Those Who Ride

by Mitch H

The Killing Herd

The wedding-encampment bustled madly in the wake of the return of the new khaleesi and the great khal. Still-hung-over riders were rousted out of their filth by their betters, who in Sunset's observation may very well have been chosen more for their capacity to work through hangovers than any actual battle-prowess.

But though Sunset hadn't seen the khalasar in action, she certainly saw them in inaction that morning, and the Dothraki in motion were dizzying, especially to a battered young mare dealing with the medicated side-effects of vezkokh, of gall-balm. By late morning, the many slaves of the horde were scurrying here and there like ants over a kicked-over hive, fetching and carrying and generally retrieving all of the many light possessions of the khalasar from where they had been scattered by nomad carelessness and celebration and the chaos that came in the wake of celebration.

Sunset, being one of those new possessions of the khalasar, was initially chivvied along with the wedding-gifts towards a small cluster of carts which must have been the khal's personal train, along with the three new khaleessiya, and the greater swarm of lesser slaves who had been the khal's personal ape-horde.

No, that wasn't a proper description of the khalzafra – among the Dothraki zafra, the khalzafra were of higher status, but they were still zafra, slaves. Sunset's sharp eyes picked out the Khal's actual herd, stomping flat-footed here and there among the chaos. She listened carefully, and caught the word, dothrakhqoyi. Something rider? Sunset asked a scurrying zafra in broken half-Pentoshi, half-Dothraki.

They spat, and pointed at a spray of filth in the mud. Sunset looked closer, and saw it was a half-dried spray of blood, the relic of one of the night's savage quarrels.

Bloodriders. The Khal's herd was composed of dothrakhqoyi, bloodriders.

And as the wedding-gifts were gathered and loaded bit by bit onto the new carts – clearly some merchant's own minor gift to the new khaleesi – Sunset began trying her best to aid the khalzafra and the khaleessiya. When she had first been captured and enslaved, Sunset had found it hard to use her hooves to perform basic tasks, she had been so used to doing everything with her supple and powerful magic.

Six weeks of deprivation had brought back her hoof-dexterity by simple necessity. The other slaves marveled at how clever a horse's hooves could be at the command of a thinking mind.

Sunset pulled her own weight. She knew what she saw, and knew that nopony would be allowed to fall behind in a grand herd like this.

See what they expect, and exceed it. See what they prize, and be it. Discover what they admire – and become it.

This wasn't Sunset's first time among strange ponies, even if it was the first time she had been alone among… this sort of herd.

A killing herd. A horde. A khalasar.

The carts were assembled, and all the khal's precious new possessions were piled carefully and packed down so that they would not destroy each other in the course of travel. Sunset did what she was directed, and it was striking how few words were needed to do what was required. The khalzafra spoke in a dozen accents, and Sunset was fairly certain that at least a quarter of the words used were not Dothraki at all – the khalzafra patois was a crazed mix of at least four languages, only one of which was Pentoshi. Visually, they looked mostly like their Dothraki masters, to Sunset's pony eyes. Perhaps some of them were flatter-faced, eyes more narrow, perhaps some subtle distinctions in their bronze hides. Some few were beige-skinned like Doreah.

None of them were ivory-colored like the new khaleesi.

Sunset absorbed as much as she could, her galled ears as wide as she could open them.

The carts were close to completed, when a pair of leather-vested men leading a string of beasts of burden appeared among the khalzafra's bustle. Sunset eyed her fellow quadrupeds, having rarely gotten this close of a look. Their eyes were tiny, and incurious, their heads big and exaggerated, like some fantasy of cave-ponies. Sunset knew that these things were no more ponies than the rock-monkeys of Canterlot were the Dothraki, but it was nonetheless strange to behold.

An argument broke out between the drogikhmahrazh, the herd-men, and Jhiqui, and they jabbered back and forth, pointing at Sunset where she was working with her teeth and her hooves, tying down the bundles of fine cloth now hidden under oiled hides on the top of one of the carts.

This would be ever so much easier if I just had my magic, damnit.

Sunset was half-distracted by the taste of the leather straps – which she was pretty sure was horse-hide – but she caught a word here or there, and realized that the herd-men wanted to take her away.

They were going to pitch her into the fucking herd? What? No, that wasn't right – the remounts herd. Jhiqui was arguing that Sunset wasn't the Khal's, she was the khaleesi's personal property. The herd-men weren't having any of that, and it sounded like they wanted the khaleesi's new grey, too, while they were at it.

