A Stiff Northern Breeze by Himring

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A Stiff Northern Breeze (main story)

(Names: Aikanaro=Aegnor, Artaresto=Orodreth, Curufinwe=Curufin, Findekano=Fingon, Findarato=Finrod, Russandol=Maedhros)

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I

On his way to the council meeting, Maedhros had hoped to find Fingon in his rooms so that they might proceed there together, but it turned out that Fingon had had similar but incompatible ideas and had gone to attend upon his father.  Thus Maedhros arrived alone in the council chamber and ridiculously early. The chamber was empty as yet except for their host, Orodreth, who nodded briefly to Maedhros and then went on doing what he had apparently been doing, arranging items on the council table. 

Maedhros strolled over to a window and leaned against the wall next to it. He watched Orodreth circle the table, straightening stacks of paper, frowning at a misaligned pen, studying an inkwell with a highly critical expression as if he was not just checking the level of the ink, but questioning the function of ink in the universe. When Orodreth had completed the round, he scratched his wrist for a moment, gazing abstractedly into the middle distance, and then started straightening the stacks of paper all over again.

Maedhros recalled that he had already noticed an unusual constraint in Orodreth the last time he had travelled west. These days he was always willing to consider that it might be himself who was causing discomfort in others. If the sight of him did not set them thinking about Alqualonde or Losgar, it made them think about Angband. Moreover, there was Orodreth’s Sindarin wife, who so very carefully had never informed Maedhros of her opinions about kinslayers. He had tried not to refine too much on Orodreth’s awkwardness in his presence, but now he was beginning to think there must be more to it. He reflected that there had been a time when he would just have asked Orodreth what was eating him, relying on their cousinhood without hesitation—and if Orodreth had not wanted to talk about it, he would have made no bones about it and it would have been no skin off anybody’s nose. But such privileges of his eldest cousin status had long been forfeit; now it behoved him to be discreet. 

Maedhros opened his mouth and was about to begin talking about the latest reports from the northern patrols, when he reminded himself, just in time, that his default subject was not regarded universally as appropriate for a little light conversation. He himself found it soothing; it gave him the comforting illusion he was actually doing something about Morgoth.  But if others preferred not to think about Morgoth at all in their spare time, who was he to argue with that?

He decided the weather might be a more innocuous topic. A nice autumn day, sunny and dry, if unusually windy—a bit on the chilly side, though, would you agree? However, as he was about to find out, in Tol Sirion even the weather was not necessarily a safe subject of conversation.

Orodreth half turned to him, lifted his chin with a jerk and said savagely: ‘Bloody north wind! How I hate it!’

Maedhros was startled.  Even relatively mild swearing was not usually Orodreth’s style. He tried to catch Orodreth’s eyes and failed. His cousins’s gaze was clearly focussed on something beyond the walls of the room.

‘Sweeping all the way across Ard-galen from the black gates of Angband’, continued Orodreth grimly, ‘and then, with nothing to stop it, on down the Vale of Sirion...  There is the scent of evil on that wind—I can smell it. How it howls day and night, in the eaves and in the corridors...  There are the voices of wolves and orcs in it, I swear!’

I know, thought Maedhros. But he could not say so. He could talk about such things to Maglor and occasionally he did. He could have talked about such things to Fingon, but never did, because if he started talking to Fingon, he did not know what else might come tumbling out. But he could not talk about such things to Orodreth.

‘Findarato says that Sirion is under the protection of Ulmo’, said Maedhros instead in what he hoped was a confident, reassuring tone.

Orodreth shivered slightly.

‘As long as Findarato was here, I did not mind so much’, he muttered. ‘But now that he mostly stays in Nargothrond...’

He looked at Maedhros pleadingly.

‘It is not myself I am afraid for! My...’, he swallowed, ‘daughter and...’

This is not merely an occasional passing mood, thought Maedhros. I can see myself in him. This is bad.

‘Artaresto’, he said gently, ‘have you talked to Findarato about this?’—and knew right away that he had made a serious mistake. 

Orodreth straightened up immediately and glared at him.

‘And make him think he can’t rely on me? You think I’m unreliable, don’t you? You think I’m a coward!’

‘No!’, Maedhros protested.

‘Of course you do! I argued against leaving Tirion, after Grandfather’s death, and you’ve considered me a coward ever since!’

‘That never even crossed my mind!’, Maedhros assured him.

It was, he reflected, the truth; it would never have occurred to him to question the courage of anyone who had dared to contradict Feanor that day. It was his own courage that he had begun questioning in retrospect. Indeed sometimes he wondered whether the swearing of the oath had not been an act of supreme cowardice, despite that brave waving around of bared sword blades.

