“She has a woman’s heart and a chicken’s legs. Small wonder her sons hide behind their walls.” But the hero did not hide. He rode out the city gates, armored in scales of copper and jet and mounted upon a white charger whose striped pink-and-white barding matched the silk cloak flowing from the hero’s shoulders. The lance he bore was fourteen feet long, swirled in pink and white, and his hair was shaped and teased and lacquered into two great curling ram’s horns. Back and forth he rode beneath the walls of multicolored bricks, challenging the besiegers to send a champion forth to meet him in single combat. Her bloodriders were in such a fever to go meet him that they almost came to blows. “Blood of my blood,” Dany told them, “your place is here by me. This man is a buzzing fly, no more. Ignore him, he will soon be gone.” Aggo, Jhogo, and Rakharo were brave warriors, but they were young, and too valuable to risk. They kept her khalasar together, and were her best scouts too.
“That was wisely done,” Ser Jorah said as they watched from the front of her pavilion. “Let the fool ride back and forth and shout until his horse goes lame. He does us no harm.” “He does,” Arstan Whitebeard insisted. “Wars are not won with swords and spears alone, ser. Two hosts of equal strength may come together, but one will break and run whilst the other stands. This hero builds courage in the hearts of his own men .” Ser Jorah snorted. “And if our champion were to lose, what sort of seed would that plant?” “A man who fears battle wins no victories, ser.”
“We’re not speaking of battle. Meereen’s gates will not open if that fool falls. Why risk a life for naught?” “For honor, I would say.” “I have heard enough.” Dany did not need their squabbling on top of all the other troubles that plagued her. Meereen posed dangers far more serious than one pink-and-white hero shouting insults, and she could not let herself be distracted. Her host numbered more than eighty thousand after Yunkai, but fewer than a quarter of them were soldiers. The rest... well, Ser Jorah called them mouths with feet, and soon they would be starving. The Great Masters of Meereen had withdrawn before Dany’s advance, harvesting all they could and burning what they could not harvest. Scorched fields and poisoned wells had greeted her at every hand. Worst of all, they had nailed a slave child up on every milepost along the coast road from Yunkai, nailed them up still living with their entrails hanging out and one arm always outstretched to point the way to Meereen. Leading her van, Daario had given orders for the children to be taken down before Dany had to see them, but she had countermanded him as soon as she was told. “I will see them,” she said. “I will see every one, and count them, and look upon their faces. And I will remember.”
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