A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

them so much?
    The sun was low to the west, and the houses cast long dark shadows. A sudden
clap of sound made Arya reach for Needle, but it was only a shutter banging in
the wind. After the open river shore, the closeness of the town unnerved
her.
    When she glimpsed the lake ahead between houses and trees, Arya put her knees
into her horse, galloping past Woth and Gendry. She burst out onto the grassy
sward beside the pebbled shore. The setting sun made the tranquil surface of
the water shimmer like a sheet of beaten copper. It was the biggest lake she
had ever seen, with no hint of a far shore. She saw a rambling inn to her left,
built out over the water on heavy wooden pilings. To her right, a long pier
jutted into the lake, and there were other docks farther east, wooden fingers
reaching out from the town. But the only boat in view was an upside-down
rowboat abandoned on the rocks beneath the inn, its bottom thoroughly rotted
out. “They’re gone,” Arya said, dejected. What would they do now?
    â€œThere’s an inn,” Lommy said, when the others rode up. “Do you think they
left any food? Or ale?”
    â€œLet’s go see,” Hot Pie suggested.
    â€œNever you mind about no inn,” snapped Woth. “Yoren said

we’re to find a boat.”
    â€œThey took the boats.” Somehow Arya knew it was true; they could search the
whole town, and they’d find no more than the upside-down rowboat. Despondent,
she climbed off her horse and knelt by the lake. The water lapped softly around
her legs. A few lantern bugs were coming out, their little lights blinking on
and off. The green water was warm as tears, but there was no salt in it. It
tasted of summer and mud and growing things. Arya plunged her face down into it
to wash off the dust and dirt and sweat of the day. When she leaned back the
trickles ran down the back of her neck and under her collar. They felt good.
She wished she could take off her clothes and swim, gliding through the warm
water like a skinny pink otter. Maybe she could swim all the way to
Winterfell.
    Woth was shouting at her to help search, so she did, peering into boathouses
and sheds while her horse grazed along the shore. They found some sails, some
nails, buckets of tar gone hard, and a mother cat with a litter of newborn
kittens. But no boats.
    The town was as dark as any forest when Yoren and the others reappeared.
“Tower’s empty,” he said. “Lord’s gone off to fight maybe, or to get his
smallfolk to safety, no telling. Not a horse or pig left in town, but we’ll
eat. Saw a goose running loose, and some chickens, and there’s good fish in the
Gods Eye.”
    â€œThe boats are gone,” Arya reported.
    â€œWe could patch the bottom of that rowboat,” said Koss.
    â€œMight do for four o’ us,” Yoren said.
    â€œThere’s nails,” Lommy pointed out. “And there’s trees all around. We
could build us all boats.”
    Yoren spat. “You know anything ’bout boat-building, dyer’s boy?” Lommy looked
blank.
    â€œA raft,” suggested Gendry. “Anyone can build a raft, and long poles for
pushing.”
    Yoren looked thoughtful. “Lake’s too deep to pole across, but if we stayed to
the shallows near shore . . . it’d mean leaving the wagons.
Might be that’s best. I’ll sleep on it.”
    â€œCan we stay at the inn?” Lommy asked.
    â€œWe’ll stay in the holdfast, with the gates barred,” the old man said. “I
like the feel o’ stone walls about me when I sleep.”
    Arya could not keep quiet. “We shouldn’t stay here,” she blurted. “The
people didn’t. They all ran off, even their lord.”
    â€œArry’s scared,” Lommy announced, braying laughter.
    â€œI’m
not,
” she snapped back, “but
they
were.”
    â€œSmart boy,” said Yoren. “Thing is, the folks who lived here were at war,
like it or no. We’re not. Night’s Watch takes no part, so no man’s our
enemy.”
    And no man’s our friend,
she thought, but this time she held her
tongue. Lommy and the rest were looking at her, and she did not want to seem
craven in front of them.
    The holdfast gates were studded with iron nails. Within, they found a pair of
iron bars the size of saplings, with post holes in the ground and metal
brackets