21. A repeat of history
In Formenos, Maedhros suddenly awoke from her sleep. Gasping for breath as she sat up, she tried to keep herself from shaking violently in her whole body. Something felt wrong, so horrible wrong. She had not had a feeling like this since the day when she had learned that the feared Warg Rider actually had been her own son.
"Nelyo? What is wrong, my dear Ruby?" asked Rog as he woke up from her movements, sitting up beside her. For a moment, he feared that something would have happened to her or the baby. But the look in her grey, terrified eyes revealed that it was something else.
"Rûsa...something has happened to Rûsa! Do not ask how, I just feel it!"
Maedhros would have thrown herself out of the bed if she had not been pregnant in the ninth month, which made her having to think of her movements before acting. Rog also stopped her with a hand on her shoulder.
"Wait! Calm down before you do anything," pleaded Rog, knowing how worried Maedhros already was when it came to the three oldest children. Getting out of bed, he helped her to stand up and walk over to the window so they could see out.
"I sense a storm somewhere...I do not know if it is an omen or not, but…"
She held her arms around her heavy pregnant belly, as if she wished to protect her fourth child from danger. Rog nodded without saying a sound.
~X~X~X~X~X~X
At the same time, Almo and Vórimo had stopped running, mostly because of that they had sensed the powerful aura as well. The power made them so terrified that they barely had the willpower to move. Vórimo did not protest when Cúwen hid her face in his clothes.
"W-what...is this power? It does not feel anything like the Valar or Maiar back at Father's trial for nearly seventy-eight years ago…" gasped Almo in fear, before he felt how violently Yuë were trembling in his arms. Being the most spiritual of the four Elves present, it was no wonder that Yuë looked like he was about to faint from pure terror. Even if he was mute, moments like this needed no words.
"Whatever it is, one thing is clear: we have to get away from here as quickly as we can! As much we would wish to go back to our older brothers up there, we have to obey their wish that at least we four would escape!"
Nodding, Almo took the lead again and hurried down between the rocks. He had gotten a few hints on how to do from Qucha when it came to climbing like this if he had to carry something in his arms, which became useful now when they tried to get away as quickly as possible. Once they were down on a mountain road, they checked for any pursuers that could be following after them.
~X~X~X~X~X~X
Back at the cave, the air was very tense. The force of Rûsa's aura as the Warg Rider was nothing like they had sensed before, for all of them had been born in Aman after the Darkening and thus never had been in Middle-earth at all during the First Age.
"The Warg Rider? Hah, as if we would fallen for a such trick! The Warg Rider is nothing else than a horror story meant to be told in whispers, something that the Exiles invented to conceal their failures against the Dark Lord under the lead of your maternal fam…!?"
But Rûsa did not allow Calcanis to finish her taunting, by starting to run towards them. One of her men found himself suddenly kicked in the gut with such unexpected force and speed that he nearly went flying into one of his companions while Rûsa took his sword. Rûsa did not waste any time; like a powerful eagle of Manwë he seemed to fly on his feet with an almost unnatural speed for an Elf despite the injuries he already had.
"Watch o...AAAAGH!"
Even if his body was a new one, Rûsa had regained his old skills over the years and was now almost on the same level as he once had been in Angband when he became really serious in fighting. While he normally kept himself in control in order to not harm someone by mistake, the current situation was an exception. This she-elf had wished to harm his family in so many different ways, and now she would have to pay the price. He would not kill her, but let her taste the bitterness of a cruel mercy.
"Mother! Mother, help!"
Finyo was revealing himself to barely be able to stand against Rûsa despite that Rûsa did not use any strength at all around him. Spoiled and pampered as he was by Calcanis and in general always been told by her that he would have no trouble to win the much younger Cúwen's heart once they met face to face, Finyo had never really thought much of that he actually might not even be the kind of possible husband Cúwen did want at all. That he never had bothered to learn how to use a weapon, as per Calcanis it was "only savages who used weapons", was now revealed as another big mistake in his very limited education.
"Don't you dare to harm my baby…?!"
Thud!
Calcanis went silent in shock from how close that arrow had been to actually hit her in the face when Rûsa managed to change its course with his sword.
