"Arri, where's my ale?" The Hound called out, "If you've spilled any I'll beat you bloody!"
For all his barking, he would not beat her bloody, she knew that much by now. The Hound might be a monster but he was not Weese or Polliver, not to her. Still, she hurried to bring the ale to his table in the corner.
Weeks had passed since the Hound had last worn his armor. No dog-helm or grey plate or sword… a simple roughspun shirt thick with sweat and dirt were all the heraldry he bore. Arya wondered what Sansa would think of a famous tourney champion like the Hound working with his hands amidst the smallfolk in exchange for bread and ale.
Sansa was gone though, married to the Kingslayer's little brother. Sandor had seen it happen, she knew, even if he did not talk about it or anything else with her. Arya was the last wolf. Her and Grey Wind, and Grey Wind had to hide from the villagers and so did she.
"Myen says the snows are melting," she announced as she set the Hound's big flagon down in front of him, "We can leave here soon and get to the Vale, I think."
The Hound glared at her from across his drink. "Who the fuck is Myen and who asked him what he thinks?"
"If the snows are melting," Arya pressed, "We can go to the Vale."
"If you want to fight steel-wearing Mountain Clansmen who burn out their own eyes for sport, Arri, you're free to go."
Grey Wind would protect her, but she did not say that. "Craven," she stated glumly, her voice sinking low. "My aunt Lysa could make you a lord but you're so scared of fighting you'll just die like a peasant."
The Hound set down his tankard and grimaced. "I'm not a craven. I'm tired, you little shit. We'll stay here a few weeks, and get enough copper to send your aunt a message. Let some other poor bastard take the risk."
"But we can-"
"Shut your mouth before I break it," Sandor rumbled, leaning over his mug.
He would not break her jaw, but she went quiet anyway. "Do you need me for anything?" she said after the moment passed.
Sandor grunted, and that was as close to permission as he was like to give. Arya had left the tavern in half a heartbeat, and before long she was out among the trees. She checked behind her for Myen, the little girl from the village who followed her everywhere, but it seemed that Myen had left her behind when the Hound got off from work. The Hound scared the little girl, made her hug her stupid little cloth doll even tighter. Arya smiled. At least the Hound was good for something.
She picked up a stick from the forest floor and began hitting the trees as she passed, imagining that the stick were Needle and the trees were Bolton men. She found herself yawning, uncontrollably, as she often did these days. The Hound said he was tired, but she was tired too, though she did not know why. She slept half till noon most days and even then she did not feel rested. She felt more alive in her dreams than she did awake.
A soft 'woof' called from behind her and she turned to see Grey Wind standing there, tall as a horse and as silent as a mouse. Arya never found Grey Wind, he always found her. She rushed to him, burying her face in the thick ruff of his neck.
"I missed you," She said, hugging him tight. The wolf pulled her in close with its snout and for a moment everything in the world was right.
She pulled away. "Sandor's a coward and he won't go to the Vale even though the snows are melted," she stated. "He's just afraid to die."
Grey Wind huffed indignantly.
"He talks like he means to stay here all winter, like he's lost his belly for fighting. I wish you'd just go to the Vale with me, I know you'd keep me safe on the road."
The great wolf lay down and rolled on his back in the dirt, looking at her as though he was inviting her to play.
Arya rose and walked in a circle. "We don't need him! I don't know why you think we do! He's not part of the pack, he's just a dog."
Grey Wind cocked his head, opening his mouth wide in a doggy grin.
"We shouldn't even be going to the Vale, we should be going to Jon at the Wall!"
Grey Wind just blinked at her with those huge yellow eyes of his. She sighed and tackled his neck. "I wish you could talk," she stated mournfully. But wolves couldn't talk, not even to each other. Not like people could. Grey Wind could never help her with Maester Luwin's lessons or explain to her about Northern politics or tell her about lands far to the east. She hugged him tighter.
She did not leave him until the sun had nearly set and the villagers were closing their doors. When she got back to the stable that she and the Hound had been staying in, she found him or the Hound sitting on a stool, watching for her.
"You best not be thinking of running off on me," The Hound snarled at her, "You're my prize, you understand?"
"Or what, you'll run me down like Mycah?"
"I hit you with the ax once, don't make me hit you with my sword."
"Your sword?" Arya questioned. But she saw it then, laid across his lap where he was working at it with a whetstone.
"Aye, its a rusty, ill-used piece of shit but its better than that fucking longaxe. It's half my wages if you can believe it."
"If you've been paid, then..."
"The work's done, and we've been told to bugger off."
