Chapter Text
Fingon had thought himself inured to the sight of injury; frostbite on the Ice that turned entire limbs to blackened, swollen ruins; hunting accidents that had set writhing tendrils of viscera crawling across the green grass of Valinor. He’d cut off Maedhros’ hand himself, steeled against the blood, the screams, the wet tearing of sinew.
But there was a horrible intimacy to watching the healers set to work upon his cousin, stitching the wreckage he’d carried off the mountain back into something like a person, that was somehow worse than blood and pain.
“-can’t just ‘pop’ it back in after so long,” said a woman whose name he was sure he knew. “Until we know the extent of the damage we risk making things worse.”
‘Remembers subjects’ names’ came only a little after ‘can perform deeds of great valour’ on the list of requirements for a prince. Still, nothing came to mind and he stared at her cold-weathered face with an increasing sense of disorientation.
“If you’re proposing we just leave it-” said another, a girl who would have been no more than an apprentice in Valinor, raised up by necessity to fill dead men’s boots upon the long march.
“It’s been left thirty years,” said the senior healer. “We’ll keep it immobilized and anything more invasive can wait. We’ll need him conscious to assess the nerve damage anyway.”
The smell in the tent - unwashed bodies and abattoirs - caught in his throat and set him gagging. Still, he would not leave; Fingon the Valiant, of the line of Finwë, who had braved ice and orcs and the treacherous peaks of Thangorodrim, only to turn faint at the sight of a little blood?
“Go outside, my lord,” the younger healer told him and, mutely, he shook his head. “For the sake of his dignity if not your own,” she insisted.
It was the excuse he needed. He went. What wouldn’t he do for Maedhros’ sake?
***
“We’ll have to send to his brothers,” Fingon said wearily. He had gone straight from the healers’ tent to his father’s, not pausing to change his clothes. He regretted it now, looking back at the ashy footprints he’d tracked across the carpet.
“Do you think they don’t know already?” said Aredhel, who had come also, wrinkling her nose and gathering her white mantle away from him. “Swooping into camp atop the king of eagles wasn’t subtle.” Ever since their childhood, she’d resented it when he went off to hunt, ford rivers, climb mountains and left his little sister behind. Small wonder she was angry at him now.
“And the sons of Fëanor are likely to be even less so,” said their father. “They’ll demand we give him over into their protection.” Fingon had expected anger from him as well, for abandoning his duties, for the risk he’d taken, for bringing one of Fëanor’s sons into their camp, but his father had greeted their return with honour and sympathy. Fingon was still waiting to find out just how much trouble he was in.
“They can’t move him,” he said.
“I concur,” said Fingolfin. “His health aside, I would fear for my nephew under their care.” He had embraced Fingon when he first staggered from Thorondor’s back and still wore the same stained robes but despite that his face was calm and his voice was smooth and measured as it had ever been when he spoke before the courts of distant Tirion.
Fingon was too tired for politics. “Speak plainly, Father.”
“Thirty years and none of them bestirred themselves to do what you accomplished in a matter of days. Thirty years in which Maglor ruled as High King.”
“He never claimed the title.” Maglor had not looked like a usurper triumphant when Fingon had last seen him, before leaving on his quest. He had looked worn, grey eyes as flat as Lake Mithrim, and had not disputed Fingon’s accusations of cowardice and treachery, he who could once have convinced his cousin black was white had he a mind to try.
“Only the power.”
“We’ve heard gossip since you left on your wild eagle chase,” said Aredhel. “Maedhros did not take part in the burning, did you know that? He alone stood aside. I wonder what his brothers made of that.”
“Say what you will of the sons of Fëanor, but say not that they are disloyal,” Fingon said, his voice rising. The knowledge struck him like a blow but he was too tired to unpick why. “Our lives would be a good deal easier if they hadn’t followed their mad father against all sense. Do you think they would betray their brother lightly?”
Their father shrugged as though it didn’t matter. “Either way, our most prudent course of action is to hold him. He will be safe from treachery and, if we are wrong, it will not hurt for us to have some extra leverage.”
“You mean for him to be our captive? After everything he’s suffered-”
“Do you forget what our people suffered?” Their father smiled his politician’s smile, his voice still calm. “He will be cared for, treated as befits his station, but his welfare is not - will never be - my priority. Before all else, we must keep our people safe.”
