A Clash of Kings-Chapter 1

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Arya I
A Clash of Kings chapter
AClashOfKings.jpg
POV Arya
Page 22 UK HC (Other versions)
Chapter chronology (All)
Prologue  ← Arya I →  Sansa I

Arya II

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 a 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. The disguise is necessary because half of the new recruits would turn her over to the queen for a pardon and the other half would do the same but rape her first. 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.

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.

Her lumpy, uneven haircut has earned her the name “Lumpyhead” from the orphan boys Lommy Greenhands and Hot Pie, who take 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. Lommy insists that it is probably not even a real sword, which angers Arya. She insists that it is castle-forged steel. 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. 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 back to the stable boy she stabbed during her escape from the Red Keep.

An older boy, known as the Bull because of his bull-motif helmet, makes a half-hearted attempt to intervene, but Hot Pie continues. Arya attempts to diffuse the situation by offering to surrender her wooden practice sword, but Hot Pie refuses 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 she learned from Syrio Forel and 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 he spanks her several times with her own stick sword. Once it is done, Yoren explains to her that however much her punishment hurt, Hot Pie is feeling much worse. Yoren also reveals that her father, Lord Eddard, was supposed to be allowed to take the black instead of being executed, but something went queer. That is why Yoren was waiting at Baelor’s Sept.

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. 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 sword, Ice, covered with her father’s blood.

When she finally falls asleep, Arya dreams of Winterfell. She misses her brothers 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