A/N: I've enjoyed GoT S4 immensely, but one thing I've missed with the limited screentime in Essos is some of the character interactions from A Storm of Swords, particularly the fact that Jorah personally trained Grey Worm for command. I got to thinking about it the other day, and thinking led to having feelings and feelings led to…writing fic. Hope you other Team Dany fans enjoy this. Thanks to erolyn2 for giving it a beta.
Train Up a Child
Drogon had scarcely finished his share of the goat—the dragon's share—when he knocked his head against the brazier where the meat had been cooked, then twisted his serpentine neck to look at his mother with green eyes narrowed in demand.
Sighing, Dany pushed herself upright on the cushions where she had been picking at her own supper, and lifted the lid off the brazier. Before she could reach in, Drogon pushed his head past her and fell upon the remainder of the meat, his slightly smaller brothers looking on hungrily.
"If Ser Jorah calls my people mouths on legs, then you're mouths on wings," Dany said with an exasperated wag of her head, followed with a caress of the scaly black tail which curled around her and served as a bolster as she leaned back on her sleeping silks.
Food, and how they would get enough of it to sustain her army as well as satiate the gnawing bellies of those who called her Mhysa, caused a perpetual headache the longer they tarried outside the gates of Meereen. Ser Jorah was right; they would soon eat up the countryside, but neither could she turn a deaf ear to the people's pleas for her to feed their children. They could not fend for themselves, for they had never been free to do so. There had to be another way. She would not watch them follow her only to fall as so many of her khalasar had in the Red Waste. In her dreams, Doreah withered away in her arms; sometimes Dany's breasts ached with the helplessness she'd felt when her milk dried up and she could no longer give her dragons suck.
Outside her tent, the rumble of a man's familiar voice heralded the arrival of Ser Jorah. Dany wanted to be pleased at the prospect of his company to distract her from these thoughts, but she could not face another argument with him about the freedmen, or Meereen, or Daario Naharis. Nevertheless, she sat up eagerly when the tent flap pulled back, only to sink back with disappointment when Jorah himself did not enter, but Missandei.
"Your grace," said the little scribe, with the big eyes that were golden as the setting sun as they reflected the candlelight, "Ser Jorah asks if he may borrow your history of the Seven Kingdoms."
Dany's brows pulled together. In their days riding in Drogo's khalasar, Jorah had on more than one occasion read her Westerosi books to her, or sat with her while she read, to answer her questions. Not once had he asked to borrow them for his own use.
"Of course he may, but whatever for?"
Missandei did not know, so Dany, curious, fetched the book herself from the bottom of a trunk—the history, to her chagrin, she found dry and did not read as frequently as she did the volume of songs and fairytales—and took it out to him.
"It's for Grey Worm," Ser Jorah explained when she asked him what he was about. "There is a map I would show him. I've been trying to explain a particular troop movement, and I think he will understand it better if he can see a map. My attempts at drawing leave much to be desired."
Dany giggled, pleased to have reason to do so in light of how strained their interactions had lately become. "No, you never did strike me as artistic."
His lips curved in a slight grin. "I'll return it in short order, your grace."
"No need. I'll bring it back myself-after I've heard your military lesson."
"You wish to observe Grey Worm's training?"
Though the smile did not entirely leave this face, a subtle shift in the lines, or a slight narrowing of his eyes, perhaps, indicated surprise. Dany's stomach gave a little twinge. Her bear, dearest of all her friends, did not expect her to desire his why should he? She'd neglected him of late. Avoided him. And in doing so had, no doubt, made him feel devalued by her. Not for the world would she have him feel that.
"I hope I may learn from it, as well," she told him. "You've taught me to count troops. It would be useful to know how to move them, as well. After all," she added, "when I tell my enemies I'm only a young girl and know nothing of war, I don't like it to be true."
Jorah's dark eyes glinted conspiratorially, as they had when together they plotted her deception of the Astapori masters. "Indeed, my queen."
He suggested summoning Grey Worm to her tent, where she would be more comfortable, but Dany rebuffed him on grounds that she would not disrupt them further for the sake of another hour on her cushions. In truth, she wanted a change of scenery, her own spacious tent making her feel confined. Anyway, it didn't feel as large as it once had, now she shared it with three moderately sized dragons in whose presence unsettled Jorah.
