A Clash of Kings-Chapter 1

Arya Stark is travelling north with Yoren of the Night's Watch, disguised as a boy. When the orphan boy known as Hot Pie tries to steal her sword “Needle,” Arya beats him senseless. Yoren takes her aside for punishment and reveals that her father was supposed to be allowed to take the black, rather than be executed.

Synopsis

Arya Stark is journeying north with Yoren and his recruits for the Wall disguised as Arry the orphan boy. Yoren has promised to deliver her to her home at Winterfell when they pass by, with no one knowing her true identity.

When he had dragged her into an alley after her father’s execution, Arya had been sure Yoren meant to kill her. Instead the smelly old black brother had only cut her hair and insisted she pretend to be an orphan boy named Arry until they reach Winterfell. She is told that the disguise is necessary because half of the new recruits would turn her over to the queen for a pardon and silver, while the other half would do the same but rape her first. It should not be too hard to pass as a boy, but she has to be careful about where she passes her water.

There are about 30 of them, some of the recruits are orphan boys recruited with promises on food and clothing, but others are criminals from the dungeons under the Red Keep. The most frightening are the three from the black cells, whom Yoren keeps chained in the back of a wagon. That is only one of five wagons, which contained supplies: hides, bars of pig iron, a cage of ravens, cloth, books, paper, ink, medicine, spices. Yoren had bought

The gates of King's Landing had been easy to pass. The Lannister guards were searching for the highborn daughter of the Hand of the King, not a skinny boy with his hair chopped off. Yoren had called one of them by name and they had been waved through. As she leaves she halfway wishes that Blackwater Rush would rise to take out everyone there, but then her sister was there.

She had thought her nickname of “Arya Horseface” was bad, but the orphan boys Lommy Greenhands had named her lumpyhead because of her lumpy, uneven haircut; she finds her head actually feels lumpy. Orphan boys Lommy Greenhands and Hot Pie had taken her silence to mean she is frightened, stupid, or deaf. They are the worst part of the journey. Arya is two years younger and quite a bit smaller than they are.

One morning, Lommy and Hot Pie begin questioning Arya about her sword, “Needle,” wondering where she got it. Hot Pie sarcastically states that maybe she had been a squire. Another insists that she is not a squire, and it is probably not even a real sword. Angrily she insists that it is castle-forged steel, stupid. This only gives rise to claims that she stole it, which angers Arya even more because Needle had been a gift from her bastard brother Jon Snow, and they were not going to call her bastard brother thief. Then Hot Pie gets the idea that he can steal Needle from her and Lommy encourages him. Hot Pie’s declaration that she doesn’t even know how to use a sword takes Arya knows she can and thinks back to the stable boy she stabbed during her escape from the Red Keep. Then they say she is going to cry (she had wept that night and now could not weep another tear) and then that she will wet her pants.

An older boy with shaggy black hair, known as the Bull because of his bull-motif helmet, tells them to let him be, but Hot Pie continues. Arya attempts to diffuse the situation by offering to surrender her wooden practice sword, but Hot Pie tells how he beat her up like he did another boy and reaches for Needle. Arya uses her practice sword to whack Hot Pie’s donkey. The animal bucks and throws Hot Pie to the ground. Arya dismounts and breaks his nose with her practice sword before turning on Lommy, who cowers away in fear. The Bull shouts a warning and Arya turns to face Hot Pie. The injured boy throws a rock at her, but Arya ducks and closes the distance to strike him again on the hand, cheek, knee, and back of the head. As a dazed and wounded Hot Pie attempts to charge her, Arya slips into a Water Dancer pose and wickedly stabs the boy in the groin.

By the time Yoren intervenes to pull her off, Arya has hit Hot Pie a dozen more times and the boy’s pants are brown and smelly. Yoren drags her off the road into a tangle of trees, cursing and muttering. There tells her to drop her breaches, telling her to scream loud, and then he whacks her hard several times with her own stick sword. She does not want to scream, but she does, and her thighs and cheeks are in great pain. When finished he tells her that if she ever uses that blade on one of her brothers, he it will be twice as bad, and explains to her that however much her punishment hurt, Hot Pie is feeling much worse. Yoren also reveals that he had gotten a letter that he was supposed to be Baelor’s Sept because Lord Eddard was supposed to be allowed to take the black instead of being executed. Something went queer. When she says someone should kill Joffrey, he replies that someone will, but not her.

Afterward, Arya is unable to sit a donkey for several days, but Hot Pie is unable to do anything but lie in the back of a wagon for even longer and Lommy stays as far away as possible. The Bull points out that whenever she looks at Lommy now, the boy twitches. She did not answer since it seemed safer not to talk. That night, while looking up at the sky, the Bull calls the red comet the “Red Sword,” saying that it looks like a sword fresh from the forge. Arya can see it as a sword as well, but to her it is her father’s great sword, Ice, covered with her father’s blood, as it was after his head had been cut off.

When she finally falls asleep, Arya dreams of Winterfell. She longs to see her mother, Robb, Bran, and Rickon, but more than anyone she misses her brother Jon on the Wall. She wishes that somehow they could come to the Wall before Winterfell, just so she could see Jon again.

References and Notes

• Humorous review of the chapter by Jason.
• Review in the course of a 10th reread by Slynt.
• Review and summary by Leigh Butler.