Thank you for reading.

Warning for some gore and violence in this one.

xxx

Chapter 17

The Mistake of Ramsay Bolton

Where Rhaegar and Lyanna say good-bye and truly terrible things build up

Jaime

"Good work, wench," said Jaime, "your coming distracted the creature from finding me first."

"I don't know what you mean, my lord," Brienne murmured back, touching a black pendant on her neck. "I came as silent as I could."

Her moments of shyness always surprised him all over again, so genuine as he had never seen them in delicate ladies of the court, whimpering to the touch of the pretty knights in the dark alcoves of the Red Keep.

Yet her reply made the golden eyebrows grow stiff and all his senses turn back to a state of utmost alertness. He moved to where the water had been dripping, minutes, hours ago, half expecting to see another enemy. The silence was empty and peaceful, the cold somewhat less. Behind him, Brienne uncovered Lord Arryn, who seemed to stop shaking. Small mercies, thought Jaime.

"Come out," he spoke to the moving air, "and I may be merciful."

"My lord," the dark air said from behind a rock, and a pile of human misery, flesh and armour, wet and shivering, ugly red hair mixed with snow, slumped at his knees. "I burned another dead man, just like I saw you doing. Than I followed the monster! I followed it into the caves... It was terrible! But I didn't know what else to do, you left me in the tree to die! How could you vanquish that thing? Please don't kill me, please, please..."

Jaime first pulled Ser Shadrich on his feet and then slapped him harshly several times all over his face, for a good measure of his treason.

"You are a piece of shit," he said, "at least try speaking like a man. Why did you take Lord Arryn? How much did Lord Royce pay you?"

"Lord Royce, my lord?" the miserable knight asked, humiliated. "I have never had a pleasure of meeting him."

"Naturally, you'd never meat Bronze John in person, being a lowlife. How much coin did he send you or promise to give you in exchange for the child?"

"Jaime," Brienne said bluntly and the hint of reticence in her voice made him forget everything, the cowardly knight and his own fears. For Jaime was still afraid of the thing that he murdered, despite that it turned into crystal and that he would never admit being scared of it to anyone.

"We should go," she continued, warily. "You can question him later."

"Or do it here and leave him to what's haunting us when we're done," Jaime disagreed.

"Please, my lady, tell him! We travelled together, tell him I'm just a hedge knight honouring my new master!" screamed Ser Shadrich.

"Don't presume to know me to save your hide, ser," she told him, and then to Jaime. "I'm certain that Lord Royce could afford to hire someone more capable if he is truly behind this."

"What would I do without you?" Jaime said with love in his voice, but it came out as a hoarseness in the great hollow hill of the old gods. "This knight is past his best years and works for coppers. Silver stags and golden dragons are beyond his reach. And the greediest man we've been travelling with was his last known master, so..."

Jaime faced Ser Shadrich and bellowed as if he had four hands and not only one, in a voice that would make Lord Tywin sing the Rains of Castamere in his grave, "Tell me the truth if you don't want the Others to take you for real!"

"My lord of Lannister, it was Lord Baelish, he told me to admit it to you only after torture, that Lord Royce paid me three hundred golden dragons! And then Littlefinger would tell y... you to spare my miserable life and pay me five hundred when you got us back!"

Lord Commander of the Kingsguard considered the most fitting manner to execute a double traitor when the winter cold started growing on them again. The water dripping from the cave wall where Ser Shadrich had been hiding hardened into ice before their eyes.

"He's telling the truth," said a newly conscious Robert Aryn in a thin voice. "I was riding two steps behind and I heard everything. It's just that Lord Baelish thinks I am witless and don't understand. But I do."

"Then why not telling anyone, why letting him take you?" Jaime asked in frustration.

"Because I like the old red-haired knight. He's coarse and he beats me but he also teaches me things. Lord Baelish only bedded my mother and then she died. I know it was the singer who killed her out of jealousy, but it doesn't feel right."

"The northern singer?" Brienne asked, puzzled.

