Blood and Fire

7. We will not speak

Afterwards Oropher retained only a few memories of the battle for the upper square, fragments full of blood and fire. The roar as the Noldor came raging up the avenue and broke through the barricade. Scarlet ribbons tangling in the fountains. A lantern smashing with a blinding flash that set the tapestries alight. Chaos confusing friend and foe, so that only their war-cries set them apart. And the whole world narrowed to the edge of his sword, the sharpest of lines between his life and someone else’s death.

It took longer than he had expected for the battle to be lost. Sometimes in snatched moments he did wonder, fractured and feverish through the fighting, why the Noldor did not attack at full strength. There was never time to reach an answer. Oropher remembered that afterwards, and his own hellish exhaustion, increasing with every swing of his sword.

The bloodbath when the Sindar broke. He remembered that.

They were not used to death, the Sindar. They had lived too long in the shelter of Melian’s Girdle, while Beleriand beyond became a murder-ground for Bauglir’s monstrous hordes. Oropher had done what he could, for Dior’s sake. It had not been enough.

How he came to be fighting at Celeborn’s side, he did not afterwards recall. An overwhelming impetus towards defence of his King wiped out all else. Possibly he was back at Amon Ereb, struggling to hack a way past Orcs in battered metal plate surrounding the blood-soaked hill on which Denethor and his household had made their final stand. The red mist rising in his head left no space for thought. When his eyes cleared enough for him to see that they had broken through the chaos of that terrible rout into a moment’s respite somewhere deep in the caverns, a knot of Nandor and some few Sindar still clustered around Dior with his bloodied sword, the only image that remained was the crumpled muzzle of the Orc beneath whose heavy corpse he had come groggily awake after the battle at Amon Ereb. He remembered staring into the Orc’s open eyes, strangely peaceful in death, and realising that his whole body hurt more than he had ever thought possible.

“Oropher,” said Celeborn again, urgently. “Can you hear –?”

The roar of battle filled his ears. “I hear you.”

The Sinda seemed relieved; he nodded once and turned away. “Lord –”

“The day is lost,” said Dior, and his voice was as clear and calm as any nightingale singing beneath the starlit boughs in the long ages of Melian and Elu Thingol. Behind him in a tapestry his forebears smiled, entranced and entrancing one another amid the woven woods of Nan Elmoth. Nimloth had somehow come through the rout with them and sat huddled on the ground nearby, looking very pale and not a little sickened. A few of her archers stood protectively around her, clutching their daggers. “So too is Menegroth, I fear. Our hopes lie now with your lady, Celeborn.”

“She will not fail you,” said Celeborn. “That I swear on my own life!”

“I never doubted her or you,” said Dior gently. He laid one hand on Celeborn’s shoulder, as grave as Lúthien when he and Beren set out to avenge her father at Sarn Athrad. Lúthien’s charm shone in his dusk-grey eyes. “Come now, kinsman. You delved these paths an age ago and more. Which way will take us most swiftly to the treasury?”

By the look on Celeborn’s face, he was seeing Lúthien in her son as well. He blinked twice, inhaled deeply and and swung around. “Here, I believe –”

As he spoke, a handful of Elves appeared from that direction through the silent dark. Oropher snapped into a fighting stance before he recognised Melian’s dark messengers beneath the blood. Others of the Sindar who had gone with them to lure the Noldor into the depths of Menegroth came behind. Erestor was already shaking his head. “Not this way. There’s a pack of them at the other end.”

Dior lifted his head sharply. “Do they follow –?”

“No. I think not.” He was breathing hard and his words came curtly. “One of the sons is wounded. Maybe the dark one, Caranthir. Whichever led the charge on the upper square. They were – distracted. No trouble, for us.”

“Good. Then which way?”

“The main levels are swarming. Downwards, through the cellars.”

“Very well,” said Dior, adjusting his grip on his sword and lifting Nimloth to her unsteady feet. “Guide us.”

The cellars were a gloomy string of caverns layered with thick cobwebs and occasionally illuminated by dim lanterns that leaked light from shadowy alcoves. The intricate stonework of the upper levels gave way here to unadorned storerooms and narrow corridors through which they passed like bloody ghosts. Their footsteps hissed and whispered in the dusty air. Oropher’s head was still clouded by the aftermath of battle, or he might have found that passage through the cellars more unsettling; he could almost believe himself in Ossiriand’s greenwoods in the stone forests of Menegroth, but down below in Menegroth’s deep cellars not even a semblance of sculpted trees remained. Even Celeborn seemed uncertain of their way at times. They were passing very far underground and the weight of stone and earth pressed heavy above them.

They exchanged accounts as they went. The hunters of the Noldor had come late to the battle for the upper square, arriving when the fighting was already in full swing. When the rout came, they had been swept away, but not so far that they could not follow from a distance as Dior and his few remaining forces took refuge in the lower caves. “We passed Celegorm on the way,” Melinna remarked offhandedly. “With any luck, his brothers will find him soon and be distracted further.” Perhaps fortune favoured them; certainly no Noldor were encountered in the dusty cellars, nor any signs of life other than the distant skittering of nervous rats.

At length they reached a stairwell full of yellow light. “This comes out near the hall above the treasury,” said Erestor, already going up the shallow steps with Melinna close behind. “We need to move fast.”

“Moving,” said Oropher wearily and followed them into the light.

He emerged into an empty passageway. There was no sign of the Noldor. Melinna waited impatiently for everyone to ascend from the cellars while Erestor vanished ahead to see whether the path was clear. They were almost at the avenue leading up to the doors of the hall when he reappeared, shaking his head urgently. “Back – they’re coming –”

“It is too late to go back,” said Dior and stepped out between the stone trees. “Remain where you are. I shall parley with them.”

He took up position in the middle of the avenue, laying his sword at his feet.

“Lord –!” burst out of several throats, Oropher’s among them.

Dior raised a hand to silence them. “The hall was to have been barred from within. Before we pass inside, the Noldor will be upon us. If I can parley with them, there is yet hope. Remain where you are. Or am I not King?”

There was a touch of irony in the lift of his brow. He might have been wearing Thingol’s crown. That had been sunk into the river with the rest of Thingol’s treasure after the battle at Sarn Athrad, of course.

Elves were beginning to appear at the other end of the avenue. The torches they carried burned almost without smoke.

“Noldor!” called Dior, holding up his hands to show that he held no weapon. Oropher remembered Elu Thingol striding the scarlet field at Amon Ereb, that mighty lord whose rule had endured in unchanging glory for so many ages of the world. Such a king might Dior Eluchíl have been, had he so chosen, yet he had always taken his graceful mother’s path and ruled by charm and charismatic quietness. He stood like Thingol now, a king clothed in majesty and clotted gore. His voice rang clear through the shadows. “I am Dior Eluchíl and I wish to parley! Who commands you?”

They ran him down in a blaze of light.

Of all the memories that Oropher afterwards retained from that day, Dior’s death was the one that he would most readily have forgotten. The Noldor yelling as they came howling up the avenue. Swords rising and falling as the torches flared. Blood spattered everywhere and Dior falling in silence, without so much as a grunt of pain, his face a fair mask of perfect surprise. And Nimloth’s paleness drenched in crimson, hacked down as she ran through the stone trees to her butchered husband’s side. The ruin of her dismembered limbs. Oropher would have paid with Elu Thingol’s treasure from that gold-filled river to forget the way she screamed.

Fighting followed. He remembered none of it. Only the death of Dior Eluchíl, Lúthien’s son, and Doriath cast down forever by Elven blades.