Whatever else you may have done. “What is it that you think I’ve done?” she said. “Who are you?”
“We were king’s men when we began,” the man told her, “but king’s men must have a king, and we have none. We were brothers too, but now our brotherhood is broken. I do not know who we are, if truth be told, nor where we might be going. I only know the road is dark. The fires have not shown me what lies at its end.”
I know where it ends. I have seen the corpses in the trees. “Fires,” Brienne repeated. All at once she understood. “You are the Myrish priest. The red wizard.”
He looked down at his ragged robes, and smiled ruefully. “The pink pretender, rather. I am Thoros, late of Myr, aye . . . a bad priest and a worse wizard.”
“You ride with the Dondarrion. The lightning lord.”
“Lightning comes and goes and then is seen no more. So too with men. Lord Beric’s fire has gone out of this world, I fear. A grimmer shadow leads us in his place.”
“The Hound?”
The priest pursed his lips. “The Hound is dead and buried.”
“I saw him. In the woods.”
“A fever dream, my lady.”
“He said that he would hang me.”
“Even dreams can lie. My lady, how long has it been since you have eaten? Surely you are famished?”
She was, she realized. Her belly felt hollow. “Food . . . food would be welcome, thank you.”
“A meal, then. Sit. We will talk more, but first a meal. Wait here.” Thoros lit a taper from the sagging candle, and vanished into a black hole beneath a ledge of rock. Brienne found herself alone in the small cave. For how long, though?
She prowled the chamber, looking for a weapon. Any sort of weapon would have served; a staff, a club, a dagger. She found only rocks. One fit her fist nicely . . . but she remembered the Whispers, and what happened when Shagwell tried to pit a stone against a knife. When she heard the priest’s returning footsteps, she let the rock fall to the cavern floor and resumed her seat.
Thoros had bread and cheese and a bowl of stew. “I am sorry,” he said. “The last of the milk had soured, and the honey is all gone. Food grows scant. Still, this will fill you.”
The stew was cold and greasy, the bread hard, the cheese harder. Brienne had never eaten anything half so good. “Are my companions here?” she asked the priest, as she was spooning up the last of the stew.
“The septon was set free to go upon his way. There was no harm in him. The others are here, awaiting judgment.”
“Judgment?” She frowned. “Podrick Payne is just a boy.”
“He says he is a squire.”
“You know how boys will boast.”
“The Imp’s squire. He has fought in battles, by his own admission. He has even killed, to hear him tell it.”
“A boy,” she said again. “Have pity.”
“My lady,” Thoros said, “I do not doubt that kindness and mercy and forgiveness can still be found somewhere in these Seven Kingdoms, but do not look for them here. This is a cave, not a temple. When men must live like rats in the dark beneath the earth, they soon run out of pity, as they do of milk and honey.”
“And justice? Can that be found in caves?”
“Justice.” Thoros smiled wanly. “I remember justice. It had a pleasant taste. Justice was what we were about when Beric led us, or so we told ourselves. We were king’s men, knights, and heroes . . . but some knights are dark and full of terror, my lady. War makes monsters of us all.”
“Are you saying you are monsters?”
“I am saying we are human. You are not the only one with wounds, Lady Brienne. Some of my brothers were good men when this began. Some were . . . less good, shall we say? Though there are those who say it does not matter how a man begins, but only how he ends. I suppose it is the same for women.” The priest got to his feet. “Our time together is at an end, I fear. I hear my brothers coming. Our lady sends for you.”
Brienne heard their footsteps and saw torchlight flickering in the passage. “You told me she had gone to Fairmarket.”
“And so she had. She returned whilst we were sleeping. She never sleeps herself.”
I will not be afraid, she told herself, but it was too late for that. I will not let them see my fear, she promised herself instead. There were four of them, hard men with haggard faces, clad in mail and scale and leather. She recognized one of them; the man with one eye, from her dreams.
