The Rescue of Elros and Elrond by heget  

Elros had the idea to cut the horses free to cover their escape. The two half-elven children were neither old nor large enough to ride the horses to freedom, but releasing the animals could fool their pursuers and deny an advantage to trackers. There were no dogs in the camp to track by scent, but many threads of false leads would be necessary to craft a blanket of confusion to hide them. Elros, explaining his logic to his twin, did not trust their balance to stay astride in the faster gaits that the boys would need to escape; beginners had no business riding pell mell through the forest, and the young boys were still novice riders. But he was no longer afraid of approaching the large animals. The refugee camp at the Mouths of Sirion could not support many horses, so the two boys had been relatively unfamiliar with horses until they were captured and taken to the Fëanorian camp. Elros liked horses. He trusted them more than anything else in this upheaval of their lives. The twins had been ripped away from home and family and taken to this unsafe camp in an unfamiliar forest by men who said that they would not hurt the boys - but those men were the same that had not only slaughtered everyone that the two boys had grown up with but, before the twins had been born, been the same ones who killed their grandparents and uncles. The Fëanorians had hounded their family and people all of their lives. Horses might accidentally step on Elros and crush his foot - or at least loom over him and whinny piercingly. But horses had soft muzzles and were not cruel nor would they promise that they were not cruel through lying mouths. Horses only lied about saddle girths and feed buckets. Elros trusted the horses.

The one that Elrond trusted most of all was his twin brother. And since Elros trusted his twin, when Elrond said that tonight was the time to flee, Elros listened and proposed the ruse with the horses.

Elros and Elrond whispered their plan to the soft crescent ears of the camp’s horses picketed where the campfires and torchlight did not reach, asking the horses to wander away just for the few hours of leeway that the two needed to escape. Large equine heads bobbed silently in the night, eager to comply. In early summer, grass beckoned. With stolen knives the young boys sawed through ropes. Most of the horses were kept on the far side of camp in a large corral, and Elros needed the knife to wedge open the latch. Elrond had first stolen his knife to stab the ones that had murdered Meleth, the boys’ nurse. That plan had failed, but he kept the unused blade for this new plan. He had wanted revenge on those that had dragged them away, but fear stopped him. His heart felt better giving the knife to Elros and watching him use it on rope and wood.

A crueler version of their plan would have been to stab the horses, crippling leg tendons or cutting throats. That violent option would have been taken by the outlaws that served Maedhros and Maglor. That was what the murderers of their grandparents and uncles would have done. Elrond did not suggest it to Elros and hated himself for thinking of it.

Anyways, their mother had drilled into Elrond and Elros how to flee through a forest and find food and shelter. Elwing had not taught her tiny sons how to kill. Why she had not was difficult to say: either they were not old enough to learn or she did not know herself how to or Elwing did not want the life of warriors for her sons. Their mother was gone; Elrond and Elros could not ask her why. Two months ago the reminder that their mother was dead would have triggered tears, but Elrond was dry-eyed. Determination and excitement overrode other emotions. Tonight they would escape. They would flee into the woods and hide in the forest just as their mother had taught them. The trees that lined the final length of the River Sirion before it emptied into the Bay of Balar were scant and small, making Elwing’s instructions on forestcraft difficult to model. But their mother ensured that the twins knew how to start a fire, how to climb trees, where to find food, and how to mask their tracks. Their mother had placed them in the arms of Meleth, their nurse who had been their father’s nurse before, and told them to run and hide, to go far away from the fighting and the men with swords. She would draw the bad men away; they must flee.

Elros and Elrond were obedient sons. They would flee.

First, the horses needed to run away.

The old mare with the large star on her forehead bent to nibble at Elros’s hair. A gentle, familiar gesture. A farewell. The horses understood, and the twins thought that the animals must have had the same heartsick shame that turned some fighters at the refugee camp at Sirion, the ones that had refused to burn homes or kill more mortal and elven lives. In silence and slow walk did the star-marked mare lead the corral’s occupants out of the now-open gate.

Tonight’s watchman for this end of camp was Dregor, an outlaw from Talath Dirnen and briefly a follower of Gorthol of the Dread Helm, or so he claimed. Elrond and Elros knew those names from old Dírhaval’s great work, the prose-poem that the old mortal man had been building from all the pieces of story brought in by the refugees. Meleth had been friends with the caretaker of the old mortal and Elwing stressed to her sons that it was vital that they know the history of all their people. Gorthol was really their grandfather Tuor’s cousin, the dragon-slaying Túrin. Dírhaval told that part of the story over and over to the young boys, even though it had been scary at the time, because they liked best how great-cousin Túrin killed Glaurung the Golden through cunning and stealth. And that they were not allowed to hear other verses. Which even now terrified the boys, if the slaying of Glaurung by hiding in a river gorge and stabbing upward as the dragon crossed overhead was not frightening enough. What could have been worse? Now, the twins thought that they could guess.

No convenient river gorges could hide the boys tonight, but a stroke of chance would. Dregor’s young daughter, Rúth, was colicky, and he had taken her to Kreka, leader of the other mortals in the Fëanorian camp. Kreka was Bór, honor-bound to never raise a weapon against the elves, and her Easterlings were shunned by the other mortals and most of the elves in the Fëanorian camp. Not that there were many Bór and almost all of them old women - but Kreka had a son around the same age as Rúth and was something like a Wise-woman. Dregor hoped for a poultice to help his daughter and had abandoned his post. He did not know this, because Kreka promised to tell one of her people to cover the watch for Dregor as tiny Rúth wailed in pain. Elrond and Elros, watching while they listlessly played a board game with Bledda, Kreka’s son, knew that Kreka had been lying. Her mouth creased the same way that Bledda’s did when cheating. Bledda was a few years younger than the twins, a child hopelessly bad at simple strategy, dice rolls, and hiding that he lied about his dice rolls. His mother, Kreka, was a better liar. She fooled Dregor. But the twins knew. Kreka did not want them here. Her sad face whenever the boys visited her tent betrayed her. She told them to return to the tent of Maglor to practice counting puzzles, which she knew that they had finished, and bade Bledda to gather up a hamper of food so that the boys could eat dinner away from the chaos of a crying Rúth and her panicking father. Bledda, confused because they had already eaten, gave the twins a bag of dried tallow-covered meat and berries prepackaged by his mother. The tacit suggestion of travel food was clear permission.

