Of Draugluin by Huinare

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Ohta

War comes to Endórë, and Draugluin meets someone he did not expect.

 

“I’m not technically a werewolf.”

“So speaks the sire of the werewolves.”  Lord Mairon peered over the battlements toward the brush and gullies east of Angband.  “You’ve been glad enough to identify as one of them when it involves sleeping under the eaves of the firs and playing with the whelps.”

He had me there.  My ears went back for a second.  I tried again.  “The Maia herself said that she can’t pick prophecies out of the air.  They come to her unbidden.  What are the chances that she would have seen Huan defeated, right when you asked?  She’s probably lying.”

“Did you stop to think she might have seen this earlier, but refrained from saying anything about it until desperation wrenched it past her guard?  She is not lying.  It’s not in her nature.”  

“All right,” I agreed quickly, not wanting Mairon to go off on another of his speeches about the fascinating honesty of a being poised on the edge of death.  The wind came out of the west and sent his hair eastward, exposing black strands at his nape that usually only showed as a shadow under the lighter stuff.

He rummaged around for something to tie it back with, shrugged, and slid to a sitting position out of the wind with the stone at his back.  “Draugluin, I would deem that you qualify as a werewolf, despite some obvious differences between you and the Nauri, and certainly none of them are as powerful as you.  While the Hound presents a very real threat to those with significantly less power than you, he may not be so terrible when confronted with a more even match.  After all, he never stays to fight the Raucar but continually flees them.  While doing all this running and hiding, I daresay he’s doing quite a bit of spying and I like it not.  And he’s slain as many of the Nauri alone as Pallandë and her crew slew between the three of them.”

Huan’s deeds had not made me quite so angry because I hadn’t witnessed them myself, but Mairon had a point.  I felt anger stirring again, and it was for myself as well because I was afraid to go out and avenge my folk as I ought.

Mairon could all but see me thinking these things.  His sharp eyes blinked once at me.  “I’ll send an escort to follow you at a distance.  They shall intervene if you run into trouble you can’t handle.”  He laid both hands on my ruff just behind my ears.  “Know that you underestimate yourself though.  Your strength has never waned, only your confidence.”  

So it was that I left the safety of Angband at last, relieved to be taking action and doing the honorable thing despite my worries.  I’d got used to thinking of myself as a dotard and a cripple, and the land proved me wrong.  I tore over rock and stream, stopping to howl challenges and cast around for scent or sign of the Hound of Valinor.  After five days, I ran into a couple of rangers from Angband.  They told me that Huan hadn’t been sighted since three days before I’d come forth, and that the rangers were starting to think he’d left the region altogether.  

I kept searching, but as often as I thought of finding the Hound I thought of the sky field with its stars and clouds.  I ran just to be running, until I ran into the foothills northeast of Angband against the liking of the two escorting me.

“Captain Draugluin–where are you going?”

“Up.  These hills command a wide view.”

The other two both went formless, as the Raucar usually did when they were abroad in those days, but I heard the speaker’s frown.  “We’ve been up so high while accompanying you, sir, and there’s no Hound to be seen from above either.  He’s well and truly gone.  Might we not be thinking of heading back?”

It wasn’t the first time I had gotten a sense that the people who were supposedly under my authority didn’t respect me.  I couldn’t do many things that came easily to them.  “My orders are to seek Huan.  This I’ll do until I hear otherwise.  He may have come up here himself, for all we know.”

“Sir, I believe it is important that Lord Mairon know the Hound has possibly fallen back.”

“I have not reached that conclusion yet,” I answered as importantly as I could, and I climbed more quickly.

“Your pardon, sir, but it seems quite likely.  And if the Hound has left, it’s probably because he did whatever Oromë sent him to do.  Things might be moving apace now.  The Lord of Angband would surely wish to–”

“If your conclusion is so obvious as all that, the rangers have surely sent a message to the Lord of Angband already.”  I was trying not to bristle with anger and embarrassment.  My companions made a good point, one that hadn’t occurred to me.   “But if you wish to go tell him yourselves, don’t let me slow you down.  Go.”

“We were instructed not to leave you…”

“Well, I’m instructing you to go.  Tell him I said so, and that if he wants anyone to answer for it I will.”

