Challenging Morgoth to a fight to the death is really the sort of thing Fingolfin has always presumed an elf could only do once.
But here he is, again, willingly, as part of one of Feanor's plans.
Maybe Feanor isn't the crazy one in the family.
He looks across the lake to where the gates of Angband wait, takes a deep breath, and rides forward.
Despite all Finarfin's threats, it really wouldn't be such a bad way to die.
Nerdanel waits with Arafinwe and Tyelpe and hates every second of it. Feanaro is taking the last of her sons into danger, and she's no warrior to go with them or healer to prepare for their return. All she can do is sit and wait with her pale faced grandson, knowing that if this plan fails, she will have so very little left.
After what the Valar's herald has proclaimed, she can't even pray.
A normal dog would have been no use at all at tracking Feanor's sons at this point. There is no plausible way to find a fresh scent trail to follow, and even if they could have, the odors wafting from Angband are overwhelming for even an elven nose.
But Huan is no ordinary dog. He knows what they were hunting for, and once the hunt begins, he needs nothing so pedestrian as scent.
Huan runs forward. Feanor, Celegorm, and Fingon are fast behind him.
They can do this, Feanor tells himself. If Fingon could do it alone, than they can certainly do it together.
Unless the Valar can hold both memory and grudges across timelines, of course. Unless this really is some obscure lesson he has not yet run the course of. Unless last time really had been pure luck -
But those are variables he can't control. All he can control now is this run toward the cliffs where his eldest son had once hung.
Except.
Except Huan is turning away from that cliff. Away from even the gates.
Huan is angling straight for where the challenge is to take place.
They have prepared for every possibility, Fingolfin thinks after a moment of blankness. Every possibility but this.
Morgoth has stridden out, great and terrible, from his black gates. A Maia of some sort is behind him - Sauron, maybe, or one of the lesser ones, it isn't as if Fingolfin has spent much time socializing with them - which is fair enough as these things went. He has his own line of guards waiting behind him.
That, he had expected. That, he can deal with.
He had not expected the Maia to be dragging three familiar bodies, in which he can still detect a faint spark of life, on a chain behind him.
Morgoth smiles. The effect is a good deal less pleasant than it had been back in Valinor, but Fingolfin almost prefers it. This smile, at least, is honest.
"As you can see," he says, "I have come to trade. Where is your side of the bargain?"
Fingolfin doesn't believe for an instant that Morgoth will hand over his captives and let everyone walk away. There's a trick here, a trap, but Fingolfin unwraps the sword and lets the light of the Silmarils shine forth anyway. It will buy time, at least, and he desperately needs that.
Morgoth's smile grows sharp. "But you have forged it into one treasure, not three! Surely you cannot expect me to agree to such an uneven trade."
If he had really been haggling, he would have argued the point, but everyone here knows this was coming to a fight eventually. Better to decide when that point is now than to fall into an ambush.
And Morgoth will not have his captives killed quietly when all are distracted. He will make a production of it, or not do it at all. Odd as it seems, his nephews will be safer this way.
"I didn't come to bargain with you, overgrown weasel that you are," Fingolfin spits. "I came to give this to you, point-first. Or are you too great a coward to face the very treasure you covet?"
Morgoth's smile grows stiff for only a moment before he charges.
Fingolfin urges his horse forward.
Seven blows, he reminds himself. You know you can give him at least seven blows.
He tries not to think about how one of those blows had been struck even as he died.
They hide behind a convenient outcropping of rock. If Feanor remembers correctly, the same rock had played a small role in the ambush that had led to his death for the first time.
Seeing the scene before him, it takes all the restraint he has to not charge forth in all the rash anger that had been his undoing then.
Fingon's hand is tight around his own sword. "We have to help them," he hisses.
Celegorm's eyes are fixed on where his brothers lay, but by the devastated fury in his face, he agrees.
Huan, though, is looking to the Maia and growling.
There's no good way to do this quietly.
"Huan and I will engage the one holding them," Feanor says quietly. "Hopefully, he will drop the chain to fight. Whether he does or not, you two must try to free them and drag them to the line of soldiers Nolofinwe brought. Understood?"
They nod tensely.
If Morgoth's forces see it from the gates and decide to interfere, they're doomed, but there's nothing that can be done about that.
With a great shout, Feanor charges.
Three blows.
The sword Feanor had forged him is serving him better than his old one ever had. The light from the Silmarils burns Morgoth even when the blade fails to quite connect.
Morgoth's massive form is slow, but not quite slow enough for comfort. All it will take is one blow to smash his ribs open and send him flying to the earth to be ground into dust -
That was last time. That was then, this is now, and he ducks a swing of the mace Morgoth carries. His sword stabs upward into Morgoth's wrist. Foul blood drips down.
Four blows.
Fingolfin hears a shout. He doesn't dare turn to look.
The chain had been abandoned as the battle commenced. The initial length splits into three separate branches, and Tyelkormo kneels by the nearest bit and frantically begins sawing through it with a knife his father had given him. The enchanted steel cuts through it, but it isn't nearly fast enough for his taste.
Findekano's blade isn't half as good, so he kneels by the prisoners. "Maitimo? Can you hear me? We're going to get you out of here."
Tyelkormo spares them one quick glance.
Curufinwe looks by far the worst off, eyes open but unseeing, hands twisted almost beyond recognition. He suspects that the resemblance to their father that his brother had been so proud of had done him no favors.
