Artys POV
"Master Artys."
The greeting came from all sides as I made my way through the camp soldiers stepping back to let me pass, heads turning, fists pressed to their chests.
I gave each man a nod and a brief smile and kept walking. There was no time to stop.
The horse-lovers would be here soon.
The upper gate was busier than I had left it. Men moved along the walls above, checking positions, passing orders down the line.
The smell of oil was heavy in the air thick and dark, the kind that clings to the back of the throat.
Near the gate itself, men were preparing fire barrels and oil-soaked bundles, readying them to roll down the slope toward the lower pass if the first gate was breached.
It was a good killing ground, a long, narrow channel between two rock faces, nowhere to spread out, nowhere to go except forward through whatever came down at you.
I was still looking at the archer towers when a voice interrupted me.
"What are you doing here?"
Daario Naharis stood a few feet away, one hand resting on his belt near the hilt of his small sword, his expression somewhere between curious and suspicious.
He had the manner of a man who was always performing slightly, even in private the tilted chin, the half-smile that said he considered himself the most interesting person in any room.
I gave him my coldest smile back.
"It is my camp. I can go where I please." My eyes moved past him as I spoke, scanning the archer towers above the gate.
I counted the positions carefully. For every two of the other men stationed at each tower, there was one Second Son.
Smart placement.
Pity nothing escapes my birds.
"I wanted to oversee the preparations myself," I said, returning my gaze to Daario. "This is where the heaviest fighting will be. The horde, from my guess, will likely split into three columns the largest would be coming straight for this gate."
"But were you not commanding the left wall?" Daario asked, his eyes narrowing slightly. "Who holds it now?"
"Noll has it. He is a good commander. He will hold it." I glanced up at the tower again. "I felt I needed to be here."
Daario studied me for a moment, then shrugged, the suspicion settling back beneath the performance.
"Whatever you feel. Just try not to get yourself killed."
The half-smile returned. "If you die, who is going to pay us?"
"Your payment is the least of my concerns right now," I said. "But don't worry. Once this is over, you'll have everything you're owed and more."
He nodded slowly, apparently satisfied.
Then the screaming started again.
"Yer shieraki anni! Anha Khal fin anni!" the Khal's wife screamed from the hilltop, struggling wildly against the chains as her voice echoed across the valley.
"My Khal has come for me! My Khal is here!"
"Yer vosecchi! Anha Khal fin asqoy jin!" she shrieked, glaring down at the defenders with mad confidence.
"You are all dead! My Khal will burn this place!"
"Yer me athchomari! Yer me adakhataan!" she roared one final time, her voice almost breaking.
"You will scream! You will all die!"
She had been saying variations of this for the better part of an hour. The new recruits kept glancing up at her with wide eyes.
"Someone make her screams stop. Just put a cloth over her mouth," I shouted in annoyance.
I can't take any more of this "my Khal, my Khal."
"Master." I heard Kaelen's voice from behind.
I turned.
He came through the gate passage with several hundred men behind him, all in black armor, moving in the quiet, organized way that Unsullied always moved.
They spread out immediately, taking up positions near the Second Sons along the wall, on the stairs, and at the base of the archer towers.
Daario watched them with a small frown. "Reinforcements for the center?"
"Yeah," I said. "Given the size of the main column coming at us, I wanted more men here."
He didn't argue, but I could see the tension working through his jaw as the new men settled in beside his own, two black-armored soldiers for every one of the Second Sons, quiet and still and ready.
"Open the gate," I ordered as the gate was opened inward by five men on each side, pulling it.
The three of us walked out of the gate — Daario on my left, Kaelen on my right — and looked down the slope.
It was a long, narrow channel between the rock faces, angling downward to where the lower gate sat.
Our men lined the rocks on either side. Other soldiers were already moving into position with wooden planks covered in iron spikes and oil barrels ready to tip.
An effective kill zone, built for exactly one purpose.
"What is all that?" Daario asked, nodding at the barrels.
"We tip them down the slope if they breach the lower gate," I said pleasantly. "Then we set it ablaze."
"Why was I not told about this?" He turned on me, his voice sharpening. "Mero and the rest of the Second Sons are still down there at the lower gate."
I turned and gave him the smile I had been saving.
"Why? Isn't it better this way?" I said. "The traitors deserve to die, don't you agree?"
His eyes went cold.
Then I gave Kaelen a single nod.
"STRIKE!" Kaelen's voice cracked out like a whip across the gate yard.
The sound that followed was not battle — not at first. It was too quick and too organized for that.
The Unsullied moved on the Second Sons the way a hammer moves on a nail, and the screams of the Second Sons followed.
It was over in less than a minute.
"You bastard," Daario said quietly, his distinctive accent thickening with fury. His hand went for his dagger in one fast motion, his arm pulling back to throw—
A massive hand stopped his arm and lifted him off the ground.
Kaelen had moved without a sound and now held Daario off the ground, both of his arms pinned.
Daario's feet dangled. He was frightened, shocked, and helpless all at the same time.
I stepped forward slowly and looked up at him.
"Any last requests?"
"Fuck you," Daario said, and spat.
It hit my breastplate and ran down the steel.
I looked at the streak of spit for a moment.
I reached down and drew my dagger — dragon bone hilt set with gold and silver, Valyrian steel blade — and looked back up at Daario.
"You should not have done that," I said.
"Hold him still," I told Kaelen.
"He will not move," Kaelen said, and meant it.
Daario's arrogant expression shifted. The performance dropped away entirely, and what was underneath it was plain and human and afraid.
"Please," he said. The word came out smaller than I think he intended. "Please... it was Mero's plan, I swear it. I had no part in the deal with the Khal. Mero arranged everything. I only knew about it this morning."
He was speaking faster now, his accent breaking apart. "Please. I will do anything. I will serve you. I will fight for you. I will be your slave, your dog, whatever you want. I swear on my mother's name... I can even suck your cock."
"No need for that," I said.
"I have your mother for that." I joked with a cruel smile.
I drove the dagger into his stomach.
He made a sound that was not quite a scream — more like a man who had all the air taken out of him at once. I pulled the blade free and drove it in again.
And again.
Each strike was fast and without pause, the way you do when you want it to be finished rather than prolonged.
Kaelen held him steady through all of it, unmoved, doing his job.
By the end, Daario had stopped making sounds.
I stepped back and looked at the blade in my hand, dark and wet. My glove was soaked through. The gate yard around us was very quiet.
I cleaned the dagger on the inside of my cloak and sheathed it.
"Fucking idiot. It's a bad habit to spit on other people. I hope he remembers that in his next life," I said, looking at the dead body.
Above the camp, the Khal's wife was still screaming.
Below, in the valley, the dust cloud had reached the mouth of the pass.
POV Ends
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