7: The Last of the Royal Women

The wounded Orc groaned and writhed.

Dís felt as if the necklace of fangs were a living thing that constricted her throat. Her voice was hoarse: "Why didn't you just kill it?"

Tauriel stared. "Her, not it."

It. A bitch-Orc was an it – a monster, a beast, like the Wargs its kind rode into battle. "Why didn't you kill it?" the Dwarf repeated. She was shaking.

The Elf did not reply at once. She muttered something to the nurse, and then pointed to the creature's wounds.

"They were starting to flay her; they'd hacked off the right breast."

"Is that not what Orcs do to Elf-women?"

"Our field-surgeon seared the stump. But the left… An arrow. They'd ripped it out before I reached her. The skin was too spoiled for their use."

The flesh had suppurated, the black blood streaked with yellow. As Tauriel examined it, the creature moaned and whimpered. Dís remembered her aunt.

No.

Not like Thora.

Not like a Dwarf. Not her kin.

It was an Orc.

– Aye, but a young one, a mere girl, Kíli's age or younger.

No. Not like Kíli. Not like Fíli, or Frerin, or Thora – the young and beautiful ones whom she had lost…

"Why didn't you kill her?"

Tauriel glanced up from the wound. "I know what you think. Orcs slaughtered my family, too: I hated them. But I used to hate Dwarves…"

"It's not the same!" she hissed. "Why –?"

"– Because I couldn't save your sons!" the Elf snapped. She half-closed her eyes, as if the better to recall the scene. "It was in the rout – Lake-men were on top of them, frenzied. Women. That was what I saw. Not their race. Women. Like me. Like you. Stripped, raped, butchered women."

"The skin…" Dís recalled Bofur's warning about the Lake-men's leather.

"For the tattoos. The warriors scarify, but the noblewomen have tattoos. To Men, it adds value to their hides."

Among the Dwarves, it was only the men who were tattooed, to indicate their lineage and prowess in war. If the Orcs and Goblins had not attacked when they did… Dís pushed that thought aside.

"Who is she, then, if you say she's high-born?" Though Mahal knew what that meant among Orcs: they were all low, as far as she was concerned.

"Aiyurug of Gundabad, last daughter of Azog and Bolgana, his queen."

The Orc murmured in recognition.

Dís steeled herself. That house was responsible for the near-destruction of her family. Thrór, Frerin, Fíli, Kíli… Thráin's mind; Thorin's wounds…

"Our healing spells have little strength on her kind. It's strange: some say they were once our kin. They must be 'too corrupted' now, I suppose. We dressed the skinned parts with spider-silk – all those vermin are good for." Indeed, on close inspection, the crusting over much of the Orc's torso had formed upon the translucent mesh of webs. "The venom numbs pain, and, since the flesh heals beneath it, it lessens scarring. We used it for burns on the Laketown folk – but then, our powers worked on them, too. But it can't be used when the wound isn't clean." Tauriel looked at her. "Is there nothing you can think of?"

She wanted to say, Kill her. Cut her throat.

But the agony in Aiyurug's wine-red, slanted eyes was too familiar.

Smother her, she wanted to say.

But the ruined young body stirred the dead to life, against her instinctive revulsion. Thora in the baggage-wagon; Frerin and Thorin, stretched out in tents on two very different battlefields, one dying, one clinging to life (once she'd got that interfering Wizard out of the way)… And searching in vain for her sons among the wounded as they were carried in for tending within the Front Gate. Finding them dead, broken beyond all healing…

"Fomentations – Yes, perhaps… And this is not the best season for them, but maggots – Aye – Maggots devour bad flesh, and leave the sound whole."

"Maggots?" the Elf nurse exclaimed, and, shaking her head, muttered something to the Tauriel, who translated. "That disgusts her. We don't keep such things."

"Try the Lake-men's victuallers. If not – the hot knife." She addressed the nurse directly. "Is that wine you have? Give it here, with the linen. That will have to serve for now."

She began to bathe Aiyurug's wound, gently but firmly trying to ease out what she could of the pus. She felt her body tense, the narrowed eyes fixed intently on hers, the fanged mouth compressed with pain.

The arrow had caught her at an angle, under the arm – glancing off the edge of her cuirass to pierce the pectoral muscle and the breast. The wound-track had been opened up when it had been wrenched out. It was a wonder she had not bled to death where she lay, but then, if Orcs were, indeed, once of Elvenkind…

"You've done this before," Tauriel observed.

"Too often. I was at Azanulbizar, long before the Field of Dale. And Óin and Högni have taught me more: the wounds in my brother's chest and back –"

"For a woman, I mean."

"When I was very young. When Smaug came. My aunt… She was just a girl herself. I helped tend her."

