Part 1: Winterfell – The Reaping (Arya)
It's dark when I wake. My room is silent and cold, but Nymeria's fur keeps me warm. Robb and Jon found the wolf pups in the snow a few years ago. They're already huge. We have to keep them a careful secret from the Targaryen soldiers. They would almost certainly kill them.
I wonder why I'm so restless. I feel afraid, here in the dark, but that's madness. I'm a hunter, darkness is my friend. And then I remember. It's Reaping day.
I'll never sleep now that I've remembered that, so I slip out of bed and dress silently in the dark, dragging my long brown hair into a braid. Nymeria watches and jumps off the bed when I approach the door and grab my bow and knife. She stands as tall as my shoulder, but she moves without a sound. We slip outside together.
The great keep that is my home is silent and cold, like my room. Even through my boots the chill rises from the stone floor. At this hour of the morning, with dawn not yet broken, even the hot springs do no good. Still, I need to be outside, in the fresh air, in the Wolfswood, where I hunt illegally every day. I'm lucky to live in the keep, to be the 'lord's' daughter, to have a proper roof and enough to eat, but the Wolfswood is the only place I feel free.
Outside the walls of the keep, I pass through the shantytown we call the Refuge, a tumble of rundown huts. It's quiet still. Most people who can't sleep will stay in bed. The curfew runs until sunrise, and it's a flogging if you're caught by the guards, but for me it's no great feat to skirt the few soldiers on patrol. They're from King's Landing, where life is soft and warm. I can hear several complaining about the cold.
Passing one of the huts I'm tempted to look in the small hole that passes for a window, but I don't. If he's awake he'll be in the woods and I'll find him. If he's not, I won't drag him out of bed to come.
Once I'm beyond the Refuge it's a quick sprint across open ground to the trees. In the dark that's no real danger. If I was fair-haired, I guess it would be, or if I was auburn like Sansa, but I'm not, I'm dark-haired, a true North-child, a true Stark. All I have to do is stay low to avoid the Red Woman's viewers. I make the trees with Nymeria at my heels. Ghost would never be able to do that, nor Lady, but Nymeria's fur is a bit darker than theirs.
I slow among the trees, calmer already. I won't bother to hunt today. I wouldn't be able to get it to the families without getting caught. I'll hunt again tomorrow, as I have for three years. People used to starve in Winterfell, but they don't anymore, thanks to us.
Dawn is beginning to touch the eastern sky as I walk the forbidden paths of the Wolfswood. There's a clearing and a small, hidden lake surrounded by low stone cliffs only a ten minute walk in. I can see a silhouette sitting by the water and I smile. I should never have doubted that Gendry would be out here this morning too. He looks up as Nymeria trots to his side and licks his arm, and he gives me that quick, honest smile I've come to know so well.
Gendry was that boy who stood out in the crowd of refugees. He was already an orphan and alone then, coming from Fleabottom in King's Landing. He was used to a tough life, and I understood later that what I saw in his eyes wasn't just defiance. He was a survivor, like me. I didn't meet him for another six years though.
I was ten. I remember a funeral the day before, a little boy from the Refuge who'd starved to death. He was only three, a year younger than Rickon, and as I watched them bury him I decided I was sick of my people dying around me. The woods were forbidden to all but the hunters - who had to send all they caught to King's Landing - and most of the District were too frightened to defy the law. But I was angry, young, and perhaps a little foolhardy. The day after the funeral I went out into the woods alone for the first time. I had a small bow, a handful of arrows, a few knives, and no idea what I was doing. Only instinct. I was utterly alone, Nymeria not yet trained enough to bring out with me. I jumped at every little sound, and I don't know how I managed to nail the rabbit I caught that morning.
When a voice spoke behind me I jumped like a scalded cat. "What're you doing out here?"
I was sure I was caught, but the boy behind me was no older than Robb and Jon. I recognised him; those blue eyes never changed, except to grow more defiant. He became Mikken's apprentice not long after that - still is now - but at that time he wasn't. Beyond that he lived in the Refuge, I knew nothing about him. Even then, when he was only fifteen, he was tall and muscled, with shaggy black hair falling into his eyes. There was no warmth in those blue eyes that day.
