The grey mist resting over the Narrow Sea did not burn away; it was torn to shreds by the sheer, crushing mass of the approaching horde.
From the deck of the royal flagship, the Westerosi lords watched the vast armada of Dothraki blunder into the narrow strait between Bloodstone and Grey Gallows. The Dothraki had no vanguard. They possessed no line of battle, no order, and no understanding of the treacherous sea currents that defined the Stepstones. They were a swarm of timber driven solely by rage and the lash.
The roaring battle cry of forty thousand horse-lords echoed across the water, a terrifying, unified scream that vibrated in the heavy wooden planks of the Westerosi ships.
King Robert Baratheon stood at the prow of his flagship, his antlered helm gleaming in the dull morning light. He gripped his massive iron warhammer with both hands, his blue eyes fixed entirely on the approaching tide of wood and painted flesh.
"Steady," Ser Brynden Tully commanded, his veteran voice carrying down the line of the Royal Fleet. The Blackfish watched the lead Dothraki ships caught in the rapid currents. "Let the sea do the first day's work. Hold the line."
The Dothraki armada was too vast for the narrow passage. As the front line was pulled forward by the violent tide, the ships behind them, driven by panicked, enslaved rowers trying to escape the whips of their captors, crashed directly into their own lead vessels.
The sound of splintering wood cracked like thunder across the water.
The impact sheared the long wooden oars right off the galleys, crushing the slave crews trapped below the decks and leaving the swift ships dead in the water. Driven by the pressing mass behind them, more ships collided, their riggings tangling, their wooden hulls grinding together in a chaotic snare of their own making.
From the decks of the locked ships, the Dothraki screamers unleashed a dark cloud of arrows.
Thousands of shafts arced through the sky toward the Westerosi ships. But the horse-lords were firing from shifting, unstable decks. They could not brace their legs. The harsh sea wind caught the light, short-bow arrows, robbing them of their force and sending the vast majority of them hissing harmlessly into the cold grey waves fifty yards short of the Westerosi line.
A few stray arrows clattered against the thick oak bulwarks of the royal flagship, failing to even bite into the wood.
Lord Stannis Baratheon watched the arrows fall short. His pale blue eyes were cold, judging the precise distance between the tangled Dothraki vanguard and the perfectly aligned Westerosi line. He waited for the exact moment the current dragged the crushing mass of stolen ships into the fatal range of the longbow.
"Lord Brynden," Stannis said, his voice entirely devoid of emotion. "The trap is closed."
Brynden Tully gave a single, sharp nod to the men manning the halyards.
The heavy black canvas flag of holding was dropped. In its place, a massive, blood-red flag was hauled up the mainmast, snapping violently in the eastern wind. At the base of the mast, the Stormlander drummers shifted their rhythm, beating a rapid, deafening sequence that echoed across the water to the waiting flanks.
On the port side of the line, Lord Randyll Tarly saw the red flag rise.
The Lord of Horn Hill stood on the command deck of the towering Redwyne galley, looking down at the thousands of Reachmen archers standing shoulder-to-shoulder along the heavy wooden rails. The air was thick with the foul, choking smell of burning pitch and tar.
Tarly drew Heartsbane, the great Valyrian steel sword catching the orange light of the braziers.
"Draw!" Tarly roared.
Five thousand thick yew bowstrings were pulled back in perfect, practiced rhythm. The sound was a deep, terrifying groan of tension. The archers laid their iron-tipped shafts across the burning braziers. In an instant, the line of the Reach became a wall of bright, flickering fire.
"The wind is at our backs!" Tarly commanded, pointing Heartsbane toward the tangled mass of Dothraki ships struggling in the current. "Burn them down! Loose!"
The sky turned black, and then immediately burned bright orange.
Five thousand pitch-soaked arrows flew over the rolling grey waves, carried further and faster by the harsh sea wind. The volley descended upon the densely packed Dothraki vanguard like a rain of falling stars.
The impact was utter ruin.
The arrows struck the dry, heavy canvas sails of the Pentoshi cogs. Within seconds, the sails erupted into massive sheets of fire. The flames spread rapidly down the thick ropes and tarred riggings, turning the towering masts into pillars of burning light.
