Redemption of the Dragon

Act 2 – Prophesy or Conspiracy · Chapter 18: The Road Home

The first day west, no one spoke of victory.

That seemed wise.

Victory sounded too clean for what they had left behind.

Ifequevron shrank behind them in heat shimmer and dust, its patched walls holding the afternoon light like old bone. Smoke still rose from two places inside the city. Not battle smoke, mayhaps. Cooking fires. Burned stalls. Men beginning the ordinary labors that followed extraordinary terror. Tom did not know. He watched until the city disappeared behind the low ridges and still felt as if he had turned his back too quickly.

Setzuko remained there.

Eight Tears riders remained there.

Four Ibbenese leaders had gone north carrying bruised pride, dead men, and orders they did not like.

A dragon had vanished into the sky.

And Tom rode west because Oros waited.

Because Vissenya waited.

Mayhaps.

That was the thought that made his hands tighten on the reins until the horse tossed its head.

"Easy," Jory said beside him.

Tom looked over.

"I said nothing."

"Your hands did."

Tom forced his grip loose.

The tattoo on the left side of his head burned where sun found it. Every bump of the saddle pulled at wounds that had reopened and closed too many times to know which state they preferred. His shoulder ached from Norg's axe. His thigh stung from Gorn's spear. His ribs complained about being ribs. None of that troubled him as much as the road between him and the woman in Oros.

He had left her wounded.

He had told himself it was necessary.

It had been necessary.

That did not make the leaving kinder.

"She will be there," Jory said.

Tom gave him a sidelong look.

"You are doing it loudly."

"Doing what?"

"Thinking of her."

Boro, riding behind them, said, "We are all thinking of her."

Mera looked back. "You are?"

"Aye. Mostly wondering if she will laugh at his head or stab whoever did it."

"Both," Jory said.

Tom almost smiled.

Almost.

The first three days passed through the rough lands west of Ifequevron, where ash-colored fields gave way to broken scrub, low ridges, and dry washes cut into the earth like old scars. Setzuko had given them local names before they left, but names slipped away when every hill looked like the last and every streambed held more stone than water.

They moved fast at first.

Too fast.

Tom knew it and let them do it anyway.

The horses paid for his impatience before he admitted the truth. On the fourth morning, Qavo's mount went lame on a slope of shale and nearly pitched him down a ravine. By noon, Darro's horse had begun to foam badly under the bit. Jory said nothing for half the day, which was how Tom knew the lecture was coming.

It arrived when they stopped in the shade of a black rock shelf.

"We keep this pace," Jory said, "and we walk home."

Tom drank from his waterskin and stared west.

"We lose days if we slow."

"We lose everything if the horses fail."

"Oros is two weeks."

"Oros was two weeks when we had fresh mounts, a clearer road, and no one chasing us."

Boro scratched his beard. "No one is chasing us. That worries me."

Salla, who had been watching the ridge behind them, said, "Someone is. Far, but not gone."

That ended the argument.

They found the riders before sunset.

Not by sight first.

By dust.

A thin brown smear on the eastern horizon, moving with purpose. Too wide for merchants. Too fast for farmers. Too loose for soldiers who obeyed walls and roads. The land had begun to open by then, flattening ahead into the endless rolling grass of the Dothraki Sea. The sight of it should have meant space, speed, and a clean route west.

Instead, it meant exposure.

"Dothraki?" Mera asked.

Rovan would have known at a glance, but Rovan remained in Ifequevron with Setzuko. So they had Salla's eyes, Darro's caution, and Boro's willingness to declare every distant problem punchable.

"Too many for bandits," Darro said.

"Too few for a khalasar," Jory said.

"That comforts me less than you think," Boro said.

Tom shaded his eyes.

The riders were still far off, but the pattern was wrong for travelers. Scouts in front. Wider bodies behind. More dust beyond them, mayhaps, or only wind making ghosts.

"The great khalasars went to the dragon queen," Mera said. "That is what the traders said."

"Most did," Darro answered. "Most is a soft word."

The Dothraki Sea had not emptied because Daenerys Targaryen had called. No land emptied so neatly. Men too proud to kneel, too far to hear, too greedy to stop, too frightened of new queens to follow them, all had reasons to remain. Smaller bands. Broken khalasars. Rogues with no bells in their hair worth naming. Riders who had learned that a world distracted by dragons left easier prey in the grass.

Tom looked west.

Open land.

No walls.

No cover beyond shallow folds in the earth and the rare line of scrub.

"We ride," he said. "Not straight west. Southwest until dark, then north by the stars if clouds allow. We do not give them a clean trail."

"That will cost time," Jory said.

"Aye."

He hated the word as soon as he said it.

