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Episode 86: A CLASH OF KINGS, ARYA IV: "Lake of Fire" SHOW NOTES!
🕑 Added 2019-11-04 15:01:01 +0000 UTCHello and welcome to the Not A Cast … podcast: the one true chapter-by-chapter podcast going through A Song of Ice and Fire one chapter a week. I’m one of your hosts Jeff better known as BryndenBFish.
And I’m your other host Emmett, better known as PoorQuentyn.
Welcome to the eighty-sixth episode of the Not A Cast, titled: “Lake of Fire: An Analysis of ACOK, Arya IV,” in which the pig-faced shit-knight Amory Lorch wipes out Yoren of the Night’s Watch and most of his charges. It’s not all bad news, though; at least Arya saves Rorge and Biter!
This episode is brought to you by our Small Council:
- Hand of the King WolfmanZack
- Grand Maester Timbob
- Lord Commander of the Kingsguard Mark N.
- Lord Travis, Master of Ships and Warden of the Waves
- Ser Keith J, Master of Whisperers
- Lord Philip the Merciful, Master of Laws
- Jancy O, Lady Commander of the Night’s Watch
- Lord Gene, Master of Coin
- Archmaester June, Healer of the Lesser Poxes
- Ragged Michael, Warden of the North
- Nelson the Hammer, Prince of Dragonstone
- Scarlett the Other Red Woman and Mistress of Whisperers
- Lord Micah: Warden of the West and the Kraken’s Bane
- Lord James: the Jim that was Promised
- The High Bearded Priest
- The Blue-Ringed Octoling
- Lord Jake, Assistant (to the) Hand of the King
- Lady Xena Valyrian
- Hedrigal, Captain of the Air Ship Arrogance
- His Grace’s High Inquisitor Frank
- Lord James Stormborn, Warden of the World Wide Weirwood
- Ser Jasper the Cruel, the King’s Justice
- Laurence, Prince of Dorne
- Richard, Sealord of Braavos
- Kelly, Warden of the East and Mistress of (Old) Bay of Crabs
- Steven the Steadfast, Master of Hounds
- The Blue Winter Rose Knight of Highgarden
- Lady Stephanie
- Lord Wryinn
- Lord Anonymous
- Lord Carlos
- Lord Andrew the Restless, a Priest of the Drowned God
- The King's Cook, Nolly Olly, Master of Cannoli
Spoiler warning: All published books, 5 novels, 3 Dunk and Egg novellas, histories, interviews, TWOW sample chapters, as well as Game of Thrones the TV show. Anything and everything!
And for those of you listening, the History of Westeros podcast livestream is kicking off around 11:30PM EST. So, as soon as you’re done here, head on over there! Link will be in the comments!
Question
Normally, here, we would read a question and respond to it, and we do have an excellent question for this week, but we’re going to save it for our final discussion. A few weeks ago, Jeff promised that we’d be reading some of our reviews on Apple Podcasts. So, let’s do that now.
Mike And Ike123456789
Life changing. Geoff and Ernie have become the mid 40s lesbian moms I never had <3
Silverwing Flyer
1 + 1 = >2
NotACast offers great content and insights into every aspect of asoiaf - the plot, the characters, the overarching themes, and writing techniques. Jeff's "readings" eg., Catelyn's "Moonlight Sonata" from AGoT, often highlight specific aspects of writing that take my breath away. Emmett provides articulate and wonderfully profound big picture insights on characters and themes. Emmett and Jeff balance each others' pacing and perspective to make for a content rich podcast that holds my attention. Five (5!) stars guys!
J_o_e__
Repetitive whining. If you want to listen to a couple of guys whine about feudalism and overread the text, then this is the show for you.
Sgt. Kevlar,
Running with Wolves
The only opportunity I have to listen to podcasts is during my daily runs. Ever since I’ve found this podcast, I’ve been running further and further every day so I can listen a little longer. These guys are forcing me into fitness.
I love this podcast!
00Goose00
If you love ASOIAF you will love this podcast
So, ASOIAF holds a special place in my heart. Reading these books has got me through some difficult times in my life. Recently, I was diagnosed with a semi-rare condition that renders my left leg paralyzed. I have been depressed for months. When I discovered this podcast it gave me the same joy and spark that reading the ASOIAF novels gave me years ago. Emmett and Jeff are quite literally my life savers. After listening to this podcast my health has even gotten better--doctors crediting my mental state improvements. Today, I am proud to say that my leg has regained 100% full use thanks to this podcast. JK-still paralyzed but now I have hours of killer chapter by chapter content from two of the greatest minds in ASOIAF fandom. Amen, brothers.
So, thank you so much for the reviews, everyone. We read all of them. And keep them coming! It helps people find the podcast and helps our little community grow!
