The Orc captain, his gloating smile grotesque the firelight, gripped the stump of a severed human hand and raised his trophy in a gesture of triumph. A tiny speck of green sparkled on one of its fingers, and instantly Beren recognized the ring of Felagund.
Barahir lifted his hand to brush the greying hair out of his eyes, held it to his lips to silence his men, signaled sharply for them to move in on their target. That hand had mended harnesses and bowstrings, tended wounds and cookfires. It had held Emeldir's one last time before she departed, then waved farewell to his sisters and his friends.
His father stood there, whole and hale, gaunt and weary, laughing and grim.
His corpse lay on the ground before Beren, defiled, the great treasure of his house and the symbol of his friendship with Felagund torn from him, along with the hand that bore it.
He was no longer human - just a mass of rage that could somehow move like lightning. He did not think before leaping out of the shadows, sword drawn, teeth bared, screaming like an animal. Barely aware of what he was doing, he snatched his father's hand from the Orc's grasp, then turned on the shocked creature and cut off his head before he had time to react. Swinging his sword wildly about him, he managed to beat back the other Orcs, some of whom had finally started towards him.
Everything around him faded to a blur; he blocked it all out and focused on putting as much distance as possible between himself and the firelight. He ran doggedly, clutching the sword and cradling Barahir's hand in his free arm. He could hear the shouts of the Orcs as they pursued him, could feel their arrows flying past him, but he was tireless, running faster and farther than he ever had before in his life. They would not catch him; he knew these woods, as surely as he had known that the hand belonged to his father.
The sounds of pursuit had long faded by the time Beren's legs gave out, and he collapsed near a small stream. The water was dark and scummy, like so many of Dorthonion's rivers had become, but he dragged himself to the bank and splashed some of the liquid on his face and down his throat to quench his raging thirst.
He stared at the hand, still lying in the crook of his arm. The rest of Barahir's body lay entombed miles away in a simple grave, not a worthy resting place for the Lord of Ladros but the best Beren had been able to do under the circumstances. He would not be able to return to the grave to give his father his hand, for it was many miles away, and Orcs still swarmed the lands near their former camp. The thought filled him with a fierce, burning anger, and he had to fight back another scream.
Still unable to stand, Beren dragged himself away from the riverbank and into the shelter of a small copse of trees. Picking up a fallen branch from the ground beside him, he attacked the dirt with it, using his meager strength to gouge out a hole large enough for Barahir's hand. As he dug, the faces of his twelve dead companions passed through his mind, and though he tried to shut them out he found he could not.
Baragund and Belegund. His cousins, sons of Barahir's brother Bregolas who had ruled before him. They were much older than Beren, but had tolerated him when he tagged along with them as a child, and had been comrades-in-arms when he grew older. Both had been separated from their young daughters in the evacuation; Beren had played with Morwen and Rian, and helped care for them when they were small.
Dagnir. He had been Bregolas' war-leader, the man responsible for training most of the warriors of Beren's generation. Half the men of Dorthonion owed him their lives by association. Ragnor. Dagnir's son, a couple of years older than Beren. No one but his father could outshoot him, though Beren and his friends had often tried. Gildor. Barahir's closest friend, and the quietest man Beren had ever met. He spoke only rarely, and moved stealthily enough to avoid even the most attentive of Morgoth's servants.
Radhruin and Dairuin. Brothers - twins, in fact. They'd been identical once, but the long scar across Radhruin's face, earned in a skirmish three years ago, made them easy to tell apart. Urthel. He was the oldest in the group, and had only one eye remaining, but no one knew the forests of Dorthonion better than he did.
Gorlim. Ah, Gorlim, unhappy and desperate. His shade had appeared to Beren, warning him of the attack on the camp. Whether it had been real or a product of some madness brought on by patrolling the dark woods alone, he still did not know, but the fact remained that Gorlim's body had not been among those Beren buried that night. Arthad and Hathaldir. Brothers. Arthad was Beren's age, his close friend since childhood. Hathaldir was the youngest member of their company. Their father had died in the Bragollach, and their mother had begged them not to stay behind.
Barahir. Their leader. The reason they kept fighting.
Baragund Belegund Dagnir Ragnor Gildor Radhruin Dairuin Urthel Gorlim Arthad Hathaldir Barahir…
He vowed again, on all their names, to take what vengeance he could while he lived. He repeated them over and over until they blurred together and burned themselves into his mind.
Casting aside the branch, Beren removed the ring from his father's finger and placed the hand into the shallow hole. He didn't have the energy to make it any deeper. When he brushed the dirt clumsily back over the tiny grave, it barely covered the remains. Unable to look any longer and feeling slightly sick, Beren turned his back on it.
He opened his hands, still covered in the blood of Orcs and of his father, and looked down at the ring cupped inside them. Even in the shade of the trees, the green jewels seemed to sparkle, the eyes of twining silver serpents that glimmered in the fading light of dusk. Beren had never seen another piece of jewelry so fine in its detail; the craftsmanship of the elves was truly masterful. But although the ring represented everything that Barahir had accomplished, everything that was honorable and good about his house, it was a mere trinket, a pale substitute for his father.
Overwhelmed by another surge of anger, Beren clenched his hand into a fist and drew it back, meaning to throw the ring away in the direction of the stream. But something made him stop, and he simply hurled it at the ground instead, watching it bounce and land on top of the loose patch of earth where Barahir's hand lay.
He stared at it, the last of his father's posessions. What good would throwing it away do him? It would be a painful reminder of all that he had lost, but maybe that was what Beren needed to keep himself alive. Or at least, alive long enough to cause damage to a few of Angband's servants in his father's name, in all their names.
He wiped his left hand clean on his tunic as best he could, though it didn't do much more than replace the blood with dirt, or perhaps a mixture of the two. It hardly mattered; no one was here to see him, nor was anyone likely to ever again. There was no one to care if the priceless treasure of his house was caked with the blood of its previous owner. In fact, in his current state the blood seemed to him far more important than the ring itself.
Beren turned the ring over in his hand. It felt cold and clammy, like his father's corpse. He put it on.
It's not my father, but it will have to be enough. I have work to do before I join him.
There. Now he had a purpose, a goal beyond mere survival. He could not defend their homeland on his own any more than his father could with twelve men. He had avenged Barahir when he killed the Orc captain, but there were still eleven more whose killers roamed unchallenged in the darkness. And there was one last thing he could do for his father.
Come what may, come the hell of Angband to our very doorstep, we will fight.
The familiar words that he'd heard his father speak countless times sounded in his mind, Barahir's voice as close as though he stood beside him. Almost involuntarily, Beren turned back to the little grave and brushed the dirt away from his father's hand. It belonged with the rest of him, in the highlands that had sheltered them for so long. Summoning all his remaining strength, he rose shakily to his feet.
Hell has already come, Beren thought. But it shall not take me yet.
He wrapped Barahir's severed hand in his cloak and headed east.