Disclaimer: Characters and settings are not mine. They belong to the Tolkien estate, to Peter Jackson, and New Line Cinema (I think).
A/N: It's been years since I have written anything, so constructive criticism is what I want; though a few complements are good for my poor self-esteem, I'd ask that they'd not be over the top gushers. However, please tell me if you spot any errors in sentence structure, phrases sounding off, continuity errors in the characters or writing style: anything that your fresh eyes see that mine do not. If you absolutely hate it, tell me why. If you love it, tell me why. Most of all, tell me what I can do to be a better writer.
Please note I'm trying for a bit of realism with all the bodies I'm working with, which you may or may not like. There will be latrine usage, so brace your selves! It's going to get hairy, smelly, piss-y, bloody, and semen-y with a side order of honest-to-god discussions of bowel movements. I'm talking about prodigious shits here people, because these guys have them. Now take that information and let it steep. That's right, feel the horror, people. You have been warned. It's rated M for a reason.
In general, this is a hetero pairing fiction, but there may be some slash if you squint or choose to believe it. Or I may add it later. It really depends on where these bastards will take me.
The Elvish comes from Real elvish dot net. The form that it is in is exilic Quenya with light Sindarin influences. Let that be a clue for you. Translations are at the end of the chapter, or roughly in the Nídhel's POV. I may forget to add it, so call me out on it if the chapter needs it.
Happy readings.
We are all travelers in this world. From the sweet grass to the packinghouse, birth 'til death, we travel between the eternities.
-Robert Duvall, Broken Trail
Chapter 1
When Nídhel heard the distressing call of voices mingling with the soft whisper of the wind's soliloquy, she froze as her interest was piqued. Who but the prowling cats, the hunting owls, or the creeping crickets disturb the night's sighing? She listened intently, but when the last notes faded and the hush lingered, her curiosity settled on a prickly bed. It was disconcerting, for the silence rang harsher than broken bells. It stroked her ears, curling in their depths like black smoke where it laid there heavily, smothering her hearing.
Nídhel sighed and pulled her long limbs tightly against her chest, tucking herself further between old tree roots; she wrapped a light blanket snugly around her, its rustle softer than the sweep of plucked petals, but coarser than a mutt's coat. It was an old companion that kept her warm on cooler nights like this. Her heart thrummed a hard melody under her breast, tapering itself with the continued stillness around her. Or so she thought when her heart lurched as another bout of cries came from an uncertain distance away. Could it be goblins? Goblins on the Road sat in her gut unpleasantly, but what concern was it of hers when she rarely, if ever, used it? But goblins near her concerned her greatly: self-preservation was always her mistress in this game of life. But if there were goblins near, should she scout them to assess the danger, or stay away as far as possible? It did not sound like the screech of goblins, but of a people with a deeper pitch. Perhaps a caravan of merchantmen caught unawares in their downy beds by some foul creature? She squeezed her eyes tightly as she breathed. Knowing was better than not knowing, even if the answer was unpleasant as goblins or dead men.
She pulled her blanket away from her, crumpling it as she shoved it into her small pack. She grabbed and strung her old bow, a better friend she has never had. Shouldering her pack, she looped her quiver around her chest; she settled it across her pack, twelve arrows roosted deeply in its nest, another six to be fletched. Clutching her bow and a drawn arrow loosely, Nídhel stole away into the night.
She was not far when she saw the light of a large fire through the trees. She was even less when she felt its heat. The voices were clearer: their agitation, their panic was an acidic tang upon her tongue. She sniffed the air, inhaling with quick breaths through her nose. The wafting fumes of burning wood were tinged with the filthy stench of shit, rotten meat, and the heavy smell of unwashed bodies. She rubbed her nose as she grimaced.
The clearing that met her eyes was not as terrible as the smells presented, but it was not pleasing either. The light drew her eyes first, before sweeping out and seeing all of it: the fire, a spit cooking, men tied in bags, and, her lips curled, trolls. Trolls were not rare, but they were not a common occurrence, especially this far from their mountain holes. They were hardy race of foul creatures whose origins were lost to the tides of time and the bending of the earth. Tall they were, some sixteen feet or more, with hides thick and rough: difficult to kill, but they were slow and lacked clever wits. Yet, and luck to all who came across such beasts, they have weaknesses if one thought of it.