A stray Dothraki arrow, caught perfectly by a sudden gust of wind, managed to clear the gap. The iron tip buried itself deeply into the shoulder of a young Reachman archer in the front rank. The boy cried out, his bow dropping to the wooden deck as he fell backward.
There was no panic. The line did not break.
Randyll Tarly did not even flinch. He pointed a leather-clad finger at the fallen boy. "Drag him back! Fill the gap! Draw!"
Two men immediately stepped out of the rear rank, grabbed the wounded archer by the straps of his armor, and hauled him roughly toward the healers waiting near the mainmast. Another archer seamlessly stepped forward, planting his boots in the exact spot the wounded boy had stood, drawing his bowstring tight. The grim rhythm continued without missing a single, lethal beat.
"Loose!" Tarly bellowed again.
A second volley of fire followed the first, and then a third. The Reachmen fired with cold, merciless aim.
Arrows rained down onto the crowded wooden decks. The Dothraki wore no armor, only painted vests, horsehide leggings, and woven grass. The burning pitch clung to their skin and clothing. Men screamed in sheer agony as the fire caught.
Below the burning decks, the reality of the sea took a different, darker toll.
The Dothraki relied entirely on enslaved Pentoshi rowers to move their stolen fleet. As the fire spread across the upper decks and the terrifying shrieks of the dying horses echoed through the lower holds, the slaves realized they were dead men. If they kept rowing, they would burn alive.
In the dark, suffocating belly of a massive cog, a single, bloody mutiny began. A chained rower dropped his heavy wooden oar. The Dothraki slave-driver raised his whip with a harsh curse, but the slave lunged forward, wrapping his heavy iron wrist-chains directly around the slaver's throat. Within moments, the entire hold erupted. Desperate, starving men used their chains, broken oars, and bare hands to tear their captors apart.
With no one left to man the oars, the ship stopped moving. Caught entirely by the violent currents of the Stepstones, the dead ship drifted sideways, crashing heavily into the reefs of Bloodstone, ripping its hull wide open.
Deep within the filling hold of one such dying galley, chained to a bench alongside men who wept and prayed, sat Viserys Targaryen.
The Beggar King was stripped of his fine silks, wearing only filthy rags, his silver hair matted with sweat and sea salt.
As the ship struck a reef and the freezing waters of the Narrow Sea rushed into the lower decks, the other slaves began to scream. Viserys yanked frantically at his iron chains, the cold water rapidly rising past his waist, then his chest.
"Unchain me!" Viserys shrieked into the dark, his voice cracking with sheer, pathetic terror. "I am the blood of old Valyria! I am the dragon! Fire cannot kill a dragon!"
But it was not fire that claimed him. The freezing, black water surged over his head, filling his open mouth and silencing his mad screams forever. The Targaryen king died in the dark, chained to a piece of stolen wood, entirely unnoticed by the world above.
On the starboard flank of the Westerosi blockade, Prince Oberyn Martell watched the Dothraki vanguard burn.
"They intend to use their own burning ships as a bridge!" Oberyn shouted to his Dornish crew, realizing the sheer, brutal will of the horde. Driven by the weight of the ships behind them, the burning vessels were being pushed forward, closing the distance despite the heavy losses.
Oberyn walked down the line of the heavy siege scorpions mounted on the deck of his dromond. The massive iron bolts dripped with bubbling, cheap black pitch.
"Take their hulls!" Oberyn commanded, his voice biting. "Fire!"
The heavy iron winches snapped forward with a deafening crack. Dozens of massive scorpion bolts, thick as tree trunks and trailing fire, launched across the short span of water.
The heavy bolts slammed directly into the sides of the approaching Dothraki ships, striking just at the waterline. The impact shattered the wooden planks, punching massive, jagged holes in the sides of the stolen cogs. The heavily overloaded ships, already riding dangerously low, took on water instantly and began to list heavily to the side.
As one massive slave barge began to tilt and sink beneath the waves, Oberyn caught sight of a familiar, wretched figure.
Chained to the mainmast of the dying barge, stripped of his golden rings and perfumed silks, was Magister Illyrio Mopatis. The grossly overweight cheesemonger was weeping openly, struggling vainly against the heavy iron collar around his thick neck as the flames licked at the deck and the sea rushed over the rails.