Maitimo, though bloodied, is rising to a sitting position with Findekano's help. He's saying something in a hoarse voice, but with the noise of two battles raging around them and the hoarseness of his brother's voice, he can't make out what it was.
Makalaure, though, pushes himself up on his elbows and locks eyes with Tyelkormo. "Stop trying to cut it," he commands. His voice is cracked and weary, but the power behind it has yet to fade.
"We're not leaving you," Tyelkormo growls.
"Good," Makalaure says with fervor. "But cut the chain later. If we do what we can, and the two of you help . . . "
Tyelkormo grasps the point immediately. They can pick the locks or saw through the chain at leisure back at camp; the important thing is to get his brothers back to safety first.
But the chain is long, thick, and undeniably heavy, and Curufinwe, at least, will not be able to walk on his own. He risks a glance at where Huan and his father are still locked in battle with the enemy.
They have injured him, and injured him greatly. Huan's jaws are currently locked around his throat, and Ada's sword is dripping red. With so great an injury, surely . . .
Huan's strength is the greater, but he's also the more occupied.
"Ada!" he shouts.
Even through the noise of battle, his father hears. Tyelkormo has risen and looped the greater part of the chain around himself and manages not to stagger under it. Findekano is carrying the greater part of Maitimo's weight as he helps him to his feet.
Ada takes in the situation at once. He calls something to Huan, and then turns, eyes still aflame from the battle, to rush to their side.
Five blows.
Fingolfin is not entirely unaware of the events around him. He knows the delaying tactic is working, but he's beginning to doubt it will last long enough. His horse is exhausted, and his own arm aches with the weight of the unfamiliar sword.
And Morgoth is laughing. That's never a good sign.
"Did you really think this would work, little elf?"
He turns, entirely unconcerned with baring his back, and swings his mace at the slow moving pack of Feanorians. Feanor is in the lead all but carrying one of his sons; he'll never be able to block or dodge in time.
Not again. Not ever again -
Fingolfin slices his sword at Morgoth's exposed knee. Morgoth falters, blow slightly diverted, and Feanor lunges clear to one side.
Huan's foe have fled. The great hound turns, sides heaving, to help face the new foe.
It still won't be enough, Fingolfin realizes with a sinking heart. It was never going to be enough.
A flash of movement catches his attention, and his gaze is drawn upward to a flock of great birds descending from the sky.
"Their timing was much improved," Fingolfin says from outside the healers' tent. The healers have insisted on limiting visitors, so for now Finwe's sons wait outside while Nerdanel, Celebrimbor, Fingon, and Celegorm fuss within. A horde of cousins will probably descend as soon as they're given the word. There's far less resentment to divide them this time. "For a moment I was afraid they'd just be carrying off the bodies again."
"Still not funny," Finarfin informs him, but the set of his shoulders is still far too relieved for his words to hold much bite.
Feanor finally tears his attention away from the entrance to the tent. "I doubt Morgoth will let this stand for long."
Fingolfin's mouth twists. "Probably not," he agrees. "Dare we hope that our reinforcements will have arrived by then?"
"We can always hope," Feanor says. "Although that was always more Finarfin's area than mine."
"We'll hold out," Finarfin says firmly.
"Oh, probably," Fingolfin agrees with a sigh. "In the short run, we've certainly got an excellent shot. In the long run, though, most of us are still all going to die horribly, aren't we? We have the Silmarils, yes, but I doubt the Valar are going to accept that we're truly penitent until things get a good deal worse than this."
"I for one am not feeling terribly penitent yet," Feanor says. "And there are worse things than dying in the fight against Morgoth."
"There are," Finarfin agrees. "But none of them are happening today. We've rescued your sons, the healers are . . . well, not optimistic, exactly, but at least in awe of your sons' stubbornness and certain enough that they're going to live, and no one died in the rescue. All we have to focus on are holding out and helping them heal for now."
"And matchmaking," Fingolfin says as an old worry strikes. "We're going to have to be careful no one gets wiped out of existence over this."
"That's settled then," Feanor says almost cheerfully. "I'll worry about my sons, Finarfin can worry about the war, and you can worry about matchmaking."
Fingolfin shoots him a look but declines to actually protest this. "Oh," he remembers, drawing out his new sword, "I suppose you'll be wanting this back?"
Feanor looks at it for a long moment, eyes glowing in the light of the gems and aching with longing, but he shakes his head. "Keep it," he says. "My oath's fulfilled, and I'll not tempt another. You used it well enough."
Fingolfin swallows hard and puts it away carefully, looking down to hide the way the world has blurred.
When he looks back up, Finarfin is grinning brilliantly. "This is better than last time at least," he says. "Even if we do end up all dying horribly."
"Last time?" Fingon says uncertainly from behind them.
All three of them spin. Fingon has poked his head out from within the tent.
As the silence dragged on, Fingon continues on. "Oh, and, um, the healers said someone else could come in now." His eyes dart between them, very obviously still full of questions.
"Well, he's your son," Feanor says to Fingolfin, "and you're the one who blurted it out," to Finarfin, "so you can sort it out between yourselves. I'm going to see to my sons." He slips past Fingon before either of them could protest.
As much as he is now willing to admit that he loves his brother, at that moment, Fingolfin feels quite willing to contribute to the dying horribly part.
Judging by the expression on Finarfin's face, he feels much the same.
A/N: That's it for the main story, but I will have a bonus chapter of Fingolfin plotting out his machmaking posted tomorrow.