A Dog Doesn't Need Courage

His laugh set her hairs on end.

“I would thank you to not insult my companions.” Whatever contempt she held for Ser Hyle notwithstanding, she would not have a man of his caliber of dishonor slurring Podrick. The boy might stutter, but he was not stupid. After a small pause she added, “Podrick found me…” No, not past Duskendale. The boy had been stalking me at least since Rosby, “…on the road. He is seeking someone Lady Sansa may yet be with. Ser Hyle and I are old acquaintances,” she said flatly. Brienne would not be revisiting that tale anytime soon. She had not even told Podrick the whole of it. Dwelling on the wager only made her ears grow hot with anger. “What Ser Hyle seeks is his business,” she grumbled lowly. It might not sit so well with the Hound if he knew Ser Hyle sought to collect reward or ransom for Sansa. Not that I would let that happen. Not while I’m able to wield my blade. 

She hesitated, as she always did before giving him information. And there will be hesitations yet to come. Brienne had thought it through many times; she had learned from Lord Tarly that Sansa would not be found in the Vale, what for Lysa Arryn’s death. It had been her last idea, and she had been throughout the Riverlands already. It seemed the best course to take. Since Nimble Dick she had no other leads. Only feelings…

 “We will follow the Trident up to the High Road,” she said, “And into the Vale of Arryn.” Seven tell me I have made the right choice. She winced, as though making conversation with this man physically pained her. She stole a glance back. Podrick was atop his sorry looking palfrey, dutifully listening to Ser Hyle’s complaints, but staying as attentive as he was able to the Hound. Good lad.  “Lady Sansa may have shelter there.” It was strange, telling her plans to a man who had been the right hand dog of King Joffrey. She studied his scarred face, wondering how any man could amass such a widespread reputation. Once face-to-face with the man himself, the reputation retreated, and somehow the feeling of dread from his infamy left her.

It was while they were making camp offroad for the night that she truly became anxious. She took Pod aside. “I will take the first watch,” Brienne told him in a hush, “But you must watch over me again while I sleep, as you did with Dick Crabb. Remember, Pod. I wake quickly.”

His huge form eventually emerged from the darkness...the flames that licked and reflected off his face revealed a new gruesome horror to them. He said nothing...his dark eye drinking in no light. He tore his gloves off and sat down. He sat away from the fire, like some sort of wild animal shrieking away from the light. He must have been cold in his spot, but regardless he took his sword out, a small smile twitching at his lips. He began to clean it rythemically. It reflected the light unintentionally into Briennes blue eyes.

The Eldar Brother had a strange definition of dead.

“You can’t be serious,” Ser Hyle had crossed his arms. The three of them had not budged from the graveyard, standing amongst corpses and a boy’s grave half finished.

“He may prove…insightful,” Brienne scowled despite her words. She did not trust Sandor Clegane half so far as she could throw him. Whatever information or elsewise aid he provided would not make up for the foreboding feeling in her stomach, or the lack of sleep she would get in the coming nights.

“I thought you had no use for men, Beauty,” Hyle said. Brienne grunted and replied, “For all he’s done, he’s still another sword on a dangerous road.” Her words sounded false, even to her own ears. She stepped away from the two of them, and as she lumbered down the hill herself she thought she heard Hyle say, “Another sword to cut our throats and save the outlaws the trouble.” She ignored him, heading too for the stables and fetching out her grey mare. Hyle and Podrick were not long in following her and retrieved their own mounts, supplies and weapons in awkward silence.

“Septon Meribald? And Dog?” she asked Podrick. “Staying behind, Ser. My lady.” She could not fault the septon for that. The Quiet Isle was an oasis amidst a desert of suffering. Dog, too, would be happier for it.

He hated knights and Hyle was exactly that, an arrogant little prat with too much pride seeping through like soured milk in a muslim cloth. He lead his beast to tort along side Brienne's steed at a reasonable pace. "You keep queer company.." he said in a grumbling tone. "A stuttering child and a knight with an ego coming out of his ears.." he laughed.

She glanced back up at the sept to see Podrick and Ser Hyle making their way back down the steps. It would be rude to depart the Quiet Isle without bidding the Eldar Brother farewell. Her sapphire eyes shot back to the Hound like arrows. There was no time. She motioned her companions over to the graveyard, and saw the look on Hyle’s face as they drew nearer. Pod was looking at the Hound as though he were an extinct beast from an ancient text. She would never be able to convince them that this was a sound idea. Especially since it altogether was not. Anxiousness tugged at her heart. He was reckless, untrustworthy, and he would not hesitate to kill any of them if it came to it.

