Chapter Text
Christmas was usually a merry affair in Hithlum, but the winter of 1852 seemed determined to end the year much as it began it: unsettled and subdued, darkened by the rumored threat of violence brought far too close to home. Neighbors were still out visiting neighbors, and Christmas revelries still had all the lamps in town burning, when the distant sound of battle first began its terrible roar. Some thought it an approaching thunderstorm at first—a calamity in its own right—but the storm had settled over Fort Mithrim, and it was the distant, mingled cacophony of human voice and animal scream all blended with the crashing of the gunfire that the townspeople rushed into the streets to hear, staring wide-eyed out towards the forest and the hills beyond. Mithrim stood more than ten miles south of Hithlum, too far for anything of the dreadful battle to be seen by the anxious watchers. Yet on occasion the very air around them shook with the roar of explosion, and the sky would change over Mithrim in brief, desperate blossoms of bilious white, the clouds bruising with violent light.
That, folks learned later, was Feanorian magic, or else buried wizardry that their father left behind. The earth around Mithrim was changed overnight, an itinerant farrier reported solemnly, enjoying his audience at the bar the day after Christmas. He had been only newly arrived in town on Christmas morning, but emboldened by his own curiosity—as well as a prophet’s surety of how the townsfolk would welcome him back if he arrived bearing gossip—he had been brave enough to go investigate the next morning under the pretense of his customary visits to service Mithrim’s stable. He had been turned away at the bridge—a great disappointment, that, for one of the few tradesmen still welcome at that insular place! Still, he went away not empty-handed.
“News, I say! A fearsome skirmish in the night, and a dozen defenders dead, mebbe more,” he announced to his rapt audience, emphasizing his points by tapping his forefinger upon the bar as though counting down a list. “Many more than that wounded, and many of those badly. That is what Mr. Stokes told me, and him with his own head bound up even tho’ he were standing guard. But the men as attacked Mithrim fared far worse than those as defended, from what I saw. There’s enough of them still unburied upon the hillside to make that plain.”
Who had dared make war upon Mithrim fort, and who had reason? The farrier could answer those questions too, once he had his tankard generously refilled.
“Who else but the Frenchman?” He said, looking about with a look suddenly grave and lowering his voice. “The dead men were all dressed like him, in hunting furs and with more tokens besides, Stokes said. Seems one of the newcomers gave him insult somehow, and now there’s to be war over it. Best if you all keep clear of Mithrim for a while, I think, until things quiet down—or end, God preserve us! In the meantime, you know where to find me, and my hands left pitifully idle, and my fine iron shoes unused, eh? You know where to find me.”