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They rode hard during the day and made camp beneath the trees at night, stopping as often as they could at every inn they passed along the way to change horses and fill their bellies with something other than roots and rabbits and rainwater. They made it through three quarters of their journey without too much trouble. Of course, there was the one man who "recognized" Jaqen, but he merely stared openmouthed until he passed them, and by the time he thought to look back, Arya had pulled Jaqen behind a tree. They stood pressed quite close together, and Arya found herself both relieved and strangely disappointed that Jaqen was not the type to make a lewd jape.
Another morning, when they were a fortnight's ride from Winterfell, Arya woke to a hand over her mouth and a weight settling over her hips. She looked up to see a strange man above her, holding a knife between his teeth and struggling to unlace his trousers with one free hand. Arya did not try to scream - in fact she tried harder not to roll her eyes before she glanced over at Jaqen. Two men had pinned him down onto his stomach, a third advancing toward him, swinging a long knife.
The man above her grunted as he finally pulled his cock free, and Arya waited until the man with the knife was almost upon Jaqen before she swung her legs up to knee the man above her in the back. He fell forward with a whoomph of breathlessness, and pulled his hand off her mouth in his scrabble to remain upright. Arya wrenched an arm free from under him and clawed at his face. He cried out and rolled off of her and Arya leapt to her feet, pulling Needle from her belt and a knife from her boot in the same fluid motion.
To her right, Jaqen - whose hair was brown with mud and who, she was sure, would not have been attacked had the men thought him a Targaryen - had managed to flip the man with the knife onto his back and send one of the others sprawling at Arya's feet. She met his eyes and grinned. He bared his white teeth at her in return before one of the men who had held him down caught his attention once again.
Arya left him to it and twirled her blades in her hands. The man at her feet scowled up at her, and she smiled back before crouching above him. "Men," she whispered, dragging the tip of her knife across his shirt to reveal the bare skin beneath, "can be so vulnerable at times," and she raised her blade, "don't you think?"
But before she could sheath her knife in the man's chest, a thick hand caught her wrist and dragged her backwards. Arya yelped as the hand twisted her arm until the knife fell free. The man who had straddled her earlier pulled her upright and wrenched Needle from her grasp before looping his arms through hers and holding her tight to his chest. The man on the ground rose to his feet and wiped his mouth, grinning.
"Look at that," he said, picking her knife up off the ground. He pointed it at his chest. "You already got me half undressed. Hardly fair. Time I returned the favor," and he pulled at the front of her shirt and slashed the knife through it, the tip of the blade just grazing her chest, "don't you think?" The big man behind her chuckled. Arya narrowed her eyes.
"No," she said, "I don't." She raised a leg and kicked him where it counted, hard. He screamed, stumbled backwards, and fell to his knees.
The big man growled in her ear and, oddly enough, she felt his cock stiffen against her. Arya rolled her eyes. Men. He tightened his grip on her arms and slammed her against a tree. Arya wriggled against him, trying to get free, before she realized his trousers were still unlaced and he was reaching around to unlace hers. She pressed her front to the tree trunk and scraped her cheek in her effort to look over at Jaqen. The man with the knife was dead, his own blade sticking out of the side of his neck, and the other was curled up on the ground, groaning in agony. Jaqen stepped over him and to the raper clutching his manhood. He toed the man with his boot and looked up at Arya as if to ask permission.
She noted briefly that he did not rush to her defense, as some boys - a man now, I suppose - might have. She shook the thought from her head and nodded, the bark of the tree scraping her cheek again. Jaqen slammed the heel of his boot into the groin of the raper and knelt between the man's legs, prying them apart with practiced hands. Arya turned her face away when she saw him draw his knife and waited until the raper's screams distracted the big man before she threw her head back and hit him in the nose.
The big man stumbled back, holding a hand to his bleeding nose. "You little bitch!"
Arya whirled around and scooped her sword up from the ground. "Little is right. Bitch, not until recently." And she flew at him, twirling with the grace of a water dancer, slicing, cutting, slashing, jabbing, until the big man fell dead and his blood flowed red at her feet. She wiped her lips and paused to examine her handiwork before looking up again at Jaqen. He had finished with the raper, and was now on his back with the last man's hands around his throat. Jaqen's lovely face was purple, his full lips blue, and it was a sight that did not sit well with Arya. He managed a feeble smile when he saw Arya coming, and the smile grew wider when she plunged Needle through the man's back and out his front. The tip of the sword, she would later learn, cut into Jaqen's chest.
"A girl," he croaked as Arya pulled the dead man off of him, "has become - "
"Shut up," she said, helping him to his feet. "I'd like to make it to Winterfell before winter comes."
"A girl has forgotten," he rasped, "Winter in Westeros ended a year past."
Arya sighed and wiped Needle clean on the hem of her shirt. "It was a joke, Jaqen. They don't have those, where you're from?"
He nodded. "A man asks forgiveness. Being choked to death has made a man foolish." But his eyes twinkled, and Arya punched him in the arm.
Jaqen crouched amongst the dead bodies and passed a weary hand over his face. Arya noted red blood on his smooth, dark cheek and red blood staining his fine white hair, the mud in it now all rubbed away. She smiled. "A little more blood in your hair," she murmured, licking the blood from her lips, "And you'll almost look like the Jaqen H'ghar that Arry the orphan boy knew."
The look he gave her was one of such pure derision that Arya couldn't help but laugh. "Alright," she said, sitting down beside him, "Catch your breath. Once you've done that, there's a stream not twenty miles north. We'll camp there for the night, and bathe the blood from our skin."
Jaqen looked as though he was about to roll his eyes, but instead he said hoarsely, "A girl will need a new shirt." Arya frowned and held the tear in the cloth closed. With any other man she might have known what that comment symbolized, but Jaqen was not any man. She lifted a lock of his hair with two fingers and sniffed at it. She grimaced. "Eurgh. Not as much as a man needs a bath."
His lips curved up in a smile. "A girl does not smell so sweet herself."
"That's enough catching your breath. Come," she said, rising to her feet and extending a hand towards him, "Winterfell's a fortnight's ride away."