Of course, in Orodreth’s case, it had not been a question of contradicting his own father. He and Finarfin had been unanimous. Maedhros wondered, now, just how hard the parting between his uncle and Orodreth in Araman had gone.  He had had so little attention to spare at the time—he had concluded that Orodreth had simply decided to follow his brothers, almost as if it had been a foregone conclusion, but now he saw there was nothing  simple about that at all. Was it already before that or only afterwards that Orodreth had seemingly disappeared into Finrod’s shadow?

It had not always been so. He remembered, long ago, a very young cousin who could not be stopped from climbing things. Once, he had had to rescue Orodreth from a near-perpendicular rock face after a ledge had literally crumbled under his feet. He had been nauseous with terror. But the golden-haired little boy had been quite unfazed...

Orodreth was still staring furiously at him.

‘I wanted to avenge Grandfather as much as you! If we had had a chance actually to attack the Enemy... But this, this... They call it the Siege of Angband, but it is we who are the ones besieged!’

He clenched his fists.

‘You will not tell Findarato a thing about what I said’, he demanded.

‘Artaresto...’

‘You will not tell him. Promise me that.’

If there is one thing I really hate, it is being forced to make promises, now.

‘Promise me!’

But if I tell Findarato about this conversation, Artaresto will feel so shamed and resent it so much that it will do more harm than good.

Reluctantly, Maedhros nodded.

Instead of looking relieved, Orodreth looked sceptical—and still very angry. It occurred to Maedhros that even if he had forced himself to talk more openly and plainly about his own fears to Orodreth, Orodreth might not have believed him—not without the kind of corroborative detail that could have proved extremely counter-productive. Probably the last thing Orodreth needed right now was an inside account of the dungeons of Angband.

 

II

The council meeting proceeded much as most of these meetings did, leaving Maedhros plenty of time to observe the marvellous transformation of Orodreth. For as soon as Finrod entered the room, Orodreth began to sparkle, and soon he had turned back into one of the golden sons of Finarfin. Self-assured and sociable, he successfully took up his duties as host while at the same time deferring courteously to Fingolfin as High King on the one hand and to his brother Finrod on the other—and when it came to the matter of assigning tasks and duties, nobody was more ready to take on a little extra here and there than Orodreth.

It was true, these were all very minor matters, requiring no more than an additional couple of guards perhaps or one master mason with his apprentices, another wagonload of provisions or slightly longer working hours for the smiths of Tol Sirion. All of it was certainly well within the capabilities of Orodreth and his people, and Maedhros would have considered it quite inappropriate to question any of it in public. And yet he was uneasy, for was this not the same cousin who had just before so clearly shown the strain his increasing responsibility for the safety of Tol Sirion was placing on his shoulders? Why, under the circumstances, be greedy for more duties, more responsibilities than he already had?

Maedhros looked thoughtfully at Finrod, but he had not really expected Finrod’s attitude to tell him anything and it did not. Finrod was being his usual benevolent and gracious self—but he would never have done anything to undermine the self-representation of any of his brothers in public, whatever his private opinions. However, if he was worrying about Orodreth, he certainly was not showing it.

 

III

After the meeting, Maedhros went off on his own to exercise his horse, that is, to consider the matter of Orodreth. He headed up along the eastern bank of Sirion, straight into the wind. In the years he had spent in northern Beleriand, he had become inured to its chill.

The reasonable way of approaching the problem, he still felt, would have been to drop a hint into the ear of Finrod, a suggestion that his brother was in need of added support. Unfortunately, he had promised not to report the conversation as such to Finrod, but perhaps if there was a more subtle means of conveying his concerns... He remembered the suspicious look Orodreth had given him before the meeting, just as the others entered the room. No, anything he said about Orodreth to Finrod now would be resented as a betrayal of Orodreth’s trust, no matter how he put it.

Another brother, then? Aikanaro? At the thought of somehow persuading straight-talking Aegnor to say the right things to Orodreth without offending Orodreth’s sensibilities or revealing that Maedhros had put him up to it, Maedhros’s temples began to throb. Maybe if Aegnor could be prevented from realizing that it was Maedhros who wanted him to do it?

By the time Maedhros turned his horse around and started back downriver, he was plotting to have Maglor tell Aegnor to tell Finrod to tell Orodreth—what actually? It was not as if Maedhros could stop the north wind from blowing. Maedhros might be getting plenty of exercise and fresh air on this ride, but he had also developed a fierce headache.

