Author's Note: So, I wrote about six different version of this chapter. I don't think anything's ever given me any more trouble. And it's the last chapter, too. Thank you for reading/reviewing.
"It was when the tail knocked me down, I think," muttered Ranka,"I haven't - I don't want to look. Is it bad?"
"I'm, ah, not an expert when it comes to this sort of thing - I can't tell," Nori said, not being strictly honest "But we need to find help. There are plenty of farmhouses on the other side of the ridge. We'll go to one of them."
Ranka nodded and tried to take a step away from the river, but she stumbled and Nori had to grab her arm to steady her.
"I don't think I can," Ranka said, managing a small, rueful smile "You go to one of the farms and bring help back."
This was, Nori knew, the logical thing to do. But he wasn't going to do it. He couldn't.
"I'm not going to leave you here."
Ranka laughed, a harsh, rough laugh that made her gasp for breath. It made Nori flinch away from her, and frightened him almost as much as his one quick look at the...the cut in her side had.
"What can happen to me here? The dragon's dead, remember?"
Anything. Anything can happen.
"Don't argue," Nori said "Look, I think if you let me help you, we'll be able to get back up to the ridge."
Ranka hesitated, but at last she nodded and slipped her arm across Nori's shoulders, allowing him to gingerly support her.
"The sword?" she asked, looking at the weapon which still lay on the blood stained grass by the dead dragon.
"Leave it."
When they'd walked down to the river early in the morning, it hadn't taken them more than an hour to reach the bottom of the slope. The journey back up was much more difficult.
They stumbled over tree roots and tripped over rocks, and with each fall, Nori could feel Ranka getting weaker. She kept her hand pressed tightly to her left side, and Nori watched the blood well up under her fingers and knew that the bleeding wasn't going to stop of its own accord.
They'd paused about halfway up the slope to bandage the wound as best they could with Ranka's only spare tunic, but Nori had a nasty feeling that this had done very little to stem the flow of blood.
He didn't quite know what the sharp spikes on the dragon's tail had ripped open inside of Ranka, but he was starting to wonder if perhaps the injury was even more serious than he'd at first guessed.
At one point, Nori spotted a clump of plants with dark, flat leaves growing at the foot of a pine tree. He wrenched them out of the ground and held them out to Ranka.
"A friend, Oin, told me about these. They can help to clean the wound."
To Nori's annoyance, Ranka shook her head.
"No," she said, stubbornly "No herbs."
"Ranka," Nori began, beginning to feel very desperate, "if any dirt or grime gets into that- that cut, then...it'll be dangerous."
"Isn't it already?" said Ranka, laughing that harsh, barking laugh again "No herbs."
Nori sighed and nodded, but tucked the leaves into one pocket.
"We'd better move on, then," he said.
Hours passed, although Nori had no way of knowing for exactly how long the two of them had been walking for. They staggered and stumbled on, bruised and battered, and leaving a trail of blood, that rolled in droplets off Ranka's hands and dripped onto the ground behind them.
As they neared the ridge, Ranka stumbled and fell, this time rolling several feet down the slope before coming to a halt, panting and gasping in pain. Nori helped her to her feet, but didn't dare to let go of her in case she fell again.
"Use the leaves," he said, bluntly, noting that Ranka was now covered in pine needles and dirt "If the wound wasn't dirty from the start, it will be now."
"No!"
Nori felt a surge of anger - of irritation that he seemed to be more concerned about Ranka's injury than she was herself. Or maybe she was still lying to herself - telling herself that this was what heroes did.
The bright light of the afternoon was already fading into the deep blue of evening as reached the top of the ridge, and stood looking down at the rocky hillside that stretched out beneath them. Nori could see the nearest farm - a small cluster of dark shapes miles away, and his heart sank as soon as he realized how far away it was.
"Nori," said Ranka, her tone oddly placid, "how long do you think it will take us to get to that farm?"
"Oh, an hour," Nori lied "Two at most."
In order to get down the hillside, they would have to clamber over a series of large rocks - a task which would hadn't even been terribly easy on their way up. Nori went first, jumping off the first rock and landing with a slight sideways stumble on a clear patch of ground beneath it.
"Come on. Jump and I'll catch you," he called up to Ranka, before seeing her hesitate and guessing why "Look, if it was me who was hurt, I'd be asking you to catch me, alright?"
Ranka nodded and jumped, slipping awkwardly down the rockface, and leaving a streak of blood across it as she went. Nori caught her clumsily, feeling a stab of agony in his hurt shoulder as he did so, and heard her yelp in pain as he touched her left side by accident.
