Hold Each Other by Grundy

Adaneth

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He had heard of Men long before he actually encountered any.

The Nolofinwions may act as if the cousins they were so close to in their childhood fell at Alqualondë and have as little to do with him and his brothers as possible, but the Arafinwions were a different matter. They wrote regularly – Findarato in particular was an indefatigable correspondent, sharing with his cousins anything that crosses his mind may interest or be of use to them.

So given Ingo’s fascination for the firimar, hearing about them was unavoidable. But until now Carnistir has had no opportunity to see them for himself, for there were none in Thargelion.

His scouts’ report some time ago of a band of the Secondborn coming down the dwarf road from the Ered Luin had been the most interesting thing to happen in several years, but curious as he was about them, it had not occurred to Carnistir that they would need or want him to ride out to greet them personally. He had sent a messenger with a welcome, telling them they might stay or pass through as they would.

They settled in small groups in the south of his lands, and though he had not formally granted them any particular area as their own, he was pleased to have the land populated by people who were no friends of the Enemy. They contributed to trade with the dwarves, and his scouts had no trouble keeping track of their movements from a distance, for they were not a stealthy people.

For some years he gave them little thought. Then the orc raids began. The foul creatures began in the north, as one might expect, but found the elven outposts too well defended to try more than once.

He sent warnings south, but his frustrated messengers reported that they were unsure if the warnings had been received by the correct people, much less whether their seriousness had been understood by the firimar.

He discovered to his regret that they clearly had not been when a host of orcs swept down from the mountains they had used to hide their movement, sweeping many of the small settlements away in the first wave of their assault.

By the time Carnistir and his forces reached Sarn Athrad, where most of the surviving Men had gathered into a hastily constructed stockade to defend themselves, they were lucky to still be alive.

He did not expect much gratitude from their leader, but he had expected some thanks.

Instead, he found the young leader of the people who called themselves the Haladin almost contemptuous of his aid. It was not until she spoke that he realized he dealt with a woman.

“You took your own good time getting here, master elf. A few more days, and you would have had naught to do but bury us,” she said coolly.

“I sent warnings to your people some time ago,” Carnistir replied, nettled. “It is hardly my fault if they went unheeded, or if you did not think to send messages yourselves when you saw the orc hordes coming down on you.”

She frowned, but her manner thawed somewhat.

“If warning you sent, my lord, none reached our village,” she replied, scrubbing at the hair plastered to her forehead irritably. “Perhaps my words were overhasty, for we have been sore pressed here. For all I know, one of the dead may have heard your message, but they are beyond asking, and they are many.”

“Your losses were heavy?” Carnistir asked with a frown. Ingo had written of the younger race being doughty fighters at need, and he had been framing his plans as such, expecting them to be able to hold the southern part of his lands without over much support.

“We have lost more than half our numbers, lord,” she replied. “Most that survive are women or children too young to take up arms. That is how I myself come to lead.”

One of his captains silently handed him a paper with a tally of their hasty survey of the living and the dead. Her words were no exaggeration –the Haladin were no more than a quarter of what they had been this time last year. The orcs had been more than twice the number of the Haladin at the start, and all of them fighters.

“This is not usual among your people?” he said in some surprise. He had assumed the mortals were not so different than elves, where nissi were not barred from any particular role by their sex, and might pursue whatever calling was suited to their skills.

She looked at him as if he were daft.

“I lead because my father Haldad was chief. But he and my brother Haldar were both slain,” she replied. “Haleth am I.”

“I salute you, Lady Haleth. It is no mean feat to hold against the orcs when so outnumbered.”

She couldn’t seem to decide whether to bow or curtsey, and in the end settled for inclining her head. He suppressed a smile.

“I am Carnistir, lord of Thargelion. If you would remain in my lands, I would offer you a more protected fief further north, where you would be closer to my own stronghold that I might better see to your defense until your numbers have grown.”

She nodded, then swayed on her feet.

“I thank you for the generous offer, my lord. Perhaps I might have time to consider before I make my answer?”

“You should certainly take time to sleep,” he replied, waving at one of his attendants to make ready a tent. “If I might be of service?”

He offered his arm, and could see her consider refusing.

“Do not be foolish,” he murmured in an undertone. “I care not whether you be woman or man, nor do any of my soldiers. You have been fighting for days, and are all but falling over for exhaustion.”

She gritted her teeth, but took his arm and let him steer her toward the clean tent and hot bath waiting for her.

-----

The Haladin were not minded to serve any lord, Haleth told him some weeks later – weeks in which he and his followers had fed and sheltered and healed what remained of her people. Moreover, they sought a land of safety, where orcs could never again come on them unawares.