"Grey Worm," she greeted the young commander of her Unsullied as she ducked beneath the door flap of Jorah's quarters. In the instant before he snapped to attention, she'd glimpsed him looking more relaxed than she'd ever seen him before, sitting hunched on a low stool, and she told him to be at ease. "Ser Jorah has nothing but praise for your training."
Not a muscle of the youth's face twinged in emotion, but his dark eyes did dart sidelong, as though in self-consciousness, and she thought she saw color darken on his cheekbones-although it might have been only a trick of the uncertain candlelight. Still, she liked the thought of the eunuch, bred to be hard and unfeeling, being pleased to have earned praise from his general.
"This one has learned much," Grey Worm replied, "but still much more for this one to learn."
"And what does Ser Jorah wish you to learn about tonight?" Dany asked, perching on the stool Grey Worm had vacated.
The exile knight had been searching through the yellowed pages of her book, and now placed it, open, on the second bench, which must serve as a low table in the sparsely furnished quarters. Dany leaned forward to make out the map he'd turned to, squinting in the dim; Jorah moved a pillar candle to shed a better light on it.
"Dorne?" she looked up at him inquiringly.
"And your ancestor the Daeron the First's conquest of it."
"The Young Dragon, they called him," said Dany. "He was but fourteen when he conquered Dorne, was he not?"
Viserys told her the way of it, when she was small, and the very last thing she imagined for her future was that she, too, would be a Young Dragon. She was now a little older than Daeron, but soon she would have conquered three great cities before she even reached her sixteenth name day.
"He was, your grace-and but eighteen when the Dornishmen rebelled and killed him."
That made her slump on her stool. Jorah he hastily added, taking a knee beside her, "For now, our interest lies only in the Young Dragon's strategy, which won him his seventh kingdom. Grey Worm, sit here and have a look."
Naturally, the Unsullied youth obeyed without hesitation, and Dany scooted her bench a little apart from Ser Jorah to make room for Grey Worm to crouch on the knight's other side where he could see the map.
"Now the reason why Dorne, despite being the least populous of the Seven Kingdoms, had never been successfully taken even a century and a half after Aegon and his sisters conquered Westeros, lies chiefly in its geography. The entire northern border is mountainous, with but two passes that will accommodate an army on the march. The Stoneway, here…" His forefinger traced a line along the eastern part of the map, then moved to a more central region of the country. "…and here, the Prince's Pass. Both are well guarded, with watchtowers all along them...In fact the Stoneway is more commonly called the Boneway, for the ground is as much stone as the bones of the poor fools who dared to invade Dorne."
The desire Dany expressed to learn alongside Grey Worm had appeared to please Jorah, yet he seemed almost to forget her presence as he angled his body toward the younger man, away from her, becoming more engrossed in the geography lesson. And although her interest had not diminished-indeed, this particular historic episode might well prove valuable to her own future invasion-she was distracted by the equally intriguing interactions between the commander of her Queensguard and the commander of her Unsullied.
"How would you march your Unsullied into Dorne, Grey Worm?" the knight asked.
As she watched Grey Worm contemplate the map of Dorne and his strategy, his lips pursed and brows furrowed, Dany understood Ser Jorah's method. A former slave soldier, Grey Worm was accustomed to carry out orders, not to give them. If he was to succeed in a command post, the young man's mind must be freed from the shackles imposed by the rigors of his combat training. Thus Jorah did not simply tell the story of the Young Dragon's Dornish invasion, but exercised Grey Worm's little used imagination by asking him to supply the gaps in his narrative.
At length, the young soldier replied, "This one would divide the army and find a pass hidden from the watchtowers."
If Grey Worm's stoic face had earlier hinted at pleasure to have earned approval, Ser Jorah's now looked proud to have reason to give it. Dany felt the swell of both emotions, too, for both their sakes, but accompanied something else which she could not name, which turned the moment bittersweet.
"That is, indeed, the plan King Daeron devised," Jorah said. "The Young Dragon marched his troops through a goat track, bypassing Castle Yronwood entirely. Meanwhile..."
He went on, describing how this enabled the remainder of the army to sail up the Greenblood while the majority of the Dornish forces were occupied fending off the surprise attack in the mountains, but Dany heard less of what Jorah said than the manner in which he said it. For a man who was by nature taciturn, reserving speech for when it was required him, and then often delivering it gruffly, he was also a natural teacher. She knew that from her own experience, of course, but to observe it from the rare perspective of outsider, afforded a new appreciation for this particular gift of his. He was not a man of considerable means, yet his education had surely not suffered for it, transforming the coarse manner to eloquence. He had never seemed so lordly to Dany as he did now.
