see I’ve gotta hunt you, I’ve gotta bring you to my hell I wanna feel you in my bones I’m gonna tear into your soul
–
He listens to him, sword rattling, righteous in his fury, shining bright against the wisps of clouds that sweep over the ground. Burning, burning like his brother did once, and the thought brings a smile to Morgoth’s face, all sharp-toothed and the weight of Grond is a comfort in his burnt-black hand.
Oh, it’s too easy.
The doors open, slowly, oh so slow as if to say – here it is, your last chance to reconsider, little one. When he steps forth, rolls his shoulders, blinks against the light he expects to find himself disappointed, to find that this little false king has fled.
Their eyes meet across the gloom, across years and years of hate and death and the wait is finally over. It sends a thrill through him, tastes like gold in his mouth and he can see – oh but for a flash of a moment – that same cold desire echoed in the elf.
It’s a dance; the meet, the part, the meet again. The steady thud-thud-thus of steel against earth sets a rhythm, a flow. Step one, two, three, four; twirl and collide. The bite of metal and skin, dust and ash rising like the fanning of skirts, the heady copper tang of blood and sweat and he’s never felt so alive.
He wonders – no, no he sees it there, bright as gems reflected back at him. Maybe they could be here, in this moment forever. He laughs and raises his hammer once more.
It’s over too soon, anger stickss in his throat, festers in a roar that presses behind his teeth and when he looks down at last, he sees that last spark of defiance, flaring bright in the rush of defeat.
Let us have done with this – Let us continue –
please.
Cold steel bites into him, a final taunt and he steps – the last step of their dance – feels the give of soft flesh beneath him and oh, the disappointment is a greater agony than any wound, not-regret but fury slick as blood.
The Enemy wore his father’s jewels upon his crown, and he took the light for that awhile.
One would think that the self-claimed Lord of Arda had better things to do than leer at thralls, Maedhros told him and laughed a little.
But there was only one light and no jibes, no pain greater than that he had already learnt to bear.
He had seen and dreamt more awful things than a blind, pale eye, opening like a wound in the sky. But the wolves down in the depths began to bay, so he knew it wasn’t his fancy.
The whole of Thangorodrim heaved with tiny, scuttling bodies like an antheap overturned, and under the howling wolves he could hear screams. Not Morgoth’s light then, unless it was and he did not care that his thralls suffered. Maedhros turned his face up to it and felt no pain himself, save the smarting of eyes gone too long to the dark.
It was familiar, this light, but he shied from making the comparison.
In the cold glare of it, whatever it was, the mountain’s jagged flanks were frosted silver. He thought of bones and teeth. Did not look down to where his own bones stretched thin, corpse-white skin.
It died eventually, as all things seemed to now, choked by coils of smog and sunk beneath the earth. But new light came and no wan corpse-glow, this. The orcs down in the pit cried out in earnest, and Maedhros hid his face.
A trumpet shrilled.
It burnt just as the light did, with a familiarity that sunk claws into his chest. The same bright notes that had welcomed them home when they were children and their grandfather was king, before all had gone to ruin.
That could not be real.
He screamed anyway, because pride had died long years ago but hope, somehow, had not.
There was no answer.
Of course there was no answer.
Eventually, the noises stopped. The light went away.
And came again.
And went.
And came.
He counted. Ten blinks of light and Morgoth was back to gloat. He was angry, maybe, or afraid, or maybe there was no difference.
A hundred, and the smog grew thick enough to turn the light’s coming to the merest flicker.
There was only so much time one could devote to spite and recrimination.
Still, Maedhros had many things to hate and a lot of time to fill. He started with Morgoth, spent a day or a year thinking up invectives, and then moved onto his creatures. The spider that had swallowed up the light, and the balrogs that had torn his father open, strewn steaming, smoking guts across the ground.
He cursed his father then, for failing and falling and leaving them to this. His brothers who had left him (though he’d surely curse them harder if they came). his brother for fleeing to his death, and their grandfather for waiting for his own.
