While Ramsay lay bleeding and entirely unconscious in the mud, Roman commanded his men to follow the traumatized peasant woman's directions directly to the Bolton hunting camp.
A mile deep into the woods, they found a small, isolated hunting cabin. The moment Roman pushed the door open, a horrific, metallic stench of blood and feces assaulted his senses.
The cabin was a literal slaughterhouse. The mutilated corpses of several people who had been meticulously flayed alive were chained to heavy wooden posts. The central tables were sickeningly piled high with sheets of ripped, cured human skin. Because the victims had been expertly skinned alive using specialized Bolton techniques designed to prevent rapid blood loss, their exposed musculature was covered in a horrific layer of dark red, congealed mucus.
The vast majority of the flayed corpses belonged to young peasant women, and the physical evidence heavily implied they had been violently assaulted by Ramsay before their agonizing deaths.
Roman's face remained entirely devoid of emotion, a cold, absolute fury settling into his bones. He calmly ordered his soldiers to carefully carry the mutilated bodies and the sheets of human skin out of the cabin and transport them directly back to the Vanguard's main encampment on the shores of Long Lake.
Once they returned, a rudimentary, military tribunal bench was rapidly erected beside the lake. Ramsay Snow, his shattered jaw hastily bandaged, was dragged before the Vanguard.
When Roman laid out the horrific, mutilated corpses and the sheets of human skin before the entire Whent army, the horrific reality of Ramsay's crimes was put on absolute, undeniable display.
During the presentation of evidence, several battle-hardened Riverlands soldiers couldn't stomach the sheer psychotic brutality and turned away to vomit. Fili took one look at the flayed women, her face draining of all color, and violently retched until she was violently dry-heaving water onto the frozen grass.
The surviving peasant woman, wrapped tightly in a thick Whent cloak, burst into agonizing, hysterical tears upon seeing the skins of her friends. She graphically, loudly recounted exactly how Ramsay and his henchmen had relentlessly tortured them in the cabin.
Faced with absolute, irrefutable physical evidence and a surviving witness, Roman's impromptu military tribunal delivered an instantaneous, unanimous verdict: Ramsay Snow was sentenced to immediate, horrific execution.
Roman leaned forward and whispered highly specific instructions to his heavy infantry executioners. The massive, heavily scarred Whent soldiers grinned darkly, bowing respectfully.
"Rest assured, Lord Roman!" the lead executioner growled. "We will ensure this psychotic beast truly experiences the agonizing pain of his victims!"
As he was violently dragged away by the guards, Ramsay frantically tried to bark through his shattered jaw, spitting blood and screaming that Lord Roose Bolton would march south and personally butcher Roman for this insult.
Roman simply scoffed dismissively from his warhorse. "If Roose Bolton actually gave a single damn about his psychotic bastard, he wouldn't have assigned an absolute, horrific degenerate like 'Reek' to be his primary servant."
The original "Reek" had been rapidly identified and shot dead by Harrenhal archers during the initial sweep of the forest. The servant's hygiene and sheer depravity were so legendarily horrific that when the Whent soldiers attempted to burn his corpse, standard firewood simply couldn't cleanse the stench. Roman had literally been forced to incinerate Reek's corpse with pure White Flame just to stop his men from gagging.
The executioners tied a thick, abrasive hemp rope directly around Ramsay's bound wrists and secured the other end tightly to the saddle of a massive warhorse. They then violently spurred the horse into a heavy gallop, dragging the Bastard of Bolton directly into the dense, rocky depths of the Wolfswood.
The massive warhorse mercilessly dragged Ramsay for over a mile through the dense brush. The jagged rocks and freezing roots of the forest floor violently shredded his expensive Northern leathers, acting like thousands of tiny, jagged blades.
Before long, Ramsay's clothes were reduced to bloody rags, and the flesh of his chest, back, and thighs was rubbed entirely raw, leaving him a mangled, unrecognizable, screaming mess of meat.
Ramsay's agonizing, echoing screams startled massive flocks of ravens into the sky, but the Whent soldiers listening from the encampment felt absolutely zero pity; the monster was finally receiving his agonizing due.
Back at the camp, amidst the distant screams, Roman held a deeply respectful, solemn cremation ceremony for Ramsay's victims. He utilized his pure, holy White Flame to completely incinerate the bodies, symbolically purifying their remains and laying their traumatized spirits to rest.
