Perhaps she had made a mistake in abandoning Ser Creighton and Ser Illifer. They had seemed like honest men. Would that Jaime had come with me, she thought. but he was a knight of the Kingsguard, his rightful place was with his king. Besides, it was Renly that she wanted. I swore I would protect him, and I failed. Then I swore I would avenge him, and I failed at that as well. I ran off with Lady Catelyn instead, and failed her too. The wind had shifted, and the rain was running down her face.

The next day the road dwindled to a pebbled thread, and finally to a mere suggestion. Near midday, it came to an abrupt end at the foot of a wind-carved cliff. Above, a small castle stood frowning over the waves, its three crooked towers outlined against a leaden sky. “Is that the Whispers?” Podrick asked.

“That look a bloody ruin t’ you?” Crabb spat. “That’s the Dyre Den, where old Lord Brune keeps his seat. Road ends here, though. It’s the pines for us from here on.”

Brienne studied the cliff. “How do we get up there?”

“Easy.” Nimble Dick turned his horse. “Stay close t’ Dick. The squishers are apt t’ take the laggards.”

The way up proved to be a steep stony path hidden within a cleft in the rock. Most of it was natural, but here and there steps had been carved to ease the climb. Sheer walls of rock, eaten away by centuries of wind and spray, hemmed them in to either side. In some places they had assumed fantastic shapes. Nimble Dick pointed out a few as they climbed. “There’s an ogre’s head, see?” he said, and Brienne smiled when she saw it. “And that there’s a stone dragon. T’other wing fell off when my father was a boy. Above it, that’s the dugs drooping down, like some hag’s teats.” He glanced back at her own chest.

“Ser? My lady?” said Podrick. “There’s a rider.”

“Where?” None of the rocks suggested a rider to her.

“On the road. Not a rock rider. A real rider. Following us. Down there.” He pointed.

Brienne twisted in her saddle. They had climbed high enough to see for leagues along the shore. The horse was coming up the same road they had taken, two or three miles behind them. Again? She glanced at Nimble Dick suspiciously.

“Don’t squint at me,” Crabb said. “He’s naught t’ do with old Nimble Dick, whoever he is. Some man o’ Brune’s, most like, come back from the wars. Or one o’ them singers, wandering from place to place.” He turned his head and spat. “He’s no squisher, that’s bloody certain. Their sort don’t ride horses.”

“No,” said Brienne. On that, at least, they could agree.

The last hundred feet of the climb proved the steepest and most treacherous. Loose pebbles rolled beneath their horse’s hooves and went rattling down the stony path behind them. When they emerged from the cleft in the rock, they found themselves under the castle walls. On a parapet above, a face peered down at them, then vanished. Brienne thought it might have been a woman, and said as much to Nimble Dick.

He agreed. “Brune’s too old to go climbing wallwalks, and his sons and grandsons went off to the wars. No one left in there but wenches, and a snot-nosed babe or three.”

It was on her lips to ask her guide which king Lord Brune had espoused, but it made no matter any longer. Brune’s sons were gone; some might not be coming back. We will have no hospitality here tonight. A castle full of old men, women, and children was not like to open its doors to armed strangers. “You speak of Lord Brune as if you know him,” she said to Nimble Dick.

“Might be I did, once.”

She glanced at the breast of his doublet. Loose threads and a ragged patch of darker fabric showed where some badge had been torn away. Her guide was a deserter, she did not doubt. Could the rider behind them be one of his brothers-in-arms?

“We should ride on,” he urged, “before Brune starts to wonder why we’re here beneath his walls. Even a wench can wind a bloody crossbow.” Dick gestured toward the limestone hills that rose beyond the castle, with their wooded slopes. “No more roads from here on, only streams and game trails, but m’lady need not fear. Nimble Dick knows these parts.”

That was what Brienne was afraid of. The wind was gusting along the top of the cliff, but all she could smell was a trap. “What about that rider?” Unless his horse could walk on waves, he would soon be coming up the cliff.

“What about him? If he’s some fool from Maidenpool, he might not even find the bloody path. And if he does, we’ll lose him in the woods. He won’t have no road to follow there.”

Only our tracks. Brienne wondered if it wouldn’t be better to meet the rider here, with her blade in hand. I’ll look an utter fool if it is a wandering singer or one of Lord Brune’s sons. Crabb had the right of it, she supposed. If he is still behind us on the morrow, I can deal with him then. “As you will,” she said, turning her mare toward the trees.

Lord Brune’s castle dwindled at their backs, and soon was lost to sight. Sentinels and soldier pines rose all around them, towering green-clad spears thrusting toward the sky. The forest floor was a bed of fallen needles as thick as a castle wall, littered with pinecones. The hooves of their horses seemed to make no sound. It rained a bit, stopped for a time, then started once again, but amongst the pines they scarce felt a drop.

The going was much slower in the woods. Brienne prodded her mare through the green gloom, weaving in and out amongst the trees. It would be very easy to get lost here, she realized. Every way she looked appeared the same. The very air seemed grey and green and still. Pine boughs scratched against her arms and scraped noisily against her newly painted shield. The eerie stillness grated on her more with every passing hour.

It bothered Nimble Dick as well. Late that day, as dusk was coming on, he tried to sing. “A bear there was, a bear, a bear, all black and brown, and covered with hair,” he sang, his voice as scratchy as a pair of woolen breeches. The pines drank his song, as they drank the wind and rain. After a little while he stopped.

“It’s bad here,” Podrick said. “This is a bad place.”

Brienne felt the same, but it would not serve to admit it. “A pine wood is a gloomy place, but in the end it’s just a wood. There’s naught here that we need fear.”

“What about the squishers? And the heads?”

“There’s a clever lad,” said Nimble Dick, laughing.

Brienne gave him a look of annoyance. “There are no squishers,” she told Podrick, “and no heads.”

The hills went up, the hills went down. Brienne found herself praying that Nimble Dick was honest, and knew where he was taking them. By herself, she was not even certain she could have found the sea again. Day or night, the sky was solid grey and overcast, with neither sun nor stars to help her find her way.

They made camp early that night, after they came down a hill and found themselves on the edge of a glistening green bog. In the grey-green light, the ground ahead looked solid enough, but when they’d ridden out it had swallowed their horses up to their withers. They had to turn and fight their way back onto more solid footing. “It’s no matter,” Crabb assured them. “We’ll go back up the hill and come down another way.”

The next day was the same. They rode through pines and bogs, under dark skies and intermittent rain, past sinkholes and caves and the ruins of ancient strongholds whose stones were blanketed in moss. Every heap of stones had a story, and Nimble Dick told them all. To hear him tell it, the men of Crackclaw Point had watered their pine trees with blood. Brienne’s patience soon began to fray. “How much longer?” she demanded finally. “We must have seen every tree in Crackclaw Point by now.”

“Not hardly,” said Crabb. “We’re close now. See, the woods is thinning out. We’re near the narrow sea.”