Daenerys could recall the first time she gazed upon the sheer enormity of the Dothraki army. Waves upon waves of mounted horsemen, wielding blades as wicked and sharply-curved as the sickle moon in the night sky. She could still hear the deafening current of their battle cries, if she closed her eyes. The thunder of hooves that shook the ground as they transformed into one vast, solitary predator on the prowl. Thousands of them. And they'd poured over the crest of that jagged hillside like blood, spilling from the heart of a bone-deep wound.
And then there were twelve.
She held her head high, her lips pressed taut. Like the line of a scar, ragged in the flesh. If she never wavered, then those who followed her would never have reason to doubt in the undying strength of their queen.
And yet, they were proud. Just as she was. They had always been just this proud, their eyes set deep and hard within their faces that were disguised beneath their masks of warpaint. She swallowed.
"You have brought summer to this frigid landscape," She told them, in the mother tongue that turned their blood into liquid flame. "You are the heroes of the ice and fire."
She wished she could confide in them. She wished—for a fleeting moment—she could tell them the truth. That she was brittle and broken by the cold and the snow. That their victory tasted too much like iron and blood, and loss and defeat—and sacrifice, gone too unnoticed to have even mattered.
But the last of the Dothraki were silent and impassive, their facades broken only by the fissure of violence.
And victory was as still and tranquil as a tomb.
~