Chapter 21: Over the Sea and Far Away, pt. 4
I picked up Jorah’s head by the hair and holding it away from Aethon rode back to Jon. He helped me strip off my armor and upper clothing, and I left it with him when I turned to face Drogo.
“Are you ready, khal Drogo?” I asked.
Daenerys reached towards him, begging him not to do this, and to his credit Drogo seemed conflicted. Then he came to a resolution.
“Come then, blood of my blood. As we are one, let us fight this Andal as one,” he called out. Three other riders moved forwards with him.
Oh, that fucking cheat.
I shook my head. “Jon, it’s fine!” I called out. “I’ve got this.”
Jon just looked at me. “I wasn’t going to move in the first place,” he said dryly. “After all, I wouldn’t want to ruin your grand story.”
“Gods, Jon, with that much saltiness are you sure you aren’t Ironborn?” I replied. Then, to make sure I got the last word, I urged Aethon forwards.
The four dothraki had spread out in a tight arc, their horses moving at a steady walk. They had seen what I had done to Jorah, and weren’t going to risk closing so quickly. One stayed at the back and drew a bow. Seriously. These guys really went all in when it came to stacking the deck. Unluckily for them, there was no way a single archer was going to break through my shields. But I didn’t want to show that off unless necessary, so I urged Aethon to move faster.
“I thought you said we would fight with swords, khal Drogo?” I called out as I closed with them.
“And we are,” he replied. “But I said nothing of my bloodriders. Of course, you could always join my khalasar instead.”
I shook my head. “There won’t be a khalasar when you’re dead.” And with that, we clashed. Or rather, Aethon did, rearing up and dancing forwards while balanced on his hind legs, his front hooves lashing out and downing the two bloodriders’ horses that were part of front line. It was a thing of terrible beauty, watching Aethon fight. The bloodriders were good, and didn’t go out of the fight with their horses, but it gave Aethon the chance to charge the archer before he was ready. We passed to the archer’s side, and my blade flicked out in a wicked horizontal blow, taking off the archer’s upraised hand.
We wheeled around, then charged back at khal Drogo who was now far less good-tempered. I heard Daenerys scream in the background as we clashed one, twice, three times as I battered his guard lower and lower. Then his sword was totally out of position and I extended forwards, my sword passing in a straight lunge through the front of his neck and out the back.
I withdrew the blade, and Drogo’s hands came up to his throat, desperately trying to staunch the bleeding as his mouth filled with red blood and he choked on the air he would never breathe again. Then Aegon stepped forwards, putting Drogo closer to me, and my sword swung hard to the side, taking off his braid and part of his skull. With a twist of the wrist I flicked his braid towards me and caught it.
“NO! NOOO!” I heard Daenerys shout, restrained from rushing to Drogo by the men he had once set to protect her. I rode down the last of Drogo’s bloodriders then turned to the rest who were looking on in shock and horror. Drogo’s party broke into a chaos of shouting as Jon, Togo and Ghost raced up behind me. Jon tossed me my archery equipment which I quickly reattached to Aethon’s tack. I didn’t, however, have time to get my armor back on.
I turned to their party which was growing a bit more orderly and called out. “By my victory I claim Viserys and Daenerys Targaryen! Does anyone here gainsay me?”
My hand was full of arrows, the first already nocked and ready to be drawn. I could already see the riders splitting up into two main groups, each headed by what I was guessing were some of Drogo’s lieutenants. In the middle were Daenerys and her protectors who looked far from pleased at their position. Both leaders had seen me shoot, and neither wanted to die for some foreign girl or her piece of shit brother.
“You killed Drogo. She is yours,” the one called.
“This is known,” agreed the other.
One of Daenerys’ protectors looked furious. “She is our khaleesi!” he shouted. “We must bring her into Vaes Dothrak so she can join the dosh khaleen!”
I grinned. I’d had the time to talk to the merchants and some Dothraki about Dothraki customs, and knew their law well enough to answer that. “Wrong. All khaleesi must be approved by the dosh khaleen first. Khal Drogo never presented her. So Daenerys Targaryen is not your khaleesi, but simply a girl your khal had at one point. I imagine he’s done the same to many girls,” I said somewhat crudely.
I could see him wavering. “Or you could challenge me for her?” I offered. And that did it. The fight went out of his eyes, and he pulled back from her.
Poor Daenerys. She couldn’t even speak Dothraki, couldn’t follow the rapidly changing situation. But she realized how bad things were for her when the last of her protectors pulled back and abandoned her.
I looked at her, not unkindly. She was just a girl, for all the death and misery she could have sparked, and never chose this for her life. “They’ve abandoned you, Daenerys,” I explained.
