A Vulture With the Sun in Its Talons by heget

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Chapter 1

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"We cannot stay," Kreka says, scrutinizing the timbre of her own voice. She stands before the two elf lords near the edge of the camp, facing them alone, but the eyes of both her people and theirs are upon her. Age has begun to creep into her voice. She is only a few years over forty, but she will soon be old, with a voice withered and desiccated. Already she can hear her voice made bitter and fragile like a piece of untanned leather now riddled with cracks. No good for belts and shoes, but she hopes the strength of her heart makes that leather voice into the finest bowstring, that her words fly sure and deep into the breasts of the Bright Ones. She will not allow her speech to be dismissed. "Our people will no longer stay with your camps. We no longer pledge for your protection, Lord Maglor, Lord Maedhros."

Kreka wishes she was like Old Ullad with her failing vision, that she had a flimsy haze to settle over her eyes, one that would give her power to meet the piercing light of the Bright Ones’ eyes, the power to not look down, to feel confident that a shield protects her conviction and inner mind. But Kreka stares, and allows her anger and duty be her shield.

She is an old woman by the reckoning of her people, and age ate away her fear of them.

There are few in the camps of the Bright Ones anymore. The elves that remain are mostly drifters, suspicious ones with gaunt faces, the escaped thralls and exiled criminals. Those that still value their own kind and their own lives band together to join the Bright Ones, and many of the ex-thralls see a kinship with the one-handed. The human outlaws are worse than the elven ones. Violent crude men, they either boast about or hide dishonorable deeds in their pasts according to temperament or crime. Kreka cannot decide which she finds more worrying. The men that come are desperate, and among the merely scared and hungry are the oathbreakers, murderers, and traitors. They crawl into the following of the Bright Ones, who need the numbers and no longer cared what type of men will follow them.

As a mother to her son and leader of her people, Kreka cares. As holder of the honor and memory of Bór of the Great Soul, of Great Foremother Borte, of her grandfather and great uncles that died to preserve their loyalty, the soul of her people, she must stand and fight for it.

Especially now when rumors of another choice have come to her.

"We came to you because we feared for our lives. Because we were weak, and you had strength. Because your swords would keep the orcs and the other tribes from wiping us out." Kreka speaks of her people’s truth, and her shame would be to cover this past in deceit, not admitting the weakness. There is no use in pretending that the other tribes had not overpowered the kin of Bór, or deny that Great Foremother Borte had gathered her servants and remaining men, her daughters-in-law and grandchildren, and fled because ignoble death had been the only alternative.

"I know that your people’s reasons for demanding we shelter you were motivated by self-interest. I assumed that honor and fealty were also part of your reasons," the elf lord says scornfully.

The slap of the word honor rakes across Kreka’s face like the claws of an eagle, but she is proud, and her hand goes to her breast. She feels the worn silk of the garment under her fingers, the embroidered vulture with red eyes. The pattern is old. A symbol of her kin from long before they came over the mountains, it is old in the ways of men, if not as ancient as the elves. Feeling the raised stitches of the wings, Kreka is no longer intimidated by those that saw the first rise of the sun. Did not even the lore of the Bright Ones agree that the sun itself was theirs? Why else would the vulture hold it in its claws, protecting it? Honor. Yes, this was about honor, that Kreka and the people of Bór of the Great Soul must not lose it, if it was not already lost to them.

Kreka tightens her hands into two fists, wills herself to become Foremother Borte, to have the same strength to speak to the serpent sword and the blood-haired with words that cannot be parried.

The shame is on the Bright Ones, not her. “We came to you because we feared death by orcs and other men, feared the power of the Dark King Morgoth,” Kreka repeats. “But know this. We pledged our old fealty to the Dark King for the same reasons. Because we feared his power, feared his orcs, feared the swords of other men.”

The Lords Maedhros and Maglor look as if they have been struck, which pleases Kreka. She smiles grimly to see the rush of anger and shock on their faces, the outrage that she dare compare the two. The arrowhead of her words has stuck. “It was only our fear, and your strength.”

"And what, because we are no longer strong you will betray us, be faithless oath-breakers to turn back because the road is dark?"

"The road was ever dark," Kreka shouts. "We were never safe from the Dark King, never had peace. Life was that before we crossed the mountains, before we turned for you. It has been such for us when we were under your care, and it will be once more. That will not change. Great Foremother Borte came to you because she had no other choice, and because honor demanded it. All her sons died for you lords. But it is not because you have not the strength, Lords. It is because you cannot offer us honor, or truth. If we stay with you any longer, the proud folk of the Great Soul shall diminish to nothing, honor-less, nameless. The camp dogs scavenging the barest scraps from the leaving of murderers, that is all we shall be. No, they shall be greater than us, because they were never once something more."  

Kreka would weep if she could to think of how far they had fallen. Not just her kin but the Bright Ones, who once, long before the sun arose, had been honorable and true. But no longer. Not for many long years of the sun. And too blind to see how deeply they had fallen, and dragged the People of Bór down with them.

