Part 05: A Shuddering in the Air by Eilinel's Ghost

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A Shuddering in the Air | Part 05 of the Atandil Series

Still anticipating this to be a ~15-20 part series (find Part 1 here).

It's still averaging approximately 2 weeks for each portion. A reminder that you can subscribe to the series here if you want to be alerted whenever I get my act together and post the next parts.

Thanks for bearing with the slow burn.

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A QUICK EDAIN PRIMER for anyone who doesn’t obsessively carry the Bëorian family tree around rent-free in their heads:
Balan: the Atani chieftain later known as Bëor
Baran: Balan/Bëor’s eldest son
Belen: Balan/Bëor’s second son
Original characters: Estreth (sister of Balan's deceased wife), Hathus, Eimet

Content Warnings
- CW death
- CW battle

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310^th YEAR OF THE SUN, AUTUMN

The Woods of Ossiriand, Near the River Thalos

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Balan woke again, restless. He had not slept a full night through since Belen was wounded, whether from the recurring dreams or by mere anxiety. It was becoming a consistent pattern, he noted with irritation. This was at least the fifth time tonight. 

It was disorienting to wake under the open sky once again. They had been a migratory people as long as he could remember, but when they did set an encampment as they had at Thalos, they would remain for at least a year or more, often several. 

It had all come apart so quickly. 

Within a day of Belen’s injury, there had been messengers from Orndaer’s people, three grim envoys hovering like shadows at the edge of the encampment, watching every movement with sharp and wary eyes. They would speak to none but Nóm and hardly acknowledged the presence of any Atani who approached with him. Though in truth none would have spoken in return should they have been addressed. Only Balan and Belen had progressed far enough in the language to attempt dialectical differences, but Belen lay yet in a fitful slumber and Balan stood in stony silence before the kin of his son’s assailant, and his people set their mood by his. 

In some ways it was like watching a stranger, Balan reflected as Nóm spoke with the emissaries at length. His entire demeanor had changed and there was an air of aloof command that he never adopted with the Atani. Balan found it deeply disorienting. There was a distance between them in those moments that pricked at his steadfast calm and he hovered behind the Elven king, sullen and quiet, nursing a simmering jealousy. 

A faint light grew behind the mountains and Balan rose with a sigh. There was little point trying to sleep now that dawn had come. He wrapped the blanket about his shoulders and glanced at Belen, who lay curled in several spare rugs and was sleeping soundly beside him. It was a relief being freed from the compulsion to scrutinize his son’s breathing whenever he woke. The wound was healing with surprising speed, Estreth had informed him a few days prior, and Belen could even move about the encampment on his own for short stretches. Nóm had taken to watching him like a mother cat, which both amused and relieved the boy’s father, as it left him free to go about the caravan as needed without fear of anything befalling Belen in his absence. Balan was glad of the development as the herds had been nervous since the abrupt departure and his people needed to maintain a swift progress on their road. Wherever Nóm was leading them, it was imperative they reach it with time left to provision and shelter for the oncoming winter.

He shivered as he walked through the camp. Estreth’s portents or no, the frost was impending. He wrapped the blanket tighter about his shoulders and turned his steps toward the eastern side of the encampment where a figure sat outlined against the dim light, perched atop a boulder at the edge of the ravine. 

It was Balan who reached out this time in greeting, a tentative touch, and he felt at once the warmth of welcome.

“Tis early yet for thee,” Finrod said in Quenya as the other neared. It was intoned as a statement, but Balan felt the question lift in his thought.

He shrugged as he looked up at the grey eyes smiling back at him. “Sleep is an fickle master,” he said with a wry grimace and turned his gaze back toward the mountains. “Or perhaps I am a restless vassal.” Balan glanced up at him with a quizzical expression. “Do you ever sleep?”

Finrod chuckled. “A few nights without will do little harm. Yes,” he added as Balan still eyed him dubiously, “I sleep.”

The Atan walked around to the lower side of the boulder and hoisted himself up to sit beside the other. From that vantage he saw that Nóm held a thin branch in his hand, intricately carved all across its length, and was shaping it still with a small knife. Balan peered at the carvings in curiosity. “What is it?”

"Simpina.” Finrod blew over the surface to clear the shavings, then held it out to the other. “A flute. Rather crude, I’m afraid, but it was quick work.”