Carnistir had by then seen enough of the Haladin to believe it was not ingratitude, but fear that motivated them. Thargelion was bounded by mountains in both the north and the east, and they had already seen to their cost how well the dark creatures could use them to hide.

He had also grown rather fond of the Haladin’s brash young leader, who he had of necessity spent some hours with each day – fond enough to disquiet him.

“Very well,” he replied. “Remain a few seasons by Lake Helevorn, where you will be directly under the protection of my garrison. Regain your strength and prepare for your journey westward. By the time you are ready to move on, I am sure we can have found a more agreeable place for your people.”

He had several in mind. Estolad, Talath Dirnen, the coastal plain between the Nenning and the Narog – all would suit the Haladin’s stated wishes, and he might even be able to secure guarded passage for them if he could convince his brothers and cousins to take an interest. It went without saying, unfortunately, that he would have to work around Doriath, for Thingol detested mortals nearly as much as Kinslayers.

Haleth regarded him with pursed lips before finally nodding.

“It is good that I trust you, Lord Carnistir,” she said wryly. “Else I might suspect you of trying to delay us.”

He shrugged, and chose not to ask why she thought he would wish to delay them – for he hoped he had not noticed his fondness. No good could come of it in any case, an adaneth and a ner.

“It is only sense to plan such a journey,” he replied. “If you set out now, you will travel in the kindest part of the year, it is true. But unless you travel much swifter than I expect, you would arrive with the growing season already at an end. How then would you survive the winter with nothing put by?”

She blinked, and he reminded himself that she was new to leadership. He was also not sure of her years- for all he knew, she was young enough that she had only known settled village life, not what an undertaking it was to move a large number of people, their animals, and household goods halfway across Beleriand.

“You have considered our movement with some care,” she said slowly.

“You may have declined to stay in my lands, but the places I think you will wish to settle are near to my kin, and you might be their allies,” he told her, deciding to explain as he would have to his brothers or cousins had they still been young. “If I send you to them as beggars, needy and dependent on their charity, they will think less of you and be displeased with me. If I send you to them as an independent people with some strength left to you and the prospect that you will soon enough be stronger, they will like you better- and me for sending you there. That will benefit us both.”

“When you put it that way, it sounds so logical,” Haleth said drily. “Less a favor than something both parties benefit from.”

“Of course. Is that not best when dealing with other groups?” Carnistir asked, trying to cover that he might perhaps be overstating the benefits to himself. “To seek an outcome to the good of both?”

Haleth regarded him for a moment, then let the topic drop.

“When you speak of a few seasons,” Haleth began uncertainly.

“I mean the remainder of this year, and at least the growing seasons of the next,” Carnistir told her. “Possibly longer, but that cannot be determined with any certainty yet. You will need this year merely for your people to heal, regain their confidence, and begin to rebuild your strength. Then next year you can direct your efforts to preparing for the journey, and laying in your stores of food, clothing, and other supplies you will need both on the road and once you arrive, enough to see you through the first harvest in your new lands.”

Haleth looked off into the distance, where some of the boys old enough to be useful were helping elves guide the livestock they had been able to round up into makeshift paddocks. They had been working on this task for several days, trying to gather all they could of the surviving animals, for the Haladin could not afford to lose more through inaction than they already had at the hands of the orcs.

“When did the Haladin come down from the mountains?” Carnistir asked, knowing that in his own lexicon it was ‘not so long ago’, but unsure how mortals would measure it.

“My father was but a boy when we spread out in the river valley,” Haleth answered.

Carnistir nodded.

From what he had seen of the survivors, he doubted there were more than a handful among what remained of her people who would remember those days. Fortunately for Haleth, most of them were women, which meant she would have little difficulty obtaining their advice without losing face among the men. The men of the edain, he had noticed, often discounted conversation among their females, deeming it all ‘gossip’.

“So you, and nearly all of your people, do not remember the journey across the mountains,” he said quietly. “You should use the move to Lake Helevorn as a trial – it will give you some better idea of what an undertaking it will be to move to the places I suggest.”

“Bearing in mind that the journey to your place will doubtless run smoother as we will have a small host of elves with us,” Haleth snorted.

“Indeed,” Carnistir agreed, pleased afresh at her quick mind. “You may be thinking of this journey merely in terms of relocating to this site from Sarn Athrad, but even moving you as far the lakeside will not be so easy.”

Once the initial triage of the living and rituals for the dead had been completed several days after the battle, he had moved the survivors to a site further up the Gelion, where the water ran clear and the land was unstained by the foulness of orcs and showed no signs to remind them of the battle at the ford. It was but a day’s ride at an easy pace, but even so, for many of the mortals it had been a difficult trek.