Tonight no watchmen would scan the woods outside the tents of the Bór or the large horse corral to the west. No one observed how the gray mare with the large star silently walked west into the woods, all the other horses following her, some trailing cut lead lines, none nickering or neighing to betray the twins. No one to say which tent the twins were in or know until the dawnbreak. At the treeline, where the earth was soft with last year’s decomposing leaves, did the horses trot off in multiple directions, no longer moving as a herd. Tonight Elrond and Elros must escape.

Pursuers would assume the boys run northwest, back towards Beleriand and the sea, in the direction of their remaining kin and safety on the Isle of Balar. Forest dense and green surrounded the Fëanorian camp, so south or east made little difference to get lost within. Summer and their mother’s lessons would keep them from starving. Elwing’s sons would fare better than Elwing’s brothers. The bag of Bór food promised that.

The young boys did not factor the danger of orcs into their escape route. Recapture from the attackers that snatched them from their home was a real danger; orcs were only in stories about their grandparents and great-grandparents.

Elros and Elrond stamped their feet hard next to the hoof-prints facing west and shoved a scrap of fabric from their tunics, bright orange like autumn leaves, on the rough bark of the nearest tree. A small piece, barely more than a few threads, as if snagged on a wiping branch from a fast-moving horse. Leaping did not place the fabric scrap high enough to fool a tracker into thinking them riders, so Elros as the lighter twin stood on his brother’s shoulders to balance and reach. Then through miming Elrond regained the purloined knife, used it to cut a few strands of hair, and sprinkled them on nearby bushes. Elros enthusiastically copied him, but Elrond stopped him from cutting off a braid. That would have been too obvious. When the Fëanorian elves discovered them missing and started to track, they would feel clever for finding those clues. Maglor loved to tell hunting stories. His voice was nicer than old Dírhaval, and his stories were shorter and less sad and scary. Elrond worried that the skilled trackers would be hard to fool, but Elros was right. The horses and their own arrogance would trick them.

They had swapped out the bright orange clothing for inconspicuous green behind Arlun’s tent, where a small pack of rope, the knife, a flask, twine for making snares, and two long scarves that could work as makeshift hats or cloaks had been stashed in anticipation of this chance.

Climbing the rest of the way up the tree and then crossing to the next was difficult in the darkness but helped by the boys’ lightness. And Maglor and Maedhros did not know how well the twins could climb. Limb-walking required perilous applications of balance and daring leaps aided by a length of purloined rope, but this was a game that their mother and the Sindar had taught the boys as soon as they could walk. Squirrels and owls the twins would be, scrambling through the forest canopy as if the branches were the rigging of their father’s ship. At first the pounding of their hearts was fear as they circled wide around the wooded perimeter of the Fëanorian camp, but excitement replaced that. A glee from outwitting adults it was, as any parent of young children well-knew, and a glee that came from releasing the fear that had never left from the night that Meleth took them from their mother’s arms and began to run, even as Elros and Elrond learned to suppress that fear in an outward mask of acceptance.

The mask had only worked because it had been true. They liked Maglor’s stories and mathematics lessons, the lessons in horseback riding and soft songs when they cried at night. Maglor was kind. Maglor loved them as he did his own brothers, even if all of Maglor’s brothers were dead but for the one. Elrond only had his brother left, too, with the rest of his family slain or gone. Maglor and his brother promised to keep them safe, so the fear had to become small and hidden like a mouse in a burrow when the foxes hunted.

Euphoria, ever a short-lived emotion, faded in the predawn. Half-elven though they were, Elrond and Elros had only as much endurance as children possessed. What they also had was foresight to climb as high into the summer canopy of a tall oak as they dared and string the stolen rope in a loop around the trunk above two branches at the threshold of their weight, creating a loop to brace their bodies. Secured in the knowledge of the safety rope, the weight tolerance of thin limbs that even the unnaturalness of elves would not overcome, and the screen of leaves in summer fullness, Elrond and Elros settled for a quick nap to recover strength.

Morning birdsong woke them.

The twins judged that hiding their trail was more important than the speed of running on the ground. Southern Ossiriand grew trees densely, mostly elm with thick fanning canopies. Many elm had two layers of dense branches, one high and low like two balls stacked atop another. Few bushes grew in the underbrush to hide in. It was better to fool the hunters’ instincts by staying above. And, the twins decided, the element of fun and danger won out. It felt like hopping between islands of drier ground in the marshland, and after each leap they paused, waiting for signs of notice and the startled birds to settle. Soon after dawn they could hear faint shouts when the wind blew eastward, but only twice before that sound faded. Success emboldened them, and they dared the ground in-between some of the larger trees, always pausing to see if any footsteps or obvious signs of broken twigs betrayed them.

“Your plan worked,” Elrond whispered as the twins found a promising hollow high in one of the elms, some old den that they could both fit into, alas uncomfortably. “They followed the horses.”