The Valar, who should have stopped Morgoth, stopped them, done anything but curse them and them send them on their way.
When he started blaming his mother, and Olwë who might have done more to stop them, he knew that was too far.
For a while, he hated the mountain, the shackle, the smog that hid the stars. But there wasn’t much satisfaction to be had in hating inanimate objects, and they were all Morgoth’s doing anyway. Maedhros tried hating him a little longer, but it was like chewing the dry bones of an old kill.
Mostly, he hated himself, and that was fertile ground. He had failed his people and his family. He had stolen and murdered and betrayed. He had broken his mother’s sculpture of the colour green (done all in gold) when he was seventeen. She still thought it had been Huan, and would never know the truth.
Even so, he ran out of things to hate about himself (nails curling in upon themselves, the lice and the stink and he’d always had ugly knees) eventually.
Without hate to cling to, it was hard to cling to life. There were things he loved (too many of them the same) but he shied from those as he shied from touching the suppurating wounds around the manacle. All was grey, as smoke, as stone, and being ready to die was not the same as wanting death.
He had been ready since the docks of Alqualondë, but now he welcomed it, if only it would come.
It didn’t. Morgoth’s spells were strong as mountains, strong as shackles, and the Ainur had no mercy.
What came, at last, was a sound, so faint and sweet. It might have been a harp.
“There are actually two fingering techniques,” said Maglor, swaying gently to the music twisting in his fea. “But I’m happy to elucidate on the properties of both.”
Maedhros watched him with narrowed eyes from the other side of his desk. “Go on.”
“First there is plucking, in which one holds the strings under tension and the sound is made upon release, winging it’s way to the listener’s ear like an arrow striking home in a target. It is consistent, systematic! Excellent for fixed arrangements and sight reading. The sound is rounded, rich as wine and fruitcake.” Maglor’s hands caressed the air as he spoke, fingers pressing and weaving, drawing a music only he could hear from nothingness.
“And then there is striking. Like the lightning, bright and keen, one’s nails tap out the tune. This is the provenance of wandering minstrels, those whose skill is in improvisation-”
“What,” his brother interrupted, in tones of pure aggrievement, “Are you talking about?”
Maglor sniffed and gathered up his robes and wounded dignity. “You asked.”
What happens when we don’t dread our own body breaking We can see the dark clouds start to seethe above us We were never meant to be such vessels of physical form You doubt and you’re desperate You wear both your cross and your hammer Such beautiful dreams of violence In them your tongue is made of silver But we don’t fight like animals, we fight like gods
It tastes like salt and rust, drips down the side of his face and smears behind his teeth. The weight of the crown presses down heavy and cold and he can barely see through the iron, the silver glint and as they dance around each other, blood through water he cannot tell where one ends and the other begin. It is bright and furious, some summer storm rolling in from a dark distance, all destruction and hate for a moment and when the dust settles what will be left but the ruin of them.
It will be the ruin of them both, and he has never felt so alive.
He is laughing as the hammer comes down, again and again, leaving pits from which darkness flowers, wraps around them like a veil of dirt and death and rage.
“You wish for death, o king, then let me give it to you.”
Maedhros paused and gave it some thought, turning the question over in the same way he pondered their winter stores or military incursions along the border.
“Their lack of subtlety,” he said at last, running a pen over his brass knuckles with a sound like a spring frog. “Their utter lack of guile or nuance. They tell one story but they tell it simply. Do they indicate emotion? Care? Compassion? Romance? No, at their root they tell merely the tale of physical arousal and by damn they tell it in all manner of conditions. It’s an admirable steadfastness.” Outside the winds of Himring Hill wailed and he shifted in his seat. “Their capacity for comedy! ‘Sblood, is there anything more satirical in its very nature?” He moved an oblong paperweight that Fingon had sent him aside on his desk with a fond smile. “Which isn’t to say they can’t be very fair as well, though that is obviously a matter of, hah, taste. And of course it is interesting – shall I say, deliberate? – that you choose to describe them as ‘handy’, given your audience, but I won’t deny that as one who had to relearn dexterity in my non-dominant hand I appreciated their straightforward design and execution. Far easier to learn that left-handed than penmanship or fencing or deboning a grouse.” He cracked his bone knuckles against the brass ones and moved the paperweight again. “So there you have it: a singleminded weathercock, appreciated in its dependability – well, mostly – sleek of design, lacking in artifice; ridiculous, whimsical, ergonomic.” He sighed deeply. “Though doubtless you would get a different answer from someone else. Why on earth do you ask, brother?”
