Daenerys Targaryen
The enemy could not remain cowering behind their impregnable castles and rode forth to meet them. Then came the Battle of Cloverfield.
Even then, looking upon the enemy host — so calm and steady in appearance — Daenerys caught herself thinking that her foes did not look frightened or uncertain. Over the past weeks, Joffrey and his lords had shown plainly enough that they did not greatly fear dragons, and that they possessed a fitting answer to them.
She had not been able to burn the enemy army upon the march. Everything would now be decided in a single battle.
At first, fortune favored them. She directed Drogon against the right flank and began setting the charging ranks of knights ablaze.
That day, her Drogon was truly magnificent. And Viserion strove not to lag behind his elder brother. Again and again they "plowed" through the battlefield, sowing terror and death in their wake. Yet she remained cautious — the enemy met her with such storms of arrows and crossbow bolts that at times fear crept close to her heart, fear for herself and for her dragons alike.
She realized her mistake when she attacked the king and his retinue. The target had seemed far too tempting… The girl lost her head and could not resist. She had been given a chance to win the battle in a single stroke, and she could not ignore it!
Almost at once, it became clear that it had been an ingenious trap.
Yes, Drogon had managed to burn more than a hundred men and horses, but in the next instant something pierced his thick scales. Daenerys did not see where precisely the bolt struck, yet she felt the mighty beast shudder from snout to tail-tip. In that moment, he reminded her of a ship crashing upon hidden rocks.
With a furious roar filled with agony, Drogon began to fall.
Even as he plummeted, he did not forget his rider and tried to carry her closer to her own soldiers. When he struck the ground, she was thrown and crashed down hard, her head slamming against the earth. The arm with which she tried to break her fall snapped, and pain exploded throughout her entire body.
She did not lose consciousness, yet the whole world spun around her. The ground trembled strangely, and her ears rang with a dull roar.
Daenerys shook her head, and sound slowly returned to her — groans and whistles, curses and shouted commands, and somewhere nearby the shrill, unbroken scream of a man in pain. A soldier missing an arm and a leg crawled across the ground with wide, maddened eyes. He looked directly at her, yet clearly did not see her at all.
The stench of spilled entrails and voided bowels struck her nose, mingling with the heat of the dragon and the faint cool breeze scented with clover.
From the air, astride her dragon, the battlefield had looked entirely different.
Not nearly so horrifying.
Not nearly so vile.
Drogon, wounded yet unbroken, roared beside her and ceaselessly burned anyone who dared approach. Then jars came flying toward them, and all was swallowed by green flame.
The heat was monstrous. She felt her clothes ignite and vanish in an instant, along with her hair, her brows, her lashes… And yet she had been born of the Dragon's Flame, and fire could not harm her.
Not even such fire as this!
It could not harm her — but from the lack of air, from pain and weakness, from the screams and the stench, the girl lost consciousness and collapsed upon the ground.
***
Daenerys awoke several days later.
When she opened her eyes, she did not at first understand where she was. The girl lay in a bed and felt the gentle warmth of the sun shining through a cloth canopy above her. She seemed to be inside a tent. The fabric of the walls and ceiling had been dyed red — and she could not remember either the Martells or herself possessing such a thing.
She stirred, and at once an unfamiliar guardsman, drawn by the sound, pushed aside the heavy flap and looked inside. He examined her calmly and in silence, said nothing, and withdrew again.
Then faithful Missandei took his place.
"Your Grace…" She nearly ran to the bedside, seized Daenerys by the hand, kissed it, and burst into tears.
Daenerys listened to her tale in horror. Everything had been lost in a single moment. All her friends and allies were dead — Barristan Selmy, Grey Worm, Mormont, Oberyn Martell, and countless Dornish lords besides.
No one knew what had become of Daario, though the Stormcrows had been almost entirely wiped out.
"And the dragons?"
"Drogon died protecting you," Missandei answered through streaming tears. "Viserion flew away, and no one knows where he is now."
It was a catastrophe.
Yronwood and Martell had been taken captive, the Dornish had surrendered hostages and bent the knee to royal authority. The war had ended before it had truly begun.
A sudden pounding filled her skull, and the girl lost consciousness once more.
The days that followed blurred into a clinging, unending nightmare. She no longer wished to live and could not understand why she should. She had lost her purpose and become disillusioned with everything.
Most of all, she had become disillusioned with herself, for everything she touched seemed doomed to end in disaster or utter ruin.
Daenerys did not know what she would have done without Missandei. There was also the strange archmaester from the Citadel named Marwyn the Mage, who resembled a dockside brute far more than a great scholar.
He told her many things, comforted her as best he could, and even confessed that once he had wished to join her cause rather than King Joffrey's.
(End of Chapter)
P@treon: /SadRaven
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