A Storm of Swords asoiaf-3

by George R. R. Martin

  with no one there to hear.

  Yes now the rains weep o’er his hall,

  and not a soul to hear.

  Finally Tom ran out of rain songs and put away his harp. Then there was only the sound of the rain itself beating down on the slate roof of the brewhouse. The dice game ended, and Arya stood on one leg and then the other listening to Merrit complain about his horse throwing a shoe.

  “I could shoe him for you,” said Gendry, all of a sudden. “I was only a ’prentice, but my master said my hand was made to hold a hammer. I can shoe horses, close up rents in mail, and beat the dents from plate. I bet I could make swords too.”

  “What are you saying, lad?” asked Harwin.

  “I’ll smith for you.” Gendry went to one knee before Lord Beric. “If you’ll have me, m’lord, I could be of use. I’ve made tools and knives and once I made a helmet that wasn’t so bad. One of the Mountain’s men stole it from me when we was taken.”

  Arya bit her lip. He means to leave me too.

  “You would do better serving Lord Tully at Riverrun,” said Lord Beric. “I cannot pay for your work.”

  “No one ever did. I want a forge, and food to eat, some place I can sleep. That’s enough, m’lord.”

  “A smith can find a welcome most anywhere. A skilled armorer even more so. Why would you choose to stay with us?”

  Arya watched Gendry screw up his stupid face, thinking. “At the hollow hill, what you said about being King Robert’s men, and brothers, I liked that. I liked that you gave the Hound a trial. Lord Bolton just hanged folk or took off their heads, and Lord Tywin and Ser Amory were the same. I’d sooner smith for you.”

  “We got plenty of mail needs mending, m’lord,” Jack reminded Lord Beric. “Most we took off the dead, and there’s holes where the death came through.”

  “You must be a lackwit, boy,” said Lem. “We’re outlaws. Lowborn scum, most of us, excepting his lordship. Don’t think it’ll be like Tom’s fool songs neither. You won’t be stealing no kisses from a princess, nor riding in no tourneys in stolen armor. You join us, you’ll end with your neck in a noose, or your head mounted up above some castle gate.”

  “It’s no more than they’d do for you,” said Gendry.

  “Aye, that’s so,” said Jack-Be-Lucky cheerfully. “The crows await us all. M’lord, the boy seems brave enough, and we do have need of what he brings us. Take him, says Jack.”

  “And quick,” suggested Harwin, chuckling, “before the fever passes and he comes back to his senses.”

  A wan smile crossed Lord Beric’s lips. “Thoros, my sword.”

  This time the lightning lord did not set the blade afire, but merely laid it light on Gendry’s shoulder. “Gendry, do you swear before the eyes of gods and men to defend those who cannot defend themselves, to protect all women and children, to obey your captains, your liege lord, and your king, to fight bravely when needed and do such other tasks as are laid upon you, however hard or humble or dangerous they may be?”

  “I do, m’lord.”

  The marcher lord moved the sword from the right shoulder to the left, and said, “Arise Ser Gendry, knight of the hollow hill, and be welcome to our brotherhood.”

  From the door came rough, rasping laughter.

  The rain was running off him. His burned arm was wrapped in leaves and linen and bound tight against his chest by a crude rope sling, but the older burns that marked his face glistened black and slick in the glow of their little fire. “Making more knights, Dondarrion?” the intruder said in a growl. “I ought to kill you all over again for that.”

  Lord Beric faced him coolly. “I’d hoped we’d seen the last of you, Clegane. How did you come to find us?”

  “It wasn’t hard. You made enough bloody smoke to be seen in Oldtown.”

  “What’s become of the sentries I posted?”

  Clegane’s mouth twitched. “Those two blind men? Might be I killed them both. What would you do if I had?”

  Anguy strung his bow. Notch was doing the same. “Do you wish to die so very much, Sandor?” asked Thoros. “You must be mad or drunk to follow us here.”

  “Drunk on rain? You didn’t leave me enough gold to buy a cup of wine, you whoresons.”

  Anguy drew an arrow. “We’re outlaws. Outlaws steal. It’s in the songs, if you ask nice Tom may sing you one. Be thankful we didn’t kill you.”

  “Come try it, Archer. I’ll take that quiver off you and shove those arrows up your freckly little arse.”

  Anguy raised his longbow, but Lord Beric lifted a hand before he could loose. “Why did you come here, Clegane?”

