Newly hatched, the dragons were like malnourished kittens—so emaciated that one could only distinguish their necks, tails, and wings, as if they had no torsos at all.
Cradled in her hands, they felt practically weightless.
However, it was a different story when they spread their wings.
Their wingspan was three times their body length.
Each wing was a delicate expanse of translucent, vibrantly colored skin, stretched taut across long, slender bones.
Dany had suffered a miserable childhood.
From the age of five, she had wandered among the Nine Free Cities, living a life deprived of adequate food and clothing.
This left her somewhat malnourished and stunted.
Furthermore, being only fourteen, her figure had barely developed.
Her apple-sized breasts were completely incapable of providing sufficient milk.
With nothing to eat, the starving hatchlings constantly craned their necks and screeched.
Like the chimneys of steam locomotives, their snouts and maws occasionally puffed out plumes of scalding white smoke.
Dany tried placing dried meat, mare’s milk, bloody raw meat, and boiled meat in front of them, but the hatchlings would only take a sniff before turning their heads away.
She was frantic with worry, and Jorah had no idea how to feed them either.
Before the birth of these three, dragons had been extinct for over a century.
Their legends could only be heard in children’s bedtime stories.
That was until her first bath in the flames, when the black dragon wriggled out of Dany’s embrace and ravenously gnawed on a charred bone within the fire.
Then Dany understood: dragons only ate meat that had been roasted by fire, and it had to be thoroughly charred.
They were still too young to breathe fire and roast their own meals.
And the first thing that truly proved dragons were magical creatures wasn’t their birth from the flames, but their astonishing appetites.
Dany had tested it herself—they could consume three times their own body weight in a single meal!
Any famous glutton or competitive eater would look like an absolute amateur compared to these three dragons.
This completely defied her scientific worldview.
Dany couldn’t fathom where all that food went.
Once, she deliberately pinched the black dragon’s belly to feel the food digesting, and then…
There was no ‘and then.’ He just kept eating, his belly kept churning, churning, and he kept eating…
Because they ate so much, their bodies grew visibly larger day by day.
Dany thought happily that perhaps she would be able to ride a dragon very soon.
But to ride a dragon, the dragon first had to learn how to fly.
Every time Dany’s gluttonous dragons lifted off, they wouldn’t even make it two feet off the ground before flapping their wings and nose-diving into the dirt.
It was quite a pathetic sight.
Today, as the egg-yolk-like sun struggled to climb over the horizon, Dany was thrilled to see that her baby dragons could finally glide at low altitudes like paper airplanes.
After every feeding, she would carry her dragons in a woven bamboo basket on her back and find an open clearing for flight training.
As the golden-red morning light slanted across the earth, Dany cupped a baby dragon in her hands and tossed it forcefully into the air.
The hatchling flapped its wings and darted forward.
Then, she bent down and scooped up another one from the ground…
The hatchlings that nose-dived into the dirt would crawl back to their mother on their own, lining up to wait for their next test flight.
During these times, a group of children—dirty as mud monkeys and wearing nothing but short trousers—would often hide behind the distant hills.
With wide, almond-shaped eyes, they would curiously peek at them, occasionally letting out gasps of awe.
Around ten o’clock in the morning, the horse women would shout loudly, calling their children home to eat and sleep.
They generally slept until around four or five in the afternoon, packed up, and continued their journey.
Aside from the Khal and his *kos*, the children born here only knew their mothers, not their fathers.
With very few exceptions, most could not identify who their fathers were.
The *khalasar* took responsibility for raising the children.
Once grown, they would repeat the fate of their parents: the women would bear children, and the men would become warriors, following the Khal to wage war in all directions.
For thousands of years, this was how the Dothraki had lived.
Perhaps this would change in the future.
After all, changes were already taking place.
Dany hoisted the basket back onto her shoulders, carrying her three little dragons, and leisurely returned to her tent.
First, she scrubbed the grime from her body using fine red sand.
Then, after sharing some dried meat with her dragons, she cuddled them close and fell into a deep sleep on her woven grass mat.
This time, having pitched her tent right against the low wall Dany had built, Doreah was finally able to sleep peacefully through the midday heat.
Previously, let alone this Lysene girl, even most of the horse people couldn’t endure the stifling heat and found it nearly impossible to sleep.
Even though Dany was fulfilling her duties as the leader of the *khalasar* perfectly, this was still the Red Waste—a purgatory of plains.
At dusk on the third day, the *khalasar* had only been marching for half an hour when an old man’s head slumped, and he tumbled from his horse.
Because Dany had established a strict decurion system, news of the old man’s fall immediately reached her at the front of the column.
Leaving Aggo and Rakharo to accompany her, Jhogo led the majority of the *khalasar* onward.
The main host could not stop; the outriders searching for water further ahead were waiting for them!
The old man who had fallen had a pair of pale blue eyes that resembled those of a dead fish.
His skin was far fairer than the rest of the tribe, and the roots of his greying hair retained a golden-yellow hue.
He was not Dothraki, but a slave from Khal Drogo’s *khalasar*.
After taking control of the *khalasar*, the first thing Dany did was remove the slave collars from their necks, granting all slaves the status of tribesmen.