"You said something, hag?" Rûsa spoke in a frighteningly soft voice as he pointed his sword towards Calcanis. At least ten of her men had been injuried in some way that would leave them as cripples. The others was seriously starting to regret that they had obeyed her orders to attack the prince.
"Lady Calcanis, get out of here! You and your son are only becoming burdens for us to protect right now!"
She had expected Rûsa to be like his maternal grandfather in personality, quick in anger like his uncles and haughty enough to be an easy prey with his half-siblings as bait. After all, she was one of them who strongly believed that the old sibling rivality between Fëanor and his half-brothers woud be repeated with Maedhros' children, and that Rûsa would only react to the kidnapping in order to save his face in public. Unfortunately, that had been a serious flaw in her plan to have Finyo married to Cúwen.
"No...do not let yourself be scared of him! He will not be able to go on forever with the injuries he got earlier!"
In fact, that was precise what Rûsa felt as well. Turned back into the Warg Rider or not, the adrenaline rush in his body did not really manage to lessen the pain from his injuries. He needed to get both Túrëo and himself away from here as quick as possible. Glaring over his shoulder, he got a idea that could work if they just took the bait…
"After him! Try and lock him inside the cave!"
~X~X~X~X~X~X
"Maeglin! Maeglin, wait on us others!"
But she did not listen. Instead, Maeglin focused on running on the mountain path towards where the powerful aura could be felt. Her heart was filled with fear, confusion and terror.
"Why...what has caused Rûsa to return into the Warg Rider?! No doubt that he is greatly worried for Cúwen and Yuë after that they were kidnapped from Formenos like that when he took his eyes away from them, but surely that would not have been enough for this to happen?!"
Even if Rûsa had done his best to not frighten her in Angband, she had never been able to forget his powerful aura as the Warg Rider. In a way, it had hinted to surpassing Turgon's aura when he reminded everyone that he was the ruler of Gondolin, since Rûsa fought so often for his life in Angband in order to survie from one day to the next. Even if she had been afraid of him, Rûsa had never harmed her outside that single time when he was forced to take her as his concubine.
"Please, Rûsa, please...do not try anything that could destroy everyone's efforts to hide your past! One careless mistake right now when you are back as the Warg Rider could ruin you!" Maeglin begged mentally, on the hint to tears, as she ran. In her mind, different memories of their month together in Angband and the last twenty years overlapped each other:
The time she had taken the chance to see his full face while Rûsa slept; the surprise at seeing him reborn in the body of an Elfling; the time when Sauron had forced her to witness Rûsa fight in the Arena and use her as a mocking reminder for Rûsa that her life depended on him in Angband; the first time they had kissed after the event with Vanë, how nervous he had been before finally gathering enough of his courage for the kiss; the way Rûsa smiled so tenderly when he was with his siblings; how much he simply enjoyed to be free instead living the life of a slave.
"AAAAAAAH!"
A scream from somewhere above her. Maeglin stopped running, and that was a good reaction, seeing that two people was sliding down from a higher point by being dragged down in a minor case of loose soil and stone that they had stepped on. Thankfully, the two Elves did not land too awkwardly, but what surprised Maeglin was the sight of the two Elflings which they were carrying.
"Cúwen? Yuë?"
At the sound of their names, and seeing who she was in a new flash of lightning, Maeglin nearly found herself knocked over by her younger second-cousins who threw themselves towards her.
"Maaaaaeglin!"
"Uff! What...who are those two Elves? And where is your brother?! Should not Rûsa be around here too?" Maeglin asked in great worry. It was not that Maeglin meant to put Rûsa above his siblings, she simply became very scared at not seeing him with them and knowing that he had returned into being the Warg Rider again. Much to her relief, they did not seem too injuried but she did not doubt for a moment that the whole kidnappning event had been very traumatic for them.
"Vórimo and Almo helped us escape from their mother, but their own brother Túrëo and Rûsa are still up there...Yuë!"
