GOT: Khal — Chapter 110 - Do You Know How Big Three Dragons Are?

"Whitebeard Father, what do we do now?" Strong Belwas asked, his voice rough as gravel. Batista and Johnson stood behind him.

Barristan didn't answer right away. He stood at the command post window, looking out at the stars.

The wind on Dragonstone never stops. It pours in from Blackwater Bay, lifting his cloak and sending it streaming behind him.

After a moment, he turned and walked to the table. He spread out a piece of parchment and dipped his quill.

"First, report everything that happened here to Meereen."

His pen moved fast, the strokes hard and clean. He wrote down the full picture of Dragonstone: casualty numbers, the hour the main tower fell, the stubborn resistance of the remnant defenders, the deep hostility of the locals toward outsiders.

When he reached the fishermen, the pen paused.

Then it kept moving. No omissions, no embellishment. Just the facts.

At the end, he noted that he had arrested Nimitz and Jorah Mormont.

He blew the ink dry, folded the parchment, tucked it into a small leather pouch, and sealed it with wax. Then he rose from the table and turned to Strong Belwas. "Find a fast ship. Send it back to Meereen with your most reliable man."

"Understood." Strong Belwas took the pouch, and the three brothers walked out.

Barristan then summoned the Unsullied officers and the freedmen leaders to the command post together.

A dozen bald, dark-skinned Unsullied stood in two rows, faces blank.

The freedmen officers gathered on the opposite side. Their faces bore wounds. Their eyes were red. They looked exhausted down to the bone.

Barristan stood before the table, both hands braced on the edge, his back straight as a lance. The candle had been freshly replaced. Its flame burned without a flicker.

"Commander Nimitz and Deputy Commander Jorah have been confined for the indiscriminate killing of civilians. By authority granted by Khal Drogo, I am assuming temporary command. Any questions?"

The Unsullied never ask why.

Among the freedmen, someone asked with undisguised satisfaction, "Did you kill him, Whitebeard Father?"

Nimitz had been one of the Astapor slave masters. These men had joined Drogo's army as freedmen, but in Nimitz's eyes their lives had never been worth a copper. He'd kept ordering frontal assaults. Of the 8,000 freedmen who had marched out of Meereen, fewer than 5,000 could still stand.

"I have only imprisoned them," Barristan said. "The authority to judge them is not mine." He gave the order immediately after: "Stop the house-to-house sweeps. Surround the holdouts. Cut off their water and food."

No one spoke.

"Am I understood?" His voice cracked like a whip.

The Unsullied officers beat their chests in unison. The freedmen leaders hesitated a half-second, then placed their right hands over their hearts.

"Understood, Commander."

Barristan nodded and waved them out.

That night, he barely slept. Before dawn he sent men to plant the prepared banners across the island, every one of them.

When morning light broke, black dragon banners flew from every tower, every battlement, every high point on Dragonstone.

That banner had been Rhaegar Targaryen's sigil. The old emblem of the Prince of Dragonstone.

Daenerys wanted every last one of the usurper's dogs to know: the true king of Westeros had returned.

A middle-aged Stannis loyalist stood inside one of the towers, his face pitted with the old scars of measles, rough and cratered. He looked up at the banner snapping in the wind, and when he spoke, his voice was hoarse.

"I haven't seen that banner in over ten years. I was sixteen, fresh into Robert Baratheon's army, facing Prince Rhaegar across the Trident."

"Has Prince Rhaegar returned?" a young soldier asked.

The men laughed. It was short laughter, like dry wood cracking, no warmth in it at all.

The middle-aged man shook his head. "Not unless he's become a wight. I watched Robert's warhammer cave in his breastplate with my own eyes. The rubies burst from the armor and fell into the river."

"It's Viserys Targaryen who has returned," said a wounded man lying on the ground, picking up the thread. "When Robert moved to besiege Dragonstone, the last two Targaryen children slipped away to Braavos with Ser Willem Darry."

