By Stars' Light by Erfan Starled

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Chapter 3

 

 

*** The Mountains of northern Aman ~ The Grinding Ice ***

 

Glorfindel apparently still had the energy to be curious despite the unrelenting cold. “Does he say anything yet?”

 

“Not a word.” Glorfindel, Indis’ nephew on her sister’s side, had shown endless patience with all of them, apparently liking the company of his younger cousins. He treated all Finwë’s grandchildren with impartial kindness, related or not. Finrod had never seen him take sides in his uncles’ quarrel. When Glorfindel spoke his mind, he did so discreetly where it might do most good and least harm. His unhasty deliberations had always reminded Finrod a little of his father. Childhood was long past, yet Finrod felt obscurely comforted that he was here. Even if it was taking kindness too far to be solicitous of one guilty of bloodshed.

 

In a lull in the wind, Glorfindel cast his next question against the monotony of walking. “Why do you think he got left behind?”

 

“No idea. It wasn’t accidental, though. Fëanor was furious with him over something and wouldn’t let Maglor talk to him.”

 

“Doesn’t that make you think twice about what went on?”

 

“He’s got guilt written all over him. You can see it yourself.”

 

“He is not doing well, Finrod.”

 

Were any of them? Finrod grunted. “Even if I wanted to, there is nothing I can do. He can go back to his own soon enough, once we get there. If they will take him.” If they got there. He bit his tongue and kept his fears to himself, as did they all.

 

Despite his words, he took to wondering why Fëanor had cut his follower off so callously. It was something to take his mind off the cold. Glorfindel was right. Calyaro was not doing well. Physically, he managed better than some, but his spirit seemed broken. ‘Slain by grief…’ Mandos’ words echoed in his mind as he walked, until that took all his effort and thinking faded into a blur of white ice.

 

Talking hurt. Breathing hurt. Theirs was proving a wretched northward march, with food rationed and breath that froze in the air. They were all wondering just how long their bodies could function in the intense cold.

 

Fingolfin led the way with Turgon or Fingon. Galadriel, too, was eager to be at the fore. She and Finrod argued with their uncle as to how far north they must go before they could risk the ice. Argument availed little against ignorance and they spent more and more time in care of those who weakened in strength if not resolve. The steep escarpments meant the company must help each other along and keep careful watch on the slowest and the youngest that travelled in their midst.

 

As time passed, hardship distilled the cousins’ determination, as they weighed the dangers of cold and hunger and struggling through the mountain fringes against the need for the sea to be frozen all the way across once they ventured the strait itself.

 

The familiar tapestries of stars overhead altered subtly with the leagues. Some of the southern constellations had dropped below the horizon altogether and the northern constellations that remained held truer to their ever-circling course. Ango’s entire body was almost always visible now, curled around Hen Anguo, the only unmoving star in the sky. Galadriel puzzled over this change  but found no explanation. She and Glorfindel had less energy for debate, with talk so difficult, but Finrod was certain they would thrash out the mystery endlessly, once returned to warmth and safety.

 

In fear of perishing of short commons and prolonged cold, they at last turned east. A sound like nothing they had ever heard rumbled ominously ahead of them, as much felt as heard, transmitted through the icy snow they crossed. At first only faint, it grew insistently with every step they took, until the edge of Aman brought them to ramparts of ice forced high under relentless pressure.

 

Even with its surface waters frozen by Morgoth’s ancient blight, the Sea far below still moved and the Ice with it, grinding in constant torture. Fantastic shapes rose in ridge after ridge, carved by the wind and alternately smoothed and gouged by flying ice. In the troughs between these, frozen waters stretched from fissure to fissure, with fragments small and large all moving one against another. The air was filled with unearthly groaning that sapped the ability to hear even their own minds’ thoughts above its noise.

 

Soon, they bunched together for warmth, but the ice rapidly grew more treacherous than the wind and the cold. The first time a crevasse betrayed someone’s footing, hidden by layers of snow, it provoked screams and horrified lunges to help. Then the ice taught its second harsh lesson, as would-be rescuers slid into the void themselves to be lost in turn.

 

By the tenth fall, the shouts for help invoked their risky, new routines. Carrying ropes to hand, they probed for the last safe edge, stamping down hard before crawling spread-eagled onto the surface near the edge.

