Fountain, Flower, Sword by Kenaz

"I, too, loved Ecthelion, you see. But he broke with me. He had found another that he held more dear. A runtish lad of unexceptional birth who I, myself, taught to hold a sword." He laughed bitterly. "You can imagine how galling it was for the Lord of the House of the Flower to be defeated by a mere and untitled stripling he himself had trained up!

-From Marchwarden: Hidden Hero

“I must rest.”

 “Not yet. Here, let me help you.” Her body is dead weight in his hands.

 “Please, let me rest.”

 “Soon.” He tries again to steady her on her feet. “Now you must walk.”

 He calls out to his father, only a few strides ahead of him but barely visible in the brume. The wind rises and swallows his words. A shout behind him demands that he either go on or move out of the way. He steps aside; she will not walk and he cannot leave her.

 “They’ve lit a fire!” Her voice, breathless and childlike, is not her own. Its timbre chills him as deeply as the cold.

 “There is no fire here, Mother. The snow is playing tricks on your eyes.”

 But she does not --  cannot--heed him. “I will just stay for a moment.” Her eyes, glassy and over-bright, fix on something only she can see. “It is warm here.”

 “There is no fire, Mother. Please, you must walk. Get up.” His patience, like his strength, is waning. How far ahead has Turgon gone, he wonders, and his father? Where is Glorfindel? Glorfindel was always right behind him. Someone pushes past him and does not stop.

 She goes limp in his arms—like a stubborn child, he thinks—refusing to stand. His anger overwhelms him and he releases her, his arms now trembling from their burden. She collapses in a pile on the snow.

 “I think I shall stay.” A fey light plays across her face and is gone. Snowflakes settle on her lashes and in the corners of her eyes. She does not blink them away.

 “Leave her.” It is his father. His father, grey-faced with strain and grief. “She is already lost to us.”

 He howls: “No!”

 The wind bites at his lips, whips away his words.

 His father kneels, pulls the glove from her hand. Her fingers—those fine, slim things that had danced so gaily over flute and harp— are black to the knuckle. He cannot bear to look, and so turns away, watches the endless stream of hunched forms lurching forward from darkness, into darkness. When he looks back, the gold band has disappeared from his mother’s ruined finger, secreted away somewhere in his father’s coat. He has wound her cloak tight around her like swaddling. Like a winding cloth. He sees rather than hears the words his father whispers to her before he rises, the movement of his lips, the vapor of his breath unwinding from his mouth.

“Come,” his father compels him, turning his back on his wife. After a few paces, he throws back his head and keens to the starless sky. Grief rends the last bit of music from his father’s soul.

 He would vomit if his stomach had not been so long empty.

Time passes.

He mindlessly follows the steady rhythm of snow crunching beneath boots.  Sometimes sleep beckons, and he fights it as he has never fought anything before. Do not fall behind, he chides himself. Do you think Father will carry you if he could not carry Mother?

Taunting winds rise from the unseen quarters, thrashing ice across his face, blinding him. He hunkers down, waits for it to pass, but when he stands again, he can no longer see his father, nor their path.  He calls out in terror.

"Here!” His father’s voice— but what direction?

It comes again: “Here! I am holding out my hand!”

His arms swim through empty air. A tentative step. He flails once more and—

“There, yes! Step closer now.”

“I cannot see the way—”

“—If we fall behind, we will be lost.” 

Another step. His gloved hand finds his father’s, holds tight. He is a man grown, yet now  to clasp his father’s hand, to be led like a child, is a comfort, perhaps the only comfort left to him. They move together, bracing against the wind.

The ice groans, shifts beneath his feet. His father’s grip loosens; he closes his own more tightly. For a moment, the entire world is balanced on the head of a pin, waiting for the slightest stirring to upend it.

 “Stay where you are. Do not move.” 

The silence now is leaden, impenetrable. There is nothing but him, his father, and the ice.

“Drop my hand.”

“Father, no!”

 “You must. Now, Ehtelë. Let go.”

 His father’s voice holds no anguish. Its calmness is as uncanny as the silence that engulfs them.

 He lets go.

 They hold in perfect stillness, waiting, watching. Time unfurls around them like an endless white ribbon.

 Still he quakes when the rumble of thunder rises up around him, quails when the barrage of a sudden storm obliterates the preternatural lull. He looks up, but the sky holds only darkness and unfathomable mystery.  He looks down and—

His father does not scream, only gasps in surprise as the ice gives way beneath his feet and he vanishes  into the black abyss below.

No...no...no... 

Strong arms wrap around his body from behind and reel him back, drag him away from the chasm opening before him.

No...no...no...

His heart flies into his throat, and he feels the ice crack—

Ecthelion’s body pitched forward as he came awake, dizzy and disoriented, his ragged breath rending the night’s silence. It took a moment to regain his wits. He cursed aloud and hastily lit the bedside lamp. When the flare of light failed to entirely dispel the horror of the dream, he threw back his sheets and rose from the bed to shake off its remnants.

The fire in the grate had guttered out. His breath lingered in the air and the sweat of fitful sleep chilled on his skin.  He padded barefoot across the cold slate floor and into the withdrawing room, where the glow from his lamp glinted off wine bottles and off the silver-worked goblets abandoned on a table. One of the leadlight windows creaked on its hinges, ushering in the night air as it swung to and fro. He went to close it, repressing the urge to swing it hard enough to shatter the panes. Pausing with one hand on the window, one hand on the casement, he let the wind buffet against him, catching his nightshirt like a sail. Either the chill would clear his mind, he thought, or it would drive him back to the warmth of his bed and force him to attempt sleep once more. Below him, the bright disc of the moon rippled and swayed in the broad pool of the fountain that gurgled and spouted in defiance of the cold.  An unusual occurrence, that: a full moon at midwinter. He should have marked it; perhaps its strange tides influenced men’s minds in the night.  

The cold, the creaking hinge, the moon, the wine: little wonder the night had gone as it had. The lords of Gondolin had marked the longest night of the year with a solemn feast in Turgon’s great hall. Later, he had marked the turn of the wheel with his boon companion and overindulgence in drink. Glorfindel had offered to stay afterward, but then, didn’t he always? Perhaps I should have let him, he thought. Glorfindel, after all, was no stranger to his maudlin turns. But it would have been unkind to extend an invitation that promised much but yielded little, and he had taxed his friend’s patience on that front more than was meet.

He poured the dregs of Glorfindel’s goblet into his own and returned to the window.  The world was empty and still. Snow blanketed the vale and turned the peaks of the Crissaegrim to forbidding teeth of ice. The great courts of the city had been swept clear, but a crust of fine, white powder built up around window ledges and on the leeward sides of the balusters and capped the marble statues of the Valar in the Gar Ainion.

The appearance of a figure approaching the fountain drew his attention.  The figure—a man, he saw, and a stranger to him—paused at the basin of the fountain, and Ecthelion wondered irritably what unearthly hour it was that these fools were still about.

