The Horse Gate of Vaes Dothrak was made of two gigantic bronze stallions, rearing, their hoovesmeeting a hundred feet above the roadway to form a pointed arch.

Dany could not have said why the city needed a gate when it had no walls … and no buildings thatshe could see. Yet there it stood, immense and beautiful, the great horses framing the distant purplemountain beyond. The bronze stallions threw long shadows across the waving grasses as Khal Drogoled the khalasar under their hooves and down the godsway, his bloodriders beside him.

Dany followed on her silver, escorted by Ser Jorah Mormont and her brother Viserys, mountedonce more. After the day in the grass when she had left him to walk back to the khalasar, theDothraki had laughingly called him Khal Rhae Mhar, the Sorefoot King. Khal Drogo had offered hima place in a cart the next day, and Viserys had accepted. In his stubborn ignorance, he had not evenknown he was being mocked; the carts were for eunuchs, cripples, women giving birth, the veryyoung and the very old. That won him yet another name: Khal Rhaggat, the Cart King. Her brotherhad thought it was the khal’s way of apologizing for the wrong Dany had done him. She had beggedSer Jorah not to tell him the truth, lest he be shamed. The knight had replied that the king could welldo with a bit of shame … yet he had done as she bid. It had taken much pleading, and all the pillowtricks Doreah had taught her, before Dany had been able to make Drogo relent and allow Viserys torejoin them at the head of the column.

“Where is the city?” she asked as they passed beneath the bronze arch. There were no buildings tobe seen, no people, only the grass and the road, lined with ancient monuments from all the lands theDothraki had sacked over the centuries.

“Ahead,” Ser Jorah answered. “Under the mountain.”

Beyond the horse gate, plundered gods and stolen heroes loomed to either side of them. Theforgotten deities of dead cities brandished their broken thunderbolts at the sky as Dany rode her silverpast their feet. Stone kings looked down on her from their thrones, their faces chipped and stained,even their names lost in the mists of time. Lithe young maidens danced on marble plinths, draped onlyin flowers, or poured air from shattered jars. Monsters stood in the grass beside the road; black irondragons with jewels for eyes, roaring griffins, manticores with their barbed tails poised to strike, andother beasts she could not name. Some of the statues were so lovely they took her breath away, othersso misshapen and terrible that Dany could scarcely bear to look at them. Those, Ser Jorah said, hadlikely come from the Shadow Lands beyond Asshai.

“So many,” she said as her silver stepped slowly onward, “and from so many lands.”

Viserys was less impressed. “The trash of dead cities,” he sneered. He was careful to speak in theCommon Tongue, which few Dothraki could understand, yet even so Dany found herself glancingback at the men of her khas, to make certain he had not been overheard. He went on blithely. “Allthese savages know how to do is steal the things better men have built … and kill.” He laughed.

“They do know how to kill. Otherwise I’d have no use for them at all.”

“They are my people now,” Dany said. “You should not call them savages, brother.”

“The dragon speaks as he likes,” Viserys said … in the Common Tongue. He glanced over hisshoulder at Aggo and Rakharo, riding behind them, and favored them with a mocking smile. “See, thesavages lack the wit to understand the speech of civilized men.” A moss-eaten stone monolith loomedover the road, fifty feet tall. Viserys gazed at it with boredom in his eyes. “How long must we lingeramidst these ruins before Drogo gives me my army? I grow tired of waiting.”

“The princess must be presented to the dosh khaleen …”

“The crones, yes,” her brother interrupted, “and there’s to be some mummer’s show of a prophecyfor the whelp in her belly, you told me. What is that to me? I’m tired of eating horsemeat and I’m sickof the stink of these savages.” He sniffed at the wide, floppy sleeve of his tunic, where it was hiscustom to keep a sachet. It could not have helped much. The tunic was filthy. All the silk and heavywools that Viserys had worn out of Pentos were stained by hard travel and rotted from sweat.

Ser Jorah Mormont said, “The Western Market will have food more to your taste, Your Grace. Thetraders from the Free Cities come there to sell their wares. The khal will honor his promise in his owntime.”

“He had better,” Viserys said grimly. “I was promised a crown, and I mean to have it. The dragonis not mocked.” Spying an obscene likeness of a woman with six breasts and a ferret’s head, he rodeoff to inspect it more closely.

Dany was relieved, yet no less anxious. “I pray that my sun-and-stars will not keep him waiting toolong,” she told Ser Jorah when her brother was out of earshot.

The knight looked after Viserys doubtfully. “Your brother should have bided his time in Pentos.

There is no place for him in a khalasar. Illyrio tried to warn him.”

“He will go as soon as he has his ten thousand. My lord husband promised a golden crown.”

