CHAPTER 74: ARYA

Arya and Sandor Clegane arrive at a familiar inn, now guarded by a gibbet. Despite Arya’s misgivings, Sandor enters to seek news of the ruby ford. Inside, they find Polliver, the Tickler, and a pimply squire—men from Ser Gregor’s company—who trade taunts and grim tidings, including Joffrey’s death and Sansa’s supposed role.

Tension flares when the Tickler throws a knife and Polliver draws steel. A vicious melee erupts. Sandor, drunk and unarmored, is pressed hard by Polliver’s methodical assault while the Tickler flanks him. Arya distracts the squire, then stabs him in the belly. Wounded at ear, neck, and thigh, Sandor rallies, crippling Polliver with a brutal backhand that splits his face. As the Tickler retreats, Arya seizes his fallen blade and repeatedly stabs him from behind, shouting his own interrogation questions back at him.

With their foes dead or dying, Sandor judges the ford likely held by Gregor’s men and chooses to flee. Bleeding badly, he has Arya gather coin and wine and they ride off. They hide by the Trident, where Sandor has Arya cleanse his wounds with boiled wine; he screams and passes out as she binds him. By morning he is feverish, and as they struggle on, he collapses, the thigh wound turning foul.

When Arya draws Needle to end his suffering, Sandor goads her, confessing to Mycah’s murder and his complicity in Sansa’s torment, begging for mercy and death. Arya refuses, declaring he does not deserve it, mounts up, and leaves him beneath the trees, alive but failing.

Traveling alone, Arya reaches Saltpans after six days. She sells her horse for a pittance, then seeks passage north on the purple-hulled galleas Titan’s Daughter. The Braavosi captain refuses her coins and labor, citing pirates and war, until Arya presents Jaqen H’ghar’s iron coin and says, “Valar morghulis.” Recognizing it, the captain answers, “Valar dohaeris,” and grants her a cabin.