Dealing with Dwarves
Notes: Having seen the last Hobbit movie and finding the closure after Thorin's death to be... lacking, to say the least, I felt compelled to write something about the Dwarves coming to terms with that loss—not only of a friend and relative, but the direct line of Durin. This story was written to be compatible with both the books and movies, though I had to be carefully vague at one point because in the bookverse it was Dáin who killed Azog, long before the events of The Hobbit.
Also, for those of you who don't already know, Dáin Ironfoot is a seriously awesome character. Just look up his history or take a gander at the LotR Appendix; the Dwarves could not have asked for a better king, and I personally believe he was a better leader than Thorin would have been. (Sacrilege!)
The wounds on his face had not healed from the burial when Dáin went down to meet the companions of Thorin Oakenshield. The low voices from the waiting chamber ceased at the sound of his footfalls; he left his guards outside and entered the doorway, bare as yet of hangings and ornaments.
The Dwarves turned to face him, the snowbeard Balin rising from a chair, his brother Dwalin beside him. Dáin recognized also Glóin and his brother; the rest were craftsmen and traders whom he did not know, picking themselves up from whatever alcove or piece of furniture they had happened to perch on or lean against. The room was a hodge-podge of scavenged furnishings and hastily-hung decorations, a casualty of the scramble to make these long-abandoned halls fit for a King.
A King. Dáin found it hard to breathe at the thought, as though he were weighed down with ten suits of armor and his war-boar besides.
"Baraztarâg Kibilinbarul, Uzbad-u-Thakalbund." Balin bowed low, with the others following his lead. "Shalum ai dûm mênu."
"Ai dûm mênu shalum." Dáin greeted them with a nod. So it was to be 'Lord of the Iron Hills,' at least for now. He hoped to change that with this meeting, or they were all in for a rough ride. "I trust you find your quarters suitable, kinsman?"
"Of course, my lord. Your staff have been nothing but kind."
Beneath the mildness of Balin's words, Dáin noted the specks of blood against his white beard, and the dirt and blood that still flecked the beards and clothing of his companions. So they wished him to see the tokens of their grief for Thorin and his heirs, another bad sign.
"I am glad to hear. Glad to see, too, that you are unscathed from battle."
Dáin felt tension rise in the air, and wondered in a fleeting moment if he should have left his guards in the hall. Then he faced down the narrowed eyes and clenched teeth in the room, and waited.
"Aye, and we could say the same of you, my lord." Glóin pushed his way to the front of the group, fiery beard bristling. Chips off the same rock, he and Dáin used to call themselves, for the looks they had inherited from their shared forebear Náin the second of his name. "Where were you, Dáin, with your thousand men and fancy war-pig? And now you come swooping in to snatch up Thorin's throne, you who were never a king's son!"
Now comes the crux of the matter. Dáin stood his ground until he and Glóin were chest-to-chest. "If you've something to say, say it. Do you charge that I dealt falsely with my kin?"
"I say that no man gains from the deaths of Oakenshield and his sister-sons like you do. When would you and your line ever lord it over Durin's Folk, in a thousand years, were it not for-"
Dáin's fist flew into Glóin's face with a crack that reverberated down his arm and sent Glóin tumbling to the floor. Standing over his cousin, it occurred to Dáin that this was the first uncalculated action he had taken since walking into this room.
"I'll kill the goblin-turd! Let me up!" Glóin struggled amid a confusion of limbs, with half his companions trying to help him up and the other half holding him down.
"Say that again, son of Gróin. I gained from the death of my cousin?" Dáin realized he was trembling. "Gained? With my friend in the earth and his line—Durin's line, by the Maker!—at an end, with the men of my very own Ironbound-" he stopped at the memory of his dead warriors strewn across the battlefield, feeling that pressure on his chest again.
"That throne was never meant for your sorry arse and you know it!" Glóin shot up from the floor and came barreling toward him. The breath was knocked out of Dáin as he was thrown against a wall, a pewter vase clattering to the floor when his flailing hand disturbed it in its niche.
Rage surged to the top of Dáin's head and he grabbed his cousin, taking his leg out from under him with a hook of the knee. They fell together, exchanging blows and insults, shouts of alarm and remonstration in their ears.
"Sire!" Glóin's weight was pulled off him and steel-encased legs blocked his sight. Nolin of his guard knelt over him. "Are you harmed?"
Dáin grasped the guard by the braids in his beard and pulled him close. "Did I shout for you, laddie?"
"No, Sire. But he laid hands upon-"
"And I did some laying of me hands first. We were having a family conversation, now go away." Dáin released the guard's beard so that the younger Dwarf staggered back.
"That goes for all of you. Out!" Dáin swung his arm in a brusque gesture to the guards who held Glóin. They obeyed, though slowly and with dark glances at Glóin.
