Well, you know what they say about sequels…
And yet, this is indeed the sequel to my previous story, Quest to Forochel. I will try to write it so that you don't have to have read first one, but you really should go back and read the first one! I promise you, it's quite good. We'll wait :)
Back now? Okay, let's get started.
I own nothing that is Tolkien's. He is the master, and I am but a humble flatterer enamored of his works (and with Peter Jackson's interpretation of them, too). Betta is my own OC, and I have grown very fond of her, but this story is really about Fili and Kili, their preparations for the Quest to Erebor and their relationship with their grim uncle, Thorin...
Oh, who am I kidding! It's mostly lovely, romantic angst! I spent eighteen months on QtF, now it's time to have some FUN :D
If you like this story, leave a REVIEW! If you don't like it, leave a REVIEW anyway and tell me what I'm doing wrong. I love it!
-Paint
Even in March, in the north of Forodwaith and as far south as the foothills of the Mountains of Angmar, the land lay under a bitter cold wind and huge drifts of deep snow, but south of the great Icebay of Forochel, the weather was growing mild and the snow was not deep. The high peaks of Ered Luin were a wall against the gentle winds of Belegaer, but they also collected the worst of the snow upon their peaks. The air was cold east of the mountains and in winter there was little traffic between the River Lhun and the icy beaches of Forochel, but a long and winding north-south road had been built far away from the North-South Road. It was used mainly by the hearty ice-traders who were all of the race of Men. Many years had passed since the Dwarves went that way in any noticeable number. Gundabad and the Eastern Road through Angmar were too dangerous to allow the descendants of Durin to visit their ancestral home.
The road between the Lhun and Forochel was difficult, but the winter of 2941 had been mild (for those who had not ventured farther north than the North Downs) and spring was come early. The scent of the season was in the air, and the northern arm of the river that would normally have remained frozen well into April had begun to crack and thaw so that it was dangerous to attempt the crossing with any weight of wagons.
And it was many wagons that wound down from the north and passed through the few villages and about the even fewer homesteads built beside the road. Pale faces looked out of windows as they rode by and it was a curious sight they saw.
First in line were many grim and frowning Men dressed in heavy fur coats though their faces were still tanned by the sunny lands of the south from whence they had come. They drove five wagons piled high with seal skins, frozen slabs of whale meat and jars of fish oil fresh that they brought from the Lossoth villages of the north. At the last northern village, a company of ice-traders had joined the caravan, riding with them while the weather was cold, but as the air grew warmer, the ice-traders quickened their speed and rode swiftly on ahead. Theirs was a race against time to bring their precious cargo south to Mithlond before pure ice turned to cold water.
Last in line of the long caravan were six Dwarves upon ponies and three more that drove a single wagon nearly empty of all but rope and tent. These were the merchants of Gloin, son of Groin, and they had set out from Dunland many weeks before. Groin's son did not trade for goods but for gold, and each Dwarf carried a purse beneath his shirt that had grown heavier with every stop they had made along the way. All that their wagon had once carried had been changed and changed-over many times until even the little that Gloin had bought from the Lossoth was sold back to the Men of his own caravan in exchange for gold. Only his clever mind could have calculated the profit of the journey – though a profit had certainly been made – and yet there was no doubt among the Men that they had come out the worst for his work.
The goodwill between the two companies of the caravan had been lost upon the road. The Dwarves would have ridden apart from the Men either way, but once the extent of their loss had been made known, the Men had widened the space between them and neither word nor man bridged the gap but what was absolutely necessary.
Trapped there, within the no-man's-land that had been formed between the two races, rode not a man but a woman, a single pony and its rider. If the strangeness of the mixed-race caravan had not been enough to draw curious eyes, then surely she would have.
The woman was small and pale, her long dark hair hung in tangled locks and half-braids. Her coat was clearly not made in Eriador but belonged to a faraway land and its wear and tear proclaimed that it had seen better days many years ago. The woman rode well, but she sat stiffly in her saddle, her shoulders bowed down under a heavy weight and her right arm wrapped in a sling. She held close against her chest as if it gave her great pain. Even so, her eyes were stern and her jaw proudly set. She might have ridden alone for all the thought she seemed to give to the rest of the caravan; to any who saw her without knowing her tale, she seemed a lost wanderer who happened to turn onto the road between the Men and Dwarves without realizing they were one travelling party.
