Western Liao, Samarkand.
Within a week, the newly appointed Ivan Thousand Households had successfully cleared his territory of bandits, but now faced a new threat, the once prominent Khwarezmia, which had once controlled Samarkand in Central Asia.
His territory was completely treated as a buffer, placed on the western side of Samarkand.
Now, Western Liao was in a precarious situation, with the remaining controlled land only stretching from Samarkand to the Bukhara corridor. Thankfully, the elite troops were still intact, preventing Ivan Thousand Households from having to consider when to switch sides just after boarding the ship.
Recently, Ivan's troops had swelled to ten thousand strong after absorbing numerous bandits.
Among them, he picked out five hundred trusted men and trained them as armored cavalry using the Mamluk method, supplemented by a thousand light cavalry to serve as the mobility strength of Ivan's forces.
