A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

when Tyrion left the Small Hall. Bronn was
waiting in his solar. “Slynt?” he asked.
    â€œLord Janos will be sailing for the Wall on the morning tide. Varys would have
me believe that I have replaced one of Joffrey’s men with one of my own. More
likely, I have replaced Littlefinger’s man with one belonging to Varys, but so
be it.”
    â€œYou’d best know, Timett killed a man—”
    â€œVarys told me.”
    The sellsword seemed unsurprised. “The fool figured a one-eyed man would be
easier to cheat. Timett pinned his wrist to the table with a dagger and ripped
out his throat barehanded. He has this trick where he stiffens his
fingers—”
    â€œSpare me the grisly details, my supper is sitting badly in my belly,” Tyrion
said. “How goes your recruiting?”
    â€œWell enough. Three new men tonight.”
    â€œHow do you know which ones to hire?”
    â€œI look them over. I question them, to learn where they’ve fought and how well
they lie.” Bronn smiled. “And then I give them a chance to kill me, while I
do the same for them.”
    â€œHave you killed any?”
    â€œNo one we could have used.”
    â€œAnd if one of them kills you?”
    â€œHe’ll be one you’ll want to hire.”
    Tyrion was a little drunk, and very tired. “Tell me, Bronn. If I told you to
kill a babe . . . an infant girl, say, still at her mother’s
breast . . . would you do it? Without question?”
    â€œWithout question? No.” The sellsword rubbed thumb and forefinger together.
“I’d ask how much.”
    And why would I ever need your Allar Deem, Lord Slynt?
Tyrion
thought.
I have a hundred of my own.
He wanted to laugh; he wanted to
weep; most of all, he wanted Shae.

ARYA
    T he road was little more than two ruts through the weeds.
    The good part was, with so little traffic there’d be no one to point the finger
and say which way they’d gone. The human flood that had flowed down the
kingsroad was only a trickle here.
    The bad part was, the road wound back and forth like a snake, tangling
with even smaller trails and sometimes seeming to vanish entirely only to
reappear half a league farther on when they had all but given up hope. Arya
hated it. The land was gentle enough, rolling hills and terraced fields
interspersed with meadows and woodlands and little valleys where willows
crowded close to slow shallow streams. Even so, the path was so narrow and
crooked that their pace had dropped to a crawl.
    It was the wagons that slowed them, lumbering along, axles creaking under the
weight of their heavy loads. A dozen times a day they had to stop to free a
wheel that had stuck in a rut, or double up the teams to climb a muddy slope.
Once, in the middle of a dense stand of oak, they came face-to-face with three
men pulling a load of firewood in an ox cart, with no way for either to get
around. There had been nothing for it but to wait while the foresters unhitched
their ox, led him through the trees, spun the cart, hitched the ox up again,
and started back the way they’d come. The ox was even
slower
than the
wagons, so that day they
hardly got anywhere at all.
    Arya could not help looking over her shoulder, wondering when the gold cloaks
would catch them. At night, she woke at every noise to grab for Needle’s hilt.
They never made camp without putting out sentries now, but Arya did not trust
them, especially the orphan boys. They might have done well enough in the
alleys of King’s Landing, but out here they were lost. When she was being quiet
as a shadow, she could sneak past all of them, flitting out by starlight to
make her water in the woods where no one would see. Once, when Lommy Greenhands
had
the watch, she shimmied up an oak and moved from tree to tree until she was
right above his head, and he never saw a thing. She would have jumped down on
top of him, but she knew his scream would wake the whole camp, and Yoren might
take a stick to her again.
    Lommy and the other orphans all treated the Bull like someone special now
because the queen wanted his head, though he would have none of it. “I never
did nothing to no queen,” he said angrily. “I did my work, is all. Bellows
and tongs and fetch and carry. I was s’posed to be an armorer, and one day
Master Mott says I got to join the Night’s Watch, that’s all I