Vee: Thanks for the feedback! And I am trying to keep everyone in character as much as possible. However, I have to take liberties with some of them because of a lack of personalty (case in point, Weasel, who is only there for a short while in ACOK, kind of similar to Lommy. The same goes for characters like Elmar and the Heddle sisters).
Chapter Thirteen:
Ashes To Ashes (2017)
One year had passed since Weasel had been rescued from the Brave Companions. Arya, Gendry, and Hot Pie had just returned to the house after going on a hunt together. As they walked up to the house, Arya got a look at the sack of dead animals that Hot Pie had in his possession and the dead deer slung over Gendry's shoulder. He had used his sledgehammer to smash its head in after Hot Pie had crippled it by shooting it in the leg with an arrow. Arya was thankful for what Hot Pie had done; without his quick action, it would have gotten away.
Entering the house after passing by the spot where the hole in the yard once was (the group had filled it after Nymeria had been discovered during the previous year), Gendry placed his sledgehammer up against the wall adjacent to the door before he, Arya, and Hot Pie went to deliver the food to Willow. Hot Pie, as Willow watched, placed the sack on the counter. Gendry maneuvered his arms to place the deer next to the sack.
"I'm going to prepare the food with Willow," Hot Pie announced to Arya and Gendry. "This is going to take a while."
Arya, as she and Gendry proceeded to walk away from Hot Pie and Willow, glanced over at Gendry's sledgehammer. "That looks pretty heavy," she commented. "How easy is it for you to swing around?"
"Not that hard for me," Gendry answered. "You just let momentum do the work for you."
"I bet I could use it," Arya said.
Gendry hooted. "Really?" he said in between spurts of laughter. "You? You'd fall over in one swing!"
Arya's eyebrows lowered, and her eye narrowed. "I wouldn't fall over! I could swing it just as easily as you!"
Gendry laughed again. Before anyone could say anything else, Arya heard footsteps coming from the basement stairs. She looked and saw Jeyne approaching. Arya didn't know if anyone else had noticed this, but her hair looked a little disheveled, and a few beads of sweat were at the top of her forehead.
"What's with all the ruckus up here?" Jeyne asked. Weasel then appeared from down the stairs from the second floor of the house, Nymeria following after her.
Ever since Weasel had been rescued, she had been the only other person besides Arya who Nymeria had been taking orders from. Arya wasn't sure as to why that was the case, but she was at least relieved that someone besides her could give Nymeria orders which she actually listened to.
"What's going on?" Weasel asked, looking over the action from behind the railing of the stairs. Nymeria had stopped and was watching them as well.
"Gendry thinks I can't swing his sledgehammer around," Arya explained.
"And you can't," Jeyne said. She spoke again when she saw the look Arya gave her. "Arya, I'm being realistic. You're much better off with that machete, and you have no experience with the sledgehammer."
"I could use it if I wanted to!" Arya called back. Jeyne shook her head, retreated back into the basement, and Arya realized with annoyance how she'd just made herself look.
Arya, deciding to not make the situation worse than it already was, began to walk upstairs. Weasel and Nymeria followed her, and they soon reached their bedroom. There was no more work to be done on the property that day, so Arya figured all they needed to do was eat and call it a night.
In her bedroom, Arya sat across from Weasel. Nymeria was sitting up on the bed at Arya's side. Together, they talked until dinner was ready. Willow came upstairs, knocked on the door, and announced that everything had been prepared. Arya, Weasel, and Nymeria left the room, went downstairs, and ate outside at the picnic table with everyone else. Dinner went as it usually did–people laughed, people joked, Gendry didn't say a word, Arya flung a piece of meat at Nymeria, and the food was all gone by the end of it. During all of this, Arya didn't bring up what had happened earlier in the day in any way whatsoever, and neither did anyone else.
Need to not make myself look like an idiot, Arya thought to herself as she and Weasel went to bed that night.
