Chapter 10: All Hail to the Days
The mountain passes were closed, but that was of little concern for the two elves who were traveling east over Caradhras, moving quick and fleetfooted over the deep drifts. The snow had been packed hard by the driving winds, and the elves were dressed in layers and warm cloaks, well suited to the foul weather.
Night was approaching. It would soon be the shortest day of the year, and darkness came early. A small hollow in the craggy slopes, not deep enough to be called a cave, assured them that they would at least survive until dawn.
"You start a fire," Elladan said. "I'll keep watch."
Elrohir made a face. "As if it's worth the bother. We haven't caught so much as the scent of a goblin since we left home."
He tugged on one of Elrohir's braids. "Nevertheless."
Elrohir knelt to the ground and began rummaging through his pack. He had been collecting pine needles and bits of dried bark when they were still below the tree line, and they had brought as much dry wood as they could carry. "Toss me your tinderbox."
Elladan obliged. "Lost yours again, brother?"
"No. It's just buried somewhere at the bottom of all this." He shoved the tangle of clothes, wrapped food, and weapons gear back into his pack.
"You should keep your things more carefully."
Elrohir started packing down snow, making a windbreak for his little pile of firewood. It was labor made rote by endless repetition; his idle thoughts began drifting homeward, to Imladris. "We could be sitting beside father in the halls, in front of a roaring hearth." He chivvied the scattered sparks into a sad little flame. "With Lindir playing his harp and singing all the old midwinter tunes."
"Don't," Elladan said, not turning around. It was an old argument, and he was sick of hearing it.
But Elrohir persisted. "Father would have Estel curled up beside him, and the little lad would be watching everything with those eyes of his, all wide and wondering. He's just a child, for all he thinks he's a warrior." A swirling gust of wind drove snow and flecks of ice into the quiet air underneath the overhang. The flame flickered and went out. "Why did we ever leave home?"
"You know why we left," Elladan said. "What makes this winter different from any other?"
"We didn't have Estel before. He doesn't understand why we do it. The hunting. Why we're gone for months and months at a time. " Elrohir sat back and made a small noise of satisfaction as the wood began to smoke, another small flame cracking amid the careful pile of tinder. This one stubbornly refused to go out. "He wanted to come with us, you know. Wanted to go on an adventure."
"Brave lad," Elladan said. For the first time there was a trace of regret in his voice: sadness, resignation. He stepped further into the shelter of the overhang, toward the warmth of the fire. Elrohir was feeding it branches, piece by broken piece. "Oh, curse it all, you're right," he said. "There's no point in keeping watch. There's not a goblin left in these mountains." He settled down on the ground, wrapping an arm around his brother's shoulders. "What happened to them?"
Elrohir hummed thoughtfully. He was softer than his brother in some ways, quieter and more even-tempered, but he had the greater share of Lord Elrond's foresight. "They left," he said, brushing his fingers against the cold stone of the mountainside. "In great haste, and armed for war. I do not think they will be coming back."
"Good. Though I would have liked the pleasure of killing a few of them myself."
The wind howled, and far down in some bleak rocky valley a warg howled back. Elladan tensed, and then relaxed: only one of the creatures. A warg would not hunt or kill alone. No doubt it too was searching for shelter, or for the pack it had lost.
"I think of her often, this time of year," Elrohir said, a little later. He leaned away from the warmth of the fire, letting his head fall onto Elladan's shoulder. Outside of their little overhang, the darkness was complete. "She loved it so. The singing, and the decorations. The miruvor. Do you remember how she and father used to dance?"
"Why must you speak of such things?"
"I would rather remember her like that," Elrohir said. "Better to think of her dancing then captured in the mountains, alone but for—well."
"And that is the difference between us, for I can think of nothing else," Elladan said. Indeed, he was thinking of it even as he spoke; his hands tightened against Elrohir's shoulder, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise. It was unconsciously done, but Elrohir still reached up and forcibly loosened his grip.
"You're hurting me," he said.
Elladan drew back hastily. "Oh. I didn't mean to."
"You never do. If we want to hunt," Elrohir said, "we must go further east. Across the mountains."
"How far east?"
Elrohir closed his eyes, reached out in some inexpressible way into the earth and air around him. "Hundreds of miles," he said. "To another mountain, standing alone. There will be a great battle there on midsummer's day. I see—" he took a sharp breath, "—I see smoke rising from the slopes, and a town razed to the ground."
