The Bull and the Tides by heget

The First

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Arodreth blamed his old age for his bull-headed stubbornness. He was not of the first hundred and forty-four to wake in the starlight of Cuiviénen, but others forgot he did not count among Unbegotten, for he was old enough to remember the Great Journey. He could recount for everyone the climb over both mountain ranges, the great river that lay between them, and the terror that the initial encounter with the sea had given him. Despite the touch of Ulmo in his mind to quiet that fear of the vast roaring ocean, Arodreth did not forget. Ulmo could take awake the fear, but the Vala could not erase the memory of that first impression. With stubborn contrariness Arodreth avoided the ocean, staying inland where the sound of waves could not reach him. Like any of his tribe, he loved water and the music created by waterfalls and rivers, but the great sea he mistrusted. The old elf had no desire to cross the ocean, so when King Elu disappeared, he gladly attached himself to the search parties that stayed. He dug his heels into the shore and bade good riddance to the last leg of the journey. When the king returned with a new queen at his side, Arodreth was content to sacrifice the chance to see the light of the Two Trees if it meant never seeing the sea.

Arodreth was old and experienced and had risen high in the active defenses of his kingdom before the queen’s Girdle removed need. Stubbornness was rich soil in which to grow wounded pride. If the old soldier listened one more time to the king’s newest adviser make snide remarks on how his shield and sword was too rusted and superfluous, he vowed to use said sword on Saeros and welcome the consequences. Mablung, captain of the March-wardens, begged vainly for Arodreth to stay. Again the old elf dug his heels and turned around.

The retired soldier went to his farm below the Teiglin to grow roses and avoid the efforts of his steward to find him a wife. He mediated disputes between his people and the newly arrived Noldor and tried to convince himself that he was content. His stubbornness kept him there until a quarrel had him chasing after a pair of angry and half-familiar eyes. Those eyes took him to the recently constructed city of Nargothrond, where its new king and commander of the guard asked Arodreth to stay. They needed someone to train soldiers for Nargothrond’s defense. Mablung had boasted of Arodreth’s skill with the sword, but not half as often as he had of Arodreth’s efforts to lead soldiers during the first battles of Beleriand or his ability to take callow men and make rangers of them. With Nargothrond’s king both wealthy and charismatic, the commander welcoming and humble enough to defer to Arodreth’s experience, and their need so obvious, the old elf accepted the opportunity for meaningful work once more. He abandoned his roses to shake the rust off his sword.

The other reason, unspoken and obvious, was the biting tongue and angry eyes of the woman that Arodreth recognized too late. Her multi-colored silks replaced by a chateliane’s keys, he mistook the woman as younger, as someone who had not seen him quake with fear before the roaring of ocean waves. She had been a high lady among the Sindar, politically active and wise, before the orcs overran her land and then some Noldor prince built a castle and claimed it as his own. Befriending the sister of the king of Nargothrond in lieu of nothing else, she latched onto Felagund as a student worthy of her advice. Arodreth almost pitied the young king. Fish metaphors took little to become grating, but the king only ever seemed amused by them. The new city under the bank of the River Narog gave her a home and an army of servants to boss around, kept her busy enough to forget grief and sated her need for revenge.

The sight of the former lady scolding the king about taxation policies as she trailed after him carrying his laundry never failed to brighten Arodreth’s day. “She treats him like he was her dullard son,” he said to the commander of the guard.

The commander shrugged. Undoubtedly the king found the motherly concern wrapped in ocean metaphors to be comforting. The commander did not tell Arodreth that the older man’s grousing and stories of the Great Journey or his many years of service for the rulers of Menegroth was just as familiar and comforting, that he thought of Arodreth as a replacement for the father he had left, as did all the rangers who trained under the old elf. He said nothing of how all of Nargothrond knew why Arodreth demanded so often his boots be re-polished, invited himself to the steward’s weekly meetings, made the maids hide smiles when he repeated some insult about teeth and lion-fish hoping someone could explain, or why rangers ran messages down to the steam laundries as often as the training yards. Arodreth still hated the sea, but he could retell at least seven different sayings about the tides, how they waited for no one and could not be commanded and how some boats did not rise at the same time, and everyone knew why. They knew the true reason why the stubborn old man came out of retirement to guard and advise a strange king in the first place. The commander of Nargothrond would be the first to admit he had no interest in romance, but still he lived vicariously through those he knew. There was a bet circulating that the commander hoped to win on the day Arodreth’s finger wore a golden band. Old Mother Swan and Old Father Bull were the secret epessës the rangers of Nargothrond called them, the two ancient elves too stubborn to admit their affection.

Arodreth was old enough to have seen stone wither away as trees would. He mistook neither as permanent and knew no creation of elves shared their immortality, be it a sword or a garden or a crown. He was sure there was some aphorism about impermanence involving the ocean, though he was loathe to ask the woman who knew. Still, in his stubbornness he thought his time would be longer.

The chatelaine disliked her king’s plans to aid the mortal, but disliked the idea of him betraying a friend and a life-oath more. She disliked his abdication most of all, and swore by all the pike-fish in the sea that this was stupider than trying to reel in a great-shark. The king did not tell her he had once done so as a child with his grandfather and maternal cousins. “I shall not be fishing alone,” he did say to tease and reassure, but the woman harrumphed and scowled. Ten fools would accompany the king and the mortal, and the one she accounted the greatest fool was among them.

Arodreth had thrown his lot in with Felagund, and old wounds on his pride burned when the city rejected them. He would not hide when his sword and shield was needed. He said farewell to the woman with fierce and familiar eyes, comparing his resolve to the tide. She did not tell him of what the Lady Galadriel had foretold, that her death and his had been seen if she did not stay close to Arodreth and he to her. “The tide always returns,” she told him instead. “You would know that if you ever spent time at the sea.”

Arodreth thought about rings, about making a silver one in the shape of roses or a diving swan, but he had never asked, and now his hands were empty. The commander watched and said nothing as Arodreth turned his heels and charged away.

That stubbornness kept Arodreth standing during a wizard’s duel of songs of power, holding up a shaking mortal as the werewolves closed in. Stripped naked and chained to the bottom-most pit of the dungeon, he focused on the memory of a pair of angry eyes and tried to recall every metaphor about hauling nets and gutting fish and watching the tides that she had ever told him. It made a good distraction until the Maia revealed his plan.

Arodreth knew it was fitting that he was chosen before any of the others, for he had been born before the Great Journey and knew that nothing would last. Once more he dug his heels and told the commander to stop crying, his king to stay strong, the mortal to reunite with the woman he loved. He told them that this was not as terrible as the first roar of the ocean. His pride would not let him beg, and he pretended the nails of the beast that dragged him to the center of the pit were no sharper than rose thorns. Before the teeth descended, the old elf spoke one last time. “I am finally crossing the sea,” Arodreth said. “Tell her I was too stubborn to go any other way.”

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Chapter End Notes

Part of the process of concocting characterizations and backstories for the ten unnamed companions of Finrod and Beren was taking some of my favorite minor characters from other series and crossing them over into the Silmarillion. For the concept of a much older veteran soldier (and one can't get much older than the first born generation), I looked to two of my absolute favorite secondary characters from The Wheel of Time. If you've read that series, the old general symbolized by a bull wearing a crown of roses and the older than she appears woman who can't speak two sentences without mentioning a fish metaphor should be familiar. If not, then ignore the names Gareth Byrne and Siuan Sanche.