The Most Unfortunate Khatun Part 2 - Naransetseng's decision

The following day, Bo-Jing, Tetsukichi, Salt, and Bangqiu met with the surviving leaders of the Eagle Clan and learned the full measure of the disaster that had befallen their people. During the Master's invasion, a large war band of beastmen, accompanied by giants, had broken away from the main host to ravage the Eagle lands. They stormed the clan's ancestral hall, slew the khan and many of his household, and drove the survivors into exile. Though the stronghold itself held little military value, it had become the center from which the raiders continued to terrorize the surrounding countryside.

The companions concluded that they could not safely continue toward Khanbaliq while such a threat remained at their backs. Together with the Eagle Clan, they devised a plan. The combined horsemen of the Bolad Horde, the Sansar Horde, and the Eagle Clan would protect one another while a small company of trusted warriors infiltrated the occupied hall, struck down its leaders, and freed whatever captives could still be saved. Naransetseng remained with her brother Batzorig under the protection of the allied camp.

Guided by Eagle Clan scouts, the companions reached the occupied stronghold without raising the alarm. They silently dispatched the sentries at the gate before slipping deeper into the hall. Concealed by magic, Bangqiu and Bo-Jing entered the great feast hall, where the giants celebrated amid the plunder of the Eagle lands. There Bo-Jing employed the Coin of the East to sow confusion among their enemies while Bangqiu imprisoned the gathering within a ring of fire. As the giants turned upon one another in panic and rage, Tetsukichi led the remaining warriors in a swift assault that shattered their resistance.

The companions then pressed into the council chamber, where the giant chieftain and his captains were making plans for further raids. Once again, deception, sorcery, and disciplined swordsmanship proved decisive. Before the night had ended, the chieftain lay dead, his household destroyed, and the dungeons beneath the hall had been opened. Several dozen prisoners, long believed lost, were restored to freedom.

Believing the danger past, the companions escorted the rescued captives to safety and made camp a short distance from the ruined hall. At first light they rejoined the Eagle Clan, expecting to celebrate a hard-won victory.

Instead they found tragedy.

Two nights after the companions had departed on their assault, the allied camp had been discovered by one of the Master's sinister flying deer. 

Before dawn, hundreds of beastmen descended upon the camp. Batzorig and the warriors of the Bolad Horde prepared to die defending Naransetseng, but she refused to purchase her own safety with the lives of others. While the fighting raged around her brother's tent, she slipped away unnoticed and surrendered herself to the beastmen.

Batzorig, grievously wounded after holding the attackers at bay, believed only that the enemy had suddenly abandoned the assault. He staggered into his tent and collapsed from exhaustion. Only with the coming of morning did he discover that Naransetseng was gone, and understand the terrible choice she had made.

The Most Unfortunate Khatun Part 1 - A Daring Plan

When Bo-Jing and his war band returned to Banua, the battle had settled into an uneasy stalemate. Dead beastmen and other monsters littered the ground before the walls, but the defenders were nearing exhaustion. The archers had almost spent their last arrows, and the surviving attackers searched for ways to climb the walls and overwhelm the catwalks.

Though weary from their long ride, Bo-Jing and his companions immediately joined the defense. Charging through the gates in tight formation, they relieved the exhausted archers and methodically drove the remaining monsters from the settlement.

Bangqiu and Naransetseng reached Banua later that same day. Having crossed the mountains, they spent one final night at a small stupa outside the settlement before entering the city. Naransetseng was warmly welcomed by Ganbaatar, brother to her late husband and Khan of the Bolad Horde, and by Bo-Jing, who once again returned to her the necklace that had so recently been recovered. She accepted it with joy, grateful for his gesture of quiet heroism.

The celebration proved short-lived. By the following morning, Ganbaatar spoke the truth that everyone already understood. Whatever obligations family might impose, his first duty was to the people of Banua. With the Master's armies pressing ever closer, the Bolad Horde could not risk its survival to protect a woman who no longer belonged to its people. Naransetseng would be granted three days' refuge in Banua and might be required to depart even sooner should the beastmen return.

At the time, neither the companions nor the khans understood why the Master's servants pursued Naransetseng with such determination. They knew only that wherever she fled, the beastmen followed.

Those anxious days were brightened by the arrival of Tetsukichi, a renowned warrior of the Sansar Horde. Faithful allies of the Eagle Clan, sixty Sansar horsemen had answered the Eagle Clan's desperate call for aid. Tetsukichi himself was already a trusted companion of Bo-Jing and Bangqiu, having fought beside them in many adventures, including recent victories against the Master's advancing armies.

Together they reached a bold conclusion. The surest way to defend both the Valley of the Five Fires and the northern khans was to force the Empire itself to confront the Master. If Naransetseng were escorted toward Khanbaliq and the beastmen pursued her into the settled lands, the Emperor could no longer leave the burden of the war to his frontier vassals. And if the Master’s incursions weakened the Emperor, Bo-Jing opined that it would be a punishment not completely undeserved considering the institutions of slavery and concubinage that flourished within the Empire.

Bo-Jing and Tetsukichi therefore departed Banua with their companions at the head of two hundred mounted warriors: one hundred and forty riders of the Bolad Horde joined by sixty horsemen of the Sansar Horde. Their road to Khanbaliq led first through the neighboring lands of the Eagle Clan.

There they found devastation surpassing even that suffered by Banua. Dead men and beasts lay where they had fallen. Scores of bodies had been hung from trees or splayed upon the rocks as grisly warnings. For leagues the forests had been felled, and the scrublands burned bare. On the second evening of their march, bitter winds sweeping down from the mountains forced the company to make camp in the shelter of a shallow valley.

There, for the first time, the companions began to question whether escorting Naransetseng to Khanbaliq remained their foremost duty. If the Eagle Clan had truly been broken, pressing onward might preserve one woman while abandoning an entire people—and perhaps the Valley of the Five Fires itself—to the Master's advance.