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They were still miles from King’s Landing when the plume of dust and debris billowed into the sky. Anyone within 30 miles of the shit hole of a city would have seen it. Still none of the Brotherhood stopped to ponder the destruction that must have just occurred in the capitol; they continued marching behind the footsteps of Beric and Thoros of Myr.
Sandor kept his distance behind the Brotherhood. He wasn’t one of them. Their fire god was a hoax. And if he was real, Sandor wanted no part of the entity who cursed him from childhood. He shared no love for the men he traveled with, but they fed him and shared their loot with him. They claimed he was part of their god’s great war. He’d leave long before it came to that. He was done fighting in wars for fake gods and unworthy kings. But until that moment came, Sandor would gladly play his part.
He never planned on returning to this pit of hell. He could smell the stench of shit and death long before he saw the city, before the smoke cloud rose to intersperse with the clouds. It brought back memories of Blackwater Bay, of those crazed smallfolk that had rioted and nearly killed the poor Stark girl. If only they had succeeded in reaching Joffrey. Every fiber in his body recoiled from stepping foot in King’s Landing again. He hated the people here. He owed nothing to Brotherhood or the city. He should stop and leave these fools to their own demise. And yet, he continued behind the retinue like in a trance. A force dragging him along, overpowering the will he has to be free of this place city
Just beyond the city walls, he recognized where the smoke was coming from. Where the grandiose, hypocritical Sept of Baelor once proudly stood over the city, was now a pile of rubble. They would never find what they were looking for now. No doubt Cersei had reached the girl first. So much for those flames.
Sandor didn’t say that. He didn’t speak at all. He was here to reap the benefits of following the Brotherhood, not to nose himself into their melodrama. If nothing else, there may be a few trinkets of value in the rubble.
The Brotherhood had other aspirations. In the flames Thoros the loon claimed to the Queen in the “war to come”. They planned to seek an audience with the Queen and her boy king Tommen. There was zero chance of that happening. The Kingsguard would laugh in their faces the moment they reached the castle grounds. Then they’d impale the lot of them so Cersei could show off their spiked heads. Perhaps the Sparrows would appreciate that gesture. The little tavern they’d spent the night in was abuzz with rumors of tension between the crown and the cult of fanatics.
Sandor would be gone long before that happened. Until then…
The narrow streets of King’s Landing, typically too overcrowded and too loud to hear the person next to you, scarcely showed signs of life. There was the odd peasant here and the stray prostitute there, but otherwise the streets were eerily quiet and empty.
“Do you think they’re at the sept?” one of the Brotherhood whispered.
The man next to him sneered. “A massive pillar of smoke is rising from that shithole. Where else do you think the smallfolk would be?”
There were more smallfolk as they came closer to the Sept. However, there was no sign of the gold cloaks. Those who were out were pillaging merchant carts and stealing from bakery shops. No one seemed to care for the chaos in the city.
Soon the smell of smoke engulfed the natural scent of waste and shit that filled the city streets. Sandor cringed at the smell, unable to avoid breathing it in. If he closed his eyes, he could believe he was back home, still screaming after Gregor had shoved him into the fire. His cheek flinched at the memory and Sandor willed his brain to think of anything else.
“When do you think they’ll recover the bodies?” one woman asked a man on the corner.
The man snorted. “What bodies? A blast like that would have destroyed the lot of them.” He shut his mouth the moment he recognized the Brotherhood. Looking down, he tugged the woman with him back into the delapidated building that passed as a home in King’s Landing.
The Brotherhood marched on in silence, carefully taking in whatever whispers they could from the growing plots of people before they inevitably shut up and ran away from them.
The bitch was supposed to stand trial today. The thought of Cersei, proud, arrogant Cersei, standing trial for a blatant crime against the gods might have brought a smile to Sandor’s face. Except it was all for not, apparently. He could only hope that she befell the same fate as her son in whatever chaos had engulfed the sept.
Dozens of gold cloaks formed a blockade around the gates to the Red Keep. Some of them Sandor recognized from his time in the city, but most looked scarcely old enough to hold a sword, let alone defend King’s Landing. Each glance held a tremor of fear. They recognized him as Joffrey’s Hound. Despite his amended outlook with the Brotherhood, Sandor could still rip apart these brats if he chose to.
“We have a message for the King and Queen. An urgent one,” Beric stood tall before the captain of the Gold cloaks. Sandor couldn’t remember his name, not that he ould have held any importance when he was in King’s Landing before.
“No one is to see the royal family at this time,” the captain said. He periodically glanced at Sandor, his fist tightening around his sword with a tension that surely would get him killed in battle.
