[Winter Training Yard, 10th moon, 294AC]
The clang of steel rang through the crisp autumn air, a hundred swords singing out as the men of White Harbor and its surrounding lands heaved against one another in the Winterfell training yard. Ser Harald Stark watched it all unfold with the squinted eyes of a seasoned soldier, his breath misting before him in the chill.
Another batch of men, recruits molded in the fires of the Greyjoy Rebellion, most now drawn from the southern ends of the White Knife, had come up the new canal, ferried like cargo along that stubborn river until they reached Winterfell's gates. Now they formed ranks beneath the banners of the Greycloaks, Lord Alaric's growing host.
Harald barked out a sharp command. "Shields up! You won't live to see another dawn if you can't guard your belly, you gods-damned fools!"
At his side, the newly knighted Ser Wylam Slate, commander of the Greycloaks, grimaced and paced like a caged direwolf. Beside him stood Ser Desmond Manderly, a veritable mountain of a man, newly sworn to Winterfell's service. Desmond twirled his heavy halberd as easily as a girl might spin a ribbon, the deadly axe-blade flashing silver in the pale morning sun.
The halberd thudded into the packed dirt, cleaving a wooden shield in two.
"Again!" Desmond bellowed, his voice carrying across the yard like a crashing wave.
The men scrambled to obey, hastily reforming lines. Harald nodded approvingly. Desmond was young, true, one-and-twenty, newly blooded, but the lad bore the strength of the Umbers and the cunning of the Manderlys in equal measure. Lord Wyman's cousin, Ser Marlon, had married well when he took a daughter of Last Hearth, a distant relative of the Greatjon, to wife.
These men needed drilling. Ramsay Snow had been running wild to the east, and soon enough, blood would be demanded of every soul who bore arms.
Harald adjusted the old woolen cloak around his shoulders, his mind drifting a week back, to the ceremony that had set all of this in motion.
[The Week Prior, Winterfell]
It had been a bitter, beautiful morning when Lord Alaric Stark summoned them before the heart tree in Winterfell's godswood. Snow dusted the ground, and the great weirwood loomed above them, crimson leaves rustling like whispered prayers.
There, beneath the watching eyes of the old gods, Alaric Stark had raised his sword, not Lightbringer, nor Blackfyre, but an honest, old Northern blade, Ice, and proclaimed the birth of a new order.
Winter Knights, he named them, men anointed not in the name of the Seven, but to the gods of leaf and stone, ice and fire. No septon anointed them. No polished courtly rites. Only blood, steel, and oaths before the heart tree.
Ser Torrhen Stark knelt first, and Alaric touched blade to shoulder.
"I name you Ser Torrhen Stark, Winter Knight of the North."
Then Ser Harald himself, young though he was, grim and scarred from many battles, bent the knee. His knighthood had come once before, in the anointing oil and murmured prayers of the South on the battlefield. This time, it was different. This time it meant something.
"Rise, Ser Harald Stark, Winter Knight of the North."
Next was Ser Rodrik Cassel, the last to be re-knighted; his nephew Jory Cassel, a newly married man, had followed, sturdy and proud. Then Wylam Slate, fresh and fierce, and Desmond Manderly, his broad shoulders bowed in solemn reverence.
The heart tree watched in silence. The weirwood's red eyes glistened like drops of frozen blood.
When the ceremony ended, they shared no grand feast, no songs. Only the solemn nods of warriors who knew that the next feast they attended might be the Stranger's table.
[Flash back end]
The memory faded as the yard before Harald roared with fresh life. A mock melee broke out among the recruits, steel hissing against steel. Wylam was shouting again, drilling the formations into them like nails into oak.
Soon, Harald thought, these men would be culled again, chosen for the Winter Guard, Lord Alaric's personal elite guard: five hundred shields of ice and iron. Those selected would fight not for gold or glory, but for the Stark of Winterfell, and the Stark of Winterfell only.
