Release from Bondage by heget

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"The ghosts," he blurted. "They whisper to me. They...they know my name."

It was a wolf that found Faron and Faelindis, a monstrously large beast with coal-black fur and eyes that glowed green. The two elves had not stumbled far from their resting place, and with the light but a dim overcast allowing no clear shadows, any passage of time was difficult to judge. Faron’s memories of daylight had been damaged by centuries in Angband. Distance and direction were concepts as muddled above ground as they had been in the crevices and tunnels of the Iron Pit, leaving him to feel hopelessly adrift. Still he judged the surroundings too bright for twilight, nor did he think they had travelled in circles. Faelindis had not questioned Faron on their plans or destination yet, less from habit and more from her recognition that they had nothing upon which to build a plan. Though the winds had died, the air was still thick with dust and ash. Some ash had settled like snow across the black rocks that surrounded Thangorodrim, dulling the stones that had shone like polished black glass to a matte gray. A muted world, numb with silence, and until the wolf crested the ridge in front of them, Faron and Faelindis had been equally quiet. The fear to draw attention to themselves was too ingrained even in this new world where the three peaks of Thangorodrim had been smashed to fine rubble and the earth had ceased its violent tremors. The King of Angband had been defeated, but Faron was afraid if he voiced that belief aloud it would be disproven. Hope was a dangerous skill to regain, as the giant wolf on the hill before them proved.

An elf dismounted from the beast, and that the rider was clearly one of the Eldar instead of the bandy-legged orcs shocked Faron out of his terror. They had not been discovered by a warg rider. Those green eyes belonged not to a wolf, not one of the Enemy’s scouts come to recapture them. Those were the green eyes of a hunter of wargs, the noble counterpart to the Enemy’s corrupted werewolves and wargs that Faron knew too well, a being of whom Faron had only a singular acquaintance. “A Hound of Oromë,” he told Faelindis, who gripped his unbroken arm and hid behind his back, “like Huan.” The large black hound lowered its muzzle and whined, the plaintive sound an apology for frightening them, then lifted both head and tail at Faron’s words, wagging the tail and barking like a pup. A giggle escaped Faelindis’s lips, and she moved out from behind Faron, smiling up at the great hound. Her hand still clung to his wrist.

“He sounds like Huan,” she whispered to Faron.

The hound barked in happiness, paws dancing in place, nails clicking against the stone, and his tail wagging in a furious blur. The sounds of his barks were more musical than that of regular hounds. This made Faelindis laugh again. The dismounted elf rested a hand behind the hound’s ears, a caress to calm, then the hand descended to scratch at the fur behind a thick collar lined with sharp spikes and plates to protect the neck. His other hand pulled down the headscarf that covered his face and neck, revealing a pale face and blue eyes that shone with uncanny light as all eyes of the Exiles did. This was no Exile, though, Faron knew, but a soldier of the Army of the Valar, and one with a Hound of Oromë as companion.

A hand signal to tell the hound to stay in place, the strange elf half slid, half skipped down the ridge to approach Faron and Faelindis. His arms were empty, raised in welcome, and the only visible weapon was the hilt of a small blade belted perpendicular to his back. The elf wore strange pale leathers coated in gray ash and dust, and a copper gorget reflected off the pale daylight, the lightness of his armour a sign that he expected minimal danger. From how he approached Faron and Faelindis, he clearly expected it more likely for them to bolt in fear instead of attack him. Or his confidence in his giant canine companion to protect him from any danger was stronger than the need for weapons or heavy armor. From what Faron remembered of Huan, and Aglar’s stories of the hounds that he and his siblings had raised in Aman, this was not unwarranted.

The elven scout was close now as to reveal fine details of his face. Red-tinted brown hair and eyes as blue as a river surrounded by freckles that reminded Faron of the flanks of river salmon - he knew who this elf was. The Hound of Oromë had been his first hint, and that face shaped like part of a matched set with the two that haunted Faron’s memories confirmed it. A sharp tug on Faron’s wrist from Faelindis was sign that she recognized those familiar features as well. There was no doubt that this stranger was related by blood to Aglar and his younger brother, Craban, or to their cousin, wry Edrahil who had been the steward of Nargothrond when King Finrod still ruled. Family they left in Aman, though Faron had not entertained the possibility that their kin would be among the soldiers of the Valar.

