Chapter 167: The Ending

In the harsh winter, the weather is always overcast and cold for a few days before heavy snow, and in Rhovanion, which had been cold for more than a week, the sparse ice crystals turned into goose-feather-like heavy snow within minutes of the flakes beginning to drift from the sky.

This covered the boundless Wilderness in a silver coat.

Ashur, who was fleeing frantically, looked at the snowflakes drifting across the sky and revealed a smile of having survived a disaster.

The heavy snow falling at such an opportune moment made Ashur feel that this was the protection of the Dark Lord, and that he had finally survived this crisis, because the cavalry could not gallop in such weather, the heavy snow would cover his tracks in a very short time, and those hateful birds could no longer fly in the heavy snow.

He was safe, but the subordinates following Ashur had been reduced by more than two-thirds; they had used their lives to delay the enemy's pursuit, winning crucial time for their commander's escape.

Even though Ashur was like a stray dog at this moment, he still had subordinates loyal to him.

Ashur had also abandoned his cumbersome war chariot and switched to a faster Easterling warhorse, because at the beginning of his flight, he had been seized by fear and subconsciously only thought about getting away from the battlefield immediately, never considering whether the war chariot was suitable for escaping.

At that time, he had only glanced at it casually and knew that the opposing cavalry force was definitely no less than three thousand men, and the moment he regained his composure, he saw the figures of Elves among them, and their equipment did not come from the Elves of Mirkwood.

The style between them was completely different, and they looked much better equipped than those annoying ghosts living in Mirkwood; Ashur roughly guessed the origin of these Elves.

Even living in that backwater place of Rhun, Ashur, who held a high position, knew a few things; sometimes Sauron was also willing to share some information with his "loyal" subordinates when assigning tasks.

Ashur knew that those Elves on the opposite side did not belong to the Woodland Realm; whether they were the Galadhrim from the Golden Wood or the Light Elves from the Last Homely House, their combat effectiveness was far stronger than those Silvan under Thranduil.

And Ashur also knew that the closer the Elves' gathering points were to the West, the more developed their civilization was.

Seeing this scale of Elven troops, Ashur knew that his battle had already failed; caught in fear at the time, he only thought about escaping, while everything else was thrown to the back of his mind.

Ashur, who had calmed down during his flight, actually associated many things based on the information he currently had.

Some time ago, a Nazgul from Mordor suddenly flew to him and brought the Dark Lord's order, requiring him to stir up some trouble after a period of time to contain the Dwarves of the Lonely Mountain and the Woodland Elves of Mirkwood.

At that time, Ashur had guessed that the war between Mordor and Gondor must have reached a crucial moment.

It was just that with his strength at the time, it was impossible to face the joint forces of Elves, Dwarves, and Humans directly; if he confronted them head-on, the losses would be very great, and he might even be driven directly out of Rhovanion, but in order to complete the Dark Lord's order, Ashur still intended to do something.

That was his plan to raid the area south of the Running River; as long as he could defeat the Northmen living there and continue to arrange for some of his tribesmen to establish gathering points there, it would inevitably successfully attract the attention of Humans and Elves, or at the very least increase the pressure on the enemy's defense.

As for the Dwarves, Ashur had never thought about what he could do to them; how could he threaten the little shorties living in the mountains, unless someone got him an army of Orcish.

Besides being able to complete the mission, Ashur also happened to need to raid that place to obtain some labor replenishment; if this matter was completed very smoothly, it would be killing two birds with one stone.

However, before he could even start doing this, he was attacked first, and then he saw the figures of other Elven forces at the moment of the decisive battle.

In the process of pondering repeatedly, Ashur somewhat understood why his opponent suddenly had so many Elven cavalry.

That was, these Elves had a great possibility of being reinforcements going to support Gondor, and coming here to attack him was just something done in passing, or to resolve a part of their worries.

Having figured this out, Ashur suddenly had other plans; he intended to hand over the management of the tribesmen to his son Tade by his side after returning to the camp, and let him do the work of relocation, because with the tribe's existing strength, they could no longer stay in Rhovanion.

