The night was black as ink, bitterly cold.
Carnford's military camp did not fall completely silent with the coming of night. Instead, it was carrying out a special harassment operation.
Squads of carefully selected rocket troops carried improved rocket devices and quietly advanced to predetermined launch positions roughly three miles from the Sauron main camp.
These rockets had crude Black Powder warheads fitted to their tips and stabilizing rods bound to their tails. Propelled by gunpowder blasting backward, once their fuses were lit, they dragged scorching orange-red tails of flame behind them and tore through the air with shrill, piercing howls like the screams of ten thousand evil ghosts. They streaked across the pitch-black sky, lurching crookedly along unpredictable trajectories toward the Sauron camp.
Their accuracy was atrocious. Most veered far from their targets and fell into the wilderness, or ran out of power and plunged from the air.
Of the few that reached the skies above the camp, the explosions when they struck the ground or hit tents were quite limited in power, often only setting a small patch of tents or fodder alight and causing single-digit casualties. Yet Karl's tactical objective had never been to inflict substantial losses.
The true power of these intermittent rocket attacks, continuing through half the night, lay in their ceaseless, nerve-rending screams of death, and in the instant terror of unknown strikes brought by every tail flame ripping through the darkness.
They were meant to deny the Sauron camp even a moment of peaceful sleep, piling mental dread atop the soldiers' exhaustion and draining their strength and will to the utmost before the decisive battle.
The plan seemed to be working. From the direction of the Sauron main camp came occasional faint commotion as rockets fell: the urgent clanging of bronze gongs, shouts