The Lands of Weeping and of War by bunn  

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Faith unbroken

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They stayed in the hills with Iarwain for several days. The hounds brought rabbits and small-deer in plenty, and they hunted for hazel-nuts and blackberries, for the first mushrooms of autumn. Iarwain knew every fruit and leaf and all and all their properties: things that Amrod might have known, but Maglor had never learned. 

More than that, he knew songs out of the east, from traditions that Maglor had never encountered before. He was a little disappointed when Iarwain declared that his time in these hills was over and that the time had come to travel south, although it was unclear who set the time or where precisely he was going. 

Elros had taken a fancy to go further east, to the great freshwater lake that Iarwain had spoke of, and since the sky was still clear and blue and the leaves only just beginning to be tinged with gold, it seemed a pleasant notion. They rode down into the wide grasslands around the margins of the River Lhun, taking their leisure and riding slowly, singing as they went, and forded the river at a point where it ran wide and shallow over shining gravel.

Ahead of them the hills rose wild and fair against the morning sky, wooded with great craggy ancient oak trees with wide-stretching branches. The grazing deer had made glades and pathways through the woodlands, and they followed the deer-trails up through the trees into higher lands where the white stems and red berries of the rowan trees shone in the sunlight. 

“You played that one yesterday,” Elrond said idly when Maglor began picking out an autumn-song on the harp, one that Finrod had written long ago. “Give us something different. Something from Tirion, perhaps?” 

“Something from Tirion.” Maglor thought for a moment, and began to pick out notes as his horse ambled on, snatching at leaves as she went. “This is a making-song,” he said. “They used to sing it a good deal in the workshops on the main hill up to the Square of Fountains, to smooth the work onwards. You don’t really get the effect with just the harp, it needs the ring of hammers and the rattle of the loom... But this will give you some idea.” 

When the song was done, they were riding down a long green sweep of hillside, dotted with scattered trees. Elrond said to his brother, “You don’t want to see Tirion, someday?”

Elros screwed up his face and gave him an amused look. “I chose not to. I’ll build my own city instead, and admire Tirion reflected in song.”

Elrond made an unimpressed noise. 

“Give it a rest, Elrond. I’m not going to change my mind. Anyway, I don’t see you hurrying across the Sea to Tirion. ”

“I’m staying with Gil-galad. And Maglor, of course,” Elrond said, coolly. 

“You are not,” Maglor said firmly. “Stay for Gil-galad if you like, but...”

“Yes, I know.” His expression, for Elrond, looked unusually annoyed. “Do not follow the house of Fëanor. I’m not. I don’t feel any inclination to! If I need someone to follow, it would be Gil-galad. Following the house of Fëanor is a great mistake. Frankly, I have no idea why anyone ever did.”

“My father was very persuasive. And very able,” Maglor said, taken aback. 

“And he had a great regard for his own creations and very little respect for anyone else’s. Or for the loyalty of his own people, so far as I can see. Come on Maglor, why do you always defend him? He made you swear a disastrous oath, then got you all doomed through sheer obstinacy in a fit of rage.” 

“No!” Maglor took a deep, calming breath, because this was Elrond after all, and made himself reply without heat. “That is not how it was. We chose to swear the Oath. We were all of us angry, and all of us afraid. The Valar had humiliated our prince, and so, our people. The Enemy had slain our king and plunged the land into darkness. The Valar could not protect us, would not aid us; we had to strike back. Alqualondë... I wish now we had acted otherwise there, but we had no idea that there was another choice. I supported my father’s decision. It was his to make.”

“And his decision to burn the ships he stole?” Elrond’s voice was sharp with a cutting edge of incredulity. 

“We stole. He was the king. He judged that we did not need Fingolfin’s people to do our task, and that division would weaken us. He misjudged the strength of the Enemy, but he could not have known.” 

“Maedhros said...” Elros began.

Maglor cut him off. “Maedhros disagreed. His right. I did not.”

Elrond frowned. “I thought you felt Alqualondë was a terrible mistake?” 