The biggest of the four wore a stained and tattered yellow cloak. “Enjoy the food?” he asked. “I hope so. It’s the last food you’re ever like to eat.” He was brown-haired, bearded, brawny, with a broken nose that had healed badly. I know this man, Brienne thought. “You are the Hound.”
He grinned. His teeth were awful; crooked, and streaked brown with rot. “I suppose I am. Seeing as how m’lady went and killed the last one.” He turned his head and spat.
She remembered lightning flashing, the mud beneath her feet. “It was Rorge I killed. He took the helm from Clegane’s grave, and you stole it off his corpse.”
“I didn’t hear him objecting.”
Thoros sucked in his breath in dismay. “Is this true? A dead man’s helm? Have we fallen that low?”
The big man scowled at him. “It’s good steel.”
“There is nothing good about that helm, nor the men who wore it,” said the red priest. “Sandor Clegane was a man in torment, and Rorge a beast in human skin.”
“I’m not them.”
“Then why show the world their face? Savage, snarling, twisted . . . is that who you would be, Lem?”
“The sight of it will make my foes afraid.”
“The sight of it makes me afraid.”
“Close your eyes, then.” The man in the yellow cloak made a sharp gesture. “Bring the whore.”
Brienne did not resist. There were four of them, and she was weak and wounded, naked beneath the woolen shift. She had to bend her neck to keep from hitting her head as they marched her through the twisting passage. The way ahead rose sharply, turning twice before emerging in a much larger cavern full of outlaws.
A fire pit had been dug into the center of the floor, and the air was blue with smoke. Men clustered near the flames, warming themselves against the chill of the cave. Others stood along the walls or sat cross-legged on straw pallets. There were women too, and even a few children peering out from behind their mothers’ skirts. The one face Brienne knew belonged to Long Jeyne Heddle.
A trestle table had been set up across the cave, in a cleft in the rock. Behind it sat a woman all in grey, cloaked and hooded. In her hands was a crown, a bronze circlet ringed by iron swords. She was studying it, her fingers stroking the blades as if to test their sharpness. Her eyes glimmered under her hood.
Grey was the color of the silent sisters, the handmaidens of the Stranger. Brienne felt a shiver climb her spine. Stoneheart.
“M’lady,” said the big man. “Here she is.”
“Aye,” added the one-eyed man. “The Kingslayer’s whore.”
She flinched. “Why would you call me that?”
“If I had a silver stag for every time you said his name, I’d be as rich as your friends the Lannisters.”
“That was only . . . you do not understand . . .”
“Don’t we, though?” The big man laughed. “I think we might. There’s a stink of lion about you, lady.”
“That’s not so.”
Another of the outlaws stepped forward, a younger man in a greasy sheepskin jerkin. In his hand was Oathkeeper. “This says it is.” His voice was frosted with the accents of the north. He slid the sword from its scabbard and placed it in front of Lady Stoneheart. In the light from the firepit the red and black ripples in the blade almost seem to move, but the woman in grey had eyes only for the pommel: a golden lion’s head, with ruby eyes that shone like two red stars.
“There is this as well.” Thoros of Myr drew a parchment from his sleeve, and put it down next to
the sword. “It bears the boy king’s seal and says the bearer is about his business.”
Lady Stoneheart set the sword aside to read the letter.
“The sword was given me for a good purpose,” said Brienne. “Ser Jaime swore an oath to Catelyn Stark . . .”
“. . . before his friends cut her throat for her, that must have been,” said the big man in the yellow cloak. “We all know about the Kingslayer and his oaths.”
It is no good, Brienne realized. No words of mine will sway them. She plunged ahead despite that. “He promised Lady Catelyn her daughters, but by the time we reached King’s Landing they were gone. Jaime sent me out to seek the Lady Sansa . . .”
“. . . and if you had found the girl,” asked the young northman, “what were you to do with her?”
“Protect her. Take her somewhere safe.”
The big man laughed. “Where’s that? Cersei’s dungeon?”
“No.”
