The Heat of Dorne Chapter 8 (Patreon)

“What did you do?” Doran asked, his voice icier than the Wall.

“Father, we…” Arianne tried to say.

“No!” Doran barked. “I would hear it from him.”

Daemon sat next to her in her father’s solar, looking less bothered by the older man’s rage than she was.  They had both had time to prepare for this conversation as they approached Sunspear, but it seemed that he was better prepared than she was.

“Prince Doran, we…” Daemon tried to say calmly.

“I had my misgivings about letting you go to Slaver’s Bay,” Doran admitted, “but you made a good point about those strange eggs, and I felt it was worthwhile.  I certainly didn’t expect you to return with a slave army!”

“I will point out that we freed those slaves,” Daemon said in his defense.

“A fact that I am going to have to spend a great deal of time stressing,” Doran growled.

They had known that acquiring the Unsullied was going to rub some people the wrong way and was something that they would have to explain carefully.

“I did write Father to inform him of everything and he didn’t seem that bothered in his reply,” Daemon said.

“The Unsullied would have been enough, but then you had to go and do this!” Doran snarled, pointing out the window towards the newly verdant landscape of Dorne and the vast forest of trees, many of them white as snow with leaves the color of blood.

“Ah, yes,” Daemon said. “There is an explanation for this.”

“I can’t wait to hear it,” Oberyn commented, sounding significantly less angry than her father.  He hadn’t been the one fielding complaints and panicked concerns about the sudden changes to the lands of Dorne.

Doran just glared at his brother for a moment before turning his steely gaze back at Daemon.

“This all goes back to my scuffle with the Ironborn,” Daemon began.

“Will I ever stop hearing about that?” Doran groaned.

“Probably after this,” Daemon replied. “You’ll recall that in the immediate aftermath of the incident, a number of rumors spread about it.  Arianne said that most of them reached your ear.”

“Yes,” Doron snorted. “At the time, I thought that it was mostly nonsense, but the only one that appears to be untrue was that madness about you fighting their god.”

Daemon looked away for a moment, and Doran slammed his hand down on his heavy desk. “No!  I can believe that you repelled an assault from the entire Iron Fleet, that you led a counter assault on some of the pirate keeps, and that you looted a fortune in gold, jewels, and arms, but I refuse to believe that you fought a fucking god!”

“It wasn’t much of a fight,” Daemon chuckled.  Just as her father looked like he was going to turn beet red in anger, he held up his hand and continued, “I didn’t fight the Drowned God.  That would have been well beyond me, but there was an...incident.”

“What happened?” Doran asked.

“You recall the story of Garin the Great?” Daemon asked.

“It’s one of the most pivotal tales in the history of my people; of course I do,” Doran replied dryly.

“Then you’ll remember that when all was lost for the Rhoynar and Garin’s forces were utterly defeated, he called upon his goddess to smite his foes at the cost of his life,” Daemon said. “It turns out that such a thing wasn’t unique to Garin or to Mother Rhoyne.”

“What do you mean?” her father asked.

“As we were departing from the Iron Islands, we happened to notice a great gathering of priests on Old Wyk,” Daemon explained. “I knew from what I had read of them that the religion of the Ironborn has never had any holy texts like the Seven Pointed Star and that it has always been an oral tradition.  Since most of their wretched, rapist culture comes from their religion, I figured that if we killed them all, with their nobility crushed and a transfer of power all but assured, that it might help put an end to their pillaging ways.”

Daemon paused for a moment, taking a sip of his wine before continuing, “we took them by surprise, or seemed to at least, but as we reached the last one, he shouted out to the sea for his god to take his life and use it to destroy us all.  He then took a cup of what I assume was seawater and inhaled it.”

“What happened next?” Oberyn asked, by then openly curious.

“He started to change,” Daemon said, his voice sounding grim.  Arianne had heard the tale before, and he never failed to sound haunted by this part.  “These things, like little tentacles, burst from his jaw, making him bleed, and his eyes turned black.  He started growing taller, and when one of our men tried to rush him, the very sea burst forth to push him away.  He started screaming as the transformation was apparently as unpleasant as it looked.”

“You said that you didn’t fight him, though,” Doran said.

“He was twelve feet tall by the time I thought of something,” Daemon said. “None of us could reach him, and I knew that if whatever the fuck was happening to him was allowed to finish, we’d all be in dire trouble.  I had a dagger on me, a Valyrian steel one that I had taken from one of the keeps that we looted, and I hoped that if I threw it, it might get through where we could not.  I ordered a few of them to try to rush him from the side and distract him, and then, while his attention was on them, I threw the blade as hard as I could.  It struck true, getting buried deep between the beast’s ribs, and the sea went still.”

“You killed a god?” Oberyn asked, sounding stunned.

“I doubt it, though the Bear Islanders have taken to calling me godslayer,” Daemon said, rolling his eyes. “The transformation wasn’t finished, and whatever that priest was in the process of becoming, he was still mortal, and a knife in the heart turned out to be as fatal for him as it should be.  We cut off his head to send to the Citadel for study and made no further stops on our way back to Bear Island.”

“So what does this have to do with you turning Dorne into the bloody Reach?” Doran asked.

“I think it’s more like the Vale, really...nevermind,” Daemon said, earning another glare from her father. “When I pulled the dagger out of the beast’s heart, it was stained yellow.  The transformation had turned the priest’s blood into this viscous, golden liquid, and no matter how many times I washed the damn thing, I couldn’t get it off.  When I got here, I started looking through old Rhoynish texts and came across a scroll on your people’s old water magic.”

