T his is an evil dream, she thought. But if she were dreaming, why did it hurt so much?

The rain had stopped falling, but all the world was wet. Her cloak felt as heavy as her mail. The ropes that bound her wrists were soaked through, but that only made them tighter. No matter how Brienne turned her hands, she could not slip free. She did not understand who had bound her, or why. She tried to ask the shadows, but they did not answer. Perhaps they did not hear her. Perhaps they were not real. Under her layers of wet wool and rusting mail, her skin was flushed and feverish. She wondered whether all of this was just a fever dream.

She had a horse beneath her, though she could not remember mounting. She lay facedown across his hindquarters, like a sack of oats. Her wrists and ankles had been lashed together. The air was damp, the ground cloaked in mist. Her head pounded with every step. She could hear voices, but all she could see was the earth beneath the horse’s hooves. There were things broken inside of her. Her face felt swollen, her cheek was sticky with blood, and every jounce and bounce send a stab of agony through her arm. She could hear Podrick calling her, as if from far away. “Ser?” he kept saying. “Ser? My lady? Ser? My lady?” His voice was faint and hard to hear. Finally, there was only silence.

She dreamt she was at Harrenhal, down in the bear pit once again. This time it was Biter facing her, huge and bald and maggot-white, with weeping sores upon his cheeks. Naked he came, fondling his member, gnashing his filed teeth together. Brienne fled from him. “My sword,” she called. “Oathkeeper. Please.” The watchers did not answer. Renly was there, with Nimble Dick and Catelyn Stark. Shagwell, Pyg, and Timeon had come, and the corpses from the trees with their sunken cheeks, swollen tongues, and empty eye sockets. Brienne wailed in horror at the sight of them, and Biter grabbed her arm and yanked her close and tore a chunk from her face. “Jaime,” she heard herself scream, “Jaime.”

Even in the depths of dream the pain was there. Her face throbbed. Her shoulder bled. Breathing hurt. The pain crackled up her arm like lightning. She cried out for a maester.

“We have no maester,” said a girl’s voice. “Only me.”

I am looking for a girl, Brienne remembered. A highborn maid of three-and-ten, with blue eyes and auburn hair. “My lady?” she said. “Lady Sansa?”

A man laughed. “She thinks you’re Sansa Stark.”

“She can’t go much farther. She’ll die.”

“One less lion. I won’t weep.”

Brienne heard the sound of someone praying. She thought of Septon Meribald, but all the words were wrong. The night is dark and full of terrors, and so are dreams.

They were riding through a gloomy wood, a dank, dark, silent place where the pines pressed close. The ground was soft beneath her horse’s hooves, and the tracks she left behind filled up with blood. Beside her rode Lord Renly, Dick Crabb, and Vargo Hoat. Blood ran from Renly’s throat. The Goat’s torn ear oozed pus. “Where are we going?” Brienne asked. “Where are you taking me?” None of them would answer. How can they answer? All of them are dead. Did that mean that she was dead as well?

Lord Renly was ahead of her, her sweet smiling king. He was leading her horse through the trees. Brienne called out to tell him how much she loved him, but when he turned to scowl at her, she saw that he was not Renly after all. Renly never scowled. He always had a smile for me, she thought . . . except . . .

“Cold,” her king said, puzzled, and a shadow moved without a man to cast it, and her sweet lord’s blood came washing through the green steel of his gorget to drench her hands. He had been a warm man, but his blood was cold as ice. This is not real, she told herself. This is another bad dream, and soon I’ll wake.

Her mount came to a sudden halt. Rough hands seized hold of her. She saw shafts of red afternoon light slanting through the branches of a chestnut tree. A horse rooted amongst the dead leaves after chestnuts, and men moved nearby, talking in quiet voices. Ten, twelve, maybe more. Brienne did not recognize their faces. She was stretched out on the ground, her back against a tree trunk. “Drink this, m’lady,” said the girl’s voice. She lifted a cup to Brienne’s lips. The taste was strong and sour. Brienne spat it out. “Water,” she gasped. “Please. Water.”

“Water won’t help the pain. This will. A little.” The girl put the cup to Brienne’s lips again.

It even hurt to drink. Wine ran down her chin and dribbled on her chest. When the cup was empty the girl filled it from a skin. Brienne sucked it down until she sputtered. “No more.”

“More. You have a broken arm, and some of your ribs is cracked. Two, maybe three.”

“Biter,” Brienne said, remembering the weight of him, the way his knee had slammed into her chest.

“Aye. A real monster, that one.”

It all came back to her; lightning above and mud below, the rain pinging softly against the dark steel of the Hound’s helm, the terrible strength in Biter’s hands. Suddenly she could not stand being bound. She tried to wrench free of her ropes, but all that did was chafe her worse. Her wrists were tied too tightly. There was dried blood on the hemp. “Is he dead?” She trembled. “Biter. Is he dead?” She remembered his teeth tearing into the flesh of her face. The thought that he might still be out there somewhere, breathing, made Brienne want to scream.

“He’s dead. Gendry shoved a spearpoint through the back of his neck. Drink, m’lady, or I’ll pour it down your throat.”