She looked to the men in the bags to her right, calculating methods of their release against the risks of the trolls' wrath. For a granule moment she thought she should leave them to their fate. The odds against her were stacked, and she trembled for a heartbeat. Why risk her safety for theirs? She shook her head and felt shame paint her cheeks in broad strokes. Despite how foolish the men were for having been caught by such witless creatures, no one deserved to be a troll's meal. Trolls were a race whose foul deeds need not continue if it could be helped. Those men left on the spit did not deserve to be there. Therefore she should help them, but how? There were too many bagged men spread out for her to release and not be noticed. She spied a dark haired man closer to the tree line with a burlap bag pulled and tied at his neck. If she were to cut the rope that binds him and release him, perhaps he can save what was left of his men and get away. Or distract the monsters while she did… what exactly? Charging three fully-grown trolls was a terrible idea for her or the bound man. What they lacked in intelligence was more than made up for in strength: sheer and brutal. By the heavens above, she should leave. She will untie the dark man then she will leave.
Silently she moved about the thick shrubs and under low branches, coming out and crouching a few feet behind the man's shoulder. She could see everything with the exception of a few men on the other side of the boulder she hid beside. She hesitated, staring at the man's wide shoulders and dark hair. She felt the man's agitation like stormy waves against the cliffs of the sea. It was nearly overwhelming, the mixture of the anger and panic of everyone in the clearing. It was heady enough to distract her. Nídhel took a cleansing breath, and released it. She peered around; sweeping the ground for something she could use to capture the man's attention, as she was not about to make a sound that could attract the trolls.
Spying a piece of bark she gripped it, judging its weight before tossing it at the man. It hit him on the shoulder: nothing, not even a flinch. It was like he did not feel it. She sighed and pursed her lips, looking about her once more and grabbed a short stick. She held her breath and tossed again. It hit him exactly where the bark did and still nothing. He shifted a bit but nothing more. Damn the stars, she inhaled. She tossed another twig just a bit further and it landed to his left and skidded a little: just enough for the man to see and hear. She stared hard at him as he looked about for source of the disturbance. She shuffled nearer and tossed another twig, lightly hitting the back of his head. He froze, sighed, and turned his head to gaze over his shoulder at her, but he could not see her fully, if at all; but it appeared that he did, because he jerked his head forward in a come hither gesture. She watched the trolls before she moved behind his shoulder, setting her bow aside and pulled a small knife from her boot.
Thorin felt his blood boil as he sat helpless, watching as his dwarves on the spit cook like freshly caught conies. The thought and action churned his stomach, nearly making him ill. Was this it? Was this how Thorin Oakenshield, King Under the Mountain and his Company ended, a troll's morsel? He burned holes into the towering creatures, willing their deaths with his sight alone. When they did not die, he turned his wrath upon the hobbit several bags of dwarves away. He knew the hobbit was too green for the road, but he did not think the diminutive man would be so foolish as to take on three huge trolls only weeks into their quest with no skills in his coat pockets. All for a pair of ponies that his nephews, his heirs, the future princes of Erebor were suppose to watch? He saw the path they left behind when the boys ran breathless into the camp, shouting trolls, ponies, and Mr. Boggins is stealing them back, we have to help him! By Mahal's hammer! What in Mordor were they doing? Trolls do not appear out of thin air! They were louder than a pack of warg bitches in heat. His glare shifted to the dark mass of hair at his feet. Kíli was growing into a decent honorable dwarf, one that made Thorin proud. But sometimes, Thorin wished he left the boy at home with his mother when he did something as stupid and reckless as sending the hobbit to get the ponies. And that Fíli, the next King Under the Mountain, could let this happen at all made Thorin's blood sear his veins.
Thorin was glaring at the squirming face-in-the-dirt heir apparent when he felt, or thought he felt, something hit his surcoat covering his shoulder. He shifted and waited, but nothing happened. Then a twig skidded into view on his left, and he knew something was there. When another twig hit the back of his head, Thorin turned to the underbrush to his side and behind his shoulder. Having stared at the bright lights of the fire, he could see nothing but consuming darkness and the imprint of the flames dancing before his eyes. He blinked until the darkness became less overpowering and he could see the deepening woods around him, as well as the tall figure crouched in on himself. Gandalf, Thorin sagged just a bit, and turned back towards the trolls, watching them as they bicker over the cooking dwarves. He tilted his head and beckoned the man to him. When he settled behind his shoulder, hidden from the trolls, Thorin spoke.
"Finally cared to join the feast, Gandalf?" He asked with a small dose of black humor as he shook his head somewhat ruefully. "I hope you have a plan, wizard."
"Ma samit maurë alieva?" the figure hummed, the words floating on the air.
The dwarf king froze before whipping his head to face, or as much as he could face with the person behind him, what was definitely not the winkled visage of their guide, but that of someone else. It sounded womanish, but the face was hidden in the shadows, and her form was marginally lite by the fire. All he could clearly see was a knife in a pale dirty hand: a knife that was coming towards his neck. If Thorin was ever asked about his first encounter with the woman, he would never admit to panicking, because, damn it he was a king, and kings do not panic. He was merely caught off guard.
