The Black Sword by elfscribe

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Chapter 2 - Song of Fate

After all the noise, the silence that ensued was heavy, laden with emotion. The fire crackled. Beleg would not look at me. But after that outburst, I would have some answers.

“What happened when you saw Túrin?” I said.

“Nothing,” Beleg replied. He seemed to find something interesting in the dregs of his cup. “Nothing beyond what I already told you.”

“I think you haven’t told me all. You said he was living among the Gaurwaith and even when you gave him the news that Thingol pardoned him and did not hold him responsible for Saeros’ death, he would not return with you. I know you, Beleg, as well as anyone, and ever since you came back to us, I have sensed that something weighed upon you.”

“I fear for the company he keeps,” Beleg said, and he met my glance with those keen starlit eyes. There was deep hurt there and it stung my heart.

“What did they do to you?” I growled.

“They were needlessly cruel to a guest,” he said bitterly. “They . . . molested him and used him ill. And Túrin should have been angrier when he learned of it. At the very least he should have seen them for what they are. Instead, he stays, playing at being the fair and noble captain to a gang of thieves and murderers, when he should have returned to Doriath. He should have returned . . .” and here his voice broke unexpectedly, “to those who love him.”

My heart twisted in pain. Tears stung my eyes, so I averted them, looking up at the rafters, noticing the bleakness of my surroundings as I had done so often since he left me to chase after that sour boy. I too had loved Túrin once, had admired his skill at arms, admired his strong body and comely face, even once he’d grown and let it be marred by the beard. But my attraction had fallen away when he had proven so stubbornly rash and proud in the matter of Saeros’ death. Perhaps it was a weakness of his race or maybe I had forgotten what it was to be young. “He does not deserve your love,” I snarled. “Will you go . . .?” I could not finish the thought aloud, but it echoed in my head: will you go back to him, yet again? Will you leave me for good?

“I do not yet know what I shall do,” he said.

You will go, I thought. You will go and I don’t know how to stop you. I threw back the covers, swung my naked legs over the side of the bed, looked ruefully at the bandage around my thigh.

“What are you doing?” Beleg said as he rose from his chair and came towards me.

“I have to take a piss,” I said. “Help me up.”

Once relieved in the pot under the bed, I settled back down and turned away from him since I could not bear my anger, my pain. I heard him go to the door and toss out the pot, then again the creak of the chair as he sat. I watched the shadows cast by firelight on the rough-chinked wall.

After a time, he said, “I am weary, Mablung. May I come in with you?”

“As it pleases you,” I grunted. I should have said no, should have told him to get out, but I could not manage the words.

“I’ll try not to jostle you too much,” he said. I could hear him divesting himself of his garments, setting them on the chair. Then felt him slide under the furs, felt his touch like magic, his naked loins warm against my backside. He put his muscular arms about me, gently pulled me close, and rested his head on my shoulder. I lay stiffly for some time, even though there was no place I would rather be, no arms I would rather have surrounding me.

“I know you disapprove of Túrin’s actions and have no more use for him,” Beleg said softly into my neck, “You are right, in many ways he has earned our wrath, but you must understand . . .” I waited, but he said no more. After a while, I heard him softly snoring.

~o0o~

I awoke with a start, and knew that I’d had the same dream. The dregs of it slipped from my mind’s eye, but I could still see that last terrible image of the faceless warrior holding out the sword before the images shimmered and faded out. The pale light of early dawn was visible through the high windows. I was lying on my back. Beleg was by my side, face buried in the pillow, his arm flung over my chest. He stirred. “What is it?” he said in a sleep-raspy voice.

“A dream.”

He shifted to his side, his mouth close to my ear. “You have had frequent nightmares since we brought you back. Are they about the bear?”

“No. It’s a vision I saw just after the bear attacked me. I swear it seemed real. Of course I was probably out of my head with pain . . .”

Instantly, I felt him alerted. “What did you see?”

I paused for a moment to fix it in my mind’s eye. “I saw a funeral boat coming down the Mindeb, set aflame. There was a body lying on a bier. The boat came level with me and then the thing sat up. Beleg, it sat up, even though covered in fire, and brandished a sword at me, a strange sword of black iron. I did not think so at the time, but since I’ve had these dreams I’ve realized why it looked familiar. It was like the new sword, Anglachel, that King Thingol gave you before you sought out Túrin. But the boat and its passenger proved insubstantial. A mirage. It disappeared before my eyes.”

Beleg’s body tensed. He murmured, almost as to himself, “When I first roused you, nearly frozen by the river, you said something that seemed strange to me. You cried out,‘Túrin!’ And then you said, ‘The black sword is death.’ I knew not what you meant and thought you were out of your head.”

