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Cheers and howls rose like thunder as they waited for the killing to begin.
Khal Drogo stood in the center, surrounded by his warriors.
Thick muscle corded across his body beneath a map of old scars.
He radiated raw, terrifying pressure.
His long black braid hung heavy to the back of his knees, gleaming with oil and hung with countless tiny silver bells that marked his victories.
“I will show you what happens when you anger Khal Drogo!” he roared.
Rahallo stood nearly six-foot-three, yet next to Drogo he looked almost slender.
Unlike the other Dothraki he kept his chest covered.
His soul had come from a world three thousand years in Earth’s future, an age where everything below the neck was censored.
He still had some pride about his body.
Daenerys stood among the watchers.
Her fingers twisted together.
Her heart hammered so hard she could barely breathe.
She could not pull her eyes away from Rahallo.
She did not understand why she felt this sharp, anxious pull toward a stranger instead of the man who was supposed to become her husband.
From the first moment she had seen him, something in her had recognized a shared wound.
“That boy is already dead, little sister,” Viserys said with vicious satisfaction.
“Drogo is the undisputed king of the grass sea.
This worthless sheep man is begging to die.” Daenerys said nothing, but a wave of unexpected disgust rose in her chest at her brother’s words.
The duel began.
Drogo let out a bull-like bellow and charged.
Every heavy step made the ground tremble.
“Khal!
Khal!” The crowd roared, fists pounding against chests as if they could already see Rahallo’s corpse.
Drogo’s first strike came down in a vicious overhead chop, the blade screaming through the air.
Rahallo twisted aside at the last instant and answered with a sweeping cut aimed at Drogo’s waist.
Drogo barely managed to wrench himself out of the way.
He stumbled back several steps.
The opening exchange had gone against him.
Rage exploded across Drogo’s face.
His arakh became a blur of motion.
“You filthy sheep man!
I will tear you to pieces!” For all his size, Drogo moved with terrifying speed and power, fast and heavy as a hunting leopard.
Rahallo stayed calm under the storm of blows.
He slipped each attack by inches and waited for openings, striking back whenever he found one.
Suddenly he dropped low and exploded forward.
His blade cut a vicious horizontal arc toward Drogo’s midsection.
If it landed, it would have sliced the bigger man clean in half.
Drogo saw the danger and brought his own weapon up in a desperate block.
The two blades crashed together with a ringing metallic scream that stabbed at every ear.
Rahallo’s arms went numb from the impact.
But Drogo was driven backward three or four steps.
Blood welled from his torn hands.
He nearly lost his grip on the hilt.
A collective gasp rippled through the crowd.
The air itself seemed to freeze.
No one had expected Drogo to be forced onto the back foot.
Shock flickered across Drogo’s face, quickly replaced by wounded pride and then pure fury.
He sucked in a breath, then leaped high into the air with a savage roar, both hands on his arakh as he brought it down with all his strength, aiming to split Rahallo from crown to crotch.
The attack was powerful but slow.
Rahallo slid aside.
He started to counter, but Drogo had deliberately left himself open.
The bigger man twisted in mid-air and drove a brutal kick into Rahallo’s chest.
Rahallo staggered back three or four steps.
A large black boot print marked his chest.
His entire body felt like it was coming apart.
The crowd erupted in fresh cheers, celebrating Drogo’s counter.
Daenerys held her breath.
She realized with a jolt of confusion that she had been silently praying for Rahallo to survive—for him to win.
The feeling unsettled her deeply.
Rahallo steadied himself, drew a sharp breath, and watched Drogo press the advantage.
At the last second he dropped into a low slide, slipped beneath Drogo’s swinging blade, rose behind him, and slashed across the bigger man’s back in one lightning cut.
Drogo grunted in pain.
A spray of blood blossomed across his back and ran down his long braid in thick streams, spattering the ground in bright red drops.
Enraged beyond reason, Drogo’s eyes turned bloodshot.
He charged again with a roar.
But Rahallo no longer met strength with strength.
He used his agility, weaving through the attacks, striking and fading.
“You only know how to run, coward!” While Drogo swung another heavy blow, Rahallo saw his chance.
He deliberately met the descending blade at the exact spot where he had earlier notched it.
There was a sharp, ringing crack.
Drogo’s arakh broke cleanly in half.
The upper portion spun through the air in a glittering arc before burying itself in the dirt, still quivering.
Drogo stared at the broken hilt in his hand, stunned.
Rahallo’s mouth curved into a cold, taunting smile.
He leveled Ascala’s point at Drogo’s face.
Drogo threw the useless hilt aside and rushed forward bare-handed.
Even without a blade his massive strength could still tear a man apart.
But Rahallo was faster.
He dropped beneath the grasping arms, twisted his wrist, and sent the curved blade slicing across the back of Drogo’s knees.
Drogo bellowed in agony.
Blood fountained from the severed tendons.
His legs could no longer support his weight.
He crashed to his knees with a heavy thud.
In the horrified silence that followed, Rahallo walked calmly around behind the fallen khal.
He seized the oily braid with one hand and yanked Drogo’s head back hard.
Then he drove Ascala downward from collarbone to heart in one smooth, unstoppable thrust.
Drogo’s huge body locked rigid.
His eyes widened with furious disbelief as the light faded from them.
Rahallo did not pause.
He stepped around in front of the dying man, hooked his fingers into Drogo’s throat, and ripped it open.
Blood sprayed outward in a violent fountain.
With a sharp crack he crushed the vertebrae in Drogo’s neck, then pulled Ascala free from the shoulder and lifted the severed head high on the tip of the blade.
The entire gathering fell into stunned silence.
Thousands of eyes stared at the head impaled on the sword.
Their khal’s eyes were already dull and empty.
The tiny bells still woven into his braid gave off soft, eerie chimes with every slight movement, like the sound of death itself approaching.
Illyrio Mopatis’s fat face had gone slack with shock.
His thick lips moved soundlessly for several seconds before he managed to whisper, “Khal Drogo is dead?
That… that cannot be…” Viserys’s face drained of all color.
He stumbled back a step, eyes wide with terror and venom.
He muttered curses under his breath, too frightened to speak loudly in case Rahallo turned that cold gaze on him.
“Savage… damned savage…” The man holding the bloody blade had not only killed Drogo.
He had destroyed House Targaryen’s last hope of restoration.
Ser Jorah Mormont’s brows drew together.
His expression was complicated as he watched Rahallo.
Daenerys slowly loosened her white-knuckled grip on her robe.
She could not look away from the man standing in the center of the circle.
Rahallo raised Ascala high above his head.
Blood ran down the blade and over his hands, streaking his face and hair in vivid red.
He threw his head back and let out a roar that split the sky.
“Anha, Khal Rhojosaroon!” (I, King of the Grass Sea!)
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