The wedding was over. In the halls above, the feast was being cleared away, the butchered bodies of Robb Stark's bannermen dragged to be burnt or thrown from the ramparts into the river. Endless buckets of water and an army of servants were at work scrubbing the blood from the floor. Walder Frey watched it all gleefully, still in the seat where he had sat throughout the massacre.
In the dripping wet dungeons beneath the Twins, Roose Bolton had begun work on an abomination. Assuming the Lannisters held to their part of the bargain, he was to be made Warden of the North, and he intended to send a message to the other Houses of the North that they would remember for a long time, one which would strike fear into their hearts at the mere mention of the liege Lord. He would make a mockery of the young wolf's body, decapitating him and sewing the head of his Direwolf in place. There were only two problems...
The first was a minor trifle, and would resolve itself in time, he had no doubt. The boy, more stubborn even than his father, refused to die, even despite the two arrow wounds that pierced his shoulder from front to back, and the knife in his belly. It was unnatural, but the boy could only have so much blood in him. Laid out on a slab of cold stone, Robb Stark was looking paler even than the leech lord, his chest rising and falling in shallow breaths. Until the young wolf's death, Roose Bolton had decided to rekindle a few of his House's old traditions. His fingers glided over a selection of razor sharp knives, selecting with an expert eye the implement that would draw out the torment, as he flayed the boy alive.
The second, more troubling, problem was that the boy's Direwolf, Grey Wind, had escaped his kennel during the events of the Red Wedding, and was nowhere to be found. If his men could not track it down, perhaps he would have to settle for a regular wolf.
The hours wore on, the leech Lord savoring his work. The old ways were truly still the best, and his House had refined them to an art. They could skin a man totally, and still keep him alive long enough for him to see their handiwork. Yet as a miserable dawn began to creep over the Twins, and Robb Stark still refused to succumb to death, Roose began to consider the need for restraints. The ex-King in the North's eyelids fluttered.
"My lord."
Roose looked up as one of his men stepped into the dungeon. He looked wet and tired from a long night of hunting in the storm. "Have you found the Direwolf?" Roose asked quietly, and the soldier looked uncomfortable.
"Not quite, my lord. We found... a Direwolf. A she-wolf, bigger than any we've ever seen, leading a pack of wolves. It killed four of our men before we could get a spear through it."
A rare smile almost formed on Roose Bolton's lips, but thought better of it. He had heard the tales of the female Direwolf harassing the Riverlands. His hands assessed the half-flayed body of the King laid out before him. Perhaps a new skin would suit Robb Stark better. "How large would you say this wolf is?" he asked. "As large as a man?"
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