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GOT Chapter 72: A Sea of Riders and a Bride Alone
🕑 Added 2025-08-14 06:24:11 +0000 UTCThe grand wedding was set upon the grasslands beyond the outskirts of Pentos. It was held there because the Dothraki believed that all the g
The grand wedding was set upon the grasslands beyond the outskirts of Pentos.
It was held there because the Dothraki believed that all the great events in life should be witnessed beneath the open sky.
Yet as one of the two main figures of the ceremony, the bride, Daenerys Targaryen, felt only fear.
Before her stretched a sea of people—Khal Drogo had summoned all the warriors of his khalasar to attend his wedding, and they had come as promised.
There were well over forty thousand Dothraki riders, countless women and children, slaves, and the great numbers of livestock they had brought with them.
They spread out in every direction, an endless tide like a vast ocean.
Their arrival had devoured every scrap of food within sight of the sun, leaving the people of Pentos increasingly uneasy.
To this end, the magisters of Pentos had been forced to more than double the city’s guard, bringing the citizens only the barest sense of comfort.
By custom, the wedding feast began at dawn and would last until nightfall.
As the bride, Daenerys was placed beside Khal Drogo, the two of them seated high upon an earthen mound built between pavilions woven from grass.
Yet as she looked upon it all, her gaze was slightly vacant. Her thoughts drifted to a dream she had had some time ago.
In that dream, she had seen a dragon—and Viserys was there too, striking her, tormenting her.
She remembered being naked in the dream, cowering under Viserys’s fists, terrified and lost.
She had tried to run from him, but her body would not obey. She collapsed to the ground, warm blood flowing down her thighs.
All she could do was moan in helplessness.
Then, all at once, she had heard the sound of something tearing, followed by the roar of a great fire flaring to life, casting light over everything around her.
It was as if someone—or something—was answering her.
When she opened her eyes, Viserys was gone, but great pillars of flame rose all around her.
In the midst of the fire crouched a dragon.
As though it had sensed her gaze, the great beast slowly turned its head, molten eyes meeting hers.
The memory made her shudder, snapping her back to the present.
She had never been so afraid in her life—
Except now, at this very wedding.
The sounds of the world returned to her ears.
“I say we should hurry and marry Princess Daenerys off, before the wealth of Pentos ends up in the pockets of mercenaries and rogues,” Ser Jorah Mormont quipped nearby.
Ser Jorah was a burly man in his middle years, his skin darkened by the sun, the open front of his clothing revealing a thick mat of chest hair.
Though his hairline had begun to recede, he was still strong and broad
On the night Illyrio had sold Daenerys to Khal Drogo, Jorah had offered to serve Viserys—speaking as a knight living in exile.
Viserys, of course, had been quick to agree.
And so from that day on, Ser Jorah Mormont had remained at his side.
Hearing Mormont’s jest, Magister Illyrio chuckled softly, his beard quivering.
Viserys, however, kept a cold face as he looked up toward his sister, seated above him on the high dais. His tone was edged with open displeasure.
“If he’s so inclined, he can have her whenever he wants,” he said.
“So long as he keeps his word.”
“I’ve told you before—everything is already in order. Since the Khal has promised you a crown, he will keep that promise.”
Seeing Viserys still tossing such barbs at a time like this, Illyrio gave a weary wave of his plump hand, the rings on his thick fingers glinting in the light.
“Very well, but when will it be given?”
Viserys turned his head toward the wealthy magister before him, a man with a greasy, forked yellow beard and a mouthful of crooked, yellowed teeth.
“That will depend on the Khal,” Illyrio replied with a smile, reaching for a duck wing dripping with honey and fat.
“He will, of course, take the girl first. Then, after the wedding, he must lead his riders across the grasslands to bring her to the dosh khaleen at Vaes Dothrak.”
“After that, he should fulfill his promise—
If the omens favor war.”
Illyrio drawled the last words, then unceremoniously shoved the dripping wing into his mouth and began chewing. His beard was soon matted with honey and grease.
But Viserys, hearing the magister’s evasive tone, grew all the more impatient. He lowered his voice to a harsh growl from deep in his throat—the snarl of a sleeping dragon disturbed.
