Her eyes had grown accustomed to blackness. When Harwin pulled
the hood off her head, the ruddy glare inside the hollow hill made
Arya blink like some stupid owl.
A huge firepit had been dug in the center of the earthen floor,
and its flames rose swirling and crackling toward the smoke-stained
ceiling. The walls were equal parts stone and soil, with huge white
roots twisting through them like a thousand slow pale snakes.
People were emerging from between those roots as she watched;
edging out from the shadows for a look at the captives, stepping
from the mouths of pitch-black tunnels, popping out of crannies and
crevices on all sides. In one place on the far side of the fire,
the roots formed a kind of stairway up to a hollow in the earth
where a man sat almost lost in the tangle of weirwood.
Lem unhooded Gendry. “What is this place?” he
asked.
“An old place, deep and secret. A refuge where neither
wolves nor lions come prowling.” Neither wolves nor lions. Arya’s skin prickled. She
remembered the dream she’d had, and the taste of blood when
she tore the man’s arm from his shoulder.
Big as the fire was, the cave was bigger; it was hard to tell
where it began and where it ended. The tunnel mouths might have
been two feet deep or gone on two miles. Arya saw men and women and
little children, all of them watching her warily.
Greenbeard said, “Here’s the wizard, skinny
squirrel. You’ll get your answers now.” He pointed
toward the fire, where Tom Sevenstrings stood talking to a tall
thin man with oddments of old armor buckled on over his ratty pink
robes. That can’t be Thoros of Myr. Arya remembered the red
priest as fat, with a smooth face and a shiny bald head. This man
had a droopy face and a full head of shaggy grey hair. Something
Tom said made him look at her, and Arya thought he was about to
come over to her. Only then the Mad Huntsman appeared, shoving his
captive down into the light, and she and Gendry were forgotten.
The Huntsman had turned out to be a stocky man in patched tan
leathers, balding and weak-chinned and quarrelsome. At Stoney Sept
she had thought that Lem and Greenbeard might be torn to pieces when
they faced him at the crow cages to claim his captive for the
lightning lord. The hounds had been all around them, sniffing and
snarling. But Tom o’ Sevens soothed them with his playing,
Tansy marched across the square with her apron full of bones and
fatty mutton, and Lem pointed out Anguy in the brothel window,
standing with an arrow notched. The Mad Huntsman had cursed them
all for lickspittles, but finally he had agreed to take his prize
to Lord Beric for judgment.
They had bound his wrists with hempen rope, strung a noose
around his neck, and pulled a sack down over his head, but even so
there was danger in the man. Arya could feel it across the cave.
Thoros—if that was Thoros—met captor and captive halfway to the
fire. “How did you take him?” the priest asked.
“The dogs caught the scent. He was sleeping off a drunk
under a willow tree, if you believe it.”
“Betrayed by his own kind.” Thoros turned to the
prisoner and yanked his hood off. “Welcome to our humble
hall, dog. It is not so grand as Robert’s throne room, but
the company is better.”
The shifting flames painted Sandor Clegane’s burned face
with orange shadows, so he looked even more terrible than he did in
daylight. When he pulled at the rope that bound his wrists, flakes
of dry blood fell off. The Hound’s mouth twitched. “I
know you,” he said to Thoros.
“You did. In mêlées, you’d curse my flaming sword,
though thrice I overthrew you with it.”
“Thoros of Myr. You used to shave your head.”
“To betoken a humble heart, but in truth my heart was
vain. Besides, I lost my razor in the woods.” The priest
slapped his belly. “I am less than I was, but more. A year in
the wild will melt the flesh off a man. Would that I could find a
tailor to take in my skin. I might look young again, and pretty
maids would shower me with kisses.”
“Only the blind ones, priest.”
The outlaws hooted, none so loud as Thoros. “Just so. Yet
I am not the false priest you knew. The Lord of Light has woken in
my heart. Many powers long asleep are waking, and there are forces
moving in the land. I have seen them in my flames.”
The Hound was unimpressed. “Bugger your flames. And you as
well.” He looked around at the others. “You keep queer
company for a holy man.”
“These are my brothers,” Thoros said simply.
Lem Lemoncloak pushed forward. He and Greenbeard were the only
men there tall enough to look the Hound in the eye. “Be
careful how you bark, dog. We hold your life in our
hands.”
“Best wipe the shit off your fingers, then.” The
Hound laughed. “How long have you been hiding in this
hole?”
Anguy the Archer bristled at the suggestion of cowardice.
“Ask the goat if we’ve hidden, Hound. Ask your brother.
Ask the lord of leeches. We’ve bloodied them all.”
“You lot? Don’t make me laugh. You look more
swineherds than soldiers.”
“Some of us was swineherds,” said a short man Arya
did not know. “And some was tanners or singers or masons. But
that was before the war come.”
“When we left King’s Landing we were men of
Winterfell and men of Darry and men of Blackhaven, Mallery men and
Wylde men. We were knights and squires and men-at-arms, lords and
commoners, bound together only by our purpose.” The voice
came from the man seated amongst the weirwood roots halfway up the
wall. “Six score of us set out to bring the king’s
justice to your brother.” The speaker was descending the
tangle of steps toward the floor. “Six score brave men and
true, led by a fool in a starry cloak.” A scarecrow of a man,
he wore a ragged black cloak speckled with stars and an iron
breastplate dinted by a hundred battles. A thicket of red-gold hair
hid most of his face, save for a bald spot above his left ear where
his head had been smashed in. “More than eighty of our
company are dead now, but others have taken up the swords that fell
from their hands.” When he reached the floor, the outlaws
moved aside to let him pass. One of his eyes was gone, Arya saw,
the flesh about the socket scarred and puckered, and he had a dark
black ring all around his neck. “With their help, we fight on
as best we can, for Robert and the realm.”
“Robert?” rasped Sandor Clegane, incredulous.
“Ned Stark sent us out,” said pothelmed
Jack-Be-Lucky, “but he was sitting the Iron Throne when he
gave us our commands, so we were never truly his men, but
Robert’s.”
“Robert is the king of the worms now. Is that why
you’re down in the earth, to keep his court for
him?”
“The king is dead,” the scarecrow knight admitted,
“but we are still king’s men, though the royal banner
we bore was lost at the Mummer’s Ford when your
brother’s butchers fell upon us.” He touched his breast
with a fist. “Robert is slain, but his realm remains. And we
defend her.”
