Jon woke to a clatter of hooves. Dawn had barely tinged the sky with gray. He threw on his cloak and stepped outside, only to see a line of riders retreating toward the Dreadfort along the northern treeline from which they had come. The man at their head lay low over his horse's back. It was Ramsay.
Roger Bolton stood beside the camp gate, the cold wind lifting one corner of his cloak's hem. The sky had only just begun to brighten, and the morning light falling across his already taut face made it look even more ashen.
He was clearly still furious over what had happened the night before. Ramsay had taken men to attack the Free Folk behind his back, only to fall into an ambush himself. House Bolton had suffered heavy casualties, and now Ramsay had abandoned the force and fled back to the Dreadfort.
Yet all Roger could do now was lead the remaining men onward to Winterfell. He knew that if he turned back toward the Dreadfort, he would likely be condemned for last night's disaster before he even got through the castle gates, with no chance of surviving.
He ordered his men to carry the dead from the Free Folk camp, one body at a time, to the edge of a freshly dug pit in the snow behind their own camp.
The soldiers worked in silence. The only sound was the crunch of boots sinking into deep snow. Finally, Roger issued an order to the entire force: without his permission, no one was to take another step toward the Wildlings' camp.
Though Jon was nominally a commander of this force as well, and had even become its highest-ranking member on paper after Ramsay left, he understood his position perfectly well.
These soldiers belonged to