Brienne, filled with resolve, rested her palm on Oathkeeper again. “You have one chance,” she said steadily. “Betray us, and you will not live to see your regret.”

He entered the Brother's quarters and tore through the chests and boxes for his armour. He redressed...feeling himself rebuild into an iron clad monster. The strain on his muscles against the weight felt like a comfort. He stood tall then. A Lion's man no more. I am a dog. A Hound. A Clegane. And the last of two it would seem....

He exited the quarters just as he was sheathing his great sword. He was ready with nothing on his person but weapons. If he needed food, he'd get it. He needed nothing but his armour and his steed. He walked towards the stables as the Brothers fled the scene, the mighty stallion began to huff and shout before the Clegane screamed a "Shut the fuck up!" at it and the horse immediately quietened. He saddled him and prepared him and as he did the horse neighed softly, his nostrils flaring as he sniffed his master and his lips extending to nip playfully at the man's lank hair. Sandor petted the beasts head and lead him happily away from his prison.

 Words are wind. She steeled the fortress within her. She’d heard that tone a thousand times from a thousand men. As the sun beat down upon her straw-covered head she glowered up at the large man. I was a knight. I was Renly’s knight. The thought furthered her strength and gave it wind.

 “On the way…” she repeated, her brow furrowing as she blinked a few times to be sure she heard correctly. He cannot mean…but as he tore away the brothers’ garb she could not help but wince at the man before her. He had hundreds more scars than she had seen on Ser Jaime in the baths, and they were all the more gruesome. She could almost see the fights playing out behind them. They darted around his body like the blinking trails left by lightning. And beneath the lightning laid the severe toughness that made up his hulking figure. She looked back up to his scarred face as a chill ran up her spine.

I’m coming with you. “No,” she said firmly and immediately. “And it is not only your business when it concerns Lady Stark’s daughters.” She gritted her teeth. If his intent toward either one of them were less than honorable there was no way in Seven Hells they could form any uneasy alliance. “Your reasons, your intentions concern me.” If he did come along, she would not be sleeping. He could easily overpower Podrick and perhaps even Ser Hyle if either were on watch. Brienne would not see that happen. An oathbreaker, a liar, a killer and worse…there would be no trust found in that, no matter how common their goals.

"I know where the little bitch was last..we might be able to track her..and another sword is not something to be bawked at.." he shot her a poisonous look again. "And I don't give a toss if you don't trust me...you can't stop me from coming. No one can.." he ground his teeth then, looking at her.

He wanted to know is Sansa was safe...at least..and if she wasn't he wanted to help the little bird. She had been his final thoughts beneath the old and silent solider pine. But now that he had woken up..he vowed not to simply think and sigh but to fight and take action. Hounds ate little birds..but sometimes the winds changed.

He couldnt be a sworn brother. He couldnt take the oath. He resufed to die in the snow after not touching a woman for twenty years. He didn't fancy the idea of sharing quarters with men and young men that had the same thoughts on their minds. Women, snow and death. No...he'd rather die.

Brienne’s hand found her hilt and as she drew Oathkeeper she bashed the pommel into the Hound’s unprotected solar plexus with a grunt. She would not bare her steel down on an unarmed man, however ferocious he was. When his grip loosened she pushed her sword once more back into its scabbard, and shoved the beast of a man away from her. It was a marvel none of the Brothers had approached to stop them. But what could they do? They were unarmed and silent as the graves they stood by. And where were Pod and Ser Hyle? Surely the goodbyes had been long finished. Brienne dared not look back to the sept. She backed away, slowly, from Clegane. Her hand was clutched upon her sheathed anchor, upon her honor, upon her keeper of oaths. Her magic sword.

“I serve no one. I don’t serve the Lannisters. I will not be selling her. I am bound to an errand to find Lady Sansa and return her…“ to her Lady Mother. But she was dead. A living oath to a shade and a memory. “…to the safety of her family.” She eyed him carefully, her sapphire eyes cutting into the endless dark in his, ready for a fight if it came to it.

"An oath to a dead woman...to find two rumours..." there was a flash of something in his eyes then...sadness? No..cruelty maybe. He looked at her again and visibly stiffened at her question. He turned to her and let his face turn cruel and mean, not very different to how it had been but it was lacking the mocking smile. "My business is my own woman." he snarled and snapped at her.

