The night was quiet in Cairo, the air thick with jasmine and the distant murmur of the Nile. Salahuddin paced his private chamber, brow furrowed, hands clasped behind his back. Scattered across the table were the latest reports from the Sea Wolves—another Venetian convoy seized, another pirate fleet burned, another chest of gold added to the treasury.
Yet, it wasn't enough.
He turned to Taimur, who stood by the window, moonlight glinting off the city's domes.
"We have them on their knees," Salahuddin said, voice low. "The Crusaders scurry like rats in their ports. Why do we wait? Let us strike—take Acre, take Tyre, drive them into the sea!"
Taimur did not reply immediately. He picked up a cup of spiced milk, took a slow sip, then set it down.
"Attack now, and what do we gain?" he asked. "A few thousand dinars? The thrill of watching their banners burn?" He shook his head. "We'd wake a sleeping lion. The Crusaders would forget their squabbles, unite under a single king, and throw everything they have at us."
Salahuddin's jaw clenched. "And if we wait? We sit idle while they grow stronger?"
Taimur stepped forward, gaze steady. "We grow stronger faster."
He unrolled a scroll across the table, revealing a plan—numbers, timelines, training regimens, the architecture of a future empire.
"In five years," Taimur said, "we'll have an army that doesn't just raid, but conquers. That doesn't just harass, but holds."
Salahuddin scanned the figures.
Asad al-Harb—3,000 elite heavy cavalry, the hammer of any battlefield.
Desert Hawks—12,000 swift raiders, the scourge of Sinai.
Elite Heavy Infantry—5,000 armored spearmen, unbreakable in siege or shield wall.
Elite Light Infantry—20,000 skirmishers and archers, death in the shadows.
Garrison Troops—30,000, to hold every fortress, every city, every patch of sand we take.
"Five years is a long time," Salahuddin murmured.
"And if we rush?" Taimur countered. "We take Acre, only to lose it a month later because we lack the men to hold it. We'd bleed for a prize we can't keep."
He tapped the scroll. "This isn't just about winning battles. It's about winning the war."
Salahuddin's eyes flicked to the map of Egypt on the wall—the Delta secure, the borders guarded, but still vulnerable.
"Al-Sa'id," he said.
Taimur nodded. "The Sand Foxes found whispers there—Fatimid loyalists, Nubian mercenaries with loose tongues. Small now. But left unchecked, it festers."
He leaned in. "The Crusaders won't attack. Not with Nuruddin pressing from Syria. Not with our wolves ruling the sea. This is our chance. Build the army. Secure the land. Then strike—not for a raid, but for empire."
Silence stretched. Somewhere in the palace, a servant's footsteps echoed, then faded.
Finally, Salahuddin reached for the scroll. His fingers traced the careful inkwork.
"Five years," he said.
Taimur nodded. "Five years."
The Sultan rolled the scroll tight, grip firm. "Make it happen."
The vault beneath Cairo's citadel smelled of oiled steel and old parchment. Taimur ran his fingers along stacked Milanese breastplates, each one gleaming dully in the torchlight. These weren't the crude plates of local smiths. They were masterworks from Lombardy, shaped by generations of craftsmen who had perfected the art of war.
"Fourteen hundred," Taimur murmured. The number matched the ledger—2,400 originally seized from Shawar's treasury, with 1,000 already issued to the Asad al-Harb. The rest had been forgotten in the frenzy of naval expansion.
Salahuddin stood beside him, his calloused fingers brushing the articulated joints of a pauldron. "We have the armor," he said. "Now we need the men to wear it."
Taimur nodded. The Asad al-Harb already numbered 2,000—500 armored with looted Crusader gear, 500 outfitted from the Sultan's coffers, and the remaining 1,000 wearing Milanese steel. These warriors were the pinnacle of heavy cavalry—Kurdish clansmen, born to the saddle, raised with lance and sword in hand.
"Call for another thousand from Damascus," Taimur said. "Your uncle Shirkuh would be ideal to lead them."
Salahuddin's lips twitched in a rare smile. "Nuruddin keeps him close in Aleppo. But the men will come."
Messengers rode at dawn.
Three weeks later, the first detachments arrived—not in a grand procession, but in quiet groups trickling into Cairo. Veterans all. Scarred from border skirmishes. Their hands curved by reins. They bore the subtle signs of Kurdish warriors—the curl of their mustaches, the way they wore their swords forward on the hip.
Diyar, a grizzled captain with a nose broken three times, led them.
"Your uncle sends his regards," he told Salahuddin in the courtyard. "Nuruddin kept him busy, but he spared his best riders."
Training began immediately.
These men needed no lessons in war. What they needed was mastery of the unfamiliar armor and seamless integration into the Asad al-Harb.
At dawn, they drilled in breastplates until the weight felt like skin. By midday, they wheeled in formation, their horses tuned to every shift in pressure. In the afternoons, they sparred under the watchful eyes of veterans, learning to turn the armor's burden into advantage.
Taimur watched one such session from the yard's edge. A young rider, maybe eighteen, struggled with his form. His scars were still pink from his first battle.
"Your elbow," Taimur called. "Higher. The armor protects your ribs—use it."
The boy adjusted. His next stroke came faster, sharper. His opponent barely parried.
Diyar grunted in approval. "They learn quick."
