The tent had the lamp and the summons and nothing else.
Batu pulled the map board from beneath the table's edge and set it in the center. Carved wood, the terrain marked in low relief, the plains and river lines and general distances between the western steppe and Karakorum indicated in shallow cuts.
He had used it since before the southern march. The pieces came from a leather pouch beside it, carved in the same functional way, each one distinguished by a notch or a mark, functional and plain. He emptied the pouch and left the figures in a loose pile at the board's edge.
He picked up the largest and set it in the west.
That was the Jochid position. Three tumens with campaign experience, an administrative apparatus under the wolf's track seal, census riders in the field, and a capital site marked in the frozen ground east of the camp that would break ground in spring.
