A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

tongue and feed it to my bitch.” He
twisted her ear between his fingers to make certain she’d heard, and told her
to get back to those steps, he wanted them clean down to the third landing by
nightfall.
    As she worked, Arya thought about the people she wanted dead. She pretended she
could see their faces on the steps, and scrubbed harder to wipe them away. The
Starks were at war with the Lannisters and she was a Stark, so she should kill
as many Lannisters as she could, that was what you did in wars. But she didn’t
think she should trust Jaqen.
I should kill them myself.
Whenever her
father had condemned a man to death, he did the deed himself with Ice, his
greatsword. “If you would take a man’s life, you owe it to him to look him in
the face and hear his last words,” she’d heard him tell Robb and Jon
once.
    The next day she avoided Jaqen H’ghar, and the day after that. It was not hard.
She was very small and Harrenhal was very large, full of places where a mouse
could hide.
    And then Ser Gregor returned, earlier than expected, driving a herd of goats
this time in place of a herd of prisoners. She heard he’d lost four men in one
of Lord Beric’s night raids, but those Arya hated returned unscathed and took
up residence on the second floor of the Wailing Tower. Weese saw that they were
well supplied with drink. “They always have a good thirst, that lot,” he
grumbled. “Weasel, go up and ask if they’ve got any clothes that need mending,
I’ll have the women see to it.”
    Arya ran up her well-scrubbed steps. No one paid her any

mind when she entered. Chiswyck was seated by the fire with a horn of ale to
hand, telling one of his funny stories. She dared not interrupt, unless she
wanted a bloody lip.
    â€œAfter the Hand’s tourney, it were, before the war come,” Chiswyck was
saying. “We were on our ways back west, seven of us with Ser Gregor. Raff was
with me, and young Joss Stilwood, he’d squired for Ser in the lists. Well, we
come on this pisswater river, running high on account there’d been rains. No
way to ford, but there’s an alehouse near, so there we repair. Ser rousts the
brewer and tells him to keep our horns full till the waters fall, and you
should see the man’s pig eyes shine at the sight o’ silver. So he’s fetching us
ale, him and his daughter, and poor thin stuff it is, no more’n brown piss,
which don’t make me any happier, nor Ser neither. And all the time this
brewer’s saying how glad he is to have us, custom being slow on account o’ them
rains. The fool won’t shut his yap, not him, though Ser is saying not a word,
just brooding on the Knight o’ Pansies and that bugger’s trick he played. You
can see how tight his mouth sits, so me and the other lads we know better’n to
say a squeak to him, but this brewer he’s got to talk, he even asks how m’lord
fared in the jousting. Ser just gave him this look.” Chiswyck cackled, quaffed
his ale, and wiped the foam away with the back of his hand. “Meanwhile, this
daughter of his has been fetching and pouring, a fat little thing, eighteen or
so—”
    â€œThirteen, more like,” Raff the Sweetling drawled.
    â€œWell, be that as it may, she’s not much to look at, but

Eggon’s been drinking and gets to touching her, and might be I did a little
touching meself, and Raff’s telling young Stilwood that he ought t’ drag the
girl upstairs and make hisself a man, giving the lad courage as it were.
Finally Joss reaches up under her skirt, and she shrieks and drops her flagon
and goes running off to the kitchen. Well, it would have ended right there,
only what does the old fool do but he goes to
Ser
and asks him to
make us leave the girl alone, him being an anointed knight and all
such.
    â€œSer Gregor, he wasn’t paying no mind to none of our fun, but now he
looks,
you know how he does, and he commands that the girl be brought
before him. Now the old man has to drag her out of the kitchen, and no one to
blame but hisself. Ser looks her over and says, ‘So this is the whore you’re so
concerned for,’ and this besotted old fool says, ‘My Layna’s no whore, ser,’
right to Gregor’s face. Ser, he never blinks, just says, ‘She is now,’ tosses
the old man another silver, rips the