Chapter 10 Chapter Ten Arya

It's not so much a road as two ruts through the weeds. The good thing is that since there are few people coming and going, no one can point out their whereabouts.The King's Road was full of people, but here there was only a trickle. On the downside, the road snaked back and forth, sometimes interspersed with back roads, and sometimes disappeared almost entirely, only to reappear a mile or two away when they had almost given up hope.Arya hated the situation.The surrounding terrain is not rugged, with hills and terraced fields undulating, dotted with grasslands, woods and small valleys; in the valleys, the water flows slowly and the banks are sandwiched by willows.Although the scenery is beautiful, the path is very narrow, turning left and right, making their progress almost as fast as crawling.

Slowing down were the wagons, with their heavy loads, their axles creaking and rumbling.A dozen times a day, it is necessary to stop and pull out a wheel that is stuck in a rut;Another time, in a dense oak forest, they ran into an ox cart pulled by three people and piled up with firewood. Take the reins, lead the ox into the woods, turn the car around, tie the ox again, and return the same way.The ox was slower than the wagon, so the day was wasted. Arya couldn't help but look back frequently, not knowing when the golden robed guards would come after her.At night, at the slightest sign of trouble, she would wake up with a start, clutching the hilt of her needle.So far, every time they set up camp, they must send someone to watch, but Arya doesn't trust them, especially the orphans.They might be useful in the back alleys of King's Landing, but they're certainly useless here.As long as she herself is "quiet as a shadow", she can touch all of them quietly, and sneak into the dark woods to relieve herself under the starlight.Once, when it was Lomy Greenhand's turn to stand guard, she crept up an oak tree, approached from tree to tree, and finally touched the top of his head, but he didn't feel it.She could have jumped right there, but she knew his screams would wake up the camp, not to mention Yoren's beating him up.

Ever since they knew that the queen mother wanted Daniel's head, the orphans like Romy treated him as a special person, and he didn't like it at all. "I didn't offend any Queen Mother!" he said angrily, "I always just do my job well, blowing stoves, blacksmithing, moving things, doing chores, I want to be a weaponsmith, but one day Master Mott wants to I join the Night's Watch, and that's all I know." With that, he went off to polish his helmet.His helmet was beautiful indeed, well rounded, with eye slits in the visor, and two large metal horns.Arya watched him take the oilcloth and polish it carefully, until it was so shiny that it reflected the roaring campfire.But he never puts his helmet on.

"I bet you he's that traitor's bastard son," Romy whispered one night, out of Gendry's ear. "He's the offspring of that Lord Wolf—the guy who was beheaded in the Great Sept of Baelor." "He's not!" Arya retorted.My father only had one bastard son, and that was Jon.Depressedly, she rushed into the woods, wishing she could just jump on the horse and ride home.Her mount was a chestnut-colored mare with a white spot on her forehead.Now she not only had a good horse, but she was always a good rider herself, and she could gallop away and never see them again—unless she wanted to.But in this way, no one came forward to spy, no one stood behind to guard, and no one stood guard when she fell asleep. When the gold robe came to catch her, she would be alone, so she stayed with Yoren and his party It's safer together.

"We're not far from God's Eye," said the Black Brother one morning, "but the King's Road will not be safe until we cross the Trident, so let's walk around the lake and along the west bank. Over there." And at the next intersection of the ruts, he turned the wagon westward. Since then, farmland has been replaced by forests, villages and manors have become smaller and more scattered, hills are higher, valleys are deeper, and food has become more and more difficult to obtain.Yoren had filled the wagon with salt fish, hard bread, lard, turnips, sacks of green beans and barley, and a wheel of yellow cheese before they left town, and had eaten them all by now.They had to fend for themselves.Yoren sent ex-poachers Kos and Kurz to the front of the line, deep into the woods, and by dusk they would be able to carry a deer on a branch on their shoulders or return to the line with a bunch of quail dangling from their waists.The younger boys were sent to pick blackberries along the road, and if they passed the orchard, they had to sneak over the fence and return with a bag of apples.

Arya is good at climbing trees and picking things quickly.She likes to be alone.One day she was lucky and happened to run into a rabbit.The rabbit is brown and fluffy, fat and big, with a pair of long ears and a nose that keeps turning.Rabbits could run faster than cats, but they couldn't climb trees, so she knocked him down with a stick, picked up his ears, and gave Yoren a stew of mushrooms and wild onions.Because Arya was successful in catching rabbits, she got a whole leg, which she shared with Gendry.Everyone else got a spoonful, even the three condemned prisoners.Jaqen H'ghar thanked her politely, licked the oil stains on his dirty fingers with his fangs, and showed a happy expression, Rorge, who had no nose, smiled and said, "Oh, now you're a hunter again? Diarrhea Kill the rabbit with a mangled head and a dysentery face."

