1. Death of a Dwarf Lord
Kili lay awake, staring at the stone roof overhead and the dancing patterns of firelight cast there by the room's solitary torch. He should have been fast asleep already, since his mother had strictly ordered him off to bed hours ago, but he found that sleep did not come with closing his eyes. Anxiety gnawed in the pit of his stomach, making it growl like a hunting warg.
Or perhaps his stomach merely growled because he hadn't had a decent meal in days.
For weeks, the cupboards of their small home in the Ered Luin had been growing barer and barer, as day by day the meat disappeared, then the vegetables, then the butter, leaving them with only a few stale loaves of bread. But in a few more weeks there would be axes and daggers to sell to the men in the valleys, and then the cupboards would be restocked for a month or so. It never occurred to Kili, only seven years old at the time, that this cycle of food and famine was anything other than ordinary. No one in their village had enough to eat these days, although they shared what they could.
No, what kept Kili awake was not the lack of food. It was the lack of his father. His father had left with Uncle Thorin almost a year ago, and today Uncle Thorin had returned. But Kili's father had not.
"Fili!" Kili hissed, elbowing his older brother.
"Wha'?" Fili blinked his eyes open sleepily and rolled over. He had no trouble sleeping. He didn't feel the same gnawing anxiety that seeing Uncle Thorin return alone had sparked in Kili.
"Mother isn't back yet." There were only two beds in the house, which were really nothing more than slabs of stone jutting from the walls that were covered with thin straw pallets and threadbare blankets. The bed on the opposite side of the room, the one that belonged to Fili and Kili's mother, was conspicuously empty.
"Hrmph." Fili made an unintelligible grunt and rolled back over so that he was facing the wall again.
"She's been talking with Uncle Thorin for hours," Kili continued, not bothered by his brother's apparent disinterest. He knew he was listening anyways. "You know they're talking about Father!"
"Wait for the morning," Fili mumbled.
Kili sighed. Both brothers knew full well that whatever was being discussed on the other side of the bedroom door, they were unlikely to ever figure out what it was once the sun had risen and Uncle Thorin had left. When the older members of their family had a secret to keep, they would take it with them to their everlasting graves of stone rather than submit to Fili and Kili's pestering.
Making up his mind in a second, Kili slipped out of bed and made his way to the door, his bare feet not making a sound on the cold stone floor. The rough-hewn wooden door did not quite fit its frame, and through the gap at the bottom came the faint whisper of voices. Kili crouched by the side of the door, careful not to let his small shadow block the flickering torchlight and alert his mother to his presence. He closed his eyes and pressed his ear to thin crack between wood and stone.
Before he could register anything he heard from the other side of the door, there was the rustle of a blanket being thrown back and the soft tread of feet. Kili cracked one eye open and saw his brother crouching on the opposite side of the door. Fili gave him a curt nod, and the brothers strained to hear what their mother and uncle were saying.
"By Durin's beard, Thorin, you've been edging around it for hours!" Fili and Kili immediately recognized the sharp voice as belonging to their mother, Dís. "Tell me about your wanderings some other time. Write a book if they're so fascinating! Tell me what happened to him."
"We were ambushed…" That was Uncle Thorin's deep, gravelly voice. Kili recognized it in a heartbeat, even though it sounded oddly strangled.
"It wasn't painful, was it?" Dís's suddenly hushed voice was barely audible through stone and wood.
Fili arched one thick blond eyebrow in silent question, to which Kili merely shook his head. Listen, he mouthed, pressing his ear against the door once again.
"It was quick," Thorin said reassuringly. "Balin and Dwalin had already reached the rocks, and we were running fast behind them. One moment he was by my side, the next he was gone. I looked behind me and saw his body on the ground, an arrow in his back."
"He died running away," Dís whispered.
"He died in battle. We were looking to make a stand at the outcropping, but the orcs had us outnumbered ten to one. Many more perished before we managed to break their lines and retreat into the caves. Afterwards, we looked for his body. This was all we could salvage. I don't want to talk about the ambush, Dís. We've lost too many to those vile scum as it is."
