The winter camp drilled relay runs through the rest of the season. Signals flashed from the Jochid army through the Toluid, Ogedeid, and Chagataid, then raced back again in under twelve minutes by the fifteenth attempt. The first run had taken forty.
The riders themselves had become the difference. Every man had hammered the shared signal tongue into muscle and instinct until hesitation vanished. By winter's end, the system no longer felt experimental. It breathed like part of the army itself.
Across the camp, the arrowhead forges burned deep into the night.
Repairing and rearming dozens of thousands of riders demanded more than labor. Workshops that had once served a single tumen now worked double rotations beneath the harshest cold of the season.