Two months later, Arya had left her and Weasel's bedroom to go downstairs and look for Gendry and Hot Pie. Earlier in the week, they had been out hunting with her and Nymeria, and though they had a large (for the group's standards) number of people in a hunting party, they gathered less food than before. Therefore, Arya wanted to talk to them about potentially spreading out into farther areas of the woods to find more food, potentially even going over to Harroway to find animals to hunt. Arya knew that they could still spear fish in the river for food, but that wasn't enough to feed seven people and one dog. Hot Pie had suggested looking for plants to grow, and Jeyne had once mentioned the possibility of breeding animals for food. Arya and Willow, as the authority figures in the group, considered these options, but didn't know how to start doing said things.
Arya, walking down the hallway to the stairs, passed by Jeyne and Willow's bedroom. As she kept moving, she caught a sliver of a private discussion between Jeyne and Willow thanks to their bedroom door being ajar. Jeyne and Willow weren't as quiet as they thought, so Arya was able to hear some of it as she walked towards the stairs from the bedroom.
"Are you sure?" Willow asked.
"Yes, I am. I wanted to tell you first because you're my sister."
There was a pause. "I'm so happy for you two."
Jeyne replied. "Now we have to worry about another m…"
Arya didn't catch the rest of it. She didn't want to listen in on Jeyne and Willow's discussion, so she went back to focusing on finding Gendry and Hot Pie. Arya, reaching the first floor of the house after walking down the stairs, quickly found them talking by the front door.
Hot Pie noticed her first. "Hi, Arya."
"Guys, we need to talk," Arya started.
Hot Pie raised an eyebrow. "Are we in trouble?"
"No, it's about food," Arya replied. "We're running out of it."
Hot Pie had a knowing look appear on his face when Arya said this. Since he and Willow dealt with the food, they would know they were beginning to run out of it. "Yeah, so what do you propose we do?"
"We need to start searching farther," Arya answered. "We're almost out, and we can't solely survive on the fish we catch. And need I remind you that we're in summer right now. Winter is coming. Sure, autumn's between those two, but it's still coming. We barely had enough to survive last winter. We need to start spreading out and look through more areas."
Gendry and Hot Pie glanced at each other. Arya could tell that they were silently communicating with one another that she was right. As they looked back at her, Hot Pie spoke.
"Where do you suggest we go?" Gendry asked.
Arya began to explain everything, every idea she and Willow had shared with one another about improving this situation. After she was done, they debated among themselves about where to go next for food after calling Willow into the room so she could talk about it with them. After a lengthy discussion, they decided to go to Harroway in the coming days, likely two days after their next coming trade with the Brotherhood Without Banners.
Two days later, Edric and Tom from the Brotherhood Without Banners arrived to trade with those at the house. Arya managed to get a brief period of time to talk to Edric, and they quickly got on the subject of the Brave Companions and the raid on Saltpans from the previous year.
"I'm surprised none of you died," Edric said to Arya.
Arya chuckled in amusement. "We're survived worse. You remember Fairmarket?"
Edric frowned. "How could I forget?"
Realizing that she had made a mistake by bringing up the event that had caused Edric to leave the group in the first place, Arya regretted it. She decided to explain herself. "Sorry, Edric, I didn't mean to–"
"No, it's fine," Edric said, waving it off. "There was nothing we could have done for Elmar. I stopped being angry at Gendry a long time ago."
Arya was relieved. For a second, she thought that Edric would shout at her or something, and she had a few flashes of memories shoot through her mind about that time years ago. The whole group almost dying in Fairmarket, Jaqen showing up, the escape, and Elmar turning and nearly taking a chunk out of Arya's throat. She also brought to mind the many months she experienced falling asleep in the RV thinking that Edric and Gendry would kill each other during the night.
The thought of the years passing by also made Arya realize something: she didn't know how old she was. She also didn't know how old the others were, either. She knew that Gendry was the oldest, and Hot Pie and Lommy were likely a year older than her. Jeyne would likely be second oldest, maybe a year younger than Gendry, and Willow was likely as old as Arya. Weasel was, of course, the youngest, being only two when they first met her. Now she was a number of years older, and Arya knew that because of how tall she was getting, Weasel could have easily passed as someone who was probably twelve or thirteen years old when she was really still in the single digits concerning age.
