Warning for bad language

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Chapter 23

The Champion of the Faith

Where Sandor loses it a bit

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Septa Lemore

"Ashara, wake up," said Tyene Sand, nervously scratching her headdress worthy of a devoted septa, which lay heavy on her hair like a nest of exotic birds. "You haven't been well."

A septa with grey eyes which could have been purple in a different light stood up nervously from a humble wooden pallet in a dwelling they both occupied in the grey home of the Faith only a few streets away from the Great Sept of Baelor. The ashy interior could not be more different than the airy spaces adorned with precious crystals where the faithful of the Seven gathered to worship.

"The foreign monk wanted to examine you by force," Tyene continued. "I didn't let him."

"You did well," Septa Lemore said to her younger companion. "The fewer people know about me, the better. And you should remember not to use that name. Lemore is a better one."

"As if the monk would know Lady Ashara Dayne," the darker of the two women said stubbornly. "Tyene!" her friend protested, making the same mistake by not calling the younger woman Septa Tyene.

The natural daughter of Prince Oberyn Martell, graceful as a sandstorm, was not intimidated at all by the four grey-coloured and possibly hollow walls of their room. "He may be older than you but you have been thought dead since the Usurper came to the Iron Throne. In the unlikely case that he would recognise you, I did some asking about the Elder Brother from the Quiet Isle. He was a miserable hedge knight from the Reach, called Randyll, imagine, like old soldier Tarly. The only good thing about him is that he had the common sense to fight in Rhaegar's army at the Trident. He has turned into an insipid benefactor and healer of the poor ever since."

"In truth, my blood ran cold of how the High Septon looked at that monk. If looks could kill, his would. I wouldn't want him to look at Aegon that way," the other woman complained. "Not in a thousand years!"

"High Septon is ours," Tyene said with conviction. "We need him to give his blessing to Aegon before Daenerys comes. Than hopefully his aunt should accept his claim and the kingdoms will be spared a clash among the living Targaryens..."

"Blessings, claims, kingdoms, living Targaryens…" Septa Lemore sighed. "Jon sent a raven that Aegon went missing on a fool's errand in the riverlands. After so much grooming he proves as reckless as his father. They found him in a strange company which he refused to leave."

"What company?"

"Jon wouldn't tell in a letter. Ravens have wings and walls have ears. Nothing is safe."

"That much is true," Tyene agreed but there was more on her mind and she would bring it forward as was her wont. "Be as it may, we will see soon enough. But tell me, why did the looks of that monk upset you so? Don't lie to me, Septa Lemore. It was not the High Septon at first."

An answer was long forthcoming in the gloom.

"Among other things, he reminded me of my brother," the older woman finally said, turning her back on Tyene to stare through the sole small window of the room. "It was as if a dead man rose to life in front of my eyes."

"Forgive me, but Arthur was almost as silver-haired as Rhaegar, more so than his living cousin Gerold Dayne the Darkstar, and also very handsome. This monk was so barren and bald. He had no spice at all, my friend. The only thing I found appealing was the iron colour of his voice. The kind that people would listen to. Was that the voice of your brother?"

"I think so..." Septa Lemore said softly. "I haven't heard Arthur for so long that I have almost forgotten the sound of his voice. Sad, isn't it? How everything is forgotten and the debts of blood are not paid..."

"They will be.." the new thought of Tyene Sand was cut in half by the mighty calls of a herald, drumming on the street under the window of their cell, small and cramped, with only two hard beds and four walls of stone.

"…to hold high the lamp of the Crone!"

"Others take me," Septa Lemore cursed, listening carefully to the proclamation, leaning to the window sill for balance.

"The Elder Brother from the Quiet Isle! The champion chosen by His Holiness the High Septon to fight against Ser Robert Strong, the champion of the Queen Regent!"

"Maybe you were right about fearing His Holiness, Ashara," Tyene commented. "He does seem to have a way of dealing with his enemies. This is no good. Cersei will still be alive and well when Aegon arrives if this mockery of the trial takes place. Blood will flow when he takes the capital! That monk is as much of a soldier as I am a man! He cannot hope to win!"

