Chapter Text
The day before the palisade was to go up, two groups arrived in the village at the base of the Mountains of the Moon.
The first was a group of three riders, early in the morning. Behind them marched a handful of squires and soldiers bent over and weary from war. Arya thinks nothing of them, at first, and continues hammering at the board the Hound had given her to work on. It was to be part of the gate, and her nails needed to be precise to give it support. At least her hammering was straighter than her stitches.
But then Arya heard the voices. “You there! Bring us your village head.”
As a village boy ran off to find the elder, she looked up, trying not to draw attention to herself. The men on foot were unfamiliar, but the rest. The soldiers. She knew the soldiers.
Arya looked about, trying to find Clegane. Where was he? They should never have come here.
“Aren’t you going to offer us drink and bread?” Polliver called as the village elder approached empty handed.
“We have none to spare.”
“Well you better find some, before we decide to burn your wall to ash.” The Tickler shrugged. “We’re hungry, and thirst too. My men have been marching a long while and they deserve a drink, I think.”
There was whispering and the messenger boy ran off again. Arya didn’t pretend to hammer anymore. No one else did, either. Like as not, the Hound still nursed his headache from the ale he drank the night before. He never woke up early, not here.
“I’ll send my son to fetch something, then.” The elder said. He waited quietly for the riders to speak. Arya turned back to her hammering, striking the last nail in with a satisfactory thud. In her head, she worked out the best way to get to Craven from here. She could take him and Stranger and get away without ever having to see the Hound again. She’d thought of it before, when he was drinking himself into a stupor.
But then the messenger boy came back with his mother, carrying a tray of beer and bread, and the Hound. The woman approached with hesitancy. Polliver motioned for the squire to take the tray. When the boy walked away, Polliver swung down and pulled her in to grope at her breasts in front of the entire work crew. She squealed and tried to push him off, but he just laughed before throwing her in the mud.
“So this is what you have for protection?” Polliver laughed. “Do you know what coward hides in your village?”
“Is that the lost puppy Ser Gregor spoke of? The one who piddled in the rushes and ran off?” The squire asked, looking up to the Tickler for approval. Clegane never said a word, his hand still set on his belt as if he were having a casual conversation in the marketplace and not preparing for a fight outside a poorly-equipped village.
There’s ten in all, Arya thought. If it were just the three riders, the Hound could take them. But ten trained fighters against just him . . .
The Tickler thumped the squire on his head. “Fool, that’s Ser’s brother.”
Arya studied the weapons on Polliver’s belt; a longsword on his left hip, and on his right a dagger and a slimmer blade, too long to be a dirk and too short to be a sword. The rest all only seemed to carry staves and dirks.
Polliver grabbed a tankard from the squire’s tray as the liquid sloshed off it. He drank it empty before throwing it towards the village woman. “Bring more. We’re a thirsty lot of king’s men. Serve us well.”
She scurried back into the village without bending over to retrieve the tankard.
“King Tommen’s men, now.” Polliver laughed. “Have you heard, Sandor? King Joffrey’s dead. Poisoned at his own wedding feast.”
There were shocked gasps around the gathered crowd. No news of the matter had made it here. Joffrey’s dead! She imagined his face, blond curls and mean smile. Joffrey’s dead! Yet nothing about this news made her leap the way she thought it ought to.
The Hound snorted. “Who killed him?”
“The Imp, they say, and his little northern wife.” Polliver smiled, like he had some particularly good story. “We heard she killed the king with a spell, and afterward changed into a wolf with big leather wings like a bat, and flew out a tower window. But she left the dwarf behind and Cersei means to have his head."
That's stupid, Arya thought. Sansa only knows songs, not spells, and she'd never marry the Imp.
“Well won’t King Tommen be wanting such loyal men back to protect him?” The elder tried to speak.
The Tickler smiled and it set shivers down Arya’s back. “We’ll be gone, soon enough. Even if you didn’t have this cravenly cur for protection. Just bring the village’s gold out nice and tidy and we’ll be on our way.”
“On your way after you’ve killed them and taken their wives to your beds, you mean.”
The Tickler shrugged. “What’s a village in the Vale to you? Help them carry out the gold, Sandor, and then come with us to see your brother at Harrenhal. Ser would want you to return with us.”
“Bugger that. Bugger him. Bugger you.”
Something silvery flashed across the space between villagers and soldiers. The Hound lurched to the side, drawing his sword. A man screamed as a blade hit his side; it would have hit the Hound if he had not been on the move already. In a minute, the drinking soldiers had tossed aside their tankards and were charging at the unprepared villagers.
Arya shifted away from the gate, but didn’t follow the stampede into the village enclosure. Crowds were a stupid place to die.
Seeing her in the corner of the workspace, the chunky squire stepped towards her as he fumbled for his swordhilt. Arya grabbed a handful of nails and threw it at his face. Her improved aim had him falling black and screaming as his face broke out in bloody cuts.
Polliver had approached Sandor, meeting him in the middle. The Tickler road from above on his horse, laughing as he shouted orders at his men. Fear and panic rose in Arya’s throat. Fear cuts deeper than swords. Fear cuts deeper . . .
She tried to squeeze her hands into fists, but found one already closed around her hammer. Arya could work with that.
