The cries broke off and became one: it tapered, shook, and it ended. There was a long hush– then steps in the brush coming for her. She sat astride her warhorse and waited with her knuckles in the mane, but it was the Hound that came stalking back through the wood.
A shallow red line ran from his collarbone to shoulder and his tunic hung in a slit from it, but his face was calm and watchful. He lifted his chin at her, made his way over and reached up to pull her from the horse, hard hands gentle around her ribs, and she was small again on the ground. She watched him run his hand down the horse's muzzle in atonement, also gentle; stretch up to pull off the tunic, frown at it. The blood had almost stopped but it ran with pink fluid. He wiped it with the wadded tunic. She clasped her hands behind her back and looked at him. For a while they stood facing each other in silence.
"You frightened me."
He nodded, a slow nod, calm and without apology. They regarded one another.
"You hit the horse so he would run, and then you killed all of them."
"I did." He shrugged, and grinned a narrow, mirthless grin, pressing closed the slit at his collarbone. It wept clear rose-tinged fluid as his palm slid over it. "How much should I ask for, from your people? What is it now, six men? No, seven. Those rats back there, the bastard at the inn, that headless shit... You're expensive."
"Eight," she said, thinking of the butcher boy, seeing the list clearly. And nine for my father, but that's mine, not his; and it can't be paid, it's fathomless.
The Hound regarded her through narrowed eyes and, misunderstanding, laughed. "You mean to add me, too? Cruel, but you've got the right of it." He dabbed at the rose gloss that was dripping down his chest, touched her shoulder with the other hand. "And how much did you hear of what that old fuck said? Tell me the truth."
"That you were going to sell me, but there was no one left– " She broke off. Of course, that was true, Robb was off fighting. But why did it still prick at her, what did that mean? She bore the weight of his stare for a while and finally he nodded.
"Mmm. All right. Not going to sell you, though, if that's what scared you."
It wasn't. She grimaced at him and murmured, "I'm worth a kingdom," in a flattened and ironic voice, and was surprised when he nodded and agreed, "Twice over," softly, without hesitation, without any qualification.
Not anymore, she thought.
He tucked his chin to look at the weeping line. "And you won't be selling me either, except for in pieces by the time we're through, if I keep on this way. Good thing I didn't duck. Look at this. It was that mole-looking bugger with the ears. I'll bet he died thinking he'd got me, but it was me that got him. He's probably in hell right now, looking around and wondering where I am."
For some reason, Sansa laughed, in spite of the twinge she had felt for the man– sympathy, perhaps, for his pathos and for the inevitability of his death. The Hound jerked his head up at her laughter and grinned sharp through the curtain of his hair at her, and turned to walk back towards the clearing, wiping at his arm. She followed him.
"Who were they? I thought they were knights, but their arms, they were all scratched away. And why are they–why were they here?"
He pushed a branch out of her way. "Who were they. Why not knights? You don't think knights are deserters and graverobbers, when they get a chance?" She opened her mouth at the word deserter but then put her head to the side and looked at him, and said nothing. "They were here for the same reason we are," he continued, "trying to get where they were going with their heads still on. You'll see how that worked out for them. And those arms weren't theirs. They robbed a battlefield. None of those arms meant a thing. Could be anyone's." His voice had taken on an unconvincing flatness and she glanced up to see his wary grey eye fixed at hers. He was, she reflected, still a rather poor liar for how often he did it; she wondered where the lie was in his words, what truth he was trying to cover up. "Every bit of that plate came from a corpse, and now it's a corpse wears it again," he muttered under his breath, "until the next hopeless fuck comes across it." Then, louder, "The arms don't matter."
She stopped short at this and looked closely at him for a moment, and then he grimaced and pushed forward, and was back in the clearing.
The men were still around the fire, but now they were all tumbled over each other and shining wet. The boy Robb's age was gone, she first thought, had crawled away, until she saw the dented cuirass with a dark glossiness in the hollow of the collar. His head lay beside him, turned away, looking like a lump of wet turf with an ear on the top; she was glad to not see his face, thin and brown and mutely accusing. The others looked like they'd fallen on command and stayed there, like mummers in a play. The old man had fallen back against the tumbled legs of his brethren, a pile of purple entrails steaming in his lap, and his jaw hung open. Before Sansa turned away she looked quick at his glassy grey eyes. How had he known who she was?
The Hound was digging through the sacks behind the fire. The mens' horses had fled from the cries– cheap mounts traded away for stolen arms, cheap swords lying idle in their hands just the same now, without worth. Not like the Hound's horse, not like the Hound's sword. He has some things to make up for the scar, maybe the gods do listen in a way. She stood there quietly and looked at the great disparity of war, of men, the astounding void between those that have and those that do not– she saw herself clearly, saw the gifts that had stacked themselves up in a glowing tower beside her trials, evening them, and she swallowed her nausea, stood humbled in the face of it.
The Hound turned and misread her expression, rasped past the bodies to her. "Those men would tear you apart if it wasn't for me." He stood up, absently wiping at the cut. "Believe it. But look at them now."
