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Episode 75: A CLASH OF KINGS, ARYA I-III: "On the Road" SHOW NOTES!
🕑 Added 2019-08-21 04:19:21 +0000 UTCHello and welcome to the Not A Cast … podcast: the one true chapter-by-chapter podcast going through A Song of Ice and Fire one chapter a week. I’m one of your hosts Jeff better known as BryndenBFish.
And I’m your other host Emmett, better known as PoorQuentyn.
Welcome to the seventy-fifth episode of the Not A Cast, entitled: “On the Road: An Analysis of ACOK, Arya I-III,” in which Arya Stark wanders the war-torn Riverlands with her new companions: kids who try to rob her, adults who threaten to kill her, and her guardian Yoren, who beats her. It’s...it’s just so much fun to make new friends.
This episode is brought to you by our Small Council:
- Hand of the King WolfmanZack
- Grand Maester Timbob
- Lord Commander of the Kingsguard Mark N.
- Lord Travis, Master of Ships and Warden of the Waves
- Ser Keith J, Master of Whisperers
- Lord Philip the Merciful, Master of Laws
- Jancy O, Lady Commander of the Night’s Watch
- Lord Gene, Master of Coin
- Archmaester June, Healer of the Lesser Poxes
- Ragged Michael, Warden of the North
- Nelson the Hammer, Prince of Dragonstone
- Scarlett the Other Red Woman and Mistress of Whisperers
- Lord Baby the Onion Baby
- Lord Blackheart the Defiant, Master of Zorse
- Lord Micah: Warden of the West and the Kraken’s Bane
- Lord James: the Jim that was Promised
- The High Bearded Priest
- The Blue-Ringed Octoling
- Lord Jake, Assistant (to the) Hand of the King
- Lady Xena Valyrian
- Hedrigal, Captain of the Air Ship Arrogance
- His Grace’s High Inquisitor Frank
- Lord James Stormborn, Warden of the World Wide Weirwood
- And our newest council member, Jasper B!
Thank you councillors very much!
Spoiler warning: All published books - 5 novels, 3 Dunk and Egg novellas, histories, interviews, TWOW sample chapters, as well as Game of Thrones the TV show. Anything and everything!
Question
Scarlett, the Other Red Woman and small council Mistress of Whisperers asks:
First off, I absolutely love the podcast and I can’t wait to get to A Clash of Kings, if only because it gets me closer to A Dance with Dragons :)
“The Lannisters are proud,” Jon observed. “You’d think the royal sigil would be sufficient, but no. He makes his mother’s House equal in honor to the king’s.” (ARYA I, AGOT)
I was going through the early chapters again, specifically Arya I, and thought it was interesting that Jon was the first to notice that Joffrey divided his arms which makes me wonder if this is subtle foreshadowing of Jon doing the same once his parentage is revealed. You both have commented that Jon’s initial reaction would be anger and while I don’t imagine that he will come to terms with this fact quickly, I do think that he will come to accept it. Knowing how much Jon wants to be a Stark, I could see him making “his mother’s House equal in honor” to the Targaryens. What do you guys think?
Synopsis
Here I am, on the road again.
Here I am, upon the stage
Here I go, playing Arya Stark again
Here I go, turn the page (to ACOK, Arya I-III)
When Arya was back at Winterfell, they called her “Arya Horseface”, and she hated it. Nothing worse. But now, that goddamn Lommy Greenhands calls her “Lumpyhead.” Now, Arya’s head did feel lumpy, and all. Back in King’s Landing, Yoren put a knife to Arya’s scalp, telling her that he was taking men and boys to the Wall.
Now you hold still, boy.
There was only stubble and uneven tufts of hair left when Yoren was done with her. Arya would need to become Arry, and why is that? Because Yoren was taking her back to Winterfell.
“Gate shouldn’t be hard, but the road’s another matter. You got a long way to go in bad company. I got thirty this time, men and boys all bound for the Wall, and don’t be thinking that they’re like that bastard brother o’ yours.”
Yoren had the pick of the dungeons from Lord Stark, and the guys he was bringing north were of poor moral quality, half willing to turn Arya over to Cersei, the other half willing to turn Arya over to Cersei after raping her. So, Arya need to go piss in the woods, away from everyone else. And she should watch her liquid intake.
Strangely, getting out of King’s Landing had been pretty easy. The Lannister guards waved them through after Yoren called one out by name. No one even looked at “Arry.” They were looking for Arya of Winterfell.
Arya never looked back. She wished the Rush would rise and wash the whole city away. Flea Bottom and the Red Keep and the Great Sept and everything, and everyone too, especially Prince Joffrey and his mother.
But she knew that Sansa was in the city. So, she stopped wishing for that and started wishing for Winterfell instead.
Remember that thing about how Yoren said the pissing would be the hardest part for Arya? Unfortunately, not the case. Lommy Greenhands and Hot Pie were the most difficult parts about her journey … so far. They were coming with Yoren for the promise of food and shoes at the Wall. But then there were others too. Three dudes who were going to the Wall who had been chained to the cage and were being wheeled north. One had no nose, the other had sharp, filed teeth and weeping sores. And the other … ah, well, we must leave some things for a future reveal.
Five wagons left King’s Landing with supplies for the Wall, towed by plow horses. Yoren had two horses and six donkeys for carrying the boys north. None of the men in the party gave a shit about Arya, but the boys were a different story.
“Look at that sword Lumpyhead’s got there. Where’s a gutter rat like Lumpy-head get him a sword?”
Arya chews her lip sullenly and stays quiet, not wanting to go to Yoren for help. Hot Pie puts in that maybe Arry is a lordling’s squire. Lommy doesn’t think it’s even a real sword.
“It’s castle-forged steel, you stupid, and you better shut your mouth,” Arya snaps.
Well, now the boys want to know where Arya got the sword. Did she steal it? Arya shouts angrily that she didn’t steal it. Hot Pie gets close and tells Arya he wants the sword. She doesn’t even know how to use it.
Yes I do, Arya could have said. I killed a boy, a fat boy like you, I stabbed him in the belly, and he died, and I’ll kill you too if you don’t let me alone.
