Laws and Customs (Cover and Art Edition) by AdmirableMonster  

He shouldn’t have returned to Tavrobel.  Not during these troubled times.  But it was in the little house at Tavrobel that Pengolodh believed he had unwittingly abandoned a series of his notes about Maeglin, including a short interview he had conducted with King Turgon.  Gil-galad had sent an escort with him, but neither of them had wanted to take too many warriors away from the front for something like this, especially when a small group could easily slip beneath the notice of the armies of all sides.

Stupid, Pengolodh told himself as he crouched beneath the small table inside the now half-ruined cottage.  Neither of them had considered the possibility of other small groups, which would be far more likely to take an interest.  He had not even realized they were being attacked until his horse reared and ran and he had turned to see the rest of the company engaged in a pitched battle.

Running was the only thing he knew how to do, but he was used to it, and he knew that Dínferedis and her two soldiers did not need to have their attention split trying to protect the useless scholar, so he had fled and looked for a hiding place in the cottage.  With a scrap of ragged blanket across the table, he thought he had concealed himself as well as he could, but he did not know what was happening.  This might be where his luck ran out.  Trembling, he splayed one hand across the floor. 

He did not have to wait long to confirm that his luck had, indeed, run out.  At first, everything was still.  But very soon, the floor vibrated once, then again in the rhythmic pattern of a set of heavy boots.  Pengolodh’s breathing stuck in his throat.

Elentári, he prayed silently.

Then the table was thrown over sideways with a heavy thud, and he looked up to see a mud-spattered Orc with a bloody blade in one hand.

Pengolodh tried to run, but a hand caught his wrist, and he was jerked instantly to a stop.  He turned and went for the Orc’s eyes, but a heavy blow across his face snapped his head back, and he blacked out for a moment or two.

By the time the dizziness had passed, the Orc had dragged him out of the cottage and flung him down in the center of a ring of armed warriors.  Pengolodh frantically cleared his eyes, trying to see what had happened, trying to find a way out.

There were bodies on the ground—Dínferedis and her warriors, as well as two Orcs and another Elf, an unfamiliar one.  Pengolodh’s stomach roiled.  Forgive me, forgive me.

The last Elf, though—that was not one of their own.  And when Pengolodh looked up at the ring, he saw something that made his heart drop through his feet: Elves and Orcs conversing rapidly in what seemed to be a complex pidgin dialect.  Pengolodh’s Orcish was minimal, but the other language they were speaking was Quenya, complete with hand gestures, so he could follow some of the rudiments.  Something about scavenging, supplies—

Their attention turned to him.  His heart was thundering in his rib-cage, and the fear sent him back to his feet, flying in a futile attempt to break through the ring.  Hands grabbed him instantly, no matter how he kicked and bit and fought, always more and more, until his breath was seizing in his lungs and his muscles would not obey him.

This, then, was where it ended.  In front of an abandoned cottage, surrounded, again, by the bodies of friends.  Pengolodh’s hands balled into fists, and he could not keep back the frustrated tears, or the little sob that wrenched itself out of his throat.

Be dignified, he told himself.  Go to Mandos without being afraid.  Elentári help me—

It didn’t do much good.  All he could feel was the frenetic beat of his heart in his ribs as he was dragged on his knees in front of a big white-haired Orc, whose face remained expressionless as he flipped a dagger from his belt and pointed it at Pengolodh, saying something as he did so.

It was in Quenya, Pengolodh was sure, but heavily accented, and the fangs distorted the words so that he could not follow them without the aid of gestures.  The Orc repeated the instruction.  Pengolodh could not shrug, could not raise his hands to gesture.  He could only watch, helpless, hands stilled, leaving him mute.

Then one of the Elves caught the Orc’s arm, tugging him down to say something rapidly.  The Orc frowned, and Pengolodh saw him look around the group as if assessing something.  Then, with a slight shake of the head, he gestured to the Elf to move forward.

The Elf was grinning, and she addressed Pengolodh clearly.  “You’re the deaf scholar from Sirion.  The one they call the Pengolodh.” Turning, she spat to the side.

The red of her robes had faded to a faint brownish tint, but the accent was unmistakable.  Fëanorian.

There was little point in denying it.  Pengolodh nodded.

She smirked at him.  “I’ve been wanting to meet you, slanderer.” Strutting forward, she pulled out a little wrapped bundle, and cold encompassed Pengolodh’s entire body.  His notes.  She had his notes.

He must have made a noise, because she laughed delightedly and tossed the bundle into the air, catching it just before he was certain it would have fallen to strike the muddy ground.

