Chapter 123
The Last Stand
Words cannot describe the relief I felt at this most unexpected turn of events. I would not lose everyone I had ever known. We might not be able to reach out, hold hands and embrace. We would never sit together in the same room again, have a meal together or spend Christmas at my parents'. This solution did not change all that, but when I wrote my letter I was convinced that I was cutting all my old ties. Now a few fragile ones remained.
It's funny what war can do to us and the ties we do form. In peacetime relationships follow normal patterns. You have the luxury of being able to take your time to get to know a person. Friendships and romantic relationships take the time to develop. Of course, they can still go from zero to a million in seconds for some people, but it's not the norm. As such it can take a while before a situation occurs that really tests the people in said relationship. Make or break time can be some time in coming.
That's different in wartime, I find. First of all, you know who your enemy is. Believe you me, no one is ever going to be stupid enough to befriend an orc. It was slightly different with the traitors in Erebor, I know, but once they had shown their true colours and they were known, they were disavowed by everyone who ever knew them. They became the enemy and they died because of it.
It is because the world beyond had grown so cruel and dangerous that we clung more tightly to our friends. If someone saves your life in battle, they're practically your friend for life. You bond with people much quicker when you're depending on each other for your survival and you're in a world surrounded by danger where you might snuff it at any given moment. I formed friendships in those days that went so much deeper than most of my friendships in England became over a much longer timespan. I married a man I knew for less than half a year. It was not just me either. Harry formed such a strong attachment to the dwarves in general and Jack in particular. And then there was Thráin, who, very much to his surprise and everyone else's, became good friends with an elf…
Thráin
'Movement,' said Legolas.
It was all the Fellowship needed to drop to the ground and pull their cloaks over themselves to hide. Over the few hours they'd had to do this several times, but so far they had not been found out. Mordor was almost empty, but still orcs remained. They were few and far in between, but they were there all the same.
Thráin curled up under the elvish garment and hoped for the best. He heard no sound but the wind. Orcs, even if they could be bothered to try, never managed to sound as anything less than a herd of bolting Mûmakil. What had Legolas seen?
'It is safe,' the elf said after a lengthy silence.
Thráin rose with the others. He found Legolas standing straight, gazing north.
'What did you see?' he asked. 'The wraiths?' That would account for the lack of footsteps.
'So I thought at first,' Legolas nodded. 'It was for this reason that I sounded the warning, but then I looked closer.' A smile broke through on his face. He pointed to a few small dots on the northern horizon. 'Can you see?'
Thráin squinted, but saw no more than he had already seen. 'Three dots, airborne.'
The Nazgûl had acquired winged beasts, so yes, these could very well still be them. In all his calculations there were still three Nazgûl unaccounted for. It stood to reason that they had remained here to guard the Black Land itself now that most of the troops had departed it. Three here, three in Gondor and three in the North.
Legolas looked at him with exasperation. 'I wonder how you can get by with such poor sight, my friend,' he said.
'As I recall, you mistook them for something they were not at first glance,' Thráin retorted irritably. 'Would you enlighten me?'
'Eagles,' said Legolas, which shut Thráin up immediately.
They were here. Despite the ash and the dust in the air, Thráin breathed easy for the first time in days. 'Beth's doing,' he told Legolas. If the eagles were here, that meant that Beth was still alive to tell Gandalf to summon them. She was not half as useless as she had been at the start of this quest. 'We shall require them for the return journey.'
Gimli took this opportunity to say his piece. 'I don't see why they can't come here, take the Ring, fly it to Mount Doom and drop it there as to save us the journey.' He had the Ring at the moment. It had not yet tripped him, but it made his temper shorter than it ought to be.
'There's a thought,' Sam said. 'Why don't they?'
Honestly. 'We might as well wave a flag and announce our presence to Sauron. He would intercept the eagles before they ever reached their goal. Sauron would take the Ring. All would be lost. We remain hidden for the time being. Let us remain that way.'
