The hundred were assembled on the open ground east of the camp fence, separated into two groups without instruction.
The steppe riders had gathered on the near side. The foreign men stood further out, twenty feet of open ground between them, and neither half had moved to close it.
Batu observed it in silence.
The steppe riders looked like the rest of his tumens. Lean through the body, composite bows racked across their backs, the watchful figure of men who had grown up on horseback.
Nothing on them carried tumen markings or clan colors. Suuqai's work. Fifty men from across three tumens, no more than two from any single mingan, each one stripped of the affiliations they had walked in with.
The foreign men were built differently. They stood lower through the body, wider through the chest, several carrying full beards no rider in the steppe tumens wore.
