Bledda and the Beast by heget

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Chapter 1

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Bledda lurched back suddenly, almost losing his balance and falling to the dirt as his legs tangled beneath him. It would have been a humiliating blow to his young pride, but he was too startled and concerned with the creature in front of him to worry overmuch about a young man’s dignity.

Bledda was almost eighteen years old, a young man who had grown up in the dark days of Beleriand when the Great Enemy had ruled uncontested over the continent. Until ten years ago, that was, when the vast and glorious armies from the West had landed to challenge the Great Enemy. Bledda’s mother had decided it was time the Bór return to Beleriand from the homeless wilds of Taur-in-Duirnath and plead for succor where all the other survivors of Beleriand gathered. Bledda had fought orcs and seen many elves, but he had never seen this creature before.

It was large and loud, with a mouth full of white fangs, and it was snapping and growling at Bledda. The vicious beast was only restrained by a piece of leather around its throat and linked to a post driven in the ground. If pressed, Bledda would say it most resembled a warg, though he did not understand why anyone in the refugee camp of Balar would keep a live werewolf, especially when children and the infirm were nearby. Spittle flew from its red maw and dagger-like teeth. Its body strained against the thin piece of leather, lunging towards the young man. Bledda cringed at the volume and malice of sound. Why was there such a dangerous beast in the center of camp and why was he not warned of it when the boat crammed with other desperate and weary survivors of Beleriand had unloaded its passengers on the crowded shores of this island?

An old man was drawn by the noises of the creature and Bledda’s startled shout. He started to yell at Bledda in an unfamiliar language, making gestures towards the howling creature and pointing accusingly at the young man.

"I did not do anything!" Bledda shouted in his best Sindarin. He knew his mastery of the Grey-elven tongue was better than most in his tribe, but it was hard to hear anything over the creature’s snarling and howls. The clamor was drawing spectators, and Bledda began to panic.

Thankfully his rescuer appeared, shouldering through the crowd to place herself between Bledda and the old man near the beast.

Pulling Bledda behind her, Rúth smiled at the man next to the snarling creature and said a few calming words in one of the Edain tongues. It was too rapid for Bledda to understand, but he noticed the man stopped frowning and shouting. As Rúth continued to placate the old man and his wolf-beast, Bledda attempted a smile of his own and whispered his thanks to Rúth.

Rúth’s father had been one of the unaffiliated people in the scattered homesteads of Talath Dirnen, and had even met Gorthol the Dread Helm once. He had joined with other outlaws and desperate souls looking to the Fëanorian elves for safety. Rúth, like Bledda, had been born in those camps. When Bledda’s mother had decided her people could no longer tolerate vassalage to their old elven lords, that it was time to leave to Balar before there was nothing left of the honor and freedom Great Foremother Borte had fought for, Rúth came with the Bór on the journey north. Bledda had been pleased beyond words that Rúth had joined them, for she had been his only friend. Nowadays, without the fear of starvation and Morgoth’s creatures - though the appearance of this werewolf in the middle of the refugee camp was most alarming! - Bledda had opportunity to notice his thoughts towards Rúth were evolving to something that was not only friendship.

Rúth folded his hand between her two small hands, squeezing tightly. She continued to smile at the old man, replying to some repeated question with a shake of her head and a gesture towards Bledda. At one point she reached over and made a gentle smacking motion to the back of his head, a gesture she had picked up from his mother Kreka. It didn’t hurt, but Bledda knew the gesture meant he has been foolish, and he blushed and tried to look both contrite and harmless.

The other human refugees were more willing to trust his female companion. Rúth had the appearance of one of the Edain under her borrowed furs and dress, for all she wasn’t one, which was useful once they reached the refugee camps. The people here mistook her for one of the Strawhead slaves escaping from Dor-lómin, of which there were many now that General Ingwion was sending expeditionary forces up towards the Ered Wethrin. Bledda had ridden beside one of the specialist battalions on the way to the shore. He watched the tall elves with white banners tend to their cold and mountain gear, eyeing the peculiar grappling tools, strangely woven ropes, and the dense white overcoats. Those strange elves in their white coats and even whiter banners had smiled at Bledda as he rode pass, and had called out to him in their unfamiliar tongue. Bledda had answered back in Sindarin. Only one of the soldiers seemed to have understood, and had waved in return.

Bledda rather liked the elves from across the sea. They were bright and clean in a way that was deeper than eyesight, and showed only an aloof kindness to the young man of the last people of Bór.