Maglor raised his head from where he’d been cradling it in his hands for the last ten minutes, having failed several times to interject. “Music,” he said faintly. “I was asking your opinion on the musicians I should book for the winter festival.” He sank his head into his hands again. “Pianists, brother, for the love of all that is holy.”
“Oh,” said Maedhros, after another pause. “No, go with harps, I’ve never liked all those tinkling keys and besides they’re a nuisance to haul around. Your articulation must be suffering,” he added, as Maglor groaned and fled the room. “If I can’t tell from ‘pianists’ then you might want to work on your, ah, diction.”
Curufin straightened his doeskin gloves and redid the silver fastenings on his jerkin, which had come loose during the day’s ride. There was a fire roaring in the brazier but it seemed to have little effect on him as he crossed his legs, folded his hands, and hooded his eyes like one settling in for a long wait.
Celegorm watched this all in naked disgust. “How can you be so bloodless right now? We should be rallying the damn troops, not waiting a minute longer for the half-breed’s reply!”
Curufin examined the stars embroidered on the back of his gloves. “I assure you that I remain entirely full of blood. Maedhros has said – and I agree – that it is only reasonable to give Eluchil another day to respond.”
Celegorm spat. “You and Nelyo make me physically ill. As if Dior’s lack of answer isn’t response enough! If he has to consider our terms then he’s not considering them at all. We go in and we retrieve what is ours, or have you forgotten that that’s how it works?”
“If you’re going to be ill, kindly avoid doing it on the carpet,” said Curufin, scuffing his toe over the spittle Celegorm had deposited.
“So,” said the man. He knelt so that his long red hair kissed the sand, but still he towered over them. “Which of you is which? I’m sure you’re sick of being asked, but I promise not to do it twice – I have the trick of telling twins apart.”
Elrond and Elros said nothing. The other man, who had dragged them from the cave, was silent too, even when the kneeling man glanced to him with a frown upon his handsome face.
“We’re your closest kin upon these shores,“ he said when the silence had stretched long. “And so we’ll guard you until your parents return for you.” Guard could be taken a number of ways but he did not choose to clarify.
“They won’t come back,” said Elrond, who was given to portentous prophecy.
“You killed them,” said Elros, because you didn’t need the foresight of the Eldar to read bloody blades and corpses on the nursery floor.
The man stood at their backs made a dry clacking sound. They would later learn it was a laugh. He was as ugly as the other man was handsome with a twisted mouth, spindly, crooked fingers, and pale eyes that stared and stared.
“My brother does not speak,” said the kneeling man, in his place. “And your mother lives, as far as we can tell. It is our hope as much as yours that she return.”
“And if she doesn’t?”
“As I said, we are kin. Do you know us?”
“Kinslayers,” said Elros.
“Fëanorians,” said Elrond.
“Precious little distinction these days,” said Maedhros – for surely that was who knelt before them – as his brother clacked another laugh. “Our people will see to your needs. Pelingil will-”
The grip upon their shoulders tightened and the mute man made a sound that was almost words.
“I do not think that wise,” said his brother.
The sound again, but more insistent and Elrond, despite his resolution, flinched away from those cold, broken fingers. The man let him go and he staggered, righted himself and almost took off running, but Elros was still held and where would they run to now?
“Are you certain?” Maedhros said.
“Ekh,” hissed the man.
