Quenta Narquelion by bunn

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The Fall of Luindirien

There is a map for this chapter, but it contains a spoiler so I've put it at the end.

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It was a year before Morgoth took his revenge for the attack on Mount Rerir and the recapture of Thargelion, and when he did, it came in a way that nobody had expected.

Fëanor and his sons, with an escort of one quarter of their remaining people, were east of the Ered Luin again, down near the Baranduin among the trees that were starting to turn golden as the last of the summer faded. There was now a thriving settlement of the Edain and Sindar out of Beleriand there, in the wide flat lands of small woods and sandy pasture that stretched out to the south and west of the land of the people of Bór.

They had taken another shipment of the armour for the Vanyar, loaded on dwarf-ponies, down to a place in the beechwoods where they could camp and send a messenger to Borthin.

Usually the dwarves took the armour this way now, but the army of Belegost had taken heavy losses recently, in an attack across the river into East Beleriand. Belegost had paid a high price for it, and so Maedhros had offered to take over guard duty on the Vanyar armour, at least for this one trip until the wounded of Belegost had had some time to heal.

They did not go near the Edain, or into Borthin’s village. Círdan’s ships might be there, and contact with either the Edain or Círdan’s people might lead to a confrontation that would benefit nobody but Morgoth. Instead they set up a temporary camp in the hills.

“And you’re going to be here when I come back, are you?” Elrond asked, with a dubious look down from his horse at Maedhros standing among the grey trunks of beech-trees, under leaves almost the colour of his hair.

“I am sending Eärrindë and Nahtanion with you,” Maedhros pointed out. “The three of you should be able to get back to Belegost together safely, even if we have to move before you get back and you can’t find us. We may have to, if we see any of the Edain coming this way, but I hope we won’t: I’d like to get this armour safely to the quay, not leave it in a wood.” He hesitated for a moment. “I’m not intending to leave you here, unless you want to stay. But if I send any other messenger than you, there’s a good chance it will cause trouble.”

“I suppose so. I’ll see you later, then.”

“No rush!” Maglor said. “We don’t mind waiting. It’s pleasant to be under blue skies for a change.”

Elrond nodded, and rode off, with Eärrindë and Nahtanion following him on their own horses, wearing gear from which the Fëanorian star had been carefully removed.

They waited for three days in the beechwood for them to return, letting the horses and ponies graze on the hills above the wood where the tall beeches gave way to hazel scrub and long grass. On the fourth morning, there was still no sign of them so Maglor suggested riding down the valley a little way to look out towards the villages in the lowlands below.

They came out of the woods, down to the rough road that wound through the hills from Belegost to the river, and stopped in shock. Ahead of them, to the south across the low-lying riverlands where the Edain villages lay, a desperate ragged, running fight was going on. It was hard to pick out exactly what was going on, but there were wolfshead banners down there. Maedhros swore, and turned his horse at speed to head back to the wood to collect his people. He had brought only thirty-five of them. It was a long time since there had been any major threat so far south and east, and he had left the majority of his small force in Belegost, too far away to reach in a hurry.

“How do we handle this?” Maglor asked as they rode back down together, staring down at the struggle below. “If we come down on the Edain unannounced they may well turn on us. There are Sindar from the Havens living there, Elros said.”

“I know. We’ll just have to hope that Elrond is there and can explain us,” Maedhros said, grimly. “You can’t touch his mind? I have just tried.”

Maglor shook his head. “No. But it’s not as if we were close by blood: I always find it hard. If he’s fighting, I wouldn’t expect to be able to.”  Maglor’s art had always been with words, not thoughts.

“I didn’t bring his banners. I didn’t think we’d need them... We’ll just have to try to look bigger than we are and hope they don’t recognise us. Can you sing us up the illusion of an army?”

Maglor blinked. “I can try, if you want,” he said reluctantly. “But you know I can’t do that and fight too.”