When Jorah concluded the lesson, he dismissed Grey Worm; tomorrow they would practice some of the particular maneuvers discussed with the Unsullied, and the young commander would need to be well-rested.
"Or rather, I will," he joked and Dany smiled; on an earlier occasion, Jorah had told her Grey Worm was tireless-in heavy tones which belied his own fatigue after a hard day's training.
As Grey Worm bowed to take his leave, the knight added, "If you would, first accompany the queen back to her tent?"
Dany wondered briefly that Ser Jorah should abdicate this duty. Then again, it was not many days since she accused him of mistrusting all men save himself because he loved her. If this was his way of making amends, she was touched by the gesture-though a young eunuch was perhaps too easy a choice to trust in that particular regard.
"Thank you, Grey Worm, but Ser Jorah may see me safely back when I am ready."
With a nod, the Unsullied youth left them, and Jorah pushed to his feet.
"I would offer you refreshment, khaleesi," he said, going to the corner where a small trunk where he kept his clothes and armor was littered with personal effects, "but I have only a little ale." He gestured to a small cask. "You're welcome to it, of course-"
"I had wine enough with my supper, thank you, ser." She reached for the book, closing the cracked leather cover with a caress as she drew it into her lap to clear the bench for Jorah. "Please, partake if you wish."
He poured himself a cup, then sauntered back to her, looking down as he drank. "I hope you were satisfied with the content of Grey Worm's lesson."
"More than. He seems a quick study."
"Like someone else I know."
The crinkles at the corners of his eyes deepened, his affection for her evident, but Dany didn't mind it now, and gave him a smile as he lowered his big frame onto the low stool. It was as it had been between them in the old days. Or she could imagine that it was.
"I'll have to be a quicker study of my ancestral history," she said with a sigh. "Viserys told me about Daeron, but his version was rather more glorious than yours."
"No doubt your brother read the account written by Daeron's own hand," said Jorah, more judiciously than she'd ever heard him speak of Viserys. Perhaps it was the ale. He took a swig, and chuckled. "I got hold of a copy in the library at Winterfell when I was a boy. My father had a choice few words about my lack of discernment. I believe he put it, mooning like a lovesick maid over a lad's boasts of his own valor. He then proceeded to lecture me on the unembellished truth of the invasion."
"I see," said Dany with a laugh. "And this is the version you gave Grey Worm and me?"
The image her mind produced of Jeor Mormont bore a striking resemblance to the man who sat before her now-his head a little balder, his beard a bit greyer, his large frame a bit stouter, but with the same dark eyes regarding her from the unhandsome face that had grown so dear to her-so she had some difficulty reconciling the stern character Jorah depicted with the scene she had just witnessed between him and Grey Worm.
Her breath hitched.
"If I'd told that one," Jorah replied, "you'd have both snored. I don't share my father's belief that a story must be stripped of all the interesting bits in order to be truthful."
Dany attempted to smile at that, but Jorah had already noticed that she no longer laughed with him.
"Khaleesi? Have I offended? I assure you, I meant no insult to your ancestor, only that it is common knowledge that the Young Dragon exaggerated the numbers of the Dornish army." He drank, which was perhaps the reason that his lips curved again in a smirk as he swallowed, his storytelling mood winning out over his concern at the alteration in hers. "Which proved to be a valuable defense to the Dornish in the centuries that followed. They never bothered to correct their enemies about their actual numbers, and so have retained a more fearsome reputation than they have perhaps deserve."
She lay a hand on his knee. "You did not offend, my bear."
Only unintentionally made her sad, when his reference to his father opened her eyes to what had touched her about the way he taught Grey Worm: it was paternal.
Jorah instructed the young soldier as his own father had taught him to be a lord and a warrior.
As he would have-should have-instructed his own sons to be lords and warriors, if he'd had any…If his first wife had not died trying to bear them…If he'd had any by the second for whom he'd given up everything to end up in exile, here.
With her.
Here, encampment outside the gates of a city he would try to conquer for her, though he'd advised her to abandon it and turn west. To home…to his island..to his hall of pines where he believed she would lead him.
Holding his arm as he escorted her through the dark back to her own tent, she thought it was well that she had no choice but to reject his offer of marriage. When she lay alone upon her sleeping silks, she stroked Drogon's smooth black scales and prayed the gods would give Ser Jorah what she could not.