IV: Decisions

Harry came to, slowly and painfully. His head still throbbed, and though he no longer felt the trickle of blood running from the cut, there was a nasty gritty feeling which told him there was dust and dirt stuck to the drying blood. His vision was blurred, and his skin was clammy with sweat. Despite all the times he had been told not to over the years, first by Madam Pomfrey, then by Hermione and later Snape as well, he reached a weak hand up to his head to feel the cut. That is to say, he tried to, but before his arm had moved more than a few centimetres from his body, it met resistance.

Raising his head, wincing and squinting, Harry saw by a faint, flickering light that he had been bundled tightly in a blanket, so tightly that there was no leeway for him to wriggle out of it. It was a sign of just how weak he was that he could be bound by a blanket, he realised foggily. He squinted around him, the ache that had settled into his shoulders from the strain of holding up his head, shooting painfully up his neck.

He was surrounded by people, perhaps five or so, who were also covered with blankets, though none looked as tied up as he was, and they all seemed to be fast asleep. Two more were sitting just inside the threshold to the small stone room. They were obviously guarding the entrance, against things coming in, rather than anyone coming out, Harry thought, judging from the way they would from time to time scan the darkness beyond the doorway, though he had no idea of what they thought they would see. One of them, the old man who had tried to talk to Harry earlier, held a staff which gave a small sphere of light, the only light source in the room. He was careful to place it so that it was shielded from the outside by the stone wall. The other was a young man was about twenty-ish by Harry's admittedly slightly hazy reckoning, with long, flowing blond hair. He was wearing a kind of greenish-grey tunic and leggings and looked to Harry more like Robin Hood than anything else, particularly with the quiver of arrows he wore on his back.

Harry felt a sharp stone sticking into his back and shifted pathetically in his cloth prison to find a more comfortable position. But instead of rolling off the stone, Harry ended up shuffling feebly into one of the sleeping men, who woke with a start. Harry swore under his breath as the man threw off his own blanket, looked carefully at Harry's face and placed his hand on Harry's forehead before turning to the old man in the doorway, who had looked up when the man had got up, and calling softly out to him in a strange language that Harry didn't understand.

'Gandalf! He has woken.'

The old man took up his staff and came over, carefully stepping over the sleeping forms of the other men. Harry wasn't sure what to make of him. He wore a long, grey robe and a fraying hat, which conspired with his long beard to make him look rather like Professor Dumbledore fallen on hard times.

'He is feverish, though truly I did not expect a night on a stone floor to do him much good. His eyes are barely focused, and he shivers still. The wound on his head needs cleaning, but whether we can spare the water...He needs rest, in a bed, and an infusion of athelas to clear his head before fever from his wound sets in.'

'Yes, but that will all have to wait. It is barely two hours into the watch, Aragorn, you should rest.'

Harry's eyes flickered from one to the other, searching their faces for any clue about what they might be saying. They were clearly discussing him. Harry had always hated it when people did that, but at the moment he was more worried about the way their voices seemed to swirl around his head, getting alternately louder and softer.

'I will go back to my post,' the old man said, and went quietly back to his spot by the threshold.

The man whom Harry had woken looked down at him with a kindly sort of smile.

'Rest. You will need your strength when we begin marching again.'

Harry didn't know why the man had bothered speaking at all. It wasn't as if Harry had any idea what he was saying, or was capable of replying. But there was something about him, something indefinable, which seemed to communicate without words. The man might have been smelly, dirty and generally wild-looking, but there was something in his face which told Harry that he was also good, wise and honorable. Harry felt himself relax against his better judgement, the tension in his head lessening and relieving some of the aching. He knew shouldn't let his guard down around a stranger merely because he looked like a nice person, particularly in his current state of helplessness. He could just imagine the choice words Snape would have had for him if he'd been there.

The stone was still there, digging into his back, but Harry decided to just grin and bear it, and didn't try moving again. Truth be told, he couldn't summon the strength. Iron-heavy eyelids slid closed, and he drifted off into a turbulent sleep.

This time is was the nice-seeming man who woke Harry. He opened his aching eyes to find the man crouching over him.

'Fuck!' he swore before he could help himself, but what he had thought would be a scream barely came out as groan.

