Anguy and the other archers were waiting. Two Mummers came bursting from the septry side by side, axes in their hands. A few smashed through shuttered windows, and soon enough thin tendrils of smoke were rising between the broken shutters. …Flaming arrows flew through the morning mists, trailing pale ribbons of fire, and thudded into the wooden walls of the septry. Thoros gave a shout, and the outlaws attacked in earnest. He screamed as his clothes took fire, and that was the end of stealth. The second man dropped the torch, and the flames licked up at him. One man went down with an arrow through his throat, the other through his belly. The Mummers had posted two guards there, but their torch left them night blind, and the outlaws had crept in close.
He tumbled bonelessly down the steep slate pitch, and fell in front of the septry door. He was crouched down by the chimney two hundred yards away, no more than a vague shadow in the predawn gloom, but as the sky began to lighten he stirred, stretched, and stood. The man on the roof was the first to die. But we haven’t seen them go to war until now: Throughout ASOIAF, we’ve had their actions described by Starks and Lannisters alike, we’ve heard their names on the lips of torturers and their victims alike, and through Arya’s eyes we’ve seen how their day-to-day support structures function.
These questions become all the more important because this chapter in the one time that we actually see the Brotherhood Without Banners in action as a guerrilla army fighting against the Lannister regime. Are they the mythic outlaws they appeared to be in the Hollow Hill, or just robber knights? Does their revolutionary justice seem more equitable or more corrupt when it lacks the benefit of divine sanction? And of course, what does this all mean for Arya Stark and her future direction in life? In this chapter, therefore, Arya (and thus the reader) takes a second look at the Brotherhood Without Banners in the sober light of day.
TWITCH LEECHER CHAPTER FULL
One cannot live forever in the full flood of mystical revelation like an LSD high or an orgasm or an adrenaline rush, homeostasis inevitably kicks in to return us to normalcy. There is something almost natural, about it. Arya VII can’t help but feel like something of an anti-climax (although more properly it’s a denoument) after the literary fireworks display of the previous chapter.
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