Betta knew that they were a single caravan, and that she was a begrudged part of it. She thought bitterly of the promise that Fili had made that she would ride along with him upon his pony to rest her injured arm. That promise had lasted only long enough for him to speak with his fellow Dwarves, for they would not have a human among them. They were not like Fili and his brother.
She had been disappointed, but not surprised, on the day they set out, when she learned that she was expected to ride her old pony by herself. She was disappointed, but not surprised, to learn that Fili was unwilling to stand up to his fellow Dwarves and defend her.
Her pony's hoof struck a stone beneath the snow and stumbled. Betta's arm was jostled and she gasped at the sudden shock of pain that shot up to her shoulder and across her chest. It had been more than two weeks since the Lossoth healer had taken his bone-saw to her right forearm and cut away the mangled hand and wrist that had been crushed beneath the cold waters of Angmar's underground rivers, but she could still feel the tingling of the cold air against her invisible fingertips. She closed her eyes and imagined the missing hand rolled up tight into a fist to protect the fingers that were not there from the bitter wind. The phantoms chill faded and she sighed.
The first day of their ride had been the most difficult when her wound had been fresh and unused to being moved. She had struggled to learn how to change her own bandages, to wash the fresh scars with melted snow, and to endure the constant pain that was like a fire burning up her arm and down her back until half her body was numb. That first night had been a nightmare that she could not wake up from because she could not fall asleep. Every way that she lay hurt her, and she felt vulnerable without Fili or Kili sleeping at her back.
Four days it had taken to deaden the pain in her arm, and by then her anger had dulled as well. She no longer blamed Fili for forgetting her; she blamed herself instead for being foolish enough to think that nothing would change once he was back among his own kind.
The sound of muted voices reached her ears and she opened her eyes. She had ridden too close to the company of Men and they had begun to look back at her and to murmur angrily to themselves. Betta checked her pony. The animal was not happy. It did not like to ride alone when its fellows were near enough to smell. It whinnied in protest, but Betta knew that she was stuck were she was. She missed the ice-traders; they, at least, had spoken with her and told her all the news of the south. They were Men, but they traded with Elves, Dwarves and Men equally, and dealt with each race without prejudice or fear.
The other company of Men, those from Dunland and Bree who had come north with Gloin's Dwarves looked sideways at Betta and sneered at her. She had heard them talk, back at the Lossoth village, whispering behind their hands about her. She was a human who had spent too much time among Dwarves. Their scent was on her and her own kind did not trust her. Gloin's Dwarves did not trust her either. She did not need to understand their words to know what was being said when she spoke with Fili and Kili as if they were her friends.
They had been her friends, in the wild, open lands. What they were to her now, she did not know. For five days, she had ridden alone, caught between Men and Dwarves as the gap between the two races widened. At any point, she might have reminded Fili of his promise to help her or called upon Kili who would have spoken for her, but she did not. She was proud and, what was more, she did not wish to get between them and their kin. Gloin was their cousin and had a greater claim to their loyalty than any human woman.
Betta felt the fingers of her right hand begin to tingle again. She pressed her arm against her chest, but no matter how hard she tried to pretend, she had no hand to close, no fingers to breathe upon. Her right-hand glove was in her pack, folded away and useless to her. A tear fell from her eye and traced a cold line down her cheek. She wanted nothing more than to see Fili smile again and to hear him promise that she would not be abandoned once they were back at Ered Luin, but she knew that he could promise no such thing. Among his own kind, he had changed.
.
A dozen yards behind Betta's sulking pony, Gloin rode at the head of his small company and chatted cheerfully with the nephews of Thorin Oakenshield. Fili and Kili rode on either side of their cousin, doing their best to hide their indifference to their cousin's words. Gloin had turned a good profit on his journey and he was looking ahead to a glad reunion with his fair wife once they reached Thorin's Halls, those two things being nearly all that he had spoken of for three days.
