In the camps of the Bór by heget

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Chapter 1

"The sons of Bór were Borlad, Borlach, and Borthand; and they followed Maedhros and Maglor, and cheated the hope of Morgoth, and were faithful."

“the sons of Ulfang went over suddenly to Morgoth and drove in upon the rear ... They reaped not the reward that Morgoth promised them, for Maglor slew Uldor the accursed, the leader in treason, and the sons of Bór slew Ulfast and Ulwarth ere they themselves were slain”

- The Silmarillion Ch 20 "Of the Fifth Battle"

 

"For the sons of Fëanor that yet lived came down suddenly upon the exiles of Gondolin and the remnant of Doriath, and destroyed them. In that battle some of their people stood aside, and some few rebelled and were slain upon the other part aiding Elwing against their own lords (for such was the sorrow and confusion in the hearts of the Eldar in those days); but Maedhros and Maglor won the day."

- The Silmarillion Ch 24 "Of the Voyage of Eärendil"

 

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The camp is full of noise long before Kreka sees the red banners of her liege lord, the Bright Ones. Once the Folk had pitched their round felt tents separate from the Bright Ones, the elves, but they are together too few in number and now sit only strides apart, and when their horses are corralled, it is in the same pen. It is the horses she hears first, the stamping of their hooves, the whuffs of their breath and low cries as they sense home and food and rest. Kreka is a woman of the People of Bór, and she knows horses. She smiles, perhaps more nervously than she wants to admit, for she is glad her liege lords have returned, even if they make her uncomfortable.

A glance to confirm her young son is where she left him. Old Ullad has a vulture-like grip on the back of his tunic as the other hand stirs the footed cauldron in front of her tent. Children could never be unattended, least they run loose into the paddocks and tramped, or worse into the woods beyond and lost.

"Mind Grandma-ma Ullé, little one," Kreka says on a laughing tongue, making shooing hand motions at the boy. "Stay put so I may find you after I speak to the Bright Ones, and maybe I shall tell you of what happened. Be a good son; do not shame me, and perhaps I shall bring you with me tonight and sit on my lap as the Bright Ones sing of their victory."

Her son plops to the ground, a fat pout on his small lips, but he does not stand up and pull at Ullad’s grip. Having accepted her admonishment to wait - a small miracle in itself! - he picks up a stick near his chubby knees and begins to bend it. Leaving her son to play at being an archer, Kreka meanders her way through the circle of tents, following the rest of her kin that line the rough wooden palisade waiting for the elves to come out from the trees.

The blood-haired one emerges first, Maedhros One-handed. The leader with the sad face, she thinks, sad and broken Little Father. His shadow follows, the dark-haired brother. Once there had been more than one brother of Maedhros with dark hair, before Doriath. Kreka, like all her people, secretly fears the second brother, Maglor of the serpent-swift sword. He is a great warrior, as skilled in war-arts of the sword, the bow, and the horse, as good of a warrior that her kin should aspire to be. But Kreka will not deny she feels uneasy around the one they call Maglor. For all his seemingly gentle manner, his sorrowful voice, she remembers who the stories say slew Mighty Uldor. A wolf may howl mournfully, but a wolf is full of hungry teeth.

She does not see the one that looks like One-handed, the two-soul that would ride behind the serpent-swift sword. Is it to be Doriath again? The riders that enter the camp are too few, and this close to the encampment any scouts or outriders would not stay divided.

The warriors have filtered in through the palisade that separates their camp from the gloom of the trees. At first the voices had been happy, excited, but as all the Bright Ones enter and people begin to count the numbers, see the empty saddles and the ugly stains of gore and blood, the questions change. Kreka sees the faces of the lords, Maedhros and Maglor, and for all the brightness of their eyes knows this coldness. My eyes, when Ernath died, she thinks. They have failed. They did not recover the jewel that means so much to the Bright Ones’ honor. They have lost the last of their brothers as well, and so many, too many of their men. Kreka needs only her hands twice to tally the warriors of the elves, and fear climbs up her innards on taloned paws, for how can her lords keep her people safe with so few?

The men of her people press at the lords for knowledge of the attack, of how it failed, if the fallen were buried at that place next to the strange thing called the sea.

Kreka cares little. They have failed, and more have died. Whenever the elves attacked another, the only thing they bring back is more death. Her mother said as much, the day the Bright Ones returned from Doriath.

She notices shapes in front of each of the lord’s saddles, which she could not discern as they entered. Now that she sees, she stifles a cry of shock. Children, two very young boys, a pair of elves, she thinks, as alike as the two-souled was said to be to his long-dead twin in appearance, though the one seated before Maedhros clutches at the horse’s mane and looks around fearfully, while his brother sits listlessly against Maglor. Both boys have been worn out by the journey and whatever they saw before. Kreka knows, for their eyes are red, and faces sullen and puffy, like Bledda after her son cries out a tantrum. They must have come from Sirion, from the village her liege attacked, for Kreka knows the elves have no children here and does not know the faces of these boys. 

