It was hard not to keep pushing forward. All Fili wanted was to get back home as soon as possible. If it were just himself, he'd push on through each day as far as Mindy would take him, but with Sigrid it was a different matter, especially now. She needed rest, and although he'd made her promise to tell him if she needed it, he was very familiar with her tendency to keep on going, thinking of everyone but herself. Hence the need for the promise in the first place. He'd been erring on the side of caution for over a week now, with late starts and early finishes to their days, knowing that however easily they'd fallen back into the rhythm of travelling – setting up camp, sleeping under the stars, hunting rabbits for stew and catching fish when they could get them – Sigrid's health needed to be forefront in his considerations. Not that she couldn't participate – he smiled as he recalled the image of her stripping down to her blouse and linens on the bank of the shallow stream they'd crossed the day before yesterday, to wade in, determined to catch their supper, her sunhat falling over her face as she seized hold of the first wildly struggling trout and triumphantly held it aloft. He'd never deny her the joy she took in it; seeing it melted his heart. She just needed to be mindful of pacing herself. He smiled again as he glanced across at her, riding beside him in the afternoon sun, her puppy nodding drowsily in the sling she held in front of her. She didn't catch him looking, lost as she was in her own reverie, her eyes unfocused and unseeing as she swayed along with the lilting cadence of Daisy's steps. He didn't want to interrupt her, but he couldn't help himself.
"You're far away, beloved," he said gently. "What are you thinking about?"
Sigrid looked around, her face for a moment still blank, then smiling as she met Fili's eyes and came back to the present. "Hmm? Oh, it's nothing. Just daydreaming."
She looked away from him again to the road ahead, and Fili was left with the impression that she was… not exactly hiding something, yet not exactly telling him the whole truth, either. Her thoughts were her own, however, and he didn't press her. If she wanted to confide in him, she'd do it when she was ready.
"It's nearly time to set up camp," he said. "How are you feeling, love?"
"I'm fine," she said automatically. Then she hesitated, and glanced towards him with a sheepish expression. "Actually, I am a bit tired, now that you mention it. Where will we stop?"
"Half a mile ahead, maybe less," he replied. "Remember where we stopped our first night out from the Pick and Shovel? The little stream?"
Sigrid's eyes lit up. "The one with the wild thyme? Are we that close?" she exclaimed. "That means we'll be at the inn tomorrow. I thought we were miles away."
"Not that far. A day's ride for us, half a day for an ordinary traveller," Fili said.
"It'll be so good to see Maggie and Birger again," Sigrid continued. "Dear Maggie." She fell silent, her eyes straight ahead but once again becoming dreamy and unfixed as her attention drifted.
Often now it seemed to Fili as though Sigrid's mind was elsewhere. She had mislaid Daisy's curry comb a couple of nights ago, and had burst into angry tears as she hunted through the saddlebags for it, turning to embarrassment and finally laughter as she found it wrapped in oilcloth and tucked in amongst her blouses. He knew the mind-fog to be one of the many symptoms of pregnancy that women and dwarrow-dams alike found frustrating, and understood it was temporary, but he didn't quite know whether it was more humorous or disconcerting to see Sigrid become so easily flustered when she was usually so sharp. A bit of both perhaps, he thought, with a wry smile.
There was one thing he was glad she hadn't remembered, though, and that was because he wanted to surprise her. He didn't think she realised that tomorrow was the anniversary of their wedding feast, five years to the day since they had signed the agreements between their two families and celebrated their marriage. It was one of two anniversaries they celebrated, the other being the date of their handfasting, a week after New Years' Day, and neither of them usually passed unmarked by a gift, a special meal, and a glass or two of fine wine that they shared sitting on the edge of the parapet of the great front gate of Erebor, under the stars. Back in the Iron Hills, while Sigrid thought he'd been busy finishing Tilda's hunting knives, Fili had actually been working on his gift to her, a delicate piece of jewellery that had been inspired by a chance conversation they'd had one night on their journey to the Iron Hills, as they lay together in their bedrolls, looking at the stars. The piece was now wrapped and carefully stowed in his saddlebag, and although quietly confident, he was still modest enough to hope she would like it, and was anticipating the surprise it would be when he gave it to her.
His attention snapped back to the road with a start, as he realised that Sigrid had turned off and was heading Daisy north, picking her way over and through the tufts of grass and low bushes that dotted the dry, sandy soil, and he was about to call out to her when he heard the stream babbling away in front of him, and smelled the woody, lemony scent of wild thyme in the air. She was heading to their campsite. Fili shrugged, smiling; perhaps it was he who had the mind-fog after all.
