Quenta Narquelion by bunn

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Failing Hope

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In the wake of Nirnaeth Arnoediad, there followed a seemingly endless round of small skirmishes, exhausting to the spirit and wearing to the nerves. Fëanor fought silently beside his sons, careful not to make his presence obvious, but still, an unsleeping, unseen terror to the servants of the Enemy.  It was dispiriting to see how little they could now achieve.There was rarely time to think of anything but the immediate problems: the approach of the enemy, provisions, water, fire, brief moments of rest.

The raiding bands of orcs, the wraiths and giant wandering spiders that now appeared across the land were bad enough, but the hardest of all was dealing with their own people whose minds had been broken.

Amrod came riding back out of the night to Midcastle.  It was the only fort along the Andram wall that they still had people enough to garrison, save from the few people still left holding on in Wallsend.  The tattered remnant of his warband was behind him. Almost all were injured: all exhausted. Amras came running down to meet him as the horses clattered through the gates. Fëanor followed, worried.

It was rare that the twins went out together to fight, now; it worked better to have one to hold the wall while the other commanded the roving patrols. It was hard on them though: once, they had taken joy in doing everything together as one. But those days were gone.

“What happened?” Amras demanded, as Amrod dismounted painfully. He had a leg-wound, the kind you got when someone on the ground struck up at you on horseback, but usually orcs could not reach so high.

“One of Morgoth’s thralls,” Amrod told him. Amras made a frustrated noise. “I know, I know. I was foolish.”

“You know better than that!” Amras said. He pulled his brother’s arm across his shoulders and began to help him up the steps. Someone took Amrod’s horse, and others were helping what was left of Amrod’s troop. It was a well-rehearsed process, by now.

“Yes, but it was Laitar. He hadn’t been gone long, and after all, he came with us from Valinor. He was strong, I thought. He came back with three others... Nairien over there was one of them, the only one who lived. I checked the others. There was no sign of darkness in their eyes at all, they had not been taken to Angband, I’m sure of it. Then there was a spider, and I was tired... I didn’t check Laitar. He was my friend, after all.”

“Oh, no,” Amras said, with a kind of sick resignation. They reached the hall. He supported Amrod to a bench, and started to help him take his armour off.

“I know. Foolish of me.”

“I’m sorry about Laitar.”

“I am, too. And sorrier for the three guards he stabbed to let his orc friends get near us without an alert.”

“You know it was not really him,” Amras said, checking the wound carefully. It looked clean,that was something.

“No. No, of course not,” Amrod said wearily. “Or if it was, he was locked deep inside himself, unable to say or do anything to warn me... I had to shoot him. He tried to run back to Angband.”

Amras rubbed his face, miserably. “Not another one.”

“Laitar was my friend. He was. He would not have done it, if he had any choice. I should have checked his eyes.” Amrod’s face was pale and his eyes were wet. Fëanor would have given almost anything to be able to put an arm around him.

“Even if you had, very likely you could not have freed him,” Amras said gently. “Morgoth’s will is strong.”

“Maglor has done it,” Amrod said, obstinately.

“Only twice. And Maglor has an advantage anyway, being a singer. He was practicing for this before we ever knew it was possible, you know that.”

Amrod wilted. “I suppose so. I’ll never know, now. I hope Mandos will be kind to him.”

“Have a drink,” Amras said, offering a cup, because there was no other comfort that could be offered.

* * * * * *

 

Curufin and Amrod stood high up in the heather-covered hills of the Andram Wall, looking out east over Wallsend. It was raining a little, a slight thin rain that caught the afternoon light. The lonely hill of Amon Ereb loomed in the misty blue distance across the plains. You could see the outline of Caranthir’s hastily-expanded fort on the crest of the hill, and just make out the faint shape of new walls around the base of it, shades of grey-blue against the misty distance.

“Why ask me?” Curufin said bitterly. “I thought you had all agreed not to trust me with anything, since Nargothrond.”  

“Because this is something you are very good at,” Amrod said. He shrugged. “And, in all honesty, I cannot say what I would have done in Nargothrond either. It can’t have been easy.”