He straightened up then and narrowed his eyes at her "Why do you dress like a man...? A knight..?" the mocking smile had returned. "Do you wish that sword was a cock?" he laughed again..his head hurt...how long had it been since he was drunk? too long. The sun was high in the sky and the breeze had ceased. He was suffocating. Suffocating on this island. "You can tell me on the way.." he said the suddenly.

Aflash of steel caught his eyes, as with the baring of Sandor Clegane’s teeth. To some, the twisted complexion— fashioned even more so by the angry burn that have always corroded the elder’s form— as akin to a wolf’s. Still, Robb felt the man in him incline to disagree. The hound is no wolf, as no wolf is the hound. Planting his own footing apart— to the breadth of his shoulder— Robb momentarily dropped his gaze, counting on. The clattering steel where by each sauntering step Clegane’s armor covered body is led closer and closer sounded like the tickling of clock in the main hall that has been his father’s, and his father’s father’s before him. Robb knew the weight. In all its clarity, he had always known what is expected. “Tell me….do you dream of being a knight, boy?” It sounded pretty ironic, really, coming from Sandor Clegane’s mouth, a man twice more than Robb’s own age.

Most time, what a man wants is not always what he expected…or have dreamt of, even a boy would know. It was then that Robb lifted his chin, meeting the other man’s speculation with the level of self-assurance recognized of being possessed as well in Lord Eddard Stark, the name he has deigned to mention just . about. then. “I was only trying to be conversational.” Ser Clegane. The title, ‘Ser’, goes without saying but for the sake of courtesy— well, if he was not kidding himself, Robb would say it had been precisely for the sake of courtesy that he had opted for that title in the first place— the young lording was willing to indulge that bulk of a man. Did Clegane seem taller? Beckoned by the older man’s sudden motion, Robb swiped his attention minutely aside. His own sword, for a moment, remained forgotten. With wood being wood, it will never carry the same weight as with the metallic piece laying there at Robb’s feet.

Wood. Steel. Physicals. Something always carries. “Knighthood, and glory. Those, however, sound just like dreams for child’s fantasy.” If Clagane had wished to enrage him, then he would have to be solely dissapointed. “Boys’, childish, something you would already have outgrown.” Much lighter of form when came face-to-face in comparison with the hound, a wolf’s arrogance earned Robb with a befitting grace to easily rival the other. He met Clagane’s gaze. The older’s scowl was answered with a smile and a dismissing laugh as Robb took his own step forward. Good natured, and perhaps, with a touch of defiant, it was then when he’s sufficiently covered the ground that he was only a distance apart from Clagane, the not-knight’s daring offer was reached for. It was tentative at first, but by the time his hand came enclosing around the sword’s metallic hilt, the grip was decisive. Robb braced his feet, and gave the blade a firm pull. The blade required both his hands; not to mention, a minute or so before he finally managed to heft it up for closer inspection.

It is heavy…but again, physical.

“There are always a luxery to dreaming so long as one learn enough never to get caught in one.”

He took a few steps back, hoping the lordling would try to swing it at the staw dummy and fail...fail miserably. That would bring a laugh to this hounds muzzle. "I need more wine.." he thought allowed. "You know your wine up North is shit...if not imported the cold's ruined it..." he grumbled. He sighed then and yawned. The sooner he was shot of here the better.

"Of course I will...." he paused before continueing "My lady..." he nodded his head slightly and let his hand come up to stroke her hair back into place. "You look beautiful Sansa...remember that.." he came forward then and planted a tender kiss upon her brow. "Come now..I'll take you to your chambers.."

The fact that he seemed to think she would care about what titles he had also struck a nerve inside of her. Blinking back tears, she let her eyes find their way to the ground. I’d rather have no one and be loved than have everything and not be loved. 

He was iron clad again, he was The Hound again, he was Joffery's again. He stood there, as hard as metal, the man who had beat her at the King's command. "You can not speak of this with anyone...." he mentioned.

“You should go to Maester Luwin if you have a hangover…He could help with what ails you.”  He gratefully takes Sandor’s hand for the help up, afraid that he may end up trying to crawl his way back to the castle if he was left to get up on his own.  Leaning back against the cold stones, the chilly air is reminding him that the heated moment that left him burning hot was long gone.

He was sick of the snow and the wild and the wildling. She was like this land. Harsh and unyielding. He stood there and listened. "Are they gone?" he asked, but he didn't want her to answer, it would probally be a jab, he thought they were gone. They sounded gone.