Sigrid followed her nose, breathing deeply of the delicious scent of thyme that hung in the air. She pulled Daisy up in the same clearing they'd camped in on their outward journey, close but not too close to the small brook and sheltered by a ring of small shrubs, and looked around for Fili, who was following about fifty yards behind her. She dismounted and walked Daisy to the brook, and let her dip her head to drink from the cool, shallow running water. Fili joined her to water Mindy and the pack pony, and she handed Daisy's reins to him and made her way up the side of the brook to the place, another fifty yards or so along, where she'd discovered the luxurious carpet of wild creeping thyme.
The fragrance surrounded her. The billowing cushions of tiny lavender-coloured flowers, thickly covering the plant's dense, miniature leaves, covered at least twenty yards of the riverbank, and the sight was spectacular. Bees by the dozen bumbled over the tiny flowers, hovering back and forth, then rising serenely to transport their harvest to their hive, wherever it was. At least a dozen different birds twittered at her from the bushes, drawn both to the insect life that proliferated under the groundcover and to the flowers themselves, and the bolder ones hopped to the outer branches of their hideaways to cast darting glances at the intruder. She felt Fili arrive beside her, equally as entranced as she by the sight of the carpet of purple and the bustling secret world that depended upon it.
"Do you think I could take a transplant back home?" she whispered. "Do you think it would survive?"
"I don't see why not," Fili replied. "We can try, surely."
Sigrid drew in a deep breath, and let it out slowly, and turned to Fili with hopeful eyes. "I'll dig up a rootball in the morning. I'll ask Maggie for a pot or something to plant it into when we get to the Inn, and we'll see if we can't get it home."
Fili smiled at her and nodded. Then he reached down and clasped her hand. "Great idea. But for now," he said, dragging out the word, "you need to come with me. Bed."
"Bed?" she said, one eyebrow raised, and a smile in the corners of her pursed lips.
"For a nap," Fili said with a laugh. "Come, love, you said you were tired. I've got your bedroll laid out. I'll set up camp and make supper while you rest."
"All right," she conceded. "But here." She stooped down and picked a few sprigs of the thyme, and handed them to Fili. "For the stew."
The hot flushes were back, and Sigrid was boiling. She rolled onto her back, threw off her covers, and fanned herself to cool down. She'd dozed until evening, waking to the tantalising smell of stewed rabbit with thyme, and they'd sat on their bedrolls and eaten heartily before relaxing back to watch the stars coming out in the dusk. Fili had done everything, she thought with a twinge of guilt: caring for the ponies and the puppies, making the campfire, hunting the rabbits for the stew and then cooking it, everything, and he was now snoring gently beside her, having fallen asleep fully clothed. He must have been so tired, she thought. He'd never begrudge her anything, she knew that, but she felt that she should have done more to help him instead of sleeping the afternoon away, pregnant or not. Especially now, as it seemed that her nap had only served to make it more difficult to stay asleep at night.
The night air was pleasantly cool on her perspiring skin, and she sat up, fanning herself again, but she needed water. She reached for her waterskin, close beside her bedroll for exactly that purpose, and took a sip. Nothing came out, and she tilted it up, shaking the rounded pouch to encourage the last drops to fall into her mouth. It wasn't enough. She got up, and tread carefully in her bare feet through the tufts of spiky grass to the stream to refill her skin.
When it was half full she lifted it to her lips and drank, the chill of the water at any other time enough to give her a headache, but now serving perfectly to counteract the boiling heat inside her. She splashed a little over her face and dabbed it around, using the rolled-up sleeve of her sleeping shirt to wipe away the drips. It was an old shirt of Fili's, far too wide in the shoulders for her slender frame, but she loved wearing it to bed over her linens, the fabric of it worn as soft as goosedown over the years. She stood and looked around her, the night softly lit by a crescent moon, and breathed in, feeling the hot flush slowly receding. She breathed in again, slowly, through her nose. She couldn't smell the thyme in the air any more. Perhaps the wind had changed, or perhaps one's nose simply became inured to it over time, and then needed a bigger dose. The smell was calming, though, and she thought perhaps a sprig or two in her pillow might help her go back to sleep, so she wandered slowly up the riverbank towards the thick, purple carpet.
Sigrid's muffled scream woke Fili instantly. He leapt to his feet, pausing for one moment to determine where the sound had come from, and noticed the puppies, awake and standing stiffly, barking towards the south. He cocked his head, and then heard Sigrid cry out again from upstream, north, and not far. Already running, he shouted a command over his shoulder to the puppies to stay, and sprinted grimly towards her, not knowing what he was going to find.
He burst through the bushes, and saw two men and two dwarves on horseback, one of them holding his wife in front of him, the pony's reins binding her wrists and a hand over her struggling mouth. He knew them all: Taft and Hawk, the thieves that he'd caught in this very region only a couple of weeks ago, and supposedly in jail in the Iron Hills; a guard from the Iron Hills by the name of Aurvang; and lastly, impossibly, holding Sigrid in front of him and kicking his pony forward with a gloating grin on his face – Nyrath.