Be All My Sins Remembered by Marchwriter

Do candles pity moths?
Or moths candles when the wind blows them out?

— Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth, Morgoth’s Ring

The tantivy thrilled through the smoky woods.

Three horsemen in hot pursuit flashed past ranks of beech and oak. Their coursers’ legs stretched long, leaning into the gallop, their hooves as they leapt the creekbed just behind the running-hounds, releasing the scent of broken earth and awakening. Leaves, still stiff with frost, shivered and lifted. A cloud of thrushes whirred skyward in the wake of their passing.

From sunlit plain to green-lit shadow, they passed and slowed. The pale light of dawn skimmed through the trees, picking out the chestnut flanks of their steeds, the golden head amidst the dark.

Finrod’s gloved hands tightened on the reins, the blood in his veins singing from the gallop.

Maglor, who rode on his left, sounded the horn once more with more enthusiasm than need. Fëanor's eldest, the russet-crowned Maedhros — though he bore no horn and scarcely understood the concept of enthusiasm — was as animated as Finrod had ever seen him. His eyes gleamed with the thrill of the chase and pursuit. With the shattered remnants of a boarspear tucked tight under his remaining hand, he alone of the three rode with a simple halter looped around his horse’s neck, his boots anchored in the stirrups as the ancient stones in the hillside behind them.

“Nothing like a brisk ride to stir the spirits,” Maglor said.

They had been up since dawn, and trailing their quarry since it had grown light enough to see beneath the trees, and Finrod stifled a tension yawn as they slowed.

“For myself, I would prefer cleaner clothes and something softer than a rock to sleep on.”

“It’s good for you. How can a lord ask the men he leads to endure hardship if he will not bear such his own self?”

“I do not mind hardship at need,” Finrod replied, mildly enough. “But I fear I am not of that feather who pursues discomfort for its own sake.”

“A man must not let himself go to seed. Even in these days of peace, he must keep his senses sharp and swordblade honed. Some of us anyway.”

Not for the first time Finrod questioned his wisdom on agreeing to this madcap venture in the first place.

Fingon had asked with his usual blend of princely hauteur and brotherly charm. And, as always, when Fingon asked, Finrod could but accede to the inevitable.

Which would not have been hardship — usually — Maglor was comely and courteous enough. However, Maedhros more than made up for his brother’s graces with their utter lack.

His veiled hints that the southern lords of the Eldar sent no help to the marches, that they owed their freedom from the ravages of Orcs to his vigilance alone, but perhaps, most of all, the unspoken assurance — evidenced in the cock of his shoulders and the lift of his head — that he had the ear of those nearest and dearest to the High King (among other things) rankled after a fortnight’s endurance.

“A showing of our strength would only provoke the Enemy—” Finrod started.

“A little provocation might remind him that we do not sleep.”

“Were that help ever asked for, I would give it and readily. I have not heard that the marches were so overrun with Orcs that greater strength of arms was required.”

Maglor’s quick eyes followed the repartee with the avidity of a swordsman watching a bout, waiting for the touch that would draw first blood.

“So. I must beg on bended knee for a handful of soldiers from your garrison. The High King sent five-score to me without a murmur.”

“Yes, I know well how you bend the ear of the King… Even so, our soldiery is too few and too thinly equipped for such engagements as you pursue. Or will you arm them?”

“Loosen the purse strings of your treasury a little, why don’t you, Felagund. Or is it rumor alone that those caves of yours are full of jewels and other troves from Tirion?”

“Jewels, perhaps. Not armor. For some reason, steel and iron have a tendency to sink in icy water.”

Maglor laughed, uncomfortably. “Beware, brother-mine, lest you provoke the beast too sorely. Our mild-mannered cousin has a sharp tongue when roused.”

Heat prickled across the back of Finrod’s neck and swept across his cheeks. Incivility was not one of his usual faults. And if he was going to dredge up every old grievance between the children of Feanor and those of Fingolfin, he might as well throw open the leaguer himself and usher Morgoth in with a salute of trumpets.

“The dogs have it at bay.” Maedhros dipped his head. “The honor is yours. If you wish it.”

Only a son of Fëanor would make an honor sound like a challenge. If nothing else could be said of them, Feanor’s sons had never been easily daunted by hot words.

Nor Finarfin’s, for that matter.

Finrod nodded.

The dogs had penned their quarry against an outcropping of the Wall itself, a steep slope of gravelly rock and scrubby trees.

Such a boar — if boar it truly was — had not passed into Eastern Beleriand since the leaguer was first forged. A forest of broken arrows and the scars of arrows and of daggers scored and cross hatched its leathery sides. Maedhros’ first spear poking through a gash in its massive shoulder. All sinew and heavy muscle and arching, razored tusks that menaced the dogs from every side and caught one a hefty blow in the ribs, sending it tumbling ears over tail into the scrub from which it did not emerge even as the others closed, worrying flank and throat and ears and hind. And yet, some mischievous aspect, a feint with a tusk, the spark of intelligent malice in its black eyes belied the pigskin it wore.

At Maglor’s call, the dogs sprang back, every hackle on end, every tongue lolling.

Warmth rising from the horse’s body beneath him, Finrod pressed its sides, urging it forward. The boar, cornered against a slab of granite, snorted in challenge.

However dubious the honor, Finrod’s pride forbade a refusal.

He swung out of the saddle and unsheathed the dwarf-dagger from his belt. His hand slick inside its leather glove, he sucked a breath deep into his belly, the familiar coil of apprehension and fear that he had known little of since the Dagor Aglareb drumming through his veins.

A hundred pounds of rawboned flesh threw itself into him like an avalanche of stones, and the breath whooshed out of him as he collided painfully with the tree, all meat and pig-stink and bark and dagger. Wet ran down his wrist, and a terrible pressure squeezed what little remained of his breath out of him.

Angrist sank, and the dwarf-wrought steel sank deep. Lifted, plunged. Lifted again.

The boar wrenched so hard against him, it nearly tore the blade from his hand. He twisted the dagger hard, deeper into flesh, and a moment before he thought he would lose his breath entirely, he would sink into lurking black or find himself crunched under iron-shod hooves, the pile of it collapsed atop him.

Yet the evil spirit still surged and kicked and struggled against the sudden cleaving of it from its housing, and it was a long while yet before the red light behind those black eyes went out and longer still before Maglor dared crouch beside the beast long enough to heave it off him.

“How fare you, cousin? Not hurt, are you?”

“Only in pride.” Finrod accepted the proffered hand, wincing when his ribs protested. “I should have kept on my horse.”

Maedhros was already out of the saddle and striding around the boar, tilting the head back with his spear tip, the better to examine it. “I have not seen such a creature since the leaguer was forged. They are growing overbold.”

The spear tip dropped, plunged into the earth, Maedhros’ scowling gaze turning back north. “Well. We have felled our beast here. What say you we ride back to the north? There is bear this time of year in the hills.”

“Too rich for my taste,” Finrod said, wincing a little.

“You will not stay?”

Maedhros, pointedly, said nothing.

“Nay. I have lingered in idyll long enough — or so I have been told. And I fear to wear out my welcome.”

“Nargothrond will be languishing without you.”

Finrod flexed his lips in parody of a smile as he retrieved Angrist and wiped the ichor on his cloak. “I have left it in good hands.”

Maglor walked with him as far as the break in the woods, cooling their horses. “Never mind him, Ingoldo. Maedhros has much on his mind of late, not least of which the increasing numbers of Orcs testing our strength.”

“To hear him talk, you would think me the chief cause of his calamity.”

“He would be glad to have you by his side. If the hour comes.”

“When it comes,” Finrod said too low for Maglor to catch.

They came at last to the edge of the trees, and to the south, the road unfurled along Andram, a gleaming pale gold under a sinking sun.

“Have a care,” Maglor warned him, clasping his arm in farewell. “The road between here and Nargothrond is long, and even in peace, a man might go astray.”

“At least the weather is mild.”

He mounted up and left Maglor there in the glade. His ribs ached with the jostling, but he rode smoothly until the wood was almost out of sight, and he came to the confluence of the path that ran along the Wall. Finrod hesitated. West lay the road home. More or less straight on along the trodden paths of Aros through the vales of Sirion nigh to the bridge of Narog.

And East… the wild country. Inhabited only by the half-feral Green Elves — or so many of the Eldar believed though if any had journeyed thus far to speak truly of it, none had returned. The mountains beyond were vast and very blue.

A strange, niggling craving for…what he did not know and might have dismissed as wanderlust or folly save that it kept recurring with the insistence of a voice in the dark, urging him as he had not felt since before Nargothrond was founded.

Finrod touched the reins and the horse turned his back on the sun, the shadows unfurling long before him.

The sun sank behind his shoulder in a riot of color, and with it came the night sounds and night breeze though it was not cool enough for his cloak.

He led his horse across the gravelly shallows of Ascar and up onto the brow of a hill to catch the last of the light in hopes of spotting some likely-looking copse or leeward side of a dell to bivouac for the night.

He crested the brow of a hill, looking down into the darkness of the vale between the rivers.

Lights filled all the vale between the silvery arms of Ascar and Thalos. Red bonfire lights. Hundreds of them. Two thousands strong, at least by his hasty count.

A cold, hard dread settled in the pit of his stomach.

The gentler slopes of Himring were vulnerable, indeed, but if so many Orcs had already breached Maglor’s Gap then the sons of Feanor had slept on watch, indeed, and Nargothrond’s ill-equipped and ill-manned militia would have to make due in defense of the western lands.

He dismounted and checked the dagger sheathed in his belt, wishing for the first time that he had not neglected to leave his sword in Nargothrond. An old habit, uneasily broken for the sake of practicality and peacetime.

The wind, blowing soft but strong in his direction, carried on its currents the sound of singing. Not the harsh, clanging jeers of Orcs, nor the familiar, mellifluous tones of his own kindred. It was a song in a rhythm he had never heard in a language he did not know, and that was enough to summon him forward.

Down the slope, shadow-footed. Upwind, just in case. He slipped into a copse of close-growing beech trees and crept forward, careful to avoid any snapping twig or cluster of jangling leaves that might give him away. He ventured rather nearer the lights than caution might have dictated until he could discern the shapes sitting around them.

A ring of them.

Somewhere, a pipe was playing.

And there were people. A strange-looking, dark-haired, dark-eyed people. Hand-clapping, feet-stomping like the beating of drums to a man piping on a flute, singing in loud, carrying, raucous voices. They sang and laughed and passed bowls of food and drink across the fires.

