Laws and Customs by AdmirableMonster  

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Of the Orcs

Pengolodh speaks with Harashkir about Orcish customs, then later decompresses with Elros.

Content warnings at chapter end (far fewer than some previous chapters.)

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The fires were burning low.  Harashkir had a fully belly, and his ears were also full, with the sound of his people’s songs.  It had been a long time since they had had the energy for singing.  When he had been young, they had sung in Angband: life was hard, but there was food enough and rest enough.  When they had escaped in the confusion of the first few years of the great war, they had sung then, too.  But food had become scarcer, death more common.  The singing had petered out and finally stopped altogether.  He was glad for them, that their music was returned to them.  And glad for himself as well, though it didn’t feel fair.  It felt like a reward for an atrocity.

Their situation—technically prisoners of the king—felt more free than living in Angband.  Although the guards posted among them only let them gather in small groups, they were jovial and kind, and already, Harashkir knew, some of his folk were befriending them.  Many of the king’s folk—at least the ones who had been chosen to act as guards—seemed to have the easy acceptance of people with other shapes that came from necessity, the kind of thing that had forged deep bonds in Angband between Elvish and Orcish thralls alike.

A light step, out-of-place among the more heavily-armed and armored guards, approached from the direction of the main fortress.  Harashkir turned automatically and found himself looking at the scholar.

She was walking very determinedly straight towards him and within moments was closer than she had been since—the rape.  At her side was another Elf, much taller, robed in green.  Harashkir stared up at her from his seat on the log by the side of the fire, utterly unsure what could have brought her here.  He could smell sweat on her, could hear the pounding beat of her heart and see a minute constriction of her odd, Elvish pupils, but he did not know if this portended nervousness or anger.

She gestured to her companion, who took up a position at her side, signing a question to her that Harashkir did not understand.  She signed a response.  The other nodded and turned to Harashkir.  “My lord Pengolodh wishes to interview you.”  The way he said pengolodh made it clear, finally, that it was a name, which made Harashkir feel even smaller and more ill-at-ease.

“I don’t understand,” he said.

The companion signed to the scholar—to Pengolodh, who signed back, and Harashkir realized she had brought him as an interpreter.

“Lord Pengolodh is a scholar and historian, and they would like to ask you about your people’s ways,” the interpreter clarified, using one of those incomprehensible Elvish pronouns that always gave Harashkir a headache when he was trying to follow the language.  He transferred his attention back to Pengolodh, who was obviously the person who actually wanted to converse with him.  Better practice when dealing with an interpreter, and Harashkir could not bear to be rude to her, even if he still did not at all understand how his people’s ways could have brought her back into the midst of his folk, even under careful guard. 

“I will try to answer,” he said, with a nod.

“You recognized the king’s words that he learned from his father,” she said.  It was not a question.

A chill settled into Harashkir’s stomach.  Was she looking for evidence that her king was of two kindreds?  The guards here might be well-enough disposed to Orcs, but Harashkir knew there were many Elves who weren’t.  He owed his life to Pengolodh and to her king—how could he choose one of them to betray?

“It made me think that perhaps his father learned those words from your people,” she clarified, her eyes following his face closely.  He couldn’t tell if she was trying to intimate that she already knew, but at least it seemed that his first fear wasn’t founded.

“Yes,” he said, as she seemed to be waiting for a response.  “Maybe that’s where he heard them.  They’re the words from an Orcish epic.”

“I’d like to know more about the words.  Can I sit?”

She hardly needed Harashkir’s permission, but he slid sideways on the log and gestured welcome.  She hesitated for a bare moment and then settled herself beside him.  From inside a pocket of her robes she drew forth a small, leatherbound book, like the one he had returned to her at Tavrobel, and one of those clever Elven writing implements.  Signing with it in her hand made her movements clumsier, but her interpreter evidently understood her well.

“Now tell me.”

Harashkir didn’t know how to begin.  “I, uh,” he said.  She waited.  This was nothing anyone had ever asked him.  He didn’t have children.  He never would.  He didn’t remember how he’d first heard the story, and he wasn’t a bard, who would know how to recite it properly.

“Maybe let’s start with the epic,” she said, after he tried and failed six dozen different times in his head.  “Are there many epics among your people?”

This was like asking if water was wet.  Harashkir stared at her.  He’d never had a conversation like this with an Elf.  Either they were all thralls together, and they already knew, or they were Nordowen’s folk, who would work with his folk but clustered together in the evenings and whispered about them, laughing and mocking, if not openly.

“It is common, then.” She was amused.

“Yes,” Harashkir said finally.  “I don’t know if I used the right word.  All our stories are songs.  We pass them on to our children.  I don’t have children.”

