Fractures by Elleth  

Chapter Four: Maedhros and Fingon

Maedhros and Fingon begin the pursuit, and Maedhros draws on his experiences in Angband to learn an important piece of information.

Fair warning: This chapter contains some grisly imagery. If any of the following bothers you, please take due care reading: Torture of captives, mutilation (eye horror in particular) and forced cannibalism. I'm not sure whether it qualifies as "Dead Dove", but the dove is at the very least in the ER.

It was not until after daybreak that the two scouts emerged from the tunnel, looking spent and reporting nothing good.

"It seems that was an escape tunnel for the mortals that lived here. They must have wrought it intentionally confusing to throw any seekers off of the trail of anyone fleeing. It veers down into a cave system, into water and over rocky ground, and that was where we lost them," the woman reported, pushing bright hair back under the dark grey hood she wore. "Even the stones would not tell of their passage - it may be that the Enemy's arm has grown long enough to shield them even there. In other tunnels we found foes - spiders, and worse things that we dared not fight, for the sake of time. I suggested we separate, but now I think my brother had the better idea of it."

Maedhros nodded, heavy-hearted and heartsick, as he listened to his scouts finish their report. "I thank you, Glorloth and Gladhion," he said quietly. "Dismissed."

The siblings bowed and filed out of the house, and Fingon was pacing again. "What now? All your caution gave us was more distance to cross and even less chance of finding Alphangil!"

Maedhros winced. "I know that you are more likely to run heedless into danger than to make a plan and follow it, but only because that was a success once does not mean rushing into the tunnel will bring Alphangil back to us as it brought me back to you rushing into Angband. You were lucky then - and wise to set out to heal the feud, but not cunning. Manwë still pitied us then, that is the only reason you succeeded, or I would long be fodder for the carrion birds of Morgoth, with one of your arrows in my ribcage."

"I AM YOUR KING! YOU WILL -" Fingon thundered, and then halted as if struck by a sudden thought. The volume of his voice dropped only slightly, but a strange, feverish tone bloomed up in it instead. "How can you be sure none of your people - especially the ones delaying us - is another traitor? How can you be certain when you trusted this Cýronil enough to take her into your service?"

Maedhros' tone, too, changed. It softened dangerously. Fury and frustration dragged his voice into a deep, low, threatening cadence, more reminiscent of Maglor than himself. His brothers were rightly terrified of it.

He had never used it with Fingon before.

"Because I interrogated her, personally. It takes one thrall to recognize another," Maedhros said through what he was sure must be thin white lips. He was breathing hard, resting both his stump and his hand on the map table opposite Fingon, their postures mirrored and both of them tense enough to snap. "I failed to realize that she was still under Morgoth's power, but you will be happier not knowing all I do to keep my people safe, to separate those who mean us harm from the ones that do not. But I will vouch with my life for Glorloth and Gladhion. Their parents died defending Himring in the Bragollach and they have no love for the Enemy. You are King, but you do not know my people as I do."

Their eyes met, and Fingon's steely expression softened until he closed his eyes. "I apologize," he said quietly, defeated. "The longer we wait, the more I fear for her. I am King, I am not Mandos to be unmoved."

"I know, and I do not blame you." Maedhros let his voice go gentle, allowing the cracks in it to show. He reached across the table, laying his hand in Fingon's, finding his skin cool and clammy, and looking up found his eyes tired with the lack of rest and the worry gnawing at his mind. He resolved to teach Fingon something of the ways to steel his mind when they had all three returned to Himring, but miles and battle still lay between them and Alphangil's rescue.

"If we cannot find her, then we must pursue the other half of the host and find someone to tell us where she is. Caution is done with. Come."

He spoke to Hwestonnen briefly, outlining his plan to follow the host travelling in the open. From where they were near the center of Dorthonion, the Orcs would not yet have reached Anfauglith; they would have found shelter to wait out the daylight - hopefully in a spot that would allow for a quick, deadly attack leaving no more survivors than they needed to find out about Alphangil's whereabouts.

