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Game of Thrones White Dragon Rising
Game of Thrones The Sun Dragon Descends
Dusk settled over the plains. Khal Drogo licked his cracked lips, eyes burning with fury. The White City of Viserysfort stood before him like an impassable mountain.
His arakh had thirsted for blood all day, but the enemy?
The enemy soared above the ninth heaven, appearing and vanishing like a ghost.
The Dothraki had charged as usual that morning, yet they still hadn't reached the walls.
Drogo glanced at the screamers around him. Most had dark circles under their eyes, spirits worn thin.
The horses looked even worse. The dragon's midnight roars and flames had driven them mad, stampeding through the camp until no one could rest.
Viserys's attacks had no pattern—pure chaos, striking without warning. He chose random hours between the wolf and the bat, hitting whoever was convenient. Both the horselords and the Tyroshi were exhausted.
In the old days, a camp set ablaze was one of the deadliest things that could happen. Even Drogo barely slept.
He knew the milk men's trebuchets and longbows were lethal, but he had no choice. Drogo decided to use sheer numbers to break through to the moat and try a full assault.
If he didn't risk one last big attack, his army would collapse anyway.
He had fought hundreds of battles, but none had ever filled him with such helpless rage. For the first time he felt truly powerless.
Yet Khal Drogo refused to slink away in shame. For a Dothraki, failure meant death.
A khal could be cruel, but he could never show weakness like a woman or child. The price of silence for a khal was too high.
Drogo had already sacrificed too much in Andalos. Backing down now would destroy his personal authority.
If he gave the order to retreat, dozens of screamers would challenge him on the spot.
He had only recently become khal. He had never expected his first great conquest to collapse in his hands.
A single lost duel, a single lost battle—either could end a khal.
The Dothraki had never known stable rule or smooth succession. When a khal grew too old to ride or lost a fight, a younger man simply took his place.
That was why the Dothraki Sea had never seen a true khal, the Stallion Who Mounts the World.
Just like Temmo, who once besieged Qohor. Temmo led his khalasar against three thousand Unsullied eighteen times, raining arrows three times, and was thrown back each time.
In the end Temmo, his sons, every ko, his three bloodriders, and ten thousand Dothraki warriors lay dead on the field. The survivors had no choice but to retreat.
Drogo still had elite warriors. He decided on one final battle. Hesitation and delay were the only reasons he hadn't left already.
"We've lost all the good grass for the horses, Drogo. We can't keep bleeding here," Jhaqo said. "Eating dead horses forever isn't a plan."
Jhaqo sometimes rode with Drogo. This time he had come expecting easy plunder—the dosh khaleen had promised Drogo's son would be the Stallion Who Mounts the World.
Instead the war had turned into a nightmare of endless attrition.
"My warriors have no food, no sleep," Jhaqo complained. He was older than Drogo, but his power was smaller.
"Wait a little longer," Drogo growled through clenched teeth. "I still believe the horse god will bless us…"
"Tell the warriors to prepare," Drogo ordered. "We cannot wait for another night raid. Tonight we cross the river with grass mats and planks. We will take the Andalos fortress."
"As you command, Khal," the Tyroshi commander said. "My men will assist."
The Tyroshi acted as go-betweens for the coalition and handled communication.
Their own morale was at breaking point. Desertions had already begun.
If they didn't strike now, the army would disintegrate.
"Your men are better at swimming," Drogo told them. "I need their help."
The Tyroshi nodded. The Disputed Lands and Tyrosh were coastal; most of their sellswords could swim.
Daario had already stepped up beside Drogo. "I have the best crossbowmen, longbowmen, and scorpions ready. If the dragon appears tonight, it will be our best chance to slay it."
Daario kept his rage locked inside. He had gathered every skilled man he could find.
"Koso, take our best archers and follow this blue-haired Tyroshi," Drogo told his bloodrider. Koso's eyes were cold, his hands quick, and he loved to hurt people. He was considered the cruelest of Drogo's bloodriders.
Koso carried a double-curved dragonbone longbow—he was an excellent shot.
Drogo brought his own warriors, but he could not storm the tall walls and deep moat alone. He needed the coalition's strength.
"As you command, Khal," Koso answered arrogantly.