"So is anything else on your mind?" Arya asked.
"Yeah, Tom mentioned this coming over here, but I'll tell you," Edric said. "I want to warn you: a lot of Gregor Clegane's people from Harrenhal have been spotted around here recently."
Arya's eye widened. "What?"
Arya knew what he was talking about. They had narrowly avoided being killed by the men from Harrenhal when they finished off the Brave Companions. She was certain that they would just loot what remained in Saltpans and then leave. But apparently, she was wrong. But what were they doing around Crossroads a year later?
Edric nodded. "Yes, Lem and I got a look at one of their camps when we were out scouting. They're definitely around here."
After a short while, Tom and Edric left, and Arya gathered everyone in the living room of the house, understanding that they needed to know about what was going on. When everyone was present, Arya explained the situation to them. When she was done telling her companions what Edric had told her about the Brotherhood Without Banners finding an encampment set up by men from Harrenhal, Jeyne was the first to speak.
"This is bad, really bad," she said. "I can't believe we didn't expect those barbarians from Harrenhal to go looking for us, but they're here."
"How do you know they're specifically looking for us?" Hot Pie asked, crossing his arms.
"Because that's how they operate," Jeyne answered. "They MUST have seen us when we were getting out of Saltpans. Maybe one of the Brave Companions told them about it, or maybe–"
"One year later, they finally get around to coming for us," Hot Pie cut in. "I don't think–"
"Exactly!" Jeyne shouted. "You're not thinking!"
"Hey, don't yell at him!" Willow shouted at Jeyne from the other side of the room. "I agree with you, but we're not going to get hostile with each other!"
Hot Pie looked ashamed after seemingly having caused the shouting match.
Arya looked over at Jeyne. "Is there anything we can do?" She looked over at Willow immediately after she had spoken. "What about you? Willow, do you have any ideas?"
"We all need to be very aware of our surroundings and stay alert," Willow said. "Harrenhal has more people and weapons than the Brave Companions did, and they have the backing of two larger communities. If something happens to them, then both Kings Landing and Casterly Rock will get involved."
"But what does that mean for us?" Lommy asked.
"If they find us, we have two options," Willow answered. "We can stay, hold down the house, and all die in the process. The other option is to abandon the house and run as far away as we can possibly get."
"No!" Jeyne shouted back. "I won't abandon everything we've worked for, everything we're expecting, just to die out in the woods somewhere–"
"WE HAVE NO OTHER OPTIONS!" Willow screamed. "Believe me, I want to stay here! I want to keep going what we've got going here! But we can't all survive if we try and hold them off when they find us! We aren't that well-defended, we don't have nearly enough weapons, we're running out of food, and you're–"
"OKAY!" Jeyne shouted loudly, turning to walk away, sniffling, as she began crying. Lommy, noticing this, got up to go and comfort her. As the two of them walked away, Arya turned to face Willow again.
"Is… is that really all we can do?" she asked. "Aside from either run away if they come here, or fortify the house and die defending it?"
"It's not 'if', Arya," Willow said, "it's when."
"But what if it is 'if'?" Weasel asked. "Maybe they won't find us."
"They will," Willow replied. "If Rorge and them found us, they will."
The discussion ended shortly afterward. Most people parted ways and stayed away from one another for the rest of the day.
Five days later, Arya entered the house with Nymeria, Gendry, and Hot Pie in tow. They had two whole sacks of food with them. One bag, slung over Gendry's shoulder, was full of dead animals. The one carried by Hot Pie had a bunch of canned food items they'd discovered in Crossroads. Arya thought that they wouldn't find much food there, but they did in the end. Because of the walking distance between Crossroads and Harroway, they had to stay the night in an abandoned house there. They had spent three days out of Crossroads, and it made Arya wish they had a car to use. She figured they couldn't use the RV anymore because they used it for storage.
