Chapter 74

Above and Beyond

Everything did seem hopeless and bleak. All throughout a war there are desperate moments when you just can't see how anything can ever be all right again. That day was one of those days for quite a few people. For Thráin the problem lay in growing ever more uncertain that he would see it to the end of the journey with Frodo's sanity still intact. If I were in his shoes, I am sure I would have done the same, if I wasn't outright panicking already. The Ring grew much stronger much faster than it did in the book. It was not just despair, but also a very legitimate concern.

For Thoren it was easy to lose heart. His alliance was falling apart around his ears, with distrust and hostility running rampant in the halls of Erebor. The men of the Lake felt hard done by – and not entirely without cause, because most of them were innocent of any treachery – and the other groups within Erebor were fearful of them at best. And that too is wholly understandable. Then there was the not unimportant fact that he was trapped, cut off from his own people with no easy way back to them, surrounded by the inescapable evidence of one of the greatest tragedies his people had ever endured.

It was harder still for his family, who believed him gone. The blow hit harder the second time around. It had been difficult enough to lose him once. Losing him twice knocked the ground out from underneath them. Cathy lost herself to rage. It was temporary, but it was not something anyone, including she herself, had ever believed her capable of. Jack followed where she led, though he had to do so from his own bed. Duria did not collapse this time. She just went very quiet, still as stone. She performed her tasks and spoke sensibly, as she always did. I dare not presume that she felt the loss as keenly as the others did, but it seems very likely.

As for me, I felt trapped. Helm's Deep did not seem so much of a refuge now as it first had. We were sitting ducks, waiting to fight a battle that all common sense dictated that we could not win. I hauled water, I did not prepare to fight. Not that I was any use in the actual fighting – my left arm still hurt like damnation and after two days of hard labour my right arm was next to useless as well – but I was restless all the same. Restless and scared shitless, I should say in the interest of being honest. Every last instinct screamed at me to run, because how could I survive this? I had done well enough in skirmishes, but this was open war. This was a future battlefield and I had no business being anywhere near it.

But I stayed, because the sad truth was that I had nowhere to run…

Beth

Beth's mind had gone nearly as numb as her arm. Aragorn had made it very clear that she was not allowed to use her left arm for anything more strenuous than eating meals or dressing herself. Her recovery was going well, but only so long as she didn't ignore his sound medical advice. Not that he called it that.

But her right arm was in good shape, at least it had been at the beginning of this water-removal scheme. After two days of nearly non-stop hauling up water the end was finally in sight. Where the water had been knee-high at the start it only reached a little over her ankles now.

Just a shame we can't throw it at the orcs. If they had as many arrows as they had water, this approaching army would be a lot less of a problem. But they couldn't and Beth grew more worried with the hour.

The people around her did not. They were either resigned to whatever fate would come their way or ready to go down fighting. At least that was what it looked like to Beth. She could not ask them, because she still couldn't speak more than five words of their language – one of which was their word for rain – and they spoke about as many of hers.

But she had learned something about those who worked closest to her all the same. There was gruff and old Gárbold who missed an eye. The scar tissue suggested that this was not a recent development. He spoke nothing much to anyone, so with him at least she did not feel as bad about not speaking a word. Kindly Éohild was either his wife or his sister. They were always seen together and they were of an age, but since she could not communicate she had not yet found out which it was. She had none of her teeth anymore, but that did not stop her from chattering nearly non-stop to the young man who took bucket after bucket from her to pass it on further up the wall. They were her fellow water-scoopers in her area.

Beth felt horribly out of place with them, even though she was relieved that she could contribute something instead of being cooped up inside all day. She did not speak these people's language and she had not gone through any of the horrors that they had gone through. She was very much the outsider here, the one who didn't belong.

Clearly Éorryth shared Beth's opinion of herself. She was a mother with a toddler tied to her back with a shawl while she worked. She was the first one on the chain and so took Beth's bucket from her. Beth would never have found out so much as her name if one of her friends had not called her by it, because in two days Éorryth had not even smiled at her or acknowledged her presence beyond the occasional glare and the more frequent impatient gesture to hurry up and pass her a bucket already.

