Daenerys saw the Dothraki ranks stir before she understood why.
Then her husband was leading a group of riders at full gallop, hoofbeats thundering, dust billowing up behind them until they disappeared.
She could guess what had happened.
She asked anyway, as if she needed to hear it said.
“What happened?”
Jorah Mormont stepped forward, his tone flat.
“We’re under attack.
It’s not unusual.
The Dothraki sustain their khalasars by raiding neighboring lands — and when there’s no one else to raid, they raid each other.”
Daenerys stared at the spot where Drogo had vanished.
She didn’t speak.
The worry on her face said enough.
By the time Drogo reached the battlefield, his cavalry on both wings was already grinding against the enemy in close melee.
His instinctive riding mastery took over.
He clamped his legs tight, drew his longbow, and loosed.
The shaft punched through two men’s throats in a single line.
The first clutched his neck and pitched off his horse.
The second hadn’t registered what happened before the arrowhead burst through the back of his neck.
Drogo swung back and made a single gesture to the thousands of warriors behind him.
Simple.
Every man on the grasslands knew it.
Fan out.
Envelop them.
The warriors split into two columns and swept around both flanks.
The enemy was surrounded.
Then Drogo vaulted onto his horse, gripped his arakh, and drove into the mass of men.
The blade carved an arc in the sunlight.
One enemy split from shoulder to chest, blood spraying across Drogo’s torso.
He leaned sideways to dodge a thrusting spear and shaved off half the man’s face with a casual backswing.
His horse never slowed.
His blade never stopped.
Every stroke dropped another body from the saddle.
He drew his bow faster than his enemies could clear their blades.
A man ahead had barely raised his arakh when an arrow nailed him through the eye socket.
Someone to his left moved to ambush him — Drogo turned and put an arrow straight through his mouth.
The head emerged from the back of his skull.
One man slid off his horse with his foot still caught in the stirrup, getting dragged along for dozens of yards.
The warriors saw their Khal and roared.
They surged forward and hacked harder.
After all these days, he had fully settled into this body, fully accepted this identity.
His soul and this body had become one.
Back in his original world, a few hundred meters on horseback was enough to leave his inner thighs burning.
Now it was different.
He could sit or stand on the saddle, bend at the waist whenever he liked, twist his torso without thinking, movements flowing as naturally as if he’d trained half a lifetime for them.
He found Khal Ogo quickly.
The man rode a black horse and stood out sharply among the press of fighters.
Drogo wheeled toward him.
Ogo saw him coming and spurred his horse forward to meet him.
The two horses closed fast.
Drogo flicked his wrist.
His arakh flew from his hand, tumbling straight for Ogo’s horse’s leg.
In the same motion he dipped low off the saddle, one hand sweeping an arakh up from the ground.
In that instant of bending, he caught it from the corner of his eye, Ogo’s horse’s foreleg severed clean.
The horse pitched headfirst.
Ogo launched from the saddle and hit the ground hard.
Arakh in hand, Drogo’s horse was already on top of him.
Ogo had barely scraped himself upright, both legs shaking, barely able to stand.
Drogo brought his blade down.
CLANG.
A blade swept across and blocked the strike.
Ogo’s bloodrider.
The steel clashed right beside Ogo’s ear, sparks biting the air.
The screech of metal made Ogo clamp both hands over his ears and stumble back a step, nearly going down again.
Drogo yanked the reins.
His horse reared and pivoted.
Before the bloodrider could pull his blade back, Drogo’s arakh swept across his throat from the side.
Blood sprayed across the horse’s mane, hot and steaming.
The other two bloodriders hit him at the same time.
Drogo dropped flat against his horse’s back.
Both blades slashed through the air above his face.
Not a single hair touched.
He snapped upright with a surge from his core, biting the spine of his blade between his teeth.
His horse still driving forward, he twisted sideways and back, drew his bow with both hands, and put an arrow into the left man’s ribs.
The head punched out the other side.
One left.
The man’s eyes went red.
