Roose Bolton believed Jon and Robb's little "good cop, bad cop" routine worked so well for one reason: Jon wore the badge of an enforcer.
As long as Jon could hide behind "I'm just keeping order," anything he did looked justified.
So the solution was simple—strip that away.
If Bolton could punch a hole through Jon's enforcer image, then Jon wouldn't have anything to stand on afterward.
Ramsay listened closely and finally caught what his father was getting at. His face brightened with excitement.
"I get it, Father. You want me to provoke him."
"Exactly," Bolton said. "And do you know how?"
"Yes." Ramsay nodded hard.
He was a bastard himself. He knew better than anyone what bastards were sensitive about.
He'd just grab Jon by the "Snow" and twist—mock him for it until he snapped.
And the truth was, even among bastards there was a pecking order.
If your mother was highborn, people treated you like a "better" bastard. But someone like Jon—who didn't even know who his mother was—sat right at the bottom of that ladder.
Over the next few days, the Northern camp slipped into a kind of "wrong" calm.
The soldiers behaved. They didn't harass the townsfolk.
Even the usual friction between different houses seemed to vanish.
It was so clean it felt dirty.
Jon felt like something was off—nine out of ten, maybe ten out of ten.
On the battlements, Theon stood beside him, looking out over the massive sea of tents.
"Jon… you think the lords are scared now?"
"Scared?" Jon said. "No. I think the big fish is about to bite. This is the calm before the storm."
Jon knew someone was about to set him up.
And the target would be the "enforcer" authority Robb had given him.
Theon's eyes lit up, clearly thrilled by the idea of trouble.
"So what are you going to do?"
Jon glanced at him. "You know what a trial by combat is?"
"The hell—what?"
That day, Jon went out on patrol like usual.
Someone ran up to report that men from House Bolton had gotten into a dispute with men from House Harreys.
It had escalated to the point where they were ready to start cracking skulls.
Jon knew instantly: this was Roose Bolton's trap.
He leaned slightly toward Theon and spoke low. "Theon—go get Robb. Tell him I'm about to kill someone."
"The hell, Jon… you—?"
Theon came from the Iron Islands, where people called themselves ironborn.
For a real ironborn, taking a life was practically a hobby.
But Theon had grown up in Winterfell, and hearing it said so flatly still felt brutal.
And the strangest part was Jon's face—calm. Almost bored.
Wait. Which one of us is supposed to be the Greyjoy here? Which one of us is the ironborn?
Then it clicked—Theon realized what Jon was about to do.
He slipped away quietly and rode back toward Winterfell.
When Jon reached the site of the "fight," he found a crowd brawling in a messy knot.
To make it look out of control, plenty of them were shouting loud enough to shake the air.
Jon watched them with a cold curl to his mouth, thinking they weren't even trying.
Nobody wanted to spill real blood. The worst injury he saw was a nosebleed. Most of them just looked disheveled—hair messed up, clothes tugged loose.
But if you were going to put on a show, you did it properly.
Jon knew Roose Bolton—or Ramsay—was nearby.
He didn't bother looking around.
He raised a hand, and the twenty-something young Winterfell men behind him surged in with their staffs, cracking down without picking sides.
But these fighters were prepared. They wore padded armor under their clothes.
A few took hits to the head, but they didn't scatter like the earlier camp bullies Jon had beaten.
Watching from a distance, Ramsay smiled with satisfaction.
He leaned toward a few young nobles beside him and said quietly, "The bastard wolf just walked into my trap."
Even though Ramsay was a bastard, everyone could tell Bolton meant to shape him into an heir.
So Bolton's bannermen were more than happy to stay on Ramsay's good side.
They'd help rile Jon up—and they'd serve as witnesses, swearing Jon acted out of personal rage instead of enforcement.
If they could sell that story, Robb wouldn't be able to keep using the easy "punish everyone" compromise.
