The Sword & Sorcery Anthology (74 page)

“Some kings make themselves. Robert did.”

“He was no true king,” Dany said scornfully. “He did no justice.
Justice...that’s what kings are
for
.”

Ser Jorah had no answer. He only smiled, and touched her hair, so
lightly. It was enough.

That night she dreamt that she was Rhaegar, riding to the Trident.
But she was mounted on a dragon, not a horse. When she saw the
Usurper’s rebel host across the river they were armored all in ice, but
she bathed them in dragonfire and they melted away like dew and
turned the Trident into a torrent. Some small part of her knew that
she was dreaming, but another part exulted.
This is how it was meant
to be. The other was a nightmare, and I have only now awakened.

If I look back I am lost,
Dany told herself the next morning as she
entered Astapor through the harbor gates. She dared not remind
herself how small and insignificant her following truly was, or she
would lose all courage. Today she rode her silver, clad in horsehair
pants and painted leather vest, a bronze medallion belt about her
waist and two more crossed between her breasts. Irri and Jhiqui had
braided her hair and hung it with a tiny silver bell whose chime sang
of the Undying of Qarth, burned in their Palace of Dust.

The red brick streets of Astapor were almost crowded this morning.
Slaves and servants lined the ways, while the slavers and their women
donned their
tokars
to look down from their stepped pyramids.
They
are not so different from Qartheen after all,
she thought.
They want a
glimpse of dragons to tell their children of, and their children’s children.
It
made her wonder how many of them would ever have children.

Aggo went before her with his great Dothraki bow. Strong Belwas
walked to the right of her mare, the girl Missandei to her left. Ser
Jorah Mormont was behind in mail and surcoat, glowering at anyone
who came too near. Rakharo and Jhogo protected the litter. Dany had
commanded that the top be removed, so her three dragons might be
chained to the platform. Irri and Jhiqui rode with them, to try and
keep them calm. Yet Viserion’s tail lashed back and forth, and smoke
rose angry from his nostrils. Rhaegal could sense something wrong
as well. Thrice he tried to take wing, only to be pulled down by the
heavy chain in Jhiqui’s hand. Drogon only coiled into a ball, wings
and tail tucked tight. Only the red glow of his eyes remained to tell
that he was not asleep.

The rest of her people followed; Groleo and the other captains and
their crews, and the eighty-three Dothraki who remained to her of
the hundred thousand who had once ridden in Drogo’s
khalasar
. She
put the oldest and weakest on the inside of the column, with nursing
women and those with child, and the little girls, and the boys too
young to braid their hair. The rest—her warriors, such as they were—
rode outrider and moved their dismal herd along, the hundred-odd
gaunt horses who had survived both red waste and black salt sea.

I ought to have a banner sewn,
she thought as she led her tattered
band up across Astapor’s meandering river. She closed her eyes for
a moment, to imagine how it would look: all flowing black silk, and
on it the red three-headed dragon of Targaryen, breathing golden
flames.
A banner such as Rhaegar might have borne.
The river’s banks
were strangely tranquil. The Worm, the Astapori called the stream.
It was wide and slow and crooked, dotted with tiny wooded islands.
She glimpsed children playing on one of them, darting among elegant
marble statues. On another island two lovers kissed in the shade of
tall green trees, with no more shame than Dothraki at a wedding.
Without clothing, she could not tell if they were slave or free.

The Plaza of Pride with its great bronze harpy was too confined a
space to hold all the Unsullied she had bought. Instead they had been
assembled in the Plaza of Punishment, fronting on Astapor’s main
gate, so they might be marched directly from the city once Daenerys
had taken them in hand. There were no bronze statues here; only
a great wooden platform where rebellious slaves were racked, and
flayed, and hanged. “The Good Masters place them so they will be
the first thing a new slave sees upon entering the city,” Missandei told
her as they came to the plaza.

At first glimpse, Dany thought for a moment that their skin was
striped like the zorses of the Jogos Nhai. Then she rode her silver
nearer and saw the raw red flesh beneath the crawling black stripes.
Flies. Flies and maggots
. The rebellious slaves had been peeled as a
man might peel an apple, in a long curling strip. One man had an
arm black with flies from fingers to elbow, and red and white beneath.
Dany reined in beneath him. “What did this one do?” she demanded
of Missandei.

“He raised a hand against his owner.”

Her stomach roiling, Dany wheeled her silver about and trotted
toward the center of the plaza, and the army she had bought so
dear. Rank on rank on rank they stood, her stone halfmen with
their hearts of brick; eight thousand and six hundred in the spiked
bronze caps of fully trained Unsullied, and five thousand odd behind
them, bareheaded, yet armed with spears and short swords. The ones
furthest to the back were only boys, she saw, but they stood as straight
and still as all the rest.

Kraznys mo Nakloz and his fellows were all there to greet her.
Other well-born Astapori stood in knots behind them, sipping wine
from silver flutes as slaves circulated among them with trays of
olives and cherries and figs. The elder Grazdan sat in a sedan chair
supported by four huge copper-skinned slaves. Half a dozen mounted
lancers rode along the edges of the plaza, keeping back the crowds
who had come to watch. The sun flashed blinding bright off the
polished copper disks sewn to their cloaks, but she could not help but
notice how nervous their horses seemed.
They fear the dragons. And
well they ought.

Kraznys had a slave help her down from her saddle. His own hands
were full; one clutched his
tokar,
while the other held an ornate whip.
“Here they are.” He looked at Missandei. “Tell her they are hers...if
she can pay.”

