A Game of Thrones page 166 -

Eddard Stark had left before dawn, Septa
Mordane informed Sansa as they broke their fast. “The king
sent for him. Another hunt, I do believe. There are still wild
aurochs in these lands, I am told.”
“I’ve never seen an aurochs,” Sansa said, feeding a piece
of bacon to Lady under the table. The direwolf took it from
her hand, as delicate as a queen.
Septa Mordane sniffed in disapproval. “A noble lady does
not feed dogs at her table,” she said, breaking off another
piece of comb and letting the honey drip down onto her
bread.
“She’s not a dog, she’s a direwolf,” Sansa pointed out as
Lady licked her fingers with a rough tongue. “Anyway,
Father said we could keep them with us if we want.”
The septa was not appeased. “You’re a good girl, Sansa,
but I do vow, when it comes to that creature you’re as willful
as your sister Arya.” She scowled. “And where is Arya this
morning?”
“She wasn’t hungry,” Sansa said, knowing full well that her
sister had probably stolen down to the kitchen hours ago
and wheedled a breakfast out of some cook’s boy.
“Do remind her to dress nicely today. The grey velvet,
perhaps. We are all invited to ride with the queen and
Princess Myrcella in the royal wheelhouse, and we must
look our best.” Sansa already looked her best. She had
brushed out her long auburn hair until it shone, and picked
her nicest blue silks. She had been looking forward to
today for more than a week. It was a great honor to ride
with the queen, and besides, Prince Joffrey might be there.
Her betrothed. Just thinking it made her feel a strange
fluttering inside, even though they were not to marry for
years and years. Sansa did not really know Joffrey yet, but
she was already in love with him. He was all she ever
dreamt her prince should be, tall and handsome and strong,
with hair like gold. She treasured every chance to spend
time with him, few as they were. The only thing that scared
her about today was Arya. Arya had a way of ruining
everything. You never knew what she would do. “I’ll tell her,”
Sansa said uncertainly, “but she’ll dress the way she always
does.” She hoped it wouldn’t be too embarrassing. “May I
be excused?”
“You may.” Septa Mordane helped herself to more bread
and honey, and Sansa slid from the bench. Lady followed at
her heels as she ran from the inn’s common room.
Outside, she stood for a moment amidst the shouts and
curses and the creak of wooden wheels as the men broke
down the tents and pavilions and loaded the wagons for
another day’s march. The inn was a sprawling three-story
structure of pale stone, the biggest that Sansa had ever
seen, but even so, it had accommodations for less than a
third of the king’s party, which had swollen to more than four
hundred with the addition of her father’s household and the
freeriders who had joined them on the road.
She found Arya on the banks of the Trident, trying to hold
Nymeria still while she brushed dried mud from her fur. The
direwolf was not enjoying the process. Arya was wearing
the same riding leathers she had worn yesterday and the
day before.
“You better put on something pretty,” Sansa told her.
“Septa Mordane said so. We’re traveling in the queen’s
wheelhouse with Princess Myrcella today.”
“I’m not,” Arya said, trying to brush a tangle out of
Nymeria’s matted grey fur. “Mycah and I are going to ride
upstream and look for rubies at the ford.”
“Rubies,” Sansa said, lost. “What rubies?”
Arya gave her a look like she was so stupid. “Rhaegar’s
rubies. This is where King Robert killed him and won the
crown.”
Sansa regarded her scrawny little sister in disbelief. “You
can’t look for rubies, the princess is expecting us. The
queen invited us both.”
“I don’t care,” Arya said. “The wheelhouse doesn’t even
have windows, you can’t see a thing.”
“What could you want to see?” Sansa said, annoyed. She
had been thrilled by the invitation, and her stupid sister was
going to ruin everything, just as she’d feared. “It’s all just
fields and farms and holdfasts.”
“It is not,” Arya said stubbornly. “If you came with us
sometimes, you’d see.”
“I hate riding,” Sansa said fervently. “All it does is get you
soiled and dusty and sore.”
Arya shrugged. “Hold still,” she snapped at Nymeria, “I’m
not hurting you.” Then to Sansa she said, “When we were
crossing the Neck, I counted thirty-six flowers I never saw
before, and Mycah showed me a lizard-lion.”
Sansa shuddered. They had been twelve days crossing
the Neck, rumbling down a crooked causeway through an
endless black bog, and she had hated every moment of it.
