Chapter 121

Desolation

The clean-up took days. The dead and injured were beyond count. There was rubble everywhere. Fires burned that really shouldn't be burning, so there were loads of people running around with buckets of water to put it all out again. Just because the battle had ended didn't mean that it was all over.

Movies consistently forget to mention this, I might add.

The moment when Aragorn dismissed the army of the dead became a defining moment. He himself was very nice and humble about the whole thing. He was very conscious too of the fact that he was not in fact in charge yet and to that end asked to speak to Denethor. Boromir calmly informed him that he had found it necessary to remove his father from power and that this being the case meant that he was the ruling Steward now. Aragorn was still recovering from that bit when I was forced to drop the bomb that Denethor was no longer alive at all.

It was not the way I had wanted that conversation to take place. I had hoped that I could find a moment to take him to the side and explain what happened when there was no one around to see how he took the news. But I had missed the chance and so here we were.

He took it not so different than Faramir had done. For a moment he went very still, gaze turned inward, then he bowed his head. In the style of Thráin I decided to get all the difficult stuff out of the way as fast as I could now that I had started anyway, so I told him what happened. It wasn't pretty, but I spared him as many details as I could.

Denethor's death was good news for Aragorn, but he never acted like it was. In fact, he scored a lot of points by making it abundantly clear that as far as he was concerned Boromir was still in charge of the city. No formal handover had been done, so for him that was the end of it. He pointed out that its rightful King though he may be, he knew very little of Gondor. Boromir on the other hand was known and loved.

Boromir in turn rose to the occasion. He must have been more tired than I was, but you'd never know it to look at him. He knew the people and he knew his land. So he sent the reinforcements that Aragorn had brought – and who had done very little fighting if any at all – to work in clearing the battlefield so that those who hadn't slept for such a long time could go and rest. He ordered that the healers sorted themselves out and got started. He gave them a carte blanche to recruit as many people to their aid as they needed with his blessing. I myself sent Aragorn to the Houses of Healing to see to Merry and Éowyn and then I spent the rest of my day running errands for the healers.

I have such admiration for the healers that served in this war. They were faced with more work than they could perform in a century, but they never let this hold them back. Instead of panicking, they got on with it. They did their jobs as best as they could under sometimes impossible circumstances. This was the same everywhere. It was true of the healers in Rohan, in Gondor and also of the ones in the North who were about to have their workload tripled yet again…

Cathy

Erebor rose up in the distance, dark and imposing. In the constant twilight in which Sauron had cloaked the land one could almost fail to see the destruction the orcs had wrought upon the outside. The absence of the familiar shape of Dale was the first clue for an unsuspecting traveller. Once one had noticed that, there was no missing the shapes of trees and the destruction of everything that grew. The orcs had reversed all the hard work that had been done since the reclamation of Erebor.

This is what the desolation of Smaug must have looked like, Cathy thought.

As a child she had drunk in the stories her father and mother told her about their questing days. Often she had longed to be able to see how it had all been. Now she would have given anything she had to bring back the lands as she remembered them from her childhood. There was something infinitely sad in the mangled land. Not even ruins remained of Dale. There was no evidence that Smaug's reign had ever ended, not here.

She felt desolate too, she reflected. In a way she almost felt hollow, detached from herself. Thranduil's news had knocked her off-balance and she had been trying to regain her equilibrium ever since, thus far without success.

He is not dead, she reminded herself. He can't be. There's been no evidence.

Those few lines had become her mantra, repeated over and over again in an endless cycle in the hopes that she might eventually begin to believe it. But then she would remember that Elvaethor's infallible senses had at long last let him down. She'd read the dismay in his eyes when he could no longer say with any certainty what Thoren's fate was.

'Let me speak to my sister,' she requested of Thranduil. 'This news had best come from me.' Not from an elf that she was not entirely sure of. Thoren trusted him these days. That was all good and well, but Cathy remembered her history. This was the elf who had imprisoned her parents and then besieged them when they were vastly outnumbered, all out of spite. She was well within her rights not to trust him.

He nodded once. 'As you wish, Lady Cathy.'

Nothing was as she wished of late. He is not dead. He can't be. There's been no evidence. But she no longer felt sure. Thoren'd had so many lucky escapes already. Logic dictated that even his famous luck must run out sometime. Her heart whispered that at last he had pushed it too far and now he truly was gone.

