By the eyes of beasts of prey by Angamaite

F.A. 505, East Beleriand

Read F.A. 505, East Beleriand

“It’s not that different,” a voice whispers in the pre-dawn darkness of late summer one night, tearing through the silence of a starless cobalt firmament -- not like a dagger, but like barbed wire, to which the coarse expectation of terror is ecstasy. The unceasing northern wind carries its echoes away quickly, but it leaves a hole.

Daylight is yet hours away. When it comes, the sky will be the colour of ash and the wind just as bitter as at night. One wouldn’t know this for summer if not for the days getting longer. 

Longer, and yet cold, and yet silent, for the faces of the Sun and the Moon have become rare visitors whose continued existence is known more by heart than by sight; even birds no longer sing in Thargelion, only the yellowed leaves of trees that get too little sunlight and dew-wet grass rustle in the deadly silent air of the coldest hour of the night. Rain is sparse and dirty. The filth of Angband stretches far over the Anfauglith and the girdle of mountains that encircles it, regularly bringing clouds with the appearance of slag as far south as the Andram. Animals flee in its wake, and young trees grow bent and gnarled, or else they do not grow at all; hunting is sparse and returns stunted animals with tough meat, too few eggs in the clutches of woodland fowl, and a persistent taste of something foul at the back of the mouth from the cured meat of the small, hardy deer that still run through the northerly woods. There are no crickets, no fireflies circling through the shadows anymore. Not even moths.

The night tries to soften the sight in shades of blue and grey, blunting the edges of desolation upon the jagged silhouettes of distant mountains, but it is of little aid to eyes as keen as those of the Eldar. 

A washed-out world of silhouettes and ghosts is no mercy, merely a reminder of their failure. 

 

The only light in the whole world is a faint stripe of lighter grey above the mountains to the east.

They do not light campfires after dark. Foolhardiness is not yet foolishness -- one may tread far into the north and tempt luck knowingly without baring his neck too far, but it is a dangerous business even for the foolhardy who ride forth in secrecy as their steel. Even men whose hearts are dead to fear still know pragmatism.

Hungry things worse than orcs prowl the woods.

And thus they light no fires. They break their fast on tough, cold strips of jerky or the tasteless leftovers of the past evening that no longer dribble with juice -- stupid, and vain beyond reason to think of indulgence in food here, where the only indulgences permitted are those in bloodshed -- and ride single file by day, clad in grey over their blued steel like Þindarin vagabonds, crushing mud and dry dirt the colour of rotten meat under their heels until it crusts their boots to the knee as though wrath-hot blood could chase out the encroaching cold which limns all eyes that spend too long staring north and are being burnt out from within. 

Fools’ hopes, as everything over the past thirty years. They’re killing orcs, and wolves, and monstrous things, and time; the viscera splashes upwards, only to be washed off and encrusted again, the bluing on their plate is rubbing off and being oxidised again, and they circle each other like scavengers instead of princes all the while baleful silver stars wink at one another from their banners and cuirasses with an accusatory mithril gleam. And the wind howls, and the ashes on the Anfaucalitsë swirl in it, and Moricotto-- 

Moricotto must be laughing in his filthy den. 

How that burns. Curufinwë is no stranger to the bite of flames and hatred both, but never before has it been so caustic.

 

In silence they sit, like outlaws and outcasts, in the heartless grey dark before sunrise while the wind whispers to them its meaningless dirge. They have encamped themselves near the top of a low hill where fading foliage offers a good view northwest without exposing their silhouettes for miles on end, within walking distance of a stream that trickles from the Luinoronti and as such remains unfouled, even though there is nothing to look at; the night has been peaceful even though a fight would’ve been a much desired vindication, and perhaps the intertwined symphonies of steel and slaughter would quench some eager characters that are turning hound-like in languishing. Little pity indeed -- as little as their iron hearts harbour. 

The grass rustles. The forest covers the air with a wet smell that isn’t altogether rotten and dead, but it cannot truly conceal the dirty aftertaste of ruin.

And into this darkness without rest or riposte, the voice whispers again, “It’s not that different.” 

He looks up, in one breath cursing the intrusion and his own startled reaction both.

The light in a pair of tree-lit eyes, so pale they might as well be molten mercury and far more corrosive in their fey glare, shines fever-bright above the ruins of a dead campfire and the silhouette of a knife that has yet to be fully cleaned. He knows the mark -- the engravings of dancing huntsmen in wreaths of oak are of his own make -- but not that its grooves harbour dried blood so easily, nor what pleasures his brother’s tongue finds in the taste of it that make it trace agonisingly slow curves along the gilded foliage. 