“We haven’t successfully wielded anything like that since before we came to Westeros,” Doran said.

“Anyone with Rhoynish blood can, it turns out,” Daemon said. “The scroll spoke of the need for a great catalyst to achieve any such feats of magic, and I figured that a dagger stained with the blood of a god would count.”

“So you two, after returning from moons abroad, decided to travel to the center of Dorne and do this?” Doran asked, pointing outside again. “Why?”

“To be honest, Father, we didn’t think that it would do this much,” Arianne said. “When Daemon brought me the idea, I was curious and wanted to see what would happen, but I didn’t truly expect anything.”

“I thought that we might make a little oasis in the desert,” Daemon said. “I certainly didn’t think that it would extend to all of Dorne, but there were factors that we didn’t take into consideration.  Our inability to limit the spell was one of them.”

“There is a reason why the Faith holds magic to be dangerous,” Doran growled. “Do you have any idea how livid the Septons are about this?”

“When are the Septons ever not livid?”Arianne asked herself mentally before she could catch herself.  Daemon really was rubbing off on her.

“You could always claim that this is a miracle from the gods,” Arianne suggested.

“I could if not for all the fucking weirwoods,” Doran snarled. “It doesn’t help that you two pulled this stunt off on the holiest day in the old Rhoynish faith.  Many among the Orphans of the Greenblood are taking the spreading of weirwoods along their river on Mother’s Day as a sign from their goddess that she has become one with the Old Gods and have started worshiping them.  Why weirwoods anyway?”

“They’re not all weirwoods,” Daemon said. “Another thing that we didn’t realize is that one doesn’t need all that much Rhoynish blood to wield their magics.  Descending from Myriah Martell, even though that was many generations ago, gave me enough Rhoynish blood to unwittingly affect the spell.”

“The Orphans weren’t followers of the Seven to begin with, so it is not as though the Septons have lost Dornish followers to this,” Arianne reasoned. “Their ire will surely dissipate in time, and I cannot imagine that the people at large are terribly upset to live in a more arable land.  They certainly won’t be after the next harvest, anyway.”

“The people aren’t terribly upset, though your spell wasn’t without consequences,” Doran replied. “South of Skyreach, there is now a vast lake.  There was a band of men traveling through the area at the time, and while most escaped the water, not all did.  I don’t know yet if there were any more losses, but Gerold Dayne died.”

Arianne felt her heart sink. “What?”

“I found out this morrow,” Doran said gravely. “Lord Ulrick wants answers as much as the septons do.”

“Um, my prince?” Edric piped up.

“Yes,” Doran replied, giving him leave to speak.  He was in the room solely because he had been with them when they did their spell and was a noble heir.

“I guarantee that my father isn’t actually that upset,” Edric said. “He has to investigate it for appearance sake, but no one really liked cousin Gerold.”

“Be that as it may, it’s still a loss, technically at the hands of my heir,” Doran said, glaring at her. “Thank the gods, word hasn’t spread yet of your involvement.  The men who informed me that you were spotted returning from the epicenter of all of this are loyal.”

“I…” Arianne went to say, unable to find the words.

“Edric?” Daemon asked. “With Gerold gone, that leaves just four Daynes, right?”

“Yes,” Edric replied. “Aside from myself and Father, all that’s left of us is uncle Arthur and aunt Allyria.”

“So would Allyria be the next lady of Gerold’s keep?  I don’t recall its name,” Daemon asked.

“High Hermitage, my Prince,” Edric replied, “and I suppose so.  The lord of that keep is usually known as the Knight of High Hermitage, and Allyria can’t be a knight, but I guess my father could make her lady of it.”

“And she’s not yet married, correct?” Daemon asked, an idea clearly bouncing around his devious head.

“Not that I know of, my prince,” Edric said. “We’ve been away a while, but last I knew, she wasn’t even promised to anyone yet.”

“Then there might be an idea to help placate House Dayne and stop them from looking too closely into this, while actually gaining House Martell something in the process.”

“Go on,” Doran prompted him.

“Provided that she is to be the lady of High Hermitage, you could wed Quentyn to her,” Daemon said.

“I’ll admit that Gerold’s death will demand some sort of recompense if they find out about what happened, but giving them a prince of House Martell in marriage would be extreme,” Doran said.

“That’s not counting the benefits,” Daemon said, smiling. “High Hermitage sits nestled in a vast stretch of the Red Mountains, and they are full of a resource that Dorne could make significant use of.”

“They’re full of iron and little more,” Doran said.

“Iron might not be gold, but to some, it’s far more valuable,” Daemon said. “I remember reading as a boy that the Summer Isles have very little iron of their own and pay well for it.”

“What of it?” Doran asked.

“Dorne has a fleet now,” Daemon said. “If trade ties could be established between our lands, we could trade iron for valuable, exotic goods from the Isles that we could then sell to the rest of Westeros.  It could potentially be lucrative, and having a direct tie to such an iron-rich region would mean that House Martell could profit directly.”

For the first time since they arrived in his solar, her father looked something other than angry as he contemplated Daemon’s idea.

“If you like, Arianne and I could go and negotiate a tentative trade treaty,” Daemon suggested, and Arianne looked at him like he was mad.

“Absolutely not!” Doran snarled, his anger returning in full. “You two and everyone else who accompanied you on your travels are staying in Dorne, no, in Sunspear!  You’ve been away too long, and I want you well within my sight, something your royal father will agree with me on.”

