Heget's Blatherings

After the Third Kin-slaying, Maglor and Maedhros return to their camp in Ossiraind with Elwing's sons.
A human woman learns of what happened and must make hard decisions.

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"The sons of Bór were Borlad, Borlach, and Borthand; and they followed Maedhros and Maglor, and cheated the hope of Morgoth, and were faithful."

“the sons of Ulfang went over suddenly to Morgoth and drove in upon the rear ... They reaped not the reward that Morgoth promised them, for Maglor slew Uldor the accursed, the leader in treason, and the sons of Bór slew Ulfast and Ulwarth ere they themselves were slain”

"For the sons of Fëanor that yet lived came down suddenly upon the exiles of Gondolin and the remnant of Doriath, and destroyed them. In that battle some of their people stood aside, and some few rebelled and were slain upon the other part aiding Elwing against their own lords (for such was the sorrow and confusion in the hearts of the Eldar in those days); but Maedhros and Maglor won the day."

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The camp is full of noise long before Kreka sees the red banners of her liege lord, the Bright Ones. Once the Folk had pitched their round felt tents separate from the Bright Ones, the elves, but they are together too few in number and now sit only strides apart, and when their horses are corralled, it is in the same pen. It is the horses she hears first, the stamping of their hooves, the whuffs of their breath and low cries as they sense home and food and rest. Kreka is a woman of the People of Bór, and she knows horses. She smiles, perhaps more nervously than she wants to admit, for she is glad her liege lords have returned, even if they make her uncomfortable.

A glance to confirm her young son is where she left him. Old Ullad has a vulture-like grip on the back of his tunic as the other hand stirs the footed cauldron in front of her tent. Children could never be unattended, least they run loose into the paddocks and tramped, or worse into the woods beyond and lost.

"Mind Grandma-ma Ullé, little one," Kreka says on a laughing tongue, making shooing hand motions at the boy. "Stay put so I may find you after I speak to the Bright Ones, and maybe I shall tell you of what happened. Be a good son; do not shame me, and perhaps I shall bring you with me tonight and sit on my lap as the Bright Ones sing of their victory."

Her son plops to the ground, a fat pout on his small lips, but he does not stand up and pull at Ullad’s grip. Having accepted her admonishment to wait - a small miracle in itself! - he picks up a stick near his chubby knees and begins to bend it. Leaving her son to play at being an archer, Kreka meanders her way through the circle of tents, following the rest of her kin that line the rough wooden palisade waiting for the elves to come out from the trees.

The blood-haired one emerges first, Maedhros One-handed. The leader with the sad face, she thinks, sad and broken Little Father. His shadow follows, the dark-haired brother. Once there had been more than one brother of Maedhros with dark hair, before Doriath. Kreka, like all her people, secretly fears the second brother, Maglor of the serpent-swift sword. He is a great warrior, as skilled in war-arts of the sword, the bow, and the horse, as good of a warrior that her kin should aspire to be. But Kreka will not deny she feels uneasy around the one they call Maglor. For all his seemingly gentle manner, his sorrowful voice, she remembers who the stories say slew Mighty Uldor. A wolf may howl mournfully, but a wolf is full of hungry teeth.

She does not see the one that looks like One-handed, the two-soul that would ride behind the serpent-swift sword. Is it to be Doriath again? The riders that enter the camp are too few, and this close to the encampment any scouts or outriders would not stay divided.

The warriors have filtered in through the palisade that separates their camp from the gloom of the trees. At first the voices had been happy, excited, but as all the Bright Ones enter and people begin to count the numbers, see the empty saddles and the ugly stains of gore and blood, the questions change. Kreka sees the faces of the lords, Maedhros and Maglor, and for all the brightness of their eyes knows this coldness. My eyes, when Ernath died, she thinks. They have failed. They did not recover the jewel that means so much to the Bright Ones’ honor. They have lost the last of their brothers as well, and so many, too many of their men. Kreka needs only her hands twice to tally the warriors of the elves, and fear climbs up her innards on taloned paws, for how can her lords keep her people safe with so few?

The men of her people press at the lords for knowledge of the attack, of how it failed, if the fallen were buried at that place next to the strange thing called the sea.

Kreka cares little. They have failed, and more have died. Whenever the elves attacked another, the only thing they bring back is more death. Her mother said as much, the day the Bright Ones returned from Doriath.

She notices shapes in front of each of the lord’s saddles, which she could not discern as they entered. Now that she sees, she stifles a cry of shock. Children, two very young boys, a pair of elves, she thinks, as alike as the two-souled was said to be to his long-dead twin in appearance, though the one seated before Maedhros clutches at the horse’s mane and looks around fearfully, while his brother sits listlessly against Maglor. Both boys have been worn out by the journey and whatever they saw before. Kreka knows, for their eyes are red, and faces sullen and puffy, like Bledda after her son cries out a tantrum. They must have come from Sirion, from the village her liege attacked, for Kreka knows the elves have no children here and does not know the faces of these boys.

Why have her lords taken these children, she wonders, for their parents must lie dead by her liege lord’s blades, and what reason would they have for stealing the children? Unless they were the only survivors left, she guesses, the only ones not slain, and the lord with one hand is soft-hearted, would not leave two young boys to die of exposure again. According to her mother, that is, who remembers what happened after Doriath, that Kreka was too young to know. Hearsay, anyway, for no human fights at the side of the Bright Ones anymore, not since the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, not since the sons of Bór chose to fight for the elves against their kin. Damning their people to flee afterwards to the Bright Ones for safety, for all the good it did, Kreka thinks bitterly. To swear an oath to no longer raise a weapon against any of the elves, for even the sacrifices of Bór’s sons bought little trust after Uldor’s treachery.

Once everything has settled, the bowstrings unstrung, horses checked and brushed down and turned loose to the paddock, the one with dark hair, Maglor, calls for some food to be brought for the boys. A bit of goat’s milk, he says in an unconfident voice, most unlike him, and Kreka knows he has never cared for any children aside from his brothers, and that these boys are a challenge. The word Peredhil she does not hear yet, nor will understand its meaning at first.

It is as she is fetching some nourishment for the new hostages, for they must be the Bright One's insurance to keep the boys' surviving kin from following and retaliating, though it is best to think of them as just new refugees, for maybe elves consider the boys the same as how they think of her folk, that Kreka learns that which breaks her world.

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