Dorbei POV
The forest sprawled northeast from the ford, birch and oak mixed in the way the Volga-Kama country grew them, the trunks pale in the spring light with the branches still half-bare.
The new growth had not filled in enough to close the line of sight through the outer stands, and from a hundred and fifty meters on the open ground, a rider watching could see twenty or thirty meters into the forest before the cover became dense.
Dorbei was on a low rise at the perimeter's center. His tumen spread in a wide arc around the accessible side of the forest, each section at the distance the plan required, close enough to perceive movement at the forest, far enough back that a volley from cover had spent most of its force before reaching them.
The relay riders were at their intervals between sections, ready to notify about any encounter.
