A/N: Thank you everyone who left a review, it means a lot!
RHAEGO
"There's so many of them."
Jakerhro's jaw hung so low that it might have well touched the ground. Rhaego turned his one good eye onto the legions that had amassed before the city, unable to hold back a smirk. I will kill many of them soon, he thought. The Slavers of Yunkai will come to fear my name soon enough.
He felt a hand on his shoulder, and turned to Daario. "What?" he snapped.
"Uh," muttered the sellsword, pointing up into the blue sky. Rhaego followed his finger. There was a black spot up there, not far above them, but moving upwards. At first he thought that perhaps it was a bird of some kind, but then it began to come down. Realization dawned suddenly. A stone from a trebuchet…
It grew larger as it fell, tumbling over and over, seeming to move with ridiculous slowness, as if sinking through water, its total silence adding to the unreality. Rhaego watched it, mouth agape just as Jakerhro's had been. An air of terrible expectancy settled on the walls. It was impossible to tell exactly where it was going to fall. Men began to scatter this way and that along the walkway, clattering, scuffling, gasping and squealing, tossing away weapons.
"Gods," whispered Jakerhro, throwing himself face down on the stones.
There was a deafening crash as a section of parapet was ripped apart nearby, sending a cloud of dust and flinging chunks of stone into the air. Splinters whizzed around them. An Unsullied not ten strides away was decapitated by a flying block. His headless body swayed for a moment before toppling over in a pool of viscera.
The stone crashed down somewhere in the city, smashing and through shacks, bouncing and rolling, flinging shattered timbers up, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake. Rhaego blinked and frowned. His ears were still ringing, but he could hear someone shouting.
"They have siege weapons!" the Shavepate was shouting pointlessly, squatting down behind the parapet with his hands clasped over his head, a layer of light dust across his robes. "They're bombarding us!"
"You don't say," muttered Rhaego. There was another mighty crash as a second rock struck the walls further down and burst apart in a shower of fragments, hurling stones the size of skulls into the dirt below. The very walkway beneath Rhaego's feet seemed to tremble with the force of it.
Daario looked down at the damage before turning back to Rhaego, slight panic creeping into his colourful face. "They'll come at us again soon."
Rhaego grinned, took out his axe and nodded to his bloodriders. "Then we better go greet them."
The endless wave of slaves, and larger, stronger fighters, swept across the sandy plain towards the city walls. The Brazen Beasts that the Shavepate had sent out where spread too thin, and they knew it.
"They will break," said Daario, his voice high and his gaze wild.
Rhaego was watching the oncoming line. "You know we have to charge that line," he said. "If we charge that line we can scatter them. It'll buy Ser Barristan and my red woman enough time to play their trick." He knew that he was probably grinning like a small child, but he couldn't help but feel his blood warm at the thought. "A force of my bloodriders, ten thousand slaves, sellswords, and Ghiscari revivalists…." He looked at the Tyroshi. "You know we have to."
Grey Worm stepped forward, face blank. "We will follow you. A second line of defence should you fall."
Daario shrugged. "The Queen would be displeased if you rode out without my aid," he grinned, flashing his golden tooth. "And anything that displeases her would certainly strip me of pleasure…aye; the Stormcrows will ride with you."
"Kill whatever comes under your sword," Rhaego said with an edge of sarcasm. "Follow me."
MYLESSA
It was just the kind of day that Mylessa usually would have enjoyed. The bright sun came down in a magnificent golden beam from her windowsill, the air warm and dry. All of it was a gift from R'hllor to protect and nurture mankind from the dark.
The red priestess closed her eyes and said a prayer, then opened them once more to face the small fire she had burning away in a silver dish sat upon a table. The light continued to pour through the high windows, and creep down the whitewashed wall, revealing calculations in chalk, silver, charcoal, even scratched out in dirt. The Priestess used whatever came to hand when she felt she needed to write down some new remembered ingredient or measurement.
And still light crept down the wall.
Mylessa waited until the sun crossed a chalk line she had drawn, and then raised her eyes to a particular set of instructions on the wall. She whispered a near silent prayer in High Valyrian and reached down into the sleeves of her dress, taking out a small handful of powder. With careful precision she sprinkled it evenly around the edge of the small fire, careful so that the flames themselves did not touch the circle she had made.
The light intensified and struck a small mirror and then shot across the room in a focused beam.
She uttered a command in the tongue of Asshai, just as her old teachers had taught her, and the beam intensified, drawing in the light around it while the beam sparkled like a line of lightning, passing above the chalk designs, through another piece of mirror and into the silver tray. The flames began to dance about more wildly, swelling until finally they pressed against the line of powder she had drawn. As soon as the flames touched the circle they turned a brilliant blue colour. Now is the time, if I do this wrong then we are all of us given to R'hllor…
With a practiced movement Mylessa drew a small blade from within her dress and held the blade to her right palm. She leaned in close, and uttered a final prayer, softly as a lover, before drawing the blade across her soft flesh and allowing her lifeblood to fall into the flames. The effect was instantaneous, with the blood bubbling and sizzling, consuming the blackened remnants of the powder and turning into a soup. The flames gave a final flare before subsiding, quick as they had come.
"Did it work?" the girl asked softly.
Mylessa suddenly felt light headed, as if at the onset of a fever or a strong chill. But her mind was abruptly clear and sharp, and the bubbling goo in the tray was giving off the unmistakable warmth of power. "Jhezabel," she called, "a drink." She felt as the flames did, needing to consume something.