There's been no evidence, she repeated in her head. No dwarf would ever believe something for which there had been no proof. So she held to what she said: so long as she had not seen her brother's body, she would absolutely refuse to believe it, no matter what her worst fears whispered to her.

'You would be wise to give her no hope,' Thranduil said. Of course it was too much to ask for an elf not to offer advice. 'There is very little to be had.'

She fought for patience and won. Barely. 'If I have a need of your advice, I shall not hesitate to apprise you of it,' she said. 'Yet I have not done so and therefore your counsel is unwelcome. I shall deliver my news truthfully, but in whatever manner I see fit.'

That rather shut him up.

Cathy did not know in what way she should deliver the news. There did not seem to be a right way, yet for Duria's sake she'd have to find one. Uncle Ori might be confident in claiming that Duria would not fall again now that she was so aware of the danger, but Cathy was not. Duria was hanging on by the very thinnest of threads. And now Thoren might be gone and no one had as of yet any idea of what had become of Narvi. Who was to say that she would not fall again?

She focussed her efforts there in favour of pushing away all her fears about Halin and her friends and family with the army. There was nothing she could do for them now. When their fates were certain, she would allow herself to feel again. Until then Thoren had entrusted Erebor to her. I must be as strong and unmoveable as the Mountain itself.

There was no more Duria to fall back on when the world came crashing down around her.

I must fulfil that role now.

There was no avoiding it either. Duria – Thráin had not nicknamed her nosy for no reason – stood just outside the gates, the children grouped around her. Jack was there as well, armoured and armed and looking decades older than he was. Yet he commanded respect and admiration from those he now led. They saluted him when he passed. Some even bowed.

Jack pretended not to notice.

Climbing down from a pony was not an easy feat when pregnant. Getting up had not been fun and had required the help of Thranduil of all people. Fortunately she had Jack on hand to help her off.

'Document delivered?' he asked.

'Delivered, then taken back to Erebor for safekeeping,' she reported. So much had happened since she set off that her original mission had faded away to the back of her mind.

'What in Durin's name happened?' he whispered under his breath. 'What's the elf doing here?'

"The elf" had ears sharp enough to hear exactly what Jack said, but he had the grace to pretend that he did not.

'The battle was lost, our forces are on the run,' she reported in a voice just as hushed. 'They won't be far behind us.' She took a deep breath and then gave him the worst news. 'Thoren was taken. He was badly injured, might be dead.'

Jack went very still for a moment. He deliberately let his hair fall before his face so that she couldn't see how he took the news. She tried all the same. It only lasted a few seconds anyway and then he spoke again: 'Proof?'

'None.' Thranduil could speak about what was likely until he was blue in the face, but Thoren had cheated fate before. He had been presumed dead and had shown up again regardless.

But the orcs have him now, she thought. This is different. This is worse.

It was bad before and he returned anyway. There has been no proof.

In the end that was all that mattered. So she steeled herself and said: 'Elvaethor's gone after him with Tauriel and Dáin. To obtain proof if nothing else.'

'To bring him home?'

'To bring him home,' she confirmed. Dead or alive, that remained to be seen.

Jack nodded.

'Leave Duria to me,' she said. 'You will need to prepare the defence of the Mountain. More of our wounded are coming and the army is not far behind. I think it will be a siege again.'

With less food than they'd had for the first time, but with less mouths to feed as well. Many warriors had left, but had not returned. Many never would, left as spoil for the orcs and whatever wild animals still dared to roam the land. When she looked around her these days, she saw mostly womenfolk. All the menfolk had gone to war. Those that remained were the very old and the very young and the very wounded.

A whole generation gone and Thoren with it.

That led to her next realisation. I don't believe he has survived. Not truly.

Be that as it may, Duria needed to be told something, so she had better go and do it. She left organising everything to Jack and Fíli and turned to Duria herself.

Her sister already suspected. 'Who has died?' The tone of voice was brisk, but it sounded brittle all the same.

Cathy was no elf or man that she would endlessly dance around the subject, so she gave it as straight as she could. 'Thoren was taken by orcs.' A more gentle soul might have given the recipient of such news a few moments to take it all in, but Cathy was no gentle soul. She barrelled on instead. 'He was alive when they saw him last. The orcs seem to believe that he may yet be used to bargain with.'

