Reincarnated as Genghis Khan's Grandson, I Will Not Let It Fall-Chapter 47: What the Third Clan Sent

The outer screen flagged him before the morning raiding party had formed.

Penk’s relay rider came in from the outer post at the standard interval, but the message he carried was outside the cycle. A rider on the upper road, moving with purpose. He had covered the distance in the dark.

Batu was at the horse line when they brought him through.

The rider was lean and road-dry, his animal spent at the outer post behind him. He had come from the third corridor clan, the one whose headman had accepted the wolf’s track terms with the flattest face and the least visible resistance of the three.

"Two of the clans are moving," the rider said. "Their riders are working with a body that’s coming up from Berke’s territory. They’re on the eastern road. Your supply line went north on that route."

"When did you leave."

"Before first light. The body was assembling when I departed. I rode straight through."

"How far assembled."

"Riders coming in from two directions. A few hundred at least. More coming."

He paused. "I couldn’t stay to count them."

Batu looked at him. "Your name."

"Altan."

The convoy had gone out the morning after the battle. It would be somewhere ahead now, loaded and moving at load pace, with Penk’s relay pairs for company on the track and nothing else.

"Your horse is finished," Batu said. "Get a fresh one from the line. You ride with us."

Altan went with the handler without question.

Berke’s move was the correct one. No approach from the south ran into anything other than prepared ground. The streambed. The earthworks. The position with depth behind it.

The raiding parties were stripping his reserves beyond the streambed and the river was shut against his commercial traffic. The clans remained.

Three agreements placed recently, each resting on a winter grazing dependency that still pointed south, each one only as real as the clan that kept it chose to honor. Two of them had made their choice when Berke gave them a reason to.

The third had sent a rider through the dark.

One clan holding was the number that mattered. One could send word in time. One had.

Torghul was at the relay station when Batu arrived.

"You’ve seen the message," Batu said.

"Just now."

"Two mingans. Your selection. Ready within the hour."

Torghul looked at him directly. "You’re taking them yourself."

"Yes."

A pause. "That leaves me short if Berke pushes across the streambed while you’re across the river."

"He won’t push across the streambed," Batu said. "He just committed his move to the supply line. He can’t run two operations at once against a fortified position.

A force that needed the clans to force our hand won’t have the depth to press the south face at the same time."

Torghul held that for a beat. He didn’t argue it.

"Dorbei holds the south bank," Batu said. "Regardless of what comes back from the north. He holds the river."

"Understood."

"The raiding parties continue. Penk’s relay runs without adjustment. The camp’s posture doesn’t change until I send word back."

Torghul was already turning toward the mingans. "It’ll be ready."

The two mingans took shape quickly. These were men who had come through the engagement and spent the days since in the raiding rotation or holding the camp’s lines, and the preparation moved through them without requiring direction.

Equipment checks ran without instruction. The horse handlers moved the right animals to the right men before the jaghun commanders had finished their counts.

Jaghun by jaghun the ranks filled, each rider checking his own animal before settling into position. The bridles went on without prompting. The quivers were full, checked against the count, and seated correctly before anyone looked away from their own equipment.

The sound of the camp changed as the mingans drew together. The scattered noise of an encampment organizing itself became the lower, directed sound of a body that knew where it was going.

The pack animals carrying spare loads moved into position at the rear and steadied there. The ranks had been at rest long enough, pointed now at something that needed to be reached.

Bayan came in off the eastern circuit when the word reached Kirsa. He arrived at his position on the right edge of the forming ranks and said nothing to the men beside him. His animal was rested from the morning run.

He settled into his place without announcement, without looking for acknowledgment.

Siban’s three guides went to the front with Altan just behind them.

They moved out through the fortified gate.

The terrain between the camp and the river was familiar. The same ground the raiding parties had worked across in the days since the battle. Nothing moved on the ground ahead. The pairs were at their intervals as the formation passed.

The river came up quickly. The eastern crossing came up ahead. The near bank firm underfoot, the current shallower here than at the western approach. The markers still in place.

The water was colder than it had been when the southern march first came through. The season had moved into it, the chill carrying down from higher ground upstream, and the horses felt it in the first step.

They went through without breaking stride.

Batu crossed with them. The noise of a full formation crossing filled the air. The push of current against horses, the specific sound of hooves on river stone, the scattered crossing of ranks moving in file.

The screen was already on the far bank, moving east.

The far side came up under his horse and the eastern road ran ahead through dry grass, pale and straight, cutting east toward where the two defected territories sat astride it.

The sky above it was flat and empty. The track gave back nothing about what was on it.

The convoy was somewhere ahead on it. The body and the two clans somewhere between the convoy and the crossing.

On open ground with flat visibility in every direction, the approach ran clear to the horizon. The dust from two mingans rose before the riders who made it. Whatever was on that track had the same view.

Both sides would read each other’s approach long before they closed.

The last riders came off behind him.

The formation moved north.