"Did she live?"

"No."

A long silence followed, broken only by the grunting breathing of the Orc.

"I'm sorry."

Dís answered bitterly: "Too late for that."

"We should have helped you, but the king forbade us all…"

"Done's done." She sighed. "Strange: when I think of her now, she seems more like a daughter to me. Always young, beautiful. Just like my lads: I'll never see them with grey hair and long beards."

"They were fine young men. Brave warriors."

"Aye."

"Kíli… I… It wasn't what – what they're saying. We were friends. We talked, when he was my prisoner. I realised we were… alike."

"I hope not!" She half-smiled. "Half my grey hairs come from that lad, the rest from the Eikinskjaldi! Fíli was never any trouble."

"I mean – he taught me to see people as themselves: not as Elf, or Dwarf."

"– Or Orc?" She finished bandaging Aiyurug's armpit and breast, and settled her gently back on the sacks.

Tauriel bowed her head. "Hard. So hard. They killed my family…"

"And mine."

"Dwarf-scum…" the Orc whispered, and Dís realised that she was lucid enough to have understood what they were saying. "Dwarf-scum…killed my grandfather, father, brothers. And Men did this… Me, mother, sisters…"

"Orc-filth killed my grandfather, my brother, my sons," said Dís. "They half-killed my other brother, too. And Men killed my husband."

Aiyurug's right hand reached up feebly. For a moment, it crossed the Dwarf's mind that she was going to try to choke her with the necklace fashioned from her people's fangs. But no. She simply touched it, held it.

"Same. Same," she repeated. "Dead give you strength: why we eat the flesh." She made a grimace. "Same. Sister," she said; then, looking towards Tauriel: "Blood sister."

Dís searched for the right words. "You need to rest – child."

Tauriel spoke in Elvish to the nurse, who, glancing warily at Dís, nodded in agreement. She held a phial to the Orc's lips. She drank, and quickly began to sink into sleep, snoring like one of Dáin's battle-swine.


The Lady of Erebor gathered her cloak about her. The captain led her back upstairs, leaving the last of the royal women of Gundabad in the care of her nurse. She was glad to get out of the crypt: she had spent too much time among tombs, and she felt unsteady on her feet.

"Can she not be moved somewhere more comfortable? A proper bed?"

"A bed, yes, perhaps, but… She prefers the dark. It's like a cave. Orcs aren't like us in that respect, more like…"

"More like Dwarves?"

The Elf flinched and changed the subject. "I can give you some lengths of spider-silk, if your brother has any need of it for his wounds."

"Thank you. He's healing well, but there are still one or two raw places. And our cousin Óin Gróin's-son and Högni Helgi's-son would be glad of it for some of the other wounded."

"It would be an honour," said Tauriel. "I'll arrange it before you leave. Your brother proved himself a – a great hero."

"He always has been; no more proof was needed. But you've no idea how pleasing it is to hear from an Elf…"

She smiled sadly. "I saw him struck down – and rise again, to fight on. How he did so, with so many hurts – all red and gold he was, blood and armour, as the sun was setting red and gold… Your sons were beside him. All of them fighting, all of them taking so many blows… I'd almost reached them – almost – but… I, too, fell. And that's how… why…" She faltered, then continued:

"By the time I woke, the sun was rising. The princes had gone – your brother also – but whether alive or dead, I'd no way of knowing. I used spells to staunch my own wounds, and my shirt to bind them, and joined the pursuit.

"Orcs and Goblins were fleeing on Warg-back or on foot, some slaughtering their own in panic. The Lake-men were picking over the wounded and dying – robbing and murdering. That was when I found

"Two of the princesses were already dead, mutilated. The queen was being held down. I heard her bellowing in pain, while they hacked at the youngest girl. I still had my sword, so I charged, claiming them as captives of King Thranduil. The Men ran." She laughed wryly. "They must have thought me mad – some half-naked Elf shrieking and waving a sword.

"I knew I couldn't get both to safety. Queen Bolgana was a mighty creature, an Orc beauty, I suppose. Too heavy for me to lift alone, and I'd no horse. I dressed her wounds with what was left of her clothes, and wrapped a Man's cloak about her. I left her my ration of lembas bread and my water-flask. There's been no news; she must be dead. The girl – Aiyurug – I carried back to camp. It reopened my own hurts – they bled into hers, and hers into mine, red blood and black. We collapsed together in the surgeon's tent."

"But you hate Orcs."

Tauriel quickened her pace through the cloister. "Before I came to know your kinsmen, I thought Dwarves brutish, greedy, ugly."

"Much as I thought of Elves!" Dís countered, trying to keep up. "But Men… Nothing you have said surprises me about Men."