“And we’ll need your sword. Thirty-seven of us. Thirty-seven... There must be over a thousand of Morgoth’s Men down there that I can see, and they will have reinforcements, no doubt. ”

“Well, the Edain can fight. Borthin’s people, too. But most of the Edain fighters will be in the west with Elros, of course. Raise the river?”

“If the Baranduin was in a mood for feeling helpful and the situation down there was suitable, I’m sure Elrond would have done that already... Fog. Everyone here can at least raise a mist. If they can’t see us coming, they can’t count us. Let’s try and panic them.”

“Good idea,” Maglor said, pulling out the harp from its leather sling.

It took what seemed a painful length of time to call up the river-mist, even with all thirty-seven of them and Fëanor working on it. Maglor was quickest. He wove mist from music with a kind of tense concentrated fury. Once the mist was over the river, they could not see what was happening down there any more, and that made it all the harder to wait and work to build the mist. It did not take long, but it felt like weeks.

But at last the fog was built, thick and white and wet hiding the land all around in a heavy veil, so that they could barely see one another.

Maedhros said the word to call the wind they would need to carry the mist with them, and they rode out, at a canter to begin with, then as they came down into the wide sandy lowland meadows, they broke into a gallop, hoping that the ground was clear and the horses would not stumble, the mist blowing with them, beading on their hair, soaking everything.

As they rode, Fëanor shaped the fog. It was easy to shape wind-blown fog: it almost had the form of running people through it, anyway. This was the kind of game he could play almost without thinking about it, weaving fog into shapes of running horses, of the armies of the Noldor as they had been when they marched out from Aman in the darkness after Alqualondë. He could feel Maedhros doing the same thing as they moved, and hear Maglor singing shapes into it under his breath, though he had put the harp away and drawn his sword.

And then they were into the back of the attacking Men, striking them down, and fading back swiftly into the mist again, leaving them striking wildly at a force that seemed to take no injury, for it was only mist.

Then back again, another swift strike, another retreat, before their enemies could work out what was fog and what was real.

They hit them three times when the opposition began to waver and to run. Maedhros whistled the Noldor back, clearly cautious that they not come through Morgoth’s Men and end up fighting the wrong people. It was hard to see who was who in the mist.

Then, suddenly, the light faded, and Fëanor felt a great power strike against the mist, and the wind that Maedhros had called to move it. Fëanor still had his art woven through that mist, as his sons did. The counterblow hit him like a blow in the face, a fierce cold of the far North, wild and terrible. You could hear the boughs of the trees along the river cracking as the cold bit into them. Maedhros, riding just in front of Fëanor, reeled as it hit him, and his horse was hard put to it to keep his rider in his seat.

The fog fell as snowflakes and was gone as if it had never been, revealing overhead the black clouds that Morgoth boiled forth from Thangorodrim. Under them in the suddenly dimmer light, they could see ahead a strong force of Edain and the Borthin’s people. Breaking off from them into a retreat towards the river, between the Edain and the little group of mounted Noldor, were the army of Easterlings.

But nobody was looking at the Easterlings any more. High above them, up on a clifftop of an outthrust arm of the Ered Luin, a golden figure stood, shining against the darkening sky. Fëanor stared at it. The cold strength of it felt horribly familiar. The dark clouds folded around it as if in welcome. It lifted its arms, and the ground began to shake around them. Someone among the Edain was screaming, and then the cliffs began to fall, slowly, but with a terrible inevitability. Dust billowed into the air.

And then, suddenly, everyone was running, north and west, away from the collapsing mountain, up into the hills that still stood strong. And as they ran, a great deep rumbling came behind them, deeper even than the falling mountain. Looking back over the desperately running people, Fëanor’s sight could just make out a white line across the distant horizon, a white line that roared.

Maedhros slowed his horse once they were well clear of the falling cliffs, and the others followed him, letting the men and women on foot stream past them up the hillside. There were animals running with them too, dogs, goats and sheep and horses, and even a small herd of cattle lowing in panic, horns tossing wild-eyed.