The air had been damp and clammy, the causeway so
narrow they could not even make proper camp at night, they
had to stop right on the kingsroad. Dense thickets of
halfdrowned trees pressed close around them, branches
dripping with curtains of pale fungus. Huge flowers
bloomed in the mud and floated on pools of stagnant water,
but if you were stupid enough to leave the causeway to
pluck them, there were quicksands waiting to suck you
down, and snakes watching from the trees, and lizard-lions
floating half-submerged in the water, like black logs with
eyes and teeth.
None of which stopped Arya, of course. One day she
came back grinning her horsey grin, her hair all tangled and
her clothes covered in mud, clutching a raggedy bunch of
purple and green flowers for Father. Sansa kept hoping he
would tell Arya to behave herself and act like the highborn
lady she was supposed to be, but he never did, he only
hugged her and thanked her for the flowers. That just made
her worse.
Then it turned out the purple flowers were called poison
kisses, and Arya got a rash on her arms. Sansa would have
thought that might have taught her a lesson, but Arya
laughed about it, and the next day she rubbed mud all over
her arms like some ignorant bog woman just because her
friend Mycah told her it would stop the itching. She had
bruises on her arms and shoulders too, dark purple welts
and faded green-and-yellow splotches, Sansa had seen
them when her sister undressed for sleep. How she had
gotten those only the seven gods knew.
Arya was still going on, brushing out Nymeria’s tangles
and chattering about things she’d seen on the trek south.
“Last week we found this haunted watchtower, and the day
before we chased a herd of wild horses. You should have
seen them run when they caught a scent of Nymeria.” The
wolf wriggled in her grasp and Arya scolded her. “Stop that,
I have to do the other side, you’re all muddy.”
“You’re not supposed to leave the column,” Sansa
reminded her. “Father said so.”
Arya shrugged. “I didn’t go far. Anyway, Nymeria was with
me the whole time. I don’t always go off, either. Sometimes
it’s fun just to ride along with the wagons and talk to
people.”
Sansa knew all about the sorts of people Arya liked to
talk to: squires and grooms and serving girls, old men and
naked children, rough-spoken freeriders of uncertain birth.
Arya would make friends with anybody. This Mycah was the
worst; a butcher’s boy, thirteen and wild, he slept in the
meat wagon and smelled of the slaughtering block. Just the
sight of him was enough to make Sansa feel sick, but Arya
seemed to prefer his company to hers.
Sansa was running out of patience now. “You have to
come with me,” she told her sister firmly. “You can’t refuse
the queen. Septa Mordane will expect you.”
Arya ignored her. She gave a hard yank with the brush.
Nymeria growled and spun away, affronted. “Come back
here!”
“There’s going to be lemon cakes and tea,” Sansa went
on, all adult and reasonable. Lady brushed against her leg.
Sansa scratched her ears the way she liked, and Lady sat
beside her on her haunches, watching Arya chase Nymeria.
“Why would you want to ride a smelly old horse and get all
sore and sweaty when you could recline on feather pillows
and eat cakes with the queen?”
“I don’t like the queen,” Arya said casually. Sansa sucked
in her breath, shocked that even Arya would say such a
thing, but her sister prattled on, heedless. “She won’t even
let me bring Nymeria.” She thrust the brush under her belt
and stalked her wolf. Nymeria watched her approach warily.
“A royal wheelhouse is no place for a wolf,” Sansa said.
“And Princess Myrcella is afraid of them, you know that.”
“Myrcella is a little baby.” Arya grabbed Nymeria around
her neck, but the moment she pulled out the brush again the
direwolf wriggled free and bounded off. Frustrated, Arya
threw down the brush. “Bad wolf!” she shouted.
Sansa couldn’t help but smile a little. The kennelmaster
once told her that an animal takes after its master. She
gave Lady a quick little hug. Lady licked her cheek. Sansa
giggled. Arya heard and whirled around, glaring. “I don’t
care what you say, I’m going out riding.” Her long horsey
face got the stubborn look that meant she was going to do
something willful. ”Gods be true, Arya, sometimes you act
like such a child,” Sansa said. “I’ll go by myself then. It will
be ever so much nicer that way. Lady and I will eat all the
lemon cakes and just have the best time without you.”
She turned to walk off, but Arya shouted after her, “They
won’t let you bring Lady either.” She was gone before
Sansa could think of a reply, chasing Nymeria along the
river.
Alone and humiliated, Sansa took the long way back to
the inn, where she knew Septa Mordane would be waiting.
Lady padded quietly by her side. She was almost in tears.
