#lovedbyspark

[vezhave]

@lovedbyspark | for Eira

Drogo gazed at the wall of the tent, not seeing the silk there. In his mind's eye, he saw the gardens of Adrevale Keep, heard and smelled the ruckus of the markets. Dirty children, laughing, chased cats, and beside him... He tore himself from the memory as the flap of the tent was drawn aside. Word had come that a band of riders had run down some travelers and they should be arriving with their spoils to present them to their Khal. He took a disinterested pull from his drinking horn as Dothraki men shoved dirty figures inside, and slaves carried looted goods behind them. Drogo looked over them with disinterest. Their clothes were in disarray from their flight and the following fight. Splashes of red dashed across them and... He stopped, eyes flicking back to the golden-haired woman knelt in the middle of the new slaves. Blood splattered across her face and her dress... It was Adrevalen in make, he had no doubt. The shoulder and and skirt were torn, and she held the bodice of the dress to her chest. The drinking horn slipped from his hand and, trembling, he stood. He took one step, breathed, "My daisy," and rushed forward, crouching before her and taking her face gently in his hands. His eyes, wide, searched her face, took in the bruising around her eye, horrified and amazed all at once. Then, his face turned into a mask of fury and he straightened, slugging the face of the rider who held her shoulder. "Who touched her?!" he demanded, his voice ringing like a hammer on an anvil.

[vezhave]

The words twisted in his heart like a knife. Our son. Hers and Sedgeric's... or hers and his? He looked away from her as Cohollo reentered the tent, carrying a large horse haunch from outside and followed by a slim girl with a small basket of bread. Cohollo began to carve chunks from the haunch while the girl passed bread to the women, her eyes never meeting theirs. The rolls and loaves were stale, but they would add even more body to the hot stew. His mouth dry, Drogo stared into the flames licking at their kindling, a storm brewing behind his eyes. He said nothing while Cohollo served the women strips of horsemeat. Finally, he turned back to Eira. "Cohollo and several of my ko and riders will take you and your women to Adrevale," he said, decided. "I will go north with a band of riders, and find your husband and son." It was an idea that was practically unheard of among the Dothraki; a khal, leaving his khalasar for a long trip? Never mind that it was a quest to help a foreign woman. But Drogo could not abandon her, nor her son.

The women all followed obediently but looked questioningly again as Drogo gestured for them to eat. It has been a confusing, frightening day for all of them; she'll need to speak to them later after they've been fed.

"Go on," she told them. "Khal Drogo can be trusted. He's an old friend." Then, grateful, she took her place by the fire, swiftly aware of how sore her legs and feet were. Still, nothing hurt quite a badly as her heart for her son.

"I have to have faith that Sedgeric will be alive," she said, quietly so only Drogo could hear. The castlemaids were busy accepting food from Cohollo and murmuring bewilderedly to each other. "If he falls, Drogo... Our son is too young, and misfortune has made the Teague line too short. Everything will crumble."

[vezhave]

Concern for Eira's child tightened his ribs, and that concern only mounted as he tightened his arms around her and felt the prodding of bones. "Gods," he murmured, an expletive he had picked up from his time among Western men. "You're like a skeleton, my daisy- Cohollo." He turned towards his bloodrider, who looked to him and nodded, leaving the waterskin with the women before shuffling over to the fire, where a pot bubbled between two secure stakes. "Come," Drogo said to the women, taking Eira by the hand and leading her to the fire where Cohollo was already ladling a thick and hearty stew into rough pottery bowls. "Sit," Drogo urged the women, helping Cohollo to hand out the bowls. "Sit. "Blood of my blood," he said to Cohollo, "Bring a haunch from the main pit, and any bread left from the last town." Cohollo dipped his head and slipped from the tent, calling for a couple of slaves as he did.

Eira could feel her women staring. Were she not so weary, she might have resisted Drogo for the sake of keeping appearances, but the moment his arms folded around her, she sank into him and his warm, familiar scent. He might notice that she has changed in the five years they have been apart; the soft curves of her body are subtler now, replaced by a thinner frame, small and bird-fragile.

At mention of her husband, Sedgeric, and her son, Philip, her throat tightened and something rended sharply in her chest.

"I don't know," she confessed. "They were meant to follow but never came."