The elf, kin by ties unknown to Aglar, babbled a string of words. At their incomprehension, the strange scout with the familiar face shifted to another language, one whose cadence and stresses sounded near to the mortal tongue Faron had picked up from the people of Bëor. He recognized the first two syllables as the start to a question. As the scout began his questions in yet another new and unknown language, Faron interrupted. “Can you speak Sindarin?”

“Yes. You can? Some escaped thralls know only mortal tongues. Unversed I am in Easterling speech.” His Sindarin was serviceable but peppered with abrupt and awkward pauses, like a novice rider riding a horse unsure of its footing. Such an accent belonged to Faron’s late childhood, to his first years in Nargothrond surrounded by Noldor still learning his people’s language. The face was Aglar; the voice could have been Craban.

Am I in another dream, another memory? The small hand on Faron’s wrist pulled him out of his rambling thoughts.

“We are not mortals but elves,” Faelindis said, and Faron desired to smile at the stranger’s mistake. The feel of broken and missing teeth against his tongue stopped him. His wretched and worn appearance, with hair turned brittle and white, was such that to be mistaken for one of the mortal elders was no far leap, so he did not begrudge the erroneous assumption. Faelindis, coated in blood and ash and dressed in the meanest of rags, had still the ethereal beauty of an elven maid. She should ever only be mistaken for the noble flower of Noldorin royalty and not a mere mortal thrall.

The vehemence of that thought and the desire it trailed in its wake choked Faron’s mind, bringing his wandering contemplation to a stumbling collapse as he wondered what metaphorical stray arrow had felled him. With his attention on the maid beside him, bewildered by the longing to proclaim her beautiful, he missed the stranger’s approach until the scout stood not but two feet away, arm stretched out.

“I am known as Sarno Herenvarnion. Eh, Sarnor? Father name would be ...Gwaltha-barnon? I do not know what mouth sound my siblings chose.” The scout looked young and lost.

“Sarnor,” Faron breathed out. “Aglar spoke of you, of his last brother, babe in his mother’s arms too young to come. I knew him.” Faron could not be embarrassed by the anguish in his voice as he clasped the proffered arm nor judge if his words were discernible beneath that strain. “Your brothers, Aglar and Mornaeu, and your cousin born in snow, I knew them. They were my friends, dearest friends. I was… I am Faron of Nargothrond, sworn to the House of Finarfin, son of a lord of Brithombar. I was a soldier in the company of Lord Gwindor.” Why were his knees devoid of strength? His face felt hot and wet, tears it must have been, and he cared not how greatly he wept. It was difficult to look the younger elf in the eyes, hard to remember to tilt his face up instead of cringing down in fear. “The maiden beside me, she is also a lady of Nargothrond. Her name is Fael,” again Faron’s tongue grew thick, “Fael indis .”

“Faelindis of Nargothrond,” she said in that high bright voice, almost a giggle. “I was a lady-in-waiting to Princess Finduilas. My name is Faelindis.” The relief of proclaiming that secret broke Faelindis into peals of near-hysterical joy, and she collapsed to her knees, covering her mouth as she laughed. Faron could not remember kneeling beside her, but somehow he was staring up at a bewildered Sarnor, leaning into a giggling Faelindis and smiling through tears. At a loss, the young scout and his green-eyed hound watched the pair cry with laughter and kneel in the dust of Thangorodrim.

 

 

Sarnor led them back to the fortifications held by the Army of the Valar after a silent argument with his hound to allow Faelindis to ride upon the dog as if he was a horse. Faron held onto the stirrup for support, having stubbornly refused to join Faelindis astride the hound. Though Sarnor vouched for his companion, assuring Faron that the hound could carry the weight of two so emaciated, the reminder of warg riders and Faron’s resurgent pride halted that. Thus the journey was slow. The ex-thrall tried to repress the envy he felt watching the younger elf walk without pain or hesitation.

Eventually Sarnor’s path intersected with other friendly scouts, though it soon became obvious that his use of a canine mount was unique among the soldiers of the Army of the Valar. Some were mounted on horses, a group of five afoot waved to Sarnor from the distance, and one scout with a strange narrow eyepiece covering the top of his face rode upon an animal Faron had never seen before but looked like a gangly cross between sheep and horse. When Sarnor greeted his fellow soldiers and patrol parties, he shouted the first word of Quenya that Faron clearly understood and learned, that for survivors. Only later would Faron learn the word had originated in the Telerin dialect. The other scouts, intent on their missions, spared a moment to exchange and update the maps they pulled from small oilskin folders. They would look over Faelindis and Faron, but did not press Sarnor for details. The scout riding the unfamiliar creature gifted a pair of warm blankets for Faron and Faelindis to wrap themselves in. The group of five did not stop to meet with Sarnor. Likely, their task was too pressing.

