The caravan came off the road before the lead screen was visible.
Batu saw it from his position near the column's front, the distant line of animals and men pulling north off the road's edge as one organized movement, the man leading it having read the dust column ahead and made his decision without needing to see what was inside it.
The caravan knew what a large force looked like from behind a horizon. It moved accordingly, the animals bunching against the road's northern margin, the men taking positions at their animals' heads and standing there in the patient way of people who had been doing this for decades.
The lead screen passed them. Then the van.
Then the main column, ten thousand riders at march pace, the road shaking under the force of it, the vibration carrying through the ground and through the feet of that man and his men standing in the dry grass at the road's edge.
The tumen didn't look at them.