"Tyene, listen to me," the older woman said with passion, turning away from the drums and the flutes below to face her friend. "That monk is not my brother, but assuming for the moment that he was, which weapon did Arthur wield even better than Dawn?"

"His lance, of course, Arthur was excellent in jousting, almost as good as Rhaegar who was the best of his time, but why…"

"Tyene, do me this favour. Think of this monk as Arthur come to life and you will serve Aegon's cause well. Go and do what you know best, convince the High Septon that the fight should be a joust, at the plaza of the sept, for instance. Tell him some sweet words of how the poor love jousting, so it will make them love him all the more."

"Why don't you give him Arthurs's sword if you fancy him to be your brother?" Tyene could not understand.

"I intended to surrender Dawn to Aegon when he takes the capital. It is high time to do that. I am sure that both Arthur and Rhaegar would approve if they were alive."

"Sound idea. Valyrian steel for the last son of the old Valyria…If we forget for a moment that a daughter of old Valyria is coming after all of us riding a dragon…" Tyene frowned thoughtfully and the wrinkles on her young forehead resembled the ever changing movement of the hot sand in the faraway deserts of Dorne.

"Daenerys is a woman. She will have understanding," Septa Lemore observed.

"Targaryens never had any. It is an idle hope. Our only hope lies in crowning Aegon before she claims the throne for herself."

"One Targaryen had a kind word for everything and everyone," Lemore said, melancholy taking hold of her dark eyes.

"Yes, and for that he ended up dead in the Trident before the Usurper burned his body. The great river ran red with blood of friend and foe for days. Pieces of Rhaegar's funeral pyre drifted in the stream, together with the rubies from his armour, as prey for brigands and beasts! Daenerys knows all that and she will seek revenge. She razed the whole cities to the ground across the water!" Tyene sat on the window sill in a very non septa-like manner, lithe tanned legs protruding from under her robes. "Prince Quentyn perished on the way and failed to approach her on time. She will not believe that Aegon is her nephew whom Varys saved from certain death. Especially if the Usurper's son in all but blood, Tommen Baratheon, and his mother, are still alive, and Varys again a mere servant at their court. Now, if Lyanna and her baby didn't die at birth, then maybe…"

"All that is old history, Tyene," Septa Lemore said with dryness that killed the argument, more deadly than the looks of His Holiness could ever be.

In a much lighter tone, she continued. "Right now, you're going to visit the High Septon, or I will change into a peasant wench and get you to a winesink. These robes grow heavy on you. You should take a lover! It would make you talk less."

"And risk that some sparrow catches me in the act?"

"Tyene, Tyene, Tyene, constant penitence has made you cold," older septa mocked her friend. "And then you mock me that since I lived across the sea, I no longer sound like a woman from Dorne."

"Ashara," Tyene promised, forgetting again that she should not use the older woman's name, "when this is over we will ride fast to Sunspear on swift horses from Uncle Doran, and have all the lovers we want. You can even take your bald monk of the Seven if that is your desire!"

With the last words Tyene slipped down from the window, and out of the room, missing a sewing needle that the other woman threw after her by a tiny inch.

Sandor

They have heard the heralds first while the Elder Brother was about to deliver a baby in Flea Bottom. Sandor Clegane stood immobile, watching and listening, petrified in an old habit of a sworn shield, witnessing how despite having heard every single word of the calls, the monk from the Quiet Isle did not blink an eye. He laboured with the woman, teaching her to breathe, hands full on, until his task was finished and a new born boy cleaned and safely tucked in his mother's arms.

"What is your name, brother?" the new mother asked, weak from the loss of blood. "I would wish to give him your name. At least one of us would have died without your help."

"I gave it up to serve the gods-" he started to explain, but a woman would not hear it. "Please, brother. You must still remember your name. Everyone does."

A dark-skinned septa, whose advice the High Septon recommended to them earlier, appeared running in the narrow street. She must have overheard the conversation for the home of the new mother and her son was more a half-open shelter from the rain, than a house of any kind.

"Name him Arthur," she gave an unsolicited piece of advice to the woman. "It's a good name. Better than Randyll."

