Dragon Deception by Mimi Lind

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Wakened

2. Wakened

Go to thy kin. 

Snowflakes hit Túrin’s face in sharp, cold stings. Somehow it had become winter while he was running north, but again he had lost track of time and couldn’t say when it happened. Perhaps it was the altitude doing it, for he noticed he was jogging through the secret pass in the Ered Wethrin mountains, south of Dor-lómin.

Not far left now.

He was very thirsty, but up here all water sources were frozen and the snow was too scarce to gather. Túrin tried to catch snowflakes on his tongue, feeling them melt and form tiny droplets. It only worsened his thirst so he gave up. Soon he would be back home and could drink his fill from the well.

As he came closer to the end of the pass, he began to recognize landmarks he hadn’t seen since he was a small boy. Over there was that wolfhead-shaped cliff overhang, and there the ancient oak, and further ahead he spotted the glade where he had hunted rabbits with Sador Hopafoot. Cheered by the familiar sights Túrin increased his pace.

He rounded a hill, and at last the house where he was born appeared, sitting snugly in a vale at the foot of the mountains. It looked suspiciously abandoned – there was no smoke coming from the chimneys, and the windows were dark – but he tried to keep his hopes up. Perhaps they just lacked firewood.

A small village surrounded the manor house, with several cottages, two farmsteads and a few shanties where the servants had lived. The dirt road leading through the village more resembled an animal track now, overgrown with weeds and grass, and the buildings on either side clearly were deserted; their doors hung on broken hinges and those windows which had had glass panels were smashed. Glancing through one, Túrin saw a mess of overturned furniture under a thick coating of dust. 

Still he trudged on. It could be a ruse; a way for his mother and sister to protect themselves. Maybe everyone lived in the great house now, both the lady and her people. It would be easier to defend a single building.

He had reached the gates now but to his dismay one of the doors was smashed in halves and the other missing completely. Inside, a startled rat scurried across the floor as Túrin entered, and the air smelled dusty and stale. 

Continuing further he saw that the hearth in the large hall was cold. Nobody lived here, he knew that now, but just in case he searched all the rooms for any signs of his family. 

He found almost nothing. The place had been ransacked long ago, thoroughly looted by an unknown enemy. 

Walking through his childhood home, Túrin felt tears burn in the corners of his eyes. It held so many memories of that rare, long lost time when he had been a little boy, untouched by violence and hardship. He had had a father and a mother, and a best friend in old Sador Hopafoot. 

When he came to the nursery more tears streamed down his cheeks. The shelves were still there, and on them lay several of the wooden animals Hopafoot had carved for him – whoever plundered the manor must have thought them worthless. Even the toy sword he had killed imagined foes with remained, and now Túrin picked it up, hefting the smooth wood. How small it was in his hand! The last time he held it, it had felt big and heavy. 

Putting it back, he palmed a beautiful little horse and placed it under his shirt to have at least one keepsake to remind him of his childhood. Perhaps it would bring him luck.

Then he resolutely left the desolate house. There was no time to linger and wallow in bitter-sweet memories; he had to find out what cruel destiny had befallen his mother and sister.

oOo

Under his shirt, the tiny wooden horse jumped in beat with his footsteps as Túrin ran towards Lady Aerin’s house. Go to thy kin. His old relative would know where his mother was. She had to!

After a while, the road grew wider and looked less abandoned, and now he began to meet a few people. Most of them looked ragged and poor, servants or maybe thralls? Since he didn’t know whether they were friends or foes, he pulled his hood up and talked to no one.

When he arrived at the gate, he was relieved to find Aerin’s house clearly inhabited. A flurry of activity was going on in the outhouses and on the courtyard.

A servant opened, and gave him a suspicious look. Then he said something in a foreign language. 

“I don’t understand.” 

“I said: who are you, and what’s your errand with Lord Brodda?”

Túrin stared at him. Brodda? That sounded like an Easterling name. “You can call me… uh, Wildman. Wildman of the Woods. I seek shelter for the night. My old relative Aerin used to live here, and she helped my family before.”

The man’s eyes softened. “Lady Aerin still lives here, and I know she’d not deny a kinsman shelter. Come inside.”

Túrin was led through narrow corridors to the servants’ domains, and offered a place around their fire. More wanderers sat there, and they looked up with curiosity when he joined them. When he didn’t say anything they soon lost interest and continued their conversation.

A maid gave him a piece of dark bread and a bowl of stew. Túrin gratefully devoured the simple meal. He couldn’t remember when he last had anything to eat, and as his chilled limbs slowly thawed he finally began to feel more like himself. 

He turned to the man beside him, a thin, youngish looking fellow. “So. Brodda is lord of this house, they say. Who is he? I’ve been away for a long time and haven’t heard any news from this country since.” 

The other’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed nervously, and then he swiftly turned away and struck a conversation with the man at his other side.

Túrin looked at his back, surprised. Had he said anything wrong?

An old, crippled man hobbled over to him. “You can’t use that language openly,” he hissed. In a subdued voice, he explained that Brodda might think he was a spy and have him beaten or even hang him for it! Lady Aerin tried to keep up the old ways and allow shelter for wanderers, but it was done in secret from her husband – husband by need, that was.

Túrin frowned. So an Easterling had taken Aerin as wife by force! That explained a lot. Would that his mother and sister had not met a similar fate!

