Marchwarden: Hidden Hero 5

Marchwarden: Hidden Hero

Part 5

Posted: May 5, 2006
Title: Marchwarden: Hidden Hero
Author: Kenaz.

*****

The Marchwarden led his men home in the early hours of the following morning bearing the bodies of their lost comrades. Their faces were solemn and weary. Haldir walked alone at their head, his face most grim of all.

Not for the first time, Elemmakil's words came to him, this time in the memory of a border skirmish fought in the earliest years of the age. It was the night Tathalion lost his first men, and Elemmakil consoled him, offering the wisdom of one who understood his anguish. It is a captain's burden to carry the deaths of every man he loses, he had explained to Haldir later. I bear many upon my back, and it is ever an onus.

A curse upon your name, Elemmakil of Gondolin! Haldir silently inveighed as he traded his bloodstained grey woolens for his ceremonial armor and blood-red mantle. Why are you not here to offer me your wisdom? For I am sore in need of it this day! There is no one who can share this burden with me, and I did not fathom it would be so very heavy. I fear I will stumble with every step.

When they reached Caras Galadhon, more bitter tidings awaited, for then Haldir learned of the archer's death in the healing houses. The news crushed him like a millstone and for a fleeting moment he feared he would sink to his knees under the weight of still more grief. Three families, then, would find him at their door soonest, presenting the blue cloak that a father, son, or husband had first worn with pride, and last worn as a winding cloth.

At each home, he delivered his sorrowful speech, and the rote repetition of the words blunted the biting edge of his own pain somewhat, yet where the ache receded, only emptiness remained, and that was little better. At the archer's talan, the door was opened by an elfling who smiled brightly to see the mighty Galadhel captain looming over him in his brightly polished panoply and scarlet cape. His mother did not smile; she knew what his visit portended and her chin quavered before he even began to speak.

Ah, I am become the storm-crow! Young ones will flee from me, for they will look upon my face and see only a message of doom!

As he gave his cruel soliloquy, the newly-made widow wept, and the smile faded from the little one's face, replaced by baleful eyes that stared up full of accusation and the one question Haldir could not answer: why. He thought he might sooner gouge out his own eyes than ever face that look of uncomprehending misery and blame again.

There was no moment of reprieve. The funeral pyre needed to be built without delay that the broken houses of three valiant spirits could be returned to the earth at the setting of the sun. Each splinter that drove into his hands as he helped to raise the bier seemed to him to be castigation from the trees, reminding him that he had failed to protect both them and his men.

When at last the interminable day had dimmed and the pyre had burned itself to ashes, he slipped silently into the woods to be alone with his heartache. But no tears sprang to his eyes. He was utterly numb. Without any task to occupy his mind and hands, he felt listless and untethered. Do not punish yourself with solitude, Celeborn had exhorted. Yet what else could he do, when solitude was all he possessed?

No, he corrected. Not all I possess. Merely all I have claimed. He walked deeper into the shadowed heart of the woods until he found the path that would lead him home.

The latch clicked, followed by the barely audible complaint of wood as he tentatively opened the door, trying to still his hand from trembling as his fingers lit upon its smooth plane.

Haldir braced himself in the doorframe, his eyes blinking hard in the low light, reassuring himself that all was in its accustomed place: the boots lined up tidily by the door, the green cloak draped over the back of the chair, the mug abandoned on the mantel, its bottom no doubt stained with the dregs of this evening's tea. Which had it been, he wondered, colt's foot and chamomile or betony and milk thistle? Galion said nothing as he entered, simply watched him with sympathetic concern from the couch where they had trysted now and again, closing his tome on his finger and absently running his thumb back and forth over the leather binding.

With a book, of course. Can anything be so horribly awry, then, if Galion is here, reading? This nightmare cannot be so great, can it, if he is here, and he reads as he ever did?

When Haldir at last crossed the threshold, his cloak swung heavily with each step, imparting his footfalls a resolve his creased brow belied. As he tried to breathe, the air caught in his lungs, hitched in his tightening throat, and he feared he had lost the capacity for speech. Through the arch at the far end of the room, He espied the bedchamber, the bed neatly made, linens pulled up just so, the blue counterpane which had on occasion swaddled him in the languor following their dalliances pulled straight and smooth. And here, in the room where he stood, his eyes traversed the bookshelf and found a smooth, grey river stone. Small it seemed now; it was once big enough to wholly fill the hand of a child, big enough to contain within it all the secrets of rushing water and constellations, of hurts assuaged and tender oaths answered with earnest silence. Does it hold those secrets still?