Unlike the Noldor with their protracted feasts and conspicuous dignity, the Sindar who had followed Turgon out of Nevrast marked the quarters and cross-quarters of the year in their own fashion, with customs the Noldor on on the whole found primitive.  For instance, they took to the sea on the longest, coldest night of the year. His first season in Vinyamar he had watched dumbfounded as hundreds of young men shirked their clothing, made a reckless dash down the steep escarpments tracing the coastline, and ran into the water in naught but their skins, invoking the name of Ossë like a battle cry and singing all the while. The young women, at least, had shown better sense, choosing to thumb their noses at winter huddled tight together around small holly-fires, watching the spectacle below them with undisguised mirth. Though their exodus to Gondolin had taken them far from the sea, the Sindar still pursued their frigid revels, though now they perforce ventured beyond the walls of the city to dunk themselves in the mountain-fed springs and brooks of the vale.  

Save, of course, for a handful of bolder lads— young men just on the cusp of maturity with all the brashness and untried mettle of the newly-grown— made their seasonal ablutions not in the streams of the Tumladen, but in the fountains of the city. The better, Ecthelion assumed, to shock their elders and display their bravado.  Though certain of a man’s assets, Ecthelion considered scornfully, were hardly best displayed in cold water. Turgon, far from being shocked, found the demonstration “in goodly spirit,” a sentiment Ecthelion did not share, if only because he was at least nominally responsible for the care of the fountains and the safety of the fools who abused them.

So a late-coming idiot, then. Though the young, he supposed, found it never too late for idiocy. It was what made them young. The trespasser stopped almost directly below his window and began to disrobe. He did it thoughtfully, folding each article and setting it above him on the fountain’s retaining wall. The usual practice had been throw one’s garb aside haphazardly as one rushed to the fountain and boosted a comrade over the walls, shoveling up shirts and tunics and trousers in indiscriminate handfuls after their romp. But not this one. That alone caught Ecthelion’s attention, but the body revealed held it: pale in the moonlight, lissome with fresh maturity, crowned with a tumble of dark hair left unbound.  

Once atop the wall, the young man cringed against the kiss of cold air on his skin and chaffed his arms. Framed in the window, Ecthelion’s flesh prickled in sympathy, and he braced for the inevitable splashing and shouting. The young man, however, stood silent and tall, raising his arms to the sky as if he would embrace it, and something in Ecthelion’s heart turned at the sight. He affixed the image in his mind, this solitary youth honoring the night, offering himself to the water and to the moon.  

The boy dove head-first into the basin with such facility that he made barely a sound or a splash.  Ecthelion, however, whispered an imprecation: the water in the pool was barely a fathom deep. Far too easy to imagine a neck snapped, a skull battering against the fountain’s stone floor. Not that the potential for injury stopped any of the others; but then, the others didn’t make their assault on the fountains in the middle of the night, alone. He waited, but he could not see the boy’s body in the water for the darkness.  What could possibly have possessed him to take such a ridiculous risk? Ecthelion’s heart raced, and not for the first time that night, he felt pinpricks of fear on the back of his neck.  A bead of sweat traced a swift path down his ribs. He leaned out the window, staring down into the pool, willing the water to reveal something, anything.  The fountain burbled merrily on as if it had taken no notice of the boy’s presence at all.

Fool! How quickly could he reach the stairs and cross the square to the fountain? Should he call for help? He had opened his mouth to shout an alarm when the pale form of the stranger broke the surface. Echthelion heard the rush of his own breath even as the youth in the fountain exhaled.

He watched with a mixture of relief and consternation as the young man pushed himself back onto the wall. Emerging from the water, Ecthelion beheld now a true child of Ossë, water glinting like diamonds on his skin, kelp-like hair clinging to his neck, his breast, his back. He faced the fountain’s center and bowed low, something Ecthelion had not seen done before, and scuttled back down to the square to dress. Even from his vantage, Ecthelion could see the goosebumps on his skin, the muscles contracting to stave off shivers. Ossë’s child he may have been, but not impervious to winter’s chill. All the same, he drew on his clothes with the same care with which he had disrobed, as if this were no foolish caper to him, but an act of reverence, to be undertaken with sobriety.

Ecthelion never did discern what caused the stranger look up at just that moment, but his eyes locked on Ecthelion as if some impalpable force had impelled them. Ecthelion was too flustered to even step back from the window.  Righteous indignation blossomed, and he remained where he stood as much for his own ridiculous stubbornness as for anything else, daring the man to demure.

But the stranger did not demure. Far from appearing startled or ashamed that he had been caught out, he held Ecthelion’s gaze boldly, and then he smiled. Simply smiled. And it was that which drove Ecthelion at last away from the the window, from the draught, from the vision in the night. He closed the window tightly behind him, swiftly drew the curtains, swallowed back the dregs of the wine, and beat a precipitate retreat.

“You’re late.”

Glorfindel levied his statement without judgment, without any insinuation beyond a brow arched in curiosity. He himself had been none the worse for wear when they had parted ways for the evening, so he could only wonder at Ecthelion’s arrival at the training grounds, tardy, red-eyed, and drawn. He tucked away the letter he had been holding to offer a hand in greeting, but Ecthelion didn’t take it. He installed himself at Glorfindel’s shoulder, arms akimbo, and appraised the field.

“What have I missed?”

Glorfindel recognized the throaty burr that accompanied a lack of sleep. “Little as yet,” he replied.

Neither cold nor snow stayed the army from their practices.  With each passing year, the hour of reckoning grew nearer and more inevitable. Thus, Gondolin’s archers bent their bows, her axemen and swordsmen sparred, and her spearmen assailed their targets from afar. Other companies drilled in formation, or simply worked at tasks of strength and endurance to keep mind and body keen. Most bore memories of the Helcaraxë, and scars of their encounters with Morgoth’s hordes at Lammoth under the first rising of the moon. Others had been born to the lands harried by dark creatures for centuries before the Noldor had returned: Sindar from Nevrast and Dor-lómin sworn to Turgon, who had come out of Valinor with wealth and weapons far greater than their own. Another generation of warriors, Noldor and Sindar alike, had been born to the blade on the Hither Shores, seasoning their hands at the Dagor Aglareb, or in countless smaller skirmishes. Evil did not rest; nor did they.

“Rôg’s men are at the smithy,” Glorfindel said, ticking off a list on his fingers. “The archers have all left for the lists, save for some Egalmoth held in reserve to assist the bowyers and fletchers. Laiqalassë and his men are ranging in the vale; he holds we lay too much stake in the inviolability of the gates and ought place more men in the foothills and the plains.”

“He is right.”

“Salgant declined to put in an appearance because,” he shrugged, “well, he’s Salgant.”

“And he’s an ass,” Ecthelion muttered under his breath.

“Yes,” Glorfindel agreed, “he’s that as well. Why he even feigns an interest in martial affairs is beyond me.”

“Oh, because he wants to write songs about them,” Ecthelion grumbled. “He wants to pen heroic anthems to make lads tremble and ladies swoon. Well, that, and he found that his odes lacked verisimilitude when he couldn’t tell the blade of a sword from its butt.”

Glorfindel laughed, but he well knew that the matter was no mere jape, not to Ecthelion, and thus, not to him. Ecthelion, after all, had been born in Tirion to the House of the Silver Flute, not the House of the Fountain, and his reluctant sword-arm had been forged out of necessity and despair. The House of the Fountain had risen in Gondolin, built on a foundation of vengeance, and the calling of a charge was now his song. Glorfindel missed the clarion sweetness of Ecthelion’s singing voice, but Ecthelion no longer sang for him, not as he had in Valinor, and so he no longer asked.

