A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

wood.
“Boy!” called Jaqen H’ghar. “Sweet boy!”
    The open trap was only a few feet ahead, but the fire was spreading fast,
consuming the old wood and dry straw faster than she would have believed. Arya
remembered the Hound’s horrible burned face. “Tunnel’s narrow,” Gendry
shouted. “How do we get

her through?”
    â€œPull her,” Arya said. “Push her.”
    â€œGood boys, kind boys,” called Jaqen H’ghar, coughing.
    â€œGet these fucking chains off!”
Rorge screamed.
    Gendry ignored them. “You go first, then her, then me. Hurry, it’s a long
way.”
    â€œWhen you split the firewood,” Arya remembered, “where did you leave the
axe?”
    â€œOut by the haven.” He spared a glance for the chained men. “I’d save the
donkeys first. There’s no time.”
    â€œYou take her!” she yelled. “You get her out! You do it!” The fire beat at
her back with hot red wings as she fled the burning barn. It felt blessedly
cool outside, but men were dying all around her. She saw Koss throw down his
blade to yield, and she saw them kill him where he stood. Smoke was everywhere.
There was no sign of Yoren, but the axe was where Gendry had left it, by the
woodpile outside the haven. As she wrenched it free, a mailed hand grabbed her
arm. Spinning, Arya drove the head of the axe hard between his legs. She never
saw his face, only the dark blood seeping between the links of his hauberk.
Going back into that barn was the hardest thing she ever did. Smoke was pouring
out the open door like a writhing black snake, and she could hear the screams
of the poor animals inside, donkeys and horses and men. She chewed her lip, and
darted through the doors, crouched low where the smoke wasn’t quite so
thick.
    A donkey was caught in a ring of fire, shrieking in terror

and pain. She could smell the stench of burning hair. The roof was gone up too,
and things were falling down, pieces of flaming wood and bits of straw and hay.
Arya put a hand over her mouth and nose. She couldn’t see the wagon for the
smoke, but she could still hear Biter screaming. She crawled toward the
sound.
    And then a wheel was looming over her. The wagon
jumped
and moved a
half foot when Biter threw himself against his chains again. Jaqen saw her, but
it was too hard to breathe, let alone talk. She threw the axe into the wagon.
Rorge caught it and lifted it over his head, rivers of sooty sweat pouring down
his noseless face. Arya was running, coughing. She heard the steel crash
through the old wood, and again, again. An instant later came a
crack
as loud as thunder, and the bottom of the wagon came ripping loose in an
explosion of splinters.
    Arya rolled headfirst into the tunnel and dropped five feet. She got dirt in
her mouth but she didn’t care, the taste was fine, the taste was mud and water
and worms and life. Under the earth the air was cool and dark. Above was
nothing but blood and roaring red and choking smoke and the screams of dying
horses. She moved her belt around so Needle would not be in her way, and began
to crawl. A dozen feet down the tunnel she heard the sound, like the roar of
some monstrous beast, and a cloud of hot smoke and black dust came billowing up
behind her, smelling of hell. Arya held her breath and kissed the mud on the
floor of the tunnel and cried. For whom, she could not say.

TYRION
    T he queen was not disposed to wait on Varys. “Treason is vile enough,”
she declared furiously, “but this is barefaced naked villainy, and I do not
need that mincing eunuch to tell me what must be done with
villains.”
    Tyrion took the letters from his sister’s hand and compared them side by side.
There were two copies, the words exactly alike, though they had been written by
different hands.
    â€œMaester Frenken received the first missive at Castle Stokeworth,”
Grand Maester Pycelle explained. “The second copy came through Lord
Gyles.”
    Littlefinger fingered his beard. “If Stannis bothered with
them,
it’s past certain every other lord in the Seven Kingdoms saw a copy as
well.”
    â€œI want these letters burned, every one,” Cersei declared. “No hint of this
must reach my son’s ears, or my father’s.”
    â€œI imagine Father’s heard rather more than a hint by now,” Tyrion said