A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

a broad chest and strong-looking
arms.
    â€œYou better give Hot Pie the sword, Arry,” Lommy said. “Hot Pie wants it
bad. He kicked a boy to death. He’ll do the same to you, I bet.”
    â€œI knocked him down and I kicked him in the balls, and I kept kicking him
there until he was dead,” Hot Pie boasted. “I kicked him all to pieces. His
balls were broke open and bloody and his cock turned black. You better gimme
the sword.”
    Arya slid her practice sword from her belt. “You can have this one,” she told
Hot Pie, not wanting to fight.
    â€œThat’s just some stick.” He rode nearer and tried to reach over for Needle’s
hilt.
    Arya made the stick whistle as she laid the wood across his donkey’s
hindquarters. The animal
hawed
and bucked, dumping Hot Pie on the
ground. She vaulted off her own donkey and poked him in the gut as he tried to
get up and he sat back down with a grunt. Then she whacked him across the face
and his nose made a
crack
like a branch breaking. Blood dribbled from
his nostrils. When Hot Pie began to wail, Arya whirled toward Lommy Greenhands,

who was sitting on his donkey openmouthed. “You want some sword too?” she
yelled, but he didn’t. He raised dyed green hands in front of his face and
squealed at her to get away.
    The Bull shouted, “Behind you,” and Arya spun. Hot Pie was on his knees, his
fist closing around a big jagged rock. She let him throw it, ducking her head
as it sailed past. Then she flew at him. He raised a hand and she hit it, and
then his cheek, and then his knee. He grabbed for her, and she danced aside and
bounced the wood off the back of his head. He fell down and got up and stumbled
after her, his red face all smeared with dirt and blood. Arya slid into a water
dancer’s stance and waited. When he came close enough, she lunged, right
between his legs, so hard that if her wooden sword had had a point it would
have come out between his butt cheeks.
    By the time Yoren pulled her off him, Hot Pie was sprawled out on the ground
with his breeches brown and smelly, crying as Arya whapped him over and over
and over.
“Enough,”
the black brother roared, prying the stick
sword from her fingers, “you want to kill the fool?” When Lommy and some
others started to squeal, the old man turned on them too. “Shut your mouths,
or I’ll be shutting them for you. Any more o’ this, I’ll tie you lot behind the
wagons and
drag
you to the Wall.” He spat. “And that goes twice for
you, Arry. You come with me, boy.
Now.
”
    They were all looking at her, even the three chained and manacled in the back
of the wagon. The fat one snapped his pointy teeth together and
hissed
, but Arya ignored him.
    The old man dragged her well off the road into a tangle of trees, cursing
and muttering all the while. “If I had a thimble o’ sense, I would’ve left you
in King’s Landing. You hear me,
boy
?” He always snarled that word,
putting a bite in it so she would be certain to hear. “Unlace your breeches
and pull ’em down. Go on, there’s no one here to see. Do it.” Sullenly, Arya
did as he said. “Over there, against the oak. Yes, like that.” She wrapped
her arms around the trunk and pressed her face to the rough wood. “You scream
now. You scream loud.”
    I won’t,
Arya thought stubbornly, but when Yoren laid the wood
against the back of her bare thighs, the shriek burst out of her anyway.
“Think that hurt?” he said. “Try this one.” The stick came whistling. Arya
shrieked again, clutching the tree to keep from falling. “One more.” She held
on tight, chewing her lip, flinching when she heard it coming. The stroke made
her jump and howl.
I won’t cry,
she thought,
I won’t do that.
I’m a Stark of Winterfell, our sigil is the direwolf, direwolves don’t
cry.
She could feel a thin trickle of blood running down her left leg. Her
thighs and cheeks were ablaze with pain. “Might be I got your attention now,”
Yoren said. “Next time you take that stick to one of your brothers, you’ll get
twice what you give, you hear me? Now cover yourself.”
    They’re not my brothers,
Arya thought as she bent to yank up her
breeches, but she knew better than to say so. Her hands fumbled with her belt
and laces.
    Yoren was