BRIENNE
The trial began as most trials did: with a prayer. She and Jaime stood stone-faced, though Thoros urged them to kneel, as he implored the Lord of Light to judge whether their hearts were fair or foul, their souls black or white. No man is solely one or the other. Long ago she had thought it so, that the heroes were tall and handsome and valorous, the maidens beautiful, the villains hideous, and the endings happy. Back when she was a big ugly girl, when she was serving in King Renly's Rainbow Guard, she might have been considerably attracted to the red priests' worldview. Now, not by half. And that was even before they tried to hang me.
Brienne still did not understand what had possessed her, still less how it had actually worked. She had been prepared to meet her own death honorably, though she could scarcely bear the thought of failing Ser Jaime, of leaving Sansa Stark out in the world alone and unprotected. But when the rope lashed around her neck, when her air cut off, when the world dwindled down to one bright roar of blackness, she had a sudden incentive to reconsider. Pod and Ser Hyle Hunt were going up next to her – it was Pod, who had followed her so loyally, and no matter how inconvenient and unchivalrous Ser Hyle was, she did not have the stomach to condemn him to die for her. Ser Goodwin would despair of me, she remembered thinking blindly, and then she screamed, "Sword."
For a wrenching, gagging moment, she was not sure if the outlaws had understood – or if they had, if they intended to do anything about it. The sword or the noose. Her service and survival, or her denial and her death. Then Lady Stoneheart rasped a command, a knife sawed through the rope, and suddenly Brienne was falling. She collapsed into the wet grass, thrashing and gulping and retching, and two neighboring thumps informed her that Pod and Ser Hyle had been correspondingly liberated.
Brienne felt too weak-kneed to even attempt to rise, fearing what she would see when she did. Then she smelled a strange cold scent, rolled over, and to her horrid shock realized that the thing that had been Catelyn Stark was standing directly above her. The corpse's unblinking eyes stared down into hers. Then it nodded once, stepped away, and said something to Thoros in its parched rattle.
No, Brienne thought, no, this is not her, Lady Catelyn was brave and sad and strong. Not this monster. She reeled to her knees, tasting bile, and remained there, hunched over, as Pod and Ser Hyle performed similar wheezing reparations.
The corpse and Thoros spoke a few moments more. Then the red priest turned to her and said, "Lady Brienne, m'lady has chosen to allow you the chance to demonstrate your sincerity. You will be given back your sword and things, and allotted the span of one week to find Ser Jaime and bring him here to answer for his sins. One week, until sundown on the seventh day. If at that time you have not returned, or have not brought him, these two – " he gestured at Pod and Ser Hyle – "will be hanged at once. So shall you and Ser Jaime, no matter in what day or year or age we should find you. Do you understand?"
Brienne had tried to speak, but her own voice was a strangled gasp. She nodded instead. Jaime, it's better that I get Jaime, he'll tell them that I was telling the truth, they will, they'll see. . . Up until even a few moments ago, she had still believed that Jaime would somehow talk his way out of it. He had convinced the Brave Companions not to rape her during their captivity, by lying to them that she was worth her weight in sapphires, and had kept up the pretense even when they had trimmed him short a sword hand. It was hard to remember how much she had loathed him then, with his cruel gibes and his casual lack of remorse and his disheveled golden arrogance. To the outer eye, nothing had changed save that missing hand, but Brienne knew better.
She looked at Jaime, standing across from her. It was impossible to tell what he thought; his face was a mask. How can this possibly be a fair trial, if one of us is meant to die? Thoros had been very clear that honor would only be considered satisfied when there was blood in the mud. It is not too late, I could still agree to fight Ser Gendry. I would very likely kill him, and then we might walk free.
Yet even as the thought crossed Brienne's mind, she knew it was hopeless. If she could not let the likes of Ser Hyle Hunt perish on her behalf, then she could never look into the eyes of Renly's ghost and drive the sword through him herself. Not after she had watched him murdered in front of her. Only time and distance and bitter experience had allowed her to fully comprehend what had happened in his camp, but Renly himself remained untarnished. I wonder if I would have continued to worship him so much, if he had lived. Yet she did not want to think about that. Ser Gendry might not be Renly, but it made no matter.
