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8.
Father has a new horse. She’s a fine horse, a beauty, if the stablehands are to be trusted. She’s white like the puffy white clouds that come inland off the sea.
Father had told him that one day he would be a knight and he wouldn’t need to rely on stablehands to recognize good horseflesh. And just looking at her, Sandor thinks he might be beginning to do it.
Father names her Warrior, because she’s a war horse, a gift from Lord Tywin. He ignores it completely when Septon Brant tells him it is a sacrilegious name.
Sandor is confused—you don’t name a mare “Warrior”.
Girls can’t be “Warriors”. Girls are Maidens, like Alinore.
7.
Alinore brings him flowers once the bandages have been off for a month. She’s used to his face now, used to the scarring and the fact that they had to cut off his ear to keep the melted flesh from making him deaf on one side.
She arranges the flowers in a little jar next to him.
“Septon Brant helped me pick them. He said that it was a goodly thing—something the Maiden would do.”
He tries to smile at her.
“I can read full books now, too—can I read to you?”
He nods, and she opens a book.
It’s a stupid book, really, full of dumb stories about rabbits, but when he closes his eyes he can see his mother’s face so he doesn’t mind the stories—not really.
7.
Gregor laughs at the way that he’s trying to fight, the way that he grabs at the hearth and tries to push his face away from the coals.
“You think I’ll let you up?” he croons, and Sandor writhes. “You think I’ll let you up. You’re going to—”
He hears a scream and feels Gregor’s hands pulled away and he pushes himself as far away from the coals as he can manage.
He can’t feel his face.
8.
“The Gods have blessed your brother with the Warrior’s own strength. Such a gift cannot be ignored.”
Sandor thinks of father’s white horse, lovely and gentle and shining in the sunlight.
“He isn’t the Warrior. He’s the Stranger.”
Septon Brant hits him, strikes him on his good cheek. “Do not say such a thing of your own brother. You know it’s not true.”
But it is, and Sandor knows it, and if Septon Brant can’t see it, then maybe he’s not as smart as he thinks he is, and maybe then his Gods aren’t what he says they are.
7.
He can’t sleep on his side anymore. He can’t press the bandages against his pillow. It sends stinging pain through his face when he does. He wonders if he’ll ever be able to do it again. It feels wrong, sleeping on his back.
10.
He leaves that night. He’s not staying—not here, not while Gregor is the only one left in the castle. He knows that he’s big enough to pass for at least twelve in most places and he’s positive it won’t be hard to convince someone—anyone—to take him on as a squire or a man-at-arms or a something. He’s always been big and strong, and, if he’s learned anything from Gregor, it’s that men don’t think twice about saying no if you’re big and strong.
He passes Warrior when he goes through the stables. She’s calm and watches him with big brown eyes. For a moment, he wants to take her, because it makes him sick—the idea of Gregor riding father’s horse.
But if anything’s going to make Gregor come after him, it’s him taking Warrior so he doesn’t.
8.
Septon Brant doesn’t look at him when he speaks. None of them do. They don’t like looking at his scars. Why don’t they? It’s not his bloody fault they are there. Or maybe everyone thinks it is—he baited Gregor, after all—playing with that dumb toy. Gregor didn’t even want it. He didn’t. And Sandor was always going to give it back.
“Your brother has done a horrible thing to you, it is true. It would have been a grave sin had your father not put a stop to it. There is no sin greater than kinslaying. And no man is more cursed than one who does it.”
7.
He hopes it had gotten thrown in the fire. He hopes it burned up like him.
7.
He cries when Maester Baldwin tries to light a fire in his room.
“No,” he sobs, blubbering worse than Alinore when she’s upset.
“You’ll be cold, Sandor,” Maester Baldwin says gently.
“No fire,” is all he manages to say.
So Father leaves one of his dogs—little golden Lann—in his room with him to keep him warm while he sleeps. She makes whimpering noises when he cries and licks his face dry of tears. Well, part of his face. She can’t reach under the bandages. Part of him wants to take them off to let her. But he doesn’t dare, and that makes him cry harder, because if there’s a part of his face that needs the tears licked off it’s definitely the part she can’t reach.
6.
He and Alinore play a game. It was his idea, because Alinore was scared of the way that Gregor talks sometimes. Whenever Gregor comes into a room, they see who can sneak out of the room first without him noticing.
Sandor usually lets Alinore win—she’s more scared of him than he is. And she’s slower, so she needs more time.
8.
“How are the Gods just if they let people do bad things?”
“The Gods guide us to be good, not evil. Sometimes the good can do evil.”
“But why? How can the good do evil and not be evil themselves?”
