Reincarnated as Genghis Khan's Grandson, I Will Not Let It Fall-Chapter 70: Census and Accounts

Orel came in the morning with the tribute tallies under his arm and stopped at the tent entrance. A brief pause, then he crossed.

Batu was already at the table. He gestured once and Orel came forward and spread the tallies out.

The records were organized by territory, working outward from the main camp. Orel’s hand in it was clear, each tributary’s last reported figures beside the date of reporting.

The established clans ran clean. The Burjin had sent a written tally recently, standard levy in horses and grain, the figures matching the agreed terms under the wolf’s track seal. The Tergesh record was current to Jaran’s departure. The Ulus submission was logged. The Sartat, the yellow banner clan, the Yargach, all present, all under seal.

Then the records thinned.

The Kipchak clans east of the Ural ran on approximations. Estimates built from what riders had reported in previous seasons, adjusted upward or downward by what the patrol lines had observed.

No direct count behind any of them. The Bashkir territories to the northeast were thinner still. A single entry noted that three clan headmen had acknowledged the Jochid line’s authority, with no subsequent tribute record.

Then the southern territory.

Below the streambed, in what had been Berke’s administrative reach, there was a notation. Territory under consolidation, figures pending. A marker, not a record.

Dorbei’s riders were moving through it, submitting clans as they found them, but none of that had come north in written form yet.

"The southern clans," Batu said. "How many does Dorbei estimate."

"His last rider put it at eight to twelve clans of varying size." Orel’s voice carried its usual register, flat and precise. "That’s from what he’s encountered directly. There may be more in the outer reaches."

"What are we collecting from them."

"Based on what Berke collected. His figures, passed through what our riders found when we stripped the stores." Orel’s eyes moved to the tally. "It’s an estimate. We don’t know what they actually hold."

Batu looked at the records spread across the table.

A tribute system built on estimates drifted. He knew this without needing to think about it. Every season, the numbers served the man reporting them more than the man receiving them.

A clan headman who reported a hundred households and held two hundred had been extracting a margin from the arrangement since the day the first estimate was entered. Multiply that across the Kipchak clans, the Bashkir territories, the new southern ground, and the drift accumulated into something real.

The seal on the tribute felt guaranteed an arrangement that neither party could verify against the ground. The seal was worth what it could be checked against.

"Has anyone counted them directly," Batu said. "Any of them."

"No," Orel said.

"Then we do it." Batu kept his voice even. "Every tributary. Households, men of fighting age, animals, grain stores. The Burjin and Tergesh first since they’re closest, then the Kipchak clans, then north to the Bashkir line."

"The southern territory gets counted when Dorbei’s consolidation is far enough along to make the count accurate." He paused. "Before summer."

Orel was already making a note. "The count needs riders who can correct a false report."

"The tribute enforcement riders carry it. Under the wolf’s track seal. A headman who gives a false count gets a second visit."

Orel noted that too. He kept writing for a moment and then looked up.

"There’s a second problem," he said.

Batu waited.

"My office can handle the records when the tallies come in. What it can’t cover is running the count itself in addition to the existing load, and there’s the site to account for, and Dorbei’s reports when they start arriving regularly."

He looked at the tallies on the table. "The records man from the prisoner group is managing the staging counts. He’s one additional hand. What we’re adding now is more than one hand’s worth of work."

Batu sat with that for a moment.

The campaign had produced real wealth. The accumulated product of a fought and won operation against a Jochid branch that had been running independently for years.

The animals driven north from the stores below the streambed were in the depot. The penalty levies from the Tergesh and the Ulus and the Sartat had come in as horses, good stock. The silver that had been moving through the lower river crossings under Berke’s informal arrangements now moved under the wolf’s track seal.

A portion of every merchant load that passed through fed the Jochid account in dirhams and silver by weight. The prisoner processing had added to the tally in goods and animals catalogued from what Berke’s men had carried.

It was enough. It covered what he was about to authorize without drawing on it.

"A portion of the campaign’s taken goods goes to the civil account. Separate from the military account. It funds three things. Uyghur scribes from the eastern settlements, on a paid term. They run consistent records across all formats."

"Hired workers for the site, craftsmen and laborers brought in on paid terms. And riders for the census and collection work."

Orel had stopped writing and was looking at him.

"You know the Uyghur traders," Batu said. "They come through the camp on the Bulgar merchant road."

"Some of them have the training," Orel said. "I can send word through the trading routes before summer."

"Do it. Also have riders check what craftsmen are in the captive populations. Stonework, timber framing, ironwork. They come under paid terms, fixed period."

Orel wrote it all down. When he finished he was still for a moment, looking at the tallies.

Batu looked at him.

He had come in this morning and laid out the tribute picture without being asked to frame it as a problem. He had named the southern gap before Batu could arrive at it himself.

The personnel constraint came in the same report, in the same register, without separating it from the rest as if it were a complaint. He had been running the outer office since before the Sarat campaign.

A deputy was already in place. The Uyghur trading route was familiar ground to him. He had the records man from the prisoner group already working under him.

He had been doing the work without the authority to make it move faster.

"Your function changes," Batu said. "You run the administrative office. The census riders, the scribes when they arrive, the tribute records across all territories."

"You report to Khulgen for supply coordination. Anything that requires the seal comes directly to me."

Orel held that for a moment. "The site," he said.

"Go on."

"The records work and the construction are two different things at two different scales. The site needs someone managing what comes in and goes out, the labor accounts, the material contracts."

"That’s running alongside the census and the collection work." He looked at the table. "Khulgen is doing it because no one else is."

"Khulgen shouldn’t be doing it," Batu said.

"No."

Batu leaned back.

Khulgen’s function was intelligence and logistics, supply chains, information movement, the accounting of a military operation. He had taken on the site because the gap existed and he had seen it and filled it when he saw it, the way he always did.

But a construction program that would run for years, managing silver, labor accounts, materials sourcing, negotiations with local clans for timber and stone, correspondence with craftsmen arriving from outside the steppe. That work was different.

The role required specific experience. One who had run something permanent before. A market town. A caravanserai. A city’s bureau.

The role had a name in the Persian tradition. Sahib-diwan. Someone from Khurasan, from the tradition of managing settled accounts through fractured dynasties for centuries.

Someone who had sat in the position and managed accounts and workers and disputes and correspondence and knew what that meant from the inside.

"I want you to find a name," Batu said. "Through the Uyghur traders, through the tributary contacts, through whoever comes through the site in the coming months."

"Someone who has held a senior post in a settled place. Persian or Khurasani background is what you’re looking for, someone who knows what it means to run a diwan, to manage accounts and works and personnel under one function."

"That experience, that specific background." He met Orel’s eyes. "A good name. Not whoever is nearest."

Orel wrote it down. He gathered the tallies and straightened them against the table edge.

"The scribes first," he said. "Then the census riders."

"In that order," Batu said.

Orel went.

The tent was still. Outside the camp ran its winter routines, the horse lines and the perimeter pairs and the labor at the eastern edge carrying its loads through the frozen morning.

Somewhere in the Uyghur settlements to the east, scribes trained to read and write and maintain records across different formats were moving through their own winter.

Somewhere in Khurasan, someone who had managed accounts and workers for a settled place was doing whatever such people did when the campaign had moved past them.

Orel would find that name or he wouldn’t. The search was running.