The Walls Will Serve by Himring

The first time, they came there in spring, season of exploration. The Sinda who was their guide led the way down from the hill-top, with the confident assurance of one who knows his own territory. The small group of strangers followed him down the faint track, disciplined and in single file, until they all stood by the cleft in the rock where the stream bubbled out, welling up strongly from the heart of the hill to flow away southwards into lands they had as yet barely heard of.

‘This is Little Brother Gelion,’ said the guide. ‘His elder brother rises to the east, in the mountains over there, and the two of them join up to make Big Gelion, away down there. Gelion is little here, but his water is good to drink and never fails, even in times of drought. Is that what you were looking for?’

‘Yes, indeed, my friend’, said the tall, red-haired, one-handed stranger.  ‘May the stars shine above your path, always, for the good guidance you have given us!’

The Sinda had, of course, sensibly refused to tell them his name. They, on the other hand, had come out with their own names straight away—as if they had nothing and no one to fear!—but those names were in their own incomprehensible language, impossible to pronounce or remember. The red-haired one was called something like… Mae? Rus?

The Sinda shrugged.

‘You did say you want to build walls up there?’ he asked curiously, pointing back up the hill.

‘Yes,’ said the red-haired one. ‘I will build walls up there for protection and defence. I hope in time they will come to serve you and yours, too.’

The Sinda shrugged again. They were truly strange folk, these, and they had the strangest ideas, but they seemed to mean well, mostly, most of the time.

‘I will come back and see how you are faring, lord’, he said politely, ‘about two moons from now.’

And so he parted from them and, fading unobtrusively into the landscape as is the way of the Sindar, he went away south-west to re-join his own people.

But Nelyafinwe Maitimo Russandol said to those of his household: ‘We will stay here beside Gelion tonight and tomorrow we will return to the hill-top and begin.’

Ceredir answered: ‘That will be a slow business—building a large fortress on a bare hill-top in an empty land!’

‘We will have time, I hope’, said Maedhros. ‘Tirion was not built in a day. But as for the land, I could wish it were emptier… We will have to take thought how to defend ourselves as we build.’

They all looked northward, briefly, and then away.

‘I will go look for firewood’, said Naurthoniel.

‘I will take care of the horses’, said Celvandil.

As the others dispersed and went about their already-accustomed tasks, Maedhros remained alone for a while, staring at the hill top. This whole range of hills was much, much lower than the Ered Wethrin that fenced Hithlum or the sheer mountain slopes that protected Dorthonion. Nor could Maedhros borrow Melian’s Girdle to defend his people. But he was a Noldo and Noldor build in stone, so he would build walls on Himring Hill, strong walls to fend off all attacks.

No Noldo had to ask another the way to Angband; its malevolence made itself known to them. But Maedhros Feanorion felt Morgoth’s power beat on his mind night and day. Fusing present sensation and memory, it pursued him, awake and asleep. And so, now, for a moment he felt his will falter.

That hill top looked bare indeed. Noldor might build in stone, in Valinor, but his people had no future in these empty, hostile lands. Why attempt to raise walls with great labour only to know they will fall? Was it not futile, worse than futile, to try to outface the Dark Foe, the Deceiver, in any fashion a Noldo could devise? Was their Sindarin guide not right to consider his plans foolish and vain?

The sound of rushing water at his feet recalled him to himself. Maedhros shook his head. No, this land was by no means empty nor wholly hostile. It offered rock to build on and stone to build with. It offered a steady water supply for his as-yet-unbuilt fortress.  It had offered guidance and friends in need, careful, cautious friends, to be sure…

He remembered, back in Valinor, his cousin stabbing his index finger at a place on the map and asking: ‘And what is here?’

He had shaken his head and answered: ‘I have no idea.’

Now he was standing right in the middle of that blank space –and it was not blank at all.

His cousin had loved Mithrim when they got there. He loved the moon, the sun and Middle-earth.

Perhaps you would even like this place, Findekano? I am tempted to see it merely as yet another place of exile but I will try and look at it with your eyes.

Maedhros lifted his face to the wide expanse of pale, chilly sky that stretched above the Marches. The walls of Himring would serve, he thought.  He would make them serve, at least for a while.

When the others gathered again, having accomplished their various tasks, they found him perched on a boulder, writing a letter to his brother Curufinwe. Curufin was skilled in all kinds of making and construction. More recently, he had turned out also to be good at improvisation and making do when it could not be helped, despite the occasional heart-felt profanity.

They walked down to the springs of Little Gelion, the pair of them, in silence, Maedhros careful not to look at his cousin beside him. Even after three days, he still found himself reeling inwardly sometimes at the knowledge that he was loved, as if his head was unable to catch up with his emotions. If he cast too beseeching a look upon his cousin, he knew Fingon would be tempted to throw caution to the winds in his efforts to reassure him. He did not want reassurance at that price, did not even need reassurance at this point, really. However evident it might be that it was not entirely possible to love Maedhros Feanorion, the one that Maitimo had become, Maedhros believed firmly that Fingon was capable of impossible things.

‘Are you sure you are not cold?’ Maedhros asked once more, instead, while keeping his eyes fixed and intent on the path. His cousin must not be cold again for his sake or through his fault, if it could be prevented.

‘No, no, I don’t feel cold at all’, Fingon answered.

