I Sit and Think of Times There Were Before by Erdariel  

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Of Gileinas and the Great War

Okay, yes, I know this is over twice the length of the first chapter and a complete digression from the event and topics of the last chapter, but it makes sense in my head, okay? Also honestly I'm lazy and I don't have the patience to go over it and try to edit it to a length shorter than what it is while still retaining everything I think is important in the chapter, and I didn't feel like there was any good place to cut it into two chapters either

I promise I'll get back to the point in the next chapter...

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Gileinas was half-starved when I first saw him, covered in more mud than clothes. It was evening under the murky clouds of Mordor. I was standing watch at the edge of our camp, for Isildur had sent me away. The kings were holding council together and seemed to not want even their closest servants present. It was quiet that night, but the kind of quiet that makes a man feel ill at ease, as though the world was holding its breath in anticipation of something. And I saw the movement of something crawling in a ditch only some thirty yards from my post.

I thought it some spying orc at first, and fitted an arrow to the string of my bow and was about to cry out, but some doubt gnawed at the back of my mind and kept me from shooting. The creature did not move with the purpose and determination I would have expected of an orc. Nor did I see any sign of weapons or armour on the figure. It just crawled and dragged itself forward a few inches at a time, seemingly oblivious to how near I stood.

I put the arrow back in the quiver and roused the other watchman, a fellow named Mornaras who was dozing nearby in a little hollow on the ground sheltered by a large rock. We stood guard in pairs, and often when the hours of the shift grew long, one of the pair would rest while the other kept watch. (In truth people were not supposed to do it, but there never seemed to be quite enough time for rest otherwise, so I never told Isildur or any of the captains about it and did very little to discourage it myself.) I pointed the figure out to Mornaras and told him to sound the alarm if something happened to me. Then I walked nearer until I stood at the edge of the ditch almost directly above the figure.

“Where are you going and what do you think you are doing?” I asked, loudly enough that Mornaras must have heard it back where he stood, and so must anyone else who might be hiding nearby.

The figure looked up at me and scrambled back a little, cringing back from an anticipated attack. This close I could see that it was a man — stick-thin and dirty, dressed in clothes that were in some places quite literally hanging on by a thread, but in any case a man, not an orc. His hair was thick and tightly curled, and as caked with dirt as the rest of him. His eyes were dark, and wide with terror.

I crouched down and went a little closer. He said something in a tight, breathless voice, but I could make no sense of it; many of the words were slurred or mumbled. Some of the words had the cadence of Adûnaic, but the accent, reminiscent of the speech of Black Númenoreans but not quite the same, was very thick and hard to understand. And some other words sounded entirely strange to me.

It was clear to me that he was no threat, but also clear that many of my superiors would not agree without further proof. In any case, if I told him to go away and left him alone, he would not survive very long. Either he would be shot on sight by another watchman like I had nearly done, or he would be found by orcs and killed or worse, or he would simply starve.

“I have to take you to the camp”, I said, “but if you mean us no harm, you should be safer there than you are out here.”

The man seemed to understand me, though he said nothing in response. His shoulders drooped resignedly and he bowed his head. I reached out to take him by the arm and rose to my feet. He did not resist, but it quickly became plain to me that he was very weak and could not walk far without help.

Mornaras looked dubiously at me when I brought the man over to where he stood. He clearly felt less kindly about the stranger than I did, and somewhat resentful for having been woken up because of him.

“What are you going to do with him?” he asked.

I considered my options for a while. If the man had been stronger, I would have brought him to camp right away and returned to finish my watch, trusting that all would be well in the mean time. But with as weak as he was, the walk to the camp would take much longer, and even if all went well at camp and I could hand the man over to someone else quickly, it would take longer than I could in good conscience leave Mornaras alone for.

“Take him back when our watch ends and find someone with the authority to make decisions about him”, I said.

The man had curled up in the same hollow Mornaras had slept in and was watching us warily. Mornaras looked at him for a while. He shrugged.