All she wanted was for things to be nice and pretty, the way
they were in the songs. Why couldn’t Arya be sweet and
delicate and kind, like Princess Myrcella? She would have
liked a sister like that.
Sansa could never understand how two sisters, born only
two years apart, could be so different. It would have been
easier if Arya had been a bastard, like their half brother
Jon. She even looked like Jon, with the long face and
brown hair of the Starks, and nothing of their lady mother in
her face or her coloring. And Jon’s mother had been
common, or so people whispered. Once, when she was
littler, Sansa had even asked Mother if perhaps there
hadn’t been some mistake. Perhaps the grumkins had
stolen her real sister. But Mother had only laughed and said
no, Arya was her daughter and Sansa’s trueborn sister,
blood of their blood. Sansa could not think why Mother
would want to lie about it, so she supposed it had to be
true.
As she neared the center of camp, her distress was
quickly forgotten. A crowd had gathered around the
queen’s wheelhouse. Sansa heard excited voices buzzing
like a hive of bees. The doors had been thrown open, she
saw, and the queen stood at the top of the wooden steps,
smiling down at someone. She heard her saying, “The
council does us great honor, my good lords.”
“What’s happening?” she asked a squire she knew.
“The council sent riders from King’s Landing to escort us
the rest of the way,” he told her. “An honor guard for the
king.”
Anxious to see, Sansa let Lady clear a path through the
crowd. People moved aside hastily for the direwolf. When
she got closer, she saw two knights kneeling before the
queen, in armor so fine and gorgeous that it made her
blink.
One knight wore an intricate suit of white enameled
scales, brilliant as a field of new-fallen snow, with silver
chasings and clasps that glittered in the sun. When he
removed his helm, Sansa saw that he was an old man with
hair as pale as his armor, yet he seemed strong and
graceful for all that. From his shoulders hung the pure white
cloak of the Kingsguard.
His companion was a man near twenty whose armor was
steel plate of a deep forest-green. He was the handsomest
man Sansa had ever set eyes upon; tall and powerfully
made, with jet-black hair that fell to his shoulders and
framed a clean-shaven face, and laughing green eyes to
match his armor. Cradled under one arm was an antlered
helm, its magnificent rack shimmering in gold.
At first Sansa did not notice the third stranger. He did not
kneel with the others. He stood to one side, beside their
horses, a gaunt grim man who watched the proceedings in
silence. His face was pockmarked and beardless, with
deepset eyes and hollow cheeks. Though he was not an old
man, only a few wisps of hair remained to him, sprouting
above his ears, but those he had grown long as a woman’s.
His armor was iron-grey chainmail over layers of boiled
leather, plain and unadorned, and it spoke of age and hard
use. Above his right shoulder the stained leather hilt of the
blade strapped to his back was visible; a two-handed
greatsword, too long to be worn at his side.
“The king is gone hunting, but I know he will be pleased to
see you when he returns,” the queen was saying to the two
knights who knelt before her, but Sansa could not take her
eyes off the third man. He seemed to feel the weight of her
gaze. Slowly he turned his head. Lady growled. A terror as
overwhelming as anything Sansa Stark had ever felt filled
her suddenly. She stepped backward and bumped into
someone.
Strong hands grasped her by the shoulders, and for a
moment Sansa thought it was her father, but when she
turned, it was the burned face of Sandor Clegane looking
down at her, his mouth twisted in a terrible mockery of a
smile. “You are shaking, girl,” he said, his voice rasping.
“Do I frighten you so much?”
He did, and had since she had first laid eyes on the ruin
that fire had made of his face, though it seemed to her now
that he was not half so terrifying as the other. Still, Sansa
wrenched away from him, and the Hound laughed, and
Lady moved between them, rumbling a warning. Sansa
dropped to her knees to wrap her arms around the wolf.
They were all gathered around gaping, she could feel their
eyes on her, and here and there she heard muttered
comments and titters of laughter.
“A wolf,” a man said, and someone else said, “Seven
hells, that’s a direwolf,” and the first man said, “What’s it
doing in camp?” and the Hound’s rasping voice replied,
“The Starks use them for wet nurses,” and Sansa realized
that the two stranger knights were looking down on her and
Lady, swords in their hands, and then she was frightened
again, and ashamed. Tears filled her eyes.
She heard the queen say, “Joffrey, go to her.”
And her prince was there.
“Leave her alone,” Joffrey said. He stood over her,
beautiful in blue wool and black leather, his golden curls
shining in the sun like a crown. He gave her his hand, drew
her to her feet. “What is it, sweet lady? Why are you afraid?
