As Daenerys passed through Jako's khalasar, she and her party—composed of Jorah, Aggo, and five bloodriders—reached the outskirts of the main khalasar. Here, a group of women dressed in colorful, hand-painted Dothraki vests were weaving grass mats. Their cracked and rough hands moved with surprising dexterity as they plucked wheat heads from entire stalks and tossed them into nearby baskets, weaving the remaining greenish-yellow stems into long mats as if knitting a sweater.
Dothraki yurts were mostly constructed with these grass mats. Fabric was scarce among the Dothraki, reserved for clothing like leather vests and jackets. Most of the horsemen lacked the cloth needed to make proper tents.
When the women noticed the arrival of their Khaleesi, neither reverence nor hostility marked their faces. They neither greeted her respectfully nor glared at her with resentment.
"These are slaves taken from Drogo's khalasar," Jorah muttered softly beside her.
The "ecosystem" of the Dothraki was unforgivingly brutal.
Just over a month ago, at Vaes Dothrak (the Horse Lords' city), the elderly dosh khaleen had prophesied that Daenerys would give birth to "the Stallion Who Mounts the World." At that time, Khal Drogo had been drinking and reveling with Drogo in the same tent, appearing as though they were the closest of brothers.
Nine days ago, however, thousands of miles away by the Lhazareen River, the two crossed paths again.
At the time, Khal Drogo was leading his khalasar in an assault on a Lhazareen town. Drogo's khalasar happened to pass by.
Without hesitation, Drogo joined the battle—not to help Drogo seize the town, but to ambush Drogo's rear while he was preoccupied.
After crushing Drogo's tribe, Drogo easily captured the crumbling Lhazareen town.
In that battle, Drogo personally killed Drogo and his sons, beheading one of Drogo's bloodriders in a three-against-one fight. He emerged with only a minor wound—a strip of skin sliced from his pectoral muscle.
Drogo's martial prowess aside, his actions epitomized the harsh survival rules of the Dothraki.
The scene echoed the opening of Kung Fu Hustle, where a gangster says to another about to strike him: "Wait! Don't forget—I treated you to a meal once!"
Drogo and Drogo had shared far more than a meal.
But friendship and peace existed only within Vaes Dothrak.
Under the shadow of the Mother of Mountains, every horse lord of the grasslands treated one another as brothers, setting aside all rivalries. Once outside the sacred city, however, the Dothraki Sea reverted to its raw, ruthless law of "the strong survive, the weak perish."
Not only did Drogo kill Drogo and his sons, but he also enslaved the women and children of Drogo's khalasar. They were now marching west along the Lhazareen River to be sold to the slave masters of Slaver's Bay.
A cacophony of shouts and the snap of whips jolted Daenerys from her thoughts. Before she realized it, her group had reached the edge of the khalasar's outermost boundary.
Under the dusky yellow sky of late afternoon, several Lhazareen farmsteads lay choking in thick black smoke. Flames crackled and roared, consuming the clay walls, which collapsed into smoldering heaps. Dothraki warriors in their painted vests galloped back and forth, cracking their whips loudly and shouting to drive the survivors from the ruins.
Daenerys saw many mothers, their faces blank and lifeless, stumbling as they led weeping children under the lash of the whips toward Drogo's slave camp.
Only a few men remained among them, mostly the maimed and elderly. Nearly all the able-bodied men had been slaughtered.
The Dothraki warriors instinctively cleared a path for Daenerys's party, drawing the attention of a bloodied man resting by a crumbling wall. Haggo, his face streaked with fresh gore, rode over on his horse.
"Khaleesi, have you come to steal slaves again?" Haggo jeered.
Then, as if struck by a sudden idea, he grinned at Daenerys with a wolfish sneer. Reaching down, he yanked the coarse rope hanging from his saddle high into the air.
"Ah—"
Just as she feared, an overwhelming stench of putrid sweetness and blood assaulted Daenerys, making her stomach churn. Her pupils shrank to pinpoints, and a strangled, breathless cry escaped her lips.
It was a gruesome string of severed heads—young and old, some frozen in terror, others locked in anger even in death. Thick, dark red blood dripped slowly from the rope that bound their hair, staining Haggo's thigh as it dangled from his saddle.
Some heads were cleanly severed in one stroke, while others bore jagged, uneven cuts, suggesting multiple blows before they were detached.
Daenerys even noticed one head with a shard of white spine still attached to its bloody neck.
Did Haggo's blade go dull, forcing him to wrench the half-severed head from the shoulders?
The heads' wide-open eyes and agape mouths seemed to scream accusations and curses, their silent cries echoing in her ears.
For someone witnessing such brutality for the first time, it was no surprise that Daenerys was nearly paralyzed with shock.
Gods above, only this morning, she had stood in the sunny courtyard of the medical academy, receiving her Master's degree in surgery!
Ser Jorah quickly spurred his horse to Daenerys's side, steadying her trembling form to prevent her from falling. He helped her catch her breath, poured water from his flask into her mouth, and tried to calm her down.
