Blood and Fire

9. Death and the dead

She chose her doom.

Erestor was binding up his wife’s broken wrist by candlelight. He had found something approximating a splint and enough cloth somewhere to do the job properly, and his face was intent as he worked. A gash on the back of his hand stretched open when his fingers flexed; he seemed unaware of this. Melinna’s expression suggested that her attention was elsewhere altogether. She had a long knife in her other hand and she was rubbing her thumb absently over the bone handle like some superstitious mortal with a lucky talisman. It was impossible to tell whether the blood drying on her face was hers.

It hardly mattered. They all had enough cuts of their own.

“We need to get out of here,” said Celeborn in a restless undertone. He turned away from the door, which was slightly ajar so that they might have some advance warning if any Noldor found traces of their escape and followed them back down into the cellars. His limp was more pronounced now that they were no longer running for their lives. “My wife –”

“Is on her own,” said Oropher shortly. “Though I agree. Menegroth is lost. We need to get out. With any luck, we’ll meet up with my men in the woods. Maybe your wife can talk her way past her cousins and join us there. She has the best chance of any of us.”

He glanced once around the cellar. A pitiful few of the handful who had come with Dior out of the earlier rout had survived that fight above the treasury. They sat bloodstained and weary on sacks or dusty chests in the deep gloom. He guessed they were all still seeing Dior and Nimloth sprawled out like so much hacked-up meat on the slick stone. There was no hope in any of their faces.

Celeborn’s nod was curt. “They will be guarding the bridge.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

“That is even if we can get to the bridge –”

“That too.”

“You have a plan?”

“Not much of one,” said Oropher. The darkness stank of death. It was becoming hard to think clearly about anything other than his almost physical need for light and freedom and Ossiriand’s airy greenwoods, far away beneath the untroubled peaks of Ered Luin. “You said it before. They’re overconfident. We go quietly as far as we can, then run for the gates. They’ll have guards at the other end of the bridge. I say we take to the river. Can you swim?”

Celeborn was staring at him in apparent disbelief. “Jump? Into the river?”

“It’s deep enough, isn’t it?”

“In places – but there are rocks, and the current is swift –”

“Would you rather deal with the rest of your wife’s relatives?”

By the way Celeborn’s mouth tightened, the remark did not please him. Oropher was in no mind to be tactful and did not care. He went on flatly, “We’re caught in a trap. The only way to get out is to move fast and hit from behind. If we drown, we drown. I’ve never drowned before, so I don’t know whether it’s a better death than a sword to the gut, but I’ll be cursed if I give that pack of wolves the pleasure!”

That appeared to strike a more welcome chord. Celeborn nodded slowly. “We shall be able to carry nothing away with us. Not even food. And it is winter now.”

“True,” said Oropher. “I did say it wasn’t much of a plan. Got anything better?”

Celeborn shook his head. He was frowning now, but in a way that suggested thoughtfulness. “I do not.”

“Well then –”

A thud across the cave interrupted him. Melinna had set the bone-handled knife down hard on a nearby chest. “We can get you almost to Fountain Hall. The square below the gates.” Erestor was still occupied with bandages; he hissed under his breath as the candle flickered. She paid him no attention. “There’s a way – Celeborn might know –”

“I know no ways from here,” said Celeborn. His eyebrows arched. “It would seem that I have spent too little time investigating Menegroth’s dark corners.”

“And we too much, no doubt,” said Erestor dryly, not looking up. “Melinna, if you would stop moving – thank you. There.” He secured the end of a bandage with his teeth and tied off a knot. “Yes. A way to Fountain Hall. It can be done. With care.”

“Good,” said Oropher, satisfied. “Are we agreed?”

A mumble of something approaching a consensus arose around the cave. He thought that several of those who answered him were simply too exhausted to disagree, or to think of doing anything other than following his lead. It was not at all unlikely that they would not survive a tumble into the wintry river. He might not himself. Only a primal urge to break free of Menegroth’s blood-soaked stone forests currently outweighed his leaden weariness. Celeborn was nodding, though, so it seemed that he at least had been convinced. He was already stripping off his clotted gauntlets, evidently having decided that such items would only be an unwanted burden. Others around the cave began more slowly to follow suit and Oropher started to do the same himself.