“As you wish.” And then, to the twins, “My brother will have the keeping of you.” He stood, brushed himself off, and was away up the beach, calling orders to his soldiers, as his brother knelt between them, looking from boy to boy with bright, pale eyes.
He made a new noise and tapped Elros’ chest. Even had it not been for the anger and the fear, they would have struggled to make out that tongueless gurgle, and he had to repeat himself again before they could find sense in it.
Evidently, Maedhros was not the only brother with the trick of telling twins apart, for the word that he had mangled was Elros’ name.
Do you know the darkness in the hour just before the dawn? When all shadows disappear because there is no light to fall from the sky, no light to show you the right path? In Dor Daedeloth this hour seems to last forever. And if you are one of those who used to live in light. this darkness feels so unnatural, so strange. You can only stare at this grim land and think of how long it is under the Shadow. Will the spring ever return here? Will flowers bloom again? You can walk away from the camp, but there is nothing to admire, nothing to awake happiness, hope, joy. Only ashes. And howling wind, like the voice of Manwë crying over the pitiful fate of this land. You don’t want to go, don’t want to go there alone. The option of being attacked by servants of the Enemy is nothing compared to the endless pain and sorrow of this desolate land. But you must go forth, you must leave the silent safety of the camp, the feeling that there are your friends, who can come to help you or simply talk to you. Now you are not thinking about your duties as the leader of Vanyarin hosts. You don’t remember about the council with High King Arafinwë and Herald Eonwe, Nëlyafinwë, Kanafinwë and others… There is only the need, something that pushes you away from the circle of lights, deep into the shadows, into the darkness. And there are corpses – all over the fields of dust. There was a battle, not so long ago, when the sun was above. The battlefield will be cleaned soon. The Maiar of Aulë, who came with Herald Eonwë will sing tommorow at the morning, and the earth will cover this horrible view. The bodies of all followers of the Light will be moved to rest on the hill, where a new forest will grow. You are walking through the field, empty eyes following you, broken pieces of armour or some parts of bodies are trying to stop you. But you are not stopping. And soon there is light before you, dim and red, like fresh blood. And there are mountains hovering above you – grim, dark, merciless mountains. Three volcanic peeks are bleeding with lava flowing lazily down the mountainside. And you are there, alone, shivering under the cold wind, defenceless; your light hair is shining like a falling star. And you know there are countless eyes looking at you, a lonely Vanya, here, on the treshold of Angband. And when the gate will open you know who will come out.
The gold of the Nauglamir still glittered dully beneath the rapidly drying blood of its previous bearer. Beren lifted the necklace carefully by the chain and held it at arm’s length, examining it closely. His scalp prickled as he thought of the last time he had seen the thing, gleaming at the throat of King Finrod Felagund. Now it seemed merely a twisted echo of its former self, and when he looked at it he saw nothing but the image of Finrod lying on the cold stone floor with blood covering his face and his eyes staring up at the darkness.
At last his eyes were drawn reluctantly down to the jewel, which burned clean and bloodless in its setting. It looked grotesquely out-of-place, he thought, wondering what had possessed Thingol to combine what must be the two most ostentatious pieces of jewelry in the world into one horrifying creation. The Silmaril caught the light so effectively even as it generated its own that Beren could hardly bear to look at it, yet he did not glance away. It seemed to be daring him to do so, but he thought he would let himself go blind before he allowed the damned thing to best him.
“The gem is yours, if it is anyone’s,” a voice said close to his ear, and Beren jumped. He had become quite good at detecting the silent approaches of the Lindi, but Almwë could still sneak up on him when he was distracted. The elf appeared unhurt, and his narrow face was devoid of emotion, but his movements had lost some of their grace to weariness. Beren had caught glimpses of him during the battle; Almwë had been everywhere, a deadly whirlwind that swept through Nogrod’s forces and prevented as many as possible from reaching his people, most of whom bore no weapons other than bows and arrows.
Seeing Beren grimace at his suggestion, Almwë said, “Give it to Lúthien, if you wish. It may be of some comfort to her, though I am sure nothing will please her more than your safe return, and the boy’s.”
