When Arya saw the shape of a great hill looming in the distance,
golden in the afternoon sun, she knew it at once. They had come all
the way back to High Heart.
By sunset they were at the top, making camp where no harm could
come to them. Arya walked around the circle of weirwood stumps with
Lord Beric’s squire Ned, and they stood on top of one
watching the last light fade in the west. From up here she could
see a storm raging to the north, but High Heart stood above the
rain. It wasn’t above the wind, though; the gusts were
blowing so strongly that it felt like someone was behind her,
yanking on her cloak. Only when she turned, no one was there. Ghosts, she remembered. High Heart is haunted.
They built a great fire atop the hill, and Thoros of Myr sat
crosslegged beside it, gazing deep into the flames as if there was
nothing else in all the world.
“What is he doing?” Arya asked Ned.
“Sometimes he sees things in the flames,” the squire
told her. “The past. The future. Things happening far
away.”
Arya squinted at the fire to see if she could see what the red
priest was seeing, but it only made her eyes water and before long
she turned away. Gendry was watching the red priest as well.
“Can you truly see the future there?” he asked
suddenly.
Thoros turned from the fire, sighing. “Not here. Not now.
But some days, yes, the Lord of Light grants me visions.”
Gendry looked dubious. “My master said you were a sot and
a fraud, as bad a priest as there ever was.”
“That was unkind.” Thoros chuckled. “True, but
unkind. Who was this master of yours? Did I know you,
boy?”
“I was ’prenticed to the master armorer Tobho Mott,
on the Street of Steel. You used to buy your swords from
him.”
“Just so. He charged me twice what they were worth, then
scolded me for setting them afire.” Thoros laughed.
“Your master had it right. I was no very holy priest. I was
born youngest of eight, so my father gave me over to the Red
Temple, but it was not the path I would have chosen. I prayed the
prayers and I spoke the spells, but I would also lead raids on the
kitchens, and from time to time they found girls in my bed. Such
wicked girls, I never knew how they got there.
“I had a gift for tongues, though. And when I gazed into
the flames, well, from time to time I saw things. Even so, I was
more bother than I was worth, so they sent me finally to
King’s Landing to bring the Lord’s light to
seven-besotted Westeros. King Aerys so loved fire it was thought he
might make a convert. Alas, his pyromancers knew better tricks than
I did.
“King Robert was fond of me, though, The first time I rode
into a mêlée with a flaming sword, Kevan Lannister’s horse
reared and threw him and His Grace laughed so hard I thought he
might rupture.” The red priest smiled at the memory.
“It was no way to treat a blade, though, your master had the
right of that too.”
“Fire consumes,” Lord Beric stood behind them, and
there was something in his voice that silenced Thoros at once.
“It consumes, and when it is done there is nothing left.
Nothing.”
“Beric. Sweet friend.” The priest touched the
lightning lord on the forearm. “What are you
saying?”
“Nothing I have not said before. Six times, Thoros? Six
times is too many.” He turned away abruptly.
That night the wind was howling almost like a wolf and there
were some real wolves off to the west giving it lessons. Notch,
Anguy, and Merrit o’ Moontown had the watch. Ned, Gendry, and many of
the others were fast asleep when Arya spied the small pale shape
creeping behind the horses, thin white hair flying wild as she
leaned upon a gnarled cane. The woman could not have been more than
three feet tall. The firelight made her eyes gleam as red as the
eyes of Jon’s wolf. He was a ghost too. Arya stole closer,
and knelt to watch.
Thoros and Lem were with Lord Beric when the dwarf woman sat
down uninvited by the fire. She squinted at them with eyes like hot
coals. “The Ember and the Lemon come to honor me again, and
His Grace the Lord of Corpses.”
“An ill-omened name. I have asked you not to use
it.”
“Aye, you have. But the stink of death is fresh on you, my
lord.” She had but a single tooth remaining. “Give me
wine or I will go. My bones are old. My joints ache when the winds
do blow, and up here the winds are always blowing.”
“A silver stag for your dreams, my lady,” Lord Beric
said, with solemn courtesy. “Another if you have news for
us.”
“I cannot eat a silver stag, nor ride one. A skin of wine
for my dreams, and for my news a kiss from the great oaf in the
yellow cloak.” The little woman cackled. “Aye, a sloppy
kiss, a bit of tongue. It has been too long, too long. His mouth
will taste of lemons, and mine of bones. I am too old.”
“Aye,” Lem complained. “Too old for wine and
kisses. All you’ll get from me is the flat of my sword,
crone.”
“My hair comes out in handfuls and no one has kissed me
for a thousand years. It is hard to be so old. Well, I will have a
song then. A song from Tom o’ Sevens, for my news.”
“You will have your song from Tom,” Lord Beric
promised. He gave her the wineskin himself.
The dwarf woman drank deep, the wine running down her chin. When
she lowered the skin, she wiped her mouth with the back of a
wrinkled hand and said, “Sour wine for sour tidings, what
could be more fitting? The king is dead, is that sour enough for
you?”
Arya’s heart caught in her throat.
“Which bloody king is dead, crone?” Lem
demanded.
“The wet one. The kraken king, m’lords. I dreamt
him dead and he died, and the iron squids now turn on one another.
Oh, and Lord Hoster Tully’s died too, but you know that,
don’t you? In the hall of kings, the goat sits alone and
fevered as the great dog descends on him.” The old woman took
another long gulp of wine, squeezing the skin as she raised it to
her lips. The great dog. Did she mean the Hound? Or maybe his brother, the
Mountain That Rides? Arya was not certain. They bore the same arms,
three black dogs on a yellow field. Half the men whose deaths she
prayed for belonged to Ser Gregor Clegane; Polliver, Dunsen, Raff
the Sweetling, the Tickler, and Ser Gregor himself. Maybe Lord
Beric will hang them all.
“I dreamt a wolf howling in the rain, but no one heard his
grief,” the dwarf woman was saying. “I dreamt such a
clangor I thought my head might burst, drums and horns and pipes
and screams, but the saddest sound was the little bells. I dreamt
of a maid at a feast with purple serpents in her hair, venom
dripping from their fangs. And later I dreamt that maid again,
slaying a savage giant in a castle built of snow.” She turned
her head sharply and smiled through the gloom, right at Arya.
