As the khal's train curled through the vast encampment of the greater horde, there was bustling all around them. The handmaidens and a pair of khalzafra hurriedly put up a bonnet over the khaleesi's sleeping head, hiding her in the cart she slept in. Sunset got the impression that they didn't want the khalasar to see their young bride in her current state.
The bonnet hid the handmaidens, and what they did inside the cart, from the curious eyes of the khal's riders. The encampments stretched endlessly, yard after yard, acre after acre, far further than Sunset had noticed over that long, terrifying wedding-day. All but the smallest fraction of Drogo's khalasar had been encamped far from the wedding-field itself.
Sunset brought to memory her mentor's techniques for estimating crowd-size, and revisited in that prodigious memory the actual teeming crowds which had then seemed to her to be an infinite sea of ape hostility. Now that she was calmer, and less terrified in the moment, she came to the realization that she'd only seen a couple of thousand bodies, three thousand at the most.
The collapsing tents dotted the horizon, clustered here and there, as far as the eye could see. Pentos' high brick towers rose over the west side of a flat plain that stretched between that great city and a low series of ridges rising in the east. In between was a rich farmland, flat as a planed board, full of prosperous hamlets and cart-tracks leading up to Pentos' many small but well-guarded eastern gates.
Those hamlets were locked up tight, terrified, not a single head to be seen as the khal's train rolled down a farm-track, outriders spreading out away from the carts and those khalzafra who hadn't been able to inveigle a spot on the carts.
Emptied presentation-ricks stood outside the gates of each hamlet, once full of gifts for the horde, now empty and forlorn. Sunset tried to think of what things the farmers could offer the horse-lords to keep them from busting down their doors, breaking into their desperate little fastnesses, and stealing away their colts and their fillies, murdering their dams and sires, and taking everything they had.
In between the hamlets and their inhabitants hiding desperately from the savages camped around their gates, were the Dothraki camps themselves, and the endless, teeming herds. Herds of horses, herds of goats, herds of cattle. But primarily, and overwhelmingly - horses. And out there, among the endless Dothraki herds, Sunset's sensibilities were overwhelmed by that mass of horseflesh, the sight and the smell of them all. Almost as dully-colored as their owners, the Dothraki horses in aggregate were mostly shades of brown. They looked to Sunset's Equestrian-trained eyes like so many short-eared donkeys, so boring were their coats. No wonder the Dothraki painted abstract designs on their livestock, to tell them from each other. Sunset wondered if dams could even tell their own fillies and colts from each other without some sort of guidance.
As the khal's train rolled past, each modest Dothraki camp collapsed on itself, the last of the tents disappearing into their own carts, the riders on their painted horses forming up in little bands to stretch their mounts' legs, and to remember their own riding-legs.
Or, at least, so Sunset supposed. The experience of watching thinking beings that rode unthinking creatures was still a new one to the flame-haired unicorn. She had read more than once of the semi-mythical centaurs of distant lands, whose ape-like torsos rose high over equine bodies, whose unified wholes capered gracefully through the pages of her mentor's illustrated books.
Sunset wondered if the centaurs had looked like these horse-lord apes on their mindless cattle. The 'hzaref' looked a little like ponies, or rather, like Saddle Arabian horses, but only superficially. Their tiny eyes reflected even tinier minds, as empty as those of some dogs Sunset had known, or chickens, or perhaps a chipmunk. She eyed the placid hrazefmoska which she'd helped harness into the khaleesi's cart's traces, as it pushed forward against those traces, hauling its bumping burden over the rutted track beneath their hooves.
Each camp breaking up into its road-components contributed its own little band of riders into the growing swirl of display and athleticism. Right now, they were performing for each other, and perhaps the few outriders of the khal's personal household. Khal Drogo himself had disappeared somewhere with his elder dothrakhqoyi, bloodriders, and his exhausted khaleesi was still hidden from sight. The only ponies – no, the only people to see the common Dothraki riders and their antics were the hoof-full of younger attendants which the khal's personal entourage had left behind with the train.
Sunset stuck her nose under the bonnet, keeping her balance as she walked beside the cart. She met the gaze of Jhiqui, who sat on her heels over their sleeping beauty, now dressed in new, unstained finery taken from the gifted clothing, but unconscious still.
“They're starting to get demonstrative out here. Is it common to run about with young colts and fillies standing on the backs of moving hrazef?" Sunset asked the elder handmaiden.
“Oh, graddakh! The manin are beginning their displays, are they?" Jhiqui looked down at the sleeping, small face of their mistress. “Khaleesi really does need sleep. She will be darif-mhar enough in the days to come, without proper rest." Saddle-sore, right.
Sunset whinnied a proverb from home, and at Jhiqui's interested perplexity, translated it into Pentoshi. “Present pains bring future stature, they used to say." Satisfactions, actually, was the saying, but somehow Sunset didn't think that would fly, here.
“Bah. We start to wake Khaleesi. But will need hrazef. Go get it, Sunset?"
Sunset rolled her eyes at the handmaiden. “I go Ahego…" Sunset started in Dothraki, and then thought it through, and gave up and finished in Pentoshi, “You think he'll let me return without another damn halter?"
