Chapter 186

The Stormlands.

Daenerys Targaryen.

When the battle ended, Dany rode her horse out across the field, strewn now with the dead. The handmaidens and Dothraki riding behind her talked among themselves and smiled. Dothraki hooves had torn the earth apart, trampled every last blade of grass into the mud, and arakhs and arrows had reaped their terrible harvest. Dying horses screamed, wounded men groaned and prayed, though none of it would save them. The Dothraki showed no mercy to their own wounded, let alone an enemy's. After a battle, riders set aside for the purpose, men of mercy, moved from one wounded soldier to the next, taking heads with heavy axes. Behind them came the children in little packs, picking over the corpses for anything worth taking.

A town that had only recently thrived in the Stormlands now burned. Black smoke rolled up into a merciless blue sky. Riders wheeled back and forth beneath the shattered wooden walls, cracking long whips, driving survivors out of the smoking ruins. No one in the sunset kingdoms had ever known the horror of a Dothraki invasion, and so they wandered in a daze of incomprehensible terror, unable to grasp what had become of them. Free people, and now slaves to horselords.

Looking around her, Dany felt pity for these people. Their land had been churned into one endless stretch of mud, their crops trampled flat, their husbands slaughtered, their women and children driven off into slavery. This was not how she'd imagined coming home. Perhaps some part of her had always known it would look like this, but that had never stopped her from believing otherwise. The town itself was worse. Houses burned on every side, and Dothraki riders went about their grim work, filling the narrow, twisting streets with more bodies by the hour. Dany and her retinue rode past scene after scene of violence, and each one left her heart aching.

They found Khal Drogo in the square before the city lord's own manse. To his right rose a pile of severed heads, already stacked higher than the girl herself, and to his left knelt a dozen captured warriors. At first glance Drogo bore no wounds at all, but Daenerys insisted on checking for herself. Two of her handmaidens helped her down from her horse. Six months pregnant now, she'd grown terribly clumsy.

"My sun and stars, are you hurt?" she asked, circling him, looking him over from every side.

"No, moon of my life. Though this old man tried very hard." He pointed with his arakh at the elder kneeling among the other prisoners. "You told me the men in iron clothes were meant to put you on an iron chair. I kept the strongest ones alive for you."

Thanks to the scraps of teaching she'd gotten from Viserys and Ser Jorah, Dany had begun to understand that a khalasar alone would never win the Iron Throne. For that she needed men of Westeros, men with power and standing of their own. She needed her own knights, sworn to her and no one else. But she hadn't known how to ask Drogo for such a thing, and the conversation kept dying before it properly began. Which made it all the sweeter when her husband pieced it together from half finished sentences and gave her exactly what she wanted anyway.

I am the blood of the dragon, Daenerys reminded herself. These are only common men, and they fought because their lords lied to them.

"I am Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen, khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, and mother of the future king of the Seven Kingdoms. For long years you have lived under the heel of a usurper who stripped you of even your last crumbs. That will change now. The Targaryens will reclaim the Iron Throne, and peace will return to Westeros. But it cannot be built without your help. Follow me, and I promise you, peace and justice will come again to Westeros!"

The prisoners made no move, only waited for something. At last the old man in armor, the one Drogo himself had singled out, tried to rise from his knees. Two Dothraki moved to stop him, but a short command held them back. The old man straightened and fixed his eyes directly on the girl before him. There was no fear in them, only a grim, settled resolve.

"Go to hell, girl!" The answer struck her like a blow. "What 'peace' could you possibly mean? You've brought a Dothraki horde into our lands. An army of murderers, slavers, rapists. No one in Westeros is waiting for the spawn of the Mad King! The time of the Targaryens is over!" He finished by spitting at her feet.

The riders standing nearby wouldn't stand for that, and moved at once to drag the old man off to his death. In that brief window, with no guards standing in the few feet around Dany, two of the prisoners lunged at her with a roar. In that instant the whole world stopped mattering, leaving only one endless need: protect her child. It felt like an eternity passed, though the men had covered barely a single step before whips snapped tight around their necks, choking them where they stood, and time resumed with a sound like the air itself tearing.

"KILL THEM ALL!!!" Qotho gave the order. None of the prisoners managed so much as a movement before they were sent into the Stranger's arms.

After that moment, Daenerys understood one thing clearly: Illyrio had lied to her. No one was waiting for the Targaryens to return. This would be just another war for the throne, not a war for justice.

A faint kick from within her womb pulled the khaleesi back to herself. She understood now what she would be fighting for, understood that for it, she could burn the whole world to ash.