Laws and Customs by AdmirableMonster  

Of the folk of Balar

Several months after Pengolodh is rescued by Elros, the Elves and Orcs who attacked him are brought to judgement before the king.

See chapter end for content warnings.

Several months later. Just like Elves, Harashkir thought, to pass judgement outdoors, even when the winds from the east brought ash and smoke from the forest fires.  He winced and shifted in his chains.  Stupid.  If he and his folk had parted from the Elves right away after what had happened near the meeting of the waters, they might have escaped.  But he’d worried that Nordowen would take offense, and he hadn’t wanted to subject his people to a possible pitched battle with such an equally-matched force.  Fuck.  Bad call.  They were all going to die anyway.

Harashkir was fair enough to say that they probably deserved it.  Whatever Nordowen had said, whatever excuses he had mouthed to make himself feel better, Harashkir was almost certain it had been rape, and a particularly ugly rape—multiple participants and a single unarmed free Elf.  It was always worse for the free Elves: a lot of them thought they would die of it, and if they didn’t, sometimes they killed themselves anyway.  Harashkir hoped the scholar hadn’t killed herself.  He didn’t want that on his conscience when he went to face his ancestors.  He already wasn’t sure they wouldn’t turn him away to roam as a restless ghost.

The crowd stirred.  Harashkir shifted uncomfortably in his chains and looked up.  He, his folk, and Nordowen and his were all bound in chains in the center of a circle of wooden benches rising up and then apparently merging into the trees.  Around them on three sides sat stern Elven warriors; in front of them was a large wooden chair with a richly-woven purple tapestry flung across it—the throne of the Elven High King.  It was currently empty.  The king and his councillors had been in conference, perhaps deciding the fate of the pillaging bandits they’d captured earlier in the month.  Now, they arrived to pass judgment.

The king came first, his councillors behind him, dropping easily into the chair.  He was tall, broad-shouldered for an Elf, and strangely handsome—nose slightly snubbed, eyes widely-set and with sharp eyebrows that Harashkir suspected required careful grooming to keep contained in those neat, thin points.  Was he even really a pure-blood Elf, Harashkir wondered suddenly, his breath catching in his throat.  The High King’s sharp eyes rested on him for an instant, a beat, and Harashkir looked away at the judgement in them, instinctively submissive.  Not a pure-blood, a child of two worlds.  Precious.  Beloved.  Fuck.  His judgement would be just and also proper, and Harashkir, guiltily, wished he had at least had that pretense to hide behind, that an Elf did not truly have the right to judge him.

Looking away from the face that sealed his fate, he found, quite suddenly, the scholar.  He almost didn’t recognize her.  Rather than the simple traveling clothes she had been wearing when he’d first encountered her, she was attired in a set of deep blue robes decorated with intricate silver embroidery.  Her silver-streaked hair was uncovered and largely unadorned, though some delicate white flowers had been woven into an elegant fishtail braid at the back of her head. A delicately-decorated monocle—silver with tiny flowers—was set in one eye.  She looked irritated, maybe agitated, but not fearful.  And her nose—fuck.  It was crooked, sitting oddly on the fine-boned, symmetric face of an Elf.  They had broken it, then, and Nordowen had likely made it worse.  It had already been swelling from a blow in those first moments, when Harashkir had just been planning to kill her or take her prisoner, but by the time he’d put a stop to things, it had looked worse, blood smeared across her face and bruising already evident in the hollows around the eyes.

At least she was alive.  She hadn’t killed herself, and she hadn’t died of exposure, which was the other weight Harashkir had been carrying on his heart for the last month.  He’d left her food and water, he’d known there were allies in the area, but it had still been a risk, and one he wouldn’t have taken if he’d thought he could control Nordowen.  He should never have believed that bullshit excuse for a second, and he’d known it even then, but he’d been afraid for his people.  Fuck.  He might have condemned them all to be wandering ghosts, and only Istark really deserved it.

The High King raised his head.  The crowd’s murmurs grew silent.  “I am here,” the king said, “to pass judgement on these bandits, who have been accused of theft, pillage, murder, and rape against those under my protection. Have any of you anything to say in your defense?”

If it hadn’t been for the scholar, Harashkir might have tried to contend that the thievery and pillaging had been necessary for survival on a continent that was being torn apart by powers so far above them they might as well be ants, and that the so-called murder had been a fight between equals.  But there was no defense against the last charge.  It was clear they were condemned from the scholar’s own mouth.  A living witness.  If the Elves were anything like the Orcs, it was her words that would have the most sway.  Still, Harashkir couldn’t regret her survival.

Of course, Nordowen opened his mouth.  “Rape?” he said, in his clear, haughty voice, speaking the lyrical language that was still sometimes difficult for Harashkir to follow.  “If you’re referring to our interlude with your pengolodh, it’s self-evident that it wasn’t rape.”

The scholar was watching Nordowen’s face closely.  She flinched, shutting her eyes for a moment, then schooled herself, and raised her head again to meet Nordowen’s scornful gaze.  Harashkir felt like seven kinds of a worm. The king’s face grew still, the line of his jaw more pronounced.  His nostrils flared, a hunting stance.  “And what do you mean by that?” he asked.

“He’s standing beside you, isn’t he?  Everyone knows that the Firstborn die if they’re violated.  We made a bargain, and now he wants us killed because he didn’t enjoy himself?”

