THE SHEPHERD KING
(written by AJ Nolte)
"Outriders!" The scout was nearly as exhausted as his horse, but the young man sat straight, looking his commander in the eye. Not for the first time, Allhazghar marveled at the training and discipline of the Disinherited. "They look to be of Ogo's khalasar."
"How far ahead?"
"Less than half a day's ride, Ser."
"Good." The commander of the Disinherited, who also happened to be the over-all commander of the Lhazareen army, smiled slightly. "We will meet them along the Hesh-Kosrak road. Stylan, draw me a map of that stretch of ground, will you?" The scout nodded, dismounted, and began to sketch quickly in the dirt. The commander also dismounted, and Allhazghar followed.
"You'll want this ground, Ser, just north of the Hesh-Kosrak road." As he sketched, Allhazghar nodded.
"Your scout speaks wisely, Ser Oswell. I know that ground. The north facing slopes are much steeper than those that face south."
"Perfect. Well done, Stylan; see to your mount and yourself."
"Yes, Ser." The scout wheeled his horse away at a weary trot, and Allhazghar turned to Ser Oswell Whent with a slight frown.
"Are we ready?"
The westerosi laughed slightly."If we're not ready now, lad, we never will be. We have the unsullied to anchor the line, and the legions we've raised and trained from Lhazosh, Hesh and Kosrak are as ready as they can be, short of battle. My lads are ready of course, but we've done this sort of thing before. I judge the heavy cavalry have taken in as much Westerosi knight's training as I can give them, and you would know more of the slingers than I."
Allhazghar grinned. "That I would; it is still my favorite weapon. The old ghiskari legions had no finer auxiliaries; that I swear by the Shepherd." Allhazghar still remembered the day he had first used a sling as a weapon against another man. Nearly fifteen years ago that had been. He'd been a simple shepherd boy then, returning from tending his flocks to see his village aflame and Dothraki horse lords killing and raping the inhabitants. Allhazghar still recalled the look of surprise on the murdering horse-fucker's face when the slingstone caught him square in the forehead. It had done him little good, of course; he'd been sold to the fighting pits of Mereen, escaped, returned to Lhazar, and gathered a band of men to fight off the Dothraki whenever they came. When Ser Oswell found them, they were a ragged band of poorly trained outlaws. In the past ten years, the White Bat of Westeros and his woman, the Maegi, turned them into an army. Now, at long last, the plans that brought them together would come to fruition.
"It's just nerves, lad," Oswell said not unkindly. "No harm in it, but don't let them govern you."
"I will not. But do you think we can succeed in the end?"
"Well now," the White Bat said with a smirk, "I'd say your chances are better than mine. It's a long road I'll be traveling to set the true king on the Iron Throne, but like the free, united Lhazar you and Mirri Maz Duur want to build, it begins, or ends, today."
…
They arrived well before the Dothraki, and Allhazghar watched with professional detachment as the Lhazareen troops and unsullied began fortifying their positions. The lhazareen legions had been trained on a combination of unsullied and golden company lines, which was not surprising since the two sergeants responsible for training them were a veteran of the Golden Company and an unsullied trainer respectively. Unsurprisingly, Allhazghar paid more attention to the unsullied than the Lhazareens; if all went according to plan, the later would make up a substantial portion of Oswell's share of the spoils in the grand campaign. And that grand campaign seemed much less imposing when it was all lines on a map, did it not? All well and good when a man offers to make you ruler of a new empire, but as da would say, there's a long difference in talking about sheering sheep and actually fleecing the buggers.
At long last, they saw the dust of the Dothraki khalasar approaching. The godswives of the Great Shepherd gave their invocations, and Allhazghar made the sign of the crook over his breast. He had not always been the most devout man, but who could doubt the Great Shepherd's grace on a day when so much had finally come together? Give me strength this day, to be a guardian of your fold, Oh Great and Good Shepherd. The dothraki whooped as they saw the army encamped before them, brandishing their curved arakhs and letting loose their fierce war cries.
"Steady on, you sheep-fucking shits!" That was the gruff, coarse, reassuring voice of Tom Waters, a man Oswell recruited for the Disinherited from the Golden Company almost ten years ago. Normally, Tom stood beside the banner of Ser Oswell's mercenary company: an uprooted white tree with a red dragon twined around it, but today he stood with the Lhazosh legion, acting as their senior Centurion. "If even one of you miserable in-bred shit-clods breaks ranks I'll flog you, gut you, and take a long piss in your skull!" Allhazghar saw tension leave nearly every legionnaire in hearing range. Blood-curdling threats from Tom Waters were, by now, almost reassuring for the young, tough Lhazareen shepherds he'd turned into soldiers.