A shout of laughter as a man fetched up a girl clad in skins and simple linens and whirled her around the fire, his face rosy in the firelight, his hair crowned with a circlet of wildflowers.

Something of the elf-kindred in the shape of the face and form, but something else too. A youth in their eyes and in their limbs that lacked the agelessness of the Eldar. It smoldered, a banked fire that might bloom suddenly to full flame and just as swiftly into ash.

What must it be to know such content?

Were they even aware of their danger? Of how close they ventured to the north-lands? To say nothing of the sons of Feanor or the arrows of the Green-elves who had no love for strangers in their lands without leave.

No shadow plagued them, no endless siege, no sign of darkness could he see in any of them. He longed with an almost febrile desperation to join them, to leap amidst the dancers and catch up the hands of man or maiden, to pluck the strings of a harp with flowers in his hair. It had been so long his fingers ached for the feel of it.

But he stayed where he was until the fires burned to embers. In ones and twos then in droves, the folk slipped off, ducked under tent flaps or climbed the slopes to the red caves along the river, leaving only the more stalwart or the half-awake to bank the fires or linger in speech with their fellows a little longer. But at last, even the hardiest succumbed to the pull of sleep, defeated by the lateness of the hour and the dwindling firewood.

When nothing moved in the camp save the curls of smoke off the dying fires, Finrod rose.

Wisdom whispered a swift retreat in his ear. He had no knowledge of this folk. Though he had seen no evidence of weapons (save a hatchet for chopping firewood), that did not mean they were not armed. And what would they think of a stranger in their midst, one who had stolen into their camp at night?

Beside the errant embers of a fire was a harp. Rude and scarred and much-handled. The strings made of coarse hair. The neck a little warped from damp.

Diamond-crusted flutes, drums covered in finest calfskin, trumpets of copper and brass and gold…all that had been left behind or lost on the Ice. And the only one he regretted was the harp.

He tested his fingertips against the strings and plucked. The harp gave a hum, a melodious, earthy tone. Notes he drew forth, ones low as crackling embers, ones bright as starlight. He plucked them from the warped wood, then from the air, then something in his mind and memory opened. And he felt again the warm sands of Tuna beneath him, the salt breeze in his hair, the golden light of Teleperion and Laurelin gleaming on the silver shores. Laughter and friendship and time endless before the darkening.

He did not know how long he played only that he became, gradually, more aware of eyes upon him, of movement somewhere beyond him. But not until something stung the back of his hand, disrupting the final bridge that he opened his eyes, returned to himself. The music faded like the sudden splintering of a dream.

A sudden, wary silence rushed in all about him to take its place.

A knife, notched and crude but sharp enough to skin a rabbit, hovered in front of his nose. The hand that held it belonged to a scrawny lad who stared down at him with wide, fixed eyes. He said something in a tongue Finrod did not understand — and did not need to — the level of threat in that guttural burr was enough.

He eased the harp down and held his hands, fingers splayed, out to either side in what he hoped was a universal gesture of harmlessness.

The lad relieved him of his blade and belt, examining Angrist’s glittering curve with a speculative eye.

“That blade is older than you, lad, and not so kind to unfamiliar hands,” Finrod warned him. “Handle it carefully.”

The fellow glanced at him, a slight frown furrowing his brow, but he made no answer. Instead he thrust a torch into the dying fire.

By its light, he examined Finrod’s face with liquid black eyes then said something in a tongue that had the shape and likeness of Sindarin.

Finrod’s wrists were bound, and two men took him by the upper arms and escorted him downstream.

Finrod sat on the sandy earth with his bound hands between his knees. To either side of him rose walls of red stone, scalloped and fluted by the slow coaxing of the river when it was young and full. Some of Nargothrond’s own stone might very well have been quarried here for all he knew.

All efforts to question the man standing at the mouth of the cave had been met with silence. Slowly, the moon rode the rim of the sky, and Finrod waited and listened to the night sounds of river and wind and light.

A scuff of boots on stone.

Finrod’s chin jerked up from his breast, and his neck creaked in protest. Torchlight swept into the room, searing crimson against his eyelids.

He blinked his vision clear to find himself gazing at a pair of boots rather the worse for wear. Trailing upward, he beheld a Man, tall and broad-shouldered, dark of hair and eyes, his skin weathered by wind and sun.

It was the dancer, snatching the wilting flowers from his hair.

“My men have come to me with wild tales of the gods descending upon them…and disturbing the quiet of their dreams with an unnatural music.” His speech, though thickened with an unfamiliar brogue, had something of an elvish lilt to it. Close enough to the Sindarin spoken in Nargothrond that as long as he spoke slowly, Finrod could understand.

“I am rather out of practice,” he answered. “It was not my intent to intrude nor to alarm your camp.”

The man cocked his head, watching Finrod with inscrutable grey eyes. “You are not one of the gods.”

“I should hope not.”

“You are of the elf-kin.”

“I am.”

“You do not look like them.” He gestured at Finrod’s garments and hair. “They are a wild, seldom-seen folk. And they do not come to our camps.”

“You speak of the Dark Elves. On the other side of the mountains?”

The man cocked his head again as if listening for some echo.

“We are all one folk. After a fashion,” Finrod said though he balked at further explanation. The complexities and divisions amongst the Eldar and Avari were confusing enough even to those who shared the same tongue. “I am…of another kind.”

“What is your name?”

Finrod hesitated.

While prudence forbade too free an answer, honesty — as near as he could make it — seemed the better course, considering his circumstances.

“I am only a traveler. I was hunting in the woods and…went a little astray. Once it is light enough, I will be on my way and trouble you no more.”

The Man’s brow furrowed. “There are many leagues between here and even your nearest folk.”

“I am accustomed to traveling alone.”

“You misunderstand. I cannot let you go.”

“I will be missed if I do not soon return.” He had told Edrahil, his captain, that he would return by the fall at the latest. “You have no reason to keep me here. What good would I be to you?”

“I cannot release you until I am certain you are no danger to my people.”

“Your people have nothing to fear from me.”

The Man dipped the torch in Finrod’s direction. “So you say. Yet a man may wear a fair face and hide a false tongue.”

“I do not lie,” Finrod said. “And if I truly wish to leave, neither you nor your men will constrain me.”

He rose.

Steel rasped from its sheath as the guardsman at the cave mouth drew his sword, but the other lifted a hand, motioning him back.

The torch in the Man’s hand yawed and flared to sudden flame then went out in a flood of smoke. The sword leapt from his comrade’s hand and rang upon the stone, drowning the slap of his footfalls as he fled.

In the new darkness, an eldritch light, steady as a full moon on a cloudless night, blazed in that small chamber, igniting every nook and cranny and blemish and the Man stood bathed in it, his shadow flattened against the floor and the wall behind him, his eyes opened wide and gleaming.

Something very like awe in his face, the Man bowed.

The torch sputtered and reignited, casting a red, real glow between them yet still a trace of the fell moonlight remained crackling in the air.

A wave of dizziness overtook Finrod, and he reeled against the wall, his ribs throbbing in earnest, so that his breath came up short.

“You are hurt.”

“In my infinite wisdom, I challenged a boar afoot. Or what might once have been a boar. He came off the worse but not without some cost.”

The Man looked at him a moment longer then stuck his head out into the corridor and called something in the tongue that was not quite elvish. A few moments later, a woman appeared, carrying a bowl of warm water, a clout and a small jar. She handed them off and withdrew.

“Arnica. It will help.” The Man stepped closer, lifting the pot of unguent.

Finrod watched him warily. “You’re helping me?”

“We are not a cruel folk.” The Man set the bowl and clout down near the wall. “Even to those we are unsure of.”

Finrod lowered himself gingerly to sitting and unfastened his tunic with uncooperative fingers.

The Man’s mouth thinned as he looked at the Elf’s darkly mottled side. But he said nothing, only handed over the pot of arnica. “It will help,” he repeated.

Finrod took it from his fingers with a nod of thanks. “You are kind.”

“Foolish, more like. Even those bruises might be but a guise to snare me with pity what might not be won through force or trickery.”

“Yes, only a true villain would stumble into his foe’s camp after being flattened by a boar and losing his way.”

The jape did not provoke the smile he’d expected. Instead, a grave and thoughtful look appraised him that made him feel strangely uncovered.

“You are well-mannered for a servant of the Enemy courteous of speech even in such…constraints. I must speak with my council. They will decide what to do with you. Until that time, you must stay.”

The Man braced against his thighs, thinking. "I must have something to call you in the meanwhile. If you will not give me your name, I shall call you Nóm. For your 'infinite wisdom.'"

Finrod laughed despite the jolt it caused his ribs. “And who do I have to thank for this…kindness?”

“I am called Balan, lord of this folk.” The Man unfolded his rangy frame. “Why do you smile?”

“In my tongue,” Finrod explained, “‘Balan’ means ‘one of the Valar.’”

Winter came with a vengeance to the land between the rivers.

Snow suffocated the banks and crept up the roots and trunks of the bare trees on the farther shore. Grey rime crystallized across the river Ascar though in the very center, the shadow of moving water still gleamed.

The dry air stole voices and stopped noses. Chilblained hands fumbled to fasten cloaks tighter about throats. Only the brave ventured very far from camp to gather brush enough to keep the fires going, and they tired easily, wading through thigh-deep snow, sometimes for miles only to return with an armful of logs that would scarce burn for an hour. The women and children barely left the shelter of the caves but huddled together in the few wraps and furs between them, talking in low, restless murmurs.

On a night when the bone-deep chill crept under every wrapping, and the bitter wind screamed and howled among the crags with a shrill and vengeful voice.

Balan, shivering in a ragged skin, watched his people, his expression grim. “I thought that once we had left the mountains behind us, we might find a kinder land. But winter, it seems, has followed us.”

“Your people suffer most keenly from the cold,” Finrod said. He flexed his aching fingers in their threadbare gloves. He had not come prepared to extend his travels into the deeper part of the season, and even he, Eldar though he was, knew cold was not kind to weak or strong.

“The men cannot keep the fires lit.” Balan’s fingers dug into the fur beneath his chin. “Can you not do something? With your arts?”

Finrod shook his head. “Even if I could, my arts do not work in such a fashion. Fire needs wood to burn.”

He stood and brushed the sand from his knees. Outside, white flakes glimmered against the deep blue of the sky, icing the cave mouth. While he did not relish the cold, he had grown to admire the hardihood of Men who suffered even more so than the Elves from the elements.

