Attack King's Landing? Is he mad?
For a heartbeat, Roose Bolton thought Jon must be joking. But the longer he looked at the young man braced against the great oak doors, the more a cold understanding slid into place.
He opened his mouth to give a safe, vague answer.
"How could that be possible? We—"
"Get up," Jon said.
The command cracked through the hall like a Direwolf's snarl—short, sharp, and killing all pretense.
At once the "wounded" moved.
Led by Beric Dondarrion, the men on the stretchers surged upright. Blood-smeared faces came alive as hands lashed out, seizing the weapons of the nearest Dreadfort guards. Others tore apart the wooden stretchers with practiced ease, snapping beams and crossbars into makeshift spears.
They moved too fast, too cleanly. These were not stunned victims—they were soldiers who had been ready.
A chill ran from Roose Bolton's boots to his scalp, making the hair at his nape prickle.
Harrion Karstark strode forward and pulled a two-handed greatsword from beneath one of the stretchers. Only then did Roose finally wrench himself fully to his feet, drawing his own blade as he shouted:
"Jon Snow! This is mutiny!"
By then, Harrion and his men were already charging toward him.
"Mutiny! It's mutiny! Protect Lord Bolton—protect Lord Bolton!" Polliver shrieked, voice cracking. "Open the door! Open the door now!"
"Move!" Jon roared.
He burst out of the shadows near the entrance and met the Dreadfort soldiers head-on. He wielded a blade in each hand, turning aside spear thrusts in quick, fluid motions. A kick from his boot struck one soldier full in the chest—the man flew backward, crashing into four or five comrades and taking all of them down.
By the time the tangle of bodies stopped moving, one of them was already dead.
Harrion and his men collided with Roose Bolton's guards in the center of the hall, steel ringing on steel. The Hundred Hearths Hall exploded into chaos.
Outside, the pounding and muffled roar drew the attention of the Dreadfort men stationed in the tower. They rushed to the great doors, hurling themselves against the wood.
Boom—boom—boom—
The old oak shuddered under each impact. Splinters and dust rained down from the frame.
One soldier sprinted away to call more reinforcements. But while they ran, Jon's heavy-armored elite were already in motion.
---
Martin, commanding Jon's newly organized Heavy Armored Battalion, saw the raven dip past him and wheel away. That was his signal.
"Form up!" he barked.
Eight hundred men—five hundred in Tywin Lannister's captured late-style plate, three hundred archers at their backs—marched toward the Tower of the Wailing in tight formation.
The silver-armored infantry at the front moved like a grinding steel wheel, shields overlapping, boots marching in unison. To the Dreadfort soldiers stationed around the tower, the sight hit like a memory of the Green Fork returned to haunt them.
Even if they hadn't faced this unit directly in that battle, they had seen what those white-armored troops had done to others.
Dreadfort men scrambled into defensive lines, weapons rattling.
"This is Dreadfort ground! What are you doing?" one officer shouted. "Advance another step and we'll loose!"
Martin didn't bother answering. He had only one order: pin the Dreadfort forces in place at all costs. If they pulled men away to reinforce the hall, he would strike.
The two sides stood glaring at each other in a tense standoff, steel at the edge of breaking loose.
---
Inside the Hundred Hearths Hall, the fighting grew more desperate.
Roose Bolton's personal guards were, indeed, elite. Harrion, for all his fury, found himself stalled again and again, his two-handed sword meeting shield walls and disciplined spearwork.
Behind Jon, the pounding on the main doors grew louder. Dreadfort men were ramming them in unison, wood groaning in protest.
Across the hall, Roose tried to seize control of the moment with his voice.
"Jon! Do you know what you are doing?" he shouted over the clash of blades. "This is mutiny! This is rebellion!"
What he saw in reply shook him more than his own words.
Jon tossed aside his blunted longsword, turned, and seized the ankle of a dead Dreadfort soldier. The man's body, armor and all, had to weigh more than two hundred pounds, but Jon lifted him as if he were a sack of flour.
With a twist of his waist and shoulders, Jon spun, swinging the corpse like a massive iron-studded club.
The armored body whistled through the air.
The first Dreadfort soldier barely had time to raise his shield before the "human hammer" smashed into him. Wood and bone cracked together; the man shot backward, slammed into the wall, and slid down like broken jelly.
Nearby soldiers staggered away, faces drained of color. It was no battle—they were watching some ancient giant from the old tales tear through their ranks.
Jon crashed through a ragged gap in the encirclement, cutting down the men who stood in his way and driving straight toward the dais.
"Open the door!" Roose shouted desperately, seizing on the moment when Jon had left the entrance.
But instead of returning to hold it, Jon veered toward Harrion.
"Give me that," he snapped, wrenching the massive two-handed sword from Harrion's grip with one hand.
Sword in one hand, corpse still hanging from the other, he barreled through the last line of Dreadfort men. None of them dared step in his path.
The next second, the greatsword's edge kissed Roose Bolton's throat.
