A Hound in the Woods // Sandor Clegane

Nightmare

The hardest thing is to live richly in the present without letting it be tainted out of fear of the future or regret from the past.

Sandor slung his lunch sack and axe over his weary shoulder. He had been at the settlement helping raise the framework for houses to replace their city of canvas tents. They would need to be in much more sturdy and permanent housing for the winter. Only time would tell if they would last through what was predicted to be the longest winter in living memory. 

The evening air was still warm. It seemed like they would have one last heat wave before the chill of winter took the land in its unyielding grip. The faint smell of smoke drifted through the air. 'Angharad must have the smokehouse filled and burning,' he thought. She had that smokehouse running nearly every day now to preserve meats for their winter stores. The smell of smoke grew stronger. The smell was greater than what it was when the smoke house was blazing, even when it was at full capacity.

Something was wrong. Sandor picked up his pace to come over the hill to see where the smell of smoke was coming from. Black plumes of rolling smoke rose out from the trees. His heart beat pounded in his chest. The sight before him was devastating. The cottage that he and Angharad shared was a blazing inferno. The icy grip of fear stopped his heart. All he could do was watch in horror at the sight of their home, their place of love and safety had turned into the thing he feared the most. 

A sickening thought passed through his mind. Where was Angharad?

Sandor opened his mouth to call for her but fear stopped the words from escaping. Then he heard it. The cry was feeble and weak, but he heard it all the same. "Save me!" 

Sandor forced himself down the hillside. He had to save her. Terror was gripping him, holding him back. He fought himself, making himself face the flames that licked the sky. The fire scorched their home. The heat radiating off of the flames stung his eyes as he drew closer. 

"Angharad!" Sandor was finally able to roar out. He scanned the burning house desperately.

"Sandor!" She coughed out. Her voice was growing weaker. Sandor knew that she didn't have much time left. If he didn't act now, she would surely die. The thought of losing her made his stomach churn. His resolve hardened, giving him the strength to charge into the burning cottage for her. For his Angharad.

Sandor stepped into the belly of Hell. The familiar surroundings of their home had been engulfed in hot orange fire. The supporting beams that held up the walls and roof were beginning to crumble and fall around them. A timber collapsed to his side. Sandor shielded his face from the sparks that exploded from the smoldering beam. Sandor searched franticly. He wanted desperately to escape the menacing flames as they lashed out threatening him, but he had to find Angharad. She was nowhere in sight. He called out for her again with no answer. Was he too late?

More of the thatched roof crumbled around him. He glanced upward to assess the destruction of the house disintegrating in the roaring fire. Out of the corner of his eye, Sandor saw it. The wooden knight. It was standing above him, larger than the house, reaching through the roof and gripping him so tightly he thought he would be crushed.

The knight was painted in the colors of his families house, the yellow and black of House Clegane with three black dogs. A hideous laugh poured from the helmet. It was a wicked laugh that Sandor had come to fear when he was a child. The laugh of his brother, Gregor. The giant knights hand held him down in the flames of the cottage. Air was being crushed from his lungs and Sandor thrashed to fight for his freedom. 

The world was closing in around him. This is how it would end. Killed by his brother, unable to save the woman he loved. She was cut down in the bloom of her years. Just when their life was going to take off, it was halted by unimaginable cruelty. The edges of his vision blurred. It wouldn't be long now.

Just as he felt himself dying, he heard it. A humming. The sound he found himself craving to hear every day. It filled his ears with familiar comfort. This wasn't right. Sandor's eyes flew open and he jolted up in bed. His heart pounded so hard, he felt it in his head. He breathed heavily to catch his breath.

It had all been a nightmare. His fears made manifest by his own mind. Angharad rushed to him from the armchair, shushing and cooing him. "You're okay, I'm here, I'm here. Be with me," she gently placed a hand on Sandor's whiskered cheek.

Sandor stared at her in shock that she was really there in front of him. The dream had been so real. She had died and he was unable to save her. Sandor grabbed her and pulled her tightly to his chest. He never wanted to let her go. Tears streamed down his cheeks. Angharad let him hold her. She just hummed and traced his skin with her fingertips. Eventually Sandor loosened his grip around her. 

Angharad moved to face him. "Are you okay?" she asked softly. She wiped the tears from his face, resting one of her hands on his cheek. He reached up and covered her hand with his, holding her touch to him. 

"I will be," he breathed. He was more tired now than he was when he went to bed, but sleep didn't hold the same inviting tempt as it did only hours before. "I don't think I can sleep," Sandor admitted.

"Do you want to sleep?" Angharad asked.

Sandor nodded, exhausted. Angharad went to her medicines counter and found the jars to make a sleeping tonic. She took a jar of water clover and laid 3 of the four leaved plant heads into her mortar, she then added the seeds of St. John's Wort and a conservative sliver of the root of monkshood. She ground them together and added a few drops of oil to rehydrate the plant parts.

She scraped the paste out of the mortar with a spoon and took it to the bed along with a mug of water. "This will taste foul," she warned. Sandor nodded and took the spoon into his mouth. It was foul, the acrid, bitter taste clung to his tongue despite drinking all of water. 

He coughed and handed the spoon and mug back to Angharad. She set them aside and climbed back into bed. She rubbed his back before he laid back down. Sandor rolled to his side and wrapped his arm around Angharad, pulling her close to him. A deep, dreamless sleep soon took him and he was finally able to rest.

................................

When Sandor woke, it was midday. Everything seemed that it was as it should be, but things seemed as they should be in his nightmare before they were all terribly wrong. Sandor couldn't help but feel ill at ease. He pulled his clothes on and went outside to find Angharad, seeing her alive and well would do wonders to ease his anxieties. 

She was working in her herb garden. The sun gleamed golden on her fiery hair. The only flames that didn't burn him. The fire he longed to touch. Roc stirred on the path when he saw Sandor. Angharad stopped her work and looked up at Sandor. "How do you feel?" she asked.

"Better, now that I see you, cariad aur,*" he admitted. He had adapted the term of endearment from Angharad's mother's language. She used it rarely, but was fond of it to call him loving names as her mother had done to her and her father. 

Angharad wiped the dirt from her hands onto her apron as she walked to meet Sandor on the path. He took her hands in his, and he noticed a dark mark on her arm, just under her sleeve. He pulled her sleeve up. A dark blue bruise tinged green on the edges bloomed on her forearm. Sandor's eyes shot up to Angharad's face. She was unconcerned.

"What did this?" He demanded.

Angharad remained calm as she told him, "In your nightmare, you were struggling and thrashing. You accidently struck my arm."

Shame filled his being. How could he have hurt her. The woman that only had love to give, the only person in his world that didn't look at him as the monster he was and he struck her. He struck her hard enough to bruise, marring her beautiful skin. Sandor fell to his knees before her, dropping his hands to his lap. He stared at the dirt on the ground.

Angharad took his face with both of her hands and tilted his head up to face her. "I am not hurt. I know you were not striking me," she looked into his eyes. "Don't punish yourself when I have already forgiven you."

Sandor wrapped his arms around her waist and buried his head in her belly. Angharad hugged his head and stroked his tangled curls.

*pronounced: car-ee-ad eye-r      Meaning precious love. A love more precious than gold.