“Ser, it is a matter of life and death. The Lord of Light-” Beric pleaded. He never shut up about his bastard of a fire god, did he?
“Gods, the last thing we need is another wave of zealots,” one of the soldiers snorted.
The captain whipped his head around to silence the talker, only for another solider to shout, “Stick ‘em in da pit and let Queen Cersei show ‘em what we do to their kind!”
Agreeing murmurs and further suggestion for where to send the blasphemous cult rose higher and higher, beyond the captain’s control. A few gold cloaks drew their swords, prompting the Brotherhood to draw their own. Sandor had his own at hand, ready to disembowel the first man to step his way. He may not be what he sued to be, but he was certain he could disembowel five of these boys without batting an eyelash.
Amid the growing discord, Thoros of Myr, quiet and forgotten, drew the sword out of Lord Beric’s sheath. Flames engulfed the sword, sending men back a step in every direction. Sandor, who had been furthest from Beric and Thoros, flinched from the memory of what the man’s weapon could do. The Gold Cloaks silenced immediately, the captain was relieved if only to regain control of his men.
“We are wasting our time here,” Thoros said. Beric seemed to understand immediately, standing down and following Thoros as he walked back toward the heart of the city. Reluctantly, the Brotherhood followed suit, leaving Sandor behind as he stared down the last of the Gold Cloaks. Some still shook at the realization of how close they’d been to a true fight with other properly armed men, rather than drunken peasants.
He had expected the trip to be a waste. They would never have gotten through the gates, even if Cersei hadn’t just become queen once more. The coincidence of her trial occurring, her lack of presence at said trial, and the destruction of the sept where her accusers would be left no doubt in Sandor’s mind how she’d become queen. The woman had only grown more ruthless since he’d left.
He had at least hoped to see the ugly, hulking monster his brother had become. Thoros had told him of Gregor’s seeming resurrection from the grave. Shortly after Sandor had joined the Brotherhood, Thoros returned from a visit to a neighboring town with a barrel of ale and a mouthful of gossip. While the other men drank their fill, Thoros spoke of witchcraft used by an evil maester to resurrect the Mountain’s body for purposes that violated Rh’llor. His usual fanatic-style rant. Sandor wanted to see it for himself. He wanted to revel in his brother’s misery before putting him out of it.
He trailed behind his traveling party once more as they winded through the alleys and occasional smallfolk. They halted at the clearing that was now smoldering ash and debris where the Great Sept of Baelor once stood. The smallfolk gathered here, forming a half ring where the building once stood. The bell that had once hung high above the city had crashed through buildings and was no where to be seen. Stone walls were charred to pieces. Those who dared to come this close to the destruction still cowered, fearful of who might come to clear them away, but too awed to not see the remnants for themselves. Most of them wore tattered clothes that looked as though they’d been recovered from the Sept, though no piece of clothing would survive the explosion that could knock down this building.
Sandor walked through where the great doors had once been. He could count the times he had entered the Sept. He had no love for the gods. If they were real, he would hate them. But he didn’t believe they were. Still, he could picture the grand ornamentation, the alters dedicated to the Stranger and the Mother and the Crone. The Septon’s grand pulpit would have been in the center, where pieces of stone now lay on top of one another.
Only a handful of other men were brave enough to approach the remains. They followed Thoros and Lord Beric to a bronze base where one of the statues once stood. The base had melted, distorting its shape. Pieces of glass and the hardly recognizable bits of various statues surrounded it.
“Your Lord of Light must a been thrilled with this,” Sandor muttered under his breath.
Beric stared intensely at the pile of rubble. Almost as deeply as he stared into those ridiculous flames. Sandor almost laughed at the absurdity of it. Except that he’d seen the results of this absurdity first hand. He wasn’t one to give himself to a fanatic’s ridiculous notions, but he did trust this man’s intuitions.
Sandor joined the group so he could hear Beric and Thoros as they whispered. “Do you think so?” Beric asked his guide.
Thoros analyzed the pile again. This time, Sandor noticed what they’d been staring at. A burnt and bloody hand hung limply from between two pieces of stone atop each other. He wasn’t sure how a human body could survive a blast that melted bronze and incinerated stone to nothing more than ashes. Yet there one was.
Bystanders curious enough to overcome their fears inched closer to the destruction. They whispered amongst themselves. Sandor felt restless, eager to move on and leave the city now.
Thoros, Beric and two other brothers approached the pile of rubble.
“Clegane,” Thoros called out, uncaring of the small crowd they were attracting, “help us.”
