A/N: So we're back again.


The Shadow of Angmar

Chapter 11: And It Grew Fierce and Restless

The morning was cold and crisp. The sky overhead was a deep unfathomable blue, rimmed by dark clouds that had clung to the mountainsides through the windy night. Now that the wind had dropped they were creeping slowly back into the sky overhead. There had been a light snowfall amongst the winds the night before which had left even the lower valleys dusted with fine powdered crystal which shone like millions of tiny stars in the bright morning sun.

For the week since they had left Ironhaunt the going had been hard indeed, and it had been slow. Even for Dwarves, the mountain passes of the Orocarni were no easy obstacle. With them, they had a small train of light carriages, each pulled by two of the Dwarves' hardy mountain goats. They were short and stocky like their masters, and more sure footed than Harry would have thought possible. When they were released from their harnesses each evening to forage for their own food they would leap up or down the sheer cliffs with even greater ease than Harry could walk the well-maintained mountain trail.

Each night Harry would take his turn as part of the watch, for the late winter passes were never completely safe. Every now and then the howl of wolves would be carried to them upon the wind and the goats would become spooked and fidgety.

As had become his custom, each day, Harry went between each of the Dwarves of the convoy and talked and listened to those who would entertain him.

The greatest embarrassment of Harry's time with them had been in his own inability to speak or even understand their tongue beyond a few disjointed words. It was good, then, that every Dwarf he had ever met spoke in Westron almost as easily as their own tongue.

"It is impressive work," said Onar as he looked over the staff Harry had been gifted shortly before his departure from the Halls of the Ironfoots. "I know of no craft that would allow the metal and stone to work together as one like this. It was often said that Saruman was an artisan unlike any other in skill but I had thought that to be a tall tale of the kind which often grow up around the unfamiliar. Even my father said he'd seen nothing of the skill from him."

"He does not seem the type," Harry agreed. When he thought of the smiths or craftsmen of Ironhaunt it was not an image of Saruman that came to his mind. In the months he'd stayed among the Dwarves he had built an image of the White Wizard as a man who would surely see such practical applications to be below his notice.

That he had contributed to Harry's gift, felt special indeed.

"Perhaps it would be within the ability of Telchar of Nogrod in ages past," Onar said as he ran his calloused hands over the craftsmanship. "One day, I hope my own work might reflect just a little of the mastery shown in this. It is a grand gift. I will not now doubt his hands."

He handed the staff back with clear reluctance and lingering hands. The stone and metal, which should have been cold in the frigid air of the high mountains nevertheless felt warm to Harry's touch.

Onar opened his mouth just slightly, then seemed to hesitate.

"What is it you want to ask, Onar?" said Harry as lowered the staff to its increasingly familiar place at his side. Each time he struck it against the ground in his stride it would ring with a quiet but pure sound.

"It is said that you seek the gozîg, the dragon's of the north," the young Dwarf said after a few more second pause, his voice low.

Harry closed his eyes for a moment. "No. I do not seek them," he reiterated, though there was a nagging feeling that he said it for his own benefit more than anything else. "But why do you ask? Do you know something of them?"

"That is good," said Onar, relief clear in the way his shoulders relaxed. "I know little of them, save the stories my father told me. He was there, you know, when King Gráni died."

"He never mentioned it," said Harry as he turned to look at Onar. Harry had not spent that much time talking with Buri during his time at Ironhaunt, the older Dwarf was always in motion carrying messages or carrying out other tasks.

Onar nodded. "He did not often speak of it, but he told me the tale, once."

Harry did not prompt the Dwarf to tell the story, if he was to tell the tale then it would be his own choice, not Harry's. They walked for a minute in silence and entered into a narrow gorge hewn by the Dwarves in ages past for their travellers. A few wayward flakes of snow began to tumble from the clouds that had grown overhead.

"What do you know of Were-worms and their kin?" asked Onar eventually.

"Little enough," Harry admitted. "They are smaller than the drakes of the north, I am told? Oh, and they are flightless."

"This is the truth, but it is but part of the story," said Onar as he warmed to the topic. "All dragons are intelligent, and possessed of a fierce and cruel cunning, but of all the tales of Dragons, it is Were-worms that are the most cruel and capricious."

