GOT: The Great Khal — Chapter 135 - Death of the Red Viper

The Wendwater winds down from the heart of the Kingswood, cutting a natural boundary across the northern Stormlands.

North of the river lies the Kingswood, cookfire smoke from the Crownlands curling up through the treetops. South of the river, the black banner bearing three red dragons already flies above every castle.

Drogo had drawn his line at the river and swallowed the northern half of the Stormlands whole, along with a stretch of the Crownlands, from Shipbreaker Bay to the edge of the Kingswood, every crossing belonged to him.

The man left trapped was Oberyn Martell.

Massey's Hook juts from the land like a pointing finger, its eastern coast facing the Narrow Sea, belonging to the Crownlands, its southern shore separated from the Stormlands by only a narrow bay.

Drogo sent forces in a feint against Massey's Hook and Stonedance to draw Tywin's eye, while ordering Jaqo to move troops by ship from the Wendwater into the Reach. Tywin rushed Oberyn Martell south to handle it. The moment Oberyn committed to the peninsula, Drogo seized the Stormlands and the Crownlands territory around the Wendwater's mouth, locking the Dornishmen tight on that long, narrow strip of land.

Oberyn Martell, called the Red Viper, was younger brother to Prince Doran of Dorne. At sixteen, he killed Lord Yronwood in a duel by poisoning his blade, and after that, friend and enemy alike called him the Red Viper.

He had traveled all Nine Free Cities and served with the Second Sons in Essos, mastering every weapon that came to hand.

His reputation stretched across the Seven Kingdoms. Everyone knew the same truth: duel the Red Viper, and even if you won, you wouldn't live long. His weapons were always poisoned.

During Aegon's Conquest, the Dornish learned not to meet Targaryen armies head-on. They waged guerrilla war instead. Aegon fought for nine years and in the end settled for a treaty.

Now Drogo was going to show him what real guerrilla war looked like.

He moved out with over ten thousand Dothraki riders and three dragons, taking on their final resupply at Grass Hall before driving overland straight for Massey's Hook.

Cavalry in the lead. Dragons overhead. Dust churning up from the ground, dragon shadows sweeping the earth.

Villagers along the route took one look and dove into their cellars.

Oberyn Martell didn't do what the Stormlands lords did. He didn't bolt himself inside a stone castle and wait to die.

He understood the math. The Dornish never relied on walls. Aegon had three full-grown dragons and still couldn't take Dorne, because the Dornish broke into small units, struck, and ran.

Oberyn led 5,000 Dornish veterans out of the city and scattered them through the hills and thickets of Massey's Hook. Spearmen tucked into gullies. Archers scaled the low slopes. Light cavalry swept along the coastline.

He planned to replicate his ancestors' glory, no direct engagement with the dragons, use the terrain to wear the enemy down, then move in piece by piece once they were spent.

A fine idea. Except the enemy wasn't Aegon's knights. It was Dothraki cavalry.

Drogon dropped out of the sky. Black dragonfire swept across a stand of low trees. The dozen Dornish spearmen sheltering there didn't get a chance to scream, they became charred black bones.

Rhaegal and Viserion peeled left and right, scorching through the archer positions on both flanks. By the time all 3 dragons had made one pass, the ambush the Dornish had so carefully laid was riddled with holes.

The Dothraki didn't charge the formation. They didn't linger. Moving in units of a hundred, they threaded back and forth through the Dornish skirmish lines, pouring arrows from every direction into every unshielded flank.

The Dornish light cavalry tried to answer. The Dothraki horse archers cut them down, riders and horses together.

Oberyn stood on a rise and watched his army drain through his fingers like sand.

He tried to pull his lines back in. The messenger had barely run out before a stray arrow punched through his throat. He tried to fall back. Drogo had already sealed the chokepoints.

5,000 Dornish veterans hammered left and right across the open field and couldn't break through the death net woven from cavalry and dragons.

The guerrilla tactics that had made Aegon suffer bitterly in the Red Mountains were a joke against the Dothraki. These men had been fighting on horseback since birth, and Massey's Hook gave them no room, too long, too narrow, none of the desert or mountain depth that made Dorne impossible to hold. Once the Dornish scattered, they couldn't regroup. Back up a few steps and they hit the sea.

