Here's another chapter, hope you'll enjoy. Did I say I'd be done with one or two chapters more? Well, maybe three, if I manage to refrain from too much dialogue. But I still don't think this will reach the 100,000 words level. Famous last words.

And the story is about to become less pretty, I'm afraid. I can't let the outside world leave them alone for much longer.

-ooOO888OOoo-

"Thorin, is there really nothing you would give me? Not even dreams?"

Sutho's plea echoes in Thorin's mind for the whole of the next day. In the forge his hammer falls to the sound of Not. Even. Dreams! Not. Even. Dreams! Not. Even. Dreams, until he hits too hard and the rhythm changes to No. Love! No. Love! And Thorin wants to scream.

His heart cries with the shame and guilt of having taken so much without anything to give in return – but his body is still in the cave up the moor and if he closes his eyes and bends his head he sees his hair trail across her breasts and caress her belly, he feels his mouth lick her navel and graze her curls and taste her, he feels a stirring in his loins and he wants to take, take and take her again.

"Thorin!" Dwalin whispers urgently. "Pay attention! You're going to hammer a hole in that cauldron!"

Thorin jumps slightly and tries to concentrate on his work, and that's just another layer of shame.

Then comes the evening and how could he not go to the inn? He sees her as soon as he passes the door. She's coming and going between customers and he thinks everyone must see how thoroughly they've made love the day before. She's walking in plain light for everyone to see how the usual straight line of her back is now tempered by a softer curve in her neck. She's walking – he sees now she's walking a little stiffly, as if she were sore, and the sore areas in Thorin's body tingle in sympathy and renewed desire. Her lips are just a touch redder and more swollen than usual, and maybe the skin around it looks abraded. He remembers their passionate kissing and one of his hands goes up to his beard, and that's when she looks up. Her own hand mirrors his, shooting up to touch the pink skin around her mouth.

The shared gesture causes a great warmth to spread inside him and he smiles to her, smiles like he can't remember doing since he's been on the road. Even with the whole width of the crowded room between them he can see that she catches her breath; and then she answers with an immense smile of her own.

That's when he knows what to give her. His dreams are not for her, and he can't give her love, but he can offer her their memories together.

-oOO8OOo-

The next day he rises before the dawn and goes on a little expedition around the town. He knows better than to ask his master for the free use of his forge and there's no way he could afford the cost of even such a small amount of any kind of metal. But he's a pauper prince and she's his pauper lady so a pauper's materials will have to do – what he intends to make will have to acquire another kind of value.

People don't eat a lot of meat in this place, especially not the meat of large animals, but he finally puts his hands on acceptable bone. After that, it's only a matter of letting it simmer, clean it, cut off the appropriate bits and, very painstakingly because he hasn't go the proper tools, carve.

He carves in the evenings, at the inn; he thinks maybe he should do it in secret at their lodgings but he can't, won't deprive himself of her sight. Dwalin takes a look, sits beside him and in his gruff voice asks him whether he intends to use all his stack of bone. Thorin, who is meticulously shaping something no larger than his nail, says that of course he doesn't, and that please, Dwalin can help himself to some. Then Dwalin sets himself to carving some ring ornament and soon Balin joins them. With Balin comes Hlin, who is a woman of their race and it always amuses the company to no end that Men could be so clueless and take her for a He. As for Balin, Thorin knows he's half scandalised that a woman should show herself so to strangers and prostitute her crafting talents and half in awe of her incredible skills to assess the quality and potential of stones, whether costly gemstones or the basest ore.

After a few evenings, the ring of carving dwarves attracts watchers. Sutho hovers around them and from the way she slams his pint before him, Thorin can see that she doesn't appreciate in the slightest that he's surrounded by dwarves so that they can't sit together in peace. But there are others, too, among them children, which is new. And of course, like all children of all races, these two are curious and no inhibitions refrains them from asking: "What are you doing? Is it ivory?"

"Hrmf," mumbles Thorin who can't have a conversation when he's concentrating. "Course not. 's bone."

"That's for your hair? You've already got lots of beads in your hair."

"Hrmfno"

"That's pretty. Is it for your sweetheart then?"

"Hmmmf."

