Si la mar fuera de leche by Chestnut_pod

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Chapter 5

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Even one horse, even a mule, would be a blessing. Elros remembered Maedhros liked to say a king never runs before his subjects unless he is running down a hart in the hunt, but Númenor’s newborn rocks could no more support a herd than the blasted mud of Beleriand. Meril might have run from the hill of Armenelos all the way to Rómenna, but Elros could not, not and arrive in any shape to fight a dragon. Instead, they rowed to the dragon up the firth from Rómenna, straining against the receding tide. 

 

Meril huddled in the stern of the boat beside Elros, who had one hand on the rudder, another clasping her shoulder comfortingly. As the spear-fighters rushed to the single seaworthy three-rower in the Second Harbor, she had reported that she had wished to climb Armenelos-hill, which she had seen from the Meneltarma at midsummer, and had switchbacked up its eastern face. The slope was gentle, but long, and when she heard water in a depression just out of sight, she went to search for the stream. She never found it, for cresting the lip of the cup valley, she had seen the dragon.  

 

“Just its teeth,” she said. “White and long and awful. I was behind a rock. I couldn’t see more. And I saw movement behind the teeth. They were as long as my arm. Something was moving in the valley.” 

 

Elros had hushed her then and praised her bravery, and insisted she drink and sit beside him at the rudder of the three-rower. Beneath his hand, she was stiff as a board, but silent. 

 

Also silent was the burnt Umbar-painted figure of Elwing-Who-Called on the prow. Her hands were raised to hold a lantern, her mouth carved to cry out to the waves as feathers burst from her arms and hair. Elros thought of Ancalagon, run through on the prow of Vingilot -- had the Valar carved a figurehead Elwing there too?  He kept his eyes on the far shore of the firth and did not watch her shadow run over the water. 

 

They disembarked while the low sun washed the stones and scrubby volunteer shrubs in gold. Armenelos rose gently before them, half black in the shade of the Meneltarma. The clusters of house-sized boulders that had leant the hill its name glowed orange. 

 

Should they wait here until morning? Elros wondered. The rowers would be fresher for a night’s rest -- but who would sleep, when a battle with a dragon hung on daybreak? Now, if they kept the setting sun at their backs, the dragon would be at a disadvantage. And, perhaps, just perhaps, the star of high hope rising out of the gloaming would remind the worm of its vanquished sibling. 

 

They started for the hill, Meril leading, Elros at her shoulder. 

 

The little cup valley was just as Meril had described -- water tinkling against shale just out of sight from the girl’s use-path, a gentle slope interrupted by a sudden, deep scoop just at the rise’s elbow. Elros motioned for Meril and the spear-bearers to hold back and stalked to the lip of the depression. On his belly, he slunk to the very edge, taking care not to rattle the slightest pebble. 

 

He had no blesséd boat, nor a Silmaril, but his second cousin Túrin had needed no such armaments to slay a dragon. When he and Elrond had been young, Maglor had, with varying degrees of sympathy and malice depending on how they fared, sung them tales of Turambar, slayer of Glaurung, outlaw, cursed and Doomed. One evening, soaked with rain and pestered by orcs, Maglor had told them with particular relish of Niënor’s death, and Elrond had looked up at him with that limpid poise he possessed even then and said that, for all the tragedy of their deaths, he was glad his cousins, at least, had managed to do some good despite their Dooms. 

 

Elrond was not with him now, but neither was any Doom. So had Elros chosen. His acts were his own, and his dragons, too.

 

A deep breath, and he pulled his torso over the lip of the valley. 

 

The teeth froze him in his tracks. White as bone, white as death, they were as long as a goat’s horn and hooked, great sickled spears set in a mouth large enough, it seemed, to swallow the world. 

 

Elros’ breath rasped in his throat and he thought again, desperately, of Niënor frozen under Glaurung’s eye, and of Zamîn saying she would jump if she had to. Another breath. No poison fouled his lungs, no voice wormed through his brain. 

 

He blinked. The teeth were still there, an arm’s breadth from him. 

 

Yet they did not move, and the great, hollow eye socket was black with shadow, not malign intelligence. He beheld a vast skull.  

