World on Fire by grey_gazania

World on Fire

Read World on Fire

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The smoke on the breeze was the first sign they had that something was wrong.

 

“Do any of you smell that?” Amras asked, motioning for the scouting party to halt. It was early morning, a few days into the new year, and they were making their way through the woods under a light snowfall. The wind had shifted and was blowing down from the north, and Galwen wrinkled her nose when a chill gust of air brushed over her face.

 

“That’s not a cookfire,” Heledir said behind her, and Galwen nodded in agreement. Under the scent of leaves and loam she could smell a trace of something burning, but it was harsh and acrid, nothing at all like the sweet, familiar odor of woodsmoke.

 

Amras turned to her, his bright eyes worried. “Tell me what you can see,” he said, tilting his head up towards the foliage above them.

 

Galwen scanned the nearby trees, selected the tallest one she could find, and pulled herself up into its leaves. Smaller and lighter than the towering Noldor, she would be able to reach the very top without worrying that the young, supple branches would snap beneath her weight. She climbed, ignoring the sap that clung to her hands as she went. Up, up, up, nearly three hundred feet in the air, she finally steadied herself against the thin trunk and looked to the north.

 

A black smudge hung heavily on the horizon, squatting where the blue emptiness of Maglor’s Gap should have been. For a moment Galwen gaped, dumbfounded, for even the mightiest forest fire wouldn’t produce such a massive cloud of smoke. Up here, clear of the trees, the wind blew faster and stronger, too, carrying more of the thick, foul smell towards her.

 

By the stars, the whole Gap had to be in flames.

 

She scrambled back down to her companions, her heart pounding. Smoke, she signed, wide-eyed. Covering all of Maglor’s Gap. It looks like the sky’s been painted black. I think the entire Gap must be burning.

 

“Morgoth,” Amras said, his voice low and harsh, as the other scouts stared at Galwen with horror on their faces. “Heledir, you ride back to the fortress and alert Amrod. If the Gap has been breached, we need to be ready to aid survivors and to hold back any of Morgoth’s forces that pursue them. We should send out messengers, too, to warn the Laegrim of what may be coming.”

 

Heledir nodded and turned his horse to the south.

 

“Surely it can’t be the whole of Maglor’s Gap,” Malnas said as he watched Heledir depart. “Lord Maglor and his horsemen have always defended that area with great strength.”

 

Galwen bristled. Look for yourself, she said. I’m telling no fish tale.

 

“My brother and his people may yet be fighting,” Amras said, interrupting them before an argument could flare up. “But we should be prepared regardless. Nothing good ever comes from the north.”

 

***********

 

The first of the survivors arrived three weeks later, a bedraggled party of around a hundred, mainly women and children, with only a handful of guards – clearly the first people to be evacuated. The reek of foul smoke still clung to them, beneath the smell of sweat and unwashed bodies. But, to Galwen’s surprise, they came not from Maglor’s Gap, but from Thargelion. Amras, who had been sending his patrols out wider and farther, had been leading the patrol that first spotted them.

 

“Everything is burning,” one of the women told him – slim and pale, with the telltale calluses of a scribe on the fingers of her right hand. “The flames came at night, out of nowhere, in a great cloud of choking fumes, and the orcs and balrogs assailed us. Lord Caranthir ordered everyone not necessary to the battle to flee south with the children. He rallied his men to make a stand, but I don’t think he believes they’ll win. I think he merely meant to buy as many people time to escape as he could. There should be more behind us. As far as we know, we weren’t pursued, but that could change at any moment.”

 

When Galwen tried to envision a fire so purely destructive, her mind came up blank. She had seen two true forest fires – not the careful prescribed burns of the Laegrim, fire under control, a practice Amras and Amrod had adopted from their neighbors, but true wildfires that were ended only by the hard efforts of many men and women digging firebreaks. But even those fires, furious as they were, had never led to such a massive evacuation.

 

What had Morgoth done, and how had he done it? How much of the northern part of Beleriand had he targeted? Were the other lands of the Noldor also under siege? Would her lords’ brothers even survive this attack? Would the orcs and balrogs break through their defenses and come pouring down to Ossiriand?

 

Galwen had faced orcs before, but never in the numbers this woman was describing. Did Ossiriand have the strength to withstand such an assault? Galwen had to admit that she wasn’t certain. The people here, both Noldor and Laegrim, were hunters, not used to pitched battles. They had driven the orcs from their lands with cunning, not by sheer force of numbers. Would Ossiriand burn, too? This place that was her home?

 

She would have to do all that she could to see that it didn’t.

