He had expected that Hodor would come for him, or maybe one of the serving girls, but when the door next opened it was Maester Luwin, carrying a candle. “Bran,” he said, “you … know what has happened? You have been told?” The skin was broken above his left eye, and blood ran down that side of his face.
“Theon came. He said Winterfell was his now.”
The maester set down the candle and wiped the blood off his cheek. “They swam the moat. Climbed the walls with hook and rope. Came over wet and dripping, steel in hand.” He sat on the chair by the door, as fresh blood flowed. “Alebelly was on the gate, they surprised him in the turret and killed him. Hayhead’s wounded as well. I had time to send off two ravens before they burst in. The bird to White Harbor got away, but they brought down the other with an arrow.” The maester stared at the rushes. “Ser Rodrik took too many of our men, but I am to blame as much as he is. I never saw this danger, I never …”
Jojen saw it, Bran thought. “You better help me dress.”
“Yes, that’s so.” In the heavy ironbound chest at the foot of Bran’s bed the maester found smallclothes, breeches, and tunic. “You are the Stark in Winterfell, and Robb’s heir. You must look princely.” Together they garbed him as befit a lord.
“Theon wants me to yield the castle,” Bran said as the maester was fastening the cloak with his favorite wolf’s-head clasp of silver and jet.
“There is no shame in that. A lord must protect his smallfolk. Cruel places breed cruel peoples, Bran, remember that as you deal with these ironmen. Your lord father did what he could to gentle Theon, but I fear it was too little and too late.”
The ironman who came for them was a squat thick-bodied man with a coal-black beard that covered half his chest. He bore the boy easily enough, though he looked none too happy with the task. Rickon’s bedchamber was a half turn down the steps. The four-year-old was cranky at being woken. “I want Mother,” he said. “I want her. And Shaggydog too.”
“Your mother is far away, my prince.” Maester Luwin pulled a bedrobe over the child’s head. “But I’m here, and Bran.” He took Rickon by the hand and led him out.
Below, they came on Meera and Jojen being herded from their room by a bald man whose spear was three feet taller than he was. When Jojen looked at Bran, his eyes were green pools full of sorrow. Other ironmen had rousted the Freys. “Your brother’s lost his kingdom,” Little Walder told Bran. “You’re no prince now, just a hostage.”
“So are you,” Jojen said, “and me, and all of us.”
“No one was talking to you, frogeater.”
One of the ironmen went before them carrying a torch, but the rain had started again and soon drowned it out. As they hurried across the yard they could hear the direwolves howling in the godswood. I hope Summer wasn’t hurt falling from the tree.
Theon Greyjoy was seated in the high seat of the Starks. He had taken off his cloak. Over a shirt of fine mail he wore a black surcoat emblazoned with the golden kraken of his House. His hands rested on the wolves’ heads carved at the ends of the wide stone arms. “Theon’s sitting in Robb’s chair,” Rickon said.
“Hush, Rickon.” Bran could feel the menace around them, but his brother was too young. A few torches had been lit, and a fire kindled in the great hearth, but most of the hall remained in darkness. There was no place to sit with the benches stacked against the walls, so the castle folk stood in small groups, not daring to speak. He saw Old Nan, her toothless mouth opening and closing. Hayhead was carried in between two of the other guards, a bloodstained bandage wrapped about his bare chest. Poxy Tym wept inconsolably, and Beth Cassel cried with fear.
“What have we here?” Theon asked of the Reeds and Freys.
“These are Lady Catelyn’s wards, both named Walder Frey,” Maester Luwin explained. “And this is Jojen Reed and his sister Meera, son and daughter to Howland Reed of Greywater Watch, who came to renew their oaths of fealty to Winterfell.”
“Some might call that ill-timed,” said Theon, “though not for me. Here you are and here you’ll stay.” He vacated the high seat. “Bring the prince here, Lorren.” The black-bearded man dumped Bran onto the stone as if he were a sack of oats.
People were still being driven into the Great Hall, prodded along with shouts and the butts of the spears. Gage and Osha arrived from the kitchens, spotted with flour from making the morning bread. Mikken they dragged in cursing. Farlen entered limping, struggling to support Palla. Her dress had been ripped in two; she held it up with a clenched fist and walked as if every step were agony. Septon Chayle rushed to lend a hand, but one of the ironmen knocked him to the floor.