They saw no orcs, not even the corpses. Faron guessed Sarnor was deliberately avoiding the battle sites as he led them back. Still, evidence of the enemy’s malice on their path remained. The air reeked of onion and garlic in a manner than turned Faron’s stomach instead of inducing any pangs of hunger. He could see plumes of brown smoke in the distance, which Sarnor was swift to turn them from. “Dragon’s flumes, more noxious than their blood,” the young elf explained.

They circled wide around the ruins of Thangorodrim and the battlefields that had freshly despoiled its desolated doorstop to eventually reach the foremost fortification lines of the Army of the Valar. Here were the corpses of orcs, wargs, and other unidentifiable monsters being pulled away by work crews, and the walls and trenches of proper battlelines worn down by evidence of fighting. Still Sarnor’s path skirted the edges of the carnage to fortification lines mostly untouched by yesterday’s violence. Towers protecting huge siege weapons loomed above them. Looking upon them, Faron thought of the gathered forces of the Union of Maedhros of which he had been briefly a part of and shared its ill fate. Seeing these breastworks and artillery manned by the troops of the Army of the Valar, he cursed once more the hubris of princes. Elves with long pikes and small buckler shields leaned against the vast network of trenches and raised earthwork fortifications that delineated the main camp of the army. Their white tabards and standards were stained and coated in black ash. Water turned murky and poisonous filled the bottoms of some of these trenches. It was easy to read exhaustion and a long and difficult battle on the postures and faces of the soldiers. Yet despite the grimy coating, the defenses felt akin to the stories of Gondolin rather than dismal Angband. The faces that turned up to watch Sarnor and his survivors pass by were those of elves, faces bright with joy and relief, who hailed them with blessings and well-wishes. Sarnor led Faron and Faelindis along a raised pathway that spared them the muck of the trenches and through brightly-lit tunnels in the fortifications guarded by heavily armed soldiers and doors of solid steel. Again only the Telerin word was necessary for unhindered passage, although the silent but emphatic vouching of a Hound of Oromë played equal role. Beyond the redans and trenches the ground sloped down into one of the camps of the Army of the Valar, perhaps even the main one for the sheer size and number of tents and hanging banners. Here were more soldiers, their commanders and logistics officers, the noncombatant servants, squires, runners, healers, and hanger-ons. Easily this multitude outnumbered the army that had gathered on the morning of the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, even if by proportions this was a much smaller portion of a full army than King Fingon’s half of the Union of Maedhros of which Faron had joined. And this was an army on the morning of their final victory, a sensation Faron had never beheld.

The armor of the soldiers, not the lightly equipped scouts like Sarnor, looked strange to Faron’s eyes, for the pieces were solid metal instead of suits of chainmail or the scale-like segmented pieces he grew used to in Nargothrond. Nor were they the quilted silk and padded linen and leather lined with steel common to the Sindar and mortal warriors.

At the center of a crowd of men in full armor was a tall figure in gold-washed plate with a sunburst on a blue cape, his helmet removed and chainmail caul pulled down to allow a long golden braid to fall down the cape. He was addressing the armored soldiers, high-ranking generals if the quality of the strange solid plate armor was any judge, as their commander, and he stood next to a banner that had the same straight-armed sunburst as the sigil on his cape, a device Faron recognized from the official seals of Nargothrond. When the war leader turned, his profile could be seen even from a distance. The man looked remarkably like Finrod Felagund, enough that Faron forgot himself. He called out, weeping, “My King!”

The man in golden armor heard Faron, for he was now facing the ex-thrall. The face was more akin to King Finrod than Sarnor had been to Aglar, yet just as obvious was the reason for resemblance. This was not Faron’s king returned to him. Joy extinguished as a flame swiftly smothered. The horror of his mistake, and to behold how confusion sunk into sadness on the man’s face, quelled Faron’s tongue. In shame and pity Faron turned away, only to meet Faelindis’s face, who was staring at the Noldor High King with the same bitter longing.

“We are surrounded by strangers wearing our loved ones’ faces,” Faelindis said. “What a strange torment.”

