The pace Thorin sets is rapid and no one complains about it, all of them eager to put Laketown behind them. If Laketown is the nearest place for the dwarves to trade once Erebor is reclaimed Billana can see it becoming a source of difficulty in the future. She hopes that she is wrong. It would be nice for Erebor to have an easy relationship with at least one of its neighbours, and that is unlikely with the way they were received in Thranduil's Halls. The wind is already biting and she huddles into her coat as they walk, her gait awkward due to the unusual sensation of boots on her feet. The mountain, she has been told, is a little over a week away by pony and it will likely take slightly longer on foot.
For the first time in longer than she had realised, Billana thinks of the Shire and feels an unexpected pang of homesickness. So many of her memories of that place are coloured by the way that Bungo and many of the other hobbits treated her, sometimes she forgets that before her mother died there had been times of joy as well. There had even been times when the other hobbits had included her without their usually caustic comments and thinly veiled insults. In the Shire they would still be harvesting the crops, the days still clinging to the last lingering warmth of a summer that has long passed this far north. Harvest is a time of great industry in the Shire, more so than even the spring planting, and every extra hand was welcomed. Even the hands of a bastard child that the less kind hobbits would chase away with cruel words and stones.
Not all of her fellows had been cruel to her, she can still think of Edelard Bolger with some fondness even though he had remained blind to Bungo's dislike of her and the risk posed by her step-father and his family. The Maggots had always been good to her as well, grateful for her efforts training and healing their dogs which were known to be the best in the Shire. There were others, families who lived further from Hobbiton and Tuckborough who cared little about her family history and associated with her whenever she was in the area, rare as that was, but she had been lonely as a child and lonelier still once her mother had passed and her grandfather had given her the little smial she came to call home. She hadn't realised it until now, content with her life and her animals, but as she walks among the dwarves and watches them as they softly discuss the circumstances behind their abrupt departure she realises how important this has become to her and how much she had been craving it without even realising it.
She tucks her hands under her arms as they walk, absently longing for a pair of warm mittens and a shawl to cover her hair and ears as the wind picks up. There is no real tree cover to stop the breeze and it is already as chill as an early winter wind in the Shire. She doesn't want to think about how much colder it will get before winter proper is upon them here and she shivers slightly into her coat. The pace will warm her up soon enough.
"There has to be something we can do to better protect my daughter," she hears Balin hiss at Thorin and turns her attention to the two dwarves just ahead of her.
"You can be assured that I will not break our people's oldest and most sacred law, Balin," Thorin replies. "There was a time when the Men knew that there would never be a marriage arranged between any dwarf and a member of their race, or any other, unless the dwarf involved had found their One in the match."
"The memories of Men are weak," Balin mumbles, "and a hundred and seventy years have passed since the mountain fell, there will no longer be any living who remember the old alliances and contracts."
"Most of those will have been lost when the dragon destroyed Dale," Thorin agrees. "She will be safe, Balin. We will not permit her choice to be taken from her. Nor will I condemn my sister's sons to a lifetime of solitary misery. If their hearts truly lie together only the will of Mahal could prevent them from marrying."
"Don't tempt him," Balin mutters. "She still has to face the dragon," there is a distinctly unhappy note to his voice.
"It is why she came," Thorin reminds her father, "and there is no one else that we can ask. Gandalf chose her for her magic and her scent. Would you have me send Nori? I have walked that path with you and Dwalin before, I saw what it did. I'll not do it again."
"And what of Fili and Kili?" Balin demands. "You just assured me that you would not condemn them to a lifetime of misery and loneliness. You know what the loss of her husbands did to your sister. Would you do that to them? We were fortunate that she had her boys to prevent the stone from claiming her, but your grandfather was not so lucky when your grandmother passed. They will have nothing to anchor them to the mountain, nothing to stop them from going to stone as their mother nearly did, or filling the cracks with senseless wealth as happened with Thror."
"I have little choice," Thorin snaps. "It is in the hands of Mahal. There is nothing more that I can do and it distracts us from your other concern."
"The Men of the Lake," Balin sighs. "We'll have to think of something."
"They already know that she's courting Kili. Let them continue with that information for now and we shall think on it once we have achieved what we came here to do," Thorin tells his friend. "She is perfectly capable of escaping herself should it become necessary. You must acknowledge that she is very well able to protect herself and others when the need arises. Besides, with luck the situation will have resolved itself favourably before the Master becomes a problem. I cannot imagine them waiting much longer, they are not Dwalin and Nori."