Deep in the woods, sensing the bastard had suffered enough blunt-force trauma, the executioners hauled the screaming, bleeding Ramsay upright. After thoroughly sweeping the immediate perimeter to ensure absolutely no one—not even Fili's ravens—was watching, they tightly chained Ramsay to the trunk of a massive oak tree.
"Lord Roman explicitly stated that you forfeited your right to be treated as a human being the moment you began hunting women with dogs," the lead executioner smiled sadistically, drawing a heavy leather tool roll from his belt. "He ordered us to treat you like a rabid beast. And we always obey orders."
"You know, the boys and I recently confiscated a highly descriptive, smuggled torture manual from an Essosi pirate," another soldier laughed, unpacking the heavy tools. "We have been absolutely dying to test some of the more creative techniques out."
The lead executioner dramatically rummaged through the lethal instruments.
"A heavy hammer? No, too blunt and unoriginal."
"A bone saw? Too slow and entirely ordinary."
"A flaying knife? Ah, you'd probably enjoy that too much."
The other soldiers chuckled darkly, urging him to hurry up and make his selection.
After searching for a moment, the executioner finally pulled out a massive, terrifyingly heavy pair of steel blacksmith's tongs.
"Ah! Perfection!"
The other Whent soldiers grinned maliciously upon seeing the heavy, serrated iron tongs. Two men stepped forward and violently ripped down Ramsay's bloody trousers.
"You... you cannot do this!" Ramsay shrieked, spitting blood and teeth through his shattered jaw. "My father is the Lord of the Dreadfort! He will flay you all alive! You cannot do this!"
"Cannot?" The executioner laughed, slowly widening the heavy steel jaws of the tongs. "When you were violently skinning those innocent, screaming girls alive, did you ever stop to consider their terror? Did you ever think of mercy? Now that the steel is pointed at you, suddenly we 'cannot'?"
"I am telling you right now, bastard... it is far too late for mercy."
The executioner violently forced the serrated tongs to their absolute maximum width and clamped them directly, mercilessly down onto Ramsay's exposed manhood.
"Hey, Ramsay!" the executioner roared. "Say goodbye to your little brother!"
CRUNCH.
With a horrific, sickening thud, Ramsay's manhood was violently, absolutely crushed by the heavy steel, bursting like a stepped-on caterpillar, splattering dark blood across the freezing roots of the oak tree.
Entirely unsatisfied with simply crushing it, the executioner violently gripped the heavy handles of the tongs, twisted his wrists in a brutal half-circle, and forcefully ripped the mangled flesh entirely away from Ramsay's body.
However, the sheer, apocalyptic agony of the initial crush had already caused Ramsay's brain to violently short-circuit; the Bastard of Bolton had instantly passed out from the shock before the flesh was torn away.
"Tch," the executioner spat in disappointment, tossing the bloody tongs into the dirt. "I was genuinely hoping the psychotic bastard would at least stay awake long enough to repent, but he just fainted like a coward."
Following Roman's explicit final orders, the soldiers then drew their heavy sabers, cleanly decapitated Ramsay Snow, and subsequently incinerated his mutilated corpse to ash using a small vial of highly volatile Whent alchemical fire.
They carefully preserved Ramsay's severed head and the sheets of flayed human skin. Roman intended to send the gruesome package directly back to Winterfell. He wanted Eddard Stark to clearly see the absolute, undeniable proof of House Bolton's psychotic crimes, forcing the honorable Warden of the North to take decisive legal action against his own bannerman.
Ramsay's psychotic actions were a massive, undeniable violation of sacred Northern law. Roose Bolton would be legally forced to provide an explanation to Winterfell. And if Roose dared to publicly challenge the Whent Vanguard's jurisdiction in the matter... Roman was entirely prepared to violently escalate the conflict.
Some political scales simply should not be tipped, Roman thought coldly as the executioners returned to camp. If you stay quiet, you can survive. But if you challenge my authority over a murdered bastard, not even a thousand Northern swords will save the Dreadfort.
Roman felt profoundly satisfied upon seeing Ramsay's severed, battered head tossed into a salt-barrel. He casually patted his destrier's neck.
"The culprit Ramsay Snow has been executed for his crimes against the smallfolk!" Roman bellowed to the Vanguard. "Break camp! We march to the Wall!"
As the army mobilized, Roman suddenly felt a morbid curiosity regarding exactly how his men had handled the psychopath. He rode up beside the lead executioner. "How exactly did you dispatch him? Simple hanging or decapitation?"
The executioner proudly and highly graphically recounted his deeply creative use of the blacksmith's tongs.
