Of Draugluin by Huinare

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Roimë

Of hounds and spies.

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The whelps of the second generation were approaching their adolescence.  The third generation would never know me as anything other than the old teacher, though of course my form could not age nor weaken.  I thought maybe I was acting old now, or like a cripple who is left only with eyes to watch and a voice to speak.  I wanted the older ones to forget me as I had been, and the newer ones never to know of it.  As far as beings of my sort went, I was crippled, chained to one body which might leave me ever houseless should it die. 

I would never have looked for or wanted a vocation as a keeper of lore, but I began to like it since the other options were to feel useless and guilty or to risk my life hunting and patrolling outside the walls of Angband.  And mine was an important task, especially since Mairon seemed to be losing interest in the Nauri.  As he said, the werewolf project had become self-sustaining, and he needed now to concern himself with the increasing number of enemy scouts who were combing the region.

There came an hour when the fog hung thick about the trunks of the firs in the broad forest-courtyard.  The younger Nauri had not seen such deep mists before and wanted to know about it.  I pretended to do as learned folk sometimes will, to take my time answering just because I could, but actually I was watching them to gauge how I ought to explain it.  Some of them seemed uneasy, but many were amused and interested, batting at the fog and trailing each other through it by scent.

I swished my tail and went to settle down on my rock, and a group of young wolves trailed after me.  They strewed themselves around in the pine needles, a barely-seen shadow in the mist at my feet.

“If ever you meet the Eru-whelps outside these walls,” I began, “you’ll find quickly that their sense of smell is pitiful.  They favor their sense of sight, which is keen, but a fog like this will leave them blind.  Are we blind, in the fog?”

“Yes,” said a few, and, “No,” said a few.  And then, “You ran right into a tree just now!” one of the first few said to one of the second few.

A tussling sound came out of the fog, and a yip, and then they fell quiet again and waited for me to take sides.

“Well?” I insisted.

They thought about it.  “Our eyes are blind in the fog,” a voice piped up, “but we aren’t really blind because we can still scent things out.”

“That is so.  Fog favors the Nauri.” 

I was taking a breath to say more when there was a stirring and a figure waded through the mist and through the whelps, causing them to shuffle aside.  The Nauri rarely saw Thuringwethil and she did not seem especially fond of them.  She didn’t seem especially fond of me for that matter, and I thought with annoyance and worry that it was odd for her to come here at this foggy hour.

Thuringwethil came quietly up to the rock.  She wore her favorite form, basically human but with the addition of sleek, featherless wings that folded around her shoulders like a cloak when she wasn’t using them.  “Lord Mairon requires your immediate presence in the council chamber.”

I told the whelps to practice scenting in the fog and followed Thuringwethil indoors where she immediately left me and went on her way.  I found the lord of Angband pacing around the council chamber with its crimson trimmings and mahogany furniture, talking coaxingly at two of the Nauri.  These two were half of a group recently sent out beyond the fortress to sharpen their hunting skills on wild game.  The wolves looked very unhappy.

Mairon did not look pleased either.  “Draugluin, it seems your folk have come into direct contact with the caniform creature.”

A few prior bands of Nauri had reported this creature running out at them suddenly as though it had been purposefully hunting them, but they’d had enough of a lead to evade it.  Mairon and I had heard its howling two or three times from the battlements.

I sat down between the two wolves and set to grooming the one who seemed more distressed, trying to ignore the familiar dread and anger that crouched in wait to jump me.  Mairon, who believed in a time and place for decorum, started to look disapproving, but he let it go.  “I would have them explain what occurred.”

“In good time, sir.”  I thought it was a little obvious what must have occurred, but after some time I got the Nauri to give the details.

“It was much like the hounds of Oromë in its looks, but larger by far.  It was taller than you, Draugluin, though very bony and sinewy.  But its sinews must have been made of iron chains, for it was very strong, more than we thought it should be even for its size.  And it was fast.  When it started coming at us, we ran, we couldn’t help it.  We paid for our cowardice with half our lives.  We had a long start, but it still came on and…”

“I see,” Lord Mairon said softly, not asking them to elaborate.  He would not be as much concerned about the details of the wolves’ deaths as about the exact nature of the strange hound.  “You’ve said that this creature was ‘much like’ Oromë’s mongrels.  I take it there is some difference, apart from its unusual size and physical prowess?”