“It was. But still, my father was our hope. The greatest of the Noldor. He died nobly in battle against the Enemy. If he had lived...” Maglor realised that his voice was becoming louder, and made himself stop abruptly. 

After a moment, he laughed, breaking the awkward quiet. “I’m sorry. Perhaps not the most evenhanded appraisal of his legacy. Apparently old habits die hard.”

“So I see,” Elrond said, noncommittal.

“The Oath, Alqualondë, the burning at Losgar. I regret... you know I wish things had been different, Elrond.” That was as close as he was prepared to come to admitting that Elrond had seen the Oath grip him, had seen flames raging in his dreaming mind. “But they were my choices. The worst of my deeds were entirely mine, and he would be appalled by them, I’m sure of that. You know that. I. The Havens.” The end of the sentence would not come, so he signalled Táli to halt. “I’m sorry. Look. You two go back to Lindon. I’ll stay clear.”

“No,” Elrond turned his own horse looking now more upset than angry. “Don’t. I didn’t mean that.” 

“He wouldn’t have gone looking for you if we didn’t want you to be here,” Elros said. “Don’t be daft, Maglor.” There was a definite echo of Maedhros in his voice, but probably not a deliberate one. 

Elrond smiled at Maglor, with something of effort to it, and made a vague explanatory gesture with one hand. “It’s only that it sometimes feels that it would be a fine thing to have someone else to blame.”

Maglor shook his head. “I am afraid there is no-one else.”

Elros gave his brother a thoughtful sideways look and brought his horse up to stand beside Maglor’s, rubbing idly at his mane. “What’s got into you, Elrond? First you had a go at me, and then you started prodding at Maglor.” 

“I suppose I did. Sorry.”

“I don’t mind,” Maglor said. “If you want to talk about the mess I’ve made of my father’s ragged and bloodstained inheritance, I can hardly complain, under the circumstances.” 

“Well, I can,” Elros said firmly. “We’re supposed to be having fun!” 

Elrond looked at his brother and wrinkled his nose unhappily. “It came to me that in a few years, you’ll be across the Sea, and a while after that, you’ll be gone beyond the world, and Maglor and I will be still here. I never thought it would be that way around.”

“A poor exchange, if you look at it like that,” Maglor said, with sympathy.

“Not an exchange,” Elros said. “It’s not as if I had chosen to jump off a cliff...” he caught himself short. “Hm. Not the best way I could have put that. But what I mean is, we always thought we’d be Men, and nothing wrong with that. Then, unexpectedly, we got the choice and you chose otherwise, which is fair enough. I’m not going to try to talk you out of it again. But it’s hardly Maglor’s fault that he’s an Elf. Let alone Fëanor’s.” 

“I suppose not,” Elrond said. He gave Maglor a long thoughtful stare, clear grey eyes like starry skies. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“I did not expect to be,” Maglor admitted. “But... well. You said, try to be someone you could trust, Elrond, and I will try. But it would be safest not to rely on it. You know that.” 

“You threw the Silmaril into the Sea,” Elrond said. “There’s no sign of the Oath about you any more. It’s less important what you did before, than what you do next. I was being foolish. ”

“You certainly were,” Elros agreed cheerfully. “I am travelling with a fine pair of fools. Now, shall we set up our camp here? There’s a glade just beyond those trees, and those broken branches look like they would make good dry firewood. I think we’ve ridden far enough today.” 

****

In the clear morning light next day, they could see the distant lake glinting far below them, but Elros was in no hurry to move on. “We’ve had three days riding,” he said over his shoulder to Elrond, rummaging in his pack. “The horses could do with a day of rest and so could I. Also, I have brought the board and the game pieces, and I haven’t had a chance to beat Maglor at King’s Table in years.”

“I don’t think the outcome is quite as certain as that,” Maglor protested, from his place lying stretched out comfortably with his feet near the fire. “Anyway, Elrond will win, he always does.”

“That’s what you think. Gil-galad has beaten him several times recently. It can be done! But even if he does, I’ll have the glory of second place.” 

Elrond laughed and got up. “I am the recognised master of the game, I have no need to defend my title. You two play: I have a fancy to walk down towards the lake on this fine morning.”

