A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

dress off the wench, and takes her right
there on the table in front of her da, her flopping and wiggling like a rabbit
and making these noises. The look on the old man’s face, I laughed so hard ale
was coming out me nose. Then this boy hears the noise, the son I figure, and
comes rushing up from the cellar, so Raff has to stick a dirk in his belly. By
then Ser’s done, so he goes back to his drinking and we all have a turn.
Tobbot, you know how he is, he flops her over and goes in the back way. The
girl was done fighting by the time I had her, maybe she’d decided she liked it
after all, though to tell the truth I wouldn’t have minded a little wiggling.
And

now here’s the best bit . . . when it’s all done, Ser tells the
old man that he wants his change. The girl wasn’t worth a silver, he
says . . . and damned if that old man didn’t fetch a fistful of
coppers, beg m’lord’s pardon, and
thank him for the
custom
!”
    The men all roared, none louder than Chiswyck himself, who laughed so hard at
his own story that snot dribbled from his nose down into his scraggy grey
beard. Arya stood in the shadows of the stairwell and watched him. She crept
back down to the cellars without saying a word. When Weese found that she
hadn’t asked about the clothes, he yanked down her breeches and caned her until
blood ran down her thighs, but Arya closed her eyes and thought of all the
sayings Syrio had taught her, so she scarcely felt it.
    Two nights later, he sent her to the Barracks Hall to serve at table. She was
carrying a flagon of wine and pouring when she glimpsed Jaqen H’ghar at his
trencher across the aisle. Chewing her lip, Arya glanced around warily to make
certain Weese was not in sight.
Fear cuts deeper than swords,
she
told herself.
    She took a step, and another, and with each she felt less a mouse. She worked
her way down the bench, filling wine cups. Rorge sat to Jaqen’s right, deep
drunk, but he took no note of her. Arya leaned close and whispered,
“Chiswyck,” right in Jaqen’s ear. The Lorathi gave no sign that he had
heard.
    When her flagon was empty, Arya hurried down to the cellars to refill it from
the cask, and quickly returned to her pouring. No one had died of thirst while
she was gone, nor even noted her brief absence.
    Nothing happened the next day, nor the day after, but on the third day
Arya went to the kitchens with Weese to fetch their dinner. “One of the
Mountain’s men fell off a wallwalk last night and broke his fool neck,” she
heard Weese tell a cook.
    â€œDrunk?” the woman asked.
    â€œNo more’n usual. Some are saying it was Harren’s ghost flung him down.” He
snorted to show what
he
thought of such notions.
    It wasn’t Harren,
Arya wanted to say,
it was me.
She had
killed Chiswyck with a whisper, and she would kill two more before she was
through.
I’m the ghost in Harrenhal,
she thought. And that night,
there was one less name to hate.

CATELYN
    T he meeting place was a grassy sward dotted with pale grey mushrooms and
the raw stumps of felled trees.
    â€œWe are the first, my lady,” Hallis Mollen said as they reined up amidst the
stumps, alone between the armies. The direwolf banner of House Stark flapped
and fluttered atop the lance he bore. Catelyn could not see the sea from here,
but she could feel how close it was. The smell of salt was heavy on the wind
gusting from the east.
    Stannis Baratheon’s foragers had cut the trees down for his siege towers
and catapults. Catelyn wondered how long the grove had stood, and whether Ned
had rested here when he led his host south to lift the last siege of Storm’s
End. He had won a great victory that day, all the greater for being
bloodless.
    Gods grant that I shall do the same,
Catelyn prayed. Her own liege
men thought she was mad even to come. “This is no fight of ours, my lady,”
Ser Wendel Manderly had said. “I know the king would not wish his mother to
put herself at risk.”
    â€œWe are all at risk,” she told him, perhaps too sharply. “Do you think I
wish to be here, ser?”
I belong at Riverrun with my dying father, at
Winterfell with my sons.
“Robb sent me south to speak for him, and speak
for him I shall.” It would be no easy thing to forge a peace between these
brothers, Catelyn knew, yet

for the good of