“You cannot hide from me, child. Come closer, now.”
Cold fingers walked down Arya’s neck. Fear cuts deeper
than swords, she reminded herself. She stood and approached the
fire warily, light on the balls of her feet, poised to flee.
The dwarf woman studied her with dim red eyes. “I see
you,” she whispered. “I see you, wolf child. Blood
child. I thought it was the lord who smelled of
death . . . ” She began to sob, her
little body shaking. “You are cruel to come to my hill,
cruel. I gorged on grief at Summerhall, I need none of yours.
Begone from here, dark heart. Begone!”
There was such fear in her voice that Arya took a step backward,
wondering if the woman was mad. “Don’t frighten the
child,” Thoros protested. “There’s no harm in
her.”
Lem Lemoncloak’s finger went to his broken nose.
“Don’t be so bloody sure of that.”
“She will leave on the morrow, with us,” Lord Beric
assured the little woman. “We’re taking her to
Riverrun, to her mother.”
“Nay,” said the dwarf. “You’re not. The
black fish holds the rivers now. If it’s the mother you want,
seek her at the Twins. For there’s to be a wedding.”
She cackled again. “Look in your fires, pink priest, and you
will see. Not now, though, not here, you’ll see nothing here.
This place belongs to the old gods
still . . . they linger here as I do, shrunken
and feeble but not yet dead. Nor do they love the flames. For the
oak recalls the acorn, the acorn dreams the oak, the stump lives in
them both. And they remember when the First Men came with fire in
their fists.” She drank the last of the wine in four long
swallows, flung the skin aside, and pointed her stick at Lord
Beric. “I’ll have my payment now. I’ll have the
song you promised me.”
And so Lem woke Tom Sevenstrings beneath his furs, and brought
him yawning to the fireside with his woodharp in hand. “The
same song as before?” he asked.
“Oh, aye. My Jenny’s song. Is there
another?”
And so he sang, and the dwarf woman closed her eyes and rocked
slowly back and forth, murmuring the words and crying. Thoros took
Arya firmly by the hand and drew her aside. “Let her savor
her song in peace,” he said. “It is all she has
left.” I wasn’t going to hurt her, Arya thought. “What did
she mean about the Twins? My mother’s at Riverrun,
isn’t she?”
“She was.” The red priest rubbed beneath his chin.
“A wedding, she said. We shall see. Whenever she is, Lord
Beric will find her, though.”
Not long after, the sky opened. Lightning cracked and thunder
rolled across the hills, and the rain fell in blinding sheets. The
dwarf woman vanished as suddenly as she had appeared, while the
outlaws gathered branches and threw up crude shelters.
It rained all through that night, and come morning Ned, Lem,
and Watty the Miller awoke with chills. Watty could not keep his
breakfast down, and young Ned was feverish and shivering by turns,
with skin clammy to the touch. There was an abandoned village half
a day’s ride to the north, Notch told Lord Beric;
they’d find better shelter there, a place to wait out the
worst of the rains. So they dragged themselves back into the
saddles and urged their horses down the great hill.
The rains did not let up. They rode through woods and fields,
fording swollen streams where the rushing water came up to the
bellies of their horses. Arya pulled up the hood of her cloak and
hunched down, sodden and shivering but determined not to falter.
Merrit and Mudge were soon coughing as bad as Watty, and poor Ned
seemed to grow more miserable with every mile. “When I wear
my helm, the rain beats against the steel and gives me
headaches,” he complained. “But when I take it off, my
hair gets soaked and sticks to my face and in my mouth.”
“You have a knife,” Gendry suggested. “If your
hair annoys you so much, shave your bloody head.” He doesn’t like Ned. The squire seemed nice enough to
Arya; maybe a little shy, but good-natured. She had always heard
that Dornishmen were small and swarthy, with black hair and small
black eyes, but Ned had big blue eyes, so dark that they looked
almost purple. And his hair was a pale blond, more ash than
honey.
“How long have you been Lord Beric’s squire?”
she asked, to take his mind from his misery.
“He took me for his page when he espoused my aunt.”
He coughed. “I was seven, but when I turned ten he raised me
to squire. I won a prize once, riding at rings.”
“I never learned the lance, but I could beat you with a
sword,” said Arya. “Have you killed anyone?”
That seemed to startle him. “I’m only
twelve.” I killed a boy when I was eight, Arya almost said, but she
thought she’d better not. “You’ve been in
battles, though.”
“Yes.” He did not sound very proud of it. “I
was at the Mummer’s Ford. When Lord Beric fell into the
river, I dragged him up onto the bank so he wouldn’t drown
and stood over him with my sword. I never had to fight, though. He
had a broken lance sticking out of him, so no one bothered us. When
we regrouped, Green Gergen helped pull his lordship back onto a
horse.”
Arya was remembering the stableboy at King’s Landing.
After him there’d been that guard whose throat she cut at
Harrenhal, and Ser Amory’s men at that holdfast by the lake.
She didn’t know if Weese and Chiswyck counted, or the ones
who’d died on account of the weasel
soup . . . all of a sudden, she felt very sad.
“My father was called Ned too,” she said.
“I know. I saw him at the Hand’s tourney. I wanted
to go up and speak with him, but I couldn’t think what to
say.” Ned shivered beneath his cloak, a sodden length of pale
purple. “Were you at the tourney? I saw your sister there.
Ser Loras Tyrell gave her a rose.”
“She told me.” It all seemed so long ago. “Her
friend Jeyne Poole fell in love with your Lord Beric.”
“He’s promised to my aunt.” Ned looked
uncomfortable. “That was before, though. Before
he . . . ”
. . . died? she thought, as Ned’s
voice trailed off into an awkward silence. Their horses’
hooves made sucking sounds as they pulled free of the mud.
“My lady?” Ned said at last. “You have a
baseborn brother . . . Jon Snow?”
“He’s with the Night’s Watch on the
Wall.” Maybe I should go to the Wall instead of Riverrun. Jon
wouldn’t care who I killed or whether I brushed my
hair . . . “Jon looks like me, even
though he’s bastard-born. He used to muss my hair and call me
‘little sister.’ ” Arya missed Jon most of all.
Just saying his name made her sad. “How do you know about
Jon?”
“He is my milk brother.”