Jhiqui crossed her eyes trying to follow, and then cursed and asked Irri to go in Sunset's stead.
They got the Khaleesi up on her hooves – no, her feet, and into the grey's retrieved saddle. The clots of random young Dothraki riders thickened around the train as the sun in the sky approached the western horizon, and the bravura displays increased in wildness and flair now that they had a proper audience.
The little princess smiled tightly, sitting stiffly in her saddle, looking tiny in her silks and filmy finery. Sunset walked beside the grey, saying nothing, but keeping a close eye on the sleep-deprived young bride. Around them, the horse-riding manic apes leapt about, whirling ropes about, swinging their sharp-bladed strange weapons, and cracking whips.
Both Sunset and the little princess recoiled in surprise as one young maniac got up on his saddle-horn, and flung himself over a second rider, landing sure-hoofed and one-legged in the empty saddle of a third horse, which didn't even flinch at impact.
Sunset had no idea if this sort of thing was common among monkeys who rode. How would she know? She had no measure to judge. The little princess seemed impressed enough, though.
Beyond the crowd of young Dothraki eager to be seen by their khal's new khaleesi, the horde streamed in from every direction, and as the train rolled eastward towards the low hills rising in the distance, tents were no longer anywhere to be seen.
In the west, dust clouds began to obscure the setting sun. Sunset paused once or twice to concentrate, trying to evoke some sort of response from her horn, when she didn't think anypony was watching.
Nothing.
As the sun set, the train was still rolling eastwards, and beginning to climb the tracks into the hills. Sunset's sharp eyes had spotted the khaleesi's lanky brother and his impressive armsman joining the back of the train with the Beggar King's hired drover and cart. She could see the Beggar King scanning the herd of manic youths cavorting around his sister and Sunset, scowling. What was he looking for?
Just as the last light died in the west, Khal Drogo and his bloodriders appeared from where-ever they had gone, and the train pulled off the road, rolling up onto the top of the first height east of the rising. Tents went up quickly as the khal and his young bride sat their mounts, staring westwards at the various elements of the khalasar curled across the farm-dotted plain below, disappearing into the rapidly-gathering darkness.
Torches sprung into life, spreading out like a spiders-web of little flecks of ruddy light across the face of the earth below. Drogo boomed a great deal of Dothraki at the khaleesi, bragging to her of his travels that day, and carefully naming his Vezhak, his followers. Sunset could follow a little of what the khal was saying, but not by any means all of it.
She rather thought that the poor princess couldn't understand a word of it. She could see the filly's eyes twitch back and forth, glued to her hulking husband's eyes and lips as she struggled to pry some meaning from his barbaric speech.
At last, Drogo turned from his uncomprehending bride, and addressed Jhiqui, standing to the side at a respectful distance from his stirrup.
The handmaidens were instructed to take the khaleesi under their tutelage, and – quickly, Sunset thought?
Drogo rode off to do whatever, Sunset didn't know. Supervise the chaos of his horde's many little groupings as they shifted into road-mode, perhaps?
Sunset found herself volunteering as a mounting-block for the wobbly khaleesi, who almost fell out of her saddle. Sunset barely felt the weight of the little princess on her back, and she decided that it was a helpful distraction from the raging hornache which was emerging from the fading of the effects of the long-dried salve on her head's sores.
And still not a twitch from her magic. Damnit.
Once the handmaidens got their stumbling mistress into their shared tent that the khalzafra had erected, the salves came out. The delicate little white thing was as badly galled from a day and a night in the saddle as Sunset's head had been after weeks locked inside of a harness. Sunset looked down at the redness of the girl's thighs, and thanked her dam and sire for birthing her a pony.
Being a monkey-thing looked to be a rather miserable life, if this was how resilient they were to the scuffs and pains of daily life.
The khaleesi met Sunset's eyes, as Irri and Doreah rubbed the salve into her sores, and smiled like the dawn breaking.
Sunset couldn't help but return the smile.
“Their salve is helpful, Mistress," Sunset said to her owner. “I hope it will help you sleep."
The khaleesi's eyes widened at the reminder that the unicorn could speak.
“Thank you," said the girl. “I'm sorry, what was your name?"
“She says her name is Sunset Shimmer, Khaleesi," Doreah said, somewhat rudely.
Sunset kept her self-control, and did not snap at the Lysene handmaiden, turning the impulse instead into a bow, as deep as if it were to Princess Celestia herself.
“Sunset Shimmer, your highness," said Sunset, using the proper form of address from a subject to the immortal sovereign in her native Equish, bowing as she would have to Princess Celestia before her courtiers.
“Your servant, for as long as you will have me," Sunset continued in Pentoshi Valyrian, abasing herself as it had been beat into her by her captors.
"Anha, zhey Sunset, atak jin - anha silak azh, anha qothat azh, khaleesi," Sunset finished in what she desperately hoped was not broken Dothraki, rising to her hooves, and standing as tall as she could. She found that she still had to stare upwards to meet the Khaleesi's eyes. Her purple, intense eyes, so young, but still so very familiar.
Irri beamed at them both, and nudged Jhiqui, whispering something in her ear.
And Jhiqui started explaining to the Khaleesi what Sunset had said to their mistress.