6. Gendry

"Damn wolves give me the creeps," said Lem. They had just set out on their fourth day from King's Landing. The serving wench had proved to be a good rider, even if her horse, a mare bought at the early market the morning after their night in the tavern, was a little slow. They were making good time.

"This is the third night they've been with us," said Edric. "Think this is the same pack that used to be in the Riverlands? You know, with the Demon Wolf?"

"I've heard she has red eyes, claws of steel and a coat of Ice," said Anguy dramatically. "And that she eats only the flesh of newborn babes and drinks only the blood of virgins," he said, winking at Kyra, who looked unimpressed.

Gendry was in the rear, which he liked, because it gave him time to think, and let him grimace as much as he wanted too without drawing the notice of the others. He wasn't used to riding and frequently wished that they were still walking, as they had with the children. Kyra confused him. He'd gone to bed in their cheap rooms at the Dancing Dove thinking he'd made a mistake to let her join them, but when she'd arrived at the appointed meeting spot the next morning, new horse in hand and wearing comfortable looking riding breeches, he hadn't the heart to tell her she wasn't coming. That she immediately began to get on with Anguy and Lem like they were oldest of friends — a companionship that included ganging up on Edric — didn't exactly lighten his mood either. He spent most of the first few day in a sulk.

For the first section of their journey they had stuck to the Kingsroad, which was about as safe as any other path in the Crownlands, but as dusk neared Kyra would lead them off the road and into the woods, often on paths so faint that Gendry thought they were more likely to have been made by animals than by traders, to a convenient clearing a comfortable distance from the road. Most nights they lit a fire - a risk, but in places to well concealed, not a large one, and when they began to hear the wolves, a necessary one.

He had been surprised when, on the first night. she'd laid her bedroll beside his. He knew what she wanted and had turned his back. After a night of the cold shoulder, he'd expected her to move and take up with a warmer prospect - any of the other men, in fact, would have invited her in - but instead she returned the next night, and the night after that, and the night after that. She slept restlessly, although he never her her call out. Sometimes her rustling woke him up and he watched her. She looked much smaller in her sleep, and younger. On the first night of the wolves, he had woken before dawn to find her bedroll empty and he had suddenly been filled with panic - where had she gone, on a night like this? He was about to wake the others to look for her when she slipped quietly out of the woods and padded towards her bedding. He'd chastised her angrily in a whisper and she had stared back and him sullenly, and said she had just gone to make water.

Gendry's thoughts were interrupted by Kyra herself, who had dropped back to ride beside him.

"So serious!" she jibed. "If you stay like that all the way to Winterfell we'll all die of boredom before we get there."

"I think I'll die of something else first," he said, grimacing as his horse stepped in a ditch.

"Aye, the fourth day's always the worst. But I feel worse for your poor horse, having to carry you."

After a beat, Gendry said, "I hear bad things about the North."

"Oh, terrible things." Gendry thought she was making another quip, but when he looked at her he saw her brow was furrowed wit concern. "They say that the wildings raiding the wall had destroyed half of the northern villages, and the Bolton's taxes and Stannis's army have destroyed the other half. They say that winter is coming but the grain barns are only half full. They say that Ramsey Bolton forced Arya Stark to marry him and sobs every nig—"

"That's not true!" Gendry cut in hotly.

"No?" Kyra said, raising her eyebrows.

"No, it was some other girl, not Arya, some girl they said was Arya so that Ramsey could marry her." He was surprised the the vehemence of his statement.

"You sound like you knew her. How do you know to which Lord or she is or is not married?"

Gendry was angry with himself. They had heard at Cider Hall that the Bolton bastard had married "Arya Stark" but Brienne had told them it was a like; that Jamie Lannister had told her the girl was a fake, some northern whelp his father was using to gain control of the North. She'd seen her. Besides, Arya would never marry a man like that. She'd kill him first. But he was in no mood to disclose either his relationship with Brienne or his relationship with Arya to Kyra, who already knew more than she should. Gendry had realized that there was no way to hide Oathbreaker from her without letting the weapon rust in its scabbard, and the girl had naturally been curious about so fine a sword. Gendry had told her a version of the truth; that he was a knight, and that the sword had been a gift from another knight whose life he had saved. He didn't mention that it was made of Valyarian steel, and if she recognized the Lannister symbols on the hilt she didn't say anything.

"Because she's dead," he said shortly, and spurred his horse toward the front.