Later, they picked a few ears of corn in a manor field called Baijingzhuang, but a group of peasants surrounded them and asked them to pay.Yoren glanced at the scythe in the opponent's hand, and dropped a few coppers. "In the past, our black-shirted army would have received warm hospitality no matter in Dorne or Winterfell, and the dignitaries would have felt honored to have a black-clothed brother come to stay at home." He said angrily, "Now these bums bite twice You need money for rotten apples." He spat, "We grow sweet corn, you stinky old blackbird is not worthy of eating it!" A Zhuang man retorted gruffly, "Hurry up from our field Get the hell out of here! Take your scumbags away by the way, or we'll pick you up and scare your fellow crows!"

That night, they roasted the sweet corn with the belt and grain, passed a few forked long branches through the heart of the ears, roasted them over the fire, and ate them directly after they were cooked.Arya thought it was delicious, but Yoren was too angry to eat it.There seemed to be a cloud over his head, as ragged and black as his cloak.He walked up and down the camp, muttering words. The next day, Koth spotted the barracks ahead and came back to warn Yoren. "About twenty or thirty men, in mail and half-helm," he said. "Some were badly wounded, and one sounded like he was dying. He was very loud, and I ventured to lean over to see, There were spears and shields around them, but only one horse, and it was still lame. I saw them there a long time, and it stinks."

"See the flag?" "A spotted tree cat, black and yellow, on a mud-brown background." Yoren broke off a sourgrass leaf and chewed it in his mouth. "I haven't seen it before," he admitted, "I don't know which side it is from, it could be from both sides. With such a serious injury, no matter which company it is, it will probably snatch our livestock, maybe there is more than that. I think we should take a detour Avoid." As a result, they took a long detour and spent at least two days before and after, but the old man said that the price was very good. "When you get to the Great Wall, you have plenty of time. You'll have to stay there for the rest of your life, so I don't think you need to worry."

Going further north, Arya found that the number of people patrolling the farmland gradually increased. Some just stood quietly on the side of the road, watching passers-by;Another time, she caught a glimpse of a man squatting on a dead tree, holding a longbow and a quiver hanging from a nearby tree trunk.As soon as he saw them appear, he immediately bent his bow and set his arrows, aimed at them, and did not let go until the last carriage was out of sight.Yoren scolded as he walked, "That guy in the tree, just wait for the White Walkers to catch you, and see if you will cry for help from the Night's Watch, let's wait and see!"