“Brother?” Arya did not understand. “But
you’re from Dorne. How could you and Jon be blood?”
“Milk brothers. Not blood. My lady mother had no milk when
I was little, so Wylla had to nurse me.”
Arya was lost. “Who’s Wylla?”
“Jon Snow’s mother. He never told you? She’s
served us for years and years. Since before I was born.”
“Jon never knew his mother. Not even her name.” Arya
gave Ned a wary look. “You know her? Truly?” Is he
making mock of me? “If you lie I’ll punch your
face.”
“Wylla was my wetnurse,” he repeated solemnly.
“I swear it on the honor of my House.”
“You have a House?” That was stupid; he was a
squire, of course he had a House. “Who are you?”
“My lady?” Ned looked embarrassed. “I’m
Edric Dayne, the . . . the Lord of
Starfall.”
Behind them, Gendry groaned. “Lords and ladies,” he
proclaimed in a disgusted tone. Arya plucked a withered crabapple
off a passing branch and whipped it at him, bouncing it off his
thick bull head. “Ow,” he said. “That
hurt.” He felt the skin above his eye. “What kind of
lady throws crabapples at people?”
“The bad kind,” said Arya, suddenly contrite. She
turned back to Ned. “I’m sorry I didn’t know who
you were. My lord.”
“The fault is mine, my lady.” He was very
polite. Jon has a mother. Wylla, her name is Wylla. She would need to
remember so she could tell him, the next time she saw him. She
wondered if he would still call her “little sister.”
I’m not so little anymore. He’d have to call me
something else. Maybe once she got to Riverrun she could write Jon
a letter and tell him what Ned Dayne had said. “There was an
Arthur Dayne,” she remembered. “The one they called the
Sword of the Morning.”
“My father was Ser Arthur’s elder brother. Lady
Ashara was my aunt. I never knew her, though. She threw herself
into the sea from atop the Palestone Sword before I was
born.”
“Why would she do that?” said Arya, startled.
Ned looked wary. Maybe he was afraid that she was going to throw
something at him. “Your lord father never spoke of
her?” he said. “The Lady Ashara Dayne, of
Starfall?”
“No. Did he know her?”
“Before Robert was king. She met your father and his
brothers at Harrenhal, during the year of the false
spring.”
“Oh.” Arya did not know what else to say. “Why
did she jump in the sea, though?”
“Her heart was broken.”
Sansa would have sighed and shed a tear for true love, but Arya
just thought it was stupid. She couldn’t say that to Ned,
though, not about his own aunt. “Did someone break
it?”
He hesitated. “Perhaps it’s not my place . . . ”
“Tell me.”
He looked at her uncomfortably. “My aunt Allyria says Lady
Ashara and your father fell in love at Harrenhal—”
“That’s not so. He loved my lady mother.”
“I’m sure he did, my lady, but—”
“She was the only one he loved.”
“He must have found that bastard under a cabbage leaf,
then,” Gendry said behind them.
Arya wished she had another crabapple to bounce off his face.
“My father had honor,” she said angrily. “And we
weren’t talking to you anyway. Why don’t you go back to
Stoney Sept and ring that girl’s stupid bells?”
Gendry ignored that. “At least your father raised his
bastard, not like mine. I don’t even know my father’s
name. Some smelly drunk, I’d wager, like the others my mother
dragged home from the alehouse. Whenever she got mad at me,
she’d say, ‘If your father was here, he’d beat
you bloody.’ That’s all I know of him.” He spat.
“Well, if he was here now, might be I’d beat him
bloody. But he’s dead, I figure, and your father’s dead
too, so what does it matter who he lay with?”
It mattered to Arya, though she could not have said why. Ned was
trying to apologize for upsetting her, but she did not want to hear
it. She pressed her heels into her horse and left them both. Anguy
the Archer was riding a few yards ahead. When she caught up with
him, she said, “Dornishmen lie, don’t they?”
“They’re famous for it.” The bowman grinned.
“Of course, they say the same of us marchers, so there you
are. What’s the trouble now? Ned’s a good
lad . . . ”
“He’s just a stupid liar.” Arya left the
trail, leapt a rotten log and splashed across a streambed, ignoring
the shouts of the outlaws behind her. They just want to tell me
more lies. She thought about trying to get away from them, but
there were too many and they knew these lands too well. What was
the use of running if they caught you?
It was Harwin who rode up beside her, in the end. “Where
do you think you’re going, milady? You shouldn’t run
off. There are wolves in these woods, and worse things.”
“I’m not afraid,” she said. “That boy
Ned said . . . ”
“Aye, he told me. Lady Ashara Dayne. It’s an old
tale, that one. I heard it once at Winterfell, when I was no older
than you are now.” He took hold of her bridle firmly and
turned her horse around. “I doubt there’s any truth to
it. But if there is, what of it? When Ned met this Dornish lady,
his brother Brandon was still alive, and it was him betrothed to
Lady Catelyn, so there’s no stain on your father’s
honor. There’s nought like a tourney to make the blood run
hot, so maybe some words were whispered in a tent of a night, who
can say? Words or kisses, maybe more, but where’s the harm in
that? Spring had come, or so they thought, and neither one of them
was pledged.”
“She killed herself, though,” said Arya uncertainly.
“Ned says she jumped from a tower into the sea.”
“So she did,” Harwin admitted, as he led her back,
“but that was for grief, I’d wager. She’d lost a
brother, the Sword of the Morning.” He shook his head.
“Let it lie, my lady. They’re dead, all of them. Let it
lie . . . and please, when we come to Riverrun,
say naught of this to your mother.”
The village was just where Notch had promised it would be. They
took shelter in a grey stone stable. Only half a roof remained, but
that was half a roof more than any other building in the village.
It’s not a village, it’s only black stones and old
bones. “Did the Lannisters kill the people who lived
here?” Arya asked as she helped Anguy dry the horses.
“No.” He pointed. “Look at how thick the moss
grows on the stones. No one’s moved them for a long time. And
there’s a tree growing out of the wall there, see? This place
was put to the torch a long time ago.”
“Who did it, then?” asked Gendry.
“Hoster Tully.” Notch was a stooped thin grey-haired
man, born in these parts. “This was Lord Goodbrook’s
village. When Riverrun declared for Robert, Goodbrook stayed loyal
to the king, so Lord Tully came down on him with fire and sword.
