Stranger in the Forest by chrissystriped

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Chapter One

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Turukáno sat on a rock in a clearing in the forest, his face lifted up to the new sun. The wind was blowing his hair into his face. His horse – the animal he’d been given by the Feanorians and that was the least they could do! – grazed a few steps away. He knew he should be at his father’s side during the talks with the Feanorians, but he couldn’t sit at one table with the murderers of his wife.

He understood why Nolofinwe had reached out to Feanáro’s sons. They shouldn’t fight among each other when they had a common foe. But Elenwe was dead because of them and he couldn’t forgive it so easily. Itarille woke screaming almost every night, she had nightmares of breaking ice and burning cold. She’d suffered so much already in her young life.

Turukáno slipped his gloved hands under his armpits. Hissilóme was not as cold as the Ice, but his fingers, barely healed from frostbite, hurt.

He jumped when he saw movement in the corner of his eye and reached for his weapon. They’d thoroughly defeated the Moringotto’s creatures, but there were still some scattered bands running around.

At first Turukáno thought he was looking at an orc and gripped his sword tighter. The person’s face was marked by deep scars, one of them pulled on his upper lip and made him look like he was snarling, the upper half of his right ear looked like a dog had chewed on it. His armour was made up of badly fitting parts, he had a sword, but he made no move to draw it.

He lifted his empty hands and said something that sounded like ‘Quende’ to Turukáno. Did he want to say that he was an elf? (Surely he was aware of his appearance.) Turukáno pulled his gaze from his scars and looked into his eyes. They were brown and Turukáno still wasn’t used to the sight of eyes that didn’t reflect the Light of the Trees, but they didn’t strike him as malicious. This was not an orc.

“Who are you?”, Turukáno asked him in halting Sindarin, then he pointed to himself and said: “Turukáno.”

The other laid his hand on his chest and answered: “Rog. You are... across the salty water?”

Turukáno nodded. The other elf didn’t talk like the Sindar he had met and he wondered if Sindarin was a foreign tongue to them both. He lifted his bag and Rog made a step back. He looked wary, his body tense.

“Food”, Turukáno said and took out the bread and roast meat he had intended to be his lunch. “Are you hungry?”

The wariness didn’t vanish from Rog’s face as he asked: “What do I have to do for it?”

Turukáno lifted his eyebrows. “Nothing. Sit with me. Tell me about yourself, if you want. Or take it and leave.”

He didn’t know what Rog expected him to demand, he just wanted to be friendly. And he hoped he was saying the right things. Rog seemed to think about it, then he sat down beside him, careful not to touch him, and took the offered food. They ate in silence for a while, Rog seemed ravenous and Turukáno left him the bigger part of his provisions.

“You don’t talk like a Sinda. Are you an Avar?”, Turukáno finally asked.

Rog frowned at him and Turukáno couldn’t stop himself from shivering. He looked fearsome.

“Do you mean, I am of the Quendi who didn’t follow the Hunter? Yes, I am, but I don’t like that word. We are Quendi, like you.”

Turukáno bowed his head in agreement.

“Of course. I didn’t want to insult you.” It was a rather insensitive name, he supposed. “Would you say something in your language?”

It must have come from the common language of all elves and he wanted to hear if he could understand anything.

“Will you fight against ...?” Rog used a word that Turukáno didn’t understand, but he was sure he knew who he meant.

“Yes, we are here to bring down the Moringotto. He murdered my grandfather, our king”, he answered slowly in Quenya and Rog smiled – at least Turukáno thought so, it was hard to tell with his scars. “Your language is easier than Sindarin”, he continued and although they didn’t speak the same language it was more like the difference between Vanyarin and Noldorin – Turukáno’s heart ached because it made him think of Elenwe.

“It is good that you fight. Let me fight with you.” Rog’s eyes flashed. “I came here for that. I followed the eagle.”

“The...” Turukáno stared at him.  “You saw Findekáno rescuing Maitimo?”

Rog nodded sharply.