Thoros had apparently finished his prayer. Turning to Brienne, he said, "My lady, I feel it only fair to warn you. If at any moment you step aside, or pull your blows, or otherwise attempt to let Ser Jaime off, we have Lem and Harwin waiting to take over in your place." He nodded at the big yellow-cloaked Hound, then at a dark-bearded young man with the look of a northerner. "Both of them will be. . . eager to come to grips with a Lannister."
"Oh, good," said Jaime. "Normally I'd request one for each hand, but if those two are the ones you chose, I won't mind making an exception."
Lem glared at him. "I'll fuck you with those words the way your sister does, Kingslayer."
Brienne saw a spasm of both rage and agony pass across Jaime's face, the first overt emotion he had shown since their ordeal began. But he shrugged it away, and in an instant the mask was back. With an exaggerated, grandiose courtesy, he reached with his left hand to the sword that hung at his right hip, and drew it across his body. The movement looked more or less smooth, but Brienne could only think of their first fight, over Ser Cleos' broken body just before the Brave Companions captured them. Even chained, rusty, and clumsy, Jaime had fought like the lion of his House's sigil. Indeed if he hadn't been chained, he would have killed her.
I only pray I do not need to kill him now. Brienne reached for her own scabbard, and drew her sword in a shivering hiss. Not Oathkeeper, but her own; she might well be forced to kill Jaime, but she would not do it with the precious blade he had given her, the emblem of the task that she had failed him in. Sansa Stark is my last chance for honor, he had said. They eyed each other wordlessly, as the outlaws cleared away to leave them alone.
"Are you sure you want to do this?" Jaime said. "Eleven-year-old squires everywhere fear to face me, you know."
It was so like him – to crack a mordant jest when both of them were faced with almost certain death – that it almost made her weep. "No," she whispered. "I don't."
"That makes two of us, then." Jaime shrugged. "Brienne, you don't have to. Let me fight Ser Pisscloak and his friend. That way, the one who runs me through won't be the one weeping over my corpse later. Even dead, I might find that awkward." Another strange expression crossed his face, and she wondered if he was once more thinking of his sister. Brienne remained as repulsed by the revelation of the Lannisters' incest as anyone, particularly the lengths they had gone to in order to conceal it, but she knew in a dark part of her that if she was willing to pardon it in Jaime, she must also pardon it in Cersei. The queen was not a good woman, and had sunk deeper and deeper into depravity and madness as her grip on power grew ever more tenuous, but the twins truly were part of each other.
Lem drew his own sword, an ugly heavy thing three feet long and razor sharp. "I'm more n' willing to oblige you, Kingslayer."
Harwin the northman wasted no time in following suit. "And so am I."
Jaime threw them a withering look. "You smell marginally less bad, you potentially have better table manners, and you're more likely to be mistaken for the hind end of an aurochs rather than a goat, but for the life of me I can't see how you're different from the Bloody Mummers. At least they only had the decency to take my hand, but you won't be satisfied with anything less than my soul. Haven't you thundering imbeciles worked out that there's nothing to give? Kill the Kingslayer, very well. Then you'll be a hero. Will that make you immortal, or set to rights the wrongs you're supposedly avenging, or do anything besides make you just as much a murderer as me? I don't care what god you pray to or what high-and-mighty purpose you claim. You still think you're the only ones to lose something in this war, and that makes you as blind as my sweet sister. Drop those breeches, Pisscloak, grace us all with the delightful aroma of your shit."
