Ramsay Bolton threw his head back and laughed maniacally as his horse galloped through the snow.
The biting wind and sleet whipped against his face, but it couldn't cool the burning ecstasy in his chest.
Behind him, three thousand Dreadfort soldiers followed close. They were moving fast, having suffered almost no casualties.
For Ramsay Bolton, this was good news.
Their hooves crushed the pristine snow, just as they had crushed the last shreds of their reverence for House Stark.
Running away?
No. This wasn't running away.
This was a triumph! It was a gamble on the future of the entire North!
"My Lord! Are... are we truly going back to the Dreadfort?"
A loyal knight rode up beside him, his voice laced with unease.
"Back to the Dreadfort?"
Ramsay reined in his horse slightly, looking at his subordinate as if the man were a halfwit.
"To do what? Wait for the Starks to come settle the score after the harvest?"
He stuck out his tongue, licking his cracked lips, a sickly, feverish light dancing in his pale eyes.
Now that he had made his choice, there was no turning back. It was do or die. There was no second path.
"That fool Robb... he's likely surrounded by the Vale army by now, fighting for his life," Ramsay sneered. "And that clever little bastard Lynn? He thinks he's outsmarted everyone."
"Right now, he's taking his monsters and smashing them against the walls of the Bloody Gate like a suicidal moth! The entire North—every major force, every lord of consequence—is stuck in the South!"
Ramsay's voice rose to a high pitch, filled with a seductive, demonic charisma.
"Do you know what that means?"
Ramsay pointed violently toward the North.
"It means Winterfell is nothing more than an unguarded whorehouse with the doors wide open!"
"And inside live the most highborn women in all of Westeros!"
His gaze swept across the faces of his soldiers, watching the flames of greed ignite in their eyes.
"Catelyn! Ned's wife, the Tully trout!"
"And Myrcella! Baratheon blood, a Princess of the Seven Kingdoms! Lynn's new bride!"
"Once we have them in our hands... tell me, will Ned Stark and that savage Lynn choose to keep dying in the South? Or will they come crawling back, eager to kneel and lick the mud off my boots?"
The soldiers erupted into coarse, raucous laughter.
They understood now.
Their bastard lord wasn't deserting the battle. He was using the Vale and the Riverlands to pin down the North's strength, and while the house was empty, he was going to kick in the door and take everything.
It was a stroke of genius.
"When I am King in the North," Ramsay said, a chilling grin spreading across his face, "every one of you will have land and women!"
"Now, to Winterfell!"
"Once I take the castle... after I've had my fill of Catelyn and Myrcella, they are yours to use as you please!"
"HOOORAH—!"
The Dreadfort men let out a roar like a mountain landslide. Their morale had never been higher.
Ramsay watched it all with satisfaction.
He felt like the chosen one, the true King destined to rule the North.
He remembered clearly seeing Ned Stark in the army marching south. The old honor-bound fool, looking as grim as if the world owed him gold, riding shoulder-to-shoulder with his son Robb.
What did that mean?
It meant Winterfell didn't even have a Lord to command its defense!
It was a gift from the Gods!
"We move fast," Ramsay commanded. "We must take Winterfell before anyone realizes what's happening!"
He kicked his horse's flanks, speeding once more toward the grey granite castle that held all his dark ambitions.
...
Two Days Later.
The massive silhouette of Winterfell finally rose from the white expanse of the snowy plains.
It looked so quiet. And... so fragile.
Ramsay's breathing grew heavy and shallow.
An empty Winterfell...
He could almost hear the women screaming inside. He could almost smell the noble perfume on Princess Myrcella's skin.
She was too beautiful.
Why should a savage like Lynn possess such a woman?
She would be his.
He would let every soldier in his army have her, and then, he would personally flay the skin from her body to make the most magnificent cloak the North had ever seen. He would force Catelyn to watch her husband and son's heads rotting on spikes, and then make her sing his praises all night long.
"Prepare for battle!"
Ramsay drew the curved flaying knife at his waist, the blade glinting with bloodlust under the grey sky.
"Charge in!"
"Anyone who resists, I want you to..."
The words caught in his throat.
Because, with a heavy, grinding groan, the massive gates of Winterfell began to slowly open.
Ramsay's heart skipped a beat.
Surrender?
Already?
But the people walking out of the gate were not stewards holding keys, nor were they weeping women.
They were ranks of soldiers.
Soldiers clad in heavy plate, holding long spears.
Their armor was polished to a shine, their steps were perfectly synchronized, and their eyes were as cold as iron.
