The cluster held its pace for a long time after the streambed fell behind them.
The flat terrain southeast of the fight gave back the same pale near-winter landscape in every direction, the frost-stiff grass offering no cover and no feature and no way to read the closing distance except by watching the gap between the two groups narrow increment by increment.
Both sides could read it. The cluster ahead had the heading of men going somewhere specific, not the scattered individual lines of a broken force finding whatever direction felt open.
They moved together with the coherence of riders who knew each other and knew where they were going.
Batu's horses were tired.
The animals under his group had stood in the sustained exchange through the morning, had crossed the drainage cut under concentrated fire, had fought on the south bank, and were now deep into a hard pursuit on frost-compressed earth.
Each stride had a shortened quality the summer had not produced.
