A Dwarf's Lie

I should not have been here. I should be out there, in the coomb, or the fortress with Aragorn, Legolas, and the men of Rohan, swinging my axes to hew down the tide of Saruman's forces, not huddling useless and furious in this cavern, even if I had never seen its like in splendor. Yet in this cave I was forced to stay, beside a young lass—she could not have been more than eight in man's years—who kept chattering about lovely colts with stars on their foreheads, parades of horses with bells on their bridles, and the summer fairs when she put asters on her golden tresses and laughed as she danced with her father. He was riding out, she informed me, along with her uncles and a cousin or two in the company of the Lord Erkenbrand. Her voice was tight and low for a change when she spoke of that, but there was a tinge of pride nonetheless. Then abruptly she started telling me of her playmates and the games they played on the prairie of the vales of Westfold and her voice once again sounded cheerful and earnest.

Above the tinkling of water I could hear the quiet exchange of anxious and fearful words interspersed with the occasional cry of babies, but no rumor of the battle outside disturbed the tranquility of the cave. When my eyes were not straying to the yawning cave entrance manned by the Lord Eomer, Gamling the Old and what remained of their companies, I could not help but marvel at the glittering walls and pillars around me, admiring the scintillation of torchlight glancing off the polished marble. Perhaps it was this lingering sense of peace that made the little girl beside me behave as though her life was one devoid of malice and terror.

The little girl clutched my elven cloak with small, insistent fingers. "Master Dwarf," she whispered urgently. "Master Dwarf, do you have a horse?"

I looked at her. Her eyes were large with fear and her face was as white as the rippled marble behind her. "No, lass," I growled. "Dwarves and horses are too much of a mule to get along."

She giggled; a shrill, breathless laugh. "My uncle Leof had a mule and he secretly called her wife's-mother!"

I shook my head in disgust and looked away, but the girl steadfastly ignored my ill-feigned impatience. It was then that the brief, deceptive quiet was broken by a riot of noises, shouts and clattering pouring from the coomb outside into the long, tortuous passage leading into the cave; a sound far and indistinct, but alarming and ominous. The men became agitated, and as one, the refugees turned their eyes toward the opening of the cavern. The girl stopped her torrents of breathless prattle, she stared too, her body tense. The men's faces looked grim as they unsheathed their swords and lifted their shields. I reached for my axes and made ready to stand.

I wanted to know what caused the sudden stir, but the girl still clung to me desperately, her small hand fisting a fold of my cloak, unconsciously tugging and squeezing. My eyes briefly rested on my hands, on the blood and dirt trapped on my knuckles, on my callused fingers, on the veins that stood out beneath my skin. Then I looked at the girl's hand, at her small, pink, dirty fingers…

"…Uncle Leof promised me a foal from his bay mare. He knew I loved her more than any other. She's beautiful, and gentle, and she knows me!"

…they seemed so fragile, so helpless, meant for gathering wild flowers and stroking a horse's velvety neck.

"…Uncle told me I could have him, but Father said he was too skittish and I was still too small. So Uncle said I could have a colt from the bay mare instead, to ride on the summer parade. He told me that before he left with Prince Theodred…"

Her wide, gray-blue eyes kept darting warily to the cave entrance and the grim men that guarded it. Each time she did so, her words tumbled faster, as though she was anxious to say all that she had to relate, or to let her voice wash away the fear that hung thick and bitter in the air and make her forget the imminent ruin that lay beyond the cave mouth.

"…Uncle Leof let me ride with him on Fleetwing. That was his black stallion, he was tall and swift and I would have been afraid of him if Uncle Leof hadn't been with me. He let no one come near his Fleetwing for he was a battle steed and he was cautious and very strong. But Uncle said he would let me ride him just that once, the day Mother died with my baby sister who was newly born. Do you have sisters Master Dwarf?"

Their swords and spears ready, the men stood in tight formation; a living, breathing shield for their people. In the cavern the low hum of frightened words was replaced with a near-hysterical hubbub of panicked babble and uncontrolled sobbing, as people fled deeper into the cavern, scrambling over slippery rocks and treading icy streams in their haste. In the narrow flat ledge set aside for the sick and wounded, healers were rushing from one patient to another, deciding who could be transported and who would have to stay to wait their ends. I decided that I could not stay any longer. I glanced at the girl beside me, trying to see when I could interrupt her steady monologue and detach her hands from my cloak.

"…Mother said I could name him, but the baby was a girl, and she died in the morning. She was small and ugly unlike the horses when they are born they are beautiful and …"

I decided that I could not wait any longer. "Go with your folk, lass," I said to her. "Go on. I have to join Lord Eomer's men."

"…so of course I did not have a name for the baby," she gushed breathlessly, then, without a change in speed or pitch, "Master Dwarf, stay with me, please. I have no one and I'm afraid. Please do not leave, please, Master Dwarf, please…" There were tears in her eyes now, and her lips were trembling, her voice breaking.

I stared at her in disbelief. I had been nothing but a strange, taciturn figure sitting apart from the rest of the wounded soldiers of Rohan, but she was undeterred by my silence and heedless of the difference between her kind and mine. It might have been the simple curiosity of children that drew her to me, it might be fear, or loneliness, but in the end she had given me her unquestioning trust, placing her last shred of hope in my hand, and I knew not how to tell her that the power to end this horror was not mine.

I watched her sob into the soft fabric of my cloak, her thin, narrow shoulders shuddering with every breath she took. I touched her cheek and tilted her pointed face toward me.

"Here, lass," I began in a voice that I seldom used outside the company of my kin. "I cannot stay with you. My duty is with the men fighting for the King." Her eyes grew wide with disbelief and panic, the look of one who could only watch helplessly as his trust was betrayed, his hope ridiculed.

