Chapter Six

Run, Ramsay, Run!

Ramsay's mind raced; they would be closing the only gate to the courtyard soon, but the soldiers on the second floor might not be able to flag the gate guards quickly enough to stop Ramsay from passing through first. He ducked behind a wagon, his breathing ragged as the strain of his endeavors started to get the better of him.

Also, the thought was dawning on him that he couldn't just waltz out of the gate. He would need some form of distraction… Ramsay looked around, seeing a lantern in the wagon behind him he quickly snatched it. Realizing he had nothing to light it with he searched around desperately for something that might work.

There was no flint sitting conveniently in the wagon, though, and Ramsay did not readily see any dry twigs he might use to manually ignite a flame. He froze as a voice rang out close by, "There! He's there, by the wagon!"

Ramsay hurled himself away from the wagon and away from the voice, having no plan on where to go, only knowing that he had to escape the guard that had spotted him.

The only thing around that offered itself as a hiding place was the nearby stable, so Ramsay ran there with all of his might, pulling in icy breaths of the cold air as his lungs screamed for him to stop. He couldn't stop now, though, so Ramsay willed himself on. Inside the stable he ducked into one of the horse stalls, silently hoping that he was not kicked for the act.

To his satisfaction, the mare whose space he had invaded only gave him a puzzled look, and Ramsay listened to the sound of the approaching guard, working to steady his loud and desperate breathing. An idea struck him, and Ramsay unbarred the door to the stall, giving the mare a hard slap with his free hand. The animal neighed loudly and charged out of the space.

Ramsay stayed as low as he could, favoring his injured shoulder and limb as they protested his constant rush, but still pushing himself to move as fast as possible as he slunk from one stall to the other, unlatching them all and sending the horses inside fleeing for the exit to the stables. He heard the men outside crying out and knew his miniature stampede was causing the commotion he needed.

Still walking as low as possible, so that his knees shook with the strain of doing so for such a prolonged period, he exited the back door of the stable, away from the scene he had created, glancing back to see that many people were rushing to try and apprehend the runaway horses. As he drew closer to the wide gate though his heart sunk; the guards posted here had not left.

Not only that, but a guard rapidly approached those at the gate, shouting warning as he joined them, "Ramsay Bolton has escaped the keep, and likely roused those horses; stay your post and let the others coral them. We think he's trying to make the gate."

Ramsay silently cursed to himself… what terrible luck.

He looked around, thinking about what options might remain to him. The keep wall was sheer and slick with ice; with his injuries he could not see himself committing to such an act of athleticism, which he probably couldn't have succeeded at in better health or weather. Even were he to somehow scale that wall, there were still guards on the parapets.

He glanced back to the wagon beyond the stable, which he had hidden behind when first running from the castle proper. Perhaps he could hide within until morning, and be ferried out of the keep? No, there was nowhere within that cart he could hide that he wouldn't be found; the guard would be certain to thoroughly search any cart leaving the keep until he was found.

His mind continued to race as the distraction of the guard's voices ringing out across the courtyard could be heard, but he couldn't think of anything, instead remaining hunkered in the shadow of the wall, frozen with indecision and a growing hopelessness. The calls started to draw closer, and Ramsay was startled from his reverie.

Plan or no plan, if he didn't move out from the open to another hiding spot he would be discovered. He moved quickly and quietly away from the sound of those men, wincing at the growing pain in his leg. Now that the initial rush of it all had faded somewhat, the pain that had always been there was getting harder to ignore.

He wasn't sure why he even bothered continuing this mad game; those soldiers were going to search every nook and cranny of the castle until he was found, so he might as well search out a weapon and die on his feet. The notion became a brighter one the more the pain from his shoulder and leg seeped into him.

But ultimately Ramsay did not want to die, as he surely would if he was caught, so he pressed on, tripping clumsily over a pig trough as he took a shortcut through the hog pen. He landed hard and gracelessly, groaning as he sat up. He glanced at the nearby hogs and the overturned trough and wondered if he was fated to die with the swine in the mud.

No guards seemed to be alerted to the sound of his crashing fall, though, so Ramsay picked himself up slowly, glancing around for his much needed hiding place. He saw nothing useful with the pigs, so he moved on, knowing that continuing to travel around the court was dangerous, but he was high on danger and low on options.

After moving once again across the entirety of the courtyard both to avoid the guards who were spreading throughout it and for lack of finding anywhere useful to hide, Ramsay started to think on how best he might actually evade the current spreading net of his pursuers. True, he no longer entertained any hope of escape as things were, but he had to find somewhere to rest, allow himself time to think.

