The howling of the wolves was what woke her - Shaggy and Bran's wolf, piercing the quiet of the night, driving them all from their beds.
Bran's wolf. Bran's room.
She ran, not caring that Mother would scold her for being about the castle in just her nightgown and bed stockings, but Nymeria was at her heels, so no one would dare impede her.
Nymeria joined the howling when they rounded the corner before Bran's door, and Arya stumbled to a stop, kept from falling only by Ser Rodrick's suddenly outstretched arm.
"Peace, girl," he said, pale-faced and older than usual, in the queer light. "Tread carefully."
She tiptoed into the room, eyes always on the shifting shadows by the bed - Bran, Mother, Rickon - and stopped only when she noticed what lay beyond the bed, between the wolves.
"Gods be good," she said, watching Nymeria crouch by Shaggy and Bran's wolf, jumping half a foot in the air when Grey Wind glided past her to join them - it was so strange, to see the four of them without Ghost and Lady, and would have been so even without the dead man on the floor.
"What happened?" Robb demanded, bare-chested and long dagger in hand. "Ser Rodrick, what-"
"This man was going to kill me," Bran said, stunning them all - his voice was deeper now, as if it had broken half-way in his slumber, and his eyes seemed heavy in his head, but most of all, he was awake. "Mother held the blade, and Summer killed him."
Arya was already at Mother's side, taking the lengths of cloth Rickon was tearing from Bran's sheets and wrapping them carefully around Mother's beautiful, bloodied hands. Robb moved to lean over the end of the bed, bracing himself near to Bran's feet.
"Who is Summer?" he asked, for want of anything else - what else was there to be said, after all? Who would want to kill Bran? Why?
"My wolf," Bran said, patting the bed and smiling when his wolf clambered up to lie alongside him, rumbling like a purring cat through his bloody muzzle. "It's high time I named him, don't you think?"
Mother barked a sharp laugh, sudden and short, and then they all fell silent. Arya carefully tied the strips of sheet as tight as she could, wincing to hurt Mother but afraid of letting the bleeding continue unfettered - Mother's long fingers were twitching, as if damaged, and Arya could not clear the blood well enough to properly see where the cuts were, never mind where they were deepest.
"Send for Maester Luwin," she said, "and send someone for my robe, and a shirt for Robb. Rickon, were you sleeping here? Get under the blankets beside Bran, stay warm. Mother? Mother?"
Mother blinked, as if coming awake, and smiled thinly.
"Are you warm enough, Mother?" Arya asked, keeping her eyes firmly on Mother's for fear of her going distant again - she had heard Father tell tales of men going distant after suffering grave injuries in battle, and it never boded well. "Would you like a blanket?"
Robb wrapped the old woven blanket from the foot of Bran's bed around Mother's shoulders without being asked. Now that the first shock had worn off, he was scowling, the sort of deep scowl that belonged more on Father's face than on Robb's, and his shoulders had gone tense. Arya supposed she would be tense, if this were the first problem she faced as Winterfell's keeper, and wished she had some pretty words to ease him. Sansa would know what to say, and would likely have stitched Mother's hands back together by now, too, but Arya would make do with what skills she had, and keep quiet - Maester Luwin would come quickly, and would tend to Mother, and Ser Rodrick would help Robb choose his path over this mess.
Arya tied a thin strip of cloth around each of Mother's wrists, just to be sure, and while she did that, Robb took a blanket from the chest behind the door and tossed it over the body, to hide it from view. Arya felt something in her back loosen when the man's face disappeared - she could not remember ever seeing a corpse before, or at least, not one so brutally slain.
Ser Rodrick knocked on the doorframe just as Robb settled alongside Bran, behind Arya, wrapping an arm over his skinny shoulders and kissing the tangle of his hair - all five of them looked up, startled, but Mother offered another of those thin smiles.
"Maester Luwin, my lady," Ser Rodrick said, "and some men, to move the body, if you permit it."
"Of course, ser," Mother said, nodding despite the tremor in her voice, "please send Maester Luwin in."
Maester Luwin hardly blinked to see Bran sitting up, awake, and instead sat beside Arya on the edge of the bed, in front of Mother.
"Did you wrap these, Lady Arya?" he asked quietly, setting his case to his other side and taking Mother's hands into his lap. "Fine work indeed, I think."
Arya watched what he was doing carefully, only a little aware that the boys were murmuring between themselves, and mirrored his cautious touch on Mother's other hand - the sooner they had her wounds tended the better, surely?
"Lord Rickon," Maester Luwin said over his shoulder, not looking away from Mother's hands, "run down to the kitchens, ask Gage for a tot of Barth's small beer for your lady mother, to sooth her nerves, good lad."
Rickon bounced off the bed, jostling all of them, and whistled for Shaggy to follow him as he went - they hurtled off together, Robb settled more comfortably beside Bran, and Arya kept watching Maester Luwin's work.
It did not look so very difficult, in truth.
"Now comes the difficult part," he said, and Arya felt her face grow hot - she hadn't realised that the maester was watching her as close as she was watching him! "Mind me now, my lady, see how I go."
She watched hard as he carefully uncoiled Mother's slightly clenched fingers, ignoring her hiss of discomfort, and held it to the light of the little glass-cased lantern Robb was holding out - Mother's sewing lantern, now she looked - to examine it.
"Ah," the maester said, sounding relieved. "Well, at least you will keep all your fingers, my lady - come, Lady Arya, look here."
Arya came, and looked, and saw Mother's bone shining pale in more places than one.