Lem's face altered to a truly alarming color, but he didn't answer. Harwin threw a confused look at Lady Stoneheart, but the corpse woman similarly held her silence. It was only Thoros who seemed capable of mustering a response. "Ser Jaime," he said, "our brotherhood fights to defend those who cannot defend themselves. And those are the smallfolk, the common people, those who – "
"Those who suffered thanks to my family, you mean?" Brienne had never seen Jaime so angry. "True, I was born highborn and good-looking and wealthy and talented. If I am on trial for that, I most sincerely confess my guilt. And now look at me. If Pisscloak wants to cut me to bits and call it justice, he's welcome to it. I recall my lord father took a similar approach with Prince Rhaegar's children. What crime are you defending the smallfolk from, by hacking apart a cripple? What does it give them back? All those dead dogs I personally killed, I suppose?"
"Vengeance," one of the other outlaws said. He didn't sound quite as convinced as he might have.
Jaime laughed. "I had delusions of grandeur once too," he said. "Every man does. Yours just happen to be more delusional than most. Now, I'm bloody tired of wasting my breath on you arseholes. Come on and kill me. If you're worried about your chances, I'll have the wench cut off the other hand first."
Lem moved almost before Jaime had finished the sentence, and Brienne dove out of the way just in time as the big man lunged. Lem's first cut clanged and slid off Jaime's blade, and Jaime's parry was decently placed but clumsily executed. Then the swords leapt up at each other's faces, and her stomach was in her throat as they tangled. Lem had the advantage in height, weight, and sheer brute strength. Jaime seemed to be trying to avoid running straight into his blows, deflecting or misdirecting where he could and ducking where he couldn't. It was plain that he'd had some training fighting with his left hand, as he hadn't yet been reduced to bloody ribbons, but he was forced to retreat every time Lem ramped up the attack. One or two of the outlaws tried to raise a cheer for the Hound, but it died miserably in the heavy, dusty air.
Brienne shot a glance at the thing that had been Lady Catelyn. Her eyes burned malevolently beneath her hood, but still she made no move to interfere. Lem and Jaime were locked together like a pair of rival stags, swinging and grunting and swearing at each other. Blood was running down Jaime's sleeve from a shallow cut near his shoulder, and it made her heart stop to see it, but – and no doubt he found it very amusing – it was the right shoulder. He awkwardly twisted away from Lem's next blow, went low, and feinted to the side. Lem failed to fall for it, however, and his next cut took out a chunk of Jaime's left thigh.
No! Brienne had never grown used to sitting on the sidelines during a fight, and it took everything she had not to run out then and there. Jaime was losing ground fast now, clearly flagging, unable to put weight on the wounded limb. He tried to use his golden hand to brace one of his blocks, but it was ripped away, unable to close its lifeless fingers around the sword hilt, and his foot went out from under him. But even as he was falling he was twisting like a cat, and he landed flat on his back and got his sword up in time to stop Lem's vicious downward bludgeon. "Sure you don't want to call in your second?" he panted. "The wench gets cross if you leave her out."
Lem made no response to this, not even a grunt, but Brienne's sixth sense chirped at her just in time for her to duck as Harwin's sword lacerated the precise spot her head had occupied a bare moment earlier. She spun around, got her blade up, and threw his blow back in his face with a teeth-jarring clong. He was quick, strong, and clearly no amateur, but even half-hanged, half-eaten, and half-ruined, she was still the warrior who had won the melee at Bitterbridge, who had come out the last standing above a hundred and sixteen knights. A hundred and sixteen men.
Out of the corner of her eye, Brienne caught Thoros of Myr looking somewhat alarmed; evidently the trial had not been supposed to take this turn. But she had no time to spare for him. She even lost track of Lem and Jaime. All she could see in her mind's eye was Red Ronnet Connington sneering at her and throwing the rose at her feet, Lord Randyll Tarly telling her that she would benefit from a good hard raping, all the gawking and condescending and disgusted looks, the mockeries and the japes and the outright abuse. Poor Harwin had given her none of them, was only fighting for what he believed in, the same as she was, but he had come after her with a sword. Enough. It is enough, all of it.
