After listening to Dany's city-building plan, the one-eyed crone immediately advised, "Great King of the Khaos, horsemen cannot remain in one place for too long.
"Living in stone houses, like the milk-men do, is far too comfortable. That kind of life will steal our courage and wear away our strength."
"When the Long Night comes, you will not say such things."
The King of the Khaos possessed immense authority. Once Dany made her decision, the horsemen acted at once.
First, she needed to count the population and establish a household registry.
Then Dany realized she was unmatched under the heavens.
Just counting Khas City and the twenty-six surrounding Khas, the horsemen numbered roughly five hundred thousand, with nearly two hundred thousand qualified Roaring Warriors.
The ratio of warriors to civilians was shockingly high. It was nearly a nation of soldiers.
Two hundred thousand roaring, battle-hungry warriors.
It was enough for Dany to sweep across the world.
She then ordered each Ko to present one-quarter to one-half of their people to the King of the Khaos, depending on the size of their Khas.
A total of 317 Ko survived the previous turmoil, and each possessed their own Khas. Using nations as an analogy, a single Khas City was equivalent to a kingdom, while a Khas was the province that made up that kingdom. Each Ko was the provincial governor.
Some Ko had only a hundred or two hundred Roaring Warriors. For example, in the old days, Dany herself had been a Ko—as a khaleesi. Her Khas tribe had been newly formed with just over sixty young warriors.
Some Ko had lineages spanning generations, with two or three thousand Roaring Warriors. That had been the case for Ko Pono.
His father had served as a Ko under Drogo's father. Both he and Drogo inherited their positions.
Ko Pono himself had been Drogo's strongest Ko, commanding three thousand five hundred Roaring Warriors—stronger than many Khas Cities on the vast grasslands.
In Slaver's Bay, within Dany's own Khas City, the Ko system had been replaced with a thousand-banner system. The Ko title remained, but their authority was greatly diminished. Each thousand-banner officer counted as a Ko but retained command of only fifty personal guards.
Dany had been able to complete that reform only because her Khas tribes had been far too small at the time. A small boat was easy to turn. But the number of horsemen in Khas City was far too large to reform quickly, and with a southern campaign incoming, she had to do things gradually.
Taking people from the Ko's Khas to replenish the Khas of the Khaos was part of horseman tradition.
In every battle, the Khaos led the charge with the Roaring Warriors at the very front, and his Khas always suffered the heaviest losses. Without replenishment, after a few engagements he would be left with an empty command.
Likewise, if a Ko's Khas suffered severe losses, the Khaos would use newly captured horsemen to refill that Ko's numbers first.
Now, by taking one-quarter from the smaller Khas and half from the larger ones, she gained roughly one-third of the total population in a single night.
In other words, she gained an additional seventy thousand Khas people.
She had brought five hundred Roaring Warriors from Slaver's Bay, all reserve centurions and thousand-leaders.
From the seventy thousand Khas people, she chose two hundred of the youngest warriors—those with the longest braids and the most bells.
Seven hundred centurions would command seventy thousand Roaring Warriors. Among these seven hundred, seventy served as acting thousand-leaders—temporary appointments that could be replaced at any time by a fiercer or more capable centurion, or even a ten-man leader.
Among the seventy acting thousand-leaders were seven ten-thousand commanders.
Dany, Aggo, and Quaro held the rank of ten-thousand commander in name only, while Rakharo and Jogo were true commanders of ten thousand.
The remaining two ten-thousand armies were temporarily under Dany's control as King of the Khaos. If any horseman earned sufficient merit, she would personally grant him the position of ten-thousand commander.
Afterward, Dany selected the twenty-seven weakest Khas out of the 317—the Khas whose Ko were aging and frail and whose strength was poorest.
Ten of these Khas were left in Khas City to carry out the Khaos King's command of "dig deep shelters, store vast reserves, and gather coal and firewood."
Even knowing the Long Night was coming, Khas City could not be abandoned.