He glanced at the keep door, noting that the guards who had been manning it were now in the courtyard with the others to join in the search, all of them no doubt very worried that Ramsay might actually escape them all. He licked his lips; it was insane, but he was going to have to reenter the keep, if only because he had nowhere to hide here and because they might not expect something so bold.

Looking both ways he steeled himself and bolted for the door, hobbling along with a gait that must have looked almost comical due to his injury and the fact that he was still trying to remain somewhat low so as to avoid detection. His heart hammered away at his chest and he could not for the life of him draw breath until he reached the door.

Once there he hurled himself through and swung around the door frame to slam into the stone just beyond and to the side of it, so as to be out of the view of those that might glance at the door from the direction of the courtyard. He took deep, ragged breaths, trying with all of his might to slow his breathing now that he was actually breathing again, so as to not make so much noise.

The first thing he did once there was glance at his new surroundings; no one was within the area, allowing him to relax a tiny fraction. He carefully and slowly looked around the corner of the door's frame, holding his breath again in trepidation as he did so, but he let that breath out in a rush of relief to see that no one was approaching; he seemed to have been unseen.

Now that he had made it this far he had to decide where to go from here… he let out a slow sigh of despair, almost laughing at the pointlessness of even trying to hide in the very place he was trying to flee from. He had an idea then; what about downstairs in the larder? He had never gone downstairs before, but there were stairs heading down, so there must be a larder.

Or a wine cellar, he thought to himself as he slunk towards the stairs he would need. In either case, the soldiers would likely not put much stock in the thought that he might have gone down there, at least at first, and at this point there would probably be a low chance of finding even a servant in the area. Plus, there would be food.

He moved with growing conviction; if there was someplace worthy of hiding in downstairs he might actually be able to hide there long enough for the castle to drop its guard and think him gone from the region entirely if he could find food to sustain himself with for the long wait. Of course, it was improbable he could hide from the extensive search that was coming, but everything he was doing lately was improbable.

Well if it's a wine cellar that plan isn't going to work, he thought to himself with a frown. His frown turned into a smirk as he thought on it further, reflecting that at least he would be able to spend his final days getting drunk on Stark wine, that would be sure to ruffle old Jon's feathers if nothing else, and certainly wasn't the worst way to go.

When at last he made it to the final set of steps leading to the area beneath the keep that had been carved into the earth, his eyes widened as he took in a sharp breath; this place was neither a wine cellar nor a larder. Ornate stone statues flanked massive columns and caskets in a great underground hall that stretched out further than he could see; he was in a crypt.

Ramsay just stood there for a while, transfixed by the unexpected sight of the graven statues and the long stone caskets that marked the passing of the Starks of yesterday. Then in a sudden surge of action he remembered that he was running for his life, and took off down the dark hallway, searching out an appropriate hiding place.

Ramsay's heart had begun to sink at this latest revelation, since the fact that this place was neither a larder nor a wine cellar greatly upset his plans for waiting down here. After moving quite a few hundred paces into the crypt he came upon a stone wall marking a dead end. He took a moment to give a hearty chuckle at the irony.

He sat upon one of the coffins then, one unmarred by a hundred years of dust; this one must have been recently interred. Perhaps it was old Ned Stark, whom he had heard was the victim of being naïve to court intrigue. But no, it couldn't be him, for he had also heard that Ned had been denied an honorable burial, his head mounted on a spike at the capitol.

It couldn't be the young and daring Rob Stark either, since his body had been paraded around by the Freys with the head of his own pet wolf stitched to his dead shoulders, forever to serve as a testament to any other noble who would so carelessly break an agreement of marriage for some pretty young maiden that caught his fancy.

A noise disturbed his thoughts as soldiers could be heard talking at the entrance to the crypt… "…but why would he come down here? It leads nowhere. "

Another voice, "Just do your job and look; until we find him we can't assume anything. If that murderer manages to slip us it'll be our heads."

In a panic Ramsay looked left and right, but the shallow alcoves of the crypt would prove useless once the guard brought his torch down Ramsay's way. He could see now the bright light of it as they descended the rest of the steps to the crypt floor. He glanced to the statues, but those were not large enough to hide him with any reasonable certainty.

Driven by desperation, Ramsay turned his eyes down to the stone casket he had been sitting on only a moment before. Each was built quite large as was the custom for lords and ladies of one of the great houses, and he knew that there should be just enough room for himself and the corpse if he were to hide inside.