“It is complicated.” Septon Brant isn’t looking at him, and he knows that he doesn’t like his questions. So he keeps on asking them.
“So then is my brother good or evil for what he did to me?”
10.
Lord Tywin seems surprised to see him, and is even more surprised by the news he bears.
“I would think,” Lord Tywin says, “that you would want to serve as your own brother’s squire.”
He feels sweat breaking out on the back of his neck.
“My brother feels I would learn more in your service, My Lord,” he says gruffly, not looking at Lord Tywin.
He doesn’t dare look up, because he’ll see the lie on Sandor’s face. Everyone always sees lies on his face because they don’t look at all of it anymore, they only look at the half that doesn’t disgust them.
“Very well then.”
He can’t breathe because to breathe would be to whoop with relief.
Gregor won’t touch him—not while Lord Tywin lives.
9.
Alinore is cold when he finds her—neck twisted against the stair and blood not quite dry but not quite liquid through the cracks of the stone. She’s all alone—the dogs are all locked away in the kennel, and he wants to cry because he’d told her to stay in her room at night, that wandering wasn’t a good idea, and he didn’t understand how she could be so stupid. She chose the strangest ways to be daring—scared of Gregor when she could see him, but not when she couldn’t.
19.
The Prince’s lip is puffy.
“What happened?” he asks.
But Joffrey just shakes his head. He looks away. Sandor sits with him quietly, and breathes deeply.
“I just wanted to show him the kittens,” Joffrey says. There’s something strange about the way he’s speaking, and Sandor looks down at him, but his mouth is closed again.
“So he hit you?”
Joffrey nods. Then he asks the question that’s clearly been on his mind. “Do teeth grow back? Grand Maester Pycelle says they do, but I’ve seen men without teeth.”
He sees it now—a big hole gaping in the front of his mouth where his two front teeth had once been.
“You’re lucky,” Sandor replies, “These’ll grow back. But be careful with them. You only get the one spare pair.”
12.
He sees Gregor up ahead. It has to be Gregor. He’s too big to be anyone else, a full two heads taller than the next rider.
Gregor makes him pause, but it’s not Gregor that keeps him still:
It’s Warrior, glowing as bright as the moon as she runs through the city, and Sandor wishes that he’d taken her with him when he’d run away because the idea of Gregor riding her to glory makes his stomach twist.
10.
Mother hadn’t been enough, Alinore hadn’t been enough, and Father wasn’t enough. Gregor wouldn’t ever stop, would he?
And fuck (no Father to tell him not to curse now) did it hurt like the Seven bleeding Hells, Father dead and no one but him and Gregor left. How could he want to hurt Father? Why would he want to kill Father?
10.
Can’t they see—he’s not a knight! Knights are supposed to be good and true like in the songs, they’re supposed to protect the weak and the innocent, not kill their sister and burn their brother’s face. Sandor’s face is proof enough that Gregor’s no true knight—even if no one believes him about Alinore.
All his life he’d wanted to grow up and be a knight. All his life. Running around and playing with swords, training in the practice yard.
But if Gregor’s a knight, he’d sooner die than become one himself.
He lets his hand rest on Lann’s head, and she twists around and licks his palm.
Better a dog than a knight.
6.
He and Alinore play another game that they keep secret from Septon Brant. He’s the Warrior and she’s the Maiden and they go on adventures through the underbrush just outside of the keep—never too far. Father would worry.
Father worries a lot after Mother died. He keeps a close eye on them now. That’s why Sandor isn’t afraid of Gregor. Gregor wouldn’t do anything while Father is watching.
In their adventures, they hunt the Stranger, hand in hand. The Maiden and the Warrior are obviously the best of the Seven, but he’s sure that Septon Brant will hit them if they say it, and if he knew that they were hunting another one of the Seven, so it’s better to keep it a secret. (Alinore is good at keeping secrets. Better than he was when he was little. He thinks it’s because she’s scared that Gregor will learn them.)
They hunt the Stranger because Alinore is scared of the Stranger. They pretend the Stranger is Gregor, and that if they find a magical toadstool he’ll be shrunk up and they can put him in one of their pockets and release him into the wild where he’ll get eaten by an opossum or some other terrifying creature.
12.
Everywhere is red—red cloaks, red flames as houses burn and women scream and shout. He sees men fleeing, cowering, begging.
“You were supposed to help!” he hears one shout right before a spear goes through his belly and guts come pouring out.
Do people still think that soldiers help? he wants to shout at the man as he dies, but he doesn’t. Instead he marches on, and when he finds Targaryen guards, he kills them, because he hasn’t killed anyone before and he wonders what it feels like.