The road home lengthened under his own tongue.

They rode hard until night, then rode badly through half of it, leading the horses where stones made hoofbeats too loud and doubling back twice through dry washes that held prints like gossip. By dawn, Tom's body felt hollowed out and filled with sand. No one complained. That was how he knew they all wanted to.

The dust returned by midday.

Closer.

The rogues had not lost them.

For the next week, the Dothraki Sea became less a place than a hunt.

Grass rose around their horses' legs, gold and green and silver depending how light struck it. Wind moved across it in long ripples that looked like water and hid nothing large enough to save them. The sky stretched too wide. The sun had no mercy. At night, cold came down fast and hard, and every fire they did not light felt like another small theft from comfort.

They learned the shape of pursuit.

One large band behind them, mayhaps two hundred riders if the dust told true.

Smaller groups peeling away to search.

Scouts riding wide.

Men trying to push them toward easier ground.

"They are patient," Jory said on the seventh evening, crouched beside a map that had become more wish than truth.

"Hungry," Mera said.

"Same thing, if it lasts."

Tom rubbed his eyes.

His thoughts kept slipping away from the map.

Vissenya lying pale against old stone.

Vissenya's hand at his chest before dawn.

Vissenya watching from the window as he rode away.

He had been gone too long already.

The journey out had taken two weeks.

If the road had been clean, if the horses had been fresh, if the world had shown even a passing interest in mercy, they might have returned in the same. But every detour pulled Oros farther west. Every false trail cost hours. Every time they hid, backtracked, or waited flat against the earth while Dothraki riders passed close enough to hear them laugh, another piece of Tom's patience broke away.

"You are not reading the map," Jory said.

"I know the map."

"You are looking through it."

Tom exhaled.

"I should not have left so soon."

Jory's expression shifted. "Ifequevron?"

"Setzuko has eight riders and a damaged city. The Ibbenese gave oath because a dragon frightened them. Lo Feng may still live. Bandits will smell weakness on the roads. And I rode away."

"You left orders."

"Orders are not walls."

"No. But staying would not have healed Vissenya, held Oros, steadied Elyria, found the dragon, broken Lo Feng, rebuilt Ifequevron, and ended every raid in the east before supper."

Tom looked at him.

Jory shrugged. "I thought I would save you the time of trying."

Boro, from the other side of the little hollow, said, "He practices sounding wise when you sleep."

"Someone must," Jory said.

Tom looked back at the map.

It did not help.

By the tenth day of pursuit, the rogues found them properly.

Not the large band.

A smaller force. Twenty riders, mayhaps twenty-five, coming from the north across a low rise where Salla had been certain no one would appear because the ground looked too broken for horses.

The Dothraki proved her wrong at speed.

"Mount!" Tom shouted.

There was no time to hide.

They ran for a line of black stones jutting from the grass like broken teeth. Too small for a fortress. Enough for an ugly stand. Arrows came first, short and fast, hissing through grass and striking stone. One took Nesaro through the meat of the upper arm. He cursed in Lysene and did not fall.

Boro laughed as he dismounted behind the stones.

"Finally."

"Do not enjoy this," Mera said.

"I enjoy clarity."

The Dothraki circled, whooping, testing for fear and gaps. Their horses were smaller than some Tom had known and quicker than seemed fair. Their riders wore leather, horsehair, bits of bronze, stolen cloth, bells that rang with every movement. Not a khalasar's grand scream. Something meaner. Leaner. Men with no great lord, no great cause, only hunger and curved blades.

Tom did not wait for them to decide the fight.

When six rode too close, Salla put an arrow into one horse's chest.

The animal crashed.

The line faltered.

Tom, Jory, Boro, and Mera hit them before the circle reformed.

It was brief.

Brutal.

Necessary.

Tom fought carefully, which felt strange after Ifequevron. No magic answered him. No great need opened the world. The Dothraki were fast and dangerous from horseback, but on broken stone, forced close, their speed had less room to become death. Jory took one down with shield and sword. Boro broke another's chest with the flat of his axe because he had swung too close to turn the blade. Mera cut reins, then throat. Darro speared a rider from the side and looked surprised by his own accuracy.

The surviving rogues fled after the ninth man fell.

No one chased.

They took two horses, three waterskins, a bag of hard cheese, and a curved bow Salla claimed without discussion.

Nesaro's wound bled badly until Jory bound it.

"Can you ride?" Tom asked.

Nesaro gave him an offended look. "I can complain while riding."

"That will do."

They rode before the larger dust cloud found the bodies.

After that, the pursuit worsened.