The hounds were lazing comfortably beside Elros, long heads resting on shaggy flanks, but as Elrond set off, the youngest got up, shook himself and came trotting after him, tail wagging. Behind him, the eldest of the hounds rolled over and put his head on Elros’s foot with an expressive sigh. 

Elrond smiled. “You’re coming too, are you, Húnlócon? Come on then.”

He walked down the hillside, into a long valley that led down between tawny sandstone and jagged dark slate jutting out from the dark soil, heading towards the faint glimmer of light on the lake below. 

There was a faint path among the straggling trees, marked here and there by the sharp hooves of the deer. Húnlócon sniffed enthusiastically and bounded ahead, wagging his long plumed tail enthusiastically. After a mile or two the path narrowed and turned around a great rock. Elrond could hear the rush of water somewhere below. 

As he passed the rock, the shaly surface of the path shifted under his feet, flat stones skittering away down into a great cleft in the hillside. He stepped sideways as they moved under his feet and adjusted his weight, but just as he moved, the stones shifted as Húnlócon who at that moment was walking just behind him, leaped forward.

The great hound caught Elrond’s thigh just as he was off-balance. Elrond grabbed for support, found nothing but air, and fell. A great rush of dusty stone went with him. 

After a brief, stunned moment, he realised that he had stopped moving. His shoulder hurt with a savage, aching throb. He took a deep breath, and felt himself over: no other obvious injuries, apart from a bruise on the side of his face and a skinned knee. He was covered in grey scratchy dust. Pulling himself painfully to his knees and looking up, he could see that he was at the bottom of a deep cleft, with a loose shale-bank on the side that he had fallen from.

The crumbling sides of the cleft would be climbable with both hands, but moving his left arm cautiously, Elrond was not sure he could manage it. He moved his hand over arm and shoulder, trying to determine what was damaged, but a grey swirl of dizziness came to him and he had to duck his head and focus on breathing for a moment. He would not be able to do anything much for the pain in this state, but it would be some time before Elros could find him on such rough and unfamiliar ground. 

Perhaps climbing out was worth a try after all. He set a cautious foot on the stones, and tried to climb the least steep bank, stepping as lightly as he knew how, but got no more than a few steps before the stones began to move under him, and he had to jump backwards. He landed awkwardly, his head reeling, and leant against the overhanging opposite wall of the cleft for a moment, his scratched and dusty hand against the cool wet stone. 

No, climbing out was not a good choice. He reached out to his brother mind to mind, sent him the image of where he was, and received a calm but urgent assurance that Elros was coming. All he could do was wait. 

 

High above him against the sky, a long apologetic nose appeared, wide brown eyes peering downward. 

“There you are Húnlócon!” Elrond said. “No, stay! I don’t want you to fall on my head in a shower of stone. Are you hurt?” 

The hound stretched his long legs and yawned unhappily. Elrond understood that Húnlócon was not hurt but was sorry for his mistake. 

“Never mind,” he said consolingly. “Go back to Elros. Show him the way here. Go on, Húnlócon. Elros. Find Elros. Bring him here” 

Húnlócon tilted his long ears for a moment quizzically and whined briefly, but then he seemed to make up his mind, and trotted purposefully away. 

***

Sometime later, he heard movement up above. Elros and Maglor already? But there was no sound of horses hooves, and that sounded like far too many feet... 

An unfamiliar face appeared high above against the light. Elrond blinked at it. A Man, his face wrinkled at the corners of his eyes, grizzled grey hair and a high forehead. 

“Good day to you,” Elrond said, as cheerfully as he could manage. “I am called Elrond, and I have run into misfortune today, as you see. I wonder if you might have a rope?” 

“Oh yes,” the grizzled man said, staring down at him and giving no name in reply. “Oh, yes. We have a rope.”

More heads appeared against the light, and then vanished again. Elrond could hear talking in low voices, but he did not know the language they were speaking. 

The grizzled man reappeared. “We will lower a basket. You will put sword and knives into the basket.”

Elrond blinked up at him. “There’s no need for that. I’m not going to hurt you.” 