"There," he said, steadying her "Only...oh, about thirty rocks left..."
They picked their way along in silence, sliding and slipping from rock to rock. Every so often, one of them would lose their balance and fall, crashing painfully against the hard ground or the next rock.
The last time that this happened, they were about halfway down, and Ranka, who had been the one to fall, didn't even try to get up again. Instead, she dragged herself across the ground until her back was to the nearest rock, and leaned against it.
"I think, Nori, I'd like to try the herbs, now," she said, quietly.
Nori knelt down beside her and pulled the leaves out of his pocket. Remembering what Oin had told him, he stuffed them into his mouth and chewed for a few moments, before spitting them back out again into a ball of green mush onto the palm of his hand.
"Lift up your tunic, again."
Ranka nodded and tried to tug the cloth away from the wound, but during their journey it had become...stuck.
Ranka looked at Nori for a moment, and then pulled her knife out of its sheathe and, after taking a deep breath, began to slash at the fabric, cutting the tunic away from her skin.
From her grimaces of pain, Nori guessed that she was cutting her own flesh just as much as she was cutting the cloth, but after a few minutes of work, Ranka succeeded in being able to expose the wound.
Nori had tried to brace himself for seeing it again, but the sight of the torn and bloodied flesh still made him feel decidedly sick. He gritted his teeth and began to press the chewed bits of leaf against the gash, trying not to look too closely at it.
Ranka didn't scream, but she put her hand against her mouth and bit down on it hard, until fresh blood ran down across her wrist. Nori tried not to look at her face until he'd finished and had rebound the wound in the remains of the spare tunic.
"I don't think I can go any farther tonight," said Ranka, resting her head on the rock and looking up at the sky.
No stars, Nori noticed, in a disconnected fashion.
"Ranka, we have to keep going."
"We can wait 'til the morning, surely," Ranka said, looking up at him sharply.
Go on. Tell me. Tell me I might not last that long.
Nori sighed and sat down beside her, resting his shoulder against hers. He was tired of running, anyway.
"Don't...don't go anywhere," he said, because he couldn't make himself say what he wanted to.
"I won't."
Little lies could make the truth easier to face. But you could trap yourself in a web of lies, and they could kill you.
"Any Miner's Rhyme for me?" Nori asked.
He heard a slight rustle as Ranka turned her head towards him, and felt her breath come in short, hot puffs against his cheek.
"Not got any left," Ranka said, her voice very quiet and the words indistinct "All gone in the blood."
Nori looked down and saw that she was right. The blood that had soaked through Ranka's tunic - that was even now soaking through to Nori's own skin - had blotted out the embroidered sayings.
"What do you think might have happened if things had gone differently?" he asked, after a few moments.
That wasn't exactly what Nori had meant to say, but he could tell from the way that Ranka raised her eyebrows that she'd understood.
"We'd have been miserable, Nori," she said, softly "Absolutely miserable."
"We might not have been. We might have been happy."
Ranka didn't answer, and Nori realized that exhaustion and blood loss had taken their toll and that she was asleep. Her breathing was so shallow and uneven that he found himself counting the time between each breath, and waiting for the next one.
He looked at Ranka's pale face, and he looked at her fair hair, now streaked with mud and grime and blood, and spread across the rock face behind her. And so Nori sat there beside her, counting her breaths until, much to his own surprise, he fell asleep.
But even in his dreams, he must have kept counting her breaths, because when he woke up, he was still doing it.
Which is why it only took him seven seconds to realize what was wrong. He opened his eyes and sat up, sore and aching all over and looked at Ranka.
She was still sitting there beside him, with her mouth slightly open and her eyes closed. There were tear tracks running through the lair of grime on her cheeks.
He hadn't noticed that she'd been crying.
Nori slowly lifted his hand and touched his friend's neck, waiting for a moment before lowering it again. He got to his feet and stretched, feeling his sore limbs complain and picked up his pack. He left Ranka's with her, and started down the hillside.
Before he'd reached the bottom, he met a group of farmers who had heard the noise of the battle, and had come to investigate. He pointed them in the right direction, and gave them a few instructions.
Then Nori moved on.
But when he met Thorin Oakenshield a few weeks later, and was given the chance to go on yet another adventure, Nori agreed at once. He agreed because he was told that his brothers were going, and he agreed because of Erebor.
But he also agreed to come because of Ranka.
When your kingdom has been destroyed and your people killed by a certain dragon, you hardly need another reason for wanting revenge.
But Nori had another reason, now, nevertheless.