Clash of Ambitions, chapters 7-8 (Patreon)

It is so nice to have time to write again. The older I get, the harder it is to teach. But now… summer, glorious summer. And more of Jon and Dany in Essos.

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Chapter Seven

Jon settled into the saddle and guided his mare alongside Arthur's larger gelding. “How long do you think it will take us to find her?” Jon asked. They had been on the road for two weeks now, and the settlements were thinning. Jon would have thought they would've seen some sign of enormous hordes of horsemen by this point. 

Arthur had been very careful that nothing in their small retinue looked particularly wealthy, but two dozen riders with two travel wagons should have been an attractive target for a culture that believed it against the gods to grow anything. That was such a foolish concept that Jon had trouble believing it was true. It was just as possible that others said that to make them appear stupid, the way that others would whisper that Northmen were cannibals in order to make them appear more barbarian. 

Having men from all over the seven kingdoms come to Castle Lyanna for training meant that he had heard that rumor more than once. Certainly in the depths of winter when families grew desperate, sometimes a recently passed loved one would be consumed to sustain the family, but these were great sacrifices that did not deserve to be labeled cannibalism or seen as barbaric. Especially since the few tales of that happening were rare indeed. It was more likely that the old would walk into a blizzard so that they would no longer consume food that could be used for the children or they would sit down with starving pigs, removing their clothing so that they died of exposure and the pigs would consume them before their family realized they were gone.

It would sustain the pigs and the pig flesh could then sustain the family. But these rare outliers were driven by desperation and good men's desire to protect their families. They should not be fodder for ugly rumor and innuendo. It was possible the same was true with these barbarians. Perhaps they were not so stupid as to avoid growing crops to feed themselves but others chose to describe them that way for their own ends.

“There is a town we’ll reach in a week. If Whent has any new information, he’ll send a message there. If not, we will head for a village inside the Dothroki sea of grass and begin searching for a blonde khaleesi.”

“Do you truly believe the barbarian would've married her?” Jon asked.

Arthur was silent for a long time, and Jon knew what he was thinking. As horrific as it was the barbarian may have taken her to be his wife, her life would be infinitely worse if she was simply another slave in his harem.

“He took her because of that ridiculous prophecy someone carried to him.”

“She would be mother to the stallion that mounts the world,” Jon said softly.  Daenerys had been taken at her name day celebration.  One merchant had brought her dragon eggs–three of them.  For years, Hightower and Whent had been trying to find where Rhaegar sent the three eggs he had woken from stone but failed to hatch.  On the day someone presented them as gifts to Daenerys, a fortune teller had offered another gift–a prophecy–and word that the Dothraki had already heard it.

Arthur snorted. “Why reasonable men believe in the vagaries of prophecy is beyond me.”

Jon wondered if he was talking about the horse lord or Prince Rhaegar. After all, Jon's father had endangered the entire kingdom and nearly ended his own line chasing a prophecy. The song of ice and fire he had called it. His obsession with siring a child who had the magic of Starks and Targaryens in his blood had nearly destroyed the realm. Sometimes Jon hated his birth father because he had sacrificed so much with so little evidence that it was necessary. 

Jon was not magical. He had no prophetic dreams. He dreamed of his home, the swamps around Castle Lyanna and what it would be like to return home and run through those familiar swamps, to splash through the rivers and watch the sunrise through the mist. He was hardly the great dragon dreams that defined Targaryen magic. It might be warging.  He wasn’t sure, but warging was Northern magic. It had naught to do with Targaryens. He wondered if his father would have rejected him once he realized that Jon was not the prophecy child he had sought.

“Prophecy is a fickle beast under the best of circumstances,” Arthur said, “but seers who have real gifts that have advised kings and merchants alike. However, all know how prophecy can twist out of shape. A wise king takes warnings seriously, but he does not rely on them exclusively. Even the Targaryens still owned land in old Valerya in case the prophecy of The Doom was wrong.”

“Really?”

