Carliene Stark

Chapter 77

Bronn

I kicked the horses sides, urging it along quicker. Once again I was doing some royal bastard's dirty work. Jamie wanted the girl alive, the queen wanted her dead. And I found myself wondering who of the two I would rather cross. I did not much care for the queen, but the bag of coin in my saddlebag that the old man had offered me with promise of more once I returned, jingled nicely as the horse galloped. And seeing what the blonde bitch had done to the city made me think that she was not a woman to anger or disobey.

I did not manage to follow the girl's tracks. Mostly because the group of guards sent out before me had trampled them all. Their tracks, however, were almost too easy to follow. Even an amateur tracker would have been able to follow their horses' deep prints in the soft mud and the remnants of their camps.
I caught up with them one and a half days ride from King's Landing, though I did not find them as I had expected. 

My horse reared and stomped the mud nervously, ears flicking wildly as we approached an open clearing. In the desolate brown and grey of the autumn trees the read cloaks stuck out like strange flowers splayed out on the ground here and there. Their horses were gone, scattered into the wind as it looked by the tracks heading in all directions. The six guards were all dead. Having not succumb to any blade or bow but rather to something ripping them apart.
As I guided my horse further onto the clearing I rode past one man that had his arm torn off and laying a few feet from his body, dead hand still clutching his blade. His eyes stared up at the grey sky, his throat only a mess of flesh and blood. The other's looked similar.
My horse neighed and threw it's head back and for a moment I struggled to calm it and keep it from bolting. Then my eyes fell on a pile of grey fur and I understood what had happened. 

Wolves.

I looked around again, trying to imagine the size of the pack that would have been able to take down six armed and trained men. The horse bickered again and I decided it would be best to dismount before the stupid beast decided to buck me. I guided the animal to the next best sturdy tree and quickly tried it to it. If the wolves were still around I didn't want to be left to run from them by foot. 

I walked up to the nearest body, turning the copse over and searching it for anything of value. Not like the poor sod still needed it. There was a faint rustling at the other edge of the clearing and my eyes caught sight of something white on the ground there. I turned away from the dead man to inspect it. It took me a few steps to notice it was a person, lying on their back with arms sprawled out on either side of them.

At first I thought she had suffered the same fate as the Lannister men but stepping closer I realised there was no blood on or around her besides a smudged cut on her shoulder. The Stark girl's skin was near as pale as her gown, contrasting strongly to the dark brown of her curls that fell over her shoulder in a tousled braid. Something rustled again in the bushes behind her, but I was too concentrated on her to really notice. 

Her eyes were open and completely white and I was certain she was dead until I noticed that she was breathing. An icy shiver ran down my spine as some instinct within me told me that something very unnatural was going on here. I wasn't a superstitious man, but that moment made me understand why some people were. A wolf maid laying in the woods surrounded by her dead enemies that had been torn apart by a pack of her kind. A perfectly tragic story for the singes. Only, no one would ever know of it but me.

A growl came from the bushes and I stumbled backwards, the horse behind me screaming in fear. 

Suddenly the girl eyes cleared and she blinked a few times, a tear rolling dow the side of her face before she slowly rose, studying her surrounding. Her fingers dug into the soft earth as she pushed herself backwards to rest against the tree behind her. He eyes found me and she gave me an exhausted and confused look.