"It is a good name," Elder Brother could agree, and in a curious manner the Hound would not expect from him, he wanted to know more. "Septa Tyene, how do you know the name my mother gave me?"

"Everyone knows the champion of the Faith," the young septa smirked in both amusement and malice, and simply ran further, swifter than a snake.

"Come," the Hound finally found his burnt voice. "Stop pretending you didn't hear it. You swore once not to speak, but never to close your eyes and ears. Not even your gods can ask for that."

They ended up seated in the first winesink they could find, in the place where the poorest of the poor in King's Landing spent their lives. Sandor led the way, placid as a good host tending to a guest just arrived to an unknown city. The Elder Brother did not object, thus betraying he'd been somewhat affected by the proclamation in the very least. Soon both men nursed a small flagon of Dornish sour, and the eyes and the nostrils of the Hound widened strangely at the smell and the taste of wine long forgotten.

"I will fight in your stead," Sandor Clegane said to the Elder Brother, in a voice that brooked no disagreement. "That's what His Holy Arse wants."

"That's what he may have wanted before this morning," the Elder Brother corrected him gently. "But the champion of the Faith has to belong to the Faith. You made no vows. I spoke imprudently on the stairs of the sept and it was easy to announce my name as the one chosen by the gods. The sparrows will spread the news to all corners of the town and make it impossible for me to refuse with honour. I should better prepare and meditate in silence. The gods will guide my hand."

"Honour!" Sandor Clegane scorned the silly notion. "What does honour have to do with anything?"

The Hound could not stand the meekness with which the Elder Brother seemed to accept his adverse fate, with the same placid condescension that he always imagined Sansa must have shown when she walked right into her marriage bed and spread her legs out wide for the Imp. So he tried again, fighting hard to muster his anger and speak with reason. "They say that the queen's champion is taller than my late brother and I have told you everything there was to know about him when he was merely a mercenary killing for Lord Tywin or for his own account. Ser Robert Strong is not a noble name, he could be called Waters, or Rivers, or Snow for all I care. This is some witchcraft, it has to be."

"He is a member of the Kingsguard, there is no way that the king would shame himself so by naming a bastard, or worse-" the Elder Brother objected. "-What do you expect from the Boy King and the Whore Queen?" the Hound spat out. "Cersei would have had a bear named to be a sworn Brother of the Kingsguard if it would save her lion cunt! Even one of those grumkins of the north if she could get her hands on it to serve her needs… And Tommen probably still thinks that the royal seal is a handsome toy..."

The shared memory of the blue-eyed foe made of ice turned their talk silent, almost unreal in the golden autumn of the capital where the only thing molesting the joy of the senses was the insistent stench of the streets around them. The twisting alleys of Flea Bottom were the only place in Westeros where the contents of the chamber pots emptied behind the houses stank as much as did the people.

"But the High Septon is my friend," the Elder Brother announced, believing every word.

"Aye," the Hound found the only possible answer to that, turning his burns towards his adoptive brother. "And Gregor was my brother."

"Whatever," the monk finally said, way too briefly, with odd recklessness Sandor would never expect from him. "I have seen more name days than you and forgive me the observation but it seems to me that of late you have more reason to stay alive than I."

"What is on your mind?" the Hound emptied his flagon in a single pull, slamming it on the table so hard that the rickety board almost broke. "Explain!"

"The lady has eyes for you of late. When you are not watching. But I could always see things and-"

"-Lady what? She's in love with the bloody mummery!" the Hound tried to deny as harshly as he could the sweetness of the night spent kissing Sansa, ashamed of his weakness for enjoying such a simple thing where he was a man grown and should have taken much more… or so said the familiar snarling monster slowly stirred awake by wine inside his brains… The Elder Brother would get killed by some abomination made of his brother. Sansa would come to her senses and see his scars in broad daylight and forget what she had asked of him… To be sure… That had to be the way of it.

"Besides," the Hound spoke with anger, "if you can see things, how is it that you don't see that your friend means to kill you. He already meant to in the sept, and now he has found a nice lawful way to get rid of you."