“It sounds like more trouble than he is worth, but if that really is what you want.”

The rest of our watch went by quietly. I offered the stranger a drink from my canteen twice, but he did not seem to trust it and refused. Mornaras was pointedly silent. I stared at the desolate plains of Mordor and the heavy clouds above. Nothing moved to break the monotony. There was no sign of danger, though I could not quite shake the feeling that something was going to happen soon.

The next pair of watchmen came to relieve us. They looked curiously at the stranger as I turned to help him up.

“Looks like something interesting happened”, one of them remarked.

“Ruinamacil decided to act like a fool is what happened”, said Mornaras. “He had to go and take that man prisoner.”

“He looks harmless enough”, the soldier replied placidly. He had no interrupted sleep to feel resentful about. “I do not think there is anything wrong with leaving him alive. In any case, he will be someone else’s problem soon enough.”

Despite his annoyance, Mornaras helped me bring the man back to our camp. He even agreed to keep an eye on him while I went to fetch one of our captains. I made sure to do him some favours later, as opportunities presented themselves. It tends to be useful to be known as a man who will return the favours others make for him. Being the king’s esquire often left me awkwardly in between groups, still low in the ranks and not equal with the knights and the captains, but also separate and not entirely regarded as one of the common soldiers. Even among the esquires of knights and lords of Gondor, Elendur's esquire Estelmo and Anárion’s esquire Limbifion and I were always held as something a little different. Acting fair with the soldiers and not making much of a fuss about my position alleviated the friction somewhat, though it never removed the difference.

 

I was lucky enough that when I went to report to Malicontar, the captain in charge of watchmen on the edge of the camp that I had been on, I found him in conversation with Lord Elrond. I paused at the door to the captain’s tent, clearing my throat and hoping I had not disturbed anything important.

“Come in, Ruinamacil. You look as though you have more than the usual to report”, Malicontar said.

I came to stand in front of his desk and nodded. “We have taken a prisoner.”

“A prisoner?”

“Yes. A man, not an orc.” I shifted my weight a little, feeling much less confident about my choices under the captain’s gaze than when I had made them. “In truth, I do not think he is in league with the enemy. He was alone, so far as I can tell, and with no weapons or tools of harm on him. And his condition seemed quite poor. I doubt he could have been very much use as a spy in such state. But he is not one of our own, or of our allies. I could not let him go free.”

“You could have killed him”, said Malicontar.

“I could have”, I admitted. It would have been no use to try to justify my actions. I had spared the man’s life because he had looked harmless, and he had been scared, and I had pitied him and felt that it would be wrong to kill him, not because I had had a practical reason to take him prisoner, but I knew that Malicontar did not care to discuss questions of morality. I think he would have preferred that I had killed the man and spared him the trouble of deciding what to do with a prisoner.

“Well, I had better see your prisoner then. Where is he?” Malicontar asked.

“Mornaras is keeping an eye on him. I will take you there.”

Lord Elrond had moved aside when I entered and had been quiet since then. Now he bent to pick up his bag from where he had set it down near one wall of the tent and stepped closer to us again.

“I shall come with you if you have nothing against it, captain”, he said.

“As you wish.” The captain sounded like he indeed had nothing against it, but also did not understand why Lord Elrond was interested in the matter.

“If he is indeed in poor health, whatever else is true of him, he may be better able to answer questions once he has been tended to by a healer”, Lord Elrond pointed out.

Mornaras was dismissed as soon as he had handed the man over to us. He looked relieved to wash his hands of the matter and go back to his usual routine.

I helped take the man to a small tent in the part of the camp where prisoners were kept. Not that there were many prisoners; the enemy soldiers rarely allowed themselves to be taken alive, and we rarely had a reason to try to capture them.

Captain Malicontar did not dismiss me, so I stood outside the tent while he and Elrond went inside with the prisoner. I heard them speak in low voices, at times in Adûnaic, then changing to some mixture of Sindarin or Quenya which the prisoner was unlikely to understand. I could not catch everything was that said, only a word here and another there. Nor did I try. Whether I knew what was being said or not, the prisoner’s fate was out of my hands. If there was anything I needed to know afterwards, I would be told.

