rushes scattered on the floor. It was not wise to look his lordship in the face.
“I was a boy here before the war. A ward of Eddard Stark.”
“You were a hostage,” Bolton said.
“Yes, m’lord. A hostage.” It was my home, though. Not a true home, but the best I ever knew.
“Someone has been killing my men.”
“Yes, m’lord.”
“Not you, I trust?” Bolton’s voice grew even softer. “You would not repay all my kindnesses with such treachery.”
“No, m’lord, not me. I wouldn’t. I … only walk, is all.”
Lady Dustin spoke up. “Take off your gloves.”
Theon glanced up sharply. “Please, no. I … I …”
“Do as she says,” Ser Aenys said. “Show us your hands.”
Theon peeled his gloves off and held his hands up for them to see. It is not as if I stand before them naked. It is not so bad as that. His left hand had three fingers, his right four. Ramsay had taken only the pinky off the one, the ring finger and forefinger from the other.
“The Bastard did this to you,” Lady Dustin said.
“If it please m’lady, I … I asked it of him.” Ramsay always made him ask. Ramsay always makes me beg.
“Why would you do that?”
“I … I did not need so many fingers.”
“Four is enough.” Ser Aenys Frey fingered the wispy brown beard that sprouted from his weak chin like a rat’s tail. “Four on his right hand. He could still hold a sword. A dagger.”
Lady Dustin laughed. “Are all Freys such fools? Look at him. Hold a dagger? He hardly has the strength to hold a spoon. Do you truly think he could have overcome the Bastard’s disgusting creature and shoved his manhood down his throat?”
“These dead were all strong men,” said Roger Ryswell, “and none of them were stabbed. The turncloak’s not our killer.”
Roose Bolton’s pale eyes were fixed on Theon, as sharp as Skinner’s flaying knife. “I am inclined to agree. Strength aside, he does not have it in him to betray my son.”
Roger Ryswell grunted. “If not him, who? Stannis has some man inside the castle, that’s plain.”
Reek is no man. Not Reek. Not me. He wondered if Lady Dustin had told them about the crypts, the missing swords.
“We must look at Manderly,” muttered Ser Aenys Frey. “Lord Wyman loves us not.”
Ryswell was not convinced. “He loves his steaks and chops and meat pies, though. Prowling the castle by dark would require him to leave the table. The only time he does that is when he seeks the privy for one of his hour-long squats.”
“I do not claim Lord Wyman does the deeds himself. He brought three hundred men with him. A hundred knights. Any of them might have—”
“Night work is not knight’s work,” Lady Dustin said. “And Lord Wyman is not the only man who lost kin at your Red Wedding, Frey. Do you imagine Whoresbane loves you any better? If you did not hold the Greatjon, he would pull out your entrails and make you eat them, as Lady Hornwood ate her fingers. Flints, Cerwyns, Tallharts, Slates … they all had men with the Young Wolf.”
“House Ryswell too,” said Roger Ryswell.
“Even Dustins out of Barrowton.” Lady Dustin parted her lips in a thin, feral smile. “The north remembers, Frey.”
Aenys Frey’s mouth quivered with outrage. “Stark dishonored us. That is what you northmen had best remember.”
Roose Bolton rubbed at his chapped lips. “This squabbling will not serve.” He flicked his fingers at Theon. “You are free to go. Take care where you wander. Else it might be you we find upon the morrow, smiling a red smile.”
“As you say, m’lord.” Theon drew his gloves on over his maimed hands and took his leave, limping on his maimed foot.
The hour of the wolf found him still awake, wrapped in layers of heavy wool and greasy fur, walking yet another circuit of the inner walls, hoping to exhaust himself enough to sleep. His legs were caked with snow to the knee, his head and shoulders shrouded in white. On this stretch of the wall the wind was in his face, and melting snow ran down his cheeks like icy tears.
Then he heard the horn.
A long low moan, it seemed to hang above the battlements, lingering in the black air, soaking deep into the bones of every man who heard it. All along the castle walls, sentries turned toward the sound, their hands tightening around the shafts of their spears. In the ruined halls and keeps of Winterfell, lords hushed other lords, horses nickered, and sleepers stirred in their dark corners. No sooner had the sound of the warhorn died away than a drum began to beat: BOOM doom BOOM doom BOOM doom. And a name passed from the lips of each man to the next, written in small white puffs of breath. Stannis, they whispered, Stannis is here, Stannis is come, Stannis, Stannis, Stannis.
Theon shivered. Baratheon or Bolton, it made no matter to him. Stannis had made common cause with Jon Snow at the Wall, and Jon would take his head off in a heartbeat. Plucked from the clutches of one bastard to die at the hands of another, what a jape. Theon would have laughed aloud if he’d remembered how.
The drumming seemed to be coming from the wolfswood beyond the Hunter’s Gate. They are just outside the walls. Theon made his way along the wallwalk, one more man amongst a score doing the same. But even when they reached the towers that flanked the gate itself, there was nothing to be seen beyond the veil of white.
“Do they mean to try and blow our walls down?” japed a Flint when the warhorn sounded once again. “Mayhaps he thinks he’s found the Horn of Joramun.”
“Is Stannis fool enough to storm the castle?” a sentry asked.
“He’s not Robert,” declared a Barrowton man. “He’ll sit, see if he don’t. Try and starve us out.”
“He’ll freeze his balls off first,” another sentry said.
“We should take the fight to him,” declared a Frey.
Do that, Theon thought. Ride out into the snow and die. Leave Winterfell to me and the ghosts. Roose Bolton would welcome such a fight, he sensed. He needs an end to this. The castle was too crowded to withstand a long siege, and too many of the lords here were of uncertain loyalty. Fat Wyman Manderly, Whoresbane Umber, the men of House Hornwood and House Tallhart, the Lockes and Flints and Ryswells, all of them were northmen, sworn to House Stark for generations beyond count. It was the girl who held them here, Lord Eddard’s blood, but the girl was just a mummer’s ploy, a lamb in a direwolf’s skin. So why not send the northmen forth to battle Stannis before the farce unraveled? Slaughter in the snow. And every man who falls is one less foe for the Dreadfort.
Theon wondered if he might be allowed to fight. Then at least he might die a man’s death, sword in hand. That was a gift Ramsay would never give him, but Lord Roose might. If I beg him. I did all he asked of