"The Lonely Mountain, and Dale of old beneath it. Have the dwarves reclaimed it, then? Is the dragon dead?"
Elrohir opened his eyes. "I do not know. I could see nothing but the smoke. If we wish to hunt, though, that is the place for it. All of Ered Mithrin will be emptied."
Elladan made a noise than sounded halfway to a growl. "Good."
"Father will miss us," Elrohir said. "It is a long journey. We may not come back."
But he already knew that his brother would not care about that. Elladan was not one to fret about their chances of death by the sword in the midst of war. It was capture that he feared, and helplessness, and a long slow fading like Celebrían's—like their mother who had once been laughing and strong, her hair as bright as quicksilver. No matter what Elladan thought, Elrohir remembered all too well the way she had looked when they found her at last in these very mountains.
There was a reason that the sons of Elrond spent their winters hunting goblins.
"So be it," Elladan said, just as Elrohir had known that he would. And then, perhaps still conscious of the small crescent bruises blossoming under the sleeve of Elrohir's tunic, he leaned in once more and said: "Happy Turuhalmë, brother."
Elrohir thought of Estel, and of their father, and the warmth and laughter that would be filling the halls of Imladris. "Happy Turuhalmë," he said, softly.
He watched through all the long night, as his lonely fire burned down to ashes and the darkness closed in. There was no wood left. But they were together, and they would not freeze.
By dawn there was indeed smoke rising from Dale, as Elrohir had seen in his vision. But for now it was only the ordinary sort, wood smoke curling up from stone and mud chimneys, a good strong scent that lingered in the lungs and promised warmth behind closed doors. Bilbo had grown used to the acrid dusty smell of the coal fires that heated the upper levels of Erebor, and the change was a welcome one. He breathed in deep, and let the chilly air fill his lungs.
More than a month had passed since the battle, and life was settling down into the inevitable routine of survival. The gnawing cold and hunger were endurable only because there was a promised end in sight; spring would come, as sure as anything. The frigid nights would grow shorter, and the thick dark ice that had frozen over the River Running would weaken and melt away.
But until then the lean months loomed bleak and barren in front of them. Consequently, Bilbo spent a great deal of time in the kitchens, and in Thorin's chambers, which were the coziest parts of the mountain; he remembered all too well the miserable days of the Fell Winter, which had almost starved the hobbits out of the Shire when he was little more than child. When he had to venture out, he wore an absurd number of layers, including a thick fur coat that Thorin had thrown at him one day, along with a sharp "Stop shivering, Master Burglar. You make me feel cold every time I look at you."
It had not escaped Bilbo's notice that Thorin spent a great deal of time doing just that. Looking at him, that is, not shivering; Thorin was too dignified to shiver, at least when people might see him. But ever since Dain had returned to the Iron Hills, leaving more than half his army behind, it had become apparent that Thorin spent more time with Bilbo than anyone else in Erebor. Indeed, the depth of the king's favor was so undeniable that even the stodgiest and least welcoming of dwarves had no choice but to reluctantly accept Bilbo into their midst.
For the lords and advisers that had decided to stay in Erebor rather than returning to the Iron Hills with Dain, it was a question of survival, a rule of propinquity. Thorin had neither the time nor the patience to listen to their slew of suggestions, requests, and complaints, but Bilbo did—and Thorin listened to Bilbo as he did no one else. Suddenly, befriending the hobbit was considered a very sensible thing to do. Bilbo tolerated it well enough, though he spent a great deal of time complaining to Thorin, who usually ignored him for a few minutes before telling him, not without some sympathy, to stop whining and go fetch him the Council meeting minutes.
The only time Bilbo was free to do exactly as he pleased, without being run off his feet with work and arguments and meetings and cajoling, was when he went down to Dale to visit Bard. Officially, he was "consulting about the current state of finances and trade between the city of Dale and the sovereign kingdom of Erebor." Bard's fourteenth share of the treasure remained securely within the vaults of Erebor, but his credits and debits were reckoned to the penny every week. The dwarves had decided that it was Bilbo's job to keep him honest.
So once every seven days Bilbo ventured out of Erebor into the cutting wind, appropriated a makeshift sleigh and a team of two ponies, and sat bundled in furs alongside a morose dwarf named Ibur, who had taken it upon himself to make sure that Bilbo didn't freeze to death while he was outside the mountain. Bilbo appreciated the thoughtfulness, but not the conversation. Ibur so delighted in making dire predictions and offering gloomy suggestions that Dori seemed blithely cheerful by comparison.