The Elf slowed , then paused. "What did befall your husband?"

"Ah. It was a long time ago."

"Even so. Kíli never spoke of him. He spoke of you and of the king."

"He was a babe in arms then. Kali Kol's-son was my man's name. He was golden-haired and handsome, like Fíli. And he was a great smith. People said he was second only to my brother, since my grandfather died, and my father… Well, one day, some lord in Gondor commissioned a sword from him – and such a sword! A serpent's body incised and inlaid with gold wire on the blade, with the hilt being its head, banded within green gold with eyes of tourmaline."

"I would have liked to see that!"

"Your king could have afforded it – you couldn't. I saw him spend weeks, months over the making of it. Then he rode away to deliver it. He never came back."

"How? Why?"

"We heard later that the nobleman disputed the price. Kali told him that such craftsmanship didn't come cheap, and that they had agreed the cost in the contract. The lord said this was what Men expect of Dwarves: a grasping, gold-hungry race, ever cheating and stealing from Tall Folk. So he tested the blade on my husband. Seven times."

Tauriel winced.

Dís continued: "The Steward of Gondor, who was decent enough, and wanted no trouble from my brother, got the blood-price for him, and sent it to us from Minas Tirith. But Kali Kol's-son lies in the West, in earth, not in stone, and far from his sons and from me. His death had no glory in it."

"And that's why your brother…?"

"Aye. He became their second father. Perhaps that was a mistake: his loyalty, his duty – it kept him from raising a family of his own. Perhaps. I'm not sure. Nothing seems sure, now."

The Elf shrugged. "Another time, Aiyurug and I would have slit each other's throat without a second thought. I might even have killed you. These times are not as they were."


They rejoined Thranduil and Balin in the hall. The latter was in an even more amiable mood than usual, since Thranduil had been plying him with mead, and reminiscences of the old days – evading the sensitive subject of Smaug's sack of Erebor.

"You've been a long time, cousin! So what manner of creature is this hostage?" Then he noticed her expression: he had not seen her look so ashen since the days and nights when Thorin's life had hung in the balance, immediately after the battle.

"'Creature'? Yes, 'creature'. You might say 'maiden'," she said, "though I doubt the Lake-men left her so… Aiyurug Azog's-daughter."

Balin's cup clattered to the floor. "A-a-an Orc? Durin's Beard and Mahal's Hammer!"

Tauriel bowed. "Sire, we've discussed measures that may be taken for her care – not entirely without hope, the Lady Dís thinks."

"Hmm…," said Thranduil, stretching languidly as a cat. "As I warned, we have indeed a quandary. But how do we resolve it?"

"Has Bard said what he intends to do with her?" Balin asked.

The king shrugged. "Men seem to have vivid imaginations about such things. He'll do whatever he thinks will make him popular. Anything from enslavement to execution."

"My lord," interjected Tauriel, "if she's handed over to the Lake-men, she'll die, whatever he does."

"But she's an Orc," the old Dwarf insisted.

Dís gestured him to be silent. "She's a king's daughter – as am I. It would set a dangerous precedent – very dangerous – to let her be ill-used further, especially by one who styles himself 'king'."

Thranduil drummed his fingers on the granite arm of his throne. "Very true. But unfortunately, this leaves me quite empty-handed: nothing to trade with Bard for your Arkenstone. You see the problem."

"No. You'll still earn your gemstones," said Dís.

"How?"

"I have another proposal. It requires little from you, save your presence."

Thranduil raised an eyebrow. "Oh?"

"We should feast together, soon, at Erebor, with our new neighbour, Bard, and discuss it then, together."

"With your brother?"

"He's not strong enough yet, I think, but… I've spent too long around the dead and wounded of late. Too much death, too much pain. I need cheer. And with it, I fancy, we all may be in better humour to do business. What do you think, Balin Fundin's-son?"

He nodded. "That seems a grand idea: food, wine, bargaining. I don't think any Dwarf could object."

"Certainly not Dáin Ironfoot," said Thranduil. "What will you do with him?"

"He's family. Let him stuff himself like one of his pigs. And then he can watch and learn," said Dís.


But she was silent all the ride back to Erebor. Balin did not know what to say to her. To throw away a chance to regain the Arkenstone, and for what? The life of an Orc. Or was it, he wondered, that she did not trust Thranduil to keep his side of the bargain? Yes, he told himself, that made more sense. Thranduil could easily have traded the Orc wench for the stone and then kept it or, perhaps worse, given it to Dáin, despite his words. He was playing all sides against each other. Granted, he had been generous enough to return the Orcrist to Thorin, but that was by no means as precious as the Heart of the Mountain…


"That stinks of forest and spiders!" grumbled the king. He was leaning against the gaming table, facing his sister, while Óin applied pieces of spider-silk to the raw places that remained on his side and shoulder. "Reminds me too much of getting entangled!"