Why have her lords taken these children, she wonders, for their parents must lie dead by her liege lord’s blades, and what reason would they have for stealing the children? Unless they were the only survivors left, she guesses, the only ones not slain, and the lord with one hand is soft-hearted, would not leave two young boys to die of exposure again. According to her mother, that is, who remembers what happened after Doriath, that Kreka was too young to know. Hearsay, anyway, for no human fights at the side of the Bright Ones anymore, not since the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, not since the sons of Bór chose to fight for the elves against their kin. Damning their people to flee afterwards to the Bright Ones for safety, for all the good it did, Kreka thinks bitterly. To swear an oath to no longer raise a weapon against any of the elves, for even the sacrifices of Bór’s sons bought little trust after Uldor’s treachery.

Once everything has settled, the bowstrings unstrung, horses checked and brushed down and turned loose to the paddock, the one with dark hair, Maglor, calls for some food to be brought for the boys. A bit of goat’s milk, he says in an unconfident voice, most unlike him, and Kreka knows he has never cared for any children aside from his brothers, and that these boys are a challenge. The word Peredhil she does not hear yet, nor will understand its meaning at first. 

It is as she is fetching some nourishment for the new hostages, for they must be the Bright One's insurance to keep the boys' surviving kin from following and retaliating, though it is best to think of them as just new refugees, for maybe elves consider the boys the same as how they think of her folk, that Kreka learns that which breaks her world.

The elves are telling how the fallen died, of red blood on the beaches washing out with the tide, meaningless to her, when one of the knights with his red helm and red-crusted sword admits it. That not all of their slain were killed by enemy blades. That some of the lords' troops had stood aside, not spurred their horses across the field or tried to scale the walls. That some had even turned once the walls had been breached and fought along side the enemy, turning blades against sworn-brothers. That the Bright Ones slew their own men because their soldiers could no longer follow the orders to attack yet another elven settlement, a settlement that had sent no weapons to wage war against them.

Lies at first, the woman of the kin of Bór commands to her beating heart. Panic for nothing; it is falsehood. A feeling goes up from her stomach to behind her eyes, cold and stiff.

No. They would not have killed their own warriors. Their warriors would not have decided their leaders false. Our lords have not proven themselves false.

Even to think them, the words are weak as spider thread to restrain the beast of fear crawling up her. She needs to remove herself from the stench of iron and blood and voices asking on and on for the dead. She hands the pitcher of milk to another woman and walks briskly for the safety of her tent.

Kreka goes to the finest rug in her tent, kneels upon the edge, and bows her head down until her forehead is firm against its surface, nose buried deep into the worn plush of its weaving. Only when she has flattened her body against the heirloom of her kin, breathing in the musky smell of the old rug, does she let the tears seep through her clenched eyelids. Her face is hot and breathing muffled and tight as she smothers her weeping into the earth lest the air catch it and carry it to the Bright Ones. Palms flatten to the ground, one thumb rubs worryingly at a bare patch. The other tightens around a fistful of the fringe. Until her crying steadies, Kreka grips the rug like a suckling at its mother’s breast, drawing comfort as her infant son did from her. The rug belonged to Honored Forefather Bór, he of the Great Soul, one of the few possessions of his she has. Kreka prays for whatever of his spirit that has lingered in this rug to seep up through her, give her consolation.

She had delighted as a girl in the story of how Bór of the Great Soul had gathered his three sons, Borlach and Borlad and Borthand her mother’s father, into his tent not long after they had pledged service to the Bright Ones. How, with only the faint coals of the brazier to give light, so late and dark was the night Bór chose, that he whispered the secret to his sons. How the kin of Bór would honor this new pledge, and betray their old master, the Dark King. That Bór had seen the nobleness in these Bright Ones, heard the stories from the tall men in Estolad. That he clasped the arm of each of his sons and told them, “I mean to follow these Eldar, as they call themselves, the Bright Ones with the red hair and the other with singing voice and bow. Our first lord is false to us, leads us to drink from tainted wells. The Eldar have eyes that see clearly. It is our duty as warriors to disdain lies, to aim truthfully with our bow, strike with strength in our swords, lead our kin to safe and plentiful grounds.”

But now, oh Honored Forefather, are the Bright Ones such leaders? Do they see clearly, have they led our people to safety? We turned against the Dark King, rebelled against his command because you told us the elves were more worthy of us. Branded traitors by the Folk, all our lands, our herds and goods, stolen from us, hunted down and spat upon, driven into exile because death was the punishment for dishonorable traitors that brought the Dark King’s displeasure upon them all - that was our reward for obeying you, Honored Forefather. For trusting that the Bright Ones would not be like the one who sat under the three-prong mountain of belching death.

