"Are you sure?" Jon asked, looking at the scout.
The man nodded. "Aye, I saw them. Never seen that sigil before, but it looked to be about four thousand men. Sellswords I think."
Jon sighed. "Thank you. You can go."
The man bowed and left, leaving the Bastard of Winterfell alone with his commanders, each waiting for the young man to speak first. With Robb, they had found out that they could debate amongst themselves and he would silence them when he had his plan. With Jon, he needed it a bit more quiet for him to think. They figured this out after he left the tent twice to be away from the shouting.
"Does anyone recognize the device?" Jon asked the table. "A white rose on a field of grey?"
"Company of the Rose." Howland Reed grunted.
"Roose hired sellswords." Lord Karstark growled. "Probably paid for them with Lannister gold."
"What do we know about them?" Jon continued.
"The company was formed by northern nobles who refused to bend the knee to Aegon the Conqueror." Galbart Glover answered. "They probably saw a chance to retake some of their ancestral seats by fighting for the Boltons."
"We can't split up the army." Jon sighed, crossing his arms. "There's no way five thousand men can take on four thousand sellswords and however many men Roose has."
"What do you propose?" Glover asked.
Jon screwed his mouth shut, thinking quickly. "We'll keep the army together. We don't have a choice. If we split, then we could very well lose half the army."
"Which way do we go then?" The Greatjon rumbled.
"West," Jon answered. "We'll send parties to capture the Rills and Barrowton while the bulk of our force heads towards Eagle's Roost. From there, a portion of our force will continue north and retake Deepwood Motte while the rest of us march east and deal with the Boltons."
"What about Last Hearth?" The Greatjon demanded.
"Roose will most likely call Arnolf back when he sees that Ryswell and the Dustins have been destroyed," Jon explained, trying to think of what he would do in Roose's position. "He'll dig into the Dreadfort and prolong his failed rebellion as long as he can to maximize casualties."
"If he doesn't?" Karstark barked.
"Then Lord Umber and yourself can go track the man down and take his head," Jon answered firmly. "If Bolton is foolish enough to leave him in the field, we'll make him pay."
The northern lords growled their agreement.
"Ser Wylis will take five hundred cavalry and take the Rills, same with Daryn Hornwood and Barrowton." Jon finished. "The rest of us will march towards Eagle's Roost."
Line Break
Bowden Hawker
The Captain of the Seahawk felt a savage smile spread across his face as he read the little sheet of parchment in his hands. The message from his brother was short and to the point; the lords of the North were back and coming with a vengeance. All Bowden had to do was hold out a little while longer.
"My lord, is all well?" The maester asked, poking his head into the solar. The man was covered with sweat and blood after spending hours with the injured.
"Just fine Malos. What's wrong?" Bowden asked, putting the message down.
"The enemy is attacking again. Your presence has been requested." The maester said grimly.
Bowden sighed and grabbed his weapons, still stained with blood from the previous fights, and thrusted them through his war belt, striding out of the room. Ryswell had finally breached the outer walls and had forced the defenders to the main keep. Bowden had a few hundred men left of the thousand he had started with, but for each man he lost, Ryswell lost two. He must have lost almost two thousand of his men already.
When the man emerged from the keep, he found himself in the middle of a warzone. Archers fired down on the attackers and brave townsfolk who were fighting to protect their home hurled rocks and whatever else they could get their hands on.
To Bowden's right, fifty more defenders hastily made their way out of barracks, fully armed and armored. They were not the sailors that had served so well as city defenders, but these were the actual watchmen of Eagle's Roost. Leather and chainmail-clad men who were well trained with spear, harpoon, bow, and shortsword.
"On me." Bowden barked, drawing his cutlass and storming up the steps to the battlements. "Hold! Hold!"
Bowden, never one to leave the fighting to his men, had taken part in every single engagement between his men and Ryswell, no matter how minor. Even if it was a light thirty-man party sent to probe the defenses, Bowden was there with a bow in his hands and blood on his mind.