After some time Elrond called for me. I poked my head into the tent and he asked me to fetch him a bucket of water. I did. He thanked me, and I was once again left to wait outside. A long while passed before Lord Elrond and Captain Malicontar stepped out of the tent.

“…needs the care of a healer, not the rough hand of a jailer”, Lord Elrond was saying.

“Even a beaten dog might run back to its master. What proof have we that he will not return as soon as his lords call?” asked Malicontar sharply.

“If you treat him kindly, I doubt he shall”, Lord Elrond replied. “I saw no love for his former masters in him, only fear. So long as he fears us as much as them there is a danger that he will do something foolish, but if he is treated well, it should not take very long before nothing would make him willing to go back.” He looked at Malicontar rather coldly. “You are a fine warrior, captain, and in the matters of strategy and the leading of battle you have my trust. But I have long knowledge of people, men and elves alike, good and evil and every kind in between, and I tell you that you misjudge this man.”

Captain Malicontar snorted doubtfully. “If you care so much, then you may take him and do as you will with him for all I care.” He glanced at me, seeming to only now remember my presence. “Ruinamacil, you are free to go. Get what rest you can before the king needs you again.”

With that he turned and walked away. I stood and watched him for a moment. Then I obeyed his dismissal and began to head for the tent I shared with Isildur. Lord Elrond fell in step beside me.

“It is a good thing you did not kill that poor man”, he said quietly to me. “He is only a frightened mistreated slave who fled his masters, nothing worse, unless the enemy has devised some new way to entirely blind my judgement. I think I shall speak with Isildur and see what can be done; I do not entirely trust that he would be safe or well-treated here.”

I nodded and gave Lord Elrond a small smile, though I said nothing. I was glad for the assurance that I had chosen right. I hoped the man would use his chance at a new life well.

 

After that I became busy for some time. The following day the news spread that the enemy was readying a major assault in an attempt to break our siege, and we were all in a rush to prepare for it. I was with Isildur day and night, ready for anything he might need of me. Three days later the attack came. Our lines held, but only just. For nearly four months afterwards the fighting never ceased entirely. Men fought, slept, and carried the wounded who might yet be saved out from the field in shifts with no time for leisure in between. I was excused from transporting the wounded, but only because my duty was to stay with the king at all times unless he ordered me otherwise. He could hardly ever be convinced to leave the battlefield or rest until the sword no longer stayed in his hand, and so I also saw very little rest in those days.

I did not entirely forget the escaped slave I had brought to our camp. I wondered often what had become of him. But I had no time or chance to ask after him. I left the thought of the man to the back of my mind and focused on the endless series of tasks to be taken care of in front of me.

At last the battle died down. The enemy forces drew back behind the impenetrable gates of Barad-dûr. The forces of our Alliance settled back into the routine of the siege. Many of our soldiers had died and many more had been wounded, and countless corpses of our enemies lay across the plains where the scavenging beasts of Mordor crept out of their dens to take their share. The front lines had not shifted by much more than fifty yards anywhere.

There was more time for leisure again, then, but I still never looked for the man. Four months had gone by since my paths had briefly crossed with him, and it seemed to me long enough that asking Lord Elrond about him would be a strange thing to do. In hindsight I doubt whether he would have taken it to be so, for he sees the passing time rather more like the elves do than like men, and for an elf four months is not so very long, but at the time I could not bring myself to it. I filled my time with the expected things instead; repairing my (and Isildur’s) armour and gear and doing other little tasks that had been left to pile up during the battle, gossiping with my fellow soldiers, playing games with Estelmo and Limbifion and some others.

It was almost a year later when I found out anything more. Isildur had ordered me to oversee a training session for a group of soldiers recently stationed with us. He did so often towards the end of the war, preparing me for when I would be a knight and maybe a captain in charge of my own troop, but this was one of the first times I was doing it.