The unmistakable shape of several arrows being held at the string appeared above him, all pointed at him. A basket on the end of a rope rattled down from above. 

“You will put sword and knives into the basket,” the grizzled man said, as if he had not spoken. “Otherwise, we shoot you, and take them from your body. You choose.” 

There was no cover at all here from arrows, and so no choice. Elrond managed with some difficulty to undo his sword-belt one-handed, and reluctantly put the whole thing, complete with his belt-knife, into the basket. It was not worth arguing about; Celebrimbor would make him another. 

Once the basket had been hauled up, bumping on the stones, the grizzled man nodded. 

A knotted rope slithered to Elrond’s feet. “Climb.” 

“No,” Elrond said warily. “You have my knife and sword. I’m not carrying anything else of value.”

The grizzled man looked pained. He rubbed his ear, and then made an expressive gesture with one hand. “Climb or die,” he said wearily, as if it really didn’t matter to him one way or the other. The arrows were still pointed at Elrond from above. 

Elrond took the rope, and trying to spare his injured shoulder, pulled himself up, feet against the sliding stone. With the rope to hold onto, it was possible to climb. 

When he reached the top, hands reached out roughly to grab him, and, dizzy with pain, he did not resist in time when they pulled his arms behind him and tied them. It was astonishingly painful. 

“What do you want?” he demanded, once his head had stopped spinning a little. 

“You,” the grizzled man said dismissively already turning away. A younger man wearing a patched coat that did not fit him shoved Elrond roughly around to follow him. “You’ll fetch a good price in the East.” 

“My kinsmen will pay a ransom for me. More than you’ll get in the East,” Elrond said hastily, though he had no idea how much that was likely to be. 

The grizzled man turned back, one eyebrow quirked in interest. “And where are they, then?”

Better not to mention Elros and Maglor. Elrond could not see how many men the grizzled man had with him; they were spread out along the path, laden with bundles that looked like furs. There were certainly more than two people could reasonably hope to fight. 

“Lindon,” he said, trying to ignore the pain in his shoulder and the muzzy feeling in his head. “My kinsman is king in the lands to the west of here, and he will reward you with riches if you return me to him.” 

But the grizzled man laughed shortly. “I’m not going anywhere near that poisonous nest of elves,” he said. “They did for the Mighty One of the North, they and their Powers out of the West, much to our loss.”

“You regret the fall of Morgoth?” Elrond asked, half-incredulous and half shocked. 

“Of course. It used to be my people sold slaves to Angband for gold: now we sell them to the East for silver if we’re lucky, and make up the difference with furs. I’m a plain man, I want profit, not battles. The bloody-handed Elves ruined all of that.”

“My kinsman will give you gold,” Elrond promised, wondering if it was true. Gil-galad would certainly be outraged, and might well be more inclined to war than bargain. 

But his word was not to be tested. The grizzled man shook his head with a dismissive laugh. “I’m not that stupid. Put the idea out of your head. You’ll reckon this next bit pretty foul, but it’s not so bad, the East. Plenty of chances for a young man. So don’t make my life or yours more difficult than it has to be. Brolach, bring him.”

Elrond had dealt with slavers before, in Hithlum where he and Elros had come among the remains of the enslaved Edain, and now and then elsewhere in the long years of the war for Beleriand. Morgoth had many slaves, and many slave-keepers. But they had been defeated: people left behind in the confused withdrawal of Morgoth’s armies, who knew that even if their dark master should counter-attack, he would do nothing to help them. They had been cringing, servile, expecting the worst from the allies of the people they had enslaved. You could feel the darkness and the miserable gnawing bitterness in their thoughts, but it had been a defeated bitterness. 

These people were quite different. Their thoughts were not so cruel, but glancing cautiously at their tired faces, and reaching, a little awkwardly, towards their strange minds, he knew they did not see a person in him at all, only goods to be sold, as the furs they carried were goods. Unpleasant and disconcerting to see himself through their eyes. 

Elrond caught his mind wandering, his steps becoming uneven, as the pain in his shoulder spread down his arm and his tied wrists protested. He must be careful not to faint. Conscious, he was goods: unconscious, he might be discarded as useless, but that would be no good if they put a dagger in his throat from disappointment at the profit lost. 