The man frowned down at him, the language barrier not extending to the look of concern on his face. The throbbing in Harry's head seemed to have worsened while he slept, and acutely reminded him that though these people had shown no signs of aggression, and indeed seemed to be worried about him, he had no way of knowing what their motives or allegiances were, not to mention what they planned to do with him. He was completely vulnerable: wandless, out-numbered nine to one and most definitely not at his physical best. No matter how nice they seemed, they weren't his friends, and he couldn't afford to assume anything.

The man frowned slightly, as if sensing Harry's frail guardedness, then leant over him to release him from his blankets, which were as firmly in place as they had been the first time Harry had woken up. Harry raised shaking hands to his head to feel the cut, but the man gently drew them away, then grasped Harry's forearms and pulled him slowly to his feet.

It was a good thing that they were right next to the wall, as Harry's swift change from the horizontal to the vertical resulted in a wave of dizziness that, on top of his feverish migraine, had him swaying, colourful sparkles dancing in front of his eyes. Harry stumbled, his legs unable to support his weight, and fell back into the wall. He closed his eyes, trying to ignore the way his body shook and felt hot and cold at the same time long enough to regain his balance. When he opened them he found the rest of the group, who had been asleep when he'd awoken before, all staring at him curiously.

There were four in particular who caught his eye. They were all less than four feet tall, with curly hair. With his head swimming, and not helped by the faint light, Harry couldn't make out much of their features, but it was clear to him that they weren't men, but children. They could barely be more than ten years old, and short for ten, too.

Harry smiled shakily at the boys, wondering what on earth they were doing hanging around with five armed guards, including a wizard and what looked like a dwarf (despite his height, he certainly wasn't a fifth child, the beard being something of a give-away). They smiled back, then quickly set about packing up their blankets.

Harry looked at his own blanket, clumsily gathered it up and rolled it as the others were doing theirs. It took slightly longer than it should have done due to the shaking in his hands, but he made a neat enough job and handed it back to the man, whose name Harry was beginning to think he really should find out. He was certain he wouldn't last long on his own, and at the very least they could point him in the vague direction of civilization, or whatever passed for civilization around here.

As the man turned away to replace something into a pack, Harry touched his arm to get his attention. He put a hand on his chest and said, 'Harry,' then pointed questioningly at the man.

He had been going for a 'Me Tarzan, you Jane' kind of thing, but obviously the man had never heard of Edgar Rice Burroughs or any of his works, and merely nodded and said 'Hah-ree' back.

Harry smiled wearily, not having the energy to try to explain what he had meant through the medium of gestures and body-language, which the man probably wouldn't understand and he was too weak to pull off anyway.

Once everyone was packed, the wizard called them all over, and there began a conversation in their strange language.

'During the watch, I have decided on our path,' Gandalf told the Company. 'What remains to be seen is what we shall do about our new acquaintance.'

'I would have thought that was clear enough,' replied Boromir, looking slightly confused. 'We will take him with us, of course. Surely we cannot leave him here?'

'Under any other circumstances, I would agree with you, Boromir,' said Legolas, 'but there are more important concerns. We have a mission, one in which we must not fail, and it would be a heavy risk indeed to introduce a stranger into the Company.'

'But we can't leave him!' piped up Pippin, distressed. 'We can't! It was I who found him, so it is my decision, and I say we take him with us.'

'Pippin,' replied Merry, 'it is not your decision. And in any case, you did not find him so much as nearly trample over him.'

'Pippin and Boromir are right,' said Aragorn gravely. 'We cannot just walk away and leave him here alone in the dark, Gandalf, he is ill. That head wound of his is becoming infected, soon a fever will set in.'

'But even if he were hale and healthy, we could not leave him!' said Boromir incredulously. 'Leave a man alone in Moria, to stumble in the darkness until he finds his way into an orcish cookpot?' He sneered at Legolas. 'And I thought elves were said to be kind and good!'

'What-'

'Calm yourselves, Legolas, Boromir,' Gandalf interrupted before they could descend into a shouting match. 'There is a decision to be made, and however distasteful an idea it may be, Legolas is indeed right that taking on a tenth could put our mission in danger of failing. We must now decide if it is worth the risk.' He turned to Frodo, who had been silent throughout the discussion. 'You are the Ringbearer, Frodo, it is for you to decide.'

