Neighbourly Relations by Himring

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Chapter 2: After the arrival of the Edain

In the meantime, the Edain have arrived in Beleriand and the House of Beor has settled in Angrod and Aegnor's territory, in Ladros. The next meeting between Aegnor and Maedhros will be the first after the council meeting summoned by Fingolfin in which Aegnor argued strongly for an attack on Angband and Maedhros advised against it. It is also their first meeting after Aegnor has fallen in love with Andreth.

‘Aikanaro… ‘, Russandol said under his breath. And then more firmly: ‘Aegnor.’

He extended his hand to me in greeting, but he was eyeing me warily, as if he thought I might start shouting at him at any moment. I felt rather embarrassed. It was not that I was not still feeling considerable resentment about the way he had changed his mind without warning, as it seemed to me—speaking out against a concerted attack on the Enemy, when before that he had always been the one who was pushing for unflagging vigilance and constant readiness for battle! But I was more or less resigned to the outcome of the last council meeting now—or at least believed that nothing could be done about it just yet—and I did not quite like to remember everything I had said on the occasion. The indication that Russandol evidently did was unwelcome.

Had he taken seriously what I had said, every single word of it? How aggravating of him! So often he had me chafing under the impression that he regarded all that I said and did with tolerant bemusement, from the height of his superior intellect… But his memory had always been uncomfortably good—he did not harp on past grievances or sulk, but he did not quite forget and, somehow, one knew he had not, even if it never came up in conversation.

Some of Russandol’s escort—although I believed they had been intended to look neither martial nor intimidating, for they were scattered about in twos and threes behind him on the grass and among the tents and were only lightly armed—nevertheless had rather grim expressions on their faces. It was unfortunate that not all of my more intemperate remarks had remained private within the family. It seemed that rumour had reached all the way to the Marches.

Clearly, it was time to start talking about the weather and, quickly, I did, in order to dispel the tense silence hanging over our meeting. It was not my favourite subject, normally—even when the weather had actually done something to attract attention to itself—and Russandol knew this. By the time I had talked about the weather in general, the weather and travelling conditions, the weather and last year’s harvest, the weather and prospects for the coming year, my wretched cousin had stopped looking wary and appeared to be betting with himself how long I could keep this up. Incensed by his failure to properly appreciate my efforts, I stopped for breath and he smoothly slipped in a question. Of course, he was good at these things, for the most part, and before I knew it we had settled into our old routine.

There was a lot of routine to settle into. Our traditional meeting place, the rock shelf we had originally fixed on almost by coincidence, had over the years become an established way-station for travellers between the Marches and Dorthonion. There were amenities, now. A sturdy hut had been erected to provide shelter during harsh weather. In the summer months it did double duty as a kind of wayside inn: they sent someone down from the nearest village above to live there for the duration and supply bread, cheese and small ale for a modest fee. Further back, at certain distance, there was a well-designed row of latrines. The camping ground had been provided with a set of secure mortared fire-places and was fenced off with a wall on one side to keep the unwary from straying too far toward the precipitous incline below.

And it was still Russandol and me who met here to negotiate, always the two of us. Russandol, as he had warned me he would, had persisted in addressing all messages to both Angarato and me—except for the occasional strictly private letter—but had not mentioned Angarato’s absence during our meetings to me again. I, on the other hand, had started back home that time with the firm intention of confronting Angarato with Russandol’s absurd theory in order that I might at least convey Angarato’s outright denial to Russandol—unless, that is, dismay that such a suspicion could have arisen should impel Angarato to speak directly with Russandol again himself.

That resolve had, somehow, crumbled. I still thought Russandol was wrong about Angarato. But on the way home—and occasionally since then—I had had leisure to consider how different Angarato’s attitude to Russandol was from how he treated Tyelkormo and Curufinwe when they met. True, such meetings were not many, despite the proximity of Aglon, and they were not exactly relaxed or altogether friendly, but still there was none of that iron rejection on Angarato’s part that he had for Russandol. Towards Tyelkormo and Curufinwe, Angarato showed more of an occasionally jaded tolerance.

That did not prove that Russandol was right about Angarato’s motives. I myself felt quite differently about Tyelkormo and Curufinwe, I had to admit. It was not entirely logical—in fact, it was clearly not logical, but Turko and Curvo were closer to us in age and they had never pretended to be… Had never pretended to be what? Had Russandol claimed to be anything other than he was?

