The Military Relevance of Sewage by Himring

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Chapter 1

 

If you haven't read any of the other stories in this series, it might help you to make sense of what is going on to know the following: in this version Maedhros fell in love with Fingon during the rescue from Angband, but Fingon didn't find out until after the death of Fingolfin. Also, the affair remains strictly secret and Maedhros thinks it's safer for Fingon if nobody finds out about it.

 

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‘Elrond?’

‘Yes, Erestor?’

‘I’ve found something potentially interesting. But...’

‘What is it?’

‘Look—here’s a book on military fortifications in Dor-lomin. The original binding was falling apart, so I ordered it to be re-bound. When they removed the covers, they found these leaves of parchment inside. Of course, that’s not at all uncommon. But usually they’re cut-up strips.  These leaves are complete, as if somebody had gone to the trouble to try and preserve them.’

‘They’re covered in writing? What do they say?’

‘Well, it looks as if they were a letter from Maedhros to Fingon. Except...’

‘Well?’

‘It seems to be about the military relevance of sewage...’

‘Let me see. Yes, that does look like Maedhros’ handwriting. Leave them with me, will you? I’ll have a closer look and get back to you.’

 

 ‘Well, personally I’ve always considered it possible that Turgon moved from Nevrast to Gondolin just to get away from your letters. No forwarding address, you see.  No more:  “Turgon, have you considered...” “ Turgon, I wonder whether...”  “Turgon, has it occurred to you...”’

Maedhros gives me a quick sideways glance. ‘Too much advice? When we first arrived here, we were strangers in a foreign country and very inexperienced in some ways, too. However helpful the Sindar proved to be, it seemed important that we should share all available information. I suppose it got to be a habit...’

‘Oh, I don’t mind. I never did...’

***

The first messages arrived after a worryingly long silence and were terse military reports. Those to my father had been dictated; those to me were in his own hand. The shapes of the individual letters looked stiff and rather too large, like boulders strewn around a landscape.

Gradually, the handwriting settled into an easier, more consistent style, a little slanted, a little angular—somehow a little un-Feanorian, although perhaps not intentionally so. The letters grew longer. First they included more detailed practical information, still chiefly of a military kind. Then they became almost chatty and began to contain descriptions: of the customs of the Laiquendi, of dwarves and men, of flora and fauna, occasionally even a lyrical depiction of a landscape. I suppose Turgon received few of these.

Between the expanding lines, the gaps remained. Once, I picked a random half dozen out of the neat stack in the carved wooden box on my desk to verify what I already knew. All news about his brothers—rigorously edited down to the most innocuous details. A paragraph on the beauties of Thargelion—reassuring in its way, but so impersonal that it did not seem at all to imply that he had enjoyed himself there. A list of ruses known to be used by orcs, carefully drawn up, clearly set out—but he did not say: ‘I worry about you.’ We were left to deduce this—or not. The good wishes at the end of the letters were expressed with grave formality; the only clue to the personal feelings of the writer was that they seemed just a little too elaborate.

***

‘Finrod doesn’t mind either. He calls them the Missives of Auntie Maedhros, did you know?’

He laughs. ‘No, really? I didn’t.’

‘You have my royal permission and encouragement to continue writing, Auntie Maedhros. But how do you find the time?’ 

‘I don’t sleep all that much.’

‘Except when I’m around...’

A level, steady look from those grey eyes.

'Except when you’re around.’

***

Three times, last night. The first time he inadvertently dropped off, he jerked awake again almost instantly, clutching my wrist. His thumb dug into my skin so hard, it left a bruise. He apologized.

The second time he fell asleep in the middle of a sentence. He awoke a couple of minutes later, looking highly embarrassed, but remembered clearly enough what he had been saying to try and take up the thread of conversation again.

I cut across his comments on Maglor's latest composition. ‘You seem to be exhausted. I think I should go away and let you get some sleep.’

‘No, please don’t. I won’t, if you do. Sleep, that is.’

‘Won’t you? Then sleep now. Sleep while I’m here.’

That time he slept half an hour and woke up smiling.

 

‘Erestor?’

‘Yes, Elrond?’

‘I’ve had a look at this document. I think it is important that it should continue to be preserved. We know so little about how they thought about these things...’

‘All right, I’ll have it copied then.’

‘Copied? Hmm ... Oh, yes, by all means. But do take care to keep the original as well, won’t you?  After all, it is in Maedhros’ own hand...’

 

When the messenger arrived, hard on my heels after I’d left, I laughed. ‘My liege, it has occurred to me to wonder whether you’ve considered the military relevance of sewage...’ Then I had a closer look at the letter and was puzzled. Five carefully, densely written leaves—surely a bit long even for an elaborate spoof? I began to read, and it read, indeed, like a painfully serious treatise on the relevance of sewage. Right after those week-long council sessions, in which we seemed to have discussed the military relevance of just about everything under the sun—except, possibly, sewage. Had he had some notes sitting in a drawer?

I considered the question and envisioned him sitting up the night after I left, in his plain midnight-blue robe, writing at his desk, the parchment firmly clipped to the blotter so it wouldn’t shift beneath his hand, writing through the night, as an icy draught filtered through the casement, until the dawn came, and he washed and changed to do his morning rounds on the battlements.

More sleeplessness. But that could hardly be the message—it wasn’t one he would have thought worth conveying. And was I imagining it—or was this treatise more boring than Auntie Maedhros would usually have allowed himself to be, even on the subject of sewage?

I finally found it two thirds of the way down the seventh page. He must have concluded that even the most diligent royal secretary or archivist would have been bored out of his mind by that point. Perhaps predictably, it was in a section on the digging of ditches and the importance of covering them up again after use. Definitely overdoing it and I’d tell him so the next time I saw him.

In the middle of the line, he’d deliberately written a single word, then erased half the letters so that I could just about detect what they’d been, and altered the others so that they formed part of a different word that fit the context. Half-deleted, half-concealed, it was, of course, the word I was expecting by then.

Love.