But she won’t dare do that now. Arya figures there’s other killers in the group, and she doesn’t want to draw attention to herself. Lommy brays that Arya looks like she’s going to cry, but no. Arya had cried in her sleep the night before when she dreamed about Ned. But she’s not going to cry anymore.
“He’s going to wet his pants.” Hot Pie says.
“Leave him be.”
Another voice. A tall boy with black hair, strong arms, a broad chest and a polished horned helm rides forward. But Lommy ain’t afraid. He hype-man’s Hot Pie, saying that Hot Pie kicked a boy to death. And Hot Pie says, yeah, he tooooooootally did that, kicking him in the balls till he died. So, give the sword up. Arya offers Hot Pie her practice sword, but Hot Pie ain’t about that. He tries to reach for the real sword, and Arya smacks the donkey Hot Pie is riding with his stick, sending the animal bucking. Hot Pie is knocked to the ground, and Arya comes vaulting off her and whacks Hot Pie in the face, breaking his nose. She turns to Lommy and asks if he wants some too. He doesn’t. He raises his hands and squeals at her to get away.
But then the Bull shouts “Behind you”, and Arya turns to see Hot Pie grabbing a rock to throw at her. She ducks from the rock, then flies at him, hitting his hand, cheek and knee. Hot Pie falls down, his face covered in blood and dirt. He stumbles after Arya, and then she lunges at him, pushing her wooden sword between his legs.
Yoren mercifully shows up then and pulls Arya off, telling everyone to shut the fuck up and behave or Uncle Yoren will tie them to the back of the wagon with the real criminals. Yoren then proceeds to drag Arya away from the rest of the party into the woods. Dragging Arya away seems to be something of a character trait for Yoren, doesn’t it?
“If I had a thimble o’ sense, I would’ve left you in King’s Landing. You hear me, boy?”
He then tells Arya to go take her pants off and go wrap her arms around the trunk of the tree.
“You scream now. You scream loud.”
Arya stubbornly says that she’s not gonna, but then Yoren takes a stick to her, and she screams as he hits her three times. Yoren warns her that the next time she goes after her brothers with a stick, she’ll get twice what they gave her. But Arya thinks that these people aren’t her brothers.
Yoren asks if she’s hurt, and Arya thinks Calm as still water before saying that it hurt some. Yoren has it that the boy is hurting worse. But really, Arya, it’s not Hot Pie or Lommy that killed Ned. And beating the dogpiss out of them isn’t going to bring Ned back.
But as for Ned dying when and where he did, y’know, that shit wasn’t supposed to go down that way. Yoren was in the plaza, because a very random, who-could-know individual came to drop off a boy with him and a purse of coin, stating that Ned was going to take the black. So, that’s why he was there.
“Only something went queer.”
“Joffrey,” Arya breathed. “Someone should kill him.”
Yoren says that someone will probably kill Joffrey, but not the two of them. All the same, chew some sourleaf, and it’ll help with the pain that I just inflicted on you. The sourleaf did help, but it tasted like shit. But she still had to walk as her backside was too sore to ride a horse. Hot Pie, though, had to ride in a cart, whimpering whenever the wheels of the wagon hit a rock on the road. Lommy stayed away.
That night, she lays awake watching the Red Comet. And though “the Bull” had called it the Red Sword, Arya thinks that it looks like Ice: her father’s greatsword. And the red was the blood of Ned Stark: the blood that Ilyn Payne split.
When Arya finally fell asleep, she dreams about Winterfell and how she wants to see her mom, Robb, Bran and Rickon again. But most of all she wants to see Jon Snow. Maybe she could go to the Wall first before Winterfell and have Jon call her “little sister” and tell her that he missed her. She would have liked that more than anything.
In the days that follow, Arya travels from break of dawn to dusk through the woods, orchards, field, towns, villages, market towns. They make camp at night with the red comet still overhead. But as the party journeys north, they begin to find the kingsroad crowded with more and more smallfolk coming south. On foot or atop horses and carts, the smallfolk move south towards King’s Landing, away from the war.
But a lot of these people were armed with knives, dirks, scythes and axes. They had clubs, and they grabbed the hilts of their weapons as the Night’s Watch passed by, but they never struck. But one day, a “mad” woman began screaming at them from the side of the road:
“Fool! They’ll kill you, fools!”
The next day, a merchant offered to purchase Yoren’s wagons for a quarter of their value, but Yoren refused him. The merchant said that “they” will take what they want from you.
The same day, Arya sees her first grave, dug for a child (that makes me feel something). And though the boys wanted to take the crystal put on top of the mound, Bull said fuck, no. The problem was most of the successive days, they saw more graves along the side of the road. Hardly a day passed without the graves.
One night Arya woke up terrified for no good reason y’know besides all the graves and the prophetic sign of destiny flying in the sky above her. The world was quiet that night, and Arya feels as if the world were holding its breath. Mm-hm, George. I see that you watched Return of the King.
The next morning, Praed, one of the men going north was found dead. She thinks about how the absence of Praed’s cough was why the night prior seemed to silent. They dug his grave and dispersed his goods among themselves. One of the boys tossed a handful of acorns on top of Praed’s body so that a mighty oak would grow in its place.
That night, the party arrives at a village, and Yoren decides they have enough money to stop by an inn to wash and have a hot meal. But Arya isn’t going to dare having people discover she’s a girl, even if she smells as bad as Yoren does. Arya heads to the common room for a meal.
Inside, the men and boys going north get a round on the house from the innkeeper as they feast on pork pies and baked apples. You see, the innkeeper had a brother who had been forced into the Night’s Watch after he stole pepper from a certain Ser Malcolm.
Arya sips beer and eats spoonfuls of the pie, remembering how she sometimes got to have beer with her father and how Sansa made faces at the taste.
It made her sad to think of Sansa and her father.
The inn itself has lots of people who are coming south. When Yoren states that they’re going north, everyone tells him that he’ll be coming south soon enough. Half of the fields to the north are burned out, and most of the smallfolk left are holed up behind walls. When Yoren makes the case that Tully or Lannister means nothing to him, and that the Night’s Watch is neutral in any wars in the realm, the innkeeper tells Yoren that it’s more than just the riverlords or Lannisters. There’s wild men come down from the Mountains of the Moon, and they don’t care about “the Night’s Watch takes no part.” Besides, the Starks in #InIt2WinIt. Ned’s son has come down to fight too.
