The Walls Will Serve by Himring

Chapter 2

After the Dagor Bragollach, Maedhros shows Himring to his cousin.

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.