She had more luck with the young children who brought the empty buckets back from the wall to the scoopers. Helm and Freda were brother and sister, children of a scribe and so spoke the Common Tongue relatively well. When they discovered that Beth did too they gravitated towards her in the hopes of free lessons between running and Beth was glad to be of use. It usually earned all three of them a glare from Éorryth and the youngsters words that sounded like the snapping of a whip, but Freda and Helm did not care and since Beth understood none of her insults, she did not either.

I am a lady now, she reminded herself, though she felt less like one with every passing minute. Hard though the work may be, she felt more at home here with these people than she felt in room where all the decisions are made. I am more a scribe than a lady. And if her new young friends were right, when the harvest needed bringing in their father put down his quill and pulled his weight along with every other villager. In the absence of a clearly defined middleclass, these were more familiar to her than the nobles making their battleplans.

Even Boromir and Aragorn were different somehow. The differences hadn't been so obvious on the road, where everyone did chores as needed and they were all the same. Not equal, as such. If Aragorn or Thráin said jump the others were quick to make sure their feet were off the ground. But they all chipped in. Here the King and all the other bigwigs shut themselves in the council chambers to prepare while everyone else got rid of the water.

They're working too, she thought. So stop moping and get on with it.

'Buckets!' Freda announced. She came out of nowhere with three new ones just as Beth handed off the last she had to Éorryth. 'It is almost suppertime.' She still spoke the words slowly and carefully, but her pronunciation was not bad.

The light was fading. It would be dark in an hour. 'Thank you,' she said. She estimated that they'd need another day of this and then most of the water would be gone, enough to resume business as usual. If the orcs will give us that long.

'Words?' she asked.

'Three,' Beth granted. Both of them could keep that up for a while and if it took too long, Éorryth would frown.

Freda pointed at the sky.

'Sky,' Beth told her. 'And the white and grey things floating in it are called clouds.' She spoke slowly too so that Freda could digest it. 'The clouds you get for free.'

Freda favoured her with a brilliant smile and pointed at a window above their head. 'Window,' Beth told her dutifully. 'The things that go before them are called shutters.'

'Is that free?' she asked hopefully.

'Just this once,' Beth allowed. She had never been so lenient with Harry – rules were rules – but Freda was not hers to raise and the girl had been through so much that a little indulgence was unlikely to turn her into a spoiled little brat. 'What do you want to know?'

Without hesitating Freda pointed to the sword one of the men had left lying about.

'Sword,' Beth said. 'Next time it's my turn. Deal?'

'Deal?' Freda repeated uncertainly.

'It means that you and I agree and we promise,' Beth explained, reasonably certain that the girl knew most of those words, enough at least to get the meaning of the whole sentence. Both she and her brother were exceptionally bright.

She understood. 'Deal,' she said, surer now. 'Bye, Beth!'

Beth suppressed a smile as the girl darted off, presumably to share her newfound knowledge with her brother. Bye was not a word she had come across much in this world, not without the good in front of it, and here she was, introducing a foreign expression. It was the same way in which Kate had mingled her Englishness with the customs and phrases common in this world, she thought wryly. I become more like her with every passing day.

When it was almost too dark to see, Boromir came round to visit. 'How goes it?'

Beth took advantage of his presence to straighten up and stretch her aching limbs. Éorryth might be perfectly all right with frowning at Beth, who was unknown, but Boromir was another kettle of fish entirely. 'Not so bad,' she reported. 'Another day of this and we'll be done. How are things with you?' That was after all the most important question.

'Advancing,' he said. He lowered his voice. 'But we can only delay the orcs. I do not believe that we can see them off, not without Gandalf and Éomer.' It worried him. Beth noted with some approval that he had not dragged the book into this. They both had learned that lesson.

Beth worried too. She'd hoped that Gandalf and Éomer would have found the time in the past two days to make it to Helm's Deep ahead of the orcs. Now she worried that Gandalf had not even found Éomer in the first place. Who could really know? Oh, how I miss phones and the Internet!

'Hope and pray,' Beth said. 'It's all we can do, besides fighting.'

Boromir shook his head. 'You won't fight.' He bestowed a pointed look on her left arm. Honestly, he ought to have looked at her right. Beth was not even sure she could hold a bucket, never mind a sword. 'And that is why I am here. Théoden wants to see you.'

