In The Interest of Historical Accuracy by Duilwen

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Chapter 5: Regarding Losgar and the Dagor-nuin-Giliath

Alqualondë is, of course, the proof of Fëanor’s evil; Losgar was the proof of his madness.

 

That is how the histories put it. Because – and such things must be stated delicately, lest the writer be accused of defending a crime for which the Valar have only reluctantly forgiven us – Alqualondë made sense, to a particularly ruthless mind. It diminished the grace of Valinor, and strengthened the desire to depart in the hearts of those who otherwise might have returned happily to Tirion when cooler heads prevailed. It gave the Noldor a means of transport out of Valinor. It was evil. But it was a particularly comprehensible sort of evil.

 

Losgar was insanity. For surely any brilliant and ruthless King would know he needed more than a third of his army to triumph against a Vala; for surely any competent King would be secure enough in his rule that he need not tear away the only means of his people of returning. Surely only a madman would leave his brother to die on a distant shore for the crime of being better-liked by the people who followed both of them.

 

And so the two great crimes of the Flight of the Noldor form two lenses to see Fëanor’s fall: evil and madness. Either one, alone, might not have cost him everything. I will confess to having seen a sort of poetry in it, in the rash gesture, in an entire shoreline glowing with the light of an unspeakable crime. It is, I think, the same impulse that drives artists to draw Morgoth ten times the height of a man: a desire for the enemy to be larger than life and the scope of his evil larger than our own imagination.

 

Needless to say, she saw it differently.  

 

“Word spread almost as soon as we disembarked that Fëanáro had no intention of returning, that he had given the order for the ships to burn. We didn’t do it immediately, of course – we were miles from where he and his son had disembarked and to follow merely rumored orders would be madness – but when confirmation came we lit the torches without hesitating. Everyone who remained on the opposing shore had declared their allegiance to the usurper. Furthermore, they had delayed our departure complaining about how they would never have taken the boats. So now it was as if we hadn’t taken the boats. If they had a better solution, they were welcome to follow it –”

 

“Did you realize-”

 

“That they would cross the Ice? No, of course not. We assumed they would slink back to Valinor. You have to realize, they had been complaining about having left Tirion in the first place for the past Year.  We thought they would be glad of an excuse to abandon their mission, that they would return home and spend the rest of time in the Valar’s gilded cage, complaining about how they would have found glory in the war against Morgoth if only Fëanáro had sent the ships back for them.”

“If you had known –”

 

I did not expect that question to stump her, not when many more difficult ones had been answered with the effortless grace of one who has asked them all of herself and found the answer satisfactory.

 

But there was another long moment’s silence.

 

(I took to doodling in the margins during these pauses, and as a result my notes form an elegant map of the pace of her speech – sloppy shorthand without tehtar where she spoke quickly, elegant letters where she was slow, extravagant marginalia when her words ceased entirely.)

 

“We would never have disobeyed the King,” she said after a moment’s silence, “and the knowledge that they would cross the Ice would hardly have obligated us to risk our own lives and the wrath of the gods in returning for them. But it would have meant – did mean, when it happened – rethinking their devotion to the cause, their valor, their desperation – which by then, of course, nearly paralleled our own. If we had known, I think we would have be more prepared to treat Nolofinwë’s treason as a spat between grieving brothers, more prepared to treat their accusations about Alqualondë as misdirected shock and grief. It would have cast their other actions in a different light, and I imagine the King would have chosen to send the ships back for them.”

 

“It is said that Maedhros argued –”

 

“Oh, he did,” she said at once. “Publicly. He really should not have, though in the end it made mending those bridges easier. Maybe he saw the courage that Nolofinwë’s people hid behind their distance and their arrogance and their rationalizations. Maybe he and Findekáno were – well, I’m sure you’ve heard the rumors –”

 

I will confess that I turned quite red and was utterly incapable of thinking of an adequate response.[1] Such an accusation, of course, would have been cruel and malicious even before Maedhros proved himself one of the greatest monsters of the age. Now, it was outright heresy to imply such things of the former High King. I was startled, moreover, that Maedhros’ defenders would not hesitate to mention it.

 

She was again watching me with the patience one affords a small child. “I forgot,” she said after a moment, “everyone save the Kinslayers spent the Age leaping from one deed of valor to another. No wrongs were done in their name, nothing impolitic can be said of them, their only failing was in failing to recognize the evil that had gripped their cousin’s hearts. And, of course, in following Fëanor in the first place. A single mistake for which we all unjustly suffer, yes? Would your suffering be just, little one, banished by your blood from the Undying Lands, if the heroes you descend from were flawed?”

 

“I claim no descent from the House of Finwë,” I muttered, and it only occurred to me much later that this was a digression from our supposed topic far greater than the ones I had otherwise tolerated.