Arya perks up at that. A blonde patron says that Robb rides to battle on top of a wolf, but Yoren dismisses this. And the wolves? Yeah, there’s a lot of them around the God’s Eye these days. The packs are about killing livestock. And there’s one giant wolf, a she-bitch from the seventh hell.
Arya wonders if that could be Nymeria. She thinks about how she and Jory had chased Nymeria off with rocks and shouts, and Arya feels bad that some of the rocks hit the wolf:
She probably wouldn’t even know me now, Arya thought. Or if she did, she’d hate me.
When one man says that the she-wolf stole a baby from its mother’s arms, Arya erupts and says that’s not true. Wolves don’t eat babies. Yoren orders her to go outside and see that the horses have been watered. Arya emerges outside in a fury, angry that people are stating such utter … um, falsehoods? Hm.
“Boy,” a friendly voice called out. “Lovely boy.”
The voice belongs to one of the men inside the cage. Arya approaches. The prisoner shows her his empty cup and asks if he could have some more beer. And what does this particular prisoner look like?
He was the youngest of the three, slender, fine-featured, always smiling. His hair was red on one side and white on the other, all matted and filthy from cage and travel.
A man asks for a bath and says that Arya could make a friend, to which Arya replies that she has friends. But then one of the other men in the cage, the one without a nose who’s covered in black hair, says that she has no friends. The bald one with the filed teeth hisses at Arya, and she flinches back, yelling at him to stop.
The handsome younger man apologizes and says that he didn’t choose his companions in the black cells. He asks whether she’s called Arry, and introduces himself:
“This man has the honor to be Jaqen H’ghar, once of the Free City of Lorath. Would that he were home. This man’s ill-bred companions in captivity are named rorge and Biter.”
When Jaqen asks if Arry is charmed by Biter not having the ability to speak or write, she says, uh, no. Jaqen says “A man must weep.” Rorge flings himself at the metal bars, yelling at Arya to get him some beer, but Arya tells him to shut up. She draws her wooden sword, resulting in Rorge threatening to sodomize her with the wooden sword. Arya steps towards the cage. Fear cuts deeper than swords. Biter jumps to his feet, rushing at Arya, but the chains hold him a foot and a half from her face. She hits him hard with her wooden sword.
Biter reels back, and then he gets up throwing all his weight against the chains. He reaches and reaches and reaches for her, but the chains hold tight. Finally, he subsides.
“A boy has more courage than sense,” the one who had named himself Jaqen H’ghar observed.
Arya edges back from the wagons, and another hand grabs her shoulder. She whirls around and finds herself face to face to with the Bull. He asks what she’s doing, tells her that no one should go near the men in the cages. Arya says she ain’t scurred, but the Bull is scared of them. He directs her away from the cage, and she lets him lead her.
Away from the cage, Arya asks the Bull if he wants to fight, and he stares at her. Finally, he says that he’d hurt her. He’s strong. But Arya says, nu-uh. She’s quick. The Bull draws Praed’s longsword which is not a metaphor for sex at all in ASOIAF.
They start to square off, but then Arya notices that the Bull is looking past her.
“What’s wrong?”
“Gold cloaks.” His face closed up tight.
Arya is in disbelief, but when she turns she sees that six gold cloaks are galloping up on them in black ringmail and golden cloaks. She uses the things that Syrio taught her and notices that the men have ridden hard. She grabs the Bull and drags him behind a hedge to his surprise.
As soon as the gold cloaks rein up, they yell at some of Yoren’s boys waiting to take a bath whether they’re going to take the black. Maybe, they answer. But they’d rather join the gold cloaks than the Night’s Watch. It’s cold up on the Wall. The leader of the gold cloaks dismounts his horse and proffers a warrant, stating that they need to take someone back. But then Yoren steps out of the inn.
“Who is it that wants this boy?”
From behind the hedges, the Bull asks Arya why they’re hiding, and Arya says that they’re after her. Meanwhile, the officer says that the queen wants the boy, and it’s none of Yoren’s concerns. The Bull asks why they’d want Arry, but she tells him to shut it. Yoren takes hold of the warrant and then dismisses it.
“Pretty,” he spit. “Thing is, the boy’s in the Night’s Watch now. What he done back in the city don’t mean piss all.”
The gold cloaks don’t give a damn about Yoren’s refusal. They want the boy. Arya thinks about running, but she knows she won’t get far. She was tired of running anyways. She ran when Meryn Trant killed Syrio. She ran when Ilyn Payne killed her father. She really should go out there with Needle in hand and kill all of them and never run away again.
Yoren stands there all stubborn saying that they’re not taking anyone, and that there’s laws about this sort of thing. The gold cloak then draw his sword.
“Here’s your law.”
Yoren looked at the blade. “That’s no law, just a sword. Happens I got one too.”
The gold cloak arrogantly states that he has five men with him, but Yoren says he’s got thirty. Bad odds, hombre. Still stupid, still arrogant, the gold cloak flashes his sword asking who wants some. And then each of the boys draws weapons and approaches, shouting that they’re first. Even Dobber, naked form his bath steps up with his dagger. Hell, even Hot Pie grabs a rock to throw.
Arya could not believe what she was seeing. She hated Hot Pie! Why would he risk himself for her?
The gold cloak laughs, probably extremely nervously, then tells them to put their weapons away. None of them know how which end of the sword to hold.
“I do!” Arya wouldn’t let them die for her like Syrio. She wouldn’t! Shoving through the hedge with Needle in hand, she slid into a water dancer’s stance.
The gold cloak officer calls Arya a girl and says to put the blade away, but Arya yells that she’s not a girl.
“I’m not a girl!” she yelled, furious. What was wrong with them. They rode all this way for her, and here she was and they were just smiling at her. “I’m the one you want.”
The gold cloak officer points his shortsword towards the Bull. “He’s the one we want.” But that was a mistake. Yoren unsheathes his sword and holds it to the gold cloak’s throat.
