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Published:2020-04-25Updated:2026-04-06Words:409,591Chapters:71/?Comments:5,535Kudos:6,016Bookmarks:1,658Hits:466,752
The Stormborn and the Stormbringer
SkilledWarriorKiwi
Chapter 10: Fall of Meereen
Chapter Text
"Missandei, have my zorse saddled. Your mount as well."
The golden eye scribe bowed, her bushy curls bouncing with the movement, "As Your Grace commands. Shall I summon your bloodriders to guard you?"
"Ser Barristan shall accompany us. I do not mean to leave the camps."
Daenerys' pavilion had been set up besides the sea, between the Dothraki and Unsullied camps. Burnt olive trees were scattered around her pavilion, burnt husks swaying slightly in the salty breeze. The afternoon sun glinted off the golden harpy watching over them all from the top of the Great Pyramid and she felt a flurry of hatred for the masters hiding within the walls of the city.
As she, Missandei and Barristan began to make their way through the camp- Missandei seated upon the back of a strawberry mare and Barristan upon his grey gelding -as they passed the encampment of the Unsullied she could hear Grey Worm and the other sergeants running one of the company through a series of drills with sword and shield. Another section of the Unsullied were bathing in the sea; the eunuchs were very clean, Daenerys had noticed. Each evening after their march they'd bathed in the river they followed or in the shore. Some of the sellswords of Ben Plumm or Daario reeked as if they'd not bathed or changed clothes for months on end. If there had been no water then the Unsullied cleaned themselves down with sand, like the Dothraki.
The Unsullied knelt as she passed, calloused fists pressed against their chests to which Daenerys returned the gesture. South of the Unsullied and small Dothraki were the freemen which was much more chaotic. Children darted behind her striped one like birds, skipping and laughing in high voices. The freemen greeted her as 'mother' and asked for boons or favours. Other prayed for their Gods to bless her or asked her to bless them. Others called for her child, who hung high above in the sky, many voicing that he was a gift from the Gods themselves. Daenerys greeted them warmly, touching their hands with her own when they raised them, letting them touch her boots or shins as from their murmurs it seemed they saw good luck in her touch.
Daenerys had pulled her striped one to a halt in order to speak to a pregnant woman, who wished for the Mother of Dragons to name her unborn babe, when she felt a hand seize her wrist. Turning she saw a man with a sunburnt face and shaved head who'd seized her. She'd been about to say for him to not grip her so hard when he yanked hard and pulled her right from the saddle to send her painfully onto the ground which knocked the wind right from her lungs. Her zorse whinnied and backed away even as Daenerys went to push herself back up only to freeze when she spotted the sword only a few inches from her nose.
"There's the treacherous sow," the man sneered and Daenerys felt her heart jolt as she realized it was Mero, "I knew you'd come to get your feet kissed one day-"
Then Barristan was there, his sword flashing out in a blur of shining steel to snip off Mero's hand at the wrist before the man had even finished his gloat. The Titan's Bastard screamed and recoiled, blood pumping from the stump of his wrist as his severed hand fell to the ground, still gripping its sword. Daenerys, caught off guard by the sheer speed at which the old knight had moved, barely had time to blink before Barristan had her snatched up against his side to leap out of the way just as Ghidorah slammed down onto the ground with an ear splitting scream and a storm of dust and dirt with his great wings spread.
The freedmen scattered, even as Ghidorah's middle jaw snapped shut upon Mero's head to crush it like a grape even as his other heads began to rip the man limb from limb. The waves lapped at Ghidorah's clawed feet, the surf quickly washing away the gore and blood splattering the ground even as the freemen watched from the safety of the hilly dunes.
"Forgive me, Your Grace," Barristan said even as he carefully set her back on her feet, "He should never have gotten close enough to seize you. I was lax. I did not know him without his beard and hair."
Daenerys clutched at the aged knight's arm, even as Missandei gently pressed against her side, "No more than I did. Take me back to my tent."
In a short while she was resting back at her pavilion, a lion's pelt draped over her shoulders and sipping from the goblet of wine Missandei had poured from her. Ghidorah had stomped along next to her while Barristan escorted her back and even now had his golden bulk curled around her tent, his middle head thrust through the back of the tent so his head was resting on the ground next to the pile of cushions she was nestled upon. His other two heads were keeping watch like sentries, both towards the sea and towards the walls of Meereen.
When she finished the wine, which helped soothe her trembling, she ended up using a damp rag to carefully clean the blood from around Ghidorah's snout with Missandei fetching the sea water in a small basin. Seated upon her cushions, the spiked crown of Ghidorah's skull nearly reached her shoulder even with his jaw resting upon the ground. Still, when she ran her hands over his scaly jaw she could feel the soft give of the leathery skin between his scales. Not yet fully formed, still vulnerable. She still remembered the Yunkai'i threat of filling Ghidorah with arrows. Perhaps not a scorpion bolt but with those soft slips of skin could be his undoing.
How long must a dragon age before its scales became harder than any steel before Valyrian? Daenerys did not know. She was alone with her knowledge and blood and had no wish to have Ghidorah suffer from her foolishness.