“I will need a hatchet.”

Balan looked at him.

“I may as well earn my keep,” Finrod said with a shrug. “And I am fresher than the others.”

Balan seemed to consider it, but doubt clouded his face. “I would have you stay.”

“I will return,” Finrod said. “You have my word.”

Balan kept his eyes on the fire as if he had not heard. Then, as if coming to a decision, he extended the hatchet, handle first.

Finrod took it and stepped out into the snow.

The wind hit him at once and raked his hair back from his face, but he made fair progress until the little light of the caves had almost vanished between snow-laden trunks.

Steam rising from him in the dark, he stared out towards the black hills where already the sun had left little more than a crimson glow in the sky.

There lay home.

Half a night’s journey would bring him within sight of the Green Elves. They would aid him and send word to Edrahil in Nargothrond. They, who had borne many a winter in Arda, would have built great birch fires. They would have stores a-plenty of roast meat and wine. Warm clothes. All he had to do was keep walking.

His breath smoked in a long plume from his lips. He walked a few steps, found a likely-looking length of dead chestnut and hefted the blade in his hands.

Under the spreading eaves of Taur-im-Duinath within sight of Ramdal, Balan, Finrod at his side along with a handful of his doughty young hunters slipped between the trees on the trail of a buck, their movements swift and silent as the toss of the leaves across the ground.

The sprawl of the green woodland had proved too inviting for those who had been living on winter rations and ever-tightening belts for the past months. Already a few doves hung from belts. But that would not feed the women and children they had left behind at the river, and the young men in Balan’s following were keen to explore the wilder lands beyond the rivers.

“Here, sir,” a young man crouched in the fork of a beech. “He passed this way not an hour hence.”

“Well-spotted, lad,” Finrod said, examining the scat over the lad’s shoulder. “Quietly now. We are close. Remember your fieldcraft and keep upwards of the wind.”

He met Balan’s gaze as the Man slowed to let the would-be hunters move ahead.

“They are learning well under your tutelage,” he murmured out of the side of his mouth. “I had begun to fear Baran would never see a tree for the forest.”

“He has a sharp mind if one is willing to persist and drive a hard lesson into a harder skull. Not unike his father.”

Balan grunted at that though his lips twitched. “You proved persistent, indeed.”

They followed behind the hunters at a leisurely pace, their footfalls well-matched and soundless in the undergrowth.

“I have been thinking, Nóm," Balan said though the name, bestowed half-mockingly, now came easily to his lips. "You have been with us some time now. Do you never think of returning to your own folk?”

“You wish to be rid of me now now that I have shared all my secrets?”

“Nay! I said that not at all. And there are some…secrets…you keep from me still.”

“Oh?”

“Of Aman, of the Valar, of the coming of our folk…of the shaping of stone and river-caves…the history of flowers and wine and animal husbandry…on any number of subjects, you will discourse freely and tirelessly.”

“Are you calling me tiresome now?”

Balan continued as if he had not heard. “Yet I hear little from your own lips about your people. Your life back where…wherever you are from. And of you, yourself.”

A starling whistled low somewhere above them. Not many paces off, another answered.

“I fear I am terribly uninteresting.”

“I rather doubt that.”

Since the day he had come among Balan’s folk, no word of Nargothrond had passed his lips. At first, wariness had stopped his tongue. But even after Balan had shown himself a generous and thoughtful man, a shrewd leader and a kind friend, Finrod had kept his silence though whether he feared to breach its secrecy or call to mind the responsibility he had left too long in others’ hands, he did not know.

A little bit of both, perhaps, though he did not relish that thought.

Questions about Nargothrond might lead to more questions about his people, the Noldor. And the Doom that followed them. His own part in that Doom.

The light flickered through the leaves though the wind had gone still as if listening.

“I will not pry,” Balan said when the silence lengthened. “But there is some sadness in you. I saw it when first we met. I thought…perhaps… in speaking of it, you might free yourself of it.”

“Some things,” Finrod answered at last, “are better left forgotten.”

Shadows dipped in the canopy above.

“Perhaps,” Balan conceded. “But—”

“The lads have felled their buck, it seems.”

“You are avoiding the subject.”

“Nonsense. I—Stop.” Finrod snagged Balan’s sleeve, gripping with enough force to halt him in his tracks.

“What is it?”

“I heard—”

Clouds of leaves overhead flittered and bobbed and wheeled in whirlwind shades of yellow and ochre and crimson and green, giving the lie to movement. But leaf-dances he knew, and something that was no starling stalking amongst those tree limbs contrary to the wind. A silver spark flashed through a gap between branches.

An arrow, grey-fletched and grey-shafted, thumped into the earth scant inches from their boots.

A voice called, ringing, in the brogue of Ossiriand.

“That is our only warning.”

Finrod held out his hands, palms outward, and replied in the same tongue. “Well met, good people! We mean no harm.”

“Then it might be wiser not to poach the fruits of these lands nor to hew the limbs from our trees. That is harm enough.”

Other shapes in the trees, a ring of them, enclosed Balan and Finrod. Fair and fell and armed.

Balan cast a look over his shoulder, but Finrod shot him a warning look.

He had not realized they had stumbled into the territory of the Green Elves of Ossiriand. Notoriously shy of strangers yet protective of those wide swaths of yet unsettled land in the southern and eastern reaches of Beleriand, they seldom showed themselves. Even the sons of Feanor tended to give the lands of their brethren a wide berth and meddled as little in their affairs as they might.

“It was not our intent to trespass. It has been a long winter.”

One of the Elves stepped forward, and he looked Finrod up and down, taking in his battered boots, his humble leather breeches and linen shirt. The sigil he yet wore on his left hand. Last, he looked Finrod full in the face.

“You are one of those lords — the ones that come from across the Sea,” he said in the elvish tongue.

“Yes.”

“You command these men?”

“No. They are my friends,” he said while Balan looked between them questioningly. “They are hungry.”

“They hew our trees and poach our game. We have enough mouths of our own to feed without giving way to the interlopers. Which might be said of others,” the Elf added pointedly.

Finrod’s jaw steeled. Too well did he know the attitude of many of the Avari who had remained behind in Middle-earth and resented the intrusion of the Noldor who they believed had brought war upon the lands. The vagaries of peacetime, unlike war which distilled the complexities and nuances of life down to adversity or allegiance, proved fertile soil for animosities that might else have lain dormant.

“Against the one enemy we ought stand united, not bickering amongst ourselves,” Finrod said, slow enough that Balan might follow their speech. “There is wood enough for all, and they will not infringe upon what is yours. Balan will give you his word.”

The Green Elf’s hands tightened ever-so-slightly on his bow haft, and the curve of his mouth rode a line somewhere between skeptical and polite disinterest.

“And I will give you mine. Or does that not suit you either?”

The Green Elf looked at him, narrowly, but he nodded. “So be it. They may depart from here with their lives. This time. But you will answer for their deeds, and if they hunt here again, we shall not restrain our arrows.”

That night, they sat beside one another before a fire.

“You are quiet.”

Balan stirred the embers over with a half-charred branch in one of those strange reflective moods of his. “I have been thinking.”

“Oh?”

“Something said in the woods today.”

Finrod rested his hands between his folded knees, worrying his wrist. The Green Elf tongue was similar enough to Sindarin that the word ‘lord’ could hardly have escaped Balan’s notice. Some part of him was almost glad to find his unmasking at hand. He tensed for the blow.

“You gave your word, your honor for my sake,” Balan said. “Why?”

Finrod let out his breath. “Well, I could hardly have returned to your camp with you filled with arrows.”

Unsmiling, Balan laid the tips of his fingers on Finrod’s knee. “I will not forget it.”

Finrod met his gaze, and an odd, little thrill circled down his spine. Oh, go carefully, fool, he thought. These were dangerous currents. He knew their insistent tug too well and the peril of drowning in them.

He shifted his leg out from under the Man’s touch, instantly colder for it.

Better cold than consumed.

“Think nothing of it,” he muttered.

Balan watched him a moment longer than leaned back. “I fear my people are wearing out their welcome in these woods.”

“As to that, I have been giving it some thought,” Finrod said, grateful that the conversation had steered into less treacherous waters. “There is fertile land west of here. The elven folk live further south and do not trouble much with it. A land where you might stay… for a time.”

“You know of such a place?”

“I know of a place.” It was not his to give, precisely. But fortunately the youngest sons of Feanor cared more for peace and woodland than they did land-holding.

Balan swung their kettle off the fire and filled two earthenware mugs with tea. He passed one to Finrod, smiling over the rim of his own. “There are whispers that you influence me overmuch, you know.”

“Oh?”

“Hmm. But I have long had it in my heart to go west.” His eyes were very dark and very clear. Sparks from the fire wheeled to their centers like jewels in the heart of a cave. “I have heard tell the lands of the elf-kings lie there. Places of endless beauty and hidden strength. Where their people dwell in untroubled peace.”

“No peace lasts forever. And none without cost. Even that of the Eldar.”

“Yet must we not snatch what peace we can?” Balan insisted, craning forward, his head angled for debate. “Because it is a fleeting thing, does that not increase its worth?”

“A mayfly is a fleeting thing. A day is a fleeting thing. I suppose, to Men, there is something of value in a moment’s peace. I would rather fight for a more permanent one.”

“Men have a word for that. It is called ‘Death.’ You act as if life is a thing to be borne instead of cherished.”

“Isn’t it?”

Balan tapped his forefinger against his mug. “What of love then? Is it like peace, your fleeting thing? Unworthy of regard or pursuit?”

“We must love each thing in its measure,” Finrod said, choosing his words with care. “Some things…we are meant not to love.”

“You sound as if there is a choice in the matter,” Balan said with the air of one spoiling for an argument. “Love is not a sack of meal. You cannot dole it out a little here. A little there at your leisure. It is blood and heat and light. It lifts you and sustains you--”

“—and consumes you when it is gone,” Finrod snapped, his grip tightening on the mug almost to splintering. “I have seen what such a love does to men. And it does not save them.”

Balan looked at him, and his expression was almost pitying. “Yet to never feel its heat…to never know the love of another… To never try… I would rather be consumed.”

“You speak as a Man.”

“I speak but the truth as I know it.”

“The struggle is different for the Eldar.”

“It is always different, Nóm.”

Finrod leaned back upon his elbows into the cool outside the circle of the fire and tilted his head up towards the stars.

