A Feast for Crows (A Song of Ice and Fire 4)

The bailey opened up before her, overgrown. To her left was the main gate, and the collapsed shell of what might have been a stable. Saplings were poking out of half the stalls and growing up through the dry brown thatch of its roof. To her right she saw rotted wooden steps descending into the darkness of a dungeon or a root cellar. Where the keep had been was a pile of collapsed stones, overgrown with green and purple moss. The yard was all weeds and pine needles. Soldier pines were everywhere, drawn up in solemn ranks. In their midst was a pale stranger; a slender young weirwood with a trunk as white as a cloistered maid. Dark red leaves sprouted from its reaching branches. Beyond was the emptiness of sky and sea where the wall had collapsed . . .

. . . and the remnants of a fire.

The whispers nibbled at her ears, insistent. Brienne knelt beside the fire. She picked up a blackened stick, sniffed at it, stirred the ashes. Someone was trying to keep warm last night. Or else they were trying to send a signal to a passing ship.

"Halloooooo," called Nimble Dick. "Anyone here?"

"Be quiet," Brienne told him.

"Someone might be hiding. Wanting to get a look at us before they show themself." He walked to where the steps went down beneath the ground, and peered down into the darkness. "Hallooooo," he called again. "Anyone down there?"

Brienne saw a sapling sway. From the bushes slid a man, so caked with dirt that he looked as if he had sprouted from the earth. A broken sword was in his hand, but it was his face that gave her pause, the small eyes and wide flat nostrils.

She knew that nose. She knew those eyes. Pyg, his friends had called him.

Everything seemed to happen in a heartbeat. A second man slipped over the lip of the well, making no more noise than a snake might make slithering across a pile of wet leaves. He wore an iron halfhelm wrapped in stained red silk, and had a short, thick throwing spear in hand. Brienne knew him too. From behind her came a rustling as a head poked down through the red leaves. Crabb was standing underneath the weirwood. He looked up and saw the face. "Here," he called to Brienne. "It's your fool."

"Dick," she called urgently, "to me."

Shagwell dropped from the weirwood, braying laughter. He was garbed in motley, but so faded and stained that it showed more brown than grey or pink. In place of a jester's flail he had a triple morningstar, three spiked balls chained to a wooden haft. He swung it hard and low, and one of Crabb's knees exploded in a spray of blood and bone. "That's funny," Shagwell crowed as Dick fell. The sword she'd given him went flying from his hand and vanished in the weeds. He writhed on the ground, screaming and clutching at the ruins of his knee. "Oh, look," said Shagwell, "it's Smuggler Dick, the one who made the map for us. Did you come all this way to give us back our gold?"

"Please," Dick whimpered, "please don't, my leg . . ."

"Does it hurt? I can make it stop."

"Leave him be," said Brienne.

"DON'T!" shrieked Dick, lifting bloody hands to shield his head. Shagwell whirled the spiked ball once around his head and brought it down in the middle of Crabb's face. There was a sickening crunch. In the silence that followed, Brienne could hear the sound of her own heart.

"Bad Shags," said the man who'd come creeping from the well. When he saw Brienne's face, he laughed. "You again, woman? What, come to hunt us down? Or did you miss our friendly faces?"

Shagwell danced from foot to foot and spun his flail. "It's me she come for. She dreams of me every night, when she sticks her fingers up her slit. She wants me, lads, the big horse missed her merry Shags! I'm going to f**k her up the arse and pump her full of motley seed, until she whelps a little me."

"You need to use a different hole for that, Shags," said Timeon, in his Dornish drawl.

"I best use all her holes, then. Just to make certain." He moved to her right as Pyg was circling around to her left, forcing her back toward the ragged edge of the cliff. Passage for three, Brienne remembered. "There are only three of you."

Timeon shrugged. "We all went our own ways, after we left Harrenhal. Urswyck and his lot rode south for Oldtown. Rorge thought he might slip out at Saltpans. Me and my lads made for Maidenpool, but we couldn't get near a ship." The Dornishman hefted his spear. "You did for Vargo with that bite, you know. His ear turned black and started leaking pus. Rorge and Urswyck were for leaving, but the Goat says we got to hold his castle. Lord of Harrenhal, he says he is, no one was going to take it off him. He said it slobbery, the way he always talked. We heard the Mountain killed him piece by piece. A hand one day, a foot the next, lopped off neat and clean. They bandaged up the stumps so Hoat didn't die. He was saving his c**k for last, but some bird called him to King's Landing, so he finished it and rode off."

"I am not here for you. I am looking for my . . ." She almost said my sister. ". . . for a fool."

"I'm a fool," Shagwell announced happily.

"The wrong fool," blurted Brienne. "The one I want is with a highborn girl, the daughter of Lord Stark of Winterfell."

"Then it's the Hound you want," said Timeon. "He's not here neither, as it happens. Just us."

"Sandor Clegane?" said Brienne. "What do you mean?"

"He's the one that's got the Stark girl. The way I hear it, she was making for Riverrun, and he stole her. Damned dog."

Riverrun, thought Brienne. She was making for Riverrun. For her uncles. "How do you know?"