After the Trident, Goodbrook’s son made his peace with Robert
and Lord Hoster, but that didn’t help the dead
none.”
A silence fell. Gendry gave Arya a queer look, then turned away
to brush his horse. Outside the rain came down and down. “I
say we need a fire,” Thoros declared. “The night is
dark and full of terrors. And wet too, eh? Too very wet.”
Jack-Be-Lucky hacked some dry wood from a stall, while Notch and
Merrit gathered straw for kindling. Thoros himself struck the
spark, and Lem fanned the flames with his big yellow cloak until
they roared and swirled. Soon it grew almost hot inside the stable.
Thoros sat before it crosslegged, devouring the flames with his
eyes just as he had atop High Heart. Arya watched him closely, and
once his lips moved, and she thought she heard him mutter,
“Riverrun.” Lem paced back and forth, coughing, a long
shadow matching him stride for stride, while Tom o’ Sevens
pulled off his boots and rubbed his feet. “I must be mad, to
be going back to Riverrun,” the singer complained. “The
Tullys have never been lucky for old Tom. It was that Lysa sent me
up the high road, when the moon men took my gold and my horse and
all my clothes as well. There’s knights in the Vale still
telling how I came walking up to the Bloody Gate with only my harp
to keep me modest. They made me sing ‘The Name Day
Boy’andThe King Without Courage’ before they opened that
gate. My only solace was that three of them died laughing. I
haven’t been back to the Eyrie since, and I won’t
sing’The King Without Courage’ either, not for all the
gold in Casterly—”
“Lannisters,” Thoros said. “Roaring red and
gold.” He lurched to his feet and went to Lord Beric. Lem and
Tom wasted no time joining them. Arya could not make out what they
were saying, but the singer kept glancing at her, and one time Lem
got so angry he pounded a fist against the wall. That was when Lord
Beric gestured for her to come closer. It was the last thing she
wanted to do, but Harwin put a hand in the small of her back and
pushed her forward. She took two steps and hesitated, full of
dread. “My lord.” She waited to hear what Lord Beric
would say.
“Tell her,” the lightning lord commanded Thoros.
The red priest squatted down beside her. “My lady,”
he said, “the Lord granted me a view of Riverrun. An island
in a sea of fire, it seemed. The flames were leaping lions with
long crimson claws. And how they roared! A sea of Lannisters, my
lady. Riverrun will soon come under attack. “
Arya felt as though he’d punched her in the belly.
“No!”
“Sweetling,” said Thoros, “the flames do not
lie. Sometimes I read them wrongly, blind fool that I am. But not
this time, I think. The Lannisters will soon have Riverrun under
siege.”
“Robb will beat them.” Arya got a stubborn look.
“He’ll beat them like he did before.”
“Your brother may be gone,” said Thoros. “Your
mother as well. I did not see them in the flames. This wedding the
old one spoke of, a wedding on the
Twins . . . she has her own ways of knowing
things, that one. The weirwoods whisper in her ear when she sleeps.
If she says your mother is gone to the
Twins . . . ”
Arya turned on Tom and Lem. “If you hadn’t caught
me, I would have been there. I would have been home.”
Lord Beric paid no heed to her outburst. “My lady,”
he said with weary courtesy, “would you know your
grandfather’s brother by sight? Ser Brynden Tully, called the
Blackfish? Would he know you, perchance?”
Arya shook her head miserably. She had heard her mother speak of
Ser Brynden Blackfish, but if she had ever met him herself it had
been when she was too little to remember.
“Small chance the Blackfish will pay good coin for a girl
he doesn’t know,” said Tom. “Those Tullys are a
sour, suspicious lot, he’s like to think we’re selling
him false goods.”
“We’ll convince him,” Lem Lemoncloak insisted.
“She will, or Harwin. Riverrun is closest. I say we take her
there, get the gold, and be bloody well done with her.”
“And if the lions catch us inside the castle?” said
Tom. “They’d like nothing better than to hang his
lordship in a cage from the top of Casterly Rock.”
“I do not mean to be taken,” said Lord Beric. A
final word hung unspoken in the air. Alive. They all heard it, even
Arya, though it never passed his lips. “Still, we dare not go
blindly here. I want to know where the armies are, the wolves and
lions both. Sharna will know something, and Lord Vance’s
maester will know more. Acorn Hall’s not far. Lady Smallwood
will shelter us for a time while we send scouts ahead to
learn . . . ”
His words beat at her ears like the pounding of a drum, and
suddenly it was more than Arya could stand. She wanted Riverrun,
not Acorn Hall; she wanted her mother and her brother Robb, not
Lady Smallwood or some uncle she never knew. Whirling, she broke
for the door, and when Harwin tried to grab her arm she spun away
from him quick as a snake.
Outside the stables the rain was still falling, and distant
lightning flashed in the west. Arya ran as fast as she could. She
did not know where she was going, only that she wanted to be alone,
away from all the voices, away from their hollow words and broken
promises. All I wanted was to go to Riverrun. It was her own fault,
for taking Gendry and Hot Pie with her when she left Harrenhal. She
would have been better alone. If she had been alone, the outlaws
would never have caught her, and she’d be with Robb and her
mother by now. They were never my pack. If they had been, they
wouldn’t leave me. She splashed through a puddle of muddy
water. Someone was shouting her name, Harwin probably, or Gendry,
but the thunder drowned them out as it rolled across the hills,
half a heartbeat behind the lightning. The lightning lord, she
thought angrily. Maybe he couldn’t die, but he could lie.
Somewhere off to her left a horse whinnied. Arya couldn’t
have gone more than fifty yards from the stables, yet already she
was soaked to the bone. She ducked around the corner of one of the
tumbledown houses, hoping the mossy walls would keep the rain off,
and almost bowled right into one of the sentries. A mailed hand
closed hard around her arm.
“You’re hurting me,” she said, twisting in his
grasp. “Let go, I was going to go back,
I . . . ”
“Back?” Sandor Clegane’s laughter was iron
scraping over stone. “Bugger that, wolf girl. You’re
mine.” He needed only one hand to yank her off her feet and
drag her kicking toward his waiting horse. The cold rain lashed
them both and washed away her shouts, and all that Arya could think
of was the question he had asked her. Do you know what dogs do to
wolves?
