Pentos. The Inn of Valyrian Blood. One of the rooms. 290 AC.
Ser Axel Arryn / The Witch-King of Angmar.
I had known my father was an unusually suggestible man, not distinguished by any great firmness of character. But there is a vast difference between a peaceable fool and a spineless slug. Yes, I had stumbled, but I had also solved my own problem. No one could lay anything against openly, and the Lannisters' behind-the-curtain maneuvering would go nowhere as long as Robert sat the throne. End of story. All that remained was to settle things with my father so the Lions did not grow bolder.
And what did my father do? He humiliated , treating like a child, and ordered to take as a wife the very problem I had rid myself of. This was his pattern. We won the war, so let us send the heir as a hostage to the defeated. Your son managed to untangle himself from a problem that plagued everyone, and now we ought to stand together against our political enemies? No, let us surrender instead and hope they show us rcy.
At the Royal Court there were essentially two factions: the Lannisters, and the Baratheons with the Arryns behind them. The rest I did not count, they carried too little weight. And despite a resounding victory during the Greyjoy Rebellion and the appointnt of our man as Master of Coin, the Lannisters still stood equal to us. Equal to two Great Houses with full resource, reputation, and political backing combined.
If a Lannister beca the Lady of the Eyrie or Storm's End, that would be the end of it, and the Lions would have won. I would not have worried so much, since turning those advantages into real power is no simple thing, but they had Tywin Lannister, and he could do it. Living under the heel of those blond snobs held little appeal. My father had lost his mind. There was no other explanation for helping the Lannisters along with their plans.
The decision to leave Westeros for a ti was the right one. And so as not to grow bored, I resolved to join the sellswords. By my reckoning they had the ideal life: you kill, you eat, you drink, you bed won, and there is no responsibility to speak of.
That night I went to say farewell to those I knew well. I gave a brief account of my reasons, and so of them surprised by asking to co along. They were mostly third and fourth sons of Vale lords with little to look forward to at ho. The most gratifying and amusing show of loyalty ca from my squire, eleven-year-old Waymar Royce.
Twenty well-ard n ca with in the end, not counting squires. I knew they were coming for the coin and for my favor, and I did not care. If n were willing to follow into an adventure for money, that was good enough. Loyalty is built through deeds and ti, and money would buy us that ti.
I did not take long, strangely enough, to decide which company to join. By my criteria the field was small. The Band of the Rose, the Stormcrows, the Golden Company, the Windblown, and that was about it. The rest were out, either for outright banditry, irrelevance, or a poor record.
I was not foolish enough to sail to another continent without information, so the unfortunate Varys was gently persuaded to share what he knew about the sellsword companies. On the basis of that intelligence the Golden Company was chosen. Knowing the balance of forces and who they were fighting, it was not difficult to predict they had taken heavy losses. Their being bled dry would make it easier for us to slot in and move up through the ranks. Their discipline, strength, and principles had also counted in their favor.
The plan was sound, but the weather put a small dent in it. The ship ran into a storm and we arrived in Pentos four days later than intended. While I was tracking down the whereabouts of the Golden Company, an unpleasant fact ca to light. My companions were entirely unequipped for life in the Free Cities and had a talent for finding trouble. The kind that ends with a knife in a back alley.
I had to pull them out of it and explain the basic rules for not getting stabbed to death in a lane. After a short briefing on how things worked, they started listening better. Things were calr after that, but to be safe I nad Desmond Redfort as my deputy. I had known this twenty-year-old man since childhood, having grown up alongside him. Desmond was the son of Creighton Redfort, the late Master of Arms at the Eyrie. He was responsible, dependable, and capable of using his head.
Once I had learned where the Golden Company had gone, we set off in pursuit. Before leaving I sent a few letters to Dorne. My ti there had not been spent only entertaining myself by teasing little girls. I had also been building ties with the nobility and the bastards.
The practical value of cultivating the nobility was obvious enough, but why would the heir to the Vale want bastards? The answer was simple and pragmatic. Whatever their situation in Dorne might be better than elsewhere, bastards still occupied an ambiguous position with modest prospects. In Dorne bastards were educated alongside trueborn children, which ant they knew how to fight and how to read. Gather them, arm them properly, and you had educated household guards without spending coin or ti training them from nothing. I had once had a plan to take command of the Gold Cloaks and place bastards loyal personally to in key positions, but that was not to be.
I had known that most of them would answer yes. Dorne has deeper ties to Essos than any other region, and the trade of a sellsword carries none of the stigma there that it does elsewhere. Add to that the promise of wealth and prestige, along with whatever standing my na carried, and most would be willing to try their luck.
I was paying for their passage to Essos out of my own purse, and before long between so twenty and fifty capable fighters would be joining my company.
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