After washing up, Dany gathered her people at the foot of the hill.
She mounted her small silver horse, cradling one dragon hatchling in her arms while the other two clung to her shoulders.
Riding her silver horse, she trotted past the crowd over the parched red sand.
She called out loudly, “From this moment on, my khas will be reorganized into a khalasar, and I will not go to Vaes Dothrak to join the dosh khaleen.
Are you willing to follow me into an unknown future?” “I am.” “We are.” “We all are.” A chaotic but resounding chorus of agreement echoed from her khas.
“Good!” Dany nodded in satisfaction and called out to the crowd again.
“Jhogo.
Aggo.
Rakharo.” The three seemed to guess what was about to happen.
Instead of hesitation or resistance, their faces were filled with excitement and unconcealed joy.
Kovarro, who hadn’t been called, looked dejected and ashen.
At this moment, he deeply resented the well-known tradition of having only three bloodriders.
As expected, Dany dismounted and walked up to the three young Dothraki men.
She handed the silver-handled whip hanging from her saddle to Jhogo.
“This silver-handled whip was my bride gift.
I now bestow it upon you and name you ko.
I ask you to swear to be blood of my blood, to live and die with me, to fight by my side, and to keep me safe from harm.” Jhogo solemnly took the whip and fastened it to his waist.
Then, with a sharp metallic ring, he drew his arakh and dropped to one knee, holding the curved blade with both hands at eye level.
“Blood of my blood,” he declared loudly.
It was a binding promise.
Dany took his arakh, personally pulled Jhogo to his feet, and sheathed the blade for him.
“Blood of my blood,” she returned the promise in the Dothraki way.
Next were Aggo and Rakharo.
She gifted them a double-curved dragonbone bow and a gilded arakh, respectively.
All three weapons were Dany’s bride gifts, presented to her by Drogo’s bloodriders at her wedding.
Haggo had given her the whip, the arakh came from Cohollo, and the towering bow was from Qotho.
It had only been a year, yet the weapons remained while the men who gave them were gone.
The three new bloodriders stepped away from the crowd and stood behind Dany.
She then turned her gaze to Kovarro.
Meeting his dim eyes, which now sparked with a glimmer of hope, she said, “Kovarro, I have an important mission for you.” “Do you see my dragons?” She deliberately raised the white dragon high in her hands.
It clumsily flapped its translucent, membranous wings between her palms.
“In the future, they will be powerful enough to conquer the entire world, but right now, they are so fragile that they cannot even fly.
I need a loyal and valiant Dragon Guard to protect them.
Are you willing?” “It is my honor, Khaleesi!” Kovarro excitedly drew his arakh and swore his oath loudly.
“Ser, you have already sworn your fealty to me,” Dany finally looked at the knight, who had changed back into Dothraki garb.
“One day, you will receive a peerless longsword from my hands.
It will be forged by true dragons, made of Valyrian steel.” Jorah did not repeat his previous oath, but simply gave a solemn nod.
“It is high noon, and the weather is far too scorching.
Everyone, return to your tents and rest.
We will leave here at dusk,” Dany decided.
“Where are we going?” Aggo asked.
Dany thought for a moment.
In the original plot, they seemed to use the comet in the sky as a guide.
But there was a problem: who had ever seen a comet that stayed fixed in one direction?
Comets were comets precisely because they lacked fixed, observable coordinates.
They appeared suddenly and vanished just as unpredictably.
Take the Bleeding Star, for instance—the name the Dothraki had given it.
It had suddenly appeared last night near the eastern horizon, a blood-red dot the size of a coin, trailing a faint, almost imperceptible tail.
If you didn’t look closely, you would miss it entirely.
After one night, it had risen significantly, and both its direction and brightness had changed.
Even in broad daylight, a smear of blood-red could be seen in the east, slightly tilted south at a thirty-degree angle from the horizon, looking like a long scratch across the sky’s blue cheek.
Following it would practically mean walking in circles.
This was the Red Waste; walking in circles here was a death sentence.
In fact, in the original story, Dany’s khas suffered heavy casualties.
The elderly and the young were almost completely wiped out.
They left a trail of corpses in their wake, carving out a journey of elimination with blood and death—anyone who wasn’t strong was weeded out.
Even her handmaid, Doreah, had died.
Hmm, the bizarre part was that Dany—whose husband had just died and whose ten-month-old unborn son had been sacrificed to demons by a maegi—didn’t even take time to recover from childbirth.
She crossed thousands of miles of barren wasteland and somehow survived completely unscathed.
This…
the effects of the dragon dream were simply too good.
Dany snapped out of her thoughts, smiled at her subordinates, and asked, “First, tell me where we cannot go.” Ser Jorah spoke first.
“We cannot head north.
Even if we avoid Khal Odo’s khalasar waiting for us, the moment we enter the Dothraki Sea, the first khalasar we meet will swallow your battered forces whole.
The warriors will be slaughtered, and the rest will be enslaved.” “The lands of the Lamb Men south of the river are equally unviable.
Your forces are far too weak; we couldn’t even fend off that peaceful nation.
And the Lhazareen despise the horse lords.
