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…“but on his way back to Riverrun he left his tail and went off with a woman.”
Once they’re spotted making for the camp calls ring out to herald their arrival. “She’s back! She’s brought him.” There is no welcome in the calls, no comradely greeting; instead the words lift like snouts scenting blood. “The lovers!” someone chortles, and he is upon a plodding horse again, pressed against her, can smell the ghost of his rotting hand. “The Kingslayer and his whore!” Upon hearing that she makes a choked noise.
He bristles, though not at the epithet so often flung against him. Why would they call her, so obviously a chaste and honest maid, such a thing?—other than to mock her, to wound her, to humiliate her. Her shoulders have crept high, her elbows drawn in; she is trying to make herself small enough to overlook. His pulse quickens as he tries to make a fist of the hand he does not have. Even if the golden hand cannot hold a sword, it can dispense retribution of its own. Ronnet Connington has learned as much; if Jaime has the chance, these men will, too.
Anger at hearing her insulted because of him is expected. Less so is the lightning bolt of desire, quick and pure and devastating, that the words send through him. He shivers at it, even as shame fills him.
Wisdom would let the slander stand unanswered. “My lady’s name is Brienne,” he warns, relieved that his voice is steady, if a bit loud in his own ears. “And if ever I’d had her, I would remember it.” He doesn’t need to glance over to know that her flush has deepened, darkened.
As they rein in their horses, men swarm them. Rough hands drag them from their saddles; they jerk his arms back and wind a rope around his elbows, rip his sword belt free. He notices that they leave Brienne’s hands loose. Ice spikes through his veins as he realizes that they aren’t afraid of what she may do to them. If they aren’t afraid of her, injured though she is, they can’t be afraid of him, and his bonds are meant to show him his place here.
His heart sinks as their captors herd them toward a hole in the rock. They duck into a cavern, dotted here and there with fires that cast weird shadows onto the walls. Men mill about the place, all of them with metal glinting somewhere about them: a long knife in a belt, an axe within arm’s reach. Their attention is fixed on the new arrivals. Whatever brought Brienne and him here, they have little hope of an easy exit from this place.
There is a gurgling, rattling noise, the like of which he’s never heard and that can only bode ill. Then, as if translating that hideous rasp, a northern voice calls, “Get him on his knees!”
As they force him to the ground Brienne struggles against the hands restraining her, though without much conviction. “I would see them first,” she demands, sounding not as firm as she would probably like. He follows her gaze to see that she is addressing a ghoul in grey. The figure is strangely familiar: something in its erect bearing, in the matted auburn hair.
Yet more captives shuffle out—neither of them a highborn lady of three-and-ten; just a boy and a hedge knight, both of them bruised and unremarkable in every way, though the latter eyes him with unconcealed disgust and the former looks fit to cry at the sight of her—and Jaime reckons he knows why he’s here. Even so, he huffs out a laugh. She glances sharply at him. “I’m only worth two lives to you?” he murmurs lightly. “You wound me, wench.”
“Jaime,” she keens, just at the edge of his hearing, and his slight smile disappears. He must spare her from this.
He surveys the motley assemblage, ending with the ghoul. “Who commands this?” he asks in the voice of the lord commander. “At whose order am I to die?”
The redheaded ghoul hacks and sputters and the northman says, “Your own hand signed your death warrant.” Jaime raises an eyebrow—would raise his golden hand, no longer good for signing anything, if he could. “You have broken faith with my lady.”
He shrugs. “More fool her, to be surprised by it.”
Brienne tries to stride forward. “Let him live, please, my lady. We are sworn to find your daughter, and we will, together.” He will remember the warble of her “please” for the rest of his life, be it five minutes longer or five decades. To have such a one as Brienne of Tarth—protector of innocents, loyalty made flesh, the finest knight in Westeros but for the chance of her birth—plead for his life humbles him.
The northern youth shakes his head. “Lady Stoneheart spared your life, and theirs.” He gestures to the captives. “The Kingslayer must die. Keep your word and prove yourself true.”
