Remembering Serech by Himring

| | |

Fanwork Notes

Written for the prompt location "Fen of Serech". Some details of the associated prompt reminded me of the Dead Marshes in The Two Towers. At least one section also has more general Orctober vibes, if I can call them that.

Warning that this piece features references to significant amounts of violence and character death, mostly canonical.

Fanwork Information

Summary:

A short history of the Fen of Serech, from happier times until the bitter end.

Major Characters:

Major Relationships:

Artwork Type: No artwork type listed

Genre:

Challenges: Orctober

Rating: Teens

Warnings: Check Notes for Warnings

Chapters: 1 Word Count: 855
Posted on 5 November 2024 Updated on 9 November 2024

This fanwork is complete.

Remembering Serech

Read Remembering Serech

I.

Serech was a fen: earth and water. There is nothing wrong with that, by whatever name you call it: fen or marshes or slightly more uncomplimentary words like swamp or bog.

There were Sindar that loved their muddy hunting grounds around the river Rivil as much as the hunters of Nevrast loved the shores of Lake Linaewen: swaying reeds, ducks and geese and other water birds, an abundance of plants, animals, and fungi. There were dangers there, of course, and some of them might not be obvious to those who did not know their way about the place: quagmires of unsuspected depth, tussocks giving way underfoot. Serech was not always safe. To call the fen treacherous, however, would impute a malice to the land that was not there.

The trouble with Serech was this: there came to be too many bones. It was not just the occasional victims claimed by accidents or even a minor skirmish. The Rivil flowed into Sirion close to the northern end of the great river valley and therefore the location of the fen meant that armies clashed there again and again.

II.

Celegorm, Fëanor's son, having news of them, waylaid the orcs with a part of the Elven-host, and coming down upon them out of the hills near Eithel Sirion drove them into the Fen of Serech.

These were the same orcs who had recently slaughtered many of Cirdan's people without remorse and who would have gone on to drive the survivors into the sea to seek what safety they could find on their ships, if those orcs had not been summoned north to attack Feanor and his sons instead. Waylaid they might be, but hardly innocent victims of ambush—and yet that does not lessen the terror and pain of their end, the anguish of their final struggle caught between certain death on either hand, the violence of the elven attack and drowning in the mire.

And so Serech was littered with the corpses of a fallen army for the first time. But after that, for centuries, the Elven leaguer surrounding Angband held. Slowly earth and water, animals and plants reclaimed Serech until, like a wound scabbing over, the land healed itself, although the battle was not entirely forgotten.

III.

King Finrod Felagund, hastening from the south, was cut off from his people and surrounded with small company in the Fen of Serech; and he would have been slain or taken, but Barahir came up with the bravest of his men and rescued him, and made a wall of spears about him; and they cut their way out of the battle with great loss.

In the first onslaught of the War of Sudden Flame so many of the House of Finarfin and the House of Beor fell that it was a crippling blow to either House, and there were not a few of these who fell in the Fen of Serech, either desperately struggling to defend Finrod or cut off from him and attempting to rejoin him. In the end, Finrod and Barahir barely escaped. Fallen comrades marked the path of their retreat. Bodies of Elves, Men and orcs bled out, piled this way and that among reeds and pools. Even after that first onslaught lessened, there was hardly an opportunity for retrieval or burial.

This time, no long peace followed that would have allowed the land to heal. Worse than that, soon after Sauron gained control of the land around Rivil’s well and began corrupting it. Poison began to bleed slowly into Serech from the slopes of Dorthonion above, leeching life force from all it touched, although downstream Ulmo’s power in Sirion still held strong against all such influences.

IV.

Húrin and Huor drew the remnant of the Men of the house of Hador about them, and foot by foot they withdrew, until they came behind the Fen of Serech, and had the stream of Rivil before them.

When the brothers made their retreat and last stand in Serech, the fateful battle had already raged back and forth over the ground for days. High hopes lost, their grim resolve strengthened and they kept their faith. The enemy had to bridge the river with their dead. Trolls fell under the strokes of Hurin’s axe. But by the end of that day, all the Men of Hador lay slain except for Hurin, their cut-off heads in a heap on the bank of the Rivil. Two decades later, Hurin would remember bitterly how the wind had hissed in reed and grass in Serech that sunset.

And although many fallen Elves and Men were carried away to the big mound on the plain to the north, on Morgoth’s orders, others remained where they fell,  crushed and torn and trodden in the mud, and no few of the enemy with them. There was no healing for that hurt. Soon Ulmo’s power began to withdraw down the valley of Sirion southwards, towards the Sea.

V

But now, for two Ages, all those lands have lain under the wave. Still, we have not forgotten Serech.


Chapter End Notes

The italicized passages introducing numbered sections II to IV are quotations from the published text of The Silmarillion, lightly edited for coherence.

As hinted at in section V., this piece is meant to be written from an in-universe point of view. The writer is not a particularly unreliable narrator, but it is nevertheless intended to be a partial view, by no means omniscient.


Comments

The Silmarillion Writers' Guild is more than just an archive--we are a community! If you enjoy a fanwork or enjoy a creator's work, please consider letting them know in a comment.


Ooh this was a fantastic compilation!  I was just thinking the other day that Beleriand seemed to have no equivalent or parallel to the Dead Marshes but maybe it did at Serech!  Haunting to think about, the hosts that might have crossed and looked down in the waters... 

You could imagine Finarfin's host advancing up the River Sirion towards Angband in the War of Wrath,  and at that time passing Serech might have been an experience quite similar to the Dead Marshes, I think. (I considered putting something about the War of Wrath in, but it didn't feel like something that would work for me, at this point.)

Of course, although I called this piece a "history" in the summary, it is an imagined history: there is a fair bit of non-canonical invention in here, really.

The heads of the fallen Hadorians piled into a mound by the Enemy is not mine, however: Tolkien's description of that is more gruesome than mine above, a detail that never seemed to have registered quite as much with me before!