A day later, Dobb noticed that there was a red light in the evening sky. "Unless the road turns again, the sun has set in the north." Yoren climbed to the top of the hill and looked over. "That's fire," he announced to the crowd, then licked his thumb and held it up in the air. "According to the current limelight, it should blow the fire away from us, but we should pay attention." They cannot fail to notice.The sky is getting darker, but the flames are getting brighter and brighter. In the end, it seems that the whole north is on fire.They smelled smoke from time to time, but the wind direction remained constant, and the fire did not approach after all.At dawn the next day, the fire was extinguished, but no one slept well that night. Just before noon, they arrived at the ruins of the village.The fields for several miles were covered with scorched earth, and only the charred remains of the houses remained.Charred or butchered carcasses were scattered here and there, covered with carrion crows like swimming blankets.When they are disturbed, they flutter their wings and fly, quacking angrily.Smoke still billowed from the estate in the distance, and the fence surrounding it seemed strong from here, but proved insufficient at all. Arya kicked her horse and ran to the front of the wagon to find charred bodies stuck on the sharpened stakes of the wall, their faces raised with their hands up as if to wave away the flames.Before arriving at the manor, Yoren stopped the crowd and asked Arya and the other boys to guard the carriage, and led Mookie and Kejack to investigate on foot.They climbed over the dilapidated gate, startled the crows in the wall, and in the carriage, the crows in the cage croaked strangely at their own kind. "Should we follow?" Arya couldn't help asking Gendry after seeing Yoren and others go in for a long time. "Yoren told us to wait." Gendry's voice sounded hollow, and Arya turned to see that he had donned the shiny steel horned helmet. At last they came back.Yoren held a little girl in his arms, and Mookie and Kejack carried a stretcher made of old quilts with a woman lying on it.The girl was less than two years old, and she kept crying, making a sound similar to whimpering, as if something was stuck in her throat and could not come out.She may not yet be able to speak, or may have forgotten how to say it.The woman's right hand was broken from the elbow, and the wound was bloody and bloody. Her eyesight was lax, and she did not respond to the surrounding things.She could speak, but only one sentence: "Please!" She shouted loudly and repeatedly, "Please! Please!" Rorge thought it was very funny, so he burst out laughing. It came from the hollow of the nose, and it wasn't long before Fangs laughed too, until Mu Qi cursed and told them to shut up. Yoren told them to make room for the woman in the wagon. "Quick!" he said. "As soon as it gets dark, the wolves will come, and there may be worse things!" "I'm so scared." Hot Pie couldn't help muttering to himself as he watched the one-armed woman twitching in the car. "Me too," Arya admitted. He squeezed her shoulder, "Ali, let me tell you, I didn't kick the little boy to death. I just sold pies for my mother." Arya plucked up her courage and rode as far in front of the carriage as possible, away from the little girl's sobs, away from the woman's whisper, "Please."She remembered the story told by Old Nan: Once upon a time, a hero was imprisoned in a gloomy castle by an evil giant. , Drink all the blood in your body.Arya could feel how he felt now. The One-Armed Girl had died that evening, and Gendry and Kejack had dug her a grave on the hillside, under a willow tree.When the cold wind blew, Arya seemed to hear the long willow branches whispering, "Please! Please! Please!", and the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end, and she almost ran away. "No fires tonight," Yoren told them.Supper that day consisted of a handful of wild radishes Kos had found, a cup of dried beans, and water from a nearby creek.The stream had a strange smell, and Romy said there must be rotting corpses upstream to make it smell like that.If old Rayson hadn't pulled them apart, Hot Pie would have nearly fought him. To fill her belly, Arya drank a lot of water.She thought she must not be able to fall asleep, but she fell asleep anyway.When she awoke, it was pitch black and her bladder was swollen like hell.Surrounded by people huddled together in blankets and cloaks, sleeping.Arya found her needle and stood up, listening intently.She heard the light footsteps of a guard, the turning of a restless sleeper, Rorge's snoring, and Fang's eerie hiss in sleep.There was the rhythmic friction of stone and steel from the other wagon, where Yoren sat chewing sour grass and sharpening his short knife. Hot Pie was one of the boys on the night's watch. "Where are you going?" he asked aloud as Arya walked toward the woods. Arya waved vaguely toward the trees. "No, no!" said Hot Pie.Ever since he got the real sword, he became bolder again.Although the sword is short, and he uses it like a kitchen knife. "The old man said we're going to be together tonight." "I'm going to pee," Arya explained. "Hey, just untie it under that tree!" He pointed, "Ally, God knows what's in the forest. I heard wolves howling before." A fight with him would surely make Yoren angry.She pretended to be scared, "There are wolves? Really?" "I heard it with my own ears," he assured. "Then I don't want to untie it." She went back and pulled up the blanket, pretending to fall asleep, and when she heard Hot Pie's footsteps drifting away, she turned over and slipped into the forest on the other side of the camp, as quiet as a shadow.To be on the safe side, she walked farther than usual, and only after she was sure that no one was around, she unbuttoned her pants and squatted down to do business. She was halfway through the piss, and her pants fell to her ankles, when she heard rustling under the tree.hot pie!She thought in panic, he is following me secretly!Then she saw eyes in the woods shining brightly in the moonlight.Her stomach tightened, she stretched out her hand to hold the sewing needle, and she didn't care about urinating on herself, and counted her eyes: two, four, eight, twelve, a whole group... One of them came towards her from under the tree, staring at her with its teeth bared.All she could think about was how stupid she was, thinking that Hot Pie would be gloating when they found her half-eaten body in the morning.But the wolf turned around suddenly, and ran into the darkness quickly, and all eyes disappeared.Trembling, she went to the bathroom, put on her pants, followed the vague sound of knives sharpening in the distance, and returned to the camp to find Yoren.Arya climbed into the carriage and sat beside him, trembling. "There are wolves," she whispered hoarsely, "there are wolves in the woods." "Yes, it goes without saying." He didn't even look at her. "Scared me to death." "Really?" He spat, "I thought your family liked wolves." "Nymeria is a direwolf," said Arya, embracing her body. "It's different from ordinary wolves. And she's long gone. Jory and I threw stones at her to drive her away, otherwise she would be killed by the Queen Mother." Fall." Speaking of the past, she felt sad again. "If he had been in town, I bet he wouldn't have let them chop off Father's head." "Orphans don't have fathers," Yoren said, "don't forget." His mouth looked bloody from the sourweed. "However, the scariest wolves are wolves in human skin, such as those who destroyed the village." "I really want to go home," she said pitifully.She's always tried so hard to be brave and fierce like a wolf, but sometimes, she feels like she's just a little girl after all. The brother in black took a piece of sour grass leaves from the bundle on the carriage and stuffed it into his mouth. "Little ghost, it seems that I should have left you and others in the city. It seems safer in the city." "I don't care, I want to go home." "I've been recruiting men for the Wall defenders for almost thirty years," Yoren said, spittle glistening from his mouth like blood-red bubbles. "Only three people died before and after. An old man died of a fever, a city kid was bitten by a snake while shitting, and a fool tried to kill me while I was sleeping, and a hole was opened here " He picked up the short knife and slashed at the throat, "Three died in thirty years." He spat out the chewed sour grass leaves, "Now that I think about it, it might be wiser to take a boat. At the beginning, I just wanted to do more tricks along the way. Man, alas... a wise man would take a boat and go, but I... I've been taking the King's Highway for thirty years." He put away his knife. "Go to sleep, kid, you hear?" She tried her best to sleep, but when she was lying under the thin blanket, she heard howling wolves... There was another sound, which was more vague, like whispers in the wind, and it seemed to be a few screams.