"May they never experience the pain those two did," Balin mumbles and Billana draws back, aware she is hearing things that it would be better she didn't.
She glances behind her at Dwalin and Nori. They aren't far from each other, and haven't been since Beorn's, but there is a tense air about them that had started the previous afternoon and hasn't eased. The others are all avoiding the pair and Billana has followed their example, but she is undeniably curious about the history they have that Dori, Balin and Thorin have all alluded to. She doesn't dare to ask and her attention is quickly grabbed by Ori. It doesn't take much for her to realise that he has noticed the direction her thoughts have taken, and that he more than likely knows as much as his brother does, or that he is trying to distract her from them by continuing her lessons in Khuzdul.
By later that day Billana is coming to suspect that the reason the dwarves do not teach their language to outsiders has nothing to do with the fact that they claim it is a sacred secret and a gift from their Maker, and more to do with the fact that the other races have difficulty creating some of the sounds without sounding completely ridiculous. Ori, at least, manages to keep his amusement to little more than a grin and an amused sparkle of his eyes, but Bofur laughs outright more than once and they actually have to pause and wait for him to get control of himself when a mispronunciation leads to Billana calling Ori something she doesn't understand and that the scribe refuses to translate, though he blushes fiercely. It brings the lesson to an end, however, and Thorin declares that their location is as good a point as any to make camp.
Between them Kili, Fili and Nori have managed to hunt down several rabbits and a deer during the course of the day. The rabbits are dressed and thrown into the stew pot by Bombur, and the deer is hastily dressed and wrapped to serve them in the place of dried meats until they have no other options. The hot stew is welcomed and Billana eats huddled between Balin and Fili, lingering once she is done and enjoying the warmth of the dwarves and the shelter that they offer against the biting wind. They purchased tents in Laketown, though Thorin and Gloin had argued against the extra cost, and seeing that she is shivering with the chill Bofur offers to put one up rather than disrupting Fili, who has his arm wrapped around her, or Kili who is softly debating with Thorin in rapid Khuzdul that Billana isn't familiar enough with the language to follow and that the others are studiously ignoring. She slips into the tent gratefully once it is up, curling into her bedroll in hazy exhaustion after a night with no sleep and a day of marching. She is asleep before anyone else joins her, only aware of the increase in warmth and the pressure of a body against her front and another along her back.
This forms a pattern for the following days on the way to the ruins of Dale and Erebor. With days spent walking and learning to speak the dwarven tongue with Ori and nights spent curled up in a tent which warms only a little but at least keeps the worst of the wind off them. As they travel the others down what game that they can, but the closer they get to the ruins of the great city that once lay a half day from the foot of the mountain the fewer animal voices Billana hears. It is almost like having one of her senses forcibly removed, an emptiness that comes from not being able to find the presence of any animals other than their ponies and the occasional rabbit or bird and it makes her shudder more than once at how empty the land around them is. It should be full of life, but even the grass and scrubby gorse that she would almost expect to see seem to have abandoned the land and the closer to the mountain they get the more and more they find themselves walking over sharp shards of stone rather than grass and dirt and the expressions on the faces of her companions become troubled.
By the time they reach the ruins of Dale Billana is glad that Nori insisted on the soft boots she wears, although even they haven't protected her feet fully. As hardy as the soles of her feet are, Billana has felt almost every stone and she suspects that her toes would have been cut to ribbons without the footwear. Even the dwarves heavy boots have suffered and Balin insists that they spend a few days in the ruins to centre themselves before going on to Erebor and trying to find the door.
"You've seen what was out there, Thorin," he says, "it will only be worse the closer we get. We have time, the door will not reveal itself to us until Durin's Day, as the map says. Let us rest here where we can be warm and sheltered and search for the landing closer to the time. It would be best not to move too close to the mountain until it is time, lest the dragon lives and we wake him from his slumber."
Thorin stares at her father for a long moment, although the others have already begun to drift towards the ruins of houses to examine the structures.
"Very well," he agrees after a beat. "We will rest here."
A.N: I'm not good at concentrating on the things that I'm meant to be concentrating on. I literally got this chapter done by promising myself I could write for ten minutes between every section of my studies. It was the only way to get the studying done.