When Arya saw the shape of a great hill looming in the distance,
golden in the afternoon sun, she knew it at once. They had come all
the way back to High Heart.
By sunset they were at the top, making camp where no harm could
come to them. Arya walked around the circle of weirwood stumps with
Lord Beric’s squire Ned, and they stood on top of one
watching the last light fade in the west. From up here she could
see a storm raging to the north, but High Heart stood above the
rain. It wasn’t above the wind, though; the gusts were
blowing so strongly that it felt like someone was behind her,
yanking on her cloak. Only when she turned, no one was there. Ghosts, she remembered. High Heart is haunted.
They built a great fire atop the hill, and Thoros of Myr sat
crosslegged beside it, gazing deep into the flames as if there was
nothing else in all the world.
“What is he doing?” Arya asked Ned.
“Sometimes he sees things in the flames,” the squire
told her. “The past. The future. Things happening far
away.”
Arya squinted at the fire to see if she could see what the red
priest was seeing, but it only made her eyes water and before long
she turned away. Gendry was watching the red priest as well.
“Can you truly see the future there?” he asked
suddenly.
Thoros turned from the fire, sighing. “Not here. Not now.
But some days, yes, the Lord of Light grants me visions.”
Gendry looked dubious. “My master said you were a sot and
a fraud, as bad a priest as there ever was.”
“That was unkind.” Thoros chuckled. “True, but
unkind. Who was this master of yours? Did I know you,
boy?”
“I was ’prenticed to the master armorer Tobho Mott,
on the Street of Steel. You used to buy your swords from
him.”
“Just so. He charged me twice what they were worth, then
scolded me for setting them afire.” Thoros laughed.
“Your master had it right. I was no very holy priest. I was
born youngest of eight, so my father gave me over to the Red
Temple, but it was not the path I would have chosen. I prayed the
prayers and I spoke the spells, but I would also lead raids on the
kitchens, and from time to time they found girls in my bed. Such
wicked girls, I never knew how they got there.
“I had a gift for tongues, though. And when I gazed into
the flames, well, from time to time I saw things. Even so, I was
more bother than I was worth, so they sent me finally to
King’s Landing to bring the Lord’s light to
seven-besotted Westeros. King Aerys so loved fire it was thought he
might make a convert. Alas, his pyromancers knew better tricks than
I did.
“King Robert was fond of me, though, The first time I rode
into a mêlée with a flaming sword, Kevan Lannister’s horse
reared and threw him and His Grace laughed so hard I thought he
might rupture.” The red priest smiled at the memory.
“It was no way to treat a blade, though, your master had the
right of that too.”
“Fire consumes,” Lord Beric stood behind them, and
there was something in his voice that silenced Thoros at once.
“It consumes, and when it is done there is nothing left.
Nothing.”
“Beric. Sweet friend.” The priest touched the
lightning lord on the forearm. “What are you
saying?”
“Nothing I have not said before. Six times, Thoros? Six
times is too many.” He turned away abruptly.
That night the wind was howling almost like a wolf and there
were some real wolves off to the west giving it lessons. Notch,
Anguy, and Merrit o’ Moontown had the watch. Ned, Gendry, and many of
the others were fast asleep when Arya spied the small pale shape
creeping behind the horses, thin white hair flying wild as she
leaned upon a gnarled cane. The woman could not have been more than
three feet tall. The firelight made her eyes gleam as red as the
eyes of Jon’s wolf. He was a ghost too. Arya stole closer,
and knelt to watch.
Thoros and Lem were with Lord Beric when the dwarf woman sat
down uninvited by the fire. She squinted at them with eyes like hot
coals. “The Ember and the Lemon come to honor me again, and
His Grace the Lord of Corpses.”
“An ill-omened name. I have asked you not to use
it.”
“Aye, you have. But the stink of death is fresh on you, my
lord.” She had but a single tooth remaining. “Give me
wine or I will go. My bones are old. My joints ache when the winds
do blow, and up here the winds are always blowing.”
“A silver stag for your dreams, my lady,” Lord Beric
said, with solemn courtesy. “Another if you have news for
us.”
“I cannot eat a silver stag, nor ride one. A skin of wine
for my dreams, and for my news a kiss from the great oaf in the
yellow cloak.” The little woman cackled. “Aye, a sloppy
kiss, a bit of tongue. It has been too long, too long. His mouth
will taste of lemons, and mine of bones. I am too old.”
“Aye,” Lem complained. “Too old for wine and
kisses. All you’ll get from me is the flat of my sword,
crone.”
“My hair comes out in handfuls and no one has kissed me
for a thousand years. It is hard to be so old. Well, I will have a
song then. A song from Tom o’ Sevens, for my news.”
“You will have your song from Tom,” Lord Beric
promised. He gave her the wineskin himself.
The dwarf woman drank deep, the wine running down her chin. When
she lowered the skin, she wiped her mouth with the back of a
wrinkled hand and said, “Sour wine for sour tidings, what
could be more fitting? The king is dead, is that sour enough for
you?”
Arya’s heart caught in her throat.
“Which bloody king is dead, crone?” Lem
demanded.
“The wet one. The kraken king, m’lords. I dreamt
him dead and he died, and the iron squids now turn on one another.
Oh, and Lord Hoster Tully’s died too, but you know that,
don’t you? In the hall of kings, the goat sits alone and
fevered as the great dog descends on him.” The old woman took
another long gulp of wine, squeezing the skin as she raised it to
her lips. The great dog. Did she mean the Hound? Or maybe his brother, the
Mountain That Rides? Arya was not certain. They bore the same arms,
three black dogs on a yellow field. Half the men whose deaths she
prayed for belonged to Ser Gregor Clegane; Polliver, Dunsen, Raff
the Sweetling, the Tickler, and Ser Gregor himself. Maybe Lord
Beric will hang them all.
“I dreamt a wolf howling in the rain, but no one heard his
grief,” the dwarf woman was saying. “I dreamt such a
clangor I thought my head might burst, drums and horns and pipes
and screams, but the saddest sound was the little bells. I dreamt
of a maid at a feast with purple serpents in her hair, venom
dripping from their fangs. And later I dreamt that maid again,
slaying a savage giant in a castle built of snow.” She turned
her head sharply and smiled through the gloom, right at Arya.
