Wilting ♞ Sandor Clegane

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DAYS PASSED, THOUGH it became harder and harder to tell when night fell and the sun rose through the small barred window at the top of the wall. Anya thought it had been a week, but maybe it hadn't been that long.

The jailer came once every day with a young boy trailing behind him wearing all black. They slid plates and bowls of gruel beneath the small gap between the floor and the latticework of metal. Each time they came stumbling down the stairs Anya would demand to see the Lord Commander, stating her name and relation, but every day the two of them would laugh in her face before walking away.

Then she gave up hope and resigned to curling up on the solitary bench that was in the cell. It was wooden, splintering badly in some spots, half rotten in others but it supported her weight and Sandor's. Her honeyed hair fell forward in thick, unkempt clumps and knots and in the dull light, Anya found that she now had strands of silver mingled with gold. Life had taken a cruel turn of events. Sandor Clegane watched Anya Whent with a heavy and worried gaze.

The only thing more tiresome than a drunk Thoros was one that hadn't had anything to drink in days and was stone cold sober. "You know what would warm us all up?" Thoros of Myr asked with no shortage of acrimony in his tone. Beric Dondarrion looked down at his hands, hiding either his amusement or annoyance, Erac Cleaber leaned his head back against the damp stone wall and crossed his arms. Anya glared at the Red Priest, as did Sandor. No one spoke because they all knew the answer already, but Thoros answered his own question anyway. "Some fucking rum."

Erac sighed and for a moment silence hung in the frozen air. "If you don't shut the fuck up about your rum, I'll kill you before the cold does," Anya snapped. One of the black brothers had taken his rum when they stripped them of weapons and had not offered even an empty bottle in return. The Lightning Lord chuckled under his breath. "I wouldn't push her, priest," the Hound said with only a slight amount of mirth.

It must have been the middle of the night when Anya woke, restless and freezing. She had gone through many of these nights. Most had been at Winterfell in the months following Sansa's birth. Robb and Jon were still young then and Catelyn's attention had been focused on her new daughter. When they woke from night terrors, Anya would sing them to sleep or try to tell the stories that Old Nan once told her.

There was a song that Benjen had taught her that came to the forefront of her mind and it took several long moments for her to recall the entity of the first verse. Even then she was unsure if it was correct or whole. She leaned her head against the stone wall, where water seeped through the mortar and had frozen in a thin sheet. Her voice was hoarse and cracked into a nearly silent whisper after the first words.

"When winter comes, when life is frozen
When the moors they hide away under the snow, fingers of doom will clutch the chosen, all beasts will shiver, from the lion to the crow.

When winter comes, when times are starkest, when the wailing of the wolves fades with the sun. The wilds are numb, the days are darkest, the fates of many cease to rest on only one."

And then Erac, having heard the age-old ballad in his own troubled attempts of sleep, began the second verse in a soft low voice that nigh frightened Anya when she heard it.

"When winter comes, when thrones are idol, when the brave they cower under eyes of blue, the rising roar, the endless cycle turns the darkest myths of yesterday to truth."

His voice was rich, deep, and smooth. A bard's voice, Anya thought, but to her, the song would always sound better when sung with her brother's voice, the permanent rasp that Benjen had given the lyrics a haunting quality. Sandor roused from his pitiful attempt at sleeping and soon Beric and Thoros had awoken too. No one said a word. There was no need for any of them to speak, not now, not after that song had been sung.