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Daeron rode to Mithrim with his heart beating of Luthien. How silver-sweet she had looked in the dawn light! Asking, always asking, for a favor or a story. Someday, if he was utterly fortunate, she might ask for him—he shivered in his saddle at the image of it. She was young and flawless and had known no other man, had thought of no other man, save that puppy Beren.
Beren was a native, dark-haired and dark-eyed as Luthien was, but dark-skinned, too. There had been skirmishing in the southwest during recent years, after the Alamo. This was even before the onslaught of forty-niners. Whatever forces were spotting out new land and new power—whatever relationship they bore to the growing tension between South and North in the prosperous East—no one could deny that the plains people had suffered for it. Beren had been one chased out of his grassland hiding place by a rogue regiment. He was also the only one of his people to escape.
The others were dead, said Elu Thingol firmly.
It began to seem, as the railroad flourished west, with those selfsame regiments for guards, that the missing natives were not dead at all, but enslaved.
Daeron had had pity for Beren—for his frightened young face and mangled hand. The hand had been shot through the palm with a musket ball. It was a wonder of wonders that he kept it all, but the avoidance of amputation was due to the skill of Melian. Her grandfather had been chief physician to the Emperor of China.
Less pity was forthcoming when Daeron had stumbled upon the whelp eagerly kissing Luthien, her hair slipping over his shoulders as she leaned forward, her white hands clinging to him like a sailor might cling to a ship in a storm.
Daeron slipped away unseen, and divulged what he knew to Thingol. Beren was forthwith cast out. Luthien did not know—and was too innocent to suspect—that her friend and tutor had played a part. Ever after, she spoke of Beren to him rather than her father, and Daeron was obliged to quaff deeply once more of guilt.
(Yes, it had been guilt, too, when he first looked upon her as a woman, but he had never been able to chase those feelings away.)
Mithrim was a starlit place, shining in its long lake, in its fences and bridge of bright metal. Daeron supposed he should expect an arrow in the throat as he drew near, and so he raised his hands and called.
“Ho, there! I come in peace.”
Like leaves turning in the wind, the shadows shifted in color and shape. Here were two men, shoulders so stiff as they poised their weapons that they seemed half as ready to shoot each other as him.
“In peace?” said the taller of the two. In the dark, Daeron could not see more than the outline of a hat, a hip-length coat. A slim gun.
There was the sound first of a weapon holstered, then the sound of flint. A lantern sparked to life in the hands of the second man. He was nondescript, weather-beaten. Not terribly old.
“He’s French,” said the second man.
“He is,” said the first man coldly. To Daeron: “Why the fuck are you French?”
Young, Daeron thought, or at least, unlined of face and very lion-fair of hair. But hard and dangerous. There was the comma arch of a bow slung over his back.
Daeron had survived his travels by being blandly truthful. “I come from Doriath,” he said. His horse whickered beneath him, stamping, but he kept his hands up. “I serve Thingol. I work as translator and messenger at his ranch.”
“Thingol?” the second man muttered. “Have we—"
“Tell Mairon,” said the first man, cocking his weapon, “That someday I’ll cut out his eyes and see them pickled. You’ve the count of ten to flee.”
“Mithrim?” asked the barkeep. “It’s a den of wolves. They’re mad as anything, killing regimentals. Starting fires. They’ve been a little quieter of late.”
“Of late?” Daeron set aside his barley beer. It was sour.
“Since Feanor and his eldest son were killed. They were the head hornets in that nest.”
Wolves, hornets. This man was no minstrel.
“His eldest son is dead also?”
“Rumor has it. Family fracas. Eldest seen riding—he was a fine cut of a fellow, for a lunatic. Taller than most. Carrot-top, but right to look at.” The man cleared his throat. “Seen riding out, never heard of again. The regiment don’t take kindly to outlaws.”
The story was a patchwork one, poorly told, with half the pieces missing. Daeron tapped the wood beneath his fingertips. “Was Mithrim wild before Feanor came west?”
“So you know him.”
“I’ve heard of him. Didn’t know much.” An ingratiating smile.
“He came less’n a year ago, yes. We’re not siding with anybody.” The man fell silent as a few grey-clad soldiers entered the saloon.
Daeron put down his coin, and took his leave.
“Why didn’t you shoot him?” Homer asked.
Celegorm made no answer.