"My lord, my kinsmen told me that several Easterling tribes have made camp east of the Redwater River. Nothing like this has happened for hundreds of years. They asked me to warn you."
Allen was startled by the news, then immediately asked a crucial question.
"Frey, did your people mention how many Easterlings there were in those tribes?"
Frey shook his head. "They couldn't be sure either. When they passed through, a steady stream of Easterling caravans was still arriving from the east to join the camps. There were already close to ten thousand Easterlings then."
What?! Nearly ten thousand Easterlings?
Even Allen, who had made some preparations, was caught off guard by the scale of Sauron's move. In his memory, large numbers of Easterlings would not march out of Rhûn to invade Rhovanion until the War of the Ring, decades later.
There were almost no records of Easterling invasions of Rhovanion during the intervening decades. The two regions had seen no major conflicts worth recording.
The Easterlings' arrival forced Allen to consider whether the humans' actions during the Battle of Lonely Mountain had successfully drawn Sauron's attention, making him wary of a human town he had previously dismissed.
Or perhaps Sauron simply could not accept his crushing defeat at the Lonely Mountain and had launched this attack out of humiliation and rage.
If that was the case, Allen felt that Sauron had probably already committed his name to memory. With Allen's current strength, being singled out by a Dark Lord who wielded immense power was an exceptionally bad thing.
Compared with the other human powers, Allen was still extremely weak. He could not withstand even a casual blow from Sauron.
Moreover, in Allen's recollection, Sauron was a commander with far-reaching strategic vision and extraordinarily keen instincts. Most importantly, his