Thankfully, Dwalin comes to his rescue. "Come on, let him work in peace. Don't you see that poor dwarf isn't used to such precise work? If you go on talking while he scratches with that awl, he'll pass it right through his thumb –"

"– Thank you for your commiseration," groans Thorin.

"Especially since he shouldn't be using an awl in the first place. But isn't there somewhere you should be, children? Do your parents know you're here?"

"Of course they do!" says one, probably a boy since he's wearing trousers.

"It's not bedtime yet," says the other, and she should be a girl with that pinafore.

"We want to watch!" they both say.

"It's all right," says Sutho's voice from behind Thorin. "They're Maujor's children. The innkeeper."

Thorin looks up and the innkeeper is indeed over there behind the counter, looking at them. But his expression isn't hostile so Thorin nods in acknowledgement and goes back to his carving.

"Do you want to do more than watching?" he hears Dwalin say. "Care to try yourself at bone shaping?"

"Don't give them an awl," mutters Thorin.

"Surely not. But this ring here needs polishing."

That's how Dwalin gains a following of children for the winter.

-oOO8OOo-

Thorin soon finishes his work and presents it to Sutho one evening as she's again carrying buckets from the river.

"It's not a promise," he says. "Nor a dream. But this I can give to you."

"I hoped it was for me," she simply answers, taking the bracelet and tracing the details of the carved charms with a fingertip. "But come. Help me with the water and I'll be done for the night. Then we can go in my chamber and have a look at your gift in private."

He would have liked a more enthusiastic answer, some appreciation of his craft, but Sutho's eyes are full of promises; he makes a short work of the buckets and they soon find themselves in her room.

"Thorin, this is beautiful," she says and his heart swells with relief. Then there's silence as she singles one charm. "This is a cloud, isn't it, a storm cloud with a lightning bolt? And this on the other end is a tankard, sweetly done, so – so this one must be a plough, and, oh. There's a lantern for this time I the alley, and a fish for that other time on– and even a bed, with a crack," and she eyes her own bed in the corner.

"I've left some room for other charms, if you'd like," he says in a deep voice.

"I'd love to. Will you think of one for what we're about to make?" she whispers, and then he can't answer because his mouth is otherwise occupied.

Thorin has the presence of mind to carry the bedding to the floor, so they don't break anything nor make that much noise. Their lovemaking is more considerate than in the earliest times and more tender than in the cave, but there's no less passion.

She rests in his arms and he wonders if she's falling asleep when she opens her hand and there's the bracelet in it. "What's the cord made of?" she asks, fingering the glossy black twisted strings.

"Hair. I couldn't think of anything else sturdy enough to last."

"Yours?"

"Mine," he says, and doesn't tell of all the ways this would have been understood by a dwarvish lover.

"Can I wear it?" she asks to his stupefaction.

"Of course you can! I made it for you."

"Thorin, people saw you carve these. If I were to wear it openly, there would be gossip. Maybe trouble."

"Would that hurt you?" he asks, and berates himself for not having even thought of that.

"I'm afraid you'd be the one to be hurt."

"Then wear it, my lady. If you wish. If you can. For what we have together, and I'll withstand the hurt."

"Foolish, foolish dwarf." She sighs, then smiles. "I'll wear it. But maybe with long sleeves, though I won't hide it more than that."

"Thorin," she says as once again he thinks she's falling asleep. "Will you stay the night with me?"

But then he stands up and says: "I can't, I–" He doesn't really know why he feels it's impossible. Maybe he doesn't want to fool himself with this idea they could lie and sleep together like husband and wife. Maybe he's just afraid of the commitment. So he finishes only with: "the others will be waiting for me. And I'll have to go to the forge very early, I can't go there from your place."

"Your master is truly a horrible man," she says. He doesn't know if he's hearing scorn in her tone, but what she says is true, and he leaves.

-oOO8OOo-

The first months of winter turn out to be an enchanted time. The mountains behind them turn white with snow but in the town what little falls down soon turns to mud. This combined with the cold puts an end to most of the travelling that has added some animation to the place until late fall, and most outdoor activities seem to be put on hold. Work at the forge becomes very sparse while the inn customers trickle down to a few local patrons who don't tax Sutho too much. But the work at the mine goes on, which is a great opportunity for dwarves who are more used to having to make their coins last during the winter than to earn some more, and so they decide to stay for the season, and maybe for another year.