He took a calming breath and turned to Oberyn, saying, “that said, I think there is some merit to the idea.  Would you be willing to sail down to the Summer Isles and see if there might be some benefit to establishing ties between us?”

“Would I be willing to travel to a land that’s home to some of the most passionate women in the world?” Oberyn asked rhetorically. “I think you could talk me into it.”

Oberyn had been almost entirely calm throughout the entire exchange, probably glad not to be the source of her father’s irritation as he frequently was.

Doran gave Oberyn a long-suffering look before turning back to Daemon and Arianne. “That will be all for now.  I’m going to be staying in this Sunspear for a while as I deal with the fallout of this mess.  I’ll call on you if I need anything else.”

Summarily dismissed, Arianne made her way out of the solar, her mind still clouded by what she had learned.

“Edric, run along; I need to speak with my wife,” Daemon commanded.  As soon as the boy was gone, he turned to her and asked, “are you alright?”

“Daemon we...” Arianne cried. “We…”

“Didn’t know,” Daemon finished, wrapping his arms around her. “Things grew out of our control and went far further than we intended.  Let’s just hope that no one else was hurt.”

“Gods, I hope so,” she whispered.

He walked her back to their chambers and poured her a cup of wine, which she accepted gladly and downed quickly.  Gerold had been her lover once, and while they had only slept together a few times and hadn’t been terribly close, the idea that she had had a hand in his death hit her hard.

“Why did you ask him if we could go to the Summer Isles?” Arianne asked. “If he had said yes…”

“There was no way in all the hells that he was going to say yes to letting us sail off again so soon,” Daemon snorted. “I hoped that giving him something to deny me would make him more likely to say yes the next time we bring something to him.”

“How long do you think that will be?” Arianne asked. “Your initial plan might need adjusting, given everything.”

“Two or three weeks should still be enough time for your father to calm down,” Daemon said. “This went far beyond the oasis we had planned and had some terrible consequences, but our plan remains the same.  The septons are furious, and your father will undoubtedly be willing to accept a plan that could see us try to placate them.”

She poured herself more wine and contemplated his words.  He was probably right about how long it would take her father to relax, unless it turned out that what they did had more dire consequences than they knew, and then they’d be off on their next adventure.  After all, the core of Daemon’s plan to weaken the slave trade lay not in the Summer Isles but in Andalos.

*****

Vast, empty plains stretched eastward from the narrow sea.  Green and fertile-looking, the land was nonetheless sparsely populated.  Large rivers that he knew to be the headwaters of the Little Rhoyne and the Upper Rhoyne lay in his path as he glided along.  The Little Rhoyne divided a section of plains from the hills to the east, while the upper Rhoyne ran through those famous hills that had once been home to the kingdom of Hugor of the Hill, if the histories of the Andals were to be believed.

He circled the region again and again, as he had been doing for the past few days, looking over a fast-growing settlement.  There had been a few options that he found when he scouted the area from the air the first time several weeks ago.  The one he had settled on lay in the Velvet Hills and suited his needs quite well.  Not only was it closer to the sea than the other options, but it was also so remarkably defensible that he was surprised that there wasn’t already a settlement built on it.

A low, verdant valley in the middle of a patch of rocky, uneven terrain up against the Little Rhoyne, the area was just barely large enough to build anything substantial on, which probably explains the lack of prior construction.  The rocky land provided natural defenses against horses, being too hazardous for any creatures save for goats to traverse well, and the entrance to the valley was narrow and quite easy to defend.  On the other side of that narrow path between the rocks was a small, open plain leading to the next hill right beyond it.  The only other path into the valley was through the river itself, and the waters were too deep for horses to pass through.  It was an ideal place to build if you expected to be attacked by large forces of cavalry, which, of course, he did.

Once he had settled on the location, he dispatched men and resources well ahead of his arrival.  It would be moons before the settlement was anything significant, but as it stood, it was better than it would be if he had waited until he arrived to begin construction.  He scouted around to make sure that there weren’t any armed bands headed their way just yet, and, once convinced that they were safe for the moment, he turned and flew back towards the Silence.

“Welcome back,” Tyene panted as he returned to his own body, her gorgeous tits bouncing on her chest as she rode him.

“What a welcoming sight,” Daemon chuckled, craning his neck forward to catch a nipple between his lips.

The girls had been far less bothered by his warging when they discovered that his body worked just as well in that state as it did normally.  He had laughed harder than he knew a dog could when he, while inhabiting Ghost’s body, heard the telltale signs of Obara fucking him during their journey back from Slaver’s Bay.

Looking around, he noticed Bellegere laying on top of Missandei and kissing her passionately while she slowly rubbed her clit against the other girl’s while Arianne sat on Nymeria’s face and Obara lounged on her own, a dazed, happy look on her face as his seed oozed from her cunt.

“Have they made progress?” Arianne asked.

“Yes,” Daemon said.  Smacking Tyene’s arse hard enough to make her scream, he growled, “on your hands and knees.  I want to fuck this sweet cunt while you lick Nym.”

“Yes, Daemon,” she squeaked, her cunt pulsating.  She climbed off of him and scrambled between the other sand snake’s spread legs.

Daemon made his way over to her and sank back inside her in one long, hard thrust.  He sunk his fingers into her wonderfully fleshy hips and started fucking the beautiful blonde hard and fast.

“Considering how little time they’ve had, it’s actually quite impressive what they’ve accomplished,” Daemon said. “We’ll have enough buildings to lodge everyone when we get there.”

