Neighbourly Relations by Himring

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Chapter 3: Dagor Bragollach

The last meeting between Aegnor and Maedhros just as the war breaks out that will cost Aegnor and Angrod their lives.

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Fire pours forth from Angband. At our feet, Ard-galen is beginning to burn.

Angarato takes a single, comprehensive look and turns away from the view to the north. Although a moment ago he was all haste as we stormed up the long flight of steps to the guard platform, high above the doomed plain, and in a moment he will be all breathless haste again, he moves slowly now—walks deliberately, step by step, back across the platform to the head of the stairs, his head bent, his shoulders slightly hunched, face clouded with thought. Reaching it, he looks around for me to make sure I am coming.

He does not speak. He, too, knows now, I see, and I wonder how long he has done so. Eldalote will be furious when she works out why she had to be the one to carry our messages to Findarato and Artaresto in person. But we will not be there to bear the brunt of her rage.

We leap down the steps together, and once again everything descends into a melee, Angarato barking his orders and I yelling mine. We have long been preparing for this day and I thought we had prepared ourselves so well—no, surely, we had! Why then, now, is so much undone, so much still left to do?

Suddenly a small scroll is thrust into Angarato’s hand—the familiar imprint of the Feanorian star on its wax seal smudged and lop-sided this time—and he is arrested in mid shout, stands still, clasping the unopened scroll.

‘Aiya, Russandol’, he says softly and, unexpectedly, his voice is full of regret.

But still he passes it to me unopened.

‘What does he say?’

‘He asks whether there is time for a quick meeting to coordinate our response to this attack. I don’t think there is…’

‘We cannot both of us go, no. But you could still manage it, travelling fast and light.’

That he should even mention the possibility of both us going!

‘Then you should go, Angarato.’

‘No. It would not be practical.’

And he is right. For centuries now, he has concentrated his efforts on the west of Dorthonion, while I focussed mine on the eastern defences, and partly precisely so that he could avoid our cousin—if either of us is to meet Russandol in what little time there remains, it must be me.

‘Choose the fastest horse’, he says. ‘And go as quickly as you can.’

‘But, Angarato, shall I not give him a message?’

‘A message?’

He stands, seemingly at a loss. His gaze roams around his study, as if he might find a message for our cousin hanging on the walls—such a gracious, orderly space, carefully furnished decade by decade with much of the best and most prized artwork of Dorthonion! But it is as if the shadow of Angband had fallen on it already, reducing all the achievements we were still so proud of yesterday to mere possessions, plunder for orcs. They have lost their essence, their value—all except those that will still serve us in battle. There is nothing here that will do as a last and final gift for our cousin—and casting another impatient, almost desperate, gaze around the room, Angarato suddenly seizes on the simple goose-feather quill that lies abandoned on his desk where he dropped it when news of the attack came, freshly cut, its tip stained with dried ink.

‘Give him this’, he says, firmly.

So many courteous missives addressed, unfailingly, to him as well as to me, ‘because I am rather stubborn, cousin’, but my equally stubborn brother never answered any of them…

‘Give it to him’, Angarato repeats. ‘And go now, Aikanaro, go!’

***

Russandol comes riding up the mountain path more swiftly than is entirely safe and calls out to me before he is quite within earshot. As he approaches and dismounts in front of me, he is already talking to me at high speed, pouring out a stream of news, suggestions, forming plans.

I feel a little overwhelmed at all this and have to take a deep breath before I interrupt him and say firmly: ‘No, we can’t.’

He falls silent, a somewhat stunned look on his face, as if he had stumbled over a large boulder in his path that he had completely overlooked.

‘You can’t?’ he repeats. But as I open my mouth, he adds quickly: ‘No, don’t start explaining! There isn’t time. Tell me what you can do!’

As quickly as possible, in hurried tones, we agree on a much more modest and rudimentary common strategy—and, although I do not say so, already I can see that this, too, is going to fail.

‘We will’, says Russandol in conclusion, nodding, and is already turning back to his horse, his thoughts clearly already well ahead of him, dwelling on the next step and next and the needs of those awaiting him in the Marches below.