Thorin jokes that Dwalin could ask for some nursemaid money with all the children trailing after him, but in truth it's a heart-warming sight and one the dwarves find they'd been longing to see for too long. And Thorin has a very personal reason to be thankful to Dwalin: the children are now bedecked in all kinds of bone ornaments and are making more for their parents, so that Sutho's bracelet doesn't stand out so much.

As much as he'd love to, Thorin hasn't got all that free time to go to Sutho. When they're out of work at the forge, he and Dwalin and Ingi, the third blacksmith dwarf, will ask for work at the mine and more often than not there is. Not that any of them likes it, not in these conditions: the mine is a copper mine, something that doesn't give that much profit, and the Men who own it are trying to compensate by asking for a fast production: the dwarves' tunnels have to be no larger than a worker's width and sometimes only high enough for a dwarf to crawl in; the taller Dwalin and Thorin keep bumping their heads and often end working together with Men miners instead. Some of those are nice fellows, Thorin thinks, not really caring about a comrade's size or shape when it comes to sharing a meal or any of the awful homemade brews they come with. But the state of even these larger tunnels is appalling, carved too fast in alternating layers of slate and basalt that he doesn't trust to hold together long. And what little timber there is looks old and feels spongy to the touch.

Still, it pays, and the working day is shorter than at the forge, and all in all he gets to spend more time with Sutho than ever before. The nights fall early and are bitingly cold, so it's not easy to find a place to do more than kissing, but it also means that there's nobody looking at them through the frost-covered windows. And kiss they do, warming each other's hands in each other's clothing, tasting each other until their lips are chapped with more than the cold. They even manage to make love a few times at the back of the inn; mostly a repeat of their early fast and dishevelled bouts, but once ending in Thorin lying flat on his back in the mud with Sutho on top riding him wildly. He's so covered in mud when they're done that time that he goes and convinces Balin to part with a copper piece in order for him to have a bath; and the fact that it's Sutho who brings and pours the water in the bathtub, in a large inn bathroom populated with the other dwarves waiting for their turn feels like very sweet and very prolonged torture. And then they laugh about it and Thorin carves a bathtub-shaped charm.

Soon they become good at disappearing and finding better places for lovemaking; Thorin gets to know all about the backyard stairs that reach close to Sutho's window; he even manages once to smuggle her into the dwarves' one room shack as the others are heading to the inn, but that makes for one of their more uncomfortable moments, him always on the look for one of his comrades going back. A couple of times, they put on all the layers of clothing they can set their hands on and make the climb to their cave, making a trail through the untouched snow.

-oOO8OOo-

For the others, winter is a time of rest and waiting. But for them it's a time for discovering just how far passion can go. And Thorin thinks that for himself, it's a time to discover that he's finally grown up; that maybe his youth spent in walking away from everything, from a lost home and lost hopes and faded dreams, is ending here in something that is not love, not home, not hope, but a place to finally stand and gather his strength and find back his heart. Then he tells all of this to her, and she laughs a slightly brittle laugh and tells him that he's an overdramatic idiot and that they're both still so very young.

-oOO8OOo-

Thorin isn't trying to display this passion for everyone to see. If someone would ask him, he'd even say that of course it has to remain secret. But for one who watches him, knows him and cares for him, the changes are only too evident. And that's why in the deepest winter Balin confronts him.

It's been Thorin's turn to cook at the shack and now it's his turn to do the dishwashing, something he truly hates, especially since it's a sordid affair done outside in freezing water; so he's only relieved when Balin offers to help him. But Balin doesn't look his usual affable self when they kneel side by side in the mud washing the plates.

"What's the matter?" asks Thorin.

"What do you think? You're the matter. You and that woman."

"Woman."

"Yes. Woman. As in a female child of Men. What do you think you're doing, Thorin? It's already painful enough to witness Dwalin bed, and I'm being polite, bed every foreign male dwarf he can set his hands on, but at least there's no fear of offspring. Shall I soon have to tell Thrain that the next heir to Durin's throne is a short-lived half-breed begotten through your dalliance with some ignorant Dunland maid?"