Remembering the letter he carried, Glorfindel pushed his mawkish thoughts aside. “I’ve another bit of news, should you like to hear it.” He thought of his encounter with the eager young lad and allowed the ghost of a smirk to curl up one side of his mouth. “When I arrived this morning, someone was searching for you. He had a message to deliver, and was quite insistent that it be presented to you directly.” He held it up for Ecthelion to see, displaying the unremarkable paper and the broken wax seal bearing no device. “I told him he would have to wait. The impudent pup told me that, in that case, I could give it to you.” He feigned umbrage, and gave Ecthelion his most put-upon expression. “As if I’d nothing better to do than play messenger boy for you.”

“Clearly you hadn’t anything better to do,” came Ecthelion’s riposte. “And, of course, you opened it.”

Glorfindel shrugged.  “If he was so concerned about privacy, he should have waited for you.”

Ecthelion returned a wry glance. “And if it had contained sensitive information?”

“What, a love letter?” Glorfindel snorted. “Everyone knows the heart of Ecthelion is as cold as ice. Only the quest for retribution heats his blood.”  The words were delivered in jest, but he knew as soon as he heard them ringing from his mouth that he had failed to disguise the old bitterness that colored them.

Ecthelion did not gainsay the assessment.  He reached for the letter, but Glorfindel snatched back his hand, cleared his throat, and shook it open in a decisive gesture.

“My lord Ecthelion: I present myself to you in the hopes that I may serve you in your defense of Gondolin.”

Ecthelion groaned. “Tyros and hero-worship!”

“I am not of noble birth. I will bring little to your coffers.”

“Well, now my curiosity is piqued,” he snorted. “Do go on.”

“Yet though I lack means, I believe I possess qualities that will bring honor to your House.”

“They always believe that,” Ecthelion sighed, looking out  toward the patchy grass where a number of young men were loitering, waiting for instruction or dismissal.

Many youths of the city’s great houses grew bored with their lives of leisure or wished to win a portion of glory for themselves. But these were summer’s sons for whom Morgoth and his din-horde lived only in stories and songs. Easy enough to shake an empty fist at the sky and curse ill-done deeds behind the safety of seven gates in a valley hidden from care. But men’s spirits were tested and tempered in times of war, not in times of peace, and a captain might not know until it was too late that a man was irresolute, and such revelations came at great cost. Fortunately, many would-be heroes rescinded their pursuits once visions of glory gave way to the aching muscles and broken bones of hard training. The young man who thrilled to gallop across the Tumladen with a spear aloft, shouting ‘Gurth an Glamhoth!’ might find the practice of riding boot-to-boot at a sitting a trot at the crack of dawn with winter winds buffeting their faces more tedious than heroic. In the main, these men returned to their crafts or their studies, having wasted only their captains’ time and a their fathers’ money.  Each year, the cycle began anew.

“Bad enough we’re putting blades in the hands of boys,” Ecthelion said with quiet dismay, “but that they run to their fates so eagerly...”

“Well, should you care to know, I’ve sized up your tyro and he’s not a bad prospect. Withy as a green tree, perhaps a bit underfed, but broad of shoulder for one built so slight. Agile enough. I would wager he hasn’t yet reached his full stature. Perhaps you should see him before you dismiss him out of hand.”  He nodded toward a cluster of young men grappling enthusiastically on sodden turf gone nearly bald from their raucous play, a disorderly lot fuelled by a surplus of undirected energy. ”He’s over there now, hoping to catch your eye. “Elemmakil,” he called.

The scrum of puppies broke and one of the lads disentangled himself from his fellows and trotted eagerly toward them, his exertion revealed in the steam that rose from his plain but well-made jerkin. The knees of his breeches were damp and stained with mud and grass. He nodded briskly to Glorfindel as he approached, but to Ecthelion, he bowed deep.

“My lord, thank you for allowing me to impose upon you this morning.”

His smile was utterly guileless; his face beamed with the confidence of the untried, for whom all things yet seemed possible. Glorfindel knew that look, had seen it directed at himself on occasion from young men who thought to impress—or to woo. The wide eyes and flushed face suggested the latter, and Glorfindel might have felt a pang of jealousy had Elemmakil not been so terribly callow.

“Thank Lord Glorfindel,” Ecthelion said sharply. Too sharply. “He has allowed you to impose upon me this morning.” The sleepless pallor of his face had blanched even further, and his eyes were fixed and unblinking. Elemmakil cast a glance at Glorfindel, perhaps wondering if he were being mocked, and Glorfindel, now completely confounded, wondered just what fresh hell he had just called down upon the morning.

“Your note says you wish to serve me, in defense of the realm.” The words fell like a volley of shots.

The boy’s shoulders lifted in an incipient shrug, which he seemed suddenly to reconsider in light of Ecthelion’s piercing stare. He lifted his chin and looked straight ahead, as if he were already standing at attention for his captain.  “I do, my lord.”

“Your name is not known to me. Who is your father?”

“He is a stonemason, my lord.”

“Yet you do not wish to follow his path.”

“No, my lord.”

“Why? Because you lack the skill? Or perhaps the patience? Do you imagine you will make a better name or fortune for yourself by serving a lord rather than doing honest labor?”

Glorfindel felt the sting of Ecthelion’s words and their curt delivery as acutely as if a slap had been delivered to his own face. He wondered at his friend’s ill temper, for it was unlike him to be cruel.

For his part, young Elemmakil held his ground, though the shine had come off his smile. “A mason’s work is good and honest, but it is not the life for me. I wish to take up arms, and to serve my kingdom. And no, my lord, since you have asked, I do not think I possess the innate skill to match my father’s work. He says it is no shame for a man to own his shortcomings.”

“Why not apply directly to the king, then, if you are so highly motivated and so eager to climb above your station?”

The boy failed to rise to the provocation. “The House of the Fountain is a great and noble house, and by serving its lord, I will be serving my king.”

Either he is exceptionally resilient, Glorfindel thought, or exceptionally foolish.

“Ossë is revered among my people,” Elemmakil continued, “as the master of the fountains, you also do him honor.”

Oh, well played! Glorfindel smiled into his fist. If nothing else, the boy had spirit.

"A mason's son would be more suited to the House of the Hammer of Wrath." Ecthelion had crossed his arms across his chest, more flustered than truculent. “Have you ever even held a sword before? Or anything sharper than a sledge, for that matter?”

“No, my lord, but I learn quickly, and I—"

“Elemmakil, was it?  Excuse us for a moment.”

He took Glorfindel by the elbow and drew him aside. “No. Absolutely not. I will not have him.”

“I hardly understand what the poor boy’s done to raise your ire. So he’s bold; you can hardly claim he’s entirely unsuitable for what he proposes.”

“He’s a child. I will not truck in the destruction of children.”

Glorfindel threw back his head in exasperation. “We’ve had squires younger than he by far!”

“Those are practically ceremonial positions!” Ecthelion shot back. “We are beset by the young sons of upstarts who wish to improve their own standing. We dress them up in livery, teach them how to oil a blade, then send them running about to carry our messages or fetch our horses. It’s not as if we’d take them onto the field of battle with us.”

