Viola and Sandor ride in silence for the entirety of the day. So many questions came to her mind, yet she could tell by the way he gripped the reigns tightly in his undamaged hand, and how stiff and straight his back was behind her that she probably shouldn't attempt conversation. He will speak when he is ready to, and pushing him into it will only result in a foul mood for each of them by the time it was over. The hand she had cut, however, remains tucked into her lap, curled against her lower stomach for the duration of the ride. Viola places her own hand over it to silently comfort him, even though the sun beaming down on them from horseback causes them both to sweat and become uncomfortable.
Sandor drinks heavily from a waterskin throughout the day, occasionally causing the water to dribble from his chin and roll down her neck, giving her a moments relief from the hot sun. He does not offer her any, and she doubt he would have at any point had she not pried her hand from his, their skin stuck together with sweat and re-hydrated blood from the back of his hand, and reaches out for it as he pulls it away from his lips. She turns the skin up, and takes a deep gulp, only to choke and sputter on the stale, hot, dark red wine within. Sandor chuckles behind her as she uses her sleeve to wipe the wine dripping from her chin and settles back against his chest, sweat pouring from her brow, wondering to herself just how in seven hells he was able to sit so straight atop this horse in all of that mail and armor and not be miserable.
"Water." Viola croaks between dry, cracked lips, her tongue sticking to the room of her mouth. "I need water."
"Fuck water." Sandor barks in her ear, but leads the horse towards the left, down a hill.
It does not take long before the soft trickling of water because audible to them, indicating a stream somewhere nearby in the thicket of trees they were riding through. Sandor pulls the horse to a stop and slides off the back. He lifts his hands up to help her off, and has to practically drag her from the horses back. As she makes to stand on her own two legs, her thighs and knees buckle beneath her, nearly sending her to the ground. Sandor catches her before she hits, and leans her against the nearest tree as she places her hands on her knees as panic sets in. Everything from her waist down is numb and tingling.
"I can't feel my legs." Viola pants, her eyes as large as saucers as she scans the wood line for Sandor. "Sandor, I can't feel my legs."
"Aye." He shouts from behind her as the sound of him urinating fills the air. "Been on horseback all damn night and day. It'll come back, and it'll hurt like hell."
Viola attempts to wiggle her toes in her shoes, but feels nothing. She slides down the tree to sit on the ground before ripping the shoes from her feet and rubbing them vigorously, to no avail. No matter how she moved her toes or massaged the arch of her foot, there was only numbness, as though she were wearing five or six layers of woolen socks. Sandor comes up from behind and hauls her back up, putting her feet atop his and walking her in a circle around the horse.
"Gotta keep moving if you want the feeling to come back." He instructs as he continues pacing with her as though she were a toddler.
Sure enough, within minutes of Sandor pacing her around, the feeling in her legs comes back all at once, sending a shock wave of tingling pain from toe to hip. Viola lets out a loud groan as the feeling of having a thousand needles pressed into her flesh becomes overwhelming. Still, Sandor paces her around in a circle, her feet atop his, his arms wrapped around her ribs to hold her upright. Several more moments pass before he stops pacing and releases her. He shoves an empty waterskin into her stomach from one of the saddlebags, and leads the horse by the reigns down another small hill towards the sound of running water.
The horse, however, refuses to drink from the stream. Viola walks forward, next to the horses head to investigate. The edges of the streams bank are a rust color, littered with leaves, with no traces of animal activity. As she makes to bend forward to smell the water, the back of her arm brushes the large horses muzzle. Without warning, the beast bites her hard on the back of the arm between elbow and armpit, causing her to howl in pain while Sandor drags it away from her.
Sandor reappears and begins to undo her dress, then pulls one side down low enough to grip her elbow and force it up. He turns her arm every which way, studying it in the bits of sunlight poking through the trees as it throbs in his fist, then redresses her wordlessly.
"Gonna have a nasty bruise, don't think it's broken though. Don't touch him, he doesn't like it."
"I've been on his back all day and he suddenly doesn't like me touching him?"
"Aye. Get your bloody water so we can get back on the road. Want to put some more miles between us and those cunts before we find a place to bed for the night."
"Horse won't drink that water."
"So?"
"So we shouldn't drink that water. Smells like sulfur, we should find somewhere else to get drinking water."
"Suit yourself."
