The road into the military district split from the administrative district and opened onto the garrison barracks.

Batu was hit by the smell before anything else. Hay. Leather. Horse sweat. The practical smell of soldiers who worked with animals every day, different from the smoke and trade scents that filled the rest of the city.

Most of the summer construction was finished now, the two rows of garrison barracks standing complete or nearly so. The Khar Kheshig barracks occupied the southern side with its entrance facing back toward the city. The command buildings stood beside it in rows. At the southeastern corner, the relay station was already working.

The training grounds at the northeast remained open exactly as intended, though multiple stacks of timber still waited where the final work had stalled. Along the northern boundary, horse lines stretched the full length of the district.

A relay rider met him near the center road and confirmed the deployment, several jaghuns assigned to civil order duty.

There was no tumen stationed here, the army itself remained at the winter camp south of the Sura.

Batu continued through the garrison section.

The riders on duty were where they should be.

By the standards written into regulation, nothing was wrong.

But the problem lay beneath the regulations, in the habits forming underneath them. These riders had been trained for campaigns, movement, and war. The city gave them none of those things.

At the far corner of the training ground, three riders had turned a stone-toss game into the center of their afternoon. A line scratched across the packed dirt marked the contest. One man threw while the others watched and complained over distances. It wasn’t quite failure of discipline, but men filling empty hours.

Near the second barracks row, another rider leaned against a timber corner where a watchman should have stood alert. A young woman stood with him holding a basket, likely a delivery from the city.

Whatever the rider said made her laugh behind her hand.

She answered quietly. The man leaned farther against the wall, focused entirely on the narrow distance between them instead of the district around him.

A garrison officer emerged between the barracks rows and approached with measured posture.

"My lord."

Batu looked past him toward the distracted rider. The man still had not noticed their arrival.

"How long has he been on that post?"

The officer followed his gaze. His expression tightened.

"Two hours, lord."

"Move him to another rotation."

The officer bowed once and went immediately.

Batu resumed walking. His thoughts moved through the details he had seen, about the game on the training ground, the inattentive watchman, the general discipline of soldiers doing only what the situation required and nothing more.

The conclusion came quickly.

Campaign soldiers were poorly suited for city security from both directions. The soldiers themselves lost discipline without meaningful military purpose. Meanwhile, civilians dealt every day with men trained for streets violence being used to settle minor disputes and maintain order in crowded streets.

There was a reason large cities eventually built dedicated civil watches.

The work required different habits, different expectations, even a different sense of purpose. A city watch answered to administration, not military command. Different pay. Different equipment. Different training.

The separation mattered because the work itself was different.

The relay rider walked beside Batu with a felt strip ready for notes.

"Send this to Khulgen."

Batu informed him. "The campaign riders come off city patrol. The city needs its own watch with a separate command structure and administration from the army entirely."

The rider recorded the order and walked away.

Suuqai waited near the Khar Kheshig barracks entrance for him. He had clearly been watching Batu’s approach for some time and stepped forward at exactly the right moment to join him without interrupting his pace.

Suuqai started to report without preamble. "The guard has two hundred and sixty-three steppe riders against the target of three hundred. The remaining intake positions are still in final review."

His attention stayed on the yard ahead.

"Two hundred and six norsemen against seven hundred."

Batu let the silence stretch until Suuqai continued.

"There has been some friction on the Rus river roads."

He paused briefly. "The men who might had come to Sarai hesitate now. The tension between the rulers of that land and the khanate had made it difficult for them to move through Yusuf’s routes."

"How’s the guard running?"

"Better than before." Suuqai gave a slight nod. "The men are used to each other now."

Another pause. "But the norsemen numbers are too low for the role they were meant to fill. At two hundred, they can reinforce steppe riders or operate independently in detached groups, but their number isn’t enough for a ground force. Whenever the guard needs to secure tight ground, the response defaults to cavalry tactics because those are the numbers available."

"The situation will change when we march into Rus."

"In spring," Suuqai confirmed. "The sub-commander position remains open for it."

They entered the barracks.

The interior already felt used and reused. Equipment hung from assigned pegs, personal belongings rested beside sleeping places. The men had stopped treating the building like temporary lodging and started arranging it as home.

The stone foundations and timber walls had done what Batu intended. The structure felt like a real military building because it had been built to last.

Near the far wall, a steppe rider sat cross-legged beside a norse rider. Both worked on maintenance with composite bows resting across their knees.

The steppe rider pressed his thumb along the lower limb near the grip.

"Humidity gets into the join here during this season," he explained.

The norse rider copied the motion on his own bow but placed his thumb slightly off.

The steppe rider leaned over and pressed beneath the lower join instead.

"Here." He pointed directly at the place, speaking in Mongolian.

The norse rider adjusted immediately. This time his thumb found the proper spot, and he repeated the maintenance motion correctly.

"Good."

The norseman nodded once and continued working without another word.

Batu and Suuqai passed them and moved toward the far end of the building.

"How common is that?" Batu asked.

Suuqai considered the question before answering.

"Somewhat common. Most norsemen from the early days can communicate now."

He glanced back toward the two riders.

"The larger change came later. The norsemen started joining the early patrol rotation."

"Dawn patrol?"

Suuqai nodded. "They saw the steppe riders running dawn patrols and began doing the same. Now the habit belongs to both groups."

They stepped back into the yard.

Noise rolled across the training ground before Batu could see the source. A crowd reacting to physical effort. Sharp bursts of sound followed by lower waves of commentary. Men watching a contest.

A mixed ring of riders stood around an open center. Steppe and norse together, no separation between them.

Batu and Suuqai crossed toward the crowd.

When they reached the ring, the center became visible.

Einar had a steppe rider locked by the arm and shoulder. The throw had passed the point where it could be stopped. His body rotated fully through the motion, and the other rider’s feet lifted cleanly from the packed earth.