Dawn of fourth day came with the granary smoke still rising in a gray column above Suvar’s north wall. It was thinner than the previous afternoon, but still present.

The south wall’s walkway showed defenders at their stations. The gate had not opened through the night.

No sortie had formed in the dark hours. Nothing came from the city in the early morning.

The physician was at the wounded line on the earthworks. Torghul’s deputy had the fourth day roster running before Batu reached the coordination point.

Horses stood on the captured pasture east of the compound. Loads were organized in column order. Wounded who could ride were confirmed in their sections.

Batu walked the coordination point and received what it gave him.

The relay rider from Torghul had the combined dead count from all four days. The outer earthwork positions on the first day. The inner earthwork assault on the second day. The gate breach, the city invasion, and the tower clearance on the third day.

The number came to one hundred and ninety-three.

He considered it and then set it aside.

The loads were substantial.

The agricultural zone had given six hundred counted loads in the days of raiding. The granary had given what fifteen minutes of organized plunder could take from a full winter store.

The livestock driven east from the settlements were up to several hundred head. They stood now in strings along the captured pasture.

Combined, it was more than the army had brought across the ford four days ago through its logistics.

The forest cavalry in the east line had not been touched.

Approximately one thousand riders, protected by the ground they had chosen.

They had kept the eastern agricultural zone’s stores mostly intact during the raid. That was a real outcome.

In the spring, when the full campaign came north, those riders and that stored grain would give the Bulgars something to organize around in the eastern zone.

The reed terrain east of the agricultural zone was not ground a raiding force could work. The spring campaign needed to solve that before it could use the left bank as a staging base.

That was the lesson the four days had created.

A hit-and-run operation could not reach every corner of the territory it targeted. What it could not burn, it left for later.

The spring would come with far more thousands of riders. The eastern forest would not be a problem that stayed unsolved.

He noted it and moved on.

By mid-morning the column was dressed in march order at the earthworks southside.

Torghul’s tumen formed the leading section. The pack horses and livestock followed. Dorbei’s reduced force had the middle. The brothers’ contingents took the rear.

Batu took his position near the column’s head and looked north once.

The defenders on the wall were at their stations. The repaired gate was closed.

Nothing was going to open it today.

The city had watched four days of brutal work and had nothing to send against a formed army on open ground.

What was behind those walls would spend the winter on what remained after the granary burned. It was not enough for a city of that size.

He turned south.

The column moved.

The burned outer earthwork positions came past on each side as the column cleared the perimeter.

The earthworks were still standing. Packed earth did not burn. But the palisade crowns were gone. The interiors were black and open to the sky.

The farm ground south of the positions was the agricultural zone Dorbei’s parties had worked through the previous days. The column passed through it with the smell of old smoke still in the soil.

The forest was visible to the east from the column’s center.

Batu watched it as the formation moved south. 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

No riders came out of it.

The forest cavalry had been inside the trees since the second morning, when Dorbei had redirected his parties away from the eastern zone. They had watched the raid from cover for three days.

They watched the withdrawal the same way.

They had done what the terrain let them do. The terrain did not let them follow a column of more than twenty thousand riders across open ground.

The column passed the forest.

It moved on.

The trees fell behind.

The reed vegetation came up in the late afternoon. The same dark line at the flat horizon it had been on the morning of the first day.

Bayan’s felt strips were still in the channels at the marked turns. The reed stems stood undisturbed around them.

The formation entered the channels in the same order as the outward crossing.

The same order worked going back.

The livestock strings made more noise than the horses, but they moved through.

The ford was the same ford.

Daichin went in without checking. He found the gravel bottom. The current pressed from the south the same way it had four days ago.

The far bank came up under the hooves.

Batu rode out onto the east bank. The column came out behind him in a continuous stream.

Orda was at the bank with his White Horde riders in their positions. The supply line’s stores were organized in the coordination area east of the ford.

He sat his horse at the bank and watched the column come out of the reeds.

He said nothing until Batu rode up.

"Suvar won’t have enough provisions for this winter," Orda said.

Batu glanced toward the ford as the last riders pushed through.

"Yes."

Orda shifted in the saddle, still watching the column. "The spring finds them broken before the first tumen crosses."

"The eastern forest cavalry is still a problem," Batu said. "Around a thousand. In the area east of the agricultural zone. They kept their eastern stores intact."

Orda nodded once, considering. "How many riders does that take to clear?"

"I had enough. But I don’t want to brute force it. There is a better alternative."

Orda looked east across the open steppe beyond the ford.

"Then the spring campaign has a first objective before it has a second one."

"Yes," Batu said.

The last of the column’s riders were still coming through the ford behind them. The sound was continuous, then slowly fading as the rear sections cleared the channels.

The reeds on the west bank sat in the late afternoon light. Unchanged by what had moved through it over four days.

The left bank was done.

The column was carrying east what the operation had come to take.

What the spring campaign would find on the far side of the ford was a city without a granary. Defensive positions that would need to be rebuilt from the earth up. A population that had spent a winter short of everything it needed.

Batu turned his horse east.