No one will hurt you. Put away your swords, all of you. The
wolf is her little pet, that’s all.” He looked at Sandor
Clegane. “And you, dog, away with you, you’re scaring my
betrothed.”
The Hound, ever faithful, bowed and slid away quietly
through the press. Sansa struggled to steady herself. She
felt like such a fool. She was a Stark of Winterfell, a noble
lady, and someday she would be a queen. “It was not him,
my sweet prince,” she tried to explain. “It was the other
one.”
The two stranger knights exchanged a look. “Payne?”
chuckled the young man in the green armor.
The older man in white spoke to Sansa gently. “Ofttimes
Ser Ilyn frightens me as well, sweet lady. He has a
fearsome aspect.”
“As well he should.” The queen had descended from the
wheelhouse. The spectators parted to make way for her. “If
the wicked do not fear the King’s Justice, you have put the
wrong man in the office.”
Sansa finally found her words. “Then surely you have
chosen the right one, Your Grace,” she said, and a gale of
laughter erupted all around her.
“Well spoken, child,” said the old man in white. “As befits
the daughter of Eddard Stark. I am honored to know you,
however irregular the manner of our meeting. I am Ser
Barristan Selmy, of the Kingsguard.” He bowed.
Sansa knew the name, and now the courtesies that Septa
Mordane had taught her over the years came back to her.
“The Lord Commander of the Kingsguard,” she said, “and
councilor to Robert our king and to Aerys Targaryen before
him. The honor is mine, good knight. Even in the far north,
the singers praise the deeds of Barristan the Bold.”
The green knight laughed again. “Barristan the Old, you
mean. Don’t flatter him too sweetly, child, he thinks
overmuch of himself already.” He smiled at her. “Now, wolf
girl, if you can put a name to me as well, then I must
concede that you are truly our Hand’s daughter.”
Joffrey stiffened beside her. “Have a care how you
address my betrothed!”
”I can answer,” Sansa said quickly, to quell her prince’s
anger. She smiled at the green knight. “Your helmet bears
golden antlers, my lord. The stag is the sigil of the royal
House. King Robert has two brothers. By your extreme
youth, you can only be Renly Baratheon, Lord of Storm’s
End and councilor to the king, and so I name you.”
Ser Barristan chuckled. “By his extreme youth, he can
only be a prancing jackanapes, and so I name him.”
There was general laughter, led by Lord Renly himself.
The tension of a few moments ago was gone, and Sansa
was beginning to feel comfortable . . . until Ser Ilyn Payne
shouldered two men aside, and stood before her,
unsmiling. He did not say a word. Lady bared her teeth and
began to growl, a low rumble full of menace, but this time
Sansa silenced the wolf with a gentle hand to the head. “I
am sorry if I offended you, Ser Ilyn,” she said.
She waited for an answer, but none came. As the
headsman looked at her, his pale colorless eyes seemed
to strip the clothes away from her, and then the skin, leaving
her soul naked before him. Still silent, he turned and walked
away.
Sansa did not understand. She looked at her prince. “Did
I say something wrong, Your Grace? Why will he not speak
to me?”
“Ser Ilyn has not been feeling talkative these past fourteen
years,” Lord Renly commented with a sly smile.
Joffrey gave his uncle a look of pure loathing, then took
Sansa’s hands in his own. “Aerys Targaryen had his tongue
ripped out with hot pincers.”
“He speaks most eloquently with his sword, however,” the
queen said, “and his devotion to our realm is
unquestioned.” Then she smiled graciously and said,
“Sansa, the good councilors and I must speak together until
the king returns with your father. I fear we shall have to
postpone your day with Myrcella. Please give your sweet
sister my apologies. Joffrey, perhaps you would be so kind
as to entertain our guest today.”
“It would be my pleasure, Mother,” Joffrey said very
formally. He took her by the arm and led her away from the
wheelhouse, and Sansa’s spirits took flight. A whole day
with her prince! She gazed at Joffrey worshipfully. He was
so gallant, she thought. The way he had rescued her from
Ser Ilyn and the Hound, why, it was almost like the songs,
like the time Serwyn of the Mirror Shield saved the
Princess Daeryssa from the giants, or Prince Aemon the
Dragonknight championing Queen Naerys’s honor against
evil Ser Morgil’s slanders.
The touch of Joffrey’s hand on her sleeve made her heart
beat faster. “What would you like to do?”
”Be with you, Sansa thought, but she said, “Whatever
you’d like to do, my prince.”