Faramir's sacrifice only made sense when they honoured it. Had his friend escaped? Did he yet live? Was their ruse still alive? No orcs swarmed these lands yet. Surely they would have done if Sauron ever suspected that not all was as it seemed?
Frodo nodded. 'The Ring wants us to beckon the eagles.' He had become ever more attuned to its moods of late.
Gimli changed his mind. 'Well, then we won't. We should move on. I reckon it doesn't want us to do that either.' He gave the good example himself.
They all fell in line behind him. Legolas was the only one to overtake him, so that he could lead them. His sense of direction aboveground was by nature better than Thráin's. Ordinarily he could find his way around above the surface quite well, but this land was made to confound the senses. Without the elf's impeccable senses, they would have been turned around many times before.
'You speak as though the Ring speaks to you,' he observed to Frodo once he fell into step with him. 'Is that so?'
To his credit, Frodo did not avert his face. 'Ever more,' he said. The struggle was clear on his face. 'It does not have thought in the same way you and I do and yet it speaks.'
'Eloquently too at times,' Thráin recalled. When it had spoken to him it had often done so in feelings and longings and despair, but several times there had been words. It had happened a few times that he thought in words that were not usually part of his vocabulary, but when it was very strong it spoke in complete sentences, almost indistinguishable from his own thoughts. It had not done so for some time, but it paid to be cautious.
Its focus is on Frodo.
Frodo nodded. 'Yes. It speaks clearer of late.' At last he looked to the ground. 'It haunts my dreams.'
This should not be a surprise. It wasn't, but he had hoped for something different.
'How so?'
'It calls to me,' Frodo said. 'I have no respite either in rest or in waking. It wants me to put it on, to become what the Nine are.'
'You will not become like them,' Thráin pointed out. 'They failed to bring you down even when they stabbed you. Your mind is strong, Frodo. You will not fall.'
The hobbit looked up at him quizzically. 'Not so long ago you were not so sure.'
'Not so long ago you were close to falling.' He had a ready answer for that. 'Then you recovered. Am I wrong to have such faith in you now?'
Frodo contemplated that. 'Your faith strengthens me. I think.'
'Then I shall not falter in that.'
'Does the book…?' Frodo asked, hesitantly.
'We have left the book behind,' Thráin interjected. 'We have broken away. It is of no more use to us. We chart our own course.' In a way they had done this for quite some time now. He had broken away the moment they left Lothlórien behind much sooner than the book would have predicted.
'What have we done then that is so different?' Gimli asked. 'Cause the way I see it, we've not exactly made things better.' He made an arm gesture apparently meant to encompass all of Mordor and their current circumstances.
'The road was never meant to be easy,' Thráin said.
'Like in the great stories,' Sam understood.
Thráin nodded. 'Just so.'
'What has altered?' Legolas asked, repeating the question.
'You are here.' This one he could answer swiftly. 'You were meant to go with Aragorn into Rohan and then Gondor.' He recalled a bit about Legolas being taken by a longing for the sea as soon as he clapped eyes on it. That would now not happen. Doubtless there were consequences to that. Good or bad ones? He was unable to tell.
'You spoke of this when we joined you,' Legolas recalled. 'And yet, by your own logic, you were not meant to be here either.'
'I was never meant to be on this quest,' Thráin said. 'If the book had been right, I would not have existed.'
Gimli pondered this for a moment. 'And then what hope would our people have had?'
Thráin wondered. 'I do not know.'
'Gollum,' said Frodo into the silence that fell after those words. 'What of Gollum?'
'Gollum was bound to die,' Thráin replied. 'Not when he did, but later, in Mordor itself. Had he been left to his own devices, he would have led us to Shelob's lair in the hope that she would deal with us and he could regain the Ring. In the end, Frodo would be overcome by the Ring. A struggle would ensue in which Gollum gained the Ring, but fell into the fires himself, thus ending both himself and the Ring.'
Frodo met his eyes. 'And yet you believed that he should die in Ithilien.'
He was unsure of the question Frodo truly posed to him, but he could answer the one that had been asked in words. 'Aye, I did. I still do.'
'Why?'
