The flat country between the two cities was easy marching ground, the road worn smooth by centuries of traffic, the Zerafshan's irrigation channels running silver in the last of the light to the south.
The tumen had come off a long day at a steady pace and the camp was settling into the evening without friction. Fires going up in the right positions. Horse lines running clean. The men eating or sleeping already, the ones sleeping flat on their backs with the specific collapsed quality of men who had nothing left to prove to the day.
Batu moved through it and read what he needed to read and kept walking.
The Khar Kheshig section was at the camp's southern edge, between the tumen proper and the supply train. The fire there was larger than a standard cook fire. Someone had found additional wood along the route, which was its own small skill, and it gave real heat, the kind that campaign fires rarely produced.
Eight or nine men around it. The rest on rotation or already down.