He drew a breath, courage leaving him with its exhalation, his eyes fixed to the floor. He considered, briefly, flight, but then determined that cowardice would not be added to his list of failings this night.

"Algamir, Lómion, Estadion... all dead." His voice creaked as if it had long fallen into disuse. "They are all dead and I could do nothing. Valar forgive me, I have failed them. I have failed."

When first Haldir had appeared before Galion in his armor, it had sparkled with the gleam of his pride, his new rank and accomplishment rendering him the very image of the Strongbow. Now, his head bowed and his shoulders rounded, he looked every inch the master of doom by doom mastered in a glittering costume that reflected in each of its polished plates the abject defeat that hovered about him like an ill fog.

Galion's book fluttered and flapped as it tumbled to the floor, forgotten as he rushed to take the forlorn figure into his arms, pages awkwardly curling beneath the weight of the spine. He pressed a kiss to Haldir's forehead, soft and undemanding, a kiss conferring all his love, covenanting his resignation, mayhap even contentment, to be naught but the trusted companion on this darkest night. But as he withdrew, Haldir's fingers locked tightly around his wrist, staying him. Haldir looked up uncertainly through thick lashes, blue eyes guttering with beleaguered pride, beseeching: I need... Do not ask me to beg.

He raised his hands to unhook the fibula at his shoulder. Galion caught his cloak as it slipped away and hung it on the back of the door. He moved to stand at Haldir's back, not quite touching him, taking in the musk of leather and neatsfoot oil that did not fully cover the tang of anxious sweat. Unlacing the stiff corselet, he counted to himself (one, two) each muted snap of the leather thong as it whipped (six, seven) through the grommets, leaving time enough to safely withdraw. Better it ends ere even beginning than we regret the deed done.

If Haldir marked his purpose, he did not show it, did not pause while working the buckles of his pauldrons, taking in slow, shallow breaths. He did not even move when Galion receded through the archway into the bedchamber beyond. When, at last, he raised his head, he saw Galion patiently waiting for him and his gaze fell to the healer's outstretched hand. He heard the silent appeal: Come.

Eyes the color of river stones beckoned; he answered their call.

Haldir's fires were slow to be stoked, but his need, when at last aroused, was swift and fierce. Galion traced a warm spiral around the puckered, silvery scar on his chest and Haldir's blood raced to greet the touch, as if his vital spirits were keyed to Galion's fingers, recognizing the hands that had once made that broken flesh whole.

He could hardly bear the kindness of it, as if such tender succor was not his to own, and the thought that he might merely be receiving Galion's pity was unbearable. He kept his eyes closed as he rolled atop his consort, poised on a forearm that did little to distribute his full weight, crushing the healer to the bed. Of a sudden his body had flared from smoking ember to consuming inferno and he ground his hips against Galion's, the ragged, rasping breaths he drew in and forced out of his lungs a savage and immediate wind in Galion's ear. The healer's hands drew down his sides and came to a halt at the small of his back, pulling him tighter, encouraging Haldir rage on and burn out his fires there against him.

When Haldir slowed his feverish rutting, the skin of their bellies slick and glistening, he kept his gaze averted still, unwilling to allow himself to apprehend those river stone eyes lest he was unmanned by all that was reflected back at him.

Yet he could not fathom any other place where he would feel more welcomed, more desired, more beloved, and no other's touch would bring him respite from the tempest of fury and despair that rampaged within him. And so, with eyes closed, he moved aside, and with hands that ordered rather than requested, he rolled the healer to his stomach, gripping a pale thigh below and behind the knee and pushing it up towards Galion's chest. The healer fumbled in his nightstand for a jar of salve that was torn almost viciously from his hand and with no preamble and little gentleness, Haldir spread, probed, opened.

No words of enticement were uttered in a peaked ear, no moans of pleasure rumbled from the depths of a broad chest, no melodious keening reverberated in the chamber; they coupled in silence punctuated only by intermittent gasps and grunts. This was no act of pleasure. This was something feral and desperate, a vehement dispossession of Haldir's soul-blight. With every thrust, Haldir sough to forget his pain, to sink it under the slither of sweat and the scorch of flesh—vital, vibrant flesh—and strike the memory of three cold bodies from his mind, even if only for the duration of this brutal joining.

Barely prepared, Galion gritted his teeth as the onslaught pushed him up the bed, his own ardor wilting under the relentless pounding. But as Haldir's pace faltered, his arm wrapped tight around Galion's waist and Galion covered that arm with his own, felt Haldir's fingers stretching long to reach his, to twine with them, urgently clutching his hand as he pressed his face into Galion's neck. Haldir cried out more in anguish than in pleasure, and the tremors that wracked him long after his release were something other, something harsher, than the aftershocks of climax. Galion held him in silence as Haldir's cool tears dripped on the back of his neck and coursed slowly down the long trail of his spine.