Amen, Brother. Thanks for all the great reviews! And for those of you who are tuning in live now, our next patreon-only episode entitled Botchmen: our analysis of the 2009 movie Watchmen with some analysis of the first episode of HBO’s Watchmen is out now for all small council patrons and will be coming out throughout the week for our high lords and ladies, kingsguard, sworn sword and poor fellow patrons. And if you’re listening on the release date, it’s already out for all $5/above patrons! So, check out that episode and our 20 other bonus episodes at patreon.com/NotACastASOIAF
But enough reviews and patreon. Let’s turn our attention to Arya’s fourth Clash chapter. When we last left Arya, Yoren’s party of Night’s Watch recruits had made their way north from King’s Landing and had arrived in the Riverlands to wolves howling and distant screams carried on the wind. Let’s see how things pan out in this edition of Arya Stark sees the war crimes in this synopsis of ACOK, Arya IV.
Synopsis
From a march through hell last week to a march into hell this week.
Arya and her friends reach a blue-green ribbon of a river, witnessing the vegetation and a water snake moving across the water. It’s nice, beautiful, peaceful. No, wait, this is a George RR Martin novel:
It seemed a peaceful place... until Koss spotted the dead man. “There, in the reeds.” He pointed, and Arya saw it. The body of a soldier, shapeless and swollen. His sodden green cloak had hung up on a rotted log, and a school of tiny silver fishes were nibbling at his face. “I told you there was bodies,” Lommy announced. “I could taste them in that water.”
Yum. Yoren orders the body searched to see if there’s any valuables, and then he rides out to the river to see whether it can be forded. Tragically, as we’ll see by chapter’s end, it can’t be forded here. But maybe there’s a better place to ford elsewhere, question mark? So, Yoren orders some of his boys to scout upriver and downstream to see if there’s any place to cross. Everyone else needs to hold up and wait here in this very safe place.
Searching the dead man nets a few copper coins and a lock of blonde hair tied in a ribbon. Hot Pie and Lommy then proceed to have a mud fight in the river. And Rorge screams at everyone to unchain him. Arya, meanwhile, observes a man named Kurz as he catches fish with his bare hands. It’s just your normal, Yoren is marching into goddamn hell type of day. And listen up boys, savor this moment. This is going to be the final happy moment for most of your lives.
The men Yoren sent out return around noon and tell Yoren that there’s a burned out bridge to the south. Yoren decides they can probably ford the river with the horses, but the wagons would never make it. So, he draws a map in the ground, saying that they’re south of the God’s Eye. They can’t go north and west due to all the smoke and fires that way, they can’t west as they can’t cross the river with their wagons and they can’t go east back to the kingsroad.
So, where to go?
Yoren moved the stick up to where the line and circle met. “Near as I recall, there’s a town here. The holdfast’s stone, and there’s a lordling got his seat there too, just a towerhouse, but he’ll have a guard, might be a knight or two. We follow the river north, should be there before dark. They’ll have boats, so I mean to sell all we got and hire us one.”
Ultimately, the plan relies on a couple of, shall we say, interesting assumptions: that they can find boats on the Gods Eye, that they can buy boats if they can’t find them, that they can get new mounts on the other side of the Gods Eye, oh and also that they can take shelter at Harrenhal where, um, Lady Whent is at. Yeahhhhhh, Yoren hasn’t been watching the evening news of late.
Hot Pie is the first to sound the alarm. Uh, there’s ghosts up in Harrenhal? Maybe we don’t go there? But Yoren spits, saying “There’s for your ghosts.” And then they mount off and gallop galantly in the direction of shitty destiny. As they mount, though, Arya, continuing the trend of previous POV characters, thinks about the history of Harrenhal, adding in the wrinkle that Old Nan used to tell stories about how people who go to sleep at Harrenhal sometimes wake up all dead and burned. But she, like Dany from last week, ain’t afraid of no ghosts. Besides, there would only be knights at Harrenhal, and they would take her home and keep her safe. Yeah, it’s not just Sansa who has a view of knights that need to be dispelled, people.
The party moves north along the river trail and sees abandoned houses and ripening fields of vegetables, unattended by any farmers. They gather what food they can and keep moving. Finally, they come up on the town that Yoren talked about. And it, too, is deserted.
Yoren sat on his horse, frowning through his tangle of beard. “Don’t like it,” he said, “but there it is. We’ll go have us a look. A careful look. See maybe there’s some folk hiding. Might be they left a boat behind, or some weapons we can use.”
Yoren orders everyone to go searching through the haunted house town in four groups of five apiece. Arya goes with Woth, Gendry, Hot Pie and Lommy. They move through deserted streets that freak the fuck out of Arya. She wonders why everyone just up and ran. When a jump scare in the form of a shutter bangs open, Arya reaches for Needle. But there’s no one there. It’s just the wind.
When they see the lake, they gallop for it, hoping to find boats or people or something. Instead, they only find one overturned rowboat in the lake. Lommy says they should check out the inn, but no. They’re here to find boats. Sadly, the aforementioned overturned rowboat is the only boat in town. Arya takes the opportunity to wash off all the dirt in the warm, green water. And hey, the water doesn’t taste like dead people. A major plus! Arya wishes she could swim all the way back to Winterfell. But Woth yells at her to get out of the lake. They need to get back to Yoren to assist with the search.
When they meet back up with Yoren, it’s mostly bad news everywhere:
The town was as dark as any forest when Yoren and the others reappeared. “Tower’s empty,” he said. “Lord’s gone off to fight maybe, or to get his smallfolk to safety, no telling. Not a horse or pig left in town, but we’ll eat. Saw a goose running loose, and some chickens, and there’s good fish in the Gods Eye.”
