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Ramsay Bolton laughed on the back of his galloping horse.
Wind and snow lashed his face. He didn't feel it. The scalding joy in his chest burned too hot for the cold to touch.
Three thousand Dreadfort soldiers thundered behind him.
Fast. Nearly no casualties.
For Ramsay, that was very good news.
The hoofbeats shattered the snow beneath them, and with it, the last shred of awe his men had ever held for House Stark.
Running away?
No.
This was a triumph.
A grand gamble , the entire future of the North staked on a single throw.
"My lord! We... are we really going back to the Dreadfort?"
A loyal knight pulled up beside him, voice edged with unease.
"Back to the Dreadfort?"
Ramsay reined in his horse and looked at the man the way you look at an idiot.
"Go back for what?"
"Wait for the Starks to settle the score?"
He stuck out his tongue and dragged it across his chapped lips. His pale eyes gleamed with a sickly light.
He had made his choice. That meant there was no middle ground anymore, no second option. It was kill or be killed, nothing else.
"That fool Robb is probably surrounded by the Vale's army right now, fighting for his life."
"And that clever-clever Lynn, does he think he's planned for everything?"
"He's leading his monsters straight into the walls of the Bloody Gate right now!"
"The entire North , every fighting man, every lord , all of them are in the south!"
Ramsay's voice climbed higher, rich with the kind of pull that made men want to believe.
"Do you know what that means?"
He thrust his finger toward the north.
"It means Winterfell is sitting there right now like an undefended brothel!"
"And inside live some of the most highborn women in all of Westeros!"
His gaze swept across his soldiers, watching the greed kindle behind their eyes.
"Catelyn! Ned's wife. A Tully daughter!"
"And Myrcella! Of House Baratheon — princess of the Seven Kingdoms! Lynn's new bride!"
"If we take them, tell me , will Ned Stark and that Lynn keep dying in the south, or will they slink back, get on their knees, and lick my boots?"
The soldiers erupted in coarse, howling laughter.
They understood now.
Their young lord wasn't fleeing the field. He was using the Vale and the Riverlands to pin down the North, then driving straight into the hollow heart of it to take the nest for himself.
The plan was genius.
"When I am King in the North," Ramsay said, and a smile spread across his face that made the air feel colder, "every one of you gets land and women."
"Now — to Winterfell!"
"Once I take the castle, after I've had my fill of Catelyn and Myrcella, they're yours to do with as you please!"
"ROAR!"
The Dreadfort men bellowed as one, their voices crashing across the snow. Morale had never been higher.
Ramsay surveyed it all with satisfaction.
He was the chosen one. He could feel it. The true king, the man the North had always been waiting for.
He still remembered seeing Ned Stark in the southbound column , that grim, humorless old bastard who always looked like the world owed him something, marching shoulder to shoulder with his son Robb.
Which meant Winterfell had no one left in charge.
A gift from the gods.
"We move fast," he said. "We take Winterfell before anyone knows what's happening."
He spurred his horse and rode hard toward that grey castle, the one that held every last one of his ambitions.
...
Two days later.
Winterfell's great silhouette rose from the white plain.
So quiet.
So... fragile.
Ramsay's breathing quickened.
An empty Winterfell.
He could almost hear the women screaming already. Almost smell the fine perfume on Princess Myrcella's skin.
She was so beautiful.
What had Lynn done to deserve a woman like that?
He would take her. He would let every soldier have their turn. And then, when he was done with all of it, he would peel the skin from her himself and make the finest cloak he'd ever worn.
He would force Catelyn to watch her husband's and son's heads rot on spikes. Then he would make her sing his praises until dawn.
"All troops, prepare!"
Ramsay drew the curved sword at his hip. The blade caught the grey light and gleamed with something hungry.
"Charge in!"
"Kill every last one who resists!"
The words died in his throat.
Winterfell's heavy gate groaned. A long, grinding creak of iron and old wood.
And slowly, it swung open.
Ramsay's heart lurched.
Surrendering? Already?
But no steward walked out holding keys. No women came weeping through the gap.
Row after row of soldiers marched out instead, heavy armor polished bright, long spears leveled, eyes cold as iron.
Banners cracked open in the wind above the walls. Direwolf. Silver fish leaping on blue. A giant in chains.
Stark.
Manderly.
Umber.
Weren't all the armies supposed to be in the south?
Where in the seven hells had this force come from?!
