Morning arrived slowly over the camp.
The fires from the night before had burned down to embers, thin streams of smoke rising into a sky that was still gray along the horizon. Batu rode out from his tent to see what daylight revealed now that the darkness and dust were gone.
The ground between the camp and the Moskva still showed the cost of yesterday's battle.
Broken spear shafts lay scattered across the earth. A drowned horse had caught against the near bank, its body turning slowly with the current. Along the far shore, where the fighting around the crossing had been worst, dark shadows moved over the water and settled wherever the river had failed to carry the dead away.
Batu studied the scene without looking away.
The army had paid for this advance in lives. He couldn't change that. But he could at least see clearly what those lives had bought.
Vsevolod was brought to him not long afterward.