"The wall's done?" Sandor had been helping the villagers put up a ramshackle wall of stakes, little more than a fence. She had wanted to scream at them, tell them they were wasting their time if the Mountain came through. Their wall was not much better defense than Myen's stupid little cloth doll, and the smallfolk were as foolish as she for placing their hopes on it. "I thought you were going to stay here all winter," she said, crossing her arms.
"Maybe I would've, but these know my name, know my reputation." He scowled. "Congratulations, little shit, you're getting your wish."
-
No Mountain clansmen attacked them on the road into the Vale. Arya wondered if Grey Wind had chased them off. Maybe he had. Maybe he had melted the snows too, and cleared their path for them. Anything seemed possible to her at that moment. She had never been so close to mountains, real mountains before and her spirits rose into the sky along with the road. She went to see her mother's sister, her aunt, her blood. Lysa Arryn was not pack, not yet, but perhaps she could become pack. Mother had been a trout before she had been a wolf.
The air had become cold and thin enough that Arya could see her breath, and that also made her feel like she was going home, away from the hot stink of the Riverlands and the capital. Father had been raised here, had he not? Would he also be so excited to see his breath in the air?
The howl of a wolf tore through the evening air. "Fuck!" Clegane barked. "These mountains must be rank with bloody wolves with how often we're hearing them." Arya suppressed a giggle and Sandor glowered at her. "We'll see how much you're laughing when you and your horse are riding in a wolf's belly."
"I'm a direwolf of Winterfell, I'm not afraid of wolves."
"Shut your mouth before I break it," the Hound growled, "There's plenty out here as would like to carry you away and steal my reward from me. You're my squire, and until we get to your aunt, the name your mother gave you in the cradle is 'Arri,' you hear?"
"Maybe I'd like to get taken by someone else," Arya retorted, "Maybe they won't smell like shit."
"And maybe they'd take a liking for all that Lannister gold," The Hound jeered, "You'd like that, wouldn't you? Marry you to sweet little Tommen?" A bark of a laugh escaped him and she scowled. She did not recite Tommen's name every night like she did Joffrey's or Jaime's, but the boy was still a Lannister.
"I'd like to see them try to marry me to Tommen," she spat.
"Aye, he'd more than have his hands full," Sandor stated, grimacing in what Arya guessed must be something like a smile. "But you'll stick with me anyway. We're both dead or worse if we're caught by the lions and you know it. "
If Grey Wind would let her leave she would be gone in an instant. She wanted to yell that at him, but she held her tongue. Sandor was not the worst evil in the world, not in a world with the Mountain and the Tickler and thousands like them. Grey Wind refusing to show himself to Sandor frustrated her more. What reason could the wolf have for his shyness? She could not say, but she felt sure that if she spoke to Sandor about the wolf, some kind of spell would be broken and the wolf would leave them forever. She still saw him often enough, eyes gleaming out of the woods during the night when they made camp, and often she wanted to go and play with him… but Sandor was too close and too watchful, and Arya was too tired at the end of each day. She wished she could sleep half the day as she had in the village, but instead she had to ride tired, half-slumped over on Craven's back. She wondered how long it had been since she had slept in a feather bed.
The road bent around the side of a hill Sandor pulled up short. Up ahead, their road joined with another and on that road a whole column of people, animals, wagons, and more. Arya bit her lip. They would have to wait until the caravan passed, for the Hound would risk no man seeing them until they were past the Bloody Gates. She made to dismount Craven, to give the horse a rest, but then another sound stopped her. Hoofbeats, on the road behind them. Distant, but approaching fast enough that she and the Hound would be caught before the caravan ahead past, and there were no convenient ditches in which she and the Hound could hide.
Sandor urged Stranger into a canter, cursing like a storm as Arya kept pace behind him, "Follow me, Arri," he growled, "and for the sake of all the gods, remember your damned name. We're not safe until we make it past the Bloody Gate." He pulled up his scarf over the worst of his scars. He was too big and too ugly for that to do any good, Arya thought, but she kept that to herself. Not every man was a Jaqen H'ghar.
The caravaneers dressed in bright colors of red and green and yellow, almost like the crowd that had followed the King and her Father south through the Riverlands. Arya held back a sneer. These smallfolk might as well have been children. "Hullo, strangers!" one of their men called, a simple man in plain brown robes with a shock of blonde hair sticking up from his head like the flower of a nettle. "Are you off to join the Lord Protector's host as well?"
"Didn't hear about no Lord Protector," Sandor rumbled, "Just heard there was work in the Vale."