"No! He is even better than Ser Shadrich. He tells me stories about people from the north, and great beasts. I am almost a knight now, he says, Mance. And I am! I could have defended myself when I was kidnapped, but there's another reason I did not."

"Please, enlighten us," said Jaime, his irony completely lost on a child who continued earnestly with big adoring eyes.

"Lord Baelish said that Ser Jaime Lannister, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard himself was going to come after me! The first among the seven wearing the white cloak in the Seven Kingdoms! It was the only way you would pay attention to me, small, and sick, and miserable that I am. I know what they're all whispering behind my back," the boy's innocent voice changed and he hissed with vengeance uncanny for one so young, "that I will die before I become a lord. And I know that I will never wed Alayne because she is beautiful and I am a retard. She will have to marry my handsome cousin Harry to inherit the Vale. But, please, my lord, I want so much to take the white. I would squire for you and do anything you ask of me if you would only help me become a knight."

Robert Arryn knelt clumsily, and tried as hard as he could not too shake, his underdeveloped muscles and bones a witness to his incurable condition.

"Lord Arryn," Brienne said in all seriousness and it had a better effect on the child than anything an awestruck Jaime could have done. "You saved a maiden today, that is a good start. But now we must leave."

The boy let her lead him away gently, as if she'd been his mother, groping unconsciously for one of Brienne's breasts as he went. Ser Shadrich limped after them, shivering like a leaf, and Jaime was last, sensing that the terror of the cold was closing in behind them, looking for him, just like it wanted him first under the white throne.

I was only a few years older than the little lord when I took the white, he remembered, pitying the boy. Ugly as it was, what people talked about him was probably the truth. It was unlikely he'd survive long enough to become a proper lord. Maybe the child did not deserve to know that, but it found out. And there was no way of putting it back.

Gentle birth cannot restore one's health, Jaime thought, remembering Tyrion, his brother, who would be the Lord of Casterly Rock, if they all shared a more loving father, or if the gods did not make him a dwarf.

The wailing of the dead and the thuds of steps, or hoofbeats, could be heard behind them, no one could tell how far, or how echoes came from all directions in the openness and from the deep holes the water delved in rocks in the dark places under ground. A stroll back through the caves turned into hapless run to reach the narrowest tunnel, leading out, into the sun, and the lands still protected by the change of seasons.

Jaime had no answers for why the white walkers would want him. At the end of the pass, where it was slanting upwards, someone tossed them a rope, and before they knew it, they were all out, safe and sound, and alive for another day.

Jaime's squires approached him with his white armour and a golden hand. The horses they had before falling in the trap of the old gods grazed peacefully at the side of the path. Everything was as he imagined it to be when he had touched the hiltless dagger first in the dankness of the caves.

Maybe it can sing and foretell the future, thought Jaime observing the blade with distrust.

But the Valyrian steel only shined like an immaculate colourful mirror in which he could see the answers he already had in his mind without further questioning Ser Shadrich.

"I'm an idiot. My father must be turning in his grave for having such a son," he said. "I ordered Ser Daven to kill the singer and anyone else who might make trouble on the way back to the capital, and to accept the wisdom of Lord Baelish on what trouble was."

He found that he could not stand Brienne's piercing regard, hurt and unbelieving, but he nonetheless carried on.

"Baelish sent me away so that he can kill them all."

"He thought I'd kill Ser Shadrich without thinking twice, you know, it's the Kingslayer's reputation. And if I found out the truth, I would never be back on time. Not before he's done with his plans."

"We ride back!" he said to Brienne in a voice that brought no disagreement. "Monk, you will lead the children on foot and I will send horses to bring you back as soon as I can."

"Lord Arryn," he told the boy, not understanding his own reasons for speaking. "You are the only high lord among them and you will give them your protection. Ser Shadrich is under your command."

"He is not," interrupted the boy with purple eyes. "I mean, he's not the only one, ser. I am Edric Dayne, heir to Starfall."

"Lord Dayne," Jaime acknowledged another infant lord feeling as old as the Crone. These brats only miss Arya Stark to found a company of children sellswords. He laughed at his senseless thought.

