Nerd In the North - Arc 6, Interlude III

The whole of the Riverlands stunk like a wet dog on fire, and a sennight on the river road had yet to change that one bit. Yet, he’d stopped noticing past the second mill still burning, the smell easier on the nose than even a day in King’s Landing.

The mud, however…

Sandor could not ignore that near as much, the thick black and rotting leaves of the river road sucking at Stranger’s hooves. It was enough to cost the courser a shoe two days back on a stretch of road with no smith in three villages — only to be regaled with tales of the Smith in flesh throughout each of them in the shape of a young Robert Baratheon returned from the grave.

Nonsense. Stranger had gone sour with his own mood and bit a man’s shoulder open outside one of those for the crime of bothering him with one of those tales. Good horse.

That same good horse kept its pace with a new shoe from the fourth village, the rain coming down in cold sheets of gray; enough of the wet to clean the road of summer dust and wash the outer plates of Sandor’s armor. Yet, it did nothing to clean the inside of his head, the boy’s voice still pounding in his skull. Nine days down the road and the little golden shit’s order still rang loud.

‘That last one wasn’t peeled, dog. Rise.’ He was moving before the order had pressed hard on him, standing tall in front of a serving girl of maybe ten and four; a silver tray of grapes in her hands. ‘She could have choked me. Do the same to her.’

The voice had left no room for him to refuse.

He watched his gauntlets rise to her neck, the grapes rolling onto the floor of Joffrey’s bedchamber as the girl begged with her eyes. Disgusting.

That was all it was.

Not even a knightly execution, as pointless as even that was. Just the actions of a butcher because a mad boy with magic in his throat demanded it. Sandor rode out the gates of King’s Landing a half hour later, no one at his back as he rode hard up the kingsroad.

He doubted the boy even noticed his ‘dog’ was gone for another day after.

The roadside inn sat crooked against half-drowned willows, Sandor slowing Stranger down as the track met the ford. Low and long, the building had a sign too weathered to read, but smoke coming out the chimney told him enough.

That meant a fire.

That meant food.

Sandor swung down from the saddle, the black horse snorting at his back as he tied the beast to a post. With a pat to Stranger’s head, the masterless dog turned back toward the inn.

He heard the noise from twenty paces off.

Laughing.

Not the good kind.

Sandor had years to know both kinds and had made a study of neither, but learned them both the same the way he knew how a horse kicked. The door was already hanging crooked off the frame and one hand was enough to drag the oak against warped floorboards with a groan.

The warmth met him first, the hearth ablaze and strong, the smell of ale over the floorboards just as thick. Sandor’s eyes met the barrel; the thing tapped and left running to the point the wood under it was dark and swollen. It took merely a glance to see the inn near empty and the whole of it turned over, the common room at least; benches on their sides and crockery all in pieces with no hope for mending.

Five…

Five men held the common room; river-trash by the looks of them, the sort of worthless brigands not even worth a name worth the songs.

Two by the tapped barrel, drinking horns to their mouths and laughing at nonsense. A third kneeling, all of his weight on the back of a man pressed face-first into the dirty ale-wet boards. Innkeep. Sandor knew it by the apron, the man bleeding in strings from the nose as he fought for freedom.

A pointless act with the man atop him almost half again his size and clearly with enough knowledge of how to use it.

Two more of the trash in mismatched leathers were halfway up the stairs, one with a fistful of a screaming woman’s bare breast, another hand across her wide hips as he hauled her up the steps. The last was right behind him, a fist of his own twisted tight in the hair of a girl barely blooded, her own dress torn down the shoulder as he dragged her up behind the woman that had to be the mother.

The whole room stopped as he entered, something he’d long grown used to since the days of six and ten. Sandor stood in the doorframe, head bent before he fully entered. He had to do as much in most rooms built by ordinary men for ordinary men, Sandor standing at least a head taller than most nobles and nearly two over smallfolk.

Eyes narrowed, he looked across the room and let them do the same to him; burned side already turned toward the fire, because the fire lit it best.

One of them let his horn slip from his fingers, more ale spilled on a floor already wet.

“Where’s the barmaid, then?”

“T’hell’re you?” The man sitting on the innkeep blinked, river country thick in his bunched-up words as he postured from his place on the floor. “Turn round out t’rain afore w-”

“I said.” Sandor took another step inside. “Where’s the barmaid?”

The room went silent again while he waited, ale running off the barrel spout as all eyes fell on the heft of his blade. 

The girl made a small noise, something wet and thick out of a throat that had already screamed itself raw.

“...would be you, wouldn’t it?” A grunt left him with his words as he pulled the door shut behind him, the hinge complaining until the sound of the rain was forced out. “And which of you’s the cook?”

His good eye already fell on the older woman before she even found a word.

“M-m-me, ser…” The woman worked her way around a mouthful of nothing, throat near as rough as her daughter as she trembled in the grip of the brigand. “Me, ser, I do the river fish, and the stew and the potta—”

“Ser.” His mouth pulled tight on the burned side with a scowl, the growl and look enough to silence her. 

It did that. “No ser here.”

“...a-apologies, m-m’lord.”