“Yes,” Arthur said. “Common knowledge says that they left lock, stock, and barrel because Targaryens wanted to be seen as decisive and all-knowing. But historical records showed otherwise.”

Jon should be shocked at history being a lie, but he wasn’t.

“Besides,” Arthur continued, “seers from hedge mages to priests of R'hllor agree that prophecy is failing. They said the records contained evidence of the same thing happening around the fall of Valyria and again during the dance of dragons. Large movements that involve powerful magic can disrupt prophecy.”

“Is that what you and Whent were talking about before we left?” Jon asked.  He had been training with the house guard, learning to work with new soldiers required training and effort and Arthur wanted him to be able to fight shoulder to shoulder with the men that were accompanying them on the search. However, Jon saw them from the yard, standing in the office window and talking day after day.

“It is,” Arthur agreed.  “Whent does not believe in prophecy and keeps bringing up all the temple discussions of it failing. But I told him that even broken prophesies can contain a ghost of a truth that could have been.”

“Like my uncle’s greendreams,” Jon said. He’d heard servants at Castle Lyanna whisper about how Lord Stark’s dreams were once true during the rebellion, but now they grew less reliable.

“Yes,” Arthur said.  “Your uncle had a dream of what might have been, but the vision has broken.”

“And there’s still truth in it?”

Arthur rode for a time, his eyes on the horizon.  They were surrounded by waving grass, only a pair of ruts from wagon wheels marring the illusion that they were in some world untouched by humans.  “Your uncle saw Viserys alone, trading away his mother’s crown and falling into madness before he sold his sister to the Dothraki to buy an army.”

Jon winced.

“Viserys is too well monitored for him to contact the Dothraki, but some events still happened.  This time, a prophecy brought the horse lords to her instead of her brother’s insanity, but a broken prophecy carries a piece of truth.”

“So she was fated to be taken?” Jon asked.  He hated to think about what some barbarian was doing to his aunt, but the thought that the fates wanted her to suffer like that… it made him hate whatever gods had set that fate.  Not the old gods. They were not that capricious, but he knew very little about the fourteen flames of Old Valyria. Perhaps one of them was evil enough to condemn a young woman to that fate.

“No.” Arthur sent his horse into a trot, increasing the distance between him and the guards who followed the travelling carts.  Jon put his heels to his mare to catch up. When he did, Arthus said in a low voice, “Even unbroken prophecy is difficult to interpret and as likely to lead you off the path as reveal it.”

“You're talking about the prophecy we received, aren't you?” Jon asked. Before leaving the town, they had visited a seer to find out about the prophecy that Daenerys would be mother to the stallion who mounted the world. The idea of the stallion mounting the world was a rather crude and vulgar one, and Arthur thought a seer might offer an interpretation.

Arthur’s voice slipped into the cadence of repetition. “To reach the west you must go east. To go forward you must go back. To win the north, you must go south. And to touch the light, you must walk into shadow.”

“You are not impressed,” Jon guessed.

Arthur pinned him with a dry expression. “She already knew we were going east after Daenerys, and our accent makes it clear we are from Westeros. So the first line could be given by anyone with a modicum of intelligence. Do not trust the word of someone who claims to be a seer just because they say something true.”

Jon nodded. The logic was sound. He didn’t point out that the seer in question had a stellar reputation, so much so that city leaders and merchants both consulted with her regarding major decisions. But Arthur often did this–challenging Jon to consider a different perspective or think through a complex problem to determine the simplest solution.  It was possible the woman had been wise and had turned that to dressing her good advice in the gown of prophecy. 

“To go forward you must go back is an aphorism you taught me long ago. Any warrior who wishes to improve going must go back into the fundamentals and strengthen those. But are you as quick to ignore the last two lines?” Jon could admit that the last line made him a little uncomfortable to touch the light he had to walk into shadow. He knew his uncle Ned feared that the long night was coming, a world of constant shadow.

Arthur reined his horse in so that it walked slower and turned his full attention to Jon. “To go north we must go south. Define south.”

“I don't understand,” Jon said.