"And you," he said to the petrified hedge knight awaiting his destiny, "do your best to keep everyone safe until then and don't expect any pay for it. If you don't, there will be no hiding place big enough in the Seven Kingdoms for you to cower from my reprisal."

Robert Baratheon's son

Gendry couldn't see the Elder Brother, but the bald soldier of the Faith who would teach Lady Sansa lessons was carelessly making water next to the barracks after the capture of the northern rebel. So he approached him and yelled: "Hey you, do you care to go whoring with me tonight?"

"Gods bless you, no, my son," the man said, first tucking his member in, then piously making the sign of the Seven. "They bring an honest man to his ruin."

Gendry rolled his sleeves all the way up to his shoulders as he would do when he worked in the forge. He took a good swing of his hammer and broke the man's nose, turning it into a bloody mess, experiencing profound satisfaction at his achievement.

"That was for offending my mother," he said. "And now you will tell me where you keep the prisoner, or the next blow will smash your head."

The man made a step back trying to stop the bleeding with one hand, unsuccessfully, Gendry noted with joy, and looked in the direction where the bastard had been pointing with the other hand.

A small door could be seen in the castle walls, behind the wooden dais where a henchman's block already stood, clean and ready, waiting for its next visitor.

Sandor

Gendry rushed into them before they could reach the castle's gate.

Sandor Clegane and the Elder Brother walked back slowly leading the horses, six of them in total. Gendry lifted the hammer, smeared with fresh blood, and nearly hit the Elder Brother in his eagerness to speak. The Hound watched with amusement how the older man recoiled as if he had seen a real ghost in Harrenhal. A prudent move, for the hammer was heavy, and the boy strong and not trained in its usage.

"Boy, it's me you will kill with that hammer of yours if we ever finish the silly play. You should still grow a bit to reach out to me easier, though," Sandor Clegane said, measuring the lad, more than a head shorter than him still, almost forgetting his foreboding of danger waiting for them all in Harrenhal. A minute too soon as the boy's words showed.

"They got Mance in the dungeons," Gendry panted from exertion. "Baelish does. He thinks he's the king of some outlaws up north, working with Lady Sansa's brother, and both traitors to the realm. He means to have Mance killed and hurt Lady Sansa."

One giant leg of the Hound was already in the stirrup, ready to mount Stranger and storm into the castle, when the Elder Brother pulled him back. His cowl dropped. He wore no helm, and he looked like he had just walked over his mother's grave, but his words were kind as ever, the usual calmness of his dark eyes laced with something... different? The Hound wondered if the former hedge knight just came back to life in his unlikely saviour on the Trident and if the old monk could finally accept the world for what it was, made by killers, decided by killers.

"Brother," the Elder Brother said, "you go calmly and get the lady. With some luck she is still in her rooms. Kill only if you must."

Sandor could hardly believe his ears about the last sentence he was told, but there was more to come.

"Don't leave her alone. Try and create some distraction in the castle, anything you can think about. Break the kitchen pots, release all the horses, beat up someone for all I care. Meanwhile I will ask to see the prisoner. The soldiers calling themselves of the Faith cannot refuse him the last blessing of the Seven before he loses his life of a traitor, no matter what crimes he's accused of committing. Gendry, come with me, and keep your hammer down for a while. It is a deadly weapon as Prince Rhaegar could have told you..."

Sandor rode back as calm as he could, checking on a dog shaped helm in his saddle bag. Still there, he thought. Good. It was past time for the real Hound to make his new entrance to the sorry mummery of his pitiful life, and kill everyone who thought him craven for a good start.

He tethered Stranger as close as he could to the Kingspyre Tower and ran up the stairs in enormous strides, taking them four by four to reach the room of the little bird. The door was barred and he let out a sigh of relief, knocking on it gently with huge hands.

"It's me," he rasped and was rewarded by the clicking sound. Soon she was before him, lovely and flushed, the mummers' crown of flowers he gave her carefully preserved on her untouched bedding.

"What is it, m-"

"Still no lord, remember," he cut her short but there was no resentment in his voice. "There's trouble. Littlefinger thinks the singer is the King-beyond-the-Wall. Have you ever heard of Mance Rayder? And even if he isn't, he means to kill him and take you back under his wing."