"I have been far too long in Dunland," he was saying – not for the first time, "and I will be glad to see Fris again." He sighed. "But it was good luck that brought such good fortune my way, and this journey has been well worth the delay." He chuckled to himself and clearly expected one of the brothers to ask to know more.
"An, I know there seemed little profit in it at the start," Gloin pressed on, "but there are few merchants willing to risk the northern lands, and I thought to myself… well, why not?" He fingered the silver chain about his neck.
"Yes, and you are lucky lads that I found you when I did, trapped in that dismal place. What would you have done without me!?" He laughed. "Rocks no larger than my fist and not a decent bit of iron but what has been bent into fishhooks!" He shook his head but did not really pity the tall folk who would live in what he deemed to be such squalor.
Kili sighed and pinched his ear to keep from nodding off. He had little interest in the comings and goings of merchant-Dwarves, and had tried many times to change the subject, but his cousin would talk of nothing else. One glance at Fili told him that there would be no help from that quarter; his brother had been alternately staring ahead sadly at Betta and looking guiltily down at his hands all day.
Gloin had fallen silent and frowned grumpily when neither brother filled his deliberate pause. Kili sought for a question that might yield more information than the profits of trade. "How was it, exactly, that you came to be so far north of Angmar, cousin?" he asked. "You mentioned something about some trade deal or other but have told us none of the details of your adventures on the road. It is a dangerous journey wandering so far north of Bree…"
"I have told you the details," Gloin groused good-naturedly, "but you have not been listening. Your mind is elsewhere, I think."
"Well, tell it again. I am listening now," Kili said, more than a little annoyed. Gloin was a good Dwarf and loyal, but he had never been Kili's favorite cousin. His son, Gimli, was a better friend to the brothers and it was for Gimli's sake that Kili kept his temper now. "You were trading in Dunland, last I heard," he said. "Why did you leave? Was the market there not as good as you expected?"
"Ah, lad!" Gloin cried. "Dunland is a terrible place for a hard-working Dwarf! They're all penny-pinchers and coin-counters there. One Dwarf cannot even trust another to treat with him in a fair trade, not since the Hillmen began spreading their worthless wares about town and cheating every soul from the Gap to the Glanduin."
He sighed. "Yes, I was in Dunland, until about two months ago. T'was not yet the new year, late in December, I think, though I don't recall the exact week. I had word from your uncle that I and all his close kin were wanted back at Ered Luin, so we packed up and…"
"Wanted?" Kili echoed in surprise. "Thorin sent for you?"
Fili looked up and looked around. "Thorin? What does Thorin say?" There was worry in his words and more than a little apprehension in his eyes.
Gloin looked back and forth between the two brothers. His eyes were sharp, and he touched two fat fingers to his nose as he said, "Your uncle says… nothing. Nothing that shall be spoken of here." He nodded ahead toward the Men to make his meaning clear, not that it would have stopped Kili from demanding to know more, but he knew that Gloin could be as tight with his tongue as he was with his purse strings.
"As I said," Gloin went on, "I was in Dunland not long ago when I heard that Thorin wanted us home. Some, such as I, he sent for by name," He puffed up his chest proudly, "but his message was that he would welcome any of his close kin who were willing to come. Nori was with me at the time, and I'm sure he'll make the journey… if he can get off his fat-"
"Where is Gimli?" Kili interrupted, not eager to hear Gloin's thoughts on their less respectable cousin. "He went with you to Dunland, did he not?"
"Aye, he went with me and left with me, too. He'll have arrived at the Mountains by now, I don't doubt, and be with his mother. Lucky lad! I parted with him, oh, about six weeks ago upon the Greenway – though it was far more brown than green at that time. I was not about to take him north and risk his wandering off into Troll-country. There may be few trolls in those hills nowadays, but the boy is far too young for such adventures, whatever he may think about it."
"Six weeks…" Fili murmured, turning his eyes ahead once more. It was little more than six weeks ago that he and his brother were both still living quite comfortably within Thorin's halls, roaming the town below and never dreaming that a chance meeting with a human woman would send them high into the hills to fight vicious wolves and raging snow-trolls.