Thin pricks of light, so distant and already so ancient. A log burst in the heart of the fire, sending burning ash wheeling and flirting among them where they floated a moment before they smoked out and the wind carried them away.

He said nothing more.

In the pale light of dawn, the riders trotted up the dwarf road in ranks of two-on-two, the foremost holding a banner long in the breeze, its colors unmistakable.

They descended into a trough of the valley and were briefly lost to sight ere they appeared again on the brow, heading this way.

By the time the sentries spotted them, they were well across the dwarf road and within sight of Ascar. The alarm went up, sending Men stumbling into their boots and reaching for arms.

Balan appeared at his side, buckling on his sword. “What is it? Orcs?”

“No. Not Orcs,” Finrod told him. “Tell your men to stand down and let me ride to meet them. I know them.”

On the further side of the Ascar, Edrahil thrust his banner into the hands of his sergeant and swung out the saddle even before Finrod had crossed the shallows to him.

“So here I find you. At long last. I hope you’re pleased with yourself. We believed you dead. The sons of Feanor sent word last fall, looking for news of your safe return. And your horse returned without you. We had searchers out as far as Dorthonion.”

“I’m sorry. I had meant to send word. I have been…indisposed.”

“Oh, indeed?”

His captain’s nostrils flared with a peculiar displeasure that none would have noted but Finrod. Yet his boots and his weather worn countenance bespoke a long search, and Finrod did not dare take him to task for his tone.

“I have been treated very kindly by Balan and his people. They are Men,” he added.

Edrahil took this in stride with the air of one who questioned the sanity of his lord but remained too polite to do so. He caught up one of Finrod’s hands, skating the pad of his thumb over the callouses and splintered cuts. “What on earth have you been doing?”

“Cutting firewood.”

Edrahil gave him such a look that Finrod wondered if he would be trussed hand and foot and slung over the rump of a courser for the journey home.

“Nargothrond has need of you,” Edrahil said, releasing him.

“I have not forgotten.”

“There are whispers—”

“Nóm?” Balan appeared and slung an arm across his shoulder, eyeing Edrahil warily. “I hope all is well.”

“Balan, these are…comrades of mine.”

Edrahil’s eyes tracked over Balan from his dark head to his well-worn boots, lingering on the arm around Finrod’s neck.

“So. This is a Man.”

Balan lifted his chin under the captain’s blatant appraisal, and Finrod wondered at Edrahil’s sudden antipathy. He was not a discourteous man nor given to bouts of churlishness, but he stared down Balan as if into the maw of Angband itself.

Edrahil deliberately addressed himself to Finrod. “My lord, I must insist on you accompanying me back to Nargothrond. Even the spring roads are growing dangerous. And some,” he tipped his head in Balan’s direction, “I fear may prey on your generosity.”

“‘The Man’ has wit enough to understand your speech and a name if you care to use it,” Balan retorted.

Edrahil did not blush. “Then, if he is such a sensible host, he might have the courtesy to remove so familiar a hand from his majesty.”

“Edrahil,” Finrod warned.

“‘Majesty?’”

“I can explain, Balan.”

“His right title is Finrod Felagund, King of Nargothrond,” Edrahil declared.

“Edrahil. Will you give us a moment,” Finrod said, softly, but in a tone that brooked no argument.

By the mulish look on his face, Edrahil would rather cut out his own tongue than obey. But he walked back to his retinue.

Finrod turned to his friend. “I am sorry, Balan. I would have told you.”

“You are a king,” Balan’s expression was wounded. More softly, he said. “I knew. I knew there was something…Why did you not tell me?”

It was a simple question with a decidedly un-simple answer. There was no reason he could give. No palatable one anyway that Balan would understand.

At his silence Balan’s shoulders dropped and went back as one steadying himself against a hard wind. Gone was the philosopher of the bonfire, the fellow huntsman of the woods. As if a mask had come down behind those dark eyes. He gazed at the elvish retinue, their armor glinting painfully in the sun, color springing from their banners, bleaching the hillside of their reality.

Finrod stepped closer, trying to catch his eye. “My title means nothing. I counted you a friend. I do still.”

"A king of Elves does not have the luxury of friends. Only vassals,” Balan said, his jaw wooden. His eyes when they met Finrod’s were inscrutable. “You were right. Perhaps it is best to love things in their measure.”

He stepped back, sketching an obeisance that made Finrod’s stomach plunge straight down to his boots. “I pray the Lord Felagund will have a safe and swift return to his realm.”

With a heavy heart, Finrod fetched up his gear and mounted up behind Edrahil, and they turned the horses’ heads to the west.

Some things must not be, he told himself. Some things cannot be. It was for the best.

It was no comfort. None at all.

Chapter End Notes

Acknowledgements: I owe a great deal of gratitude to —

* Participants in July’s Camp NaNoWriMo for putting up with my random questions and canon-wrestling.

* The Silmarillion Writer’s Guild for their timeline of Tolkien’s various, tangled annals where I found the spark for the climax of this story

* Oshun for a brilliant Character Biography on Finrod Felagund

If you spot any errors, though, they are all mine.

Nargothrond, 312

“My lord? It is time.”

“Thank you, Edrahil.”

Finrod shook back the brocaded lengths of his sleeves to free his hands and flicked open the coffer before him. He made a gesture over his shoulder. “I can never fasten this blasted thing properly.”

Stepping close, Edrahil drew back the thick plait of Finrod’s hair and draped it over his shoulder. Taking the coffer and handling it as carefully as if it were the still-wet wings of a butterfly, he slipped the necklace of the Dwarves around his throat and fastened the clasp without catching a single thread of hair. He smoothed and adjusted, his fingers skating lightly over Finrod’s shoulders and down his arms though the velvet of his surcoat had already been brushed to a high sheen.

“You wear it well,” Edrahil said, letting his arms fall.

The Valarin jewels glimmered in the soft light falling through the pavilion. For all its weightlessness, it hung like a millstone about his neck.

Edrahil clasped his shoulder and squeezed. “It is a night of celebration, my lord. Your people are happy and at peace and wish to share this night with you. If you didn’t look like a rain cloud about to burst. Smile.”

The order provoked a reluctant acknowledgement from Finrod’s lips. “You are too good to me, Edrahil.”

“I know it. Now, come. I would hate for you to miss my trouncing of the last of your would-be champions in the lists tonight.”

“Oho! I hope such a mighty boast has more than wind behind it!”

“It is your colors that guide my spear and keep my horse straight and strong.”

“I thought it was my silver.”

“That too.”

Finrod laughed in earnest and led the way out onto the field.

The scent of peat fires warmed the air and smoke drifted lazily over the banners and pavilions that had sprung up through the vale of the High Faroth and almost as far as the gorge of Narog itself.

In the crowning glory of the twilight, that time most sacred when the stars first blushed in the sky, the knights of Nargothrond rode out in full force. Cuirasses glinted in the light of the bonfires, throwing back glints of diamond and steel. Lance tips sprawled with the rich pennants of nobles. Phalanxes of horses turned and danced in a mock-battle almost as fierce as it was breathtaking.

Finrod watched from his place on the dais, grateful that the growing evening concealed his face. Despite the four-hundred years of peace, the knights of Nargothrond still prepared for a day when they might again be summoned to the field, and though they were beautifully turned out, their showing was thin, and Finrod could not help thinking of those lost on the Ice, borne down by the weight of their panoply, the armor’s protection become its curse.

Another autumn night, almost a year ago, he had built fires of chestnut and ash wood on the edges of another, far smaller river and there had been no armor on him.

He struggled out of his dour thoughts as a horn blared across the valley, and Edrahil, garbed in his lord’s colors, rode to the end of the list for the final joust, his opponent mirroring him on the other end.

The knight bore no device on his plain, silver shield nor did any pennant hang from his lance. A helm and visor pulled low down over his face concealed all features save the breadth of his shoulders and the strong arc of his spine; he carried himself straight and tall in the saddle. His mount too was plain, a little bow-legged, quite unlike the sleek and able coursers who were few and costly in Nargothrond.

Coin passed discreetly from hand to hand as the men jostled up against the lines for a better view. Edrahil was renowned for his skill with a lance and horse. And this mysterious fellow who sought to challenge him was an unknown though whispers passed from fire to fire that many a skilled knight had fallen to his lance.

Finrod found himself craning forward as the two riders urged their mounts to either end of the list. They dipped lances, one to the other, then ambled almost leisurely towards one another. The pace picked up to a trot, extending between one breath and the next, one heartbeat and the next.

At full-tilt, the clash of their spears cracked like thunder across the plain. The tip of Edrahil’s lance touched the silver knight in the chest, rocking him hard back in the saddle. Incredibly, he righted himself and veered round for the second pass. Several of the men cheered admirably. Doughtier men had been toppled by such a blow from Edrahil’s lance.

The silver knight wheeled and charged.

At the last second, his lance dropped.

The blow struck Edrahil square in the center of the breastplate, and a collective hiss arose as he swayed, unbalanced, and hit the ground in a rain of splinters from his opponent’s broken lance.

At once, the silver knight was off his horse, sweeping out his sword. Edrahil was already on his feet, blade in hand, feet planted. They danced the battle-dance, puffs of dust rising from their quick footwork, the flash of steel, the harsh grunts and pants of exertion as each one fought to unbalance the other, but the silver knight held his own though he moved less gracefully or quickly. Like a boar, he was steady, persistent, giving ground where he needed, then bulling his way forward with sheer zeal that had Edrahil retreating against the onslaught. He stumbled, once, just once. And it was enough.

Edrahil raised a hand, conceding surrender.

The silver knight touched his shoulder lightly with the flat of the blade, sheathed it, and extended a hand, which Edrahil ignored.

The courtly gesture touched Finrod as cheers and groans exploded around them. The silver knight was hoisted into the air on the shoulders of a cheering crowd and paraded about the ring before he was set back on his feet in front of the dais, still holding his shattered lance.

The silver knight descended to one knee and laid a hand against his breast.

Finrod brought his hands together and interlaced his fingers, surveying the bowed head. “You fight well, my man. Edrahil has never been bested with a lance.”

“I had the honor, my lord, of a worthy cause to fight for.”

“And what cause is that?”

“Love of you and of Nargothrond.”

Charm and a quick wit as well as a strong sword arm. “Remove your helm, knight, that I might know you and name you champion.”