"It is said that the fire-drakes and their northern kin have a powerful need for gold, they have ruined enough of Dwarven holds in their search for it, if the tales are true—"

"Oh the tales speak true," interjected another Dwarf walking nearby to them both. "You will see with your own eyes just what damage dragonfire can do when we reach Manarul a week hence."

"There is little wealth in gold beneath Aradi-unâ, and perhaps it is for the best, lest we would have drawn more dragons to our doors as have the Mebeltarâg, and the Abanbasân," said Onar, clearly wishing to continue with his story.

"There was a war," he continued. "Seven years ago. The Men of the Nutut-refeshshama, the Last Desert, came West in force and assaulted a few of the Eastern holds. The Dwarves came together, and a host of all the clans of these mountains met them in battle before the gates of Kidzul-Zabad'egam. The strength of Dwarves went unmatched that day, and the refeshmalu were sent from our lands, never to return. But we did not question why they had come West in such numbers never-before-seen."

The old Dwarf walking nearby interjected again. He muttered into his beard, "Were-worms, beasts of Balkûn."

Onar grunted. "Were-worms, indeed. They came upon Kidzul-Zabad'egam while the great Wake was being held for those who had fallen in the battle, three great beasts with teeth like daggers and hide like the finest Dwarven mail."

"Two of them died in the end," said the old Dwarf, and Harry looked at him properly this time, and could see a long scar that ran down the left side of his face to be lost in his bushy grey beard. "After sending all too many to the Fathers. They could barely fit the doors of the City when they came, and the great gates fell before their mighty claws, rent and hewn like pig iron before the true steel. It was the last that was the largest, half again as large as the others, none could pierce its hide. At the last it was driven off only by injuries taken in its eyes.."

"But before they died or fled, Gráni was consumed in whole, and his son, Grím, was burned by their fire such that his armour melted into what remained of his flesh," Onar finished. "We have long experience with the fire-breathers of the Northern wastes, you would do well to hope you never meet one."

The old Dwarf who'd opted to join in with their conversation grunted. "Not the prettiest sight I ever did see," he agreed. "They can speak, you know, or so say the tales. They did not speak then, they laughed. They laughed even as the King's son burned, and they laughed even as they died. The laughter of a Dragon. I hear it still, on quiet nights, in dark halls."

Harry opened his mouth to question the grizzled Dwarf further when the howl of a wolf echoed across the narrow chasm, much closer than any of the previous ones and borne not on the wind from places distant. It was close, and it was joined by another, then another.

"Kanâd!" Shouted one of the Dwarves towards the front of the train. "Arm yourselves! Do not let them at the inbarathârag!"

Over the heads of the Dwarves towards the fore of the train, Harry saw the large, familiar dark shapes of Wargs entering the gorge, their huge dark outlines stark against the thin covering of snow from the night before.

The broad-shouldered Dwarves pushed forward to meet the foe. Any normal wolves would have no chance against them as each was clad in heavy leather and mail from head to toe, but these were no normal wolves.

Like the Wargs Harry had encountered after his release from Carn Dûm these were the size of bears, and with a light of cruel intelligence in their eyes. Beneath their thick shaggy coats powerful muscles were tensed and their jaws were ready to tear flesh from bone.

The fissure was not wide enough for Harry to join in the defence and instead he was forced to aid those who'd been left to the rear in their attempts to contain the now panicked goats. He did not have the stocky power of the Dwarves who were wrestling with the strong animals in an attempt to stop them from breaking the wagons apart in their panic, but his height was an advantage of its own.

The unsettling slitted eyes of the goats would settle on him as he stood at the rear of the column, staff in hand and arms spread wide, and each creature would turn aside from him and look for a different path to freedom and safety. In the narrow gorge, there was no path that did not lead through either wargs or Harry, and the goats were unwilling to try either.

They had no such issue with the Dwarves. Among the panicking animals, Harry was able to make out the shorter hair of Onar and he watched helplessly as the Dwarf was knocked down then trampled by one of the large goats. He hoped the Dwarf was uninjured.