Her eyes showed well-concealed worry at the prospect that the journey ahead of them would be still more difficult.

“Do not worry overmuch,” he reassured her with a small smile. “As you have already realized, we will be helping you. But it will give you some idea of why I counsel you to plan your longer journey well before setting out.”

He did not want her intimidated by the undertaking before her – much less to change her mind and reluctantly accept his first offer only to chastise him later for manipulating her if her people complained. Much as he enjoyed her presence, he would not buy it at the expense of her position among her own people.

Of Elves and Women

Oshun's Just An Old-Fashioned Love Song story has inspired me to work more on this story. (The bones are there, but they need to be fleshed out considerably...)

Read Of Elves and Women

Haleth had been uncertain of the newly arrived elf-lord’s motives when he first offered offered the Haladin a fief in the north of his lands at their initial encounter. (Nor does she think she was wrong to be suspicious, for she had never seen elves before, and knew of them only through vague rumor handed down from her father’s generation – rumor which had them kin to the creatures that the Haladin had barely survived battle with.)

Now that they are actually passing through the country he had in mind for them, she was tempted to tell Carnistir that she has reconsidered her earlier decision if he has not changed his mind. It is good land, and she knows they could build not just settlements here, but given time to bring their numbers back to what they had been, villages and towns. They could thrive here, likely for her lifetime and her nephew’s if not longer.

Which makes it all the harder to hold fast to her ‘no’.

It was not just the surviving men of fighting age whose opinions she had asked before giving Carnistir her answer. She had also spoken with the widows and the women who now had no prospect of husbands among their own people, the boys left fatherless too young to be called youths who would be the ones to take up arms in the years to come, and the still beardless youths who were not truly men yet but would have to be if the orcs attacked again.

The ease and speed with which the foul creatures had come down from the mountains had shaken them all. Far better they liked the idea of removing westward, to Estolad where the mountains were far off and a watch could be kept that would not allow for such a deadly surprise a second time – and where they had heard there might be others of their kind. That was no small consideration for the unmarried maids who now had no young men to match them, and the widows who had no children – or those who had many, and no man to help provide for them now.

She had also made it a point to speak to the oldest women among them, grandmothers who could recall the crossing of the mountains. Thanks to their memories, she knew that this was not the first time things had been dire for her people, or that their men had been too few after a fight.

“There will be a season or two where even some whose men have fallen or who had not married them yet may find themselves in need of a groaning stool – overlook it,” had been the advice of her elders. “Act as though the children are all lawful, and the fathers who the women claim them to be. If we wish to live on as Haladin, not be absorbed into whatever Men we may find in Estolad, the babes will be sore needed.”

Privately, it had occurred to Haleth to wonder whether or not any of those babes would have elven fathers. The Allfather knew the elf men were attractive enough, and the older women seemed to think that it was natural to seek comfort in such a way after the battle and death they had recently seen.

She could not say, never having been married herself, and having held to the laws of her people governing relations between man and woman. (And now was not a time for her to begin breaking them, she told herself sternly.)

She also could not avoid noticing that Carnistir was sinfully handsome, and more than that, had never once talked down to her for being a woman. If anything, he seemed to simply assume that any deficiency in her planning or leadership was due to her being new to the role. More than once she suspected he had been trying to teach her as he would a young elf – which generally involved leading her to think things through in a certain way, with the expectation that she would see the solution herself.

She had laughed at her foolishness the first time she found her mind turning over thoughts of what he might think of her as a woman. There were lady elves riding among his host, as beautiful as the men were handsome. (That had been what made her believe he truly meant his fine words about caring not whether she was man or woman, only that she was competent.)

Haleth Haldad’s daughter had never been reckoned a beauty, even in the days when she had just reached marriageable age. She had not grown any prettier with the passing of the years, and at thirty-four she was reckoned by the standards of her people an old maid.

Nor will she be able to change that now. Not unless she cedes the leadership to another – and the only one she will willingly hand it over to is her nephew. There are no unwed men remaining among her own people of an age for her to marry, and she has no mind to take a beardless boy to her bed. Even should they find the other Men the elves say came into Beleriand before the Haladin, for her to marry one of them would be unacceptable to her people until her nephew comes of age.

Haldan is only just turning nine – by the time he is reckoned old enough to lead, another ten years at the least, she will be past her childbearing years entirely. Most would say her marrying at that point would serve no purpose, not when both her position as leader and her nephew will ensure her keep among the Haladin.

A giggle interrupted her thoughts, and she looked up to find a smiling child being taught a complicated clapping game by one of the elf captains.

