Chapter 4 Chapter 3 Arya

The sky was as black as the walls of Harrenhal from which they had fled, and the drizzle fell steadily, drowning the sound of the horses' hooves and blurring their faces. They ran north, away from the great lake, following a barely rutted country road through barren fields and into a forest studded with streams.Arya led the way, kicking at the stolen horse, which trotted briskly, and before long the dense trees surrounded them.Hot Pie and Gendry struggled to keep up with her.The howling of wolves continued in the distance, and she heard Hot Pie's rough panting.No one spoke.Arya looked back from time to time to make sure the boys weren't too far behind, that no one was chasing them.

They would come, she was sure of that.Not only did she steal three horses from the stables, she took a map and a dagger from Roose Bolton's own study, she also killed a guard at the side door, who crouched down to pick up what Jaqen H'ghar had given her Old coins, but she cut her throat.Sooner or later, the dead in the pool of blood will be found, and then there will be shouting.They would wake Lord Bolton and search Harrenhal from battlements to wine cellars, and they would find missing maps and daggers, and a few longswords missing from the smithy, missing bread and cheese from the kitchen.In the end, you will find a baker, a blacksmith apprentice, and a Nana...or a weasel, or Ali's wine waiter.

The Lord of the Dreadfort will not come after him himself.Roose Bolton would lie in bed and give orders, naked, with leeches on his pale skin, laying out the hunt with his characteristic whisper.Most of the pursuers would be led by his captain, Walton, nicknamed "Iron Legs" for his long legs with iron greaves; or perhaps the spitting Vargo Hurt and his mercenaries, these people call themselves warriors, others call them blood mummers (of course no one dares to say that in person), or foot hunters, because Lord Hurt has the habit of chopping off the hands and feet of his opponents .

If they catch them, Arya thought, there will be no limbs, and Roose Bolton will skin us.She still wore her barman's livery, with Lord Bolton's sigil embroidered over the heart: Flayer of the Dreadfort. Every time she looked back, she waited for a burst of torches from the distant gates of Harrenhal, or a crowd of heads on the great high wall, but nothing happened in the end.Harrenhal remained asleep until it was lost in the darkness, hidden behind trees and never to be seen. When they reached the first stream, Arya turned her horse and got off the road.They walked for a quarter of a mile in the twists and turns of the river before they climbed onto a rocky bank.If the trackers had hounds, it would make our scent impossible to tell, she hoped.We cannot walk the road.Roads bring death only, she told herself, and all roads do.

Gendry and Hot Pie did not question her decision.She had the map, after all, and Hot Pie seemed as afraid of her as he was of his pursuers.He had witnessed the guards she killed.Forget it, he was afraid that I might not be bad, she reminded herself, in this way, she would be obedient instead of doing stupid things by herself. Actually, I should be more timid, she thought, she was only ten years old, skinny, riding a stolen horse, in front of the dark forest, behind the pursuers who wanted to chop off her feet.But for some reason, she felt calmer than she had been at Harrenhal.The rain washed away the blood of the guards between their fingers, the long sword on her back was shaking in the wind, countless wild wolves ran wildly in the dark night like gray shadows, and she, Arya Stark, went forward without fear.Fear hurts worse than swords, she whispered Syrio's teachings, and Jaqen's words, valarmorghulis.

The rain stopped and fell, and stopped and stopped, but the cloak was good enough to keep out the wind and rain.Arya drove them forward at a steady pace.It was dark under the big trees, the ground was soft and cracked, half-buried roots and hidden stones everywhere, and the boys were not good at riding and couldn't move at high speed.Soon they were crossing yet another road, its deep ruts filled with rain.Arya turned away from the road again, leading the boys up and down the rolling hills, over brambles and stone blues and tangled bushes, deep into the bottom of narrow ravines where heavy branches caught damp leaves and whipped their limbs again and again. Face.

Suddenly, Gendry's mare stumbled in the mud and fell on her hind legs, throwing him from the saddle, but both were safe.Still obstinate, Gendry quickly mounted his horse and continued on without saying a word.Not long after, they witnessed three wolves devouring the carcass of a fawn.Hot Pai's horse smelled blood, stood up in horror, and then ran desperately.Two wolves fled, but the third raised his head, bared his teeth, and prepared to defend his prey. "Back," Arya told Gendry, "go slowly, don't scare him." They rode slowly around the place, until the wolf and his meal were no longer in sight, and then she patted the horse after Hot Pie, The boy was seen clutching the saddle desperately as his horse thrashed about in the forest.