The two guards paused reluctantly, but in the end they left, glad to turn their minds to other business than tagging along behind a wolf.  I jogged uphill, suddenly wishing I had somebody handy to maul, and finally stopped on the top of a narrow ridge.  

“Huan!” I howled.  My voice thundered around as several voices in the heights, and none answered.

I looked back toward Angband some ten miles distant.  The fortress was cunningly hidden, as one might expect from Mairon, mostly lurking below the three peaks and delved into the hills and scarps behind them.  The few windows and outdoor courtyards were situated in shadowed angles of the rock formations, and sorceries were laid on them to lessen their chance of being noticed.  I tried to figure out where the Nauri’s little forest might be, but from where I watched I did not have the faintest idea.  

Longing fell over me like heavy snow, but what for I couldn’t tell.  It was no use wishing for many things, so usually I didn’t.  I hadn’t slept much since starting out.  In spite of the danger, I crawled under a bush and curled up with my tail on my forepaws.

I woke to the earth trembling as it sometimes did in those parts, but more forcefully than I’d ever known it to.  A large roaring sounded from the far end of the plateau that lay at the feet of Angband.  Wriggling out of the bushes, I ran to the end of the ridge and saw a huge cloud of dust rising into the dark sky away west.  That had been the site of a pass between two steep cliffs, but the cliffs didn’t appear to exist anymore.  As I watched, a few dots of fire sprang up.  The war Mairon had anticipated must be upon us at last.  Probably he’d brought the cliffs down on the enemy host as it dared the passage to come up onto the plateau.  I laughed to think of that.

My next thought was for my Nauri, and I stopped laughing.

I bounded back down onto the plain, cursing the slowness of my form though it was faster than any other wolf upon the earth.  I gained the easternmost entry into Angband, a small gate that led to a long underground passage.  But it opened near the top of a sheer rock formation, and I had no way to get to it.  Fearing that the enemy might already be near, I padded around the foot of the rock, calling up quietly for the guards who should have been stationed there.  No answer or movement came.  They had probably been ordered to move inside the gate, to avoid drawing any attention to it, and seal it behind them.  It was indistinguishable from the rock around it when it was closed.

“Folk of Angband, open, it’s the captain of the Nauri,” I tried a last time, more loudly, in the language Mairon had made up for the Raucar.  Nothing happened.  

The only other side entrances I knew of were one on the plateau in an old hollowed-out oak, and one in a ravine to the west of the fortress.  At this rate I may as well run openly for the main gate, which was tucked into a small dell between two of the peaks.

I turned southwest and raced for the gate.  The ground shook again, violently, and I was nearly knocked off my feet.  This time the quake was much closer.  Chunks of rock tumbled down the slope on my right.  A broken branch balanced in a scraggly dead tree fell into the dry grass next to me.  I threw myself on the ground as another quake followed right on the heels of the first, then leapt back up and ran on.  Rounding a long rock outcropping that had blocked my view since I left the silent east gate, I stopped short.  The battle begun at the pass was seeping onto the field before Angband.  Many clashed with weapons or powers, and the airs above bristled with the struggles of those who preferred to fight incorporeally.

I used to take joy in fighting.  Now I couldn’t even think of it.  Even if I ran for the gate like the worst sort of coward, someone might decide to come after me with death.  The battle and its noise edged nearer across the wide field, while I stood watching for what seemed like a long time.  Telling myself that I must dash through to join my people and my lord was no use at all.  When my legs finally moved, they turned me around and hustled me away.  I hid myself in an uncomfortable thicket of brambles, wishing I’d returned to Angband along with my wiser escort the day before.  My innards felt like I was being swallowed up in some icy maw.

The earthquakes kept up intermittently for something like eight days.  I wandered aimlessly up and down the streambeds.  Some streams I’d known changed their courses or drained away somewhere below the ground.  A bit of smoke came out of the three peaks.  The time of Arda’s shaping by the Ainur was very long past, and it was impressive that some of them, Mairon and Aulë at least, were still able to command the earth to such deeds.  I tried to stay far enough away to avoid the worst effects of the quakes, but I couldn’t bring myself to go too far.