“Neither’s the one you get, less you want me to see if your apple’s ripe yet. I got me ten, fifteen more brother in that inn, if you still need convincing. I was you, I’d let loose of that gutcutter, spread my cheeks over that fat little horse and gallop on back to the city. Now.”
The gold cloak drops his sword, and Yoren says they’re keeping it for the Wall. All the gold cloaks mount up, stating that they’ll be gone for now, but they’ll be back. And they’ll take Yoren and the bastard boy’s head.
“Better men than you have tried.”
Yoren slaps the rump of the officer’s horse, and the gold cloaks head on back south down the kingsroad.
When they’re gone, Yoren angrily tells everyone they’ll be back, and they need to mount up and MOVE. He offers the gold cloak sword, and Hot Pie wants it. He gets it, but Yoren warns him not to use the sword on Arry. Yoren turns to the Bull and tells him that the Queen wants him bad.
Arry was lost. “Why should she want him?”
The Bull scowled at her. “Why should she want you? You’re nothing but a little gutter rat!”
“Well, you’re nothing but a bastard boy!” Or maybe he was only pretending to be a bastard boy. “What’s your true name?”
“Gendry,” he said, like he wasn’t quite sure.
Yoren distracts everyone and says that he’s not sure why the Queen wants either of them. Regardless, they’re going to ride like the dragon’s on their tail. He gives Arya and Gendry the two coursers. Arya says that they gold cloaks promised to take Yoren’s head too which provokes a grunt and Yoren to say:
“Well as to that, if he can get it off my shoulders, he’s welcome to it.”
As they move farther north, Arya takes note that the kingsroad was little more than two ruts through the weeds. There were less people though; so, the narrowing of the road, not at all foreshadowing things to come, didn’t matter all that much.
But it did matter that the road went back and forth like a snake, sometimes even disappearing entirely before reappearing across rolling hills, terraced fields, meadows, woodlands and valleys. It’s nice terrain even with a crooked path. But Arya kept looking over her shoulder, watching for the gold cloaks.
That sense that she was being followed, led to her waking up at all times in the night at every noise. And now Yoren put sentries out to watch for things that might creep up on them at night. But Arya didn’t trust them. They were city boys in the country, and they were lost out here. Besides, Arya could sneak past them, using the starlight to guide her path at night. Hell, one night, she even climbed up an oak tree when Lommy was on watch and got right over his head, and he saw nothing.
Arya reflects on Gendry and how everyone thought he was special now because Cersei wanted him dead, but Gendry isn’t having any of that.
“I never did nothing to no queen. I did my work is all. Bellows and tongs and fetch and carry. I was s’posed to be an armorer and one day Master Mott says I got to join the Night’s Watch, that’s all I know.
Then he’d go jerk off, er, polish his helm while Arya, um, watched.
Lommy thinks that Gendry is a bastard, probably Ned Stark’s bastard, but Arya corrects him angrily. Ned only had Jon as a bastard. More than ever, Arya wants to dash off on top of a horse, but she realizes that no one would be able to protect her. There’s be no one to watch her back.
It was safer to stay with Yoren and the others.
One morning, Yoren announces that they’re close to the God’s Eye, and that they won’t be safe until they cross the Trident. He plans to take them up the western shore as he imagines that the gold cloaks will probably think they’ll head up the kingsroad.
Heading west, the terrain changes. The farmlands became forests with smaller villages and holdfasts farther apart. And food was harder to find. Sure, Yoren had packed lots of food for the trip, but they had eaten it all by now. So, he sent two men (Koss and Kurz) to hunt while the boys picked berries. Arya once found a rabbit, killed it and brought it back. She got to eat a leg of rabbit that night which only prompted Rorge to laugh and call her “Lumpyface Lumphead Rabbitkiller.” Lovely.
Once, the party had been surrounded by fieldhands who demanded payment for ears of corn they picked, and Yoren angrily paid them.
“Time was, a man in black was feasted from Dorne to Winterfell, and even high lords called it an honor to shelter him under their roofs. Now cravens like you want hard coin for a bite of wormy apple.”
But the men had only called them “stinking old black birds” and told them to get lost. And though they roasted the corn in their husks, and that the corn tasted great, Yoren was angry -- too angry to eat.
The following day, word came from their forward scouts of a camp ahead of twenty to thirty dudes. The banner was a spotted treecat. Yoren doesn’t know which side they’re a part of, but he decides to take the party the long way around them, costing them two days. More and more, Arya notices more guards and armed men in the fields, protecting their crops. Others patrolled on horses. Another time, Arya sees a man perched up in a tree with a bow. Yoren cursed at him when he drew his bow and watched them go past.
And then things get even worse:
A day later Dobber spied a red glow against the evening sky. “Either this road went and turned again, or that sun’s setting in the north.”
Yoren climbs a tree to check it out and says that it’s fire, but they’ll be okay so long as the wind is carrying it away from them. They watch the fire all the same, and Arya begins to smell smoke. That night, the fire grows brighter and brighter, and even though the fire is gone the next day, no one sleeps well.
Yoren and his boys arrive at a village the next day where the fire had been and find a desolation of burned fields and blackened houses. Dead livestock are all around, and human bodies are impaled on sharpened stakes with hands drawn up tight in front of their faces as if to fight off the flames that had consumed them.
Yoren orders a halt and heads in scout out while leaving Arya and Gendry to guard the wagons. When they emerge, they bring a little girl and a woman. The girl was maybe two years old at most, and the woman had lost most of her arm, always whispering Please, please. Yoren put the woman in the wagon, and the atmosphere is tense and scary.
Arya and Hot Pie confess how scared they are to each other, and Hot Pie even admits that he never kicked any boy to death. He just sold pies. Arya rides far ahead of the wagon to avoid hearing the woman’s please, please or the little girl’s cries. She remembers a story about a man imprisoned by giants who fled the castle only to be taken by the Others.
The woman dies that night, but even after they bury her, Arya still thinks she can hear please, please on the wind. Yoren orders no fire to be built that night, which yeah. But that means their meals are going to be dry beans, wild radishes and a funny-tasting water which Lommy insists tastes funny because of the bodies upstream. Arya drinks too much of the water anyways to fill her stomach.