How could they take the grey? The khaleesi was still riding it. Sunset must have misunderstood that one.

More important! Sunset was about to become livestock!

Time to do something about that.

Sunset scurried over to where Irri and Doreah were packing up the fineries into their carrying-cases. Sunset wasn't exactly sure what horse-nomads would do with a full set of silver service, or fine metalworking tools, but they were putting them away into well-worked carrying cases nonetheless.

"Quickly!" whispered Sunset in an urgent half-shout. "I need some reason to stay with the khal's personal caravan. I can't disappear into the drogikh – I can't become drogikhoon!"

"Drogikh – what are you talking about?" muttered Doreah.

Irri rolled her eyes at the non-Dothraki woman, and rattled off something quick and quiet about herds – drogikh – and horses. Good, Sunset had understood that one aright. And Doreah got it from context.

Sunset wasn't the only one here learning on the job.

The handmaidens put together a set of impromptu saddlebags with Sunset and Sunset's set of leather straps she'd been using to tie down the carts. They quickly filled the saddlebags with a pile of precious books on one side, and the silver-service set on the other.

Sunset turned around with a broad grin as the two herd-men came rolling over with Jhiqui scowling behind them. Sunset twitched her flanks side-to-side to make sure her saddlebags weren't going to fall apart in the next thirty seconds, and the two Dothraki men eyed her display.

"Hrazefmoska? Sekke? Anha ajjin tokik?" asked the older of the two herders. Packhorse, thought Sunset, absorbing vocabulary as fast as she could. And there was her old friend, fool, again. Simple negation structure? Hopefully the man was a fool. He waved off the handmaidens and their new pack-horse, muttering something that Sunset suspected was maybe it's too small to ride anyways.

The herd-men untied their placid, dead-eyed horses from the leading-lines, and guided the khalzafra as they strapped them into the cart-traces. Sunset watched carefully, and while the herd-men's backs were turned, came up beside one of the horses waiting her – no, his turn. Wait, no – gelding. Sunset gagged a bit, and then got over her revulsion before she was caught doing something unhorselike.

Sunset had never been a peasant, to haul her own carts or carriages, but she'd seen them every day of her life, even in the palace. It was the pony way of life, after all. And she knew how to un-knot a halter, and pull a harness into place.

The horse she chose didn't seem like it knew what to think of Sunset. Sunset suspected she smelled like something half-human, half-horse to the poor confused thing. She settled its confusion by nipping its ear, and then pushing it forward into the harness she'd chosen for it. The gelding fell into compliance, reassured by Sunset's assertion of dominance, and it moved into place with the practiced habit of a lifetime hauling carts for humans. Sunset fumbled a bit initially with the straps and the buckles, but eventually found the notch in the leather and the latches set in place.

And that was when the younger of the two herd-men yelled behind her, having finally spotted what she was doing.

Sunset spun around, grinning, and said, in what she knew was broken Dothraki, "I think I gots it, but belt she maybe break, can look see please horse-man?"

And then Sunset realized what nonsense she'd just babbled, and it took all of her self-possession to not facehoof right there and then. She kept a desperate smile on her muzzle as the young herder scurried up to her gelding in their harness, yelping about some silly zafra handling his precious livestock.

Good, he's already thinking of me as zafra, not as livestock.

The older herder barked at Sunset and the younger herder, when he found the two of them going over Sunset's awkward and not very successful attempt to harness her gelding, but in the end all he did was drive Sunset off, and finish up the job.

That's as far as I'll be able to push that, for now. Time to back off.

The older of the two was named Ahego, the younger, Alikho. She thought maybe they were related. Subject for later investigation. For now, Sunset got out of their way.

Sunset chose rather to be distracted by a slight commotion coming up the road from the city walls in the hazy distance. The khaleesi's scrawny brother had returned, with the other Pentoshi magister. The arrogant brother was in a heavy buff coat, a sword at his hip, and there was a cart with a local drover driving a pair of donkeys. The cart bumped lightly over the ruts in the road, as if it weren't fully loaded under the tarp tied down over it.

"…not a good idea, Your Majesty. A Dothraki horde in the interior is not a comfortable or safe place for those who were not born to the nomadic life," worried the Magister at the boy Sunset had heard Allyrio deride as 'the Beggar King'.