He saw how her good mood dwindled and wanted to give her hope he didn't feel. He lost all hope long ago.

"Come" he said, "no good being inside. Let's see what's going on. The Elder Brother wants me to make a distraction and he will see the prisoner if he can, to see what can be done."

"Distraction," she held him to that one word of all. Her pretty eyes widened. "Maybe I can help. Wait."

She wore her hair up in a mockery of the elaborate southern style, tied only so much that it wouldn't hinder her movements for the false tourney they made. The large auburn gleaming knot almost fell apart when she bent to retrieve something from under the bed. A breastplate, black and precious, the Hound noticed, as only the best smith in the Seven Kingdoms could have made it.

"Can we still catch up with the Elder Brother?" she asked.

And they did. The soldiers were looking at the gathering of all four of them in the yard with watchful eyes, but whatever orders they had, no one dared to approach them just yet. They may have looked menacing enough, but the Hound knew one thing very well. In a real battle, mere appearance would not bring them victory.

Both monks still wore a patched armour from the play. A frightening greatsword in an ornate scabbard attached to the Hound's back was in plain sight, and the snarling dog helm covered all of his face, the dog's head hidden by a monk's cowl. Gendry held his hammer with great pride, and the Elder Brother occasionally caressed the blunt tourney lance, leaning on it like an old man to his walking stick, bare-faced and thoughtful.

Sansa said to them in soft voice so that the lurking soldiers would not hear, pink as if she had just been scrubbed clean in bath by her maids: "Gendry, go among the soldiers and shout that the lady might show her c... what men visit the brothels for. That she may do it in the godswood, please. Did you understand?"

"I was born in Flea Bottom, m'lady. I can call a cunt by its name," said Gendry. "But by R'hllor, how could that help?

"Just announce it, please," said a purple glowing Sansa and made a deep courtesy in front of the leader of the monks, as if she was asking for his blessing. When the Elder Brother passively proceeded with giving one, he was close enough that she could pass him the breastplate under their joined cloaks.

"A sword only cuts through flesh," she said evenly, "but an evil word can cut through the soul. That is what my septa taught me, brother, is that not so?"

"Son," the Elder Brother told Gendry, not changing his facial expression for an inch. "We will obey the lady in all her wishes."

"Elder Brother," the Hound called out then, pointing at the map of the dungeons he drew in the dry mud with his boots while Sansa did her talking. It was all he could do to stop imagining the little bird's cunt, a sick dog that he was. He pointedly hit the exit he made in the walls hard with his heel, ruining the plan made of sand as soon the former soldier hidden in the high servant of the Faith observed it, and made an approving nod.

Sandor Clegane was then taken by the hand.

He was being led away like a small confused boy, clanking as he went, too heavy in an ill-fitting armour, and worried about the outcome of the imminent clash.

Worried? When was I worried? he thought. Admit it, an inner voice said, ever since they killed her father and you knew they were going to come after her in one way or another. You've always been worried and you have done nothing.

The godswood was bigger than he could imagine it that far south in a black fortress ruined by dragon fire. The leaves of the weirwood rustled red and lush, undisturbed by any wind in the quietness of the afternoon. There was not a single soul to be seen except the two of them.

Sansa brought him in front of the heart tree, close to a stump of another giant weirwood. The flatness where the tree was cut gaped full of red lines of the blood of the earth, fresh, not scarred yet, one for every year of undisturbed life until the mighty old tree fell victim to a new enemy. A man and his hungry axe.

He had no idea what she wanted, until she got her white mask out of her pocket and he finally understood.

"You think people will come and watch us again? To listen to your chirping and my gallant remarks? They'd all run away if they knew who I was."

"I suspect my Aunt Lyanna said farewell to Prince Rhaegar after the tourney," Sansa said, serious as a statue of Baelor the Blessed in front of his Sept in King's Landing, where all those years ago her father had lost his head.

