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

"An outlaw, long dead. No one who need concern your ladyship."

Amerei's lip trembled. Tears rolled from her brown eyes.

"You must forgive my daughter," said an older woman. Lady Amerei had brought a score of Freys to Darry with her; a sister, an uncle, a half uncle, various cousins . . . and her mother, who had been born a Darry. "She still grieves for her father."

"Outlaws killed him," sobbed Lady Amerei. "Father had only gone out to ransom Petyr Pimple. He brought them the gold they asked for, but they hung him anyway."

"Hanged, Ami. Your father was not a tapestry." Lady Mariya turned back to Jaime. "I believe you knew him, ser."

"We were squires together once, at Crakehall." He would not go so far as to claim they had been friends. When Jaime had arrived, Merrett Frey had been the castle bully, lording it over all the younger boys. Then he tried to bully me. "He was . . . very strong." It was the only praise that came to mind. Merrett had been slow and clumsy and stupid, but he was strong.

"You fought against the Kingswood Brotherhood together," sniffed Lady Amerei. "Father used to tell me stories."

Father used to boast and lie, you mean. "We did." Frey's chief contributions to the fight had consisted of contracting the pox from a camp follower and getting himself captured by the White Fawn. The outlaw queen burned her sigil into his arse before ransoming him back to Sumner Crakehall. Merrett had not been able to sit down for a fortnight, though Jaime doubted that the red-hot iron was half so nasty as the kettles of shit his fellow squires made him eat once he was returned. Boys are the cruelest creatures on the earth. He slipped his golden hand around his wine cup and raised it up. "To Merrett's memory," he said. It was easier to drink to the man than to talk of him.

After the toast Lady Amerei stopped weeping and the table talk turned to wolves, of the four-footed kind. Ser Danwell Frey claimed there were more of them about than even his grandfather could remember. "They've lost all fear of men. Packs of them attacked our baggage train on our way down from the Twins. Our archers had to feather a dozen before the others fled." Ser Addam Marbrand confessed that their own column had faced similar troubles on their way up from King's Landing.

Jaime concentrated on the fare before him, tearing off chunks of bread with his left hand and fumbling at his wine cup with his right. He watched Addam Marbrand charm the girl beside him, watched Steffon Swyft refight the battle for King's Landing with bread and nuts and carrots. Ser Kennos pulled a serving girl into his lap, urging her to stroke his horn, whilst Ser Dermot regaled some squires with tales of knight errantry in the rainwood. Farther down the table Hugo Vance had closed his eyes. Brooding on the mysteries of life, thought Jaime. That, or napping between courses. He turned back to Lady Mariya. "The outlaws who killed your husband . . . was it Lord Beric's band?"

"So we thought, at first." Though Lady Mariya's hair was streaked with grey, she was still a handsome woman. "The killers scattered when they left Oldstones. Lord Vypren tracked one band to Fairmarket, but lost them there. Black Walder led hounds and hunters into Hag's Mire after the others. The peasants denied seeing them, but when questioned sharply they sang a different song. They spoke of a one-eyed man and another who wore a yellow cloak . . . and a woman, cloaked and hooded."

"A woman?" He would have thought that the White Fawn would have taught Merrett to stay clear of outlaw wenches. "There was a woman in the Kingswood Brotherhood as well."

"I know of her." How not, her tone suggested, when she left her mark upon my husband? "The White Fawn was young and fair, they say. This hooded woman is neither. The peasants would have us believe that her face was torn and scarred, and her eyes terrible to look upon. They claim she led the outlaws."

"Led them?" Jaime found that hard to believe. "Beric Dondarrion and the red priest . . ."

". . . were not seen." Lady Mariya sounded certain.

"Dondarrion's dead," said Strongboar. "The Mountain drove a knife through his eye, we have men with us who saw it."

"That's one tale," said Addam Marbrand. "Others will tell you that Lord Beric can't be killed."

"Ser Harwyn says those tales are lies." Lady Amerei wound a braid around her finger. "He has promised me Lord Beric's head. He's very gallant." She was blushing beneath her tears.

Jaime thought back on the head he'd given to Pia. He could almost hear his little brother chuckle. Whatever became of giving women flowers? Tyrion might have asked. He would have had a few choice words for Harwyn Plumm as well, though gallant would not have been one of them. Plumm's brothers were big, fleshy fellows with thick necks and red faces; loud and lusty, quick to laugh, quick to anger, quick to forgive. Harwyn was a different sort of Plumm; hard-eyed and taciturn, unforgiving . . . and deadly, with his hammer in his hand. A good man to command a garrison, but not a man to love. Although . . . Jaime gazed at Lady Amerei.

The serving men were bringing out the fish course, a river pike baked in a crust of herbs and crushed nuts. Lancel's lady tasted it, approved, and commanded that the first portion be served to Jaime. As they set the fish before him, she leaned across her husband's place to touch his golden hand. "You could kill Lord Beric, Ser Jaime. You slew the Smiley Knight. Please, my lord, I beg you, stay and help us with Lord Beric and the Hound." Her pale fingers caressed his golden ones.

Does she think that I can feel that? "The Sword of the Morning slew the Smiling Knight, my lady. Ser Arthur Dayne, a better knight than me." Jaime pulled back his golden fingers and turned once more to Lady Mariya. "How far did Black Walder track this hooded woman and her men?"