The fight at the fore of the convoy went well, Harry could see for there were few more dangerous fighters to meet in an enclosed space than a Dwarf with his axe in hand.

He could hear the shouts and cries of the Dwarves as they fought, and the growls and howls of the Wargs as they were stymied, but a new sound joined the chaos. This sound was quieter, but so very much closer. It was the crunch of trodden snow just a short distance behind his back.

The lessons he'd had during his time with the Rethlapa returned to him then and he spun in place and swung his staff wildly at the presence he could feel there and was rewarded by a pained yelp. The leader of the Wargs which had tried to sneak up on the rear of the convoy was knocked back by Harry's attack and scrabbled back to its feet while three of its kin snarled and snapped at Harry from their position just beyond the range of his weapon.

He stood his ground and held his weapon ready in the way he'd been directed by Wambald more than a year ago. He looked each of them in the eye unflinchingly as he took strength from the staff he held in his hand and the comfort its strangely familiar weight provided. Some sense told him that the Dwarves behind him had realised the danger would soon come to his aid.

The wargs looked unsure, but in a moment their blood-lust overpowered any doubts they had and, as one, they lept forward with their teeth wide.

The old Dwarf from earlier leaped passed Harry with a cry. "Khazâd!" he shouted loud enough to near deafen Harry. He was soon joined by others who met the beats alongside Harry.

Growls from the wargs mingled with the cries of the Dwarves as battle was joined. The wargs lunged in turns and the Dwarves swung at them with their heavy axes, but the beasts were driven by hunger and possessed fell reactions which saw them clear of nearly every swing. Those few strikes that landed only served to enrage the beasts further, and the smell of their own blood drove them onwards.

One, thinner than the others with long matted grey fur than hung of its frame lunged at one of the Dwarves near the sides of the gorge and its cruel teeth cut through the heavy leather of his boots as the beast pulled the Dwarf off his feet with a powerful heave.

A moment later an axe buried itself in the beast's thick skull and it collapsed to the ground but already the felled Dwarf was out of the line and much too close to the other attackers. Other wargs quickly stepped forward and pulled him away from the safety of the defensive line and a triumphant howl went up from a few other the others.

In an act of desperation Harry cried, "Accio!" and thrust his staff at the doomed Dwarf. The magic did not come. A moment later huge jaws wrapped around the head and neck of the Dwarf and his screams were very briefly muffled, then silenced.

That death, spurred both sides on and the line of Dwarves began to break up as the individuals sought to reach their cunning and agile foes. Harry swung his long staff this way and that to fend off the wargs looking to flank the Dwarves that stepped out of line in their eagerness. His success was much greater than any of his companions, for his reach was near twice that of the Dwarvish axes, but the staff did little more than stun those he hit. Those he stunned were down for mere moments before they rose up again to rejoin the fray.

Another scream echoed across the gorge, followed by more triumphant howling. In moments, all semblance of order among the Dwarves had broken. They charged into the growling, snapping mass of their foe, and their axes flashed even below the clouded sky. Harry found himself alone as the fight became a dozen duels or skirmishes between Dwarf and warg. Battlecries, howls and screams tumbled back and forth across the gorge like a captured wave.

A warg, smaller than most but no less ferocious leaped at him over the corpse of one of the Dwarves who'd been fighting just moments ago and whose hands still grasped his axe in final defiance.

Harry's swung his staff around with both hands and met the warg's skull while it was still in flight. He sidestepped the nearly senseless warg as it barrelled by him to land in a heap just behind where he'd been standing. Moving quickly, he ran the few steps to the fallen Dwarf and prized the bulky axe from his bloodied hands. He hefted the weapon in his free hand, it was a Dwarf's Axe, and too heavy for Harry to wield for long in one hand, but the sounds of battle lent him the strength. He turned from the ruined Dwarf to find the warg nearly upon him again and he swung the axe with every ounce of strength he could muster.

The warg, still dazed by the blow it had taken to the head was slow to dodge and the axe hit deep into the flesh of its spine. In a moment, it fell to the ground as its useless legs buckled beneath it, yet still it tried to turn and snap at him in its frenzy. Harry heaved the axe free and swung a second time, the beast stilled, and it did not move again. For a moment it felt like silence fell about him, the clamour of battle a far distant whisper hidden behind some thick curtain.

