I commissioned some art for this chapter, which you can see at instagram dot com slash p/By2rcYfAUC-/
I wish I could embed it somehow! It's too bad the site doesn't allow us to post links or pictures.
For me, this is a main turning point in the story. It involves elements of the world I wanted to see more of after certain events in the third book. I hope you like it xx
CHAPTER 34
ROOSE
Roose was a patient and calculated man, thin but healthy, with a hairless body except for the thin and greasy strands hanging from his diamond-shaped head. He was not given to excitement, but even for him, the wedding of his son Ramsay to "Arya Stark" was a drab affair. The girl cried the entire time, and his son waited impatiently in front of the heart tree at the center of the godswood in gaudy baubles and brooches that covered too much of his too-bright clothing. Ramsay shuffled his feet impatiently, unable to wipe that maniacal grin off his face. In many ways he was the opposite of his father, but Roose had to admit that they shared an otherwise unmatched propensity for cruelty.
Ramsay's mood caused an uncomfortable contrast between himself and that of his bride. Most of the guests present as witnesses in the godswood did not know what to make of it. His own wife, Fat Walda, took turns at whispering to him, "Lucky boy! Poor girl!" until he hushed her sternly. Roose knew that some of the northern lords recognized the girl as an imposter, but said nothing. They had no power to do anything about it. Pray they stay silent, Roose thought. A peaceful land, a quiet people. Words he lived by. Still, seeing "Lady Arya Stark" in tears on her wedding day was doing nothing for morale.
The heart tree gazed down at them, its red face twisted, and the ceremony commenced in lightly falling snow. It was said you could not lie in front of a heart tree, but the ceremony went on all the same. Wolves howled outside the castle walls, taken as an omen by some of the more loyal Stark bannermen. The old man Hothor Umber and little Eddara Tallheart met each other's eyes at the sound of the wild cries. Roose noticed, but did not bristle. Let them imagine it has meaning, he thought. It is not an omen. There are no gods.
Finally, Ramsay put the bride's cloak around the girl's shoulders and gathered her up in his arms. The nobles cheered politely. Roose had invited every sworn house and a few from the south to act as witnesses and celebrate, and now they or the representatives sent in their stead headed to the Great Hall for the feast. This union would solidify the North, strengthening the Bolton's claim to Winterfell and all its domain.
Being in the Stark's castle added a sense of legitimacy to the wedding, but it also added to the dreariness. Winterfell was a ruin. It had been burned without foresight by his malicious son, and much of it was hastily repaired for this day. Ramsay—and before him, the Ironborn boy Theon—had killed so many smallfolk that the place was eerily empty, but those left prepared busily for the feast. That meant no one came out to greet the wedding party as they crossed the courtyard. The vacancy was palpably uncomfortable, as though they trespassed on a castle in the land of the dead.
They entered the Great Hall, where the eerie feeling always hit Roose hardest. Decorative animal head trophies lined the walls above rows of pine tables spread with the banquet. Whenever he was in this room, Roose had a discomfiting and premonitory feeling that something bad would happen. But he knew by the lack of consequences from his violation of guest right at the Red Wedding that premonitions, myths, and gods were no more than tales for children. They had no power. He pushed the feeling away.
It was hard not to enjoy a wedding, even one as dismal as this. The remaining smallfolk and his servants served the banquet on the long tables while the men started on the wine and jostled to congratulate Ramsay. The smallfolk were working too hard, behaving too well, but Roose decided that he would let his paranoia rest for once and observe the bigger threat—the lords. Many were not happy with what had become of the Starks, but he had enough allies here that he was not troubled. Closest to the high table were the Karstarks—once Stark loyalists, they now followed the Boltons with the same faithfulness. Such was the result of the Young Wolf's lack of political finesse. On the other side sat Lord Emmon Frey and his wife, the Lady Gemma Lannister, and down the entire length of that side of the table several more of their Frey relatives. His wife, also a Frey, was happily chatting importance with her cousins. The Ryswells also had a seat of honor, as did the cautious and unreliable mountain clans, but it was only reluctantly that he had the Umbers and Glovers sit at the high table. Lord Manderly had sent only a young and inexperienced Maester to the wedding as a token witness, and he occupied the final seat. Roose, normally impassive, grimaced at the slight. Lord Manderly was rich from trade through White Harbor, and his insolence would not go unpunished.