Maedhros snapped orders for those of his people who were well enough to be mustered and those few who were to remain behind to care for and guard the most wounded. He did not believe in any more targeted attempts, but there might always be another enemy attack, or the denizens of the tunnels coming to the surface sensing easy prey.

With all said and done, Fingon all but raced toward the horses. They were already outfitted, and Pilin was stomping at the earth impatiently, while, more complacent, Maedhros' Nimlach stood quietly. That changed when they began moving - even on the boulder-strewn, uneven ground, Nimlach was both careful and tireless, and Maedhros led the way with ease.

The Orcs moving downslope in their heavy boots had left tracks that even the least experienced tracker would find - a churned-up path of earth, trampled plants and pointlessly hewn branches, and the ground was still groaning where they had passed. It was not long before the groans turned into laments, as Glorloth, riding alongside Maedhros and Fingon, reported.

They were closing in on the Orc-host.

They had flown into gallops over level stretches of ground where the land permitted it, and even on the slopes they made good speed, so that the sun had not long passed noon when Glorloth held up her hand to slow them, slipped from her own horse's back and inspected the track, tipped her head back and breathed deeply of the wind blowing at them.

Then she drew her grey cloak about her and vanished into the underbrush noiselessly, returning only a few moments later, and with hand gestures conveyed, A dale with three steep sides behind those bushes, open to the north. The Orcs are down there: North-east in the shade. The Queen is not with them. Two chieftains.

Maedhros gestured back more laboriously with his left. Archers at the lip of the dell. Cavalry down at the entrance. Stir them up, leave the chieftains alive. I will do the rest.

Fingon smiled as he drew his sword, his eyes bright and hard, and Maedhros' heart seized under his armour. He nodded, resorting to ósanwë for a matter that the rest of the host had no business knowing.

I love you, he said. Be safe. I could not bear losing you any more than I could losing her.

Fingon did not reply in words, but with a warmth that reminded Maedhros of their three joined bodies, and the love that came with it, but all laced with a deep, swift undercurrent of worry that only action kept at bay.

The attack was as swift and as deadly as Maedhros hoped. Fingon had left Pilin behind and fought on foot, and Maedhros, riding into the fray on Nimlach, found his heart nearly stopped to see him in battle. Anairë had been - still was, surely - a dancer of some renown, and Maedhros knew well that Fingon had inherited his mother's grace, but to see it wielded as a weapon nearly deadlier than his longsword never failed to catch his breath with the beauty of it. Even a thick arc of black blood that spattered over Fingon's armour and halfway across his face did nothing to diminish it.

Within minutes only the two chieftains were alive, overcome and tied against a dead tree. Maedhros drew a small knife from a hidden sheath on his thigh and laughed, letting his fear and fury and love for Fingon and Alphangil carry him through this.

"Do you recognize me?" he asked in Orcish, and removed his helm to let his hair fall free. He did not hide the fact that he had been forced to learn the language in Angband, but still saw his people wince. It was unlovely, he knew, and unpleasant to speak it, in a way that left his throat sore afterward. But at this moment, ordering Maglor to practice it with him even after his captivity, and to have his people bring him Orcs to interrogate instead of slaying them right away, served him well, and he could not bring himself to regret it.

The chieftains exchanged glances, but did not reply. Maedhros pressed himself against the larger one of them bodily, towering over the crooked creature with its grey-mottled skin. It stank of piss and Maedhros could hear more liquid trickle over the pocked metal of its armour.

"I asked whether you recognized me."

The other chieftain, paler and more elf-like in its complexion, something that might once have been the honey-gold skin of a Vanya, was the one to reply. "We recognize you! Who wouldn't! Red Lamp-Eye the Defiant, the one the Master put on the Mountain because he could not break you! They still sing about you!"

He spoke with something like awe. The chieftain laughed a horrible, gurgling, orcish laugh and Maedhros had to force himself to keep a mask of ice in place, to let nothing of his nausea reach his eyes. Behind him, he knew Fingon hovered. He did not understand Orcish and did not know what was said, and Maedhros did not relish the thought of Fingon seeing this side of him, the side that he had had to permit to survive in Angband.

