And Love Grew by polutropos

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They Alone Remained Thereafter

Elrond, Elros, and Gwereth are brought back to the Fëanorian camp. Maglor explains his decision to Maedhros.

There were not many horses in Sirion. Elrond’s mother’s people were not horsemen, and his father loved ships. Elrond had been on a horse only once before, in the wildflower fields with Gwereth’s friend Embor. It had frightened him, and Embor had lifted Elrond to the ground with his strong hands, laughing kindly. They had been hiding in Embor’s house, he and Elros and Gwereth, when the elf-warriors came. Elrond could not remember seeing the horse in the stable.

The bounce and sway of the animal beneath him was uncomfortable. His legs ached, like when he had once caught fever. He and Elros were snug between the horse’s neck and the elf-warrior’s large torso: Would he let them fall if Elrond let go? He glanced down at the road — a narrow dirt path, not yet the wide cobbled streets closer to town. It was far to fall, and Elros was already hurt. And where would they go? Mother was gone, Father was gone, Galdor was gone.

Gwereth was coming with them. Gwereth would keep them safe.

Elros nodded and whimpered behind him and Elrond clung tighter, fists bunching in the horse’s mane.

Low stone roofs peeked above the reeds. They were approaching the river crossing to the quay and the centre of the town where Elrond and Elros and his mother lived — and his father, when he was not at sea. No: Mama was gone, Elrond remembered, and his throat felt tight like he had taken too big a bite. Elros had wanted to go back for Mama and Elrond did not know how to explain to his brother that she was gone. But he knew. The Silmaril was gone, too. They were not safe in Sirion anymore.

All his life Elrond had learned to fear orcs and wolves and dragons. He had only seen these monsters in paintings and wood carvings and the pictures the elf-singers painted in his mind. At first, when the warrior-elves attacked them, he had thought they were orcs, and he did not understand. How could it be? They had the Silmaril. They were safe. “No, my loves,” his mother had said when Elrond asked, “they are not the Enemy’s servants — they are his enemies, as we are, though they serve his purposes. They are elves. Fallen elves who have malice in their hearts, but elves all the same.”

Why would enemies of their Enemy make war upon them?

Elrond remembered times when his mother’s friends and counsellors let slip words in their presence about evil elves who had destroyed her home; but Mother had always shushed them, so Elrond assumed they were harmful lies. Mother fought lies. She brought the people together.

But then an elf had wanted to kill him and Elros. A terrible, fell, and beautiful elf with bright eyes like Galdor who had accused his mother of stealing a birthright from him. Mother would never steal. But then, Elrond never would have believed that Mother would run away to die without them, and she had. She had said: “Please forgive me, my loves. I do not think my doom as high as Lúthien’s, but this course alone remains to me.”

None of it made sense.

Elrond sniffed. The sky smelled burnt. Elrond had smelled cookfires before, and burned bread. He had never smelled a burned sky. It stung his eyes like when the wind off the sea blew hot smoke from a firepit in his face.

This was nothing like that, though. In the night the wind had howled and the flames had roared back, but now it was still, and even though the sun was warm Elrond was cold in nothing but his tunic and the rag Gwereth had tied around his waist. He hoped they had a new pair of trousers for him wherever they were going.

He must have shivered, because the elf-warrior’s arms narrowed and brushed Elrond’s shoulders. He shrank into himself so they would not touch. His chest tightened remembering the strong and armoured arms of the other elf-warrior, the one on the cliff, squeezing the air from his lungs.

They continued down the road and the burnt smell turned sour. Rotten. A smell so thick he could taste it and his belly bubbled in protest. He scrunched his face and water seeped from his eyes. The rotting air settled deep in his lungs and spittle forced itself through his pinched lips, and he knew if he did not release the horror coiled inside him he would be sick: he let out a sharp long wail. The elf-warrior’s body curled closer in answer, pressing in around him. It was not what he wanted at all. Elrond shrank even smaller and covered his face with the collar of his shirt.

“I remember the first time I smelled a burning body,” someone said. It was the voice of the elf-woman, the one who had taken Gwereth on her horse. Good: she was still with them. “I was of course not so young. Alas that the Doomsman’s words have brought this horror even upon children.”

