Release from Bondage by heget

"A sword, that's all I ask. Let me die as Theon, not as Reek."

The armies were drawing close to Angband now. The captains of Morgoth could not deny it.  

Almost fifty years it was since word first trickled down from those closest to the Lord of Angband that the worst fear of its master had come to pass. The Valar across the sea had departed from their thrones to land upon the shores of Middle-earth and once more meant to drag Morgoth from his iron throne. The tunnels of Angband shook in perpetual tremors, like a living being facing the cold, the entire fortress feeling the small vibrations from his fear. The Dark Lord cursed the half-elven children of the lines of Turgon and Lúthien who had escaped with his stolen Silmaril to beg succor from the only force that could defeat him. The Army of the Valar had arrived, arrayed in gleaming battalions led by Eönwë, the mightiest of arms in all of Arda, the one whom no Balrog dared to face. The orcs that roamed the wasteland of Beleriand now fled back to Angband fearfully screaming of new elves with burning eyes, ones clad in white with spears that reached out and stabbed like sunlight made steel, swift and light as air who sang and laughed in glee as they outran the swiftest wargs and plucked the vampire bats from the skies. The White Elves, the orcs called them, the ones who came with skills and songs given by the Valar, who could sing the earth and air to turn against Morgoth’s forces. With them came the followers of Aulë, the remaining Noldor under their golden-haired king, and their weapons were sharper than steel and spat fire and light. Great hounds arrived with the Army of the Valar, packs of giant dogs each the equal of the mighty and feared Huan, and they howled as they chased the wargs back to their dens. Even the spider-get of Ungoliant, once firmly entrenched in the Nan Dungortheb, were ousted from their lair. No orc would willingly face what even the spiders feared.

From their southern island base the Army of the Valar marched north. Their advance was not the lightning-quick of when the Noldor first arrived or the short-term victories of the Union of Maedhros. The Army of the Valar came like a glacier, slow and methodological. Like a glacier their progress could not be halted or slowed, and once each inch of territory was firmly taken to scour it clean of Morgoth's touch, the forces of Angband could not steal it back. The irony was not appreciated by the King of Angband. Nor could his usual tactics of sowing division by treachery or playing upon fissures in the command structure of his enemies work. The servants of the Valar knew his tricks, and the Vanyar looked down upon him in disdain. The dead Sindar and Noldor like King Finrod restored and healed in Mandos and the Gardens of Lórien had shared their knowledge before the army departed. The troops landing in Beleriand for the first time knew what to expect from Morgoth, or deduced all but his last ploy, and had little fear of him. The laughter of Tulkas came with the vibrations of their marching feet, that laughter Morgoth vainly blocked from his memories of the first time he had been pulled from his throne. Vengeance and a glacier's fury propelled the sunlight lances of the White Elves, the swords of their allies among the Noldor and Second-born, and the battle songs of the Hounds of Oromë.

In the struggle between the efforts to cleanse the earth of Morgoth’s taint and free the people and land of his corrosive evil against his desperation to retain his control over land and inhabitants, it was the earth itself that lost. The sea was swallowing Beleriand. As a son of Brithombar and a high lord of the Falathrim, Faron could take pride in how the ocean had never been truly befouled by Morgoth, and it was that ocean which swept in after Morgoth’s efforts to destabilize the earth beneath his enemies’ feet. A countermove leaching away the Dark Vala’s power, the sea ate away the essence Morgoth had poured into the very stone of conquered Beleriand. Over the Ered Lómin and lapping at the foothills of the Ered Wethrin, crashing in waves against the Ered Gorgoroth and flooding through the Pass of Aglon came the sea, and soon the Gasping Dust would be thirsty no more. Before the ocean advanced the spears and swords and songs of power of the Valar and their elven and mortal allies. Angband was besieged by a far mightier army than before, one that offered him no hope of escape.

It was unspoken in the bowels of Angband what would happen when the fortress was finally breached, but the orcs and their thralls knew exactly what the other had planned. The orcs walked armed and armored through the tunnels and high galleries of Angband, ready to slaughter the slaves the second that all hope of holding off the Army of the Valar was lost, for the Dark Lord wished to make a pyrrhic victory out of any triumph and deny his enemies the captives.

Only the workforce needed to supply iron and other essentials to outfit his failing armies prolonged Morgoth’s final plan.

The elven thralls, especially those in the mines and forges with access to tools, vowed that they would not die defenseless. Against the orcs they had not even the outnumbering press of bodies as advantage, but victory in a fight was not the intent. Their souls would not be withheld from the safety and healing of Mandos no matter how or where they died now, though the thralls wished to enter as themselves. A blade in hand fighting against orcs seemed to them the most attractive and definite statement.

