Reincarnated as Genghis Khan's Grandson, I Will Not Let It Fall-Chapter 86: What the Guard Learned

The tumen halted in the basin while the accounting ran.

Torghul had brought the nearest mingan to a stop when the guard went back, and the halt sustained through the engagement’s close.

The main body stood in march order on the ridge above the basin, men sitting their horses in the silence of a formation that had heard something and was waiting to understand what it meant. Nobody had sent word forward yet. The relay was assembling the figures.

Batu stayed there.

The physician was at Bjorn’s position, working the shaft out of the upper arm with the care he brought to everything.

Bjorn sat on the ground with his back against a dead pack animal, his right hand flat on his knee, his face showing no emotion or pain. The shaft came out clean.

The physician packed the wound and Bjorn studied it once and turned away.

Ulfr had been laid out further east, on ground still disturbed from where he had landed. Two of the Norse riders had moved him there when the fighting stopped. They had covered him with his own riding coat and placed his blade beside him.

Suuqai came to Batu’s position with the tally and delivered it without framing.

He looked at the ground where the pack animals had gone down. "Four animals gone. The load from those four and nine more that were reclaimed. The tail is intact from there forward."

"The raiders."

"They won’t come back at us again."

"They don’t need to," Batu said. "They got what they came for."

Suuqai said nothing. He had already reached the same conclusion.

Gunnar was nearby, within earshot, standing at a distance from the exchange, close enough to hear if called, and waiting that it hadn’t called for him yet. When Batu looked at him he came forward and stopped in front of both men.

"What happened," Batu said.

Gunnar glanced at Suuqai briefly, then at Batu. "The steppe riders read the basin and spread. The right response for what was there." He said it without qualification underneath it. "My men assessed the ground and closed on the contact. Also the right response for what we’re built to do. Against the wrong opponent."

He kept his eyes on Batu. "I rode between the two. Told my men to spread. Told your riders where my men were. By the time the second message landed the situation had moved past the first one."

Suuqai said, "The unit ran two formations at the same time. Neither one wrong. The two of them together produced a gap."

"The gap is a signal problem," Gunnar said. "Your riders have arm signals. Clean, fast, visible at distance." He paused. "My men can’t always read one from inside a closing contact." He kept steady. "They’ll hear a horn every time."

Suuqai had gone silent in the way he went when a problem was finding its answer.

"Map the existing signal calls onto call patterns. Spread. Close. Hold. Retreat. Four calls. Whatever the formation signals, one of the Norsemen carries it and echoes it in real time. The Norse half hears the horn and runs the same pattern," Gunnar said. "Without waiting for a rider between them."

"You have those calls from the relay system."

"I’ve been learning them since the camp."

"Build the mapping before we reach Urgench. Test it on the march." Batu looked at Suuqai. "The Norsemen trains the spread pattern on its own. Against men coming at them fast. They need it in their arms before it’s an order."

Suuqai nodded once.

"The supply tail gets a permanent steppe section from the guard," Batu said. "Six riders from the fifty on rotation."

He stopped there. The accounting was done and the doctrine was named.

Torghul came down from the ridge himself. The figure he brought was specific.

"Urgench can cover the lost load," he said when he reached them. "The darughachi’s supply record puts what we need in the city stores. It adds a day to the provisioning stop."

"Acceptable."

Torghul looked over the ground. At Ulfr’s covered form. At the disturbed ground where the raider approach had come in from the east. He assessed what the terrain said about the remaining distance.

"The reed beds run south for another half day before the delta opens and the road clears," he said. "Same terrain as this."

"I know."

Torghul turned his horse and went back up to the main body.

The column moved within the hour. The guard repositioned across the formation’s full length, spreading from van to tail, six steppe riders dropping back to the tail.

Gunnar rode in the center of his fifty with a felt pad on his knee and a stylus, working through the call mapping against the relay conventions he had been carrying in his head since the winter camp. He did not look up from the work. 𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚

Bjorn rode with his left side bound. He rode one-handed in his position in the line, his hand easy on the reins.

Ulfr went forward with the formation on a spare horse, wrapped in felt. He would be buried before they reached the city. The Norsemen had their own form for that. Suuqai had confirmed the halt would happen when the time came, regardless of march pace.

The reed beds ran south on both sides of the route, dense and unreadable, the channel smell rising from them in the afternoon heat.

The steppe half of the guard watched the eastern edge constantly, with the scanning habit of those who knew that what terrain hid was as important as what it showed. They rode with their hands closer to their weapons than they had ridden the day before.

Nothing came out of the reeds.

The delta opened in the late afternoon. The reed beds thinned and the ground softened further, the first cultivation visible on both sides of the road.

The smell changed. Standing water and mud had been the norm since the Caspian. Agriculture was in it now, worked earth, land that had been turned and planted and was producing again.

The rider came from the south in the early evening, moving at a steady pace on a well-fed horse, carrying a sealed document. He reached the lead screen, was brought forward, and came to Batu’s position with the seal visible on the outer fold.

The darughachi’s mark.

The message was simple. The administrator at Urgench had been informed of the tumen’s approach and requested a meeting at the city’s outer provisioning station when it arrived. He had matters of relevance to discuss with the Chinggisid prince traveling the southern route.

Batu read it once.

Matters of relevance. From a Karakorum-appointed administrator who had had enough notice to compose a formal message and send it out to find him before the city.

He understood the precise significance of every word in a letter addressed to a Jochid prince on an unexpected route. He had chosen those words accordingly.

The march kept moving. Urgench was ahead in the dark to the south.