Excerpt, Chapter 13: Flashman and the Iron Throne
Jorah lead me to the knoll where Daenerys waited. The bastard did it none too gently. My own taunting the night before had seen to that. I felt blood tingling on my shoulders where he'd shoved me, sharpened by the chill in the air. Aye, winter was coming, all right.
Daenerys turned. She greeted her pet amorous thug with a smile and tilt of the head, before turning to me.
"Lord Flashman," she said. "Your General Wolseley is waiting for us."
Dany had said it in English, softening my native language in that cross-bred Westerosi-Dothraki trill of hers. Waiteeng forr us.
Vicky's army in Westeros was crawling along the river's edge. It looked for all the world like some great banded snake, alternating khaki, red, and bottle green. The 92nd Highlanders' kilts billowed ever so slightly in the sharp wind. Lancepoints glinted among the Queen's 9th, as clouds of steam rose from their horses' breath. A train of guns, Gardners, and Gatlings lumbered in the background.
All very impressive, I'm sure. But then I saw what Wolseley was "waiting for".
Years later, I encountered a description of the Khaleesi's host in one of the grandlings' books. One of the little delinquents had decided to inflict the story upon "dear gwandpapa" at about a sentence a minute, complete with puffed-out cheeks whenever he reached a difficult word.
I'd borne it with good humor.
Until, that is, a certain pompous ass of an author had insisted that the two sides were about even. "Armies matched in numbers and valor…dragons and swords against the Martini-Henry", or some such nonsense. As if it was cricket match.[1]
It was nothing of the sort.
To be sure, Daenerys had lost a few in the crossing. Her lizard's death in the Narrow Sea had brought its share of desertions as well, though Rhaegal had massacred Penelope's crew in the bargain.[2][3]
Even so, the Khaleesi had us beat for sheer mass. Badly. Thirty thousand at least, and half of them Dothraki screamers. A solid, angry lump of lances, pigtails and lariats.
Rhaegal's two surviving siblings glided in the air above us. The air warped around their muzzles from the heat.[4]
Good luck to you, Sir Garnet, I thought. You'll need every ounce of it.
I don't have the luxury of viewing a battle from a distance very often – Sobraon being the notable exception – but Dany had chosen her ground carefully, if not necessarily well. A river and village anchored her left, with more villages on her center and right. Unsullied infantry guarded the ground with guns they'd looted from the Narrow Sea Squadron.
Dany's forces sat on the road to King's Landing, with a bridge at their back. I noted, though, that she hadn't chosen ideal cavalry country. Westeros had too many rolling woods for that.
More Unsullied were kept in reserve, covering the bridge with stolen rifles. The entire line must have been three miles if it was an inch. Long, but thin. Brittle.
Wolsely was patient, though. He'd anchored his own right wing on the river, using woods to guard his flanks. The British infantry advanced through the mist in a slightly staggered formation. It looked like something out of the Seven Years' War, with trees masking their oblique left.
Congreves shrieked. Artillery shells exploded around the Dothraki, sending their horses into screaming fits.
The Scots on the left lurched toward the Dothraki to the sound of horse artillery. They advanced in skirmish order of all things, bayonets fixed as they moved through the forest. Rapidly. They formed along the road.
It must have surprised Dany, that speed. She snapped off an order, and the flank Dothraki slowly began pooling toward the center again. With far less discipline.
Still, I couldn't quite slow my heartbeat at the sound of thousands of Dothraki hooves. They were yelling and swinging weapons. They were ready.
Dany let them go.
British bugles sounded when the Dothraki charged. Or at least, they must have. I only saw the glimmer of brass from the hill.
The Highlanders had already begun forming themselves into squares; everyone else took cover in a long ditch running along the road. The Martini Henrys crackled. Dothraki tumbled out of their saddles. Horses crashed into each other. Animals tumbled, crushing their riders.
Cannons blasted away. Large, bloody holes streaked through the Dothraki line. Plumes of smoke from gunpowder and dust swirled around the battleground. More riderless horses trotted out. I assumed that the Gatlings had started firing.
A few minutes later, masses of Dothraki whirled out again from the melee. Some were bloody. Many were on foot.
I learned later that some of the Dothraki had reached their targets. The square had been broken at one point, but the 42nd had pitchforked them out again hand-to-hand.
Not without cost. By the time the clouds had started to dissipate, the British advance had resumed. They left hundreds of kilted corpses and thousands of Dothraki behind.