They traded fierce and furious blows for twenty, thirty, forty heartbeats, possibly more. It all was a blur. Then Harwin went low when he should have gone high, and Brienne saw her opportunity. She sliced him deep in the arm, ripped a bloody slash across his chest, and put a matching dent in the other arm. I did not hesitate, Ser Goodwin. Wherever you are, mayhaps you saw that. She had not hesitated against the Mummers, but they were truly terrible, scarce worthy to be called men. Harwin was no Mummer.
Harwin's sword dropped from his suddenly nerveless fingers. He staggered backwards, pressing a hand to his stomach, and Brienne lowered her sword into a defensive, jousting guard, not willing to swoop in and finish him. Her point was made, and he wasn't about to be striding back into the fray any time soon.
The outlaws made a communal, rumbling noise of distress. Harwin fell.
Breathing hard, Brienne finally dared to look up. Lem and Jaime were fighting in and out of the roots – or rather, Jaime was trying to use as many of them to absorb the blows meant for him as possible. There was a spreading crimson stain on his other leg now, but blood was running in Lem's eyes from a deep slash across his forehead. It was clearly blinding him, and his blows were coming slower and more raggedly than before.
"Finish him, Lem!" one of the outlaws shouted. "This won't be like it was with Lord Beric and Clegane!"
Lord Beric and Clegane? Had the man formerly known as the Hound had his own run-in with the outlaw brotherhood?
There was no time to ponder the potential ramifications of that question. Lem's last, roaring backhand caught briefly on one of the roots, and Jaime twisted like an eel – the wrong way. Lem wrenched his blade loose and buried it through Jaime's ribcage.
Brienne's scream choked to a death rattle in her throat. It is Renly, it is Renly all over again. It was a nightmare, she was frozen, she couldn't run, she couldn't – but then Jaime gave his body half a twist, trapping Lem's blade inside him before the big soldier could pull it out. And then, with the two of them close enough to kiss, Jaime swept his own across. Hard, fast, level, and utterly without mercy.
Lem Lemoncloak's head hit the ground with a squashy thud, and rolled away. His sword grated out of Jaime with a horrible sound, and his body folded slowly to its knees – then fell, blood gushing a dark, feral scarlet in the leaves.
Jaime went to a knee as well. His breath sounded like a man drowning. There was presumably just as much blood on him as well, but the Lannister crimson of his tabard made it hard to tell. Her paralysis broken, Brienne rushed forward.
Jaime fell into her arms just as she reached him. She ripped the sodden cloth away, and was horror-struck to lay eyes on the ruin of his lower chest. An inch or two higher, and it would have struck the great artery of the heart. And to judge from the size of the stain, it wasn't entirely certain that it hadn't. "Jaime," she sobbed. "No. I'm sorry."
"No. . . matter. . ." Jaime's voice was as contorted as his face, but there did not appear to be overt fear in either. "I can't die. . . while Cersei lives."
That's just a fantasy, she might have said, and nearly did. But without it, what was she? What were any of them? I have lived my life in a fantasy, while all around me the world spit and howled and did its best to destroy it, that I dared to think I had the faintest worth as a person, as a soul. Except I never did, I never thought so. I was only my father's or Renly's or Lady Catelyn's or Vargo Hoat's or someone's, anyone's. Until now.
There was a rustling behind them, and Thoros of Myr moved forward. Before Brienne could stop him, he knelt next to her and took a vial of some dark brown physic from his sleeve. "Ser Jaime," he said. "Drink this."
"Only. . . if it's poison." The defiant flash in Jaime's eyes belied his words. But with shocking compliance, he choked down a few swallows, and Brienne felt a shudder run through his entire body. He settled back in her arms, boneless.
"What did you do?" She lifted her gaze angrily to Thoros'.
The red priest raised his hands. "Do not look at me so accusingly, my lady. I asked R'hllor to bear witness to this trial, and while it would not be an answer that we like, there can be no doubt that he has. There is no more that we can in justice do."
"There is. Where are my companions? I will have them set free."
