The vast and cursed pile of Harrenhal, raised by Harren the Black and blasted by dragonfire, changed hands more than once in the War of the Five Kings, but no passing was bloodier than the night it fell to the north. Lord Tywin Lannister had made the castle his seat while he warred in the riverlands, and when he marched off to relieve King's Landing he left it garrisoned under Ser Amory Lorch, with the sellsword company called the Brave Companions among its defenders. Their captain, the Qohorik Vargo Hoat, had grown to hate the Lannisters and looked to save his own skin, and so he opened Harrenhal to Robb Stark's cause.
When Lord Roose Bolton advanced upon the castle, Hoat and his Brave Companions turned upon the Lannister men within. The garrison was put to the sword in a night of butchery; Ser Amory Lorch, it is said, was flung into a bear pit for the amusement of the sellswords. The gates were opened to the northmen, and Harrenhal became Lord Bolton's seat in the riverlands. He held it with a cold and careful hand, weighing the shifting fortunes of the war even as he professed loyalty to the young wolf, and rewarded Hoat with the lordship of the castle in name; but the Leech Lord's true purposes were his own, and Harrenhal's dark walls would soon witness fresh treacheries.