“And what are you going to do with these, I wonder?” she asked.  She stooped, holding the notes right under his nose.  “More slander?  I’ve read some of your work, you know.  You don’t have any respect for your betters, Sinda.”

Pengolodh could not keep his eyes from the notes.  It was ludicrous.  He was about to have his throat cut, and all he could think about was that they would fall into the mud, be trampled, be obliterated, and he had worked so hard on them.

The Elf turned her head, and Pengolodh realized the Orc leader had said something to her.  She waved a hand lightly, and Pengolodh caught in her response only your people and mine and something that looked like a question.  Then she turned back to him.

“This isn’t Gondolin, Sinda,” she told him.  The repetition of something that wasn’t a name, Pengolodh thought.  There was a reason for it.  He’d talked to enough folk who had survived hardships to know that when the enemy began to speak of you as a category rather than an individual, things were about to get much worse. “You can’t play Noldo here and expect it to keep you safe.  You and your bastard king.”

With a swift movement, she stepped forward and ripped his kerchief back.  He flinched in horror and tried to cover himself, but he was securely held, and his fluffy hair sprang free easily, already badly-contained from several weeks of humidity and washing in the river.

Again, she turned; again, the Orc must have said something.  This time Pengolodh caught none of it; he was trying too hard to breathe against the crushing, all-encompassing sense of shame and nakedness.

The conversation went on longer, he thought; he could not be sure.  He had finally closed his eyes, trying to shut the world out.  He was recalled to it with a harsh blow, which rattled through his painful nose and made his eyes spring open.

“Oh no,” the Fëanorian told him, a dangerous glint in her expression.  “You don’t get out of this that easily.  My friend and I have a bet, and you need to settle it.”  She nodded to the others and said something that was too hard for him to follow.  They released his arms enough so that he could move his hands, though he was still held on his knees before her.  “You’ll speak or the notes go into the fire.”

He blanched.  He couldn’t help it.  His hands trembled but he forced himself to respond, “I’ll speak.”

She hit him again, an open-handed, contemptuous slap.  “‘I’ll speak, my lady.’”

Pengolodh’s gorge rose, but he could still see the bundle of his notes, the only copy of Turgon’s words left in Middle Earth.  Could still see Idril’s serious, confident expression when she named him Pengolodh.  “I’ll speak, my lady.”

“Good, that’s good, I might win my bet.”  She ran a hand through his hair, and he shuddered, trying to move away from the mockery of a caress, but the touch became a twisting, painful grip and held him still.  Only when he stopped trying to struggle did she step back.  “Will you do anything for your notes, Sinda?”

She wouldn’t give them back.  She’d humiliate him and then destroy them in front of him and laugh about it.  But the alternative was not even trying.  Idril’s reproachful face rose before Pengolodh’s mind, the image of Gondolin’s towers collapsing in on themselves in a shower of bright-glowing embers.  I am not faithless, my king.  I am not Maeglin.

“Anything.”

She raised a warning finger.

“Anything, my lady.” He knew his eyes were burning with anger as well as with tears.  His teeth shifted awkwardly and unpleasantly against one another; he was clenching them.

“All right then, Sinda.  Have you ever pleased a woman with your mouth?”

What. Pengolodh stared at her.  She grinned back, more of a snarl than a smile.  He could only shake his head.  Of course not.  “I’m not married,” he protested raggedly, hands moving before he had time to think.

She laughed again. “Still pretending you’re a Noldo?  I know what the Sindar are like, slut.”

“I am Gondolindrim, and the Sindar aren’t—”

She held up the notes warningly, as if about to drop them, and Pengolodh dropped his hands to his sides, shaking all over.

“Anything,” she bit out, hands and mouth moving.  “You said anything.  So what is it—anything, or do I burn the notes, slut?”

Would it kill him?  At this point, he almost preferred to die, but then the notes would—the notes would—no, surely not.  He might not be personally acquainted with carnal acts, but presumably using his mouth wouldn’t—it was shameful, but it wasn’t—

It was only shame.  Dínferedis and her warriors had given their lives for those notes.  Pengolodh dipped his head and nodded.  “Anything, my lady,” he signed numbly.

“Good boy.  Open your mouth and make sure you move your tongue, I like that.”  Quite unselfconscious, she approached him, unbuttoned her loose leggings, and flipped them open.

He could not quite believe this was happening.  Everything was starting to seem very distant.  Follow the instructions, he told himself sternly.  He opened his mouth.  She sank her hand back into his hair, pulling him forward and positioning him so that his mouth was between her legs.  She stank of sweat and of many hard days in the wilderness.  His mouth met unaccustomed heat, unaccustomed moisture. She tugged his hair, hard, repositioned him slightly.  It jolted his nose, and he felt himself mewl in pain, but she ignored that.

