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"Ah!"
On the Street of Steel, more than ten Lannister soldiers charged after him in disarray, chasing the figure who was pulling farther and farther ahead of them.
A woman who failed to get out of the way in time was knocked to the ground by them. Aside from letting out a cry, there was nothing she could do.
In that place, for a commoner, even a simple curse spoken at the wrong moment could get you killed.
The men in the street, on the other hand, merely stepped aside and watched the chase with interest. Not one of them even thought of helping the woman lying on the ground.
Robb looked miserable at that moment.
The blood at the corner of his mouth had already begun to dry, and the ugly slash across his back, opened by the sword of the last Lannister soldier, had stopped bleeding thanks to the red mist that man had given him in death.
But without a steady flow of that mist, and after having already lost blood before, his physical strength was nearly spent.
Master Anguy's smithy was already behind him.
Before he could shake off the pursuers clinging close behind him, there was no way he could seek Varys's help through Anguy.
Although Robb had memorized the map of King's Landing very well, a map, in the end, was still only a flat map, not a complete view.
The street through which he was now fleeing was completely unfamiliar to him.
Even so, looking at the many smithies around him and comparing them to the general layout in his head, he should have been in the lower-middle stretch of the Street of Steel, near Visenya's Hill.
At last, he spotted a covered stall set up beside a narrow passage.
As he sprinted past it, he slashed through the two wooden poles supporting it with his sword.
With no support, the canopy collapsed and blocked the already narrow street, forcing the Lannister soldiers behind him to halt, curse, and start hacking at the awning with their swords to clear a path.
Taking advantage of the fact that all eyes were on the fallen stall, Robb slipped into an empty alley.
Inside the alley, the ground was cluttered with junk, filth, excrement, and clotheslines. As he ran, he yanked down a long cloak someone had left hanging there.
While racing and turning left and right through the alleys, he stripped off the bloodstained leather jerkin and changed clothes as he ran, doing everything he could to throw off his pursuers.
By the time he emerged from that alley and reached a broader street again, his appearance was no longer nearly as eye-catching as before.
Clop clop clop!
In that part of the city, several wagons were coming and going, giving the place an air of activity and modest prosperity.
Robb's mind worked quickly. After glancing to either side, he crumpled the bloodied jerkin into a ball and tossed it into the wagon of a man heading toward the Mud Gate.
In the same instant, he lifted the curtain of another wagon traveling in the opposite direction and slipped quickly into its compartment.
Inside were bars and pieces of iron and copper.
After fighting and fleeing with injuries for so long, Robb simply let himself drop onto a block of iron and began dragging in deep breaths.
The wagon rattled on for only a short while before gradually coming to a stop at the sound of the driver pulling on the reins.
Always alert, Robb immediately lifted the curtain and examined his surroundings.
It was a narrow, empty alley. Beside the wagon stood the back door of a smithy, and it was open.
Robb jumped down from the wagon and went in without wasting a moment.
Inside the smithy, a black-haired youth who looked to be on his way out to unload the wagon froze in place the moment he saw Robb enter with a sword in hand.
Robb had not expected to run into a boy around his own age the moment he stepped inside.
His grip tightened around the sword, and for an instant the thought flashed through his mind to kill the boy and eliminate the witness.
No.
Have I already been shaped by this world without realizing it?
Just because a boy saw me, my first thought was to kill him?
Robb's thoughts churned, but in that moment he came back to himself, relaxed his grip on the sword, and turned to leave.
"Hey. If you don't mind, you can hide in the storeroom on the left. Usually, I'm the only one who goes in there."
When he was almost at the door, he heard the youth's low voice behind him.
Robb stopped and turned to look at him more carefully.
He was a kind-faced boy, with blue eyes and black hair.
He was only a little shorter than Robb, wore a leather vest, had muscular arms, and burn marks all over his hands. It was obvious he worked hard there every day.
"My name is Robb. I'll remember this favor and repay it one day."
Since there was a place where he could hide and rest for a while, Robb did not stand on ceremony. He thanked him and walked toward the storeroom on the left.
"No need to thank me. My master will go out to make deliveries as soon as I finish unloading today, but at the latest he'll be back the day after tomorrow.
So you can only stay there until the morning of the day after tomorrow."
As he walked toward the back door, the boy spoke in a low voice.
"Gendry! Where have you gotten to? Come unload this at once!"
"Coming, Master Tobho!"
A man's deep voice rang out from outside, and the boy, Gendry, immediately ran to answer.
A smithy. Gendry.
He was King Robert's bastard.
The moment he heard that name, Robb stopped in place.
Comparing the boy's appearance with the image he had of Robert, the two... did not look alike in the least.
It wasn't exactly strange that he hadn't realized it sooner. Robb had never seen Robert in his youth. If he compared Gendry only to the fat king he knew, he would never have made the connection at first glance.
Shaking his head, and wanting only to rest for the moment, Robb decided to leave that for later.
He stepped into the smithy's storeroom and shut the door behind him.
Inside were several finished weapons, farming tools, and also a fair amount of iron, copper, and other materials.
Robb sat down heavily on a finished suit of armor and simply began resting there.
At that moment, although he was in terrible condition, he was still far from being cornered.
After the earlier loss of control, his constitution had clearly increased. His chest, injured by the impact of the oak shield, barely troubled him anymore after the last two portions of red mist.
The problem now was the long wound across his back. The bleeding had stopped, but such a tiny amount of mist was not enough to accelerate the healing.
If by any chance some pursuer managed to find him there, then he would have no hesitation in turning that man into red mist to restore his strength and treat his own wound.
It was true that, after the fighting that day, his Blood Pact Points had risen a little further, but they were still within a controllable limit.
If, in the end, there were too many enemies, he could always resort to his final card.
The problem was that he had saved that final card for the rescue of his father.
And, in all likelihood, it could only be used once. If the enemy became wary after seeing it, it would stop being much use.
Gendry went back and forth several times, unloading all the raw materials from the wagon.
After that, he helped carry the finished armor and tools out of the storeroom, and then his master left with the wagon.
Only after that did Gendry shut the back door of the smithy.
Throughout all of that time, no Lannister pursuer appeared.
With great care, Gendry even wiped away the footprints near the back door.
After finishing that, he went back to his normal work inside the smithy.
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