GOT: Khal — Chapter 120 - Hold Steady! We Can Turn This Around
"Tear down a few tents," Drogo told Cohollo. "Sew the canvas together. Something thick enough to hold Rhaegal."
Several soldiers stitched together a square patch of rough cloth, rope loops sewn at each corner.
Drogo had it spread beneath Rhaegal. The green dragon cracked his eyes open, looked at him, then laid his head back on the ground.
Four strong men took a corner each. On the count, they heaved together, lifting Rhaegal steady in the sling. Rhaegal flinched and let out a low grunt.
Hemp ropes were tied to each corner loop, an iron ring fastened to the far end of every line.
Drogon and Viserion dropped from the sky.
The black dragon's talons closed around the two rings on the left. The gold dragon took the two on the right.
They split the weight evenly between them.
To cut every ounce of burden he could, Drogo stripped the armor from both dragons. The plates came off piece by piece, uncovering the dense, tight scales underneath. Drogon shook himself out and rumbled low in his chest, like a man rolling his shoulders after too long in a coat.
Drogo pulled off his own steel armor next. A leather tunic, no pole-blade, one arakh at his hip. That was all.
He climbed onto Drogon's back.
Drogon beat his wings hard. Viserion surged at the same instant. The hemp ropes snapped taut, and Rhaegal's body lifted gently off the ground. He shifted inside the sling, uneasy, but the canvas held him.
Drogon climbed, leveled out, and turned south. Viserion gripped his two rings and followed off the right flank.
The moon hung straight overhead, full and heavy. A few thin clouds drifted across its face, shredded to wisps by the wind, and silver light spilled through the gaps and fell across three dragons and one man.
Time blurred. Then the walls of the settlement at Henanzhou finally cut the horizon.
Drogo brought them down on the open ground in front of the Surveillance Commissioner's residence. The impact of three dragons landing jolted awake the entire city.
Pono burst out of the residence barefoot, trousers clutched in one hand, hair going every direction. He saw Rhaegal in the sling, soaked in blood, and the color drained from his face.
"Khal... this..."
"Rhaegal is wounded." Drogo dropped off Drogon's back. "Keep him safe."
He had men carry Rhaegal inside, still in the sling. They picked the largest room, tore the door frame out of the wall, and settled the dragon in. Rhaegal curled up on the canvas, his body filling nearly half the space.
Drogo stood on the threshold and looked back at Pono.
"Two hundred men posted here. Day and night rotations. No strangers come near. Everyone who enters or leaves, you clear personally."
Pono nodded.
"And," Drogo said, "Rhaegal is too weak to eat on his own. Cut the meat into thumb-sized pieces and hold them to his mouth."
Pono saw the cracked splits on Drogo's lips. Saw the dark hollows under his eyes. He didn't ask questions. "As you command."
Drogo looked at Rhaegal one last time. The green dragon lay quiet in that rough canvas sling, his slit pupils fixed on Drogo.
He turned and walked out, climbed back onto Drogon, lashed on as many sheepskin waterskins as he could carry, and flew straight back to Three Peaks.
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The moment the three dragons vanished into the dark, Moro's coalition came apart.
"The dragons are gone!" A Dothraki rider jabbed a finger at the empty sky.
"Then what are we still fighting for?"
"Where are the khals? What do the khals say?" someone shouted from the middle of the crowd.
"I said from the start we shouldn't have fought this war..." A mutter, quickly swallowed by the noise.
A few khals lost their nerve and announced they were taking their khalasars and leaving. One man moved and others followed.
Khal Moro's face went to stone. "Who dares leave?"
No one listened. Khal Urgo was already in the saddle, waving his men to him. Morako followed right behind.
Moro stopped talking. He drew his blade instead.
That night, the coalition tore itself apart from the inside.
The khals who tried to leave ran into Moro's handpicked fighters. Blades flashed. Heads hit the dirt. The khals who had led the mutiny were cut down where they stood, and their bloodriders threw themselves into the fight and died for it, outnumbered, dropping one by one into the blood-soaked ground.