The other seventeen Khas would spread across the vast plains to inform the remaining Khas Cities that Dany had become King of the Khaos.
Although twenty-six Khas Cities had gathered in Khas City, the grasslands were immense, and countless tribes still remained unaccounted for.
In total, Dany brought three hundred sixty Khas (including the seventy thousand-leaders under her command) to the south, fulfilling the symbolic number of the heavens.
The Khaos King even considered whether she should someday establish a heavenly-and-earthly formation of ten-thousand commanders and use the 108 devil-stars to name each ten-thousand-man army.
For example, Dany as the Heavenly Leader Star, commanding ten thousand soldiers of the Heavenly Leader Battalion.
With such strange thoughts lingering in her mind, Dany rode Big Black out of Khas City in the early hours before dawn.
Before leaving, she gave the one-eyed crone a portion of the Moon-Singer inheritance, a copy of The Heavenly Steed Scripture, a glass candle, and a set of arcane network communication keys.
The one-eyed crone indeed possessed extraordinary aptitude, and it was exceptionally well-suited to the moon-chanting meditation of the zebra people.
Moon-Singers were different from Shadowbinders. Blood magic was a mandatory discipline for Shadowbinders but an optional one for Moon-Singers.
The Heavenly Steed Scripture would help the Doshi Khaleen establish a proper worldview of honor and disgrace. Dany believed the crones were unlikely to stray onto a dark path.
Once the crone mastered magic, Dany would be able to control Khas City even from thousands of miles away through the glass candle.
Meereen — the Queen's Study
"Seven above! Two hundred thousand Roaring Warriors? Even all the knights of the Seven Kingdoms combined do not number that many!" Old Aemon swayed as if on the verge of fainting again.
"Now I can finally rest easy. With such a force capable of conquering the world, the allied army is doomed to lose." The old man's face lit up, completely freed from the shadow of the approaching armies.
Dany bent over the pile of documents and intelligence reports that had accumulated over the past two days, and replied absent-mindedly, "I told you before. This battle is already won."
The Great Turtle Dam was complete and filling with water. Even if the allied forces could summon a true god to descend, they would not escape disaster this time.
The two hundred thousand Roaring Warriors existed solely to expand her victory and annihilate the hundreds of thousands of allied soldiers surrounding them.
She intended to hurt them badly—all of them—perhaps even half-kill them in one decisive blow.
This was the first time countries from all over the world had formed an alliance to besiege Slaver's Bay, and it would certainly be the last.
"Gone for only two days, and you've become the Khal of Khals. Is becoming Khal of Khals really that easy?" Old Aemon calmed himself, then frowned as he asked.
"Easy?" Quaithe shook his head again and again. A complicated expression of reverence and disbelief crossed his face as he explained in detail how Dany became the "Khal of Khals."
"She challenged one hundred and forty-three Dothraki warriors in a row, most of them the strongest khals and bloodriders in the khalasars. Who other than the Khaleesi could do that?" he asked in return at the end.
Old Aemon was stunned once again.
"Your Grace, you were far too reckless. You fought three at once and didn't even wear armor." The old man hurried around the desk, came to Dany's side, and examined her carefully. He kept asking nervously, "Dany, are you hurt?"
"That is exactly what's terrifying. The Khaleesi's skill was beyond belief. Her twin swords moved like thunder and lightning and could not be stopped. Her defense was like a great shield blocking out the sky, not allowing even water to seep through. She fought outnumbered dozens of times in a row and didn't take a single wound."
Two days had passed, but when Quaithe spoke of it again, he was still so excited that his voice trembled.
"Your Grace, have you reached the highest realm of swordsmanship and stepped into the divine?" Jorah asked in shock.
"No. Like Dugu Whip-Hatal, I have surpassed the extraordinary and entered a divine state of clarity," Dany said softly as she looked toward the golden sunlight streaming through the window. "You may call me the Sword God."