"Thank you, Ibur," Bilbo said on that particular morning, just as they arrived at the walls that bounded the town. "I'll be done around mid-afternoon, I should think."
"Take care not to get frostbite," Ibur said, as Bilbo stepped off the sled and straight into an inconvenient snowdrift. "Or murdered. Do you suppose the king would kill me, if I let you get murdered?"
"He would probably be very irritated, yes," said Bilbo. "Have a nice morning, Ibur."
"Don't suppose I will," Ibur said.
At his command, the ponies trudged off, their heads bowed against the wind. Bilbo watched them vanish into the swirling snow, and then turned around and made his way toward the wall. The gates, made of thick wood and reinforced with iron, were crude but sturdily built, and it took two strong men to lift the heavy iron bar and push the gates open against the wind. Bilbo slipped inside. The gates slammed shut behind him.
"Brisk, innit?" one of the gatekeepers said, breathlessly. "But it's quieter inside. The walls keep the worst of it out. Bard's in the Master's lodge, so I reckon you can wait there until he's done."
The snow wasn't as deep inside the walls, and the walking paths were well-trodden. Passerby waved and said polite good mornings as he passed. Bilbo was quickly becoming one of the most familiar faces in Dale, and Bard liked him, which meant he was regarded with general favor, at least among the soldiers and their families. Bilbo had quickly learned that it was not very pleasant, having influence only because you had the favor of the titled and powerful. Turning down Lord Varin's perennial requests for better living quarters was easy. Telling a town that a supply caravan bringing a month's worth of provisions had been ambushed by goblins before it reached Erebor was not.
This time, though, Bilbo faced nothing worse on his walk through Dale than a few hopeful women asking him when the next loads of timber from Mirkwood would arrive.
"Soon," he promised them. "In two or three days, if the weather improves and we can keep the roads clear."
No sooner had he arrived at the lodge than Bilbo heard muffled shouting and a chorus of slamming doors. Gaven was lurking under the eaves, smoking a pipe and warming his hands over a brazier. The coals glowed warm and ruddy against the black iron.
Most days, Gaven stuck to Bard's side like a burr to a woolen blanket. Bard sulked and scowled, claiming that he didn't need a bodyguard and that he was perfectly capable of looking after himself, but Gaven cheerfully ignored him. Indeed, he spent a great deal of time at Bard's house, exchanging significant glances with Legolas every time Bard started complaining about fussing mother hens.
"Is something the matter?" Bilbo asked him.
Gaven shrugged. "The usual. They're fighting again."
"Oh, dear." Now that Bilbo was listening for it, he could make out the Master's unmistakable voice, coming from the second story of the lodge. It was a manor house, really, with a high peaked roof and proper shutters and elegant carvings on all the doors. There was even real glass in a few of the windows, and four chimneys with curls of grey smoke drifting up into monotonous winter sky. "Will Bard be down soon, do you suppose?"
"Hard to say. He's in a rotten mood. Got the bit between his teeth, so if the Master's thinking to wear him down, I reckon they'll be locked up there all morning."
"What happened?"
Gaven shrugged again. "According to the gossips, Bard got cornered last night outside the walls. One of them had a knife, and it came from the lodge. The Master don't take much trouble to keep his servants in line." He offered the pipe to Bilbo, who accepted it gratefully.
"Is he all right?"
"Bard? It weren't nothing but some bruises, if that's what you mean. The prince wouldn't let him go haring around if he was hurt any worse. But he's madder than a wildcat, from the sound of it. Can't say as I blame him. Of course, it wouldn't have happened at all if he weren't so damned stubborn."
They smoked in companionable silence for a while. When the cold became unbearable they headed inside, knocking the snow off their boots before they stepped over the threshold. One of the servants—the Master had half a dozen of them—glanced around nervously when Gaven appeared, then hurried outside and whispered something in his ear. He frowned and nodded. "Fair enough," he said. "Thanks, love. I'll pass it along."
Bilbo looked curiously at him, but Gaven pretended not to notice, turning and ducking awkwardly through the doorway. "Dwarven built," he said, aiming a kick at the frame. "Clever bastards. Everything's a little too low. Reckon they did it to punish us for our crimes, and it's working. I'm always knocking my head on the rafters."
Bilbo had heard the same complaint at least a dozen times. He tactfully never mentioned that the dwarven builders had been congratulating themselves over just such an architectural triumph since the first house in Dale had gone up.