"We heard the same," the man replied, "I'm Carder and these are my folk. The Lord Protector of the Vale has called all his banners and means to join the war and if gods be good, we'll be following. I don't suppose you'd want to join us on the way, stranger? It's good luck to travel together, with the Mountain Clans as bold as they are these days. We'd love to have a proper knight in our company."
Sandor's eyes darted back down the path from whence they'd come. In the clear mountain air Arya could see the riders they had heard coming up nearly a mile behind them. Outriders with no banner, no doubt meaning to join with this host of the Lord Protector same as Carder and the others. Arya remembered Robb talking about outriders, once. Most of them were second sons of wealthy peasants who fancied they could get rich through war. If someone wanted to buy their swords they would earn their fortune that way, or else they would earn it through raiding and highway banditry.
"My name's Clif," The Hound rumbled, "and don't call me ser, I'm no knight."
Carder laughed, "You've got a sword, thick armor, and a bleeding huge warhorse. That's what makes a knight as far as I'm concerned."
The Hound sniffed. "Sounds as right as anything I've heard. Arri here tends to my armor and my horses so he'd be my squire."
"You'll stay with the caravan then?"
"You can let me ride in one of those carts for an hour and I'll do whatever you ask of me," he said with a sigh. Sandor only wanted to be out of the site of the outriders, Arya realized. The Hound had the heart of a hen, but she stilled her tongue. She did not want to fight the outriders either, not without the Hound behind her. They were so close to safety, so close.
But they put Sandor up in one of the carts and the outriders rode past them without even looking toward him, surrounded as he was by boxes and crates. Arya had to get down on her feet and lead Stranger and Craven herself, as no one from the caravan could get close to the Hound's big warhorse without it snapping its bright yellow teeth at them. But Stranger did not bite at Arya, not anymore, and she had stopped being afraid of him after the Twins. She had stopped being afraid of anything after that.
"You're a mite small for a squire," Carder was saying to her as she walked. "How did you end up serving Clif? I'll give you a penny if the story is a good one?"
"It's a bad story," she said with a frown. "My parents are dead and there's nowhere else for me to be." That wasn't quite true. She had a brother and an uncle at the Wall, Aunt Lysa in the Vale, and Great Uncle Brynden at Riverrun, but of them, only Jon was properly family. He was the only one she could call pack and he was half a world away. Compared to the uncles and aunts she had never met, the Hound felt almost safe by comparison.
"I'll not press too hard with my questions, have no fear," Carder replied, smiling. "But you won't starve, at least. Lord Baelish has food and coin for everyone."
Arya stood up straight. What? Lord Baelish? She had heard that name somewhere. She knew, she knew… yes, she knew who he was, though it seemed almost a lifetime ago. Not even Sansa had known his name when they had met. He was father's master of coin before everything had gone wrong. What was such a man doing in the Vale, and what power did he have to command its banners? "I thought Lady Lysa ruled in the Vale, on behalf of her son," she said.
"She and the Lord Regent rule now. Baelish came up from the capital in the south, finally getting away from them Lannisters, and he's here now and he's swayed Lady Lysa into finally taking action. Let's see how proud those Lannisters are when forty thousand of the Vale's finest are riding down at them through the Bloody Gate."
Arya blinked. It seemed too good to be true, and yet, and yet… it could be possible. It must be. There had been men loyal to her father in the capital, and Lord Baelish had been often with her father toward the end, now that she thought of it. Her heart beat fast and she had a thousand questions, but she buried them deep and willed her heart to calm itself. "Clif'll be glad of the work," Arri replied, "but Lions and Wolves are much the same to us."
"Well, you'll find few enough that love the Lion here. The mountain clans have gotten bold on Lannister gold and Lannister steel. It was the Imp that armed them, and it's us as have suffered for it. A village not far from here was sacked, with near everyone either slaughtered or carried off into the night. If the Lord Protector wants to fight, I'm glad to hear it."
Arri kept silent. Thinking of the Lannisters made her think of the Mountain, or of Robb, or of a thousand other things that were too near and too painful. She would think of those things later when she could be Arya again, when there was no-one to hide from.
She fell back a dozen paces until she was abreast with the cart on which Sandor was lounging.
"They say the Vale rides to avenge my brother," she whispered. The words felt almost impossible to say.
"I heard."
Was he stupid? Did he not see what this meant? "They're going to avenge my brother! They're encamped on this side of the Bloody Gate and Carder says we may meet with them tomorrow! He says there are two score thousands!"
The Hound rose to a sitting position and fixed her with a glare. "I don't believe a word of it, and I do not mean to wait to find out."
"But Carder says..."