There was the hard, cold thunk of a metal object hitting the table, and then there was silence.
Fili and Kili exchanged horrified glances. Were they hearing what they thought they were hearing? Their father was dead? A strange numbness settled over Kili like a cloak. He must have heard wrong… Father couldn't be dead…
"But what were orcs doing in the Emyn Uial, so far from Gundabad?" Dís's voice was sharp with worry.
"Dark times are coming, Dís," Thorin said. "Orcs are roaming further and further from Gundabad each day. The Misty Mountains ring from forges not in Moria, but in Goblintown. Wargs have been sighted south of the Ettenmoors for the first time in centuries. Something has awoken from the shadows."
Kili drew back from the door an inch. This was grown-up business, this talk of orcs and goblins and wargs. He shouldn't be listening, he shouldn't know… But the lure of the forbidden was too great, and the mention of Kili's name drew his attention back to the conversation in the kitchen.
"What of Fili and Kili?" This was Dís, her voice under control again. She sounded calm, confident, everything Kili needed to hear to be reassured that everything was going to be alright. They were safe in the Ered Luin. Orcs didn't come this far west.
Thorin sighed. "They are of the line of Durin, Dís, as are we. You know the darkness will be hunting them. As long as we are scattered, as long as we are weak, we are all of us vulnerable. A day will come when there are orcs in the Blue Mountains. How soon is the question."
"Our people cannot defend the Ered Luin as we once did," Dís mused sorrowfully. "Nogrod and Belegost, those ancient strongholds of Durin's Folk, were lost Ages ago when the West sank beneath the waves. We have no leader, no home. The Ered Luin will not be safe for long."
"That is why we need Erebor," Thorin stated firmly. "Too long has the dragon slept in the halls of our people, hoarding our treasure and making our home his own. If we reclaim Erebor, we can stand firm against this tide of darkness."
"Erebor was lost, Thorin."
"But one day we will take it back. I swear to you, Dís, your sons will see Erebor reclaimed."
Erebor, Fili mouthed, the wonder written plainly across his face.
Erebor. Kili had heard stories of the ancient stronghold of the dwarves, the great city under the Lonely Mountain that had been sacked by the dragon Smaug years upon years ago. What he would give to travel with Uncle Thorin to Erebor, to reclaim his homeland…
"Then we have work to do, my brother." There was the sound of a chair scraping against the floor as Dís rose to her feet. "You should rest now. In the morning we shall tell the boys about their father's death."
"And you? You will not rest?"
"No, Thorin Oakenshield, I will not rest. I will not rest until Smaug is dead and Erebor ours. I will not rest until I see the halls of our grandfather Thror returned to us and the Arkenstone glittering above the throne. I will not rest until the wargs have been driven back into their foul caverns of Gundabad and the orcs dare not show their faces in the light of this good earth. I will not rest until I know my sons are safe."
"Then you have a long night ahead of you, my sister." Thorin's chair scraped back from the table and the two eavesdroppers could hear his footsteps coming closer and closer to the door.
Without a sound, the brothers raced for their bed and dove under the blanket, managing to calm their breathing just in time as the door creaked open. Thorin tiptoed into the bedroom, closing the door carefully behind him.
Kili lay on the bed with his eyes closed, trying desperately to calm his racing heart and praying that Thorin had not heard them dashing away from the door.
But all Thorin did was walk quietly over to the brothers' bed, and Kili felt the mattress sink slightly as his uncle sat down. Then Thorin began to sing in his deep, rich baritone, as Kili's father had once sang to him.
"Far over the Misty Mountains cold,
To dungeons deep and caverns old…"
It was not Thorin's singing that finally lulled Kili to sleep, though.
No, Kili fell asleep to the clash of hammer on anvil and the whoosh of the bellows, to the ringing of iron and the clamor of steel. Kili fell asleep to a sound he had not heard in many a long year: the sound of Dís at the forge.
Author's Note: So I finally got around to starting a Hobbit story... (Yes, I know the title I'm using is an abridged version of one of Boromir's lines from Fellowship of the Ring. Shh. It works.) Thanks for reading! And reviews are always welcome!