He wonders if this is some kind of confession that he is obliged to hear out. 

Tyelcormo’s sharp teeth seem to tear into the hole his voice has left in the firmament and run it ragged on the edges, as though he could feast even on that, twisting the horn-hilt dazzlingly between fingers marked with  fresh, pink scars from hounds’ bites that never used to pattern them before.

“It’s hardly different at all, you know?” his jaws snap with a predatory click--

And Curufinwë bites, at last, releasing a shuddering exhale from his tightly wound lungs. 

“Know what?” 

 

For a long time, there is a silence of gleaming eyes, gleaming daggers, gleaming teeth, and a yawning emptiness.

“Do you recall holding debates on the definition of 'kin' among the Lambengolmor?" Tyelcormo whispers after a while, "You always did pay more heed to the cultural side of things -- even if they were only linguistic, etymological discussions. Do you remember how, precisely, did Atar’s dictionary define it?” He traces a finger down the knife's spine, head tilted aside with a curiosity that seems little more than academic. But his brother rarely seems more than academically interested in the bloodless affairs of life, these days -- they all walk like ghosts.

Sighing, the smith drags a gloved hand over his face. 

“Wasn't this your specialisation? ...It's circumstantial -- all abstract terms are circumstantial -- ranging from encompassing all Quendi through all of the Eldar or one’s clan down to the clandestine circle of blood-related family.” A frown is settling over his features, tugging at his tightly braided hair. It has always had an easy time bleeding into his voice. “I thought you had abandoned your interest in linguistics as far as the Quendi are involved.”

The huntsman laughs, low and rumbling, almost a growl fostered somewhere deep in his twitching throat. It is not a kind laughter -- he has looked thin since he was burned in the Ohta Rávanáro, cheekbones cutting salient knife-lines into his face with shadows and a chin too sharp not to suggest a predator, all his smiles either grins or smirks, and too often with blood still dried in the corners of his mouth that few wish to know the source of -- but the wheezing whistle at the end of that laughter seems downright like bait, and Curufinwë is just as ensnared as he is repulsed by it. 

“Linguistics are only distantly related, if they matter at all. Does the Oath care for technicalities -- do you think that even the Doomsman has ever considered them?” The dagger flicks something outwards. In flashes, when its blade is tilted to the west, it becomes obvious that its flat is still slick with saliva. “Do you think he cared for the gradually deepening rift, linguistic but also ancestral, between the Noldor and the Teleri?” 

“I don’t tend to spend my days contemplating the psychological machinations of the Valar,” Curufinwë scoffs in return. “Spare me the ineffectual guilt.”

“You wound me if you think I have ever harboured guilt.” 

It’s cold enough to make them both laugh.

They have nicked the carcass, though -- now, he is obliged to keep skinning it, even if the wind makes him restless with its howling, and Tyelcormo with that bloody dagger makes the efforts no better. There is always a lightness that seems unwound about him these days, in ill-timed humour and restless hands.

Shoulders squared against the wind, he leans forwards, and reciprocates the attention with pursed lips and eyes that do not blink or dodge the intensity of his brother's stare. “Why bring up linguistics and etymology in the midst of this desolate wasteland, then? We can’t have exhausted all topics of conversation so thoroughly as to turn to academic debate this trivial.” 

Curufinwë needs no dagger in his hand to be cutting, a manner learned and fostered after his own sire, but his derision is all his own. Venom, instead of flame. He doesn’t even notice that his hand has crept upon the rondel at his shoulder to stroke against the rays of the star engraved on it.

Fëanáro’s third son turns his face away, exposing a sharp profile and ears pulled back leather-taut. There must be something on the wind -- his nostrils flare and tighten powerfully -- because it takes a while for him to answer. 

“Our whole history and cultural identity is built upon the gift of speech. Linguistic debate was already inevitable in Cuiviénen, and thus it should be no surprise that it became politicised in Aman, and weaponised in Beleriand. But then, it’s not only us, is it?” 

The corner of his lips twitches. Curufinwë does not like that twitch, it feels as though he is being goaded to play the devil’s advocate for the sake of throwing his brother something to chew up, because Tyelcormo is always hungry like a rabid dog and nothing is tough enough to whet his teeth on; he is not a bone, and moreover he is not foolish enough to fall for the same conversation tricks he has employed to tease an inevitable breakdown of argument of his own debate opponents, the same tricks he has seen Fëanáro use with devastating effect. He does not yield more than cursory curiosity and a raised brow. 