Balan took it in his hands and drew his fingers across the pattern. Even in their simplicity, the figures were compelling and precise, a line of hounds chasing merrily after a horseman who rounded the top, his raised horn tapering up to form the flute’s mouthpiece.

“I thought to give it to Belen—as a way to pass the time, confined as he is to the cart.” Finrod polished the knife against his cloak’s edge and Balan noticed with a shudder it was the same that had revealed the arrow’s path only a few weeks past. 

“When did you do all of this?”

“Here, while the night passed. A task in hand keeps the senses alert.”

“You carved all this in a night? What,” he asked, glancing up at the moonless sky, “by feel?”

Finrod laughed. “You forget, my people lived long years with only the stars to guide us. Our eyes have no need of any illumination but theirs. Yours have known naught but the light of the sun,” he murmured softly, as though speaking to himself. He took the flute back in hand and turned the knife to refine the mouthpiece. “So of course, it is little wonder the night seems an impediment.”

“As does condescension.” Balan’s face was unreadable as he returned pointedly to Quenya.

“Condescension?” Finrod looked up in surprise and attended more closely to the other’s thought. “I purposed only to name as I found. But I see that angers thee as a presumed superiority, though I meant it not as such. What wouldst thou say instead?”

“I? I would tell thee we woke with the sun, and then the Darkness found us. We have been fleeing it ever since.” Balan glanced over at his companion and the sharpness eased into a boyish grin. “But sit easily, Nóm, I bristled only in jest.”

A laugh that sets your heart to dancing. Finrod recalled the other’s description of his wife’s laugh and thought the same could be said of Balan’s smile. It gathered a posy of lines at each corner of his eyes and lit the whole face with merriment. Joy rippled up from deep within him and the smile spread across to Finrod’s face as well. He huffed in mock offense and rapped the other’s head lightly with the flute.

Balan chuckled, then pulled his knees up onto the rock to wrap them within the blanket with a shiver. “Dawn it may be, but it’s no warmer yet.”

“Sit closer if the chill discomforts thee. Shared is twice the warmth.” Finrod moved his cloak aside as he spoke. Phrases from the Ice still sprang readily to his tongue, even after all these years. He lingered in silence as Balan moved nearer and he rolled the flute about in his hands. “Balan, may I ask thee of it now without drawing ire?”He spoke still in Quenya, and his restless hands turned once more to refining the carved figures. “What was it that found ye, there in the days ye will not recall?”

“Twas no lie when I told thee before I had little answer. Truly, Nóm, if I’d the knowledge, I would have given it thee.” He butted his shoulder lightly against the other’s in mild accusation. “I see I am believed now, at least.”

“I never disbelieved thee before.”

“Rot.” Balan relaxed into his own tongue once again. “You questioned me like an errant cub. Besides, if you’d believed me then, why return to it now?”

Finrod laughed. “Caught in a web of my own weaving. But truly, I thought only that I’d not earned your trust, not that you’d deliberately deceived me.” A gust of wind blew his hair down over his eyes and he tossed his head to clear it away. It fell again and Balan reached out, moving it aside and tucking it back behind his ear. It was a practical gesture, and one Finrod had seen him employ before with his sons, but the affection of it was intoxicating. The dancing smile again. Perhaps after all he had sat up too many nights; he was unaccountably dizzy.

Balan shifted his arm back under the blanket and returned the conversation to its main path. “I remember asking my father when I was a child—I was as curious as you—but we have few tales. And even those that we had, he was loth to tell me. What mattered, he said, was that we had chosen otherwise in these later days. ‘The path of penitence sets your wandering aright,’ he would tell me whenever we set out anew.” He looked out at the growing dawn that sharpened the mountains to teeth against its light. “Whatever particularities are lost now, I tell you this at least: a darkness lies behind us, and we have turned our backs upon it, and we do not desire to return there even in thought. Westwards our hearts have been turned, and we believe that there we shall find Light.”

Finrod too looked out at the dawn and regret drifted into his voice. “Truly. Yet I fear that such Light is now further westwards than either your feet or mine may tread.”

An uneasy quiet settled over them and Balan found himself wondering at the change. He was unpracticed yet at interpreting the other’s thoughts, but he had felt the shift these past days. There was a tense wariness that had not been present before and a strand of apprehension wrapped about Balan's own senses at that acknowledgment. “Do I want to know why you’ve been sitting up these past nights?” he asked at last, returning to the start of their words. “You didn’t do so before.”