He sent a brief warning message to Elros, and then focussed his mind fiercely on walking, step by step, fast enough that Brolach behind him would not push him roughly onward. 

****

They found the place where Elrond had fallen without any great difficulty. Húnlócon the youngest hound rushed ahead eagerly to the brink with his companions following, and then stood surprised upon the edge, ears up, looking down to the place where Elrond had stood.

Maglor swore. “Here it is at last. But they’re long gone. Did he say which way?”

“This way, I think,” Elros said, his face pale and tense, pointing on past a wide rocky outcropping and down across the hillside. “If they’d gone through the trees they would have broken the long grass down. The image he sent me wasn’t clear, but it must be this way.”

Maglor nodded, grimly silent, and they hurried on. 

It was getting onto evening before they caught up. They had taken a couple of wrong turnings and had to retrace their steps, and that had made up for the advantage of speed that the horses gave them. But at last they had found Elrond, looking exhausted among a mob of grim-faced Men. They wore no badges that Maglor could see, but they did not need them. Morgoth had, presumably, taught Men about slavery, and they had proved eager students. 

Maglor dismounted and let his horse take a moment to rest and crop the grass, safely concealed behind a thicket of hazel scrub. Elros followed him into cover, but his eyes were fixed, staring through a gap between slender hazel saplings down the hillside towards the distant Men.

“There are a lot of them,” Maglor pointed out. “Thirty at least that I can see, probably more. We could go for help, or follow them for a while and see if something turns up. Elrond is certainly swifter than they are, so if he gets a chance to run he should get clear of them.”

“Something has turned up,” Elros said grimly. “Us. Or at least, me. I assumed you’d want to help me, but if I was wrong about that...”

Maglor winced. “No. But consider, Elros: there are only two of us, and since I was not to use weapons...” 

Elros interrupted. “I can hardly believe my ears,” he said coldly. “Elrond is captive, injured and in pain, and you want to leave him there?”

“No, of course not,” Maglor said helplessly. 

“I see why Maedhros had to wait for Fingon,” Elros said savagely, which was something Maglor had said to himself enough times and yet still hurt. There were not many people that Maglor would have taken that from, but Elros was one of them, and he was after all under considerable strain just now. Maglor pushed it aside. 

“That is not what I meant. Only that we have one sword and a couple of hunting bows between us. No armour, either. If we are both killed or captured, that will be no help to Elrond at all.”

Elros looked somewhat mollified. “None the less, I can see no merit in waiting. The longer we leave it, the more likely it is that they will be joined by reinforcements.” 

“Very well then. We attack. Lend me your sword.” 

Elros put his hand on the hilt, frowning. “You can use a bow. Your hand is healed.”

“Elros. If I get killed here, well, there will be a few people who say I died better than anyone would have expected, and then a certain amount of cheering, probably. But if you do, then your people will be without the king they fought for. And if both of you are killed in some minor confrontation with the broken remnants of Morgoth’s rabble... Well. That can’t happen. And so, I suggest that I take the sword, and you stay well back with a bow and your horse, and that you should be prepared to ride back to Lindon to find help if this goes badly.”

Elros looked through the gap in the thicket, down to the place in the valley below where Elrond sat with his hands tied behind him and his head down. Then he looked Maglor in the face and abruptly let out his breath explosively. “There are occasions when I very much dislike being a king,” he said. 

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry I said that about Maedhros. I shouldn’t have.”

“It was true,” Maglor said and shrugged. 

“Perhaps,” Elros said, unbuckling his sword-belt. “But here I am making the same decision, for the same reasons. My heart is sore with it. I’m sorry.” He handed the belt and the sword in its sheath to Maglor.

“Hardly the same decision,” Maglor said and forced a smile as he took it. “That would be to hesitate and wait. But you’re right: they are more likely to get reinforcements than we are, Elrond is hurt, and if we go to summon help, we might never find them again.”

“And if you get yourself killed trying to fight thirty men with a sword you promised not to use?” Elros put an hand on his arm as he adjusted the buckle. “Try not to?”