Glorfindel glanced over his shoulder where Elemmakil watched them steadily, fingers restively flexing and curling at his sides.  “Dismiss him now for his youth, he’ll only come return next year with greater determination,” he warned, “and he’ll be another year further behind in his training. You and I took up sword when we were not much older.”

“And look of what came of that!” Ecthelion bit out the words with a venom barely repressed.Ah, Glorfindel thought. There it is. He reached out and laid a steadying hand on Ecthelion’s arm. He could feel the heat and strength of the man’s bicep even through thick layers of leather and wool. The nameless ache he ceaselessly nursed rose up within him, and his touch lingered longer than perhaps it should have. “We cannot go back, Ecthelion. We can only go forward.”

Ecthelion closed his eyes and, after a moment, sighed. “Yes, fine. But we can go forward without him.”

“If that is your will. I maintain that your concerns are unwarranted.” Feeling Ecthelion begin to pull away, he gave his arm a final squeeze and grinned. “When you find yourself short a swordsman and the city has begun sprouting leaning towers, I will know where to lay the blame.”

They returned to where Elemmakil stood, looking very much like a convicted man awaiting his sentence. Ecthelion was kind enough at least to deliver it quickly and cleanly.

“I have taken your interest under advisement, but I must decline. I must direct my attentions toward the skilled men already in my service; I cannot take on a youth without experience.”

Glorfindel had to credit the boy, his expression barely changed; but though his face remained resolute, he saw gutting disappointment in the barely perceptible sag of his shoulders, the slight deflation of his chest as he released his breath, the brief flicker of his eyes toward the ground.  

“Go back to your father’s house, Elemmakil.” Ecthelion’s voice was gentler now. “Learn his trade. If you truly hold me in esteem, you will consider my judgment: a mason’s life may not be an adventurous one, but it is a long one. Take it.”

Slowly, Elemmakil nodded. “Thank you, my lord, for your consideration.  It would have been a great honor to serve you.”  He bowed once more, then turned, squaring his shoulders as if by his carriage alone he could withdraw with pride intact.

“Elemmakil, wait.” Glorfindel couldn’t help himself; he was touched by the young man’s dignity. “Ecthelion speaks truly: you have little to recommend you, save sheer strength of will. Yet I will take you on in my service for one year.”  He turned to Ecthelion, whose face had gone stark white. “I will train him. If I deem him worthy, I will allow him to petition you again in a year’s time.  If you think he still does not suit, I will find a place for him in some capacity in my own House.”  He turned back to Elemmakil. “I make no promises; you must prove your worth, nor will you importune the Lord of the Fountains, nor seek his judgment without my endorsement. And I will not go easy on you.”

Elemmakil’s eyes widened, and for a moment he seemed lost for words. “I know I am not as highly bred as some of your men, Lord Glorfindel, but I learn quickly and I never tire.”

Glorfindel cocked an eyebrow. “Never tire? Bold words. That sounds distinctly like a challenge. As it happens, I am fond of challenges.”

The boy made no attempt to repress his grin then, and it flared across his face with all the brightness of a summer’s sun. “Thank you, my lord.”

Yet though he addressed Glorfindel, it was Echtelion’s gaze he sought, grey eyes twinkling with delight. “I will not disappoint you.”  Glorfindel knew for whom the words had been meant.

Having received his instructions, Elemmakil sprang off like a deer. Glorfindel watched his departure with a sense of goodwill, and a feeling of certainty that his instincts had not misled him in his actions.  So it came as a sobering shock when he noticed Ecthelion looking at him, utterly grim of face, his glaze cold and sharp as the peaks of the Crissaegrim.

And if Glorfindel found his expression distressing, his words were doubly so.

“Damn you, Glorfindel. Damn you.”

The days lengthened. The Gates of Summer had not yet opened, but the Tumladen had already gone vividly green, and the snow had vanished from all but the highest and stoniest peaks of the Echoriath. Now a keen eye could observe the first fruits ripening in the vale. The sun had begun its leisurely descent, burnishing the white stones of the city and set them afire in brilliant tones.

After Glorfindel had dismissed him for the day, Elemmakil chose a roundabout path to the gates of the city following the southeastern walls and passing behind the Lesser Market. Had he taken the direct route, he would have reached the gates earlier, but he would not have had reason to cross the Way of Running Waters, and thus, he would have had no opportunity to see the Lord of the Fountains, whose home was nearby.

He took stock of the aches in his body with satisfaction. Lord Glorfindel had proven a stern taskmaster with great expectations of his charge, but Elemmakil felt that he had put in a good showing. On his first day of training, he had been thoroughly dismayed to find that he had been placed with boys—children, truly—who had been sent up by their wealthy fathers to serve as squires. They’d had swords already, heirlooms of their houses, which some of them could only hold for a few moments at a time before their arms trembled like reeds. They clearly could not tell what to make of Elemmakil, but forbore to mock him due to his size. Most of them believed that they would be master swordsmen by the end of their very first day, simply by dint of possessing an excellent sword, and all had been more than a little brought down when their weapons had been confiscated by the master-at-arms and replaced with wooden wasters.

Though it had rankled his pride to be set aside with the children, Elemmakil had applied himself fully, and had doggedly practiced the various stances and strikes. When, after a month’s time, they began sparring, he was by necessity paired with the master-at-arms. Shortly thereafter, he had been sent to Glorfindel himself, who acknowledged that he had been testing Elemmakil’s resolve. Having found Elemmakil’s pride not so overweening that he cavilled to stand with boys half his age, Glorfindel was now willing to oversee him personally until he had skill enough to join the other men. Then, the challenge had begun in earnest, and Elemmakil ended each day exhausted and battered, but proud. His shoulders strained the seams of his shirts and jerkins now, and his limbs had taken on the breadth and girth of a man’s.

The shifting light threw long shadows, and so intent was he in marking the fall of their dark, elongated shapes across the paving stones that he nearly missed the sight he had been most hopeful of seeing: Ecthelion of the Fountain, crossing the wide court and heading toward the King’s Square. He doubled his pace, hoping to catch up to him without doing anything as ridiculous as breaking into a run. The slap of his footfalls in an otherwise quiet corner of the city drew Ecthelion’s attention and he turned. The late sun gave a warm cast to the man’s skin and made his eyes gleam. Silver and adamant sparkled in his carefully plaited hair. He was stunning.

“Well met, my lord.” Had he sounded too breathless? Had Ecthelion noticed that he had been all but galloping in his direction?

“Elemmakil.” Ecthelion’s head dipped in greeting. “You are far from home, and far from the pells.”

“I was venturing down to the terraces below the walls to pick berries before it got dark.”

Ecthelion gave him a quizzical look and pointed in the direction of the Lesser Market. “They sell the same fruits as grow in the vale in the market you just passed.”

Elemmakil smiled. “Of course one can simply buy them, but that’s hardly an evening’s gambol. I want to pick them myself, and then climb up in a tree and watch the stars come out.”

Echthelion gave him a wry look. “So Glorfindel has not yet tamed your wildness.”

Thinking of the aches that assailed him from head to toe, of the bruised limbs, of the cramped muscles, Elemmakil grimaced. “It hasn’t been for lack of trying, my lord.”

