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From the left side of the battlefield, the Brotherhood Without Banners raised their longswords high. Beside Beric, Thoros prayed devoutly, then laid fire magic upon their blades.
Among the Brotherhood's riders, Sandor looked away from the burning swords around him. His fear of fire had long since been carved deep into him, and he did not draw his own sword to take the flame.
As the charge drew closer, Sandor suddenly flicked his reins and drove his horse out ahead of the formation. He charged first toward the target that stood out even amid the dense crowd.
Ordinarily, Sandor would rather have tilled fields with the three children than fight alongside the Brotherhood. This time, however, he had to come. He had come to kill Gregor with his own hands.
"Hound, do not break formation!
"Damn it. Everyone, hold formation. Hit them from the flank before they break through the infantry!"
Beric shouted when he saw Sandor leave the group charge, but Sandor did not answer. Beric cursed and continued leading the Brotherhood's riders forward.
Through repeated resurrection and Qyburn's strengthening draughts, Beric knew he was slowly losing his sense of pain and forgetting certain important things.
Yet one obsession remained in him: to judge the Mountain and drive House Lannister out of the Riverlands.
The Brotherhood's cavalry numbered nearly three thousand, but most were trained riverlander commoners. Even though Beric badly wanted to pass judgment on Gregor, he could only lead them first.
Riding beside Thoros, Brienne looked at Sandor's back as he rode off alone. She remembered the scene before they left, when Sandor had embraced the three children in farewell. She sighed heavily and spurred her horse after him.
"Brienne..."
Beric called to her as soon as he saw her go after Sandor, but Thoros interrupted him.
"Let them go, Beric. I saw my lord's revelation in the flames. Our target is those Lannister riders.
"This battle will be the key to the Brotherhood's growth."
Beric, who had gradually begun taking the Lord of Light's revelations as his guide, nodded to Thoros. He no longer concerned himself with Sandor and Brienne, and focused on leading the charge.
Beric found nothing strange in Thoros speaking of the Brotherhood growing stronger. It seemed he had already forgotten why they had first formed the Brotherhood Without Banners.
In the chaos of the battlefield, the Mountain had killed the heavy infantry and Lord Jason alike. Like a human battering ram, he used his greatsword to carve a path of blood and bodies.
Just as Gregor was enjoying the pleasure of slaughter, he saw through his helmet a rider approaching from the left. The man wore dark mail and no hound's-head helm, but Gregor knew him.
"Ha! It is you, you thieving little pup. You've been waiting for this day a long time, haven't you? So have I."
He flung the corpse of a riverlander footman from his greatsword and laughed like muffled thunder. For once, he gripped the weapon in both hands and strode straight toward Sandor.
Seeing Gregor look so certain of victory, Sandor's childhood memories surged up in an instant. His grip tightened on his sword, and he rode at him without wavering.
When the horse was about to strike him, the battle-hardened Mountain stepped aside at the last instant, bringing himself almost alongside the horse.
Sandor was ready. He swung down with both hands in a fierce cut. Gregor held the greatsword with his right hand forward and his left reversed, then lifted it upward and blocked Sandor's blade cleanly.
The exchange showed clearly that Sandor's strength was below Gregor's. Even with the force of a downward strike from horseback, he could only barely match him.
The clash took far less time than it would take to describe.
Sandor's horse carried him onward, leaving him without an angle for another attack. Feeling the advantage slip away, he had no choice but to draw his sword back.
His horse screamed and fell, its left hind leg cut off at the knee.
Sandor had been prepared since the charge began. He reacted quickly, throwing himself forward and rolling across the ground to bleed off the force. He ignored the mud clinging to him and sprang up.
Sandor knew the Mountain's nature well. Gregor never let advantage go. Sandor had barely risen before Gregor came striding in with the greatsword in his right hand and swept a horizontal cut at his neck.
Sandor dropped hard into a crouch, letting the blade roar over his head. At the same time, he tried to cut at Gregor's left waist.