'Because the book is unreliable.' But that was not the entire answer. Honesty dictated that he expanded on it. 'His death was in many ways my doing. You'll recall that in the Dead Marshes I misspoke in front of him, revealing our purpose. This drove him into the arms of our enemies, which led him to his death.' He knew he had brought about changes for the better before, but this, he felt, was not one of those.
'We couldn't trust him anyway,' Gimli declared, crossing his arms over his chest.
'We never could,' Thráin agreed. 'Yet I believed that he had a part to play. If I had been more careful, then perhaps he could have played some part yet, but that was not to be.'
'Good riddance, I say.' Gimli never liked Gollum, with good reason. Thráin felt likewise, but he knew that Frodo had sympathised with him for equally good reasons.
'Was Gollum doomed from the start then?' Frodo asked.
Thráin took his time in answering. 'So long as the Ring existed, he would never have been able to let it go.' He was certain of this much at least. 'If he had lived after its destruction, I cannot say what might have become of him. Perhaps its hold on his mind would be broken. Perhaps the loss of it would drive him mad with grief. I do not know.' He had not dwelled on the question much when it was their own survival that kept him up at night.
Frodo on the other hand had one more question. 'If you believed that he was necessary for the quest, why would you want him killed?'
'I changed my mind,' Thráin said, 'when I realised that this was one such instance where the book was wrong.'
'About?'
'The necessity of Gollum.'
Frodo could take that in any way he liked. He had not said so, but it worried him deeply that the Ring was making such efforts again with Frodo. It had grown stronger in this desolate land. Gimli put a brave face on, but he was struggling again. He never spoke of it, but they all knew. Sam did not speak either. He simply offered Gimli his shoulder for leaning on.
He did not do so for long.
'Movement!' Legolas warned, so they all went down again.
Thráin had once again seen nothing, but this time he heard all the more. Tremors in the earth. Footsteps. Not too many, by his estimation, but enough to give them grief. They were close too, too close at that. Why had Legolas not noticed them before?
Barely had he drawn the cloak over himself when he heard them, speaking in their own tongue. 'Find them!' one voice said. 'Take them. Alive.'
They were compromised at last. The orcs had seen them. This he did not now doubt. He reached for his sword, but did not yet draw it. These elvish cloaks had proven their merit before. The orcs might not see them under these.
They didn't. They ran over the poor excuse for a road, eyes on the ground, but not seeing. It might have all gone off without a hitch, if not for Gimli. Gimli moved. Thráin couldn't say why, but he strongly suspected the Ring's involvement in this. Earlier today he had all but felt it vibrate with undisguised malice. Now it found a way to get what it had been after all along.
Gimli moved.
The orcs were alert for a group of strangers, so they would have seen this anyway, but by pure chance one of the orcs stumbled across him, flapped his hands to try and regain his balance and failed. He fell flat on his face, which caused the two who ran behind him to in their turn fall over him.
To Gimli's credit, he wasted no time. He was already on his feet, waving his axe with deadly intent. Thráin was only moments behind him, as was Legolas. Two orcs fell from an arrow through their throats before they knew what had happened. Another one Gimli beheaded before he had even seen from which way the danger came.
All descended into chaos. Orcs were only seldom surprised for very long. Thráin had little time to see if the others held their own. He only caught the occasional glimpse, but enough to be grateful for the fact that he had rescued Sam's beloved frying pan from Shelob's web; the hobbit once again wielded it with concussing effect. It was not a lethal weapon, but it stood him in good stead. Frodo had not mastered the art of fighting, but he too stood his ground. Orcs underestimated one so small, one who looked so weak. They themselves did not tolerate weakness. Those born deficient – more deficient than usual among their foul breed – did not generally speaking live long.
Frodo was currently defying expectations and they did not like it at all.
Of all the Fellowship it was Gimli who was in trouble, Thráin realised when at last he had the chance to look at his kinsman. At the start of the fight he held his own admirably, but the Ring slowed him down. He reacted too slow and it seemed as though the weight of his own weapon – one that he had used many times with great skill – was too heavy for him to bear.
