Reincarnated as Genghis Khan's Grandson, I Will Not Let It Fall-Chapter 5: What He Had to Work With

The rider came back from the west on the fifth day.

His name was Odun, the most senior of the ten men Batu had sent to handle the Kipchak dispute.

He was in his mid-thirties, steady, not the kind of man who inflated reports to make himself look useful. Batu had picked him for that reason.

Odun gave his report standing, still dusty from the ride.

"The Burjin clan submitted on the second day," he said. "Their elder accepted the ruling on the pasture boundary and paid the first tribute installment in horses. Twelve head, good stock."

"And the Tergesh."

"They refused. Their headman said the Jochid line had no authority over pasture that his grandfather’s grandfather had grazed."

Odun paused.

"He said it in front of all ten of us. Then he had us escorted to the clan boundary and told not to return."

Batu looked at him.

"He escorted you out. He didn’t threaten violence."

"No. He was intentional about it. Polite, even. Like he was making a point without giving us cause to make one back."

That was a careful man.

Not a hothead testing limits. Someone who understood that open aggression would bring a military response, so he’d chosen the kind of defiance that sat in a gray area.

Submit or fight were easy responses. Being ignored politely was harder to answer without looking disproportionate.

"How many fighting men does the Tergesh clan run," Batu said.

"My estimate put it at around four hundred riders. Maybe a hundred and fifty with real combat experience."

"Mounts."

"Good ones. They’ve had three strong foaling seasons. Their horses are well-fed."

Batu nodded once.

"Get some rest. I’ll want you available tomorrow morning."

Odun left.

Batu stood where he was for a moment, looking at the western wall of the tent, thinking about a clan headman who had calculated exactly how much defiance he could afford.

The man wasn’t wrong, technically. Ten riders was presence, not force.

The correct answer to ten riders was a polite escort to the border. It communicated the same thing back, we see your authority and we’re choosing not to recognize it, but we’re not stupid enough to give you a pretext.

Batu had used that move himself in a previous life, against bureaucratic structures he couldn’t confront directly.

It was an intelligent move.

It needed an intelligent answer.

He sent for Khulgen and a man named Torghul, who commanded the largest of his western tumens.

Ten thousand men on paper, closer to eight thousand effective after accounting for the usual gap between roster and reality.

Torghul arrived twenty minutes after Khulgen.

He was a big man, late forties, with a commander’s instinct for reading a room when he walked into one.

He took in Batu’s expression and sat without being told to.

Batu had a piece of felt on the table with a rough map scratched in charcoal.

The Kipchak pasture lands to the west. The Tergesh clan’s approximate territory marked with a cross.

"Tell me how you’d handle the Tergesh situation," Batu said.

Torghul looked at the map.

"Take two thousand riders west. Surround the clan camp, take the headman’s horses and cattle as a penalty levy, leave a garrison of fifty to collect tribute for the next three seasons. If he resists, burn the outer camp and take his sons as hostages."

It was a competent answer. Standard Mongol administrative enforcement. It would work.

"How long to assemble two thousand riders and move them west," Batu said.

"From this camp, four days to assemble. Three days to reach Tergesh territory. Call it a week."

"And while those two thousand riders are moving west, who is watching the northern pasture approaches."

Torghul paused.

"The remaining garrison."

"Which is reduced by two thousand men."

"Temporarily."

Batu said nothing. He watched Torghul look at the map.

A moment passed.

Then Torghul said, "The Ulus clan."

"They have a standing grievance with us over a bridge toll dispute," Batu said.

"If the Tergesh headman sent a rider east two days ago, what does our northern approach look like when those two thousand men are sitting on the Ural steppe."

Torghul sat back.

He was working through it, not resisting it.

"I’m not criticizing the answer," Batu said.

"It’s the right answer to the question I asked. There’s a larger question underneath it."

He looked at the map.

"I want to know what I actually have to work with before I point any part of it at a problem."

He spent the next two hours doing something he should have done the week he arrived in this body.

He went through the tumen structure with both men, systematically, the way a new commander reviews an inherited unit.

Roster numbers against effective strength. Equipment condition. Horse-to-rider ratios. Supply line distances between the main camp and the forward positions.

Three tumens across the western territories.

Thirty thousand on paper.

By the end of the first hour Batu had seen enough to know the real number was closer to twenty-two thousand effective.

Maybe twenty-four on a strong day with full fodder and no sickness in the horse lines.

That was the number that actually mattered.

What he found was roughly what he’d expected.

Good cavalry. Brave men, experienced riders, high individual competence.

And almost no institutional structure below the commander level.

Scouting was ad hoc.

Individual riders sent out on the morning of a movement, reporting back to whoever was senior at the time.

No standardized reporting format. No layered screen to catch what a single scout might miss.

Signals between units were basic.

A fire meant danger. Two fires meant fall back.

Everything more complex than that traveled by rider, which meant delays measured in hours during fast-moving situations.

There was no staff.

Torghul made every significant decision himself, which meant Torghul was the single point of failure for ten thousand men.

Batu didn’t say any of that directly.

He asked questions and let the answers paint the picture.

Torghul was sharp enough to see where the questions were leading.

By the end of the second hour he was leaning forward, engaged in a way he hadn’t been at the start.

"The scouting is the first thing," Batu said finally.

"Before we move a single man toward the Tergesh situation, I want a three-layer screen."

"Lead scouts out two days ahead, a middle screen one day ahead, and a rear observation line covering our flanks and back trail."

"All three layers report on a fixed schedule to a single collection point."

"We’ve never run it that way," Torghul said.

Not defensively. Just stating a fact.

"I know. Which is why we’re going to run it for the first time on a situation that isn’t a war."

Batu tapped the map where the Tergesh territory was marked.

"Four hundred riders with no demonstrated willingness to fight is a good training problem. Low stakes, real terrain, real movement."

Torghul nodded slowly.

"I’m riding with you," Batu said.

Both men looked at him.

"Not to supervise. To see how it functions in the field."

He looked at Torghul.

"You command. I observe. What I see will shape what we build after."

Torghul accepted this with a nod that was more than formal agreement.

There was something in it that Batu recognized.

A senior officer who had been doing the job competently for years and who had just been shown a larger version of the job.

It wasn’t deflating. For the right kind of man, it was interesting.

Torghul was the right kind of man. Good.

"One more thing," Batu said.

"The two thousand rider number. Drop it to five hundred."

Torghul raised an eyebrow.

"Five hundred well-positioned riders with proper scouting screens will accomplish the same result."

"The headman is careful, not suicidal. He’ll read the numbers and he’ll read the organization."

"A smaller force that moves like it knows exactly where his flanks are is more persuasive than a larger force that moves blind."

He paused.

"And I keep fifteen hundred riders here."

He let Torghul work through the logic. It didn’t take long.

"We move in three days," Batu said.

"Use tomorrow to select the scout units. I want men who are sharp and fast, not men who are experienced."

"Experience can be taught. Speed and instinct are harder."

He rolled up the felt map and set it aside.

Outside, the camp moved through its evening routines.

Fires, horses, the low noise of thousands of men closing out a day.

The Tergesh headman had made one calculation.

He’d sent ten riders home and assumed the response would come the way it always came.

Mass and speed and the blunt certainty of overwhelming numbers.

He hadn’t accounted for the possibility that the man now riding toward him had spent a lifetime learning how to make five hundred do the work of two thousand.

In three days he would find out what that felt like.