Gendry was on edge for the rest of the ride. He didn't know why talking to Kyra upset him so much. She was a shameless flirt, sure, but then so was Jeyne when she wasn't exhausted or hungry, and in fact so were most of the women he had met with the Brotherhood. He supposed you had to be a certain kind of woman to tolerate the Lem and Anguy. Perhaps she unnerved him because she was seemed so unerringly competent, at riding, at jibing, at finding campsites and making and breaking camp. She carried knives in her boots. It might be the way she moved, he thought. Her lithe body had a sort of savage, unconscious grace, like a cat.

That night he sparred with Edric, and exhausted the younger knight long before Gendry himself was satisfied. He tried to coax Lem into a duel unsuccessfully - perhaps too aggressively - and spent the rest of his evening furiously completing the exercises Brienne had taught him, while Kyra watched silently from across the fire.

The next day Lem pulled up beside him.

"Well you're in a foul mood, milord."

"Don't call me milord," Gendry snapped. He knew he was overreacting. But the last thing he wanted was Kyra finding out about his heritage, although he wasn't sure if he was more afraid of her telling someone or afraid of her teasing.

"Aye, aye, yer in pain, I see. Now what I wonder is if it's your arse or your heartstrings. She's a fine woman, you know, and none of us would think the worse of you if you gave her some room." Gendry opened his mouth to retort, but Lem had already pulled away.

That afternoon they reached Widewater and decided to stop for the day; the horses needed rest. Not for the first time, Gendry wished they were still on the road with Yoren, before the fight, before Harrenhal, before the Brotherhood and the twins. Things were simpler then. It had taken them almost two weeks to reach this spot on the road with Yoren, Gendry recalled. Most of the boys hadn't been much more than children then, and with the wagons the caravan to Castle Black had moved almost as slow as the orphans from the Inn at the Crossroads. The sparkling lake had been beautiful then, and was still beautiful now, but different. It was colder. Most of the leaves had changed colors or fallen, giving the lake a kind of chilly solemnity as he watched the light fade from the shore.

He heard a faint humming further along the shore and moved toward it, pushing some winter ferns out of the way.

"And how she smiled and how she laughed,

The maiden of the tree

She spun away and said to him,

'No featherbed for me'"

Kyra was crouching in a small sheltered glade, washing her hair in the chilly water. She still wore her breeches, but her shirt, just washed, was hanging on a nearby bush. Gendry flushed immediately, but couldn't look away. Her back was thin but strong; Gendry could see the outlines of her shoulder muscles, flexing slightly as she wrung her hair. Her small, white breasts were illuminated by the yellow-orange light reflecting off the lake and Gendry could see her dark pink nipples standing out against the cold. A rivulet of water ran over her collarbone and flowed around her left breast. He knew she had heard him coming, but she continued to gaze out a the lake, her face concealed by her hair.

"You can look," she said without turning. "I don't mind."

Gendry turned and walked quickly back towards camp.

That night it was Gendry who couldn't sleep. Kyra was eveywhere, sitting on Lem's lap, bouncing skillfully on her old mare, standing by the lake, inviting him to touch, to taste. He saw her in the tavern, but her face was not her face, but Arya's, and her gown had acorns on it, her small white breasts peeking out from lace trim, a rivulet of tears running from her cheek to her chest. He must have finally drifted off, because he awoke to find Kyra's bedroll empty again.

The clearing was eerily illuminated by the moon, and he could hear wolves howling in the the distance. Anguy, Edric, and Lem were all fast asleep, and Lem was snoring. Gendry got up and moved through a clump of trees and into a smaller clearing, just in time to see Kyra emerge from the trees beyond. He felt his blood rise and strode toward her, meaning to chastise her even more strongly then before, but before he reached her he caught her expression in the moonlight; it was loneliness.

Before making a conscious decision he reached her and crushed his lips to hers, gripping her hips with his large blacksmith's hands and pulling her towards him. It was not a gentle kiss, and he expected her to jerk away, but instead she brought her hands up and wound them painful into his hair, pulling him even closer, and arched her small body against his.

Gendry had been with women before, of course; with Jeyne, who would come to him at the Inn for comfort, and who he never had the heart to refuse; with a couple of the women at the Peach, who had taken him to their bed even though he couldn't pay, and even with one of the sisters, who, Gendry had learned, had been sent to the motherhome after bearing a child out of wedlock. He liked women, but had no desire to conceive a bastard, and nothing had ever felt like this.