"Mahal's cock!" He cried as he jerked away, his heart jumping hard under his ribs, but a firm hand pulled him back with a hiss.
"Vá!" She pulled at the lip of the sack where it was tied around his neck, and pierced the burlap under the rope and sawed upwards, using the resistance of the taut bag to pull the binding against the blade. He relaxed slightly. She was trying to free him.
"What is your plan, woman?" It was definitely a woman, the light cadence of her voice he heard enough in his days as a traveling blacksmith to recognize in the dark. He could hear the individual fibers of the rope being sheered away with the strokes of the blade. It slowed to a halt for some moments before she spoke in broken Westron, "Cut you. Them," he felt her move, assuming she was gesturing to the dwarves nearest him, "You cut. Run."
"What! That's it?" He shook his head, incredulous and anger lacing his words. "My shit could make a better plan than that. What of my men on the spit?" He could hear the woman breathing in his ear, and when the rope fell away, Thorin could actually breath a shade better, but it was hardly a consolation. Now he needed his sword, or an axe, or anything that will alleviate his helplessness, and a distraction would not go amiss.
"Hurry up, will you? I don't fancy turning in to stone when the sun comes up," groused one of the towering trolls. Thorin looked to the night sky. The sun was still abed in its thick indigo linens, looking to rise no sooner or later than by its own will than his. Time had never felt so unfriendly.
"You better do something soon, woman, or else there might be none of us left to help," Thorin whispered urgently.
"Do you need help?" She whispered. He had hard eyes, filled with surprise, as he stared over his shoulder at her. They were wide and a shade of blue like the glacial ice in the northern wastelands. A blue so cold they burned to the touch. They stared with such intensity that she consciously adjusted the grip on her knife. When he flinched away, Nídhel felt mildly insulted as she pulled him back with a sharp reprimand, and began cutting away at the rope.
He growled at her as she sought to free him. His pitch rose slightly near the end. Was that a question? His tone was more demanding than interrogating. The sounds he sprouted took her a moment to decipher. She went over his words; stretching them over her tongue, testing them, and comparing them to her tome of old vocabulary: trying to find their root origins. It was a passing irritation that languages kept changing with each new generation. Every village seemed to have developed its own dialect influenced by thick accents and mispronunciation. Traveling between settlements has become a hardship, because what she understood in one, did not translate well, or mean what she thought in the next. It was one of the reasons why she avoided most people. Language was in a constant state of evolution that she stood apart from in this growing world of the edain. But it was like a spark when she understood what he meant. Plan? She filed the word away for future use as she spoke, struggling to find words to express her intentions. What came from her mouth sounded as if she spoke them around stones: they were awkward and rough.
"Cut you." She gestured over his shoulder to the rest of the restrained men, "Them, you cut. Run." She scowled as her cheeks flushed over his response. Shit seemed to translate well in all languages.
She watched the trolls as she finished cutting the rope around the man's neck. Their rising voices kept her attention. They were arguing, their body language full of agitation and impatience, when a small voice broke into their tête-à-tête. The man before her froze, watching something Nídhel could not see. They were speaking too quickly for her to comprehend, but whatever it was had the men in an uproar. But when a troll lumbered toward her hiding place, Nídhel scrambled back into the shadows. Fear raced through her blood, setting her heart to the tempo of a mad dance. At her hand, she could feel the boulder's dull bite as she braced against it. Time was running short. She dared a glance over the boulder as a small child cried out as a fat man dangled over a troll's gaping mouth. Perhaps he was the child's father? Her heart fluttered, and in a fit of recklessness that was younger than her years, Nídhel cast her hand for her bow, and leaped onto the boulder. She drew back a notched arrow to her cheek and aimed; the wood creaked under her hand, a welcoming counterpoint to the sounds she heard tonight. She exhaled and let the bowstring go.
Then everything descended into chaos.
Translations
Ma samit maurë alieva? – Do you need help?
Vá! – Don't!
Gasp! Did the author just mess with the parasite scene? Yes, yes she did.
For the not recognizing the dwarves: The majority of Middle Earth is largely rural, sparsely populated, and Nidhel is solitary individual who avoids most settlements. She's heard of dwarves, but never had a real encounter with one. But dwarves are short and stocky? True, but Nidhel can't fully conceptualize the dwarves' body proportions in the bags, or on spits for that matter. Though those aren't the only indicator for the race, she also couldn't see some of those glorious beards like Gloin's in full detail. She has seen men have beards, so it's not that much of a long shot to mistake these for burly men. But once they're out of the bags, she'll realize her mistake.
Thank you for reading, please take a moment to review.