  “To get back what’s mine.”

  “Your gold?”

  “What else? It wasn’t for the pleasure of looking at your face, Dondarrion, I’ll tell you that. You’re uglier than me now. And a robber knight besides, it seems.”

  “I gave you a note for your gold,” Lord Beric said calmly. “A promise to pay, when the war’s done.”

  “I wiped my arse with your paper. I want the gold.”

  “We don’t have it. I sent it south with Greenbeard and the Huntsman, to buy grain and seed across the Mander.”

  “To feed all them whose crops you burned,” said Gendry.

  “Is that the tale, now?” Sandor Clegane laughed again. “As it happens, that’s just what I meant to do with it. Feed a bunch of ugly peasants and their poxy whelps.”

  “You’re lying,” said Gendry.

  “The boy has a mouth on him, I see. Why believe them and not me? Couldn’t be my face, could it?” Clegane glanced at Arya. “You going to make her a knight too, Dondarrion? The first eight-year-old girl knight?”

  “I’m twelve,” Arya lied loudly, “and I could be a knight if I wanted. I could have killed you too, only Lem took my knife.” Remembering that still made her angry.

  “Complain to Lem, not me. Then tuck your tail between your legs and run. Do you know what dogs do to wolves?”

  “Next time I will kill you. I’ll kill your brother too!”

  “No.” His dark eyes narrowed. “That you won’t.” He turned back to Lord Beric. “Say, make my horse a knight. He never shits in the hall and doesn’t kick more than most, he deserves to be knighted. Unless you meant to steal him too.”

  “Best climb on that horse and go,” warned Lem.

  “I’ll go with my gold. Your own god said I’m guiltless—”

  “The Lord of Light gave you back your life,” declared Thoros of Myr. “He did not proclaim you Baelor the Blessed come again.” The red priest unsheathed his sword, and Arya saw that Jack and Merrit had drawn as well. Lord Beric still held the blade he’d used to dub Gendry. Maybe this time they’ll kill him.

  The Hound’s mouth gave another twitch. “You’re no more than common thieves.”

  Lem glowered. “Your lion friends ride into some village, take all the food and every coin they find, and call it foraging. The wolves as well, so why not us? No one robbed you, dog. You just been good and foraged.”

  Sandor Clegane looked at their faces, every one, as if he were trying to commit them all to memory. Then he walked back out into the darkness and the pouring rain from whence he’d come, with never another word. The outlaws waited, wondering…

  “I best go see what he did to our sentries.” Harwin took a wary look out the door before he left, to make certain the Hound was not lurking just outside.

  “How’d that bloody bastard get all that gold anyhow?” Lem Lemoncloak said, to break the tension.

  Anguy shrugged. “He won the Hand’s tourney. In King’s Landing.” The bowman grinned. “I won a fair fortune myself, but then I met Dancy, Jayde, and Alayaya. They taught me what roast swan tastes like, and how to bathe in Arbor wine.”

  “Pissed it all away, did you?” laughed Harwin.

  “Not all. I bought these boots, and this excellent dagger.”

  “You ought t’have bought some land and made one o’ them roast swan girls an honest woman,” said Jack
-Be-Lucky. “Raised yourself a crop o’ turnips and a crop o’ sons.”

  “Warrior defend me! What a waste that would have been, to turn my gold to turnips.”

  “I like turnips,” said Jack, aggrieved. “I could do with some mashed turnips right now.”

  Thoros of Myr paid no heed to the banter. “The Hound has lost more than a few bags of coin,” he mused. “He has lost his master and kennel as well. He cannot go back to the Lannisters, the Young Wolf would never have him, nor would his brother be like to welcome him. That gold was all he had left, it seems to me.”

  “Bloody hell,” said Watty the Miller. “He’ll come murder us in our sleep for sure, then.”

  “No.” Lord Beric had sheathed his sword. “Sandor Clegane would kill us all gladly, but not in our sleep. Anguy, on the morrow, take the rear with Beardless Dick. If you see Clegane still sniffing after us, kill his horse.”

  “That’s a good horse,” Anguy protested.

  “Aye,” said Lem. “It’s the bloody rider we should be killing. We could use that horse.”

  “I’m with Lem,” Notch said. “Let me feather the dog a few times, discourage him some.”