They have no reason to treat us kindly.” “If we avoid the Lamb Men villages and follow the river downstream to the southeast, towards the ports of Meereen, Yunkai, and Astapor…” Rakharo immediately issued a warning.
“Martin told me that Khal Pono’s khalasar is driving thousands of slaves in that direction.
He plans to sell them at the slave markets along the coast of Slaver’s Bay.” Martin was a newly joined Dothraki warrior…
well, not exactly new.
He was originally a screamer in Khal Drogo’s khalasar who had left with Odo during the chaos.
Now, he had returned to his rightful owner, subdued by Dany’s status as the Unburnt and the Mother of Dragons.
Yes, the Dothraki were secretly calling her the Unburnt and the Mother of Dragons.
“Those slaves were all stolen from Khal Drogo.
Pono didn’t care for the golden medallions the Khal left behind because slaves are worth more,” Aggo added.
“Then our only option is to head south, across the Red Waste.” Dany looked at their grave expressions and sighed.
“Once we reach the sea, whether we go to the Free Cities or find a resource-rich place to farm…” “Farm?” Jorah was baffled.
“My dragons are too small,” Dany said vaguely.
As a super late-game hero, she naturally had to play it safe and scale up quietly.
She couldn’t afford to be reckless.
No matter how miserable the early game was, once her three dragons grew up, wouldn’t she be able to go wherever she pleased?
At that point, let alone restoring her kingdom, she could become a Genghis Khan or an Alexander the Great if she felt like it.
Standing behind Dany, Doreah looked terrified.
“Khaleesi, that is the Red Waste, a desolate and terrifying land of demons!
Not only do the horse lords know of it, but I also heard of its fearsome reputation from seafaring merchants in Lys.
Almost no one can cross that place where demons and hellish creatures dwell.” “I am not afraid of demons, and as long as you follow me, you need not fear any ghosts or monsters,” Dany comforted her.
She took the girl’s hand and guided it to stroke the dragon in her arms.
It felt scalding hot, like a sheet of iron baked under the blazing sun for hours.
Once the handmaid was calmed, Dany issued an order to her subordinates.
“Our khalasar may be small, but I have decided to reorganize it.” “What is the most important thing for an army?” she asked, sweeping her gaze over the group.
“Courage.
The courage to fight to the death without fear,” Aggo said.
“The strongest Khal,” Rakharo immediately followed up.
“Under the leadership of the strongest Khal, our forces will be invincible.
That was how Khal Drogo conquered the entire Great Grass Sea.” “And warhorses and tribesmen.
More people and stronger horses mean greater power,” Jhogo added.
Everything that could be thought of with Dothraki knowledge and wisdom had been said by the three bloodriders.
Kovarro scrunched his face in deep thought for a long time, his mouth opening and closing, but no words came out.
“The tactical skills of the soldiers and the coordination between different branches of the military are more important,” Ser Jorah said seriously.
“In Westeros, every knight undergoes training from a young age.
Masters-at-arms teach them swordsmanship, horsemanship, jousting, and archery.” “Maesters teach the young noblemen arithmetic, literature, astronomy, geography, and the lineages of the great houses.
The art of military formation and strategy is taught by their fathers, older brothers, or liege lords.” Without a doubt, this conversation revealed that the savage horse lords lagged far behind knightly civilization.
“Do you have the command skills for large-scale warfare?” she asked curiously.
There was an ancient saying: It is easy to raise an army of a thousand, but hard to find a single good general.
Dany’s small khalasar only had a few dozen warriors, so she didn’t need a brilliant commander right now, but what about the future?
“I have commanded a force of at most two thousand men.
That was during…” His expression changed, and he stopped mid-sentence.
“That was when you followed Eddard Stark, the Lord of the North, to overthrow my father’s dynasty?” Dany said flatly.
“Forgive me, Princess,” Jorah lowered his head and muttered.
“No need to apologize.
You were serving your liege lord; you did nothing wrong.” Dany waved her hand, returning to the previous topic.
“I believe the most important thing for an army is a sound system.” “What system?” Aggo asked in confusion.
“First, we will establish a sergeant system, and then we will perfect it step by step.” Meeting the confused gazes of the Dothraki, Dany smiled and said, “From today onward, the Dothraki warriors under my command will abandon all their messy banners and uniformly raise the dragon banner.
Any male who reaches the age of fourteen will automatically be drafted into the warrior ranks.” This wasn’t Dany being cruel; she herself was only fourteen.
Her handmaids and bloodriders were all youths of similar age, deliberately chosen by Drogo to match her.
If she set the conscription age at eighteen, she wouldn’t have anyone left in her ranks.
Of course, this was only a stopgap measure.
Once she had enough power in the future, she would significantly raise the enlistment age.
“Ten men will form a squad, and the strongest will be chosen as the squad leader.
Five squads will form a company, and a commander will be chosen from the five squad leaders based on merit.
Five companies…” Dany trailed off because she saw her four Dothraki followers looking completely bewildered.
Their expressions looked as if they were listening to an alien language.
“Is there a problem?” she asked.
“Khaleesi, I can understand ten warriors making up a squad, but how many warriors are in five squads and five companies?” Aggo asked, counting on his fingers in confusion.