The sun was high and pitiless. Heat shimmered in waves off the stony outcrops of low hills. A thinfinger of sweat trickled slowly between Dany’s swollen breasts. The only sounds were the steady clopof their horses’ hooves, the rhythmic tingle of the bells in Drogo’s hair, and the distant voices behindthem.
Dany watched the flies.
They were as large as bees, gross, purplish, glistening. The Dothraki called them bloodflies. Theylived in marshes and stagnant pools, sucked blood from man and horse alike, and laid their eggs in thedead and dying. Drogo hated them. Whenever one came near him, his hand would shoot out quick asa striking snake to close around it. She had never seen him miss. He would hold the fly inside hishuge fist long enough to hear its frantic buzzing. Then his fingers would tighten, and when he openedhis hand again, the fly would be only a red smear on his palm.
Now one crept across the rump of his stallion, and the horse gave an angry flick of its tail to brushit away. The others flitted about Drogo, closer and closer. The khal did not react. His eyes were fixedon distant brown hills, the reins loose in his hands. Beneath his painted vest, a plaster of fig leavesand caked blue mud covered the wound on his breast. The herbwomen had made it for him. MirriMaz Duur’s poultice had itched and burned, and he had torn it off six days ago, cursing her for amaegi. The mud plaster was more soothing, and the herbwomen made him poppy wine as well. He’dbeen drinking it heavily these past three days; when it was not poppy wine, it was fermented mare’smilk or pepper beer.
Yet he scarcely touched his food, and he thrashed and groaned in the night. Dany could see howdrawn his face had become. Rhaego was restless in her belly, kicking like a stallion, yet even that didnot stir Drogo’s interest as it had. Every morning her eyes found fresh lines of pain on his face whenhe woke from his troubled sleep. And now this silence. It was making her afraid. Since they hadmounted up at dawn, he had said not a word. When she spoke, she got no answer but a grunt, and noteven that much since midday.
One of the bloodflies landed on the bare skin of the khal’s shoulder. Another, circling, toucheddown on his neck and crept up toward his mouth. Khal Drogo swayed in the saddle, bells ringing, ashis stallion kept onward at a steady walking pace.
Dany pressed her heels into her silver and rode closer. “My lord,” she said softly. “Drogo. My sunand-stars.”
He did not seem to hear. The bloodfly crawled up under his drooping mustache and settled on hischeek, in the crease beside his nose. Dany gasped, “Drogo,” Clumsily she reached over and touchedhis arm.
Khal Drogo reeled in the saddle, tilted slowly, and fell heavily from his horse. The flies scatteredfor a heartbeat, and then circled back to settle on him where he lay.
“No,” Dany said, reining up. Heedless of her belly for once, she scrambled off her silver and ranto him.
The grass beneath him was brown and dry. Drogo cried out in pain as Dany knelt beside him. Hisbreath rattled harshly in his throat, and he looked at her without recognition. “My horse,” he gasped.
Dany brushed the flies off his chest, smashing one as he would have. His skin burned beneath herfingers.
rfingers.
The khal’s bloodriders had been following just behind them. She heard Haggo shout as theygalloped up. Cohollo vaulted from his horse. “Blood of my blood,” he said as he dropped to his knees.
The other two kept to their mounts.
“No,” Khal Drogo groaned, struggling in Dany’s arms. “Must ride. Ride. No.”
“He fell from his horse,” Haggo said, staring down. His broad face was impassive, but his voicewas leaden.
“You must not say that,” Dany told him. “We have ridden far enough today. We will camp here.”
“Here?” Haggo looked around them. The land was brown and sere, inhospitable. “This is nocamping ground.”
“It is not for a woman to bid us halt,” said Qotho, “not even a khaleesi.”
“We camp here,” Dany repeated. “Haggo, tell them Khal Drogo commanded the halt. If any askwhy, say to them that my time is near and I could not continue. Cohollo, bring up the slaves, theymust put up the khal’s tent at once. Qotho—”
“You do not command me, Khaleesi,” Qotho said.
“Find Mirri Maz Duur,” she told him. The godswife would be walking among the other LambMen, in the long column of slaves. “Bring her to me, with her chest.”
Qotho glared down at her, his eyes hard as flint. “The maegi.” He spat. “This I will not do.”
“You will,” Dany said, “or when Drogo wakes, he will hear why you defied me.”
Furious, Qotho wheeled his stallion around and galloped off in anger … but Dany knew he wouldreturn with Mirri Maz Duur, however little he might like it. The slaves erected Khal Drogo’s tentbeneath a jagged outcrop of black rock whose shadow gave some relief from the heat of the afternoonsun. Even so, it was stifling under the sandsilk as Irri and Doreah helped Dany walk Drogo inside.
