The Sellsword

Prologue

King's Landing, 3 Days after Ned Stark's execution.

The Dancing Wolf tavern was full to bursting with customers, as it always was in the evening. The main floor was full of the smell of **** and the sounds of drunken men talking, and on the floors above the sounds of those same men fucking whores filled the air.

Garrick was sat in the corner of the tavern, his mug of beer in one hand. He was a young man, having only recently reached his twenty first name day. His father, a blacksmith, had gifted him a sword and dagger, freshly forged, for his eighteenth name day, and after three years of hard work, he had finally earned the coin to start his journey. Garrick had seen the knights and the soldiers cross the streets of the capital all his life, and he wanted nothing more than to be like those men. It was because of that he had chosen to take up the life of a sellsword, a mercenary warrior who fought for coin and glory, or at least, that was the young man's perception of the job.

He never went hungry as a boy, partly due to his father's job as a blacksmith and partly due to his willingness to steal whenever he wished. Garrick often hung around with thieves in his early years, and he learned much of their skills, though he was never as good as they were. It was around the same time he learned to fight, which started with brawls over stolen goods and eventually progressed into real sword practice with his father. He was no Jaime Lannister, but he even at 21 he could hold his own in a fight.

Credit for the story image: https://www.tumblr.com/infinitestalia/172599291198/so-we-have-official-asoiaf-related-art-work-as