“Do we visit Sothoryos south of the Summer Sea? Is there something there we need? Perhaps we should go to Valyria, the ruined empire on the south edge of Essos. Or perhaps Lotus Port on the Summer Islands or perhaps we need to visit the south of Westeros and go through Dorne before we go home. What does it mean that we need to go south before we go north? In fact, we are riding southeast right now in search of Daenerys. Does that count as going South?”  Arthur’s look demanded an answer, and Jon could only sigh.

“It's too vague to be useful,” Jon summarized.

“Indeed, it is. Sothoryos would be a great waste of time, to visit Valeria is a fool's errand and would likely cost you your life, and we were already planning to visit Dorne so that they did not blame you when they learned of your father's choice to take a concubine. They need to know Princess Elia approved or it would be a great insult to her.”

“So, the prophecy had two lines that reveal nothing, one line that is too vague to carry meaning and that casts doubt on the last line’s veracity,” Jon summarized.  Still, the words echoed in his head. To touch the light, you must walk into shadow. He understood Arthur’s point.  He could not base his decision off a line he could not interpret.

But still.

“Do you think my Uncle Ned is right that the long night is coming?” he asked.  Sometimes he felt like the world he had grown up in had not been real. He had never known about his truefather or the prophecies surrounding him. He hadn’t known that his uncle worried not about Iron Islanders but mythical disasters.   Only instead of fleeing as the Targaryen’s had when their family member dreamed of The Doom, the Stark family would make a stand.

And his uncle thought he would be one of the Starks standing with them, fighting back the shadows the way Starks had fought back every other invader of their land.  Starks had put the heads of their enemies on pikes up and down the coast. They had slaughtered Boltons and Ironborne and every other enemy before Torren Stark had knelt to a dragon lord to save his people.

Arthur took a long time to answer.  “I don’t know, but the darkness your uncle sees… it could be in two years or two hundred.  Or we could have averted it altogether by saving the last of the Targaryens from dying with the rest of the family.” Arthur stared at the horizon–the sway of the grasses and the haze where insects swarmed. “We can’t build our lives on prophecy. Your father did that. He believed so much in the Prince that was Promised and the Song of Ice and Fire that he forgot that people lived in this reality, not some future.  He didn’t act to control his father because he believed he had larger battles to fight. And the result was that he didn’t survive to fight any of them.”

“If the long night is coming, the kingdom would be better prepared if Prince Rhaegar had taken the throne.”

“Aye,” Arthur said softly.

A distant bird screamed, or that is what Jon thought it was until Arthur wheeled his horse around and gave his own war cry.  He grabbed the reins of Jon’s horse and charged back toward the wagons.  The men were already throwing back leather flaps and archers stood, arrows notched as they watched horses charge over a low hill.

Jon put his hand on his sword just as they reached the wagons.  “Stay between them and defend the archers,” Arthur ordered. Jon already knew that was his role, and he understood that  these men were honorbound to die before him so he could not put himself in danger, but he still bridled at being held away from the fight.

Arthur put his helm down and pulled the Sword of Morning.  The greatsword shone in the sun.  The archers released their first volley as some of the men struggled into armor they had abandoned in the heat. Horses went down screaming, and the horses behind tripped over them, leading to several tangles of fallen beasts. But many of the riders leaped the obstructions and charged forward, curved blades held high.  Archers launched a second volley and more horses went down.

But still, the Dothraki charged, screaming in almost joy.  The hairs stood up on Jon’s arm, and the guards fell into the positions they’d drilled.  Most had gotten chest plates partially on. They weren’t tightened properly, but they would offer some protection. All had on helms, and the archers continued to thin the horde.

By the time the first edge of horses crashed into the guards, a good quarter of the fighters had been taken out by a dozen archers. The wild charge had led to piles and likely many broken bones.  Jon focused on the line, eager to step in if any Dothraki got past the line of guards.  Steel clashed against steel, and everywhere was movement.  Jon could only see the chaos of swinging swords, of backs, of flashes of armor.  He’d thought the melee tournament had prepared him, but Jon was lost. He couldn’t decide where to put his sword to help his guards and where his sword would be a danger to them.