Thick patterned carpets had been laid down over the ground, and pillows scattered in the corners.
Eroeh, the timid girl Dany had rescued outside the mud walls of the Lamb Men, set up a brazier. Theystretched Drogo out on a woven mat. “No,” he muttered in the Common Tongue. “No, no.” It was allhe said, all he seemed capable of saying.
Doreah unhooked his medallion belt and stripped off his vest and leggings, while Jhiqui knelt byhis feet to undo the laces of his riding sandals. Irri wanted to leave the tent flaps open to let in thebreeze, but Dany forbade it. She would not have any see Drogo this way, in delirium and weakness.
When her khas came up, she posted them outside at guard. “Admit no one without my leave,” she toldJhogo. “No one.”
Eroeh stared fearfully at Drogo where he lay. “He dies,” she whispered.
Dany slapped her. “The khal cannot die. He is the father of the stallion who mounts the world. Hishair has never been cut. He still wears the bells his father gave him.”
“Khaleesi,” Jhiqui said, “he fell from his horse.”
Trembling, her eyes full of sudden tears, Dany turned away from them. He fell from his horse! Itwas so, she had seen it, and the bloodriders, and no doubt her handmaids and the men of her khas aswell. And how many more? They could not keep it secret, and Dany knew what that meant. A khalwho could not ride could not rule, and Drogo had fallen from his horse.
“We must bathe him,” she said stubbornly. She must not allow herself to despair. “Irri, have thetub brought at once. Doreah, Eroeh, find water, cool water, he’s so hot.” He was a fire in human skin.
The slaves set up the heavy copper tub in the corner of the tent. When Doreah brought the first jarof water, Dany wet a length of silk to lay across Drogo’s brow, over the burning skin. His eyes lookedat her, but he did not see. When his lips opened, no words escaped them, only a moan. “Where isMirri Maz Duur?” she demanded, her patience rubbed raw with fear.
“Qotho will find her,” Irri said.
Her handmaids filled the tub with tepid water that stank of sulfur, sweetening it with jars of bitteroil and handfuls of crushed mint leaves. While the bath was being prepared, Dany knelt awkwardlybeside her lord husband, her belly great with their child within. She undid his braid with anxiousfingers, as she had on the night he’d taken her for the first time, beneath the stars. His bells she laidaside carefully, one by one. He would want them again when he was well, she told herself.
A breath of air entered the tent as Aggo poked his head through the silk. “Khaleesi,” he said, “theAndal is come, and begs leave to enter.”
“The Andal” was what the Dothraki called Ser Jorah. “Yes,” she said, rising clumsily, “send himin.” She trusted the knight. He would know what to do if anyone did.
Ser Jorah Mormont ducked through the door flap and waited a moment for his eyes to adjust to thedimness. In the fierce heat of the south, he wore loose trousers of mottled sandsilk and open-toedriding sandals that laced up to his knee. His scabbard hung from a twisted horsehair belt. Under ableached white vest, he was bare-chested, skin reddened by the sun. “Talk goes from mouth to ear, allover the khalasar,” he said. “It is said Khal Drogo fell from his horse.”
“Help him,” Dany pleaded. “For the love you say you bear me, help him now.”
The knight knelt beside her. He looked at Drogo long and hard, and then at Dany. “Send yourmaids away.”
Wordlessly, her throat tight with fear, Dany made a gesture. Irri herded the other girls from the tent.
When they were alone, Ser Jorah drew his dagger. Deftly, with a delicacy surprising in such a bigman, he began to scrape away the black leaves and dried blue mud from Drogo’s chest. The plasterhad caked hard as the mud walls of the Lamb Men, and like those walls it cracked easily. Ser Jorahbroke the dry mud with his knife, pried the chunks from the flesh, peeled off the leaves one by one. Afoul, sweet smell rose from the wound, so thick it almost choked her. The leaves were crusted withblood and pus, Drogo’s breast black and glistening with corruption.
“No,” Dany whispered as tears ran down her cheeks. “No, please, gods hear me, no.”
Khal Drogo thrashed, fighting some unseen enemy. Black blood ran slow and thick from his openwound.
“Your khal is good as dead, Princess.”
“No, he can’t die, he mustn’t, it was only a cut.” Dany took his large callused hand in her ownsmall ones, and held it tight between them. “I will not let him die …”
Ser Jorah gave a bitter laugh. “Khaleesi or queen, that command is beyond your power. Save yourtears, child. Weep for him tomorrow, or a year from now. We do not have time for grief. We must go,and quickly, before he dies.”
Dany was lost. “Go? Where should we go?”
