They t before first light at the map table, the three of them, with the felt spread flat and the corners held by river stones Kirsa’s riders had brought back from the eastern approach.
Torghul spoke without preamble. His tun left and left-center. Dorbei’s tun right and right-center.
One mingan detached forward from Torghul’s first formation, Chaidu commanding it for the engagent. His forty riders would run as his personal forward screen inside it.
"The forward troops function," Batu said.
"Feigned withdrawal." Torghul’s eyes moved along the map’s southern edge.
"He engages Berke’s center at range, draws them forward, then turns and withdraws back into the main line at a controlled pace while we advance behind him. Berke’s center follows or it doesn’t. Either answer tells us sothing."
Dorbei was looking at the right side of the map. "The relay interval on open ground."
Torghul nad it. The standard timing cycle on flat terrain with clear sight lines, the interval between the far right flank and the forward elent’s turning point.
Dorbei looked at the distance between the two positions on it. He ran the mathematics without speaking. The numbers did what numbers did.
"Kirsa holds the far right," Batu said. "Dorbei’s rightmost mingan goes to his command for this engagent. His riders embedded in it.
When the flanking arc cos, he reads it fast and holds it long enough for the wheel to close."
Dorbei’s eyes ca off the map. "His riders don’t know my mingan’s n."
"One engagent," Batu said. "His riders reads the arc and holds the outer position.
Your mingan follows his lead at the flank and wheels on your signal when it arrives."
Dorbei had a particular stillness. He looked at the map. His finger traced the gap between Chaidu’s withdrawal path and Kirsa’s position on the right.
"How large a flanking arc does this work against," he said.
"Several hundred riders," Batu said.
"Berke can send twice that."
"Torghul drives center hard the mont the arc commits. Berke’s choice is his center or the arc. He can’t hold both."
Torghul said nothing. He was looking at the map where the logic ran.
Dorbei looked at the junction gap once more. He was morizing the ground before they broke for their formations.
"My right will be ready," he said.
He took the river stones from the corners and left without further exchange. Torghul went after him into the pre-dawn cold.
Batu stood at the table alone. The felt lay flat without its weights. After a mont he rolled it and took it with him.
The eastern approach ca up as the sky began to pale, Kirsa’s troops moving to the near bank in asured groups while the main body held on the open ground behind them.
The river looked different at its edge than it had looked from the camp.
The current showed in the surface pattern where the water ran over a gravel bottom before the deeper channel began. Cold ca off it in a way the open steppe hadn’t carried.
The horses felt the water and pulled back before their riders pushed them in.
The lead pair crossed without stopping, churning the shallows white before the deeper water took them and the current pressed their animals sideways.
They found the far bank and turned.
The signal ca up the north bank. Clean.
The main body ca to the water.
The first sections entered in groups, each horse reluctant at the edge and committed once it was past.
The current had pull and the animals felt it, stepping with their necks low and their bodies angled into each stride.
The surface went brown fast as the crossing churned the riverbed up through the water column.
The sound built with each passing section, a sustained churning that didn’t drop between groups because the groups never stopped coming, each one pressing to the water’s edge as the one before it cleared.
The sll was wet animal and disturbed mud and cold air moving over cold water.
Batu crossed mid-column. His horse went in without hesitation and found the bottom of the deep channel with its head up, ears flat back, the water rising to belly height before the far side’s gravel ca up under the hooves.
The current pushed hard for three strides at the deepest point. Then the south bank ca up and the ground changed under them.
He turned and watched the column coming across.
The rear contingent was still on the near side, the line of riders pressing toward the water in a long queue that compressed at the edge and spread again on the far side.
The mingans were sorting themselves as they arrived, finding their intervals from Penk’s relay riders who had crossed early and were already moving between the tuns with the timing signals.
Torghul’s left and left-center was taking shape, the mingans spreading to their spacing.
Dorbei’s riders were moving into the right and right-center, his formation settling without being managed, carrying the habit of a unit that had run its intervals for years.
Chaidu’s detached mingan was assembling ahead of the main line, the larger mass of the mingan building behind his forty riders at its head.
The supply column was still on the near side, waiting for the rear force to clear before the pack horses began their own passage.
The line on the far side was not complete. The shape of it was already visible.
Kirsa ca back from the outer position at a asured pace. He found Batu without searching.
"A rider," Kirsa said. "South. He held long enough to have our numbers, then turned and rode hard."
Batu looked south. The steppe was open in every direction, pale under the morning light. No dust at this distance. The scout was already a long way gone.
He had been there from the beginning, reading the eastern approach and the tun formations sorting on the far side and the supply column’s position on the near side.
He had the count and the direction and the formation it was taking. That report was moving south.
Kirsa rode back to the right.
Batu moved his horse to Torghul’s position on the left. Torghul was watching the mingans settle into their spacing, tracking the formation’s progress through the relay signals.
"The supply column," Batu said.
Torghul looked at the rear troops still coming off the bank. "The rear riders are close. The supply column after that."
The scout’s report would reach Berke before the supply column finished crossing.
Before it was complete, Berke would be reading the account of what had co across the river and deciding what to do with it.
Batu held his horse still and looked at the formation around him.
Chaidu’s forward mingan was nearly set, the riders checking their equipnt and arrows, each man working through the sa sequence.
Kirsa’s force was spread wide on the far right, his hundred and so along the outer edge and Dorbei’s transferred mingan filling the mass behind them.
Dorbei’s remaining formation worked through its right and right-center position with no wasted motion.
The whole line stretched across the steppe in both directions, the largest force Batu had put in the field in this campaign, and the rear troops were still coming off the bank.
The river was behind them. The terrain ahead was Berke’s and it showed no difference from the ground behind them.
Sa grass, sa pale soil, sa unbroken run to a horizon with nothing to interrupt it.
Sowhere out there the scout was still riding, pushing his horse hard toward the south.
The plan was made and it was finding its shape. Whatever Berke did with the report was the next problem.
The last of the rear riders ca off the bank and found their positions in the line.
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