At that moment, the brawling soldiers actually tightened up, forming a loose ring and holding their ground, squaring off against Jon's "discipline squad."
Then Jon stepped in.
His staffwork was sharp, his footwork light—almost graceful—and still no one could stand in front of him for even a heartbeat.
That was when someone with a thick Dreadfort accent shouted, "Jon Snow! You're a deserter who ran from the Wall—what right do you have to swagger around here?"
"What? A deserter?"
"So he really is a deserter?"
"Stark put a deserter in charge of us? Why should we listen to him?"
Whispers rippled through the crowd, and even the Winterfell men who'd been following Jon started to shift uneasily.
Robb had already explained that Jon's return was settled with the Watch—but in a moment like this, the second you started explaining, you'd already lost.
Nearby, a few young nobles—standing with Ramsay—began pointing at Jon and talking openly.
One of them, a boy with a thin fuzz of mustache, raised his voice and kept going.
"Jon Snow! You deserter. You bastard with no honor."
"Tell me—have you ever even known who your mother is? Ever wonder if she's in some man's bed right now?" He laughed. "Maybe she never even knew either!"
A round of perfect villain laughter followed.
"So the big tough guy is just a bastard?"
"Yeah—what's he so proud of?"
"Wait, I think I've seen his mother. Pretty sure it was in a brothel."
The insults came in a filthy wave. The pointing fingers felt like needles, jabbing at Jon while he stood there with a staff in his hand.
Even Jon's Winterfell men—who'd followed him for days—instinctively drifted back a step, trying to create distance.
They'd always known Jon was a bastard.
But being surrounded by a crowd like this made them feel exposed too—like someone had stripped them naked in the street.
Ramsay watched, smug and delighted.
He was waiting for Jon to explode and do something reckless.
Only then would Jon truly fall into the trap.
The old Jon might not have lasted two seconds under that kind of taunting.
But this Jon did something different: he noticed a pattern.
Every loud voice had the same Dreadfort accent.
The fuzz-mustache noble took a few steps forward, doubling down, talking even more crudely about Jon's mother.
Jon looked at him like he was staring at a dead man who just didn't know it yet.
Just then, Roose Bolton arrived as well—along with Lord Rickard Karstark of Karhold.
The Karstarks were kin to the Starks, cut from the same old Northern root.
Even Rickard's name echoed Stark history—it was the name of Ned's father, Robb's grandfather.
Out of all the Northern lords, Rickard was one of the least troublesome.
His men were disciplined. Jon had never had to crack down on them.
Bolton had lured Rickard to his camp with some excuse.
He wanted Rickard to see Jon as arrogant and out of control.
If even Rickard Karstark lost confidence in Robb, Robb would panic—then Bolton could step in with a "solution," apply pressure dressed up as help, and grab command of the host.
The thought put Bolton in a good mood, though he still wore a mask of displeasure as he said to Rickard, "My apologies, my lord. You've had to witness this spectacle."
"Nothing to apologize for," Rickard replied evenly. "This sort of thing happens."
As they drew closer, they both saw Jon—standing there like a man on display, surrounded and watched like an animal in a ring.
For a second, both men felt almost disoriented.
Seven hells, he looks like Ned Stark.
So much that if you didn't know better, you might've thought Jon was the trueborn son and Robb the one who didn't belong.
They also heard the crowd's words clearly:
"Deserter." "Bastard."
Hearing those terms made Rickard's brow tighten.
Bolton widened his eyes in a show of surprise. "A deserter? Then it seems he inherited Lord Eddard's face, but not his honor."
"Still," Bolton added smoothly, "even a deserter wearing the Stark look is an embarrassment to the name."
He kept pressing, making sure that when the moment came, Rickard would lean his way and help him squeeze Robb.
Then Jon moved.
Step by step, he walked toward the thick-necked boy who'd been running his mouth.
Seeing Jon's anger on his face, Bolton and Ramsay practically smiled to themselves.
They thought he'd finally taken the bait.