The Dothraki understood strike-and-run better than the Dornish ever had. They understood breaking formation better too.

Every time Oberyn split his forces, they were encircled faster. Every feint was neutralized before it could land.

In under 2 hours, nearly 2,000 Dornish soldiers lay dead.

The remaining 3,000 were packed onto a small patch of open ground at the tip of the peninsula. Behind them, the sea. Waves slapped the rocks, white spray rising like a lament for the dead. Before them, 10,000 Dothraki, bows stowed, arakhs drawn, waiting for the final charge.

Oberyn wiped the blood from his face and tore his helmet off, hurling it to the ground.

"Khal Drogo!" He spurred his horse forward before the lines, his spear spinning a quick flourish. "Call off your savages! Have the guts to face me alone!"

Drogo swung down from Drogon's back and walked unhurried toward the open ground between the armies.

Oberyn circled the clearing, steps light and measured, like a viper waiting for its moment. He looked Drogo over in that full suit of steel, the corner of his mouth pulling into a mocking smile.

"Dothraki khals don't wear armor. They call it a coward's habit. What — different rules now that you're in Westeros? Is that iron shell because you're afraid my little stick might poke through?"

He drove the butt of his spear into the earth and stood with hands on his hips, his voice louder now.

"Take the armor off. Then we'll fight properly. Win in that thing and it means nothing."

Drogo kept walking. His voice came from behind the helmet.

"Your spear tip is poisoned, Red Viper of Dorne. You think I don't know that?"

Oberyn's expression went still.

Then the spear came out like black lightning, straight for the gap at Drogo's throat below the helmet's edge. No windup. No warning. One moment stillness, the next the tip was already there.

Drogo turned his head. The back of his blade clipped the spear shaft with a dull CLANG of metal.

Oberyn missed, pulled back 3 steps, and was already driving in from a new angle. His footwork blurred — left, right, forward, back — the spear thrusting straight one moment, sweeping low the next. His feet seemed spring-loaded, every step landing somewhere unexpected, the spear tip never leaving Drogo's vitals: throat, eyes, armpits, backs of the knees, always hunting the gaps in the plate.

Drogo rotated steadily, his blade always pointing at Oberyn's face. Each step back landed flat on solid ground, giving Oberyn no opening to close in.

They traded a dozen exchanges. Drogo's breathing hadn't changed. Sweat was already beading on Oberyn's forehead.

Oberyn pivoted on his left heel, leaned right, and drove the spear out from under his ribs in a backhand thrust. The Dornish signature move. One that had ended countless duels in a single strike.

But Drogo had already read it. The more Viserion grew, the sharper his sense of what was coming.

Half a second early, he stepped left. The spear tip scraped past his armor plate. In the same motion, his blade came up from below, edge splitting the air, and drove hard into Oberyn's spear wrist.

CRACK!

The spear flew. It came down somewhere in the long grass. Oberyn clutched his twisted hand and staggered backward, and for the first time, real fear crossed his face.

Drogo gave him nothing. He closed in fast, kicked the outside of Oberyn's knee. The Dornish prince's leg bent at an angle knees don't bend, CRACK, and he went down sideways, hard.

The blade tip pressed into Oberyn's throat. Cold steel rested against his pulsing artery. One more inch and the Red Viper would stop being a viper.

Oberyn lay flat on his back, blood at the corner of his mouth, and laughed. The sound was hoarse, carrying something that could have been self-mockery or could have been release, impossible to tell which.

"Kill me and Dorne will never be done with you." He was panting. "Doran will throw every soldier he's spent half his life hoarding into a death struggle."

"The Horse Lord doesn't take threats."

Drogo turned his wrist. The blade's edge drew across Oberyn's throat.

No blood sprayed. A thin line, slowly reddening. Then it split open.

Oberyn's eyes fixed on the sky. His pupils spread wide. The trace of a smile at the corner of his mouth hadn't quite faded.

➤ Next: Dorne's Revenge