The last man marched through the doors was the prisoner Reek, whose stench preceded him, ripe and pungent. Bran felt his stomach twist at the smell of him. “We found this one locked in a tower cell,” announced his escort, a beardless youth with ginger-colored hair and sodden clothing, doubtless one of those who’d swum the moat. “He says they call him Reek.”
“Can’t think why,” Theon said, smiling. “Do you always smell so bad, or did you just finish fucking a pig?”
“Haven’t fucked no one since they took me, m’lord. Heke’s me true name. I was in service to the Bastard o’ the Dreadfort till the Starks give him an arrow in the back for a wedding gift.”
Theon found that amusing. “Who did he marry?”
“The widow o’ Hornwood, m’lord.”
“That crone? Was he blind? She has teats like empty wineskins, dry and withered.”
“It wasn’t her teats he wed her for, m’lord.”
The ironmen slammed shut the tall doors at the foot of the hall. From the high seat, Bran could see about twenty of them. He probably left some guards on the gates and the armory. Even so, there couldn’t be more than thirty.
Theon raised his hands for quiet. “You all know me—”
“Aye, we know you for a sack of steaming dung!” shouted Mikken, before the bald man drove the butt of his spear into his gut, then smashed him across the face with the shaft. The smith stumbled to his knees and spat out a tooth.
“Mikken, you be silent.” Bran tried to sound stern and lordly, the way Robb did when he made a command, but his voice betrayed him and the words came out in a shrill squeak.
“Listen to your little lordling, Mikken,” said Theon. “He has more sense than you do.”
A good lord protects his people, he reminded himself. “I’ve yielded Winterfell to Theon.”
“Louder, Bran. And call me prince.”
He raised his voice. “I have yielded Winterfell to Prince Theon. All of you should do as he commands you.”
“Damned if I will!” bellowed Mikken.
Theon ignored the outburst. “My father has donned the ancient crown of salt and rock, and declared himself King of the Iron Islands. He claims the north as well, by right of conquest. You are all his subjects.”
“Bugger that.” Mikken wiped the blood from his mouth. “I serve the Starks, not some treasonous squid of—aah.” The butt of the spear smashed him face first into the stone floor.
“Smiths have strong arms and weak heads,” observed Theon. “But if the rest of you serve me as loyally as you served Ned Stark, you’ll find me as generous a lord as you could want.”
On his hands and knees, Mikken spat blood. Please don’t, Bran wished at him, but the blacksmith shouted, “If you think you can hold the north with this sorry lot o’—”
The bald man drove the point of his spear into the back of Mikken’s neck. Steel slid through flesh and came out his throat in a welter of blood. A woman screamed, and Meera wrapped her arms around Rickon. It’s blood he drowned on, Bran thought numbly. His own blood.
“Who else has something to say?” asked Theon Greyjoy.
“Hodor hodor hodor hodor,” shouted Hodor, eyes wide.
“Someone kindly shut that halfwit up.”
Two ironmen began to beat Hodor with the butts of their spears. The stableboy dropped to the floor, trying to shield himself w
ith his hands.
“I will be as good a lord to you as Eddard Stark ever was.” Theon raised his voice to be heard above the smack of wood on flesh. “Betray me, though, and you’ll wish you hadn’t. And don’t think the men you see here are the whole of my power. Torrhen’s Square and Deepwood Motte will soon be ours as well, and my uncle is sailing up the Saltspear to seize Moat Cailin. If Robb Stark can stave off the Lannisters, he may reign as King of the Trident hereafter, but House Greyjoy holds the north now.”
“Stark’s lords will fight you,” the man Reek called out. “That bloated pig at White Harbor for one, and them Umbers and Karstarks too. You’ll need men. Free me and I’m yours.”
Theon weighed him a moment. “You’re cleverer than you smell, but I could not suffer that stench.”
“Well,” said Reek, “I could wash some. If I was free.”
“A man of rare good sense.” Theon smiled. “Bend the knee.”
One of the ironmen handed Reek a sword, and he laid it at Theon’s feet and swore obedience to House Greyjoy and King Balon. Bran could not look. The green dream was coming true.
“M’lord Greyjoy!” Osha stepped past Mikken’s body. “I was brought here captive too. You were there the day I was taken.”
I thought you were a friend, Bran thought, hurt.
“I need fighters,” Theon declared, “not kitchen sluts.”