“What should we do with the rest of it?” Beren asked, indicating the spoils taken from Doriath that now lay in the dirt and blood among the bodies.
Almwë shrugged, disinterested. “It is cursed. Drown it in the river.”
Beren nodded, suddenly feeling very tired. Though he could not match Almwë’s ferocious pace, he had fought as hard as the elf in the heat of battle, never faltering until all of their enemies had fled or fallen. But now that the anger and desperation had faded, it was catching up to him. I’m not as young as I used to be, he thought, then laughed softly to himself when he remembered how many times he’d heard his grandfather or Aunt Andreth or Uncle Bregolas say those exact words.
“How much farther?” Fingon called into the wind. “How much farther can you bear us?”
The eagle’s cruel, hooked beak did not move, but his great voice echoed in the minds of those that huddled upon his back.
“I am Thorondor, Lord of Eagles. My wing beats are the crack of mountain thunder and when I stoop to kill it is the strike of lightning. My wings span thirty fathoms and my strength is the strength of the rising storm. I can carry you as far as is needful.”
“Thirty fathoms exactly?” said Fingon. “And how much do you weigh?”
Thorondor blinked his golden eyes. “What?”
“We’ve been doing some calculations back here,” Fingon said, oblivious to his confusion. “The average harpy eagle has a wingspan of about a fathom and can carry its own body weight – say twenty pounds – for short distances. If we were to extrapolate your weight and scale linearly, you’d be able to carry our combined weight with ease.”
“But the matter is vastly more complicated than linear scaling,” croaked his cousin. “Based on wingspan and weight, an unladen eagle would induce a velocity change on air of almost eight miles an hour – forgive the approximation, I don’t have parchment or sufficient blood – and would require a tremendous amount of energy.”
“Factoring in the additional weight of two adult Eldar-“
“-plus armour but sans several litres of blood-”
“-the energy requirements would be ludicrous. And that’s without getting into the tensile strength of muscle, bone, etcetera.”
“You understand,” said Thorondor slowly, “That I am a maia of
Manwë, cloaked only in the seeming of an eagle?” He was remembering again why, Oaths and murders aside, he found the Noldor such a thoroughly disagreeable people.
“Well yes,” said Fingon the Valiant. “But that’s no excuse for the crafting of a shoddy fana.”
“O Heirs of Finwë,” said Thorondor. “Behold! For we have found precisely how far I can carry you and the limit has nothing at all to do with the power of my wings and everything to do with the limits of my patience.” He folded his wings and dived towards the mushroom patch of tents that marked the Noldor’s camps upon Lake Mithrim’s shore, his passengers clutching tightly at his feathers and at each other.
They landed in a hurricane rush of wind that tore several tents from their moorings, and the raking of great claws that tore great furrows in the brown earth of the lake’s shore.
”Right,” said the Lord of Eagles, turning his head to peer at the elves upon his back. “Fuck off.”
The stag’s head snapped up, long strands of autumn grass still hanging from it’s mouth, but much too late. Celegorm had already loosed his shot and the arrow took it in the ribs, just behind the foreleg. It fell kicking, sharp hooves scuffing at the drifts of damp, dead leaves, but the shot had been a good one and it had stilled by the time Celegorm and Huan reached it.
He field dressed it there in the clearing, the bright stink of fresh blood and offal mingling with the flat scent of wet earth and vegetation.
The bird watched him from the canopy, bright eyes following every flash of his hunting knife. “For me,” it said, flapping down to alight upon the heap of discarded viscera. “For me, for me, for me.”
“For you,” Celegorm agreed, hefting the carcass.
“Here,” said the crow. “Here, here!”
To an archer as skilled as Celegorm, orcs died as easily as deer. So do elves, added a treacherous, tickling voice at the back of his mind, but he paid it little heed. He wasn’t Maglor to write ballads or Maedhros to flagellate himself. He was a hunter and he’d known as long as he could hold a blade that all things died much the same.
“For me,” said the crow, when the battle was done and all was gone to stillness. “For me, for me.”