"His hounds picked up their scent again north of Hag's Mire," the older woman told him. "He swears that he was no more than half a day behind them when they vanished into the Neck."

"Let them rot there," declared Ser Kennos cheerfully. "If the gods are good, they'll be swallowed up in quicksand or gobbled down by lizard-lions."

"Or taken in by frogeaters," said Ser Danwell Frey. "I would not put it past the crannogmen to shelter outlaws."

"Would that it were only them," said Lady Mariya. "Some of the river lords are hand in glove with Lord Beric's men as well."

"The smallfolk too," sniffed her daughter. "Ser Harwyn says they hide them and feed them, and when he asks where they've gone, they lie. They lie to their own lords!"

"Have their tongues out," urged Strongboar.

"Good luck getting answers then," said Jaime. "If you want their help, you need to make them love you. That was how Arthur Dayne did it, when we rode against the Kingswood Brotherhood. He paid the smallfolk for the food we ate, brought their grievances to King Aerys, expanded the grazing lands around their villages, even won them the right to fell a certain number of trees each year and take a few of the king's deer during the autumn. The forest folk had looked to Toyne to defend them, but Ser Arthur did more for them than the Brotherhood could ever hope to do, and won them to our side. After that, the rest was easy."

"The Lord Commander speaks wisely," said Lady Mariya. "We shall never be rid of these outlaws until the smallfolk come to love Lancel as much as they once loved my father and grandfather."

Jaime glanced at his cousin's empty place. Lancel will never win their love by praying, though.

Lady Amerei put on a pout. "Ser Jaime, I pray you, do not abandon us. My lord has need of you, and so do I. These are such fearful times. Some nights I can hardly sleep, for fear."

"My place is with the king, my lady."

"I'll come," offered Strongboar. "Once we're done at Riverrun, I'll be itching for another fight. Not that Beric Dondarrion is like to give me one. I recall the man from tourneys past. A comely lad in a pretty cloak, he was. Slight and callow."

"That was before he died," said young Ser Arwood Frey. "Death changed him, the smallfolk say. You can kill him, but he won't stay dead. How do you fight a man like that? And there's the Hound as well. He slew twenty men at Saltpans."

Strongboar guffawed. "Twenty fat innkeeps, maybe. Twenty serving men pissing in their breeches. Twenty begging brothers armed with bowls. Not twenty knights. Not me."

"There is a knight at Saltpans," Ser Arwood insisted. "He hid behind his walls whilst Clegane and his mad dogs ravaged through his town. You have not seen the things he did, ser. I have. When the reports reached the Twins, I rode down with Harys Haigh and his brother Donnel and half a hundred men, archers and men-at-arms. We thought it was Lord Beric's work, and hoped to find his trail. All that remains of Saltpans is the castle, and old Ser Quincy so frightened he would not open his gates, but shouted down at us from his battlements. The rest is bones and ashes. A whole town. The Hound put the buildings to the torch and the people to the sword and rode off laughing. The women . . . you would not believe what he did to some of the women. I will not speak of it at table. It made me sick to see."

"I cried when I heard," said Lady Amerei.

Jaime sipped his wine. "What makes you certain it was the Hound?" What they were describing sounded more like Gregor's work than Sandor's. Sandor had been hard and brutal, yes, but it was his big brother who was the real monster in House Clegane.

"He was seen," Ser Arwood said. "That helm of his is not easily mistaken, nor forgotten, and there were a few who survived to tell the tale. The girl he raped, some boys who hid, a woman we found trapped beneath a blackened beam, the fisherfolk who watched the butchery from their boats . . ."

"Do not call it butchery," Lady Mariya said softly. "That gives insult to honest butchers everywhere. Saltpans was the work of some fell beast in human skin."

This is a time for beasts, Jaime reflected, for lions and wolves and angry dogs, for ravens and carrion crows.

"Evil work." Strongboar filled his cup again. "Lady Mariya, Lady Amerei, your distress has moved me. You have my word, once Riverrun has fallen I shall return to hunt down the Hound and kill him for you. Dogs do not frighten me."

This one should. Both men were large and powerful, but Sandor Clegane was much quicker, and fought with a savagery that Lyle Crakehall could not hope to match.

Lady Amerei was thrilled, however. "You are a true knight, Ser Lyle, to help a lady in distress."

At least she did not call herself "a maiden." Jaime reached for his cup and knocked it over. The linen tablecloth drank the wine. As the red stain spread, his companions all pretended not to notice. High table courtesy, he told himself, but it tasted just like pity. He rose abruptly. "My lady. Pray excuse me."

Lady Amerei looked stricken. "Would you leave us? There's venison to come, and capons stuffed with leeks and mushrooms."

"Very fine, no doubt, but I could not eat another bite. I need to see my cousin." Bowing, Jaime left them to their food.

Men were eating in the yard as well. The sparrows had gathered round a dozen cookfires to warm their hands against the chill of dusk and watch fat sausages spit and sizzle above the flames. There had to be a hundred of them. Useless mouths. Jaime wondered how many sausages his cousin had laid by and how he intended to feed the sparrows once they were gone. They will be eating rats by winter, unless they can get a harvest in. This late in autumn, the chances of another harvest were not good.