[vezhave]

He listened, intent and concerned, as Eira explained. He'd spoken only a little bit of English since he'd left her, but her measured pace helped him keep up with the unfamiliar words. His jaw worked as he listened, angry on her behalf and quickly remembering his contempt for the man she had wed. Even setting aside his desire to take Eira and leave that place, Sedgeric was not a likable man. He was proud, as Eira said, and Drogo thought that pride blinded him. "I'm sorry, my daisy" he murmured, leaning down to try and kiss the tension from her brow. Unmindful of how it might appear to her maids, he wrapped her in his arms, holding her to his chest. Longing ached inside of him, and he closed his eyes as he savored the feeling of her close to him again after all of these years. Cohollo, having freed the women, began handing out pelts so that they could cover themselves, and moved back to the khal's seat to fetch a waterskin to offer them. "What of your husband?" he asked, the words bitter on his tongue, before his own brow furrowed, and his throat grew tight, and he asked, "And your child?"

The maids looked warily from Drogo to Cohollo and finally to Eira who simply nodded, but that was as good as a promise to them. They could trust Drogo and, Eira saw, they could trust Cohollo. Rachell held up her hands and allowed Cohollo to cut her free. The other women timidly followed suit.

"Famine," Eira began, rubbing at the raw skin of her wrists. Now that Drogo was so near, she wanted nothing but to collapse into his arms and tell him their story in tears. She wanted to have him hold her and kiss her brow until there was nothing left in her mind but the familiar squeeze of his embrace. But her subjects, few as they were here in this tent, needed her to be the strength that they didn't have. So she kept as steady as her body and voice would allow.

"Food has not grown for three years," she said. "And for many seasons before King Sedgeric and I were wed, more than he told me or my father. The winters have been too cold, the ground too frozen. There are always imported goods from Adrevale, yes, but as you know, the journey between there and Bremorr is not easy and often dangerous. Many of our supply caravans are intercepted and robbed, and my father cannot risk providing more protection. I tried to convince my husband to negotiate more trades from Caerenth in the west or pull from our supply if he had to, but..." Eira shook her head. "He was too proud. He claimed that it would only make the Teagues appear weak."

Her brow pinched, lips tightening. This had been a problem since she'd met her husband. Pride mattered more to him than practicality or, she often thought, logic itself.

"Watching their children starve and freeze to death... I suppose it was only natural that the people of Bremorr would reach their limit. They sieged the castle aided by men wearing colours I did not recognise and I had no choice but to flee," she said. "We were heading to Adrevale for help when your men captured us."

[vezhave]

Some of the fire left him as the tent emptied out, and he trembled a little as he held Eira's bound hands in his own. He wanted to cut the cocks off of every man who had dared lay a finger on her, but he reined in his fury, barely. "It is I, my daisy," he murmured. Taking a knife from his belt, he carefully cut the cords binding her hands. He returned the blade to it's spot and cupped Eira's face gently in his hands, as if afraid he might hurt her if he held too tightly.

"You will not be harmed again," he said to the maids, in thick and rusty English. To his most loyal friend, he said only, "Cohollo." The bloodrider dipped his head and immediately began to pull pelts from Drogo's seat, draping them over his arm as he approached Drogo and the women. Took a knife from his own belt and, at a respectful distance, held his free hand out to ask for one of the maid's bound wrists. "How did this come to happen, Eira?" Drogo asked, fretful, as his thumbs stroked her cheeks.

Fear burbled up from Eira's maids as the tent cleared, cowering and huddling around their queen as she might protect them from the rage of the khal. It was a terrifying thing to see Drogo angry even to Eira who understood snatches of what he said and, moreover, knew he would not harm her. She kept her expression still and unaffected until all that was left in the tent was herself, her maids, and Drogo and his right-hand man. Then the stiffness in her shoulders and spine wilted.

"Drogo..." She took his hand and unsteadily but determinedly stood. "Is it really you?"

[vezhave]

Drogo spun on the man with all of the rage of the sun, his chest rising and falling with each angry pull of his breath. His mind whirled; it had been years since he had seen Eira, and he had never thought to see her again. Much as he loved her, they were from different worlds, and he doubted that he would be welcomed back into hers if he attempted it. When he had last seen the Adrevalen woman, her stomach had just begun to swell with child. He had never allowed himself to wonder whether it was his, or the seed of the man she had been wed to. Either thought cut him just as deeply as the last, so he had thought of the child only as Eira's. In the years that had passed, he would occasionally ask vague questions of slaves they took from Adrevale and Bremorr, hoping at some scrap of news about his daisy or her child. He had never been satisfied with the answers. Now, his daisy, his beloved Eira, knelt before him, assaulted and dirty, and he would have blood. His heartbeat pounded in his ears, fueled by a level of anger he had never experienced before. He strode across the distance between him and the man who dared speak, gripping the man's throat. "I want the names of every rider who touched the queen-"

Cohollo had risen from his seat beside Khal Drogo as soon as the mountainous warrior had struck the rider. As confused as the rest of the hoard, his mind raced as he watched the scene unfold. Daisy, Drogo had said. Daisy... Bremorr. "Shit," he breathed, and then louder, as he stepped forward, "Blood of my blood-" Drogo's burning eyes flashed to him, furious to be interrupted, but Cohollo stepped forward, his arakh hand open and raised slightly. "Blood of my blood," Cohollo repeated, soothing, "They did not know." Of all the khalasar, only Cohollo, and perhaps some of Drogo's personal slaves, knew of Drogo's relationship with the queen of Bremorr. It was not a softness he admitted to easily, and admitting to a fondness for she who had held him a slave, and a woman at that, would not have curried any favors with the Dothraki, who had already seen him defeated once.