There was little time to celebrate, though, for Harry looked up to see a grey-bearded Dwarf beset by two wargs. He was wielding two axes and each swung wildly through the air in an attempt to keep his attackers at bay.

Without hesitation, Harry jumped towards one of the wargs and his long staff swung towards the creature as Harry let loose a wordless cry. With unnatural reflexes, the warg spun out of the way and the staff smote the ground with a bright flash and a loud, bell-like sound. The stone he'd struck cracked and the warg rocked back as if burned.

Harry did not have time to wonder at the feeling of magic, lost and unfamiliar, for in moments the warg leaped forward again, bloodied teeth barred. The staff whipped back up and Harry swung it in a broad arc to keep the beast back. Harry stepped back to find some space, but the warg pressed in close again. He brought up his staff, much closer to his body this time, for there was no space to swung it and thrust it forward into the warg's mouth.

A confused look crossed the huge wolf's eyes when its teeth met the unyielding metal and stone and Harry took advantage of that moment to bring the axe around in a heavy strike to the side of the beast's head.

It immediately released the staff and jumped back, and the axe was torn from Harry's hand. One of its eyes was a ruined mess, but the other still gleamed with malice and fury and the warg stalked around Harry cautiously.

Harry backed slowly away as he tried to keep the warg in front of him without allowing another behind him. In the brief moment he was able to look around and found that the Dwarves were winning the fight, but it would be no easy won victory.

There was yet one warg for Harry to deal with though, and he focused his attention on it once again. He kept his staff in front of him as a defense as the warg continued to stalk around him, looking for an opening. With each passing moment, Harry knew the battle came closer and closer to a conclusion, all he needed to do was fend the beast off until the Dwarves could finish it off with their axes.

He tried to take another step back and was met with resistance, the sheer stone of the gorge wall was behind him. His attention flickered as he nearly lost his balance. The warg's eyes glinted with fierce delight and it surged forward. Its jaws closed upon Harry's right leg for the briefest moment before his staff forced the beast back again. As it did though it ripped at his clothes and flesh and he was dragged to the ground.

The warg immediately turned towards Harry and it seemed like it smiled as it bared its blood-caked teeth. Harry lay upon the ground and looked at the world for what was surely the last time.

He saw the overhanging rock of the gorge wall above, the thin strip of sky beyond. He saw the individual flakes of snow that seemed to hang in the air about him, they caught the light like diamonds, or impossible fine spun glass. He saw the bodies of warg and Dwarf alike, and the blood spread across the snow against the black rocks of the gorge. He wondered at how so much blood could fall upon the pure snow, yet the black stone was unmarred.

He saw the warg bearing down upon him, jaws agape and nothing but reckless hatred in its eyes. It would not escape this day, but he could see that it did not care if it could but take him with it.

Harry looked back towards the sky, and found again the rock that separated him from it. What was it Ginnar had said?

His hand pressed against the stone of the ravine wall and he felt there some protective spirit; stone that had watched over the Dwarvish travellers for millennia. He felt the desire to help. He did not know what he was trying to do, but something within him spoke with the stone, and it listened.

There was an almighty crack above him, and the warg stopped suddenly in its tracks to look up. There was but a moment of alarm on its wolfish features before heavy black stone from the overhang above crushed the warg with nary a whimper from the beast.

Harry let out a long breath, and lay his head back against the smooth, cold stone. He closed his eyes and said a prayer of thanks to whatever power was watching over him, he was happy to be alive.

A howl went up from the other end of the column and the few remaining wargs at the rear of the caravan at last wavered. Those few that remained turned to run, or fell where they stood, cut down by vengeful Dwarves during a short-lived pursuit.

The old Dwarf from earlier stepped up beside him, two bloodied axes still in-hand.

"Ubkhu'galkhâ," he said to Harry as they both watched the last of the wargs disappear from sight beyond the end of the canyon.

Once they were gone the Dwarf turned back to Harry and offered him his arm. Harry grasped it and pulled himself to his feet with a pained hiss as he tried to put some weight on his injured leg.