Somewhere over the course of his adventures, Bilbo had turned into a shameless eavesdropper; he felt absolutely no guilt in listening intently to the argument upstairs, picking out snatches of muffled dialogue and puzzling over the pieces he couldn't quite hear. As far as he could tell, they were fighting over rationing. That had been one of Bard's less popular decisions, and the Master had backed him only reluctantly, but there was no avoiding it. Stores in Dale and Erebor were running dangerously low, and all the goodwill in the world couldn't keep shipments from Mirkwood and the Iron Hills on schedule. The weather and the goblins both were conspiring against them.
Sooner rather than later the shouting stopped, and Bard came down the stairs towards them. The scowl on his face was made far worse by a black eye, blossoming into sickly blue and purple, and an impressive set of finger-shaped bruises ringing his neck.
"Don't you look handsome," Gaven drawled. "Had a late night, did you?"
Bard thumped him hard on the shoulder. Gaven yelped, but before he could retaliate, the Master's voice drifted down from the second story: "Bard, my boy, you will make certain you let me look at the account books this week? The supply rosters too, there's a good lad. And tell my manservant to send up my morning drink."
Bard made a strangled noise, like an angry cat. He pointed a passing servant lad in the direction of the stairs, snapped "Brandy!" and stomped out of the lodge, only just remembering to duck as he passed under the doorway. Gaven followed at his side, Bilbo trailing behind them and struggling to keep up with their long strides.
"I hope you haven't been waiting long," Bard said to him, once they were outdoors and had left the lodge long behind. He was making an enormous effort to be civil, if the expression on his face was any indication. "If I'd known you were here, I would have sent you back to my house. Sigrid and Bain are out working, but the prince ought to be there."
"It's no trouble," Bilbo said. "Are you certain you're all right?"
Bard touched the swollen skin underneath his black eye and winced. "Yes. Just some poor fool who was sick of going hungry every night. And the Master insists on holding his little feasts, and going through all the rosters and account books at his leisure, as if I can't be trusted to look after so much as a cord of firewood." He took a few deep breaths, struggling to keep his voice even. "Why don't we talk about something else? I'd rather not start shouting again."
Bilbo obligingly began outlining their renegotiated costs of building materials and labor, and then the progress the Council was making on three separate trade agreements, and the commensurate effects of each on the price of the grain being shipped from the Iron Hills.
Bard made vague sounds of agreement to all of it, so Bilbo moved on to the patrol schedule: it had been changed, and changed again, to accommodate the snow-choked winter trade routes. "Dwalin should have the rosters for you early next month," Bilbo said. "And we'll send them out to King Dain and the Elvenking at the same time."
"Good," Bard said. "If we lose next month's supplies—"
"We won't," Bilbo said, with more confidence than he felt. "If any goblins cross the northern borders, we'll have warning of it. Dain is doubling the number of guards, and Thorin is sending soldiers to watch the roads south from the Withered Heath. One of the princes will be with them."
By then they had arrived at Bard's home, a little wooden shanty at the edge of town. A handful of elven runes had been carved over the door. Wood was stacked on either side, only partially sheltered by the narrow eaves. The clothesline was laden with a strange assortment of clothes, all of them frozen stiff in the snow and wind: Bard's battered tunics and cloaks hung up alongside the children's dresses, and a few garments made of finely-sewn elven cloth.
"We were careless last time," Bard said, swinging the door open and ushering them inside. "If the goblins—"
A chorus of shrieks and laughter interrupted him. Bard stopped in his tracks as two small figures flew out of the house. He caught one, but the other slipped under his arm and fled outside. "Elsie, gods curse it—you little wretch, at least put on a coat! Tilda, you must look after her," he said.
"Sorry, father," Tilda said, sounding only slightly repentant. "Hello, Mr. Baggins. Hello, Gaven."
Legolas appeared in the doorway, the aforementioned coat in his hands. "I tried," he said, when Bard looked pointedly at him, and then down at Elsie's coat. "She says she doesn't get cold. I suppose she takes after you."
Bard kicked off his boots and shoved them in a corner. "She can't take after me. She's not mine, thank the gods. Come in, both of you," he said. "It'll be crowded, but we can manage."
The house was comfortably warm. Bilbo shivered in gratitude, brushing the last of the snow off his clothes. A wood stove in the center of the room radiated heat, and a stack of dry logs was piled high beside it.
