Left Behind by Himring

Chapter 4

Decisions: Maedhros's decisions, that is, and Ulrica's.

Maedhros had sent for her again. She assumed he meant to inform her about his decision with regard to their future, hers and the children's. But when she arrived, he was busy. There was intense discussion in several languages, note-taking on wax tablets, people coming and going.

Maedhros saw her standing by the door and waved her apologetically over to a chair. So she was to wait. She sat down gingerly. The chair was throne-like, with arm rests, padded. Maedhros's wave seemed to have included, comprehensively,  an invitation to the bowl of apples sitting on the table beside her. She wondered whether Maedhros had decided after their earlier encounter that she was sickly and like to faint without support and sustenance or whether these were just elven standards of hospitality.

The discussion was continuing. She had realized by now that Maedhros had not merely been absent when they arrived, but did not in fact reside in Amon Ereb. It seemed that after the loss of Himring he moved about with his remaining people, staying nowhere for long. There was catching up to do, when he returned, apparently--this seemed to be some kind of stock-taking.

She was no whit less anxious about what he might have to say, but she had become used to postponing such thoughts. Gradually she relaxed back into the embrace of the chair and, feeling herself unwatched, she even yielded to the temptation of an apple. It tasted unexpectedly good. By the time there was a lull,  Maedhros had half-shooed his last interlocutor out of the room, and it was her turn, she had finished one apple and had started on the next.

'I need to send you to a safe place,' said Maedhros. 'But I cannot think of one.'

He looked sincere, very serious. Ulrica was wishing she had left the apples alone. She felt at a disadvantage in a conversation like this, with a half-eaten apple in her hand.

'I could just stay here?' she suggested uncertainly.

'This,' Maedhros informed her, 'doesn't count as safe.'

She supposed she hadn't exactly thought it did, but she was a little shaken to hear him say so.

'There is food,' said Ulrica, lifting her apple core in evidence. 'And nobody has been beating me up, recently.'

There had been some dark looks, of course. There had been hurtful remarks, some intentionally so, some unintentionally. But when Polfast forgot himself and dashed across the courtyard, making the horses shy and one of the elves lifted an arm to strike at him, several of his companions had stopped him at once and hauled him away. She had not been sure whether it was that elves never beat the children of others or whether they were afraid he would not be able to stop beating Polfast once he had started.

But that might not even be what Maedhros meant. The walls of Amon Ereb seemed strong and Maedhros clearly had his people well in hand. But despite their discipline and air of toughness and experience, looking at them now, not even Uldor would have believed the Sons of Feanor still had any chance of winning against Morgoth. Their last, final defeat might still be put off for a while, perhaps even, by her standards, for a long time, but their ranks had thinned. Theirs was very evidently the losing side, now.

'You could kill one of the Sons of Feanor,' suggested Lorren desperately, when she returned and spoke to them. 'They don't seem to be at all careful around you, do they? You would be  a hero! Our people would welcome you back with open arms!'

Ulrica did not believe for a moment she would survive the attempt, even if she happened to succeed, but for a moment she was genuinely tempted by this preposterous plan. To become somebody again in the eyes of her people, a real person, even if she had to kill and die to achieve it--kill red-faced, shouting Caranthir or I-didn't-do-it-myself Maedhros or remote Maglor, who, she had learned, had actually done the deed and slain Uldor on the battle-field...

She let out her breath sharply and reined in her wild imaginings. In the eyes of her people? Whose opinion did she care about, really? Who would she return to if she could?

Not her family. They had sold her to Lorgan out of need more than greed but, once done, they had never stopped pretending  that, merely because, nominally, she was honourably married, she was entirely all right. She had not had a word of comfort or encouragement from them, much less help, at a time when even the smallest show of support might have prevented her from foolishly throwing self-preservation to the winds with Uldor. 

Not Lorgan, if he still lived, nor his heirs, either. Rather than killing her himself, as he had every right to do by law and custom, Lorgan had sold all his rights in her to Ulfast and Ulwarth for three goats, two kids, and a hunting-knife. She did not know exactly how she had been used against Uldor--that part was all a blur and Ulfast and Ulwarth had never done her the courtesy of discussing with her why they were beating her to a pulp--but she could guess that she had been used and that Lorgan had knowingly connived in it--and that part was neither lawful nor customary.

No, there could be nobody for her in Dor-lomin. It was Lorren she really cared about, and little Polfast--Lorren who had looked to her for guidance in the wilds of East Beleriand and had at the same time been so quietly proud to be contributing to their survival with her skills with the sling and on the hunting trail, who clung to her now among all these strangers whose behaviour and customs she could not entirely fathom--Lorren who had occasionally called her 'mother', half by accident, who was now desperate for a return to a normality that had never existed in quite that form, a kind of reality that would somehow allow Lorren both to hang on to this newly formed family of hers that she had become close to so quickly and return to her true parents that she missed and longed for....

Ulrica would do Lorren no favours at all by dying a bloody death--or by confirming the Sons of Feanor and their followers in the idea that all members of the tribe of Ulfang were inherently and ineradicably treacherous.

She shook her head.

'I will do well enough,' she told Lorren, firmly.  'But Lord Maedhros has promised me that he will try to get you two safely back to your families, if he can. It may just take him quite some time. He gets very litte news out of the west at present, he told me, but he has heard that it is virtually impossible to get either into Dor-lomin or out of it, right now.'