Beyond Jhaqo's sprawling camp, the landscape turned into a grim industrial line of misery. Daenerys, flanked by Ser Jorah and her five riders, reached the outer perimeter of the khalasar. Here, groups of Dothraki women in painted leather vests were busy weaving. Their cracked, sun-baked fingers moved with a terrifying agility, stripping the grain-heavy ears from the rye stalks and tossing them into wicker baskets. The remaining half-green stalks were then braided into long, coarse mats.
The Dothraki lived under grass and hide. Most lacked the wealth for woven cloth; their world was one of leather, fur, and these woven reed screens.
As the Khaleesi rode past, the women and children didn't look up. Their faces were wooden, devoid of respect or even the simmering hatred she had seen in the Lhazareen.
"These are the spoils from Khal Oggo's khalasar," Jorah said softly by her side.
The "ecology" of the Great Grass Sea was one of absolute, cannibalistic brutality.
Barely a month ago in Vaes Dothrak, while the ancient crones of the Dosh Khaleen were prophesying that Daenerys would birth the "Stallion Who Mounts the World," Khal Oggo had shared wine and salt with Drogo. They had sat in the same yurt like brothers.
Nine days ago, they met again by the banks of the Skahazadhan.
Oggo was in the middle of besieging a Lhazareen town when Drogo happened upon the scene. Without a word of negotiation, Drogo led his screamers into the fray. He didn't help Oggo take the city; instead, he slammed into the rear of Oggo's forces while they were distracted by the walls.
After shattering Oggo's people, Drogo simply finished off the half-broken town for himself.
In that single engagement, Drogo had personally cut down Oggo and his heir, taking on three bloodriders at once. The cost of his victory? A shallow flap of skin missing from his left pectoral.
It was the law of the grasslands: peace existed only in the shadow of the Mother of Mountains. Once outside the sacred city, there was only the quick and the dead.
Now, Drogo was driving Oggo's women and children west along the river, destined for the slave blocks of Slaver's Bay.
The crack of a whip snapped Dany out of her reverie. They had crossed the threshold of the camp into the remains of the battlefield.
Under a jaundiced evening sky, several Lhazareen farmsteads lay dying in coils of black smoke. The fire roared and popped, devouring the dry timber. Against the backdrop of crumbling mud walls, Dothraki riders galloped to and fro, their whips cracking like thunderclaps as they herded the survivors out of the ruins.
Dany watched the mothers. Their eyes were vacant, their steps heavy as they led sobbing children toward the slave pens. The men were absent—either dead in the fields or left as cooling corpses in the streets. Only the elderly and the crippled remained among the males.
A rider broke away from the ruins, his leather vest stained dark with fresh gore. It was Haggo. He reined in his horse, blocking Dany's path with a cruel, wolfish grin.
"Khaleesi," he mocked, "have you come to steal more slaves?"
Before she could answer, he reached for a coil of hemp rope hanging from his saddle and hoisted it high.
"Ah—!"
The sound caught in Dany's throat. A wave of sweet, metallic rot hit her, thick enough to gag on. Her pupils constricted into pinpricks of pure terror.
It was a garland of heads.
Young faces, old faces, some frozen in mid-scream, others with the dull, heavy slackness of the newly dead. Thick, dark blood traveled down the rope, soaking into the horse's flank and Haggo's own thigh. Some had been taken with a clean stroke of an arakh; others had jagged, torn necks, as if the blade had dulled and the rider had been forced to saw—or pull—the head from the shoulders.
One head still had a length of white spinal column dangling from the stump of the neck.
The eyes of the dead were wide, staring at the sky. In the ringing silence, Dany thought she could hear their collective voices rising in a ghostly curse.
The surgeon within her recoiled. Only hours ago, she had been standing in a sun-drenched plaza, receiving her master's degree in surgery. Now, she was staring at the raw, visceral reality of a massacre.
Ser Jorah was at her side in an instant, steadying her as she swayed in the saddle. He pressed a waterskin to her lips, whispering low words of comfort as her breath came in ragged, shallow gasps.