“I hunted orcs. I saw how many orcs went out to fight you and how few of them came back. You are strong. And I think, if you are brave enough to enter his realm and take his property, I want to fight with you.”

“Maybe we aren’t all as brave as my brother." Turukáno smiled wryly. "But if you want to fight with us, I’ll gladly accept you in the name of my father, King Nolofinwe. Do you have companions? You surely didn’t go orc-hunting alone.”

“Alone”, Rog answered and his face became wary again. “I am alone.”

Turukáno thought he could hear a lie, but he didn’t call him out on it. Maybe he didn’t trust him enough, yet, to tell him more about himself. “Then you are as brave as my brother. Fighting alone against orcs.”

He wondered if they had cut the scars into his skin, but he didn’t ask that, either. He stood up slowly, because he had noticed that quick motions startled Rog.

“Will you come with me? I’d like to introduce you to my father.”

Turukáno flinched when Rog suddenly shot up, hand on his weapon. Then he heard the steps, too, and turned around. Galdor, a Sinda who lived around the lake, and two of his men came out of the forest.

“Turukáno, we found your horse in the forest and...”

His eyes fell on Rog and before Turukáno could blink, he had an arrow on the string and pointed it at the elf.

“Move away from him, my prince”, he said with tense voice.

Turukáno looked back and forth between Galdor and Rog.

“What’s wrong? I don’t understand...”

“Don’t you see his face? He’s a mûl, a thrall of the Dark One. You can’t trust them. Sometimes he lets one of them go free to do his works. They are wholly his creatures, as much as the orcs. We chase them away, if they dare to come close to us.”

Rog growled at him, then he vanished between the trees. Galdor took a deep breath and relaxed his string.

“That could have ended badly. We weren’t aware that you don’t know of them.”

Turukáno looked at the spot where Rog had sat a moment ago. He hadn’t felt in danger. There had been no deceit in Rog’s eyes, nothing evil.

“Are you sure, Galdor?”, he said. “He seemed like a normal elf to me, despite his looks. Tell me more about the matter.”

Turukáno caught his horse and walked back to the camp in the company of the three Sindar.

“You don’t notice it, that is the perfidious thing about them", Galdor said. "At first, people were happy when lost members of the family returned, weak and hurt but alive. But then things happened. Orcs attacked, who knew much too well when and where to strike. Whole villages massacred without the traces of an orc-attack. One of them was found covered in the blood of his family, laughing. He’d eaten their hearts.” Turukáno shuddered and Galdor looked seriously at him. “We can’t afford to trust escaped thralls, even if some might have genuinely escaped – which I doubt. There’s no way out of Angband.”

“My brother made it in and out again and stole our cousin from the Moringotto.”

But it was different, Turukáno admitted to himself. Findekáno’s deed had been undoubtedly brave, but he hadn’t needed to go inside the mountain, hadn’t needed to walk through Angamando’s gates – although Turukáno was sure that his brother would have done that too to save his friend. He realised belatedly that the three Sindar looked uncomfortably at each other.

“What?”, he asked Galdor. “What are you not saying?”

“Well... we don’t want to insult you and your family, Turgon, but... many of my people are nervous that Maedhros is allowed to walk free and unsupervised.”

Turukáno always tried to be unbiased when the Sindar he had befriended had different views than him, but he couldn’t stop himself from giving a humourless laugh.

“That’s madness, Galdor! I don’t have much love left for Feanáro’s sons, but Maedhros is no agent of the enemy! And I’m absolutely sure about that.”

“I’m just telling you to be careful with him. What if your brother was allowed to free him?”

Turukáno shook his head. “Maedhros is hurt and maybe not who he was before his capture, but he’s not a traitor. Do you know what is at stake for him?”

Galdor bowed his head in silent acquiescence, but Turukáno could see that he was just being polite. He huffed. Who’d have thought that the day would end with him defending Maedhros Feanárion?

He wished, Rog wouldn’t have vanished so quickly. He would have liked to talk with him further. Maybe he could find him again somehow.