Reincarnated as Genghis Khan's Grandson, I Will Not Let It Fall-Chapter 25: What the Ground Holds

Morning came with the camp running the way it always ran.

Batu noted it from the entrance of the command tent before he’d taken two steps outside. The horse lines were in their first allocation. Cook fires were up on the central ground. Two men from the supply detail were working the eastern granary at the pace they worked it every other morning.

Three men had been removed in the span of an hour at the first watch change. The camp had absorbed it and kept moving.

Khulgen was at the outer entrance with two folded pieces of felt.

"The eastern holding section," he said. He handed Batu the first. "Orel cleared the last of Chanar’s standing allocations before the horse lines opened. There are no active orders drawing from that section."

Batu looked at the felt. A single administrative entry, canceled, the wolf’s track seal beside the cancellation in Orel’s hand. The courier line through that section was gone. Whatever Siban had been receiving from it had stopped.

"The second," Batu said.

"The Irtysh watch sent its morning report." Khulgen handed it over. "Standard observation. No unusual movement on the northeastern approach road."

Standard observation. A road that should have been Siban’s first path for reaching his western contacts showed nothing.

Batu set both felts on the table.

A man running a network who received nothing from a reliable source would send a rider to check. The rider hadn’t come south yet, which meant either it hadn’t reached him yet or he’d received it and was still deciding.

Both paths ran to the same place.

"Torghul," Batu said.

"At the training ground."

"Bring him here."

Torghul arrived, sat across the table, and looked at the two felts without being told what they were. He’d been running the numbers before the summons reached him.

Batu pushed them aside. "The three tumens. Where they sit and why."

He laid it out without preamble. The western arc held one full tumen. Tribute enforcement on the Burjin and Tergesh territories. The patrol line keeping the minor clans from testing the boundary conditions established over the past season.

Pull from that tumen and the western agreements ran without backing. Clans that had submitted under pressure would test whatever wasn’t enforced.

The northern approach ran a second tumen in dispersed screen formation, covering the flat ground between the main camp and the forest edge. The three-layer screen ran on those riders. Collapse it and the north went dark.

The third tumen covered the eastern supply line from the main camp to the forward depot positions and ran the Irtysh road watch. The thinnest deployment numerically, working the most ground.

"How long to pull the force together," Batu said.

Torghul didn’t answer immediately. He’d been carrying the number for some time and was deciding how to state it.

"Eight to ten days to pull Chaidu’s element and Kirsa’s riders forward and concentrate with the eastern tumen’s main body at a useful position." He paused. "Siban gathers from his home territory. Three to four days to concentrate, another two on the march south."

If Siban moved the day the feed went dark, he would be moving before Batu had his force together. If he waited to confirm what it meant, the margin closed.

"He’ll wait," Torghul said.

"He’ll confirm first," Batu said. "He’ll send a rider down the northeastern road. When that rider comes back with nothing, he’ll know."

"That’s another two days."

Batu looked at the table. The margin was real. The eastern tumen’s position along the supply line put it closer to the likely meeting ground than the wide picture suggested.

The force could be massed in time. The timing depended on how he read what he’d received.

"Chaidu’s element," Batu said.

"Functional. The forty riders you sent to Jaran came from the outer rotation. The core’s intact." His voice stayed level. "Kirsa’s riders are integrating on the ten-day timeline. The three on the western screen don’t pull from the formation."

"Then we have what we need."

"We have what we need if the timing holds." Torghul met his eyes. "If he moves on instinct instead of confirmation, we meet him on ground we haven’t chosen."

That was the honest picture. Batu held it without arguing with it.

"Get the eastern tumen’s outer elements on a tighter orbit around the main body," he said. "Don’t concentrate. Don’t pull the screen down. Move the outer elements inward on a routine adjustment.

If the word comes that Siban has moved, I want that window cut by two days."

Torghul stood. "I’ll have the orders out before midday."

"One more thing. Jaran’s crossing map came in before he moved out. Send him a rider at the Hasal crossing. He checks both families and sends back whatever either one gives him.

He holds position until I say otherwise."

He left.

Batu gave it a few minutes and walked to the eastern holding pen.

The guard stepped aside. Inside, the lamp was burning at its usual low level. Temur was awake, sitting with his back against the wall, eyes already on the entrance when Batu stepped through.

He’d finished his calculations a long time ago. He looked at Batu across the small distance and waited.

Over two months in that room. He had given Guyuk’s name at the first interrogation. He had given Chanar and Beke when they were needed. The chain he’d been part of was gone.

Batu sat on the stool.

"You’re going to Torghul’s command," he said. "A rider assignment. No rank. You report to whoever he assigns you to and you ride where you’re told."

Temur looked at him. "That’s all."

"That’s all."

A brief pause. "When."

"Today."

Temur stood. He looked at the walls of the room once. Then he looked at Batu.

"The merchant," he said. "Davud. He knows more about what moved through that chain than I do."

"I know where he went."

Temur said nothing else. He walked out through the entrance into the open air.

Batu sent a rider with the instruction and walked back through the central ground.

The morning had moved into its middle hours. The camp ran its ordinary functions. The arrival would come from the northeast.

A rider first, then a force behind that rider. The only question was how much of the eight to ten days remained when it did.

The report from the southern approach came in the early afternoon.

It moved through Orel’s outer function as routine administrative traffic. A sub-unit on the southern pasture boundary had received a rider from a minor Jochid clan whose grazing line crossed between the main camp’s grazing line and Berke’s southern reach.

The clan had sent the rider north because the contact they expected to find in the south hadn’t been at the meeting point.

Batu read it when Orel brought it with the day’s stack. A missed contact in the southern line. A courier who hadn’t shown. 𝘧𝓇ℯ𝑒𝓌𝑒𝑏𝓃𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭.𝒸ℴ𝓂

Against what the morning had already produced, it was Berke running the same problem Siban was running. Both principals had received nothing from their inside sources. Both were holding something they couldn’t explain from where they stood.

He brought it to Torghul before the evening meal.

Torghul read it once. "Berke’s circle maintains regular contact with the fringe clans between his territory and ours. If the contact missed the point, he pulled back."

He set the report down. "Berke will want confirmation before he moves. He’ll wait for Siban to go first."

"Or he waits until it’s long enough that it tells him on its own."

Both of them sat with that.

The network Guyuk had built here had fed two principals. One holding the northeast, one in the south. Both were working through the same count now, and neither had reach inside this camp anymore.

The Chanar line was gone. The Beke line was gone. Two men in the field who had been built toward a purpose now had to act on their own read or stand down.

A man who had managed his record as carefully as Siban had would send riders out before he committed. That took time.

Every day that window held, the inside advantage eroded further. When they came back with nothing, the waiting would end.

"The fringe clan that sent the report," Batu said. "The Yargach."

"Yes."

"Send them a ruling on the grazing line they complained about last season. Whatever they asked for. Written, under the wolf’s track seal."

Torghul looked at him. "That brings them across."

"It does."

He left.

The last light dropped away from the felt walls. Outside, the camp ran its evening routines. Fires came up on the central ground. The horse lines ran their last allocation.

Siban was at his northeastern post, and the rider he would send south hadn’t moved yet. Batu had the deployment order half-written in Torghul’s adjusted positions. Eight to ten days.

Siban had fewer.

Jaran was at the Hasal crossing. The wolf’s track seal held both upper crossing families now. Whatever they had been sending east would move through Jochid hands from this point.