Chapter 19: Infernal Wasteland
The Dothraki people worship the strong and despise life and death - whether it is someone else's or their own. They have no entertainment activities, so fighting is common.
They often draw their swords to decide life and death because of trivial matters.
"Are there any competitions among knights in Westeros?" Dany asked Jorah.
Jorah nodded and said, "We all have armor, and even in group melees, few people die. We can learn the sword competitions of knight apprentices, let them change into full leather armor, and use unopened blunt swords to compete."
This kind of competition is definitely not as fair as real swords and guns, because many horsemen take the path of agility, and killing with one sword is their pursuit.
Blunt swords and leather armor require higher strength and physical strength.
But in order to avoid death, Dany can only accept Jorah's suggestion.
In the evening, the newly painted black flag fluttered in the wind, and her kalsi began to move slowly to the south.
Use the sun and stars as reference directions.
Before leaving, Dany had someone go to the funeral pyre and dig out the melted gold.
"This is what Drogo left. Take what he needs to the Night Kingdom, and give us the rest as a reward." Facing the hesitant centaurs, Dany said this. Drogo's dragon bone bow was also taken back.
The "dragon bone" in the dragon bone bow is not a metaphor, it is the dragon bone.
Not to mention the dozens of dragon corpses of the Targaryen Dynasty, the ancient Valyrian civilization has only been gone for 300 years, and the Valyrian Freehold at its peak could send out 300 dragons to form a conquering army.
Dragons also have a lifespan limit. They will die, leaving behind indelible dragon bones after death, so many dragon bones are passed down in the world. Dragon bones are rich in iron, and the more iron they contain, the deeper the color becomes, and finally it becomes black.
The burning of ordinary flames cannot harm them. Even young dragons can withstand the high temperature of burning firewood, let alone the bones of adult dragons?
In addition to gold and dragon bones, several centaurs also found a pile of cracked stones and dragon egg fossils in the ashes.
Putting those stones together, they actually restored three stone eggs completely!
"Dragons don't come out of stone eggs," several centaurs looked at each other at first, then seemed to think of something and shouted in horror, "Khaleesi gave birth to three dragons! Dosh Khaleen's prophecy has come true, Khaleesi gave birth to a horse that rides the world!"
Dany, who was startled by the centaurs' shouts, was also shocked after seeing the stone eggs.
"What kind of existence is a dragon?" She had doubts in her heart.
No matter how the dragon was born, they had to leave. The charred remains of the funeral pyre were gathered together and buried in a deep pit, and the team set off.
On the first night, Dany's caravan only walked ten kilometers.
Five kilometers away from the base, they encountered a stream where Drogokar's caravan fetched water. After being tossed around by more than 100,000 people and hundreds of thousands of livestock for four or five days, the gurgling stream was only a layer of mud.
Dany changed her route and decided to follow this wetland.
After walking another five kilometers, they came across a new shallow water pit. Dany asked the khals to stop. They would rest here for a day or two.
"The 87 cattle and sheep must be killed." Dany told her tribesmen, "The deeper we go into the wilderness, the less water and grass there are. We can't keep them to compete with horses for resources."
After Dany's reorganization, the human resources of the khals were more reasonably allocated and their efficiency was greatly improved.
The mutton was made into jerky, and the sheepskin was not even processed with the outer wool. It was dried in the shade by the horse women and sewn into hooded cloaks.
The wilderness was too hot, and wearing a cloak could avoid the sun during the day and reduce the evaporation of human body water. At night, it could also be worn to keep warm.
It is true that the Dothraki are nomads, but nomads cannot guarantee that everyone has a fur coat or fur cloak. Dany's original one hundred or so khas tribesmen naturally had no shortage of clothes.
But now she has almost two hundred more people, 80% of whom are abandoned old and weak, and they don't even have a Dothraki vest to change. Dany also has her own fur cloak.
When Daenerys first came to the Dothraki Sea with Drogo, he killed a white lion for her. It was a male lion taller than her little silver horse. The terrifying lion head formed a hood to cover her head, and the lion skin became a natural cloak, hanging from her shoulders and back.
On the evening of the third day, the Karls began to move forward again. This time they walked all night and waited until the sun rose from the horizon the next day before stopping.
In 10 hours, they walked about 100 kilometers.
At this time, Dany encountered trouble. More than a dozen scouts searched the surrounding 5 kilometers, but still could not find a clean water source.
Along the riverbed that was as dry as a bone, they could see the bitter water pools that were dry, shallow, stagnant, and exposed to the scorching sun from time to time.
But that was a death pool that even animals did not drink. It was full of all kinds of germs, silt, rotten animal carcasses, and even a strong smell of sulfur.
Dany became more and more curious about this world. Such a large plain surrounded by mountains in the east and west, with prairie in the north and the sea in the south, turned out to be a barren desert.
It's OK if it's a Gobi Desert, but where does the sulfur in the water come from?
This isn't a hot spring. Thinking of the hot spring, Dany suddenly had an idea. She asked Ser Jorah, "I heard that Old Valyria was built on 14 volcanoes. Was that continent near the Summer Sea also a purgatory scene like this one?"
"What do you mean?" Jorah wondered.
"Is there a volcano under the Red Waste where we are now? So the rivers will evaporate, and there is a sulfur smell in the pool water." She guessed.
What Dany wanted to say more was that both Old Valyria and the Red Waste were peculiar thin-crust geographical environments, and the surface was too close to the underground magma layer.