Harald turned his head and spat into the dirt. It would be needed, all of it. Dark times were coming, darker than many could yet see.
[Later that evening]
That evening found Ser Harald perched on one of the thick leather couches in the Lord's Solar, a blade twirling between his fingers out of habit. The fire crackled low in the hearth. Across the room, Alaric Stark sat behind his heavy oaken desk, its surface cluttered with ledgers, scrolls, and maps.
A single sheet captured Alaric's attention, a parchment bearing tidy columns of figures and the rough outline of a plant with fat, gnarled roots.
"Earthfruit," Alaric murmured, eyes tracking the rows of data. "The smallfolk gave it the name. Simple folk, plain words."
He flipped to another page, where scribbled notes praised the crop's resilience, its speed of growth, and its ability to survive in cold, rocky soil where even barley and rye faltered. In kitchens across Winterfell and beyond, the new tuber was already being mashed, salted, and sometimes roasted with meat. Plain on its own, yes, but hearty, filling, and most importantly, abundant.
"It changes everything," Alaric said, more to himself than to Harald. "A crop that can feed the North through winters long and cruel. It buys us time. It buys us strength."
Harald twirled the knife once more, watching the young lord quietly. Alaric was a Stark through and through, but there was something else in him, too, some deep, ancient cunning that went beyond even the best of the old lords.
The door creaked open.
Maester Luwin stepped inside, clutching a pair of folded letters in his weathered hands. His face, usually placid as a pond, was lined with grim concern.
"My lord," Luwin said, his voice taut. "You'll want to see this."
Alaric took the letters wordlessly. The seals were broken, Hornwood and Cerwyn, both. Harald sat up straighter, his instincts sharpening like drawn steel.
Silence stretched as Alaric read, his eyes darkening with every line.
Halys Hornwood wrote of raids, of villages burned and women carried off screaming. Lord Medger Cerwyn's letter was worse: lists of the dead, the missing, the violated.
All the work they had done, the rebuilding after the Greyjoys, the long efforts to make the North stronger than ever, all of it, now threatened by one bastard's madness.
Alaric's fist slammed down onto the desk with a sound like thunder. The inkpot shuddered. Loose parchment fluttered to the floor.
"Ramsay Snow," Alaric growled. "I should have cut his black heart out when I first heard of the whelp."
Harald rose to his feet, the knife slipping back into its sheath. He said nothing. There was no need.
Alaric's voice, when it came, was iron. "Gather two hundred Greycloaks, Ser Harald. Saddle them and be ready to ride by first light. We shall hunt Ramsay Snow down like the mongrel he is."
Harald bowed his head. "As you command, my lord."
"We will find him," Alaric said, his grey eyes cold as the winter sea. "And when we do, it will be Ice that takes the Bastard of Bolton's head."
"And if he runs?" Harald asked, voice low.
"Then burn the ground behind him," Alaric replied.
The fire snapped in the hearth, shadows leaping across the stone walls. Outside, a wolf howled at the rising moon.
Harald Stark left the solar without another word, his heart steady in his chest. Winter had come to the North long ago. Now, at last, it would come for Ramsay Snow.
[The Armory, Midnight]
The night was black and biting as Harald entered the armory. Torches guttered against the cold, casting long shadows over racks of polished steel and fresh oiled leather.
Ser Wylam Slate was already there, checking the men. Each warrior picked for this hunt bore the gray wolf-and-shield badge of the Greycloaks. Each had tasted blood before, and would do so again.
"Lord Stark gave the word?" Wylam asked as he handed Harald his own sword belt.
"Aye," Harald said, buckling the thick leather across his waist. "We ride at dawn."
Wylam grinned, wolfish and eager. "About time we bled the bastard."
In the farthest corner, Ser Desmond Manderly tested the heft of his halberd with grim satisfaction. His massive form was clad in plate and mail, the merman of his house now quartered with the direwolf of Stark.
