After passing the stretch of camp belonging to Jako Qas, Dany led Jorah and five riders to the outskirts of Khalasar LS. A group of women wearing Dothraki painted vests were weaving grass mats. Their rough, cracked fingers were astonishingly nimble—grabbing the ears from the tops of whole wheat stalks and tossing them into a nearby winnowing basket, then weaving the remaining half-green, half-yellow stalks into long curtains, as if knitting sweaters.
The Dothraki tents were mostly built from such grass mats. Cloth was so scarce that even clothing materials were rare; most wore leather vests and coats. The vast majority of the horselords had no fabric to make proper tents.
When the Khaleesi arrived, the women and nearby children looked numb and indifferent. They neither greeted her with respect nor glared at her with hatred.
"These are all slaves captured from Ogo Khalasar," Jorah said quietly at her side.
The Dothraki "ecological environment" was brutally harsh.
Just over a month ago, in Vaes Dothrak—the city of the horse lords—when the aged Dosh Khaleen prophesied that Daenerys would give birth to "the stallion who mounts the world," Khal Ogo had still been drinking and making merry with Khal Drogo in the same tent, like the closest of brothers.
About nine days ago, thousands of miles from Vaes Dothrak, by the banks of the Lhazareen River, the two met again.
At that time, Khal Ogo was leading his khalasar in a siege against a Lhazareen town. Khal Drogo happened to pass by.
There was nothing to discuss. Drogo immediately led his screamers into the fray.
Not to help Ogo take the city, but to strike Ogo Khalasar's rear while Ogo was busy with the assault.
After sweeping through Ogo's tribe, Drogo took advantage of the momentum to capture the already collapsing Lhazareen settlement.
In that battle, Drogo personally killed Ogo and his son, and also cut off the head of one of Ogo Khalasar's bloodriders—fighting three alone and paying a minimal price, only a strip of skin sliced from his pectoral muscle.
Drogo's combat strength aside, his actions clearly revealed the Dothraki's cold survival law.
At the beginning of Kung Fu, there's a scene where the Crocodile Gang boss says to the Axe Gang boss who's about to chop him down: Wait, don't you remember? I even treated you to a meal!
Drogo and Ogo had done far more than just share a meal.
Unfortunately, all friendship and peace existed only within the Horse Lord City.
Beneath the shadow of the Mother of Mountains, every plains rider in Vaes Dothrak was a brother, all disputes set aside. But once they left the holy land, the Dothraki Sea held only the most naked truth of "the strong survive, the weak are eliminated."
Drogo not only killed Ogo and his son, but also reduced all the women and children of Ogo Khalasar to slaves. They were now moving west along the Lhazareen River, to be sold to the Ghiscari slave masters of Slaver's Bay.
A burst of noise and the crack of whips pulled Dany back to her senses. Unknowingly, their group had already walked beyond the outermost edge of the khalasar.
Under the murky yellow evening sky, several Lhazareen manors struggled amid rolling black smoke. Flames roared with crackle-pop sounds. Beneath collapsing dried-mud walls, warriors in painted vests rode back and forth, long whips cracking loudly as they shouted, driving the survivors away from the smoking ruins.
Dany saw many mothers with numb, lifeless expressions, their steps unsteady as they led sobbing children. Driven by whips, they trudged toward Drogo Khalasar's slave camp.
Among them were only a handful of men, most of them crippled or elderly grandfathers.
The adult men were almost all dead.
The Dothraki warriors instinctively made way for Dany's group. This caught the attention of those resting by the base of the mud walls, and soon a man with a face smeared in blood—Haggo—rode over.
"Khaleesi, are you here to steal someone else's slaves again?"
Haggo mocked her, then suddenly a thought struck him. He bared his teeth at Dany like a jackal and sharply lifted the hemp rope hanging from his saddle.
"Ah—"
Just as he expected, a wave of cloying, nauseating blood-stink rushed straight at her. Dany's pupils shrank to pinpoints in terror, and an involuntary, breathless cry escaped her throat.
It was a string of severed heads—young ones, old ones. Some wore frozen looks of fear; others still bore fierce rage even in death. Thick, dark red blood slowly dripped along the rope binding their hair, soaking Haggo's thigh where it hung beside the saddle.
Some heads had been cleanly severed with a single strike. Others had jagged necks, as if it had taken several blows to finish them.
Dany even saw one head whose neck, blurred with blackened blood, still dangled a stark white segment of spine.
Had his blade dulled, forcing Haggo to wrench the half-severed head from the shoulders by sheer strength?
All of them stared wide-eyed, mouths agape. In Dany's ears, it seemed as though cries of accusation and curses lingered.
Seeing such cruelty for the first time, Dany was unsurprisingly terrified to the brink of madness.
By the gods—just this morning, she had still been standing in the bright, breezy plaza of a medical university, receiving her master's degree in surgery!