“I did this to unite our people, not to bring about yet more infighting over a crown,” Fingon said wearily. It has all seemed so simple when the plan had first come to him but now, fogged with exhaustion, he wondered how he had ever thought it could help. The tent swam grey around him like the lake had broken its banks and risen up to drown them all.
“Are you sure you didn’t do it for pretty red hair and a skillful tongue?” snapped Aredhel. She bit suddenly at her lip. “No, I’m sorry, that was beneath us both. Rather, our cousin has a way with words. If anyone can put this matter to rest, it will be him. However…”
“Please,” said Fingon. “No more howevers! If I’d have known the rescue would cause this much trouble-”
“You would have acted much the same,” said his father, smiling wearily. It was a true smile this time and Fingon’s heart eased just a little.
“However,” said Aredhel. “If he dies while in our care, the Fëanorians will use it against us to justify...well, whatever they want.”
“He won’t,” said Fingon. He hadn’t slept throughout his journey into Angband, had kept himself going on pure adrenaline and fear and found himself struggling, despite the tension, to suppress a yawn.
“He might,” said Aredhel. “ You may trust in prayer and ploughing blindly forwards but we don’t all have that luxury.”
“Don’t bicker,” said their father. “If Morgoth couldn’t manage it in thirty years of torment, I believe our chances good. You’ve done a great thing for us, Fingon-”
“A valiant thing,” put in his sister.
“Valiant and indescribably rash - we shall have words about that later - but for now you must rest. Know that I am proud of you.” His father clasped his shoulder.
Fingon bowed and, taking the dismissal for what it was, staggered his way towards his own tent and his bed.
***
The Fëanorians came wearing their father’s star upon their surcoats, armoured in gleaming mail and with swords upon their belts. Their banners snapped at the air behind them and their tall, proud horses kicked up sparks upon the stones of the lakeshore. They were garbed for war. His father was right; his cousins never had been subtle.
When they dismounted and removed their helms, Fingon was relieved to see it was Curufin and Amras that had come. He cared not for Fëanor’s conniving favourite and Amras looked more like his brother’s ghost than like himself but at least neither was likely to scream imprecations or start a fight right there before the gates as Caranthir or Celegorm might have.
“Well met,” he called to them.
“Cousin,” said Curufin. “Where is your liege?”
“My lord father is with his counci-”
“You may give him our regards but it is not our uncle we come to see. Where is Maedhros Fëanorion, High King of the Noldor?”
Fingon had hoped for at least the pretense of civility even if he had not expected it. He gestured behind him to the camp and the hasty palisade that surrounded it. “He lies within; I have come to guide you. My men will take your horses and your weapons.”
Curufin’s sword came soundless from its sheath - it had been crafted by his father, how could it be otherwise? - and he held it up loosely before him in a posture that was quite pointedly not a threat. He smiled his father’s smile, thin and fey. “Oh will they?” he said softly.
Fingon folded his arms. He had never feared his cousins and wasn’t about to let childish posturing change his mind. “Would you bring that into a sickroom? Do you not think your brother has seen enough of blades?”
“I wouldn’t know; you have kept us here gossiping when we might have already gone to his side,” Curufin said coldly but Fingon’s shot had struck its mark; he twirled his sword and presented it hilt-first to the nearest guard. “Let us waste no more time then. We will cater to your paranoia if we must.”
They would have hidden knives no doubt, cunningly wrought, concealed as buckles and hair ornaments, but Fingon didn’t order them searched. He’d made his point and with less of a struggle than he’d expected.
“This way,” he said.
The camp was well ordered despite the cobbled together nature of their equipment. Already latrines had been dug and stables erected for the few horses that had survived the crossing. He watched his cousins scrutinizing the fortifications, part intelligence gathering, part professional interest.
“What hide is this?” Curufin asked, frowning speculatively at their tents. He reached out to stroke the treated skin with an expression of such avid interest Fingon almost forgot how much he disliked him.
“Ever the craftsman,” he said, trying for joviality. “It’s seal. Mammals that live beneath the Ice. If you wish to study it more closely, I will make you a gift of one of the pelts.”
“No need,” Curufin said, drawing back. “I was merely curious.”
“How is he?” Amras blurted, seeming startled by his own words. They were the first that Fingon had heard from him since Valinor and still he wished he hadn’t spoken.
“Alive,” was all he could think to say. He had to bite his tongue lest he add, ‘no thanks to you.’