And now Wolsely was pushing against their right. Batteries rushed onto the best ground they could find, blasting away at any Dothraki foolish enough to remain within range. Being Dothraki, many did. One ko rode across his line waving a sword in the air.
The ground shuddered. Blasts of noise hammered my eardrums.
A few years ago, some know-it-all or other suggested that the Dothraki kos were trying to draw our fire from their own men. It's fiendishly tricky to hit a man on horseback with cannon, as I'd watched Paddy Gough demonstrate against the Sikhs. [5]
I doubt it, though. Gough had been foolhardy old lunatic, yes. The Dothraki were just stupid.
Dany played her hand.
She signaled, and Viserion swooped from the air like a scaly white ghost. The Dothraki line had been wavering. Now, it reformed. The remaining riders tore toward the British line with Viserion in the vanguard.
The center was now open for the Scots, but it might not matter.
Viserion flew pretty high, swerving away from the main body. Musketry rattled to little effect. A few spent balls might have reached the dragon – perhaps – but the scales would have shrugged them off at that range. He flew in a long loop. Here, the river worked in Dany's favor for once. We couldn't very well chase after Viserion as he headed for our artillery.
I've seen routs before. The whole line flinched as the dragon passed around them. Horses neighed, and a few threw their riders. Men scurried a touch too quickly. Soldiers pointed, and sergeants laid about their men, trying to dress the lines.
Viserion dived.
I saw a few sparks from around the artillery, and guessed that artillerymen had unslung their carbines. They needn't have bothered. Might as well try to kill an elephant with a pistol. One hopeful fellow shot a rocket, which went comically wide.
Flame guttered everywhere. Ammunition exploded.
The guns glowed red-hot. Burning men rolled away like grotesque effigies of Guy Fawkes. Roasting. The dragon snapped one up, tossed him in the air, and bit down like a raven eating a chunk of meat. The body squirmed. Viserion shook his meal until it went still.
And then, something very odd happened. Viserion started, as if he'd stepped on a needle. Even from the hilltop, I heard his pained roar. Wings opened. They beat the air, and Viserion rose a few inches.
Another jolt.
Wingbeats stopped. Viserion flopped to earth again. He clawed at the ground and screamed all the harder. His head was swiveling, as if he was looking for something.
Daenerys must have seen it first. She shoved a pair of binoculars at me. Pointed.
"Tell me what is happening, Ko Flashman!" she said. "Tell me who that is!"
I was tempted to reply that she should fight her own bloody war against my people, but Jorah growled and fingered the pommel of his sword. I took the binoculars.
A man was crouched in the bushes, perhaps a hundred yards away from the artillery. My fingers tightened on the binoculars when I saw the beard, the wide-brimmed hat. And that ridiculous large-caliber elephant gun.
"Selous?!" I whispered.
…Too loudly, unfortunately. I'd met the cocksure ass only once, in King's Landing. He'd gone on endlessly about the proper techniques for tracking and killing elephants. And tribesmen. And, if his luck held, dragons. Dragons, and more dragons.
Make no mistake; I'd seen that glint in his eye, and had known what it meant. He was a killing gentleman, was Frederick Selous, as surely as someone like Tiger Jack Moran, or Willem Starnberg…or my own Governor, if it comes to that. Just a bit overzealous.
Viserion jerked again, and collapsed.
Selous grinned, tossing another gun to his askari, or ghillie, or whoever he was. A terrified fellow, from the looks of it. The ghillie fumbled with the weapon.
Another battery was already rushing toward the wreckage to set up.
"Er…a hunter, Khaleesi," I said. "Kills large animals for a living. I'd call it quits at this point, unless you want to—"
"Then we shall give him a 'large animal'," she spat.
Daenerys was shaking.
From the pained look on her face, I suspected that the Khaleesi wasn't thinking quite right. Not with a dragon lying dead that she'd treated like a child for the past few years. (And a disturbing sight that had been).
What she did next confirmed it. Though in her defense, she'd already spotted Selous.
"Drogon!" she said.
An onyx shadow loomed over us, twenty feet from wingtip to wingtip. Grass flurried. The air whistled by. Even though he was floating a fair distance from us, I could feel the furnace in his throat heating up.