“That’s...ah...good,” Arianne moaned, grinding her cunt on Nymeria’s skilled mouth.

“Moremoremore, yes!” he heard Missandei cry.  Looking over, he saw her shaking and writhing under Bellegere as pleasure coursed through her body.  It had taken a while to convince the Naathi beauty to join in their group fun, but she had taken to it like a fish to water once she grew confident enough to try.

“You’re so beautiful when you cum, Missandei,” Bellegere cooed.

“Are you close?” Missandei asked, brushing her fingers through the other woman’s curly hair.

“Very,” Bellegere moaned softly.

“Sit on my face?” Missandei asked, still shier than the rest of them at expressing herself.

“My darling, that’s not something you ever have to ask,” Bellegere giggled, crawling up to move her smooth cunt onto the other woman’s eager mouth.  She had liked the look of Missandei’s cunt so much that she had started shaving as well.  None of the others were so enthused, and Daemon didn’t care either way.  As far as he was concerned, all cunt was beautiful.

“Oh gods, harder, Daemon!” Tyene begged.

He pushed her head back down towards Nymeria’s cunt and picked up his pace, pounding her cunt like it owed him gold.  He could hear her muffled shrieks and screams as she soared towards her peak.

“Gods, yes!” Arianne screamed as she came, bucking and convulsing on Nymeria’s beautiful face.

“DAEMON!” Tyene squealed at the top of her lungs, a geyser of her juices erupting from her cunt, soaking his balls.  The fluttering and squeezing of her already tight tunnel was too much for him, and he let loose with a loud, wordless groan, flooding her sweltering depths with his hot, white seed.

He pulled out of her and collapsed next to her, resting his head on Nymeria’s pale thigh.

“Fucking hells, I was so close!” Nymeria growled, sounding thoroughly frustrated.

Daemon pushed an insensate Tyene over and lowered himself to Nymeria’s wet womanhood.  Wrapping his lips around her throbbing clit, he sucked it into his mouth and flicked his tongue over it just the way that he knew she liked.

“Cumming!” she cried a moment later, clearly right on the cusp of her pleasure when Tyene’s brain shut down.  Her thighs clamped around his head, and he barely heard Bellegere cry out in ecstasy a few seconds later.

“Even watching you all is fun,” Obara laughed, having come to at some point during all the debauchery.

Arianne rested her head on Nymeria’s flat stomach and looked down at Daemon.  “This is much more fun than braiding your hair, no?”

Daemon just looked at her flatly, earning a laugh from his gorgeous wife.  That had been the first thing that they did to him after getting over their initial apprehension about him warging.  Needless to say, he was much happier with them getting him hard and riding him like some sort of life-sized doll.  He heard an eagle shriek and smiled.

“If Brynden’s already here, then we must be very close to shore,” Arianne said.

“We are,” Daemon confirmed.

“Does that mean we have to get dressed?” Nymeria asked, sitting up and stretching her arms over her head.

Daemon watched the arousing display, wanting nothing more than to pick up the brunette and fuck her until she passed out, and sighed.

“Alas,” he said.

Nymeria smirked and spanked Tyene hard, making her wake with a cry. “Get up and get dressed.”

Tyene blinked owlishly and blushed at the brunette. “Sorry Nym.  It just felt so good.”

She moaned the last word and rolled onto her back, winking at Daemon, who felt his cock twitch.

Daemon shuddered and finished getting dressed.  As much as he would have enjoyed watching them help each other get dressed, he figured that he should see how close they really were and left, running into Edric as he did.

“Oh,” Edric said. “I was just about to tell you, my prince.”

“We’re close to Essos?” he asked, not wanting to hint at the fact that he knew already.

“Yes,” Edric said. “Prince Daemon?”

“What is it?” Daemon asked, picking up on his squire’s unease.

“I’ve been reading some of the scrolls you brought on the Dothraki and…” he looked away, not wanting to voice his obvious fear.

“The Dothraki are an unparalleled threat on an open field,” Daemon said, “but we won’t be facing them on an open field.  I’m setting a trap for the various Khalasars that will leave them at a terrible, fatal disadvantage.”

“Are you sure that they’ll fall for it?” the boy asked.

“Oh, I’m sure,” Daemon said confidently. “For nearly four centuries, these marauders have had nearly free reign throughout Essos.  With the corpulent merchant lords of the Free Cities too weak to oppose them, they have only experienced true defeat a handful of times as they put cities to the torch, enslaved countless people, and extorted those weak lords of fortunes that would make the Lannisters envious.  That kind of multi-generational success can breed laziness, complacency, and stupidity.  I’ll be surprised if the first few Khalasars even think twice about attacking the settlement I plan to build.”

“How many do you plan to do battle with?” Edric asked.

“As many as will be drawn in,” Daemon replied. “They are, according to every text I’ve come across, fiercely independent and prone to fighting with each other when they grow restless.  That said, I’m sure they’ll realize that attacking us is a bad idea eventually, at which point I’ll set up the waypoint shrine I’ve promised and leave with the treasure I’ve taken from them.”

“And all of this is about weakening the slave trade?” Edric asked.

“I want to see what impact eliminating a few khalasars has on the trade,” Daemon explained. “They are apparently a vital part of the supply chain, and I’m looking to test the trade at large for weaknesses to see what else I could do.  I cannot war with all of Essos to bring it down and will need to move more covertly to achieve what I want, and that requires careful testing.”

“I doubt this is what Father had in mind when he sent me to squire for you,” Edric chuckled.

