Long live the King by Aprilertuile

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Injury

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Their camp near the lake was fortified first, everyone’s effort going into it, into ensuring that the camp couldn’t be entered easily by creatures seen or unseen, and then building they could live in and work in started to be built.

Tyelkormo knew that Curufinwë’s attention was focused mainly on that these days.

So his brother had missed the arrival of several elves from… Well, natives to the area. He had missed the way they started to exchange with them, and started to learn their language as they were learning theirs.

That’s how they learnt the place was called the lake Mithrim, in Hithlum.

While his brothers were doing their best to make the camp into an actual liveable settlement, to ensure the people’s safety, and create what could be called an actual city with its own economy, Tyelkormo kept riding out.

Honestly he needed to have some breathing space.

He could only focus on his dog to the exclusion of his brothers for so long, no matter how much he adored Huan.

And Makalaurë was a vicious thing when he wanted to and felt slighted. And this time, abandoning Maitimo to whatever fate he was now suffering, or had suffered… Well, it was far more than a simple slight, and Makalaurë was acting in consequence.  

So riding out was his best escape.

Huan was always at his side, and did his best to distract him when he inevitably had to work with his elder brother but…

It wasn’t even that Makalaurë was finding every possible way to call him a coward every time they spoke that bothered him the most. It was the way he did it in public as much as in private. Because of that his own people didn’t know anymore if they should acknowledge being his or should keep their head down.

It was also the sheer hypocrisy of his little brothers that was getting to him.

Yes, he was the first who spoke against going after Maitimo.

Yes, the others saw the wisdom of his words.

He wasn’t alone in thinking that running blindly after their eldest brother would have been a useless act that would kill them all.

But ah… He supposed that staying in Makalaurë’s good grace and isolating one of them was easier than confronting the same truth that sent Tyelkormo to wake up screaming almost every night. That they, collectively, chose to save their own lives by sacrificing one of them.

Tyelkormo kept his arms covered now. He didn’t know what his brothers thought of that, or if they indeed thought anything at all about it, but he didn’t care.

He’d tell them the truth one day: that he made sacrifices to Oromë every time he went out with his people, for safety, and protection, and thanks, for the comfort of habit, for the desperate hope he hadn’t lost… Oromë. That half the time it was meat or pieces of food he kept and half the time his own blood.

But…

One day. When they’d stop being hypocritical assholes in the face of their brother’s rage.

Perhaps in an age or two, knowing Makalaurë.

It’s funny how the less likely of them could in fact be the most like their father in his grief. It’s also funny, how all the brothers adapted to it as they adapted to their father.

Once upon a time, disappointing Fëanáro had seemed like a terrible thing, but since he created the Silmaril, Tyelkormo started to really fear the violence of his reactions.

Once upon a time, risking a mocking song in retaliation for angering Makalaurë had seemed worth it. Now… Tyelkormo could feel it wouldn’t be a mocking song that’s befell them, no, but he didn’t know for sure what his brother would be capable of, and he was half afraid to meet this beast.

The more he thought about it, the more he regretted not having offered to go meet the envoy himself. After all, Perfect Nelyo would have known how to tell his brothers that they couldn’t try to intervene, and it wasn’t like they’d miss him anyway.

A movement at his right led him to turn his eyes, and he found one of the local elves. A woman who introduced herself as Renieth.

Communication had been difficult at first but Tyelkormo deeply enjoyed their conversations now, and often Renieth went with his own hunting or scouting parties.

She had showed him quite a few plants, edible and poisonous both.

Some he learnt, were deadly even to elves.

It made Tyelkormo wonder if those plants grew in Aman too, and where they did, for he never saw those, not even in Oromë’s woods or the darker areas that the tree light barely touched. Or were they a Moringotto created perversion of a plant of Yavana?

It was very possible, admittedly.

“Ready?” He asked her in Sindarin.

His abilities to talk in Sindarin were very limited still, and he knew his sentences were quite terrible, but it worked and he made progresses quickly enough. Certainly more quickly than some of his brothers. But then, he supposed, they all had different duties that got in the way.

They went with their party, hunting for food this time. They were all ready to gather edible plants as well if they found some, but they were really hoping more for deer or boar.

Sadly, as they were hunting, the traces they found were not of deer or boar, not of rabbits or quails.

No.

The silence of the forest was alarming. Even Huan, usually very full of energy and confidence was being careful, standing guards next to Tyelkormo.

And orcs fell upon them before they had a chance to decide to go back.

The fight was short.

The fight was brutal.

Orcs were trying to get at Tyelkormo specifically and were in enough number to be trouble.

The fight saw Renieth thrown against a tree, throwing her back painfully.

The fight saw Loscarmë losing an ear.

The fight saw Tyelkormo take a sword to the belly.

But they were also lucky:

The orcs were killed. Huan tearing apart more than his fair share of them, and they could regroup and retreat, and another party came to their aid, having noticed the unnatural eerie silence being suddenly broken by shouting, and fighting sound of steel against steel.

Tyelkormo wondered briefly, hearing Huan whine softly in distress in his ear, whether he was going to survive that one. 

He felt sorry for Huan. He wanted to reassure him that all would be well…

But he couldn’t. His arms felt like anvils were resting on them and he could only whisper the name of his beloved dog before darkness took him.