“Orndaer’s words sit poorly with me. It bodes ill, I feel, that the Foe stirs again to venture his hand beyond our leaguer. Orndaer told me only of sorties, not any large force, but even a small raiding party when there are herds and children…” His voice trailed off.

“Yes, I’ve seen it.” Balan said quietly. “They’ve made for the herds and stores in the past. If we lose those, it is not merely the ones who fall by the sword. It means a starvation winter.”

“That you needn’t fear, at least. I would see you provisioned.”

“Nóm, we—“

“I accepted your oath, did I not? I’ll not have my people dead of cold or hunger, not if it is within my power to remedy.” He finished smoothing the flute’s mouthpiece and set the knife back in his belt, holding the instrument out to Balan. “There. Will it suffice?”

“Mm.” Balan traced the carvings again and chuckled. “You know he’ll be a right menace with this?”

“Good. A menace of joy to counter the menace of unease,” Finrod replied with an answering smile. “I will teach him to play it aright. It will do my heart good to have a merry task in hand.”

❈ ❈ ❈

“Gods all, Belen, if you play those same three notes again, you’ll find yourself killed yet—and by no stranger’s hand.”

Baran’s arms draped menacingly across the spear over his shoulders. The caravan had been underway for most of the morning and the last hour passed to the accompaniment of Belen’s fumbling piping. He grinned impishly at his brother from his perch in one of the baggage carts, propped against various blankets and bedrolls and holding the offending instrument still poised against his lips. The remainder of the cart’s contents had been shifted onto the donkey who would otherwise have drawn it; while Váya, condescending to her master’s petition, allowed herself to be coupled to the modified harness and bear the cart’s burden instead.

“Change the pressure of your breath, Bel, and you gain notes.”

“Mm?”

“If you blow harder, the pitch will move higher and you will find more than the three.”

“Oh for everyone’s sake, Nóm, don’t tell him to make it any louder.” 

Finrod laughed at Baran’s glance of helpless suffering and then winced as Belen forced a piercing screech from the pipe. 

“No.” Baran stepped away from the line and shifted his spear down into his hand. “No more. Vatta, come along. I’m urged to kill something and it’s best for everyone if that’s provisions and not my brother.”

“Gladly.” Balan chuckled and turned to wink at his younger son. “Send for us when you’ve managed more of a bird and less of a stuck pig,” he said as he retrieved his spear from Belen’s cart and slung it over his shoulder by the strap.

“Mind any stray arrows,” Bel said glibly and Baran whooped with laughter as they broke off from the caravan.

“And you mind your flippancy.” Estreth shot an amused glance at her nephew. 

“Laugh at fear and you spite his darts. Wasn’t that what you taught us?”

“Aye. Only you’ve you’ve taken it too literally to heart for my liking.”

Belen grinned and set the flute to his lips once more, letting out a long, shrill pitch.

“Gods of vengeance,” Estreth exclaimed with an accusatory glance at Finrod, “what possessed you?”

“I thought it would be a diversion,” Finrod said, trying to hold in the laughter as he grasped his hair in clumps between his fingers. “I’m paid in full for it.”

Belen leaned back with a laugh and held out the flute. “I surrender. I rely on both of you too entirely at the moment to dare risk a feud.”

Estreth snatched it from his hand before he could reconsider and moved back to walk ahead of the cart. “There, Váya, we’ll have some peace at last.” The mare snorted in response and nosed her arm affectionately. Estreth smiled and reached up to rest her hand alongside Váya’s head, her voice lowered to a murmur as she stroked her fingers over the silvery hair. “You’ve no business dragging him about like this, you know. You should never have let that one talk you ‘round to it. Lovely girl, you’re meant to soar unburdened, or with one alone upon your back.”

“Do you ride?” Finrod’s question was quiet, curious.

“I learned riding before I learned walking, Nóm,” Estreth said with a laugh, then her voice grew soft. ”My people kept horses—East, away over the mountains upon the rolling plains. When I was a child, Esrid and I would ride together upon our own mare. Chestnut brown she was, fleet in her pace, and watching the grass wheel away beneath us was as flight to the hawk.” She was silent for a long moment, then added, “Balan’s people keep no horses.”

