The nine days passed without incident.

The enrollment document reached Mahmud’s ledgers on the third morning. The grain reserve took its first entry when a Tergesh autumn report came in above the levy limit. The craftsman materials credit went out through the Ayas dispatch before the fifth day ended.

Sarai moved in the direction it had been pointed. It did not require Batu at its center to keep moving, and that was what the past year had been built for.

On the morning of the ninth day, he was at the horse lines before the sun cleared the eastern channel.

Daichin was saddled and standing. The animal had the patience of something large and well-managed in cold autumn air, its breath coming white. It stood a full hand taller at the withers than every horse around it.

Batu took the reins, mounted from the left, and looked north.

The army was dressed and waiting across the full width of the camp.

He rode to the low rise at the eastern side of the departure, where the entire force could be seen in a single sweep. He stopped there and let his eyes move across it.

Torghul’s tumen was at the head of the column. Near ten thousand effective, it was the formation that had been with Batu from the beginning, and it showed in the way it stood.

The relay riders were at their intervals. Penk’s coordination through it without needing to be called. It had been internalized past the point where instruction was required.

The arban commanders stood at their positions. Torghul remained at the head of his force, and he looked back once toward Batu’s rise with the flat acknowledgment of who had already said everything that needed saying. Then he turned north again.

Chaidu’s mingan was inside the forward section of the formation, visible from the rise as a distinct grouping at the van. It had been rebuilt after the Berke subjugation campaign losses and had gone through everything since without another gap in it.

Kirsa’s mingan sat behind Chaidu’s riders. The Khotor name was gone from all of it. What remained was a formation that had already been in region and knew reed vegetation from the opposite direction.

Dorbei’s tumen formed the column’s center. Near ten thousand effective. The west steppes veterans. Dorbei stood at the head with flat attention of who had operated on this kind of ground before and had nothing theatrical left in him about it.

Orda’s White Horde was behind Dorbei’s tumen, near ten thousand effective. These riders had worked the route as if it were home ground. Their horses moved with the loose ease that only came from familiarity. Orda rode at the lead without ceremony.

The brothers’ six mingans took the rearward sections. Approximately six thousand riders.

Tangqut was at his command position, his force dressed and organized. Toqa-Timur rode beside him at distance. Berke had his place at the outer side of his mingan, present and committed, without trying to lean himself toward the center.

All three were where the campaign required them to be.

Subutai stood near the column’s strategical center with his staff, not at the head of any tumen. His eyes were on the ground north of the camp, on terrain the column had not yet reached. He had the look he always wore on a march, a man who could not stop reading ground, no matter what sort of ground lay in front of him.

The Khar Kheshig had their positions around Batu’s rise. Suuqai at the near side. The steppe riders at their flanking distances. Gunnar with his coat closed over the felt pad inside it, the horn at his hip. Einar at the front right end, a full head above the riders around him, already looking north.

The force was near thirty-six thousand riders. Always some men were sick or not fully mobilized. Call it near thirty-six thousand effective.

Torghul raised his arm.

The formation moved.

The march north stretched into weeks of open steppe at the pace the pasture could sustain. Orda’s knowledge of the halt positions proved real. Each evening the army found good ground without fumbling for it. The horses ate well, and the next morning the formation moved at the same pace as the morning before.

The screen continued its intervals. Penk’s relay moved through the mingans. Days accumulated in the way of a constant march.

As the confluence region grew near, the terrain began to change. The soil darkened with more moisture than the southern steppe carried. Isolated reed stands appeared along the drainage streambeds, not the continuous vegetation yet, only the first sign of it.

The horses noticed the smell before the riders did. Their ears adjusted. Their strides shortened slightly. The air off the drainage channels smelled of standing water, dense vegetation, and the cold that settled into low ground faster than into open steppe.

Subutai came alongside when the first reed stands appeared on the eastern drainage side. He looked at them without looking at Batu.

"The Idel ford is four hours past the main vegetation," he said. "Bayan will have the route marked before we reach the wall."

Batu kept his eyes forward for a moment. "We proceed as planned."

Subutai gave a single nod and dropped back to his position.

The main reed wall came into view toward the end of that day’s march. It ran east and west without visible end, taller than a mounted man, dense enough to take the column’s sound and give nothing back.

The smell was fully present there, close and organic, standing water and the cold heaviness of autumn vegetation. The accumulated hooves of near thirty-six thousand riders had been carrying across open steppe for weeks, and that sound pressed into the reed wall and found nowhere to go.

Torghul raised his hand.

The main body halted south of the reeds.

Bayan had gone into the channels the previous morning, a full day ahead of the vanguard. He and his riders were somewhere in that vegetation now, mapping the viable passages and marking the routes the formation could follow without losing its depth in ground that would otherwise break it apart.

The main body did not move forward until his signal returned.

It waited south of while the reeds moved in the autumn wind with the dry sound of cold vegetation. That sound went across the halted column from the north without anything from the main body moving forward to answer it.

The signal would come before morning.