A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

foes. For each one Arya cut
or stabbed or shoved back, another was coming over the wall. The knight in the
spiked helm reached the rampart, but Yoren tangled his black banner around his
spike, and forced the point of his dirk through his armor while the man was
fighting the cloth. Every time Arya looked up, more torches were flying,
trailing long tongues of flame that lingered behind her eyes. She saw a gold
lion on a red banner and thought of Joffrey, wishing he was here so she could
drive Needle through his sneery face. When four men assaulted the gate with
axes, Koss shot them down with arrows, one by one. Dobber wrestled a man off
the walk, and Lommy smashed his head with a rock before he could rise, and
hooted until he saw the knife in Dobber’s belly and realized he wouldn’t be
getting up either. Arya jumped over a dead boy no older than Jon, lying with
his arm cut off. She didn’t think she’d done it, but she wasn’t sure. She heard
Qyle beg for mercy before a knight with a wasp on his shield smashed his face
in with a spiked mace. Everything smelled of blood and smoke and iron and piss,
but after a time it seemed like that was only one smell. She never saw how the
skinny man got over the wall, but when he did she fell on him with Gendry and
Hot Pie. Gendry’s sword shattered on the man’s helm, tearing it off his head.
Underneath he was bald and scared-looking, with missing teeth and a speckly
grey beard, but even as she was

feeling sorry for him she was killing him, shouting,
“Winterfell!
Winterfell!”
while Hot Pie screamed
“Hot Pie!”
beside her as
he hacked at the man’s scrawny neck.
    When the skinny man was dead, Gendry stole his sword and leapt down into the
yard to fight some more. Arya looked past him, and saw steel shadows running
through the holdfast, firelight shining off mail and blades, and she knew that
they’d gotten over the wall somewhere, or broken through at the postern. She
jumped down beside Gendry, landing the way Syrio had taught her. The night rang
to the clash of steel and the cries of the wounded and dying. For a moment Arya
stood uncertain, not knowing which way to go. Death was all around
her.
    And then Yoren was there, shaking her, screaming in her face.
“Boy!”
he yelled, the way he always yelled it. “Get
out,
it’s done, we’ve lost. Herd up all you can, you and him and the others, the
boys, you get them out.
Now!
”
    â€œHow?” Arya said.
    â€œThat trap,” he screamed. “Under the barn.”
    Quick as that he was gone, off to fight, sword in hand. Arya grabbed Gendry by
the arm. “He said
go,
” she shouted, “the barn, the way out.”
Through the slits of his helm, the Bull’s eyes shone with reflected fire. He
nodded. They called Hot Pie down from the wall and found Lommy Greenhands where
he lay bleeding from a spear thrust through his calf. They found Gerren too,
but he was hurt too bad to move. As they were running toward the barn, Arya
spied the crying girl sitting in the middle of the

chaos, surrounded by smoke and slaughter. She grabbed her by the hand and
pulled her to her feet as the others raced ahead. The girl wouldn’t walk, even
when slapped. Arya dragged her with her right hand while she held Needle in the
left. Ahead, the night was a sullen red.
The barn’s on fire,
she
thought. Flames were licking up its sides from where a torch had fallen on
straw, and she could hear the screaming of the animals trapped within. Hot Pie
stepped out of the barn. “Arry,
come on!
Lommy’s
gone,
leave her if she won’t come!”
    Stubbornly, Arya dragged all the harder, pulling the crying girl along. Hot Pie
scuttled back inside, abandoning them . . . but Gendry came
back, the fire shining so bright on his polished helm that the horns seemed to
glow orange. He ran to them, and hoisted the crying girl up over his shoulder.
“Run!”
    Rushing through the barn doors was like running into a furnace. The air was
swirling with smoke, the back wall a sheet of fire ground to roof. Their horses
and donkeys were kicking and rearing and screaming.
The poor animals,
Arya thought. Then she saw the wagon, and the three men manacled to its bed.
Biter was flinging himself against the chains, blood running down his arms from
where the irons clasped his wrists. Rorge screamed curses, kicking at the