Ramsay's smile went rigid on his face.
From the center of the formation, a single man walked forward.
He wore armor marked with the direwolf sigil. A wolfskin cloak hung from his shoulders. His grey eyes held no expression at all.
He reached up and removed his helmet.
A face weathered by years and wind. Unyielding.
Ramsay felt his blood turn to ice.
Ned Stark.
Fuck.
How?
How was this possible?!
"You — you're not — you were on the Kingsroad!" Ramsay's voice cracked into something barely human. "I saw you with my own eyes! Fighting the Vale cavalry!"
"How could you be back here before me?!"
He was pointing. His hand was shaking. He was pointing at Ned like he was pointing at a ghost.
Behind him, three thousand Dreadfort soldiers had gone completely silent.
They had all seen it. Every one of them. The Warden of the North, riding south with the column.
"Me?"
Ned Stark's voice was quiet. The kind of quiet that made your skin crawl.
"I never left Winterfell."
He looked at Ramsay's face , twisted, shattered, unrecognizable , and something like pity moved through his eyes.
"The blood of House Bolton has always carried the poison of betrayal."
"Lynn told me this the first day he returned to the North."
"He said: a snake is always a snake. You cannot expect it to behave itself through winter. Give it the smallest warmth, and it will bite."
Ned's gaze shifted past Ramsay to the soldiers stirring uneasily behind him.
"He left me a few interesting gifts."
"Perhaps this one will answer your questions."
Ned stepped aside. A guard came forward, holding something carefully in both hands.
A mask.
Made from some material Ramsay couldn't name. Lifelike. Uncanny.
The face on it was one he knew better than any other face in the world.
His own.
Every line. Every crease. Perfect.
"The man you saw," Ned said, his voice landing like hammer blows, "was Lynn. In disguise."
"I have been here the entire time."
"Right here in Winterfell. Waiting for you, this poisonous snake, to crawl into the cage I had already built."
The world went white.
Ramsay's mind emptied completely. He felt as if someone had seized him and thrown him off a cliff, and he was falling, falling into cold black nothing.
Bait.
Robb was bait.
And now this. Bait again.
Even the undefended Winterfell , Lynn's bait.
That Lynn. The man Ramsay had written off as a reckless brute, a king of savages with more muscle than sense.
He had calculated everything. From the very beginning.
He hadn't just anticipated Lysa Arryn's every move. He had seen his own family's betrayal coming, rehearsed it, and folded it into a trap.
Ramsay had thought he was the oriole, watching the mantis from above.
He had never been the oriole.
From the first moment to this one, he had been the mantis , scuttling and leaping, so proud of his own cleverness.
And Lynn had been the hunter the whole time, watching from somewhere higher, watching all of it unfold exactly as he planned.
"No , NO!!!"
The roar tore out of Ramsay's chest.
His genius. His perfect scheme. It was a joke. A complete, humiliating joke.
"LYNN!!!"
He screamed it at the sky, raw and ragged, drowning in venom and despair.
Ned Stark's voice answered. Cold. Final.
"Soldiers of the Dreadfort!"
It rang across the snowfield like a bell.
"Ramsay has betrayed the North. He has betrayed honor."
"Lay down your weapons now, and I will forgive your crimes."
"Otherwise..."
Ned raised his helmet and settled it onto his head. Then he drew Ice, the Valyrian steel greatsword, and its pale blade caught the winter light.
"Kill."
The point leveled toward the Dreadfort formation, already fracturing, men stumbling into each other, the fight gone out of them before it had begun.
"For the North!"
There was fury in Ned's voice. Something long held down, finally released.
"Crush them!"
"KILL!"
The Northern soldiers roared as one, thousands of voices merging into a single wave of sound. They had been waiting. Rested. Ready. Now they broke forward like a dam giving way, sweeping toward the rebel army that had nothing left , no will, no hope, no way out.
Ramsay sat motionless on his horse and watched the tide of steel roll toward him.
It was over. He knew it.
To the south: Robb's army.
To the north: Ned's trap.
He was a rat sealed in its hole. Every exit bricked shut.
But he was Ramsay Bolton.
He had not yet claimed his inheritance. He had not yet become the heir to the Dreadfort.
He could not die here.
"Kill! Kill them all!"
Something broke open in his face , wild, hysterical, beyond fear.
He raised his curved sword and spurred his horse straight into the oncoming steel.
➤ Next: Mass Execution