The Price of Brotherhood (3/8)

An eternity of miles on the back of a reeking warg, hands bound tightly in front of him so that his fingers became swollen and dark. Crushed against an orc, its chin ducked down to hiss wicked things into his ear in broken Westron – Not our favorite kind, no sweet flesh of elves, or men's crunchable bones, but I can still smell the hearth smoke on you, snaga; stronger than the stink of blood, strong than goblin filth. But not for long, no. We'll grind it off. Flay it off.

Consciousness faded in and out. Fíli's dry throat clicked; his eyes blinked feebly. All was fever and heat, and fierce, gnawing pain. Then the orc dug his nails in, and brutal clarity bubbled up for a time. The ride seemed to go on forever.

Sudden, jarring contact with the ground, and a dim awareness that they had stopped. Fíli tasted dirt in his mouth and struggled to turn, but there was no strength in him. Absurdly, he thought of his brother, with his messy, bedraggled hair that always needed combing. Laughing eyes that were dark unlike his own. A strong, safe hand.

The air blew softly on Fíli's face, cooling his cracked and bleeding lips. An orc stooped in front of him. "Is it parched?" the creature sneered. "Is it thirsty?" It barked an order, and two others heaved Fíli onto his knees, a thick arm wound around his neck. Then the orc pulled a flask from its belt. It bit the stopper and pulled it free with its teeth. "Go ahead and drink your fill, khuzd," it taunted, and shoved the spout down Fíli's throat.

A flood of foul black drink seared its way down. Fíli choked, but they held him fast. Drowned him, until they were satisfied. Then they dropped him on his twisted arm, and a mechanism of ropes and pulleys and shrieking voices exploded through his mind. Leaving him there, the orcs jeered, kicking him as they strode past.

The white warg came. From its back dismounted the huge, pale uruk who had gripped Fíli around the neck and spoken Thorin's name. His identity had never been given, but as the cruel face looked down, his broad shoulders carved with patterned scars, Fíli knew him as though he had just stepped out of one of Balin's tales.

Azog.

With the bearing of a general, he glared at Fíli with eyes that seemed to be seeking out his tender spots. He grasped Fíli's wrists with a vicious twist, and the already fractured bits of bones ground together and splintered and pierced. Fíli's wheezed. If he'd had air to breath, he would have screamed.

Azog spoke in the harsh, black speech of the orcs. Fíli knew no words, but the inflection – slow, vicious, deliberate – told him all he needed. Nor did the perverse anticipation in the uruk's eyes need interpretation. He was saying, 'This little pain is nothing compared to what is coming.'

Fíli knew almost nothing of torture. Once, in a tavern, there had been a ranger. He'd worn a dark hood and had a face that was haggard and aged, though he was not old. With his flagon cradled in his hands, he had spoken of it.

"To face torture," he told Fíli. "You must decide your goal. If your goal is to die quickly, then it must be done soon, very soon, while your mind is still your own. But if your goal is to survive… Well, you must decide that too."

At the time, Fíli had reached around his brother, who had passed out against his shoulder with a drunk, sleepy grin on his youthful face. He'd asked, "How do you choose?"

The ranger had looked at him shrewdly. "Haven't you already?"

Back with the orcs, Fíli felt a flash of clarity. His brother would want him back. Even if his body was broken to pieces, or if his mind was lost. If only to bury him, his brother would want him back.

Nearby, a brutish orc was stoking a bristling thresh of barbed tails, murmuring about whether dwarves would bleed red. In the background was the snarling of the wargs, drool dripping from their jaws. And looming over him, Azog's face – twisted and terrible – wordlessly promised to show why he was called the Defiler.

Fíli lifted his chin.

A week's weary travel from their descent of the Carrock, and still the company trudged over the rugged country between the base of the Misty Mountains and the poisoned Green Wood, which was now widely known as Mirkwood. They had been able to trade for rumors and meager supplies from the woodmen, but not for much – a dwarvish axe was valuable, but those they met possessed little besides the lumber they hewed, and Thorin's company could not eat splinters. They had to be content to part with much for little.