The Easterlings must have found another path: the fleeing people were mostly Edain, with a few elves running with them, Sindar from their clothing and their hair. There were a few of Borthin’s people too, shorter, broader and browner than the tall Edain.

A more ordered group came into sight, moving with haste, but with less panic. The Edain had formed a rear-guard, though surely no living enemy could be coming behind through the rockfall.

With them, there was Elrond at last, on foot and sword in hand, with Nahtanion beside him. “Keep going!” he called to Maedhros, as soon as he saw him, running on. “Higher up!”

Maedhros turned his horse and they followed, up into the hills. Behind them the rumbling grew. “What is that?” he asked Elrond, leaning down across the horse’s neck.

“Ulmo.” Elrond answered, breathing hard as he ran. “He’s coming.”

Up into the hills, up away from the swirling dark clouds into thin birch-woods where the sunlight came through, until they stopped at last upon a green hilltop, and looked out upon the great green wave that came cresting slowly in across the low-lying lands, with gulls crying over it and the wind blowing fierce and free above it, blowing Morgoth’s clouds away. The golden figure on the mountaintop turned to flee.

The wave smashed into the mountains to the south with a great roar and a smell of the sea, and one by one, each mountain shivered and with a vast echoing rumble, it fell.

The black clouds had gone, though there was still an odd dark cast to the northern sky, but on the hilltop, the sun was shining on the grass, and made a bright path out across the sea, which now came up almost to the foot of the hill upon which they stood. It was roiling, thick with dust and stone, but the sunlight sparkled on the surface.

The crowds of people and the animals who had run ahead were scattered through the knots of silver-barked birch trees. Most of them had thrown themselves down upon the grass to catch their breath.

Maedhros’s people had come up last, behind the rest, walking the horses, once they were clear of the water. Most of the people who had escaped the wave were further up the mountain, but just in front of them, a small group of the Edain stood looking out from the hillside across the strange new sea. One of them turned back to look at them. It was Elros.

Maedhros glanced quickly around, and for a moment Fëanor thought he would give the command to leave. But if he was going to, Elros pre-empted him. He spoke briefly to one of the Men, and then came scrambling down the hillside towards them to tangle a hand in the mane of Maedhros’s horse. Maedhros gave in and dismounted, and the others followed. Elros embraced Maglor, and then Maedhros too, to his obvious surprise and Fëanor’s private amusement.

“Was that you then, with the fog?” Elros asked, once the greetings had been sorted out.

“It was,” Maglor said, smiling, “We thought Elrond had finally found trouble too large for him to handle on his own. I might have known you would be in the middle of it!”

“I thought Morgoth had brought an army of wraiths down on us! So did the Easterlings. You should have seen their faces when you turned out to be attacking them, not us. But is this all of you?”

“I fear so,” Maedhros said. “I think we have lost eleven, unless there is anyone who has taken a different path and is elsewhere on the mountain. I hope so. I can’t think that anyone badly wounded will have got away, not from the wave.”

“No,” Elrond said, unhappily. “It came too fast. I don’t think anyone who couldn’t run can have escaped...”

“I have asked Gundor to start the count of my men.” Elros told them. “We can hope that there will be others who got away.”

“Borthin is dead,” Elrond said, in something of a rush, as if he was trying to get it over with as quickly as he could. “I was with him when we first saw the Easterlings. He led out his people to try to help Elros, but he was killed before we could join our forces.”

Maedhros grimaced. “That is sad news. Faithful he was, indeed, to the end, and a worthy heir of Bór’s line.”

Elros said, looking distressed, “Things have not gone as we had hoped. Ulmo warned us something was coming and that he would strike at it when it came, but we did not have much time. We were able to move most of the old people and the children up to higher ground, near Borthin’s villages, but I did not expect Morgoth’s lieutenant here, east of the mountains and so far south! And then the Easterlings came down on us and cut us off when we were trying to move the livestock.”

“So you think the people of Bór have survived?” Maedhros asked.