“A harbinger,” I said. “That’s clear. And it keeps coming back, so it needs me to heed the message. I fear what it portends.”

Beleg said, “I must think about this.” He turned over and was silent. I listened for a while to the gusts of wind buffeting my lodge and the scrape of the pine trees overhead. Then, unexpectedly out of the dark, I heard him softly begin to sing:

I am the charging wild boar, the ivy,
a breaker thrumming down its falling edge.
I am the infant under the unhewn dolmen stone,
flower in the midst of other flowers,
spearpoint. I am the bonfire on the hill,
the hive-queen and the shield,
the screech owl. I am the burning raft
with its body set adrift on nightwater. *

A shiver rippled up my spine. I whispered, “What are you singing?”

“It is part of an ancient song about fate and the oneness of all things. The words have always resonated with me somehow. I wonder, what is to be my fate?”

I had naught to say to that, so I lay quietly, taking comfort in the warmth of his body pressing close to mine, knowing that this time was ephemeral. I am the burning raft with its body set adrift on nightwater.

Eventually his deeper breathing told me he was asleep again, but I could not doze off myself. Now that the dream had dissipated, I had needs of a more carnal nature. I could not help it, rubbing up against his naked body had made me hard as a stone. I climbed carefully past him, got up to relieve myself in the piss pot, having to concentrate to make myself go down. I noted as I did that my ribs were not nearly as painful as they had been. Beleg was a gifted healer. For many reasons, the Shields needed him to stay with us; I needed him to stay. I got a drink of water and then slipped back into bed. He had moved into my spot near the wall. I wrapped my arm around his waist and he shifted subtly backward to mold himself against my chest. I moved his long tail of black hair aside and cupping his shoulder in one hand, kissed the nape of his neck, which felt tender against my lips. His neck was warm and his shoulder was cold. He smelled like green hay.

“Mmmm,” he said. I could hear the smile in his voice. “Are you awake?”

“Yes, I have an ache that needs curing.”

He turned his head, eyes still closed. “Are your ribs hurting you? I can get the sedative.”

“That’s not what I need,” I said, rubbing up against him.

“Ah,” he said, reaching back to investigate. “That sort of ache.” His touch caused my cock to jump with delight and strain towards him. He took hold of my hand and guided it over his hip to his own budding erection. I clasped it eagerly—how I loved to touch him, loved the slip of soft skin over his hard rod—and stroked until it had fully and impressively unfurled.

“Strongbow indeed,” I said. It was an old joke, but we both laughed anyhow. “May I?” I flexed my hips against his backside. Usually he was the one who took me but this time I wanted him. He obliged, tucked his legs up, offering himself. I made myself slippery with spit and my own juices, then slowly, bracing myself on his shoulder, I slid within him. It felt so good, so hot and tight. But he gasped, a noise of pain, as if he had not done this in a while.

“Do you want me to stop?” I asked, truly hoping I did not have to.

“No,” he said.

So I took him, slowly at first and then at his insistence, hard and fast. I paid no attention to my sore ribs, instead ecstatically ramming his backside while he jerked his hand, until I felt us both hovering on the brink. Then he cried out in pleasure and I felt him spasm around me. At that moment I released as suddenly and surely as releasing the string of my bow; the pulses sent me into the oblivion I craved. I fell back, relaxed, unstrung, and closed my eyes as a firestorm of bliss danced throughout my body. It was like this with no one else. Only he could make me feel this way. Only Cúthalion. My heart.

“Was it good?” he asked; his voice was muffled. He turned towards me, the action causing me to slip from his body.

“Yes. It was.” I opened my eyes and found him looking at me with a soft expression on his face, but there was also a profound sadness in his beautiful starlit eyes. He twined a curl of my hair around his finger.

“Your hair reminds me of oak leaves in autumn,” he said. “The same golden-brown hue and the smell of acorns.”

“Yours is like the nightwind,” I said, “dark and wild and currently tangled beyond taming.”

He laughed, then said, “If you could have your heart’s desire, what would it be?”

“I cannot let myself think that way,” I said. “It surely will bring me bad luck.” But he kept his gaze on me, his eyebrows lifted in question, so I said, “Sometimes I think of going to Region, of building a home, and planting an apple orchard. I dream of sharing that home with one whom I love. In the springtime, we would make love under the sweet-smelling apple blossoms and listen to the bees humming.”

He cupped my cheek, taking care of the clawmarks, looked at me long and deep, then he leaned in and kissed me with passion. At first he tasted like sour wine, but I did not care. I opened my mouth and devoured him until we tasted exactly like each other. Thus we dallied for a long time, kissing and caressing one another, as daylight brightened the room.