“Her?” The Hound snorted. “Is she your mother,
Dondarrion? Or your whore?” Dondarrion? Beric Dondarrion had been handsome; Sansa’s
friend Jeyne had fallen in love with him. Even Jeyne Poole was not
so blind as to think this man was fair. Yet when Arya looked at him
again, she saw it; the remains of a forked purple lightning bolt on
the cracked enamel of his breastplate.
“Rocks and trees and rivers, that’s what your realm
is made of,” the Hound was saying. “Do the rocks need
defending? Robert wouldn’t have thought so. If he
couldn’t fuck it, fight it, or drink it, it bored him, and so
would you . . . you brave
companions.”
Outrage swept the hollow hill. “Call us that name again,
dog, and you’ll swallow that tongue.” Lem drew his
longsword.
The Hound stared at the blade with contempt. “Here’s
a brave man, baring steel on a bound captive. Untie me, why
don’t you? We’ll see how brave you are then.” He
glanced at the Mad Huntsman behind him. “How about you? Or
did you leave all your courage in your kennels?”
“No, but I should have left you in a crow cage.” The
Huntsman drew a knife. “I might still.”
The Hound laughed in his face.
“We are brothers here,” Thoros of Myr declared.
“Holy brothers, sworn to the realm, to our god, and to each
other.”
“The brotherhood without banners.” Tom Sevenstrings
plucked a string. “The knights of the hollow hill.”
“Knights?” Clegane made the word a sneer.
“Dondarrion’s a knight, but the rest of you are the
sorriest lot of outlaws and broken men I’ve ever seen. I shit
better men than you.”
“Any knight can make a knight,” said the scarecrow
that was Beric Dondarrion, “and every man you see before you
has felt a sword upon his shoulder. We are the forgotten
fellowship.”
“Send me on my way and I’ll forget you too,”
Clegane rasped. “But if you mean to murder me, then bloody
well get on with it. You took my sword, my horse, and my gold, so
take my life and be done with it . . . but
spare me this pious bleating.”
“You will die soon enough, dog,” promised Thoros,
“but it shan’t be murder, only justice.”
“Aye,” said the Mad Huntsman, “and a kinder
fate than you deserve for all your kind have done. Lions, you call
yourselves. At Sherrer and the Mummer’s Ford, girls of six
and seven years were raped, and babes still on the breast were cut
in two while their mothers watched. No lion ever killed so
cruel.”
“I was not at Sherrer, nor the Mummer’s Ford,”
the Hound told him. “Lay your dead children at some other
door.”
Thoros answered him. “Do you deny that House Clegane was
built upon dead children? I saw them lay Prince Aegon and Princess
Rhaenys before the Iron Throne. By rights your arms should bear two
bloody infants in place of those ugly dogs.”
The Hound’s mouth twitched. “Do you take me for my
brother? Is being born Clegane a crime?”
“Murder is a crime.”
“Who did I murder?”
“Lord Lothar Mallery and Ser Gladden Wylde,” said
Harwin.
“My brothers Lister and Lennocks,” declared
Jack-Be-Lucky.
“Goodman Beck and Mudge the miller’s son, from
Donnelwood,” an old woman called from the shadows.
“Merriman’s widow, who loved so sweet,” added
Greenbeard.
“Them septons at Sludgy Pond.”
“Ser Andrey Charlton. His squire Lucas Roote. Every man,
woman, and child in Fieldstone and Mousedown Mill.”
“Lord and Lady Deddings, that was so rich.”
Tom Sevenstrings took up the count. “Alyn of Winterfell,
Joth Quickbow, Little Matt and his sister Randa, Anvil Ryn. Ser
Ormond. Ser Dudley. Pate of Mory, Pate of Lancewood, Old Pate, and
Pate of Shermer’s Grove. Blind Wyl the Whittler. Goodwife
Maerie. Maerie the Whore. Becca the Baker. Ser Raymun Darry, Lord
Darry, young Lord Darry. The Bastard of Bracken. Fletcher Will.
Harsley. Goodwife Nolla—”
“Enough.” The Hound’s face was tight with
anger. “You’re making noise. These names mean nothing.
Who were they?”
“People,” said Lord Beric. “People great and
small, young and old. Good people and bad people, who died on the
points of Lannister spears or saw their bellies opened by Lannister
swords.”
“It wasn’t my sword in their bellies. Any man who
says it was is a bloody liar.”
“You serve the Lannisters of Casterly Rock,” said
Thoros.
“Once. Me and thousands more. Is each of us guilty of the
crimes of the others?” Clegane spat. “Might be you are
knights after all. You lie like knights, maybe you murder like
knights.”
Lem and Jack-Be-Lucky began to shout at him, but Dondarrion
raised a hand for silence. “Say what you mean,
Clegane.”
“A knight’s a sword with a horse. The rest, the vows
and the sacred oils and the lady’s favors, they’re silk
ribbons tied round the sword. Maybe the sword’s prettier with
ribbons hanging off it, but it will kill you just as dead. Well,
bugger your ribbons, and shove your swords up your arses. I’m
the same as you. The only difference is, I don’t lie about
what I am. So kill me, but don’t call me a murderer while you stand
there telling each other that your shit don’t stink. You hear
me?”
Arya squirted past Greenbeard so fast he never saw her.
“You are a murderer!” she screamed. “You killed
Mycah, don’t say you never did. You murdered him!”
The Hound stared at her with no flicker of recognition.
“And who was this Mycah, boy?”
“I’m not a boy! But Mycah was. He was a
butcher’s boy and you killed him. Jory said you cut him near
in half, and he never even had a sword.” She could feel them
looking at her now, the women and the children and the men who
called themselves the knights of the hollow hill.
“Who’s this now?” someone asked.
The Hound answered. “Seven hells. The little sister. The
brat who tossed Joff’s pretty sword in the river.” He
gave a bark of laughter. “Don’t you know you’re
dead?”
“No, you’re dead,” she threw back at him.
Harwin took her arm to draw her back as Lord Beric said,
“The girl has named you a murderer. Do you deny killing this
butcher’s boy, Mycah?”
The big man shrugged. “I was Joffrey’s sworn shield.
The butcher’s boy attacked a prince of the blood.”
“That’s a lie!” Arya squirmed in
Harwin’s grip. “It was me. I hit Joffrey and threw
Lion’s Paw in the river. Mycah just ran away, like I told
him.”
“Did you see the boy attack Prince Joffrey?” Lord
Beric Dondarrion asked the Hound.