The Mountain seemed to have predicted his next move. As Sandor crouched, a mailed fist as large as a small pot filled his vision.
Without a helmet to protect him, Sandor took the blow full in the head. He flew backward, blood and broken teeth spraying from his mouth.
"I remember knocking your teeth out like that when we were boys. But later they grew back.
"Now I will knock them all out and see whether they grow again."
Gregor looked down at Sandor, who lay on the ground shaking his dazed head and struggling to rise. A cruel smile twisted beneath the Mountain's helm.
Just as Gregor stepped forward to truly smash the teeth from Sandor's mouth, a horse charged quickly toward the brothers.
Hearing hoofbeats and sensing a blade coming for him from behind, the Mountain turned with surprising speed and raised his blade to block.
The rider's sword scraped along his greatsword in a spray of sparks, and the point struck the fist ornament on his helm, knocking the helmet away.
Blood ran down the cuts the helm had torn into his face. The Mountain's thick, brutal features twisted with rage as he spoke to the rider now slowing and turning her horse ahead of him.
"A woman? Good. I will fuck your bloody corpse, the way I did that Dornish whore."
Anger flashed across Brienne's freckled face as she arrived in time to save Sandor. She said nothing. She shook the reins and charged him again.
The distance between them was not great, and they collided in the blink of an eye. This time Gregor did not dodge. He turned sideways at once and slammed his left shoulder into the horse's chest.
At the moment of impact, Brienne's horse drove him backward. Gregor's feet plowed deep furrows through the mud.
But because Brienne's horse had not had enough room to charge, its momentum quickly faded. In the end, the terrifying Mountain truly forced it to a stop.
Gregor's greatsword, held at his right waist, thrust diagonally into the horse's neck.
The blade passed without resistance into flesh. Hot blood poured over Gregor.
The red greatsword pierced through the horse's neck and kept going toward Brienne on its back. Brienne reacted quickly, rolling off the horse as it collapsed without even time to scream.
Gregor pulled his greatsword out of the horse's body and walked toward Brienne, broad and bloody as a demon from a battlefield tale.
"Cough... pah. Dear brother, our business is not finished. Now you are going to bully a woman too?
"Just as you bullied our sister, is that it?"
Not far from Brienne, Sandor stood again, his nose broken by Gregor's fist. He turned his head, spat blood, and taunted the Mountain.
"Heh. You want to protect her? But you know you cannot. Otherwise, our delicate little doll of a sister would not have died after I played with her.
"What did Father call her death again?
"Choked on an acorn? Like he called that ugly face of yours a bedsheet catching fire?
"Ha ha ha!"
Gregor stopped when he realized Sandor seemed to be trying to protect Brienne. He spoke of the past with pleasure, then burst into wild laughter.
"This damned world is absurd. Fuck the Seven. The Father's justice? The Mother's mercy? I have never seen either.
"Noble knights? Pah. What worthless knightly rubbish.
"The moment Rhaegar Targaryen knighted a monster like you, good only for killing, I decided I would never accept knighthood.
"Have you laughed enough? Die, you damned monster."
Watching Gregor laugh without restraint, Sandor spoke in a low voice the words he had buried deep for years. When he finished, he charged with fury written across his face.
Brienne had listened silently. From the exchange between the brothers who hated each other to the bone, she seemed to understand why Sandor hated the Mountain so deeply.
Seeing Sandor successfully provoked, Brienne wanted to warn him, but only shook her head in the end. She followed with her sword and attacked Gregor as well.
Against Sandor and Brienne attacking from left and right, the Mountain showed no fear. He met them head-on, his greatsword clashing again and again against their blades.
In the fierce swordfight, Sandor's anger made his attacks reckless, and mistakes came one after another. The first few times, Brienne's pressure from the other side forced Gregor to answer and kept him from following through.
But Brienne's hands gradually went numb from the force of Gregor's blows, and her body began to lag behind her mind. When Sandor made another mistake, Gregor opened a deep cut across his left hand.