For his own defiance, Faron did not feel as courageous. The missing fingers stole the dexterity his hands would need to wield any makeshift weapon with confidence. The elapsed time of more than a century enslaved in Angband had stolen his confidence to fight. But finding a way to stop the orcs from murdering him when the iron prison was finally breached enticed his stray moments of quiet thought. He toyed with the idea of setting the wargs loose in the tunnels. It was possible to fling open the large iron gate that divided the wargs from the rest of the gallery, enough to chivy out the entire pack. Then between his own efforts to over-excite the beasts and the maddening effects of the high tension and panic that the gallery, and indeed all of Angband, would be under during that final breach of the stronghold, the wargs would in their frenzy gladly savage every orc that their teeth could reach. That in such an event the maddened wargs would also attack any slaves, including Faron, was the flaw which forestalled his plans. Such action would kill more elves than orcs, and he refused to be a Kin-slayer, to sink even lower than the prideless wretch Angband had molded him into. In all likelihood the wargs would force through the iron fencing of their kennels to run rampant through the tunnels of Angband whether the thrall released them or not. Already the high tensions and fears that quivered Angband prompted the beasts to quarreling amongst themselves, each fresh tremor upsetting the most ill-tempered and sensitive among them to pouncing on one another or cringing with the high-pitched keening of a frightened dog, which then invited the other wargs to snap and fight. The only way to ensure the wargs did not run mad would be to kill the beasts, and Faron had no manner in which to do so, no sharp blade or strength of arm or even poison to eliminate the wolf-like monsters. He did not love the beasts, but the wargs had been under his care for so long that a chain of strange affection bound them to his heart. He feared them as only one who knew intimately the sharpness of their teeth and foulness of their breath, but with that fear was the comfort and pity of such close familiarity. The wargs were as doomed as the orcs and elven thralls. Osp will miss his wargs, he thought in a moment of whimsy and self-loathing. When the Army of the Valar finally breached the dungeons of Angband, they would find his body beside the fallen forms of the wargs. Faron did not mind, for that was how Princess Lúthien and Huan had discovered King Finrod and the others, Aglar and Gadwar and all of Faron’s dear and deceased companions. That would be fitting.

During the final assault that was coming, the only guarantee would be chaos and bloodshed, ending in death.

Faron hoped not for escape.

Dyril has almost escaped. Clever and bold, she had taken keys off a sleeping guard, had made for the access tunnels that opened high on Thangorodrim’s cliffs, had almost escaped. She had fought when the orcs cornered her, had thrown rocks and clawed at them and had screamed and screamed when the Balrogs lashed her with burning whips. Dyril had almost escaped, and then died horribly for it.

Faron hoped for no escape for himself, except that which Mandos would offer and the promised reunions found there, but still he feared death and the pain before it. Foolish after the torture he had survived in Angband, both the everyday torment and the fractured memories of the questioners’ whips and knives from his first days, but Faron could not deny to himself that death was still something he shied from welcoming. Under those sharp thin flaying knives he had longed for it, but years had dulled that desire. No other path to Mandos and the safety of the Westernmost Shore was there. Hope of escape he would not wish for. And if he continued to tell himself that, eventually the thrall would believe.

As a distraction, he watched the flow of water through the narrow chute that supplied the wargs. The channel was an arm-span in width, but of unknown depth, as the noxious smelling drinking water was not clear. Pure water would not be found in Angband. But the flowing water intrigued Faron, for in all his long years he had not discovered from where the underground wellspring came and through what pipings was the water carried to emerge in the trough for the wargs before disappearing through the wall onto another section of the prison. If the warg keeper had to carry buckets of drinking water to and from the kennels, the task have been more onerous and frankly impossible for Faron with his maimed hands and feet. The clever piece of architectural engineering assisted his duties, but as the elf stared at the water lapping against the cutaway at the bottom of the wall where the water disappeared, he wondered at its destination.

He wondered if he dove into the water and let its flow carry him away not only where the water courses might lead him but if the pipes through the walls of Angband would be too narrow or if there was another section that uncovered soon enough to prevent him from drowning. The only possible answer to any of these would be drowning and a further entrapment in the bowels of Angband, but Faron thought of the underground pools of Nargothrond. One ran along the floor of that cave chamber before sinking into a natural well that resurfaced in the hills behind Nargothrond as a spring feeding one of the River Narog's many small tributaries. Ethir paddled a dugout canoe up and down the long chamber, dodging stalactites, during his free hours and gave boating lessons to Tacoldir, whose family had been pin makers in Tirion and thus had no experience with watercraft. Ethir likened the cave spring to the Falls of Sirion south of the Aelin-uial, the Meres of Twilight of southern Doriath which battled the Fens of Serech for the top position of Beleriand’s mistiest marshland that one would not transverse without a guide and weatherproof supplies. Nine leagues the River Sirion traveled beneath the hills before resurfacing, and Ethir loved to describe the specially-crafted barrels the march-wardens used to send trade goods through the subterranean tunnel to the settlements in the willow forest of Nan Tathern rather than porting them over the Andram. Ethir, whose family came from Nan Tathern, knew well the system, for it had been how the young ranger came to Nargothrond, escorting his family’s barges up the River Narog to trade with King Finrod’s new city before completing the last leg of this widened trade route overland to Menegroth in the east. The young ranger had unfinished plans to see if he could send a small weighed barrel through Nargothrond’s sinkhole to where the stream reappeared, but never did before the Doom demanded precedence. Faron would guess that if anything was sent through this channel in the warg pen, it would emerge in the sluice for the iron forge waterwheels rather than any secret river.

