Cohollo

Cohollo is the eldest of Khal Drogo's three bloodriders, a squat, bald man with a crooked nose and a mouth full of broken teeth, shattered by a mace twenty years before when he saved the young khalakka from sellswords who hoped to sell him to his father's enemies. His life had been bound to Drogo's the day her lord husband was born. Among the Dothraki, a bloodrider is more than a guard; he is the khal's brother, his shadow, his fiercest friend. The ancient traditions of the horselords demand that when the khal dies, his bloodriders die with him, to ride at his side in the night lands. If the khal dies at the hands of some enemy, they live only long enough to avenge him, and then follow him joyfully into the grave. In some khalasars, the bloodriders shared the khal's wine, his tent, and even his wives, though never his horses. Daenerys was glad that Khal Drogo did not hold to those ancient ways; she should not have liked being shared. And while old Cohollo treated her kindly enough, the others frightened her—Haggo, huge and silent, often glowered as if he had forgotten who she was, and Qotho had cruel eyes and quick hands that liked to hurt.

Role as Bloodrider and Gift-Giver

At Daenerys's wedding feast, the khal's bloodriders offered her the traditional three weapons, and splendid weapons they were. Haggo gave her a great leather whip with a silver handle, Cohollo a magnificent arakh chased in gold, and Qotho a double-curved dragonbone bow taller than she was. Magister Illyrio and Ser Jorah had taught her the traditional refusals for these offerings: "This is a gift worthy of a great warrior, O blood of my blood, and I am but a woman. Let my lord husband bear these in my stead." And so Khal Drogo too received his "bride gifts." Later, when the khalasar arrived in Vaes Dothrak, Cohollo came to Daenerys as Irri and Jhiqui were helping her down off her silver. He was the oldest of Drogo's three bloodriders, and he told her, in Dothraki, "Drogo, who is blood of my blood, commands me to tell you that he must ascend the Mother of Mountains this night, to sacrifice to the gods for his safe return." Only men were allowed to set foot on the Mother, Dany knew. The khal's bloodriders would go with him, and return at dawn. Cohollo had the honor of helping the khaleesi onto her silver when they rode to the lake the Dothraki called the Womb of the World.

The Breaking of the Bond

When Khal Drogo fell from his horse, wounded and delirious, the bond between bloodrider and khal began to fray. The herbwomen made Drogo a mud plaster, and he drank poppy wine heavily. Dany saw how drawn his face had become. When she told him what had happened at the market—the poisoned wine, the Usurper's attempt on her life—Drogo was silent for a time, then vowed to give Rhaego the Seven Kingdoms and to take his khalasar west to where the world ends. But the wound festered. Mirri Maz Duur, the godswife Dany had saved, warned that only death could pay for life. When the maegi began her bloodmagic inside the tent, Qotho, Haggo, and Cohollo brought the hairless men, the eunuchs who healed with knife and needle and fire. "Maegi," Haggo growled. And old Cohollo—Cohollo who had bound his life to Drogo's on the day of his birth, Cohollo who had always been kind to her—Cohollo spat full in her face. "You will die, maegi," Qotho promised, "but the other must die first." He drew his arakh and made for the tent. Daenerys caught him by the shoulder, but Qotho shoved her aside. She fell to her knees, crossing her arms over her belly to protect the child within. "Stop him," she commanded her khas, "kill him." In the chaos that followed, as Qotho fought Ser Jorah and Haggo fell to Rakharo and Jhogo's whip, Cohollo caught Daenerys. Fingers in her hair, he pulled her head back and she felt the cold touch of his knife at her throat. "My baby," she screamed, and perhaps the gods heard, for as quick as that, Cohollo was dead. Aggo's arrow took him under the arm, to pierce his lungs and heart.

Thematic Significance

Cohollo's trajectory traces the collapse of the Dothraki social order under the pressure of Drogo's wound and Daenerys's foreign magic. He was the bloodrider who had always been kind to her, the one who had saved the young khalakka from sellswords and whose loyalty was absolute. Yet when the khal fell from his horse—a sign that a khal who could not ride could not rule—and when Daenerys summoned the maegi to perform bloodmagic, Cohollo turned on her with a violence that matched Qotho's. His spitting in her face and his attempt to cut her throat were not personal hatred but the reflex of a man whose entire identity was bound to a dying khal and a crumbling world. His death by Aggo's arrow, shot in defense of Daenerys, marks the moment when the old bloodrider bond is replaced by a new loyalty to the khaleesi and her unborn child—a loyalty that Cohollo himself could not accept.