Unlike the relatively "comfortable" insomnia inside the commander's tent, Thomas was curled into a ball beside a crude, dilapidated tent on the outskirts of the Sauron camp, where the cold wind poured straight in. Like an old dog afraid of the cold, he leaned against the icy tent pole.
The fur coat on him was torn and thin, utterly incapable of warding off the bone-piercing chill of a late-autumn night on the snowfield. His body trembled faintly beyond his control. Yet colder than his body were his eyes. They were dull and vacant, fixed blankly on the pitch-black, starless night sky, as if something were hidden within it—or as if he could see nothing at all.
Every winter was a brutal trial of survival for lowly Sauron soldiers like Thomas. He had to rack his brains—stealing, currying favor with his superiors, rushing to loot the battlefield after a fight, even skimping on his meager rations in exchange for a little extra food, a thicker piece of fur, or a handful of cheap liquor to warm himself—just so he could survive one day longer than the others in this race against cold and hunger.
But this year, he had thought of no way at all. His wife's death and the loss of his unborn child had been like tearing away the last spark of life from his soul.
The disastrous defeat at Tar Valley, the deaths of his comrades, Ulf's severed head... the string of blows had long since crushed him. He was like a piece of wood scorched black by war and frozen solid by the cold, merely moving with the army mechanically and numbly, walking here and stopping here.
He was alive only because he had not died yet.
Tonight, his unit happened to be assigned to guard duty