A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

away. The others flitted about Drogo, closer and closer. The
khal
did not react. His eyes were fixed on distant brown hills, the reins loose in his hands. Beneath his painted vest, a plaster of fig leaves and caked blue mud covered the wound on his breast. The herbwomen had made it for him. Mirri Maz Duur’s poultice had itched and burned, and he had torn it off six days ago, cursing her for a
maegi
. The mud plaster was more soothing, and the herbwomen made him poppy wine as well. He’d been drinking it heavily these past three days; when it was not poppy wine, it was fermented mare’s milk or pepper beer.
    Yet he scarcely touched his food, and he thrashed and groaned in the night. Dany could see how drawn his face had become. Rhaego was restless in her belly, kicking like a stallion, yet even that did not stir Drogo’s interest as it had. Every morning her eyes found fresh lines of pain on his face when he woke from his troubled sleep. And now this silence. It was making her afraid. Since they had mounted up at dawn, he had said not a word. When she spoke, she got no answer but a grunt, and not even that much since midday.
    One of the bloodflies landed on the bare skin of the
khal’s
shoulder. Another, circling, touched down on his neck and crept up toward his mouth. Khal Drogo swayed in the saddle, bells ringing, as his stallion kept onward at a steady walking pace.
    Dany pressed her heels into her silver and rode closer. “My lord,” she said softly. “Drogo. My sun-and-stars.”
    He did not seem to hear. The bloodfly crawled up under his drooping mustache and settled on his cheek, in the crease beside his nose. Dany gasped,
“Drogo,”
Clumsily she reached over and touched his arm.
    Khal Drogo reeled in the saddle, tilted slowly, and fell heavily from his horse. The flies scattered for a heartbeat, and then circled back to settle on him where he lay.
    â€œNo,” Dany said, reining up. Heedless of her belly for once, she scrambled off her silver and ran to him.
    The grass beneath him was brown and dry. Drogo cried out in pain as Dany knelt beside him. His breath rattled harshly in his throat, and he looked at her without recognition. “My horse,” he gasped. Dany brushed the flies offhis chest, smashing one as he would have. His skin burned beneath her fingers.
    The
khal’s
bloodriders had been following just behind them. She heard Haggo shout as they galloped up. Cohollo vaulted from his horse. “Blood of my blood,” he said as he dropped to his knees. The other two kept to their mounts.
    â€œNo,” Khal Drogo groaned, struggling in Dany’s arms. “Must ride. Ride. No.”
    â€œHe fell from his horse,” Haggo said, staring down. His broad face was impassive, but his voice was leaden.
    â€œYou must not say that,” Dany told him. “We have ridden far enough today. We will camp here.”
    â€œHere?” Haggo looked around them. The land was brown and sere, inhospitable. “This is no camping ground.”
    â€œIt is not for a woman to bid us halt,” said Qotho, “not even a
khaleesi.”
    â€œWe camp here,” Dany repeated. “Haggo, tell them Khal Drogo commanded the halt. If any ask why, say to them that my time is near and I could not continue. Cohollo, bring up the slaves, they must put up the
khal’s
tent at once. Qotho—”
    â€œYou do not command me,
Khaleesi,”
Qotho said.
    â€œFind Mirri Maz Duur,” she told him. The godswife would be walking among the other Lamb Men, in the long column of slaves. “Bring her to me, with her chest.”
    Qotho glared down at her, his eyes hard as flint. “The
maegi.”
He spat. “This I will not do.”
    â€œYou will,” Dany said, “or when Drogo wakes, he will hear why you defied me.”
    Furious, Qotho wheeled his stallion around and galloped off in anger … but Dany knew he would return with Mirri Maz Duur, however little he might like it. The slaves erected Khal Drogo’s tent beneath a jagged outcrop of black rock whose shadow gave some relief from the heat of the afternoon sun. Even so, it was stifling under the sandsilk as Irri and Doreah helped Dany walk Drogo inside. Thick patterned carpets had been laid down over the ground, and pillows scattered in the corners. Eroeh, the timid girl Dany had rescued outside the mud walls of the Lamb Men, set up a brazier. They stretched