“They should be safe, unless something else has gone wrong. Ulmo told me the wave would not reach the upper Baranduin.”

“That’s good to hear. I was fearing they had all been washed away.” Maedhros looked out and down at the sea sighing far below. “The whole coast must have changed shape.”

"I see what you meant, when you said once that the Valar were too powerful for this war,” Elros said wryly.

“Dangerous allies,” Maedhros agreed. “Speaking of which, we should move on, before someone notices us. Elrond, Nahtanion, where are your horses?”

“I hope they got away,” Elrond said. “We left them grazing when we went with Borthin. Three horses in a force on foot seemed cumbersome.”

“Very well. We have four riderless horses with us, you had best each take one of them for now.” He turned back to his horse, ready to mount.

Elros frowned. “The Havens was twenty-one years ago, Maedhros. Most of my men were children. And you’ve just come to our aid, after all. Let’s at least treat any wounded we still have and search the hills together for those who may be missing, before you vanish again?”

Maedhros looked down at him, frowning. “Are you sure? It will not do your reputation much good, if we are recognised.”

Elros gave him a long level look. “I can look after my own reputation, thank you, without your help. Come on. I’ll guarantee your safety. And it will be so much easier to look for those who are missing, if I have horsemen to help.”

Maglor smiled. “Very pragmatic,” he said, looking at Maedhros. “Can we take a few days break from working for the Dwarves, and serve the Edain instead?”

“I can’t offer you what you want in return,” Elros said to Maedhros. “But I still don’t believe that should be your only priority.”

“You think we should try to make amends.” Maedhros gave him a quizzical look. “Very well then. For a few days, if you wish, we are at your service... I see you have a new sword.”

Elros looked down at the sword-hilt by his hip, and a smile pulled at the corner of his mouth. “It was Thingol's sword. Gil-galad gave it to me,” he said. “I think he was a little disappointed that I already had one, when I got there. He was so very sure you’d kept us in a coal-cellar for years or something along those lines.  He gave me Barahir’s ring too, look, they found it in the rubble...  He so very much wanted to give me kingly gifts. Which reminds me, Elrond, you should speak with him. He’ll be wondering what has happened.”

“Poor Gil-galad.” Maedhros said. “It can’t be easy being High King of the scraps of Noldor left in Middle-earth, with Finarfin here.”

Elros raised his eyebrows. “Your view of Gil-galad has changed.”

Maedhros looked a little embarrassed. “You said he wanted to give you gifts. I have just remembered how Fingon had to pack him off from Hithlum to live with Círdan, after the Dagor Bragollach. He didn’t want to go. I’m sure Círdan was kind enough to him, but still... Circumstances mean we can’t be friends, but that is all my fault, not his. I forgot how young he is.  Most of what he said was true too. I should have been kinder, when he was angry with me.”

“The least of the things you should have done,” Elros told him. Then he grinned at Maedhros confidentially. “I do have Narsil safe still.  If I’m honest, your brother’s sword is better balanced than this, for me at least. I'm not as tall as Thingol!  But I couldn’t tell him that.”

“I should hope not! Shall we arrange search parties?”

“Yes. Let me just check with my men who we are missing and what the tally of wounded is.”

“I’ll try to speak with Gil-galad now. If he is waiting for word, he will be by his seeing stone, I hope, and I can speak with him straight away,” Elrond said as Elros hurried back to his men. He looked over at Nahtanion, waiting with the others. “Do you think the horses...?”

“I’m more worried about Eärrindë,” Nahtanion said gloomily. “She was right behind me, and then I looked around and she wasn’t. I think the horses will have found their own way to higher ground. But I’ll go and call for them now.”

“We’ll search for her,” Maedhros said. “She may have reached the hills before the sea came.”

 

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The searchers found Eärrindë the next day, by the shore, walking silent and wary in company with a little knot of Edain and a handful of Círdan’s Teleri, and very relieved to see her companions. One of the eleven Noldor missing had been saved by his horse, who found its way to the familiar scent and sound of the others as they came riding back up to the small temporary camp near the larger one that the Edain had made, bringing his injured rider with him.