"Yes, six weeks," Gloin said, ignorant of his cousin's thoughts. "After I heard Thorin's message, I packed up to go but I had business and a few things of my own to clear up – no reason to waste the journey. We made several stops along the North-South road all the way up to Bree. I meant to stop there a few days and then go back and cross the Brandywine at Sarn Ford before heading west… and then we came across this fine company of Men…" He nodded to the tall folk ahead of them and his laugh told what he really thought.
"I met their leader at Bree," he explained, "and learned that they were heading north into the empty lands beneath the Ettenmoors to trade what they had with the few farms there and any Rangers that they could find. Of course Farn started in on them about the orcs and hill-men and the dangers of trolls… by the end of the night, the Men were shaking in their boots at the thought of the northern lands." He laughed again, loud enough that several of the Men looked back and scowled at him, but he did not care.
"I had a few hearty lads to spare who were willing to go, and when it came time to leave Bree, we divvied up our stores and I sent Gimli on ahead with what I had promised along the western road. The rest, we took north with our axes and swords, hiring ourselves out as the tall folk's guard. It meant taking the long way 'round, but gold is gold, eh, lad?"
Kili shrugged. He admired well-wrought gold as much as any Dwarf and knew the value of the coins in his pocket, but he had never understood the eagerness with which his cousin counted what coins he had against what he might earn.
"So, you and these Men went north to the Ettenmoors?" he asked.
"Oh, not so far as that. We swung northwest across the wastes and made for the North Downs, stopping among the homesteads and trading with the Shirefolk that we met along the way. There's not really much use for guards up there. Hardly any folk of any kind but the Rangers, and we saw neither hide nor hair of any troll. We challenged a few skittish orcs upon the northern edge of the plain, but they were scared off easily enough.
"Always get your pay up-front, lad!" Gloin said, laughing. "It saves a great deal of trouble in the end. The tall folk were not glad when they realized that they had hired guards for no reason, and that we were taking nearly all the trade from them!
"It was a pleasant ride for us, though, even if it was a bit cold at the end. We made good time on the road toward Emyn Uial, and if we had kept up the pace, I might have beaten Gimli home. We found your ponies near to that old bridge, by the way. You remember the one, don't you, lad?" He looked at Kili. "Or, no… it was your brother I took there, wasn't it…" He looked to Fili instead, but Fili was not listening. Gloin followed Fili's gaze and frowned when he saw that it was the human woman who had stolen Fili's attention away.
"You found them near the bridge, you say?" Kili said quickly, hoping to distract his cousin. "We lost them many leagues north of there. A pack of wolves came upon us in the night and they bolted. We were forced to go on foot from there."
"Hmm…" Gloin shook his head and looked away from Fili. "Wolves, you say? Lucky that you escaped, but I never saw any of them around. Heard them, though, howling in the distance. We met the ice-traders the day after and they filled the tall folk there with talk of profits in the far north. They hadn't fared as well as we had in Eriador and decided to keep going rather than turn back south. I had iron left to trade and your ponies seemed strong enough once they were fed that we hitched them to the heavier wagons and went on.
"At Emyn Uial, we turned north and then… well, you know the rest. We stopped at two villages of the snow-people before we got word to go on to the one you were at. Lucky you were that I did not turn back! It was farther than I meant to go." He smiled, and Kili smiled, too. It had been lucky that Gloin had found them. Without the Dwarven company and with no money or no ponies to ride, he didn't know how long it would have taken him and his brother to get home. They might easily have arrived too late to join Thorin's quest.
Kili smiled but his eyes drifted from Gloin to his brother, and he saw the sadness in Fili's eyes. Gloin urged his pony forward, riding between the two brothers and blocking Kili's gaze.
"Yes," Gloin said, "I thank my lucky boots and good business sense that I discovered you when I did. What was Thorin thinking, letting you two wander off that way? Well, in a few more days, we'll be back at Ered Luin, and he'll have you both back under thumb."
.
