A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

gold by sunset he wouldn’t be harmed . . .”
    â€œWell,” said the singer, “you’ve got us there, my lord. That was a lie of sorts, as it happens.”
    The one-eyed outlaw came forward with a long coil of hempen rope. He looped one end around Merrett’s neck, pulled it tight, and tied a hard knot under his ear. The other end he threw over the limb of the oak. The big man in the yellow cloak caught it.
    â€œWhat are you doing?” Merrett knew how stupid that sounded, but he could not believe what was happening, even then. “You’d never dare hang a Frey.”
    Yellow cloak laughed. “That other one, the pimply boy, he said the same thing.”
    He doesn’t mean it. He cannot mean it
. “My father will pay you. I’m worth a good ransom, more than Petyr, twice as much.”
    The singer sighed. “Lord Walder might be half-blind and gouty, but he’s not so stupid as to snap at the same bait twice. Next time he’ll send a hundred swords instead of a hundred dragons, I fear.”
    â€œHe will!” Merrett tried to sound stern, but his voice betrayed him. “He’ll send a thousand swords, and kill you all.”
    â€œHe has to catch us first.” The singer glanced up at poor Petyr. “And he can’t hang us twice, now can he?” He drew a melancholy air from the strings of his woodharp. “Here now, don’t soil yourself. All you need to do is answer me a question, and I’ll tell them to let you go.”
    Merrett would tell them anything if it meant his life. “What do you want to know? I’ll tell you true, I swear it.”
    The outlaw gave him an encouraging smile. “Well, as it happens, we’re looking for a dog that ran away.”
    â€œA dog?” Merrett was lost. “What kind of dog?”
    â€œHe answers to the name Sandor Clegane. Thoros says he was making for the Twins. We found the ferrymen who took him across the Trident, and the poor sod he robbed on the kingsroad. Did you see him at the wedding, perchance?”
    â€œThe Red Wedding?” Merrett’s skull felt as if it were about to split, but he did his best to recall. There had been so much confusion, but surely someone would have mentioned Joffrey’s dog sniffing round the Twins. “He wasn’t in the castle. Not at the main feast . . . he might have been at the bastard feast, or in the camps, but . . . no, someone would have said . . .”
    â€œHe would have had a child with him,” said the singer. “A skinny girl, about ten. Or perhaps a boy the same age.”
    â€œI don’t think so,” said Merrett. “Not that I knew.”
    â€œNo? Ah, that’s a pity. Well, up you go.”
    â€œ
No
,” Merrett squealed loudly. “No,
don’t
, I gave you your answer, you said you’d let me go.”
    â€œSeems to me that what I said was I’d
tell
them to let you go.” The singer looked at yellow cloak. “Lem, let him go.”
    â€œGo bugger yourself,” the big outlaw replied brusquely.
    The singer gave Merrett a helpless shrug and began to play, “The Day They Hanged Black Robin.”
    â€œ
Please
.” The last of Merrett’s courage was running down his leg. “I’ve done you no harm. I brought the gold, the way you said. I answered your question. I have
children
.”
    â€œThat Young Wolf never will,” said the one-eyed outlaw.
    Merrett could hardly think for the pounding in his head. “He shamed us, the whole realm was laughing, we had to cleanse the stain on our honor.” His father had said all that and more.
    â€œMaybe so. What do a bunch o’ bloody peasants know about a lord’s honor?” Yellow cloak wrapped the end of the rope around his hand three times. “We know some about murder, though.”
    â€œNot murder.” His voice was shrill. “It was vengeance, we had a right to our vengeance. It was
war
. Aegon, we called him Jinglebell, a poor lackwit never hurt anyone, Lady Stark cut his throat. We lost half a hundred men in the camps. Ser Garse Goodbrook, Kyra’s husband, and Ser Tytos, Jared’s son . . . someone smashed his head in with an axe . . . Stark’s direwolf killed four of our wolfhounds and tore the kennelmaster’s arm off his shoulder, even after we’d filled him full of quarrels . . .”
    â€œSo you sewed his head on Robb Stark’s neck after