After they returned to the clearing, he sent her after kindling and traced her path from his seat in the dirt by the loud bursts of birds scattering from the trees. She was a long time gathering, and in her absence the Hound changed his rank damp clothes and, standing clammy in the watery sun, rubbed at the sore green-black mound of bruising on his side. The welt was warm to the touch and ached doubly now that the rib was knitting. He dressed slowly, leaning against the horse's twitching shoulder, idly watching the birds circle and relight. The crashing of her return sounded far before he could see her at the edge of the bank, with sun on her hair, walking slowly towards him, doubtful of her pick.
"Some of it is a bit wet."
"Drop it there, that will do." The moss on the kindling glittered with a fine wet web. She set it down and brushed the bark from her sleeves, and for a while they revolved in the quiet routines of their camp, unspeaking, each lost in disparate thought. The man kicked a fallen log around to face the spit and stood, scratching. Beard was growing in again on his good side, and it itched. It occurred to him how he must look to the little bird, one cheek bare and the other a black wing. He turned, conscious of her eye, to find her squinting up at him. She had been looking for some time, her hands clasped loosely before her in the girlish way she had.
"What will you do, when I am home?"
Stay. Serve your House, maybe. He kept silent and the girl continued, "You can't return South now, even if Stannis has won." Her gaze was naked in its speculation.
"Such a pity."
It was true. Gregor had what had been his home once, and he'd well-earned those lands. He had seen with his own eyes the price sewn up in its winding-sheet with a candle to the Stranger and another to the Father at its head.
She shook her head, one brisk dismissive shake at the jibe, and reached to put her light fingertips on his forearm. "No matter, Brandon will take you on; and Robb, he will too. They'd have to, in payment." In her voice was all the calm indulgence of regality. The fingertips gave a slight pat.
He looked down into the dusty earnest face and laughed until he coughed. She turned away and brought her flustered hands to her braid and knelt, red, to sort through her bag. He watched her in her discomposure. His future was just as he'd always known, a stilled battlefield, leagues and leagues away from the wood. He remembered her brother's face and, particularly, the proud, wary eyes beneath the auburn hair. Lying crumpled on the field, the Young Wolf would once again look far more a boy than a king. Payment.
He stood over her, needled by something he chose not to examine, rubbing at the welt through his tunic.
"Grand gesture, little bird. Does it so bother you, what to do with me after I've carried you North?"
The red hadn't left her. "It's not… it's only that you've not ever said what you expect."
"And if I did, it wouldn't matter much, would it? Have you any idea how much farther we have to go, or what lies between? Holding close those formalities anyhow, aren't you? Have they served well? Now ask yourself what has." He clenched his jaw. "Maybe your brother will bestow a title on me and I could be like one of those knights in your stories. In payment. In the meantime, that kindling's wet and we've nothing yet to eat, and you can be assured that the lions have a few men after us. How much will he owe at the end, do you suppose?"
She leaned from him, cold. "You speak as though it was I that brought you here."
It stung and he had nothing for it. He looked down, away from her eyes. She had brought back from the wood, along with the kindling, a wild fringe of thorn and leaves at the hem of her skirts.
He shook his head and stepped back from her, handing her the bag with her things to put in the sun. She took it, turned and laid out each of her three rumpled dresses with exaggerated care, then she stood over them and stared at him.
"This one," she pointed with the toe of a slipper, "the lace is very fine, from Myr. I don't know if you noticed when you packed for me." Emotion leached the civility from her voice. He looked at the dress and then at his hands, and asked her if she remembered where they'd left her net.
The girl shifted. Her eyes were steady at him, the strange blue bright against her flushed face.
"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."
Her skirts swept behind her in a wide ragged line back to the break in the wood they had made earlier. He sat for a while on the log with his elbows on his knees, scowling, then he rose to follow her.
The girl was absorbed in the sight of the writhing rabbit in the net and his approach was so quiet he went unnoticed behind her. Her rapid breathing was harsh even over the convulsive twisting of the net in the leaves. He could see the glossy corner of her wide eye as she bent to the net, and the rabbit shot back to its warren in a scatter of twigs. She stood up, the net swinging limp from her hand. The canopy was silent. The net had stilled the raucous parade in the brush. She felt his gaze and turned, slowly. Her pupils widened and she paled with embarrassment.
"Glad I taught you, for the good it did." He pointed at the dangling net.
Angry tears ran down her puckered face. She was hissing at him through her small teeth.
"I'm a lady." She drew the word out with deliberation. Broken twigs and autumn leaves still wreathed her hair. He felt himself smiling. His own irritation faded in a curious ebb.