“I heard it from the royal lips. It’s not my place
to question princes.” Clegane jerked his hands toward Arya.
“This one’s own sister told the same tale when she
stood before your precious Robert.”
“Sansa’s just a liar,” Arya said, furious at
her sister all over again. “It wasn’t like she said. It
wasn’t.”
Thoros drew Lord Beric aside. The two men stood talking in low
whispers while Arya seethed. They have to kill him. I prayed for
him to die, hundreds and hundreds of times.
Beric Dondarrion turned back to the Hound. “You stand
accused of murder, but no one here knows the truth or falsehood of
the charge, so it is not for us to judge you. Only the Lord of
Light may do that now. I sentence you to trial by
battle.”
The Hound frowned suspiciously, as if he did not trust his ears.
“Are you a fool or a madman?”
“Neither. I am a just lord. Prove your innocence with a
blade, and you shall be free to go.”
“No,” Arya cried, before Harwin covered her mouth.
No, they can’t, he’ll go free. The Hound was deadly
with a sword, everyone knew that. He’ll laugh at them, she
thought.
And so he did, a long rasping laugh that echoed off the cave
walls, a laugh choking with contempt. “So who will it
be?” He looked at Lem Lemoncloak. “The brave man in the
piss-yellow cloak? No? How about you, Huntsman? You’ve kicked
dogs before, try me.” He saw Greenbeard. “You’re
big enough, Tyrosh, step forward. Or do you mean to make the little
girl fight me herself?” He laughed again. “Come on, who
wants to die?
“It’s me you’ll face,” said Lord Beric
Dondarrion.
Arya remembered all the tales. He can’t be killed, she
thought, hoping against hope. The Mad Huntsman sliced apart the
ropes that bound Sandor Clegane’s hands together.
“I’ll need sword and armor.” The Hound rubbed a
torn wrist.
“Your sword you shall have,” declared Lord Beric,
“but your innocence must be your armor.”
Clegane’s mouth twitched. “My innocence against your
breastplate, is that the way of it?”
“Ned, help me remove my breastplate.”
Arya got goosebumps when Lord Beric said her father’s
name, but this Ned was only a boy, a fair-haired squire no more
than ten or twelve. He stepped up quickly to undo the clasps that
fastened the battered steel about the Marcher lord. The quilting
beneath was rotten with age and sweat, and fell away when the metal
was pulled loose. Gendry sucked in his breath. “Mother have
mercy.”
Lord Beric’s ribs were outlined starkly beneath his skin.
A puckered crater scarred his breast just above his left nipple,
and when he turned to call for sword and shield, Arya saw a
matching scar upon his back. The lance went through him. The Hound
had seen it too. Is he scared? Arya wanted him to be scared before
he died, as scared as Mycah must have been.
Ned fetched Lord Beric his swordbelt and a long black surcoat.
It was meant to be worn over armor, so it draped his body loosely,
but across it crackled the forked purple lightning of his House. He
unsheathed his sword and gave the belt back to his squire.
Thoros brought the Hound his swordbelt. “Does a dog have
honor?” the priest asked. “Lest you think to cut your
way free of here, or seize some child for a
hostage . . . Anguy, Dennet, Kyle, feather him
at the first sign of treachery.” Only when the three bowmen
had notched their shafts did Thoros hand Clegane the belt.
The Hound ripped the sword free and threw away the scabbard. The
Mad Huntsman gave him his oaken shield, all studded with iron and
painted yellow, the three black dogs of Clegane emblazoned upon it.
The boy Ned helped Lord Beric with his own shield, so hacked and
battered that the purple lightning and the scatter of stars upon it
had almost been obliterated.
But when the Hound made to step toward his foe, Thoros of Myr
stopped him. “First we pray.” He turned toward the fire
and lifted his arms. “Lord of Light, look down upon
us.”
All around the cave, the brotherhood without banners lifted
their own voices in response. “Lord of Light, defend
us.”
“Lord of Light, protect us in the darkness.”
“Lord of Light, shine your face upon us.”
“Light your flame among us, R’hllor,” said the
red priest. “Show us the truth or falseness of this man.
Strike him down if he is guilty, and give strength to his sword if
he is true. Lord of Light, give us wisdom.”
“For the night is dark,” the others chanted, Harwin
and Anguy loud as all the rest, “and full of
terrors.”
“This cave is dark too,” said the Hound, “but
I’m the terror here. I hope your god’s a sweet one,
Dondarrion. You’re going to meet him shortly.”
Unsmiling, Lord Beric laid the edge of his longsword against the
palm of his left hand, and drew it slowly down. Blood ran dark from
the gash he made, and washed over the steel.
And then the sword took fire.
Arya heard Gendry whisper a prayer.
“Burn in seven hells,” the Hound cursed. “You,
and Thoros too.” He threw a glance at the red priest.
“When I’m done with him you’ll be next,
Myr.”
“Every word you say proclaims your guilt, dog,”
answered Thoros, while Lem and Greenbeard and Jack-Be-Lucky shouted
threats and curses. Lord Beric himself waited silent, calm as still
water, his shield on his left arm and his sword burning in his
right hand. Kill him, Arya thought, please, you have to kill him.
Lit from below, his face was a death mask, his missing eye a red
and angry wound. The sword was aflame from point to crossguard, but
Dondarrion seemed not to feel the heat. He stood so still he might
have been carved of stone.
But when the Hound charged him, he moved fast enough.
The flaming sword leapt up to meet the cold one, long streamers
of fire trailing in its wake like the ribbons the Hound had spoken
of. Steel rang on steel. No sooner was his first slash blocked than
Clegane made another, but this time Lord Beric’s shield got
in the way, and wood chips flew from the force of the blow. Hard
and fast the cuts came, from low and high, from right and left, and
each one Dondarrion blocked. The flames swirled about his sword and
left red and yellow ghosts to mark its passage. Each move Lord
Beric made fanned them and made them burn the brighter, until it
seemed as though the lightning lord stood within a cage of fire.
“Is it wildfire?” Arya asked Gendry.
“No. This is different. This
is . . . ”
“ . . . magic?” she finished as
the Hound edged back. Now it was Lord Beric attacking, filling the air with ropes of fire, driving the
bigger man back on his heels. Clegane caught one blow high on his
shield, and a painted dog lost a head. He countercut, and
Dondarrion interposed his own shield and launched a fiery
backslash. The outlaw brotherhood shouted on their leader.