"I… uh…" I might not have been caught by a guard, but I was still frightened. I saw that he had a bow and a sack, and the makings of traps. "The same as you."
"Why?" he challenged, angry. Like me, he had a lot of anger in those days, more, maybe. "You're highborn, the lord's daughter. You get enough to eat from the Targaryens. Leave this for the rest of us!"
"It's not for my family." I told him. "It's for the others - the ones in the Refuge. The ones who have nothing. The ones too scared to come out here. That little boy yesterday was younger than my youngest brother. They have other children. I am the lord's daughter, and that means I should protect my people. What I catch today goes to that family. What I catch tomorrow goes to others."
His face softened while I spoke. I wasn't sure he'd believe me, but he did. "Sorry. You're Arya, right? My name's Gendry." He paused and then added, "Two can catch and carry more than one."
I almost smiled then, and I'm not sure that I ever had before. "You'll help me? Between us, we… we could save lives! We could be heroes!"
That was the first time I saw him smile, and I knew we'd be friends then. "What an odd pair of heroes." he commented. "A bastard from Fleabottom, and the most unladylike lady I've ever met."
I laughed then, probably for the first time since I was a baby too young to understand the world. "I'm not really a lady."
Our friendship started that day. Since then we've hunted together every day, giving everything we catch to the poor. I don't need it; the lords' families get plenty of food. Gendry doesn't need it either, anymore; here, wages are paid in food, so since he became Mikken's apprentice, he gets enough to eat too. Three years on, I sometimes feel closer to Gendry than I do to my own family.
Now he greets me with a warm smile. He's fashioning makeshift arrows, to keep himself busy while he waited, I guess. A couple of traps lie on the ground near him too, and I wonder how long he's actually been out here, working by moonlight.
I grin at him and steal one of the arrows, fit it to my bow and fire it across the small lake. Even in the dark it hits near the centre of the target we hung out there a year ago. Laughing triumphantly, I bow, and Gendry laughs too, applauding quietly. He holds up a loaf of bread so fresh the smell makes my mouth water.
"Happy Red Games."
We finish the quote in unison, the way Jon and I often do. "And may the odds be everin your favour! For the night is dark, and full of terrors!" The Games are horrific, but you have to laugh or you'll go mad.
I settle down beside him, cross-legged on the ground by the water, as he breaks the bread and hands half to me. He opens a small pouch full of berries as I rip into the bread with my teeth, feeling it warm my mouth.
"I didn't think to bring anything." I apologise after a mouthful. "How'd you get fresh-baked?"
"Baker gave it to me for a rabbit." he replies. Trade and barter are far more common now than gold or silver.
"One rabbit? He's usually so tight."
Gendry shrugs and says, with no humour or warmth in his voice, "Well, I guess we're all feeling a little sentimental today."
I just grunt in agreement and pop a berry in my mouth. It's sharp and sweet, the kind you only find in the North, and when the skin breaks the juice fills my mouth in a burst. We enjoy our meal mostly in silence, only making passing conversation. When we hunt we are constantly silent, and even when we don't we usually have no need to talk. Companionable silence is enough.
When we've finished Gendry lies back against the trunk of a tree, with Nymeria's head in his lap, and I lean against it and him, my head on his shoulder. It's so easy with him, like he was one of my brothers. To be honest, even they don't know me as well as he does. The changing colours of sunrise darken our thoughts.
"How many times is your name in the bowl now?" I ask quietly.
"Let's see…" He does some quick sums in his head, a slightly pained look on his face. He always gets that look when he thinks too hard, especially about numbers. It's kind of cute. "Thirty-six." he states at last. Thirty-six entries. An equal number for each year in the draw, each age, one for eleven, two for twelve, three for thirteen and so on, all piling up year after year. "You?"
"Um… one for eleven, plus two for twelve, plus three for thirteen… six times."