 

It seemed all teeth and eyes, with a long snout and round cranium behind, like a hunting hound. Behind it curved an immense spine, with ribs fit to engulf a longboat, bloody with sunset. Each bone in the great back could have served Tindómiel as a table. He saw why Meril had been spooked by motion -- tattered banners of rotted skin draped over the beast’s sides, swaying and fluttering in the slight evening breeze.

 

Elros’ whole body shook once, a wracking shudder, and afterwards his breath came easier. The skeleton had no true limbs, he registered, only hand-like members at the top of the spine. Following the arc of a rib to the shadowed floor of the dell, he saw that the creature had not died alone. Fish bones schooled around it in spirals and spiked knots. Mussel and clam shells clustered on rocks, open to the sky, meat long since dried to powder. Strange husks, like the carapaces of cicadas, but strangely jointed and flattened, seemed almost to skitter in the waning light. Looking closer, some of the stones were not stones at all, but bleached and desiccated billows and fronds of coral, a dead reef drowned in the air and faded by the unabating sun. At the far edge, a spring bubbled up and ran towards the Meneltarma, singing water songs. 

 

For a moment, Elros’ body insisted it lay on the edge of some tidepool or shallow, despite the wind ruffling his hair, the rocks digging into his belly. He swam among the remnants of the sea, swept out by a great undertow, as if a thousand thousand years had passed him by, and Númenor had been worn down to the seafloor from whence Ossë wrenched it. 

 

Another shiver, and Elros knew again the firm ground beneath him, his perspective on the cup valley where no dragon had ever lain. He rose to his feet, and held up a hand to beckon. 

 

--

 

“We are safe,” Elros called. “There is no dragon here.” 

 

The spear-bearers approached warily, fanning out around the edge of the dale. A few muffled oaths floated on the breeze as they looked upon the remains of the sea beast, and a few more gasps of wonder. 

 

“As you see,” he said, pitching his voice to carry, “there is no danger, only, perhaps, a memory.” 

 

A spearman removed his rusted helm, revealing himself to be Galor, wide-eyed and intent on the scene in the valley. 

 

“That was an ambergrease whale,” he said. “As large as I have ever seen. They are jealous of Great Uin, so make their perfume to delight the Lady of the Seas with sweetness instead of might.”

 

“How came it here?” Meril had crept up to hover behind Elros’ shoulder, her helmetless head chest-high to the old sailors and ex-soldiers. Galor looked down at her, scowling. 

 

“Not on the wing, certainly,” he said. “Dragons indeed! Any of the fisherfolk might have told you what this was and not sent all Númenor into dread, and taken workers away from the fields.” 

 

“Peace,” Elros said mildly, putting his hand on Meril’s shoulder. “I do recall, Galor Guildmaster of the Fishers, that a whole school of fisherfolk followed Meril to the King’s House and were quite caught up. None mentioned a whale.” He glanced lazily at Galor’s spear, more recently used for stabbing grouper than dragons. 

 

Galor’s skin was light enough to show a flush spreading from his neck in blotches. Elros watched a moment, then let Meril go, nodding slightly to him. It would not do to wound his pride overmuch. 

 

“Guildmaster, I beg your expertise. If we set out now for Rómenna, could we reach harbor before it became too dark for the rowers?” 

 

Galor cleared his throat. “I fear not, my lord king,” he said. “Look, the sun falls behind the holy mountain already. The firth is full of reefs and sandbars that hide in the dark; we would surely run aground.” 

 

A spearwoman of Galor’s guild spoke. “They will all think us devoured or slain by dragonfire if we do not return tonight. My king, will you not send Meril to tell of what we have found?” 

 

Meril nodded rapidly, but Elros forestalled her, shaking his head. “No, no. Meril has run that distance once today, and to fall on this rough ground in the dark is as likely to result in death as an encounter with a true dragon.” 

 

The woman’s face fell, and she twisted her hands on her spear, a troth-ring glinting on her finger. 

 

“Our people remember waiting,” Elros told her gently. “One night of unease will do no lasting harm. We will leave at dawn in the morning, rested, and row as fast as falcons back to Rómenna.” 

 

She bowed and stepped back into line. 

 

“So be it,” he said. “We make field camp here. Do not light fires; should the flames be visible from Rómenna, they will be afeared for us indeed. All may sleep; there is no need for a watch on the Isle of Gift. Be ready at your oars when the sun rises.”