When Drogo returned to Three Peaks, he hadn't even swung off Drogon's back before he saw it: fires jumping and scattering through the coalition camp below, screaming and steel ringing out in the dark.
His stomach dropped. He thought his own men had broken ranks and charged out without orders.
He landed. His entire force was still on the mountain, every man in place, weapons ready.
"A gift from the gods," he said to his bloodriders.
He gave the order immediately: full assembly, break out under cover of night.
He and his bloodriders hit first. They punched through the darkness, filled the trenches with the dead, and carved a path out in blood. Then he split the army into four columns and swept them wide, looping fast around to the rear of Moro's coalition. By the time dawn broke, the encirclement was complete. It was Moro's men who were surrounded now.
Drogo drove the assault from the rear.
Moro's coalition was already buckling from the night's infighting. Their light cavalry had nothing to offer against a frontal charge of heavy horse.
The coalition collapsed.
Every khalasar scattered and fought for itself. Some ran, some swung blades at anyone near them, some were still settling scores from the slaughter the night before. Drogo's riders swept back and forth through the chaos and cut them down in waves until there was nowhere left to go but up.
Moro pulled his surviving men to the summit, face like iron.
He had planned to hold the high ground the same way Drogo had, dig in and wait for his moment.
Drogo gave him no moment. A complete encirclement would only force cornered men to fight to the last. So he didn't close the ring. He left the northern road open, the road that ran to Vaes Dothrak, and said nothing about the men he had already buried in ambush on both sides of it.
"Let them run," he said. "The faster they run, the worse they die."
Moro's men held the summit for less than half a day. Drogo rotated his troops in waves from three sides, never letting the pressure drop, attacking without pause.
The khals up there had never trusted each other to begin with. They broke. They didn't know Drogo had left that road open on purpose. They thought it was mercy from the sky.
"North! Run north! Back to the holy city!"
The rout poured down the mountain and up the road like a flood.
They ran flat out. They hadn't covered ten li before war cries erupted from the grass on both sides. Drogo's ambush forces hit from the left and right at once, pouring through the fleeing column from both flanks, killing without pause or mercy.
In the chaos, Drogo and Moro found each other.
Moro's arakh came down like he was splitting a mountain.
Drogo got his blade up. CLANG. The force drove him straight down to one knee. The blow hit harder than anything he had planned for.
Moro had a full head of height on him, arms like iron bars. The second blow followed before Drogo could rise.
He rolled. The blade grazed his scalp and took a few braids with it.
His Valyrian steel armor saved his life.
The third blow landed on his pauldron. Sparks. The plate dented deep, but the blade skidded off.
The fourth swept at his waist. The armor took it. His ribs screamed anyway.
In the half-second Moro drew back for another swing, Drogo exploded upward. He reversed his pole-blade and ripped it up from below. The tip caught Moro just under the ribs. Skin peeled back. Blood scattered.
Moro grabbed the back of the pole-blade with his left hand and swung his arakh backhanded with his right.
Drogo threw his head back. The edge swept past his throat and cut his beard clean.
He twisted hard with the momentum, and the pole-blade leveraged into Moro's collarbone and jammed there, blade wedged in bone.
Moro let out a sound like a wounded animal. He ripped the blade free from his own bone with his left hand. Blood ran down the shaft and dripped off the steel.
Drogo let go. Drew the short blade at his hip. Stepped inside Moro's reach and drove it into his chest.
Moro went to one knee. The hole in his chest bubbled. Every breath rattled wet.
He raised his head. His eyes were going distant. He forced the words out through his teeth: "Cow... coward. If not for that iron shell... you'd have been dead already..."
Drogo didn't answer.
With my perception now, I could read every move before it came. Every blow he landed on me, I could have dodged.
Khal Moro. The first man who had ever truly tested him. And Drogo knew the honest answer: without the dragon-bond, he would have lost.
That day, thirty li of road between Three Peaks and Vaes Dothrak were paved with the dead.
Twenty-one khals rode into that battle.
Not one rode out.
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➤ Next: Sword Aimed at Westeros