On the way back, the rain had started, which had pushed them to run. In Crossroads, during the rain, they'd run into a few wights. During the fight, Arya had slipped and fell into a muddy puddle after cleaving through a wight's brain with her machete. Arya's face was streaked with dirt, and that wasn't the end of their misfortunes. Hot Pie had fallen himself during the scuffle and scraped parts of his face, though not badly.
When they walked inside, Arya noticed Jeyne in the living room carrying a cardboard box full of miscellaneous scrap up from the basement. She looked over and noticed them. "Oh! You're back, a– what happened?!"
"Several of us fell fighting wights," Arya answered as Nymeria trotted off to somewhere in the house. "Hot Pie got really scraped up there, but I'm just dirty after falling into a muddy puddle."
Jeyne, without saying a word, put the box down and walked over to Hot Pie. "Follow me. I'll dress those wounds," she said, then began to lead him upstairs after Hot Pie dropped his sack of food. As she walked with Hot Pie following her upstairs, she called over her shoulder, "Arya, Lommy wanted to see you. He's in the basement."
Arya glanced over at Gendry, who was now carrying both sacks of food. "Gendry, go take the food to the kitchen. If Willow isn't there, find and notify her."
With the food situation taken care of, Arya began to head downstairs to find Lommy and see what he wanted. Going downstairs, Arya noticed that the basement lights were already on. Entering the basement, it did not take long for her to find Lommy.
"Hi, Arya," he said, grinning as she approached.
"What do you want?" Arya asked. "Jeyne said you wanted to talk to me."
"Yes," he said, then turned to pull something large out from a nearby cabinet. Arya immediately knew that it was a new bomb.
"My new bomb," he said. "I call it 'Devastation'."
"Besides your hobbies, what prompted you to make this?" Arya asked, crossing her arms.
"I talked to Jeyne after that thing with Willow happened last week," he said. "I decided that I agree with her, and it'd be best to defend the house if it comes down to it. I still have that M-16 to shoot at any invaders, and I can make more bombs to put in the yard."
"Like mines?" Arya asked, then thought, Of course you'd side with Jeyne. You two are practically joined at the hip. It also made her think of the previous few weeks–Jeyne and Lommy had been unusually happy as of late, and Arya couldn't figure out why.
Lommy grinned again. "Yes, like mines! Guy steps on this, guy goes boom!"
"How would that work?" Arya asked.
"I need to get it to work right, though," he answered. "Find out some way to wire it up to make it explode when someone steps on it."
Arya, though she appreciated Lommy wanting to help defend the house in the event they were attacked, knew it would be in vain if even a fraction of the forces from Harrenhal decided to attack the house. He might kill some attackers, but it wouldn't be enough to stop a full on raid. Arya agreed with Willow: it was either defend the house and die, or run and find a new home somewhere else far away. Arya hated having to run away instead of stand her ground, but there were situations where running was necessary.
"Where is it going to go?" Arya asked.
"In front of the fence," Lommy answered. "I'm planning on making at least ten or fifteen of these. Gonna make a whole minefield."
The scenario flickered through Arya's mind: people trying to storm the house only to have their legs blown off as they made moves to jump the barbed wire-wrapped fence. Maybe one explosion would set off a chain reaction and knock out the first round of attackers. Gunfire from the house would help as well, but she knew it wouldn't help at all; if and when Gregor Clegane found them, Arya figured that he would likely attack with perhaps up to fifty people.
"Well I hope you'll get it figured out before we all die," Arya said before turning to leave. She thought, You'd better not get reckless when they come here, or else something sharp's going to go through your neck.
She heard Lommy snicker from behind her as she began to walk up the stairs. "I will!"
Stupid, Arya thought, annoyed, as she reached the living room. Jeyne, who was nearby, hurried over to her.
"Hello, Jeyne," Arya said.
"Hello," Jeyne replied. "Hot Pie is well. I've finished bandaging him."
"Alright."
"One more thing…" Jeyne said, sounding like she was nervous about saying what she was about to say. "I was curious: was Weasel a handful?"