He dived straight at Selous from across the battlefield, like an angry black meteor. Not quite as fast as a train, and but about the same size. I'd rarely seen anything move that quickly. No subtlety this time, either. The main battle line was too busy shooting at Dothraki to provoke the black leviathan flying overhead.
But Drogon was not too busy for them. He breathed. The Essex regiment burned.
His head twisted to one side. I raised my binoculars. Blood burbled down his snout. The wound had only seemed to irritate him, though.
Even the smell of roasting flesh beneath him barely slowed Drogon. I saw the familiar glow in his nostrils. But he might have been better served by coming in at an angle.
Selous was still smiling. He fired again, and tossed the gun aside. The shot went wide. The ghillie had already showed more sense than his employer, and was gone.
And then, Drogon was on him.
You'll not credit it, perhaps, but the dragon actually paused when he got within a few yards of Selous. Pulled up. I've always fancied that he was savoring his revenge, though a zoologist friend assures me that only Man actually thinks that way.
Ne'er mind. I still say he was gloating. Drogon towered over Selous, then - a man with an already-fired elephant gun. And for a moment or two, they just stared at each other.
Selous dived out of the line of fire.
Flames burst from Drogon's nostrils. The plume was wider than anything Viserion had created. Wider, even, than the streaks of fire that had engulfed the Essex regiment. It enveloped Frederick Selous like a malevolent cloud.
In almost the same instant, Selous fired his last shot. A bomb-lance, hidden in the grass. He'd waited until that last, careful second, when Drogon was too close to miss.
I was too far away to hear the explosion. But I saw it.
Great chunks of blood and scales flew from Drogon's chest. Even as he roasted Selous to fiery oblivion, Drogon's wings beat madly. In pain. He rose, rose—and collapsed into a pile of claws and wings, skidding to a stop on the blackened turf where Selous had stood. And now lay. Both burned together.[6]
Well, Selous, I thought, You've got your dragon.
In one of those obnoxious moods that seem to pass for his regular personality, G.B. Shaw once twitted me about falling asleep in the middle of Wagner's ghastly productions. I considered hurting his sensibilities further by pointing out that the Ring cycle would get my attention when they started putting thinner women in their bronze breastplates, but Elspeth was there. So instead, I told him that I'd be happy to watch any time he could produce the real Sigurd killing two dragons. Our foremost dramatist shut up.[7]
In any event…
Wolsely turned his heavy cavalry loose. A red fist with revolvers and sabers rolled up the Dothraki line.
The Khaleesi stood there, frozen.
"Withdraw, Khaleesi," Jorah said.
"I…" she said. "That—"
But Jorah had already given the order.
In the center, the Scots' squares had unraveled with a massive shrug, heading for the central village. A few stolen cannon boomed back at the Highlanders. Some exploded on their gunners. Our own guns replied. We proved significantly better shots.
They were headed for the bridge – and Daenerys's escape route.
But the Unsullied didn't run. I've seen my share of brave last stands – on both sides, thank'ee – and I say without hesitation that the Unsullied were as steady as any troops I'd ever seen.
Our artillery poured into them. They didn't break. Not even when the crossfire caught them. They just fired back, bunched into small groups like Sudanese. Not terribly good shots, admittedly; they fired their rifles from the hip. Cool as cucumbers until the Martini Henrys cut them to ribbons.
And when that didn't work…well, no matter. They charged. Never mind that the bullets were toppling them like ninepins. Five or six thousand spearmen started that trip across the killing ground. A fraction made it there.
From that point forward, it was a slogging match. Spears and bayonets and close-range gunshot wounds. They broke through the line twice. The 92nd rushed to support the 42nd, plugging the gaps. Good bayonet fighters usually beat spearmen, but it was not to be here. Corpses piled up on both sides. Only when they'd unjammed the Gatling did the Highlanders finally pry the Unsullied off.
It took half an hour. By then, there were too few of the 42nd left to celebrate. And the Dragon Queen's janissaries were dead.
The Unsullied had won, in a way. By the time we reached the bridge, the Dothraki had already slipped through.
I'm told that the whole battle lasted five hours, from the first rocket barrage to the last stand. I couldn't swear to it myself; time has a funny way of dancing about in situations like that.
Dany remained on the knoll, as the wreckage of her army passed by. Headed for King's Landing, no doubt…but then what?
"Surrender, Khaleesi," I said. "There's nothing else for it."
She kept staring at the battlefield.