The main room was large and cheerfully lit, and the walls were sturdy enough to keep even the worst blizzards at bay. It was a simple dwelling, with a packed dirt floor and no furniture to speak of. Three straw mattresses leaned against one wall, and a battered rug was spread out in front of the fireplace. Whittled pegs were set into the walls to hold coats and weapons. By rights, the heir of Lord Girion should have had the finest house of them all, but there were no manservants or iron braziers here. Bilbo had wondered more than once what Bard thought of that.
The Master of Laketown was currently without either a lake or a town, but it seemed that he was still the master.
The place wasn't entirely cheerless. A few ribbons and sprigs of greenery had been hung up in honor of the holiday, at the children's insistence. Bilbo had helped them decorate last week, and at Glóin's request he had brought a few pretty gems from the mountain as presents. A handful of opals were a petty substitute for the Arkenstone, but the younger girls had never seen anything so precious in their lives.
"They're pretty," Elsie had said, pouring the sparkling little gems from one hand to another. They gleamed, pearlescent, and tiny veins of color blazed as the firelight flickered. "But there aren't any markets. So what are we supposed to use them for?"
"I'll teach you how to play Liar's dice," Bard had promised her, when Bilbo couldn't come up with a satisfactory answer. "And we can use the opals like coin for betting." She had brightened at that.
But there were no festivities today. While Bilbo was shedding his wraps and furs, Legolas pulled Bard aside and spoke to him, too quick and soft for Bilbo to follow. Bard looked tired, not angry, but his shoulders stiffed as Legolas spoke. "It's nothing," Bard said in reply. "He swore that he would take care of it."
Legolas reached out, his fingers gentle on the bruises marring Bard's neck. "This is not 'nothing'. Elsie wouldn't go to bed until I gave her one of my knives to put under her pillow. Sigrid won't let Tilda go outdoors alone. I scarcely need tell you about Bain."
Bard reached up and took the prince's hand in his own, but Legolas pulled back. Bard scowled and looked away. "If you must fuss, at least wait until Bilbo leaves," he said, brusque.
He kept the account books under lock and key, carefully out of sight; he fetched them as Bilbo, busy pretending that he hadn't been seen or heard anything, claimed his usual spot on the threadbare rug. Elsie was still outside. Tilda had pulled Gaven aside and was laughing with him. She was of an age to be childish and mature by turns: some days she was every bit as grown-up as her older sister, but today she was busily showing Gaven the toy soldiers that Legolas had given her for a Yuletide present.
"I didn't know that elves celebrated Yule," Bilbo said, watching as they began setting up for a pitched battle, arguing over who would get the Númenóreans and whether or not there had been dwarves at the siege of Barad-dûr. Evidently someone had been telling them bedtime stories.
Legolas sat down too, his legs curled underneath him. He was thinner than he had been a month ago, and he looked tired and worried, but he smiled a little at Bilbo's confusion. "Yesterday was the first night of an ancient Noldorin festival," he said. "Turuhalmë. My people don't honor it, but it is very much like your Yuletide. The soldiers were mine when I was a child, and I asked my father to send them along with the last reports from Mirkwood. Bard said that the children would like dolls or figurines."
And so he had decided on a set of toy soldiers. Sometimes, but never for long, Bilbo forgot that he was living in a glorified military camp.
"Here," Bard said, reappearing in their midst with his arms full of books and parchment. He thumped the towering stack down on the floor. "Let's get this over with, why don't we?"
They settled down to work while Gaven kept Tilda distracted. Between the three of them they made short work of the balances; Legolas was clever with numbers and had some experience with the running of towns and kingdoms. Bilbo and Bard spent a frustrating amount of time scribbling out totals and wondering whether straw should count as food or fuel.
When Elsie returned, slipping through the door along with a flurry of snow, she refused to go play. Instead, she sat beside Bard and watched the proceedings with great interest.
"If you say 'according to the Council' one more time, I'm going to throw you out on your ear," Bard said. "We only use it in the stoves when the wood and coal run short. Which it wouldn't, if our convoys could make it across the Desolation without being raided."
"Why does it matter?" Elise asked, peering at the sheets of parchment over Bard's shoulder. "Straw is straw."
"Sensible girl," Bard said, and Elsie edged a little closer to him.
Bilbo thought for a moment about how best to explain the concept of import tariffs, and then decided that it wasn't worth the bother. "Oh, confound it all, you're right. Straw is straw. I'll just mark it down as a necessary good, and tell Thorin not to bother with taxing it."