Thorin could understand Balin confronting him about bedding a woman of the race of Men; and he even could try to find some coherent arguments to defend Dwalin; but the insult to Sutho and that barb about an offspring, when it's the thing that hurts the most in what he has – or hasn't – with her, are too much and he lashes back: "Who cares for Durin's line these days? And who appointed you my chaperone? Am I asking you about what you're doing with Hlin?"

"What I'm doing with Hlin? What I'm doing with Hlin, who, I may say, is a perfectly respectable Dwarf woman, is courting her in the most respectful way. I offer her what I can make with my own hands and I sing to her and I tell her of a time when I'll have wealth enough to find a home for us and she won't have to pass herself for a male and we can marry. I'm not leaving tracks in the snow for everyone to see and touching her in public rooms and kissing her in back alleys and fucking her in the mud like an animal!"

This only calls for one answer and Thorin hits Balin hard. Soon they're not fucking in the mud but they're fighting in it in earnest. Thorin is the one hitting the most viciously, hitting to inflict pain, hitting to rid himself of all that pent-up hopelessness and soon Balin only defends himself, and then not only that, remaining motionless under the weight of Thorin's body. They're panting hard, and then Thorin exhales and lets go.

"I guess I'll have to pay another copper for a bath," says Balin. "And we can wash our clothes in it, too. Ow!"

"Sorry. Did I break something?" asks Thorin, looking at his bleeding knuckles and maybe hoping that he did cause some hurt.

"No. No, I don't think so. But I'm going to have mighty bruises in the morning," answers Balin as he sits heavily on the frozen ground with his hands pressing on his ribs.

Thorin goes to sit beside him. They both stare at nothing in front of them, gritting their teeth, silent.

Finally, Thorin says: "Balin, you insulted me. And Sutho."

"I did. Apologies. You're not an animal."

"But you're letting the ignorant maid part stand. What bothers you most, Balin? That she's of the race of Men? Or that she's not noble-born? Or is it that we've been fucking, as you said, without a courtship first?"

"Oh, son."

"I'm not your son, and stop playing the wise old man with me. You're only fifteen years older, even if it seems you were born with grey hair."

"It's only fifteen years, Thorin, but that means I remember more of Erebor. Remember things as they should be. Thorin my lad, you were but a child when the dragon came, and what you took with you are a child's memories of wonder. But I remember the rules and the rituals and the greatness of our laws, and how that made up so much of our wealth and power."

"Ha. For all the good it does us now."

"Listen to me, lad. Were we still in Erebor, Dwalin would have been groomed to be a lord at your side, and what a mighty lord he'd be about to become, a warrior and a leader of dwarves and ever faithful to you. Had his distaste for the female body revealed itself there too, he'd have been kept occupied, he'd have been found some craft to immerse himself in, and the dalliances would have dwindled to nothing, or at least be kept to a tasteful discretion."

"But do you think that's what he wishes for himself?"

"Maybe not. But you can't say he's happier as he is now. And you, you, my Prince. There would have been a lovely dwarf maiden, someone with a beard of pale gold, or of fiery red, someone, maybe, who would have bested you with a hammer or a harp, who would have captured your attention, and you'd have courted her with music and jewels and craft and this would have been a love the whole realm would have sung of for ever. Not like it is now. Not like that. Alas that you boys had to grow up on the road, and now Dwalin behaves like the basest brute of a soldier and you are losing yourself in that world of Men."

In that world of Men, Thorin has been feeling hopeless. He has felt alien. Sometimes he's even felt scared. But he's not feeling lost and this gives him the strength to say: "We aren't lost, Balin. That's who we are, the dwarves of exile, coarser and dreamless. There isn't a princess of the Dwarves to marry me, and there won't be any more sons of Durin born in the safety and wealth of the Erebor from before the fall. But we're not lost. Dwalin is still by my side and I give him all my friendship and I trust him with my life. And we will make new rules, and new memories, and a new life, for those that are born after us, for Oin and little Gloin your cousins, and all those who still follow us."

"Ah, Thorin. You will make a great king one day, if you can learn to use that temper of yours instead of letting it use you. And if you don't forget your duty somewhere on the road."

"I am not. Will not."

"But that woman. You've given her your craft. And you're bedding her, and don't deny it. What will you do if she burdens you with a child? Do you love her?"