“No, but it will be useful for you all the same,” Daemon replied. “Stay close to me in the battles to come, and you’ll gain experience few of your peers could claim to have.”

“I’ve never killed before,” Edric said.

“A problem we’ll correct soon,” Daemon said. “You are becoming quite the swordsman, though, and your skill with a spear will exceed mine soon at the rate you’re progressing.  You’ll be quite the knight some day, and by the time you enter your next squire’s tourney, you’ll be a blooded warrior, far beyond your competitors.”

Edric smiled and nodded, clearly feeling better about what he was getting into.  Daemon led his squire up to the deck and chuckled as Brynden immediately shrieked and flew over to land on his outstretched arm.  Doing this with a bird this large normally would be unwise, but he had bonded well with the massive eagle over the last couple of moons.  He scratched at the small, soft feathers around the bird’s head and chuckled at how he preened under the attention.  A sudden whining by his feet got his attention, and he saw Ghost looking up at him expectantly.

“I hope he doesn’t get this jealous of our babes to be,” Arianne laughed as she joined him. “He’ll be much larger by then.”

Reaching down, she scratched behind the growing wolf’s ears, earning happy panting from him.

“Ghost is a good boy,” Daemon said as he beckoned Brynden to fly over to the middle mast.  He knelt and picked Ghost up, scratching his ears as he cradled the wolf in his arms. “This is something I won’t be able to do much longer.”

“You hold me well enough,” Arianne whispered in his ear.

“You’re not the size of a pony,” Daemon chuckled, setting Ghost down.

*****

The settlement that he had decided to call Hugorton, as a nod to the Faith, was far from impressive, with wooden structures fit for housing but a step down from even Planky Town.  Even his keep, the half-finished thing that it was, perched atop the tallest hill in the village, would end up looking like the Mormont Keep rather than anything grand.

The men working away were young without exception.  They were Dornishmen that he had impressed with the wealth he gained in Essos and lured to this little expedition with promises of loot.  It was never difficult to find ambitious second sons willing to go afield to make something of themselves.  These men would end up fighting, most likely, but their primary purpose was to labor and feed the real army.

His Unsullied were assembled, aiding the workers where they could and patrolling the outpost.

“You’re lucky that the moons at sea have made me grow accustomed to living without luxury,” Arianne said dryly as she looked over the half-built settlement.

“It shouldn’t be for terribly long,” Daemon assured her. “A few moons, and we’ll be able to take what we’ve plundered and return to Dorne for good.”

“And you really think that this will damage the slave trade?” Arianne asked.

“I think that the plan has merit,” Missandei piped up. “Kraznys dealt with the Dothraki many times during my time with him.  If their numbers are greatly reduced, it will impact the flow of slaves, and that’s not a bad way to test how it reacts to stresses.”

“You know, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Obara said. “Uncle Doran thinks we’re here to set up a shrine in Andalos to appease the Faith...”

“Technically, my father thinks we’re here to meet with the Pentoshi to negotiate that,” Arianne interrupted her.

“Right,” Obara said dismissively. “What do the Pentoshi think we’re doing?”

“The agent I sent to them bribed the magisters to let us set up a mining colony,” Daemon said. “Which, in a way, we are.”

“What would we be mining?” Nymeria asked, sounding amused.

“Women,” Daemon replied with a grin.

“How does one mine women?” Bellegere asked, chuckling.

“Well, imagine, if you will, that women are a vein of gold in the side of a mountain, and their men are the rocks around them,” Daemon said. “You take a pickaxe, or sword in my case, and…”

“I think we get it, dearest,” Arianne interrupted him.

“Does that mean you intend to take the women?” Tyene asked with a look of mischief on her face.

“Not the way that you mean, but yes,” Daemon said.

“Wait, what?” Arianne asked.

“I originally planned to send them on their way,” Daemon said, “but with Dorne made green and capable of sustaining a larger population, I think that I’ll just bring them back with us and distribute around the land.”

“Father might actually appreciate that,” Arianne said. “He’s been concerned about the interest that Dorne’s more usable land will bring and having a way to quickly increase our population will be a boon, especially if we bring back enough to treasure to pay for their settlement.”

“I’ve just been thinking of it as my way of adding sands back to Dorne.” Daemon said with a grin.

“That’s terrible,” Arianne groaned.

“I don’t get it,” Missandei said.

“My prince,” Andrey Dalt said, approaching quickly.

The younger brother of the Knight of Lemonwood, Andrey, was a pleasant enough sort, and though heir to his brother, the newlywed Ser Deziel was likely to have children soon, leaving Andrey with less than ideal prospects.  The greening of Dorne meant that vast swaths of newly arable land were available for the taking, and it hadn’t been difficult to convince the young man that he could make enough of a fortune to build a keep with this venture.  Once he had sworn to keep his knowledge of the true extent of the expedition to himself, Daemon dispatched Andrey to treat with the Pentoshi and begin construction of the settlement.

As Arianne informed Missandei of what else Sand meant in Dorne, Daemon went to speak with his emissary.

“Well met,” he said in greeting. “I trust you had little difficulty convincing the Pentoshi Magisters to allow us to build here.”

“It was oddly easy, my prince,” Andrey said.

“I suspected that it would be,” Daemon commented. “Show me our defenses.”

“Why did you think they’d agree so easily?” Andrey asked. “These lands are there’s, though they barely use them, and we are foreigners.  I imagine that if Myrish men came to Prince Doran and asked to build a town somewhere in Dorne, he’d react poorly.”

