Batu sent for Kirsa at the usual hour.
Kirsa arrived without asking the reason. That told Batu something by itself. Either Kirsa had already expected the conversation, or he'd decided there was no advantage in pretending otherwise.
He fell into step beside Batu as they crossed the eastern section of the camp toward the northern perimeter fence. Batu kept the pace deliberate and unhurried. Kirsa said nothing.
The two guards assigned to Kirsa since his arrival followed at the distance Batu had ordered from the beginning. Close enough to intervene if necessary. Far enough away that neither man had to acknowledge them as part of the discussion.
The northern fence overlooked open steppe. Batu had chosen the place for a reason. No supply stacks blocked the view here. No training drills occupied the ground. At this hour, almost no one passed through.
Beyond the fence, the land stretched flat toward the treeline. The trees formed a dark band running unbroken to the horizon.
Batu stopped at the fence. For a moment he studied the western ground before speaking.
"The Khotor fighters still west of the Ural. The ones who returned from Sarat and regrouped in their camps. How many are still combat-ready?"
Kirsa thought before answering. Batu watched him work through the count instead of reaching for a number immediately. Kirsa treated questions like matters to be solved. That made his answers useful.
"Before Sarat, I had four hundred and twenty riders. I brought three hundred and forty to the ridge. About a hundred and ten came back."
He paused.
"The men who didn't ride to the ridge were older riders and the ones I didn't trust to hold formation under pressure. Counting both groups together, I'd estimate around a hundred and sixty combat-ready."
A hundred and sixty riders who understood the western steppe the way settled men understood the roads around their own villages.
Men who knew the upper crossing territory from experience instead of maps. Men who had spent two generations learning how to fight in loose formations over rough ground where ordinary cavalry lost cohesion.
Batu considered it.
The value wasn't merely numerical. It was function.
"I want to absorb them into a mixed formation under Jochid command," he said. "Intelligence operations and western screening duties."
His tone remained matter-of-fact.
"The useful part is your knowledge of the upper crossing territory and the western approaches. The formation itself would not retain clan identity. The Khotor name would not continue inside the structure."
Kirsa did not answer at once.
Batu let the silence remain. Resistance usually revealed itself fastest there.
"My men," Kirsa said at last. "How would they enter the formation?"
"As riders assigned individually according to capability."
Kirsa turned toward him for the first time since they'd reached the fence.
"Then you lose the thing you're trying to gain."
Batu watched him carefully. There was no emotion in it. Kirsa meant it as a practical judgment.
"A hundred and sixty men who know the western steppe," Kirsa continued. "That knowledge doesn't exist inside any single rider. It exists in how they read the land together."
His voice stayed even.
"A man who knows a crossing warns the rider beside him before they enter it. Another remembers where spring flooding changes the ground. Another knows which ridges conceal movement from the south."
He gave a small shake of the head.
"Scatter them into mixed assignments and they become adequate cavalry. You already have adequate cavalry."
Kirsa looked back toward the open land.
"As a cohesive unit, they're something else."
Batu turned the distinction over in his mind. Cohesion itself as a tool. Shared recognition instead of individual skill.
"What are they," Batu asked, "when they're functioning correctly?"
"They're a screen that doesn't need instructions to understand what it's seeing."
Kirsa gestured toward the steppe beyond the fence.
"They can move through the upper crossing country without maps, without guides, and without losing riders because every man in the unit already knows the territory. They don't need to stop and read the ground. They already understand it."
Batu remained silent.
Kirsa had identified the real problem correctly. Batu wanted specialized intelligence capability, not merely more horsemen.
"Keep them together inside the larger formation," Kirsa said. "Make them a dedicated sub-unit with a defined role."
He glanced back at Batu.
"The clan structure can disappear. The Khotor name can disappear. Call the unit whatever serves the formation."
His tone hardened slightly.
"But the cohesion has to remain. Otherwise the capability you're trying to acquire stops existing."
The proposal came too quickly to be improvised. Batu recognized preparation when he saw it.
Kirsa had expected this conversation long before Batu summoned him. He'd spent his time at the horse lines deciding what he could surrender and what he intended to preserve.