Duria said nothing in much the same way that Jack had done. Unlike their brother, she did not speak again. She merely nodded and turned around. She forgot to take the lads with her when she went in again.

Maker save us all.

Ordinarily she would have turned to Elvaethor for comfort and reassurance, but he was not here either. Those she knew were too busy to have time to spare for her and Duria had forgotten her children. She might have gone after her sister and spoken a few words about her responsibilities, but not where the boys could hear.

So what can I do?

'We'll need to go inside,' she told the lads. One thing at a time. She would figure it out as she went, but getting them all out of the way seemed like a fairly good way to begin, so that was where she started from. 'We're in the way and underfoot here.'

'So where do we go?' Harry asked.

He was bright, this mannish cousin. Circumstances had forced him to grow up and to grow up fast. He looked at her with eyes that knew. He may not know what exactly had happened, but he understood enough to know that it was not good. He looked, Cathy reflected, like a kicked dog about to be kicked yet again.

He knows Thoren too, she realised. He doesn't know him well, but he knew him well enough to like him.

She forced a smile onto her face. 'Where would you like to go?'

He didn't miss a beat. 'Your mum's grave?' he requested, which seemed like a strange request from a lad his age.

'Why?'

He bit on his lower lip. 'Cause of the statue.'

In her confusion she could only repeat the last two words back to him. 'The statue?'

Harry nodded, gathering his courage as he went. 'Yes, because that's of what your mum looked like when she was alive and she was…' He thought hard for a moment and then spoke slowly and precisely so that he got it all right: 'My great-grandfather's sister. And Mrs Duria said that's where Thoren goes when he needs to think and you look like you need to think and I want to see what she looks like because my mum was always searching for her, so I thought…' Here at last he trailed off.

If she was honest, then it was not a bad notion. Thoren had always gone there when he needed counsel or when he needed a quiet place to think. Just the thought that he would never go there again almost made her recoil, but that was not what she did. I cannot fall apart. I have taken Duria's place. It is my lot in life to keep my head when all around me are losing theirs.

All of a sudden it was no longer so strange to her that Thoren sought counsel with the dead.

How did he bear it all?

The notion that he was gone only now started to sink in. The hollowness in her chest was filled by a sense of loss that she had known before. It was every bit as terrible as it had been then, but this time there was no one to blame, no one she could hurt to make it better.

He is gone. This time he is gone for good. If even Elvaethor no longer knew with any certainty whether Thoren lived or died, then it was time to be honest and admit that he was gone. Her new brother might not have wanted to admit that. He might not even have realised why he no longer could tell.

Cathy rather thought she knew.

So what can I do?

One step at a time. She had three boys to look after, two of whom had not said a word since their mother disappeared without a word. She would have to have words about that with Duria later. One step at a time. So she did just that; she mapped out her day one step at a time. The graveside first, because Harry asked. It'd give Duria some time to pull herself together. Then she'd go and drop the lads off with her sister so that Duria was forced to step up. After this she would return to the gates and make herself useful in whatever way she could.

When I get home, I will cry.

Weeping without restraint and without a care for whoever saw it was no longer something she could do. She was supposed to be in command, of herself as well as of this Mountain. Although the tears burned behind her eyes, she bit them back.

'Very well,' she said. 'Come with me.'

The lads followed her in silence. She held Nari's little hand in her right and Harry's in her left. Dari held Harry's hand. There was another one with eyes too old. The children are becoming the adults, because the adults are falling away by the dozen. And in the end, how many of them would be left?

Would the dwarves survive at all?

One of Thoren's last commands before he left Erebor for the last time was to have the tomb brought inside rather than have it left outside as an orc's plaything. Nes had gathered some folk around her to see it done. Most of the pieces were inside now, just not reassembled yet. The statues were here also and rather than dignified, they somehow seemed diminished by their relocation.

They both loved the outside more than common for our people. Odd though their graveside might have been, it had also strangely suited them. They had not been ordinary. They had never done matters the normal way.

That is the legacy they left us.