Uh oh. Hadn't Théodred said that his father strongly suspected that she wasn't who she said she was? Then again, he'd also said that after she had saved Théodred's life the King was unlikely to make an issue of it. And Boromir did not seem to think that there was something amiss.

'Did he say what he wanted?' she asked in a would-be casual tone.

Boromir smiled, amusement all over his face. 'I reckon he'd like to thank you for saving Théodred's life and a direct summons is the only way to achieve that aim. He seems to think you are avoiding him.'

Well, that would be because she was. 'I've been busy,' she retorted, before tagging on the more honest answer at the end: 'He makes me nervous.' And he did. Théoden had a very penetrating stare, not unlike Gandalf, and she found him somewhat intimidating. She shouldn't of course. She'd been hanging around with princes and a soon-to-be king for months and she had seen Théoden at his very weakest.

You're being silly, she told herself. And this is not what you do anymore. That was something she needed to tell herself every once in a while, because sliding back to quietly observe from the background was very easy, especially since Boromir was doing such a splendid job of getting people to listen to him without her help. And it was not as if the book was so useful these days anyway.

'He's a good man,' Boromir said and he should know. 'Here, give me your bucket. I'll take over for you.'

Beth lingered just long enough to register the look of astonishment and shock on Éorryth's face before she ascended the steps and forced herself to walk into the main keep. She found Théoden in the great hall alone, looking intently at the maps spread out on the table. He looked old and weary and yet strong and determined at the same time.

He did not immediately acknowledge her presence and so she waited. When after two minutes, during which the nerves were amped up even further, he still had not looked up, she coughed discreetly. 'You wished to see me, my lord?'

Now she had his attention. 'Lady Elizabeth,' he greeted. 'It is good of you to come.' As if she'd had any choice after he had actually summoned her. 'We have not spoken before. I wished to thank you most sincerely for my son's life.'

It was there in his eyes, the genuine, almost overwhelming gratitude. Beth did not know what to do with it and so she said: 'He saved mine as well and Aragorn played an equal part in his recovery.' You could have just said thank you, you know.

Théoden smiled, which did make him seem less intimidating. 'Aragorn has told me that you are a scribe by trade.'

'He's correct,' she said. Is this just small talk?

The King was evidently not the man for small talk – at least not during war – because he continued: 'I have been told that you have a keen eye for detail and so I charge you to stay in the Hornburg during the battle and record all that you see. And should the battle go against us, I charge you to take my son and heir and the people through the caves into the mountains and survive as long as you may and tell the tale of the last stand of the Rohirrim to all who will listen to you.'

He doesn't believe he's going to survive. The thought sent a cold chill down her spine.

'I… I… eh…' Pull yourself together, girl! 'I would be honoured, my lord.' Did he not have other scribes? She had seen Helm and Freda's father around, working his socks off like everybody else and he was a capable scribe. But he's also a man who can wield a sword. And Beth could not, especially not now.

And this was what she did. This was what she'd done, more or less, before she'd ever taken up this advising job. This is something I can do. She'd had a recording device in her pack – well, Boromir's pack, if she wanted to be honest – so that she could have recorded her interview with G. Grey in Bristol. That now felt like another lifetime. She had camera and audio and for some reason she could not name had not sent it off with Harry to Erebor.

Because you were a sentimental fool back then, Andrews, clinging to the past like a child to its teddy. But it could work for this. And since Gandalf had done whatever it was that he had done to the batteries of all her equipment she had no fear of running out of power. I can do this.

It did not make her feel any more optimistic, but it beat being sent into the caves with the women and children, twiddling her thumbs whilst waiting for news.

'I do not believe this will be the end of Rohan,' she said, not sure where the words came from, but she felt compelled to say them all the same. 'I believe that Gandalf will bring Éomer back with more men.' It could still be possible.

Another thought occurred to her. While they had been delayed, Merry and Pippin needn't have been. They were with the Ents. Gandalf had promised that was the case. Trees thrived on water. Water and mud did not put much of a crimp in their style. On the contrary, they thrived on those things. They might already be at Isengard while its armies were miles away still dragging themselves out of the mud, cursing the weather and their bad luck. That did give her hope and even some small measure of actual confidence.

Théoden smiled wearily, but did not agree. Perhaps he had been under Gríma's influence too long to be optimistic anymore.

'I will do what you ask,' Beth said.

