The outer periter ran along the camp’s eastern and northern faces in a frozen line, the stakes and rope markers half-buried in packed snow, the two-man posts spaced at intervals wide enough that soone passing between them was briefly alone. Batu had chosen this route in the early morning for that reason.
The central ground was already active by the ti he left his ger, the horse lines running their first allocation, Orel’s clerks at work before the cold had eased. Here there was only the sound of his own boots and the flat winter light coming off the steppe beyond the fence.
He raised his right arm. The pain ca where it had been coming for the past week. At the upper reach, the muscle seized for a mont before releasing. He raised it a second ti. Sa point, sa release.
The physician had said this was the healing running its course, the scar tissue working itself out as the muscle rebuilt. Batu had noted that assessnt and returned to it each morning since, checking the figure against what the arm actually produced. The figure was improving. The arm confird it.
He kept walking.
The cold here was dry and flat, pressing in from the steppe with nothing to interrupt it. His breath rose and dispersed. The posts ahead were occupied. Two riders at the next interval, standing their rotation without moving, the frost on their outer coats saying they had been there for so ti.
Suuqai was between the posts, crouching at the base of the eastern fence line. He had been running the camp’s counterintelligence work since the purge, and the rsek guard detail through the winter.
He had a section of rope in his hands. He had found sothing that needed attention and was attending to it.
As Batu ca closer he could see the stake had listed outward. The ground under it had frozen unevenly. The uneven freeze had worked the stake loose over the past several days.
The section of fence it anchored was sagging. Suuqai was checking the extent of it, pulling it to feel what tension remained.
He looked up when Batu’s footsteps reached him. His expression carried nothing particular. He stood.
"How far does it run," Batu said.
"Three spans from this stake to the next. The middle section has no tension." Suuqai looked back at the fence line. "The two posts on this stretch can see it during the day. At night the coverage depends on the angle of the fire."
Batu stopped beside him. He looked at the fence and then at the flat ground beyond it and then at the post positions on either side. The gap Suuqai had identified was real. Anyone who knew where to approach could use it.
"Tell Penk. He’ll work it into the overnight coverage adjustnts."
"I’ll tell him this morning."
He stood where he was and let the cold settle for a mont. Suuqai waited. He stood inside the silence without reaching to close it. He had always done that. The quality was the sa now as before.
The stillness Suuqai had was specific. He received information and worked with it before anything showed on his face.
"I want to put sothing formal under you," Batu said. "A guard. A hundred n, perhaps more when it’s built. Selected outside the tun structure, separate from the camp watch."
"Who selects," he said.
"You do. From across all three tuns. No more than two people from any single mingan. No cousins serving in the sa formation, no clan leaders from any tributary arrangent that touches this camp."
Batu looked at the steppe beyond the fence. "The steppe runs capable riders. What it runs short of is people who owe nothing to anyone in my command except the one who gave them the post."
Suuqai’s eyes were steady. He was reading the idea of the thing.
"’Every khan who died in his own camp died because soone inside had a reason. Guyuk had his nodes inside my camps before I found them."
Suuqai held his gaze.
"He built them before I noticed. The next attempt will co differently. The source will still be soone inside my formation."
"There’s a second force," Batu said. "Foreign riders. n from the north. From the Rus territories, or further. People from outside the clan ties of this ground. Those whose only obligation runs to the post."
The second point had landed differently than the first. He was already working through it.
"Language," he said.
"What about it."
"A guard drawn from two populations needs a working language before it’s functional. The Mongol component and those from the north will have nothing shared until soone builds it."
He nad the gap. "It takes ti. More ti than selection."
Batu thought about that. It was the correct observation. Suuqai had gone straight to the problem that ca after recruitnt. A unit with no shared language couldn’t pass orders across a line.
"That’s yours to solve. Start with those who’ve had contact with Rus traders on the crossing routes. So of Kirsa’s riders have worked those approaches. So of Siban’s know it from the Irtysh side. Find the ones with enough shared vocabulary to serve as bridges while the unit builds."
He received it.
"I’ll send word to Yusuf," Batu said. "He moves through the northern routes. Those who guard rchant trains in that country are often worth sothing. He’ll know where to find what I’m looking for, or he’ll know who does. When they arrive, they co to you."
He paused.
"How long before you have a first selection," Batu said.
Suuqai thought for a mont. A real estimate.
"Three weeks for the Mongol riders, if I’m running it separate from Torghul’s schedule. Less if I can use the training ground between cycles."
He paused. "The foreign n depends on Yusuf’s network and the season."
"The Mongol force first. The guard can function without them until they arrive."
Suuqai glanced back at the loose section one more ti. He would tell Penk about it this morning, as he’d said.
"Start today," Batu said.
Suuqai turned and walked south along the periter toward the camp’s interior. He moved with purpose.
The Keshig had been built from the sons of Genghis’s commanders. Ten thousand riders drawn from the finest noble families of the steppe, each one a political alliance written in flesh, each one carrying his clan’s claim into the tent he guarded.
That was a different instrunt for a different purpose.
It had served Genghis because Genghis’s power was the Mongol world, and the sons of that world in his tent was the point. Batu’s power was specific and contested.
Those who wanted to take it operated from inside the force he commanded. What he needed was a guard the formation could not reach into. Isolation was the instrunt.
He knew it from the life before this one. n from cold shores, standing at the palace gates of a court that was not their own, serving the emperor because the emperor was the only patron they had on that ground.
That instrunt had lasted centuries.
He intended to build sothing with a similar logic, fitted to this terrain and this century, and have it functional before the column went west.
Batu raised his right arm once more. The pain ca at the outer edge of the arc and released. The sa as before.
He held it there for a mont, feeling the limit of what it would do, then lowered it and turned back toward the command quarter.
It was getting better. That was enough for now.
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