To Kíli, this seemed to be the new pattern of the world. No longer did the promise of Erebor burn like a candle in the velvet black of a deep mine. Neither did the stories that Balin whispered around the fire draw him. In fact, he could barely look at the wise old dwarf, or any of the others with their strong bonds of blood and fellowship. Still less at Thorin.

A dark, bitter seed had taken root between him and his uncle, and though he hated himself for letting it grow, Kíli couldn't bring himself to do away with it. Whenever Kíli's fingers felt the smooth draw of his bow, he remembered the gently teasing voice that had alternately goaded and encouraged him at his unusual choice of weapon. Whenever he let his pipe pass his lips, the smell and shape of it reminded him of its lost twin. It was the empty, cold earth beside him at night. The absence over his shoulder, where always his brother had shadowed his eager step. Guilt and grief crushed Kíli. And though he knew it was unworthy of him, his anger turned outward as well as inward; he wanted someone else to suffer as greatly as himself for every wraith-like reminder that Fíli was not there.

The miles passed, first scrubby vegetation, and then a growing number of thickening trees. Soon they were within a few day's march of Mirkwood, an enormous viridian shadow that filled the entire horizon. Kíli began to feel as though his limbs were moving without him telling them to stretch and bend. His sharp eyes scanned for hidden dangers, but all he saw was dull colors.

"You can't go on like this, laddie," Balin spoke to him across a fire one night.

Bilbo lifted his head from his arms, and looked at them both intently. His comfortable face had grown lean on the journey, his once fine clothes worn and stained with weather. Bofur's stitch work could be recognized on some of the seams.

The old dwarf continued, "You're taking a wound that was already grave and leaving it to fester."

Kíli turned his head sharply, refusing to meet the eyes of the company's counselor. "The wound is already mortal."

Leaning forward, Balin said, "You may feel that all is lost right now, but you still have family remaining, and we would not stand by while you let the ties that remain wither."

Kíli would have had to be a fool not to know that he spoke of Thorin. "And what should I say to him?" Kíli demanded. He threw a branch into the fire, where it exploded with sparks. "That I'm sorry? That all I can think of is that if I had been stronger, I could have pulled him up? That if I –"

"Thorin speaks just like that," Bilbo interrupted, and both dwarves turned to him. The hobbit lowered his voice and spoke in a facsimile of Thorin's deep cadence: "If I had I been more wary and not called a halt in that wretched cave; if I had I made certain they were passed to safety first. If I had taken Fíli up myself'."

Kíli felt clubbed. He asked, "How do you know that?"

The hobbit let his head fall to one side; shrugged. "He talks to me. Maybe because I'm not a dwarf, and he's not my king. He's haunted by the same doubts, Kíli, but it wasn't your fault."

Balin was looking Bilbo with an expression not unlike admiration. Kíli could sense the run of his thoughts; friends could come from strange places. Then he turned back to Kíli. "He's right, lad. It took us all a terrible long time to realize it, but this journey is a battle, and a battle always has causalities. Most of the time there's nothing anyone could have done."

As though to protect his vital organs, and especially his heart, Kíli curled over. "But I feel –"

"I know. But think of what your brother would say if he saw you like this. Fíli was devoted to Thorin, and the bond you two shared was stronger than any I have ever seen. He wouldn't want to see you against one another."

The next morning as they were preparing to move on, Kíli placed himself beside his uncle. Thorin had not spoken much recently, his presence as large as it ever was but much more subdued. He remained still as his nephew stood voluntarily at his shoulder for the first time in many days. The younger dwarf pressed his lips together, feeling the pain of absence more strongly than ever, yet remembering Balin and Bilbo's words. He still had this part of his family.

Looking dead ahead, he murmured, "I do not blame you."

A flinch in the great shoulders, imperceptible to all but one standing right beside him. Thorin turned to look at him, his eyes bright. Without any other words passing between them, he nodded.