Follow the instructions.  He knew the basics, at least.  He might not be personally experienced, but he read fairly indiscriminately, and he’d devoured his fair share of erotic fiction. He moved his tongue.  The taste wasn’t terrible, at least, even if the sensation was beyond strange, slimy and hot.  Worse was the feeling of being trapped, the fact that he had to steal air, shaking, through his nostrils, which were already clogging with blood and snot.  

And worse than that—

He could feel her moaning, a ragged tremor going from her body into his mouth.  As she got him settled into a position she liked, there was less pain—she was only a little rough, and he could use his hands to steady himself as she rocked against his mouth.  And—his hröa responded to her heat, to her taste, to her movements.  His cock hardened; his cunt grew wet.  A horrible, distant nausea began to twist in his belly as she used him.

Elentári, please, he begged, but there was nothing but the usual silence, the heavy hand on his head, the awful feeling between his legs.  He tried squeezing them together, but that only sent a bolt of bright, ugly pleasure up his belly and into his chest.  His nipples hardened as well, pressing against the thin linen of his breast-bindings.  Please, Pengolodh prayed hopelessly, and a sharp-edged something tore out of his chest, shaking his body with the force of it.  The hand in his hair tightened, and she forced herself against him harder, her thighs shaking around his face.  For a moment, everything started to go dim, and he realized vaguely that he could not breathe.  Please—please—

Then—a gulp of air into his lungs, almost a disappointment, and there was nothing holding his head.  He sank downward against the hands that were still holding the rest of him up, and blinked through blurred eyes to see her staring down at him, flushed, her chest heaving.  Her Treelit eyes traveled up and down his form, lighting on first his face, then his chest, then his groin.  “Oh, you liked that, didn’t you?” she signed.  “I knew you were a slut.”

Pengolodh shook his head, sending splintering pain through his face and skull, but the evidence was there, incontrovertible, un-hideable.  His breath came in panting gusts through his mouth; his nose was blocked now, but he could not raise his hands to do anything about it.

“Well, I’ll go again, since you’re so eager,” she said, and then something muddier he couldn’t make out, not focused on him.  Suddenly, the others, who had been holding him passively, were moving.  Pengolodh struggled weakly, but he was too exhausted to do much other than catch his breath.  They pulled off his tabard and his belt, untucked his shirt and yanked it up; then they forced him down onto his back, hands pinning his wrists into the mud, his back pressed roughly into a pointed rock.

Her weight came down directly on his sternum, forcing his breath out in a rush.  Straddling him, she slid back along his stomach, leaving a trail of fluid where his shirt was rucking up around him.  Her hand grasped his cock, freeing it from his trousers with a rough, painful twist, and positioned it beneath her.  Then she sank down on him—heat and slick surrounding him, horribly pleasureful.  Pengolodh gasped for air, turning his head to the side.  Surely—surely now he would die.  Surely.

The rock dug into him, just on the edge of uncomfortable.  His cock sank into the Fëanorian, over and over again, as she fucked him into the ground with repeated, business-like motions.  He took one breath, and then another, each one torn out of him.  Pain prickled through him, through the wrists that were bruising from his attempts to pull them out of his captors’ grasps, through the sharp point of the rock in his back, through the cramping muscles of his abdomen.  But the pleasure was worse, a relentless warmth coiling in his belly as she rode him, as she forced him into her, again and again and again.  And he breathed, and he kept breathing, smelling blood and wet earth.

Her hands ran over his chest, and one of them brushed across his nipple.  He twitched, an intense spark of sensation traveling through him, and she halted in her motions for a minute.  When he looked at her, still trying not to try to breathe, still with his breaths coming too fast, too hard, too strong, too alive, she was flushed and amused.  She said something he couldn’t make out, too far gone to read her lips, and then she pinched his nipple, hard, through the breast-bindings.  Pengolodh’s whole body jerked.  Pain shot through his mouth, following by the smothering copper tang of blood, and he realized he’d bitten through his lip.

She did it again, and again, each time making his body thrust up into her, each time shaking loose a wash of sick pleasure; then she bore down against him heavily, pinching again as she did so, and he spasmed into a climax, all-consuming and terrible, his heels knocking against the earth.

When she peeled herself back up off him, he was still alive.  Everything had remained silent.  There had been no call to Mandos.  Pengolodh lay in his own filth and sobbed quietly.

For the space of four breaths, he thought at least it was over now.  He had failed his parents and his people and his gods, but at least it might be finished.  Then there were more hands on him, dragging his leggings down, and hands pulling his thighs apart.  She’d noticed more than he’d realized when she was playing with his nipples, then.  Maybe, Pengolodh thought, with one last guttering ember of hope, maybe that will be enough.  Maybe this final violation would detach the fëa.