Oberyn did not bother to order a bolt fired to end the man's misery. The Red Viper simply smiled. He raised his poisoned ash-wood spear high in the air, offering a slow, mocking toast across the water, and watched with deep satisfaction as the freezing sea swallowed the ruined magister who had thought he could sell a Targaryen to buy a kingdom.
For the Dothraki, the true horror of the trap was only just beginning.
Thousands of horse-lords, their clothes alight with pitch, threw themselves over the wooden rails of their burning ships to escape the flames. But the Dothraki were masters of the open plains, born to the saddle. They did not know the sea, and they did not know how to swim.
The geography of the Stepstones was a cruel executioner. The violent, swirling currents caught the unarmored warriors the moment they hit the water. Men thrashed and screamed, choking on the salt. Adding to the nightmare, thousands of panicked horses had also been driven into the sea by the flames.
The massive beasts kicked wildly in the water, their heavy hooves crushing the skulls of the drowning Dothraki who tried to cling to them. The narrow strait became a chaotic, churning graveyard of saltwater, dragging men and beasts alike down into the dark depths.
But Khal Drogo's horde had not conquered the vast plains of Essos by surrendering to fear.
Through the thick, suffocating smoke, a massive wave of Dothraki warriors abandoned their sinking, burning vanguard. They leaped from the rails of their dying ships onto the decks of the vessels pressing up tightly behind them. They moved like a swarm of angry ants over a dying carcass, jumping from ship to ship, driven by a singular, consuming desire to close the distance to the Westerosi line.
The sheer, crushing mass of the Dothraki armada finally broke the gap.
A heavy, flat-bottomed barge, its front half engulfed in flames, smashed violently into the side of the Golden Lion, the massive warship commanded by Jaime Lannister. The impact threw several Lannister guardsmen to the deck.
Heavy, iron-pronged grappling hooks were hurled through the smoke, catching onto the thick oak rails of the Westerlands ship. The Dothraki hauled on the thick hempen ropes, pulling the two vessels tightly together with a grinding screech of timber.
From the burning deck of the slave barge, the Dothraki charged.
Hundreds of painted warriors, their long braids whipping in the wind, leaped over the gap between the ships, screaming their guttural battle cries, their curved arakhs raised high. They crashed into the Westerlands shield wall like a wave breaking against a stone cliff.
The sound of the impact was horrific. Men grunted as the sheer weight of the charging Dothraki slammed against the heavy oak shields. But the line held.
The Dothraki fought with a fearless savagery, leaping onto the shields, hacking wildly at the steel helms of the Westerlands infantry. But their curved blades, meant for slicing unarmored men from horseback on the open plains, were useless against thick plate steel and locked oak. The Lannister guardsmen held their ground, letting the horse-lords throw themselves against the wall, before the second rank thrust their halberds through the gaps.
In the center of the strait, a massive, heavily fortified barge—the largest ship in the fleet—broke through the wall of burning wreckage. Its heavy, square bow was reinforced with thick iron plating, and its decks were completely black with thousands of the fiercest Dothraki warriors.
Stannis Baratheon saw the massive vessel emerging from the smoke, bearing down directly on the royal flagship. He did not want a boarding action. He wanted the ship at the bottom of the sea.
"Brace for impact!" Stannis commanded.
The two colossal ships collided head-on with a deafening, earth-shattering crash.
The impact threw men off their feet across the deck of the royal flagship. The thick iron ram gouged deeply into the front of the Pentoshi barge, punching a massive hole straight through its thick hull.
"Reverse stroke!" Stannis barked immediately, his voice cutting through the groans of the dying men. "Backwater! Tear the ram free and let them sink!"
Below decks, the Stormlander oarsmen heaved backward on the massive wooden oars. The timber of the two locked ships shrieked in protest. Slowly, the royal flagship began to pull backward, wrenching its iron ram free from the Pentoshi barge with a sickening crunch of wood. The sea immediately began to rush into the gaping wound in the Dothraki vessel.
But Stannis's cold, calculating move was thwarted by the sheer desperation of the horde.