"Ready slingers," he said in a calm but carrying voice.
"We are ready, Lord." The commander of the slingers had been with Allhazghar almost since the beginning, and it always made him uncomfortable when one of his first band of outlaws called him "Lord". Allhazghar supposed that was the "price of command" Oswell told him about so often. The Dothraki came on, then, an unstoppable tide washing up the craggy slopes of the hill. Allhazghar waited until the first rank was almost to the top of the hill, raised his arm, then dropped it in a chopping motion.
"Loose!" The lhazareen slingers had been trained to use sling staffs, which provided greater range and a more even trajectory. Based on a suggestion Oswell found in an old book of military history, they also fired lead balls made by the bell-caster who made bells for the Temple of the Great Shepherd in Lhazosh. This lead shot traveled further, faster and more evenly than the irregular stones most shepherds used in their slings. Allhazghar's slingers were the best, fastest, most accurate men with the traditional shepherd's weapon in all of Lhazar, meaning that each of them could fire the sling at least six times in a minute. Each slinger was equipped with a pouch containing twelve of the lead balls. And so, the Dothraki charging up the hill were met by a hail of lead balls that punched through unarmored men and horses.
"First rank, retire. Second rank, forward." The first rank of slingers fell back, opened their pouches, and received a fresh load of twelve shots from the loaders, young boys and girls who had trained for the purpose. While they did, the second rank poured fire on the charging Dothraki. If there had been any cohesion to the Dothraki charge to begin with, it melted under that withering, continuous fire. Still, the Dothraki came on, charging in a mad frenzy toward the infantry.
"Pikes down!" As one, the Lhazareen legionnaires dropped their pikes... and the Dothraki horses stopped.
…
It is a widely-held belief that cavalry charges always break infantry. The reality depends a great deal on the infantry, or rather, whether the will of the infantrymen can be broken before the common sense of the horse does. Infantry—particularly if armed with pikes—will stop a cavalry charge cold, for the pure and simple reason that horses, not being altogether stupid animals, prefer not to run into a forest of sharp pointy things aimed directly at them. What is so devastating about cavalry—and light cavalry like the Dothraki in particular—is a combination of mobility and intimidation. First, cavalry move faster than infantry, and can easily outflank them unless the infantry is well-trained or has a formation designed to prevent that. Second, the perfectly reasonable instinctive reaction of a man on the ground when a man on a horse is running at him is to get out of the way. For the Lhazareen army on that bloody day, the ground was in their favor, with a steep ridge of hills negating the mobility advantage of cavalry. And the will was also in their favor. The lhazareen legions had been superbly trained for the past several years to stand in exactly this situation. Many of them had been sent abroad to gain experience as infantrymen in skirmishes across the disputed lands, and in other parts of Essos. All of them had been put through the most rigorous training Ser Oswell Went and the Astapori unsullied trainers and Golden Company sergeants he hired could devise. And so, the Lhazareen pike blocks held, and the Dothraki attack swirled away. Gradually, the Dothraki found a "weak spot" in the line. It was a natural shoulder between two hills, where the slope was less steep and the solid Lhazareen legions were not present. Up the slope they came... and two thousand unsullied met them. Allhazghar saw Oswell's eyes watching that part of the battle keenly. The westerosi knight, on his visit to Astapor, took pains to express his skepticism about the unsullied, and asked to borrow 3,000 of them for a demonstration. The wise masters of Astapor agreed. After all, Ser Oswell wanted to hire all eight thousand of the eunuch soldiers, and had promised to give Astapor a great wealth in gold and exclusive rights to the slave trade in Westeros, which he would open for them, if the unsullied performed as expected. Allhazghar hid a savage smile at thought of what Ser Oswell actually intended for the Astapori, and all the cities of Slaver's Bay. The satisfaction was two-fold; he stood to benefit greatly from those plans, and no Lhazareen could ever forget the generations of forebears who suffered under the lash. If all went well, that would soon end forever. Yes, what happened in Slaver's Bay would be sweet, assuming today's battle went as expected.