 

But, in the end, it was she who returned us to the topic. “Is that synonymous with ‘heroes’, now? Because I knew many heroes, little one, and only eight of them were descended from Finwë, and your histories don’t count them either.[2] But the ships burned, and we marched inland, and the armies of the enemy converged on our people, and I dare you to tell me that what followed was not heroism.

 

We were utterly unprepared, but it was not time that would have prepared us. There is nothing at all like war, child, and drills will not teach you about it. I suppose the best way to explain is – it is hard to imagine how intensely liberating it was to watch those ships burn. They were, as I have told you, sickening; better, the fire lit the coastline so for a second we could see the new lands in a light as bright as the light of the old one. I had forgotten what light was like. Beleriand was nothing like it is now – the sort of plants that grow in darkness are utterly unlike the sort that thrive under this sun – but it had the same feel to it – wild, uncultivated, dangerous, and yet far more welcoming than Valinor. We charged inland on feet no longer weary. No one said “It was worth it”, but I know my father would have… would have been glad that by his sacrifice we had come to reach these lands, would have wished only that he could have lived to see them himself. And to think that some had spoken of turning back! We marched inland and blew our trumpets and even when the dark had fallen, again, it was the dark of a night which will pass.

 

They swarmed over the hills by the thousands, and the first sign of them was the cries of our host when they charged. They had dipped their weaponry in mud, you see, so the glint of metal would not betray them, and if each individual one was weak, pathetic, clumsier than I with a sword and quick to die, there were so many of them…

 

I had barely seen Fëanáro’s sons since Alqualondë. Only to lead drills, and to communicate orders, and in that they were distant, mouthpieces of their father… in war they were terrifying, and reassuring, and constantly, relentlessly, present. They were, you know, the ones who rode towards the Unlight when even the Valar were thrown back from it. They were, you know, the ones who held the North for centuries. Macalaure was travelling with our part of the host, and he had us organized into proper ranks in no time at all. His voice carried like no other, and the orcs shrank from it alone, even before he gave the order to charge. Fëanáro himself, of course took the lead, and even in the distance he was distinctive, brilliant, utterly fearless, and not a single orc could touch him though they flocked toward him by the thousands.

 

The hardest thing about a battle like that is remembering that you are winning. When your arms grow heavy and the blood soaks through your armor and through your clothes and dries on your skin, and they keep coming, and a moment’s failure could cost you your life – when the people you love are out there somewhere, and you cannot lift your eyes from the enemy for even a second to see if they are still alive – when your father’s body keeps flashing before your eyes and giving you at once the strength to lift the sword again and the terror to blinker your vision – it does not feel like victory, not at all, no matter how many enemies lie dead at your feet.

 

Fëanáro adapted quickly. A mind like his, I suppose, can entertain a single-minded desperate design for vengeance and worries over his children and the tactical complications of a massive battle on an open field against a limitless enemy all at once. Or perhaps killing orcs made thinking easier… it was so for me, much later, and perhaps it was so for him, even then. He ordered fortifications built as soon as our offensives had cleared some ground for us to defend. They were shabby, built quickly, but they were a place to drag the wounded and dying, a place to rest in quick shifts of a few hours-”

 

“You took naps during the battle?”

 

“It lasted 12 days,” she said, “by the old count of days, not the current short ones. Of course we rested. We were not invincible – well, Fëanáro was. He did not rest. His sons did not seem to either, although the younger ones were assigned the final defense of our hasty fortifications, a little back from the front lines. I think I slept five times, each only for a few hours, and then there would be a cry where our lines had broken or where a captain had fallen and we would rush back into the midst – you never felt ready, of course, but exhaustion fell away when you first felt your sword meet bone again.”

 

“You had heavy losses.”

 

“We had losses. Not as bad as Alqualondë – ironic, no? Morgoth could not harm us as greatly as our own kin – but then, we expected the orcs to try to kill us. If we had gone into Alqualondë expecting our kin to turn on us in murder, things would have ended very differently.”

 

I gritted my teeth. “They didn’t-”

 

“No, of course not, they were totally innocent,” she said agreeably.   “So were the orcs. Just defending their property. It was the sixth day, I think, when the tides began to turn, when we truly took the offensive…”

 

In the histories of our people, most accounts of the Dagor-nuin-Giliath are brief. I suppose that never bothered me – it was, after all, a brief battle in which our victory was complete, notable only for Fëanor’s foolish charge and his death. I suppose it felt longer to those who participated in it. But even as I dutifully recorded their minor gains of territory, I could not help regretting that my correspondent was not among those who fought with Celegorm in the south, riding down upon and utterly routing the orcs that besieged the Havens, or among those who reached Eithel Sirion and first sighted Angband. “I don’t suppose you know anyone who-” I mentioned, and she looked startled.

 

“They are all dead.”

 

“Surely not all of them.”

