Redstone Village sat near the rugged eastern coast of the North. Hornwood Keep, the seat of House Hornwood, stood further inland, guarding the dense forests that stretched toward the White Knife river.
The journey from Redstone to Hornwood covered two-thirds of the total route to White Harbor.
After weeks of slow, grinding travel through the wilderness, the caravan finally crossed into the direct demesne of Lord Halys Hornwood.
Clegg Cobb sat on the driver's bench of the lead wagon, the reins loose in his hands. He was daydreaming. In two days, they would reach the bustling winter town outside Hornwood Keep. He was already debating which brothel to visit.
Poya or Safiya? Clegg mused, chewing on a piece of dried venison. Poya has the hips, but she charges extra for the novelty acts. Safiya is cold, but she doesn't mind the belly...
A sharp, violent thwack shattered his fantasies.
An iron-tipped crossbow bolt buried itself deep into the thick oak of the wagon board, a mere inch from Clegg's ear.
Clegg's mind went blank for a fraction of a second. Then, survival instinct took over. He threw his massive bulk off the bench, crashing into the muddy road and scrambling frantically beneath the axles.
"Ambush!" Clegg screamed, his voice cracking. "Defense! Shield wall!"
Eighty yards away, hidden in the dense pine shadows, Ramsay Snow threw his heavy crossbow into the dirt in disgust.
"Useless trash!" Ramsay hissed at the weapon. "Boys! Get them!"
On his command, two other crossbowmen hiding behind thick oaks squeezed their triggers. They didn't aim for the fat caravan master; they aimed for the mounted guards riding the flanks.
Perhaps the weeks of peaceful travel had made the mercenaries complacent. Despite Clegg's scream, they reacted too slowly. Two guards were punched out of their saddles by heavy bolts, hitting the mud dead before they even drew steel.
As the remaining guards and drivers scrambled for their weapons, a dozen men wearing black cloaks over ringmail burst from the treeline, rusted swords and axes raised.
They hit the caravan with a savage, disorganized charge. In the first clash, two more of Clegg's men went down screaming.
Ramsay did not join the fray. He stood far back, safely concealed in the shadows, observing the slaughter with a cold, analytical smile.
"Yes, exactly like that," Ramsay muttered to himself, treating the bloody ambush like a tabletop game. "First, surprise with the bows. Then, a heavy melee charge to chew up the vanguard. Drive them back, collapse the center, and when the panic sets in... ride them down."
Just as Ramsay was preening over his own tactical genius, a voice like rolling thunder erupted from the rear of the caravan.
"Throat!"
A long ash arrow tore through the air.
Thwuk! The crossbowman hiding behind the oak tree on the left flank shrieked. The broadhead arrow had punched clean through his leather armor, burying itself deep in his upper chest. He collapsed, thrashing in the pine needles.
Friend and foe alike froze for a heartbeat.
Standing atop the canvas roof of the rearmost wagon was a towering figure in gleaming golden breastplate, already pulling a second arrow back to his ear.
Since adapting to the "lazy" life of a caravan guard, Aldric had spent his days sitting in his wagon, idly toying with the weirwood bow while Kevin drove.
When Clegg had screamed the warning, Aldric's reflexes—honed by a thousand raid encounters—took over. He hadn't bothered to strap on the full plate. He simply threw the golden breastplate over his head, grabbed his bow, and vaulted onto the roof to eliminate the immediate threat: the ranged attackers.
The moment the first sniper fell, Aldric's booming voice called the next target. "Center mass!"
The second crossbowman, a Dreadfort man named Pello, felt his blood run cold. He scrambled to reload, peeking around the trunk of a massive pine.
An arrow hissed past his ear, thudding violently into the bark inches from his face.
Pello gasped, a rush of euphoric relief washing over him. He missed.