“Tell me, why do you think these lands are so sparsely settled?” Daemon asked.

“To be honest, my prince, I don’t know,” Andrey replied. “The lands are rich and fertile-looking.  Much could be made of them.”

“Pentos has under its control most of what was once the Kingdom of Andalos and the southern marches beyond their old borders,” Daemon said. “If they made full use of all this land, they would be one of the wealthiest of the Free Cities, possibly the wealthiest one.”

“Why don’t they, then?” Andrey asked.

“The Dothraki,” Daemon replied. “The Dothraki are why they barely use all of this land, given that they would have to pay the horselords even more to keep peace with them than they already do if they had more here to lose, and the Dothraki are why they were so willing to take my gold and let us settle here.”

“They expect us to be slaughtered?!” Andrey exclaimed, as he caught on.

“Oh, most certainly,” Daemon laughed. “The letter that I sent you with was worded specifically to give them the impression that I was a young, naive second son of a king, looking to set up my own fiefdom across the sea.  They were happy to indulge my stupidity, take my money, and let me die.”

“I could understand treating an enemy like that,” Andrey said, “but treating random people so callously?”

“The Pentoshi are slave owners,” Daemon said. “According to one of the slaves I freed, they don’t call them slaves, but they are an active part of the trade, and all slave owners are cunts; trust me there.”

“Sylva told me some of the horrors that the princess described to her,” Andrey said. “I honestly cannot fathom such needless cruelty.”

“Lord Tywin once slaughtered two entire families because they disrespected his own, and I suspect that even he would balk at what we witnessed in Slaver’s Bay,” Daemon spat.  Changing the subject, he said, “So the gatehouse looks solid.”

“It and the guard towers are what we focused on first,” Andrey said, pointing to the stone. “The terrain in this area is too uneven for horses, and so any cavalry coming our way will have to be funneled into the area you designated.  I have to ask, though, do you really expect anyone to fall for such an obvious trap?”

“I expect a great many to fall for it,” Daemon said, smirking.

*****

“The scouts confirmed it, my prince,” Grey Worm said. “They’ll be here within the hour.”

Daemon had tried to convince the Unsullied to pick new names after he freed them, thinking that it would be good for them, but they had insisted on keeping the last name they picked on the day they were freed.  Referring to his men by names of vermin was admittedly weird, but he figured that if it made them happy, then that was enough.  The gods knew that their lives had been miserable up to that point, so he wasn’t about to argue with them on the matter.

“My prince,” Blue Fly called as he rode back to camp. “The princess and her women are on the ship as ordered.”

Daemon nodded and signaled for the unsullied to get into position.  He was confident that his plan would work.  He had set up a death trap for cavalry and believed that this small Khalasar would rush into it without hesitation, allowing him and his army to crush them.  He also knew that the gods loved to fuck men who were confident in their plans, though, and he wasn’t about to risk Arianne or the others.  A rider would be sent out to inform them that the battle was won if it was.  Arianne and the others had taken a lot of convincing but had eventually promised to flee back to Dorne if no rider came after four days.

There was one notable exception among his women, who refused to even consider not joining the fight.  It was rare that being threatened made him laugh, but being told that his face was too pretty for what she’d do to it if he tried to keep Obara from the battle was funny.

“Nym’s going to be furious with you for a while, you know,” Obara said.

“I’ll make it up to her,” Daemon said. “She’s a capable fighter, but she’s ill-suited to this kind of combat, and her skill with a spear is nowhere near yours.”

“Well, however you plan to make it up to her, tonight you’re all mine,” Obara said. “I haven’t had a good fight in ages, and nothing beats fucking right afterward.”

“But what will I do after you’ve passed out?” Daemon asked teasingly.

Obara’s eyes narrowed, but she had no retort for that.  She knew as well as he that he could fuck her into a mindless stupor.  As she went to take her position, Daemon gave his army one last look.

The unsullied were the vanguard, standing in the center of the open pathway in a tight formation, spear and shield in hand.  They weren’t wearing the distinct armor that they had been when he acquired them all those weeks ago.  According to what he had read, the most noteworthy defeat that the Dothraki had suffered since their reign of terror began was at the hands of three thousand Unsullied.  He didn’t want to give the Khal and his men any reason for caution.

If Barristan caught sight of the formation Daemon had his soldiers in, the man’s first thought would be that his old protege was going as mad as his late grandfather.  There was plenty of room around them on either side, as if they were openly inviting their enemies to attempt a pincer attack.  As it turned out, that was precisely what the prince was hoping for.  The rounded plain in the middle of the jagged, stoney expanse all but invited incoming attackers to surround the defending force.  A seasoned commander would, at minimum, suspect a trap, realizing that things looked too good to be true.  Daemon just hoped that whatever Khal had taken notice of his people wouldn’t be so cautious.

The sound of thousands of galloping horses echoed through the land, preceding the first sight of the Dothraki.  They were an impressive sight, Daemon had to admit, as the throng of light cavalry gathered on the hill overlooking the only entrance to Hugorton.  Every Dothraki boy, from the moment he could ride a horse, was trained to be a brutal killer.

They had no tolerance for weakness, and from the lack of truly old men or women among the Khalasar, Daemon concluded that those unable to keep up with the rest were culled ruthlessly. They had no farmers among their numbers, no builders or craftsmen, nothing but warriors and women who, with the exception of the Khal’s wife, seemed to be shared among the group like camp whores.  All other jobs were done by slaves.  Even the Ironborn had homes to return to that they needed to have maintained, but the Dothraki moved from place to place, having no fixed dwelling save for Vaes Dothrak.  This lack of other concerns gave them the luxury of an absolute focus on combat.