He came in swinging, blow after blow, wild and relentless.
Drogo rode the attacks from horseback, swaying and rolling, easy as a willow in wind.
The instant the man’s strength flagged and he pulled back, Drogo chopped into his neck.
Half of it opened up.
Cohollo arrived just then and drove his blade into the man’s back, burying it to the hilt.
He looked up at Drogo, breathing hard.
Ogo read the field and ran.
He grabbed a riderless horse and was already a hundred paces gone, his silhouette shrinking fast across the grassland.
Drogo didn’t hesitate.
He wheeled and went after him.
“After him!”
His warriors followed at his back.
Behind them, the sounds of battle were fading.
Only scattered steel-on-steel remained, echoing and sparse.
Drogo led the pursuit for over 100 li.
Ogo still got away.
He reined in his horse on empty grassland, chest heaving, staring at nothing.
Lost him.
He turned around and rode back.
Daenerys had been too worried about her brother to wait.
She sent Jorah Mormont to find him.
Jorah found Viserys at the edge of the battlefield.
He sat on his horse, watching the Dothraki clean up.
A few men moved through the piles of bodies with axes.
When they found someone still breathing, they finished it, axe up, axe down, and the body stopped moving.
“Battles are common here, Your Grace.” Jorah reined in beside him.
“While we’re still not too far from Pentos, you’d be more comfortable returning there.”
Viserys snorted.
“I have no interest in that.
I’m staying until Drogo keeps his word.
He gives me an army, I get my crown.”
“As you wish, Your Grace.”
“Yes, Mormont.” Viserys’s gaze moved back to the field.
“Life out here is hard.
But it’s better than sitting in Pentos waiting for the usurper’s axe to find me.”
Arrogant as he was, Viserys wasn’t stupid.
Jorah felt a flicker of guilt.
He opened his mouth, then closed it.
Viserys pointed at a girl not far away who was pulling arrows from corpses.
She was maybe ten years old, thin as a stick.
She was crouched over a body, straining to wrench an arrow free from its back.
The shaft was stuck deep.
She gripped it with both hands, planted one foot on the dead man’s backside, and hauled with everything she had.
“Why do these savages make little girls do this kind of work?” Viserys said.
“Where are the men?”
Jorah glanced over.
“The Dothraki believe touching a corpse you didn’t kill yourself brings bad luck.
So this work falls to the girls.”
Viserys said nothing.
He watched until the girl finally yanked the arrow loose.
The sun was already slanting westward when Drogo rode back into the khalasar.
He reined in and looked around.
The column had come to a ragged stop, men unloading baggage, horses being tied to stakes, warriors sitting down in the dirt and staying there.
A mess.
Still the same mess as always.
“Make camp here,” he said.
A subordinate jogged over.
“Khal — thirteen prisoners taken.
Awaiting your orders.”
Drogo nodded.
“Our losses?”
The men around him exchanged glances.
No one had an answer.
His brow tightened.
“Cohollo.”
Cohollo stepped forward.
“Tally everything we lost.” Drogo held his gaze.
“Every sheep.
Every horse.
I want a full count.”
Cohollo acknowledged the order and went.
Drogo turned to Qotho.
“Where’s the firewood I told you to collect?”
Qotho pointed.
A small heap of wood, branches, and dry grass, stacked into a rough pyramid.
Drogo walked over, looked at it, and looked back at him.
His tone was flat, but the reproach was deliberate.
“You worked all day and this is what you brought back?”
Qotho dropped his head.
Said nothing.
Haggo stood nearby holding a bundle of cloth.
Drogo took it and went through the stack, squares of fabric, roughly 5 inches to a side, sizes barely consistent.
“How many?”
“Just over a thousand.” Haggo’s voice was low.
Drogo didn’t say anything more.
Not even a tenth of what he’d asked for.
➤ Next: Night of Blood and Fire
WEEKLY POWER GOALS: 30→1ch | 50→2ch | 80→5 ch | 100→8 ch | 150→12 ch
Happy reading, everyone!