He was grateful for the heavy blue cloak that Maedhros had insisted on draping around him, but not because of the cold. The sun was out and, although the autumnal colours of the landscape left little doubt that winter would not be long in coming and the early morning hours might well bring frost tonight, the Marches looked friendly and bright in the light of noon. But the weight on his shoulders helped to remind him that he was Fingon, the High King of the Noldor, inspecting the water supply of the strategically important fortress of Himring and that said Fingon had better keep his hands to himself, under his cloak—even though it would have been all too easy to reach out and touch…

It was not that he resented his duties, although he had not yet made his peace with how he had come by them. It was just that time was slipping through their fingers, running away… The days were not long enough—and neither were the nights.

Just then Fingon glimpsed the jagged fragment of a rusty blade that lurked in a patch of grass and barely avoided stepping on it. Another little reminder of the siege! That ought to be enough to sober anyone up, surely.

They reached the cleft in the rock, stopped and regarded Little Gelion in its neatly mortared channel, running down to the culvert in the restored outer walls.

‘The well in the inner fortress has been excavated from the rock, but it is the same water, the water of Gelion’, explained Maedhros. ‘During the siege, the Enemy tried to cut off our water supply—just as they tried pretty much everything else… But they did not manage it.’

Fingon nodded. He had not been there, but he knew about such things. He remembered, only too well, Hador and Gundor and Galdor, all fallen in the defence of Eithel Sirion—and the empty saddle of his father’s horse. And his face showed it.

Maedhros felt the familiar urge to beg Fingon for forgiveness.  Maedhros’s own people, the people of the Marches, regarded him as a hero, but in truth his reach had not been nearly long enough to defend even all of them. To those beyond the Marches, he had been able to offer no help at all, however much he wanted to. And he had wanted to, so much…

But there was no point in bringing that up again. Such forgiveness as Fingon had to give, he had already given. And neither Fingon’s forgiveness nor anyone else’s would bring back the dead.

And also, even if the strength of the House of Feanor had been so much less than required, Maedhros did not want to apologize for Himring, he realized. Maybe because the efforts of too many had gone into raising Himring—not only his own—maybe because there were too many whose lives its walls had preserved, at least for now, until the next attack…

'Himring served me well’, he told Fingon, awkwardly. ‘Its walls served us well…’ And he found he was uncertain whether it was his liege lord he was appealing to, at that moment, or his beloved cousin.

Fingon heard the urgency in his voice and woke up with a start from his own dream of love and duty and guilt. For the last three days, he had not had attention for much else besides Maedhros: it had been Maitimo, only Maitimo, when they had not been studying maps together that showed too clearly the scale of their losses or poring over figures that always added up to too little, too late. The fortress of Himring had been merely a backdrop to Fingon. But however weary of battle Fingon might be, after the Dagor Bragollach, he had not wearied of the sight of Middle-earth.

He turned and looked back the way they had come. Above them, the walls of Himring gleamed on the hill-top like a crown, intricate and imposing despite their severe functionality. They had the flair that Curufin Feanorion imparted even to the simplest designs he worked on and they had more than that. In the light of midday, it was easy to ignore the battle scars. Or maybe they just added to it all.

‘It’s beautiful’, Fingon said with conviction.

Gelion bubbled at their feet, ever-changing, unchanging.

‘Is this it?’ asked Elrond.

‘Yes’, said Arminas. ‘I was sent here, several times, with messages. I know the shape of that hill-top, even if not much else is left.’

In fact, that seemed to be rather an understatement. There was nothing else left, as far as Elrond could see. He got out of the boat and stepped onto the island of Himling.

As he walked across the beach, he wondered whatever he was doing here, in this place in which he had never set foot while Maedhros was still alive. But, he confessed, he was prevaricating, lying to himself. It was perfectly obvious why he would be visiting Himling now that Elros had died and taken their shared memories of Maedhros and Maglor out of Arda with him.

Only, there was nothing here. Wherever he went, there was nothing but bare rock, no trace of masonry, not a scrap or fragment to show that here, once, had stood one of the most powerful fortresses in Middle-Earth. The War of Wrath had smashed the walls and clawed at their foundations. Afterwards, the storms and the waves had done the rest.  Here and there, in nooks and crannies protected from the harsh sea winds, tough grass and small bushes were struggling to survive.

Elrond returned—having walked all the way around the island—to the beach where Arminas had set up camp. There was a stream of fresh water there that emerged from the rock face and, dividing into small runnels, meandered among the pebbles before flowing out to sea. It occurred to Elrond that this spring might well be all that remained of mighty Gelion.

Arminas had caught and prepared a pair of sea bass. They ate in silence.

Then Arminas asked, cautiously: ‘How long were you planning to stay?’

‘I have seen enough’, said Elrond. ‘We can leave again any time you wish.’

As they got back in the boat, he bent down and picked up a small pebble.

‘You could have taken a larger stone’, said Arminas to him after a while, when they were well out to sea again.

‘I was afraid a larger one might sink the boat’, said Elrond.

Arminas looked at him closely to try and see whether he was joking, but Elrond gave him the bland stare he had adopted when he did not wish to discuss the Sons of Feanor, and so Arminas said nothing more.

***

Around Elrond, the people of Imladris were rejoicing. This first winter in the valley had been hard, but now spring was on its way and the refugees felt a surge of hope and confidence.

Elrond took a deep breath and silently dropped a small pebble into the gravel on the banks of the Bruinen. Looking up, he found he had not been quite discreet enough. Erestor was watching him.

‘Erestor’, said Elrond softly. ‘Come over here and have a look. Can you tell which one was the stone that I just dropped?’

‘Whatever will you ask me next?’ said Erestor. ‘I’m a librarian, not a mineralogist.’ Nevertheless, he came and stood beside Elrond and peered intently at the stones. ‘I cannot spot any difference at all between them’, he said, quietly.

‘Good’, said Elrond. ‘That is good.'

Chapter End Notes

Written for Gwailome.