"What do you mean?" Arya was genuinely curious about what she meant and why she was asking her about this.
"Was… was it difficult for you to… take care of her? I know you first met her at two years old."
Arya paused to think. In those days, Weasel mainly cried and asked for food. Weasel, however, quickly became attached to Arya and didn't leave her side most of the time. Lommy made fun of her, and so did Elmar. She also remembered Weasel's former habit of eating mud and sometimes insects.
"It was… difficult at first, but we taught her to become self-reliant. Honestly, the hard parts came during the first few years, when she needed to be watched at all times, when she needed to be taken care of. I mean I had to teach her how to read and write and how to hunt and use a weapon," Arya answered.
"Anything else?" Jeyne asked.
"Not off the top of my head, no," Arya replied.
"Alright, thanks, Arya," Jeyne said, then disappeared upstairs.
Arya raised an eyebrow. Jeyne asking about Weasel's early years was definitely suspicious to her, but she didn't want to follow Jeyne upstairs to pester her about her reasons for asking her about it. Instead, she thought she would find Weasel and Nymeria and spend the rest of the day with them. Jeyne mentioning Weasel had put this idea in Arya's mind, and she knew Weasel would be happy to see her after being gone for a few days.
One more week passed without incident, though everyone was still on high alert. Lommy had talked about finding more propane tanks and fertilizer to make more bombs, but Arya didn't know if he'd actually started on looking for more supplies. Arya had made another days long supply run to Harroway with Gendry, Hot Pie, and Nymeria, and while they'd found less food than before, they still found quite a bit of canned food items.
While Willow was happy to see more food, she reminded them that the men from Harrenhal were still in the area. While Arya and her group were gone, members of the Brotherhood Without Banners, which included Edric, had come to trade again. Willow and Lommy had been the ones to meet with them, and Edric had made sure to warn them about the presence of Gregor Clegane and his people in the area. Based on what Edric had said, they were getting closer to the house and definitely knew it was there. Edric had said many things, but Willow explained to Arya and the others that one word in particular had stuck out in Edric's warning to the group.
"Prepare."
Dusk soon came. Arya could tell that, herself included, everyone was on edge after hearing Edric's second warning. She figured that at any moment, the repaired front door would be kicked down, and everyone in the house would be killed. Arya didn't doubt that they'd fight to their last breaths, but it would be mainly fruitless. Even if they killed say twenty people, they would all die in the end in the hypothetical situation.
Arya was currently sitting in her and Weasel's bedroom. Nymeria was on the floor as well, and she watched as Arya sat up at the foot of her bed, staring at the floor.
"Arya, are you okay?" Weasel asked.
"I'll be fine, Weasel," Arya answered. "I… I just need time."
She hoped that would keep Weasel from pressing any further. Arya knew that Weasel knew what was going on. Arya was about to get up to do something else, but a loud noise and shouting coming from the front yard caught her full attention.
Arya's head shot upwards, and her eye widened. She immediately knew what it was, and it was confirmed when Hot Pie burst into her and Weasel's bedroom, AK-47 in hand.
"Hot Pie, what's going on?!" Weasel asked, sounding terrified. Nymeria shot upwards, and Arya jumped off the bed, immediately reaching for her machete.
"They're here," Hot Pie answered, his eyes wide. "People from Harrenhal. We need to run out through the back door."
"We can't fight?" Weasel asked.
Hot Pie shook his head, looking terrified. "Gendry got a look outside. He says it looks like there are maybe fifty people out there. It looks like all of them are armed."
Arya, machete in hand, hurried out of the door with Weasel, who had grabbed a large knife. Nymeria followed after. Arya, hurrying downstairs with the three with her, found everyone else in the living room. Willow and Jeyne were busy stuffing backpacks full of canned food, and Lommy and Gendry were at the front, behind the door. Gendry had his sledgehammer in hand, and Lommy had his M-16 with him as well as his spear. Everyone on the first floor had a backpack on, and Arya understood that they were on their way out. Also present in the living room was Lommy's latest bomb, Devastation.