Orcs not only detested weakness, but they also sensed it. It was their wont to find the weakest in any given group and fall on him like a group of starving wargs. As true bullies, they never elected to pick on someone who could match them.
He fought off two orcs and attempted to reach Gimli, who by now was in very serious trouble. A blade had pierced through his left arm; it went in one way and came back out at the other end. Gimli roared in pain, but did not let this injury deter him from fighting with all the strength that still remained to him. Bad as that was, there was worse to come. The Ring had once again escaped from the confines of Gimli's tunic and now dangled on its chain for all to see. The orcs were not blind, so see it they did.
They redoubled their efforts.
So did the Fellowship. Legolas reached Gimli first. He had given up on shooting in favour of slashing at the orcs with his daggers. He moved so fast that Thráin only occasionally caught sight of the glint of steel before another orc went down.
Sam too hurried to Gimli's aid, wielding his frying pan in one and his blade in another. 'Get out, you!' he shouted. 'Go. Away!'
The orcs did not go away, but only because all too soon they were robbed of their ability to go anywhere at all. All the Fellowship now turned on the orcs with a will. This was only a small patrol that had stumbled upon them by chance – and perhaps the will of the Ring – so they had not anticipated trouble or indeed a great deal of resistance. Before long they all lay dead on the ground.
'We must hide the corpses,' Legolas said.
'Hide them where?' Thráin demanded. There was nowhere to hide them. Most of his attention was diverted by Gimli at any rate. His kinsman sat down, face pale. It was a stark contrast to the ever increasing amount of blood flowing from his left arm. The wound of itself would not kill him, but infection might. Dwarvish healers could prevent against such a thing, but none were here. The healing rooms of Erebor were a very long way away. 'Take of your shirt,' he added to Gimli. 'I will do what I can.'
'Don't waste too much time on me.' They were in a hurry, more so now than they had been before. This skirmish would not be undiscovered for very long.
'Did not intend to do so.' Taking off the shirt would take time, he reflected, and this one was as good as gone anyway. He drew his knife and cut away the sleeve. 'Sam, bandages. Quickly, we cannot linger.'
Sam did as told while Legolas dragged the corpses to the side of the path and attempted to hide them. It was in this that he at last failed at something, because where they were there was nowhere to hide them, so at last he gave up.
Thráin busied himself picking threads of cloth from the wound before he cleaned it as best he could. 'That water is more likely to poison than heal me,' Gimli remarked sourly. Thráin concurred, but it was that or nothing. He misliked the sound of nothing.
He said nothing and bandaged the injuries as quickly as he could before more ash and dust could get in the wounds. 'Can you walk?'
'I must.'
They must indeed. So they passed the Ring on and were on their way again. They needed to buy themselves as much time as they could before these bodies were found.
Jack
'There.' Naturally it was the elf who saw it first. Aerandir had been injured some time ago. His injury prevented him from walking without a stick, but his eyes were in good shape. He had been relocated to being a watcher on the battlements. So far he had yet to fail them.
Jack squinted and found nothing. The advancing army of Mordor was nothing he could fail to see, but discerning individual shapes was beyond his might. He did not have the keen eyes of the elf next to him. He was forced to ask: 'What do you see?'
'Our missing friends,' said Aerandir.
'Which ones?' Would it kill him to give all the answers at once? Jack was in no mood to play the guessing game.
'All of them,' Aerandir replied. He took one look at Jack's face and decided that giving all the information at once was in this perhaps the best option that he had. 'They are all coming, on horseback. Elvaethor has your brother in the saddle before him.' He looked closer. 'From this distance I cannot tell whether he yet lives. The orcs are close behind them. Too close. They will not make it.'
The good news turned sour with those words.
'What does that mean?' Harry asked. He had been allowed to come here on the condition that he was quiet, but now he looked up at Jack with fearful eyes.
'Means that unless we do something, they'll never make it here.' The dread landed in Jack's stomach. 'The orcs are too near them?' He intentionally phrased this as a question.
