Chapter 204

The Dothraki Camp.

Perhaps the Westerosi believed the Dothraki to be some backward people, blundering blindly across the continent, but that was far from the truth. A khalasar, an entire nomadic city on the move, never wandered blind. Scouts always rode ahead of the main column, watching for game, plunder, or enemies, while dedicated riders guarded both flanks. Nothing slipped past them, not here on foreign soil, and not back on their own.

But tonight, on the eve of battle, the great khal Drogo had thrown together a fearsome, barbarically magnificent feast for his loyal riders. The Dothraki held that every event of true weight in a man's life must unfold beneath the open sky, so the "generous" offer to make use of some sworn lord's castle had been rejected without a shred of hesitation. Drogo had summoned his khalasar, and they had come from every corner of the Stormlands: More than thirty thousand Dothraki warriors, together with a countless host of women, children, and Westerosi slaves.

The endless day filled itself with drinking, gorging, and brawling. The horselords held fast to their old ways, wearing painted leather vests against bare skin and tight breeches woven from horsehair, cinched with belts of bronze medallions. They stuffed themselves on the strange new dishes of Westeros, drank themselves senseless on fermented mare's milk and plundered Westerosi wine, and traded coarse jokes around the fires. Against that backdrop, the small cluster of lords sworn to the khaleesi looked plainly out of place, and under ordinary circumstances neither group would have wanted much to do with the other. But one momentous event had forced them to share a single table.

"TO THE STALLION WHO MOUNTS THE WORLD!!!" Drogo's bloodriders roared.

"YES!!!" Thousands of Dothraki voices took up the cry, and even the Westerosi present did their best to look properly loyal.

A genuine frenzy gripped the Dothraki. Setting out for Westeros, they had expected little, but the past months had proven otherwise: plunder beyond counting, with nowhere left to stack it, slaves without number, and not a single worthy enemy to be found. To the Dothraki now, Westeros looked like one vast, unguarded treasure house, all but begging to be looted. The glory of being the first khalasar ever to cross the salt water only inflated an already towering self regard. Somewhere along the way, Drogo had grown from a mere khal into a great khal, winning the absolute devotion of his riders. Now the huge Dothraki sat apart, drinking with his bloodriders alone. The khaleesi had not yet fully recovered from childbirth, but that did nothing to dampen the celebration of so great an event.

"To Rhaego, son of Drogo, the stallion who will mount the world!" Drogo had been given the promised son, and he was overjoyed. "I promised that I would lead my khalasar west, to where the world ends, and cross the black salt water on wooden horses, a thing no khal before me has ever done! I promised I would cut down the men in iron clothes and topple their houses of stone! And then I would take their women by force, sell their children into slavery, and carry their broken gods back to Vaes Dothrak, to bow before the Mother of Mountains. I swore this before her face, and I have kept every oath!!!" Another wave of frenzy followed, until Drogo finally waved them quiet. "But one task remains unfinished. Rhaego has not sat upon the iron chair his mother's father once sat upon. He does not yet rule the Seven Kingdoms, and that I mean to put right! Eat, drink, make merry, and afterward we will smash the cowards in iron clothes, tear down their houses, and Westeros will be our land!"

...

Five days after the feast, Drogo's khalasar set out toward Bitterbridge. By Dothraki reckoning, infantry existed to be trampled by cavalry, so when the scouts reported that for many leagues along the river only a single stone bridge remained near a castle, with an army stationed there, the horselords threw themselves straight into the attack. Drogo believed a swift, savage charge would easily shatter this continent's cowards, but what followed was the exact opposite. The footmen locked their shields, lowered their spears, and raised sharpened stakes before them. The first line of riders slammed into the wooden barrier and stalled dead in their tracks. The cavalry's formation collapsed into a disorganized mass, and volleys of arrows tore into them from the ranks behind.