Daylight. It seemed an age since he had walked beneath the trees.

Melinna slid off her perch, examining her immobilised wrist critically. “Thank you,” she said to her husband. “It was careless of me.”

“It was, rather.” Erestor had set aside his sword and seemed to be checking that his knives were safely sheathed. “To start with, swimming will be tricky.”

“So it will.”

“Stick close to me. We’ll manage.”

Her smile was edged with something odd; she nodded and said no more.

The paths by which they made their way from the cellars to Fountain Hall were narrow, unlit cracks between caves filled with spiderwebs and dust. Occasionally they passed out into the usual corridors through discreet doors still hidden beneath thick tapestries. This required caution, since the Noldor were everywhere and no one was in any condition to fight. Increasingly as they moved towards the upper parts of Menegroth, smoke and bloody tracks and the marks of conflict were visible. Once they passed a door hanging off its hinges; a pillaged chamber lay beyond, all upturned chairs and ornaments lying in ruins. The pieces of a flute lay strewn across the floor, as though someone hoping to find a treasure hidden inside the instrument had found it empty and broken it in a fit of rage. It had been adorned with silver nightingales and the twisted remnants gleamed amid the ruins. Even now, the sight impressed itself upon Oropher. He hurried onwards into the darkness behind another heavy tapestry, this one hanging in tatters before a shattered door.

Melinna was waiting there, a shadow almost without shape. Her voice came softly. “After the next door, you’re out in the open. Go left and you’ll come to Fountain Hall in twenty paces or so. You’ll recognise the way. Erestor can lead you if you don’t.”

“‘You’?”

Behind them, the ruined tapestry fluttered. “What is this?” came Celeborn’s voice.

“I can’t swim anyway.” She spoke uncompromisingly. “I’m staying.”

Oropher had heard that tone of voice before from other people. He was more than half inclined to let the woman remain without argument; there was little enough time for discussion and less to convince Melinna against a course of action on which she was clearly determined. The city was lost. He had led Elves from Ossiriand to fall in the dark beneath Elven blades. Lúthien’s son had been butchered above his own treasury. Beneath the stone trees Nimloth’s white fingers still lay outstretched in her own pooling blood. Another death could add little to the horror of Menegroth’s ruin.

“Then you will die,” said Celeborn, for all as though Melinna could not see that herself. “This is foolish. You can do nothing more –”

“I don’t care!” Her voice was louder now and made Oropher wince. She went on more quietly, “What does it matter, anyway? Doriath is gone! And maybe it was gone when the King died and Queen Melian left Middle-earth, but anyway – now it’s gone. Gone to the wolves and the Orcs, with the rest of Beleriand! There’s nothing left to us. You go. I won’t.”

Oropher recognised that bitterness as well. Some losses bled more than any wound.

The passageway was becoming crowded as the others came under the sword-slashed tapestry that concealed the entrance. Celeborn apparently believed that Melinna could be turned away from her foolishness through sheer application of reason; Oropher, remembering his own despair in the aftermath of Amon Ereb, considered this unlikely. His own longing to be free of all this stone and bloody dark was deepening with every dangerous second the matter delayed them. When Erestor, coming last, joined them and paused in apparent surprise, finding them standing around quarrelling in increasingly fierce whispers, Oropher said merely, “Erestor, your wife’s decided she’s not coming with us. Talk her out of it or not, it’s up to you. We don’t have time for this.”

Erestor nodded curtly and pushed through the crowded passage to where Melinna and Celeborn were arguing. “One minute,” he said to Celeborn. He took his wife by her uninjured arm and led her a little way off.

“Right,” said Oropher and glanced around those who remained. “Nearly there. No fighting unless it can’t be avoided. All we want is to get to the bridge. Once you’re in the river, head downstream till the bank’s low enough to climb out. Understood?”

Another round of nods and mumbles. He glanced at Celeborn. “Ready?”

“I am,” said Celeborn. “Erestor –”

“We’re ready,” came Erestor’s grim voice from further up the passage, one hand still resting firmly on Melinna’s shoulder. Beside him, she stood in shadow; her expression could not be seen. Oropher gained an impression of tension and was not surprised.

