Reincarnated as Genghis Khan's Grandson, I Will Not Let It Fall-Chapter 76: The Long Work

The south-facing face of the camp’s earthworks had been bare for several days, the frost retreating to the shaded north edges and holding there while the rest of the earth ran dark with thaw.

The horses on the morning line were shedding their winter coats in uneven patches, the handlers pulling long clumps loose when they worked the brush through. The light came at a lower angle than it had through the deep cold weeks, and it carried more in it.

Batu had been at the training ground’s northern edge since before the first rotation started.

Torghul was beside him.

Three groups of riders were running.

Two jaghun formations on the near ground, each running the relay drill protocol that Penk’s coordination system now carried as a standard requirement. The third was a mingan exercise further out, the larger body spread across the flat in screening intervals, its spacing visible from the edge as the ordered pattern it was supposed to be.

The first jaghun ran its relay at the start of the second cycle.

The signal went out from the coordination rider at the midpoint of the ground.

Before the confirming instruction completed its route, the jaghun’s leading arban had already pulled two lengths left. The second arban read the first and adjusted with it. The third arban took its cue from the second.

The whole front of the line rotated in sequence, each unit responding to what the one ahead of it had done, and by the time the confirming instruction reached them the new position had already been established.

The jaghun commander, a stocky man on a dun horse whose name was Tolun, had not moved his arm to signal any of it.

His arban leaders had read him through the timing of the coordination rider’s approach and had moved before he could.

Torghul was watching the same thing Batu was watching.

"The third cycle," Torghul said.

"Yes."

"His third mingan showed the same thing a week ago. Two of the outer arbans responding before the signal cycle completed."

He kept his eyes on the near ground. "The coordination rider’s approach pattern changed when the relay response speed increased. The arban leaders are reading the approach."

Batu looked at Tolun’s unit completing the second half of the drill.

Each component knew where the others were without looking for them. The quality of it was there in the motion, clear to anyone watching from the edge. It was the kind of familiarity that required months of exercises and could not be issued from a document.

The evaluation criteria had named it, set the standard for it, created the conditions for it to develop. The development itself had taken the time it took.

The second jaghun went through its relay two hundred meters to the right.

He was also correct.

Batu had been watching him since the exercise opened and had not seen a single decision that violated the standards. His signals were properly timed. His positioning calls were accurate. Execution was exactly as the protocol specified.

Each arban leader executed a half-beat after the order arrived.

It was a small thing.

On a written assessment it would produce no flag. Execution was within tolerance, the result was achieved, the sequence ran correctly.

A body that processed orders was a different thing from one that anticipated them, and the difference was visible from the edge because the arban leaders were running a calibration between what they had known for years and what they were learning now.

One veteran arban leader in particular, third position from the left, was the source of it.

Batu had been watching his hands. The man’s body knew how to read a commander’s timing, had learned his predecessor over years of service together, and the knowledge was still in his arms before his eyes had caught up with the fact that the man in front of him was someone else.

There was nothing wrong with the commander. There was nothing wrong with the arban leader.

The gap between them was the product of the reform that had put someone new in an established body, which was exactly what the reform had been designed to do, and the gap would close as the unit ran the same man’s patterns through enough repetitions that the arms stopped waiting for the old version.

Torghul did not say any of this while the exercise was running.

When the rotation broke and both formations pulled to their rest positions, he turned to Batu.

"The second group," he said. "The commander’s doing it right. The unit’s running slower on response time by the log. The arban leaders are carrying it."

"How long."

"By the time we ride for the kurultai."

Torghul’s voice held no uncertainty about the estimate. "They’ll have run enough repetitions by then. The third-position arban leader is the one carrying most of it. He’s also the one who learns fastest. I’ve watched him for two weeks."

Batu looked at both on the near ground.

One that had already arrived at what the reform intended, and one that was still crossing the distance. Both products of the same evaluation system. Both moving in the right direction.

The gap was in Penk’s cycle log under its identifier.

The arban leaders’ familiarity timelines were tracked against the mingan review. The review happened on the same calendar as the officer assessments. Nothing about this gap required intervention. The system was tracking it. 𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

He looked at the mingan exercise further out.

At this distance the deployment read correctly at the pattern level, each unit at the spacing the protocol specified, the adjustments happening when they were supposed to happen.

The force going to the kurultai would take what this field had produced.

It would be a few months older and the arban leader at the third position would have months of the new patterns in his arms. The other would have those same months on top of what it already had.

Both were better than anything that had stood in this camp before the first evaluation round ran.

Batu turned north.

"The capital site," he said to Torghul. "The groundwork riders go out this week."

"They went out two days ago. Khulgen’s deputy has the deployment."

Batu noted it and kept walking.

The training area fell away behind him.

The camp opened ahead, the horse lines and the administrative quarter and the supply depot that had been reorganized through the winter under Khulgen’s management. The census riders had been returning in groups for several weeks. He had not read the full tally from the southern territories yet. The guard Suuqai was building had completed its first selection round and he had not reviewed the names.

The kurultai was in summer.

The other threads were running.