“It was Robb Stark put me in the kitchens. For the best part of a year, I’ve been left to scour kettles, scrape grease, and warm the straw for this one.” She threw a look at Gage. “I’ve had a bellyful of it. Put a spear in my hand again.”
“I got a spear for you right here,” said the bald man who’d killed Mikken. He grabbed his crotch, grinning.
Osha drove her bony knee up between his legs. “You keep that soft pink thing.” She wrested the spear from him and used the butt to knock him off his feet. “I’ll have me the wood and iron.” The bald man writhed on the floor while the other reavers sent up gales of laughter.
Theon laughed with the rest. “You’ll do,” he said. “Keep the spear; Stygg can find another. Now bend the knee and swear.”
When no one else rushed forward to pledge service, they were dismissed with a warning to do their work and make no trouble. Hodor was given the task of bearing Bran back to his bed. His face was all ugly from the beating, his nose swollen and one eye closed. “Hodor,” he sobbed between cracked lips as he lifted Bran in huge strong arms and bloody hands and carried him back out into the rain.
ARYA
There’s ghosts, I know there is.” Hot Pie was kneading bread, his arms floured up to his elbows. “Pia saw something in the buttery last night.”
Arya made a rude noise. Pia was always seeing things in the buttery. Usually they were men. “Can I have a tart?” she asked. “You baked a whole tray.”
“I need a whole tray. Ser Amory is partial to them.”
She hated Ser Amory. “Let’s spit on them.”
Hot Pie looked around nervously. The kitchens were full of shadows and echoes, but the other cooks and scullions were all asleep in the cavernous lofts above the ovens. “He’ll know.”
“He will not,” Arya said. “You can’t taste spit.”
“If he does, it’s me they’ll whip.” Hot Pie stopped his kneading. “You shouldn’t even be here. It’s the black of night.”
It was, but Arya never minded. Even in the black of night, the kitchens were never still; there was always someone rolling dough for the morning bread, stirring a kettle with a long wooden spoon, or butchering a hog for Ser Amory’s breakfast bacon. Tonight it was Hot Pie.
“If Pinkeye wakes and finds you gone—” Hot Pie said.
“Pinkeye never wakes.” His true name was Mebble, but everyone called him Pinkeye for his runny eyes. “Not once he’s passed out.” Each morning he broke his fast with ale. Each evening he fell into a drunken sleep after supper, wine-colored spit running down his chin. Arya would wait until she heard him snoring, then creep barefoot up the servant’s stair, making no more noise than the mouse she’d been. She carried neither candle nor taper. Syrio had told her once that darkness could be her friend, and he was right. If she had the moon and the stars to see by, that was enough. “I bet we could escape, and Pinkeye wouldn’t even notice I was gone,” she told Hot Pie.
“I don’t want to escape. It’s better here than it was in them woods. I don’t want to eat no worms. Here, sprinkle some flour on the board.”
Arya cocked her head. “What’s that?”
“What? I don’t—”
“Listen with your ears, not your mouth. That was a warhorn. Two blasts, didn’t you hear? And there, that’s the portcullis chains, someone’s going out or coming in. Want to go see?” The gates of Harrenhal had not been opened since the morning Lord Tywin had marched with his host.
“I’m making the morning bread,” Hot Pie complained. “Anyhow I don’t like it when it’s dark, I told you.”
“I’m going. I’ll tell you after. Can I have a tart?”
“No.”
She filched one anyway, and ate it on her way out. It was stuffed with chopped nuts and fruit and cheese, the crust flaky and still warm from the oven. Eating Ser Amory’s tart made Arya feel daring. Barefoot surefoot lightfoot, she sang under her breath. I am the ghost in Harrenhal.
The horn had stirred the castle from sleep; men were coming out into the ward to see what the commotion was about. Arya fell in with the others. A line of ox carts were rumbling under the portcullis. Plunder, she knew at once. The riders escorting the carts spoke in a babble of queer tongues. Their armor glinted pale in the moonlight, and she saw a pair of striped black-and-white zorses. The Bloody Mummers. Arya withdrew a little deeper into the shadows, and watched as a huge black bear rolled by, caged in the back of a wagon. Other carts were loaded down with silver plate, weapons and shields, bags of flour, pens of squealing hogs and scrawny dogs and chickens. Arya was thinking how long it had been since she’d had a slice off a pork roast when she saw the first of the prisoners.