"Carder's a peasant who has never gone more than a day's travel from his village," Sandor sneered, "He has no idea what he's saying."
"It's Lord Baelish who is leading them. He served my..."
A long, barking laugh escaped the Hound, so forceful it half seemed he was going to choke. Arya felt her face flush red with heat. "H-he served my father..." she forced herself to say the words.
"Close your mouth before more shit spills out of it," Sandor snapped, his voice hard but his eyes still sparkling, "You don't know a thing about Baelish. He's a Lannister dog more than I ever was, even if he did feign loyalty to your father for a time. Don't forget, I was there when your father was betrayed. I saw who was the one who held a knife to your father's throat. You'd be better riding straight to Casterly Rock then going into that one's clutches," Sandor's voice went very low. "We'll rest with these here for now as it's almost dark, but we'll be gone from them before morning."
"But-"
"I'll hear no more of it," Sandor stated, and there was something in his eyes more dangerous than any threat. Arya slipped to the back of the caravan then, leading the horses in sullen silence. The Hound was a liar and a villain. He had killed Mycah, he had killed because Joffrey had told him too and he had smiled about it. Why should she believe him over a friend of her father and mother? Why had she ridden with him so long? She had been forgetting her prayers. She should have killed Sandor long ago. It wouldn't be hard, she knew. He did not tie her up in his cloak as he had done before. He wasn't even watching her now. Tonight, she thought, she would kill him, stab him in the throat while he slept, then run away on Craven to Lord Baelish.
The sun set early in the Mountains of the Moon, and before long they were bedding down for rest. "Get some sleep," the Hound growled. "You were nearly falling off your horse yesterday and I can't have you getting damaged."
She took her bedroll from him with a glare and set to putting her bed for the night. She was tired, she knew. She had been since before they had left the village. Every day when she rose she felt as though she could use another night of sleep, but they always had to travel farther. She scowled at her weakness. She could sleep when she was with her Aunt Lysa and Lord Baelish. She had more important things to consider.
As always, the Hound slept but a few feet from her, and Arya stayed very still so he would think her asleep. The big man took forever to get comfortable, and even when he finally stilled himself it was clear from his occasional grunts and sighs that he had not yet fallen into a deep sleep. She stilled herself again and breathed deeply. She could be patient. She could wait. She had always had to wait when she had been with the Mountain, and she could wait now that she was with his brother. Wolves had to stalk their prey for hours, sometimes days, and she was a wolf too she was….
She was The Wolf.
The Wolf hunted dangerous game that night. Humans in steel and leather, who had been chased right into the jaws of her pack by other men. She had caught their scent while following the river to the great water in the south, running away from a small slaughter of their kind. Many more of their kin ran away to the west but these had been separated. They ran, a tiny pack of fewer than a dozen men with no leader and no order. She had hunted them for two days now, days in which the men had hardly slept or stopped running. At first they had run slowly, fearing pursuit of their fellow men, but now they ran from her, and she reveled in it. Wolves ran from men, even as deer ran from wolves. This was the law. But she was no mere wolf. She was The Wolf and men should run from her. This was her power, her secret, and she would teach it to the lesser wolves if she could.
The flesh of the men's horses had fed them the day before. The beasts had died under the men as they ran, and now. But that meal had been a day ago and the pack had not eaten its fill. They were hungry now, hungry to fill the void inside them, and she would provide them with meat. She would show them that living men could be eaten as easily as their beasts.
They stalked the men through the night for hours, unseen and unheard, but when the men lay down to rest, lay down to start a fire, then the wolves circled into their view, snarling and growling. The men gathered in a circle like a group of aurochs, torches and blades turned outward. They yelled and screamed and tried to stand tall, and for a moment her kin wavered, but she was not as weak as them. She stepped into the light and all noise ceased with her arrival. A low, thunderous growl escaped her, and now it was the men who wavered. Then with a yell, the tallest of the men raised his weapon in defiance and they all turned to face her, arms upraised and yells redoubled. She could charge them, break their sticks, and crush them, as her brother had done to so many, as she had done to a few. But there was no need.
As they turned to face her, they turned their backs on her lesser kin, and those now rose to pounce on them from behind, grabbing their steel-shelled legs and dragging them to the earth. The men turned to close up and form a circle again, but it was too late, the circle had been broken, it could not hold, and soon the men were buried under her pack, a tide of fur and teeth bearing them to ground.