In the middle of the night, Arya wakes up need to piss bad, real bad. She grabs Needle and moves out into the dark. She passes by Hot Pie on sentry duty who warns her that there are wolves about. She pretends to head back to go to sleep, but instead, she just waits for Hot Pie to move on. Then she heads out another way.
Out in the trees, she lowers her breeches and begins pissing when she hears a noise. She thinks it’s Hot Pie at first, but then she sees eyes shining in the wood “bright with reflected moonlight.” She grabs for Needle, but then more eyes appear. A dozen pairs of eyes. A whole pack. One wolf emerges from the treeline, and Arya thinks it’s curtains for her. But then the wolf turns and runs back into the woods, and the rest of the eyes disappear.
Arya cleans herself up and then moves back to the camp to find Yoren. There, she tells him about the wolves and recounts the story of Nymeria and what would have happened if she brought the direwolf back to Castle Darry. But if she did bring the direwolf back, maybe then her dad wouldn’t have been killed. But Yoren has it that all the boys on this road are orphans. But then he reflects on which wolves they really should fear:
“The only wolves we got to fear are the ones wear manskin, like those who done for that village.”
Arya wishes she was home. She really was trying to be brave, but she was scared. Yoren, still in deep reflection mode, talks about how he’s only lost three men going up to the Wall in the past thirty years. And now? Now it feels more dangerous.
Yoren sends Arya to bed, and she hears the wolves howling. But that’s not all she hears.
She could hear the wolves howling … and another sound, fainter, no more than a whisper on the wind, that might have been screams.
And that is ACOK, Arya I-III.
George is taking his time to do a ton of setup and groundwork for Arya’s ACOK arc. By the time we’re at Arya’s third ACOK chapter, Dany, Theon and Davos have yet to have a single chapter. So, what does that mean for Arya’s arc going forward and what is George communicating especially given what he did with Arya in AGOT?
Depth
Arya had the fewest chapters of any POV in book one, and while her characterization certainly came through strongly, her role in the big picture didn’t as much. After the sudden traumatic break with which her story in AGOT ends, her arc is wide open. Where do you go from there?
The clue is in her nickname. Not “Horseface,” the other one--Underfoot. So much of A Clash of Kings focuses on the civil war through the lens of the royal courts: Dragonstone, Winterfell, Riverrun, King’s Landing itself. We watch all the various intrigues therein unfold: intricate threats, feints and counter-feints, larger-than-life figures moving pieces around on the board.
Arya’s chapters are where we see how it feels to be one of the pieces. Her story in both ACOK and ASOS is about the fallout from the clashing kings, as it reverberates down to devastate the poor and the powerless. While Tyrion seizes control of King’s Landing, Arya trudges north through the city’s shadow. While Catelyn rides from the Riverlands to the Reach and the Stormlands and back under heavy escort, her safety never really in question, Arya is set upon by soldiers flying the crown’s banner who kill her smallfolk companions for no reason other than that they can. While Stannis and Renly argue about whose crown is bigger, Arya watches the people of the realm they both claim to rule raped and tortured and murdered on the orders of Gregor Clegane, an anointed knight. At every turn, her chapters work to strip down the pretensions of those set among the lords and ladies, and there’s a real anger in that contrast. This is where George most directly makes the case that the game is rigged.
And from what I gather, he started to make this case before he closed AGOT. If you all will recall from some of our prior episodes, ACOK was never intended to be a book until GRRM overwrote AGOT by some 300-400 manuscript pages. One of the reasons why we chose to combine these 3 chapters is that they feel like leftover material from AGOT that GRRM cut to ACOK. Here’s a very meta, in the weeds sort-of theory. I think these three chapters were once one chapter back in AGOT, but then when GRRM decided on making a “four book trilogy”, he ended up letting the narrative expand (or creep depending on your POV -- we’ll talk about that).
That being said, I think the expansion of Arya’s single chapter into three chapters is a net positive for the story. Not to reference the now long-dead pitch letter too much now that we’re in ACOK, but the story George originally wanted to tell reads a bit standard. Kings fight, people die, Dany invades, war against the Others. All well and good, but the expansion of the story as seen in these 3 Arya chapters captures something that often gets left out of fantasy storytelling: what war is like for the non-combatants. Like the camera staying with Bran as Robb departs Winterfell back in AGOT, Bran VI, the camera staying with Arya as she enters a war zone, the growing sense of danger and doom just to the north shows readers the real impact of a war that the noble classes claim is about crowns, lands, gold or justice and how it crushes the innocent underfoot. Hey wait, Arya Underfoot ...
- Road trip into hell
- Arya was facing danger and deprivation inside the city walls, but as she thinks to herself, it might’ve been safe in Flea Bottom compared to the Riverlands at war:
- She remembered a story Old Nan had told once, about a man imprisoned in a dark castle by evil giants. He was very brave and smart and he tricked the giants and escaped...but no sooner was he outside the castle than the Others took him, and drank his hot red blood. Now she knew how he must have felt.
- The threat comes in part from forces “foraging” for supplies (“one bunch rides off at dawn and another one shows up by dusk”)
- This, however, is the #1 threat to the civilian population that Arya has now joined:
- "Unleash Ser Gregor and send him before us with his reavers. Send forth Vargo Hoat and his freeriders as well, and Ser Amory Lorch. Each is to have three hundred horse. Tell them I want to see the riverlands afire from the Gods Eye to the Red Fork."
- A casual aside from the mighty Lord Tywin trickles down with devastating impact
- As the Blackfish says, Tywin is using terror with the hopes of drawing Robb out
- If interred properly in the Hague, Tywin would no doubt argue that this is the best way to secure Lannister power and Lannister power is his vessel for doing good
- Arya’s chapters, however, are clearly George’s evidence for the prosecution
- The smallfolk lack Tywin’s investment in House Lannister...as well as Arya’s investment in Houses Stark and Tully, something we’ll be talking about as we go
- That’s why she can’t deal with the idea that wolves are eating babies, and that’s why it’s such a fraught showdown when the wolves approach her in the woods
- The nobles’ ends are removed, even abstract, for the majority of the population. All they see are the means, which are so nightmarish as to defy justification:
- Riding out in front of the wagons on her horse, Arya saw burnt bodies impaled on sharpened stakes atop the walls, their hands drawn up tight in front of their faces as if to fight off the flames that had consumed them.