“That well?” Curufin said dryly, no doubt guessing what he hadn’t said. “Has he spoken of it? Any intelligence he might have gathered-”
“He’s not yet woken.” In truth he had awoken several times but never to coherency. The fancies that they were back in Tirion were harmless, for all that Maedhros’ smile and murmured ‘Fingon’ had twisted like a knife, but there were other, uglier delusions. He had once managed to drag himself out of bed and halfway to the door before the guards noticed and returned him to the pallet while he screamed and bit and struck at them with a fist he did not have. He’d reopened sewn up wounds and Hadlath had needed stitches of her own for the chunk torn from her hand. After that they had no choice but to strap him to the bed but it would not do to let his brothers see him so. Fingon misliked that they were drugging him almost as much as he misliked the leather straps, though at least those he could cut through. He had seen his cousin’s eyes gone blank and feral, blood oozing dark and sluggish between broken stitches, and could hardly argue against the necessity of it all.
Curufin’s nostrils flared with a swiftly indrawn breath and Fingon hoped he had not seen the lie. “How badly- No. Let’s not waste words when I can see for myself. Lead on.”
They were already working on a more permanent building but for now their hospital was a series of interconnected tents. They’d placed Maedhros in one of the outlying ones, to give him privacy they said, and placed guards at the entrance. They bowed and stepped aside at Fingon’s approach, lifting the tent flaps with careful, gracious choreography.
Inside the smell was not so bad as it had been the first day, when it had driven Fingon to flee. Still there was the reek of blood and fever-sweat, but the tent had been aired out and the clean, pungent smells of medicinal herbs masked the worst of it.
Very little could mask the ruin of the still figure in the bed. The healers had shaved off his hair; it had been rank with filth, tangled and louse-ridden but its lack threw the damage into sharper relief. The gauntness of his features, the sores, the strange sunkenness of the left side of his face - a broken cheekbone, they had said when Fingon asked, and missing teeth.
His right arm was twisted still despite being braced and padded and Fingon could not look at the place where it ended in a bandaged stump, the linen already pinked with fresh blood.
There were other injuries of course, horrible ones, but they were the showiest and it was they that elicited Curufin’s sharp hiss of breath, Amras’ startled-rabbit stiffness.
“How could- We didn’t- Why didn’t we-” In any other situation it would have been gratifying to see Curufin at a loss for words.
“We’re doing all we can for him,” Fingon said instead of reveling in it. “The worst is over and we’re assured he will survive.” Cold words, the barest crumbs of comfort, but did they deserve anything more?
“I should speak to your healers,” Curufin said, rallying. “There are things they might not have thought of.”
“They’re our best,” said Fingon, telling himself that there was no point taking it as an insult, that Curufin had been certain of his own expertise in every field since the day he first learnt to read his father’s runes.
“Nevertheless.” He must have meant it to sound firm but there was an edge of desperation to the words and Fingon could only nod his assent.
“They won’t be familiar with the local flora,” said Amras dully as his brother stalked from the tent. “He really could help.”
Fingon remembered his manners. “We would be grateful for anything you can teach us.”
Amras didn’t reply. He stepped forwards to lean over the bed, hands fluttering over forehead, breast, stump, finally alighting on Maedhros’ remaining hand. As a child, before he’d learnt to hunt, Amras had brought home young rabbits, foxcubs, downy baby birds cradled in the nest of his palms. It had been an age and half a hundred deaths since then but in that gesture Fingon saw the child his cousin had once been.
“Why does he not wake?” Amras asked softly.
Temporary, the healers had told Fingon. He will know himself again in time, when the fever breaks, when he is not mazed with drugs against the pain. “Thirty years on that mountain can’t have made for restful sleep. I imagine he needs to catch up,” he lied.
“It was what he would have wanted.”
“To be left in the Enemy’s hands? To be tortured and abused without hope of rescue? I do not doubt it. Do you think that excuses you?”
“No.”
“No,” Fingon agreed. He wished it had been Caranthir or Celegorm, someone who would have thrown the first blow and given him an excuse to hit something. “When he does wake, I will tell him you were here.”
“We brought a litter,” Amras said but he might have been commenting on the weather for all the force there was behind his words.
“You won’t move him.” Not ‘can’t’. A prince should be gracious and Fingon wondered at his own rudeness while not repenting it.
“No,” Amras said. He released his brother’s hand and straightened up. “Not this time. Thank you for your hospitality.”