"If you want to go back to sing of me with your misshapen brood, you will tell me what I will ask you now. You will tell me true, or I will carve a piece off of your companion and feed it to you. Do you understand?"

The Orc said nothing.

Maedhros strode over to the other Orc. The smell of piss was stronger now, but he did not let that deter him. A swipe of the small knife, and the grey orc's ear came away, black blood steaming in the icy day, leaving him snarling and biting at the air. Maedhros raised it to his own lips and tore into the frayed tip of it, keeping eye-contact with his captive, and forced a piece of cartilage down his own throat in spite of the disgust that made him want to retch miserably. He knew if he let anything show, that he had lost.

He grasped the other Orc's jaw and forced it open. "Fingon," he said, holding the severed ear between his teeth, remembering only after addressing him to speak Sindarin. "He is eager for a taste. Feed him."

Fingon took the ear from Maedhros lips and stuffed it into the orc's forced-open mouth, then Maedhros forced it shut again. "Chew," he said in Orcish. "Swallow. Do you understand."

The Orc snarled, but did as he was ordered. The ear made terrible sounds between his teeth, and a side-glance at Fingon revealed an aghast expression on his beautiful face that almost made Maedhros abandon the entire endeavour. Only knowing that if he stopped now, they would never learn where Alphangil was kept, let him carry on.

"I asked whether you understood."

"I understand!" the Orc snarled in response. "I'll talk, Master damn you!"

"He already damned me, or you would be mercifully dead now," Maedhros replied, and did not add, And I as well. "Where is the High Queen of the Noldor whom you took?"

"We didn't!"

Again, Maedhros strode to the grey Orc. "What shall it be this time, do you think?" He deliberated for a moment. "Something softer." He stabbed down at the Orc's mouth and sliced across, and coming away with no more effort than tearing a piece of paper, the grey Orc's lower lip fell into Maedhros hand. The wounded Orc screamed, openly weeping now, with filth and abuse thrown in.

Maedhros ignored him, turning back to the first one.

"Then who did, and where is she." He gestured to Fingon, and once again the same thing repeated. Fingon, now with orcish blood on his hands that he wiped on his armour without speaking, but clearly churning with conflicted emotion, fed the Orc his companion's lip and Maedhros held his jaw shut until after he'd swallowed so he would not spit it out again.

Someone in Maedhros' host was noisily sick and the Orc laughed again, this time spiteful. "Weaklings. You'll not get her back and I'll get to boast."

"Are you so hungry that you would have me take that one apart entirely? Speak!"

The Orc did not reply.

The game repeated a third time. Maedhros did not ask Fingon then, instead spearing the second Orc's eyeball on his knife and showing it to the first one slowly. His companion had stopped snarling and hung limp in his bonds. Maedhros only turned when he heard the sound of a knife being drawn and just in time saw how Fingon cut the second's chieftain's throat, then turned away with a hard look on his face.

Perhaps it was the threat of death that finally moved the Orc to speak.

"West! West and a bit north of here!" he finally shrieked, now sounding panicked. "That's where the tunnel opens up into a dried-up tarn at the edge of the Ash Plain. We'd join up there tonight and march for home. That's all I know!"

Maedhros shook the eyeball from his knife and ground it under his boot, then yanked the knife across his Orc's throat as well. He gurgled briefly, then silence fell.

"West and north along the edge of Anfauglith, a dried-up tarn and a cave." Maedhros announced to the host, in his mind's eye recalling a probable place from the maps he had stared at for far too long, and once more reminding himself that he needed to speak Sindarin for them to understand. His throat already hurt. Then he took Nimlach's reins and swung himself into the saddle.

"We ride! To the High Queen!"

"To the High Queen!"

Maedhros's heart burned, and as he glanced to Fingon racing beside him still on Pilin, he could see an answering white fire and tears in his eyes, his look stubbornly ahead.