GOT: Khal — Chapter 107 - The Night Before the Western Expedition

The wind screamed in his ears.

Drogo leaned low, chest pressed against the warm scales of Drogon's back.

The Black Dragon was already the size of a small calf. When its wings spread wide, the veins across the membranes stood out in sharp relief, and every beat sent a wave of hot air rolling back.

Daenerys rode Rhaegal. The green dragon was a size smaller than Drogon, but quicker, more fluid, its spiraling arcs carved through the sky like a curved blade.

Viserion trailed behind them both, pale gold scales catching the last of the sun. Its colt-like silhouette bobbed up and down as it chased its brothers' tails, letting out thin, sharp hisses whenever they pulled too far ahead.

Outside of training, Drogo gave all three of them free rein.

They went where they liked. They ate what they found. The fresh cattle and sheep paid in tribute by the Lhazar people, the horse carcasses left on the battlefield, even the war elephant that had died of sickness a few days back. All of it disappeared into their bellies. Dragonfire incinerated every pathogen known to man. He'd never lost a moment's sleep over their digestion.

Confinement stunts a dragon's growth. He understood that much.

Drogon suddenly threw back its head and roared, a deep, resonant blast that split the air like an axe. Ahead, a flock of white birds erupted from the tip of a pyramid and scattered in every direction, shredding apart like torn paper.

The three dragons climbed. Then climbed higher.

The Great Pyramid — thirty-three tiers, eight hundred feet of ancient stone — shrank beneath them. The setting sun gilded its summit dark gold. In the rooftop garden, a man watering plants tilted his head back. His clay pot slipped from his hands. Water spread across the stone.

Drogon kept climbing. The airstream tore past Drogo's ears and yanked his hair back from his face.

Up and up, until the entire city of Meereen collapsed into a map laid flat below him. City walls, streets, the harbor, the ramparts, everything reduced to the scale of a child's playthings.

He patted the Black Dragon's neck. Steady.

From up here, he could see all of it.

The Skahazadhan River wound its way toward the sea, its surface broken into fragments of gold by the dying sun. On both banks, the fields that had been scorched black now showed new growth, pale green wheat shoots pushing up through charred earth, patch after pale green patch, like cloth sewn over an old, ruined robe.

Beyond the river, rolling hills stretched into the distance. The gray-brown ridges still bore the black scars from the controlled burns of days past.

Along the coastline, thin columns of smoke rose from a handful of fishing villages. Sailboats rested on the water like scattered leaves, rocking gently with the swells.

To the west, Slaver's Bay spread all the way to the horizon, bleeding into the gray-blue sky until the line between water and air simply disappeared.

Jorah Mormont and Nimitz had taken the fleet out days ago, riding the southeastern wind, pointed toward Westeros. The ships carried Unsullied, sailors, and siege engines. Their objective: Dragonstone, its garrison bled thin by Stannis Baratheon's wars.

Drogo had made sure Barristan Selmy sailed with them. The old knight had decades of hard experience behind him and knew Dragonstone's terrain like the back of his hand.

Strong Belwas had gone too, along with Beast Batista and Boulder Johnson. Officially, support. In practice, overseers.

Drogo had been plain about it: if Jorah or Nimitz showed so much as a flicker of betrayal, they were to be executed on the spot. Command would pass to the brothers.

He pressed down on Drogon's neck. The Black Dragon understood. It tucked its wings and began to drop. Wind screamed past his ears. The ground came up fast.

The city sharpened into focus below him.

Twenty lesser pyramids, ranging from two hundred to four hundred feet. Drogon threaded between them, wingtips nearly kissing stone.

At the base of the city walls, rows of makeshift smithies belched black smoke. The hammers were going constantly, a relentless, overlapping clang that carried even up here, even on dragonback.

The craftsmen worked bare-chested, sweat running freely down their backs as they drove out chainmail and plate armor, piece by piece.

Drogo had issued the order weeks ago: any Dothraki warrior willing to wear armor would take a double share of the spoils when the fighting was done.

That single decree had set the camp on fire.

Men who'd spent their whole lives cursing iron clothes now stood in line outside the smithies. Some had even paid out of their own pockets for rush work. The captains of a thousand led the way. The captains of a hundred followed. Once the common warriors saw their commanders suited up, whatever protests remained quietly died.

Gold and silver make better arguments than words ever will.

The stockpiling was well underway. Warehouses groaned with grain collected from the Lhazar people and salted meat, dried fish, and horse fodder shipped up from Yunkai and Astapor. Soldiers moved through the camp inspecting weapons, sharpening arrowheads, stitching torn saddles.

In the healer's tents, rows of clay jars sat in perfect order while the healers ground herbs and packed poultices. Every bit of it pointed in one direction: west. Across the Narrow Sea. Into Westeros.

Drogo watched the bare-chested warriors queuing at the smithy doors. He watched the mule carts hauling in iron stock. He watched the scribes at the warehouse gates, tallying supplies against their lists. The sight settled something in him that no plunder ever had.

Someone below looked up, saw the shadow sweep overhead, and shouted, "A dragon! It's a dragon!"

The streets filled fast. A bread-seller left his stall where it stood. A tailor ran out into the road still holding his shears. A blacksmith froze at his anvil, bare-chested, neck craned back, watching the three shapes pass over him.

Drogo turned to look at Dany.

She sat on Rhaegal's back with her silver hair whipped loose by the wind, and the smile on her face was real, the kind that wells up from somewhere deep and can't be held down.

She shouted something at him. The wind took it before it reached him. But she was pointing down.

He followed her finger to the red-brick stands of Daznak's Pit. The crowd had stopped watching the fights. Every head was tilted back.

"Khal Drogo, ten thousand years!"

No one knew who shouted it first.

It didn't matter. That voice was a lit fuse, and in an instant the flame raced through the entire city.

They made one more pass.

The sun had sunk lower. The pyramid shadows stretched long across the stone. The whole city burned in a wash of gold and red, and the three dragons turned slow circles through the dying light, their shadows sweeping over the walls, over the rooftops, over the upturned faces of the crowd below.

"Let's go down." He signaled to Dany.

The two dragons folded their wings and angled toward the platform at the top of the Great Pyramid. At the last moment before landing, Drogon threw its wings wide. The blast of air sent persimmon leaves spiraling up from the platform in a wild, spinning cloud.

Rhaegal came down right behind it. Claws scraped stone with a harsh screech.

The serving women on the platform staggered. Missandei grabbed her hair with both hands and pressed herself behind a stone pillar. Scarlett's skirt flared up, and she shoved it back down with a curse.

Only the dragons stood completely still, tails sweeping idly back and forth.

Drogo swung off Drogon's back and dropped to the platform. His boots hit stone with a heavy thud. He turned and offered his hand to Dany. She swung down, touched the ground, and immediately wobbled — legs half-numb from the long ride, catching herself on his arm.

"They go numb when I ride too long," she said, laughing.

Drogo pulled her in against him. "Mm. Once they're bigger, we'll have proper saddles fitted for them."

Out across the city, Meereen's lights were coming on one by one, from the base of the walls all the way up to the pyramid summits, like an inverted river of stars hanging in the dark.

In the direction of the smithies, fire still danced in the open air. The hammers hadn't stopped, and they wouldn't stop until deep into the night.

Each clang rang out like a drumbeat counting down to war.

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