Left Behind by Himring

Chapter 5

Caranthir gives Ulrica a short break.

Lorren has time enough to change her mind about one important matter.

Her duties in Amon Ereb were lighter, for the most part, than they had been as Lorgan's youngest wife and de facto household slave. That did not mean life was easy for an Easterling woman among elves, after the Nirnaeth. It was hard.

It was not Caranthir in particular who  made it difficult, despite his famous temper. Experience had taught Ulrica to appreciate a dog who barked a lot before he bit, if he ever did. Unlike others she had known, Caranthir never lashed out without warning. Of course, Ulrica had a lot less face to save than any of the proud Easterling clan chiefs and warriors; such pride as she had left mostly lay elsewhere. Also, a couple of past remarks of Uldor's helped, although she had not understood them at the time.

Caranthir stopped in front of her, where she stood cutting up greens, silently losing her tether.

'You. Yes, you, woman! Take that gutful of misery of yours out of here! Take a walk! Take a nap!  Have a bite to eat...'

He turned around, grabbed a quarter loaf of bread off the counter, and thrust it at her. In the background, the head cook quickly stifled a protest.

'Whatever it takes,' barked Caranthir. 'Stay away until you've got a grip. Don't come back to work before you're sure you can cope! Someone else can do it!'

It could be mortifying, yes, to be perceived too clearly by someone who was himself too prickly to easily become a friend. But the abrasiveness did not blind her to the concern underneath.

Years passed, for elves and Men, always more quickly for Men. By the time, Maedhros, patiently sending out messages when he could, obtained the response of a Sinda who might be willing to run the additional risk, during his next dangerous journey into Dor-lomin, of taking two young Easterlings along and handing them over to someone who could deliver them to their parents, Lorren had falled in love with a young man of the Edain, a descendant of refugees from Ladros, and Polfast, no longer little, spoke Sindarin rather better than Easterling.

'It seems, by all accounts,' said Ulrica cautiously to Lorren, 'that your clan has been very successful in Dor-lomin, you know.'

Lorren gave a snort and shook strands of unruly black hair out of her eyes.

'Quit trying to spare me, Ulrica, will you?'

'Spare you?'

'Or trying to be scrupulously fair--or whatever it is that you're doing! I was only a slip of a girl and I didn't understand or believe what I was seeing, but I do remember what I observed well enough and I know better now! Lorgan mistreated you, Ulrica! So did his older wives. You did not love them for it. Why should you? And as for Lorgan the Younger--who is so successful in Dor-lomin, as we hear--you feared and disliked him. And with reason!'

Lorren's voice dropped. Painfully, she asked: 'Mother Ulrica, speak the truth, do you think, yourself, that I should leave and go to Dor-lomin?'

Ulrica caught her breath. Lorren was, by the custom of the Easterlings, an adult now, a very young one, typically headstrong and occasionally rebellious. Ulrica had felt obliged to put forward the other side of the argument, however tentatively. She had not expected to be put on her mettle like this.

Ulrica stood and thought carefully what she should say. Lorren waited, not fidgeting, although slowly her left fist clenched against her skirt. Around them the life of Amon Ereb went on, but nobody was within hearing, nobody interrupted. Polfast had wept last night. Today he was refusing to talk about it and had gone off somewhere, without telling anybody where.

'No,' said Ulrica, finally. 'I do not think either of you should go to Dor-lomin, Lorren mine, and it is not only because I myself feared and disliked Lorgan--although I admit that what you observed is true. I do not like what I hear about Dor-lomin, how things are there.'

She had not put it into words, before. It shamed her, to speak so disloyally, but for the sake of Lorren she must, now.

'I know that the reports that we hear come from sources unfriendly to our people. I am sure they make more of the bad than the good. They probably exaggerate the bad. Also, our people may have little choice, in many of the things they have done. It was Morgoth who sent them to Dor-lomin and Morgoth who keeps them there. I doubt it was with the intention that the Edain of Dor-lomin should be treated kindly!'

Lorren gave a small, jerky nod.

'But despite all that,' Ulrica continued, 'even though I think that our people cannot rightly be blamed for all the ills of Dor-lomin, I do not want you to go to Dor-lomin, Lorren, because, unlike them, you have been given a choice, even if it is not an easy one. And, also, my dear, although it may speak only of my own prejudice--little as we have heard of the dealings of our people with each other, after the death of Sons of Ulfang, I also do not trust a situation which allowed one like Lorgan to climb right to the top...'

'Yes, Mother Ulrica,' said Lorren. 'I have felt all that for some time and I think Polfast has, too. But we could not say it aloud before you did.'

And she reached out and hugged Ulrica.

The Sinda carried a carefully worded message--but no children.