The Wolf turned to lick her paw, absently. As the greatest of her kin, she had been the first to partake of the horseflesh and had eaten more than any other. These few men were too small, too scrawny, and too covered in steel to concern her when her belly was full. Her pack's teeth struggled to find purchase on the men's steely shells. The way to eat a man in steel was to pull them limb from limb and then eat the meat like sucking the marrow from a bone. Her pack would remember this in time, but for now the men would scream and thrash in terror and pain while her brothers and sisters tried to bite through their steel.
She sniffed the air, a new scent coming on the wind to her. Her brother, she realized. He was not far. He was close! Almost upon them! But no, she realized, he was still far away, climbing up through the distant mountains with his pack of humans. But why had she smelled him?
She looked to the men, and then she realized why. These men bore her brother's scent on them. He had led them far and long. It had not been only fear in their eyes when they had seen her, but recognition and confusion. These men were her brother's men, and she heard him howling at her from the mountains. She resisted. Her pack needed to eat, and her brother was nowhere near these men. A moment of resistance more, and then she yielded. Her eldest brother's claim came first, and so she threw her head back in a mighty howl that split the night.
Her pack froze, questioning her. Did she mean to eat the men herself? She walked forward, and the pack parted away from the still struggling men. One of her brothers snapped at her in defiance and swatted him aside with her paw. The men rose, slowly, stiffly, unwilling to run, and unwilling to fight. A low growl rose from her lungs and the leader of the men, the one who had been first to defy her, threw his stick to the ground and bent at the waist, that strange gesture that men always made to each other, like wolves baring their necks. She ended her growl with a huff and then barked at her pack. They had other food to seek tonight.
"Arya! Arya!" someone was saying, a heavy man's voice. Who? Where?
"Arya, Arya, get up. Get up you sodden piece of shit," Sandor was standing over her, shaking her. The Wolf dream faded from her sluggish mind as she tried to collect herself. "Get up!" Sandor repeated, and she struggled to sit up. Somewhere beyond the Mountains of the Moon, the sun had risen and dim twilight and mist covered everything in a bluish tint. Then she heard it. Hoofbeats. Dozens of horses at least, and coming fast. She awoke all at once then and sprang to her feet, wishing she still had Needle. Then she saw them.
A score of knights of the Vale rode down from the path above, their armor gleaming in the dim light of morning. Above her, Sandor was hurriedly attaching all the bits of his armor together, his rusty sword sticking out of the ground just a few feet away. The other members of the caravan had only just begun to rouse, blinking themselves awake as an avalanche steel bore down upon them.
"Why are they here?"
"I'll be fucked if I know," The Hound growled. "Could be they're just passing by, could be they're here for me. Either way, I mean to have a sword in my hand."
Or they could be here for me, Arya realized with a start. But no, no one would recognize her. Nobody had, aside from the Hound and Harwin. She wasn't huge and ugly like the Hound. No passing outrider would tell tales of a short and plain northern boy.
"If it is me they're after," the Hound stated coldly, "Things won't be going well for me. Baelish is a Lannister dog, and as far as he's concerned, I'm a traitor and a deserter. If they're coming for me you have to act like you never knew me. Go on with Carder and these others. They're good folk, if plain. Forget Arya, forget your family, you'll be happier for it."
"I won't forget-"
"Promise me," He stated, his voice more low and urgent. "Promise me you won't reveal yourself to Baelish."
Arya swallowed, her mind whirling. The knights would be on them in a moment. She had but a moment to decide. Could she do it? Could she stay with Carder and the smallfolk and be happy? Could she forget the face of her father, her mother, her brothers and sister? Did she trust the Hound? Did she... But no, she had no time to think, no time at all. The true seeing, that is the heart of it. That was what Syrio Forel had said. She turned her eyes to meet Sandor and Looked, as if for the first time, and at that moment, her heart was decided.
"I'm Arri," she said firmly. "I promise."
The warhorses clattered to a stop perhaps twenty paces from them, and their leader removed his helm to reveal a mat of nappy grey hair. The leader nodded to Sandor simply. "Lothor Brune," he stated simply, "And you're Sandor Clegane."
"What of it?" The big man replied.
"Lord Baelish heard of your arrival in the Vale, and he means to welcome you," Lothor Brune replied. "We're here to bring you to him." The leader of the knights paused. "I should mention, he privately revealed to me that he had plans of offering you a place in his guard."
"I suppose he would," Sandor said with a grimace. "Give me a minute to get on my horse and we'll be away."
He turned to look for Stranger, but Arya had already set about readying him for mounting. The Hound's eyes were almost mournful as she brought the horse over.
"And this is your squire?" Brune asked. Sandor opened his mouth, but Arya beat him to it.
"I'm called Arri, milord, though the Hound will tell you as I'm no squire, on account of him being no knight."