“She can,” the girl said.

Ser Jorah barked a command, and the trade goods were brought
forward. Six bales of tiger skin, three hundred bolts of fine soft silk.
Jars of saffron, jars of myrrh, jars of pepper and curry and cardamom,
an onyx mask, twelve jade monkeys, casks of ink in red and black and
green, a box of rare black amethysts, a box of pearls, a cask of pitted
olives stuffed with maggots, a dozen casks of pickled cave fish, a great
brass gong and a hammer to beat it with, seventeen ivory eyes, and a
huge chest full of books written in tongues that Dany could not read.
And more, and more, and more. Her people stacked it all before the
slavers.

While the payment was being made, Kraznys mo Nakloz favored
her with a few final words of counsel on the handling of her troops.
“They are green as yet,” he said through Missandei. “Tell the whore
of Westeros she would be wise to blood them early. There are many
small cities between here and there, cities ripe for sacking. Whatever
plunder she takes will be hers alone. Unsullied have no lust for golds
or gems. And should she take captives, a few guards will suffice to
march them back to Astapor. We’ll buy the healthy ones, and for a
good price. And who knows? In ten years, some of the boys she sends
us may be Unsullied in their turn. Thus all shall prosper.”

Finally there were no more trade goods to add to the pile. Her
Dothraki mounted their horses once more, and Dany said, “This was
all we could carry. The rest awaits you on the ships, a great quantity of
amber and wine and black rice. And you have the ships themselves.
So all that remains is...”

“...the dragon,” finished the Grazdan with the spiked beard, who
spoke the Common Tongue so thickly.

“And here he waits.” Ser Jorah and Belwas walked beside her
to the litter, where Drogon and his brothers lay basking in the sun.
Jhiqui unfastened one end of the chain, and handed it down to her.
When she gave a yank, the black dragon raised his head, hissing,
and unfolded wings of night and scarlet. Kraznys mo Nakloz smiled
broadly as their shadow fell across him.

Dany handed the slaver the end of Drogon’s chain. In return he
presented her with the whip. The handle was black dragonbone,
elaborately carved and inlaid with gold. Nine long thin leather lashes
trailed from it, each one tipped by a gilded claw. The gold pommel
was a woman’s head, with pointed ivory teeth. “The harpy’s fingers,”
Kraznys named the scourge.

Dany turned the whip in her hand.
Such a light thing, to bear such
weight.
“Is it done, then? Do they belong to me?”

“It is done,” he agreed, giving the chain a sharp pull to bring
Drogon down from the litter.

Dany mounted her silver. She could feel her heart thumping in her
chest. She felt desperately afraid.
Was this what my brother would have
done?
She wondered if Prince Rhaegar had been this anxious when
he saw the Usurper’s host formed up across the Trident with all their
banners floating on the wind.

She stood in her stirrups and raised the harpy’s fingers above her
head for all the Unsullied to see.
“It is done!”
she cried at the top of
her lungs.
“You are mine!”
She gave the mare her heels and galloped
up and down before the first rank, holding the fingers high.
“You are
the dragon’s now! You’re bought and paid for! It is done! It is done!”

She glimpsed old Grazdan turn his grey head sharply.
He hears me
speak Valyrian.
The other slavers were not listening. They crowded
around Kraznys and the dragon, shouting advice. Though the
Astapori yanked and tugged, Drogon would not budge off the litter.
Smoke rose grey from his open jaws, and his long neck curled and
straightened as he snapped at the slaver’s face.

It is time to cross the Trident,
Dany thought, as she wheeled and
rode her silver back. Her bloodriders moved in close around her. “You
are in difficulty,” she observed.

“He will not come,” Kraznys said.

“There is a reason. A dragon is no slave.” And Dany swept the
lash down as hard as she could across the slaver’s face. Kraznys
screamed and staggered back, the blood running red down his cheeks
into his perfumed beard. The harpy’s fingers had torn his features
half to pieces with one slash, but she did not pause to contemplate
the ruin. “Drogon,” she sang out loudly, sweetly, all her fear forgotten.
“Dracarys.”

The black dragon spread his wings and roared.

A lance of swirling dark flame took Kraznys full in the face. His
eyes melted and ran down his cheeks, and the oil in his hair and
beard burst so fiercely into fire that for an instant the slaver wore a
burning crown twice as tall as his head. The sudden stench of charred
meat overwhelmed even his perfume, and his wail seemed to drown
all other sound.

Then the Plaza of Punishment blew apart into blood and chaos.
The Good Masters were shrieking, stumbling, shoving one another
aside and tripping over the fringes of their
tokars
in their haste.
Drogon flew almost lazily at Kraznys, black wings beating. As he gave
the slaver another taste of fire, Irri and Jhiqui unchained Viserion
and Rhaegal, and suddenly there were three dragons in the air. When
Dany turned to look, a third of Astapor’s proud demon-horned
warriors were fighting to stay atop their terrified mounts, and another
third were fleeing in a bright blaze of shiny copper. One man kept his
saddle long enough to draw a sword, but Jhogo’s whip coiled about his
neck and cut off his shout. Another lost a hand to Rakharo’s
arakh
and rode off reeling and spurting blood. Aggo sat calmly notching
arrows to his bowstring and sending them at
tokars
. Silver, gold, or
plain, he cared nothing for the fringe. Strong Belwas had his
arakh
out as well, and he spun it as he charged.