- Tywin in particular just doesn’t consider the peasants’ perspective to be important, which is why he doesn’t anticipate his methods radicalizing them
- Long before Arya meets the Brotherhood, George is showing us why they exist
- I love how George paces Arya’s entry into the war zone that will change her life
- He doesn’t plunge us into the nightmare immediately (a la Sam’s chapters) nor does he pretend everything is sunshine at first (a la Sansa’s chapters)
- Instead, he builds up this trepidation and growing fear in Arya’s first few chapters in ACOK, the sense of things getting steadily worse with every mile
- It’s like the moment in “The Long Night” in which the Dothraki’s flaming swords give us just a glimpse, just the edge, of something impossibly huge and horrible
- We see victims, perpetrators, people trying to escape the red wave, others trying to profit: the full spectrum of humanity’s reaction to a crisis
- There is a group of people who are missing among or around the refugees: the nobles. Vast groups of people are fleeing their homes in desperation, and they have no one defending them.
- Instead, they arm themselves:
- Many of the travelers were armed; Arya saw daggers and dirks, scythes and axes, and here and there a sword. Some had made clubs from tree limbs, or carved knobby staffs. They fingered their weapons and gave lingering looks at the wagons as they rolled by, yet in the end they let the column pass.
- This is the foundation for the Brotherhood without Banners and the later sparrows movement
- The ruling class fails at its most basic function: protecting the people.
- There’s only one thing they all have in common, the direction in which they’re running...and our heroes are, of course, going the opposite way
- “There’s no going north. Half the fields are burnt, and what folks are left are walled up inside their holdfasts. One bunch rides off at dawn and another one shows up by dusk.”
- “Fools! They’ll kill you all, fools!”
- First they see graves, then they dig them. The comet stares down, the campfires stare up, more and more of them as the people abandon their homes
- The people who have clung to their land are more suspicious and less generous
- You get the sense of Westeros shaking itself to pieces long before seeing atrocities firsthand. They see fire on the horizon, search the burnt remains of the village, find the survivors, and all we can do is imagine what happened to them:
- “Please. Please. Please.”
- Please what? We’ll never know. Promise me, Ned…
- Arya was facing danger and deprivation inside the city walls, but as she thinks to herself, it might’ve been safe in Flea Bottom compared to the Riverlands at war:
- In defense of travelogue chapters
- As George begins expanding the narrative out from AGOT, we start to get a lot more of these so-called travelogue chapters, and this has led to criticisms of the narrative.
- Starting here in ACOK with Arya but especially in Brienne’s AFFC and Tyrion’s ADWD chapters, fans look askance at how much time George integrates “people walking/riding somewhere” chapters into the narrative.
- For me, though, I think that GRRM imbues a lot of pivotal character beats in these chapters. Moreover, GRRM communicates thematically resonant points about the series as a whole in these travelogue chapters -- points that round out Martin's universe, turning it into satisfying literature.
- Could George have trimmed these Arya chapters down to one or even two chapters? Sure. Is it a better story if he did? Impossible to say with certainty, but I think it’s better that we linger on Arya’s journey before she encounter Amory Lorch and his team of war criminals.
- We get a window into the plight of smallfolk on the road (c.f. Intro point)
- We explore Arya’s mental state after witnessing her father’s murder.
- Tension-building. We want to feel something is amiss.
- You want the reader to care about your characters — if they don’t, then there’s no emotional involvement. - George RR Martin, 2017
- George’s slow-burn gives readers the chance to care about characters before the story hits its action beats.
- Arya’s new friends
- Arya was alone in Flea Bottom, but no longer! George kicks off Arya’s ACOK storyline with Hot Pie and Lommy as her immediate source of misery
- Of course, it’s not just that they’re taunting her; it’s that they’re boasting about violence they obviously didn’t commit, right after she killed the stableboy and semi-bore witness to the deaths of Syrio and her father
- Similarly, Needle is her berserk button because it’s connected to home, family, and above all Jon Snow: the person she wants to see more than anything
- The irony is she’s seen the sort of things Lommy and Hot Pie can only boast about, and they haven’t empowered her--they’ve traumatized her
- It reminds me of what Sansa thinks about Margaery’s cousins in ASOS:
- They are children … They are silly little girls, even Elinor. They've never seen a battle, they've never seen a man die, they know nothing. Their dreams were full of songs and stories, the way hers had been before Joffrey cut her father's head off. Sansa pitied them. Sansa envied them.
- So if the first book was about falling from grace, here we have a POV looking back through the looking glass and seeing what it was once like to be innocent
- To be sure, Hot Pie turns out to have a heart of gold, but Lommy’s a little shit until he dies; I think George generally avoids the mistake of pretending the smallfolk’s suffering transforms them into saints, which would just be a nicer dehumanization
- Some of the masses are generally decent people, some aren’t, but the point is that even the latter shouldn’t be getting war crime’d all across the Riverlands
- Then there’s Gendry, immediately Arya’s buddy, sticking up for her as all large best friends in genre fiction are supposed to do
- Of course they get along, they’re Ned Stark’s daughter and Bobby B’s son!
- “If Lyanna had lived, we should have been brothers, bound by blood as well as affection. Well, it is not too late. I have a son. You have a daughter.”
- But Gendry has an arc in his own right, going from the king’s bastard to the king’s man (as part of the Brotherhood) without ever knowing the truth about himself
- That’s wrapped up in his growing class consciousness, here manifested as anger that his life was snatched away (hence his obsession with the helm) and an aggressive disinterest in why the gold cloaks might be after him
- Along with playing a peasant, Arya also has to play a boy, which plays right into her feelings of unworthiness as a young noblewoman; later on, she’ll wonder if Catelyn and Robb will even want her back given her failure to look the part
- It speaks to the larger fall from innocence that Arya can no longer be who she is in any sense, but like Sansa, must constantly be playing a role
- It also, of course, speaks to the dangers of life on the road--that Arya faces danger from her companions not only because of her name, but her gender
- Then there are Rorge, Biter, and Jaqen H’ghar, immediately set up as separate from the rest: violent, untrustworthy, intimidating even the fearless Yoren
- Rorge and Biter are exceptions to George’s musings about gray characters and how bad ugly=evil is; Rorge is a noseless rapist and Biter a monstrous cannibal
- Arya’s storyline in ACOK is generally one of the more grounded ones in the book, but as she notes, Rorge and Biter come off like demons summoned up from hell
- Even more so, Jaqen looks (and talks) like he stepped right out of a fairytale
- I talked while covering the Prologue about ACOK being this rainbow infusion into the series’ color palette, and for the most part, Arya’s storyline is the exception
- And that’s not just to reflect her mood--peasants can’t afford dyes or rich fabrics. They’re not wearing mud brown because they lack Renly’s aesthetic flair!