Everything stopped.
No command was needed. The Dreadfort soldiers froze on the spot, eyes wide, chests heaving. Only the pounding on the outer doors continued, dull and relentless.
Roose felt the cold steel press against his skin. His jaw clenched, but his voice, when it came, was still steady.
"Jon… if you let me go, I won't tell Robb what happened here. If he finds out what you've done, you'll be sentenced to death."
Even now, Lord Bolton's mind went first to calculation. Jon couldn't help but feel a grudging respect for his composure, even as he saw the flaw in his thinking.
Jon twisted the sword slightly, letting the edge bite just enough to sting. His smile was cold.
"Lord Bolton," he said softly, "you seem to have forgotten where I come from."
He spoke louder, so every man in the hall could hear.
"The Wall. The Night's Watch. I deserted from there. One day, they'll take my head for it. I know that. But until I've avenged my father, anyone who stands in my way is my enemy. Do. You. Understand?!"
The last words cracked like a whip.
For the first time, Roose Bolton's calm cracked. His face twisted.
"Jon! You— You lowborn bastard!" he spat.
He had calculated and schemed his whole life, always seeking the safest path. But what could you threaten a man with when he had no lands, no title, and no future he cared to protect?
You couldn't strip what he didn't own.
You couldn't terrify a man with a death sentence when he had already accepted one.
Surrounded by bound or disarmed knights, facing the cold edge at his throat, Roose sank back into his seat, the fight draining from his limbs.
"Lord Bolton," Jon said quietly, "hand over your army to me. You know my command; you know my character. If you entrust them to me, I will not use them as meat shields or expendable pawns."
His grey eyes hardened.
"But I will never again trust you at my back. Either yield your command… or die here. Those are your two choices. Decide."
Silence stretched.
In the end, Roose Bolton chose life.
"Open the doors," Jon ordered.
Men hauled the great oaken wings back. The Dreadfort soldiers who had been battering them stumbled inside, only to halt in shock at the scene: blood on the floor, bodies beneath black canvas, Jon on the throne, and their lord with a sword at his neck.
"Put down your weapons," Roose said, before any of them could react.
"Lord Bolton…" one knight began, staring helplessly between him and Jon.
"Put them down," Roose snapped, fury burning through humiliation. "This little bastard won't kill me."
With that assurance, steel hit stone, one sword after another.
"Pass the word," Roose added bitterly. "Tell our men outside to cease resistance."
"This… yes, my lord," the knight said, and hurried off.
When he'd gone, Jon turned to Harrion.
"Have Meici Severn and the others come as well," Jon said. "Tell them I need to speak with them."
"All right," Harrion replied, still breathing hard.
---
The northern lords arrived one by one.
Meici Severn sensed something was wrong even before he entered the tower—outside, Jon's Heavy Armored Battalion stood facing the Dreadfort troops in full battle array. That alone said enough.
The air inside the Tower of the Wailing smelled of old smoke and fresh blood. The oak doors of the Hundred Hearths Hall were cracked where they'd been rammed. At one side of the hall, something large was heaped under black tent canvas, dark red spreading slowly from beneath.
Corpses. Recent ones.
At the far end of the hall, the great seat that had once held Aegon the Conqueror, Jaehaerys I, Prince Daemon, even King Robert, was occupied by a young man in grey armor.
Roose Bolton, the Eastern Army's commander-in-chief, stood to the side like a guard—blade still within reach, but thoroughly overshadowed.
"Jon… this…" Meici Severn began, but the sentence died in his throat.
"Sit, my lords," Jon said instead.
He did not rush to explain. He simply looked at them, steady and calm, and waited.
Their nerves were obvious. They exchanged glances, shifted in their seats, and hesitated—but in the end, every man sat down. Jon's battlefield prestige weighed more than the flayed man banner right now.
Meici's chair felt cold beneath him. His thoughts churned. They had once urged Jon to take command, and he refused. Now that most of them were tired of war, he had seized power with blood and steel.
He truly couldn't read the boy's intentions.
He glanced at the Manderlys, at House Hornwood's men; they too looked wary, uncertain which way the wind would blow next.
Jon cleared his throat.
"My lords," he said, "Renly is dead. The Stormlands belong to Stannis. With them—and with the greatest fleet in Westeros behind him—he will soon march on King's Landing."
He let that sink in before continuing.
"I have also received word that House Tyrell, with seventy thousand men, has joined forces with House Lannister. If Stannis fails, what stands against us will be more than a hundred thousand men from the South and the West together."
His gaze swept the hall.
"So I have decided to lead the army into the Crownlands and take King's Landing alongside Stannis. Before today, I asked for your opinions. You all refused to march further. I had no choice but to resort to this."
His voice echoed against stone and cold hearths.
The lords stared back at him, stunned. Lannister and Tyrell, allied? To many, Tyrell was supposed to be their natural partner, not the lion's.
The ground beneath their feet suddenly felt far less solid.
---
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