Biting down his fear, he whispered: “There was a lady called Morwen, and long ago I lived in her house.” He described how he had gone looking there but found the building abandoned.

Nodding, the other replied that it had been empty for over a year now, and even before then only Húrin’s widow and her daughter lived there. The Easterlings had left them alone because they feared Morwen’s sternness and cold beauty – Witchwife, they had called her – but without the secret aid of Lady Aerin they’d have starved. “Though, Brodda often did find out, and then he beat her for it,” he added darkly.

“A long year? Then… Are they dead, or made thralls? Or did the orcs take them?” Túrin feared the answer.

The man said he didn’t know where they were, only that they had left their home. Then Brodda had plundered it and taken everything, even the dogs and the servants, except for a few like himself who had gone beggar instead. The man then told his name for the first time – Sador Onefoot – and that he had served the lords of Dor-lómin for a long time. 

Túrin tried to hide his surprise and happiness when he realized this was his childhood friend, the crippled servant who would make wooden toys for him. He still felt the small horse against his chest. Had it brought back Hopafoot to him? That must be a good omen.

When Túrin didn’t reply, the other suddenly became silent and peered warily at him. “I’m old and I babble. Don’t mind me,” he muttered.

Holding back a pleased grin, Túrin said that if Hopafoot suspected him of being an Easterling spy, he must have lost much of his wit with old age. 

Hopafoot stared at Túrin, a slow grin forming on his wrinkled face. Only Túrin had ever called him that nickname. Then he hissed: “Come outside!” It wasn’t safe to speak like this in an Easterling’s hall.

At the courtyard Túrin again asked about his mother and sister, but Hopafoot really didn’t know much. They had left in much secrecy of their own volition, and it was generally believed Túrin himself had summoned them south. Since this wasn’t the case, Lady Aerin might know more, but Túrin would never be allowed to see her in his present beggar-state. If he tried to go to the hall where Brodda and she presided, he would be beaten or worse.

By now, Túrin was getting quite annoyed with this Brodda fellow. An Easterling, soiling his childhood home and birthright! Taking his kinswoman to wife by force, and then beating her when she helped his mother! How dare he!

“Can’t I go there? See if I can’t!” Immediately he stomped off to the great hall and strode up to where the fat old fellow sat pouring ale into his ugly gob, with poor Aerin at his side. Brodda had many Easterling guests at his table, equally fat and disgusting as he, and among that lot the lady stood out as the only refined person. Her elegant features were sad but kind. 

It was very hard not to strangle the bastard when Túrin saw how afraid Lady Aerin was, and imagined the old fellow’s fat hands touching her. With an effort he restrained his anger and asked quite politely for news of his family. 

Aerin was silent at first, clearly not daring to speak before her so-called husband, but when Túrin insisted she finally told him what had happened. 

“They are in Doriath.” Her voice shook. "They left over a year ago to seek refuge there, and to look for young Túrin." 

Túrin stared at her. Doriath? But…  

Then the realization struck him like a bolt of lightning. They were safe. Morwen and Niënor were safe in Doriath, trying to find him! Glaurung had lied.

Lies, lies, LIES!

As if a veil had been lifted from his eyes, Túrin saw how utterly stupid he had been. His family had already been in Doriath when he met Glaurung, and of course the dragon had known this. Why had he listened? He had abandoned Finduilas, closing his ears to her pleas, and now she would be tortured and taken to be Morgoth’s slave, and it was all his fault.  

Túrin snapped. A white-hot wrath overtook him, blinding him as he charged against the fat Easterling, and before he quite knew what had happened Brodda’s neck was broken under his hands. 

The whole hall became an uproar. From all directions thralls jumped on their masters as if Brodda’s death had been their cue, and soon the room was a chaos of angry men with meat knives and candlesticks busily hacking the Easterlings into pieces. 

When it was over all the Easterlings were dead and the former thralls’ cheer nearly lifted the roof.

Túrin didn’t join in. He knelt silently beside a bedraggled corpse, covered in dust and spilled food where it lay on the floor. The old man had become trampled to death, it looked like.

Taking out the wooden horse, Túrin placed it in his friend’s cold hands. He had thought it would bring luck. Well, for old Hopafoot, it hadn’t.

oOo

Again Túrin was running. The weight of all the men he had killed was beginning to grow heavy on his shoulders, but instead of letting that slow his pace he hurried on along the Sirion.

Save Finduilas. Save Finduilas. Save Finduilas. Like before, he used Gwindor’s last words as a spell to keep him going through his fatigue, but it was harder this time. Now his mind was clear and his guilt manifold.

The massacre in Brodda’s hall had been the start of an uprising in Dor-lómin, but Túrin hadn’t stayed to see it play out. The thralls didn’t need him to rebel; he would only cast his shadow over them as he had cast it over so many others: Beleg Strongbow, King Orodreth, Gwindor, Finduilas, Sador Hopafoot. And the latest casualty: Lady Aerin, who instead of waiting for the Easterlings to punish her for her husband’s death had burned the house with all the corpses, and herself together with them. 

So many deaths. So much blood on Túrin’s hands. How could a person be so unlucky as he? He was cursed, that was why; through his father he carried Morgoth’s curse. 

And that was why he had left his homeland to retrace his steps all the way he had come, in a hopeless endeavour to save Finduilas. 

Chapter End Notes

Hardcore canon-conservatists can stop reading now, because in the next chapter things will change a teeny bit. :D

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