He acknowledged that with a nod and was then distracted by the door that flew open. An elf strode in with sure steps. The guard on the door, a man by the name of Gamling, jogged in afterwards.

'My lord, you have a visitor,' he panted, although that was clear for all to see. 'I told him you were not to be disturbed, but…'

'I have news that cannot wait,' the elf cut in. If this was how he behaved in the King's presence, Beth thought it likely he had not been content to bother with waiting until he was allowed in or announced either.

Théoden seemed ruffled, but like everyone else in Helm's Deep who had never seen an elf until they marched through the gates unannounced – Beth began to see a pattern here – he was too overwhelmed to put up much protest. 'Then speak of it, if you would.'

The elf nodded. 'My name is Námion,' he said, remembering some courtesy at last. 'I have this day ridden out on the command of Haldir, my captain, to scout out the position of our foe and I have found it. They are but a day's march away from us.'

They were coming. She had known that before, but now it was real and tangible.

Námion ignored the disquiet his words had caused and barrelled on: 'They have to cross treacherous ground to reach us, but even so they will reach us no later than dusk tomorrow.'

It's here. It's happening.

All her newfound confidence melted away like it had never been there in the first place.

Beth felt cold all over.

Jack

'I know the lord is wounded. I still need to speak to him as a matter of urgency.'

Jack must have drifted off, courtesy of whatever it was that Aunt Thora had mixed into his water, because when he regained consciousness the fire burned low and Harry was sleeping. He would not sleep for long if the voice at the door had anything to say about it, though. It was a sharp voice, the kind that could cut glass without even trying very hard.

'He is sleeping.' Aunt Thora said. She made it clear from those words alone that this was not up for debate. 'He has been wounded not so very long ago, he has today lost his brother and now he really needs to rest. I would counsel you to take your urgent business elsewhere. I believe Fíli is in charge of any pressing matters until further notice.'

The owner of the first voice was not so easily dissuaded. 'He is already quelling a riot somewhere else.'

Jack's mind was sluggish. That too was probably the direct result of whatever it was that his aunt had put in his drink. But he made a bit of effort and shook off the last lingering effects.

His memory returned clear and strong and he almost wished he hadn't bothered. Thoren was dead. The memory hit him like a sledgehammer to the chest. His brother had died under this very Mountain and he had been unable to do anything about it. He had not even been there with him. Instead he had been confined to his bed because of the damned knife wound in his chest.

He had felt it of course, the quakes. His very bed had moved and the Mountain itself groaned in agony. He'd known it then, even before Dwalin all but carried Cathy into the room, her face white with shock.

He barely recognised himself or his own actions. He had screamed. It wasn't at all like him, but he could not stop himself, though he tried. The pain found no other way out than through his throat. He had punched a wall in a vain effort to put an end to it and that had not much helped either. He'd only broken it, but at least he'd had the sense to punch with his left rather than his right.

He'd had no part in the revenge either. He'd been too injured to move. I am useless. He could not fight, he could barely stand.

'Let him in,' he commanded, raising his voice sufficiently for Thora to hear. He'd perform whatever duty that it was that he could do rather than lie here idly, neither use nor ornament. He sat up and ignored the blinding pain as he did so as best he could. This was not the time to be injured.

Thora's eyes told him that he was a moron and that he was setting his own recovery back by weeks, but she stood aside to allow their visitor into the room. The visitor in question was a youth of fourteen or fifteen years old who belonged to the Dale nobility. Jack had seen him around before, though they had never spoken.

'You have found me,' he said. 'How may I help?'

Seeing Jack sapped some of his confidence and arrogance. He stopped a few paces away from the bed and bit his lip. 'There's a riot, my lord,' he said.

It was not a surprise. The treachery of the men of Esgaroth had caused unrest throughout Erebor. Hadn't the lad just said that Fíli was already quelling another riot someplace else? He was so out of the way here that he was completely out of touch with the most recent developments, though he knew that the mood had turned nasty.

I cannot afford to be here. His injuries would have to wait.

'Where is this taking place and between who?' he demanded.

'It is only a few streets away, though from within this room the sounds cannot be heard,' the boy replied. 'And as to who is involved, it seems everyone, my lord, folk from all sides of the alliance.'

