The light was different now. The winter light had been gone for a few days, the morning coming in more directly through the felt panels, and the room had a warmth that had been absent since the autumn.

Batu had been at the documents since before the camp’s first horse line allocation. The stack on the table was partway down when the morning reached its full brightness.

Mahmud’s tributary tallies were first in the order. The two-column format was fully implemented, every submission from the Burjin north to the Bashkir line carrying household count and levy in the same row.

The grain reserve instrument had made its first purchase in the winter, when a Tergesh surplus report triggered the buying criterion. Mahmud noted the buying price in the margin and flagged the date.

At the document’s bottom, in Orel’s hand rather than Mahmud’s, a short notation. A small Bashkir clan from beyond the tributary line had sent riders to Sarai without being prompted. They had heard of the wolf’s track seal from traders on the northern route. The levy they agreed to was modest.

Batu set the document aside. The network was drawing in rather than requiring pursuit, and the Bashkir riders arriving without being sent for confirmed it was working past the boundaries anyone had drawn for it.

The next document was in Saran’s hand. A single page, signed with their household mark. Two settler families had disputed the land allocation while Batu was occupied with Wei. One family had submitted their enrollment paperwork first. The other had a completed building with a stone base course.

She had applied the written building benchmark from the enrollment document and ruled for the family with the completed structure, noting that the standard measured what was built and not what was written down. The ruling was correct.

The standard existed so that a decision of this kind could be made without him. It had been.

Siban’s report came in the format the Nüden had established, numbered military inteligence with nothing to identify the sender or the unit.

First, the Ryazan garrison was distributed across multiple cities rather than concentrated, with fewer trained men inside the walls than the outer fortification suggested.

Second, the outer palisade on the southern and eastern walls had base posts showing visible rot, confirmed by one of his men inside the market district while posing as a trader.

Third, there was a new bridge over the Oka southeast of the city, built within the past year based on the timber’s condition, not recorded on any prior account.

He sat with the third observation before moving on. The bridge was a crossing point the campaign hadn’t accounted for. A relief force could use it, and so could the army. Zhao would need to know, and the demolition question was now part of the corps’ advance work.

Dorbei’s report had the southern consolidation loose threads. Eleven clans from before the winter plus two more from the outer reaches.

One additional entry at the document’s end. A headman on the outer edge of the territory had bargained for better terms. He had information Dorbei couldn’t get from his own riders, specifically a seasonal ford through the Caspian coastal wetlands not on any prior map. He traded the route for a reduced levy in the first season. Dorbei confirmed the ford independently. It was real.

A headman who understood that information had value and used it was a headman worth having in the tributary network.

Torghul’s note was brief. The cross-formation relay was up to standard. The beat-slow problem from the early winter drills had closed. Three new jaghun appointments had gone through the written evaluation, all confirmed, no challenges filed. The Jochid army was ready to move.

Wei’s document was in two sections. The first was short. The fire projector was done, completed at five weeks. The first test showed the flame spreading too wide from the nozzle.

He had adjusted the nozzle and the second test confirmed it. The compound was the right grade for the frame. Ready for field use.

The second section was longer. The first cannon casting had cracked through the middle, between the thick closed end and the thinner front end. Both ends held, but the middle section broke because the sand bed had been too shallow and that section cooled faster than the rest.

He was making a second attempt with a deeper sand bed and three more days of cooling time. The pour was done. He expected results within six weeks.

The Kashgar craftsman had not yet arrived.

Batu set the document aside. The projector was ready before the army moved. The cannon would come when it came, on whatever attempt didn’t crack.

Suuqai’s expansion report had numbers in sequence. Of the target three hundred steppe riders, a hundred and eighty were confirmed and in training, the intake continuous though each candidate required a family-connection check through the full formation roster.

Of the target seven hundred norsemen, a hundred and forty had come through Yusuf’s network, fewer than anticipated for this season.

The pace of norsemen intake moved slower than the steppe rider intake and would stay that way until the campaign moved north and word spread. The current total entering spring was approximately four hundred and twenty of a thousand.

A friction note at the end. One steppe rider candidate had been rejected when the intake check found a cousin serving in Torghul’s second mingan. The connection had not been declared.

Suuqai sent the candidate back and reviewed every record in the current intake batch afterward. The family-connection check was now a standard intake step.

He set the report down. The check Suuqai had added was the right one. The founding principle survived only as long as the process that maintained it did, and the correction had happened without Batu directing it.

Zhao’s note covered three things. The river survey was complete, with three viable Oka crossing points mapped and now the new bridge southeast of Ryazan included, flagged as both a secondary crossing option and a demolition target if relief forces tried to use it. The pontoon platform timber and the tools were complete.

Then the timing observation. The Oka ice began to break at approximately the same time the army would arrive in the optimal window.

Zhao had identified a three-week period after the ice thinned and before the spring flood onset. The crossing was possible before and after, but inside that window it was safest. The camp needed to march when the window opened.

Zhao had found this by reading the terrain ahead. That was what the corps was for.

He set the last document on the stack and looked at the ordered pile. Eight reports from eight origins, all of them working, none of them dependent on him being in the room where the work happened.

The door opened.

Saran’s movement was different from what it had been in the winter. Her balance had changed, the footfall carrying it differently. She stopped at the table. The belly was very large now.

"The Jochid princes and Subutai are waiting, Batu-aa."

She looked at the documents on the table, then back at him. "It’s spring. They’re ready to plan for Bulgar before the Toluid and Ogedeid armies arrive and push toward the Rus territories."

He stood. He moved around the table toward the door. She was between him and it, and she put her hand flat against his chest. He stopped. His palm went to the curve of her belly and felt the pressure of who was inside.

Neither spoke. It wasn’t necessary.

He walked past her.

Outside, the spring light was on the camp.