"Godswood would be a good place for a secret meeting. No one ever went to pray to the old goods when I stayed in the capital, no one but myself and a drunken fool," she said with bitterness Sandor could not understand, hating her for calling him a drunken fool, even if that was what he was. A fool. Only the drink was gone and there was no other remedy in the realm to make his existence more bearable.

"I imagine King Aerys's court was no different," she concluded.

"We don't have a parchment-" Sandor Clegane tried to say, resisting her.

"-You didn't need one in the firepit when we faced the Brotherhood without Banners. I know you didn't read then, or listened to the prompting. You spoke your mind! And it worked! To know that my father never wanted to betray her, true or not, has broken the monster that my mother has become. You made it sound true and that was the most important. Why are these people any different?"

The Hound lost and she knew it when she pleaded: "It is only for a short time... Even if the singer is what they say he is, a wildling and a traitor, he was good to us for a time being. We owe him this kindness in return..."

They had to stop yelling because three serving women approached with empty water jugs, and silently sat in the grass next to the first tree in the grove framing one dead and one living weirwood. They giggled like girls. The Hound tried to think of what he could say as a farewell if he had been a handsome silver-haired prince taking leave of a warrior maiden. His head was empty for he was a miserable ugly bastard and no one would bother if he lived or died. The Elder Brother might, a strange thought came to him, but only because of his endless faith. Not because he cared for a maimed dog.

The Hound turned away from Sansa. Only to witness the people gathering. More and more soldiers came, from both Ser Daven, and Ser Bonifer. A cow mooed behind, from a commoner too cautious to leave it in the scarce pastures of Harrenhal, so it also came to watch the show. Mummery it is, he thought. If they want more lies, that is what they will get.

The cries could be heard from afar: "Mummery! Mummery in the godswood!"

Whatever Gendry heralded to the people, it has worked miracles in terms of distraction.

The place for prayers to the trees in Harrenhal, inhabited only by the winds since the abandon of the old gods in the south, was more packed than ever in its long past. Planted in Dawn Age, at the beginning of times when the children of the forest still walked alone, not hindered by the First Men, the godswood was so full that it could not harbour another mortal soul. Eyes peered among the trees, legs stood still and arms were folded in front of many different chests heaving in expectation. The community held its joint breath and waited for the show, not daring to break the heavy silence with a single cough. The calm was thick and demanding when Sandor finally dared to look at Sansa, who sat carefully on the large weirwood stump, wiggling her bare feet in the air, the slightly raised skirts revealing perfect white ankles that never walked in the fields, never touched the harsh ground or stone.

Her boots were discarded in front of the heart tree and despite showing it earlier, she wore no mask. She held a branch of red leaves in her hand, and he felt compelled to approach her.

Sandor Clegane was glad for a visor of his own helm, and the monk's cowl on top of it. It was a bit too warm in it all, but the face he wore was not the one he'd wish anyone to see. The face of a monster in love.

"My prince," she spoke evenly, a bird well trained, her voice balanced like the night after the Tourney of the Hand when she put all that Gregor was to rest in only two sentences and nine true words. No one could withstand him and he was no true knight, she had said. And Sandor Clegane knew that he was never going to be able to forget her. "If I make a request of you, will you honour it?" she asked from a weirwood throne different than her mother's. Majestic. Kind.

"As my lady commands," he rattled the empty courtesy as if he'd been a parrot from the Summer Isles for a change.

"We are not free to do as we please. You are married to a most kind and beautiful woman and I am betrothed to a good man. I begin to know you now, my prince, and see that you, as well as I, will want to hold true to your word."

"As my lady says," he said back, his head empty of all words, true or false, making a step closer to the centre of his world, twiddling her pale feet in the crispy air of the early afternoon.

"We will do our duty," she said. "But this one thing we may allow us, to say farewell in all honesty. What do you say?"

He approached her, mute as a rock, only a step away. He said, not knowing where the words had come from. "I do not wish this to be our farewell."

"Neither do I," she replied, "but it is so, nevertheless. Come!"