'Against the men of the Lake,' Jack stated rather than asked.

'As you say, my lord.'

This could not stand. He knew that it could not stand. Thoren had fought tooth and nail for this alliance. He had been dead only for hours and his alliance was not so much fraying at the seams as breaking down entirely. And when that has been done, Sauron will find us easy pickings. Then what would have been the point of it all?

He swung his legs out of bed and stubbornly breathed through the spike of pain that was so intense he nearly blacked out. 'I shall come,' he said. The lad would never have come here unless there was no other option. 'You'll have to let me lean on you, though.' That was a wound to his pride, but Thoren would not have minded. Thoren would already be out the door to put an end to this.

He is gone now and I am what remains. He could never be as good as his brother had been – the pain of loss of him struggled for dominance with the persistent ache in his chest until he could no longer tell one from the other – but he could strive for that at least.

The boy hurried to his side, eyes wide. 'My lord!' Jack found it unable to tell if the boy was grateful, shocked or a nice mixture of the two.

At least with Aunt Thora he had no problem with conflicting messages; she was livid. 'What do you think you're doing?' she demanded. 'You cannot stand!'

Wrong. 'I cannot stand unaided,' he corrected her. 'And I have found one willing to assist me.' Carefully he stood on his feet. His vision went blurry at the edges, but a few times blinking snapped it back into focus, though breathing remained harder than it usually was. He did not get quite enough air into his lungs either.

Thora went from livid to outraged. 'Back into bed with you now, my lad,' she commanded. When he had been a dwarfling that had been the kind of voice he ran from in fright, because it meant he had gone really deep into trouble now. 'You have a hole in your chest where there should be none, you have lost more blood than I care to think about and if you tell me that you can move so much as a finger without nearly going mad with pain, I shall denounce you as a liar. Enough of this now. Back to bed.'

'My fingers are doing fine,' he said. Those he could move without hurting. It was everything else that was the problem.

This was apparently not the correct answer. 'You will kill yourself,' she told him bluntly.

'And if I do not go, these people will kill each other,' Jack pointed out. 'I only do what Thoren would have done were he alive. He'd tell you that his life was worth nothing in comparison with the lives of all these others.' He had lived and died by that motto. 'If this alliance falls, we have lost. You know this. And we cannot wait for Fíli.'

And Maker only knew where Thranduil and Brand were, but Jack found it telling that this lad had come to him rather than seek out his own king. They might be with Fíli even now, blissfully unaware of the other trouble.

Thora misliked it. He could tell by her face. But he could also tell that she knew that he made a very good point. 'You're too much like your father,' she complained. 'And when you return I shall tie you to this bed if you make one other mention of going walkabout. Don't think I won't.'

He knew better than that.

The lad was at his side. He was not as tall as Jack was, despite being a man – and there was some bitter irony – but his shoulder was just the right height for grabbing onto. Jack suspected that his grip was a little too tight for the lad, but any looser and he'd lose what little balance he had entirely. That was not a risk worth taking. And he did not complain.

'What's your name?' he asked.

'Thormod, my lord,' the boy replied.

Jack had to think about it for a moment – his mind was still not as cooperative as it usually was – but he recognised it as belonging to the son and heir of one of the lords of Dale who had lands to the southwest of the now destroyed city.

'Let us go, Thormod,' he said. 'This errand cannot wait.'

Even so, it was slow-going. Aunt Thora invited herself along and, seeing as she could not persuade him to go back to bed, offered her own shoulder for support as well. He struggled along between them and ignored his body's unmistakable demands for rest. Bright spots kept leaping before his eyes and the pain became at times so intense that it felt as though the knife was plunged into his chest anew, over and over again. It almost took his breath away.

This was not a good idea.

But failing any better ones, this was what he needed to do.

He heard the noise long before he came close enough to see what was going on. His progress was too slow. He heard some voices raised in anger, some in desperation. He strained his ears for sounds of a fight and was extremely disappointed when he found them. But they were the sounds of a brawl rather than the kind of fight that involved steel.

We are not yet too late.

Even so, it was unwise to delay any further – judging by the sounds he could discern, Thormod had the measure of this conflict well enough – and he forced his body into a faster pace. His legs resisted him every step of the way, but Jack was a dwarf; he could easily out-stubborn the demands of his own body when they did not suit him. Thora threw him another look, but said nothing, for which he was grateful. Thormod said nothing either, but he was plainly worried.

