"The Iron Throne and Winterfell only want to keep weakening people like us so House Stark can hold on to the title of Warden of the North. Remember, the Starks have left both their daughters in the Red Keep."
"Besides, if there really are man-eating monsters, why didn't they appear sooner? The Night's Watch has guarded the Wall all these years, so why come out now?" Ramsay continued to insist on his view.
Roose Bolton heard Ramsay fall silent, but he did not answer at once. He merely kept tapping the table gently with his pale fingers, the soft thuds distinctly clear in the quiet room.
"The Others are real." Only after a long while did Roose Bolton speak, though a trace of contempt still flickered in his pale blue eyes.
In his eyes, a bastard was still a bastard. Even after living in the Dreadfort for many years, Ramsay had not shed a shred of the savagery in his bones. He spoke entirely from his own prejudices and never gave the family's honor or traditions a second thought.
Had Ramsay bothered to read House Bolton's history, he would have known that records of the Others had been passed down within the family.
As far back as eight thousand years ago, during the first great war between the Old Gods, the First Men, and the Others, House Bolton's ancestors had joined the other First Men of the North in following Brandon Stark "the Builder" north. They had witnessed firsthand the terrifying Army of the Dead from those lands of bitter cold.
Then there had been the second war against the Others, when the thirteenth Lord Commander of the Night's Watch became the Night's King. Their family had also sent men to follow the King in the North of that time,