It was the biggest lake she had ever seen, with no hint of a far shore. She saw a rambling¹ inn to her left, built out over the water on heavy wooden pilings. To her right, a long pier² jutted³ into the lake, and there were other docks farther east, wooden fingers reaching out from the town. But the only boat in view was an upside-down rowboat abandoned on the rocks beneath the inn, its bottom thoroughly⁴ rotted out. “They’re gone,” Arya said, dejected. What would they do now?  “There’s an inn,” Lommy said, when the others rode up. “Do you think they left any food? Or ale?”  “Let’s go see,” Hot Pie suggested.  “Never you mind about no inn,” snapped Woth. “Yoren said we’re to find a boat.”  “They took the boats.” Somehow Arya knew it was true; they could search the whole town, and they’d find no more than the upside-down rowboat. Despondent⁵, she climbed off her horse and knelt by the lake. The water lapped softly around her legs. A few lantern bugs⁶ were coming out, their little lights blinking on and off. The green water was warm as tears, but there was no salt in it. It tasted of summer and mud and growing things. Arya plunged⁷ her face down into it to wash off the dust and dirt and sweat of the day. When she leaned back the trickles⁸ ran down the back of her neck and under her collar. They felt good. She wished she could take off her clothes and swim, gliding⁹ through the warm water like an skinny pink otter¹⁰. Maybe she could swim all the way to Winterfell.  Woth was shouting at her to help search, so she did, peering into boathouses and sheds while her horse grazed along the shore. They found some sails, some nails, buckets of

分享到：