"What's going on?" Arya asked.
"They're out there," Gendry answered. "One of them demanded we come out."
"And what did you do?"
Lommy answered. "I said 'Over our dead bodies' pretty loudly."
"Lommy!" Arya shouted.
Nearby, Jeyne had finished stuffing her backpack full of all the canned food she could fit in there. Her crossbow was on a nearby counter, and she grabbed it and approached. Willow was still busy filling her own backpack, and Arya noticed her shotgun close by where the crossbow had been.
"Have they done anything else?" Arya asked as she turned her head to look out the window. Her heart lurched into her throat as she saw the sheer number of people outside. It looked like they were awaiting orders and perhaps talking among themselves.
And then they started shouting. Some of them began running towards the house, and one threw a Molotov cocktail, which landed in front of one of the windows. Another was thrown, and it broke through the other. Flames began to spread through the hallway and into the living room immediately, and Arya began yelling.
"WE NEED TO GO RIGHT NOW!"
Willow grabbed her shotgun as Lommy grabbed Devastation, and they all ran past the stairs towards the back of the house. Arya heard several firearms go off from outside, and it sounded to her like the people outside were shooting into the house. This made Arya quicken her pace. Gendry was the first one to the back door, and he practically tore it off its hinges as he threw it open. Everyone hurried out into the backyard, and Arya only once looked back to look at the burning house. She felt like Gregor Clegane's men would start looking around the back of the house, and that made her feel alarmed, which pushed her to run as fast as she could.
"DON'T LOOK BACK, JUST RUN!" Arya screamed as they headed for the wooded area behind the Heddles' home.
For the next several days, the group ran through the woods. They made it to the outskirts of Crossroads after escaping from the burning house, and they went south from there. The group didn't make it to Harroway, but they kept going south. Nobody had time to grab a map, so besides "south", they had no idea where they were going. Arya remembered that Harroway was south, so she figured that they must have passed it by then. Arya wished they had a vehicle to drive in that was large enough for all eight of them, but that was currently not an option.
It was the middle of the day when Arya felt a familiar tug at her shirt. Arya glanced over and saw Weasel there.
"Arya, my feet hurt," she complained.
"Yeah, I need to stop, too," Jeyne said as soon as Weasel had finished talking. Based on the tone of her voice, Arya figured that she was waiting for an opening to express a desire to stop moving for a while. Arya herself didn't want to stop; she felt like the men from Harrenhal would find them if they stopped. Arya took a look to her right and saw that they were close to a two lane road going through the woods, likely forty-nine feet away from them all.
Arya wondered if Jeyne wanted to stop so she could vomit. Arya had noticed that, for some time, Jeyne had been getting sick every few days. She hoped that Jeyne hadn't picked something up during their flight from the house, and it made Arya wonder why nobody else caught whatever it was that she had from her.
The last thing we need is everyone getting sick, she thought, then said, "Okay, we'll stop here for the day."
Relieved, everyone stopped. The group put their backpacks in a pile with Devastation nearby them. For a while, they sat in a circle and talked among themselves. As a few hours drew on, Arya wanted to get up and run again, get far away from anywhere where Gregor Clegane's men could be. However, some people had different ideas.
"We need to go hunting again," Jeyne said. "We should gather some food before he head on out."
"We have enough," Arya said. "We've eaten barely anything of our canned food."
"What about Nymeria, though?" Lommy asked. "She can't eat any of the canned stuff. She needs meat."
They had another discussion where Arya suggested just picking up and running after their rest instead of going hunting. People agreed, and people disagreed. In the end, it was brought to a vote. The majority, consisting of Jeyne, Lommy, Hot Pie, and Willow, voted to go hunting while Arya, Gendry, and Weasel voted the opposite.
"Okay," Arya said. "Jeyne, Willow, you'll stay here with Nymeria and try to get a fire ready. Keep the bomb and backpacks away from it. The rest of us are going to hunt for food."
"Alright, then let's head on out," Hot Pie said.
Willow approached Hot Pie. She firmly patted him on the shoulder. "Go get us some food."
