A Feast for Dragons

them safe.
Brienne had known that something was terribly amiss. She had asked her if there
had been news of her sons. “I have no sons but Robb,” Lady Catelyn had replied.
She had sounded as if a knife were twisting her belly. Brienne had reached
across the table to give her comfort, but she stopped before her fingers
brushed the older woman’s, for fear that she would flinch away. Lady Catelyn
had turned over her hands, to show Brienne the scars on her palms and fingers
where a knife once bit deep into her flesh. Then she had begun to talk about
her daughters. “Sansa was a little lady,” she had said, “always courteous and
eager to please. She loved tales of knightly valor. She will grow into a woman
far more beautiful than I, you can see that. I would often brush her hair
myself. She had auburn hair, thick and soft . . . the red in it would shine
like copper in the light of the torches.”
    She had spoken of Arya too, her younger daughter, but Arya
was lost, most likely dead by now. Sansa, though . . . I will find her, my
lady, Brienne swore to Lady Catelyn’s restless shade. I will never stop
looking. I will give up my life if need be, give up my honor, give up all my
dreams, but I will find her.
    Beyond the battleground the road ran beside the shore,
between the surging grey-green sea and a line of low limestone hills. Brienne
was not the only traveler on the road. There were fishing villages up along the
coast for many leagues, and the fisherfolk used this road to take their fish to
market. She rode past a fishwife and her daughters, walking home with empty
baskets on their shoulders. In her armor, they took her for a knight until they
saw her face. Then the girls whispered to one another and gave her looks. “Have
you seen a maid of three-and-ten along the road?” she asked them. “A highborn
maid with blue eyes and auburn hair?” Ser Shadrich had made her wary, but she
had to keep on trying. “She may have been traveling with a fool.” But they only
shook their heads and giggled at her behind their hands.
    In the first village she came to, barefoot boys ran along
beside her horse. She had donned her helm, stung by the giggles of the
fisherfolk, so they took her for a man. One boy offered to sell her clams, one
offered crabs, and one offered her his sister.
    Brienne bought three crabs from the second boy. By the time
she left the village it had begun to rain, and the wind was rising. Storm
coming, she thought, glancing out to sea. The raindrops pinged against the
steel of her helm, making her ears ring as she rode, but it was better than
being out there in a boat.
    An hour farther north, the road divided at a pile of tumbled
stones that marked the ruins of a small castle. The right-hand fork followed
the coast, meandering up along the shore toward Crackclaw Point, a dismal land
of bogs and pine barrens; the left-hand ran through hills and fields and woods
to Maidenpool. The rain was falling more heavily by then. Brienne dismounted
and led her mare off the road to take shelter amongst the ruins. The course of
the castle walls could still be discerned amongst the brambles, weeds, and wild
elms, but the stones that had made them up were strewn like a child’s blocks
between the roads. Part of the main keep still stood, however. Its triple
towers were grey granite, like the broken walls, but their merlons were yellow
sandstone. Three crowns, she realized, as she gazed at them through the
rain. Three golden crowns. This had been a Hollard castle. Ser Dontos
had been born here, like as not.
    She led her mare through the rubble to the keep’s main
entrance. Of the door only rusted iron hinges remained, but the roof was still
sound, and it was dry within. Brienne tied her mare to a wall sconce, took off
her helm, and shook out her hair. She was searching for some dry wood to light
a fire when she heard the sound of another horse, coming closer. Some instinct
made her step back into the shadows, where she could not be seen from the road.
This was the very road where she and Ser Jaime had been captured. She did not
intend to suffer that again.
    The rider was a small man. The Mad Mouse, she
thought, at her first sight of him. Somehow he’s followed me. Her hand went
to her sword hilt, and she found herself wondering if Ser Shadrich would think
her easy prey just because she was a woman. Lord Grandison’s castellan had once
made that error. Humfrey Wagstaff was his name; a proud old man