A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

make the fear go away. It was as much a part of her days as stale bread
and the blisters on her toes after a long day of walking the hard, rutted
road.
    She had thought she had known what it meant to be afraid, but she learned
better in that storehouse beside the Gods Eye. Eight days she had lingered
there before the Mountain gave the command to march, and every day she had seen
someone die.
    The Mountain would come into the storehouse after he had broken his fast
and pick one of the prisoners for questioning. The village folk would never
look at him. Maybe they thought that if they did not notice him, he would not
notice them . . . but he saw them anyway and picked whom he
liked. There was no place to hide, no tricks to play, no way to be
safe.
    One girl shared a soldier’s bed three nights running; the Mountain picked her
on the fourth day, and the soldier said nothing.
    A smiley old man mended their clothing and babbled about his son, off serving
in the gold cloaks at King’s Landing. “A king’s man, he is,” he would say,
“a good king’s man like me, all for Joffrey.” He said it so often the other
captives began to call him All-for-Joffrey whenever the guards weren’t
listening. All-for-Joffrey

was picked on the fifth day.
    A young mother with a pox-scarred face offered to freely tell them all she knew
if they’d promise not to hurt her daughter. The Mountain heard her out; the
next morning he picked her daughter, to be certain she’d held nothing
back.
    The ones chosen were questioned in full view of the other captives, so they
could see the fate of rebels and traitors. A man the others called the Tickler
asked the questions. His face was so ordinary and his garb so plain that Arya
might have thought him one of the villagers before she had seen him at his
work. “Tickler makes them howl so hard they piss themselves,” old
stoop-shoulder Chiswyck told them. He was the man she’d tried to bite, who’d
called her a fierce little thing and smashed her head with a mailed fist.
Sometimes he helped the Tickler. Sometimes others did that. Ser Gregor Clegane
himself would stand motionless, watching and listening, until the victim
died.
    The questions were always the same. Was there gold hidden in the village?
Silver, gems? Was there more food? Where was Lord Beric Dondarrion? Which of
the village folk had aided him? When he rode off, where did he go? How many men
were with them? How many knights, how many bowmen, how many men-at-arms? How
were they armed? How many were horsed? How many were wounded? What other enemy
had they seen? How many? When? What banners did they fly? Where did they go?
Was there gold hidden in the village? Silver, gems? Where was Lord Beric
Dondarrion? How many men were with him? By the third day, Arya could have asked

the questions herself.
    They found a little gold, a little silver, a great sack of copper pennies, and
a dented goblet set with garnets that two soldiers almost came to blows over.
They learned that Lord Beric had ten starvelings with him, or else a hundred
mounted knights; that he had ridden west, or north, or south; that he had
crossed the lake in a boat; that he was strong as an aurochs or weak from the
bloody flux. No one ever survived the Tickler’s questioning; no man, no woman,
no child. The strongest lasted past evenfall. Their bodies were hung beyond the
fires for the wolves.
    By the time they marched, Arya knew she was no water dancer. Syrio Forel would
never have let them knock him down and take his sword away, nor stood by when
they killed Lommy Greenhands. Syrio would never have sat silent in that
storehouse nor shuffled along meekly among the other captives. The direwolf was
the sigil of the Starks, but Arya felt more a lamb, surrounded by a herd of
other sheep. She hated the villagers for their sheepishness, almost as much as
she hated herself.
    The Lannisters had taken everything: father, friends, home, hope, courage. One
had taken Needle, while another had broken her wooden stick sword over his
knee. They had even taken her stupid secret. The storehouse had been big enough
for her to creep off and make her water in some corner when no one was looking,
but it was different on the road. She held it as long as she could, but finally
she had to squat by a bush and skin down her breeches in front of all of them.
It was that or wet herself.

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