The heads had been dipped in tar to slow the rot. Every morning
when Arya went to the well to draw fresh water for Roose
Bolton’s basin, she had to pass beneath them. They faced
outward, so she never saw their faces, but she liked to pretend
that one of them was Joffrey’s. She tried to picture how his
pretty face would look dipped in tar. If I was a crow I could fly
down and peck off his stupid fat pouty lips.
The heads never lacked for attendants. The carrion crows wheeled
about the gatehouse in raucous unkindness and quarreled upon the
ramparts over every eye, screaming and cawing at each other and
taking to the air whenever a sentry passed along the battlements.
Sometimes the maester’s ravens joined the feast as well,
flapping down from the rookery on wide black wings. When the ravens
came the crows would scatter, only to return the moment the larger
birds were gone. Do the ravens remember Maester Tothmure? Arya wondered. Are they
sad for him? When they quork at him, do they wonder why he
doesn’t answer? Perhaps the dead could speak to them in some
secret tongue the living could not hear.
Tothmure had been sent to the axe for dispatching birds to
Casterly Rock and King’s Landing the night Harrenhal had
fallen, Lucan the armorer for making weapons for the Lannisters,
Goodwife Harra for telling Lady Whent’s household to serve
them, the steward for giving Lord Tywin the keys to the treasure
vault. The cook was spared (some said because he’d made the
weasel soup), but stocks were hammered together for pretty Pia and
the other women who’d shared their favors with Lannister
soldiers. Stripped and shaved, they were left in the middle ward
beside the bear pit, free for the use of any man who wanted
them.
Three Frey men-at-arms were using them that morning as Arya went
to the well. She tried not to look, but she could hear the men
laughing. The pail was very heavy once full. She was turning to
bring it back to Kingspyre when Goodwife Amabel seized her arm. The
water went sloshing over the side onto Amabel’s legs.
“You did that on purpose,” the woman screeched.
“What do you want?” Arya squirmed in her grasp.
Amabel had been half-crazed since they’d cut Harra’s
head off.
“See there?” Arnabel pointed across the yard at Pia.
“When this northman falls you’ll be where she
is.”
“Let me go.” She tried to wrench free, but Amabel
only tightened her fingers.
“He will fall too, Harrenhal pulls them all down in the
end. Lord Tywin’s won now, he’ll be marching back with
all his power, and then it will be his turn to punish the disloyal.
And don’t think he won’t know what you did!” The
old woman laughed. “I may have a turn at you myself. Harra
had an old broom, I’ll save it for you. The handle’s
cracked and splintery—”
Arya swung the bucket. The weight of the water made it turn in
her hands, so she didn’t smash Amabel’s head in as she
wanted, but the woman let go of her anyway when the water came out
and drenched her. “Don’t ever touch me,” Arya
shouted, “or I’ll kill you. You get away.”
Sopping, Goodwife Amabel jabbed a thin finger at the flayed man
on the front of Arya’s tunic. “You think you’re
safe with that little bloody man on your teat, but you’re
not! The Lannisters are coming! See what happens when they get
here.”
Three-quarters of the water had splashed out on the ground, so
Arya had to return to the well. If I told Lord Bolton what she
said, her head would be up next to Harra’s before it got
dark, she thought as she drew up the bucket again. She
wouldn’t, though.
Once, when there had been only half as many heads, Gendry had
caught Arya looking at them. “Admiring your work?” he
asked.
He was angry because he’d liked Lucan, she knew, but it
still wasn’t fair. “It’s Steelshanks
Walton’s work,” she said defensively. “And the
Mummers, and Lord Bolton.”
“And who gave us all them? You and your weasel
soup.”
Arya punched his arm. “It was just hot broth. You hated
Ser Amory too.”
“I hate this lot worse. Ser Amory was fighting for his
lord, but the Mummers are sellswords and turncloaks. Half of them
can’t even speak the Common Tongue. Septon Utt likes little
boys, Qyburn does black magic, and your friend Biter eats
people.”
The worst thing was, she couldn’t even say he was wrong.
The Brave Companions did most of the foraging for Harrenhal, and
Roose Bolton had given them the task of rooting out Lannisters.
Vargo Hoat had divided them into four bands, to visit as many
villages as possible. He led the largest group himself, and gave
the others to his most trusted captains. She had heard Rorge
laughing over Lord Vargo’s way of finding traitors. All he
did was return to places he had visited before under Lord
Tywin’s banner and seize those who had helped him. Many had
been bought with Lannister silver, so the Mummers often returned
with bags of coin as well as baskets of heads. “A
riddle!” Shagwell would shout gleefully. “If Lord
Bolton’s goat eats the men who fed Lord Lannister’s
goat, how many goats are there?”
“One,” Arya said when he asked her.
“Now there’s a weasel clever as a goat!” the
fool tittered.
Rorge and Biter were as bad as the others. Whenever Lord Bolton
took a meal with the garrison, Arya would see them there among the
rest. Biter gave off a stench like bad cheese, so the Brave
Companions made him sit down near the foot of the table where he
could grunt and hiss to himself and tear his meat apart with
fingers and teeth. He would sniff at Arya when she passed, but it
was Rorge who scared her most. He sat up near Faithful Ursywck, but
she could feel his eyes crawling over her as she went about her
duties.
Sometimes she wished she had gone off across the narrow sea with
Jaqen H’ghar. She still had the stupid coin he’d given
her, a piece of iron no larger than a penny and rusted along the
rim. One side had writing on it, queer words she could not read.
The other showed a man’s head, but so worn that all his
features had rubbed off. He said it was of great value, but that
was probably a lie too, like his name and even his face. That made
her so angry that she threw the coin away, but after an hour she
got to feeling bad and went and found it again, even though it
wasn’t worth anything.
She was thinking about the coin as she crossed the Flowstone
Yard, struggling with the weight of the water in her pail.
“Nan,” a voice called out. “Put down that pail
and come help me.”
Elmar Frey was no older than she was, and short for his age
besides. He had been rolling a barrel of sand across the uneven
stone, and was red-faced from exertion. Arya went to help him.
Together they pushed the barrel all the way to the wall and back
again, then stood it upright.
She could hear the sand shifting around inside as Elmar pried
open the lid and pulled out a chainmail hauberk. “Do you
think it’s clean enough?” As Roose Bolton’s
squire, it was his task to keep his mail shiny bright.
“You need to shake out the sand. There’s still spots
of rust. See?” She pointed. “You’d best do it
again.”
“You do it.” Elmar could be friendly when he needed
help, but afterward he would always remember that he was a squire
and she was only a serving girl, He liked to boast how he was the
son of the Lord of the Crossing, not a nephew or a bastard or a
grandson but a trueborn son, and on account of that he was going to
marry a princess.
Arya didn’t care about his precious princess, and
didn’t like him giving her commands. “I have to bring
m’lord water for his basin. He’s in his bedchamber
being leeched. Not the regular black leeches but the big pale
ones.”
Elmar’s eyes got as big as boiled eggs. Leeches terrified
him, especially the big pale ones that looked like jelly until they
filled up with blood. “I forgot, you’re too skinny to
push such a heavy barrel.”
“I forgot, you’re stupid.” Arya picked up the
pail. “Maybe you should get leeched too. There’s
leeches in the Neck as big as pigs.” She left him there with
his barrel.
The lord’s bedchamber was crowded when she entered. Qyburn
was in attendance, and dour Walton in his mail shirt and greaves,
plus a dozen Freys, all brothers, half brothers, and cousins. Roose
Bolton lay abed, naked. Leeches clung to the inside of his arms and
legs and dotted his pallid chest, long translucent things that
turned a glistening pink as they fed. Bolton paid them no more mind
than he did Arya.
“We must not allow Lord Tywin to trap us here at Harrenhal,”
Ser Aenys Frey was saying as Arya filled the washbasin. A grey
stooped giant of a man with watery red eyes and huge gnarled hands,
Ser Aenys had brought fifteen hundred Frey swords south to
Harrenhal, yet it often seemed as if he were helpless to command
even his own brothers. “The castle is so large it requires an
army to hold it, and once surrounded we cannot feed an army. Nor
can we hope to lay in sufficient supplies. The country is ash, the
villages given over to wolves, the harvest burnt or stolen. Autumn
is on us, yet there is no food in store and none being planted. We
live on forage, and if the Lannisters deny that to us, we will be
down to rats and shoe leather in a moon’s turn.”