Then there were those he had no hope to turn. Lady Jonelle Cerwyn held the closest castle to Winterfell and was present with a small force of men. Clearly, she did not trust the Boltons. Roose had her sit at a table with the children, Lady Lyanna Mormont from Bear Island and Lady Eddara Tallheart from Torrhen's square. Let them sit apart from the others, he thought, their distaste for me the strongest flavor in their mouths. He passed them on his way to his seat at the high table, and Ramsay was suddenly among them.
"Where's my bear, Lyanna?" Ramsay's mad eyes fixated on the child.
Lyanna's tone was defiant. "I don't have it."
Ramsay moved closer to her, tongue darting between his lips like a lizard's. "I told you, I want to kill a bear at my wedding feast—"
Roose stayed Ramsay, putting an arm on his son's wrist. "We'll deal with her later. Go and enjoy your wedding."
Ramsay looked his father up and down before he decided to obey, breaking his father's grip with a violent pull back. He tossed his cape over one shoulder and left to greet his boys, Yellow Dick, Damon, and Luton. Ramsay was like a mad dog, volatile and violent, and Roose struggled to control him at times like this, when his spirits ran high and wine flowed freely.
Roose took his seat. "Arya" still red-faced and weeping, sat on the other side of Ramsay's empty chair while his wife squatted happily beside him, pausing her conversation with Gemma Lannister to give him a smooch. Everyone was waiting for Ramsay to sit down so they could begin eating. He took too long, of course, oblivious to the niceties of court, but when he did Roose was obligated to make a speech. He stood and tapped his goblet until the people were quiet, the ringing chime the loudest sound in the Great Hall, all eyes on him. Roose was not an outspoken or a loud man, and he wanted total silence before he began. He had practiced this speech and committed it to memory, knowing the full potential of sending a message to so many members of the nobility at once. The subtext was cruel—bend the knee to House Bolton or suffer the consequences, like House Stark before you—and Roose meant to be heard. He cleared his throat.
At that moment the Great Hall's heavy iron and oak doors flew open and slammed against the grey stone walls. All heads turned to the resonant boom. A team of guardsmen held the entrance for a woman that strode in, flurries of snow whistling behind her to blanket the entryway. All the color in her face came from her flashing blue eyes and her hot and angry-looking red lips and cheeks. She wore rough, wadmal clothing, and a long cloak trailed behind her, emblazoned with a primitive rendering of a direwolf. She was unmistakably highborn and carried herself like a queen.
There was no mistaking it was Sansa Stark. She had the long, sharp features of her father's side, the hair and eyes of her Tully mother. Anyone who knew either family would guess some relation. To make it worse, that new squire—Illyn Payne's young cousin, who'd come up with the delegation from Moat Cailin—recognized her and shouted her name in a state of shock as though he was a page announcing an honored guest.
"Sansa Stark!"
Roose pinched the bridge of his nose, wishing this lovely vision of a woman to disappear. Roose figured that the smallfolk had recognized Sansa and let her in through the Hunter's Gate. People at both the high and low tables were muttering, whispering to one another. Beside him, Ramsay leapt up out of his chair and whined.
"See! Father, I told you! She is here! In the North! You should have let me hunt her, but you didn't, and now she is here, at my wedding—"
"Silence!" Roose's command quieted even his simpering son, and he extended a hand down to the woman in the great oak doorway, his voice once again even and smooth. "Lady Sansa Stark," he acknowledged, although he rued losing a way to discredit her. "How kind of you to present yourself. Please, come, and take your rightful seat at the high table."
She drew closer, the two big men on either side of her walking in step. One looked to be a crazed, red-haired Wildling, and the other was the Hound—towering over other men in his great dog's head helm. So much for the guards. Behind them followed four poorly armed and armored men. No matter—even though this was a wedding feast, Ramsay always kept a knife on him and many of the Bolton's forces here had hidden weapons. She could not hope to cut them all down with just six men.