"I don't – don't think so. I feel want, more than that, lust, and I love to have her with me. But my life is not with her. She can't own my heart, and I can't own hers," Thorin says, and why is there such a pain in his chest. "As for a child – would that be such a burden, you think? Would that child, born of a Woman among Men, have to shoulder the responsibility of Durin's folk? I don't know. But I'll tell you this, Balin. It is so, that I'm making love to her. But I'm not begetting children on her."

"You are not? Oh," whispers Balin. And Thorin couldn't say what wins in the expressions of Balin's face between relief and horror at the idea of a love without its ultimate completion.

"Balin?" asks Thorin after a while. "Will you tell Thrain?"

"Maybe I still should. Maybe you're putting us at risk, with that relationship you're not hiding so well. Ah. I won't. I won't, if nobody tells him about, though I won't deny it if he asks about it. And this is as long as you don't forget your duty, my Prince of the house of Durin."

Thorin acknowledges his answer with a nod. And doesn't tell him of these two times when his life might have turned around. Of the two times he came inside her.

The first time is not so long after they've first been in the cave. Now they make love with more attention for the other's body, and all of this is still so new, the heaviness of her breasts in his hands, the curve of her belly and the softness of it, her own hands trailing in his hair and how his nipples react to her mouth on them, and her playfulness with his beard and her fierceness when suddenly she bites his neck. And suddenly it's too much and he forgets and he spills inside her.

She swears and runs to the pitcher to wash herself, naked in the cold of her room and as for him he's confused and content and knows he shouldn't be.

For the next three weeks, until her period finally comes, she won't let him take the lead. She'll have him in her mouth, or in her hand, or she'll ride him so that she's the one who can withdraw. And it's humiliating and dirty and maddening and he can't help asking for more.

The second time is not so far from now, though they're already sure that she's not with child. He has learnt his lesson by now and is ever careful when he's nearing completion. And that time he knows the pressure is building and he'll have to put out soon, he knows she doesn't wish for a child, but that very idea sends an image in his mind, Sutho standing against him with a growing belly and his own hands on it, and it's so glorious he comes at once.

She doesn't disengage this time. Doesn't swear. She only looks at him with her eyes very wide, saying nothing. And then she's in his arms and she cries and repeats in a small lost broken voice "don't do it again, Thorin, oh please don't do it again."

Twice he came inside her, twice it made him hope for a conception, and twice he berated himself for that. So he doesn't tell Balin, and instead says: "About Hlin. She's a wonderful dwarf, and I'm very glad for you both. You have all my best wishes."

"Thank you. And, about that woman of yours. I take back my words. Whatever her birth and her education, she's been a woman worth to want. But come, my Prince, let's finish the dishes and then we can spend half of our fortune for a bath and take care of our bruises. We can tell the others we've been attacked by a particularly vicious plate."

"Aye. Or a fork. Forks can be dangerous. And, Balin? Whatever there is between me and Sutho, it's not finished. Not yet. Don't hope I'll distance myself from her because we had this, hum, discussion."

"Sure, lad. I wouldn't have imagined my power of persuasion would be that great."

-oOO8OOo-

After that, winter could have ended in peace but it ends in tragedy. The days are already a little longer; Sutho points to Thorin the first purple crocuses peeking out of the old brown grass and she makes him crowns out of them, crowns that wilt as soon as they're finished so he tells her it's silly and they should make jewellery out of amethysts instead.

But with the beginnings of thaw come the first travellers and what they bring with them is a plague.

The first hints of illness are nothing, really. A few inn customers begin to cough, and they complain of headache and joint pain. But they're also miners, and miners with bad lungs and bad knees are nothing new.

But two or three days later Balin and Hlin come back from the mine early, supporting a miner easily twice their side between them. He's swaying as he walks and where his skin isn't a greenish shade of pale it's mottled with red dots; and when he lets go of them in the inn, half falling and half sitting, he vomits blood.

The man dies in the night and two more miners die the next day and after that a wave of panic engulfs the town. The travellers leave the place in a hurry, abandoning a body mottled with purpling dots behind them. Everything then halts, the forge and the mine closed as are all the doors in all the houses. Everyone hides, everyone listens for the sound of their chest, scrutinises their skin for any red marks, feels their forehead for any hint of fever. And soon, in spite of all the shunning and the frantic washing, these symptoms spread.

