Harrenhal.
Vargo Hoat, the leader of the Brave Companions, was practically sprinting across the stone platform above the bear pit. He was in a hurry to pack his bags and get out of dodge, but a short, fat obstacle was blocking his path.
"You idiot!" Vargo spat, his lisp making the words sound wet and spray-filled. "I told you, thith city ith a tomb! We need to move. You trying to thtop me?"
Vargo Hoat had the moral compass of a vulture and an incredibly sharp sense of self-preservation. When the news reached Harrenhal that Robb Stark had dismantled Tywin's reinforcements at Oxcross and taken the Golden Tooth, Vargo knew the Lannister payday was over. He had a few hundred criminals in his mercenary company, and Tywin had only left behind maybe two hundred guards.
That wasn't enough to hold a castle the size of Harrenhal against a "Young Wolf" with thirty thousand men and a pack of giant direwolves. Vargo preferred bears to wolves, so he decided it was time to switch teams.
Ser Amory Lorch, the man Tywin had left in charge, wasn't about to let the mercenaries walk out. He stood his ground in his bulky steel plate armor, his cloak bearing the manticore of his house.
"Vargo! You promised Tywin you'd defend this place!" Lorch screamed, his face turning red. "Your word is worth less than a pile of horse dung!"
"Go to hell, you thon of a bitch," Vargo hissed.
He didn't waste time arguing. He lunged forward, grabbed Lorch by the edge of his breastplate, and used his momentum to heave the fat knight over the railing.
"Attack!" Vargo roared to his men.
Amory Lorch tumbled through the air like a discarded tin can, smashing through a wooden walkway before hitting the floor of the bear pit with a sickening thud. Before he could even catch his breath, a massive black bear lumbered out of its den. Seeing its territory invaded, the beast let out a roar that vibrated the stones and charged.
"Move! Get up!" Lorch screamed at his own limbs, but he was paralyzed with shock.
The bear's paw came down CRUNCH shattering his chest plate and sending a spray of blood across the sand. As the bear started to treat him like a chew toy, Lorch's vision began to fade. In his final moments, he didn't see the bear. He saw Princess Rhaenys, Rhaegar's little daughter. He remembered dragging her from under a bed and stabbing her half a hundred times until she stopped screaming.
Now, it was his turn.
While the bear was finishing its meal, the Brave Companions were busy butchering the Lannister guards they'd been drinking with an hour ago. It was a one-sided slaughter.
On the Crying Tower, Arya watched the chaos from the shadows. She reached into a crack in the masonry and pulled out a slender, fine-steel blade.
Needle.
She'd used one of her "names" to get Jaqen H'ghar to retrieve it for her. The soldier who stole it had already left with Tywin's army, but Jaqen had disappeared for a few days and brought it back.
Arya gripped the hilt and ran down the stairs, her feet silent on the stone. She rounded a corner and almost ran into Weese.
"Move it, you little bitch!" Weese barked, trying to scramble up the tower to hide from the fighting. He didn't even look at the "boy" he was shoving aside.
Arya stepped back, her face a mask of cold, Stark iron. As Weese pushed past, she drove Needle deep into his side.
"The Starks send their regards," she whispered.
Weese let out a wet gasp, blood gushing from the wound. He tried to swing at her, but his strength was gone. He tumbled down the stairs, a limp pile of meat.
"A certain one is pleased that the girl used her own steel to settle a debt."
Jaqen H'ghar was standing on the window ledge. Arya jumped, she had no idea how he'd climbed a hundred-foot sheer wall.
"I still have one name left," Arya said, her eyes narrowing. "You can't leave yet."
"The mission in Harrenhal is done," Jaqen said softly. "A certain one must hear a name now. A certain one has paths to walk."
"No," Arya countered, thinking fast. Robb was coming. The Blackfish was coming. If she stayed, she'd be rescued. She could use her last name to help her brother. "You have to wait."
"A certain one will not wait. But a certain one can take the girl with him until a name is spoken."
Jaqen stepped forward. Before Arya could react, he exhaled a puff of sweet, floral-scented white smoke right into her face. Her head spun, her knees buckled, and the world went black.
By dawn, the screaming had stopped. The Brave Companions were busy looting the corpses, they didn't even care if the bodies were Lannister or their own.
Vargo Hoat stood over the bear pit, looking at the tattered remains of Amory Lorch. He knew he could never go back to the Lannisters, but the North seemed like a viable alternative. If he played his cards right, maybe the Starks would let him keep this castle.
"Little ones!" Vargo lisped to his men. "Go to the dungeons. Bring out the Northern lords. Feed them. Treat them like kings!"
That was how Robert Glover, heir to Deepwood Motte, found himself being escorted out of a cell by a grinning, goat-bearded mercenary.
"Lord Hoat?" Glover asked, blinking in the morning light. "What happened?"
"Hahaha! Lord Glover!" Vargo threw an arm around him. "From today, we are brothers! We are on the same thide!"
Glover didn't understand, but seeing the dead Lannister guards, he just nodded and smiled.
Nobody noticed two swift horses galloping out of the stables as the gates opened. A tall, mysterious man and a small, unconscious figure were already miles away, heading toward Saltpans, the gateway to the sea and the Free City of Braavos.