‘Russandol’, I say, trying to regain his attention.

He keeps on moving, reaching for the bridle—the impetus is too strong or maybe he has not even really heard me.

‘Russandol! I want—we need to say farewell!’

He lurches as if I had stabbed him. His hand falls away from the bridle. The change in him is astounding, at least to me, for I have lived with that thought long enough to get used to it. His face looks so white, so desperate all of a sudden, his eyes beseeching me...

So that is what he looked like at Losgar.

The thought comes to me unbidden. It is a revelation. Somehow, without ever quite disbelieving the story about his standing aside at Losgar, I had never quite believed it either. It seemed so pat—the way his brothers had never mentioned it before Russandol was rescued by Findekano, the way it came out just as soon as Findekano had rescued him, while Russandol was far too ill to confirm or deny it, the way Russandol and his brothers avoided referring to it afterwards. I had felt, vaguely, that my feelings were being manipulated.

Except now my memory is clearing and I see that there was nothing pat about it at all. Tyelkormo came rushing up while we ourselves were still struggling with the shock of what had had happened to our cousin. He took one look at his brother—his condition was obvious enough—and backed away at once. He was not looking at any of us, eyes wide and unfocussed as if the sight of his brother had struck him blind, as he choked out: He asked Father, you know. He asked: Who will you send for first—Findekano the Valiant? He drew a shuddering breath. He whispered: And he stood aside…afterwards at the burning… Then he stumbled off, probably to throw up somewhere behind a tent.

Later, rumour filled in the outlines, but there never was anything like an official account. They were like that, Russandol and his brothers; they had always been like that. Even although it was obvious to any discerning observer that they sometimes fought in private like cats and dogs, even when it would have been more politic for them to be seen to disagree, they closed ranks in public, all seven of them, instinctively, to present an united front to the world, as if to pretend that seven were one…

‘I’m sorry’, says Russandol.

I blink. For a moment, I thought he was apologizing for Losgar again. Then it dawns on me that he is apologizing for my death, as if he had personally caused it. But in truth it is going to be more of a collaborative effort, isn’t it?

‘I do not regret coming’, I tell him.

‘You lighten the burden on my House by saying so’, answers Russandol. ‘But I wished a long life for you.’ Now his eyes are wet. ‘If I had not voted against attacking, when our uncle suggested it…’

The outcome might well have been the same. And if he had, I would not have known and loved Andreth. I shrug and give him a small smile. He reaches out and ruffles my hair so that it stands all on end. A long time ago, I remember he was the first of my elders to notice that I considered myself too grown-up for such gestures and to stop doing that. But it feels good now.

Russandol sighs. He reaches for the bridle again.

‘Russandol!’

He stops and gives me an enquiring look.

‘I have this for you—from Angarato.’

He holds out his palm and I put the quill on it. He stands for a moment, palm outstretched, weighing it in his hand. Then he carefully puts it away.

He leaps into the saddle. I watch him ride back down the path more swiftly than is entirely safe, but not for long. I have my own destination to get to and little enough time to get there.

At some point during the wild ride back, it occurs to me that I never told him about Andreth. But then I realize that, of course, I did—I told him everything about her except her name.

***

‘I’m afraid we are beginning to run out of feathers’, says the fletcher.

The siege was long. There are few livestock left within Himring’s walls and few birds of any kind.

‘I believe there is a small store of feathers for spare quills kept in the scriptorium,’ says Maedhros. ‘I don’t know how well suited they are for the purpose, but I guess they will be better than nothing. I will see they are delivered to you.’

He hesitates, then reaches inside his clothing and brings out a single goose feather, its tip stained with ink.

‘Use this one.’

‘But, Lord Maedhros’, asks the fletcher, somewhat bewildered at being offered a single feather, ‘is this not a personal quill of yours? Do you not want to keep it for writing with?’

‘I do not think this quill will write again’, says Maedhros quietly. ‘And our enemies are not well versed in the epistolary art. Fletch me an arrow that will fly true and straight and find its mark and I will be content.’

And he places the goose feather in the fletcher’s open palm.