Riding north, Sandor learned not to see anything past his immediate path. If he looked side to side he could see the dead bodies hanging like rotten fruit, or the hollow eyes of fleeing refugees seeking some kind of haven in King's Landing that he knew they wouldn't find. The first time he saw a cottage, though, little more than shell and charred remains left, he reined Stranger in and stopped to look at it.

Two of the walls, made of little better than mud and wood, were standing still, crumbling and scorched with long black burn marks, but somehow they had been spared where the rest of the house was gone. The roof, no doubt thatch, would have burned first, when it was set to light. The door would have been closed, blocking out escape, trapping whoever was there helpless as rabbits in a burrow with a fox at the hole. Or a dog. His lip curled.

This might well be his brother's work. Or was it only that whenever he saw fire, he saw his brother? He shook the thought off like so many flies.

He thought about the people who had lived in the little cottage, then, thought about how they would have screamed as the scorching heat closed in around them, and perhaps the husband tried to shield his wife – or perhaps he shoved her out, offering her up as ransom for his life, if he were that kind of cowardly bastard – but either way there would have been no escape. The flames would have crept under the door, licking inward, striping the wood on the walls black with long, greedy tongues.

The fire would have found them, sooner or later. It would take their clothes, first, and their hair, burning both to crisps and ashes, but they would only be conduits to skin, that took a moment to catch and then they would feel pain as it seared nerves, and they would scream, likely, until their lungs gave out, or burst as the air inside heated past enduring.

And then they would have died, either choking on the smoke or burning as the fire found a foothold in their flesh and consumed what it found until there was nothing left to consume, and only a charred and unrecognizable wreck remained-

He felt himself shudder and hauled Stranger around viciously. The two walls standing stood mute, the burn marks on their walls plain testimony to the path the burning had taken. He could see no skeletons in the wreckage. Perhaps the house had been empty when it burned. Perhaps.

Sandor swore, loudly, and jerked the horse forward, digging his heels hard into the stallion's sides. So they were dead, or they weren't. So what? It was just a house.

He watched the house burn every night for a week, until he drank enough to sleep dreamlessly. There was nothing else in the dreams.

Just a burning house, and he stood in the dark and watched the fire light up the night; and in the dreams, he was not afraid of it.