They then get to arguing on what to do now. Should they patch the row boat, build new boats? Well, as to the first question, the row boat would only take four people across. And to the second: no one knows shit about building boats. So, that’s a no-go. Still, maybe they’d build a raft. Yoren decides, very, very consequentially, to sleep on that idea. In the meantime, they’re going to hide out in the holdfast to Arya’s horror:
Arya could not keep quiet. “We shouldn’t stay here,” she blurted. “The people didn’t. They all ran off, even their lord.”
“Arry’s scared,” Lommy announced, braying laughter. “I’m not,” she snapped back, “but they were.”
“Smart boy,” said Yoren. “Thing is, the folks who lived here were at war, like it or no. We’re not. Night’s Watch takes no part, so no man’s our enemy.”
I mean, yeah, this is the part where you’d expect me to be like, “Wow, Yoren, way to be a fuckin’ idiot.” But y’know, Yoren has a point. The Night’s Watch is ostensibly neutral in this conflict, any conflict and … okay, okay. I’ll wait to defend my boy Yoren in the depth section.
Yoren, the boys and Arya move into the holdfast, placing the iron bars down through the entrance. Arya observes that the walls were ten feet of unmortared stone. They find a plot device in the form of trap door inside with a tunnel that leads out to the lake. Interesting detail. Keep it mind!
They eat a chicken and some onions inside the holdfast, but no one’s much for talking while they eat. After dinner, Yoren divides up when everyone will be on watch, and Arya catches the second watch. Sleep proves fleeting for Arya; so, she decides to do some sword honing. No, not that. Get your minds out of the gutter. Hot Pie sits next to her and asks where she got the sword from.
“My brother gave it to me,” she muttered.
“I never knew you had no brother.”
Arya paused to scratch under her shirt. There were fleas in the straw, though she couldn’t see why a few more would bother her. “I have lots of brothers.”
“You do? Are they bigger than you, or littler?”
I shouldn’t be talking like this. Yoren said I should keep my mouth shut. “Bigger,” she lied.
“They have swords too, big longswords, and they showed me how to kill people who bother me.”
Hot Pie beats a retreat at that, and Arya falls asleep, dreaming of a wolf howling.
She wakes up with her heart thumping in her chest, knowing that something is wrong. She starts shouting for everyone to wake up. Everyone disbelieves that anything is amiss, claiming that “Arry” had a bad dream, but Arya shouts that it was a wolf she heard. Someone is coming.
Before they could hoot her down again, the sound came shuddering through the night-only it was no wolf this time, it was Kurz blowing his hunting horn, sounding danger.
At that, everyone start frantically donning clothes. Arya runs for the gate and passes by Jaqen H’ghar and Biter. Jaqen yells at Arya to free him as he knows how to fight. But she ignores them, climbing up onto the catwalk. She reaches the wall, climbs partway up the wall and sees what appears to be a sea of lantern bugs in the town. But it isn’t lantern bugs.
Then she realized they were men with torches, galloping between the houses. She saw a roof go up, flames licking at the belly of the night with hot orange tongues as the thatch caught. Another followed, and then another, and soon there were fires blazing everywhere.
Arya thinks it’s about two hundred riders, but she doesn’t know for certain given how the fire and smoke is distorting her view. Factcheck: Tywin dispatches Amory with three hundred riders at the end of AGOT, but I certainly hope that the Brotherhood without Banners has drubbed the bejesus out of Amory’s party, and that they’re down to two hundred. Ahem.
All the same, they’ll be coming for them soon. Then Gendry points out that a column of riders are approaching the holdfast. They come up to the holdfast and demand that the holdfast be opened in the name of the king. One of the recruits yells back, wondering which king they’re talking about before being cuffed for his trouble.
Yoren climbs to the top of the gate and yells that the townsfolk are all gone. And that he’s merely a recruiter from the Night’s Watch with recruits for the Watch heading north. But the men below think Yoren and company might be part of the Brotherhood without Banners. Ah, as to that, the sigil of the NW is black. He raises it for them to see whether it’s black for the Night’s Watch or not.
“Or black for House Dondarrion,” called the man who bore the enemy banner. Arya could see its colors more clearly now in the light of the burning town: a golden lion on red. “Lord Beric’s sigil is a purple lightning bolt on a black field.”
Arya remembers when she saw Beric Dondarrion when he rode off for Gregor Clegane, thinking this happened a long time ago when she was Arya of House Stark and no Arry the orphan boy. And Arry wouldn’t know about the lords. So, she stays silent.
Meanwhile, Yoren waves his banner all around, asking if they’re blind. Can’t they see that he’s not a Dondarrion man!?
“By night all banners look black,” the knight in the spiked helm observed. “Open, or we’ll know you for outlaws in league with the king’s enemies.”
Yoren demands to see the manager, AKA he asks who’s in charge of this rabble. And up steps a fat motherfucker with a pig face and a manticore on his shield. And this guy’s name? Ser Amory Lorch who really, reaaaaaaaaaaaaaallly sucks. More on him later! He commands Yoren to open the gates in the name of the one true king Joffrey Baratheon. He says this while all the town burns around them.
