A book sits tucked away among Brenior’s possesions, wrapped in cloth and carefully bundled. It is old, with cracking spine and yellowed pages, but at times he will still draw it out, sit on his cot, and mouth the familiar words of tales great and ancient.
He does not need the book, for every word is graven into his memory, and he could recite it cover to cover if he so wanted. But as a boy, and then a young man, he had needed the book, and by now it is habit.
-
They began with Of Beren and Lúthien, for that was Adar’s favorite, and as reader he always got the first pick. They hadn’t the whole tale, laid out in fine print as the poets had written it, but the shortened version their book contained was enchanting still, and even more so in Adar’s deep voice. From a different piece of parchment, a little newer, he would read the full Lay at times, diciphering Nana’s cramped handwriting with the ease of long practice. They hadn’t an official copy, but Nana had memorized the lay as a girl and had written it out for Adar to read, and that was even better.
Next they skipped ahead, to Nana’s favorite, the many journies of Eärendil and the Host of the West. Sídhon, old enough then to be argumentative, questioned the fast-forwarding from the near-beginning right to the end of the First Age, but as they always got to the middle parts in the end, there wasn’t much point to the argument. (As Brenior had found, there wasn’t much point to many of his older brother’s arguments in those days.)
Brenior’s favorite was the great return of the Noldor to Beleriand, Dagor-nuin-Giliath and the rescue of the Falas. Great deeds were recounted, and glory bright and glittering. The words read triumphant, though he knew it wouldn’t last. Grief had aided the Noldor’s battles, and grief was still to come of them.
The Mariner's Wife he liked the least, when their parents began to introduce them to tales of Númenor, for he thought the characters too one-sided. He'd asked his father once, at the age of six, why nobody forced Aldarion and Erendis to get along and share their toys like his father did with him and his brother. The booming laughter that followed was one of his most treasured memories. Sídhon hated it less, which was strange, and listened with expressions pensive and confused by turns.
The Tale of the Children of Húrin was the most contentious between the brothers, by far, for though Sídhon disliked the heroes and decried their stupidity at every oppurtunity. Brenior loved the intricacy of it and the vast lands it traversed in its telling from the twisting trees of Doriath to the high halls of Nargothrond. It was interwoven with many other tales, and many heroes came in and out of it like passing seasons.
-
In later years, after the small house on the Pelennor was far behind and the cold walls of a tiny building on the workers’ tier had become home, it was Brenior who read the tales aloud. He had not his mother's way with words, nor his father's manner of always making a story seem the grandest of tales. He was, perhaps, a better teller than Sídhon, but as their mother put it that did not take much doing.
Sídhon sat on the rickety bed they all shared and mended the gear the barracks had loaned him, Naneth sat by the fireside and knit, for even in the late evenings she constantly worked, and Brenior sat beside her with the old book on his lap.
His voice rose with excitement every time they drew up to the climax, the battle. The poet's words slipped ever faster, chanting and singing by turns and at times too glib for him to quite get his mouth around.
“...the chanting swelled, Felagund fought, and all the magic and might he brought of Elvenesse into his words...”
-
Even later, when Brenior was a man grown, he would sit still by that same fireside and recite the great tales aloud to his mother, when the nights were long and she was in too much pain to sleep. She would remain in bed, hands too knarled to weave or sew clasped in her hands, and Brenior wondered at times if she really knew it was her son that spoke and not another. His voice had deepened around the age of twenty, and gave his mother little starts now and then.
He got to the tale of Túrin and halted, waiting on the groan with which Sídhon would ernestly urge that they skip this one. A beat would pass, and then he would forge on. He had learned to supress the memories when he wished to, and then he had only wanted to immerse himself in the tale as he always did He looked up with an exhilarated grin after each great villian was defeated, or a great hero, and saw his mother gazing into the fire, barely paying attention.
-
A small trunk the barracks gave him, to place by his bedside and keep all he owned within. The book, he wrapped in protective cloth he had begged off the libraries, and tucked in a corner. Little care had they given it as children he thought, and it had been banged, dropped, used to hit a sibling at times, and thrown on one occasion. It was battered, it was cracked, it was old, and it was unnecessary. He still tucked it away, even as he sold his mother’s old loom and needles. The old parchment with the Lay of Leithian had long been lost, but he knew the tales by heart himself then, and can put it to paper again later.
Finished, he turned his back on the empty stone house, and made his way to the soldiers’ tier.
-
Calaer joined the Rangers when the both of them were going on twenty-seven, though why Brenior didn’t understand in the least. They were both of them succeeding as soldiers, for a given value of ‘succeed’ at least. Certainly, war was enroaching, but war would come to them soon enough and Brenior saw no need to run out to meet it as the captains were doing.
Nonetheless, it was a bright spring morning when Brenior stood once more at the great gate, watching the company of Ithilien Rangers readying to ride out with their lieutenent. Calaer’s manner is bright and easy, though their farewell bitter. The Rangers have leave every few months, he told Brenior, he’d see him soon.
And he does, as promised, for a good few years.
Then, the Rangers are called even deeper into Ithilien: War is coming.
-
His shoulders shook with each booming thud, as the battering ram jolted into the great gates once more. As a child, he had seen the gates for the first time with a gasp, and his father had proudly claimed nothing could break them. Another great thud hit the gate, and a faint crack accompanied it.
...then Felegund there swaying sang in answer a song of staying...
He shoved back harder, he and a hundred others, but, like Finrod, they could not last long.
-
The Sun rose, inch by torturous inch, and blood spilled across the eastern sky as if Mordor itself had been grievously wounded. Flame light, the new dawn whispered, Flee darkness.
-
At the end of the world, he fought beside Calaer, for little now did the borders between companies matter. They fought, with bow and blade until the arrows ran out and Calaer picked up a fallen spear instead. The battle raged on, and they fought as if in a trance.
Perhaps a great tale might be made of their last stand, Brenior thought, should their be any to escape. Perhaps the last free minstrel might sing of the last stand of the Host of the West. The Battle of the Black Gates, they would call it, or maybe The Defeat of the West.
His shield had been broken, and he wielded his sword two-handed, hacking and blocking on instinct alone while his mind wandered in a strange dream. The blade smoked black, and its hilt felt like a haft in his hands.
“Aure entuluva!” The cry came distantly, and faint.
-
It was over.
The Host, or what was left of it, regrouped in nearby Cormallen, and there a great flurry of new work began. More pleasent was it by far then the slaying of orcs, and Brenior threw himself into it with what energy he had. Calaer had also made it through, for never in the fighting had they lost track of each other, and was aiding his company with the finding of game in the wilds of Ithilien.
Again he seemed to walk in dreams, though there is a crystal clarity to the air, to the laughter not far off, to the joyful songs already resounding through the fields, to the grit work of caring for the wounded, that rings far more true than any dream or memory.
Night fell gently in Ithilien, and there came a soft wind out of the West.
-
Months pass before before he actually returns to the city for any great length of time, and gets the chance to return to his room in the barracks. The building had only recently ended its short-lived career as a hospital, and so the beds are stripped and rearranged. The trunks of each soldier’s belongings though sit still beside them, and Brenior’s key still fits the lock. He lifts a cloth-covered bundle out, and unfolds it on the bed. No one else is here, and so he reads the words aloud.
“A king there was in days of old...”
He stays there long into the night.