 

 

The structure that the scout led Faron and Faelindis to was too grand and solidly built to be labeled merely a tent, with double layers of canvas over wooden frames painted as to appear solid and wood panels hinged for wall partitions and doors. Unmortared brick fashioned the floor. It harkened to reports brought back by Mablung and Daeron of the accoutrements at the Mereth Athardad, especially since the height and breadth of the building overtook the dimensions of the grandest mortal drinking halls. The building was hung with bright blue gems for illumination and imbued with the over-sweet smell of healing herbs. A healer’s place, then, and Faron with his broken arm and Faelindis’s cracked ribs were thankful for it. They were led into two small rooms hung with white curtains and separated on either side by tall wooden screens carved with flowers that Faron could not recognize, each given a pallet to rest on, and told a healer would come to inspect them shortly. The interior of the healer’s tent was too loud for Faron to hear Faelindis on the other side of the wooden screen, and before he could call out to her, the healer pulled aside the white drape and entered. A second woman, taller and heavily muscled with black leathers and red gloves, stood behind the healer and did not enter the partitioned space, lingering like the bodyguard she obviously was. The healer turned to wave away the other woman. “I need no assistance with this one, Dondwen.” Faron ignored the impulse to cringe away from the healer and her guard. This was not Angband and the healer had only the calm self-certainty of authority in common with the orcish overseers. She was slim and short, with bright green eyes that had not the glowing light of the Two Trees. An elf of Beleriand then, one of the Grey Elves. Her companion was Noldor, brown eyes bright with the unnatural light, and by the simple cut of the leathers and white sash was one of the soldiers that came with the Army of the Valar. Many of King Finarfin’s troops were women.

“I can stay,” the woman in black leathers said in a surprisingly timid and gentle voice. “His arm is broken; you may need my assistance.” The brown eyes that stared at him had pity, not revulsion. Her words were slow, heavily accented; it was obvious she spoke Sindarin for Faron’s benefit.

The healer addressed her companion in a mix of languages, of which Faron only understood the parts spoken in Sindarin and the Mannish tongues. “Then stay outside the door and see if you can hail one of the nurses for more bandages, oil of the aid-leaf, and-” The healer rattled off more items, none of which Faron recognized, then grumbled, “In truth those storerooms would find a guard most useful; even the servants of Îdh are vexed to combat the shortage.”

The woman laughed at the healer’s words and backed out of the partitioned room, closing the white curtain, though her shadow silhouette disclosed how she lingered in reach from the doorway. Satisfied, the healer turned once more to Faron, her green eyes inspecting him like a captain inspecting green troops. She softened her face at the signs of Faron’s distress. Faron tried to relax his body in response, crafting a silent mantra to remind himself that he was safe and free forever of Angband and the orcs.

The healer ran a cool hand over Faron’s brow and shifted his head from side to side, checking for abrasions and cracks in his skull. Then she held a glowing stone in front of his eyes to watch how they dilated in the cold light. Her voice was soft as carded and washed wool. “The scouts say you claim to be from Nargothrond. We have had few survivors from that city, none rescued from the Iron Fortress.”

“Have-” Faron croaked, “have they many survivors from Angband?”

“No,” the healer said, moving her examination down to Faron’s neck and upper back, fingers running along the lines of corded scars from the overseers’ whips. “They have not found many living survivors.”

Faron placed the accent, hard at first to determine by the softness of her voice, as the clipped and old-fashioned dialect spoken inside the Girdle. A refugee from Menegroth then, one of the few who had survived the kingdom’s destruction and the second attack on the refugee settlement at the mouth of the River Sirion.

The healer moved around to his arm, cleaning as carefully as she could to not aggravate the broken bone. Finding skin unpierced, she began to rub an ointment that numbed the pain and began to wrap the arm in white cloth, then a second set of thicker bandages soaked in an unfamiliar concoction. The smell was not unpleasant.

Her hands moved down to Faron’s hands, and he needed more willpower than he could hope to possess to not flinch away, mindful of his missing fingers. He knew what the small flaying knives of the torturers had taken was among the first injuries the healer would have noticed, but he could not bear her touch. Patiently she waited until the tension slackened, no longer pulling away as she daubed more ointment between the remaining digits. Faron studied the floral designs on the screen partition. As she worked, the healer addressed him in a tone affectedly causal. “The healer who trains me was from Nargothrond. I am a novice, dealing most with the herbs and tinctures, yet with this last battle there were many needed. She is off with those most gravely injured. My apologies that you must endure with me.” The healer gave another apologetic smile to Faron.

