Batu POV

The overnight screen reports arrived before the sky had found its color. Chaidu’s riders had been watching the inner defenses through the dark, and what they found in the third watch was organized movement.

Groups of cavalry were pushing southeast from the inner defensive positions along the drainage channels and into the forest east of the agricultural zone, before the screen could put a firm count on them.

They were not refugees. The movement was too directed, the groups numbering thirty to forty riders each. They had been gone before first light.

Batu read the report and looked at the agricultural zone spreading west and southwest from his position.

The raiding smoke from the previous day had died out overnight, but the western region was already beginning to create new torrents of smoke as Dorbei’s parties reached their morning targets.

He sent the screen account forward to Dorbei’s coordination point and rode south.

DORBEI POV

Dorbei had his own reports when Batu’s rider arrived.

Two parties had made contact in the eastern region at first light.

The first, a twenty-rider group working toward grain stores northeast of the previous day’s targets, had lost three riders to a volley from a stand of trees running along a drainage ditch. They pulled back without reaching their objective.

The second party had been within two hundred meters of a secondary depot when a tree line to the east opened at range. They took two hits and turned back.

Both groups had encountered the same problem. They approached along a natural lane, took fire from tree cover they hadn’t read in time, and withdrew before the damage compounded.

Dorbei looked at the coordination felt, with its group assignments spread across it.

"Pull in the small groups from the east."

He said to the nearest coordination rider. "Every group with fewer than forty riders. Bring them here before midmorning."

The consolidation took an hour.

When the eastern parties came back in, Dorbei combined them into groups of sixty. He worked through the felt until the eastern assignments had been collapsed into bodies large enough to absorb a volley without losing their operational capacity.

Trailing screens went to each group.

Eight riders hung back one hundred meters behind the main body, watching the flanks and trees before the main body committed to any route

The nearest group leader was called forward. He dismounted, stepping in close.

"The screens do not engage."

Dorbei explained. "They watch. If they see cavalry in the trees, they call it before the main body is inside enemy range."

The group leader shifted his stance.

"And if we’re already under attack when they call it?"

"You wheel north," Dorbei said. "Don’t stop to think about what you’re leaving behind."

The group leader mounted and rode back.

The groups moved out in the late morning.

Nameless Raider POV

One of the groups, sixty riders working northwest through open ground toward a secondary depot, had the settlement in view when the trailing screen called it.

The rider at the center of the trailing eight saw them first.

Horses in the forest along the settlement’s eastern side. Too deep in shadow for grazing animals. Bows drawn.

He raised his arm and closed his fist.

The signal ran forward through the formation. The main body wheeled north before it reached the settlement.

The turn was still running when the arrows came from the trees.

The first volley came in flat at sixty meters, aimed at the outer right where the riders were slowest through the turn.

A shaft entered one man’s left side between the ribs. He folded forward over his horse’s neck, hands locked in the mane, still in the saddle.

The rider beside him took a shaft through the upper back. The point came out below the collarbone. He dropped off the near side and hit the grass.

Another horse went down with an arrow through the neck, collapsing from a canter to its chest in three strides.

The formation kept turning.

The second volley came as they cleared the wheel and drove north.

Two riders on the trailing edge took shafts across the back.

Another man took one through the arm. The bone resisted, but the muscle tore through.

A horse stumbled from a shaft in the haunch, its stride breaking, dragging its rider sideways as the formation stretched.

No one slowed.

The Bulgar cavalry stayed in the trees.

A third volley fell short at maximum range.

Then nothing.

The group kept moving north.

The trailing screen rider broke off and turned south, carrying the account.

DORBEI POV

Dorbei received it at midday.

He read it against the field reports from the eastern region and understood what the full picture showed.

Across all contacts since dawn, the estimated cavalry count was close to a thousand riders operating from the forest.

They moved in groups of thirty to fifty, holding inside cover where the raiding parties’ natural routes ran closest to the forest edge.

They had organized it overnight, after the outer defenses fell.

They knew the Mongol force would not follow them into the trees. They had built the harassment around that.

Sixty-rider groups with trailing screens reduced casualties per contact.

They did not solve the problem.

The eastern stores were going to stay where they were.

"We only raid western and southwestern regions from here forward."

Dorbei said to the coordination rider. "Every active group in the eastern region pulls north of the drainage channel and works the open ground."

The rider acknowledged and moved at once.

The smoke columns that had been rising east of the drainage disappeared. New ones rose from the west and southwest, where the redirected parties reached stores the harassment cavalry could not protect.

Dorbei wrote down the tally and sent it north.

Approximately six hundred loads recovered and burned from the outer agricultural zone. Eastern region abandoned after confirmed cavalry presence estimated at a thousand riders. The human and horses casualties. Western and southwestern regions still under raid.

Batu POV

Batu received the report on the rise north of the coordination point.

The eastern stores had been protected. There was no short term answer for it.

Subutai came alongside him on the rise and reined in.

He had been moving through the enemy positions through the morning, watching the inner defenses from different directions and sending riders forward to read it at range.

"The ditch is four meters wider than the outer position ditches."

Subutai reported. "The palisade above the earthwork runs taller by a full log height. The garrison inside should be at full capacity plus everything that got back through the gate after the outer positions fell."

Batu kept his eyes on the horizon.

"How many?"

"Three thousand. Perhaps more."

Batu considered the inner defenses.

The earthwork line stood clear against the sky. Watchtowers were set close along the palisade.

"The ditch is the problem," Subutai said.

He gestured ahead.

"I want the assault wedge on a narrow front with maximum depth behind it when it crosses. Narrow enough that the defenders can’t spread their fire across the full width. Deep enough that the front rank keeps moving even after the first volleys."

His hand dropped.

"And the suppression starts the moment the assault riders reaches the ditch’s near bank. Every arrow goes into the palisade walkway while the crossing is running."

Batu turned to the relay rider behind him.

"Tell Torghul to prepare for the assault."

The rider moved off at once. 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

Torghul’s tumen would move north toward the ditch.