Chapter Text
Ramsay woke in stages of bitter cold as though the thrice-damned Others were gnawing on his limbs, sucking the very marrow from his bones along with all the warmth. He slipped into sleep like plunging into frigid water, but when the darkness threatened to keep him, something always dragged him back to the surface. This happened repeatedly, until at last he woke lucid enough to realise he wasn’t alone. At first he thought the chest providing a furnace of heat for his back belonged to Dom, but he quickly realised the flesh wasn’t defined enough. Dom was hard, compact muscle with little pillowy fat to be found. The arms around him belonged to someone more soft. Pod.
Ramsay groaned heavily, trying to recall the events that would result in him bedding down with his squire like a poor hedge knight. His memory of the battle was fuzzy, his head still too clogged from milk of the poppy, no doubt. He slipped back into sleep before he could find a satisfactory answer.
He’d ended up with Podrick Payne as a squire, the same way he’d become a knight; it was all Dom’s idea. When Father had granted him leave to marry Myranda, Dom had insisted on knighting him. Southron knights could chose their name, and it would give Ramsay the chance to shake off the hated bastard name of Snow, so as not to pass it down to his son. There were no official knighted bastard names in the North, like Longrivers or Unflowers or any other ridiculous name in the South.
Ramsay had eventually settled on the name Redbolt, as it referenced the House from whence he came, and the Red Kings the Lords of the Dreadfort descended from. It took some getting used to, but gradually the name became a skin that fit him well. His son was named with the same principles in mind; Merik, for Myranda and Domeric. And Podrick was very good with the babe.
After the Lannisters screwed themselves out of favour with the Southron crown, Robb Stark had a whole contingent of Lannister bannermen in his castle he wanted separated and contained. He was adamant they were to be hostages, and not prisoners in any dungeon. When the Westerlands were conquered, these hostages could be used to bargain with the households they had come from. So a possey of Lannister bannermen had been shunted to the Dreadfort, the nervous, pudgy Podrick Payne being one of them. Domeric had pushed Ramsay to accept him as a squire, since he was one of the more prestigious highborns from the group. The rest of the hostages they had acquired were simple guardsmen from low, masterly houses and the like.
The boy, Podrick, was Tyrion Lannister’s former page, and unreasonably quiet. It became a game, to get Pod to impart an opinion. Ramsay, who already enjoyed the sound of his own chatter immensely, talked in even greater amounts in an effort to garner response. Pod was shy, but not clumsy or lackwitted, and immensely gentle, even in the face of his fears or battle. And he was kind to Merik, who was a slow child.
No one would describe Ramsay as a patient man, and had never been gentle. He was mindful of Merik’s young age and inability to understand what was expected of him, but at times frustration got the best of him. However, Ramsay had vowed to himself that his own child would never feel belittled and besieged by his father, as Roose had done to him. Instead of tormenting his own child, Ramsay took his anger out on prisoners, servants or in dangerous games with Myranda, depending on his mood. Neither of them were kind people, but as much as they could love, they loved their son.
In future years, Ramsay would be especially glad that Podrick had found his way to the Dreadfort. The Bolton master-at-arms was not half as inclined to be tolerant, of the extra assistance and training which Merik required to keep up, as Pod was. Ramsay's son wasn’t a simpleton by any means, but he needed repeated teaching to grasp a method, and did not make leaps of intuition on his own. Pod would come to spend a lot of time sparring with Merik, with wooden swords, and was always encouraging. Ramsay would watch from the shadows occasionally, and wonder how any man could be so unfailingly caring all the time, without discernable motive. But all that was to come later.
When Ned Stark called the banners, Ramsay took Podrick Payne South, knowing the boy had no close family, and no reason to feel deep regard for the place of his birth. The Boltons had treated him well, and it was reflected in the competent, heedful application of his duties. He cared for Ramsay’s belongings carefully, and outfitted him for battle well. Still, Ramsay had never expected to owe the boy his life.
Their skirmishes with Lannister men in the Riverlands had ended in the bleakest time in his life. Myranda had followed him to war, cloaking herself in the garb of a camp follower to avoid detection until it was too late. They had travelled too far to safely send her back by the time she revealed herself, and Ramsay was furious when she refused to stay in an allied castle. The best he could manage was to confine her to his tent when he went into battle, and assign her a guard. Naturally, she flouted that, and joined the archers, being better with the bow than most of them.
After the first two frays, he stopped bothering. Besides, there was nothing quite so satisfying as fighting alongside his wife in actual battle. When splattered in the entrails of their enemies, their blood was up, and they would fuck like rabid beasts. They garnered quite a reputation for themselves. It was a sight to see a beautiful woman and her lord husband fighting in tandem, but it was not worth the price they paid.
The fight was done; a pathetic skirmish not worth writing to the Dreadfort to tell Gwyn about, making the outcome all the more horrific. A arrogant Southron fuck got his hands on a crossbow after their commander had surrendered. Ramsay didn’t see it, no one save for Myranda seemed to. A strangled voice denounced them as Northern savages, and then his wife was shoving him aside, out of the path of the loosed bolt. It skewered her flesh like a knife through pork. She crumpled to her knees, blood pouring from her mouth like the gush of a brook. Ramsay had her cradled in his arms before he could understand what was happening. The arrow had pierced her chest below her heart, not immediately fatal, but a mortal wound nethertheless.
“Ramsay,” she gasped, bubbles of blood popping at the edge of her purple-painted lips.
“Shhh,” He hushed her, unknowingly rocking her back and forth in an effort to comfort her. It did nothing to help with the pain. Behind them a scuffle was taking place, as the man who shot her was descended upon by furious Northmen. Domeric broke the man’s jaw with one blow of his fist, but Ramsay was deaf to it all.