Night fell early in winter across the northern lands and all was dark and quiet. The mismatched assortment of wagons and animals made camp beneath a long, low overhang of rock less than a day's ride from the shores of the River Lhun, but Gloin meant to go another day south before attempting to ford the frigid waters near the crossing that Fili had used many weeks ago when he led his own much smaller company across to the eastern shore. There, the river was shallow and there would be less chance of their wagon being overwhelmed by the grinding blocks of broken ice that floated down from its still-frozen source. Before then, Gloin meant to bid farewell to the company of Men; the tall folk with their heavily laden wagons must go all the way down to the ferry above the confluence of the Little Lhun before they could cross over and head toward the town.
After the crossing, it was an easy ride west to Thorin's Halls, and Gloin looked forward to it, but Betta was uncertain. She had long ago made up her mind to follow Fili at least as far as the town beneath Ered Luin, but she had not yet decided whether she would stay there and for how long. In her heart, she had begun to doubt whether she could ever call those stony hills home.
Both Men and Dwarves had arranged their wagons in a line between the trees and the stone wall behind their two separate campsites. The Dwarves had built their own fire and roasted their own game that they had caught among the scattered trees that grew on either side of the road as they travelled. It was mainly squirrel and rabbit, but they mixed the fresh meat with what was left of their preserves into a fine stew, not a bite of which was offered to the Men.
Not that the tall folk would have had any of it. They had not bothered to hunt but had as much as they needed to eat from their own supplies and from the fish that they had bought from the Lossoth. The scent of fried sea-salt and fat mingled with the smoke of simmering stew, both equally delicious, but the Men would not have swallowed even a mouthful of the Dwarven fare, and the Dwarves would rather choke than eat fish from a Man's frying pan.
Both camps set their watches for the night, each not trusting the other to look out for any but his own, yet even the Men whose fears had once been stoked by the whispering of Dwarves now knew that there was little chance of danger. The usual assortment of bandits and thieves would be found in these hills, of course, but they would not dare assault so large and well-armed a company, and more wary folk than they would have laughed to think of orcs venturing so near to Elvish lands. It was but a stone's throw to the Grey havens in the south, and Forlond lay beyond.
Kili sat alone on the ground at the edge of the Dwarves' camp closest to the camp of the tall folk. He pushed the food about in his bowl, eating it but with little appetite. He knew that some orcs did indeed venture west. Hadn't he seen with his own eyes the trouble that they might cause? He frowned as he listened to the laughter and songs of the Men and remembered the exciting tales that Betta had told them of her own people in the south. He would rather have heard new tales from the tall folk than listened to the same old legends that the Dwarves told about their own fires, and which he would hear again anyway once they were back at Ered Luin.
What was the point in travelling if you only stayed among your own kind? Kili thought to himself and knew that it was a very un-Dwarf-like thought to think.
Fili stepped out of the darkness of the trees behind his brother. He re-fastened the buckle of his belt as he approached the camp. Kili handed him his bowl as he sat down, but Fili had even less appetite than his little brother. He, too, was wrapped up in memories of the past, of two dead men lying in the dirt beneath the evergreens upon the road to the Lhun. He remembered Betta kneeling down beside the body of the boy, and how strange it had been to see her grieving for one who had once attacked. Of course, that had been before he knew her history and had heard of the deaths of her five brothers. Fili sighed and wished for the nights when he and his brother had sat alone with their guide and laugh and tease each other without fear of censure.
Kili tipped up his bowl to drink the last few drops of broth. He had tasted real hunger beneath the mountains of Angmar and would never again turn down good food. Looking over at his brother, he saw that Fili had hardly touched his stew but knew that it was no daintiness of appetite that held him back. He looked toward the darker shadows between the two camps where Betta made her own small camp, and he sighed.
"You should go talk to her," he told Fili, "while Gloin is busy with the wagon. Bring her something to eat. She cannot always be swallowing the Lossoth's dried fish or whatever it is that the tall folk toss her way."
"They are her own race," Fili said, but he stood up as if he meant to do as Kili suggested. At the same moment, at tall, narrow shadow stepped away from the Men's camp and walked toward Betta's tent. Fili sat down again.
"There he is again," he grumbled, his hand tightening into a fist.
Kili watched the young man make his way toward Betta's pup tent – a tent which that same young man had provided for her when the Dwarves insisted that they had no canvas to spare. It was one of those items that merchants carried in anticipation of some misfortune – a broken wagon-wheel or injured horse – that would force them to leave behind part of their goods, covered and hidden, to be retrieved later, but it was also warm and dry. Gloin would have a similar tent of his own, but he had conveniently forgotten about it.