Banners unfurled atop the battlements, snapping in the wind—the Direwolf, the Merman, the Giant!
Stark! Manderly! Umber!
Didn't they say all the armies went South?
Where the fuck did these troops come from?!
Ramsay's smile froze on his face.
He watched as a single figure slowly rode out from the formation.
The man wore the familiar armor of House Stark, a heavy wolf-pelt cloak draped over his shoulders. His grey eyes revealed no emotion.
When he removed his helm, revealing a weathered, stoic face, Ramsay felt his blood turn to ice in his veins.
Ned Stark?
Fuck!
How is this possible?!
How in the Seven Hells is this possible?!
"You... you aren't..." Ramsay stammered, pointing a trembling finger. "You should be on the Kingsroad! I saw you! I saw you fighting the Vale knights with my own eyes!"
"How could you get back to Winterfell before me?"
Ramsay shrieked the words, sounding less like a man and more like a cornered beast seeing a ghost.
Behind him, the three thousand Dreadfort soldiers were equally dumbfounded. They all remembered seeing the Warden of the North in the southern host.
"Me?"
Ned Stark's voice was calm. A calmness that was far more terrifying than anger.
"I never left Winterfell."
He looked at Ramsay's face, twisted by shock and horror, and his eyes held a trace of pity.
"There is always a poison of betrayal running in Bolton blood."
"Lynn warned me of this the very first day he returned to the North."
"He told me: A snake is always a snake."
"You cannot expect it to behave in winter. If you give it even a little warmth, it will inevitably bite you."
Ned's gaze drifted past Ramsay to the restless soldiers behind him.
"He gave me a few interesting gifts before he left."
"Perhaps seeing this will answer your questions."
Ned turned slightly. A guard behind him stepped forward, holding something in both hands.
It was a mask.
A lifelike mask made of some unknown material, terrifyingly realistic.
It was a face Ramsay knew all too well.
It was a perfect replica of Ned Stark's own face.
"The 'me' you saw in the South," Ned's voice struck Ramsay's heart like a warhammer, blow by blow. "Was just Lynn in disguise."
"I have been here the whole time."
"Right here in Winterfell. Waiting for you, you venomous snake, to crawl into the cage I prepared for you."
BOOM—!
Ramsay's mind went blank.
He felt as though he had been pushed off a cliff, plummeting into a bottomless, freezing abyss.
Bait.
Robb was bait.
This was bait, too!
Mother have mercy... even the 'defenseless' Winterfell was Lynn's bait!
That Lynn... that man he dismissed as a reckless wildling King...
He had calculated everything from the start!
He hadn't just predicted Lysa Arryn's every move. He had even rehearsed the betrayal of the Bolton family and turned it into a killing trap to wipe them out!
Ramsay thought he was the hunter stalking the prey from behind.
He didn't realize that from start to finish, he was just a arrogant little mantis prancing about, oblivious to the bird looming overhead.
And Lynn was the true hunter, watching it all from the shadows.
"No... No!!!"
Ramsay let out a desperate, guttural roar.
His pride, his intellect, his genius schemes—in this moment, they were nothing but a joke.
"LYNN!!!"
He screamed at the sky, his voice filled with endless malice and unwillingness.
But the only response he got was Ned Stark's cold, emotionless judgment.
"Soldiers of the Dreadfort!"
Ned's voice boomed like thunder across the snowfields.
"Ramsay has betrayed the North! He has betrayed his honor!"
"Lay down your arms now, and I may spare your lives!"
"Otherwise..."
Ned slowly placed his helm back on his head and drew the massive Valyrian steel greatsword, Ice, from the scabbard across his back.
"Kill."
The cold, smoke-dark blade pointed directly at the chaotic, terrified Dreadfort formation.
"For the North!"
Ned's voice carried the suppressed fury of a man whose home had been threatened.
"Crush them!"
"KILL—!"
Beneath the walls of Winterfell, thousands of fresh, rested Northern soldiers let out a sky-shaking roar.
Like a dam bursting, they flooded toward the traitor army that had already lost its will to fight.
Ramsay Bolton sat dazed on his horse, watching the tide of steel surging toward him.
He knew it was over.
There was no way out.
To the South lay Robb's army. To the North was Ned's trap.
He was a rat sealed in a hole.
But he was Ramsay Bolton!
He hadn't become the Lord of the Dreadfort yet! He couldn't die!
"Kill! Kill them all!"
A hysterical madness overtook Ramsay's face.
Waving his flaying knife, he let out a scream and was the first to charge straight into the wall of steel!