The Edain, however, thought Bledda was also one of the refugees from Dor-lómin, though they for the most part had looked unkindly upon his face. Some had addressed him as one of ‘Brodda’s Bastards’ - whoever that was- and were most surprised to learn, if they bothered to listen to Bledda’s explanation, that although he was one of the tribes the Edain called Easterling, his ancestor had been Bór of the Great Soul, and that he had been born at Amon Ereb. Bledda had never seen the mountains of Ered Wethrin, and in fact had not seen Beleriand since his people had fled south when he was only four. But he was in Beleriand now.

Bledda was tired, though, of being mistaken for some type of Easterling spy. Or those that looked darkly when they heard his people had once served the Fëanorians.

"What is that creature, and why does the old man have it?"  Bledda asked Rúth, splitting his gaze between her bemused face and the still quietly snarling animal.

Rúth swallowed a laugh, though her eyes were bright. “That, Bledda, is a dog. A hound, like in the stories. The man owns it, like one does a horse. It is no werewolf.”

“That is a dog?” Bledda frowned.

The animal was still making low growls in its throat, though the old man had reached a hand down to stroke its head and ears. The dog, for that’s what it was, ceased the growls and thumped a tail from side to side.

"I know what a dog is," Bledda said, frowning at Rúth. She had covered her mouth, though he could hear the giggles escaping. "Stop it. I know about dogs. Mother said we used to have many dogs in our tribe, and used them for hunting and to herd our horses and cattle. We just never had any with us when Great Foremother Borte demanded the Bright Ones take us in. Something about the hounds refusing to stay around the Fëanorians."

"Father noticed that," Rúth said in a calmer voice. "The dogs ran away from the camps whenever anyone brought them. They didn’t snap at the elves, but we thought it strange how they obviously hated the elven lords. And all the stories said the elves had supernatural mastery over animals."

"Not Kin-slayers," Bledda replied. "Mother says they especially hated the two that attacked that elven princess, the ones no mortal had served under. But no dog would serve the Bright Lords. That should have been our sign. We should have left long ago, come to Balar before I was born."

Rúth squeezed his hand once more, her face full of a quiet sympathy and sorrow.

Bledda turned back to the old man, noticing a badge of four spears on his red tunic. Bledda recognized it as the sign of the Strawfolk, as one of the Hadorim. Still, the old man was Edain, so Bledda took a chance and addressed the old man in his most polite Sindarin. “I apologize. I was startled by your hound.”

The old man grunted and muttered a string of words in his own tongue. Bledda plastered the most disarming smile he could muster on his face and with exaggerated slowness lifted his hand from his belt-knife. The foreign words were obviously a question, for Rúth turned back to the man and answered with a light negative.

"Please tell me the old man didn’t also ask if I had never seen a dog before," Bledda muttered as a hot blush spread down his cheeks and around the back of his ears.

Rúth giggled.

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Chapter End Notes

The whole concept of this fic comes from the line in the ‘Lay of Leithian’ :

”Thereafter never hound was whelped/ would follow horn of Celegorm/ or Curufin. Though in strife and storm,/ though all their house in ruin red/ went down, thereafter laid his head/ Huan no more at that lord’s feet,/ but followed Lúthien, brave and fleet.” (Canto XI, lines 302-308).

This canine revulsion likely extended to their brothers and the rest of their followers when Celegorm and Curufin joined them, if not immediately, that certainly after they assault the son and kingdom of Huan's beloved Lúthien and Beren.

And so I came to the amusing revelation that anyone around the Fëanorians would quite possibly have no exposure to dogs.

 

'Brodda's Bastards' is the catch term I created for the large population of mixed-ancestry Edain, whose fathers or grandfathers would have been Easterlings under Lorgan who took Edain women as wives and mistresses, and other children of the Edain slaves left in Dor-lómin after the Nirnaeth. Though never mentioned outright in the text, I think these children are a logical conclusion, and I imagine a large portion of the initial settlers of Númenor would have this ancestry.

The Children of Húrin establishes that many human families lived in the areas between Doriath, Nargothrond, and Dor-lómin who were not affiliated with either of the Three Edain tribes or an elven city. And yes, I had to look up just how such a person would know Túrin of Many Names.

The Hadorim speak an early version of Andûnaic, which naturally Bledda would have no reason to understand. Still, Sindarin was the lingua franca of Beleriand that all Edain tribes had in common (as the Haladin had an unrelated language and depending on which version, Taliska of the Bëor was either closer to the language of the Hador or not). Unlike all the elves in Beleriand, the arriving Vanyar and Noldor under Finarfin don't speak Sindarin, though they would quickly learn. However I also love the idea of some of the mortals working along side the Host of the Valar picking up Quenya, as to have a more natural explanation for its appearance in Númenor. The future for Bledda and Rúth involves scouting and translating for one such Vanyar troop.

The sigil.