“T-they can’t,” she gasped. “I’m their khaleesi!”
“I’m sorry, girl, but you’re not. Dothraki khaleesi’s have to be presented to the dosh khaleen, the widows of all the khals who died before their time. That was going to happen after you got to Vaes Dothrak. Now, they decided it would be easier to surrender you to me.”
She was looking around, the panic and hysteria starting to set in. I decided to nip that right in the bud. “Hey! Daenerys. Look at me. Look at me. It’s going to be alright. I won’t harm you. And if you go out into this crowd, you’ll be nothing more than a rich prize, a toy that used to be Drogo’s to boast about. So take a deep breath, and calm down.” She was doing so, thankfully, rather than panicking and running and make this situation into a whole mess.
I had been closing with her then when I figured I was near enough hit her with a bolt of concentrated suggestion to sleep. She passed out, slumping in the saddle. Aethon raced forwards and I caught her, pulled her into the saddle in front of me, and her grabbed her horse’s reins. Her horse was a beautiful silver filly, and I figured Daenerys might want to keep her. A couple minutes later a rider came galloping up, a struggling silver-haired male tied up and slung over the horse’s back.
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“Unhand me! I am your king!” the figure screamed.
The rider rolled his eyes and shoved him unceremoniously onto the ground. “This one,” he told me, “is utterly useless. He would rather ride a cart than a horse.”
Oh, Viserys, were you really so stupid as to do no research about the people you wanted to have fight for you? No Dothraki would follow someone who rides in a cart.
Whatever. I didn’t need that bastard; if he’d just gone into a nice, quiet exile I wouldn’t have been there in the first place. Quick as can be, the groaning young man’s noises were cut off as an arrow sprouted out of his skull.
I turned to look at Jon. “I told you it would make for a good story,” I said with a grin. “Now let’s get out of here before anyone else tries to kill us.”
I started pushing temporary versions of my enchantments into Daenerys’ horse so it could keep up.
Jon came up beside me. “But wouldn’t that just make the story better?” he asked snarkily.
I glared at him. “I think I liked it better when you brooded.” We both burst into laughter at that relatively weak joke and the sudden decrease in tension.
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A few hours later, and with Hue and Mu to verify that there wasn’t any pursuit we particularly needed to worry about, we stopped for a rest. I got my clothes and armor back on, and settled in to work on the horse.
First, I sterilized her. I made sure I could reverse the procedure, but I didn’t want to release a new breed of super-horses without consideration. Then I added the same upgrades that Aethon had. I noticed that when I upgraded an animal it would be reasonably loyal to me. The Direwolves loved me about as much as their owners, and warg-bonds were deep. Still, just in case the horse tried to help Daenerys escape I used a modified communication link that left her incapable of stopping me from over-writing its vision, hearing, scent and touch with my own. If I needed to I could shut the horse off from all sensation, though hopefully that wouldn’t prove necessary.
I checked over Daenerys too. She was pregnant, the to-be-born child a girl. I made sure both of them would be having no new children without my reversing the magical surgery. That way even if she did somehow escape, it wouldn’t be a critical emergency. I also installed the conceptual shield and added a bit of regeneration so that she could keep up when we were riding. I’d take it away when we were on a ship to King’s Landing.
Then I noticed something interesting. A dormant, unpowered enchantment resting in her blood. I memorized the pattern of it, thinking I’d test it later. With any luck, it would be the storied Targaryen fire-invulnerability.
With that done, I woke up Daenerys.
She was obviously confused by everything that happened, and recoiled back when she saw me.
“You fainted, Daenerys,” I explained, shooting a glance at Jon not to mention my magic to her.
She looked on the verge of tears. “So, my sun-and-stars?”
I assumed she meant Drogo, as her horse was right behind me. “Drogo?” I verified.
She nodded. I shook my head. “I killed him,” I answered. “It wasn’t a dream.”
Then she broke into sobs. “Why?” she finally asked. “Why did you have to kill him? He didn’t even want to go to the Seven Kingdoms!”
“But you did, Daenerys,” I said calmly. “And your brother did. And you didn’t want to go to bend the knee, but to start a new rebellion. You think you’re in pain? You think today was bad? Grow up, girl. A successful rebellion on your part would have put at least a hundred thousand men into the ground before the dust cleared and the fighting was over. A hundred thousand widows and orphans. No, today was a mercy. A mercy for all the people sleeping peacefully in Westeros who won’t be killed, raped, enslaved by some barbarian Dothraki horse-lord.”
