Reincarnated as Genghis Khan's Grandson, I Will Not Let It Fall-Chapter 45: The Second Problem

The column was forming on the northern edge of camp when the morning screen went out.

Batu watched from Torghul’s position on the left. The pack horses moved in line, each one loaded and checked before it passed the count point. The handler on each animal walked alongside it through the gate check, then stepped back for the next.

Penk’s relay riders moved between the forming sections, carrying the departure timing to each unit. The sequence moved without visible direction.

Kirsa’s screen had already gone. Three pairs, different men from the day before, moving south and east at the standard intervals. One of them had been on the eastern approach circuit since before the engagement.

A compact rider Batu had noticed for the consistency of it, always the last back, always the first to check his animal’s footing before anything else. That morning he came back early at a steady pace and delivered his report to Kirsa directly.

Kirsa listened, asked one question, then called after him as he turned. "Bayan."

The rider stopped.

"Same route tomorrow. Extended east past the second marker."

Bayan acknowledged it and went to the horse line without looking for anything further.

Kirsa came to Batu a few minutes later. "The streambed ground is clear. No movement south of it since yesterday’s last check."

"Keep the rotation."

Kirsa went.

Near the wounded line, Chaidu was moving between the men who couldn’t ride. His riders had lost a considerable amount of their strength at the junction and what remained was sorted.

Those back in formation, those being staged north with the column, those still under the medical detail’s care. A younger rider was managing the staging group, calling intervals and checking each man before the handlers moved them.

He had been at that work since first light, steady, no wasted movement. Chaidu hadn’t redirected him once. When Chaidu crossed the line to hand him an updated staging count, he addressed the man by name.

Olan.

Batu registered it and kept walking.

It would go north within the hour. Siban was at the camp table when Batu arrived, sitting with a felt spread in front of him, his hands flat on the surface.

Batu sat across from him.

Siban looked at it for a moment, then at Batu. "The ground south of the streambed. There’s nothing on it."

Batu said nothing.

"Berke’s riders know every fold and track between here and his heartland," Siban said. "His animals know the pasture. His supply lines run two days behind him and they’re intact.

Whatever we bring across that streambed, we bring it onto his terrain. Flat open terrain in his territory with his supply holding is his engagement."

"His supply lines," Batu said.

Siban nodded once. "He moves tribute north along the corridor roads. Goods from his southern clans, merchant traffic that uses the lower river to move between his territory and the northern routes.

That crossing is how he finances his forward operations. His arrangements with the traders along that corridor depend on the river being accessible and under his control." He looked at it. "Both conditions are gone."

Batu looked at him. "Yusuf."

Siban held that for a beat. "You had that in hand before the column crossed."

"The crossing made it a field fact," Batu said.

The difference between a written guarantee on a sealed felt and a force holding the territory the guarantee named was the difference between a claim and a position. Yusuf’s terms fixed Bulgar commercial traffic through Jochid-controlled crossings at a locked rate for three years.

The lower river was Jochid-controlled in practice now.

Every merchant who used it moved under Jochid terms. Berke’s informal arrangements, goods delivered against crossing rights and advances paid against future access, had no written standing against the written guarantee.

The crossing he had named as his own was no longer his to give.

"The traders he’s already collected from," Siban said, following it out. "The men who paid him for access he can’t deliver. He can’t refund them. The arrangements become liabilities."

"Yes."

Siban was still for a moment. His eyes moved across the flat southern horizon through the tent opening, the dry steppe and the faint line of the streambed in the distance.

"He’ll push riders through the corridor to test the clans before his financial position forces his hand," Siban said.

"He’ll want to know what they are worth under pressure before he has to decide anything larger."

"It will show him what it is while the column is inside it."

Siban looked at him directly. "If it doesn’t return before the corridor is tested, the camp has what the raiding parties can bring in and nothing else."

Siban was naming the exposure so both men had it clearly in front of them.

"The corridor is the risk that keeps the position viable," Batu said. "The raiding is what makes that risk worth taking."

Siban nodded slowly. 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

The raiding was the logic of a holding position. The formation controlled the territory north of the streambed. Berke’s land. The stores where he had kept grain and animals against the winter.

Every store stripped and every animal driven north extended the field camp’s window and subtracted from Berke’s reserves at the same time.

His supply lines couldn’t move through the corridor under Jochid observation, and what he had positioned on that side was being removed. When winter forced the question of whether to press against the Jochid line or absorb the loss, his answer would come from a weaker position than he had started with.

"The riders for the raiding parties," Siban said. "They need to know the ground south of the streambed. My men know it."

Batu looked at him.

"I rode that territory before. Under the previous arrangement. My riders can guide your parties to the store sites and the pasture lines without losing time on unfamiliar ground."

It was a correct offer and a calculated one. The calculation was visible. The offer stood.

"Give Torghul the names," Batu said. "Three riders. He assigns them."

Siban folded the felt and stood.

The column would move by midday. The raiding parties would go out tomorrow with ground knowledge they hadn’t had that morning.

The position held under the Jochid formation’s presence, and what Berke faced was a position extracting from his territory while he waited for a problem that was not going to hold still for him.

Winter was no longer solving it for him.