"Maybe he's a little squire," Hot Pie put in. ![]() She could see the back of Yoren's faded black cloak up ahead of the wagons, but she was determined not to go crying to him for help. "Where's a gutter rat like Lumpyhead get him a sword?"Īrya chewed her lip sullenly. When he laughed he brayed like the donkeys they were riding. He'd been a dyer's apprentice before he was caught stealing, and his arms were mottled green to the elbow. "Look at that sword Lumpyhead's got there," Lommy said one morning as they made their plodding way past orchards and wheat fields. She was two years younger than the youngest orphan, not to mention smaller and skinnier, and Lommy and Hot Pie took her silence to mean she was scared, or stupid, or deaf. The men paid her no mind, but she was not so lucky with the boys. Arya would have preferred a real horse, but the donkey was better than riding on a wagon. Teams of plow horses pulled the wagons, and Yoren had bought two coursers and a half-dozen donkeys for the boys. ![]() They took five wagons out of King's Landing, laden with supplies for the Wall: hides and bolts of cloth, bars of pig iron, a cage of ravens, books and paper and ink, a bale of sourleaf, jars of oil, and chests of medicine and spices. One had no nose, only the hole in his face where it had been cut off, and the gross fat bald one with the pointed teeth and the weeping sores on his cheeks had eyes like nothing human. The worst were the three he'd found in the black cells who must have scared even him, because he kept them fettered hand and foot in the back of a wagon, and vowed they'd stay in irons all the way to the Wall. Yoren had taken grown men from the dungeons as well, thieves and poachers and rapers and the like. "The Watch needs good men," he told them as they set out, "but you lot will have to do." Yoren had plucked some from the streets with promises of food for their bellies and shoes for their feet. That wasn't the hardest part at all Lommy Greenhands and Hot Pie were the hardest part. Yoren was wrong about the pissing, though. When she remembered that, Arya decided to wish for Winterfell instead. But she knew it wouldn't, and anyhow Sansa was still in the city and would wash away too. She wished the Rush would rise and wash the whole city away, Flea Bottom and the Red Keep and the Great Sept and everything, and everyone too, especially Prince Joffrey and his mother. They were looking for a highborn girl, daughter of the King's Hand, not for a skinny boy with his hair chopped off. The Lannister guardsmen on the gate were stopping everyone, but Yoren called one by name and their wagons were waved through. Leaving King's Landing was easy, just like he'd said. That'll be the hardest part, the pissing, so don't drink no more'n you need." So you keep to yourself and make your water in the woods, alone. The other half'd do the same, only they'd rape you first. This lot, half o' them would turn you over to the queen quick as spit for a pardon and maybe a few silvers. "Lord Eddard gave me pick o' the dungeons, and I didn't find no little lordlings down there. I got thirty this time, men and boys all bound for the Wall, and don't be thinking they're like that bastard brother o' yours." He shook her. "Gate shouldn't be hard, but the road's another matter. "Now you hold still, boy." By the time he had finished, her scalp was nothing but tufts and stubble.Īfterward he told her that from there to Winterfell she'd be Arry the orphan boy. "I'm taking men and boys from the city," Yoren growled as the sharp steel scraped at her head. ![]() ![]() She remembered how the breeze sent the fistfuls of dirty brown hair skittering across the paving stones, toward the sept where her father had died. When Yoren had dragged her into that alley she'd thought he meant to kill her, but the sour old man had only held her tight, sawing through her mats and tangles with his dagger. At Winterfell they had called her "Arya Horseface" and she'd thought nothing could be worse, but that was before the orphan boy Lommy Greenhands had named her "Lumpyhead."
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