The Dothraki valued strength above all else and treated life and death—whether their own or others'—with frightening indifference. With no songs, no games, and no theaters to distract them, their only form of entertainment was brawling. Fists, blades, or blood, it mattered little.
They would often draw swords to settle the smallest quarrels, the fate of a knight or horse decided over disputes as trivial as who had first reached the water trough.
"Are there tournaments among the knights of Westeros?" Daenerys asked one evening, her silver hair glowing faintly in the firelight. She had been watching two riders circle each other, ready to draw steel over a saddle strap.
Jorah Mormont nodded, leaning on his sword. "We do. But our fights are not quite like this. In Westeros, we wear armor. Even when knights clash in groups, there are few casualties. We train with blunted swords, sometimes with padded armor for the young ones, so they may learn the art of fighting without losing their lives."
Dany tilted her head, intrigued. "So it is not a true battle, then?"
"Not entirely," Jorah admitted. "But it teaches form and discipline. Knights learn to strike, parry, and endure. Even with blunt swords, one must have strength and stamina. Without armor, a single well-placed blow could kill. With armor, you must fight harder, longer, until your enemy yields."
She considered that. Among the Dothraki, skill meant agility, the single killing stroke, the horse's speed. To fight in armor with dulled blades was another philosophy entirely—a contest of endurance rather than quick death.
Still, to avoid needless bloodshed, Daenerys accepted Jorah's advice.
As dusk fell, the newly painted black banner of her khalasar rose against the red horizon, its fabric snapping in the hot wind. Her people began their slow march southward, guided by the fading sun and, later, the watchful stars.
Before leaving, she ordered the molten gold from Drogo's funeral pyre scraped up. "This is what Drogo left behind," she told the hesitant horsemen. "Take what belongs to him to the Night Lands. The rest is a reward to us, his khalasar."
Drogo's dragonbone bow was also retrieved.
The "dragonbone" of its name was no poetic flourish—it was truly fashioned from the bones of a dragon. Not just a relic of Targaryen glory but a weapon of power. Dragons, though mighty, had lifespans too. When they died, their bones endured. Valyria, in its height, had fielded three hundred dragons in conquest, and though the Freehold had been destroyed only three centuries past, many remnants still lay across the world.
Dragon bones, saturated with iron, darkened with age until they gleamed black as night. Ordinary fire could not harm them. If even a fledgling dragon could endure the flames of a pyre, how much more unyielding must be the bones of a full-grown beast?
Among the ashes of Drogo's pyre, the horsemen also discovered cracked stones and fossilized shells. Piecing them together, they formed three intact stone eggs.
"Dragons do not come from stone eggs," muttered the riders, exchanging uneasy glances. Then, as realization dawned, a cry rose among them: "Khaleesi has given birth to three dragons! The prophecy of the Dosh Khaleen is fulfilled. The Khaleesi has birthed the stallion who mounts the world!"
Startled by their words, Daenerys herself felt a chill of awe. She held one of the eggs, heavy and cold as stone, and whispered, "But… how do dragons exist?"
Whatever the answer, there was no time to linger. The pyre's remains were gathered and buried deep, hidden from scavengers and sorcery alike. Then the khalasar moved on.
That first night, they covered only ten kilometers. Five kilometers from their starting camp, they reached the stream that had watered Drogo's vast horde. But four days of turmoil by a hundred thousand people and countless beasts had reduced the once-gurgling brook to little more than muddy trickles.
Dany pressed onward, guiding her people along the wetlands. Another five kilometers brought them to a shallow waterhole. Here she commanded a halt. "We will rest for a day or two," she said.
Her khalasar, diminished yet still numbering hundreds, obeyed. The horses were watered; the sick and weary were tended. Yet Daenerys was grim. "Kill all eighty-seven cattle and sheep," she ordered. "The deeper we go, the fewer resources we will find. We cannot afford to let them compete with the horses."
The men obeyed. Meat was dried into jerky; skins were preserved. The horsewomen stretched and stitched sheepskins into hooded cloaks. By day, the cloaks shaded them from the blistering sun; by night, they trapped what warmth the desert offered.