“I have become quite expert at not dying, by now,” Maglor said mildly. “I swore no oath to go unarmed, nor did the king ask me to. He commanded me only to live as one of the thralls released from Angband, who do not carry weapons. I did swear that I would keep the king’s peace, and I can’t do that just now unarmed. I am fairly sure that Gil-galad would prefer to have his herald back in one piece than fuss about the legal technicalities.”

Elros ducked his head and gave Maglor an unhappy grin. “Certainly.” 

“So. I think we give no warning and try to pick off as many as we can from cover with the bows first.”

“No warning?” Elros shook his head. “We should give them the chance to hand their prisoner over first.”

“To two of us?” Maglor looked sideways at Elros doubtfully. “We aren’t an army.”

“No. But we are armed, uninjured, and looking for a fight. They’re Men, not Orcs or Elves. They all want to go home without getting hurt, and I doubt they will think him worth getting injured for.”

Maglor held out a hand. “I yield to your knowledge. Shall we go?”

Elros moved quietly back up the hillside to the place where they had left the horses, and pulled himself up onto his horse’s back, checking his bow and making sure his quiver was full and that he had spare arrows conveniently close to hand. He paused and looked over at Maglor, who had mounted Táli, and was adjusting the unfamiliar sword belt to hang as he preferred. 

“You don’t want Elrond’s horse? He’s faster.” 

“He is, but Táli is a warhorse, and Elrond’s horse is not,” Maglor said, and grinned deliberately because it might give Elros more confidence and they certainly were going to need as much of that as they could muster. “I will take the two eldest hounds, but the others had best stay here. They’ll only get in the way. 

Elros nodded, took a long breath and let it out again. “Let’s go.” 

***

 

Every time he was wounded, it surprised Elrond all over again that pain itself was tiring. This was the worst kind of wound, the one you took where there was no chance to rest afterwards. 

The slavers were not marching particularly fast, and yet when the leader, Ulgan, finally called a halt, Elrond was thoroughly grateful for it. He would have been even more grateful for something to drink. But nobody here was speaking in any language that he knew, and his hands were tied. Just being able to sit still for a moment was a considerable relief. 

And then, as if out of a dream, there was the sound of galloping hooves, and Elrond looked up to see Maglor in unfamiliar shining armour that caught the last of the sunlight dazzlingly, his eyes full of the light of Valinor in the evening shadow, with the tip of his sword under grizzled Ulgan’s chin. 

“Hold!” he cried in a great voice of power, but three of the Men ignored him — perhaps they could not understand his speech. Two pulled out long knives and advanced, and more of them began to grope for their bows. 

Elrond staggered awkwardly to his feet. 

Two arrows hit the nearest bowmen by their feet and stuck quivering in the grass, while Maglor’s horse leaped nimbly sideways, caught the two Men holding knives with swift hoofstrokes and danced back to hold Ulgan at swordpoint again as he turned to run. A little down the hill, a number of Men were standing very still before two monstrous hounds with long shining teeth and eyes fixed upon their throats. 

“Hold!” Maglor cried again, and this time everyone froze. “Move again, and we shall slay you all!”

How? Elrond thought, and blinked up at him.

“You have taken Elrond, a prince of the House of Finwë, unlawfully prisoner,” Maglor said relentlessly, staring down into Ulgan’s startled eyes. “For this the sentence should be death, and the vengeance of the Noldor will follow every one of you until you are driven weeping into a bitter grave. Yet I will spare you, if Elrond will speak for you.” 

“Oh, spare them,” Elrond said, torn between terror and laughter, because they were sufficiently outnumbered that either seemed the appropriate reaction. He walked over to Maglor’s horse, trying not to feel relieved, because this could still all go horribly wrong. “My sword, please.”

“Sorry elflord,” Ulgan said in his accented version of the language of the Edain. He was leaning back slightly to get away from the edge of Maglor’s blade, and now he unbuckled Elrond’s sword belt from his waist. “A terrible misunderstanding, surely.” Maglor leant forward and took the sword from his shaking hand. 