 

By the hundredth such disaster, they had found ways to walk – and climb – east with an exhausted, despairing caution, trying to cover the distance in hopes of not perishing of cold and starvation from their very slowness. Some ideas had worked. Others failed.

 

They roped groups together in the ill-founded hope that one person could be saved by the rest. Without purchase for their feet on the ice, it only meant multiple disaster as one person’s fall pulled others over with them. Grimly they uncoupled the ropes from those at the front.

 

They learned to proceed in strict lines and rotate the leaders of each file when they tired. Whatever lengths of wood or metal they had brought, be it sword, spear, javelin or mere fishing rods, they used to check for solid ground ahead. Prod, test, step. Prod, test, step. In this way they managed for a time. Until the ice moved and a bank gave way where they stood.

 

The cold and eerie wastes, the constant grinding and creaking that vibrated through them, the treacherously flowing Ice that preyed on them without respite, opening channels before them no matter how careful they were, the wind that howled for leagues on end carrying sharp ice that cut exposed flesh – any one of these would have eroded the alertness they could not afford to lose and could not maintain.

 

So many were lost that the Helcaraxë felt like a live creature beneath their feet, taking them treacherously by ones and twos. Determination became their mainstay, hope a casualty left in their wake with the rest. They had thought to cross successfully by sheer perseverance, but sapped by cold, doubt set in and later thought itself froze, numbing hope and doubt alike.

 

They lost count of Ango’s revolutions, by which they measured time.

 

Oddly, Calyaro woke from his stupor in the midst of this misery when he tripped over an exhausted mother and her child, fallen before him in the line of march. Finrod saw him stumble and land on the hard surface. For a moment he seemed dazed, before he looked around and stood up with the crying child, thumb in mouth, lifted to one hip. With his other hand he bent to pull the mother up. Finrod reached him and together they hauled her clumsily to her feet.

 

Calyaro nodded his thanks. Finrod, due to relieve Orodreth, let go. Calyaro gripped the mother’s arm more firmly in his frozen hand.

 

When Finrod trudged up the line again later, the three of them were still together. Calyaro had apparently kept them going until the mother could clutch the toddler to her chest once more, wrapped about by a shared cloak for what warmth she might retain about them. Finrod saw him lay a hand on the child’s back in parting, and touch the elf’s shoulder, before moving away.

 

Finrod grew used to seeing him join the rescuers when someone fell, or lead a file, or walk the lines with other stalwarts to shove falterers up and on. He had not imagined he could feel gratitude toward one of Fëanor’s number at the Haven, but he came to rely on him in the same way as he did Orodreth, Aegnor and Angrod as they tended those who faltered.

 

It was far too cold to stop to rest. Hands could not undo packs or hold food. They froze and walked and pushed each other along. The only passage of time was another freezing breath and the next forced step of a cold-stiff foot, punctuated by another wail of terror that would galvanise the nearest into painful action. Hands chapped by cold barely healed, reopening at the slightest exposure or strain, the deepening wounds slowly turning black as healing failed them. Finrod fell into line more and more often to rest and blindly keep step without having to think. More than once while on duty he walked mindlessly in the wrong direction, waking disoriented and off course.

 

Once, he had strayed and only knew his error when hands laid on him roughly halted him, jolting him to consciousness.

 

“Calyaro?” Dazed, he looked about him. Only the two of them stood in a hollow between ridges. Had Calyaro not seen him and woken him he might never have woken at all, or he might have wandered until he dropped without ever finding the others if once the wind rose. Calyaro started trudging in the right direction, dragging Finrod with him by a hand threaded through the rope coiled at Finrod’s waist.

 

The Ice stretched before them, never ceasing its noise.

 

When bitter tragedy hit Turgon, Galadriel and Glorfindel kept Turgon, Idril and Aredhel firmly between them near Fingolfin. Turgon seemed lost in nightmare, barely acknowledging them after Elenwë’s loss.

 

Coming painfully up to the front, Finrod asked, “How is he?”

 

Galadriel was measuring the skies, probably checking their direction by the Snake’s Eye while the driving, blinding winds were in abeyance. She did not answer, but Glorfindel shrugged.