“You cannot hide from me, child. Come closer, now.”
Cold fingers walked down Arya’s neck. Fear cuts deeper
than swords, she reminded herself. She stood and approached the
fire warily, light on the balls of her feet, poised to flee.
The dwarf woman studied her with dim red eyes. “I see
you,” she whispered. “I see you, wolf child. Blood
child. I thought it was the lord who smelled of
death . . . ” She began to sob, her
little body shaking. “You are cruel to come to my hill,
cruel. I gorged on grief at Summerhall, I need none of yours.
Begone from here, dark heart. Begone!”
There was such fear in her voice that Arya took a step backward,
wondering if the woman was mad. “Don’t frighten the
child,” Thoros protested. “There’s no harm in
her.”
Lem Lemoncloak’s finger went to his broken nose.
“Don’t be so bloody sure of that.”
“She will leave on the morrow, with us,” Lord Beric
assured the little woman. “We’re taking her to
Riverrun, to her mother.”
“Nay,” said the dwarf. “You’re not. The
black fish holds the rivers now. If it’s the mother you want,
seek her at the Twins. For there’s to be a wedding.”
She cackled again. “Look in your fires, pink priest, and you
will see. Not now, though, not here, you’ll see nothing here.
This place belongs to the old gods
still . . . they linger here as I do, shrunken
and feeble but not yet dead. Nor do they love the flames. For the
oak recalls the acorn, the acorn dreams the oak, the stump lives in
them both. And they remember when the First Men came with fire in
their fists.” She drank the last of the wine in four long
swallows, flung the skin aside, and pointed her stick at Lord
Beric. “I’ll have my payment now. I’ll have the
song you promised me.”
And so Lem woke Tom Sevenstrings beneath his furs, and brought
him yawning to the fireside with his woodharp in hand. “The
same song as before?” he asked.
“Oh, aye. My Jenny’s song. Is there
another?”
And so he sang, and the dwarf woman closed her eyes and rocked
slowly back and forth, murmuring the words and crying. Thoros took
Arya firmly by the hand and drew her aside. “Let her savor
her song in peace,” he said. “It is all she has
left.” I wasn’t going to hurt her, Arya thought. “What did
she mean about the Twins? My mother’s at Riverrun,
isn’t she?”
“She was.” The red priest rubbed beneath his chin.
“A wedding, she said. We shall see. Whenever she is, Lord
Beric will find her, though.”
Not long after, the sky opened. Lightning cracked and thunder
rolled across the hills, and the rain fell in blinding sheets. The
dwarf woman vanished as suddenly as she had appeared, while the
outlaws gathered branches and threw up crude shelters.
It rained all through that night, and come morning Ned, Lem,
and Watty the Miller awoke with chills. Watty could not keep his
breakfast down, and young Ned was feverish and shivering by turns,
with skin clammy to the touch. There was an abandoned village half
a day’s ride to the north, Notch told Lord Beric;
they’d find better shelter there, a place to wait out the
worst of the rains. So they dragged themselves back into the
saddles and urged their horses down the great hill.
The rains did not let up. They rode through woods and fields,
fording swollen streams where the rushing water came up to the
bellies of their horses. Arya pulled up the hood of her cloak and
hunched down, sodden and shivering but determined not to falter.
Merrit and Mudge were soon coughing as bad as Watty, and poor Ned
seemed to grow more miserable with every mile. “When I wear
my helm, the rain beats against the steel and gives me
headaches,” he complained. “But when I take it off, my
hair gets soaked and sticks to my face and in my mouth.”
“You have a knife,” Gendry suggested. “If your
hair annoys you so much, shave your bloody head.” He doesn’t like Ned. The squire seemed nice enough to
Arya; maybe a little shy, but good-natured. She had always heard
that Dornishmen were small and swarthy, with black hair and small
black eyes, but Ned had big blue eyes, so dark that they looked
almost purple. And his hair was a pale blond, more ash than
honey.
“How long have you been Lord Beric’s squire?”
she asked, to take his mind from his misery.
“He took me for his page when he espoused my aunt.”
He coughed. “I was seven, but when I turned ten he raised me
to squire. I won a prize once, riding at rings.”
“I never learned the lance, but I could beat you with a
sword,” said Arya. “Have you killed anyone?”
That seemed to startle him. “I’m only
twelve.” I killed a boy when I was eight, Arya almost said, but she
thought she’d better not. “You’ve been in
battles, though.”
“Yes.” He did not sound very proud of it. “I
was at the Mummer’s Ford. When Lord Beric fell into the
river, I dragged him up onto the bank so he wouldn’t drown
and stood over him with my sword. I never had to fight, though. He
had a broken lance sticking out of him, so no one bothered us. When
we regrouped, Green Gergen helped pull his lordship back onto a
horse.”
Arya was remembering the stableboy at King’s Landing.
After him there’d been that guard whose throat she cut at
Harrenhal, and Ser Amory’s men at that holdfast by the lake.
She didn’t know if Weese and Chiswyck counted, or the ones
who’d died on account of the weasel
soup . . . all of a sudden, she felt very sad.
“My father was called Ned too,” she said.
“I know. I saw him at the Hand’s tourney. I wanted
to go up and speak with him, but I couldn’t think what to
say.” Ned shivered beneath his cloak, a sodden length of pale
purple. “Were you at the tourney? I saw your sister there.
Ser Loras Tyrell gave her a rose.”
“She told me.” It all seemed so long ago. “Her
friend Jeyne Poole fell in love with your Lord Beric.”
“He’s promised to my aunt.” Ned looked
uncomfortable. “That was before, though. Before
he . . . ”
. . . died? she thought, as Ned’s
voice trailed off into an awkward silence. Their horses’
hooves made sucking sounds as they pulled free of the mud.
“My lady?” Ned said at last. “You have a
baseborn brother . . . Jon Snow?”
“He’s with the Night’s Watch on the
Wall.” Maybe I should go to the Wall instead of Riverrun. Jon
wouldn’t care who I killed or whether I brushed my
hair . . . “Jon looks like me, even
though he’s bastard-born. He used to muss my hair and call me
‘little sister.’ ” Arya missed Jon most of all.
Just saying his name made her sad. “How do you know about
Jon?”
“He is my milk brother.”
