Reincarnated as Genghis Khan's Grandson, I Will Not Let It Fall-Chapter 74: The Summer Summons

The survey site sat on low ground east of the camp, marked at its corners by stakes driven into the earth before the full freeze came in. The cordwood and stone stacked at the southern edge was as far as the prisoner labor had gotten before the ground locked solid.

A blueprint on felt, the stakes, the stacked material. That was what winter had permitted.

The rest waited for the thaw.

Batu was looking at the site plan with one of Khulgen’s deputies when the rider came in from the southern perimeter at the measured pace of a man delivering something formal.

The outer fold carried Ogedei’s seal.

Batu took it and read the outer fold without breaking the seal, confirming what the mark had already told him. Then he broke it and read the contents once through.

When he looked up, Siban was crossing the frozen ground from the camp’s direction.

He was carrying a document with the same outer fold.

Neither man spoke for a moment. Siban reached him and they stood at the survey stakes, each holding his own copy of the same letter.

The meaning of it settled between them without needing to be named.

Batu walked back toward the command tent. Siban fell in beside him.

The summons was formal and standard in the way that imperial documents were formal and standard. The language named obligation without specifying consequence, the kind of phrasing that had served Genghis’s administrators across three generations because its authority stood on its own.

All Chinggisid princes were invited to present themselves at Karakorum by the summer of the coming year.

The kurultai would address campaign planning for the western expansion. Attendance was expected.

They sat at the table with both copies in front of them and a lamp, the camp sounds coming through from outside, the horse lines and the winter cold and the general rhythm of a formation moving through its afternoon.

"Campaign planning," Siban said. "That’s the reason."

"It’s accurate," Batu said. "The western campaign is the only expansion left worth planning. The south is consolidated. The east will soon be conquered. Everything that remains runs west."

"The question is whose operation it is."

"It’s mine by position. My tumens are already here. I’ve fought for this ground and I hold it. The natural commander for this operation is the senior Jochid prince who commands these formations. The kurultai will ratify what’s already true on the ground, or it will try not to."

Siban picked up his copy and set it down again.

"Guyuk will contest the command structure. He’ll cast it as accountability to the central command. Anything that runs west runs under Karakorum authority, and Karakorum authority means Guyuk’s authority."

He paused.

"That’s been the project since before his father’s health turned. Command of the march is the largest prize left, and whoever commands it comes back with enough standing to support a succession."

"You know his method."

"I ran inside it," Siban said.

He said it without apology.

"His men worked the provincial princes before the kurultai was announced. The bloc he needs was being built while we were on the southern steppe. By the time the summons went out, the factionalism was probably already where he wanted it."

Batu held that.

Guyuk had been running the preparation for months. Probably longer.

The deception channel had been feeding him a picture of a weakened western position, which meant he had been building his bloc against a Batu he believed was struggling and ill-served for winter.

The gap between that picture and the actual position was the instrument Batu had constructed. It would not close until Guyuk arrived at the kurultai and found the Jochid line standing in a configuration he hadn’t planned for.

"Orda," Batu said. "What’s your read."

Siban considered it for a moment. Their eldest brother was an enigma to many.

"He stepped aside before any of this began. He had that position before you arrived in the west and he hasn’t moved from it. I’ve seen him twice in the past few years. His read of it is the same."

He looked at Batu directly.

"He understands that the Jochid line holds together or it gets absorbed. That’s the standing he made and he keeps making it."

"He’ll close the bloc if the position is strong."

"He’ll close it if the position is correct," Siban said.

"Orda reads power. If what you bring there is a Jochid line with unified territory, a functioning army, and a clear claim on leading it, he’ll stand behind it because it’s the right answer for them."

Siban let it firm before proceeding, "If you bring him a contested position with internal fracture points, he’ll hold back and preserve his own ground."

Batu understood.

Orda was not sentimental about the decision he’d made years ago to cede his inheritance rights to Batu. He had made it because it was correct and he had maintained it because it continued to be correct.

The case to Orda ran on power. The Jochid line’s coherence against the alternative was what had always moved him.

"Berke’s summons," Siban said. "It’s traveling south."

"Yes."

"If he attends, you’ve consolidated his territory on the same table where he’s sitting."

"The official notice placed it correctly," Batu said. "A disloyal branch brought back in line. The territory reclaimed by right of senior Jochid authority. Karakorum has that version. The council reviews what arrived first."

He looked at the document.

"If Berke sits at that table, he can contest the account. He’d be contesting it in a room full of men who received our version months before he could deliver his own."

Siban was still for a moment.

"If he doesn’t attend."

"Then his absence reads as acceptance. He received the summons and chose not to come."

"The consolidation stands without challenge."

The lamp burned between them. Outside, a gust moved through the camp and the tent walls took it and steadied.

"The Toluid line," Batu said.

Siban looked at him.

"Tolui’s sons. Mongke is the eldest. They have every reason to resist a clean Guyuk succession. An assembly that goes entirely to Guyuk’s faction removes them from the succession completely and they know it."

He stated it as what it was.

"That’s not a position they accept without resistance."

Siban took that in and ran it.

"I’ve seen Mongke. He’s capable, colder than people expect when they meet him. His line’s position in the council depends on whether they read the opposition to Guyuk as real."

He paused.

"A nominal challenge they sit out. A real one draws them in. The front position they leave to others."

Batu said nothing. He let it rest where it was.

The table held both documents and the lamp and the space between two men who had reached the outer edge of what the conversation could carry in this direction.

Batu looked at Siban.

"Where do you stand."

The question was direct and it was the only one that needed to be asked at this point. Everything else had been context.

Siban was still for a long moment. His eyes moved to the document on the table and then back up.

Something moved in his face. It calmed before he spoke.

"The Jochid line stays together," he said.

A pause.

"I’ve read what you’ve built and I’ve read the alternative. The alternative is the steppe carved up into provinces of whoever wins in Karakorum. That’s the reason. The five-year function is a separate matter."

He looked at Batu directly.

"I decided this before the streambed. I’m telling you now because you asked."

Batu looked at him.

"Good."

Siban gathered his document and stood. He went without ceremony.

Batu stayed where he was.

The lamp burned low. The document lay in front of him, Ogedei’s seal broken, the formal language of obligation sitting across the felt in administrative script.

Campaign planning. Summer.

Siban had said what he meant to say, and he had meant all of it.

What lay underneath that remained unseen.

The planning with no name yet, running below the political positioning and the march west and the year of building that had led to this moment, had no surface that would show in a conversation.

Batu folded the document and set it to the side.

He sat with what came next.

The plan of it that needed to be thought through alone.