Only after Ramsay had enjoyed their discomfort to his satisfaction did he drawl, "As for those wildlings outside the city... I've already found a solution."
Just then, someone spoke.
He was a burly man wearing the mail and surcoat common among the officers, but he also had a pair of iron greaves of the sort worn with plate armor strapped to his legs. They covered him from knee to ankle, making his attire look rather mismatched.
He was the Dreadfort's Captain of the Guard, Iron Leg Walton.
It was precisely because he always wore those iron greaves that he had earned the nickname "Iron Leg."
Roose Bolton had previously sent him to the Riverlands to recruit members of House Karstark who no longer swore allegiance to Robb Stark.
After finding them and bringing them to the Vale, where he planned to wait for Lord Roose to march south and join them, he had unexpectedly discovered the missing Arya Stark and clashed with a silver-haired young man.
The Karstark officers had been slaughtered almost to a man. He had escaped by sheer luck and reported the news to Tywin Lannister, who was gathering his army in the Vale.
Later, Roose Bolton had assembled the Northern Army and marched south into the Vale. After joining forces with Tywin, he had sent Walton back to the North to help his bastard son, Ramsay Snow, command the five thousand elite Bolton soldiers left at the Dreadfort.
By a twist of fate, this had spared him from that deadly catastrophe.
Afterward, when Iron Leg Walton heard the news from the south-that the army of three hundred and seventy thousand assembled by his Lord Roose and Tywin had been annihilated in a single battle-he could scarcely believe his ears.
Then came endless terror, as though his