But the Bright Ones' own warriors had turned against their lords, decided that there was no longer honor in serving the blood-haired and the serpent-sword. And slain for that refusal. The wrong blood on the swords.

Kreka gasps into the thin rug of the floor of her tent, hoping no one dares to enter until she can wipe the redness from her face.

She wonders if she can stay.

Ruga had left, journeyed to land where the Folk were given dominion in hopes of finding…she does not know. She doubts Ruga knew. But still her brother took two horses, not the finest in their camp and certainly not ones belonging to the elves, and rode north. In his patched nondescript leathers, leading a set of winter-lean but well-trained horses, the gold band of an eagle and a vulture locking talons around his wrist, she knows he would have been mistaken for an unaffiliated but proud warrior. As long as he was careful not to let his tongue betray him, or dare to speak the language of elves and Straw-haired, she thinks he could have gone unnoticed. They have not changed much, her refugee people, from the Folk that had cast them out. And such a fine bowman as Ruga would have been welcome in any hall.

Kreka debates if she could travel the dangerous road to the new land of the Folk, cross the wilds of Beleriand now under the fist of the Dark King. She doubts it.

Anyways, Bledda is still in his milk-teeth, too young to leave. Her son is all she has, and it has been nearly ten years since Ruga left. There are no guarantees anymore.

"Foremother Borte," Kreka whispers, lifting her head from the ground and feeling the wooziness as the blood resettles, "is this the best course? Are they still our only trail to follow, the Bright Ones? Can they still protect us, and will we still be worthy of our honor if we stay?"

Kreka stares at the shapes along the bronze sides of the brazier, shapes worn smooth by time. The brazier came from over the mountains, old in her people’s reckoning. It can provide no answers.

She thinks of the two young now-motherless boys. Kreka curses her soft heart, for pity will not allow her to abandon those boys. What does the one named Maglor know of the care of small children?

They are motherless boys, too, the Bright Ones.

Kreka does not know where the thought comes from, and the initial absurdity of it makes her laugh, a clean sound in the confined heat of her tent. The elves are older than the sun and moon, she has been told; what need have they of mothers? Still, Kreka remembers their cold, lost faces. It has been a long time for them, without mother or father, and now no longer any brothers. Even Little Father. Motherless boys, the lot of them. Kreka smiles, and if it is a cheerless smile at least it is one with purpose. There is need for her here, in this camp of the Bright Ones, a hand to lead to safe water to drink, clear eyes to see.

Kreka bows her head, thanks Foremother Borte for her strength, Forefather Bór for his wisdom.

She leaves her tent, calls for her son and some food, enough for three boys. She plans to go the one called Maglor and help him feed his new charges. If he wants to protect some lives instead of ending them for once, Kreka will encourage it. By the ancestors, if she did not stay, how would the elves ever survive on their own?

 

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Chapter End Notes

 The few lines about the people of Bór captured my imagination, and I always wondered if any survived and what happened to them. Thus I came up with the idea of two women named Bortë/Borte (and yes, it was as much a nod to the wife of Genghis Khan as following Tolkien's naming conventions). The first Borte follows in the tradition of Haleth, Emeldir, and Morwen as a strong woman who leads her people away from the other Easterling tribes who used the Bór as a handy scapegoat to explain Morgoth's disfavor, going the Fëanorians as a last resort and for a debt of honor after the Nirnaeth.

I used small tidbits of Hun, Persian, and Mongol tribes for inspiration for the Bór in all the stories for this series, and also tried to think of different terms they’d use to call themselves and the elves without resorting to making my own vocabulary. The personal names of OCs are modified from the family of Attila the Hun: Bleda, Kreka, Rugila, Ernakh.

Most of this individual story comes from my musings for the People of Bór and what the juxtaposition of the actions of the Easterlings against what happened at Sirion would dredge up. And because for the brief time the sons of Eärendil are held captive by Maglor and Maedhros, I wanted a reason for them to still have contact with mortals, as they grew up at the Mouths of Sirion in a mixed society, will return to the same at Balar, and Elros chooses mortality at the end of the War of Wrath. Not that the slim evidence about the twins give any reason to assume their time as hostages was for more than two years, but I wanted a human caregiver for the young boys, hence the creation of Kreka.

Also it sets the seed for a reunion during the War of Wrath between the twins and Bledda - and meeting his daughter Bortë, future queen of Númenor. Because that's the other wrinkle, that though we know the names of Elros's four children we have no record of the mortal woman Elros married, a glaring absence when all other peredhil marriages are well-documented. A half-Easterling queen, of a lineage faithful to the West, who was beloved by the often mixed population of early Númenor, but as the Dúnedain turned towards blood purity and colonization was removed from the history books...

I've edited this story to reflect my decision in the sequels to go with the version where the events at Losgar occur so that Amrod dies, as I've preferred that version as enriching and re-enforcing the characterizations of Fëanor and his sons.