Slowly, almost reluctantly, the silver knight lifted his helm and laid it on the grass at his feet. Sweat and exertion had swept his dark hair into curls at his temples and the nape of his neck, and his ruddy face suggested an exertion of more than a hard fight.

But Balan beamed all the same. “I would consider it the highest honor to be named your champion, my lord.”

Rising from the dais on shaky legs, Finrod stepped down, offered Edrahil a consoling clap on the shoulder then summoned Balan to his feet.

“Walk with me.”

Somewhere in the dark beyond the furthest tents, a frog’s chorus pulsed in time with Finrod’s stammering heart.

The stars Elbereth had netted in the vastness glimmered above them like silver fish in crystal still water, the moon casting their shadows before their feet. Now bobbing together, mingling and parting, an ever-varying dance of advance and retreat. Every now and again, hands would brush in the dark of the path or a shoulder jostle, and any words Finrod had finally gathered up would turn to ash in his mouth.

Though he had envisioned this very meeting a thousand times a thousand different ways, the reality of the body beside his, the familiar voice and form…a peculiar reticence clung to the air that he did not know how to disperse, to find their old ease with one another again.

In the months since their last parting, he had thrown himself into the marshaling of Nargothrond and the strengthening of its defenses. That, alongside Edrahil’s ruthless cheer, provided a welcome distraction and gave him the distance he needed to sort himself out. It was better this way, he reasoned. Men and Elves were too different of a kind. They were not meant to mingle in one another’s lives. Why court pain to no good purpose?

And, slowly, he believed that to be true.

And with a single lance-thrust Balan had toppled all.

“I did not know you had such skill.”

“My father used to herd sheep. Remarkable how similar the two are. Except a knight rides straight at you and falls more easily. Give me a knight over a stubborn ram any day.”

“You jest, surely.”

Balan’s teeth flashed at him in the dark. “Perhaps.”

They slowed, an arms length apart, each trying to gauge the way forward in the other’s half-shadowed face. The bonfires and merriment from the encampment lingered behind them, ghosts of light and sound.

Balan passed a hand through his dark hair, chafed the nape of his neck. “I missed you. Nóm.”

“And I, you. I had not thought to see you again,” Finrod said. Though he had, many times, re-envisioned their last encounter. How things might have gone otherwise. How he might have redressed his ill before he had even committed it. “I should not have lied to you, Balan.”

The Man’s lips pressed ever-so-slightly together, and he looked away, leaving Finrod at pains to sort out where he had erred. Had he not apologized? Had he not conceded his wrong? Why then that dark face? Such a fragile thing, a Man’s pride. So easily wounded and slow to mend.

“Had our positions been reversed, I would very well have done the same,” Balan said.

Finrod broke away first, tentative as one who treads uncertain ice. “So…how goes it with the folk of Thalos?”

“Putting your instruction on husbandry to good use though the Green Elves like that no less. All things considered, they are well.”

“‘All things considered?’”

A breath. “I wish I could say that my purpose here was nothing more than an excuse to trounce Edrahil and win my way back into your graces.”

The night prickled with an early chill.

“Has some ill befallen your people…?”

“Not yet.” Three deep furrows in his brow cut a barred shadow. “My sleep has been troubled of late. Ill dreams. Fire and smoke, the cries of men and other…creatures beggaring belief or horror. I have read the portents in water and stars and stones after the manner of my folk. They all say the same. A darkness is coming. The power that dwells in the East is too great. The Elves cannot hold forever. And when He spills forth, He will do so in fire and ash and fury that has not been seen on this earth.”

“Portents do not always make for wise counsel.”

Balan cast him a sidelong look. “Orcs have been spotted in East Beleriand. The Green Elves are fleeing south, carrying whispers and rumors of trouble stirring…And whatever your opinion on portents, my words do not surprise you, I see.”

“No. I’m afraid they don’t.” Some of the same had come even to Nargothrond.

“What do you propose to do?”

“Nargothrond’s knights are valiant, but they are not numerous,” Finrod said, clasping his hands in the small of his back. “Not enough for open war. It is why I built the hewed city in the first place. Against the day when Morgoth would rise again. But if King Fingolfin calls up the banners, I am bound to go. We all must do what we must to prevent him gaining a foothold again.”

Balan folded his arms against the wind now blowing strong out of the East. He said nothing as he gazed out across the gorge of Narog and, just beyond, the Guarded Plain, featureless and shrouded. “A man cannot stand idly by while others fight for him.”

His words hung in the air, freighted with more than an acknowledgement of Finrod’s fealty. Balan’s shoulder pressed warm against his, and Finrod could not bring himself to move away.

“A lord’s raiment becomes you.” Balan made as if to brush the Nauglimir lying against Finrod’s breast. “When first you appeared in our camp—”

“—led at knifepoint, as I recall.”

“Even disheveled and boar-bruised, you had a bearing about you.”

“Thank goodness, it’s dark. My blushes.”

“The Dark could not touch you.”

A shadow brushed against the inside of Finrod’s chest. He had seen that look before on other men: men of the House of Finwë whose fingers though blackened to the last knuckle still clutched their blades, though glass-eyed with exhaustion still heaved themselves through thigh-deep snow. Men who had plunged beneath glacial waters or simply vanished into some unseen abyss, that grim determination fixed eternally on their features. Men who had followed him.

“No.”

“‘No,’ what? I have not asked a question.”

“I know what you would say. And my answer is no.”

“Again. I have not asked for anything. Indeed, there is nothing I would ask but much I would offer. My services and my sword to the lord of Nargothrond who first befriended us in our need. Now we would aid him in his.”

“The Dark does not touch me, say you?” Finrod hissed. “Yet it does. A sword will cleave my flesh and snuff my life just as it will yours. I am no celestial being, no…Vala to be worshipped. Nor do I consider what is between us a debt owed.”

Balan shook his head. “I am no tyro, too callow to know either my own or another’s measure nor one moved to act out of obligation. I have seen your heart, Nóm, and what we might do for our people. I would be part of that. Forfeit my life, if need be.”

“An oath so sworn may not be broken,” Finrod said. “Your life may be the least of what you forfeit.”

“I will take that chance.”

Damn him!

Finrod fought the urge to seize him and shake sense into him. How like a Man, too short-sighted and stubborn to recognize that brave words could slay a man as easily as a sword-thrust. Too eager to prove himself the master of his own fate, that he alone could make such a vow and come away unscathed.

He would plunge forth, even unknowing.

“And what of your people? Your son?” Finrod asked though he did not relish wielding a man’s family against him in such a manner. “Are they not owed your fealty?”

“My people, including my son, know the price we must pay for our freedom and our safety,” Balan insisted. “If I must part from them in order to do that, so be it.”

Finrod stalked downslope to the edge of the gorge where the stars drifting above the rim of the world gleamed like ice in the velvet of the sky, their light and the half-crown of the moon limned the rock walls with ghostly light and glinted far below on the broad back of Narog. A clean, brittle wind wafted up from below, a stray lock ticking against his cheek, stirred loose from its plait.

Away on his left hand, Ringwil rattled and chattered over his shallow bed of stones just a short way before he flung himself over a fall, tumbling headlong, and was lost in Narog’s steady churn.

What recourse?

To accept such an oath — even if he could do so in good faith — would yoke this Man and his fate to the Doom of the Noldor and all their attendant suffering.

Yet to refuse it would strangle the tentative seed of friendship between the Eldar and Edain.

Worse still to turn Balan away again would break a ready heart.

And that last, Finrod could not endure.

For a wild moment, he considered the enchantments at his command. A pass of a hand might turn that intent face slack with sleep, rendering the evening as dull and foggy as if besotted by wine, the proffered pledge as forgotten as a wish in a dream.

And yet…

He could no more stop this then he could demand the river halt its flow. Even damming it would but redirect its course. This Man and those to come after him — all would have their own part to play; the Valar had decreed it so. And what was he, a mere Elf, to stand in the way of such?

“If you would precede with this folly of yours—”

“I would.”

“Then kneel.”

The imperfect moonlight softened the precipice of Narog, making one almost believe he might step off the edge of the earth here and float away into the sky as Balan went to one knee at its edge. An enchantment hung upon the air that was not of his own making.

“I will be faithful and loyal and will maintain faith and loyalty to Findaráto, son of Arafinwë, son of Finwë, Lord of Nargothrond, in matters of life and limb and of earthly honor against all foes; and never will I bear arms for anyone against him so long as my life lasts.”

His face, upturned to star and moonlight, was pale within the darkness of his hair. Yet his eyes…All the light of the heavens went whirling inward to the center of his eyes like sparks in a fire burning too bright and hot. For the briefest of moments, a circlet of silver cast of moonlight and shadow flickered about his brow. Tall and broad of shoulder, he knelt, a chief of a great people, at once venerable and humble, a warrior filled with the vigor and valor of manhood, a Man whose bloodline and destiny were inextricably woven together.

The lord of Nargothrond stood, hopelessly transfixed.

Now, at last, he understood how Thingol might have beheld a glory and grace beyond his understanding and felt the whole world fall away.

Balan was watching him, his rapt expression faltering in the face of the prolonging silence. “My lord?”

Finrod mastered himself. “Rise, Bëor son of the Edain. Knight of Nargothrond.”

He enfolded the Man’s clasped hands in his own and lifted him to his feet and sealed their covenant with a press of his lips.

They did not immediately move apart but lingered in the sacred space alive and pulsing between them, their hands still joined, fingers interlacing.

“They will say you have ensorcelled me,” Balan whispered, his thumb scribing small, absent circles across the skin of Finrod’s wrist. “That the elf-king of Nargothrond comes to villages of Men at night and spirits away the hardiest members of the tribe to do his bidding.”

Finrod laughed softly, painfully. “I have such arts. After a fashion, I suppose. But it is against my nature and inclination to bend others to my will. I would rather they come to me freely for then all their deeds hold the fullness of their heart.”

He laid his free hand, fingers splayed, against Balan’s breast, the notch of his throat, no bigger than the impress of his thumb. The air thickened, and a wind lifted a few strands of dark hair from Balan’s temple.

“I hope you know what you have done for yourself,” Finrod said, absently tucking the flyaway back. “The life of a knight is not an easy one. You will have to train hard. Edrahil is chief captain — and he will not go gentle with you.”

“Certainly not after I absconded with you as I did,” Balan said, almost rakishly, but when Finrod cocked an eyebrow in confusion, he shook his head and did not elaborate, his manner turning grave. “I will not fail you.”