Finrod knew the wistful mourning in her expression and looked upon her in compassion as they walked. “My mother’s people dwelt beside the sea,” he said after a time, his voice quiet. “As you upon the horse’s back, so my mother taught me to swim ere ever my father taught me use of my feet on land. It too was like unto flight. I remember hovering in the water, one arm grasped within my mother’s hands, the other held in my grandfather’s, and they drew me along between them on pinions soaring through the reflected.” His voice fell away for a long moment, then he added in a murmur, “I long for it still.”

“Do you no longer swim?”

“Nay, I swim,” he said with a laugh. “In rivers, streams, lakes…any bounded water. But the Sea will no longer have me. Not to ride upon her waves, not to perch upon the neck of a prow, not to know the flight of her waters. It is an ever present ache, that absence, is it not?”

“Yes.” Estreth did not meet his eye. “It is.” 

“We shall reach the casári road ere nightfall, and from thence Sarn Athrad and the plains of East Beleriand. If you wished it,” he said after a long hesitation, “Váya would bear you over their rolling grasses.” 

Estreth ran one hand along the dappled neck beside her, but made no reply. Rather, she turned her eyes back to the flute and studied the carved figures in greater detail. “It’s lovely for being such a thing of menace.” Her voice was quiet, but warned him back onto casual footing. “Is it a pattern only or something particular?”

“It is the Vala Oromë as he is shown in our traditions, riding with his hounds to the hunt. I think,” he added after a moment, glancing back to include Belen as well, “he may have been what you saw depicted among the mountain passes: leading the Great March of my own people across these lands.”

Belen shuddered. “I’m afraid I’ve rather gone off the fascination, Nóm. But tell on, I’d salvage it yet, if I may.”

“Valiant boy. What was it you said before, ‘laugh at fear to spite his darts’?”

“Aye, near enough.”

“Very well, then. If I can recall it, there was a rather crude song about the March that my cousin taught me when I was young.” Finrod looked back at Belen with a grin. “I’ll sing that, if you will, and see if we cannot bind amusement to those images rather than pain. Where’s your father hidden his harp?”

“Far side of the donkey,” Belen replied with an answering grin.

“And what passes for a rather crude song among your kind?” Estreth asked with amusement as Finrod ducked under Váya’s head and rummaged about among the donkey’s burdens. 

“Well,” Finrod replied as he freed the instrument from the cords and began tuning it, “the March was delayed many centuries beyond the Valar’s plans from how often my people paused to beget new generations…” His words trailed off as he walked back to join them and his fingers lept across the strings with a mischievous smile. “So as crude as Eimet’s melodies, at any rate.” Then the clear, Elven voice rang out over the meadow, laughter and song woven together as he picked out the melody upon the harp, now strumming the strings, now drumming out a rhythm upon the wooden neck. 

It was a simple song, relying more on play of words than any complex construction, and Finrod shifted it to Sindarin for Belen’s ease. By the second or third repetition, Belen had learned verses as well as chorus and they sang it out together, Estreth joining in for scattered lines and laughing at their merriment.

Then she broke off as the song began again and looked hard at the horizon. “Nóm, is that smoke over the tree line?”

Finrod fell silent and his eyes drifted toward the thickets to the northeast, discerning what Estreth’s sight could not: carrion fowl rising and dipping again into the waving canopy. The lines of his face drew together intently.

“What is it?” Estreth asked, her voice low, an edge of wariness creeping into her tone as she saw his expression.

“There is a shuddering in the air,” Finrod replied in the same register. “I like it not.”

Váya snorted and twitched her shoulder as though a fly worried her, and Finrod laid a hand upon her shoulder, murmuring under his breath to settle her. She snorted again and then tossed her head in the air with an insistent nicker.

“Orqui.” Finrod turned swiftly to face the woods as the deep bellow of an ox horn reverberated from the eaves. “Goblins!”

“Baran’s horn!” Belen sat up swiftly and reached for his spear, then fell back with a sharp cry as the injury reasserted its mastery.

Hathus and a group of warriors were already sprinting toward the horn’s sounding while a larger group took up formations along the edges of the caravan. Finrod pulled his sword free from where it lay amidst the baggage. “You do not leave that cart,” he said sternly to Belen as he saw that Estreth was among those who had joined Hathus. “Not a foot outside of it, do you hear me?” Then he too was sprinting toward the woodland, his fëa reaching out frantically for any acknowledgment from Balan’s. Silence.

His feet moved ever faster over the greensward and he outpaced the others as he reached the forest, darting like a phantom beneath the trees with his hair streaming behind him, a trail of light. They could not be far now. He could hear the clash of weapons, he could scent the flow of blood. Balan! Place your hand over mine, Balan. Follow the line of my arm! 

