In the harsh winter, the weather always turned cold and gloomy for a few days before heavy snow. Rhovanion had endured more than a week of cold, and within minutes of the first flakes drifting from the sky, the scattered ice crystals gave way to snowflakes as large as goose feathers.
The boundless wilderness was blanketed in silver.
As Ashur fled desperately, he looked at the snow swirling across the sky and smiled with the relief of a man who had escaped death.
The snow had arrived at such a perfect moment that Ashur felt it was the Dark Lord's protection. He had finally survived this crisis. Cavalry could not gallop in weather like this, the heavy snow would soon cover his tracks, and those accursed birds could no longer fly through it.
He was safe, but more than two-thirds of the men who had accompanied him were gone. They had bought their commander precious time to escape by giving their lives to delay the pursuit.
Even now, when Ashur was no better than a stray dog, he still had men loyal to him.
Ashur had also abandoned his cumbersome chariot and switched to a faster Easterlings Warhorse. At the start of his flight, terror had gripped his mind, and his only instinct had been to get away from the battlefield immediately. He had never considered whether a chariot was suited to an escape.
A single cursory glance had told him that the enemy cavalry numbered at least three thousand. The instant he recovered his senses, he had also spotted Elves among them, and their equipment was not that of the Elves of Mirkwood.
Their styles were entirely different, and their gear looked far finer than anything those loathsome creatures in Mirkwood wore. Ashur could roughly guess where these Elves