Reincarnated as Genghis Khan's Grandson, I Will Not Let It Fall-Chapter 33: What Siban Rides Into

Khulgen arrived before the morning fires had caught, coming in from the southern road with two riders at his back and a pack horse. The pace of his arrival said the distance had been covered without stopping. He came directly to the eastern base and fell into step beside Batu.

"The camp holds," Khulgen said. "Mersek kept his riders inside the perimeter and didn’t allow the lines to loosen. Orel maintained the supply accounting and left no gaps in the tallies. Penk’s relay riders returned along the chain in proper order."

Batu kept walking. "What word reached you."

"Word of the column moving north came through the western circuit before long," Khulgen said. "After that the circuit riders brought back what they found." He paused.

"A rider from the Ulus headman arrived on the second morning. The headman had been watching the northeastern approach from his outer pasture line and saw the column pass north. He chose not to send riders in any direction at that moment."

Khulgen looked toward Batu. "The message said he was ready to receive Jochid officers when you returned. He wishes to discuss establishing a formal arrangement."

The headman had seen the column depart and had held his men at home instead of committing them to any movement. He had dispatched his rider before the result of the engagement could possibly reach him.

That meant he had considered the meaning of the column’s departure and had already judged the likely outcome, acting on that judgment while events were still unfolding beyond his sight.

"Send acknowledgment," Batu said. "Tell him I’ll receive his riders within a week of our return."

Khulgen inclined his head once.

"The Yargach rider passed through before dawn," he added. "He was moving fast and riding south."

Berke’s rider. The man had reached the narrows, read the terrain with a trained eye, and turned his horse without hesitation. His report would move faster than Batu’s column could.

Batu kept walking through the supply stacks. "The wounded."

"I brought away as many as I could safely transport," Khulgen said. "Your physician is behind me with the supply train if you choose to send word and call him forward."

He looked at the rows of men near the western ridge base. "I’ll need a complete count of supplies and losses before I can organize proper resupply."

"Torghul has the numbers."

Khulgen went to find Torghul.

Siban stood at the northern end of the narrows when Batu found him there.

He was on foot at the entrance to the cut, his posture straight, looking down into the passage where the floor still showed what had been done there.

His men were carrying their dead from the passage while Jochid men watched the work in disciplined silence. Siban stood with his arms at his sides, the cloth binding still wrapped around his forearm, and watched the column move through the cut without calling to them.

Batu came to stand beside him. Neither spoke. The clearing work continued below them.

"Your mangudai maneuver," Siban said at last. "The withdrawal onto the southern flat. The moment when your riders halted and turned."

"They were trained for it," Batu said.

Siban kept his gaze on the cut below where the dead were being carried out one by one. "We had already entered the cut before your ridgeline troops revealed themselves."

"Yes."

There was no accusation in his voice. He was standing at the point in the passage where the outcome had become fixed.

"The relay rider," Siban said. "The one who climbed the eastern face during the fighting. From the track his pace read as routine. I watched him go over the ridge and couldn’t tell what message he carried."

"Supply information for the ridgeline element."

Siban was still for a moment. "Each movement read as routine until the moment it mattered," he said.

He turned away from the passage entrance and looked at the camp spread across the base of the ridges.

Supply men moved between the stacks. A count rider crossed from Torghul’s position toward Khulgen at a measured pace. Two members of the medical detail worked through the wounded near the western ridge base, one man to the next, without breaking pace. A horse handler led three animals from one line to another, keeping clear of the work area.

Siban watched all of it without speaking.

"I rode south expecting to find a camp that had moved too quickly for its own stability," he said at last.

"A young commander who had consolidated power quickly, gathered several tributary clans, and begun administrative changes." He paused. "That was the picture presented to us."

Batu said nothing.

"The picture had been built by men who only read the surface of events," Siban said, watching the count rider disappear behind the stacked weapons.

"They weren’t reading the work that created the surface."

Batu let the statement settle.

"Your staff function," he said.

Siban turned his head.

"You know the Irtysh approaches better than anyone currently under my command," Batu said.

"I want a full assessment of that border. Every approach, every position where the ground favors a defending force. Torghul receives it when it’s done."

"Then you’re preparing for something that may move west," Siban said.

"I’m preparing for anything that may move in any direction."

For a moment there was only the sound of the clearing work below them. Siban looked back toward the entrance of the channel.

"Our father’s riders held the Irtysh crossing for years," he said. "That was before the boundary was fixed where it stands today.

He used to say that crossing was the only barrier between the Jochid lands and everything that lay east of them." He paused. "He wasn’t wrong."

Batu let the words rest. They were Jochi’s sons by different mothers. The engagement had run between them regardless.

"Your senior riders," Batu said after a moment.

"The men who will come to camp for the season. Choose those who know the eastern approaches well. There’s no reason for the season to pass without strengthening our knowledge of that ground."

Siban looked at him for a moment, the same read he had brought to the breakfast table and to the channel mouth. 𝒻𝑟ℯℯ𝑤𝑒𝑏𝑛𝘰𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝒸𝑜𝘮

"I’ll give Torghul the names before the column begins its march," he said.

He turned and walked toward the western base where his riders were gathering.

By late morning the formation stood ready, the clearing work was done. The dead had been accounted for with care. The supply stacks had been tallied and loaded.

Siban’s released men were already departing northeast in organized groups, each one passing through the count point before the screening men allowed them to leave the field.

Torghul found Batu at the eastern base as the final elements settled into position.

"Everything’s ready," Torghul said.

Batu mounted his horse and rode forward to the head of the column.

The steppe opened ahead in long pale waves of dry grass beneath the clear morning light. The sound of the moving column carried backward through the ranks.

The steady rhythm of horses and equipment, the compression of a large force settling into its intervals. From the front of the formation the narrows were already fading behind them.

The two ridgelines closed together in the distance before the track curved around the first fold of land and hid the passage from sight.

Batu did not look back.

What lay behind him had changed something in the wider arrangement of the steppe. The change was not loud or dramatic.

News across the open grass never traveled that way. It moved in fragments carried by many voices, reaching different ears at different speeds.

By the time the full story assembled in one place, events elsewhere were already moving again. That was how information moved on the steppe.

Berke’s knowledge would not arrive in fragments. His rider had seen everything with his own eyes.

He had seen the cleared passage, the counted weapons, and Siban’s men returning home under the conditions Batu had imposed.

He had turned south while the morning was still young and was now riding hard with that complete report. Whatever conclusion Berke reached, he would reach it with a clear read of the situation.

That left a single question. What a cautious man would do when the arrangement beneath him had changed without announcement.

He could remain where he was, calculating that a force which had just lost a hundred and thirty men would require time before it could move again.

He could begin working the watching clans scattered along the approaches between his territory and Batu’s, observing how those small forces oriented themselves now that Siban’s position had been closed.

Or he could ride north in person, which would be the choice that required the greatest confidence in his own calculations and the least confidence in Batu’s next decision.

Every one of those possibilities led back to the same question.

What Batu intended to do next.

Berke’s rider had turned south before the morning was two hours old. By the time the column reached the main camp, Berke would already be sitting with the full account and deciding what to do with it.

That decision would not wait for Batu to finish counting his dead.