Ecthelion’s laughter sounded like the song of water on stone. A rare gift, Elemmakil thought, and he wished to hear more of it. What can it hurt, he thought, just to ask? “Come with me, my lord. The night will be mild, and it is not so very far to go. The bushes will be picked bare soon enough.”

Ecthelion shook his head, but smiled as he did so. “Thank you, but I must be going.”

“Would you flee from me again, my lord? I, who have offered myself to your service?” He meant his words to tease, but in earnest he wished to know. Ecthelion had crossed his arms over his chest, but Elemmakil thought the pose looked defensive rather than annoyed, and so he persisted. “What could you possibly have to fear from me?” Feeling suddenly bold, he added, “or perhaps the Noldor do not know how to climb trees?”

Ecthelion’s eyes narrowed even as he smiled his dazzling smile. “I believe Glorfindel instructed you not to importune me.”

“But I am not!” Elemmakil exclaimed, stepping back, only to catch a spark of mirth in Ecthelion’s grey eyes. “At least,” he qualified, “not in any official capacity. I am not come to ask you to see my progress.” He slipped into a ready stance. “Though if you asked me to demonstrate what I’ve learned, I would be pleased to show you.”

“Oh, I’m sure you would.”

The Lord of the Fountain, who always presented a grave and stately public face, seemed very nearly playful this evening, and it was a joy to be witness to that. Elemmakil himself felt his own joys and sorrows so keenly that he could not imagine keeping it hidden. “You have watched me before, my lord, and I think you enjoyed it then.”

“You were hardly subtle,” Ecthelion chuckled. “When a man stands naked on a fountain beneath an open window, I daresay he only does so in the hopes that someone, somewhere, is watching him.”

A rush of blood filled his cheeks, but he could not stay his smile even as he looked away.

“Don’t play the coy disciple with me, cheeky pup.” Ecthelion seemed almost to be letting down his guard. “If your actions had only been meant to honor Ossë, you would have carried them out with the rest of your fellows. Though I maintain there is very little that’s reverent about splashing around in the water in the dead of winter.”

Did Ecthelion truly think him irreverent? “We honor the Powers with light and life, my lord. We raise our voices to them in joy and our bodies in honor. Our rites may seem coarse to the Noldor—.”

“Peace, Elemmakil.” Ecthelion had raised a hand to forestall him. To Elemmakil’s surprise, the great lord seemed almost abashed. “I should not have spoken so: the Sindar are a valiant people, and I did not mean to suggest otherwise. I am simply accustomed to the staid ways of my own folk.”

“I will never understand the Noldor,” Elemmakil dared. “You are all such a dour lot. Why build beautiful towers and gardens and fountains if not to revel in their beauty?”

“We are in mourning for what we have lost.”

“You mourn for something that I have never known. I know only the mountains, the vale, the city—” he nodded toward the Way of Running Water,“—the fountains of Ecthelion.”

Ecthelion’s answering chuckle reached the core of Elemmakil’s giddy heart.

“Let it never be said that a mason’s son does not appreciate fountains!” He turned and began to walk, looking back after a few steps. Elemmakil followed. “I wish I could describe Tirion on Túna to you, but my words would be inadequate. Turgon has endeavored to build its likeness here, but the winds in Tirion never blew so cold as they blow in Gondolin, nor did Summer spend its force so quickly.” His face softened as he spoke, some inner light of memory rendering peace from its planes and angles. “The streets fair glittered with adamant sand, and great crystal stairs rose from the strand to the great gates of the city. And the sea, the ageless sea...” He laughed again, but this time, there was sorrow in it.

They had come to the colonnade. Trellised morning glory vines climbed skyward, their vivid blooms curled in sleep. Ecthelion sat down on one of the stone benches between the columns, and Elemmakil sat down beside him uninivited, but Ecthelion did not seem to mind. “When dark times arose, we were lead to believe Aman was but a cage to restrain us. We bridled at bonds we had only suddenly perceived, believed cunning lies dressed as truth. Yet having come so far, the only thing we can do to keep ourselves safe from Darkness is to build ourselves a cage in truth.”

“Do you truly think of Gondolin as a cage?” Elemmakil wondered at this pronouncement. "Our realm is beautiful, glorious! Please do not despair, my lord. Tell me more about Valinor. I am trying to see it in my mind.”

Ecthelion shook his head, then looked at him, appraising him with an earnestness that Elemmakil did not expect. He did his utmost not to falter under the scrutiny. When Ecthelion reached over and touched his face, turned it in his hand, Elemmakil’s heart beat so loudly he was certain its throb was audible to them both.

“You are so young,” Ecthelion said.

Elemmakil’s mouth went dry. “Ecthelion.”

Ecthelion seemed startled to hear his own name. Perhaps he was; Elemmakil had never addressed him as such aloud before, impertinent as it was, only tested it on his tongue a thousand times in the barest of whispers.

“I think”— Did he dare?— “I am about to importune you again.”

“You...what?”

Elemmakil leaned in and kissed him, thoroughly. Ecthelion’s body went stiff under his ambush, and Elemmakil felt the incredible strength constrained by fabric and flesh, the fire blazing fiercely behind his austere facade. And while he did not exactly warm to the assault, he didn’t push Elemmakil away, nor even withdraw his hand from Elemmakil’s face. He seemed to just patiently wait for it all to subside. When Elemmakil pulled back at last, Echthelion’s eyes remained closed, his lips slightly parted, and Elemmakil could see the flood of color in his cheeks, could hear the way he breathed more quickly and more shallowly.

The silence stretched on. Elemmakil sat rooted to the spot, waiting for the chastisement he was sure would follow. But what came instead was only a quiet question.

“Why did you do that?”

“Kiss you?” He stared at Ecthelion in puzzlement. “Ecthelion—my lord—that’s rather self-evident, is it not?”

Ecthelion’s eyes blinked open. “You should not have done.”

Elemmakil’s stomach clenched, and though he knew he should keep silent, words eddied up like water from a spring, and he could not contain them. “I know. And yet if I hadn’t, I would only have continued wondering what would have happen if I had. I know that my low birth renders me utterly unsuitable. And for all I know, you find a man’s advances repellent—”

Ecthelion’s hand moved away from his cheek, and he lay a single finger over Elemmakil’s lips to quiet him. “I do not judge you by your birth. But you are young yet, Elemmakil, and the world is not so kind as you think. We stand on the verge of war, and I am a man with a blight upon my soul.”

He looked so forlorn that it was all Elemmakil could do not to pull him near. “If are on the verge of war, all the more reason to cling to joy when and where we find it. For what do we fight, if not for all the things that are beautiful and good—laughter, and love, and kindness?”

Ecthelion exhaled and looked away. His plaited forelocks slipped over his shoulder, the silver embellishments jingling as they fell. Elemmakil wondered what his hair would look like unbraided and free, what it might feel like slipping between his fingers.

After a time, Ecthelion spoke. “You know of the flight of the Noldor from Aman.”

“Yes, of course.”

“Then you must know that not all of the host of Fingolfin was innocent of the deeds done at Alqualondë. It was neither spite nor malice that drove us, but confusion. We arrived to a pitched battle, and did not understand until later—until we had compounded our folly with murder— how grievously we had misunderstood what had happened. Ecthelion spoke quietly but clearly. “Tell me: what right do I have to these things, the beautiful and the good that you name, with blood on my hands?”