Finrod saw them then, spread out beneath the darkling trees. Thirty-five, he numbered swiftly, a small sortie just as Orndaer had recounted. Baran, Balan, and Eimet were scattered behind the nearer trees with several others, cut off each from the other in their flight back toward the meadow. The trail of bodies told of their path through the woods, battling for each tree, cutting their way to every step. Finrod’s heart fell as he recognized Atani bodies lying among the dead and a raw fury burned up from within him, white-hot, raging. He would end any who harmed these fírimar. He would tear them limb from limb.

“Anar caluva lyenna!” Finrod’s voice rang out through the timber and he flew headlong into the melee. The nearer Orcs wheeled about at his approach and drew into a new formation, shouting to each other as they shifted their attack. He was among them in an instant, the light of Aman spilling out with his fury, heedless of his own defense as he thought only to draw them away from Balan and the others.

”Dweré ah sunda!” Hathus and his warriors crashed through the trees, voices raised in their war cry, and did not halt until they had passed the beleaguered hunters. The company drew into a tight block, shields locked and spears bristling outwards, weaving Balan and his companions into the center to allow them a moment’s respite. Then they advanced together, every third step slammed against the ground with a shout. The Orcs turned once more and faced the new attack with ferocity.

“Nóm!” Balan saw the other still harrying the Orcs’ flank, biting into the side of their attack like a hawk—in, strike, down and about, sweep out of range before the return strike could land. “Nóm, pull back!”

Finrod’s wrath eased at the call of the other’s voice and he swung beneath the arc of his adversary’s blade. It nicked his cheek and he felt it cut through the flesh of his arm in the passage. But he was free of the rash ambush and he sprang back toward the shelter of the shield wall as a wave of short javelins rained out from the Atani line. The front column of Orcs faltered, re-formed.

“You rash devil!” Balan caught hold of Finrod’s tunic as he neared and pulled him roughly behind the hedge of shields. “What were you thinking?”

“I reached out for you and there was nothing.”

Balan looked up at him in surprise and caught a brief glimpse of unguarded thought. Fear, rage, an overwhelming wave of devotion that rushed helplessly to the brink. A bottomless, dizzying panic at the certainty of loss. The walls closed abruptly and Balan stood breathless, shaken. “I live,” he said hoarsely.

Finrod caught him by the shoulder, the fervor of his grip like steel, then turned to his place in the shield wall, Balan at his side.

❈ ❈ ❈

“Bring them out from the trees.” Finrod’s voice was weary. The Orcs had been outnumbered after the furor of Hathus’ advance, and many were felled in the surprise of that first rush. The remainder fought on beneath the trees, meeting fury with ferocity, valor with fortitude, and desperation withal. There was little joy in the victory, for it was hard won and seven of Balan’s warriors lay dead amid the bracken. But they had held the sortie to the woods and the caravan was spared. 

“The yrch as well,” Finrod added to Hathus as he paused. “We burn the carcasses lest scavenging beasts sicken from their flesh.”

“You’re bleeding.” Balan joined him as Hathus departed and reached up to turn his face where he could survey the cut. It was already clotting and he turned his attention instead to the gash across Finrod’s arm. “This is deep,” he said and concern wove through his voice as he moved the torn sleeve aside. “Here, let me bind it.” He unwound the wide sash he wore about his waist, and cut a strip of cloth from its edge. 

It was an unnecessary gesture. Finrod would wash and tend the wound when they returned to the camp, he would bind it after the manner of his people’s healers, and both knew it full well. But Balan stood beside him in the aftermath of battle and held still the sudden intimacy of thought, his heart pounding and within it the burning need to reach out, to meet him in some touch of tenderness. Instead he took the other’s arm within his hands and bound the flesh together, gently, wrapped about with his own torn vestments. 

“There,” he said, struggling to find his voice as his fingers knotted the cloth. “That should keep your blood within you, at least.”

“Yes,” Finrod replied, and his voice was as gentle as Balan’s touch. “It should. Thank you.”

The Atani finished carrying the last of their fallen from the forest and had turned now to disposing of the remaining corpses. The disdain was clear upon their faces as they took hold of the legs and dragged them away, grasping with as little touch as possible. 

