Archive of Our Own

Bauglir gave him the night to think it over. Gothmog set the spurs on his table, chewed a plug of tobacco, and listened to the sound of water dripping.

There are a few things he knows. There won't ever be a place more pleasurable to him than his old plantation. Bauglir in his pocket, looking over his shoulder, will be a sight less manageable than Bauglir more than a day's ride away.

But. But. Gothmog's not in the business of mountain carving. Bauglir runs a second crew--some of whom he pays, most of whom he keeps in ankle shackles--to conduct the slow, punishing crawl of excavation and stonework.

Some men want a fortress; Bauglir is one of them.

Bauglir is an old-fashioned man, and a bit of a fool (so Gothmog might say if he was deep in his liquor with honesty), but also an impressive and devious brute.

And there is the heart of the matter: if Gothmog sprouts up even so much as a shanty town at the foot of this hell mountain, he'll swear on the Irishman's grave that they'll see no trouble from the Mithrim rats again.

The best among them, anyway, was the boy.

He spits against the wall. It isn't satisfying. He needs to have a word with the fur-trapper, as well as with Bauglir. Gothmog didn't serve the redhead up as a peace offering just to have Mairon tear him up in a fit of jealousy.

A whipping can be recovered from. Not always prettily, not just-as-you-were, but it's Mairon's love of eyes and hands and delicate skin that Gothmog finds himself sweating over.

He sucks down a few swallows of whiskey, and realizes he's already made his decision about rebuilding Utumno.

Outside Bauglir's study, Gothmog pauses. The door is shut, and the kerfuffle behind it keeps him from knocking for a moment.

There is a grunt, like a man kicked, and then Bauglir's smooth voice uneven, spiked with fury:

"Stay down."

Silence.

Gothmog wonders if the redhead is giving trouble again. Feels a spark of almost-respect, as he has before. He'd have endless uses for a spirit like that. He knew that when he lifted the boy's face out of the mire and saw that there was still fire behind his dripping eyes.

That's the kind of fire that can slowly burned down into a useful monster.

Bauglir is speaking again. "I've half a mind to give you a taste of your own whip," he says. "Remember, if all I want is a knife, I am capable of reaching for one myself."

Not the boy, Gothmog realizes. He smiles. Not the boy.

"Out of my sight," Bauglir commands at last, after a pause in which no one answers. "Return to me with your demon-head in check, and I may spare you."

There is the sound of someone scrambling to their feet. Gothmog steps back from the door.

When it opens, Mairon steps through. His pale hair is disheveled around his shoulders. There is a bruise beginning to form beneath his left eye. It makes him look--

Well, more like a man and not some sort of heathen idol.

Gothmog grins. He lets the yellow-cat-gaze sear him, almost enjoys it, won't be afraid of it, and savors the thump of Mairon's boots echoing down the hall.

Then he knocks on the door.

Bauglir is standing in front of his desk, frowning at his knuckles. He flexes his long pale fingers.

"Cosomoco," Bauglir says. "Have you come to disappoint me?"

He could take Bauglir in a fair fight, but Bauglir never fights fair.

"I ain't come to raise a single hair on your head, sir," Gothmog tells him. "Just to say I've considered, and I accept. You give me the manpower, and I'll be raising walls in a week."

One corner of Bauglir's mouth worms upwards. He raises his flint-dark gaze, studying. "A city beneath a hill," he says. "I like the sound of that. Do you read the Greeks?"

"Can't say I do." Don't care to.

"They put their gods on a mountain." Bauglir shakes his head. "And since I have no gods, that only leaves one answer, doesn't it?"

There is blood on his white knuckles.