“You have never failed me.”

A hand, rough with callouses, unafraid of toil or danger, brushed the ridge of Finrod’s cheek. “You regret it.”

Finrod caught Balan’s fingers in his own as if he were trapping a small and frightened bird — or, perhaps, that was his own wildly fluttering heart. “It is done. And cannot be undone.”

He meant to say more, to try to explain the thousand thoughts in his mind and the struggle in his heart for the right thing, but any words he would speak vanished in the advance and retreat of their breath, the linking and unlinking of their hands in the dark.

“I would…beg one more boon of you…my lord. If I dare.” The silver in his eyes leaped, glowing, beckoning Finrod into their warmth, out of the cold.

The leaguer would hold, he told himself, feeling as if he had tumbled headlong into a terrible mistake and was about to make another. The leaguer had to hold.

Alas, for the short-sightedness of the Eldar, he mused as Balan leaned forward and kissed him again.

To plunge forth, even knowing…

Edrahil was awaiting him when he returned with the taste of moonlight still on his lips.

“I did not expect you to wait up,” Finrod said, pausing on the rim of the firelight. He felt almost as if he was intruding upon something.

Edrahl sat wreathed in stillness with his boots out to the fire, all smoked down. “I trust you had much to discuss. You and…your champion.”

“Balan wished to make a private request for my ears alone.” Finrod said, unfastening his silver cloak. He folded it neatly into quarters and dropped it atop the log. “He wished to serve in the host of Nargothrond.”

“Oh?”

“I granted it.”

Edrahil brushed an invisible scuff of dust from his jousting leathers and said nothing at all.

“I did not think such news would ill-please you.” While he had not expected enthusiasm, this cold reception was disconcerting. “Nargothrond has need of knights.”

“We are not so desperate as all that we must pluck sheep-herds from the fields to fill our ranks.”

Finrod folded his arms and canted his head. “He proved himself keen enough tonight.”

“A pretty bout does not a warrior make.” It was said mildly enough, but Finrod knew Edrahil too well by now. Oft his most cutting words were his quietest. “My men have fought beside one another for long years. They will balk at such an unknown in their ranks.”

And the men's captain not least of all, it seemed.

“What is it about them that chafes you so?” Finrod scuffed a boot in the dirt. “Or is it Bëor alone? That he bested you in the lists?”

Edrahil’s gaze followed the curls of smoke over the listing pavilions and sleeping tents. “This has nothing to do with my pride. We know nothing of him or his people. Where they came from. Whom they serve.”

“I lived among them,” Finrod said. “I know them. And even had I not, their coming was foretold. They are children of this earth even as we are.”

“And even our folk have been corrupted by Angband.” Edrahil looked up at him, his face half in shadow. He did not blink, and Finrod felt oddly exposed as if Edrahil could read something in him that even he did not know. “There are whispers, Finrod, that either you have not heard or were not willing to hear. They speak of shadows. That Men fled — or were ousted — from the other side of the mountains, and He has been among them and blacked their hearts against the Eldar.”

Above Thalos, with red light on the red walls, the storytellers would talk of Men who who heard a fair voice in the shadows and followed it, never to return. Men feared the Dark and hated it. But if they spoke little of their journeys before they came to Beleriand, Finrod had always seen their generosity and hardihood and unwavering spirit. And never — save for that first night — had a violent hand raised against him nor an ill word spoken.

“I did not think you one to truck in gossip and idle tale-bearing,” Finrod said as if twitching away an errant fly. “What ails you tonight? Are you drunk? This insolence is tiresome and unlike you.”

“I’m merely feeling honest. And I am not the only one who speaks thus.” He lifted his chin in the direction of the dark tents. “Nor will some of your court be as diplomatic as I am when the king quits his own party to steal away with some stranger.”

“You see enemies where there are none.” Finrod stepped into the circle of the light and crouched beside him, now beginning to see the shape and weft of Edrahil’s thought. “Bëor is not your foe. Nor your rival, for that matter. You are my most trusted captain. None could usurp your place at my side.”

“Not at your side, no.” Edrahil’s stare settled deep in the crimson heart of it. The words drifted from him like the words of a dream. “A dim ember, however constant, cannot compare to a flame, brief and bright though it be.”

“What on earth does that mean?”

Edrahil draped an arm over his crooked knee, drawing inward as if he'd spoken more than he'd meant to. “Their fates are not ours. They look beyond the circles of this world. They care not for it as we do. Our struggle against the Enemy is not their struggle.”

“The Enemy is caged behind the leaguer,” Finrod said, waving towards the North where, leagues away, the bastions of the Elves still stood. Fingon and Orodreth and Aegnor and Angrod and the sons of Fëanor.

“For how long?” Edrahil asked. “You know as well as I how vulnerable the northern lands are. It’s only a matter of time before He tests our strength again.”

“It will not come to that.”

“Why?” Edrahil demanded, suddenly sharp. “Because you wish it so? Was it not you who told me that you feared Maedhros would put forth his strength too soon? That his hills were too low to keep the Orcs out forever? Yet now, you balk?”

“I have sent men to their deaths before,” Finrod said, quietly, “and have weathered their losses.”

“And I have watched you wither a little more with every one of them.” Edrahil softened, a little. “There is enough loss in this world, Ingoldo, without having to chase it. This Man you so ardently believe in will be tested. What if he fails? What if he falls? What if he proves less true than you believe?”

“He won’t.”

“Or you? He is a knight in your service now, you say. He may fight. He may die. And you may be the one to send him to that death. Can you do that?”

As always, Edrahil could be counted upon to drive his point in and in deep enough to draw blood.

Finrod lowered himself to sitting and braced his back against the log, now his turn to seek retreat in the fire. “You have ever been forthright with me. Even when I least wished it.”

“You used to appreciate it.”

“It will not come to that,” Finrod repeated.

Edrahil’s face, grim and wan, flickered with shadows and light as he held forth a folded piece of parchment. The waxed seal was broken, but even so Finrod recognized the eight-pointed star.

His stomach plunged.

“A runner came whilst you were…otherwise occupied. The Pass of Aglon has been breached. The sons of Fëanor call for aid.”

It was far past the hour for petitioners or his captains or even Edrahil, whose absence of late had been both apology and reprimand, when the knock came. Two taps, a pause, two more taps. If a man could long for and dread a thing at once, it was such a knock at such an hour.

Not yet dressed for sleep, Finrod lifted his head, just a fraction, from the map and its gratuitous use of dark ink. How harmless those flat lines, traced by a cartographer’s pen, appeared on parchment. The winding road to Aglon and back might have been conquered in a day and with little fanfare from this vantage point.

Yet the smeary shadows stalking the top of the map from end to end — though rather less to scale than the rest of the world (none dared venture near Angband for detail’s sake) — had very real counterparts, indeed. And very small and rather forlorn looked the bastions along Sirion in the west and Himring in the northeast. How vague and empty the lands between.

He rested his finger on the pulse of the road he and his knights would ride on the morrow. North to the Crossings of Teiglin. Then East across Iant Iaur. The bridge was still well-kept, if memory served, despite its unfortunate location under the very eaves of Taur-nu-Fuin, whose bristling black lines lacked the dismay of reality here in the safety of his own halls. He traced it over and over as if, with the next passage, he could redirect his fate to a safer, saner course and so steer clear of the decision he had no wish to make and could not avoid.

The knock came again. A little louder this time. Even now, his visitor did not enter without permission. The thought brought a painful little smile to Finrod’s lips even as it relieved him. Some things still stood. Yet Finrod had never kept him waiting long. On other nights — too many other nights, he admitted — he had oft received his visitor even before that first knock, unshod, hair unbound, eager to commence with his folly.

Kisses begun tentatively in the moonlight above Ringwil gathered breath and potency in the darkness of Nargothrond’s deepest chamber. Under the coaxing of a calloused hand riding his flank, he could dismiss Edrahil’s dire pronouncements as the clamoring of the overcautious (or envious).

Morning light, of course, had always reasserted his sanity and his avowal that the next night would find him determined to set a very different course…Edrahil’s words clamoring in his ears: You may be the one to send him to that death. Can you do that? Now, the decision had come to him, willing or no. And delay would make it no easier.

At his summons Bëor stepped into the chamber and eased the door to behind him.

He had put on his jubilee finery. The surcoat of blue and white — a gift well-bestowed—accented the breadth of his shoulders, the taper of his hips. Above his breast, picked out in gold thread, glinted the sigil of the House of Finarfin. His hair, now grown long in the fashion of the Eldar, was swept into a queue at his nape that a simple tug might unravel. He had even sheathed a little ornamental dagger at his waist.

For all the world like a promise of one last night’s grace.

Yet instead of sprawling — as was his wont — across the divan where many of their trysts had begun (that dark head scribing a slow serpentine curve down) or leveling a look of heated intent from the shadow of his hair, the Man stood very straight, just out of arm’s reach. Only his thumbs, hooked in his belt, betrayed his discomposure, worrying the leather under his fingers.

Finrod leaned back in his chair, the muscles in his neck and shoulders creaking. “My colors become you.”

“I hope so.” But the words were bereft of sultry invitation. “I have missed you of late.”

It was all Finrod could do not to round the desk between them and beg forgiveness. Instead, he heard himself say, “Matters of some import have required all my attention of late.”

“Matters such as the assault upon Aglon, perhaps? Your ride north?”

Only a trusted few had been apprised of Maglor’s request. “How did you hear of that?”

“Lurking at keyholes,” came the unabashed reply with at least a trace of Bëor’s old mischief. “Close quarters do not make for well-kept secrets.”

“Duly noted.”

“Particularly amongst those who have a vested interest in your welfare.” Bëor’s eyes lowered, fingertips skating absently over the scrolled leaves of Finrod’s secretary. “I swore to follow you.”

The taste of moonlight on his lips.

“I remember.”

Bëor’s rucked brow and steeled jaw rode the line between earnest and aggrieved. “As your vassal, I swore. And I had presumed — perhaps wrongfully — as your friend.”

The hurt in his tone knifed Finrod between the ribs. “Of course, we are friends.”

“And yet you would ride alone into peril.”

Finrod’s chair grated against the flags. He could guess the intent behind the careful words, and he was loath to own himself unequal even to their unvoiced plea. He poured a glass of malmsey from the board, more out of a desire to occupy his hands and eyes than the fortification of his courage. Tawny as dirt at the bottom of the glass; tainting the sides with a coppery stain like old blood.