'And their horses are too tired.' The answer was not encouraging. 'They are trotting. I have no doubts that they would urge their horses to greater speed if the animals were yet capable of it. They too are afeared and yet they cannot move any faster than they do.'
'They must have been chased for hours,' Flói observed. 'Time to do something about that.'
Jack concurred. 'Call out as many of the guard as you can,' he charged his cousin. 'On horseback, if possible. Speed is of the essence.'
Flói nodded and disappeared.
'Stay here and keep the watch,' Jack told Aerandir.
The pressure on his hand increased. 'Are you going to fight?' There were tears in Harry's eyes now.
Jack crouched down to his level and took both the child's hands in his. 'I must,' he said. 'That is my duty. It is my task to see this Mountain and all the people who dwell in it safe. That includes my brothers, my kinsman Dáin and Tauriel.' Maker only knew what she was to Thoren lately. 'To do so I must ride out and fight, as I did not so long ago when the Easterlings threatened our wounded. Do you remember?'
Harry hesitated only briefly before he nodded. 'Yes.' He frowned, seemingly deep in thought. 'Is fighting your strength?'
Jack vaguely recalled a conversation he'd had with Harry when they had both been confined to their beds. 'It is.' He could say so without boasting. He had slain a Nazgûl after all. He had triumphed against the Easterlings despite the odds stacked against him. He did not say that the odds were very much against them once more. 'Do you remember yours?'
He did. 'Speed,' Harry announced without even a moment's hesitation. 'Can I help?'
'Aye, so you can. It will be your duty to remain here with Aerandir and send any message that he needs down to the guards at the gates. Do you remember the way there?' This should keep him out of trouble, whilst at the same time making him feel like he contributed something.
Harry nodded. 'That's what heroes do.'
'Yes, that is what heroes do.' He did not think of himself as such, but this was the definition they had reached. 'Do you have your dagger?' He waited until Harry had produced it before he continued: 'Very good. Keep it close. You remember how to use it?' Another nod. 'Any orc you see, you try to run away, but if running away is not possible, you use it to hurt him. Promise me that.'
'I promise.' The boy's voice was a little wobbly, but he put a brave face on it.
I would have been proud to call him mine, Jack realised. He ruffled the boy's hair. 'Very good. Listen to Aerandir, Harry. He will do right by you.'
Harry nodded again, so Jack let go of his hands and made to stand up. It was at this moment that Harry caught him by surprise. He jumped at Jack and wrapped his arms around his neck, holding him tight. 'I don't want you to go,' he said in a small voice.
Jack held him for a few moments, before he gently disentangled the boy to hold him at arm's length. 'I must,' he said. 'For that is my duty, as being a messenger is yours. We must both do what we are called to do.'
A few tears trickled down Harry's face, but he controlled himself admirably. 'I understand.'
'Good lad,' Jack said. He turned to Aerandir. 'Keep an eye on him.'
He pressed a quick kiss to Harry's forehead, ruffled the lad's hair one last time and then departed. This was no time for lengthy goodbyes and he did not intend to take many risks in this. The aim was simple: make sure that their friends made it safely into Erebor, then retreat and close the gates. That ought to keep the Enemy out for some time.
He came upon Brand near the gates, mounting up.
'What are you doing?' Jack demanded. Brand may be of an age with him, but his body had aged faster than Jack's. He was no longer as agile as he used to be. His reflexes had slowed. He had no business going out and risking his life.
Brand knew what he meant. 'I've always been a good horseman and I have come through most of this war with nary a scratch to show for it.' He gave Jack a pointed look. 'And not for lack of fighting.'
Jack knew that. Brand was an able swordsman, even at age sixty. He had a good head on his shoulders too. For all his distaste of men and their ways, Jack had always respected Brand as both a man and a leader. He had done right by his people.
'It is not for me to say you nay.' It wasn't. 'But I also know that your people require leadership, which you cannot offer them from the grave.'
'The same is true for you,' Brand replied very sensibly. 'Yet here we both are.'