Celegorm let it have its due.
“Here,” said the crow. “Here! For me! For me! For me!” It alighted upon the corpse’s foot only to flap away again when it groaned and twitched.
“Not for you,” Celegorm snapped as he drew close enough to recognise the crest upon the armour, and then the figure’s waxen features. Caranthir’s ruddy face was corpse-pale, his eyes blown black from side to side with shock and pain, but he still lived. Enough to fumble weakly for his own weapon as Celegorm knelt over him and drew his knife to cut away his breastplate. “Be still,” he said.
“The battle?” Caranthir rasped.
“Lost.”
“Our brothers?”
“All far better off than you. Be still, I said,” he added as Caranthir tried to rise.
“For me,” the crow repeated sullenly.
“There’s a whole mountain of corpses for you to pick over,” Celegorm snarled over his shoulder. “Get gone before I use you for fletchings.”
“Here,” the crow croaked, somewhere high above.
Celegorm could not bring it into focus, saw only a blur of flat grey sky and clawed black branches. The snow had leeched the pain out of his wounds and would leech all else away soon enough.
“Here,” said the crow, again. “For me?”
“Why not,” Celegorm rasped. It was hard to speak, harder still to laugh but he did both anyway. “For you.”
“We need horses,” King Fingolfin said, and to which the princes of his host agreed. Some heads nodded more vigorously than others, but no one present refuted his statement. The boost to mobility and size against the orcish army had been well-proved by the cavalry victory of the sons of Fëanor before the moon arose.
But only the sons of Fëanor and their followers possessed any horses, for they had transported the animals aboard the stolen Swan-ships. It had proven impossible to herd any creature across the frozen darkness of the ice desert, nor had the followers of Fingolfin and Finrod attempted to do so. Nor had they any horses or other beasts of burden remaining to even attempt to take with them across the Helcaraxë when Fëanor had betrayed the host by taking the fleet and abandoning them. He had loaded all the animals that the Noldor had the foresight to bring in that hurried flight onto the largest of the Swan-ships before he disembarked in secret.
To his best friend, Turgon privately confided that his brother Fingon was as wroth at the theft of his beloved steed as to the general betrayal at Losgar. Finrod believed it, for he had observed that among the later messages containing proposals for possible reconciliation that Fingolfin had sent to Maglor after learning of what had transpired before their arrival were demands for the return of Fingolfin and Fingon’s horses. Turgon’s personal opinion was that food was a more pressing demand, though he conceded to Finrod that plough animals would greatly increase the production of arable land, and thus horses would be a boon.
The Sindar elves of this new mist-laden land did possess horses, though the animals were few and far between because of the onslaught of the army of Morgoth. Herds of thousands had been slaughtered by the orcs, and most of the surviving animals had been rescued by taking them south into the protection of the Girdle or by fleeing east and then south. The horses and other livestock that the Sindar herdsmen had been able to protect and hide from the orcs were therefore all the more precious and guarded.
In any case, the native horses of Beleriand were smaller creatures than the Noldor were accustomed to, almost uniformly of a black or bay coloration, though some had a lighter dun coat, with sporadic stripes and spots, and universally with a long black stripe down the back. Their heads were large and ungraceful, eyes small and dark, and the manes and tails thick and coarse. Prince Fingon disparagingly likened them to donkeys and asses, yet he was first to entreat the Sindar horse owners to allow him to examine the horses and worked tirelessly to assist in their care and tend to lingering wounds. Fingon’s interest back in Valinor had heavily skewed towards all forms of equestrian competition, a passion he had shared with Aunt Lalwen, and no one was better at creating an instant rapport with the animals. Unlike gregarious and charismatic Turgon, his older brother Fingon had always very few friends, and those few but close bonds of friendship had mostly been forged in the paddock fields or as friendly rivalries in the equestrian sports.