The old man before her, who had broken his left arm in the fall, was among the first beneficiaries of this new system.
Dany brought a skin of mare’s milk to his lips and asked, “How old are you?” After examining him, she found no signs of heatstroke or dehydration, but she did notice his mouth…
He was so old that he didn’t have a single tooth left.
“I…
I don’t remember, Khaleesi.” The old man drank the fermented mare’s milk and roused from his stupor.
“Where does it hurt?” Dany asked again.
“My…
*cough*…
my arm,” the old man groaned in pain.
Dany frowned.
She obviously knew his arm was broken, but she wanted to know why he had fallen from his horse.
She spent about twenty minutes cleaning the broken arm, then used two wooden splints to set and secure the fractured bone.
Even if it was a comminuted fracture, this was all Dany could do.
Without medicine, a doctor was no different from an ordinary person.
She instructed the horse herder, Effendi, “Carry him to the wagon.” Effendi was the decurion in charge of the old man’s unit, managing a squad comprised entirely of the elderly, who were usually responsible for herding and guarding supplies.
Two other old men removed a few tents from a flatbed wagon to make room for him, then strapped those tents onto the old man’s saddle.
The procession continued moving.
“Khaleesi, he should be left here.
His time has come,” Irri, Dany’s handmaid, said in a tone meant for everyone to hear.
“No one should live longer than their teeth.” The rest of the horse people murmured in agreement.
Dany, however, disagreed.
“Have you ever thought about it?
A *khalasar* does not keep useless people, so how has he lived this long?
The Khal must have needed him.
I’m guessing he possesses some remarkable skill.” “Perhaps it’s medicine, or maybe literature.” As soon as she said it, she shook her head in denial.
“It wouldn’t be literature.
Maybe his herding skills are exceptional.
Is that it, Effendi?” Effendi was riding behind Dany.
Hearing his name, he deftly spurred his horse to her side, keeping half a horse’s length behind her, and praised in an exaggerated tone, “Khaleesi, you are incredibly perceptive.
Nothing escapes your eyes.” Although the flattery was a bit stiff, it was a compliment coming from the mouth of a Dothraki!
It was as rare as seeing a penguin in the Arctic.
“What kind of remarkable skill does he have?” Aggo asked curiously.
“Hoson is a master of the twelve Arts of the Spring Cry.” “Yes, the blue-eyed Volantene is Hoson,” Effendi added.
“Arts of the Spring Cry?” Dany looked confused.
“What are the Arts of the Spring Cry?” “Ah, you people who live in stone houses just make things too complicated,” Effendi waved his hand dismissively.
Dany’s cheeks flushed red as she immediately understood—it was the secret arts of the bedchamber.
“How is that a remarkable skill?” She felt her pride take a hit, her mood souring.
Reading her expression, Effendi panicked slightly.
He tried hard to recall the boasts old Hoson had once made to him and said, “Khaleesi, even the famous Kaiyuan, the world’s training center for female slaves, only knows seven Arts of the Spring Cry.
But Hoson…
he is Volantene.
He knows techniques that only the Dragonlords used before the Doom of Valyria.
Even though only five of those ancient techniques have been passed down, it’s enough to make him unrivaled in the world today.” Volantis was the only city of the ancient Valyrian Freehold to survive the Doom, and was now one of the nine Free Cities.
The ruling class of Volantis were orthodox Valyrian nobles, just like House Targaryen.
The Targaryens, back in the day, were considered exiles…
“Even if he is the best in the world, what use is he at his age?
Why did the Khal keep him around?” Dany asked, puzzled.
“He is the father of Khal Haggo,” Effendi said solemnly.
“A Khal’s father cannot be abandoned.” “Khal…
Haggo?
Was Haggo the Khal of another *khalasar* before?” Dany grew even more confused.
“Not Khal Drogo’s bloodrider, but Blue-Eyed Haggo from twenty years ago.
Even in our current, small *khalasar*, there are at least three children named Haggo.” “I see.
This Hoson is quite something!” Dany nodded, pulling her white lion pelt cloak tighter across her chest.
She sighed in amazement, “To think a slave’s son actually became a Khal.” “He was of mixed blood; Haggo’s mother was Dothraki.
Because Hoson served the previous Khal so well—he is, after all, a master of the twelve Arts of the Spring Cry—his brave son was made a *ko*.
“Later, Blue-Eyed Haggo became a Khal himself and made quite a name for himself on the Great Grass Sea, until he met Khal Drogo’s father…” Effendi’s expression turned wistful.
Dany nodded to herself.
A person’s value wasn’t solely determined by their martial prowess; an elder’s wisdom and rich life experience were also precious treasures.
“Khaleesi, did you know that Khal Drogo was once stolen away when he was a child?” Effendi asked suddenly.
“I know.
It was Cohollo who risked his life to save him.
That time, Cohollo gained two bone-deep scars on his face, but he also became the Khal’s most trusted companion, and later, Drogo’s bloodrider.” Speaking of this, Dany’s heart suddenly skipped a beat.
She exclaimed in shock, “Could it be that Blue-Eyed Haggo was the one who did it?”