“Thank you!” Curufin said. “No, it was not. It really was not easy! I know Maedhros thinks we should have consulted him and Fingon, but I still have no idea how that would have helped. Finrod’s oath and ours were in direct conflict. Celegorm and I could see no other path. We had to do something. ”

Amrod looked sideways at his brother and changed the subject. “So this gap,” he said. “Is there any device you can think of? We would struggle to hold the Andram, if it came to it, but with Amras in the west and me at the eastern end, we could try. But the plains between here and Amon Ereb are quite impossible to defend, so far as I can see.”

“I can’t see a way to fortify it,” Curufin admitted. You could see it hurt him to admit it, but Fëanor did not dare to reach out to him with comfort or suggestions. “Maglor’s Gap was always a weak point, and this is wider. And we have fewer people to hold this plain than the Gap, now.”

“We barely have the people to hold the Andram Wall,” Amrod agreed. “If I pull people off guard duty in the hills to try to build fortifications across the gap to Amon Ereb, then we risk losing control of the crossing of the Sirion in the west. And if Morgoth gets hold of the east bank of Sirion....That would mean no more supplies from the Falas. Not to mention ruin for what’s left of our people south of the Wall. We have herds on that land, and we need access to the Taur-im-Duinath. Wood, hithlain for rope, and then there’s food, fruit, nuts and honey and... well everything. Without that, there’s nothing but Ossiriand.”

“Yes, I do understand the tactical problem, Amrod,” Curufin said testily. “I’m not an idiot.”

“Did I say you were? I was only thinking aloud. No need to be so prickly!”

“I can’t spin defences from the air!” Curufin exclaimed. “I lost my workshops with Himlad, and my people to... to Nargothrond.”

Curufin’s people had stayed with his son, of course, but at the moment Curufin seemed barely able to speak of Celebrimbor at all. Fëanor, listening, ached for him. He had always expected loyalty from his sons, and they had delivered it, even Maedhros, who sometimes seemed almost too willing to follow his own ideas, had followed Fëanor when it counted. For Celebrimbor to have turned away from his own father to Orodreth, of all people, was hard on Curufin. It was a pity that Celebrimbor’s mother had not come to Middle-earth. A pity for Curufin, too. The three of them had been so close.

“I know, I know,” Amrod said. “It was a faint hope. I just thought you might be able to come up with something. You often do. Amras and I can lend you a few people. Caranthir and Maedhros will too, if you can think of something useful to do with them.”

“And they would obey my orders? My own people refused!” Curufin laughed without any obvious sign of being amused.

“If I tell them to, yes, they will.” Amrod said, patiently.

“Maglor won’t help. He thinks if it had been him in Nargothrond he would have done better. Convinced Finrod, somehow, to break his oath, while keeping his own, and then have Finrod join us with Nargothrond’s full strength in our union. I’d like to have seen him try.”

“I don’t believe he has thought it out,” Amrod said. “He is just unhappy.”

“Aren’t we all?” Curufin rolled his eyes.

“Maglor will help if Maedhros tells him to. Come on. Think about the problem, at least. I know the situation isn’t ideal, but it’s what we have to work with.”

Curufin laughed more genuinely this time. “Suddenly I feel my youngest brother is more grown-up than I am,” he said. “Spinning defences from the air... Hm. You mentioned rope. How if we at least set a warning line across from the Andram to Amon Ereb? It wouldn’t hold back a dragon, but we could use it to give warning of orc-bands on the plains, at least, so we can intercept them. And we could do it simply with rope, we only need something to hold the line.”  

Fëanor could not but be proud of him for that.  He had lost almost everything, and yet, he had not stopped thinking and making. Amrod, too was making the best of things, and taking the time to help his brother too.

Amrod grinned at Curufin. “See! I knew that you’d come up with something. That would be a lot of rope, but I think we might be able to manage it. Let’s go and check what supplies we already have.”

 

* * * * * *

A cold night at the start of winter, the wind blowing snowflakes in wild spirals around the eaves of a small thatch-roofed house, one of a small cluster of buildings somewhere lost in the darkness of the western slopes of the Ered Luin. The orcs and Easterlings did not care for snow, and so, unusually, three of Fëanor’s sons found themselves together for a short while, with their father’s spirit looking on in silence.