'That's her,' Harry said. He let go of Cathy's hand and stood straight before the statue of the late Queen under the Mountain. He tilted his head. 'She looks like my mum a bit. And like you too.'

Cathy smiled. 'I always took after her.' Standing here made her wonder. Would I have called her mum if I had grown up in that strange world of hers? But she had not grown up in that world. She had grown up in this one instead and that was because of the dwarf whose statue stood next of that of the Queen.

Growing up, Cathy had spent more time with her father than with her mother. Her mother was the one who made the rules, yet her father was the one who so often let her break them. To her he had always been loving and kind. Yet this was also the dwarf who had marched on Erebor with a small company to take it back from the dragon Smaug. He'd had courage.

Thoren was like him so much.

He is your responsibility again, she thought, not knowing whether the dead might hear it or not. He's in good hands with you.

But he was no longer with them.

So it was time to step up and carry on the great work her father and her brother had done before her. Cathy bowed to the statues – oh, if only Duria could see her now! – and prepared to do just that.

Elvaethor

They rode in silence. Dáin was no natural talker, Elvaethor suspected, unlike his son, who talked enough for the both of them. He brought a grim determination to the proceedings that Elvaethor found matched in his own mind.

They stopped but twice to feed and water the horses and let them have a little rest. Dáin showed no sign of fatigue and although Elvaethor's shoulder ached fiercely, he found that he could bear the pain well enough. For his brother he'd face worse and carry on.

During the second stop he spoke to Tauriel: 'My heart is silent,' he said. During the long hours on horseback he had searched it again and again to no avail. There was no certainty, not of Thoren's life, but not of his death either. 'But perhaps yours is not.'

She hesitated before responding. 'My heart is afraid.'

She said no more. Perhaps, like him, they were too afraid for Thoren's fate to hear clearly what should otherwise have been obvious to them both.

He inclined his head and climbed back on the horse.

It was no hardship finding the army. Their own forces fled before it. The retreat was done in an orderly manner, too orderly to call it flight. Yet this was not the first flight that Elvaethor had seen, nor the first victory of the Enemy. If only he closed his eyes his mind would take him to times long gone and to the faces of friends long buried.

He kept his eyes wide open.

They avoided their friends in favour of riding hard to the south, from where the danger came. They made no plans. All depended on what they'd find. For all they knew Thoren might have died and the orcs might have thrown his body aside to be trampled. Even Elvaethor's mind shied away from thinking much about what orcs preferred to do with the remains of their enemies.

The orcs could be seen, smelled and heard from far away. They had not yet broken camp, but their encampment was not quiet. Orcs were not content with silence. They gained no rest or comfort from it. Nor did they take delight in good conversation or music. They were twisted beings. They had no use for peace, so all must be discordant noise instead. Elvaethor wrinkled his nose, but said nothing.

'We should take cover,' Dáin said when it was nearly dawn. It was the first time that he had spoken since they had left. 'You stand out like orcs in a bathing room.' He did not mince his words, as was the way among his people.

My people now, Elvaethor reminded himself. Nevertheless he nodded and did as Dáin asked. He dismounted and led his horse towards a small cluster of trees. They had little to offer in the way of shelter in the midst of winter, but to those with eyes less keen than elves, they might be invisible. He put up the hood of his coat to conceal his hair. After a moment Tauriel did the same.

Now that they had come so far it was for her that he feared. She had not spoken much. Her eyes were not gazing at the here and now. He had seen such gazes before. Once he had looked on Dari after his wife had passed. This was the same look. Within half a year after it Dari had starved himself into his own grave.

Centuries after that and not so very long ago he had seen the same in Thorin Oakenshield after Kate had passed on. His heart ached for his friends again, much the same as it had done when he first lost them. He had not run from the grief this time, but the pain remained, only temporarily dulled.

It was not dulled for Tauriel now. He had lived this story before. He knew its ending.

Yet not all hope was lost. Cathy was right in proclaiming that she would not believe anything she was told concerning her brother until there was evidence to support it. This was the way of the dwarves and that was what he had become. These must be my ways.

'If he's alive, they'll keep him under guard,' Dáin said. 'Master Elf, put your keen eyes to good use if you would be so kind.'

Elvaethor could have argued that he was no longer to be counted among the elves, but in blood this was what he was, so he took no offence. This was not a time for quarrelling. 'As you wish,' he said instead.