"Sweet merciful mother," Ser Oswell breathed, and Allhazghar smiled more broadly. The Dothraki tide smashed against the unsullied wall, leaving broken men and horses in its wake... and receded. All along the lines, the Dothraki fell back down the hill, firing arrows behind them.
"Feigned retreat, just as we predicted," Allhazghar told the commander of the Disinherited. "Will they try to get around us to the east or the west, do you think?"
"To the east," Oswell said confidently. "They'll make for the dry river bed, I've no doubt of it." And, indeed, it appeared as though the Dothraki were breaking off their assault and swinging to the east of the line of hills on which the army had positioned itself.
"The remaining thousand unsullied will make sure they won't enjoy the experience. In the meantime," the Westerosi grinned, "it should give me time to get the heavy cavalry in place."
…
As Oswell predicted, the Dothraki failed to break through at the river bed. And so the khalasar swung west, putting the sun of the afternoon directly in their eyes as they rode across the front of the hills, seeking to flank the Lhazareen army to the west. In theory, the ground to the west looked suitable for such a maneuver; gently-sloping hills, with shepherd's paths running through them that would eventually take the Dothraki back to the Hesh-Kosrak road. Unfortunately for Ogo's khalasar, the western hills were also defended. With a loud blaring of horns, the heavy cavalry trained and led by Ser Oswell came barreling down the hill, lances leveled, and smashed into the more lightly-armed Dothraki. In the vanguard, Allhazghar saw two banners: the shepherd with a lamb draped over his shoulders that had been chosen as the banner of Lhazar, and the uprooted white tree and red dragon of the Disinherited.
As a rule, light cavalry do not fight heavy cavalry head-on. The typical Dothraki tactic was to feign retreat, lead the heavy cavalry to pursue them, and almost literally harass the heavier horsemen to death. Here, the Dothraki had two disadvantages. First, they were moving up hill, while the heavy cavalry came down hill at them. Second, the heavy cavalry had the fresher mounts. Ogo's khalasar shattered under the hammer blow, and Allhazghar watched its destruction with satisfaction. Oh, he doubted very much that most, or even all of the Dothraki who rode with Ogo would be killed. In fact, most would likely escape, and many would be offered a position in the Lhazareen army. There was something to be said for adding Dothraki as scouts and light cavalry, particularly for the upcoming campaign in Slaver's Bay. But Ogo was more than likely dead, meaning any survivors of the Khalasar who tried to reconstitute themselves would have to settle the matter of the succession first. More importantly, Allhazghar had demonstrated to his people, and to himself, that the Dothraki could be beaten, and that the Lhazareen were capable of doing it.
"You don't need to conquer the Dothraki sea," Oswell told him on that long-ago fateful day when he and Mirri Maz Duur explained their plan to turn a former shepherd boy, pit-fighter and bandit into an Emperor. "Make Lhazar strong enough that you can play his Khals off against one another. Keep any one of them from growing too powerful. Once you've grown stronger, you might even send missionaries of your good shepherd amongst the khalasars, and support those who convert with gold and military alliances. First, though, you must convince your people that it can be done, and that means smashing a Khalasar." With a satisfied smile, Allhazghar knew that the first step had already been taken, and that Lhazar would never be the same. He thought about the White Bat, this strange Westerosi man who had come to Lhazar and made Allhazghar's cause his own. There were times when he wondered what drove the man? Yes, he was lover to the maegi Mirri Maz Duur to be sure, and she had born him a half-Lhazareen daughter who was now a lass of twelve, and serving as a godswife and Maegi in training under the tutelage of her mother. Still, Allhazghar knew Ser Oswell to be almost fanatically driven by his far-off westerosi cause, and wondered how the man hoped to achieve it from Lhazar? And yet, fifteen years ago, I would not have believed this day would ever come. Who knows, perhaps the white bat will succeed in crushing the wise masters, and leading an army of Unsullied across the narrow sea to put his true king on a throne of iron. Such thoughts and fancies were far beyond Allhazghar's concern. He wished the White Bat luck, but Westeros was far away. For now, it would fall to the Shepherd King to begin building a free, powerful Lhazar on the foundation of victory that had just been laid. Still, he marveled at the loyalty Ser Oswell Went held to his dead king, and wondered who this Rhaegar Targaryen must have been to make a man like Oswell fight so hard in a hopeless bid to put his son on the Iron Throne.