Sandor walks away, back up the hill where he had lead the horse, leaving Viola to tumble barefoot and gripping her arm behind him. He tosses her back atop the horse as though she weighed no more than a sack of flour, places her shoes roughly on her feet, and climbs back up after her with a groan. The following ride is worse that the first. Viola's rear is sore from the edge of the saddle, her legs are weak and and throb from dangling over the sides of the horse, her neck and the back of her head are both tender from hitting against Sandor's armor, and her back aches from sitting upright for so long. Suddenly, she is thankful Father never allowed her atop a horse of her own.
As the sun hangs low in the sky, the sound of fast moving water causes Viola, and the horse she rode, to each perk up. Sandor fidgets in the saddle, liking having to make water again now that his waterskin full of wine has been emptied, and he pulls them away from the deserted, overgrown road they had been traveling and towards the sound of water. The horse does not even wait for them to drag themselves from his back before he bends his long, strong neck and begins drinking from the river. Sandor helps Viola down again, this time, her legs are only stiff and not completely numb. She practically throws herself to the ground apposite the horse, cupping her hands in the cool water and splashing it on her face, allowing it to stream down her chin and chest. She fills the second waterskin and drinks greedily from it, savoring the coolness of it on her tongue. She refills the skin and turns to find Sandor removing a bedroll from the side of the horse, which he places in a thick covers of shrubs and trees, so as to remain somewhat hidden.
"Do we have any food?" Viola asks as she makes her way to Sandor and helps him unroll the thick bedroll, likely nowhere near large enough to fit them both.
"No." He says soleomly.
"What do we have?"
"A healing kit for battle, a bedroll, two waterskins, and whatever you fit in the second saddlebag."
"Okay." Viola begins to scour the ground for anything they can use, anything to feed them. "Okay, I will find dinner, you find me some sturdy sticks, about as big around as my wrist, and a sapling that's nearly as tall as I am."
Viola drops to her hands and knees and begins to study the ground, just as her father taught her and her brother when they were young. She slowly makes her way up and down the riverbank, taking care to poke her head beneath thick shrubs and carefully move brush and debris. Finally, she finds what she is looking for far enough away from their camp to not be spotted, yet close enough to hear should they catch anything. She stands and wipes her mud caked palms on her skirts and goes to find Sandor.
Once she returns, she finds several branches piled neatly near the bedroll, along with an entire sapling he had ripped, roots and all, from the ground.
"Thank you, but I needed the sapling to remain in the ground." SHe chuckles as his eyes roam up and down her body, taking in her muddy skirts and windblown hair. "Is there any rope in your packs?"
"Aye." Sandor undoes the pack containing his wartime medic supplies and removes a long length of rope to pass to Viola.
Along with the rope, the pack also contains three straight needles, two curved needles, a length of dried catgut, and a flint and several bundles of cotton for fire starting. Viola gets to work creating a large slip knot, which she sets aside. She asks Sandor for his knife, and sits beside him on the edge of the bedroll as she uses the knife to sharpen each end of the wood he had brought her, then breaks off a section where a branch would have been, ensuring a large L is left on two of the pieces to act as a linking mechanism of sorts. Sandor watches her in silence, studying the way she carved the wood, how she holds her hand and knife as she works, and the way her brow scrunches in concentration.
The sun is near setting by the time she has finished, but there is still enough light reflecting off of the rivers surface for her to see by. She hastily gathers her supplies and marches off towards the brush she had found in her earlier scouting. She sets the snare she had carefully constructed, opting for a springy, low hanging tree branch instead of a large sapling. Sandor leans against a nearby tree as she works, studying every move she makes. Finally, once the snare trap has been set in place, Viola plucks some white clover flowers from a nearby clover patch, and places them inside of the snare to act as bait.
She pulls Sandor by the arm back towards the river, and instructs him to help her find two semi flat rocks, large enough to fit in the palms of their hands. The light is nearly gone by this point, but they quickly find two rocks big enough to fit their needs, and she leads him towards their bedroll.
Under the cover of trees, Viola sits on the ground and begins digging in the soil with her rock. She pats the ground, instructing Sandor to sit and help her. Within minutes, they've dug a hole roughly the size of her head, elbow deep in the ground. Viola tests the dampness of the ground by squeezing the clumps of dirt between her fingers, hoping that it isn't too moist, and that she moved far enough away from the river to prevent ground water from filling the hole. Once happy with the first hole, she wets her finger in her mouth, spitting out pieces of dirt in the process, and holds it above her head to find the direction of the wind. The wind comes from the east, so she sets to digging a second hole in that direction, angled towards the first. Sandor does not assist with this, only watches in silence and she removes handfuls of soil until she finally is able to break through to the first hole with her fingers.
