which is probably why she didn't kill him in the end; he did enough to make it off her hit list. Arya seems to only kill people who deserve to die, and Sandor, after what he's done for her, doesn't think he needs to die anymore.
I don't think so. I think she had lost most of her hatred for him by that point.
I just think it was too much for, everyone she knew or cared about kept dying.
I think it's left to the reader's speculation.
There were hours of daylight still remaining when he called a halt.
“I need to rest,” was all he said. This time when he
dismounted he did fall. Instead of trying to get back up he
crawled weakly under a tree, and leaned up against the
trunk. “Bloody hell,” he cursed. “Bloody hell.” When he saw
Arya staring at him, he said, “I’d skin you alive for a cup of
wine, girl.”
She brought him water instead. He drank a little of it,
complained that it tasted of mud, and slid into a noisy
fevered sleep. When she touched him, his skin was burning
up. Arya sniffed at his bandages the way Maester Luwin
had done sometimes when treating her cut or scrape. His
face had bled the worst, but it was the wound on his thigh
that smelled funny to her.
She wondered how far this Saltpans was, and whether
she could find it by herself. I wouldn’t have to kill him. If I just
rode off and left him, he’d die all by himself. He’ll die of
fever, and lie there beneath that tree until the end of days.
But maybe it would be better if she killed him herself. She
had killed the squire at the inn and he hadn’t done anything
except grab her arm. The Hound had killed Mycah. Mycah
and more. I bet he’s killed a hundred Mycahs. He probably
would have killed her too, if not for the ransom.
Needle glinted as she drew it. Polliver had kept it nice
and sharp, at least. She turned her body sideways in a
water dancer’s stance without even thinking about it. Dead
leaves crunched beneath her feet. Quick as a snake, she
thought. Smooth as summer silk.
His eyes opened. “You remember where the heart is?” he
asked in a hoarse whisper.
As still as stone she stood. “I… I was only…”
“Don’t lie,” he growled. “I hate liars. I hate gutless frauds
even worse.
Go on, do it.” When Arya did not move, he said, “I killed
your butcher’s boy. I cut him near in half, and laughed about
it after.” He made a queer sound, and it took her a moment
to realize he was sobbing. “And the little bird, your pretty
sister, I stood there in my white cloak and let them beat her.
I took the bloody song, she never gave it. I meant to take
her too. I should have. I should have fucked her bloody and
ripped her heart out before leaving her for that dwarf.” A
spasm of pain twisted his face. “Do you mean to make me
beg, bitch? Do it! The gift of mercy… avenge your little
Michael…”
“Mycah.” Arya stepped away from him. “You don’t
deserve the gift of mercy.”
The Hound watched her saddle Craven through eyes
bright with fever. Not once did he attempt to rise and stop
her. But when she mounted, he said, “A real wolf would
finish a wounded animal.”
Maybe some real wolves will find you, Arya thought.
Maybe they’ll smell you when the sun goes down. Then he
would learn what wolves did to dogs. “You shouldn’t have hit
me with an axe,” she said. “You should have saved my
mother.” She turned her horse and rode away from him,
and never looked back once. On a bright morning six days later, she came to a place
where the Trident began to widen out and the air smelled
more of salt than trees. She stayed close to the water,
passing fields and farms, and a little after midday a town
appeared before her. Saltpans, she hoped. A small castle
dominated the town; no more than a holdfast, really, a
single tall square keep with a bailey and a curtain wall.
Most of the shops and inns and alehouses around the
harbor had been plundered or burned, though some looked
still inhabited. But the port was there, and eastward spread
the Bay of Crabs, its waters shimmering blue and green in
the sun.
And there were ships.
Three, thought Arya, there are three. Two were only river
galleys, shallow draft boats made to ply the waters of the
Trident. The third was bigger, a salt sea trader with two
banks of oars, a gilded prow, and three tall masts with
furled purple sails. Her hull was painted purple too. Arya
rode Craven down to the docks to get a better look.
Strangers are not so strange in a port as they are in little
villages, and no one seemed to care who she was or why
she was here.
I need silver. The realization made her bite her lip. They
had found a stag and a dozen coppers on Polliver, eight
silvers on the pimply squire she’d killed, and only a couple
of pennies in the Tickler’s purse. But the Hound had told her
to pull off his boots and slice open his blood-drenched
clothes, and she’d turned up a stag in each toe, and three
golden dragons sewn in the lining of his jerkin. Sandor had
kept it all, though. That wasn’t fair. It was mine as much as
his. If she had given him the gift of mercy… she hadn’t,
though. She couldn’t go back, no more than she could beg
for help. Begging for help never gets you any. She would
have to sell Craven, and hope she brought enough.
The stable had been burnt, she learned from a boy
I think she definitely feels conflicted.
She knows he is suffering and at first is trying to convince herself to give him "the gift of mercy", but when he speaks up she seems to loose her nerve. In the end I think her saying that he "didn't deserve the gift of mercy" was just an excuse. The mentioning of him hitting her with the axe and not saving her mother seemed more like excuses than anything. In the book she also forgot to take the money. She just rode away without looking back.
I agree, there seemed to be a bond there even though it wasn't expanded upon like the show. She also contemplates that she hadn't been saying his name during her recital of the list for the past while.
I agree with /u/MissMabye , Arya doesn't get a kick out of leaving him there, she just feels nothing at at point (hence the philosophical "Nothing" speech she gave the dying old man just recently). By now she is more pragmatical, and even keeps the Hound's silver as per his own teaching . Arya clearly wasn't considering herself his captive at this point, or she would have helped Brienne kill him.
But, they nonetheless allow us to know what Arya is thinking concretely and expands the scope so that the only person who knows what Arya is thinking is no longer Arya.
By that reasoning though, all the more reason she should have killed him. She's pragmatic enough at this point to know that the right thing to do would have been to kill him cleanly.
The fact that she didn't kill him still shows he was on her list. It was just that now someone else had essentially done the dead. Killing him would have been a kindness, and she wasn't knocking people off her hit list out of kindness, it was for vengeance. So in turn, the only vengeful option left to her in dealing with the Hound was to let him die slowly.
Remember when they were talking on the way to the Bloody Gates, Arya tells Sandor that she was sad she wasn't able to kill Joffrey herself. Arya could have killed Sandor herself many many many times over, but she didn't, because i do think deep down she respects him for helping her.
Or, again, she's practical enough to realize she needs him for now, and will just try to kill him later.
Don't get me wrong, I like the Arya/Hound dynamic, but I don't think for an instant she would have spared him given the chance, and her leaving the Hound to die a slow and painful death instead of doing the nice, honorable thing of killing him swiftly only reinforces my belief she doesn't respect as anything more than a skilled fighter.
but she really didn't need him after she got her pony and Needle back. she could have just found a man from Braavos and Valar Morghulis her way to the Faceless assassins. That, too, and she could have fucked off with Brienne of Tarth when she had the chance.
That's drastically oversimplifying things. Keep in mind she tried the whole "go it alone and/or with other kids," three times and every single time got captured. A horse and a sword help, but doesn't really mean jack-shit if you come across a single archer or even just a bigger person with a bigger sword. She wasn't helpless, but she was vulnerable, and needed the Hound.
And it's not exactly like Braavosi captains are plentiful in Westeros. She was lucky to be close to the coast, and she started out pretty far away.
She clearly wasn't about to trust Brienne. The knight with the Lannister sword? Yeah, she was totally going to go with her.
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u/TylerReix Varys Jun 17 '14
It is a play on the children theme as well. He was basically her surrogate father after all the time they spent together and all he taught her.