As he came back down the steps, he saw that the clamor had slipped inside the walls, indistinguishable from the battlefield, as is the way of war. Women sobbing and clutching bare breasts, their dresses in shreds at their knees, ribbons falling from their hair; men tearing at each other, a bloodied septa with her hands over her eyes. Men jostled past him, each with his own bag over his shoulder, clanking and jangling, bags of stolen plate and stolen silver. One great bearded goat in a bloodsoaked tunic passed by with a girl over his shoulder and a woman stumbling after him, howling my only daughter, my only girl. He strode to the stable past what he knew to be the truth of mankind asserting itself in wild screechings. He thought for a moment on what he'd been told of the hells; fire and depravity, wasn't it? All waiting patiently 'til the moment you die for the great reveal. The reveal shuddered glorious before him now, wreathed in green flame. It did not disillusion him in the slightest. He had seen it firsthand, quite some time ago.
The bag on his shoulder convulsed, and then he felt a wasp in his throat. He stopped. Jutting there from the bag was a golden needle with the tip now red, a golden needle from her hair. He pulled it out from her hard little grip in the bag and looked at it in his palm, and laughed. Of all the things, a pin. Men had hacked away at him for hours upon hours, hacking at him with their dying breath, and here was this, the victor, a jeweled pin winking in his palm. He put it in his pocket and patted her, unaccountably pleased.
There was only one good horse left in the stable and it was his, and there was a limping dark-haired man trying for it with the slow soothing movements of a man well versed. He didn't see the Hound coming up behind him, or see the Hound lead his horse past him through the straw.
He sat her down and pulled the bag down from her small ivory face. He didn't like the terror, didn't like her eyes shut tight against him, and so he put his face close to hers.
"Look at me."
She did, then, blinking startled at him, and he slid his cheek against hers and spoke close in her ear to cut through the fog. "We're going to ride, now, and you'll not scream. If you do, I'll just leave you. Do you understand?" She nodded into his neck and he felt her breath hitch. He pulled back and regarded her at arm's length. "If you fall off the horse, you're going to die."
She looked away from him in disdain and he saw with relief that she would do. He put her on the horse and they went out to meet the war.
It was there in the road, and it was a chaos. Men were clamoring below him and a cold shroud of calm slid over him and the world went silent. There was a gash at his brow and his heavy scar pulled down at it, held it open, kept the blood draining into his eye and made it bleary. But the clear calm was still there, and with it the best of him; time slowed. He again noted that mounted battle was much like rowing, simple: a deep duck to the side with the oar, cut back a shallow swing. The sea rose before him screaming and he rowed. The spray was much the same, only hot; he was a young man, armed fully with rage and despair, and so the sea parted for him and fell.
The gate was open and its men had died so long ago that they were already covered by mud, barely visible. He was glad of it and not glad; he could pass through easily now, but it meant that the world was lost beyond recapture. He sighed and bit through the sigh–he'd tasted fear in it. Fear was the true killer, the only real one, and he knew how to keep it at bay: lay it bare and look at it, and crush it with the anger.
The girl tensed at the sight of her knights mashed down in their mud graves and he, leaning, skewered it at her; whispering in the warm white shell of her ear, he felt her droop then, and pulled her back against his chest, felt her heart fluttering in his arm. The horse jostled and sank into the fallen bodies just as the mud, then the gate was beyond them and the Road spread out before them, heaped all over with struggling men; they were lit pale green from the clouds which were low and emerald. He surveyed it with dispassion. A vipers' nest.
To the left of the Road was the scrubby wood, which men feared. He nudged his horse and it picked off into the bracken and away.
His life had revolved in its wheel; once again, he had run to the wood.
As a young child, he'd been all through the wood of his home, trailing dogs and throwing rocks and listening to the echo of his own voice, but it was only after he had burned that he'd come to value it.
No one had looked at him after. Strangers would stare at him, but all of those he knew would look at some vague point above his head or, sometimes, speak without looking at him at all. Once in a while he would forget the burn and himself, and run about blustering and shouting and waving a stick as he always had. Then the averted eyes would remind him, and he would collect his angry dignity and compose himself. The cook didn't mind his face, but then again, her son had come out with a slit running from his nose to his mouth and he bubbled when he breathed.
The wood, in its terrible simplicity, had welcomed him the same. He was wiry and tough and pragmatic, and it showered him with reward for those things–rabbits, fish, handfuls of gooseberries, honeycombs cracked and dripping, long days of walking and shouting songs to himself and to the dog, long warm drowsy afternoons lying in the moss and dropping helplessly to sleep. He would slink home after dusk late for the dinner and ripe for punishment. After the cold meal and the scolding, he would stand shivering in the barrel that was his bath while the cook scrubbed the dirt from the cracks in his scar with a brush and listened to him ramble about the heroic rabbit that had, after worthy chase, proven unequal to his skill. Then he would go up to his bed. Paramount was that he avoided his brother, who loomed laughing and tall, and awed him not only with a humiliating panic but with the sharp bitter truth that he was vulnerable and that he was alone.
He was older now; he'd forced his way back into the world of men, but it had been injurious and snarling all the way. He'd forgotten the vast comfort of the wood, and he was gratified. The few men running past them had trailed away and all was quiet. He watched the stands of trees go by, pale ghosts in the green dark, and felt the girl relax into sleep in the circle of his arm. He himself had gone beyond weariness into that numb-limbed unreality of exhaustion that is almost pleasant. His broken ribs sang with his breath, but he didn't mind; the weight of what he'd lost was lighter now. His chin fell to her crown and he blinked awake once, twice, a dozen times, and then finally let himself drop fully into the unreality. His eyes stayed half-open, but he dreamed behind them.
The horse floated through the wood, and he went in and out of his dreams. Then the air was crisp again and pine-smelling, the birds were out and it was morning.