Whether he had or not, we had been more familiar with Tyelkormo and Curufinwe and their weaknesses—and it was Russandol we had ended up being more deeply disappointed by. He had once been the one who broke up our childhood quarrels and mended our toys. We had none of us been children for quite a long time but he had somehow retained a shadow of his former moral authority in our eyes, past the age when perhaps we should have known better. So we were inclined to blame him more for letting us down—in Tirion, at Alqualonde and at Losgar—than his brothers, because we had suspected from the outset that they would follow their father regardless of any other considerations. That might not be altogether fair, but it was a fact.

And despite painstakingly reasoning all this out, I was still not prepared to speak openly to Angarato and test my hypothesis. Even when that ill-fortuned council meeting had ended in shouting and rancorous disorder, I had ranted away, casting aspersions on Russandol’s character right, left and centre—arrant coward, I had called him to his face, complacent fool, liar—but I had not mentioned his past imprisonment in Angband, let alone what he had said to me—not to him, not to Angarato nor to anyone else.

I had had opportunities to consider what it might mean not to return fully from Angband. No longer was it something that happened only to Sindar. To my knowledge, a handful of captured Noldor had escaped or been freed over the years. Ardil had disappeared again, under suspicious circumstances. Saron had, without warning, strangled his wife and daughter and then set himself on fire. Maryame had not walked since, although she had been freed more than two hundred years of the sun ago. My friend Vanimo now lived like a prisoner in his quarters and suffered agonies of fear every time he had to set foot outside the door.

Of those whose fate I knew, Russandol seemed to have made the best recovery by far. I did not even want to think about that. And I did not want to hear what Angarato had to say about it in case it was not what I wanted to hear.

Angarato had not been able to avoid Russandol entirely over the years, of course. They had occasionally met formally at the councils my uncle summoned, including this last one. And when they did, I occasionally felt the urge to shout at Russandol: Look, look, how can you possibly think my brother, your cousin, would wish to see you dead?! But always the words died on my lips as my gaze wandered to and fro between their inexpressive faces. Russandol’s relentless courtesy seemed as unyielding, in its way, as Angarato’s iron mien. Neither gave anything away.

Russandol was being courteous to me now, inviting me into his tent. Having established that I did not plan to continue heaping reproaches on his head, he was proceeding with business as usual. But I had a reputation for plain speaking, although sometimes I wondered how deserved it was...

As we entered, I impulsively reached out and clasped his shoulder and, cutting straight across one of his urbane phrases, blurted out in Quenya: ‘How are you?’

His eyes widened a little and, for a moment, his hand came up as if to fend me off; then it stopped in mid-air and changed direction. With the tips of his fingers, he briefly touched the back of my hand where it rested on his shoulder.

‘Thank you, Aiko, I am quite well’, he said softly.

He had not called me Aiko in a very long time. I guessed he had understood what I meant to ask, but I was less certain whether he had actually answered my question or just given me a soothing pat on the head, so to speak. Maybe it made no difference; maybe that was simply all the answer he had to offer. I took my hand away and we continued our conversation in Sindarin as before.

There were things to discuss and they took time. We talked about tariffs and trade. We talked about patrols and military intelligence. We talked about craft developments and general news. We talked one evening—cautiously in Quenya and out of earshot of anyone else—about Thingol and about Cirdan. There was not much change to report on that front: Cirdan was still willing to put up with any Noldor who were willing to form a barrier between his havens of Brithombar and Eglarest and Angband so long as those Noldor refrained from waving reminders of the Kinslaying straight under his nose, while Thingol tolerated nobody except my siblings and myself and was liable to give even us short shrift if we displeased him in any way.

I was quite prone to displeasing my great-uncle. There was not enough of the Teler in me, apparently. And maybe indeed there was not, but sometimes it seemed to me that Elwe Singollo’s ideas of what made a Teler were even narrower than the Girdle of Melian.

Russandol listened intently to the little I was prepared to say about Doriath. He seemed to feel that it was up to us to deal with Thingol—notwithstanding that it was mainly he and his brothers who were responsible for our problems with Thingol to begin with—although in fact there was not all that much he could do, I supposed, as Thingol had refused him and all his people entry into Doriath altogether. Maybe one of the reasons why he had voted against the proposed attack on Angband was that he thought we had not tried hard enough to ally Thingol more closely to our cause. He had not explicitly said so. Nevertheless sometimes in the past I felt I had almost seen the question hovering on his lips: Aikanaro, do you not realize how important this matter is to our chances of survival?