“They won’t give up,” Elros whispered in return, thinking of Maedhros. “After they recapture all the horses and know we aren’t with them. They need us,” he added, repeating something that Dregor had once said about how the peredhil boys were hostages to keep Gil-galad from retaliation against the Kinslayers. A strange notion, but one that the other mortals had thought sensible. Exchanging wards to forestall escalations of blood feuds was an old Easterling practice, according to Kreka, but one that rarely worked. Her great-grandfather, Bór, had been a peace-hostage of a tribe allied to Ulfang, but a raid had stolen him back. Kreka could recite a long history of blood spilled between the two Easterling groups, unlike the Edain, full of betrayal and slain family that the Nirnaeth Arnoediad was only the final most bitter verse. Her stories started to sound like their mother’s stories of her family, even their father’s of how Gondolin fell.

Rather than let nervous fear return, Elrond bit into the ball of dried meat and fruit.

His brother rudely requested a piece with a shove.

“I heard a creek nearby,” Elrond whispered as Elros chewed. “After dusk, we’ll go to it and gather water, then continue. M- they think we will run towards the sea. So we won’t. Not until they give up.”

Elrond almost voiced his fear that Elros was right and Maedhros and Maglor would not stop looking. But the sons of Fëanor had before. A strange thing to be grateful for. One that felt cruel towards the uncles that they had never known.

“Do you think Ada knows?” Elros whispered in the darkness of the tree hollow.

This was not the first time that his twin had asked that question, nor did Elrond’s answer change. “He’ll go to Cousin Gil-galad and Lord Círdan when he returns and finds everyone…gone. Vingilot is the best ship. Ada is safe and waiting for us.”

What the twins feared most, elven voices echoing from below their hiding tree, failed to materialize, so at dusk they crawled out and continued climbing. At the creek they first lowered the rope to soak a rag with water and wring it out into open mouths. Only when convinced that no one besides a river rat knew of their presence did Elros climb down to the bank to refill the flask.Then Elros used the knife to cut a piece from his green tunic large enough to rewrap the remaining food and use the watertight bag to fill with water. The dry air foretold of more days without rain, and there was no guarantee of another creek. Elrond watched his brother nervously, hoping that the large mulberry hid him. Remembering one of Elwing’s lessons, the boys gathered any remaining fruit that was no longer green but ripe reddish black. Unripe mulberry was toxic to both mortals and elves. Washing their stained fingers in the creek and brushing the indentations in the mud with a fallen branch, the boys tossed their rope across the lowest-hanging branch of the nearby elm and hauled themselves up. For a minute they dangled over the creek, and Elrond thought of Cabed-en-Aras, the river gorge that Túrin used to slay Glaurung and where Hunthor died. Only in the safety of the elm’s higher branches did his fear fade. Spending the night back in that large tree hollow was a temptation to reject, as it was too close to the Fëanorian camp. The darkness of night dampened fear of discovery, and the boys only stopped when they found a tall evergreen in which they felt safe to hide.

On the second day the only excitement was the herd of deer that they almost mistook for riders. Then the badger that Elros had to drag his brother away from watching. This time they traveled during the daylight hours. Distance was important now, for the search window would be widened.

On the third day they chanced running on the ground, refilling their water at a creek large enough to be the early stretch of a river. A fallen log gave them a bridge to cross. Eventually, or so Elrond told his brother, they would follow one of these rivers down to the shoreline and then up back to the Bay of Balar. Maybe they would make a raft and paddle right next to the coastline, ducking in with the tides but using the ocean to stay out of the Fëanorians’ reach. Surely Ulmo would protect the grandsons of Tuor.

On the fourth day the twins were found.

No son of Fëanor found Elros or Elrond.

One of the Green Elves did. A strange elf was standing on another of the elm tree’s branches below where the twins were hiding. With clothing as green as the young elm leaves and hair and skin as tan as the bark, only the outrageous choice of headgear disrupted the camouflage. Had the elf not spoken, the twins doubted that they would have noticed the Nandor bowman, for such was the mastery of his woodcraft. Even with that flower crown.

Not a simple daisy ring, either, that flower crown, but a botanical creation with the towering audacity and flamboyant weight of Morgoth’s iron crown. Branches thickly laden with bright pink flowers were too eye-catching to overlook, yet somehow the Nandorin elf accomplished the feat of near-perfect stealth to climb onto the same elm tree. Exhaustion and hunger perhaps played a role. It was the flowers’ scent that alerted the boys. So incongruous was the strong scent of blooming cherry blossoms that it forced the twins to turn around on their perch until they found the source staring up at the twins in matching bewilderment, mouth and eyes wild.

Neither Elros or Elrond remembered screaming. Still, they did. Though regrettable and counterproductive to their goal, the loud noise was involuntary and understandable. A stranger on the same tree, close enough to leap up and grab their feet, was frightening. The scream did make the elf lower his bow and cry out an apology. And the elf needed his hands free to catch the falling Elrond who had unbalanced off his tree branch in the shock. The Nandorin bowman immediately released Elrond, more to dissuade a struggling Elrond from tipping them both out of the tree than the threat of Elros with his knife crawling towards them.

“Peace, my princes!” the elf shouted in the Laegrim accent. The difference in accent between the Green Elves and the Sindar was most noticeable as a subtlety of vowels - a lack of diphthongs and overall terseness - but one that the twins could notice. It was their mother’s accent. She had been born in Ossiriand and both her parents raised among them, so although her family moved to Menegroth when she was very young, by some quirk Elwing retained the traces of the accent that marked her as the daughter of Dor Firn-i-Guinar. Instantly the sound of the words soothed Elros and Elrond before the context of the message could. “My princes,” the elf repeated. “My princes, come down before you fall. I did not intend to startle you, nor you I.”

Their mother’s accent - and that the twins did not recognize the elf’s face, which meant he was not a follower of Maedhros and thus safe, earned him their trust.

And, Elrond was honest to himself, his curiosity overruled his caution. Cherry blossoms did not flower in the months of summer. How had this Nandor bedecked himself in a dense pink profusion?

The descent from the tree was made awkward and slow because the twins could not decide if maintaining eyesight or placing the bulk of the tree’s trunk between them was safer. That the Nandor bowman leapt from the lowest branches straight to the forest floor without use of rope only sparked envy.