The painful conflagration within had been transiently extinguished, but sleep did not come easily to Haldir. He had wanted, and had taken, the only intimacy Galion had ever refused him. How many times, in his long years, had he found himself sunk to the hilt in some warm body only to slip from that berth-- and the other's presence-- as soon as courtesy and decency allowed (and on more occasions than it pleased him to admit, before even that)? The intoxicating pleasure of the act made him leer with satisfaction; he craved the clutch of his hands on sharp hipbones and the weight of another's legs tossed wantonly over his shoulders, and he sought the taut welcome of an accommodating form eagerly and often.

But never had it felt like this. Even fraught with violent sorrow and lacking any of the trappings of tenderness, even wanting for the susurration of sweet words and the silk of superfluous touches, there was infinite care. Each rough thrust into Galion's body had brought him closer to home, and closer to peace. And when, at last, the undertow of grief swept him into a dark and lonely sea, it was Galion that he clung to, tempest-tossed, and Galion who spoke not a word of censure or condescension as he silently wept, tearful as some stricken maid, but simply held him still and close, moving only once to lift their joined hands and brush a compassionate kiss across Haldir's knuckles, bringing them to rest against his heart, that Haldir might feel the steady comfort of its consistent rhythm against his palm.

Was this what he had willingly forgone when swearing his heart to his office alone? This peace? This deliverance? How could such serenity and devotion ever be thought a bane, even to the most earnest servant of duty? Nay! Indeed, it was this care, this.... this love... that balmed the afflicted soul and foiled the slow corrosion of despair.

He cursed himself for a lackwit and clung more tightly to the healer, curling his body to mold around Galion's lanky form, feeling the warmth of the healer's back against his chest, seeking the oblivion of sleep with his face half-buried in a sheaf of dark hair scented with herbs and tinctures. To feel those fingers lace with his just as they had done as children was to know solace, for even then, in the little brush-fort with its carpet of moss, it had been Galion who had known his fears and silently, with the barest touch, assuaged them.

When the sun rose, it was Haldir, not Galion, left alone in the bed. As the spindly light of dawn matured into the denser gold of morning, Galion eased himself gently from the Marchwarden's clutches, for Haldir's arm had remained an intractable shackle around him all through the night, and made his way to the bath for his morning ablutions. He made ready for his day in the healing houses and still Haldir lingered in blank and dreamless sleep.

It was just as well, he considered, that they might both be spared awkward apologies or explications, the invocation of grief to explain away Haldir's extended presence in his bed. By eventide, he would be gone, and both would simulate forgetfulness until Haldir forgot the event in truth, though Galion never would.

So when faced in twilight's ambient glow with the sight of the Marchwarden pacing anxiously outside his door, Galion froze. Such blatant deviation from the predictable, if painful, order of their affairs threw him off balance.

"Welcome home, friend."

Haldir's face was still clouded with residual grief, though the small smile he wore was warm, if slightly guarded, and Galion wondered at the uncertainty evinced by the pinched set of his features. His heart throbbed rapidly in his chest, like a deer poised for flight.

"I had not thought to see you again so soon."

Haldir's smile edged crookedly up one side of his face, making him appear simultaneously waggish and abashed.

"I was a poor companion for you last night. Bad enough I afflicted you with my tribulations, but I compounded my incivility by chasing relief for myself and offering none to you. I thought..." he paused there, as if to choose his words most delicately. "I hoped you might permit me to rectify my oversight. To...thank you for your care."

Galion's stomach dropped with the sheer cruelty of it. A night of light-hearted pawing was a thing he had learned not only to bear, but to enjoy. One night of intimacy when exigent circumstances demanded was even in his power to manage. But to become just another mount to be ridden as Haldir's whims dictated was beyond all toleration. For certes he had made that point abundantly clear on the occasions when their play had become overly raucous and Haldir's fingers had cleverly quested down and back to wordlessly make his wants known. Each time, Galion had reined him in and met his frustrated look with one of immovable resolve. But the Marchwarden was accustomed to having his demands met, and Galion now had little alternative, if he meant to preserve his heart, but to speak plain.