Fingon did not see them out, as he really should have, but drew up a camp chair beside his cousin’s bed. He could justify it as an attempt to avoid an argument with Curufin, who might take the refusal to hand over Maedhros with less equanimity than his brother. But truly he drew comfort in the steady rise of his cousin’s chest, the restless flicker of eyes beneath their lids, the uneasy twitch of fingers - five - against the blankets.
Whatever happened next, he has salvaged something . They could not take that away.
***
Fingon spent the rest of the day sitting at his bedside, fingers interlaced with those of his cousin’s one remaining hand, trying not to notice how thin they were, how crooked - the healers said some would need to be rebroken and reset.
He wasn’t good at idleness. Maedhros, with six younger brothers, had been the one to cluck over grazed knees and sit up by sick beds. Fingon could stay still for hours at a time upon the hunt but that was an active kind of stillness. This helpless waiting near drove him mad and so he had paced the tent and rolled bandages and read reports and, finally, left. There were fortifications to build, soldiers to drill, new lands to scout and, not only must those tasks be done, but his people must see him doing them.
The trip he left on, tracing the streams that fed the lake back towards Ered Wethrin, hadn’t been supposed to take more than a day - it was too dangerous for small groups to be out after dark in unknown lands - but then Doronor’s horse had come up lame, the weather had turned and they were all very relieved they’d packed enough supplies to set up camp for the night.
With the merry crackle of the fire and the earthy smell of root vegetables roasting in the embers it was a pleasant night despite the rain. After decades upon the ice, to lie back upon the dewy sward and feel the grit of sun warmed earth beneath one’s fingers seemed an impossible luxury. Fingon looked up at the stars and tried to put aside the tragedies, the feuds, the loves that had driven him to Beleriand and to see the land for what it was and what it could be. Such a kingdom they could build!
“Movement in the trees, my lord.”
“To arms!” Fingon leapt to his feet and tried to pretend that his heart hadn’t leapt also. Peace and tranquility had never really suited him anyway. Always he had felt most clearheaded, most himself when facing down a challenge.
He unwrapped and strung his bow, the camp bustling like an ant hill as the other scouts scrambled for their own weapons. There had been no cause to use it since Thangorodrim and he surprised himself by feeling no trepidation as he notched an arrow and sighted along it.
“On my mark,” he said as others raised their weapons. “I’d hate to shoot a Sindar and give King Thingol yet more ammunition to fling back at us.”
Along the picket line, their horses whickered and tugged at their halters; Fingon truly doubted it was Elwë’s people in the trees. Even at such a distance he was sure he could smell them, the stink of filth and festering wounds, or perhaps that was all in his head.
“There!” said Elegil. “I heard a branch break.”
“Hold,” said Fingon. “Don’t waste your arrows on shadows. Hail!” he called to the night, in Quenya then Sindarin. “Hail and well met. I am Fingon, Fingolfin’s son, come in peace. Will you come out and treat with us?” He wanted a battle, wanted it so badly his teeth ached with the clenching of his jaw, but he was a prince of the Noldor and he would not attack unprovoked, however foul the foe, however unlikely the chance at compromise.
From the woods before them and behind came laughter, rough and mocking. Many voices; more than twenty Fingon thought.
“We are outnumbered,” Ýreth murmured behind him.
“We shan’t be for long,” Fingon said brightly. “Did you forget I faced all the orcs in Angband alone? And here there are a dozen of us - it is almost unfair!”
Some of his soldiers laughed, out of duty perhaps but that was enough. He knew that they would hold.
Another branch snapped, louder and closer. The night was pierced by orange pinpricks, bright like fallen stars - the firelight did not seem so merry reflected in orc eyes.
Fingon shook rain damp braids from his face. “Draw!” he said.
Closer they came, and closer. It was not his imagine; despite the rain, the woodsmoke, the horses, he could smell the charnel house stink of them. A horse screamed in fear and Fingon could see Lossamon’s hands beginning to tremble.
“Loose!” Fingon cried.
Twelve pairs of stars winked out but there were more, always more. Fingon thought of red hair cropped short and the sound of a dagger parting sinew and he cast aside his bow and drew his sword.
He charged, not caring if he charged alone.
The orcs broke from the trees to meet him, a wave of twisted bodies and faces contorted by hate and pain. More than twenty, less than thirty. He had faced worse odds and lived.
Some orcs had crude polearms and Fingon slowed his wild sprint just in time to avoid impaling himself on a spear aimed for his chest. He broke the thrust and then stepped upon the shaft to keep the orc from raising it, letting his own blade flick up into the orc’s neck.
