Chapter 112: Shatar
The board had been out since the camp finished its first water allocation, the Shatar pieces arranged on the felt square that had traveled from the western steppe through the mountain passes and arrived no worse for it. Suuqai moved his horse piece and set it down without studying it afterward. He already knew what the board showed.
Batu was considering the left flank when the first runner came through the tent entrance. One of Siban’s men, a lean rider who had been positioned in the inner section when the notification channels were established. He stopped at the respectful distance and gave it standing.
"Yeke Noyan’s younger son," the runner said. "His faction broke for the assembly ground an hour after Guyuk’s. He was with them."
Batu had expected it. Orda’s intelligence from the plateau meeting had put that commitment as likely and waiting for the right moment to announce, and the right moment was when the push happened and the announcement carried the lowest risk. He noted it and returned his attention to the board.
"Anything else."
"Not yet."
The man withdrew.
Suuqai’s face carried nothing. Batu moved his chariot piece along the open file and lifted his hand from it.
The afternoon was past its midpoint. Outside, the activity ran its established rhythm, the horse lines and the relay riders cycling at their post-arrival intervals. The tumen had been moving for months and had not learned to stop fully in a single afternoon.
The activity was lower than a march day’s but it had the same underlying impression, purposeful and organized, running without seeking instruction.
Nachugu’s report came twenty minutes later, through a different man positioned to observe their approaches to the gathering site.
"Nachugu broke for the assembly ground before midday. He’s there."
He had gone where the numbers pointed, which was what uncommitted princes did when the kurultai was called and they hadn’t built a reason to stay away. Batu set it aside and came back to the board.
Koden’s report arrived with Siban himself, which meant it required more than a single line.
He came through and stopped. He glanced at the board and then at Batu.
"Koden’s riders took their place at the assembly ground," he said. "Koden followed a quarter hour after them. He placed himself at the outer edge, watching from there. He hasn’t come toward Guyuk’s section and he hasn’t given any visible signal of alignment."
Batu received this. Koden was running the plan Orda had described, making himself present without committing to an alignment, which was its own kind of statement about where his interests sat relative to the Ogedeid faction’s preferred outcome.
"Arghun," Batu said.
"Still where he was. I’ve had two conversations. He’s listening. He hasn’t decided."
"Keep at it."
He left.
Suuqai had not taken his eyes off the board during the exchange. He was waiting for Batu to play. Batu checked the board and moved his elephant piece into the center.
The afternoon continued. Two more reports arrived with names, minor princes from the Ogedeid fringe whose individual votes didn’t change anything on their own. They had taken their places at the gathering. Batu noted them as part of a running count and came back to the board each time.
Then the runner came with Subutai’s report, and Batu’s hand was on a pawn piece when the man spoke.
"Subutai and his staff moved to the gathering," the runner said. "An hour ago."
Suuqai’s eyes came off the board and found Batu’s face. He stayed there for a moment and then returned to the pieces.
Batu set the pawn down where he had meant to set it.
Subutai had spent his working life designing campaigns and watching them run, and the western campaign was the largest open question at this gathering. A vote that might authorize it had been called. He had gone to where it convened. Subutai had come for the authorization, not for either faction’s victory, and Batu understood that and set it aside.
A man who had designed more campaigns than any other commander alive needed to be present where the authorization happened, because the authorization was what he had come to Karakorum for. Whatever the vote result was, he would work with it. His professional interests and Batu’s ran toward the same result, and the path he had taken today was consistent with that.
There was nothing in it that worked against him.
Batu considered the board.
Suuqai moved his bers piece diagonally across the open flank and took Batu’s forward chariot off the board and set it to the side. That was a good move. The bers move had been invisible until it was already done. He studied the position for a moment, found the response it demanded, and moved.
Siban came back before the light had changed much further and stood at the entrance.
"The session hasn’t been called into formal standing," he said. "The Ogedeid faction and Chagatai’s faction and the princes who came are at the gathering. Ogedei came to the palace complex’s outer gate and saw what was there and turned back inside."
The gathering space had not filled the way a kurultai required it to fill. The Jochid banner stood unmoved in the valley. The Toluid banners were settled on the northern margin. Not a rider from either faction had crossed toward the center. The Great Khan had seen what was present and found it short of what the ceremony required.
"Arghun," Batu said again.
"Before nightfall," he said. The timeline was already decided.
He left.
The board had reached a middle position where the open center was contested and both players had developed their pieces into lines that committed to something without yet resolving it. The game had a subtle tension at this stage, both sides pressing their pieces against the other’s, waiting for one of them to run out of space and be forced to commit.
Batu moved his horse piece through the gap on the right and sat back.
The light was going when the formal rider arrived at the outer perimeter. He carried Ogedei’s administrative mark on the document’s outer fold, and the perimeter guard brought him through to the command tent’s entrance without delay. The rider handed the document across and withdrew without ceremony.
Batu read it with his hand still resting on the tent’s felt wall.
The kurultai was convened five days from the document’s date. All princes were expected to constitute their factions in full and present themselves to the gathering. The language named no one and set the date without explaining the rescheduling. It named only the expectation.
Every faction in the valley had received the same notice or would receive it before the evening fires died down. Every camp would read it the same way. The kurultai had been announced and had not run, and Ogedei had set a new date, and the new date was after Orda’s northeast approach would bring the Jochid faction to its full constituted strength.
Batu set the document on the table beside the board.
Suuqai studied the position. He reached forward and moved his bers piece one more rank and sat back, unhurried.
Batu studied what that move had changed and what it was threatening. Outside, the cook fires came up in the cooling evening, the wolf’s track banner taking the last of the light above the command tent as the sky deepened above the valley.
Five days.
He found the answer to Suuqai’s move and put his piece down.