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Arya
艾莉亞
The road was little more than two ruts through the weeds.
與其說這是路，不如說是穿過雜草叢的兩道車轍。
The good part was, with so little traffic there'd be no one to point the finger and say which way they'd gone. The human flood that had flowed down the kingsroad was only a trickle here.
好處在于，由于往來人少，就沒有人能指出他們的去向。國王大道上人潮洶涌，這里只有涓滴細流。
The bad part was, the road wound back and forth like a snake, tangling with even smaller trails and sometimes seeming to vanish entirely only to reappear half a league farther on when they had all but given up hope. Arya hated it. The land was gentle enough, rolling hills and terraced fields interspersed with meadows and woodlands and little valleys where willows crowded close to slow shallow streams. Even so, the path was so narrow and crooked that their pace had dropped to a crawl.
壞處呢，這路像蛇一般前后蜿蜒，有時和荒僻小徑交雜纏繞，有時則幾乎完全消失，等他們快放棄希望，才在一兩里外又復出現(xiàn)。艾莉亞討厭這樣的狀況。附近地勢并不崎嶇，丘陵和梯田高低起伏，草地、樹林和小溪谷點綴其間；溪谷中，水流緩慢，柳樹夾岸。風景雖美，路徑卻非常狹窄，左彎右拐，使他們前進的速度幾與爬行無異。
It was the wagons that slowed them, lumbering along, axles creaking under the weight of their heavy loads. A dozen times a day they had to stop to free a wheel that had stuck in a rut, or double up the teams to climb a muddy slope. Once, in the middle of a dense stand of oak, they came face-to-face with three men pulling a load of firewood in an ox cart, with no way for either to get around. There had been nothing for it but to wait while the foresters unhitched their ox, led him through the trees, spun the cart, hitched the ox up again, and started back the way they'd come. The ox was even slower than the wagons, so that day they hardly got anywhere at all.
拖慢速度的是馬車，它們載重很多，車軸嘎吱作響，隆隆行進。一天里，必須停下十幾次，把卡在車轍里的輪子拉出來；要么就是臨時增加拉車的牲口，以助其爬上泥濘斜坡。還有一次，在一片濃密的橡樹林中，他們迎面碰上一部三人合拉的牛車，上面堆滿了柴薪，雙方都無路可讓，最后只好等那幾個樵夫解開韁繩，把牛牽進林子，掉轉(zhuǎn)車頭，再把牛重新拴上，原路返回。那頭牛比馬車還慢，所以那天等于就這么浪費掉了。