Roman's face went entirely blank, his expression violently shifting several times as he processed the horrific physiological implications of the act. By the Seven... what exactly are these men reading in their barracks?
Leaving the bloody shores of Long Lake behind, the Vanguard hit the King's Road at a heavily accelerated pace. Without the dense, treacherous terrain of the Wolfswood slowing them down, they made excellent time, rapidly crossing the Last River and emerging into the freezing, barren tundra of the far North.
After several grueling weeks of relentless marching, the Harrenhal supply train finally reached its ultimate destination.
As the massive Vanguard crested the final icy ridge, Roman and the fresh Riverlands recruits laid eyes upon the Wall for the very first time. Entire squads of hardened cavalrymen instinctively reined in their mounts, gasping in absolute, jaw-dropping awe.
An impossibly massive, endless mountain range of solid, gleaming blue ice rose violently from the open plains, violently slicing the continent in half.
Looking at the sheer, terrifying scale of the structure, Roman couldn't help but marvel. Bran the Builder was an absolute architectural god.
"Tch!" Roman clicked his tongue, shaking his head. "Why the hell was this massive scale of architectural ice-magic lost to history? If I had access to this level of structural sorcery, I would have completely rebuilt every single peasant house in the Riverlands in a single afternoon!"
Overhearing their Lord's casual mumbling, the surrounding Whent soldiers were deeply moved. Even while staring at the most terrifying, magical wonder of the known world, their Lord's first instinct was to figure out how to use the magic to build better, warmer homes for the impoverished smallfolk back in Harrenhal.
This was the exact reason they were fanatically, suicidally loyal to Roman Rivers. House Whent was the only noble house in Westeros that genuinely treated them like human beings.
Faced with the violently harsh, freezing micro-climate surrounding the Wall, the Whent Vanguard, under the strict guidance of the veterans, had already donned their heavy, fur-lined winter cloaks.
Fili, riding closely beside Roman, was bundled so heavily in thick white furs she looked like a small, adorable snow bear. Noticing that Roman was still only wearing his standard steel armor, she grabbed a heavy wool blanket and aggressively tried to drape it over his broad shoulders.
"Lord Roman, it is absolutely freezing out here! You must put on some thick furs!"
Roman was entirely speechless. Due to the raging draconic blood boiling in his veins, he was currently so incredibly warm that he was actively utilizing his White Flame to discreetly vent excess body heat into the air; if he put on a heavy fur cloak now, he would literally start sweating and risk hypothermia.
Unable to reveal his biological secret to the entire Vanguard, Roman simply patted Fili's head affectionately and gently pushed the blanket away, promising her he was perfectly fine.
Fili was exactly like a highly affectionate, deeply clingy golden retriever. She obsessively managed Roman's daily needs with intense dedication. However, sometimes her sheer enthusiasm was a bit overwhelming, giving Roman the distinct feeling of being forcefully tackled and licked on the face by a massive, happy dog.
But Roman knew the absolute truth: it was precisely because of the fanatical, magical support of people like Fili that he had managed to secure Harrenhal so smoothly. He knew he would absolutely need her unwavering loyalty when the true, apocalyptic storms of winter finally arrived.
Thinking of this, Roman's icy blue eyes softened immensely. He reached out and gently, playfully pinched the girl's freezing, pink cheek.
"Hmm? Lord Roman, what are you doing?" Fili mumbled, her cheek squished in his gauntlet.
"Nothing," Roman chuckled. "I just think you look incredibly cute bundled up like that, Fili. I couldn't resist."
"But my face is going to permanently deform if you keep squeezing it!" she pouted.
After ensuring their heavy siege wagons were fully secured for the final approach, the Whent Vanguard finally arrived at the massive, iron gates of Castle Black. It had been a truly agonizing, months-long logistical nightmare.
In the original books, the fat King Robert supposedly managed to casually travel from King's Landing to Winterfell and back in a matter of months, Roman thought incredulously. Given the horrific state of these Northern roads, it is an absolute miracle the drunken stag didn't die of a heart attack on the journey.
Standing stoically before the massive gates of Castle Black, Lord Commander Jeor Mormont—the 997th Commander of the Night's Watch—was silently waiting to receive the Harrenhal convoy.
The legendary "Old Bear" stood flanked by his senior rangers, his heavily scarred face set in an expression of deep, highly suspicious confusion as he watched the massive, heavily armed Whent Vanguard approach.
He had naturally expected a standard supply caravan. He had absolutely no idea why the Lord of Harrenhal had marched a terrifying, fully modernized army of heavy cavalry directly to the edge of the world.
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