Mycah

Mycah is the son of a butcher, a boy of thirteen who works in the meat wagon of King Robert Baratheon's traveling party. He is described as ungainly, with a coarse, freckled face and thick red hair, and he smells of the slaughtering block. He becomes Arya Stark's friend on the journey south from Winterfell, practicing swordplay with her using wooden sticks, a pastime that Sansa Stark finds sickening and beneath her station.

Friendship with Arya Stark and the Conflict with Joffrey

Mycah and Arya meet by the Trident, where they play at knights with broom-handle swords. Arya has asked him to practice with her, and he obliges, though he is years older and a head taller. When Prince Joffrey and Sansa come upon them, Joffrey mocks Mycah, calling him a "butcher's boy who wants to be a knight" and forces him to pick up his stick sword. Mycah, frozen with fear, protests that it is only a stick, not a sword. Joffrey presses the point of his real sword, Lion's Tooth, against Mycah's cheek, drawing blood. When Arya attacks Joffrey to defend her friend, Mycah seizes the chance to flee into the trees.

Death and Aftermath

Mycah is hunted down by Sandor Clegane, the Hound, who rides him down and kills him with a single terrible blow that cuts him almost in half from shoulder to waist. The Hound brings Mycah's body back slung over his horse, wrapped in a bloody cloak, and presents it to Eddard Stark. Ned is told that Mycah "ran" but "not very fast." The body is later returned to his father, the butcher, in a bag, so dismembered that the man initially thinks it is a pig he has slaughtered. Mycah's death is never punished; the Hound serves the queen, and the king does not intervene. Arya blames herself for asking him to play at swords, and the memory of his murder fuels her hatred of the Lannisters and the Hound. His death also deepens the rift between Arya and Sansa, who insists that Mycah attacked the prince and that the Hound's killing was justified.