The night on the grassland went quiet.
After the voices died away, other sounds crept in — insects calling in the grass, animals rustling in some distant cave, the occasional cough drifting over from camp.
Dany still sat there, Lale beside her, and that Dothraki rider Jogo nearby.
Behind Drogo, his three bloodriders hadn’t moved.
The fire had burned down to red coals.
Sitting beside it now, you couldn’t feel the heat at all.
Drogo spoke first, his eyes still on the center of the fire.
“You’re here.
You have something to say?”
Dany couldn’t tell if he was talking to the bloodriders or to her.
She waited for Lale to translate before she answered.
“My brother saw you fight Ogo’s khalasar today.”
“He said you defeated his bloodriders without any trouble.
He also said you could definitely beat Robert Baratheon’s army.”
She was still too young.
The moment she opened her mouth, her whole purpose was sitting right there in the open.
Drogo had assumed she was going to ask about the dragon eggs.
Turns out she was just running errands for her brother.
He turned his head and glanced at her.
She was watching him with a smile.
In the dim glow of the coals, that smile looked like flattery, or maybe begging.
Hard to tell which.
Drogo looked away and spoke at his own pace.
“Robert — he’s about to die.”
Dany froze.
She looked at Lale, thinking something had gotten lost in translation.
Lale nodded.
Nothing had gotten lost.
“Gored by a wild boar!” He burst out laughing, shoulders shaking with it.
Dany stared at him.
“How do you know that?”
Drogo didn’t answer her directly.
“I also know that none of his three children are actually his.
His horns are greener than the Dothraki Sea.”
Dany looked at him the way you look at a man talking in his sleep.
When it came to anything involving Viserys, Drogo’s approach was simple: read the message, reply with nonsense, repeat.
No communication possible.
She stood, brushed the dust from her skirt, and turned to leave.
A khal sitting in the middle of Essos, declaring how Robert Baratheon was going to die, claiming his children weren’t even his — who was going to believe any of that?
She walked away.
Twenty or so steps out, his voice caught her from behind.
“Don’t you care about the dragon eggs?”
She stopped.
Turned around.
The faint light from the coals reached her face.
She hesitated.
“No,” she said.
“Magister Illyrio told me those eggs turned to stone long ago.
They can never hatch.”
She said it.
Then she hesitated again.
She wanted them to hatch.
Of course she did.
Drogo wasn’t surprised by her answer.
The three dragons had only hatched after the Khal’s sacrifice, an accident none of them had planned for.
The Dany standing in front of him now had no way of knowing that.
So he waited.
He closed his eyes and tried to pray: let the embers cool, let the hatchlings emerge.
He knew what was coming.
Ice and fire could not share the same world.
The White Walkers would cross the Wall.
The dragons would be born.
Both were written.
But before the eggs hatched, this body, this Khal, this Horse Lord of the grasslands, couldn’t outrun the fate that had already been set for him.
The bloodriders kept him company through the night.
Morning light pushed through from the east.
A thin mist settled over the ashes, soaking the cinders until they were dark and damp.
Nothing moved in the ash.
Drogo’s heart dropped.
He walked into it.
The bones of the 4 captives hadn’t finished burning.
He stepped on one, CRACK, clean and brittle.
He drew his arakh and swept the ashes aside slowly, careful not to harm anything that might have come out.
But when the ash cleared, what looked back at him were still three dragon eggs.
Just three eggs.
“It was a blood sacrifice,” he muttered.
“Why won’t they hatch?”
His voice was low, but Qotho caught it anyway.
“We don’t need dragons.
The Dothraki have horses.
That’s enough.”
Drogo had no patience for him right now.
One plan had failed.
Another was already forming.
“Cohollo.
Get me a large cauldron.”
“Yes, Khal.”
By the time the water was boiling, the khalasar was loud with the noise of morning.
Drogo placed the dragon eggs in one by one.
Water splashed over the rim, hit the hot iron, and HISSED out of existence.
People moved through the camp, watching their khal do something none of them could make sense of.
They watched.
They didn’t dare say a word about it.
Drogo stared into the cauldron.
The three fossilized eggs rested at the bottom.
Boiling water churned around them in slow, heavy rolls.
Cohollo asked, “What do we do with the other 9 captives?”
“Let them go.”
Qotho and Haggo looked at each other.
Qotho was the one who spoke.
“We should shave their heads and take them as slaves.”
Haggo followed, which was rare.
He wasn’t a man who wasted words.
“If we release them, people will think we’re weak.”
Drogo looked at Qotho.
Then at Haggo.
“They won’t.
Those men have already had the courage beaten out of them.”
“They saw what happened to the 4 we burned last night.
Every bit of it.
I want them to walk home alive and tell everyone exactly how I deal with people who attack us.”
Haggo nodded.
He turned, arakh in his right hand, and walked toward the captives.
The men started pleading the moment he moved.
“I will grovel at your feet.
Make me your slave, just spare me.”
“I was following Ogo’s orders.
I had no choice.
Please.”
Haggo walked up to them.
He drew the blade.
A few of them squeezed their eyes shut.
The blade came down and cut through the ropes binding their wrists.
The ropes dropped to the ground.
The captives looked up at Haggo, not sure what they were seeing.
“Go,” Haggo said.
“Tell Ogo we will hunt him to the ends of the earth.”
They scrambled up, grabbed the wounded between them, and ran.
Stumbling, lurching, not looking back, until they were far enough that some of them finally did, glancing over their shoulders as if they expected arrows to come for them anyway.
➤ Next: Placing the Crown Upon Her Head
WEEKLY POWER GOALS: 30→1ch | 50→2ch | 80→5 ch | 100→8 ch | 150→12 ch
Happy reading, everyone!