Batu rode to the northern edge of the ridge with Torghul beside him and studied the Ulus formation below.
Roughly two hundred riders held position on the broken slope between the rocks and the flat beneath it. They hadn't fled with the yellow banner clan. More important, they hadn't collapsed during the close fighting.
They had stayed together instead. Waited. Watched the battle on the ridge from a distance, likely trying to judge whether Batu's formation would break next.
Now every rider below looked uphill toward the place where the fighting had ended.
Their banner still stood above them. Unbroken.
One rider left the Ulus line and started up the slope at a measured walk. No escort nor weapon raised. He stopped about ten meters from Batu and waited.
"The Ulus commander asks for terms."
Batu glanced back toward the formation. Two hundred men was still enough to matter. Their horses would be tired after the pursuit, but tired cavalry could still turn dangerous if cornered.
The riders below had also seen what happened to the Khotor on the ridge. They knew exactly how costly another charge could become.
"The Ulus commander comes himself," Batu said. "Alone. Terms aren't discussed through messengers."
The rider hesitated, then turned back down the slope.
A minute later another man approached alone. Younger than Batu had expected. Perhaps thirty-five. His expression remained composed, but his eyes moved carefully across the ridge as he rode, taking in the dead, the wounded, the surviving formations.
He stopped five meters away and looked directly at Batu, and then past toward the ridge behind him, where riders still moved among the aftermath of the close fight.
Then his gaze shifted toward the Khotor prisoner waiting near Torghul's riders. Something tightened briefly in the man's face. Recognition, perhaps. Or reconsideration.
"The Khotor told us you were finished. They said the assassination weakened your position enough that a coalition could move against you without consequence."
He took a moment before continuing.
"They made a convincing argument."
"And now?"
The Ulus commander studied him in silence. Batu let it stretch. Men often revealed more while deciding whether to speak than while speaking itself.
At last the commander let out a slow breath.
"Now I'd like to hear the terms before my men decide the slope is worth attempting."
Batu looked down at the two hundred riders again, then back at the commander before him.
"Standard tribute. The same terms given to the Burjin and the Tergesh. Plus a penalty levy for today's attack. I'll decide the number after I've counted my dead."
He let the words sit for a moment.
"And your three senior riders come to my camp for one season as guests. They'll be housed well, fed well, and treated as men of standing."
The Ulus commander understood immediately.
"Guests who aren't permitted to leave."
"Guests who return home at the end of the season," Batu said. "And tell their headman exactly what the Jochid camp looks like from the inside. Those are the terms."
The silence lasted longer this time.
Finally the commander nodded.
"It'll be done."
"Name."
The man met his gaze. "Sodor."
Batu repeated it silently, fixing it in memory.
Without waiting for a reply, Batu turned his horse and rode back toward the center of the ridge.
Behind him, Sodor descended toward his men.
Torghul's riders were already moving through the aftermath of the battle. The Khotor prisoner still sat bound on his horse nearby, watching everything with the same flat, measuring expression he'd worn since capture.
Batu stopped in front of him.
"Name."
"Kirsa. Commander of the Khotor."
"You knew this would fail."
Kirsa met his eyes without flinching. "I knew it might."
"Then why do it?"
Kirsa was quiet for a moment. Not theatrical silence. Thought. He was deciding how much truth still mattered now that the battle was over.
"The Khotor have lived west of the mountains for many seasons," he said at last. "My father's generation. Mine."
He looked briefly toward the ridge and the dead scattered across it. "Two generations raised knowing what Genghis did to our people. Two generations knowing we couldn't answer it."
Then he looked back at Batu.
"When news came that the assassination failed, some of my riders thought it proved you were strong." He paused. "I thought it proved you simply hadn't been tested yet."
Another brief silence followed.
"I was wrong about that."
Batu studied him carefully. A man who had built a coalition around an old grievance and a judgment of an unproven commander. The grievance had been real. The judgment had failed.
"You're still alive," Batu said.
"Hm."
"Think about why."
Batu turned his horse toward Torghul. There was no value in continuing until he understood the cost of the day.
The counting lasted two hours.
Thirty-one Jochid riders dead. Sixty-three wounded to varying degrees. Eleven of those likely unable to ride within the week.
Chaidu's basin force had absorbed the heaviest losses during the first impact. Nine dead in the opening half minute. Sixteen more during the sustained close fighting that followed.
Torghul's crest formation had lost six during the withdrawal over the ridge. The two Batu had personally seen fall, plus four more elsewhere along the line.
Against that, roughly two hundred and forty Khotor and allied riders remained dead on the field.
The yellow banner clan had lost twelve while fleeing, most of them to arrows from the southern anchor as they ran.
The Ulus had lost none.
Batu sat with the numbers for a while, turning them over in his mind.
Thirty-one dead was a considerable cost. Against a force of nine hundred and forty, it was also a favorable tactical exchange on ground his enemy had entered poorly and he had exploited effectively.
He understood the military reality of it.
That did not erase the other reality.
Thirty-one men meant thirty-one names. Thirty-one clans. Thirty-one horses returning without riders. A commander who ignored that eventually stopped understanding what his authority actually cost.
So Batu forced himself to hold both truths at once.
Then he set the numbers aside and considered what the battle had created.
The Khotor were broken as an organized fighting force for at least a season.
Kirsa remained alive and in custody, which created leverage Batu had not yet decided how to use.
The Ulus were now bound to tribute obligations and would send three senior riders into the Jochid camp.
The yellow banner clan had fled. That mattered almost as much as the battle itself. It showed how they behaved under pressure and what they were likely to do when tested again.
They had broken formation, lost men in retreat, and suffered no formal punishment beyond the dead they left behind.
That left an unsettled account.
Batu would send a rider to their headman within the week. Tribute demands. A penalty levy. And an offer to settle the matter before Batu settled it himself.
Give the headman one chance to act correctly.
If he accepted, the problem ended cleanly.
If he refused, the next campaign would target a clan that had already shown weakness under pressure.
And somewhere farther west, dozens of clan headmen were already hearing reports about this battle.
Batu had fought while outnumbered on ground he had not originally chosen and still won decisively.
That kind of result traveled quickly across the steppe.
It also changed future decisions.
He found Torghul again near the northern edge of the ridge as the sun lowered toward the horizon.
"We move at first light," Batu said. "Any wounded who can ride stay with the column. The ones who can't get litters. Nobody gets left behind because they're slow."
Torghul nodded.
"And Kirsa rides with us. No bonds after tonight. Keep guards on him, but treat him like a guest."
Batu looked north across the open steppe.
"I want him to see the main camp."
Torghul watched him for a moment. "You're planning to use him."
"I don't know how yet." Batu watched the fading light spread across the grass. "But a Khotor commander who led a coalition against me is more valuable than one dead on a ridge."
He fell silent, thinking through the shape beneath the battle.
"Their grievance is old. That means every Khotor fighter inherited it from someone else." He glanced toward Torghul. "Inheritance isn't always the same thing as loyalty."
Torghul considered that quietly.
Then he said, "You think he can be turned."
"I think a man who admitted he was wrong is worth more than a single night's conversation."
Batu started back toward the center of the ridge.
Behind him, fires rose one by one across the battlefield where nine hundred and forty riders had crossed a ridge expecting victory and found something else waiting for them instead.
By morning Batu would know all thirty-one names.
Everything beyond that could wait until they returned home.