They should have turned aside. Her people should have left at Sirion, at Doriath, back when the difference between the honor of the old masters was clear. She should have left when she realized she could not see the difference.

We stood aside, and you stole our honor.

We thought you were better than the Dark King, would make us better. You have not. We are not.

"So you wish to leave us?" says the one-handed lord in a sad voice. Pity and guilt would have softened her heart, but Kreka can not afford to be fooled by his sadness.

"Are we not free to leave you, if we came to you freely?" Kreka bites with venom.

She knows their stories of why they really came. That Paradise was attacked, Paradise ruined, unsafe. Except Paradise is still there, safe, unruined, still home of the gods and land with no war, no death, the bed of the sun where it sleeps without fear. Great fools, the Bright Ones, to leave. The Dark King is here and not there. The little peredhil had told her stories, when they felt safe and were left alone because the Bright Ones were away, of their friends among the Edain men, not just the Straw-haired but the ones that skulked through trees like the shadow elves. Old men and women gave the stories of the Edain to the boys and their dead mother. Knowledge from all the people only half-learned and then half-forgotten by those two odd boys they shared, how the fathers of their men had journeyed with the sunrise looking for that promise of Paradise, the paradise that was still there with no Dark King.

The light in the eyes of the Bright Ones blinded them. Such eyes could not see. Blind and foolish, considering nothing but the call of light, never the ground at their feet. And Kreka could no longer try to lead the lords away from folly and destruction.

So she spits her words like dirt thrown at an enemy’s eyes, and that is the crux, because she fights the Bright Ones like enemies now, not allies.

She cannot serve those she treats as enemies.

Because there were other Bright Ones, ones on the sea, with greater honor. And they had made a place for refugees of men and elves that Kreka regrets she did not take her people to. If not in the beginning, then she should have lead them away when the two little hostage boys had been returned to tribe and kin. Or when the Dark King had covered all the land with his orcs and demons, and she had fled south into the tangled woods beyond the rivers with the lords she no longer trusted. But Bledda had still been so young, and Kreka had been afraid. She had been afraid of the men and elves at the refuge on the island and at the river mouth. And so she had not joined with them, because she had stood aside as the serpent sword and the one-handed attacked and killed men and elves. None of river mouth or island had pledged allegiance to the Dark King, none were threatening or attacking her people or lords. Those dead warriors she mourned long ago in Sirion who had turned against her lords kept more honor than her, more honor than remained to the people of Bór the Great Soul who had striven so hard to preserve it.

Honor was not in trinkets, in objects, but in the actions and blood. Blind fools. Blind fools who destroyed their own honor for something that was an untouchable star anyway, and had dragged her people into their folly and worthlessness. No more. Kreka was the blood of Bór, of Borte, of the vulture of the sun.

"We are leaving," Kreka says in her cracked leather voice, and finds her voice is the sternness of steel. The weight of her people’s eyes behind her feel like armor making her strong, like all their hands on her back, holding her up, steadying her weak knees, soothing away the aches in her bones.

"We are leaving, we are going back north, and we shall find the army of the elves come from the lands of paradise, and the place of refuge for elves and men. We renounce you and any claims of fealty. If you choose to stop us, you must do it by force."

Kreka straightens her hands from the tight fists and tries to ignore the stinging pain where her nails had dug into her palms or the quaking of her knees. Her gaze is level. Almost fifteen years ago she had learned the lords had killed their own men who turned aside or tried to stop what happened at the Mouths of Sirion. Kreka had cried then, long and bitterly with the realization of who her lords were and what they could do. What they would do. She meets their bright gaze and knows they have slain men and women who have defied them. She has learned it is right to fear what violence the Bright Ones might stoop to, and she can no more stop their swords if they use them than stop the wind or the rain from falling. Since the new star arose and rumors flowed south of the armies from the West landing upon this shore, there have been many fierce storms and tremors in the earth. Kreka had cried in fear at their power and fury, but she stands firmly and silently now. The weight of her people’s eyes are behind her.

The Bright Ones do not answer. Their gaze turns from her and they make no motion of protest. Kreka feels no triumph, just a long weariness, but it is what she expects. She desires nothing of them but this silent acquiescence, and will speak no more. Borthand’s grandaughter has fulfilled the demand as a descendant of Foremother Borte, and now her next task awaits. It is a long journey back north to Beleriand, daring dangers of the Dark King’s armies to reach the refuge on the ocean and the promise of the army from paradise. Plans have been made, people readied, belongings packed, but Kreka must begin the process of moving them. A long journey, she thinks, but her knees no longer ache.

The serpent sword, the elf lord with the compelling voice, calls out to her, begs a word. Kreka does not pause in her march away, having said what was required as her final duty to former masters. They are nothing to her and now the tasks of leading her people are her only concerns. But the serpent sword calls out. His voice is a familiar one, for constantly has he waxed and waned in his sorrows, and his self-pity became as meaningless and ever-present as rain patter years ago. For some reason he thought Kreka a willing audience to his litany of regrets and woes, though she does not see how he could mistake her for a willing audience now. Kreka blocks the voice from her ears until he shouts his last rebuke. “You compared us to the orcs.”

