A Long Time Falling by Himring

---

The Fall of Doriath

---

I

 

After another two hours of being shouted at, Maitimo’s temper is clearly fraying badly.

‘Tyelkormo, I don’t quite know what you two thought you were doing in Nargothrond, but already the family record with regard to this particular Silmaril is hardly admirable and attacking Doriath now will not improve it. The first time for ages anyone made a serious attempt to wrest a Silmaril away from Moringotto—and all you seem to have  thought of was how to stop them in their tracks! And, as a result, we ended up with one dead cousin.’

‘We were probably going to end up with one dead cousin anyway. You call that a serious attempt?’

‘So it was a silly, half-assed attempt, but the same might be said of other ventures.  And this one happens to have worked...in the end. ‘

‘Has it? We don’t have the Silmaril. They do.’

‘Moringotto has one the less. He’s the one who stole them in the first place, he killed Grandfather in the process and he’s still got two of them. And you keep telling me that Atar would want to go us after the one Dior has?! Even as simple maths, it doesn’t make sense. Are you sure this hasn’t got anything to do with your old resentment of Thingol— or any grudges you are still harbouring against Luthien? It is Moringotto who is our enemy, I tell you! He is the one we need to concentrate on. Stop distracting us by raising side issues.’

‘You’ve concentrated on Moringotto—and what have you got to show for it? A mile-high pile of corpses, with Findekano somewhere in the middle of it.’

There have been hints before, but now the unforgivable has actually been said. Suddenly in the deserted farm house we are using as temporary headquarters, you could hear the proverbial pin drop. Maitimo goes rigid in his chair, his face dead white. When he resumes speaking, he does so in a low, level voice, itself shocking after all the yelling that has gone on for the last couple of hours.

‘All right. A palpable hit. It was I who planned the Nirnaeth.  I tried to save our people and ended up slaughtering them like cattle. It is true; I’ve already killed so many, it hardly matters now whether I kill a few more of them intentionally.  If you insist on going to Doriath, I will follow you.’

Such undisguised self-loathing. Our brothers have never seen him like this before; I haven’t seen him like this since just after Thangorodrim.  He quietly gets up, walks across to the door, opens it and goes out. The door crashes shut behind him, shuddering on its hinges. The wood cracks right across in three places.

I look at Tyelkormo, who stands frozen by the head of the table, open-mouthed. He does not know quite how cruel his jibe was, but even given what he knows, it was cruel enough. Still, he did not expect this kind of reaction from Maitimo. And I’m beginning to suspect that his shock goes even deeper. He’s been belabouring Maitimo to invade Doriath for months, dredging up any means of persuasion fair and foul, ever since the messenger came back from Doriath with Dior’s refusal to give up the Silmaril to us. And yet it seems to me now that he did not expect to win this debate; he did not expect Maitimo to yield.

When your beloved father imposes impossible obligations on you and then inconsiderately dies without providing any further guidance how you are to make them square with the requirements of common morality, ordinary life or even your own physical survival, who do you turn to? Why, your older brother who has always tried to sort things out for you when you were in trouble—and anyway why did he permit you to get into this particular trouble in the first place? I suppose it came naturally to Tyelkormo, given Maitimo’s near-exhaustible patience with his younger brothers when they were kids, howling, kicking little savages. We have all done it, to a greater or lesser degree. But Tyelkormo, more than any of us, I guess, has been trying to have his cake and eat it, being the obedient son and at the same time relying on Maitimo to stop him from doing anything too drastic in his attempts to carry out the oath.  And Maitimo has been colluding with him in a way, his need to maintain a brave front at all times encouraging Tyelkormo in his delusion that Maitimo was up to taking just about any amount of verbal assault and battery.  Now Maitimo has snapped, Tyelkormo finds himself at a loss.

Perhaps the same is true of Curufinwe, although I find him harder to read; I always did. I cast a quick look around the table. Carnistir is pale and breathing hard. There is no help to be expected from him. Carnistir cordially dislikes people; they keep messing with his head. He forgives those of us he needs to love, maybe loves us the more fiercely because love comes at such a cost for him, but it leaves him with scant sympathy for others. If Dior’s refusal to give up the Silmaril has caused this emotional ruckus between Maitimo and Tyelkormo, then Carnistir is going to place the blame squarely on Dior. And Ambarussa simply look frightened and as if they wish they were somewhere else.

‘Tyelkormo,’ I say, ‘go after him. Go now, before it is too late, and tell Maitimo you don’t insist on invading Doriath.’

For a moment he wavers. But he’s too afraid of losing face. His gaze hardens, and he casts about for the nearest stick he can find to beat me with.

‘Oh, we all know why you agree with everything he says!’

Ah, that rumour—I should have known it would turn around and bite me. There are two ways of countering this—either pretend not to know what he’s talking about or burst out laughing that he should so much as consider believing it. And he doesn’t really, of course. But suddenly, I, too, have had as much of Tyelkormo as I can possibly take.

‘Wash out your mouth, brother’, I say coldly and make for the door. It falls apart as I open it and I leave it dangling on one hinge.

II

 

I find Maitimo sitting at the foot of a favourite tree, leaning against the bole, staring into the middle distance. He glances up in acknowledgement, as I sit down beside him, not too close.

‘Lost it. Lost them.’, he says succinctly.