Together, backed up by fifty trained guardsmen, Bowden stormed up and down the battlements, helping push back defenders wherever they came screaming over the wall. His cutlass was swung with so much fury that it practically cut men in two, severing arms, legs, and heads with a single blow.
"We do not break! We do not flee!" Bowden bellowed.
The fight was short and bloody, lasting only half an hour before calls to retreat came from the enemy. Ryswell was playing the slow game with Bowden and it greatly annoyed the man. He would throw his men at the defenders in waves, slowly breaking them down for a few days before he would overwhelm them with numbers. It was the same tactic he used at the main gate.
"How many men?" Bowden growled as a captain ran up to him.
"Another fifty or so." The man answered grimly. "A dozen or so are injured."
"Get them to Malos," Bowden ordered. "Make sure the walls are restocked with ammunition."
"We're running low, my lord." The man answered. "We will run out in a few days."
"I know," Bowden said. "That's when they'll try to take the castle. Break down anything that's not essential to the castle. Chairs, tables, even bed frames. I want them sharpened and used when we run out of arrows and rocks."
The man paled slightly and nodded, running off. Bowden marched back into the castle, striding past medics as they rushed out to help the injured and dying. Maester Malos' supplies were stretched as thin as possible and used when absolutely necessary.
"Get here soon Roland," Bowden muttered to himself. "Or else we're all dead men."
Line Break
Asha
The Dreadfort looked unimpressive to the ironborn. True, it was the middle of the night, so it looked more like a black mass against the land lighted by the moon and stars, but there was nothing extraordinary about it. Asha and her men had passed the ruins of Winterfell while heading east. THAT had been impressive to behold.
Compared to it, the Dreadfort looked like a hunting lodge.
"We're ready." One of the raiders whispered to Asha.
The Captain of the Black Wind nodded and began to make her way towards the castle, her men following close behind. Six of her raiders had climbing grapnels in their hands. They would serve as their entry into the castle and out if all went to plan.
Truth be told, Asha didn't have much of a plan for saving her brother. Deepwood Motte had nothing valuable to help with the rescue mission, so she was going in blind with the hope that she would be able to find her brother and get him out before anyone noticed what was happening.
It took a few moments for the raiders to reach the walls. They had pressed themselves against the western wall, with Asha keeping her eyes up towards the top of the wall where two sentries leaned on their spears next to a burning brazier, bundled in their cloaks.
Asha turned her gaze on her men with bows in their hands, holding up two fingers to indicate the number of men on the wall. They nodded and laid arrows on their strings before moving a little ways away from the wall, giving themselves better angles to get their shots off.
All four men fired, and the sound of two bodies crumpling soon followed. Asha's men were adept at firing from the rolling deck of a ship at sea. On solid ground shooting targets who weren't moving, it was like killing fish in a barrel.
"Go." Asha barked quietly.
The raiders with the grapnels moved away from the wall, swinging the iron hook in their hands before throwing them up the wall. The nearest man to Asha tested the hook, making sure it was firmly caught before handing the trailing rope to his captain, who took it and quickly began to scramble up the wall. Her men followed suit. Soon, there were a dozen men and her on the walls.
"The rest of you stay there," Asha called in a loud whisper over the wall. "Two of your, grab their cloaks and spears. Pretend you're the guards."
Two men immediately stepped forward and took the spears and cloaks from the northerners before throwing the bodies over the walls. In the firelight, the cloaks disguised their chainmail and leather armor that bore the sigil of House Greyjoy.
"The rest of you, follow me," Asha ordered, taking the axes from her belt and moving quickly down the wall and towards the keep.
As soon as the ironborn were in the keep, Asha took the first turn she came across and strode quickly down the hall, her gaze sweeping side to side for any clue as to where Theon might be. Her ears strained to hear anything. After a few minutes of searching, she and her men came to a point where there were a set of stairs leading up and leading down.
