[Nogrod]

Interlude, or a second Preface

Legends about the horrors of the Evil Breath spread fast before the wind itself. It surely was a most terrifying foe, only an endlessly dark mind like Morgoth’s could come up with. You couldn’t see it or touch it, you couldn’t smell it or taste it. Unlike orcs it didn’t bow to steel or stop with an arrow. No one knew where it was or what it was, but you could figure out its path where people suddenly dropped down sweating in sudden high fever and pain, having problems to breathe – and usually withering away in a few days.

Making things worse, there was no medicine that seemed to cure it. What followed was considered by many even more horrifying: the people infected had to be left on their own. There was to be no soothing of the sick and dying. The ill were left to face their agony and oftentimes imminent death alone, separated from their families and friends. It was pure cruelty.


~*~


As said earlier, before the outbreak of the Evil Breath things had looked much brighter. Late 469 F.A. the talk of the united hosts rising against Angband together had changed from vain hopes and empty bragging into some real negotiations between the different parties. And so it was that after promising to join the union of Maedhros, old Halmir, the Lord of the people of Haleth, was on a tour to meet his kin and other allies to discuss how to prepare for the coming war. The most important meeting for him was to discuss with brothers Húrin and Huor, the two great sons of Galdor the Tall.

They had agreed to have a counsel at Húrin’s village when autumn would start to turn into winter. That was settled long before there were any signs of what was to come and threaten the lands beneath Anfaughlith. When the news of this new evil finally started to spread autumn was already waning and Halmir had already set on his journey. When the stories reached these travelers on the road, it was too late to turn back.

Huor had suggested Halmir that they’d meet at the next village east from Húrin’s as he would be there before the counsel, just to settle some land-issues and aid in various defensive projects in the village. But instead of a celebration and a happy family-reunion by the fireside, the travelers met a grim and emptying village. Huor and his company had decided to stay and wait for Halmir as there were fresh rumours that Huor’s village was suffering a major outbreak of Morgoth’s Breath. It would have been too risky to try and reach home.

After a joyless and cold lunch under the empty roof of the chieftain’s house, the six travelers quietly saddled their horses. It was around midday when they headed west in the falling rain under the leaden skies, but there was no way of telling it was daytime, for it was dim and dusk like twilight.