The Walls Will Serve by Himring

Chapter 1

Maedhros decides to build a fortress on Himring Hill.

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.