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"Ahhh!!!"
Smalljon wore a full suit of plate armor, a relatively rare piece in the North, which Robb had managed to find for him. In his hands, he carried a black lance.
The instant the two sides collided, he drove the lance straight through the belly of an ordinary infantryman. Using the tremendous force of the charge, he kept riding forward with the enemy soldier skewered on the tip while the man let out a miserable scream.
The mounted lancers in Winterfell's front line could not match him in ferocity, but just about all of them were able to kill an enemy foot soldier with their lances.
And the few who escaped the lance points by luck were still sent flying by the tightly packed momentum of the charge itself.
On that battlefield, which had only just erupted into combat, battle cries and screams of agony immediately began to ring out without end.
The Bolton soldier impaled on the black lance had not died yet. His final instinct for survival made him clutch the shaft that had pierced through him.
But as the horse jolted during the charge, his organs kept spilling out of his stomach. His grip gradually weakened, his eyes began to lose focus, and it was already obvious he was not going to survive.
Smalljon truly lived up to his reputation as a fierce warrior. Even with an enemy still hanging from his lance, it did not hinder his movements in the slightest.
After riding ahead of everyone else and piercing three enemy foot soldiers in succession, he felt the lance had become too awkward to use. So he casually threw it aside and drew the standard sword from his saddle.
Most of the mounted lancers could not reach Smalljon's level, but against a group of ordinary infantry already panicking and with their formation completely broken, they were simply unstoppable.
Making full use of the cavalry's impact, they carved open strip after strip of empty ground through the enemy ranks.
Battle had never been anything but cruel.
After charging into the enemy infantry formation, Robb began slashing hard to both sides with the sword in his hand.
Because of his height on horseback, his sword almost always struck at the heads of the enemy foot soldiers. Those hit by him either had a huge gash torn into their necks or were beheaded outright.
Behind him, enemy soldiers fell, blood spraying from them like human fountains.
If he could spare the attention to look back right then, he would probably have thought of one of those exaggerated blood-spraying scenes from certain movies.
Beside him, Bloodwind was even more brutal. Relying on his massive size, he charged wildly back and forth without restraint. The luckier enemy soldiers were only sent flying by the impact. The unlucky ones had their bodies torn apart by claws sharper than longswords.
One particularly brave enemy soldier saw the wolf coming at him like an unstoppable force. Unlike the others, who fled in every direction, he did not run.
Instead, he gripped his sword with both hands and charged straight at the beast.
Just as the two were about to collide, he suddenly threw himself sideways to the ground and slid toward the wolf's belly, trying to strike its blind spot.
Crack!
Bloodwind, whom Robb had strengthened in a balanced way until he had surpassed an ordinary direwolf several times over in every regard, had an enormous body, but he had lost none of his agility.
With a light sidestep, he avoided the blow and left that brave and clever soldier exposed once more.
Then he lowered his head, opened his mouth full of serrated fangs, and tore the man's head clean off with a single bite.
Chewing his "snack" indifferently, he kept charging forward, harvesting those fragile lives without the slightest pause.
Even here, the power of that blood bond was already starting to show. In barely two months, that little cub had been turned into a brutal killing machine on the battlefield.
Looking at the infantry, whose formation had already been completely shattered by the cavalry attack from the rear, Locke understood that everything was lost.
He looked around, trying to find a riderless horse to escape on, but when the sound of hooves echoed behind him, the last thing he saw was a heavily armored Winterfell rider with a massive build.
After punching all the way through the enemy infantry formation, Smalljon kept charging and, when he spotted several Bolton soldiers in mail by the roadside, killed them in passing.
With his breakthrough mission complete, his next target became those "iron cans" ahead, the heavily armored riders still locked in combat with Winterfell's infantry.
The fighting on the walls of the Dreadfort had already ended. Below the main gate, the Winterfell militia, who had long since heard the sounds of battle coming from the allied army's camp, began to fear that their line of retreat would be cut off.
Shouting that they were going back to reinforce the camp, they hurriedly fled to the rear.
It was not exactly a rout, but it looked very much like one.
Trogg had no way to stop it.
Roose Bolton no longer had his usual calm. He ground his teeth in silence as he glared furiously toward the fighting around the allied camp.
Although he had already reached his conclusion in silence, he still hoped some kind of miracle might happen.
Leaving aside the hastily raised infantry, that cavalry was the true foundation of House Bolton's strength.
When the heavy cavalry was surrounded and swallowed up by Winterfell's cavalry and infantry, the last spark of hope in his heart went out as well.
"Order the conscription of every man in the town taller than a wagon wheel. Let the women handle the logistical support. Give all the men a little training, then put them into the defense of the castle."
He turned away from the battle outside and gave the order to the attendant at his side.
"Send a letter to Ramsay at once. Inform him of the situation here and tell him to avoid Winterfell's army and preserve his strength."
Watching the attendant hurry away after receiving the order, Roose still had not reached the point of despair, though his expression remained grim.
House Bolton had suffered a devastating blow, but as long as the Dreadfort did not fall, its foundation would still remain.
During the past few days of siege fighting, the Dreadfort's elite infantry had lost more than two hundred men, but they had inflicted losses more than ten times that number on Winterfell's assault troops.
In terms of military strength, the Dreadfort still had more than a thousand elite infantry, two hundred cavalry, and soon all the men in the town who would be conscripted.
As for supplies, the Dreadfort had always been a fortress built for war and had underground cellars specifically meant for storing food. On top of that, there were still the goods looted from numerous merchant caravans.
He was confident he could hold out inside the Dreadfort for years.
But could Winterfell's soldiers maintain the siege for years?
The answer was obviously no.
But now, there was nothing he could protect except the Dreadfort itself. Prosperous places within Bolton lands, such as Stonehedge, would certainly be looted clean.
'I underestimated that wolf cub too much. If he keeps growing, he will become a serious threat.'
After making his calculations, Roose immediately headed for the study inside the castle. He intended to personally write a secret letter and send it to that figure in the west.
The battle outside the Dreadfort was already nearing its end. In truth, the moment Winterfell's cavalry launched its surprise attack, the victor on that battlefield had already been decided.
What followed was basically a one-sided massacre. Among House Bolton's three thousand levied infantry, many had already thrown down their weapons and dropped to their knees with their hands raised, begging for mercy, after suffering only a single cavalry charge.
But House Bolton's heavily armored riders truly lived up to their reputation as their deadliest force, loyal to the very end. They fought on against Winterfell's forces until the very end.
Robb drove his sword hard into the gap of a heavy rider's helm, and when he yanked it back out, a spray of fresh blood came with it.
A faint red mist rose from the rider's body as it hit the ground and entered Robb's body.
At that moment, Robb's eyes were blood-red, and his entire body was wrapped in a layer of crimson mist that only he could see.
As his thirst for battle kept rising, he kept riding and cutting down enemies without pause. The sword he had originally carried had broken long ago, and by then, even he no longer knew how many weapons he had already torn from the hands of his enemies.
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