"There will be a lot of those among those who survived," said the Dwarf, and he reached up to pat Harry on the shoulder. The action sent painful flashes through his side and leg. "You will be in good company."

Harry placed an arm around the Dwarf's shoulders and leaned upon him heavily in an attempt to save his injured leg. "You saved my hide, back there," the old Dwarf said as he led Harry back towards the caravan at a painfully slow pace. "And a few others, too, I think. I am Thórir, and you have my thanks, Darjûn."

"I did only what was necessary," said Harry as he tried to make out Onar among the surviving Dwarves. "They would have killed me too."

"So it always is, in battle," said Thórir. "But we all are naddud 'uzghu now, every Dwarf fights for himself in his first battle, in his second he fights for the Dwarf next to him and in his third he fights for all Dwarves."

"I am no Dwarf," said Harry as an unbefitting smile tugged at his features.

"Now you are. Not kinsman, perhaps, but you have fought at the side of Dwarves to save the blood of Dwarves. You are a Dwarf," said the grizzled Dwarf in a tone of voice that brooked no argument.

Harry was unable to control it. He laughed, and the sound was utterly out of place among the blood and death of the small battlefield, though no less welcome for all that. "You don't think I'm a little tall?" he managed to ask between gasps.

Thórir shook gently beneath Harry's weight and he felt more than heard the Dwarf's own rumbling laughter.

It was short-lived, but no less welcome for all that. As soon as it faded Harry looked about at the many injured Dwarves all about. He saw a bruised and battered, but alive, Onar and breathed a sigh of relief. He looked down at Thórir. "See if you can find my baggage," he said, all mirth now gone from his voice. "I think there is yet more for me to do."

o-o

"Manarul was a great hold, once and long ago," said Thórir as the Dwarvish caravan approached the blackened gates set high atop a mountain plateau a week's travel north of their battle with the Wargs. "But Dragons were drawn to its wealth like moths to a flame."

Harry looked at the great gates and could see there some long lost echo of the greatness that had once been held within. Now, though, they were blackened and warped and stood ajar and unmoving. Earth and stone had piled up against them over the years, only a narrow path had been kept clear for travellers seeking shelter.

That their journey had only been a week had been the source of much amazement among the remaining Dwarves. Harry's salves and potions had saved more than half-a-dozen of the injured travellers, and had eased the pain of many more. After just a single day of recovery and burying the dead they had been back upon the mountain trail, and had made as much speed as before their battle.

"I heard word that it was haunted," said Harry as he tried to make anything out in the gloom beyond the door.

"Nay," said Thórir as he shook his head, "Save by those brave few who live here still. Most of the Dwarves this far North have long since spread out into smaller keeps, small enough that no Dragon may find entrance through the unbreaking stone of the mountain. The lower depths are said to be overrun by Orcs and other, fouler things, but they have been long blocked off from the light above."

There were few things in Harry's mind more foul than Orcs; one thing only, in truth. Or one man, if such a creature could still be called a 'Man'. He had no desire to seek any such creature out.

"Then for what reason do the caravans travel so often back and forth?" Harry asked. Surely if the northern Dwarves were so scattered a people it would be hard to trade with them on any scale.

"Though Manarul is near abandoned as a city, it is still the seat of the King of Stiffbeards," said Thórir as they crossed the threshold into the semi-darkness beyond. "It is still the hub of trade in the North."

As his eyes slowly adapted to the dim, Harry was able to look about him at the once great city. Bare stone, cleaved stone, blackened stone. No adornment was to be found on any of the walls and the floor was rough and deeply scored by claws that must have been the size of a horse. He did not wish to think how large the beast that had borne them might have been, perhaps ten times the size of the Dragon he'd faced himself in another world, another life.

There were great blank spots upon every wall and pillar where once hung huge slabs of gold, the wealth of the mountain, cast and worked into monuments to the deeds of the great kings of old.

All that was gone now. There was only the long cold memory of fiery death in the blackened stone and few pieces of melted metal still upon the walls.

