Of Things Made to be Destroyed by janeways

In fairy stories, the kind he used to tell his nephew, the handsome prince sees the beautiful princess and falls instantly in love. She is radiant, and he, burning with passion, strides purposefully towards her, mind made up to ask for her hand in marriage. They dance, because they are at a ball (these sorts of things always seem to happen at balls), they kiss, and then they are married, and live happily ever after. (“What happens in the happily ever after?” Celebrimbor had once asked. Caranthir, stuttering, had told him to ask his father.)

This was not a fairy story. The first time he saw her, she was little more than a blur covered in blood and filth as he swept past her on horseback. In the back of his mind, Caranthir registered that she appeared to be the person in charge, and after his initial assault drove the attacking orcs back, he turned his horse, searching her out amongst the rabble. She fought close to the front lines, screaming orders to her soldiers above the din of the wind and rain, voice raw with the kind of fury that most often masks fear. (Something in the ragged edges of her words caught his notice, and he heard in them first his father and then himself.) He made to catch her eye and saw he had already caught hers. (Well, Caranthir reasoned, trying not to make too much of it, he was a mighty Elven lord on horseback who had just swept in from the rear with half his cavalry. Eru knew what he seemed like to this mortal woman.) Riding up to meet her, he spared no time for pleasantries and cut straight to the point, shouting the first words of his message even before he had quite reached her. Belatedly, it occurred to him that she might not speak Sindarin. He prayed that by some miracle these people had encountered friendly Avari who might have passed on Thingol’s language.

Luck, it would appear, was on his side. Slashing at an orc who had broken through the defensive line, she shouted back her reply over the howling of the wind. Battle plans thus agreed on, she returned her attentions to the orc as Caranthir charged forward to his soldiers once more, surging into the fray.

*

By the time the battle was over, the storm had subsided to a drizzle, no less damp and miserable but at least less noisy. Picking his way through the uneven ground, Caranthir guided his horse around the bodies of the dead and injured. Mannish and Elvish soldiers alike scoured the battlefield for fallen comrades, either to tend or to bury. The orcs they left. The woman stood a ways off, surrounded by a contingent of other Men, whom he guessed to also be women by the obvious swells of their hips and chests. (He wondered if perhaps that was why Men seemed to take so much stock of whether one was male or female—those being the only two options, as he understood it, although in truth he found Mannish sexual dimorphism, and the extent to which it seemed to govern their genders, their societies, and their daily lives, utterly mystifying.) With Elves he would not have so easily known, but then, with Elves it would not have mattered. Perhaps these women were considered more suitable counselors or bodyguards for a female leader? Or perhaps this was a society governed by women? Had Findaráto or the twins mentioned any tribes of the Edain with matriarchal systems of leadership?

His thoughts thus occupied, Caranthir did not notice when his horse failed to stop completely as he dismounted. Tripping ahead with the forward momentum, his leather riding boots slipped in the wet mud, and he stumbled with an “oomf” directly into the woman’s outstretched arms. Peering down at him, she blinked. For the first time, he could see her face clearly, and he found himself preeminently occupied with the sheen of sweat and rain on her skin, and how it seemed to glimmer as it rose in thin wisps of steam into the cold air.

She coughed politely and he realized with embarrassment that he had been staring. “You, ah,” he stuttered, “you fight well.” Regaining his composure, Caranthir righted himself awkwardly, all the while praying silently he would not slip again. “Thank you.”

“I am Haleth, daughter of Haldad, by right of succession chieftain of the Haladin.” She gave him a once over, flicking her eyes from head to toe and back up. Without thinking, he felt himself stand up straighter. “Who are you?”

“I am Morifinwë Carnistir, called Caranthir in the tongue of Elu Thingol; Prince of Thargelion, fourth son of the First House of the Noldor. I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Lady,” he replied in what he hoped was the correct mixture of grandeur, magnanimity, and pleasantness. First contact protocol was an inexact science at the best of times, and he had met few Edain before—certainly not as the ranking prince in his side of the exchange. And certainly not having just tripped into their arms. Gazing at her again, he noticed the same intensity he had first seen on the battlefield, a veneer of authority with its foundation in insecurity. By right of succession, she had said. Even though her Sindarin wasn’t perfect, that much had come across clearly. So her parent had likely died in this battle, or at least recently enough that she had not been formally recognized as leader in her own right. Dimly, Caranthir recalled the name Haldad from the depths of his memory: a man’s name, he thought, so not a matriarchy—another reason for her overcompensation. Haldad—wasn’t he the one who had united the Haladin? Not a long or well-established line of leadership either, then. A wave of sympathy swept over Caranthir. Poor woman. At least his father, in all the blustering and recklessness of his last years, had been secure in his right of succession by birth and the strength of his line.