As plagues go, it's not the worst. A lot of those who are touched only develop a raging fever but they don't lose blood, and most of these don't die, though they're left thin and wan and exhausted. But there are still too many corpses, some of them left to rot in the street, whether for fear of catching the disease or because they have no relative left to perform a funeral.

Only the dwarves, who don't fear the diseases of Men, still walk around the deserted town and they end gathering at the inn, which is still warmer and nicer than their shack. And the innkeeper and Sutho are still there in the empty great room, serving them pints and some stew and listening to their songs. The innkeeper won't go to his house for fear of contagion to his family, and Sutho has no other place to go.

Soon Sutho is coughing. "It's nothing," she says at first, "my head doesn't hurt, I must have caught a cold."

But in the evening she faints.

Thorin gathers her in his arms; and to the nod of the innkeeper he climbs the stairs and takes her to her room, and puts her in her bed.

In the night her fever rages high. Thorin tries to uncover her somewhat, but she's shivering so much and he give her back her blanket; he gives her water that she half swallows and half spills on her shirt; he changes her clothes and climbs in the bed close to her and thinks it's such a shame that he's been unclothing her and he's lying close to her and he's finally spending the night with her and she doesn't even know it.

The next day she moans and mumbles and maybe Thorin hears something about love, but he can't be sure and she's delirious. So he keeps on holding her hand and feeding her honeyed water and he's never felt so scared in his life.

This goes on for the next day and night and on the morning of the third day her forehead feels cooler. She opens bruised eyes and he can see that she's watching him. He squeezes her hand and bends to lay a very light kiss on her mouth.

"What are you doing, Thorin," she croaks. "You're going to catch the plague if you keep close to me."

He smiles. "I'm a Dwarf, Sutho. We don't catch Men's diseases. We don't catch so many diseases wherever they come from, at least diseases of the body, you know. My grandfather might be mad, he may have had wound fever once or twice, but he's two hundred and forty five years old and nobody can remember him having ever been physically sick."

"Oh," she says, but she's too tired and reclines back on the pillow. Thorin busies himself with mixing a little more honey with water and adds the juice of a lemon the travellers have left in their rooms.

"Drink," he says. "Your fever has abated but if it behaves like in the other cases it will go back up in the night. But we can use the respite to try to make your body stronger. Do you think you can eat?"

"I'll try," she says, and he goes to find her something.

He finds the innkeeper in the common room.

"How are you?" he asks the Man.

"Fine. Surprisingly fine. I might have coughed some yesterday and thought I had some pain in my shoulders and neck, but nothing came of it, and I have no fever. Maybe I'm immune – though who knows."

"Any news of your children? Wife?"

"No. No, I daren't go and ask. Nobody has come."

"I'm sorry."

"Yeah. And Sutho?"

"The fever abated this morning, but –"

"Yeah. It's probably going to climb back up soon."

"She's agreed to try to eat something. Would you have anything appropriate?"

"I'll make her gruel."

Her hands are too weak, and she complains of pain in her elbows and wrists, so he feed her the gruel, and is glad to see that she swallows some.

"If it can help," he says, "you have no red spots and you're not bleeding."

"It helps," she says, and then she falls asleep.

She wakes up in the afternoon and the fever is still on the low side. He makes her drink and eat and then what she wants is to talk.

"Thorin," she says, "you told me your grandfather was two hundred and forty five years old. That's true?"

"Yes."

"Is he – is it something exceptional among dwarves? To live so old?"

"Old? Oh, no. He's nearing the time when we begin indeed to become old, but some of us get to live longer, sometimes much longer – that is, when we're not burned by a dragon or slain by orcs or just by men on the road."

"How old are you?"

"Oh, I'm very young. Forty last year."

"Very young? Forty? The innkeeper is forty. I thought we were near the same age, maybe that you were a little younger than me. I thought you were eighteen, maybe twenty."

"And you, how old are you?"

"I'm twenty two. And I hope I'll see twenty three."

Thorin knows Men are short-lived; but he's never measured before what it means in terms of counting the years of one's life, and how Men must have to cram so much live in so short a time.

"I'll see that you make it to twenty three," he says, and he feels that the gap between them must have opened even more.

