When Jaime felt a delicate, barely-perceptible weight drop into the saddle behind him, he reacted immediately, reaching behind him with one hand and flinging whatever it was to the ground. To his surprise, the dark bundle of robes did not crumple into a heap, groan and lie still, but rolled, graceful as a cat, to its feet again, a ludicrously tiny sword clutched in one hand, its wolf eyes like wildfire.

It was the Stark girl. And unless he was mistaken, she had just tried to kill him.

Blasted impudence.

She came at him again as he dismounted, her tiny sword striking a blow so powerful that the impact of deflecting it drove him to one knee.

That's impossible.

The girl slid into a distinctly non-Westerosi-looking stance and waited for him as he stumbled to his feet, red-faced and humiliated. The last time he had so gravely underestimated an opponent, he had been her age. The knowledge stung.

To add insult to injury, he hadn't even bothered to armour himself, reasoning that the little girl probably wouldn't be much of a threat in the unlikely event of his actually being the one to find her; and as she let her cloak drop to the floor and kicked it elegantly to one side, revealing the suit of boiled leather beneath, he cursed his own stupidity.

'Put the sword down, my lady,' he said, in what he hoped was a commanding, reasonable voice.

She seemed to take offence at that, and lunged.

At first, he felt alarmingly disoriented. The girl was everywhere at once, trapping him in a whirlwind of lunges, parries and blows; attacking him from the rear when he expected an assault from the front; continually aiming for his head, his neck and the back of his knees; rolling between his legs to upset his balance; her tiny feet dancing elflike across the earth, never staying in one place. His sword seemed more of a burden than anything else: too large to do any damage and too heavy to allow him to try.

Soon enough, though, patterns began to emerge, just as they did in the technique of every knight and squire he had ever faced in the practice yard, on the tourney grounds and on the battlefield. He began to anticipate the way she would move, and each time (well, almost each time), he was ready. She sensed the change in him, and adjusted accordingly, and soon her eyes were burning into Jaime's as his searched hers; for the secret, for the next move, for the game. Under ordinary circumstances, it would have mortified him that he was taking so long to dispatch some dirty little tomboy who had never sparred in a practice yard in her life; but the feeling did not plague him at this particular moment. He was having too much fun.

How had she learned to fight this way? The speed and grace of it exhilarated him; no mucking about with lances, war hammers and horses; no grunting under the weight of armour or suffering the walking-through-mud drudgery of the conventional duel, joust or mêlée. It was just her and the blade; her as she became the blade.

'Bit of a quandary for you,' she said, clearly enjoying herself, 'if you kill me, you've failed your father. But if you don't kill me…I'm going to kill you.'

He cursed as she disarmed him, his sword flying off into the trees like a spear. He drew his dagger and flung it at her. She deflected it easily.

Jaime felt naked as his name day.

She is going to kill me.

Instead of killing him, she drew a greatsword from its sheath on her back and tossed it to him. He caught it deftly.

Seven hells, Jaime thought, a kind of ecstasy taking hold of him as he faced her, what a woman.

As they circled each other, he felt himself getting hard. Nothing unusual about that. It wouldn't be the first time it had happened mid-battle. He wondered if she had noticed.

Jaime and Arya drew nearer and nearer to each other, and he smiled at her as a lion would at an object of prey.

Her eyes lighting up like the sun on a blade, she smiled back.

Notes

That's all for now, beautiful people! Sequel coming up soon!

Thank you for all the kind reviews and feedback! Please keep them coming so I can better spread the love of Arya and Jaime.

Valar Morghulis and goodnight!