Footsteps rang with the clank of armor, slowly approaching from the platform entrance.
Daenerys turned around.
A tall figure approached and stopped below the steps, covered in blood. A gaping slash had split his vambrace, and blood dripped from his fingers onto the flagstones.
It was Jorah Mormont, who had vanished for so long.
Daenerys's gaze fell on his arm.
"Your Highness, a band of Sons of the Harpy slipped through the sewers to launch a surprise attack," Jorah said steadily. "The sentries spotted them in time. I led our men in trapping them inside the passage and killing them all."
He paused briefly, his tone growing graver.
"But the sewers were too narrow to deploy our forces properly. We suffered forty-six casualties."
Daenerys said nothing.
She looked at Jorah, drenched in blood, and at the wound that had torn through his armor.
Her brother Viserys had first recruited this knight after the tournament in Lys. Later, he had accompanied the siblings when they left Pentos.
Once, when she had been driven into a corner and nearly forced to marry a Dothraki barbarian far from home, Aegon had broken the deadlock and brought her and Viserys to the Narrow Sea Domain.
At the time, emotions had run high and events had been chaotic. No one had remembered the knight who silently followed them. By the time they thought of him again, Jorah had long since disappeared.
Only recently, when the Narrow Sea Domain came under fierce attack from the combined fleets of Slaver's Bay and Volantis, had the long-absent knight of House Mormont suddenly reappeared in Lys and volunteered to don his armor and fight.
Daenerys had seen him risk his life in battle with her own eyes. That fearless devotion had led her to set aside her doubts and