A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

the place.”
    â€œSee a banner?”
    â€œSpotted treecat, yellow and black, on a mud-brown field.”
    Yoren folded a sourleaf into his mouth and chewed. “Can’t say,” he admitted.
“Might be one side, might be t’other. If they’re hurt that bad, likely they’d
take our mounts no matter who they are. Might be they’d take more than that. I
believe we’ll go wide around them.” It took them miles out of their way, and
cost them two days at the least, but the old man said it was cheap at the
price. “You’ll have time enough on the Wall. The rest o’ your lives, most
like. Seems to me there’s no rush to get there.”
    Arya saw men guarding the fields more and more when they turned north again.
Often they stood silently beside the road, giving a cold eye to anyone who
passed. Elsewhere they patrolled on horses, riding their fence lines with axes
strapped to their saddles. At one place, she spotted a man perched up in a dead
tree, with a bow in his hand and a quiver hanging from the branch

beside him. The moment he spied them, he notched an arrow to his bowstring, and
never looked away until the last wagon was out of sight. All the while, Yoren
cursed. “Him in his tree, let’s see how well he likes it up there when the
Others come to take him. He’ll scream for the Watch then, that he
will.”
    A day later Dobber spied a red glow against the evening sky. “Either this road
went and turned again, or that sun’s setting in the north.”
    Yoren climbed a rise to get a better look. “Fire,” he announced. He licked a
thumb and held it up. “Wind should blow it away from us. Still bears
watching.”
    And watch it they did. As the world darkened, the fire seemed to grow brighter
and brighter, until it looked as though the whole north was ablaze. From time
to time, they could even smell the smoke, though the wind held steady and the
flames never got any closer. By dawn the fire had burned itself out, but none
of them slept very well that night.
    It was midday when they arrived at the place where the village had been. The
fields were a charred desolation for miles around, the houses blackened shells.
The carcasses of burnt and butchered animals dotted the ground, under living
blankets of carrion crows that rose, cawing furiously, when disturbed. Smoke
still drifted from inside the holdfast. Its timber palisade looked strong from
afar, but had not proved strong enough.
    Riding out in front of the wagons on her horse, Arya saw burnt bodies impaled
on sharpened stakes atop the walls, their

hands drawn up tight in front of their faces as if to fight off the flames that
had consumed them. Yoren called a halt when they were still some distance off,
and told Arya and the other boys to guard the wagons while he and Murch and
Cutjack went in on foot. A flock of ravens rose from inside the walls when they
climbed through the broken gate, and the caged ravens in their wagons called
out to them with
quorks
and raucous shrieks.
    â€œShould we go in after them?” Arya asked Gendry after Yoren and the others
had been gone a long time.
    â€œYoren said wait.” Gendry’s voice sounded hollow. When Arya turned to look,
she saw that he was wearing his helm, all shiny steel and great curving
horns.
    When they finally returned, Yoren had a little girl in his arms, and Murch and
Cutjack were carrying a woman in a sling made of an old torn quilt. The girl
was no older than two and she cried all the time, a whimpery sound, like
something was caught in her throat. Either she couldn’t talk yet or she had
forgotten how. The woman’s right arm ended in a bloody stump at her elbow, and
her eyes didn’t seem to see anything, even when she was looking right at it.
She talked, but she only said one thing. “Please,” she cried, over and over.
“Please. Please.” Rorge thought that was funny. He laughed through the hole
in his face where his nose had been, and Biter started laughing too, until
Murch cursed them and told them to shut up.
    Yoren had them fix the woman a place in the back of a wagon. “And be quick
about it,” he said. “Come dark, there’ll be wolves

here, and worse.”
    â€œI’m scared,” Hot Pie murmured when he saw the one-armed woman thrashing in
the wagon.
    â€œMe too,” Arya confessed.
    He squeezed