"Yes, my lady." The child poured her a cup of wine from a stone jug nearby and brought it to her.
"Thank you." Mylessa took a long gulp, swallowed and grinned at the girl. She would make an excellent acolyte, she thought before draining the rest of the cup.
"So…."drawled the child, "Did it work my lady?"
The red priestess turned back to the soup on the table. It had stopped bubbling but retained a sense of warmth, and its colour had settled into a vibrant green. Using her empty wine cup, Mylessa gently scooped up some of the substancefor inspection. She could tell already that it would burn as brightly and powerfully as any R'hllor could give them.
"It is ready."
RHAEGO
Rhaego led his riders out the city gates, through the dusty plains. He laughed, turned to find Jakerhro behind him, along with all of his other bloodriders and Kos. Each of them had been with him since childhood, had grown with him and fought by his side. He loved and considered them all his kinsmen. He smiled. "Remember this, boys!"
His riders, with the addition of all the sellswords, formed in multiple ranks, and took up six hundred yards of front leaving as much again on either flank. Empty air. He was the centre man in the line. The slaver line was four hundred paces away, give or take.
The big horses made the earth shake, even at a walk. Their leather danced and licked, and the sound of their riders armour rattled and clinked. The sound of an army. Two hundred and fifty paces. They sped into a trot. The Khalasar made the ground rumble like an earthquake.
Despite it all the Yunkishmen still underestimated them. They had more than a four dozen hardened warriors to strengthen their chained men, belling and ranting several hundred paces to the rear of the infantry line. They were coming on now, coming quickly, but they were going to be much too late for the moment of impact.
The two lines were approaching each other at the combined speed of a galloping horse. The slaves were not going to flinch but they were spread out over the ground, all cohesion lost, like a swarm of insects pouring over the ground. "Charge!" he shouted. Jakerhro and the others might not have heard him over the drumming hooves, but he swept his axe up high above his head. His lips curled back. He was the wind, and the roar of the hooves, and the edge of the blade. He swung his axe down with a roar and right into a Yunkishman's face, burst it wide open and sent his corpse tumbling. He heaved the axe all the way over to the other side and it crashed into a shield and left a great dent in it, knocked the man who held it under the thrashing hooves of the horse beside.
The slight bodies of the chained men were like straw dolls set in a field, and the blades ripped through them so smoothly that they died without dragging the weapons down, and the stronger men were able to engage three, four even five of them before their spears broke, or their points touched the ground or had to be dropped. The horses were spread widely enough to allow the horse and rider to thread the enemy line, to take advantage of spaces between slavers, to weave their path.
For a few deadly heartbeats, the riders destroyed the Yunkishmen, and there was nothing they could do to retaliate. But like mud clogging a rake, the very density and sheer numbers of began to slow the riders charge and even their heavy horses had to shy or simply could no longer trust their hooves to ground that was so thickly littered with dead slavers. The charge slowed and slowed and then the Yunkishmen began to fight back.
Whatever his other failings, Rhaego's stallion had a great heart, and he loved to fight. The horse swung back and forth, pivoted on his forefeet and kicked with his back hooves, half-reared and pivoted on his back feet, punching with his front, keeping Rhaego in the centre of a carefully cleared circle devoid of standing foes. Slaves who tried to get under the horse to hamstring him or worse were trampled to sticky ruin or simply kicked clear.
He had no sense of time. The feverish warmth was coming over him again, and his thoughts shrank back to the bare minimum. Kill everyone not on a horse. Kill anyone on a horse who gets in my way. Kill everyone…
He screamed his war cry. The high wail, out of the Dothrak sea, though his voice was cracked and creaking now. He laid about him, hardly looking what he was chopping at, axe blade clanking, banging, thudding, voices crying, blubbering, and screeching. His ears were full of mindless roar and rattle. A shifting sea of jabbing weapons, squealing shields, shining metal, bone shattered, blood spattered, furious, terrified faces washing all around him, squirming and wriggling, and he hacked and chopped and split them like a mad butcher going at a carcass.
His muscles were throbbing hot; his skin was on fire to the tips of his fingers, damp with sweat in the burning sun.
Rhaego spotted Jakerhro, down on his knees fighting for his life against a large, hardened warrior. He sent his horse crashing into his bloodrider's adversary. A ton of horse versus a hundred pounds of man flesh was no contest at all. He turned the horse around and spotted another large man closing in and he charged again, this time a spear shot out and pierced his stead in the side, the great horse giving a scream of pain. Rhaego leapt free before he could be crushed underneath its mass, landed on something squishy and rolled, ending up on his knees, and pushed immediately to his feet.
Off to the right, Jakerhro and Daario Naharis were pouring blows into the armoured form of a tall brute, but behind them the thick knot of companions had begun to dissolve as the next wave of Ghiscari revivalists-armoured warriors of experience-began to rip into their horses. Armour crumpled; men died.
He felt something sharp slip through his leather, near his ribs knocking the breath from him. Instinctively he pressed his hand to it, and felt a wooden shaft sticking from his flesh and wetness spreading through his boiled leather. Breathing began to hurt; a copper taste filled his mouth. He fell to his knees. All of a sudden everything changed.
There was a thunderclap; a gout of white-green fire that shot down from the heavens and spread into the ranks of the screaming slavers, consuming everything and anyone unlucky enough to get caught in its wave of death. Men burned, horses burned, leather and steel burned as though they were kindling and all form of order was lost completely.
Rhaego smiled.