DISCLAIMER: This story is entirely based on character[s] from George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire

DONE WITH DEATH

Sandor stepped out of his chamber into the passageway. The soldiers who had woken him held torches and he squinted at the glare of the light and held himself far from their flames.

"Forgive me, m'lord," the young man said, "but the Blackfish sent us to wake you. Says you needs come quickly: there's a dead man outside the walls, and it be no accident he says, m'lord."

Seven buggering hells, he thought, won't he still be dead at daylight? But he was commander now, and consort to the lady of Winterfell, and so outranked all other men.

"Let me dress," he rasped. He slept naked though it was not yet spring, and had only wrapped himself quickly in a fur from the bed.

When he slipped back into the sparely furnished, dark chamber he saw that Sansa had woken and lit a candle and was sitting up now with a worried look on her beautiful face.

"Sandor?" she asked anxiously.

"Go back to sleep, little bird," he told her as he pulled his clothes from the wooden bench where he had dropped them. He pulled on woolen smallclothes, breeches, a rough linen shirt and wool tunic. Gods, it's bloody cold; even in here. The fire was only just glowing embers since their firewood was rationed, as was nearly everything else in Winterfell.

"Why did they wake you, my love?"

Sandor grunted as he pulled on his boots.

"A dead man," he replied shortly, "outside the walls. Might be they heard I dug graves and think I miss it." He turned to look at her now. "You should sleep," he counseled, nodding to her middle though she had only told him of their impending second child days before and would not show for several turns of the moon yet. There was only a taut firmness that could be felt if he ran his hand over the bare skin of her lower belly, which he had done every night since with pleasure.

Sansa smiled sweetly at his concern and pushed her thick auburn hair back from one side of her face. It made Sandor want to sink his hands in it and bury his face in her soft neck.

"I won't be long," he reassured her instead, and he picked up his heavy cloak and turned to join the soldiers outside his door.

….

Their feet crunched on the packed snow that covered the ground between the outer walls of Winterfell and the edge of the winter town. There was another small group of soldiers with torches standing around what was unmistakably a body on the ground, dark and sprawled against the cold white expanse. Their breaths fogged in the frigid night air, and some had ice forming on their beards or held scarves crusted with frost before their faces. Sandor approached his wife's great uncle who looked decidedly grim.

"Blackfish," he acknowledged him.

"Clegane, sorry to wake you but I thought you needed to see this." He gestured to one young soldier who lowered his torch closer to the body. There was blood staining the snow around the man's head and a sizeable rock nearby. Sandor grunted his understanding and looked back to the Blackfish with the same grim expression.

"Might it be he just slipped and fell, m'lord," one young soldier piped up, "and hit that rock?"

"He's face down, soldier," Sandor told him, "and that rock is not big enough to have opened his skull: that'd be his brains you see." He indicated the streaks of clotted blood on top of the snow with a gloved hand. "Hit hard and more than once, I'll wager: you can see the blood and gore flew nigh far." As he spoke he heard a man step back to turn away and retch. "There's no snow on the rock either: it had to have been picked up from the ground, and the bloodstain is beneath it." He nodded to the Blackfish. "You judged well this was no accident," he rasped.

The Blackfish looked up at him from under grey, bushy eyebrows. "No," he agreed solemnly in his smoky voice, "this was murder."

….

"Anyone know this man?" Sandor asked gruffly when they had turned him over.

"Aye, Flyn Snow; well, Flyn Smith now: works at the blacksmith's in winter town, m'lord," a soldier answered.

The Blackfish sighed and shook his head. "We didn't need to lose a smith," he observed, "nor any tradesman for that matter."

"You've the right of that: we've too many to feed but not enough to fight and work."

The wars had taken a devastating toll on Westeros, not least of all in the North which had borne the losses of the invasion of the Ironborn, the sack of Winterfell and fighting between Lord Stannis Baratheon and the combined forces of Houses Bolton and Frey, all before the Others descended on them in the coldest, darkest winter in the history of the Seven Kingdoms. Many lives had been lost and the land was ravaged by fighting, foraging and neglect when crofters had died or fled. Eventually starvation had been the only thing that flourished when meager stores were exhausted and naught could be yielded from their lands of endless snow and unburied corpses but what little could be hunted from the forests.