Kreka spins and strikes like a cobra. “Indeed. For who else attacks the settlements of elves and men who have offered no violence?”

The elf lord steps back, and his eyes show his new weariness for death and possibly a glimmer of self-awareness, but Kreka spent all her sympathy on him and has none left. She owes him nothing more. She cannot be his mother, and certainly not his conscience, not to an immortal lord older than the sun itself who is blind to the dishonor of his path. Her duty is to her people and her son, to follow in the tradition laid before her by Great Foremother Borte and every woman before her that wore the symbol of the vulture and sun.

Because she wants her son to be a man to have pride in, to stand equal to his ancestors. Because Kreka woke from many nightmares where it was her camp attacked, her son stolen from her as her body was left for the birds, and Bledda raised among the enemies that killed her people. Nightmares that he might one day call the ones holding bloody swords that did it ‘father’, her only son growing ignorant and forgetful of his kin, no longer remembering the cradle songs or the sound of her voice. Just so the peredhil boys had confessed to her in quiet, shame-filled voices how they could no longer remember which memories were true and which false, losing the memory of their mother and their people and the meanings of their names. Kreka has had too many nightmares of Bledda taken and raised to be someone he is not, not valuing the lessons of her people, the great honor of Forefather Bór, never holding a bow in his hands and knowing the legacy he carried. To be like those peredhil boys who almost accepted such a fate.

Bledda waits for her, holding the reins of their horses. The felt tent has been packed away, along with the belongings they chose to retain and carry. Her son is a gangly young man now, anxious for responsibility. Kreka can barely see the traces of the fat babe he once had been. He overshot her height a few years ago and is all long limbs and uncertainty of how to move them, with three finger-widths between his wrist and the edge of his tunic sleeves. There is no fat on his features, and the boniness of his limbs and hollow cheeks are due more to the dire scarcity of food than Bledda’s age. His ears, at least, are the same, large and round and sticking out prominently from his head. Ernath had ears like those, Kreka remembers, and the memory of her dead husband is a worn sorrow that comforts like the feel of a blanket against her cheek instead of a thorn in her chest. His father never saw Bledda, but Bledda at least knows who his father was. She wants that memory of his father and the examples of her grandfather and kin to be the path her son follows. Not the example of the outlaws that overrun this camp or the merciless dishonor of the Bright Ones.

“Gather our people,” Kreka tells her son, and his sharp glance to the elf lord behind her is as eloquent as her refusal to look. The divide between her people and the disgraced lords is as sharp as an arrowhead. She smiles, though, to see the daughter of one of the outlaws join in the sedate rush to the picket of horses with the last of the bundled belongings. Bledda’s eyes follow her as well. We are leaving behind no pieces of our hearts that we shall miss, Kreka thinks with a savage fierceness. This time the Bór have gathered their survivors, their sons and daughters, servants and beasts, but on the call of a better hope and no regrets. Kreka repeats the cradle chant in her thoughts. 'And so did Borte gather all to her tent, daughters by choice, the thralls and servants, her young grandchildren and men, to promise of safety lead them.' Safety it had been, at a price of honor.

The new star in the sky is called ‘Hope’, though none know who started saying it or when anyone first heard. A jewel of the Bright Ones originally, but placed in the sky by the gods of paradise as a promise. Long have mortals followed the sky for hope, according to the stories from the two orphan peredhil boys. Kreka rests her fingers on the embroidered sun above her heart. Hope, if it led to honor, was better than a shadow of safety.

"Will we be welcome by these new gods?" her son whispers. "Or will they be just like the Bright Ones?"

"They gave us the sun," Kreka reminds him.

 

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Chapter End Notes

Even when I found a way to save the Bór by sending them to demand shelter from the homeless Fëanorians on the run, I knew they would never stay forever, and I kept Kreka's people with Maedhros and Maglor longer than I honestly think likely. No matter what, the Bór would eventually leave as to stay canon-compliant and true to their characters: for in the end, "[Maedhros and Maglor] stood alone against all the world’, thanks to ‘their many and merciless deeds" (Silm 303).

Timeline I used for reference comes from HoMe XI :

532. Elros and Elrond twin sons of Earendil born.
538. The Third and Last Kin-slaying.
540. The last free Elves and remnants of the Fathers of Men are driven out of Beleriand and take refuge in the Isle of Balar.
542. Eärendil comes to Valinor.
545. The host of the Valar comes up out of the West, lands in Beleriand with great power.
545-587. The last war of the Elder Days, and the Great Battle, is begun. In this war Beleriand is broken and destroyed. Morgoth is at last utterly overcome, and Angband is unroofed and unmade. Morgoth is bound, and the last two Silmarils are regained.

 

Men are the Children of the Sun, and there are nods to both Nekhbet and the Book of Ruth.