Harry now understood the caution of Saruman, and of the Dwarves. No matter how far his power grew there was no way he could hope to bring down any beast so large and deadly as that which had been the death of that city of ruins.

"What happened to the Dragon that did this?" he asked Thórir as he stared at the century-old damage.

The old Dwarf grunted, "It fought another Dragon over the riches here, both died of their wounds. They have no thought nor dream of kinship, their will is only to dominate like the one that spawned their fathers when the world was yet young."

"What happened to the body?" Harry asked. He didn't expect that it had survived, but perhaps if he could find a more recent Dragon corpse his journey would not be in vain.

"I don't know. There are a few shields I have seen that have tales attached to them that say they come from the scales of the beasts that were found here after their battle," said Thórir. "But I wouldn't be surprised if they were locked away and have rotted to nothing by now. You do not know how much these people despise Dragons."

"I think I could perhaps hazard a guess," said Harry. There was something in the blackened and scarred city that reminded him of the walls of Carn Dûm. Perhaps it was some shade of the suffering they had both seen. He pushed that thought to the back of his mind, he was here for a reason, and shadows of the past could serve only to distract him from his goal.

He needed to seek out something of a Dragon, and for that he would need his ear to the ground.

o-o

"It is said that Khazad-dûm is to be abandoned," said a Dwarf as Harry listened with detached interest. "A great fiery beast descended upon it, killed the King of Durin's Folk and drove them from their Halls."

"A Dragon?" Harry asked sharply. This was news such that he'd been waiting for for all too long.

"Do you know of any other beast that could drive the strongest of the Dwarf clans from the greatest of the cities of our people?" asked the Dwarf. "Even a dragon… It must be one of the greatest of its kind to still stalk Middle-earth."

Another Dwarf joined in the conversation. "I have travelled to Khazad-dûm once, when I was but a young lad. A greater hall I have never seen, and no Dragon could breach its gates. They are too small and too strong. Even should such a beast gain entrance it could not hope to navigate the deeps, nor even reach the great Halls. It spans the mountain range and the tunnels run unnumbered. It could not be laid low by any Dragon."

"Do you call me liar?" asked the first Dwarf and he pushed himself back from the table at which they were sat in a burst of movement.

Perhaps it might have gone further, but Harry laid a hand on the Dwarf's shoulder and spoke as evenly as he could. "He would do no such thing," he said soothingly. "But it is a tale, and it came to you through many mouths and many ears, did it not? You know how reliable such news can be."

The Dwarf paused for a moment before grunting and sitting down again. He took a large gulp from the tankard of earthy Dwarven beer. "I will let it pass this time," he said grudgingly. "But what I said is only what news has come to the King here."

Even with his doubts, it was the most promising story Harry had heard in the three years of his time in the harsh northern mountains.

It had become almost a habit. He would travel from one small hold to the next and offer his services as a healer. He had soon become well known among the hardy folk of the mountains. Aches and pains and other injuries were a constant companion in the hard lives of the Dwarvish miners, and the warriors who sought to keep them safe from the roving bands of desperate men shaken loose from Ub-khûn after its near collapse and the unexplained disappearance of Khamûl from its jagged throne.

It had served to give the long wait meaning. Among the grand Halls of Ironhaunt Harry had been little more than a curiosity, here among the Stiffbeards he was both useful and respected.

He had, on occasion, travelled south and a few times he had travelled north to investigate some tale or other of dragons. It was only the occasional dreams he had, when he saw the high towers of the home he'd lost, that he remembered why it was he was living in such a harsh and dangerous place.

On most of his travels, he'd had a companion; Thórir had rarely opted to leave Harry's side, much though Harry tried to protest. The old Dwarf said simply that he had a debt to repay, and that he would see it done.

Harry had asked why none of the other Dwarves he had helped had taken to following him on his every journey and Thórir had simply shrugged and told him that young Dwarves had no appreciation for the traditions of their people. It had been an argument Harry could see would be fruitless.

Onar had returned home to Ironhaunt after just two years in the North. Harry had travelled back with the young Dwarf, for he felt some little piece of kinship with the young Dwarf who'd found himself wanting in the face of adversity.