Another, Ecetion, came walking up to the camp on the morning of the third day, quite uninjured and delighted to discover that his horse was safe, having followed the riders after having panicked and thrown his rider. Their reunion was a delight to see, though Ecetion swore that this would be the last time he would ride Windfoot into battle. He clearly was not suited to it.

But eight were lost, and after twelve days of searching, they had to assume them gone for good. One of them was Lanwion, who had been a weaver in Tirion, renowned for images woven in fine silk. Long ago, Lanwion had been a friend of Fëanor’s mother.

He had made the transition seamlessly from outstanding craftsman to able guard captain, had been one of Fëanor’s own people, and had only not been beside him at the last because he had been badly wounded in the Battle Under Stars, and had to be carried from the field unconscious, with his left arm hacked through at the elbow.   He had been there steadfast and true when Maedhros had returned from Thangorodrim, a living reassurance that there was no insurmountable obstacle to a missing hand, and had followed him to Himring.

Lanwion had seemed almost as much a fixture as Maedhros himself. It was strange to be without him, and although it felt a little treacherous to mourn a single person when so many had been lost, Fëanor could not help it.

For a very long time, it had been Lanwion’s task to redistribute duties after they had lost people to a battle. This time it was Lanwion’s own duties that must be shared out. Maedhros and Maglor split most of his work between them. There were no longer enough of their people that there was any need to have a captain of the guard to report to the sons of Fëanor.

Elros was constantly busy, making arrangements for the Edain and Sindar who had been settled around the lower Baranduin and now had escaped to the hills, to move north and east, along the old dwarf-road that led from Nogrod and Belegost towards the mysterious and fabled dwarf-strongholds of the Misty Mountains to rebuild their villages there. With luck, they would be far enough from Angband that they would not be attacked again.

There was no sign of the Easterlings at all, and after none of the scouting parties had reported any sight or sign of them, Maedhros and Elros agreed that they must have been overwhelmed by the great wave.

“One less thing to worry about, anyway,” Elros said, when he appeared, a little unexpectedly, by Elrond’s side at the Fëanorian fire that evening when the sky had deepened to a velvet blue and the first stars were pricking into view. “I wonder if it’s too much to hope that Morgoth’s lieutenant has gone the same way.”

“Ulmo has not told you?” Maglor asked, looking from Elros to Elrond.

Elros shook his head. Elrond made a face. “Not in any way that I can make sense of, anyway. He sent me a dream. It was confusing. Dark waves, flame, mountains falling, our father’s star, and the sound of a harp.”

“He spoke to me directly, before the wave,” Elros said. “That’s why I was here, not on Balar or up at the Falas. But I’m still not entirely sure I understood him. It was... overwhelming.”

“The Valar are often hard to understand,” Maedhros said, with what Fëanor felt was monumental understatement. He poked at the fire with a stick.

“Well, I hope he won’t need to intervene on this side of the mountains again,” Elros said with a sigh. “We had them all set for the winter, and now the survivors are going to have to build new homes with the winter coming on. And supplies are short. We’ve lost most of this year’s harvest to the sea.”

Maedhros laughed shortly. “Elros. The Valar are your allies in war! Ask Ulmo for supplies for your villages. He won’t be short of fish. Finarfin will send you builders, if you ask him, and Ingwion will no doubt send singers who can call sweet fruit from trees in midwinter.”

“Oh!” Elros said. He grinned at Maedhros. “Now I feel foolish.”

“You aren’t scratching a living in the Taur-im-Duinath any more,” Maedhros said.

“No. Life has got so much more complicated than that.”

Maglor laughed. “If you are missing it, I am sure we can find some spiders webs for you to set fire to.”

“I can honestly say I am not missing the giant spiders,” Elros told him, laughing back. “I wonder how much of the Taur-im-Duinath is left? We will have to have new maps made.”