  Lord Beric shook his head. “Clegane won his life beneath the hollow hill. I will not rob him of it.”

  “My lord is wise,” Thoros told the others. “Brothers, a trial by battle is a holy thing. You heard me ask R’hllor to take a hand, and you saw his fiery finger snap Lord Beric’s sword, just as he was about to make an end of it. The Lord of Light is not yet done with Joffrey’s Hound, it would seem.”

  Harwin soon returned to the brewhouse. “Puddingfoot was sound asleep, but unharmed.”

  “Wait till I get hold of him,” said Lem. “I’ll cut him a new bunghole. He could have gotten every one of us killed.”

  No one rested very comfortably that night, knowing that Sandor Clegane was out there in the dark, somewhere close. Arya curled up near the fire, warm and snug, yet sleep would not come. She took out the coin that Jaqen H’ghar had given her and curled her fingers around it as she lay beneath her cloak. It made her feel strong to hold it, remembering how she’d seen the ghost in Harrenhal. She could kill with a whisper then.

  Jaqen was gone, though. He’d left her. Hot Pie left me too, and now Gendry is leaving. Lommy had died, Yoren had died, Syrio Forel had died, even her father had died, and Jaqen had given her a stupid iron penny and vanished. “Valar morghulis,” she whispered softly, tightening her fist so the hard edges of the coin dug into her palm. “Ser Gregor, Dunsen, Polliver, Raff the Sweetling. The Tickler and the Hound. Ser Ilyn, Ser Meryn, King Joffrey, Queen Cersei.” Arya tried to imagine how they would look when they were dead, but it was hard to bring their faces to mind. The Hound she could see, and his brother the Mountain, and she would never forget Joffrey’s face, or his mother’s… but Raff and Dunsen and Polliver were all fading, and even the Tickler, whose looks had been so commonplace.

  Sleep took her at last, but in the black of night Arya woke again, tingling. The fire had burned down to embers. Mudge stood by the door, and another guard was pacing outside. The rain had stopped, and she could hear wolves howling. So close, she thought, and so many. They sounded as if they were all around the stable, dozens of them, maybe hundreds. I hope they eat the Hound. She remembered what he’d said, about wolves and dogs.

  Come morning, Septon Utt still swung beneath the tree, but the brown brothers were out in the rain with spades, digging shallow graves for the other dead. Lord Beric thanked them for the night’s lodging and the meal, and gave them a bag of silver stags to help rebuild. Harwin, Likely Luke, and Watty the Miller went out scouting, but neither wolves nor hounds were found.

  As Arya was cinching her saddle girth, Gendry came up to say that he was sorry. She put a foot in the stirrup and swung up into her saddle, so she could look down on him instead of up. You could have made swords at Riverrun for my brother, she thought, but what she said was, “If you want to be some stupid outlaw knight and get hanged, why should I care? I’ll be at Riverrun, ransomed, with my brother.”

  There was no rain that day, thankfully, and for once they made good time.

  BRAN

  The tower stood upon an island, its twin reflected on the still blue waters. When the wind blew, ripples moved across the surface of the lake, chasing one another like boys at play. Oak trees grew thick along the lakeshore, a dense stand of them with a litter of fallen acorns on the ground beneath. Beyond them was the village, or what remained of it.

  It was the first village they had seen since leaving the foothills. Meera had scouted ahead to make certain there was no one lurking amongst the ruins. Sliding in and amongst oaks and apple trees with her net and spear in hand, she startled three red deer and sent them bounding away through the brush. Summer saw the flash of motion and was after them at once. Bran watched the direwolf lope off, and for a moment wanted nothing so much as to slip his skin and run with him, but Meera was waving for them to come ahead. Reluctantly, he turned away from Summer and urged Hodor on, into the village. Jojen walked with them.

  The ground from here to the Wall was grasslands, Bran knew; fallow fields and low rolling hills, high meadows and lowland bogs. It would be much easier going than the mountains behind, but so much open space made Meera uneasy. “I feel naked,” she confessed. “There’s no place to hide.”

  “Who holds this land?” Jojen asked Bran.