It was this focus, this freedom from all distractions, that had made the Dothraki such a dangerous force.  The average Dothraki screamer had likely seen as much combat and bloodshed by the time he reached what the Westerosi would consider his majority than seasoned warriors twice his age back there.  That experience made them lethal, and the way they engaged in battles, moving like the wind with the bells in their hair and their enraged cries making them sound like thunder, made them terrifying.

They were not without weakness, though, and as the sound of their jeering and laughter reached all the way to Daemon and his troops, he smirked, realizing that he had correctly identified one.  They worshiped a horse god, and all of their culture revolved around horses.  Every text he had read on them stressed this point.  To be unable to ride a horse was to be fundamentally less in their eyes, and Daemon had arranged an army of infantry for them to attack.

Someone, presumably the Khal, barked an order, and dozens of Dothraki warriors came charging down the hill, screaming at the top of their lungs like madmen.

“Hold!” Daemon ordered, though surrounded mostly by Unsullied, he barely had to.

Spears at the ready, he and his soldiers held firm as they prepared to engage with the obvious probing attack.  He had his men standing tightly together, shields at the ready in case they needed to bunch together to ward of storms of arrows, but the Khal apparently deemed them unworthy of his archers.  Charging into a group of spearmen was generally ill-advised for cavalry, but even if the Dothraki lost a few men, they still would have potentially battered the group and left them open to a follow-up attack if they made contact.  As the first few Dothraki fell into the shallow spike traps arranged in front of Daemon’s men, though, there was little chance of that.

The Dothraki’s moment was ground to a halt as they crashed, not into the infantry they had been intending to attack, but into a wall of their own men.  Several warriors were thrown from their horses in the crash and into the waiting spears of Daemon’s men.

“Kill them all!” he bellowed, thrusting his own spear through the neck of the first man he met.  The soldiers moved as one, butchering anyone unfortunate enough to get within range.  The Dothraki were taken aback by the sudden shift in fortune and adapted poorly as they were met with a well-coordinated assault.

Daemon had had the Unsullied teach him how they were taught to fight and passed those lessons onto Edric and Obara.  To move as one with the unit they were fighting alongside was of paramount importance, and he had drilled them again and again until they were capable.

“Edric to your left!” he heard Obara bark and turned just in time to see his young squire plunge his spear through the chest of a man trying to slash at him.

“Good for him,” was all he had time to think before he was forced to duck under an arakh.  The spear of an Unsullied behind him finished off the man before he could try again, and Daemon took a deep breath as he realized that man had been the last of them.

He looked out at the hill, where thousands more suddenly very angry Dothraki watched their initial assault fail and bellowed for the others to get back in formation.  If the Khal was going to order his horse archers into the fray, this was the most likely time for him to do it, and Daemon decided to try using another one of the Dothraki’s apparent weaknesses against them.

Calling out as loudly as he could, Daemon started yelling an insult in the guttural language of the horselords out at them.  It didn’t translate well into Common, but according to Missandei, who had stammered and blushed her way through the explanation, the gist of it was that the person you were insulting preferred to be ridden by their stallion rather than ride him.  The Unsullied, Obara, and Edric soon joined in, yelling the insult in unison with him, their voices echoing across the plain.

The Dothraki grew audibly enraged in short order, and some started riding towards them before the Khal had even given the order.  The accounts of people who had spent time with the Dothraki had pretty much all made it clear that they were quick to take offense and respond with violence, and it appeared that they were correct.  The cavalry charge split into three groups, with one moving forward while the other two circled around to try and attack Daemon and his forces from three sides.  They clearly believed that the spike traps that the first group had come across were the only ones there.  In truth, they weren’t even the only ones in front of the defenders.

The sounds of mounted men falling into lethal traps and crashing into each other surrounded Daemon and the others, but those sounds were soon drowned out by a blaring horn.  Daemon steadied himself as the true battle began.  The man he had on the watch tower behind him had been given explicit orders to sound that horn only when the last of the Dothraki warriors had spilled into the carefully prepared killing field.  It was a signal for the rest of his men to begin their attack.  They spilled in from the tunnels dug under the jagged, uneven terrain and surrounded the Khalasar, who found themselves unable to move far as they were suddenly hit on all sides by arrows.

The Dothraki wore little in the way of armor and relied on their immense speed and ferocity to overwhelm their opponents.  Robbed of these advantages, they were nowhere near as much of a threat, and by the time they realized just how terrible of a trap they had rushed into, it was far too late.

Daemon caught sight of what he assumed was the Khal, given the length of his braid, and threw his spear through the man’s unarmored chest.  Drawing Nightsister, he was immediately beset by three enraged men coming towards him on foot.  Obara impaled the first one to reach them, and Daemon caught the arakh of the second on his shield, parrying with a thrust that the man barely dodged.

The third one tried to bury his curved blade in Daemon’s helmet with a downward slash, but the prince caught it on his blade, slicing clean through the metal.  The disarmed man barely had time to look at his broken sword before Daemon severed his head with a swift slash.  Obara bashed the second one in the head with her shield, and Daemon pierced his heart.

“That one was mine!” she growled.

“There are plenty of others out there,” Daemon chuckled.  Looking over at the battlefield, he said, “if we hurry, we might actually get a few of them.”