“I do not mean to be besieged here.” Roose
Bolton’s voice was so soft that men had to strain to hear it,
so his chambers were always strangely hushed.
“What, then?” demanded Ser Jared Frey, who was lean,
balding, and pockmarked. “Is Edmure Tully so drunk on his
victory that he thinks to give Lord Tywin battle in the open
field?” If he does he’ll beat them, Arya thought. He’ll beat
them as he did on the Red Fork, you’ll see. Unnoticed, she
went to stand by Qyburn.
“Lord Tywin is many leagues from here,” Bolton said
calmly. “He has many matters yet to settle at King’s
Landing. He will not march on Harrenhal for some time.”
Ser Aenys shook his head stubbornly. “You do not know the
Lannisters as we do, my lord. King Stannis thought that Lord Tywin
was a thousand leagues away as well, and it undid him.”
The pale man in the bed smiled faintly as the leeches nursed of
his blood. “I am not a man to be undone, ser.”
“Even if Riverrun marshals all its strength and the Young
Wolf wins back from the west, how can we hope to match the numbers
Lord Tywin can send against us? When he comes, he will come with
far more power than he commanded on the Green Fork. Highgarden has
joined itself to Joffrey’s cause, I remind you!”
“I had not forgotten.”
“I have been Lord Tywin’s captive once,” said
Ser Hosteen, a husky man with a square face who was said to be the
strongest of the Freys. “I have no wish to enjoy Lannister
hospitality again.”
Ser Harys Haigh, who was a Frey on his mother’s side,
nodded vigorously. “If Lord Tywin could defeat a seasoned man
like Stannis Baratheon, what chance will our boy king have against
him?” He looked round to his brothers and cousins for
support, and several of them muttered agreement.
“Someone must have the courage to say it,” Ser
Hosteen said. “The war is lost. King Robb must be made to see
that.”
Roose Bolton studied him with pale eyes. “His Grace has
defeated the Lannisters every time he has faced them in
battle.”
“He has lost the north,” insisted Hosteen Frey.
“He has lost Winterfell! His brothers are
dead . . . ”
For a moment Arya forgot to breathe. Dead? Bran and Rickon,
dead? What does he mean? What does he mean about Winterfell,
Joffrey could never take Winterfell, never, Robb would never let
him. Then she remembered that Robb was not at Winterfell. He was
away in the west, and Bran was crippled, and Rickon only four. It
took all her strength to remain still and silent, the way Syrio
Forel had taught her, to stand there like a stick of furniture. She
felt tears gathering in her eyes, and willed them away. It’s
not true, it can’t be true, it’s just some Lannister
lie.
“Had Stannis won, all might have been different,”
Ronel Rivers said wistfully. He was one of Lord Walder’s
bastards.
“Stannis lost,” Ser Hosteen said bluntly.
“Wishing it were otherwise will not make it so. King Robb
must make his peace with the Lannisters. He must put off his crown
and bend the knee, little as he may like it.”
“And who will tell him so?” Roose Bolton smiled.
“It is a fine thing to have so many valiant brothers in such
troubled times. I shall think on all you’ve said.”
His smile was dismissal. The Freys made their courtesies and
shuffled out, leaving only Qyburn, Steelshanks Walton, and Arya.
Lord Bolton beckoned her closer. “I am bled sufficiently.
Nan, you may remove the leeches.”
“At once, my lord.” It was best never to make Roose
Bolton ask twice. Arya wanted to ask him what Ser Hosteen had meant
about Winterfell, but she dared not. I’ll ask Elmar, she
thought. Elmar will tell me. The leeches wriggled slowly between
her fingers as she plucked them carefully from the lord’s
body, their pale bodies moist to the touch and distended with
blood. They’re only leeches, she reminded herself. If I
closed my hand, they’d squish between my fingers.
“There is a letter from your lady wife.” Qyburn
pulled a roll of parchment from his sleeve. Though he wore
maester’s robes, there was no chain about his neck; it was
whispered that he had lost it for dabbling in necromancy.
“You may read it,” Bolton said.
The Lady Walda wrote from the Twins almost every day, but all
the letters were the same. “I pray for you morn, noon, and
night, my sweet lord,” she wrote, “and count the days
until you share my bed again. Return to me soon, and I will give
you many trueborn sons to take the place of your dear Domeric and
rule the Dreadfort after you.” Arya pictured a plump pink
baby in a cradle, covered with plump pink leeches.
She brought Lord Bolton a damp washcloth to wipe down his soft
hairless body. “I will send a letter of my own,” he
told the onetime maester.
“To the Lady Walda?”
“To Ser Helman Tallhart.”
A rider from Ser Helman had come two days past. Tallhart men had
taken the castle of the Darrys, accepting the surrender of its
Lannister garrison after a brief siege.
“Tell him to put the captives to the sword and the castle
to the torch, by command of the king. Then he is to join forces
with Robett Glover and strike east toward Duskendale. Those are
rich lands, and hardly touched by the fighting. It is time they had
a taste. Glover has lost a castle, and Tallhart a son. Let them
take their vengeance on Duskendale.”
“I shall prepare the message for your seal, my
lord.”
Arya was glad to hear that the castle of the Darrys would be
burned. That was where they’d brought her when she’d
been caught after her fight with Joffrey, and where the queen had
made her father kill Sansa’s wolf. It deserves to burn. She
wished that Robett Glover and Ser Helman Tallhart would come back
to Harrenhal, though; they had marched too quickly, before
she’d been able to decide whether to trust them with her
secret.
“I will hunt today,” Roose Bolton announced as
Qyburn helped him into a quilted jerkin.
“Is it safe, my lord?” Qyburn asked. “Only
three days past, Septon Utt’s men were attacked by wolves.
They came right into his camp, not five yards from the fire, and
killed two horses.”
“It is wolves I mean to hunt. I can scarcely sleep at
night for the howling.” Bolton buckled on his belt, adjusting
the hang of sword and dagger. “It’s said that
direwolves once roamed the north in great packs of a hundred or
more, and feared neither man nor mammoth, but that was long ago and
in another land. It is queer to see the common wolves of the south
so bold.”
“Terrible times breed terrible things, my lord.”
Bolton showed his teeth in something that might have been a
smile. “Are these times so terrible, Maester?”
“Summer is gone and there are four kings in the
realm.”
“One king may be terrible, but four?” He shrugged.
“Nan, my fur cloak.” She brought it to him. “My
chambers will be clean and orderly upon my return,” he told
her as she fastened it. “And tend to Lady Walda’s
letter.”
“As you say, my lord.”
The lord and maester swept from the room, giving her not so much
as a backward glance. When they were gone, Arya took the letter and
carried it to the hearth, stirring the logs with a poker to wake
the flames anew. She watched the parchment twist, blacken, and
flare up. If the Lannisters hurt Bran and Rickon, Robb will kill
them every one. He’ll never bend the knee, never, never,
never. He’s not afraid of any of them. Curls of ash floated
up the chimney. Arya squatted beside the fire, watching them rise
through a veil of hot tears. If Winterfell is truly gone, is this
my home now? Am I still Arya, or only Nan the serving girl, for
forever and forever and forever?
She spent the next few hours tending to the lord’s
chambers. She swept out the old rushes and scattered fresh
sweet-smelling ones, laid a fresh fire in the hearth, changed the
linens and fluffed the featherbed, emptied the chamber pots down
the privy shaft and scrubbed them out, carried an armload of soiled
clothing to the washerwomen, and brought up a bowl of crisp autumn
pears from the kitchen. When she was done with the bedchamber, she
went down half a flight of stairs to do the same in the great
solar, a spare drafty room as large as the halls of many a smaller
castle. The candles were down to stubs, so Arya changed them out.
Under the windows was a huge oaken table where the lord wrote his
letters. She stacked the books, changed the candles, put the quills
and inks and sealing wax in order.
A large ragged sheepskin was tossed across the papers. Arya had
started to roll it up when the colors caught her eye: the blue of
lakes and rivers, the red dots where castles and cities
could be found, the green of woods. She spread it out instead. the
lands of the trident, said the ornate script beneath the map. The
drawing showed everything from the Neck to the Blackwater Rush.