‘Maybe not.’

‘You think anything you or I can say will stop them now? Even if I choose not to regard what I said back there as a promise—and I know Tyelkormo will try to hold me to it—I’ve lost my hold, my edge... And I’ve already used up all my arguments.  So what do you suggest? We try to tie up five brothers, with only three hands between us? We appeal to our people, split them into factions, and end up with violence and death amongst ourselves? I am sorry; you were trying so very hard to calm us all down.’

I nod. I can think of nothing to say.

After a while, he says: ‘Tyelkormo is underrating the people of Doriath. He thinks, because they did not take part in the wars, they are no match for experienced warriors. But you’ve met Mablung, you met Beleg, and you can imagine what anybody they trained will be like. And it’s their home territory. They know it so much better than us. And then there is the Girdle of Melian, whatever remains of it...

The only chance to get that Silmaril without huge losses on both sides will be to go in there and get out again as fast as possible, with as much force as possible, a quick strike...’  He looks at me and sighs. ‘No, don’t tell me. Atar imagined he could get the ships out of Alqualonde without killing a single Teler...’

‘Maybe you did your job too well, trying to keep everybody’s courage up’, I say. ‘Tyelkormo thinks we are stronger than we are.’

‘No, he knows how weak we are. It’s what makes him want to lash out. It upsets his sense of equilibrium, to see those weak who he thinks of rights should be strong and those strong who he thinks of rights should be weak...’

More silence.

‘I know no real harm of Dior’, he says. ‘I haven’t even met him. By the messenger’s reports, he’s not polite to Feanorians, but, since he’s the son of Beren and Luthien and the great-nephew of Olwe of Alqualonde, he can hardly be expected to be.

He also relies too much on the reputation of his parents and grandparents for his protection and forgets that the sons of Feanor are no longer helping to guard his eastern borders in strength. I think, if we do not attack Doriath, Moringotto soon will. But I’m not pretending that’s an excuse; if Dior can’t defend the Silmaril against Moringotto, how will we defend it once we get hold of it? In a saner world, we’d be petitioning for admission into Doriath to help him strengthen his defences, now the Girdle is weakening... Dior is an arrogant fool. Maybe arrogant foolishness is punishable by death in Beleriand nowadays, but it is certainly not we who should be doing the punishing.

I know plenty of harm of Tyelkormo, too much of it because I share in it myself. But he is our younger brother. I remember what he was like as a baby, what he was like as a boy,  how he was given Huan, the time he had his first crush on a girl...  If it is a choice between Dior and Tyelkormo, I would prefer Dior to be the one to die.’ He looks me steadily in the eyes.  ‘It is morally reprehensible.’

He gets up, hesitates and looks down at me, as he asks: ‘Macalaure, do you think Tyelkormo is right that Atar would want us to invade Doriath? And, if so, which Feanaro?’

III

 

Maitimo reaches out and gently closes Carnistir’s eyes.

‘Does it strike you, Macalaure,’ he says in a strained brittle voice, ‘that maybe we are simply not cut out for a life of crime? I mean, in Alqualonde, we got the ships, but we left our dead as well as theirs strewn all over the harbour front and then killed ourselves trying to sail the ships. And now...  Even Turin Turambar, to begin with, was better at robbery than this!’

A despairing gesture summarizes what “this” is: three brothers dead, Dior and Nimloth dead, Menegroth’s famed grottoes a bloody shambles, no Silmaril. And then Celegorm’s servants come and tell him what they’ve done with Dior’s sons.

IV

 

He turns up at our camp outside Doriath’s borders more than two months later, just as I’m wondering whether to risk sending out Ambarussa with another search party into the outskirts of the forest or to move away from this increasingly dangerous location altogether, trusting him to catch up with us somehow... For some reason, he’s sopping wet and the expression on his face makes me think of concussion. He patiently allows me to check his skull.

When I’ve got him cleaned up and into dry clothing and also persuaded him to eat a bowl of hot soup, I dare to ask him: ‘So you didn’t find them?’ He doesn’t answer; the expression on his face is blank. ‘You didn’t find Dior’s sons, Elured and Elurin?’

‘No, I didn’t find them‘, he answers after a while. ‘Instead, I think I lost myself out there, somewhere in the remains of the Girdle of Melian.’

‘I shouldn’t have let you go alone. I should have been with you...’

‘No, I needed you to organize our retreat. In fact,’ his voice gains in strength, ‘you shouldn’t have waited for me in such an exposed position. We must leave straight away.’

***

‘Macalaure...? I’m hearing voices now.’

I put down the arrow I’m trying to fletch—Ambarussa have been teaching me—very carefully. My mouth has gone dry with fear.

‘Voices?’

‘Voices...of the dead. Except I guess they cannot really be the dead...’

‘Cannot?’

‘I don’t think Atar and Tyelkormo would say such things to me...’

‘Such things?’

He doesn’t look at me. Unfortunately both of us can think of plenty of devastating things Atar and Tyelkormo have said to Maitimo and they’re not alive to take them back.

‘Findarato’, Maitimo’s voice grows firmer, ‘Findarato would not come all the way from Namo’s Halls just to berate me about the kinslaying at Alqualonde and the fall of Nargothrond. It is not something he would do.’

But a trace of doubt remains in his eyes.