On the ground, Elros hesitated between unsheathing the knife again or reaching for his brother's hand for reassurance. Elrond overruled the internal debate by claiming his brother’s hand, fingers squeezing in the all-too-familiar signal to wait for adults to make the first move.

More Nandor revealed themselves, stopping at neighboring trees to encircle the twins while keeping enough distance for the illusion of escape. The speed and silence of their movement and the lack of threat meant that the twins were not planning on bolting from the gathering Green Elves, though the peredhil boys were unaware of their own feral and wide-eyed faces and thus why the Nandor were so afraid of spooking the children. Only three rangers joined the Green Elf on the ground. Two were bowmen; another carried a long iron spear. All were taller than the flower-crowed elf but looked towards him as their obvious leader. With wonder and caution clear on their faces, the emerging elves murmured the names of two princes. The wrong names. Eluréd. Elurín. As more of the Green Elves came from the summer foliage, their voices grew louder as reverence became excitement and joy. “Elrond, Elros,” the names became, or a shouted, “Elwing’s sons,” and the twins forgave the first names. Elros and Elrond had not expected wandering hunters amongst the Green Elves this far south of the River Adurant to know their names. It was painful to be reminded that the others were still looking for their uncles Eluréd and Elurín, but a comfort that the hope had not been abandoned.

Elrond never considered the possibility that friendly elves would find them so far from the Isle of Balar. A little sadly he dreamed that these Nandor were correct to still cling to the hope that their uncles were not dead. A flight of fancy, that Elwing’s brothers had survived and fled south, also hiding in the woods of southernmost Ossiriand. In a sweeter song, the pair would have found each other, like Cousins Tour and Túrin staring at each other across the lake. That sweetness only existed in songs where time stopped in the branches of ancient starlight trees. Was that how this Nandorin bowman kept his pink flowers from fading? Had they wandered into an enchantment?

“Who are you?” Elrond asked.

“Captain Orothaiben,” the Green Elf answered. “We have been hunting and killing orcs and the lesser dragons that dare south. And scouting the Kinslayers to warn Balar if they turn towards the sea once more or flee over the mountains. Though they do not fell our trees as the mortals once did, their presence is a dishonor. Rumors we had that the Kinslayers held you captive. Our plan was to interrogate one of their followers, a former kinsman, to learn the truth.” The hatred that Orothaiben felt towards the Nandorin followers of the Fëanorians twisted his face into an ugliness that the beauty of the flowers could not offset. Elrond dissected the name in his head. Cherries and rage fit the captain of the Green Elves. Elrond wondered if it was a mother-name or later bestowed. “Such is their skill that we dared not chance discovery, until a few days ago, a great tumult, we feared that one of their scouts had finally noticed us.” Some of the Nandor in the trees muttered curses and spat. Elrond understood that professional pride had now been salvaged, knowing that the uproar was over the twins’ disappearance.

“We loosed the horses,” Elros bragged.

“Like clever outlaws,” said one of Orothaiben’s men on the ground, the only one carrying an iron spear instead of a wooden bow. He was the only elf with pale gray hair instead of brown or black, but his thin-lipped face shared no signs of immediate kinship with the line of Elu.

“Twas a marvelous escape,” the Nandor captain, Orothaiben, proclaimed, his vigorous head nod dislodging some of the pink petals of his flower crown to fall into his shoulders and litter the forest floor, “but I beg that you allow us to escort you, my princes. For the love that I bore for King Dior and Queen Nimloth, kinswoman of our slain king Denethor.”

“You will take us to Cousin Gil-galad?” Elros asked, and the Nandor captain answered by swearing an oath.

Elrond, disappointed with the loss of his dream raft, hoped that said disappointment did not show. This would be safer. And the Green Elves would have food.

Elrond’s nod of acceptance was the sign that the rest of the Nandor must have been awaiting, for almost all of the company descended from the trees and began to crowd around the boys and their captain, speaking over another in excitement. Amenities like blankets, sturdier shoes, and food were bandied about in the overlapping discussions. From clues, the Nandorin camp was nearby and a debate on if to have the boys rest there or quickly move further out of the Fëanorians’ range was breaking out in furious whispers among those standing farthest away. Flower-crowned Orothaiben made a sharp hand movement that silenced his men’s chatter and redirected all eyes to him. “Thou all give me quiet. Camp first. A balrog company was sent over the valley of Thalos. We have only a few seasons before all of Ossiriand is burning. We must plan for after we return the boys. To sate my heart’s wounds, I must increase the number of orc corpses.”

This, though neither twin knew it at the time, was the debate that would embroil Balar well into the early years of the War of Wrath that none had any idea was coming, for Orothaiben’s followers were the only elves not of the soon-to-be arriving army that were still willing to fight Morogth’s forces upon the fields of Beleriand.

“You will come with us?” Orothaiben asked once more, fluctuating back to that polite hesitancy by which he addressed the children but did not show towards his men. Elros realized that the knife-brandishing must have made a great impression, or that the boys’ wariness was not as masked as the twins had assumed. Strange how it had so fooled Maedhros and Maglor. A willful blindness or arrogance perhaps from the sons of Fëanor, thinking that they had fully won the trust of their young hostages.

“Yes,” Elros and Elrond answered, “take us home.”

The Nandor did not cheer, but the flurry of hand movements and wide grins conveyed the joy.

The captain of the Green Elves apologized once more to the twins. “The likeness with your uncles is truly uncanny. Your faces mirror those of Prince Eluréd and Elurín.”

“Nonsense,” one of the rangers interrupted. He shoved to the front of the huddle to stand beside his captain and point at Elros’s face. “Look at that weird little mole below this twin’s eye. That’s Tuor. Your grandfather had that same mark, like a tear.”