Yuë had gotten a coughing fit. As she supported him in standing up while he gasped for breath, Maeglin saw in the corner of her eye how the Mountain Clan warriors carefully took hold of Vórimo and Almo in a non-threatening way. If it was true that they had helped the siblings to escape from the kidnappers but that Rûsa had gotten behind for some reason, it had to be in order to avoid having his half-siblings see him return into the Warg Rider.
"Ada Eöl, please keep a eye on those two. I need to see where Rûsa is…"
~X~X~X~X~X~X
Outside the flashes of lightning outside at the opening, the cave was in darkness. In a attempt to hide them both despite his injuries, Rûsa had taken the unconscious Túrëo with him behind a rock large enough to cover them both.
"This is not good. I need to get out of here as quickly as possible with Túrëo...my injuries won't allow me to fight as good as I normally do...the longer I am here, the higher the risk that I will end up recaptured…"
As he instinctly checked on Túrëo, Rûsa became worried at seeing the first signs of fever. The arrow in his leg had caused an infection to start, and if the arrow was not removed soon and the wound treated fast, Túrëo would suffer from gangrene. He had seen in Angband how other slaves had suffered from old injuries that eventually transformed into gangrene, and with the way Túrëo had limped on his right leg, it did not seem like he was getting enough of a good blood flow in his damaged leg.
"Where is he?!"
The shadows on the cave walls revealed that they were coming closer. If he did not do anything fast, he would lose the change to get out of here.
"He has to be here…"
Taking a deep breath and closing his eyes for a moment, Rûsa mentally laid out the plan. Once he opened his eyes again, he rose to his feet.
"Looking for me?"
"There he is!"
Too late did the exiled Elves realize the mistake in attacking Rûsa when he had the environment to his advantage, and even if he never had been in this cave before, he knew precise how to fight inside different kinds of caves. Once more he revealed the survival and battle skills he had done in Angband to deadly perfection.
"Lord Finyo, get away from him!"
Rûsa ran around in the cave, using the darkness and flashes of lightning to bring up their fears for him. He had became skilled in the game of hide and seek from a very young age in Angband, for it had been a way of survival in childhood.
"As I will let myself be afraid of someone who will be dead soon…?!"
Finyo immediately regretted his boastful words and the fact that he forgot to be on his guard, for Rûsa jumped up in the air and landed on him from the air on purpose. Thanks to Rûsa being so large in height and having a notable musclemass that increased his total body weight, Finyo did not stand a change. There was a sickening sound of bones being broken as they landed on the rough cave floor of stone.
"AAAAAAH!"
Finyo's right arm and shoulder took most of the inpact in the fall, breaking on contact from the fall and Rûsa's body weight.
"Mother! Mother, he broke my arm!" wailed Finyo between sobs from the pain like the overgrown child he was, while Rûsa got off him. Rûsa did not waste any time. The other Elves was too terrified of him to even dare to try an attack, so he could easily throw the unconscious Túrëo over his shoulder and rush out from the cave.
"You dared to harm my poor child, you barbarian!"
As in slow motion, Rûsa heard the sound of a whip behind him. The whip caught around his left foot and made him trip.
"Agh!"
In the fall, he dropped Túrëo who rolled over against a small rock that stopped him. Gasping in pain, for now he started to feel that he had lost a notable amount of blood from the wound he had gotten by the earlier whipping, Rûsa tried his best to defend himself against the whip-lashes that rained down on him.
~X~X~X~X~X~X
When Rûsa tried to get back up on his feet, a snare caught his right hand and a jerk on the rope made that he almost fell over again.
"Toss the rope over that cliff and tie it around something futher away so it restrains his movements!"
With his right arm forced above his head like that and pushed to the mountain side with his back thanks to the few unharmed Elves keeping hold of his left arm and body, Rûsa found it much harder to fight against them. To top if off, a sword hilt hit him straight in the stomach, sending the breath rattling from his lungs.
"You...really are almost more trouble than what you are worth, unholy child of sin…!" hissed Calcanis from where she was coming towards them. She picked up something from her belt as she came close.
"Open his mouth."
The order reminded Rûsa far too much about when Sauron planned to have him as test subject for a new poison. In quickly growing fear, he tried to get free from the hands that held him still.