“Deny it all you want. That sword says you’re a liar. Are we supposed to believe the Lannisters are handing out gold and ruby swords to foes? That the Kingslayer meant for you to hide the girl from his own twin? I suppose the paper with the boy king’s seal was just in case you needed to wipe your arse? And then there’s the company you keep . . .” The big man turned and beckoned, the ranks of outlaws parted, and two more captives were brought forth. “The boy was the Imp’s own squire, m’lady,” he said to Lady Stoneheart. “T’other is one of Randyll Bloody Tarly’s bloody household knights.”
Hyle Hunt had been beaten so badly that his face was swollen almost beyond recognition. He stumbled as they shoved him, and almost fell. Podrick caught him by the arm. “Ser,” the boy said miserably, when he saw Brienne. “My lady, I mean. Sorry.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for.” Brienne turned to Lady Stoneheart. “Whatever treachery you think I may have done, my lady, Podrick and Ser Hyle were no part of it.”
“They’re lions,” said the one-eyed man. “That’s enough. I say they hang. Tarly’s hanged a score o’ ours, past time we strung up some o’ his.”
Ser Hyle gave Brienne a faint smile. “My lady,” he said, “you should have wed me when I made my offer. Now I fear you’re doomed to die a maid, and me a poor man.”
“Let them go,” Brienne pleaded.
The woman in grey gave no answer. She studied the sword, the parchment, the bronze-and-iron crown. Finally she reached up under her jaw and grasped her neck, as if she meant to throttle herself. Instead she spoke . . . Her voice was halting, broken, tortured. The sound seemed to come from her throat, part croak, part wheeze, part death rattle. The language of the damned, thought Brienne. “I don’t understand. What did she say?”
“She asked the name of this blade of yours,” said the young northman in the sheepskin jerkin.
“Oathkeeper,” Brienne answered.
The woman in grey hissed through her fingers. Her eyes were two red pits burning in the shadows. She spoke again.
“No, she says. Call it Oathbreaker, she says. It was made for treachery and murder. She names it False Friend. Like you.”
“To whom have I been false?”
“To her,” the northman said. “Can it be that my lady has forgotten that you once swore her your service?”
There was only one woman that the Maid of Tarth had ever sworn to serve. “That cannot be,” she said. “She’s dead.”
“Death and guest right,” muttered Long Jeyne Heddle. “They don’t mean so much as they used to, neither one.”
Lady Stoneheart lowered her hood and unwound the grey wool scarf from her face. Her hair was dry and brittle, white as bone. Her brow was mottled green and grey, spotted with the brown blooms of decay. The flesh of her face clung in ragged strips from her eyes down to her jaw. Some of the rips were crusted with dried blood, but others gaped open to reveal the skull beneath.
Her face, Brienne thought. Her face was so strong and handsome, her skin so smooth and soft. “Lady Catelyn?” Tears filled her eyes. “They said . . . they said that you were dead.”
“She is,” said Thoros of Myr. “The Freys slashed her throat from ear to ear. When we found her by the river she was three days dead. Harwin begged me to give her the kiss of life, but it had been too long. I would not do it, so Lord Beric put his lips to hers instead, and the flame of life passed from him to her. And . . . she rose. May the Lord of Light protect us. She rose.”
Am I dreaming still? Brienne wondered. Is this another nightmare born from Biter’s teeth? “I never betrayed her. Tell her that. I swear it by the Seven. I swear it by my sword.”
The thing that had been Catelyn Stark took hold of her throat again, fingers pinching at the ghastly long slash in her neck, and choked out more sounds. “Words are wind, she says,” the northman told Brienne. “She says that you must prove your faith.”
“How?” asked Brienne.
“With your sword. Oathkeeper, you call it? Then keep your oath to her, milady says.”
“What does she want of me?”
“She wants her son alive, or the men who killed him dead,” said the big man. “She wants to feed the crows, like they did at the Red Wedding. Freys and Boltons, aye. We’ll give her those, as many as she likes. All she asks from you is Jaime Lannister.”
