Dawn came late. The Hound stretched in the cold pearly blue-grey, arms in the air, grabbing at the leaves above him. They cracked like parchment. When these drop, we'll have no cover. He wondered, idly, if he would live to see spring, and wondered more urgently why it was that, down at his feet, the girl rolled her blankets together with her usual delicate unhurry. It was cold, he was cold; the chill bite snaked viciously up the leg of his trousers and yet there she sat, a shadow, slowly folding.
"Some people get faster at a thing, more often they do it." He grimaced down at her.
She smiled and didn't bother to look up and, defeated, he stamped around the clearing, kicking at the storm's windfall, rubbing the chill from his arms.
Your mother was of the riverlands; that's where she'd have me bring you. She could be right. Even as the idea revolved in his mind he also saw the memory that dredged up alongside it- Stark's head spinning down the dias. He'd overheard what Cersei had commanded Joff, that the man be sent back north. Who had whispered in his little ward's ear? There were too many voices, too many hands pulling too many ropes. Your mother could be right or she could be dead. They might all be. He knew what the riverlands were like. It was easy to imagine the Young Wolf's head bouncing away on some riverbank somewhere, across some scorched field, leaping across the rushes of some polished hall. That was what happened to kings. That was what happened to imposters as well.
He turned and looked over at the bent nape of her neck where the hair was fine and coppery. And your little brothers were home safe, weren't they. Look what became of them. But she wouldn't, he'd decided. She'd seen enough. At the end of the Kingsroad her home lay in ashes and he wouldn't take her, wouldn't tell her; instead they'd end in the map's empty space. He had nothing better. He did not mean to survive it, but she might. You look your mother's daughter. I pray you are Stark enough for what comes next. He stared into the darkened half of the sky above them, eyes unfocused, imagining it.
He felt his fear and knew its capability to freeze him in place, scoop him up to be crushed under its arm, carried small and helpless. The only antidote was to think of the endpoint. Close his eyes to everything else. And so looked into the sky and he imagined the shadowed doors of their harbor opening and the girl walking through them, safe now, inaccessible, his work done, his life given value.
A sound from behind him. She was, for the first time, loading the horse herself.