Sansa stood up on the trunk of the white tree when he obeyed her and stepped all the way forward, acutely aware of the ruin of his scars which could never be hidden enough from the world. He instinctively turned them to face the heart tree and away from the curious eyes, forgetting they were under the helm, and the hood. Sansa was a good head taller than him then, and that was out of the ordinary.

"Before I leave, and return to the north, I wish you to know, beyond any doubt, of what could have been. Consider it a parting gift, offered against my better judgement."

No one could prepare the Hound for what had happened then.

Sansa pulled the visor of his helm up, with fingers used to helping brothers and cousins, and the gods knew who else out of their armour. At the same time, a torrent of red hair was released, showering his face in its entirety, hiding it from view, covering it better than his own lank black hair ever could. The snarling dog receded under the monk's cowl just far enough that his entire face was bare, but only to Sansa. She grasped his neck with one hand, as if looking for direction, and without any hesitation, revulsion or flinching, pressed her lips to his.

All the words came back to Sandor Clegane then, but they couldn't leave his mouth. Not at that moment for it was invaded in a sweetest way. He even forgot to check if she was looking at him, or closed her eyes, his obsession that she should look at him irreparably lost in that moment. His hands found her body and held her close.

You started this, he thought. And a dog will bite if tempted for too long.

He kissed her like he never kissed anyone, hungry and desperate, waiting for her to stop the madness, to realise what they were doing, that people were watching...

But she'd have none of that. It was she who bit him first, on the scarred part of his lips, leaving her mark on his flesh, gentle, but unyielding, and the Hound could understand very well why Baelish wanted to kill them all to get back what he almost lost.

Sandor Clegane would destroy a kingdom, just like Rhaegar did, if only he could have her all for himself. The scraps from his masters' table would never be enough when it came to Sansa Stark.

He wished she would kiss his scars, and not only his lips, imagining that he could sense it, knowing he could not. It would be a monstrous thing to ask anyone to touch that. He wished she would love him, and hated himself for all his wishes.

The thing was, he didn't deserve her, and the other men had already taken her before she could even learn to look at his face.

So he sank to his knees and buried his head in her stomach in despair, hiding his face completely, gripping her waist to savour the miracle while it lasted.

"I burn for you," he said, "and it burns me to know that you will never, never be mine."

Leaving her lips in peace was like coming down from the clouds. There were one too many soldiers in the castle for two men and a boy to outsmart them or defeat them. Corbray and Blackwood could not be trusted, and revealing himself to Daven was a last resort idea, and not a particularly good one at that.

The Hound knew he could not just leave Sansa to Baelish and walk away. He had already left her once.

So he had to say, never showing his face, hoping she'd understand: "If I am not there for you, and you need help at court, trust Ser Arthur above all others, above your father. He may come out for you even when it seems unlikely. Not because of me, but because he is not a bad man."

"But what harm could befall the crown prince in his own court, I do not understand," she said, sounding differently than ever before, serious, sad, but not afraid, not afraid of him...

"Ser Arthur may not seem it, but he's the best of them all," he insisted and saw she finally understood.

If I die today, the only one who may protect you from Baelish is Jaime, he wished to tell her in plain Common Tongue, but he could not.

The terror of his helm and the monk's hood were placed back on his head, more gently than ever, and he couldn't remember how he stood up. He couldn't remember how he helped her put her boots back on.

He'd always remember how the brave soldiers cried liked small children instead of cheering when the mummery ended.

The washerwoman eager to see men as gods made them, stood in a first row, unable to part her eyes from the couple in front of the heart tree, smelling a half dried yellow flower in her right hand, using the left one to dry a single tear.

Jaime

"What if Lady Sansa makes trouble?" Brienne asked, sullen, glaring at Jaime from her steed, when they had left the others far behind. Her words were filled with contempt the courtiers used, ever since he stabbed Aerys, to gossip behind his back. But only the sapphire lady had the courage to shove it in his face since he was still a lice-infested prisoner of Lady Catelyn Stark.

Jaime had to smile.

"I admitted to being an idiot, in front of Ser Shadrich," he said, "but not a complete fool".

A pair of blue eyes waited for him to continue, still angry with him as seven hells.