"Brother," the Elder Brother's dark eyes pierced those of the Hound, pleading, conflicted and on the verge of tears, searching for approval or a form of friendship at the very least. They betrayed a tremendous doubt in everyone and everything that Sandor Clegane had never seen before in a man who had saved his life.

"Can't you understand?" the Elder Brother supplicated. "It is as if I have to do this. As if this was the reason why the gods have sent me to the capital that has now been revealed..."

The Hound stood abruptly on his two strong feet. He needed much more wine and of the better quality than the piss they were drinking if he was to swallow that kind of horseshit.

"Brother? What's wrong?" the Elder Brother asked of him in apprehension.

"Suit yourself," the younger man barked. "There is no such thing as the reason why gods have sent us to do anything. It is only you who wants to do it. And if you want to fight whatever they had made out of my brother, please, by all means, do it. Die as you wish! As will I."

And with those words he stormed out, steaming, leaving the Elder Brother to await his destiny all alone.

Jaime

They were lucky that Cersei dressed lavishly even when she visited the dungeons so they heard the rustle of her silks just on time to hide Brienne under the floor of the cell. Jaime tried to pull an indifferent face and avoided the look of her green eyes mirroring his own, afraid she would read his treason in them, written in golden capital letters.

"Sweet brother," she said immediately, breathless from her walk down the many winding stairs, "what do you know of this Elder Brother of the Quiet Isle?"

"Why now, sweet sister? The man is as simple as he is blessedly devoted to the Faith. Besides, he is not your type…"

The slap found his cheek, probably not half as strong as the one Brienne gave to Ser Hyle when he had tried to kiss her, but it hurt nonetheless.

"Don't be an idiot, Jaime. The Holy Sparrow, who is to my disgrace a much more dangerous enemy than I initially believed him to be, named him the Faith's champion. This monk must have some weapon or ability that we don't know of."

Jaime had to deny this, remembering the holy man who unceremoniously stomped out the fire destined to burn him and Brienne. "Cersei, he is older than us and he is no warrior. Just a peace loving monk who helps the innocent and the poor. A kind of man who would get himself killed for his neighbour if he believed him to be just. I don't see how he could possibly prevail over Ser Robert Strong I had the honour to meet in the throne room."

"Still…" Cersei paced around him, fighting her nervousness, and Jaime had to position himself in the middle to avoid that she stumbles into the hidden hole in the ground. As a consequence, he stood so odd that his knees hurt. He knew that he would not be able to maintain the posture for long.

"The Faith demanded a joust… Why would they do that if they weren't hiding something?" Cersei wanted to know.

"Perhaps you should ask His Holiness," Jaime suggested. "But if you ask me, this man can win only if the Seven miraculously give strength to his arm. And I stopped believing in such nonsense long time ago."

"Qyburn tells me no one can win over my champion. Only a person possessing a magic of old, or of the dragons who are all dead, could stand a chance. And there is no such person alive in Westeros."

Jaime unwillingly touched a black pendant under the coarse prisoner tunic on his neck, and instantly saw a pair of smooth long arms of a woman nervously clinging to a hiltless dagger in the impending darkness, probably hearing every word he and Cersei said. Wait, we have borrowed these from this Elder Brother. Magic! he thought and he rejected it. No. It can't be. That man is genuinely not rotten, just like Ned Stark had a mishap to be.

"Daenerys…" Jaime said instead, to stop the thoughts he could not share with his sister, spreading his arms like a blind bat to move both Cersei and himself away from the hole and toward the door. "-is not here!" she shot back. "Yet," Jaime stated with finality. "Cersei, you have to listen to me, please. We have to leave King's Landing. The sooner, the better."

"Father was right," his sister screamed, "you are a fool! And here I thought I might be able to count on you to do something for me."

"I have done too many things for you, sweet sister, and I will do many more," he told her, calm as a dungeon wall. "But I will not let you get yourself or Tommen killed."

"Oh no? And what will you do if their holy champion prevails? Wail in the dark? You're forgetting your place. I am the Queen Regent now!" she despised him and she would let it show. "I brought you something to ponder about your choices if your eyes are still good enough to see in the candlelight. Or maybe you lost your sight too when you lost your hand. Here!"