So, Yoren says fuck off. Okay. He doesn’t say that. I’ve just been watching a lot of Succession of late. He says that they’re just recruits for the Wall. They’re no foes of the Lannisters or to Amory Lorch, Yoren says probably winking in the direction of Arya Stark.
Look with your eyes, Arya wanted to shout at the men below. “Can’t they see we’re no lords or knights?” she whispered.
“I don’t think they care, Arry,” Gendry whispered back.
So, Arya looks into Amory’s pig face, using the method of actually looking with her eyes the way Syrio had taught her, and she knows that Gendry is right.
Amory demands they open the gates if they’re not traitors so that they can have a quick look to make sure there are no traitors in the holdfast, but Yoren holds fast against Amory. No, you can’t come into the holdfast. Fuck. Off.
“So be it,” Amory says. “You defy the king’s command, and so proclaim yourselves rebels, black cloaks or no.”
Yoren says they’ve only got young boys in the holdfast, and Amory, who BTW is going to die like a coward via a bear later in this book, says that they’re all going to die. The “knight” raises a fist, and a spear comes flying through the air aimed for Yoren. Instead, it hits Woth through the throat, and he falls boneless from the catwalk.
“Storm the wall and kill them all,” Ser Amory said in a bored voice.
More spears come flying out of the band of war criminal traitors below, and the sounds of war erupt from outside the wall as Arya yanks Hot Pie to cover. Torches fly next, and Yoren shouts Blades! And for everyone to spread out and defend the wall. In NFL QB style, Yoren goes with a 3-3-5 spread defense, dispatching Koss, Urreg and Lommy upfront. Hot Pie says he doesn’t know how to fight, and Arya says it’s easy, probably thinking of dropping her Stick ‘em with the pointy end line.
But then a hand clasps the top of the wall, and she instead remembers fear cuts deeper than swords. When the top of a helmet appears, she slashes hard with Needle into the hands, and the man falls. Hot Pie yells at Arya that there’s someone behind, and she whirls as a pirate cosplayer with a knife in his teeth swings his leg over the wall. She thrusts Needle through the middle of his head.
But more men mount the walls, using the unmortared stones to climb their way up. Yoren tangles up the knight who was carrying the Lannister banner with his own black banner. Yet more still climb, and Arya wishes that Joffrey were here; so she could put her sword through his face. Super fuckin’ metal. Four Lannister goons try to take an axe to the gate, but Koss dispatches them via arrow one by one. Dobber wrestles a dude off the wall but gets stabbed for his heroism. Lommy smashes mofos with a stone. Another boy named Qyle begs for mercy before a man with a wasp sigil puts a mace through his face.
Everything smelled of blood and smoke and iron and piss, but after a time it seemed like that was only one smell.
A skinny dude gets over the wall, and Gendry smashes his sword against the man’s helm, taking the helmet with him. Under the helmet, he was an older dude who looked scared.
But even as she was feeling sorry for him, she was killing him, shouting, “Winterfell! Winterfell!” while Hot Pie screamed “Hot Pie!” beside here as he hacked at the man’s scrawny neck.
Hot Pie! A war cry to send terror through the hearts of every Lannister traitor.
But even as we stand in awe of Hot Pie’s heroism, Arya sees the Lannisters moving into the courtyard below. She jumps down to fight alongside of Gendry as the death blossom spreads around her.
And then Yoren was there, shaking her, screaming in her face. “Boy!” he yelled, the way he always yelled it. “Get out, we’ve lost. Herd up all you can, you and him and the others, the boys, you get them out. Now!”
But wait, how the hell is Arya going to get everyone out?
“The trap,” he screamed. “Under the barn.”
Thank goodness for the plot device, George!
Yoren runs off to fight, and Arya grabs Gendry and they’re heading for the barn. They scoop up Hot Pie and the redshirt Lommy as well. And then they run through heat hot as a furnace into the barn. The air swirls with smoke with a “sheet of fire from ground to roof” in the barn as the animals they rode in on scream, kick and rear knowing that the fire is coming for them.
But then Arya sees the three people in the cart: Jaqen, Rorge and Biter.
“Boy!” called Jaqen H’ghar. “Sweet boy!”
The trap door was ahead, and the fire was spreading fast. Arya forces the crying girl, Lommy, Hot Pie and Gendry through the door, and then she asks where the axe was. Gendry says it’s where he was chopping wood earlier. So, Arya runs out into the courtyard and continues to witness further Lannister war crimes.
She saw Koss throw down his blade to yield, and she saw them kill him where he stood.
She finds the axe though, and she grabs it, but then a mailed fist closes around her arm. She spins and places an axe cut into the man’s leg never knowing what the man even looked like.
Going back into that barn was the hardest thing she ever did. Smoke was pouring out the open door like a writhing black snake, and she could hear the screams of the poor animals inside, donkeys and horses and men.
A donkey was on fire when she came through the ring of fire. Arya throws a hand up over her nose and mouth as the smell of burning flesh and hair became thick in the barn. And she hears Biter screaming. She crawls to the sound. Finally, she gets over to the wagon and tosses the axe into the wagon. Rorge catches it as Arya boogies away. She hears the axe crashing against the wood behind her and then she hears the bottom of the wagon ripped loose.
