Complete silence. No motion in the room but the glittering dust. Turning, his eyes first passed over a dark pocket in the wall, then leapt back to it: a low doorway, a little black oval set into the dim grey. Beyond it something slithering along the black earthen floor- a snake; no, a torn strip of fabric. Hem from a skirt.
His shoulders and the crown of his head scraped the stonework going in, even bent double. In the dim his eyes cleared and he saw all of it at once. The feathery strokes of swept dust on the floor. The nest of stained sacks heaped up and hollowed into a bed. The tiny cane leaning against them, its gnarled knob polished with age. The girl standing rigid before the nest of sacks, her back to him. All in one instant. She did not move and he opened his mouth to call to her but as his eyes followed her gaze he saw her hand reaching to hold the hand that was extending to hers, that was a mirror image of hers, that was reaching out for her from the dark of a burlap sack.
Don't fucking touch it, he thought he told her as his body dove forward and pulled her to him in one swoop, lifted her as lightly as air, packed her tight against his chest. I'm here, I'm here, was what he said. Fast up the stairs into the light before she could scream. Against his scarred neck all that he felt, from her open ragged-breathing mouth and sharp teeth pressed against him, was the warmth.
Behind them the bag drooped. The hand slid back down. Outside the small round window the rushes settled as the fugitive finished its laborious escape to the creek.
.
At his horse he let her down, very gently, but kept his hand at her waist until he was sure. Under it he could feel her ribs moving beneath her cote, her breath a fast patter pressing him. Around them the meadow was as silent and peaceful as before. Her eyes stayed determinedly on his as she found her footing.
"A monster," she whispered.
He nodded. The touch of redness, her effort not to cry, made the blue as bright as a jay's wing. He held her steady gaze with discomfort.
"A bad thing, that," he said, not knowing what else to do with her anger but agree. He understood it to be directed in part at him, the moniker being one he'd long ago accepted. When would it stop mattering to her anymore, the difference between monsters? He thought of the mobile in the mill, the little ribcage strung together spinning in the dim dark. The runaway boy-soldier in the bag, mouth eaten away. He could go back to the mill. Cut the witch's head off.
But you stopped him, didn't you? He took his hand from her waist and brought it to his shoulder, where it hesitated. Drew it away again, slowly. Could you take care of me without a sword? He looked back at the mill and grimaced to himself, trapped.
A rustle beneath his ear, the girl rising up on her toes. Balancing a hand on his elbow, she artlessly kissed the good side of his mouth.
.
Even though the creekbed veered more east than he liked, and was considerably slower, they returned to it and kept in it. He could tell she preferred it. The trees shrouded themselves in vines and ferns, and the rock gave way to patches of swampy silt.
A thought had caught the Hound and as they rode he picked it over. Behind them the witch, or whatever it was, had been left in peace to finish its miserable meal. After that would be another meal, and another; another pile of small bones tied with dried flowers and hung to swing in the wind. Far behind the witch was Joff, left to commit whatever act Joff thought to commit next, and far behind him all was Gregor-
Hells take them all, he thought, and ended there. It did always end with Gregor. Sometimes in his dreams they fought again on the tourney yard with the whole kingdom watching, and in them his sword slid right up into that open roaring mouth, soaking the Hound in his brother's blood; but even in those dreams, strangely, Gregor never died.
A monster. Once the Hound's face had healed enough to go outside he'd learned that it wasn't just his own father who couldn't look at him. Gregor had made monsters of the Cleganes, first with his own reputation and next with the brazier. The burn had never frightened Joff, though, not even as a baby. As a little boy he'd been proud of his guard, even boastful of him. But what made Joff so fearless was a dark thread inside him, and it showed itself, as the years went on, to be woven in the whole of the cloth.
Often in the mornings Joff wanted to shoot hares in the yard. One of those mornings the gamesman had turned his back to them, bent to wrestle with the hutch. The Hound had watched wordlessly as the bolt's aim swept from the center of the courtyard to a point between the gamesman's shoulders. He watched Joff's small body still itself. Watched the bow tremble with the tension. Listened to the boy's measured exhale.
The Hound laughed, softly, and Joff's shoulders twitched in a guilty jump. The bolt slid away from the gamesman's tunic and reluctantly dragged itself back to the empty courtyard. The Hound waited. A wary green eye stole to his, met it, as the boy half-turned his head.
"Best not," the Hound rasped.
The boy drew himself up. They had fifteen years between them, but the boy's sense of preeminence won. "Just a bit of fun," he said, gazing up evenly. "And so what if I did?"
The Hound closed one eye. "It's none of my concern. But if the bolt slipped, people might say you picked the slowest target." And Joffrey reddened, snarled, and turned his attention to the hares in revenge, bagging, in the end, seven of the dozen. Reporting it to Robert later the boy had called it ten; but that, too, had been none of the Hound's concern.
At Casterly Rock one learned to lower a point when the master was in range. This was not something they taught princes. It wouldn't have mattered. The predilection lay under Joff's thoughts and slipped out when opportunities arose, like a snake living under his skin. The Hound knew Joff was different from Gregor, of course. Gregor acted in implacable rage, a rage out of all proportion, whereas the Prince hurt for the fun of it. He knew the creature in the mill to be different from the both of them. And understood himself to be different from all three, if a killer regardless.
He looked down at the girl. A dusty spiderweb lay over her braid like a hairnet. He brushed it away. She didn't seem to notice. What do reasons matter in the end, is what she'd say to that.
.
As the sun faded from the treeline, a thicket of dying vine stalled the horse. The Hound dismounted. Up close the vines looked like a wall of gnarled brown arms holding one another. He lopped them apart, thoughtlessly, sneezing at the dust they brought up and batting away wasps he'd dislodged from the thicket. The vines cleaved like muscles under his swing. For a moment- one of his life's rare moments of disobedience- he was aware of the skill of his swing as a mechanical movement, as an act not of mastery but of conditioning. This brought a ridiculous image: the wooden toy knight of his childhood, life-sized and garish, pegged arm swinging, performing the motion it was built for, its painted face bearing that unchanged expression, that single stoic line of a mouth, those black-dot eyes. The Hound snorted the thought away, and kicked the fallen vine from the path.
They rode on.