There’s Harrenhal at the top of the big lake, she realized,
but where’s Riverrun? Then she saw. It’s not so
far . . .
The afternoon was still young by the time she was done, so Arya
took herself off to the godswood. Her duties were lighter as Lord
Bolton’s cupbearer than they had been under Weese or even
Pinkeye, though they required dressing like a page and washing more
than she liked. The hunt would not return for hours, so she had a
little time for her needlework.
She slashed at birch leaves till the splintery point of the
broken broomstick was green and sticky. “Ser Gregor,”
she breathed. “Dunsen, Polliver, Raff the Sweetling.”
She spun and leapt and balanced on the balls of her feet, darting
this way and that, knocking pinecones flying. “The
Tickler,” she called out one time, “the Hound,”
the next. “Ser Ilyn, Ser Meryn, Queen Cersei.” The bole
of an oak loomed before her, and she lunged to drive her point
through it, grunting “Joffrey, Joffrey, Joffrey.” Her
arms and legs were dappled by sunlight and the shadows of leaves. A
sheen of sweat covered her skin by the time she paused. The heel of
her right foot was bloody where she’d skinned it, so she
stood one-legged before the heart tree and raised her sword in
salute. “Valar morghulis,” she told the old gods of
the north. She liked how the words sounded when she said them.
As Arya crossed the yard to the bathhouse, she spied a raven
circling down toward the rookery, and wondered where it had come
from and what message it carried. Might be it’s from Robb,
come to say it wasn’t true about Bran and Rickon. She chewed
on her lip, hoping. If I had wings I could fly back to Winterfell
and see for myself. And if it was true, I’d just fly away,
fly up past the moon and the shining stars, and see all the things
in Old Nan’s stories, dragons and sea monsters and the Titan
of Braavos, and maybe I wouldn’t ever fly back unless I
wanted to.
The hunting party returned near evenfall with nine dead wolves.
Seven were adults, big grey-brown beasts, savage and powerful,
their mouths drawn back over long yellow teeth by their dying
snarls. But the other two had only been pups. Lord Bolton gave
orders for the skins to be sewn into a blanket for his bed.
“Cubs still have that soft fur, my lord,” one of his
men pointed out. “Make you a nice warm pair of
gloves.”
Bolton glanced up at the banners waving above the gatehouse
towers. “As the Starks are wont to remind us, winter is
coming. Have it done.” When he saw Arya looking on, he said,
“Nan, I’ll want a flagon of hot spice wine, I took a
chill in the woods. See that it doesn’t get cold. I’m
of a mind to sup alone. Barley bread, butter, and boar.”
“At once, my lord.” That was always the best thing
to say.
Hot Pie was making oatcakes when she entered the kitchen. Three
other cooks were boning fish, while a spit boy turned a boar over
the flames. “My lord wants his supper, and hot spice wine to
wash it down,” Arya announced, “and he doesn’t
want it cold.” One of the cooks washed his hands, took out a
kettle, and filled it with a heavy, sweet red. Hot Pie was told to
crumble in the spices as the wine heated. Arya went to help.
“I can do it,” he said sullenly. “I
don’t need you to show me how to spice wine.” He hates me too, or else he’s scared of me. She backed
away, more sad than angry. When the food was ready, the cooks
covered it with a silver cover and wrapped the flagon in a thick
towel to keep it warm. Dusk was settling outside. On the walls the
crows muttered round the heads like courtiers round a king. One of
the guards held the door to Kingspyre. “Hope that’s not
weasel soup,” he jested.
Roose Bolton was seated by the hearth reading from a thick
leatherbound book when she entered. “Light some
candles,” he commanded her as he turned a page. “It
grows gloomy in here.”
She placed the food at his elbow and did as he bid her, filling
the room with flickering light and the scent of cloves. Bolton
turned a few more pages with his finger, then closed the book and
placed it carefully in the fire. He watched the flames consume it,
pale eyes shining with reflected light. The old dry leather went up
with a whoosh, and the yellow pages stirred as they burned, as if
some ghost were reading them. “I will have no further need of
you tonight,” he said, never looking at her.
She should have gone, silent as a mouse, but something had hold
of her. “My lord,” she asked, “will you take me
with you when you leave Harrenhal?”
He turned to stare at her, and from the look in his eyes it was
as if his supper had just spoken to him. “Did I give you
leave to question me, Nan?”
“No, my lord.” She lowered her eyes.
“You should not have spoken, then. Should you?”
“No. My lord.”
For a moment he looked amused. “I will answer you, just
this once. I mean to give Harrenhal to Lord Vargo when I return to
the north. You will remain here, with him.”
“But I don’t—” she started.
He cut her off. “I am not in the habit of being questioned
by servants, Nan. Must I have your tongue out?”
He would do it as easily as another man might cuff a dog, she
knew. “No, my lord.”
“Then I’ll hear no more from you?”
“No, my lord.”
“Go, then. I shall forget this insolence.”
Arya went, but not to her bed. When she stepped out into the
darkness of the yard, the guard on the door nodded at her and said,
“Storm coming. Smell the air?” The wind was gusting,
flames swirling off the torches mounted atop the walls beside the
rows of heads. On her way to the godswood, she passed the Wailing
Tower where once she had lived in fear of Weese. The Freys had
taken it for their own since Harrenhal’s fall. She could hear
angry voices coming from a window, many men talking and arguing all
at once. Elmar was sitting on the steps outside, alone.
“What’s wrong?” Arya asked him when she saw
the tears shining on his cheeks.
“My princess,” he sobbed. “We’ve been
dishonored, Aenys says. There was a bird from the Twins. My lord
father says I’ll need to marry someone else, or be a
septon.” A stupid princess, she thought, that’s nothing to cry
over. “My brothers might be dead,” she confided.
Elmar gave her a scornful look. “No one cares about a
serving girl’s brothers.”
It was hard not to hit him when he said that. “I hope your
princess dies “ she said, and ran off before he could grab
her. In the godswood she found her broomstick sword where she had
left it, and carried it to the heart tree. There she knelt. Red
leaves rustled. Red eyes peered inside her. The eyes of the gods.
“Tell me what to do, you gods,” she prayed.
For a long moment there was no sound but the wind and the water
and the creak of leaf and limb. And then, far far off, beyond the
godswood and the haunted towers and the immense stone walls of
Harrenhal, from somewhere out in the world, came the long lonely
howl of a wolf. Gooseprickles rose on Arya’s skin, and for an
instant she felt dizzy. Then, so faintly, it seemed as if she heard
her father’s voice. “When the snows fall and the white
winds blow, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives,” he
said.
“But there is no pack,” she whispered to the
weirwood. Bran and Rickon were dead, the Lannisters had Sansa, Jon had gone to the
Wall. “I’m not even me now, I’m Nan.”
“You are Arya of Winterfell, daughter of the north. You
told me you could be strong. You have the wolf blood in
you.”
“The wolf blood.” Arya remembered now.
“I’ll be as strong as Robb. I said I would.” She
took a deep breath, then lifted the broomstick in both hands and
brought it down across her knee. It broke with a loud crack, and
she threw the pieces aside. I am a direwolf, and done with wooden
teeth.
That night she lay in her narrow bed upon the scratchy straw,
listening to the voices of the living and the dead whisper and
argue as she waited for the moon to rise. They were the only voices
she trusted anymore. She could hear the sound of her own breath,
and the wolves as well, a great pack of them now. They are closer
than the one I heard in the godswood, she thought. They are calling
to me.
Finally she slipped from under the blanket, wriggled into a
tunic, and padded barefoot down the stairs. Roose Bolton was a
cautious man, and the entrance to Kingspyre was guarded day and
night, so she had to slip out of a narrow cellar window. The yard
was still, the great castle lost in haunted dreams. Above, the wind
keened through the Wailing Tower.
At the forge she found the fires extinguished and the doors
closed and barred. She crept in a window, as she had once before.
Gendry shared a mattress with two other apprentice smiths. She
crouched in the loft for a long time before her eyes adjusted
enough for her to be sure that he was the one on the end. Then she
put a hand over his mouth and pinched him. His eyes opened. He
could not have been very deeply asleep. “Please,” she
whispered. She took her hand off his mouth and pointed.