The elf-warrior hummed low, like a growl caught in his throat, and said nothing.

Burning bodies. Could she mean the horrible thick rot in the air was bodies? Why were they burning bodies? The dead ought to be buried at sea. That was how they had always done it, when age or sickness or injury snuffed out a life.

Elrond swallowed, dry and bitter, and wiped the dribble from his chin with his shirt. He was messy: messy with blood and urine and spit. He thought of the sea where the dead were buried. He wanted to wash away all of this filth in the sea and never come up.

Maybe he would find his mother and the Silmaril there.

The smell worsened the closer they came to the bridge. Somehow, Elrond grew accustomed to it. He supposed you could grow accustomed to anything if you had to endure it long enough.

As they crossed the bridge, Elrond saw them at last: bodies, a great mound of them heaped on the stone quay. Or so he guessed, for it was hazy and shapes amid the heap were difficult to make out. It looked more to Elrond like the wet sand he would let drip from his fist on the beach. Drip drip drip until a wormy grey hill formed beneath his hand. Several biers ringed the great pyre. Elrond wondered who they were, and why they had deserved this special treatment when the others had not.

For the first time since they had left Embor’s house, the elf-warrior spoke. Not to them: Elrond could tell because his tone and pattern was that of adults speaking to each other. He had a clear deep voice. Its harmonious lilt was all wrong. It should be rough and sharp, like the other warrior’s; like the smoky stinging sky. Despite the clarity of his speech Elrond found him difficult to understand, as if his ears were full of water.

He was asking the woman something about his brother’s body.

“He was not recovered from the river,” she replied.

“I did not think the river so deep here.”

“No, my lord, not too deep — but when they dove to search for them the bodies had all been swept to sea. Lord Ulmo has claimed them, it seems.”

“Lord Ulmo has claimed many things this night.” He was silent another moment. “And Amrod: You said you did not find him?”

“Nay, lord. Perhaps another came to him before I did. He was gone.”

A long and heavy puff of breath brushed the back of Elrond’s head. “So be it,” the warrior said. “May their souls rest and may Ilúvatar’s pity find them.” Then, so quiet Elrond was sure he did not intend to be heard, he added, “Though my heart tells me it will not be so.”

The elf moved the reins into one hand and closed the other arm around Elrond and his brother. Elrond had already made himself as small as he could, so he sucked his breath in and held it. He felt his eyes bulge and his neck tighten. The breath escaped and he gasped, lungs pushing against the large hand that covered most of his side. The hand did not resist the expansion of his chest. He breathed again, slowly this time, and the hand rose and fell with the rhythm of it.

It reminded Elrond of the weight of a thick winter coverlet, and he fell into a heavy slumber.

The few tents that had made up their bivouac had been disassembled by the time Maglor returned to the camp with the children and Dornil and their nurse. Wagons had been loaded with both goods and people and yoked to the horses. They lined the road that had been a footpath through the tall grasses when they found it, and was now trammelled wide by the passage of their army. This host would be Maglor’s charge on the long southern route to Amon Ereb. Uncharted lands: he wondered how many, how much, they would leave behind or lose along the way.

The sun blazed directly above them: the treeless field was hot. Sweat dripped down Maglor’s chest beneath layers of linen and mail and wool.

What remained of their army stood in loose formation at the eastern end of the field. Seeing them thus assembled was like looking upon a field of rye after an errant river had swept through half the crops, leaving behind a stark scar of barren mud. How many of those missing had been casualties? How many had been deserters?

The commoners clustered about their ranks came nowhere near to making up the numbers of their losses. They were perhaps half again the size of the army, many of them elderly, crippled, children. Desperate people who believed death to be their only other choice.

All heads faced the two men standing on a wagon before them: Maedhros addressing them, so capably playing the battle commander even in his despair, and Lisgon beside him. Maedhros’ voice carried to where Maglor and Dornil sat upon their horses, watching.

“Those are your words,” Dornil said.