“Asshai, I would say. It lies far to the south, at the end of the known world, yet men say it is agreat port. We will find a ship to take us back to Pentos. It will be a hard journey, make no mistake.
Do you trust your khas? Will they come with us?”
“Khal Drogo commanded them to keep me safe,” Dany replied uncertainly, “but if he dies …”
She touched the swell of her belly. “I don’t understand. Why should we flee? I am khaleesi. I carryDrogo’s heir. He will be khal after Drogo …”
Ser Jorah frowned. “Princess, hear me. The Dothraki will not follow a suckling babe. Drogo’sstrength was what they bowed to, and only that. When he is gone, Jhaqo and Pono and the other koswill fight for his place, and this khalasar will devour itself. The winner will want no more rivals. Theboy will be taken from your breast the moment he is born. They will give him to the dogs …”
Dany hugged herself. “But why?” she cried plaintively. “Why should they kill a little baby?”
“He is Drogo’s son, and the crones say he will be the stallion who mounts the world. It wasprophesied. Better to kill the child than to risk his fury when he grows to manhood.”
The child kicked inside her, as if he had heard. Dany remembered the story Viserys had told her, ofwhat the Usurper’s dogs had done to Rhaegar’s children. His son had been a babe as well, yet theyhad ripped him from his mother’s breast and dashed his head against a wall. That was the way of men.
“They must not hurt my son!” she cried. “I will order my khas to keep him safe, and Drogo’sbloodriders will—”
Ser Jorah held her by the shoulders. “A bloodrider dies with his khal. You know that, child. Theywill take you to Vaes Dothrak, to the crones, that is the last duty they owe him in life … when it isdone, they will join Drogo in the night lands.”
Dany did not want to go back to Vaes Dothrak and live the rest of her life among those terrible oldwomen, yet she knew that the knight spoke the truth. Drogo had been more than her sun-and-stars; hehad been the shield that kept her safe. “I will not leave him,” she said stubbornly, miserably. She tookhis hand again. “I will not.”
A stirring at the tent flap made Dany turn her head. Mirri Maz Duur entered, bowing low. Days onthe march, trailing behind the khalasar, had left her limping and haggard, with blistered and bleedingfeet and hollows under her eyes. Behind her came Qotho and Haggo, carrying the godswife’s chest between them. When the bloodriders caught sight of Drogo’s wound, the chest slipped fromHaggo’s fingers and crashed to the floor of the tent, and Qotho swore an oath so foul it seared the air.
etween them. When the bloodriders caught sight of Drogo’s wound, the chest slipped fromHaggo’s fingers and crashed to the floor of the tent, and Qotho swore an oath so foul it seared the air.
Mirri Maz Duur studied Drogo, her face still and dead. “The wound has festered.”
“This is your work, maegi,” Qotho said. Haggo laid his fist across Mirri’s cheek with a meatysmack that drove her to the ground. Then he kicked her where she lay.
“Stop it!” Dany screamed.
Qotho pulled Haggo away, saying, “Kicks are too merciful for a maegi. Take her outside. We willstake her to the earth, to be the mount of every passing man. And when they are done with her, thedogs will use her as well. Weasels will tear out her entrails and carrion crows feast upon her eyes. Theflies off the river shall lay their eggs in her womb and drink pus from the ruins of her breasts …” Hedug iron-hard fingers into the soft, wobbly flesh under the godswife’s arm and hauled her to her feet.
“No,” Dany said. “I will not have her harmed.”
Qotho’s lips skinned back from his crooked brown teeth in a terrible mockery of a smile. “No? Yousay me no? Better you should pray that we do not stake you out beside your maegi. You did this, asmuch as the other.”
Ser Jorah stepped between them, loosening his longsword in its scabbard. “Rein in your tongue,bloodrider. The princess is still your khaleesi.”
“Only while the blood-of-my-blood still lives,” Qotho told the knight. “When he dies, she isnothing.”
Dany felt a tightness inside her. “Before I was khaleesi, I was the blood of the dragon. Ser Jorah,summon my khas.”
“No,” said Qotho. “We will go. For now … Khaleesi.” Haggo followed him from the tent,scowling.
“That one means you no good, Princess,” Mormont said. “The Dothraki say a man and hisbloodriders share one life, and Qotho sees it ending. A dead man is beyond fear.”
“No one has died,” Dany said. “Ser Jorah, I may have need of your blade. Best go don yourarmor.” She was more frightened than she dared admit, even to herself.
The knight bowed. “As you say.” He strode from the tent.
Dany turned back to Mirri Maz Duur. The woman’s eyes were wary. “So you have saved me oncemore.”
“And now you must save him,” Dany said. “Please …”
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