Ctesiphon, in the King of Kings' palace.
Still wearing his jeweled crown and dressed in utmost splendor, Bahram VI had fallen into deep fear.
The six cities of Khorasan had all been lost, Isfahan was under siege, and all of Persia had descended into fragmented chaos. No one knew how many cities had laid down their arms and defected to the Tatars, nor how many had been breached and massacred by them.
The Tatars' strength and brutal methods had deeply intimidated the King of Kings.
For a time, he could not help but feel regret. When he had allied with Kutlug, he had only wanted to use the Khitans, his century-long foes, as a shield and let them exhaust each other against the Tatars, unwilling to send troops to support them.
Yet he had never expected the once-mighty Khitans to prove so vulnerable before the Tatars, collapsing in defeat within only half a year.
Then, when Khwarazm also suffered a crushing defeat, Bahram VI finally reacted and hurriedly dispatched reinforcements. But instead, the allied army was wiped out in a single battle, their heads piled into towering mounds and their blood gathering into flowing rivers.
Immediately afterward, the Tatar host drove straight in, entering the Persian Plateau by mountain paths. The several armies hastily assembled were utterly unable to stop them and were swallowed up in a very short time.
Bahram had never encountered such a terrifying enemy. Their weapons and equipment were clearly on par with his own, yet he felt as though his side were primitive men, helplessly beaten by the enemy without any ability to strike back.
This was a gap in tactical doctrine, and also a gap in the level of organization among the soldiers.
Bahram did not understand where the problem lay, but even if