shortly after and that is enough to make a vindictive person she became very suspicious towards him.