Fingers sank into his wet cunt, up to the knuckle.  Someone slapped his thigh lightly.  Pengolodh looked up for long enough to see there was a different Elf between his legs now, and then turned his face away.  At least this intrusion hurt, though not really all that much.  The rock in his back was worse.  It would probably bruise.  He noticed, distantly, that he was no longer really expecting to die.  Instead, he was vaguely cataloguing the new set of sensations through a grey numb veil.  There was a stretch—that was most of the pain—and an intrusion, and the repeated drag of the thing inside him against the walls of his cunt, repetitive, not as pleasureful as his cock inside the other, but pleasureful enough.  Hands were playing with his breasts again, and he shuddered and closed his eyes.  A particularly violent thrust drove him into the rock, and he gasped.  That might have broken the skin, finally.

He searched for a distraction. Looking around the area, he saw that what had originally been a muddled ring of onlookers had broken apart.  Several of the Orcs were standing watch at the edge of the clearing.  One or two of the Elves were going in and out of the cottage, perhaps checking for supplies.  Pengolodh did not think there would be much left.  The big white-haired Orc stood watching with a neutral expression, while several of the other Elves were—

Pengolodh’s face burned.  What they were doing should not have made it worse—nothing should have made it worse—but it did. 

The Elf fucking him clutched at his hips and went still, cock twitching obscenely inside him.  When he pulled out, Pengolodh felt hot seed trickling out of him.  His stomach heaved, but he forced the nausea down, afraid of what they might do if he threw up. Another Elf took the first one’s place. They stopped holding onto his wrists. It made little difference.  Pengolodh lay limp and felt his body move, hands lying like discarded gloves against the earth. The soreness between his legs slowly increased, but he couldn’t even be glad of the discomfort anymore.  Worse, this one lay on him, weight pressing him into the earth, and Pengolodh could feel the moans and grunts against his crawling skin as the second fucked the seed of the other back into him, then let it mingle with his own.

The next one was an Orc, and the feeling of the larger cock pressing at his entrance was, abruptly, too much.  Pengolodh felt himself make a noise that shook his whole body.  His gaze fell on the white-haired Orc, who made a motion, and he signed, desperately, even though he knew he wouldn’t be understood, “Please, kill me.  Please,” trying at the same time to make the words come out of a throat that did not know how to shape them.

The Orc’s mouth opened, and even with the accent and the fangs, Pengolodh could read a sharp word, Stop.

The Orc between his legs halted, looking back.  Then, with bad grace, he stepped back, letting Pengolodh’s legs fall, splayed and trembling, to the earth.

The Fëanorian met the white-haired Orc partway to Pengolodh’s side, saying something, furious and rapid.  The Orc looked at her impassively, then took her by the shoulder and steered her over to Pengolodh.  He gestured from her to Pengolodh; she glared, but shrugged, and said to Pengolodh, “He wants to know if you want them to stop.”

Agony twisted up Pengolodh’s spine.  His eyes flickered to the notes at her side.  The white-haired Orc jabbed a finger into her shoulder.  She rolled her eyes.  “He says I have won the bet, as you have fulfilled your word.”  She turned sideways and said something else, but now the Orcs around the clearing were stirring, several of them reaching for their weapons.

“Stop,” Pengolodh signed.  He could not take more, in any case. (Maeglin bloomed somewhere deep and hidden in his chest.  Maeglin.  No.)  “Please.  Kill me.”

She said something else to the Orc, who nodded and took the notes away from her.  Then she turned back and shook her head, face cold.  “A true Noldo wouldn’t have survived that, slut.”

Pengolodh squeezed his eyes shut, tears slipping down his cheeks.  A large pair of hands took him carefully beneath his shoulders and drew him into a sitting position.  Then rough cloth was thrown across his legs, and something soft and leather was tucked into his hands.  He opened his eyes again to find that the Orc had pressed his notes on him.  He pulled something off his belt and handed Pengolodh a waterskin and a few strips of dried meat, miming eating.  Pengolodh stared at him.

The Orc gave him a nod, raised his hands, and stepped back.  He turned his head, calling out, and the whole band of them began to collect together.  The Elves were a little slower to gather, several of them tucking themselves back together or staring at Pengolodh, who instinctively tried to make himself smaller, but after a few minutes, they were all gathered, and then all of them began melting away into the forest.

Pengolodh curled up around his notes.  The damn rock was no longer in his back.  It was the last thing he thought before he slipped into a deep stupor.