The last name that Elros or Elrond expected to hear was that of their mortal paternal grandfather, and a barrage of questions swelled up to replace everything that they had initially planned to ask their rescuers. Quickly it was established that the tall elf - the same spear-carrier with pale hair- was a native of Hithlum and kinsman of Annael. The ranger from the north buckled under the weight of the twins’ demanding questions about Grandfather Tuor and Great-Grandmother Rían and living with Great-Grandfather Annael. Elros kept touching his mole reverently, and Elrond felt jealous that they were not identical twins. To placate himself, he pointed out various moles and freckles on his arms and one on his chest, asking the captain if any matched those of Grandfather Dior or Great-grandfather Beren. Orothaiben knew Grandmother Nimloth and swore that Elrond had her teeth-shape. Privately Elrond thought the observation weird until the flower-crowned elf removed a glove and held out the flesh of his palm where it met his thumb. There was a small crescent scar.

“Queen Nimloth bit me as a child,” Orothaiben said, as if it was his proudest memory. “As fierce as her father’s spider.”

None of Elwing’s stories ever mentioned spiders.

“Approach!” one of the Nandor still in the trees shouted, and Orothaiben quickly pulled on his glove.

“My princes,” he began deferentially, but Elrond interrupted.

“They heard me scream. They’re coming.”

The captain of the Green Elves did not look at the twins with the pity that they were so accustomed to but a burning intensity that both pretended was not familiar. If Elrond compared it to a hawk, Orothaiben was not scary. “You shall be safe with us.”

Those were Maedhros’s eyes, battle-crazed and heedless of injury.

Each twin was picked up by one of the Nandor and hauled up into the trees, then carried through the canopy to a thicket of elm surrounding a fallen oak. At first confused, the twins soon learned that a pair of small wooden platforms had been created high in these particular elm trees, a lookout flet with a foliage camouflage woven on the underside of the platform. Here the twins were deposited, motioned to remain quiet, and shown where to peer over at the correct angle to watch the clearing without being seen. A Nandor scout that the twins did not recognize joined them and the spearman on the flet, clarifying that the approaching Fëanorians had been spotted by this scout, and the relaying of his signal was the cause of alarm. Orothaiben and a few other Green Elves positioned themselves in the surrounding trees with bows strung and arrows held loosely. Still hidden from the ground, the hunters waited for their quarry. The boys had no reference for this ambush, for it held no sense of danger like the stories of Túrin’s slaying of Glaurung or the Hunt for Carcharoth. The Nandor were smiling. After the stories of Menegroth and the destruction of their home, the twins believed that fighting back against the Fëanorians was as dire as fighting Morogth’s dragons that had sacked Gondolin and Nargothrond, won only by sacrifice. But Orothaiben and his men had no fear, as if they were hunting deer and not a more dangerous animal like a boar or bear. And, watching Orothaiben pluck another petal from the crown he wore and flinging it towards the forest floor, the mystery of the cherry blossoms was answered. The captain of the Nandor knew that the scent and colorful petals could be used to track him. Bait. The confident madness which taught orcs to recognize and fear the scent of cherry blossoms. That no hunter besides Araw was more skilled than the Green Elves of Ossiriand was a fact that the twins now had proof.

In the long wait, birdsong returned to fill the silence, but the twins knew that to hope for a false alarm was foolishness - and an insult to their rescuers. Still, over an hour passed before the caution of the far-eyed Nandor scout was validated.

As certain as the pain of a burn after touching the metal of a pot atop a fire, Maglor and Maedhros, garbed in russet red cloaks that matched the elder’s hair, entered the clearing of the fallen oak tree.

The first arrow hit the ground before Maglor’s feet, angled so that it would have skewered his leg had the singer entered the clearing at a run. The second arrow came from behind, whizzing past Maedhros and landing beside the first arrow. It had been only an inch, two at most, from his shoulder, and would have ripped through fabric had the arrowhead been larger. Maedhros leapt to the side like a frightened animal. A third arrow joined, angled high. It would have pinned Maedhros between the shoulder blades had the archer not waited until he moved. A fourth arrow, also from behind, sailing over their heads to land behind the fallen oak.

Nothing could have been a clearer threat, and the cruelty of the implied death from behind was particularly insulting. Three more arrows, aligned like a trick shot, thudded into the trees in behind the two Noldor, then the captain of the Nandor hit the young sapling growing out of the exposed roots of the fallen oak as showy proof of how surrounded the two Noldor were and how willing the hidden archers were to spend arrows to prove a point.

After the first arrow Maglor drew his curved blade and spun defensively, cloak held to shield his body. Maedhros half-unsheathed his own blade. Neither were carrying projectile weapons, unless a sling was hidden under a cloak. The lack of companions or horses confused the boys. Surely they had recaptured the horses. Did the Noldor no longer trust their men or beasts, or had they thought to track the boys alone and on foot and reach them? Elrond refused to calculate how quickly the pair had caught up to them.

After the second or third arrow the nature of their unseen enemies must have been obviously hostile elves and not orcs. Elros wondered if that was frightening or reassuring to the two Fëanorians. There was nothing distinct about the Nandor arrows or fletching to his untrained eyes, but the boy doubted that one could mistake them for orcs’. And the Fëanorians had no allies besides the outlaws of their small camp and the few Bór.

Orothaiben shifted, deliberately allowing the pink of his floral attire to peek through the foliage. The movement and color drew Maedhros and Maglor’s attention. The Nandorin captain whistled a short and mocking note, as if he did not think the pair of Fëanorians keen-eyed enough to notice him without aid. Orothaiben languidly notched another arrow. All was calculated disrespect; the whistle and slowness was the same playfulness as the cherry blossoms. Everything spoke of someone who had grown bored of his own mastery and whose joy came at the expense of his enemies.