She looked up at me, confused. What I was saying didn’t fit with her world view. “B-but, I thought the Usurper was ruining the country? That people were just waiting for us to come back and restore things to the way they were?”
Wow. They had kept her very sheltered apparrently
I laughed bitterly. “Are you really so naïve? The rebellion didn’t happen for no reason, Daenerys. Do you think that all those lords went to war over what, greed and the evil in their hearts? No. Your father was called the Mad King for a reason. His own son, Rhaegar, was plotting to depose him. But then Rhaegar fell in love with Lyanna, and lost his reason in turn. He stole her. It would be wrong if she had been the poorest peasant girl or beggar.
“But she wasn’t. She was the daughter of one Lord Paramount, the betrothed of another. And when her father went to court with her older brother to beg for her release, the king, your father, accused them of plotting to kill Rhaegar, of having had Lyanna seduce him to give them justification for it. He burned Lord Stark alive while his oldest son was tied so that he would slowly strangle if he struggled to help his father. Lord Stark died screaming, and his son died struggling. That’s why Robert rose up, why the Starks came south. And the memory of that, of that madness your family was so famous for, is why the Kingdoms would never fall without a heavy fight.”
She looked stunned. “Your brother never told you about that, did he?” I asked. I had to hammer the point home while she was still recovering, and would likely have to reinforce it half a dozen times on the way back. “About how your father refused to cut his nails and hair for fear of anyone with a blade being close to him. About how he’d beat your mother. About all the other lunacy. So no. No one who wouldn’t stand to profit, and profit heavily, is interested in your returning to take the throne.”
“And how do you know all of this?” she demanded, sullen. Ah, great. A pissed off teenager. Was I sure I couldn’t just kill her? Because I was sure she’d test me patience in the days to come.
“I asked questions of those who were at court at the time,” I answered. “Some of the servants and Ser Barristan the Bold included.”
“Barristan turned his cloak,” Daenerys rejoined.
“He killed a dozen men at the Ruby Ford, and finally fell to his injuries. He was so wounded they expected he would die, but Robert had been impressed enough by his honor and skill that he sent his own maester to tend to Ser Barristan. By the time Barristan could walk again without assistance, the war was over. In return for Robert’s mercy, he swore to him. And even now, all these years later, when Robert heard of your future child and grew fearful, and all but Lord Stark on the small council accepted the necessity of sending assassins for you, Ser Barristan spoke in your defense. He took no small risk doing so, even if he was not successful.”
Daenerys lowered her eyes in shame. “If you were meant to kill me, why didn’t you?
I grinned. “I’m not meant to kill you, of course. Lord Stark and Ser Barristan were right. There was no honor in killing a young pregnant girl. I volunteered to see you brought back under Robert’s control, or placed into the dosh khaleen.”
She looked at me incredulously, her mouth hanging open. “Wait, do you mean to say you set off to do this? That you always intended to kill Drogo? Just the two of you against his whole khalasar? Are you insane!?”
Jon decided to speak up. “I asked him the same thing, you know. He said it would make for a better story.”
I settled back in arrogant amusement. “Well, it worked didn’t it? And we’re not two, we’re eight. I’m Odysseus, as I mentioned before the fight. This is my friend and technically my squire, Jon. Aethon is my noble steed, while Shadowfax puts up with Jon’s bony ass. Togo is the oversized dog, Ghost the direwolf. Hue and Mu are my ravens, but they’re currently out scouting. Anyways, I’d rather we avoided any pursuit, so it’s time to ride.”
Daenerys began to mount her horse. “Eight, because of course he counts the animals,” I heard her mutter. “And he has the temerity to call my father the mad one.”
“I heard that!” I called out. “And you shouldn’t insult the non-humans here, you’ll hurt their feelings. By the way, what’s your horse called?”
“My silver? The Dothraki don’t name horses,” she replied.
“You’re not Dothraki, Daenerys,” I reminded her.
She looked down and sighed. “I don’t know then.”
“How about Asfaloth?” I suggested.
“Asfaloth? What does that mean?” she asked.
“Asfaloth, which means foam-flower, was the horse of a hero from a tale. Glorfindel, one of the greatest of the Firstborn in wisdom and strength, an Elf-lord who met and turned back the Immortal Witch-King of Angmar.” I had been just slightly obsessed with Tolkien as young child. I only read the trilogy three or four times before I started only reading my favorite bits in subsequent read-throughs, so that wasn’t too excessive. Right?
She considered it. “No, I don’t think so. I think being my Silver suits you just fine, doesn’t it?” she asked the horse, getting a nod in response.
Fine. See if I care if you subject your horse to your horrible naming sense.