Hello! Not much to say, I just hope this chapter's easy to follow. I've been so exhausted lately with school. But the show must go on!
Happy reading :)
3
The Devil's Reap
Fíli woke up to the sound of someone wailing.
What in Durin's name…
It was still dark outside his window, though the first signs of the sun were beginning to show. The wailing was coming from one of the other bedrooms in the inn. Fíli swung out of bed and threw his blanket around his shoulders. He followed the noise until he found himself four doors down the hall, where a small clump of people with grim faces were gathered.
"What's going on?" Fíli asked, feeling a cold dread come over him.
"Someone's dead," a sandy haired woman whispered, her shawl drawn tightly around her shoulders. It was just that kind of night, the sort where one needs something wrapped around them to keep any semblance of warmth.
Fíli looked into the dimly lit room, where a young child clung to an old man as they both sobbed over the still body on the bed. He couldn't see the face, but he could see curly red hair draped to the waist and knew it had to be a woman. Maybe the child's mother and the daughter of the old man. Fíli didn't recognize any of the mourners, but he couldn't fight the crushing pity that came over him.
"What happened?" a by-standing child whispered. The wailing was almost unbearable. Fíli felt a hand on his shoulder and found Dwalin standing behind him, looking just as grim faced as the tragic onlookers.
"Come away laddie," he said grimly, "Leave 'em to mourn in peace."
The blonde dwarf followed Dwalin down the stairs and into the common area where a few more people had gathered. Fíli found a bench and sat down with his blanket still pulled close to him. He zoned out as they talked in hushed voices until one broke off—the innkeeper—to get a mortician to retrieve the body.
"You look like you could use something warm, lad." Fíli looked up to find the homely face of the innkeeper's wife smiling kindly at him. He barely registered the hot mug of cider she was holding until she placed it in his hands.
"Thank you," he said softly, staring at the hot liquid. He didn't understand why he felt so cold and empty, but the chill went all the way to his bones. Like a dark cloud hung over the entire place. The woman sat next to him and watched the clumps of men and dwarves alike talk amongst each other. Dwalin joined them a moment later without a word.
"What happened?" Fíli finally asked, "To the woman. How did she die?"
The innkeeper—Pauline—sighed and folded her hands. "Goblin Fever, I'm afraid. It's been a terror in this part of the mountains for years."
"But we've always been told that Goblin Fever wasn't real," Fíli protested, "That it was a myth used to scare bandits from the mountains."
Pauline shook her head. "The original disease died with the defeat of Sauron many, many years ago. For a while we were free of it. But this new illness emerged with symptoms identical to the fabled fever, save for its speed. Almost like this string is weaker than the first. The healers named it Coal Fever for the way it turns the victim's nails black at the last stages. All the same, the similarities led to many believing it to be Goblin Fever, and the name has stuck." She sighed and rubbed the weariness from her eyes. "It can only be cured by consuming a dried flower called Mallos, but it doesn't grow here. The merchants you escorted have brought it to us in large quantities but for some like the woman, it's too late."
The cold inside of Fíli grew icier as Pauline's last few words hung in the air. After a moment he let himself listen to the people talking around him.
"…showed signs of it just three weeks ago…"
"…comatose for four days, they were hoping that the Mallos would…"
"…left her child and father behind, the poor wretches…"
"….early breakfast for me…"
"…goblin attack on the eastern village. She had a cut on her ankle I believe. Got it infected somehow, nobody knows w…"
"…wash the sheets…"
"…wretched mood at first. Nearly drove her family away. But they…"
"Wait."
Fíli's head snapped up, staring directly at Pauline. "How does it start?" he demanded. She blinked back at him in shock but his panic only grew with her silence. "Pauline, how does Goblin Fever start? How do you know if someone has it?!"
"What are you on about, boy?" Dwalin interjected, but Pauline spoke before Fíli could.
"The first stage is a change in mood," she said softly, "They become goblin-esque in demeanor."
Fíli's mug of cider was long forgotten as he listened to her words.
"So they become petulant? Unreasonable?"
Pauline's eyes were sad when she looked at him and nodded. "They fall far away from the person they were once known to be."
A small cry escaped Fíli's mouth and he was quickly on his feet. "Kíli," he choked, looking to Dwalin, "Master Dwalin, we have to find my brother."
A sharp, steadying throbbing greeted Kíli to consciousness.
What in Durin's name is wrong with my head?