“Perhaps I know her, the senior healer?”

“She is called Faelineth. The scout who brought you in is her brother by marriage, though they never met before this last month, when all battalions and support were called to the front lines.”

“I know her then,” said Faron. “Her husband was a dear friend of mine, before he died. Faelineth had a brother as well; both were companions of King Finrod who chose to help fulfill his life-debt to Beren. They died in Tol-in-Gaurhoth.”

“I know,” said that soft voice.

The suspicion overwhelmed him. “Your sadness as we speak of that quest - you knew of the twelve. This is not just sadness for your princess or her cousin.” Faron swallowed. “One of the soldiers who left, we called him Bân. He spoke often of a woman in Menegroth with whom he shared letters, wishing to court. Aereth?”

“They call me Airanis,” she said. “I try not to mind it.” Her smile was regretful.

Quietly Faron spoke, “Bân treasured his letters from you. All who knew him knew the depth and sincerity of his feelings. He strove to be worthy to receive your affections, to be true and honorable. They who followed the king and Beren,” Faron licked his lower lips, tongue pulling over the broken and missing teeth, and left his sentence unfinished, overcome with shame.

“The princess and her mortal husband gave me accounts of their last moments,” Aereth said, “I knew long before of his death, and his reasons. I am proud of him. I cannot begrudge.”

“You can mourn.”

“And I have. As have you. But please, speak no more of those fallen.” Her head nodded to the door, where the Noldo woman stood guard. At Faron’s incomprehension, the healer sighed. Lowering her voice, she explained. “Dondwen seeks a childhood friend who joined the Exile. She knows not what he renamed himself in Beleriand, or which prince he followed, or if he ever reached this shore. But he promised to become a great and acclaimed hero, and his hair was golden. Few of the Noldor have light hair who were not kin of Felagund. There was a lord of Gondolin, who saved them on the pass from a Balrog. Glorfindel he was called; the refugees from Gondolin loved to sing about him. That might have been her friend.”

“Or Bân’s quiet friend. He didn’t speak much about his past, except that he and Bân joked about how small their home villages were.” Faron pressed his tongue against the stubs of his teeth. “The one she seeks may be Fân.”

“If so, he is dead,” said Aereth. “I wish not to smother her hope, yet even she doubts he lives. Still, Dondwen searches the survivors for him.”

“Survivors.” Faron could not stifled a bitter laugh. “The few of us.”

“The few there are,” said Aereth in her soft and firm voice, “is thanks to my lady Elwing and her husband Eärendil, who brought us the grace and might of the Powers from the West.”

Faron flinched. “I meant no disrespect, Lady Aereth.”

Cool hands smelling of strange herbs touched his brow. “You have endured what no one should have endured. You have not fallen into despair or madness. If any are allowed their grief and bitter feelings, it is you. And I, and the mortals,” the survivor of Doriath and Sirion added. “Survivors, if they could be saved, most were beyond words, beyond thought. Beyond kindness, whether to show it or accept it. Or walking dead, souls sundered from body. You would have remembered them, the freed prisoners from Tol-in-Gaurhoth, and how long many of them lasted before asking for the Judge’s Mercy. Others, they were hollowed out inside, filled with darkness. Weapons to use against compassion and hope. Such was never uncommon, and more so as the war has gone on. And you need not convince me of the horror of Angband.”

Faron pulled his damaged hands from her grasp and curled away from her eyes. Aereth sighed, apologized, and shoved a cup of clear liquid in his face. “Drink this. Regain your strength, and accept that we marvel that you had such a strong will to survive a terrible place, you and your companion. Drink this, and it will help to lessen the memories of it. Angband shall be no more. The Powers are stripping it bare to the foundations of the earth this time. The Enemy is in chains, and this time he shall never be released. Drink.”

Chapter End Notes

Bân is the sixth companion of Finrod and Beren to have died in Tol-in-Gaurhoth, Fân the ninth, and Faelineth's brother the fourth. Several crossover counterparts in this chapter, from Rickon and Shaggydog to Aerith/Aeris and Tifa.

Tolkien used World War I as inspiration for the War of the Jewels- the Fall of Gondolin being the most obvious, so the War of Wrath also needed some nods to WWI. Saruman's gunpowder allows for the possibility of gunpowder artillery used by the Army of the Valar, but I'll leave that ambiguous. The mustard gas less so, and as for trench warfare, that was not an invention of the nineteenth century.

Îdh is the Sindarin name for Estë.

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