Joffrey reflected a moment. “We could go riding.”
“Oh, I love riding,” Sansa said.
Joffrey glanced back at Lady, who was following at their
heels. “Your wolf is liable to frighten the horses, and my dog
seems to frighten you. Let us leave them both behind and
set off on our own, what do you say?”
Sansa hesitated. “If you like,” she said uncertainly. “I
suppose I could tie Lady up.” She did not quite understand,
though. “I didn’t know you had a dog . . .”
Joffrey laughed. “He’s my mother’s dog, in truth. She has
set him to guard me, and so he does.”
“You mean the Hound,” she said. She wanted to hit
herself for being so slow. Her prince would never love her if
she seemed stupid. “Is it safe to leave him behind?”
Prince Joffrey looked annoyed that she would even ask.
“Have no fear, lady. I am almost a man grown, and I don’t
fight with wood like your brothers. All I need is this.” He
drew his sword and showed it to her; a longsword adroitly
shrunken to suit a boy of twelve, gleaming blue steel,
castle-forged and double-edged, with a leather grip and a
lion’s-head pommel in gold. Sansa exclaimed over it
admiringly, and Joffrey looked pleased. “I call it Lion’s
Tooth,” he said.
And so they left her direwolf and his bodyguard behind
them, while they ranged east along the north bank of the
Trident with no company save Lion’s Tooth.
It was a glorious day, a magical day. The air was warm
and heavy with the scent of flowers, and the woods here
had a gentle beauty that Sansa had never seen in the north.
Prince Joffrey’s mount was a blood bay courser, swift as
the wind, and he rode it with reckless abandon, so fast that
Sansa was hard-pressed to keep up on her mare. It was a
day for adventures. They explored the caves by the
riverbank, and tracked a shadowcat to its lair, and when
they grew hungry, Joffrey found a holdfast by its smoke and
told them to fetch food and wine for their prince and his
lady. They dined on trout fresh from the river, and Sansa
drank more wine than she had ever drunk before. “My father
only lets us have one cup, and only at feasts,” she
confessed to her prince.
“My betrothed can drink as much as she wants,” Joffrey
said, refilling her cup.
They went more slowly after they had eaten. Joffrey sang
for her as they rode, his voice high and sweet and pure.
Sansa was a little dizzy from the wine. “Shouldn’t we be
starting back?” she asked.
“Soon,” Joffrey said. “The battleground is right up ahead,
where the river bends. That was where my father killed
Rhaegar Targaryen, you know. He smashed in his chest,
crunch, right through the armor.” Joffrey swung an imaginary
warhammer to show her how it was done. “Then my uncle
Jaime killed old Aerys, and my father was king. What’s that
sound?”
Sansa heard it too, floating through the woods, a kind of
wooden clattering, snack snack snack. “I don’t know,” she
said. It made her nervous, though. “Joffrey, let’s go back.”
“I want to see what it is.” Joffrey turned his horse in the
direction of the sounds, and Sansa had no choice but to
follow. The noises grew louder and more distinct, the clack
of wood on wood, and as they grew closer they heard
heavy breathing as well, and now and then a grunt.
“Someone’s there,” Sansa said anxiously. She found
herself thinking of Lady, wishing the direwolf was with her.
“You’re safe with me.” Joffrey drew his Lion’s Tooth from
its sheath. The sound of steel on leather made her tremble.
“This way,” he said, riding through a stand of trees.
Beyond, in a clearing overlooking the river, they came
upon a boy and a girl playing at knights. Their swords were
wooden sticks, broom handles from the look of them, and
they were rushing across the grass, swinging at each other
lustily. The boy was years older, a head taller, and much
stronger, and he was pressing the attack. The girl, a
scrawny thing in soiled leathers, was dodging and
managing to get her stick in the way of most of the boy’s
blows, but not all. When she tried to lunge at him, he caught
her stick with his own, swept it aside, and slid his wood
down hard on her fingers. She cried out and lost her
weapon.
Prince Joffrey laughed. The boy looked around, wideeyed
and startled, and dropped his stick in the grass. The
girl glared at them, sucking on her knuckles to take the
sting out, and Sansa was horrified. ‘Arya?” she called out
incredulously.
“Go away,” Arya shouted back at them, angry tears in her
eyes. “What are you doing here? Leave us alone.”
Joffrey glanced from Arya to Sansa and back again.