She has noticed that the elves riding with them – she calls it riding, but it is guarding in truth – all take a great interest in the children, and has found Haldan laughing with one elf or another nearly every time she looked for him.

It took some days before she worked up the courage to mention it to Carnistir, for she did not like to feel as silly and ignorant as she knew she must appear to him. Her thirty-odd years were nothing to his centuries. (Not that she has dared ask his age, or whether he was young or old by the reckoning of his kind.)

“Your people are very fond of children,” she remarked as they set up her tent one evening.

He had given her the tent, on the grounds that a leader should have her own. The smaller one she would have gladly shared with her brother-wife and nephew was left to Haldan and Anleth and doubtless slept two more comfortably than three. And she had quickly enough seen why he thought a leader should have their own tent, for people sought her out to deal with problems at all hours, day and night. Anyone sharing her tent would no more get to sleep the night through than she did.

“Of course,” he agreed easily. “Are your people not also fond of young ones? You have so many of them about.”

“Yes,” she said slowly, wondering how best to phrase what she was thinking.

“But?” he asked patiently, having already learned to distinguish between the many varieties of silence in their conversations.

“Your people seem more keenly interested than we generally are in children not our own,” she said at last, hoping she was not treading on some cultural difference that would give offense.

“Yes, well, I suppose it is because we do not often see any,” he replied thoughtfully. “Elves do not as a rule bring forth children in time of war. As such there have been very few elflings among my people since coming to Beleriand.”

She blinked. From what little she knew, the Noldor had been in Beleriand for hundreds of years, the Sindar for thousands.

“But are not many of your people married?” she asked blankly, trying to wrap her mind around the self-control that must require.

“Yes,” Carnistir said with a frown, as if unsure where her confusion lay. “But it is a rare couple who wish to beget a child while under the threat of Morgoth. Among the Noldor at least. The Sindar feel differently, or so my cousins who have been among them say.”

“So husbands and wives avoid…”

She paused.

Orcshit, but she was all but bound to tread on some taboo or other with this. Clearly elves’ bodies must have very different urges if otherwise loving couples could go hundreds of years without touching each other! Unwed or not, she has some experience of desire, and the usual teenage explorations with the opposite sex to inform her how maddening it would be to need to command her body to deny its instincts for so long.

He looked at her expectantly, still faintly puzzled, and for the first time since they’d been travelling together, looking slightly lost.

Damnation! For all she knew, they didn’t even use the same euphemisms for the act…

“Sex,” she finally got out, hoping her face wasn’t red as a beet. “For centuries at a time?”

Now he looked so totally confused she would have laughed if she wasn’t worried about mortally offending him.

“Stars, no,” he replied. “Why would you think that?”

At least he wasn’t offended. Or laughing at her.

“But if there are no elflings,” she stammered, trying to make sense of it.

“It is a choice to beget an elfling, not an inevitable consequence of joining,” Carnistir replied, and she could hear him trying to keep the tone of explaining things to a young child out of his voice.

“It is?” she asked weakly.

He snorted.

“Were it not, I would most certainly have more than six brothers,” he assured her dryly.

She could think of a good many women of the Haladin who would envy the elf ladies more than just their ageless beauty if word of this got around. More than one matron has heard the talk from the midwives about the need to avoid further pregnancies if she wished to see her children grow up. Many more would simply like to be able to enjoy their husband without the threat of another round of childbearing.

Carnistir looked at her oddly, then asked hesitantly, “Is it different for your people?”

Now it was her turn to make sure she did not talk down.

“Stars, yes,” she replied, echoing his earlier phrasing, since it was sure to be safely non-offensive. “Sometimes when a man and a woman lie together, a babe comes of it, sometimes not. The couple have little say in the matter – they take their chances. There are ways to make conception less likely, but they are far from foolproof.”

As at least one of the younger women of the Haladin could attest, having just that morning been determined to be with child at only fifteen. Fortunately for Meleth, seventeen-year-old Hundar was still among the living, so while she would have the minor embarrassment of a hasty wedding a few years sooner than the norm, she would not face the shame of a big belly with no male in sight to take responsibility. (Haleth suspected that while most women would be understanding of a girl whose intended had been openly courting her before the orc attack finding herself in such a situation, Meleth might not have received the same mercy had Hundar not stepped forward.)

Carnistir’s eyebrows had risen as close as they could manage to his hairline, but he said nothing – plainly for worry of saying the wrong thing.

“I suppose your people are so like to us in form that it had not occurred to me that something so fundamental might be so different,” Haleth said lightly, more to break the tension than anything else.

“Indeed,” he murmured. “At any rate, now you know why we are so pleased to have children around. I imagine the only serious danger your young ones will face while you are among us is being thoroughly spoiled by indulgent elves.”