“Brother?” Arya did not understand. “But
you’re from Dorne. How could you and Jon be blood?”
“Milk brothers. Not blood. My lady mother had no milk when
I was little, so Wylla had to nurse me.”
Arya was lost. “Who’s Wylla?”
“Jon Snow’s mother. He never told you? She’s
served us for years and years. Since before I was born.”
“Jon never knew his mother. Not even her name.” Arya
gave Ned a wary look. “You know her? Truly?” Is he
making mock of me? “If you lie I’ll punch your
face.”
“Wylla was my wetnurse,” he repeated solemnly.
“I swear it on the honor of my House.”
“You have a House?” That was stupid; he was a
squire, of course he had a House. “Who are you?”
“My lady?” Ned looked embarrassed. “I’m
Edric Dayne, the . . . the Lord of
Starfall.”
Behind them, Gendry groaned. “Lords and ladies,” he
proclaimed in a disgusted tone. Arya plucked a withered crabapple
off a passing branch and whipped it at him, bouncing it off his
thick bull head. “Ow,” he said. “That
hurt.” He felt the skin above his eye. “What kind of
lady throws crabapples at people?”
“The bad kind,” said Arya, suddenly contrite. She
turned back to Ned. “I’m sorry I didn’t know who
you were. My lord.”
“The fault is mine, my lady.” He was very
polite. Jon has a mother. Wylla, her name is Wylla. She would need to
remember so she could tell him, the next time she saw him. She
wondered if he would still call her “little sister.”
I’m not so little anymore. He’d have to call me
something else. Maybe once she got to Riverrun she could write Jon
a letter and tell him what Ned Dayne had said. “There was an
Arthur Dayne,” she remembered. “The one they called the
Sword of the Morning.”
“My father was Ser Arthur’s elder brother. Lady
Ashara was my aunt. I never knew her, though. She threw herself
into the sea from atop the Palestone Sword before I was
born.”
“Why would she do that?” said Arya, startled.
Ned looked wary. Maybe he was afraid that she was going to throw
something at him. “Your lord father never spoke of
her?” he said. “The Lady Ashara Dayne, of
Starfall?”
“No. Did he know her?”
“Before Robert was king. She met your father and his
brothers at Harrenhal, during the year of the false
spring.”
“Oh.” Arya did not know what else to say. “Why
did she jump in the sea, though?”
“Her heart was broken.”
Sansa would have sighed and shed a tear for true love, but Arya
just thought it was stupid. She couldn’t say that to Ned,
though, not about his own aunt. “Did someone break
it?”
He hesitated. “Perhaps it’s not my place . . . ”
“Tell me.”
He looked at her uncomfortably. “My aunt Allyria says Lady
Ashara and your father fell in love at Harrenhal—”
“That’s not so. He loved my lady mother.”
“I’m sure he did, my lady, but—”
“She was the only one he loved.”
“He must have found that bastard under a cabbage leaf,
then,” Gendry said behind them.
Arya wished she had another crabapple to bounce off his face.
“My father had honor,” she said angrily. “And we
weren’t talking to you anyway. Why don’t you go back to
Stoney Sept and ring that girl’s stupid bells?”
Gendry ignored that. “At least your father raised his
bastard, not like mine. I don’t even know my father’s
name. Some smelly drunk, I’d wager, like the others my mother
dragged home from the alehouse. Whenever she got mad at me,
she’d say, ‘If your father was here, he’d beat
you bloody.’ That’s all I know of him.” He spat.
“Well, if he was here now, might be I’d beat him
bloody. But he’s dead, I figure, and your father’s dead
too, so what does it matter who he lay with?”
It mattered to Arya, though she could not have said why. Ned was
trying to apologize for upsetting her, but she did not want to hear
it. She pressed her heels into her horse and left them both. Anguy
the Archer was riding a few yards ahead. When she caught up with
him, she said, “Dornishmen lie, don’t they?”
“They’re famous for it.” The bowman grinned.
“Of course, they say the same of us marchers, so there you
are. What’s the trouble now? Ned’s a good
lad . . . ”
“He’s just a stupid liar.” Arya left the
trail, leapt a rotten log and splashed across a streambed, ignoring
the shouts of the outlaws behind her. They just want to tell me
more lies. She thought about trying to get away from them, but
there were too many and they knew these lands too well. What was
the use of running if they caught you?
It was Harwin who rode up beside her, in the end. “Where
do you think you’re going, milady? You shouldn’t run
off. There are wolves in these woods, and worse things.”
“I’m not afraid,” she said. “That boy
Ned said . . . ”
“Aye, he told me. Lady Ashara Dayne. It’s an old
tale, that one. I heard it once at Winterfell, when I was no older
than you are now.” He took hold of her bridle firmly and
turned her horse around. “I doubt there’s any truth to
it. But if there is, what of it? When Ned met this Dornish lady,
his brother Brandon was still alive, and it was him betrothed to
Lady Catelyn, so there’s no stain on your father’s
honor. There’s nought like a tourney to make the blood run
hot, so maybe some words were whispered in a tent of a night, who
can say? Words or kisses, maybe more, but where’s the harm in
that? Spring had come, or so they thought, and neither one of them
was pledged.”
“She killed herself, though,” said Arya uncertainly.
“Ned says she jumped from a tower into the sea.”
“So she did,” Harwin admitted, as he led her back,
“but that was for grief, I’d wager. She’d lost a
brother, the Sword of the Morning.” He shook his head.
“Let it lie, my lady. They’re dead, all of them. Let it
lie . . . and please, when we come to Riverrun,
say naught of this to your mother.”
The village was just where Notch had promised it would be. They
took shelter in a grey stone stable. Only half a roof remained, but
that was half a roof more than any other building in the village.
It’s not a village, it’s only black stones and old
bones. “Did the Lannisters kill the people who lived
here?” Arya asked as she helped Anguy dry the horses.
“No.” He pointed. “Look at how thick the moss
grows on the stones. No one’s moved them for a long time. And
there’s a tree growing out of the wall there, see? This place
was put to the torch a long time ago.”
“Who did it, then?” asked Gendry.
“Hoster Tully.” Notch was a stooped thin grey-haired
man, born in these parts. “This was Lord Goodbrook’s
village. When Riverrun declared for Robert, Goodbrook stayed loyal
to the king, so Lord Tully came down on him with fire and sword.
