He woke her at first light.
She had heard him start packing the horse through her sleep, and the horse tossed, irritated, and so her dreams had been filled with Robb in the stable, Robb making her ride and she protesting; Robb laughing and swatting at her in the great vaunted stables of their home. When the rough hand closed around her wrist she woke smiling, still at Robb, and then her eyes cleared.
The man in the pale light smiled back. Their smiles faded together. He said, "Yes," softly, to the disquiet in her eyes, and gripped the wrist harder to pull her to her feet.
She went out in the woods as far as she could bear and squatted, her dignity sore. When she came back she ate bread from her bag and watched him finish packing. He had an economy of motion that reminded her of her father, which both comforted and upset her. When the horse was packed he turned and picked her up and sat her on the giant thing without hardly looking at her, but she could see that his regret had largely passed. He was busy; he was planning the route.
They rode, steady, the Hound's breath warm on the cold crown of her head, and the wood passed by in jolting grey-green beauty. Early morning cackling birds, pockets of fog above small creeks, hares bounding from the brush with their ears back flat. The horse stopped occasionally of its own accord to drink, and sometimes just to stop, and blow. The Hound was silent and she was grateful for it, lost in the sea of thoughts of her home, her mother, and what she would say.
It was afternoon when they passed a thin man standing perfectly still in the shallow of a creek, holding a sharpened pole. Sansa was reminded of a quail she'd almost stepped on once, down by their old woodpile–it had been so still, hiding in plain sight–this man had the same drab brown plumage and the same rigid terror. He was looking at the Hound. She looked at the man. Does he live here? How can one do that? And they passed slowly by. The Hound patted her arm, a single pat, and said nothing.
They rode and rode, endless jolting, and as the sun was waning she was very sore, and felt at odds with the horse and with trying to keep herself from the chest behind her. She shifted, and shifted again. He moved forward, and she felt his hair brush her neck. He was looking down at her. "Lean," he said, a clipped command, and she stayed still. Then his arm, flat and broad as an oar, came around her ribs and pulled her back. "Lean. Go on." So she did, and fell into his rhythm. It was easier and it was warmer and she dozed against the oar.
As the sun set, she found that she and her companion had begun a routine. They slowed at a clearing and he set her down. The horse, brushed; the man, off in the wood crackling around and back with two hares dangling limp from his left hand. He cleaned them and set the spit, set the small fire, stretched, yawned, scratched his chest by the fire. The horse grazed behind them, a soft constant sound. And again she found herself before the fire, finished with eating and looking across at the Hound. He was sharpening, quick little rasp-rasps, the blade across his thigh. The part of her that was not afraid of him, that knew him, found it easier to speak to him in the dark.
"When you left. Joff would never have let you go. Did he know?"
He came back from wherever he was and focused on her. "He does now."
She squinted at him. "You just left? I think– he'll be so angry, though."
He regarded her steadily, his eyes all black in the low light. "I left, no matter. I would again." She didn't know what to say. There was silence, and she brushed through the ground's light loam with a knuckle.
"No one told me what he is, and he looked, well, he looked so–" She upturned a hand, not caring to admit how she'd found his looks to be, and the Hound leaned forward, grinning his crooked grin.
"You're wrong, he is what he looks. He looks a king and a king he is, bird, inside and out. What did you think a king is?"
She shook her head. "Everything was like a dream, and then…" Her voice trailed away, and his grin spread. "A dream? Your whole life is a dream. Took a bastard and Ilyn Payne himself to wake you. Not sure even that did the trick."
Bastard. He would tell the truth, if anyone would. "Do you mean that it's true?"
"What your father said. What the Hand before him said. They died for it. You doubt them now?"
"How are you sure?"
He shrugged, bent back down to his work. "I've half my life in their name, more than half. Came there from Gregor, younger than you; now I'm twenty-eight. When Joff was born, the Kingslayer was–" He described a circular motion in the air, "wild, I don't know, like he was in a frozen lake, on the wrong side. Cersei was pleased as a cat in the cream. She will gamble. And Joff, all gold. I remember, but I didn't see it, then. But the boy grew, and I took him over, as I was bid." He frowned down at the sword. The dark filled in the hollows of his eyes and jaw, made him look like a skull with lank hair. "Then, I saw. Robert's? He'd be bigger, and simpler, and other things, besides. Dark, like Robert. Rough." She stared at him, remembering the king's red face, Joff's ivory-gloss cheekbones. "And–But then, you didn't know Jaime. He's kind of reckless, a careless kind. Joff reeks of it. You well know that much." He smirked up at her. "Also, I'd been Cersei's guard, before. Easy enough to let your own guard down around your dog, and she did."
Sansa breathed. "But if you knew, then you knew he was never the prince."
He shrugged again. The minute rasp of his stone carried over the fire to her and his voice, husky like the stone, came along with it. There was wryness in it. "Tell me it isn't just. That court, tripping on its honor, with a cuckold and a drunk for a king. Those two yellow-headed fuckers–" Sansa couldn't bear his drooping grin, "that buggering dwarf, the Kingsguard. And, finally," He swiveled the sword to point at her from its rest on his knee, "a bastard, next on the throne."
