A Feast for Crows

Lord Tarly’s face suggested he would have liked nothing better than to stick her own head on a spike and mount it above the gates of Maidenpool with Timeon, Pyg, and Shagwell. “You mean to continue with this folly?”

“I mean to find the Lady Sansa.”

“If it please my lord,” Ser Hyle said, “I watched her fight the Mummers. She is stronger than most men, and quick—”

“The sword is quick,” Tarly snapped. “That is the nature of Valyrian steel. Stronger than most men? Aye. She’s a freak of nature, far be it from me to deny it.”

His sort will never love me, Brienne thought, no matter what I do. “My lord, it may be that Sandor Clegane has some knowledge of the girl. If I could find him…”

“Clegane’s turned outlaw. He rides with Beric Dondarrion now, it would seem. Or not, the tales vary. Show me where they’re hiding, I will gladly slit their bellies open, pull their entrails out, and burn them. We’ve hanged dozens of outlaws, but the leaders still elude us. Clegane, Dondarrion, the red priest, and now this woman Stoneheart… how do you propose to find them, when I cannot?”

“My lord, I…” She had no good answer for him. “All I can do is try.”

“Try, then. You have your letter, you do not need my leave, but I’ll give it nonetheless. If you’re fortunate, all you’ll get for your trouble are saddle sores. If not, perhaps Clegane will let you live after he and his pack are done raping you. You can crawl back to Tarth with some dog’s bastard in your belly.”

Brienne ignored that. “If it please my lord, how many men ride with the Hound?”

“Six or sixty or six hundred. It would seem to depend on whom we ask.” Randyll Tarly had plainly had enough of the conversation. He started to turn away.

“If my squire and I might beg your hospitality until—”

“Beg all you want. I will not suffer you beneath my roof.”

Ser Hyle Hunt stepped forward. “If it please my lord, I had understood that it was still Lord Mooton’s roof.”

Tarly gave the knight a venomous look. “Mooton has the courage of a worm. You will not speak to me of Mooton. As for you, my lady, it is said that your father is a good man. If so, I pity him. Some men are blessed with sons, some with daughters. No man deserves to be cursed with such as you. Live or die, Lady Brienne, do not return to Maidenpool whilst I rule here.”

Words are wind, Brienne told herself. They cannot hurt you. Let them wash over you. “As you command, my lord,” she tried to say, but Tarly had gone before she got it out. She walked from the yard like one asleep, not knowing where she was going.

Ser Hyle fell in beside her. “There are inns.”

She shook her head. She did not want words with Hyle Hunt.

“Do you recall the Stinking Goose?”

Her cloak still smelled of it. “Why?”

“Meet me there on the morrow, at midday. My cousin Alyn was one of those sent out to find the Hound. I’ll speak with him.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Why not? If you succeed where Alyn failed, I shall be able to taunt him with that for years.”

There were still inns in Maidenpool; Ser Hyle had not been wrong. Some had burned during one sack or the other, however, and had yet to be rebuilt, and those that remained were full to bursting with men from Lord Tarly’s host. She and Podrick visited all of them that afternoon, but there were no beds to be had anywhere.

“Ser? My lady?” Podrick said as the sun was going down. “There are ships. Ships have beds. Hammocks. Or bunks.”

Lord Randyll’s men still prowled the docks, as thick as the flies had been on the heads of the three Bloody Mummers, but their serjeant knew Brienne by sight and let her pass. The local fisherfolk were tying up for the night and crying the day’s catch, but her interest was in the larger ships that plied the stormy waters of the narrow sea. Half a dozen were in port, though one, a galleas called the Titan’s Daughter, was casting off her lines to ride out on the evening tide. She and Podrick Payne made the rounds of the ships that remained. The master of the Gulltown Girl took Brienne for a whore and told them that his ship was not a bawdy house, and a harpooner on the Ibbenese whaler offered to buy her boy, but they had better fortune elsewhere. She purchased Podrick an orange on the Seastrider, a cog just in from Oldtown by way of Tyrosh, Pentos, and Duskendale. “Gulltown next,” her captain told her, “thence around the Fingers to Sisterton and White Harbor, if the storms allow. She’s a clean ship, ’Strider, not so many rats as most, and we’ll have fresh eggs and new-churned butter aboard. Is m’lady seeking passage north?”

“No.” Not yet. She was tempted, but…

As they were making their way to the next pier, Podrick shuffled his feet, and said, “Ser? My lady? What if my lady did go home? My other lady, I mean. Ser. Lady Sansa.”

“They burned her home.”

“Still. That’s where her gods are. And gods can’t die.”

Gods cannot die, but girls can. “Timeon was a cruel man and a murderer, but I do not think he lied about the Hound. We cannot go north until we know for certain. There will be other ships.”

At the east end of the harbor they finally found shelter for the night, aboard a storm-wracked trading galley called the Lady of Myr. She was listing badly, having lost her mast and half her crew in a storm, but her master did not have the coin he needed to refit her, so he was glad to take a few pennies from Brienne and allow her and Pod to share an empty cabin.

They had a restless night. Thrice Brienne woke. Once when the rain began, and once at a creak that made her think Nimble Dick was creeping in to kill her. The second time, she woke with knife in hand, but it was nothing. In the darkness of the cramped little cabin, it took her a moment to remember that Nimble Dick was dead. When she finally drifted back to sleep, she dreamed about the men she’d killed. They danced around her, mocking her, pinching at her as she slashed at them with her sword. She cut them all to bloody ribbons, yet still they swarmed around her… Shagwell, Timeon, and Pyg, aye, but Randyll Tarly too, and Vargo Hoat, and Red Ronnet Connington. Ronnet had a rose between his fingers. When he held it out to her, she cut his hand off.

She woke sweating, and spent the rest of the night huddled under her cloak, listening to rain pound against the deck over her head. It was a wild night. From time to time she heard the sound of distant thunder, and thought of the Braavosi ship that had sailed upon the evening tide.

The next morning she found the Stinking Goose again, woke its slatternly proprietor, and paid her for some greasy sausages, fried bread, half a cup of wine, a flagon of boiled water, and two clean cups. The woman squinted at Brienne as she was putting the water on to boil. “You’re the big one went off with Nimble Dick. I remember. He cheat you?”

“No.”

“Rape you?”

“No.”

“Steal your horse?”

“No. He was slain by outlaws.”

“Outlaws?” The woman seemed more curious than upset. “I always figured Dick would hang, or get sent off to that Wall.”

They ate the fried bread and half the sausages. Podrick Payne washed his down with wine-flavored water whilst Brienne nursed a cup of watered wine and wondered why she’d come. Hyle Hunt was no true knight. His honest face was just a mummer’s mask. I do not need his help, I do not need his protection, and I do not need him, she told herself. He is probably not even coming. Telling me to meet him here was just another jape.

She was getting up to go when Ser Hyle arrived. “My lady. Podrick.” He glanced at the cups and plates and the half-eaten sausages cooling in a puddle of grease, and said, “Gods, I hope you did not eat the food here.”

“What we ate is no concern of yours,” Brienne said. “Did you find your cousin? What did he tell you?”

“Sandor Clegane was last seen in Saltpans, the day of the raid. Afterward he rode west, along the Trident.”