I did realize how important it was. Despite that, sometimes I felt a strong reluctance even to make the attempt—and sometimes it was because of my reservations about Russandol and his brothers and sometimes it was because of Thingol… And in any case, I was no diplomat. However even Findarato, who certainly was, had not succeeded in making all that much headway with Thingol—support in building projects, yes, promises of military aid in case of need even for Nargothrond, let alone for any other Noldorin realm, no.

Russandol’s grey eyes were fixed soberly on mine and I stiffened slightly, thinking he might be about to breach his silence and we would end up having to speak about Alqualonde again. But then he looked away for a moment, sighed a little and smiled at me and I knew to my relief that, once again, we would not. Shortly after that we parted for the night.

It was early the following afternoon as we paced together in the sunshine back and forth along the low wall that bordered the encampment—having spent all morning sitting bent over pages of records and draft agreements—that Russandol asked me lightly: ‘So, now that the First House is settled in your realm in Ladros, how do you find yourself feeling about the Atani, Aikanaro?’

As it was the advent of the Edain that had triggered the ill-omened council meeting, this conversational gambit was almost certainly intended as a further step in easing things between us back into their accustomed rut, but I had reasons to be self-conscious about my attitude to the Edain that Russandol could not be aware of.

Awkwardly, I tried to deflect his question: ‘But surely you’ve encountered them yourself? You met Beor during that little skirmish near Aglon, didn’t you? And since they settled in Ladros there must have been plenty of occasion for contact with his people—why, I’ve been told they even have a name of their own for you!’

‘Ah, yes… Dayred Lefthand!’ Russandol gave a small snort of laughter. ‘Lefthand, of course, being an extremely polite way of putting things… That allusion to my hair colour perhaps a little less so…’

‘Dayred is just their way of saying Dawn’, I said defensively.

‘I know! Meaning that each morning they look east from Ladros and catch sight of me on the battlements of Himring, my head of hair flaming crimson in the sunrise? A striking image, but rather unlikely!’

Russandol's eyes were alight with amusement. He stopped and sat down, perching on top of the dry-stone wall and patted the rocky surface next to him invitingly.

‘You like them, don’t you?’ he asked kindly.

I sat down beside him.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, I do.’ And taking a deep breath, I burst out: ‘Russandol, does it ever strike you how stale and unprofitable our life in Valinor was, how limited the scope of our imagination? Before we arrived here in Endore, had we the least idea of the possibilities, of the riches that life could hold? I used to believe our role here was to spread the light of Aman, bring insight and knowledge to benighted minds and alleviate the darkness of their ignorance. But I tell you, Russandol, whatever gifts we have to bestow are as nothing compare to what Endore holds for us. It is Middle-earth that teaches us and it is we who are here to learn and…’

Suddenly, I stopped in mid-flow, aghast at realizing the extent of my insensitivity and complete lack of tact. How could I have let myself forget who I was talking to? This was after all the same cousin for whose state of mind I had such dire fears. Who would be less likely to sympathize with me on this subject than Russandol? And who would be more unlikely to appreciate the harsh lessons Endore had had in store for him since the moment he had first set foot in this land? The most I could hope for was that he would dismiss my outburst with a weary smile as yet more proof of Aikanaro’s irreparable naivety.

But Russandol did not seem offended by my lack of judgement nor was his expression dismissive. He sat calmly on the wall beside me, the stump of his right arm, which at some point he had stopped concealing, lying relaxed in his lap. Maybe he had only ever made a point of concealing it because he had realized it bothered me. In the bright sunlight, I could see those thin lines of scars running across his face quite clearly. But his face was gravely attentive as if he was considering the truth of what I had said. He looked east for a moment, out across the plain of Himlad and the Marches towards the Blue Mountains, and then turned back towards me.

‘It would be good to think so, Aikanaro’, he said simply.

***

On the day of my departure, on a sharp turn in the switchback trail, I looked back down the steep slope to the camp on the rock shelf below. Russandol was standing there alone, just where I had left him, gazing after me. When he saw me looking down, he raised his hand, sketching a brief wave.

I wondered why, when he had forfeited so much of my trust, I still sometimes ended up telling him things I had told nobody else, not even my brothers.

Chapter End Notes

Note re "Dayred/Dawn Lefthand": this is a wholly fanciful interpretation of the Old English name given to Maedhros by Tolkien in an Old English version of the Annals. My suggestion that, because Old English later represents the language of the Rohirrim in LOTR, this name might have been given to Maedhros by Edain is probably completely unjustified.

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