Word of a fight in Harrion Karstark's camp reached the Tower of the Wailing before the bruises had finished swelling.
"They're brawling? Over what?" Roose Bolton asked lazily, reclining in his chair.
"It seems the wildling soldiers under the bastard's command stole meat from the Karstark rations," Polliver reported.
"Stole meat…" Roose tilted his head, thinking. "That does sound like something those savages would do."
"Could this cause a rift between the bastard and House Karstark, my lord?" Polliver probed.
Roose gave him a sidelong look, then shook his head. "Unlikely. Jon is to Harrion what Eddard was to Rickard. A few missing chunks of pork won't break that."
He flicked his fingers. "Go take another look. If it escalates, report at once. And where is the bastard now?"
"He went hunting with his wolf last night. Seems he only just returned to camp."
Roose nodded, relaxing a fraction. Jon hadn't been seen lingering with the other lords recently; that made the whole thing look like an accident, not a scheme.
When Polliver left, Roose moved to the window, gazing down into the gray sprawl of Harrenhal's yards. The angle was poor; he couldn't see the fight clearly, couldn't properly hear the shouting, only the faint murmur of chaos.
His eyes slid past the outer bailey toward the Tower of Dread.
What are you up to, bastard?
Polliver hurried back sooner than expected, face bright with excitement. "Lord Bolton! Those wildlings ran back and called for more men! The bastard went too—he says he hopes you'll mediate personally."
"He wants me to mediate?" Roose asked, surprised despite himself. "How bad is it?"
"Quite a crowd has gathered," Polliver said. "And not just soldiers—several lords as well. Meici Severn, Wendel Manderly, many others. The Brave Companions have men there too."
"How did they all find their way there so quickly?" Roose's frown deepened. Something was off. "Have Jon's troops left his own camp in force?"
"No, my lord," Polliver said firmly. "If they had, our men would already have reported it."
Roose thought that over, then exhaled slowly. If Jon's personal troops hadn't moved, then the scuffle really might be nothing more than wildlings and Karstarks clashing over meat.
All the same, it was an opportunity.
Jon would soon be leaving Harrenhal and the Eastern Army. If Roose handled this affair cleanly in front of half the northern nobility, it would help cement his authority.
Learning that Vargo Hoat had also sent people to watch only made his decision clearer. If he bungled this, he'd look like a weak figurehead—even after Jon was gone.
"Take men to control the situation," Roose ordered. "If possible, bring only the bastard and Harrion back here. No others."
"Yes, my lord," Polliver said, bowing out.
---
In Harrion's camp, tempers were still boiling.
"If not for Lord Jon you'd all be dead already! What's wrong with us eating a little of your meat?" a clansman shouted, lip split and glistening with blood.
"Ah! You admit it then?" Harrion roared from his stretcher. "Stealing rations from other banners—do you even know what crime that is?!"
The nearby lords had already pieced together the story. Their own men had been grumbling for days about short measures and missing chunks of meat. It seemed Harrion's camp was simply where the powder keg had finally blown.
On one of the stretchers lay Beric Dondarrion—though anyone watching would have taken him for another battered soldier. He knew the truth of the plan Jon had slipped to him: while everyone's attention was fixed on the brawl, the truly injured had been swapped out and replaced with healthy men wearing hidden mail, faces smeared with deer blood to look freshly beaten.
The "wounded" were not helpless at all.
Elsewhere, Martin had already assembled the heavy cavalry, waiting for Jon's signal. When the time came, they would thunder toward the Tower of the Wailing to pin the Bolton forces in place.
Inside the Hundred Hearths Hall, when Jon and Harrion entered, they would act. Roose Bolton had to be seized—or killed—before he understood what was happening.
Footsteps approached, heavy with steel.
"Stop! All of you, stop!" Bolton soldiers barked as they pushed through the crowd. "Lord Jon, Ser Harrion, you will come with us!"
Dondarrion cracked one eyelid. Polliver stood at their head.
"Bring our wounded as well!" Jon's voice cut through the noise. "Lord Bolton will want to see for himself who broke discipline first!"
"We've got wounded too!" Harrion shouted at once, picking up the cue. "Carry them all! Every man here is proof!"
There were nearly thirty or forty "injured" in total. Two men to a stretcher meant over a hundred bodies moving with them if they all went. Polliver balked immediately.
"No. The wounded stay," he snapped.
"Why?" Harrion shot back. "Their injuries are evidence!"
"You brought this on them!" a clansman snarled. "Why should we—"
"Enough!" Polliver barked. "Quiet!"
The shouting swelled regardless. The thing had grown beyond a simple fistfight; Harrion and Jon were both pressing hard.
Jon turned to Polliver, expression perfectly measured. "Then have your men carry them," he suggested. "If Lord Bolton thinks there are too many of ours, let the Dreadfort soldiers bear the stretchers. That way no one can accuse us of tricks."
Polliver hesitated, then nodded slowly. Men with broken faces and "crushed ribs" could hardly start trouble in the Hall of a Hundred Hearths. And it was an elegant show of Dreadfort control.
"Very well—Bolton men will carry them!" he ordered. "Move!"
Boots thudded. Dondarrion felt rough hands grab the poles of his stretcher and forced a low groan through blood-caked lips. In truth, the blood was only animal, but it stung his eyes and made the act more convincing.
They were lifted, turned, carried away from the wild chaos of the camp and toward the black bulk of the Tower of the Wailing.
On the way up the stairs, a Bolton soldier slipped. One stretcher lurched; its occupant rolled, and something small and solid clanged on stone.
A short axe tumbled into view.