- So of course everything in her ACOK chapters is the color of wilted wheatstalks. The one pop of color is Jaqen H’ghar with his red-white hair
- He’s the Melisandre figure in this storyline, the Jojen, the Quaithe; he’s the herald of wonder and terror, deliberately out of place in this underfoot environment
- Mel parallels are especially abundant: Jaqen comes over from Essos, performs mysterious magic, both directly kills and tempts Arya to...and of course, that hair
- Much more when Arya saves their lives and Jaqen demands three deaths in return; for now he says “Arry” is “lovely” and has “more courage than sense”
- What makes Jaqen very different from Melisandre or Jojen or Quaithe, however, is that he does not appear to have come to Westeros to seek out Arya Stark
- This just happened! They were swept together by the circumstances of the war, their connection made steadily deeper, and then he leaves her behind
- That’s so fitting because Arya (unlike Bran or Dany or Stannis) isn’t the messiah you seek out because the prophecies say so. She’s the one you trip over.
- That, in turn, fits Arya’s role among the smallfolk. Of course the POV among those crushed underfoot, ignored by those above, would be the one to stumble across her magical mentor figure rather than be part of some grand destiny.
- Yoren of the Night’s Watch
- As with Jon, Arya gets an endless string of mentors trying (and only partially succeeding) to fill the hole Ned left behind: Harwin, Beric, Sandor…
- But Yoren comes first, because he was there when Ned died; he’s the one who cut her hair, the hair that looked like Ned’s, flying off to the sept as if to join him
- Yoren reminds me of Stannis, not only in his sour temperament, but in how George carefully constructs him as an ambiguous character
- On one hand, he’s trying to get Arya home (without even being asked to by Ned as in the show). On the other, he admits they might’ve been safer in the city.
- On one hand, he beats her until she bleeds; on the other, he’s teaching her an important lesson about not taking her grief RE Ned out on the likes of Hot Pie...
- Yoren is also like Qhorin (their names even sound alike!) in that they represent the best of the Night’s Watch, but you also get the sense they’ve both worn those black cloaks a little too long, and have partially lost touch with humanity writ large
- Giving your life for the greater good isn’t the same thing as being nice or likable
- Yoren is also important for his perspective on the Watch and its relationship to the realm. Underneath all the growls and mutters, Yoren is a true believer
- He’s thoroughly devoted to the idea that the Night’s Watch is a noble calling that unites the realm even (especially) in contentious periods such as these
- He walks straight into the mouth of the civil war insisting that his cloak shields not only him but those in his care, because that’s how it’s supposed to work, dammit!
- And again, the ambiguity: there’s something genuinely inspiring about that, but it’s also an act of willful blindness that ends up getting almost everyone killed
- George uses Yoren’s worldview as a way to reflect how Westeros has fallen from the ideal of the Night’s Watch: everyone working together for the common good
- Of course, as we’ve said before and will say again, the Watch as it actually exists does not reflect this ideal, especially within the political context of Westeros:
- “I had a brother took the black, years ago. Serving boy, clever, but one day he got seen filching pepper from m’lord’s table. He liked the taste of it, is all. Just a pinch o’ pepper, but Ser Malcolm was a hard man. You get pepper on the Wall?” When Yoren shook his head, the man sighed. “Shame. Lync loved that pepper.”
- Still, George consistently frames that ideal as something to be reached for, and similarly, Yoren insists that his colors run deeper than the divides of the civil war:
- “Tully or Lannister, makes no matter. The Watch takes no part.”
- The Liddle encountered by Team Bran in ASOS argues that such escalated danger on the road is symptomatic of a failure of leadership:
- “When there was a Stark in Winterfell, a maiden girl could walk the kingsroad in her name-day gown and still go unmolested, and travelers could find fire, bread, and salt at many an inn and holdfast. But the nights are colder now, and doors are closed.”
- Yoren is making the same argument, filtered through his personal bitterness:
- “Time was, a man in black was feasted from Dorne to Winterfell, and even high lords called it an honor to shelter him under their roofs,” he said bitterly. “Now cravens like you want hard coin for a bite of wormy apple.”
- “Him in his tree, let’s see how well he likes it up there when the Others come to take him. He’ll scream for the Watch then, that he will.”
- At some level, Yoren realizes that his peaceful ideal of Westeros no longer exists:
- Arya thought it tasted wonderful, but Yoren was too angry to eat. A cloud seemed to hang over him, ragged and black as his cloak.
- “Been bringing men to the Wall for close on thirty years.” Froth shone on Yoren’s lips, like bubbles of blood. “All that time, I only lost three. Old man died of a fever, city boy got snakebit taking a shit, and one fool tried to kill me in my sleep and got a red smile for his trouble.” He drew the dirk across his throat, to show her. “Three in thirty years.” He spat out the old sourleaf. “A ship now, might have been wiser. No chance o’ finding more men on the way, but still...clever man, he’d go by ship, but me...thirty years I been taking this kingsroad.”
- So is he a tragic figure of a bygone era, or does that bloody frothy “red smile” bubbling on his lips represent his culpability in the bloodletting coming next?