The headache miraculously vanished when he saw who was coming along the river bank to meet him, his unbraided hair streaming out behind him like swirling smoke drawn with vigorous strokes of charcoal. Findekano. The ends of Fingon’s blue scarf danced in the breeze. The horse he was riding was dapple-grey.

‘There you are!’, he called out, as soon as he was within earshot, ‘I was told you had been looking for me before the council, but you seemed to have vanished, afterwards, and it took me a while to figure out where you had gone. I have not had a chance to tell you yet—your brother is absolutely brilliant!’

‘Which of my many brilliant brothers do you mean?’, Maedhros asked smiling, although he was fairly sure he knew.

‘Curufinwe, of course! I showed those drawings of his to my engineers. They built those pulleys exactly according to his specifications. You should see the size of the blocks of stone we are hauling up that cliff face! Many times the size of what we could have transported up along the switchback path. It will be the strongest wall—impregnable!’

‘Curufinwe will be glad to hear that.’

‘Oh, I have already sent him a letter singing his praises as well as I knew how. But thank you for prodding him into offering his help!’

‘There was no need at all to prod him.’

Fingon gave him a quizzical look.

‘I did tell him you had the best engineers of all Hithlum working on the problem’, admitted Maedhros.

‘Ah,’ said Fingon appreciatively.

In silent agreement, they dismounted and began walking down the path towards Tol Sirion together, both willing to delay their return to the fortress for a little while. Their horses ambled along behind them. Maedhros shook his head very slightly. The cry of orcs, the howl of wolves that he had been sensing just beyond the range of hearing was muted. The wind is just the wind, he told himself and, as long as Fingon was confidently striding beside him, he was content to believe it.

His thoughts turned back to Orodreth.

‘Will you be staying on after the council?’, he asked Fingon.

‘I had not planned to, but... Will you?’, asked Fingon hopefully.

‘No’, said Maedhros, with regret.

Briefly, Fingon’s disappointment showed, but he had got used to this sort of thing. He would simply have to stick to Maedhros like a bur and get the most out of his cousin’s presence while he was there, before he disappeared into the East again.

‘So why are you interested in my staying on, if you will not be there?’

‘I was thinking maybe you should spend a little time talking to Artaresto.’

‘Talking to Artaresto? What about? Wait—there seemed to be a rather tense atmosphere between the two of you when the rest of us came in, this afternoon. Have you and Artaresto quarrelled?’

‘No.’

‘No, I forget, you do not really quarrel these days, do you?’

‘As opposed to my extremely quarrelsome youth’, said Maedhros solemnly.

Fingon gave a snort of laughter. Both of them were remembering those weeks and months in Mithrim during which Maedhros had been continuously snarling at Fingon, like a dog driven mad with pain—when he had not been outright shouting at him—but they skirted around that subject, as they always did. It was not, in any case, relevant to Orodreth, for even then Maedhros would not have permitted himself to quarrel with a son of Finarfin.

‘I have noticed—Artaresto has been looking as sick as a heron lately, whenever Findarato’s back is turned’, said Fingon thoughtfully.

‘Have you got any idea why that is?’

‘You are not going to tell me what passed between you?’

‘You must not even mention to him that I talked about him to you.’

‘You will not say what you think is the matter with him? But you are prescribing him a dose of Findekano for whatever it is that is ailing him? Are you sure that he will appreciate it? Not everyone likes me as much as you do!’

Indeed they don’t. In fact, Artaresto better hadn’t... No, steady—you’re being silly. Count to three, then casually:

‘I can’t think why not. Besides, I thought you were still close, all of you?’

‘Some of us closer than others.’

‘And Artaresto?’

‘Looks to Findarato and no one else.’

‘That might not be an entirely good thing.’

‘Maybe not...  I had not considered it before—how much he has changed. All of us have...’

They were silent for a moment, considering changes.

‘I will do my best with him’, said Fingon.

‘Your best is usually very good’, said Maedhros, quite without irony.

‘A compliment, no less!’, exclaimed Fingon, amused and touched. ‘Now I know you are asking me to do the impossible.’

‘Thank you’, said Maedhros gratefully, answering the implied intention and ignoring the little jibe. (Besides, it was not true that he never paid Fingon any compliments, he thought. He had been Fingon’s teacher once, long ago, and carefully included judicious amounts of praise in his letters to him, whenever the occasion arose.)

Really worried about Artaresto, thought Fingon. I wonder... No, I will have to wait and see for myself.

