Only death can pay for life
Notch. Draw. Release. Repeat.
It was difficult to lose yourself in the process of firing arrows when you had to keep glancing at the sun; since she now had to tell her family where she was going and when she'd get back, she couldn't just go wandering about like she usually did.
Stupid Hound.
Practicing her needlework had worked better - a pair of the bamboo practice swords leaned against a tree nearby - but she'd lost herself in the forms and spent longer then she'd meant to on it. All to take her mind off ... everything. That song. The song that had been playing when the Hound knocked her out to stop her trying to help her mother.
"One more Stark would have been only one more corpse." She'd told herself that even if they'd taken her, they would have kept her alive, because she was valuable, but what if Robb was right? What if they would have killed her?
Notch. Draw. Release.
If so, it meant the Hound had saved her life. And if he'd saved her life...
"The Red God has his due, sweet girl, and only death may pay for life."
If he'd saved her life, she owed the Hound a death.
Maybe giving him the gift of mercy would have covered that, but she'd ridden off and left him to die painfully. Maybe I owe him for that, too. One death, or two, or none. She didn't know, and there was no one here to ask, no kindly man, no waif, not even Jaqen H'ghar who she hadn't even known served the Many-Faced God till later.
An arrow smacked into the tree. "Raff the Sweetling," she said. Another. "Dunsen." And another. "Ser Gregor the Mountain." Notch, draw, release, one after the other. Three trees so far were covered in marks from her arrows. "Ser Ilyn, Ser Meryn, Queen Cersei." She'd lost count of how many times she'd emptied her quiver and had to run over to a tree and pull her arrows out, as well as scavenging in the forest for the ones that had missed. "Theon Greyjoy. Roose Bolton." She fired an arrow higher into the tree, knocking a couple of leaves loose. She tried to shoot them out of the air. "The H-" She missed. "Sand-" Missed again. And she couldn't put his name on the list. Didn't know whether it belonged there. She'd never been unsure like this before, never not known if she needed to kill someone or not.
Snarling suddenly, she dropped her bow and streaked across the clearing, Needle whipping out of its scabbard, flowing across the distance between her and the tree like a stream going downhill - quick as a snake, smooth as summer silk, fierce as a wolverine - closing the last few yards in a drawn-out lunge.
She stood there, at full extension, sword pinning one of the fallen leaves to the tree. "Valar morghulis," she said.
It was difficult to lose yourself in the process of firing arrows when you had to keep glancing at the sun; since she now had to tell her family where she was going and when she'd get back, she couldn't just go wandering about like she usually did.
Stupid Hound.
Practicing her needlework had worked better - a pair of the bamboo practice swords leaned against a tree nearby - but she'd lost herself in the forms and spent longer then she'd meant to on it. All to take her mind off ... everything. That song. The song that had been playing when the Hound knocked her out to stop her trying to help her mother.
"One more Stark would have been only one more corpse." She'd told herself that even if they'd taken her, they would have kept her alive, because she was valuable, but what if Robb was right? What if they would have killed her?
Notch. Draw. Release.
If so, it meant the Hound had saved her life. And if he'd saved her life...
"The Red God has his due, sweet girl, and only death may pay for life."
If he'd saved her life, she owed the Hound a death.
Maybe giving him the gift of mercy would have covered that, but she'd ridden off and left him to die painfully. Maybe I owe him for that, too. One death, or two, or none. She didn't know, and there was no one here to ask, no kindly man, no waif, not even Jaqen H'ghar who she hadn't even known served the Many-Faced God till later.
An arrow smacked into the tree. "Raff the Sweetling," she said. Another. "Dunsen." And another. "Ser Gregor the Mountain." Notch, draw, release, one after the other. Three trees so far were covered in marks from her arrows. "Ser Ilyn, Ser Meryn, Queen Cersei." She'd lost count of how many times she'd emptied her quiver and had to run over to a tree and pull her arrows out, as well as scavenging in the forest for the ones that had missed. "Theon Greyjoy. Roose Bolton." She fired an arrow higher into the tree, knocking a couple of leaves loose. She tried to shoot them out of the air. "The H-" She missed. "Sand-" Missed again. And she couldn't put his name on the list. Didn't know whether it belonged there. She'd never been unsure like this before, never not known if she needed to kill someone or not.
Snarling suddenly, she dropped her bow and streaked across the clearing, Needle whipping out of its scabbard, flowing across the distance between her and the tree like a stream going downhill - quick as a snake, smooth as summer silk, fierce as a wolverine - closing the last few yards in a drawn-out lunge.
She stood there, at full extension, sword pinning one of the fallen leaves to the tree. "Valar morghulis," she said.