The soldiers were running towards the villagers, but Arya’s eyes honed in on Sandor. He grunted in pain as Polliver moved on him, each strike methodical and hard. The Hound, still hungover, stepped slow and clumsy. But still determined. He grunted in pain as Polliver swung and meet the stub of his ear. Blood gushed, and Polliver smiled in triumph.
But the Hound seemed angrier, driving Polliver back with frenzied, furious attack. At his back, the Tickler had turned his attention away from the screaming villagers and moved his horse towards the Hound.
In the distance, something caught fire and flame.
The Tickler moved to leap off his horse's back. Arya drew her single dagger and tried to fling it at the Tickler. The weapon met his arm guard, him barely hitting it at all.
"Behind you!" She screamed. Arya wondered why she cared. She could still get to Craven and Stranger, if she tried. But who was she without him? Her mother dead, her aunt up the mountain . . . now there was only the Hound.
"Are you the puppy's puppy?" The squire sneered, advancing on Arya with a sword in his hand. She had forgotten about him. Arya stumbled back, but not before he could grab her arm.
Without thinking, she jerked her hammer up and against his side, burying the end tines in his unprotected belly. It went right in with a sickening squelch. Arya tugged it out and pushed him back. The squire's eyes went big and wide as he fell to the ground, grasping at his wound.
Arya grabbed his dropped sword and shoved the hammer away so it dangled from her rope belt.
Polliver and the Tickler were fighting the Hound still, taking turns swiping at him. An ugly red gash bled from his upper thigh and his breathing came noisily. Sandor backed away slowly, leaning on his good leg as he lunged with his sword to block each stroke.
"Throw down the sword, and we'll take you back to Harrenhal," Polliver told him.
"So Gregor can finish me himself?"
The Tickler said, "Maybe he'll give you to me."
Arya looked around. There were no villagers, no soldiers. Only her, the three of them, and the dying squire.
"If you want me, come get me."
Polliver and the Tickler began a faster onslaught, both attacking with fast, wild strikes. Even Polliver has lost his measured strokes from before. The Hound backed away in her direction. A lucky hit from the Hound's blade landed in Polliver's face and pulled away with half his head.
The Tickler stopped his advance. His back was to Arya, the Hound just before him. With a scream, she drove the squire's sword through the Tickler's back. "Is there gold hidden in the village? Silver? Gems? Food?" She pulled it out and hit him again, this time with the hammer. She hit his nose less straight than her nails in the gate and hit again. "Where is Lord Beric? Where did he go? How many knights? How many men? How many, how many, how many?"
The hammer and her hands alike were red with blood as the Hound pulled her off. "Enough." She struggled for a moment before he surprised her by pulling her all away. "Enough. There's more to take care of in the village. The soldiers are still here. You go fetch the horses in case we must make away."
Dragging his leg, the Hound went after the screams and wails coming from the village. Arya took a deep breath. She looked to Polliver's body again, wondering . . . on his belt she found what she never thought to see again. Needle.
The blade made her think of her sister, Sansa, singing softly as she sewed, and of her brother, Jon, who gave her Needle and ruffled her hair when he called her little sister. Tears welled in Arya's eyes as she thought of them and all the rest. Quickly, she threw aside the squire's sword and wiped her eyes. No tears, stupid. Now was not the time to cry. She was a wolf, and wolves did not cry.
By the time Arya made it to the barn and found Craven and Stranger, there was no need to ready them. She saw that plain enough. Three soldiers' bodies littered the village square, right before the well, with pitchfork holes in two of their torsos. The other didn't have a head, looking severed by the Hound's blade.
She did not know what had happened to the other four, but the Hound was covered in more blood when he came to her and sat before the barn. "Go find some ale. I'm thirsty."
But it wasn't necessary to bring him ale, because the elder's wife already approached, her little daughter at her heels, the one whose doll Arya had ripped. The alcohol the woman had wasn't for Sandor's belly but his leg, to kill the rot before it could set in. Without speaking, the woman cleaned and bandaged him up.
Then the village elder came to see them next, when his wife was done. He had wine for the Hound, in thanks for the defense of the town. "I thought a man like you would bring blood with him."
"So you knew who I was from the beginning."
"Aye. We don't get travelers here, but folks get stories at market and the fairs. We know about King Joffrey's dog."
"And you'll be seeing me on my way, for bringing blood to your gate?"
"The men didn't know you were here. Not until we brought you out." The man hesitated. "They say you lost your belly for fighting at the Blackwater. But you fought well enough today. Even though they say - "
"Well enough? I killed seven of the attackers on my own." The Hound shot Arya a look. He was taking credit for her kills, then. Good. She did not want to linger on the lives she had taken, today or ever. "But I know what they say. Pay me, and we'll be gone."
"We'd hope to keep you. For at least some of the winter. If you'll keep fighting when the raiders come." The elder said. "The space in the barn can be outfitted long term, and you can stay here until you're healed before manning the palisade after we raise it tomorrow."
"I'll think on it. May be we get more coin elsewhere. Or more feed." His eyes leveled on Arya. She wondered if he would still try to make it to her aunt, even though they said the mountain was nearly impassable in winter and crawling with wildmen armed by the Imp.
She would never know what he would decide based on the offer alone though, because the second visitor came down from the high road and gave Sandor a means to get up it.