"See here," I said. "My people ain't in the habit of murdering women…Well, at least not pretty ones who happen to be politically vital, and you're both. Send me to Wolsely, and I can—"
"Can what?" she said. "Secure me a life as a captive, Ko Flashman? Shall I become like my brother Viserys, begging to the Khaleesi-of-the-Steam-Lands for my keep?[8] No. I will die in battle with my people. Qoy Qoyi. They are the blood of my blood. And my blood is the blood of the Dragon."
"But, Dany—"
Jorah bristled when he heard the nickname, looking like some cross between Sir Galahad and a dented, angry tin can. I was past caring. Daenerys interrupted me, though.
"You may go if you wish," she said. "Please. I have no…I do not desire your death."
I looked down at that young slip of a girl, blonde and pale like a porcelain doll. Fists clenched, head raised, daring me to contradict her. It was almost absurd.
And yet, it wasn't. Hadn't I seen that expression before from the women who sat astride the world? From Jeendan as she tore her clothes, and wept, and threatened death to the Khalsa? From the incomparable Yi Concubine, spitting in Sang Ko-in-Sen's face?. And –
Mheri Jhansi nahi denge! I will not give up my Jhansi.
Aye, there was the Rani of Jhansi as well. And Daenerys was another one. The Dragon's daughter, through and through.
Had she been another woman, I would have called it quits there and wished her good luck and fair sailing. Self-preservation is an important consideration when you're trapped between the last British army in Westeros and hordes of Mongol-Comanches.
But I found, much to my surprise, that I couldn't quite leave the little lunatic to die. I've only done that for a handful of women in my lifetime. A lifetime, I might add, that has largely consisted of skulking away (usually into worse trouble, more's the pity) from danger.
Dani may also have been the only one I hadn't been acquainted with in a way that Arnold would have disapproved of.[9]
"Now see here, girl—"
"I am Daenerys Stormborn," she said. "Khaleesi. Mother of Dragons."
She'd spoken gently, but with enough firmness to put her message across.
I looked around, hoping for someone who wasn't a medieval lunatic with a death wish. Alas, there was only Jorah.
"Say something, would you?" I said.
Ser Jorah just stared.
"I've seen the way you look at her, you silly ass," I said. "D'you think I haven't? Tell your Khaleesi to do the bloody sensible thing and give herself up."
And you know? He absolutely hesitated. I felt the slightest thrill of hope in my chest, but—
"That is for the Khaleesi, Englishman."
He seemed to deflate a few degrees as he said it. Sighing, as if he'd bowed to the inevitable a long time ago.
Well, bully for him.
"Please, Dany—" I said.
She flinched, but held up a hand.
"Go," she said. "And live to an old age with your grandchildren in, ah…Een-ga-lund. Sing them to sleep with tales of dragons."
[1] Flashman presumably refers to With Wolseley in Westeros, written by popular children's novelist G.A. Henty in 1889. Henty had worked as a war correspondent before becoming an author, but had no first-hand experience in Westeros.
[2] HMSPenelope was completed 1868 as a box-battery ironclad. The Phenomenon rescued her from an eventual fate in the reserve in 1880, when she became the Narrow Sea Squadron's flagship. She was captured during Daenerys Targaryen's aerial surprise attack against the anchored fleet.
[3] Rhaegal (1880-1883) was one of the three dragons hatched from the Targaryens' eggs. He was a greenish-bronze creature, considered more dangerous than Viserion, though less than Drogon. HMS Pallas's crew killed him with a whaling bomb-lance.
[4] Viserion and Drogon, Daenerys's other two dragons.
[5] General Sir Hugh Gough (1779-1869) wore a white "battle coat", supposedly in part to draw fire away from his troops.
[6] Frederick Selous (1851-1883), V.C. (posthumous), was a British ivory hunter, soldier, and adventurer. He had served – and hunted – in Rhodesia before the war in Westeros. Had he not perished in the Westerosi Succession Crisis, it is likely that he would have risen to the same stature as men like Abel Chapman, Arthur Henry Neumann, or Frederick Russell Burnham. He remains the only hunter ever to "bag" a dragon.
[7] Sigurd, or Siegfried, killed the dragon Fafnir in Wagner's Der Ring Des Nibelungen.
[8] The Dothraki title for Victoria.
[9] Thomas Arnold (1795-1842) was headmaster of Rugby during Flashman's unsuccessful tenure there. Flashman displayed a fear of him throughout his life that bordered on the pathological.