Sandor, nearly mad with rage, ignored the blood pouring from his hand. He kept squeezing strength from himself and hacked at Gregor again and again.
"Sandor..."
Brienne was beginning to breathe hard. After the Mountain drove her back with a horizontal sweep, she took the chance to try to stop Sandor's wild assault.
If the rhythm continued, both of them would die under Gregor's sword. But before she could speak, Sandor looked back at her, and the words stopped in her throat.
Sandor and Brienne, driven back by the sweep, pressed in again. Gregor turned and knocked Brienne's sword aside on his right. His left side seemed to open.
Sandor, still attacking like a madman, could not have missed that chance. He rushed in with his sword.
Gregor had offered the opening on purpose. He knew Sandor was easy to anger. Even if Sandor knew it was a trap, he would not let go of a chance to die with him.
"Die!"
When Gregor knocked Brienne's blade aside, he had not used all his strength. The moment Sandor took the bait and closed in, he roared, reversed his greatsword, and stabbed back from beneath his left armpit.
The greatsword did not sink into flesh. Instead, it caught on something.
Gregor looked back and saw Sandor's bloodied face. There was no madness on it now. Expressionless, Sandor had locked Gregor's greatsword in the crossguard of his own blade.
The sound of flesh being cut came at once. Gregor's left foot weakened, and he dropped to one knee. Only then did the terrible pain from his left ankle reach him.
The greatsword beneath his arm suddenly loosened. A moment later, his right ankle flared with pain as well, and Gregor fell onto both knees.
"Ah!"
Perhaps the posture humiliated him. Gregor roared at the sky, withdrew the greatsword from under his arm, and swung at Brienne and Sandor in a frenzy.
But with the tendons at both ankles cut, the Mountain was like a shark stranded on land. He no longer had the same terrible threat.
When Sandor and Brienne cut the tendons in both his wrists from front and rear, the greatsword that had killed countless men fell heavily to the ground.
Now kneeling, both hands hanging useless at his sides, the Mountain was like a tiger without teeth. He had lost all danger.
"Whew. Sandor, that mad look you gave him was convincing. It seemed real."
After the most exhausting battle she had ever fought, Brienne let out a long breath and spoke to him. Sandor was still staring at Gregor.
When she had seen him look back with clear eyes and not a trace of madness, she understood he had been putting on an act for Gregor's benefit.
So when he tilted his head slightly toward Gregor's legs, she immediately understood where the next attack should fall.
"It was not acting. I used to want to die with this monster. But now I have people to protect. Why would I be willing to die with him?"
Looking at the Mountain kneeling before him, Sandor shook his head and answered quietly.
For the first half of his life, killing Gregor had been Sandor's purpose. Now that the goal was about to be fulfilled, he felt a strange emptiness.
"Why are you not doing it? Enjoying the sight of me kneeling before you?
"Ha ha ha! Every bitch you cared about, I killed. I pressed your face into the fire.
"The sound of your screaming was beautiful. Do it!"
Seeing the two of them stand before him without striking, Gregor tried to provoke Sandor into ending him.
"Gregor Clegane, you want death to settle the sins you committed? Do not worry. It will not be that easy.
"Hmm. The only thing on you still capable of harm is your mouth."
Beric had come up behind Sandor and Brienne at some point. When he finished, he stepped forward and kicked Gregor in the chest.
After Gregor fell backward, Beric sat on him and smashed the hilt of his sword into Gregor's mouth.
One by one, the Mountain's teeth were knocked out.
Brienne turned her head away. Around them, while she and Sandor had fought Gregor, the Lannister riders had been destroyed by the remaining allied infantry and the Brotherhood's cavalry.
The victors moved back and forth across the bloody field, collecting spoils and finishing the wounded.
At that moment, a great explosion sounded. A green flame rose at Harrenhal's high gate. It seemed that the mighty castle had fallen at last.
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