All these thoughts came and passed in the blink of an eye. Haleth, too, had been making her own mental review, and now she spoke. “Thank you for your aid, Lord,” she said carefully, picking at each syllable, although whether to better her pronunciation or bide for more time to think, he was unsure. “You have been generous in your help today, and in letting us settle your southern lands,” she continued. Caranthir saw that she aimed to go on, but he interjected, hoping to reassure her (and spare himself further effusive comments, which he found embarrassing—he had had enough embarrassment for one day).

“It is well enough to me that you should be settled there, Lady. My people make little use of these lands and your presence discourages more aggressive invasions from—” In the background, he heard the snarl of a wounded orc who had regained consciousness. There was shouting, more snarling, the clashing of metal, and then all fell silent again. “…More unsavory peoples than yourselves,” he finished pointedly. “In fact,” he found himself saying, in one of those all-too-common moments where he could feel his lips moving faster than his mind, with apparently no ability to control the words coming out of his own mouth, “it would not displease me if you were to remain here.”

“It would not displease you?” Haleth’s tone was unreadable but decidedly lacking in enthusiasm.

“With your own fiefdom, of course,” he added hurriedly. Why am I like this? he wondered mournfully. It’s like dropping something and just watching it fall. “You would be free to rule your people and live as you see fit, with as much or as little involvement in my affairs as you wish. I believe it would continue to be mutually beneficial for us both.”

“My Lord,” Haleth spoke deliberately, choosing her words carefully but firmly. “My Lord, is that not already what we have been doing? Living as we pleased, with as much as involvement in the affairs of Elves as we desired?” That is, Caranthir surmised unhappily, none at all.

Caranthir felt a surge of—annoyance? disappointment?—rise up in his throat. “Yeeess,” he answered slowly, drawing out each sound in an attempt to calm down. “To a degree. But as you have been living on my lands without leave—that is,” he caught himself as anger flashed across Haleth’s face—“without formal, legal documentation, you have also been denying yourselves access to certain special protections, public works and improvements projects, tax benefits, etcetera…” As he felt himself slip into what his brothers called “Accountant Mode,” he stopped and took a deep breath. He did not have the time or patience to teach this woman the finer details of administration. Either she had learned what she needed from observing her father, or she would now have to learn the hard way. And he would be damned if he begged a Man to stay on the lands she had already been illegally squatting on. (Even if that squatting had substantially kept the orcs at bay. And resulted in the land being cultivated and cleared of unwanted flora and fauna. And thus increased its real estate value.) Caranthir took another deep breath and settled himself.

Haleth gazed at him silently, considering her options. He guessed that she was not foolish enough to say aloud that she didn’t need him, and he certainly wasn’t foolish enough to insist aloud that she clearly did. One did not get to be as rich as Caranthir by being that stupid. So, what would it be, then?

“My people need time to recover before we can begin making plans for the future,” she said at last. A non-answer, then. Wise decision, he thought. It would give her time to consider her options while receiving more goodwill aid from his people. He would have helped her anyway, of course—he wasn’t a monster, despite what his tempter and his actions at Alqualondë might prompt some to say—but it was clever maneuvering not make that assumption.  Perhaps she had learned more than he had first assumed.

He bowed and took his leave, remounting his horse and guiding it over to his lieutenant. There was a tightness in his chest that he couldn’t explain, and for some reason he couldn’t pinpoint, his mind was filled with the fairy stories he had once told his nephew, and how when his father had first seen his mother, she had been covered in the soot of the forge.

After they removed the bodies of the wounded and the fallen, they piled the corpses of the Orcs in a loose pyramid at the edge of the field and set it aflame. It was a common practice among the Elves, just a practicality, really: a way of clearing the land and containing any diseases the Orcs may have been carrying, or that the dead flesh might have attracted. Apparently, among some of the Edain, the practice had led to a folk belief that unburned bodies of Orcs would curse the land, scar it beyond any further use with the pollution of their evil.

