When Daenerys returned to her tent, the bald men who were treating Drogo had not yet left. A group of women with chicken-skin complexions and grotesque features stood with their legs spread wide, like gnarled tree roots, their disheveled, graying hair swaying in time with the ritual dance.
Their toothless mouths gaped open as they sang ancient Dothraki chants, their voices piercing and grating on the ears.
They danced and sang around the naked man on the bed. Beside them, the flames in the campfire leaped up to two meters high in time with the rhythm, then suddenly dwindled to embers that glowed and faded.
Daenerys's scalp tingled. She stood in the doorway, her legs frozen like pillars of steel and concrete, unable to move.
*It's just a Dothraki shaman's dance. Nothing to worry about. You're the Mother of Dragons. Just a little flame fluctuation. Maybe it's the wind.* She told herself.
"Roooar—"
Drogo suddenly let out a non-human howl from the fur-covered bed, a sound filled with nothing but extreme agony.
How many times had the old Daenerys seen him smile calmly in the face of wounds ten times worse?
Even for a mighty warrior like Zhang Fei, having a layer of skin sliced off his chest should have been a mere superficial wound!
Even if the wound became inflamed and infected, even if the pathogens burrowed into his vital organs, he should have been listless and semi-conscious, almost numb—though she was a recent graduate, Daenerys had dozens of internships under her belt. She knew that inflammation could never cause such excruciating pain.
Recalling Mirri Maz Duur's healing ritual, she remembered how every night, Drogo thrashed on the bed, punching and kicking at the air, tearing through several sheepskin blankets.
Daenerys was now completely certain: the witchmaiden had done this deliberately. She wanted to exact the cruelest revenge on the Dothraki, and what could be more satisfying than watching their Khal die in agony, enduring endless torment?
No, that wasn't enough. Daenerys pressed her hand against her belly. The witchmaiden planned to sacrifice Drogo's son to demons, condemning his Khaleesi to a lifetime of suffering.
During the day, Drogo drifted in and out of consciousness. At night, he struggled with the pain, and several Horsemen healers forced him to drink two large bowls of poppy milk.
Poppy milk, a milky liquid extracted from poppy flowers, had remarkable pain-relieving and anesthetic properties. It was the most common anesthetic on the continent of Westeros and in the Nine Free Cities.
(Author's Note: In *A Song of Ice and Fire*, the poppy flower symbolizes real-world poppies, but the poppy flower itself is not the same as the poppy flower. Simply put, the poppy milk in *Game of Thrones* is a secondary magical item unique to the fantasy world, with no real-world counterpart.)
While the Horsemen lacked the Maesters' skill in purifying poppy milk, they could steep poppy flowers in wine to achieve a similar effect.
These bald-headed women were true "quacks," lacking any formal medical training. They only practiced medicine as a "side hustle" because they were unable to bear children—their daily lives consisted of tending fires, cooking, and herding horses and sheep.
Their medical skills were abysmal, and they possessed almost no knowledge of witchcraft. They could neither treat moderately serious injuries nor counteract the witchmaidens' dark magic—Daenerys was certain they hadn't even realized Drogo had been cursed.
After the bald-headed women bowed and departed, Daenerys, assisted by her handmaidens, approached the bed.
"Jhiqui, bring me a dagger—a sharp one," she said to her handmaiden.
When Daenerys married Drogo, she received many gifts, including three handmaidens from Viserys: the Dothraki girls Jhiqui and Irri, and Doreah, a golden-haired, blue-eyed woman from Lys.
Jhiqui, Irri, and Daenerys were all around 14 years old. Both Jhiqui and Irri had been captured and enslaved when Drogo destroyed their father's khalasar.
Doreah was older, 20 years old, and the top courtesan at the famous Lysene brothel.
They were no ordinary maids. Irri was an expert horsewoman and taught Daenerys to ride. Jhiqui, fluent in the Common Tongue, Dothraki, and High Valyrian, specialized in teaching Daenerys Dothraki.
As for Doreah, she was tasked with transforming the naive Daenerys into a "riding expert"—or, as the common folk would say, an "old hand at the reins."
Jhiqui moved with practiced efficiency, retrieving a 30cm dagger from a waist-high purple wood chest with red copper trim. The hilt was made of yellowish-brown bone, and the blade was sheathed in brown cowhide, curved into an arakh-like arc.
"This is Drogo's dragonbone dagger, Khaleesi," Jhiqui said.
*Shing!*
The short blade slid from its sheath, catching the dim firelight and leaving a trail of white light. The thin, translucent blade was flawless. A flicker of satisfaction crossed Daenerys's smoky purple eyes. A fine blade!
Seeing her lean down, using Doreah's oil lamp to hold up the gauze covering Drogo's chest, Ser Jorah quickly stepped forward. "Khaleesi," he said softly, "your hands are not steady. Allow me."
"My hands and feet are clumsy? You think my master's degree is a fake?"
Daenerys shot Great Bear a sidelong glance, then swirled the blade of her knife through the outer flame of the candle. With practiced skill, she sliced through the filthy gauze clinging to his skin, revealing a hard mass of blue-green mud and dried fig leaves. Layer upon layer, accumulated over seven or eight days, the Dothraki had repeatedly plastered on the "Dothraki Holy Medicine"—a mud-based concoction.
Calling them "Mongol doctors" would be an insult to actual Mongol doctors.
Jorah turned his head, his eyes filled with surprise and doubt. The dressings were being cut and peeled away with such delicate, nimble movements that it was hard to believe they came from the hands of a young woman who knew nothing of swords and was pregnant.