Viola grabs handfuls of small twigs, leaves, and pine needles, and tosses them into the first hole. SHe retrieves the flint and cotton from the medic pouch, and as she removes them, Sandor grabs her hand and retches them from her grip.
"What the fuck do you think you're doing?" He barks down at her. "You'll lead those cunts right to us!"
"We are building the fire underground, so there will be no light from it. The holes, and the tree coverage will mask the smoke. We will not be seen." Viola gestures up at the canopy of tree limbs above them, and back down at the hole they had been working on. "Trust me. I've done this hundreds of times."
"How do you know how to do all of this?"
"My father taught my brother and I. This is how they'd survive when they would go on hunting trips."
Sandor relents and allows her to strike the flint, the dry material in the bottom of the hole catches quickly, and she slowly feeds it small twigs until the flame is large enough to hold larger sticks. Just then the rustling of trees and the high pitched squeal of a small animal tells her that something is caught in the snare she had set. She grabs Sandor's hand and hauls him up, then marches him towards the shrubbery to check their catch. Dangling by a foot high in the air is a fat, brown rabbit. Sandor quickly kills the rabbit and removes it from the snare.
"Have you ever skinned a rabbit before?" Viola asks him as he walks away from her, the rabbit clutched in his large hand.
"No." He barks and sits heavily down on the bedroll.
"Then let me." She holds her hand out for the rabbit, which Sandor passes to her along with the knife.
She takes the rabbit to the rivers edge, and places it atop a large rock where she gets to work using the moon and stars for light. Before long she has the rabbit dressed and on a spit. She places the spit over the opening of the hole containing the flame, and the two sit in silence as the rabbit cooks.
"Where are we going?" Viola asks as she hugs her knees to her chest next to Sandor.
"Seeing you home to your father."
"Really?" Viola sits up excitedly, smiling in the darkness.
"Aye. Swore to you I would see you home."
"And then what? What will we do then?"
"I will go to Free Cities, hear they are always in need of sellswords."
"If you're going to the Free Cities, then I'm going to Free Cities, too."
"Thought you wanted your father?"
"I do. I want him to know that I'm alive, but you're my husband."
"Wouldn't take a husband that wanted you because you couldn't leave your father, now you're going to leave your father to follow your husband." Sandor scoffs as he moves further away from the fire to lean against a tree. "The Free Cities is no place for a lady."
"I'm not a lady. I go where you go. I just want my father to know that I'm alive, and then we can go. Perhaps he will even join us, with the wars coming, I doubt there will be much work for a stonesmason. He can find work there." Viola rotates the rabbit and watches as it drips grease into the fire, the flame popping and cracking gently. "What happened back there? Why did we leave?"
"Whole damn city was on fire." He says quietly, his voice low and husky.
Viola abandons the rabbit and crawls towards Sandor as he begins slowly removing his armor, leaving him in mail and underclothes. She helps him place it next to the bedroll, then crawls against his side, tucking her head in his arm as they lean against the tree in the darkness.
"Thank you for coming back for me." Viola whispers.
"Couldn't let you burn, could I?" Sandor says before kissing the top of her head and resting his chin on it.
They eat their rabbit in silence, Sandor eating all of his and most of Viola's before licking his fingers clean and throwing himself down on the bedroll with a grown. Viola gets to work kicking dirt into the fire to extinguish it, then curls up next to him, using his body to shield her own from the wind that was beginning to pick up.
"We'll have to stop sooner tomorrow if we want to get all of this done before dark, and find food. It's hard to skin a rabbit in the dark."
"I have a bit of coin. Might find an inn on the road. We can stop for a night or two."
Viola removes the stocking from her breast and pulls the leather sack from it. She presses it into Sandor's hand, and he bounces it up and down in his fist, checking the weight of it.
"It isn't much, but if we combine it with what you've got, it should be enough to see us to Father, and then to the Free Cities. We can live off the land, like this, and save this for when we need it." Viola suggests and Sandor presses the pouch back into her hand.
"Hide it away." Sandor instructs her. "We may need it later."
Viola does as she is told and Sandor pulls her tight against his chest, his chain mail digging into her cheek and his shoulder plates keeping her from putting her head on his chest as she normally would sleep. She shifts down lower, resting her head below his breast, and quickly drifts off to sleep as he runs his fingers through her hair.