Slaves

In the distance, the first batch of liberated slaves sent onto the battlefield came stumbling over in crooked lines, driven and berated by the officers as they stepped across the muddy, blood-soaked ground.

Most were dressed in rags and gaunt with hollow cheeks. Their faces were filled with fear at the battlefield's carnage, bewilderment about the future, and the unease of having been "freed" without knowing where to go next.

Under the officers' orders, they first hurriedly assisted the auxiliaries in carrying Carnford Army's wounded out of the sea of corpses and blood and sending them to the medical camp in the rear.

With their own wounded evacuated, the battlefield looked even more desolate. Only the Sauron corpses remained, piled in layers in every imaginable posture, along with the Sauron prisoners who were too badly wounded to move or had already been disarmed and placed under guard.

Soon, the prisoners and wounded were herded together and forced to kneel in a patch of ground that had just been cleared. Hundreds of them formed a dark mass. Most were injured, and their eyes were filled with despair, hatred, or numbness.

At that moment, the recruits who had just finished helping with the rescue work were assembled once more and brought before the clearing where the Sauron prisoners knelt.

They looked at one another, unsure what they were supposed to do next. The ominous atmosphere in the air made many of them grow restless and uneasy.

The soldiers marched over expressionlessly and forced bloodstained cleavers—some of them even notched—into the recruits' hands.

The cold, sticky sensation made many recruits' hands jerk, and they nearly dropped their blades.

"Silence! Listen carefully!" William's boots struck the ground as he strode to the front of the recruits, his voice booming.

His bloodstained sword pointed toward