CHAPTER 9: THE BASTARD OF THE DREADFORT

The stench of Reek could make a summer flower wilt.

It had always been that way, ever since the day he was born. When Reek was pulled from his mother's womb, the midwife thought the woman had birthed a corpse. She almost fainted at the sight of him, all sallow and sickly looking. "But it lives!" she shrieked as the babe squirmed in her arms. "By gods, it lives! What is this grotesque creature?" Not a babe, she thought, but a monster.

Maester Uthor declared a sickness was to blame for his condition, but of the blood or the body he couldn't say, and so he offered no cure. Others had their own explanation. They believed he'd been cursed by the gods. The gods had made him stink, they said, so that men would know his soul was rotting.

Reek didn't know much about the gods or his soul, whether it was rotting or not. All he knew was that the smell of him repulsed everyone, even the horses. For that, he was forced to sleep in the pig pens, with the shit and the mud. During his youth, the children often chased him around the yard and clobbered him with stones. "Reek, Reek," they would chant while he bled and begged for mercy. "You reek, Reek!"

And so that became his name.

Naked and shivering, Reek squatted in the middle of the rushing stream and tried to wash himself clean for his master's special day. His knobby knees wobbled as he bent over and scooped water into his cupped hands. One stumble or slip and he would crack his head open on the sharp rocks below. Reek struggled to keep his balance, but he never fell. Around him, the water whirled and rippled, clear and blue as he'd ever seen, and toe-numbingly cold. It burned when it touched his skin, but still he splashed it on his face and poured it over his body, scrubbing until his flesh was raw and red. Then he grabbed a fistful of sweet grass and rubbed it all over in hopes that the perfumed oils would soak into his skin.

He stopped and took a quick whiff of himself. The sweet scent lingered for only a moment; then he smelled only Reek. He growled in frustration. "No good!" he cursed. "Still no good!" And he ripped the grass to shreds.

His soiled, smelly rags were hanging from a nearby tree branch, stained brown and swarming with flies. Reek glared at the buzzing pests. "Won't do. Won't do at all." His clothes, they too would need a good scrubbing if he wanted to look presentable for his master's special day. Reek took them, drowned them in the river, and then beat them dry on the rocks.

The damp cloth clung to his skin as he limped through the quiet forest. The flies followed, hovering overhead like a dark storm cloud. Reek shooed them away with both hands, but they always came back.

"A special gift," he muttered to himself. "A special gift for the master's special day." Today was Ramsay's name day. He was sixteen now, a man by law, and so he would need a man's gift. But what? Reek thought long and hard and swatted the flies when they flew too close.

The idea came to him just as a little biter landed on the tip of his long, humped nose. "A hunt!" he exclaimed, frightening the insect away. "The master will want a hunt to celebrate his special day! Oh, the cleverness of me!" He grabbed his stomach and bellowed with laughter. "I'll give 'im the best hunt he's ever had — and not one of deer or wolf or boar. The master's sick of hunting those. Not a challenge, he says. Not a thrill. It's a maiden he wants, a fair maiden with dark hair and pale eyes, dark hair and pale eyes, dark as the night and pale as the moon." Reek spun and ran off to find the perfect present.

While combing through dense forests and climbing over rocky hills, Reek realized that finding such a maiden was no easy task. There was a severe shortage of beauties in the region. It was a hard and unforgiving land worked by a silent and sturdy people, true of men and women alike. Along the banks of the Weeping Water lived fishermen's daughters and river wenches who stank of fish and were missing most of their teeth. Beyond the Dreadwoods lay a number of farmhouses full of suitable young maidens, shy and unassuming, with rosy cheeks and calloused hands, but Reek was still hobbled after the pig farmer skewered him with his pitchfork when he caught him sleeping in the barn. He wouldn't have the speed to survive another chase if one sprang up on him, and farm girls were hardly worth the effort. The master had had his fill of farm girls. They were faster than most, but they always hid in the most obvious of places, and they were easily fooled by sweet words. Today was his special day. He needed a special hunt. And Reek would find him a worthy prey.

He discovered her in the middle of an apple orchard on the edge of the northern wood. From there, Reek could see the western bank of the Weeping Water, its dark waters spotted with fishing boats and river rafts. Reek hid among the trees and silently stalked the maiden. A common servant she was, and commonly beautiful, with hair the color of wheat, long and blowing freely in the breeze. Reek could not clearly see her face, but from a far-eye's glance she appeared handsome enough for the master.

Humming quietly to herself, she walked down the grove with a wicker basket gently swinging from her arm. The bittersweet fruits were now ripe for picking and ready to be baked with cinnamon or stewed with prunes. She went from tree to tree, picking up fallen apples and looking them over before finally placing them in her basket. Around her, men on ladders were plucking fruit off the branches. Reek was careful to avoid them as he followed her through the grove.