Jaime. The name was a knife, twisting in her belly. “Lady Catelyn, I . . . you do not understand, Jaime . . . he saved me from being raped when the Bloody Mummers took us, and later he came back for me, he leapt into the bear pit empty-handed . . . I swear to you, he is not the man he was. He sent me after Sansa to keep her safe, he could not have had a part in the Red Wedding.”
Lady Catelyn’s fingers dug deep into her throat, and the words came rattling out, choked and broken, a stream as cold as ice. The northman said, “She says that you must choose. Take the sword and slay the Kingslayer, or be hanged for a betrayer. The sword or the noose, she says. Choose, she says. Choose.”
Brienne remembered her dream, waiting in her father’s hall for the boy she was to marry. In the dream she had bitten off her tongue. My mouth was full of blood. She took a ragged breath and said, “I will not make that choice.”
There was a long silence. Then Lady Stoneheart spoke again. This time Brienne understood her words. There were only two. “Hang them,” she croaked.
“As you command, m’lady,” said the big man.
They bound Brienne’s wrists with rope again and led her from the cavern, up a twisting stony path to the surface. It was morning outside, she was surprised to see. Shafts of pale dawn light were slanting through the trees. So many trees to choose from, she thought. They will not need to take us far.
Nor did they. Beneath a crooked willow, the outlaws slipped a noose about her neck, jerked it tight, and tossed the other end of the rope over a limb. Hyle Hunt and Podrick Payne were given elms. Ser Hyle was shouting that he would kill Jaime Lannister, but the Hound cuffed him across the face and shut him up. He had donned the helm again. “If you got crimes to confess to your gods, this would be the time to say them.”
“Podrick has never harmed you. My father will ransom him. Tarth is called the sapphire isle. Send Podrick with my bones to Evenfall, and you’ll have sapphires, silver, whatever you want.”
“I want my wife and daughter back,” said the Hound. “Can your father give me that? If not, he can get buggered. The boy will rot beside you. Wolves will gnaw your bones.”
“Do you mean to hang her, Lem?” asked the one-eyed man. “Or do you figure to talk the bitch to death?”
The Hound snatched the end of the rope from the man holding it. “Let’s see if she can dance,” he said, and gave a yank.
Brienne felt the hemp constricting, digging into her skin, jerking her chin upward. Ser Hyle was cursing them eloquently, but not the boy. Podrick never lifted his eyes, not even when his feet were jerked up off the ground. If this is another dream, it is time for me to awaken. If this is real, it is time for me to die. All she could see was Podrick, the noo
se around his thin neck, his legs twitching. Her mouth opened. Pod was kicking, choking, dying. Brienne sucked the air in desperately, even as the rope was strangling her. Nothing had ever hurt so much.
She screamed a word.
* * *
THE LOST LORD
It should not have taken this long, Griff told himself as he paced the deck of the Shy Maid. Had they lost Haldon as they had Tyrion Lannister? Could the Volantenes have taken him? I should have sent Duckfield with him. Haldon alone could not be trusted; he had proved that in Selhorys when he let the dwarf escape.
The Shy Maid was tied up in one of the meaner sections of the long, chaotic riverfront, between a listing poleboat that had not left the pier in years and the gaily painted mummers’ barge. The mummers were a loud and lively lot, always quoting speeches at each other and drunk more oft than not.
The day was hot and sticky, as all the days had been since they left the Sorrows. A ferocious southern sun beat down upon the crowded riverfront of Volon Therys, but heat was the last and least of Griff’s concerns. The Golden Company was encamped three miles south of town, well north of where he had expected them, and Triarch Malaquo had come north with five thousand foot and a thousand horse to cut them off from the delta road. Daenerys Targaryen remained a world away, and Tyrion Lannister … well, he could be most anywhere. If the gods were good, Lannister’s severed head was halfway back to King’s Landing by now, but more like the dwarf was hale and whole and somewhere close, stinking drunk and plotting some new infamy.
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