A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

hunting horn, while Tarber helped himself to bow and boots and knife. They’d
taken it all when they left. At first they thought the two had just gone
hunting, that they’d soon return with game and feed them all. But they waited
and waited, until finally Gendry made them move on. Maybe Tarber and Cutjack
figured they would stand a better chance without a gaggle of orphan boys to
herd along. They probably would too, but that didn’t stop her hating them for
leaving.
    Beneath her tree, Hot Pie barked like a dog. Kurz had told them to use animal
sounds to signal to each other. An old poacher’s trick, he’d said, but he’d
died before he could teach them how to make the sounds right. Hot Pie’s bird
calls were awful. His dog was better, but not much.
    Arya hopped from the high branch to one beneath it, her hands out for balance.
A water dancer never falls.
Lightfoot, her toes curled tight around
the branch, she walked a few feet,

hopped down to a larger limb, then swung hand over hand through the tangle of
leaves until she reached the trunk. The bark was rough beneath her fingers,
against her toes. She descended quickly, jumping down the final six feet,
rolling when she landed.
    Gendry gave her a hand to pull her up. “You were up there a long time. What
could you see?”
    â€œA fishing village, just a little place, north along the shore. Twenty-six
thatch roofs and one slate, I counted. I saw part of a wagon. Someone’s
there.”
    At the sound of her voice, Weasel came creeping out from the bushes. Lommy had
named her that. He said she looked like a weasel, which wasn’t true, but they
couldn’t keep on calling her the crying girl after she finally stopped crying.
Her mouth was filthy. Arya hoped she hadn’t been eating mud again.
    â€œDid you see people?” asked Gendry.
    â€œMostly just roofs,” Arya admitted, “but some chimneys were smoking, and I
heard a horse.” The Weasel put her arms around her leg, clutching tight.
Sometimes she did that now.
    â€œIf there’s people, there’s food,” Hot Pie said, too loudly. Gendry was
always telling him to be more quiet, but it never did any good. “Might be
they’d give us some.”
    â€œMight be they’d kill us too,” Gendry said.
    â€œNot if we yielded,” Hot Pie said hopefully.
    â€œNow you sound like Lommy.”
    Lommy Greenhands sat propped up between two thick roots at the foot of an oak.
A spear had taken him through his left calf

during the fight at the holdfast. By the end of the next day, he had to limp
along one-legged with an arm around Gendry, and now he couldn’t even do
that.
They’d hacked branches off trees to make a litter for him, but
it was slow, hard work carrying him along, and he whimpered every time they
jounced him.
    â€œWe have to yield,” he said. “That’s what Yoren should have done. He should
have opened the gates like they said.”
    Arya was sick of Lommy going on about how Yoren should have yielded. It was all
he talked about when they carried him, that and his leg and his empty
belly.
    Hot Pie agreed. “They
told
Yoren to open the gates, they told him in
the king’s name. You have to do what they tell you in the king’s name. It was
that stinky old man’s fault. If he’d of yielded, they would have left us
be.”
    Gendry frowned. “Knights and lordlings, they take each other captive and pay
ransoms, but they don’t care if the likes of you yield or not.” He turned to
Arya. “What else did you see?”
    â€œIf it’s a fishing village, they’d sell us fish, I bet,” said Hot Pie. The
lake teemed with fresh fish, but they had nothing to catch them with. Arya had
tried to use her hands, the way she’d seen Koss do, but fish were quicker than
pigeons and the water played tricks on her eyes.
    â€œI don’t know about fish.” Arya tugged at the Weasel’s matted hair, thinking
it might be best to hack it off. “There’s crows down by the water. Something’s
dead there.”
    â€œFish, washed up on shore,” Hot Pie said. “If the crows eat

it, I bet we could.”
    â€œWe should catch some crows, we could eat
them,
” said Lommy. “We
could make a fire and roast them like chickens.”
    Gendry looked fierce when he scowled. His beard had grown in thick and