As a matter of fact Maedhros had stopped worrying about Orodreth for the time being. It was not that he was certain he had found the right solution. He rather doubted whether Orodreth’s problems were capable of solution. But he had just silently dropped his half-formed plan to follow Fingon to Barad Eithel for a couple of days after the council and, although he was not at all sure that it would have been wise to do so, he still felt that for the moment he had given Orodreth the best he had to give. Reflexively, he reminded himself that he owned nothing and had no right to anything. With Fingon companionably walking beside him, just an arm’s length away, the customary self-reproof failed to bite.

Maedhros began to be aware of movement all around them. Everything seemed to be rushing southwards ahead of them. To their right, Sirion flowed—deep and swift and dark green in the centre of its channel, but close by there was white water, waves breaking against boulders and over flotsam and eddying in small bays against the bank. On the foothills to their left, oaks and beeches were being stripped of their autumn foliage by the gusting wind. Higher up and all the way to  Dorthonion, the branches of the pines swayed and soughed, while overhead there was a flock of migrating birds, small dark dots against the sky. A low-flying raven that was moving at an angle to the wind had to flap its wings vigorously so as not to get carried off southwards against its will.

It was not that he was unaware of such things, normally. Sometimes, though, he had to work hard to make himself perceive his surroundings, while past and future relentlessly gnawed on the present. Here, now, with Fingon, it was effortless.

‘A pleasant day’, he said. ‘Rather windy.’

Fingon assented.

Soon, he would have to start asking Fingon questions. It was not always the best way to find out what he wanted to know, but there was so rarely time to find out things gradually by observation. Already, he felt his list of questions lengthening...

But he did not want to ask anything just yet. He wanted a little time to savour, amid all this rushing of wind and leaves and water, Fingon’s steps unhurried beside his—buoyant, as if he was quite ready to take off running at a whim, and yet relaxed, as if there was no reason for either of them to be anywhere else. He thought that perhaps Fingon would appreciate a brief, comradely touch to the elbow, but rejected the idea as too risky. He did not trust himself to achieve comradeliness.

But it did not really matter, here and now. Maedhros discovered in himself a fervent belief in the inalienable right of every elf in Beleriand to go for leisurely walks with his cousin—or hers, he amended with a little smile at the thought of Irisse—and a profound pity for those poor bereft beings that had no cousins. He was completely conscious of the absurdity of his thoughts and quite unrepentant.

Fingon was thinking of all the things he had saved up to discuss with Maedhros. Somehow, none of them seemed important enough that he wanted to start talking about them just yet. The silence seemed too good to break. He tried to steal a glance at Maedhros’s face, just to confirm...

Suddenly, a freak gust of wind came whirling about them, whipping their cloaks and scarves around their shoulders. For a while, both of them were all floating hair and flapping cloth and shying horses. They sorted themselves out, amid little noises of good-humoured annoyance.

‘You’ve got a leaf caught in your hair, Russandol’, said Fingon suddenly.

Maedhros made himself move out of reach, but not quickly enough.  Fingon extended his hand.  Beyond Maedhros’s line of sight, a gentle tug...

‘Here.’

It was an oak leaf, dark brown, shrivelled and bone dry, as if it had passed through a fire. Brittle. Maedhros picked it up from Fingon’s palm, taking it lightly between the tips of his fingers, but however carefully he tried to hold it, it crumbled and blew away like ashes upon the wind. 

 

 

IV

Fingon seizes him by the elbow.

‘Quick!’

They duck under the overhanging branches and stand together concealed within the canopy of luxuriant foliage. Sunlight filters through. Fingon looks upwards. A flash of memory, blue as a kingfisher’s wing...

‘Hold still for a moment!’

He plucks a spring-green oak leaf and, with a twist of the wrist, pushes it into Maedhros’s hair below his right ear, precisely in place. Maedhros briefly closes his eyes. He feels Fingon’s grip shift on his arm.

‘Can’t stand the sight of me?’

The warm clasp of strong fingers.

‘You dazzle me.’

Fingon leans in closer.

‘Not everyone likes me as much as you do.’

This time, he says it triumphantly; he glows with the certainty of it. Blue, blue as a kingfisher’s wing...

And Maedhros answers him softly: ‘They don’t.’

 

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Chapter End Notes

 

I'd be surprised if anybody is keeping track, but I haven't been consistent in the use of names for Orodreth in this series (first he had no Quenya name at all, because I wasn't sure whether he wasn't after all Angrod's son, born in Beleriand, then he was Artaher). I'll try and take care of that at some later stage.

Orodreth's passion for climbing things when he was a boy is an allusion to his name, which is said to mean 'mountain lover'. He doesn't seem to have got much chance to indulge his love of mountains in Beleriand (although in the version in which he is Angrod's son I suppose he grew up in Dorthonion.)