"See how swiftly these Ironbound boots grind upon our necks." Glóin dusted himself off, his glare white above the glistening red that covered his face. "You come as friends and stay as conquerors?"
"Glóin, that is enough." Balin placed his hands on his kinsman's shoulders. "What alternative would you propose to him? That he turn around and return to the Iron Hills, leaving the Lonely Mountain undefended?"
"I'm proposing he not grasp at something that was never his." Glóin wiped his face, leaving a bloody smudge. "Why do you think he asked to meet us today? Because he needs the support of Thorin's companions to sit that throne. Just ask him!"
They turned to him, their gazes pricking his face. Dáin reached up and touched his jaw to find it slippery and wet, like Glóin's. The fistfight had been bloodier than the usual way of these things, having reopened the funerary wounds each had cut in his own face to honor Thorin.
Meeting the eyes of Thorin's companions he felt again the bitter-numb bite of the knife before the tomb. He heard his own keening in his ears, and in it were the echoes of an earlier grief that a century and half had not dimmed.
"Do you think me... happy to be here?" The words tumbled from him in broken pieces. "Think you that I was happy to inherit the Iron Hills from my grandsire, because my father was no longer there? Was it my gain to be named a hero when still a beardless youth, when my only wish was to die defending my fallen father?" He closed his eyes for a moment shot through with grief; the stairs of Kazâd-dûm were under his feet again, and once more he flew up the broken steps to place himself between the sprawled form of Náin and the grinning Defiler.
"Always it was the loss of my closest and dearest that was my 'gain.' There was none like Thorin Oakenshield in all of Durin's line, and never will be. I would give these halls and their riches, and a thousand times more to see Thorin again, to laugh with him, yet I cannot!" A sob tore loose from his chest. "And I am sick of it, sick to the death of losing those who are bravest and best among us."
"Yes," hissed Dwalin, hitherto silent next to his brother. The others murmured their assent, and Dáin saw his pain reflected in their faces.
"We must hold the Lonely Mountain in strength if we are to stop our people's bleeding." The words came easier now, with the crushing weight of mourning lifted from his throat. "I care not who is the man to do this. The direct line of Durin is broken forevermore; the gate is open for those whose fathers were never kings, as my cousin so eloquently put it. Which of you wants it? You, Balin? You, Glóin? Say the word and I will pledge my fealty and the Ironbound to you."
"Not I." Balin took a step back as though to physically remove himself from the suggestion. "I am old, and too far removed from the line of succession."
"I am even farther from the line and you know it, you old fox." There was something like admiration in Glóin's growl. "Truly there is no alternative, is there?"
"The one thing we all wish is the one thing that cannot be." The cuts on Dáin's face ached at the thought. Yet it was a clean pain, one that promised a way forward though the scars would never fade.
"We must let him go if we are to go on." Balin knelt, as did Dwalin next to him. "You have the support of Thorin's companions, lord, and as the eldest let me be the first to say it: Behold Dáin son of Náin, King Under the Mountain, King of Durin's Folk. Behold!"
"Behold!" Glóin went to his knees and bowed his head, followed by the others.
Lai Baraztarâg Kibilinbarul, Uzbad-undu-Abad, Gabil Uzbad-u-Sigintarâg. They were not words Dáin had thought nor wished to hear, and even now a part of him rebelled at what seemed sacrilege and treason both. He itched to look over his shoulder, as though Thorin might return in wrath to claim what was rightfully his.
Then come back, you bastard. He ducked his head to hide his tears. Don't leave me here in your place.
He faced the kneeling forms before him, Thorin Oakenshield's comrades and kin who were willing to leap across an abyss of loss. He knew he could do no less.
"Thank you," he said, and bowed low to them all. "Thank you, good sirs."
Baraztarâg Kibilinbarul, Uzbad-u-Thakalbund.= Redbeard son of Silverhorn, Lord of Iron Hill. "Redbeard" is the Khuzdul truename I imagined for Dáin, while "Silverhorn" is my Khuzdul name for his father Náin.
Shalum ai dûm mênu.= Peace be on your halls.
Ai dûm mênu shalum.= On your halls be peace.
Lai Baraztarâg Kibilinbarul, Uzbad-undu-Abad, Gabil Uzbad-u-Sigintarâg = Behold Redbeard son of Silverhorn, Lord Under the Mountain, Great Lord of Durin's Folk
For the Khuzdul parts I mined not only Tolkien's original Khuzdul glossary but also the "Neo-Khuzdul" created for the movies, and also made up one word (shalum) which is an obvious copy of the Hebrew shalom. For more on my methods, rationales, and resources see my detailed notes on this story, found on my DW: ljlee dreamwidth org 57551 html