Asha briefly remembered her Nucle Rodrik telling her and Theon stories about Westeros whenever he visited their mother on Pyke before her father's rebellion. He told them of the Long Night and the Age of Heroes, the Targaryen conquest and many other stories. One of his darker stories had been about the war waged between the Starks and Boltons for control of the North. He had said that the Boltons were renowned for their love of flaying and how the 'Red Kings' would wear the skin of flayed Starks as capes.
Part of the story was a rumor about a room in the Dreadfort where the skins still existed.
"Down," Asha said, slowing descending the stairs.
The new hallway was lit with only a few torches, making the area looking even more sinister for whatever reason. The daughter of Balon Greyjoy felt like she had ravens fluttering in her stomach and it made her feel like she was ready to puke, but she knew that was just fear and pushed the nerves back down.
At the end of the hall was a door that was different than the others. There were iron bars where there would normally be a window and the wood was reinforced with black iron. The biggest difference was the lock under the handle.
Asha slammed the back of her axe on the lock, breaking it before pushing the door open. The room was damp and dreary, with a small barred window set high on the wall opposite of the door. There was also the stench of shit, blood, and something she couldn't describe, but it made her cover her nose with her arm as soon as she stepped inside.
In the center of the room, next to a table with bloody knives and other instruments, was a giant wooden X with a bloody, beaten, disfigured man strapped to it, his head covered with a sack.
Asha pulled the sack off and cursed violently when she found herself looking at the bloody and scared face of her brother.
"Held me." Asha snapped, pulling at the leather straps that kept her brother up. Two more ironborn came forward and freed his other hand and his feet. When he was free, he slumped against Asha, barely alive.
"Grab him," Asha said, still shocked and stunned at what she saw. Her brother was almost bone thin, his feet and hands covered with blood-stained rags that showed he was missing most of his fingers and toes. His torse and legs were hatch-marked with cuts and bruises. The most unsettling was the massive red blotch on the undergarment her brother wore.
With Asha once again in the lead, she and her men moved as fast as they could back through the castle, cutting down anyone who got in their way. As soon as they were out, they headed back up the steps to the battlements where they had gotten into the castle.
Standing over the two dead bodies of her crew was a pale, big-boned young man, shirtless and garbed in boots and leather breeches. He wielded two cleaver-like swords and had an insane smile on his ugly face.
"Well hello there," he said gleefully, the men at his back readying their weapons. "Leaving so soon?"
Asha glanced at the grapples, wondering where the rest of her men were at. She had left nearly fifty men at the bottom of the wall. They would have noticed if something was wrong.
"I'm sure you're wondering where your friends are." The shirtless man said, gesturing with one sword towards the wall. "Take a look."
Asha, shuffled towards the wall, keeping one eye on the man, glanced over the edge of the wall. Her entire crew lay slaughtered at the base of the wall.
"You'll pay for that," Asha growled, readying her weapons.
"You're a feisty one." The man snapped. "You'll be fun to break."
Asha roared and threw herself at the man, her men at her back. The fighting was fierce, but the boltons had more men and soon it began to tell. Her men began to go down all around her till it was just her and three of her men, their backs against the battlements. The pale man smiled evilly. He had cut down three of her men himself, practically hacking them to pieces.
Asha glanced towards Theon's body, shivering and still unconscious on the walkway. She had traveled across the North to get him back, and now she was about to die herself.
"I'm sorry." She whispered.
The boltons charged forward, killing her last three men as Asha threw herself over the edge of the wall, nearly snapping her arm from her body as she caught herself on one of the ropes. She cried out as the rope burned and ruined her palm, but she fought through the pain and made it to the ground, running as fast as her legs could carry her back towards their camp and the rest of her men.
"I'll be back Theon," Asha swore, humiliation and fury burning the oath into her brain.