The settlements of the Czechs and the Slovaks were no more than early landmarks in this voluminous flux. On it went: over the fallen fences of the Roman Empire; past the flat territories of the Avars; across the great rivers and through the Balkan passes and into the dilapidated provinces of the Empire of the East: silently soaking in, spreading like liquid across blotting paper with the speed of a game of Grandmother’s Steps. Chroniclers only noticed them every century or so and at intervals of several hundred miles. They filled up Eastern Europe until their spread through the barbarous void
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