For a moment she did not think he understood, but then he slid
out from under the blankets. Naked, he padded across the room,
shrugged into a loose roughspun tunic, and climbed down from the
loft after her. The other sleepers did not stir. “What do you
want now?” Gendry said in a low angry voice.
“A sword.”
“Blackthumb keeps all the blades locked up, I told you
that a hundred times. Is this for Lord Leech?”
“For me. Break the lock with your hammer.”
“They’ll break my hand,” he grumbled.
“Or worse.”
“Not if you run off with me.”
“Run, and they’ll catch you and kill you.”
“They’ll do you worse. Lord Bolton is giving
Harrenhal to the Bloody Mummers, he told me so.”
Gendry pushed black hair out of his eyes. “So?”
She looked right at him, fearless. “So when Vargo
Hoat’s the lord, he’s going to cut off the feet of all
the servants to keep them from running away. The smiths
too.”
“That’s only a story,” he said scornfully.
“No, it’s true, I heard Lord Vargo say so,”
she lied. “He’s going to cut one foot off everyone. The
left one. Go to the kitchens and wake Hot Pie, he’ll do what
you say. We’ll need bread or oatcakes or something. You get
the swords and I’ll do the horses. We’ll meet near the
postern in the east wall, behind the Tower of Ghosts. No one ever
comes there.”
“I know that gate. It’s guarded, same as the
rest.”
“So? You won’t forget the swords?”
“I never said I’d come.”
“No. But if you do, you won’t forget the
swords?”
He frowned. “No,” he said at last. “I guess I
won’t.”
Arya reentered Kingspyre the same way she had left it, and stole
up the winding steps listening for footfalls. In her cell, she
stripped to the skin and dressed herself carefully, in two layers
of smallclothes, warm stockings, and her cleanest tunic. It was
Lord Bolton’s livery. On the breast was sewn his sigil, the
flayed man of the Dreadfort. She tied her shoes, threw a wool cloak
over her skinny shoulders, and knotted it under her throat. Quiet
as a shadow, she moved back down the stairs. Outside the
lord’s solar she paused to listen at the door, easing it open
slowly when she heard only silence.
The sheepskin map was on the table, beside the remains of Lord
Bolton’s supper. She rolled it up tight and thrust it through
her belt. He’d left his dagger on the table as well, so she
took that too, just in case Gendry lost his courage.
A horse neighed softly as she slipped into the darkened stables.
The grooms were all asleep. She prodded one with her toe until he
sat up groggily and said, “Eh? Whas?”
“Lord Bolton requires three horses saddled and
bridled.”
The boy got to his feet, pushing straw from his hair.
“Wha, at this hour? Horses, you say?” He blinked at the
sigil on her tunic. “Whas he want horses for, in the
dark?”
“Lord Bolton is not in the habit of being questioned by
servants.” She crossed her arms.
The stableboy was still looking at the flayed man. He knew what
it meant. “Three, you say?”
“One two three. Hunting horses. Fast and surefoot.”
Arya helped him with the bridles and saddles, so he would not need
to wake any of the others. She hoped they would not hurt him
afterward, but she knew they probably would.
Leading the horses across the castle was the worst part. She
stayed in the shadow of the curtain wall whenever she could, so the
sentries walking their rounds on the ramparts above would have
needed to look almost straight down to see her. And if they do,
what of it? I’m my lord’s own cupbearer. It was a chill
dank autumn night. Clouds were blowing in from the west, hiding the
stars, and the Wailing Tower screamed mournfully at every gust of
wind. It smells like rain. Arya did not know whether that would be
good or bad for their escape.
No one saw her, and she saw no one, only a grey and white cat
creeping along atop the godswood wall. It stopped and spit at her,
waking memories of the Red Keep and her father and Syrio Forel.
“I could catch you if I wanted,” she called to it
softly, “but I have to go, cat.” The cat hissed again
and ran off.
The Tower of Ghosts was the most ruinous of Harrenhal’s
five immense towers. It stood dark and desolate behind the remains
of a collapsed sept where only rats had come to pray for near three
hundred years. It was there she waited to see if Gendry and Hot Pie
would come. It seemed as though she waited a long time. The horses
nibbled at the weeds that grew up between the broken stones while
the clouds swallowed the last of the stars. Arya took out the
dagger and sharpened it to keep her hands busy. Long smooth
strokes, the way Syrio had taught her. The sound calmed her.
She heard them coming long before she saw them. Hot Pie was
breathing heavily, and once he stumbled in the dark, barked his
shin, and cursed loud enough to wake half of Harrenhal. Gendry was
quieter, but the swords he was carrying rang together as he moved.
“Here I am.” She stood. “Be quiet or
they’ll hear you.”
The boys picked their way toward her over tumbled stones. Gendry
was wearing oiled chainmail under his cloak, she saw, and he had
his blacksmith’s hammer slung across his back. Hot
Pie’s red round face peered out from under a hood. He had a
sack of bread dangling from his right hand and a big wheel of
cheese under his left arm. “There’s a guard on that
postern,” said Gendry quietly. “I told you there would
be.”
“You stay here with the horses,” said Arya.
“I’ll get rid of him. Come quick when I
call.”
Gendry nodded. Hot Pie said, “Hoot like an owl when you
want us to come.”
“I’m not an owl,” said Arya. “I’m
a wolf. I’ll howl.”
Alone, she slid through the shadow of the Tower of Ghosts. She
walked fast, to keep ahead of her fear, and it felt as though Syrio
Forel walked beside her, and Yoren, and Jaqen H’ghar, and Jon
Snow. She had not taken the sword Gendry had brought her, not yet.
For this the dagger would be better. It was good and sharp. This
postern was the least of Harrenhal’s gates, a narrow door of
stout oak studded with iron nails, set in an angle of the wall
beneath a defensive tower. Only one man was set to guard it, but
she knew there would be sentries up in that tower as well, and
others nearby walking the walls. Whatever happened, she must be
quiet as a shadow. He must not call out. A few scattered raindrops
had begun to fall. She felt one land on her brow and run slowly
down her nose.
She made no effort to hide, but approached the guard openly, as
if Lord Bolton himself had sent her. He watched her come, curious
as to what might bring a page here at this black hour. When she got
closer, she saw that he was a northman, very tall and thin, huddled
in a ragged fur cloak. That was bad. She might have been able to
trick a Frey or one of the Brave Companions, but the Dreadfort men
had served Roose Bolton their whole life, and they knew him better
than she did. If I tell him I am Arya Stark and command him to
stand aside . . . No, she dare not. He was a
northman, but not a Winterfell man. He belonged to Roose
Bolton.
When she reached him she pushed back her cloak so he would see
the flayed man on her breast. “Lord Bolton sent
me.”
“At this hour? Why for?”
She could see the gleam of steel under the fur, and she did not
know if she was strong enough to drive the point of the dagger
through chainmail. His throat, it must be his throat, but
he’s too tall, I’ll never reach it. For a moment she
did not know what to say. For a moment she was a little girl again,
and scared, and the rain on her face felt like tears.
“He told me to give all his guards a silver piece, for
their good service.” The words seemed to come out of
nowhere.
“Silver, you say?” He did not believe her, but he
wanted to; silver was silver, after all. “Give it over,
then.”
Her fingers dug down beneath her tunic and came out clutching
the coin Jaqen had given her. In the dark the iron could pass for
tarnished silver. She held it out . . . and let
it slip through her fingers.
Cursing her softly, the man went to a knee to grope for the coin
in the dirt and there was his neck right in front of her. Arya slid
her dagger out and drew it across his throat, as smooth as summer
silk. His blood covered her hands in a hot gush and he tried to
shout but there was blood in his mouth as well.
“Valar morghulis,” she whispered as he died.
When he stopped moving, she picked up the coin. Outside the
walls of Harrenhal, a wolf howled long and loud. She lifted the
bar, set it aside, and pulled open the heavy oak door. By the time
Hot Pie and Gendry came up with the horses, the rain was falling
hard. “You killed him!” Hot Pie gasped.
“What did you think I would do?” Her fingers were
sticky with blood, and the smell was making her mare skittish.
It’s no matter, she thought, swinging up into the saddle. The
rain will wash them clean again.