The rogue bands knew they had been bloodied. Men like that did not always retreat from blood. Sometimes they followed it harder, because pride had joined hunger. Twice more, smaller groups struck at them. Once at dawn, once near dusk. Both times Tom's company fought them off and lost time doing it.

Qavo took an arrow through his calf and had to be tied to the saddle during hard riding.

Corren's spear broke.

Mera lost a knife and mourned it more sincerely than most people mourned cousins.

Boro began counting how many days since anyone had slept in a bed and stopped after twelve because the number angered him.

The large band came closest on the eighteenth day after Ifequevron.

They had backtracked through a streambed, followed it west for half a day, then doubled south across ground so stony it punished every hoofstep. Tom thought, briefly, that they had shaken pursuit.

Then Dothraki horns sounded behind them.

Not close.

Close enough.

They ran.

There was no nobility in it.

Only survival.

Grass whipped at their legs. Horses blew foam. The sun sat low and red ahead of them, turning the land into fire. Tom's head throbbed beneath the tattoo. His wounds had become old aches layered beneath newer ones. He leaned low over the horse's neck and thought of Vissenya because thinking of anything else would have meant thinking of failure.

Vissenya breathing.

Vissenya laughing, mayhaps, if he ever gave her reason.

Vissenya's fingers at the edge of his new tattoo, likely furious and gentle in the same impossible motion.

He had to reach her.

The land dipped suddenly into a shallow valley choked with thorn scrub.

Jory saw it first.

"There!"

They plunged into the scrub and paid in skin.

Branches clawed faces, arms, horses. The path inside was not a path. It was an argument with plants. But the scrub swallowed dust, broke sight, and made horses slow to a careful, furious crawl. Tom dismounted and led his horse through a gap barely wide enough for its chest. Behind him, the Dothraki horns grew louder, then confused, then angry.

They spent the night in that thorn-choked valley without fire, without food beyond hard cheese and a mouthful of water each, while the rogue riders searched the grassland above them.

Once, hoofbeats passed so near that Tom could see a horse's legs through the thorn.

No one breathed.

Not truly.

The rider stopped.

Spat.

Said something in Dothraki.

Another answered from farther away.

The first rider moved on.

Only after the hoofbeats faded did Boro whisper, "I hate plants."

Mera whispered back, "They feel the same."

By morning, the large band had moved west, thinking their quarry ahead of them.

Tom led his company east for half a day.

It hurt worse than any wound.

Every step away from Oros felt like betrayal.

But the false direction saved them.

They found a dry riverbed by noon and followed it north under banks high enough to hide them from distant eyes. Then west again after dark. Then south around a ruined hillfort where old stones watched the Dothraki Sea with blind patience.

Days blurred.

The twentieth.

The twenty-third.

The twenty-sixth.

The count mattered until it did not.

The road home became a chain of decisions no song would remember. Hide or ride. Water the horses or keep moving. Eat now or save it. Fight or vanish. Turn west or lose another day. Every choice cost something. Every cost had Vissenya's face behind it.

Tom began speaking less.

Jory noticed, of course.

"You are folding inward," he said one night while the others slept in a ring of low stones.

Tom looked up from the knife he had been sharpening without need.

"That sounds like something Cleyton would say."

"He uses more words."

"I am tired."

"Aye."

The silence settled.

Jory sat beside him.

"You think Oros fell."

Tom's hand stopped on the whetstone.

"I think many things."

"That is one of them."

Tom looked west, though the night held no direction he could see.

"Maegor took it once. Red priests are still hunting me. Baelys may not have been alone in his betrayal. The Tears are scattered between Oros, Elyria, Ifequevron, and whatever Baelys left behind. Aemon had his own road and his own burdens. Cleyton is chasing mysteries in old books. Kemal holds a castle full of men who were enemies days before. Vissenya was wounded when I left."

He swallowed.

"I should be there."

Jory did not answer quickly.

That was why Tom trusted him.

"You cannot be everywhere," Jory said at last.

"A lord must be."

Jory glanced at him.

"Is that what you are now?"

Tom almost denied it.

The words rose easily.

No.

I am no lord.

I have no house.

I asked for none of this.

But Ifequevron stood behind him now whether he wanted it or not. Four Ibbenese clans had taken his orders. Men knelt when the dragon landed. Setzuko governed because he had named responsibility as if naming made it lawful. The left side of his head carried a dragon in black ink because power had required a shape.

"I do not know what I am," Tom said.

Jory nodded.

"Better than being certain too early."

Tom laughed once, quietly.

"That is also Cleyton."

"Mayhaps he is useful."

"Do not tell him."

"Never."

They reached the Demon Road on the thirty-first day after leaving Ifequevron.

Tom did not recognize it at first.