"Roose Bolton, Lord of the Dreadfort." Sansa's voice had the timbre of a dulcimer and reverberated through the Great Hall. "The gods have sent me against you."
Bold, Roose thought, but little girls and gods did not scare him. "You would do well to eat with us," he cautioned.
"The Boltons do not hold the tradition of guest right, but the Starks and our allies do." She took a few measured steps toward him. "I cannot accept your invitation."
"Your game is a farce, Lady Sansa. You may have come to threaten me with your. . . army . . . but I fear you have done little except endanger yourself. The Bolton claim to Winterfell is stronger than yours, and meted by the crown."
"You, the most disloyal of all Stark bannermen, invite me to eat in my own house and speak to me of decrees from the false king who killed my father."
"I do. For what do you control now? Nothing. Winterfell is joined to House Bolton. My son has married your sister, here, Arya Stark."
Sansa stared at the girl seated at the high table next to Ramsay, who even with her grey dress and rich furs looked less a Stark than the redhead gazing at her. "That is not my sister."
Sansa's claim caused an uproar. Those seated closest to him shouted to have her removed at once. Farther down the table, the mountain clan leaders demanded an explanation. The Glovers and Umbers shouted affirmative that the girl wasn't Arya. Ramsay leapt up from his chair, shouting, "You bitch!" and Roose shoved him back down. He raised his hands for silence and spoke over the hum, low like the sound of a beehive, that kept up from the tables.
"It has been years since you saw each other. You were but a child then. Stop this. The North under House Bolton has the support of the crown. Do not suffer us more Stark idealism. It would be better for all of us if you were to forsake your claim."
"No. I am the Lady of Winterfell, and a Princess in the eyes of all who knelt before my brother, King Robb. Even the Dreadfort belongs to me. Step down from your seat, Bolton. I will not have my house put in the hands of a traitor and a bastard."
It was the final straw for Ramsay. That impetuous spawn leapt up and unsheathed his thin flaying dagger, shrieking louder than the rest. His boys ran to him, ready for a fight. Seeing a knife again brandished in the hands of a Bolton at a wedding feast, half the Northmen likewise jumped from their seats. Several took out hidden weapons and stood in a defensive stance. Perhaps the possibility that something like this might happen was not far from the minds of the Freys, because then several of them took out their weapons as well. Many of the women just started screaming.
Centered on opposite ends of the chaos, Roose and Sansa were both still. Sansa's deep blue eyes locked with his pale ones. It seemed to Roose that time passed slower around them as the clamor on their sides dulled, Walda's screeches sounding far away as sluggish Ramsay pulled himself onto the table.
Sansa's eyes rolled back in her head. The dark blue disappeared, leaving only milky whites. Her red lips parted. For a moment Roose thought she was having a fit—he'd seen flayed men do it, when the pain became too great and the brain and body tore apart from each other. But she stayed on her feet as her guardsmen drew protectively closer around her.
A murder of crows swooped in through the great oak doors, their cries and caws unnoticed until the birds swooped and dived at the men's heads. After them came a pack of wolves, so fast that Roose couldn't count them. They separated into groups of two and three and leap onto people at the low tables, knocking them to the floor and taking turns biting them. Worse, then, were two enormous direwolves, one blond with black-tipped fur, the other dark as night, who made straight for the high table and jumped onto Ramsay.
Roose gritted his teeth. He wanted to believe this was some cheap parlor trick—but then there were more animals, a menagerie of animals poured into the Great Hall. A team of shadowcats invaded and bear weasels joined the rush. A great elk charged in with its head down and its antlers at the ready, its hooves slipping on the smooth stone floor. An enormous white bear lumbered to the center of the room and roared like thunder. And through it all Sansa stayed still, a stone island in the middle of a river of animals.