There was no reasoning with one such as that, so Jack did not. Brand was old enough to make his own choices. He had no time to waste on more words either. He mounted up himself and cast an eye at the few troops that Flói had been able to assemble on such short notice. They weren't many.
We are not enough.
Yet duty compelled him to ride out regardless.
'Our task is simple!' he told them, raising his voice above the din. All around him fell silent. 'Our friends are out there to bring our King home. They have faced many trials, they are weary and pursued. It falls to us to relieve them and see them safe. Who will ride with me?'
A chorus of cheers went up, which he took for confirmation. Dwarves who would not have followed where he led a year ago, now obeyed his commands without question. They were not the only ones who followed him now; he saw men of Dale and of Esgaroth, elves of Mirkwood and even, tucked away at the back where no one looked at him, the Easterling Mubul. He was as jittery as an elf at a dwarvish party, but he had come. When Jack met his eyes, he read steely determination there.
Now is the time to see what he is made of.
He wasted no more time on words. The gates were open before them, so he urged his horse into a gallop and led the sortie, sword already in his hand. In the time he had needed to get to where he was, the armies of Mordor had grown closer and so had his friends. He could see them with the naked eye now. There they were, two horses. Tauriel he saw on one of them, half turned back in the saddle, shooting arrows at everything that came too close with deadly precision. Elvaethor was on the other horse, holding on to Thoren, who did not move.
Maker be good. We cannot lose him.
Of Dáin there was no sign.
The horses were struggling. The one Elvaethor rode looked as though it could collapse at any moment. With the orcs at his heels, this was a development that he could ill afford. Neither could he fight; all his efforts were concentrated on keeping Thoren on the horse as best he could. He looked harried and tired and too pale. Word had it that he was still recovering from an injury he sustained some time ago in defence of Thoren.
Is there anything that he will not do for us?
Elvaethor's face lit up with hope when he saw Jack's party. Jack, unlike his people, reined in when he reached his friend, grabbing the reins of Elvaethor's horse as he did. 'Dismount and take my horse,' he ordered. 'Before this one drops dead beneath you.'
Elvaethor looked at him. 'What of you?'
'I will make my own way back,' he replied. 'This is not for you to worry over. Go. Take Thoren to safety.'
He gave the good example by dismounting and after a moment's hesitation Elvaethor did the same. 'Do not linger too long,' Elvaethor counselled.
He ignored that as the superfluous remark that it was. 'Where is Dáin?' he demanded instead.
He took it upon himself to gently lift Thoren from the horse to transfer him to the fresh horse. Only up close could he see that Thoren still drew breath, which was a miracle in and of itself. There was a nasty wound across his throat that indicated that the orcs had tried to slash his throat, then changed their minds and bandaged it up instead, presumably so that they could have their fun with him for a while longer. Maker be good.
Elvaethor gestured behind them. 'He offered to take on the orcs so that we may yet escape.' He bowed his head in acknowledgement of that sacrifice. 'I am sorry, Jack.'
'We will bring him home as you did Thoren,' Jack promised. It took a special kind of bravery to face all the might of Mordor alone. He'd never liked Dáin – and he was sure that the feeling was entirely mutual – but he was kin. 'Alive if possible. Go now, my friend. You have a duty to perform.'
'I will, my brother,' Elvaethor said with emphasis. 'Jack, be careful.'
He nodded. He had no wish to die here. 'We will only buy you the time that we need,' he vowed. 'Then we shall return home.' Their part in this war was almost done. Once the siege had begun, they would wait for Thráin to do what he had to. Perhaps it is only through his efforts that we may yet triumph.
He saw Elvaethor off and then turned south to face the onslaught of orcs. It was no hardship to find them. They filled the horizon from east to west in such numbers that he could not even begin to hazard a guess as to the exact amount of them. The fighting had already begun. It was thickest right before him. Briefly he saw a horse – Dáin's presumably – rear up in panic before it was slain. Orcs crawled over it and stabbed it viciously until it was dead. The horse screamed. Until it didn't.
He grasped his sword tighter and joined in the fighting. He took his place beside Brand, who despite his age wielded his sword with skill. 'Where is Dáin?' he asked between blows. 'Have you seen Dáin?'
