Reincarnated as Genghis Khan's Grandson, I Will Not Let It Fall-Chapter 73: Jebe’s Brother

The outer perimeter ran along the camp’s eastern and northern faces in a frozen line, the stakes and rope markers half-buried in packed snow, the two-man posts spaced at intervals wide enough that someone passing between them was briefly alone. Batu had chosen this route in the early morning for that reason.

The central ground was already active by the time he left his ger, the horse lines running their first allocation, Orel’s clerks at work before the cold had eased. Here there was only the sound of his own boots and the flat winter light coming off the steppe beyond the fence.

He raised his right arm. The pain came where it had been coming for the past week. At the upper reach, the muscle seized for a moment before releasing. He raised it a second time. Same point, same release.

The physician had said this was the healing running its course, the scar tissue working itself out as the muscle rebuilt. Batu had noted that assessment and returned to it each morning since, checking the figure against what the arm actually produced. The figure was improving. The arm confirmed it.

He kept walking.

The cold here was dry and flat, pressing in from the steppe with nothing to interrupt it. His breath rose and dispersed. The posts ahead were occupied. Two riders at the next interval, standing their rotation without moving, the frost on their outer coats saying they had been there for some time.

Suuqai was between the posts, crouching at the base of the eastern fence line. He had been running the camp’s counterintelligence work since the purge, and the Mersek guard detail through the winter.

He had a section of rope in his hands. He had found something that needed attention and was attending to it.

As Batu came closer he could see the stake had listed outward. The ground under it had frozen unevenly. The uneven freeze had worked the stake loose over the past several days.

The section of fence it anchored was sagging. Suuqai was checking the extent of it, pulling it to feel what tension remained.

He looked up when Batu’s footsteps reached him. His expression carried nothing particular. He stood.

"How far does it run," Batu said.

"Three spans from this stake to the next. The middle section has no tension." Suuqai looked back at the fence line. "The two posts on this stretch can see it during the day. At night the coverage depends on the angle of the fire."

Batu stopped beside him. He looked at the fence and then at the flat ground beyond it and then at the post positions on either side. The gap Suuqai had identified was real. Anyone who knew where to approach could use it.

"Tell Penk. He’ll work it into the overnight coverage adjustments."

"I’ll tell him this morning."

He stood where he was and let the cold settle for a moment. Suuqai waited. He stood inside the silence without reaching to close it. He had always done that. The quality was the same now as before.

The stillness Suuqai had was specific. He received information and worked with it before anything showed on his face.

"I want to put something formal under you," Batu said. "A guard. A hundred men, perhaps more when it’s built. Selected outside the tumen structure, separate from the camp watch."

"Who selects," he said.

"You do. From across all three tumens. No more than two people from any single mingan. No cousins serving in the same formation, no clan leaders from any tributary arrangement that touches this camp."

Batu looked at the steppe beyond the fence. "The steppe runs capable riders. What it runs short of is people who owe nothing to anyone in my command except the one who gave them the post."

Suuqai’s eyes were steady. He was reading the idea of the thing.

"’Every khan who died in his own camp died because someone inside had a reason. Guyuk had his nodes inside my camps before I found them."

Suuqai held his gaze.

"He built them before I noticed. The next attempt will come differently. The source will still be someone inside my formation."

"There’s a second force," Batu said. "Foreign riders. Men from the north. From the Rus territories, or further. People from outside the clan ties of this ground. Those whose only obligation runs to the post."

The second point had landed differently than the first. He was already working through it.

"Language," he said.

"What about it."

"A guard drawn from two populations needs a working language before it’s functional. The Mongol component and those from the north will have nothing shared until someone builds it."

He named the gap. "It takes time. More time than selection."

Batu thought about that. It was the correct observation. Suuqai had gone straight to the problem that came after recruitment. A unit with no shared language couldn’t pass orders across a line.

"That’s yours to solve. Start with those who’ve had contact with Rus traders on the crossing routes. Some of Kirsa’s riders have worked those approaches. Some of Siban’s know it from the Irtysh side. Find the ones with enough shared vocabulary to serve as bridges while the unit builds."

He received it.

"I’ll send word to Yusuf," Batu said. "He moves through the northern routes. Those who guard merchant trains in that country are often worth something. He’ll know where to find what I’m looking for, or he’ll know who does. When they arrive, they come to you."

He paused.

"How long before you have a first selection," Batu said.

Suuqai thought for a moment. A real estimate.

"Three weeks for the Mongol riders, if I’m running it separate from Torghul’s schedule. Less if I can use the training ground between cycles."

He paused. "The foreign men depends on Yusuf’s network and the season."

"The Mongol force first. The guard can function without them until they arrive."

Suuqai glanced back at the loose section one more time. He would tell Penk about it this morning, as he’d said.

"Start today," Batu said.

Suuqai turned and walked south along the perimeter toward the camp’s interior. He moved with purpose.

The Keshig had been built from the sons of Genghis’s commanders. Ten thousand riders drawn from the finest noble families of the steppe, each one a political alliance written in flesh, each one carrying his clan’s claim into the tent he guarded.

That was a different instrument for a different purpose.

It had served Genghis because Genghis’s power was the Mongol world, and the sons of that world in his tent was the point. Batu’s power was specific and contested.

Those who wanted to take it operated from inside the force he commanded. What he needed was a guard the formation could not reach into. Isolation was the instrument.

He knew it from the life before this one. Men from cold shores, standing at the palace gates of a court that was not their own, serving the emperor because the emperor was the only patron they had on that ground.

That instrument had lasted centuries.

He intended to build something with a similar logic, fitted to this terrain and this century, and have it functional before the column went west.

Batu raised his right arm once more. The pain came at the outer edge of the arc and released. The same as before.

He held it there for a moment, feeling the limit of what it would do, then lowered it and turned back toward the command quarter.

It was getting better. That was enough for now.