Arguments broke off mid-word. Every eye snapped to the weapon. The "wounded" man on the fallen stretcher froze, caught between playing dead and reacting.
Dondarrion's heart hammered. Are we exposed?
Polliver stepped toward the axe, suspicion flaring—but Jon moved faster, scooping it up in one fluid motion.
He rounded on Harrion, face thunderous. "Your men brought weapons?"
"That's impossible!" Harrion snapped back, thick neck flushing red. "Karstarks don't turn steel on their own!"
"The evidence is in my hand," Jon said coldly, brandishing the axe. "Whatever explanation you have, give it in the Hundred Hearth Hall."
He spun, jabbing a finger at the Bolton soldier who'd dropped the stretcher. "And you—watch your damned footing. Do you know what happens if a man dies because you stumble?"
Polliver's suspicions ebbed. Men cheated and lied, but they rarely staged a quarrel with themselves just to smuggle in a single axe—it was easier to hide one under a cloak. Jon's fury felt real. He waved them on.
They climbed.
At last they reached the Hundred Hearths Hall. The towering oak doors stood open, flanked by roughly fifty fully armed Dreadfort men. Beyond, the vast chamber yawned—fireplaces cold, air echoing.
The doors themselves drew Jon's eye. They weren't much smaller than a castle gate, their thickness obvious from the way the hinges complained when they moved. If one ever slammed shut on a beast, it would crush more than bone.
They had brought a little over thirty stretcher-bearers and "patients" between them. To move those doors and block them completely would take at least seven or eight men.
And beyond the doors Roose's soldiers waited: steel helms, mail, and leather, two to three times their number.
Dondarrion swallowed hard. Even knowing the plan, even trusting Jon's talent, the odds looked ugly.
At the far end of the hall, Roose Bolton sat on Harren the Black's wide stone seat, pale eyes unreadable. As the stretchers were laid out before him, his frown deepened.
He didn't believe Jon and Harrion would truly fall out over meat. Yet here they were, the Karstark lord and the bastard of Winterfell standing shoulder to shoulder, five or six steps from his throne with a line of bloodied men laid before him.
He looked from the two of them down to the stretchers. Every man there was unarmed and apparently helpless. Even if some scheme lay beneath the surface, fifty armed Dreadfort soldiers inside—and hundreds more in the tower—gave him confidence.
"Jon. Ser Harrion," Roose said finally. "I have heard the outline of your dispute, but I would hear it from your own mouths."
His gaze never left their faces. Harrion, almost without thinking, glanced at Jon.
That look alone told Roose enough: there was no real hatred between them. They were up to something.
Trying to make trouble for me? he wondered.
"It's like this…" Harrion started gruffly. "Our Karhold men had their meat withheld by those wildlings—"
"Who are you calling wildlings?" Harken snapped, voice far too strong for one supposedly beaten senseless. "Say that again!"
"I mean you lot who crawled down out of the mountains!" Harrion shot back, eyes blazing. "Can't you understand your own name?"
Their bickering snapped across the hall like a whip crack. Roose watched their faces, but Jon's expression stayed flat.
Instead, Jon rounded suddenly on the Dreadfort soldiers still clustered near the stretchers.
"What are you all standing there for?" he barked. "Is watching us argue such fine entertainment? Enjoying the show, are you?"
"Jon Snow," Polliver spat, bristling. "You're a bastard on the verge of losing his command. By what right do you order Bolton men around?"
Roose cut him off at once. "Enough. Be silent."
He turned to his own soldiers. "You may go."
Sweating and winded from carrying corpses up the Tower, the men were only too happy to obey. They filed out in twos and threes, boots fading down the spiral as they descended further into the tower.
To Roose, it seemed a minor concession. In his mind, Jon would soon be gone and all these men would answer to him anyway. Even if something odd happened, there were still another two or three hundred Bolton elites stationed throughout the tower. The situation was in hand.
Soon, the Hundred Hearths Hall held a little more than a hundred souls: some fifty fully armed Dreadfort troops, the thirty-odd men Harrion and Jon had brought, and the wounded on their canvas beds.
Jon listened carefully to the fading stomp of boots. Only once he was sure the last of the stretcher-carriers had left this level did he move.
Roose was still pretending to listen patiently to Harrion's rambling account when Jon stepped away. Polliver stiffened, hand ready at his sword. A man who had killed the Mountain could not be allowed sudden movements.
"Jon?" Roose called, voice tight.
To him, Jon Snow was a flood held behind a dam. If that dam broke, all of Harrenhal could be washed away. His fingers found the pommel of his blade.
Jon didn't answer. He crossed to the window where his raven perched, slid open the latch, and sent it out into the air. Black wings flashed once, twice, then dwindled into the pale sky.
What is he doing now? Roose thought, irritation mixing with unease.
All eyes followed Jon. Harrion watched. Harken watched. Dondarrion, from his stretcher, watched through half-lidded eyes.
Then Jon walked—not back toward Roose, but toward the great oak doors.
He set his shoulder against one.
With a slow, groaning protest of wood and iron, the huge slab began to move.
The door was easily twice Jon's height, thick as a castle wall. Watching a single man heave it inward was like watching a boy turn a millstone single-handed. The sound of the hinges scraped along every bone in the hall.
Darkness fell as the light slit narrowed, then vanished. The hall dimmed, the air suddenly thick.
Bolton soldiers shifted uneasily, hands tightening around spearshafts and sword grips.
"Jon, what are you doing?" Roose demanded, finally rising halfway from his seat.
From the shadow at the door, Jon spoke, voice calm but carrying to every hearth:
"Lord Bolton… if I were to march this army on King's Landing right now—would you be willing to come?"
---
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