Jeyne approached Lommy and hugged him, kissing his cheek before speaking. "Be careful out there."
"We will," Lommy promised as he hugged her back.
Arya approached Nymeria. Nymeria looked up at her as Arya spoke to her. "Nymeria, you stay."
Nymeria stayed.
After everything was taken care of at the temporary encampment of the group, Arya, Gendry, Hot Pie, Lommy, and Weasel all began to venture deeper into the woods. Though Arya would much rather continue running south, she understood that the majority of the group wanted to find food, and Nymeria potentially starving was a genuine concern she herself had.
"Just like old times, right, Arya?" Lommy said, grinning as he gripped his spear in one hand. His M-16 was strapped to his back. Hot Pie still had his AK-47 with him.
Now that Arya thought about it, it was like old times. She and Gendry, Hot Pie, Lommy, and Weasel all scouting for food like when Weasel was a toddler. However, Arya was not nostalgic for this time; it reminded her of being in a constant state of fear and thinking that death was potentially around every corner. And while death really could be around every corner, Arya and her companions were no longer the scared children they once were.
"I guess it is," Arya replied.
They'd been walking for a while, but none of them had found any live animals anywhere. Arya was beginning to feel as if they wouldn't find anything. Still, she felt as if she needed to at least try. At least until it got dark out.
After they kept searching for thirty minutes, they found a deer. It was a big buck that'd been walking by itself when the group stumbled upon it. Not hesitating, Hot Pie approached, aimed the AK-47 at the deer, and fired. Because of where he was in the crowd of people, he didn't hit the buck in the heart or throat, but instead in its leg and hindquarters. As it partly both limped and ran away, Arya pulled out her machete and charged with the four others with her. However, before they could get close, someone called over to them from the nearby road.
"HEY!"
Everyone turned their heads to look and, to Arya's horror, she saw the same people who'd attacked the house. They were the same people from Harrenhal who'd wiped out the remainder of the Brave Companions in Saltpans. Currently, fifteen armed men were charging towards them from the street, and more were starting to get out of cars and armored vehicles.
"GET AWAY FROM US!" Lommy screamed as he pulled out his M-16 and began firing. Hot Pie began shooting as well while Arya, Gendry, and Weasel began to make moves to run away. Hot Pie and Lommy noticed, and as people fell dead, they turned to hurry after Arya, Gendry, and Weasel.
They ran for a while. Every now and then, Hot Pie and Lommy turned around to shoot at their growing number of attackers. Arya hoped that they hadn't found Jeyne, Willow, and Nymeria back at the encampment. Arya also hated this whole situation; things had started to look up for them when they found the buck, and now they would likely be separated from everyone else.
A short while later, they found themselves in the middle of a small clearing. Lommy and Hot Pie still fired into the woods, and they soon ran over to Arya, Gendry, and Weasel to group up with them. Arya felt someone grab her shoulder, and she turned to see one of their attackers. Quickly, she rammed her machete into his heart, and he fell dead. Nearby, Gendry's sledgehammer slammed into the side of the face of someone else, just as two more appeared from nearby. All over, people were pouring into the clearing. Weasel, now genuinely frightened, stabbed into someone's abdomen before stabbing them in the back of the neck. Lommy and Hot Pie kept shooting, and Gendry tried to fight a group of men that was progressively getting bigger every second and were beginning to overpower him.
Weasel's voice was panicked. "We're surrounded!"
Weasel jerked around for a bit, likely not knowing what to do, then she broke from the group and just ran, making a mad dash into the woods north of them all. Arya tried to reach out and grab her, likely knowing she was running right into her own death, but she wasn't quick enough and just barely made contact with a bit of her hair.
Run, Weasel, Arya thought as Weasel disappeared into the trees, hoping she'd make it out okay. Run as fast as you can, run and never come back.