“Good,” he said. “Let’s go.”

For such an unwise plan, it went surprisingly well.

There were fewer Noldor in Fountain Hall than Oropher had expected. Later he realised that most of them must have been deep in Menegroth and tearing apart the caves in search of Dior’s Silmaril, or any other treasure that might have gone untouched through the Naugrim sack. Most of those remaining near the gates seemed to be wounded or those who tended to them. At any rate, their passage through the site of that first battle was troubled by little more than startled cries. The square had been mostly cleared of the debris left by the fighting; Oropher passing through was fleetingly aware of bodies laid out on charred tapestries and the blood-smeared floor. The tower of lanterns had been taken down from above the scarlet fountain and what little smoke-hazed light there was came mostly from the distant broken gates.

They pounded up the avenue of sculpted trees. The smoke rasped in Oropher’s throat. Everything was taking on an eerie vividness as his exhaustion heightened. The impact of his feet hitting stone jarred his whole body.

And out into the icy air.

There was a moment when Oropher ran blind into snow, breathless because the cold had snatched away his breath and dazzled by sudden daylight after so long in the smoky dark. He found himself skidding and was grateful at once to Celeborn, who caught his arm before he fell. Ahead the bridge stretched out across the wintry depths, a slippery length of ice and snow. The snow was already wiping out the trampled tracks of blood and filth. Dark shapes could just be made out on the other bank.

The river gulf seemed much deeper than Oropher had remembered it, back in the cellars. Momentarily he teetered on the brink. Behind them, the sounds of pursuit were beginning to emerge.

“Come on,” said Celeborn beside him. “Now.”

Over the edge. Oropher hit the water like a stone.

For a moment, the sensation of having broken every bone in his body outweighed everything else. Then he discovered that he was submerged in freezing water and gasping for air. The current was as swift as Celeborn had warned; he struggled to keep his head above the surface and tangled with other bodies swirling in the river. Everything was a nightmarish chaos of limbs and bloody foam. A white face gaped at him and bobbed away. One of the men who had fallen in that first battle. Others floated all around beneath the tumbling snow. The gory neatness of the square below the gates came back to him in a vivid flash of memory. The Noldor had thrown the Sindarin dead into the Esgalduin. He had barely a moment to realise this before the current tossed him dangerously near an outcrop of jagged rocks and all his attention was diverted to the struggle against the river.

The rest was merely ice and obstinacy. He lacked the strength to fight the current, but somehow managed to keep on coming up for air until the river deposited him in a quiet eddy already choked with bloating corpses. Celeborn had reached it before him and was already clambering up onto the bank. The bridge over the river to Menegroth was far behind them. Snowflakes blurred in Oropher’s eyes. Here the riverbed was low enough to stand and he did so, shouldering leadenly through the remains of men who had fought at his side. Fine tremors were beginning to shiver uncontrollably through his limbs and his throat burned with smoke and fatigue. By the splashing behind him, not all of the others had drowned or broken their necks falling from the bridge. Just then it was impossible to care. He was increasingly too numb to think of anything other than rest and warmth.

Celeborn was kneeling above him on the bank, reaching down. “Here.”

“Thanks.”

The water had been cold enough, but the air as Oropher emerged from the river was breathtakingly glacial. Ice was already forming in Celeborn’s pale hair. As Oropher got a knee up on the frosty bank, he glanced over Celeborn’s shoulder and uttered a stifled exclamation. A number of Elves with swords and bows had appeared silently among the snow-clad trees.

For a moment, even his stubbornness almost gave way to despair. Then his mind caught up with his eyes and he recognised Edhur and the second patrol, one of those that had been caught out in the woods when the Noldor came.

So they were safe after all. For now.

“Lord Oropher, thank Elbereth!” said Edhur, coming forwards. The rest of the patrol were already moving to help all those who had survived the fall from the bridge and the trip downriver out of the water. Oropher caught sight of the dark heads of Melian’s messengers through the drifting snow. Edhur clasped his shoulder briefly and turned to Celeborn, who stood there dazed. “And Lord Celeborn! The lady Galadriel will be glad.”

It was hers to choose.