"I would do anything to comfort you, Haldir. If solace is in my power to give you, I will give it. But I will not lay for you when your interest waxes only to be left cold when it wanes, with naught but a sharp ache and stained sheets for company. There are many who will play the sheath for you gladly and ask no more than a tumble, but I am not of that feather. It is difficult enough to keep my head when we tryst. I tire of waking alone with the taste of you still on my lips."

Haldir flinched at Galion's unhappy reproof; he knew it was well earned. But he pressed on, refusing to show his dismay. Too long he had undervalued what lay right before his eyes, but the past night had unearthed for him the full radiance of this jewel, the inestimable value of the treasure that was Galion, and he could only hope the love that had long been offered and just as long brushed aside would be offered still. He stepped close and closer yet until he could reach up with both hands and curl his fingers around the healer's neck, smoothing the high arch of his cheekbones against the pads of his thumbs, watching the familiar line creasing Galion's brow as he startled back from Haldir's encroaching presence. But Haldir would not let him go. Not this time, nor ever again.

"Then let me stay, sadron," he implored, "and taste me anew each morn."

Galion's face darkened momentarily as a cloud of wary disbelief overcast his features, but then the shadows fell away and the flickering light of hope he had long kept buried and silently tended became a blazing beacon, his incandescent smile a lodestar dispelling the fleeting gloom of uncertainty. The healer was radiant in his joy.

Haldir's own face reflected their shared jubilance, and he promised himself that his companion's comely face would never wear that shade of sorrow or mistrust again.

Languid strokes now supplanted frenetic displays, and no more did Haldir avert his gaze, but rather looked with wonder at the one to whom he had released his heart. Each gesture was one of caring, the embodiment of this strange new adoration still tinged in sorrow. Despite Haldir's scapegrace grin beneath the darkening sky, this clinch in the downy comfort of Galion's bed—their bed, now-- was still driven by his desire for surety rather than lust. Equal import was ascribed to tentative touches and shared breaths as to a molten grind or a long, slow pull of a shaft. This time, when fingers ventured downward, Galion did not intervene in their passage, but threw his leg over Haldir's hip and pushed toward him.

"I would know how best to pleasure you, Galion," Haldir whispered, the earthy timbre of his voice promising all manner of delight as warm lips moved against the healer's pale throat and salve-sleek fingers teased him to readiness. "What is your desire?"

"I want you deep," Galion groaned, and in an instant Haldir was kneeling between his splayed limbs, his eyes glittering with intent.

He lifted one of the healer's legs to his shoulder while the other wrapped reflexively around his waist and locked there as if to cage Haldir and keep him close, and with a slow, inexorable push, Haldir sank deep in the clenching heat, letting his head loll on his neck as he gritted out a ribald imprecation at the sublime feel of it, that warmth beyond all others, his grip on Galion's thighs tightening to the verge of pain.

"Deeper," Galion panted. "Fill me."

Haldir leaned in with all his weight, bearing down into that cinching haven until the healer had taken every turgid inch of him. The deliberate slide of his body set a pace that was devastating in its languor, each slow push and measured withdrawal an exquisite torment to them both. Yet for Galion, more exquisite still was the warmth of Haldir's cheek nuzzling his leg, the caress of his breath against the tender skin behind his knee, and the nip of his teeth there followed by placating kisses. When Haldir's eyes closed this time, it was to lose himself in the sensation of Galion's flesh, not to hold him at bay, and so exquisite he was in that moment, lost to the buck and slip of ecstasy, his muscles shifting beneath his skin, his lips parted and chest heaving, that Galion was primed to spend even before the wide, callused hand began to move along his length in synchrony with the body that rode him, each provocative stroke harrying him to a wild culmination.

Dark hair whipped and tangled against the pillow and Haldir watched surreptitiously through the fringe of his lashes as Galion writhed under his touch, opened to receive him fully, tiny beads of perspiration glistening like a crystal diadem high on his brow. It filled Haldir with grateful awe that he should find both pleasure and comfort, both rapture and care, with one such as this, a dark and peerless beauty who had ever been a friend and brother, and even sometimes a lover, but who now wore a another title: beloved.

"Ai, Haldir!" Galion reared up beneath him, his face flushed. "I am undone!"

"Show me," Haldir gasped, his pace quickening to keep time with Galion. "Let me see you succumb!"

Galion's back arced off the bed as if he would snap his spine with the intensity of his climax. His length throbbed in Haldir's hand and he cried out the full measure of his bliss, ropes of seed shooting across the curve of his chest as his body went rigid. The clench and pulse within pulled Haldir over the edge and he bayed like wolf as his release took him and he drove himself deep into Galion's heat.

