In January of Sigmund's second year, the Northern Territory in the new year did not receive the warmth and peace it had hoped for. Instead, the iron hooves of war crushed its last shred of luck.
Harald brazenly tore apart the thin, fragile veil of the truce, and the war machine that had been gathering strength for so long let out a deafening roar.
Ferocious totems of wolves, tigers, bears, and other tribes snapped and fluttered in the biting north wind.
On the official road leading south, a procession stretching beyond sight slowly writhed forward. Flags stood thick as a forest, blotting out the sky and sun. At its core were fifty thousand elite Sauron troops, clad in all manner of leather and chain armor, carrying spears and battle axes, their eyes fierce and their steps heavy.
Close behind came thirty thousand incorporated or allied tribal warriors, along with the Broomflower Defectors under Luo Yao. Their equipment was comparatively disordered, and their morale uneven.
Even more numerous were thirty thousand slaves driven by whips and burdened with heavy baggage, along with over ten thousand logistical laborers herding countless ox carts and wagons loaded with provisions, arrows, tents, and even the heavy components of siege engines.
Dust billowed skyward, hoofbeats rumbled like thunder. This behemoth of more than a hundred thousand men, nearly exhausting Sauron's current national strength, moved like a slow mountain of steel and flesh. With the determination to crush everything in its path, it aimed directly for the southeastern land marked "Carnford."
Yet when the beast's foreclaws truly stepped into Carnford's actual territory of control, the expected unstoppable advance never came.
What greeted them was a land of death that had been meticulously prepared. Villages stood empty. Wells had been sealed, filled in, or poisoned. Crops that had