A Dothraki screamed and directed his horse to leap over the defenders. Arthur gutted the animal in the air, entrails spilling over his arms, but the Dothraki was inside, running for the wagons and the vulnerable archers.  Two dropped their bows in favor of short swords and shields, but Jon leaped between.

He brought his sword into position and nearly fell backward as the Dothraki hit him with so much force that it left his whole body open for counterattack. But the strike had been so hard that Jon couldn’t recover fast enough to take advantage.  The Dothraki pulled his blade back, and Jon stumbled backward, scrambling to get away from the wagon so he could maneuver. He couldn’t take many direct hits like that, so he had to deflect, but with his back to the wagon, that wasn’t possible.

Before the Dothraki could strike again, an arrow went into his nose, sinking deep in the flesh.  The warrior screamed in pain, gurgling blood that soaked into the ground. Jon swung his sword, ending the man’s suffering.

This was the first death he had dealt, but he couldn’t think about it. Two more Dothraki had gotten past the line, and Jon focused on the fight in front of him, the way Arthur and Jaime had taught him.

By the time the fight was over, two of their guards were dead and three more injured.  All the archers were safe, and nearly a hundred Dothraki lay dead in the grass.  Arthur walked the field, beheading any that survived.

“This is why they would never take the seven kingdoms,” Arthur said wearily as he gave mercy to another man who moaned in the tall grass. 

“They had no strategy,” Jon said.

“Only determination and terror,” Arthur agreed.  “It is no way to fight, but then their goal is not to live–it’s to die fighting so they can join their horse god’s horde.”  He stabbed another survivor.  Jon looked away, bothered by the casual dismissal of these men’s lives.

Arthur stopped and looked at Jon.  “This is what it means to rule, Jon. You control lives. Your decisions will lead one man to enjoy a full larder and another to starve. There is no way to be a perfect ruler, so you must decide who will suffer and how much suffering you will allow.”

“I don’t want to rule the seven kingdoms,” Jon said. “Uncle Ned always points out that the law of conquest supersedes the law of succession.”

“Then you will rule Castle Lyanna. Old Walder’s daughters and granddaughters suffer. Will you allow that?”

“They won’t be my bannermen.”

“No, but your people’s daughters will be stolen away.  You have Freys on one side and crannogmen on the other. You have very little land of your own, so you will always have to decide where you draw the line, and no matter what decision you make, someone will call you a monster.  Follow your prince into battle, and you betray your vows by disobeying his orders.  Follow his orders, and men will name you coward for not being at his side when he most needed you.”  Arthur’s expression was haunted, and Jon could hear the echo of his guilt.

“Sometimes I think the crannogmen are wise. They live where no one can find them and ignore the rest of the seven kingdoms.”

Arthur shook free of his thoughts. “They likely play political games within their own families. It’s the nature of men.”  He started walking the field of dead again.  They’d inherited several good horses that had been left standing around when the last Dothraki died, and a few of the guards had picked up curved blades, likely as trophies, but still. This all felt like such a waste. A bloody, terrible waste.

Chapter Eight

Dany slid off the horse and clung to the saddle. Her body ached, but she did not think any of these people would care about the pain in her ribs or the one between her legs.  Irri moved to her side.

“Are you well, khaleesi?”

Dany almost laughed.  She was not well.  Not at all.  Drogo was too heavy–his member too large.  She had tried to yield to him, to tell herself that it was her destiny as a woman to lay under some husband and the only difference was that Hightower and Lena had not chosen this husband for her.

Her mind skittered away from the memory of Hightower, overwhelmed by Dothraki and still swinging his sword as he yelled for her to take cover. But there had been no cover to protect her from the barbarians. Every door and window had been locked by the owners of the manse who wanted to protect their own possessions, leaving Dany to be dragged away while Ser Gerold choked on his own blood.

Irri leaned closer. “Do not show weakness, khaleesi.”