The heads had been dipped in tar to slow the rot. Every morning
when Arya went to the well to draw fresh water for Roose
Bolton’s basin, she had to pass beneath them. They faced
outward, so she never saw their faces, but she liked to pretend
that one of them was Joffrey’s. She tried to picture how his
pretty face would look dipped in tar. If I was a crow I could fly
down and peck off his stupid fat pouty lips.
The heads never lacked for attendants. The carrion crows wheeled
about the gatehouse in raucous unkindness and quarreled upon the
ramparts over every eye, screaming and cawing at each other and
taking to the air whenever a sentry passed along the battlements.
Sometimes the maester’s ravens joined the feast as well,
flapping down from the rookery on wide black wings. When the ravens
came the crows would scatter, only to return the moment the larger
birds were gone. Do the ravens remember Maester Tothmure? Arya wondered. Are they
sad for him? When they quork at him, do they wonder why he
doesn’t answer? Perhaps the dead could speak to them in some
secret tongue the living could not hear.
Tothmure had been sent to the axe for dispatching birds to
Casterly Rock and King’s Landing the night Harrenhal had
fallen, Lucan the armorer for making weapons for the Lannisters,
Goodwife Harra for telling Lady Whent’s household to serve
them, the steward for giving Lord Tywin the keys to the treasure
vault. The cook was spared (some said because he’d made the
weasel soup), but stocks were hammered together for pretty Pia and
the other women who’d shared their favors with Lannister
soldiers. Stripped and shaved, they were left in the middle ward
beside the bear pit, free for the use of any man who wanted
them.
Three Frey men-at-arms were using them that morning as Arya went
to the well. She tried not to look, but she could hear the men
laughing. The pail was very heavy once full. She was turning to
bring it back to Kingspyre when Goodwife Amabel seized her arm. The
water went sloshing over the side onto Amabel’s legs.
“You did that on purpose,” the woman screeched.
“What do you want?” Arya squirmed in her grasp.
Amabel had been half-crazed since they’d cut Harra’s
head off.
“See there?” Arnabel pointed across the yard at Pia.
“When this northman falls you’ll be where she
is.”
“Let me go.” She tried to wrench free, but Amabel
only tightened her fingers.
“He will fall too, Harrenhal pulls them all down in the
end. Lord Tywin’s won now, he’ll be marching back with
all his power, and then it will be his turn to punish the disloyal.
And don’t think he won’t know what you did!” The
old woman laughed. “I may have a turn at you myself. Harra
had an old broom, I’ll save it for you. The handle’s
cracked and splintery—”
Arya swung the bucket. The weight of the water made it turn in
her hands, so she didn’t smash Amabel’s head in as she
wanted, but the woman let go of her anyway when the water came out
and drenched her. “Don’t ever touch me,” Arya
shouted, “or I’ll kill you. You get away.”
Sopping, Goodwife Amabel jabbed a thin finger at the flayed man
on the front of Arya’s tunic. “You think you’re
safe with that little bloody man on your teat, but you’re
not! The Lannisters are coming! See what happens when they get
here.”
Three-quarters of the water had splashed out on the ground, so
Arya had to return to the well. If I told Lord Bolton what she
said, her head would be up next to Harra’s before it got
dark, she thought as she drew up the bucket again. She
wouldn’t, though.
Once, when there had been only half as many heads, Gendry had
caught Arya looking at them. “Admiring your work?” he
asked.
He was angry because he’d liked Lucan, she knew, but it
still wasn’t fair. “It’s Steelshanks
Walton’s work,” she said defensively. “And the
Mummers, and Lord Bolton.”
“And who gave us all them? You and your weasel
soup.”
Arya punched his arm. “It was just hot broth. You hated
Ser Amory too.”
“I hate this lot worse. Ser Amory was fighting for his
lord, but the Mummers are sellswords and turncloaks. Half of them
can’t even speak the Common Tongue. Septon Utt likes little
boys, Qyburn does black magic, and your friend Biter eats
people.”
The worst thing was, she couldn’t even say he was wrong.
The Brave Companions did most of the foraging for Harrenhal, and
Roose Bolton had given them the task of rooting out Lannisters.
Vargo Hoat had divided them into four bands, to visit as many
villages as possible. He led the largest group himself, and gave
the others to his most trusted captains. She had heard Rorge
laughing over Lord Vargo’s way of finding traitors. All he
did was return to places he had visited before under Lord
Tywin’s banner and seize those who had helped him. Many had
been bought with Lannister silver, so the Mummers often returned
with bags of coin as well as baskets of heads. “A
riddle!” Shagwell would shout gleefully. “If Lord
Bolton’s goat eats the men who fed Lord Lannister’s
goat, how many goats are there?”
“One,” Arya said when he asked her.
“Now there’s a weasel clever as a goat!” the
fool tittered.
Rorge and Biter were as bad as the others. Whenever Lord Bolton
took a meal with the garrison, Arya would see them there among the
rest. Biter gave off a stench like bad cheese, so the Brave
Companions made him sit down near the foot of the table where he
could grunt and hiss to himself and tear his meat apart with
fingers and teeth. He would sniff at Arya when she passed, but it
was Rorge who scared her most. He sat up near Faithful Ursywck, but
she could feel his eyes crawling over her as she went about her
duties.
Sometimes she wished she had gone off across the narrow sea with
Jaqen H’ghar. She still had the stupid coin he’d given
her, a piece of iron no larger than a penny and rusted along the
rim. One side had writing on it, queer words she could not read.
The other showed a man’s head, but so worn that all his
features had rubbed off. He said it was of great value, but that
was probably a lie too, like his name and even his face. That made
her so angry that she threw the coin away, but after an hour she
got to feeling bad and went and found it again, even though it
wasn’t worth anything.
She was thinking about the coin as she crossed the Flowstone
Yard, struggling with the weight of the water in her pail.
“Nan,” a voice called out. “Put down that pail
and come help me.”
Elmar Frey was no older than she was, and short for his age
besides. He had been rolling a barrel of sand across the uneven
stone, and was red-faced from exertion. Arya went to help him.
Together they pushed the barrel all the way to the wall and back
again, then stood it upright.
She could hear the sand shifting around inside as Elmar pried
open the lid and pulled out a chainmail hauberk. “Do you
think it’s clean enough?” As Roose Bolton’s
squire, it was his task to keep his mail shiny bright.
“You need to shake out the sand. There’s still spots
of rust. See?” She pointed. “You’d best do it
again.”
“You do it.” Elmar could be friendly when he needed
help, but afterward he would always remember that he was a squire
and she was only a serving girl, He liked to boast how he was the
son of the Lord of the Crossing, not a nephew or a bastard or a
grandson but a trueborn son, and on account of that he was going to
marry a princess.
Arya didn’t care about his precious princess, and
didn’t like him giving her commands. “I have to bring
m’lord water for his basin. He’s in his bedchamber
being leeched. Not the regular black leeches but the big pale
ones.”
Elmar’s eyes got as big as boiled eggs. Leeches terrified
him, especially the big pale ones that looked like jelly until they
filled up with blood. “I forgot, you’re too skinny to
push such a heavy barrel.”
“I forgot, you’re stupid.” Arya picked up the
pail. “Maybe you should get leeched too. There’s
leeches in the Neck as big as pigs.” She left him there with
his barrel.
The lord’s bedchamber was crowded when she entered. Qyburn
was in attendance, and dour Walton in his mail shirt and greaves,
plus a dozen Freys, all brothers, half brothers, and cousins. Roose
Bolton lay abed, naked. Leeches clung to the inside of his arms and
legs and dotted his pallid chest, long translucent things that
turned a glistening pink as they fed. Bolton paid them no more mind
than he did Arya.
“We must not allow Lord Tywin to trap us here at Harrenhal,”
Ser Aenys Frey was saying as Arya filled the washbasin. A grey
stooped giant of a man with watery red eyes and huge gnarled hands,
Ser Aenys had brought fifteen hundred Frey swords south to
Harrenhal, yet it often seemed as if he were helpless to command
even his own brothers. “The castle is so large it requires an
army to hold it, and once surrounded we cannot feed an army. Nor
can we hope to lay in sufficient supplies. The country is ash, the
villages given over to wolves, the harvest burnt or stolen. Autumn
is on us, yet there is no food in store and none being planted. We
live on forage, and if the Lannisters deny that to us, we will be
down to rats and shoe leather in a moon’s turn.”