“He’s yours!” Arya heard, and “At him! At
him! At him!” The Hound parried a cut at his head, grimacing
as the heat of the flames beat against his face. He grunted and
cursed and reeled away.
Lord Beric gave him no respite. Hard on the big man’s
heels he followed, his arm never still. The swords clashed and
sprang apart and clashed again, splinters flew from the lightning
shield while swirling flames kissed the dogs once, and twice, and
thrice. The Hound moved to his right, but Dondarrion blocked him
with a quick sidestep and drove him back the other
way . . . toward the sullen red blaze of the
firepit. Clegane gave ground until he felt the heat at his back. A
quick glance over his shoulder showed him what was behind him, and
almost cost him his head when Lord Beric attacked anew.
Arya could see the whites of Sandor Clegane’s eyes as he
bulled his way forward again. Three steps up and two back, a move
to the left that Lord Beric blocked, two more forward and one back,
clang and clang, and the big oaken shields took blow after blow
after blow. The Hound’s lank dark hair was plastered to his
brow in a sheen of sweat. Wine sweat, Arya thought, remembering
that he’d been taken drunk. She thought she could see the
beginnings of fear wake in his eyes. He’s going to lose, she
told herself, exulting, as Lord Beric’s flaming sword whirled
and slashed. In one wild flurry, the lightning lord took back all
the ground the Hound had gained, sending Clegane staggering to the
very edge of the firepit once more. He is, he is, he’s going
to die. She stood on her toes for a better look.
“Bloody bastard!” the Hound screamed as he felt the
fire licking against the back of his thighs. He charged, swinging
the heavy sword harder and harder, trying to smash the smaller man
down with brute force, to break blade or shield or arm. But the
flames of Dondarrion’s parries snapped at his eyes, and when
the Hound jerked away from them, his foot went out from under him
and he staggered to one knee. At once Lord Beric closed, his
downcut screaming through the air trailing pennons of fire. Panting
from exertion, Clegane jerked his shield up over his head just in
time, and the cave rang with the loud crack of splintering oak.
“His shield is afire,” Gendry said in a hushed
voice. Arya saw it in the same instant. The flames had spread
across the chipped yellow paint, and the three black dogs were
engulfed.
Sandor Clegane had fought his way back to his feet with a
reckless counterattack. Not until Lord Beric retreated a pace did
the Hound seem to realize that the fire that roared so near his
face was his own shield, burning. With a shout of revulsion, he
hacked down savagely on the broken oak, completing its destruction.
The shield shattered, one piece of it spinning away, still afire,
while the other clung stubbornly to his forearm. His efforts to
free himself only fanned the flames. His sleeve caught, and now his
whole left arm was ablaze. “Finish him!” Greenbeard
urged Lord Beric, and other voices took up the chant of
“Guilty!” Arya shouted with the rest. “Guilty,
guilty, kill him, guilty!”
Smooth as summer silk, Lord Beric slid close to make an end of
the man before him. The Hound gave a rasping scream, raised his
sword in both hands and brought it crashing down with all his
strength. Lord Beric blocked the cut
easily . . .
“Noooooo,” Arya shrieked.
. . . but the burning sword snapped in two,
and the Hound’s cold steel plowed into Lord Beric’s
flesh where his shoulder joined his neck and clove him clean down
to the breastbone. The blood came rushing out in a hot black
gush.
Sandor Clegane jerked backward, still burning. He ripped the
remnants of his shield off and flung them away with a curse, then
rolled in the dirt to smother the fire running along his arm.
Lord Beric’s knees folded slowly, as if for prayer. When
his mouth opened only blood came out. The Hound’s sword was
still in him as he toppled face forward. The dirt drank his blood.
Beneath the hollow hill there was no sound but the soft crackling
of flames and the whimper the Hound made when he tried to rise.
Arya could only think of Mycah and all the stupid prayers
she’d prayed for the Hound to die. If there were gods, why
didn’t Lord Beric win? She knew the Hound was guilty.
“Please,” Sandor Clegane rasped, cradling his arm.
“I’m burned. Help me. Someone. Help me.” He was
crying. “Please.”
Arya looked at him in astonishment. He’s crying like a
little baby, she thought.
“Melly, see to his burns,” said Thoros. “Lem,
Jack, help me with Lord Beric. Ned, you’d best come
too.” The red priest wrenched the Hound’s sword from
the body of his fallen lord and thrust the point of it down in the
blood-soaked earth. Lem slid his big hands under Dondarrion’s
arms, while Jack-Be-Lucky took his feet. They carried him around
the firepit, into the darkness of one of the tunnels. Thoros and
the boy Ned followed after.
The Mad Huntsman spat. “I say we take him back to Stoney
Sept and put him in a crow cage.”
“Yes,” Arya said. “He murdered Mycah. He
did.”
“Such an angry squirrel,” murmured Greenbeard.
Harwin sighed. “R’hllor has judged him
innocent.”
“Who’s Rulore?” She couldn’t even say
it.
“The Lord of Light. Thoros has taught us—”
She didn’t care what Thoros had taught them. She yanked
Greenbeard’s dagger from its sheath and spun away before he
could catch her. Gendry made a grab for her as well, but she had
always been too fast for Gendry.
Tom Sevenstrings and some woman were helping the Hound to his
feet. The sight of his arm shocked her speechless. There was a
strip of pink where the leather strap had clung, but above and
below the flesh was cracked and red and bleeding from elbow to
wrist. When his eyes met hers, his mouth twitched. “You want
me dead that bad? Then do it, wolf girl. Shove it in. It’s
cleaner than fire.” Clegane tried to stand, but as he moved a
piece of burned flesh sloughed right off his arm, and his knees
went out from under him. Tom caught him by his good arm and held
him up. His arm, Arya thought, and his face. But he was the Hound. He
deserved to burn in a fiery hell. The knife felt heavy in her hand.
She gripped it tighter. “You killed Mycah,” she said
once more, daring him to deny it. “Tell them. You did. You
did.”
“I did.” His whole face twisted. “I rode him
down and cut him in half, and laughed. I watched them beat your
sister bloody too, watched them cut your father’s head
off.”
Lem grabbed her wrist and twisted, wrenching the dagger away.
She kicked at him, but he would not give it back. “You go to
hell, Hound,” she screamed at Sandor Clegane in helpless
empty-handed rage. “You just go to hell!”
“He has,” said a voice scarce stronger than a
whisper.
When Arya turned, Lord Beric Dondarrion was standing behind her,
his bloody hand clutching Thoros by the shoulder.
