Fingers up bottoms: one. Castles under siege: two. Beheadings: two, at least.

By the tallies that count on Game of Thrones, you'd have to say this is a pretty decent episode, really.

It opens on Arya (Maisie Williams), whom we last saw being skewered like a mushroom-and-tofu stack at a vegetarian barbecue before leaping into the sewage-infested water of Braavos, after which she staggered back to land, blood seeping out of her gaping wound, septicaemia presumably seeping in.

Now, she's backstage at the theatre, calling in the debt Lady Crane (Essie Davis) owes her for that life-saving bit when she stopped the actress drinking the poison in her drink (OK, so Arya had put the poison there in the first place. But let's not quibble).

As it happens, Miss Fisher – as ABC watchers will know her best – is a dab hand with a needle and thread. She's had plenty of experience patching people up, she says, because she has a thing for the sort of men who go out drinking and whoring and then come home stinking of drink and whores, and her response generally is to stick them with a knife, feel bad about it, then stitch them up.

As for the young actress who'd wanted her dead, "she'll have trouble finding work after what I did to her face".

She's one tough cookie, that Lady Crane, but she's taken a shine to Arya. Come join the theatre, she says, and what with all that face-maiming and sticking people with a blade it sounds like the young Stark lass has all the necessary skills for life as a thespian.

Lady Crane (Essie Davis) reckons Arya has what it takes to make it in the theatre, especially the killer instinct.

But she wants to travel, does Arya, and not with a panto troupe.

"Essos is east, Westeros is west," she says. "But what's west of Westeros?"

"I don't know," the older woman replies.

"Nobody does. It's where all the maps stop."

"The edge of the world, maybe."

"I'd like to see that."

So it's off to the bookshop to snap up a copy of West of Westeros on a Shoestring – but first, she has to heal, so Phryne gives her some milk of poppy. Arya – who didn't even notice she'd popped out to score – looks aghast.

"Trust me," Lady Crane says. "If my soup didn't kill you, nothing will."

Meanwhile, out in the Riverlands, Sandor Clegane (Rory McCann), aka the Hound, is hunting for the religious nutters who killed his adopted family of religious nutters.

The Hound (Rory McCann) has an axe to grind ... preferably against someone's skull.

He finds them huddled around a campfire in the forest, shoving fingers up each other's backsides for fun. The Hound doesn't waste time talking – hell, he doesn't even stop to sniff their fingers – he just strides in, axe swinging, and lops the head off one, puts his blade through the chest of another, and whacks a third in the nethers.

As what used to be the man's private parts ooze to the ground, the Hound demands information.

"Where's the other one, the one with the yellow cloak?"

"F--- you," says the bleeding man.

"Those are your last words? F--- you? Come on, you can do better."

"C--t," No-Nuts says.

"You're shit at dying, you know that?"

Oh it's good to have you back, Hound. Your sweet, sweet poetry is exactly what this show has been lacking.

The Hound's brother may not be so eloquent, but he's not to be outdone this episode. Over in King's Landing, Gregor Clegane (Hafthor Julius Bjornsson​), aka the Mountain, is about to have a moment of his own.

He don't say much, that Mountain, but he do leave an impression.

More religious nutters – this lot led by Cersei's cousin Lancel Lannister (Eugene Simon) – turn up to "invite" the Queen Mother to meet the High Septon (aka High Sparrow). Of course it's not really an invitation, but Cersei says no all the same.

Lancel's men are about to arrest her when her man-Mountain blocks their way.

"Order your man to stand aside or there will be violence," Lancel says.

"I choose violence," says Cersei (Lena Headey). She may be hideous at times (well, most of the time) but, damn, she can be cool too.

There's a whole flock of Sparrows here but the Mountain only has to rip the head off one of them to send the rest flying south for the winter.

Brother Jamie (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), meanwhile, is laying siege to Riverrun, but dreaming of the sweet incestuous love of his sis. If only he could get Blackfish (Clive Russell) to clear the hell out he could get back to King's Landing and beget some more bastard sons to sit on the Iron Throne, which is exactly where young Tommen (Dean-Charles Chapman) is right now.

Poor Tommen. He doesn't seem to have noticed that whoever sits in the Iron Throne soon ends up dead.

Freshly converted by his wife's feigned devotion, thick-as-tar Tommen tells his subjects "the faith and the crown are the two pillars that hold up this world; one collapses, so does the other". We can only hope.

Back in a tent in the fetid swamps of Riverrun, Jamie parleys with Brienne (Gwendoline Christie). They're an odd pair, mysteriously drawn to each other by their shared faith in chivalry. They look like they're just one roused emotion away from an armour-plated love clinch; breastplate to breastplate they'd come, their arms just a little too short in all that metal to wrap around each other. Never mind – an hour-and-a-half later they'd finally have been stripped down to their undergarments by a team of pages, ready at last to gird their loins in steamy battle.

But I digress.

Brienne says she wants to try to get Blackfish to leave the castle and march north in support of Sansa. Jamie gives her until nightfall to make it happen, otherwise they'll be on opposite sides of the battle that inevitably will follow.