The weight of Ecthelion’s words fell upon them, and in the ensuing lull, Elemmakil let their gravity wash over him. He considered his response carefully, for what he said now might determine the course of so many things to come.

“I asked Lord Glorfindel once why you were so sober of bearing. He told me it was because you still grieved for your parents who perished crossing the Ice.”

Ecthelion nodded guardedly. “He spoke in truth, if not in full. It would not have been his place to say more.”

Elemmakil raised an appeasing hand. “I meant only this: if you have caused death, you have felt its sting as well. You, too, have suffered a great loss. I have only known you as a gallant man, and I will not judge you for deeds committed long ago, without hateful intent.”

Echthelion did not respond, but Elemmakil felt the rigidity of the man’s body subside a fraction, and they sat together in stillness for a long while as the sun fell and the shadows climbed.

“The night is coming, Elemmakil,” Ecthelion said after a time. “Even an untamed Sinda will fare poorly trying to pick fruit and climb trees in the dark.”

Elemmakil marked the gentle dismissal in his words, but after all that had passed in that hour, he could not feel disheartened. He rose and bowed low, and Ecthelion stood and resumed his course toward the King’s Square.

Just before he edged out of earshot, Elemmakil spoke his name once more. Ecthelion stopped and turned, waiting.

“Do you think...” Elemmakil paused, took in a breath for courage, and let loose one final salvo. “Do you think I might importune you again some night?”

Ecthelion did not answer him, but Elemmakil was nearly certain that even in the dusky light of eventide, he saw the man smile.

Ecthelion had nearly reached the King’s Square when he stopped and turned aside.  He had not intended to let Elemmakil waylay him for so long, and yet his presence had come as balm unlooked for. The boy roused something in him... well, something best left unexplored. The sun had set fully now. He would only draw unwanted attention to himself if he went so late to dinner.  Unfortunately, he had now thoroughly recovered his appetite, and would now have to make do with whatever he could muster in his own kitchen.

Returning home, he rooted through the pantry, thoroughly flustering his cook and housekeeper who had not been expecting him, and took a cold plate of cheese and sausages and a bottle of wine up to his withdrawing chamber, dismissing the housekeeper’s insistence that the cook should fix him a proper meal. He sat to his simple repast content for once with his food and with his thoughts.

A late knock at his door caught him off his guard, thought it shouldn’t have. Only one person had leave to come directly to his apartment without announcement, and he came almost nightly. A moment after the knock, Glorfindel’s golden head illuminated the doorway, his brow furrowed in familiar concern.

“Your absence at dinner was noted. Is aught amiss?”

Rising to greet him, Ecthelion shook his head. “No, I was unavoidably delayed, and did not feel like making a scene with a grand entrance. I will make my apologies tomorrow.”

“You will. Turgon was displeased.” Glorfindel joined him at his table, picked up his goblet, sniffed the contents, and took an investigative sip. “This one is sweeter than your usual choice.”

Ecthelion poured him a portion. “Why displeased? We have a standing invitation to his dinner, not a standing command.”

“He has had news. Maedhros is finally summoning the banners, as we long assumed he would. Turgon will send ten thousand men to stand with Fingon. You and I are to flank him.”

The pronouncement seemed to draw all the air from the room. “Damn,” Ecthelion hissed. Ten thousand men was no small part of their army.

“He would send more if he thought he could spare them. We will march on Anfauglith in a fortnight.”

Ecthelion sat bolt upright, his appetite vanishing in a trice. “So soon?”

“Turgon feels there is no time to waste, especially if we wish to reap the benefits of surprise. Our arrival will be unexpected, and with any luck, Morgoth’s host will be ill-prepared for our number.”

A frisson of unease coursed through his veins. “My heart is troubled at this.” Ecthelion admitted. “Turgon must realize that if we go forth, he cannot long hope to contain the secret of the city.”

“You think we should not go, then?”

“I know we must go, and moreover, I would we had joined Fingon sooner.  Perhaps Fingolfin would not lie under that cairn on the mountain had we ventured forth sooner. Turgon must possess wisdom which we do not to have held us in reserve until the last. But it is a simple matter of course that the arrival or departure of thousands of men will not go unmarked by our enemies.”

“True,” Glorfindel nodded. “Then it is well we have already begun training new men to increase the watch in the mountains and on the gates. Speaking of which, your would-be defender continues to impress me.”

“Elemmakil?” Ecthelion asked, almost dreading to speak of him. “So you have not come to regret taking him on.”

“Quite the contrary.” Glorfindel refilled their cups. “True to his word, he does not tire easily, and he takes nothing for granted. I admit I shall actually be saddened if he should apply to you again.”

Ecthelion shifted stiffly in his chair. “You assume I would take him.”

“Why wouldn’t you?” Glorfindel smiled broadly. “He is still rough around the edges, but fully trained, I think he will prove an asset. You play at indifference, but think: you may be turning your back on an excellent house-carle. Why are you so set against him?”

“I’m not.” Ecthelion now wished he had said nothing, but could not rightly evade the question. “I dislike sending green boys to their deaths. Nor do I think it right or proper for idolatry to stand as the basis of service.”  He rolled the stem of his goblet between his fingers, watched the wine spinning in the bowl. “He was so damnably eager. When I looked at him, all I could think was that I had never been that young.”

Glorfindel’s hand settled on his forearm. “But you were, Ehtelë. We all were.” His voice had gone wistful, and Echthelion could feel the weight of his gaze like a burden. “You were so very happy then, unencumbered by sorrow. You sang then.” His other hand rose to stroke Ecthelion’s hair. “I would hear you sing again.”

“Findë.” Ecthelion sighed, fixed his eyes on the table.

“I ask for nothing in return.”

“Oh, but you do,” Ecthelion countered. The argument was old but unassailable.

Glorfindel released him. “The heart loves as it will, Ehtelë; foolish or no, it simply does.  Would that I could turn mine to some more fruitful venture, for no-one is more weary than I of your bloodless refusals.”  He ran a hand roughly over his own face.  “You are as loath to hear the words as I am to say them, but my convictions bid me speak, and not hold myself to a coward’s silence:  I have loved you since we were young. Since the days when you played your flute and sang for me at the water’s edge in Tirion.”

The admission fell like a blow, though Ecthelion had known the truth of it long before. This was a wound he had been given the power to heal, and yet, he had not the will to do so. “This love of yours exacts a heavy toll, my friend.  For you are my friend, and as dear to me as my own blood. I feel I am the villain each time I turn you aside. I despise knowing that mine is the hand that deals you pain, and yet—”

His words were interrupted by the clatter of gravel on the window. The taut moment had been ended, but Ecthelion felt no relief from it. Rising from his seat at least gave him space to breathe without the suffocating weight of regret so near. He pulled aside the curtains and opened the leaded frame. His stomach lurched and twisted, and he nearly laughed in despair at Elemmakil’s unfathomably inopportune arrival. He stood below on the wall of the fountain, the very place where Ecthelion had first laid eyes upon him. The wind and his night’s adventures had teased out stray locks of hair from the queue which had earlier barely contained it. He was cradling a cache of strawberries in his shirt, and in his free hand he held one single, gloriously ripe berry, which he raised to Ecthelion like a tribute.  