“Your sister?” She nodded, blushing. Joffrey examined the
boy, an ungainly lad with a coarse, freckled face and thick
red hair. “And who are you, boy?” he asked in a
commanding tone that took no notice of the fact that the
other was a year his senior.
“Mycah,” the boy muttered. He recognized the prince and
averted his eyes. “M’lord.”
“He’s the butcher’s boy,” Sansa said.
“He’s my friend,” Arya said sharply. “You leave him alone.”
“A butcher’s boy who wants to be a knight, is it?” Joffrey
swung down from his mount, sword in hand. “Pick up your
sword, butcher’s boy,” he said, his eyes bright with
amusement. “Let us see how good you are.”
Mycah stood there, frozen with fear.
Joffrey walked toward him. “Go on, pick it up. Or do you
only fight little girls?”
“She ast me to, m’lord,” Mycah said. “She ast me to.”
Sansa had only to glance at Arya and see the flush on her
sister’s face to know the boy was telling the truth, but Joffrey
was in no mood to listen. The wine had made him wild. “Are
you going to pick up your sword?”
Mycah shook his head. “It’s only a stick, m’lord. It’s not no
sword, it’s only a stick.”
“And you’re only a butcher’s boy, and no knight.” Joffrey
lifted Lion’s Tooth and laid its point on Mycah’s cheek
below the eye, as the butcher’s boy stood trembling. “That
was my lady’s sister you were hitting, do you know that?” A
bright bud of blood blossomed where his sword pressed
into Mycah’s flesh, and a slow red line trickled down the
boy’s cheek.
“Stop it!” Arya screamed. She grabbed up her fallen stick.
Sansa was afraid. “Arya, you stay out of this.”
“I won’t hurt him . . . much,” Prince Joffrey told Arya, never
taking his eyes off the butcher’s boy.
Arya went for him.
Sansa slid off her mare, but she was too slow. Arya
swung with both hands. There was a loud crack as the
wood split against the back of the prince’s head, and then
everything happened at once before Sansa’s horrified
eyes. Joffrey staggered and whirled around, roaring curses.
Mycah ran for the trees as fast as his legs would take him.
Arya swung at the prince again, but this time Joffrey caught
the blow on Lion’s Tooth and sent her broken stick flying
from her hands. The back of his head was all bloody and
his eyes were on fire. Sansa was shrieking, “No, no, stop it,
stop it, both of you, you’re spoiling it,” but no one was
listening. Arya scooped up a rock and hurled it at Joffrey’s
head. She hit his horse instead, and the blood bay reared
and went galloping off after Mycah. “Stop it, don’t, stop it!”
Sansa screamed. Joffrey slashed at Arya with his sword,
screaming obscenities, terrible words, filthy words. Arya
darted back, frightened now, but Joffrey followed, hounding
her toward the woods, backing her up against a tree.
Sansa didn’t know what to do. She watched helplessly,
almost blind from her tears.
Then a grey blur flashed past her, and suddenly Nymeria
was there, leaping, jaws closing around Joffrey’s sword
arm. The steel fell from his fingers as the wolf knocked him
off his feet, and they rolled in the grass, the wolf snarling
and ripping at him, the prince shrieking in pain. “Get it off,”
he screamed. “Get it off!”
Arya’s voice cracked like a whip. “Nymeria!”
The direwolf let go of Joffrey and moved to Arya’s side.
The prince lay in the grass, whimpering, cradling his
mangled arm. His shirt was soaked in blood. Arya said,
“She didn’t hurt you . . . much.” She picked up Lion’s Tooth
where it had fallen, and stood over him, holding the sword
with both hands.
Joffrey made a scared whimpery sound as he looked up
at her. “No,” he said, “don’t hurt me. I’ll tell my mother.”
“You leave him alone!” Sansa screamed at her sister.
Arya whirled and heaved the sword into the air, putting
her whole body into the throw. The blue steel flashed in the
sun as the sword spun out over the river. It hit the water and
vanished with a splash. Joffrey moaned. Arya ran off to her
horse, Nymeria loping at her heels.
After they had gone, Sansa went to Prince Joffrey. His
eyes were closed in pain, his breath ragged. Sansa knelt
beside him. “Joffrey,” she sobbed. “Oh, look what they did,
look what they did. My poor prince. Don’t be afraid. I’ll ride
to the holdfast and bring help for you.” Tenderly she
reached out and brushed back his soft blond hair.
His eyes snapped open and looked at her, and there was nothing but loathing there, nothing but the vilest contempt.
“Then go,” he spit at her. “And don’t touch me.”