As Lathron walked among the Dourhands, he felt their eyes upon him. All gazes were suspicious, a few were scared. He smiled to himself behind his scarf, and pulled it up further while walking faster so that his cloak billowed behind him - what good were dark, mysterious clothes if you couldn't intimidate a few people with them? If those people happened to be Dourhands, so much the better.
He left the far side of town and passed several huge pieces of machinery. Dourhand Dwarves clustered around them, and they too eyed him with suspicion. Lathron did not understand the huge, clanking structures. The noise they made was deafening, and they belched out clouds of smoke. What purpose did they have? Why would anyone build something so loud and obtrusive? He was almost convinced that it was the Dourhands' polluting machinery that was causing the sickness. Then he remembered the smell of the afflicted Dwarf's arm - that was not mere industrial pollution.
He came to the river. It was frozen over, except where it passed among a stretch of rapids. There, the soil along the banks had been churned up. As he drew closer, he noticed the smell again. A quick sniff of the soil confirmed it - the water was causing the sickness.
Over the sound of the rushing water, he heard another sound - deep, grunting pants. Slowly, he raised his head. Across the river, a huge brown bear had stopped to drink at the water's edge. It was clear at a glance that the animal, too, was sick. Its ribs protruded, and its fur was falling out in clumps. Instead, its skin was covered in slimy reddish-black sores, akin to those on the arm of the Dwarf. The bear raised its head from its drink, and saw Lathron. Its eyes were dull and bloodshot, but as soon as it saw the Elf, they filled with rage. It charged across the rapids, bellowing. Moving faster than a snake, Lathron drew his bow, aimed and fired. The bear paused, an arrow sprouting from its mouth. Then it reared and bellowed again. Another arrow in its neck seemed only to enrage it further. It was only the third arrow in its eye that felled it, and it crashed to the ground, its claws mere inches from the hunter. He circled the body, examining it. The rotten flesh steamed. Gingerly, he cut off a hunk from its flank with his knife, but as soon as it was separated from the corpse, the flesh began to rot, disintegrating into ever-smaller chunks that fell into the river and dissolved. Lathron took a handful of snow and scrubbed the knife clean thoroughly before replacing it in its sheath. Clearly, the bear's sickness had crazed it - he had given the beast no reason to attack him. He could only hope that Dwalin's Dwarves did not begin to exhibit the same symptoms. He had to find the source of the corruption before it was too late.
To his right, he saw a Dourhand crossing the river with a wheelbarrow via a narrow wooden bridge. He rushed over to him. "Quick," he commanded. "Tell me, where does the river spring from, and how do I get to it?"
The Dwarf looked confused. "The mountain up yonder," he gestured over the river to the north, where cliffs rose high into the sky, scarred by many tiers of quarries. "Ye can get te the spring by the Mirkstone Tunnels."
"Thank you." Lathron ran off across the bridge. As he reached the other side, something made him turn back. The Dwarf he had talked to was deep in conversation with what appeared to be a foreman. As he watched, the Dwarf turned and pointed towards him. The foreman's expression darkened. He gestured to two other Dwarves, both carrying wicked looking mining tools, and they began to advance.
"Halt!" the foreman commanded once he drew closer. "What is your purpose here, Elf?"
"To find the source of the poison in this river. People and animals are dying, thanks to your neglect. A cure must be found."
The Dwarf hefted his pickaxe. "I'm afraid you can go no further. This area is off-limits to outsiders. Now go, before I get angry."
Lathron leaned down until they were nose to nose. "Try and stop me."
"With pleasure." The Dwarf gave a sinister grin. Suddenly, he shoved Lathron hard in the chest, sending him sprawling. The other Dwarves advanced, wielding hammers and other spiked tools. Whatever they were for, they looked fearsome.
Lathron leapt up, drawing his swords with a flourish. One of the Dwarves was dead before he had time to blink. The other backed away, swiping with his tools to keep Lathron back. The foreman drew a whip from his belt and began to lash it. Without warning, he cracked it, and the lash wrapped itself around Lathron's right arm. The pain numbed Lathron's hand so that he dropped his sword, but with the other he cut the whip in two, then stabbed at the remaining worker as he lunged. The Dwarf fell dead, and Lathron advanced on the foreman. He swung his pickaxe, and Lathron parried, sending sparks flying. The Dwarf tried a heavy overhand swing, but Lathron jumped back, and the tool buried itself in the ground. The Dwarf tried to tug it free, and Lathron brought his sword down on his neck, beheading him.
"More secrets," he mused aloud as he unwound the end of the whip from his arm and retrieved his sword. "I've never met people with so many things to hide."
He strode into the quarries, where more Dwarves were hard at work. Huge adult aurochs had been chained to giant minecarts and were hauling away vast cartloads of rubble under the crack of whips. At the top of a series of wooden walkways and stone terraces, he spotted it - a door into the mountainside.
At the same time, the Dourhands spotted him. He raced for the walkways, and the Dwarves raced after him. They poured onto the walkway ahead of him, blocking his route up. Instead, he leapt at the cliff, clawing his way up onto the next ledge. As he wound his way up, he glanced below and saw that his pursuers were far behind.