Before the royal flagship could pull entirely away, dozens of heavy iron grappling hooks flew across the narrowing gap, biting deeply into the rails and rigging of Stag's Wrath. The Dothraki hauled on the ropes with the strength of madmen, locking the dying barge to the flagship. They would sink, but they would take the Westerosi ship down with them.
"They are boarding!" Brynden Tully roared, drawing his sword. "Hold the main deck! Do not let them reach the helm!"
The Stormlander marines rushed to form a defensive line, raising their shields and spears.
But King Robert Baratheon did not step back behind the shield wall.
The King let out a booming, joyful laugh that echoed louder than the crash of the timber. He stepped forward, placing himself at the very front of the boarding ramp created by the tangled prows of the two locked ships. He raised his massive iron warhammer high above his head, his blue eyes burning with the fierce, absolute joy of combat.
The first wave of Dothraki warriors charged across the tangled wood, screaming their battle cries, their arakhs raised to slaughter the armored men of Westeros.
Robert brought his warhammer down.
The square block of heavy iron struck the lead Dothraki warrior squarely in the chest. The sound of ribs shattering cracked over the din of the battle. The sheer, terrifying force of the blow lifted the warrior entirely off his feet, throwing him backward into the men charging behind him, sending three of them tumbling over the edge of the ship into the dark water below.
"Come on then!" Robert roared, his voice a force of nature. "Show me how the horse-lords fight!"
Robert waded into the charging mass of Dothraki. He moved with a speed and ferocity that defied his heavy plate armor. He did not bother to parry the curved blades. He let the arakhs strike his castle-forged steel, the sparks flying as the light weapons glanced harmlessly off his thick breastplate and heavy pauldrons.
He swung the warhammer in wide, devastating arcs. Every strike was lethal. He crushed helms, shattered shoulders, and broke knees. He fought not like a king, but like a man possessed, his mind entirely lost in the bloody, glorious rhythm of the slaughter. The men of the Stormlands pushed forward behind him, inspired by the terrifying, unstoppable force of their King.
The deck of the royal flagship ran thick with blood, the air heavy with the copper scent of death and the ash of burning ships.
Robert brought his hammer down, crushing the skull of a Dothraki screamer. He pulled the heavy iron free, stepping back for a brief moment.
The physical toll of the slaughter was immense. Beneath his thick steel plates, Robert's broad chest was heaving violently, gasping for the smoke-filled air. His massive arms burned with deep, aching exhaustion from the sheer weight of the iron and the endless swinging. The thick leather grip of his warhammer was entirely slick with the blood and gore of the horse-lords, making it dangerously hard to hold.
Robert shifted his stance, planting his heavy boots firmly on the blood-soaked timber of the deck. He squeezed the leather grip tight, wringing the hot blood from the handle, and braced himself for the next wave.
But the next wave did not charge.
The crowd of Dothraki warriors directly in front of him suddenly parted. They stepped back, lowering their arakhs, forming a narrow path through the chaos of the ruined deck.
A single man walked forward.
He was massive, standing taller than any man Robert had faced that day. He was broad, heavily muscled chest bare and gleaming with sweat and the faint spray of salt water. His skin was the color of burnished copper. His long, dark hair was tied in a thick braid that hung down past his waist, woven with dozens of small, silver bells that chimed softly with every heavy step he took.
In his right hand, he held a long, beautifully curved arakh, the steel sharp and unblemished.
Khal Drogo stopped ten paces from the King of Westeros.
The sounds of the dying fleet, the roaring fires, and the clashing of steel seemed to fade into the background. The battle around them slowed, the men of both sides stepping back, recognizing the heavy presence of the two lethal killers standing on the ruined deck.
Drogo looked at the giant man encased in thick, blood-stained steel. He looked at the massive iron hammer resting in Robert's grip. The Khal's dark, piercing eyes held no fear, only a cold, burning wrath and the unyielding pride of a man who had never been defeated in single combat.
Robert Baratheon tightened his grip on his warhammer. His grin vanished, replaced by a hard, lethal stare. He recognized the truth instantly. He would be the fastest, most dangerous foe Robert had ever faced.
Robert felt the familiar, heavy thrum of his own pulse, the blood running hot in his veins.
The Stag and the Stallion locked eyes across the bloodied timber, the burning sea surrounding them, waiting for the first strike to fall.