Chapter 51 Chapter 50 Arya

The carriage went downhill with difficulty along the muddy road, and a few patrolling cavalry came forward one hour away from the Green Fork River. "Low your head and shut your mouth." The Hound warned her.The other party has three people: a knight and two attendants, lightly armored, riding fast horses.Clegane flicked his whip at the horses pulling the cart. The old pair had undoubtedly seen good times, but they were a little tired now.The carriage creaked and shook, and the two huge wooden wheels turned while squeezing the mud on the road, carving deep ruts.The Stranger was roped to the carriage and followed.

The grumpy ponies were stripped of their armor and harness, and the Hound himself wore a dirty green dungaree over a soot gray cloak, with a hood over his face.As long as you keep your gaze down, the other party will not be able to see his face clearly, at most you will see the whites of his eyes.He looked like a sleazy farmer.A big farmer, Arya thought, with boiled leather and well-oiled mail under his dungarees.She looked like a farmer's son, or a swineherd.Inside the carriage were four low wooden barrels filled with bacon, and a barrel of pickled pig's feet. The cavalry spread out, surrounded them, and only approached after looking at them for a while.Clegane stopped the carriage and waited patiently, without hesitation.Knights armed with spears and swords, squires with longbows, their coats of arms were one size smaller than those sewn on their master's coats: a golden diagonal stripe on a brown ground, with a pitchfork on top.According to Arya's plan, as soon as she encountered a patrol, she should immediately reveal her identity, but she expected to encounter a gray warrior with a direwolf on his chest, even if it was a chain-splitter giant from the Umbers or a steel giant from the Glover family. Iron Fist would take the risk, but he really didn't know this Pitchfork Knight, and he didn't know who he was working for.Lord Manderly's banner featured a white mermaid holding a trident, the closest thing to a pitchfork she had ever seen at Winterfell.

"What are you doing at the Twins?" asked the knight. "Supplying bacon for the wedding festivities, I hope you are satisfied, sir." The Hound grunted in reply, his eyes lowered to hide his expression. "Salty meat won't please me." Pitchfork Knight gave Clegane a very cursory look and paid no attention to Arya, but he gave the Stranger a long, hard stare.Obviously, this is not a plowing horse, you can tell at a glance.The big black horse bit the mount of one of the attendants, nearly throwing him into the mud. "Where did you get this guy?" Pitchfork Knight asked.

"My lady told me to take it, sir," Clegane replied humbly, "as a wedding present for young Lord Tully." "Ma'am? Which lady do you work for?" "Lady Hoan, sir." "She thinks a horse can be exchanged for Harrenhal?" the knight jeered. "let's go." "Yes, my lord." The hound flicked his whip, and the two animals continued their weary journey.When the carriage stopped earlier, the wheels had sunk deep into the mud, and it took the old horse a while to pull them out again.The riders were now far away, and Clegane took one last look at them and snorted. "Ser Donnel Hay," he said, "has lost so many horses and armor to me that I nearly killed him once in a joust."

"Then why doesn't he recognize you?" Arya asked. "Because knights are idiots, if you look at a pockmarked peasant, you will feel inferior." He whipped his horse. "Lower your eyes and call 'Sir Sir' respectfully a few times. Most of the knights won't pay attention to you. They care more about horses than ordinary people. This idiot should have recognized the Stranger." Should have recognized you, Arya thought.Whoever saw Sandor Clegane's burn did not easily forget it.He also couldn't hide the scar behind the helmet, which was shaped like a snarling dog.

That's why they need wagons and pickled trotters. "I don't want to be dragged to your brother in chains," the Hound told her, "nor to fight my way to meet him, so here's a little trick." A farmer I met on the King's Road provided carts, horses, clothes and barrels—not voluntarily, of course, but stolen by hounds with swords.The farmer cursed him as a bandit, and he said, "No, I'm on the conscript team, so thank God for letting you keep your underwear. What's the matter? It's up to you whether you want boots or legs." The farmer was as tall as Clegane The same height, but obediently took off the boots.

By evening they were still some distance from the Green Fork and Lord Frey's twin castles.Almost there, Arya thought, and she knew she should be excited, but her stomach was twisting.Maybe that meant she was still battling a cold, maybe not.She remembered having a dream last night, a terrible nightmare. Although she doesn't know the specific content now, the feeling of trance still lingers.No, it's getting stronger and stronger.Fear hurts more than a sword.She had to be strong, like her father said, not a crying little girl.There was nothing between her and her mother, but a gate and a river and an army...but that was Robb's army, so there was no real danger.isn't it?

And then there was Roose Bolton.The bandits called him "Lord Leech," and he disturbed her.She had escaped from Harrenhal not only to get rid of the Mummers, but also to get rid of Bolton, and had to slit the throat of one of his guards on the way.Did he know she did it? Would he blame Gendry or Hot Pie? Would he tell her mother? What would he do if he saw her? Maybe he wouldn't recognize me at all.Now she is not like a lord's waiter, she is like a drowning mouse.A drowning male mouse.The Hound had shaved her hair two days ago, but in a way worse than Yoren's, nearly balding one side of her head.I bet, Robb, not even my mother would recognize me.The last time she saw them was the day Lord Eddard Stark left Winterfell, dressed as little girls.

Before the castle was seen, music was heard: under the roar of the river and the beating of raindrops, in the distance came the sound of pounding drums, roaring horns and shrill flutes. "Looks like we missed the wedding," said the Hound, "but the feast is still going on. I'll get rid of you soon." No, I got rid of you, Arya thought. The road, which had been running mostly northwest, turned due west, passed an apple orchard and a rain-battered cornfield, and climbed a hillside where suddenly the river, the castle, and the camp all appeared.Hundreds of men and horses gathered around three huge tents.These three large tents stand side by side, facing the gate of the castle, like three canvas halls.Robb set up his barracks far from the castle, on higher, relatively dry ground, but the Green Fork overflowed its banks and even submerged some of the tents that were not carefully placed.