But before Pello could raise his crossbow, a massive, jarring force yanked his left arm backward. White-hot pain exploded in his shoulder. He looked in horror as he realized a second arrow had punched entirely through his bicep, pinning his arm to the tree trunk behind him.
Aldric quickly scanned the treeline. The snipers were neutralized. He went to turn his bow on the melee.
But the ambushers had already crashed into the wagons. The fighting was a chaotic, point-blank brawl in the mud.
Aldric was a Paladin who had only picked up a bow a week ago. He didn't dare risk a friendly-fire incident with his untested accuracy.
He threw the weirwood bow aside, reached over his shoulder, and drew the Serpent's Striker.
"Kevin! Hold the wagon!" Aldric roared, leaping down into the mud.
The Bastard's Boys had chosen their ambush site well. The road was narrow and flanked by thick brush, rendering cavalry useless. It was an infantry meatgrinder.
But infantry was Aldric's domain.
He waded into the melee. Against the rusted steel and ringmail of the Bolton men, Aldric's epic-tier greatsword was an instrument of absolute devastation.
His first horizontal sweep caught a bandit in the ribs, folding the man in half with a sickening crunch of shattered bone. His second strike, an overhead chop, cleaved clean through a raised wooden shield and the helmet beneath it.
With Aldric's arrival, the tide of the battle reversed instantly. The sheer, terrifying brutality of the golden giant broke the attackers' momentum.
Seeing his men faltering, Ramsay's smile vanished. He turned to his servant. "Reek! The crossbow! Put a bolt in the giant!"
Reek scrambled to pick up the heavy weapon Ramsay had discarded. He wound the crank, slotted a bolt, and fired blindly into the melee.
Aldric had just backhanded a bandit into the mud when he felt a sharp, heavy ping against his back.
He glanced over his shoulder. A mangled iron bolt lay in the mud at his feet, having sparked harmlessly off his magical golden breastplate.
Another sniper? Aldric frowned, looking toward the deep woods.
Through the trees, he saw a fleshy boy in fine dark clothes spinning his horse around.
"Reek! Run!" the boy screamed, spurring his horse into a frantic gallop, abandoning his men without a second thought.
The remaining Bastard's Boys, seeing their master flee, instantly lost their nerve. The smarter ones threw down their weapons and fell to their knees in the mud, begging for quarter. The slower ones tried to run and were cut down from behind by the enraged caravan guards.
When the screaming finally stopped, Clegg crawled out from beneath the wagon.
"Boss," a bleeding guard reported. "Martin and Jonny are dead. Carl took a blade to the gut; he won't last the hour. The rest of us are battered."
Clegg's face was dark as a thunderhead. "Understood."
Three men dead. The profits from this run wouldn't cover the blood money owed to their families.
Filled with a sudden, violent rage, Clegg marched over to the four surviving prisoners kneeling in the mud.
"Speak!" Clegg roared, kicking the nearest man square in the face. "Who are you? Who paid you to hit my wagons?"
The man spat blood and teeth. "Fuck you, fat man—"
Clegg drew a heavy mace and brought it down on the man's knee. The bandit shrieked, curling into a fetal position.
Clegg turned to the second prisoner. "Your turn. Talk."
"Mercy, my Lord!" the second man babbled, terrified. "I'll tell you! Just don't—"
"I said talk!" Clegg kicked him blindly.
The kick caught the kneeling man under the jaw. There was a sharp, loud crack, and the man's head snapped around at an unnatural angle. He slumped into the mud, dead instantly.
Seeing this, the third prisoner threw himself flat, covering his head with his hands. "Please! I'll tell you! We're from the North! Our master is the Bastard! Ramsay—"
"Shut your mouth!"
The shout came from the treeline. It was Pello, the crossbowman Aldric had pinned to the oak tree. He was bleeding heavily from the chest and arm, but his eyes were wild with panic. "Do you want your families flayed? Shut up!"
Clegg froze, his mace lowering slowly. "Ramsay? Which Ramsay? Not... that Ramsay?"