A large, armored, black van had pulled into the woods behind the group as they continued to fight the people from Harrenhal. Gendry swung a hard punch and dislocated a man's jaw. Arya slashed someone's throat open with her machete as another grabbed the back of her shirt at the same time. Hot Pie ran out of ammo and instead hit someone in the face with the butt of his AK. Lommy had reloaded his own weapon and began shooting again.
And then someone shot back. Lommy screamed as he fell after a few bullets shot through the leg that wasn't made of wood, one hitting his knee on the same leg as well. Though on the ground, he kept shooting into the woods. Nearby, Hot Pie yelled as the AK-47 was wrestled away from him, and another man tackled his fat form. Gendry had his sledgehammer taken from him by then, and he was in the process of having his hands tied behind his back after he'd been forced to the ground. Arya was still fighting fiercely. She sliced someone's fingers off as she bit someone else's forearm hard enough to draw blood.
And then someone hit Arya in the back of the head hard enough to disorient her so her machete could be taken from her. As she herself was forced to the ground, she felt her own hands being tied behind her back. The same thing was happening to Hot Pie, and Lommy was still yelling and shooting.
And then Lommy ran out of bullets, and he had no replacement magazine. Now desperate, he reached for his spear, but a larger man grabbed the shaft of the spear and yanked it out of his gloved hand. By then, from right to left, Arya, Gendry, and Hot Pie had been lined up on their knees next to the van. Lommy was farther away from the three of them, looking up at the man who'd taken his spear from him.
"ATTENTION!" a high, thin voice shouted. All of the men turned to see a portly man with a pig-like face enter the circle the men from Harrenhal had made in the clearing. Arya saw no sign of Weasel anywhere, but she did get an eyeful of this new arrival. Arya figured he was someone important, hence all of the body armor he was wearing and the respect the other men gave him.
The portly man with the pig-like face stepped in front of Arya, Gendry, and Hot Pie. "My name is Amory Lorch," he said. "From here on out, all of you are prisoners of Gregor Clegane of Harrenhal. Now Dunsen, prepare our return to Harrenhal. Raff, you deal with the prisoners."
Amory stepped away, and Arya watched as Raff, the man who'd taken Lommy's spear, grabbed the latter by the throat and began to violently drag him over to the others. While they moved, Lommy clawed at Raff's arm, but Raff didn't seem to care. Raff spiked Lommy to the ground in front of Arya.
"YOU'LL NEVER TAKE US!" Lommy screamed up at Raff.
Raff snickered. "And what will you do, then? Bleed on me? You on your own killed twenty-three of us."
Lommy's eyes narrowed. Though he couldn't stand in his current state, he sat up, glared at Raff, and spat on one of his boots.
Raff looked unamused, then briefly looked down at his bleeding leg wounds. "Can you walk?" Raff asked.
"No," Lommy answered defiantly. "Guess you have to carry me."
Raff didn't say a word, just tightly gripped his new spear and powerfully thrusted it into the front of Lommy's throat. Arya didn't flinch, and neither did Gendry. Hot Pie audibly gasped and trembled. Lommy, in desperation, gripped the shaft of the spear and tried pulling it back. Raff, annoyed, harshly jerked the spear to the right, cutting through Lommy's left jugular vein. Lommy's blood went flying, and it found itself spattered across Arya's face.
Lommy, gagging and trying to crawl away, had flipped over after having his throat cleaved open. He didn't get far. Raff walked over and rammed the head of the spear into the back of Lommy's neck. There was a wet crackling noise as Raff yanked the spear free after planting his left boot down on the back of his target's head to help pull the spear free, and Lommy went limp on the ground. As more of Lommy's blood pooled around his body, Raff turned to walk to the hostages as someone else from the crowd went to retrieve the M-16.
"Wow, I never thought he'd shut up," Raff joked. Several men laughed. Arya wanted to tear them apart, and she felt like Gendry was thinking the same thing. Hot Pie was too terrified to move.
Raff approached and, one by one, led the prisoners into the back of the armored van. First, Hot Pie. Second, Gendry. Third, they came for Arya. Arya didn't fight Raff as he grabbed her and yanked her to her feet. The only thing she could do was hope Weasel had gotten away.