Lord Varin, he thought with no little satisfaction, could stew to his heart's content over his precious trade legislation. The king's amendment and a three-fourths vote from the Council could rewrite practically any law in the land, and Bilbo had both king and council tucked neatly in his waistcoat pocket. Which, of course, was precisely what got him in trouble with Lord Varin in the first place.
They worked well into the afternoon. By the time they had settled the last of the accounts and put the hated stack of parchment back in its lockbox, it was well past time for Bilbo to return to the mountain. He stayed anyway, wheedled into joining Gaven and the children in their game. Somewhere along the long and inordinately complex road to war, the elves and men had taken up residence in Barad-dûr and were busily fortifying it against an unexpected attack by a legion of trolls.
"Like the ones in your story, Mister Bilbo," Elsie said.
"Oh, and King Oropher isn't dead," Tilda informed him. But she was looking at Legolas as she said it, a little anxiously.
Legolas knelt beside her. "I'm glad to hear it," he said. "Now, tell me more about these trolls."
Soon, Tilda and Elsie were arguing about how many men it took to bring down a troll. Bard was dragged in to settle the matter once and for all, and he did, at which point Gaven told them that Bard wouldn't be able to tell a troll from a boulder if one came up and bit him. The debate began all over again. Bilbo, the resident authority on trolls, was so reduced to helpless laughter that he was of no use to either side.
"You should come up to visit sometime," he said to Bard, as he was bundling up to leave. "All of you. We've done a fine job restoring the upper levels, and Bombur has been making mulled wine from the casks that Thranduil sent us. We could have a proper Yuletide celebration."
Bard smiled, a little ruefully. "You're very kind," he said. "And the children would love it. But I don't think Thorin Oakenshield would be too pleased to see me at his gates again.
"Oh, I would talk him into it," Bilbo said. "Just you wait, Master Bowman. One day when you least expect it, a messenger will come from Erebor with a gilded invitation to dine in the royal hall."
Bard shook his head. "Aye, on the same day that Gaven tosses a crown at me and calls me king of Dale. It's a kind thought, Mister Baggins, but Thorin and I will never be friends."
It was probably true, Bilbo thought, as Ibur drove the sleigh back toward the mountain through the white drifting snow. It would have been nice, though, having everyone together for the holidays. Back in the Shire, Bilbo had regarded his numerous relations as more trouble than they were worth. They were particularly irksome in the wintertime, when all he wanted to do was curl up with a cup of tea and a nice book. But things were different now. For reasons which he didn't quite understand, Bilbo felt nervous every time he looked down at the sturdy walls and little houses of Dale.
Compared to the towering strength of the mountain, he supposed that any town would look small and vulnerable, but not even Bard would bother denying that Dale was indefensible. There were still goblins lurking in the north, though no one knew how many. And there was word from Thranduil that Dol Guldur had not been entirely forsaken. Bilbo was left with a lingering unease and a longing, no matter how impractical, to keep everyone safe in the mountain, sheltered by the strength of steel and stone walls.
It was a worry that Thorin would understand well. Or perhaps that was just it. Perhaps somewhere along the way, he had started shouldering Thorin's worries and burdens as his own.
It was, Bilbo though wryly, probably the only decent Yuletide gift that he could give to the richest king in Arda.
He certainly wouldn't want a set of toy soldiers.
"I think there's trouble down in Dale," Bilbo told Thorin, late that evening. "Or there will be soon enough. One of these days the Master will push too far, and Bard will lose his temper."
"Given the choice between the two of them, I would back the soldier," Thorin said. He still refused to use Bard's name, if he could avoid it. "But I leave the gambling to Nori."
They were in Thorin's old quarters in the royal wing of the palace, which were once again clean and orderly; the dust and grime of more than a century had been scrubbed away, and some of Thorin's old belongings had even been salvageable.
Thorin had taken to spending his evenings there, meeting informally with his closest advisors. More often than not Bilbo stayed late into the night. Sometimes he did nothing more useful than listen while Thorin dictated formal letters to Ori, or read quietly while Thorin paced back and forth, working through some uncomfortably thorny problem that had come up during a recent Council meeting. More commonly, the evenings turned into informal Council meetings all on their own. Bilbo usually kept quiet. He was hopelessly out of his depth when it came to standing patrols or the structural integrity of the lower levels of the mountain.
