AN: If you read Ch. 16 in the first few minutes after I posted it, I ended up going back and making a few changes. You might want to check it out! Thanks for the reviews, folks! They are so helpful!
After lunch, Jon ordered Arya to stay inside and learn about running a keep with Sansa so that he and Gendry could have an uninterrupted lesson in sword-fighting. Sansa had begun by showing Arya the repairs and planting that had been done in the glass gardens, as well as the foodstores, including grain, beans, sun-dried vegetables, fruit and berries, sausages and meat preserved with salt or smoke. She then showed Arya a ledger book listing the foodstores and how changes had to be tracked, week-to-week. She also explained that they would have to work with the keep's farmers to make sure there was enough feed for the livestock.
Then she'd asked Arya what she would request for a week's meals. Arya had gotten a dreamy look on her face while describing feast after feast: "…and three—no, four hams."
"Arya, at that pace, we'd starve after less than a year of winter!"
Arya sighed and put her head down on the table. "We're doomed."
"We're not! You just have to think it through! If we eat all the chickens, that's the end of eggs, too! If you eat all the cows, that's not only the end of new cows, but no new milk or cheese. If you eat all the sheep, we don't just lose lamb and mutton; we lose wool. To make it last, we make soups, stews, meat pies…"
Arya sat up. "You know I used to have a friend called Hot Pie."
"What?" Sansa sighed. "Arya, you're trying to distract me, just as you always did with Septa during our lessons."
"I am not! Ask Gendry later. He'll tell you! He was a baker. He works at an inn. He tried to make me a direwolf out of bread. It was kind of lumpy but tasted really good."
"Arya, you have to try..."
"I will if you will."
"If I will what? What do you want me to try?"
"I'll learn to do all this," she gestured at the ledger book, "if you'll let me teach you to fight."
"Arya, it isn't proper."
"And the things bad men try to do...are they proper?"
Sansa turned pale. Arya didn't want to hurt her sister with her words, but better her words than some terrible man in a worse manner.
"Sansa, the Hound…he told me he saved you, once."
"The Hound?" Sansa looked confused. "He would say the most terrible things, but yes, he save me. He saved me more than once. He stopped me from trying to throw Joffrey from the battlements. They would have cut my head off for it. Then one day, the smallfolk rioted. Some men had me, and if he hadn't come..." She cleared her throat. "He killed them. He told me he liked to kill, and I should be glad, because he would be all that stood between me and Joffrey. And during the Battle of Blackwater, he found me and offered to take me home, to Winterfell. He used to call me 'Little Bird.'"
Arya nodded. Sandor Clegane hadn't lied about saving Sansa. "He called me 'the Stark bitch,'" Arya said with a distant look, "Or just 'girl.'" She shook off the image of him, bloody and begging leaning against the bottom of a cliff. "I'll teach you to protect yourself with a knife and a sword."
"And you'll learn everything you need to know to be lady of a great house without complaining?"
"I will!"
"I don't believe you, but fine."
She handed Needle to Sansa, who held the sword with a limp wrist, dangling it toward the ground.
"Sansa, you're graceful. You'll be good at this if you give it half a chance!" She took the sword back from her sister and demonstrated a series of moves—turning and pivoting, twisting and thrusting her sword— for Sansa, who was smiling.
"I thought you were clumsy! That was beautiful," she said, "Alright, show me how to hold the sword."
Over the next few days, they formed a routine. Sansa and Jon taught Arya and Gendry how to care for a holdfast and all the people it was responsible for. Arya taught waterdancing techniques to Sansa, Gendry and Jon. Jon gave Arya and Gendry some lessons with swords until Gendry was proficient enough to join in drills with the rest of Jon's men. Arya was arguing to join with the men, too, but when it became known that Lady Arya and Lady Sansa were dueling, local girls began to show up, requesting to train.
"Please, Miladies, I want to serve the King of the North," or "Please, Miladies, Winter is here, and the things they say are coming…" Arya had agreed immediately.
"Arya, what will their families say?" Sansa asked.
"I would think that their families will be glad that their daughters are safer. I made no promises that Jon would allow any of them to train for battle. I'm teaching them the style of fighting that's best for self-defense."
She relented, so Arya began teaching a dozen women a combination of what she'd learned from Syrio Fyrell and what she'd learned as a dockside girl: how to stomp a man's foot, breaking the small, delicate bones; how to kick him in the stones; how to break his nose with an elbow; how to thrust blades into the soft places between bones: the jugular, the femoral, the heart.
The first day, the men had mocked them as "Arya's Army," but the women instantly took the name for themselves. So it was that Lady Mormont arrived to the sight of Arya and Sansa Stark parrying and thrusting in the snowy courtyard, having an impressive duel before the delighted eyes of Arya's Army.
AN: I'm a teacher, and Summer Vacation ends tomorrow, so if you want me to keep making the time to write for you, please take a spare moment to leave a review for me. I can't tell you how much it helps. It only you guys were around to cheer me on as I write my non-fanfic writing. I'd get so much more done!