You order your men to follow the road from the forest. They grumble a bit, but see the wisdom in your command. With a couple men ahead and behind to scout for ambushes you proceed forward. Going through the forest is tough, especially for the men carrying the wounded.
Every so often a stone pillar is placed along the road, and eventually you become intrigued enough to call for a break next to one of the pillars to investigate. The overall pillar is about two metres in height, almost as wide as a man. The pillar is comprised of three parts. A cube acts as a base, the main portion of the pillar is a cylinder, while on top of the pillar is a pyramid block of white marble, engraved with some sort of design, though it's far too weathered for you to make out clearly. The pillar and the base both have writing on them. Being illiterate you ask your men if any of them can read, and to your relief one of them raises his hand. Admittedly his knowledge is very basic, but it's better than anybody else. Unfortunately the writing on the pillar isn't Russian, so his skills come to aught, even though he recognizes a couple of the letters.
Your company makes poor time through the forest, and as night starts to fall you can't have gone more than a couple kilometres. You order your men to start setting up camp as best they can, and send a couple to bring in the scouts. To your surprise, they arrive a couple seconds afterwards. The reason soon becomes apparent, a group of horsemen was spotted riding down the road, heading in your direction. While they didn't seem to be pushing their horses very hard, they'll undoubtedly pass near the camp in a couple minutes.