~o0o~

We spent the day in bed, taking turns at each other. A sweeter day I can’t imagine, even though parts of me were still sore from the bear, and my limbs felt shaky. Soon enough I was sore in new places, but that pain I would never begrudge him. Algaron knocked on the door once in the early afternoon just after we had finished another bout and were lying exhausted, hot, and sweaty on the bare linens, having tossed the fur pelts aside. We both yelled at him to get lost and heard his laugh, followed by retreating footsteps. In between efforts to assuage our hunger for each other, we slept, cozily nestled together. I was happy and knew it could not last. So, I did not dare ask about his intentions.

Sometime in the afternoon, I woke to find Beleg gone, and immediately felt bereft. I rose, pulled on some leggings and a tunic, wrapped a woolen cape about me, and went to the door. Looking out, I saw that the sky was overcast, a uniform dull grey. There were plumes of smoke, just as grey, coming from the two chimneys on either end of the Fire Hall. The landscape was hard and frosty and smelled of the cold. Overhead, the tall pines surrounding our dwellings creaked in the wind. The trail between lodges was red with the muddy track of the Shields coming and going.

I saw Beleg leave the Fire Hall, carrying a wine-skin and a covered tray. Strapped to his hip was his new sword. I held open the door for him.

“I thought you might be hungry after our exertions,” he said as he entered and scraped his boots on the mat. He whipped the cloth off the tray revealing a steaming brisket of bear meat, potatoes, and freshly baked biscuits. The wonderful smells brought on a pang of hunger.

“Oh, that was a fine notion!” I said. He set down the tray on the table, unbuckled his sword, and hung it on the peg next to his great bow Belthronding, and my Delugrist.

Beleg engaged himself in carving up the brisket and I got down plate and cutlery, and poured the wine into the tankards. Then we sat down at my small table. For a while we did not speak much, beyond the mundane ‘could you get . . .,’ and ‘pass me. . ., ’ both of us so ravenous that we wolfed down the food. Sating one appetite seemed to be good for another one, I thought.

When we were done and had cleaned up, we filled our wine cups, sat on my bed, and rested our backs against the wall. Leaning on each other’s shoulders, we watched the flames licking eerily around the black shapes of the logs in my stone fireplace. My ribs were hurting me again, but it was a dull, distant sort of ache, very similar to the one I had in my heart. I stared at the logs propped on each other, surrounded by the flames, when one of them cracked and fell, sending a flurry of sparks up the chimney. A hole opened up in the center of the logs, which looked like the Balrog’s mouth as he roared out his triumph. I shivered and then rubbed my temples. My headache was threatening to start up again.

Beleg whispered, “Do you think about that battle, sometimes? Or do you try to put it from your mind?”

It was as if he had heard my thoughts. “I see him all the time,” I said. “Unexpectedly. It’s like a waking nightmare. I do not think I was made to be pitted against such a foe. There are times when I feel . . . unmanned.”

He leaned over and kissed my head. “You are the bravest man I know,” he said. “And that includes our foolhardy young friend, Túrin.” He must have felt me stiffen and pull away, for he sighed. “Bravery is not a lack of fear; it is knowing fear and going on in spite of it. It is something I have failed to teach him, and I must. He is too proud.” There was a certainty in his tone.

My harmony dissipated in a sudden whoosh as precipitous as the log falling in the fireplace. I sprang back from him. “Do you love that boy so much?” I cried, trying to keep the bitterness from my voice and failing. “You will go to him, won’t you? Even after what those scoundrels did to you! Even after all we have been through together? Even after today . . . .” I rose from the bed and began to pace.

“I thought you of all people would understand,” Beleg said.

“Well, I do not,” I snapped. “Is he that much better in bed than I?”

Beleg looked shocked, his eyes wide, then he chuckled. “You’re jealous,” he said. “You.”

“I think I have a right to be!”

He got up and laid a gentle hand on my shoulder, which I shrugged off. “Come sit,” he said, “you’re working yourself into a temper.”

“What do you care!”

“I care, Mablung. That at least should be plain to you,” he said, his voice rising in anger. “Let me explain my feelings for Túrin, he who will not listen to reason and now calls himself Neithan, the Wronged. It is not what you think.”

I tried to calm my anger, but it is hard once it blows up like that. I sat abruptly back on the bed, and threw my weight against the wall with my arms folded, while he dragged a chair over and sat on it backwards, resting his arms on the top rail.

“Explain,” I said coldly.