Later, they passed a burnt village, carefully stepped through the empty shells of the huts that had been burned to black charcoal, and found that a dozen people had been hanged from a row of apple trees, and the corpses had rotted to the bone.Hot Pie prayed for them, begging the Mother for mercy, something he whispered softly, repeating again and again.Arya stared at the sodden, rag-clad disembodied bodies, and said her own prayers: Ser Cregor, Dunson, Polliver, Raff the Sweetmouth, the Notepad and the Hound, Ser Ilyn, Ser Meryn, King Joffrey, Queen Cersei.She touched the coin Jaqen had given her, hidden under her belt, and ended the list with valarmorghulis.Then she rode under the dead man, reached out and plucked an apple.The apples were overripe and rotten to a paste, and she devoured them along with the worms.

It was a day without dawn, the sky was slowly brightening, but there was no sun in sight.The pitch black turned to gray, and the colors hesitantly reappeared in the world. The sentinel tree showed a dark green color, and the yellowish brown and light golden broad leaves almost turned brown.They stopped to water the horses, while they ate a cold convenience breakfast of bread that Hot Pie had stolen from the kitchen, and yellow hard cheese. "Do you have a definite goal?" Gendry asked her. "We're going north," Arya said. Hot Pie looked around blankly, "Which way leads to the north?"

She pointed at the cheese, "That one." "There's not even the sun, how do you know which way to go?" "Look at the moss, fool. You see, they grow especially thick on the side of the tree. That's the south side." "What are we going north for?" Gendry wondered. "There is the Trident to the north," Arya said, unfolding the stolen map. "See? Once we reach the Trident, we can walk up the river until Riverrun. That's it." She traced the path with her fingers. , "Although the road is long, you will never get lost if you follow the river."