"Must be there's something of my father in me anyways. I didn't doubt Baelish for a second when he tricked me to order Daven to kill the singer if necessary. That was his win. I had no idea. But when Littlefinger left us, I told Daven to keep Lady Sansa, Elder Brother and Brother Gravedigger safe and sound until I returned, and I specified that safe meant he should leave neither of the three alone in custody of Littlefinger or any of his soldiers if he valued his life."

Jaime thoroughly enjoyed how Brienne's shoulders were not tense anymore. Almost riding her down to come close enough, he squeezed his legs tight not to fall out of the saddle, and moved a short strand of very light bristle hair out of her eyes.

"There," he said, "it suits you better, my lady"

After riding for some time, she seemed almost at ease with him again.

"Ser Daven does not know that Brother Gravedigger is the Hound, does he?" she asked, carefully.

"Sandor wanted it that way. He was never very open minded with people if you get my meaning. I let him be."

"You call him by his first name. Is it because he was the servant of your family?"

"I call you by your first name. Do you feel like my servant?" he asked her, accusingly.

"No", she said, honest as ever. "More like your friend. But high lords do not befriend ladies."

"Well, lads befriend wenches, I'd say. And you got me there. Sandor and very few others came as close as possible to being friends of mine in Casterly Rock. Almost friends, mind you, for I was the lord's eldest get, so I had none."

Only a secret too precious to behold, too dark to reveal, and too sweet to live by anything else, he told himself in his mind, cursing his weakness, and thinking of his sister.

"You spoke almost like a commoner, now," she observed.

"I did," he answered, "I used to do it a lot when I was a boy with the soldiers in the household. It angered my father, but it made my brother laugh."

"It fits you," she said, embarrassed for saying something like that at all.

"Brienne, you wound me," he jested, whistling merrily a few lines from the 'Bear and the Maiden Fair'. "You know what a commoner as strong as me would have done to a big wench like you, don't you, by now?"

She was redder than the crimson of Cersei's wedding gown, and Jaime, more than ever, felt like a man.

"Where do you think Baelish will make his move?" Brienne asked when she managed to speak again.

"In Harrenhal," Jaime said, his forehead suddenly wrinkled like a sky filling up with clouds before the rain. "And the gods only know what poor Daven will make out of my confused and contradictory commands. We should better make haste.

Robert Baratheon's son

Gendry leaned on his hammer next to the dais that once contained a gibbet, trying to keep calm. The Elder Brother and the Lady Sansa were not there, which was not a bad sign in itself. The hulking monk faced him, all the way on the other side of the wooden dais where Mance Rayder, the King-beyond-the-Wall, as Gendry finally learned the correct title, was to take a last walk of his life.

The prisoner came out, wearing a black tunic and his odd black and white cloak. One of his eyes was black, and his trousers cut open on several places. His hands were tied with hempen rope and he walked meekly, a tangle of hair, dark and grey, framing the face of one resigned to his fate.

He was supposed to have run away, and him being there, that was a bad sign.

Littlefinger stepped forward and spoke in his lordly voice, stern and fake, but the corners of his eyes were singing with joy.

"In the name of His Grace King Tommen of House Lannister and Baratheon, First of His Name, King of the Andals, the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm, by the word of Petyr, of House Baelish, Lord Paramount of the Trident and Lord Protector of the Vale, I sentence you to die."

"Behold the demise of Mance Rayder, a wildling and a traitor, presuming to call himself King-beyond-the-Wall," the kind lordly voice continued, proclaiming the end of the horrors all in the south recalled when the legendary enemy was mentioned.

Old women said Mance Rayder ate children for breakfast, or drank blood of the captured men of the Night's Watch. Strong men believed that an army of Wildlings would descend upon the peaceful villages of the Seven Kingdoms and kill everyone in their sleep if the Night's Watch was not careful. For it was widely known that the men north of the Wall observed no gods, no laws, and only lived to commit murder and plunder, and be killed in return. They were animals. They were not people.

"Did you presume I would not know?" Lord Baelish asked, triumphant. "I suspected you from the first day, Mance. I lured you here where I could be sure to bring you to justice with the help of the Lady Sansa. Didn't you find it suspicious that she wanted to come to Harrenhal in support of my plans? My Alayne has been working with me all along!"