Having lost a considerable number of riders, Drogo recognized his mistake and ordered a retreat. The first attempt had failed, but the second was not long in coming. This time the great khal moved with more cunning, trying to bury the enemy under a hail of arrows. Under ordinary circumstances, mounted archers would hold an overwhelming edge over footbound opponents thanks to sheer mobility; that mobility was their whole strength, making concentrated, aimed fire against them all but impossible. Randyll Tarly understood this well, and so had taken the simpler path: he had drilled his archers to fire on a fixed area, and, by sheer coincidence, that area happened to be exactly where the Dothraki loosed their own arrows from. The exchange lasted twenty minutes, and, unfortunately for the Dothraki, it did not go their way; the Reach's longbows simply outranged them, their volleys landed far more concentrated, and what infantry stood within range sheltered behind shields throughout. The trade fell heavily against the horselords.

In his fury, Drogo tried three more times to force the bridge, without success. He then ordered part of his army to split into smaller bands, find alternate crossings, and cross the river elsewhere. In this the Dothraki succeeded well enough, but every crossing point already had men waiting for them. Most died in fruitless attempts or fell back, though a handful of bands managed to cross and force close combat. There, the Dothraki screamers showed their clear superiority over ordinary men, but timely help from a rapid response company saved the situation. Heavy armored cavalry cut through the savages like a knife through butter, leaving them no chance at all.

Toward evening, Drogo was forced to call off the attempt and withdraw. On that first day alone, the Dothraki, in their madness, lost nearly two thousand men against fewer than five hundred from the Reach's army. It was a phenomenal success, and months of preparation had paid for themselves many times over. Beyond the raw numbers, something else mattered just as much: horselords once thought unbeatable in open field had been thrown back, and that lifted the soldiers' spirits enormously, heartening the whole of the Reach, and now a steady flood of volunteers, supplies, and equipment began pouring toward Bitterbridge. Lord Tarly's standing soared to unprecedented heights, and within the month Randyll was being hailed as the "Savior of the Reach," while the Faith of the Seven later named him "Champion of the Seven."

Renly Baratheon, who had failed to save the Stormlands in time, tried to spin the story so that Randyll Tarly appeared to be defending on his behalf, while simultaneously attempting to mend ties with the disgraced lord. To the court's surprise, it went nowhere. At that point, the last Baratheon still had no idea that the Hunter had already betrayed him and thrown in with the Lannisters, treating Tarly's cold shoulder as a kind of protest. Once the truth came out, it dealt colossal damage to the king's already fragile standing. A portion of the Reach's nobility defected to the Hunter's side, and before long Tarly had become the region's supreme lord in everything but name. Highgarden could do nothing about it. Every last Tyrell force, along with their closest allies, had already been committed to aiding King Renly, and the castle now stood guarded by a garrison of a mere five hundred men.

On the eighth day, the Dothraki tried every trick they could devise to force a crossing: false maneuvers, night attacks, simultaneous strikes at several points, sabotage (their least successful gambit), relentless pressure, volleys of arrows (fairly effective, though their supply ran dry quickly), attempts to sink scouting boats, all of it came to nothing, and by the end of that final day the khalasar had lost six thousand riders. Drogo would gladly have fought on to the bitter end, but his scouts brought word that Renly Baratheon's army was closing in on their rear.

Between the losses and the sheer number of wounded, the horselords could not hope to stand against two armies at once, and chose to fall back. At the khaleesi's urging, Drogo turned his khalasar south, toward Nightsong. Daenerys had recently received a letter from Princess Rhaenys, in which her niece offered her warmest wishes and proposals for coordinating their efforts.

Before long, a strange three way standoff took shape in southern Westeros: beyond the Mander stood the rebel Randyll Tarly, threatening the nearly defenseless castles of the last Baratheon's lords; to the south, the combined Dothraki-Dornish army, striking fear into all who beheld it; and to the east, the battered forces of King Renly, unable to move against either side for fear of taking a blade in the back from whichever third party remained.