They held him in chains in the middle of the yard. Rain was pouring down and everything was wet and cold and full of mud.
Arya stood inside the warmth of the holdfast. Looking out of the window down on him.
He hasn't moved within the last hour, but he was shivering from the cold. Therefore Arya knew that he was still alive.
A itching pain pulsed beneath her ribcage. The same spot her heart once had been.
"Let him go."
"I can't let him go. He killed two of the soldiers. The third will probably during the night because of the damage the smith caused with his hammer." Edric Dayne joined her at the window.
"I don't care. " Arya closed her eyes for one moment. She remembered, how she and Gendry were caged into the yard of Harrenhal while rain was pouring on them as well. She remembered how Gendry has tucked her ice-cold feet behind his back to keep them warm.
"Everybody know what happens in these tents. They call it the outskirt brothel! You can't prevent the men turning on the camp followers, but this ... is just sick. They were children."
"I know." Arya knew that Edric was truly sorry. He was a kind soul. "It make me sick too, but … there is no proof. It's the smith word against the words of the dead men friends and they probably lie to save their own skins, while everybody saw Gendry walking in broad daylight to the food tents and attacking the men brutally, while they were off-duty. I'm sorry, mylady."
She hissed.
"This is … wrong."
Edric Dayne watched her a very long moment, before he touched her arm.
Arya pierced him with her cold stare and then shoved his hand away.
"I'm sorry. It's unjust, but there is nothing I can do for him. Mylady, … he's just a bastard."
Arya looked at him sharply.
Edric Dayne hesitated and then asked low: "What makes a lowborn bastard smith so special to you, Arya?"
Arya couldn't answer straight away.
Nothing. Everything.
Instead she said: "I need him."
(c)aditu90