Gwindor had escaped, at cost of a hand, through some side tunnel in the mines that was long since discovered and blocked off, and Faron was no miner. Dyril had stolen keys to escape the holding pens and fled through the orc tunnels, only to be recaptured as she reached the surface, and Faron had his doubts. The cruel character of the hands that ruled Angband would find more use out of an unsuccessful escape attempt by which they could display the penalty and futility of trying to resist or flee. Clever Dyril, bold and bait, was deceived by a mind more clever and vicious than hers. Escape was a trap. Faron would wait for death, and when his spirit found Mandos, he would search its halls for Ethir and ask if there were streams that flowed besides the Weaver’s looms. He would embrace Aglar and his kings, noble Finrod and Orodreth, if they had not already been released, and speak to Gwindor, who would finally have a companion that understood all the torment they had endured. There he would learn the indisputable fate of Princess Finduilas, and Faelindis would be free to claim her true name.

Eyes panic-wide, Faron turned from his study of the water to the view through the iron grating into the gallery beyond. Faelindis, the thought hit like a short arrow bolt embedding in his chest, what would happen to the elven maid when Angband fell? Indecision and need trapped his movements, and he stood half-turned and ill-balanced on his maimed feet, staring at the gate that separated the warg pen from the rest of the cavern. This place would be dangerous when Angband fell, but was there any place that would not? Was there any place for the maid to wait and hide, or at least a choice of quick and relatively painless death? And of the overseer with the ruby earring, nothing restrained the orc now, with the war near its end and the Army of the Valar amassed under Thangorodrim’s shadow, their siege weapons and Maiar on Angband’s front gate.

As if his panicked realization had been a premonition, though the gifts of foresight had belonged to Craban and King Finrod and while rumored among the family of Faron’s mother had never manifested for him, a terrible screech echoed down the main hallway to the gallery. A warning cry from one of the shadow creatures, Faron thought, and the temperature of air backflow from the tunnels rose as the sounds of sizzling and popping flames echoed in reply. Heavy pounding thuds in concert with those firestorm sounds meant the remaining Balrogs had awoken and were on the move. More screeching cries as if from the throat of some malignant bird ricocheted off the walls, and the orcs interrogated each other about orders and procedures, uncertain of what had spurred the Balrogs to hurry. It was not a full call to arms and stations, or the long awaited panic to prelude the end. That, everyone knew, would begin once Morgoth stood -or was forcibly pulled- from his iron throne, and the tremors that shook throughout Angband had not stilled to signal that event. The wargs stirred, those sleeping springing awake, those eating or drinking from the trough stopped, and those that had been barking and howling paused with pricked ears. The pack awaited some signal, their fur bristling, tails stiff. It was not the excitement of knowing a chance to chase was here, for the beasts were too quiet, too uncertain. Prudently Faron moved to the kennel side gate, slow enough to not add to their attention.

And then Faron finally heard that faint noise that had stirred the captains of Angband. Trumpets and horns he had never heard before, their sound though blocked and distorted by several tons of stone was not too dissimilar to the horns that had voiced when the Noldor first arrived to relieve the siege of Brithombar or that morning of the Nirnaeth Arnoediad. A richer and more eerie sound to be able to reach through the solid and polluted earth of Thangorodrim, these were the terrible horns that disregarded the ears of the material world.

The oldest warg stood behind Faron, panting through its stained yellow teeth, ears pinned back as if wishing it could block the divine sounds. It made no move to stop Faron from unlatching the tender's gate and crawling out of the pen, but it panted and watched. The younger wargs were beginning to howl, mournful calls that irritated and unnerved the orcs. If the pack continued to howl for more than a few minutes the overseer would come to castigate the warg tender for not keeping the beasts quiet, so Faron had a short grace period before he could expect the whip. The howls were not yet piercing, nor had the entire pack joined. The red eyes of the oldest warg implored him, a softening fear in those blood-colored eyes.  Pity’s poison squeezed Faron’s chest.

“Maybe I’ll see you in Mandos,” he whispered to the warg, wondering what had prompted him. “Yavanna shall find your spirit and heal it, and the Hunter. One day those horns won’t frighten you; you’ll run proper and free like you were supposed to.”

On that parting, Faron re-latched the gate and began to hobble in search of Faelindis.