After the Trident, Goodbrook’s son made his peace with Robert
and Lord Hoster, but that didn’t help the dead
none.”
A silence fell. Gendry gave Arya a queer look, then turned away
to brush his horse. Outside the rain came down and down. “I
say we need a fire,” Thoros declared. “The night is
dark and full of terrors. And wet too, eh? Too very wet.”
Jack-Be-Lucky hacked some dry wood from a stall, while Notch and
Merrit gathered straw for kindling. Thoros himself struck the
spark, and Lem fanned the flames with his big yellow cloak until
they roared and swirled. Soon it grew almost hot inside the stable.
Thoros sat before it crosslegged, devouring the flames with his
eyes just as he had atop High Heart. Arya watched him closely, and
once his lips moved, and she thought she heard him mutter,
“Riverrun.” Lem paced back and forth, coughing, a long
shadow matching him stride for stride, while Tom o’ Sevens
pulled off his boots and rubbed his feet. “I must be mad, to
be going back to Riverrun,” the singer complained. “The
Tullys have never been lucky for old Tom. It was that Lysa sent me
up the high road, when the moon men took my gold and my horse and
all my clothes as well. There’s knights in the Vale still
telling how I came walking up to the Bloody Gate with only my harp
to keep me modest. They made me sing ‘The Name Day
Boy’andThe King Without Courage’ before they opened that
gate. My only solace was that three of them died laughing. I
haven’t been back to the Eyrie since, and I won’t
sing’The King Without Courage’ either, not for all the
gold in Casterly—”
“Lannisters,” Thoros said. “Roaring red and
gold.” He lurched to his feet and went to Lord Beric. Lem and
Tom wasted no time joining them. Arya could not make out what they
were saying, but the singer kept glancing at her, and one time Lem
got so angry he pounded a fist against the wall. That was when Lord
Beric gestured for her to come closer. It was the last thing she
wanted to do, but Harwin put a hand in the small of her back and
pushed her forward. She took two steps and hesitated, full of
dread. “My lord.” She waited to hear what Lord Beric
would say.
“Tell her,” the lightning lord commanded Thoros.
The red priest squatted down beside her. “My lady,”
he said, “the Lord granted me a view of Riverrun. An island
in a sea of fire, it seemed. The flames were leaping lions with
long crimson claws. And how they roared! A sea of Lannisters, my
lady. Riverrun will soon come under attack. “
Arya felt as though he’d punched her in the belly.
“No!”
“Sweetling,” said Thoros, “the flames do not
lie. Sometimes I read them wrongly, blind fool that I am. But not
this time, I think. The Lannisters will soon have Riverrun under
siege.”
“Robb will beat them.” Arya got a stubborn look.
“He’ll beat them like he did before.”
“Your brother may be gone,” said Thoros. “Your
mother as well. I did not see them in the flames. This wedding the
old one spoke of, a wedding on the
Twins . . . she has her own ways of knowing
things, that one. The weirwoods whisper in her ear when she sleeps.
If she says your mother is gone to the
Twins . . . ”
Arya turned on Tom and Lem. “If you hadn’t caught
me, I would have been there. I would have been home.”
Lord Beric paid no heed to her outburst. “My lady,”
he said with weary courtesy, “would you know your
grandfather’s brother by sight? Ser Brynden Tully, called the
Blackfish? Would he know you, perchance?”
Arya shook her head miserably. She had heard her mother speak of
Ser Brynden Blackfish, but if she had ever met him herself it had
been when she was too little to remember.
“Small chance the Blackfish will pay good coin for a girl
he doesn’t know,” said Tom. “Those Tullys are a
sour, suspicious lot, he’s like to think we’re selling
him false goods.”
“We’ll convince him,” Lem Lemoncloak insisted.
“She will, or Harwin. Riverrun is closest. I say we take her
there, get the gold, and be bloody well done with her.”
“And if the lions catch us inside the castle?” said
Tom. “They’d like nothing better than to hang his
lordship in a cage from the top of Casterly Rock.”
“I do not mean to be taken,” said Lord Beric. A
final word hung unspoken in the air. Alive. They all heard it, even
Arya, though it never passed his lips. “Still, we dare not go
blindly here. I want to know where the armies are, the wolves and
lions both. Sharna will know something, and Lord Vance’s
maester will know more. Acorn Hall’s not far. Lady Smallwood
will shelter us for a time while we send scouts ahead to
learn . . . ”
His words beat at her ears like the pounding of a drum, and
suddenly it was more than Arya could stand. She wanted Riverrun,
not Acorn Hall; she wanted her mother and her brother Robb, not
Lady Smallwood or some uncle she never knew. Whirling, she broke
for the door, and when Harwin tried to grab her arm she spun away
from him quick as a snake.
Outside the stables the rain was still falling, and distant
lightning flashed in the west. Arya ran as fast as she could. She
did not know where she was going, only that she wanted to be alone,
away from all the voices, away from their hollow words and broken
promises. All I wanted was to go to Riverrun. It was her own fault,
for taking Gendry and Hot Pie with her when she left Harrenhal. She
would have been better alone. If she had been alone, the outlaws
would never have caught her, and she’d be with Robb and her
mother by now. They were never my pack. If they had been, they
wouldn’t leave me. She splashed through a puddle of muddy
water. Someone was shouting her name, Harwin probably, or Gendry,
but the thunder drowned them out as it rolled across the hills,
half a heartbeat behind the lightning. The lightning lord, she
thought angrily. Maybe he couldn’t die, but he could lie.
Somewhere off to her left a horse whinnied. Arya couldn’t
have gone more than fifty yards from the stables, yet already she
was soaked to the bone. She ducked around the corner of one of the
tumbledown houses, hoping the mossy walls would keep the rain off,
and almost bowled right into one of the sentries. A mailed hand
closed hard around her arm.
“You’re hurting me,” she said, twisting in his
grasp. “Let go, I was going to go back,
I . . . ”
“Back?” Sandor Clegane’s laughter was iron
scraping over stone. “Bugger that, wolf girl. You’re
mine.” He needed only one hand to yank her off her feet and
drag her kicking toward his waiting horse. The cold rain lashed
them both and washed away her shouts, and all that Arya could think
of was the question he had asked her. Do you know what dogs do to
wolves?