'Someone you know in this conflict?' Jack asked.

'My cousin, my lord,' he replied. The worry etched a deep frown into his forehead, which made him look years older. 'He lives in Esgaroth.'

That explained it.

He walked faster still.

Jack knew he'd not walked far by the time they finally happened upon the scene, but he reckoned that he had walked for nearly twenty minutes. His progress had been far slower than he'd liked and while he had stumbled along to his destination, the closest thing to war he had ever seen under this Mountain had broken out.

In the square about a hundred and fifty people had assembled. The men of Esgaroth had formed something of a barricade to hinder anyone who might be so inclined from entering through the archway that led to their own quarters. Lined up before them were the guards Thoren had ordered to stand watch here, to prevent the people of Esgaroth from leaving. And before them a crowd had assembled and everybody was hurling insults back and forth. The guards, who were supposed to keep the peace, looked harangued and tired and in some cases more than ready to join the fight.

To his left two men were rolling over the ground, hitting each other as often as they could. Elvaethor was there too, one of his eyes knocked shut, trying to restrain a lad dressed as one of Esgaroth from joining the fight. A rock sailed through the air and bounced off the helmet of one of the guards without doing any harm, but the mood was clear enough.

Maker be good.

'Enough!' He tried to shout, but he was out of breath – another drawback of his recent injury – and it came out more like a squeak. Nobody saw or heard him. They were on the fringes. Everyone's focus was elsewhere.

This would not do.

He took a deep breath and then another. The dizziness receded a little, just enough for him to get on with it. Without warning he let go of the people who supported him. His body did not thank him for that. But he had just enough strength to put an end to this.

He strode forward, drew in one more breath and then bellowed with all the strength that still remained to him: 'Enough! Desist at once!'

The noise fell away. Folk backed away.

This suited Jack well enough; it was hard enough to keep himself upright and people getting in his way was not helping matters. He had better make the most of this opportunity.

He reached the middle of the square and halted there. 'Enough!' he repeated. 'What is the meaning of this?'

There was no shortage of answers.

'You keep us imprisoned!'

'They killed our people!'

'We've done nothing!'

'They tried to escape!'

This would not do either. 'Enough!' His chest constricted. It was so very hard to get sufficient air into his lungs. He felt his heart pound in all the wrong places. 'We cannot win against Sauron if we do not honour the alliance that my brother forged!' Oh, how Sauron would laugh if he saw this. 'He has not yet gone for a full day and you are already at each other's throats! We cannot stand if we do not stand united!'

'Well, perhaps you ought to let us go free then instead of keeping us locked up like animals!' a woman hollered from behind the barricade.

'Or perhaps he ought to kick you out entirely so that your lot can't kill our people again!' someone else from the other side shouted back. Jack couldn't see who it was.

He raised a hand to shut them up. Miraculously, that actually worked. He turned to the crowd. 'You will have justice for the ones who perished because of treachery,' he promised them. Nothing less would do to satisfy his conscience. 'But we will hold the actual traitors to account, not those who had nothing to do with it. You will disperse and not repeat tonight's actions.' He actually had to stop for breath. His lungs screamed for the air he did not quite give them. Jack ignored that. 'Remember that we are only still here because we have stood as one until now. If we do not continue to do so, what we have achieved so far means nothing!'

He turned around to face the men of the Lake, slowly, because the world was spinning enough already. On the upside, this gave him a few valuable moments to catch his breath.

'You will stay where you are until such time that all traitors have been apprehended,' he told the sullen faces that peered at him from across their makeshift barricade. 'I cannot put everyone at risk by acting otherwise.' It had been Thoren's biggest dilemma before his death, yet what choice had he? The alternative was unthinkable. 'My people work as hard as they can to resolve this matter once and for all. I ask of you to have just a little more patience and to desist from putting any more knives in my chest out of spite, because that's not helping matters.'

He looked down at his chest. Odd, he thought the bandages were supposed to be white.

They were dark crimson now.

The floor rushed up to meet him and he knew no more.

Next time: Thoren returns to civilisation and Beth takes up her new position as war correspondent.

Thank you so much for reading. As always, reviews would be very lovely.