And Ashur would rush to Mordor at the first opportunity to report this news to Sauron, who was preparing for the decisive battle with Gondor; for such important news, the Dark Lord should surely grant him some rewards, whether it was equipment, population, or supplies, all of which could recover part of his losses.

Without needing to calculate in detail, Ashur knew that he had suffered heavy losses in this war, having lost at least four-fifths of his strength, and the remaining ones would also need to spend a lot of time and energy to appease and intimidate.

And these heavy losses naturally stemmed from that guy named Allen, and that guy wearing colorful robes who provided false information also had a certain responsibility.

At this moment, Ashur thought silently in his heart, just wait; when he gained enough strength, he would definitely not let those two people go.

And this so-called "culprit" was currently pursuing him behind Ashur, but had already given up at this moment.

After finishing the matters on the main battlefield, Allen soon caught up with Holimion, who had been entangled with the enemy for several rounds; there was no help for it, as more than two hundred Easterling cavalry blocking them regardless of their lives had indeed hindered the speed of Holimion's pursuit.

This allowed Ashur to escape from Holimion's field of vision, but it also allowed Allen to catch up with his Captain of the Personal Guard's tracks in the environment where the heavy snow was drifting.

At this moment, after the initial ice crystals fell, they quickly turned into snow water under the effect of geothermal heat, and the snow water mixed with mud, quickly freezing into solid ice in such cold weather, and the drifting goose-feather-like heavy snow soon covered all of this.

Even Elf Horses, which far exceeded ordinary warhorses, found it difficult to gallop quickly in such treacherous terrain, and by the time Allen found Holimion, the surroundings were already a vast expanse of white; in a short time, the heavy snow had covered all identifiable markers, including the footprints left by Ashur when he fled.

After spending a bit of Dinar to activate his ability, Allen clearly saw Ashur fleeing; in his line of sight, dozens of enemy figures were galloping on the snow, and through the northwest wind blowing up the snowflakes, he also confirmed that Ashur was indeed fleeing to the west.

But this was of no use; the snow was simply too heavy, rendering the surroundings into a silver-white in a short time, and in such an environment, it was impossible for Allen to accurately find Ashur on this Wilderness.

Moreover, the most important thing at present was no longer chasing and killing the enemy, but how to lead the captives and soldiers to reach the nearby camp to survive this initial severe cold.

Few creatures could march and fight in such a cruel environment; of course, this did not include those Elves who could walk on snow without leaving a trace. Even in blizzard weather, Holimion could walk lightly on the snow, but Allen still refused the Captain of the Personal Guard's request to continue the pursuit.

Elves could walk freely in the snow, but that did not mean they could also camp in the Wilderness in the wind and snow; at this time, the wind was swirling past him, carrying snowflakes.

Seeing this situation, Allen worried that what followed would likely be a blizzard that would rage for a long time. If they encountered such harsh weather, losing their way would be an extremely dangerous thing; for an Easterling commander who had already lost most of his strength, it was not worth Allen's most powerful forces taking such a risk.

Soon, relying on the tracks he had left when he came, Allen led the Horse Archers in pursuit and found the main force not far behind him, and by the time he returned, the snow had actually fallen quite deep; if he had dragged it out for too long, let alone supporting Gondor in the future, finding a place to avoid the snow might have been the only choice.

At this time, Allen's subordinates had almost finished cleaning up the battlefield, the carriages and supplies left by the Easterlings had already been gathered, and the armor and weapons taken off by the Easterling soldiers had all been placed on the carriages, which were already covered with a thin layer of snow.

For this point, Allen had to thank the Easterlings' combat customs, otherwise, he might have had to temporarily abandon these supplies and wait until the snow melted and the spring flowers bloomed next year to look for these spoils of war.

And the number of captured Easterling prisoners was even more enormous, in which the Elves helped a lot; they gave up riding in such heavy snowy weather and walked on the soft snow in the surprised eyes of the Humans, and behind them were groups of bound Easterlings.

In such weather, most of the fleeing Easterlings simply could not escape the tracking of the Elves, and even if a small number of Easterling soldiers used the heavy snow to hide their figures, how could they survive without horses? In the end, it was nothing more than a dead end.