He could feel that he was lying on something hard and uncomfortable and the sounds of wagons and dirt roads surrounded him. He heard a familiar merry laugh and groaned as the sound cut straight through to his aching head.
How long have we been on the road? He wondered deliriously, I thought for sure we would have reached the village by now…
The wagon went over a bump, jostling poor Kíli and his headache.
Hold on a second.
Something wasn't right. Kíli froze and listened, his eyes still closed against the light he didn't want to meet. The wagon went over a second bump and this time there was no mistaking the sound of rattling chains.
Kíli's eyes shot open and he immediately regretted his decision and closed them. It hadn't been especially bright, but it hurt all the same. With a heavy groan he tried to rub the pain from his temples. Except there was a problem. His hands wouldn't move.
In fact, he couldn't feel his hands at all.
Kíli opened his eyes and this time bit back his groan and forced himself to adjust to the light. And for the second time that day he regretted opening his eyes.
Above him was the frame of a covered wagon, but the bars were made of iron. Faint sunlight poured through the wagon cover and something about it made his conscience twinge. But what truly disturbed him was the sight of his hands chained to the side of the wagon above him.
And that his hands weren't the only ones there.
"Easy lad, you have a welt on your head the size of an egg," a voice told him.
Bofur.
Kíli closed his eyes and forced himself to sit up as slowing as possible. "Easy now…there ya go."
Now in sitting position, the young dwarf could literally feel every single pulse of his blood as it drained from his head. He still couldn't feel his hands, but there was strange feeling in his wrists that must be from the shackles cutting off his circulation. When he managed to open his eyes again, his heart dropped to his stomach. In the small wagon there were eleven people chained up to the sides. Kíli didn't recognize those of them that were menfolk, but he certainly recognized the dwarves.
Millí was chained directly across from him, her head rested against the bars. He wondered if she was unconscious or just asleep. Two people over sat Ori, looking scared and miserable as Kíli's ever seen him before.
On Kíli's side of the wagon were himself and Bofur, and at the end closest to the back was Gimli with a large gag tied around his face. The two boys made eye contact before the ginger dwarf's eyes flicked back to Millí.
Upon further inspection, Kíli realized two things. One, that everyone in the wagon was fairly young—and if not young, definitely not old—and two, his family was not there. He couldn't tell if that made him feel relieved or not.
"I don't understand," Kíli finally said. His voice sounded rough from grogginess, but he imagined he probably looked worse than he sounded. The longer he stayed conscious, the more his old feeling of miserable irritation began to return. His head and shoulder throbbed in tandem as the chained people blinked at each other.
"Slavers," one of the men answered. He was covered in dirt and bruises and looked exhausted. The scarring around his shackles suggested he'd been on the wagon a long time. "From what we've gathered, they sell their cargo on the Greyflood River."
"Slavers?" Kíli repeated. "How in Durin's name did we get caught up with slavers?"
Bofur sighed and shifted his weight. "The merchants you lads accompanied to the village were not all toymakers and veggie peddlers."
Kíli opened his mouth to say something when suddenly the back of the wagon flew open. The light blinded him as the silhouette of a man stood in the entrance.
"Rise n' shine, shitheads," declared the man. Kíli recognized the thick and course accent, but not the voice. When he could see properly, he made out a pile of flaming red hair on a face that looked sturdy and young. He looked jolly even, with his broad smile and bright paisley shirt. If you could discredit the fact that he just called them all shitheads.
But then again, Kíli thought, maybe he's the sort of guy that gets jolly about having a bunch of people chained up in his family wagon.
Gimli, who was closest, tried to kick the man but missed on account of his legs being too short. The captor's smile didn't falter even as he nonchalantly slapped the dwarf across the face.
"None of that, now, I don't have all day," he laughed. His eyes flicked to each of the prisoners and stopped when he landed on Kíli.
"Ah, he's awake! Our trophy catch." Kíli concentrated every negative feeling he could possibly muster—and it was a considerable amount to be certain—into his glare as the man approached him. When he knelt close, Kíli could see he was fairly young. And something about the look of him made his conscience twinge again, but his head was spinning too much for him to sort it out. "Gotcher self bumped, I see. M'name's Rod. Tell me dwarf, how many fingers am I holding up?"
Rod held up his hand with four fingers displayed. But Kíli's mouth didn't open in the slightest; he just continued to stare at the boy. There was just something so nagging about his face that Kíli didn't notice when he waggled his fingers impatiently.