Frodo looked up at Gandalf, then at Legolas, and finally at Boromir. He cast a quick glance over his shoulder at the stranger, who had collapsed on the stone floor a short distance away, either leaving them to get on with whatever they were doing, or simply too weak to move. How could they explain to him that they were leaving him to die?

'We shall take him with us,' he said, trying to appear more confident than he felt. 'We cannot leave a man to die while it is in our power to save him. It is a risk, but we are nine and he is one; there are more than enough of us to make sure he does not…try anything.'

Frodo was acutely aware that this decision fell to him not merely because he carried the Ring, but because if the man did attempt to take it, he would certainly kill him to do so. He looked up at the wizard. 'We have no right to condemn him to death. We cannot leave him.'

Harry looked around at the strangers getting ready to break camp. They had finished their huddle, but he was still no wiser as to what they had been discussing, or what they intended to do with him. The thought occurred to him that really, the worst case scenario as far as he was concerned was that they wouldn't do anything with him at all – that they'd just go on their merry way and leave him behind to die in the darkness.

But despite all the warnings that he'd been given over the years about trusting people too soon and taking things at face value too readily, Harry didn't think that they would leave him there. The rough-looking man who'd been watching him overnight had a look about him that Harry instinctively trusted. Maybe it was the kindness in his expression, or the concern he'd expressed for Harry's condition, or maybe he just looked honest. The other big guy had given him a few encouraging looks too; he seemed more ordinary but still earnest and well-intentioned. The Dumbledore-ish one had a benevolent smile that made him look every inch the universal-grandfather that the Professor himself had always seemed. The dwarf seemed friendly enough, and the boys, but Harry got the firm impression that the blonde Robin Hood didn't like him.

Maybe it wasn't dislike per se, but Harry was getting a definite feeling of… disapproval from him. Disapproval and pity. Harry didn't like being felt sorry for at the best of times, and he liked it less when he was feeling this weak. The thought that his current condition may actually work in his favour in garnering sympathy and aid from this strange group of travellers made him feel faintly revolted.

He was probably reading into his vague impressions far too much, but in the absence of verbal communication all he had to go on was what body-language and facial expressions were visible in the weak light. Snatches of Snape's oft-heard rant about his lack of observational skills and general unsubtle tendencies floated through his aching brain, making him doubt his first impressions. Not that there was anything he could do about it in this situation.

Having shouldered his pack, the kind-looking man had turned back to where Harry was slumped on the floor, leaning against the hard stone wall. He gave an encouraging grin that Harry returned weakly, and stuck out a hand to help him up. Harry grasped it gratefully, but for the second time that morning – if it was morning, it was impossible to tell– Harry found his knees unwilling to support his weight and promptly sagged back onto the wall.

The man turned back to the rest of the group and called out to them, softly, but loud enough to get their attention. The group came together in a second close huddle while Harry slid down the wall to sprawl once again on the stone floor.

'There is a problem with the stranger,' Aragorn informed the Company. 'He cannot stand. He is as he was last night, if not worse. Sleep has not aided his condition. He cannot stand, I am certain he will not be fit to walk.'

'So you see, Legolas!' cried Boromir. 'He can be of no danger to the Company: he cannot stand, he cannot walk and he cannot speak. Though if you wish to be entirely sure that betrayal is impossible, we could yet put out his eyes so that he may not mark our path and send enemies after us.'

Legolas did not respond, but looked away, clenching and un-clenching his jaw as if eating back the words he wanted to say.

'I thought we had agreed the lad is to come with us,' said Gimli, breaking the silence. 'If he cannot walk, we shall have to carry him. I see no need for further delay; we ought to have been underway by now.'

With that, Gimli went back to his pack and heaved it onto his broad shoulders. The rest of the Company gave each other uneasy looks before following the dwarf's example and separating to set their packs to rights in preparation for leaving the guardroom.

Aragorn motioned for Boromir to come over to where he stood over Harry's slumped and somewhat delirious form. The two men, being roughly the same height – Aragorn being the taller by a few inches – reached down and lifted Harry so that one arm went over each of their shoulders. They found that Harry's lean form weighed very little, for which they were glad as it would certainly make the day's march more comfortable. The man's feet trailed slightly on the stone floor, but it would have been much worse had Harry been taller, and they considered it good enough to be going on with.

And so it was that a semi-coherent Harry found himself being hauled out of the guardroom and into the vast demesnes of Moria, slung unceremoniously between the two great men of the Company.