Arya dives into the tunnel, dropping five feet. She tastes mud and doesn’t mind the taste. At least it’s cool in here while above ground, it was death, fire and blood. A great crash erupts behind and above her, and Arya kisses mud of the tunnel floor and then strangely, strangely cries
For whom, she could not say.
And that is ACOK, Arya IV: battlechapter, battlechapter, battlechapter! What’d you think of this chapter, Emmett?
Depth
We had some minor complaints about the slow pace of Arya’s first few chapters in ACOK (which is why we bundled them together into a single episode), but you can’t argue with the payoff. Arya IV is a perfectly executed horror movie of a chapter: ramping up the tension and dread of those earlier chapters before strapping them to dynamite, lighting the fuse, and running like hell. Up to now in ACOK, George has told us about the war crimes spreading across the Riverlands, rather than showing them to us. Now we see the real deal, and it’s an unsparing horrorshow of soldiers slaughtering civilians (including children) without reason nor hesitation. Like all good horror writers, you see George working to cement anger at the world in both his characters and his audience, and that process has only begun for Arya, as we’ll see in her chapters to come.
The first three Arya chapters exist as travelogues as Arya and co head north into the mouth of the beast. First time readers don’t know that though. So, they’d be forgiven if they came on Arya’s fourth chapter and went here we go again. Except that George, to use a very overused but appropriate phrase here, subverts our expectations in Arya IV. The chapters opens fairly similar to its three forebears. You’ve got the party continuing to move through the countryside. You’ve got the need to get away from the war, you’ve got the natural obstacles the party has to think their way past.
But then there’s the decision to head up to the town on the Gods Eye, the haunted house feeling of the town. But hey wait, now we’re back to having a camp-meal in the abandoned holdfast. But no one wants to talk. Then Arya has a wolf dream. She’s had ‘em before. But this time she wakes up in a fright. Someone is coming. And then it’s war. Red, red war.
- No exit
- The chapter as a whole has this sinking sickening sensation of a trap slowly closing around Yoren and his pack
- George throws us for a loop right from the get go, beginning the chapter with some of his most serene imagery…
- The river was a blue-green ribbon shining in the morning sun. Reeds grew thick in the shallows along the banks, and Arya saw a water snake skimming across the surface, ripples spreading out behind it as it went. Overhead a hawk flew in lazy circles.
- ...before brutally undercutting it:
- It seemed a peaceful place...until Koss spotted the dead man.
- Lommy bragging that he could taste the corpses in the water stood out to me on reread, as a sign of corruption and death spreading through the land but also his persistent innocence in face of it (of course, innocent is not the same as likable)
- But Arya is losing her innocence, hence the emphasis on her seeing the body
- The corpse indicates that Man has sullied the friendly face of Nature, and is a marker of the war that our heroes cannot escape
- Arya’s early ACOK chapters as Tolkien pastiche
- Travel chapters
- Thematic similarities in man despoiling nature
- But it isn’t technology that’s interrupting nature as you’ll see as a thematic consonant in LOTR; it’s man itself.
- Man killing man is an offense against nature and it’s an offense against the state of nature.
- Yoren then lays out how the road is narrowing before them, leaving no destination but Harrenhal
- The bitter irony being, of course, that Harrenhal is currently the HQ for the reavers who will descend on Arya & Co. in this chapter!
- Even if they’d escaped Ser Amory’s infernal gaze, they’d have wound up in Lannister clutches regardless. No mercy to be found, no way out of the war.
- This is why it works so well for me that Yoren’s killers aren’t the Lannister goons he confronted earlier; it’s the perfect mix of agency and happenstance
- On the one hand, Yoren backed himself and his charges into his corner in part because he was trying to avoid said goons catching up to them on the kingsroad
- On the other, no one could have predicted that Amory and his wrecking crew would show up to burn an empty town, because...why would you do that?
- At that point, they’re more emissaries of cruel fate than they are rational political actors, and accordingly, you see signs of doom looming throughout the chapter
- Hot Pie’s invocation of the ghosts of Harrenhal
- Arya’s memory of Old Nan’s grisly stories about said ghosts
- Empty cottages
- Then empty farms
- Then the empty village, as if Westeros is emptying out from the bottom up
- Arya hears spooky ghost sounds in the village! oooOOOoooo!
- All of which adds to up to nails on a chalkboard for Arya, telling her they shouldn’t be here and need to GTFO as quickly as possible, and she’s got a rational basis:
- "Arry's scared," Lommy announced, braying laughter.
"I'm not," she snapped back, "but they were."
- "Arry's scared," Lommy announced, braying laughter.
- So much of Arya’s story is about fear, and while fear is indeed the mind-killer, it’s also important to be able to tap into and understand it as Arya does here
- Yoren the idealist
- Yoren’s counterargument to Arya’s well-based fears is the same as it ever was:
- “Thing is, the folks who lived here were at war, like it or no. We're not. Night's Watch takes no part, so no man's our enemy."
- As before, George uses Yoren of the Night’s Watch as a tragic figure of both righteousness and folly, a good man blind to his bad world
- He never considers that his information about Harrenhal might be out of date!
