A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

just leave him, Arry,” Lommy pleaded. “They don’t know about the rest
of us. If we hide, they’ll go away, you know they will. It’s not our fault
Gendry’s captured.”
    â€œYou’re stupid, Lommy,” Arya said angrily. “You’ll
die
if we don’t
get Gendry out. Who’s going to carry you?”
    â€œYou and Hot Pie.”
    â€œAll the time, with no one else to help? We’ll never do it. Gendry was the
strong one. Anyhow, I don’t care what you say, I’m going back for him.” She
looked at Hot Pie. “Are you coming?”
    Hot Pie glanced at Lommy, at Arya, at Lommy again. “I’ll come,” he said
reluctantly.
    â€œLommy, you keep Weasel here.”
    He grabbed the little girl by the hand and pulled her close. “What if the
wolves come?”
    â€œYield,” Arya suggested.
    Finding their way back to the village seemed to take hours. Hot Pie kept
stumbling in the dark and losing his way, and Arya had to wait for him and
double back. Finally she took him by the hand and led him along through the
trees. “Just be quiet and follow.” When they could make out the first faint
glow of the village fires against the sky, she said, “There’s dead men hanging
on the other side of the hedge, but they’re nothing to be scared

of, just remember fear cuts deeper than swords. We have to go real quiet and
slow.” Hot Pie nodded.
    She wriggled under the briar first and waited for him on the far side, crouched
low. Hot Pie emerged pale and panting, face and arms bloody with long
scratches. He started to say something, but Arya put a finger to his lips. On
hands and knees, they crawled along the gibbet, beneath the swaying dead. Hot
Pie never once looked up, nor made a sound.
    Until the crow landed on his back, and he gave a muffled gasp.
“Who’s
there?”
a voice boomed suddenly from the dark.
    Hot Pie leapt to his feet.
“I yield!”
He threw away his sword as
dozens of crows rose shrieking and complaining to flap about the corpses. Arya
grabbed his leg and tried to drag him back down, but he wrenched loose and ran
forward, waving his arms. “I yield, I yield.”
    She bounced up and drew Needle, but by then men were all around her. Arya
slashed at the nearest, but he blocked her with a steel-clad arm, and someone
else slammed into her and dragged her to the ground, and a third man wrenched
the sword from her grasp. When she tried to bite, her teeth snapped shut on
cold dirty chainmail. “Oho, a fierce one,” the man said, laughing. The blow
from his iron-clad fist near knocked her head off.
    They talked over her as she lay hurting, but Arya could not seem to understand
the words. Her ears rang. When she tried to crawl off, the earth moved beneath
her.
They took Needle.
The shame of that hurt worse than the pain,
and the pain hurt a lot.

Jon had given her that sword. Syrio had taught her to use it.
    Finally someone grabbed the front of her jerkin, yanked her to her knees. Hot
Pie was kneeling too, before the tallest man Arya had ever seen, a monster from
one of Old Nan’s stories. She never saw where the giant had come from. Three
black dogs raced across his faded yellow surcoat, and his face looked as hard
as if it had been cut from stone. Suddenly Arya knew where she had seen those
dogs before. The night of the tourney at King’s Landing, all the knights had
hung their shields outside their pavilions. “That one belongs to the Hound’s
brother,” Sansa had confided when they passed the black dogs on the yellow
field. “He’s even bigger than Hodor, you’ll see. They call him
the
Mountain That Rides.
”
    Arya let her head droop, only half aware of what was going on around her. Hot
Pie was yielding some more. The Mountain said, “You’ll lead us to these
others,” and walked off. Next she was stumbling past the dead men on their
gibbet, while Hot Pie told their captors he’d bake them pies and tarts if they
didn’t hurt him. Four men went with them. One carried a torch, one a longsword;
two had spears.
    They found Lommy where they’d left him, under the oak. “I yield,” he called
out at once when he saw them. He’d flung away his own spear and raised his
hands, splotchy green with old dye. “I yield. Please.”
    The man with the torch searched around under