Even if she very much nearly had from her ignorance; so confident had she been in having no enemies among her children. She'd been so focused upon Meereen she'd forgotten the lesson of Qarth; that enemies lurked within those who offered smiles yet held a knife ready for her back. Many wished her dead but she'd known mostly the assassins of the usurper and traitorous cowards across the Narrow Sea rather than those within her host. She had been foolish to forgo the possibility her enemies would try to strike at her from within her own people, within the freemen. If not for Barristan's speed or Ghidorah's vigilance she could have been bleeding out within the surf of Slaver's Bay.
It was why she forgave Barristan, refusing the knight's apologies. It had been her own choice to walk among her people with only a single of her Queensguard and she nearly fallen due to her arrogance. The assumption that those who favoured the slavers would not try to strike her down. But at the same time she refused to be cowed, refused to hide behind the curtains of her pavilion. To do so would show such cowardly acts succeeded. Aegon, Visenya and Rhaenys never shied from joining battle, never hid from the public despite knives in the dark and out of all the Targaryens they were the most well known. She would do the same.
I am the blood of dragons and I do not hide from my enemies even if I keep my eyes upon the shadows.
It was why, when the assault of Meereen commenced a day hence, she'd heeded her council and stayed behind upon the back of her zorse. She had wanted to lead the assault herself but her captains were unanimous that such a thing was suicidal. So she agreed to their council and stayed, within view but not within harms reach with Ghidorah at her back and Barristan and Jorah by her side.
None had yet called her Daenerys the Conqueror but perhaps they would. Aegon the Conqueror had won Westeros with three dragons and his sister-wives but she had taken Meereen in less than a day with naught but the sewers and sea. The destruction of her ships provided the wood for siege weaponry and it had taken naught but a day before the repurposed masts of the ships to smash asunder the eastern gate to spill her people inside. Before the assault had begun, Grey Worm and some trusted others had slunk into the city within the bowels of filth, bearing gifts of weapons and freedom to the slaves inside.
And thus she heard the city fall from half a league away when the defenders' shouts of defiance among the chorus of striking steel and screams changed to cries of fear. Ghidorah had rising up high, wings spread as he spat out gouts of lightning from all three heads as he understood what Daenerys knew. The slaves are rising, she knew at once. The gifts had been well received.
Once her Unsullied had finished their purge and the sacking had come to an end, she rode her striped one through the corpse-choked streets with Ghidorah gliding high above. She rode past burned buildings and broken windows, through brick streets where the gutters were choked with the stiff and swollen dead. Her zorse's shoes clipped along the blood stained tiles and filth filled her nose but Daenerys never let herself waver. Cheering slaves lifted bloodstained hands to her as she went by and as those of Yunkai they called her 'Mother.'
The Unsullied had gathered the Great Masters in the plaza before the Great Pyramid but they themselves were not so great, now stripped of their status and whips and jewels and tokars. Old men with spotted skin, young men with ridiculous hair styles, women round and portly compared to the thin frames of their watching former slaves.
She had steered her zorse to the front of the steps of the Great Pyramid to dismount. There were many other pyramids in Meereen but none stood even half the height of the Great Pyramid and it was there she chose her punishment. Ghidorah had landed to her back with a great gust of air and chittering growls. His red eyes burned as he snapped his jaws, the Great Masters cowering from her child's malice. The barbed spikes of his tails flexed, one scraping gouges in the stone of the plaza.
Daenerys hated the masters so as they sobbed and begged for mercy. How dare they ask for such a thing, when they strung up children as markers and enslaved fellow people for coin.
So when one of the women begged to her, pleading to know how many Great Masters must be taken in order for the rest to be spared Daenerys already knew the answer.
"One hundred and sixty-three," she answered, remembering the sun-baked corpses strung up along the dust road, "Give me one hundred and sixty-three of your leaders as penance and the rest shall be spared."
In the same fashion as the murdered children she had them nailed to wooden posts around the plaza, each Great Master pointing at the next in a grand circle. The anger was fierce and hot inside her when she gave the command to her soldiers. it made her feel like an avenging dragon, especially with Ghidorah at her back and great necks hanging above her as he hissed and snapped. Jorah and Barristan kept their opinions to themselves as she ordered the Masters punished, instead staying diligently by her side.
But later, after the siege camp was packed away and she passed the slavers dying on the posts to reach her new chambers at the apex of the Great Pyramid with Missandei by her side, when she heard their moans and smelled their voided bowels and blood-
It was just. It was, she thought, refusing to acknowledge their misery as she began to make her way up the step as her child's spiked shadow soared over head, I did it for the children. The Great Masters now know the pain of those innocents they condemned to death simply to spite me. They cared not when children naught even reached their tenth nameday screamed when spikes were lodged in their limbs upon the crosses of the road to Meereen. The Masters cared not then. Let them know the agony before they are sent to whatever hell there is waiting for them.
High above Ghidorah had settled upon the top of the Great Pyramid, perched at the point where the golden harpy once stood.
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