Reincarnated as Genghis Khan's Grandson, I Will Not Let It Fall-Chapter 68: Military Modernization

Torghul sat across the table. Siban took the position to his right. The lamp was burning between them, and the winter air pressed in from outside, the kind of cold that had been sitting on the camp long enough that no one noticed it anymore.

Batu looked at Torghul.

"The junction gap at the lower river," he said. "What produced it."

Torghul answered without pause. "The relay timing ran the plan. The arc came wider and faster than the plan assumed. The cycle kept running what it had been given."

"Those on the right flank."

"They held their section. Did exactly what they’d been told."

"Yes," Batu said. "They did."

He let it sit for a moment.

"The gap came from the space between the relay and the field. Between the plan running correctly and the ground moving differently. Those on that flank held their position and couldn’t read what was forming around it."

He kept his voice flat. "That’s the problem."

Torghul held his gaze and said nothing.

"The formation is going west," Batu said. "When it does, the officers in those mingans are going to be weeks away from the nearest man who can correct a bad call. What produces those officers needs to run without me standing in the room."

Torghul was still for a moment.

"Some of those who’ll face this evaluation held their positions at the narrows," he said. "They held them when the ridge was loud and the arrows were coming from two directions. They held at the lower river when the flanking arc came in harder than we built the plan for."

Torghul looked at the table. "Telling them that costs something to say."

"What it tells them is what comes next," Batu said. "What they already did is what it is. The assessment measures the next thing."

"They won’t hear it that way."

"Some of them won’t. Some of them will."

Torghul looked at the lamp. He had the face of a man who had accepted a correct answer and was now itemizing what carrying it would cost him.

"What are we measuring," he said. "Because survival isn’t the standard anymore, you’ve said that, I understand it. What replaces it."

Siban had been still since he sat down. He spoke now, and his voice had the quality it always had, without urgency, naming a thing he had been thinking through before he arrived.

"The standards need to name something visible from outside the man’s head," he said. "I spent weeks reading this formation from outside it. What I could read was the relay, the pace riders, the intervals. What I couldn’t read was whether the officers below mingan level could call a gap before it formed."

He looked at the table. "That happens between a man and his read of the ground. It either comes out through a report or it doesn’t. The report is what’s observable. The standard has to come from that."

Torghul looked at him. He was reading the analysis for what it was worth.

"Say what that looks like at each level," Torghul said.

Siban considered it for a moment.

"At the arban, the question is simple. Does the commander know each of his ten. Can he report their state without being asked, who is ready, who has taken a wound, who has an animal that’s going lame. Any commander who can’t answer that in the middle of a moving situation hasn’t built what an arban requires. That’s the standard at the base."

Torghul nodded once. There was nothing to argue with there.

"At the jaghun level it changes," Siban said. "A jaghun commander can’t see every rider under them. He reads his boundary, left edge, right edge, what’s in front. The standard there is whether he reports up before he acts on his own read."

Siban’s eyes moved back to the table. A commander who decides and then carries his own judgment forward is running the unit independently. One who calls it up and waits is running it as part of the formation. The second one is what the formation needs.

Torghul looked at Batu. "That’s what the relay was built for."

"Yes," Batu said. "Penk’s function exists because the army didn’t have that habit. It still doesn’t have it completely."

He paused. "Putting it on felt fixes it. Every jaghun commander knows he’s being evaluated against it."

"And the mingan," Torghul said to Siban.

"The junction," Siban said. "Whether a commander reads what’s forming outside his direct sight and names it before it closes. The arc at the lower river was visible to anyone looking east who wasn’t occupied with his own front. The mingan commanders on the right were occupied with their own front."

He paused. "The standard is whether a man calls that kind of gap under pressure. Calls it aloud. Gets it up the chain before the situation forces the answer." 𝕗𝐫𝐞𝕖𝕨𝐞𝗯𝚗𝕠𝘃𝐞𝚕.𝐜𝗼𝚖

The tent was still for a moment. The lamp threw its steady light across the felt on the table.

Torghul turned it over in the way he turned over things that had an obvious application he didn’t want to name aloud until he had to.

"There’s a commander in the second mingan," he said at last. "He held his section through both river engagements. Good officer. Steady. When the right flank broke open, he held his section correctly and said nothing."

He looked at the lamp. "That cost us what it cost us. He never called it."

"How long has he held that section," Batu said.

"Since before the Sarat campaign."

"And those in his jaghun."

"They’d follow him anywhere," Torghul said. He said it without looking at Batu. "He’s built that. Over years. In fire."

"That’s real," Batu said. "And the evaluation will tell him he hasn’t demonstrated what mingan command requires. Those two things are both true."

Torghul sat with it.

"He won’t receive it as two things being true," he said. "He’ll receive it as one thing. Everything he’s done wasn’t enough."

"Then explain what the assessment evaluates," Batu said. "You know the difference. Tell him."

"I know the difference. Getting it to make sense for him is a different problem."

"He’ll hear it from the felt. The criteria are on paper. The standard is specific. When he reads it he knows exactly what the assessment evaluated and what it didn’t."

Batu continued, "His section is his as long as he holds it. The assessment is about what comes next."

Torghul nodded. The order would run.

"The other problem," Siban said.

Torghul glanced at him.

"The commanders running the assessments," Siban said. "If one commander assesses his own men, he brings his own loyalties to the felt. He’s worked with these officers. Some of them he’d fight to protect."

Siban kept his voice level. "The standard is written but the application is his, and his application is going to run in the direction of those he’s spent years with."

"He’s right," Torghul said. He said it without looking at Batu.

"Two signatures," Batu said. "The assessing commander and one other officer at the same rank or above. Both sign the result."

Torghul looked at him.

"Two officers with different histories with the commander being assessed," Batu said. "Both have to put their name on the felt. If one of them is softening the result, the other’s signature is there and the discrepancy is visible."

Torghul was still for a long moment. It meant he would have to sign his name beside evaluations that went against those he had led through fire, with another commander’s name beside his. The cover of personal discretion was gone.

If he passed a commander the standards didn’t support, his signature said he did.

He understood why the design was correct. He also understood exactly what it was going to feel like to use it.

"Any challenge goes up the line," Batu said. "Heard once. Noted beside the result. Then the result stands."

"And if a challenge doesn’t come through the line," Siban said. He named it as an architecture problem.

"Then it’s not a process problem," Batu said.

Siban nodded once. The boundary was stated.

Torghul stood. He walked out with it.

"One week," Batu said to Siban. "Three observable standards at each level, arban through mingan. On felt. Under the seal."

Siban nodded.

"The assessment calendar," Batu said to Torghul. "Every officer at jaghun rank and above before spring. Results recorded by Siban’s hand."

Torghul said he understood and walked out.

The tent was silent with only two men in it. Siban had his stylus in his hand. He set a blank piece of felt on the table and looked at it for a moment, organizing the framework before the first mark went down.

Then he began to write.