'Fallen.'
Too many good folk had died fighting this evil. Now Dáin had joined their number. 'Where?'
'Straight ahead.'
Where the horse had been. Every once in a while an opening fell between the fighting bodies allowing him a glimpse of the beast's cadaver. He did not see Dáin, but he had to be there. Or his body had to be there at any rate.
'I am of a mind to bring him home.'
He did not wait for agreement, but he fought his way there. The resistance grew more fierce the further he advanced. These orcs were as big and as brutal as the ones who had come north with the first army. They were stronger than the ones Jack had fought before on campaigns. They had been smaller, not as strong and not as organised. Orcs did not group together on their own. When the groups grew too large, fights broke out and they halved their own numbers again. This could have been a good way to keep their numbers in check, but they multiplied faster than rabbits. Like weeds.
'We ought to go.' The words alerted Jack to Brand's presence.
Once more he was tempted to ask what Brand thought he was doing here, but he refrained. 'Once I have retrieved my kinsman.'
'Save me from the stubbornness of dwarves!' Brand fumed, but he did not go.
We were friends once, Jack recalled. Brand's life had followed a different path. He had aged quicker, had married, fathered children, come to the throne. They had grown apart, more so when Jack decided that it was best that he did not mingle with men too often, lest he be mistaken for one more than he already was. I gave up on friendship for the sake of appearances. For all the good that had done him.
Perhaps we are friends still.
In Brand's eyes they must be, for he followed where Jack led without question. Together they fought themselves a way to the horse and it was there that they did find Dáin, heavily injured, but alive. Corpses, after all, did not bleed. That was only the start of the bad news, because there were orcs everywhere. Dáin was also half buried underneath the horse. He had nowhere to go. The orcs knew this. One of them had his blade high above his head with every intention of bringing it down on the Lord of the Iron Hills. He never got round to it on account of Jack running him through.
'Keep the orcs off my back,' he told Brand, before turning to Dáin. 'Can you move once I lift the horse?'
'Are you out of your mind, lad?' Dáin demanded. 'Retreat if you know what's good for you.'
'I shall, once I have liberated you.' They had no time for this. 'Can you move?'
'I reckon so,' Dáin answered. 'Jack, you ought to go and leave me.'
Jack pretended he had not heard that. He may not have the full strength of a dwarf, but he was stronger than any man he knew and that ought to suffice. Brand did as he had been told, but that would not last. By the time the orcs became too many for him to resist, he meant to be gone from this place. It took tremendous amounts of effort, but he managed to lift the horse just high enough for Dáin to do as he had been told. Even so, Jack noted that he moved with some difficulty.
He is hurt worse than he shows. Then again the blood on his clothes spoke for itself, because not all of it was black. Yet he did not say a word of it. Instead he hoisted himself onto his feet and grabbed the axe that had fallen in the struggle. 'You are your father's son, Jack, and I do not intend that as a compliment. For Durin's sake, has sense abandoned you?'
'Aye, it must have,' he sneered back. 'Folk never tire of telling me that it runs in my blood. Have you done complaining of your rescue? If so, I should like to see us all safe to Erebor.'
It was time they were gone. The orcs, never ones to miss a good fight, had noticed that in this corner there was the promise of a good one. They also sensed the weakness. Indeed, Dáin was swaying on his feet. Brand sported a bleeding wound across his right shoulder that had not been there when Jack last looked on him.
Maker be good, we are surrounded.
They had already lingered too long. Of these three only Jack yet stood uninjured. An orc came for Brand, yet he turned him back. That was what one did for friends. His next blow put an end to an orc who saw the weakness in Dáin and meant to use it. That was what one did for kin. So Jack stood and did his duty.
Until he didn't.
Next time: it's not looking good. Not looking good at all.
Thank you so much for reading. Reviews would absolutely make my day, so please leave one if you've enjoyed this chapter or if you just want to rant at me for not giving my characters a break. That's perfectly all right as well.
Until Sunday!
