When Daenerys returned to her tent, the hairless men treating Drogo had not yet left.
Several women with skin like plucked chickens and terrifying appearances spread their dry, root-like legs, their disheveled gray hair swaying to the rhythm of their ritual dance.
Their toothless mouths were wide open, singing ancient Dothraki songs in sharp, ear-piercing voices.
They danced and sang around the naked man on the bed.
The flames of the nearby campfire leaped two meters high in time with the song’s rhythm, then suddenly died down to almost nothing, leaving only the charcoal flickering dimly.
Daenerys felt her scalp tingle.
She stood at the entrance, her legs feeling like solid steel-reinforced concrete pillars, unable to take a single step.
*’This is just the Dothraki witch-doctor dance, nothing major.
You are the Mother of Dragons, it’s just some fluctuating flames, maybe it’s the wind…’* she told herself inwardly.
“Roar—” Drogo suddenly let out an inhuman howl from the fur bed.
The sound carried only one emotion: extreme agony.
How many times had Daenerys seen him face injuries ten times worse with a faint smile?
For a towering, fierce warrior like him, having a layer of skin sliced off his chest should only count as a flesh wound!
Even if the wound was inflamed and infected, even if the bacteria had penetrated his internal organs, he should be groggy, his consciousness fading, feeling almost numb.
Although she had just graduated, she had dozens of internship experiences and knew that inflammation would never stimulate the pain nerves to this extent.
Recalling how, ever since Mirri Maz Duur began treating him, Drogo would thrash and punch the air in agony every night, tearing several sheepskin blankets to shreds.
Daenerys was absolutely certain now.
That maegi did it on purpose.
She was using the most cruel method to exact her revenge on the Dothraki.
Undoubtedly, nothing would satisfy her more than letting the Khal die in ultimate agony and endless torment.
No, she wasn’t satisfied yet.
Daenerys touched her belly.
The maegi also wanted to sacrifice Drogo’s son to demons and make his Khaleesi suffer for a lifetime.
Drogo, groggy during the day and struggling in pain at night, was quickly held down by several horse lord healer-women and forced to drink two large bowls of poppy wine.
Milk of the poppy, a milky white liquid extracted from poppies, had miraculous pain-relieving and anesthetic effects.
It was the most commonly used anesthetic in Westeros and the Free Cities.
The horse lords didn’t have the Westerosi maesters’ techniques for purifying milk of the poppy, but they could steep poppy flowers in wine for a similar effect.
These hairless men fully deserved the title of quack doctors.
Without formal training, they only took up healing as a side gig because they were barren—they also did daily chores like cooking, tending fires, and herding horses and sheep.
Their medical skills were abysmal, and their magic was practically nonexistent.
They could neither treat slightly severe injuries nor dispel the maegi’s dark magic.
Daenerys was certain they hadn’t even realized Drogo was under a curse.
After the hairless men bowed to her and left, Daenerys finally approached the bed, supported by her handmaids.
“Jhiqui, find me a dagger.
A sharp one,” she told her handmaid.
When Daenerys married Drogo, she received many gifts, including three handmaids from Viserys: the Dothraki girls Jhiqui and Irri, and the blonde, blue-eyed Lysene girl Doreah.
Jhiqui and Irri were about the same age as Daenerys, fourteen.
Both were taken as slaves when Drogo destroyed their fathers’ khalasars.
Doreah was older, twenty, and had been the top attraction at a famous brothel in Lys.
None of them were ordinary handmaids.
Irri was an expert rider, tasked with teaching Daenerys how to ride.
Jhiqui was fluent in the Common Tongue, Dothraki, and High Valyrian, specifically teaching Daenerys the Dothraki language.
As for Doreah…
she was tasked with training the naive little Dany into a master of ‘riding’…
or rather, an expert in the arts of the bedchamber.
Jhiqui moved quickly, retrieving a twelve-inch dagger from a waist-high purple wood chest with copper-inlaid edges.
It had a yellowish-brown bone hilt and a brown leather sheath, curved like an arakh.
“This is Drogo’s dragonbone dagger, Khaleesi,” Jhiqui said.
*Schwing!* The short blade was drawn, flashing like a ribbon of white silk in the dim red torchlight.
The blade, thin as a cicada’s wing, didn’t have a single notch.
A look of satisfaction flashed through Daenerys’s violet eyes.
A good knife!
Seeing her lean over by the light of the tallow candle Doreah held, seemingly preparing to cut open the bandages on Drogo’s chest, Ser Jorah quickly stepped forward and said softly, “Khaleesi, you are heavy with child.
Let me do it.” *’Heavy with child?
Do you think my master’s degree is fake?’* Dany shot the large bear a sideways glance.
She passed the blade through the outer flame of the candle, then skillfully sliced open the filthy silk cloth stuck to the skin.
Beneath it was a hardened crust of blue mud and fig leaves, layer upon layer.
Over the past seven or eight days, the hairless men had repeatedly slathered on more than ten layers of this ‘Dothraki holy medicine’—mud paste.
Calling them quack doctors was an insult to actual quack doctors.
Jorah turned his head, looking at Dany with surprise and confusion.
The dressing was being cut and peeled away with deft agility, hard to believe it was the work of a pregnant young girl who knew nothing of swords or knives.
The top layer of the dressing was still moist, but the bottom layer was as dry as a Lamb Men’s mud wall.
Under Dany’s rhythmic tapping, it cracked into pieces as easily as a mud wall.
Peeling away the fragments stuck to the flesh and removing the blackened purple fig leaves piece by piece, a sweet, cloying stench mixed with the smell of rot gradually filled the spacious yurt.
The odor was so overpowering that they could barely breathe.