The loss of able men was particularly devastating since soldiers were still needed to keep the peace and to prevent looting and fights over lands, materials or food, and craftsmen were needed to rebuild and make repairs and for everyday needs such a blacksmiths for forging steel arms and horseshoes, kennel masters for keeping hunting dogs, wagon and sledge makers and wheelwrights, tanners, drovers, masons, carpenters: the list of tasks necessary for them to maintain life in the near-destroyed North was endless.

In this matter the Wildings from beyond the Wall had proven invaluable: they were accustomed to privation and hard work and were singularly adaptable to life in the North. Even the women had skills with arms and animals and tools that were so badly needed and Sansa, who sat the high seat of Winterfell until her young brother Rickon reached his majority as Lord Stark, had seen to it that many who were amenable to swearing fealty were rewarded with positions in the castle or homes in the abandoned winter town and other castle villages, and land to till come the spring. Most Wildings had chosen to settle in the Gift but those who had fought and travelled further south were offered reason to stay.

"Born a Snow was he: no family then?" Sandor rasped.

"Aye, m'lord, the smith was his goodfather, and his woman's just had a boy."

"She was his wife, soldier," Sandor corrected him. "You will remember to show respect to the people we protect; or try to protect," he added regretfully, "regardless of birth." Sandor had no reservations about bastardy himself and again the losses wrought by the wars had made able young men of what was once deemed low birth more attractive to tradesmen and, seemingly, to their daughters. Good for him, thought Sandor, I'm not the only one who rose and wed above himself. He then damned his own idiocy for congratulating a dead man.

A soldier was approaching them now with a low sledge piled with folded burlap, generally used to move feed and tools through the yards of Winterfell.

"Very well, move him but remember this man was one of us, not an enemy or a carcass. You will treat him as such; and no one is to breathe a word of this until we are able to speak with his family. I won't have his widow learning of it from folks shouting in the road," Sandor ordered. "You," he called to the soldier who had retched, "you help them; best get used to this if you want to be a soldier, lad."

"I'm sorry, m'lord," he mumbled miserably,

Sandor saw how young he was but stood his ground firmly; he needed to be tough with them if they were going to toughen up themselves and survive.

The Blackfish walked up behind him as the men dragged the body away over the snow.

"Shall I speak with the man's family?" he asked.

It would have been easy to accept the man's offer; Sandor knew he was still regarded with fear and suspicion while the Blackfish, though also not a Northman, was mostly respected as their former lady's uncle and advisor to the young King in the North. But Sandor was commander of the garrison and the garrison patrolled the winter town and so the responsibility fell to him.

"No," he answered resolutely. "I'll do it."

….

He waited until almost daybreak, knowing the smith would start his day early. Sandor knocked on the wooden door and waited. He could hear a baby crying inside. He door finally opened with a hard yank.

"'bout time ye-" the burly smith answered and stopped, his eyes widening as he looked up to see Sandor before him. He dropped them just as suddenly. "M'lord, how-"

"Forgive me," Sandor interrupted gruffly, "but I needs speak with your daughter…about her husband."

….

Sandor stood stiffly while the girl sobbed and shook her head.

"It's my fault. If I had'na sent him out for help… but the babe had a fever-" she sobbed again.

"We'll send the maester for you," he told her brusquely, "and anything else you need," he offered.

"Can you send me another goodson who's a smith, then?" the girl's father commented sourly. "How'zit I'm supposed to get it all done?"

"I'll ask about an apprentice for you; we've some boys training at Winterfell," Sandor answered.

The man shook his head darkly. "This should'na happened," he grumbled.

"No," Sandor replied gruffly, "it shouldn't have; unless you know some reason someone would do for him?"

"What ye sayin' then?" the man asked defensively.

"Debts, grudges, fights: do you know why anyone would want him dead?"

The man's eyes narrowed now. "Not all mens got troubles followin'em," he sneered. "Flyn was a good man."

And I'm not, Sandor concluded from the man's look and words. He turned to the new widow now.

"I'm sorry," he told her. "We're also short of men; but you have my word we'll do all we can."

"Thank'ye, m'lord," she sniffled. Then she dropped her head in her hands and began crying again.

….

An' who's he to question us with all he's done wrong, the blacksmith would tell people who stopped into his forge. The Hound hisself asking' about other men's sins, and murders even; and this bloody crime happened on his watch, he spat.

He brung'us back Lady Sansa, he did; and she married'im too, his daughter countered, red-eyed and sniffling as she worked the bellows.

Oh aye, and her standin' in the godswood as a maid when they wed and her already with a babe in 'er belly then, they says. He forced hisself on our lady, I'll wager ye and she had'ta marry or birth that black dog's bastard…