She drank. “I am looking for a girl,” she whispered, between swallows. She almost said my sister. “A highborn maid of three-and-ten. She has blue eyes and auburn hair.”

“I’m not her.”

No. Brienne could see that. The girl was thin to the point of looking starved. She wore her brown hair in a braid, and her eyes were older than her years. Brown hair, brown eyes, plain. Willow, six years older. “You’re the sister. The innkeep.”

“I might be.” The girl squinted. “What if I am?”

“Do you have a name?” Brienne asked. Her stomach gurgled. She was afraid that she might retch.

“Heddle. Same as Willow. Jeyne Heddle.”

“Jeyne. Untie my hands. Please. Have pity. The ropes are chafing my wrists. I’m bleeding.”

“It’s not allowed. You’re to stay bound, till . . .”

“. . . till you stand before m’lady.” Renly stood behind the girl, pushing his black hair out of his eyes. Not Renly. Gendry. “M’lady means for you to answer for your crimes.”

“M’lady.” The wine was making her head spin. It was hard to think. “Stoneheart. Is that who you mean?” Lord Randyll had spoken of her, back at Maidenpool. “Lady Stoneheart.”

“Some call her that. Some call her other things. The Silent Sister. Mother Merciless. The Hangwoman.”

The Hangwoman. When Brienne closed her eyes, she saw the corpses swaying underneath the bare brown limbs, their faces black and swollen. Suddenly she was desperately afraid. “Podrick. My squire. Where is Podrick? And the others . . . Ser Hyle, Septon Meribald. Dog. What did you do with Dog?”

Gendry and the girl exchanged a look. Brienne fought to rise, and managed to get one knee under her before the world began to spin. “It was you killed the dog, m’lady,” she heard Gendry say, just before the darkness swallowed her again.

Then she was back at the Whispers, standing amongst the ruins and facing Clarence Crabb. He was huge and fierce, mounted on an aurochs shaggier than he was. The beast pawed the ground in fury, tearing deep furrows in the earth. Crabb’s teeth had been filed into points. When Brienne went to draw her sword, she found her scabbard empty. “No,” she cried, as Ser Clarence charged. It wasn’t fair. She could not fight without her magic sword. Ser Jaime had given it to her. The thought of failing him as she had failed Lord Renly made her want to weep. “My sword. Please, I have to find my sword.”

“The wench wants her sword back,” a voice declared.

“And I want Cersei Lannister to suck my cock. So what?”

“Jaime called it Oathkeeper. Please.” But the voices did not listen, and Clarence Crabb thundered down on her and swept off her head. Brienne spiraled down into a deeper darkness.

She dreamed that she was lying in a boat, her head pillowed on someone’s lap. There were shadows all around them, hooded men in mail and leather, paddling them across a foggy river with muffled oars. She was drenched in sweat, burning, yet somehow shivering too. The fog was full of faces. “Beauty,” whispered the willows on the bank, but the reeds said, “freak, freak.” Brienne ddered. “Stop,” she said. “Someone make them stop.”

The next time she woke, Jeyne was holding a cup of hot soup to her lips. Onion broth, Brienne thought. She drank as much of it as she could, until a bit of carrot caught in her throat and made her choke. Coughing was agony. “Easy,” the girl said.

“Gendry,” she wheezed. “I have to talk with Gendry.”

“He turned back at the river, m’lady. He’s gone back to his forge, to Willow and the little ones, to keep them safe.”

No one can keep them safe. She began to cough again. “Ah, let her choke. Save us a rope.” One of the shadow men shoved the girl aside. He was clad in rusted rings and a studded belt. At his hip hung longsword and dirk. A yellow greatcloak was plastered to his shoulders, sodden and filthy. From his shoulders rose a steel dog’s head, its teeth bared in a snarl.

“No,” Brienne moaned. “No, you’re dead, I killed you.”

The Hound laughed. “You got that backwards. It’ll be me killing you. I’d do it now, but m’lady wants to see you hanged.”

Hanged. The word sent a jolt of fear through her. She looked at the girl, Jeyne. She is too young to be so hard. “Bread and salt,” Brienne gasped. “The inn . . . Septon Meribald fed the children . . . we broke bread with your sister . . .”

“Guest right don’t mean so much as it used to,” said the girl. “Not since m’lady come back from the wedding. Some o’ them swinging down by the river figured they was guests too.”

“We figured different,” said the Hound. “They wanted beds. We gave ’em trees.”

“We got more trees, though,” put in another shadow, one-eyed beneath a rusty pothelm. “We always got more trees.”

When it was time to mount again, they yanked a leather hood down over her face. There were no eyeholes. The leather muffled the sounds around her. The taste of onions lingered on her tongue, sharp as the knowledge of her failure. They mean to hang me. She thought of Jaime, of Sansa, of her father back on Tarth, and was glad for the hood. It helped hide the tears welling in her eyes. From time to time she heard the outlaws talking, but she could not make out their words. After a while she gave herself up to weariness and the slow, steady motion of her horse.