Gradually, the girl strayed further away from the group, far from sight, far from ear's reach. Nobody even noticed that she'd wandered off. That was when Reek made his move, while she was bent over and collecting apples from the ground. He stepped out from behind the tree and slowly crept toward her, keeping his head low and his feet quiet. She was still humming and picking, completely unaware.

Closer and closer he stepped. His wet tongue slithered across his lips with anticipation. He wondered what her yellow hair felt like, if it was as soft as it looked, so he stepped closer and closer and ...

The girl stood and sniffed the air. "What is that awful smell?" she wondered as she glanced over her shoulder.

Reek froze in mid-stride. It was too late. He'd been found out. The young maiden turned and was staring at him now with a horrified expression, the same expression he'd seen on so many faces before her.

She took a swift step back and held the wicker basket like a shield. "What is it you want?" she asked, looking him up and down. "Are you hurt?"

But from her lips, Reek heard only the midwife's screeching voice: What is this grotesque creature? And the children were chanting, Reek! Reek! You reek, Reek! You're a freak, Reek!

He clutched his head with both hands and cried over the noise, "STOP IT! STOP SAYING THAT! I'M NOT A FREAK!"

The wicker basket crashed to the ground and a dozen red apples rolled across the green grass. Reek was on top of the girl, his hands clutched tightly around her throat, crushing with a giant's strength. "I'm not a freak!" he yelled. "I'm not a freak!" He squeezed and squeezed while the maiden's fists pounded against his stiff arms. Trapped beneath him, her legs were kicking and her feet were scraping. "I'm not a freak!" Harder he pressed until he heard a deep groan escape her lips; then she was still, and the voices were silent at last.

Reek loomed over the woman's lifeless body. Even in death, she remained handsome. Her yellow hair was sprawled out around her pale face and glistening like threads of gold silk in the sunlight. He'd never seen such pretty hair on a woman, but when he touched it, he frowned. It felt not like silk but straw: dry and coarse against his skin. Reek moved to her face, touching her cheek and tracing over her lips with his fingers. The warmth was quickly escaping her body. Reek had spoiled her for his master, that much was certain, but she was fresh enough for him. After all, he'd always preferred a quiet woman.

He finished quickly and dragged her body into the surrounding forest, where he would leave her for the wolves and the crows. Afterward, Reek hurried back to the miller's cottage, which sat along the southern bend of the Weeping Water. There, his master was waiting for him to return with his gift. How would he react when Reek came back empty-handed? Reek trembled at the thought.

Oh, he'll be angry with me, he thought, and he'll punish me! The master hates to be disappointed! His body still ached from his last punishment, when he dared to say that word which his master loathed, that word which reminded him what he was, truly ...

"A bastard!" Reek flinched and threw his hands over his head, expecting a swift and savage beating, but nothing happened. He was alone and free to speak the truth. His lips twisted into a crooked, yellow grin, and he shouted, "A bastard of the Dreadfort! A bastard of the Dreadfort!" His loud cackles echoed through the forest and sent the birds flapping away in a panic.

Astride a mare she'd named Beauty, Drucilla Bolton watched the blackbirds scatter into the grey sky. The horse gave a snort and turned sharply to the right, but Drucilla was quick to calm her and regain control.

Beauty was more docile than her last horse; that one was hot-blooded and wild and had thrown her off its back on more than one occasion. The horsemaster couldn't explain why. "I assure you she's well-trained, m'lord," he'd said to his lordship. "Never so much as nipped a man before now. Horses can be awfully particular about their riders, though. Some they like, while others ..." He shrugged. "But I'll find her a better horse, m'lord, a gentle horse suitable for the young lady."

As promised, he'd found such a horse, a true beauty who obeyed Drucilla's every command, but that hadn't stopped the whispers in the stables. "There's a reason that horse didn't take to her," the stableboys would say when they thought they were alone. "I think it sensed something it didn't like. Bad blood."

The following day, the guards discovered a number of Lady Bolton's jewels hidden where one of the stableboys slept. The boy lost his right hand and, from then on, chose his words more carefully.

Drucilla looked down the riverbank. There stood her older brother, lost in thought as he silently stared into the deep, deep waters where his younger sister had drowned six years ago. He heard her crying out to him. He saw her tiny fingers slipping beneath the surface, but he could do nothing to save her. He hadn't been there to protect her.

Drucilla rode to her brother's side. A cold wind blew and loosened her tight knot of hair; the free strands swept across her face as she glared ahead.

"We should at least talk about it," she said, thinking he was still bothered by what they had seen in the Torturer's Tower. It had been well over a fortnight since the incident, but still Domeric wandered around the castle with a haunted look in his eyes. He ate but a few bites of food a day and scarcely slept at night. As he stood before her now, Domeric seemed a skeleton himself, with his deep, sunken eyes and pallid skin. Drucilla thought it quite pathetic, the way he was acting, pathetic and dishonorable to their great house. A true Bolton would never flinch at the sight of the flayed man.

