The tumen was already dust to the north when Suuqai turned the group east.
Fourteen of them. Seven steppe riders from the Khar Kheshig on the flanks and forward, three norse at the rear, one guide from the Urgench garrison walking his horse at the front beside Suuqai, and two prisoners in the center with their hands bound to their saddle rings.
The prisoners were from the garrison and had been interrogate in the holding pen the night before. They rode without speaking and watched the eastern horizon the way men watched things they had helped create.
The order had come from Batu before the tumen moved. It was brief because it did not need to be long. Two raider groups in the eastern channels. The leaders of those groups alive long enough to understand what had found them, then not alive.
What was left behind would carry the warning further than any rider could.