He's telling the truth. "How could you let them? And just follow Joff, do anything he told you…"
"No, that's wrong. I didn't do everything he bid. What it was, he would only ask for what he knew I'd do." The smile grew, stretched his burnt lip to white. She remembered Arya's butcher's boy again. It's not the scar itself that is so bad, it's the scar behind the scar. I could have run, yesterday. What have I done? "Did you care for him at all?"
The smile fell. "Hate him as you will, little bird, but understand that he'd not much chance. His life was set for him when his mother chose her brother's bed. Bad enough, that, but they were together in the womb, even." He shook his head at his work. "Kingslayer knew the cost; he'd put Aerys down for madness, and it's clear how that madness came to be." The Hound looked up at her, and his voice was very low. "Wonder if he can bear to do the same when the new king's too sick to rule."
She shuddered and didn't want to look at him anymore. She looked at his boots instead, crossed over each other in the ashes. He stirred, gestured to her with his stone. "He was already gone wrong, far before you. Far before. He grew, and–well. He did things, every once in a while. Cersei hid them as best she could, but Robert found out. It was a shock to Robert; he's a simple man and he took it poor." The Hound shrugged slightly, as if to himself. "They gave him to me. I could handle the boy. I know that kind."
Sansa looked at his slick black scar, and felt a wave of understanding. Oh, but you do, don't you? She marveled for a moment at this glimpse of the Queen's mind. If she'd been the man, instead of the Kingslayer–it must haunt her, that throne. She did what she could to put herself on it, in Joff. To be a mother to that, and yet love him so. She spoke without thinking. "I thought to kill him, once."
He laughed. "You did, at that. And you would've. Both of you. Didn't think on it at all, I saw you. What a thing to your mother, her children falling from the sky like shot crows." She looked away from him, tilting her face upwards, and he let her blink til she regained her composure. "You'd not be the one to kill the king. It's beyond you, or I; it's theirs now. They'll fight it down to the end. Whoever's claw is sticking up from the mud's the winner, and they win what prize? A seat of knives, worn smooth by dead men." He gazed at her, the lines at the sides of his mouth dark in the shadow. "I'll take the wood, and gladly."
Is it so beyond me? "I am a Stark, of Winterfell."
"Pleased to hear that you recall, I'd thought you'd said you were the daughter of a traitor." Sansa felt her hands sweating, and relaxed their fists. "Stark or not, you're a woman. You'll not sit the throne. Not even Cersei could, for all her grasping."
"I think she sits it, some of the time."
The Hound dropped his head back and laughed. "I'll bet she does. When everyone's asleep." He was spluttering. When he came back, his grin was genuine. "No, little bird, you're right. She does, in her way. For what it's worth. Blackwater showed it weren't worth much." She left us when they lost. He settled back, still grinning, and brought his legs out to the fire. She stared for a while at the worn soles of his boots, then at her own. They were quiet for a while, him rasping, her tracing through the loam at her feet. A piece of bark all laced with worm tunnels almost looked covered in script in the soft light. She picked it up. It was beautiful, like a tiny maze. She turned it over, then, and saw that the rough backside was dotted with colorless spiders, and dropped it with a gasp. Everything in the wood has a bug on it, or is rotten on the underside. She thought of King's Landing, suddenly, and grimaced. Not just the in the wood, maybe. Maybe most places.
Her thoughts went to the Lannisters. She remembered Joffrey as she'd first seen him, his hair bright gold in the weak sun. His crisp jaw, the way he'd eyed her as he'd walked beside her, a lovely green glint shining at her for a moment. How her chest had burned at that slanted look. She thought of him, then of Cersei and the Kingslayer, together. It was a long time before she was aware that the Hound's rasping had stopped, and she looked over the fire at him. His arms and ankles were crossed, and his chin was on his chest. The sword had dropped, the pommel lying across his thigh. I could stand up and leave right now, she thought idly, just like falling off a walk with Joff's arm in my hand. I couldn't take Joff with me now, but I could take whatever I am. She sighed, and brought her knees to her chest.
The man across from her was still frightening, even crumpled in sleep. His face had slackened but the puckered scar had still not smoothed, and the light moving over it made him seem awake. My age more than twice over. Where will I be, when I'm his age? Sansa thought of Ser Dontos for a moment, and realized with a pang who she would've chosen, had she been given a choice. She watched the firelight on his face and thought of the story he'd told her, back there in the dark, on the way to her room. She'd promised never to tell, and she wouldn't; he'd handed over his dignity with that story, and he'd not meant to tell it at all, she was sure. She frowned at the sleeping man. He'll sell me, of course, but who shan't? My own father sold me to Robert, but it was Joffrey who paid him. The thought was blasphemous; she shut her eyes and kept them shut, and put her head against her knee. For a while she dreamt of her father, but it was the Hound's warm hand on her wrist that woke her, and after she'd stumbled over to her pallet, she didn't dream at all.