ROBB
They'd found Ramsay Snow within a day's ride to Moat Cailin. He said that his men needed rest. Robb didn't believe that for a moment. He'd heard tell what the Bastard of the Dreadfort had done to Lady Hornwood. Roose had been cool, hardly defending his son at all. Robb had stripped him of his command and promised to revisit the matter after the ironborn were driven from the North. In the mean time, Theon Turncloak was to be brought to him.
They'd come to Winterfell and found it in ruin. It made Robb clench his fists and his stomach turn. There were more than two dozen squatters living there. He had told them that, as long as they helped rebuild, they would be made servants or make their homes elsewhere, as they liked.
Theon arrived on the third day in Winterfell, when they had just started to make progress rebuilding. Bolton men dragged him forward and made him kneel before the Lord of Winterfell. Before Robb, however, stood neither the boyhood friend he had once known nor the monster he'd heard killed his brothers. Instead, what stood before him was a weak pitiful thing wrapped in rags. He had been beaten and tortured and paid for his crimes many times over. Yet still he lived.
"I never killed your brothers, Robb. I swear it by the Old Gods and the New. I swear it by the Drowned God and the Fire God Stannis prays to. I swear it, Robb. Bran and Rickon, they escaped and we never found them. I killed the miller's sons instead," was the first thing Theon said.
"Why should I believe you?" was the Lord of Winterfell's reply
"You don't have to believe me. I just thought you should know," Theon turned away.
"I don't believe you," said Robb.
I don't care. It wasn't me who burned Winterfell, Robb. It was Ramsay. He burned it and killed everyone who wasn't a Frey. He took me prisoner and cut off my fingers and toes," said Theon, pleading.
"Next, I suppose you'll tell me that it was some other man who commanded the forces who took Winterfell," Robb said.
"No, it was me. I did that," Theon said.
"That crime carries the same punishment as all the rest," the Lord of Winterfell said.
"I know," came the small pitiful reply.
Robb executed Theon before the great heart tree in Winterfell's god's grove. Before it happened, as the two men prepared for the end, Theon had said something to Robb, out of earshot of the rest of the northern lords and ladies gathered for the execution.
"All I ever wanted to be was a Stark. I couldn't even be that," he said.
"You should never have tried," Robb replied.
Those were the last words shared between the two who had once been friends. Robb passed the sentence and he swung the sword. It was all over in a single quick chop. Yet, when it was over, Robb did not have the vengeance he desired. That night, as he lay next to Jeyne, Robb weeped for the friend he had lost. Of course, he had lost him long before.
The next day, Robb prepared to leave. Jeyne and a few retainers were to stay behind. The North still needed to be reconquered and there were troubling ravens from the wall.
Roose Bolton came in to speak with him.
"My son plans to murder you,"
"What?" said Robb, shocked at the suggestion.
"My bastard son, he plans to murder you at the farewell feast tonight," Lord Roose said.
"Why would he do that?" Robb asked, suspicious.
"His blood is tainted, I see that now. The rumors about Lady Hornwood are true, I have that from his own mouth. He plans to use my men and the sellswords I have brought to kill you. He hopes to claim the title Lord of Winterfell or perhaps even King in the North. It is madness and treason. I will not go along with it. Yet, I do not have the heart to kill him. He is my son and kinslaying is a crime most foul," Lord Bolton said, in the same quiet voice he always used.
"You are sure this is what he plans to do?" asked Robb
"He came to me with the plan not an hour ago. He wants my help. I have given him everything and still he hopes to take more," Roose shook his head, "His blood is tainted. I have come to you so that you will know I had nothing to do with this madness,"
That night, at the feast, Robb and the other high lords sat in a raised dais overlooking the great hall of Winterfell. Ramsay Snow sat with an odd collection of sellswords at one end of the hall. The servants and smallfolk sat at the other. Halfway through, Ramsay stood up, banging his glass for attention:
"A toast, a toast, a toast I say! To the man you would have been the King in the North and now is only the Lord of Winterfell! Let his reign end happy!" With that, the sellswords flipped the long table and drew knives.
Before anything more could be done, however, the door at the end of the Great Hall burst open with half a hundred Stark men pouring in. Several of the Bastard's Boys, who served Ramsay but truly reported to Lord Roose, put their knives to Ramsay's throat. The Bastard's Rebellion lasted only a moment and the only casualties would be from the executions.
