The Art of Speech Through Smithcraft by Idrils Scribe

Gore

If Lothlann was an ocean of waving grass, the marching companies of the sons of Fëanáro were the rising of its silver tides as we swept the plains in a mighty arc moving west towards Ard-galen.
At first we drove out naught but small bands of Orcs and Wargs, stragglers and scouts easily destroyed by our vanguard. I recall my childish eagerness, and being disappointed at the lack of opportunity to prove myself. True to his word, Maitimo remained close beside me. My chance arrived when we came upon the siege of Ladros.
A great multitude of Orcs and other foul creatures were encamped in the foothills rising towards the dark pine-covered heights of Dorthonion, pillaging and defiling the green lands. The brothers Angaráto and Aikanáro, their names by then unceremoniously Sindarinized to Angrod and Aegnor, valiantly defended their fief, but lacked the numbers to break the noose of Moringotto’s servants that was pulled ever tighter around their necks.
Maitimo proved himself an able strategist, drawing the Orcs out to meet us on the plain instead of giving them the advantage of higher ground in the hill-country.

Show me a warrior who claims they were anything but mindless with terror at the sight of their first Orcs, and I will show you a liar. Seen from a distance it was as if the highlands of Dorthonion released rivers of viscous, slow-running pitch upon us. When they approached the streams separated into individual shapes running jerkily, hunched over, many knuckling along to the ugly beat of their war-drums. At first my heart was almost moved to pity at the sight of living creatures so hamstrung and mutilated. The feeling abruptly turned to terror at the sight of the bloodlust in their sickly yellow eyes and their vile weapons: crudely made polearms eight feet long, topped with cruel blades and hooks for pulling down riders.
The fate of what Elves they succeeded in unhorsing grew clear soon enough, when the hapless fellow in front of me was pulled to the ground and torn to pieces by a mad frenzy of claws and fangs. His howls of agony would resound through my nightmares for years to come, and they continued until Canissë, with a steady hand and terrifying hate in her eyes, drove a white-fletched arrow through his eye.

Perhaps I should boast of my valour that day, of how I “slew the foe in droves” as my politically astute uncle Makalaurë would sing to great acclaim not a sennight later. I would prefer not to make a fool of myself. This was my first battle, and the tally of my contributions to the day’s glory amounted to remaining alive and keeping my morning meal where it belonged.

There on the battlefield, surrounded by screams and the stench of entrails, threatened from every direction, I could not spare a moment to think of it, but these were the first Orcs Maitimo had encountered since his torment in Angband.
His vengeance was terrible to behold. If my uncle had been as flame that morning, in the heat of battle he blazed like a living inferno. Never before had I witnessed such lethal skill at arms. The red gems on his sword-hilt caught the light as he thrust and hacked, sending flecks of red light across the surrounding knights of his household guard like dancing splatters of blood.

Maitimo hewed through the churning black hordes like a harvester scything ripe wheat, unstoppably clearing a path to their captain under his banner of sable unblazoned. To lead his first attack on the Noldor Moringotto had sent forth no mere Orc. This was a Boldog, a fallen Maïa clad in orc-flesh. The accursed beast was even taller than Maitimo himself, armoured in black iron and brandishing a cruelly spiked club nearly its own size. In its beady eyes shone a twisted cleverness far beyond the blind obedience and terror of regular Orc-slaves, whose masters use whips to drive them onto the battlefield. Here was an opponent against whom Maitimo’s hot rage would only serve to endanger him.
The Boldog knew this, and it taunted him mercilessly as they circled, weapons held aloft, appraising each other. Its coarse, hateful voice recounted the foulest details of torture and humiliation before all his household. Only then did I realise this very creature must have been among his tormentors in Angband. Even under the torrent of the monster’s scorn, Maitimo’s face was unreadable, his eyes blank.
He remained calm and impassive, methodically testing the Boldog’s defenses as it ramped up its provocations. From Maitimo himself it moved on to his brothers. Makalaurë captured, Tyelkormo dragged to Angband in chains, brutalizing the entire House of Fëanáro until he reached Pityafinwë dismembered under the vilest of tortures. Maitimo slashed, and ducked the swinging club, and parried in a silence heavy as stone.

What measure of Sight remains to Maiar who have abased themselves so deeply I cannot say. Did the Boldog perceive me among the wide sweep of Elf-warriors keeping the throng of common Orcs from stabbing our prince in the back as he fought? Or had it heard mention of my presence in Beleriand wrung from Maitimo’s lips by some foul torture? We will never know, but in the end it was my name that decided their duel.

“Fear not, my Elf-thrall. I swear no Orc will ever lay a finger on your nephew. We hear that of all your bellicose House, Telpë has the sweetest disposition. My Master is of a mind to break him personally. We will carry him to Angband unbruised as a ripe peach.”

The Boldog, its slavering mouth seemingly too small for the multitude of yellow fangs it was meant to contain, looked directly at me across the field, and laughed.

After working up to it for so long, the swift and simple reality of Maitimo whirling underneath the swinging club to decapitate the monster with a single stroke was almost disappointing.
Blood-spattered and wild-eyed, Maitimo took the Boldog’s head and impaled it on its own standard, tearing off the black banner to tread it into the creature’s blood. When he raised his grisly trophy high for us all to see, a red fever of blood-lust and vengeance descended on the House of Fëanáro. We fell upon the dismayed Orcs with enough bitter hatred to purge ourselves of the dreadful images the Boldog had conjured, washing our minds clean in black blood. Looking back I can barely remember how many I killed or how I achieved it, so frenzied was the deluge of violence Maitimo had unleashed on his enemies. Later I found gore clinging to me in the strangest of places, bone-fragments working their way under my gambeson and more than blood alone matting my braids.

At their captain’s fall, the Orcs were utterly routed and fled north in disorder. Even as the cavalry and knights pursued them, drunk on victory and the clear wind in our faces, the call of many horns was heard from the West, and Maitimo’s face alighted like sunlight through dark clouds breaking. Many fair voices took up the call.

“Nolofinwë! Nolofinwë has come, and with him rides valiant Findekáno!”

Like two cupped hands, the eastern and western phalanxes of Elvish riders met to encircle the fleeing Orcs.
Fëanáro and Nolofinwë, the kinslayers and the clean-handed, the Dispossessed and the High King, naught did it matter as we fell upon the Orcs’ disarrayed rearguard in a storm of blue Elvish steel. Makalaurë later sang that not a single Orc escaped us to return to Angband, possibly the only line of his whole splendid lay that is not poetic exaggeration. We still had long hours of hard fighting to do as the sun settled in the west, colouring the clouds of toxic fume spilling forth from Moringotto’s fortress as deep a crimson as the very earth beneath our feet.

We were close to the Thangorodrim itself then, and I knew the very sight of the piled, groaning agony of its ashen peaks was torment renewed for Maitimo. By then I had returned to my senses enough for understanding to click into place at the look of deep relief in my uncle’s eyes as they rested on the imposing figure with gold-wound braids that was Findekáno.
Every one of the furtive whispers I managed to overhear as they did the rounds of Aglon’s barracks was true. To my uncle, Findekáno was his saviour in more ways than one.