She left him a single candle burning, and than she hauled in a large heavy book she must have first left in front of the door of the cell.

"You don't deserve my mercy, or my love," she roared. "But you have it all the same. Best pray that Qyburn is right. Or I am sure that the Tyrells will arrange that an accident happens to you down here. Meanwhile, here's the damn thing you grew to love more than you have ever loved me."

She slammed him harsh in his chest with the hard covered book of more than a thousand pages, and hurried back up faster than when she came, panting. Jaime was left with the White Book of the Kingsguard, safely anchored between his strong arms.

He was certain that she would have hit him in the head, if only she equalled him in height.

For once, Jaime was glad that his twin sister and he were not exactly the same.

Sansa

The Elder Brother wandered to the fisherman's house all alone early in the afternoon, as a man who didn't know where he was going, his cowl wet with what may have been tears.

When Sansa asked if he had seen the Hound, he shrugged and climbed the city wall, dragging a saddlebag over his right shoulder. He scaled the masonry barefoot as if he were a great lizard and not a holy man, using every hollow in brick, mud and stone. On the top, he opened the bag and took out a broken lance, placing it carefully over his knees.

He stayed seated on the top, with only the broken weapon for company. In the distance, there was the sea, the glimmers of gold and blue bathing in the daylight.

When Sansa called to him, he refused to speak. She was reminded of Bran exploring the walls of Winterfell, and her heart ached. The thought of seeing the older man falling, broken like a heirloom of other times, lay heavy on her mind, so she begged him to come down. She even sang him softly a hymn to the Father and to the Smith. But the gods were deaf, and their servant lost to them, high up between the sea and the skies.

It did not help that the axe armoured sparrows and more refined Warrior's Sons with holy crystals in their swords followed after him from wherever he came from. More kept coming and going in small groups, to kneel under the wall and adore the holy champion of the faith, in confused whispers of prayers, awe and admiration.

"He will show to the world the true face of the queen," they said. "She hated the poor and let them starve. And now her hour has come."

When the evening came, Mance Rayder had had enough of hiding his uncouth face inside the house to avoid that some knight of the Faith who had been in Harrenhal recognises it and brings them trouble.

"Sansa," he said quietly from the inside. "Nymeria..." And Jon's sister immediately understood his counsel, fed up with the procession of the devote as a proper lady should never be.

"She is a sweet dog," she told the kneeling sparrows and the standing Warrior's Sons, five of them at that moment, when Nymeria answered her silent summon to stroll out of the house. The direwolf approached the men, a snarling menace ready to jump at the slightest provocation. "She guards this good house in the evening, my lords, the streets are full of non-trustworthy folk."

Nymeria jumped lazily at the first sparrow and tore off a piece of his patched breeches, grazing his dirty skin with her sharp teeth. "To me!" Sansa called her. "Good dog!" And then she spoke to the men who finally had the good sense to at least stand up. "My lords, perhaps you could continue your prayers somewhere else and leave us honest folk and the champion too, to have some rest. If not, how will his hand be strong as you wish for it to be, to defend your cause?"

"Mance," she said backwards to no one in particular when they all left. "Sandor..." And just like she took his meaning without many words, he willingly accepted hers, disappearing into the night with the rest of their company. Sansa was left with the Elder Brother, perched high up on the wall with the ruined lance, and the fisherman's family peering from their windows upstairs, in clear mistrust of their many tenants and their uninvited guests. Even Nymeria had to leave her to find some nourishment while the city remained plunged in the darkness.

They could not find him the entire night.

Gendry and Ser Daven led one rescue party but they returned empty-handed and fell into restless sleep.

Sansa needed only a gash over her throat to look worse than her not so dead mother in the early hours of the morning when Mance Rayder and Lord Blackwood finally dragged Sandor Clegane back to the house, dead drunk and heavy like a corpse.

The wildling and the riverlord had to use a cart the butchers would pull, with the carcasses of slaughtered pigs and aurochs always slightly hanging on the ground. Sandor's long legs swept the dust off the streets as they went, obscenely regular in his sullied breeches. His monk cloak was gone, lost only the Seven knew where. Only his own black clothing remained, covered in gore and dirt.