 

“All of them. Why do you suppose I came out to greet you?, None remain who were close to the princes of the Noldor, or among their personal guards. Forty thousand, I suppose, departed Tirion under the banner of our King. Less than a hundred of us remain, and thirteen who were with them until the bitter end. The other twelve did not wish to talk with you. You should realize, little scholar, that you are a very lucky man.”

 

Which was, of course, cause for me to gape at her disbelievingly and permit another diversion. “Why do you suppose you survive, when all the others-”

 

“Isn’t that a little like marveling at the fact you exist, of all the children your parents could have conceived? Had some other person survived in my stead, you would be talking to them… I am excellent with a sword, but so were many who died. I can keep my head in a fight, but I can tell you the names of a thousand who had the same strength, and died anyway. I am lucky, I suppose.”

 

“Lucky hardly seems to describe it,” I muttered. I was referring, of course, to the shocking magnitude of that slaughter – forty thousand -  but she misunderstood me.

 

“I prefer the hardships of this land to the questionable mercy of Mandos,” she said, “and we hold, here, that to feel otherwise dishonors the dead. Ours was not a happy life, or even, often, a life better than oblivion– but the living are always lucky, because for us there is the hope of brighter days. Or at least freedom…”

 

Those words I recognized, of course, though I had only heard them quoted ironically. She was entirely sincere.

 

“The battle ended when there were no enemies left to kill. It was a strange thing – we found ourselves standing there, shocked, tired – for the fatigue only truly reaches you when the fighting stops. I think I was still caught up in the haze of war, really, had stopped thinking of either enemies or allies as people, had stopped thinking of blood as anything other than a sticky inconvenience – that is my only explanation for why I was not sickened. But I was not. I just felt curiously empty. We had triumphed. Someone started going around dispatching the wounded among our enemies. Others were dragging our own wounded back to safety. I wanted to look for my mother and my brother, but I hadn’t the slightest idea where to start, and fear was dull, compared to the sheer exhaustion. I carried a dead man back to our camp and fell asleep.

 

We woke to the news that Fëanáro was dead. I do not know for how long I had slept – I do know that while I had seen a thousand things that would haunt me in nightmares later I slept for the time without nightmares, and woke feeling as if it were only a moment later. The trumpets were bleating- not in mourning, in horror, in anguish, in shock, because it should have been impossible, because all of us should have died in our King’s defense. We had sworn, after all…

 

I do not know how long I slept, but I know I was not tired in the slightest. The battle was over. The Noldor were victorious. And the King was dead, which meant, in the end, that everything else was nothing more than a spectacularly extravagant failure. Now I felt sick.

 

People who had witnessed the deaths of their children, their parents, their husbands and wives with a weary stoicism fell weeping to their knees. It was not – it was the one thing that was unimaginable. I don’t – I can’t – I’m sorry,” she said and I realized to my everlasting astonishment that she was crying, even now.

 

I felt nothing at all, of course. For the sake of the Noldor it would have been better had Fëanáro died in Alqualondë – it would have been an outright disaster if he had lived long enough to greet the host that crossed the Ice.

 

Perhaps this opinion showed on my face, because when she began her tale again her voice was considerably colder. “I found my mother eventually, of course. We were Noldor, and we were practical, and we had a system for reuniting families and organizing guard rotas and treating the wounded and burying the dead in place even before the sons of Fëanor returned – they were a long time in coming, and it took us a long time to learn the reason. But when Canafinwe, and not Nelyafinwë, led the banner of their return host, there was no grief left, only a dull sort of shock.

 

He spoke only briefly. “We have not the strength to assail Angband at the moment, but nor has Morgoth the strength to attack us. All of the armies he raised for the conquest of these lands lie dead at our feet. Clear their bodies away! Build walls! Build homes! Forge swords! And the gates of Angband will crumble when the time is right.

 

He had a marvelous voice, you know. If you had heard it, you would almost have believed it.”

 

[1] There is, of course, no basis for supposing any such thing; if the accusation is unfamiliar to the reader, I will not claim responsibility for putting it in print, and hope indeed that all traces of it vanish from our histories.

[2] I had, repeatedly, told her my name; she never used it, though she did vary her endearments whenever I objected to one. 

Chapter End Notes

Although, as readers have almost certainly have noticed, this story mostly tracks the Shibboleth of Feanor instead of the Silmarillion, I've decided to keep the version of Losgar in the Silmarillion. The version where Feanor burns the ships in secret with only a few dozen trusted followers, while the rest of his host sleeps, doesn't make sense to me. It unneccessarily absolves the rest of Feanor's followers of guilt. And if Maglor had nothing to do with the ship burning, nor did the vast majority of the host, it's hard to explain why they wouldn't reunite with Fingolfin's people more easily. As for whether Amras died... when I can, I like resolving different versions of the mythology as in-universe confusions. 

My population estimates are detailed and justified elsewhere; I'll include them also in the Appendices (yes, the Appendices our darling narrator keeps mentioning do exist, and I plan to append them to the story when it's complete)!

 

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