“I do not mean to be besieged here.” Roose
Bolton’s voice was so soft that men had to strain to hear it,
so his chambers were always strangely hushed.
“What, then?” demanded Ser Jared Frey, who was lean,
balding, and pockmarked. “Is Edmure Tully so drunk on his
victory that he thinks to give Lord Tywin battle in the open
field?” If he does he’ll beat them, Arya thought. He’ll beat
them as he did on the Red Fork, you’ll see. Unnoticed, she
went to stand by Qyburn.
“Lord Tywin is many leagues from here,” Bolton said
calmly. “He has many matters yet to settle at King’s
Landing. He will not march on Harrenhal for some time.”
Ser Aenys shook his head stubbornly. “You do not know the
Lannisters as we do, my lord. King Stannis thought that Lord Tywin
was a thousand leagues away as well, and it undid him.”
The pale man in the bed smiled faintly as the leeches nursed of
his blood. “I am not a man to be undone, ser.”
“Even if Riverrun marshals all its strength and the Young
Wolf wins back from the west, how can we hope to match the numbers
Lord Tywin can send against us? When he comes, he will come with
far more power than he commanded on the Green Fork. Highgarden has
joined itself to Joffrey’s cause, I remind you!”
“I had not forgotten.”
“I have been Lord Tywin’s captive once,” said
Ser Hosteen, a husky man with a square face who was said to be the
strongest of the Freys. “I have no wish to enjoy Lannister
hospitality again.”
Ser Harys Haigh, who was a Frey on his mother’s side,
nodded vigorously. “If Lord Tywin could defeat a seasoned man
like Stannis Baratheon, what chance will our boy king have against
him?” He looked round to his brothers and cousins for
support, and several of them muttered agreement.
“Someone must have the courage to say it,” Ser
Hosteen said. “The war is lost. King Robb must be made to see
that.”
Roose Bolton studied him with pale eyes. “His Grace has
defeated the Lannisters every time he has faced them in
battle.”
“He has lost the north,” insisted Hosteen Frey.
“He has lost Winterfell! His brothers are
dead . . . ”
For a moment Arya forgot to breathe. Dead? Bran and Rickon,
dead? What does he mean? What does he mean about Winterfell,
Joffrey could never take Winterfell, never, Robb would never let
him. Then she remembered that Robb was not at Winterfell. He was
away in the west, and Bran was crippled, and Rickon only four. It
took all her strength to remain still and silent, the way Syrio
Forel had taught her, to stand there like a stick of furniture. She
felt tears gathering in her eyes, and willed them away. It’s
not true, it can’t be true, it’s just some Lannister
lie.
“Had Stannis won, all might have been different,”
Ronel Rivers said wistfully. He was one of Lord Walder’s
bastards.
“Stannis lost,” Ser Hosteen said bluntly.
“Wishing it were otherwise will not make it so. King Robb
must make his peace with the Lannisters. He must put off his crown
and bend the knee, little as he may like it.”
“And who will tell him so?” Roose Bolton smiled.
“It is a fine thing to have so many valiant brothers in such
troubled times. I shall think on all you’ve said.”
His smile was dismissal. The Freys made their courtesies and
shuffled out, leaving only Qyburn, Steelshanks Walton, and Arya.
Lord Bolton beckoned her closer. “I am bled sufficiently.
Nan, you may remove the leeches.”
“At once, my lord.” It was best never to make Roose
Bolton ask twice. Arya wanted to ask him what Ser Hosteen had meant
about Winterfell, but she dared not. I’ll ask Elmar, she
thought. Elmar will tell me. The leeches wriggled slowly between
her fingers as she plucked them carefully from the lord’s
body, their pale bodies moist to the touch and distended with
blood. They’re only leeches, she reminded herself. If I
closed my hand, they’d squish between my fingers.
“There is a letter from your lady wife.” Qyburn
pulled a roll of parchment from his sleeve. Though he wore
maester’s robes, there was no chain about his neck; it was
whispered that he had lost it for dabbling in necromancy.
“You may read it,” Bolton said.
The Lady Walda wrote from the Twins almost every day, but all
the letters were the same. “I pray for you morn, noon, and
night, my sweet lord,” she wrote, “and count the days
until you share my bed again. Return to me soon, and I will give
you many trueborn sons to take the place of your dear Domeric and
rule the Dreadfort after you.” Arya pictured a plump pink
baby in a cradle, covered with plump pink leeches.
She brought Lord Bolton a damp washcloth to wipe down his soft
hairless body. “I will send a letter of my own,” he
told the onetime maester.
“To the Lady Walda?”
“To Ser Helman Tallhart.”
A rider from Ser Helman had come two days past. Tallhart men had
taken the castle of the Darrys, accepting the surrender of its
Lannister garrison after a brief siege.
“Tell him to put the captives to the sword and the castle
to the torch, by command of the king. Then he is to join forces
with Robett Glover and strike east toward Duskendale. Those are
rich lands, and hardly touched by the fighting. It is time they had
a taste. Glover has lost a castle, and Tallhart a son. Let them
take their vengeance on Duskendale.”
“I shall prepare the message for your seal, my
lord.”
Arya was glad to hear that the castle of the Darrys would be
burned. That was where they’d brought her when she’d
been caught after her fight with Joffrey, and where the queen had
made her father kill Sansa’s wolf. It deserves to burn. She
wished that Robett Glover and Ser Helman Tallhart would come back
to Harrenhal, though; they had marched too quickly, before
she’d been able to decide whether to trust them with her
secret.
“I will hunt today,” Roose Bolton announced as
Qyburn helped him into a quilted jerkin.
“Is it safe, my lord?” Qyburn asked. “Only
three days past, Septon Utt’s men were attacked by wolves.
They came right into his camp, not five yards from the fire, and
killed two horses.”
“It is wolves I mean to hunt. I can scarcely sleep at
night for the howling.” Bolton buckled on his belt, adjusting
the hang of sword and dagger. “It’s said that
direwolves once roamed the north in great packs of a hundred or
more, and feared neither man nor mammoth, but that was long ago and
in another land. It is queer to see the common wolves of the south
so bold.”
“Terrible times breed terrible things, my lord.”
Bolton showed his teeth in something that might have been a
smile. “Are these times so terrible, Maester?”
“Summer is gone and there are four kings in the
realm.”
“One king may be terrible, but four?” He shrugged.
“Nan, my fur cloak.” She brought it to him. “My
chambers will be clean and orderly upon my return,” he told
her as she fastened it. “And tend to Lady Walda’s
letter.”
“As you say, my lord.”
The lord and maester swept from the room, giving her not so much
as a backward glance. When they were gone, Arya took the letter and
carried it to the hearth, stirring the logs with a poker to wake
the flames anew. She watched the parchment twist, blacken, and
flare up. If the Lannisters hurt Bran and Rickon, Robb will kill
them every one. He’ll never bend the knee, never, never,
never. He’s not afraid of any of them. Curls of ash floated
up the chimney. Arya squatted beside the fire, watching them rise
through a veil of hot tears. If Winterfell is truly gone, is this
my home now? Am I still Arya, or only Nan the serving girl, for
forever and forever and forever?
She spent the next few hours tending to the lord’s
chambers. She swept out the old rushes and scattered fresh
sweet-smelling ones, laid a fresh fire in the hearth, changed the
linens and fluffed the featherbed, emptied the chamber pots down
the privy shaft and scrubbed them out, carried an armload of soiled
clothing to the washerwomen, and brought up a bowl of crisp autumn
pears from the kitchen. When she was done with the bedchamber, she
went down half a flight of stairs to do the same in the great
solar, a spare drafty room as large as the halls of many a smaller
castle. The candles were down to stubs, so Arya changed them out.
Under the windows was a huge oaken table where the lord wrote his
letters. She stacked the books, changed the candles, put the quills
and inks and sealing wax in order.
A large ragged sheepskin was tossed across the papers. Arya had
started to roll it up when the colors caught her eye: the blue of
lakes and rivers, the red dots where castles and cities
could be found, the green of woods. She spread it out instead. the
lands of the trident, said the ornate script beneath the map. The
drawing showed everything from the Neck to the Blackwater Rush.
