Warfare by Innin

Chapter 1

Read Chapter 1

The gates of Sirion had swung inward unobstructed, as Maedhros has devised. Several of his people, proven in battle and of certain loyalty, had been sent to the Havens of Sirion under false names and stories, well before he had first made demands for the Silmaril, well before the warnings. They had been invaluable in providing strategic information and bending the situation into an advantage; his way, only those who actively refused surrender would need to die.

Or so he hoped.

This far into the town, in the seafaring quarter, heavy with the stench of fish and the briny brack water of the estuary, streets were deserted and the windows shuttered, the houses standing like dead, forbidding faces. It was not unsual for nightfall in any ordinary town that Maedhros recalled, but this was hardly an ordinary situation. The townsfolk who hadn't fled could have rained arrows on any invading force from their upper windows, but the Havens of Sirion were a refugee camp, and not many had survived this far because they were combatants, rather the opposite – women and children who had escaped the battles that had robbed them of their homes, leaving behind soldiers and fighters dying to buy their escape. It was a town of the lucky, not the brave, and perhaps the silence was only natural. Many of the people here, he knew from reports received only hours before, had fled to sea in their cutters at the first word of the Fëanorian approach, and perhaps the vanguard around him, marching with the rattle of chainmail, had been enough to quench the spark of resistance in whoever remained. They must be weary.

Maedhros had known before that he himself was also tired of bloodshed; Doriath and its woods had made that clearer than he allowed to admit to anybody but himself. Still, it was easier than he liked to close his ears to the screaming that erupted in the town behind: Maglor held the main of the host, and with him were many men erstwhile serving their middle brothers who wanted blood in revenge for Doriath. Maglor had insisted that he would be able to hold them to order regardless, and it seemed he had been wrong.

More screams joined the first in spite of Maglor's promise, but to think they might have taken the town without battle must have been an illusion from the first. Maedhros closed his ears to the growing din, rested his hand on his sword, and sped up his step until he was nearly jogging, and his vanguard had trouble keeping step.

The street widened into a marketplace, across a bridge spanning a swampy, reed-choked channel feeding into the docks and the open sea beyond them. All but a few were empty, but those of his men who had guarded Elwing's white tower on a swept-up hillock directly by the shore had made certain she had not escaped, and indeed – in the gathering dark a bright, steady light spilled from the uppermost windows.

The step of his vanguard faltered entirely, leaving only many-voiced puffs of breath. Maedhros turned. Young faces, most of them: more than half the sons and daughters of the Exiles who had known the light of Aman, or ever seen the Silmarils with their own eyes.

Hopeful faces, too, lifting to Elwing's windows with apparent, painful awe. They had grown up with stories of the Silmarils, stories that warped the quest into something glorious, rather than the string of defeats and torn-apart recoveries it had been, the thing that had cost them their parents and families and friends.

"Wait here," Maedhros said. His voice rang hollow and breathless to his own ears, and few even seemed to take notice of his words or the fact that he intended to face Elwing alone, their faces raptly upturned to the holy light. "Guard the door."

He made his way to the tower half-expecting to be struck down in some ambush, but everything remained painfully quiet. Not even the wind soughed over the water, which lay as frozen.

He took his shoulder to the door, fully expecting it to be locked, but before bright flashes of pain could burst across his vision, the door swung inward. It had not been locked, and Maedhros paused. That, if nothing else, should have alerted him more than it did – that this was a trap, a lure, a deliberate ruse – for why else should Elwing spell her presence across the Havens, unless she wanted to draw attention to herself, and what motive other than surrender could she have to attract them? Revenge.

A hollow feeling settled firmly within him, and he trod on the first step of the spiral staircase as though to reduce it to rubble, to bring the whole tower down. Should he die here, he would not care.

Another step, and his heart began to pound painfully. Another, and his mouth became dry. There was no one on the stairs, no archers, swordsmen, any soldiers at all as it wound its way upward into the first landing and past a seating room of slender furniture, unremarkable and empty apart from opulent wall-hangings depicting a shining city in a valley like a snowdrop seen from afar. Gondolin; Eärendil's heritage.

Elwing's Silmaril had shone from the topmost windows, and although Maedhros' heart nearly faltered – for killing never became routine, indeed he did not allow himself to let it become routine, in turn savouring to the twist of his blade in an orc's gut, and abhorring the memory of cutting down his kinsmen – he dragged his feet up the next flight of stairs, and then another, until the stair ended abruptly before another closed door, and light spilling from the crack below it.

It swung inward at his touch, and for a moment the light stabbed at his eyes and blinded him. The first that revealed itself to Maedhros' vision when it returned was a woman in a blue dress, dark-haired, standing tall to meet him, but when he had almost reached her, laughter sounded behind him in the room, and his hand sank into the soft fabric of yet another wall-hanging, superbly executed (or a trick of the light) – not Elwing, instead a depiction of Lúthien regarding him with a pitiless glance from grey eyes.

He took his time to turn to Elwing.

She looked – she looked much like her ancestress had, standing as tall, her grey eyes as pitiless, her nose straighter and her lips lusher in a way that dissuaded in no way from her beauty, although the twist of her features did its parts in making her look near-feral, a girl grown to adulthood without parents who had died at the hands of his people.