It came out of the west like a dark line laid across the world, old Valyrian stone running through broken lands with a stubbornness that felt almost arrogant. Fused black surface, cracked in places but still harder than the earth around it. Weeds grew at the edges and sometimes through fractures where time had finally worried open a seam. The road did not care. It had survived empires, storms, wars, and fools.

Boro dismounted and kissed it.

Mera stared. "Did you just kiss a road?"

"A road that is not grass," Boro said into the stone. "A road that is not thorns. A road that is not hiding Dothraki behind every hill. I may marry it."

"It can do better."

Tom looked east one last time.

No dust.

No horns.

No riders.

For the first time in weeks, the horizon behind them was empty.

The Demon Road did not make them safe.

No road in Essos deserved that much trust.

But it made them safer.

Traffic returned in cautious scraps. A mule cart guarded by three nervous men with spears. Two merchants who claimed to sell dyed wool and smelled strongly of smuggled wine. A pilgrim with no shoes who stared at Tom's tattoo and began walking faster in the opposite direction. Ruined watch posts appeared along the way, some occupied by lizards and shadows, one by a family who sold watered beer and did not ask questions if paid first.

They slept beside stone instead of inside thorns.

They lit small fires again.

They let the horses walk without looking back every hundred breaths.

It felt indecently luxurious.

The last stretch still took days.

Tom hated each one less because Oros had become a direction instead of a hope.

The land grew rougher as they neared the old Valyrian holdings. Black hills rose. Heat vents breathed faintly in the distance. The air tasted of salt and minerals. Once, far off, something winged moved against a cloud and vanished before anyone could decide whether it had been bird, dragon, or tired eyes making promises.

Tom said nothing.

Neither did the others.

On the final night before Oros, they camped in the lee of a broken mile marker carved with Valyrian letters worn nearly smooth.

No one wanted to sleep.

That made sleep come badly and late.

Boro snored first anyway, because some men had talents that ignored circumstance. Mera sharpened the knife she had taken from a Dothraki rider to replace the one she had lost and declared it inferior three times before keeping it. Darro and Qavo slept with bandaged limbs stretched toward the little fire. Salla sat watch with the curved bow across her knees. Corren mended a strap by feel in the dark. Nesaro hummed something low and Lysene until Jory threw a pebble at him.

Tom sat apart, looking west.

Oros lay beyond the dark.

One more day.

Mayhaps less if they rode hard.

His heart had become an impatient thing inside his ribs.

He tried to imagine the reunion and failed at it in a dozen directions.

Vissenya asleep.

Vissenya standing in the yard despite Cleyton's orders.

Vissenya angry.

Vissenya smiling.

Vissenya too pale.

Vissenya gone.

He closed his eyes against the last thought, but darkness was not kind enough to remove it.

Jory came to sit beside him without asking.

"Tomorrow," he said.

Tom nodded.

"Tomorrow."

"You should sleep."

"So should you."

"I am not the one about to face Vissenya with half a shaved head."

Tom touched the tattoo. The skin had scabbed and tightened. It no longer burned unless he prodded it, so naturally he had prodded it ten times a day.

"It is not half."

"That will be your defense?"

"I have survived worse arguments."

"Not from her."

Tom looked into the fire.

The thought of her anger did not frighten him.

Not really.

It was the thought of her hand reaching for him afterward that undid him.

He had missed many things in his life. Home. Safety. Men who had died. Days before betrayal had taught him new languages of grief.

This was different.

Missing Vissenya had weight and heat. It lived under the breastbone. It made time cruel. It made distance personal. It had followed him through grass, blood, thorns, and old roads until he could no longer pretend it was only desire or fear or gratitude for a night of shared warmth.

He loved her.

The thought no longer surprised him.

Only the speed of it did.

"Jory," he said quietly.

"Aye?"

"If she is not well…"

He did not finish.

Jory looked toward the western dark.

"Then we face that too."

"That is not comfort."

"No."

"You are bad at comfort."

"I learned from Cleyton."

Tom huffed a tired laugh.

For a little while, that was enough.

The fire burned low.

The road behind them held its dead dust and lost days.

The road ahead held Oros, answers, consequences, and the woman Tom had ridden more than a month to reach.

He lay down at last, cloak pulled over aching shoulders, sword close to hand out of habit rather than fear.

Sleep came slowly.

When it did, it brought no dreams of dragons, no Dothraki horns, no city gates breaking under stones.

Only a narrow room in an old castle, dawn at a window, and Vissenya's fingers resting over his heart.

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Disclaimer: Frostfyre is a non-commercial fan fiction project inspired by a Realm of Thrones campaign for Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord and set in the world of A Song of Ice and Fire. All rights to those original settings and characters remain with their respective owners.