Game of Thrones Tales: The Ultimate Game:Book I-Back to the Throne Room

Game of Thrones Tales: Back to the Throne Room...Part XXII

Game of Thrones Tales: Back to the Throne Room...

Summary: There's only one solution when Tyrion and Sansa have found the new King as mad as the Mad Targaryen and cynically evil, once on the throne, as Joffrey. So evil he's happily allowed the world to be invaded by unspeakably hideous creatures from some little planet out on the spiral rim of the Galaxy, to secure his reign of terror.

Part XXII...

The grounds of "Mistress Hanuk's" farm...Very early morn...

Yes, hide in plain sight...Arya thought, trudging wearily, with pail and lantern... The Brotherhood's way, really. In fact, no need not to take full advantage of all the blessings such a strategy offered. Particularly if it encouraged an overconfident Dirter spy to contact her HQ, determined to broadcast a bit of momentous news.

She paused, sighing, setting down lantern to lift the barn door bar. No denying that this settled farming life, for all its charms, wasn't hard work, even after all she'd been through.

Yes, this would be information that might pry her loose from her admittedly very well played role, at least for a moment...

Namely that the long-lost Arya Stark, sister of Lady Sansa and in-law of the Minister of Defense, had at last turned up.

And whom was the said Arya more likely to communicate with than her dear brother and Nights' Watch Commander?

Of course if the dear lady Hanuk was in possession of intelligence furnished by say, a Brotherhood traitor, she might be expecting an experienced agent commander to try to pass herself...Or, himself...Off as a wandering refugee. But Arya Stark, who'd not been seen in public for years and whose two written communications with her sister had been both secret and limited in information and whose one visit to said sister had been likewise secret, would understandably have been nervous about revealing herself as she traveled from the far North where she'd hidden from the Lannisters and others seeking her for so long. Hanuk would be suspicious, naturally, but unable to be certain.

Still...A long-lost Stark girl suddenly showing up, alive...On the doorstep of a top Dirter spy masquerading quite brilliantly as one of us?

Just a bit too difficult to dismiss as coincidence...

And yet, it really was...Totally coincidence and amazing good fortune that she'd blundered into Hanuk's nest...

Not that it would hurt her standing with the Council to suggest she'd had reason to look in on "Mistress Hanuk" and her farm.

No...She sighed...Best to stick to the truth. They'd know it anyway

And best of all she had the perfect stand-in for herself as the Brotherhood's commander...Another visitor whom Hanuk had good reason to suspect...Who fit the bill exactly.

And whom, as a member of the Brotherhood, she could request...Well, order...To take her place...For the greater good.

Not that she wished any harm to befall Arden Snow...But war is war, after all. He'd surely been prepared for the possibility. And he was safely off...And might just be skilled enough to remain so.

And she would be betraying nothing, simply leaving it to Hanuk to draw her own conclusions and back them up through surveillance .

It would mean likely suicide for Arden and any with him if taken and threatened with whatever advanced means of torture and "interrogation" the Dirters possessed, the fact that there had been little evidence that the Dirters bothered about such things to date counting for little with such a people. Certainly they were brutal enough when their interests were perceived threatened even if subtlety seemed beyond them. At the very least a captured Arden, suspected of leadership of the Brotherhood in Westeros would face that brutality...And Gods know what else, Hanuk's little game having revealed another side to the Dirters.