“You seem to be doing very well with the Edain, especially since you had to start off not knowing any of them,” Maedhros told him. “I’m impressed with your organisation of them, truly.”

Elros suddenly looked much younger, and quite delighted. “Gil-galad helped me a lot. I would have been lost without him. And Gundor is a marvel.” He looked over at his brother. “I sometimes wish there were two of me, though. The Doriathrim mostly look to Círdan, but they come to me if he tells them something they don’t like. Which is often: Balar is very unlike Doriath, I’m told.”

“And you want to push the Doriathrim off to me instead?” Elrond said, eyebrows raised. “You make it sound so inviting. I think I prefer Belegost.”

“Bah,” Elros said cheerfully. “Foiled again. I’d forgotten that you always see through my cunning plans.”

Maglor took out his harp. “Since you are visiting us, you should choose the song,” he said. “Or would you rather play?”

“No! I don’t get to hear you play any more. I should take the chance while I have it. There’s nobody who comes close on Balar. Sing... sing the one about Finrod and Bëor’s first meeting. Your version, not the one from Dorthonion.”

“Finrod! He’d laugh that you asked me for that one. Well, I hope he would... Is Daeron of Doriath not on Balar?” Maglor said, settling the harp carefully between his knees. “I heard him sing a few times. He’s good. Better than I am, or so I have been told.”

Maedhros made a choked noise of amusement. “Don’t believe a word of it,” he told them. “Either that Daeron was better, or, much more, that Maglor believes it.”

“Well, he’s definitely not on Balar,” Elros said. “I would have noticed. There isn’t space on Balar to overlook anyone, let alone a singer. If he’s still alive, he must have gone east.”

 

* * * * *

 

Two days later, in the first red morning light, Fëanor under the thin shadow of birch-trees was watching Maedhros look out south across the wide new sea which hissed and sparkled below the hillside. It was starting to make new beaches for itself where the cliffs had fallen, though the water was still clouded with soil.

Maglor came up and tapped his brother cheerfully on the shoulder. “Have we finished searching the shoreline? What’s next?”

“We should go back north,” Maedhros said, abruptly.

“We have only been here a few days,” Maglor pointed out frowning. “I don’t think Morgoth will be missing us yet.”

“None the less.”

Fëanor looked at his eldest son with some concern. The Oath was coiling thick around him. Maglor, as usual, seemed somehow to manage not to notice it. Maedhros was clearly uncomfortable about the way it pulled at him, and so Fëanor reached out and pulled it back around himself instead. Maedhros gave his father’s spirit a miserably unhappy look, though it did have gratitude in it too.

“What’s the matter?” Maglor asked him.

“I found myself dreaming of Eärendil, and the Star in the West,” Maedhros admitted, in a low voice.

Maglor winced. “Even here?”

“The war has reached beyond the mountains,” Maedhros said, and shrugged.

“North, then,” Maglor said, and sighed. “I’ll tell Elros we are leaving.”

“I’m sorry,” Maedhros said, almost helplessly. “I can leave you and Elrond here and go back to Belegost. That should be far enough. I hope.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Maglor said. “Elrond can stay if he wants to.  But we will do this together.”

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Chapter End Notes

See Map Larger
The area marked with wavy green lines is the area that was flooded in this chapter. The area around the southern Baranduin, apart from the mountains, was largely marshy and low-lying, running down to wide areas of dune and saltmarsh (hence the reason why it was not possible, in Chapter 13 : East of the Mountains, to carry the armour manufactured in Belegost to the Sea: it would have been a very long journey over land that had never been settled permanently, was marshy and very treacherous. The scale is not perfect, but gives some idea how the land fits together. Of course, between the First Age and the Third Age when we see Hobbits living along (what is left of) the river Baranduin, Numenor has fallen (resulting in tidal waves hitting Lindon) and the Flat World was rendered Round, so considerable changes in the landscape are only to be expected. Luindirien is an alternative name for the Ered Luin, used here because I thought to state the name gave away what was going to happen.