147 ASOS 4 Arya I: Protector is the Pack

Once she acknowledges she'd be moving twice as fast alone, Arya realizes she's endangered Hot Pie and Gendry by bringing them as protection. She considers protecting them by revealing her identity, if they're caught, until she realizes that would mean Roose Bolton would know. Then, she decides she'll do whatever it takes to secure their escape. That night, Arya has a wolf dream, unwittingly warging Nymeria. She and a pack of wolves kill the Bloody Mummers tracking them.

Leadership

The chapter's theme of leadership opens the wonderous thought of what Arya could do if she knew she controlled an army of wolves through Nymeria. This will develop when we later realize Arya is in danger of becoming a wolf in human skin because an unwitting warg. The horror of what Arya would do as a brutal, murderous power counters the excitement about the image of Arya riding Nymeria at the head of a wolf army. It contributes to the growing theme of responsibility in leadership.

Arya leads and thinks the others allow it because she's the one with the map, but when they break for lunch Gendry asks her where they're going. He seems concerned she still means to walk to Winterfell. The implication is that Gendry, who likely only came along to protect Arya, will not go just anywhere. Themes of attrition and mutiny that will build toward the mutiny at Craster's have also circled the question of contest for leadership, as with Lark the Sisterman's repeated suggestions to Chett, Jaime's intention to redirect Brienne away from the river and roads to avoid recapture, and Gendry's role. Gendry backs Arya in decisions we know to be sound, such as walking a mile in a creek bed to obscure their trail and letting Hot Pie know his pains can't dictate because the group hasn't reached safety yet. However, when Arya falls asleep in her saddle, Gendry takes the reins and tells her they're going to sleep now, taking first watch. It's a reminder that every man of the group who adopts the mentality of leadership adds to its collective strength.

Mnemonic device "Protector is the Pack" refers to

1. Arya's initial awareness that she should try to bring Hot Pie and Gendry with her to Riverrun because of the moment in the Harrenhal godswood when she prayed to the heart tree for guidance and heard Ned's voice say what he did to her in the Red Keep when he explained the Stark House words: "The lone wolf dies but the pack survives." It is more dangerous to travel alone and to be alone in the world, as she was in Fleabottom.

2. Arya's protection of Hot Pie and Gendry by warging Nymeria to kill the Bloody Mummers sent after them. When she wargs Nymeria, who leads a meta-pack of a hundred wolves, Arya is protector and pack.

3. Gendry and Hot Pie's roles in the group. Each contributes to an overall leadership: Gendry by quietly managing up and Hot Pie by loudly questioning.

Constructions

Arya is in danger of becoming a wolf in human skin because a unwitting warg. The upcoming Bran chapter (153 ASOS 10 Bran I: Fly of Die) demonstrates the danger of a warg's becoming like their beast. "Remember yourself or the wolf will consume you," Jojen warns.-127 Yet, Bran keeps "forgetting" to assert his will over Summer and would rather just be Summer. His natural judgement is being dangerously influenced. After Summer steals a kill from a wolf pack, Bran recommends stealing horses or a boat to facilitate their travel, though the Reeds have already ruled that out as being as likely to get them hunted as trying to trade and letting people guess who they really are. When Arya killed the guard to escape Harrenhal, she had to conjure her teachers to embolden herself to do the deed but, once it was done, left her hands bloody, trusting the rain to wash them. It's the last line of 138 ACOK 65 Arya X: Iron Coin.

Setup for the Red Wedding in Arya's so fearing Roose Bolton that she decides not to reveal her identity as Arya Stark to the Bloody Mummers, who she is less afraid of.

Setup for The Brotherhood Without Banners, Stoneheart, and her eating the worm from the kindly old man's eye at the House of Black & White in Arya's eating the wormy apple plucked from the orchard hung with corpses.

References

Arya, who looks like Lyanna, and Gendry, who looks like Robert, begin to be shipped in this chapter for a romance foreshadowed by Ned in A Game of Thrones when Renly showed him Margaery's likeness and asked if she looked like Lyanna, prompting Ned to wonder if Renly was fantasizing his own romance resembled Robert and Lyanna's.