The coast was some distance, but the storm blew salt in on its wind, sharp in his throat. On his back in the tall grass, his head propped against the neck of the brindle dog sleeping beside him, he was invisible. Above him, the feathered heads of the grass rippled. He watched the grass, white ghost-wisps in the moonlight, a sound like fingertips brushing parchment, over and over. With the breeze sea-tinged and cool and the milky waves undulating over him, it was easy to forget the ground beneath him. He was floating on a raft, tetherless, too far out in the field to hear the night sounds of the Keep.
His escape from his stuffy bedchamber had been a disobedience of small consequence; Gregor was away to squire. Should he be caught, punishment would be meted out by their father instead, whose severity had lessened since the burn. His father had changed some over the months, and the boy knew the cause.
But it was very late and his father slept, as did the Keep, and he alone was awake in the field beside the path, freed, listening to the toads and to the dry thunder. Dry lightning ran across the sky. Near in the grass the thin birdlike screams of a fox-fight sounded, and the dog grumbled in its sleep underneath him. His eyelids drooped.
It began without warning and from nothing. A sudden density of pressure like a blanket dropped over them, a sudden tension, making the hairs on his arms rise to press against his sleeves. His pupils dilated. A single brilliant blue-white spear shot out from the sky, as bright and violent as an entire day crushed into one line. He clapped his hands to his ears and cried out but, deafened, could not hear himself, and the roof of the stables on the other side of the path exploded in a ball of white and gold.
Shingle landed pattering like rain and he could hear now, and what came to him was crackling, horses screaming and the stablehand shouting angrily above the din. He was on his feet but unable to move, the dog before him barking over the panic. From the riot inside the collapsing stables came a crack, a snapping plank; then came the work of his mind, crashing from the wreck as it always did. He saw its broad wild face first with its white eyes, surging up through the broken door, lit bright by its mane afire, leaping, screaming. It ran just as ever, thundering towards the field, his nightmare, his burning horse.
Before he fell back into the grass, he saw, astride the horse bearing down on him, a massive figure in sooty armour, a mounted shadow. Deep in the helm-slit, glistening in the reflection of the burning mane, were grey eyes shining. The shadow was laughing, arms outstretched and triumphant. Its sword was a glinting arc. He threw his own hands out before him screaming and could not look, only turn his face to the grass in his horror.
The Hound opened his eyes and sat up, his stomach rising in his throat. Around him was the wood, blue and calm with fog. Next to him was the little bird's shocked face, her hands pulling his blanket clear from his knees. He had been shouting, perhaps, or gagging, or both.
"No, no, don't. Not here," she was saying.
He rose and went to the brush to crouch where she couldn't see him. It was bitter and tasted of the silt, stinging in his nose, but his stomach calmed when it was gone and he was relieved. Should've done this last night. The dream had faded, and only the early birdcalls and foggy fern around him were real. He looked at his hands gripping his knees; they were crusted rust-brown, and he remembered the thin man who'd run from him. Then the whole of the night came to him, like painted pages in a book: the keys, the old woman, the boy with the figs and his bored gaze, the girl's lashes on her warm cheek, her hair wound in his knuckles. The dry blood left a dust on his breeches as he stood up. He spat his way back to their bed, where she was staring at him wide-eyed. He wiped his mouth and patted her with his other hand. Stretching out brought a surge of pain above his ear, and he pressed the heels of his palms to his eyes until it ebbed to a slow throb. The sun was pale, barely showing through the morning haze and he was thankful for that, thankful for the sound of her rustling in her blanket, close at his side.
Countless times he'd had the dream. The first had been a fortnight after he'd hidden out in the field and had seen the stable hit by lightning. The stablehand, enraged and cursing, enormous in his stained nightshirt, burnt thatch glowing in his knot of white hair, had found the shaking boy and carried him over to his father, who was blearily surveying the stables. The stable roof and wall had collapsed and three good horses were ruined, but nobody had burned. That terror was his mind's own.
In his early dreaming it had been the stablehand stumbling towards him on fire, shrieking and flailing; the shreds of his nightshirt flapping behind him, his white hair black and crisping away from the bared skull. Over the years the dream grew with him, changing, disappearing for stretches, months on end, until he again bolted awake to the touch of seared fingers. Later, after he'd bought Stranger, the dream had come again, but there was no stablehand. Instead, there was the burning horse. It had ridden after him, kept after him for nearly five years; it had never before had a rider.
There was no question of identity. The rider had been massive in its dark armour, very tall, with a distinctive set to the wide shoulders, an old familiarity in the high swing of the blade, in the turbulent eyes. He frowned, and rubbed his face against the crook of the arm shading it. Why should he come after me now? At Blackwater he had chosen escape and with finality, pushing past the other deserters. On the stairwell, coming down from her chamber, he'd had the unsettling feeling that his life had ended that night; it had, in its way, and he'd gone adrift, freed.
Traveling in the clarity of the quiet green and talking only to the girl had scoured him. Now, slowly, the truth was beginning to show; he'd spent his years hating his older brother and yet not so very far from his footsteps, always behind, dogged in the bloody track. Both the track and the hate had seemed inevitable and not without worth; over time the hate stripped his life to the clean strong core, burnt it small and hard, allowed him to endure. But through the years somehow the track had spun itself, far up and beyond, and he'd still walked it. Hadn't he heard the persistent muttering, rumors of his brother at the Sack, in the Holdfast, sprawled bloodied on the floor? He'd hated the murmurs, the way the name had sounded on their tongues. There's the younger Clegane, look. Do you remember...?
