The Hound spurred the great horse away up the ridge, and their late afternoon was without incident. As the sun dropped, a cool wind rose up from the creek; the bank flattened and became wide, mossed. After the horse had been tethered on the bank and they had sat and eaten the rest of the hard cheese, he had bid her follow him into the wood.
It was that time of the early evening when the wood is awake again with all things– birds gusting in waves; every thicket besieged with a small war. The man stepped quiet through the wood, scanning, waiting while she untangled skirts, and finally stopped before an outcropping of dirt and root that held a warren-hole at its foot. He took the net she'd made from his hip and nodded to her for her attention, stooped to rub the net in the loam at his feet. He'd strung rope through the edges until it was as an onion bag; to the rope he'd tied a peg of branch, one end whittled sharp. She watched as he pressed the peg in beside the burrow and spread the net around the edges of the hole, dropping twigs over those edges to hold the net secure. Then he rose and dusted his hands, touched her shoulder and led her back through the wood to the bank of the creek.
"Easier when you've something to chase them out, but time'll have to do it." He smiled at her. "I'll set the spit. Get kindling, now, away from the bank, nothing green." She did, and as she gathered she looked at her hands. They were dirty and there was dirt far up under the quick of her nails. It smacked of commonness; she stopped and dug it out with a broken twig, wincing. When she came back with her bundle the spit was there and he was eying her.
"Do you remember where we left your net?"
"Yes, why? What happened?"
"Go and look after it. If it's full, bring it. If it's empty, be quiet and let it be." She looked at him but could find no retort, and walked to the burrow, following along the break in the brush her skirts had left. The wood was purple now and beautiful, beautiful, easy to look at and forget all else; she knew what was coming and hoped against it.
And then, of course, was the net drawn tight like a fist around a small struggling thing, peg holding it fast to the ground. She remembered how he'd laughed to himself when he'd shown her the knot. "Now I'll have you make lace," he'd said, laughing; she hadn't understood, then. Make lace. Make lace a weapon. She looked at the caught thing, its black-bead eye shining wide at her.
It was so easy to lift the net loose, watch the thing struggle out, watch it bound panicking back into its warren. She felt simultaneously her hunger and her relief. The rabbit, her hunger, the stranger in the night, his thin wife. No answer seemed correct; every answer had its own injustice. The rules of her courtesy had proven unequal to the game, but she had none to replace them. It was if she had forgotten her name and none had stepped up to present itself as the new one. She looked at the net until some sound made her turn and look into the brush behind her; there was the Hound, watching her, his face molten with disdain. His displeasure had not meant much to her in theory, when she'd turned over the net. With him standing there before her, it was, for some reason, crushing. He gazed at her.
"Poor bird. Is the world ugly, is it not as you'd thought? You'd fall back to your songs, then. But don't forget. I'm here. You can keep the songs. I'll be the ugly." His rasp was soft, but only with derision. He motioned to the net. "Glad I taught you, for the good it did." She was tired, couldn't keep from crying, not with his face, not with the wave of anger that was clenching her throat. The injustice of it all.
"That's how you fight? You weep? That's what you have?" He came closer, squatted down ten paces from her, tapped his knuckles to the ground. He was smiling his lopsided smile at her. "Fine weapon, tears. And your only one, too. Best you drink a lot of water; life's hard." Sudden rage disoriented her, took away her will to keep his eye. She could feel red creeping up her face.
"I'm a lady. I don't–" Her voice sounded garbled and too loud in the quiet wood, the words off, the words childish. He was silent, and the silence dragged on and on. Her tears slowed, but blood rushed in her ears. When she looked up again he was still squatting there, his eyes narrow, his burnt-mask face unreadable.
"A lady, then. Little lady, alone in the wood, watching your supper run away. Starks must think they can eat dignity. Let me warn you, your father lost his taste for it when he lost–"
She flew at him, squalling, and him laughing delightedly. Her clawing nails scrabbled, skittered over his glass-hard burnt cheek and fell into his laughing mouth. He gripped her shoulders and held her away from him at arm's length, and still she clawed the air in front of his face.
"That's right. That's how you fight it, isn't it?" His voice was soft again, but the mockery gone. Her hands dropped. She sobbed in his grip, her face a wash of mucus. He was staring at her, intent, his expression unfamiliar. Bright red streaks had sprung up across his good cheek and down to his throat.
"Do you want to die hungry in the wood? Is that how your pretty song ends? Doesn't seem fair after it all, does it?"
"No," she sobbed.
"Are you going to let it go again?" It was almost placatory.
"No. I won't. No." She breathed in, deep. I hate you. I'm losing my name more each day. He held her shoulders and drew her to him, slowly, until she was against his chest and could feel his slow heartbeat. That was too similar to her father, too similar to the princes in the stories of her childhood; she pushed him away. "I hate you. I hate you so much."
He threw back his head and laughed. The hands gripping her shoulders squeezed and then relaxed, then fell away. He was smiling, a hideous thing in the clear light. "Hate me all you care to, little bird. Hate me all through your dinner." He rose, dusted himself, and walked back out into the wood, smiling.