"The Sword God? Isn't that too exaggerated?" Old Aemon looked conflicted, beginning to suspect that Dany was once again boasting out of habit.
"It is not exaggerated," Dany said firmly, shaking her head. "Before this, I was indeed only at the extraordinary level. But think about it: who were those hundred Dothraki I defeated?
"They were among the strongest out of hundreds of thousands on the great grasslands. Would battling them to the death not give me anything in return?
"In truth, it was because I broke through in the middle of the battles and stabilized my extraordinary realm that I demanded to fight three at once.
"And after the entire battle was over, I directly condensed the divinity of the Sword God."
This time, Dany was not exaggerating.
Throughout history, almost every wielder of the Dawn Sword had reached or come close to the extraordinary realm. Otherwise, they could not become the "Sword of the Morning." Not every generation of House Dayne produced one. Only those with truly exceptional swordsmanship qualified to wield Dawn and bear the title.
Thousands of years had passed. How many Swords of the Morning had there been?
And Westeros valued the knightly path. House Dayne was not the only noble house with outstanding swordsmen.
Among the Seven Gods, only the "Warrior" truly lived up to the title, nearly perfect.
In the state of the Warrior, Dany gained the experience of countless swordmasters, and her swordsmanship theory already surpassed the mortal limit.
More than a hundred khals, bloodriders, kos, and sons of khals were like experience points, helping her turn theory into real ability.
She was also half-divine herself, capable of condensing divinity.
Divinity was the divine elevation of a particular discipline. Was swordsmanship not a discipline?
Naturally, Dany condensed the divinity of the sword and was fully qualified to call herself the Sword God.
"What level is the Sword God then? How many can you take at once?" Jorah asked curiously.
Dany thought for a moment. "If three khals work well together, they can already injure me. After each battle, I simply used holy healing to quietly mend my wounds.
"Against four khals, I would be heavily injured. I may still defeat five, but with six khals I would undoubtedly lose unless I wore valyrian steel armor.
"Even with valyrian steel armor, eight khals could still injure me. Armor stops piercing, not blunt impact."
"Doesn't sound… very strong," Jorah muttered with a frown.
"It's extremely strong. Those are khals, not ordinary soldiers," Quaithe emphasized, eyes wide.
"Still not extraordinary enough," Old Aemon murmured.
Indeed, it was not extraordinary enough. She was calling herself a Sword God, yet she still could not defeat ten at once.
But the gods of this world were simply not that extraordinary.
Arthur Dayne was hailed as the greatest swordsman alive, yet he was killed when three men ganged up on him.
If she truly had the power of a Sword God from an eastern fantasy novel—sword aura filling the sky, sword light splitting apart, sword intent tearing open the void—why would she need to forge a pair of white and red swords?
Her magical black sword was still left behind in Meereen.
In wuxia novels, a master could defeat armed foes with bare hands, turning anything into a sword.
But in this world, two swords were better than one, one sword was better than none, and a Sword God without a sword could die at the hands of an ordinary swordsman.
That was the reality—embarrassing as it was.
"That is because I wasn't using magic. Wearing valyrian steel armor and wielding magic swords is when I truly become an army-destroying force."
"That's true. You also have magic," Jorah said with a nod. Then he seemed to remember something and hesitated before asking quietly, "Your Grace… that little mist in the garden upstairs, the little sprite transformed from a raven… can my father also be revived as a fire sprite?"
(ps: The Dothraki often call Qarth people "milk people" because their skin is very white—whiter than most white folk.
The Dothraki themselves have brown-yellow skin. Since most people in the trade cities are white, the Dothraki mock them as "milk people."
In modern slang, it's similar to "white pig.")
Sorry for the late release again today. I began editing at 8:30, and normally I can publish by 9:30. But one chapter needed heavy revisions, delaying things by more than half an hour.
(End of chapter)
Want to read the chapters in Advance? Join my Patreon
https://patreon.com/Glimmer09