The routed soldiers were like a flood bursting through a broken dam, spilling across the plains and over gullies until they reached the seashore—only to find there was no road ahead. They had fled all the way to the frozen shore of the Northern Sea! In winter, the waters near the Northern Sea's coast had frozen into a vast ice field, white as far as the eye could see.
The routed soldiers at the front hesitated on the ice, not daring to step onto that seemingly smooth sheet whose depths they could not fathom. But the even greater tide of people surging from behind allowed them not the slightest hesitation or pause.
Under the immense pressure, the first batch of routed soldiers was squeezed onto the ice. Since others had gone ahead, those behind seemed to find a way out and flooded onto the ice after them, continuing their desperate flight north along the coastline.
Carnford's cavalry did not cease their pursuit just because the enemy had fled onto the ice. They repeatedly organized waves of charges, striking the utterly disordered Sauron rout like the tide, wave after wave, as they cared for nothing but fleeing for their lives.
Countless Sauron soldiers were trampled to death beneath the iron hooves of the cavalry formations amid the chaos, their screams drowned out by the thunder of hoofbeats.
The routed soldiers fled in blind panic in every direction, only to be swiftly herded back toward the shore like ducks by Carnford's infantry lines, which pressed steadily in from the east and south.
The overwhelming tide of Sauron rout let out screams as immense as a tsunami, filled with panic and despair.
No one thought of resisting anymore. No one thought of organizing. Everyone wanted only to flee along that narrow "path to