Maedhros and Maglor stepped back from the clearing into the border of shadows, though this did little. Not even a fool could misunderstand the warning, and though they must have known that they were surrounded, they looked only in the direction of that flash of pink. If Maedhros or Maglor had looked up, they might have noticed one of the Green Elves in the tree directly above them, weapon pointed downwards. Maglor shifted away from his brother, a sign that they perhaps sensed the immediate danger, but it was Maedhros who opened his mouth.

The Nandor bowman’s arrow did not graze even a strand of Maedhros’s hair as it thwacked into the tree beside him, but as with the other warning shots, these near misses were only due to the archer’s incredible control. Only on Orothaiben’s whims would those inches change. Fast could be Maedhros’s blade - but no speed or reflex that the swordsman possessed was faster than the archer, despite what Maedhros’s desperate ego may or may not admit. And Maedhros’s fear was wiser than his pride.

The left hand rose in a gesture of surrender. The mouth closed without a word.

Only then did any of the Nandor make a verbal response.

Short mocking barks and whistles assaulted the two Fëanorians from the branches that hung above their heads, encircling them in scorn. Some of the Green Elves could throw their voices and others moved silently around the perimeter of the clearing, disguising the sources of the mockery. The Nandor laughed at how the two Feanorians flinched, prolonging the sounds. Then as swiftly as the laughter started, it stopped. In this silence did the leader of the Nandor eventually deign to break with a taunt. “Be at ease, Kinslayers. My arrows will not pierce thee, though my heart doth sing for it. Yet I shall not be thee. If I e’er become like the orcs, murdering elves and men and despoiling fair cities and refuges, it shall be the Black Foe himself that turns me into a monster, not my own hand.” This barb turned Maedhros as red as his hair, his eyes alight with the same murderous rage that the boys remembered when he cut down their nurse. Orothaiben laughed again, and there was only cruelty in that sound. “If thou linger within my sight, perhaps my hands shall attempt to end thee. The temptation is strong. And it is not the last time that thou hast brought malice and violence in thy wake. Thou has not offered any decent man or elf peace for many a long year, and so thou cannot demand that anyone treat thee with such. When first the orcs came, before we fled west over the mountains, we thought them kin as well, and reached out in brotherhood and pity to give the orcs succor. They did to us what thou have done, Kinslayers. Orcs, I name thee, though you look still fair,” and here Orothaiben laughed again, “instead of foul.”

Maedhros’s rage deprived him of speech, so it was Maglor who opened his mouth to attempt to bargain or refute the Nandor bowman’s evaluation of their character and deeds. He achieved no more success than his brother, for the bowman spoke over Maglor, “We do not listen to the words of orcs. They have no value but to the Great Enemy and even he, I think, listens not to his minions’ prattle.”

“We are not-” Maglor started to deny the accusation, but the forest erupted into raucous laughter, uncalculated and involuntary, as every single Nandor elf gave into the absurdity of Maglor’s denial. As loud as a giant flock of crows were they, and Elrond and Elros were infected by the sound. Smiles unbidden unfurled on their faces.

Orothaiben whistled once more, a rising note longer than the one he had taunted the two Fëanorians with, and made the one-handed gesture that the twins now understood as a command for silence.

“Crawl back to your camp, Orcs. And fetch your horses before my men mistake them for deer. The beasts look underfed,” the Nandor captain taunted.

“The boys!” Maglor shouted, and Elrond felt a pang at the emotion in Maglor’s voice- but as always the child could not identify how much of the racing in his heart was fear. The fear of Maglor never left, no matter what other feelings also grew in his heart.

“The children that you stole are not yours to know, Thief,” the Nandor bowman spat. Again the insult drew colors to Maedhros’s pale and scarred face.

Another long silence, the Nandor waiting for the Fëanorians to dare hypocrisy and claim innocence of that accusation. Elros glanced at his brother’s face. Hurt, and the cause of that expression the same confusing mixture of sources.

Once more Maglor pleaded, “We do not wish them to come to harm.”

That lie drew not only raucous laughter from the Nandor but pain in Elrond’s hand as his twin squeezed it in furious disbelief. Elrond was doing the same to Elros, digging his nails into his twin’s flesh like the stolen knife had cut into the corral gate.

Maedhros and Maglor were liars. Their mother was dead. They had hurt the boys by destroying their home and the home that they should have had -just as Morgoth had destroyed the city of their father’s grandfather- and by stealing them away and not letting them leave. Elrond wanted to leave. More than he wanted to stay with Maglor, more than the fear that there was no place safe to go and all of their family and the families of the elves and mortals that the boys grew up with were all dead, more than fear in how there was something mean in the Nandor bowman’s face - that same meanness inside Maedhros and Maglor and the outlaw men and elves that obeyed them. Only some of the Easterling women and children in the outlaw camp lacked that meanness. Bledda’s mother had been nice, like Meleth, and Elrond prayed that one day Maglor or Maedhros would not stick their sword through kind Kreka.

“Go north!” Orothaiben commanded. “Find one of the balrogs that despoil our lands and die fighting against their might, Ship-Burners! Choose a worthy, selfless death instead of cowardice.”

“My brother and I shall not leave until we know that the boys are-”

“Thou shall do nothing!” Orothaiben interrupted. “All thy grand choices have been to the cause of evil, even when they were not meant so. And death to elves and mortals alike has thou chosen, again and again like the orcs thou art.”

This, Elrond thought with a nod to fairness, was not completely true. Maedhros and Maglor had spared them instead of murdering them besides Meleth. Nor had the Fëanorians abandoned Elwing’s sons in the cave, though that would have been better, for then they would have been rescued by Círdan. However the only reason that the twins had been there was because Maedhros and Maglor had decided to invade the last free settlement on the mainland, the last safe refugee from Morgoth’s forces. Mentally Elrond withdrew his objection.

“Are they safe?” Maglor pleaded.

