Chapter 21: The Past of the Horse People
When the dragon was born, it was like a malnourished cat, skinny and bony. Only the neck, tail and wings could be distinguished, as if it had no torso. Holding it in your hand, you can hardly feel its weight.
But when they spread their wings, it was different. The wingspan was three times the length of the body. Each wing was a piece of delicate translucent skin, colorful, tightly stretched between the long thin bones.
Dany was miserable when she was a child. From the age of 5, she began to wander between the nine city-states, living a life of lack of food and clothing. She was quite stunted, and she was young, 14 years old, and had no figure. Her apple-sized breasts could not provide enough milk.
The dragon had nothing to eat, and it stretched its neck and screamed with hunger. Like the chimney of a steam train, hot white smoke came out of its nose and mouth from time to time.
Dany tried to put dried meat, mare's milk, bloody fresh meat, and cooked meat in front of them, but the dragon just sniffed and turned away.
She was so anxious, and Jorah didn't know how to feed them. Before the three dragons were born, dragons had disappeared for more than a hundred years. Only in the bedtime stories before children went to bed could they hear their legends.
It was not until the first fire bath that the black dragon broke free from Dany's arms and bit a charred bone in the fire hungrily.
Then Dany understood that dragons only eat meat that has been burned by fire, and it must be burnt.
They are still too young to spit flames and roast ingredients by themselves.
The first thing that proved that dragons are indeed magical creatures is not that they are born from fire, but their amazing appetite.
Dany personally tested that they can eat three times their own weight in food at a time!
What big eater, what wandering fairy, compared with the three dragons, is just a younger brother.
This completely violates her scientific worldview, and Dany can't imagine where the food has gone.
Once, she pinched the black dragon's belly to feel the movement of food, and then nothing happened. He kept eating, and his belly kept moving. He kept moving and eating. Because they ate a lot, their bodies grew visibly day by day.
Dany thought happily that maybe she would be able to ride a dragon soon.
And in order to ride a dragon, at least the dragon must learn to fly. Every time Dany's greedy dragon was less than two feet off the ground, it would flap its wings and fall to the ground.
Very embarrassed.
That day, as the egg yolk-like sun struggled to climb out from the horizon, Dany was happy that her baby dragon could finally glide at low altitude like a paper airplane.
After each feeding, she would carry her dragon in a bamboo basket and find an open space to practice flying.
The golden red morning light slanted across the earth, and Dany held the baby dragon and threw it up with force.
The young dragon flapped its wings and leaped forward, then she bent down and picked up another one from the ground.
The young dragon that fell to the ground would crawl to its mother's side by itself, line up, and wait for the next test flight. At that time, there would often be a group of children like mud monkeys, wearing only a pair of shorts, hiding behind the hills in the distance, opening their round almond eyes wide, "peeping" at them with curious eyes, and occasionally exclaiming with satisfaction.
Around ten o'clock in the morning, the horsemen women shouted loudly, calling their children to go home for dinner and sleep.
Well, they usually sleep until around four or five in the afternoon, tidy up and continue on the road.
Except for Khal and Ko, the babies born only have mothers but no fathers.
Except for very few, most of them cannot tell the father.
The Khals will be responsible for raising the children, and the grown-up children will repeat the fate of their parents. The women are responsible for giving birth, and the men become warriors and follow the Khal to fight in all directions.
This is how the Dothraki have been for thousands of years.
Perhaps, there will be changes in the future. After all, changes have already appeared.
Dany picked up the backpack again, carrying the three little dragons, and slowly returned to the tent.
First, she rubbed the dirt on her body with red fine sand, and shared some dried meat with the dragons. Then she hugged the dragons and lay on the straw curtain and fell asleep.
This time, Doreah was able to sleep soundly at noon because the tent was built close to the low wall built by Dany.
Before, not to mention the girl from Lys, even most of the horsemen could not stand the heat and could hardly fall asleep.
Even though Dany fulfilled her responsibilities as the leader of the Karls very well, this is the red wasteland and the purgatory plains after all.
At dusk on the third day, the Karls had only walked for half an hour when an old man tilted his head and fell off his horse.
Because Dany had established a relatively strict system of decapitation, she, who was at the front of the team, knew about the old man's fall from his horse at the first time.
Leaving Aggo and Rakharo to accompany her, Jhogo continued to move forward with most of the Karls.
The large army could not stop, and there were scouts looking for water waiting for them ahead!
The old man who fell off his horse had a pair of blue eyes that looked like dead fish. His skin was much whiter than other tribesmen, and the roots of his gray hair had a golden hue.
He was not a Dothraki, but a slave of Kar Drogo.