It was terrible luck to tamper with the bodies of the deceased, and Ramsay had to ask himself exactly what lines he was willing to cross to escape those that searched for him, especially because he had so little chance of continuing to evade them. After a moment's time and with the realization that the lid would make noise that would be heard if they drew too close, he made his decision.

Ramsay pulled at the heavy stone lid as quickly as he could, gritting his teeth at the awful noise that it made as he did so. He could only hope that they were too far out to have heard the sound, rushing to clamber inside the dark space as soon as it was opened enough for him to squeeze himself inside. He pulled the lid back into place.

Once again, it made that harsh, gravelly noise, and this time he heard a voice startlingly close by speak, though sounding muffled on account of his new position within the stone casket, "Did you hear that? I think someone's down here!"

Ramsay held his breath as he listened to the sound of booted feet upon the stone just outside of where he lay.

His heart beat furiously within his chest, sounding impossibly loud to his own ears within the muted confines of the crowded space. Now that he was inside he could feel the unsettling feeling of the body beneath him pressing him from below, and he did everything in his power not to imagine an angry ghoul wrapping its dead hands vengefully around his throat.

After what seemed an eternity of painful heartbeats the silence was finally broken by the voice of the second man, "There's no one in here; must have been a rodent you heard, or perhaps you're getting jumpy in your old age."

The first grunted his dissent in a voice that Ramsay couldn't quite make out, and then he heard the sound of retreating footfalls.

Ramsay let out a long, slow breath of relief, mixed with apprehension as the growing sense of despair that he had felt before started to return. Where to from here? He had effectively entombed himself, and perhaps rightly so as his opportunity for surviving the choices that had led him here seemed bent on ending him.

He tried to relax himself within his newly created prison of his own making, but still the body below pressed into him. He thought on how best to solve this new conundrum as well as plot a manner of survival for the coming days. He had eaten and drunk shortly before his assault by the unnamed servant, so it would take some time before he became intractably thirsty.

Still, the guard would be at full force for a period that would likely exceed his growing need for drink, so later on he might be pressed to venture out from the crypt and seek sustenance or escape, whichever he could best manage. Deciding that to be the best he could formulate for now, he focused on the stiff beneath him.

It was uncomfortably tight in the coffin, and if he was intent on surviving by hiding within it, he was going to have to arrange it so that he wasn't laying upon a dead person. It didn't take long for him to come to the conclusion that the best solution to this problem would be to simply place the corpse in another coffin.

They were dead, what did they care if they had to double bunk? Besides, they were all family, and perhaps these Starks had been something like the Lanisters in life… Either way, Ramsay would be free of both his guilt for squashing a body under him and the annoyance that was inevitably created by the sensation of someone underneath him.

He waited until he was certain that the men who had entered the crypt in search of him had exited and were long gone before carefully sliding the heavy lid aside once more, clenching his jaw at the awful grating noise that it made and the blossoming pain in his shoulder as he did so. Then he stuck his head out, his wide fearful eyes surveying his surroundings to be certain that he was alone.

There was no light save the few torches that burned in sconces down the hall, and the room lay empty except for himself, so he launched himself from the coffin, not realizing how much he hated being inside it until that moment. As soon as he had he looked down he could see who's body he had been laying atop; Rickon Stark.

Ramsay stood there a moment, looking down at the corpse of the boy he had so recently murdered, frozen by the destiny that had led him back to him. Was this Rickon's revenge, to watch him starve while hiding like a coward in a crypt? He should have known it would be him, no wonder that it hadn't smelled worse; the cold and his recent passing meant he hadn't started rotting yet.

Ramsay lingered for a moment longer, caught in the irony of what he was doing so powerfully that it physically held him like a great big vice of uncertainty. He liked to think that he wasn't a superstitious sort, but only a fool discounted the possibility of all things beyond his own ken simply because he wasn't able to reason it with his own experience.

Finally though he found his will to act once more, if only because that age old force of self-preservation drove him ever forward. He took the body and moved it to the next nearest casket, which was covered in the thick layer of dust that he noticed Rickon's grave had been absent of. An ancient body then, likely interred for decades if not centuries.

He worked at the heavy stone lid as quietly as he could, gagging at the stench that escaped when he had cracked it open. It was so nauseating that he had to step away for a moment, putting his hands on his knees and doubling over as he took great big gasps of relatively fresh air so as to avoid retching due to the foul odor.

Oh, what a world this one had become to him, that Ramsay now found himself in the habit of opening graves like some common and lowly robber of the deceased. He did his best to shelf his growing indignity as well as gird his stomach for the smells he was going to be unable to avoid, pulling his shirt over his mouth as he returned to his grisly task.

