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 roof 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.
“Hodor,” said Hodor, straightening.
They found themselves in a gloomy strongroom, barely large enough to hold the four of them. Steps built into the inner wall of the tower curved away upward to their left, downward to their right, behind iron grates. Bran looked up and saw another grate just above his head. A murder hole. He was glad there was no one up there now to pour boiling oil down on them.
The grates were locked, but the iron bars were red with rust. Hodor grabbed hold of the lefthand door and gave it a pull, grunting with effort. Nothing happened. He tried pushing with no more success. He shook the bars, kicked, shoved against them and rattled them and punched the hinges with a huge hand until the air was filled with flakes of rust, but the iron door would not budge. The one down to the undervault was no more accommodating. “No way in,” said Meera, shrugging.
The murder hole was just above Bran’s head, as he sat in his basket on Hodor’s back. He reached up and grabbed the bars to give them a try. When he pulled down the grating came out of the ceiling in a cascade of rust and crumbling stone. “HODOR!” Hodor shouted. The heavy iron grate gave Bran another bang in the head, and crashed down near Jojen’s feet when he shoved it off of him. Meera laughed. “Look at that, my prince,” she said, “you’re stronger than Hodor.” Bran blushed.
With the grate gone, Hodor was able to boost Meera and Jojen up through the gaping murder hole. The crannogmen took Bran by the arms and drew him up after them. Getting Hodor inside was the hard part. He was too heavy for the Reeds to lift the way they’d lifted Bran. Finally Bran told him to go look for some big rocks. The island had no lack of those, and Hodor was able to pile them high enough to grab the crumbling edges of the hole and climb through. “Hodor,” he panted happily, grinning at all of them.
They found themselves in a maze of small cells, dark and empty, but Meera explored until she found the way back to the steps. The higher they climbed, the better the light; on the third story the thick outer wall was pierced by arrow slits, the fourth had actual windows, and the fifth and highest was one big round chamber with arched doors on three sides opening onto small stone balconies. On the fourth side was a privy chamber perched above a sewer chute that dropped straight down into the lake.
By the time they reached the roof the sky was completely overcast, and the clouds to the west were black. The wind was blowing so strong it lifted up Bran’s cloak and made it flap and snap. “Hodor,” Hodor said at the noise.
Meera spun in a circle. “I feel almost a giant, standing high above the world.”
“There are trees in the Neck that stand twice as tall as this,” her brother reminded her.
“Aye, but they have other trees around them just as high,” said Meera. “The world presses close in the Neck, and the sky is so much smaller. Here… feel that wind, Brother? And look how large the world has grown.”
It was true, you could see a long ways from up here. To the south the foothills rose, with the mountains grey and green beyond them. The rolling plains of the New Gift stretched away to all the other directions, as far as the eye could see. “I was hoping we could see the Wall from here,” said Bran, disappointed. “That was stupid, we must still be fifty leagues away.” Just speaking of it made him feel tired, and cold as well. “Jojen, what will we do when we reach the Wall? My uncle always said how big it was. Seven hundred feet high, and so thick at the base that the gates are more like tunnels through the ice. How are we going to get past to find the three-eyed crow?”
“There are abandoned castles along the Wall, I’ve heard,” Jojen answered. “Fortresses built by the Night’s Watch but now left empty. One of them may give us our way through.”
The ghost castles, Old Nan had called them. Maester Luwin had once made Bran learn the names of every one of the forts along the Wall. That had been hard; there were nineteen of them all told, though no more than seventeen had ever been manned at any one time. At the feast in honor of King Robert’s visit to Winterfell, Bran had recited the names for his uncle Benjen, east to west and then west to east. Benjen Stark had laughed and said, “You know them better than I do, Bran. Perhaps you should be First Ranger. I’ll stay here in your place.” That was before Bran fell, though. Before he was broken. By the time he’d woken crippled from his sleep, his uncle had gone back to Castle Black.
“My uncle said the gates were sealed with ice and stone whenever a castle had to be abandoned,” said Bran.
“Then we’ll have to open them again,” said Meera.
That made him uneasy. “We shouldn’t do that. Bad things might come through from the other side. We should just go to Castle Black and tell the Lord Commander to let us pass.”
“Your Grace,” said Jojen, “we must avoid Castle Black, just as we avoided the kingsroad. There are hundreds of men there.”
“Men of the Night’s Watch,” said Bran. “They say vows, to take no part in wars and stuff.”
“Aye,” said Jojen, “but one man willing to forswear himself would be enough to sell your secret to the ironmen or the Bastard of Bolton. And we cannot be certain that the Watch would agree to let us pass. They might decide to hold us or send us back.”
“But my father was a friend of the Night’s Watch, and my uncle is First Ranger. He might know where the three-eyed crow lives. And Jon’s at Castle Black too.” Bran had been hoping to see Jon again, and their uncle too. The last black brothers to visit Winterfell said that Benjen Stark had vanished on a ranging, but surely he would have made his way back by now. “I bet the Watch would even give us horses,” he went on.
“Quiet.” Jojen shaded his eyes with a hand and gazed off toward the setting sun. “Look. There’s something… a rider, I think. Do you see him?”
Bran shaded his eyes as well, and even so he had to squint. He saw nothing at first, till some movement made him turn. At first he thought it might be Summer, but no. A man on a horse. He was too far away to see much else.
“Hodor?” Hodor had put a hand over his eyes as well, only he was looking the wrong way. “Hodor?”
“He is in no haste,” said Meera, “but he’s making for this village, it seems