Batu rode to the northern edge of the ridge with Torghul beside him and looked down at the Ulus formation on the broken slope.
Two hundred riders, roughly, holding ground between the rocky ground and the flat below. They hadn’t run with the yellow banner clan and they hadn’t been broken in the close.
They’d held and waited and now they were looking up at the ridge where the fight had ended.
Their banner was still up. Green, clean, no surrender in it.
A single rider detached from the Ulus line and ca up the slope at a walk. He stopped ten ters from Batu’s position and held still.
"The Ulus commander asks for terms," the rider said.
Batu looked at the formation below. Two hundred n. Their horses were tired from the pursuit.
The n were intact but they’d watched the ridge fight from a distance and they knew what had happened to the Khotor.
"The Ulus commander cos up himself," Batu said. "Alone. Terms aren’t discussed through riders."
The ssenger went back down.
A minute later a man ca up the slope alone. He was younger than Batu had expected, maybe thirty-five, with a composed face and careful eyes.
He stopped five ters out and looked at Batu.
"You sent us ho two days ago," the man said.
"Yes."
"And then we ca back."
"Yes."
The Ulus commander looked at the ridge behind Batu where the aftermath of the close fight was still being processed.
Then he looked at the Khotor prisoner on Torghul’s line. Sothing moved in his face.
"The Khotor told us you were finished," he said. "That the assassination had weakened your position enough that a coalition could move without consequence."
He paused.
"They were persuasive."
"And now," Batu said.
The Ulus commander looked at him for a long mont.
"Now I’d like to know the terms before my n decide the slope is worth trying."
Batu looked at the two hundred riders below. Then at the Ulus commander in front of him.
"Standard tribute," Batu said. "Sa as the Burjin and Tergesh. Plus a penalty levy for today. I’ll set the number after I count my dead."
He let that land.
"And your three senior riders co back to my camp for one season as guests. They’ll be housed, fed, and treated as n of standing."
The Ulus commander heard the implication of that.
"Guests who can’t leave."
"Guests who go ho at the end of the season," Batu said. "And tell their headman what the Jochid camp looks like from the inside. That’s the arrangent."
A long pause.
"It’ll be done," the Ulus commander said.
"Na," Batu said.
The man looked at him. "Sodor."
"Sodor." Batu held it a mont. "Your n fought well today. They made a bad decision and held it with discipline. That’s worth knowing."
He rode back toward the center of the ridge without waiting for an answer.
Sodor rode back down to his n.
Batu turned his horse back toward the center of the ridge where Torghul’s riders were moving through the aftermath and the Khotor prisoner was still sitting bound on his horse, still watching Batu with that flat assessnt.
Batu rode up to him and stopped.
"Na," Batu said.
"Kirsa," the man said. "Commander of the Khotor."
"You knew this would fail."
Kirsa looked at him steadily. "I knew it might."
"Then why."
Kirsa was still for a mont. The pause wasn’t for show. He was deciding how much of the true answer to give.
"The Khotor have been west of the Ural for thirty years," he said. "My father’s generation. My generation."
"Two generations of n who grew up knowing what Genghis did to our line and knowing there was nothing to be done about it."
He looked at Batu directly.
"When we heard the assassination failed, so of my n said it ant you were strong. I said it ant you hadn’t been tested yet."
He paused.
"I was wrong about that."
Batu looked at him. A man who’d built a coalition on a thirty-year grievance and an honest read of an untested commander and had been wrong about the second half of it.
"You’re not dead," Batu said.
"No."
"Think about why."
He turned his horse toward Torghul to begin counting the cost.
The count took two hours.
Thirty-one Jochid riders dead. Sixty-three wounded with varying severity, eleven of those unlikely to ride within a week.
Chaidu had taken the worst of it in the basin elent’s initial drive, losing nine n in the first thirty seconds of contact and sixteen more through the sustained close.
Torghul’s crest line had lost six on the retreat over the ridge, the two Batu had seen go down plus four more he hadn’t.
Against that, the field held approximately two hundred and forty Khotor and allied dead.
The yellow banner clan had lost twelve running, mostly from the southern anchor’s arrows as they passed.
The Ulus had lost none.
Batu sat with the numbers for a while.
Thirty-one dead was a real cost. Against nine hundred and forty it was also a tactically favorable exchange on ground of his choosing against a pursuing force.
He knew that.
But thirty-one n had nas and clans and horses that would go back riderless, and he held those numbers without flinching from them.
Then he set them aside and looked at what the day had produced.
The Khotor were broken as a fighting force for at least a season.
Kirsa was in custody with leverage value that wasn’t fully clear yet.
The Ulus were now committed to tribute and had three senior riders coming into the Jochid camp.
The yellow banner clan had run, which was information about their reliability and their likely behavior when the next pressure arrived.
They’d run and lost twelve n doing it and received no formal consequence beyond the dead.
That was an open account.
Batu would send a rider to their headman within the week. Tribute terms, a penalty levy, and an invitation to close the matter before he ca to close it himself.
Give the headman the chance to calculate correctly.
If he did, good.
If he didn’t, the next operation ran on a clan that had already shown it would break under pressure.
And sowhere in the western steppe, thirty clan headn who’d been watching Batu’s movents had just gotten a new data point.
He’d been outnumbered almost two to one on ground he hadn’t chosen in advance, and he’d won it clean.
That wasn’t a small signal.
He found Torghul near the northern edge of the ridge as the sun began to drop.
"We move at first light," Batu said. "The wounded who can ride go with the column. The ones who can’t, we rig litters and they co with us at whatever pace they need."
Torghul nodded.
"And Kirsa rides with us. Not bound after tonight. Under guard but treated as a commander."
Batu looked north across the steppe.
"I want him to see the main camp."
Torghul looked at him. "You’re going to use him."
"I don’t know yet. But a Khotor commander who led a coalition against and ended up in my camp alive is a more interesting thing than a Khotor commander who’s dead on a ridge."
Batu looked at the last of the light on the grass.
"The rkid grievance is thirty years old. That ans every Khotor fighter is carrying sothing their father handed them. That’s inheritance, and inheritance isn’t the sa as loyalty."
Torghul said nothing for a mont.
Then, "You think he can be turned."
"I think a man who told he was wrong, unprompted, on the day he lost, is worth a longer conversation than one night."
He walked back toward the center of the ridge.
Behind him the fires were going up one by one across the ground where nine hundred and forty riders had crested a ridge and found sothing they hadn’t planned for.
Thirty-one nas that Batu would know by morning.
Everything else could wait until they were ho.
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