The following evening, Viserys Targaryen the Third stepped back into the sprawling command pavilion of the Volantene field army.
Only a single day had passed since his last visit, yet the entire atmosphere inside the tent had been flipped on its head.
Last night he had come as a conspirator, sealing a secret pact with one of the three Triarchs—Varyon Dortalos—to overthrow the political order of Volantis itself.
Tonight he returned as the rightful heir of House Targaryen, commander of the Dragon Claw Company, here to hammer out the final battle plan against Khal Drogo.
Viserys let his gaze sweep across the pavilion, taking in the faces of the men who would ride into hell with him tomorrow.
The massive Torrhen Snow, captain of the Company of the Rose and a Northern bastard born near Winterfell, was bent over the huge sheepskin map, knuckles white, gray eyes locked on the terrain markers along the Rhoyne.
Beside him stood the short, monkish Corban Pyre of the Warrior Maids, fingers wrapped around the seven-pointed star hilt at his belt, unable to hide his distaste for the foreign sellswords around him.
A little farther back, the twin captains of the Freeborn Company—Melwan and Kelwan—wore identical studded leather and matching daggers, whispering between themselves while their four sharp eyes scanned every corner of the tent.
Torio Hoth, captain of the Iron Shields and a Pentoshi sellsword veteran, lounged against a tent pole trading lazy banter with Daario Naharis of the Storm Crows.
Daario's beard was freshly dyed a vivid blue, gold rings glinting in his hair, fingers idly stroking the dragon-glass pommel of his sword. His usual mocking eyes flicked toward the Volantene nobles with a calculating glint no one else could quite read.
Viserys's gaze moved on to the four old-blood Volantene lords.
These men of pure Valyrian descent had shed their old softness during the long siege, forging themselves into warriors worthy of their ancestors. They had proven to the Triarchs—and to every sellsword in camp—that the old blood still carried fire.
The most striking among them was Weymond Dorya, commander of the Triarchs' elite reserve: full companies of Unsullied in perfect formation and the heavy cavalry of the Sons of Valyria, drawn from the citizen nobility.
This young lord from a minor branch—once invisible in Volantene politics—had finally found his place on the battlefield. He stared at the decisive plain marked on the map, pale violet eyes holding neither fear nor doubt, only a quiet regret that the war was about to end.
The instant Viserys entered, every head turned.
Torrhen Snow and the twins offered the curt nod of Northerners—polite enough, but nothing more.
Torio Hoth barely lifted an eyelid and pretended not to notice, still leaning against his pole.
Corban Pyre stepped forward at once, bowed with stiff grace, and recited a short poem he had composed himself, every line praising Viserys's recent lightning raid on a Dothraki grazing camp and the burning of their forage stores.
Only Weymond Dorya—the proud old-blood who normally looked down on every foreigner—actually smiled, a genuine smile, and gave the exiled prince a deep, respectful bow.
Even the ever-flippant Daario Naharis swallowed whatever witty remark had been on his tongue and simply lifted his chin in greeting.
Viserys's eyes lingered for a heartbeat on Daario and Torrhen Snow—his two future co-conspirators—and he had to fight down the tiny smile that threatened to tug at the corner of his mouth.
He knew exactly why these two were willing to risk their necks in the coming coup.
Daario, the flamboyant Tyroshi rake, had only recently removed the rival captains who opposed him inside the Storm Crows. He desperately needed to deliver rewards far beyond the contract if he wanted to keep his seat. Without fat sacks of gold and mountains of loot for his men, the Storm Crows would replace him—or bury him—within weeks.
And Torrhen Snow, the Northern bastard who claimed he had become a sellsword only because he had nowhere else to go, dreamed of one thing: enough coin to buy a castle, good farmland, and never again bend the knee to any lord. The Triarchs' secret promises had handed the bastard the chance of a lifetime.
Right now the three of them—Viserys, Daario, and Torrhen—sat in the same fragile boat with Varyon Dortalos. One wrong wave and the whole thing would capsize on the Rhoyne.
None of them intended to breathe a single word of the plot.
The elephant party's spies were certainly inside this tent. Their job tonight was simple: make those spies see nothing, hear nothing, and report nothing.
"Tomorrow," Varyon Dortalos's deep voice cut through the low murmurs, ending the pleasantries, "we meet Khal Drogo's main horde on the open field."
He cleared his throat and went straight to business. "We have prepared for this decisive battle for long months. The victory of Volantis—and the fullness of your purses, my sellsword lords—now rests on what we do tomorrow. So… gather round the map."
Every captain and Volantene officer moved forward obediently.
The great sheepskin chart of Volantis and its surrounding lands had been laid out in advance, dotted with beautifully carved wooden markers, each painted a different color to show which force it represented.
Varyon raised the Valyrian steel rod that symbolized the Protector of Volantis and tapped the tiny horse figurine placed against the city walls.
"Drogo's khalasar has bled heavily these past months," the Triarch said, voice steady and calm. "My strategy of splitting our forces to hunt his outlying kos and cut his supply lines has worked. Combined with the defenders inside the city beating back every assault, the nomads have lost the fire they brought when they first encircled us. According to the latest scout reports, the Stallion Who Mounts the World now commands barely fifty thousand Dothraki warriors. Of those, only a little over forty thousand still have horses fit to fight. Hunger has hit his herds hardest—many mounts are too weak even to carry a rider. In addition he can still arm perhaps ten thousand slaves as cannon fodder."
He paused, sweeping the rod across the Volantene positions on the map. "We, on the other hand, have sixty thousand men in the field outside the walls and another one hundred and fifty thousand behind them. Our soldiers are well fed, our horses strong, our men victorious in every recent clash and burning with high morale. The Dothraki camps are nothing but hunger, chaos, and doubt."
Viserys had no spies of his own inside Drogo's khalasar; he had to trust Varyon's intelligence.
After all, tomorrow's battle would decide his own fate as well.
Every secret pact he and Varyon had made, every ambition he held for the Iron Throne, rested on victory at dawn.
Varyon had gathered a host large enough to make every Free City stare: eight thousand cavalry—both the heavy lances of the old-blood nobility and the lighter horsemen of the sellsword companies—thirty thousand city militia, and twenty-five thousand mercenary infantry.
Maesters would later write that no such army had been raised by Volantis since the Blood Century that followed the Doom of Valyria.
They had no more men to give, no more banners to fly.
All that remained was the hope that these soldiers would be enough to win tomorrow's fight.
"But do not think victory will simply fall into our laps," Varyon continued, tone turning grave. "Drogo knows we are coming—his scouts have shadowed our army for half a month. That his khalasar has not torn itself apart in rebellion after such a long siege proves his grip on those warriors remains as hard as Valyrian steel. I have no doubt he is waiting for this battle… because if he can shatter us and seize our camps and grain stores, he can prove to his people that fortune has not yet abandoned him."