More and more Dothraki riders surged toward Gorys.
The thin black defensive line was soon torn apart in dozens of places.
The old village chief sohow gathered a group of n. They picked up stones from the ground or, if they were lucky, scavenged discarded weapons.
But they were still no match for the horse lords.
With nothing but their flesh and blood, they tried to delay the Dothraki advance—buying precious monts for their families to escape.
Behind them, the Targaryen line opened small gaps.
Won and children were allowed to pass through the soldiers and into safety.
A few scrawny n might slip through among them, but no one worried too much about that.
Out of the ten thousand civilians, perhaps six or seven thousand would ultimately survive.
Just as Jon Connington prepared to order Gorys and his cavalry to withdraw, Gorys himself was dragged from his horse by a swarm of Dothraki warriors.
His final glance fixed upon the banner of the three-headed dragon.
His eyes were filled with longing.
Perhaps he wished to see the fisherman's daughter once more. Perhaps he longed for victory.
Or perhaps… he simply missed ho.
.....
In the Goose Mountains, Drogo's army was already prepared for battle.
Each warrior had chosen his best horse from among the remounts they carried with them.
Drogo rode up a small rise, raising his curved blade as he addressed his warriors.
"Do you know what I spoke about yesterday with the ssenger of that king, Viserys?"
"He asked us to withdraw! He even said he would give much gold!"
"Children of the Horse God—tell . Should we retreat?"
"No retreat! No retreat! No retreat!"
The Dothraki roared in unison.
Drogo had never known defeat.
And those who followed him had never tasted it either.
In recent days, stories of Gohor's imnse wealth had spread through every khalasar.
This would be a victory many of them would rember for the rest of their lives.
"Capture the sister of that king who lives in his stone tent!"
"Put golden chains on her!"
The man who shouted this was one of Drogo's kos—Jako.
Among the Dothraki, a ko was sothing like a feudal lord.
In the canon, after Drogo's death, Jhaqo would take most of Drogo's khalasar and beco the most powerful khal in the grass sea.
But now, his loyalty to Drogo remained absolute.
Drogo smiled coldly and shouted, "Then do not take your eyes off my blade!"
"Where my whip points, that is where your glory lies!"
"My warriors—attack!"
Drogo pulled his reins. His warhorse reared up, his long braid whipping behind him.
For a mont, he looked almost like a conqueror destined to shake the world.
The Dothraki army erupted in wild cries and surged forward toward Viserys's forces.
Watching this, Viserys turned and nodded to Mathos.
Mathos signaled the nearby trebuchets with a series of flags.
The soldiers released the engines they had prepared...But instead of stones, the machines hurled clouds of iron caltrops.
In less than a minute, tens of thousands of caltrops were scattered across the battlefield.
Their effect, however, was limited.
Compared to the vast battlefield, such obstacles caused little damage.
The Dothraki only laughed and drove their horses onward. In their eyes, there was only one target.
The great command tent of Viserys.
.....
On the hills, the longbown watched the Dothraki army rushing toward them like a landslide of mud and steel.
Fear gripped many of them.
Fortunately, the veterans quickly steadied the ranks.
In truth, even the veterans had never seen a battlefield on such a scale.
But they recovered faster than the new recruits. Even Viserys, watching from the heights, felt a chill crawl up his spine.
The sight reminded him of the gas he had once played before crossing into this world.
Endless waves of enemies.
Undead hordes.
Beast swarms.
But none of them compared to the terror of tens of thousands of cavalry charging forward.
For a brief mont, it even seed as if the mountains themselves were moving.
The screaming riders looked ready to trample everything before them.
The Dothraki closed the distance rapidly...Soon they were within three hundred ters.
So riders at the very front suddenly crashed to the ground.
The warriors behind them could not see the fallen bodies and had no ti to stop.
n and horses were trampled beneath the hooves of those who followed, their cries drowned beneath the thunder of the charge.
Soon nothing remained but shattered bodies pressed into the earth.
The riders noticed shallow pits scattered across the field.
But against an army of tens of thousands, such obstacles ant nothing.
They simply crushed forward.
Every rider stared with bloodshot eyes at the black-armored infantry blocking their path.
Haggo led the charge in place of Drogo.
Two hundred ters.
One hundred eighty ters.
One hundred fifty ters.
It seed that in the next mont, his curved blade would strike the heads of those iron-clad soldiers.
But suddenly Haggo felt sothing strike his shoulder.
Like a heavy punch.
The force nearly tore him from his saddle.
Before he could steady himself, more blows rained down from above.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
The sound of steel tearing flesh spread across the battlefield like the breath of a demon. Most of the n struck by arrows were pierced straight through.
Even the horses were not spared.
One horse had its skull pierced clean through like at on a skewer.
It collapsed without even managing a final cry, dragging its rider to the ground.
At a distance just over a hundred ters from the longbow line, it was as though an invisible scythe of death had appeared.
The roaring cavalry charge collapsed like cut wheat.
By all logic, this was the mont to retreat. But cavalry had only one instinct.
Charge.
And so wave after wave of Dothraki rode into the killing zone.
Wave after wave died there.
Soon the corpses of n and horses piled so high between the two armies that the ground itself rose.
Even Drogo had now entered the storm of arrows.
The rain of arrows was relentless.
A trained longbowman could fire twelve to fifteen arrows per minute.
The twenty thousand longbown facing the Dothraki released nearly two hundred thousand arrows in less than a minute.
For the inexperienced archers who had never seen battle before, only one thought remained in their minds.
Shoot.
They followed the signals of the flag bearers, concentrating fire wherever commanded.
The gray torrent of riders slowly turned crimson.
"K… Khal Drogo! Run! Break through! Their bows are… too strong!"
Drogo turned sharply.
He saw Kovarro.
At so point, three arrows had struck the bloodrider's chest.
Blood spilled from his mouth with every word he spoke.
Drogo suddenly realized that the bloodrider who had once rescued him from rcenaries when he was still a boy… was leaving him forever.
___________
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