He did as promised and looked. The camp was as chaotic and unorganised as he had expected it to be. Orcs had put up tents and makeshift roofs of dirty cloth where they happened to have stopped once the order had come to make camp for the night. Some campfires yet burned, but most had gone out through neglect. Here and there bodies lay of their own comrades, killed in petty squabbles over small patches of land that would be abandoned when the army moved on.

They have no regard for life, Elvaethor thought. To them it is not sacred.

Every other sentient being had it, the knowledge that life was something to be cherished, not to be carelessly extinguished. Murder was a crime in all the lands he had ever seen, yet among orcs it was celebrated instead. Morgoth had twisted his first creations – if creations was the word to be used for taking something already alive and then maiming them mentally and physically beyond any recognition – to such an extent that they had become entirely other.

'There is no sign of the Nazgûl,' he reported. It might well have flown off to scout the area, but though he scoured the skies, he saw nothing there either. His senses usually never failed to detect one of those creatures if they were close. There was nothing.

'Nor of any heavily guarded segments,' Tauriel observed. He heard the note of worry in her voice. She contained it, but only barely.

Elvaethor shared her concern, but he had not yet given up. 'If he was injured, as you say he was, they might not fear his escape. That is only to our advantage.'

The Enemy might however suspect that some of the Free Folk would take exception to their leader's capture and might thus stage a rescue. He expected more orcs on watch, but could detect only a few.

They believe themselves the victors and therefore the masters of these lands. Caution is not their way.

'Where would they keep him?' Dáin asked, all business.

Although Elvaethor had met the Lord of the Iron Hills several times now, he still failed to get the measure of him. Thorin and Kate had disliked him because of his reluctance to lend his assistance to their quest, this he knew. From what he had seen it was a dislike and a mild distrust that Thoren shared. The fact that he had sent Dáin home had spoken of the little faith he had in him. Elvaethor had heard rumours about Dáin's conduct during the retreat from the hill and wondered. Yet here he was, volunteering to free his King from the Enemy's camp.

'I cannot say,' he answered honestly. 'If orcs were rational beings, my estimation would be that they kept him at the heart of their camp to ensure no one could free him.'

'Applying logic to orcs?' Dáin scoffed. He spat on the ground. 'That'd be the day.'

'As you say,' Elvaethor agreed.

He looked again, willing his senses to tell him more than they were made to. Where are you, my brother? If Thoren made but one noise, then he would hear him, even above all the ruckus that the orcs made. Thoren might be hidden from sight, but to an elf that would mean nothing.

Tauriel heard it first. She went very still for a moment and then looked at Elvaethor. 'Did you hear that?'

He strained his ears. At first he heard nothing, but then it came to him too; the soft low moan of a body in pain. No orc could make that sound. It was the sound of a being that could feel pain in ways that orcs could not. Soft and feeble though it was, it was recognisable as Thoren's voice.

'He lives.' It took speaking the words for him to feel the truth of them. The thing that had cut off his senses fell away as though it had never been. He felt again. He knew. Fear and grief – and the fear of grief – had blinded him. Like the dwarves who had so generously adopted him as their own, he had required proof before he could believe.

Now he did.

Dáin's head snapped up. 'He lives?' He narrowed his eyes at Elvaethor in undisguised suspicion. 'How can you tell?'

'I heard,' Elvaethor said. Just as dwarves and men often found the sharp senses of elves unbelievable, Elvaethor often found himself wondering at just how dimmed their senses must be. Oftentimes he wondered how they went through the world so unaware of their own surroundings. 'He lives, but I fear that he is in a bad way.'

'We will retrieve him.' Tauriel had transformed. Gone were the haggard look and the empty eyes. Fire burned in them again. Hope had restored her to her former self. 'There,' she said, pointing a finger in the direction Elvaethor himself suspected. 'That is the way.'

Dáin frowned. 'Anything more precise?' He did not question Elvaethor's words, but neither was he much impressed.

Elvaethor gazed on the camp again. 'That cluster of tents,' he said and pointed. 'I cannot be more precise from here, but I will know when we come closer.'

They were in luck. Orcs did indeed not think and act as the other races did. The small group of tents was on the outskirts of camp instead of in the middle. To reach it, the small rescue party would have to pass a considerable part of the orcish camp, but they need not march through it, as he had feared.

