However, Carnford had clearly anticipated this. In the open ground several hundred meters before the earthen wall, the seemingly flat terrain had long since been carved with countless crisscrossing rifle pits and anti-infantry trenches of varying depths.
These fortifications alone were not enough to stop a large army, but their presence greatly delayed and endangered the work of the Sauron sappers.
"Faster! Dig faster, you lazy bastards! If you don't want the supervisory team behind you chopping off your heads, put your backs into it!" Thomas howled hoarsely like a wounded beast, the wooden stick in his hand lashing mercilessly across the back of a slave who had moved a little too slowly, producing a dull thud.
Thomas, a Goldspur who had earned the appreciation of the minor leader Einar by "outstandingly" completing slave-labor assignments on the outskirts of Eagle Nest, and had ultimately been recommended into the Sauron Auxiliary Army, was now undergoing another bizarre transformation of identity.
He wore the rough leather armor issued by the Saurons, which did not fit him particularly well, with a shoddy iron blade at his waist. His face held a mixture of slight pride in his new identity and profound fear of his present circumstances.
He was now a "proper and honorable" member of the Sauron Auxiliary Army, even a minor leader in charge of more than thirty slaves. Yet that "glory" now seemed so fragile and ironic. He was leading those slaves to dig their own deaths beneath the guns of Carnford's defenders.
Shovels struck frozen earth with dull clanking sounds.
More than thirty sallow-faced, emaciated slaves with numb eyes dug desperately under Thomas's driving and the threat of the Sauron regular army's supervisory team farther behind them.
They needed to first dig out a relatively safe transfer point or staging