“Do not make the same mistake again,” Maglor said with a tone of menace in his voice so convincing that Ulgan’s eyes slid sideways in terror, looking for a way out, and then went back to Maglor’s grim face. “Run, slaving curs, and perhaps I shall not set my hounds upon you. And do not dare to return.” 

Most of the Men had already slipped warily away, and now Ulgan and those few who remained stepped cautiously backwards, one step, two, and then turned and fled, while Maglor’s old warhorse danced on her hind legs and neighed defiance. 

Elros was behind him then, cutting the ropes around his wrists, and then boosting him onto his horse, while Maglor watched the shadows, sword raised, and the hounds prowled, snarling. 

“So far so good,” Elros said in a quiet voice. “Now, time to run before they get their courage back.” 

*****

They rode as swiftly as the three tired horses could manage for a few miles, gathering up the hounds that they had left behind on the way. Then Elros and Maglor dismounted to spare their horses. Maglor’s armour had disappeared, and he was in the familiar hunting clothes again. They took a winding path, north, then west in the starlight, until they came to a green meadow beside a shallow stony stream, lined with willow trees that loomed dark against the deepening blue of the sky.  There was still a rim of gold and green long the western horizon, but above, the first stars were beginning to show.     

“They could still be following,” Maglor said uneasily, looking back over his shoulder. 

“After that performance? I doubt it,” Elros said. “Anyway, they are Men, and they are on foot. Men prefer the Sun. I’m not sure even orcs could have followed us at that speed, but if Men have, we will certainly hear them long before they come up to us in the dark of night.” 

“Oh good,” Elrond said, and slid ungracefully from his horse. “I would very much like a drink, and to sit on something that isn’t moving.” 

Maglor laid out a bed-roll and Elrond gratefully lay down on it to be covered in both a blanket and the cloak that he had left behind that morning. Húnlócon, wagging gently and apologetically, came over and lay down next to him. “Thank-you for fetching them,” Elrond told him and rubbed his soft ears. 

“How are you hurt?” Elros demanded, providing a cup of wine mixed with water from the stream. 

“Something’s wrong with my shoulder. And I may have hit my head,” Elrond said, and drank thirstily. “I’m a fool! Never stand between a hound and a squirrel on the edge of a drop!” 

“You certainly are,” Elros said, relieved. “Honestly, what an embarrassment. Think of me having to explain to the Valar that my immortal elf-brother tripped over a dog, fell in a hole and got captured by a bunch of Morgoth’s left-over thugs. There’s no way to make that sound good, Elrond.”

“Good thing you were there to save my reputation, then,” Elrond said, and managed to grin back. 

“They didn’t hurt you?” Maglor asked, sitting down next to him to rummage in a bag for dried fruit, meat and oatcakes which he set down by Elrond’s hand. 

“Only a couple of blows when I couldn’t understand what they wanted as quickly as they wished,” Elrond told him. “Oh, and sore wrists where the rope rubbed,” he added, feeling the rope-burns with a grimace. 

“Let me wash them,” Elros said, with more sympathy. “I still have athelas left in my pack. Then we can take a look at that shoulder.”

Elrond groaned. “Leave the shoulder till the morning? I’ve had enough for today.”

“Let him take the pain out of it,” Maglor said. His eyes were still roving to the shadow of the trees in the direction they had come from. “Then we can try mending it when you have rested. I’ll keep watch tonight, Elros.”

Elros raised a quizzical eyebrow, as he set out kindling and a couple of dry logs.

Maglor held up a hand.“Very well. Yes, it’s unlikely they will follow. But... I would prefer to surround you both with an army and three lines of stone-built fortifications, just at the moment. Since we are here in the wild wilderness...Humour me. I’d be happier keeping watch.”

“Fair enough,” Elros said, setting light to the kindling. “Give me my sword back, though. You can use Elrond’s.”

“Can I?” Maglor looked sideways at Elrond under a cloud of unruly dark hair that shadowed his face, so that the light in his eyes was clearer than usual. 

Elrond laughed, and then winced as the movement jarred him. “You and Maedhros gave it to me. And I’m in no state to use it just now; only duly grateful to be rescued.... what on earth was that you were wearing, Maglor? It shone like a mirror!” 

