Reincarnated as Genghis Khan's Grandson, I Will Not Let It Fall-Chapter 65: The Lower Position

The group was at the northern gate before Batu arrived.

Kirsa had them dressed and ready in the dark, ten riders in total, their horses rested and loaded with a day’s supply. No screen formation.

A small body moving with a destination.

Bayan was at the right edge with his horse’s head angled outward, reading the open steppe beyond the gate.

Batu came through the camp with his right arm in the sling and mounted from the left side. He had done it every morning since the physician fitted the sling before the march north.

The horse stood still for it.

He took the lead without speaking and the group moved out through the gate.

The steppe ran south in the dark. Cold at this hour had the flat specific character of the night’s last depth, the frost hard on every surface, the grass standing stiff along the track.

The horses moved at a steady pace, their breath rising white, the sound of their hooves on frozen ground clean and specific in the still air.

By the time the sky began to lighten in the east the terrain had flattened further, the long steppe rolls giving way to the approach terrain that ran to the lower river.

Bayan moved to the outer edge of the group’s right side, widening slightly from the track, reading the approaches without being directed to.

Kirsa rode a half-length ahead of the main group, his eyes going to the features on either side of the track as they appeared out of the dark.

The lower river came up in the early morning light.

The eastern approach. Firm footing on the north bank, the shallower current. The edges had iced over in a pale flat band on both sides, running out from each bank until the main current stopped it.

The current between the ice lines was slower than it had been in autumn but still moving, dark water catching the low morning light at its surface.

The horses felt the cold coming off it before they reached the bank.

They stepped through without resistance.

The ice cracked flat under the hooves at the margins and then the water was at the animals’ legs and then the far side came up and the group moved past the crossing.

The eastern channel branched off south of the lower river, the water pulling away from the main body and running its own course south.

The track along its near bank was worn.

Animals had used this route for years, and men too, long before Batu arrived in this territory.

Merchant traffic, the kind that moved between the Bulgar routes and the steppe approaches without wanting to cross the full width of the main river.

He had named that in the previous afternoon’s conversation as part of the site’s value. He could read it now in the specific wear of the near bank, the marks on its edge where boats or loaded animals had worked the surface over seasons.

The group rode south along the channel.

The current here was narrow and faster for its width, the kind of movement that delayed icing because the water ran before it could freeze. He had named this freeze. The surface confirmed it now.

It ran open where the main river’s edges had already begun to close.

Batu pulled his horse to the edge and stopped. The pasture on the far side ran deep and flat to the eastern horizon. On the near side the terrain stepped up slightly, a natural rise above the channel face.

The sight lines from this position were clean in every direction.

North to the lower river crossing, south toward the territory Dorbei now held, east across the open plain, west back toward the steppe approaches. A formed body coming from any direction was visible from here before it arrived.

He read the slope below him. Old trees stood at the point where the face dropped toward the water, their roots gripping the compressed soil there.

The lower portions of their trunks were darker than the wood above. The bark discolored at a consistent horizontal line running across each tree at the same height. Below that line the bark was smooth and dark from years of contact with water. Above it, the bark held its normal texture.

Batu traced the line across the trees and out across the open surface. The grass grew differently below that elevation.

Thinner, the stems shorter and more widely spaced, the roots not establishing the same density in earth that spent part of every spring submerged. Above the line the grass was full and close. Below it, the soil showed through in patches.

Spring flood.

Every year the channel rose to that level and held it before dropping back. Any structure built below that elevation would be in the water annually.

He sat with it.

The elevated ground behind the slope had room for what the site needed. The administrative function, the records capacity, the supply staging point that would make the work at scale.

Kirsa had come up beside him.

"Every spring," Kirsa said. "The channel runs high for three to four weeks after the snow comes off the upper slopes. It covers the margin and the ground south of it as far as that second rise."

He paused.

"The near bank stays dry above the mark. The far bank sits too flat to hold."

The elevation above it held what was needed.

The second rise Kirsa had named was visible to the south, a low feature that put a clear boundary on the flood plain’s extent. Inside that boundary the earth spent part of every spring under water.

"The first structures go above the mark," Batu said.

"Yes."

He watched the channel for a moment. The water moved steadily south, dark and clean, the current unbroken by ice in the main body. The merchant approach marks on the near bank showed years of use.

The crossing here was workable in conditions that closed the main river. The pasture held deep on both sides. The sight lines were clean.

He had what he needed.

The group formed up when Batu turned from the bank.

Bayan came back from the outer route he had been running along its edge and settled into his position without comment. The riders checked their animals.

Kirsa took the lead position. Batu stopped at Kirsa’s right.

He looked at him for a moment.

The composed face, the eyes that moved to the bank once more before settling forward. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝒆𝒘𝙚𝓫𝙣𝙤𝒗𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

A man who had come across the Ural with a thirty-year grievance and a hundred and sixty riders whose name had been stripped away, and who had spent everything since putting those riders into every function the campaign required, watching them go into positions they did not come out of, and continuing without breaking.

"You command a mingan," Batu said.

Kirsa looked at him. Nothing theatrical in it.

"Which mingan," he said.

"Yours," Batu said. "The one you’ve been running since the southern campaign."

Kirsa held the look for a moment. Then he turned his horse north.

Batu turned with him.

The camp was somewhere ahead through the flat winter steppe, the cold air coming off the open plain as it came when the day had warmed fractionally from its overnight depth but not enough to matter.

The eastern channel ran south behind them, its flood mark and the rise above them fixed now in a way they had not been the previous morning.

The group moved north and it fell behind them.