“Yes, it wasn’t a normal, dull animal like the other hounds.  It had keen eyes like we do, and it had something about it like you have, Lord Mairon, and like Captain Draugluin and all the other folk in Angband and the Maiar have.”

“Did it speak in your hearing?”

“No.”

“Were there Maiar around?”

“No.”

Mairon nodded to the two Nauri, thanked them, and dismissed them.  I wished to go with them back to the trees, but he motioned to me to stay.

He half sat, half leaned on the edge of the table as he sometimes did he thought he might want easy access to pacing.  I myself paced in one tight circle, all but chasing my tail, then plunked down on my haunches facing him.

I began, “I had specifically requested that no Nauri be sent to hunt outside the fortress walls, after the groups that were chased–”

“I remember the conversation as well as you do.  I am aware that my insistence upon sending them out seemed cruel to you, but part of the purpose for which the Nauri were bred was to eventually range about all the wild lands of the earth.  We cannot forever cloister them all here because one monstrosity, of which there may or maybe not be more in the future, is roaming around out there.  They need to be tried against new threats, for threats they shall always face.  Now that it’s confirmed this uncanny hound is a rather terrible force, I will honor your request to keep them all within Angband for the time being, but only because the Nauri are not yet numerous enough to bear heavy losses.  It shan’t be all that many years before colonies of them are turned loose across the length and breadth of Endórë.”

My mind rolled over itself trying to follow Lord Mairon’s several lines of thought and recall what I was protesting.  At last I said, “Did two of my folk need to die for you to decide this hound is a threat?”

His eyes held the fell shadow of a glare and I considered being alarmed, but the look passed and he answered mildly.  “Maybe.  Since the prior witnesses beheld the hound only at a greater distance, we did not know what it was capable of, nor its nature.  Now we know that there is indeed intelligence in its demeanor and even some indication of Ainu being.  It sounds indeed to me like a hound-formed Maia rather than an exceptional animal.  But why such a form do you think?  Is it simply a preference, or perhaps he was asked, tactically, to assume this guise?”

Mairon was so interested in his hypothesizing that he had forgotten how he’d got started on it.  Again the spark of anger that sometimes glowed behind my lungs flared brighter with each breath I took.  When I made him no answer, he looked at me sharply and saw how quickly my breaths were coming, and his hands which sometimes gestured at imagined charts in the air fell still. 

“Draugluin, I am sorry you take it bitterly and I blame you not, but your folk shall always die and you have always known this.  Were you were to seal them in the deepest chambers of Angband, all shall die by infirm and doting age,” he said gently and immovably.

The anger was doused by resignation.  I remembered Gothmog in Utumno, actually and metaphorically seething with anger over just about everything, and how disgusting I’d found the fellow.  If that spark ever caught and surged along my spine and into my head, I might never be able to put it out.  It was better to be quiet about it all, and Lord Mairon was right anyway.

“I knew it, of course.  I knew not what it would mean though.  I have no insight into what anybody might intend with this hound business, and I should like to go be with my folk now, my lord.”

Mairon gave a faint shrug.  I crossed to the door, put my right forefoot on the small slate tile near the frame which had some art in it to recognize my pawprint, and left quickly when it swung open.

The Nauri, still shadows in the mist, were howling loss and indignation when I joined them.  They currently numbered forty-four adults and one hundred twenty-nine adolescents, and indeed they were becoming too many for the forest-courtyard to hold.  Thirteen of the first generation were already gone, six in the skirmish with the three Maiar, one from injury and lack in the wilds, four sent into the east some months back and never returned, and now two at the hound’s jaws.  It had already been murmured, before anyone had gotten a clear description of the canine creature, that it may have slain the four missing Nauri, and none doubted it now. 

They asked me later whether those who had been killed while fleeing dishonorably had any chance of a place among the sky-wolves.  I answered that Ancamanar would offer any wolf who had died the same chance for redemption, and I was getting uncomfortable with the story and how easily they believed it. 