But Blackfish doesn't think much of her suggestion that they slip out the tradesman's entrance and head north to fight the sadist Ramsay Bolton and an army of the undead, nor that he abandon his family home to the Lannisters. Funny that.

"This is my home and if Jamie Lannister wants it he can bloody well take it the way everyone else does," says Blackfish. By booking it on Air B'nB, that is. And they can bloody well do their own laundry, too.

Over in Meereen, Lord Varys (Conleth Hill) and Tyrion (Peter Dinklage) are wandering the streets, the latter convinced his deal with the masters has paid off handsomely, the latter not so certain but more focused on his forthcoming trip to Westeros where he plans to catch up on all the latest musical theatre.

"I leave behind the most famous dwarf in the city," he says.

"Varys," Tyrion corrects him. "The most famous dwarf in the world."

With Varys gone, Tyrion tries to convince Missandei (Nathalie Emmanuel) and Grey Worm (Jacob Anderson) that getting smashed is a perfectly good way to spend your days ruling a kingdom. She's just starting to see the sense in this when the city is attacked by an armada.

"The masters have come for their property."

Grey Worm has a cunning plan: do nothing.

"We will defend the Pyramid and wait for them to come," he says. "Then we will fight them." Oh, sure you will.

There's a rattling at the door. Is this the moment? No it's Daenerys (Emilia Clarke), with a dragon squawking somewhere in the background. She looks well pissed.

Back at the other siege, Jamie has decided Blackfish's nephew Edmure Tully (Tobias Menzies) might be the best way in. After all, he is still technically Lord of Riverrun.

"You know at some level that you're an evil man," Eddy tells Jamie, in a rare moment of both insight and defiance from a man who has thus far proven to be nothing if not weak and stupid.

"I'll leave that judgement to the gods," says Jamie.

"How convenient for you."

Lordy, now he's getting all witty too. Amazing what a brush with death can do for a man's character.

Jamie Lannister is a man of light and shade.

Jamie confesses that all he wants is to get back to his sister. "If I have to slaughter every Tully that ever lived to get back to her, that's what I'll do."

That includes Edmure's infant son, and his surprisingly comely wife. Given that he's never seen the former and hasn't set eyes on the latter since their wedding night, you might think he'd greet this with a "meh". But no.

Instead, Edmure walks up to the gate, demands they drop the drawbridge and let him in. Blackfish won't have a bar of it but the leader of the watch insists. "He's my lord, my lord. My lord has given an order." My lord, it's a drolly amusing exchange.

The drawbridge is dropped, Edmure resumes command and immediately tells his men to lay down their weapons. Blackfish dies – but off-screen; apparently they'd used all this episode's blood-and-guts budget in the first five minutes – and Brienne and Podrick row away, as Jamie gives a wistful little wave from the ramparts. I swear, if that suit of armour had floaties attached he'd dive right in after her.

The Hound, meanwhile, has bumped into Beric Dondarrion (Richard Dormer) and his band of outlaws, last seen waaaay back in season three.

Turns out the Hound's mates were slain by some of Beric's Brotherhood, and now these varmints are about to be hanged for their crimes.

The Hound demands a different sort of vengeance, with his axe.

"We're not butchers," the priest Thoros (Paul Kaye) says. "We hang them."

"Hanging? Over in an instant," says Sandor. "Where's the punishment in that?"

"They die," Thoros says.

"We all bloody die, except this one here," the Hound says, nodding at Beric, whom he once sliced in half only to see him come back to life (as you do).

Beric wants him to come north with them and join the battle against the evil that's massing there. It's a cause bigger than themselves, he says.

The Hound is unconvinced. "A lot of horrible shit in this world gets done for something larger than ourselves," he says.

How did this bloodthirsty former servant of the even more bloodthirsty Lannisters become the voice of reason all of a sudden?

And finally, back to Arya. After Lady Crane is killed in her home by a man who turns out to be the Waif (Faye Marsay), she leaps out of a window and into the streets of Braavos, stopping only to make some freshly squeezed orange juice using the innovative method of rolling her body over fruit strewn across a stone staircase (maximum juice, minimum pulp, apparently).

She wants to travel, does Arya, but will it be to the west of Westeros or back home to Winterfell? Photo: HBO/Foxtel

Her stitches are popping open, blood is again seeping, and her days, surely, are numbered. But she lures the Waif to a room in which the world's slowest-burning candle sputters away. A room where she just happens to have hidden her sword, Needle. One swipe of its blade and the room is plunged into darkness; another swipe and Needle is plunged into the Waif.

In the House of Black and White, the camera tilts up to reveal the face of the Waif in a niche, so freshly removed that blood still drips from the flesh.

"Finally," says Jaqen (Tom Wlaschiha). "A girl is no one."

Not quite, oh faceless man. Not quite.

"A girl is Arya Starkof Winterfell ," she tells him defiantly. "And she's going home."

Karl Quinn is on Facebook and on twitter @karlkwin