“In some measure,” Maglor replied. Maedhros’ speech was his own, but laced with Maglor’s words from that morning, reordered into plainer but no less subtle language. It was a skill Maglor, who had no talent for simplicity, had envied at times.

“So it was your counsel to offer mercy and bring this remnant of Sirion with us?” Dornil asked.

Maglor was too weary to rebuke her for her prying. And why should she not know? “Yes. And it is I who will lead them — and you will come with me, commander.”

Dornil exhaled, and Maglor knew another question lagged behind.

“What of these captives?” she said, gesturing to the children and their nurse. “Was it Lord Maedhros’ command to take them? Or was that your own counsel also?”

Maglor saw no need to answer, knowing Dornil had reached the correct conclusion even before asking. Ever did she see through him, even as her husband had.

When he was a child, Maglor had gathered fledglings fallen from their nests. He had set them in a basket and swaddled them in blankets and fed them from his own hand. “Children ought to be reared by their parents,” Fëanor would scold him (speaking also, Maglor later realised, of himself). “You should leave them be. It is not your role to meddle in the fates of Yavanna’s creatures.”

But Maglor had continued to nurse his fledglings for many years, hiding them away where his father could not find them. He never was able to teach them to fly, though often they discovered this ability on their own. Those who did not became dependent upon him for the remainder of their lives — and he on them. It was this realisation that had made him stop.

That is until he had set eyes upon Elwing’s orphaned sons and his heart had cried Help them.

It was this he would shortly have to explain to his brother, who had finished speaking and now wove through the crowd towards them.

He made a sign for Dornil to dismount and aid him in doing the same. Doubt swooped through his stomach. He stamped it down. He prepared to defend his choice.

Lifting Elros then Elrond down from the horse, he said to Dornil: “They are not captives.”

“You did not follow my command,” Maedhros said.

They were alone, save Lisgon who stood by as ever, a silent sentinel of support beside his lord. The boys and their nurse had been settled in a carriage with several other children and their guardians, and remained under Dornil’s watch. A healer had been summoned to attend to Elros’ injury.

“You commanded that I ensure they were safe,” said Maglor. “I judged that they would be safest with us.”

Maedhros huffed and his eyes darted about, landing on his hand. He curled and uncurled his fingers, as if testing their dexterity. Or preparing to strike. The hand instead came to rest on the hilt of a dagger at his left hip.

“And Dornil?” he said. “Did I not command you to tell no one of your errand?”

“You did. But I came upon her on my way, returning from her search for Amrod, and I trusted her to aid me. She is my chief commander.”

Maglor glanced at Lisgon, whose eyes were veiled and cast upon the ground.

“You should not trust her,” Maedhros said. “She is vengeful.”

“Nonetheless,” Maglor said, “she is loyal, and we have few such people left to us.”

“Tell me then: was it Dornil advised you to take Elwing’s children captive?”

Maglor knew if he paused too long that Maedhros would suspect, so he offered a half-truth.

“No,” he said. “I brought them here because they were hurt and needed healing.”

“You could not have healed them there?”

Leave them be, Fëanor had said. Ensure they are safe and unharmed, Maedhros had said, and they had been. Safe enough. He had felt the fierce fire of elven blood in Elros’ spirit, had known the boy would heal on his own. He might have left them there, in the care of the closest person to a mother they had left, and his brother’s command would have been fulfilled. He might have brought back the welcome news that the children lived and they two might have carried on spinning and spinning in ever tighter circles until they were all that was left.

Maglor had done otherwise. The weight of that decision hung on him like the cloak of kingship that had once been fastened across his shoulders, outsized and heavy. He had learned to bear that mantle; he would learn to bear this one, too.

“Healed them, perhaps,” he said in answer to Maedhros’ question. “And left them to an unknown fate. They need protection.”

The skin around Maedhros’ eyes twitched as if rebelling against the firm set of his lips; as if trying to smile, held back by the same stretched thread that held him back from madness.

His next words were in the language of their birth. “You believe yourself the best-suited to that task, then?” So swiftly as to be almost imperceptible, Maglor sensed Maedhros skirting the boundaries of his mind. “I thought you had given up nursing fledglings long ago, brother.”

