The garrison was already assembled when Batu came through the camp fence onto the eastern ground.
The arc ran from both sides of the fire outward to where the firelight gave out and continued beyond it in silhouette and mass, the garrison filling the space in the pre-dawn cold between the ceremony's center and the open steppe behind them.
The pressure of that many men holding a single point of focus had presence to it, a thing the cold carried and the dark gave definition to.
At the arc's near edge the Khar Kheshig stood in position, the two halves of them standing without gap between them. Suuqai was at their center. Further east, on the open flat beyond the assembly's outer edge, Torghul's tumen stood in march order. The column was waiting for what came after.
The white horse was at the ground's center with the fire behind it.