"Enough riddles," Aldric said, stepping forward, wiping the Serpent's Striker on a dead man's cloak. "Is this boy famous?"
"Not famous," Clegg said, his voice dropping to a terrified whisper. "Infamous. Ramsay Snow. The bastard son of Lord Roose Bolton of the Dreadfort. He's a monster, Aldric. A sadistic animal. The Dreadfort lands are just north of here."
The only son of a powerful high lord, leading a cross-border raid into Hornwood territory? Aldric's political instincts flared. This wasn't simple banditry. This was an act of war.
Aldric frowned. He walked over to the pinned crossbowman. "Why attack us? Was the boy who ran Ramsay Snow?"
Pello glared at Aldric with desperate defiance. He clamped his mouth shut.
Aldric crouched down, meeting the man's eyes. "You think silence buys your family safety?" Aldric asked softly. "From what I hear, your master is not a man who cherishes loyalty. He abandoned you to die in the mud without a second thought."
Aldric leaned closer. "You are captured. Do you think a paranoid sadist will believe you kept your mouth shut? When he gets back to the Dreadfort, what do you think he will do to your wife? Your daughters? To ensure there are no loose ends?"
Aldric was bluffing, applying psychological pressure he had learned from interrogating Scarlet Crusaders. But he underestimated the sheer terror the name Ramsay Snow inspired in his own men.
Pello shuddered violently, tears cutting through the grime on his face.
"If... if I tell you," Pello choked out. "Will you swear to let me live? To let me run away?"
Aldric didn't answer. He looked at Clegg.
Clegg hesitated, his knuckles white on his mace. Finally, he nodded. "Tell us everything. You live."
Pello spilled it all. He told them how Ramsay had grown bored torturing a peasant girl. How he had planned the ambush on a whim, simply to practice his military tactics. How he had ordered them to leave no survivors.
As Aldric listened, a cold disgust washed over him. He wasn't robbing us for coin. He was using us as target practice.
"What now?" Aldric asked Clegg. "Do we drag these men to Lord Hornwood for justice?"
Clegg shook his head bleakly. "I am a merchant, Aldric. A nobody. If I drag Bolton men into Hornwood Keep, I force the Earl's hand. He will have to answer an act of war. I will send a raven to Master Rodney first. But..."
"But what?"
"But I doubt Earl Halys Hornwood will care," Clegg said bitterly. "To the high lords, the lives of three sellswords are not worth the blood of a war with the Dreadfort."
Aldric nodded heavily. Justice is a luxury the smallfolk cannot afford. After pulling Pello off the tree and binding his wounds, Clegg ordered his men to cut the throats of the remaining prisoners. They wouldn't risk carrying Bolton men on the road.
Following Pello's directions, they found the bandits' horses tied deep in the woods. Seven fine mounts—a small windfall that did nothing to replace the men they had lost.
From the ambush site, it was a hard, paranoid two-day push to the winter town outside Hornwood Keep.
When they arrived, Clegg immediately vanished into the town to trade goods and send his ravens. Aldric and Kevin stayed in the armed camp, refusing to let their guard down, practicing their drills in the shadow of the great castle.
Five days later, Clegg received his orders. He requested an audience with Earl Halys Hornwood, presenting the captured horses and Pello as evidence.
The result was exactly as Clegg had predicted.
Lord Hornwood summarily hanged Pello as a common bandit. He publicly declared the evidence "insufficient" to prove any involvement by House Bolton, officially sweeping the incident under the rug to avoid a border war.
Perhaps to appease his conscience, Lord Hornwood offered Clegg slightly better tariffs on his traded goods.
It was blood money. Clegg accepted it without a word. When you stand in the shadow of a lord's castle, you do not bare your teeth.
After hiring three new guards to replace the dead, the caravan rolled out of the winter town, turning south on the Kingsroad. Destination: White Harbor.