Tonight, however, it was only the two of them, and they were doing nothing more productive than sitting in front of the hearth and drinking wine. Thorin claimed it was in somewhat belated honor of Yule, which of course was nonsense—dwarves didn't celebrate it, and only those few that had spent years living among men gave it even the slightest thought. It was far more likely that Thorin had finally given in to Balin's wheedling and agreed to take the evening off.
("You can't be forever working," Balin had said more than once, which Thorin seemed to take a challenge rather than a reminder that even the king of Erebor was, in the end, only mortal.)
At least the wine was excellent. As a whole, dwarves were inclined to ales or spirits, and Thorin wasn't much impressed with the vintage, but it suited Bilbo perfectly. Thranduil had no doubt selected it precisely for that reason. The Elvenking had sent it to Bilbo as a present, and it was better by far than anything that Bilbo had ever stolen from the cellars of his palace; it was a dark red, almost smoky, with hints of plums and blackberries. The scent reminded Bilbo of the infamous oaken wine barrels that he had used to break the dwarves out of Thranduil's dungeons.
"I will never understand," Thorin told him, distastefully, "why you insist on drinking something that tastes like so foul."
For the last few minutes Bilbo had been swirling his glass in an abstracted way, his thoughts still drifting back to Dale. "Yes, quite," he said, paying no attention to what he was saying. He had learned it was usually best to agree with Thorin when he started complaining. Or at least to nod, and pretend to be politely interested.
Thorin had evidently noticed. "If you want to leave, you need not stay on my account. I'm sure you can find company more congenial to your tastes."
"What?" Bilbo sorted through the last few moments of their conversation in his mind. Oh. Something about the wine. "Don't be absurd. You would probably quite like it, if Thranduil hadn't been the one to give it to me."
"Hardly," said Thorin, which Bilbo took to mean that he was entirely right. "If our brews aren't good enough for you, it's no concern of mine."
"And if you're going to be like that, I'll not share any more of it with you. You can go back to drinking that appalling slop that Nori's been selling."
Thorin made a face at that. He relented with good grace, and took another sip of wine. "Oín is helping him now," he said. "He says that it's his bounden duty to see that Nori doesn't accidentally poison anyone."
Bilbo snorted inelegantly at that, letting the last of his worries slip away. It was rare to see Thorin in such a genial mood, and no good would come of fretting the evening away. Before he could reply, though, there was a muffled clatter in the hallway outside, followed by a chorus of familiar raised voices and the slamming of a heavy wooden door.
Thorin sighed.
"And there goes Kili," Bilbo said. It had become a familiar scene over the last fortnight, and what followed was equally predictable.
There was a knock on the door, and before Thorin had a chance to say anything, Fili pushed the heavy oaken door open and slipped inside. "I'm sorry to bother you," he said. "Do you mind?"
"Come on in, lad," Thorin said. He poured Fili a glass of wine, which Fili downed in a few quick gulps. "Sit. Did your brother throw you out again?"
"No," Fili said, throwing himself into a battered old armchair by the fire. "We had a fight. He left."
Thorin and Bilbo exchanged a glance; so much for their quiet evening alone. "Do I need to thrash some sense into him?" Thorin asked. "Or will you do that yourself?"
Fili made a small, unhappy noise. "Don't joke," he said. "I can't even imagine hurting him, not when he's so grim and determined to do it himself. Why can't you order him not to go out on patrol?"
"And leave him to rage and storm until he finally draws his sword on someone?" Thorin shook his head. "His body is as healed as it ever will be, though I cannot understand how. If I order him to stay in the mountain, he will not obey me. When he disobeys I will be obligated to punish him, and he will hate me for it."
It was true. Once Gandalf had stirred him from his sleep, Kili was on his feet so quickly that Oín declared the lad blessed by Mahal. Just like his uncle, the dwarves of the mountain said, nodding sagely amongst themselves. A true heir of Durin. Not even Azog the Defiler and all the orcs of Gundabad could bring down Thorin Oakenshield, and his youngest sister-son was alike to him in more than mere looks. Kili might have been half dead and missing a hand, but he threw himself into the rebuilding of Erebor with a determination that bordered on violence. He sparred with anyone who would take the time to fight him, and drilled until he collapsed in exhaustion.