It took several minutes for the world to stop spinning. Dany forced the tears back, swallowing her revulsion. She sharpened her gaze, molding it into a weapon of cold violet fire, and forced herself to look Haggo directly in the eye.
Slowly, the smirk slid off Haggo's face. He seemed to find her silence unnerving. He looked down, grumbling as he moved to hang the heads back on his saddle.
But the quiet bothered him. He looked up again, snarling, "What are you looking at, Khaleesi?"
Her eyes were no longer clouded with shock; they were as clear and cold as a mountain spring. "I am counting," she said, her voice steady. "To see if you truly took the most heads. It is a pity—Ko Pono has two more than you."
"You—!"
The veins in Haggo's neck bulged. He looked ready to strike her, but he bit back his rage. He vaulted off his horse and strode toward Pono's pile, pointing and counting under his breath, his thick fingers clumsy as he struggled with the tally.
Dany's icy facade almost wavered.
The bloodriders were legendary warriors, but in this world, even the greatest fighter tired after killing half a dozen men. None of the leaders had more than twenty heads. Yet here was Haggo, a man who could split a skull with a flick of his wrist, struggling for a full minute to count to twenty.
Finally, he returned to his saddle, comparing his "trophies" one by one against Pono's.
The 'medical student' was right. Haggo was short by two.
Thump.
Haggo hurled his garland to the ground in a fit of pique. The heads rolled in the dirt, collecting a fine coating of dust like flour on a piece of meat.
With a roar of frustration, he lunged into the line of Lhazareen captives. He grabbed a woman in her thirties, ignoring her shrill screams and frantic struggles. Right there, in the dirt of the battlefield and in the presence of the Khaleesi, he unfastened his breeches and took her.
The woman's wails were his music. He looked up at Dany while he did it, his smile a jagged, hideous thing. It was a challenge. A provocation.
Everyone knew the Khaleesi had a habit of interfering. But Daenerys knew this was a war of nerves. If she tried to stop him now, without Drogo's protection, it would end in a bloodbath for her and her khas.
She gave a soft click of her tongue and nudged her horse forward.
Haggo spat a Dothraki curse after her, his "victory" ringing hollow.
As she entered the heart of the ruins, a dying horse lifted its head to nuzzle at her leg, letting out a thin, whistling whinny. A wounded Lhazareen man, his lips cracked and white, reached a trembling hand toward her. "Khaleesi... water... please..."
Before Dany could even reach for her skin, a Jaqa rhan—a Mercy-Giver—approached at a trot.
"Forgive the interruption, Khaleesi," the youth said with a polite, vacant smile.
His blade flickered. A single, efficient stroke opened the man's throat.
Blood sprayed in a rhythmic hiss. The man's eyes dimmed, the pain vanishing, replaced by a strange look of mild confusion. It was as if, in his final second, he was simply wondering why he couldn't have had a drink first.
The Jaqa rhan moved on, harvesting the heads of the fallen. Behind them, a group of young girls followed with baskets. They giggled as they moved among the corpses, their small hands stained dark as they plucked spent arrows from the bodies. The good ones would be reused; the broken ones would be stripped for their metal heads.
And finally, there were the dogs.
A pack of lean, hungry curs with eyes like yellow glass. They sniffed at a corpse near Dany's filly, looking up to see if she would drive them off. When she didn't move, they set upon the body, their teeth snapping through gristle and bone.
A pack of wild dogs always followed the khalasar. They were the final link in the ecological chain of the Great Grass Sea.
"Ugh"
Dany doubled over in her saddle, retching. The dogs scrambled back, startled by the sound, pieces of pale, warm flesh still dangling from their maws.
"Khaleesi, it is late," Ser Jorah said, his hand firm on her shoulder. "Let us return to the camp."
"Yes," she whispered, her voice a ghost of itself. "Let's go back."
The veil had been torn away. In the space of an afternoon, the beautiful, golden world of the Dothraki had revealed its rotting, blood-soaked heart.