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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 UTC

Hello 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: 

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!

https://youtu.be/Z7svbIy5fb8

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.

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.

Conclusion


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