A Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin Read Free Book Online Page A

looking at her. “You hurt?”
    Calm as still water,
she told herself, the way Syrio Forel had
taught her. “Some.”
    He spat. “That pie boy’s hurting worse. It wasn’t him as killed your father,
girl, nor that thieving Lommy neither. Hitting them won’t bring him
back.”
    “I know,” Arya muttered sullenly.
    “Here’s something you don’t know. It wasn’t supposed to happen like it did. I
was set to leave, wagons bought and loaded, and a man comes with a boy for me,
and a purse of coin, and a message, never mind who it’s from. Lord Eddard’s to
take the black, he says to me, wait, he’ll be going with you. Why d’you think I
was there? Only something went queer.”
    “Joffrey,”
Arya breathed. “Someone should kill
him!
”
    “Someone will, but it won’t be me, nor you neither.” Yoren tossed back her
stick sword. “Got sourleaf back at the wagons,” he said as they made their
way back to the road. “You’ll chew some, it’ll help with the
sting.”
    It did help, some, though the taste of it was foul and it made her spit look
like blood. Even so, she walked for the rest of that day, and the day after,
and the day after
that,
too raw to sit a donkey. Hot Pie was worse
off; Yoren had to shift some barrels around so he could lie in the back of a
wagon on some sacks of barley, and he whimpered every time the wheels hit a
rock. Lommy Greenhands wasn’t even hurt, yet he stayed as far away from Arya as
he could get. “Every time you look at him, he twitches,” the Bull told her as
she walked beside his donkey.

She did not answer. It seemed safer not to talk to anyone.
    That night she lay upon her thin blanket on the hard ground, staring up at the
great red comet. The comet was splendid and scary all at once. “The Red
Sword,” the Bull named it; he claimed it looked like a sword, the blade still
red-hot from the forge. When Arya squinted the right way she could see the
sword too, only it wasn’t a new sword, it was Ice, her father’s greatsword, all
ripply Valyrian steel, and the red was Lord Eddard’s blood on the blade after
Ser Ilyn the King’s Justice had cut off his head. Yoren had made her look away
when it happened, yet it seemed to her that the comet looked like Ice must
have, after.
    When at last she slept, she dreamed of home. The kingsroad wound its way past
Winterfell on its way to the Wall, and Yoren had promised he’d leave her there
with no one any wiser about who she’d been. She yearned to see her mother
again, and Robb and Bran and Rickon . . . but it was Jon Snow
she thought of most. She wished somehow they could come to the Wall
before
Winterfell, so Jon might muss up her hair and call her
“little sister.” She’d tell him, “I missed you,” and he’d say it too at the
very same moment, the way they always used to say things together. She would
have liked that. She would have liked that better than anything.

SANSA
    T he morning of King Joffrey’s name day dawned bright and windy, with the
long tail of the great comet visible through the high scuttling clouds. Sansa
was watching it from her tower window when Ser Arys Oakheart arrived to escort
her down to the tourney grounds. “What do you think it means?” she asked
him.
    “Glory to your betrothed,” Ser Arys answered at once. “See how it flames
across the sky today on His Grace’s name day, as if the gods themselves had
raised a banner in his honor. The smallfolk have named it King Joffrey’s
Comet.”
    Doubtless that was what they told Joffrey; Sansa was not so sure. “I’ve
heard servants calling it the Dragon’s Tail.”
    “King Joffrey sits where Aegon the Dragon once sat, in the castle built by his
son,” Ser Arys said. “He is the dragon’s heir—and crimson is the color
of House Lannister, another sign. This comet is sent to herald Joffrey’s ascent
to the throne, I have no doubt. It means that he will triumph over his
enemies.”
    Is it