Thoros inclined his head, turned away, and vanished through a drape of hanging leaves. After the loudest and longest silence of Brienne's entire life, broken only with the sound of Jaime's shallow, stertorous breathing, he returned with Pod and Ser Hyle, both of whom looked considerably the worse for wear. One of Ser Hyle's eyes was swollen shut, the rope weal around his neck was even deeper than hers, and his hair was stained and clumped with blood. Poor Podrick looked more furtive than ever.
"Here, my lady," Thoros said. "I will have you know that if this brotherhood was under my command, matters would have transpired quite differently." He shot an elusive, sidelong look at Lady Stoneheart. "But we will honor the agreement."
Agreement? That's a kind word for it. "Pod," Brienne said. "Ser Hyle. Walk out of here. Take the first horses you can find. Perhaps you will succeed where I have failed." She hesitated agonizingly; how could she commend Sansa Stark, assuming the girl was even still alive, to the ilk of Hunt? But the man she saw behind his haunted eyes was not the one she had known before. "Find Lady Sansa. Keep her safe. I will join you when I can."
"You." Pod coughed; it sounded as if he was bringing up a lung. "Where are you going? Ser. My lady."
Brienne looked down at the unconscious man in her arms. "To the Quiet Isle," she said. "I pray it will not be for long."
She rose to her feet, awkwardly hoisting Jaime's dead weight. Meeting the eyes of Lady Stoneheart, she said, "My lady, I'm sorry. Sorry for leaving you, sorry for not doing better, sorry for not bringing your daughters back, sorry for what you've become. But whatever you believe, I did not break my oath. I never betrayed you. I never would have."
The corpse woman did not react for several moments. Then she made another gesture, and Thoros stooped and pulled something out from the roots. It was dented, stained, battered, and rusted, but Brienne still recognized it. Anyone who had heard tale of it, or the man who wore it, would have.
"Here," Thoros said, holding out Sandor Clegane's helm. "I urged Lem to be rid of it, when he first took it from Rorge." He shot another sidelong glance at the former Hound's headless body, sprawled in the dirt. "I thought it boded ill, which apparently it did. But Ser Jaime killed Lem, so it is his, if he wishes to claim it."
"Keep it." Brienne had no use for hollow tokens. She had encountered enough woe and trouble as it was, without a symbol universally associated with the unconscionable crimes committed across the riverlands. "I imagine Ser Jaime could give less than half a damn. Perhaps you can use it to fetch water."
She turned, hefting Jaime into a slightly better position. He was still breathing, that was good, and the flow of blood appeared to be slowing; something in the potion Thoros had administered must have had that effect. It could be that he is right, he cannot die while Cersei lives. But what if the queen was being called to stand trial for her life even this very moment?
Pod and Ser Hyle, moving slowly and painfully, vanished up the tunnel. Carrying Jaime, Brienne was about to join them, when she heard Lady Stoneheart speak. Dreading it, she nonetheless glanced back one last time. She owed her that much, at least. "My lady?"
"She says that you must go," Thoros supplied, after a reluctant moment. "Even she cannot gainsay the revealed will of R'hllor. But she says that even unto the uttermost ending of the world, she will remember, and she will hate."
So she will, Seven save her. She has nothing else left, this creature that she is, this thing, of my lady that was so clad in grief and tears and loss. And at that moment, Brienne felt her heart break.
"Gods-speed, goodmen, my lady," she said formally. It is almost due east from here to the Quiet Isle, a ride of a week or so, faster if I can find a skiff to take us down the Red Fork. She thought of her first journey down the river with Jaime. This will be different. By the old gods and the new, I swear it. The Elder Brother will heal him, and then we will decide where it is that we will go next. "Goodbye."
The climb to the surface was breathless and wearisome, cumbered as she was. When she emerged aboveground at last, the sky was full dark, kissed with stars. The moon was beginning to rise, and Jaime shifted slightly. "Wench. . ."
"Shut up." She got a better grip on him. "Please."
He shook with something that might have been an agonized laugh. Then, seeing no horses to hand, she did the only thing she could. She swung one arm under Jaime's knees, the other under his shoulders, and began to walk. Before long, she had vanished into the night.