He downed most of the glass in a swallow. Bitter on his tongue, the tannin strong in the back of his throat with notes of the grave, of earth churned up in the wake of bloodshed.

“It is not your fight.” He swirled the dregs at the bottom of the glass. He could not meet those beseeching eyes.

“You told me that my people would be safe. Now I learn that Orcs threaten the Pass just north of their dwellings, scarce leagues away. How is that not my fight? What else would you have me do? Hide behind your gilded walls? Wait with the maidens and children, cowering behind the skirts and charity of the Eldar?”

Yes, Finrod thought but did not say. I would have you safe.

Bëor’s stare bored between his shoulder blades. “Even now, you count us as lesser. Younger, weaker. You lie to us because you think we cannot understand. You love us — but only a little — according to our measure among the mayflies.”

“That is not so.” Even to his own ears it sounded false. “You are new come to the guard. I would not see your skill taxed so soon against such an enemy.”

Others did not have such consideration, whispered that treacherous voice in his mind.

“I am not new to the sword,” Bëor insisted, taking a step closer. “Or to Orcs. I can help you. You need me.”

“Damn you, I am trying to protect you.”

“I did not ask to be protected! I am not a child, Finrod.”

“No. You are not. You are mortal.”

Bëor’s carriage softened a fraction. “You cannot spare us from Death, my friend. It is our fate.”

“Perhaps,” Finrod said, laying down the glass rather harder than he meant to. “Even so, I would counsel you not to chase it.”

Bëor, however, was watching his face with hawkish intensity, undeterred by his circling. “Were you even going to tell me? If I had not come, would I have awoken tomorrow to find you gone, the sheets cold and stale?”

It was too close to the truth to admit aloud.

“As I said, I have had many matters on my mind,” Finrod said, stalling for time to think and collect himself. “Besides, there is honorable enough work here. I cannot leave Nargothrond undefended whilst I am elsewhere.”

“You have men enough to stand at ramparts staring out over empty grass. When I swore my fealty, it was no braggart’s boast nor a tyro’s desire to prove himself. It was in earnest.” He took a step forward, closing the distance between them. “I would not have you fight alone.”

That is why I would not have you by my side. If you fall…defending me…I will not be responsible for your death. But his courage had not been made to utter those words aloud. His tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, too desiccated to form words.

Bëor’s warm hand brushed the arc of Finrod’s cheekbone, slid under his hair to cup the back of his neck. It was a warm hand, unafraid of hard labor or long toil or death. A hand that had plucked harp and heart strings with equal mastery. And Finrod yearned to lean into it but could not. A flame burned beneath that hand. A fire that would burn too bright and too hot — and reduce him to ash if he let it.

“No.” He drew back, chill sweeping his nape as Bëor’s hand fell away. He lit a taper on the desk.

His lover made a noise somewhere between a hiss and a sigh like a cat that’s been dashed with water. “So that is your answer. A Man, I suppose, is only a base creature, after all. Best suited to kneel for your lust, but not to stand at your side.”

Volleyed like an arrow from a bowstring, the remark spun Finrod round, provoked at last beyond forbearance.

“I could have you clapped in irons for such insolence,” he snarled, hands furling into fists at his sides, wrestling against the urge to seize the man and shake him until his teeth rattled. “You think you have faced the Enemy, rash boy. You know nothing of him. Or of what his Orcs will do to every man, woman, and child if they breach the Pass. Your wounded pride is the least of my concerns, and you truly know nothing of me if you think otherwise. You would serve at my side. What need could I possibly have of you?”

Bëor stood before him as stalwart as a sapling clinging to a mountainside under the onslaught of a storm. White to the lips, his face did not change, but beneath, something desolate and proud and wholly itself still burned, unquenched.

Finrod’s anger faded as quickly as it had flared, leaving him weak as if he’d been bled and not a little ashamed. It was not like him to lose his temper. Too many things of late had been unlike him. This conversation could not continue.

“Go, Balan. You are dismissed.”

To his credit, the Man inclined his head jerkily in obeisance and murmured. “As you wish. Lord.”

All the air sucked out of the chamber with the punctuating clap of the door, leaving a hollow emptiness in its wake. Finrod squeezed his eyes tight shut, pushing away the uncustomary ache.

Letting out an unsteady breath, he went to his trunk, the lid cracking against the footboard. Buried within lay his father’s corslet, its mithril scales all a-glitter, the belt studded with diamonds. Only this one had survived the Ice. The harp had been left behind. The wraps and furs and jewels of Túna.

Only these things remained: the sword, the armor.

He lifted out the heavy mass of scales and spread it upon the bed, the ghost of a man on his sheets. That was all that ever survived. The world he now knew was not made for tenderness. And it did not allow for such luxuries as love.

He blew out the tapers and slipped into his cold sheets, alone.

A grey wind swept down the Pass of Aglon to meet he knights of Nargothrond as they thundered up the causeway, ducking their chins against the bitter lash that had shaped and sharpened the walls of the ravine.

The wind dropped once within the courtyard, but the late-season chill deepened, if anything, as a harried-looking messenger rushed out and greeted them with a courtesy more perfunctory than formal.

“My Lord. You are expected. Your men may proceed to the garrison. If you will follow me.”

“Edrahil, see them settled,” Finrod said.

“If…that is your wish, my Lord,” Edrahil said.

In the presence of others, Edrahil unfailingly presented the face of a dutiful captain, but even for a dutiful captain, he had lingered close since they departed Nargothrond. Suffocatingly so. Better to face a room full of kinslaying kinsmen than another instant of that half-pitying, half-apologetic look Edrahil kept casting over his shoulder when he thought Finrod wasn’t looking.

“It is,” Finrod prompted.

The knights of Nargothrond in ranks three deep, their backs straight as their spears, wheeled off with martial precision. The hindmost had forgotten to doff his hood. Young, perhaps, and green to the courtesies of court. They seemed so few. Hardly a storied army though each was valiant and would fight beside him to the last if he asked it of them.

He hoped he would not have to ask.

The messenger led him on, and despite the grimness of his surroundings, he could not help admiring the craftsmanship, the warren of corridors and slitted windows, the sloped ramps in place of stairs.

Four of the seven sons, absent only the two youngest and the darkest, were assembled in a wide hall. At the head of a long table stood Maedhros with Maglor at his shoulder. Gone were the merry huntsmen he had ridden beside in the woods what felt like ages ago (though Maedhros could never be deemed ‘merry,’ exactly).

From polished cuirass to the curved blades belted at their waists, these were warriors primed for war.

The only fair head among them, Finrod could not repress a sense of isolation — the apartness a deer cut from the herd might feel — all the more compounded by the wolfhound that circled and sniffed at his heels, a low gnarl of suspicion rumbling from its throat.

At the sound, Maedhros raised his head, an eyebrow cocking. “I near thought the guards were spinning me an idyll when they reported riders at the gate. Can it be Nargothrond has prised open its purse strings at long last?”

Maglor detached himself from his brother’s side and took Finrod warmly by the arm. “Glad we are to see you none the worse for wear. We heard tell you found some misadventure after our last parting.”

“None the worse for wear,” Finrod echoed, not entirely truthfully. He said no more, hoping that the matter would be passed over for others more urgent, but Celegorm, ever the lover of gossip, leaned across his forearms and fixed Finrod with a gimlet, almost prurient, eye.

“These Atani, we hear much rumor but little of substance… Are they of a measure with the Belain’s dire pronouncements? Are they fearsome? What sort of fighters do they make?”

“They are a hardy folk and very valiant,” Finrod said. “Accustomed to…an unfettered life.” Even such paltry explanation as that felt like an admission of s secret.

I would follow you, the shadow of Bëor’s voice reproached him.

“Is that so? They must be comely, at the very least, to have so…enamored you.” Celegorm flashed him a smile that was all teeth. “So how many did you bring with you? We have need of chaff. The Enemy has brought threshers enough.”

Finrod was hard pressed to still his hands from threshing chaff of a very different sort. His back and legs ached with days of hard riding; he had slept scant hours in the last fortnight, and a weariness that had nothing to do with physical fatigue had settled like a black shadow across his soul as the miles lengthened between him and Nargothrond. And while distance and activity had blunted the sharp edge of his separation from Bëor, he resented Celegorm’s pressing fingers into an open wound, unknowing or no. His temper, already at its limit of late, was dangerously fraying.

With an effort of will, he swallowed back his rising bile and addressed himself to Maedhros instead. “Speaking of, I was given to understand matters were somewhat urgent. Yet you would rather fritter away time with idle questions.”

Maedhros quelled Celegorm with a stern look.

“Indeed. We have sent scouts to espy the Enemy’s numbers. Only one has returned and with little news of use. Either their woodcraft has improved or some other baleful power conceals their numbers and movements.” He plucked up his plumed helm from its place on the table and fitted it over his telltale hair. “I leave for Himring tonight. Maglor will come with me. Curufin and Celegorm and your men will fortify the Pass here. With luck, we will be able to drive them off ere we ever have need of you.”

Finrod found this rather optimistic. The Enemy had ever hedged his numbers and his strength, the better to take his foes unawares. But he agreed. Maedhros unexpectedly caught Finrod’s arm with his remaining hand as the others filed out to fetch their horses and ready their men.

The Fëanorian’s eyes glittered with a fey light. “I feel it in my bones. This is the first onslaught before the storm, Findaráto,” he intoned. “He is testing us. If we fail here…”

“We will not fail,” Finrod said. The grip was on his arm was tight, almost painfully so, yet he did not shrug it away. “You are not alone in this.”

“I am glad you have come,” Maedhros said, and then he was gone.

As the footsteps of the brethren faded down the corridor, Finrod moved to the hearth. High in the corners, the shadows had grown thick and deep. What was more galling?

Glad, Maedhros may be, but not enough to set them to work. No, they were to be left behind and man the walls until something should happen. He felt a swell of sympathy for Bëor — almost as much as relief that the Man had not come.

Too often had Fëanorian pride exceeded its grasp, and he liked it not at all that Maedhros would lay all his hopes on the cavalry. If the Enemy were smart, they would avoid Himring at all costs, and there were open places, many of them, where a clever and sure-footed foe might come down on Aglon’s outworks…

“Someone ought to take a look around,” he addressed the wolfhound who had stretched its belly toward the comfort of the fire.

The wolfhound’s ear twitched, as if to say who? You? But it did not lift its head from its paws.

