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bald one with the pointed teeth and the

weeping sores on his cheeks had eyes like nothing
human.
    They took five wagons out of King’s Landing, laden with supplies for the Wall:
hides and bolts of cloth, bars of pig iron, a cage of ravens, books and paper
and ink, a bale of sourleaf, jars of oil, and chests of medicine and spices.
Teams of plow horses pulled the wagons, and Yoren had bought two coursers and a
half-dozen donkeys for the boys. Arya would have preferred a real horse, but
the donkey was better than riding on a wagon.
    The men paid her no mind, but she was not so lucky with the boys. She was two
years younger than the youngest orphan, not to mention smaller and skinnier,
and Lommy and Hot Pie took her silence to mean she was scared, or stupid, or
deaf. “Look at that sword Lumpyhead’s got there,” Lommy said one morning as
they made their plodding way past orchards and wheat fields. He’d been a dyer’s
apprentice before he was caught stealing, and his arms were mottled green to
the elbow. When he laughed he brayed like the donkeys they were riding.
“Where’s a gutter rat like Lumpyhead get him a sword?”
    Arya chewed her lip sullenly. She could see the back of Yoren’s faded black
cloak up ahead of the wagons, but she was determined not to go crying to him
for help.
    “Maybe he’s a little squire,” Hot Pie put in. His mother had been a baker
before she died, and he’d pushed her cart through the streets all day, shouting
“Hot pies! Hot pies!”
“Some lordy lord’s little squire boy, that’s
it.”
    “He ain’t no squire, look at him. I bet that’s not even a

real sword. I bet it’s just some play sword made of tin.”
    Arya hated them making fun of Needle. “It’s castle-forged steel, you stupid,”
she snapped, turning in the saddle to glare at them, “and you better shut your
mouth.”
    The orphan boys hooted. “Where’d you get a blade like that, Lumpyface?” Hot
Pie wanted to know.
    “Lumpy
head,
” corrected Lommy. “He prob’ly
stole it.”
    “I did
not
!” she shouted. Jon Snow had given her Needle. Maybe she
had to let them call her Lumpyhead, but she wasn’t going to let them call Jon a
thief.
    “If he stole it, we could take it off him,” said Hot Pie. “It’s not his
anyhow. I could use me a sword like that.”
    Lommy egged him on. “Go on, take it off him, I dare you.”
    Hot Pie kicked his donkey, riding closer. “Hey, Lumpyface, you gimme that
sword.” His hair was the color of straw, his fat face all sunburnt and
peeling. “You don’t 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.
Only she did not dare. Yoren didn’t know about the
stableboy, but she was afraid of what he might do if he found out. Arya was
pretty sure that some of the other men were killers too, the three in the
manacles for sure, but the queen wasn’t looking for
them,
so it
wasn’t the same.
    “Look at him,” brayed Lommy Greenhands. “I bet he’s going to cry now. You
want to cry, Lumpyhead?”
    She had cried in her sleep the night before, dreaming of her

father. Come morning, she’d woken red-eyed and dry, and could not have shed
another tear if her life had hung on it.
    “He’s going to wet his pants,” Hot Pie suggested.
    “Leave him be,” said the boy with the shaggy black hair who rode behind them.
Lommy had named
him
the Bull, on account of this horned helm he had
that he polished all the time but never wore. Lommy didn’t dare mock the Bull.
He was older, and big for his age, with a broad chest and strong-looking
arms.
    “You better give Hot Pie the sword, Arry,” Lommy said. “Hot Pie wants it
bad. He kicked a boy to death. He’ll do the same to you, I bet.”
    “I knocked him down and I kicked him in the balls, and I kept kicking him
there until he was dead,” Hot Pie boasted.