Dany pushed off from her silver and gave her handmaiden a nod.  She knew Irri and Jhiqui were trying to help her.  They were slaves, and she was their only protection. But she could not protect them or herself if she lost her husband’s favor.  She had to be strong. She smiled and started walking toward the area where women were already setting up a meal.  A Dothraki woman watched her. She was older than most, white streaks at her temple where the rest of her hair was black.

Dany wondered if her white hair is why Drogo had taken her. Did he see Dany as exotic? Did he associate white hair with elderly women, thinking she would have their wisdom with the body of a young woman?  She could think of no reason why a Dothraki would want her.  She could imagine a man falling in love with her the way Daemon had fallen for Rheanera.  Dany was clever and well-educated and strong.  But Drogo did not know her before taking her.  She could imagine a man stealing her to make a claim on the Iron Throne, but Dothraki did not cross the sea. They had no designs on Westeros.

None of this made sense.

She took a wineskin from a slave, drinking only to splutter when she found the skin full of fermented milk. For a second, she almost vomited, and the women all watched, their eyes full of malice and mirth. Dany stared at them before taking another drink of the vile liquid.  The woman with white streaks in her hair pursed her lips, her expression interested where everyone else retained some malice.

A horse came thundering in fast, and Khal Drogo jumped from the back before the animal even stopped. “Moon of my life, I have brought you a gift.”  He wrapped an arm around Dany, pulling her against his body.  She took a deep breath and settled against him, even as her body and soul rebelled against his touch.  He let her go, but then his hands were around her neck.  It took a second to realize he was fastening a necklace around it.  She touched the heavy metal, perhaps even gold.  It was a stylized horse rearing up and displaying a shockingly large cock.

“You will be mother of stallion,” Drogo said, each word pained.  Irri was teaching her Dothraki, but Drogo had to learn common phrases if he hoped to be understood.  It was odd. He was giving her gifts and learning common tongue, all to please her, yet he couldn’t understand that his decision to take her precluded her ever seeing him as anything other than the brute who had stolen her future.

Much of the Dothraki didn’t make sense.  Dany touched the necklace and smiled. “Thank you,” she offered in Dothraki. He looked pleased.

“I am sun of your day.  I will father stallion,” he said proudly.

Dany blinked at him, not sure what she should say to that.  The khal’s horse had stood patiently waiting the second Drogo jumped off, and now he leaped back onto his horse and rode off.  Irri’s hand touched Dany’s back, reminding her that she was there, and Dany let out a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding.

“He wishes for many children with you,” Irri said softly.

“I understand that,” Dany said.  She just didn’t understand why he had decided it had to be her.  Irri was far better on horses and she was clever. She spoke Valyrian, common tongue and Dothraki.  She would have made an ideal wife. She certainly wouldn’t have been sore after riding for the day and her ribs would not have ached from carrying the weight of her husband in bed.

Jhiqui brought a small stool, and Dany sat outside the tent that was hers. The evening was too hot to go inside the stifling heat, so she contented herself with watching her handmaidens fetch stew and a tasteless flat bread the Dothraki carried.  The older woman who had been studying Dany for three days now stood, walking toward her.

“You eat horse,” she said, gesturing to the stew.

“I eat what my hosts offer me,” Dany countered. She would rather not eat horse, truth be told, but she had no illusions that her position would be improved if she starved herself.

“Hosts.  I know not this word.”

Dany did not attempt to explain.  She already risked sounding sarcastic to anyone who spoke the common tongue, but she trusted Irri to keep her secrets. “I am honored my husband sees strength in my womb.” She parroted the memorized phrase in Dothraki, but instead of nodding approvingly as others did when they heard it, the woman scoffed.

“Do you count womb as only value?” she asked.

“No!” Dany sat up, refusing to wince when her thighs burned with exhaustion.

The woman nodded.  “Good. I am Hidiqi. I am Dothraki of man.”

“You’re a man?” Dany nearly tipped off her stool in shock.

“I am Dothraki of the man,” Hidiqi repeated.