Hot Party kept blinking at the map. "Where is Riverrun?" Riverrun was marked as a tower, drawn at the junction of two blue lines, which must have been the Tumblestone and the Red Fork. "Here," she pointed at the map, "Riverrun, there are words below." "Ali, can you read?" He was amazed, as if she had just claimed to be able to walk on water. She nodded. "At Riverrun, we will be safe." "Will it? Why?" Because Riverrun was my grandfather's castle, and my brother Robb was there, Arya almost blurted it out.But she bit her lip and folded the map, "We can only hope so. Let's talk when we get there." After that, she got on the horse.She was uncomfortable hiding the truth from Hot Pie, but there was nothing she could do, she couldn't trust him.Gendry knew, but his situation was different.Gendry had a secret of his own, though what that secret was was a mystery to himself. Arya told them to pick up speed when they set off, making the horses go as far as they could.Several times, when she saw a large flat land in front of her, she lashed her horse with spurs and galloped.However, she knew that the speed was still far from enough.The road became more and more bumpy, and the hills were not high or steep, but they seemed endless, and they soon grew tired of climbing up and down endlessly and preferred to follow the terrain.Along the creek bed, through the intricate small canyons, surrounded by trees, covering them with a huge canopy. From time to time, she let Hot Pie and Gendry go first, and retraced her steps to cover her tracks.From beginning to end, she pricked up her ears, waiting for the pursuers to appear.Too slow, she reminded herself, biting her lip, we're going too slow and we're bound to get caught up.Once, when she was walking on the ridge, she noticed some dark shadows crossing the creek in the canyon behind them. For a while, she panicked and believed that Roose Bolton's cavalry had caught up, but after a closer look, she saw that That's just a pack of wolves.So she put her hands around her mouth and yelled at the pack: "Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh." The biggest wolf in the pack raised his head and roared after her. , the sound made Arya tremble all over. Around noon, Hot Pie began to complain.He told them his ass was so sore, the saddle was chafing the skin on his inner thighs, and most importantly, he wanted to sleep. "I'm so tired I'm going to fall off my horse." Arya looked at Gendry. "If he falls, what do you think will come first, the wolf or the Mummer?" "Probably a wolf," Gendry said, "with a better nose." Hot Pie's mouth opened and closed.He continued to follow up and finally did not fall.It rained again.All along, except for occasional intervals, the sun has never been seen.The temperature was getting colder and colder, and the pale mist walked among the pine trees and surged over the scorched and bare fields. Gendry looked as bad as Hot Pie, but he was stubbornly refusing to complain.He rode awkwardly, and under his tangled black hair, he looked determined, but Arya decided he was struggling.I should have expected that, she thought to herself.She had been riding horses since she could remember, a pony when she was a child, and a real horse when she was older, but Gendry and Hot Pie were both city people, and ordinary people in the city had to walk.Yoren had given them mounts when he had brought them out of King's Landing, but it was one thing to ride a donkey or ride slowly down the Kingsroad in a coach, and it was quite another to drive a steed through primeval forest and scorched fields. It might be faster to go alone, Arya knew, but she couldn't leave them.After all, they were her companions, her friends, her only living friends, and if it weren't for her, they'd both be at Harrenhal well, one blacksmithing and the other cooking.If the Blood Mummers catch me, I'll tell them I'm Eddard Stark's daughter, sister to the King in the North.I'm going to order them to take me to my brother, and no harm to Hot Pie or Gendry.But they won't believe me, even if they do... what about the terrifying Lord Bolton?Although he was her brother's vassal, she was very afraid of him.I will never let them catch us, she swore quietly, holding the longsword Gendry stole for her, her hand over her shoulder, not me. Later that afternoon, they came out of the forest and found a bank ahead.Hot Pie yelled cheerfully, "Trident! Now just go upriver, as you said. We're finally there!" Arya bit her lip. "I don't think this is the Trident," said the river, widened by the rain, but still less than thirty feet.The Trident she remembered was much wider than this. "The river is too small to be the Trident," she told them, "and we haven't come very far." "We'll be there soon enough," insisted Hot Pie. "We've been riding all day, hardly stopping, and must have come a long, long way." "Let's look at the map again," Gendry said. Arya dismounted, took out the map, and unfolded it.The raindrops beat rapidly on the parchment, and soon gathered into a trickle. "I reckon we're somewhere around here," she said, pointing, and the boys poked their heads over her shoulders for a closer look. "But," said Hot Pie, "we hardly moved, as you say. See, you pointed here and said it was Harrenhal, and you're almost pointing here now! And we've all been riding all day Already!" "Harrenhal is a long way from the Trident," she said. "It's impossible to get there without walking many days. There must be another river ahead, one of these rivers, see." She pointed to the map where There are several thin blue lines marked, and each line is marked with a name. "Dairy River, Green Apple River, Maiden River...here, this river, Xiaoliu River, should be this one." Hot Pie stared at the thin thread, then looked at the river in front of him, "But I don't think it's too small." Gendry also frowned, "The river you're referring to will flow into another river, huh." "Great Liujiang," she read. "According to the picture, the Daliu River will flow into the Trident River, so we can follow the Xiaoliu River to the Daliu River and then to the Trident River, but the direction must be downstream, not upward. However, if the river is not The Xiaoliu River, but the one next to it..." "Birth Creek," Arya read. "See, it twists and turns, and ends up in the lake, back at Harrenhal." The boy traced the thin line with his fingers. Hot Pie's eyes widened like lanterns. "No! We will definitely be killed!" "We've got to find out which river this is," Gendry declared, in his most stubborn voice. "We've got to find out." "No, it's not necessary." There are names beside the blue line on the map, but no slogans can be written on the river bank. "We don't need to go upstream or downstream," she resolved, rolling up the map. "We'll cross it and continue north, just as we