And watching the light leave someone’s eyes, watching them sink down to the ground, his sword thrust deep in his chest—he understands. And for the first time in ages, he feels like he has control.
10.
The Gods didn’t curse Gregor—not for Alinore, not for father, not for mother. Maybe hewas the curse for something Sandor had done but couldn’t remember. Or maybe something Sandor was yet to do.
Maybe he was Sandor’s curse because Sandor would kill him one day. He’d be a kinslayer then, and his curse was to lose everyone else before he did it.
16.
He hears from the Grand Maester that Gregor’s wife is dead.
“What, did he kill her too?”
The Grand Maester makes some sort of outraged clucking noise, and Sandor almost laughs.
10.
It makes bile rise in his throat, watching Gregor kneeling before the Prince.
10.
Some men die quiet, that’s what his father had always said. Some men die loud, moaning and groaning, and crying out to the Gods to save them because there’s nothing left in the world for them but they’re still fucking scared of dying.
His father dies quiet. They had brought him back to the keep and he’d been still and pale, his wide blue eyes staring numbly at Sandor as he’d been carried up the stairs.
“Keep watch over him,” Gregor had called after the men-at-arms. “He’s had a nasty fall.”
Gregor’s face was calm, and his lips had been dry, as if he’d been licking them the whole way back to the Keep.
7.
He doesn’t want to look in a mirror—not ever. Alinore is scared to look at him, now. More scared than she is to look at Gregor.
He must be a monster. He never wants to see it.
18.
“Did you see that fucker? He’s huge,” hollers one of the men on the longship. Sandor doesn’t smile. He’s not huge—he’s whatever’s next smallest after huge. But he’s big enough, he supposes, and he feels his sword connect with an assailant’s helm. He hears a clang, and a crunch, and sees blood dripping out of the bottom of the helmet—blood and what is undoubtedly brains.
Freakish big and freakish strong—a Clegane through and through. He doesn’t have time to dwell on it before he swings his sword again, hearing the crash of steel against a poleax.
12.
Everyone’s horrified about what Gregor did to the Princess. Lord Tywin has her body disposed of before King Robert gets there. The children are brutalized too, but it’s a little too obvious what Gregor did to Princess Elia. Better that no one sees. Better to pretend it never happened.
Because that’s all anyone ever does with Gregor—turn a blind eye to what he does and brush it under the rug as though it isn’t so bad because no one will ever question what you do if you're big and strong and they’re afraid of you.
18.
“You should be knighted for your valor, Clegane,” commented Lord Tywin. They are riding back from Lannisport to Casterly Rock, where Lord Tywin will feast the King’s party. “You’ve served your Lord and King well.”
Sandor shakes his head. “I’m no knight.”
He can feel the curiosity rolling off of Lord Tywin—no, not curiosity. Curiosity doesn’t feel disappointed.
Well, fuck his disappointment.
He’s no knight.
17.
Sometimes, when he’s least expecting it, he wonders what Alinore would think of him if she could see him now—big and brutish and grunting, as horrible a person as ever they’d pretended to hunt, when they pretended to be the Warrior and the Maiden.
8.
“I’m ugly,” he says. It’s the easiest thing to say. Easier by far than saying anything else.
“It is ugly,” says Septon Brant, “You are not.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Sandor replies, frowning. It’s hard to frown on the right side of his face now. It’s hard to smile too.
“It is your soul that makes you beautiful, Sandor. Not your flesh. Vanity is ugly. This scar will keep you from vanity. It will remind you of the good in your soul.”
It will remind me of Gregor, he wants to say, but he already knows that Septon Brant will frown at him when he says it, say something of his brother’s penitence, and expect him to accept it. So he nods and looks back down at the Seven Pointed Star, not really seeing the words there.
23.
Lord Tywin gives him a horse, the way he gave his father a horse when he was younger.
He’s a beauty—a courser with heavy black hair. When Sandor goes to run his hand along his flesh, he jerks his head angrily.
“He has a temper, but then again, so do you,” said Lord Tywin, “I trust you’ll treat him well.”
Sandor keeps running his hand along the horse’s side. “I will, My Lord,” he says.
Horses are like dogs, really. Show them respect and they’ll respect you back. That’s how the courser stops looking at him angrily—and even starts begrudgingly accepting his touch when he pats him gently.
But he’s no Warrior—no gentle brave white mare. He’s just the opposite of that. No white knight in shining armor who fucks you bloody if you let him. He’s angry on the surface and gentle underneath.
Sandor laughs to himself, and names him Stranger.