Baatulan has the compact, weather-hardened look of someone used to standing watch in sleet. His dark hair is combed straight back with such precision that even rain seems to part around the parting, while his thick mustache is waxed into two short, blunt points. A smell of beeswax and oiled leather follows him. He walks heel-first and squarely, as if each step has been measured against a drill yard. The unexpected detail is the tiny, brightly painted wooden birds he carves and leaves on windowsills, each with a different expression.

He is patient with frightened people but impatient with careless authority. In a crisis he becomes exact and decisive; in a quiet room he can be unexpectedly funny, though he hides jokes inside complaints. He longs for the comfort of belonging to a unit, yet distrusts anyone who asks him to follow orders without explaining who might pay for them.

Baatulan grew up at the Sixth Ford, where his mother kept a ferry and his father mended harness. At nineteen, he enlisted as a road guard, proud of his knack for getting a frightened patrol to hold formation. During a winter retreat, his captain ordered the bridge behind them burned before the last civilian cart had crossed. Baatulan disobeyed, held the bridge with three other guards, and got the cart through; one of those guards, his closest friend, Shun, never came back from the river ice. The army dismissed Baatulan for disobedience, though the stranded families still send him small parcels at midwinter. He now works as a hired escort and occasional watchman at the Sixth Ford. He sends money to his widowed mother, argues with the ferry reeve over unsafe planks, and avoids answering letters from his former captain, Tseren, who has recently returned to the district with a new command.