Sandor huffed in annoyance, but did as the Brotherhood’s leader asked. They dug smaller pieces of debris and charred stone out from around the body and off of the what must have previous been a pillar within the sept. They uncovered the other hand, which was not burnt, but was still bloody. One of the legs had deep red and white marks that clawed up to the thigh which was covered by the pillar as well. Whatever clothes the woman—it was becoming and more and more clear this was a woman—had been wearing were now rags, partially turned to ashes by the heat it had been exposed to.
When most of the debris had been cleared away, Lord Beric circled to the top of the pile. “I think you were right,” he muttered to seemingly no one, then his eyes bore into Sandor. “Help me move this.” Sandor, more intrigued than he had been before, squatted at the low end of the pillar, wrapped his fingers beneath the pillar and lifted up. His arms shook, his muscles burning in the attempt to move the pillar. His knuckles turned from pink to pure white as he gripped the base of the pillar harder to make sure he didn’t drop it. Lifting tree logs for that village had helped him return to shape and was the only thing that enabled him to move the pillar the meter it had to go.
Dust and ash flew up in the air the moment Sandor dropped his end, clear from where the body was. His face was flush from the physical exertion. His arms quickly regained their strength, but his back ached deep within. Further proof he was not the man he could have once boasted of.
Thoros snatched the body up before anyone else had a chance to look at it. He threw his cloak over the body which hung over his shoulder. Quickly, he accounted for each of the bystanders who had seen what the Brotherhood had done.
“Lynard, recompense these folk generously for what they have seen,” Thoros whispered.
“What should I give them?” Lynard asked. The Brotherhood had little enough to spend on themselves. They could ill afford to buy the silence of a dozen peasants.
“Whatever we can,” Thoros told him. He led the march out as Lynard gathered a few fellow brothers to complete his task.
He approached Sandor, a hitch in his step revealing his nerves. He was barely a man, his patchy stubble and waivering voice proof. “Ser Sandor-“ he began, no doubt hoping to use Sandor’s reputation and strength as a form of intimidation.
“No.” Sandor marched past the much shorter man. He kept pace his usual pace, trailing far behind Beric and Thoros, but within the Brotherhood’s band of marchers. He was certain that they would be caught, that the Brotherhood would be apprehended by some goldcloaks or soldiers for bodysnatching and returned to the Red Keep to await punishment. Sandor almost relished the idea. What better way to destroy his brother than a trial by combat?
But they weren’t stopped. No gold cloaks showed up. Soldiers looked the other way, tired of fighting and uncaring of what a group of nomads could possibly be running away from the city for. They wished they could run with them.
By the time they reached the inn they had boarded in the previous night, the sun was falling behind the hills in the distance. They didn’t bother going inside and claiming rooms again. Instead, they snuck around the building to the abandoned shed a kilometer from the inn.
The shed, hardly big enough to call it even that, was falling apart. The wood was molding. Holes riddled the door, which wasn’t opened as much as it was removed from the frame and set aside.
Beric handed the body to Thoros so he could join Rylan and Paetren clear out the shed. Begrudgingly, Sandor volunteered his help. Old, half rotted food filled the building. Stacks of rotted vegetables meant to last the winter were drug out. Bags of flour leaked as Sandor picked them up, not bothering to hand them off to the next Brother who managed to catch up from King’s Landing. All the food came out until only 3 barrels of ale remained inside.
The structure within the shed was just as bad as the outside. There were holes in the roof, likely why the food was in such bad condition. Bugs crawled all over the floor and up the walls.
Once deemed clear, Thoros carried the body in and laid it across the 3 barrels. The shed was so small that the majority of the Brotherhood, most of whom had now made it back, had to stand outside. Sandor made sure that he was not on one of them. He forced his way into the farthest corner of the shed.
Queen Margaery looked nothing like Sandor remembered her. He’d seen her twice, both times as a girl no older than Sansa Stark had been when he’d known her. She was a pretty little thing then, long brown curls cascading down her shoulders and rosy cheeks with a smile that was always sweet, yet mischievous.
Her hair was singed, one side now shorter than the other with curls that looked so fragile they might break if touched. There was a gash on her forehead that blood had poured from, leaving one side of her face black and red with crusted blood. There was an angry red burn mark on the other side of her face, starting at the jaw, growing up her jaw line, and ending at the top of her cheek. There were other burn marks down her body. Anywhere on the right side of her body where clothes were not covering her, Sandor saw marks ranging from purple and black bruises to red and white burn marks to open wounds of blood. After seeing the bone in her right arm, one of the brothers shoved his way out of the shed, puking his innards outside.
Thoros stood at her head, Beric at her feet.