The lad's name was Tom, Fili knew, but little else had they been able to discover since the two camps were so stubbornly separated. Tom had begun to be friendly with Betta while the company was still at the Lossoth village when she was still sleeping and eating with Ix's family in their hut, and it was not until they set out on the long road home that she had found herself caught between the two races. With no company but her own, she had gratefully accepted Tom's friendship and was glad that he ignored the jeers of his people to sit with her.
Each night, after the caravan had made camp, it was Tom who took care of Betta's pony, bushing it down and leading it to the pickets with the Men's horses. He built her fire and brought her food. He sat and ate with her, too, and it was he not Fili who spoke to her and kept her spirits high which might otherwise have fallen too low to bear.
Tonight, Tom arrived at Betta's tent with bowl and cup in hand. He knelt down and looked inside, but the woman herself had gone into the trees a few minutes before and had not yet returned. The young man sat down to wait for her, feeding a few sticks into the fire.
"She is not there. Leave the food and go, damn you," Fili muttered under his breath.
Kili rolled his eyes. He understood why Betta could no longer share the same tent as he and his brother, and why she did not feel welcome among their kin, but it had been Fili's choice to distance himself from her, to avoid speaking to her or offering her any assistance that she needed. He might easily have ridden beside her at any point in the journey, suffering only sharp looks and a disappointed frown from Gloin. None of the other Dwarves who were with them would dare to speak against Thorin's heir.
Betta's familiar shape emerged from the trees and she walked slowly back to her tent. She sat down beside Tom and took the bowl that he handed to her. They ate quietly together, and Kili strained his ears to hear what was said, but though the wind would sometimes carry to him the murmur of their voices, he could not make out the words. Fili scowled and listened, also. He set aside his dinner.
Kili took up the bowl and put it back into his brother's hands. "Finish it," he ordered. "You will not last long eating only your jealousy."
"He is a boy, not even a grown man," Fili muttered, "a stripling with no beard…"
"Then you have no reason to be jealous. What do you expect her to do when you ignore her for days?" Kili shook his head. "They talk, that is all. You think that she could love him as she loves you? Ha!" Kili laughed at the thought of any woman choosing any man over his brother.
"And yet, he is of her own race," Fili said. He ate his cold stew without tasting it and set aside the empty bowl.
It was about the same time that Tom and Betta finished their own meal. The young man stood up and bid her good night then left her.
"There, he is gone now," Kili said. "Go and speak with her."
But Fili shook his head. "Gloin will be finished with the wagon soon. It does not take long to patch a wheel, and I would rather postpone that argument until I must deal with Thorin." He saw Kili's disappointed look and forced himself to smile. "Besides, Betta is a clever woman. She knows why I keep my distance."
He turned his eyes back to her tent, but she had put out the fire and had crawled inside to sleep. "Once we are all back at Ered Luin, when she is stowed away safe and secret in Nan's cabin, then we shall have our time together," he said. "Then, we shall…"
"You are a fool if you think so," Kili said so sharply that he shook his brother out of his musings and Fili looked up in surprise. "You are a fool to waste a single moment with her when we have the dragon in Erebor breathing down our necks!"
"Hush!" Fili said. "Do not speak that name! We are too far south, and you heard what Gloin said. There may be other ears listening…"
"Then I will not say the name, but I will say again that you are a fool to neglect her." Kili was impatient with his brother's stubbornness, but he was also angry with himself. He knew that he, too, might have ridden ahead with Betta or spoken to her upon the road. He might have done so with less loss of dignity than the heir of Oakenshield. What did it matter what Gloin thought of their friendship with a Betta? She had done more than enough to earn their love and loyalty during their Quest to Forochel.
"Perhaps you are wise to be jealous, brother," Kili said after a long pause. "After all, she is not a Dwarf-woman, and you know that the tall folk are not bound to their first love. Some of them even marry twice or more and their lives are short. Betta loves you now, but for how long if you continue to ignore her?"
