CHAPTER 26

RAMSAY

Ramsay was hunting. His tattered boots crushed the snow beneath his feet. The wind whipped beneath the hood of his roughspun cloak and chapped his thin lips. He had dogs, trained to hunt wolves and women, but he'd left them behind. He had a horse, a mean-spirited stallion, but he'd dismounted a quarter of an hour ago and went on foot for now. And he had weapons—a truly grand assortment of crossbows, longbows, swords, axes, knives, spears, pikes, maces, and more—but all he chose to take today was a dirk tucked into the belt beneath his cloak.

Ramsay's father said that a nobleman had one job: to keep the peace among his subjects. But Ramsay thought that he had two more: to fight, and to hunt. When or where there wasn't any fighting to be had hunting sufficed to keep a man's skills sharp.

He hid himself beneath a soiled cloak and went into the town.

Ramsay worked hard for his people. Throughout history there were tales of royals who dressed like smallfolk and went among their subjects. There was no better way to learn what the common people felt in their hearts. Unfettered by propriety, they spoke with uncensored voices and expressed their honest sentiments.

"A peaceful land, a quiet people," his father often said.

Ramsay would keep them quiet.

The people were chittering at each other like happy little squirrels. They bounced from one to another like gleeful young rabbits. It was the middle of the day and the sun had come out as bright and hot as if it were a late spring morning. Ramsay stalked over to a group of people standing in a circle outside the local tavern, his hands held out to passerby in the guise of begging.

"Did you hear the news?" The speaker was charismatic, with the soft look of a merchant about him. "The Princess has returned!"

"Nonsense," the innkeeper huffed at his guest's suggestion.

"It's true!" the young man insisted. "She's come to reclaim her father's castle and liberate the North."

The others laughed, but the pretty blonde barkeep kept up the conversation. "But how could she do that? She don't got no army marching up the kingsroad, do she?"

"Perhaps there are lords who rally to help her in secret."

The innkeep shook his fat head. "Under Bolton's nose? I doubt it."

Good.

"Ooh, might be her brother could help her," the woman said. "He's Lord Commander on the Wall now."

"The men on the Wall take no sides."

"Still, that's his sister. He must know how bad people have it nowadays."

Ramsay gritted his teeth. It was true that winter had hit the citizens hard. The threat of famine, already a reality in the more remote places, caused the population to bleed out into ships bound for warmer climates—ships that were often captured by the ironborn, its passengers sold to slavers. Ramsay had no sympathy for these treacherous deserters.

"That's Ned Stark's son," the woman went on. "Surely he'd do the right thing and help us."

Bitch! Ramsay decided he'd kill her last. The innkeeper gave him a sour look for loitering near the door of his tavern. He lowered his head, keeping his ears turned to the group.

"Oh, I'd do anything to have the Starks back," the young man said. "Those vile Boltons haven't done us a lick of good. It was the most dangerous trip of my life, bringing the goods here from White Harbor, what with all the bandits on the road."

The blonde nodded sympathetically, but the inkeeper shook his head. He wasn't really that fat, Ramsay noticed, but had folds of extra skin like he'd lost a lot of weight in a short period of time. "You shouldn't speak ill of your liege," he chided. And in a whispered breath—"You don't know who might be listening." Then he turned and kicked at Ramsay. "And you! Beggar! Get off my doorstep!"

Ramsay darted away, making quite a show of it, as though he could barely keep himself on his feet. People thought he was drunk, or worse, diseased, and wanted nothing to do with him. Still, he caught snippets of their conversations, and even scrambled at the ground for the bite of bread a child tossed to him, much to the chagrin of its mother.

"My neighbor's cousin sold Princess Sansa a secondhand dress!"

"She'd be better off with a pair of boots and a fur coat."

"She's riding up the Kingsroad on a white horse."

"I heard she can turn herself into a wolf."

Ramsay ground his teeth all the way back to where his servant waited with his horse. The common emotion shining through even the most skeptical hearts was hope. All the people wanted, on some level, to believe that Sansa was coming to rule the North. They enjoyed talking about how she would make it. He didn't doubt that they would help her, either. His people were scum. He was their Lord's son, yet they preferred that weak bitch!

Back at his camp, Ramsay's men—the bastard's boys, as they were called—told him not to worry about it. But in the morning Ramsay had the servants do what they could to get the stench of Reek's clothes out of his skin. They oiled his hair and tied it back into a low, sleek ponytail. He dressed carefully in his house colors. He wanted everyone to know him as a Bolton.