Who’s there?” Glorfindel asked even as he crossed the room to look for himself.  Ecthelion felt the heat of his body behind him, heard the small intake of breath as he looked down and saw Elemmakil and the simple offering in his outstretched hand. “Ah.”

“Findë—”

Glorfindel shook his head and backed away from the window. “I begin to see now.  Forgive me.” In his rush to leave, he overturned one of the goblets. Wine splashed across his tunic and pooled on the floor at his feet.  As the red stain blossomed across his belly, he let out a pained laugh. “I look as if I’ve been run through. It seems appropriate, does it not?”

“The heart loves as it will,” Ecthelion whispered. He knew when Glorfindel’s shoulders sank in defeat that he wore the full measure of his guilt, his pain, and his truth in his face.

“It does,” Glorfindel ceded.

He departed without another word, leaving Ecthelion alone in his rooms, and with Elemmakil still standing on the fountain’s edge, a single berry having proven as sharp a weapon to a man’s heart as any knife.

Glorfindel departed as swiftly as he might without making a scene. The cool air hit his face and he pulled it into his lungs as if it could temper the fire within, but it did not help. I am a soldier, he reminded himself, forcing one breath after another through his constricted throat, I have born worse hurts than this. The mercy-stroke had been cleanly and efficiently delivered; that was Ecthelion’s way.

And he could hardly claim he was unaware that Ecthelion did not return his affection in a like degree: Ecthelion had made that clear in one way or another for many years. He had only himself to blame if he had chosen to ignore the subtle hints and quiet refusals Ecthelion had been laying out before him all this time. The grief he felt now he had purchased with his own coin.

But that Ecthelion rejected him because his eye had fallen on some runtish lad of unexceptional birth whom he himself had taught to hold a sword— well, there was little tonic for that. The Golden Flower had been bested on the only field he truly cared to win, and it was his own man who had done him in.

He considered taking himself to the pells to pass the night wailing away at a post with his heaviest sword, but dared not risk injury when there when a more important trial was so close at hand.  He walked briskly, his hands clenching into fists as he strode across the court. His footfalls reverberated off the the stone walls, and for the briefest of moments he had the horrible thought that if he gave voice to the misery percolating in his breast, Morgoth himself in Angband would likely hear his shout. He imagined, with a strange sort of humor, what terrible poems Salgant would write if the Hidden City fell because one man could not have what his heart most desired. The absurdity of it very nearly made him bare his teeth in a rictus of a smile.

Of course, fate had a way of being exceptionally unkind. As he passed through the Great Market, whose stalls were all shuttered tight for the night, his path crossed with the very person he least wished to see. Elemmakil took notice of him at the same time. His infuriatingly cheerful steps faltered and his expression instantly became reserved.   

“My captain.”

He made a neat salute, though he failed to look entirely dignified, what with one hand still holding up a shirttail full of strawberries.  Had circumstances been otherwise, Glorfindel would have laughed. One of the berries tumbled free and landed at his feet. They both stared at it. Glorfindel because he desperately wished to crush it under his heel in a moment of spite, and Elemmakil, Glorfindel presumed, because he didn’t know if he should pick it up or let it lie.

Perhaps it was that which softened Glorfindel’s heart a fraction.  Elemmakil, for all his efforts and his growing strength and skill, was still young. Young, and full of spirit. There had been no deceit on his part, no machinations.  He was nothing more than a besotted boy with a shirtfull of berries. Yet Glorfindel’s pride was not so eagerly appeased. Were I not his captain and liege-lord, I would call him out.

But in the end, there was nothing for it but to bear it. To call Elemmakil out would do nothing to endear him to Ecthelion, nor, in the last, would it do anything to mollify his own pride. It would only shame him, and give momentary satisfaction to his basest instincts, and those instincts would receive satisfaction enough when they faced down the Glamhoth on the Gasping Dust.  

“You are returning from Lord Ecthelion’s.” The cadence of Elemmakil’s gave the statement the slightest hint of a question.

“I am.” He offered no further elucidation. Let him think what he will; it is none of mine if he comes to inaccurate conclusions.

Elemmakil nodded, and said nothing, looking more and more uncomfortable with each passing moment of silent engagement.

Let it go, Glorfindel counseled himself. Save your venom for those who truly deserve it.

“Go home,” he told Elemmakil. “The hour is late, and the king has given me grim tidings which I will make known on the morrow.”

“Yes, sir,” Glorfindel gave a sharp half-bow, then stepped back to allow Glorfindel to pass before him.

Glorfindel walked on, his back arrow-straight and his head erect. He could feel Elemmakil’s gaze following him, and walked all the taller for it.

The night is darker here, Elemmakil thought.

They were not so very far from home, and yet to one who had never seen the sky beyond the Echoriath, had never ridden beyond the furthest reaches of the Tumladen, the outside world was as alien as it was imposing. The Sirion roared away from them, white foam rising on its currents, as if seeking a hasty escape from the parched and bloodstained land before them. The unwelcoming pines of Taur-na-Fuin loomed beside them, and the men sheltering there found little rest.

Fatigue plagued him; he thought he had never been so tired in all his days. Yet righteous fury stirred him, and righteous fury propelled him forward with his weapons at the ready and his eyes alert.

Righteous fury...and fear.

On their march, Glorfindel had placed him near the rearguard, flanked on either side by older men he had not known before: Adelthang, who had been born in Vinyamar, and Tulkayar, who followed Turgon out of Valinor long ago. Bright had they been in their shining mail, and bright had been the sound of Turgon’s trumpets, and the voices of Elves and Men as they had called out Auta i lómë! The night is passing!

Tulkayar had fallen when they had been driven back by the enemy host. His body had been left on the field to sink in the Fen of Serech. He did not know the name of the man who had stepped forward to take his place.

That had been but one of their losses. Fingon the Valiant, High King of the Elves and brother to his own king, had been slain before their eyes by a Balrog of Morgoth, his colors trampled into the dust beside his body. Elemmakil had never known such abject terror in his life as when he first beheld that creature, the embodiment of flame and darkness, a thing whose malevolence—whose very existence—was an abomination, an insult against life itself.

He sat alone now, at a distance from his fellows, running his whetstone down the length of his blade. Some of the older warriors could hone their swords with ancient magics, weaving songs of sharpness that touched the edge of their steel with fey blue light.  He had seen Tulkayar sing such a song; in the end, it had made no difference.  Elemmakil was content to use his stone; it gave his trembling hands an occupation, and his eyes a point to focus on beside the endless miles of smoke, and darkness, and fire.

“Elemmakil!”

An unfamiliar voice called his name. He rose and scanned the land before him. A man was weaving a path through the throng, looking left and right.

“I am Elemmakil,” he called in answer, and the man doubled his pace.

“You’ve been summoned by the captain,” the man said, and pointed to the pavilion that had been raised near the bank of the river.  

Elemmakil pocketed his whetstone and wiped his sweaty hands on his trousers. His sword rang as it slid home in its scabbard. He wondered why he had been called. Glorfindel had cooled toward him after their meeting in the market, though their training had continued apace until Glorfindel had by necessity turned his attention to the marshalling of troops and supplies.