The Dothraki were nomads, but not all had furs or cloaks. Many of the abandoned and infirm who had joined Daenerys possessed only a single vest, threadbare and useless against the wasteland. But she herself wore a cloak of white lion fur. Drogo had hunted the great beast for her when first she rode at his side. Taller than a horse it had been, its massive head forming her hood, its pelt cascading down her back like a mantle of kings.
On the third evening, the khalasar moved again, riding through the cool of night. By dawn, they had crossed a hundred kilometers. But when scouts searched five kilometers in every direction, they returned empty-handed.
Not a single clean water source remained. The riverbeds were bone-dry. Here and there, shallow stagnant pools glistened in the sun, but their waters were poison—rank with rot, silt, sulfur, and death. Even beasts would not drink.
Daenerys stood on the cracked earth, her brow furrowed. A vast plain stretched before her, bound by mountains to east and west, grassland to the north, and the sea to the south. Yet here, only desert and desolation remained.
Why sulfur? she wondered. Deserts were expected. But sulfur in the waters? Unless…
She turned to Jorah. "I have heard Old Valyria was built upon fourteen volcanoes. Could this land once have been the same? A place of fire beneath the earth?"
Jorah frowned. "What do you mean?"
"Perhaps volcanoes lie beneath this Red Waste. Rivers vanish, waters steam, pools stink of sulfur. The crust here is thin, the magma close."
Before Jorah could answer, Doreah groaned within the tent. Her face, flushed crimson, glistened with sweat. "The sulfur comes from demons," she whispered. "They gnaw at my heart. Soon they will devour my soul."
"You have heatstroke," Daenerys said flatly.
"What is heatstroke?" asked Irri, fanning herself with weary arms.
Jorah grunted as he stripped off his vest, revealing the thick mat of black hair upon his chest. "The princess means fever."
"Something like that." Dany offered Doreah her bag of mare's milk. "Do not drink the water—it will strip the minerals from your body. Drink this instead."
The Lyseni girl recoiled at first, murmuring, "This is your portion. I cannot—"
But Dany pressed the bag into her hands. She had already instituted rations: water free, horse meat plentiful, but milk, salt, wine, and fruit carefully measured. Now, even water must be guarded. If they could not find more soon, half would die before leaving the desert.
Frustration welled within her. "Separate the men and women for camp," she ordered. "Strip if you must. It may help you endure the heat."
Irri sighed. "Princess, even naked we burn. The ground itself scorches. Once I slept upon two sheepskins; now the sand burns through them."
Daenerys laughed suddenly. "Scrape away the top layer of sand!"
They stared, puzzled.
"The surface holds the sun's fire," she explained, eyes bright. "Beneath, it will be cooler. We'll line the pits with cloth, and the ground itself will shield us."
She strode from the tent, the flap falling behind her. Sunlight struck her like a hammer, white and blinding. The sandstone blazed red beneath the glare, reflecting a fiery glow that painted the whole desert in the hues of hell. Sulfur stung her nose.
This wasteland, she thought, is no mere desert. It is purgatory.
She donned her lion's hood and walked among the silent tents, each like a grave mound in the heat. From one came muffled gasps—men and women together. She lifted a flap and blinked. Horsefolk, even in purgatory, found strength for passion. Shaking her head, she left them to it.
At the riverbed, unsaddled horses lay in the dust, ears drooping. They gnawed weakly at the tough devilgrass that pushed up between stones.
"Khaleesi," rasped a voice. An old man stood before her, thin as bone, his face wrinkled and leathery, his braid barely reaching his shoulders. His eyes, though clouded, still shone with life.
"Avanti," she greeted him. This "Venerable of Many Dynasties" had served twelve khals; she was his thirteenth. A curse, perhaps—or a blessing.
"Will the horses endure?" she asked.
He smiled with toothless gums, ugly yet sincere. "With water and devilgrass, they will last two weeks."
Relief touched her, but only briefly. "And without?"
His face darkened. "Most of our beasts are old, lame, weak. They should have been slaughtered long ago. They will not last, even on the Grass Sea. But with you, Khaleesi… we shall see."
Daenerys nodded, steel in her voice. "We shall see. When the time comes, we will make arrangements."
And so the khalasar pressed deeper into the purgatory wasteland, beneath a sun that turned the sky to fire and the earth to ash.
End of Chapter 19
---