This time she dreamed that she was home again, at Evenfall. Through the tall arched windows of her lord father’s hall she could see the sun just going down. I was safe here. I was safe.

She was dressed in silk brocade, a quartered gown of blue and red decorated with golden suns and silver crescent moons. On another girl it might have been a pretty gown, but not on her. She was twelve, ungainly and uncomfortable, waiting to meet the young knight her father had arranged for her to marry, a boy six years her senior, sure to be a famous champion one day. She dreaded his arrival. Her bosom was too small, her hands and feet too big. Her hair kept sticking up, and there was a pimple nestled in the fold beside her nose. “He will bring a rose for you,” her father promised her, but a rose was no good, a rose could not keep her safe. It was a sword she wanted. Oathkeeper. I have to find the girl. I have to find his honor.

Finally the doors opened, and her betrothed strode into her father’s hall. She tried to greet him as she had been instructed, only to have blood come pouring from her mouth. She had bitten her tongue off as she waited. She spat it at the young knight’s feet, and saw the disgust on his face. “Brienne the Beauty,” he said in a mocking tone. “I have seen sows more beautiful than you.” He tossed the rose in her face. As he walked away, the griffins on his cloak rippled and blurred and changed to lions. Jaime! she wanted to cry. Jaime, come back for me! But her tongue lay on the floor by the rose, drowned in blood.

Brienne woke suddenly, gasping.

She did not know where she was. The air was cold and heavy, and smelled of earth and worms and mold. She was lying on a pallet beneath a mound of sheepskins, with rock above her head and roots poking through the walls. The only light came from a tallow candle, smoking in a pool of melted wax.

She pushed aside the sheepskins. Someone had stripped her of her clothes and armor, she saw. She was clad in a brown woolen shift, thin but freshly washed. Her forearm had been splinted and bound up with linen, though. One side of her face felt wet and stiff. When she touched herself, she found some sort of damp poultice covering her cheek and jaw and ear. Biter . . .

Brienne got to her feet. Her legs felt weak as water, her head as light as air. “Is anyone there?”

Something moved in one of the shadowed alcoves behind the candle; an old grey man clad in rags. The blankets that had covered him slipped to the floor. He sat up and rubbed his eyes. “Lady Brienne? You gave me a fright. I was dreaming.”

No, she thought, that was me. “What place is this? Is this a dungeon?”

“A cave. Like rats, we must run back to our holes when the dogs come sniffing after us, and there are more dogs every day.” He was clad in the ragged remains of an old robe, pink and white. His hair was long and grey and tangled, the loose skin of his cheeks and chin was covered with coarse stubble. “Are you hungry? Could you keep down a cup of milk? Perhaps some bread and honey?”

“I want my clothes. My sword.” She felt naked without her mail, and she wanted Oathkeeper at her side. “The way out. Show me the way out.” The floor of the cave was dirt and stone, rough beneath the soles of her feet. Even now she felt light-headed, as if she were floating. The flickering light cast queer shadows. Spirits of the slain, she thought, dancing all about me, hiding when I turn to look at them. Everywhere she saw holes and cracks and crevices, but there was no way to know which passages led out, which would take her deeper into the cave, and which went nowhere. All were black as pitch.

“Might I feel your brow, my lady?” Her gaoler’s hand was scarred and hard with callus, yet strangely gentle. “Your fever has broken,” he announced, in a voice flavored with the accents of the Free Cities. “Well and good. Just yesterday your flesh felt as if it were on fire. Jeyne feared that we might lose you.”

“Jeyne. The tall girl?”

“The very one. Though she is not so tall as you, my lady. Long Jeyne, the men call her. It was she who set your arm and splinted it, as well as any maester. She did what she could for your face as well, washing out the wounds with boiled ale to stop the mortification. Even so . . . a human bite is a filthy thing. That is where the fever came from, I am certain.” The grey man touched her bandaged face. “We had to cut away some of the flesh. Your face will not be pretty, I fear.”

It has never been pretty. “Scars, you mean?”

“My lady, that creature chewed off half your cheek.”

Brienne could not help but flinch. Every knight has battle scars, Ser Goodwin had warned her, when she asked him to teach her the sword. Is that what you want, child? Her old master-at-arms had been talking about sword cuts, though; he could never have anticipated Biter’s pointed teeth. “Why set my bones and wash my wounds if you only mean to hang me?”

“Why indeed?” He glanced at the candle, as if he could no longer bear to look at her. “You fought bravely at the inn, they tell me. Lem should not have left the crossroads. He was told to stay close, hidden, to come at once if he saw smoke rising from the chimney . . . but when word reached him that the Mad Dog of Saltpans had been seen making his way north along the Green Fork, he took the bait. We have been hunting that lot for so long . . . still, he ought to have known better. As it was, it was half a day before he realized that the mummers had used a stream to hide their tracks and doubled back behind him, and then he lost more time circling around a column of Frey knights. If not for you, only corpses might have remained at the inn by the time that Lem and his men got back. That was why Jeyne dressed your wounds, mayhaps. Whatever else you may have done, you won those wounds honorably, in the best of causes.”

Whatever else you may have done.............