Ser Jorah hurried his horse to Dany's side, steadying her so she wouldn't fall. He helped her catch her breath and lifted a waterskin to pour water into her mouth.
Like a rag doll, Dany let Jorah and Aggo fuss over her for quite some time before she finally regained her breath and clarity.
She struggled to pull back the tears and fear in her eyes, forcing her gaze to fill with killing intent. Then she raised her head, compelling herself to meet Haggo's stare as he still held the string of heads aloft.
Gradually, the cruel grin faded from Haggo's face. Looking bored, he lowered his head and hung the heads back on his saddle.
But no sooner had he done so than the heavy, oppressive silence around him seemed to irritate him.
"Khaleesi, what are you looking at?" he snarled viciously, raising his head again.
At this moment, Dany's eyes held no fear or confusion. Her violet pupils were clear and icy, like a pool of cold spring water. "I'm counting—seeing whether you took the most heads. Unfortunately, Pono Qor has two more than you."
"You—!"
Veins bulged at Haggo's neck as he was about to lash out, but he immediately shut his mouth, leapt nimbly from his horse, and strode over to Pono. Facing Pono Qor's string of heads, he began counting in a low voice. After a while, he frowned and started counting on his fingers.
Dany's cold, pretty face was starting to crack.
Bloodriders were indeed powerful, but A Song of Ice and Fire was a low-magic, low-martial world. Even the strongest individual fighter was worth only ten men at most. A formidable warrior would begin to tire after killing seven or eight people in succession.
Whether Haggo or the dozen or so kos, none had collected more than twenty heads—yet Haggo counted on his carrot-thick fingers for nearly a full minute.
Finally, he returned to his own saddle, lifted his string of heads, and compared them one by one with Pono Qor's.
Uh—"top student" Daenerys was not wrong. Haggo was indeed short by two.
"Bang!"
The blood-sticky heads rolled on the ground, picking up a thin layer of dust, like fried chicken legs coated in breadcrumbs.
Fuming, Haggo tossed aside his own string of heads and dragged a woman in her thirties from the nearby line of "sheep men" slaves. Ignoring her shrill cries and struggles—and ignoring the fact that the Khaleesi stood right in front of him—he yanked open his sheepskin shorts and mounted her.
The woman's wails seemed to be taken by him as a badge of honor. He even lifted his head and grinned smugly at Daenerys, the smile twisted and cruel, filled with provocation.
Everyone knew that the Khaleesi had once defied Dothraki tradition to forcibly save women who were being raped in public.
Daenerys knew even better that this was a war between her and Haggo. She should leave as if nothing were happening—this would be the best choice for her, and for that pitiful woman.
"Hyah!"
She lightly kicked her heels against her horse's belly. The silver mare stepped away with a light, graceful gait.
Haggo cursed a few lines of Dothraki under his breath, venting himself.
Entering the battlefield, dying horses startled by Daenerys lifted their heads and whinnied pitifully at her. Wounded men groaned, licking cracked lips as they cried, "Khaleesi, please give me some water." But before Dany could move, a Jhakarro came jogging over.
"Sorry, Khaleesi, for disturbing you."
He gave Daenerys an apologetic smile. Then a flash of steel—his blade slit the throat of the wounded man begging for water.
With a hiss as blood sprayed out, the wounded man gurgled and his eyes dulled. There was no pain or fear on his face—only faint regret and confusion.
As if, in his final moment, he was simply wondering: why couldn't you let me drink one sip of water before dying?
Jhakarro—Dothraki whose duty was to grant release to the wounded. They moved back and forth across the battlefield, harvesting strings of heads from the dead and the dying.
Behind them ran groups of little girls carrying baskets, laughing as they followed. After curiously watching Dany for a moment, they skipped toward the corpses, stretching out small hands stained black-red with blood to pull arrows from bodies and toss them into the baskets.
Intact arrows would be kept for reuse. Those with damaged fletching would have new feathers attached. Even broken arrows had their metal heads retrieved, later to be re-mounted onto wooden shafts by slaves or women.
Last came a pack of gaunt, starving wild dogs with ferocious eyes. They cautiously sniffed the corpses in front of Dany. Seeing that she did not stop them, they bared their teeth and began tearing into the flesh. There was always a pack of wild dogs following a khalasar, forming a unique food chain on the grass sea.
This kind of scene had happened many times before. The dogs were used to it—and assumed that the "horse person" Daenerys before them was used to it as well.
"Ugh—"
Dany bent over her horse and retched violently. The wild dogs were startled into retreat, even dropping the warm, pale sinew clamped in their mouths.
"Khaleesi, it's getting late. Shall we leave?" Ser Jorah supported her shoulder, urging her with concern.
"Alright. Let's go back."
This cruel world had already torn away its veil before Daenerys without restraint.
In the shortest possible time, she gained a sufficient understanding of the environment she now inhabited.
(End of Chapter)