An Inconvenient Flame [Sandor Clegane]

Chapter 15 - Traveling

          A yawn escaped me before I could cover it. We had been on the road for quite some time now and it wasn't getting any easier. I stretched my arms over my head and shifted in the saddle again. It earned me a short gaze from Sandor ahead of me. I gave him a small smile, but he only rolled his eyes at me and turned away again.

The further north we were getting the colder it became at night. Surprisingly, when my shivering had become too annoying for Sandor, he had agreed to let me sleep beside him during the night. I usually laid with my back against his, turned towards the fire, where he was lying on his side with his back leaned against me, turned the other way.

I always laid between him and the small fire we sometimes dared to light. I had noticed the glimpses of fear in his eyes whenever he came to close to the fire. He was afraid of it but would never give me a reason as to why he was afraid of it whenever I asked him.

My intuition told me it had something to do with the scar on the right side of his face. I knew it was a burn wound, inflicted by his brother. That had to be the cause. I had come to see the full extent of the wound. It was hard for him to keep it hidden all the time, and a few times he had shifted his hair away, allowing me to fully see it. But whenever he caught me looking at him, he always shifted his hair back again.

I groaned in pain and shifted in my saddle once more when Sandor suddenly decided to halt his horse. We still had a few hours of daylight left, but I didn't complain about resting here. It was close to a small stream, and we could stay out of sight because of the tall trees surrounding us. It was getting easier to ride for a longer period, but the soreness never left me. I was extremely uncomfortable but had never once complained to Sandor, thought I knew he had noticed.

Sandor noticed way too much sometimes, and it annoyed me greatly. I couldn't hide a thing from him. More than once had he already called me a bad liar. It kept me from lying to him, or definitely not too often.

After we had dismounted our horses, I begun gathering wood for the fire. It wasn't a big one, but we needed it to prepare some food. The fire wasn't much bigger than the palm of my hand, and it gave us little warmth. I held my hands out towards it when Sandor suddenly returned. He had managed to catch a rabbit. He had it skinned in a matter of seconds and before long it was cooking over the fire.

It wasn't the greatest meal, but it was still better than what we had gotten the last few days. I could feel how the lack of food had already impacted my body. I had lost weight because I hadn't been eating properly but so had Sandor. I could see the malnourishment on him like I could see it on myself. We had quickly agreed that we couldn't stay at every inn from here to Winterfell, neither of us had money for it. And the fear of being recognized also lingered wherever we went.

Once we had finished eating, Sandor had pulled out his sword which he was now cleaning and sharpening. For a second, I had seen father instead because Sandor had been sitting like he always did underneath the Weirwood in Winterfell. It had brought tears to my eyes, as I couldn't stop watching the movements of his hand while he cleaned his sword. It brought me the same comfort watching him as it had done watching father.