Caranthir wondered about that, now, as he stood watching the fire. Whether evil really was an unscourable stain. How it came to be transmitted. He thought of the first Orcs: Elves tortured beyond recognition into mockeries of life itself, their hatred and their bitterness further distilled in every generation. They had not been so different from him, once.

“Do they have mothers?” The voice from behind him was Haleth’s. She moved to stand beside him. Without turning, he answered.

“They must, although in truth, I would prefer not to dwell on such thoughts.”

Haleth sighed. Her mouth was set hard around the edges, but there was a peculiar look in her eyes. She was silent for a moment, and then said suddenly, “I wonder if their mothers teach them to hate us the way our mothers teach us to hate them. I wonder…” She trailed off, letting the question rise with the sparks and ash high into the night air. The sky had finally cleared, and stars twinkled overhead, cold and indifferent and far, far away.

They stood there, together before the flames, long into the night.

Morning dawned cold and misty. To Caranthir it seemed the damp earth itself was shivering under the wan early light. But there was light, and for that he was grateful. He had slept little, but there were many who had slept even less: those tasked with setting up camp, organizing the hospital, tending to the wounded, and burying the fallen. (It struck him, how both his people and Haleth’s buried their dead in the earth: for the Noldor, it was a tradition forged in Beleriand, a way of connecting them to this land; for the nomadic Haladin, it symbolically marked their journey and the places where, for however long, they made their home.) A long rest and a lazy morning was perhaps warranted, he thought. It was almost certainly desired by all, yet it seemed that sleep escaped more than Caranthir: even by the time he dressed and left his tent, the large camp was wide awake with the sounds of talking and the pungent smell of woodsmoke.

Damn, he thought, all the wood’s soaked through and smoking something fierce. I’ll be lucky if any of my meals for the next day taste like anything more than soot. Caranthir detested a smoky fire. Supplies of food, medicine, cloth, and dry wood were on their way from his castle, but the supply caravan would take a day or more to reach them. As he approached his head cook for the cavalry, he was already making a mental inventory of food that either would not be strongly affected by the presence of smoke or that might actually be by improved by it. And then, as he passed one of the women of Haleth’s guard, an idea struck him.

*

“Hail the victorious dead!” Haleth’s voice rang out strong and clear across the field.

“Hail!” answered Caranthir, raising his goblet in toast.

“Hail!” came the chorus of replies from the gathered combatants and survivors. They had set their feast at many long tables arranged in a sort of central “square” in their tent city, a large area at the head of camp left intentionally clear. Caranthir was pleased to see a certain amount of mingling between the two peoples, if not much conversation (which he hoped was simply the result of limited Sindarin on the Haladin’s part).

Having instructed his head cook to consult with the Haladin concerning their supplies and dietary preferences, he had approached Haleth with his plan. “It will be a symbolic celebration,” he had explained. “It is a tradition among the Noldor. With the sun still in the morning sky, almost at the peak of noon, we celebrate both our past successes and the promise of good health to come.”

“Have you a name for it?” Her question had thrown him.

“Have—what? A name for a victory celebration?”

“You said it was a tradition amongst your people.”

“Oh, well, yes, a meal taken late in the morning. Not necessarily a victory meal, although such an occasion would not be excluded—”

“What do you call it?”

“We call it ‘brunch.’”

*

Leaning back in his camp chair to let his food settle, Caranthir turned to look at Haleth. She was still eating intently. He noted the soft roundness of her ears—still such a novelty to him—and the beginnings of lines around her eyes, tiny folds in the delicate skin. Mannish age was a matter of some confusion for Caranthir. Dwarves, with whom he had more familiarity, he had learned to judge fairly accurately, and like Dwarves, Men did age and die, but how the two peoples’ lifespans and signs of aging compared he did not know. Haleth could have been still a young woman or one well into her middle age. Whatever her age, she carried weight and wisdom beyond her years, though. That much he could tell.

“What, pray tell, are you looking at?” Haleth’s voice startled him from his thoughts. She had not turned her head (or, Caranthir noted, paused her eating while she spoke). “I can feel your eyes on me, Lord.”

“You have keen senses, then,” he countered.

“I have led a dangerous life; I have had to develop them,” she answered, eyes still on her food. Still, he did not answer her, but held his gaze steadily. At length, she turned to him. “You did not answer me, Lord. What are you looking at? You have the look about you of a man searching for something.” Haleth cocked her head, and although she did smile, there was a laugh in her eyes. “What are you hoping to find in my face?”

