"Khalasar, loose! Give the Unsullied covering fire!"
Drogo sent the archers first.
The Dothraki were masters of the arakh and no less deft with bow and arrow. To their minds, shafts killed as surely as steel—striking near and far in perfect concert.
Thwish, thwish, thwish!
The khalasar's arrows hissed out. Salladhor Saan returned fire, but the Unsullied locked shields and turned the storm aside.
Drogo bellowed, "Unsullied fleet—no need to mind aught else. Ram straight through!"
Only two or three dozen ships held the far side of the harbor. Save for the Valyria, none matched Drogo's great war galleys; the rest were mere hundred-oared pirate craft.
With more than a thousand ships of his own, the Khal could afford the loss.
As the leviathans charged full tilt, Davos and Salladhor Saan lost their nerve. Hemmed against the quays, their ships had no room to flee. They could only watch as the onrushing rams crushed their prows like eggshells.
Grey Worm's battle-spirit burned. "Unsullied! Cast the ladders. Down with me—kill the foe!"
With Missandei vanished in the Sorrows, he had become once more the feelingless engine of death he had been made to be.
Bang! Bang!…
Boarding-ladders thumped down from the galleys. Pirates and garrison men could not close to hack them free—the Dothraki bows reached too far and kept them back—so the Unsullied came down spear-and-shield, step after iron step.
Once the Unsullied had taken the enemy decks, Drogo ordered the khalasar to cease shooting.
Steel crashed and men screamed. The Unsullied met pirates and Dragonstone guards in a grinding press.
They worked long-spear and short-sword in tireless turn, throwing their foes into panic—like men clinging to a cliff's edge above a bottomless void, dead the instant their minds relaxed.
This time Grey Worm did not tarry among the small fry. He drove straight for the pirate-king—Drogo had named him to be taken alive.
Salladhor Saan was an old hand of the sea. Watching his men fall, his line crumple, he dared not stand against the Unsullied. He meant to quit the ship and run.
"Brothers! Abandon ship—back to Dragonstone!"
Feinting a slash to force off the nearest Unsullied, Salladhor leapt, seized a halliard, and slid down. His crew, suddenly unburdened of courage, aped him at once.
Davos sighed and ordered his garrison to fall back as well.
Against such soldiers, all they could do was buy this much time.
"Hmph! Think to run?"
Drogo's snort was contempt made sound. "Jhogo—my bow!"
His bloodrider took down the great dragonbone bow and set it in the Khal's hand. Drogo bent, nocked, and with only three heartbeats to aim, loosed.
Hiss—
Perfect. The arrow took the pirate-king in the calf.
"Ah!"
Pirates are less faithful than sellswords. They had sworn to Salladhor Saan, but with death upon them, each man fled for himself.
Dragonstone's great rocks were everywhere. Between harbor and castle ran but a single rough track. Many, souls half-flown, scrambled up the crags to gain the gate faster.
Limping and gritting his teeth, the pirate-prince soon fell behind—and Grey Worm, swift as a cat, was on him.
At the head of the retreat, Davos lowered his eyes and sighed. "Ah, Salladhor Saan, old friend—forgive me."
They had smuggled together, living with their heads tied to their belts; hardship had bound them close. When Davos called, Salladhor had brought his fleet to help Stannis strike at King's Landing.
But now it could not be. The Onion Knight could only bid farewell in his heart.
Seeing his brother taken, old Captain Kollensa Saan—who had drowned his days in wine—smiled for the first time in years. He shook with joy. At last he might learn his wife and child's fate.
Davos kept cutting glances to the red woman on the stone dragon's claw. "Faster," he urged beneath his breath. "Faster!"
Drogo, too, watched the ant-small priestess, and murmured with scorn, "You will not escape."
He felt as if he held a giant blade forty feet long—letting the foe run thirty-nine.
When Daenerys opened her lovely eyes and smiled toward him, he knew—their children had come.
A vast shadow swallowed the light, and every man of the khalasar looked up.
They had not seen the three dread dragons for half a month. The beasts were larger now.
Drogon, mightiest of the three, spread wings a hundred and thirty feet from tip to tip—and would grow greater yet, for Balerion the Black Dread had once cast a span of one hundred and fifty.
The white, Viserion, and the green, Rhaegal, were smaller, yet each spread more than a hundred feet—enough to lay a shadow over an entire warship.
Shriek—sskree—gakh!
Those cries snared every fleeing soul; even the chanting within Dragonstone faltered and died.
"Gods! Dragons!"
"O Lord! That black one could swallow me whole!"
Whoof—whoof—!
Gliding low over the Dragon Gallant, the three chose to land upon her deck.
They had been hunting half a month, but the bond between mother and children ran deeper than sinew. At her call they had flown like thunder.
Hot and reeking of steam, each dragon could now bear not only their slight mother but even the tall Khal.
Two months past, Drogo had already become a dragonrider, drinking deep the fierce joy of the world seen from a dragon's back.
He strode to the black and slapped its thigh. "Come. Fly with your father to kill."
He set a boot to Drogon's wing and stepped up onto the ridged back.
Daenerys climbed to Viserion, both hands tight upon the dragon's horns—afraid the jolting of the skies might pitch her to the stones.
Drogo's seat was sure as any horse. On a back so broad, he needed no handhold.
He pointed at Melisandre upon Dragonstone. "Fly. There."
The black obeyed, wings beating.
Hands clasped behind his back, Drogo rode the assault, imperial and unbending.
"Dracarys!"
"Dracarys!"
Husband and wife, following close, loosed death from above—dragons' fire carving a road of flame below.
Screams tore the air. Pirates and garrison, caught mid-flight, burned where they ran.
Davos, at the very fore, was lucky—he spied a man-sized cleft in the rock and thrust himself into it.
Lives fell like wheat before the scythe, and Drogo, drunk on slaughter, laughed cold and wild.
"Ha—ha—ha—ha!"
Higher and higher Drogon climbed and came down upon the dragon-claw of the fortress itself.
The woman before him made Drogo's eyes swim—too witch-beautiful by half.
From head to heel she was red: a gown of slick silk bright as living flame, sleeves long, the bodice slashed to show a darker blood-red beneath.
At her throat a red-gold collar, tighter than any maester's chain, set with a great gem that burned with strange red light.
Her hair was no orange or strawberry shade, but a polished, deep coppery red, like fire itself. Even her eyes were red; yet her skin was pale and smooth as cream, without blemish.
She stood tall and willowy, higher than most knights, high-breasted and narrow-waisted, with a heart-shaped face.
Once a man's gaze lit upon her, it was hard to tear away. Even Drogo was no exception.
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🐉 Dragon King of Ice and Fire
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