The top layer of dressings remained moist, but the lower layers were as dry as a sheep's mud wall. Under Daenerys's rhythmic tapping, they crumbled easily into several pieces, like a crumbling wall.
As she peeled away the fragments clinging to his flesh and stripped off the dark purple fig leaves, a sweet, fetid stench gradually filled the spacious yurt, so overpowering that it made the others gasp for breath.
Doreah clamped a hand over her mouth, her cheeks puffing out as the thick tallow candle in her other hand trembled violently. Jorah quickly took the candle from her, and she immediately backed away several steps, then hurried outside to vomit.
The wooden tray in Irri's hands was piled high with detached clods of earth and leaves, stained with pus, blood, and tiny fragments of decaying flesh.
Drogo's wounds were now fully exposed to Daenerys's eyes: his left chest was a black, festering mass, the putrid wound gleaming under the candlelight.
As Drogo gasped for breath, his chest heaving, three rivulets of dark purple pus and blood flowed from the wound, soaking the pristine lamb's wool blanket beneath him. The increasingly pungent, sweet-rotting stench made even the stoic Ser Jorah feel nauseous.
"Khaleesi... Khaleesi..." Ser Jorah glanced at Daenerys, who stood pale and frozen in place, then at Irri and Jhiqui, who had turned away, pinching their noses. He opened and closed his mouth several times, unable to form a coherent sentence.
When Daenerys finally came to her senses and ordered Irri and Jhiqui to prepare hot water, strong liquor, and other necessities, Ser Jorah immediately grabbed her arm and urged, "Khaleesi, did you see? Your husband is dying."
*I know,* Daenerys thought silently. *His chest must be filled with foul pus and blood, and his heart is submerged in that dark, toxic blood. Even if we could dispel the dark magic, such a wound would be fatal even in a modern medical age.*
*In fact, he's already dead,* she thought. *The witchmaiden is using her twisted dark magic to keep him alive, prolonging his torment.*
"What do you want to say, Ser Jorah?"
"Child, we must leave before he takes his last breath!" Jorah urged.
"Leave? Where to?" Daenerys asked blankly, her eyes fixed on Drogo's chest.
"To Asshai, in the Shadowlands. It lies far to the south, at the edge of the known world, and is said to be a thriving port. There, we should be able to find a ship back to Pentos."
Ser Jorah hesitated. "Can we trust the Khas? Just the two of us... I'm not sure..."
"Heh." Daenerys's pale smile turned bitter as she shook her head. "You worry too much, Ser. We won't make it. With so few of us, we can't protect ourselves. But if we bring the Khas, a large group will be too conspicuous. Do you think the forty thousand roaring warriors are blind?"
*To Asshai?*
A journey of ten thousand miles. Even a grown man would struggle with such a trek. Daenerys, a fourteen-year-old girl with a swollen belly, would be better off just slitting her own throat.
Ser Jorah glanced at Daenerys's belly, his brow furrowed. "Your Highness, even for the child's sake, you must try to escape this place. The Dothraki follow Khal Drogo out of fear, but that's all. They will never follow a helpless infant. It's nothing like our Westeros."
"When Drogo dies, Jhogo, Bono, and over a dozen other khals will immediately begin fighting for the position of Khal. Drogo's khalasar will collapse, turning on each other until a final victor emerges."
"And then?" Daenerys asked, her face impassive.
Ser Jorah's heart ached. After a moment's hesitation, he whispered, "The new Khal will show no mercy to his rivals. Your child will be seized at birth and fed to the dogs—just as Drogo did to Ogo and his son."
Daenerys proved more resilient than Ser Jorah had imagined. Aside from her face growing even paler, she didn't descend into hysterical despair.
"If... I have about a week left. My due date is in about seven days. If Drogo dies before then, before my child is born, will they let me leave?" Daenerys asked hesitantly.
"I am the Khaleesi. Dothraki tradition dictates that no one may harm a widow. At most..."
Daenerys gritted her teeth and forced out the final words: "At most, they'll send me back to Vaes Dothrak to join the Dosh Khaleen."
Ser Jorah's expression tightened in disbelief. "Are you willing to live out your days in Vaes Dothrak?"
He shook his head bitterly. "It's futile. Haven't you noticed that the Dosh Khaleen in Vaes Dothrak have no children? In all these years, has not a single Khaleesi—like you—lost her Khal while pregnant?"
"Just an infant, and one who has lost his tribe," Daenerys said, her violet eyes wide with fear and disbelief.
Ser Jorah smiled bitterly. "Do you remember your brother Rhaegar?"
Fourteen years ago, on the eve of Daenerys's birth, her eldest brother, Crown Prince Rhaegar Targaryen, died on the banks of the Trident, slain in battle against the usurper.
Her father, the Mad King Aerys, was murdered by the White Knight who should have died defending him, his throat slit beneath the Iron Throne.
On that same day, Rhaegar's children—Daenerys's niece and nephew—were slaughtered. Three-year-old Princess Rhaenys was split in two. Infant Prince Aegon was torn from his mother's breast and, amidst the Crown Princess's heart-wrenching wails, was smashed against a stone wall like a ripe melon, reduced to a bloody pulp.
Of the entire Targaryen dynasty, only Daenerys and Viserys had survived. Now only Daenerys remained.
She had fared worse than Murong Fu, who at least had his four great clans and maternal relatives.
"If even knightly Westeros was so cruel," Jorah continued after a pause, "how much more so the savage Dothraki... And there's one more thing. Beneath the Mother of Mountains, the Dosh Khaleen prophesied that your child would ride the world like a horse. His future achievements would inspire such fear in any enemy that none would risk letting him grow to adulthood and return for vengeance. They won't let you leave."