"We find him, I'll put a hole through his gut he'll never forget," Desmond rumbled.
Alaric walked into the armory, hearing Ser Demond's words, and nodded. "No prisoners. Not this time."
The men gathered their gear in silence, a deadly stillness settling over them. Outside, the world slept. Inside, Winterfell's vengeance sharpened its claws.
[Before Dawn]
The first pale light of dawn painted the courtyard silver when two hundred horsemen gathered in formation. Their breath steamed in the cold air. Steel gleamed in the half-light.
At their head, mounted on a great grey destrier, sat Lord Alaric Stark, clad in black and grey, Ice slung across his back.
He raised a gloved hand.
"Ride hard. Strike swift. Show no mercy."
The Greycloaks roared their answer, a sound fierce and primal, like the cry of wolves in the dark.
Harald took his place beside Wylam and Desmond, the thrill of the hunt pounding in his veins.
And with a thunder of hooves, they rode forth from Winterfell, a storm of iron and vengeance.
[On the Road]
For three days, they scoured the lands east of the White Knife. Smoke still clung to the air in places, the burnt-out husks of farmsteads and villages muttering their black accusations against the sky.
Harald found the tracks easily enough: a band of about a hundred men, some mounted, some afoot, moving fast and leaving carnage in their wake. The smallfolk had fled into the woods, the smart ones, but many were not so lucky.
At a ruined mill by a half-frozen stream, they found the bodies.
A girl no older than twelve, throat slit from ear to ear. A boy nailed to the mill's door like some gruesome trophy. Two old men, their bellies carved open and stuffed with frozen mud.
Ser Wylam cursed and kicked his horse into a trot, circling the scene. "No Ironborn did this," he growled. "No wildling either. This is the work of a beast."
Harald dismounted, studying the tracks again. Ramsay's trail was plain as spilled blood: reckless, arrogant. He wasn't trying to hide.
Good, Harald thought grimly. That will make gutting him all the easier.
[The Skirmish at Blackbriar Hollow, 10th moon, 294AC]
They caught the first of Ramsay's men at Blackbriar Hollow.
The scouts rode back at dusk, mud-splattered and breathless. "My Lord!" one shouted. "They're camped in the hollow, 30, maybe more! Some look wounded. They've got captives too, smallfolk."
Alaric wasted no time. "100 of you, dismount and form the shield wall!" he barked. "Axes at the ready! March hard and fall upon them before they know we're there!"
As Alaric commanded, half of their party dismounted and formed ranks, the other hundred staying back to not only watch the horses but sweep any trash that may escape through the cracks, as if there would even be any.
'He intends to use this as further training for foot engagements.' Ser Harald thought as he too dismounted following his lord
The Greycloaks answered with a low, savage cheer.
Night had fallen hard and fast by the time they reached the hollow. Harald signaled, and the riders fanned out, surrounding the crude encampment where fires flickered like dying stars.
Then he gave the signal.
Chaos erupted.
Greycloaks poured down the slopes like a thunderhead. Steel flashed in the firelight. Ramsay's men, Bolton men, broken men, bandits, and neerdowell's scrambled for weapons, their cries ripped away by the cold wind.
Ser Desmond Manderly was the first into the fray, his halberd sweeping a man from his feet like a child's doll. Ser Wylam Slate and Ser Jory Cassel smashed into the flank, shields battering, axes hacking. Harald himself bore down on a figure lunging toward a captive, his sword opened the man from hip to shoulder in a single brutal stroke.
It was not a battle. It was a massacre.
When the fighting ended, 23 or so of Ramsay's men lay dead in the blood-slick snow, and 10 more were taken alive, bloodied, shivering, pissing themselves.
One of them broke quickly under Desmond's heavy hand.
"Ramsay's riding east!" the man wept. "T'ward the Weeping Water! Said he'd find safety in the Dreadfort if he could cross the river! Said no man alive could catch him!"