Maglor blew gently into the long wooden tube, listening for the tone. He took out his long knife and made a small adjustment to it, blew again, a long, haunting call, and another fine shaving peeled carefully from the smooth wood.

“Why don’t you make another harp?” Amras asked him idly. He was sitting on a low stool made from a tree-stump, darning socks by the light of the fire. “I thought you preferred harps to flutes?”

“Can’t get the strings,” Maglor told him, stroking the base of the pipe gently with the knife to even it off. “I don’t like gut or hair for harp strings. I tried both. The sound isn’t so clean and they go slack in the wet. I prefer metal strings. They have a better tone.”

“You can’t get some from our friends in the mountains?”

“I’d prefer not to ask them for non-essentials,” Maglor said, drily. “They send us supplies in return for defending their frontiers. I’m not sure their generosity extends to sending me luxuries that I cannot pay for. Best to keep some goodwill for when we really need it.”

“You may be right,” Maedhros agreed. He was making arrow-flights from grey goose-feathers, a small, wickedly-sharp knife in his left hand, and the feather caught neatly in the grasp of the silver hand that he wore upon the stump where his right hand should be. “You know that’s why they always like Caranthir so much? He has always kept very detailed accounts. So Azaghâl told me once. The mark of an honorable person, the Dwarves say.”

Maglor laughed. “He did well enough out of them, from all I have heard!”

“But now his treasures have gone to Ulfang and his friends anyway, so he might as well not have bothered,” Amras said with a grimace.

“Ask Celegorm to send them some venison in payment for some harp-strings,” Maedhros suggested. “He always says the hunting’s good down there by the river.”

Maglor grimaced. “No.”

Maedhros raised an eyebrow. “This again? He’s your brother. You can’t ignore him. I know you don’t really hate him...”

“I’m not asking Celegorm for anything,” Maglor told him tersely. “He imprisoned Lúthien when she asked him for aid, and tried to force her into marriage. Almost exactly what Eöl did to poor Aredhel, and I thought Celegorm was shocked by that! He may be my brother, he may have been stupid enough to swear the cursed Oath with the rest of us but I don’t have to like him. Or Curufin, for that matter. I’m amazed Curufin let him get away with it. I’m amazed that Celegorm would think of such a thing! I liked Finrod. And he was brave. A lot braver than Curufin.”

Anger flamed hot in Fëanor, but he held it back. Maglor had done his duty every step of the way. He did not have to be happy about it.

“I liked Finrod, too,” Maedhros said bleakly. “But I don’t think his death was entirely Curufin’s fault. Do you remember Finrod’s people, back at the Mereth Aderthad? They thought themselves the most fortunate of the Noldor in Middle-earth: no blood on their hands and a shining leader to follow. He was going to build them a new city, as beautiful as anything in Aman. They loved him, I would swear it. They did follow him to the Dagor Bragollach, after all. And most of Nargothrond crossed the Grinding Ice with Finrod.”

“You think Finrod didn’t try very hard to oppose Curufin? Hmm.” Maglor carefully cut a new hole in the flute.

“If Finrod had really wanted to lead the whole of Nargothrond to march on Angband, I believe he could have convinced them. In fact, I wonder if he had tried to leave Nargothrond without renouncing the crown, if they would have let him go.”

“So he used Curufin to try to keep his city safe. It’s certainly a more comfortable way of looking at it,” Amras said.

“More comfortable from our point of view, certainly. I’m not at all sure that it’s right.” Maglor said, frowning.

“Finrod was far from stupid,” Maedhros said. “If he had insisted that they all come with him, the whole city would have died. They might have retaken Tol Sirion, but I can’t believe they would have got into Angband. If you had a free choice to follow Curufin or Finrod, who would you pick? Even Celegorm and Curufin’s own people did not follow them away from Nargothrond: they chose Celebrimbor.”