Finrod watched them for a time in silence, then his eyes drifted over the remaining corpses.“Ámen apsenë nahtaremmar,” he murmured under his breath, “sív’ emmë apsenet tien i nahtarir emmen.”

“What was that you said?” Balan looked up at him curiously, the words too quiet for him to hear.

“A benediction, of a kind.” Finrod’s voice was strained. They watched together as Hathus and the warriors continued the process, dragging each out toward the eaves and the growing pile.

“What are they, Nóm?” Balan asked at last, his eyes passing over them in disquiet, the bodies looking vulnerable and exposed now that life had left them. “Do your people know?”

Finrod hesitated a long moment before answering. “I told you once of those who were taken by the Foe’s servants, in the early days of my people’s awakening.”

“You did,” Balan replied and felt a growing dread in the pit of his stomach.

“We know not with certainty from whence the orqui came, for by the time we encountered them, the Valar were not beside us to answer. But we can reason from knowledge already received, and from our own órë—I know not how to render it in your tongue. It is…the heart’s knowledge or conscience, the hand of Eru that guides the fëa.” He bent down to close the staring eyes before him and set the arms at rest upon the corpse. “There is kinship there that cannot be denied. They multiply as we do. They eat, sleep, and drink as we do. They die as we do.”

“They rape, pillage, and slaughter,” Balan added in a low voice, a ripple of fury.

“And they rape, pillage, and slaughter.” Finrod lingered a moment beside the body, then rose slowly. “Did you know they sing as well? When I first found you and heard your voices rising through the woodland, I feared it was a raid of their kind, slipped south past the defenses in the North. Then I saw you and learned better, of course. But they sing, Balan—and they sing as we do.” He was silent as he remembered his own voice lifted with Belen’s not even an hour past. It had shaken him deeply the first time he heard Orcs singing in the distance on the plains of Ard Galen. It was the first moment he had faced head-on the creeping horror of what that kinship entailed. He continued with an effort. “There are many philosophies among my people as to their origins. Some say they are naught but slime, creatures of mud and filth. It is easier, you see, to cut them down without scruple when you believe them naught but clay animated by some fell will; the Melkorohíni existing solely in opposition to the Eruhíni. Others believe that cannot be so, for were they such they would move of one will, in and of one purpose, propelled only by the thought of their maker. And yet we see for ourselves there is often strife among them, which could not be if they were but puppets of the Foe’s mind. Thus it is posited that they are rather those unhappy ones who fell into his hands ere we were led out from Cuiviénen, twisted or corrupted, tormented into enslavement and fear until their wills knew naught but his, their souls no hope but mastery.”

“And which do you believe, Nóm? Though I guess it already.”

“I? Neither and both,” he said with a wan smile. “Though if you pressed me I would say the latter. Yet there is a fracturing, a disjointedness that seems to dwell between their wills and their bodies that perplexes me. It is said that Gorthaur has at times imprisoned spirits within the bodies of fell beasts, and I confess I wonder whether some variant of that evil necromancy might not be at play. But I know not, Balan, it is all conjecture. What I see with my eyes is that they are twisted and evil. What I hear in my heart is kinship. Nay, that I see with my eyes as well. Look upon them,” he said softly, kneeling once again beside the body and turning the face toward them, “they heal from great hurt even as my own people, only with different tending.” The Orc’s face was missing the left side of his nose and scarred all across with deep gouges that had been left open to bind back as they might. Finrod studied this visage for a time, then turned the corpse to face away from them, hiding the face once more against the arm. “Most often I hate them, for I have seen the works of their hands and the foul deeds of their darkened wills. But ever and anon I find there is yet pity in me, and where that is, I must hearken to it. Else I too should begin yielding my soul to that same darkness. Mandos grant them release—and healing.”

“And grant my people vengeance,” Balan said quietly, then turned away.

❈ ❈ ❈

“You and I are over here, Nóm.” Estreth summoned him with a shake of her head as he had begun making his way toward the gathered crowd. The bodies of the fallen Atani had been laid out upon the clean grass, washed and tended by the others and shrouded with thin blankets. “Only those within the clan take part.”

“Are you not?” he asked in surprise as he joined her.

“No. I would not be broken from my kin. Balan offered to scorn custom and take the blood bond without a renunciation, but I wouldn’t have it. I would sooner rely upon charity than belong to any but my own folk.” Her eyes followed Balan’s people as they ordered the bodies upon the grass. Each was now surrounded by an outline of gathered wildflowers: yellow, white, and pale blue. “It is a small stubbornness now, but one I cling to. For in all other ways I am more of their folk now than of my own. Still, I hold what ties I may.”