Maglor made a sound of amusement. “That was my first set of armour. Conspicuous, no? We learned better, later. But when first the Noldor made armour, it had not occurred to anyone that we might wish to be unnoticed. I thought the illusion of it might impress them. ” He took off the sword belt, handed it to Elros, and put on Elrond’s sword instead. “Or at least, I hoped it would discourage them from peppering me with arrows. ” 

“You looked terrifying,” Elrond said, as Elros began to carefully lave his hand with warm water from which the bright scent of athelas was rising. He caught Maglor’s eye as he turned to survey their surroundings, sword in hand. “‘Yet I will spare you, if Elrond will speak for you’? What did you plan to do if I’d said ‘kill them all!’” 

“I planned to try to kill them all,” Maglor said, apparently seriously. He turned to survey the far bank of the stream, and then gave Elrond a considering look over his shoulder. “I was more confident about it once I’d seen the look on their faces when Táli did her party-piece: one of those men will limp for the rest of his life, I think, and the other will never have children. A well-trained war-horse; the worth of a prince’s ransom in emeralds... But I would say that if the entire house of Finwë were assembled here, you, Elrond, would be the single least likely person present to say ‘kill them all.’ Though, I have never met your father, so I’m guessing about him.” 

“I wasn’t even tempted,” Elrond said, as his brother murmured quiet, reassuring words, and the pain that had run up his neck and down his arm receded. The warm weight of the hound pressed against his leg, and Maglor stood between him and any possible threat, which was an old familiar comfortable feeling, despite everything. 

Perhaps a little disloyal to Father, whose star Elrond could now just see through the woven branches of the trees. But how could you weigh Eärendil, who had slain the Dragon and broken Thangorodrim to win the war, against Maglor, who had risked his life with an old horse and a borrowed sword in his hand, because Elrond needed him to? 

Elrond met his brother’s eyes and agreed silently that you could not. There was no need to.

Elrond looked over at old grey-muzzled Táli, cropping the grass quietly beside his own horse, and laughed. “We told you to come unarmed! No sword is worth a prince’s ransom in emeralds, Maglor. But I’m glad you brought Táli, after all.” 

“There’s obeying orders, and then there’s taking pointless risks,” Maglor said with a grin. “And Táli is a nice quiet ride. Most of the time, anyway.”

“They could have rushed you, if you hadn’t surprised them,” Elros said. “I wasn’t expecting you to go in so fast.”

“Nor did they.” 

“I can’t help wondering who else they may carry off. Do you know, they said they regretted Morgoth’s fall? He used to buy slaves for gold.” 

Elros made a pained face. “I could wish there were no Men who considered trade in slaves a reasonable way to make a fortune, but to trade people into the Hells of Iron...”

“At least there will be no more of that... I was assured that life as a slave in the East is not so bad, though surely that was to keep me quiet. I can’t imagine being a slave is ever a joyful life.” 

“I can believe it might be better than Angband,” Maglor said. Táli had come wandering over from cropping the grass, and he combed his fingers absently through her long mane, but his bright eyes were on the trail that led back the way that they had come . 

“Surely it must be. And even in Angband, an end came at last. But the hope that evil was ended forever... well. So much for that.” 

“You could still go into the West,” Maglor said quietly. 

“I could,” Elrond agreed. He could leave Middle-earth to Men who had learned Morgoth’s law, and saw nothing wrong with it. Or he could stay, and oppose them, perhaps. But to put it that way would seem a reproof to Elros, and that would be unfair. “But think: how dull would it be, to go so soon to Valinor? I’ve only had a fine adventure that I can boast about to Gil-galad, and nobody was badly hurt. Apart from those two men that Táli kicked and I can’t summon up too much sympathy for them.”

Elros laughed. “No. But there will be adventures of a different sort to be had on the Land of Gift, I hope.”

“I’m sure you’ll find them,” Elrond said cheerfully. If you’ll take my advice though, you’ll avoid the adventures that involve falling down deep holes.  They’re nothing like as much fun as you’d think.”