“That depends on what you are implying by ‘us’, if we’re to base this conversation on semantics.” 

“What I am implying is that the gift of speech that we equate with blood is not an isolated invention of the Quendi,” the huntsman continues, quick whispers tearing past his lips in a low voice that will become lost on the wind before it reaches Calion and the scouts encamped a few feet downhill, but with eyes that seem to bore through the darkness like daggers themselves. “The Khazâd and the Atani have developed language independently of the Quendi, on completely different foundations no less; the Laiquendi and their further eastern Avarin cousins share linguistic roots with us, but their migratory lifestyles centered around isolated tribes and low volumes of written tradition have made their dialects drift so far from the original proto-Quenya that they are not whatsoever mutually intelligible.” 

The forced lightness tying off the ends of his words does not float past, but the pause is only temporary--

“Even beasts speak, in their own way. Ravens have regionalisms and display particular allegiance or rivalry based on their origin, and our Aman-born hounds did not share much of a language with the Þindarin hunting packs of Hísilómë. Are they kin?” 

 

Curufinwë’s eyes widen. He hears a shrill laugh on the air, and belatedly realises it is his own, as wild and fey as the tongue scraping past Tyelcormo’s teeth.

“Are the Lestalië kinslayers for making battle with the Khazâd?” he pushes further, leaning a hand against his knee. “They're not as unlike in Fëa as in Hröa. We have all raised our swords against the Atani, too, and they have even learned to speak with our tongues as they have learned to lie with our kind; the difference cannot be that irreconcilable. So what, if they were in the service of the Enemy? Did that make their blood any less red?” 

The wind is picking up in the branches high above, sending shivers of rustling foliage through the air. The black clouds continue rolling across the sky in their unfurled banners, ash-grey, corpse-grey, wrought-iron-thrall-chain grey. All their scouts, mounts and hounds are downwind, and the two of them might as well be the last living elves in the whole world. It is a magnificent depth of silence against which the smoke-rough tones of Tyelcormo’s voice scrape deep grooves, making him once again Turcafinwë, even without the cavalryman’s wings shadowing his back or tassels of silver and black flying from his spear, even with his sunken cheeks, bruise-black shadows graven over the eye sockets and the tattered strands of hair around his face that barely scrape the bottom ribs (it never grew back to its former length after their exile from Narrostoron, though it has been forty years, almost to the day) -- as long as he keeps his stare turned forwards.

Curufinwë cannot help but sink into his words when he begins to speak as a commander, as a firebrand in silver wrought. Kanafinwë would have made his argument poetic, a lament of inevitability. He’s never had their father’s spine; neither has Morifinwë, easily wroth, but only ever in the way that coals smoulder and crackle. And Nelyafinwë would have made no argument at all, for Beleriand has cost him his dignity and the Unnumbered Tears seemingly took his tongue, too, if he had ever inherited it from Fëanáro at all. Only Turcafinwë is sufficiently loyal that he would never debase himself so much as to sugarcoat or beg.

“While we ride around the wilderness and hunt raiding packs like scavengers, Lúthien’s bastard whelp is flaunting Atar’s twice-stolen Silmaril on his neck as Doriath’s new king now -- Elu or Eluchíl, what’s the difference? And he is half Secondborn, too.” 

The Oath burns at the back of his throat, parching through both those words and the quicksilver eyes that stroke upwards from Curufinwë’s hands to his face, seizing his stare like a clenched fist. Even if there was an argument to make, it wouldn’t let him.

There is none. If the years hadn’t yet inured them against cruelty, the wars have.

“He might as well be half dog, for all the difference what kind of mortal creature his mother has fucked makes.” the elder brother sneers, and spits the word mother as though it soured in his mouth, lips curling, but then he chuckles again, and the younger laughs with him that harsh and bloodless laugh. 

“Half Secondborn or half dog, but all thief.”

“All thief indeed -- and should we tolerate thieves to live, Curufinwë?" Turcafinwë tilts his head. His tone seems to deepen, past the air, the wind which rankles them both, the firmament, the mind's centuries-old walls -- and straight to heart like a lance. "Have we abandoned even the pretence of loyalty? Elda or Maia or Aftercomer -- hideth or hoardeth, or in hand taketh, finding keepeth or afar casteth -- he’s not going to send it back, no matter how many letters Nelyafinwë sends to him, because the bastard believes it to be his fucking birthright.” 