“My husband would not like me to keep the company of a man,” Dany said, although she could not see any way in which Hidiqi was a man. She had the curves of a woman, and the round face, although her almond eyes made it more angular than the faces Dany was used to seeing. But nothing suggested she was a man.

“Why? Dothraki of man are much respected,” Hidiqi said.  

Irri moved to squat next to Dany.  “She is correct. All Dothraki respect the Dothraki of the virile.”

“Virile?” Dany asked. “She said of the man.  Is she a man or not?”

Irri tilted her head to the side and she and Hidiqi exchanged confused looks.  “What exactly is man to you?” she asked.

Dany’s eyebrows rose and her face grew warm.  “Not a woman. Someone who cannot give birth.”

“Any person can avoid birth with right medicines,” Irri said. “What makes a man?”

Dany opened her mouth, closed it, and then gathered her courage to try again. “A man has a…” She made a gesture between her legs, tracing out the shape of what she had seen on Drogo.

Irri giggled and spoke in quickfire Dothraki to Hidiqi. They were amused by Dany’s reluctance to say the word, but if she never saw another manhood, she would count herself lucky.  While marriage was the lot of all women, and suffering in marriage was inevitable, she had never considered this possibility. She was cut off from her family and servants and even people who spoke the same tongue with ease.  She felt her nose grow stuffy as she struggled to avoid crying. She would not show them weakness.

“We used the wrong word,” Irri said.  “We did not know man meant one who had a cock. We hear outsiders call those with cocks but no…” here she inserted an unfamiliar word before finishing, “not men, so we thought men meant to have….”  Again, she used the unfamiliar word.

“What does this word mean?” Dany asked.  A mistranslation made more sense than the claim that Hidiqi was a man, and she had often heard soldiers insult each other by calling one another “woman” or “girl,” so it made sense that there would be confusion.

“It is one who kills with own sword and chooses own leader,” Hidiqi said.  

Dany could understand why someone might assume that meant a man. The world gave them more options and more power. It always had.  Lena always told her stories about how great her mother had been, yet no one would have given her the throne, even if Aerys was already showing signs of imbalance before becoming king. Better a king who was mad than a woman with power.  “You said you were this, but you must listen to my husband, Khal Drogo,” Dany challenged the older woman.

Hidiqi leaned forward, smiling so her rotten front tooth was fully visible. The smell forced Dany to hold her breath.  “I trust my own blade and horse. I can, like any… ride away to find a different Khal. I could even try to take riders and call myself a Khaleesi of the….”

“Free,” Dany translated. “I think the word you search for is free, so you are a free Dothraki.”

Hidiqi searched Dany’s face. “Does this word mean that I must be responsible for myself? I must take my own plunder or exchange my own gifts?”

“Yes,” Dany said.

Leaning back, Hidiqi smiled.  “Then I am a Dothraki of free. I make my own choices. Do you hope to be Dothraki of free or trade your womb for food and the security of your husband’s blade?”

“I…” Dany knew that she had never wanted to be valued only for her womb. Her worst fear was to be married off to someone who would lock her in the Red Keep and keep her only so she could bear sons with the Targaryen name. But being responsible for herself in this horde was a terrifying thought. Four people had died at her wedding, fighting over nothing.  She needed Khal Drogo’s sword to defend her if these barbarians targeted her.  

But she was a Targaryen. She was the blood of the dragon.  She sat up straighter.  “I would learn to be free.”

“Good! Good! To be free is better. Strong… um…” she said an unfamiliar word.

“Strong people,” Irri said. “It is good to be strong and free and able to shelter others who can trust your blade.  But you must prove your strength.”

“I can learn to be strong,” Dany said, but I need my husband’s blade now.”

Hidiqi smiled brightly.  “Good. Good. I can teach much. And Khal Drogo is strong free.  He will like a free wife. It is said only free wife can give strongest sons. It will set you above all other wives, but before the ceremony of the heart, you must learn to be free. Then you will have choices, Khaleesi of Drogo.”  She patted Dany on the knee and looked very satisfied with herself.