“Neither do I.”  She presented the words matter-of-factly.  Then she continued, “I still tell stories.  It’s why—they call me Pengolodh.”

Maybe he’d been wrong that it was a name.  “Is that not your name?”

“It’s my name, but it wasn’t either of the names I was given at birth.”  She frowned, tapping her pen against her notebook.  “So, if your stories are sung, do you not sing them to outsiders?”

“No, it’s not like that, we’re not the Dwarves.” Something he knew, finally.  “I’m just not very musical.”

“Well,” she pointed out dryly, “I can’t hear, so it doesn’t matter.  Just tell me what happens in your story—your epic.  How do the words fit into the story?”

That reassured him a little, and he realized she had been doing it intentionally—building up a friendly rapport to help settle his nerves.  It made him feel sick, and he had to put his head down for a minute, failing to meet her eyes.  How could she do that, when he’d just watched and done nothing while they raped her?  Fuck.

He breathed slow, to calm himself.  He owed her far more than he could repay, but he could do this much for her, at least.  “Right.  Nega is a woman who lived a long time ago, before we were slaves, when we were just a people who lived in the north.  She had two brothers and they were the only family she had left in the world.  Their parents had died when their home was destroyed.”

“Destroyed? How?”

He hadn’t expected her to interrupt him, and he looked up to see that both she and the interpreter were sharing a long look.

“Uh, I don’t know.  The story doesn’t say.”

She nodded.  “I’m sorry—please go on.”

“Don’t,” he said without meaning to, too sharp, moving too quick, and for the first time she startled, flinching backwards.  “I mean—don’t apologize.  Shit. I’m sorry.”  He rubbed his sweating palms on his trousers and tried to make his body language submissive.

After a stretched, awful moment, she settled back into her seat.  “Go on,” she told him.

“They were waylaid on the road, and the attackers killed her brothers, but Nega escaped.  Later, she went to the lord of her land and asked for his help.  He captured the bandits and said he’d abide by Nega’s verdict.  She let them go—that’s what she said to them, or maybe what the lord of the land said.”  He paused.  “Um, later they come back and kill her, and her daughter hunts them down and takes them back to the lord of the land, and he tortures them to death.  There’s a lot more, but that’s everything about Nega.”

The scratching noise of the pen stopped abruptly.  Pengolodh met his eyes.  “She dies.  Because she shows mercy.”  She shook herself.  “Well, I suppose that’s not exactly uncommon in an epic.  Are all the stories of your people tragic?”

She was afraid now; he was certain of it.  Her hands were shaking, and the smell of her sweat had grown stronger.  

He didn’t know what to say.  “Most of them.”

She folded a little over her knees.  He needed to think of something.

“I don’t want to be tortured to death,” he said finally.  “And I believe your lord can protect you.  He’s a child of two worlds, and they say those children can see the farthest.”

A blink, as if she were coming out of a reverie.  “But if he could not,” she said, her clear green eyes rooting him to the spot, “what would you do then?”

“I’d—protect you,” he said, fumbling with the honesty.  “I don’t want to be tortured to death, but I thought we would be, and I thought that’s what your lord should do.  That’s the judgement I would have made.  For what we did.”

The rhythm of her heart settled a little.  “For what you did?” she asked, with the faintest half smile hovering over her mouth.  “You stopped her.”  Before he could decide whether there was some other response she was looking for, she rose to her feet.  “Thank you,” she said, the gesture that had cut him to the quick the first time and now did it again.  “I’ll come back.  I want to hear more of your stories.”

“If you want.”

“Don’t apologize again.  It doesn’t help.”

He ducked his head numbly.  “As you command, great lady.”

It made her laugh, for some reason, but it was better than the fear.

* * *

It was late and Pengolodh was very tired, but he wasn’t ready to sleep.  Instead, he sat in front of a candle burning low, and wrote.  He was starting to get a headache, but he didn’t stop until the small strip of colored cloth in front of his desk dipped and raised, the marker he used in place of a knock on his door.  Then, rubbing his eyes and wondering who was calling on him at this time of night, he went to the door.

It was Elros, looking about as tired as he felt.  “I just got back,” he said tersely.  “Balrogs to the east.  Everything was on fire.”  His eyes, Pengolodh noted, were reddened with smoke.  “How did it go?”

Pengolodh gestured him inside.  “I went down there,” he said.  “Right into the middle of them.  I spoke to Harashkir.  I didn’t run away.”  He’d wanted to.  Almost every minute he was there.  He hadn’t done it.  “He was trying not to scare me, I think.”

“Something else happened, though, didn’t it?”