Daenerys, limp as a rag doll, let Jorah and Aggo fuss over her for some time before she finally regained her composure.
Blinking back tears and suppressing her terror, she tried to harden her gaze, forcing herself to exude an aura of cold determination. Slowly, she raised her head and compelled herself to meet Haggo's gaze, even as he still held the grisly string of heads aloft.
Gradually, the cruel grin faded from Haggo's face. He lowered his head as if bored and let the string of heads drop back to his saddle.
But as soon as he did, the heavy, tense silence around them seemed to irritate him further.
"What are you staring at, Khaleesi?" he barked at Daenerys with a venomous snarl.
By then, Daenerys's eyes had lost all traces of fear or confusion. Her violet gaze was as clear and icy as a frozen spring. "I'm counting," she replied coolly. "To see if you've collected the most heads. Unfortunately, Pono has two more than you."
"You—"
The veins in Haggo's neck bulged as he began to snap at her but immediately thought better of it. Instead, he dismounted with surprising agility, striding toward Pono. He bent to inspect Pono's string of heads, muttering numbers under his breath. After counting for a while, he scratched his head and started tallying on his fingers with a puzzled expression.
Daenerys's icy demeanor wavered slightly.
The bloodriders were indeed formidable warriors, but in the low-magic, low-power world of A Song of Ice and Fire, even the strongest fighters could only fend off ten foes at most. For elite warriors like Haggo and Pono, cutting down seven or eight enemies in one battle was already exhausting.
None of the bloodriders—or the handful of other warriors she had seen—had collected more than twenty heads. Yet Haggo stood there, counting on his thick, carrot-like fingers for nearly a minute.
Eventually, he returned to his saddle, lifted his string of heads, and began comparing it with Pono's, one by one.
It turned out Daenerys, the "scholar," had been right. Haggo was indeed short by two heads.
"Thud!"
One blood-soaked head tumbled to the ground, rolling in the dirt until it was coated with a thin layer of ash, like a breaded drumstick.
Infuriated, Haggo threw down his string of heads. Without hesitation, he yanked a thirty-something woman from the line of enslaved "lamb people." Ignoring her desperate screams and struggles—and the presence of the Khaleesi right across from him—he unfastened his leather breeches and mounted her on the spot.
The woman's wails seemed to fuel Haggo's twisted sense of pride. He even lifted his head and flashed a gruesome, cruel smile at Daenerys—a smile brimming with mockery and defiance.
Everyone knew that the Khaleesi had once defied Dothraki customs to save a woman from public humiliation.
Daenerys understood all too well: this was a battle between her and Haggo. The best course of action—for herself and for that poor woman—was to act as if nothing had happened and simply leave.
"Hyah!"
Gently nudging her silver mare, Daenerys urged it forward, the horse stepping lightly as they moved away.
Haggo cursed in Dothraki under his breath, venting his frustration.
As Daenerys entered the battlefield, a dying horse lifted its head at her approach, letting out a plaintive whinny. Nearby, wounded soldiers groaned, their cracked lips whispering, "Khaleesi, water, please."
But before Daenerys could respond, a young jakalan jogged over.
"Apologies, Khaleesi, for disturbing you," he said with a faint, apologetic smile.
In a swift motion, his blade flashed, slitting the throat of the soldier who had begged for water.
With a gurgling spray of blood, the soldier's eyes dulled. There was no pain or fear on his face—only a faint hint of regret and confusion, as though his final thought was: Why wouldn't you let me drink before I died?
The jakalan—executioners tasked with ending the suffering of the gravely wounded—moved tirelessly across the battlefield, harvesting strings of heads from the dying and the dead.
Following close behind them was another group: young girls carrying wicker baskets. They darted about cheerfully, glancing at Daenerys with fleeting curiosity before turning their attention to the corpses. With hands stained a deep reddish-black from dried blood, they plucked arrows from the bodies, tossing the shafts into their baskets.
Arrows that remained intact would be reused in future battles. Damaged fletching would be repaired, and even broken shafts were salvaged for their metal arrowheads, to be remounted by slaves or women back in the camps.
And then came the wild dogs—gaunt, starving, yet feral and fierce. The pack sniffed cautiously around Daenerys before turning to the corpses. Seeing no objection from her, they bared their teeth and began tearing into the flesh.
A pack of wild dogs always followed a khalasar, forming a peculiar ecological chain in the vast grass sea.
Such scenes had played out countless times before. By now, the dogs had grown accustomed to it—and assumed the "horsewoman" Daenerys was equally indifferent.
"Ugh—"
Daenerys doubled over, retching against her saddle. The sound startled the dogs, causing them to retreat. One dropped a piece of warm, pale flesh from its jaws, leaving it uneaten.
"Khaleesi, it's late. Shall we leave?" Ser Jorah asked, steadying her by the shoulder, his expression filled with concern.
"Yes, let's go back," Daenerys replied.
This brutal world had stripped away all illusions for her, revealing its unrelenting cruelty.
In a short span of time, she had gained a clear and harrowing understanding of the environment she now lived in.
(End of Chapter)
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