Almost giddy in the wake of such an explosive merger, Haldir slipped with no small reluctance out of the healer's body and lowered the Elf's trembling legs to the bed. He leaned down to pluck kisses from Galion's lips before fitting himself to his side. Blue eyes settled then on a bolt of green, and he reached up to tug Brethil's sash off the headboard where Galion had draped it. He pulled it through his fingers, even raised it to his face and sniffed, as a territorial beast might scan for the scent of an interloper.

"The scribe's, I take it?"

Galion nodded, refusing to be rattled by the tensing of Haldir's jaw and the slight narrowing of his eyes that bespoke unanticipated, yet undeniable, jealousy. He reminded himself coolly that he had every right to bestow his favors on anyone he chose.

"A lovely piece," Haldir dismissed with manufactured airiness. "I am sure he will be glad to see it returned to him. Just as I will be glad to see it go."

Bristling at the subtly imperative tone, Galion plucked the silk from Haldir's hands and let it slip to the floor. When he turned back, Haldir's eyes had taken on a strange cast that on any other countenance he would have named pleading. "Why do you look at me thusly?" he cautiously queried.

"I have been a fool." Haldir spoke quietly and in earnest. "I have been granted more tenderness and constancy from you than ever my actions merited. With all I have done and failed to do, might you still have me for your own, Galion? It is your care alone that restores me, undeserving though I am. You have ever been my strength: will you also be my heart?"

And Galion found, once presented with the greatest of all his desires, he could do nothing but stare dumbly as if he had not understood the words. After too long of an interval, he quietly whispered yes.

"Then I am blessed beyond all measure," Haldir smiled softly and kissed him, a slow, sweet kiss. He reached for Galion's hand, and soon, he slept.

But Galion did not sleep; the loamy smell of communion still lay strong on the sheets and hung heady in the air, recalling pleasures exquisite and profound: The memory of Haldir's body filling him, rocking deep, the dulcet crescendo of the Galadhel's voice as he howled his ascendancy. He was swimming in a drowsy gladness he might have imagined impossible, save that Haldir's breathing, a low and rhythmic tide beside him, reminded him of its plausibility—nay, its very existence—with every cresting sigh. Could he have meant his words? Did he really mean to make an offering of his heart, or were these but empty words spoken in the hazy aftermath of pleasure that both would later regret? Even if they were, Galion could not regret feeling the warmth and weight of the body at rest beside him, seeing the long fingers of a rough hand interlaced with his own in what seemed the most intimate gesture of all.

Lothlorien, 2941 Third Age

The guardians of Lorien were as breathtaking as they were lethal, arrayed for battle and flying their colors high. They formed ranks stretching across the land and prepared for the fray. Before them, another line of warriors stood, though they wore neither helms nor armor. The most ancient and powerful of the Eldar and the Istari had gathered on the withered field, and with the strength of their magic, they would at last expel the Necromancer from his lair. The wardens of the Wood would lay down their lives if the need of the Wise demanded it, and they readied themselves to destroy the yrch and fell creatures that would no doubt be driven into the open once their master had abandoned them to their pitiful fates. Somewhere beyond their purview, King Thranduil and his masterful son rallied their own forces to dispatch the din-horde that sought refuge in their own troubled forest.

The healers waited beneath the eaves where a few archers still perched in the boughs to cover them. Galion had seen Haldir only for the briefest of moments as the guard assembled, his eyes bright with the foretaste of bloodshed, his jaw set like a steel trap and squared with determination, and his carriage bold, as if his very presence announced to any who looked upon him: Today I will rid my land of Evil's taint!

"I will return," he had said just before he joined his men. That the words "to you" were left unspoken was of little import, for Haldir knew that Galion's heart had heard them, and had known them true.

****

Curunír is the Sindarin name for Saruman the Wise. The benediction for Algamir was taken from the lyrics to "Gandalf's Lament" from the soundtrack to FOTR.

The phrase "master of doom by doom mastered" is taken from The Silmarillion, "The Tale of the Children of Húrin," and refers to the mighty warrior and tragic hero, Túrin Turambar. As Galion had made previous comparisons between Túrin and Haldir, it seemed only fitting to use this apt allusion here. Likewise, "Strongbow" is Beleg Cuthalion, Marchwarden of Doriath.

Sadron = Faithful one
Elleth = Female Elf
Hado i philinn! = Release the arrows
In gwidh ristennin, i fae narchannen, i reniad lín ne môr, nuithannen. = The bonds cut, the spirit broken, your journey has ended in darkness.
Fea = Spirit or soul
No galu govad gen. = May blessings go with you.
Híren = My lord

*****

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