“As they are no longer in the hands of their enemies,” Orothaiben murmured, then shouted, “Begone. I offer thee the mercy that I do not give other orcs, for the sliver of it that thou creatures still possess, in the hope that thou might redeem thyselves. As my father once offered succor to the first orcs, thinking to aid a tortured kinsman who escaped the Dark Lord. They slew him.” The flower-crowned elf smiled. Nothing in his face spoke of joy or kindness.

Had Maedhros less self-control, he would have been shuddering. Once more Maglor covered for his brother’s silence. “And are we safe to depart?”

“Thou insult me by ascribing thy character to me,” Orothaiben spat. The multitude of arrows embedded in various places around and in the forest clearing betrayed or confirmed his words, depending on if one focused on the fact that no arrow intentionally had touched a son of Fëanor. “Had I wished to instigate an attack, I would have done so when thy brother built a fortress upon the gravesite of my fallen king and kin, when Amon Ereb was despoiled by those that have the blood of my people upon their blades.

“I do not, because I am not as low as thee.” Orothaiben shifted on his arboreal perch, allowing the twins a better angle in which to see his face instead of guessing from tone of voice and arm movements.

“By thy oath and actions are thee the hunters of men and children alike, pursuing their deaths. Back to thy lairs, foul dragons of thy own making. I have no rich gems or gold upon my corpse to loot. North to the Rathlóriel thou canst go and dredge it to satisfy this immoral greed.”

“I do not care about gold!” Maedhros shouted.

Orothaiben made a face of bemused acknowledgement. “Your brother,” he said, referring to Caranthir. “I cannot tell thee apart,” he jested in a flippant imitation of Noldor disdain. “Thou cares not who thy enemy is and has made of it the world. ‘Tis a sad existence, this that thou hast chosen. But in truth I feel no pity. No more than I can the orcs that slew my father or my king Denethor. Or the ones that slew my King Dior, his fair queen, and his children. Thy presence is poison upon my soul. I will not pursue thee, for the foulness that corrupts like dragon miasma.”

Years later, a gray-haired Bledda would explain the root of that emotion to the twins in a confession of compatriotism. Disgust and sorrow fueled that hatred of Orothaiben’s, because the source was love made unhallowed. Bledda as the last Scion of the People of Bór felt the same emotion when confronted by the Easterlings that kept their allegiance to Morgoth. Where should have been a happy reunion between two mortal tribes was thwarted by all-consuming fury that those that could have been distant kinsmen were willing to chase the promise of evil at every offer. In Dor-lómin, men ruled over conquered people with the tools of despair and cruelty, corrupted by the promise of a rich home. Bledda accepted the fearful and hateful glances from the children and grandchildren of the Hadorim women spared to be kept as Easterling wives, children who looked at their own fathers with either fear or love or an all-too-familiar blend of both. “My mother and her mothers clung to honor, even when we lost our homes and then renounced our second. But we never renounced our heritage as the People of Bór, because ever since the Choice made by Bór of the Great Soul, the only foes that we have slain are those of the Dark Lord. I know this, even if the victims of Dor-lómin do not. And I will not blame the ones that show me fear because I would not change my garb or songs.” Bledda paused before continuing his confession, knowing that the parallel that he was drawing would hurt the brief companions of his childhood. “Those that hate me because they see me as a traitor for siding with the Army of the Valar, those have my sorrow. And disgust. For they have identified themselves with their family’s murderers and captors. Not all could be Aerin and slay their second family, or Tuor and escape. Not all could choose death, or had the luck to find allies to evade recapture. To live by siding with the victors, choosing the friends of Morgoth as their masters and ignoring their deeds, giving those men their love, and hating their fellow victims and those that escaped the whip and blooded sword. To mistake for true kindness this corruption under the guise of safety. And that feeling will curdle into a matching hatred if I allow it. It is poison, and it fills me like heady wine if I indulge, eager to steal my wits, and I wish to. Because anger towards evil is not wrong, but the blindness towards mercy is.” Nodding towards the refugee camps that the Vanyar soldiers established for the remaining mortal inhabitants of Beleriand as the continent was slowly washing away, Bledda continued. “The fighters that denounce their old ways and their fathers' oaths, that will no longer attack the helpless and terrorize women and children, I will help to save, though if it were to be my sole judgement I would rule to give them death, or at least stay my hand and watch from high as the flood waters and avalanches bury them. Instead I give to the Gods the task of judging their sins.” Bledda’s deep sigh came not from an old mortal man’s weariness but a young man’s pain. Kreka’s son accepted his limitations on who he could not save. Neither Elrond nor Eönwë yet reached the same conclusion, holding out on a hope as little as could be nurtured, though the slain from Sauron’s unwillingness to submit to judgement and give true repentance would come later and of far higher toll. “The young, they will be comforted by your stories of the island. You and your brother should go among them more often and tell the story of arriving on the Isle of Balar, of how crowded it was with faces familiar and not, of sharing the sorrow of lost family and joy of your survival. Your brother soothes their fears when he reminds them of the experiences that they share and soon will. To them give your attention, as I remind myself to. My job is easier when the refugees trust us, and they trust when given bittersweet truth. That your arrival to Balar did not reunite you with kin thought dead, but among your people did you return. The children have never seen the ocean.”

The night before the twins sailed to the Isle of Balar, Orothaiben camped amongst the remaining beech trees of Nimbrethil where the twins had first been taught to climb. The smooth silver trunks and low branches called out to be explored, and it was with nostalgia that Elros and Elrond raced up the nearest tree until they could peer over the late summer leaves. Under the glow of moonlight they could see the rest of Arvenien. Stumps of felled trees dotted the surrounding hillsides. Turning they could see the glint that was the distant reflection off the ocean, but the Cape of Balar was too far away to see. There was a small fortress there now built by the orcs, according to the Nandor scouts, hence all the felled trees. Orothaiben wanted to attack it after dropping off the twins. The orcs had no watercraft to launch an invasion to the Isle of Balar, another location too distant to see from their arboreal lookout, but a stronghold worrying close to the last safety of Beleriand’s free people was unconscionable. Neither twin wanted their Nandorin friends to leave them so soon after arriving in Balar, but it was a selfishness that they could not voice.