Domeric wished she hadn't brought it up at all. "I cannot close my eyes without seeing that man's face: without skin, covered in blood, smiling at me with those teeth and staring at me with those piercing blue eyes." He squeezed his own eyes shut as the memories came flooding back to him. "Gods, why did you have to take off that sack, Drucilla? Why?"

While he stood in the chamber, trembling in fear, his sister had approached the flayed man and ripped the brown sack off his head to expose what little remained of his face; and when she did, the flayed man came alive and started thrashing about and screaming.

"He had no face," Domeric murmured, "and still he was screaming. He had no face."

"The flayed man is the sigil of our house," Drucilla said with a faint smile. "Clearly, the gods wanted us to find him."

Her words made Domeric ill. "How can you be so proud of this?"

"Why shouldn't I be proud?" she answered. The wind caught her hair and sent it spiraling around her face. "This is our family's legacy. Remember our words, Domeric. Our blades are sharp. With those blades, we are prepared to do what must be done, what other houses are too afraid to do, for the sake of the realm and our great family. You seem to have forgotten that."

He shook his head. "Drucilla, you defend what you do not understand." Although she thought herself mature, she was but a child of twelve and a victim of her own naivety. Their father had done her no service by keeping her trapped in the Dreadfort for so long. In the Vale, Drucilla would have blossomed into a fine young lady, learning the latest dances and reciting poetry with Cassandra and her sisters, but instead she remained in the darkness of the Dreadfort. The leeches had drained her dry while their father filled her head with lies. Now Domeric feared she was too far gone to be saved.

Drucilla rolled her eyes. "Oh, I am not so blind, Domeric. I know more than you think. You think Father is some monster who tortures people for his own pleasure, but you're wrong. He has a reason for everything, our father, a perfectly good and rational reason. That man we found was a wildling, you know, one of many who has recently fled into the North. Father wanted to know why, but the stubborn man refused to tell him, so Father had him flayed alive, slowly, until he at last spoke the truth."

That truth, however, she refused to share with her brother. He never believed in the Others when Hilda spoke of them, and so he wouldn't believe her now if she claimed they were returning and bringing the Long Night with them. Domeric loved the histories, but the Others he considered pure fantasy.

Even now, Domeric wasn't listening to her.

"You told Father?" he interrupted, with anger in his voice. "You went to him and you told him everything? We swore that we would keep it a secret. You promised!"

Drucilla raised her chin. "You swore, Domeric. I made no such promise. And yes, I did tell Father because there are no secrets between us. You may doubt him, but I trust him completely. Everything he does, he does for us."

"Drucilla, you are a fool if you think Father actually cares about us. He doesn't care about anyone." Saying the truth aloud filled his heart with despair, but it filled his sister with rage. For a moment, he thought she might strike him.

"If you were not my brother," Drucilla threatened in their father's whisper-soft voice, "I would rip out your tongue and feed it to the crows."

Domeric didn't doubt his sister's words. Her passion for justice was the talk of many in the Dreadfort, as was her blind devotion to their lord father.

"You have no right to speak of him like that," she went on, "not when you barely know him. You haven't been here, Domeric. And now you would condemn us and think us inferior to your righteous Redforts? But you aren't a Redfort. You're a Bolton. You were born a Bolton and you will die a Bolton. And as a Bolton, you must place family before all else. You'd best remember that if you ever hope to succeed Father." She gave the reins a sharp tug, turned, and rode back to the Dreadfort.

Reek had been watching the two siblings from the safety of the trees. When Drucilla came galloping by on her black mare, he ran and hid in the bushes like a frightened animal.

Although her lord father had passed the sentence, Reek knew all the lashings and beatings he'd received were by her command. She was the one whispering in her father's ear, and he liked to please her.

"She's his favorite," he murmured as he picked at the fresh scabs on his face. He sucked his fingers into his mouth and tasted blood. "She's always been his favorite ... because she's just like him. And they've always spat on me! Go away, Reek! Go back to the pig pens where you belong! They threw me out like I was nothing!" He turned and fled with a hobbling gait. "But soon, soon they'll be nothing! Soon, I'll make them nothing!"

He hurried back to the miller's cottage, where his master was target shooting with the bow his mother had given him on his last name day. It was a proper weapon for a hunt, carved from black oak by one of the best bowyers in Blackburrow. Ramsay liked the way it felt in his hand: heavy and powerful, powerful as he hoped to become.

He raised his bow arm and took aim at a distant tree. With a twang of his bowstring, the arrow sliced through the air and pierced the heaving chest of his fleshy target. Blood pooled in the wound and trickled down the man's stomach.