"If you think that you can force a marriage between my sister and your son by killing me and Yuë, you will have to face the consequences of being a Kinslayer with blood on your hands! Your husband only narrowly avoided being stamped as Kinslayer and Kingslayer thanks to lord Elrond saving my maternal family from the poisoning! No one will see the betrothal between Cúwen and Finyo as legal when it is revealed that you plan to kill us all in order to have your son married into the royal family with the highest-ranked female in the line to the throne…!"
His jaw was forced open with a painful hold, and then Calcanis forced down a white powder into his mouth. With a strained hiss in cold fury, Rûsa jerked his head back. But the moment he got his face free again, Rûsa felt how his heart started to beat alarming fast and he found it suddenly very difficult to breathe properly.
"Yes, the same yew powder that I used on the nut cookies which I sent to your mother over twenty years ago. It was planned to kill her and her brothers that way, as it is not uncommon for expecting mothers to be given some form of sweets when they are with child, but sadly it did not work as wished. Although...seeing that your mute little freak of a brother clearly was born premature and is very frail as a result, it is better than nothing."
Rûsa's eyes became wide in horror at those words, and not just because of the yew poison in his body. So their suspicions that it indeed had been she who had poisoned Maedhros and the unborn Yuë at that time, was true! He began to tremble in his whole body as reaction on the poisoning and would have collapsed down on the ground from muscle weakness, had not the rope around his right hand forced him to remain standing up.
"Now, I believe that there is a firstborn of mine who needs to be punished for daring to disobey me…"
Calcanis walked over to where Túrëo laid on the ground. Having woken up from his unconsciousness in the fall, Túrëo tried his best to try crawling away as his injured leg did not allow him to stand up.
"Mother...mother, please…!" Túrëo pleaded in terror as she towered over him. In answer, she coldly raised a hand and two of her unharmed men took hold of Túrëo's arms, holding him in place.
"Cut off his right leg."
"No! NO, STOP!" screamed Rûsa in a paniced voice when he saw the sword being lifted and for a moment, it seemed in his mind like that Túrëo was replaced by any other slave in Angband that had been seen as useless for work after a serious injury and would end up executed by the orc guards once it was revealed that they could not work properly anymore.
"Be silent!"
The whip hit Rûsa in the face, dangerously close to his eyes and causing a new bleeding wound on his forehead. Also the breathing difficultly and slow heartbeat from the yew poison was making him close to passing out.
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH MY SOON-TO-BE HUSBAND!?"
In a flash of lighting, Maeglin was revealed where she was standing on a cliff, her bow ready to shot a arrow straight on Calcanis. It was a cold fury in her black eyes that made her look just like Eöl once had done right before he had been thrown from the cliff of Caragdûr as punishment for killing Aredhel by mistake.
"Maeglin, you fool...we had a agreement to not...call each other something like that in front of others yet…"
Rûsa gasped in pain as he tried to keep his heart keep beating. He needed treatment for the poisoning as quickly as possible if he was not to enter the Halls of Mandos a second time, for Calcanis had given him a much bigger dose of the yew poison than what Maedhros had gotten in her. Maeglin looked ready to kill someone with her bare hands at seeing how Rûsa fought to stay awake. And right behind her, was Oromë standing. A quick look around revealed several of Oromë's Maiar standing on cliffs, all ready to shot their arrows as well.
"Calcanis, you are arrested for kidnapping and for nearly unleashing one of the Dark Lord Morgoth's greatest crimes into Arda. If you do not want to end up with arrows in your legs like a hunted deer, step away from your two prisoners and give up! Otherwise I cannot promise you anything..."
The Vala's deep voice was like the thunder in the sky, and the threat far too clear for someone to dare to disobey him. Using the change of surprise since the Elves was so focused on their master, the Maiar was quick to bind Calcanis and the others.
"Rûsa!" cried Maeglin in horror as she ran over to him. However, in just that moment, Rûsa's already slow heartbeat suddenly stopped without warning and his body, still held up only by the rope around his right wrist, became limp as a rag doll as his spirit left his body.
~X~X~X~X~X~X
Author's note: And once more, someone from the House of Fingolfin is saving someone from the House of Fëanor from a situation involving being held up with the right arm.