 

“He’ll survive. But you?”

 

Finrod felt more dead than alive, with legs made of lead and lungs cut by knives with every breath. “I’m fine. I’d better get back.”

 

Glorfindel eyed him critically. “Stay here. I’ll go.”

 

With relief he gave up his watch while Glorfindel went to the rear in his stead.

 

When the hateful creaking of the ice first diminished, Finrod hardly noticed it. When nothing gave way under them, when they no longer had to divert their progress to shouted warnings, the impossible realization stole over them that the Helcaraxë was behind them.

 

Even as this hope took root and their steps grew confident once more, a shine of silver appeared about them, ever brighter, and long shadows sprouted from their feet to claim the land ahead. Behind them where the Pelori must be, the sky was paling, and then a circle of unknown light mounted the heavens. Calyaro was not the only one to stop and raise his face to stare in bewildered wonder until Fingolfin ordered horns brought out, and chill hands and blue lips tried valiantly to play as they marched into their own shadows under a silver sky.

 

“Ghost of Telperion,” the whisper ran. It sounded like a phrase from song. Finrod looked around and found Calyaro but he was only smiling faintly. With blissful silence underfoot, they walked on snow converted by the unearthly light into crystalline sparkles of extraordinary beauty. At last Fingolfin steered his survivors south, deeming they had gone far enough east into the foothills to find land not water if they turned for warmer climes.

 

When they first saw bare rock, they collapsed wordless, apart from a few enquiries about injuries, or persuading the dangerously weak to eat. They stared at each other in an unhappy mix of grateful disbelief and worn grief.

 

Calyaro sat blankly staring at his hands’ blackened skin where cracks had deepened as he persisted in working the ropes. Whether healing was prevented by the cold or forestalled by fresh damage, none was sure. Finrod looked away from their ruin to where Turgon sat, staring into nothing, and wondered when any of this nightmare would seem real.

 

Fingolfin started scratching a map with his dagger on the rocky substrate, cast into strange relief by the inexplicable orb now rebounding from the eastern horizon. They all kept staring skywards, but it did not feel an ominous thing. It had come from the west and thither it returned with no immediate disaster in its wake. They dared a diffident trust of this Light so reminiscent of the Elder Tree, and a goodly feel gradually replaced their first surprise.

 

“Here.” Fingolfin stabbed the ground. “This is known from before the crossing. We go south to the firth that breaks the coast. There is a vale that will see us through the mountains. After that, we will see. The old tales place Angband in the north, here somewhere.” He swept a curving line above his other marks with the tip of his dagger. “But exactly where he has fled, we won’t know until we get there.”

 

The company formed up. South they went, their thirst at last liberally quenched with fresh, running water, and then east through the mountains, following the path of the sky’s voyager as it sank to the horizon. But as they emerged from the vale, a red-gold fire lit the western sky. Colour blazed all around them as this late-born twin to the silver elder climbed high. In burgeoning hopes that the Valar had not wholly forgotten them, Fingolfin summoned banner bearers forward and ordered his horns to signal their coming into a day most joyous, in spite of all that had gone before.

 

Their hearts lighter despite danger ahead, they covered the leagues to Morgoth’s doorstep. Rough prints of creatures unknown were all they saw of enemies, fled away from them and from the sky’s fierce new beacon.

 

No herald emerged nor any enemy, though they waited and Fingolfin had spears batter the doors in notice and challenge. But no answer came and he would not wait for some trap to form about them, vulnerable as they were down on the plain between the arms of grim mountains to north and west and east. Out of prudence he turned south intending to search out a place of safety with clean water and plentiful food where they could all rest.

 

And so they travelled south and east, back through the high pass to put the wall of mountains between them and the enemy’s gate. Here on the western plains they would succour the weary and renew their strength.

 

Scouts reported a Noldorin encampment about a great lake, set in the wing of a spur of hills. There Fingolfin led them, for he was angry and his company many in number, in no mind to avoid or delay this encounter. On Mithrim’s shores they came to rest, anxious to confront their betrayers. 

 

Chapter End Notes

Names

Ango – The Snake (Draco)

Hen Anguo – The Eye of the Snake (Polaris, the North Star)

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