And yet, he himself had killed a child; he too had wrapped it in a Lannister cloak and carried it to his masters. On his way he'd met the girl's father, who, graceless in his raw aversion, looked at him and past him to the bundle leaking on the ground. The Hand had spoken into his eyes and the Hound had scoffed at his distaste, at the sting of his judgment. He'd ridden away with his bundle, true on the track. Now the track had swept away so quickly, here in the damp moss, his arm over his eyes and the girl's slow breathing at his shoulder. Something had jostled him from his ruts—some light insistent pressure gone uncontested—and he'd found himself in the wood. He was further from his brother than he had ever been.
And yet there had been a rider on the burning horse.
Foreboding, maybe. His father's Maester had listened to the boy's recital of the repetitive dream with avidity, the glow of his singular pursuit making his dull eyes wet. "The gods may speak to us in sleep, but seldom do we heed what's shown," he'd said, clapping his hand on his bench, his muslin cones of dusty tea rolling around with the impact. "This dream of the burning man is a portent of future trial, surely." The watery voice, the stale-vinegar smell of the man, was suddenly vivid in his ears and nose, and he grinned, eyes shut. Future trial. A safe bet he made there, the useless bugger.
He'd had years of preparation should his brother come for him in true, as he'd promised at the Rock. The march on King's Landing was beginning, and the Mountain had ridden in early on the third day after Lord Tywin had summoned his bannermen. The Rock was awash in men and wagons and hurrying squires, so the boy found it possible to keep himself unseen until, caught in the throng outside the armoury on an errand for Gerion, he'd looked up to see his brother's dark face looming tall over the golden heads of the men beside him. Gregor lowered his chin, brow knitting in a quick spasm. To the men and to Lord Tywin it was nothing but a nod, tactful if brief, but the boy had seen the mouthed word. That hushed 'someday' was an avowal, and it promised death.
He'd given a sharp nod in kind, for he'd made his decision: he would not fall before his brother. He too was tall now, and skilled, but it was his wrath, always simmering just under his skin, that would hold him up against Gregor. From then on he'd honed that wrath, spent a thousand nights awake conjuring up his brother's attack, countless humid hours in the training yard hacking away at his spectre.
How deeply that someday had shaped his life he couldn't measure. Even now the routine imaginings rose up from their vault: Gregor's eyes, red and incredulous at his defeat; Gregor, motionless in the dirt. But they seemed hollow somehow, and brought him none of their usual satisfaction; he dismissed them and rolled onto his side, curled, and slept.
He woke late and sore, the sun full on his face and his mouth dry, and stretched out to pat awake the girl. His hand dropped through the air; there was nothing below but her rumpled blanket. He sat up, suddenly lightheaded. The clearing was still, her slippers gone from their place beside the bags, and a scrambling panic opened up in him. He rose to his knees, tangled in the blanket, breathed in deep to call.
He heard a rustling to his side, the fern wavered, and she was there; her calm face shadowed and now breaking into the light at the mouth of the clearing, her eyes shaded, now bright blue. Relief flooded him. She hesitated at the edge of the bramble then stepped through delicately, holding something out to him. Her fingers were stained dense red, as were her lips. The sensation returned to his hands; he rubbed them on his knees, blinking.
"Where did you go?"
"There's a stream down there. Look." She knelt close, passing one wrist up over her mussed crown. Her color was high, flushed from the sun. With the outstretched hand, she dropped her prize to his: a whorled shell, opalescent, luminous blue at the flanges, a perfect tiny horn. "They're everywhere in it, heaps of them. All pearly, like this one."
He frowned at it and handed it back. "You should never go—" he began, and she looked steadily at him for a moment. He dropped his eyes from hers, and she tilted back down to her shell, settling beside him. The look was familiar; he'd often felt it on his own face. Had enough of being told, haven't you?
Her voice was soft. "Imagine carrying everything you have about with you on your back, like this. Although…" The glance came back to him, startled. "Although I suppose we are, really. You and I, and him." Her chin tipped up, a nod to the horse cropping at the grass in the shade behind her. She raised the little shell to squint through the flanges at the light. "It'd always somewhere to go, hadn't it?"
The Hound stretched, snorting, and looked at her sidelong. "Earlier it was becoming a queen you were making a song of. Now it's a snail." Her eyes crinkled up and she laughed, a sudden bright burst. He reached behind him to hand over the bag from the inn.
When her bread was finished, he cut down a pole for the creek and sat at her side again to pare the end, looking from the blunt edge of the blade against the pad of his thumb and back to her, occasionally. She faced away from him, the skin of her reddened shoulder shiny from the sun, pulling burrs from her damp hem. Her soft humming came and went, distracted. Just under her ear was a little half-moon curve, a faint pink line. He looked away, flushing, and rose slowly.
"I'm going to the creek."
He looked down at her small form curled inside his shadow, staring up at him. For a long moment he felt in his chest the immense weight of the explanations that were his to give. Instead, he bit his tongue and turned; but a few yards into the brush he stopped short, to listen to the crackle of her steps following after him.