Instead she looked at the Hound, who was holding a cup he'd found and squinting judiciously at it. Tear me apart; and he'd killed them just like that. He sees the world the way he thinks it is and then he solves it with that sword. For a second–but only that–she recalled him that morning, fully absorbed in the hawk's nest, a gangly boy shining through his eyes; a tall, mistreated, thwarted little knight. But the old man hadn't wanted to tear her apart, of course. He wanted to steal her, just as the Hound had.
He rose from his pawing and nodded to her, tossed something bright over the pile of bodies. She fumbled but caught it; it was a rough brooch, ancient beaten gold, crude work, a man's head wearing a mask of leaves. She stared at it, turned it. She liked it, and she didn't–it was crude but beautiful; it came from the pocket of a dead man. She looked over at the Hound and saw him give her a slight shrug, thought, for some reason, of the inn, and again took the gift.
He found what he'd been looking for and poured some of the wine over the cut, hissing between his teeth as it touched, then sat by the bags and drank the rest and stretched and shivered. She sat by him, placed herself so the boy's head was hidden from her on the ground behind the pile, and looked at her brooch. He pointed at the pile of bodies.
"He wouldn't have got me at all–only, the old one distracted me." The Hound's voice was diffident, but held, strangely, a tinge of apology, and so she reached out, touched lightly above the cut, a soft acknowledgement, and nodded, and he nodded back to her and shrugged again. "He's the rats' problem now." He inspected the yellowish crust forming at his shoulder, and then lowered his head, looked at her from the corner of his eye, looked at the dented cuirass sitting upright before them. Sudden sly merriment trembled under his rasp as he leaned to her. "I suppose that plate would fit you, you know. First you'll have to get it off of him. Easier now that–"
She scowled and batted him away and rose, dusting her skirts, and he rocked with laughter that opened the cut again. He followed her past the heap of men back to the horse.
After they had ridden away the clearing was silent for some time. Then, slowly, patters came through the wood, soft steps. The brush waved a bit. A fox's bright head appeared and he slunk low to sniff at an outstretched hand; the leaves above them shivered and the crows dropped down: one, two, three. A small battalion began to amass–here a rat, there another, now a wave, delicate little things dancing in.
The crow that balanced himself in the old man's lap was as black and glossy as the entrails and he cawed to his brethren, bragging, and did what he came to do.
The girl and her companion rode away from there and soon were along a drying creekbed. There was only a trickle running through the pebbles and so the horse had a clear lane. Steep mossy walls rose on either side of them, all studded with huge roots in snarls like black snakes. The creek had once raged– the walls rose higher than the horse– but now the dry bed was a deep slice through the wood, and the cathedral of trees above spread its canopy. They were in a green tunnel.
The Hound had draped a rag over the cut and put over it another tunic, this one quilted for mail. She forgot herself and leaned back, and her head had rested against the cut. He said nothing, but he tensed; she jerked away and apologized, rode straight in the saddle, and he patted her arm.
The tunnel was darker than the wood and foggy with mist; it was the underbelly, it was beautiful. How easy for us, if this led all the way North. It would be the opposite of the Kingsroad, we'd be hidden the whole way. They rode in silence, him relaxed and breathing warm wine over her while she daydreamed. The tunnel widened a bit and now shafts of sunlight that had broken through the canopy stood gleaming in the way before them like gold spears. She sighed at this, and looked up to the canopy above her, the drape of mossy vines hanging down like hair, the spears of dusty gold light trembling. It was only because she was looking up that she saw it, and she startled him with her cry.
"Look! No, up, look!" Above them was another forest, upside-down, like a mirror. Two giant trees all black and scarred by lightning had fallen, ages ago, and the wood had grown under them and lifted them, bent and buckled, grown around them, but lifted them all the same, to the very top of the canopy. And now they hung inverted above the creekbed, enormous things hung with moss in long strands, floating like a city above them. The man stilled the horse and they both stared for a while. Birds swung through the city, fluting. The sun lit it from above in a nimbus, like a green warship seen from deep underwater. She couldn't look away.
I suppose the children of the forest could have thought this was heaven, because they didn't know any better. She ran her fingers through the end of her braid, her eyes tearing a bit from the bright nimbus. Heaven might be like that, anyway, another world above you the same as yours, but instead everything is beautiful. There was no mud in the canopy; no silt, no fog, only swaying vines and birds and the great hollow twin trees with their roots to the sky.
"No one's been through here for some time," the man rasped above her, "I wonder how long the creek's been dry. We'll stay in it tonight, I think." She assented and the horse began again in its slow ramble. They picked up the creek for an hour or so as it wound north, seeing no one, watching the green tunnel expand and contact. At one point the bed dipped and turned rocky and they dismounted and led the horse. Sansa, walking, found a rock that had a fern painted inside of it, somehow, a black feathery outline, but it was too heavy to bring along and so she left it behind, and was pained. She asked the Hound who he thought had made it, but he shrugged at her and told her that things make themselves. She chewed over that until the bed went silty again and they could ride.