- The Riverlands are ablaze with war, but he assumes Lady Whent will still be there with a cheerful smile welcoming him and his to hearth and harvest
- That’s because to acknowledge otherwise is to admit two terrible truths
- One is that the Westeros he believes in, the one embodied by the ideal of the Night’s Watch, does not and cannot exist in the midst of total war
- The other is that he has led not only himself but his charges, including children, including one he feels duty-bound to see home, straight into the belly of the beast
- It’s the same disillusionment that was the central focus of book one, in the context of the now-omnipresent violence that exploded at that book’s climax
- Yoren goes down insisting he has the authority to make Amory Lorch turn heel and leave those kids alone, because he is the Lorax and speaks for the realm
- Ultimately, he’s as much a bygone figure as those in Old Nan’s stories, believing that the realm Aegon the Conqueror forged as he burned Harren the Black will protect him, when Arya is learning the grimmer reality: “No man’s our friend.”
- Neutrality in a civil war makes you more vulnerable, not less, and while Yoren’s at fault for blinding himself to that, I think it’s more a critique of the war than him
- That bygone era is not that long ago. Granting that the scale of Lannister war atrocities in the Riverlands is far and above Westerosi norms of war, Yoren’s been traveling Westeros his entire life.
- And in all of those travels, he’s operated with the assumption that his status protects him from the dangers of the road.
- To re-emphasize a point from the last time we visited with Arya, Yoren’s belief that NW neutrality safeguards him works similar to how Catelyn will think that guest right will protect her and Robb at the Twins.
- That no one in Yoren’s entire life (save for the one boy who attempted to murder Yoren we heard about in Arya III) has ever attacked, threatened or denied Yoren the courtesy of safe conduct is because of Yoren’s ostensible neutrality.
- Given that George had decided on the Red Wedding as the means of ending Robb Stark’s claim and Robb Stark once and for all, I think the upcoming Lannister abandonment of cultural norm is groundwork for the Red Wedding in the next book.
- But just to reemphasize something we were talking about back in Episode 75, the small irony in all of this is that Yoren isn’t completely neutral here. He’s sheltering the daughter of Eddard Stark, safeguarding her from the Lannisters.
- Now that’s not in any way to justify what Amory Lorch is about to do. For lack of a better term, Yoren is a non-combatant in this war, and Amory has no idea that our venerable Night’s Watch recruiter is secretly sheltering Arya Stark.
- But the greater question George wants us to ask over Night’s Watch neutrality: is it a value worth upholding when innocents are endangered? Yoren chooses to save Arya. And Jon in ADWD will choose to save “Arya” rather than give her over to a monster.
- But that’s not *actually* Arya in ADWD, and the *actual* Arya that will return to Jon in TWOW will have been through a lot of life experience -- with that one of those experiences that shapes her forming her outlook and personality in this very chapter.
- Yoren’s counterargument to Arya’s well-based fears is the same as it ever was:
- Arya the idealist v. Arya the cynic
- Even before the battle, we’re beginning to see the effects of the long road on Arya, as she’s caught between the values represented by her desire for home and the nihilism inculcated by everything she sees along the way
- This struggle is reflected through the prism of her mentors: Yoren believes in the Watch like she believes in Winterfell, but isn’t a spotless glamorous archetype like Syrio, and dies less spectacularly (though no less heroically)
- Arya’s still invoking Syrio, specifically in the name of using his unreal skills to master unforgiving realities:
- Kurz caught a fish with his bare hands. Arya saw how he did it, standing over a shallow pool, calm as still water, his hand darting out quick as a snake when the fish swam near. It didn't look as hard as catching cats. Fish didn't have claws.
- Look with your eyes, Arya wanted to shout at the men below. "Can't they see we're no lords or knights?" she whispered.
"I don't think they care, Arry," Gendry whispered back.
And she looked at Ser Amory's face, the way Syrio had taught her to look, and she saw that he was right.
- In other words, Syrio is now myth, but Arya’s stuck in the mud with Yoren
- Nature speaks to safety and rebirth and an end to tears; Arya wants to swim home, which speaks to an enduring wistful naivete not dissimilar to Yoren’s
- This is similar to Sansa in AGOT, begging Joffrey to send her home, seeing over the fields, forests, oceans and mountains atop the Red Keep, yearning for home.
- This is the pre-eminent motif of our Stark/Snow POVs: ALWAYS yearning for home, fantasizing implausible scenarios where this will occur
- She may realize more than he does that Watch neutrality won’t protect them from whoever made the villagers run for their lives, but she clings to her own myths:
- Hot Pie was being silly; it wouldn't be ghosts at Harrenhal, it would be knights. Arya could reveal herself to Lady Whent, and the knights would escort her home and keep her safe. That was what knights did; they kept you safe, especially women.
- Interesting that Arya and Sansa, TOTAL OPPOSITES, both still want to believe in true knights showing up to save the day! Almost like they aren’t total opposites!