In deference to Thorin, no one ever pointed out that Fili had never quite recovered from his own injuries, modest though they had been in comparison to Kili's. Thorin wouldn't discuss it, and dismissed the tentative suggestions that there was something wrong with the crown prince: that his lingering pallor and exhaustion were even slightly out of the ordinary. "We are all of us tired," he would say, coldly. "Fili does his duties and more."
And no one, not even Bilbo, dared to press him about it.
"He's going to get himself killed," Fili said. "Uncle, he's half-mad. I've never seen him so angry before. It's almost cruel, the way he uses himself."
The banked fire crackled, casting flickering shadows against the smooth arches of stone. "Did your mother ever tell you about the time that Frerin broke both his arms at once?" Thorin said, after a long pause.
"Both?" Fili echoed. "That sounds—well, that sounds awful."
"Yes," Thorin said. "At the time, those were the most miserable months of my life. They were certainly the most miserable months of his life. He couldn't do anything on his own, and he wouldn't let the servants touch him. Your mother and I were stuck with his foul temper until he healed."
"What happened?"
"The formations on the south side were unstable. We didn't know it at the time. Grandfather wanted tunnels spreading out across the plains, to make travel up from Dale easier in the wintertime. Frerin was down with the surveyors when the excavations collapsed."
"How did he escape?" Bilbo was too curious to bother with polite restraint. Thorin, unlike the rest of the dwarves, almost never spoke of his family or his life before the journey to Erebor. Bilbo had never even heard him mention Frerin's name before. If it weren't for Balin's love of history lessons, Bilbo wouldn't know anything about Thorin's life before he came knocking at the door of Bag End.
"I found him," Thorin said. "He knew that I would."
"Was he terribly angry?" Fili asked. "About being rescued, I mean."
Bilbo frowned: surely anyone would be grateful to be saved from such a wretched death. But Thorin looked as if he understood . "Sometimes," he said. "But he mended, eventually."
"I wish I'd known him," Fili said, a little wistfully. "It would have been nice, having another uncle."
Thorin hesitated for a moment, and then said, "Would you like to hear another story?"
Fili almost dropped his wineglass. "You mean it?"
"I wouldn't have offered if I didn't," Thorin said. "Our burglar ought to have a few tales of the family he restored to its kingdom, don't you think?"
Bilbo swallowed. "I would like that very much," he said, his voice soft with something like reverence. "If you don't mind."
True to his word, Thorin told them stories of Erebor in the bright afternoon of its glory, when their trade stretched from Far Harad to the distant western Havens of the elves, and the word of a dwarf of the mountain was as good as gold in all the courts and markets of Arda. They were more like fairy tales than family history, and Bilbo wondered if many years ago, perhaps in this very room, Thrór had told his young grandson these same tales. They were bedtime stories fit for a prince of Erebor, and sometime after midnight Fili fell asleep listening to Thorin's deep baritone voice. Thorin carried on for a few minutes, watching his nephew fondly.
"They called our mountain the watchtower of the north," he finished at last, "as great as Amon Sûl when the kings of Arnor still held strong. Long after Eregion was lost, and the king of Arthedain fell to Angmar's trickery, the dwarves of Erebor stood strong and proud, and bowed before no lords but their own." Then he fell silent for a moment, and shook his head. "I feel like a court jester," he said. "Those words belong to my grandfather, not to me."
"No," Bilbo said, not yet free from the spell of Thorin's voice. So close to the hearth, the room was drowsily warm, and the wine was making him lightheaded. "You do them honor. I feel like I could march into battle against all the goblins in the world."
"I thought you already had."
Bilbo flushed. "Yes, well. There was nothing heroic about it, really. Surely you know it was all for you."
Thorin looked at Bilbo with such affection that Bilbo had to resist the temptation to do something appallingly Tookish and inappropriate.
"Shouldn't you wake Fili?" he said, hastily. "We have a Council meeting tomorrow morning, after all."
"All the more reason to let him sleep. If I sent him back to his rooms, he would only wait up until Kili came back."
"Yes, well. I should leave, at any rate. It's been a long day. Busy." Bilbo almost tripped over his own feet as he stood. Surely he hadn't had that much to drink!
"As you like," Thorin said. Bilbo had the vague sense that he was being made fun of. "Happy Yule, Bilbo."
"Happy Yule," Bilbo said, and fled the scene before he said something unforgivable. Only much later, when he was curled up in his own bed and trying without much success to calm his racing thoughts, did he realize that Thorin had called him by his given name.
It was, to his recollection, the first time in the entirety of their acquaintance.