She woke to the sun setting, and the coughing of the Hound.
There was a small fire, crackling, and stretched above it on a spit was half a smoking hare. He'd washed his face of the blood and he was sitting in the smoke, chewing and coughing and looking at her. Without his plate, in only his filthy clothes, he wasn't much smaller, and that made her afraid again. He motioned and she walked over to the fire and sat huddled in her cloak. He eyed her. "Didn't run. Didn't think you would." He looked up at the treetops and she did too, to the cobalt sky above the clearing. "How do you like your new cage, little bird? Good deal bigger." He rose, sawed at the spit, and handed over a stringy thigh.
It wasn't all that pleasant, what with the dryness, but it was hot. They ate in silence together, the big man clearing his throat, she chewing and watching the fire. The weight of where she was landed heavy on her as she finished eating, and she felt a sudden desperation for comfort. There was none, and there wouldn't be, she realized, so she spoke to the man as a sorry consolation.
"Why did you go? Did someone tell you to take me?"
The Hound's eyes widened in the firelight, and he gave an echo of the laugh he'd had in her room.
"If they had, would you like this better?" She stared at him. "No, girl, I ran away, and I stole you, too. Do you picture Dontos' ship, circling the harbor? I bet that you do."
She started to cry, silently. He frowned at her. "Think you're the only one that's lost their home? I've nothing at all. You think I have a place in the North, people waiting? Stop crying." And she did, looking at his face and seeing the regret there, clear and bright and bitter. He's sorry he left. He's sorry he has me along. The regret twanged a chord of fear inside her. He was drunk when he took me; he wants to leave me now. The cold she felt when she looked at the man was nothing compared to the cold that filled her at the thought of waking up in the wood, to no one. Sansa wiped her face, composed herself, made herself look at him. There was a spray of dried blood up his left wrist. The hare. He was looking at the fire, not her, and his face was wretched. She forced herself to talk, to distract him from the regret.
"Why did you leave? You didn't say."
The firelight was dying and she could see the jut of his underlip, magnified by the shadow, as his frown deepened. "I ran away from the fire. You know why." She nodded, and he breathed, fixed his gaze on her, leaned back. "I don't know that you could smell it, in your room. But you did, at the stable. That smell, it was a hundred thousand men, burning. And those burning men?" He leaned forward. "They were running. They were running, on fire, all of them. It wasn't a battlefield, it wasn't– You wouldn't know. The water was on fire, everything–" She saw a sudden bright sheen on the good side of his throat, sweat caught in the stubble. "They were running at me. My own men. They didn't know me. They were all on fire. I fought and then I couldn't fight anymore and I left."
They sat in silence for a moment. "I got the horse and I drank. Packed the horse. My things, and a few things I'd been owed. Also," he paused, and the shadow of the uneven smile returned, "took away a few things, what I thought valuable."
He watched her fists curl and laughed. "Easy, it's the truth. I was going North anyway."
"Valuable? To sell?" Her voice was wavering again.
"Valuable of itself, and yes, valuable things are sold." He was laughing silently at her now, his grin wide and crooked from the scar.
"Why didn't you take Joff, then? If you were– If you…" Anger was closing her throat tight.
The man leaned back again, rested on his palms, and regarded her. "I suppose you're fit to judge the worth of the new king as any. Tell me, do you find him to have particular value?" He watched her hackles rise, then gave a diffident nod. "Much the same as I thought." To her surprise, a short burst of laughter came from her, and she put her hand over her mouth.
The man rose, stiffly, and kicked loam over the dying fire. She saw the embers swirl bright over his boot, and then it was blue-dark. She heard, rather than saw, him crackling through the brush, heard him talking to the horse in his tired voice. She toed her way to her pallet in the glowing blue. It was cold and smelled of sweat, and she felt movement scurry from under it as she crawled into it, but her legs were floating from exhaustion. A short while passed. She heard the crackle as he returned, and the clinking as he lay, but she was asleep before she could hear his slow breathing in the dark.