The white horse was called Daichin.
The na ca to Batu on the march’s first morning. It ant warrior in the old tongue, not a boastful na for a horse but an accurate one, the sa way a knife was called a knife rather than sothing decorative. Daichin. It fit.
The animal was large in a way that stood out even from the front of the column. The campaign horses running through the formation were the standard Mongolian breed, short-backed and barrel-chested, built for days rather than hours, hardy and sufficient.
Daichin was sothing else.
It stood a full hand taller at the withers and carried that height without the heaviness that usually ca with it. The stride was longer than the horses around it and the cadence slower, but the ground covered was the sa or more. Through the morning it had not increased its effort beyond what a walk required.
When the screen riders changed their pace ahead, it read the formation’s adjustnt before Batu had signaled it and matched the new rate on its own. It had made up its mind about the march and was executing the decision.
Batu let it go and watched what it did.
By the second day he had stopped managing it entirely. The horse knew what a column looked like, knew what a march felt like.
Subutai ca alongside on the third morning.
He pulled his horse to match pace without announcent, the way he did everything. The arrival was simply there once it had happened.
"The Bulgars will have their army in the field when we cross the Volga," he said. "Their professional force is between ten and fifteen thousand. They will add conscripts, but they will not trust conscripts in the open field against cavalry. Call it ten to twelve effective."
"That’s what I counted," Batu said.
"The capital is on the left bank, south of the Kama confluence. If we cross the Volga north of that point, we co at it from behind the river bend. They will not see the army until we are already at the crossing."
Batu shifted slightly in the saddle, eyes still on the horizon. "I want to cross before the horses have recovered from the march."
Subutai studied him for a mont. "You will get one charge at full formation capacity, and then the horses need to winter."
"One charge is enough."
Subutai’s fingers adjusted the reins, a small, precise movent as he considered it. "The route is through the Mordvinian ground north of the Kama. You will want the screen riders out a full day ahead, not half. The reed country between the Kama and the Volga is complex, and you do not want to be reading it for the first ti on the morning of the crossing."
"Bayan can handle it."
"I know," Subutai said. He glanced ahead, then back. "I am saying give him the full day."
"Done."
The exchange ended there. Subutai let his horse fall back to his own position without further movent.
The steppe opened ahead in the pale sumr light, flat and enormous, the Orkhon valley long behind them.
Saran was in the column’s middle section, positioned where a senior household mber would be, with her attendants spread around her.
Batu watched her from the front when the column rode a hill that put his position above the formation’s full length.
She was watching the relay riders pass between the mingans. One passed close to her position, on a route between the second and third mingan, moving at the relay’s standard pace. Her eyes tracked him from entry to exit.
Then she turned to the nearest Khar Kheshig rider and asked sothing.
The rider answered.
She nodded once and turned her attention back to the formation ahead of her.
She was mapping the information system.
He looked away and back at the road.
Batu’s brothers were further back in the column, visible as a cluster of riders in the Jochid section. They were not riding formally but in the loose way of n who had been in each other’s company for weeks and were now simply going the sa direction.
Tangqut was talking, which was his default state on horseback.
Orda rode with his characteristic contained exactness, taking up exactly as much space as necessary.
Berke kept his slight remove from the center of the group.
Siban sat his horse in the position that put him closest to whatever information passed through.
As for Torghul, he was at the formation’s eastern flank, where he always was.
Penk’s relay ran its intervals between the mingans. The screen was out at the spacing the protocol specified.
The supply rotation was cycling correctly. Batu could read its timing from the movent of the supply riders through the column’s rear third, each one moving at the pace of a man who knew where he was going and when he was expected.
Suuqai had the near position of the Khar Kheshig periter, watching the terrain ahead. The steppe riders were spread at their flanking distances.
Sowhere in the norse side, Einar’s height was visible above the horses around him, the way a landmark stood above flat ground.
The formation had nothing in it that required attention.
That was the proper state.
The northern route ran west through open plateau and then into the Kazakh steppe country, ground familiar to Orda’s White Horde riders who traveled it routinely.
Each day the terrain grew more recognizable. Not to Batu’s eyes, which still knew it as relatively new ground, but to the horses, whose movent changed in the way horses moved when the country was becoming familiar.
On the sixth evening, he looked at the road ahead from where the tun had stopped for camp and thought about the Volga.
The eastern river where the capital site sat. The construction that had been running since before the march east, which Khulgen had managed through the winter and spring, and now sumr. The records building would be complete. The foundations of the market district would be set.
What the army needed was the Bulgar region. The supply staging area on the Volga that would garrison the Mongol force through the winter of 1236 into 1237.
The capital site and the staging area were not the sa place, but they were close enough to support each other. The campaign’s logistics ran through the connection between them.
He thought about Bulgar city on the left bank south of the Kama, and Subutai’s note about the reed country north of it, and Bayan going out a full day ahead of the column.
Daichin shifted under him, adjusting its weight without changing position.
The road was still ahead of them.
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