'In and out,' said Dáin. 'Quick and quiet. We're not equipped to take on all the might of Mordor.' He seemed to have deemed himself the leader of this venture. As Lord of the Iron Hills that was indeed his prerogative, but his manner rubbed Elvaethor the wrong way.

Yet there was little he could say to protest. Time was not on their side and neither were the numbers. 'We must retrieve him before they move again.'

'On foot, I think,' Tauriel said. 'Horses are sure to be noticed.'

So were folk on foot, but Elvaethor did not say this. 'We must keep our hoods drawn over our faces and pray that they are too lax to pay much attention to what goes on beyond the boundaries of their camp.'

He had walked among orcs before, but then he had the garb of an Easterling to lure them into a false sense of security. As far as he could tell, there were no men at all among the orcs now. That army had been scattered to the four winds. Would that this one did the same.

Not while Sauron lives, he knew. His thoughts strayed to Thráin for a brief moment. May your Maker keep you and the Valar light your path, my friend. It was Thráin's wont to take risks that others would avoid and it was perhaps this that made him rise above all his fellows. Did he know yet where his path would eventually lead him?

Waiting served no purpose, so they tied the horses to the trees and began to walk. The constant half-dark was their friend in this. So long as they moved at an almost leisurely pace and kept to the shadows where they could, they could pass almost unnoticed. He kept his eyes on the camp, but not only did he not see any orcs who were awake, he also no longer could see anyone guarding this camp at all.

They have grown arrogant indeed.

Tauriel had noticed it too: 'No one guards this camp. Are they so sure of their victory?'

They must be. It was a grave defeat that the Free Folk Alliance had suffered. Elvaethor had seen how they had fled before the forces of Mordor. Hope had abandoned many of them. All their remaining hope now lay in the strength of the walls of Erebor. If the Enemy had one more of those cursed devices as he had employed before, that hope was sure to prove false. The orcs had every reason to feel as arrogant and victorious as they wished.

'Come,' he said. 'It cannot be long before they wake.'

Only the occasional fire lit their way, but he did not need the light to see. He had heard Thoren make a noise but once more and it had been as feeble as the first time. Hold on, he prayed. Just a little longer, brother. We are almost there.

Now that he was closer he knew where to go. Tauriel knew it too. She increased her pace accordingly, until Elvaethor put a hand on her arm to hold her back. He understood her impatience, but caution would serve them better. 'Nothing is gained by making ourselves stand out,' he reminded her. They had come too close now.

Anger flashed across her face, but she brought it swiftly to heel. She nodded. 'You are right.'

He took the lead from there. He was no less impatient than his sister, but he was the more cautious one. Tauriel was much younger than he was and at times like these it showed. She had seen less of the world, less of war and less of life itself. Part of him wished he could have kept it that way, but she was long grown, old enough to make her own choices.

This was where they had led her.

The camp up close was as disorganised and as filthy as he had seen from a distance. The cloths that made up the tents were old and worn. They were blackened by the mud and the ash and the blood and, from the look and smell of it, excrement. He wrinkled his nose in spite of himself. Who could live like this?

Still nothing moved. He beckoned his friends over to the tent at the far end of a makeshift and mostly accidental alley. Thoren had made no noise for some time now, but he was certain that he was there. Either way, they had to start somewhere.

Tauriel wriggled her way past him to the tent. He reached for her to make sure that she remembered to be cautious, but she was quicker than he was in many things. He had little choice but to follow after her and do what little he could. Dáin followed after him, his footsteps much louder than those of Elvaethor and Tauriel.

Tauriel reached the tent first. She wasted no time on making sure it was as unguarded as everywhere else; she just walked straight in. Then she gasped.

Elvaethor followed.

Then he gasped as well.


Next time: the rescue mission continues. Meanwhile Beth resolves the situation with her family at last.

A thousand apologies for the delay, by the way. Unforeseen circumstances threw my whole schedule into disarray and in the ensuing chaos, The Book completely slipped my mind. It won't happen again. But at least it means you won't have to wait too long for the next update, so there's that.

Thank you for reading. Reviews would absolutely brighten this dreary Dutch day.

Until Sunday!