It was a narrow mossy rift in the wood that he chose, and the girl settled beside him at the fire. They ate thick slices of sharp cheese and cured pork. She, brushing a loose strand of hair from her eyes, wiped a stripe of pale ash on her cheekbone.
"Is there any more? Oh, thank you." Her cupped hands held out under his looked like white shells, lit from below by the fire.
The palisade of mossed trunks and the low coals brought again that warm illusion of enclosure, but he was not comforted. The cottage stuck in his mind. War was an endless violent sea and a constant of his life. He had never thought to question it, but he could feel now within himself the ache of change, an unexplained tremor, and he was unsettled.
"Here. Are you still hungry?"
She shook her head and yawned behind her wrist, then stretched her thin arms out to the fire, wrapped herself up. They sat in silence, hers calm. Some time later, he rose and stepped on the fire, grinding the coals into the ash, and they went to their beds in the dark.
He lay propped on his side opposite his knitting rib and slept the deep helpless sleep of injury. His dreams, too, were helpless: the dream of the burning stables again, intensified by his exhaustion. A repetitive sound started up nearby. Someone was digging beside him. The stealthy shuffling broke through the loud chaos of his dream. The sound went on insistently and he began to rise up, irritated, through the heavy sleep. The digger cried out, waking him.
Standing in his pallet, he saw through the dark a faint moving outline dragging the girl up from her bed. It took only a moment. A fistful of knotted hair, curls dense as a lamb's, held tight in his hand; and the man flinched in surprise. His own jaw clenched. A clean pass, adrenaline giving it more than he'd meant, became a lop; a sinewy jump of the crown against his palm as the body fell away. He flung the limp leaking weight from the girl and pulled her up; he bent cursing and ran his hands over the sodden wool, looking for the tear, sightless.
Her ragged breath felt hot against his collarbone. "I'm not cut," she said, then curled her fingers into his shirt, sobbing.
The girl's uneven voice came up in gasps from his chest after a while. "You don't understand. There was nowhere I could go, and everyone–everyone wanted something from me, they took it and they lied to me. And now that we're here, I thought it would be safer, but that man didn't even know who I am, and he still wanted–" She choked on tears and he held her to him, feeling her small ribcage shudder under his arm, her anger and terror. "I thought it was you at first, but it was a stranger… He's too big, I couldn't do anything–" The injustice made her voice break.
She had thought it him. Bright in his memory was the underside of her chin, lit pale green and trembling, reflected on the blade. At first, she had thought it him.
"… and I'm so tired of it, everyone grabs at me…"
He couldn't hear the end; it was muffled into his chest. Her knees began to give and he held her shoulders and followed her slowly, her legs doubling beneath her, until they were both sitting on the ground. The wind cooled his chest where her dress had soaked through his tunic. Her fists in her lap were white at the knuckles. He cleared his throat and wiped his wet hands off on the moss behind him. Her breathing was rapid.
The hum of insects started up again and she was silent. He had nothing to say. He wished helplessly for something to give her–something, anything–but what meager gift he had tasted sour. Anger will kill the fear, he could tell her, but for the snag: what, then, kills the anger?
It was Gerion who had first spoken of it, in his own youth. Before the glittering pit that was Cersei, he'd been the younger Lannister's squire, and every morning the drawling voice with its ripple of humor had answered his. Gerion, with his blunt wit and his dagger-sharpness, his countless and unaccountable acts of geniality.
One afternoon, Gerion had remarked idly on something he'd overheard Lord Tywin say of Gregor. The boy, bristling, lapsed into silence; the knight standing beside him in the sun probed into it with his vivid curiosity.
"Not overmuch fond, are you." The pale-gold face searched his.
"He hates me and I hate him," he'd said, simply.
"I can see," Gerion had said, his eyes sober, "that you're afraid of him, and the fear has turned to hate. Perhaps you haven't yet noticed the problem with hate." Wryness showed in the twist of his narrow lip. "Imagine a banquet where you can have anything you choose; you must only decide your taste, and it will be brought to you. Now imagine a man who chooses to eat only what he's used to–the dish that others have fed him in the past. It's an empty dish, this one he chooses, but he eats from it in spite of all the lovely things he might otherwise have; and no matter how much he eats, he starves. Tell me that isn't you."
"But what he's done, and no one stops him," he'd responded, and closed his mouth on the rest.
"And no one will," Gerion had answered, the twist lifting, "but you didn't answer me. Are you that man?" He'd waited, head tilted, and, receiving silence, leaned and kicked gently at the boy's toe. "You're taller; you'll be needing new boots soon." Then he turned, his thin cheek tawny in the sun, and left the question behind him in the air.
The boy had no answer then, nor had the Hound any now. He had, however, his word; he pulled her pallet close to his and waited for her to come. The chattering of her teeth behind him as she changed from her wet dress was like the skittering of leaves.
Lying in the dark, he heard a change in the girl's breathing, her lips moving in whispers, an archaic prayer to the nameless tree-gods of her home. He listened, and watched the sky through the pocket in the canopy. Some time later, she folded in her sleep to settle against him; the small warm pressure, inexplicably heavy, caved him in.