The captain who was the soldiers’ actual trainer, a quiet but good-natured man by the name of Gwaedir, pointed groups of them out to me and told where they came from and what kind of background they had. These were not a unified group, nor were they likely to all be placed in the same units with each other. There were farmers and fishermen from Lebennin and Anfalas, shepherds from Calenardhon, craftsmen’s sons from Osgiliath and Minas Anor and Pelargir, even a few young men all the way from the distant Arnor who were looking to follow in the footsteps of their fathers or brothers or cousins who had gone to war before, or who wished to do something that seemed important and return home as heroes with great stories to tell. Sometimes I wonder how many of them never returned to their homes in the North.

“Those four there”, said the captain, pointing to a group who stood near each other, seemingly talking amongst themselves, “have seen something of this war already. They have not been soldiers as such, but they have been travelling with the supply caravans back and forth between here and Minas Ithil, minding the animals and carrying some burdens themselves. And while those caravans have soldiers to protect them, I gather that they have had to join in the fight themselves from time to time as well.”

One of the four was shorter than the rest, with darker complexion than most Dúnedain have and tightly curling black hair that had been cut quite short. He was lean, but I guessed he had some muscles nonetheless; work with the supply caravans took strength. He glanced towards me and the captain, and our eyes met briefly. His were sharp and alert. I do not know what he saw in mine.

He looked familiar, but I did not recognise him at first. I thought he might be a son of one of those families who had settled somewhere on the coasts of Middle-Earth long before the Downfall. Maybe some men of Middle-Earth had married into the family and those features happened to come through in him. I guessed I had perhaps seen him briefly at some time or another when the supply wagons had arrived at the camp and that was why he looked familiar.

The training session went by without incident. The captain told me which of the men he intended for archers, which as spearmen and axe-men, and which few he meant to train as swordsmen. The short dark man, whom the captain told me was called Gileinas, was one of them. He was agile enough to be good with a sword, and also had the strength to carry the heavy shield the front-line fighters used. Captain Gwaedir chuckled when he told me that, and said that if our kings had any sense in their heads, they would all rush to try and snatch Gileinas up for their Guards when he was fully trained. I smiled and resolved to tell Isildur that when I returned to him.

I tried to organise the men into two somewhat evenly matched groups with most of them wielding the weapons the captain had recommended for them. I put the men through some basic exercises in thangail against thangail and then dírnaith against thangail and made notes of their strengths and weaknesses to discuss with Gwaedir. I knew I was only clumsily copying practice drills I had been put through myself and seen others lead, but I hoped the captain would trust that in time I would learn to do it well.

I was walking back to Isildur’s tent after the training session when I heard the footfalls of someone running to catch up with me. I halted and turned around. It was Gileinas, and as he approached I finally recognized him. He looked very different now, washed as clean as any of the soldiers and no longer starving or terrified, but there was enough of the same in the shape of his face that I knew him now for the escaped slave I had brought into the camp over a year before.

“My lord”, said he, pausing a respectful distance in front of me.

“I am not a lord, merely an esquire”, I said.

“But I am told you are of a high family and are well-trusted by King Isildur”, he replied uncertainly.

I supposed that was true enough, if one did not take into account my family’s fall into disgrace — or counted me as a relation of Queen Varyandë rather than the son of my father. Not being in the mood to draw attention to the more shameful details of my family history, I nodded.

“Nonetheless, I am not a lord. I would have you call me by my name rather than by a title that is not mine. But can I do something for you?”

He hesitated for a moment. “You saved my life. I wanted to thank you.”

It was my turn to hesitate. I did not know how to answer that. Telling him he was welcome seemed overly arrogant.

“I only did what seemed right to me. And I am glad to see you are well. I wondered what happened to you, sometimes”, I admitted.

“Lord Elrond and some of his healers took care of me. I was told I was free, that I could go where I wished. I wished to help the people who had saved me”, he told me.