I began to wonder without cease what did happen to the Nauri’s minds, to their words, when they perished.  The wonderings came into my dreams, where I followed strange paths, challenging or begging all manner of mortal and immortal creatures for knowledge and advice.

Mairon said that my folk would be a liability if we bid them out-of-doors now anyway.  “I suspect the Oromendili have perceived that the Nauri, since they cannot dematerialize, offer the best chance of locating Angband.  Doubtless the hound reached this region by stalking or chasing the missing group.  I dispatched Raucar to attempt his capture, but he is canny and he has drawn back some leagues as he’s become aware of the pursuit.  The enemy already suspects the general location of Angband in this section of the Angoronti, and I fear these recent incidents bring their focus ever closer to the vicinity of the three peaks.”

The three peaks were unusual in that they stuck out a bit from the rest of the mountain range and were very conical.  Mairon thought they had come into their volcanic being when Illuin fell in its earth-ripping cataclysm.  They smoked almost constantly, which was part of the reason the main portion of Angband had been delved in the quieter mountains right behind them.  Much of the smoke from the furnaces of the workshops was vented up through these seething peaks, so that it looked like a natural occurrence.  The fortress was very well-hidden, its few outdoor courtyards and platforms fashioned to blend in with angles and shadows in the rock face, and it was well-guarded by mostly immaterial Raucar.

After some days of the hound continuing to evade capture, Mairon proposed at council to send forth three wolves as decoys.  They would act as if they were on patrol, but they would be closely guarded by the formless Raucar and would be in no actual danger.  I reminded him of what he had said about not sending the Nauri without while the hound still roamed, and Thuringwethil shot me a look of annoyance over the mahogany table.  Though Mairon had left out parts of the truth many times, he had never gone back on his word to me, and he was unwilling to do so now although I saw the thought cross his eyes in a gold flicker.  He pointed out again that there would be no real danger involved, and persuaded me to sanction his coming among the Nauri to ask for volunteers to help capture the Hound of Valinor. 

There were quite a few volunteers. 

Three were selected and sent out, and I tried not to think about it. 

After a few days, Mairon came with news.  He bid me walk down the corridor to the council chamber with him, and his eyes gleamed as he sat down at the table.  I settled myself on my accustomed ebony stool.   

“Did you get the Hound?” I asked, even then doubting that the Hound would be unwary enough to fall into such a trap.

“No.  The decoys did lure in something else that might be of interest to you though.”  It seemed he could barely contain some mongrel sentiment of amusement and anger. 

I was clueless for a second, and then I put my forepaws on the table and leaned across it.  “Those three meddlers?”

“The same.  Our decoys drew them because they themselves were sneaking around Angband’s eastern neighborhood in wolf guise, of all things, evidently hoping some Nauri would show them to the entrance.”

I snarled and spluttered like a prey over which the jaws of outrage and delight quarreled.  “I should gut them just for that!  What happened?”

“They approached our decoys claiming to be of a sundered line of Nauri, whom I’d allegedly sent as suckling whelps to Utumno years ago as tribute, now bearing messages to Angband.  Is that not the most heinous, unmitigated arrogance?”

I growled agreement.

“Your wolves were wisely suspicious,” continued Mairon, “but Curumo was speaking and evidently he’s been working on his uncanny powers of persuasion since there’s little else he’s good for.  The obscure one from Mandos was also casting some kind of sorcery over them to dampen their Maia presence.  The Nauri played along until they came to the sentry rock, where their unseen guard and both sentinels fell on the spies.  They got hold of Námo’s person at once.  Unfortunately Alatar and Curumo managed to flee like honorless cowards, which I’m told their companion urged them to with most tragic nobility.”

He watched my reaction with interest as he spoke all this.  Alatar concerned me least.  I had admired his melee skill.  Curumo I hated most, but Námo’s Maia certainly did not have my love either.  If it weren’t for her and her dire words, I might have been able to remain ignorant of the full extent of my predicament.  I might not have that dread, always there like a faint whiff of rot in a pine wood.

Mairon finished, “I resolved to give you access to any of these three, should they fall into our care, as recompense for the heavy loss of life you witnessed at their hands.  I’m willing to largely leave you to your own devices, within certain parameters pertaining to interrogation and to an invention I’m testing on the captive.”