- Ultimately, I’m pro-Yoren, because I think the failure is that Westeros no longer has room for a guy with an admirable vision trying stubbornly to do the right thing
- Showdown with the gold cloaks
- This happens in the middle of this chunk of Arya’s story, but I wanted to close this section with it because it brings all the above threads together perfectly
- You get this fragile oasis of the inn with its bathhouse, functioning properly, standing in for refuge and comfort...everything that the war is taking away
- Indeed, the arrival of the gold cloaks stands in for all the violent arrogant authority figures swaggering around the Riverlands disrupting these refuges
- Not only do they act and talk like they’re better than everyone, not only have they come to kill an innocent child as collateral damage from the nobles’ infighting, but they specifically reject Yoren’s ideal of a realm built on and united by law:
- The gold cloak drew a shortsword. “Here’s your law.”
- That’s the purest expression of the breakdown of order in the Riverlands, and how it’s being driven not primarily by criminals (many of whom are going around saving people!) but by uniformed men acting with official imprimatur
- These bleak circumstances stand in for the whole of Westeros at war, and it’s so great that before things get much worse, George gives us an image of defiance
- First, Yoren spins the officer’s might-makes-right attitude around on him:
- “That’s no law, just a sword. Happens I got one too.”
- Here, we see the balance of power shifting as the underfoot realize that if the law is a sham, they owe neither deference nor respect to law enforcement
- The officer falls back on numbers, but Yoren cries ARE THERE NO TRUE KNIGHTS AMONG YOU?...uh, he points out that he has thirty men to their five
- Of course, just as with Catelyn’s call to arms at another inn in the previous book, that assertion means nothing if the thirty don’t actually back Yoren up
- But they do! One by one, the smallfolk of Westeros pick up the most humble weapons available and stand together, some literally naked, to defend one of their own from the elites who treat them like pawns and playthings
- It doesn’t change their circumstances, it doesn’t end the war nor topple the social structures, but it resonates as an insistence that we will not go quietly into the night, we will not vanish without a fight, we are the last of the giants!!
- And Yoren proves himself to be a badass out of the songs like Syrio after all:
- ...it was a mistake to take his eyes off Yoren, even for an instant. Quick as that, the black brother’s sword was pressed to the apple of the officer’s throat. “Neither’s the one you get, less you want me to see if your apple’s ripe yet. I got me ten, fifteen more brothers in that inn, if you still need convincing. I was you, I’d let loose of that gutcutter, spread my cheeks over that fat little horse, and gallop on back to the city.” He spat, and poked harder with the point of his sword. “Now.”
The officer’s fingers uncurled. His sword fell in the dust.
“We’ll just keep that,” Yoren said. “Good steel’s always needed on the Wall.”
“As you say. For now. Men.” The gold cloaks sheathed and mounted up. “You’d best scamper up to that Wall of yours in a hurry, old man. The next time I catch you, I believe I’ll have your head to go with the bastard boy’s.”
“Better men than you have tried.” Yoren slapped the rump of the officer’s horse with the flat of his sword and sent him reeling off down the kingsroad. His men followed.
- ...it was a mistake to take his eyes off Yoren, even for an instant. Quick as that, the black brother’s sword was pressed to the apple of the officer’s throat. “Neither’s the one you get, less you want me to see if your apple’s ripe yet. I got me ten, fifteen more brothers in that inn, if you still need convincing. I was you, I’d let loose of that gutcutter, spread my cheeks over that fat little horse, and gallop on back to the city.” He spat, and poked harder with the point of his sword. “Now.”
- Finally, Westeros works like the songs say it should...but Yoren isn’t looking for applause from the audience, because he knows what’s coming next:
- “Fool! You think he’s done with us? Next time he won’t prance up and hand me no damn ribbon.”
- As he notes, even Cersei’s corrupt cronies are still observing some of the niceties at the moment. As the war continues, though, that won’t last. Life is not a song.
- Yoren’s right, even though these particular thugs aren’t the ones who kill him. They might as well as have been--they do the same dirty work as Amory Lorch
- The other melancholy note is Arya assuming the gold cloaks are after her, because unlike Gendry, she knows she’s a lord’s child on the run from Cersei
- Her own class consciousness will later strain her bond with Gendry as he develops an ideology which sees the Starks and Tullys as part of the problem
- So even though we see everyone come together here, it’s only for one shining moment, and then they’re back to being humans divided against themselves
Foreshadowing/Groundwork
Sadly, this is not the only time someone tries to take Needle away from Arya. Polliver steals it later in this book and keeps it until the end of ASOS, when Sandor kills him and Arya takes it off his corpse. When she arrives in Braavos, the Faceless Men try to get her to surrender the sword voluntarily. You can see George working his way to the idea that “Needle was Jon Snow’s smile,” that the sword stands in for all her wistful memories of Winterfell and family (sorry, D&D!)
Biter's Untold Backstory!
Rorge owned a pot shop or bar in Flea Bottom, the really bad part of King's Landing. Rorge would stage rat fights, and dog fights, bear cub fights, etc., and make money of these fights. At some point he found young Biter, a big ugly kid with no parents or something like that, and took him in. Rorge starting putting Biter into the fights, fighting mastiffs and bear cubs, etc. And then he said something like "And all of this led to his winning personality! So there you go, that's the backstory for Biter that I haven't written yet, but I might!"
Arya and Gendry squaring off against each other outside of the inn reads as foundation for Gendarya. Swordplay as a metaphor for sex as seen in Jaime and Brienne’s chapters, Brandon Stark’s words to Lady Dustin, etc.
The random person who came to Yoren with a bag of gold and a boy is very likely Varys, as he tells Tyrion in ACOK, Tyrion II:
"Alas, no. There was another bastard, a boy, older. I took steps to see him removed from harm's way . . .
Theory/Discussion
Will Arya and Nymeria meet again?? Ok, yes, obviously. But how will it go?
In 2014, George made an appearance on behalf of the Wild Wolf Sanctuary in which he hinted at a future for Arya and Nymeria:
"Wolves have been part of European folklore, of which America's descended, going back thousands of years. In Rome, Romulus and Remus — there's always been this relationship between wolves and men."
That relationship is seen time and again in Martin's series, and it's one that will Martin says will continue as the last two books are eventually released. Arya's wolf, Nymeria, in particular, will play an important role.
"You know, I don't like to give things away." says Martin, a grin spreading across his face. "But you don't hang a giant wolf pack on the wall unless you intend to use it."
Conclusion
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