“I don’t give a damn about Dothraki omens. The Usurper sits on my father’s throne. I’ve waited long enough—how much longer must I wait?!”
His voice carried naked frustration, but Illyrio did not tremble before the young man’s dragon’s wrath as the silver-haired girl might have.
He tossed aside the bare duck bone, shrugged his broad shoulders, and looked at the “true dragon” before him with a voice that was soft, almost mockingly so.
“Great king, you have already waited most of your life. What are a few more months—
Or even a few more years?”
Illyrio’s strange, teasing tone only sharpened Viserys’s anger. Just as it seemed the young man might be goaded beyond reason, Ser Jorah Mormont, standing at his side, laid a hand on his shoulder to calm him.
“Your Grace, I advise you to be patient as well,” he said, nodding in agreement.
“The Dothraki keep their word—but always in their own way.
“A man of lower rank may ask the Khal for aid, but you must never presume to lecture him from above.”
It was clear the knight had his own way of soothing his new “master.”
Hearing Mormont’s words, Illyrio cast him a sidelong glance, a sly smile curling his lips.
Viserys, however, seized on the change of target, turning to Mormont and hissing under his breath, “Mormont, you’d best mind your tongue—or I’ll have it cut out.”
“I am no man of low station. I am the rightful king of the Seven Kingdoms. A true dragon does not bow or bend the knee!”
At his outburst, Ser Jorah lowered his eyes respectfully.
Illyrio only smiled in that secretive way of his.
Hearing their exchange, Daenerys, on the high dais, instinctively turned her gaze toward them.
The true dragons are gone… she thought, staring at her brother, her slender fingers clenching the rich silk of her gown.
Noticing her eyes upon him, and not yet finished venting his anger, Viserys turned his head toward her on the mound.
He sat just below her, dressed in a new black wool tunic embroidered with a crimson dragon on the chest. At his waist hung a borrowed sword, its hilt set with gaudy gemstones.
Daenerys looked at her brother and saw, clear in those pale violet eyes, the fire of his temper.
She knew he resented sitting beneath her, and could not bear that every time the servants brought food, they served Khal and his bride first—leaving him the leavings afterward.
But beyond nursing his anger, there was nothing he could do.
So he sat there, stewing, his expression worsening with every fresh wound to his pride.
Daenerys had no time to dwell on him. Surrounded by the vast sea of people, she had never felt so utterly alone.
Viserys had told her to smile, so she forced herself to keep one fixed on her face—
Until the muscles in her cheeks ached, and the tears began to slip, unbidden, from her eyes.
She fought to hide them. She knew how furious Viserys would be if he saw, and she feared even more how Khal Drogo might react.
One by one, the platters of food brought to her she waved away. Her stomach was a tight, churning knot; she could not swallow a thing.
No one sat beside her to talk, to ease her loneliness.
Khal Drogo laughed and shouted down to his bloodriders, bellowing in answer to their jests—but never once did he look at the bride at his side.
She could not understand a word. She did not speak Dothraki, and the Khal knew only a few phrases of the Valyrian of the Free Cities.
So she sat in her wedding gown, a cup of honeyed wine in hand, unmoving, speaking only to herself in her mind.
I am the blood of the dragon. I am Daenerys Stormborn, Princess of Dragonstone, with the blood of Aegon the Conqueror in my veins…
It was not until she saw the first man die that the sun had moved only a quarter of the way across the sky.
The drums thundered. Women danced to amuse the Khal.
Drogo’s face was without expression, but his eyes followed their movements, and now and again he would slip a bronze medallion from his belt and toss it toward them, spurring the dancers into fierce struggles to claim it.
Other warriors looked on with interest.
Then came the sight that made Daenerys’s eyes widen.
From the crowd, a warrior strode into the circle of dancers. He reached over one woman’s shoulder, shoved her to the ground—
And there, before all, mounted her as a stallion mounts a mare.
At the sight, Daenerys suddenly remembered what Illyrio had warned her of before.
“The Dothraki mate no differently than the animals they herd."
"And within the khalasar there is no such thing as privacy. Their notions of sin and shame are nothing like ours.”