“Are you sure this is the queen?” one of the Brothers asked.
Thoros nodded. “I recognized her from the flames.”
Sandor snorted. “Wasn’t she alive in your bloody flames? Your fire god really delivered for you this time.”
“She was alive,” Beric said. “And she will be again.”
“Rolfe, take some men and keep the inn keeper busy. This will take some time.” Rolfe acquiesced and left. “We’ll need water. Sandor, take a few good men with you and bring us back some buckets. Dump the seeds and the extra ale and use the barrels if you need to.”
“Why? She’s not like him,” he pointed at Beric. “She had no desire to serve your god. Let the dead rest.”
“Rh’llor has a plan for her,” Beric said. His eyes stayed down, never meeting anyone else’s. “We all have a role to play.”
Sandor wanted to argue. But he couldn’t deny he was intrigued. Beric shouldn’t be alive, yet he was here. By all accounts, Sandor himself should not have been alive. The fire he was pushed into should have killed him. He didn’t believe in this Lord of Light. But he was curious enough to go along with his host’s desires.
Sandor marched out, snatching Lynyrd on his way out as Beric and Thoros continued issuing instructions. He grabbed two other men and a few barrels, dumping the contents behind the shed.
“The creek was this way,” Lynyrd took the lead.
“I heard the Queen was as pious as Baelor himself,” one of the companions said.
“Ha. I heard the queen was a great slut. Couldn’t keep her legs closed around a man with power,” the youngest of them smirked.
“Shut up you cunts. I want some fucking quiet,” Sandor said.
“Ah, he’s just pissed he quit playing the King’s pet before getting a lick of-,” Sandor turned on the youngest Brother and jabbed him square on the jaw with a sickening crack and yelp. He stumbled backward, falling on his arse. His jaw was misaligned, blood gathered at the corner of his mouth.
“I asked for quiet,” Sandor never looked back at the kid.
No one spoke for the rest of the journey. They filled three barrels worth of water. Sandor carried one, while the Brother with the broken jaw and his wiser friend carried one together. Lynyrd lagged behind them, struggling to carry his load, but refusing to show weakness by allowing Sandor to help him.
A fire was lit outside of the shed. Candles lit up the inside, one in every direction around the deceased queen. Sandor set down his barrel at the door. The queen looked as though she’d been cleaned up some. A skinny old man who never did much lifting and was occasionally carried on their longer journeys stood over her body, rubbing some sort of ointment on her burn marks. He’d been a maester once, but he was exiled from the order for abandoning his faith in the Seven for the fire god.
“Good, you’re back,” Thoros came behind Sandor. “We can begin the ritual. Help me move this barrel in.”
Sandor picked up the barrel and entered the building. He squeezed past the unmoving maester and placed the barrel beside him. He flinched at the heat of the candle so close to his back and tried not to think of how close it was to touching him. Thoros removed the top of the barrel and dipped a rag into the water. He washed the blood off of her face and arms.
“You need to leave,” Beric whispered beside him. “We need faith in this room. There is no place for your doubt. Perhaps after this is done, you will finally believe.”
Sandor snorted. He shook his head and marched out of the building. Lynyrd and the kid with the broken jaw were welcomed with open arms. The Lord of Light was a load of bull, but Sandor did envy.
The few other men who stood outside gathered around the fire. Their combined belongings laid in a pile not far from the fire. Sandor grabbed a blanket from the pile and sat down as far from the fire as he could while within eyesight of the happenings in the shed. He had no desire to be near the fire.
Inside Thoros, Beric and the maester moved around Margaery. They dumped a whole barrel of water on her, thoroughly washing her body. Thoros placed his hands on her shoulders, his lips moving in a prayer. The process took what felt like hours, the temperature dropping quickly. Sandor wrapped the blanket tighter around himself. He had no idea what the Brotherhood hoped to achieve from this ceremonial burial preparation, but he was damn near tired enough to leave them and abscond a room in the inn. His curiosity wouldn’t let him leave.
One moment, Beric was leaning over Margaery, Sandor’s view blocked by several brothers who stood in the doorway. Then there was a thud, and a mixture of gasps and shouts. A few men ran from the shed. Once they’d fled, Sandor was able to fully see.
Beric lay on the ground, unmoving, though no one was paying him any attention. Sandor walked closer for a better look and stopped right outside of the shed’s doorway. The brothers who had been around the fire formed a mob behind him, all in unbelieving shock.
Queen Margaery, wrapped in a sheet, sat up on the kegs. Her chest heaved in and out, gasping air she should not have been breathing. She was alive. And Sandor had never felt more fear than he felt now.