“If you would indulge my curiosity— I take it that Gileinas is not a name you always carried?”

“It is not, no. But the elves taught me some of their speech, and I liked the thought of giving myself a new name in that language.”

I nodded. I had heard a new layer in his accent that was alike to that of the elves. It was in strange contrast with the notes of the Black Númenorean accent that were still there, too, but somehow they came together in his speech to create their own new harmony.

Some years later he told me the tale behind his name. He said that one night, when he had been a slave of men stationed near Lake Núrnen, by fate or carelessness he had been left unchained, and had seen a star shine through a break in the clouds. It had awakened some seed of defiance that had slumbered deep in the mould of his heart. He had resolved then to follow the star as far as it would lead him, and had slipped out past the guards and their watch-fires and travelled through the long night, and many more long nights like it. Why a kind star would have led him northward into the most terrible and desolate parts of Mordor and the thick of the war, I cannot fathom, but in the end it did lead him to me, and I am glad of that. He told me that when the star was shrouded by clouds, he hid himself, and often that was when enemies passed him by. When the star appeared again he continued his journey. The star guided him right, and he was never caught until I found him. And when he was told he was a free man, it had seemed right to him to take on a new name to use in his new life, and so he had named himself after that guiding star.

At the time we did not speak of his name or history at such length, however, but exchanged some more polite words and parted ways, he going to his duties and I returning to mine. When Isildur asked me how things had gone, in addition to an overall account of the practice, I told him what Captain Gwaedir had said of Gileinas having the makings of a member of his or King Elendil’s or King Anárion’s Guard and added some observations of my own from the day. I did not tell him about having met Gileinas before, however. I hope he would have taken it well if I had told him, but I was not quite certain enough to do so.

For a while I kept a polite distance to Gileinas. Although I felt some affection for him, it seemed to me that while I was, even if only rarely and for the sake of my own learning, involved in training the group of new soldiers that included him, it would not be fair for me to be close with one over all the rest.

But eventually all of those men were assigned to their permanent troops. Somewhat to my surprise, Isildur had kept Captain Gwaedir’s comment in mind. After making some inquiries by himself and seeing the men fight with his own eyes, he chose Gileinas and one of the others for his own Guard.

I saw Gileinas more after that, and began making some cautious efforts toward friendship. He seized on them more eagerly than I had expected, and returned my offers with his own.

Not everyone approved of him quite so easily. He made no secret of being a former slave, and even had he wished to do so, it could not have stayed secret very long. No-one would challenge or question Isildur’s choice to his face, but outside of the battle, simply between soldiers, it was nonetheless easy to make it clear to Gileinas that he was not entirely welcome.

“I do not understand why you like him so much”, Estelmo said to me one evening while we were sitting together.

“Because he is good company.” I picked up a pawn from the game board and moved it absentmindedly. “I do not understand why the rest of you are so determined not to.”

“You know he is not the same as the rest of us. You know he belonged to the enemy once”, Estelmo sighed.

“He was a slave who escaped as soon as he found a way to. I should think he has as much reason to hate the enemy as any of us. And certainly less reason to go to the enemy again or believe any tempting lies than some of us have. There were men in Númenor who only cast their lot in with the Faithful late, because the sacrifices in the Temple frightened them, or because they did not dare to go to war against the Lords of the West, not because they loved the elves or the old ways or thought the way the Faithful did. Elendil welcomed them into the fold nonetheless, and Isildur says the choice proved right more often than it proved wrong. Why should we deny Gileinas the same chance?”

“He is not a man of Númenor. Not even partly. No doubt he has reason to side with us, no doubt he has courage to back it up, but his kind are not made as strong or enduring as we are. When the push comes to shove, he will be the first to break.”

“Someone must always be the first to break, even if there were only Dúnedain in the company. But I also do not think he will be the first”, I said.

“Very well”, replied Estelmo. “Be his friend, if you see fit. But when his strength falters at the worst moment, remember that I always told you so.”

“And when you see that he endures where others fail, remember that I always said he would.”

