The The

The In the pre-release

Theon chapter from the Wins of Winter, he tells Stannis that Rousse Bolton is sending some of his men to attack him.

Stannis declares that this is a blunder, that Ruse could simply sit there and Winterfell and wait for Stannis's army to starve and freeze.

Now Stannis doesn't know why Ruse made this bad decision, but he's happy to capitalize on it.

He's more focused on how to

take advantage of the situation than he is curious about why Roos is making an inexplicable

strategic mistake. But we know why. At least we have all the pieces to figure it out, because unlike

Stannis, we get a number of chapters inside Winterfell.

Dennis is left to wonder what's happening in there, but we get a firsthand to look at it through

Theon. And that's our subject of our episode today. Now, Stannis makes it sound easy, right? He says,

ah, all they got to do is sit there. They can just relax in Winterfell, let the weather do the job for them, claim the victory for them.

But as Stanis's army deals with the cold, the heat is turned up for Roos and his allies inside Winterfell. And I'm not just referring to those really nice vents that they get the hot water from.

No, no, we're talking a different type of heat.

A significant measure of this tension, that's the kind of heat

we're talking about, is straightforward enough. A lot of the Northerners really don't like

the phrase. Everyone knows about the Red Wedding and many of Ruse's allies, allies in quotes,

lost men there. So it's personal? It's more than personal. Only fear of Ruse Bolton keeps them in line.

But soon after the wedding of Ramsey to their Arias Stark imposter Jane Poole, bodies start

appearing. One death, then another, and another, and more after that, with each frozen corpse,

it becomes apparent that the Bolton's

may not have quite the level of control over the situation as it first appeared.

...