"Had it from one of Beric's bunch. The lightning lord is looking for her too. He's sent his men all up and down the Trident, sniffing after her. We chanced on three of them after Harrenhal, and winkled the tale from one before he died."

"He might have lied."

"He might have, but he didn't. Later on, we heard how the Hound slew three of his brother's men at an inn by the crossroads. The girl was with him there. The innkeep swore to it before Rorge killed him, and the whores said the same. An ugly bunch, they were. Not so ugly as you, mind you, but still . . ."

He is trying to distract me, Brienne realized, to lull me with his voice. Pyg was edging closer. Shagwell took a hop toward her. She backed away from them. They will back me off the cliff if I let them. "Stay away," she warned them.

"I think I'm going to f**k you up the nose, wench," Shagwell announced. "Won't that be amusing?"

"He has a very small cock," Timeon explained. "Drop that pretty sword and might be we'll go gentle on you, woman. We need gold to pay these smugglers, that's all."

"And if I give you gold, you'll let us go?"

"We will." Timeon smiled. "Once you've f**ked the lot of us. We'll pay you like a proper whore. A silver for each f**k. Or else we'll take the gold and rape you anyway, and do you like the Mountain did Lord Vargo. What's your choice?"

"This." Brienne threw herself toward Pyg.

He jerked his broken blade up to protect his face, but as he went high she went low. Oathkeeper bit through leather, wool, skin, and muscle, into the sellsword's thigh. Pyg cut back wildly as his leg went out from under him. His broken sword scraped against her chainmail before he landed on his back. Brienne stabbed him through the throat, gave the blade a hard turn, and slid it out, whirling just as Timeon's spear came flashing past her face. I did not flinch, she thought, as blood ran red down her cheek. Did you see, Ser Goodwin? She hardly felt the cut.

"Your turn," she told Timeon, as the Dornishman pulled out a second spear, shorter and thicker than the first. "Throw it."

"So you can dance away and charge me? I'd end up dead as Pyg. No. Get her, Shags."

"You get her," Shagwell said. "Did you see what she did to Pyg? She's mad with moon blood." The fool was behind her, Timeon in front. No matter how she turned, one was at her back.

"Get her," urged Timeon, "and you can f**k her corpse."

"Oh, you do love me." The morningstar was whirling. Choose one, Brienne told herself. Choose one and kill him quickly. Then a stone came out of nowhere, and hit Shagwell in the head. Brienne did not hesitate. She flew at Timeon.

He was better than Pyg, but he had only a short throwing spear, and she had a Valyrian steel blade. Oathkeeper was alive in her hands. She had never been so quick. The blade became a grey blur. He wounded her in the shoulder as she came at him, but she slashed off his ear and half his cheek, hacked the head off his spear, and put a foot of rippled steel into his belly through the links of the chainmail byrnie he was wearing.

Timeon was still trying to fight as she pulled her blade from him, its fullers running red with blood. He clawed at his belt and came up with a dagger, so Brienne cut his hand off. That one was for Jaime. "Mother have mercy," the Dornishman gasped, the blood bubbling from his mouth and spurting from his wrist. "Finish it. Send me back to Dorne, you bloody bitch."

She did.

Shagwell was on his knees when she turned, looking dazed as he fumbled for the morningstar. As he staggered to his feet, another stone slammed him in the ear. Podrick had climbed the fallen wall and was standing amongst the ivy glowering, a fresh rock in his hand. "I told you I could fight!" he shouted down.

Shagwell tried to crawl away. "I yield," the fool cried, "I yield. You mustn't hurt sweet Shagwell, I'm too droll to die."

"You are no better than the rest of them. You have robbed and raped and murdered."

"Oh, I have, I have, I shan't deny it . . . but I'm amusing, with all my japes and capers. I make men laugh."

"And women weep."

"Is that my fault? Women have no sense of humor."

Brienne lowered Oathkeeper. "Dig a grave. There, beneath the weirwood." She pointed with her blade.

"I have no spade."

"You have two hands." One more than you left Jaime.

"Why bother? Leave them for the crows."

"Timeon and Pyg can feed the crows. Nimble Dick will have a grave. He was a Crabb. This is his place."

The ground was soft from rain, but even so it took the fool the rest of the day to dig down deep enough. Night was falling by the time he was done, and his hands were bloody and blistered. Brienne sheathed Oathkeeper, gathered up Dick Crabb, and carried him to the hole. His face was hard to look on. "I'm sorry that I never trusted you. I don't know how to do that anymore."

As she knelt to lay the body down, she thought, The fool will make his try now, whilst my back is turned.

She heard his ragged breathing half a heartbeat before Podrick cried out his warning. Shagwell had a jagged chunk of rock clutched in one hand. Brienne had her dagger up her sleeve.

A dagger will beat a rock almost every time.

She knocked aside his arm and punched the steel into his bowels. "Laugh," she snarled at him. He moaned instead. "Laugh," she repeated, grabbing his throat with one hand and stabbing at his belly with the other. "Laugh!" She kept saying it, over and over, until her hand was red up to the wrist and the stink of the fool's dying was like to choke her. But Shagwell never laughed. The sobs that Brienne heard were all her own. When she realized that, she threw down her knife and shuddered.