Game of Thrones: Rise of the Supreme Dragon Queen

"When the news of Meereen's fall reached Yunkai, you should have immediately realized it was time to switch sides. After all, we had a contract.

Even if your commander clung to unrealistic fantasies and wanted to take one last gamble, that illusion should have shattered when over twenty thousand of your infantry and cavalry were ambushed outside the city.

My demands were not high— the Windblown would turn against the Ghiscari, help me take Yunkai, and in return, you would leave with the payment promised by the Ghiscari, plus one promise from me.

Honestly, I really can't understand what your commander was thinking."

Dany shook her head, her tone filled with helplessness.

The Windblown, with its two thousand cavalry, certainly had the right to negotiate.

But two thousand horsemen couldn't change the entire battlefield, and the price she offered was more than fair.

"Grazdan suddenly insisted on breaking out, disrupting the commander's plans," Denzo sighed.

"Fine, even if your plans were disrupted, all the Ghiscari had already entered the city. Even if you realized you had fallen into a trap, why did you still try to escape?

Do you know how many people died the night before?

Because of your sudden retreat, nearly eight hundred mercenaries were killed in the chaos.

Ninety percent of the dead were from the Windblown, while the Ghiscari lost only one person. Yes, just one Great Master!"

Dany mocked.

"N-No, that's impossible!" Kago struggled and shouted.

"What's impossible about it? The Ghiscari were already trapped within the encirclement; they had no way to escape. The ones causing the chaos were all from your Windblown. Even if I had no ill will toward you, in that situation, there was no other choice!"

Dany said indifferently.

"It was me… I… I got my brothers killed…" Denzo's voice trembled as two clear streaks of tears ran down his dirt-streaked face.

"Why didn't you slaughter the Ghiscari? Why didn't you kill the mercenaries who fell into your trap?" Kago glared at Dany with resentment.

His heart was filled with injustice. The Windblown had seen through this woman's trick, yet they suffered the heaviest losses.

It wasn't fair!

If—if this woman had wiped out the Ghiscari cavalry inside the city, then their retreat would have had meaning!

"Heh, what kind of person do you think I am? A monster who kills for fun?

Why would I waste valuable captives? Mercenaries can be ransomed, and Ghiscari soldiers can be turned into laborers. Wouldn't the bread made from their wheat taste delicious?"

"Sigh, our arrogance ruined the Windblown.

Maybe, deep down, we always believed Her Majesty the Queen was doomed to fail.

A loser wasn't worth our attention, let alone our loyalty.

Subconsciously, we even arrogantly thought we could decide the queen's fate."

Denzo let out a bitter laugh.

Now, viewing everything as an outsider, he suddenly realized something terrifying—

The Dragon Queen had three dragons, ten thousand Unsullied, and tens of thousands of well-trained Mother's Men.

She herself possessed wisdom beyond mortal comprehension and had never lost a battle since her rise.

Yet, neither the commander nor the officers had ever truly respected her.

They saw her as nothing more than a foolish girl who had lucked into success.

If she weren't foolish, why would she try to free slaves?

If she weren't foolish, why would she make enemies of the entire world for people unrelated to her?

If she weren't foolish, why would she lead fifty thousand soldiers on a forced march to Yunkai?

Everyone kept saying: "It's a pity about the Dragon Queen. No matter how many battles she wins, she's bound to meet a tragic end sooner or later."

But the problem was—

She had always been the victor.

And the Windblown had no right to look down on someone taller, smarter, and stronger than them.

Every kindness from the giant was mistaken for weakness.

And their commander still thought he could make the Dragon Queen take the blame while he reaped the rewards.

Sigh, they never knew their place!

"If you had no ill will toward us, then why did you send horsemen to hunt us down?

Why not just let us leave?"

Kago shot a glare at the "weak" Denzo before furiously yelling at Dany.

Dany looked at him with scorn, as if he were an idiot.

"Are you brain-damaged?