The orc beside it swung at him in a wild, overhead blow. Fingon raised his own blade to cover and, though his arm rang with the impact, the orc sword slide off of it like rain rolling off a roof. The deflection overbalanced his opponent and Fingon kicked out its knee to keep it that way, plunging his sword into its side as it stumbled.
Something clipped his thigh and he staggered but whatever had struck him vanished into the tumult as swiftly as it had come. The din of battle all around him now, so that, were they not wearing his father’s blue livery, he would be hard pressed to know his allies from his foes. He saw, through the haze of battle-fury, Lossamon fall to his knees and he shoved his sword through the back of the nearest orc, perhaps the one that had hurt him, perhaps not.
The smell of blood was stronger now, his face was sticky with it though he had no idea where it had come from, or if it was his own.
Another one came at him, huge and brutish, swinging a heavy, jagged blade at his neck. It was easy to step back and let the blade go whistling past his face and then, with the creature thrown off balance, step in and lay it open, shoulder to hip.
So slow these creatures were and so foolish. It almost felt unsporting.
Something barreled into him from the side and, while he got his sword up in time to cover, he was forced back, unable to bring the blade to bear. It caught at him, long grey arms wrapping around him to keep him from disengaging. Good! He relaxed his wrist, punching forwards to slam the pommel of his sword into its face. Teeth flew - he could not count how many in the dark - and he drew his weapon back and punched again, again, again. The orc’s legs bucked and it went down, dragging Fingon with it. He let himself fall, twisting so that he landed atop it.
His sword was pulled from his grip and he let it go, drawing a knife from his belt. The orc was still alive - still alive? it’s face was gone, how could it live? - struggling beneath him, filthy iron gauntlets closing about his wrist, about his throat.
His gorget was the finest steel and yet he felt it bend beneath that grip. No time to wonder, no time to feel the bruising pain in his wrist, he raised his free hand and the dagger edge ran red with firelight as he brought it down into the gaping ruin of its mouth.
The orc stopped moving and Fingon rolled free of it, grabbing for his sword. He sprang to his feet and looked about but there was no more fighting to be seen. His soldiers stood about, as shakily as he, but not an orc remained upon its feet.
His hand ached and so did his side. One of the gems that had been worked into his sword hilt was gone, leaving a socket gaping like a missing tooth. He picked through the ruin of the orc’s face until he found the lost sapphire.
“Sir?” one of his soldiers said carefully from somewhere quite far behind him.
Fingon straightened, tucking the gem into a pocket and feeling foolish. His first thought should have been for his soldiers. “Is all well? Take whoever is least injured and secure the perimeter.”
“Yessir,” said the soldier and she was gone before Fingon could get a reply to his question.
He saw why shortly, almost stumbled over his answer.
Lossamon was dead, his chest stoved in, ribs jutting proud like the timbers of a hull left to rot upon the shoreline. A death Fingon had lead him to. This was why he had climbed Thangorodrim alone, this awful sense of responsibility, the wondering if he’d been smarter, faster, better- No. Not now.
“Wrap the body,” Fingon ordered. “With all due respect. We’ll bring him back to the lake to be interred.” It was an undreampt of luxury to bury their dead. On the ice, they had left a trail of corpses behind them and thought themselves lucky that they could do that much. Towards the end they had been so cold, so hungry that even leaving them behind seemed like a waste. But, however far they had fallen, the Noldor hadn’t fallen that far.
They had moved the orc bodies away far enough that they might burn them, repaired the camp and set a watch. Fingon had expected to lie awake, bothered by the hundred things that kept him from sleeping every other night plus a few new ones (Lossamon dead and the orcs as well - they had been people once and he should never let himself forget it). But the turf was soft and he was tired and slept as soundly as he ever had.
They returned to Mithrim late in the afternoon, their shadows thrown before them by the falling sun.
Ever industrious, even in the short time they had been gone, the stakes of the palisade had been sharpened and work on a spike-lined trench had begun.
The guards opened the gate smartly at their approach. “you’re asked after, my lord,” said one of them. He could see the moment she caught sight of the riderless horse, the blanket-wrapped bundle slung across its saddle by the way her expression went suddenly wooden.
“I’m sorry to have kept Father waiting. I shall go to him at once,” Fingon said, though a debriefing was the last thing he wanted.
“Not him, sir. Your cousin. He’s awake.”