The course was longer than anything the wrestling ground or the archery range had required. It went east from the camp along the Orkhon’s southern margin, the cleared ground stretching across the valley floor for a distance that most competitions did not need.

The Naadam race was not a sprint between animals. It was a test of what a horse was, its breeding, its conditioning, what the land it came from had built into its bones over generations. The course covered a span of ground that left nothing to riding skill or tactics. It measured only the animal.

The crowd distributed itself along the course’s full length rather than concentrating at one end. Men had been walking the grounds since before the morning meal to find their viewing positions. By the time the first horses were brought to the starting area, the course was lined on both sides with people for as far as the valley floor would hold them.

Batu stood near the midpoint of the course. From the midpoint he could watch the animals at speed, which was different from watching them at the start or the finish. At the start the horses were composed, managed by their handlers. At the finish they were spent.

At the midpoint they were running as they would, the breeding showing through without help or concealment.

The riders were small. Every man at the grounds understood why without being told. Lighter across the back meant the horse carried less and showed its true nature over distance.

The boys who rode were between eight and twelve years old, chosen from each faction’s camp for their size and their nerve. They wore minimal equipment. They lay forward along the animals’ necks in the position that offered the least resistance.

They were not the point. The animals were the point.

"The small ones are the good riders," someone said from the near end.

"I know. I’ve seen it since before you were born."

"I’m just saying-"

"Then stop saying."

The first group came through from the east, turning back toward the starting area for the return leg. The heartland horses, animals from the Mongolian plateau, the core Ogedeid string, moved at the pace that had carried Mongol armies across three continents.

Short through the back. Barrel-chested. Legs carrying less length than their bodies warranted but covering the ground in a rolling stride that ate distance the way water ate a dry riverbank, steadily and without drama.

These were horses that could run for two days.

Every man who commanded cavalry on the steppe knew what that meant. An army mounted on these animals could sustain pace for the full span of a campaign season without the horses degenerating.

They could march through cold they had grown up in, on grass they had evolved to digest, in terrain that matched the environment that had shaped them for a thousand years.

"Solid animals."

"Always are."

"No surprises from that direction."

"The Ogedeid string never surprises anyone. That’s the point of them."

Batu watched the nearest horse’s hindquarters as it passed. The push from the back end was the honest measurement. The front of a horse could be trained to look better than it was. The hind couldn’t.

These animals pushed cleanly, driving forward without the slight twist in the hip that indicated a weakness in the coupling. 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

The second group came through before the dust of the first had been put down.

Central Asian horses. The Chagataid string, from the Ferghana Valley and the grazing grounds east of Samarkand. Tall animals with long necks and the shine on their coats that came from a particular kind of bloodline, horses that had been prized in the region for centuries before any Mongol khan had heard the valley’s name.

They moved with the long, reaching stride of animals built for speed over flat ground, covering more distance per stride than the heartland horses. The intervals between their footfalls were longer and their movement more extended.

The crowd near Batu shifted to watch them pass.

"Look at the legs on those."

"That’s a Ferghana horse. You can tell from the length."

"Fast."

"Fast, yes. See how the boy’s holding on?"

"All the boys hold on."

"Not like that."

The Ferghana horses were fast across ground like this. They were built for the semi-arid flat terrain of Central Asia, for the kind of distances that raids covered in a single day rather than what campaigns covered in a week.

Their endurance profile differed from the heartland horse in ways visible to anyone watching. Batu watched the second animal’s breathing as it came abreast of him and observed the animal’s effort, the front end doing more work than the back end, the push diminishing at this stage of the course in a way the Mongolian horse’s had not.

Speed. Excellent speed. In a short contest on flat ground these animals won.

Over multiple days on mixed terrain in cold weather, carrying a fully equipped heavy rider rather than a boy of ten, a different conversation.

The Chagataid cavalry was brilliant at the fast raid and the aggressive flanking move on open ground. Extended operational campaign, far supply line, winter conditions on the northern steppe, different animal, different answer.

The crowd noise was different for these horses. More men making the sound of people watching something run that runs beautifully. The aesthetic response was real.

These were beautiful animals.

"I’d pay four horses for that one."

"You don’t have four horses."

"I’m saying what it’s worth."

A third group came through from the east, minor princes’ strings, mixed breeding from various parts of the empire’s reach. Some Mongol heartland animals that had been east and come back, some Kipchak steppe horses from the western frontier, one animal that had the marks of something from further south, thicker through the neck and with a heavier build that had been bred for mountain terrain rather than flat ground.

Batu watched each one with the attention and put each description against the others.

The Kipchak steppe horse caught his attention for twenty meters as it passed. Longer in the back than the heartland Mongol. Not as lean as the Ferghana animal.

A horse that had grown up on the same kind of grassland as the western steppe strings, flat, open, rolling ground, but from east of the Ural rather than west. Faster than the Mongolian horse over short distances, more durable than the Central Asian horse in cold conditions, but not carrying the combination of the two that came from the far western steppe.

A good cavalry horse. Not the best one available for the terrain the campaign would cross in its first year.

He already knew what was in his own camp’s eastern string.

A handler came through the crowd at Batu’s left side, moving with the purpose of who had been sent to collect a person rather than to watch a race.

"My lord. Your animals are ready at the starting area."

Batu looked east along the course’s length. The valley floor ran out to where the morning light was still coming in flat from the hills.

The crowd along both sides of the course stood with their attention oriented toward the starting area, knowing what the next group meant, the announcement of the Jochid western string had moved through the crowd the way information always moved at the assembly, in advance of the event itself.

"The boy is ready?"

"Yes, my lord. He’s been with them since before first light."

Batu looked at the grounds.

Every man along it who had watched the Ogedeid string and the Ferghana animals and the mixed group had been considering what was available and what it could do.

What they were about to watch was the last piece of information they would carry from the games period.

He walked toward the starting area.