A band of defeated soldiers wandering freely in my territory—should I just ignore you?

What if you raided my estates or slaughtered my people? Who would I complain to then?"

"We just want to get out of this shit hole!"

Kago shouted.

"Then you should have told me!

How was I supposed to know what you wanted?

Judging by the Windblown's actions, I damn well thought you were a Ghiscari suicide squad, determined to fight me to the death!"

"Your Majesty, can you answer a few questions for me? I just want to understand how we lost this war," Denzo asked, his eyes filled with desperation for answers.

That question hit Dany's sweet spot.

What was the point of victory if she couldn't boast about it?

"Heh, we'll see. Some of my tricks are still worth using a few more times."

Dany lifted her chin slightly, speaking with reserved pride.

"Your Majesty, the army you took to Meereen only had a few thousand elite cavalry, yet almost everyone in Meereen believed you had brought fifty thousand soldiers.

Some even claimed to have seen it with their own eyes. How did you manage that?"

Denzo asked.

"I freed a large number of slaves along the way, and my army was newly recruited," Dany replied, half-truthfully.

But in reality, with less than three days to travel 250 kilometers, there was no time to free fifty thousand slaves.

The real reason was simple—

By the time she took Meereen, it was already dusk.

The fifty thousand "cavalry" outside the city were actually just a few thousand slaves dragging branches behind their horses, creating the illusion of a massive force.

As for the fifty thousand "soldiers" marching into the city at night,

Dany had borrowed a trick from Dong Zhuo, the old warlord.

A thousand elite troops entered through the east gate carrying torches, ensuring the Ghiscari of East Meereen could see them.

Meanwhile, in the already sealed-off North District, another thousand troops quietly slipped out through the north gate in the darkness.

Repeating this process dozens of times, suddenly, Meereen had "fifty thousand" heavily armored elite warriors.

At that moment, the Great Masters of Meereen were so terrified that they didn't dare leave their pyramids, giving Dany the precious time to expand her Mother's Men.

Denzo wasn't sure if he believed her, but he continued asking,

"Your Majesty, how did you hide your army's movements?"

"I sent scouts to clear the roads," Dany replied.

Denzo let out a bitter laugh.

That was an obvious lie—anyone with common sense wouldn't believe it.

But she had already warned them she wouldn't tell everything.

"I think I understand now.

You left around forty thousand infantry and five thousand cavalry behind in Yunkai.

The fifteen hundred Unsullied in the rear camp were just bait to lure us into attacking."

However, the rear camp was not the true ambush point. With forty thousand troops, it was too large to be concealed within the rear camp. Perhaps you wanted to minimize losses, so you split the allied infantry and cavalry, planning to take them out separately.

Without a doubt, the real kill zone was in the ruins of the front camp—a place we never expected, especially since we had just passed through it.

The cavalry, without infantry protection, had already galloped back and forth nearly 20 kilometers. Their horses had lost their momentum, leaving them trapped with no way out.

It was true that only a few thousand cavalry were stationed in the rear camp, but the infantry positioned along the ravines on both sides of the camp were merely a decoy.

There might not have been anyone in the back rows at all. As for the distant rumbling of hooves, that was just a few riders herding horses to create an illusion.

Oh, and they even tied branches to the horses' tails—one of our scouts from Ghis saw it. He told us after regrouping with us the next day."

Dany nodded and smiled, "You guessed correctly. I didn't want to go through all this trouble, but as you said, forty thousand soldiers were simply too many to hide in the rear camp."

A sharp glint flashed in Danso's eyes as he asked, "The real question is—where did you hide those nearly forty thousand troops?"

The Ghiscari were not fools. When they advanced from the city to attack the rear camp, they had dispatched hundreds of scouts to survey the surrounding 20–30 kilometers.

It was possible that Dany's three thousand cavalry and the thousands of disguised laborers posing as the main force could have squeezed into the rear camp. But where did the forty thousand infantry hidden for the real ambush at the front camp come from?