Fuck it.  Harashkir had been going to let him keep digging them deeper, but a muscle twitched in the scholar’s jaw and her hands clenched, making tight bunches in her pretty blue robes.  She didn’t deserve any more of this.  Twisting in his chains, he slammed his shoulder violently into Nordowen’s face, and the Elf stumbled sideways with a cry of pain.  Harashkir pushed forward between the rest of his chained companions and went heavily down on his knees before the High King.

“It was rape, King,” he said, enunciating as clearly as he could.  “If there’s to be torture before death, I am the leader of this band, and I would ask you allow me to suffer it on behalf of my folk.”

The scholar was looking at him.  Harashkir could only hope someone was interpreting for her, because he did not think she would be able to understand him otherwise.  Still, he didn’t think that his instinct to drop his head as he spoke to her would be the right thing to do for this woman, so he looked up and met her eyes as he spoke.  “It was not a fair bargain.  You were not treated the way a prisoner should have been.  It is my fault, and that of my folk.  I accept it.”

To his faint relief, the scholar turned to a dark-haired Elf by the king and exchanged a series of rapid gestures.  They were mostly signs that Harashkir did not understand, but he caught a question, the scholar nodding in the affirmative, and something that looked like death, passed back and forth like a coin between them.  Then the scholar looked back at him and held his gaze for a long moment, before putting her hand to her mouth and drawing it outward to display an open hand, palm-up.  It was a simple gesture, and one that Harashkir knew.  Thank you.

A sick numbness spread up from Harashkir’s belly to become an almost painful burning heat in the back of his neck and his ears.  He looked away—and right into a knee, which Nordowen brought up with a crack! into his face.

“Traitor!” he howled.  “Fucking Orc traitor!”

He would have thrown himself at Harashkir, but the Elvish guards grabbed him and wrestled him to the ground, leaving Harashkir swearing and tasting his own blood, stinging waves of pain resounding through his face and skull.  Nordowen was still yelling, and Harashkir found himself suddenly grateful that the scholar couldn’t hear, because he caught, “could have had your own taste, if you wanted it!”  Well, that probably meant he would be tortured as well, but he richly deserved it.  Harashkir should have put him down like a rabid animal—he should have known Nordowen was one of the lost ones, the mad ones, the ones who had forgotten what it meant to be a person.

Wincing, Harashkir spat to clear his mouth, shook his head—a mistake, his own freshly-broken nose informed him—and, wincing, looked back to the king.  He was in conference with the scholar now, signing back and forth with her with a fluidity Harashkir hadn’t realized was possible.  Ancestors, the scholar was not only an advisor, but a friend of the king.  Nordowen, you fool.  He would certainly be tortured as well, and neither of them could hope for a quick death.

“You,” the king said to him, and he tried to compose himself.  “Leader.  What is thy name?”

“I’m called Harashkir, king.”

“Harashkir.  Which of thy folk was it who was going to continue the rape when thou didst halt it?”

Harashkir heard Istark hiss through his teeth.  For one unworthy moment, he considered indicating him, but it would not be right.  “I was responsible, king.  I will not name them.”

“That is honorable of thee,” the king said.  “It does render the judgment more difficult, as—”

“It was me, king!” Istark had pushed his way forward.  Harashkir closed his eyes, relieved despite himself.  At least Istark had not lost himself as thoroughly as Nordowen.  He joined Harashkir on his knees.  “It was me, and it was rape, and I have shamed my ancestors.”

Nordowen made a kind of piercing whistling noise from where he writhed on the ground.

“Good, I am glad to see you both acknowledge the truth that my scholar has told and written.”  It had the cadence of a formal statement, but one that Harashkir did not know.  The king sat up straight, drawing the majesty of his heritage about him like a cloak, and continued.  “This is my judgement.  The witness has confirmed that his companions died in battle, and that there were equal losses among these bandits. Thus I will not consider it murder. Those who participated in the rape are to be put to death.  That is at least three of the Noldor, one of whom has already confessed.  The rest of that folk will be remanded to Eönwë, to be taken for judgement back to Valinor.  The Orcs will be kept under guard among my people for fifteen years, understanding that this is a long period of time for those of that kindred.  If, during that time, they prove to be penitent and trustworthy, they will be released.”

Harashkir stared at him.  “Great king, you can’t—I am responsible for the actions of all those under my command.”

“Thou art.  As my scholar has told it, the Elves were not under your command, but hers.”  He nodded at Nordowen.  “Thou didst stop thy folk from committing the unpardonable.  And we need honorable folk among us, for this long war has not yet neared its conclusion.”  He leaned forward, locking eyes with Harashkir.  “Those who prove themselves after a first mercy are the most worthy.  Those who fail are the most unworthy.  So my father taught me.  Which wilt thou be?”

The words of Nega in one of the oldest Orc epics, when she pardoned her brother’s murderers.  Harashkir prostrated himself.  “King, you are powerful indeed, as is your brave scholar.  I will strive to be the first kind.”

Chapter End Notes

Chapter Content Warnings

• once again the idea that someone can't have been raped because they didn't die
• references to gang-rape
• some moderate violence (another broken nose)
• unintentional misgendering due to cultural misunderstandings
• the messy question of culpability of an onlooker in a gang-rape situation

For Orc names, I've muddled around with limited Hittite vocabulary, since my understanding is that is one of the sources Tolkien used for some of his Orcish. "Harashkir" is a combination of the Hittite words for "eagle" and "heart" to imply that the name's meaning is "eagle-heart", "Nega" means "sister", and "Istark" means "disease." The name Nordowen is from Chestnut_pod's Elvish name list and means "Oak maiden" in Quenya.