A Feast for Dragons

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five-and-sixty, with a nose like a hawk and a spotted head. The day they were
betrothed, he warned Brienne that he would expect her to be a proper woman once
they’d wed. “I will not have my lady wife cavorting about in man’s mail. On
this you shall obey me, lest I be forced to chastise you.”
    She was sixteen and no stranger to a sword, but still shy
despite her prowess in the yard. Yet somehow she had found the courage to tell
Ser Humfrey that she would accept chastisement only from a man who could
outfight her. The old knight purpled, but agreed to don his own armor to teach
her a woman’s proper place. They fought with blunted tourney weapons, so
Brienne’s mace had no spikes. She broke Ser Humfrey’s collarbone, two ribs, and
their betrothal. He was her third prospective husband, and her last. Her father
did not insist again.
    If it was Ser Shadrich dogging her heels, she might
well have a fight on her hands. She did not intend to partner with the man or
let him follow her to Sansa. He had the sort of easy arrogance that comes
with skill at arms, she thought, but he was small. I’ll have the reach
on him, and I should be stronger too.
    Brienne was as strong as most knights, and her old
master-at-arms used to say that she was quicker than any woman her size had any
right to be. The gods had given her stamina too, which Ser Goodwin deemed a
noble gift. Fighting with sword and shield was a wearisome business, and
victory oft went to the man with most endurance. Ser Goodwin had taught her to
fight cautiously, to conserve her strength while letting her foes spend theirs
in furious attacks. “Men will always underestimate you,” he said, “and their
pride will make them want to vanquish you quickly, lest it be said that a woman
tried them sorely.” She had learned the truth of that once she went into the
world. Even Jaime Lannister had come at her that way, in the woods by
Maidenpool. If the gods were good, the Mad Mouse would make the same mistake. He
may be a seasoned knight, she thought, but he is no Jaime Lannister. She slid her sword out of its scabbard.
    But it was not Ser Shadrich’s chestnut courser that drew up
where the road forked, but a broken-down old piebald rounsey with a skinny boy
upon his back. When Brienne saw the horse she drew back in confusion. Only
some boy, she thought, until she glimpsed the face beneath his hood. The
boy in Duskendale, the one who bumped into me. It’s him.
    The boy never gave the ruined castle a glance, but looked
down one road, then the other. After a moment’s hesitation, he turned the rounsey
toward the hills and plodded on. Brienne watched him vanish through the falling
rain, and suddenly it came to her that she had seen this same boy in Rosby. He
is stalking me, she realized, but that’s a game that two can play. She untied her mare, climbed back into the saddle, and went after him.
    The boy was staring at the ground as he rode, watching the
ruts in the road fill up with water. The rain muffled the sound of her
approach, and no doubt his hood played a part as well. He never looked back once,
until Brienne trotted up behind him and gave the rounsey a whack across the
rump with the flat of her longsword.
    The horse reared, and the skinny boy went flying, his cloak
flapping like a pair of wings. He landed in the mud and came up with dirt and
dead brown grass between his teeth to find Brienne standing over him. It was
the same boy, beyond a doubt. She recognized the sty. “Who are you?” she
demanded.
    The boy’s mouth worked soundlessly. His eyes were big as
eggs. “Puh,” was all he could manage. “Puh.” His chainmail byrnie made a
rattling sound when he shivered. “Puh. Puh.”
    “Please?” said Brienne. “Are you saying please? ” She
laid the point of her sword on the apple of his throat. “Please tell me who you
are, and why you’re following me.”
    “Not puh-puh- please. ” He stuck a finger in his mouth,
and flicked away a clump of mud, spitting. “Puh-puh- Pod. My name.
Puh-puh- Podrick. Puh-Payne.”
    Brienne lowered her sword. She felt a rush of sympathy for
the boy. She remembered a day at Evenfall, and a young knight with a rose in
his hand. He brought the rose to give to me. Or so her septa told her.
All she had to do was welcome him to her father’s castle. He was eighteen, with
long red hair that tumbled to his shoulders. She was twelve, tightly laced into
a stiff new gown, its bodice bright with garnets. The two of