The outer perimeter ran along the camp's eastern and northern faces in a frozen line, the stakes and rope markers half-buried in packed snow, the two-man posts spaced at intervals wide enough that someone passing between them was briefly alone. Batu had chosen this route in the early morning for that reason.
The central ground was already active by the time he left his ger, the horse lines running their first allocation, Orel's clerks at work before the cold had eased. Here there was only the sound of his own boots and the flat winter light coming off the steppe beyond the fence.
He raised his right arm. The pain came where it had been coming for the past week. At the upper reach, the muscle seized for a moment before releasing. He raised it a second time. Same point, same release.