Smiling, Ramsay lowered the bow to his side. "A fair shot, no?" he asked Reek.

Reek looked once more at the man bound to the tree. A thief he was, caught and punished by the master for trying to steal his mother's silver, what little she had. The master made clever use of him, as he always did.

Reek nodded. "A fair shot, Master. You're on your way to becoming a great marksman." The three arrows had hit their marks: two in the belly and one through the heart. The last had finally stopped the man's squirming. His head fell and his body went limp. Tonight, he would be food for the crows.

"Indeed," said Ramsay with a content nod, "but any man can shoot at a stationary target. What I need is a hunt and a worthy prey, fast and cunning as a fox." He turned toward Reek and glowered at the empty space beside him, where his gift should have been standing.

"Where is it?" he asked, his fingers tightening around the bow grip. "Where is my present, Reek? Today is my name day, if you remember, and you bring me nothing but flies and your stench? Is that how you would honor your master, Reek? Is it?"

Reek stumbled back, shaking his head violently. "No! No! I tried — I tried, but she was spoiled! You deserve better, Master, much better than some peasant girl. I found you a better present, Master, truly!"

Ramsay pointed a short, stubby finger toward a nearby tree. "Go stand next to that tree, Reek," he ordered, and his smelly servant reluctantly obeyed. "Closer ... Closer ... Stop!"

Reek stopped.

"Now, place your hand against the trunk, palm facing out. Very good, Reek." There was a glimmer in his grey eyes, and his thin lips stretched into a wide grin. "Stay very still. I'd hate to miss ... though, you'd hate it more, I'm afraid."

Reek's hand started shaking, but he held it in place for his master. He closed his eyes and waited for the pain.

Ramsay counted, "One ... two ... three!"

The crunch of his bones came first, followed by the thump of the arrowhead hitting the trunk. After that, Reek heard only his own screams as blood poured from his hand. The arrow shaft was sticking out of his palm, feathers flickering in the wind. In his madness, Reek wanted to rip his hand free, even if it meant tearing it in half.

Ramsay came forward. "So sorry, Reek. I suppose I need more practice, don't I?" He grasped the shaft and gave it a cruel twist before he yanked it out of his servant's hand. The smell of Reek's gushing blood made his head spin. "What were you saying, Reek? You found me a better present, you said? Well, where is it?"

Reek was binding his injured hand with cloth torn from his tattered tunic. "I'll — I'll show you! Come, this way. Follow me!" Clutching his bandaged hand to his chest, Reek staggered toward the riverbank and waited for his master to join him. "There!" he said, gesturing with his hand. "Look there, Master!"

Ramsay had to squint to see it clearly. In the far distance, surrounded by wisps of smoke and cloud, stood the dark towers of the Dreadfort, the seat of House Bolton. For days the builders had been working tirelessly to construct the lists in time for Domeric Bolton's name day tourney. It would be the first time the Dreadfort would ever host such a grand event. Lord Bolton was not fond of feasts or tourneys, but his son and heir had grown accustomed to such lavish celebrations while living in Redfort. Lady Bolton thought a proper tourney would bring a smile to her son's sullen face.

"What of it?" Ramsay asked with a disinterested snort. "Why should I care about the Boltons?"

Reek stifled a laugh. "Because ... because ... you're the bast—" He smothered the rest of the word with his hands. Stupid, stupid Reek! He taught you with beatings and slashings not to say that word! Now he'll teach you again, another painful lesson. Not a bastard. Never a bastard. Only the master.

When Ramsay turned, there was a fire in his eyes. "What did you say, Reek?"

Reek backed away, thinking he should bite off his tongue before it betrayed him a second time. "B-Bastard," he uttered despite himself. "You're the bastard of the Dreadfort. You're Roose Bolton's bastard son!"

He braced himself for his punishment, but it never came. Sneaking a quick peek, Reek found his master staring across the river.

The wind whirled across the icy waters and ruffled Ramsay's black hair. Somehow the Dreadfort seemed closer now, within reach. After five long years of waiting and wondering, he had finally found the answer to the question which had plagued his thoughts and dreams. Not a night went by without him thinking of her, Drucilla Bolton, the little lady with eyes like his: ghostly and grey. Now he knew why their meeting had left such a lasting impression — a scar to match the ones he'd given her. He smiled at the memory and longed for their reunion.

Ramsay turned and strode back to the cottage, where his mother had baked a hot onion pie for his supper. "Be sure to wash well, Reek," he said over his shoulder. "You wouldn't want to offend the Boltons with your foul smell. Mother will make you some new clothes as well. Those dirty rags won't do at all."

Reek was slow to follow. "Master, I don't understand."

Ramsay didn't miss a stride. "Well of course we must attend my brother's name day celebration. It would be rude not to." Besides, I have a game to finish ... and a prize to claim.