A Storm of Swords — Arya I

Loose in the riverlands, Arya, Gendry and Hot Pie ride for Riverrun — until singers with swords find them at an inn: Tom o' Sevens and the brotherhood without banners.

The chapter retold

Arya Stark is loose in the riverlands with two boys and no plan beyond Riverrun — Gendry, stubborn about his forge and his parentage in equal measure, and Hot Pie, mourning his lost bakery with the seriousness other people reserve for lost kingdoms. Hunger and bad luck have made the three of them careless, and it costs them: at a wayside inn a band of singers turns out to carry swords under their cloaks, led by a garrulous, gap-toothed man who calls himself Tom o' Sevenstrings and answers Arya's fear with a courtesy she has learned not to trust from strangers.

The capture is the book's first look at the Brotherhood Without Banners, the leaderless-in-name outlaw band that will occupy much of Arya's arc and complicate the story's easy war-morality — men who rob both sides and call it justice, and who are, this early, more interested in Gendry's smithing arm and Arya's evident gentility than in her name. It also strands Arya farther from Riverrun than she has ever been, trading one kind of danger for a subtler one dressed up in songs.

This movement: Wolves at the Crossing

• Brienne rows the Kingslayer downriver under a flag of lies; the banter starts sharpening into respect.
• Robb returns to Riverrun with a Westerling bride and a broken treaty; the Freys go home cold.
• Beyond the Wall, the survivors of the Fist stagger to Craster's; Sam earns the name Slayer with a dragonglass dagger.
• Dany sails for Astapor, where an army that feels nothing is sold by men who feel less.