"The Khotor name goes," Batu said.
"Yes."
"And your riders understand that?"
Kirsa stood still for several moments before answering.
"My senior riders will resist it," he admitted. "The younger ones probably won't."
Another pause.
"The younger men grew up west of the Ural with nothing except the name and the story attached to it."
His expression remained controlled, but Batu heard the weight beneath the words.
"The name was what their fathers gave them when they had no land, no office, and no future to pass down. But they've watched this camp long enough to see what it's building."
Kirsa looked toward the center of the encampment.
"They'll come."
Batu studied him.
This was a man who had admitted error on the day of his defeat. A man who had spent his time in camp studying systems and purpose while everyone else watched for signs of rebellion.
Now he was offering his men stability at the cost of the only inheritance most of them possessed.
"Think carefully about the senior riders," Batu said. "How many hold to the name out of conviction, and how many because habit became identity."
Kirsa considered that longer than the earlier questions.
"I'll know better in a week."
"Then come back in a week."
Batu left him at the fence and walked back through the camp alone.
On the way, he stopped at Orel's station.
"The seal design," Batu said. "A wolf's track. Single print. Right forefoot. Clean lines."
Orel wrote the instruction down immediately and asked no questions.
Batu continued on.
The wolf's track was an old Jochid mark, older than Karakorum's current administrative structure. That mattered. Old symbols carried legitimacy more effectively than new ones, provided people recognized them.
At the same time, the mark was distinct enough that nobody would mistake its source.
From this point forward, every document Orel sealed would carry it.
Every merchant, tributary headman, and sub-commander receiving written rulings would understand exactly whose authority stood behind the decision.
By evening, the camp carried the quiet feeling that followed a productive day. Several unresolved matters had moved forward. Others had reached conclusions.
The horse lines completed their final allocation before dark. Near the eastern gate, the watch rotation shifted onto the revised schedule.
Inside his ger, Batu reviewed the day's administrative decisions in the order they'd occurred. He preferred doing it that way. It revealed connections between choices that had seemed unrelated during the day itself.
The Yusuf agreement.
The appointment of the three sub-commanders.
The unresolved but advancing negotiations with Kirsa.
The seal decision.
Then his thoughts returned to the conversation at the northern fence.
One detail in particular. Something Kirsa had mentioned while describing the rider who'd approached the western clans before Sarat.
At the time, Batu had registered it and moved on because the larger negotiation demanded attention. Now he examined it more carefully.
Kirsa had said the rider promised eastern recognition for any western clan that moved against Batu.
Not merely support.
Recognition of territorial claims after Batu's removal.
Specifically, Guyuk would legitimize whatever territory those clans held once Batu was gone.
At first Batu had taken it as a recruitment incentive. Promise land security. Reduce hesitation. Strengthen participation.
Now the statement suggested something larger.
Territorial legitimization implied prior planning.
Guyuk's network had already formed expectations about what the western steppe would look like after Batu disappeared. Which clans would hold which territories. Which commanders would remain viable. Which claims would receive recognition.
That kind of offer could not have been improvised in negotiation.
The rider had arrived carrying a prepared political settlement detailed enough to make believable promises to individual clan leaders.
That required intelligence far beyond Mersek's supply data and movement reports.
It required someone inside the network who understood western clan structure, territorial disputes, commander rivalries, and which men could be persuaded under specific conditions.
Guyuk's network had started mapping the western steppe before Batu ever arrived there.
His own actions had only expanded the information already being collected.
Batu leaned back slightly and followed the implication further.
The silence surrounding Arslan no longer looked like inactivity.
It looked like patience.
He held the thought there instead of rushing toward conclusions.
Guyuk's network possessed enough familiarity with western politics to make territorial offers to commanders by name.
Meanwhile Batu had been running deception operations against an eastern contact while assuming false supply data concealed the larger structure of his territory.
The Borte-Qol channel still had value. But the operation covered a smaller portion of the problem than Batu had originally believed.
Which made the next requirement obvious.
Before he could decide what information to feed Guyuk's network, he first needed to understand what the network already knew.
And the first man capable of helping him answer that question was Kirsa.