Fili's face had been pensive, but now he looked at Kili with open fear. "She would not…" he protested.
"Whether or not she would, I know that if I were in your place, Fili, I would not risk it. I would not waste one minute that I had with the woman that I loved."
"Be glad that you are not in my place," Fili said. "I hope that you never are."
At that moment, Gloin joined them and interrupted their talk. The broken wheel had been patched and he sat down, plucking a few stray splinters of wood from his thick, red beard. "That is the last time that I purchase any metal-work from the tall folk!" he said.
Kili knew what was expected of him. "Why did you, cousin?" he asked obediently.
"That wheel picked the wrong time to split, lad, the very worst time. We were miles out from Bree and not a forge to be found nor any friendly Dwarves. The Rangers are good folk, I suppose, if you are in for that sort of thing – wandering about and worrying all others with your strange ways. Their iron got us farther than the brittle bolts of the forges of Bree would have done, but true Dwarven steel would have gotten us farther. It is lucky that Thralin has his kit with him, and Thrin can make iron out of sand, given time. It is only a patch, but a patch is enough to get us home, eh?"
He smiled and looked at the brothers, but Kili had hardly heard his cousin's talk and Fili was still looking into the shadows that hid Betta's tent.
Gloin's smile disappeared. "Now," he said sternly, "I have not yet heard how it was that the two of you came to be so far north… and how you were roped into wandering with a human woman." He looked closely at Fili, but the night was dark and the fires were distant; he could not read the expression on his face. "I cannot imagine that Thorin would consent to such a journey, and she certainly does not look as if she could afford a Dwarven guard, not even of common Dwarves…"
"Thorin did consent to it," Kili said, "and for reasons that we will not speak of here." He gave Gloin a pointed look that spoke of other conversations and other words that the old Dwarf had refused to say.
Gloin stared at him in amazement, unable to imagine any way that Betta's journey might be connected to Erebor or to the two brothers. "But how is she…?"
Kili raised an eyebrow and Gloin shut his mouth. All day, he had resisted Kili's constant questions regarding Thorin's message and what Gloin knew of their future quest. He was not at all pleased at being put off but knew that he could not demand answers without providing them in return.
"Thorin consent to this!" he muttered. "He let you run around Eriador with one of the tall folk's women… a one-handed woman, at that!" He shook his head. "I do not believe it."
"She did not always have only one hand."
Gloin harrumphed into his beard. "That adds little in her favor," he said.
"She saved my life," Kili said, growing angry. "More than once, she saved both our lives, but perhaps you find no profit in that, cousin Gloin."
"She has no gold," he said matter-of-factly, "nor any goods to trade. No, I see no profit in her, and neither should either of you if you were in your right minds. You have had too much travel than is good for a young lad. Your lives would have been safe enough if you had stayed at home."
Kili bit his tongue, knowing that no words of his could change his cousin's mind, but Fili was reminded of the wild wolves upon the foothills of Angmar and the dark tunnels underground. He remembered Kili's pale, bloodless face when the wolves had nearly killed him – but Betta had saved his life. She had saved him again, nearly sacrificing her own life when the orcs attacked them underground, and for that she had lost her hand. She had saved Fili's own life from the snow-troll.
The anger was too much for him to swallow. "You know nothing, Gloin!" Fili said sharply and rose to his feet. "You know nothing of Betta and nothing of me if you think that I would value any weight of gold over a good woman and a brave fighter."
"Ha!" Gloin cried, but he was caught by surprise. He had thought that Fili was still the stubborn but soft-spoken Dwarf that he had known many months ago in the Blue Mountains. "I only say what every Dwarf here thinks," he insisted.
"Not every Dwarf," Kili said and stood beside his brother.
"Keep your thoughts to yourself, cousin," Fili said. His hand was on his axe, but he had no intention of drawing it. "If you insult that woman again, we must fight, and I would not willingly raise my hand against my own kin. Tomorrow, Betta will ride with me, and if you do not like it, then ride behind the wagon with the others where you need not see us together."