Ser Jorah grunted. “Yes, Khaleesi, but … the Dothraki look on these things differently than we doin the west. I have told him as much, as Illyrio told him, but your brother does not listen. Thehorselords are no traders. Viserys thinks he sold you, and now he wants his price. Yet Khal Drogowould say he had you as a gift. He will give Viserys a gift in return, yes … in his own time. You donot demand a gift, not of a khal. You do not demand anything of a khal.”

“It is not right to make him wait.” Dany did not know why she was defending her brother, yet shewas. “Viserys says he could sweep the Seven Kingdoms with ten thousand Dothraki screamers.”

Ser Jorah snorted. “Viserys could not sweep a stable with ten thousand brooms.”

Dany could not pretend to surprise at the disdain in his tone. “What … what if it were notViserys?” she asked. “If it were someone else who led them? Someone stronger? Could the Dothrakitruly conquer the Seven Kingdoms?”

Ser Jorah’s face grew thoughtful as their horses trod together down the godsway. “When I firstwent into exile, I looked at the Dothraki and saw half-naked barbarians, as wild as their horses. If youhad asked me then, Princess, I should have told you that a thousand good knights would have notrouble putting to flight a hundred times as many Dothraki.”

“But if I asked you now?”

“Now,” the knight said, “I am less certain. They are better riders than any knight, utterly fearless,and their bows outrange ours. In the Seven Kingdoms, most archers fight on foot, from behind ashieldwall or a barricade of sharpened stakes. The Dothraki fire from horseback, charging orretreating, it makes no matter, they are full as deadly … and there are so many of them, my lady. Yourlord husband alone counts forty thousand mounted warriors in his khalasar.”

“Is that truly so many?”

“Your brother Rhaegar brought as many men to the Trident,” Ser Jorah admitted, “but of thatnumber, no more than a tenth were knights. The rest were archers, freeriders, and foot soldiers armedwith spears and pikes. When Rhaegar fell, many threw down their weapons and fled the field. Howlong do you imagine such a rabble would stand against the charge of forty thousand screamershowling for blood? How well would boiled leather jerkins and mailed shirts protect them when thearrows fall like rain?”

“Not long,” she said, “not well.”

He nodded. “Mind you, Princess, if the lords of the Seven Kingdoms have the wit the gods gave agoose, it will never come to that. The riders have no taste for siegecraft. I doubt they could take eventhe weakest castle in the Seven Kingdoms, but if Robert Baratheon were fool enough to give thembattle …”

“Is he?” Dany asked. “A fool, I mean?”

Ser Jorah considered that for a moment. “Robert should have been born Dothraki,” he said at last.

“Your khal would tell you that only a coward hides behind stone walls instead of facing his enemywith a blade in hand. The Usurper would agree. He is a strong man, brave … and rash enough to meeta Dothraki horde in the open field. But the men around him, well, their pipers play a different tune.

His brother Stannis, Lord Tywin Lannister, Eddard Stark …” He spat.

“You hate this Lord Stark,” Dany said.

“He took from me all I loved, for the sake of a few lice-ridden poachers and his precious honor,”

Ser Jorah said bitterly. From his tone, she could tell the loss still pained him. He changed the subjectquickly. “There,” he announced, pointing. “Vaes Dothrak. The city of the horselords.”

Khal Drogo and his bloodriders led them through the great bazaar of the Western Market, down thebroad ways beyond. Dany followed close on her silver, staring at the strangeness about her. VaesDothrak was at once the largest city and the smallest that she had ever known. She thought it must beten times as large as Pentos, a vastness without walls or limits, its broad windswept streets paved ingrass and mud and carpeted with wildflowers. In the Free Cities of the west, towers and manses andhovels and bridges and shops and halls all crowded in on one another, but Vaes Dothrak sprawledlanguorously, baking in the warm sun, ancient, arrogant, and empty.

Even the buildings were so queer to her eyes. She saw carved stone pavilions, manses of wovengrass as large as castles, rickety wooden towers, stepped pyramids faced with marble, log halls opento the sky. In place of walls, some palaces were surrounded by thorny hedges. “None of them arealike,” she said.

“Your brother had part of the truth,” Ser Jorah admitted. “The Dothraki do not build. A thousandyears ago, to make a house, they would dig a hole in the earth and cover it with a woven grass roof.

The buildings you see were made by slaves brought here from lands they’ve plundered, and they builteach after the fashion of their own peoples.”

Most of the halls, even the largest, seemed deserted. “Where are the people who live here?” Danyasked. The bazaar had been full of running children and men shouting, but elsewhere she had seenonly a few eunuchs going about their business.

“Only the crones of the dosh khaleen dwell permanently in the sacred city, them and their slavesand servants,” Ser Jorah replied, “yet Vaes Dothrak is large enough to hou............