Ramsay and his men rode to Torrhen's Square with his pink banners high. They rounded up the barkeep, the young man, and two others harboring false thoughts against his family that Ramsay had heard while eavesdropping the day before. They left the innkeeper out of it, but the man came out with the crowd that invariably gathered during such displays. Ramsay was happy to leave him alone along with the others who seemed at least a little afraid of him, but what he really wanted was for the people to be so loyal that they wouldn't even think of betraying him.

They separated the woman from the men, tying a rope around her wrists to the pommel of Ben's saddle, and forced the men to kneel with their heads over the chopping blocks. Ramsay circled the crowd on his horse, keeping them at a distance while his men prepared the spectacle. He caught the blubbery red face of the innkeeper. The child who threw him the bread stared knowingly into his eyes.

"I am your Lord!" He raised his voice to a boom that would be heard by everyone. "I was given this land by the King of Westeros. To challenge me is treason! To speak against me is treason! Even to think against me is treason. The penalty is death. Let these men be an example for you."

At that, his boys cut the heads off the sniveling traitors. Dick was poor at it and had to lift his victim's head and saw through the neck. Ramsay would have liked to do it himself, but he thought it made him look more important to have others do his work for him. Besides, he had the girl for later.

Like a whisper on the wind Ramsay heard, "He who passes the sentence should swing the sword."

"Who said that!" he roared, his eyes searching the crowd for the guilty party. The people looked dumb.

"Milord," the kennelmaster motioned to the girl crying behind his sturdy gray horse, "We ought to be getting back soon if you want to take the dogs out . . ."

Ramsay narrowed his eyes at Ben, mistrustful. But Ben's plain, placid face betrayed nothing beyond concern for his dogs. Ramsay shot one last vicious look at the frightened townsfolk. Good. Let them fear. Let them remember.

That night he took the barkeep out with two of his dogs. They were trained on wolves and women, and he kept them sharp. He told the girl to run. She stumbled north towards her village. He was impatient and she did not get far before he caught her.

He raped her with the dirk in his hand, flaying little bits of her skin off while he held her to him. He thought of Sansa. The people wanted her. They believed in her, but they got him. They should learn to respect, fear, and please him. He wanted to destroy her and ruin the hopes of an entire nation.

When he looked down at the girl he saw he'd cut too deep with his knife and she was dead. Ramsay was so furious at having been distracted and losing so much of his fun that he wept. He took it out on her body. The snow under them turned red, and wider around them bled out to pink, like his sigil.

It gave him the grandest idea. He would rape Sansa. He would do it in public with the most people watching as he could gather, so they would know who ruled the North. He would drug her or pin her so that she would be still when he skinned off her face. He would carry the face with him to show those who had not seen, who did not believe what he could do.

At that moment he became obsessed with the idea that she was here in the North. His men did not understand. For a fortnight they tried to hide that they were humoring him. They wanted to go straight to Moat Cailin and treat with Jaime. Ramsay didn't give a fuck about that Lannister snob. He wanted to solidify the Boltons' rule. He wanted to keep the she-wolf alive as long as possible until he watched the final shudder of her death.

There were not many towns, but the talk in all of them was the same. The Princess of the North returned. As they neared the southern border the rumors became more concrete. He was confident that they were on her trail. When they got near the southern border he left most of his company in an encampment near Moat Cailin. He took his boys towards Barrowton, to keep hunting.

"We've been on the road a long time," Damon complained. "Your Lord father forbid us to go to Barrowton, too. If we go this way we may not even get a nice bed to sleep on after our long journey."

But there was something up this way. They came upon the remnants of a fight—a man and a horse, dead, their bodies picked by scavengers of all the valuable bits of metal and cloth that could be salvaged.

"Oh, let it go already!" Skinner bitched at him. "You're chasing a ghost."

"Shut the fuck up, or I'll cut your tongue out for you. Get the dogs!"

They sniffed round the scene, and some bayed down the road, but others pulled to a nearby hilltop. Ramsay grew hard. The death had excited him—now this.

One of the dogs huddled and bayed over a spot on the hill. Ramsay ran to her and she wagged her tail. She stood over a piece of scrap. Ramsay pulled it out of the mud and treasured it in his hands. It was just a torn, dirty, piece of cloth that looked splattered with blood, but there was no mistaking what it had once been—a pretty blue dress.