The Caspian did not look like a lake.
That was the first thing Batu registered when the tumen crested the low ridge that had been blocking the western view and the water appeared. A lake had a far shore. A lake had its horizon at a distance the eye could see as possible.
The Caspian ran west from the shoreline below them and kept running until the sky took it, the water dark gray in the winter light, the surface carrying the long low chop of open water with nothing on the other side to stop it.
The horizon was clean. Whatever was behind it was not visible and would not become visible regardless of how far south the army marched, because the far shore was not to the west.
He had known this about the Caspian from the other life. Maps, campaign histories, the whole geographic archive that had come with the consciousness. Knowing it and standing on a ridge looking at the water were not the same.