But she's not done.

"Thorin. Since you don't fear the plague, will you do what you're doing for me for the rest of my people?"

"Hush," he says, "I'm not leaving your side."

"But you have to, you and your friends. Don't you see?" and she's nearly shouting, in that poor creaking voice of hers. "There are bodies to bury outside, that will pollute the water if no one gets to it, and the people who survived are much too weak to do anything. And there are ill people that you could prevent from dying if you help them the way you're helping me. Children. Mothers. Grandfathers. Sweethearts. And there are people who are without news from them, who would need someone to bring them. And food to gather and bring, and animals to feed. You have to help!"

"There are only ten of us. And I don't know what the others will say. There's not much love between Dunland Men and us dwarves."

"But haven't we welcomed you well enough in this town?"

"Welcomed, I don't know. But I, at least, have got a debt, because of you. I'll ask the others."

"Thank you," she says, and then she pants hard and he feels her forehead and is afraid.

"Go now," she adds, "while you still feel you can leave me. Ask them."

He kisses her and goes to find his comrades and explains. As he thought, the enthusiasm isn't overwhelming.

"What do we owe them?" asks Ingi. "Men are only using us and treating us as their dogs, and when that man at the forge becomes too jealous he'll just throw us out without thanks."

"But," says Thorin, "They've let us in at the inn and listened to our songs and sung with us."

"Aye," says Hlin, "but then they're making us work like beasts of burden and deny us even a day of rest."

"We should leave now," says Onar, another of the miner dwarves.

"If we leave right now," says Balin, "nobody in the whole of Dunland will grant us entrance, not with the fear of the plague."

"I will help," rumbles Dwalin, not bothering with arguing and, as always, going straight to the point. "Children are always the first to die in such plagues, and I've grown attached to some in this place. I wish to see how they're doing."

"I'm asking you all to help," says Thorin. Then Balin raises an eyebrow and he nods, or maybe it's a small bow, and the others' bows are unmistakable.

"That's settled, then," says Balin.

The next weeks pass in a blur of exhaustion and horror. Thorin still spends his nights beside Sutho, but during the days he'll go with his comrades. They carry corpses and dig wide collective graves and they're thankful that it's still cold so that the stench is not what it could be. They try to find their way around pigs and sheep and cattle that balk at their unpractised hands. They bring water and make food and support the convalescents and hold the hands of the dying and they wash bloodied sheets and they scrape for willow root and they scourge the whole town for a little more vinegar.

In the middle of that haze there's Dwalin who comes one day with a little body in his arms and a dishevelled worn thin woman in his wake, and he kneels in front of Thorin and his face never wore such an expression of despair, not even sixteen years ago.

"I've fed her, he says, I've held her, I've given her bark and water and she didn't bleed and the fever was gone. What more should I have done? And then she was just too weak and she has just gone off like a candle in the wind."

He lays the small corpse in front of him and one of his large fingers sets on the small bone pendant at the dead girl's neck.

But the woman who came with him swats his hand away and howl: "why are you still alive? Why? Why couldn't you save her like you saved me? Why are you still here when you're only – only a Dwarf, and she was my child!"

She lets herself fall to the ground in front of the girl and cries, and Dwalin stays there as well, his hands on each side of his body and his head held high and he's weeping too. After a while the innkeeper appears and places his hand on his shoulder; he's still hale and has begun to help the dwarves in heir tasks. "Come," he says. "Let her grieve. I for one know you do too."

Then there are more corpses and more illness and vomit and blood and curses, day after day.

Thorin still goes to Sutho's room. Her fever rises and falls in waves and he's sometimes hopeful, and sometimes not. He brings his only book, a cherished memory of Erebor, some poetry about the dragons war in the Grey Mountains he'd been reading, what an irony, the day of the dragon; he reads it to her, even so all these treasures and fires and songs of dire fight must feel like as much nonsense to her. She raises her head in one of her clear-minded days and says: "you'll teach me how to read, won't you, when I'm better?"

That's a promise that he's glad to make her and that he fervently hopes he'll be able to fulfil.

Finally one day she's better, and the fever doesn't come back. She's so weak and so frail and so thin and she barely can holds her arms as she lifts them up to him and he embraces her and doesn't let go and cries in her hair.