The farmhouse had seen better days, its stone walls crumbling like old bones, but it offered shelter from the biting wind that had followed them since dawn.

The fire was burning bright, and Arya was practicing.

Swift as a deer. She slid her right foot forward and let Needle follow, the point tracing a small bright circle in the dark. Quiet as a shadow. The blade came back to her shoulder. Fear cuts deeper than swords.

Behind her, the Hound drank. She could hear him doing it, the wet swallow and the sigh after, the wineskin sloshing lower every time. He had been drinking since they made camp under the broken wall, and he would drink until he fell over, and in the morning he would be foul about it, as if it were her fault.

"You look like a chicken," he said.

Arya did not turn around. "You look like a burned chicken."

"Aye." He laughed, that ugly sound like a saw going through a knot. "But I'm not the one dancing about in the dark with a buggering knitting needle."

"It's a sword."

"It's a skewer. It's what a cook shoves in a bird to see if it's done." The wineskin sloshed. "Your dancing master teach you that? The little Braavosi cunt with the wooden stick?"

"Syrio Forel was the First Sword of Braavos."

"Syrio Forel is dead," the Hound said, "and I never met a first anything who couldn't be opened up by a fat fuck in good steel. That's the whole lesson, girl. There's no other lesson. All the rest is songs, and songs are for cocksuckers who've never had to wash a man off their hands."

Arya turned around then. He was sitting with his back against a fallen stone, one leg out straight, the burned half of his face away from the coals the way he always kept it. He was so big that even sitting he seemed to be looming down at her.

"I could beat you," she said.

The Hound stopped drinking. He lowered the skin and looked at her with real attention for the first time in three days, and that was worse than being ignored.

"Say that again."

"I could beat you. With swords. If we sparred." She lifted her chin. "You're slow."

"I'm slow." He said it like he was tasting it. "Seven bloody hells. You've been eating your own shit and calling it supper."

"You're big and you're slow and you're drunk."

"I'm all three, and I could take that little skewer off you and make you swallow it sideways, and I'd not need to stand up to do it." He let his head fall back against the stone. "You can't beat me, girl. You could kill me, might be. If I was asleep, or shitting in a ditch, or if you got behind me with something sharp and had the guts to push. That's not the same as beating me."

"Why isn't it?"

"Because any fool can kill." He said it flatly, the way he said the things he actually believed. "A knife in the dark. Poison in the cup. A rock to the head while a man's pissing against a tree. Killing's the easy part — that's the joke, and nobody tells it. Beating a man means standing in front of him, in the light, both of you awake and sober enough to see it coming, and putting him down anyway. Nobody's done that to me yet. Not knights, not my brother's dogs, not one of the whoreson heroes they write the songs about."

"Then it's an easy bet for you," Arya said.

The silence went on long enough that she heard the horses shifting in the dark, and the river, and a nightbird somewhere past the wall.

"A bet," he said.

"You said you never met anyone who couldn't be killed by a fat man in good steel. I'm not fat. But I'd take the bet."

"With what? You've not got a copper to piss on. You've not got a horse — that horse is mine, same as the saddle and the buggering blanket. You've got a stolen cloak, boots that don't fit, and a skewer."

"If I win," Arya said, "you serve me for a month. Do whatever I say, go wherever I tell you."

The Hound’s voice was rough as sandpaper. “And if I win? What do I get, little wolf?”

Arya’s confidence surged. She couldn’t lose this. Not to him. “If you win—” She hesitated only a moment. “You get my maidenhead. My back door. No one’s ever had it.”

The Hound made a low sound in his chest. "That's a fat fucking prize. Careful, wolf bitch, you'll have me trying."

"Well?" Arya waited.

The silence stretched between them like a drawn bowstring. Even the fire seemed to hold its breath.

The Hound’s eyes gleamed in the darkness. "Done." He shoved himself up off the stone, and up, and up, until he was standing, and Arya made herself not step back. "Blunted, or you'll spit yourself on that thing and I'll have a corpse to bury. There. That's a stick. Here's mine."

He kicked a length of broken rafter toward her feet. His own was the size of an oar.

"That's not the same weight," Arya said.

"No. It isn't." He grinned, and half his mouth grinned with him. "The world's not a fair fucking place, girl, and neither am I. Come on, then. Show me the dancing."

---

It lasted four heartbeats.

She was swift as a deer and quiet as a shadow, and none of it mattered. He came forward like a hillside coming down, batted her guard aside with a jolt that went all the way up into her teeth, and put her flat on her back in the wet grass with the point of the rafter under her chin. She hadn't seen how. That was the terrible part. Syrio would have said watch with your eyes — and she had, and she still hadn't seen it.

"Oh I"ll enjoy this," said the Hound. "Can't say the same for you."

Arya let her arm go loose. She let her mouth go loose too, and stared past his shoulder at nothing, the way the dead men had stared at nothing in the village, and she felt him ease back half a step — just half, just the weight coming off —

She hooked her heel behind his ankle, snapped her stick up two-handed, and cracked it across the outside of his knee.

He didn't fall. He roared — "Fuck!" — staggered, caught himself against the stone, and by the time he'd hauled himself round she was three paces off with her point up and her breath sawing in her throat.

"That's a touch," Arya said. "I touched you, that's a touch, that's—"

"That's cheating."

"You said in the light and awake. You never said anything about cheating."

The Hound stood there breathing, one hand clamped over his knee. Then he started to laugh, and went on laughing, and it turned into coughing, and he spat into the coals.

"Aye," he said, "But enough fooling." The Hound rose to his full height, his massive frame blocking the firelight. “Time to pay your debt, wolf girl.”

Arya glared at him. “This is ridiculous. We should—”

“Should what?” The Hound took a step toward her. “Go back on your word? I thought Starks were honorable.”

Arya’s hands curled into fists. “Fine. What do you want me to do?”

The Hound’s eyes traveled down her body with deliberate slowness. “Take off your clothes. Slowly.”

“You’re disgusting,” Arya spat, but her fingers removed her belt and then opened her leather tunic.

“All of it,” the Hound said, his voice rough. “I want to see what I’ve won.”

Arya’s cheeks burned as she pulled down her breeches, until she stood naked before him, the firelight painting golden patterns on her skin.

“Sit down,” the Hound commanded. “Show me what I’ve won. Your shithole.”

Arya rolled her eyes but complied, sitting down and spreading her legs. “Just get it over with,” she muttered, feeling her face flush with humiliation.