By his bearing and the proud way he held his head, he must have been a lord. She could see mail glinting beneath his torn red surcoat. At first Arya took him for a Lannister, but when he passed near a torch she saw his device was a silver fist, not a lion. His wrists were bound tightly, and a rope around one ankle tied him to the man behind him, and him to the man behind him, so the whole column had to shuffle along in a lurching lockstep. Many of the captives were wounded. If any halted, one of the riders would trot up and give him a lick of the whip to get him moving again. She tried to judge how many prisoners there were, but lost count before she got to fifty. There were twice that many at least. Their clothing was stained with mud and blood, and in the torchlight it was hard to make out all their badges and sigils, but some of those Arya glimpsed she recognized. Twin towers. Sunburst. Bloody man. Battle-axe. The battle-axe is for Cerwyn, and the white sun on black is Karstark. They’re northmen. My father’s men, and Robb’s. She didn’t like to think what that might mean.
The Bloody Mummers began to dismount. Stableboys emerged sleepy from their straw to tend their lathered horses. One of the riders was shouting for ale. The noise brought Ser Amory Lorch out onto the covered gallery above the ward, flanked by two torchbearers. Goat-helmed Vargo Hoat reined up below him. “My lord cathellan,” the sellsword said. He had a thick, slobbery voice, as if his tongue was too big for his mouth.
“What’s all this, Hoat?” Ser Amory demanded, frowning.
“Captiths. Rooth Bolton thought to croth the river, but my Brafe Companions cut his van to pieceth. Killed many, and thent Bolton running. Thith ith their lord commander, Glover, and the one behind ith Ther Aenyth Frey.”
Ser Amory Lorch stared down at the roped captives with his little pig eyes. Arya did not think he was pleased. Everyone in the castle knew that he and Vargo Hoat hated each other. “Very well,” he said. “Ser Cadwyn, take these men to the dungeons.”
The lord
with the mailed fist on his surcoat raised his eyes. “We were promised honorable treatment—” he began.
“Silenth!” Vargo Hoat screamed at him, spraying spittle.
Ser Amory addressed the captives. “What Hoat promised you is nothing to me. Lord Tywin made me the castellan of Harrenhal, and I shall do with you as I please.” He gestured to his guards. “The great cell under the Widow’s Tower ought to hold them all. Any who do not care to go are free to die here.”
As his men herded off the captives at spearpoint, Arya saw Pinkeye emerge from the stairwell, blinking at the torchlight. If he found her missing, he would shout and threaten to whip the bloody hide off her, but she was not afraid. He was no Weese. He was forever threatening to whip the bloody hide off this one or that one, but Arya never actually knew him to hit. Still, it would be better if he never saw her. She glanced around. The oxen were being unharnessed, the carts unloaded, while the Brave Companions clamored for drink and the curious gathered around the caged bear. In the commotion, it was not hard to slip off unseen. She went back the way she had come, wanting to be out of sight before someone noticed her and thought to put her to work.
Away from the gates and the stables, the great castle was largely deserted. The noise dwindled behind her. A swirling wind gusted, drawing a high shivery scream from the cracks in the Wailing Tower. Leaves had begun to fall from the trees in the godswood, and she could hear them moving through the deserted courtyards and between the empty buildings, making a faint skittery sound as the wind drove them across the stones. Now that Harrenhal was near empty once again, sound did queer things here. Sometimes the stones seemed to drink up noise, shrouding the yards in a blanket of silence. Other times, the echoes had a life of their own, so every footfall became the tread of a ghostly army, and every distant voice a ghostly feast. The funny sounds were one of the things that bothered Hot Pie, but not Arya.
Quiet as a shadow, she flitted across the middle bailey, around the Tower of Dread, and through the empty mews, where people said the spirits of dead falcons stirred the air with ghostly wings. She could go where she would. The garrison numbered no more than a hundred men, so small a troop that they were lost in Harrenhal. The Hall of a Hundred Hearths was closed off, along with many of the lesser buildings, even the Wailing Tower. Ser Amory Lorch resided in the castellan’s chambers in Kingspyre, themselves as spacious as a lord’s, and Arya and the other servants had moved to the cellars beneath him so they would be close at hand. While Lord Tywin had been in residence, there was always a man-at-arms wanting to know your business. But now there were only a hundred men left to guard a thousand doors, and no one seemed to know who should be where, or care much.
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