Such Great Deeds by Himring

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Chapter 5: Serech

How it ends, was always going to end...
Beleg and Mablung escape from the Battle of Unnumbered Tears.

They stumbled through the fens of Serech in a manner that would have been shameful for Marchwardens of Doriath if their circumstances had been otherwise. However, Mablung was leaning hard on Beleg's arm, weakened by loss of blood and his wits apparently addled by the poison of the dragon fumes he had inhaled.

It was only one of Glaurung's brood they had encountered on the battle-field, not the great dragon himself. This creature had neither reached its full growth nor were its scales as fully hardened as its sire's, but it was deadly enough even so. Mablung and his company had born the brunt of its attack, until Beleg, off to the side, was lucky enough to get a clear shot at the dragon's left eye. By then, they had been swept apart from Pengyl and her archers and the rest of Fingon's troops. They had tried to fight their way back to join up again, even if it might be with Haldir and the Men of Brethil at the rear. But despite their efforts, each time they tried to regain their bearings after beating off another wave of the enemy, Fingon's banner had been farther and farther away. Orcs poured in between. They lost more ground--and even more of their company--until the last remaining handful was temporarily saved by people of the Fountain from Gondolin who were trying to fall back towards their own main force. Beleg and Mablung were left with no choice but to retreat with them and so, eventually, with Turgon's army. By that time, Mablung had been wounded in the arm and, less severely, in the side.

Beleg and Mablung splashed, knee-deep, into a stinking muddy trough and then out again, slipping and slithering on rotting blades of grass. Beleg had been extraordinarily lucky and was largely unhurt, but he was distracted, his attention divided and drawn away from the tricky task of finding his path through clumps of reed and treacherous water.

He was concerned about Mablung, wondering whether they could afford to stop and check his wounds. Were the bandages he had hastily applied during the brief halt while Turgon was debating his course with the Men of Dor-lomin holding? Mablung was doggedly struggling on, silent, except for heavy, often laboured breathing, but he seemed very disoriented. He was in shock, too, of course. So was Beleg; so would all of those be who survived the battle. It also seemed to Beleg that Mablung might be running a fever. It seemed unlikely for wounds to fester so badly, so quickly, but there was no saying, with wounds taken today. Malice of all kinds had been strong, back out there, on the plain.

But even with all this on his mind, Beleg was listening. His hearing was keen and, despite his exhaustion, fear and grief seemed to have only sharpened it.

Immediately around him the fens were deathly silent, as if every living being was terrified, down to the gnats, and the only sound was a soft hissing of reeds and dry grasses in the cooling air. In the distance, towards their right, the shadow of the Ered Wethrin was growing darker.

Behind their backs, some distance away by now, where the main course of the Rivil flowed, was the place they were fleeing from--and a desperate last stand. The Men of Dor-lomin were falling one by one. As he and Mablung fled deeper into the fens, Beleg had heard their battle cries, fewer and fewer, against the enemies' horn calls and drum rolls, the howls of orcs and trolls. And now...

Aure entuluva!

Beleg abruptly stopped. Mablung lurched painfully forward and Beleg grabbed him quickly to stop him from falling.

'What is it?' Mablung mumbled.

Beleg did not answer.

Aure entuluva!

Beleg was sure it was Hurin's, that last lone voice rising strongly above the enemies' triumph and derision.

Day shall come again!

Beleg found himself casting around, trying to think of a safe place where he could hide Mablung and go back...

Once before, he had failed Hurin, when the other was still a boy and he and his brother had been lost on the outskirts of battle, at the Ford of Brithiach. Beleg and his people had spent days searching for the boys, after the battle, but they had vanished without trace and he had had to let their kin, both Halmir and Galdor, know that they were almost certainly dead. But miraculously, Hurin and Huor had turned up again, alive.

Not this time. Huor was surely already dead. Hurin was about to fall, would probably fall before Beleg could get to him, even if he simply dropped Mablung in the mud and went racing back. The Men of Dor-lomin had known that none would survive, a price they had willingly paid for Turgon's escape.

Beleg could not afford to. He could not die in Serech. He had to get Mablung to safety, report to Elu Thingol, bear messages. Even if it filled him with burning shame to hear Hurin crying out and do nothing.

'Beleg?' Mablung asked. Clearly, his hearing was dulled as much as his other senses and he could not hear Hurin calling.

Aure entuluva! Day shall come again! Aure entuluva!

Beleg caught Mablung more firmly and went on, as quickly as they could manage it, Hurin's calls echoing in his ears, stepping cautiously, guiding his friend through the mire. The sun poured out red gold across the mountain tops as if it was for the very last time, flashing on the surface of slimy puddles and gilding dead grass. Then, irrevocably, she set.

Beleg listened, listened, waiting for Hurin to call out just one more time, but now there was nothing. Behind them, that lone brave voice had fallen silent.
They walked on into the dark, into rising wind. There was, for now, no sound of further pursuit or advance behind them, as if this last effort, at the end of six days of battle, had exhausted even their inexhaustible Enemy. Turgon and his army, somewhere ahead and to their left, would probably get clean away, back to Gondolin. Then, at least the sacrifice of the Men of Dor-lomin would not have been in vain.