As they approached, the music from the castle became even louder. The sound of drums and trumpets swept through the camp, and the music played by the nearby castle was different from that on the other side. It sounded like a war rather than a ballad. "Not much," Arya commented. The Hound snorted, perhaps laughing. "I'm sure even a deaf old woman in Lannisport will complain about the noise for no reason. I heard Walder Frey's eyes are bad, so why no one mentions his goddamn ears?" Arya wished it was daytime.If there is sun and wind, you can see the flag ahead, and you can find the ice wolf of the Stark family, or the tomahawk of the Seven family, or the steel-clad iron fist of the Glover family.But in the dark dusk, all colors are gray.The rain had weakened to a silky mist, but the earlier downpour had made the flags so wet, like dishcloths, that they were unreadable.

A circle of wagons and carts surrounded the camp, forming a rough wooden wall against any attack.It was here that the guard stopped them.Their captain carried a lamp, just bright enough for Arya to see his crimson cloak speckled with blood, and the arms of the Lord Leech, Flayer of the Dreadfort, were stitched across the chests of their soldiers.Sandor Clegane had dealt with them as he had dealt with a ranger, but the Bolton officers were harder than Ser Donnel Hay. "What do you want bacon for the Duke's wedding feast?" he asked contemptuously. "And pickled pig's trotters, sir." "You must have made a mistake. These things are not for the banquet. Besides, the banquet is in progress, and entry and exit are prohibited at this moment-an additional reminder, I am a northerner, not some southern knight sucking a pacifier." "The master ordered me to meet the manager, or the chef..." "The castle is closed, and adults cannot be disturbed." The officer thought for a while. "You unload it by the wedding tent, right there." He pointed with his mail-coated fingers. "Ale makes people hungry, and Old Frey has a few pig's trotters, and he has no teeth to eat such things. Get Sage King, he knows what to do with you." The officer shouted orders, and his men pushed them away. A carriage, let them in. The hound whipped and urged the horse towards the tent, but no one paid any attention.Centaurs splashed past rows of brightly colored tents, the damp silk walls illuminated by oil lamps and braziers inside like magic lanterns: pink, gold and green, stripes, waves and squares, birds, beasts, horns, stars , wheels and weapons.Arya finds a yellow tent studded with six acorns, three on top, two in the middle, and one on the bottom.This must be Lord Smallwood, she thought, remembering Acorn Hall far away, and Lady Smallwood admiring her beauty. Around the shining silk tent, there are more than 20 times as many felt and canvas tents, black and opaque.There were also military tents, each big enough to accommodate forty soldiers, but these were no different from dwarfs compared to the three wedding tents.The banquet seemed to have been going on for hours, with loud toasts and clinking of glasses, mixed with the usual neighing of horses, barking of dogs, rumbling of vehicles, jeers, clacking of steel and wood.The music grew louder as the castle approached, and a layer of darker, more dismal sounds lay beneath—the river, the rising Green Fork, roaring like a lion in its den. Arya twisted and squirmed, hoping to catch a glimpse of a direwolf sigil, a gray and white tent, a face she had known from Winterfell, but in vain.There are strangers everywhere.She stared at a soldier peeing in the grass, but he was not a "drink belly"; she saw a half-naked girl laughing and rushing out of a tent, but the tent was light blue, not from a distance gray, and the chased man had a tree cat embroidered on his coat, no wolf; under a tree, four archers were waxing new strings for a longbow, and they were not her father's archers; They met, but he was too young and too thin to be a Luwin maester.Arya looked up at the Twins, the soft light of lamps burning in the windows of the towers.Through the hazy night rain, the Twin Fortresses looked weird and mysterious, like a place in an Old Nan story, not Winterfell Castle. The crowd in the big wedding tent is the densest.The wide tent door was fastened high, and people were busy coming in and out, holding wine cups and glasses, and some even brought camp prostitutes.Arya glanced inside as she passed the first of the three, and saw hundreds of people crammed into benches, jostling barrels of mead and ale and wine, leaving little room to move, but Everyone drank happily.At least they were warm and dry, and I was cold and wet, Arya thought enviously.Some people even sang loudly. At the door of the tent, the soft raindrops were evaporated by the overflowing heat. "To Lord Edmund and Lady Roslin!" cried a voice.They were all drunk, and someone shouted again, "To Young Wolf Lord and Queen Jenny!" Who is Queen Jeyne? Arya wondered a little.All she knew was Queen Cersei. A fire pit was dug outside the big tent, and it was covered with a rough canopy woven of wood and animal skins, which was enough to block the vertical rainwater.But the wind was blowing obliquely from the river, so the rain drifted in after all, making the flames hiss and circle and leap.Arya's mouth watered at the smell of servants turning chunks of roast over the fire. "Shall we stop?" she asked Thornfeng Clegane, "there are northerners in the tent." She knew, by their beards, their faces, their bearskin and sealskin cloaks, their looming toasts The Karstarks and the Umbers and the Mountain Clans knew it by the voice and the song. "I'll bet there were some from Winterfell, too." Her father's, the Young Wolf Lord's, the Stark cubs. "Your brother is in the castle," he said, "and your mother. Do you want to see them or not?" "Want to see," she said, "and Sage King?" The officer told them to find Sage King. "Sage King can fuck his own asshole with a hot stick," Clegane's whip whizzed through the drizzle and lashed the horse's flanks. "I'm looking for your bloody brother."