"Out of hundreds, thousands." he reminds me. "It won't be either of us, Arry." He took up the nickname for me a year or so back. Somehow, it always makes me smile.
I feel a chill, though, at the thought that his name is in there six times the amount mine is. Robb and Jon are both in there thirty-six times too, and Sansa's in fifteen times. Fifteen entries for age fifteen. It feels like fate, a bad sign, but it's the same for every fifteen-year-old. It was the same when Robb, Jon and Genrdy were fifteen, but they're still here, thank the gods. Bran will be waking up scared now. He's eleven. It's his first year in the draw. At least his name's only in there once.
Gendry responds to my silence with a gentle elbow in my side. "Don't tell me Arya Stark's afraid!"
"Of course I'm not!" I retort hotly, elbowing him back. "Are you?"
"No!"
We're both terrified, any sane person would be. I don't mind that Gendry knows I'm afraid and I doubt he cares much that I know that he is, not anymore, but the bravado and the teasing make us both feel better.
In the distance we hear thundering hoof beats and the low rumble of a carriage. We sit bolt upright. That sound has become the sound of death and doom in Winterfell. We're not rich enough to own good horses or fancy carriages. That can only mean one thing.
"Here they come, I have to get back!" I scramble upright, brushing leaves from my clothes.
"I'll meet you at the Reaping." Gendry calls softly as Nymeria and I run for the keep.
Gendry can slip back to the Refuge while the guards are distracted greeting the carriage, but I have to be there with my family to greet them. Sound carries in the crisp air here, so they're still miles away when I sneak back to my room. My mother has already laid out a soft green woollen dress for me. She was probably awake before I was, pacing the halls or the kitchen, worrying for her children. This year will be seven kinds of hell for her and Father. All but one of their children will be in the Reaping.
Normally I don't wear dresses. I hate them, and besides, you can't hunt in a dress. But this is Reaping Day. Everyone has to dress up, so I slip into the dress and start to wrestle with the tangles in my hair, staring at myself in the mirror.
Mother told me once that in the days before the Red Games all women and girls wore dresses, or at least most. None were technically allowed to hunt or fight, particularly highborn ladies. Women stayed in the home and sewed and managed the household. Women were used to make marriages with great Houses to boost their own House's status. That wouldn't work now. You can't marry outside your own District, and anyway, there are no great Houses apart from House Targaryen, since the 'lordsl who head the Districts are only barely better off than our people.
I wonder who I would've been in a world like that. I guess I'd still be me, the one who broke the rules, who went her own way. My parents would despair of me. I don't think I could have been the good little girl, forced to leave all the important stuff to the men. Even if I was raised in a world like that, I think I'd still be the lawbreaker, the fighter, the hunter. I wonder if I'd have ever met Gendry.
No-one knows what made Aerys include girls in his Games after years of women being considered the weaker sex. Maybe he thought we'd all be killed, but there was a female victor within a few years, a girl from the Iron Islands. Maybe it was part of Aerys' madness, or maybe in that he was actually sane. Maybe he was just thinking of his ancestors, Rhaenys and Visenya, who rode to war on dragon-back alongside their brother, Aegon.
When I've managed to brush all the tangles from my hair I slip my feet into the boots by my bed and head out of my room again, locking Nymeria inside this time. I join my family at the gates of the keep. My father is wearing his finest as lord of Winterfell, but his face is grim. It's his job to read out the history and the Treaty that he and the other lords were forced to sign. It's his job to tell the two tributes to shake hands. It gets harder for him every year, essentially being the one to send two kids to their deaths.
My mother looks beautiful in a pale grey dress, but her face is hard and drawn. Sansa's in blue, her red hair styled. She's trying to keep her face expressionless but her lip trembles on occasion. Robb and Jon are both wearing dark brown, standing shoulder to shoulder with matching glares. Bran and Rickon are in grey, like Mother, and they both look openly frightened.