We continued playing our game in silence. It ended in a tie, but only because we ran out of time and had to return to our duties.

If Isildur minded my friendship with Gileinas, he never showed it to me. He seemed to trust him as much as any other soldier. Gileinas paid back for that trust, fighting as fiercely as anyone, doing his duty just as diligently as the rest. (Sometimes more diligently; he never slept on watch the way many others did.) His knowledge of the ways of the enemy helped us more than once. And as battle after battle went by and his resolve and courage remained as strong as anyone else’s, the others began to accept him.

The years of the war dragged on. I grew used to Gileinas’ presence, his friendship and his grounding and practical approach to the dangers and troubles we faced every day. More and more often I found myself going to him for counsel and comfort. I laid out my fears and sorrows in front of him, and he laid out his in front of me, and somehow we both found our burdens lightened. There were others I loved and others I trusted with my life, but none I ever felt I could confide in so easily. Isildur carried the weight of thousands of lives on his shoulders; I did not wish to burden him with my individual troubles as I might have in days of peace. To the others I was too often Isildur’s esquire before I was Ruinamacil; I dared not speak with them for fear that they would think Isildur had confided in me something that made our situation seem more hopeless than anyone had known, and my words would shake their faith and resolve. But to Gileinas I was always his friend and the man who had shown him kindness and trust unprompted before I was anything else, and he welcomed me as I was and did not take my words for more than they meant.

Gileinas became also the one whose eyes I sought to see what he was thinking when we sat around a campfire with other men and someone was singing or telling a tale. His laughter became the one I was most trying to coax out when I told jokes. He was the one I turned to grin to when I won at some game.

 

Now, when I write these words, Gileinas is long since dead. He was young when we met, even by the reckoning of his own people. I was much older than him, though still young by the lifespan of the Dúnedain. He told me before he died that his life had been longer than many could hope for. Yet it seems too short to me, for I have been obliged to go on through the decades without him, carrying only memory and grief in my heart.

I am loath to speak ill of the Lords of the West or the One that is above them, but at times I cannot help but think that it was ill-done to give us such long lives and build a land for us so separate from all other kindreds of men. It is easy to look down on that which one knows to be briefer than himself, and hard to love it as an equal, knowing that one will have to suffer a long life without it. A hunter or a shepherd may love his dogs, but he will love them as creatures different from himself, whose master he is and who exist to serve him, and he knows they shall die before him and hardens his heart against that loss. But men are not dogs and it is a terrible thing to treat them as such, no matter how short their lifespans may be. 

Yet how could the men of Númenor, coming from their secluded island where folk were so long-lived and illness and early death were rare, look upon the men of this Middle-Earth and meet them as equals, to be loved and trusted and understood the same way as their own folk? They were asked to knowingly welcome grief and pain that they might have to carry half their lives or more. It is only natural for their hearts to have tried to avoid such hurt.

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Chapter End Notes

On the names; Mornaras, Malicontar, Limbifion, and Gwaedir are all sourced from Chestnut_pod's Elvish Name List. Mornaras and Gwaedir are Sindarin and mean "Black stag" and "Wind watcher" respectively. Malicontar and Limbifion are Quenya and mean "Amber lord" and "Swift hawk".

The name of Varyandë (who I mentioned in the first chapter as well, but oh well, you get notes on the name now) is Quenya for "protector", from varya, "to protect" (which come to think of it I'm now suspecting may be borrowed from the Finnish word varjella, but that's beside the point and I have no proof that it is), and the -ndë suffix which turns it from a verb into the feminine form of person-who-is-doing-the-verb. I made the name up for my take on Isildur's wife for a fic I've written previously and will keep using it for her in the future too, and I know at least one of my friends has borrowed the name for a fic of theirs once.

As an additional lore note because it probably won't come up in the next chapter either, if anyone's curious about Ohtar's relation to Varyandë: in my head he's the son of her nephew. I have some half-formed ideas regarding Ohtar's father and whatnot, but no details or full stories for now.