Gerion was well-read and occasionally lectured him on tactical matters; mostly because the knight was expansive as a rule and liked, along with a great variety of other things, the sound of his own voice. He remembered well that voice. There had been a morning when, frustrated to trembling, training against an older and contemptuous squire, he'd jerked away angrily from a lazy thrust. He was unaccustomed to the new weight of a cuirass, and the dodge somehow accelerated until the ground came up to hit him in the back. He clattered inside the cuirass and lost his breath. From across the yard came a slow clapping; it was Gerion, who wandered over and extended down his hard hand, at the same time reciting his favored Tactics by Maester Aryon. 'Let the opponent become so inflamed that he passes that crucial moment when nerve and calculation are equal. Too early and calculation will allow him the greater defense; at the point of equality his opposition will be most effective. Only wait past that point and he will blunder in his red fog, and he is yours.' The boy took both the hand and the droll words at face value, and the next morning the older squire left the yard green and shaky-kneed, dented at the gut. Years later, he'd watched as Gerion's nephew used the same method to great effect, with Cersei.
The Hound grinned at the memory and looked at the girl. Her throat was as red as her hair. The imperiousness had dissolved and she was flushed, nettled; inexpressibly earthly, wretchedly dear.
He leaned forward and pushed. "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–"
The last bit of composure dropped from her with a clatter. She ran to him, howling, and was at him in a bound, clawing at his face. He put his hands on the small hard shoulders and held her at arm's length before gathering her up in an embrace.
"I hate you," she hissed, flattening her palms against his chest to push him away. He laughed harshly, but was far less pleased than he'd thought to be; he slid his arms from hers and regarded her. In a way, he did have his victory: that studied courtliness of hers was her armament against lions; worn before him, it meant only that she counted him amongst them. Now that complaisance was shattered, she was trembling with wrath. The conquest was his, but he found it meager. He turned away, and leaned to swing the quiver across his shoulder. Once beyond the thin copse, he stood and wiped at his face. His knuckles came away red from his tingling cheek and he rubbed them on his thigh, grinning sourly.
In the silence after they ate, he sat scratching away the thin coat of rust from the mail at his knees and watched her stare at him from the corner of his eye. Her face was composed again, the hatred gone, redness now only at her swollen lids and the peak of her lips. She sat calm, shoulders back, looking him over. He shifted.
"What?" In response she only tilted her chin, her eyes still on his. "It's rude to stare."
She looked pointedly to the remains of the spit smoldering in the ash. "Why did you want me to do that?"
Why, indeed? She was hardly older than he had been when he'd learned the final, simple stipulation of the wild. The night his father's body had been brought home, the men stayed late in the hall, talking quietly. His brother's deep voice rose hoarsely against the others, unmistakable. Two distinct words carried up the stairwell: my rights. The boy needed no further warning. Hurriedly he packed and dropped from a window-ledge, seen by no one. The night was cool, dark, barely moonlit; he ran hidden in the shadow of the Keep. Before him was a narrow lane that wound its way to Casterly Rock and to its sides was the black tangled weald. The lane would be far faster, the weald was dense. He chose. Because he knew his way, the briars hardly touched him.
At dawn he'd heard hounds in the distance, his keep's hounds, goaded by his keep's men. They know, and yet when they catch me they'll carry me back. He'd understood, even as he ran, that they had no choice, same as the maester who'd dabbed him with ointment, but averted his eyes from the fresh red scratches on Gregor's hand. Silence, too, from the men who'd pulled the boys from the brazier, and one had been his father. Now Gregor had again their father's silence, and to keep it he'd need his younger brother's as well. The hounds' faraway call moved up through the trees. He pushed away all thought and aimed for the creek, running so hard a white hurt clawed his lungs, and once in the water he shook the dogs, but not, he knew, his brother.
A fortnight later, he was somehow still free, but hungrier than he could bear. He stunk of fear, and everything that could fled from him. What little he'd managed to catch he couldn't cook because the smoke might draw the riders. No breaking branch had to tell him that he was still hunted–his brother's command would be to bring him back, not to try–but the branches broke day and night, terrifyingly. So he ate hare raw in thin wet shreds, salivating and gagging equally; ate roots, nettles, bulbs of grass that numbed his mouth. It was a long, arduous way north, on foot. Near the end of it, he found himself pulling away loose bark and swallowing what was behind without looking, without chewing.
One morning, there were columns of smoke in the sky ahead. The next night he sat dazed at a long bench, wolfing brown bread and stew, and a raven had flown from Casterly Rock to Clegane Keep with his young master's gracious acceptance of its bestowal.
Was it then, swallowing grubs, that he had learned that survival meant bending himself to the will of the wild blackness around him? He'd acquiesced, surrendered his pride, ate what was given him, and so had lived. Had he not then carried this lesson to Casterly Rock, to King's Landing?
"You'll learn what hunger will have you do," he said, simply.
The girl slowly shook her head at him. Her expression was remote, but her eyes were curious. "What is it that you want me to be?"
"I want you to see the world as it is. Start by seeing the wood as it is; start with the fucking net."
They sat in tense silence. She broke it with the question he had been waiting for, and her tone made it a challenge, barely veiled.
"Why did you take me?"
He was silent. To answer would be to admit something he preferred to keep folded away inside himself, but she leaned forward, repeating the question, pushing, her red-rimmed eyes bright in the low firelight. The truth came out helplessly.
"I took something I shouldn't have."
He sat by himself by the fire for a long time after she'd gone to her blankets. He rose when it burned to coals, and shuffled the pallets around to lie down beside her as quietly as he could.