Yoren
A crook-backed wandering crow of the Night's Watch, gruff and foul-mouthed, who ranges the realm gathering recruits for the Wall from its dungeons and gutters.
A soul born at The Riverlands, sworn to The Night's Watch.
The fuller tale
Season One
Arya, shorn and renamed Arry, slips out of King's Landing in Yoren's recruit column.
Where they stand. Castle Black and King's Landing.
Season Two
Arya, marching north with Yoren's recruits, shares the road with a caged man named Jaqen H'ghar. Yoren dies defending his recruits; Arya, Gendry and Hot Pie are dragged to Harrenhal as prisoners.
How it ends for them
On the screen. Killed on the kingsroad (S2┬ÀE3)
The Watch's crusty recruiter died at the burning holdfast on the kingsroad, refusing to yield Robert's bastard to the gold cloaks. He took an axe and kept swinging until Ser Amory Lorch's men finished him.
On the page. Died defending his recruits (ACOK, ch. 15)
The Watch's sour old wandering crow died at the holdfast by the Gods Eye, an axe in him and his recruits scattering, still refusing to yield anyone to Ser Amory Lorch. He'd promised Ned Stark he'd get the girl home.
He dies as he lived, refusing to hand anyone over. In the books, LorchÔÇÖs soldiers storm the holdfast by night and Yoren goes down fighting in the gate, an axe in him, still swinging, buying his recruits the minutes some of them use to live. The show gives him the same death by another road: surrounded at the camp, he declines the gold cloaksÔÇÖ warrant with open contempt, takes several of LorchÔÇÖs men with him, and is finally pinned and finished ÔÇö a crossbow bolt and a blade ending thirty years of service in a ditch on the kingsroad. In both tellings the promise survives him: Arya Stark walks out of the wreckage carrying the lessons and the fury, and the men who killed him start appearing on a certain list.
Their chapters, book by book
A Game of Thrones 1 chapter that name them
A Clash of Kings 3 chapters that name them
Where the page and the screen part
The two tellings walk the same road with different scenery. In the books the ambush comes at an abandoned holdfast by the Gods Eye, where YorenÔÇÖs courtesy is answered by Ser Amory LorchÔÇÖs assault; the show moves the fight to a burning roadside camp and gives the demand a different pretext ÔÇö the gold cloaks hunting Gendry, RobertÔÇÖs bastard, whom Yoren refuses to yield with a knife at a throat and a speech about fat men and sharp steel. Book-YorenÔÇÖs cargo is also heavier: it is he who carts Rorge, Biter and the courteous monster called Jaqen HÔÇÖghar north in chains, a decision whose consequences ripple through AryaÔÇÖs whole saga. Both versions agree on the essentials ÔÇö the sourleaf, the shears, the debt to Ned Stark paid in full.
Their journey
Where the two tellings send them to the same place the road runs whole; where they part, the screen keeps the left and the books the right.