"Elwing," he said, and licked moisture back into his dry lips. "Lady. Why am I here?"

"Why are you indeed," she said. "Your right to this is void." In her hands lay a casket of milky crystal that shone from within and threw her face into a soft wash of shadow and light. Her lip curled; the shadows shifted.

"You are here because I have decided to offer you a trade. As you see, I am alone here. I am at your mercy, and you at mine, should I decide to act on the powers that came on my from my grandmother. You know that I am right. It is written plainly on your face."

She drew herself up straighter. Maedhros stepped in, and she let him, training wary eyes onto him, but no more, and then she laughed. Maedhros' eyes flicked between her face and the casket, the way her fingers curled around it with no intent of giving it up.

"What must I do for you to yield the Silmaril, lady?" he asked. "All of this, all the death my people are visiting upon yours outside will cease if you give me the stone. If you do not, their blood is on your hands as much as it is on mine."

"Then tell me, Fëanorian, am I the one slaughtering my people? Or are you?"

"You wanted me here. What for?"

Again Elwing laughed, and any softness that her face might have held, any pretense at mercy - or of fear - vanished. Maedhros found himself facing the queen of her people, holding herself no less than his equal, and felt his anger surge – that she had the gall for this, that she was damning her people to meet him on an equal standing. Those words burst out in a bitter surge. Elwing dropped the casket; the lid burst open and brighter radiance spilled across the floor. His words faltered, stunned, to find Elwing striking him hard across the face, leaving his face burning.

"You take from me my family, my brothers, take me from my sons, and you dare spit that into my face? Shame on you, Fëanorian – you come as an orc in fair guise! Do your orc-work!" Elwing lifted her hand again and Maedhros moved to stop her blow, but instead found his hand seized, found her fingernails digging into his skin, twisting his wrist downward and down, she yanked her dress aside and pushed herself onto his fingers, trapping his hand between her thighs, already slick.

Maedhros stilled, closed his eyes.

"You never meant to offer me a trade, or even the possibility to exchange something for the Silmaril itself --"

"-- I mean to revisit all your sins upon you. I know them, and many of them I know better than you yourself! My people will die regardless; you have already begun the slaughter before you attempted to negotiate, but at the very least I want you to remember me; I want you to know this, know me, know with every fiber of yourself that you sought to break me, and that you failed."

Truth was potent, truth spoken with convinction. Despite himself, Maedhros felt himself stirring.

"Then let it be so."

The moments passed in harsh breaths, a fumble of fingers, rubbing, scissoring, pushing, chainmail chiming as Elwing removed it and loosened his breeches, yanked him toward her, pushing his nose into her hair, the salt-scent of the sea clinging to her, a shove against the wall that sent his foot catching on the casket, sent the Nauglamír sliding toward the low window, sent his heart skipping with fear it might fall before he twisted and tore himself from the sight --

Elwing's head collided with the tapestry, her teeth clicking together audibly, her eyes for a moment rolling unfocused before she fixed her gaze onto Maedhros again. This close to Lúthien's depiction she still looked similar, but in the way an amateur's copy of a famous painting might, and Maedhros squinted against the sight. A certain angle, and she might perhaps – yes, if he looked this way – he might even convince his mind that this was not Elwing at all, with her salt-scent and seafoam dress, that it was Fingon crowded between the wall and him, Fingon's legs wound around his hips, Fingon pushing back against thrust, and thrust, and thrust, not a woman's soft body, not – no.

"I want recompense for my brothers dragged into the forest to die," she hissed in his ear. "I want recompense – ah! - for my mother, and my father, and my flight, I want recompense for seeing you, I want --" his body held her pinned against the wall; Lúthien's hanging twitched and shuddered with every thrust that shoved Elwing into it, his stump beside her face to steady himself against the wall, his smeared hand clamping over her mouth until her teeth scraped over his palm and she gulped down air when he released his hold.

She continued hissing obscenities, of the blood of her people spilled in Doriath, of the senseless greed of the Noldor, how the gem brought the Havens prosperity and health, how the Silmaril bestowed blessings as it would see fit, until Maedhros wished he could close his ears to her voice as easily as to the screaming in town before, and found that her words twisted past his unwillingness to hear.

"– and were I to give you the Silmaril, it would withhold its blessings from you. I want to - I want to see you break. You are no longer – no longer deserving. I want to see you understand that. B- but recall also this, Maedhros Fëanorion – recall the sword that felled your brother Celegorm – my father's. Recall the blade that struck your brother Caranthir – my mother's. Recall the dagger you found between your brother Curufin's ribs – a child's, mine."

He recoiled. Her hands clawed into his shoulders, her legs pulled him close and deep into her, her nails clawed into the ripples of scars and the soft flesh beneath, scratching, digging, coming away red-nailed when she shuddered around him, her mouth twisting again, then slacking for a moment only until composure again gained the upper hand and she pushed him off easily, her dress falling down wrinkled to her ankles while she hurled herself at the window, snatched the Silmaril into her hand while Maedhros still stood dumb-struck and growing flaccid, and her look before she fell and the room plunged into darkness spoke volumes:

My recompense. You shall never have either of us. I won.