Drogo, breathing heavily, like a stallion ready to fight for it's herd, stood there a moment. The entire tent seemed to hold it's breath. Then, he bore his teeth, spit a curse, and shouted, "Out! Everyone, out!" Immediately, the existing slaves scurried from the tent, leaving the new captives. Many of the riders went with them, but a few hesitated before going. His bloodriders remained, but he dismissed all except for Cohollo with a jerk of his head as he turned back to Eira, reaching to help her stand.

          Queen Eira Hywel (Teague now, legally of five years, but she would forever consider herself a Hywel first) had been in her chambers with her most trusted handmaid when it happened. Shouts arose outside and in minutes the night sky burned with the glow of fire and the screams of knight, horse, and servant alike. The castle was under siege, and its own people were heading the attack.

          There had been no time to think, barely any time to act, before the walls that protected the Teague's castle gave and the uprising poured through with anger and a taste for royal blood. Rachell, the handmaid, wasted no time in swirling a thick cloak around Eira's shoulders and rushing her through the servants' passage with nary but a hastily gathered satchel of clothes. They fled out with a small knot of castlemaids, a stable boy, and five of Bremorr's swiftest knights trained just for such calamity. All mounted on their horses, they fled southward from Bremorr under the cover of night with little supplies and only the prayer that they might escape.

          Eira was promised that her son, still a babe of five, and her husband would join them with a caravan of their own before dawn, but the morning sun came and there was never sight nor word of either. The caravan waited for as long as they could before they were forced to move again. Eira wept in fear for her child and could not be consoled.

          Snowy mountains and grey rock slowly bled into plains and grassland as the caravan moved from Bremorr toward what they hoped would be security in Adrevale. They had months of travel ahead and their supplies were dwindling, so the stable boy named Ozwin was sent ahead on a fast horse to the next village to ask for news of the uprising, and pass a message to be sent to King Hywel in Adrevale Keep. Eira prayed he would return with good word... but what he returned with were grinning Dothraki riders. The caravan fell all at once from the pot into the fire.

           Her knights were slaughtered, maidens and horses captured, and Eira had not seen the boy Ozwin since he returned with the Dothraki men who had intercepted him. She had tried first to plead with them, speaking what little she could remember of their tongue, but it did no good. They stripped her of her jewellry, humiliated and assaulted her, and bound her like a common slave with the rest of her party. In but one evening, she felt the last of herself had been torn from her. The comforting walls of Adrevale could not have felt farther away.

          x x x

          It was dark when the Dothraki men brought their spoils back to camp. The royal horses were gathered together and left to be freed of their tack by the Dothraki women while the castlemaids and their queen were brought as slaves to the khal's tent. It seemed too much to take in at once--the candles and the flickering shadows they cast, the shifting clusters of strange, Dothraki faces, the muffled sobbing of her ladies and the frightened push of their battered bodies as they all were made to stand in the centre of the tent, it all spun in her vision which was growing poorer by the minute. A Dothraki rider had struck her hard once across the face when she resisted him and the spot where the blow met the high point of her cheek felt thick and tight with swelling. Still, she held her head high, gaze listing, unfocused, toward the khal. Even sitting, he looked more mountain than man.

          And then all at once he was at her, and through the haze of shock and exhaustion, all she could wonder was... Why? Her answer came quickly enough in the form of too-gentle hands and a voice she had not heard in so long.

          "My daisy."

          Eira's breath stuttered at the sound. She had not recognised him in his adornments and braids, but now he was all she could see. Dry lips parted, dumbfounded, but before she could speak, Khal Drogo stood and knocked the rider at her side with such force that he fell onto his knee on the packed earth. A confused murmur lifted among the crowd as tension rippled through the tent. None seemed to know how to answer their khal, or else they did not want to.

          "They were traveling from the north, My Khal," one of the braver of the riders spoke up. "From Bremorr. There was a boy among them, he said their kingdom has fallen. Their own people betrayed them." He did not grin, but Eira swore she could hear the pleasure in his voice. "This is their queen and her women. They came with eleven good horses."