“How was the magistrate?” Belegorn teased playfully, his normally deep baritone voice jumping an octave higher to a normal man’s voice, looking bereft of the squire Baranor whom he had unceremoniously dumped into a local stable’s haybale. He carried his distinctive feathered-helmet in the crook of his arm and waved with his free hand.
“There’s a tournament… in two months. Just as well; I need time to train this woman and win her some renown among the common folk,” Laugon replied tersely.
The jovial demeanor of Belegorn dropped without much resistance and he took the other man aside away from the fountain toward a quieter spot by the palisades. Belegorn looked as massive as the tree-trunks that guarded Edoras, yet far more ornate by the harness of the Knights of Dol Amroth in shining maille and a coat of plates. “Brother,” he began with increasing concern rising in his voice, “Two months to make an untrained noblewoman of all people into a fighter? Have you hit your head? What exactly happened? What have you done?”
“I made a promise,” Laugon replied with certainty, as if the statement itself made sense.
Belegorn rolled his eyes. “Oh no, not another one of those.”
“Yes, another one of those- wait, it is not some mere flight of fancy. This is more than obligation or paying back a favor,” Laugon explained now with passion rising in his voice. “This is an Oath-”
“Yes, yes, an Oath,” Belegorn cut in. “So I’ve heard. You don’t go swearing such things casually, even if the stories of living death are not true.”
“Well, they are! I’ve seen the Men who Isildur cursed to undeath, but I wager it was not his own power which made it so.”
Belegorn scoffed then. “So it’s not just the girl who’s got flights of fancy, but you too.”
The smaller brother shook his head disappointedly. “Disbelieve all you want, but we have seen them. The fear gripped me as ice on a foolish winter-vessel. I felt death tightening my heart and my breath fell still. My feet refused to carry me-”
The larger brother yawned loudly. “Booooooooring.”
“Well excuuuse me brother, I apologize that my harrowing tale is not so exciting for you,” Laugon shot back defensively.
“Where’s the action? The fire? You’ve never been good at making up stories, brother.”
“It is not made-up!”
Belegorn rolled his eyes; reluctantly he conceded the point or at least got tired of disputing it. “Let’s say everything your addled mind saw was real. So what?”
“So I needed courage and strength of morale to save her. Only an Oath could provide that, and it did. I found my courage and entered that cursed place to bring her back alive from the depths.”
Belegorn laughed then; it was probably one of the least charitable laughs Laugon had heard in the long time he had known his brother, and actually stirred genuine anger in him, but he held his tongue. He did not need a real fight on two fronts when he felt he could hardly win with the noblewoman in question, Filigereth, the wayward daughter of Dol Amroth. Still, Belegorn went on despite his deliberations: “First, judging by your present state, ‘twas she who rescued you and not otherwise,” he said while pointing to the mess that Laugon had become in a few short days: a disheveled mudball with a dirty cloak, matted black hair, and a terrible stench accompanying him wherever he went. He continued, “Second: you swore an Oath to her father to bring this disaster of a girl back to Dol Amroth?”
“No,” Laugon said.
Taken aback, Belegorn narrowed his eyes. “Many things you are, but a liar is not one of them.”
“I swore an Oath to her: I would protect her from the darkest dangers and see her through to reconciliation with her family, however that goes.” Laugon nodded sagely then, as if this was the right and proper course to take.
“You idiot,” Belegorn began while his meaty, fat jaw hung agape out of disbelief. “You honorable, stupid, foolish, contemptible, self-destructive, ludicrous, asinine, brainless dolt! Do you realize what you’ve done?”
“What?” Laugon asked tersely, letting the wave of insults wash over him despite how genuine they were, for they were coming from his blood-brother.
“You’ve doomed yourself. Undeath there may not be, but have you read history at all?!”
“You certainly have not!” the smaller brother shot back defensively, pointing an accusatory finger.
“Oh, but I have. The Oath of Fëanor. Written about in Quenya and kept in some dusty tome of Saphadzîr, aye, but the tutors made me read it one day as punishment. Well, the ancient Elf-lord sought to keep his holy jewels on pain of doom and darkness, and what came to him and his sons save darkness and ruin? They slew kin and did all manner of naughty things and in the end came to two of three’s possession. You know what happened next? The two surviving sons could not even have their prize for their wickedness, they were burned so badly by the purity of those jewels. One threw himself to his doom and the other wandered the shores gnashing his teeth and wailing forever.”
“I am not wicked,” Laugon pouted, clearly taking the wrong lesson from this morality tale.
Belegorn smacked his forehead. “That’s not the point, you dolt! You may as well be wicked; it matters not. Oaths bring curses, and you’ll be a dead man in the course of this.”
“I would rather be dead than dishonorable!” Laugon blurted out, and stopped himself. He realized just then how alike he was to Filigereth, the intractable woman whom he barely knew and had verbally jousted with for a week straight. Understanding dawned on him a scant little, but it did dawn, and he looked ashamed.
“It is a wonder you are not dead already! Perhaps you will see this cursed Oath through to its end, for Fortune’s smiled upon you more times than I care to count, brother.”
Baranor the squire walked up just then to join them, rubbing his temples something fierce. Clearly the young man of seventeen winters struggled with a hangover - perhaps the worst of his short life to date - and blearily regarded his master and his master’s brother. “My head hurts.”
“So does mine,” Belegorn quipped.
Laugon patted Baranor’s shoulder gently. “Wait ‘till you’re older to drink so much.”
Belegorn caught the implication and laughed. “Oh, please! The prudence with which you refer comes only after those very same bouts of drinking, to which I say: let’s gain more experience! Back to the pub! Brother, when you’ve finished realizing how much of a fool you are and wish to drink your sorrows away, come join us.”
The giant of a man ushered the young squire away and left Laugon to consider the gravity of his hastily-made decisions in quiet contemplation while he sat by the fountain and awaited Filigereth’s return.