I reached into my pack and took out the soft leather pouch where I treasured the Lady's hair, while her eyes followed my every move. I gazed at the wariness and fear that stained her eyes. Deep in this child's heart remained the last stubborn traces of innocence, of believing in bedtime stories, of impetuous embrace and heartfelt kisses, of artless laughter and boundless dreams. Somehow I felt that if I could spare her the loss of that priceless bit of childhood, it would partly redress the callous deed that I was about to do: leaving her.

I took her hand and placed the pouch in it. "But I want you to keep this for me," I continued, untying the drawstring and opening the pouch. "Because I will return to take it back. I have to go, but only for a while; I shall come back for you. You shall not be alone."

She peered into the pouch. The Lady's hair gleamed in the faint light as though possessing a radiance of its own. "It's beautiful," she whispered. "What is it? Is it gold?"

"Aye, it is, and the most valuable kind there is," I replied solemnly. "This is the hair of an elven lady with great power and beauty. She had kindly bestowed me three strands of her lovely hair, each bearing a trace of her power. They shall grant you your wish. Three locks, three wishes."

"Three wishes?" she whispered, staring raptly at the content of the pouch.

A young woman, wearing the brown apron and herb pouch of a healer, came hurrying toward us, her hassled, worried face brightening a little at the sight of the little girl. "Frega," she called. "Frega, come! Why are you not with the other children? Come! We must make haste!"

The little girl's eyes left my little pouch and locked on mine. There was a vast expanse of calm and faith in those green spheres as she whispered, "Bless you, Master Dwarf." Then, on impulse, she rose, leaning on my shoulder—I was glad the elvish cloak softened the cold, unyielding rigidity of my corslet—and planted a fleeting kiss, damp and warm with her breath, on my cheek. "Keep safe."

Then she stood and hurried toward the woman, who had come no closer to us, her progress encumbered by the milling healers and patients. The woman seized the little girl by the hand and picked her up, hitching the lass on her hip and walking swiftly away. Soon they disappeared behind a pillar, lost in the current of golden hair gleaming in the torchlight.

I hefted my axes and got on my feet. The old healer who tended to my wound threw a harried glance at me, but as he was busy assisting a badly injured soldier, he said nothing. The area nearest to the entrance had been deserted. Barely extinguished fires, abandoned beddings and assorted belongings littered the sandy cave floor. As I walked up the slight incline leading to the entrance, I could hear the noises coming sharper and louder.

Lord Eomer barely noticed when I wove my way to his side. He was conferring with Gamling and the captain of his archers, who spoke of little known passages where soldiers could hide to ambush the enemy; desperate plans wrought of stubborn hope. I looked at the grim men around me, at their simple chainmail and leather jerkins, at their swords and spears, unadorned and seemingly lacking in sturdiness. Surely if the enemy could find their way to the caves then the keep had been overrun, and the King, and Aragorn, and Legolas and all the men who fought with them had met their demise. If the entrance to the caves was breached, what hope did these men have of overthrowing the enemy, uruks and men armed with weapons that could cleave a dwarven helmet?

I had lied to the little lass when I left her. I would not return for the Lady's hair. She would be alone when the last dam against the assault broke and her little cherished world of soft-eyed mares and playful colts, of summer dancing and winter sleigh-rides, vanished in the bitterest, most terrible way. She put her trust in me and I told her falsehood. I taught her naught of the atrocity that would surely befall her; horrible, inevitable, but true nonetheless. I lied to her instead.

I hoped she would forgive me.

Epilogue

"And then when I heard the shoutings 'Erkenbrand! Erkenbrand for the Mark!' I knew it was not our foes who had entered the pass to the caves!"

"You delivered us, my lord! Bless you!"

"…the King rode out of the keep with his company, and Aragorn and Legolas were with him…"

"…it was a hasty council between Gandalf and the Lord Erkenbrand and we've been galloping ever since…"

"Master Dwarf! Master Dwarf!"

The high-pitched call stopped me and I whirled around to find its source amid the tumult of families joyfully reunited.

"Master Dwarf! There, Father! There! Look!"

Then I saw a her face, still begrimed, still rather pale, but luminous now with a smile of pure happiness, the kind only the very young knew. She had her arms around the neck of a tall, bearded man, whose eyes, though betraying nights of troubled sleep and days of weariness, were sparkling brightly in vivid likeness to those of his daughter's.

When they were but ten paces away from me she slid down from her father's arms and ran toward me, shouting, "It's true! It's true!'

She stopped before me, seizing me by the wrist and putting the leather pouch on my upturned palm before clasping my hand between both of hers. "You were right," she said, her voice almost a whisper of awe. "These locks granted me my wishes."

"I'm glad to know you did not doubt me, lass," I remarked dryly.

She giggled and motioned for me to lean forward so she could whisper to me. I caught her father's smile and bemused eyes, but yielded to her bidding even so.

"I made two wishes," she told me with great seriousness. "So you still have one wish left."

"How thoughtful of you," I commented. "What did you ask for?"

"I wished for father to return for me, and for you to be spared from harm," she said proudly. "Did I not make good use of my wishes?"

"You truly did, child," I huskily replied. "I am glad you did not wish for a white horse of your very own."

"Master Dwarf!" she chided hotly before resuming her conspiratorial tone. "What would you use your one wish for?"

I paused briefly, looking at the walls and pillars and arches of diamond-speckled marble and glinting granite. Then I looked at the little girl's eyes, shining like a pair of jewels that had trapped the essence of the sun in their hearts.

"I wish," I said, "that when everything is safe and settled I may return here, to this fair and wondrous place, and look at its beauty."

-fin-