Baelish searched the crowd, but just like Gendry, he could not see the lady. That is already better, thought Gendry, taking what hope he could, staring at the round attentive faces of the soldiers and smallfolk, and seeing how they were all afraid.

It was late in the afternoon and they wanted to see the blood of the singer whose verses they applauded in the morning.

They would cheer for Littlefinger now, they would bow to anyone who would promise to alleviate their fears, not asking too many questions of their new lord and master. The peasants prayed to plant one more crop, before the winter or another army take it. The soldiers yearned for a truce, to receive payment for their services, to waste them on cheap pleasures until their liege lords would call the banners again.

Ser Daven handed Lord Baelish the sword.

"Oh, I could not," Littlefinger excused himself, showing the empty sleeve under his expensive doublet, embroidered with gold. "Ser Daven, would you do me the honour, or name the executioner of your own choosing. Let's get this over with."

Ser Daven obliged and walked to the block, motioning to his soldiers to bring forth the prisoner. Before they could obey, the wildling walked himself in measured steps to the piece of wood, oak, or birch, Gendry thought. It was dull brown, not white, not a white tree of the north.

The death from the south for a man from the north, Gendry felt sick, observing the prisoner bending slowly.

But instead of kneeling next to the block the King-beyond-the-Wall lowered his torn trousers and stepped out of them. With ease, he tossed them carelessly down from the dais where he was to be beheaded, deep into the yellow mud. The non-kingly gesture revealed a long strap of scarred flesh on both legs, in a straight line from his buttocks to his heels. The barely healed injuries pierced the eye, bright red and horribly regular, executed with the precision only human cruelty could muster. He made sure that Lord Baelish would see the old wounds before he approached the block and knelt, not putting the head down, yet.

Mance spoke just as he looked: dark wings, and even darker words. "I heard it was customary among you, kneelers, for a prisoner to stand trial, or at least for a man sentenced to die to be allowed to speak before his beheading is carried out. Do you not respect your own laws?"

"Do you deny that you are Mance Rayder, the King-beyond-the-Wall, whose head is forfeit in the Seven Kingdoms?" asked Ser Daven, politely.

"Aye, I am Mance Rayder," the prisoner replied. "But I never called myself King-beyond-the-Wall nor have my people ever called me that. It is the names you kneelers gave me. How can I be at fault over a name invented by others? Is being given a name by folk I have never met a breach of your southern laws? If I call you Kings-beyond-the-Gallows, my lords, will your lives be forfeit among my people, beyond the Wall?"

"His people!" Baelish snorted. "You presume to talk of your people as if you were a king and not a pretender, an impostor and a murderer!"

"An impostor and a murderer!" Mance echoed. "Choice words, my lord, for one as honourable as you."

"Ser Daven, bring us his head!" Baelish tried to speak as King Joffrey did when he ordered the head of Lord Eddard Stark, but Harrenhal was not King's Landing and his attempt did not stop the prisoner from talking.

"I was no king," Mance said. "But I had a people. They called me Mance for that is my name. And they didn't follow the title you invented for me in the south. They followed me. The man."

"Are you quite done speaking?" asked Lord Baelish, impatient, his eyes twinkling with a sureness of the impending victory.

"Only my last words, a question, to Lord Baelish, Ser Daven, if I may."

The blond curly knight nodded, unable to resist the courtesy he was offered, and the wildling spoke in a voice sharper than steel.

"Tell me, Lord Baelish, what was the only mistake Ramsay Bolton ever made?"

"Ramsay Snow may have made a mistake or two in his youth, regrettable things, yes, and understandable given his age. But since he was legitimized by the rightful king, Ser Ramsay Bolton, Lord of Winterfell, and lawful son to Roose Bolton, Lord of Dreadfort and the Warden of the North, made none!" dictated Baelish, self-assured as if he had still been the king's councillor in King's Landing.

"Oh, but he did," Mance said simply, "he didn't kill me when he had a chance."