"And, no doubt, too much of the Hobbit getting us untangled," his kinsman observed.

"Aye – and how falsely he's played us since!"

"Did the Elves advise you how long to leave it on?" Óin asked Dís.

"Till the skin has healed underneath," she said. "They used it on some of the Laketown people, and on their hostage."

"And did you find out who that was?"

"Aiyurug Azog's-daughter. The last of the Gundabad royal house."

Óin blinked in incredulity, more owlish than ever. "Did I hear that aright?"

"Thranduil is keeping a bitch-Orc?" Thorin recoiled in disgust. "Where? In his bed?"

Dís shook her head. "In an old burial crypt. She's but a young lass, and cruelly wounded. I tended her a little while."

"An Orc? For Mahal's sake, why? No-one gives them quarter! And after all they've done to us – Have you gone soft in the head, sister?"

She shook her head. The Orc-fangs about her neck rattled. "Tall Folk raped and slew her mother and sisters. They'd started skinning her. Her hurts – like Aunt Thora's…"

"Don't you even think – She's not to be named in the same breath! Not in –" He started to cough, his whole body shaking.

"Calm yourself, cousin!" said Óin. "Calm yourself! Your lung's healing well; don't tear anything! Deep breath, slowly… That's it…"

"It was Captain Tauriel who saved her," Dís said.

"Kíli's Elf?"

"She'd wanted to help you and the lads. She couldn't, so she… I think she must have felt that she had to save someone. So as not to feel… powerless – useless."

"But an Orc?" He waved his hand dismissively.

"Thorin, if the Orcs hadn't come down, and we had fought the Tall Folk…"

"What?"

"The Men could have raped me. And they take the skin for the tattoos: they would have flayed my children alive – or you, if you'd skin enough left whole!"

The king glowered, wordless, for a while.

"Thorin, there have been too many dead children. Women – girls. Is that how men of any race should use any woman, king's daughter or no? Where's the honour in that? There is none."

"No," he said grimly. "Because it is war."

She crumpled against the table, her head in her hands.

The King's-Table pieces stood between them on the table: the carved warriors biting their shields; amid them, the king, enthroned, at the centre of the board.

"I know what it is to be 'the last of the royal women', Thráin's-son Thrór's-son."

Still grim-faced, he stretched out a hand and stroked her hair. He remembered standing with her, chilled to the bone, in the rain beside the road, watching their father lay the top stone on his sister's cairn. "You must bear yourself as a queen: you're the last of the royal women now. Never forget," he had told her. Such a tiny slip of a girl she had been, hair black as a raven's wing (he had sometimes called her "Black Crow", in jest), but she had straightened her back and proudly lifted her head… That head was, indeed, greyer now than it had been when they left Ered Luin this past spring. But through all those years, she had never forgotten; had never failed him, nor betrayed him, as others had done.

She was as exhausted as himself, he realised. All she had done, all she had sacrificed, had been in the hope that Fíli would be king in turn, with Kíli his trusted right-hand, as Frerin should have been his. And now…

A blood-debt. Life for life: his own, the lads…

"Because it is war," he said quietly, "as the Tall Folk wage it. But that is not how we wage war." He turned to Óin: "If you think he can be spared, send Högni Helgi's-son to Thranduil's encampment, to tend the wench. Let him tell the Elven King that Durin's Folk do not torture women, nor will see them traded like beasts. Thus commands the King Under the Mountain."

Dís gazed up at him, and made as if to speak.

"Don't thank me. For what now can Thranduil trade for the Arkenstone?" he asked bleakly.

"We don't need Thranduil," she said, trying to recover her composure. "We trade directly with Bard. We give him what he really wants."

"My head?" He forced a smile. "Having come so nigh to losing it, I'd hoped to keep it another century."

"No, she said. "Not yours." Then, as if turning to a happier subject: "How is your harp-practice faring?"

To be continued


Notes:

1. Aiyurug (Moonlight). The real-world Aiyurug, or Khutulun (All-White), was a Mongol warrior-princess, niece of Kublai Khan. A formidably strong young woman, she reputedly challenged all would-be suitors to wrestle her. A later version of her story changed the wrestling contests into riddles, and became Turandot (derived from an epithet meaning 'Daughter of Asia').

2. Bulugan Khatun, or Queen Bolgana – another Mongol name, and it seemed apt for Azog's wife, as the source of their son Bolg's name.

3. "Black Crow" – author's family joke here. My great-great-grandmother's sister Cairistìona was nicknamed "am fitheach dubh" because of her black hair.