Jaime nearly laughs at that, his eyes narrowing. Brienne has proven herself true time and again, across miles and months, through blood shed and sheer stubbornness. What she has never been is a skilled liar, so that something is amiss has been obvious from the moment she returned to him. Her eyes have been turned from him, never meeting his gaze; her speech has been unusually shy. He’d expected perhaps to have to fight for Sansa Stark, side by side with Brienne. He’s known for ages that he might die with her, though not like this. The men holding her let go, none too gently; one shoves a sword into her hands, and for a moment she looks down at it as if she’s never held a weapon before. Then she pulls Oathkeeper from its scabbard and pivots to face him.
Jaime Lannister’s lot in life, it seems, is to kneel before one woman or another. First Cersei, then Catelyn Stark, who has become an eldritch creature who wants him dead; and now it will end with him on his knees before Brienne, the Maid of Tarth. For so long he’s thought that he would die in battle, on his feet or astride a horse with a sword in his hand; he finds he doesn’t mind being at Brienne’s feet. He only hopes she won’t blame herself too much, afterward.
He looks up at her and smiles. It’s not the expression he’d like to wear, an insouciant smirk in the face of the Stranger; it’s softer, fitting for the woman who has planed away his carefully constructed self-conceit.
“Go away inside,” she whispers; he isn’t sure if it’s to herself or him that she speaks. He won’t do it, not this time, not in their last moments together.
He’s never been afraid of death, but with the hour at hand he finds himself reluctant. “Brienne,” he says. The glistening of her eyes is more precious than any gemstone. Would that he had knelt before her in peaceful times. “I trust you.” With his life, and now with his death. It will be quick—she will make sure of it. Her sword is sharp, her arm strong. He, at least, will not suffer.
Though her expression does not lighten she straightens, drawing her shoulders back and her head high. In her eyes he sees rekindled that defiant spark, and bites back a grin. Her fingers tighten around Oathkeeper’s hilt. “Jaime,” she says, “you—”
As if possessed, the hedge knight bursts from where he’s been standing and barrels toward the undead Catelyn Stark. All eyes turn to him, including Brienne’s; surely Jaime isn’t the only one to see the northman pull his dagger and aim it at the knight’s gut. The knight himself sees and dives forward, under the dagger and at the northman’s knees. The two tumble down and Catelyn—Lady Stoneheart—stumbles back, hissing. While Jaime considers staggering to his feet Brienne whirls away from him, crossing to where the two men grapple in the dirt and, in one stroke, separating Lady Stoneheart’s head from her body.
As the blow is struck all sound is sucked out of the cavern, and the fires extinguish. With ears ringing and eyes wide, he wonders if he’s died, if someone has finished the job for Brienne. Then, dead or alive, he hauls himself to his feet.
Across the cavern—or maybe nearer than he can tell—there is a faint glow, a pale wriggle of movement in the air. With his luck it will be some creature that thrives in darkness come to feast on human flesh; or maybe it is merely madness taking hold, his mind so starved for light, even after just these few moments, that it has imagined itself a source. The sweep of it to and fro through the black is entrancing; streams of light linger in the air, making it hard to discern the thing’s shape. But now he can see that its light is blue, and that it seems to be searching for something. Strange though it is, the light does not alarm him as it approaches—except when it now and then disappears. Its blue is kindly, comforting, and he stands straight and still, ready to welcome it.
When the light reaches him it is enough to illuminate its immediate surroundings. A band around his chest loosens with the darkness pushed back. Now he can see that the glow comes from a sword, and can’t imagine why he didn’t recognize it earlier. He’s been here before: in a dream with Brienne lighting his darkness.
A hand he knows extends toward him. The fingers run from the crown of his head to the nape of his neck, then across his throat, pausing at his pulse point to feel the thrum of blood there. Her hand splays against his chest, drags down toward his stomach; his breath catches at the warm press of it as she ensures that he is uninjured. I am well, he wants to tell her, and wants to ask if she is, but doesn’t know if his voice will work or if the sorcery surrounding them will leave him mute.
And then she touches his face: the faintest brush of fingertips against his cheek. For neither the first time nor the last Jaime is helpless before her, helpless without her. He closes his eyes, none the blinder for it, until she takes her hand away.
Then she is cutting through his bonds, propping the half-dead hedge knight halfway onto Jaime’s shoulder, and leading them and the boy out of the cavern. They emerge, squinting, into daylight. In the light the sword is as ordinary as it’s ever been; in the light so is she. He takes her hand in his, and takes up his place beside her.