The next morning, the khalasar struck camp and set out.
Tradition demanded it: Drogo would lead his people across the Dothraki Sea and present his new bride to the dosh khaleen at Vaes Dothrak.
The masses camped outside the walls of Pentos began to move.
Tents came down, baggage was bundled and loaded.
Women lifted children onto horseback; slaves shouldered pots and pans.
The crowd moved east like a tide going out, leaving wreckage in its wake.
The grass had been trampled to mud.
Refuse lay everywhere.
Horse dung steamed in the morning sun, and flies swarmed in thick, droning clouds.
A magister stood atop the city wall and exhaled slowly.
“Thank the gods.
They’re finally gone.”
The column marched on, vast and sprawling, stretching further than the eye could follow.
Drogo had brought the interpreter Lali along this time.
He placed her with Daenerys’s retinue, if fortune smiled, she’d quicken with child even sooner than Daenerys.
He himself was heading to rejoin his bloodriders and the main host.
The khalasar was as disordered as ever.
Over 100,000 people on the march, the formation scattered like a fistful of sand thrown to the wind, losing a few hundred along the way wouldn’t have surprised anyone.
But Drogo had more pressing concerns.
Reform would have to wait.
He turned to Koso.
“Carry my command: gather every item along the route that can burn and bring it along.”
He added with deliberate weight: “Make sure every last person hears that order.”
Koso nodded.
He rode along the column’s flank at a gallop, bellowing as he went: “The khal commands, gather everything that can burn and bring it with you!”
Then Drogo turned to Haggo.
“I want ten thousand squares of cloth.
Five inches each, square-cut.
Gathered before sunset.”
Haggo took the order and rode off.
Neither of them understood what Drogo wanted.
Neither of them asked.
It seemed that as long as he didn’t challenge Dothraki tradition, his bloodriders would carry out any command without question.
Only Kohoro stayed at his side.
He spoke first:
“Prince Viserys has sought an audience with you several times.
Will you see him?”
“No.
Keep blocking him.”
Drogo knew exactly what Viserys wanted, ten thousand riders to invade Westeros, fuel for his Iron Throne fantasy.
As khal, he had no intention of sending the tribe’s finest warriors to die for that fool.
Kohoro nodded.
“Yes, Khal.”
Drogo glanced at him.
“Do you know why I sent Koso and Haggo on those two tasks?”
Kohoro answered without hesitation: “You have your reasons.
We don’t need to know why, we just carry it out.”
Drogo changed the question.
“Do you think they’ll finish before nightfall?”
Kohoro considered briefly.
“I don’t think they can.
Our column stretches over ten kilometers.
Even if Koso shouted himself hoarse, he couldn’t get the order to every person.”
He paused.
“As for Haggo, five thousand would already be a fine achievement.
If he gathered whole cloth and had men cut it, he might manage.
But that takes time.
Ten thousand five-inch squares by sunset is asking a lot.”
Drogo listened.
The corner of his mouth moved, not quite a smile.
He reached inside his coat and pulled out a small hourglass, delicate and compact.
He held it up, tilted it, watched the fine sand trickle down.
“With a captain-of-a-thousand system in place, both tasks would be finished before this runs through three times.”
Kohoro looked at the hourglass.
Then at Drogo.
Still baffled.
Drogo kept his patience.
“Forty thousand warriors, you pick forty captains of a thousand.
When I issue a command, I only need to gather those forty.”
“Each captain of a thousand tells his ten captains of a hundred.
Each captain of a hundred tells his captains of ten.
The order flows down, layer by layer.
Fast enough?”
He added:
“Under each captain of a hundred, as long as more than ten per—”
He stopped himself.
Saying “ten percent” would only lose Kohoro entirely.
He rephrased.
“Under each captain of a hundred: if more than ten men fail to receive the order, I hold him to account.”
Kohoro fell silent, turning the words over.
Drogo watched his face, unable to tell whether he was struggling with the concept or working out the arithmetic.
Then, after a long moment, Kohoro’s brow eased.
His eyes lit up.
He started nodding, and the flattery came pouring out:
“Khal, you are truly born a god of war.
This method, no one on the grasslands has ever thought of anything like it…”
Drogo was almost embarrassed by the praise.
Kohoro’s eyes sharpened.
“So you sent them on those two tasks on purpose.
To let them discover the problem themselves.”
“That’s one reason.”
Drogo looked at him, voice dropping.
“The second reason — I wanted them out of earshot.”
The smile died on Kohoro’s face.
The bloodriders are a khal’s closest companions.
No secrets between them, not merely guardsmen, but brothers and partners.
When the khal holds council by day, his bloodriders stand at his shoulder.
When the khal dies, they go with him.
When the khal falls in battle, the bloodriders avenge him and then take their own lives.
Some khals even share their wives with their bloodriders.
The only thing never shared is a khal’s own mount.
What Drogo had just said hit Kohoro like a bomb going off behind his ribs.
Drogo spoke without urgency, his voice level:
“I have received a prophecy from the Great Stallion.
I have less than a year of life remaining.”
Kohoro hadn’t recovered from the first blow before this one landed.
What little color remained drained from his face.
He opened his mouth.
The words came out in pieces.
“H-how…
how can that be?
Prophecies aren’t…
they’re not always accurate…”
“At the wedding feast,” Drogo said, “did I not prophesy the number of dead correctly?
Twelve.
Not one off.”
Kohoro’s face went gray, as though a stormcloud had settled over him.
He knew Drogo would not jest about this.
Drogo saw his expression and softened slightly.
“You once saved my life.
You are the closest person I have, like a father to me.
That is why I chose to tell you and not the others.
I don’t want panic.
The fewer who know, the better.”
Kohoro buried the storm rising in his chest.
“Then what must we do?”
“The dragon eggs are—”
A horn cut him off.
WOOOO,
Long.
Deep.
Drawn out like a wound.
Drogo had never heard that sound before, but something buried in his inherited memories surfaced in an instant: enemy attack.
The thing he had feared most had come to pass.
The column stretched for over 10 kilometers like a single great serpent.
Scouts ahead, a vanguard clearing the path, a rearguard anchoring the tail, cavalry riding both flanks, but if an enemy concentrated their force at any one point, they could still punch through.
He looked around.
The people within sight weren’t panicking.
Those who needed blades were drawing them; those who needed to rally were rallying.
The herders kept herding.
The riders kept ambling forward on horseback.
As if being raided were everyday business.
They were used to it.
A horseman came charging out of the dust.
The scout hauled up in front of Drogo, gasping:
“It’s Ogo’s khalasar!
They’ve struck our flank!”
Rage ignited in Drogo’s chest.
He fixed the direction the scout was pointing and spurred his horse into a dead gallop.
➤ Next: Become One — The Fight Begins
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