"Mine dearest magister, I haven't the slightest fear of these horse rabble. They know what I offer them, and the Dragon fears no horse-soldiers, however brash and famous their arms. But I know how easily savages forget their obligations, if reminders of said obligations are not always before them in remembrance. I will stay with my sister and her new husband until he gives unto me his promised arms, and the men to wield them. It is my obligation to my own dignity, my lord magister. And that is that."

"Your Majesty, far be it from me to contradict a King's wisdom. I merely beg you one more time to consider you make your seat here in Pentos, where you can keep current with the reports from Westeros and-" and they were again out of even Sunset's sharp hearing, somewhere beyond the khal's personal train, obscured by the muttering and the clatter of the remounts herd being formed up on that side of the collapsing encampment.

And Sunset noted the human in heavy armor upon a tall, handsome stallion, hurrying to catch up with the Beggar King and the magister. She vaguely remembered the man from the night before-

The white princess and her savage husband chose that moment to distract Sunset from her calculations, pulling up to the prepared carts, their khalzafra, slaves, and the new khaleesi's khaleessiya, handmaidens. The pale little princess was weaving bleary-eyed on the back of her grey filly, only Khal Drogo's strong, ruthless hand on her reins keeping that pony from bolting in panic at the lack of direction from her flagging rider.

Sunset, following some sort of instinct whose origin she didn't understand or recognize, hurried over to the side of the wild-eyed grey filly, who even in her youth and coltishness, was still five or six hooves taller than the orange unicorn. Sunset rubbed up against the shoulder of the skittish filly, and muttered nonsense-words in the general direction of the horse's ear.

Sunset's closeness calmed the horse, and Drogo, his eyebrows high and perplexed at Sunset's sudden display, let go of the reins, and leapt smoothly off of his own stallion, walking around the far side of the grey to pluck his bride from her saddle.

The Khal barked instructions at Irri and Jhiqui, who showed him to the pallet they'd arranged in the middle of the cloth-cart for their new employer-owner. Sunset was impressed by this display of planning and foresight on the part of Jhiqui, and resolved to keep closer to the other handmaiden.

Sunset had much to learn.

The Khal hovered over his sleeping young bride for a second, while the rest of his household watched him carefully. All around the household, the rest of the encampment was disappearing into saddle-bags, carts, and into thin air, as far as Sunset could tell. She took the grey's reins into her teeth, and waited for the two herd-men, Ahego and Alikho, to remember their duty, and take the grey into their care.

Ahego walked up to the two quadrupeds, and looked at Sunset with those leather reins in her teeth.

"Azha yer javrakaan anni, hrazef-maegi," he snarled, and seized the javrath, the grey's reins. Then he spat at Sunset's hooves, and stomped off, the grey following placidly in his wake.

"Sunset," sang Jhiqui, "I tink Ahego, he like you!"

Off in the distance, Sunset could see a scattering of horse-riders moving away from the encampment, and columns of horses, riders, and carts were forming in ranks to the eastward, away from the great walls of Pentos.

The Khal threw himself into the saddle of a new horse, a great-chested roan mare, and he moved off in the direction of the disappearing riders. A half-dozen riders fell in behind him, and then another dozen, and then two of the carts the zafra had prepared, and then the remount herd. More carts, more carts, carts filling up with zafra running to catch their rides, swarming over their low sides.

And then the cart holding the three khaleessiya, and the sleeping khaleesi, and then…

Sunset broke out of her trance, and trotted to catch up with her herd, and her place within it, beside the dull-eyed dray-horses in their traces.

It was still an hour and a half short of noon.

As they left the ruins of the wedding-encampment, Sunset kicked the dust of Pentos from her heels.

Author's Note:

Thanks for editing and pre-reading help to Oliver, Shrink Laureate and the general Company.

Comments

[Crimson Sol]

Just started reading yesterday, was sad that there were only a few chapters and then I just saw this posted.

Devoured it and burped in satisfaction.

[Neece]

I'd like for there to be translations in the chapters themselves, but it could maybe detract from the confusion we share with sunset, so dunno.

Still a favorite

[FanOfMostEverything]

I lost interest with A Song of Ice and Fire somewhere around the third book, but this has most definitely caught my interest. Eagerly looking forward to more, especially since Sunset should have front-row seats to the rebirth of magic.

[totallynotabrony]

a great-chested roan mare

Careful, that's somebody's fetish.

[ponygrad]

Why doesn't every fantasy book have some animals talk. It makes things so much more interesting.

She managed to be part of the horde on her own recognizance. She'll be able to slip away when she needs to