“If I had a silver stag for every time you said his name, I’d be as rich as your friends the Lannisters.”
“That was only. you do not understand. ”
“Don’t we, though?” The big man laughed. “I think we might. There’s a stink of lion about you, lady.”
“That’s not so.”
Another of the outlaws stepped forward, a younger man in a greasy sheepskin jerkin. In his hand was Oathkeeper. “This says it is.” His voice was frosted with the accents of the north. He slid the sword from its scabbard and placed it in front of Lady Stoneheart. In the light from the firepit the red and black ripples in the blade almost seem to move, but the woman in grey had eyes only for the pommel: a golden lion’s head, with ruby eyes that shone like two red stars.
“There is this as well.” Thoros of Myr drew a parchment from his sleeve, and put it down next to the sword. “It bears the boy king’s seal and says the bearer is about his business.”
Lady Stoneheart set the sword aside to read the letter.
“The sword was given me for a good purpose,” said Brienne. “Ser Jaime swore an oath to Catelyn Stark. ”
“. before his friends cut her throat for her, that must have been,” said the big man in the yellow cloak. “We all know about the Kingslayer and his oaths.”
It is no good, Brienne realized. No words of mine will sway them. She plunged ahead despite that. “He promised Lady Catelyn her daughters, but by the time we reached King’s Landing they were gone. Jaime sent me out to seek the Lady Sansa. ”
“. and if you had found the girl,” asked the young northman, “what were you to do with her?”
“Protect her. Take her somewhere safe.”
The big man laughed. “Where’s that? Cersei’s dungeon?”
“No.”
“Deny it all you want. That sword says you’re a liar. Are we supposed to believe the Lannisters are handing out gold and ruby swords to foes? That the Kingslayer meant for you to hide the girl from his own twin? I suppose the paper with the boy king’s seal was just in case you needed to wipe your arse? And then there’s the company you keep. ” The big man turned and beckoned, the ranks of outlaws parted, and two more captives were brought forth. “The boy was the Imp’s own squire, m’lady,” he said to Lady Stoneheart. “T’other is one of Randyll Bloody Tarly’s bloody household knights.”
Hyle Hunt had been beaten so badly that his face was swollen almost beyond recognition. He stumbled as they shoved him, and almost fell. Podrick caught him by the arm. “Ser,” the boy said miserably, when he saw Brienne. “My lady, I mean. Sorry.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for.” Brienne turned to Lady Stoneheart. “Whatever treachery you think I may have done, my lady, Podrick and Ser Hyle were no part of it.”
“They’re lions,” said the one-eyed man. “That’s enough. I say they hang. Tarly’s hanged a score o’ ours, past time we strung up some o’ his.”
Ser Hyle gave Brienne a faint smile. “My lady,” he said, “you should have wed me when I made my offer. Now I fear you’re doomed to die a maid, and me a poor man.”
“Let them go,” Brienne pleaded.
The woman in grey gave no answer. She studied the sword, the parchment, the bronze-and-iron crown. Finally she reached up under her jaw and grasped her neck, as if she meant to throttle herself. Instead she spoke. Her voice was halting, broken, tortured. The sound seemed to come from her throat, part croak, part wheeze, part death rattle. The language of the damned, thought Brienne. “I don’t understand. What did she say?”
“She asked the name of this blade of yours,” said the young northman in the sheepskin jerkin.
“Oathkeeper,” Brienne answered.
The woman in grey hissed through her fingers. Her eyes were two red pits burning in the shadows. She spoke again.
“No, she says. Call it Oathbreaker, she says. It was made for treachery and murder. She names it False Friend. Like you.”
“To whom have I been false?”
“To her,” the northman said. “Can it be that my lady has forgotten that you once swore her your service?”
There was only one woman that the Maid of Tarth had ever sworn to serve. “That cannot be,” she said. “She’s dead.”
“Death and guest right,” muttered Long Jeyne Heddle. “They don’t mean so much as they used to, neither one.”
Lady Stoneheart lowered her hood and unwound the grey wool scarf from her face. Her hair was dry and brittle, white as bone. Her brow was mottled green and grey, spotted with the brown blooms of decay. The flesh of her face clung in ragged strips from her eyes down to her jaw. Some of the rips were crusted with dried blood, but others gaped open to reveal the skull beneath.
Her face, Brienne thought. Her face was so strong and handsome, her skin so smooth and soft. “Lady Catelyn?” Tears filled her eyes. “They said. they said that you were dead.”
“She is,” said Thoros of Myr. “The Freys slashed her throat from ear to ear. When we found her by the river she was three days dead. Harwin begged me to give her the kiss of life, but it had been too long. I would not do it, so Lord Beric put his lips to hers instead, and the flame of life passed from him to her. And. she rose. May the Lord of Light protect us. She rose.”
Am I dreaming still? Brienne wondered. Is this another nightmare born from Biter’s teeth? “I never betrayed her. Tell her that. I swear it by the Seven. I swear it by my sword.”
The thing that had been Catelyn Stark took hold of her throat again, fingers pinching at the ghastly long slash in her neck, and choked out more sounds. “Words are wind, she says,” the northman told Brienne. “She says that you must prove your faith.”
“How?” asked Brienne.
“With your sword. Oathkeeper, you call it? Then keep your oath to her, milady says.”
“What does she want of me?”
“She wants her son alive, or the men who killed him dead,” said the big man. “She wants to feed the crows, like they did at the Red Wedding. Freys and Boltons, aye. We’ll give her those, as many as she likes. All she asks from you is Jaime Lannister.”
Jaime. The name was a knife, twisting in her belly. “Lady Catelyn, I. you do not understand, Jaime. he saved me from being raped when the Bloody Mummers took us, and later he came back for me, he leapt into the bear pit empty-handed. I swear to you, he is not the man he was. He sent me after Sansa to keep her safe, he could not have had a part in the Red Wedding.”
Lady Catelyn’s fingers dug deep into her throat, and the words came rattling out, choked and broken, a stream as cold as ice. The northman said, “She says that you must choose. Take the sword and slay the Kingslayer, or be hanged for a betrayer. The sword or the noose, she says. Choose, she says. Choose. ”
Brienne remembered her dream, waiting in her father’s hall for the boy she was to marry. In the dream she had bitten off her tongue. My mouth was full of blood. She took a ragged breath and said, “I will not make that choice.”
There was a long silence. Then Lady Stoneheart spoke again. This time Brienne understood her words. There were only two. “Hang them,” she croaked.
“As you command, m’lady,” said the big man.
They bound Brienne’s wrists with rope again and led her from the cavern, up a twisting stony path to the surface. It was morning outside, she was surprised to see. Shafts of pale dawn light were slanting through the trees. So many trees to choose from, she thought. They will not need to take us far.
Nor did they. Beneath a crooked willow, the outlaws slipped a noose about her neck, jerked it tight, and tossed the other end of the rope over a limb. Hyle Hunt and Podrick Payne were given elms. Ser Hyle was shouting that he would kill Jaime Lannister, but the Hound cuffed him across the face and shut him up. He had donned the helm again. “If you got crimes to confess to your gods, this would be the time to say them.”