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Chapter 19: Purgatory Wasteland
🕑 Added 2025-09-05 11:49:22 +0000 UTCThe Dothraki respected strength and despised weakness. Life was cheap, whether it was their enemy’s or their own. With no other entertainment, fighting was their pastime, and they would draw a blade over the smallest of insults.
"In Westeros," Dany asked Jorah, watching the two warriors circle each other, "how do your knights compete?"
"We have armor, Your Grace," he said. "Even in a great melee, deaths are rare. And when training squires, we give them leather armor and blunted swords. They learn the art of the fight without the price of blood."
It wasn't a perfect solution. Many Dothraki relied on speed and a single, killing blow. A contest of brute strength with blunted blades would favor a different kind of warrior. But it was better than watching her meager forces kill each other. She adopted the idea immediately.
That evening, as the new black dragon banner waved in the hot wind, her khalasar began its slow march south, navigating by the setting sun and the rising stars. Before they left, she sent men back to the funeral pyre.
"This is what Drogo left behind," she told the hesitant Dothraki as they dug through the ashes. "He has taken all he needs to the night lands. The rest is a gift for his people."
They recovered the pools of melted gold and, to her relief, Drogo’s dragonbone bow. The name was no metaphor; it was crafted from the literal bone of a dragon, black with age and rich with iron, a material that ordinary fire could not harm.
Then, one of the men let out a shout. Buried in the ashes, cracked but otherwise whole, were three stone eggs. They pieced the broken shells back together, their faces a mixture of confusion and awe.
"The dragons did not come from the eggs," one of them whispered. Then, a look of horrified understanding dawned on their faces. "The Khaleesi… she gave birth to a three-headed dragon! The prophecy is true! She has given birth to the Stallion Who Mounts the World!"
Dany, drawn by their cries, stared at the empty stone shells, a cold knot of confusion in her own stomach. What in this world is a dragon, truly?
She had no time to ponder it. The remaining charred bones were gathered and buried in a deep pit, and the khalasar moved on.
They traveled only ten kilometers that first night, finding the stream where Drogo’s great horde had watered now reduced to a muddy trickle. Dany altered their course, deciding to follow the damp depression of the wetlands. After another five kilometers, they found a shallow pool, and she called a halt.
"The eighty-seven cattle and sheep must all be slaughtered," she commanded. "As we go deeper into the waste, water and fodder will become scarce. We cannot let them compete with our horses for what little there is."
The work was done efficiently. The meat was cut into thin strips to be dried into jerky, and the women set to work sewing the uncured sheepskins, wool and all, into hooded cloaks. The desert was brutally hot, but a cloak would shield them from the sun, reducing the loss of precious sweat, and provide warmth against the surprisingly cold nights. Her original khas had been well-supplied, but the nearly two hundred outcasts who had joined them were destitute, many lacking even a proper vest.
On the third day, they traveled all through the night, covering fifty kilometers before the sun rose again. And now, they were in trouble. The scouts searched a five-kilometer radius and found nothing. The riverbed was bone dry, exposing only stagnant pools of bitter water that smelled of sulfur and rot, a broth of death that even the animals wouldn't touch.
"I have heard," Dany said, her mind working, "that Old Valyria was built upon fourteen volcanoes. Could this land, this red waste, be the same? A thin crust of earth over a heart of fire? It would explain why the rivers evaporate, and the pools stink of sulfur."
"It is demons, Khaleesi," Dorea whispered from inside the tent. "The sailors in Lys say this land is haunted." Even in the shade, the girl’s face was flushed a deep red, like a steamed prawn, and her thin silk clothes were plastered to her skin with sweat. "I feel one inside me now," she panted, rubbing a hand over her heart. "It is biting me, trying to devour my soul!"
"You have heat stroke," Dany said flatly.
She offered Dorea her own waterskin of mare's milk. "The minerals in your body are gone. Drink this."
"No, Khaleesi," the girl whispered, shaking her head. "It is your ration. I… I can still hold on."
Dany ignored her protests and pressed the skin into her hand. Before they’d left, she’d had to establish a rationing system. Water and the tough horse jerky were freely available, for now. But the essentials—mare’s milk, salt, wine, fruit—were strictly limited. Soon, she thought with a grim certainty, even the water will have to be rationed.
She could not sit still. "I am ordering the camp to be separated by gender," she told her maids. "You may all be naked in your own tents to escape the heat."
"The tents are like ovens," Irri sighed, fanning her face. "And the ground itself burns the feet."
"Then you can shovel off the top layer of sand—" Dany started to say, and then she stopped, a slow smile spreading across her face. "Of course. Why did I not think of it?"
Lifting the tent flap, she was momentarily blinded. The sun was a furnace, and the white light reflecting off the flat, red ground created a shimmering sea of fire. It truly looked and smelled like purgatory. The other tents were silent, like dozens of tombs scattered across the wasteland. She walked to the nearest one, a large patchwork of cowhide and horse skin, intending to give her new order. But as she approached, she heard a sound from within: the suppressed, rhythmic panting of… several people.
She quietly lifted a corner of the flap and peeked inside. The Dothraki, it seemed, were not bothered by the heat. Or by a lack of privacy. Silently, she let the flap fall and walked away, a strange mix of exasperation and admiration in her heart.
She found the horses near the edge of the riverbed, their ears drooping as they chewed on the tough, yellow-brown devil-grass that grew between the rocks.
"Khaleesi." A voice startled her. It was the little old man, the "multi-dynasty veteran" who had served twelve Khals before her. His name was Avanti. He was short and thin, with a bald head, a tiny braid, and a face as wrinkled as a dried orange. Only his eyes were still bright with life.
"Avanti," she said. "Can the horses regain their strength before dark?"
The old man gave her a flattering, toothless smile. "With clear water and this devil-grass, the strong ones can last for half a month, Khaleesi."
Dany felt a wave of relief. Half a month was enough to cross the waste, if they did not get lost.
"However," Avanti continued, his expression turning worried, "only a hundred of these mounts are strong. The rest are old, lame, sick, or ill-tempered. Even on the Great Grass Sea, with all its forage, they would not last long. Everyone knows such a horse should be killed for its meat."
"I understand," Dany said, her voice calm, her gaze distant. "When the time comes, there will be other arrangements."