"Because there are demons here, there is a sulfur smell." The maid Doreah interrupted.
Although hiding in the tent, she was still flushed with heat, like a steamed prawn. Sweat flowed down her neck in several streams, and her exquisite figure was fully revealed under the thin silk clothes.
"Did you see a demon?" Dany sneered.
"I... I seem to be possessed by a demon. I feel very uncomfortable all over," she rubbed her chest with difficulty and panted, "It is gnawing at my heart, and it will soon devour my soul!"
The Lys girl's eyes were filled with fear, and she said it with such confidence that Dany almost believed it.
"You have heatstroke!" she said.
"What is heatstroke?" Irri asked, fanning herself.
Dany was not afraid of the heat, and the maids fanned herself instead of serving her.
"Princess, you are talking about fever, right?" Jorah struggled to take off his vest, revealing the lush black hair on his chest like a bear.
"That's about right." Dany handed her horse milk leather bag to Doreah, "Don't drink water, the minerals in your body are all..."
"Forget it, drink my horse milk."
"But this is your quota." Doreah looked dazed. She stretched out her hand to touch the leather bag and shrank back as if she had been electrocuted. She shook her head and said, "I can still hold on. I can drink water."
Dany didn't try to persuade her, but directly stuffed the leather bag into her hand.
Because of the shortage of materials and the uncertain future, Dany had established a rationing system before setting out.
Water can be drunk as much as you want, because you have always been along the river and can always find water.
Horse meat can also be eaten as much as you want. The dried meat is so dry that it can be used as a knife to cut wood. Even if it is freely supplied, people can't eat much.
The main things are horse milk, salt, wine, and fruit, which need to be rationed in limited quantities.
Looking at the situation, even water is not allowed. No way!
There must be enough water, otherwise even if they can get out of the wilderness, more than half of them will die.
Thinking of this, she could not sit still any longer, and said to the maid, "I will separate the men and women to camp, and everyone can be naked in their own tents. You can take off your clothes later."
"The tent is like a furnace, and it's useless to take off your clothes. Before, when I was on the grassland, I would wake up in the night with two layers of sheepskin mattresses on the ground, but now it's hot to step on the ground." Irri sighed.
Dany teased, "You can shovel away the top layer of sand--"
At this point, she suddenly had an idea and laughed, "Why did I think of such a simple method now?"
"What method?" Jorah asked curiously.
Dany waved her hand, "Let's go out and take a look."
The tent curtain was lifted, and Dany's eyes were blurred. The sun almost came close to her face, and the white light cast by the beam of light instantly made people enter a white world.
She lowered her head and rubbed her eyes. After finally regaining her vision, Dany had an illusion that she had really arrived in purgatory.
The dazzling white light shone on the flat red sandstone ground, reflecting almost the same intensity of red light, like the red light of flames. Large patches of dense red light formed a red sea of fire. People walking in this wasteland seemed to be walking in purgatory.
Oh my god, there was also the smell of sulfur lingering at the tip of my nose.
It turned out that this place was only a wrong name, not a wrong nickname. This was the "Red Purgatory"!
Dany quickly put on the white lion hood and looked around her camp. The tents of each family were quiet, like dozens of graves piled on the ground.
She walked to the nearest one and prepared to remind everyone to separate men and women so that they could take off their clothes to avoid the heat.
But as soon as she walked to the door of the big tent that was sewn like patches of cowhide, sheepskin, and horsehide, she heard a suppressed gasp.
The kind of mixed men and women.
Dany opened her mouth wide, with a look of disbelief on her face.
Until she quietly stepped up and lifted a corner of the door curtain.
It seems that I thought too much. The horse people don't care about the difference between men and women.
Moreover, they are not Doreah, who seems to be highly adaptable and very tough.
Dany quietly stepped back a few steps, not disturbing the passionate centaurs, and walked to the edge of the riverbed on the hot gravel ground.
Forty or fifty strong horses without saddles, with drooping ears, facing the scorching sun above their heads, scattered in an open area, they chewed the tough yellow-brown devil grass growing under rocks and dead trees with difficulty.
"Khaleesi, you are here?" A little old man suddenly appeared in front of Dany, who didn't know where he came from.
"Avanti, can the horses recover their strength before dark?" Dany asked a question that she didn't even believe.
This little old man who helped Ka LS herd the horses was the "old man of many dynasties" who had served twelve khals, and now Dany was the thirteenth.
Uh, it's a bit unlucky!
Avanti was short and thin, with a hunched back. He had gray hair on his bald head, and he barely tied a braid behind his head that was not as long as his middle child. His reddish-brown face was covered with dry lines cut by time, just like a dried orange.
Only a pair of deformed eyes that no longer looked like almonds were still full of the divine light that symbolized life.
He opened his toothless mouth and smiled at Dany in a flattering way. It was a very ugly smile.
"Khaleesi, if there is enough clean water, plus the devil grass unique to this wasteland, they can at least hold out for half a month."
Dany breathed a sigh of relief. If her team did not take a detour, they should be able to cross this desert in half a month.
"But, all the horses I have here are healthy," Afanti told Dany worriedly, "Except for the hundreds of men riding on healthy and strong horses, most of them are old, thin, sick, lame, weak and bad-tempered animals.
Even in the Great Grass Sea, with abundant grass, they can't last long.
Everyone knows that horses like that should have been killed for horse meat. Our previous Ka LS was fed with horse meat."
"I understand, there will be other arrangements when the time comes." Dany said calmly.
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(End of this chapter)