The riders enter first, Targaryen soldiers dressed in shimmering armour like dragon scales, all garbed in the red and black of House Targaryen. The carriage comes in among the last of them - the gate had to be widened years ago to let it through. It's a bright, golden, bejewelled thing, decorated with rubies and chunks of dragonglass, an eyesore here in the harsh North. That carriage would buy food for the whole District for weeks, months. The only gold here is what's sent up from Casterly Rock and used to plate the armour that is sent to King's Landing.
The carriage stops, and a soldier opens the door. Cersei Lannister, escort for half the Districts, steps out. She's a very beautiful woman, with long golden hair and green eyes. She came from Casterly Rock once, before a Targaryen soldier noticed her and decided he wanted her. She had managed to evade the Games, and had three children with her twin brother, Jaime, who was lord of Casterly Rock, but that didn't matter. A Targaryen soldier wanted her, and he was high-ranking so Aerys gave the order and he got her. The soldier spotted her after her younger brother, Tyrion Lannister, won the Games. People still talk about him. He's a dwarf, legs stunted, back twisted, head too big. No-one believed he could win. Everyone said he'd be first to die. Instead, he outsmarted them all and returned home a victor. That was about five years ago. I think the world will always remember him.
Father gives the customary greeting, but like every year I'm in too much of a daze to hear the words. There's the traditional offer of meat and mead, but they won't accept it. They'll take the tributes and be on their way. When Father finishes, the soldiers hustle us off to the northern courtyard, built specially for this. Everything has already been laid out: the stage where Cersei and my father and the previous victors will stand, the rope that will cut off the potential tributes from our families, the little circle of red light that is the Red Woman's viewer – that's how the crowd in King's Landing will watch us. A bored Targaryen soldier takes my name and waves me through. We're not divided by age or gender, so I head straight for Gendry. Robb and Jon follow, and Sansa and Bran soon join us. Mother and Rickon stand near the stage, on the safe side of the ropes. I stand between Jon and Gendry, feeling truly tiny here but also almost safe.
Slowly the courtyard fills up, and then the only three surviving Winterfell victors come onto the stage. There have been four, since the Games began, but one died three years ago. Two of the survivors, a tiny woman called Mia Snow who once came from Deepwood Motte and Harwin, a burly man of Winterfell, have let themselves go. You can't get fat on the meagre food here, but their muscles have sagged and they look pale and weak. Harwin looks drunk; he always does. Mia just stares.
The third victor is Jory Cassel, and he's still a magnificent specimen, muscled arms from working alongside Mikken the blacksmith, thick, lustrous black hair. He's no looker, but compared to the other two he's a god.
Father mounts the stage next, followed by Cersei. She's changed from her plain travelling clothes into a violet-coloured silk dress. She looks beautiful but her face isn't happy. She was forced into this job after she became the soldier's wife.
"Welcome, welcome." she begins in a tight little voice, forcing a cheerfulness she doesn't feel and so sounding strained. "The time has come to select one courageous young man and woman for the honour of representing Winterfell in the annual Red Games."
A bowl is carried onto the stage.
"It's your first year." I hear Sansa whispering to Bran. "You're name's only been in there once, they're not gonna pick you."
"They're not gonna pick any of us." Robb vows, and his eyes flicker across us all, Sansa, Bran, me, Jon, Gendry.
"Ladies first." Cersei announces, dipping her hand into the bowl. "And may the odds be ever in your favour."
I wish, for Bran's sake, that she'd get it over with and do the boys first. As she rummages around in the bowl I'm praying that it's not me; that it's not Sansa, who would never survive; that it's not Jeyne Poole, Sansa's best friend, even though I don't like her; that it's not little Beth Cassel, Jory's sister - she's of an age with Bran, in the Reaping for the first time, and that family have gone through enough. I can see Beth standing on the edge, as close to her father as she can get, and her cheeks are wet with tears.
Cersei finally draws a slip of paper, unfolds it and peers at it. Her voice rings out across the courtyard, loud and clear. And it's not Sansa Stark. And it's not Jeyne Poole. And it's not little Beth Cassel.
"Arya Stark."