“You remember when the gracious Morwen came to the King, with her sullen, dark-haired son in tow? A mere bit of a boy, then, but there was something about him. A presence. A sense of greatness that I thought could be nurtured. And apparently so did Thingol.”

I nodded.

“So you will remember that the King was taken with them both, with their plight, and the memory of Húrin, his father, and adopted Túrin as his foster son.”

“Of course, Beleg. This . . .”

He held up a hand. “Let me finish. After that incident with the slingslot hitting Saeros in the back of the head, Thingol decided Túrin needed discipline, to be trained properly in arms and in hunting skills. He asked me to do it and I said that I had no interest in training one of the Edain. The King said to me, ‘The boy admires you, Beleg. Do you not see his eyes follow you everywhere? You will do this as a favor to me.’ So I could not refuse and undertook to train him. We worked hard, and at first he resisted the tasks I set him, having no patience for the repetition, the exercises to harden him. He wanted to jump right to the most difficult skills. Many a time he drove me to exasperation.” He smiled fondly, the memories soft in his eyes.

“I remember that too,” I said.

“When we were sparring with wooden swords, he asked me in that reedy boy’s voice he had back then, ‘Why cannot I have a real one, Beleg?’ I said, ‘You can have one when you’re ready.’ ‘When would that be?’ he said. ‘When I say so,’ I replied. He glared at me and I glared back at him until he yielded.

“He had grown apace then; you’ll remember that tall, lanky youth with the shock of black hair that always used to hang in his eyes. Then came the day when he did not show up for practice at our usual hour. I went searching for him and found him in a clearing in the wood. He was practicing on a straw target with a man-sized sword, much too big for him, and yet he was performing with raw power, and a fair degree of skill. The target was all but reduced to tatters. I thought perhaps I had been wrong to make him wait. I crept closer and saw in horror that he had taken Thingol’s sword Aranrûth. I ran up behind him, and called his name. It was a mistake to have startled him so, as green as he was. He turned in the midst of a swing, and if I had not ducked, it might well have gone badly for me.”

I gasped and Beleg chuckled. “It wasn’t so close, truly, but the effect on him was profound. He turned white as ice, dropped the sword, and fell to his knees. ‘Beleg, I am so sorry,’ he said. I sat down next to him and found that he was weeping, so I gathered him into my arms. He began to sob. I asked him what was the matter and he said, ‘Do you remember your father?’ I replied that I had none, having awakened by the shores of Cuiviénen. He said, ‘Then you do not know what a sorrow it is to lose a father that you loved.’ He was looking at me with those grey eyes of his, his face streaked with tears, and he said, ‘Just now I realized that if I should lose you, I will have lost my second father and I do not think I could bear it, Beleg. I would not want to live.’”

“You never told me this story,” I said. My heart was aching, for him, for us, and maybe even a little for Túrin.

“It was a small enough incident, well, except for how angry Thingol was at Túrin’s theft of his sword,” Beleg smiled. “But after that day I found I did not mind the time spent teaching him, or the occasional bouts of temper or sulkiness that came upon him if he did not master a skill quickly enough. I watched him grow and mature into a good and loyal friend, as well as a superior warrior. I felt pride in him, Mablung. I would no sooner allow him to be hurt than to cut off my own hand. And now, I cannot bear to see him wasting himself among those vile companions.” His brow was furrowed with concern.

As for me, at last I understood. “You think of him as your son.”

He considered. “Yes, I suppose that is how I think of him. I made peace with the knowledge that I shall never marry and have a son of my own. I am too much the lone wolf, too much the warrior. But there has always been a void. Yes, Túrin is the son of my heart, for good or ill. So, you see, Mablung, you have naught to worry that I shall take him to my bed.”

This revelation may have fought down my jealousy, but it did nothing for the terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach. If anything, it grew worse. I said, “That is well. But you have given him everything of your wisdom and training that you can. There comes a time when a son must walk his own path, often against his father’s wishes, and there is a parting of the ways. I cannot help the foreboding of my heart, which I have felt ever since you set out alone to track him after Thingol pardoned him.”

“Finding him did nothing as he would not listen. I must admit that I was greatly angered with him when last we parted.” Beleg rested his chin on his arms. “But now I find that I cannot let it be. Instead I worry about him.”

“Will you go seeking him in the wild yet again? Braving orcs, and fell beasts? That is most unwise.”

“I have done it all my long life, since before you were born, my friend.” He rubbed his chin, gauging his words. “In any event, I will not have to wander about looking for him again. When we parted Túrin said to me, ‘If you wish to keep your word and stay beside me, then look for me on Amon Rûdh. Else this is our last farewell.’