"Did anyone see those two Westerosi men?" asked a soldier with bandages wound around his head.

The middle-aged man bit his lip. "I'd know them if they were ash. Barristan Selmy — Kingsguard to Prince Rhaegar himself. King Robert pardoned him, and now here he stands on the other side."

"And the other one?" A young soldier's knuckles whitened around his spear. "He killed a lot of ours."

The tower went quiet.

An old veteran crouching in the corner spoke up, his voice low and flat: "If I'm remembering right, I saw him joust at Lannisport once. That's Jorah Mormont. Lord of Bear Island, from the North."

"The North?" someone said. "Why would a Northman swear to the Targaryens?"

The old veteran raised his head. His eyes were clouded. The corner of his mouth pulled into something that wasn't quite a smile.

"If it's him, it makes perfect sense. He sold slaves. Eddard Stark sentenced him to death. Looks like he ran to the Targaryens instead."

The tower was crammed with over a hundred people.

The stone walls were thick and wet, sweating fine beads of moisture. The floor was spread with dry straw and rags that reeked of mildew and old sweat, the air so close it was hard to draw a full breath.

Most of the hundred packed inside weren't soldiers, they were old men, women, half-grown children, pressed into the corners. Only eleven men were fighters, and six of those had cloth strips wound around their wounds, the cloth soaked black with blood and stuck fast to the skin.

In the corner sat a few half-empty grain sacks and several wooden barrels. The barrels were almost dry.

The young soldier spoke again, his voice carrying a certainty he hadn't earned.

"Viserys won't succeed. Joffrey Lannister — the usurper — has already crushed the civil war, with Tywin behind him. Aegon had dragons three hundred years ago. Viserys has none."

The middle-aged man's head snapped around. His gaze cut like a blade. "Watch your tongue. The Lannisters are our enemies too. Our king is Stannis."

He raised his crossbow, leaned out through the crenel, and glanced down. "Someone's coming."

The air in the tower drew tight.

The wounded men who'd been lying in the corners pushed themselves up against the wall, hands finding weapons.

"Easy. Just one." The middle-aged man's shoulders dropped. He leaned out and called down: "Ser Barristan! It's been a long time!"

Barristan looked up. "You know me?" He had left the Belwas brothers behind. They were too conspicuous and would only harden the defenders' nerves.

The man laughed. "I doubt there's a soul in the Seven Kingdoms who doesn't know your name."

More heads appeared along the wall, every pair of eyes fixed hard on the old man standing below.

"What is your name?" Barristan called up.

"Rolland Storm," he said. "Castellan of Dragonstone."

"A bastard, then." Barristan gave a slight nod, his eyes moving across the uncertain faces on the battlements. "Lay down your weapons. I swear by the Seven and by the Queen: your lives will be spared."

"Queen?" Rolland said.

"We are the vanguard of Queen Daenerys Targaryen."

Rolland studied him for a long moment, then let out a short, cold laugh. "So you did go to the Targaryens after all. It won't work, Selmy. What happened to Rhaegar already proved that."

Barristan didn't rise to it. "Daenerys has three dragons and an army hundreds of thousands strong. When I left, those dragons had already grown to the size of calves. By the time she reaches Dragonstone herself, I expect they'll be larger still."

Silence settled over the battlements.

Rolland's throat moved. The pox scars across his face seemed to tighten.

He glanced back at the hollow-eyed soldiers behind him, then turned back around. His voice dropped. "Give us a moment to discuss this... Ser."

He stepped back behind the wall. The heads along the battlements disappeared one by one.

From inside came the low murmur of argument, broken by coughing and the dull thud of something knocked over.

After a long while, the hinges of the tower door gave a harsh, grinding shriek. The heavy iron door was pushed open from within.

They came out with their heads down, one after another.

Rolland walked first. He set his crossbow on the threshold, straightened up, and stepped through the door.

Behind him, the wounded were helped along by others, limping out into the light.

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