Lindir looked at these dejected captives, feeling some worry in his heart; the Noldor Elf, who was of great age and rich in experience, naturally guessed the King of Men's thoughts, but he had no good feelings for these Easterlings. In the distant past, these Easterlings had betrayed them, which was Lindir's personal experience.

In fact, the Elves only trusted the Edain, that is, the descendants of the House of Beor, the House of Hador, and the House of Haleth.

For example, the Numenoreans all came from these three families; they made no small contributions in the War of Wrath, thereby receiving the blessings of the Valar and possessing bloodlines far exceeding ordinary Humans. They proudly called themselves High Men, then called those Humans who were not enemies but not so noble Middle Men, and called those who submitted to Sauron Dark Men.

Although he had never publicly stated it, Allen scoffed at this kind of classification; he believed that this was not a correct ideology.

Allen felt that the higher the ability, the more responsibility one needed to shoulder; in this process, people with responsibility could enjoy the respect of others for themselves, and could also possess wealth and power that ordinary people could not obtain, but one could not treat this ability as capital to look down on others.

What about the Gondorians who thought themselves noble? If it were not for the help of the Northern Men, they would have been wiped out by Sauron hundreds of years ago; even the most powerful people needed the help of others in a crisis, even if they did not have such powerful abilities.

And the people living in Eriador, they all had more or less a certain relationship with the House of Haleth, even the Dunlendings living in Dunland were the same; do not look at their current style of conduct as bad, their ancestors were also proper people who had assisted the Elves and fought against the minions of Morgoth in the past.

And the Northern Men ruled by Allen were mostly related to the House of Hador; some of them were tribesmen of the House of Hador who stayed on this side of the Misty Mountains, and some were people who refused to go to Numenor to live and returned to the tribe; places like Esgaroth and the Kingdom of Rohan all originated from this.

Even after thousands of years had passed, the Elves would occasionally help Humans overcome difficulties at critical moments for the sake of past sentiments; for example, the founding King of Rohan, Eorl the Young, was intercepted by Sauron when he led his tribesmen south to support Gondor.

The insidious and cunning Dark Lord hid in the fortress of Dol Guldur and released a piece of darkness towards the Rohirrim, obstructing their path south, and at this time, a mass of white mist drifted out from Lothlorien; this mist hid the figures of the Rohirrim, allowing them to safely head south, assist Gondor in winning the war, and even establish the Kingdom of Rohan after the war.

Without needing to think, one knew that it was Lady Galadriel who had reached out to help the Rohirrim.

And besides this, the Elves had always had contact with the descendants of these Edain, but thousands of years had passed, and they still held deep wariness towards the Easterlings.

Lindir, who had hesitated about this for a long time, looked at Allen, who had a thoughtful face, and in the end, did not voice his concerns; on one hand, his relationship with Allen did not reach the level of offering advice, and speaking deeply when the acquaintance was shallow was a very abrupt behavior; Lindir, who was extremely methodical, would not make such a mistake.

On the other hand, Lindir felt that the King of Men before him might not need him to say much; under his observation, today's battle was actually fought quite beautifully, using infantry as bait to attract the enemy's attention, and at the right time, letting large-scale cavalry appear on the enemy's flank, causing the enemy's chaos, and easily obtaining victory.

Especially Kurda's persuasion of the stubborn enemy to surrender at the end made Lindir feel that Allen had prepared too fully for this battle.

Completing such combat operations required not only the reasonable use of soldiers but also a very good understanding of the strength comparison between the enemy and oneself, and most importantly, one had to have some speculation about the psychology of the enemy leader.

In fact, even Lindir had not expected that with the appearance of our Cavalry, the enemy leader would choose to flee at the very first moment, thereby triggering a massive rout of the enemy army and making this battle incomparably easy.

In his view, victory was certainly assured, but he had never imagined it would be this easy.

In fact, Allen, who devised this plan, had not anticipated this point either; he adopted this method to complete this decisive battle more to reduce casualties among the Cavalry, especially the Warhorses.

Because Allen had already decided to head south to support Gondor.