She did hate him, in fact, all through dinner. Through the fire he made, through the hour he was away in the brush where she stood by the horse and gritted her teeth, through the cleaning of the handful of rabbit he'd walked back with, and through the long while of silence that followed as he cooked and hummed and spat, and then handed over her smoldering portion. She thought of the bead but she ate anyway, as she had a hundred times before. She thought of Robb, the children's hunt coming back from the wood, her father smiling with his hand on Robb's shoulder and the doe bouncing limp, head hanging off the cart with black blood draining from its nostrils. She'd eaten that with great pride, hadn't she; hadn't all the children listened with gravity as Robb had recounted it to the men, hadn't the men nodded their approval and clapped her father on the back? Hadn't she eaten a thousand meals and never paid for one of them, never watched the bead widen in its terror; hadn't her long summer treated her well?
Then as the night stretched out and covered over their camp, she felt the hate ebb away, and felt betrayed that it should pass so quickly. It was replaced with a coldness. She hadn't looked at him for hours; she looked over the fire at him now. He was sitting crosslegged, his hauberk on his lap, scraping away the new rust; his tooth was on his lip in concentration. Looks like a dog, even. He felt her eye and looked up, frowning.
"It's rude to stare." The curtness, the mockery in his voice wasn't cruel, as it had been earlier, but it was still there. Perhaps that's the only way he can. She frowned back at him.
"Why did you want me to do that?"
"Nothing in the wood will come to you, girl." He nicked himself and, scowling, set the tooth again.
"But it's not something I would do." How does he not understand? I have a role.
"You'll learn what hunger'll have you do. Seems you ate what I brought anyway; but if you'll have no hares then you'll trap birds, I'll see to it. Better, maybe. If you eat only hare, you're sick after a while, and you die."
"Why, are they poisonous?"
He laughed and squinted at the chain in his lap, ignored her mockery. "Don't think so. Seems it's more that having too much of one thing builds up in you and takes your balance, and that's what makes you sick. I've noticed it with wine, myself." He was laughing. He's avoiding it.
She picked at her slipper and asked him again, and shook his head.
"Why the net? If I die–ah, and you'd like that, wouldn't you? You'd best know how to live, until you can find someone else." He glanced at her, narrow-eyed in the dark.
"Who else?" she demanded, thoughtlessly, and then averted her eyes from the answer in his blank stare. Who else? The swirling knot of dead men that had held her afloat– her father, her Jory, her father's guard, every one, Ser Dontos, most likely– they had culminated in this man across from her, scraping mail on his lap. She asked again, asked the true question.
"Why? Why did you take me?" She saw the well; she kept on. When he snarled, the fissures in his burnt jaw pleated together like black ribbons; she could see them pleated glossy in the firelight now.
"Why are you showing me all of these things? What do you want me to be?"
His good nostril flared, and he breathed loudly; her small jaw clicked as she set it.
"What did you do when they taught you to lie at King's Landing? You lied and lied. Butcher's boy? And your father, too, your brother, spoke against them, I remember. Learned well. Saved yourself." He bared his teeth, but it was no smile. "That's done and you're in the wood, same pretty lying thing, but lies won't help you now. Soon you'll be home, but your home is not what it was, I can tell you that. Your father's dead, sister's gone away, your brother's a boy at war. Your mother… Ah. I want you to see the world as it is. Start by seeing the wood as it is; start with the fucking net." He ducked his head back down.
The cold scales watched him duck his head to avoid her; it was the cold scales and not the child that asked him again.
"Why did you take me?"
He looked back up, and she saw faintly in the well a weakness, but it was a weakness she was too young to understand. He grimaced, shook his head. When he answered it was from the depth of the well, and it was more to himself than to the changeling across from him. "I took something I shouldn't have." He frowned at the mail. "It's better for you, than the other, at least."
"You put me in a sack, and you tied up my mouth."
He laughed at that, softly, scratching the burned side of his throat. "And I may again. Look at these battle wounds." He pointed to the streaks on his good side. "I'll be all over scar by the end, if you have your way." He had his uneven grin. He's glad I hurt him. Was it to prove he'd won? No, it's something else. She regarded him steadily. Was it her courtesy that he so disliked? Not that alone, it was the obedience. And yet he wanted her to do as he said. Maybe he just likes anger. He has enough of it himself, you'd think he'd be full to the top. She was suddenly tired. The wind was blowing the smoke of their small fire over to her, and her eyes felt raw.
"Go lie down. I need to do this." His head had ducked again, like an owl; he didn't look at her as she rose. She stood, looking down at him. He shook his chain out, eyed it, then one quick look up before setting back to the work. "We'll ride early on the morning." The day had been long; she felt muddled, and the anger had left her empty. She thought on the way he'd looked at her, when he'd held her shoulders. Pride, or something like it. Not about himself. It was because of me, for me. Why, why? I don't want the well. She picked her way to her pallet. It was colder, and the sharp wind threaded down through the trees. She lay on her back and watched the treetops sway, black against the deep blue. It was clear, the stars brilliant. Night birds called softly to each other. Her eyes closed; she was warming now. Far later in the night he lay on his pallet beside her, and she didn't stir at all.