Reincarnated as Genghis Khan's Grandson, I Will Not Let It Fall-Chapter 28: What the Ford Tells

Dawn came gray and cold over the narrows.

Batu stood at the eastern ridgeline’s upper edge and looked north. Below him the cut ran straight between the two ridge systems before opening onto flat steppe beyond the crossing.

The passage was visible for its full length from this elevation. Empty in the early light.

He sent the lead scout out at first light with two riders. Down from the heights, through the channel, across the ford, onto the northern track to read the sign in full daylight.

One man who had been there the previous evening and two riders to cover his flanks while he worked.

The column’s overnight position filled the channel below. Horses on lines running along the western ridge. Supply riders moving between the forces.

The ordinary sounds of a large force in its first morning in position filled in around them. Animals and equipment and the low voices of men who had slept in the open.

Torghul was visible at the base of the western ridge, moving between forces, checking what the night had done to the formation’s cohesion.

The waiting carried its own information. Nothing had come through the narrows in the night.

The rear observation pairs on the southern route had reported nothing moving from that direction. The force sat undisturbed, which meant Siban’s outer riders had turned back before reaching the channel and had not yet returned with the main body behind it.

The scout came back in less than an hour.

He came up the eastern face on foot and stood in front of Batu. His eyes went north before he spoke.

"Multiple horses," he said. "Moving south. The stride spacing is measured. Patrol pace." He paused. "The sign is from yesterday afternoon. The bank was wet when they crossed. It’s dried since."

Six riders had crossed after the column was already on the march from camp, moving toward the narrows.

Siban’s outer riders had come through, read open steppe, and turned back before Batu’s force reached the cut from the other direction.

The gap between the two movements was hours.

Siban’s riders had reported open terrain to their south. Whatever they told him when they returned north, it did not include a tumen on the heights.

That intelligence was already wrong before it reached him, and he was moving on it.

"The count," Batu said.

"Six horses on the southern bank. Two sets of three, spaced for a lead pair with a covering rider." The scout looked north without being asked. "They didn’t push past the near bank. They crossed, held long enough to read the ground ahead, and turned back."

Six riders sent ahead. A lead pair reaching the near bank was exactly what a careful commander put in front of a formed body moving into unfamiliar terrain.

Siban was a cautious commander.

Batu sent the scout back to his position and went down the eastern slope to where Torghul was working through the western force’s overnight disposition.

Torghul looked up when he arrived.

"Six riders crossed yesterday afternoon," Batu said. "Forward screen. They read the ground and turned back north."

Torghul absorbed this. "He’s moving on an empty road report."

"Yes."

"Then we push the lead screen forward. Past the water, past the bend. Count what’s behind the forward force."

"Two pairs," Batu said. "Observe and return. No contact."

Torghul turned to find the right riders and Batu said, "Kirsa’s men on the eastern face."

Torghul stopped. "All of them?"

"The upper third. The route from the northeast runs along a shelf before it meets the ridgeline. If he sends his flanking force wide before committing the main body to the channel, that shelf is where it comes up."

Batu looked at the upper face above them. "Kirsa’s riders know that shelf."

Torghul studied the upper terrain. The shelf was not visible from the path below.

A flanking force moving up from the northeast would reach it before seeing the positions above. If the men on the shelf saw the flanking riders first and held, the concealment held.

If they moved too early or misread the position, Siban had the high ground before his main body entered the channel.

"If his flanking screen reaches the shelf before we see it coming," Torghul said.

"Kirsa’s riders will see it," Batu said.

Torghul went to find the lead pairs and Kirsa.

The two pairs went out past the far bank within the hour. The Kirsa sub-unit moved to the upper eastern slope in small groups, spacing their movement to keep the ridge’s profile unchanged from the path below.

Chaidu’s element tightened its position along the western face below the crest. The force settled into its second waiting.

Guyuk had mapped this territory before Batu arrived. The shelf on the east, the blind cut where the passage ran past the western ridge, the water conditions by season.

All of it had been in the picture built for Siban’s use. That picture was what had given Siban the confidence to push south with a formed force.

The men now on the eastern shelf knew the same country from a different direction and had grown up moving through it in the dark.

What Guyuk’s network had catalogued from the outside, Kirsa’s riders had lived from within.

The lead pairs came back before midday.

One rider from the first pair came up the eastern slope at a controlled pace. Fast enough to read as urgent.

He reached Batu and Torghul on the lower ridge and steadied his breathing before speaking.

"Past the ford and past the bend," the rider said. "On the flat steppe, moving south. An advance force in front, then a gap, then the main body behind it.

The main body is in column of march."

"The screen force," Torghul said.

"Thirty riders. Spread wide on both flanks of the road."

Thirty riders as an advance force was a significant commitment. A commander who sent thirty ahead of his main body across open terrain expected it to have something on it.

Between those six riders and this movement, Siban had updated his read of the ground ahead.

That probe should have confirmed the route was clear. Sending thirty riders ahead said it hadn’t been enough.

"He knows something changed," Batu said.

Torghul looked at him.

"The probe came back with empty ground. He sent thirty ahead anyway." Batu looked north toward the point where the track curved out of sight. "Something in the picture didn’t hold."

Torghul held that for a moment. "The count on the main body."

"The second pair held at the curve to count," the rider said. "They’re still out."

They waited.

The second pair came back twenty minutes after the first. Their rider came up the western slope and found them on the lower crest.

The count was specific. The main body was formed up and moving south at a steady pace.

The estimate, given the formation’s length and standard spacing, put Siban’s force at four to five thousand riders. The Irtysh border detachment ran three hundred. The territory between the Irtysh and Orda’s eastern holdings carried more on its circuits.

Batu looked at the passage below the cut’s entrance and ran the distance against the pace.

"Before dark," Torghul said.

"Yes."

Siban’s force would reach the channel entrance before the light went.