- As with Sansa, the lingering belief in songs is linked to desire for home, but when Hot Pie tries to bridge the gap by talking about her family, Arya shuts him down
- She can only let it out in the context of battle, yelling “Winterfell!” at the top of her tiny lungs, and as Gendry will reveal to her later, even that brief expression of identity is enough for Hot Pie to catch on that “Arry” isn’t as “he” appears
- It’s like her self is being squeezed out of her, just like Yoren’s belief in the realm is being squeezed out of him, just like they’re all being squeezed into this trap
- War, red war!
- All the chapter’s themes and imagery come to a head when the soldiers arrive
- Arya is warned of their approach by the howl of a wolf, which represents home and family but also the predators she met on the road
- Regardless, the warning doesn’t save anyone, so what good is it?
- The soldiers strike like a force of nature--Arya compares them to lantern bugs and fallen stars--but set fire to the trees as well as the houses. In other words, they’re not part of any natural cycle, here to salt the ground so nothing grows
- Tywin thinks of this purely as a message to be sent to Robb and his riverlord allies, with no consideration at all for what happens to the Lommys and Hot Pies
- It’s self-sabotage; he’s leaving his family with nothing over which to rule, no home for the people to come back to, no peace worth having after the war is done
- Consider, too, that the town is abandoned. There are no riverlanders hanging out in the town, all the farmers have boogied on out.
- So, Tywin’s heartless, cruel and war crime objective has already been achieved.
- And yet these assholes burn the town anyways. And they’re bored by it!
- This is distilled nihilism, providing no benefit other than the destruction to these bored soldiers and their who-gives-a-shit commander.
- It reminds me of the scene from Full Metal Jacket where Joker is flying into Vietnam aboard a helicopter, and the door gunner is massacring civilians -- not for any strategic benefit, but for the pure nihilism of killing people.
- Only Arya Underfoot provides eyes on this side of the game of thrones in ACOK
- Yoren confronts them waving his cloak as a banner, the most Yoren thing ever
- If war is, in terms of political imagery, a collision of banners, then this is Yoren trying to carve out a neutral protected space in shadow of his black banner
- But all banners look black by night (as in, all banners die during the long night), and Arya sees that Lorch’s true banner is fire, not open to ideological disputes
- Moreover, the Lannister men leap to the association with Beric Dondarrion, because claiming neutrality gets you lumped in with guerillas fighting all sides
- And indeed, Beric believes in an idea of the realm not dissimilar to Yoren’s
- The difference is that Beric has already died once expecting Lannister thugs to respect the king’s banner, and won’t make that mistake again
- Still, Yoren’s right to refuse Amory and his thugs entry, because he can tell that Amory is not genuinely giving him a chance to spare himself and his charges
- He just wants an excuse to attack, to proclaim them rebels and thus nonpersons
- Yoren’s way at least gives his charges a chance to defend themselves, rather than allowing their killers to walk in and butcher them without so much as a fight
- Arya’s arc, meanwhile, keeps thrumming along beneath the surface
- The mention of Beric leads to a brief flashback to her relative halcyon days in the Red Keep before her father’s fall, just so George can measure the gap
- She wonders why the Lannister men can’t see that they’re not enemies, not an army, until Gendry (raised among the peasants) tells her the truth: they don’t care
- So much of ACOK from the title on down is about the kings posturing for each other but the first real combat we see in the book isn’t between their armies
- It’s one army turning on the people for the sport of it, using the letter of the king’s justice to justify their actions while violating its spirit on every level
- George goes for the gut as Yoren tries a last appeal to the world he believes in...
- “Got me young boys in here,”
- ...but it comes up empty against the world Amory believes in, the one he and Gregor and Vargo Hoat are making real on Tywin’s behalf:
- “Young boys and old men die the same.”
- This battle can’t hope to match the big ones in terms of logistics or twists and turns, so George focuses instead on the intimate details that sear into memory
- That’s especially appropriate given that this is Arya’s first battle, a ramp-up from the violence she witnessed and briefly took part in back in book one
- Cinematic shots like the hand coming over the wall with dirt in its nails, or Yoren using his black banner to kill the knight who mocked him for it
- So much great fire imagery, glinting off stone and swords and the eyeslits of Gendry’s helm, capturing the feeling of the world burning down around you
- I like that Jaqen keeps up his role as the one pop of color in Arya’s otherwise deliberately visually drab ACOK chapters by talking about “red war”
- Then Yoren appears to call Arya a boy one last time (sniff), and tell her to run
- Ironically, given that Arya’s story in ACOK feels like trapdoors opening beneath her, what saves her life and those of her companions here is a literal trapdoor!
- A trapdoor out of hell, no less, and Arya makes it out of hell with her values intact, insisting on saving as many lives as she can, feeling even for the animals
- Of course, while saving the little girl is unambiguously heroic, saving Jaqen is more ambiguous and saving Rorge and Biter will have dreadful consequences
- But can we hold Arya responsible? She’s just one red blood cell flying down the artery of the war, and that’s what makes the chapter’s end so devastating:
- Arya held her breath and kissed the mud on the floor of the tunnel and cried. For whom, she could not say.
- Is she crying for Yoren, for her family, for that blond hank of hair in the soldier’s purse? There’s so much to cry for in Westeros at war that she just can’t choose.
