Chapter 200: The Military District
Batu picked up multiple more carved stones before speaking, settling them in his palm.
"The district needs to be capable of supporting an entire tumen as garrison."
He pondered a bit more, "Plus the Khar Kheshig, the engineer corps, and Penk’s relay hub."
Khulgen looked at the northern felt. "The northern ground runs approximately eight hundred meters from the city expansion plan to the flood plain. A military infrastructure fills roughly two-thirds of that."
Batu looked at the remaining third and said nothing for a moment. Then he set a stone at the region southern side, near where the future gers clusters would stay, and placed a second stone beside it with some distance between them.
"The Khar Kheshig barracks here."
Batu explained, pointing at the first stone. "Its own horse lines, its own supply buildings, its own entrance from the city side. They are to be separated from the standard army."
Saran tilted her head, "The barracks entrance... does it come off the road from the gers, or the administrative quarter road?"
"The administrative road," Batu said.
He placed the second stone, close to the Khar Kheshig barracks but not touching it.
"The commander’s center. It will be used by me, and whoever is commanding the garrison."
He placed a third stone slightly behind the second.
"Next to it, the intelligence section, with a separate entrance from the building exterior wall."
Khulgen looked at where the commander’s center stone sat relative to the administrative quarter.
"The current access road from the administrative quarter doesn’t reach this far north."
"Then build it," Batu simply ordered.
He moved to the district’s central area and began placing the barracks stones, ten of them in a block pattern representing the mingan organization.
"It will be a fixed garrison."
He placed the last barracks stone without looking up. "Timber frame, stone footings on every building. The riders who garrison here sleep in buildings organized by their arban and mingan positions."
Khulgen said, "For construction at this scale, it’d take longer than the campaign preparation window. The stone footings alone take most of the summer if the labor comes from the general population."
"That’s acceptable. The garrison is for future use regardless."
He placed a fifth stone southeast, near the workshop district. "The engineer corps barracks is here, next to the supply depot, with its own equipment storage. Zhao needs enough room to disassemble and reassemble the siege equipment without moving it across half the district."
Then two more stones went south from the barracks, one nearer and one farther south.
He said, placing the nearer stone. "Supply depot here. Weapons and general equipment in the main building, the compound and fire weapon stores in a separate structure on the depot’s far side."
He placed the farther stone. "Granary here, at the district’s southwestern margin, close enough to the road that supply convoys don’t have to march through the barracks to resupply it."
Khulgen made one observation. "The granary at that position sits just next the gers."
Batu adjusted the stone ten meters north on the felt.
"Then we extend the road between them to be the separation between districts."
Saran started to trace the road in the felt without being asked.
"Medical section."
Batu said, placing a final structure stone near the commander’s center. "Accessible from the barracks and from the command buildings. A physician’s working space and a recovery ward."
He moved to the district northern side and held two remaining stones.
"The horse lines run across the entire northern margin."
He set both stones spanning the district’s width at the map’s edge.
Khulgen then informed, "The northern ground doesn’t have a natural water source at that position. It is possible to set up a channel extension from the Volga river branches that reaches the city northern section, but it will require a season to finish the work."
"Start it before winter." Batu nodded.
He set the relay station stone at the district’s southeastern corner, where the military district road would meet the main relay route that went outside the city.
"Penk’s rotation hub here, a station building for the relay riders with their own horse stalls."
Then he looked at the northeastern section of the district between the barracks and the outer boundary. There was nothing placed on it.
"The training and parade ground occupies the northeastern section. It will remain open ground."
He did not set a stone there.
Batu looked at the complete felt map.
The administrative quarter at the city’s center with its the the records building, Mahmud’s accounts office, the relay coordination node, the physician’s quarters, the Khan residency. The wolf’s track authority expanding from it in every direction.
The river infrastructure along the eastern bank’s lower position, the granary and depot at the flood-mark boundary, the dock at the channel’s mouth.
East of the residential areas, the workshop district’s cluster, extended now with the dry channel as its boundary, the Bulgar craftsmen’s workshops south of the existing ones, the refinement facility sitting east of the dry channel with the separation Wei needed.
South of the administrative quarter, the market district with the specialty goods row reaching northeast toward the workshop road, and the upper residential cluster squeezed between the markets and the administrative quarter.
Between the districts, the residential zones, buildings spread out through the city and gers at the north.
And the military district expanding over the map’s upper section.
The Khar Kheshig barracks, the commander’s center and the intelligence section, the ten barracks in their mingan distribution, the engineer corps barracks, the supply and granary on their separate roads, the medical section near the command buildings, the horse line spanning the northern margin, the relay station at the southeastern corner, and the open eastern felt of the training ground left unmarked.
The intelligence section’s entrance faced outward from the commander’s center.
The Nüden’s reports would come through it. Be whatever Siban found in the Mordvinian territories, what the riders ahead of the army into the Rus principalities sent back, everything needed to ensure that Guyuk’s network could not rebuild what it had lost.
The city was designed to outlast the campaigns it supported. Every campaign that left from here would return to a place that had not diminished in the absence.
Saran had been watching him read the map in silence. When he looked up from it, she called up for his attention.
"The Khwarezm administrators for the guild structure," she said. "We haven’t moved on that."
Batu looked at her across the map.