By the end of the first month, they moved like wolves in iron. By the second, they fought like a single organism. And by the third, they were ready.
On the plains outside Cairo, the full 3,000 assembled. The demonstration began with a charge—lances dipped in perfect unison, smashing through dummies clad in Crusader mail. A trumpet sounded. They wheeled and reformed, switching to curved swords for brutal close-quarters drills. Then, at full gallop, they fired crossbows from the saddle, bolts striking true.
As the dust settled and the men tended their mounts, Diyar approached, armor streaked with sweat and sand.
"Well?" he asked.
Taimur looked out at the iron tide of cavalry—3,000 strong, Milanese-armored, deadly with lance, sword, and bow.
"Now," he said, "we're ready."
The training grounds outside Cairo stretched as far as the eye could see—a vast expanse of dust and sweat where twenty thousand men learned the art of war. Taimur stood atop a wooden observation platform, his gaze sweeping across the sea of recruits. Peasant boys from the Delta, their sun-browned faces still soft with youth. Nomadic tribesmen from the eastern deserts, their eyes sharp as the scimitars at their hips. Nubian mercenaries, their massive frames towering over the others, their muscles coiled like springs.
They had come from every corner of Egypt, answering the call not out of desperation, but hunger—hunger for glory, for coin, for a place in the legend Salahuddin was building.
Now, they would be forged into weapons.
The nomads came first. Six thousand sons of the desert, their lean bodies hardened by years of chasing goats across the sands. They needed no lessons in endurance, in reading the land, in moving unseen. What they needed was discipline.
Taimur paired them with veteran Desert Hawks, men who had spent years harrying Crusader supply lines. The training was brutal.
Dawn began with thirty-mile runs across the dunes, weighted down with waterskins and weapons. Midday brought archery drills—not target practice, but firing from horseback at full gallop, striking moving dummies with terrifying accuracy. By evening, they learned the art of the ambush, melting into the landscape like mirages, striking fast and vanishing before the dust could settle.
One young tribesman, barely sixteen, collapsed during a night march, his legs giving out beneath him. A grizzled instructor dragged him up by the scruff of his neck.
"You want to live?" the old hawk snarled. "Then learn to run on broken legs. Out there, the Franks won't let you rest."
By the third month, the nomads no longer walked like men. They moved like ghosts, their footfalls silent, their presence unnoticed until their blades were already wet.
The Nubians were different. Where the nomads were lean and quick, these men were mountains—broad-shouldered, thick-armed, built to crush resistance beneath their heels.
Their training was not about speed. It was about becoming an unbreakable wall.
Each man was fitted with reinforced layered armor, a rounded helmet, a tower shield as tall as a child, and a spear that could punch through a horse. They drilled in phalanx formations, their shields locking together like the scales of a serpent, their spears forming a deadly thicket.
"Hold!" the drillmaster barked as mock cavalry charges thundered toward them. "Hold, you dogs!"
The first few attempts ended in disaster. Men broke ranks, shields wavered, the line shattered. But by the fifth week, they stood firm. By the eighth, they advanced as one—an unstoppable tide of steel and muscle.
One test remained.
Taimur ordered a live demonstration. A hundred of the heaviest Asad al-Harb charged the Nubian square at full tilt. The ground shook. The air filled with the screams of horses and men.
And when the dust settled, the square held.
Not one Nubian fell.
The peasant boys were the wildcards. Soft from years of tilling fields, their hands better suited to hoes than swords. But they had something the others didn't—desperation.
Their training was the most varied. Mornings were spent drilling with light round shields and curved swords, their movements fluid and precise. Afternoons saw them mastering the bow, firing volley after volley until their fingers bled. By night, they learned to move silently through marshland, their bare feet finding purchase where armored men would sink.
At first, they were clumsy. Arrows flew wide. Blades wavered. But week by week, they hardened. Their muscles thickened. Their eyes lost the dullness of farmers and gained the sharpness of predators.
By the sixth month, they were no longer peasants.
They were hunters.
Not all would stay with the main army. Taimur handpicked two thousand of the finest—a thousand light infantry, five hundred heavy infantry, and five hundred Desert Hawks.
They would be sent to Al-Sai'd, where whispers of rebellion had begun to stir.
The Sand Foxes had already infiltrated the region, their agents moving through the markets and taverns, marking troublemakers. These soldiers would be the hammer to the Foxes' dagger.
Diyar, the old Kurdish captain, eyed the selected troops with approval. "They'll bleed," he said.
Taimur nodded. "But they'll win."
By the end of the sixth month, Egypt's army had transformed.
Desert Hawks: 10,500/12,000 (5,000 veterans + 5,500 new. Ghosts in the desert).
Heavy Infantry: 5,000/5,000 (1,500 veterans + 3,500 new. An unbreakable wall).
Light Infantry: 12,000/20,000 (3,000 veterans + 9,000 new. Fast, lethal, relentless).
[System Notification: Military Expansion Complete]
[+1,000 Merit Points]
[Total MP: 21,800 / 100,000]
And somewhere to the south, two thousand of their best stood ready to crush rebellion before it could spread.
Taimur looked out over the training fields, now empty save for the trampled earth and the lingering scent of sweat and steel.
Somewhere beyond the horizon, the Crusaders still clung to their forts, still believing themselves safe behind their walls.
They would learn.
Soon.