Kyra broke their kiss and ducked her head to bite his neck, her hands skimming down his chest, dropping to his waistline, where she began to untuck his shirt. When Gendry pushed her off balance with the force of his next kiss, she dug her hands into the top of his breeches to stay upright. Gendry untied her cloak, dropping it onto the moss behind her and wrapping his other hand around her jawline as he did so, making her cry out. Then like an animal he tore off her wool shirt, exposing her breasts in the moonlight.

He grabbed her small, tight ass with one and and put the other in her hair to lay her on the cloak, not gently. She moaned and arched her back when Gendry bit her right nipple, circling the left with the index finger of one hand, and then bit his shoulder, hard. Gendry could feel his arousal pushing against her thigh, and she ground her hips to shift him towards her center, making him even harder. When Gendry moved his tongue to her other breast, she resumed her work at his waistline, deftly untying the laces of his breeches and tracing her hands along the hard lines of muscle at his hips.

She smelled like the forest, Gendry thought. Nice, like pine needles and wet leaves. And something else, something feral, but exciting. Her smell reminded him of something, of someone, but he couldn't remember what.

Kyra slid his breeches over his hips, letting his arousal spring free, and quickly began to work on her own, wriggling completely out of her breeches and smallclothes while Gendry was still trying to kick off his boots. While he was off balance trying to kick off his pants and appreciate her entirely bare body at the same time, she surprised him by swing a leg around his hips and flipping them around, so that he lay on the cloak and she was straddling him, her hair fallen loose from its tie falling over her shoulders and pooling around her aroused breasts. Gendry thought he had never seen anything so beautiful in his life.

She was trembling. The cold, Gendry thought, and he reached up to pull her down for a kiss. Her heart was hammering, and his too. His shirt was still on, he thought, what a nuisance, and he started to sit up to take it off, but Kyra pushed him down and took him in her hand. He put his hands on her thighs and she raised and then lowered herself onto his arousal, the sensation of her wet heat making him see black for a second. She was very tight. He felt resistance and he worried for a moment that he was too big for her, but then she pushed herself down with determination and he felt something break.

He sat up quickly, one hand propping him up against the cloak. Her eyes were tightly shut and from her face he could tell she was in some pain.

"You're a virgin," he said in disbelief.

While he said this she adjusted her hips, making Gendry spasm slightly, and he saw her face relax. Her eyes flew open suddenly and she looked straight into his blue ones.

"Not anymore I'm not, stupid," she said.

Gendry felt ears grow hot. They were still joined at the hips and when she started to lift herself to get off of him he clamped his hands on her thighs. He was going mad from the lack of movement and had half a mind to flip her over and fuck her senseless, virgin or no. Another part of him wanted to run, and to forget that this, forget that she had ever happened. He'd never been with a virgin before, and if he had had his choice he never would have either. It was a completely different thing.

"Let me go, Gendry," she said, squirming and flushing herself as she realized exactly how intimate their position was.

He was having more and more trouble not moving and he let go to her, his dick crying out for the lack of friction, his brain ashamed to notice that there were red marks on her hips would be blue before tomorrow. She dismounted and quickly pulled on her shirt, grabbing her breeches and tugging at her cloak that Gendry was still sitting on. "Wait," he said, and grabbed her arm. She yanked it away but he was much stronger than she, and after a few seconds of violent struggle she was sitting on the cloak, her legs pinned between his own and her wrists trapped by one of his hands. She looked furious.

"I said let me go," she hissed.

"I don't understand," he said. "Why didn't you tell me? Why did you seduce me? You hardly even know me!"

She looked away and Gendry forced her chin towards him. She blanched under his gaze and jerked desperately against his hold, not helping Gendry's stubborn hard-on.

"Because I wanted you!" she growled. "I wanted it to be you." And then so quietly that he wasn't sure he heard right, "I feel safe with you."

And then suddenly instead of jerking away she leaned forward and kissed him, a sort of hopeless kiss that made Gendry melt and ignite at the same time. When then broke Gendry had a stupid grin on his face and Kyra looked a little shocked.

Gendry let go of her wrists and her legs and and put his hand in her hair. "That wasn't really it, you know," he said. "Here, let me show you."

**NOTE

Skipping to sexy times! Hopefully you all have figured out who Arya is.

I woulda liked to put in more build up, but I'm not here to write a novel, and this is not the main point of this fanfic. Not typical Gendrya sexytimes either because Gendry doesn't know. She's not his true love yet.

Also, for those of you worried about ages, think whatever you want, I worried about it for a while too but then again I think it's just better if we imagine all of GRMM's characters to be about 5 years older.