The Nandor also lacked boats, but the elves knew how to make dugout canoes. However, with seventy-five miles of seawater, they would not chance the voyage but wait for contact with Círdan’s mariners. The Bay of Balar was mild enough for amateur sailors to venture into the coastal shallows on calm days, hoping to spot a friendly fishing vessel or pearl diver. Here the Green Elves needed the twins’ knowledge. As natives the boys knew its weather. The air smelled of home, the wind that caressed their faces as they leaned out of the beech trees as soothing as Meleth’s hands. At night the seagulls, sandpipers, and terns were asleep. In the morning the birds would cry, and Elrond and Elros would delight in the sound of their returning neighbors, the ones that the Third Kinslaying had not slaughtered. A short-lived delight that grew to highlight which sounds and sights and sensations were missing.

“Grief,” Elrond said, “for all the people I could never see again and the homes that were lost, even those that I did not think I would miss. Father told me the same, of Gondolin. Of how, as much as he hated his Uncle Maeglin who tried to kill Grandfather Tuor and himself, a little part of him still loved his uncle, despite the evil. And though Eärendil loved the sea more than any place in all of Arda, he still missed the walled mountains of Gondolin and its towering white buildings, cage though it was. But he would not choose it over the forests or the shore or the sea, which he would have never known without Gondolin’s destruction. And that all paled before Mother.”

Bledda chuckled. “For me, I like these mountains. I like the blue of the sky and the clear canopy of stars. The cold stone and snow, the strong winds, the bright yellow-green lichen. I was never at ease in the forest.”

“I have tried to teach you,” Elrond said. “How you can climb the sheerest cliff face and fall from a tree astounds me!”

“Squirrel,” Bledda teased, “that is what your elf-blood is. Or cat, with your night-sight. I am too old, my bones too brittle, to test against the whims of fickle branches.”

Elrond hated this reminder of the disparity of their aging. The War of Wrath was not yet ended, so Eönwë had yet to gift the boons of power, wisdom, and life span beyond that of any mortals to the Edain (and the last of the Bór, equal in loyalty) - or the choice that would one day permanently divide the peredhel twins. To change the subject, Elrond asked, “Well, Goat-friend, what happened to the horses all those years ago?”

Chapter End Notes

The only actual break with canon is Orothaiben's company still fighting against the orcs and forces of Morgoth in the final days of the First Age when we are told none beside those freshly arrived from Aman did so. Everything else is sketching in the empty spaces.

Over ten years ago I had the genesis of this fic with the creation of the character of Orothaiben, though its premise of rejecting the entrenched fanon around Elros and Elrond's captivity is twice as old. Especially when the blatant ties to fandom misogyny informed the treatment of certain characters, and my dissatisfaction and disgust only grew the longer that I spent in said fandom. Some fics are a liberating delight to write, like this one.
There is no canon basis for how long the Fëanorians held the twins hostage - and I will not sugarcoat the situation as something else. The period could have been years, but just as easily only a few months. Just long enough for 'love as little can be thought' to grow alongside other emotions. Nor any statement on how or when the twins were no longer with Maglor and Maedhros, only that it happened before the two sons of Fëanor alone decided to attack Eönwë's camp and murder their way to the Silmarils only to have the jewels reject them. There is a single canon suggestion of Elrond breifly returning to try to help Maglor before leaving him at the start of the Second Age, which this fic can support or not. The same adherence to canon informs A Vulture With the Sun in Its Talons. Before the start of the War of Wrath and the arrival of the Falmari fleet seems most logical. And that the twins escaped just as likely, if not more-so, than a terse prisoner return, that the two remaining sons of Fëanor are unaccounted for by the end of the War of Wrath to be able to sneak into Eönwë's camp to murder some guards.

I do allude to a version of events set forth in "The Problem of Ros" where Maedhros and Maglor abandoned the twins in a sea cave nearby to be found and named.

As for Orothaiben himself, years of exposure to various Japanese media will familiarize one with tropes such as the Blood Knight, the Vengeful Ronin, and the symbolic ties of cherry blossoms to samurai and the bushido code. That and a sigil creation spawned him. Underneath those tropes the Nandor captain is quite similar to other Tolkien characters that also appear in this story or would have in Dírhaval's Narn. A bit fell, no longer sane. And using the informal pronoun as an insult. Seregeithon from In Need of a Cold Shower goes unnamed here, but readers of that fic already know this backstory. Tonally it is an odd sequel.

The presence of the Bór, specifically Kreka and the family of Elros's eventual wife, is my other long-head and fleshed-out headcanon, where I am once more playing in the gap of canon information. Bledda's reunion and his words to Elrond, particularly the parallel, were another story that I had wanted to write for over twelve years and finally found its home here. And Kreka's fears are some of the underlying tensions.

Dregor, btw, is a pun. Queen Bortë's grandfather was not a good man, but his one redeeming quality was to be an attentive and loving single father.

Nimloth's kinship to Denethor is a headcanon that I adopted, in part because we know nothing about Denethor's kin except he had plenty who all died at Amon Ereb. What is canon is Elrond's admiration and indentification on his elven side with Turgon, but that he prefered and was prouder of his ties to Thingol and the Sindar. And both Elros and him carried deeply about their mortal heritage. So Dírhaval fanboying is not just warranted but demanded.

I suppose this is all a long-winded apology for how long it took me to actually write this story out, and thus I wish to thank polutropos for the incentive.

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