Her eyes had grown accustomed to blackness. When Harwin pulled
the hood off her head, the ruddy glare inside the hollow hill made
Arya blink like some stupid owl.
A huge firepit had been dug in the center of the earthen floor,
and its flames rose swirling and crackling toward the smoke-stained
ceiling. The walls were equal parts stone and soil, with huge white
roots twisting through them like a thousand slow pale snakes.
People were emerging from between those roots as she watched;
edging out from the shadows for a look at the captives, stepping
from the mouths of pitch-black tunnels, popping out of crannies and
crevices on all sides. In one place on the far side of the fire,
the roots formed a kind of stairway up to a hollow in the earth
where a man sat almost lost in the tangle of weirwood.
Lem unhooded Gendry. “What is this place?” he
asked.
“An old place, deep and secret. A refuge where neither
wolves nor lions come prowling.” Neither wolves nor lions. Arya’s skin prickled. She
remembered the dream she’d had, and the taste of blood when
she tore the man’s arm from his shoulder.
Big as the fire was, the cave was bigger; it was hard to tell
where it began and where it ended. The tunnel mouths might have
been two feet deep or gone on two miles. Arya saw men and women and
little children, all of them watching her warily.
Greenbeard said, “Here’s the wizard, skinny
squirrel. You’ll get your answers now.” He pointed
toward the fire, where Tom Sevenstrings stood talking to a tall
thin man with oddments of old armor buckled on over his ratty pink
robes. That can’t be Thoros of Myr. Arya remembered the red
priest as fat, with a smooth face and a shiny bald head. This man
had a droopy face and a full head of shaggy grey hair. Something
Tom said made him look at her, and Arya thought he was about to
come over to her. Only then the Mad Huntsman appeared, shoving his
captive down into the light, and she and Gendry were forgotten.
The Huntsman had turned out to be a stocky man in patched tan
leathers, balding and weak-chinned and quarrelsome. At Stoney Sept
she had thought that Lem and Greenbeard might be torn to pieces when
they faced him at the crow cages to claim his captive for the
lightning lord. The hounds had been all around them, sniffing and
snarling. But Tom o’ Sevens soothed them with his playing,
Tansy marched across the square with her apron full of bones and
fatty mutton, and Lem pointed out Anguy in the brothel window,
standing with an arrow notched. The Mad Huntsman had cursed them
all for lickspittles, but finally he had agreed to take his prize
to Lord Beric for judgment.
They had bound his wrists with hempen rope, strung a noose
around his neck, and pulled a sack down over his head, but even so
there was danger in the man. Arya could feel it across the cave.
Thoros—if that was Thoros—met captor and captive halfway to the
fire. “How did you take him?” the priest asked.
“The dogs caught the scent. He was sleeping off a drunk
under a willow tree, if you believe it.”
“Betrayed by his own kind.” Thoros turned to the
prisoner and yanked his hood off. “Welcome to our humble
hall, dog. It is not so grand as Robert’s throne room, but
the company is better.”
The shifting flames painted Sandor Clegane’s burned face
with orange shadows, so he looked even more terrible than he did in
daylight. When he pulled at the rope that bound his wrists, flakes
of dry blood fell off. The Hound’s mouth twitched. “I
know you,” he said to Thoros.
“You did. In mêlées, you’d curse my flaming sword,
though thrice I overthrew you with it.”
“Thoros of Myr. You used to shave your head.”
“To betoken a humble heart, but in truth my heart was
vain. Besides, I lost my razor in the woods.” The priest
slapped his belly. “I am less than I was, but more. A year in
the wild will melt the flesh off a man. Would that I could find a
tailor to take in my skin. I might look young again, and pretty
maids would shower me with kisses.”
“Only the blind ones, priest.”
The outlaws hooted, none so loud as Thoros. “Just so. Yet
I am not the false priest you knew. The Lord of Light has woken in
my heart. Many powers long asleep are waking, and there are forces
moving in the land. I have seen them in my flames.”
The Hound was unimpressed. “Bugger your flames. And you as
well.” He looked around at the others. “You keep queer
company for a holy man.”
“These are my brothers,” Thoros said simply.
Lem Lemoncloak pushed forward. He and Greenbeard were the only
men there tall enough to look the Hound in the eye. “Be
careful how you bark, dog. We hold your life in our
hands.”
“Best wipe the shit off your fingers, then.” The
Hound laughed. “How long have you been hiding in this
hole?”
Anguy the Archer bristled at the suggestion of cowardice.
“Ask the goat if we’ve hidden, Hound. Ask your brother.
Ask the lord of leeches. We’ve bloodied them all.”
“You lot? Don’t make me laugh. You look more
swineherds than soldiers.”
“Some of us was swineherds,” said a short man Arya
did not know. “And some was tanners or singers or masons. But
that was before the war come.”
“When we left King’s Landing we were men of
Winterfell and men of Darry and men of Blackhaven, Mallery men and
Wylde men. We were knights and squires and men-at-arms, lords and
commoners, bound together only by our purpose.” The voice
came from the man seated amongst the weirwood roots halfway up the
wall. “Six score of us set out to bring the king’s
justice to your brother.” The speaker was descending the
tangle of steps toward the floor. “Six score brave men and
true, led by a fool in a starry cloak.” A scarecrow of a man,
he wore a ragged black cloak speckled with stars and an iron
breastplate dinted by a hundred battles. A thicket of red-gold hair
hid most of his face, save for a bald spot above his left ear where
his head had been smashed in. “More than eighty of our
company are dead now, but others have taken up the swords that fell
from their hands.” When he reached the floor, the outlaws
moved aside to let him pass. One of his eyes was gone, Arya saw,
the flesh about the socket scarred and puckered, and he had a dark
black ring all around his neck. “With their help, we fight on
as best we can, for Robert and the realm.”
“Robert?” rasped Sandor Clegane, incredulous.
“Ned Stark sent us out,” said pothelmed
Jack-Be-Lucky, “but he was sitting the Iron Throne when he
gave us our commands, so we were never truly his men, but
Robert’s.”
“Robert is the king of the worms now. Is that why
you’re down in the earth, to keep his court for
him?”
“The king is dead,” the scarecrow knight admitted,
“but we are still king’s men, though the royal banner
we bore was lost at the Mummer’s Ford when your
brother’s butchers fell upon us.” He touched his breast
with a fist. “Robert is slain, but his realm remains. And we
defend her.”