Fili did not wait for Gloin's sputtered reply. He nodded to his brother and then left the Dwarves' campsite, walking toward Betta's tent. Kili watched as Fili knelt down before the opening. He guessed that his brother spoke to her, but what was her reply could only be imagined. It must have been good, because a moment later, Fili crawled into the low tent with her and Kili sighed. He looked over at Gloin, expecting the old Dwarf to be full of anger and disgust, but Gloin only shook his head sadly.
"It is as I suspected," he said. "Your poor, foolish brother… You would do well to warn him that it is a long and lonely road he walks, Kili."
"He knows it already."
"Does he? Well, I hope that she is worth all the trouble that she will cause." He sighed. "At least he should have waited until after… after… well, you know. These are not the wild lands, and Fili is no common Dwarf that he might throw his life away. He is Thorin's heir, and Thorin will not be glad to hear of this."
"Just as Fili would not be glad to hear that news has reached our uncle's ears before Fili himself brings it to him," Kili said, but frowned and wondered whether it would not be better if they waited to break the news until after Erebor, as his cousin suggested.
Gloin shrugged. "As you like it," he said. "I will keep this secret gladly."
He walked away, shaking his head and muttering under his breath. He left Kili to finish out the watch alone, and it was just as well. Kili could not have slept on a warm, feather bed with so many uncomfortable thoughts stuck in his head.
.
After Fili had told off Gloin and walked away from his cousin and brother, he could feel his heart pounding in his chest and the sweat was cold on his brow. It was as if he had fought a deadly battle and had just escaped with his life, but the true battle was yet to come. Would Betta forgive him his cowardice? And how would he face Thorin if he felt this way after confronting Gloin and with his brother beside him?
He approached the tent anxiously and knelt down. The ground was hard and damp under his knee as he looked into the darkness. The moon lit only the edge of her boot near the entrance; all the rest of her was in shadow.
"Are you awake, Betta," he whispered.
She gave no answer, yet he heard movement inside.
"I have been a fool and full of pride," he said, "but that is nothing new. Will you forgive me? Might I sit with you awhile?"
He heard her quiet breath and finally her voice. "There is no room for sitting," she said. "And it is cold in here, but you are welcome."
He ducked under the low tent and crawled inside. As she said, the pup tent had little room to spare and even a Dwarf sitting down would hit his head on the roof. It was too dark to see, and he could only feel where she was. Betta already lay lengthwise and from head to toe she was nearly as tall as the tent was long. Fili stretched out alongside her, unable to lay anywhere where his side was not pressed against hers, but he had more room to spare at his feet being several inches shorter than she was.
"So, you forgive me, then?" he asked softly.
"There is nothing to forgive," she said, but he knew that she was lying.
"Will you let me stay awhile? This tent is cold, and two bodies may warm it more quickly than one."
"Stay as long as you like," she said. "Stay forever." He smiled and reached out, searching for her hand. He felt her flinch back. "Be careful!" she warned him. "My arm…"
"I know." It pained him to think of that wounded limb. Taking more care, he found her left hand and held it tight in his, then lay down with his head pillowed on his arm. "Sleep now. I will have to slip away in the early morning hours, but tomorrow you will ride on my pony with me."
"No," Betta shook her head, "I am quite strong enough to ride upon my own pony. I am glad that you are no longer ashamed of me, Fili, but you will be home soon and you will have more important things to worry about. We should not be seen together."
Fili frowned, but he did not object. He knew in his heart that Betta was right and it would not do for him to flaunt their relationship. Dwarves could talk as much as Men, and there would be rumors enough once Gloin said his piece back at the mountains, but Fili hated to think that no one but he and his brother would ever know all that she had done for them. If a Dwarf had done all that she had done for Thorin's nephews, he would have been held in high honor.
Fili closed his eyes and was soon fast asleep, but Betta lay awake a little longer, enjoying the feel of his hand in hers and his arm around her. She savored the moment, not knowing when would be their last night together. The pain in her phantom limb was forgotten; she forgot that she was maimed at all.
Hello, wonderful readers! and a special welcome to those who made it all the way through QtF.
Let me know what you think, REVIEW! REVIEW! Getting your comments and knowing that you are reading along is the only reason that I put myself through the torment of grammar corrections and meeting update deadlines ;)
Yours, always,
-Paint
