The Sentiment of Steel by Kenaz

Chasing Flies

Chasser les Mouches [ Fr., “to chase flies”]: an old French fencing phrase pejoratively referring to frantic parrying, thereby resembling swatting at flies.

Afterward, Ecthelion did not sleep.

The guttering lamp gave off just enough light to see the lines and angles of Glorfindel’s body on the bed beside him. Softened and vulnerable in sleep, curled on his side, one arm dangling limp over the bed. He slept, Ecthelion thought, the sleep of the well-loved and well-wearied, the sleep of a man who has gone to his rest knowing he possessed everything he might wish for. The realization landed like a blow. He had imagined, had hoped, that if he gave vent to this longing, he might find himself satiated, and could then move on to the proper order of things, to the obligation that bound him. But, no. It had simply driven the desire deeper.

Precariously poised on the bleeding edge of manhood, he had been invited to perform at a festival of musicians in Tirion. He had taken a prize for a composition he had written and played on his flute. Moreover, he had caught the eye of a man from Avallónë, the very sort of minstrel maturity and common sense would have warned him against. But possessing little of either quality at that age, Ecthelion found him completely irresistible. He had plied Ecthelion with unwatered wine and taught him far more than sea-songs of the Lonely Island. He had woken in the night to find the man gone, and his own purse with him, and could not even afford to settle the bill for his lodgings. He had given his flute to the innkeeper for collateral and sent word to his brother, begging for both assistance and secrecy. His brother had arrived the next morning, paid the innkeeper, and retrieved Ecthelion’s flute. Upon hearing the tale in full, he had laughed himself puce and remarked it was a good thing Ecthelion was the second son, and not to worry, he’d happily breed enough heirs for them both.

But his brother had not lived to bring forth his promised fruits; he floated forever with their beloved mother in the black and lightless waters beneath the Grinding Ice.

A follower of Finwë in Valinor, his grandsire then pledged his sword to Fingolfin and took his entire family— save his unwilling wife— across the ice in his service. He had died as he had lived, the High King’s man: the Glorious Battle had not been glorious for all. It followed, then, that his own father would serve Fingolfin's son, and in time he grew high in Fingon’s esteem and numbered in the elite ranks of his personal guard. But the grief of loss had opened a fissure between father and son as impassable as fracturing ice, and for all his efforts to prove his own worth, never did they regain the closeness Ecthelion had so treasured as a carefree child in Valinor. And so he sought freedom from his anguish through the only egress open to him, by leaving Fingon’s service, one younger son offering his sword to another.

Ecthelion's father had tolerated his defection, but not before extracting the price of their parting in a promise. Now, in the dark, Ecthelion could hear his voice: “Go thou, then, with Turgon, if thou wouldst, knowing we two may not meet again. Pledge him thy sword and thy fealty. But you alone of our kin must be as the roots to the family tree, for you alone survived to do so. Establish thine own house, and by this all shall know now and ever after, our blood has served the descendants of the righteous line of Finwë, and not the tainted line of Feanor!”

I will, he had answered. I swear it. The short-sighted eyes of youth failed to fathom how the echo of his words would come to weigh upon him like a millstone. Thus always the Noldor, he thought, are held for ransom by unwise oaths.

“You have regrets.”

He had not realized Glorfindel had been awake, but of course he was. His hand perched light as a bird on Ecthelion’s hip.

“We should not have...I should not have...”

Glorfindel sat up and pulled up the sheets around his hips. “What?” he asked warily. “Say what you would.”

Ecthelion’s limbs had become leaden, his skin too taut across his chest. “I erred,” he said thickly. “I made a vow to marry and establish our family here. That was the cost of following Turgon, of following you. My father asked it of me, and I gave him my word.”

“You might have mentioned this before.”

“You knew. You have always known.”

“Yet you just said you were not considering marriage. You said this tonight, knowing what I wished of you. Unless you plan to feign ignorance.”

Ecthelion shook his head, morose. “No. Of course not.”

“And yet,” Glorfindel continued, “this vow did not stop you before we reached my bed. But now that I have made a fool of myself, you have decided quite suddenly to consider it again. Or is it that having tasted what I offer, you desire it no more?”

Ecthelion still said nothing. Wracked with shame, he kept silent, and damned himself further. The temperature in the room had dropped precipitously.

“Ah.” Glorfindel turned away and swung his legs off the bed. “I see.” He hunched forward, bracing his forearms on his thighs. His hair hung long and tangled, curtaining off his face from view. “Well, then. I am sorry to have offended you. I had not intended to endanger your oath.”

“I am sorry, Glorfindel. I should have thought my actions through.” Lunge and thrust.

Glorfindel’s back rose and fell as he drew in a breath and deflated. “I think it would be best if you left.”

Ecthelion picked out his clothing from Glorfindel’s, following the trail of discarded shirts and trousers out of the bedroom and into the rooms beyond. The absurdity of it might have been humorous, if it hadn’t been so humiliating. He dressed hurriedly and departed like a thief.

Crossing the plaza in the dark reminded him once more, and with stinging clarity, of the assignation with the minstrel in his youth and all the shame he had felt in its wake. With one important difference: then, he had been ashamed because he had been played for a fool. Now, it was he who had played another false, whether he had intended it or no.

The rain that had threatened all evening was upon him before he reached home.