I barely slept.  I saw enemies in every shadow, and the Nauri in every flicker of a passing animal.  This was when I started to wish I were just an animal in truth, a creature who would die completely and leave no spirit.  I fancied I was walking through a fog of cattail down riddled with knives.  Each gust of wind shook the cattails and rattled the knives, and pointed out my failures in Mairon’s voice.  

Then at last a quieter kind of vibration, like many marching feet, ran through the earth.  I raised my head and saw that another host was coming along the foothills out of the east.  I capered liked a demented whelp and almost ran to meet them.  But then I thought about how Lord Melkor would take my failure to brave the field.  My actions were basically desertion.  So I fled from them, too, and hid cowering as Utumno’s army marched past in its terror and splendor, its fire and shadow.  

Soon the harsh light of Valarauca flame came up from the field, and war drums rolled.  I was heartened by all of this.  Utumno had twice the host of Angband, under the command of the Dark Lord himself.  

But something else happened then that I could never have imagined.  A quake greater than any of the others tore across the land, and I saw the three towering peaks of Angband slide apart as if they were made of nothing more intimidating than sand.  Then I was crashing down a slope along with dirt and boulders and plants.  My head smashed into something.  Terror and darkness moved in swiftly.

I came out of them more slowly, full of pain, relieved at least not to have died. Everything was quiet.  I heaved off a heavy coat of dirt, gravel, and a creeping vine.  The westward sky was choked with dust and smoke.  Staggering to the top of the hill of rubble, I could just make out the shadow of a host retreating into the east.

I approached Angband, clambering and leaping over mangled land, and found the field silent under the heavy debris clouds.  The toppled peaks sat like the backs of dark tortoises wallowing in their own guts.  I swallowed my dread back and trotted around the place.  All the gates were destroyed or blocked.  With a sickening sort of hope, the kind that does not expect to be fulfilled, I sniffed around for any trace of the Nauri.  They might be trapped down below, or dead on the field or in the wreckage.  There was no sign of anybody, mortal or no.

I was tempted to sit down and howl, but it would change nothing.  Before I could lose my nerve, I turned back east and ran desperately, until I could see from the many-colored banners that the army moving away in that direction was Valinor’s.  But before them went the host of Melkor, in what Mairon would probably have called a “strategic retreat.”  Still I didn’t try to join them.  For all I knew, Melkor might punish my cowardice by making me join the Valaraucar in the rearguard or something.  It was Mairon I sought.  He might know what had become of my wolves, he understood my problems enough to possibly be forgiving, and he was my commander anyway.  But I couldn’t tell if he was among the Dark Lord’s folk now.

I stopped and panted, exhausted and indecisive.  My head pounded.  Both armies were far ahead by the time I started moving again.  Not knowing what else to do, I tailed them at a great distance for days.  When I came finally within sight of the cold slate-colored mountains that hid Melkor’s stronghold, his folk had already vanished inside.  Valinor’s troops were arrayed at the feet of the sheer cliffs.  It seemed Utumno, a much older and deeper place than Angband, was prepared for a siege.  That land had always been chill and quiet, dark rock brindled with white snow, but now color and noise came into it.  I watched the flames and quakes and skirmishes from afar, repeating the helpless guilt that had been involved in standing by as Angband fell.

If I was going to be useless, I could go and do that far away in a safe place.  I could go back to Angband and dig around in the rubble til my paws bled.  Every choice seemed ill.  I’d fallen into a deep shadow years ago and it had only gotten longer.  Maybe it was the lack of sleep again, but even now I could almost see that shadow just beyond a few pine boles, matching step with me as I paced anxiously.

“Draugluin,” the shadow hissed.  I whirled and snarled at it, then stopped and gaped at the faint glint of familiar eyes.

“Ancalagon?”

Chapter End Notes

Ohta: Evidently Quenya for 'war.'  Yes, my creativity is unparalleled.

If anyone wants a closer look inside my mind and process, which no one sane does, this song is my soundtrack for the fall of Angband (well, actually for Angband and Mairon in general).  The tune/instrumentation is the thing.  The lyrics, as far as I can tell, are about David and Bathsheba and presumably entirely irrelevant to the subject at hand.

 

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