“Gil-galad will be pleased.  I’ve learned more about his heritage,” Pengolodh said, in lieu of answering.  “I think Harashkir will tell me more too, if I go back.”

Gracelessly, Elros sat on the floor.  “Can I touch you?” he asked, from his very unprepossessing position.

“Yes.”  To Pengolodh’s surprise, he scooted closer and then laid his head along Pengolodh’s thigh.  It was intimate but not intimidating.

“So what happened?” he prodded.  “Are you writing down the Orc story now?”

Daringly, Pengolodh swatted him with a piece of paper, and Elros wrinkled his nose and pretended to sneeze.  “No,” he said.  “I’ve got all my notes, and I’ll need to speak to him more if I want a more complete story anyway.  He’s not a storyteller.  I’m trying,” he didn’t want to admit it, but he suspected Elros wouldn’t stop until he told him what had happened—not without him asking Elros to stop, anyway, but somehow he didn’t want to do that either, “I’m trying to use the notes from—from Tavrobel.  To write about Gondolin again.  About Maeglin.  I don’t know why I’m bothering.  I’ll never know the truth.”

“You avoided the question again,” pointed out Elros.

“You asked me two questions at the same time.”

Shrug.  A little infuriating.  Tentatively, Pengolodh put his hand on Elros’s head and petted him, combing his fingers through the messy curls, matted with sweat.  “He told me about the quote, yes.  It’s spoken by a woman whose brothers are murdered.  She frees the murderers, and then they come back and kill her.”

Elros made a face.  “Oof.”

“They’re tortured to death later.”

“Doesn’t really help.”

“No.”

With a slow, gentle motion, Elros took his hand and simply held it, a little like he had when they’d slept together, with the fingers interlaced.  He didn’t hold it for long, but he squeezed it once before releasing it.  “You’re safe now,” he said.  “I wish I could hand you a better promise than that, but I suppose we both know that I can’t.”

Tears pricked at Pengolodh’s eyes, and, after a moment, he let them fall.  “I wonder if they tortured Maeglin,” he said.  “I’ve been wondering the whole time.  Or if they did worse.  I’d have done anything for my notes, and then I’d have done anything to make it stop.  Or did he really betray us as Idril said?”

“You knew Maeglin,” Elros said slowly.  “I didn’t realize.”

“We were friends.” Pengolodh rubbed his hands across his face.  “We used to take tea together.  He knew my childhood nurse very well.  Lord Talagando of the Harp.”  And there was someone Pengolodh couldn’t think about—not now, maybe not ever.  He gestured helplessly at Elros.  “The first time I wrote it, it was the only story I could tell.  Now I don’t know.  And I don’t have any evidence to tell me differently.  All I have is this.”  He tapped the notebook.  “We barely talked about him.  All Turgon said was that he was a true Nolofinwëan.”  He shrugged.  “And I have what Idril said, I suppose.”

“What about what you remember?” Elros asked.

“That? None of it holds together.  I don’t know.”

“Maybe you should try to write a different kind of history about him.”

“I’m a loremaster of Gondolin,” Pengolodh said.  “I’m—the loremaster of Gondolin.  That’s the only kind of history I know how to write.”

“And of course you couldn’t learn anything else.”  Elros squeezed his hand again.  “Think about it.  Maybe you could write an epic instead of a history this time.”

“But then it won’t be true,” Pengolodh complained.  He was already considering it.  “I can’t.  Maybe.”

Elros yawned, and his eyes flickered over to the bed and back.  “Can I stay here tonight?” he asked, before Pengolodh could ask him if he wanted to.  “I’m going to have nightmares about forest fires.”

“I’m going to have nightmares too,” Pengolodh replied.  “Please stay.  Will you whistle me a lullaby?”

A very strange look appeared on Elros’s face.  “I don’t know if you’ll be able to hear it this far from the remains of the Girdle.”

Pengolodh shrugged.  “I could put my fingers to your lips.”

The look changed into something considering.  “Maybe do that anyway,” Elros said, and smirked.  “Yes, all right, I’d be honored.”

They went over to the bed together after Pengolodh had straightened his papers and blown out his candle.  Elros pulled off his tabard and leggings, leaving him in his undershirt, and Pengolodh, without even thinking about it, changed into his nightshirt in front of him.  Then he pulled back the covers and invited Elros into his bed.  At least if he had nightmares, he’d wake up to a familiar face.

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Chapter End Notes

Chapter Content Warnings

• light misgendering due to cultural confusion again, this time to Pengolodh's face; it doesn't bother him
• heavy themes, including reference/discussion of rape, death, and torture, but all non-explicit

there wasn't a good place to make it clear, but the Elf interpreting for Pengolodh is Galdor (of Gondolin).