With their assailants surrounded and trapped, his forces had made quick work of them.  Less than an hour later, the battlefield was littered with the corpses of men and horses, and the ground turned to reddened mud.  The few still fighting were terribly outnumbered, a stark reversal of their initial fortune.  Daemon trudged through the bloody mess to reach his squire, just finishing off a half-dead Dothraki man that was giving him little trouble.

“You’ve handled yourself admirably today,” he said.

“Is it always like this?” Edric asked as his opponent succumbed to his injuries.

“Not at all,” Daemon replied. “It’s usually much worse.  I’ve yet to check, but I would wager we suffered very few casualties, especially considering that we were slightly outnumbered to begin with.”

“Your plan worked,” Edric said. “There is one thing that confuses me, though.”

“What’s that?” Daemon asked.

“You said that the Dothraki have been extorting the people of Essos for centuries, stealing fortunes in wealth and killing anyone who refused to pay them.” Edric said.

“Yes?” Daemon asked, wondering what point the boy was getting at.

“They didn’t demand anything,” Edric said. “They just attacked us.”

It wasn’t a question, but it certainly begged one.  In the excitement of battle, Daemon hadn’t even thought about it, but his squire was right.  The Khal had made no demands for tribute.  If he had, the prince would have told him to fuck his mother.  He wanted this fight, but the Khal had no way of knowing that.  So why hadn’t he made any demands?

“Our settlement doesn’t look particularly prosperous,” Daemon said. “He probably took one look at it and assumed that the most he could hope to get out of us was slaves.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Edric said.

His squire thought so, but Daemon didn’t.  The most troubling possibility that he could think of was that Pentos had sent the Khalasar to attack him, but that would have been madness.  If Daemon got himself killed in an idiotic expedition to Andalos, that was on him, but if the Pentoshi had a direct hand in it, the magisters would be inviting war with the Seven Kingdoms if they were caught.  They didn’t need to specifically send the Dothraki after him anyway, since he was likely to encounter them regardless.  So were the Pentoshi magisters just suicidally dishonorable, or did he have a specific enemy in the city that he didn’t know about?”

Perhaps it was neither, and the explanation he gave Edric was true.  At any rate, it was something to ponder.

“The cunts are all dead or dying,” Obara spat as she limped over to him.

“Are you hurt?” Daemon asked.

“One of them got a good kick in,” she said with a shrug.

“Grey Worm,” Daemon called, “order the men to kill the survivors, strip them of anything valuable, and pile them high.  We’ll burn them later.”

“Yes, my prince,” the Unsullied replied dutifully.

“You two come with me,” Daemon said. “Century, form up!”

The hundred Unsullied who made up his honor guard responded to the order almost instantly.  Daemon smiled at seeing that he hadn’t actually lost any of these particular unsullied and led his guards out over the hill.  As he expected, waiting for him on the other side was the caravan that made up the rest of that Khalasar.  Their women were waiting patiently with the slaves and their treasures.  He would have to wait for Missandei to actually communicate with them, but if the unfrightened looks on their faces wereany indication, he wasn’t going to have much difficulty.

Addressing the slaves in High Valyrian, he said, “the Khalasar fell against us.  Does anyone here speak both Valyrian and Dothraki?”

“Er...I do,” a well-built man said, surprised and stepping forward.

“What is your name?” Daemon asked.

“Babko Jatt, my lord,” the man said.

“So if I asked you to tell the Dothraki women that their men lost and they’re now ours, you could?” Daemon asked.

“Oh yes, I’m rather fluent in the tongue,” Babko said. “You’ll have little trouble with that too.  Half the women here belonged to another Khalasar that Khal Ogo defeated a few moons ago.  They joined this band without complaint.”

“Do so then,” Daemon said, watching as the man called out to the group in the tongue of the horselords.  The women looked a little surprised at first, probably at the idea that non-Dothraki had beaten them, but then looked at Daemon and his companions with hungry expressions.

“Why do they suddenly look like they want to fuck?” Daemon asked.

“They do want to fuck,” Babko chuckled. “It’s a rare battle that doesn’t end in sex among the Dothraki.”

“Everyone into the village!” Daemon commanded.  He added to Babko, “relay that order to them.”

Turning to his Unsullied, he said, “start moving their goods towards the outpost.  It’ll be pain in the arse to get wagons through all that mud, so go as far as you can and we’ll work something out when we have time.”

“Is it just me, or do the Dothraki women all look like they want to get bent over?” Obara asked.

Remembering that she didn’t understand a word of what was just said, Daemon replied, “apparently it’s common after battles among them.”

“Women after my own heart,” Obara chuckled. “Of course, they’ll have to wait their turn.”

“I’m well taken,” Daemon said dryly. “Edric, on the other hand, isn’t.  Take your pick of them, lad.”

“What?” the boy asked.

“You killed your first man today, so you might as well have your first woman too,” Daemon said.  He hadn’t taken his squire to a brothel yet because the boy had been even younger than he was when he first had a whore, but his nameday had passed on the journey to Andalos and he was the same age now that Daemon was then.

“Trust me, boy, there’s nothing like it after a fight,” Obara said, making his fair-haired squire blush.

“Alright then,” Edric said, trailing after the group.

“While your squire’s off to get his first taste of cunt, what say that we go keep your promise to me before the others arrive?” Obara asked.

“What promise was that?” Daemon asked teasingly.

She limped up to him, pulled off his helmet, staring right into his eyes, her own dark with lust, and said, “you know which one.”

He chuckled and kissed her deeply, knowing that his day was just beginning.