“Her?” The Hound snorted. “Is she your mother,
Dondarrion? Or your whore?” Dondarrion? Beric Dondarrion had been handsome; Sansa’s
friend Jeyne had fallen in love with him. Even Jeyne Poole was not
so blind as to think this man was fair. Yet when Arya looked at him
again, she saw it; the remains of a forked purple lightning bolt on
the cracked enamel of his breastplate.
“Rocks and trees and rivers, that’s what your realm
is made of,” the Hound was saying. “Do the rocks need
defending? Robert wouldn’t have thought so. If he
couldn’t fuck it, fight it, or drink it, it bored him, and so
would you . . . you brave
companions.”
Outrage swept the hollow hill. “Call us that name again,
dog, and you’ll swallow that tongue.” Lem drew his
longsword.
The Hound stared at the blade with contempt. “Here’s
a brave man, baring steel on a bound captive. Untie me, why
don’t you? We’ll see how brave you are then.” He
glanced at the Mad Huntsman behind him. “How about you? Or
did you leave all your courage in your kennels?”
“No, but I should have left you in a crow cage.” The
Huntsman drew a knife. “I might still.”
The Hound laughed in his face.
“We are brothers here,” Thoros of Myr declared.
“Holy brothers, sworn to the realm, to our god, and to each
other.”
“The brotherhood without banners.” Tom Sevenstrings
plucked a string. “The knights of the hollow hill.”
“Knights?” Clegane made the word a sneer.
“Dondarrion’s a knight, but the rest of you are the
sorriest lot of outlaws and broken men I’ve ever seen. I shit
better men than you.”
“Any knight can make a knight,” said the scarecrow
that was Beric Dondarrion, “and every man you see before you
has felt a sword upon his shoulder. We are the forgotten
fellowship.”
“Send me on my way and I’ll forget you too,”
Clegane rasped. “But if you mean to murder me, then bloody
well get on with it. You took my sword, my horse, and my gold, so
take my life and be done with it . . . but
spare me this pious bleating.”
“You will die soon enough, dog,” promised Thoros,
“but it shan’t be murder, only justice.”
“Aye,” said the Mad Huntsman, “and a kinder
fate than you deserve for all your kind have done. Lions, you call
yourselves. At Sherrer and the Mummer’s Ford, girls of six
and seven years were raped, and babes still on the breast were cut
in two while their mothers watched. No lion ever killed so
cruel.”
“I was not at Sherrer, nor the Mummer’s Ford,”
the Hound told him. “Lay your dead children at some other
door.”
Thoros answered him. “Do you deny that House Clegane was
built upon dead children? I saw them lay Prince Aegon and Princess
Rhaenys before the Iron Throne. By rights your arms should bear two
bloody infants in place of those ugly dogs.”
The Hound’s mouth twitched. “Do you take me for my
brother? Is being born Clegane a crime?”
“Murder is a crime.”
“Who did I murder?”
“Lord Lothar Mallery and Ser Gladden Wylde,” said
Harwin.
“My brothers Lister and Lennocks,” declared
Jack-Be-Lucky.
“Goodman Beck and Mudge the miller’s son, from
Donnelwood,” an old woman called from the shadows.
“Merriman’s widow, who loved so sweet,” added
Greenbeard.
“Them septons at Sludgy Pond.”
“Ser Andrey Charlton. His squire Lucas Roote. Every man,
woman, and child in Fieldstone and Mousedown Mill.”
“Lord and Lady Deddings, that was so rich.”
Tom Sevenstrings took up the count. “Alyn of Winterfell,
Joth Quickbow, Little Matt and his sister Randa, Anvil Ryn. Ser
Ormond. Ser Dudley. Pate of Mory, Pate of Lancewood, Old Pate, and
Pate of Shermer’s Grove. Blind Wyl the Whittler. Goodwife
Maerie. Maerie the Whore. Becca the Baker. Ser Raymun Darry, Lord
Darry, young Lord Darry. The Bastard of Bracken. Fletcher Will.
Harsley. Goodwife Nolla—”
“Enough.” The Hound’s face was tight with
anger. “You’re making noise. These names mean nothing.
Who were they?”
“People,” said Lord Beric. “People great and
small, young and old. Good people and bad people, who died on the
points of Lannister spears or saw their bellies opened by Lannister
swords.”
“It wasn’t my sword in their bellies. Any man who
says it was is a bloody liar.”
“You serve the Lannisters of Casterly Rock,” said
Thoros.
“Once. Me and thousands more. Is each of us guilty of the
crimes of the others?” Clegane spat. “Might be you are
knights after all. You lie like knights, maybe you murder like
knights.”
Lem and Jack-Be-Lucky began to shout at him, but Dondarrion
raised a hand for silence. “Say what you mean,
Clegane.”
“A knight’s a sword with a horse. The rest, the vows
and the sacred oils and the lady’s favors, they’re silk
ribbons tied round the sword. Maybe the sword’s prettier with
ribbons hanging off it, but it will kill you just as dead. Well,
bugger your ribbons, and shove your swords up your arses. I’m
the same as you. The only difference is, I don’t lie about
what I am. So kill me, but don’t call me a murderer while you stand
there telling each other that your shit don’t stink. You hear
me?”
Arya squirted past Greenbeard so fast he never saw her.
“You are a murderer!” she screamed. “You killed
Mycah, don’t say you never did. You murdered him!”
The Hound stared at her with no flicker of recognition.
“And who was this Mycah, boy?”
“I’m not a boy! But Mycah was. He was a
butcher’s boy and you killed him. Jory said you cut him near
in half, and he never even had a sword.” She could feel them
looking at her now, the women and the children and the men who
called themselves the knights of the hollow hill.
“Who’s this now?” someone asked.
The Hound answered. “Seven hells. The little sister. The
brat who tossed Joff’s pretty sword in the river.” He
gave a bark of laughter. “Don’t you know you’re
dead?”
“No, you’re dead,” she threw back at him.
Harwin took her arm to draw her back as Lord Beric said,
“The girl has named you a murderer. Do you deny killing this
butcher’s boy, Mycah?”
The big man shrugged. “I was Joffrey’s sworn shield.
The butcher’s boy attacked a prince of the blood.”
“That’s a lie!” Arya squirmed in
Harwin’s grip. “It was me. I hit Joffrey and threw
Lion’s Paw in the river. Mycah just ran away, like I told
him.”
“Did you see the boy attack Prince Joffrey?” Lord
Beric Dondarrion asked the Hound.