 

***********

 

But the Elves in the south of Beleriand were lucky. Though more survivors continued to arrive over the course of the next month, none of Morgoth’s forces had pursued them. Amras and Amrod did all they could for the refugees, welcoming them and helping them to settle, but all the while they waited for word of their brothers. 

 

Word finally arrived in the form of Caranthir himself, nearly two months after the breeze had blown the first hint of smoke down to the south. He staggered into Amrod and Amras’ lands with the last of his men, the rear guard, all swaying with exhaustion, their clothes still streaked with soot and ash.

 

“It was a living nightmare,” he rasped, accepting a flask of water from his brother. “Rivers of flame, and a host of balrogs led by that wretched fire-breathing worm. Ard-Galan and Lothlann are ash. Maglor’s horsemen were burned alive. He took most of the survivors and fled to Himring, but some of the people in the eastern parts of his land came to us.” Caranthir paused to take a few more gulps of water and then added, “A fat lot of good it did them. We were overrun by orcs, legions of them, like locusts. They poisoned Helevorn. The whole lake is dead -- every fish, every weed…”

 

He leaned forward, trembling slightly, and rested his forehead against Amras’. Amras accepted the touch, placing his hands on Caranthir’s shoulders.

 

“Our brothers?” he asked. “Have you any news?”

 

“Himring still stands,” Caranthir said, straightening up. “You know Maedhros. He’ll die on no one’s terms but his own. Morgoth has paid dearly for every foot of ground he’s tried to gain around the fortress. Maglor’s there as well. But the Pass of Aglon was breached, and Himlad was taken. Celegorm and Curufin took their people and fled southwest. The last message I received said that they had sought shelter with Finrod. Probably the best choice. It’s not as though that fool in Doriath would let them in, pursued by balrogs or not.”

 

Amras breathed out with relief, and Galwen saw some of the tension that he’d carried these past two months fall from his shoulders. She could understand why. The deaths of her own brothers, so many years ago, had shattered her world. Her lords had been living with that fear ever since the first party of survivors had arrived. Now Amras was no longer in doubt. His brothers still lived, despite Morgoth’s best efforts.

 

“And the west?” Amras asked. “Our uncle’s lands?”

 

“Morgoth hasn’t been able to breach the mountains surrounding Hithlum. But Angrod and Aegnor are dead, and Dorthonion is destroyed.” Caranthir let out a strangled half-laugh that sounded as though it was born more of hysteria and despair than actual amusement, and he said, “You know, I couldn’t stand to be in the same room as Angrod, but I never would have wished that upon him. Burning is a horrible death. Neither of them deserved that.”

 

Once more, Amras put his hands on his brother’s shoulders, this time squeezing gently. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll take you and your men back to the keep. Heledir,” he added, turning to Galwen’s foster father, “you’re in charge. Finish the patrol and then come back.”

 

“Of course, my lord Amras,” Heledir said, and as Amras, his brother, and the last of Thargelion’s refugees turned back towards the fortress, he signaled for the rest of the patrol to move on.

 

***********

 

What do you think will happen now? Galwen asked Heledir later that evening when they stopped to make camp.

 

“I don’t know,” he said.

 

Galwen rolled her eyes. She should have known better than to ask so bluntly. Her foster father could be notoriously evasive when it came to his own opinions, preferring to keep them to himself until he knew what his lords were planning.

 

You must have some thoughts, she signed.

 

Adding another stick to their small fire, Heledir was silent for a long moment before saying, “It’s not my thoughts that matter.”

 

Your thoughts matter to me.

 

Again, Heledir didn’t speak right away. Finally, after nearly two minutes’ unbroken silence, he said, “I think if Morgoth has taken that much of our northern lands, eventually he’ll start shifting his attention south. I think we may have to make a stand. I only hope we’ll have time enough to prepare.”

 

That was more or less an echo of Galwen’s own thoughts, and a less reassuring answer than she had hoped for. She couldn’t help wondering, too, how long Maedhros and Maglor would be able to hold out at Himring. She’d met them, of course, on their occasional visits to their youngest brothers, her lords, and she knew that both were formidable warriors, but how long could they stand against the full might of Morgoth, when the dreadful monster had already destroyed half the North?

 

She’d never been in a battle that even remotely approached the scale that would be needed to strike back against the Black Foe, and she couldn’t deny that the prospect frightened her. She wasn’t a child anymore, not by any means, and she was decent with a sword and highly skilled with a bow, but she was a hunter, a scout, not a soldier.

 

Sitting such a battle out, however, would be unthinkable. She owed Amras her life. If he needed soldiers, a soldier she would have to be.

 

Hopefully that day would be far off, but perhaps it would be prudent to start preparing now.

---

Chapter End Notes

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