It was inevitable. And yet the intensity of those words still makes Curufinwë hold his breath with something -- with vindicating anger, with elation, with a dark and devouring flame invoked by the brand that Beren and Lúthien have made on the past, with the choking certainty that his brother is correct. From here on, the only way is forwards. And words alone do not cleave, which is why in Endórë smiths and swordsmen both have more purchase on the threads of destiny.

The star on the rondel refuses to warm, but its grooves are familiar enough. Something bitterly poignant about the fact that the only heritage left to them since they lost Himlad are swords and plate seems to edge at his mind, but he is in no mood for poignant words and melancholy anymore. His two eldest brothers entice themselves sufficiently with that. Now, Turcafinwë is extending an offer to act instead of languishing to him -- he can see it, shimmering in the predawn grey like a thread of pure mithril set aflame, quivering and choking and razor-sharp, if he grasps it he might know that he lives still by his own blood -- and he would be fool not to reach after it.

 

His silver-pale brother slowly rises to his feet, running a hand over the black hilt of his longsword. He isn’t looking at Curufinwë, but his voice is thick and light at once, and his eyes must be unbearably bright. 

“I have hunted for centuries even before we first drew swords at Alqualondë,” he begins. One, two, three strokes of the thumb against the length of the grip and along the pommel. “I have hunted deer that I spoke to as fawns and speared boars, bears, elks with their last mercy even while they pleaded with me for grace. Aman was not without death, only that most did not care to look it in the face as intimately as the Hunt demanded, safe behind the curtain walls of lofty civilisation, thinking that it is incomparable if we cannot understand the speech of animals, that it exonerates us. Would it be exonerating us still if we had waited a while longer for the linguistic drift to make Telerin barely intelligible? If we never taught the Atani our languages? If we had refused to learn Þindarin, would the linguistic barrier draw the line in the sand between kin and not-kin?” 

Transfixed, Curufinwë stares, feeling his lungs heave under the crackling tension in the air as though they were barely his own. 

“And would it make a difference? Whether it’s Þindar, Atani, beasts, would it matter?” 

No one is laughing anymore, no one but the wind. 

The first lines of red are beginning to appear between the mountains and the sky.

Turcafinwë finally turns his head to face his brother, allowing the silence between them to drive the point as deep as it needs to be to reach the heart, to stir the frozen blood to life. It calls upon the coils of loyalty and honour that have slumbered for too long, feeding off the table-scraps of unnamed skirmishes that no history book will ever chronicle, assuaging itself with a later , and an on another day , and an at some better opportunity, hurling excuses when they should have been carving paths with a voice that cannot be ignored any longer.

Is it fear that has kept their heads bowed? 

Do they have anything to fear to begin with?

The riot of peace blossoms was never intended for them, and it was a fool’s hope to think otherwise, hubris that eats away at the heart like mildew. As long as they evade the pursuit, they will suffer, and bleed, and grind their teeth. And all of it for nothing. There is no mercy for faithless sons.

Curufinwë does not avert his eyes.

 

They have been denied too many times -- even once had been too much -- and indeed the Iathrim have been of less aid in the wars against the Enemy than even hounds, all the while they bled and suffered and cast sacrifice after sacrifice into a darkness that gave them no reprieve in turn.

The shadows of sword-hilts rake their accusing fingers through the endless grey of not-quite-night and not-quite-day in absolutist tooled black leather and silver fittings. Bannermen to blood-spattered cloaks, they offer no comfort, for they do not know how to speak in a language wherein exists the concept of untruth; it is unjust to call them Moricotto’s inventions, when the slender piercing longsword bears so undeniably the mark of Curufinwë Fëanáro that walking through armouries feels like treading through a mausoleum. It comes to his mind only now that his brother is so alike to a sword, when he stands against the colourless skies with the wind whipping against the sharp bones of his face, and his burning eyes and faintly trembling lips are the only things in the whole world that seem to be trying to burst out of its bonds for how alive they are. The barbed-wire hole his voice has carved out of the fabric of the sky is fraying wildly.

Turcafinwë’s mouth twists, bitter and elated, sharp-fanged, drawing in air as though he was about to dive. He crushes the long-dead embers of their bonfire under heel and spur, advancing on against the northern horizon.

“It’s not that different,” he whispers.

 

---

Chapter End Notes

The alternative Quenya translations of Sindarin names are sourced primarily from here https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/User:LorenzoCB/Ingolonde_Project or else original cognates translated with the aid of the community of Vinyë Lambengolmor.

I never finished my degree in linguistics, but I liked the classes.

Originally posted on Ao3.