Maglor held out a hand in an equivocal gesture of acknowledgement. “I still think it was craven of our brothers. They took advantage of Finrod’s hospitality. And what was Curufin thinking, convincing Nargothrond that Morgoth was too strong to attack and they would all suffer horribly? We could have used their support. Who knows, perhaps they might even have turned the tide, if their whole army had come out again at the Nirnaeth! For that matter, if they had asked Lúthien for a fair alliance rather than penning her in a cave, think how she might have helped us! For what she did to Sauron, I’d...” Maglor stopped abruptly, almost as if he had choked.

“You’d have let her have and hold a Silmaril?” Maedhros said, disbelieving. Fëanor stared at Maglor.  He did not believe it either.

“No.” Maglor said with some difficulty. “No, perhaps not that. But something could have been agreed, surely. And it is thanks to Curufin that Nargothrond would not fight. No wonder he fled his lands at the first serious threat. He’s craven. I thought better of him. I thought better of both of them!”

Maedhros shrugged. “Well, he was right, wasn’t he? Morgoth was too strong. Too strong for Finrod, too strong for me and... and all of us.” There was an awkward silence. Nobody mentioned Fingon but everyone was thinking of him. “It was Thingol of Doriath who sent Finrod out to die, not Curufin. Perhaps I should have listened more to Curufin, before. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. None of it matters, until we get the Silmarils back.”

“You used not to think that way,” Maglor said. “You used to think there was more to it than that.”

“That was before,” Maedhros said. There was a long pause, though which the faint crackling of the fire was the only sound.

“Well, ask Caranthir then,” Amras said at last. “Caranthir can afford harp strings, even now.”

Maglor grinned humorlessly. “Alas for Caranthir, funding all of our endeavours! I don’t think I have the nerve. Good harp strings are expensive. And, after all, I’ve never made a flute myself before. It will be interesting. ”

He blew gently into the pipe again, and made a fluid trilling sound, like a nightingale singing.

Maedhros stilled, staring into the fire, a goose quill still caught in his silver hand. It was clear to Fëanor’s perception at least that he was speaking in thought to someone, but he could not see who it was. A long moment, and then Maedhros blinked and looked across the fire at his brothers. His face was grave.

“Celebrimbor has opened his mind to me. Nargothrond has fallen to the Great Dragon. Orodreth the king is dead. Most of the people of Nargothrond... they were slain in battle, or taken as thralls.”

Maglor put his face in his hands.

“But Celebrimbor lives. Is he free?” Amras asked urgently.

“Yes, he was not taken. He fled south after the battle with those of his people that survived. He is at Círdan's Havens at the mouths of Sirion. Most of the other survivors have fled into the woods of Doriath. It seems that Thingol has let go of his objections to the Noldor enough to offer them sanctuary.”

“But of course Doriath would not accept a son of the House of Fëanor. So he has gone to Círdan, rather than come to us,” Maglor said frowning.

“Yes. I suppose he did at least contact me with the news.”

“Why did he open his mind to you, and not to his father?” Amras wondered.

“I am his lord,” Maedhros shrugged as if that entirely explained why his nephew might not wish to speak to his own father, after so long an absence.   Fëanor was not at all sure that it did.  Celebrimbor and his father had been so close.

“Celebrimbor does not care to open his mind to his father, any more than I would myself,” Maglor said.

“That, too. But still, it doesn’t matter. Only the Silmarils matter.”

It was warm by the fire, for all that the night was cold outside, and yet Maglor looked at his elder brother and he shivered.   It seemed that Maglor, too, was losing his nerve.

* * * * *

Fëanor could remember a time, not so very long ago, when Caranthir would not have thought of being seen drinking ale with a dwarf in public. But Caranthir now, cheerfully lounging on a bench in a worn leather coat with a battered sword at his hip, was a very different Caranthir from the haughty prince in silks and gems who had once been so careful of his dignity.

They were sitting at the inn near the main gate of the great dwarf-city that the residents called Gabilgathol, but which was usually referred to outside of it by the Elvish name of Belegost, looking out west across the mountain-road to Beleriand, stretching away blue and purple into the sunlit distance. Even now, the servants of Morgoth never came so far into the Blue Mountains as Gabilgathol. The Gates stood open, traders were coming and going, and the mountain-city would have looked almost like a city at peace, if it had not been for the number of watchful guards.