Sandor opened his mouth to correct her but it simply came out a sigh instead, eyes on the weapons the man holding her had on him; a rusted knife and a shortsword no better in quality hanging from his belt. “Let them go.”

“...what?” The words left the man holding her, the biggest of them looking Sandor up and down as if he could count height and reach without knowing his numbers.

“I said…” He hated repeating himself but dead men were often deaf men. “Let them go. I want ale and meat. Hard to get that with her tits out and her hair torn free.”

The man laughed, the short ugly kind meant to get friends to join in. None did but by then, he was already turning his hip as his hand went for his hilt. “I’ll carve you a plate of m—”

Sandor’s blade was already out in a hiss of steel, the floorboards crossed in three heavy strides of his boots. The brigand’s steel barely cleared the leather when Sandor took him through the neck and collar. The head stayed on, mostly; a fault of the edge and a fault of his own for not putting a stone to it since the Red Keep.

Red went against the wall as the man collapsed as a sack of meat down the stairs, spray still going as the woman fell under it. Blood flew up across the side of her face and neck as she found it hard to scream. 

Her daughter tried, though.

Hells.

"Rush t'bastard!" Another horn splashed to the floor as the other four came at once, the last sensible thing they would ever do.

A wood-axe swung for his head, Sandor catching it by the haft on his gauntlet. His pommel drove straight into the man’s face, blood and teeth flying free as the man choked on his own blood. 

Before he could even scream, Sandor took him across the chest with a downswing. The heavy blade cleaved boiled leather and soft stomach, slick guts spilling onto the floor in a mess of red and pale pink. The man dropped his axe and clutched at his belly — a scream high and thin spilling out with his guts enough to drown out any of the women.

A sword swung his way, river-trash swinging it two-handed with all the grace of a man splitting kindling. Sandor let it come past him, an armored elbow meeting the side of the man’s head with a sound like a ringing bell against stone.

Something gave as the man fell into a table already on its side and the table gave way.

The third of them had a spear, of all daft things to carry indoors. He screamed as he charged at Sandor, another bit of idiocy to add to a life full of them. The point got up under Sandor’s arm, scraping along his armor and out, a strip of the gambeson going with it.

That was all it took before Sandor got the shaft in his left hand and pulled.

The spearman came with it; the trouble with spears in a place like this.

Sandor got him against the wall, forehead meeting the man’s nose twice. By the second, the man had let go of the spear and most anything else.

The last man — the one who’d used the innkeeper as a stool — only needed a look at the room around him before he turned and ran for the door. Sandor kicked a broken chair forward, the wood catching the man across the legs and bringing him to the ground in the span of a single breath.

Three steps had Sandor cross the distance before he caught the brigand by the back of his tunic, the common room suddenly quiet — save for dying men and the steady drumming of rain on the slate roof.

“M-mercy, Ser…” Already wrong. Another annoyance to add to several others. “Mercy.” The man held up empty hands as Sandor let him drop down to the floor, piss dark against the wool of his breeches. “I didn’t touch t’lass, I swear it. Ye can ask ‘er. I only ‘eld the man down while Ren—”

“Aye.”

"—I've a wife at Fairmarket, ser, I've a boy no bigger'n—"

"You held him down."

"Aye. Aye, that's all, that's all I did, Ser."

The world was full up with men who only held things down.

That was the whole of it.

His brother was one of them and Sandor had borne a fire against him that had burned bright his whole life. It had only ever flickered nine days past. Never… Sandor raised his sword again, the smell of open bowels and sour ale filling his nose as he saw Gregor’s’s shadow in his own. Not again.

“Pleas—!”

The greatsword went through the brigand’s chest, straight down through and pinning him to the floorboards. “That’s all you did.”

The man’s mouth opened in a silent shape, Sandor gripping the sword tight as he leaned his weight onto the hilt. I’ll do the same to you, brother.

The blade lit.

Not with fire.

Sandor would have known fire, would have dropped the blade and fled the inn to escape anything like that. No, the brigand’s blood ran up the blade, the edges of it shifting to a deep red running up and out of the steel.

Along the fuller.

Over the crossguard.

Onto his arm.

Under his sleeve, Sandor could see it through the gaps in the mail and plate; spreading higher and higher until—

A gasp forced itself free as his face opened, the whole ruined side of it burning through every crack and seam like it was that night again and the coals were against it. By the time he knew himself again, Sandor realized he was against the wall with the sword still in his grip.

Still shining.

Light ran off the blade slow and slick, like fresh blood refusing to fall.

"The Seven..." The innkeep had got himself up onto one elbow, blood down his chin with both eyes wide and weeping. "A holy blessing of the S-Seven…"

"Shut your mouth."

"—the Warrior's own hand, that were, plain as—"

"Shut your mouth."

The man shut it.

"Well?" Sandor put the sword across his knees, ignoring the shine as he cast his eyes on mother and daughter. "Get to it. I've not eaten since yesterday morning."

The woman and girl had yet to move from the stairs, even as Sandor tipped his head at the barrel still running out onto the floor. “And one of you get me a drink before you shut that thing off.”