There’s Harrenhal at the top of the big lake, she realized,
but where’s Riverrun? Then she saw. It’s not so
far . . .
The afternoon was still young by the time she was done, so Arya
took herself off to the godswood. Her duties were lighter as Lord
Bolton’s cupbearer than they had been under Weese or even
Pinkeye, though they required dressing like a page and washing more
than she liked. The hunt would not return for hours, so she had a
little time for her needlework.
She slashed at birch leaves till the splintery point of the
broken broomstick was green and sticky. “Ser Gregor,”
she breathed. “Dunsen, Polliver, Raff the Sweetling.”
She spun and leapt and balanced on the balls of her feet, darting
this way and that, knocking pinecones flying. “The
Tickler,” she called out one time, “the Hound,”
the next. “Ser Ilyn, Ser Meryn, Queen Cersei.” The bole
of an oak loomed before her, and she lunged to drive her point
through it, grunting “Joffrey, Joffrey, Joffrey.” Her
arms and legs were dappled by sunlight and the shadows of leaves. A
sheen of sweat covered her skin by the time she paused. The heel of
her right foot was bloody where she’d skinned it, so she
stood one-legged before the heart tree and raised her sword in
salute. “Valar morghulis,” she told the old gods of
the north. She liked how the words sounded when she said them.
As Arya crossed the yard to the bathhouse, she spied a raven
circling down toward the rookery, and wondered where it had come
from and what message it carried. Might be it’s from Robb,
come to say it wasn’t true about Bran and Rickon. She chewed
on her lip, hoping. If I had wings I could fly back to Winterfell
and see for myself. And if it was true, I’d just fly away,
fly up past the moon and the shining stars, and see all the things
in Old Nan’s stories, dragons and sea monsters and the Titan
of Braavos, and maybe I wouldn’t ever fly back unless I
wanted to.
The hunting party returned near evenfall with nine dead wolves.
Seven were adults, big grey-brown beasts, savage and powerful,
their mouths drawn back over long yellow teeth by their dying
snarls. But the other two had only been pups. Lord Bolton gave
orders for the skins to be sewn into a blanket for his bed.
“Cubs still have that soft fur, my lord,” one of his
men pointed out. “Make you a nice warm pair of
gloves.”
Bolton glanced up at the banners waving above the gatehouse
towers. “As the Starks are wont to remind us, winter is
coming. Have it done.” When he saw Arya looking on, he said,
“Nan, I’ll want a flagon of hot spice wine, I took a
chill in the woods. See that it doesn’t get cold. I’m
of a mind to sup alone. Barley bread, butter, and boar.”
“At once, my lord.” That was always the best thing
to say.
Hot Pie was making oatcakes when she entered the kitchen. Three
other cooks were boning fish, while a spit boy turned a boar over
the flames. “My lord wants his supper, and hot spice wine to
wash it down,” Arya announced, “and he doesn’t
want it cold.” One of the cooks washed his hands, took out a
kettle, and filled it with a heavy, sweet red. Hot Pie was told to
crumble in the spices as the wine heated. Arya went to help.
“I can do it,” he said sullenly. “I
don’t need you to show me how to spice wine.” He hates me too, or else he’s scared of me. She backed
away, more sad than angry. When the food was ready, the cooks
covered it with a silver cover and wrapped the flagon in a thick
towel to keep it warm. Dusk was settling outside. On the walls the
crows muttered round the heads like courtiers round a king. One of
the guards held the door to Kingspyre. “Hope that’s not
weasel soup,” he jested.
Roose Bolton was seated by the hearth reading from a thick
leatherbound book when she entered. “Light some
candles,” he commanded her as he turned a page. “It
grows gloomy in here.”
She placed the food at his elbow and did as he bid her, filling
the room with flickering light and the scent of cloves. Bolton
turned a few more pages with his finger, then closed the book and
placed it carefully in the fire. He watched the flames consume it,
pale eyes shining with reflected light. The old dry leather went up
with a whoosh, and the yellow pages stirred as they burned, as if
some ghost were reading them. “I will have no further need of
you tonight,” he said, never looking at her.
She should have gone, silent as a mouse, but something had hold
of her. “My lord,” she asked, “will you take me
with you when you leave Harrenhal?”
He turned to stare at her, and from the look in his eyes it was
as if his supper had just spoken to him. “Did I give you
leave to question me, Nan?”
“No, my lord.” She lowered her eyes.
“You should not have spoken, then. Should you?”
“No. My lord.”
For a moment he looked amused. “I will answer you, just
this once. I mean to give Harrenhal to Lord Vargo when I return to
the north. You will remain here, with him.”
“But I don’t—” she started.
He cut her off. “I am not in the habit of being questioned
by servants, Nan. Must I have your tongue out?”
He would do it as easily as another man might cuff a dog, she
knew. “No, my lord.”
“Then I’ll hear no more from you?”
“No, my lord.”
“Go, then. I shall forget this insolence.”
Arya went, but not to her bed. When she stepped out into the
darkness of the yard, the guard on the door nodded at her and said,
“Storm coming. Smell the air?” The wind was gusting,
flames swirling off the torches mounted atop the walls beside the
rows of heads. On her way to the godswood, she passed the Wailing
Tower where once she had lived in fear of Weese. The Freys had
taken it for their own since Harrenhal’s fall. She could hear
angry voices coming from a window, many men talking and arguing all
at once. Elmar was sitting on the steps outside, alone.
“What’s wrong?” Arya asked him when she saw
the tears shining on his cheeks.
“My princess,” he sobbed. “We’ve been
dishonored, Aenys says. There was a bird from the Twins. My lord
father says I’ll need to marry someone else, or be a
septon.” A stupid princess, she thought, that’s nothing to cry
over. “My brothers might be dead,” she confided.
Elmar gave her a scornful look. “No one cares about a
serving girl’s brothers.”
It was hard not to hit him when he said that. “I hope your
princess dies “ she said, and ran off before he could grab
her. In the godswood she found her broomstick sword where she had
left it, and carried it to the heart tree. There she knelt. Red
leaves rustled. Red eyes peered inside her. The eyes of the gods.
“Tell me what to do, you gods,” she prayed.
For a long moment there was no sound but the wind and the water
and the creak of leaf and limb. And then, far far off, beyond the
godswood and the haunted towers and the immense stone walls of
Harrenhal, from somewhere out in the world, came the long lonely
howl of a wolf. Gooseprickles rose on Arya’s skin, and for an
instant she felt dizzy. Then, so faintly, it seemed as if she heard
her father’s voice. “When the snows fall and the white
winds blow, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives,” he
said.
“But there is no pack,” she whispered to the
weirwood. Bran and Rickon were dead, the Lannisters had Sansa, Jon had gone to the
Wall. “I’m not even me now, I’m Nan.”
“You are Arya of Winterfell, daughter of the north. You
told me you could be strong. You have the wolf blood in
you.”
“The wolf blood.” Arya remembered now.
“I’ll be as strong as Robb. I said I would.” She
took a deep breath, then lifted the broomstick in both hands and
brought it down across her knee. It broke with a loud crack, and
she threw the pieces aside. I am a direwolf, and done with wooden
teeth.
That night she lay in her narrow bed upon the scratchy straw,
listening to the voices of the living and the dead whisper and
argue as she waited for the moon to rise. They were the only voices
she trusted anymore. She could hear the sound of her own breath,
and the wolves as well, a great pack of them now. They are closer
than the one I heard in the godswood, she thought. They are calling
to me.
Finally she slipped from under the blanket, wriggled into a
tunic, and padded barefoot down the stairs. Roose Bolton was a
cautious man, and the entrance to Kingspyre was guarded day and
night, so she had to slip out of a narrow cellar window. The yard
was still, the great castle lost in haunted dreams. Above, the wind
keened through the Wailing Tower.
At the forge she found the fires extinguished and the doors
closed and barred. She crept in a window, as she had once before.
Gendry shared a mattress with two other apprentice smiths. She
crouched in the loft for a long time before her eyes adjusted
enough for her to be sure that he was the one on the end. Then she
put a hand over his mouth and pinched him. His eyes opened. He
could not have been very deeply asleep. “Please,” she
whispered. She took her hand off his mouth and pointed.