Doreah covered her mouth with one hand, her cheeks bulging, while the thick tallow candle in her other hand trembled violently.
Jorah quickly reached out and took the candle from her.
Doreah immediately stumbled back a few steps, jogged over to lift the leather flap, and began vomiting outside.
The wooden tray held in Irri’s hands was piled high with the removed chunks of mud and leaves, stained with pus, blood, and tiny bits of rotting flesh.
At this moment, the full extent of Drogo’s injury was revealed to Dany.
His left chest was pitch black, the festering wound glistening in the candlelight.
As Drogo breathed rapidly and laboriously, his chest rising and falling, thick purplish-black pus oozed out in three branching streams, soaking the pure white lambskin blanket beneath him.
The increasingly pungent, sweet stench made even a tough man like Jorah nauseous.
“Khaleesi, Khaleesi…” Ser Jorah looked at Dany, who stood frozen with a pale face, then at Irri and Jhiqui, who had turned their heads away and covered their noses.
He opened and closed his mouth, trying to speak several times but failing to form a complete sentence.
When Dany snapped out of it and ordered Irri and Jhiqui to prepare hot water and strong wine, Jorah immediately grabbed her arm and said urgently, “Khaleesi, do you see?
Your husband is dying.” *’I know.
I can guess that his chest cavity must be filled with foul pus, and Drogo’s heart is soaking in that toxic, purplish-black blood.
Even if the dark magic is dispelled, with this kind of trauma, he would definitely die even in the medically advanced modern world,’* Daenerys thought silently.
One could even say he was already dead.
The maegi wanted him to suffer more torment, so she used bizarre dark magic to keep him clinging to life.
“What are you trying to say, Ser?” “Child, before he takes his last breath, we must leave!” Jorah urged.
“Leave?
To where?” Dany stared blankly at Drogo’s chest, asking numbly.
“To Asshai by the Shadow.
It lies in the far south, at the edge of the known world, and is said to be a thriving port.
We should be able to find a ship back to Pentos from there…” Ser Jorah hesitated for a moment, then asked, “Are the men of your khas trustworthy?
Just the two of us might be…” “Heh…” Daenerys’s pale face broke into a bitter smile.
She shook her head and said, “Ser, you’re overthinking it.
We can’t escape.
With too few people, we can’t protect ourselves, and if we take the khas, a large group would be too conspicuous.
Do you think forty thousand screaming warriors are blind?” To Asshai?
It was a journey of ten thousand miles.
Even grown men couldn’t endure the hardship of such a long trek, let alone Dany, a heavily pregnant fourteen-year-old girl…
It would be quicker to just stab herself with a knife.
Ser Jorah looked at Dany’s swollen belly and frowned.
“Princess, even for the sake of the child, you must try to flee this place.
“The Dothraki submit to the power of Khal Drogo, but it ends there.
They will never follow a babbling infant.
This is completely different from Westeros.
“Once Drogo dies, Jhaqo, Pono, and a dozen other kos will immediately begin fighting for the position of Khal.
Drogo’s khalasar will tear itself apart, slaughtering each other until a final victor emerges.” “And then?” Dany asked, her face wooden.
Ser Jorah couldn’t bear it.
He hesitated for a moment before whispering, “The new Khal will not leave his rivals alive.
Your child will be taken the moment he is born and fed to the dogs…
just like Drogo did to Ogo and his son.” This Dany was much stronger than Jorah had imagined.
Aside from her face growing paler, she didn’t fall into hysterical despair.
“If…
I have about a week…
about seven days left until my due date.
If Drogo dies before then, and my child hasn’t been born yet, will they let me go?” Dany asked hesitantly.
“I am a Khaleesi.
By Dothraki tradition, no one can harm a widowed Khaleesi.
At most…” Dany gritted her teeth, struggling to force out the last sentence: “At most, they will send me back to Vaes Dothrak to become one of the dosh khaleen.” Ser Jorah looked shocked, saying in disbelief, “Are you willing to grow old and die in the city of the horselords?” Then, he shook his head in anguish.
“It’s no use.
Haven’t you noticed that none of the dosh khaleen in the city have children?
In all these years, do you think not a single Khaleesi lost her Khal while pregnant, just like you?” “He’s just a baby, an infant who has lost his tribe,” Dany said, fear flickering in her violet eyes, unable to believe it.
Ser Jorah smiled bitterly and asked, “Do you remember your brother, Rhaegar?” Fourteen years ago, on the eve of Daenerys’s birth, her eldest brother, Crown Prince Rhaegar Targaryen, died on the banks of the Trident while fighting the Usurper.
Her father, the ‘Mad King’ Aerys, had his throat slit by the White Knight sworn to protect him, dying tragically beneath the Iron Throne.
On that same day, Prince Rhaegar’s children—Daenerys’s niece and nephew—met their ends.
Three-year-old Princess Rhaenys was hacked in two.
The infant Prince Aegon was torn from his mother’s breast and, amidst the Crown Princess’s agonizing shrieks, smashed against a stone wall like a melon, reduced to a bloody pulp…
Of the entire Targaryen dynasty, only Dany and Viserys were left…
and now, only Dany remained.
*’I’m worse off than Murong Fu.
At least he had his four retainers and his cousin,’* she thought.
“If Westeros, which reveres the spirit of chivalry, is like this, then the savage Dothraki…” Jorah paused before continuing, “There is one more thing.
Beneath the Mother of Mountains, the dosh khaleen prophesied that your child would be the Stallion Who Mounts the World.
His future achievements will be enough to strike fear into the heart of any enemy.
No one will risk letting him grow up to seek revenge by letting you leave.”