The sun dipped and the tunnel went shadowy, and so they found an inlet that was mossed but dry and built a small fire in its walls. The burning wood smelled salty and the smoke hung low in the inlet inside the night fog, and made everything she saw turn grey and pearled, and the Hound unpacking the horse looked like a ghost. He wandered away for a while, and when he returned she did as well, and she found she wasn't afraid of the dark brush at all. As she walked back towards the inlet she saw it glowing like a cauldron in the black sea of the creekbed and the Hound's shadow moving tall against the trees, and she was glad for no reason she could name.
From the bag bought at the inn came cured beef in fist-sized chunks and cheese that smelled unpleasant but was delicious and buttery in her mouth, and wine. The man gave her some, laughing as she dealt with the unwieldy skin, and then she was considerably warmer inside. She pulled her cloak around her and put her slippers to the fire, and watched it popping and sparkling through half-closed eyes.
"Do you think that the children of the forest knew about heaven?"
The man put down the wineskin and regarded her; he, too, was sprawled out, but lying opposite her, and his face was mostly shadowed.
"No. Why would they need to?"
"Well–" she was struggling with her thoughts, which were sluggish; she was comfortable, and warm inside from the wine, "because, the way those trees were. They had to have– Everyone needs- Don't you think that they thought they'd go somewhere when they died, if they were good?"
"Why would they need to go anywhere?" He yawned and tossed something into the fire. "And who says that they were good? Good doesn't exist in the forest. Good was only made by people, you know. Like your septa, and you saw what happened with that." He laughed to himself and leaned over to her with the skin. "What's good anyhow? What's good for me- well, I don't think you'd find it all that good for you." He snorted a laugh and rubbed his face with his hands. "No, you wouldn't. And is that what 'everyone needs'? A reward, after they die, to make them good?
The wine wasn't pleasant, exactly, more sour than sweet, but neither was it bad. She handed it back to him after, her throat warm. "You don't want to go to heaven, do you?"
He laughed, raspier, holding the cut still with a palm. "Oh, I do, of course. A white horse to ride, and I'll be just like the Knight of the Flowers, and here's what I'll do all day, in heaven. First of all– " His eyes had narrowed and he was starting to shudder again with merriment; she broke in before he could finish.
"That's awful, don't. And you saved him from your brother, anyway."
He sobered, still palming the cut. She watched his face go wooden. "No. That was– that wasn't what that was." His eyes had narrowed to slits.
"You saved him because he was good," she drew the cloak tighter around her shoulders, "and your brother is evil." The fire popped between them; they were both silent for some time while he drank.
Finally he crossed his arms over his chest and cleared his throat. His face was still wooden but she saw the well flickering behind his eyes; she had almost forgotten that it was there.
"Is it all that simple for you, little bird? How easy it must be. Did you ever realize that Loras won with a trick? He did. His mare was in heat, he'd planned it well. Your pretty knight cheats; tell me, how sweetly does that rose smell now? Is that what you find to be good? And my brother, did the gods make my brother? Is it good that I would kill my brother, because he's evil? And when I do kill him, does this disappear as well?" He pointed to the plate of scar, and she saw it shuddering with the force of the well. "Is everything fair, then, and I get my reward, I ride away to heaven on my white horse?" He spat, suddenly, and looked away, scowling into the wood. She saw the muscles under his scar writhing as he clenched and unclenched his jaw.
She didn't like the well, but she understood it, and she wasn't afraid of it any longer. Hadn't she seen her own father's legs kicking like a frog's as a black pool poured forth from him and ran thick down the steps? She looked across at the man.
"Nothing is fair, but that doesn't mean you have to let it. You stopped him, didn't you; and you brought me here, away from them." She could hardly control the tumbling words; the wine was strong and she felt them pouring out childishly; her eyes had gone hot and for a moment she worried that she might cry in front of him again. But the man's scowl had slid from him and he turned back to stare at her through his slitted eyes. She stared in kind and watched him drink. Time passed and the bird calls of late night began, the low whooping in the trees.
He shook his head and passed the skin to her. It sagged, it was almost empty. His eyes were dark.
"We could keep going, and I could keep you."
What an odd thing to say. It'd be me kept you, or Robb, anyway. She frowned at him, confused, but let it go and instead drank what was left of the skin- and that was too much. She passed it back, her arm heavy. He looked closely at her and then beckoned to her, put his hands out to her, let her lean against him as he pulled her pallet from the ledge above and rolled it out beside him. She curled clumsily into it, suddenly chilly and terribly tired, the wood a little wavery at the edges; she felt the blanket being pulled over her, heavy and comforting; the pallet was soft from the moss, the sound of the fire almost as good as rain.
Because his shoulder was sore, he slept on his back. She curled against his arm and dreamed vividly of riding the great black horse through crashing waves, a frothing wave surging to the shore. She could feel her hair whipping in the salt wind, feel the other riders racing behind her. She could hear distantly the war drums, pounding from deep inside the surf, pounding hollow in her ears, a perfect echo of her heart.