started." "Can this horse swim through?" Hot Pie asked suspiciously, "It looks deep, Ali, what if there is a snake in it?" "That's not the point. The question is, can you be sure we've been going north?" Gendry wouldn't budge. "Look at the hills around you... Maybe we've been going in circles..." "Moss under the tree..." He pointed to the nearest tree. "This tree has moss on three sides, and the one over there has no moss at all. We may have lost our way." "Perhaps," said Arya, "but I'm going to cross this river anyway, and you can stay here if you don't want to follow." She climbed back on her horse and said nothing to the boys.Even if they don't follow me, they might still find Riverrun, but they'll probably be caught first by the Mummers. She rode along the embankment for more than half a mile before she found a place where it seemed possible to cross the river, and even here her mare was reluctant to enter the water.Whatever the name of the river was, it was muddy and fast, and the water in the middle of the river filled the horses' bellies.The shoes were soaked, but she clamped on to the stirrups and climbed to the opposite bank.At this time, there was a "plop" sound from behind, as well as the nervous neighing of the mare.It's nice that they're finally here.She turned the horse's head and watched the boys struggle to cross the river and finally stood wet beside her. "This is not the Trident," she told them, "this is not." The second river that follows is less deep and easier to cross.It's not the Trident River either.No one raised a dispute. When they rested again, when it was getting dark, they let go of their horses and brought out bread and cheese. "Wet and cold," Hot Pie grumbled, "we're far enough from Harrenhal, we must be far, that we should fire—" "No!" Arya and Gendry yelled in unison, and Hot Pie recoiled in terror.Arya glanced sideways at Gendry.He and I speak in unison, as Jon used to.She thought of the years in Winterfell, and among all the brothers she missed Jon Snow most. "Sleep at least?" Hot Pie pleaded. "I'm really tired, Ali, and my ass hurts like hell. I think I've got blisters." "It will be worse if you get caught," Arya said. "We have no choice but to move on." "But it's getting dark, and there's not even a moon tonight..." "Stop being wordy, get on your horse!" As the light faded, they moved slowly, and Arya felt herself getting heavier and heavier.She knew she needed a break like Hot Pie, but how dare she?If you fall asleep, maybe when you open your eyes, you will see Vargo Hurt standing in front of you, next to Shagwei the Clown, Uswick the "Pious", Rorger, Fang, Utter Monks these monsters. Before long, her horse was shaking like a candle in the wind, and her eyelids were getting heavier.For a moment she closed her eyes, then snapped them open again.I can't doze off, she cried silently to herself, I can't.So she rubbed her eyes hard with her fingers to hold it open, then grabbed the reins and kicked the horse to a canter.But no matter whether people or horses could maintain the speed, they took a few steps and returned to strolling.Then her eyes closed again.This time it can no longer be opened immediately. When she opened her eyes again, the horse had stopped walking, but was gnawing on a clump of grass with its head down.Gendry shook her arm. "You fell asleep," he told her. "No, I just rest my eyes." "Bullshit, how can a resting eye be so long? Your horse was spinning around, and I knew you were asleep before he stopped. Look, Hot Pie is as sleepy as you, and he just hit a branch , was knocked off the horse, you should have heard him yelling. Oh, it didn’t wake you up with such a loud voice. Okay, you have to stop and rest.” "I can walk, keep walking like you," she yawns. "Liar," he said, "go ahead if you want to be an idiot, but I have to stop. Stop talking, I'm on the first shift, you go to sleep." "Where's Hot Pie?" Gendry pointed.Hot Pie was already lying on the ground, wrapped in his cloak, sleeping among the damp leaves, snoring softly.He held a large wheel of cheese in his hands and seemed to fall asleep after taking only a few bites. Well, there's nothing to argue about, Arya thought, and Gendry was right.The blood mummers need a rest too, she told herself.She could barely dismount from her horse due to her general weakness, but she managed to tie up her mount before collapsing under a birch tree.The ground was hard and wet.She didn't know how long she hadn't slept in a formal bed, how long she hadn't enjoyed a hot meal and a roaring fire.Before closing her eyes, the last thing she did was draw out her long sword and put it beside her. "Ser Cregor," she murmured and yawned, "Dunson, Polliver, Raff the Sweetmouth, the notepad and... the notepad... the Hound..." She had a blood-red and wild dream.The Blood Mummers appeared in the dream, a party of four, a white-skinned Lysian and a black-skinned savage axeman from Ibben Port, the scarred Dothraki King Yigo and an unknown Dornishman.They rode endlessly, through layers of rain, in rusted iron and soaked leather, longswords and battle-axes clanging in the saddles.They thought they were catching me, and she understood this strange dream so clearly, but they were wrong, she was catching them. In the dream she was no longer a little girl, but a wolf, huge and strong.She came out from under the big tree in front of them, showing her sharp teeth, and let out a rumbling growl.She could smell the strong smell of fear emanating from men and horses.The Lysian centaurs stood up, screaming in panic, and others shouted at each other in the language of men, but before they could respond, other wolves swooped out of the darkness and drizzle.Together they form a huge team, thin, damp and silent. The battles are short and bloody.The hairy man was dragged off his horse before he could draw his axe, and the black man died while bending his bow and nocking his arrow.Reese's white man wanted to run, but her siblings were hot on his heels, making him keep turning.Finally, the wolves rushed up from all directions and bit the horse's legs, and when he landed, his throat was also torn off at the same time. Only men with bells on their heads stood firm.His horse kicked off the head of one of her sisters, and he himself chopped another sister almost in half.The curved silver claws danced swiftly, responding to the soft ringing of the bell at the tip of the hair. With all her rage, she jumped on his back and knocked him head-on-foot off the saddle.She locked her jaws on his arm as she fell, her teeth piercing through leather and wool and soft flesh.After landing, she shook her head wildly and ripped his upper limbs from his shoulders.Full of joy, she moved her limbs back and forth with her mouth, spraying out warm mist of blood in the cold and dark rain.