Winterfell.
Legend held that Brandon the Builder had built it during the Age of Heroes, eight thousand years ago.
House Stark had lived in this ancient castle for generations, ruling over the entire North...
Yet now, the banners flying above Winterfell bore the Flayed Man.
Against a pink background, the upside-down, flayed figure stretched its limbs in the cold wind, like a silent warning.
Patrolling soldiers could be seen everywhere, atop the walls and below them.
They wore chainmail beneath dark surcoats, the same Flayed Man sigil embroidered on their chests.
Their boots crunched over snow-covered stone steps, and the clatter of metal echoed through the freezing air.
There were quite a few of these soldiers.
Quite a few was something of an understatement.
And all of this was thanks to the calculating Lord Roose Bolton.
Several months earlier, Tywin Lannister had gathered the Four Kingdoms Alliance in the Vale to crush the rebel who had returned from across the Narrow Sea, abolished feudalism, and defied the Seven... Aegon Targaryen.
As the new Warden of the North appointed by Tywin, Lord Roose was naturally duty-bound to take part.
To demonstrate his sincerity, he had scraped together a full hundred thousand men from the bitterly cold North and marched south in force.
His loyalty to House Baratheon and King Tommen sounded positively touching.
But the ever-shrewd Lord Leech never acted without keeping something in reserve.
He had forcibly conscripted thirty thousand farmers from his own lands, giving each a spear or a sickle, or simply an unshaped tree branch.
He publicly claimed that these were all the troops House Bolton could muster.
Those farmers were gaunt and sallow, dressed in rags, and could barely hold a proper weapon steady, but that did not matter-Lord Roose only wanted the numbers.
After all,