"I believe I asked you a question, dwarf."
Rage, enhanced by whatever had been fueling his rotten attitude for the past week, boiled up inside of him to the point he could no longer suppress it.
"Unchain me you coward." For effect, Kíli spit in Rod's irritatingly jubilant face.
Not so cheery now, are you?
Rod wiped his eye and flashed another grin at Kíli, but this one had only danger behind it. "Very well," he said simply. Standing up, he addressed a second man who'd come to the wagon. "Tobi, this one for sure," he pointed at Kíli, who was now glaring at the chubby, white-blonde boy apparently named Tobi. "And…hm…" Rod looked around at the prisoners and pointed at one of the unfamiliar boys, "That one…and…" he gestured lazily towards Ori, "This one."
"Ruk marad bashukuh," came a stern voice. Everyone looked to Millí, who was awake and spitting flames from her eyes at Rod.
"Dunno what that means, whelp."
Millí squared her shoulders and narrowed her eyes.
"I said, you will take him over my dead body."
Rod laughed a full belly laugh and pointed incredulously at Ori. "Him? This skinny little thing?"
"Millí, don't—"
"You can both come!" Rod chuckled. Then he ducked his head so as not to hit it and exited the wagon, gesturing back at them to Tobi before walking away.
"Okay, make this easy and it will be easy," the boy said. "Make it hard and we'll make it harder."
Before Kíli could register what was happening, three more men poured into the wagon with Tobi. When the blonde unlocked Kíli's shackles, he barely had time to drop his hands before someone was hoisting him up and out into the dirt. He landed hard on his chin and wince at the way his teeth had clacked together. He heard the other bodies hit the ground beside him and tried to get his head to work.
You're not chained. Run.
He pushed himself up from the dirt, only to have a foot in his back slam him back down. "Not yet, scum," the man hissed, grinding the toe of his boot against Kíli's spine.
"I'm not the scum here," he growled back, but his words were lost in the dust.
"Okay you miserable wretches," Tobi announced, "There was a rock slide and now our path is blocked. You're to clear the rocks away from the road as quickly as possible. Try to run and our archers will hobble you, understood?"
The foot was lifted off Kíli's back and a hand grabbed his hair, yanking him to his feet. The second he was up he swung a fist at the man who'd grabbed him. He felt it connect with a jaw and smiled in satisfaction, lunging at the captor while he clutched his face. The two of them tumbled to the ground and Kíli was quick to latch his fingers around the man's throat.
"Enough!"
There was a loud crack and a flash of pain cut across Kíli's back. It distracted him long enough for the man underneath him to land a punch to his ear and toss the dwarf off of him. Kíli scrambled to get up and recieved sharp kick to the side. He ground his teeth together and refused to cry out. He would not give them that satisfaction.
Now on his knees, a hand grabbed the dwarf's jaw and forced him to look up. A whiskery man looked down at him with a patronizing look of pity, a whip folded into his other hand.
"You just lost food and water for the day, congratulations," he said in an eerily calm voice. "Keep it up and everyone else will lose it too."
He released Kíli's jaw and patted his head right over the welt that had formed from when he was initially captured. When the man walked away Kíli made eye contact with Millí, who was looking at him with a mixture of worry and anger. Not anger directed at him, but at their situation. He nodded to her and heaved himself up to his feet, swallowing a curse he wanted to spit at the man he punched.
"Kíli, where's Fíli?" Ori asked quietly.
"I don't know," he snapped harshly, "And I don't care."
An incredible amount of bitterness swelled in Kíli then at the shocked look on Ori's face. It was so strong he could taste it in his mouth.
"How could you say that?" Millí reprimanded in a raspy whisper. Now that they were outside, he could see the blood dried to the right side of her face.
"Because," Kíli hissed, "he wasn't there. Nor was Thorin. There's a reason why we're the ones in this mess and not them. They weren't there to help us; they didn't even notice we were gone. And now look where we are. And I bet they don't care, they're just happy that its my—our hides on the line and not theirs. Well let me tell you what, a curse on them. A curse on all of them. My family, and yours, and all the other blasted dwarves in that village. If they're satisfied to let us rot in a slave wagon than I'll be happy to let them rot in their respective graves when they meet them, make no mistake."