  “The Night’s Watch,” he answered. “This is the Gift. The New Gift, and north of that Brandon’s Gift.” Maester Luwin had taught him the history. “Brandon the Builder gave all the land south of the Wall to the black brothers, to a distance of twenty-five leagues. For their… for their sustenance and support.” He was proud that he still remembered that part. “Some maesters say it was some other Brandon, not the Builder, but it’s still Brandon’s Gift. Thousands of years later, Good Queen Alysanne visited the Wall on her dragon Silverwing, and she thought the Night’s Watch was so brave that she had the Old King double the size of their lands, to fifty leagues. So that was the New Gift.” He waved a hand. “Here. All this.”

  No one had lived in the village for long years, Bran could see. All the houses were falling down. Even the inn. It had never been much of an inn, to look at it, but now all that remained was a stone chimney and two cracked walls, set amongst a dozen apple trees. One was growing up through the common room, where a layer of wet brown leaves and rotting apples carpeted the floor. The air was thick with the smell of them, a cloying cidery scent that was almost overwhelming. Meera stabbed a few apples with her frog spear, trying to find some still good enough to eat, but they were all too brown and wormy.

  It was a peaceful spot, still and tranquil and lovely to behold, but Bran thought there was something sad about an empty inn, and Hodor seemed to feel it too. “Hodor?” he said in a confused sort of way. “Hodor? Hodor?”

  “This is good land.” Jojen picked up a handful of dirt, rubbing it between his fingers. “A village, an inn, a stout holdfast in the lake, all these apple trees… but where are the people, Bran? Why would they leave such a place?”

  “They were afraid of the wildlings,” said Bran. “Wildlings come over the Wall or through the mountains, to raid and steal and carry off women. If they catch you, they make your skull into a cup to drink blood, Old Nan used to say. The Night’s Watch isn’t so strong as it was in Brandon’s day or Queen Alysanne’s, so more get through. The places nearest the Wall got raided so much the smallfolk moved south, into the mountains or onto the Umber lands east of the kingsroad. The Greatjon’s people get raided too, but not so much as the people who used to live in the Gift.”

  Jojen Reed turned his head slowly, listening to music only he could hear. “We need to shelter here. There’s a storm coming. A bad one.”

  Bran looked up at the sky. It had been a beautiful crisp clear autumn day, sunny and almost warm, but there were dark clouds off to the west now, that was true, and the wind seemed to be picking up. “There’s no ro
of on the inn and only the two walls,” he pointed out. “We should go out to the holdfast.”

  “Hodor,” said Hodor. Maybe he agreed.

  “We have no boat, Bran.” Meera poked through the leaves idly with her frog spear.

  “There’s a causeway. A stone causeway, hidden under the water. We could walk out.” They could, anyway; he would have to ride on Hodor’s back, but at least he’d stay dry that way.

  The Reeds exchanged a look. “How do you know that?” asked Jojen. “Have you been here before, my prince?”

  “No. Old Nan told me. The holdfast has a golden crown, see?” He pointed across the lake. You could see patches of flaking gold paint up around the crenellations. “Queen Alysanne slept there, so they painted the merlons gold in her honor.”

  “A causeway?” Jojen studied the lake. “You are certain?”

  “Certain,” said Bran.

  Meera found the foot of it easily enough, once she knew to look; a stone pathway three feet wide, leading right out into the lake. She took them out step by careful step, probing ahead with her frog spear. They could see where the path emerged again, climbing from the water onto the island and turning into a short flight of stone steps that led to the holdfast door.

  Path, steps, and door were in a straight line, which made you think the causeway ran straight, but that wasn’t so. Under the lake it zigged and zagged, going a third of a way around the island before jagging back. The turns were treacherous, and the long path meant that anyone approaching would be exposed to arrow fire from the tower for a long time. The hidden stones were slimy and slippery too; twice Hodor almost lost his footing and shouted “HODOR!” in alarm before regaining his balance. The second time scared Bran badly. If Hodor fell into the lake with him in his basket, he could well drown, especially if the huge stableboy panicked and forgot that Bran was there, the way he did sometimes. Maybe we should have stayed at the inn, under the apple tree, he thought, but by then it was too late.

  Thankfully there was no third time, and the water never got up past Hodor’s waist, though the Reeds were in it up to their chests. And before long they were on the island, climbing the steps to the holdfast. The door was still stout, though its heavy oak planks had warped over the years and it could no longer be closed completely. Meera shoved it open all the way, the rusted iron hinges screaming. The lintel was low. “Duck down, Hodor,” Bran said, and he did, but not enough to keep Bran from hitting his head. “That hurt,” he complained.