“They did what ?” Caranthir demanded, putting his cup down abruptly on the low table.

“Some craftsmen from Tumunzahar have killed King Thingol,” the dwarf, Audur, told him again.

“But... how?”

“They were doing some jewellery-work for him, there in Doriath. He refused to pay, or so we heard. They walked right out of Menegroth with it. The elves only caught them when they reached the fords of the Aros. Even then, some of them got away. ”

“Wait. They walked right out of Menegroth with... with what, Audur?”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. They killed Thingol, and took the Nauglamir, the Necklace of the Dwarves that long ago we made for Felagund, that was taken from the ruin of Nargothrond. And Thingol had tasked them to set into it, the Silmaril...”

“WHAT?!” Caranthir leapt to his feet. “But... no, they were caught, you say. So the Silmaril is still in Doriath?”

“Well,” Audur looked uncomfortable behind her beard, and felt the need to carefully turn her golden arm-ring until the yellow stone caught the light. “No. Because then, Tumunzahar declared war on Doriath. They sacked Menegroth, and took the Nauglamir. ”

“Impossible.” Caranthir laughed harshly. “Nobody can sack Menegroth. Doriath is protected by the arts of Melian.”

“No more. Queen Melian has vanished, now that Thingol is dead. Doriath was unprotected. It has fallen. It’s true!” she added hastily, for Curufin’s face was dark with suspicion. “I had cousins from Tumunzahar who were there. We did try to talk them out of it! Gabilgathol has always traded peacefully with Elves. We wouldn’t do something like that. Or not straight away, anyway. We know that Elves sometimes have ... different ideas about contracts. ”

Caranthir looked down at her. “Audur. Tell me swiftly. Where is the Silmaril of Doriath now?”

“With Lúthien and Beren on Tol Galen. Beren led an attack on the army of Tumunzahar, as they were heading home...”

“With Lúthien.” Caranthir swore loudly and creatively in Valinorean Quenya, his face reddening. Fëanor was tempted to join in. Of all the creatures in Middle-earth who might have ended up in possession of the Silmaril after the death of Thingol, it had found itself in the hands of the one person who had bested Morgoth himself.

“He attacked them at Sarn Athrad, at the great ford there, just as they were crossing the river. They were above ground and taken by surprise. None of them survived.”

“ None of them?” Caranthir’s voice was sharp with surprise. He, like Fëanor, had seen the Dwarves fight.

“The Shepherds of the Trees came down on the survivors. It was a massacre.”

Caranthir began to speak, then paused and clearly thought twice of whatever he had been going to say. He said instead. “And your cousins were among them. I am sorry.”

Audur said glumly “They died fighting, but I wish it had been in a better cause. The river is paved with the gold of Doriath now, we hear. They only took the Nauglamir. Nothing else. I wouldn’t want the thing, no matter how lovely it is. I hear people saying now, that the Nauglamir is under a dragon-curse still, from the dragon that ruined Nargothrond. Dragon-gold is always unchancy.”

“Why am I only hearing about all of this now?” Caranthir demanded.

“Because now is when you have come to Gabilgathol?” Audur said looking confused and a little alarmed.

“You couldn’t have sent a message? I was in Thargelion, not thirty leagues from Sarn Athrad!”

“We weren’t sure how you would feel about it. After all, Doriath is an Elf-kingdom, and the people of Tumunzahar are our brothers. I thought you might find it... difficult, to know that Tumunzahar marched to war on Doriath. Some of us wondered which side you would choose.”

Caranthir took a deep breath and sat down again, with an obvious effort. Fëanor was impressed that he had managed it. There was a time when Caranthir would simply have stormed off, no matter what offence he might cause in the process.

“Audur, please , if our alliance means anything to you at all, if you hear any word about the Silmarils, you must let me know at once. We don’t want the Nauglamir. But the Silmaril...that is very important to us. An heirloom of our family. The work of my father’s heart, which will never be repeated: that means the same to us as it would to you. We are sworn to recover them. We would give anything. Anything .”