Three pennants snapped smartly above the main poles: the standard of Fingon, the fallen High King; the standard of Turgon, the High King yet uncrowned, and a golden flower on a field of green for Glorfindel. Two sentries stood at attention at the entryway. He recognized them from the training yard in Gondolin, but their eyes were focused hard on the night beyond and they did not acknowledge him. When the messenger announced him, they stepped aside and he slipped within, offering a salute and standing ready until he was summoned closer.

Two lamps hung inside the tent, throwing out subdued light.  Glorfindel stood behind a makeshift table staring at a map.  A mortal man stood beside him, speaking in low tones and drawing a path across the map with his finger while Glorfindel nodded. He had seen this man and one other before, some time ago, in Gondolin. The few years between then and now had aged him, putting grey in his beard and lines around his eyes. Time, he remembered, touched Men in ways it did not touch Elves.

Glorfindel looked up when he entered, and kept his level gaze on Elemmakil as he said, “Húrin, would you excuse us for a moment?” The Man acknowledged him with a curt nod before stepping out of the tent.

Once alone, Glorfindel crossed toward him, his expression unreadable.

“How do you fare, Elemmakil?”

“Well enough, my lord. Tulkayar—”

“—Yes. I know.”

“He was a valiant man. He knew I had not been in battle before, and he watched over me. Adelthang, as well.”

Glorfindel nodded. It was only then that it occurred to Elemmakil that Glorfindel had assigned them for exactly that purpose. It was a kindness beyond what any one man deserved, though he knew it had been done not for his own sake, but for the sake of the one they both loved. He wished to acknowledge this, but also to let his lord know that he would take a place at the fore, that he knew his life no more important than the life of any other.

“Sir, I—”

Glorfindel did not allow him to finish. “I have a message which must be delivered to Ecthelion, and only Echthelion. Do you know where his pavilion stands?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Tell his sentries that I myself have commanded that they should admit no one until you have departed. Stay as long as he has need of you.”

Elemmakil swallowed. “Sir, I am not a man of note; wouldn’t someone of higher rank better suit your purposes?”

Glorfindel made a noise that wasn’t quite a laugh, and his mouth curled in something that wasn’t quite a smile. “I might have thought so once,” he said, “but, no: you’ll do.”

“Sir?” He wasn’t sure he understood.

“Never mind.  Just take this”— he handed Elemmakil a note which had been tightly folded and sealed in green wax with the imprint of his ring—”and do as I have bidden. Now, go. Ask Húrin to come back within when you leave.”

Elemmakil felt that he should say something else, but knew it was neither the time nor the place, and hardly knew the right words in any case. He saluted his captain once more, and departed.

The metallic rattle of Ecthelion’s hauberk hitting the ground rang shrill in the confines of his tent. He rolled his shoulders up and back, relieved to be free of its weight.  His shirt, sweat-damp and stained, clung to his chest, and it stank, but that was hardly foremost of his concerns. When he closed his eyes, he could still see the imprint of flames on his eyelids, the living fire of Morgoth’s spawn as it raised its burning lash.

Gothmog, you will answer to me yet! Your life is forfeit, creature of Darkness! He had bellowed those words, both threat and promise, his own impetuous oath, even as he had watched Fingon fall. He had not even realized he was speaking until the sound of his own voice reverberated in his ears. The vehemence of the proclamation had unnerved him, even as they drove him onward.

But evil had taken the day, vows of vengeance or no. Fingon was dead, and the doughty Azaghâl of Belegost, and Maedhros had been betrayed from within at a devastating cost to them all. Glorfindel had fallen back with Turgon, and his own flank had narrowly avoided being driven into the fens, the Men of Dor-lómin bringing up the rear. Of Elemmakil, there had been no sign. He could not allow himself to think on that now. He rubbed at the ache in his neck that would not subside, returned to his maps, and poured himself a cup of small-ale to wash away the taste of iron and ash.

When his sentries announced a messenger, he granted entry without looking up from his work. It was only after a moment of silence had passed that he irritably raised his head to find out what stayed the man from speaking. When he saw Elemmakil standing before him, his face taut and weary, it was he who found himself at a loss for words.

“My lord,” Elemmakil stammered, his voice ragged, “my captain bade me come here and deliver this message to you.”  He held out a paper closed with Glorfindel’s familiar seal.

“Elemmakil...”  His voice trailed off. Relief had rendered him dumb. “Sit. Please.”

Elemmakil shook his head.  “I am on my captain’s errand, my lord. I will rest when I have completed his task.”

You will be the death of me, Ecthelion thought, his weary heart moved to breaking at the mere sight of this stalwart and loyal young man. He took the message and broke the seal.

Ehtelë, it began.

I had not set out to put these words to paper, yet now I fear I write them too late. Our losses this day spur my hand to set these lines lest words which must be heard go unspoken.

Too long have you held tight to your grief. Too long have you set yourself apart. If it be not my heart which consoles you, let it be another’s-- so long as you are consoled, I cannot bring myself to despise it.

I have kept him as far from harm’s way as I can, and will continue to do so inasmuch as I am able. He is a boy no more, Ehtelë. His sword has been tempered in blood and fire, as was mine, as was your own.

The night is short, and it is not for us to know what will happen on the morrow, but I will not march into the fray with any regrets in my heart, and you should not, either. Do not turn him, nor what he offers, aside.  

Do this for me. Promise me.

Findë.

Ecthelion read and reread it, his heart hammering in his chest.  Unbidden tears pricked at his eyes, but did not spill.  He looked up at Elemmakil, and something in his face must have given him away, for Elemmakil moved suddenly toward him with an expression of great distress.

“Ecthelion—my lord—what is it?”

Ecthelion shook his head. His throat had gone too tight to speak. He took Elemmakil’s face in his hands, memorized every line, every plane. His jaw was strong and stubbornly set; his grey eyes were fever-bright with need and longing, and darkly ringed with the toll of battle.  Glorfindel was right; Elemmakil was a boy no more.

“Are you well?” Elemmakil asked, even as he pressed his head to yield its weight into Ecthelion’s palm.

“Yes,” Ecthelion whispered, and leaned in to press a kiss to Elemmakil’s brow. “I am.”

Elemmakil’s eyes fluttered closed, and he made a quiet sound in the back of his throat. Ecthelion pushed all his misgivings aside...his self-reproach, his sorrows, his anger. He pulled Elemmakil’s face to his and kissed him, softly at first, and then with the hunger of a man who had been too long without sustenance.  Elemmakil’s arms came around him, and he could feel the solidity and substance in their grip. These were not the reedy limbs of the boy on the fountain, but a warrior’s solid strength. He sank into their grasp even as he returned it with his own. His own body, so long held in slumber by his unhappiness, remembered its yearnings, its needs, and came awake once more.  Beneath a smoke-filled sky, on an arid, blood-washed plain which had only just begun its cruel reaping, a note of purest joy was sounded, and in that moment, Ecthelion believed with all of his heart, and with all of his soul, that no matter what the morning brought, Evil could never truly hold sway over Good.

“Elemmakil?” he ventured.

“Yes?” Elemmakil’s answering whisper was husky and warm, carried on the current of his shallow, rapid breaths.

“Importune me for a little while longer.”

Elemmakil’s throaty chuckle and the wet heat of his mouth was the only reply that came, and the only reply that was necessary.