Be All My Sins Remembered by Marchwriter

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Chapter 1: Sunlight and Shadow

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.

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