For a moment she did not think he understood, but then he slid
out from under the blankets. Naked, he padded across the room,
shrugged into a loose roughspun tunic, and climbed down from the
loft after her. The other sleepers did not stir. “What do you
want now?” Gendry said in a low angry voice.
“A sword.”
“Blackthumb keeps all the blades locked up, I told you
that a hundred times. Is this for Lord Leech?”
“For me. Break the lock with your hammer.”
“They’ll break my hand,” he grumbled.
“Or worse.”
“Not if you run off with me.”
“Run, and they’ll catch you and kill you.”
“They’ll do you worse. Lord Bolton is giving
Harrenhal to the Bloody Mummers, he told me so.”
Gendry pushed black hair out of his eyes. “So?”
She looked right at him, fearless. “So when Vargo
Hoat’s the lord, he’s going to cut off the feet of all
the servants to keep them from running away. The smiths
too.”
“That’s only a story,” he said scornfully.
“No, it’s true, I heard Lord Vargo say so,”
she lied. “He’s going to cut one foot off everyone. The
left one. Go to the kitchens and wake Hot Pie, he’ll do what
you say. We’ll need bread or oatcakes or something. You get
the swords and I’ll do the horses. We’ll meet near the
postern in the east wall, behind the Tower of Ghosts. No one ever
comes there.”
“I know that gate. It’s guarded, same as the
rest.”
“So? You won’t forget the swords?”
“I never said I’d come.”
“No. But if you do, you won’t forget the
swords?”
He frowned. “No,” he said at last. “I guess I
won’t.”
Arya reentered Kingspyre the same way she had left it, and stole
up the winding steps listening for footfalls. In her cell, she
stripped to the skin and dressed herself carefully, in two layers
of smallclothes, warm stockings, and her cleanest tunic. It was
Lord Bolton’s livery. On the breast was sewn his sigil, the
flayed man of the Dreadfort. She tied her shoes, threw a wool cloak
over her skinny shoulders, and knotted it under her throat. Quiet
as a shadow, she moved back down the stairs. Outside the
lord’s solar she paused to listen at the door, easing it open
slowly when she heard only silence.
The sheepskin map was on the table, beside the remains of Lord
Bolton’s supper. She rolled it up tight and thrust it through
her belt. He’d left his dagger on the table as well, so she
took that too, just in case Gendry lost his courage.
A horse neighed softly as she slipped into the darkened stables.
The grooms were all asleep. She prodded one with her toe until he
sat up groggily and said, “Eh? Whas?”
“Lord Bolton requires three horses saddled and
bridled.”
The boy got to his feet, pushing straw from his hair.
“Wha, at this hour? Horses, you say?” He blinked at the
sigil on her tunic. “Whas he want horses for, in the
dark?”
“Lord Bolton is not in the habit of being questioned by
servants.” She crossed her arms.
The stableboy was still looking at the flayed man. He knew what
it meant. “Three, you say?”
“One two three. Hunting horses. Fast and surefoot.”
Arya helped him with the bridles and saddles, so he would not need
to wake any of the others. She hoped they would not hurt him
afterward, but she knew they probably would.
Leading the horses across the castle was the worst part. She
stayed in the shadow of the curtain wall whenever she could, so the
sentries walking their rounds on the ramparts above would have
needed to look almost straight down to see her. And if they do,
what of it? I’m my lord’s own cupbearer. It was a chill
dank autumn night. Clouds were blowing in from the west, hiding the
stars, and the Wailing Tower screamed mournfully at every gust of
wind. It smells like rain. Arya did not know whether that would be
good or bad for their escape.
No one saw her, and she saw no one, only a grey and white cat
creeping along atop the godswood wall. It stopped and spit at her,
waking memories of the Red Keep and her father and Syrio Forel.
“I could catch you if I wanted,” she called to it
softly, “but I have to go, cat.” The cat hissed again
and ran off.
The Tower of Ghosts was the most ruinous of Harrenhal’s
five immense towers. It stood dark and desolate behind the remains
of a collapsed sept where only rats had come to pray for near three
hundred years. It was there she waited to see if Gendry and Hot Pie
would come. It seemed as though she waited a long time. The horses
nibbled at the weeds that grew up between the broken stones while
the clouds swallowed the last of the stars. Arya took out the
dagger and sharpened it to keep her hands busy. Long smooth
strokes, the way Syrio had taught her. The sound calmed her.
She heard them coming long before she saw them. Hot Pie was
breathing heavily, and once he stumbled in the dark, barked his
shin, and cursed loud enough to wake half of Harrenhal. Gendry was
quieter, but the swords he was carrying rang together as he moved.
“Here I am.” She stood. “Be quiet or
they’ll hear you.”
The boys picked their way toward her over tumbled stones. Gendry
was wearing oiled chainmail under his cloak, she saw, and he had
his blacksmith’s hammer slung across his back. Hot
Pie’s red round face peered out from under a hood. He had a
sack of bread dangling from his right hand and a big wheel of
cheese under his left arm. “There’s a guard on that
postern,” said Gendry quietly. “I told you there would
be.”
“You stay here with the horses,” said Arya.
“I’ll get rid of him. Come quick when I
call.”
Gendry nodded. Hot Pie said, “Hoot like an owl when you
want us to come.”
“I’m not an owl,” said Arya. “I’m
a wolf. I’ll howl.”
Alone, she slid through the shadow of the Tower of Ghosts. She
walked fast, to keep ahead of her fear, and it felt as though Syrio
Forel walked beside her, and Yoren, and Jaqen H’ghar, and Jon
Snow. She had not taken the sword Gendry had brought her, not yet.
For this the dagger would be better. It was good and sharp. This
postern was the least of Harrenhal’s gates, a narrow door of
stout oak studded with iron nails, set in an angle of the wall
beneath a defensive tower. Only one man was set to guard it, but
she knew there would be sentries up in that tower as well, and
others nearby walking the walls. Whatever happened, she must be
quiet as a shadow. He must not call out. A few scattered raindrops
had begun to fall. She felt one land on her brow and run slowly
down her nose.
She made no effort to hide, but approached the guard openly, as
if Lord Bolton himself had sent her. He watched her come, curious
as to what might bring a page here at this black hour. When she got
closer, she saw that he was a northman, very tall and thin, huddled
in a ragged fur cloak. That was bad. She might have been able to
trick a Frey or one of the Brave Companions, but the Dreadfort men
had served Roose Bolton their whole life, and they knew him better
than she did. If I tell him I am Arya Stark and command him to
stand aside . . . No, she dare not. He was a
northman, but not a Winterfell man. He belonged to Roose
Bolton.
When she reached him she pushed back her cloak so he would see
the flayed man on her breast. “Lord Bolton sent
me.”
“At this hour? Why for?”
She could see the gleam of steel under the fur, and she did not
know if she was strong enough to drive the point of the dagger
through chainmail. His throat, it must be his throat, but
he’s too tall, I’ll never reach it. For a moment she
did not know what to say. For a moment she was a little girl again,
and scared, and the rain on her face felt like tears.
“He told me to give all his guards a silver piece, for
their good service.” The words seemed to come out of
nowhere.
“Silver, you say?” He did not believe her, but he
wanted to; silver was silver, after all. “Give it over,
then.”
Her fingers dug down beneath her tunic and came out clutching
the coin Jaqen had given her. In the dark the iron could pass for
tarnished silver. She held it out . . . and let
it slip through her fingers.
Cursing her softly, the man went to a knee to grope for the coin
in the dirt and there was his neck right in front of her. Arya slid
her dagger out and drew it across his throat, as smooth as summer
silk. His blood covered her hands in a hot gush and he tried to
shout but there was blood in his mouth as well.
“Valar morghulis,” she whispered as he died.
When he stopped moving, she picked up the coin. Outside the
walls of Harrenhal, a wolf howled long and loud. She lifted the
bar, set it aside, and pulled open the heavy oak door. By the time
Hot Pie and Gendry came up with the horses, the rain was falling
hard. “You killed him!” Hot Pie gasped.
“What did you think I would do?” Her fingers were
sticky with blood, and the smell was making her mare skittish.
It’s no matter, she thought, swinging up into the saddle. The
rain will wash them clean again.