He was well past the docks and almost at the edge of the small town when the unmistakable sound of steel clashing against steel startled him out of his thoughts. He stopped abruptly and tugged lightly at the reins of the laden pack horses to either side of him, pulling them to a standstill. The eastern sky was lightening to the pale pearly color of a shell, and the docks were slowly beginning to stir with movement in anticipation of the dawn. And somewhere off to his left in one of the ramshackle shipping shanties, someone was having a brawl. With swords. "The middle of a war and winter and people find even more excuses to kill each other," Gendry muttered. Without giving it too much thought, he wound the reins around a post and set off to have a look. No good if Jack or Pate or one of the other brothers had come to town for some fun and gotten himself into a bad spot somehow.
The crusted remnants of dirty snow skirted the bases of the buildings. The quick bright sound of swords clashing led him down a muddy track that turned away from the seaside and ran up a little row of faded grey storage houses. He hurried as the sounds grew louder, now punctuated by rough curses and grunts and thumps. A crash and a thud sounded in immediate succession, and the walls of one of the rickety structures shook. Grimacing, he drew his sword and jerked at the door latch. A man with a dark red gash under his chin and a beard clotted with blood slid limply to the ground at his feet as the door which had been propping him up swung open. Gendry stepped over the dead man and let his sword point lead him into the building.
A lamp lay broken on the hardened dirt floor, its oil darkening the ground in a spattered arc. A single thick candle cast the room in long flickering lines of light and shadow. At a glance, Gendry saw bare, skeletal rafters hung with rope and cloth and herbs, piles of furs, and stacks of wooden crates and barrels lining the walls. A ragged man with deep lines on his face and a few scraps of grey hair on his head stood panting a few yards away, clutching a bloodied arm to his chest and jerking himself around frantically. "Where'd you go, bitch?" the man growled. "Wait 'til I get my hands back on you, I swear by the seven hells I'll –"
"Oh, there she is!" a second voice crowed. A scrawny younger man scrambled up from behind a crate and pointed to a far corner with the pocked sword in his fist.
Gendry couldn't see anyone in the corner, and although his mind stumbled a moment over the word 'she,' the situation before him demanded all of his attention. He was a knight. Whether someone had attacked these men or they had attacked someone else, it was his duty to see justice done. "What in the name of god is going on here?" he called out, punctuating his words with a twitch of his sword.
Both men whipped around to face him, startled. "None of your damned business," the older man grunted with some effort. "A – what'd'ya call it? Private disagreement. You get on out o' here, boy!" He turned back to the younger man. "Willam, you get -"
But Willam was on his knees with his eyes rolled back in his head, a thick, wheezing sound bubbling up from his chest. The sword that had sprouted from his throat jerked back, and he crumpled to the floor. The older man cried out once, in what might have been fear or indignation and then began to sob. The sword and its bearer burst forth from the shadows, all dark cloak and glimmering steel, and before Gendry could really think his actions through, he was moving.
He threw up his sword arm out of sheer instinct, and his sword caught the other blade in midair. With a twist of the wrist the other swordsman deflected his downward cut, threw him off balance, and then barged right past him. Gendry stumbled and spun to see the him rushing towards the older man, who lay mewling and groaning on the floor. "Stop! What are you—" Gendry began, but it was too late. The sword took the older man in the chest and ran him through, pinning him to the ground. He fell silent for the first time, his mouth hanging open and his hands grasping at the blade in his chest helplessly. "We didn't mean..." he whispered hoarsely, before jerking one and then going limp.
The dark figure turned and glanced in his direction for the briefest moment, and Gendry noticed that this was not a "he" at all, but a young woman, tall and wiry. The words the dead man had spoken pounded loud in his head.
The girl jerked her blade from the man's chest and wiped the blood on the dead man's cloak. She turned to face him, blade still in hand, and Gendry noticed that there was blood flowing freely from a wound in her thigh, visible through a ragged slice in her thick wool trousers. A dark grey cloak longer hung from her shoulders, too long and too fine for a whore or a sea urchin or a farmer. Her dark hair was bound in a tight braid behind her head, dark leather girded her torso and dark wool trousers her legs, and her hands were mottled with dark, wet blood. Her face stood out in stark contrast to the rest of her, drawn and so very pale. She was shaking visibly. Why hadn't he noticed before?
He carefully kept his gaze on her in case she decided he posed the same threat as the other unfortunate three. "What - what happened here? Who are these men?" he asked uncertainly. When she didn't respond, he frowned. "You've been wounded. They hurt you?" He cast a wary glance at her bare sword, but she hadn't moved to strike at him, so he slowly and deliberately sheathed his own blade. Holding his hands up in a nonconfrontational gesture, he took a step towards her. "Could you tell me what's happened here, m'lady?"
The sword slid from her hand slowly, and she looked at him with the oddest expression. "Quick as a snake," she said, with a strangled little laugh that sounded almost like a sob. And then: "You stupid, stupid... stupid." Her eyes rolled back and her knees buckled and she collapsed to the floor in a puddle of dark cloth and blood. His stomach gave a familiar jerk, and no, no, no. "Seven bloody buggering hells," he cursed with feeling.
Suddenly afraid that someone else had, like him, heard the fight, Gendry turned and leaned from the doorway to look up and down the muddy lane. Seeing no sign of movement, he hurried back to the woman on the floor. With unsteady hands, he ripped two long strips of cloth from the dead man's cloak, bundled one up, and pressed it hard against the wound in an attempt to staunch the bleeding. The stab went deep and there was far too much blood for his liking. Working as quickly as his cold clumsy fingers would allow, he tied the other strip tight around her upper thigh. Gendry scowled at his work and muttered a curse. He tugged at the strip of cloth again to tighten it, and then scooped the woman up in his arms and stood carefully. He shouldered his way through the doorway and out into the breaking light of day, and cast glances this way and that to see if anyone was coming to investigate. But the pathways were still blessedly empty, and the few men milling around the docks in the distance made no indication that they had heard anything out of the ordinary.
It was not until he had secured the loads on the pack animals, settled the woman carefully in front of the saddle on his palfrey, and had trekked off a good hour from the Saltpans that he let himself think about what he was doing.
"This is the worst idea I've ever had," he said aloud to the trees. But what choice had there been? None at all, that's what.
The weight of her head shifted against his chest and she made a pained sound. Gendry tried not to panic. Jeyne was at the inn, and Jeyne was the best in the whole Brotherhood at tending wounds. Jeyne would set her right. And after that – well. It could be weeks before they had word from the Lady. Anything could happen. But it was no good. This was not a secret he could keep from her. This is how it would be: he would take Arya Stark to the inn to have her wounds tended, and wait for any news on the Lady's whereabouts.
Even as he tugged at the reins and urged the animals faster, Gendry couldn't help thinking that taking a dead-until-two-hours-ago girl to her truly-and-actually-dead-but-not-quite mother still seemed like a bad idea all around. But it wasn't his decision to make.