The bitter morning wind scraped across the desolate plain like knives, whipping up frozen snow and sand from the ground and striking the marching men and horses with a soft, rustling hiss.
On the winding, rugged path, a gray torrent made up of countless figures, carts, and horses silently but steadily crawled toward the southeast.
This was a detached force of the Sauron army that had set out from Wintersburg, taking the northwest trail to strike at the flank of Eagle's Nest Fortress. It was jointly led by Ulf and Svein, with more than thirty thousand fighting soldiers in total, plus an almost equal number of auxiliary troops, slaves, and a massive baggage train.
In the middle section of this seemingly endless column, beside a unit flying the banner of the Sparrow Corps, a small incident occurred.
"Dog slave! I'll teach you to slack off! I'll teach you to dawdle!"
Furious curses mingled with the shrill scream of a whip tearing through the air, breaking the dull rhythm of the marching column.
Thomas, once a fugitive slave and now a newly promoted Sauron fighting soldier, was flushed red as he swung an oil-soaked Hard Cowhide Whip, lashing it viciously across the back of a ragged slave curled up on the ground.
Crack! Crack! Crack!
Each fall of the whip drew a stifled cry of pain and the sound of worn sackcloth ripping apart.
The slave was a boy who looked only fifteen or sixteen. His face was sallow and gaunt, and he shivered under the cold wind and the beating. Several hideous streaks of blood soon rose across his back.
He had been trying to lift a handcart loaded with arrows and short spears, but the wheel seemed to have sunk into a pothole filled with frozen earth and crushed