Jorah caught up before his horse had even steadied.
“Khal, I’m sorry!”
Drogo didn’t look at him.
He stared at Viserys, teeth grinding, the fury in his eyes almost physical.
He could kill him right now.
One stroke.
The fool couldn’t even dodge.
It would feel good.
But no.
Dany’s disgust with Viserys wasn’t deep enough yet.
Kill her brother now, and she wouldn’t cheer.
She’d only remember that he was the one who killed the last family she had.
She might swallow it today, but someday it would surface again and become a debt.
Drogo drew a slow breath and pushed the fire down.
Viserys was still talking.
He had no idea he’d just walked past the gates of death.
His voice was actually louder now:
“The people of the Seven Kingdoms are still waiting for me!
They are busy sewing dragon banners, praying that I will soon lead an army across the sea to liberate them.”
Drogo steadied himself.
“What the common folk pray for is good weather, healthy children, and a full harvest.”
“As long as they can live in peace, they don’t care how the high lords play their game of thrones.”
He shrugged.
“It’s just that the common folk have never gotten what they wished for.”
Viserys’s face twisted, features scrunching together like something had curdled.
He erupted:
“This is treason!
When I sit the Iron Throne, your head will be the first to roll.”
The man had truly lost his mind.
No filter left at all.
If the Dothraki had understood a single word, he would have been hacked to pieces already.
No one insulted their khal like that.
He heard every word.
And even knowing Viserys would die, knowing the man didn’t have long, knowing was one thing.
Hearing it with his own ears was another.
The blood surged up anyway.
He was shaking with rage.
The fire climbed from his chest and kept climbing, impossible to push back down.
He grabbed his bow and nocked an arrow.
“Don’t!”
Dany cried out.
But the arrow had already left the string.
It grazed past Viserys’s cheek and punched clean through his ear.
Blood sprayed.
Viserys pitched off his horse and hit the ground, clutching the side of his head, screaming like a stuck pig.
Drogo lowered the bow.
If his hand had shifted even a fraction, that arrow would have gone through Viserys’s eye socket.
The column moved on.
Hooves passed by Viserys, dust kicked up and settling across his face.
No one looked down.
He writhed on the ground, blood seeping through his fingers, staining his silver hair red, each scream sharper than the last.
Only now did he seem to understand: Drogo was not Dany.
Drogo would not quietly absorb his tantrums.
He kept crying out in pain, but he said nothing else.
Dany rode on.
Her face was pale, and she did not look back.
Drogo rode at the front.
He didn’t want to kill Viserys.
Couldn’t kill him.
Not yet.
He was thinking: there were other ways.
The method Ramsay Bolton used on Theon Greyjoy, for instance, break a man’s pride down to nothing, turn him into an obedient dog.
If it came to that, he wouldn’t mind making him Unsullied either.
Dany rode in silence for a while, turning Drogo’s words over in her mind.
The common folk don’t care who sits the Iron Throne.
True dragon or usurper, it doesn’t matter.
They want good weather, healthy children, and food enough to eat.
This was nothing like what Magister Illyrio had told her.
Illyrio said the people of the Seven Kingdoms longed for the dragon’s return, longed for Viserys to lead his army home across the sea.
She raised her head.
Jorah Mormont was riding behind her and to her left.
“Ser Jorah.”
He urged his horse forward and fell in beside her.
“What Khal Drogo said — is it true?” she asked.
“Do the people of the Seven Kingdoms truly not care who is king?”
Jorah was quiet for a moment.
“Yes, Khaleesi.
The people of the Seven Kingdoms want three meals a day and to be left in peace.
Who sits the Iron Throne — they don’t much care about that.”
Dany studied his face.
“Then what about you?
Why did you come all the way to Essos to swear fealty to him?
Isn’t it because he’s of the blood of the dragon?
Isn’t that what people in the Seven Kingdoms believe?”
Jorah’s expression stiffened for just an instant.
“Because I was exiled.” A trace of bitterness in his voice.
“Why?”
“I caught some poachers on my lands.
By law, I should have handed them over to the Night’s Watch.
Instead, I sold them.” He said it plainly.
“What is the Night’s Watch?”
“They guard the Wall, against the wildlings to the north, and…” He paused, and in the end didn’t mention the Others.
These days the Others were legend.
No one had truly seen them.
“The Watch is made up of exiles and criminals.
Go to the Wall, and your past crimes are forgiven.”
Dany nodded slowly.
“Was what you did, was it serious?” she asked, with the curiosity of a child.
Jorah was quiet again.
“Eddard Stark sentenced me to death.
I had no choice but to flee somewhere beyond the Seven Kingdoms’ reach.”
He spat to the side when he finished.
She knew that name.
Every time Viserys spoke of the Usurper, he brought it up.
“He and the Usurper were like brothers,” she said.
Then she pulled her reins and looked back.
She couldn’t stop worrying about Viserys.
That arrow had gone through half his ear, and blood had soaked the ground.
She knew he’d earned it.
But he was still her brother.
She turned her horse around.
Three maids and three mounted guards fell in behind her as she rode back.
Viserys was still there.
Doreah was crouched beside him, binding his ear with strips of cloth.
He despised the other two Dothraki maids, but he tolerated Doreah well enough.
Back when she was still his slave, they had spent a great deal of time together, “practicing their swordsmanship,” one might say.
The bleeding had stopped.
The cloth wrapped around and around until half his head was covered.
Viserys sat on the ground, mouth going the whole time, each word worse than the last.
“That bastard…”
“Please don’t speak like that,” Dany said.
Viserys snapped his head up and stared at her.
“You little bitch — you dare tell me what to do?”
Dany closed her mouth.
She lowered her head, not daring to say another word.
He kept going, the words growing fouler.
“You worthless thing, did you fail to please that savage?
You’d better get him to give me his army, and fast.
Or I’ll take you away and sell you to someone else who will.
There’s always someone who wants a little dragon whore to warm their bed…”
Jorah stood nearby, listening.
His brow tightened with each word.
“You should stop,” he said.
“If Khal Drogo hears about this, he’ll cut out your tongue.”
Viserys yanked the sword from his belt and leveled the tip at Jorah’s chest.
“Show disrespect to your king again,” he said through his teeth, “and I’ll take your head first.”
The blade was less than a foot away.
The hand holding it trembled, not from rage, but because he could barely hold the weight.
Jorah didn’t blink.
Viserys had no soldiers, no money, and couldn’t win a real fight.
The sword was a fire poker.
Nothing more.
What Jorah actually wanted to say was this: You think I came here out of loyalty to you?
I was only watching you.
Reporting your movements back.
But he said nothing.
He just stood there and let the sword point at him.
➤ Next: Reform Bears Fruit
WEEKLY POWER GOALS: 30→1ch | 50→2ch | 80→5 ch | 100→8 ch | 150→12 ch
Happy reading, everyone!