Maglor refused to permit the intrusion. “It will not be my task,” he said. “Their nurse is with us. Their father’s return is doubtful, they have lost their mother, the nurse is the closest thing left to them—”

“Lost their mother?” Maedhros interrupted. “Tell me, how did that happen?”

“She chose to die!” Maglor cried. “She left them.”

“You think yourself guiltless then?”

“We came because our brothers would have gone without us—”

“Did you command soldiers in the sack of this Haven or not? Did your sword, your voice, not send dozens of souls to Mandos?” He did not await an answer. “We made war on these people because of our oath, Macalaurë. Not because of our brothers. No more than we sacked Lestanórë because of Tyelkormo. Do not forget that, when you write the lament of this battle.”

That last was designed to hurt, but Maglor found himself too rapt in contemplation of his brother’s tone and manner to feel it. There was no heat to his argumentation, no real condemnation. It was not what Maglor had readied himself for at all.

When Dior’s sons had been lost, Maedhros’ face had contorted with grief and rage. He had wailed and torn his hair, as he had not done since the slow trickle of rumour had reached the wilds of Ossiriand and put an end to the mute endurance of his disgrace, singing the death knell of his last hopes: that Hithlum was overrun and the High King killed.

That was the sort of raw despair Maglor had thought would surface now. He had thought he had seen it sparking in the lines of Maedhros’ face before he set out to find the children; but if he had (and he doubted it now), it had been snuffed out. For all that the tragedy of the previous night had shredded his own heart to ribbons, Maedhros was as cold and politic about the outcome of this battle as he had been about its preparations.

Maglor understood what he must do. It was not sentiment that would earn back his brother’s trust, but reason. Maglor had ever hated to wander the cool paths of reason, where the heart grew dark and silent and eventually ceased to sing altogether. It had happened to Celegorm and Curufin; it was happening to Maedhros.

“I believe the children will serve us well,” he said at last.

In the beat of quiet that followed, Maglor hoped he had been wrong and would be rebuked for his insolence. But Maedhros, who had sworn never again to take hostages, nodded and said, “Proceed.”

How easily the rest unravelled. “They are the heirs of the Houses of Nolofinwë and Elwë, and the heirs of Bëor and Hador and Haleth. I do not know what will come to pass, but should they grow to manhood sympathetic to our cause…” Maglor trailed off. He looked over his shoulder at the carriage, where Elros sat upright beside his brother and they shared a wafer between them. He looked back to Maedhros, and realised he too had been watching the children. Maedhros swallowed and cast his eyes at the ground. Perhaps his reasoning was not so cold. “Perhaps,” he said aloud, “in some way I cannot foresee, they will be our hope.”

Maedhros lifted his chin. “Very well,” he said. “Care for them well. Love them, as I know you can, and perhaps they will in time love you in return. But do not speak of hope.”

“Thank you,” Maglor breathed, a rush of relief. His knees nearly gave way beneath him. “I will not fail you. I swear I will not fail you.” The urge to move, to touch was too strong. He embraced him. “I will not fail you,” he repeated into the curve of Maedhros’ shoulder, cheek pressed to the cold metal clasp of his cloak. “I will not fail them.”

Maedhros did not return the embrace, but neither did he push Maglor away.

Maedhros stood upon a hill watching the long caravan of Maglor’s host retreat south: a grey snake winding through the golden fields. The sun curved west behind them. Beyond, the woods of Taur-im-Duinath spread across the horizon like a vast canker.

Such, also, was the shape and colour of the future Maedhros foresaw when he searched his heart.

“Tell me, Lisgon,” he said to his captain beside him, “do you think we will see them again?”

Lisgon watched the host for a long time. “Not all,” he said at last.

“My brother?” Maedhros asked.

“Aye.”

“And Elwing’s sons?”

“That I cannot see, my lord. But I think if Maglor lives, so will they.”

Chapter End Notes

Thank you to sallysavestheday for the helpful beta, and to Melesta, cuarthol, and Ettelene for the ongoing support in writing.

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