A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

Mountain’s slain him twice. Got me a silver stag says he don’t stay dead
this time neither.”
    Arya did not know who Bloody Mummers were until a fortnight later, when the
queerest company of men she’d ever seen arrived at Harrenhal. Beneath the
standard of a black goat with bloody horns rode copper men with bells in their
braids; lancers astride striped black-and-white horses; bowmen with powdered
cheeks; squat

hairy men with shaggy shields; brown-skinned men in feathered cloaks; a wispy
fool in green-and-pink motley; swordsmen with fantastic forked beards dyed
green and purple and silver; spearmen with colored scars that covered their
cheeks; a slender man in septon’s robes, a fatherly one in maester’s grey, and
a sickly one whose leather cloak was fringed with long blond hair.
    At their head was a man stick-thin and very tall, with a drawn emaciated face
made even longer by the ropy black beard that grew from his pointed chin nearly
to his waist. The helm that hung from his saddle horn was black steel,
fashioned in the shape of a goat’s head. About his neck he wore a chain made of
linked coins of many different sizes, shapes, and metals, and his horse was one
of the strange black-and-white ones.
    â€œYou don’t want to know that lot, Weasel,” Weese said when he saw her looking
at the goat-helmed man. Two of his drinking friends were with him, men-at-arms
in service to Lord Lefford.
    â€œWho are they?” she asked.
    One of the soldiers laughed. “The Footmen, girl. Toes of the Goat. Lord
Tywin’s Bloody Mummers.”
    â€œPease for wits. You get her flayed,
you
can scrub the bloody
steps,” said Weese. “They’re sellswords, Weasel girl. Call themselves the
Brave Companions. Don’t use them other names where they can hear, or they’ll
hurt you bad. The goat-helm’s their captain, Lord Vargo Hoat.”
    â€œHe’s no fucking lord,” said the second soldier. “I heard Ser Amory say so.
He’s just some sellsword with a mouth full of

slobber and a high opinion of hisself.”
    â€œAye,” said Weese, “but she better
call
him lord if she wants to
keep all her parts.”
    Arya looked at Vargo Hoat again.
How many monsters does Lord Tywin
have?
    The Brave Companions were housed in the Widow’s Tower, so Arya need not serve
them. She was glad of that; on the very night they arrived, fighting broke out
between the sellswords and some Lannister men. Ser Harys Swyft’s squire was
stabbed to death and two of the Bloody Mummers were wounded. The next morning
Lord Tywin hanged them both from the gatehouse walls, along with one of Lord
Lydden’s archers. Weese said the archer had started all the trouble by taunting
the sellswords over Beric Dondarrion. After the hanged men had stopped kicking,
Vargo Hoat and Ser Harys embraced and kissed and swore to love each other
always as Lord Tywin looked on. Arya thought it was funny the way Vargo Hoat
lisped and slobbered, but she knew better than to laugh.
    The Bloody Mummers did not linger long at Harrenhal, but before they rode out
again, Arya heard one of them saying how a northern army under Roose Bolton had
occupied the ruby ford of the Trident. “If he crosses, Lord Tywin will smash
him again like he did on the Green Fork,” a Lannister bowmen said, but his
fellows jeered him down. “Bolton’ll never cross, not till the Young Wolf
marches from Riverrun with his wild northmen and all them wolves.”
    Arya had not known her brother was so near. Riverrun was much closer than
Winterfell, though she was not certain where it

lay in relation to Harrenhal.
I could find out somehow, I know I could, if
only I could get away.
When she thought of seeing Robb’s face again Arya
had to bite her lip.
And I want to see Jon too, and Bran and Rickon, and
Mother. Even Sansa . . . I’ll kiss her and beg her pardons like
a proper lady, she’ll like that.
    From the courtyard talk she’d learned that the upper chambers of the Tower of
Dread housed three dozen captives taken during some battle on the Green Fork of
the Trident. Most had been given freedom of the castle in return for their
pledge not to attempt escape.
They vowed not to escape,
Arya told
herself,
but they never swore not to help
me
escape.
    The captives ate at their own table in the Hall of a Hundred Hearths, and could
often