The column had held position for several days after the letter arrived.
The screen ran its route each morning and returned with nothing. The north bank of the river stayed empty. No riders appeared on the far side and no further ssage ca from the south.
The camp did what a camp on flat open ground did when it held. It waited, and the waiting showed. n moved through the daily functions at the pace of a held position.
Kirsa had been using the ti. Each morning before the screen went out, he sent two or three of his riders south toward the river, different n each ti, never the sa pair on the sa track.
They ca back at different hours and reported to him. He compiled what they found.
When he had what he needed, he ca to Batu’s tent before the horse lines had run their first allocation.
Batu told him to co back after the supply accounting.
Khulgen arrived first, before the morning had fully opened, with a felt folded under his arm. He sat and spread it on the table without preamble.
The ten-to-fourteen day window he’d nad at their last eting had been running. Much of it was gone. What remained put the resupply requirent closer than it had been.
The supply line had been running without incident. All three clans reported no unusual movent through Penk’s relay.
The resupply load would be moving north through territory where the seals were less than three weeks old, and a supply train at supply train pace was not a fighting formation.
He folded the felt and looked across the table at Batu. What the numbers pointed toward was evident without stating it.
"Get the allocation ready for movent," Batu said. "Don’t move it yet."
Khulgen went.
Kirsa ca in almost imdiately. He had his own docunt, larger and rougher, drawn in the field. He spread it on the table without asking.
"Two approaches within range of our current position," he said. "Eastern and western."
He covered the eastern route first.
Firm footing on the near bank for a hundred ters before the water, enough that the formation didn’t churn the near side on the way through.
The front was wide enough that the formation didn’t compress into a narrow file before entering the water. The river was shallower there and the current ran slowly.
For a force this size, the eastern route crossed faster.
The western route had softer footing on the north side, manageable for light riders and harder for a force this large.
The water was deeper and the current had more pull. It would cross, but slower, and the horses would feel it.
Batu looked at the docunt. "The south bank."
Kirsa put his finger on the western approach. "My riders watched both from the north side for several days.
The western side has a watch position on the far bank. Recent fire remains on the near side. Hoof marks on the south approach. Soone’s been sitting on that crossing."
He moved his finger east. "Older sign here. Less of it. The last clear observation was so ti before we arrived."
The western approach was the one a column commander chose first when assessing the river from a distance. More visible near side, the obvious route from the camp’s perspective.
It was also the one Berke’s riders had been sitting on.
Batu said nothing. He looked at the docunt.
"How far between the two," he said.
Kirsa nad the distance. Far enough to be genuinely separate, close enough that the march didn’t need to divide to reach either one.
Batu rolled the docunt and held it. He looked at Kirsa. Kirsa looked back without filling the silence.
They rode south together an hour later. The ground between the camp and the river was the sa open steppe the column had been camped on, dry grass, hard soil, nothing on any flank.
From the forward observation point where Kirsa had been staging his reconnaissance, the river was different from what it had been on the horizon.
Up close the north bank rose slightly before dropping to the water. The current was visible from here, catching the low morning light along its surface, moving with a steadiness that the wider view had hidden.
Cold ca off it. The near bank slled of mud and wet grass in a way the open steppe behind them didn’t.
The far side was low and open. Grass started imdiately from the water line and ran south into flat steppe that looked the sa as the ground on the north side.
Sa color, sa length, sa pale horizon beyond it. The letter had nad a line. The ground didn’t show one.
The open terrain kept whatever Berke had on the south side.
A force held back from the water’s far edge by half a day’s ride could sit there undetected from the north side and be on the water in hours when the main body entered.
Kirsa stood beside his horse and said nothing. He had given his assessnt.
The far side held his attention, the sa watch he had been running since they stopped, checking that nothing had changed.
Kirsa’s scouts crossing first and reading the far bank before the main body entered the water was the only way to know what was waiting before fifteen thousand n were in the river.
Batu turned his horse north.
He found Torghul at the relay station in the middle of the afternoon, going through Penk’s timing tallies. Torghul looked up when Batu stopped in front of him.
"First light," Batu said. "The column crosses."
Torghul held that for a beat. "Which approach."
"Eastern."
A nod. He knew Kirsa’s auxiliary had been watching that ground since they stopped.
"Screen disposition."
"Kirsa goes first. His riders reads the far bank and signals before the main body enters the water."
Torghul was already turning toward the relay station to begin the preparation sequence. "It’ll be ready."
The camp had taken on a different quality through the hours that followed.
The maintenance rhythm of a held position replaced by sothing directed, each function pointed the sa way.
The horse lines ran their allocations in a different order. The supply train reorganized on the eastern flank.
Penk’s relay riders moved between the mingans with a pace that said the timing signals had changed their content. n checked equipnt they’d already checked.
Batu stood at the southern edge of the camp as the light went level in the sky.
The river had gone dark with the rest of the horizon, the far bank lost in the general darkness of the south.
Sowhere out there, at the eastern crossing, the ground Kirsa had been watching since they stopped waited under the sa dark.
Tomorrow it would be behind them.
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