"These sinews here," Luwin said, pointing out the stringy parts sort of visible between the meat of Mother's fingers and palm, "are still connected, and so your lady mother will still have movement in her hands if we sew her wounds properly - would you like to help me?"
"Oh, I couldn't," Arya said, retreating to her previous spot and ducking her head, to hide behind her hair. "My stitches-"
"Are straight and even," Luwin said. "I have seen them, my lady, and they are precisely as they should be for work such as this. Here, this is the needle you will be using, and this the thread. Thread the needle for me, and we will decide what to do then."
Arya's hands shook as she fiddled at the eye of the needle, but she managed to thread it, and passed it back to Maester Luwin without incident. He seemed to realise how little she wished to aid in this, and instead passed her a glass bottle, and a cloth.
"Wash your lady mother's other hand with this," he said. "The cuts on that hand are not quite so deep, but I must be able to see them clearly all the same. I will stitch if you wash."
Arya nodded, and carefully daubed away the blood caking and clinging to Mother's hand while the maester went about his work. Underneath the blood, Mother's fingers were blue with cold, and Arya wished she could hold onto them to warm them - but surely that would hurt.
"Are you cold, Arya?" Mother asked. "Come here, sweetling, sit under my blanket with me."
Arya had not noticed that she was shivering, but when she curled under Mother's outstretched arm, under the heavy blanket, she was surprised by just how cold she felt.
"Why would anyone wish to kill Bran, Mother?" she asked, barely daring to even whisper the words. "He has never done anything that anyone should want him dead."
"No, sweetling, he has not," Mother said, the foggy distance gone from her eyes, replaced by fury. "But I shall find out who sent that man, and I will make certain they pay for this, you can be sure of that."
They all slept in Bran's room that night, piling onto his bed and sharing the extra blankets to keep warm - even Mother, although she remained in her chair, and Rickon abandoned the bed to curl up on the rug with Shaggy at some stage.
"My legs aren't working," Bran said, when Robb moved to help him up from bed. "What am I to do? I cannot stay in bed all the time."
Mother was gone to bathe and dress, and to wash her hair - she had washed it only once in the three weeks since Bran's fall, and Arya's stomach had dropped in sympathy when Mother's maid had come and suggested it. She could not imagine how horrible it would feel, and how much soap it would take.
But Bran's legs were a more pressing issue than Mother's hair, she knew - what were they going to do?
"For now," Robb said, "I will carry you down to the hall, and back up-"
"You have the whole of Winterfell to run," Bran pointed out, looking more embarrassed than anything else, which Arya could not understand. Were she in his position, she would be raging, cursing the gods both old and new. "Perhaps- no, Ser Rodrick has other duties, and Rickon is not big enough-"
"I could!" Rickon put in, bouncing on the bed as though this were a normal morning. "I could carry you if you needed me to, Bran, I could!"
"I don't doubt it, little brother," Bran promised him, "but I will need to be carried everywhere, unless some other solution is found, and then you would never have time for anything else."
Rickon stopped bouncing, pouting in annoyance - torn, obviously, between standing by Bran and acting his age. Arya might have laughed, in other circumstances.
"What are we to do, then?" she asked, tying a ribbon around the end of her braid - a plain ribbon, brown and unremarkable, but a concession to Mother, who was so angry and scared that Arya would have done a great deal more to offer her comfort than just wear a ribbon in her hair. "I cannot carry you, and as you say, Robb has duties to attend to."
"Hodor could carry you, if you don't mind his company, Bran," Robb said thoughtfully. "Just until we find some better solution - perhaps we could move you into chambers on the ground floor, too? Rickon might like to move as well, to keep you company - and it would suit the wolves better, no doubt."
"Me and Shaggy will move," Rickon said firmly, beaming at Bran. "We can have chambers alongside one another!"
"Maester Luwin hasn't said you can leave bed just yet, so it will be a few days before we must think too hard on this," Robb said, quiet and gentle and bizarrely like Father, considering how little he had of Father's look. "Perhaps in that time, we shall find a better solution."
Bran smiled, as thin and pained as Mother's smiles from the night before, and Robb left them, trailed by Rickon and Shaggy and Grey Wind.
Bran's smile fell as soon as the door closed.
"I'll bring you books," she said, "and anything else you might want - we'll find some way of helping, Bran, I know we will-"
"Nothing will help," he said, turning to look out the window. "I flew, Arya, and I fell, and I shall never even stand again. You should go, attend to your own duties. I will be fine."
He would not be, she knew, but she did not want to upset him - so she left, Nymeria behind her, and hoped that they could find something, anything , to help.
Before Bran was even out of bed, Mother was wrapping herself in her travelling cloak.
"You must be brave, my darlings," she said, touching Robb's face with one bandaged hand and Arya's face with the other. "I will be home as soon as I may - heed Maester Luwin, and Gage and the others."
"We will, Mother," Arya said, painfully aware that she was no fit replacement for their mother, not as Robb was for their father. "We will do our best to keep Winterfell standing for your return."
Mother smiled once more, and then turned away, accepting Ser Rodrick's help in mounting her horse. It was a long road to King's Landing, and they would be best served to leave now, early in the day, to give themselves their best start.
Arya wished more than anything that they would stay, or that she could go with them.
"Is it brave," Robb asked on a whisper, "to admit that I wish she was not leaving?"
Arya shook her head, linked her arm through Robb's, and turned back to the keep - it was starting to rain, after all, and there was much to be done.