Rickon was light, at least, having been a thin boy as he was. Ramsay lifted him up once he had opened the other casket enough to squeeze him through the opening and with some difficulty worked him inside of it so that he would fit with whatever skeletal person it was that was going to be sharing its space with its new roommate.

He found himself wishing as he did that he had opened the new grave more to accommodate levering a second body inside, but Ramsay had been loath to spend more time hovering over the disgusting display than needed, and so in yet another cruel twist of fate ended up doing so for even longer as he worked to put Rickon in.

Funny that, he thought; cruel twists of fate. His entire life of late seemed to simply be a long chain of cruel twists of fate, as if the gods were having a go at him for their own divine amusement. It was easy for him to lose himself in his self-pity now, covered in grave dust with the smell of the deceased still cloying his nose as he slid the coffin lid home.

It still seemed like it was only yesterday that he had achieved it all and was not only the Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North, but also gathering political alliances and armies that would one day secure him an even greater future. Who knows, if not for the sudden arrival of the Knights of the Vale, maybe he would have done more…

Ramsay sighed as he returned to the coffin that he had started in, so recently vacated by Rickon for his own comfort. He had begun to relax due to his relative safety down in the crypt; it was so very quiet there, like a place where men dared not tread. His nerves jumped as he heard the sudden commotion of guards approaching once more, and he dived for his hiding spot.

He worked quickly to pull the cover back over himself, mentally screaming in helpless despair at the harsh, awful grating noise it made despite his attempts to do so quietly.

"There, there it is again! That noise I told you I heard from before!" Ramsay quietly cursed to himself under his breath, wishing he had been quicker in returning.

There was the muffled sound of armored men with booted feet striding over until they were very near, and Ramsay held his breath. His breathing should hardly tip anyone off from within the casket, as it would be fairly impossible to hear through the stone, but he found himself holding on to that air anyways.

More voices from outside of the casket, "I swear I think your ears are going out on you, old man. There wasn't anyone here before, and there isn't anyone here now."

The older more baritone voice responded, sounding irritated, "I know what I heard fool boy, and that was no cat or rat to make such a sound. It was like huge claws on stone."

The younger man responded with a tone that rang of incredulity, "I don't know but I think that Jon Snow left his dire wolf upstairs. I'm sure if such a beast was down here we'd see it."

The other man sighed and Ramsay could hear a set of feet pacing around just outside of his hiding spot, "Yeah but it was loud, I don't know how you've missed it twice now."

"Maybe because you imagined it? Look my hearing is perfect, and I didn't pick up on any crazy claws on stone sounds, unless you're going to tell me one of those statues was moving around down here?"

The brusque voice responded angrily but not without a strong hint of resignation that allowed Ramsay to begin breathing again, "Well when you put it that way it does sound ridiculous."

Ramsay counted his blessings, thinking that perhaps not all of the gods were out to see him fail, when he heard the booted feet begin to retreat back the way that they had come. Then one set stopped, and he heard the older man's voice echo through the crypt again, faint but still clearly heard, "Wait… the dust on this coffin has been disturbed…"

"What do you… oh shit do you think this guy would hide inside the fucking coffin?"

Ramsay's heart flew into his throat as he heard the quickly escalating situation outside, but he couldn't begin to think of an exit strategy from his current awful predicament. His hands flew to the lid but they froze there; he couldn't exactly hope to open it undetected.

He heard the sound of another casket being opened, most likely the one he had disturbed which now held the body of the recently departed Rickon Stark, and he knew that these men would know which one he was in as soon as they observed the new occupant. His only hope was that his noise would be disguised long enough for him to get a head start…

With wild abandon fueled by his surging fear, Ramsay pushed past the pain in his shoulder that shoving so hard against the stone lid caused and threw himself out of the casket so that he might better continue running for his life. The guards were certainly startled, but the noise they created in opening the other coffin had not masked his own noise as he had hoped.

Knowing in that instant of time that this game had become a deadly race, since he had no real chance of defeating two armed and aware guardsman in combat, and because the older man on the right was scarred and bore the look of a veteran, Ramsay launched himself into a sprint aiming to run for the exit beyond them.

The younger guard proved to be quicker of wit than was healthy for Ramsay, however, and equally fast with his reflexes; he lunged at Ramsay as the latter tried to bolt by, stopping his forward momentum by slamming Ramsay to the ground and quickly barring his arm behind himself, pinning him. The younger guard was smiling, "Whelp… guess you were right. Sorry, Groves."