A thud in front of him made him look back up. Ahead, two figures had jumped onto the walkway, but these were not Dwarves. With grey-red skin, bulbous yellow eyes, long pointed ears and bandy legs, these were Goblins.
The Goblins gnashed their fangs at him and brandished their weapons, but Lathron was running too fast to stop. He dug his heels in and skidded towards them, his swords outstretched. The Goblins' faces twisted in sudden horror as they realised what was about to happen.
Then he was past them. Finally, he stumbled to a halt and turned around. The Goblins stood stiffly for a second, then their heads toppled and fell to the floor. The one nearest the edge of the walkway keeled over the edge, landing heavily among the Dwarves below. Lathron spat after it.
"Mae Govannen Lathron! Na I Valar, cend ha namaer!" - 'by the Valar, it's good to see you!'
In the hollow before the tunnel door stood an Elf, almost identical to Elladan, except his clothing was torn and stained with dark blood.
"It's good to see you too!" Lathron beamed. "We were worried. What have you been doing all this time?"
"Searching for answers," answered Elrohir. "I'm guessing you've been doing the same."
"I have, but quick, there's no time, the Dourhands are coming!"
"No need to worry," Elladan gave a grim chuckle. "They won't try to come back up here any time soon."
Lathron followed him back into the hollow, and saw that it was filled with the bodies of fallen Dwarves, and not only Dwarves - among the dead were several more Goblins. "What are they doing here?" he asked.
"The foul things are crawling all over the place this side of the river. Luckily, it's the only place they're safe to come out in the day because the smoke protects them. It's hard to believe but they seem to be allied with the Dwarves. Elbereth only knows what they're planning.
"You know about the ritual tonight of course?" Lathron asked, "And the sickness?"
"Yes, the valley is sick. The bears, the barghests, the red flowers, it's evil - dark magic. I can only hope it doesn't spread to the Dwarves."
"It already has. Hadn't you heard? Dwalin is here, with a company of Longbeards. They came with the same purpose as us, except they drank water from the river and got sick. I came here to find its source, and maybe find a cure."
Elrohir was shocked. "Then it is far worse than I thought. Myself, I came here because it is where the presence of evil is strongest. Can you feel it?"
Lathron could - a chill in the air, like the wind off a glacier. "What do we do now?"
"I was about to venture in, but was attacked. I had just finished them off when you arrived. Now you have told me about Dwalin's plight, our task becomes all the more urgent. We must venture in and find the source of the corruption. I have seen this sort of thing before, and nature will always try and cleanse itself - purge the poison from its body, as it were. If I am right, at the source of the corruption, we will find this beginning to take place. It is there that we will find the secret to making the cure."
From below, shouts rose up, mingled with the shrieks of Goblins. Elladan looked over the edge. "It appears I was wrong - they are brave enough to come up after all." He turned back to face Lathron. "You go. Leave me here. I will fend them off."
"No, let me!" Lathron protested.
"No. I have already held them off once, I can do it again. Besides, by the sound of it you have achieved more today than I have in two. No, you must venture inside."
"Alright, what am I looking for?" Lathron asked.
"Anything that appears wholesome and green. Follow the sense of evil, and it will lead you to the source." He pulled out a torch, lit it with his tinderbox, and passed it to Lathron, then strode over to the lip of the hollow and drew a pair of thin, curved swords. Lathron heard feet thundering below. "Hurry! There is no time to waste!"
Lathron took a deep breath, and entered the tunnel.
'Oh no, not another cave,' I hear you say.
But wait, this one's special. It's exciting, and different, and spooky, and very important to the plot. Which is why you'll have to wait for the next chapter. Bwahahaha! I'm so evil. But don't worry, I've decided to make it, and the one after it, (which is number 13, and also very important plot-wise) Halloween specials! Yay! Only 2 weeks until the next installment! Now I must go tie a knot in my hanky so I don't forget...
And yes, today we learnt an important environmental message. Pollution never pays - it makes for a very inhumane death for bears. Shooting them through the face is much kinder, stylish and less messy. Ok, maybe not the messy.
Just in case you were wondering (or not), yes, I am treating Goblins as a separate race from Orcs. Strictly this isn't true, but I'm justifying it to myself by saying that Goblins are the small annoying ones, and Orcs are the big annoying ones.
Oh, and a plea for help, if anyone reading this happens to be an expert on Sindarin grammar, could you let me know if I got the translation above right? In fact, if anyone ever spots something wrong with my Elvish (or indeed my English, heaven forbid...) please don't hesitate to jump on it and tell me off.
Lathrond Aleniel, Elf Hunter, Firefoot Server.
Disclaimer: almost all of the names of people, places and general things are owned by Tolkien Enterprises, New Line Cinema or Warner Brothers, and are fictitious, or if real are used fictitiously and solely for the purposes of entertainment within boring disclaimers. The others are owned by me. Any similarity to any real life person, alive or dead, is probably almost but not quite certain to be entirely uncoincidental.