A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

carcass of a horse.
    A handful of Ser Gregor’s men emerged from the towers to watch him dismount; hard-eyed, hard-mouthed men, the lot of them.
They would have to be, to ride beside the Mountain.
About the best that could be said for Gregor’s men was that they were not quite as vile and violent a bunch as the Brave Companions. “Fuck me, Jaime Lannister,” blurted one grey and grizzled man-at-arms. “It’s the bleeding Kingslayer, boys. Fuck me with a spear!”
    â€œWho might you be?” Jaime asked.
    â€œSer used to call me Shitmouth, if it please m’lord.” He spit in his hands and wiped his cheeks with them, as if that would somehow make him more presentable.
    â€œCharming. Do you command here?”
    â€œMe? Shit, no. M’lord. Bugger me with a bloody spear.” Shitmouth had enough crumbs in his beard to feed the garrison. Jaime had to laugh. The man took that for encouragement. “Bugger me with a bloody spear,” he said again, and started laughing too.
    â€œYou heard the man,” Jaime said to Ilyn Payne. “Find a nice long spear, and shove it up his arse.”
    Ser Ilyn did not have a spear, but Beardless Jon Bettley was glad to toss him one. Shitmouth’s drunken laughter stopped abruptly. “You keep that bloody thing away from me.”
    â€œMake up your mind,” said Jaime. “Who has the command here? Did Ser Gregor name a castellan?”
    â€œPolliver,” another man said, “only the Hound killed him, m’lord. Him and the Tickler both, and that Sarsfield boy.”
    The Hound again.
“You know it was Sandor? You saw him?”
    â€œNot us, m’lord. That innkeep told us.”
    â€œIt happened at the crossroads inn, my lord.” The speaker was a younger man with a mop of sandy hair. He wore the chain of coins that had once belonged to Vargo Hoat; coins from half a hundred distant cities, silver and gold, copper and bronze, square coins and round coins, triangles and rings and bits of bone. “The innkeep swore the man had one side of his face all burned. His whores told the same tale. Sandor had some boy with him, a ragged peasant lad. They hacked Polly and the Tickler to bloody bits and rode off down the Trident, we were told.”
    â€œDid you send men after them?”
    Shitmouth frowned, as if the thought were painful. “No, m’lord. Fuck us all, we never did.”
    â€œWhen a dog goes mad you cut his throat.”
    â€œWell,” the man said, rubbing his mouth, “I never much liked Polly, that shit, and the dog, he were Ser’s brother, so . . .”
    â€œWe’re bad, m’lord,” broke in the man who wore the coins, “but you’d need to be mad to face the Hound.”
    Jaime looked him over.
Bolder than the rest, and not as drunk as Shitmouth.
“You were afraid of him.”
    â€œI wouldn’t say
afraid,
m’lord. I’d say we was leaving him for our betters. Someone like Ser. Or you.”
    Me, when I had two hands.
Jaime did not delude himself. Sandor would make short work of him now. “You have a name?”
    â€œRafford, if it pleases. Most call me Raff.”
    â€œRaff, gather the garrison together in the Hall of a Hundred Hearths. Your captives as well. I’ll want to see them. Those whores from the crossroads too. Oh, and Hoat. I was distraught to hear that he had died. I’d like to look upon his head.”
    When they brought it to him, he found that the Goat’s lips had been sliced off, along with his ears and most of his nose. The crows had supped upon his eyes. It was still recognizably Hoat, however. Jaime would have known his beard anywhere; an absurd rope of hair two feet long, dangling from a pointed chin. Elsewise, only a few leathery strips of flesh still clung to the Qohorik’s skull. “Where is the rest of him?” he asked.
    No one wanted to tell him. Finally, Shitmouth lowered his eyes, and muttered, “Rotted, ser. And et.”
    â€œOne of the captives was always begging food,” Rafford admitted, “so Ser said to give him roast goat. The Qohorik didn’t have much meat on him, though. Ser took his hands and feet first, then his arms and legs.”
    â€œThe fat bugger got most, m’lord,” Shitmouth offered, “but Ser, he said to see that all the captives had a taste. And Hoat too, his own self. That whoreson ’ud slobber when we fed him, and