It felt like so long, now, that he'd first left Ironhaunt in search of tales of dragons but here, now, after more than three years, a flickering light illuminated the path before him, a path he'd thought long lost.

He left the Dwarves to continue swapping their stories and went to where he knew he'd find someone with whom he could talk.

Thórir was training again, in what had once been a training yard fit for a King's army. Now it was mostly ruined, great stones had been cleft from the ceiling above and lay scattered across the soft sand of the cavern floor. It was said that much of the final battle between the two great worms had been fought here. Harry could see why.

"What do you know of Khazad-dûm," Harry said with raised voice once he was close enough to be heard over the Dwarf's grunting.

Thórir paused in his training and looked Harry over. "So you have heard the rumour of its fall then," he said without preamble. He turned back to the younger Dwarf against whom he was sparring. "No Dragon could gain entry to those Halls. Ironhaunt is a hovel compared to the City of Durin's Folk."

Harry leaned back against a nearby stone and watched as the two Dwarves returned to their sparring.

After a while, the two Dwarves slowed their activity and Harry called out again. "What about a very large dragon? The like of which hasn't been seen since the last age?"

No Dragon large enough to battle the city and win could fit through the gates," said Thórir. "And those gates were made by the greatest of craftsmen, both Dwarf and Elf."

"Something else then," said Harry as he tried to come up with some reason for such an outlandish rumour to have made it so far. "Some other creature from the elder days?"

"There are none," said Thórir tiredly as he picked up some items he'd set aside during his training. "Dragons are the last great threat in this world."

That was really all there was to it, Harry supposed. The tale, whatever had inspired it, was impossible. Khazad-dûm was the greatest city in Middle-earth, and its people both noble and valiant. There was no power in Middle-earth great enough to lay it low.

But as the days slipped beyond the western hills, and the weeks slipped by, the stories did not fade and instead grew in detail and length. It was a month after Harry had first heard the rumour that at last the full truth was made clear.

"I was there," said a Dwarf, recently arrived from the Western hills. "A shadow of flame rose up from the deeps, Durin's Bane, we called it for no weapons could harm it. It had fire running in its veins, and a great whip of unquenchable fire that cut through everything it touched. Shadow rose about it wherever it went and no door could stay it for long. Durin was lost within weeks of the beast's awakening, and though we fought hard and for every Hall, Náin too fell eventually."

He took a deep gulp from the tankard that had been placed in front of him by the attentive Dwarves all around. "So we fled, we left the pride of all Dwarves to wither in the unholy claws of some unknowable beast from the Elder days. Moria it is now for true, the Black Pit that swallowed all but the meanest of Durin's Folk. Nothing can stand against that devilry."

The occasional glances sent in Harry's direction by the crowd of Dwarves was not lost on him. It was no dragon, but it was perhaps the next best thing.


A/N: The response to the last chapter was phenomenal, and I want to thank everyone who reviewed it. I do read every one, and any mistakes they point out get looked at. I try to reply to as many as I can, but the sheer number these last couple of weeks was rather overwhelming.

The good news is that I also enjoyed writing this chapter. I think the biggest relief is that the clumsy time-skips are now done for a good few chapters. Harry's about the head west again!

There's a bunch of stuff that needs to be addressed for folk unfamiliar with the minutia of Tolkien's works:

There are seven clans of Dwarves. Longbeards, Firebeards, Broadbeams, Ironfists, Stiffbeards, Blacklocks and Stonefoots. The Longbeards include Gimli, Thorin and so on. The Ironfists are the clan Harry was staying with in Ironhaunt. The Stiffbeards are the Dwarves of this chapter, the Stonefoots and Blacklocks were the Dwarf clans further east that battled the were-worms in the story at the start of this chapter. Kidzul-Zabad'egam (Golden Throne) was the capital of the Stonefoot Dwarves (not canon).

Manarul means 'renewed place' in (Neo)Khuzdul. Sadly, it was only renewed once. It is/was the capital of the Stiffbeards.

Khazad-dûm is Moria, the capital of Durin's Folk (the Longbeards).

The other uses of Dwarvish should be reasonably clear in meaning from their context, I hope. In any case, they are not plot critical.