“I heard it from the royal lips. It’s not my place
to question princes.” Clegane jerked his hands toward Arya.
“This one’s own sister told the same tale when she
stood before your precious Robert.”
“Sansa’s just a liar,” Arya said, furious at
her sister all over again. “It wasn’t like she said. It
wasn’t.”
Thoros drew Lord Beric aside. The two men stood talking in low
whispers while Arya seethed. They have to kill him. I prayed for
him to die, hundreds and hundreds of times.
Beric Dondarrion turned back to the Hound. “You stand
accused of murder, but no one here knows the truth or falsehood of
the charge, so it is not for us to judge you. Only the Lord of
Light may do that now. I sentence you to trial by
battle.”
The Hound frowned suspiciously, as if he did not trust his ears.
“Are you a fool or a madman?”
“Neither. I am a just lord. Prove your innocence with a
blade, and you shall be free to go.”
“No,” Arya cried, before Harwin covered her mouth.
No, they can’t, he’ll go free. The Hound was deadly
with a sword, everyone knew that. He’ll laugh at them, she
thought.
And so he did, a long rasping laugh that echoed off the cave
walls, a laugh choking with contempt. “So who will it
be?” He looked at Lem Lemoncloak. “The brave man in the
piss-yellow cloak? No? How about you, Huntsman? You’ve kicked
dogs before, try me.” He saw Greenbeard. “You’re
big enough, Tyrosh, step forward. Or do you mean to make the little
girl fight me herself?” He laughed again. “Come on, who
wants to die?
“It’s me you’ll face,” said Lord Beric
Dondarrion.
Arya remembered all the tales. He can’t be killed, she
thought, hoping against hope. The Mad Huntsman sliced apart the
ropes that bound Sandor Clegane’s hands together.
“I’ll need sword and armor.” The Hound rubbed a
torn wrist.
“Your sword you shall have,” declared Lord Beric,
“but your innocence must be your armor.”
Clegane’s mouth twitched. “My innocence against your
breastplate, is that the way of it?”
“Ned, help me remove my breastplate.”
Arya got goosebumps when Lord Beric said her father’s
name, but this Ned was only a boy, a fair-haired squire no more
than ten or twelve. He stepped up quickly to undo the clasps that
fastened the battered steel about the Marcher lord. The quilting
beneath was rotten with age and sweat, and fell away when the metal
was pulled loose. Gendry sucked in his breath. “Mother have
mercy.”
Lord Beric’s ribs were outlined starkly beneath his skin.
A puckered crater scarred his breast just above his left nipple,
and when he turned to call for sword and shield, Arya saw a
matching scar upon his back. The lance went through him. The Hound
had seen it too. Is he scared? Arya wanted him to be scared before
he died, as scared as Mycah must have been.
Ned fetched Lord Beric his swordbelt and a long black surcoat.
It was meant to be worn over armor, so it draped his body loosely,
but across it crackled the forked purple lightning of his House. He
unsheathed his sword and gave the belt back to his squire.
Thoros brought the Hound his swordbelt. “Does a dog have
honor?” the priest asked. “Lest you think to cut your
way free of here, or seize some child for a
hostage . . . Anguy, Dennet, Kyle, feather him
at the first sign of treachery.” Only when the three bowmen
had notched their shafts did Thoros hand Clegane the belt.
The Hound ripped the sword free and threw away the scabbard. The
Mad Huntsman gave him his oaken shield, all studded with iron and
painted yellow, the three black dogs of Clegane emblazoned upon it.
The boy Ned helped Lord Beric with his own shield, so hacked and
battered that the purple lightning and the scatter of stars upon it
had almost been obliterated.
But when the Hound made to step toward his foe, Thoros of Myr
stopped him. “First we pray.” He turned toward the fire
and lifted his arms. “Lord of Light, look down upon
us.”
All around the cave, the brotherhood without banners lifted
their own voices in response. “Lord of Light, defend
us.”
“Lord of Light, protect us in the darkness.”
“Lord of Light, shine your face upon us.”
“Light your flame among us, R’hllor,” said the
red priest. “Show us the truth or falseness of this man.
Strike him down if he is guilty, and give strength to his sword if
he is true. Lord of Light, give us wisdom.”
“For the night is dark,” the others chanted, Harwin
and Anguy loud as all the rest, “and full of
terrors.”
“This cave is dark too,” said the Hound, “but
I’m the terror here. I hope your god’s a sweet one,
Dondarrion. You’re going to meet him shortly.”
Unsmiling, Lord Beric laid the edge of his longsword against the
palm of his left hand, and drew it slowly down. Blood ran dark from
the gash he made, and washed over the steel.
And then the sword took fire.
Arya heard Gendry whisper a prayer.
“Burn in seven hells,” the Hound cursed. “You,
and Thoros too.” He threw a glance at the red priest.
“When I’m done with him you’ll be next,
Myr.”
“Every word you say proclaims your guilt, dog,”
answered Thoros, while Lem and Greenbeard and Jack-Be-Lucky shouted
threats and curses. Lord Beric himself waited silent, calm as still
water, his shield on his left arm and his sword burning in his
right hand. Kill him, Arya thought, please, you have to kill him.
Lit from below, his face was a death mask, his missing eye a red
and angry wound. The sword was aflame from point to crossguard, but
Dondarrion seemed not to feel the heat. He stood so still he might
have been carved of stone.
But when the Hound charged him, he moved fast enough.
The flaming sword leapt up to meet the cold one, long streamers
of fire trailing in its wake like the ribbons the Hound had spoken
of. Steel rang on steel. No sooner was his first slash blocked than
Clegane made another, but this time Lord Beric’s shield got
in the way, and wood chips flew from the force of the blow. Hard
and fast the cuts came, from low and high, from right and left, and
each one Dondarrion blocked. The flames swirled about his sword and
left red and yellow ghosts to mark its passage. Each move Lord
Beric made fanned them and made them burn the brighter, until it
seemed as though the lightning lord stood within a cage of fire.
“Is it wildfire?” Arya asked Gendry.
“No. This is different. This
is . . . ”
“ . . . magic?” she finished as
the Hound edged back. Now it was Lord Beric attacking, filling the air with ropes of fire, driving the
bigger man back on his heels. Clegane caught one blow high on his
shield, and a painted dog lost a head. He countercut, and
Dondarrion interposed his own shield and launched a fiery
backslash. The outlaw brotherhood shouted on their leader.