The words felt like poison spewing from his mouth, but if felt incredible to have the toxin of them in the air and no longer in his chest. Millí's eyes stung with tears as she shook her head at him.
"You're not Kíli," she whispered in a shaky voice, "I don't know what's become of you, but you're not the friend I knew."
Kíli glared at her and shrugged his shoulder. "I'm not going to apologize for not meeting your standards in friendship."
He turned then as the men started to move them forward. But when he did, something else caught his eye entirely. The wagon he had been in was covered in eccentric, purple fabric with golden suns embroidered into the pattern. In fact, all of the wagons were brightly colored in such a way, and not a single one of the people around them looked unfriendly.
And then he saw a man watching them; a man with bright red hair, cheery eyes, and a robust middle.
"Kíli, my boy!" he laughed with open arms.
Demetrius.
Kíli was proving harder to find than Fíli initially thought. The sun was high in the sky now and all of the dwarves in the village that could be spared were looking for the young dwarf. Not a few hours ago, Fíli had appealed to Thorin to get help in finding his brother.
"Think about it, Uncle," Fíli implored, "He was in such a horrible mood. He'd never act that way if he were well, I know it. And he was bit by a goblin in the battle! If that's not a way to contract the fever, I don't know what is."
Thorin's lips pressed together in a hard line. "I can't deny that I've seen how this fever works, and it does seem to align with the way Kíli's been behaving," he said slowly, "Perhaps I didn't want to believe it. So many in this village have died of it before the merchants brought the Mallos with them. But if we can get some to Kíli, he should be alright."
"Exactly why we should find him as soon as possible."
But they couldn't find him anywhere.
Fíli thought that maybe Kíli was hiding somewhere so that he could be alone from the people he found to be so irritating. He tried every inn and every pub in the village to no avail.
"It'll be difficult," Thorin had said, "It's not often that Kíli can be found if Kíli doesn't want to be found."
And that concerned Fíli more now than ever. He had since learned the workings of the illness, and the knowledge disturbed him. The warning phase was the anger and irritation that he knew Kíli had experienced. After that, the fever hits and there's five stages before a brief comma and eventually death. If Kíli was in any of the next stages, there's a chance he'd be too sick to seek them out or get help. Kíli. His younger brother could be suffering alone somewhere.
The thought made Fíli feel sick himself.
He had learned all of this in one of the pubs, where he heard of a folksong for the Goblin Fever. It was a chilling song in lyric, though the tune hadn't been as heavy as the words. Regardless, even hours later, Fíli couldn't get it out of his head.
In the northern mountains blue,
A silent devil walks.
Deep in dark his poisons brew,
And in darkness come for you,
The devil that never talks.
o
His door a cut or slit or sting,
The devil of the coal.
Then bitterness and anger bring,
The first of his awakening,
Before he becomes whole.
o
Five strikes mark the devil's reap,
At anger's demise.
Five before the widows weep,
On the eve of wakeless sleep,
When the devil claims his prize.
o
The first will spin you side to side,
Fill your bones with ache,
In confusion lose your stride,
As the flames engulf your hide,
And watch your muscles quake.
o
The second strike will take your head,
Riddle it with stones.
Your stomach fills with shards of lead,
Until the devil deems you bled,
And stokes fire in your bones.
o
The third marks the coldest days,
The flames turned to ice.
And though the flesh is still ablaze,
If feels the sun has quenched its rays.
And slipped to winter's vice.
o
Four is brief but of cruelest fair,
To the truth you're blind.
And all you loved is clearly there,
As boundless visions grace the air,
But only in the mind.
o
The fifth comes afore the night,
As darkness turns sweet.
Your eyes too weary for the light,
Your bones too heavy for the fight,
The devil takes to his feet.
o
No thunderclap can wake the heart,
That's fallen to the sleep.
No weeping love can stem the start,
Nor remedy of herb and art,
Can release the devil's keep.
o
Without golden flower's mend,
Devil can't be slain.
And in the dark his hand extend,
And taken then, to mark the end.
To never wake again.
o
OooOOoo, ominous. Looks like Kíli's in for a rough time once the grumpiness ends.
Translation: When Millí says "Ruk marad bashukuh," it really (roughly) means "Over my dead bones." I'm sure there are some grammatical rules I'm missing when it comes to Khuzdul, but I'm trying!
Oh, and happy Easter tomorrow!
As always, commenting makes life better! (And a hearty thanks to all those who do!)