Angrod’s wife, Edhellos, had bred and raised horses, selling the finest to the various princes, and she had personally bred or trained the majority of the horses paddocked in the Fëanorian camp. She too would glared across the lake in the direction of those stolen herds, murmuring dark and vicious words too low for any to hear. Then to quell her hate temporarily she would visit the Sindarin herds, though that had the opposite effect of only inflaming her jealousy. “We need horses,” Angrod said to his older brother, “for my marriage depends on it.”
Finrod enlisted Turgon’s help in conferring with the leaders of the Sindar elves in Nevrast about possible purchases of some of the remaining horses. Sheltered in the marshland around the lake in eastern Nevrast, multiple herds of these smaller gray and white horses -ponies, truly- had survived. They were too short to be comfortably ridden by the taller Noldor; Turgon in particular looked comical standing next to one- but for pack animals and pulling farming equipment they would more than suffice. And they were more aesthetically pleasing than the other breeds native to Northern Beleriand, if the princes were honest. So Finrod began to divvy some of the jewelry he had carried across the Helcaraxë to people he trusted, his sister-in-law Edhellos and his childhood friends Edrahil and Heledir chief among them, to bargain for horses for the Noldor under King Fingolfin.
According to a helpful Sindar herdsman named Annael, yes, the natives of Beleriand did have ‘tall horses’. The King of Beleriand, Elu Thingol, was taller than even Prince Turgon, and needed a refined and spirited mount equal to his stature. There was a royal herd of leopard-spotted destriers,
horses as strong and swift as any son of Nahar, but they could not be found north of the Ered Wethrin.
Still the existence across Lake Mithrim of the Valinorean horses, tall and strong and more than a few stolen, tormented those that brooded over them and the necessity of horses for the war effort against Morgoth.
This goaded Heledir to make the suggestion one night to Angell and a few other warriors of his acquaintance that they should cross the lake in secret and rustle horses. Secret plans were made, getaway routes carefully examined,
Edhellos consulted and inducted into the conspiracy along with her husband, and rope stockpiled.
Thankfully Fingon returned from his daring rescue, facilitating a more genuine probability of reconciliation between the two Noldor camps, and the eventual goodwill gesture of the return of several horses and additional livestock. Thus the raid was unnecessary (and plans for its existence denied).
There were a hundred thousand moments that it might have been; Maedhros, nimble fingered, picking twigs from Fingon’s hair and trying not to laugh after a disastrous attempt at amateur ornithology; sharing a horse after one came up lame upon a hunt, his cousin’s warm body pressed against his and an arm looped casually about his waist; swimming together naked in the chill waters of Elendë, the reflected ocean turning grey eyes almost blue.
It wasn’t any of them.
Would that it had been.
No, when Fingon first looked at his cousin and felt desire kindle in his heart and heat coil in his loins, though they did stand beside the water still, it was not the sea that was reflected in Maedhros’ eyes.
They were black from side to side, all pupil, and in the light of Fingon’s torch they burned.
“You came,” Maedhros said. He was panting, chest heaving, lips drawn back to show his teeth in what might have been a smile or a snarl or neither.
“I did.” Fingon bit his own lip against the sudden desire to kiss that fierce look from off his face. “What happened? Why did they turn on us?”
There was blood on Maedhros’ face, a long smear of it following the contour of one high cheekbone, more splattered across his surcoat, and the sword in his hands was dark with it from point to hilt.
Fingon’s pulse quickened at the sight of it and he stepped over the corpse that lay between them to touch the smudge upon Maedhros’ cheek.
“It’s not mine,” Maedhros said, turning his head to lean into the caress. “None of it is.” His voice was rough, from calling orders, Fingon thought.
“I know.”
“Fingon, you shouldn’t-”
What Maedhros thought he should not do, Fingon never did find out. The patter of booted and bare feet ran hollow upon the jetty as five sailors rounded the nearest hull and came racing towards them.
Maedhros leapt to meet them with all the grace of a stooping hawk, side stepping a thrust and slipping his own blade up beneath the lead fisherman’s guard to open up her throat.
MisbehavingMaiar: Tumblr Archive 