Roose grasped for something to defend himself with and came up with his dinner knife. People were panicking. Where they tried to run wolves waited, tails wagging, to herd them back to the center. The shadowcats hurled themselves at the women. Gemma Lannister gave piteous screams as she twisted in pain from a cat's claws raking down her back. The blood scratches on her white flesh matched the color of her red dress. Below the dais, the elk charged forward and impaled both Yellow Dick and Luton against the wall in its great antlers. For the moment they were held in place a pair of bearweasels came up and ripped out their genitals.
Ramsay's screams brought Roose back to proximity. His son was stretched out on the table in the mouths of the two direwolves. The blonde one's teeth sunk into the wrist of his sword hand and pulled it high above his head, the flaying knife ineffectual in Ramsay's grip, and the black one held his ankle in its mouth and shook its head back and forth. His shirt pulled up, exposing his white belly, and an ermine ran forth and sunk its teeth into his flesh. The little weasel turned red with blood as it burrowed into his stomach and several other animals ran forward to bite Ramsay, his blood spraying onto their fur.
Roose turned away, sick. Fat Walda had been by his side; she was now behind him, facedown on her stomach, a snow leopard on her back, its fangs sunk into her neck. Its yellow eyes bore into his as it raised its head, mouth bloody, and Walda stayed still beneath it. Roose pointed his knife—and heard a screech and felt the pain of talons raking into his arm as a gyrfalcon descended on him from above. He swatted the bird away in time to see the snow leopard bound past him and leap onto another Frey, the lot of them screaming as they were ripped apart by wolves, shadowcats, and bearweasels.
Many of the Northmen huddled in the center of the room, ignored. Lady Cewyn, Lyanna, and Eddara hugged each other, their faces turned inward away from the carnage. The great white bear was pink up to its arms. It needed only one swipe to take a man down, bloodying it further. Ramsay moaned piteously beneath the animals. The motley group parted for the big black wolf as it backed away with his intestines in its jaws, pulling them in a string out of his stomach's bloody cavity.
Roose tried to turn and run but lost his footing and fell, slipping on the Frey blood under his boots. He saw the bodies of his men-at-arms, Ramsay's boys, and the Frey and Lannister entourage in pieces throughout the Great Hall. He heard mumbling—the girl they had pretended was Arya Stark hid under the table, praying. The human screams died down, replaced by the animals' snarls and growls as they tugged on the bodies and chewed on and ate the people. Some of the animals even ate the food. The wolves jumped up on the tables and licked the meat dishes clean, the elk deigned to lower its head to a platter, and Roose saw a bearweasel lap from a goblet.
Sansa regained herself and met the mass of shocked northerners in the middle of the Great Hall. The Hound roused up the largest men before the group continued over to where Roose lay, wide-eyed, wolves eyeing him from the room's perimeter as though daring him to get up and run.
Sansa marched up to him. Her eyes were dark blue again and flashing in triumph. The animals slowly filed out the big oak doors they had poured in from. "They left you for me," Sansa said; and to her men, "Take him to the dungeon. Tomorrow, my court will witness the fate of the treasonous Roose Bolton."
An Umber man and the Wildling suffered to carry him there. Many of his former bannermen came to visit him in the dark cell that night. They had grudges, and they meant to get some recompense before morning. Roose was in a state of mental shock, but he felt the beatings.
At first light the Hound came to drag him out of the dungeon and take him to the yard, where he threw him on his knees next to a chopping block. The crowd, already gathered, parted for Sansa and the last of the witnesses to make their way through.
"Princess Sansa, you needn't wield the blade yourself," spoke the young Maester, sent by that traitorous Lord Manderly. "There are many strong men here who would do it for you, and the northern lords will not begrudge Your Grace for refusing to sully her visage."
"I want to restore order to the North. I will do it as would my father, Eddard Stark. He who passed the sentence swings the sword."
A murmur of ascent went through the crowd, and Lord Karstark handed Sansa a greatsword. She handled it unlearnedly, leaning down to Roose to check the position of his head on the block. There she whispered in his ear with a ferocious growl. "This is for Robb!"
Sansa took a wide stance and Roose heard his own nervous words falling unwonted from his swollen lips. "You'll be sorry—the South won't accept this—and you Northmen, bending the knee to a woman—"
She brought down the sword.