“He’s yours!” Arya heard, and “At him! At
him! At him!” The Hound parried a cut at his head, grimacing
as the heat of the flames beat against his face. He grunted and
cursed and reeled away.
Lord Beric gave him no respite. Hard on the big man’s
heels he followed, his arm never still. The swords clashed and
sprang apart and clashed again, splinters flew from the lightning
shield while swirling flames kissed the dogs once, and twice, and
thrice. The Hound moved to his right, but Dondarrion blocked him
with a quick sidestep and drove him back the other
way . . . toward the sullen red blaze of the
firepit. Clegane gave ground until he felt the heat at his back. A
quick glance over his shoulder showed him what was behind him, and
almost cost him his head when Lord Beric attacked anew.
Arya could see the whites of Sandor Clegane’s eyes as he
bulled his way forward again. Three steps up and two back, a move
to the left that Lord Beric blocked, two more forward and one back,
clang and clang, and the big oaken shields took blow after blow
after blow. The Hound’s lank dark hair was plastered to his
brow in a sheen of sweat. Wine sweat, Arya thought, remembering
that he’d been taken drunk. She thought she could see the
beginnings of fear wake in his eyes. He’s going to lose, she
told herself, exulting, as Lord Beric’s flaming sword whirled
and slashed. In one wild flurry, the lightning lord took back all
the ground the Hound had gained, sending Clegane staggering to the
very edge of the firepit once more. He is, he is, he’s going
to die. She stood on her toes for a better look.
“Bloody bastard!” the Hound screamed as he felt the
fire licking against the back of his thighs. He charged, swinging
the heavy sword harder and harder, trying to smash the smaller man
down with brute force, to break blade or shield or arm. But the
flames of Dondarrion’s parries snapped at his eyes, and when
the Hound jerked away from them, his foot went out from under him
and he staggered to one knee. At once Lord Beric closed, his
downcut screaming through the air trailing pennons of fire. Panting
from exertion, Clegane jerked his shield up over his head just in
time, and the cave rang with the loud crack of splintering oak.
“His shield is afire,” Gendry said in a hushed
voice. Arya saw it in the same instant. The flames had spread
across the chipped yellow paint, and the three black dogs were
engulfed.
Sandor Clegane had fought his way back to his feet with a
reckless counterattack. Not until Lord Beric retreated a pace did
the Hound seem to realize that the fire that roared so near his
face was his own shield, burning. With a shout of revulsion, he
hacked down savagely on the broken oak, completing its destruction.
The shield shattered, one piece of it spinning away, still afire,
while the other clung stubbornly to his forearm. His efforts to
free himself only fanned the flames. His sleeve caught, and now his
whole left arm was ablaze. “Finish him!” Greenbeard
urged Lord Beric, and other voices took up the chant of
“Guilty!” Arya shouted with the rest. “Guilty,
guilty, kill him, guilty!”
Smooth as summer silk, Lord Beric slid close to make an end of
the man before him. The Hound gave a rasping scream, raised his
sword in both hands and brought it crashing down with all his
strength. Lord Beric blocked the cut
easily . . .
“Noooooo,” Arya shrieked.
. . . but the burning sword snapped in two,
and the Hound’s cold steel plowed into Lord Beric’s
flesh where his shoulder joined his neck and clove him clean down
to the breastbone. The blood came rushing out in a hot black
gush.
Sandor Clegane jerked backward, still burning. He ripped the
remnants of his shield off and flung them away with a curse, then
rolled in the dirt to smother the fire running along his arm.
Lord Beric’s knees folded slowly, as if for prayer. When
his mouth opened only blood came out. The Hound’s sword was
still in him as he toppled face forward. The dirt drank his blood.
Beneath the hollow hill there was no sound but the soft crackling
of flames and the whimper the Hound made when he tried to rise.
Arya could only think of Mycah and all the stupid prayers
she’d prayed for the Hound to die. If there were gods, why
didn’t Lord Beric win? She knew the Hound was guilty.
“Please,” Sandor Clegane rasped, cradling his arm.
“I’m burned. Help me. Someone. Help me.” He was
crying. “Please.”
Arya looked at him in astonishment. He’s crying like a
little baby, she thought.
“Melly, see to his burns,” said Thoros. “Lem,
Jack, help me with Lord Beric. Ned, you’d best come
too.” The red priest wrenched the Hound’s sword from
the body of his fallen lord and thrust the point of it down in the
blood-soaked earth. Lem slid his big hands under Dondarrion’s
arms, while Jack-Be-Lucky took his feet. They carried him around
the firepit, into the darkness of one of the tunnels. Thoros and
the boy Ned followed after.
The Mad Huntsman spat. “I say we take him back to Stoney
Sept and put him in a crow cage.”
“Yes,” Arya said. “He murdered Mycah. He
did.”
“Such an angry squirrel,” murmured Greenbeard.
Harwin sighed. “R’hllor has judged him
innocent.”
“Who’s Rulore?” She couldn’t even say
it.
“The Lord of Light. Thoros has taught us—”
She didn’t care what Thoros had taught them. She yanked
Greenbeard’s dagger from its sheath and spun away before he
could catch her. Gendry made a grab for her as well, but she had
always been too fast for Gendry.
Tom Sevenstrings and some woman were helping the Hound to his
feet. The sight of his arm shocked her speechless. There was a
strip of pink where the leather strap had clung, but above and
below the flesh was cracked and red and bleeding from elbow to
wrist. When his eyes met hers, his mouth twitched. “You want
me dead that bad? Then do it, wolf girl. Shove it in. It’s
cleaner than fire.” Clegane tried to stand, but as he moved a
piece of burned flesh sloughed right off his arm, and his knees
went out from under him. Tom caught him by his good arm and held
him up. His arm, Arya thought, and his face. But he was the Hound. He
deserved to burn in a fiery hell. The knife felt heavy in her hand.
She gripped it tighter. “You killed Mycah,” she said
once more, daring him to deny it. “Tell them. You did. You
did.”
“I did.” His whole face twisted. “I rode him
down and cut him in half, and laughed. I watched them beat your
sister bloody too, watched them cut your father’s head
off.”
Lem grabbed her wrist and twisted, wrenching the dagger away.
She kicked at him, but he would not give it back. “You go to
hell, Hound,” she screamed at Sandor Clegane in helpless
empty-handed rage. “You just go to hell!”
“He has,” said a voice scarce stronger than a
whisper.
When Arya turned, Lord Beric Dondarrion was standing behind her,
his bloody hand clutching Thoros by the shoulder.