If Dany's troops had been stationed thirty kilometers away, they would have been too far to intercept the retreating cavalry in time.

Under normal circumstances, an army would take one or two days to cover thirty kilometers.

Dany's expression darkened as she uttered three words: "Emerald Lake."

"Emerald Lake?!" Danso and Kargo's faces changed drastically, showing both realization and shock.

Five kilometers north of Yunkai lay a picturesque lake, shimmering like an emerald embedded in the earth—hence, the Yunkai'i called it "Emerald Lake."

Ghiscarian nobles often took their families there for outings, boating, swimming, and hunting in the nearby forests.

But to eliminate the Dragon Queen, who commanded fifty thousand troops and three dragons, the Wise Masters of Yunkai had drowned ten thousand slave corpses in Emerald Lake.

The manors across the Yunkai plains had been set ablaze, and the wells within twenty kilometers of the city had been sealed shut.

After a grueling 600-kilometer march, the fifty-thousand-strong army was utterly exhausted. Even if a cautious general suspected the lake, they would still proceed with care while drawing water from it.

The Ghiscari had even deliberately dumped horse manure and sewage into the lake, creating the illusion that the water had already been tainted—concealing the true trap: the ten thousand rotting corpses beneath the surface.

In the end, using corpses to spread disease was an entirely new tactic in this world—one devised by the ruthless Great Wise Master.

Moreover, the decomposition process took time. For the first two weeks, the lake remained as picturesque as ever, with clear waters reflecting the sky. But the invisible bacteria had already begun to spread, poisoning the lake.

The fifty-thousand-strong army unknowingly ate, slept, and trained beside a massive pit of death. Just imagining it was terrifying.

Even the Wise Masters were afraid. Across both East and West, ancient people deeply feared plagues. Their scouts hadn't dared to enter the area at all.

And Emerald Lake was only three kilometers from the front camp!

"You weren't afraid of the plague?" Danso asked in disbelief.

"Hmph, of course, I was. I was terrified." Dany's tone was cold. "That evening, after reaching Yunkai, we immediately began fortifying the camp and digging wells. At dawn the next day, I ordered two thousand soldiers into the lake to retrieve the corpses that had been soaking for two days."

Danso suddenly understood. "We noticed the pyres burning corpses that day. We assumed they came from the corpse forests along the main road, but you mixed the lake corpses in and burned them together."

At that moment, the Sword Poet grasped another crucial detail—on that day, when Zidane and he had seen smoke rising from the camp, it had likely been real. There truly had been forty or fifty thousand soldiers stationed there at the time.

When Meereen fell, they naturally assumed the front and middle camps had been abandoned. The enemy even went so far as to set up straw dummies in the tents, further convincing them they had fallen for a classic "Empty City Stratagem."

At the time, both the Ragged Prince and Danso had been in awe of the Dragon Queen's "Empty City Stratagem," believing it to be the greatest tactical innovation on Essos in a thousand years.

But in truth, this world had never seen such a tactic before.

And yet, the Dragon Queen had already surpassed it. She had played a far grander game than just deceiving some foreigners with an empty city ruse.

The so-called "Empty City Stratagem" that had frustrated and impressed the Ghiscari coalition so much… was a lie. Over forty thousand hidden troops had been lying in wait all along!

Layers upon layers of deception, truth mingling with falsehood—even now, days after the battle had ended, the mighty War God Grazdan and the battle-hardened Ragged Prince still couldn't fully grasp how they had lost.

So tragic. So pitiful.

Danso's face was ashen, his expression utterly dejected.

"How did you know there were corpses in the lake?" Kargo couldn't help but ask.

"Do you think I'm so foolish that I wouldn't send spies into Yunkai?" Dany said with a cold smirk. "Let me tell you the truth—I have intelligence operatives in Yunkai, Meereen, New Ghis, Qarth, Volantis… even thousands of miles away in Pentos and Braavos."

(End of Chapter)

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