A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

over the edge.
    â€œHere, you!” an angry voice shouted at Arya, but she bowled past, shoving people aside, squirming between them, slamming into anyone in her way. A hand fumbled at her leg and she hacked at it, kicked at shins. A woman stumbled and Arya ran up her back, cutting to both sides, but it was no good,
no good
, there were too many people, no sooner did she make a hole than it closed again. Someone buffeted her aside. She could still hear Sansa screaming.
    Ser Ilyn drew a two-handed greatsword from the scabbard on his back. As he lifted the blade above his head, sunlight seemed to ripple and dance down the dark metal, glinting off an edge sharper than any razor.
Ice
, she thought,
he has Ice!
Her tears streamed down her face, blinding her.
    And then a hand shot out of the press and closed round her arm like a wolf trap, so hard that Needle went flying from her hand. Arya was wrenched off her feet. She would have fallen if he hadn’t held her up, as easy as if she were a doll. A face pressed close to hers, long black hair and tangled beard and rotten teeth.
“Don’t look!” a
thick voice snarled at her.
    â€œI … I … I …” Arya sobbed.
    The old man shook her so hard her teeth rattled. “Shut your mouth and close your eyes,
boy.”
Dimly, as if from far away, she heard a … a
noise
 … a soft sighing sound, as if a million people had let out their breath at once. The old man’s fingers dug into her arm, stiff as iron. “Look at me. Yes, that’s the way of it, at
me.”
Sour wine perfumed his breath. “Remember,
boy?”
    It was the smell that did it. Arya saw the matted greasy hair, the patched, dusty black cloak that covered his twisted shoulders, the hard black eyes squinting at her. And she remembered the black brother who had come to visit her father.
    â€œKnow me now, do you? There’s a bright boy.” Hespat. “They’re done here. You’ll be coming with me, and you’ll be keeping your mouth shut.” When she started to reply, he shook her again, even harder.
“Shut
, I said.”
    The plaza was beginning to empty. The press dissolved around them as people drifted back to their lives. But Arya’s life was gone. Numb, she trailed along beside … 
Yoren, yes, his name is Yoren
. She did not recall him finding Needle, until he handed the sword back to her. “Hope you can use that, boy.”
    â€œI’m not—” she started.
    He shoved her into a doorway, thrust dirty fingers through her hair, and gave it a twist, yanking her head back. “—not a smart
boy
, that what you mean to say?”
    He had a knife in his other hand.
    As the blade flashed toward her face, Arya threw herself backward, kicking wildly, wrenching her head from side to side, but he had her by the hair, so
strong
, she could feel her scalp tearing, and on her lips the salt taste of tears.

BRAN
    T he oldest were men grown, seventeen and eighteen years from the day of their naming. One was past twenty. Most were younger, sixteen or less.
    Bran watched them from the balcony of Maester Luwin’s turret, listening to them grunt and strain and curse as they swung their staves and wooden swords. The yard was alive to the
clack
of wood on wood, punctuated all too often by
thwacks
and yowls of pain when a blow struck leather or flesh. Ser Rodrik strode among the boys, face reddening beneath his white whiskers, muttering at them one and all. Bran had never seen the old knight look so fierce. “No,” he kept saying. “No. No. No.”
    â€œThey don’t fight very well,” Bran said dubiously. He scratched Summer idly behind the ears as the direwolf tore at a haunch of meat. Bones crunched between his teeth.
    â€œFor a certainty,” Maester Luwin agreed with a deep sigh. The maester was peering through his big Myrish lens tube, measuring shadows and noting the position of the comet that hung low in the morning sky. “Yet given time … Ser Rodrik has the truth of it, we need men to walk the walls. Your lord father took the cream of hisguard to King’s Landing, and your brother took the rest, along with all the likely lads for leagues around. Many will not come back to us, and we must needs find the men to take their places.”
    Bran stared resentfully at the sweating boys below. “If I still had my legs, I could beat them