Chapter 203: The True Unsullied
The show had only ever shown the Unsullied carrying a single type of spear. The books didn't go into much more detail than that. So when Ian heard the word three, his full attention snapped into focus.
"Tell that barbarian he ought to be embarrassed — asking questions after standing there acting like he knew everything!" Kraznys mo Nakloz, unable to follow the Common Tongue exchange, had clearly decided that Ian finally asking a question meant he'd scored a point. He addressed Missandei loudly, visibly satisfied with himself.
"He's asking technical questions, Master," Missandei replied, looking to Kraznys rather than answering Ian directly.
"Then go fetch Instructor Fehmar." Kraznys started to say something else, then caught himself — he needed Missandei right here. He turned instead to the slave girl fanning him from behind. "Well? Go! Move!"
The girl dropped her fan and hurried down from the platform into the plaza below.
A few minutes later, the man Kraznys had called for arrived on the platform. Instructor Fehmar was Ghiscari through and through — his hair sculpted into an elaborate shape that somehow managed to be even more extreme than Kraznys's own ridiculous style. He served a dual role: training the Unsullied and assisting Kraznys during sales.
Under normal circumstances, Kraznys didn't need him for much. Most buyers were merchants or minor lords with no real military background — Missandei would recite the standard pitch, the buyers would be suitably impressed, and coin would change hands. Fehmar only got called up when a buyer actually knew enough to ask harder questions.
"Distinguished guests." Fehmar's Common Tongue was rougher than Missandei's — workable, but clearly a second language. "Do you have questions for me?"
"I'd like a detailed breakdown of the three spear types the Unsullied train with," Ian said, "and the formations that go with each one."
Fehmar straightened slightly, settling into his element.
"From a young age, every Unsullied is trained in three weapons: a four-foot throwing javelin, an eight-foot one-handed melee spear, and a twenty-foot phalanx pike. Each weapon pairs with a different shield and a different formation.
We equip them with small round shields as standard, but buyers can upgrade at their own cost — when using the melee spear, they're fully capable of handling large oval shields or tower shields.
In the field, you can position Unsullied javelin-throwers in loose skirmish lines ahead of your main formation. A coordinated volley can disrupt cavalry charges and break enemy chariots before they reach your pike wall.
With the long pike, they form the most resilient defensive line in the known world. The only way to break it is to hit it with heavy cavalry on ground so open that the formation can't anchor — otherwise, they hold until the last man drops. No one gets through a proper Unsullied pike wall while a single soldier is still standing.
And with the melee spear, they become your assault force. Their hand-to-hand technique is precise and fast — fast enough to keep pace with charging heavy cavalry on an open battlefield."
Ian's mind went immediately to the Macedonian hypaspists — Alexander's elite infantry that had kept pace with the Companion cavalry at Gaugamela. When the Companions punched through Darius's center, the hypaspists poured into the gaps right behind them and sealed the victory. It was one of the most perfectly coordinated combined-arms actions in military history.
The Unsullied, judging by what Fehmar had just described, were built along the same lines — but with a decade of training instead of a few years, and with pain tolerance that no free soldier could match. They didn't fight for pay or reputation. They were weapons in human form.
"You don't believe me?" Fehmar misread Ian's silence as skepticism. "Have you heard of the Three Thousand of Qohor?"
"If I hadn't, I doubt I'd have sailed halfway across the world to Astapor." Ian nodded without argument.
The Battle of Qohor had taken place over four hundred years before Robert's Rebellion. A Dothraki khal named Temmo had led his khalasar west across the Dothraki Sea and ridden all the way to the walls of Qohor. The city had hired two sellsword companies — the Bright Banners and the Second Sons — and had also purchased three thousand Unsullied.
By the time the Unsullied arrived, Qohor's own army had already been ground to pieces, and both sellsword companies had taken their money and run.
In that situation, the three thousand Unsullied had arrived the day before the city was expected to fall — and had killed twelve thousand Dothraki while losing twenty-four hundred of their own. The surviving riders had cut their braids on the battlefield before retreating. It was the most famous military engagement in Essos, and the story every Astapori slaver reached for first.
"That said," Ian shifted his tone, "I think that story has been... polished. Considerably. Over the years."
Fehmar blinked. "What do you mean?"
Most buyers, even the sharpest ones, placed their orders after the full explanation. This Westerosi knight was supposed to be pulling out his coin purse right now, not going sideways.
"How far is Astapor from Qohor?" Ian asked.
"Roughly two thousand miles."
"Qohor purchased the Unsullied only after receiving word that things had gone badly at the front. Which means those soldiers marched two thousand miles and arrived — according to the story — exactly one day before the city was going to fall." Ian let that sit for a moment. "You don't find that a little convenient?"
"This—"
"Temmo's khalasar had been campaigning against Qohor for months before the Unsullied ever arrived. They had already destroyed Qohor's standing garrison. They'd already run off the Bright Banners and the Second Sons. They were exhausted, they'd taken losses, and they'd been besieging a fortified city for the better part of a season. The Unsullied didn't arrive to save a city on the edge of collapse — they arrived to fight a khalasar that had already bled itself half-dry."
"Even so—"
"Does a coincidence like that actually exist in the real world, Instructor Fehmar? An army marches two thousand miles and arrives within twenty-four hours of the city's fall? With your experience, you know that's not logistics — that's a story someone cleaned up after the fact."
Fehmar went quiet. He couldn't argue with the math, and he knew it. A march of that length had too many variables — weather, supply, terrain, disease. The precision of the timing was simply not believable under scrutiny.
"In other words," Ian pressed on, "the Unsullied weren't the only force defending Qohor during that battle."
"Whatever remained of Qohor's garrison was completely insignificant!" Fehmar shot back, finding his footing again. "The Unsullied won that defense. That is not in dispute."
Ian ignored the deflection entirely.
"Working from what we know, we can reconstruct what Temmo's khalasar looked like before the Unsullied arrived. Consider two things we know for certain.
First — Qohor's craftsmen are among the finest in Essos. The city was famous for it. And that means they would have had access to quality armor and equipment, including heavy cavalry that most Essosi cities simply couldn't field.
Second — the Dothraki have no craftsmen of their own. They have no bow-making tradition. The arrows they carry are captured goods or tribute from conquered cities, which means their supply is finite and non-renewable."
This was something the show had actually illustrated, Ian recalled — you could spot at least three different bow designs in Dothraki hands across various scenes, all clearly looted from different sources.
The books backed it up too: Khal Drogo had sent young girls to collect arrows from corpses after battle, and Daenerys had quietly disapproved of the waste. The Dothraki relationship with ranged weapons was entirely dependent on what they could take from others.
(End of Chapter)
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