The ravens persecuting Lord Blackwood had wisely chosen to nest on the wall and forsake him, for the time being, at least. During the day they chirped at the praying sparrows as the messengers of doom, and their croaking always welcomed the company back to their temporary home.

"Sansa, here you have him," Mance said, wiping sweat from his forehead. "Try to get him conscious. Tytos and I will now bring the other one down from the wall, even if we have to set it apart, stone by stone."

"It would be for the best if we first poured a bucket of water over the Hound's head," Lord Blackwood said, "or he will oversleep the trial as a dog that he is."

"Blackwood, leave that choice to the lady. We have more work to do. Have you ever scaled a wall of the castle in a siege?" Mance asked and Blackwood followed him to the outside as if he was not a lord of the riverlands but a green man under the command of the King-beyond-the-Wall.

Sansa realised that no matter what happened, Mance never lost hope, never sat idle, and always tried to do something in all circumstances. No wonder he was able to survive everything he did, she thought, and it was not a small thing. Even his cloak made of human skin seemed less repulsive to Sansa in the gratitude of a single moment when the wildling let the Hound's body drop on the longest of all pallets they had, right under her two feet. She was exhausted from standing and waiting for the men to return.

The advice on water was also sound and Sansa found herself holding a full bucket of it, still vaguely smelling on fish. One, two, three… She closed her eyes and did it as fast as she could.

"Seven hells," a weak rasp came out of the Hound's mouth when the cold water hit him, and then he shook his head and hair like a proper dog in a bit more vigorous way. Nymeria growled at him weakly from the corner she occupied, recently returned from her night prowling of the streets, to digest whatever sustenance she took. Thinking of what Nymeria might be eating regularly made Sansa sick, and she preferred not to consider the matter.

"I am sorry," Sansa stuttered. Seeing her above him kept the Hound's grey eyes open, bloodshot and angry, the eyes of a killer she had not seen in a long while. "I had to wake you," she said. "You have to get well and help the Elder Brother. They say it will be a joust. You won the Hand's Tourney, you should be able to. We have only two days left to prepare."

"Seven hells, girl…" he said with revulsion. "Let me die piss drunk as I should have done after the Blackwater. Admit it, don't pretend otherwise, I am making you sick. And your chirping disgusts me. Always did."

"But you love me, you said so in your fever in Pennytree-" Sansa said without thinking and was met with a mean laugh from below. "Love you? What I would love to do to you, my lady, is to bury my cock between your thighs and slam it in you until you screamed. Harder than you ever did for the Imp, or anyone else. Is this the kind of love you dream oft? Go back to your stupid songs and leave me be..." he finished his hateful statement and closed his eyes, determined to deny her being there.

Sansa wanted to scream at his awful words but she found that the image they conveyed was too powerful to ignore. Her back tingled in awkward sensation and her legs seemed to have lost solidity, bending like grass, softer than two fragile cinnamon sticks collapsing under the weight of the desert they were designed to spice on the royal table.

That was what men did, she knew. To women, even to other men in some cases. It was what other men wanted from her, too. Tyrion, Marilion, Petyr, servants and stable boys in the Vale... But the thought of the Hound doing that made her head turn with treacherous thoughts of spreading her legs for him willingly, and brace herself for the pain, as a wife should do for her husband. If only he would kiss her first and take her in his arms as he did before his anger returned.

Instead of screaming, she chose to tell him the truth as she saw it. "That seems to be what most men want from me, so why should it appall me if you want the same?"

She missed the incredulous opening of his mouth when she begged him with all her heart: "Please, help the Elder Brother prepare for the trial by combat. Will you not? You saved him before."

"It is in vain," he muttered, somewhat calmer. "He is doomed to failure."

"You don't know that! Please!"

"You asked me to do this often," he pulled her down to lie next to him, his face painfully close to hers, and all she could do was hold her breath and fight the sickening smell of acid wine he exhaled. She went stiff and the tingling in her spine was replaced by the all consuming fear that for once he might make good on his terrible promises to her.

"See," he rasped with difficulty and without malice, "the little bird has already changed her mind."

With those words he turned his face away from her and passed out.