After Dany took control of Kar Drogo, the first thing she did was to untie the slave collars on the slaves' necks and grant all slaves the status of "tribesmen".
The old man in front of him who broke his left arm was the first beneficiary of the new system.
Dany brought the mare's milk bag to him and asked, "How old are you?"
After checking, she found no signs of heatstroke and dehydration, but saw his mouth.
He was old and had no teeth.
"I don't remember, Khaleesi." The old man drank the fermented mare's milk and woke up from his stupor.
"Where do you feel uncomfortable?" Dany asked again.
"I coughed my hand." The old man groaned in pain.
Dany frowned. Of course she knew his hand was broken, but she wanted to know why the old man fell off his horse.
It took her about 20 minutes to clean the broken arm and fix the old man's reattached arm with two wooden boards.
Even if it was a comminuted fracture, Dany could only do this. A doctor without medicine is no different from an ordinary person.
She ordered the horse herder Avanti, "Carry him to the cart."
Avanti was the leader of the ten-man team to which the old man belonged. He managed a team of old men and was usually responsible for grazing and looking after supplies.
The two old men took down a few tents on the cart to make room for the old man, and hung those tents on the old man's saddle.
The team continued to move forward.
"Khaleesi, we should leave him here. His time has come," said Irri, the maid beside Dany, in a tone of announcement to everyone, "No one should live longer than his own teeth."
The other centaurs agreed.
Dany disagreed. "Have you ever thought about it? The khals don't keep useless people. How could he live so long? The khal must need him. I guess he must have some great skills."
"Maybe it's medicine, maybe it's literature," she said, and immediately shook her head to deny it. "It's not literature. Maybe he has a very good herding skill. Isn't it, Avanti?"
Avanti followed Dany on horseback. When he heard her call, he rode to her side nimbly, half a horse behind, and praised in an exaggerated tone: "Khaleesi, you are really a discerning person. Nothing can be hidden from you."
Although the flattery was a bit stiff, it was a compliment from the Dothraki! It was as rare as seeing penguins in the Arctic.
"What are his special skills?" Ago asked curiously.
"Watson is proficient in the twelve spring calls."
"Well, the blue-eyed Volantis is Watson." Avanti added.
"The Art of Spring Cry?" Dany asked with a puzzled look on her face, "What is the Art of Spring Cry?"
"Ah, those people who live in stone houses are always troublesome." Avanti waved her hand. Dany blushed and immediately understood that it was the secret art of spring palace.
"What kind of skill is this?" She felt slapped in the face and felt very unhappy.
Avanti read her expression and was a little panicked. She tried to recall what old Watson had boasted to her and said, "Khaleesi, even the famous Kaiyuan, the world's female slave training center, only knows seven kinds of spring cry, and Watson. He is a Volantis and knows the skills that only the dragon kings knew before the destruction of Valyria. Although only five kinds have been passed down, they are enough to dominate the world."
Volantis is the only city that survived the Great Destruction of the ancient Valyrian Free Fortress and is now one of the nine free trade cities.
The ruling class of Volantis is the orthodox Valyrian nobles like the Targaryen family.
Targaryen was an exile back then.
"Even if he is the best in the world, he is so old, what's the use? Why does the khal keep him?" Dany asked puzzled.
"He is the father of Khal Hago," Avanti said solemnly: "The father of a khal cannot be abandoned."
"Khal Hago? Was Hago the khal of another khal before?" Dany became more and more confused.
"It's not the bloodrider of Khal Drogo, but Haggo Blue-Eye from 20 years ago. Our current Khal is so young, but he has at least three children named Haggo."
"I see, this Watson is not simple!" Dany nodded, pulled the white lion cloak on her shoulders closer to her chest, and said with emotion: "A slave's son actually became a khal."
"Half-blood, Haggo's mother is Dothraki. Because Watson served the previous generation of khals very well - he was proficient in 12 kinds of village crying techniques, his brave son became a bandit.
Later, Haggo Blue-Eye became a khal again, and made a name for himself in the Great Grass Sea until he met Khal Drogo's father." Avanti sighed.
Dany nodded secretly. Whether a person is valuable or not is not only determined by military strength. The wisdom and rich experience of the elderly are also a kind of precious wealth.
"Khaleesi, do you know that Khal Drogo was stolen when he was a child?" Avanti asked suddenly.
"I know that it was Cohollo who risked his life to save him. That time, Cohollo had two deep scars on his face. He also became the most trusted partner of the khal, and later became Drogo's bloodrider."
At this point, Dany suddenly had an idea and asked in surprise, "Could it be Haggo the Blue-Eyed who did it?"
Read 70+ Advanced Chapters At Pat Reon
p@treon.com/FicToric
(End of this chapter)