Finrod opened his mouth to reply, but a hush had fallen over the gathered company as Balan stepped out from their number. He had traded his usual overtunic for one of rich, dark red, embroidered across its length with an elaborate pattern of vines and beasts and blossoms. The intricacy and tone stood out against the dried bracken and he made a striking figure as he walked forward to stand before the fallen. He bore a spear laid flat across both palms, tipped with ceremonial gold and carved about the shaft with images of his people’s long wandering. This he held in stillness until all the throng had fallen silent, then he grasped it in his right hand and swung it upwards in a twisting arc, bringing the base down to strike against the earth. As the wood met the ground, Balan let out a great cry and Finrod’s breath caught in his throat at the sound. It was part wail, part lingering, one-noted song and it cut through the air as a blade of sorrow, before tapering again into silence. A hush. Then Finrod heard the intake of breath about him and his heart broke ahead of the coming sound; all the gathered people answered in kind, a deep, resonant keen echoing through the hollows until it too receded into stillness.

Balan stepped forward and knelt beside the first in the shrouded line, Thurbrand, a venerable warrior who had carried a spear since Balan’s childhood, and he folded the cloth back across the chest. He touched three fingers to each temple, to the valley between the eyes, to the chin. “Honor be upon you, my father,” he said softly, his voice intoning the practiced calm of a benediction. “Valor rest within you, my brother. Peace take you within her arms, my son.”

Baran knelt in the grass above the warrior’s head, his hands extended to hold a clay bowl, intricately painted and partitioned into three shallow sections, cupped within his palms. Balan reached out as he finished the invocation and took a seed from each segment. Gently, he opened Thurbrand’s mouth and set the seeds upon the tongue, closing the lips once again. 

“From earth and from water were we ordered, from earth and from water were we formed. Return now to the soil that shaped us and from it grow again in life anew: grain for our sustenance, fruit for our delight, the oak tree tall for our shelter.” His hand rested for a long moment over Thurbrand’s face, then he stepped back a few paces from the prostrate form and knelt to one knee, his palms laid flat upon the ground and his head bowed. After a pause, he rose once more and moved to the next body, repeating the ritual again. “Honor be upon you, my mother. Valor rest within you, my sister. Peace take you within her arms, my daughter.”

It was a custom done in scorn of death, Balan would tell Finrod later that night as they sat beside the fire in the hush of the midnight watch. He might come ever ravening among them, but they would scorn his maw. Even in their rotting they would lay claim to life.

Balan moved down the line, until all seven had been tended. Then he stepped backwards, never turning his back to the line of bodies, until he stood foremost in the waiting line of warriors. Baran had moved now to stand at his side, and Finrod noted with a start that even Belen stood among them, leaning heavily upon his spear while his face was drawn with pain and determination.

Then they sang. Not even Makalaurë’s voice echoing through the darkened halls of Tirion had rent Finrod’s heart with the piercing ache of this lament, rough-sung and cried out in abandon. It began quietly, first with Balan's voice alone, but soon it spread throughout the whole kindred, shifting in waves as the music passed from tongue to tongue. A rolling chant, the words layered each over the other, until the voices lifted once more in the long, wailing cry, while over them the line of warriors chanted in unison,

Death the destroyer, Death the slayer.
Death the coward, Death the betrayer.
Dead the makers, dead the life-givers.
Dead the valiant, dead the troth-keepers.
Living the memory, living the honor.
Living we hold you, deathless we make you.

And it was then Finrod realized he was weeping.

---

Chapter End Notes

TRANSLATIONS
Q = Quenya, S = Sindarin
Simpina: [Q] flute, pipe
Orqui: [Q] orcs, plural
Anar calve lyenna: [Q] the sun shine upon you
Ámen apsenë (phrase): [Q] roughly: “forgive us our slaying as we forgive those who slay us” Cobbled together from this.
orë: [Q] heart (inner mind); warning, caution, (pre)monition, heart (inner mind), *conscience; warning, caution, (pre)monition
Melkorohíni: [Q] children of Melkor
Eruhíni: [Q] children of Eru
Fírimar: [Q] mortals, ones apt to die

- Vatta is an invented term for “father”
- Dweré ah sunda is an invented phrase meaning “valor and truth”, loosely modeled after the Gothic language