For the next two days, the front lines before Nalan Castle became a bloody, silent battlefield of attrition. The fighting mainly took place between scouts and reconnaissance units dispatched by both sides.
Roderick did not rashly order a frontal assault on the heavily fortified zone. He sent out his finest mountain company soldiers and agile Flintlock Riflemen in several small squads, attempting to circle through the forests on both flanks, scout out weak points in the defenses, capture prisoners, or at the very least drive off the Sauron scouts and gain a view of the battlefield.
The Sauron defenders had evidently received orders to fight to the death as well. They likewise sent tribal hunters familiar with the terrain and elite infantrymen into the forests to intercept Carnford's scouts.
Thus, dozens of small-scale yet exceptionally brutal and fierce encounters and ambushes erupted on the sparsely vegetated, rock-strewn slopes and in the dense woods before the main positions.
There was no thunderous cannon fire or orderly volleys—only the whistling of arrows through the air, the dull reports of Matchlock Rifles, the meaty thuds of war sabers and axes biting into flesh, and the brief screams of the dying. Soldiers from both sides used every boulder and every tree as cover, moving and hunting like ghosts.
Webber led his platoon on a nighttime infiltration mission, intending to determine the course and depth of a trench. They crawled forward through cold mud, evaded two patrols, but triggered a crude alarm trap set by the Sauron people as they neared their target—several stakes tied together with thin cords and hung with empty cans toppled over, unleashing a harsh clattering din.
In an instant, the startled Sauron sentries raised the alarm in the darkness. Several fire arrows shrieked into the sky, illuminating the surrounding area