“Do you remember, when we met?” She panted out, in great heaving gulps of air and agony.
She had been five years old, he just a little older. She had been the new kennel master’s daughter. Her hair was a bird’s nest of tangles, her dress no better than rags. She smelt of wet dog. And she had been the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, and he told her so.
She smiled at that, more of a grimace. “I was a peasant. You moulded me into something more. I owe you everything.”
He shook his head, clinging to her as though he could keep her if he held on tight enough.
“Not this, never this.” He denied, but she only smiled her bloody, ghastly smile. Ramsay was vaguely aware of Dom dropping down on her other side, clutching her shaking hand.
“Take care of our boy,” she whispered, and Ramsay lurched forward to kiss her, feeling her lips weakly press back against his before she shuddered out her last breath, and died.
Though he was too gone to hear it, he howled like a dog with a limb cleaved off, blinded by tears as he screamed out his fury and rage into the unfeeling night. He knew Dom by touch alone, too submerged beneath grief to see him, recognising the scent of his brother beneath the dirt and sweat and copper tang of blood. Dom gathered him close like he was a babe, cradling Ramsay’s head to his chest, so that he might hide from the truth for a moment. So that he could shriek and wail and bawl somewhere safe.
After Myranda’s death, he became reckless in the extreme. What little mercy he had inside him had died with her. After disembowelling and flaying the cunt that killed her, leaving him alive long enough to hang from a cross and set alight, something in Ramsay shattered. He garnered a reputation for insane brutality on the battlefield, so much that Robb Stark was wary of deploying him. Soon enough, those that met him in battle regularly threw down their arms rather than face him, after seeing what he had done to their comrades. He was rarely in a charitable enough mood to take prisoners, however, though they were often afforded a clean death for the simple reason that he preferred a challenge.
It was no surprise that he would push himself to his body’s limits, catching a dangerous chill that might have left his son an orphan, were it not for Pod. The youth was diligent, and there couldn’t be too many men willing to share a bed with Ramsay Redbolt, providing naked body heat, even when a maester ordered it so. But Pod was never one to shirk his duties. Which was why Ramsay found himself lying like a defiled maiden in his squire’s arms.
When he rolled to face the still sleeping boy, he found that sometime during the war, Podrick had become a man grown. He’d shed his puppy fat over the hard march South, with the long hours training at the pike and sword and bow, though he wasn’t skilled in any of them. Pod wasn’t truly skilled in anything, unless you counted compassion as a skill, and Ramsay never had.
Pod blushed to find himself under scrutiny upon waking, and Ramsay was distantly horrified to feel himself stir at it. Ramsay was attracted by strength, or screaming. He did not arouse at gentle Southrons that blushed at coarse language and until lately had been doughy with layers of blubber. Ramsay resisted the urge to kick the younger boy from his bed. Knowing that he probably owed his life to his squire.
Denying it didn’t make the bizarre attraction go away. There was something about Pod that was so distinctively gentle, in a way that Bolton men, indeed all Northmen, were not. Men of the North were gruff and hardy and didn’t sigh when their Southron squires kneaded out the aches in their muscles.
“Why do you care so much?” He asked of Pod, when he caught the boy spoon-feeding a peasant child with his hands wrapped in thick bandages.
Pod shrugged, as was his wont when words could be avoided. Ramsay clucked, not content with that answer, and spent the remainder of his day following his squire about. There wasn’t much of interest to be found in the swamp Neck, as they waited for Robb Stark to order them South again. The Northern army had been pulled back until Robert Baratheon conceded to their demands. Pending that, Ramsay had nothing to distract him from his grief but encouraging letters from his step-mother, and Pod’s strange habits.
“They have no one watching over them. No one that cares if they live, or die.” Pod said, in a quiet moment, as they sat together and watched the sun set below the boggy horizon. “I know what it is to feel that.”
Ramsay shrugged. That was the general state of life, he found. The gods didn’t care if they lived or died, and neither did most people, unless they wanted something from you. He opened his mouth to say so to Pod, who fixed him with one of his soft looks before he could get a word out.
“It costs nothing to provide them with a little comfort. A piece of hope.”
“You’re giving them a false expectation. That in the future, they will encounter men as chivalrous as our doe-hearted Podrick Payne. They won't.”
Pod frowned. “I prefer to believe they might carry a good deed with them. Perhaps provide the same to another in need, repaying the kindness in some manner.”
Ramsay sighed heavily and fixed his eyes back on his surroundings, ever-wary of being set upon by lizard-lions.
“You’re too gentle, Podrick.” He bemoaned, “It will be the death of you.”
He tugged the boy to stand, and with the darkness to conceal them, kissed him to see what that goodness might taste of. Pod let out of muffled yelp of protest or confusion, hands fluttering about Ramsay’s chest, as though unsure if he could push him away without incurring consequence. After a long moment, Ramsay stepped back and licked his lips. Pod was blinking in stupefaction, but still his face was placid, unsullied by grudges or bitterness.
No man could endure in this world remaining so pliable and pure. Ramsay was only repaying the debt, by muddying the boy up a bit, that he might have a better chance of survival. So Ramsay told himself, when he took Pod by the hand and lead him back to his tent. The boy didn’t even put up a token resistance, allowing himself to be stripped and pressed into the furs and tasted all over. Even afterward, Ramsay couldn’t put a name to the taste, that unique quality that made Pod so sweet.
A thorough investigation was called for, and until they were called back to war, neither of them had anything better to do. It was a deeper distraction than Ramsay could have hoped for, knowing no wench could hold a candle to his Myranda. But Pod was something altogether different, and Ramsay always enjoyed the flavour of something new.