Foreshadowing/Groundwork
We get more setup for my beloved summer home of Harrenhal, both in terms of its sinister reputation and its specific political meaning for Arya:
Hot Pie's eyes got wide. "There's ghosts in Harrenhal . . ."
Yoren spat. "There's for your ghosts." He tossed the stick down in the mud. "Mount up."
Arya was remembering the stories Old Nan used to tell of Harrenhal. Evil King Harren had walled himself up inside, so Aegon unleashed his dragons and turned the castle into a pyre. Nan said that fiery spirits still haunted the blackened towers. Sometimes men went to sleep safe in their beds and were found dead in the morning, all burnt up. Arya didn't really believe that, and anyhow it had all happened a long time ago. Hot Pie was being silly; it wouldn't be ghosts at Harrenhal, it would be knights. Arya could reveal herself to Lady Whent, and the knights would escort her home and keep her safe. That was what knights did; they kept you safe, especially women. Maybe Lady Whent would even help the crying girl.
How about that axe that Arya tosses up to Rorge? I wonder if that’s important:
The axe blow that had killed [Yoren] had split his skull apart, but the great tangled beard could be no one else's, or the garb, patched and unwashed and so faded it was more grey than black. (ACOK, Arya V)
Oh shit, did Rorge kill Yoren with the axe Arya gave him? We’ll find out together in ACOK, Arya V! (But yes, absolutely. Rorge did it.)
Theory/Discussion
Ser Josh B, a Sworn Sword, asks:
Amory Lorch Question - (sneaky combining multiple Arya chapters). I’ve often been interested in how in the fandom Amory Lorch seems to take a backseat to Gregor Cleagne. In ACOK I think of Lorch as just as big of a “war criminal” as Clegane, but he tends to be ignored in most of the commentary I’ve heard. Have you noticed the same? And why do you think that is? I think as Arya points out the indistinct appearance of the Tickler adds to his monstrous nature, I think a similar thing would apply to Lorch.
- Amory is a prominent monster in the backstory, not only in murdering Princess Rhaenys but also (semi-canonically) committing child murder in the Reyne-Tarbeck conflict
- However, that lacks the mythic echoes of Gregor’s Bluebeard backstory, nor does George ever stop the story dead to outline the precise precariousness of Amory’s situation, as he does with Vargo Hoat, the third head of Lord Tywin’s terrible trinity
- Vargo also has a more distinct personality than Amory Lorch, and again, his revenge plot with Jaime and Brienne gets more attention on the page
- But the main reason Lorch doesn’t work the same as the Tickler is that his worst acts are in the backstory, whereas Gregor and Vargo’s men dominate the current atrocities
- Amory Lorch could even be said to be redundant, but he has a couple plot purposes besides wiping Yoren off the map and thus redirecting Arya’s storyline
- He provides fodder for a crucial reversal wherein she feels like she’s gained vengeance for Yoren when Amory loses Harrenhal to Northmen and is fed to a bear...
- ...but those Northmen work for Roose Bolton, and they lured the Bloody Mummers away from Tywin, and they just keep bringing the pain to the smallfolk all around Arya
- Amory also allows Tywin to attempt to redirect blame for the atrocities against Rhaegar’s family away from Gregor, which is (as I’ll argue come ASOS) a very revealing move
- On the whole, I think Ser Amory Lorch falls between the cracks of the flamboyant evil of someone like Gregor and the banality of someone like the Tickler
- One of the series’ less memorable villains, but not everyone can be interesting in themselves. Sometimes someone just has to serve the plot!
- You brought up Roose Bolton and how he conducts himself with Amory at Harrenhal (spot-on, as always) and that gives me the chance to talk about another character parallel: Steelshanks Walton!
- Bannerman to Roose Bolton, just a normal soldier-guy.
- He also participated in the Red Wedding
- And he helped secure the illegitimate Bolton rule in the North.
- As Jaime thinks about him:
Steelshanks Walton commanded Jaime's escort; blunt, brusque, brutal, at heart a simple soldier. Jaime had served with his sort all his life. Men like Walton would kill at their lord's command, rape when their blood was up after battle, and plunder wherever they could, but once the war was done they would go back to their homes, trade their spears for hoes, wed their neighbors' daughters, and raise a pack of squalling children. Such men obeyed without question, but the deep malignant cruelty of the Brave Companions was not a part of their nature. (ASOS, Jaime VI) - I agree that George is not going for a banality of evil critique in Amory (That’s definitely the Tickler), but rather a critique of the guy who even Bronn would look askance at:
- Tyrion was a little drunk, and very tired. "Tell me, Bronn. If I told you to kill a babe . . . an infant girl, say, still at her mother's breast . . . would you do it? Without question?"
"Without question? No." The sellsword rubbed thumb and forefinger together. "I'd ask how much." - At the very least, and I mean very, very least, Bronn has a code that might prevent the murder of innocents.
- But for Amory, he’s willing to throw three year old boys down wells, stab three year old girls like Rhaenys Targaryen and murder members of the Night’s Watch -- all because he got ordered to by Tywin Lannister.
- I think that’s the critique of characters like Amory Lorch and Steelshanks Walton: the unquestioning acquiescence to authority -- an authority in the cases of Tywin Lannister and Roose Bolton is fundamentally evil.
Conclusion
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