“It may be no hardship for you to lie in idleness, but I cannot if I may be of service. I have arts Maedhros does not that will conceal me and may reveal their numbers or, at least, their location, which gives us the advantage,” Finrod argued, aware that he was debating with an animal who, as a general rule, would not argue back. “And besides, it’s only a look around. If Maedhros is right, all I do is risk wasting a little time.”

And if he’s wrong? The wolfhound looked at him with a half-lidded yellow eye. That would make you a reckless fool as well as a faithless one, wouldn’t it?

“You know, you would make a very fine pelt for my dais.”

To this, the wolfhound made no reply.

He stole out of the little eastern wall gate into a sallow twilight.

The encroaching night had drained most of the color and substance from the earth, erasing texture and detail, but Celegorp’s sentries up on the wall were likely as keen-eyed as his hounds. Plucking the shadows from the crenellations above him and the arch of the gate behind, Finrod drew them around his shoulders and over his hair like a mantle. Soft as a wraith, he moved across the thin stretch of open field and so down into a grove of fir trees, picking his way, his footfall leaving no trace, his breath no sound.

With the outworks fading into the dusk behind him, he kept the thin song of a stream on his right, the heavier darkness of the firs on his left as they rose up the crags. Despite his glamor, he felt exposed, the edges of the ravine scowling down at him from on high.

And the wind…

It funneled down the pass relentlessly, achingly. It struck him like the edge of a sword. It flung grit into his face and eyes, groped under every stitch of clothing with its insistent, chilly fingers. Not since the Ice had he faced such nagging, relentless discomfort. A low hum among the stones rose note by note to a shrill wail like an animal screaming in pain. Grimly, he ducked his head into it and tightened his grip on his sword hilt, his hands sweating in spite of the chill.

A footbridge spanned the stream a few yards on. And it was there that Finrod nearly stumbled over one of Maedhros’ sentries, lying facedown on the riverstones with a black pool under him.

Finrod’s heart picked up and slammed hard against his throat and ears. He swept out his sword and turned in a full circle, every sense straining. But for the wind, all was quiet. Quickly, he bent. The riverstones were still damp with the sentry’s blood. A star-shaped gash was all that was left of one eye, and a terrible jester’s grin, far too wide, split the lower half of his face.

A cry of pain or rage or joy — so close, Finrod startled backward, half-believing the slain sentry had made the noise — rent the night. A red light had appeared from nowhere on the other end of the bridge, and by its fell radiance, Finrod could see the monstrous faces of the Enemy though he was certain they had not been there a moment ago.

At least a score strong — the vanguard, most likely. They were large, leathery, and red-eyed, their faces twisted into animal-snarls, their fangs sharpened for blood. The Orcs thumped across the footbridge, the wood groaning under their weight. A runnel of sweat pooling at the back of his belt, Finrod drew his shadow-mantle tighter about him as they approached. Focusing, he looked off into the trees on his side of the stream.

As if on cue, the Orcs looked too. They shouted and jostled and pointed. A flicker of light — starlight, fey-light — flashed again and vanished amid the trees. With cries and howls, a full quarter of them went dashing off into the trees.

One, however, did not. An Orc chieftain, larger than the others, snuffed the air once and turned bright red eyes on Finrod.

At once, his head exploded with pain, black wings battering around inside his skull. And a Presence, a roaring dark wind that twisted at something inside him. He staggered, half-falling, aware that his shadow-mantle had fallen to rags about him. He tore his palms on sharp river stones.

The black chieftain roared, and they were on him.

He barely snatched up his sword before the first blow clanged against his cross guard, sending shockwaves up his shoulders. His hearing dimmed, and his vision centered, focused, his periphery alive. Faces, hands, legs, arms, necks. He hewed at them until his sleeves sagged, heavy and wet, and his blade smoked with black ichor, channels searing down the blue steel. His hands slipping in their leather gauntlets. The stink of blood and animal sweat, adding to the cottony taste of adrenaline singing through his veins.

But he was tiring, and they kept coming.

He slipped in the slick of blood and lost his footing and went down into the shallows of the stream. Before he could rise, an iron boot thumped into chest. All breath heaved from his lungs, and icy water drenched his gorget. His blade rang on the stones and was kicked out of reach.

The Orc chieftain’s notched and blackened blade hovered a hairsbreadth from his chest. He gazed up the jagged blade and breathed once. In. Out. He would not look away. If he must seek penitence at Mandos’ hands soon, he, at least, would not look away.

Lips drawn back in a feral snarl, red tongue lolling, the Orc hefted the blade in both hand and plunged down.

The black blade notched on the stones. The Orc stiffened, breath hitching as on a laugh then he dropped to his knees and fell in the stream. Something dark fluttering at the edges of its corpse and vanishing into the night.

Bëor stood above him, sword blade streaked with black ichor, eyes alight with a fell fire. He was wearing an elven cloak with the hood thrown back.

Finrod could only gape as the peal of a horn richocheted off the flanks of the Pass and Maedhros’ cavalry charged into the fray.

Finrod pulled his bloodstained cuirass over his head, the gambeson catching where a few of the links had pierced it, and let both fall in a pile of clinking rings. His under tunic clung to him, ripe with sweat and the grime of the battlefield. What he wouldn’t do for a good wash. Something hot to take the ache from his bones.

They had won. For now. But it was a taste of things to come. Of that much, Maedhros had been right.

He sank onto his pallet and tossed an arm across his eyes, his mind empty of anything but the desire for sleep. He was coasting on the edge when a shadow fell across the mouth of the tent.

“In or out,” he called, kneading his brow.

Edrahil ducked under the flap though he stepped no farther than the threshold. He was filthy as Finrod, but he still stood firm, steady as ever he had been.

Finrod remained where he was, unable to summon the energy to sit up or move. “Edrahil. Glad I am to see you on your legs.”

“And you, my lord.” He said nothing more.

“If you like, you can take root there. Though I would think after chasing the enemy’s tail halfway back to Angband, you would—”

“I was too far.”

“What?” He lowered his arm, the better to see his captain whose face wore an implacable expression.

“I was too far away. I swore I would stay by your side, and I could not. You might have died, and I was not near enough to save you. That is the cold truth of it.”

Finrod hauled himself to half-sitting though his body protested the movement.

“Yet I did not. There is no blame here, Edrahil.”

“You are wrong, my lord.” He stood very straight, a soldier steeling himself against some final blow. The words came soft, slowly, almost wrenched. “I was wrong. He came for you.”

Finrod opened his mouth to interrupt, but Edrahil held up a hand. “I feared…he would prey upon your good heart. That he sought only his own glory, the safety of his own people but…he had wrought a change in you. He brought you back to life.”

“I would have fallen today if not for him.”

“That’s not what I mean. Though it is true.” The rigidity bled out of Edrahil’s shoulders, and he slumped onto the bunk beside Finrod, their shoulders brushing. “I am glad, Ingoldo. Truly. That you love someone. You just could not love me.”

Finrod dropped his gaze to his knees. “I am sorry, Edrahil.”

“You know I shall follow your banner whithersoever you lead. Though to my own folly, perhaps.”

Finrod took that beloved face between his hands and pressed a fraternal kiss beneath that dark hairline. “They call me Wise. But I will never understand the greatness of such a heart as you possess, sadron. That you remain by my side despite my many follies.”

“Many, many follies,” he agreed and disentangled himself, but gently. “You are a good man, Ingoldo. And a worthy one. If this is but a taste of the enemy’s wroth to come, best not to squander what precious peace remains to us.”

A single lamp burned within the tent on the edge of the army’s encampment, its flame unwavering enough that the silhouette within was cast in full-fledged relief against the canvas.

A figure was seated within, chin bowed almost to his chest, utter weariness evinced in the bowed shoulders, the hands resting listless on his knees. He still wore hauberk and boots, fouled with the battlefield, though the laces of the latter, at least, had been picked loose.

Finrod hesitated with his fingers against the flap. As clearly as one of his visions, he could see a road unfurling before him, forking. One path led straight on, its stones neat and laced together, neither branch nor tree to overshadow it. The other was overgrown, patches of it hidden behind brakes and brambles. Its destination, unknown. The tug of both warred in his heart. Whichever one he pursued, he could not turn back after.

His feet made the decision for him before even his mind had made itself up. He cast back the canvas flap and ducked inside.

Bëor’s head snapped up at once, his expression flirting somewhere between contrition and defiance. Neither sat easily on his face, and both were overshadowed by an exhaustion of body and spirit that made Finrod ache in sympathy.

He did not speak. This was not a night for revelations or avowals, and words were uneasy things: too easily misinterpreted or misspoken.

Actions would have to serve.

He knelt on the beaten grass at Bëor’s knee and eased first one foot then the other free of its confining leather. The hauberk next, Bëor struggling with unwieldy limbs to unthread himself. It tumbled beside the cot in a heap of rings.

Slowly, Finrod worked the tips of his fingers under the hem and peeled him out of the sweat-stained linen. There was a bowl and a pitcher of water lying beside the lantern, and Finrod made good use of both, wetting a rag and wiping the color of blood and bruise from the bronze skin, his fingers skating over flesh, feeling where it hurt and drawing it out.

Bëor took a deep breath, his ribs expanding under Finrod’s touch, and that breath did not hitch with pain.

Finished, Finrod carded his fingers through the dark hair, tipped up the reluctant chin until Bëor’s gaze met his. Those grey eyes snared him more surely than a candle flame, their brightness unbearable.

I am the moth, he realized — drawn inexorably toward the brilliance and warmth of the fire. For what else was there, but this? Cold, insistent examination, which would leave him forever on the periphery of things, witnessing, but never really seeing, never touching or tasting or feeling. Too long had he held himself aloof, in ice encased. And in the warmth of Bëor’s steady gaze, something deep within him eased its frozen grip and let go, a new thing, verdant and lush, pushing up through brittle soil.

He buried his hands in that dark mane to hide their tremors, drew Bëor to his feet and into his embrace. Bëor’s lips against his were dry and warm though the press of teeth, the swipe of a tongue sparked an answering conflagration in Finrod’s belly. In that moment he stood a heartbeat’s distance from his imminent destruction and his greatest. Even if it consumed him utterly, it would be a sweet ash.

When they drew apart at last, he stroked the bristled jaw with his fingers, Bëor’s breath damp and rapid against his cheek, their faces scant inches apart.

Finrod bent down and snuffed the candle behind its glass, wreathing them in the ghost of wax and smoke.