THE BLOODS OF BOLTON | GAME OF THRONES

CHAPTER 14

AT DAWN, THE FLAYED MEN came for Ramsay. 

Skinner, Garred the Gagger, and Torrhen Two-Fingers with his heavy wooden club, they came without warning and without mercy, bursting through the door and seizing the boy while he still lay asleep.

"Your luck's up, bastard!" shouted Skinner, his wet lips fixed in a vicious grin.

Ramsay awoke with a violent jerk, his head foggy with fatigue. He went to rise, but Two-Fingers was in front of him before he could find his feet. The giant swung his mighty club and struck him with a savage blow to the temple. Ramsay's chains jangled and tightened. The wall came rushing fast. He felt the bones in his nose break with a sickening crunch as blood poured from his head and flowed down his cheek. A second stream trickled from his nose and dripped over his lips. Skinner was laughing while Two-Fingers wiped his weapon clean. The Gagger spoke not a word. Ramsay swallowed the pain with a single gulp and then slowly reclaimed his footing.

Then Two-Fingers gave a nod, and the Gagger came forward and threw a dirty sack over the boy's head. The fabric was soiled with blood and sweat and stank of death. Ramsay gagged from the smell of it.

The guards dragged him out of his cell by his chains and led him through the tower. Trapped near blindness, all Ramsay could see was the flame from the Gagger's torch, its shape obscured by the burlap fabric, reduced to a faint red-orange glow. He followed it through the darkness while his body wobbled and his feet stumbled. Ramsay struggled to keep his pace. When he failed — and he failed often — Two-Fingers was there to quicken it again. By the time they reached their destination, he would barely be able to walk.

They brought him outside, where it was cold and grey. The winds gathered their strength and blew with a fierce howl, pressing the burlap tight against Ramsay's face. The mud squished under his boots as he walked. For a long time that sound was all he heard, that and Skinner's voice as he spoke of the great suffering he was about to endure.

"We once let a man soak in a tub of his own shit and piss for days beneath the summer sun," he said. "We covered his face with honey and milk until he was all sweet 'n sticky. A waste of good honey, I say, but the flies like it well enough. After a time, the maggots and the worms slowly devoured the boy while his body rotted." He shrugged. "But Gagger here doesn't much like the smell. And we don't have time for all that, unfortunately."

Ramsay heard the heavy hooves of an approaching horse and the creaks of wooden wheels. Two-Fingers pushed him forward, and he collapsed into the back of a wooden cart. The guards climbed in after him.

During the ride, Skinner was sitting beside him, casually picking his teeth clean with his knife. "Of course, starvation's always an option. If you leave a man in his cell long enough, eventually he'll go mad with hunger and eat himself. But that's not much fun, you see. I once got so bored I forgot about the prisoner entirely. When I finally did return to his cell, he had eaten all the meat off his right arm, what little meat there was. To be fair, he didn't have much meat on him to begin with. And he was dead, of course, by the time I got there." He steadied his blade as the cart rolled over a bump in the road. Ramsay's head bobbed up and down and then fell forward. He didn't have the strength to lift it again, so he just left it to hang. "But he was a poacher, you see, and you're not a poacher, are you? ... No, just a harmless little bastard."