For that, he had no answer. “Merely looking,” he said softly.

Shaking her head, Haleth turned back to her food. “I am grateful for your hospitality, but you Elves have strange ways.”

Caranthir paused. “Yes, ah, well…” Excellent diplomacy, Carnistir, very princely, he berated himself. “I am sure many of our customs must seem different and unusual,” he said in what he hoped was a recovery. Seizing an opportunity where he saw one opening up, he pressed on. “I am unfamiliar with many of your people’s customs as well, Lady. Please, enlighten me as to the origin of your earlier toast. I found it very moving.”

Haleth hummed a moment while she finished chewing. “In truth, I know not. But as you said, I too have always found it moving. The idea that their sacrifice was not in vain. That we are celebrating their lives rather than mourning their deaths.”

“It is a pleasing sentiment,” Caranthir agreed. “My people, being of eternal life, are often inclined towards intense sorrow at death. It is not permanent for us—we are re-embodied in the Undying Lands, after our time in the Halls of the Dead; we do not continue on past the circles of the world,” he interjected hurriedly at the gape-mouthed stare from Haleth at his statement that death was not permanent for Elves. “I think it because we do not understand death, not truly,” he continued, “not in the way mortals must. But I do not feel it must always be so, for us. I should like if we adopted an attitude not unlike your own.”

Haleth nodded slowly. Her face, usually steeled in a veneer of stern unreadability, had softened in surprise at this last admission. Perhaps, he surmised, she was astonished that such a proud lord as he would so openly admit her people’s customs preferable to his own. But Caranthir was above all a practical person: there were no trade networks built upon prejudice, and no profits to be gained by clinging to pride in the face of a better option. (And besides, his cousin Ingoldo’s funeral dirges really were abominable.)

“Now you have asked me a question, I should like to ask you one of my own,” Haleth said, settling back in her own chair. This was going to be a long conversation, apparently.

“I welcome it.”

*

Alone in his tent, Caranthir plucked away at the design before him. It was a small piece, a white horse courant on a field of green, interspersed with golden flowers. In time, the edges would be circled by a pattern of interlocking stalks, leaves, and flowers. He hadn’t decided what it would be—probably a handkerchief—or to whom he would gift it—at the moment, he was leaning towards Tyelko, but that would rule out its being used as a handkerchief. (Caranthir was not sure the last time he had seen his brother use anything remotely resembling a handkerchief. Or a napkin. Maybe he would use it as a hand towel? Maybe.)

As he sewed, Caranthir considered his earlier conversation with Haleth (which, in all honesty, had not left his mind since he had reluctantly left her side). What had started as a gaffe had evolved into a discussion of many hours, lasting well into the afternoon as tables were cleared around them and people dispersed to their various duties. Caranthir did not think his reputation as a difficult person was always deserved, but he had to admit that he rarely found a conversation so effortless and enjoyable. That his partner was a Mannish woman he had just met did not escape him. His hand stilled.

Haleth did not seem any more the sort of person to use a handkerchief than his brother Tyelkormo, but perhaps she would like the embroidery on the horse.

*

“And then I caught him staring at me!”

“What was he looking at?”

“Me, I think.”

“Why was he looking at you?”

“Who knows? Probably to stare at how hideous a mortal I am!” Haleth laughed loudly, and the group of women around her burst into snorts and giggles. Even here, in the privacy of her own tent, in the company of her own guards, in the safety of her own language, she could not admit that the idea stung. So she laughed it off. Made a fool of the poncy Elvish princeling and his airs. What did she care why he looked at her, so long as he gave her people food and supplies? Let him entertain himself how he would. (An alternative way he might entertain himself with her flitted through her thoughts, and she pushed it away, silently cursing her traitorous mind.) The conversation turned to other matters, and Haleth followed along with half a mind, laughing or hmm-ing where appropriate, but her thoughts remained with Caranthir, and the way his eyes glinted like mica in the sun when he looked at her.

Chapter End Notes

In a few places, if I'm remembering correctly, Tolkien notes that the Men of Rohan are ultimately descended from the Haladin (and that the Wild Men, although a separate people, joined with the Haladin and lived among them, which I always found interesting). The exact references are escaping me, but I tried to reference that connection with the toast (which is Theoden's in the extended edition of PJ's RotK) and the flag of Rohan, a white horse on a green field.