Bago’s khalasar was two days’ ride from Vaes Dothrak.
Drogo did not rush.
The first day, he led his riders in a wide arc around their flank, moving at a leisurely pace.
The old, the young, and the women followed behind.
Tens of thousands of horses grazed loose across the grasslands.
From a distance, it looked like nothing more than a large tribe on the move.
Bago’s scouts came out several times to look, rode wide circles from a safe distance, then turned back to report.
The second day, Drogo sent Virgo with part of the old and young around the left flank and Koro with men around the right.
On the surface, still just herding horses.
In truth, both detachments were already quietly closing in from either side.
A full day’s ride still separated the two khalasars.
Drogo just kept roaming, east one day, west the next, day after day.
Bago’s scouts came every day, watched every day, and went back to report every day: “They are still herding horses.”
Bago’s vigilance slowly loosened.
By the fifth day, Drogo’s scouts had mapped out the whole khalasar.
3 separate grazing grounds, spread more than a dozen li apart.
The khal’s main camp sat on a gentle slope at the center, only a thousand or so men around him, the tents scattered loosely, and barely a handful of sentries posted on the outer perimeter.
Drogo knew the moment had come.
He looked up at the sky.
Clouds veiled the moon, and the nighttime grassland was dark enough to swallow a horse’s hooves whole.
He left 2,000 men to guard the old and young.
With 5,000 riders at his back, he pressed toward Bago’s main camp under cover of darkness.
Midway there, a scout slipped out of the blackness.
“Khal, Bago’s people — they’re all dead asleep.”
“Good.”
He glanced back.
5,000 riders split into five columns, moving forward like five black serpents sliding belly-low across the ground.
Cloth wrapped the horses’ hooves, muffling every footfall on the grass.
No one spoke.
No one lit a torch.
Only the occasional snort of a horse broke the silence.
When the first pale smear of dawn touched the horizon, Drogo saw the camp.
Hundreds of tents scattered along a small river.
No cooking smoke yet.
Everyone still sleeping.
A few sentries leaned against wooden posts, their heads slowly bobbing.
Bago was woken by the need to piss.
He crawled out of his tent, stood outside to relieve himself, and squinted at the distant horizon.
The grassland lay smothered in thin mist, all gray and featureless.
He yawned.
Halfway through it, he went still.
Something was moving in that gray mist.
He rubbed his eyes.
Horses?
Men?
Cavalry.
Row after row of cavalry, spilling out of the mist, surging toward him.
Blades caught the dawn light and turned white.
“Enemy attack, to horse —”
He was still shouting when he realized his trousers weren’t tied.
Warriors burst from the tents with blades in hand.
Some were still scrambling to find their horses.
Formation?
There was no formation.
Bago’s horse stood right beside his tent.
He vaulted up, dug in his heels, and screamed into the crowd.
“Follow me!
That way — charge!”
Dozens of men fell in behind him and drove toward the gap in the encirclement that hadn’t yet closed.
Behind him, his camp was already gone.
Drogo’s cavalry had crashed into the tent clusters.
The frontmost rank rode straight over them, the tents flattened, the people inside never had time to cry out before the hooves had already passed.
The riders behind poured in after, blades swinging to either side, cutting down whoever was scrambling out from under the canvas.
One man crawled out of a tent with his trousers not yet on, half his body still inside, a blade came in from the side and his head went off at an angle, blood spraying across the neighboring tent.
Another burst out with his blade up.
The moment he found his footing, a charging horse plowed into him and sent him sprawling.
A hoof came down on his chest.
CRACK.
He opened his mouth to scream and nothing came out.
A second horse trampled over him.
Women ran with their children clutched tight, scattered after only a few steps.
Warriors hunted for horses.
The horses had already bolted, stampeding wild through the camp.
A man managed to mount, as he straightened in the saddle, a stray arrow buried itself in his neck.
He toppled backward.
The horse galloped off with an empty saddle.
A man knelt on the ground with his hands over his head, shouting for mercy.
It wasn’t clear who he was shouting to.
Drogo rode his black-red horse through the chaos, Qotho on his left, Haggo on his right, Cohollo guarding his back.
The three kept their positions tight around him.
As long as the horses were moving, his bow was in his hands.
An enemy rider charged from the flank.
Qotho moved to intercept, but Drogo’s arrow was already loosed.
The man clutched his chest and toppled backward.
To the right, someone was rallying a counterattack.
Drogo twisted and loosed.
The man dropped from his horse and the fighters around him dissolved into chaos.
Quiver empty.
He slung the bow across his back and drew his arakh.
An enemy slashed at him.
Drogo leaned aside, came back with a reverse cut, and the man slid off his horse.
Another lunged.
He drove the blade into the man’s chest.
When he pulled it free, blood hit his face.
He spurred his horse over the bodies and rode on.
Ahead, the largest tent.
Bago’s.
Drogo slashed open the tent flap and charged in.
Empty.
Blankets still in disarray.
Bedding still warm.
He came back out.
A centurion ran up beside him:
“Bago’s gone!
He broke out through the gap on the southeast side in the confusion, took a few dozen men with him!”
Drogo reined in and looked southeast for a long time.
Run, then.
Run to the holy city.
Someone’s waiting for you there.
A dozen centurions had already gathered around him.
Several were drenched in blood.
“Khal, let me pursue!”
“Send me!”
“My horses aren’t tired yet, we can still catch him!”
He held his horse.
It pawed the ground twice.
The killing cries were still rising, but quieter now.
“Fogo Bargho.” He called the name.
“Take your men and go after him.”
The bald young man answered without hesitation.
“Yes, Khal.”
“Catch him if you can.
If you can’t, turn back.
Don’t ride too far.
Don’t ride into an ambush.”
Fogo Bargho nodded, turned, and left.
One crack of his whip, and a hundred riders followed.
By the time the sun fully cleared the horizon, reinforcements from Bago’s other 2 grazing grounds had finally arrived.
A dark mass of dust rose in the distance, pressing forward.
At least 1,000 riders.
Drogo watched it and said, “They don’t know Bago’s already run.”
The dust cloud drew closer.
Hoofbeats rolled in like muffled thunder.
Bago’s warriors came with blades raised and voices screaming.
The two forces crashed together.
The dull crunch of steel biting into bone.
Horses screaming as they collided.
Unhorsed men trampled down into the grass.
They charged hard, but Drogo had the numbers.
His men held.
The enemy couldn’t break the formation.
Everything ground down into a tight mass, shoving, pushing, no one able to look out for anyone else.
Then Virgo burst out from the flank with his riders, like a blade driven into the kidney.
Bago’s men still hadn’t steadied their formation when the right side erupted as well.
Koro’s riders crashed in from the rear flank and drove straight through the crowd.
Three forces.
The thousand-odd riders in the center had nowhere left to go.
Backward, blocked.
Forward, blocked.
By the time the sun stood fully in the sky, the battle was over.
On the other side of the grassland, Bago lashed his horse and didn’t dare look back.
Of the dozens of personal guards who had broken out with him, some had fled, some were dead.
Barely ten remained, teeth clenched, riding grimly in his wake.
“The holy city!” he screamed.
His voice had already cracked raw.
“Once we’re inside the holy city, we’re safe, they don’t dare kill inside the holy city!”
No one answered.
Everyone was just breathing.
The horses had been running all morning.
Their mouths were ringed with white foam.
One horse gave out without warning, legs buckled and it went down, launching its rider far across the ground.
The man hauled himself up and tried to run after them.
He fell behind after a few steps.
No one looked back for him.
Bago didn’t look back either.
He just kept lashing his horse, over and over, until bloody welts ran in stripes across its back.
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