Alaric looked down at the man, disgusted. "He's wrong," he said coldly.
And then he ordered the prisoners hanged from the blackbriar trees, a warning to any who dared follow Ramsay's path.
[The Next day, nearing Ramsay's remaining force]
They rode hard the next day, leaving the wounded behind under the protection of a few stout men. The Greycloaks cut across frozen streams and through whispering woods, driving their horses until foam frothed at their bits.
At midday, a raven-haired young man, a scout from the lands of House Cerwyn, galloped up.
"My lord!" he cried breathlessly to Harald. "We've sighted him! Two leagues ahead, a large band, seventy or so men!"
"Push on," Alaric ordered. "No rest till we have his head."
Snow began to fall, thick and blinding, veiling the land in swirling white. Still, they pressed on. Through forest and fen, over half-frozen brooks and brittle reeds.
At last, as twilight gathered, they saw them: dark shapes running ahead, desperate, ragged. Ramsay and the last of his reavers.
"Loose at will!" Harald shouted.
Arrows hissed into the dusk. One rider toppled from the saddle, another's horse screamed and crumpled. The rest veered east, but the Greycloaks were faster, fresher, hungrier for blood.
It ended at a narrow gorge overlooking the Weeping Water, where the river hissed and frothed between sharp rocks. Ramsay tried to flee across the broken ice, but the river would not suffer him.
His horse slipped on the treacherous footing and went down hard, spilling the bastard into the freezing shallows.
Harald reined in his mount at the edge of the gorge, sword bare and gleaming.
"Ramsay Snow!" he bellowed, voice carrying over the roar of the river. "In the name of Alaric Stark, Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North, yield!"
The bastard of Bolton staggered to his feet, wild-eyed and snarling like a trapped animal. His face was a twisted mask of hatred and terror, blood and water streaming from his sodden cloak.
"Never!" he spat, drawing a cruel, serrated blade. "You'll not take me, wolf's get! I am the heir of the Dreadfort!"
"No," Harald said, spurring his horse forward into the shallow, icy water. "You are carrion."
Ramsay rushed him with a shriek. Harald met him with a savage downward stroke, smashing the bastard's blade aside. Ramsay reeled, but he was fast, slippery, wriggling away like an eel. He slashed at Harald's horse, drawing blood, but the destrier merely reared and kicked, catching Ramsay square in the chest and throwing him backward into the freezing river.
The current seized him.
For a moment, Ramsay flailed, fighting the water, but his heavy clothes and armor dragged him down. Just as Harald thought the current would seize him, Alaric grabbed the boy and threw him onto dry land, armor and all.
"Gah!" the bastard yelped as he found his bearings and swiftly rose to his feet, teeth chattering from the cold currents and sword shaking in his hands, a stark contrast to the now towering figure of Alaric, standing a full head taller than the bastard of Bolton and wielding Ice.
"Well, Ramsay Snow, what say you to the charges brought against you for your vile crimes?" Alaric spoke, low and steady, as cold as the ice on the Weeping Water.
"I am no Snow!" the boy roared as he launched toward Alaric, his sloppy thrust being parried quickly and slapped away. "I am the true heir of House Bolton, I am destined to bring back the glory of the Red Kings!"
"No." With one word, Alaric ran the bastard through, the gleaming valyrian steel greatsword now dripping the bastard's blood as it came clean out of his back.
"You have no claim to any lands, bastard, you have no claim to life even, may the old gods curse and torture your soul for eternity." Alaric continued, his tone even and slow, "Now die."
Just as he was about to speak, Ramsay seized up and fell to the ground as Alaric withdrew his blade from the boy's body.
With that, Ramsay Snow, the mad bastard of Bolton, fell, blood spurting from not only his mouth but from the massive hole left behind from Ice running him through
It was over, Winter had come for Ramsay Snow, and the boy succumbed, bleeding and shitting himself like the trash he was.