The way was seething with men shoving and running in the green dark. She rode jerking against the arm and watched as the great horse parted them in its wake, clanking, ears back. Men dove from it, and from the man above her, who was cursing and swinging and laughing. They don't even see me, they only see the horse, no one cares, no one knows. She gaped at the swirl of ash-covered faces below her; all were running and none met her eye, none saw her at all. We'll be stopped at the Iron Gate, he has no cloak now and no helm and they'll bring me back; and then she remembered his scarred face, and her chest ached. No, they'll know him, and they'll never stop him. The swirl of men became a crush; now there were women and men pushing barrows, pushing carts, there were wagons and goats, all tumbling together, and the black horse clove through them all. There were high screams under her and the horse stumbled but didn't slow. Does it think it's in war? and then she realized, dully, it is in war, we are in war.
The great grey portcullis in its stone wall loomed before them, wreathed in ash. Relief pounded through her, but then they were closer, and she saw. It's open. The Queen had it closed, how can it be open again? People were stumbling over lumpy piles in the mud all before the gate; from one lump, a single slender mailed arm reached straight up, the fingers bent.
"There's all your knights, girl, look. See that? By morn they'll be just a part of the road." His mutter was close above her ear. The horse trod over the shabby armoured piles, and when Sansa looked down, she saw a wagon rut etched over the dented backplate of a man buried facedown in the mud. She looked away, swimming, and the arm around her curled.
They were through the gate then, and the rush of men had not stopped. They were coming and going equally, in equal panic, hundreds of them, swarming and shouting. She saw, ahead, men and women crawling over an enormous tipped haywain that blocked the way, the muddy axles in the air, the downed team still. One woman was standing to the side of the road, screeching, holding her throat. Sansa met her gaze for a second, and the glassy eye rolled over her and away.
The man behind her shifted and the horse, blowing, stepped out of the mud of the road and into the wide gutter, then began picking its way through the brush. She felt brambles snagging her skirts, little bites pulling her. The wood was sparse and lit soft green from the clouds behind her, and soon the screaming from the road had faded to muted caws. People ran past through the brush, dark figures, not many and now, less. In the new quiet she could hear the horse's frothy blowing and the breathing of the man above her. It was still acrid, but it was steady and slow. Calm, she thought, all of this, and he's been calm, and she stilled, and watched the wood ahead, past the horse's nodding brow.