“And what did you answer?”

“I said, ‘Maybe that is best.’”

“I agree. On Amon Rûdh. Why there?”

“He thought it looked like a good fortification.”

“It’s a place easily besieged.”

“I know.” He hung his head unhappily.

“Willful boy!” I said. “He deserves his fate!”

“As Túrin said on that day he stole the sword, ‘I do not think I could bear it,’” Beleg said softly. “But don’t fear for me, Mablung; I will come back, as ever I have.”

I looked over at Anglachel hanging so innocently beside my own sword, the two of them side by side, in the way that for so long we had been side by side. I rose from the bed, went over and took it down off the wall, drew it out of its sheath and stared at it. The iron looked strange, unlike any steel I’d seen, black and cold, with a fine series of hammer dings in the surface. On the edge of hearing was a soft voice, which I liked not at all. Death! it whispered.

Beleg said suddenly, “Be careful!”

I felt a sharp nick across my palm. Blood welled from my hand and I dropped the blade with a clang to the floor. “This sword will be your undoing, Beleg. I have foreseen it,” I cried. “The corpse on the burning ship is yours!”

He leapt up from the chair, his eyes were wide in a pale face, his hands fisted. “What if you have foreseen something else? The sword could be his savior and the corpse is crying out for it. You called his name. What if it means Túrin’s death if I don’t go to help him? That is what I think.”

“I do not believe that,” I said.

“But you cannot say for sure.” He was looking at me searchingly.

“No, I can’t. It is just . . . a feeling. Stay with me, Beleg. Please. I do not ask for much in this world.” A drop of blood hit the floor with a soft pat, then another.

His expression softened. He came over, picked up the blade and resheathed it, then he went to my storage trunk, withdrew a scrap of cloth, and tore off a piece. “Come here,” he said gently. He took my hand and bound it. “If you keep wounding yourself like this, I’ll have to bandage up your whole body.”

“‘Twill be my winding sheet,” I said, my voice choking with emotion.

“You are a survivor, Mablung, as am I.”

“Not forever. The bear made me feel my mortality, as the vision of the burning ship made me feel yours.”

“I am torn and all my paths are dark to me,” Beleg said.

I wanted to ask him if he loved me. I wanted to tell him that I needed him, more than Túrin did. But I could not, and I would not beg. The lone wolf and the wounded stag would follow the paths that they chose themselves. “I am the bonfire on the hill, the hive-queen and the shield, the screech owl. I am the burning raft with its body set adrift on nightwater.”

Instead I said, “Let us finish the wine and then go to bed. Our paths will become clearer in the morning.”

We did not speak much, for at that juncture all subjects were painful. Instead, we buried ourselves in the sweet immediacy of the flesh. I touched and tasted him, and inhaled his breath, trying to make the moments stretch; I watched the firelight on his wise and beautiful face, traced the scars on his body, saw how he looked off into a country that I could not see. And I reflected that with us immortals, there comes a time when we listen to the seductive lure of the long dark.

When I awoke in the grey light of dawn, he was gone and so were his bow and the black sword. Outside my lodge the world was white with a dusting of new-fallen snow. And there, going on before me, I beheld his footprints—erasing slowly in the wind.

The End

Chapter End Notes

*The poem that begins “I am the charging wild boar” is an excerpt from a longer Celtic poem called Amergin’s Song, passed down orally for several thousand years until it was written down around 1100 A.D. Amergin means ‘born of song’ and was the chief bard of the Milesians. Supposedly he sings the song as his people were coming ashore in Ireland. It is quite an extraordinary piece in which the images stand for seasons of the year and mark a soul’s passage through time. There is a quality of emotion in each image. This poem hit me so profoundly, I’m going to have to use it in another story. Here is the full text of it:

Amergin’s Song
I am the stag with seven tines,
a flood widening across a plain.
I am wind in a trough of ocean,
the sun’s tear, a globe of dew-wet
on an alder branch. I am a hawk
above the cliff, streaming and still,
a thorn beneath the thumbnail,
fire that makes a human head
of smoke above itself.

I am the oak and the lightning
that blackens one side, salmon swimming
and the taste of it cooked
on a hawthorne shaft, a hill of vineyards
and hazelnut trees where poets walk.

*This line is a direct quote from Children of Húrin: ‘If you wish to keep your word and stay beside me, then look for me on Amon Rûdh. Else this is our last farewell.’ ‘Maybe that is best,’ said Beleg, and went his way.
J.R.R. Tolkien, Children of Húrin. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2007. p. 119.

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The Black Sword by elfscribe

Chapter 2 - Song of Fate

Chapter End Notes