In the darkest hours of the night, Beleg and Mablung came to an islet, hidden among the rushes, past the point where the marshes of Rivil had gradually merged into the swampy banks of Sirion. They took the advantage of drier, safer ground to allow themselves a short period of rest. Beleg had a look at Mablung's wounds, rebandaged them and gave him a sip from a small flask that Melian had given him before they left Menegroth. Mablung still seemed ill, beyond even the effects of exhaustion and blood loss, but Melian's potion seemed to revive him a little. Beleg fed him a little waybread and wished they could risk a fire.

'Beleg', Mablung suddenly said, clutching the hand that held the waybread, 'do you remember? That morning, Fingon and... Utulie n'aure! Auta i lome! Do you?'

'Yes, well,' replied Beleg numbly, 'we will have to leave that out when we report to Elu, won't we?'

'We what?' said Mablung bewildered, blinking, and after a while: 'You're criticizing Fingon for using Quenya at that moment?'

'Not me,' said Beleg. He had shouted in Quenya along with the rest, when Fingon raised his cry. It was not so long ago, that morning, before Fingon was lost and all the north of Beleriand along with him, but the day that had come was now gone.

Beleg urged a bit more waybread on Mablung and then ordered him to rest. He should have forced himself to rest, too. But when he lay down, he could not lie still and he sat up again.

Messages. He would need to send messages--report to Thingol, of course, and alert the rest of the March Wardens, and by no means only those on the northwest borders, for there was no border even in the South now that would remain entirely safe for long. But he would also have to send messages to Brethil, to Amon Obel--could it really be the case that none of Haldir's Men had survived? But remembering what that hell of a battlefield had been like, he did not doubt that it could. And he would have to send messages to Nargothrond, to Orodreth and to Finduilas. There was no doubt at all that none of Gwindor's men could have escaped, he had glimpsed them being sucked straight into the iron maw of Angband. Cirdan--maybe some of his people had survived, fleeing into Ered Wethrin and were making their way home either by land or by the ships waiting in the Firth of Drengist. He could not be sure of that, he would send messengers to the Havens, too, and hope they arrived there before Morgoth's troops did. And Ossiriand--if things on the eastern front had gone as he guessed, the Green Elves' northern flank would be exposed now, too, although they would probably find out before he could let them know. But he would send messages in any case, because there was no counting on it that anyone else was left to send them.

They would need to be wary. They would need to make plans. They would need to make any plans they could still make. There would not be much that could be done about Hithlum. Maybe Annael's people could still get away.

The sky was getting lighter again, but it was cold. There seemed something wrong with his view of the sky, with the very air around him. Was he just imagining it? Was it because he was still in shock--and so, so tired, after six days of fighting? But no, he was not imagining it. Something had leached out of the light, out of the air, out of the sound of Sirion's waters. A barrier had broken, exposing them to the power of the Enemy. A subtle malice seemed to have invaded the hiss of the reeds. There would come a harsh awakening if any had believed they could stay safe by staying at home.

Beleg gathered up his belongings, packing them in his bag again. His hand encountered metal and he drew out Fingon's brooch, the showy Noldorin thing that Fingon had given him long ago at the Mereth Aderthad so he could travel safely in Hithlum. He had taken it off after that journey and not worn it again. He had never meant to keep it, of course. But it had always seemed to be the wrong moment to return it--conveying a rejection, not the kind of statement he wished to make--and then, after Fingon and he had met again and finally spoken at length, that night in Barad Eithel, he had forgotten about it. Returning it had no longer seemed important, on the scale of things.

Such a bad thing, always, only to find out how much you had cared for someone when you had lost them and could no longer tell them... But Beleg remembered sitting up with Fingon in Barad Eithel, Fingon so tired that he had to prop himself up with his elbows on the table in order to stay upright, but still eagerly, eagerly listening to tales of Cuivienen, and shook himself out of that thought. Much time had been lost, true, that could have been spent in friendship, but Fingon had known he cared, surely he had known.

He took the brooch and put it on. Let Elu make of that what he would. Then he went to rouse Mablung. They needed to move on.

Chapter End Notes

The story features two canonical battle cries in Elvish (Quenya): Utulie n'aure! Auta i lome! (The day has come! Night is passing.) and Aure entuluva! (Day shall come again!). It also alludes to the fact that the use of the Quenya language had been banned by King Elu Thingol.

The idea that Beleg and Mablung were saved in the battle by troops from Gondolin is drawn from Rhapsody's excellent story "The last stand", but seems logical and may well have been used by others independently.

I have posted an independent version of this chapter elsewhere (on LiveJournal and Many Paths to Tread), entitled "Even So the Reeds Hissed in Serech at Sunset". This title is adapted from canon (later said by Hurin in front of the concealed Gates of Gondolin).

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