"Thank you, Khal," blue-haired Daario bowed deeply. Dothraki archers were never weak.
"I'll say it plainly," Daario told them. "The man in silver armor on the dragon's back is Viserys!"
"The silver-armored one is Viserys!"
"Of course we can see that," the Dothraki archers growled, already eager to turn the king into a pincushion.
"I only want Viserys's head," Drogo said to the Tyroshi and Daario. "I will destroy this city. Everything else I will give you a share of."
"Wise Khal," the Tyroshi replied, pleased. In raw fighting power the horselords were stronger.
What Drogo promised carried weight. Getting real spoils from the Dothraki was never easy.
The Tyroshi coalition understood perfectly: in the slave-trade networks forged during the Century of Blood, the horselords were a vital link.
When khals visited the Free Cities they dressed in silks and perfume.
Now they saw that Viserys was the one truly breaking the world's balance—and he was far more dangerous than any khal.
"As for the slaves you capture, the Archon will offer generous gifts for the best of them," the Tyroshi commander promised. They were true slavers, greedy to the bone.
The Dothraki had no real concept of coin. When they dealt with magisters they demanded gifts and returned one of their own.
Night fell deep and dark. The thunder of hooves shook the earth.
The Dothraki launched their largest assault since the war began.
The Tyroshi coalition moved among them. The sellswords hated the assignment, but they had no choice—if the army broke, they would die under Dothraki or Andalos blades.
Viserys watched the distant blaze of light and fire. They had finally snapped.
The roar of tens of thousands rose and fell like a tide.
This was their desperate final throw. Viserys sensed their numbers were greater than Drogo's own khalasar—perhaps the khal had brought allies.
Surrounded by his knights, Viserys studied the scene from the walls. He had stayed on the battlements since the war started.
"Tell the longbowmen—if the coalition and the horselords want to come, let them reach the moat, right up to the water's edge."
"As you command, Your Grace!"
The trebuchets in the darkness were a different kind of terror. Besides stones, they now hurled burning pitch barrels.
The throwing arms rose and fell again and again. War horns wailed.
The Dothraki kept charging. Their thick formation spread out; many still dodged the stones.
Viserysfort's soldiers encouraged one another. The longbowmen steadied their nerves.
The trebuchets roared behind the white walls like a poem of death.
The once-narrow moat had become a deadly chasm.
Many men were struck by arrows and tumbled into the water.
"Faster!"
"Faster!"
"Faster!"
Dothraki screamers crowded the riverbank, trying to bypass the moat—protecting the Tyroshi swimmers in the process.
The Tyroshi sailors went in first, taking the grass mats and planks from the horselords. They needed to build makeshift bridges, even try to burn the gates of Viserysfort.
"Where's the dragon?" Daario wondered. He had positioned every heavy crossbow and scorpion, yet nothing came.
More and more sellswords plunged into the cold river. They could already see the thick iron chains of the drawbridge. Cut those chains, smash the next gate—
The shallow fords and the moat itself were packed with attackers. The fire from the White City had even slackened a little, giving the Tyroshi a false sense of safety.
Arrows and stones still fell, but they had already succeeded halfway.
The Tyroshi sailors worked together desperately. The dead sank; the living fought for their lives.
Men in heavy plate or mail—dead or alive—were dragged into the moat and never moved again.
The dying screams echoed endlessly.
"Kill!" Khal Drogo gripped his arakh. Once the gates of the White City were open, he would slaughter everything inside.
The Tyroshi had used dead horses, grass mats, and planks with every ounce of strength to build fragile floating bridges. Their moment of triumph lasted only a heartbeat.
They saw the great oak-and-steel gates of the Andals—gates that would take axes to break.
Then several battered old boats drifted down from upstream, slipping into the moat like a nest of emerald vipers released into the water.
From the sky, fire-pots shaped like crows began to fall.
Burning. Burning. Terrifying screams rose with the flames.
Men already in the shallow water and the moat could not turn back. A hellish green fire erupted, spreading in every direction.
The green liquid splashed everywhere. The green flames became demons that devoured the attackers.
The green-fire demon stretched out its fingers, racing along bodies, along the Tyroshi bridges, devouring everything it touched.
Burning. Burning. Every object became a blazing torch.
The wildfire had arrived.